Roderick on the Line
Episode 25: Supertrain
Airdate: March 21, 2012
Transcription by Joe Cabrera @joecab
[opening theme music]
John Roderick:
Hello?
Merlin Mann:
Hi John. How are you?
John:
Hi Merlin.
Merlin:
How’s it going?
John:
[sings] “Mer-lin Mann.”
Merlin:
Hee hee! [takes a breath] Ahhhh ...
John:
It’s going pretty well. I’m getting kind of a late start this year.
Merlin:
[laughs] Ahhhh, so it’s March. So you’re—you mean getting a March start on a January year, or ... ?
John:
Oh, is it March already?
Merlin:
Oh, no ...
John:
I have so much to do. [inhales and exhales]
Merlin:
Haven’t even sent out my—something—cards. I—y’know, I was in a relationship—
John:
St. Patrick’s Day cards?
Merlin:
[in an Irish brogue] “Ah, hoi ta toi ...” I was in a relationship for a long time with a person who was as ... neh, y’know, this “Anna Karenina,” right? We never have the same problems. But—
John:
You were in a relationship with Anna Karenina?
Merlin:
Yeah, it really went off the rail—it went way off the rails.
John:
Oh wow. That’s hot.
Merlin:
Hold for laugh. We’re bad. We would have a Christmas tree. We’d buy a Christmas tree late. Excuse me, holiday tree.
John:
Mmhmm. Holiday tree.
Merlin:
And, uh ...
John:
Non-denominational Christmas tree.
Merlin:
It never, well, it was certainly not Catholic. You know. I mean really.
John:
Catholic tree?
Merlin:
I would never have a Catholic tree. Not in my home. I wouldn’t let ’em teach my kids either.
John:
Well, there was a Catholic tree growing on my street.
Merlin:
How could you tell?
John:
Well. It’s a Catholic tree.
Merlin:
Come on, that was a softball. There’s a million ways you could have taken that. Oh, I dunno, the kids that touched it kept crying? I dunno. I got nuthin’. Transubstantiation-made bread? I dunno.
John:
[laughs] Transubstantiation?
Merlin:
It’s hard to say. It’s got two Ss. I think it’s misspelled a lot, just like “misspelling.” I misspell “misspell” all the time.
John:
Because it has two Ss?
Merlin:
Yeah. That’s called recursion. Which is also known as recursion.
John:
Transubstantiation. Yeah, that’s recursive. “Transubstantiation” has more than two Ss.
Merlin:
I can tell you’re not Catholic.
John:
And I have braces, so it becomes very hard—halfway through the word, it’s one of those words sometimes I bail out of. “Transubstansub ...”
Merlin:
Oh, yeah you mean—we call it Jesus breading.
John:
I don’t get all the way through it.
Merlin:
We just call it Jesus breading now.
John:
Jesus breading.
Merlin:
Yeah, it’s like you get some panko breadcrumbs, you roll that bastard around.
John:
Sure.
Merlin:
No, not bastard. You still can’t prove it. But he did have a dad. You know Anakin Skywalker didn’t have a father either.
John:
That’s not true. Anakin Skywalker had a father.
Merlin:
He absolutely did not. Shmi. Shmi. His mother’s name was Shmi, which I think is a very unfortunate name.
John:
How did Shmi get impregnated?
Merlin:
No one knows. I think she might be coverin’ up. Shmi might be coverin’ it up.
John:
Wait a minute, is that true? Is that part of the Star Wars cosmology?
Merlin:
Well, at least Joseph—
John:
I didn’t read any of the—
Merlin:
At least Joseph and Mary had that kind of sham marriage.
John:
Uh huh.
Merlin:
Where he was the—the word was, he was called a cuckold.
John:
A cuckold.
Merlin:
He was a cuckold, right? ’Cause that’s a thing. You know, cuckolding is a thing.
John:
Yeah, I know it is.
Merlin:
Yeah, that troubles me. I’ll bet, I wonder how you say—
John:
It troubles you because you have a hot wife.
Merlin:
How you say “cuckold” in German? “Das Cuckolding.”
John:
“Coo-kold”?
Merlin:
There’s been a lot of that. There’s a lot of everything in Germany, John. I—the point is that, like our Lord and Savior, yes, yours, like the man behind the tree ...
John:
Anakin Skywalker, also—
Merlin:
Did not—
John:
Product of a virgin birth.
Merlin:
Did not have a traditional—yes, precisely. Now I don’t know if she’s a virgin. Maybe she turned it around. Maybe she had the surgery.
John:
Maybe she got it from a toilet seat.
Merlin:
Oh my.
John:
That happens.
Merlin:
You’re telling—you think they got toilets on Tatooine?
John:
I’ll bet you—of course they do.
Merlin:
They got slave toilets.
John:
Unless George Lucas devised some—unless there’s a special race that, like, that poops wheatgrass juice shots or something.
Merlin:
You think maybe they got droids that do that?
John:
[laughs] Well, it’s a—they look like human beings in the movies but maybe that’s just a representation. Maybe they’re really like Jodie Foster’s father in Contact, where they just appear in a humanoid form.
Merlin:
Huh.
John:
Because we can’t understand their true—
Merlin:
Oh ... no, no, no.
John:
We can’t understand their true nature.
Merlin:
Stop right there. Stop right there. You’re getting close to actual religion and I’m going to have to stop you there. Now, Catholic trees in, what, southern Seattle? Where are you? You’re in like the southern part of town?
John:
I’m in southern Seattle, yeah. Catholic trees are—they grow mostly in Bavaria.
Merlin:
[snorts] Not in Romania at all.
John:
No, no, no. Not in Romania.
Merlin:
The Balkans? Anywhere in the Balkans, John? Do they get trees in the Balkans?
John:
No, you won’t see a Catholic tree in that whole area. But in—
Merlin:
Because it’s all Orthodox. Orthodox, right?
John:
It’s Orthodox there. Well, there are Catholics there.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
But I made a pact with myself to not talk about the Balkans anymore on this podcast.
Merlin:
I wanna learn. No no. Please don’t thinkpax [sic]. You know what? No no. No no.
John:
No no no. No. Are you telling me I’m doing it wrong?
Merlin:
I’m telling you—
John:
Am I doing the internet wrong?
Merlin:
Don’t listen to people. You keep every key on that keyword, my friend, and you keep it plugged in. You know what I’m saying? Well, not plugged in in your case. You got the Bluetoot [sic].
John:
Yes sir. I do have the Bluetooth. That’s why I just bought stock in a AA battery company.
Merlin:
Yeah. Yeah. We—you know at our Walgreens, which is the worst—y’know, apparently everything I do is in Walgreens now—you can go and you can drop off your old, dead batteries, which is nice.
John:
And then what happens?
Merlin:
I dunno. As Michael Stipe says, “When you throw something away, where is ‘away’?” Did I just blow your mind?
John:
Oh my God. Whoa. Where is "away"?
Merlin:
Brady’s Kids.
John:
And I want to go there.
Merlin:
I know. I want to go to "away." Lately my daughter’s been bugging me to have a picnic at the dump.
John:
At the dump?
Merlin:
Yeah. They told her at school that there are parts of the dump they’re going to try to turn into a picnic ground? So if you don’t like ants, ask yourself how much you’re going to enjoy seagulls. Oh, and did I mention? Stinky garbage.
John:
One time, actually, right after the first freight train I ever hopped—
Merlin:
[laughs]
John:
I got off the train in Vancouver, Washington, ’cause it stopped in Vancouver, and I didn’t understand that it was going to keep going. This is a thing I learned over time, hopping freight trains. They stop, sometimes, but it doesn’t mean they’re done.
Merlin:
Is this after you had a pilot’s license?
John:
I had a pilot’s license already. Yeah.
Merlin:
Okay.
John:
But I was learning a new skill.
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
I was learning a new thing.
Merlin:
Right. Bustin’ a Guthrie.
John:
So it pulls into Vancouver, Washington, and it stops. And it just sits there, and I’m like, “Oh, god, I guess this was just a really short train that just went to Vancouver.” So I get off and, of course, immediately the train just starts up and off it goes. And I’m standing by the side of the track in the middle of the night. And so I walk across—for those of you not in the Pacific Northwest, there’s a giant river across, it’s called the Columbia River, there’s a giant train bridge that goes across the Columbia—and I walk across this bridge. And I’m walking and looking for a place to sleep. And so, it’s so late, and I’m so tired, and I’m so stupid, and I find this big, beautiful open area. And I’m like, “Oh, perfect.” And I’m carrying a tent at this point, and I walk across this kind of rough ground, and I find a clearing, and I set up my tent. And in the morning, I wake up to the sound of bulldozers all around me.
Merlin:
[laughs] Oh no.
John:
And I—and it’s already hot. It’s like 7:30 in the morning. It’s already hot ’cause it’s the middle of summer. And I poke my head out of my tent, all sweaty. And I look around, and I have pitched my tent in the middle of a garbage dump, on a patch of land that had, apparently, like, they laid many layers of garbage and then they would put dirt over the top of it.
Merlin:
Right.
John:
So I’m on a very thin layer of dirt.
Merlin:
You’re literally in a landfill.
John:
In a landfill.
Merlin:
They’re filling the land up and then more filling. Like a big, dirty, garbage sandwich.
John:
And all around are those giant bucket loaders ...
Merlin:
[gasps]
John:
Driving around, full of garbage. And the guys in the bucket loader trucks have never laughed so hard in their lives. And they’re doing their jobs. They’re taking their buckets of trash. And every one of them makes a point to drive as close as they can to my tent and laugh, tears running down their face, as I get out in my underwear and get dressed, fold up my sleeping bag and my tent ...
Merlin:
[laughs] Is it really as comical as it sounds, though? Were you amongst garbage, or did you just find a clear spot?
John:
I was surrounded by garbage.
Merlin:
[laughs]
John:
I was just—and there was dirt. There was a layer of dirt over the top of it. So in the middle of the night, I thought it was just this really freshly plowed—
Merlin:
You didn’t have like a Coleman lamp you were bustin’. You set this tent up many times. You knew I need this much, I need this much flat land, I need this much stuff that doesn’t have a washer/dryer on it, and I can pitch my tent.
John:
Yeah. And I was 17, so I was dumber than rocks, and I didn’t—I mean, this is the type of thing where even if you were even the ripe old age of 18, you probably would have stood there for a second and thought, “Wait a minute. What is this place?” You would have caught a whiff of it, or you would have—something would have tipped you off.
Merlin:
That’s—y’know, that’s the part. As someone who used to read books—this is the part of my mind where it’s unresolved—is that I feel like, for myself, when I’m anywhere even like slightly near a dump, there’s a very specific smell to a dump. I would call it a dump smell.
John:
It is a dump smell. But they had—there were a couple of things here working on me.
Merlin:
The dirt. All right. The dirt for sure.
John:
There was the dirt, and also it was right next to a river, and so there was a strong breeze in open country, you know. I dunno. It was very late at night ...
Merlin:
Oh, so there was a river smell, too?
John:
There was a river smell, but also, like, the combination I think of fresh dirt and the breeze disguised the dump smell long enough for me to pitch my tent and fall asleep. But, boy, in the morning, in the hot sun, it sure smelled like a dump.
Merlin:
And in retrospect, you look at this as a rookie mistake. ’Cause, again—I try to be sensitive to these things; if we need to cut this out we can—I try to be sensitive to the things that you’ve learned in your training and out of didacticism.
John:
Right.
Merlin:
My question to you is, in retrospect, does it scare the living shit out of you to know that you made such a potentially poor decision about location? I bet it was not a defensible position. I’m guessing, for one thing—
John:
No.
Merlin:
You may have been on lower ground than you would have liked.
John:
Well, and here’s—I mean, it occurred to me later, like, there was absolutely nothing keeping one of those guys in his dumper loa—dumping—
Merlin:
He’s a little bit hungover. He rubs his eyes for half a second.
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
And pretty soon you have the contents of a—three days ago from KFC is now covering a 17-year-old John Roderick.
John:
That, or, that they just think like, “Oh, it’s a piece of tent trash that didn’t get mushed down.”
Merlin:
Is that what they call hobos there? Tent trash?
John:
Tent trash. And the first thing they do when they get up in the morning is see which guy can roll over the ratty tent first.
Merlin:
[laughs] And he’s all—it’s like a little game of quoits. They just trying to get in there.
John:
“Hey look up there. What’s that? Oh, we—something—we missed a spot last week. Let’s get it,” you know? I mean any—but seriously, if I made a list of the top 50 rookies mistakes I’ve made where I should have ended up—
Merlin:
Right.
John:
Covered in KFC buckets and buried in a—
Merlin:
I think at a point where you’ve been in the business long enough, and in the variety of businesses that you’re in, it would be very interesting for you to put out a probably unsuccessful e-book about the places where you learned because you went a little bit wrong.
John:
Oh.
Merlin:
Again, the things that you can talk about.
John:
Oh wow.
Merlin:
But, you know what I’m saying? I’m just saying, and in this case, now you, I’m just guessing, that 17-year-old John, you were not a big e-book reader. That probably wouldn’t have helped you. That was a lesson you had to learn.
John:
It’s true. Quite true.
Merlin:
And yet—I’m just gonna guess, you know we can always guess—it’s like a—you get broken up with—by some awful girl, and you realize you’re probably are not the first person to do that. Or in this case, probably literally hundreds of women that you’ve broken up with.
John:
Mm.
Merlin:
In this case, I’m just guessing, hobo-in-a-tent is something they were dealing with a lot between the river and the railroad. That—you know what I’m saying?
John:
River and the railroad, absolutely. But probably most hoboes at that point were seasoned enough to not pitch their tent in a garbage dump.
Merlin:
They call them salty travelers.
John:
I’m gonna guess I’m in the decided minority of people. I mean, surely people pitch tents in garbage dumps that have been capped, and turned into parks and picnic grounds.
Merlin:
[takes a breath]
John:
That happens all the time.
Merlin:
Capping. I got mixed feelings about capping.
John:
Oh yeah, I do too.
Merlin:
That seems, that’s—oof—that’s kinda like putting Saran Wrap over something, then thinkin’ that like it won’t go bad.
John:
Well, here’s my feeling: that all the landfills that have been capped and turned into public parks in America are actually trash mines for the future when the future is mining trash.
Merlin:
[gasps]
John:
So they’re just going to uncap that stuff, and mine all that, all those plastic—it’s going to the cheapest way to get petroleum products.
Merlin:
Ohhhhhh ...
John:
In 50 years.
Merlin:
Oh my god. You just wrote the beginning of what will be an awesome—if it’s not something already and you’re just stealing—speculative fiction series on what happens. We’re talking way beyond peak oil.
John:
Mmhmm.
Merlin:
We’re talking post-post-Kunstler.
John:
Right.
Merlin:
If you’ll pardon my French. You’re talking about literally the only oil we have is by melting a Mr. Potato Head.
John:
Yeah. Right. Mining, I mean by that point all the biodegradable stuff will have at least turned into pink slime ...
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
And then all that’s left in there is plastic crapola that has already—that’s just ripe to be recycled. Reused, reduced, and recycled.
Merlin:
And then re-re-recycled.
John:
And then re-re-re-re—
Merlin:
There has to be a fourth triangle.
John:
Mmhmm.
Merlin:
That’s a really good point. And here’s the thing: they always say, I think we’ve discussed this on a previous visit, but they always say one thing that all these gloom-and-doomers get wrong about lots of things, whether that’s population growth, or, you know, running out of food or whatever. Like, for example they’ve said, ever since that I can remember, that the problem of world starvation is not really that the food isn’t there, it’s a distribution problem. Then it’s an economic problem of caring enough to get that on a boat and take it somewhere.
John:
Right.
Merlin:
And in this instance they’re saying, you know, we’re not thinking far enough ahead about how the technology changes. I’m still not persuaded technology is changing fast enough, but, if I could say, this is your speculative fiction series, not mine. For the sake of argument, let’s say we realize how majorly fucked we are on—
John:
Mmhmm.
Merlin:
On the fuel situation, and we do find some way, this cold fusion-style way, to get way more energy out of way less. You’re saying, if I understand correctly, you could potentially run a future dump of tent slammers on maybe just a few Mr. Potato Heads that have been melted down in the appropriate way, setting aside the pink slime which we could use for something. You’re saying maybe we could become so efficient, we uncap, we go, and we fill our tanks with Mr. Potato Heads.
John:
Absolutely right.
Merlin:
That’s good.
John:
I mean look at the third episode of Back to the Future.
Merlin:
Hmm. Really? Is there something, is that really something I need to write down on a card?
John:
He—I mean we know already that car requires 1.21 gigawatts.
Merlin:
Okay.
John:
And in the third episode, or in the end of the second episode. Or I dunno which. Maybe it was the first one.
Merlin:
I think they filmed them concurrently.
John:
Oh, well, at one point he comes back from the future to the present in the eighties, and he goes and gets some trash out of the kitchen and throws it into the trash compactor inside the DeLorean.
Merlin:
Ohhh, right. I think he does that in the first episode.
John:
Okay, that’s the first episode. Well, in any case, he—we know it takes 1.21 gigawatts.
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
So he’s getting that amount of energy out of some coffee grounds, and some, y’know, some plastic—
Merlin:
Probably I’m gonna guess a two-liter Pepsi bottle?
John:
Two-liter Pepsi bottle. So we know that energy is in there.
Merlin:
Pepsi Free.
John:
We just have to find—and these trash centers are just in the middle of our cities, so there isn’t going to be a transportation problem. It’s cheap energy.
Merlin:
Oh, John, I’m sorry, I’ve been getting you way wrong. You’re a fucking futurist.
John:
Hmm.
Merlin:
Have you really thought about this, or—
John:
[makes some futuristic boops]
Merlin:
Are you just stealing it from someone else?
John:
No I’m not stealing it from someone else! I’m offended. My real plan, my real project, is to go out there to those giant floating seas of plastic detritus that are out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Merlin:
Oh, those big, like, reefs of trash that form—
John:
Yeah those big—
Merlin:
Those are scary.
John:
Those Sargasso Sea-sized dead zone of garbage—floating garbage. And just go out there with some kind of a long net fishing trawler, and just gather it all up, and process it on my converted Exxon Valdez future ship—
Merlin:
[laughs]
John:
That’s captained by David Popper.
Merlin:
[laughs] Oh, you are so ready to be a Jonathan Coulton character.
John:
[laughs]
Merlin:
You’re gonna be the garbage czar.
John:
I’m garbage czar!
Merlin:
And you know what? My daughter and I have started reading—last night we read a Batman comic from 1941, which was awesome. But you’re like Bat—or a James Bond, maybe? You’re some kind of a supervillain, where all—or maybe SMERSH. Right, SMERSH? That’s the bad guys, right?
John:
That’s some of the bad guys.
Merlin:
That’s where some of the girls wear combat boots?
John:
Mmhmm!
Merlin:
And so here’s what happens: what’s gonna happen is that people at MI-35 or whatever are gonna be sitting around going, “We’ve noticed some very unusual activity.” Right? “People are using Swiss accounts ...”
John:
Uh huh.
Merlin:
They probably have lots of pistols in them, “to buy out capped garbage dumps across the U.S.”
John:
Right. “Who is cornering the market?”
Merlin:
“There seems to be a lot of interest in buying capped dumps near ...”
John:
“And old decommissioned oil tankers ...”
Merlin:
“And old decommissioned oil tankers,” yes, but there’s a pattern here, and they make the giant—you know, like every supervillain, you gotta your giant miniature version of whatever you’re building? Like in Die Hard or ...
John:
Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin:
Or is it Goldfinger? It’s one of those. From SMERSH With Love, I guess.
John:
The model.
Merlin:
Exactly. And a pointer. You gotta have a pointer. And it’s nice to have a midget, if you can find one. Right?
John:
Oh my god, they’re everywhere.
Merlin:
Heh. Heh. Hah. I think the midgets are gonna come to you.
John:
The thing is, when you’re a supervillain—
Merlin:
Yes?
John:
They come to you.
Merlin:
I think that’s where you send your resume.
John:
They say always “little people” too.
Merlin:
Okay.
John:
Not to get too ping-pong.
Merlin:
Well, little people become droids. I think the midgets, that’s the bad ones.
John:
They’re the ones that look out for you. They’re the ones that carry like vials of poison and blowguns.
Merlin:
Right. Well, yes.
John:
Little people, there’s always going to be jobs for droids. You know what I’m sayin’?
Merlin:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or Munchkins.
John:
Did you know that Kenny Baker and Jack Purvis used to have a cabaret show together? The guy who played—the guy who played R2-D2 and the guy who played, like, yeah. They used to h—
Merlin:
I didn’t know they had a cabaret show, but then I don’t follow the trades.
John:
Hm.
Merlin:
The pattern they notice—I’m sorry, I’m almost done with this, I swear to God—here’s the thing, though, I learned this from you, fucking John Roderick. You’ve just brought it all together in a way that will—well, it’s blowing my mind. You got the water, you got the dumps, you got the trash, you got the railroads. Again, we’re back to the same thing—
John:
That’s right.
Merlin:
How do you learn about a fucking city? It’s transportation, it’s energy ...
John:
Well, Warren Buffett knows it. He bought all the railroads.
Merlin:
That’s right. You know what he says: he says you should buy things when they’re inexpensive and then sell them once they become expensive.
John:
See.
Merlin:
That’s all you have to do.
John:
Why didn’t anyone ever say that before?
Merlin:
That is the one thing that those Wall Street fat cats don’t want you to know. And all I’m saying is that if James Bond or anybody else who has a miniature model, and a pointer, and some midgets, starts pointing, they’re going to notice—
John:
Mmhmm.
Merlin:
That a lot of the places that this very—
John:
“Wait a minute, wait a minute—all our garbage dumps and oil—decommissioned oil tankers have all been bought up! Oh, where are all the midgets?”
Merlin:
[laughs] “We’re going to have a lot of trouble finding used pump chili containers.” But, no, I’m saying if you buy these, it comes with a fucking gas station. If you find these near a waterway and a railroad, you have a built-in—
John:
What do you mean, “If you find these near a waterway or a railroad”? They are precisely situated near waterways and railroads.
Merlin:
Eventually this business will grow, and you know what you’re going to need? Office space—can I just say? Mobile home parks. The poor people live in mobile homes in the shittiest part of town—low-lying, right? It’s probably near the railroads and the dumps.
John:
So you’re saying that there’s a potential script for a Bond film in this—
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
But instead of the Bond villain being a super-billionaire—
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
The Bond villain is a genius white trash, dump-living trailer trash guy.
Merlin:
If by “white trash” you mean “rich, procrastinating sometimes musician,” I would have to say “yes.”
John:
Who, rich, procrastinating sometime musician, who—
Merlin:
Who—
John:
Knows how to speak white trash enough to communicate with all the denizens of these outsider communities.
Merlin:
Okay, listen: I’m totally fine with your head getting big ...ger, and you getting more self-involved. Do you honestly believe that you can talk “white trash” that well?
John:
No.
Merlin:
Okay.
John:
I know I can’t. I know I can’t.
Merlin:
I can see you getting super, super frustrated at a little general about two in the morning.
John:
Heh. It’s one of the things ... I had a really interesting conversation with a guy many, many years ago, where I had been prowling through America’s underbelly, America’s undercarriage, for a few years.
Merlin:
America’s lady basement.
John:
And I was talking to this guy. It was upstate New York. I was at Cornell, and he was a smart kid at Cornell, but he was he was from the Bronx, you know? He was one of those smart kids from the Bronx. He had street smarts. And I was telling him about all these places in West Virginia, and Alabama, Tuscaloosa, that I had been, and how I was trying to communicate with these people in their native dialect. And this kid—we’re both kids still, y’know, whatever, 19 years old—and he looks at me and goes, “uh uh, whadya talkin’ about, ‘native dialect’? I just talk to people like I talkin’ and then they understand me and they respect me that I’m—I’m speakin’ in my own language.”
Merlin:
[snickers]
John:
And I was like, “Well, what are you talking about? You don’t wanna talk to people around America like in your weird accent. You wanna try and get inside their mind, and get inside their culture, and seem like you’re from there.” And he was like, “What? You’re never gonna fool anybody that you’re from there. You just talk like you talk, and they know you’re who you are.”
And he blew my mind. And at the time, that was a heavy, heavy lesson I learned from this kid. And I stopped making the rookie mistake—which I had been making—the rookie mistake of going into places and trying to, like, figure out how they they do it and then—
Merlin:
Were you trying to pass?
John:
No, not trying to pass, but, like, I mean, obviously the first thing I said was “I’m not from here,” but I didn’t understand that—but half the time I’d go, [in a Western drawl] “Hey, y’all, I’m not from around here.”
Merlin:
Or you—you talked jivey.
John:
“Yo, dawg! I’m not from—” You know, I would try to adopt their local mannerisms.
Merlin:
Right.
John:
Because I thought that was how you greased the wheels.
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
And this guy from the Bronx was saying, “No, I have a comically Bronx accent, and I go everywhere, and people are fine.” And he was a wise man, for his 19 years. And I was actually embarrassed when I learned—when it was revealed to me, I was being kind of a turkey ...
Merlin:
[laughs]
John:
By going around and, like, mimicking people’s accents back to them.
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
And thinking that I was really getting inside—
Merlin:
I’ve done that, I have done that, and know I continue to do that. And what’s weird about it is, in my head when I’m doing that? And y’know now I really notice when other people do it. There’s this guy I see around the neighborhood, and whenever he talks to anybody, he acts like they are an ESL—like an English as a Second Language person who is profoundly retarded.
John:
Wow.
Merlin:
[with exaggerated pronunciation] “Everything he says to them he explains like this. I think that he does things like buy and sell cars? But what I want to do is explain to you that I will park it here, and then you can get it later.” And it doesn’t matter. He talks that way to me. He talks that way to anybody. That’s how the guy talks. But what’s funny is like—
John:
Maybe he’s from the Bronx.
Merlin:
Could be. It could be. Maybe they’re a very candid people there. Here’s the thing though: I think that is, ironically enough, in my experience, a weird kind of provincialism?
John:
Hmm.
Merlin:
Because my provincialism. I’m so provincial that I think I’m fancy. That’s how, I don’t know enough to know what I don’t know, right?
John:
Uh huh. Uh huh.
Merlin:
That’s how much of a fucking dumbass I am. And so I go out and act like the entire world has to have my brilliance dumbed down a little bit?
John:
Oh, sure.
Merlin:
And you know what? I’m not saying this for you, but for me. And you know what? I’ll even throw in a little bit extra by trying to catch up with your own little code-switching patois.
John:
[laughs]
Merlin:
My dark friend.
John:
Well, coming from Alaska, I really did come to America as though America was a foreign country. And not just a foreign country, but multiple foreign countries within one big continent, right? So the, so—
Merlin:
How long where you there? You were born—I’m sorry—so you were born in Washington, right?
John:
Yeah. I grew up between Seattle and Alaska, and moved, so—
Merlin:
Your mom did oil-based computing in—
John:
Oil-based computing. And my dad was a lawyer. A government lawyer for a long time.
Merlin:
But in the corridors of power?
John:
He was the chief counsel of the Alaska Railroad.
Merlin:
Oh. Wow!
John:
Which at the time was a federally-owned railroad. Doesn’t connect to any other railroads. It’s just the railroad that goes across Alaska.
Merlin:
[audible typing on keyboard]
John:
And so he was a big wheel there.
Merlin:
[typing throughout] Mmhmm.
John:
He had a pass in his wallet that allowed him to get on any train in the—
Merlin:
[gasps] It’s like a Europass except in America? And you can just ride?
John:
Oh my god, it was so amazing.
Merlin:
Oh my god, was it like—I’m sorry I’m cutting you off.
John:
I still have it. I still have it but it doesn’t work.
Merlin:
Was it like trains with seats? Or where you like—was it a cargo plane?
John:
What do you mean, “trains with seats”? Yes, yes, yes. Seats.
Merlin:
You got to ride like on consumer trains?
John:
Not only that ...
Merlin:
I’d kill for that.
John:
But sometimes, when, y’know, when he had a reason ...
Merlin:
[typing]
John:
He would call up, and the Alaskan Railroad had a Presidential car ...
Merlin:
Oh my godddddd.
John:
Which was a three-bedroom apartment with a living room, and a kitchen, and a butler’s pantry, and a balcony on the back ...
Merlin:
[typing] [gasps]
John:
And he would have them attach this train. This Presidential car which had been Truman’s whistle stop car—
Merlin:
[typing] Are you kidding me?
John:
He would have them attach it to the back of any Alaska Railroad train.
Merlin:
Oh my god ...
Merlin:
And we would go choo-choo-training around Alaska.
Merlin:
“The Ferdinand Magellan Railcar.”
John:
Oh, you’re looking it up?
Merlin:
I’m lookin’—there’s several here. What I’m telling you, John Roder—I’m sorry to interrupt you, but already I’ve got such a train boner. You can’t even imagine.
John:
I do, I can imagine. I mean, not your boner in particular—
Merlin:
’Cause I’m thinking, John Roderick—do you understand what people pay to do practically fucking anything near Alaska today? You mention “Alaska” and “whales,” and people are writin’ checks.
John:
I should do that more.
Merlin:
To ride around in like a really nice, a three-bedroom train car in Alaska, did you—oh my god, didja ever get to do it?
John:
All the time. Are you kidding me? My sister and I have pictures of ourselves just partying in this train car, leaning off the balcony, y’know. Sleepin’ in the train. We’d sleep on the way to Fairbanks, and then we’d get to Fairbanks, and we’d stay in the train car while they turned it around and got ready to go—to make the trip back. We did all kinds of stuff. My dad actually—
Merlin:
Did they have TV? Did they have TV in it?
John:
I don’t remember, but this was not—are you—watching TV was not a thing you would’ve been doing.
Merlin:
I would. But you had books. You would have had books or games. You probably had board games and stuff.
John:
Well, I mean you’re on a train going through Alaska. You’re like hanging off the back the whole time. We would spend hours hanging off the back.
Merlin:
I can already tell in your biopic—your probably massively overrun, overfunded and “Behind the” Heaven’s Gate of a biopic that you will have someday—I can see that. Now if that were me, I would be sitting there going like, “Why can’t I watch Shazam!?” But I can see you curling up with a book on special forces, special ops, just getting up in the skycar and just sitting there. I’m just looking at the photo that’s [sic] right now: “The best way to see Alaska is on the Railroad. The Alaska Railroad Corporation.” And already I got a total tunnel train boner. I would love to be in the skycar reading the encyclopedia right now. This is gorgeous.
John:
Yeah. And the thing is, this is something I learned when I was a kid traveling with my dad ’cause my dad always stayed in—my dad was a high roller, so he would always stay in high-rise hotels. Classic hotels. Hotels that had full-sized swimming pools in them, and not in the basement, either. Hotels that have full-sized swimming pools on the eighth floor, you know what I mean? Like, pretty nice places. And private train cars, and this type of thing. And what I learned is that when you stay in a giant hotel, or when you stay in a deluxe train car, you can entertain yourself almost indefinitely by finding things to throw off the balcony.
Merlin:
[laughs]
John:
So, if you are in a train car and you’re going across Alaska, you are scouring the train. And the thing is, the train is connected to the regular train full of regular people. And actually, there was a man, an Alaska Railroad employee, who was posted at the door of our car to keep the regulars—
Merlin:
Are you kidding me?
John:
Not at all.
Merlin:
You had a riffraff monitor?
John:
We had a guy, in a—it was coat and tie, who sat on a stool, and was like “Uhp, sorry, this is the end of the public train.”
Merlin:
[snickers]
John:
So we would go through the train and we would just collect all the things that might be interesting to throw off the back of the train as the train is speeding through the countryside. And I’m not talking about litter; litter wouldn’t be interesting. But things that might break, or things that might fly; these were also all the things that I would scavenge hotels for. And I would sit—because my dad, being the guy that he was, he would often say, “You stay in the room. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” And then I’d be in the hotel room, and I always took that to mean, “You stay in the hotel.” Or, “You stay around the hotel.” As I got older, it was like, “You stay in the vicinity of the hotel.” But I’d sort of collect stuff, like I would get a bucket of ice, ’cause you’re gonna wanna throw some ice off the eighteenth floor.
Merlin:
Mmhmm. Evidence melts.
John:
And—that’s right. And I would get lots of paper. And I would try to find matches, because you wanna make paper airplanes and light them on fire, and throw them off the eighteenth floor, out of your eighteenth floor hotel room. And I would sit and just huck stuff out of the hotel, and I cannot tell you the number of people who looked up from the sidewalk in the busy urban environment, and shook their fists at the sky because I had slimed them from high up in the air. Yeah.
Merlin:
I’m just glad to know you wouldn’t have abused power if you had it.
John:
No, not at all. Not at all. You know, in addition to having my pilot’s license when I was 17, my dad took me down to the rail yard one time and had a man teach me how to drive a locomotive.
Merlin:
[snickers]
John:
He knew that this would be something I’d be interested in.
Merlin:
Was this something planned ahead? Did they put this on the calendar?
John:
Oh yeah.
Merlin:
Or did your dad just show up and disrupted things to teach you?
John:
Well, I can’t really tell. I—he knew this engineer—
Merlin:
It’s all a little foggy now.
John:
You know, they all knew him, ’cause he was at the head office. But—
Merlin:
Well, let’s state the obvious here: which is that your father was important powerful—whatever—enough, that he was a man that you, if you had the choice you’d rather not disappoint him?
John:
Mmhmm.
Merlin:
In any role, right? And let’s be honest: even if you’re the hotel serving him, he’s a big gun in the travel industry.
John:
Mmhmm.
Merlin:
And so you wouldn’t want him to fill out that card and say, “I’m Dave Roderick, and ...”
John:
“And some bellhop chastised my son for throwing a bucket of ice out of the window of a twenty-fourth floor ...”
Merlin:
“This one’s throwing flaming planes out!” But also, now—
John:
“So, I’d like his job, please. I wanna see this kid. Bring him to me.”
Merlin:
Now that would be funny, if every time he got mad, he insisted to that person’s boss that you got to have that person’s job for a day.
John:
But, driving a locomotive ...
Merlin:
I’m sorry. Loc—sorry about that. Locomotive, yeah.
John:
Oh my god. So. Fun. Because, really, there’s not much to it. You have a little handle that’s the throttle, and you have a brake, a horn. But, boy, when you put that thing in gear and it starts to move ... hoo! Oh, also, they let me ride on the front of the locomotive.
Merlin:
[laughs] By the cow catcher?
John:
Yeah. Out there, y’know, there’s a little railing, that you can walk around the very fr—the nose of—
Merlin:
I think that’s for maintenance, John.
John:
It is for maintenance, but they let me go out there ’cause I begged.
Merlin:
Oh my god.
John:
I was like, “please, please, please let me ride on the front of the ...”
Merlin:
You get to do like a Titanic thing?
John:
Yeah, yeah.
Merlin:
That would be so fun.
John:
From the front of the locomotive, yeah. It was very fun. But, y’know, I’m sure everyone was shitting bullets because I was climbing on the front of this train, and all the guys inside were like, “Uhh, it’s the boss’s kid.”
Merlin:
And the great part is your dad would probably have to adjudicate the case. Do the case when it went to trial. And then the people from the insurance company were there?
John:
At the time, because—
Merlin:
[in a Southern lawyer’s voice] “I just want to understand, according to the lawyer, the lead counsel for your company asked that the child be pushed to the front of the prow.”
John:
[laughs] At the time there was no such thing as child abuse?
Merlin:
Mmm.
John:
So they wouldn’t have put my dad on trial for letting us—
Merlin:
They didn’t have a name for it. It was like autism.
John:
Yeah. They didn’t have a name for it. It was like, “Oh, I don’t understand why all these kids are so sad. Anyway ...”
Merlin:
[laughs]
John:
“Let’s sue the schools!”
Merlin:
[laughs]
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Okay, well, so far I’ve got three lessons. I’ve got lesson one—and again, we can cut this out if it’s too much—but lesson number one for your e-book is, “Don’t pitch your tent at a dump.”
John:
Right. Good.
Merlin:
Number two: “Don’t have a fakey patois to act like you are understanding someone better.”
John:
Exactly.
Merlin:
And, “if you’re gonna lean out a window, have stuff to throw.”
John:
That’s right. You’ve nailed it. You’ve nailed all the topics.
Merlin:
I’m just gonna—I may end up being your Boswell. So I’ll just capture all of this here. I’ll keep it here in nearby. I just—if we can, I don’t want to get too far from something much deeper here, though, which is, y’know, it’s your show, but I don’t want to get too far away from the idea that—
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
I hope it’s not stealable. I think you may be so far in front of this idea, we don’t need to worry about it being stolen?
John:
No, I think it’s gonna be stolen.
Merlin:
Well, obviously, well here’s the thing: you’ve got contacts inside the industry. You’ve ridden the front of a fucking locomotive that you were driving.
John:
That’s right. That’s right.
Merlin:
How many people have ever even fanta—that’s a terrible idea.
John:
Mmhmm.
Merlin:
That’s an awful idea.
John:
Pretty bad.
Merlin:
You’ve done that, and you—
John:
And people are way too timid to throw things out of high-rise windows now.
Merlin:
You’ve thrown flaming paper from a Harry Truman car.
John:
Yes.
Merlin:
Like, how many people can say they’ve done that, so here’s all I’m thinking, is when you do have this, I dunno what you wanna call it. This dystopic future empire that involves tearing open garbage dumps in order to melt Mr. Potato Heads or what have you, I think you conduct that by train. I think you go from one mobile home park to the another—
John:
Supertrain.
Merlin:
Via s—John, Supertrain.
John:
Supertrain.
Merlin:
And here’s the thing: can I just point out? It’s scalable and extensible. You can literally hook new cars on.
John:
Yes.
Merlin:
You’re going to be so rich, and so fucking weird at this point—
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
That you could have a new throwin’ car.
John:
Supertrain—
Merlin:
You could have an eighteenth—Supertrain can be whatever you want it to be that fucking week.
John:
Supertrain with a giant claw, like a giant claw crane. And you could ride Supertrain right up to old trash dumps and giant claw crane reaches out, grabs the whole trash dump in its giant claw, and puts it on flatcars, and you take it to your supertanker processor.
Merlin:
Oh, now would that be on your other train? Because it seems—but you could—here’s the thing though—okay, sorry.
John:
Yeah, sorry, you’d have trains all across America.
Merlin:
You know what? You have too much, you break it off. You call somebody else in. You have Juniortrain come in and take care of the rest of it. But you’re saying, you literally tear off the top of that, where the children might be camping or having a picnic.
John:
Yeah. People are playing frisbee, and here comes Supertrain—
Merlin:
Tear it off like a cheap toupee—
John:
[makes a mechanical tearing-off sound]
Merlin:
And then Mr. Claw goes in and grabs that, and starts filling all the Potato containers for future fueling. I think it’s a fantastic idea.
John:
Well the thing is, that, in the future, right? Like, already, we know, we notice that plastic cutlery is being made out of compressed potato starch. Right?
Merlin:
Sh—compostable, yes.
John:
Yeah. We don’t need oil and petroleum to make plastic forks anymore, because they’re making them out of potato starch.
Merlin:
Hm.
John:
And we don’t need petroleum to power automobiles anymore because we have these electric automobiles, and we’ll have hydrogen cars or whatever. So we’re going to need a lot less petroleum in the future. But there are some things that petroleum—that you really need petroleum for.
Merlin:
Like lawnmowers.
John:
Yeah. And petroleum jelly.
Merlin:
Ohhh, okay.
John:
You need petroleum for anything that has “petroleum” in the name.
Merlin:
Okay, I see—you’re saying that there could not be, for the sake of argument, a solar-powered jelly that would have the same performance features. Because you would need petroleum.
John:
Exactly. Exactly. You need petroleum jelly. You couldn’t have a hydrogen jelly.
Merlin:
What about other kinds of lubricants? Like for motorcycles or buttplugs? Well because you shouldn’t use petroleum on for that.
John:
You could use whale oil for some of that stuff.
Merlin:
How do you—now how do you get that? Do you have to kill the whale?
John:
Mm, well ... you could ... milk the oil.
Merlin:
You know they’re mammals? Did you know that?
John:
[laughs] You could milk ’em. Milk the oil out of them.
Merlin:
Okay.
John:
And then throw ’em back.
Merlin:
Okay.
John:
And that could be a subset of my supertanker. It has a whale milker on the side.
Merlin:
[laughs] Well here’s another obvious—again, I know—I’m sure you’ve already thought of this and it’s part of your probably very big book of plans, but—it’d be pretty cool also if you basically never had to get out. There’s like this one, like, Truman car that it’s always yours. It’s always yours. It’s like your bedroom.
John:
Ohhh. And it goes into the supertanker.
Merlin:
Into the fucking supertanker. The Supertrain goes on the supertanker. It could move you around. It becomes sort of a, like, a what? Like a large-scale Rascal. Or a—
John:
Yeah. Right. It’s like a SuperRascal ...
Merlin:
You know what? You know what? You’re going to be so fucking rich, you could potentially have a SuperRascal on the Supertrain, so you don’t—you could just move around very easily. And the thing is you’re going to have a lot of those cool little levers and knobs.
John:
Mm.
Merlin:
Maybe even the kind of thing, maybe you could have one of those, what’s his name? The universe guy? Where you could blow to make your chair move around.
John:
[laughs]
Merlin:
Or to, for example, say, tear the toupee off this picnic ground and put the contents inside of my Potato car.
John:
Right. Because I’m not—y’know when I tear the top of that picnic ground—
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
I’m not just harvesting old plastic bags. I’m not just turning that into petroleum.
Merlin:
No.
John:
There’s also all those batteries that Michael Stipe threw away fuckin’ 50 years before.
Merlin:
Right.
John:
That are full of, who knows what’s in those batteries? Probably they have a solid gold core. I’ve never—
Merlin:
There’s probably a lot of stuff, and also I know this from San Francisco what people leave on the street. People will get rid of stuff that is kinda mostly good.
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
A little bit of elbow grease, and that will be fine again.
John:
Sure. Although—
Merlin:
So you could also have a Goodwill car. You could have a Goodwill supertanker.
John:
Here’s the problem, though. A lot of that stuff has been sitting in a landfill for 50 years. Probably like the cou—the kinda like okay couch?
Merlin:
I think the consumer is going to get wayyyy less picky when they can’t run their lawnmower anymore, they can’t use their buttplugs, and they’re wondering how they’re going to get a Mr. Potato Head. I think they’re not going to stop asking questions. They’re just going to say, “How much?”
John:
You’ll also have generations of hipsters by that point—
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
Who will be so starved for vintage material ...?
Merlin:
Ohh.
John:
That it’ll be like, “This is vintage. I know that it’s been sitting in a landfill for 50 years, and it smells like a dump. And it’s, like, permeated with batteries—”
Merlin:
Yes.
John:
“And whale oil, but this is a vintage couch. How much will you pay?”
Merlin:
If you think your appreciation of Stealers Wheel is ironic now, just wait until I give you a literally non-functional 8-track that has literal battery acid and human shit on it.
John:
If someone is listening to this podcast and can only appreciate Stealers Wheel ironically?
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
I will personally come and beat your ass.
Merlin:
Will you go ride there on your train?
John:
Because, my god, Stealers Wheel is amazing.
Merlin:
That’s what Gerry Rafferty was in.
John:
That’s right.
Merlin:
There’s a big scene in that movie. Remember that?
John:
Which—oh, Harold and Maude?
Merlin:
Mmm, no, I was thinkin’ of—
John:
Star Wars.
Merlin:
Okay. I’ll come back to that. I’m sorry, please go ahead. All I’m saying, John—
John:
No, no, you’re talking about the “Mr. Pink” movie.
Merlin:
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. It’s that and tip. I’m sorry, please continue. All I’m saying is, I fear you. I have a few questions I’d like to ask later for some follow-up.
John:
[laughs] I love the way you say “please continue” and talk.
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
And then you talk.
Merlin:
All right, please continue. But the main thing I wanna ask, I would like to get just a rough idea, just generally, so I know whether I need to start getting weapons, is—please don’t answer "no" whenever you’re done after you continue—do you think this will be largely benevolent? Will it, will you want people—will you force people to perceive it as benevolent? Or will this really, truly be like a stark, dystopian vision, where you really run the entire universe based on your own caprice? I think I know the answer.
John:
Y’know, “Power tends to corrupt—”
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Merlin:
That’s what Lincoln said.
John:
That was—that’s George Lincoln.
Merlin:
No, no, no. Oh, I’m sorry, I was thinking of—like in “Rockwell.”
John:
The second President of the United States, George Lincoln.
Merlin:
Is that—? Okay.
John:
But I think what will happen, is, initially, it will be presented as an ecological—y’know, I will be a benevolent eco-warrior.
Merlin:
It seems like a friendly, helpful option.
John:
Yeah. And the Supertrains will all be painted kind of iPhone white, and it will be, and the super crane will also be iPhone white, and it will look like a very nice, y’know, hel—like, people will flock to fund this operation.
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
I’ll have lots of IPOs. I’ll have seven or eight IPOs. And each one will raise billions of dollars. And the President will shake my hand. And it will and I will, y’know I’m thinking I’ll dress like Tom Wolfe. I’ll have like three-piece cream-colored suits.
Merlin:
You can trim your beard and get a walking stick. A green walking stick. A walking stick made out of park benches that used to be milk cartons?
John:
Right. And people will think, that, they’ll think, “John Roderick, Eco Warrior, Supertrain Founder,” like, “Hyper Recycler.”
Merlin:
How ’bout this—how about this: “John Roderick, White-Suited Eco Peace Maker.”
John:
Ohhh.
Merlin:
He has—he’s got children. He’s giving jobs to children, and not in a mean way. He’s excee—he’s handing out—he’s going across the country in a green train that is literally creating energy as it travels across the country. You know what? Maybe it’s got WiFi transmitters, too. You’re helping poor people get on the internet.
John:
Oh my god, WiFi train.
Merlin:
WiFi train. You give out CFL light bulbs and vegan meals. But nice vegan meals.
John:
I let kids ride on the front, I let kids ride on the back ...
Merlin:
Yeah, but not in an unsafe way.
John:
There’s a whole section where you can light paper airplanes on fire and throw them in a way that will not start a larger fire. There’s a whole section.
Merlin:
Oh. So you’re saying it’s like a renewable airplane source?
John:
Well, let’s just say it’s not—
Merlin:
It’s not non-renewable.
John:
Right.
Merlin:
Okay.
John:
It’s not non-renewable. But I see it as—
Merlin:
People would fall for that in a second. Are you kidding me? People go to fuckin’ Whole Foods. They would love the—what’s it called? Supertrain? Supertrain?
John:
Supertrain. But that as time goes on ...
Merlin:
Yes.
John:
Of course, as I become richer and control more and more garbage dumps, and more and more public parks are disappearing, no one can play frisbee anymore. There’s no place to picnic anymore because Supertrain has been there.
Merlin:
But at this point, who cares? Because BMW and Bayer are doing great. They’re very happy ’cause under the Supertrain system, everybody’s making money. Everybody’s happy. The poor people have CFL light bulbs and vegan meals? But things are subtly changing.
John:
That’s right.
Merlin:
Subtly changing.
John:
Pretty soon people are addicted to vegan meals. And where do they get them? Supertrain.
Merlin:
Supertrain.
John:
Can’t get ’em anywhere else. Supertrain cornered the market.
Merlin:
Pretty soon you can’t afford to buy a mobile home anymore, because there’s so many super office parks.
John:
Well, and a lot of those mobile homes have been recycled by Supertrain.
Merlin:
But they’re all green technology, so at first it all made sense.
John:
Mmhmm. I like this a lot.
Merlin:
You got people burning sage, and hittin’ fucking drums.
John:
I become a ... evil super genius.
Merlin:
It writes itself. There’s no question about it.
John:
Yeah yeah yeah.
Merlin:
Y’know, here’s the thing, John. Can I just point out one thing—
John:
I hope no one steals this idea.
Merlin:
See, here’s the thing: I don’t think anybody can steal this idea, right? So—
John:
Right.
Merlin:
So y’know success, you got the, execution is ideas, “ideas are a multiplier of execution,” something like that. I’ll look it up later. The point is, ideas are like a dime a dozen. It’s how you implement it, right?
John:
Right.
Merlin:
And so here’s the thing: you gotta say to yourself, like, what, like, who do you want having this job? If you had your choice of different dictators. I say you want a truly—a competent dictator who knows where you shouldn’t pitch a tent. If you know what I mean.
John:
Yes.
Merlin:
I think you want, John Roderick. ’Cause here’s the thing: other guys are gonna come along, and they’re gonna have their own pale version of Supertrain.
John:
Sure. They’ve never ridden in front of a train.
Merlin:
It’s gonna run Flash, the battery’s not going to last for very long, right? But they’re all be copycatting on the Supertrain program.
John:
Right.
Merlin:
Right? And still those garbage dumps are gonna sit there with their little hats on. Nobody’s going to make any money. Mr. Potato’s just sitting there doing nothing.
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
I think, I dunno, I just think—
John:
The thing is, I already figure, by just by having spoken about it, I mean normally super genius wouldn’t talk about his plan like this until he had the hero tied up in the—
Merlin:
Oh, floating over the shark tank full of acid?
John:
Yeah, exactly. Tied up, floating over the shark tank full of acid on the supertanker.
Merlin:
[snickers]
John:
And the Supertrain-branded supertanker. That is when I would be explaining this whole thing to him, as I was about to drop him into the shark tank full of acid. But, I—the reason I’m doing it now, the reason I’m talking about it now, is that I’m very confident it will produce some fan art which I’m going to use to galvanize—
Merlin:
[laughs] Ohh, they call it—what do they call it? Instead of grassroots, they call it, the ... astroturfing? Is that what you call it?
John:
I’m astroturfing.
Merlin:
You’re astroturfing.
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Huh. Y’know I’m thinking about this. I wanna say, now I can’t remember, it might have been in Billy Jack. Yeah I’m pretty sure it was Billy Jack. Where the guy says—the guy’s facin’ off with this kind of elderly man which, if memory serves, may have been dressed as Colonel Sanders. But what I recall is Billy Jack—or it might be a different movie; I’m old—he says something along the lines of, “You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna kick you, on this side of your face, with this foot, and you know what? There is not a damn thing you can do about it.”
John:
[laughs]
Merlin:
And you know what he does? He fucking kicks him. in. the. face.
John:
With that foot.
Merlin:
Yeah, and you know what? Can I just tell you? There was not a damn thing that guy could do about it.
John:
Nothing that guy could do.
Merlin:
Uh huh.
John:
What I want is a BLT.
Merlin:
Mmm.
John:
I want you to hold the lettuce—
Merlin:
Between your knees.
John:
I want to to hold the tomato ... between your knees!
Merlin:
[laughs] You know, once you get into, as the President for Life of Supertrain Industries, I think you’re going to very easily be able to have these conversations with people who actually literally can’t do anything about it.
John:
Yeah. Well I hope so. Y’know, my present project—here’s my present plan.
Merlin:
Oh, I can’t wait to hear about this.
John:
Yeah, I got a good plan. My present plan is that all through Silicon Valley, and in Seattle, too, there are all these startups. These tech startups, where people who are working in the tech industry are all sort of in this mutual masturbation society where they all think they know what the world is made of, and what the world needs, and they’re making apps, and they’re launchin’ apps, and they’re launchin’ sites, and they’re makin’ techs, and they’re techin’ makes, and whatever it is people are doin’. And they’re all on each others’ boards of directors, and they’re all makin’ IPOs ...
Merlin:
Thought leaders.
John:
They’re thought leaders. Well, they think they are.
Merlin:
Mmhmm. [laughs]
John:
But here’s the problem. Here’s the problem: there’s not a single person on any of those boards of directors with real-world experience.
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
And I bring that kind of real-world experience to the table. So my current plan is to start marketing myself as a potential member of the board of directors of some of these internet startup companies. Because they really need somebody that can speak truth to power.
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
They need somebody who has thrown stuff out of a high-rise. They need somebody who once had a pilot’s license. They need somebody with this kind of real world experience to help guide them through the rocky—’cause you see a lot of these companies, they’re like a flash in the pan, right? They arc across the sky ...
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
And then, kaputzville. If they had me on their board of directors, tellin’ ’em like it was ...
Merlin:
Right.
John:
Tellin’ ’em, “Hey! You don’t need to speak in a fake Southern accent to sell your app in the South. You just speak in your regular Brooklynese ...”
Merlin:
Regular stupid Stanford accent.
John:
“You just talk in your Stanford accent, and people are gonna buy it or not buy it based on whether or not it’s a useful app that works on the iPhone.”
Merlin:
This is the amazing part, though, John, is these guys, the ones who—they’re takin’ techs and makin’ techs and takin’, what’s your phrase, “techin’ makes”?
John:
Techin’ makes, yep.
Merlin:
They’re ... that’s like Tex-Mex?
John:
[laughs]
Merlin:
They’re out there doing all of this stuff, and like, the ones, “I’m a serial entrepreneur,” “I’ve had all these different startups,” the ones who consider themselves really smart and really, as we say in the business, “forward-looking”?
John:
Mmhmm.
Merlin:
If they are really looking us forward, as they claim to be with their forward-looking? They are gonna wanna be on the good side of the guy who owns Supertrain.
John:
That’s right. That’s exactly right.
Merlin:
It’s not precisely extortion, it’s “pre-stortion.”
John:
It’s “pre-stortion.”
Merlin:
It’s just a way of saying, “Hey, y’know, you’re gonna have a real pretty daughter someday. It would a shame if at some point something were to happen to her. Involving an extremely costly train.”
John:
I do that around Seattle all the time. When people, like, y’know, there are a lot of people at the—I interact with people at the Mayor’s office, I interact with a lot of, y’know, people that are part of the machine here? And—
Merlin:
Yeah. The corridors of power.
John:
Yeah, the corridors of power. And I don’t even have to say it. It’s just understood among these people, like, “Ah, I don’t know what Roderick does. I don’t even know why he’s here at this meeting. Isn’t he a singer/songwriter?”
Merlin:
[laughs]
John:
“Why is he here?”
Merlin:
“Why is he so involved in civics?”
John:
But at the same time, the Mayor is listening to him. So, there will come a time, maybe, when I don’t wanna be on the wrong side of him. I don’t know why—
Merlin:
Ohh.
John:
But I’m gonna be nice to him and give him what he wants.
Merlin:
That’s not even how your dad started.
John:
It’s how everybody in power starts. You just just end up, you show up places, and people go, “why is he here?” And then they go, “Well, I better not cross him.” And if enough people do that, then pretty soon you walk in a room and everybody applauds. Which is kind of interesting.
Merlin:
There’s a guy—well, they better applaud, if they have any sense. Here’s the thing: there’s a guy in my neighborhood. We’ve got a handful of really colorful guys in my neighborhood, by which I mean crazy homeless guys. And one of these guys, who I tend to avoid because he cycles, y’know, as you do.
John:
You mean, he’s a bicyclist? Or he is—
Merlin:
Yeah. He’s got a fixie.
John:
Oh.
Merlin:
Well, I think he’s bipolar, or something. Or maybe ...no, he’s probably schizophrenic. He’s not bipolar.
John:
So you’re saying he cycles through many phases.
Merlin:
Well, he has days where he doesn’t stand in the street throwing fried rice at pigeons?
John:
[laughs]
Merlin:
And days when he does. And it’s a kind of cycle. Like both of his wheels.
John:
Hee hee!
Merlin:
It turns around and around. And here’s the thing: I avoid this guy because I don’t want fuckin’ fried rice thrown at me. I’m mean, I’m a pretty snappy dresser.
John:
Even though you’re clearly not a pigeon.
Merlin:
Okay. And as much as I don’t like to admit it, I do go to the KFC-slash-Taco Bell, which, as you know, is near my home.
John:
Yes.
Merlin:
I go in there, and probably three out of five times I go in there, that guy is in there. This guy I’m pretty sure does not have a lot of dough. But every time I go in there, and I should explain a little more, this guy wears basically like filthy sweatpants, and he ties lots of plastic newspaper bags around parts of his body?
John:
Oh!
Merlin:
And then he has kind of an ad hoc—
John:
He’s a real San Franciscan, it sounds like.
Merlin:
Yeah. He wears this kind of like, if you took like a, if you made like an acid helmet out of like a bandana kind of thing, out of like a rag you used to clean tools of a car? He wears that on his head. He has a very large salt-and-pepper beard. He looks a little bit like a young Oliver Sacks, and eats the shit out of some fuckin’ chicken. I think—
John:
If I was this guy?
Merlin:
Yes.
John:
I would be very careful about how close I got to Supertrain.
Merlin:
[laughs] Yeah, yeah ...
John:
Because it sounds like Supertrain might just pluck him ...
Merlin:
Heh. With a big claw?
John:
He sounds very recyclable.
Merlin:
[laughs] Does the big claw—?
John:
He sounds eminently recyclable.
Merlin:
What he needs to worry about is being reusable. Because Supertrain’s going to have a lot of technology ...
John:
There are definitely parts—
Merlin:
That Captain Bird Hate is not going to be ready for. It is kinda funny. You know me. You know my brain.
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Like, I see things. I tell stories.
John:
So he eats at Kentucky Fried Chicken, but he hates birds?
Merlin:
He fuckin’ hates—he throws—he stands in the street, taking handfuls, like, you know, people will leave food around. He finds some fried rice from like the Thai place. He’s fucking screaming in the middle of Taraval Street and throwing rice at pigeons. And the pigeons are just fucking with him. At first they’re like, “Obviously, that guy’s crazy.” Then pretty soon, what, if you’re a pigeon, and somebody is throwing rice at you—
John:
This guy’s a fried rice fountain.
Merlin:
Exactly. “Oh, don’t throw me in the briar patch.” So they’re just fuckin’ laughin’. They’re just—
John:
He has to know that, though. First of all, he has to know, that—
Merlin:
He does know, John. He’s crazy. That’s the problem. So here he is, I go in, and two out of five times I go to the KFC, he’s sittin’ there. And he is—I’ve never seen anybody eat angrier than Bird Guy. He’s fuckin’ going after some dark meat, his beard is shiny, he’s diggin’ it, and you know what? I’ve never seen the guy ever, ever, ever pay. So, I—the thing is, I haven’t asked. But you know me: in my head, now I’m wondering about things.
John:
Right.
Merlin:
You know? Maybe Supertrain as an answer for this at some point. But all I’m saying is, I don’t know if they’re doing this out of charity. I think they’re not ...
John:
Is he digging in the trash and pulling out dark meat?
Merlin:
He’s not. He’s sitting right at the table next to where my daughter and I are enjoying a cookie. He is sitting there, and literally shoving dead fried bird into his face.
John:
Wait, wait, wait, you get cookies at KFC/Taco Bell?
Merlin:
I don’t want her to have to eat the chicken. That’s not healthy.
John:
Oh, right. Good man. Smart.
Merlin:
Yeah. And so, I don’t know, I could—I don’t precisely know where I’m going with this.
John:
Wait, even fried chicken that’s made with Jesus panko?
Merlin:
Okay, okay, I go there a lot, all right?
John:
[laughs] They have those chicken bits now.
Merlin:
There’s nothing that isn’t wrong with KFC. Every single aspect of KFC has something that’s wrong with it: the messaging, the posters, the photography, certainly the oil that they make things in. Every single ... oh, the signage. Don’t even get me started on the signage. I’m gonna take a photograph of the signage for you.
John:
Where they got—where Colonel Sanders is no longer a person? He’s just a—
Merlin:
Oh, an icon? No, no.
John:
Action figure?
Merlin:
No, no, I like—that I don’t mind. You know, we got a big bucket here. The bucket is bigger than you think because of what is known in the art as “foreshortening.” The bucket’s actually quite large, but, y’know, can I just mention one other thing in passing?
John:
Mmhmm.
Merlin:
That, you know who likes to sit around the rim of the bucket?
John:
Uhhh ...
Merlin:
Birds.
John:
Oh, birds.
Merlin:
Birds. Mmhmm. Birds.
John:
They know which side—I mean, they’re cannibals, those birds.
Merlin:
But but but—much like the man throwing the rice, I think there’s a certain kind of ... what, self-destruction? A need for self-harm? But all I know is that guy is getting fucking free chicken and I’m not. Maybe I haven’t asked enough. But Pauline—
John:
Hmm.
Merlin:
Who I don’t think listens to the show ...
John:
So you’re envious of the guy with plastic bags around his legs.
Merlin:
“Envy” is a strong word.
John:
He’s getting free chicken.
Merlin:
I’m not envious. I’m saying “jealous.” I want him to not have it either.
John:
I see.
Merlin:
Naw, that’s not accurate. But anyway ... [exhales]
John:
I understand what you’re saying. I think Supertrain’s gonna solve all of this.
Merlin:
I don’t know Supertrain’s gonna solve these problems. But I’m saying there’s a lot of complexity, and America has a lot of stories to tell.
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Y’know? And a lot of people are going to need help. Now, hmm. I gotta tell you, John—
John:
Are you familiar with pink slime? Do you know what pink slime is?
Merlin:
That’s different from gray goo. Is Kurzweil the guy that makes the keyboards, or the guy who makes the gray goo? That’s Ray Kurzweil, right?
John:
Kurzweil makes the keyboards.
Merlin:
It’s not Robert [intentionally mispronouncing “Moog”] “Mogue.” You say “Mogue” or “Moog”?
John:
Well you say “Moog” because you’re not a dope. But if you don’t ...
Merlin:
I totally agree.
John:
If you’re a music industry dope, and you want to call him by his real name, it’s “Mogue.”
Merlin:
How do you pronounce the French film festival that is a homonym with what you drink a Coke out of?
John:
[pronouncing “Cannes”] “Con.”
Merlin:
I think it’s “Can.”
John:
“Cans.”
Merlin:
I think “Con” is fake white trashy patois. I think you’re doin’—I think you’re—sorry.
John:
Is that right? It’s “Cans.”
Merlin:
I think you might be—
John:
“I’m going to the ‘Cans’ Film Festival.”
Merlin:
I think you might be—as your Boswell, excuse me, as your Boswell, I think you may be bending at least rule number two, the patois problem.
John:
How do you pronounce the capital of Vermont?
Merlin:
“Pier”?
John:
[trying to say “Montpelier”] “Mont-pell-ee-yer.”
Merlin:
“Mont-peel-ee-yer,” right? “Mont-peel-ee-yer”?
John:
I guess “Mont-peel-ee-yer.” “Mont-peel-ee-yer,” “Mont-pell-ee-yer,” I just know [in a French accent] “Mohn-pell-ee-ay”
Merlin:
I just know from trivia—[in a French accent] “Mohn-pell-ee-ay”—
John:
[in a French accent] “Mohn-pell-ee-ay.”
Merlin:
Like, the whole [pronouncing the New York City street “Houston”] “How-ston” versus “Hew-ston” thing? And this is more ways New York is trying to fuck us? And I’m going to be glad when Supertrain drops that giant fucking claw on New York. No offense to our friends who live there.
John:
Ah. There are a lot of people in New York.
Merlin:
Most of our friends have moved out of Manhattan, and I think that’s smart. There’s a lot of trains in Manhattan. I think Supertrain is going to have a huge influence over all of that monstrosity that we call “Manhattan.”
John:
This is a good question. Will Supertrain be able to, because as I am working to convert people in America over to my way of thinking, will Supertrain also be converting the other trains?
Merlin:
Oh, I think it has to.
John:
Supertrain will speak “Train” to them.
Merlin:
Oh abso—it’ll speak “Train” fluently, and not in any kind of a jokey Bronx patois.
John:
Right.
Merlin:
You’re going to have something like 160 years of parallel tracks behind you on all of this. I think—
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Like, again, it’s like the Treaty of Versailles, let’s be honest. People are going to be looking for a hero. I think there are a lot of trains out there that are not happy with their work.
John:
There are so many great trains, and they are held back by people with insufficient vision.
Merlin:
Oh, yeah, and especially the law. When a lot of those laws were signed, I think those trains already felt a little bit, let’s be honest, a little bit neutered. And there’s things they couldn’t do?
John:
Sure. Well, the whole Amtrak business. I mean, why is there even an Amtrak?
Merlin:
Ugh.
John:
It makes me so mad.
Merlin:
They should just call it “Rolling Vagina.”
John:
What about that train that was going to go from L.A. to New York in five hours because it was in a vacuum tube under the ground?
Merlin:
Oh, come on.
John:
What happened to that train?
Merlin:
There was going to be a tube train?
John:
Did you not ever read Popular Science magazine? I can’t believe you—
Merlin:
I know about MagLev.
John:
Well that’s—so you take MagLev ...
Merlin:
And put it in a tube.
John:
You put it in a tube. And then ...
Merlin:
[gasps]
John:
You vacuum all the air out, so there’s no resistance.
Merlin:
Are they allowed to have air in the train?
John:
Well, yeah, you have to have air in the train.
Merlin:
It’s got compression of some kind.
John:
The train is compressed like an airplane.
Merlin:
Okay.
John:
The train is a—it’s sealed. And then it’s—
Merlin:
Would they have food?
John:
Well, yes, it’d be a supey dupey—they’d have incredible food. Because it would probably cost 20 million dollars to ride this train. Because how much would it cost to build a pressurized tube from New York to L.A.? It would cost a lot of money.
Merlin:
Yes.
John:
But ...
Merlin:
You probably have to move a few things around.
John:
But, if you did it, you could have a train that went from New York to L.A. almost as fast as an airplane. But it would be a train.
Merlin:
And, you’re underground, which is pretty appealing.
John:
I think it would be even faster. I think if you had Mag—if it was magnetically levitated, and you had no air resistance ...
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
You could go, conceivably, faster than light.
Merlin:
Mmhmm. And this—that’s based on science?
John:
You’d go faster than fast. You—it would be so fast. Yeah, you would get there before—
Merlin:
I think you could go as fast as is safe and practicable. Which is not true with a plane. Plane’s got a lot of problems and a lot of overhead. You ever do this? You ever have go somewhere in like the Northeast Corridor, but you have to st—y’know go through New York? I’m telling you, I do the math, and it’s frequently to hop on a fuckin’ Peter Pan bus rather than, like, do anything involving changing at an airport.
John:
Mm. Oh, absolutely.
Merlin:
When I went to Connecticut I did that. When I went to Rutgers I did that. It was all—it was so much easier. I mean, you know what I’m saying?
John:
It’s cheaper just flying to Pittsburgh and rent a car.
Merlin:
If you fly to Pittsburgh—and Pittsburgh is still there? That’s considered an incorporated city?
John:
Yeah, yeah, Pittsburgh is still there. And in fact there’s that guy, that bald kid who’s the mayor of, like, one of those outlying factory towns, who’s turned his little town into a mecca of entrepreneurship?
Merlin:
Mmm. Are you sure you didn’t hear about this ...? That sounds like an NPR story.
John:
[laughs] I think I read about it in Parade magazine. Or maybe I read about it in the United Airlines in-flight magazine?
Merlin:
Brady’s Kids.
John:
But it’s a guy. And he’s, like, my age. He’s your age. He’s our age. But he’s a big guy. He’s bald—
Merlin:
He’s part of the Supertrain generation.
John:
He’s Supertrain generation. He’s bald. He’s pretty—about 350 pounds, and he got himself elected mayor of this town where all the factories closed. It’s like a Billy Joel song, this town.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
And ...
Merlin:
Handing out forms, standing in line.
John:
Yeah. [sings] “ ... the union people go awaaaaaay ...” I don’t know the lyrics to that thing.
Merlin:
[sings] “... all for Leyna ...”
John:
But, and he’s turning this town into some kind of—he’s trying to turn it into, well, if you read Parade magazine—
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
He’s turning it into a Utopia. If you’ve ever been on the ground in that part of the country, you know that he’s just trying to keep, like, the radioactive devil dogs from eating children, like right out of—
Merlin:
[laughs]
John:
Right out of the cribs.
Merlin:
[laughs] They call it a tech incubator.
John:
[laughs] You know? Like, he’s just trying to keep the glaciers back.
Merlin:
What kind of dogs? I wanna write this down. What kind of dogs?
John:
Radioactive devil dogs. They’re rife through that whole area.
Merlin:
Sounds like a minor baseball team.
John:
He’s basically standing out there, with a Bic lighter, on—at the front edge of a glacier. And he’s trying to hold it back. He’s melting it back with his lighter. That’s his plan.
Merlin:
Uh huh.
John:
But anyway ...
Merlin:
It sounds like you admire him a little bit, though. Is it because of his weight, or his hair, or his prestige? It sounds like you admire him a little bit. You look at him, going “ahhhhhhhh!,” right? You’re sizing him up.
John:
The thing is, y’know, he is mayor of, like, Ass Pimple, Pennsylvania, which is more than I can say—
Merlin:
You need—Supertrain needs him. And he needs Supertrain.
John:
I think it’s true.
Merlin:
That bit’s going to run out at some point, and he’s going to want to shove some Mr. Potato Head into that, and that’s only available with your giant fucking crane hand.
John:
Well, and he’s a visionary, I’m a visionary.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
We’re going to meet at the TED Conference. ’Cause that’s where visionaries go.
Merlin:
Aren’t you gonna just—is there any chance—I’m sorry, I’m not gonna ask personal favors, we’re not close enough to do that—but is there any chance you can just destroy the TED Conference, and just replace it with something much more Supertrain-like?
John:
I think the TED Conference is doing a very good job of destroying itself.
Merlin:
Okay.
John:
Y’know? Like—
Merlin:
What would you think of maybe have a conference literally on a parallel track? Supertrain?
John:
Here’s what’s happening to the TED Conference: It has already become a brand. It’s like, I went to Marshalls the other day. Well, first of all, I went to Ross.
Merlin:
[laughs] To get some new pillows.
John:
’Cause I was looking for a blanket.
Merlin:
[laughs]
John:
I have enough pillows, but I was looking for a blanket, ’cause all my blankets were dirty. And the only way you can wash a blanket is in one of those supersized blanket-washing washing machines at the laundromat?
Merlin:
Which Supertrain will have eight to ten of.
John:
And I hate going to the laundromat.
Merlin:
Hate it.
John:
So you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to buy a new blanket. I’m going to put these dirty blankets in the closet. I’m going to go buy a new blanket. So I go to the Ross, but all the Ross blankets are, they’re—that’s gross. They’re gross there. So I went to Marshalls ’cause it’s a higher caliber.
Merlin:
Mmm.
John:
It’s a higher quality blanket store. And I discover that there are blankets, there’s bedding ... let’s call it bedding. There’s bedding branded with Valerie Bertinelli’s face. It’s the Valerie Bertinelli line of bedding and home fun stuff.
Merlin:
Is it remaindered items from somewhere besides Marshalls, or is this an exclusive to the Marshalls brand?
John:
No, no, no, it’s not remaindered. I’m sure that the Valerie Bertinelli line is only available in the finest department stores.
Merlin:
Huh.
John:
And it’s got a picture of Valerie, and it’s—
Merlin:
It’s a Valerie Bertinelli blanket.
John:
Yeah. And it’s not a picture of Valerie—it’s not the one I would have picked.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
Y’know, like I would have picked—
Merlin:
Where she’s in a baseball cap, she’s still little, and livin’ with Ann Romano.
John:
Well that’s the one I would have picked.
Merlin:
Mmm. Me too.
John:
From my fanfic—but no, it’s a picture of her. They tried to make her hair look like it’d blown in the wind, and—
Merlin:
Oh.
John:
I dunno. She—
Merlin:
They did that to Jaclyn Smith at Sears, too.
John:
Yeah. And the thing about it is, well first of all, I didn’t realize that Valerie Bertinelli still had enough cultural cachet that people trusted her to sell them their household goods.
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
But also, it was—I really noticed how much she and Eddie Van Halen, who already looked alike when they met, grew to look almost exactly alike.
Merlin:
No.
John:
I mean Eddie Van Halen looks like a desiccated version of her?
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
You know what I mean? Like if you took Valerie Bertinelli and you put her in a fruit dehumidifier ...
Merlin:
[snorts and snickers]
John:
It would look like Eddie Van Halen.
Merlin:
[laughs] If she got plumped up a little bit.
John:
Well, no, like a de-humidifier. If she got—all the water got put back—
Merlin:
If you make the raisin back into a grape.
John:
That would be Valerie Bertinelli. Yeah.
Merlin:
Wow. Eddie. Eddie Van Halen, like, God bless him, like Mick Jagger. Wow. You think it’s smoking that does that?
John:
I think that they both look like they’ve been in a smoker.
Merlin:
[laughs loudly]
John:
I think—
Merlin:
With like wood chips?
John:
Yeah. I think that they may have been wood-chip smoked for extra flavor.
Merlin:
And that they have been covered in some kind of regional sauce in the next couple hours?
John:
If I was a cannibal, there would not be enough meat on Eddie Van Halen to keep me going through the afternoon.
Merlin:
You’re so bummed Mike Anthony left.
John:
Oh my god, now that guy.
Merlin:
Oh, he would fry up so nice right now.
John:
Make some steaks. Make some steaks. Mm.
Merlin:
I was wrong. I was wrong about him. You know what?
John:
Michael Anthony? You thought he was the weak link, but you realized he was the Bill Barrett.
Merlin:
Was that on this show? This was years before the show, right? I said this. Well, this is one of our many, many, y’know, the visits that led up to this. Our public visits.
John:
Yes. Our long conversations where we’d both yell at each other about Van Halen and the Beatles.
Merlin:
I think this is might be one of the evergreen ones that I continue to stand behind. At least once or three times.
John:
Mmhmm.
Merlin:
And you are adamantly, oddly enough, adamant about saying I was wrong about was, is—
John:
Well that was weird.
Merlin:
Hmm. Hmm. Is Mike Anthony, in fact, a competent, let alone good, bass player?
John:
Right.
Merlin:
And we held to, if memory serves, held to extremely different points of view. Let’s put it this way: yes, but also was he even a fucking important part of Van Halen?
John:
And can you reiterate your stand?
Merlin:
I was fucking wrong about everything. My stand was that—okay, so here’s my—you want to hear my—here’s my eight-note Mike Anthony joke. Ready? [strums the same eight notes steadily on a guitar]
John:
Dk-it-doooo! Bomp-baah!
Merlin:
Okay, but here’s the thing.
John:
Signature bass line!
Merlin:
I used to make that sound with my mouth when I used to do one measure because that’s kind of boring.
John:
Bawm. Bawm. Bawm. Bawm.
Merlin:
Right. And to me that represented—and to me his biggest move was always, “Hey, look at this, I got the Jack Daniels bass.” And he’d do that thing where, let’s be honest, it’s kind of a douche thing, where you don’t pump your fist? Yeah, you pump your fist laterally with your left hand while you hit an open A or E.
John:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin:
Which I would never—that’s very Winger. That is really super Winger.
John:
They really—
Merlin:
You know what? Can I just say on many counts, I was dead wrong. On the new record—which is not great, but okay—it’s got moments where they have replicated the super-important harmonies. I always thought it was Edward. I thought it was Edward. Edward’s in there, but he’s not the crucial harmony, right?
John:
No, Mike Anthony—
Merlin:
Mike Anthony was the crucial [sings] “Beautiful girls,” right? That’s him.
John:
I—right, yeah, high harmony. He had it. He had it.
Merlin:
That was him.
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Okay, Eddie was singing along. Do you think Eddie was just mouthing, or was he really singin’?
John:
He had the Linda McCartney mike, I think.
Merlin:
Ohhhhh, gosh, he had the McCartney switch.
John:
Yes.
Merlin:
Do you think, okay, so when they were recording with Ted, though, like, were they doing like three harmonies? Do you think Mike was doing like, because it sounds like three-part harmony at least. Is it all Mike?
John:
You know “Diamond Dave” had harmonies that he was like, “Oh, hey, man! Gimme a microphone! Wa-how! Hoo!”
Merlin:
And you can hear that on—you can definitely hear that on the first couple records, especially when they do—you know what I’m talkin’ about? There’s this tight harmony of Van Ha—oh, so let’s just stipulate we’re talking about early Van Halen. There’s the tight harmony, like, it sounds like a fucking glorious machine harmonies?
John:
Yeah.
Merlin:
And then there’s the slightly more rowdy sing-along harmonies where Dave harmonies.
John:
I’m sure Dave was in the sing-along harmonies. But who knows? Who know what Eddie Van Halen’s singing talents are? He’s a great musician.
Merlin:
Yeah. It’s fun when he sings along though. It’s nice to see him sing along.
John:
He’s a key element.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
I swear to you, it—back in the eighties, if anybody had to pick a weak link of R.E.M., it would have been Bill Berry every time.
Merlin:
Ah. Sickening.
John:
But, it turns out ...
Merlin:
[in Merlin’s signature “turns out” voice] Turns out.
John:
Only one—he’s the only one with any taste. He’s the only one with any sense of what a good pop song is. ’Cause as soon as he left the band, they couldn’t pick their songs. They couldn’t—
Merlin:
[gasps]
John:
He was the guy—
Merlin:
Oh, he was their “Tommy.” He’s the one who kept the taste up.
John:
Yeah. He was the one who was like, “Uh, Michael? You know, that’s not a very good lyric.” Or, “I don’t think that’s a good song.” Or, I don’t know what he was doin’—
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
But he was the one that decided what the good songs were. And once he was gone, Michael Stipe was the only—nobody could say anything to Michael Stipe.
Merlin:
Next time you’re sitting around not drinking wine with Mike Mills, I would like you to have the Supertrain-stones to ask about that.
John:
Mmhmm.
Merlin:
Mmhmm. Because I bet he has a different point of view. [flaps index card]
John:
You know, Mike Mills once accused me of being a homophobe.
Merlin:
Oh, he doesn’t like houses?
John:
[laughs] Because I don’t like words that sound alike.
Merlin:
Oh, of course, I’m sorry. I think—I’m sorry.
John:
A homophonophobe.
Merlin:
Hmm.
John:
But that was because Mike Mills had had four bottles of wine at that point, and he didn’t—
Merlin:
He probably meant something else, too.
John:
He was talking—he turned, and he was talking to the fern—
Merlin:
Yes.
John:
Next to him at the restaurant, and I happen to be, you know, on that side of the table.
Merlin:
Thank god alcoholic bass players are out there getting in front of this in honor of our nation’s homosexuals. It must be nice to have a friend and he—I saw him at a show in town a few years back.
John:
Mm.
Merlin:
And, you know what? Never mind. He seemed fun. He read a little “creepy” to me. Little creepy.
John:
You know, I—
Merlin:
He read creepy. He read creepy in the room. He read as, “I’m Mike Mills in, like, a Todd Rundgren Circus circa ’72 outfit” like, spangly Granny goes to—that kind of thing?
John:
Yeah.
John:
The thing about R.E.M., is that, in a way, I feel like R.E.M. became a cult? But—
Merlin:
By 1982 they were a cult.
John:
Oh, I mean, sure, they were a cult to girls.
Merlin:
I’m sorry, you mean the talent was a cult.
John:
Yeah, I’m saying, yes, they were a cult to girls in Reannan skirts. But they were a cult within that, where the members of the band were actually in the cult themselves. And it was hard to tell who was making the rules of the cult. Y’know, Mike Mills is a tremendously talent guy, and probably like just a regular indie rock guy. But because he was in R.E.M. and because they have this kind of weird groupthink policy, where you’re not allowed—you know, nobody ever says anything on the record—
Merlin:
Mmhmm.
John:
You know, you watch those videos of them when they’re really young, and they already took themselves so seriously when they were 18 years older or whatever. Mike Mills just never had an opportunity to have a good time.
Merlin:
Oh, he was like a child actor.
John:
Yeah. He has been his whole life—
Merlin:
He went from being a child actor to working on a really super-weird commune.
John:
Yeah. And now he thinks that, like—this is a theory that was advanced by a close friend of mine who happened to once have been in R.E.M.?
Merlin:
Is he a vampire? Is he a vampire?
John:
I’m not gonna say who, but one of my friends who used to be in R.E.M. said that what Mike Mills should have done, many, many years ago, was release a Mike Mills solo album. If he had just—he writes songs. If he had put out a record of his own music, then he would be free. He would have been free of this like “I’m the bass player ...”
Merlin:
You mean, get it out of his system?
John:
Get it out of his system.
Merlin:
Right.
John:
And also break that weird spell that was over those guys. Like Peter Buck ended up gettin’ out.
Merlin:
He had side projects—side projects and stuff to keep him lively.
John:
Yeah. And what is Peter Buck doing right now? I guarantee you, wherever he is in the world right now, he’s playing the guitar right now. At this very moment.
Merlin:
Is he still doing that mandolin thing?
John:
He does all that stuff.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
But Mike Mills? He’s livin’ in some hotel room somewhere. He’s probably putting cocaine in his penis ...
Merlin:
[snorts and laughs]
John:
And he never got out.
Merlin:
[laughs] [sings] “ ... Near wild Heaven ...”
John:
[laughs]
[closing theme chord]
Merlin:
[dings bell]
John:
Ow!