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418: S-Tier Face (Merlin Mann: Part 1)

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Content provided by Christina Warren, Jeff Severns Guntzel, and Brett Terpstra, Christina Warren, Jeff Severns Guntzel, and Brett Terpstra. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Christina Warren, Jeff Severns Guntzel, and Brett Terpstra, Christina Warren, Jeff Severns Guntzel, and Brett Terpstra or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.

This is the first of two episodes. The idea was for Merlin and Jeff to discuss how they were using chatGPT in ways that are maybe novel. The thing is, the pre-show banter became in-show banter that barely touched the intended topic, which is awesome because now, thanks to the transcript of this episode, we have fodder for chatGPT experimentation between episodes.

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Show Links

With that, we present to you these show notes:

Merlin in the wild

From the Music Jags

From the Movie and TV Jags

From the Mental Health and Wellbeing Jags

Merlin’s list of useful things to say to yourself:

  • “Not now.”
  • “Stay on target.”
  • “Stop.”
  • “Just keep doing the thing.”
  • “Whatever, you’ll get it next time.”
  • “What exactly are you saving this for?”

Books:

Odds & Ends

Join the Conversation

Thanks!

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BackBeat Media Podcast Network

Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter.

Transcript

Merlin Mann (Part One): S-Tier Face

[00:00:00]

[00:00:04] Introduction

[00:00:04] Jeff: Hi, everybody. This is the Overtired Podcast. I am Jeff Severns Guntzel. I am normally here with my comrades, Christina Warren and Brett Terpstra. They are not here.

[00:00:16] Jeff: They are comrading somewhere else with somebody else, and I have instead Merlin Mann joining me. Hello, Merlin.

[00:00:23] Merlin: Jeff, how are you? I love your name. You have a, you have a nice, no, I like, I like the, the, as we say in poetry class, I like the scansion of your name. I like how, I like the mouth feel of your name. I shouldn’t

[00:00:33] Jeff: Is that the, is, is that the poetry version of, I like the cut of your jib?

[00:00:36] Merlin: It is very much like that. It’s a very, it’s kind of nautical verse.

[00:00:39] Jeff: Nautical verse? Yes. Hey, listen, I want to get something out of the way.

[00:00:43] Merlin: Yes, do.

[00:00:44] Matthias Jabs

[00:00:44] Jeff: Um, which is, um, and I put this in the, in the show notes kind of cryptically, um, there have been a couple of cases in listening to your podcast

[00:00:53] Merlin: Wait a minute, this is about the scorpions.

[00:00:56] Jeff: yes.

[00:00:57] Merlin: The

[00:00:57] Jeff: where, where you are, you are starting a [00:01:00] sentence that is about to include the name Matthias Jabs.

[00:01:04] Merlin: no, I got it wrong.

[00:01:05] Jeff: I say to myself, I don’t know, maybe it’s not, how is it supposed to be said?

[00:01:08] Merlin: The thing is, you know that phenomenon that needs a name? I’ve read this word approximately 200 times, but I’ve never had to say it out. I still have friends where I don’t know really how to pronounce their name, and I don’t know, and like, you pick up your, in my case, that’s how I learned the solo for No One Like You was from Guitar for the Practicing Musician, which would have, every issue would have, this is usually called magazines, you’d buy them, and it had tablature for usually like three.

[00:01:38] Merlin: Like songs. It could be eruption. It could be, you know, whatever, but like, yeah. And I, for some reason, my friends and I, I guess, cause we thought we were cool. We, we said Matthias, but I don’t think that’s right.

[00:01:48] Jeff: Matthias. Yeah. I would have only read the name in Hit Parade or Circus Magazine. You know what I mean?

[00:01:53] Merlin: Boy, they loved Def Leppard for a while, didn’t they

[00:01:55] Jeff: loved Def Leppard. So okay. So here’s, here’s why Matthias [00:02:00] Jabs, I mean, besides the obvious, which is that he should be spoken about

[00:02:03] Merlin: He shreds. Is he the one with, is he the one with the Explorer?

[00:02:06] Jeff: yeah, I think he’s the

[00:02:07] Merlin: He’s kind of the more, he’s, he’s the less, he’s, I was going to say he’s the handsome one, but he’s the less grotesque of the, uh, of the people.

[00:02:13] Jeff: a nice way to put it. And also like saying his name as a young man might’ve been the first time words came out and I felt sophisticated. Matthias

[00:02:21] Merlin: Yeah. Isn’t that a good feeling until the second later when someone goes, that’s not how,

[00:02:25] Jeff: That’s how you say it, exactly! So there have been these, I think it’s twice, maybe three times, I’m listening to a podcast, you’re talking, you’re starting a sentence that will ultimately have the name Matthias Jabs in it, and I somehow know it’s coming, and it is said in my mind at the same time, and I think, how the fuck does that happen with Matthias Jabs?

[00:02:45] Merlin: Isn’t that, isn’t that funny?

[00:02:46] Mean Time to Weird

[00:02:46] Merlin: Before we were recording, we were talking about an affliction, affliction, a gift that, that some people like us have, which is like you have a very close association between some piece of audio and either like a time or a location or a feeling, [00:03:00] often a location. But I think it’s somewhat allied to that or like today when the 45th president, because I’ve watched a lot of his rallies,

[00:03:08] Jeff: That’s the one with the T.

[00:03:10] Merlin: the testosterone?

[00:03:12] Jeff: No, the letter T.

[00:03:14] Merlin: Oh, yeah, but that’s all, it’s also the testosterone. That’s part of

[00:03:16] Jeff: Yeah, that’s also the

[00:03:17] Merlin: Yeah, yeah, they put it on hats now. But, uh, but he, uh, but

[00:03:21] Jeff: Don’t lick my, stop licking my hat! It’s getting aggressive!

[00:03:24] Merlin: ask you nicely, very nasty woman licking my hat. Think of it. He, but no, he does that thing where he goes like, you know, they’re bringing in, they’re letting him in 21 million people.

[00:03:34] Merlin: They’re, from their, from their jails and their prisons, their mental institutions and their insane asylums.

[00:03:40] Jeff: they’re insane. It’s like chai

[00:03:42] Merlin: Okay, but here’s the thing now, Jeff, because we are, we are in the same, um, carass about this. Do you know what the next thing might be after he says, and insane asylums? Do you know what the next line is, could be if he’s in the right mood?

[00:03:57] Jeff: What? No.

[00:03:58] Merlin: He simply says the, he [00:04:00] begins next, his next sentence, he pauses for a minute to soak in the adulation, and then he says, the late great Hannibal

[00:04:07] Jeff: Oh, the late, great Hannibal Lecter, of course!

[00:04:09] Merlin: And do you know, do you know, have you, have you arrived? The reason why he always says that right after that,

[00:04:15] Jeff: No, I’ve never gone for the full context, which is probably what he would ask me to

[00:04:19] Merlin: this is something we’ve been exploring on, uh, do by Friday, another podcast I do, and I, and this, this very much is, um, is I’m applying scholarship from, from actual, like journalists and professional spec, professional speculators, but. What does he say? He says that they’re bringing over, they’re emptying out their jails.

[00:04:35] Merlin: Then you hear, the crime is down in Venezuela, and he’ll say 70, 72 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent, right? But in this particular one, this is the vintage of the last few weeks has been, they’re emptying out their jails, their prisons, their mental institutions, their insane asylums. Hold for whatever. And then he goes, the late Great Hannibal Lecter.

[00:04:56] Merlin: Silence of the Lambs. Does anybody remember the movie Silence of the [00:05:00] Lambs? You know, he would like to have you for dinner. And this has been widely, widely reported, but I wanted to, for those of you who have not heard this, or maybe you don’t follow this stuff as closely as I am, um, apparently doomed to do, what’s the last thing he said?

[00:05:14] Merlin: D D D D D, ellipsis, mental institutions, and insane asylums. Somebody figured out, he thinks that, that is what political asylum is.

[00:05:24] Jeff: Yes, yes, yes, yes. I was

[00:05:26] Merlin: Or he’s made an association in his head the same way that we have these broken brains where like, I think of an overpass in New Zealand, every time I think of talking about vocational wheel, like he, no, that’s, that’s that back to work podcast episode, but yeah.

[00:05:39] Merlin: Yeah. So like it’s. And you’re like, oh, and then, because he really is, I said to somebody the other day, it’s, it’s almost like he’s memorized a Markov chain, like somebody gave him an MD5 hash, and he somehow unintentionally memorized it, and now he can’t unremember it. 729 2202 was my phone number when I was 10, and I [00:06:00] will know that for the rest of my life, and I don’t need to know that.

[00:06:03] Merlin: But if I see the number 729 in the wild, I think of my phone number. If I see the number 207 in the wild, I think of my laundry number in military school. You can’t unlearn those things, and I think he is in such a state at this point. Cut all of this out. I’m so sorry, Jeff. Hi, Jeff. How are you?

[00:06:20] Jeff: I love it. I love it. I love it.

[00:06:21] Jeff: Um, and also you’re reminding me in that sort of, um, that space between saying insane asylum and saying Hannibal Lecter, I’m reminded, I know you’re a fan of John Dickerson.

[00:06:32] Merlin: really, I think John Dickerson is so smart. I

[00:06:35] Jeff: In the most recent Political Gab Fest, he, he coins the phrase Mean Time to Weird.

[00:06:41] Merlin: Oh, am I allowed to cuss? Forgive

[00:06:43] Jeff: Yeah. Yes. Please,

[00:06:44] Merlin: Hey Jeff, fuck you, because I actually wrote that down. I wrote, no, let me find it, um, no, it was so funny, and, cause he said it, and I was like, there’s no, wait, what, [00:07:00] that, that, okay, I have this from, in drafts, oh god, this is a really poorly taken note, on, uh, September 12th, at 3.

[00:07:07] Merlin: 44pm pacific time, I wrote down, John D, Mean Time to Weird. I literally wrote it down in drafts. That’s the only thing in the whole draft.

[00:07:16] Jeff: That’s awesome. He’s brilliant. He’s brilliant. He’s such a delightful thinker to follow.

[00:07:22] Merlin: was watching him after the most recent debate, um, with Kamala Harris and on Colbert. And one of the things I really admire about him is he does something that is so. unusual and so difficult to do well, which is like Colbert would ask him a question, and when every time he’d respond, he’d have a very thoughtful response.

[00:07:43] Merlin: But whereas a lot of people would hear a question and then go like, Okay, well, I have the training to know how to reframe this into the answer that I want to give. And that usually involves beginning a sentence with the word so period. And so you, you know, you do this thing where you go, so [00:08:00] the way that this, but in John’s case, he doesn’t do that.

[00:08:03] Merlin: And he doesn’t sound like an asshole, but he very gently acknowledges what the person says, integrates it into his answer. And then rather than necessarily exactly answering the question he was given, he provides the context that he thinks is necessary for understanding how the thing that person said fits into a larger landscape.

[00:08:21] Merlin: He never loses track of that. And even as he does that, he does not sound like a conservative. Conservative, small c, Ding a ling, like he’s a very active thinker about things and he never stops reprocessing things at levels that a lot of us who are obsessed with media and think everything is everything, like he’s really good at disassembling the parts of something in a very humane way, giving it back to you in a way that makes you both seem smarter, which is really difficult to do, believe me, I know.

[00:08:47] Jeff: It’s a great way to put it. I also love something he does often when he’s talking is he stops and says, what do I mean by that?

[00:08:53] Merlin: Oh, I totally agree. And I’m like, I like, even on that, if you go back and watch that Colbert interview, where he’s wearing a very [00:09:00] handsome suit, um, you know,

[00:09:01] Jeff: a very handsome man.

[00:09:02] Merlin: he’s really good looking guy. I mean, his face from every angle is, is, is very, is very, he has an S tier face.

[00:09:13] Jeff: From every angle. Oh,

[00:09:14] Merlin: angle, I’ve seen every angle of his face, I’ve photographed his face, I know it’s dimensions. The other day I posted a photo of him and me outside my office because I’m

[00:09:23] Jeff: I saw that. I saw

[00:09:24] Merlin: Now that was followers only, but I had to, I realized I know too many people named John. It occurs to me every time I look at my photos.

[00:09:33] Merlin: Persons area. And I’m like, I know too, I know too many men named John or some variation of John and like that I need to really cull this herd at some point. Um, yeah, I mean, but he is also, I find him, you know, I’m, I’m gonna say something Jeff. I don’t, I don’t use this word a ton because I think it has not only been abused, I think it’s not a useful word.

[00:09:55] Merlin: And I think on some level it doesn’t mean what people think it means. But I find him inspiring [00:10:00] in the sense, and I’m not saying like I want a poster of him or something, or get a. John Dickerson poster that says hope for some reason. I don’t mean inspiration in that way, I mean the way he rolls. The way that he conducts himself.

[00:10:12] Merlin: He is, in the true sense of the word, a gentleman. And, and being just very, very, very, very, very, very lightly acquainted with him. He’s like that. He’s really, really nice, and really warm, and really smart, and he’s, he has worked his humanity, his history, his background, his family, and his Catholicism into a worldview that I find very invigorating.

[00:10:37] Merlin: I wish there were more John Dickersons in this world.

[00:10:39] Jeff: And he’s someone like Colbert who works his Catholicism into his work in ways that are just really, really beautiful.

[00:10:47] Merlin: his nerd stuff! The same way the

[00:10:48] Jeff: And his nerd

[00:10:49] Merlin: is always fact checking the Lord of the Rings stuff.

[00:10:52] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:10:54] Merlin: fact check. No, they couldn’t have taken the eagle, I know. [00:11:00] Um, but yeah, it’s I think Mean Time to Weird is good. I’m sorry, continue.

[00:11:05] Jeff: Mean Time to Weird.

[00:11:07] Merlin: One thing I really I was looking I’ve been looking forward to doing this with you despite what you could have guessed over the summer with our various

[00:11:15] Jeff: Oh, shit. Shh,

[00:11:16] Merlin: this.

[00:11:16] Merlin: Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. Settle, settle. No, no. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant to say, I really, I was just, uh. I, I would like to do this show probably more often than you would like, because

[00:11:29] Jeff: Nah, no such thing.

[00:11:30] Merlin: this tickles a part of my brain that begs for more use. And on the one hand, it’s fun because I get to go off with you about things that sound like, sound like Guided by Voices EPs.

[00:11:43] Merlin: But also, like, this gives me access to discussing the kind of stuff that I feel is so, sometimes so subtle. And yet so powerful, and yet gets kind of dropped out of the discourse in which everything is everything, and I’m really grateful that you put up with me to [00:12:00] schedule this, and, uh, I, I enjoy being here, and if you wanted me to be on more often, I would.

[00:12:04] Merlin: Not, not enough to be annoying, but I really enjoy talking with you. And I follow you on the internet now.

[00:12:10] Jeff: guess. Good to see you on Mastodon.

[00:12:12] Dingalings Failing at a Heist

[00:12:12] Jeff: Uh, recently a, a, a big hit on, on Double Indemnity. Um,

[00:12:18] Merlin: my God.

[00:12:19] Jeff: a movie I had honestly hadn’t even registered, or I probably heard of it. Hadn’t registered until,

[00:12:25] Merlin: I think everybody’s probably seen clips of Barbara Stanwyck walking down the steps or something. But you like, if you’re like me and you grew up with My Three Sons, you’re like, I cannot believe that it’s Fred McMurray. It’s, it’s, he’s so off, and Edward G. Robinson, all three of

[00:12:40] Jeff: Edward G. Robinson, my

[00:12:41] Merlin: good in that movie.

[00:12:42] Merlin: It’s really, it’s such a well played movie. Told Noir and I think it’s not only famous because it is a very good noir but also just it’s a very watchable noir in a way that like The Big Sleep is completely confusing. Don’t bother reading the book. The book does not make any sense at all but The Big Sleep is still a fun movie.

[00:12:59] Merlin: But like you [00:13:00] ever see DOA?

[00:13:01] Jeff: Nope.

[00:13:02] Merlin: Um, can I give you the log line?

[00:13:04] Jeff: Yeah. Give me the logline.

[00:13:06] Merlin: A guy realizes, I want to say that every guy realizes he has been poisoned and has 24 hours to find the person who poisoned him and why. And this is from the 50s.

[00:13:19] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:13:19] Merlin: How cool is that? It’s got been remade badly several times,

[00:13:22] Jeff: It sounds, yes, so I’m, I am kind of in love with 40s and 50s noir movies right now. I watched, like, I watched The Killing. I watched Human Desire, Double Indemnity, of course. And, and I am, I am amazed. I think when I was younger, I watched a lot of this kind of stuff. But I mean, I’m talking when I was like 16 or 17.

[00:13:39] Jeff: And as a grown ass man, it all just lands differently. Like it’s a, it’s,

[00:13:45] Merlin: I totally agree. And as a grown man, but also as if I could add to that, as somebody who then has unintentionally been loving movies and increasingly now TV shows that you don’t even realize are a noir, I mean, it’s [00:14:00] just, I’ll be basic. The Big Lebowski is a noir. There’s two big genres that we tend to think of as artifacts from other decades.

[00:14:07] Merlin: Times when they’re really, like, and less so, like, noirs, right? Like, I don’t think noirs were ever that mainstream. I mean, what is that Elliot Gould movie? It was a long, uh, the long goodbye in the 70s. There’s all these kinds of movies that are noir ish, but, you know, the other one’s westerns. Where there’s so many things, when you watch them and really pay attention, I guess Star Wars is kind of, in some ways, uh, considered a western.

[00:14:30] Merlin: But, like, Mandalorian. is straight up a Western down to like when he walks, there’s a spur noise.

[00:14:36] Jeff: yeah, exactly, exactly,

[00:14:38] Merlin: And, but like, you, you know what I’m saying though, what’s interesting about that is like, it’s to me, this kind of synthesis, contra my, my declaration that not everything is everything. I do think it is really.

[00:14:48] Merlin: Um, uh, it gives me life to be able to associate one thing to another and then to look at the, to compare and contrast. But even just on an aesthetic level, it’s so fascinating to [00:15:00] be, to be into the second act of almost anything. Everything the Coen brothers has ever done and realized, I mean, yeah, I get that this is about ding a lings failing at a heist, but I didn’t get how much so many of their movies are really a kind of a noir, but simple, I guess, obviously, but

[00:15:17] Jeff: Blood Symbol, so good,

[00:15:18] Merlin: oh my God, how great are those kids?

[00:15:21] Jeff: yeah,

[00:15:21] Merlin: But yeah, I mean, I, uh, I like stuff a lot, you know, and

[00:15:26] Jeff: love stuff.

[00:15:27] Merlin: I really, oh god, I love stuff.

[00:15:29] Music is the Best (Part 1)

[00:15:29] Merlin: Again, I told you, I was up till three last night for absolutely no good reason apart from I just kept listening to music that made me want to listen to more music. And

[00:15:36] Jeff: And what was the, what was the chain, what was the

[00:15:39] Merlin: do you really care? Christ, this is hard to meter because it involves YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Apple Classical App, but let me go look at my Mastodon because that’s usually, that’s usually the trails of my effluvium.

[00:15:58] Merlin: That I can, I can best. [00:16:00] I can see I ended with Freddie, Freddie Mercury. Oh, you know what it was? I got into a little bit of a jack. Oh, yes, you know what it was? Um, do you ever, there’s a really good YouTube channel that I recommend to people who like things. Um, Trash Theory is a YouTube channel. Yeah, so it’s this English guy.

[00:16:17] Merlin: I love it when people Really put effort into something and this guy makes these videos like the one I recommended the other night was hey Have you ever heard that song Common People by Pulp? It’s a song that I really like a lot It’s a very important song to me from that time. He does this amazing video about like how we got to Common People.

[00:16:34] Merlin: He does one about like pre 1976 punk. One of my favorites, for selfish reasons, is like Power Pop before My Sharona, like how we got

[00:16:44] Jeff: Oh, nice.

[00:16:45] Merlin: but he in particular has a series, because he’s an English person as far as I know, called New British Canon, where he’ll just do a thing on Suzy and the Banshees.

[00:16:52] Merlin: His one on Eurythmics is so thought

[00:16:55] Jeff: My eyes just hit it at the same time as you said it, yes,

[00:16:59] Merlin: I give you a [00:17:00] factoid?

[00:17:00] Jeff: please,

[00:17:01] Merlin: Um, so they, they arrived pretty big in, I think, 82, 83, 82, I think, with Sweet Dreams in America. You know, and of course, he goes through the tourists, the two of them, their previous pop band in England that I adore. But he goes through all that, blah da da blah da blah, but by the time, I think it was their second video, uh, uh, D k d k d k d k, Love is a Stranger, where she’s in the backseat of, like, a limo, and she’s got,

[00:17:25] Jeff: yep, totally.

[00:17:26] Merlin: yeah, um, MTV pulled that video until she agreed to show her birth certificate to prove that she was an assigned female at birth person.

[00:17:34] Jeff: Wow.

[00:17:35] Merlin: Now, I didn’t know that. And that’s just one of the indignities to which she was subjected. Who does that to Annie Lennox? She’s Scottish. It’s horrible. Check out The Tourist. Check out the tours. They do a cover of, uh, I Only Want to Be With You, that old 60s song. They do an amazing cover of that. It’s real, real earworm.

[00:17:55] Merlin: Um, and, oh, but like, okay, so I was listening to Trash Theory, and I was listening [00:18:00] to an episode I’ve heard before, but I actually really, really listened to it, which is Another one of those, so you get the idea, which is like, almost like, uh, Hit Parade, the way Hit Parade goes, the wonderful podcast Hit Parade is like, this is a song that was number one, fantastic podcast, where he’ll go like, and so that gives you, let me tell you the history of boy bands, or let me tell you the history of, one of my favorites is an early episode, UB40’s, the history of UB40’s Red Red Wine.

[00:18:24] Merlin: Which is a surprisingly compelling episode. Great

[00:18:27] Jeff: Awesome.

[00:18:27] Merlin: Ditto with this guy, where he’ll go like, how we got to Nevermind. And I, I love Nevermind. That was a super important season of music for me. That’s my season of Superchunk. That’s my season of my second wave of teenage fan club, um,

[00:18:43] Jeff: your seeds around. Around.

[00:18:47] Merlin: Cast Iron. Cast Iron. And seed toss. And then they, they, they, they, they, they covered two sedo songs. They cover, not only did they cover two Sedo songs on the same record, they released a [00:19:00] single that had a, and the B side were both Sedo songs, both from the same album. And actually, uh, I think it was from Weed Forton.

[00:19:07] Merlin: They covered two songs that were actually like, like in order on the Sedo album. That’s a ballsy move in

[00:19:12] Jeff: That’s an excellent move. That’s

[00:19:15] Merlin: know, any thought could be the beginning of a brand new tangled web you’re spinning. Anyone could be a brand new love. Um, but anyways, so I was watching this one on, on grunge and I have to be honest, like I’m in, in the many, many, many genres out there.

[00:19:30] Merlin: Grunge is not near the top for me as a thing, but like mainly there was a, we had a free jukebox in college that had. That Mudhoney, Keep It Out of My Face song on it. I knew that. I knew the drummer in my band really liked Melvin, so I knew Houdini. I knew a handful of things. I don’t know, I really lost you there, yeah.

[00:19:50] Merlin: I don’t mind stealing bread. But, like, going back and listening to what, like, actually what Soundgarden sounded like at first, all these bands sounded like at first, and that got me into a [00:20:00] Melvin’s Jag. Then, I

[00:20:01] Jeff: that’s a good jag.

[00:20:02] Merlin: rediscovered, oh my god, have you seen King Buzzo show you how to play, um, Honey Bucket?

[00:20:09] Jeff: I have seen that. And

[00:20:11] Merlin: It’s so simple, but it’s so cool.

[00:20:13] Jeff: was an HBO series at one point, I have a, we were on the same label, uh, Amphetamine Reptile Records. And

[00:20:20] Merlin: wait, I’m sorry, I’m having, I’m having some kind of a neurological event. Can you just, is there a way to just include once, what, you, you, you were in a band that was on Amphetamine Reptile?

[00:20:31] Jeff: yeah, yeah, the Meathead label. I mean, I say that lovingly.

[00:20:34] Merlin: Do, do, would I, would I know the name

[00:20:36] Jeff: You wouldn’t, we were at the end, we were a band called the Freedom Fighters. We were one of the last like four releases before Tom Hazelmeyer just like burned out and shuttered the whole thing and just spent all his time at the shooting range.

[00:20:48] Merlin: See, like, the kids don’t know from this. Today you say Homestead Records or Caroline Records and people are like, what? What? I like indie records. Anyway. But, oh, okay. So. Wow. Wow. My

[00:20:58] Jeff: And the AMRAP [00:21:00] offices were in an old dentist’s office here in Minneapolis, um, and the studio was downstairs where they recorded the records, but there was this one room that was just piles of weird shit like promo, like test pressings and, and VHS recordings of, you know, shows from the various bands over the past like 10, 15 years, and I’d been such a huge fan.

[00:21:21] Jeff: So I put in I just start putting shit in because there’s a TV and a VCR there and there was some HBO show that I’d never heard

[00:21:29] Merlin: And you don’t know. You have no idea. There’s probably a piece of masking tape on there that says show three or something,

[00:21:34] Jeff: exactly. Exactly. So there’s this I put in this VHS thing. It just says like, it just I think it’s just says Melvin’s and there’s just a bunch of random shit on it. And and Buzzo is on the HBO show where he’s going to buy a mansion, which he can’t do. And,

[00:21:47] Merlin: Wait. Approximately what year?

[00:21:50] Jeff: this must have been okay,

[00:21:51] Merlin: Did he have the big hair and everything?

[00:21:52] Jeff: yeah, definitely.

[00:21:53] Jeff: I would have been in there in like 98, 97. And so it would have been around around there. So he walks in with this realtor this [00:22:00] mansion and he’s carrying he’s carrying a lunchbox like a 1950s style

[00:22:03] Merlin: got to see this. Oh my God.

[00:22:06] Jeff: and

[00:22:06] Merlin: How so that now that’s an HGTV show. I would watch sort of like fishing with John. Yeah. Where you go

[00:22:11] Jeff: Fishing with John. Oh my God.

[00:22:12] Merlin: Yeah. Yeah. But I would, I would watch, I would watch an HGTV show where just King Buzzo goes to different places. Open houses.

[00:22:20] Jeff: Oh, yeah, totally. What? Fishing with John a, a mixtape favorite for

[00:22:23] Merlin: I bought a, I bought a, I bought a, the Criterion DVD of that. The Willem Dafoe episode of Fishing with John is very, very important.

[00:22:31] Jeff: and, and the Tom Waites one has a bit where he’s singing in the canoe along the river of men, of men

[00:22:38] Merlin: Can you imagine fishing with Tom Waits?

[00:22:41] Jeff: no, I can’t, but I can kind of ’cause of that show. Okay. So anyway, he’s, he’s, he goes into, and the realtor’s looking and I’m like, who the fuck? Fuck is this? I mean, of course, it’s like, you

[00:22:51] Merlin: For those of you who don’t know, King, uh, what’s his name, Buzz,

[00:22:54] Jeff: Oh yeah, we should do this. Yeah. Buzz Osborne.

[00:22:57] Merlin: these three guys, talk about a power [00:23:00] trio, these three guys who at first were one of the fastest punk bands of all time, but then in time became famous. Their contribution in the canonical story of Seattle Grunge, they were the ones who brought in very heavy, very loud, very loud music.

[00:23:15] Merlin: Um, people say Black Sabbath, I don’t totally agree, but like, for, for, but think

[00:23:19] Jeff: slow, but fast.

[00:23:20] Merlin: think about Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, one of the greatest songs

[00:23:22] Jeff: That’s a good. Yeah. Yep.

[00:23:27] Merlin: You know, like that, but so sledgey. Oh my God, going blind.

[00:23:31] Jeff: Oh, oh,

[00:23:32] Merlin: he, as a power trio, the three guys, all great musicians and Buzz, known as King Buzzo, how, I guess an afro? How do you describe what his hair was? It was like a weather system.

[00:23:43] Jeff: special. Yeah. It’s a weather system that works. Yeah. That works.

[00:23:47] Merlin: And he’s out buying a mansion. He’s buying a mansion, huh?

[00:23:50] Jeff: looks like the stills of the early nuclear tests, you know, a little bit.

[00:23:53] Merlin: Yeah, or maybe like, like you could have mistaken for like a silhouette of Sideshow Bob.

[00:23:57] Jeff: And his lyrics are complete gibberish [00:24:00] and yet evoke emotion in

[00:24:03] Merlin: You wouldn’t know, but he’s really

[00:24:04] Jeff: really smart. Really smart. So, so he’s buying this house and the, and the realtor’s like increasingly just like, who the fuck? This isn’t real. And, and when he gets the sense that that’s happening, he, he kneels down and he sets the lunchbox on the floor and he opens it up and he pulls out a magazine on which he’s, he’s on the cover.

[00:24:21] Jeff: And, and it just says, king BuZZo, god of grunge. And he says, he says, well, look, you

[00:24:28] Merlin: Well, that and 20 percent will get you a

[00:24:30] Jeff: like, yeah, he’s like, you can see here, I am the godfather of grunge, on which he tries to buy this house.

[00:24:36] Merlin: mean, like you can keep that copy. I’ve got more, but that’s now my, that’s my 20 percent is me on the cover of this.

[00:24:42] Jeff: Incredible.

[00:24:43] Merlin: sent you the, uh, do you remember when the solo records came out?

[00:24:47] Jeff: Oh, yeah, of

[00:24:47] Merlin: So, there’s three guys in the Melvins, and this, I posted this last night, and this is how I remembered this, was like, the, the, oh my god, the whole story of the KISS, the KISS solo albums are their own story.

[00:24:57] Merlin: Like, the cutout sensation of my youth. [00:25:00] The, the four KISS solo, the four KISS solo albums were in cutout for over a decade. Everywhere you went, there was copies of, like, the Ace Frehley one with, you know, New York Groove. So, when the Melvins did solo

[00:25:11] Jeff: was, was Beth on Peter Criss solo

[00:25:14] Merlin: No, Beth was on Destroyer.

[00:25:15] Jeff: I don’t do Kiss trivia well. Okay, go ahead.

[00:25:17] Merlin: I think they were on Destroyer 76.

[00:25:19] Merlin: Um, but anyway, there was that and that led me into, then I got into looking at one thing I love about Trash Theory also. Hi, my name is Merlin Mann and this is a podcast about things I like. Um, he does a really good Spotify playlist for every episode. And you’ll get why, like, like, you know, let’s talk after and I’m going to curate exactly the right first episode for you to watch of Trash Theory.

[00:25:41] Merlin: But then he does a really good, like, like Hit Parade, there’s a really good Spotify playlist where like every song that he played a portion of is in it. But then that led me into. Oh, then, then the Algo pulls up, um, Freak Scene by Dinosaur Jr., and I suddenly was struck. Here we go, Jeff. You ready? Write it down.

[00:25:59] Merlin: Here’s another [00:26:00] one. The very clear recollection of me, not arguing with, but bantering with Chris and Marty, the other guitar player and the drummer in my band in college, about whether Bug, the was just a little bit too poppy because I, I had cut my teeth on You’re Living All Over Me. That was what got me into Dinosaur, was then, which is a little heavier, definitely a little weirder.

[00:26:23] Merlin: It’s got Polito. It’s got that weird Sebedo song on it. And, but then the Algos, now it’s off the hook because now I get Love is All Right Tonight by Rick Springfield. And that is one of the This performance in particular is like, you don’t realize like how gifted that band was. You just think of like, oh, it’s the guy from General Hospital that had a pop

[00:26:43] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Heh heh

[00:26:44] Merlin: a Sammy Hagar cover. It’s really weird. But, um, but that’s really, and then that got me into Pat Benatar. They whisper

[00:26:50] Jeff: hell is for children.

[00:26:53] Merlin: and the one, two, three, four. And they’re still married. Did you know that? They’ve been married [00:27:00] since 1980. I checked chat GPT. I said, I said to chat GPT last night. Ooh.

[00:27:05] Merlin: You see how I bring it around? You see how I bring it around?

[00:27:07] Jeff: heh heh heh heh heh heh. So,

[00:27:11] Merlin: I,

[00:27:11] Jeff: to Chep GPT,

[00:27:13] Merlin: says to it, I says, I, and what had happened

[00:27:14] Jeff: is that, Derry Girls? So I says to myself, says I. Heh heh heh heh

[00:27:18] Merlin: I’ve been tied up with my own shoelaces! They tied me to the radiator! It’s just not as nice! Um, God, I love that show. Um, so I open up Chat GPT, I open up, uh, whatever, 400IO Preview, and I just type the sentence, Are Pat and Spider still married? No context. Are Pat and Spider, Spider with a Y, still married?

[00:27:40] Merlin: And it said As of my knowledge, cut off in October 23, Pat Benatar and her husband, Neil Spider Giraldo, are still married. They’ve been together since 1982. Does that make you feel good?

[00:27:51] Jeff: makes me feel super good.

[00:27:52] Sponsor: 1Password

[00:27:52] [00:28:00] [00:29:00] [00:30:00]

[00:30:36] Full Catastrophe Living

[00:30:36] Merlin: I’m almost done. Then the Algo brought up my favorite version of Somebody to Love by Queen, which is not, I, everybody’s like, you know, Live Aid’s a good show, but there are other shows, people.

[00:30:49] Merlin: Um, Somebody to Love in Montreal, 1981. This is all on my internet site, you can find. Um, and, and that got me into that, but then that got me into, I went off on a jag and somehow I [00:31:00] went off on an angle. And usually at this point I would open up Apoclassical and listen to Vivaldi’s Summer and try to go to sleep, but, which I shouldn’t do because the last, last movement of that is one of the most baller metal things ever written.

[00:31:11] Merlin: But I, and I found myself instead listening to lots of, I don’t know what you call this genre, but do you know the band Boygenius?

[00:31:16] Jeff: yeah, yeah

[00:31:17] Merlin: Okay. So like, I don’t know what you call that genre.

[00:31:20] Jeff: which is like a super group, right,

[00:31:21] Merlin: Yeah, there’s, it’s, it’s Lucy. I gotta say this right, it’s Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and uh, and um, and Julien Baker. These three women who are just super interesting.

[00:31:33] Merlin: And I got into like, and then I was listening to Hannah Eide, who I can highly recommend, and I ended up going back and listening to Torres, T O R R E S, one of the great records. If you like theatrical, musical theater, oh, oh, oh, I have a Torres video, it’s gonna change your life. Um, and that’s where I was and then I finally went to sleep according to my watch.

[00:31:51] Merlin: I went to sleep at like 3. 05 AM. But, but here’s the thing, Jeff. I made a logistical pivot at this point. uh, uh, uh, I, [00:32:00] I don’t, the listener is almost certainly not familiar with my work. But, but one of my thought technologies the last few years has been, uh, it’s one thing to feel bad and it’s another thing to feel bad about feeling bad.

[00:32:11] Merlin: And so I’ve discovered that applies very heavily to sleep in my case. Well, yeah, I mean, it’s the second arrow. Like it’s, it’s what the, the Buddhist, the Buddhist says, you know, the first arrow is the one that, that somebody shoots at you and hits you in the leg, but you feeling about bad about that is the arrow you shoot into yourself. And, and all of my, so many of my strategies to, to bring in another piece of terminology of mine, the mean dad voice. Sometimes when we’re not sure what to do in life, or when we’re vulnerable, or just in our repose, or just being alive, a mean dad voice tells us what’s wrong with us. And how we’ll never get it right.

[00:32:50] Merlin: And that is a uniquely terrible thing to be litigating as you’re theoretically trying to go to sleep.

[00:32:57] Jeff: Awful.

[00:32:58] Merlin: You can’t make yourself go [00:33:00] to sleep. You can’t, you can’t yell yourself into falling asleep. Like it just doesn’t work that way. And so, this little part of the concerto I’ll draw together by saying like, so, I think the practice in your words for this is to say to yourself, I mean, you could do something as glib works for me as like, I’ve decided, I’ve decided, I’ve decided not to worry about this or I’ve decided this is going to be okay.

[00:33:26] Merlin: And like kind of make a deal with yourself and it can may sound like happy talk, but like seriously, dude, has, have you, as yelling at yourself ever helped your heartbeat go down and let you go to sleep? And I’ve realized, and so I

[00:33:38] Jeff: knows I’ve tried.

[00:33:39] Merlin: And I’ll cut, flash forward through years of this practice, and I have a lot of practices about sleep I’d love to share with people, um, but one of them is I say to myself, hey, you know what?

[00:33:48] Merlin: What, what, what, what’s, what’s going to happen? What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? Like tomorrow is actually Thursday is my Thursday. Thursday is my day when I do things like schedule a podcast with my friends, but it’s also when I do a lot of my like power pottering [00:34:00] around the house stuff.

[00:34:01] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:34:01] Merlin: And so, like, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? I said, well, I know I need to be up to talk to Jeff at, you know, ten. So just set an alarm for eight. I had four, four and a half hours of sleep, and then it’ll be fine. You’ve done stuff on four hours of sleep lots of times, and maybe you’ll take a nap later and maybe you won’t, but you can’t really catch up on sleep, but you also, there is no benefit to stressing out about sleep you didn’t catch.

[00:34:30] Merlin: And knowing that before you, quote, try to go to sleep, I find more helpful than it seems. Does that make sense?

[00:34:39] Jeff: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, it just, it’s the worst thing in the world to be wrestling with yourself.

[00:34:44] Merlin: inclination then is to go, what the, what, what’s wrong with

[00:34:47] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, man.

[00:34:50] Merlin: on! Um, that, you know, another one, another, if you, in terms of these, I should write these down, but another nice thing to just very gently say to yourself, [00:35:00] you know, I’ve decided not to let it bother me. That’s the actual phrase that I, I

[00:35:03] Jeff: Mmm.

[00:35:03] Merlin: for lots of things, but, but another one is, oh, I’m going to put this right on my list.

[00:35:09] Merlin: Um, you ready for this? This is a thing you say to yourself. So, however you got where you are in a given moment, you find yourself thinking. You don’t yell at yourself. You find yourself thinking, um, it’s not the time for that.

[00:35:24] Jeff: Mmm. Yes. Yes.

[00:35:27] Merlin: how about just very gently, not now. way you’d say to a little kid, well, as much as you want to go to Disney World, we need to go return these batteries at Walgreens.

[00:35:37] Merlin: And

[00:35:37] Jeff: It’s a, the not now thing is a huge act of self compassion.

[00:35:41] Merlin: oh my God, do you think, do you do, do you do anything? No, honestly, do you do anything like that?

[00:35:46] Jeff: You know, it’s only, I don’t, I hope this is related enough, but it’s something that really

[00:35:50] Merlin: not gonna matter either way. I’m just like

[00:35:52] Jeff: I suppose, while, while you were talking, something that kind of came up for me that, that, that really made me think of. So I had a, I dropped my, uh, [00:36:00] oldest son, my first born off at college about a month ago, like 11 hours away.

[00:36:04] Jeff: And, and man, with two things. One is I did have to decide months earlier, I have to stop grieving this now. Because there’ll be a time to grieve it.

[00:36:12] Merlin: I’ve already started. I’m still, I’m still grieving stuff from sixth grade as my kid is getting ready to apply to college. I’m still, I’m still two wars behind at every juncture.

[00:36:25] Jeff: Yes, yes, yes, it’s hard. Well, so but here’s the thing. Okay, so I successfully, it took me a minute and it took me, you know, bringing it up in therapy, but I got to the point where I’m like, okay, I’m not grieving this anymore, because I can’t enjoy him here. Because everything makes me think about how he’ll be gone.

[00:36:42] Jeff: Right? I can’t do that.

[00:36:44] Merlin: Oh, oh my god.

[00:36:45] Jeff: I want to have here.

[00:36:46] Merlin: Oh my God, I’m so ashamed of how often I think that. I’m so, there’s one point, there’s one point in the early part of my kid’s transition where I were like, we just kind of quietly, not like banned photos of my kid on [00:37:00] devices, but there was a time when we were still like getting our hands around it, where it was weird to see a photo of our baby and be like, Oh my God, we’re adjusting to so many things.

[00:37:09] Merlin: In addition to everything about having a teenager, there’s another big thing. That wasn’t bad in any sense. I think. I don’t know. I hate to sound needy about it, but like, I fucking love my kid. But like, there was a point where like, you’re like, in the same way for you, like, the day that you dropped your kid off at college may not be the day that you come back and watch that video of your kid having a bath

[00:37:29] Jeff: it’s

[00:37:29] Merlin: he was, when he was one.

[00:37:31] Merlin: Maybe that’s not the best day for that,

[00:37:32] Jeff: It’s not the best. It’s not the

[00:37:34] Merlin: Or maybe it is. Maybe it is. I mean, I guess it varies.

[00:37:37] Jeff: The thing that I think was actually a, a first time truly integrated lesson in this was that, um, in the week before we were to take him, I was a wreck. I was feeling agony that was flavors of a terrible breakup, um, and, and flavors of a death where you’re like, I don’t have anyone to be mad at.

[00:37:57] Jeff: This, I mean, you know, some deaths, I don’t, let’s say a [00:38:00] natural death. I don’t have anybody to be mad at. I can’t reverse

[00:38:02] Merlin: Well, it’s hard to say you didn’t know it was going to happen. It’s like,

[00:38:05] Jeff: Exactly,

[00:38:05] Merlin: not surprising that it happens. It’s surprising when it happens.

[00:38:09] Jeff: So I was having these moments for that entire week. It really is kind of this, it’s this agony. And now I’m still, I don’t cry easy. And that’s not a point of pride.

[00:38:16] Jeff: I just don’t cry easy. Um, and, and as it’s getting closer, I am almost by the end, I’m in a constant state of sort of sniffling. And I can’t say words that are related to us taking him away. I can’t even say the words, right?

[00:38:30] Merlin: Talk about a deep down, complicated, like, knot of emotions. It’s not even, it’s not one emotion. It’s not like you go, I’m sad. It’s like, it’s so, it’s, it’s like almost the definition of the word bittersweet. Which is like, I have irreconcilable feelings right now, and it’s not one or two or three feelings. I have like seven irreconcilable feelings.

[00:38:50] Merlin: And they’re all real. There’s none of them that aren’t real.

[00:38:53] Jeff: And, and there’s this point where it’s like, yeah, This, I’m like, okay, agony. I can, I can sit with agony and figure this out a little [00:39:00] bit, because I’m doing this to myself right now, right? Like, I can be very sad, um, uh, without doing this to myself. And I was like, I had this thought, because I was really crying.

[00:39:10] Jeff: I just had to kind of steal away to cry all the time.

[00:39:12] Merlin: Especially if it’s not easy for you, right? I mean, you have to like almost like probably enter into some kind of like a chamber and like go, well, now here comes the process of me letting this happen.

[00:39:22] Jeff: I have to be like in a car or something. So, so I’m like, okay, I’m crying at this, and I need to cry through it. Like, I’m moving at this, but I need to move through it, right? Like, that’s,

[00:39:32] Merlin: only way out is through. Yeah.

[00:39:33] Jeff: Oh my God. And when I, when I had that, I was like, it still was hard. Next couple of days were really hard, but there was such a different feeling to it.

[00:39:42] Jeff: And again, it’s like one of those things where it’s like an accidental, I mean, I guess the act of self compassion was just stopping and being like, okay, fucking hold on. This is horrible. Let’s just take this apart.

[00:39:52] Merlin: Well, I mean the act of compassion is like you’ve accepted that You can’t, in the same way that you can’t yell yourself to sleep, [00:40:00] I, I, I say in that document, like, that I feel like negative, quote unquote negative emotions are like cockroaches, where like you can scare them away for a little while, but that, they’ll, they’ll come back.

[00:40:11] Merlin: They’re like the sand people. They’ll, they’ll be back in greater numbers. You know what I mean? You can’t, yeah, they, they, they, you know, that’s why they walk single file. To disguise their numbers. Feelings. Hi, I’m Merlin Mann and I think feelings are like Tusken Raiders.

[00:40:31] Jeff: But then it becomes like the, um, what’s the, the feist video for the 4 song where you think it’s one person and then the, yeah, it’s great. Um, yeah. So anyway, that was, you ha, I thought about that when, when you were talking about this, it’s like a, it’s a different thing. It’s a different space, but it is that thing of having to tell yourself, hey,

[00:40:50] Merlin: But you can’t do that. I can’t do that. Anyway, without a certain level of just to really state the obvious. I find it difficult to do that unless I make it a [00:41:00] practice or a special project or unless I basically say to myself, you know what, I, going in this, like a, it’s almost like a Daniel Kahneman thing.

[00:41:07] Merlin: Continuing in this first order thinking way about this is not great for me. Like, I can actively put all of my energy into avoiding this feeling or I can accept that maybe the feeling won’t kill me and it might actually make me feel more human in some way.

[00:41:23] Jeff: yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:24] Merlin: There’s a book, um, God, where is this from? Oh, it’s originally from Zorba the Greek, but a guy wrote a book, which, oh God, who wrote this book?

[00:41:32] Merlin: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. This is Jon Kabat Zinn. The, the

[00:41:34] Jeff: Oh,

[00:41:34] Merlin: writes a lot about, yeah, you

[00:41:36] Jeff: Also, weirdly, Howard Zinn’s son in law.

[00:41:39] Merlin: I did not

[00:41:40] Jeff: I built Howard Zinn’s website.

[00:41:43] Merlin: Are you kidding me?

[00:41:44] Jeff: No, I’m not kidding you. Yeah.

[00:41:47] Merlin: um, let’s can you put a pin in this one? We I want to talk about, um, fame famous pe websites for famous people we’ve made. Let’s let’s will you write that

[00:41:54] Jeff: Okay. That’s great. Yep. I’ll write it

[00:41:55] Merlin: My kid is currently I we had we had back to school night for my kid’s junior year, [00:42:00] uh, last week. And, uh, one of the things they’re reading is people’s history.

[00:42:04] Jeff: Oh, that’s excellent to hear.

[00:42:06] Merlin: I mean, you could do a lot worse. Yeah, this school, boy, they’re terrible. They, they include social justice in everything they try to do. What a bad school.

[00:42:13] Merlin: Oh, my God. I love this school so goddamn much. Um, yeah. So have you heard of this book, Full Catastrophe Living? You might

[00:42:19] Jeff: Yeah, it’s behind me.

[00:42:21] Merlin: Oh, really? Well, it comes from Zorba the Greek, but he refers to life as the full catastrophe.

[00:42:28] Jeff: Yes.

[00:42:29] Merlin: Does that, I’m, I’m not putting this well, does that, maybe you could explain it better than I, but is that’s kind of part of it, right?

[00:42:35] Merlin: Is instead of, instead of putting my, this goes for sleep, this goes for lots of things. Instead of taking all the energy from my, um, insert Star Trek reference, instead of putting all the energy into keeping my shields up, maybe it’d be better off to just kind of stop the air, stop the ship for a while, and really think about what we’re doing here because.

[00:42:54] Merlin: The shields I’m putting up are not helping, they are depleting my energy, and it’s not getting me closer to saving the people [00:43:00] on the, uh, Kobayashi Maru.

[00:43:02] Jeff: Yeah, definitely. I was reading this morning, I don’t have it in here, and it’s a name I don’t know I can say, which is Pema Chödrön, I think is her name.

[00:43:10] Merlin: She’s the source of one of my all time favorite quotes.

[00:43:12] Jeff: Which is?

[00:43:13] Merlin: Remember, you are the sky, not the weather.

[00:43:15] Jeff: Oh, that’s so good.

[00:43:17] Merlin: It’s one of the greatest quotes I’ve ever heard.

[00:43:18] Jeff: That’s so good.

[00:43:19] Merlin: also has two diureses in her name.

[00:43:22] Jeff: Uh,

[00:43:23] Merlin: She has two umlauts.

[00:43:24] Jeff: sounds, it gets too

[00:43:25] Merlin: Sorry, keep going.

[00:43:26] Jeff: stole the umlauts from my name at Ellis Island, I think.

[00:43:29] Merlin: Really? It used to be Umlautowitz?

[00:43:33] Jeff: Yeah, yeah. Whoa! Hey! So this book is, How We Live is How We Die. And it is

[00:43:42] Merlin: Happy birthday, Grandma.

[00:43:44] Jeff: yeah, I know, you know what’s funny?

[00:43:46] Jeff: I was reading it

[00:43:47] Merlin: I love you, Grandma. Here’s a book.

[00:43:49] Jeff: I was leaving, I was reading it as my youngest came down and I hid the cover like it was porn. I was just, I don’t want him to just have to take that and be like, what the fuck?

[00:43:56] Merlin: do that with my O’Reilly book about Pearl. [00:44:00] When my wife, when my wife comes in and finds me eating Snickers bars and listening to Valdi, I’m like, Oh, at least it’s wholesome.

[00:44:09] Jeff: exactly, exactly. Yeah, so her thing is like, Think everything’s always dying, right? Like, I mean, it’s a, it’s a dark turn in a way, but it’s like, maybe we can find

[00:44:21] Merlin: every glass is temporarily unbroken. But,

[00:44:26] Jeff: Bridges says, in, in season one of the, um, of the old man, everything’s always in free fall, uh, which is a little dark, but,

[00:44:35] Merlin: but that’s the full catastrophe though, is, is to, to realize it’s not, it’s not a way, and this is a very Alan Watts esque thing. Concept that I will very poorly mangle because I’m making this up as we go along. But like, the reason I keep saying stuff like this goes for sleep, one of my sleep technologies, and this is, I think, related, is that I started to realize things that tend to happen before I go to sleep.

[00:44:58] Merlin: Not that I brush my teeth or turn off the [00:45:00] lights, because who brushes their teeth? But like, but at bedtime, there are things that go through my, I think, I bet everybody has these things. It’s usually described as like, my mind is racing or blah, blah, blah. I’m thinking about tomorrow and all these things.

[00:45:11] Merlin: But I. Would sit with that and learned in time to sit with that and a funny thing we don’t time to get into this But like this is a huge deal for me is realizing there are three or four things That tend to go through my mind before I go to sleep. This was such a breakthrough for me. And, like, they include things like, well, first, I realize I’m, I’m, I feel bad that I’m not just going to sleep.

[00:45:34] Merlin: I’m not talking about, like, being up all night. I’m talking about every single night before I go to sleep. This is, which is important. If you only meditate when you’re sad Did that become something that just you associate with being sad if you just start instead start noticing something on a regular basis and you make it a practice or a project.

[00:45:49] Merlin: Nobody needs to know about it. Nobody needs to know about this, except that it might help. And I realized just in summary. Yeah, I tend to think like, Oh, man, I’m having trouble going to sleep. And then I tend to, like, [00:46:00] have a sudden jolt. of not panic, but I’ll suddenly realize something I don’t like thinking about right before bed.

[00:46:08] Merlin: And everybody’s got their own version of that. Then I tend to realize sometimes I have a really weird, like sexual thought, like that’s not not even my sex stuff. And it’s just but like, it’s weird and like upsetting to think about. And then I, you know, but what’s funny is, Once you just watch the traffic without getting in the car, that all becomes very instructive because guess what I have now?

[00:46:32] Merlin: Now I have a way of saying another phrase I like a lot. Oh, Here comes that feeling.

[00:46:38] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:46:39] Merlin: And because I’m the sky, not the weather, that feeling of that jolt. How about instead I realize that means I’m now in, for my purposes, step two of the falling asleep process? And like and now once I feel like a slight tingling.

[00:46:54] Merlin: On my skin or on my like this part of my body, I know now I’m about 10 minutes from falling asleep or [00:47:00] five minutes from falling asleep. And like, you can make, you can think of that in any way that works for you, but like, no, we’re not at Disney World yet. But we just took the exit with a big green sign says Walt Disney World.

[00:47:12] Merlin: So, Don’t worry, we’re still moving toward where we need to go. We’re not there yet. But once you’ve commuted on a route 50 times, you can have really, maybe even too clear heuristic for what happens. Oh, and when we see the water wheel, that means we’re five miles away from Auntie Susie’s house. Like you, you get more confidence why the way back is always seems faster than the way there.

[00:47:36] Merlin: The familiarity of that. And once you stop trying, what is the takeaway, as they say, about that? Instead of trying to reject Or, uh, reparse, or normalize, or just reject a feeling that you’re feeling. How about you just watch the car how about you just watch the stream without jumping into the water, [00:48:00] and now you know, okay now, yeah, just like every night I’ve moved on to step three.

[00:48:06] Merlin: And what’s weird is the weird meta part of that is once you know that that’s what you’re doing, and it’s gonna be different for everybody, but I encourage people to think about this and try this in sleep and life, but once you start doing that and it stops being something you fear or reject, It just becomes another thing.

[00:48:24] Merlin: I mean, it’s like, it’s like you don’t get as mad or sad or you don’t feel as vulnerable and broken. And this last part of this is what I realized over time. I can’t, I can’t prove this, but all those little thoughts that unbidden that come to me, those, like, I’m trying to evade those thoughts or outrun them in my head.

[00:48:45] Merlin: Like, First of all, yeah, well now that’s just part, I know that’s just part of the process, and that’s okay, you develop a certain familiarity with it, you start saying things like, oh, you know, here comes that feeling again, but the meta part of that is, now I’m not dreading [00:49:00] going to sleep, because I have a toolbox.

[00:49:03] Merlin: for at least putting some kind of a frame around this, and the ultimate life hack, in some ways, is to not need the life hack. Like, once you’ve found a way out of your own aversion to the full catastrophe, I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but that’s not a thing you get a vote on. You don’t get a vote on it.

[00:49:22] Merlin: Why do I cry? after something is over? Why didn’t I cry at the time? Why is it that like you’re kind of like you’re describing, right? Like, but also why? Why are there’s all these things where the emotional part of it seems like it comes at the wrong point? Well, what I’ve realized is that in the same way that my young person telling me who he is, was a gift.

[00:49:45] Merlin: My kid trusted me enough to tell me who he really is. I could be mad about like one, one could be mad about how your kid is not what you Expected and another one is to go, Holy shit, can you [00:50:00] imagine how brave that kid was to tell me who he really is? I’m the luckiest person in the goddamn world that they have a kid who knows who they are and then tells me who they are.

[00:50:10] Merlin: And I don’t, I don’t think honestly, I mean, you’d have to know me to know, but, um, I can’t imagine a greater gift than that. And I maybe wouldn’t even have learned at that point How good my kid was at life until I had the vulnerability to go, that’s, that’s great. I, I have nothing to add to this holler if you need money, like just do your thing.

[00:50:36] Merlin: But I don’t know if that makes sense, but, and so how do I attach that to sleep? Um, well, I start to realize that again, cause I have a practice of this, that vulnerability that I feel that I used to reject, that’s just an indication that I’m human and that I’m alive and that maybe. Is it possible? This is crazy.

[00:50:55] Merlin: Really follow me on this, Jeff, because this is what they call the big takeaway at the New York Times. The big [00:51:00] takeaway is that, is there a chance that I had that feeling I don’t like having, specifically because I’m vulnerable, specifically because when do you get vulnerable? So, you get vulnerable when you’re relaxed.

[00:51:13] Merlin: You ever had a cat?

[00:51:14] Jeff: Yeah. I have two cats. That’s Yeah, exactly.

[00:51:17] Merlin: a cat, and most cats, especially if they used, well, think about, think about this, you get a cat, and like, most cats like some kind of interaction, but, you know, some cats really like interaction, but most cats, in my experience, like interaction on their own terms. And so, they’ll come up and let you know when they want to scratch, or they’ll let you know when there’s a new box, or whatever.

[00:51:37] Merlin: And sometimes, if the cat gets very relaxed, it seems to want you to rub its tummy, and But the thing is, a cat will get so relaxed, this is, this is, I swear I’m going somewhere kind of with this, the cat gets so relaxed, it kind of unintentionally lets you rub its tummy. But what happens, a cat is an animal, the cat realizes it’s on its back, and it’s vulnerable, its belly is up in the air, and it’s [00:52:00] just, it’s like a deer at the watering hole.

[00:52:02] Merlin: And what happens when you rub a cat’s tummy, and then it realizes it’s getting its tummy rubbed? It might bite you, or it might scratch at you, or it might just simply leap out of your lap,

[00:52:10] Jeff: Whoa, hold on. Yeah.

[00:52:12] Merlin: because that’s the cat realizing it’s vulnerable, given a state of relaxation. Now, how can we, as just only barely slightly differently advanced beings, go, well, maybe that thing, that little, like, ah, I feel that maybe that’s life rubbing my tummy, where like, I feel I can cry.

[00:52:30] Merlin: Because I’m not actively experiencing the bad thing anymore. Maybe I can have this feeling and that doesn’t undo me. I’m the sky, not the weather. And then I get to laugh at myself a little bit because I’m like a sleepy kitty.

[00:52:43] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:44] Merlin: you, I mean, do you get that? Does that make,

[00:52:45] Jeff: Yeah. I totally get that.

[00:52:47] Merlin: But, but if you don’t, if you don’t accept that, that vulnerability is part of going to sleep, it’s going to be hard to get a good night’s rest.

[00:52:53] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And the thing that kind of occurred to me while you were talking about, you know, the whole watching the traffic thing is like, [00:53:00] you were talking on Mastodon the other day about your, your frustration about door management on The Walking Dead. And, and I feel like the way we instinctually

[00:53:08] Merlin: to say about door management. And it made me realize that door management in life is about so many more things than the gate at Alexandria.

[00:53:16] Jeff: it’s like, you left the fucking door open. And that is what you’re,

[00:53:19] Merlin: Yeah, the fucking priest, the guy from The Wire, left the gate open?

[00:53:23] Jeff: yeah,

[00:53:23] Merlin: What? Didn’t, I thought you were just specifically hung a lantern on it. One of the other guys, the guy who leaves his own door open on his cruiser, Grrrr, specifically said, make sure you close the gate, church guy. Doo doo doo doo doo! I guess some people wandered in.

[00:53:39] Merlin: Throw Rick out, he wants two of those strict measures! Anyway, door

[00:53:43] Jeff: Close the fucking door. Well, that’s it. That’s it, right? So the, so the, the other, the other thing that happens in Falling Asleep when you’re yelling at yourself is you’re, you’re treating it as a door management problem, right? Or it’s like, why am I letting this shit in? Why did we leave the fucking gate?

[00:53:58] Jeff: Who left the fucking gate [00:54:00] open?

[00:54:00] Merlin: And what do you do? You say to yourself, well you use phrases, and again this is meaningful to me, I like words, um, oh god, I can’t go to sleep. I can’t stop thinking about this. Talk about rehearsing failure. And I’m not saying don’t acknowledge the truth. What I am saying is, why do you have to add such a negative valence to something instead of just looking at it?

[00:54:20] Merlin: Like, why do you have to have a strong opinion about everything instead of just going, yeah, there’s a thing. There’s that feeling. There’s, you know, and like, I, or like, you know, what do they say in, in, uh, the, the singer in the Sondheim musical? I made it through all of last year and I’m here. Like, you know, the full catastrophe.

[00:54:36] Merlin: Boy, this is a deep podcast,

[00:54:38] Jeff: I’m gonna make it through this year if it kills

[00:54:40] Merlin: I’m gonna make it through this year. You ever seen Craig Finn sing that with Mountain Goats? This is, this is maybe the thing, I’m guessing in my head, this might be the thing that John Roderick probably most hates me sending to him. But, cause I love the whole study. It’s Mountain Goats, um, performing this year with Craig Finn singing the lead vocals with

[00:54:58] Jeff: Oh, I’ll have to look it up. You know,

[00:54:59] Merlin: [00:55:00] And, no, but like imagine Craig Finn, like you can tell he’s a nerd, right? Even in his coolest moment you can tell he’s a nerd. He’s writing songs about John Berryman, who you know from, you know.

[00:55:07] Jeff: yeah, of course he’s buried here. Yeah.

[00:55:09] Merlin: But he didn’t so he died, you know?

[00:55:11] Music is the Best (Part 2)

[00:55:11] Merlin: Um, I don’t know if you, do you like the Holt Steady?

[00:55:14] Jeff: So I have a very close relationship with that band going, going back.

[00:55:18] Merlin: Do you, do you know Lifter Puller? Did you know

[00:55:20] Jeff: Yeah. I, we used to play with Lifter Polar all the

[00:55:23] Merlin: No way! That’s so cool! Their performance of Stuck Between Stations on Letterman is one of my all time favorite things. He likes the warm feeling but he’s tired of all the dehydration! The guy’s always in a totally pressed suit, he sleeps in a van, but then he comes out and, and he does the little Stephen vocals on Stuck Between Stations.

[00:55:47] Jeff: yes, here’s the thing. So since we’re here and now we’re in, like, very obscure territory, and

[00:55:52] Merlin: Show notes for this are gonna be a bitch. You’re gonna need technology. You’re gonna need, you’re gonna need a new model to help

[00:55:57] Jeff: this is the only way Chippy T is going to come [00:56:00] into this conversation is when I throw the show notes through

[00:56:02] Merlin: We have pages and pages of notes about ChatsheepieT to talk about. We got to do a part two.

[00:56:07] Jeff: But let’s, let’s stay here because I. I absolutely loved Lifter Puller and I’ll, and I will send you this, but my band and Lifter Puller, I organized a Christmas show and, and we recorded a single together where we

[00:56:20] Merlin: Oh man! By the way, single is, is, is a trademark of IRS records,

[00:56:24] Jeff: yeah, exactly. And their song was called Bitchy Little Christmas.

[00:56:30] Merlin: Were Lifter Polar, and please, please help people out by explaining what Lifter Polar is and why they have a funny, they have a funny spelled name.

[00:56:37] Jeff: Lifter Puller was a, was a Minneapolis, was a Minneapolis band.

[00:56:41] Merlin: It’s the guitar player and the singer from the whole study, right?

[00:56:44] Jeff: Yeah, so it’s, well, Tad Kubler was the bass player, um, of the, of Lifter Puller, uh, and, and Craig Finn was the singer guitar player, and, um, they had a, Dan Monick was the drummer, amazing dude, amazing photographer, but anyway, Lifter Puller was this band from Minneapolis [00:57:00] that got a little bit, like, minor famous towards the end, and were on, like, Jenny Jones and Letterman.

[00:57:06] Merlin: Were they like, were they like regionally, they’re not like twin tone famous, but like they’re regionally well known?

[00:57:11] Jeff: Regionally. Yeah, exactly. People loved them here. People sang along. I mean, it’s hard not to sing along to those stories. And I guess the biggest thing, and you can say this too, the biggest thing about Lifter Polar and the Hold Steady is the stories are incredible. It’s like if Bruce Springsteen was one of us.

[00:57:25] Merlin: and seriously, Stuck Between Stations is not like, I’m not here to say that it’s about John Berryman and the Dream Songs, but like, you know, John Berryman is like, he likes the golden gophers, you know,

[00:57:37] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

[00:57:38] Merlin: yeah, but like, it’s like, but there is

[00:57:40] Jeff: First time the Golden Gophers were ever mentioned on this podcast.

[00:57:44] Merlin: I think, I think this might be why. Like maybe perhaps, why I can’t know if Roderick’s ever actually listen to them I mean, I think he’s just naturally he naturally rejects bands that are kind of similar as his, but um But that’s what really got me when I very first heard Not [00:58:00] Boys and Girls in America, but the oh oh oh oh oh Shoot.

[00:58:04] Merlin: What was the one before, with uh, started out with, The Positive Jam

[00:58:08] Jeff: yeah, yeah,

[00:58:09] Merlin: you know the one, the first one, but when I first heard that and I was like, Oh my God, this is really, this is like MFA version of Bruce Springsteen

[00:58:17] Jeff: Yes. Yes. Yes.

[00:58:20] Merlin: with, with, with both of the things that make those two things wonderful, like reading, reading things like John Berryman, but also really enjoying something like Thunder Road.

[00:58:28] Merlin: Like that is reconcilable in a really exciting way. Lifter Puller, man.

[00:58:34] Jeff: Lifter Puller. Amazing.

[00:58:35] Merlin: you heard Nothing Painted Blue?

[00:58:37] Jeff: Heard what?

[00:58:38] Merlin: Nothing Painted Blue? So I mentioned a minute ago the Mountain Goats, uh, uh, Peter Hughes was, he wasn’t in, he wasn’t in Nothing Painted Blue for my favorite time. He was in a little earlier, but I will find a record for you, but check out Nothing Painted Blue if you like Too Clever by a Half, you know, kind of like listening to Jonathan Colton sing [00:59:00] about fractals.

[00:59:01] Merlin: Like, if you like that kind of thing, but like, a little more serious, uh, I’m gonna write that down. I’m gonna tell you about Nothing Painted Blue. Very, very smart band. Are we gonna talk about the internet, or not?

[00:59:13] Jeff: We’re getting there, I

[00:59:13] Merlin: people, people don’t tune in to hear us talk about life. They, they, they’re here for the hot tech tips.

[00:59:18] Jeff: Sorry, fuckers. Oh, God.

[00:59:22] Merlin: got, I got your model.

[00:59:24] Jeff: Yeah, no, we can do this. I have to say, having wound our way to Lifter Puller, I’m a little dizzy. Like, how is this happening? And starting with Matthias Jabs, by the way, which is great. Like, just a nice bookends to that part.

[00:59:38] Merlin: What was your, what was your, what was your first record? Was, was it, was probably, you’re probably younger than me, so probably the one with, uh, the Bitch is Hungry song on it. Dun dun dun. Rocky Like a Hurricane. That, that was probably like, see, I’m, I’m a breakout, I’m a breakout guy.

[00:59:50] Jeff: Yeah, and I mean, I got to break out. Uh, I can say that when I got a viola thinking I was going to be in band, the only thing I ever learned was, was rock you like a, was rock you like a [01:00:00] hurricane.

[01:00:00] Merlin: See, I would have thought you’d be into John Cale. I could see you being very into John Cale. Mmm.

[01:00:06] Jeff: time. Long time. Yeah. But, but since you asked, but let’s just pretend you asked what my first album was generally, and I will say that the first one that I bought of my own volition was the cassette of Huey Lewis Sports.

[01:00:16] Merlin: Oh my god, really, 1984. I, um,

[01:00:20] Jeff: when I came

[01:00:21] Merlin: so you’re also then, you’re also old enough to remember Columbia House,

[01:00:25] Jeff: Oh, yeah.

[01:00:25] Jeff: This, okay, so here’s the, so, okay, fine.

[01:00:27] Merlin: ten, ten for a penny. I owed four, I owed 40 to Columbia House for six years because of sports.

[01:00:35] Jeff: Oh, yeah. But they can’t come after you. You’re a

[01:00:37] Merlin: And I didn’t have the sense to have it delivered to our neighbor’s mailbox, you know? That was, that was the good way to run the

[01:00:43] Jeff: But Merlin, here’s what’s amazing that you brought that up, because I always have an asterisk in my head when I say that was the first one. What I really mean is that was the one that brought my first package of Columbia House

[01:00:55] Merlin: Oh, that’s, isn’t that, that is so momentous, [01:01:00] oh my god, I have

[01:01:01] Jeff: It was a

[01:01:01] Merlin: I have such a story about that.

[01:01:04] Jeff: Well, I don’t mind hearing it. I mean, I don’t know. Yeah.

[01:01:06] Merlin: When I was ten, uh, living in Cincinnati, Ohio, uh, the neighborhood was called Grosbeck. One day, long story short, I, I go out to check the mail, I’m ten, right, this is 1970. It’s 1976, so I had a record player, so it would be 76 or 77. The point of the story is, oh God, I’m going to mess this up a little bit. I go outside and there’s a big package, and I think it was basically that thing I described a second ago.

[01:01:32] Merlin: So the idea is, you would get these, there were these services where you, my parents did this, where you’d sign up for a service and you’d say, okay, um, I really like music. I’m going to, they’re going to send me seven 8 tracks cassettes or 10 or whatever. A Tracks cassettes, you know, for a penny or whatever, but then you’re signing up for this thing where like, if you don’t physically return, mail back a thing every month, they automatically send you a record.

[01:01:56] Merlin: But what everybody did was a scam. A lot of people, anyway, [01:02:00] would like, do a scam of like, I get seven free albums and now my neighbor is on the hook for that or whatever. I went out and I got a big, there’s a big package like between our screen. Screen Door and Our Door Door. And I think it was seven albums.

[01:02:13] Merlin: I’ll tell you the ones I remember off the dome. I opened this thing up, it was addressed, I guess it wasn’t addressed to me, but like, it was seven albums. I’m 10 years old. Now this becomes one of those stories that like in a shitty biopic, like this would be that moment like where Paul McCartney sees a bass in a window or whatever.

[01:02:31] Merlin: Um, it was the, it was the greatest, it was a Dolly Parton greatest hits that had like Life’s Like a Butterfly, that era. Um, yeah. Beach Boys Greatest Hits,

[01:02:40] Jeff: Mm

[01:02:41] Merlin: The Monkees Greatest Hits,

[01:02:42] Jeff: Mm hmm.

[01:02:43] Merlin: Kiss, Rock and Roll Over, Kiss, Destroyer, Um, oh, oh, one that I didn’t love, a Jefferson Starship album, and I’m probably forgetting another one, but I think it might be the one with the, uh, with the Cunnilingus song, you know, I got [01:03:00] a taste of the real world, when I went down on you, girl, if only you believed in miracles, baby.

[01:03:06] Merlin: It

[01:03:07] Jeff: John Berryman.

[01:03:08] Merlin: one that had the dragon on the cover, but anyway, that was my first, I suddenly had, An album by the

[01:03:16] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:03:16] Merlin: who at the time I was watching in reruns on UHF,

[01:03:19] Jeff: yeah. So good.

[01:03:20] Merlin: and I suddenly also had an album with stuff like Beach Boys In My Room,

[01:03:24] Jeff: Mm.

[01:03:25] Merlin: or like that era, the era, obviously, duh, I’m not basic, I mean, I like Pet Sounds quite a lot, but like, I also celebrate the catalog of the Beach Boys, especially right before Pet Sounds,

[01:03:38] Jeff: yes, for

[01:03:39] Merlin: even or especially stuff like Help Me Rhonda, but like In My Room and boom.

[01:03:48] Merlin: Don’t worry, baby, don’t worry,

[01:03:50] Jeff: Don’t worry, baby.

[01:03:54] Merlin: um, yeah, that was my experience with

[01:03:56] Jeff: was like their Ronette song.

[01:03:57] Merlin: Oh, absolutely. It sounds like Hal Blaine. [01:04:00] That changed my life a little bit. That day where I opened up those records, and even then becoming like a familiar, like I didn’t play the Dolly Parton as much as, Kiss Destroyer, which is like, I mean, that was T.

[01:04:12] Merlin: H., for people my age, that was T. H. E. Kiss album, like, if you, I mean, Alive 2, which is not very good, like, there’s all of those, and it sounds like you’re not a big Kiss fan, but Kiss Destroyer, it’s the one, it opens with, it opens with Detroit Rock City, it’s got

[01:04:25] Jeff: Which is amazing, which is incredible. It’s a shuffle. It’s a I mean, it’s just an incredible song. Yeah, is that as a drummer, it was how I learned shuffles was that beat?

[01:04:37] Merlin: end up being friends with drummers, it’s the weirdest thing.

[01:04:39] Jeff: Johns and

[01:04:40] Merlin: No, it’s the weirdest thing, all of my, all of my, all of my, my, my fake friends that have been in bands, the people who actually will talk to me, it’s invariably the drummers. I’ve made friends with so many drummers and I don’t know why. I mean, I guess, I guess because I can’t make friends with musicians. Oh!

[01:04:55] Jeff: oh, both sides of the mouth.

[01:04:58] Merlin: Are these, are these your drums? Are these [01:05:00] your drums?

[01:05:00] Jeff: what? My son’s in, my son’s in a band and his drummer, and they both run cross country and his drummer who I’ve come to know a little bit and he was running and I, and he was kind of way back in the race. So he’s the only one coming through and I yelled both sides of the mouth to him because you know this joke, how do you tell if the stage is level?

[01:05:19] Jeff: The drummer’s drooling out of both sides of his mouth.

[01:05:24] Merlin: That’s funny! That’s funny, bullseye! I like that!

[01:05:28] Jeff: I yell both sides of the mouth at this kid

[01:05:32] Merlin: And you can already hear it in your head, Dad!

[01:05:34] Jeff: It was a big mistake. That’s

[01:05:37] Merlin: Um, can I, can I give you one fact that you don’t remark about and then we go straight into the actual topic? Is that okay? But I want, can I do a, can I do a mic drop right here? I’m tired all together. Um, it means a lot to me. My kid means a lot to me, but a big part of my kid meaning a lot to me is me getting out of the picture, or, you know, [01:06:00] not putting myself into the picture that was taken of my kid, you know, over a decade ago.

[01:06:06] Merlin: It’s very difficult to do.

[01:06:07] dadblog.blog

[01:06:07] Merlin: I think, I think you know this, and yet I’m still very interested, and I’ve realized that, like, I only have access to parts of my kid’s life because that’s how it should be, but there are places where my kid is, you know, is, Himself and performs. I would, I would commend. It’s very important you put a link in show notes to his letterbox, because he’s a genuinely very funny writer.

[01:06:30] Merlin: I’ll get you a link for that. But

[01:06:32] Jeff: Okay.

[01:06:32] Merlin: for the fourth. Fourth, separate time last night. I signed up for Instagram.

[01:06:41] Jeff: For the fourth separate time, are they four separate accounts or do you just kill it and come

[01:06:45] Merlin: I’ve had, I mean, all the good, all my good usernames are gone. But like, I signed up for Instagram when everybody first got on it. And I somewhat famously bounced because I’m like this. This is back in the better days, that essay I wrote. Like, this is about where I was like, fuck this. [01:07:00] A bunch of people who work at Apple taking pictures of birds on wires?

[01:07:02] Merlin: No, thanks. of course, I did, I have, you know, Have my Facebook account like deactivated for like 10 years, but you know, everybody thinks I’m one of the hill people. So like, you know, hot dogs, ladies, that account’s gone. Um, so last night, uh, And don’t, I’m not, God, it’s so critical you’re not following me, but it’s just to say to you that like, I don’t know, you kind of, we’re familiar with each other enough that I think you would appreciate that like, that’s my bet noire.

[01:07:30] Merlin: Like Facebook and Instagram are like, I don’t, I don’t want to yuck on anybody’s yum, but it’s not a thing I want to do and they’re bad. And no, but last night I, unwilling horse, This is my new account and I’m just

[01:07:45] Jeff: hmm. Unwilling horse. Uh,

[01:07:51] Merlin: to see my kid, but that’s, that’s like I need to bring the mountain to Mohammed and he said it, he said it was okay [01:08:00] to, to, to follow him there.

[01:08:01] Merlin: So once a day or so I’ll.

[01:08:03] Jeff: yes. You have to go. Yeah. Yep.

[01:08:05] Merlin: was so bummed when I left Twitter, but I was like, and it was kind of abrupt where I was finally like, you know, imagine me clapping like, new dealer out of here. Like, I cannot be here anymore. And at this point, it’s just it’s just war criminals and war profiteers.

[01:08:19] Merlin: That’s all who’s left there at this point. And people still send me things. All my friends who are quote off Twitter keep sending me things from Twitter. And I don’t understand how that works. But no, I can handle one thing at a time. I can handle one social network at a time. I can handle as well.

[01:08:33] Merlin: Transcribed Probably talk about in some future episode, I can handle one. LLM with really mostly one model at a

[01:08:42] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:08:44] Merlin: I need to learn the hammer I’ve got before I buy more hammers. And I do not need more hammers, especially if they say Instagram on them. But I’m not covering myself with glory. I don’t fucking care.

[01:08:54] Merlin: I’ll probably deactivate it. It’s just not worth it. This is a signup process. The [01:09:00] entire time we’re sitting there and eventually mom and Billy switch seats so he could sit next to me and make fun of me while because he doesn’t think I know how to use the Internet.

[01:09:08] Jeff: Isn’t that funny? Listen, kid! Can you even spell angel fire?

[01:09:17] Merlin: Listen, listen, let me explain something to you. I had an internet shrine to, to, to, to, to that, to that gal from Paramore before you were even born. It was on Geocities and I don’t know where it is now.

[01:09:31] Jeff: And yeah, I couldn’t get the under construction thing off,

[01:09:33] Merlin: I couldn’t get it, but I had a blinking gif. I had a, I had another one. I used a pencil for an HR. That’s a horizontal rule.

[01:09:40] Merlin: Sit down. Let me explain to you. Um, but, like, you know, I’ll probably bounce off that and just see how it goes, but, like, you know, just to, the, the, crossing the T, I think, and I said this to my kid last night who, of course, looked at me very perplexed, uh, not perplexed because, because my kid’s dumb, but perplexed because I’m an idiot, but, like, um, I was like, you know, kid, [01:10:00] like, you know, perhaps know me, and I’m, I’m, I’m a, I’m a, I’m a laughing stock in our house in every conceivable way, which is okay, um, I, I don’t, I don’t draw that part of my life from my family.

[01:10:12] Merlin: That’s not what they’re there for. They’re not there to make me feel smart and good. They’re there to be who they are, for me to stay the fuck out of the way. I’m a, I’ve said this since my kid was born, I’m a, I’m a basically a mule with a checkbook. Just, if you, if there’s nothing to do being a mule, and there’s nothing to do being a checkbook, you’re not needed right now.

[01:10:28] Merlin: Nobody needs your opinion.

[01:10:30] Jeff: so you’ve got cocaine and a checkbook.

[01:10:32] Merlin: Well, yeah, they’re in my butt.

[01:10:34] Jeff: Yeah,

[01:10:34] Merlin: The checkbook.

[01:10:35] Jeff: it out. You gotta go and fetch it.

[01:10:36] Merlin: my, I keep all, I keep all my checkbooks in my butt because I’m a mule.

[01:10:40] Jeff: Cause I’m a mule.

[01:10:41] Merlin: Google it. Um, great. Now, now I’m going to have another thing on Urban Dictionary. Um, there’s Mann’s assumption and also checkbook, but, but, but, um, but no, I said, I said, yeah, I said, honestly, you know, not that it matters.

[01:10:54] Merlin: You can’t be earnest with a 16 year old. But I was like, you know, it means a lot to me to look at new [01:11:00] things. Because, I didn’t say this, but I’ll say this to you, Jeff, like, the, our, this is in the document, like, I think, I know, for myself, and I think in most cases, most of us tend to become, I don’t know if it’s conservative is the wrong word for it, we tend to become hidebound in our ideas about things, and blah, blah, blah, this is a different conversation, but I was like, you know I like new stuff, like, my family’s constantly making fun of me, like, there’s a joke on, Messed on my podcast that the joke that started with next hempkin which tracks max would say stuff like oh this new iPhone I need it for my work and that became like so that that’s a running joke now is I need this for my work But like honestly when I’m like Madeline if you’re gonna rent a car Please rent a car with Carplay, and she’s like I don’t what and I’m like Yeah, but like, if we’re going to have a car for five days, A, I want car play in the car, and B, all my, I learned this from Jason Snell, I mean, everything is copy, as Nora Ephron says, like, um, this is all stuff that is applies to other things.

[01:11:59] Merlin: And just [01:12:00] because you don’t understand what my job is, doesn’t mean I don’t understand what my job is. So I say to my kid, I says, I says to him, I says, you know, I like learning about new stuff. I said, but honestly, I’ve also learned that sometimes I need to revisit my priors about old stuff. Which, believe it or not, in this case is Instagram, because now Instagram is not just a place where they wheeze my juice and steal my data and try to sell me screen doors.

[01:12:21] Merlin: It also is now a place where my kid is. And that, I don’t know if I’ll be there forever, or I don’t, I don’t need to have a big position on this. My kid’s on Instagram. I’ll look at it there. I found out my kid likes Talking Heads a month ago, and I’m like, how could you, why have you not sat down and watched the Rome 1980 concert with me?

[01:12:39] Merlin: You need to tell me when you like things that are good.

[01:12:42] Music is the Best (Part 3)

[01:12:42] Jeff: Wait, is the Rome 1980 concert, is that on YouTube and not like an official release? Is that when Adrian Belew’s in the

[01:12:47] Merlin: Oh, it’s, it’s the best. I’m somebody who watches Exit… Stage Left once a month. This is, it’s the best, it is the best recorded rock concert I’ve ever seen. [01:13:00] And don’t even, don’t even mention, don’t even mention that later one that’s also a very good movie. That’s a movie about David Byrne. This is a movie

[01:13:07] Jeff: This is the one that is incredible energy, just unbelievable

[01:13:11] Merlin: It’s got Bernie, Bernie Worrell, yeah, Adrian Belew, arguably at the height of his powers. Oh God, the woman, the singer, McDonald is her

[01:13:20] Jeff: I’ve seen it and I actually sent it to my son and said this is, I literally said this is the best live performance I’ve ever seen on

[01:13:28] Merlin: It is. It’s the best live performance. And like, especially if you like talking heads anyway at all, especially if you’re one of those people who came in, quote unquote, late with Burning Down the House. We were like, no, Fear of Music

[01:13:37] Jeff: that was the Paramore

[01:13:38] Merlin: Fear of Music is kind of their best record in some ways. Like, it’s definitely like the low key.

[01:13:44] Merlin: Oh, yeah, this is like this. But Adrian Belew. And he has to play, he’s playing a Roland. He’s playing a solid state Roland

[01:13:52] Jeff: hmm. Sure is.

[01:13:52] Merlin: and, and his,

[01:13:54] Jeff: He made some weird

[01:13:55] Merlin: his weird, weird ass strat, it’s, he’s got, he’s, he’s taken out three of the five [01:14:00] springs in the back. So he’s got his whammy bar has two and, and he, but he, I think the thing is with that lineup, with like, Nine people on stage or whatever.

[01:14:09] Merlin: I think he can’t play as loud as he would probably like to to play the way

[01:14:14] Jeff: as many elephant sounds.

[01:14:15] Merlin: cuz think about how much it’s not feedback in the usual sense. Like you really got me sense Well, it’s more like but like he He has to, and like you can see him struggling to, I don’t know, you play guitar,

[01:14:27] Jeff: No, God,

[01:14:28] Merlin: okay. But like, like on a guitar, like you, there’s harmonics.

[01:14:30] Merlin: Like if you hit a harmonic on the B at the 12th, that’s a pretty easy harmonic. You can sound like the edge. Really easy. Do, do, do, do. Try and hit that one on the fifth string. And if you don’t have enough volume, you don’t get the overtones. And you can see him not struggling, but you could see all the effort he has to put into that.

[01:14:48] Merlin: To do what he’s doing, Donette McDonald, that’s her name, and that’s also, I walked away saying, these are three of the best rhythm guitarists I’ve ever seen. Because Jerry Harrison and David Byrne, guess what? You know what? David [01:15:00] Byrne is a really fucking good

[01:15:01] Jeff: Really great. Yeah, definitely.

[01:15:03] Merlin: wanna, I wanna underline this because a lot of you are gonna be really smart and say, yeah, I really love Stop Making Sense.

[01:15:09] Merlin: Here’s what I’m saying to you. Stop Making Sense is a very good movie. It’s a really good movie. It’s a movie about David Byrne.

[01:15:13] Jeff: that’s a great way to describe it.

[01:15:15] Merlin: I mean, this is a, like, you’re gonna, you’re gonna, oh my god, it’s so good,

[01:15:20] Jeff: You’re gonna love them without the big suit. I’ll tell you

[01:15:23] Merlin: it’s a good bit, it’s a good bit,

[01:15:24] Jeff: It’s a great bit. It’s so funny you bring this up because what I’m remembering now is that so I’d already loved Adrian Belew, but I kind of just like left him in my King Crimson records.

[01:15:34] Merlin: was your, what was your, oh, okay, so like, Discipline, Discipline,

[01:15:37] Jeff: my uncle’s King Crimson record.

[01:15:39] Jeff: The Court of the Crimson King. Yeah, it’s Unbelievable.

[01:15:43] Merlin: Friend

[01:15:44] Jeff: I still put it on all the time, but,

[01:15:46] Merlin: to sign

[01:15:48] Jeff: him, I left him there, you know, like I let him, he didn’t come out, uh, of that record, uh, for me. And so when I saw this, I was like, are you fucking kidding me? And then I went

[01:15:56] Merlin: and he’s playing the whole time he’s part of the band.

[01:15:58] Jeff: I went down such a [01:16:00] rabbit hole on YouTube that there was a point at which it was all it was feeding me practically was a new Adrian Belew content.

[01:16:05] Merlin: Oh my God. Dude. Dude. Like for those of you out there who have not gotten the, the gospel on Adrian Blue, I mean, I think in, in a weird way, he might be best known from King Crimson, which is already so crazy that that’s what he’s well known for. But like, treat yourself like I think. A good starting point might be, after Heroes, it’s the Lodger.

[01:16:27] Merlin: I think on the Lodger, on the Lodger tour, he’s on, I think he’s on, that’s mostly Carlos, um, Carlos Alomar, I think, but like, but there’s a live performance, but he’s wearing like pleated leather pants, and he introduces this young man from Georgia, Adrian Belew, and he’s still got hair and stuff like that, but then he was also in Zappa’s band.

[01:16:45] Jeff: I was just gonna say, there aren’t that many people who were in Zappa’s band, and I am a, um, I’m a, uh, here and there fan of Frank Zappa,

[01:16:53] Merlin: I, I like, I like Zappa songs and some Zappa. Zappa Records. And I like the way everything [01:17:00] sounds, but I can’t listen to like tons and tons of

[01:17:03] Jeff: Oh, no. No, no, no. But what I love, and this is where that, where that, oh, it’s great, where that, where that rabbit hole led also was just people talking about auditioning for Frank Zappa,

[01:17:14] Merlin: Oh my God. Can you imagine?

[01:17:16] Jeff: genre that I highly recommend.

[01:17:19] Merlin: That is so funny. And then what else? Uh, I’m missing another one. Then he was a do. DOA do. He’s on fear of music. He’s on anda you know that like, uh, what is that?

[01:17:30] Jeff: Digga, digga, digga,

[01:17:31] Merlin: Zimbra on Zimbra. Diga. Diga Dig. You know? Um, which does sound kind of like Fri uh, and then, oh, but he also has his solo album.

[01:17:38] Merlin: You know, I’m Lone

[01:17:40] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:17:41] Merlin: Like that was my introduction. My friend put an Adrian Belu, so my friend made me this amazing high quality Maxwell cassette of like a bunch. ’cause we were both

[01:17:50] Merlin: XLII

[01:17:50] Jeff: or XLII-S?

[01:17:52] Merlin: it might have been XLII, as this is 85, so that might be an XLII, but it included, um, Mediterranean Sundance by Al Di [01:18:00] Meola, et al.

[01:18:00] Merlin: It included Hot on Your Heels by, um, the band was Steeler, but by Yngwie Malmsteen, which is

[01:18:06] Jeff: Mm hmm.

[01:18:07] Merlin: Um, it included, ba ga da da dum dum, da ga da da da dum dum, uh, uh, uh, some Iron Maiden. Like, and, uh, oh, a little bit of Stevie Ray Vaughan, but anyway, it was all the shredding, like, good, classy shredding guitar people, and he put a lone rhinoceros on there, because he could make his guitar sound like an elephant or a rhinoceros.

[01:18:25] Jeff: I’m going to blow your mind straight from Wikipedia right now.

[01:18:28] Merlin: Do it, bring

[01:18:28] Jeff: To say that in the list of contributions to records that he made, you, you’ve got a cluster of Laurie Anderson records followed by Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors.

[01:18:39] Merlin: What? Oh, I heard an Adrian Belew fact. I find this difficult to believe for reasons we can litigate, but, um, okay, so my kid is a kid, and, uh, love that, um, we’re a big Ryan Reynolds house, for better or for worse, and like that video, what’s the video game movie, Free Guy? My kid really liked Free Guy. And there’s a song [01:19:00] that plays a role in that movie, it appears several times, and it’s a Mariah Carey song.

[01:19:05] Merlin: Uh, it’s the one that goes, you know, it’s the sweet, sweet fantasy baby. Now what is the primary sample that you remember from Fantasy by Mariah Carey?

[01:19:15] Jeff: I don’t remember a sample from

[01:19:16] Merlin: It goes like this.

[01:19:17] Jeff: think I was so transfixed by the fact that she wasn’t Minnie Riperton. Anyway, that’s another story,

[01:19:21] Merlin: could totally hear that. Oh God, I rewatched Idiocracy last night with Minnie Riperton’s daughter

[01:19:25] Jeff: which I have not watched.

[01:19:27] Merlin: gosh, it’s awfully good.

[01:19:28] Merlin: I’m going to give you four notes and a rest. Well, there abouts. Ba dum, bum, bum, ba dum,

[01:19:35] Jeff: Oh, then it, uh, uh, fuck, fuck, fuck,

[01:19:38] Merlin: What you gonna do when

[01:19:39] Jeff: it’s not,

[01:19:41] Merlin: I’m gonna have some fun. What do you consider fun? Fun. Genius of Love. Oh, talk about the black private. Wait, let me get this right. Are you talking about the black private dick? Who’s the sex machine with all the chicks?

[01:19:58] Jeff: Yeah. No, but hold on.

[01:19:59] Merlin: just, I’m just talking about [01:20:00] Shaft.

[01:20:01] Jeff: that that’s yes. And then, and what follows that? Shut your

[01:20:04] Merlin: Shut your mouth. Oh, he’s listening to that cassette all the time. Um, so, uh, Chris and Tina and Tina’s two sisters. Sorry, sorry, sorry. The Rhythm Section of Talking Heads. Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz. Now, I think even at that point, they were at least dating, probably married. The drummer and the bass player, Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz.

[01:20:21] Merlin: She and her two sisters and Chris Franz did a really wonderful album, uh, called, I think Is it called Tom Tom Club? But it’s the one that’s got wording, opens with wordy rapping hood, but most famously has a song on it called Genius of Love,

[01:20:36] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:20:36] Merlin: is a song that I found completely beguiling, partly because of its wonderful animated video that I saw in 1983.

[01:20:44] Merlin: But, you know, that’s that, that, ba dump, bump, bump, ba dump, which is sampled on that Mariah Carey song. Guess who played guitar on

[01:20:53] Jeff: Was it Belew?

[01:20:54] Merlin: It’s Adrian Belew. Adrian Belew found out only recently. This is the part that I have trouble with. He [01:21:00] just found out recently that like, and this doesn’t make sense because it seems like he would have seen some checks, but I, I, maybe he doesn’t have a writing credit.

[01:21:06] Merlin: I don’t know. But point is, like you go and you see Free Guy and you’re going to hear that really catchy song. Sweet, sweet fantasy baby. Prominent sample. He discovered recently, he had no idea he had been sampled on like a top ten song. Can you imagine? That doesn’t happen to me.

[01:21:22] Jeff: No, that’s never happened to me

[01:21:24] Merlin: I mean, it just doesn’t happen in my day to day, at least not that often that I find out I’ve been sampled on something,

[01:21:29] Jeff: Also, you know what I realized years after not being in a band anymore? It’s like, I thought I knew what I wanted to be true for me in a band and my band, but what I realize now is what would have been really amazing is to be exactly where I am now, which is not with a band, but every once in a while a royalty check comes in.

[01:21:45] Jeff: Wouldn’t that be nice?

[01:21:46] Merlin: That is, I’m thinking about that, that is a really, it’s sort of like how my friend John Roderick wants to be, this is very specific, he’s always wanted to be a retired head of the CIA.

[01:21:57] Jeff: Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

[01:21:58] Merlin: And there are numerous [01:22:00] steps that are missing from that stack.

[01:22:03] Jeff: Yep. Yep. Yep.

[01:22:04] Merlin: It’s funny because I was thinking, when I was thinking about Dinosaur Jr.

[01:22:06] Merlin: and arguing with Chris and Marty last night, I had a thought. Which is like, I kind of miss being in a band and like, not again, not arguing, but like going back and forth with your friends about like what the best song on Trap Mask Replica is.

[01:22:19] Jeff: Oh, completely.

[01:22:20] Merlin: case, what’s your favorite? I really miss I miss the,

[01:22:23] Jeff: Got me?

[01:22:23] Merlin: I miss the, me and my girl named Mimbo, Limbo, Spam. That’s right, the Mascara Snake.

[01:22:32] Jeff: Very special.

[01:22:34] Merlin: a very special album, and it just goes to show you, you don’t really need to wear headphones in the studio if you can hear kind of a little bit through the

[01:22:40] Jeff: No. Fuck no.

[01:22:41] Merlin: Um, but I was thinking I do kind of, I, yeah, I mean royalties would be nice.

[01:22:46] Jeff: Just to say about bands, you had said this twice now, that there’s sort of a relationship between banter and argument. And I think that what I miss most about being in a band is that practice space world where banter and argument are the same, [01:23:00] are sort of the,

[01:23:00] Merlin: But also, also stuff where there wasn’t an answer. Like today, everybody’s obsessed. My, my, my, my, my dear worst friend, John Siracusa, who I’ve only recently realized mainly just cares about being right. He wants to be right, he wants to be right, and he wants you to know that we’ve already talked about this on the show before.

[01:23:15] Merlin: That doesn’t come up at band practice.

[01:23:18] Jeff: No, hell no. No

[01:23:19] Merlin: Because I mean like in the same way that like I’ve tried to say to my dear wife, sometimes communication is not about relaying information. It’s about bonding, right? And like, that’s really good to know about me. Because when one of the bits in our, every family’s got bits, and one of the bits in our family come up, I’m not doing that.

[01:23:37] Merlin: When I quote a Curious George cartoon, and there are Curious George cartoons that I quote constantly, like all the time. Anytime I hear, you know me, maybe a certain cadence. And I, I just, I just start quoting, uh, that’s a good amount, or a lot of cheese, or like whatever it is, or something happened in there, something monkey related.

[01:23:58] Jeff: All I hear is woo.

[01:23:59] Merlin: Ooh, [01:24:00] and he remembers Pigeon Compass. That’s such a good show. That’s

[01:24:05] Jeff: That’s good technology.

[01:24:07] Merlin: off Caillou. Turn off Caillou.

[01:24:09] Jeff: Oh, turn off Caillou forever. Turn on Pingu if you can’t get

[01:24:13] Merlin: What about that Mr. Hinkle? Has he ever been indicted? Remember, remember Caillou’s next door neighbor? That guy’s no Mr. Wilson, is what I’m saying. Um, we’re closing the threads on our threads. Um, useful things to, I sent you a screenshot, uh, useful things to say to yourself. Not now. Stay on target. Stop. Just keep doing the thing.

[01:24:37] Merlin: Eh, whatever, you’ll get it next time. What exactly are you saving this for? That’s to the chicken wing that my wife put in the fridge a long time ago and I said, you’ll never eat that. Cause now, now we’ve got garbage and the cost of a bag. I’ve decided not to let it bother me. Any, I mean, obviously we’re going to need to have, uh, maybe next week or something.

[01:24:56] Merlin: We will have another episode to talk about the dingus. [01:25:00] Uh, this feels, this feels like something good to do.

[01:25:05] Jeff: I love

[01:25:05] Merlin: I bet there’s some, one person, somebody who will like this.

[01:25:10] Jeff: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean,

[01:25:11] Merlin: I’m very deeply sorry.

[01:25:14] Jeff: I

[01:25:14] Merlin: is there a podcast? Are you listening to any good podcasts? Do you like, oh, you know, have you ever heard Serial?

[01:25:18] Merlin: Yeah, I’ve heard Serial. Yeah, but like, is there one where they talk about Glenn Fleischman and Lifter Puller?

[01:25:23] Jeff: of, have you heard the off week, uh, overtired?

[01:25:25] Merlin: my God, it’s so good. What about Franz Nicolay? What, what about that guy who plays keyboards in, in, in the whole study? Do they mention him at all? Well, I heard on that show that, I heard that he likes the warm feeling, but he’s tired of all the dehydration, is what I

[01:25:39] Jeff: it’s probably, that sounds about right. I’ve

[01:25:41] Merlin: The hardest part about this is going to be finding things for notes, because this would be a very good notes episode.

[01:25:48] Jeff: That’s actually the most fun part. Thank you, Merlin

[01:25:52] Merlin: Wait, is that it? I mean, how the fuck is that the end?

[01:25:55] Jeff: Didn’t you just say we’re done?

[01:25:56] Merlin: Oh, I probably did. Let me look at my notes. I think I said I’m done. Let me[01:26:00]

[01:26:00] Jeff: Feel free

[01:26:00] You Still Gotta Do Shit

[01:26:00] Merlin: Uh, what else did I wrote down? Oh, I wrote down the word, phrase, ditto health. Oh, oh, yeah. So one thing I was going to say, I realized this in life, but I really crystallized when I was, um, in the hospital in December for a while, a few days.

[01:26:12] Merlin: And, um, uh, I figure what this is related to, but it was related to something you said earlier. Oh, about your kid. Oh yeah, you’re talking about, like, we were talking about kids, and like, you know, sort of, however you think of it, like, your kid’s going to college, you’re fighting the last war, you’re like, and you’re talking about, like, I kind of got the implication from what you’re saying, I think, of like, hey, I need to get my head in the game.

[01:26:33] Merlin: Like, I’m not helping by being sad about who my kid is. I’m not saying you said that, but you know what I mean, like, and I realized while I was in the hospital, the thing that makes so many things so difficult in life is that everything keeps going on in life, no matter what is happening with you. Put differently, your entire life, your life that you’re part of, continues to go on even when you feel bad about life.

[01:26:56] Merlin: And that’s, that’s an observation. It’s not, That [01:27:00] doesn’t, you don’t have to go run around, do anything, change your schedule. But, you know, it’s what makes it difficult. Like, when you’re trying to get help for physical or, God forbid, mental health, ask your co host about this. Your life will continue to go on.

[01:27:13] Merlin: You still gotta do shit while you’re figuring out How to be who you are in a way that’s sustainable. All of life goes on without you. And the reason I say that here is for several reasons. Just in the generic. Well no, in specifics. With your kid, you’re losing actual time. Whatever time you have right now, Being how you are, you know, having the life that you have.

[01:27:36] Merlin: And I’m not trying to make this a binary or digital. I’m not saying like, oh, my kids ate, so now I’m not sad anymore. No, but like, the problem is, like, your head’s not in the game, and you’re not there for what you do have. And the thing is, that goes for everything. And that requires an extraordinary amount of tolerance and forgiveness in yourself.

[01:27:55] Merlin: And, and like, that’s why I try to avoid saying things like, you better do this or [01:28:00] like, you know, why don’t you just, or all those things that dumb people say. What I’m trying to say is like, everybody says, Oh, God, be sure to spend time with your kid. And it’s like, it’s true. Like, my tip was always free for, for, for, for.

[01:28:10] Merlin: Parents, get on the floor. Go be dumb.

[01:28:13] Jeff: on the floor.

[01:28:14] Merlin: Do what your kid wants to do, even if, even or especially if you think it’s stupid. You don’t need to corral them or have like a personal intellectual rodeo that’ll help them be proactive in life. Like, just get on the floor and build whatever dumb crap your kid wants to build, whatever.

[01:28:30] Merlin: But like, that keeps going. You can have relief from the feeling of always fighting the last war by not making it about yourself. And by saying, Hey, I’m Some days I’m the mule, some days I’m the checkbook. And some days I’m not needed at all. And that’s not bad. That’s just what it is. So instead of trying to constantly, in the same way that you cling to these pants that don’t fit anymore, and this chicken you’re never going to eat in life, find a way to disappear in Life’s chicken.

[01:28:58] Merlin: And find your way to disappear into the full [01:29:00] catastrophe. The most that you can at a given time, but as you said earlier, we never got to this, but then make that a practice. Make it a thing you keep coming back to. If you have a fork in the road, like if you’re trying to be healthier and you have the choice of eating more well or less well, well, you always have that choice whether you like it or not.

[01:29:18] Merlin: That’s the existential, that’s the Kierkegaardian dilemma of life. But like, you know, my kid will live with us, God willing, for a little bit longer. A year or so, and, and like, I have so many levels to that feeling, many of which I’ve gently tried to move aside, including, hey, why isn’t my kid, why doesn’t my kid like me as much as when my kid used to come crawl in bed with me before dawn on Wednesday mornings, because that’s when the new comic books came out, and we would read on the iPad, we would go see what’s new with Adventure Time, or, you know, or Spider Man, or whatever, and I miss that, but like, that’s That kid.

[01:29:57] Merlin: That’s that person. And also, that was [01:30:00] me, then. And, uh And then, like, the next level becomes like, oh, that is sweet, you have that memory, you must miss it. And it’s like, well, it’s not that I’m, I wouldn’t say I miss it, Bob. But you would, but it is, sorry, that’s, that’s, uh, that’s, uh, office space, not idiocracy.

[01:30:14] Merlin: But, like, you, but you know what I’m saying? Like, it’s, it takes a lot, the great Edgar, Edgar A. Guest, It takes a heap of living to make a house a home. It takes a lot of, like, gentle self awareness, or, Like, like non dad voice stuff to incline yourself toward accepting you are where you are. You’ve been where you’ve been.

[01:30:35] Merlin: And that full catastrophe continues whether you’re into it or not. And I’m not saying you have to go out and zone out and buy a iPhone app that has a gong sound in it. But like, there is a way that you can incline yourself toward the tumult of things you care deeply about. And in some ways, maybe that vulnerability might bubble up in ways that are both instructive and reassuring.

[01:30:57] Merlin: and useful, and will [01:31:00] help you transition to whatever your next thing is. And that’s that the full catastrophe goes on. If you’re living, it’s difficult.

[01:31:10] Jeff: This has been awesome.

[01:31:12] Merlin: This is the best. Thank you for having me. And thanks for playing with me and and tolerating me. And, um, hello, hello, hello, everyone. And sorry for how we are.

[01:31:24] Jeff: People died for us to be able to do this

[01:31:25] Merlin: Yeah, I watched. I didn’t watch my buddies die face down in the mud. Am I wrong?

[01:31:33]

…   continue reading

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418: S-Tier Face (Merlin Mann: Part 1)

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This is the first of two episodes. The idea was for Merlin and Jeff to discuss how they were using chatGPT in ways that are maybe novel. The thing is, the pre-show banter became in-show banter that barely touched the intended topic, which is awesome because now, thanks to the transcript of this episode, we have fodder for chatGPT experimentation between episodes.

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Show Links

With that, we present to you these show notes:

Merlin in the wild

From the Music Jags

From the Movie and TV Jags

From the Mental Health and Wellbeing Jags

Merlin’s list of useful things to say to yourself:

  • “Not now.”
  • “Stay on target.”
  • “Stop.”
  • “Just keep doing the thing.”
  • “Whatever, you’ll get it next time.”
  • “What exactly are you saving this for?”

Books:

Odds & Ends

Join the Conversation

Thanks!

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BackBeat Media Podcast Network

Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter.

Transcript

Merlin Mann (Part One): S-Tier Face

[00:00:00]

[00:00:04] Introduction

[00:00:04] Jeff: Hi, everybody. This is the Overtired Podcast. I am Jeff Severns Guntzel. I am normally here with my comrades, Christina Warren and Brett Terpstra. They are not here.

[00:00:16] Jeff: They are comrading somewhere else with somebody else, and I have instead Merlin Mann joining me. Hello, Merlin.

[00:00:23] Merlin: Jeff, how are you? I love your name. You have a, you have a nice, no, I like, I like the, the, as we say in poetry class, I like the scansion of your name. I like how, I like the mouth feel of your name. I shouldn’t

[00:00:33] Jeff: Is that the, is, is that the poetry version of, I like the cut of your jib?

[00:00:36] Merlin: It is very much like that. It’s a very, it’s kind of nautical verse.

[00:00:39] Jeff: Nautical verse? Yes. Hey, listen, I want to get something out of the way.

[00:00:43] Merlin: Yes, do.

[00:00:44] Matthias Jabs

[00:00:44] Jeff: Um, which is, um, and I put this in the, in the show notes kind of cryptically, um, there have been a couple of cases in listening to your podcast

[00:00:53] Merlin: Wait a minute, this is about the scorpions.

[00:00:56] Jeff: yes.

[00:00:57] Merlin: The

[00:00:57] Jeff: where, where you are, you are starting a [00:01:00] sentence that is about to include the name Matthias Jabs.

[00:01:04] Merlin: no, I got it wrong.

[00:01:05] Jeff: I say to myself, I don’t know, maybe it’s not, how is it supposed to be said?

[00:01:08] Merlin: The thing is, you know that phenomenon that needs a name? I’ve read this word approximately 200 times, but I’ve never had to say it out. I still have friends where I don’t know really how to pronounce their name, and I don’t know, and like, you pick up your, in my case, that’s how I learned the solo for No One Like You was from Guitar for the Practicing Musician, which would have, every issue would have, this is usually called magazines, you’d buy them, and it had tablature for usually like three.

[00:01:38] Merlin: Like songs. It could be eruption. It could be, you know, whatever, but like, yeah. And I, for some reason, my friends and I, I guess, cause we thought we were cool. We, we said Matthias, but I don’t think that’s right.

[00:01:48] Jeff: Matthias. Yeah. I would have only read the name in Hit Parade or Circus Magazine. You know what I mean?

[00:01:53] Merlin: Boy, they loved Def Leppard for a while, didn’t they

[00:01:55] Jeff: loved Def Leppard. So okay. So here’s, here’s why Matthias [00:02:00] Jabs, I mean, besides the obvious, which is that he should be spoken about

[00:02:03] Merlin: He shreds. Is he the one with, is he the one with the Explorer?

[00:02:06] Jeff: yeah, I think he’s the

[00:02:07] Merlin: He’s kind of the more, he’s, he’s the less, he’s, I was going to say he’s the handsome one, but he’s the less grotesque of the, uh, of the people.

[00:02:13] Jeff: a nice way to put it. And also like saying his name as a young man might’ve been the first time words came out and I felt sophisticated. Matthias

[00:02:21] Merlin: Yeah. Isn’t that a good feeling until the second later when someone goes, that’s not how,

[00:02:25] Jeff: That’s how you say it, exactly! So there have been these, I think it’s twice, maybe three times, I’m listening to a podcast, you’re talking, you’re starting a sentence that will ultimately have the name Matthias Jabs in it, and I somehow know it’s coming, and it is said in my mind at the same time, and I think, how the fuck does that happen with Matthias Jabs?

[00:02:45] Merlin: Isn’t that, isn’t that funny?

[00:02:46] Mean Time to Weird

[00:02:46] Merlin: Before we were recording, we were talking about an affliction, affliction, a gift that, that some people like us have, which is like you have a very close association between some piece of audio and either like a time or a location or a feeling, [00:03:00] often a location. But I think it’s somewhat allied to that or like today when the 45th president, because I’ve watched a lot of his rallies,

[00:03:08] Jeff: That’s the one with the T.

[00:03:10] Merlin: the testosterone?

[00:03:12] Jeff: No, the letter T.

[00:03:14] Merlin: Oh, yeah, but that’s all, it’s also the testosterone. That’s part of

[00:03:16] Jeff: Yeah, that’s also the

[00:03:17] Merlin: Yeah, yeah, they put it on hats now. But, uh, but he, uh, but

[00:03:21] Jeff: Don’t lick my, stop licking my hat! It’s getting aggressive!

[00:03:24] Merlin: ask you nicely, very nasty woman licking my hat. Think of it. He, but no, he does that thing where he goes like, you know, they’re bringing in, they’re letting him in 21 million people.

[00:03:34] Merlin: They’re, from their, from their jails and their prisons, their mental institutions and their insane asylums.

[00:03:40] Jeff: they’re insane. It’s like chai

[00:03:42] Merlin: Okay, but here’s the thing now, Jeff, because we are, we are in the same, um, carass about this. Do you know what the next thing might be after he says, and insane asylums? Do you know what the next line is, could be if he’s in the right mood?

[00:03:57] Jeff: What? No.

[00:03:58] Merlin: He simply says the, he [00:04:00] begins next, his next sentence, he pauses for a minute to soak in the adulation, and then he says, the late great Hannibal

[00:04:07] Jeff: Oh, the late, great Hannibal Lecter, of course!

[00:04:09] Merlin: And do you know, do you know, have you, have you arrived? The reason why he always says that right after that,

[00:04:15] Jeff: No, I’ve never gone for the full context, which is probably what he would ask me to

[00:04:19] Merlin: this is something we’ve been exploring on, uh, do by Friday, another podcast I do, and I, and this, this very much is, um, is I’m applying scholarship from, from actual, like journalists and professional spec, professional speculators, but. What does he say? He says that they’re bringing over, they’re emptying out their jails.

[00:04:35] Merlin: Then you hear, the crime is down in Venezuela, and he’ll say 70, 72 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent, right? But in this particular one, this is the vintage of the last few weeks has been, they’re emptying out their jails, their prisons, their mental institutions, their insane asylums. Hold for whatever. And then he goes, the late Great Hannibal Lecter.

[00:04:56] Merlin: Silence of the Lambs. Does anybody remember the movie Silence of the [00:05:00] Lambs? You know, he would like to have you for dinner. And this has been widely, widely reported, but I wanted to, for those of you who have not heard this, or maybe you don’t follow this stuff as closely as I am, um, apparently doomed to do, what’s the last thing he said?

[00:05:14] Merlin: D D D D D, ellipsis, mental institutions, and insane asylums. Somebody figured out, he thinks that, that is what political asylum is.

[00:05:24] Jeff: Yes, yes, yes, yes. I was

[00:05:26] Merlin: Or he’s made an association in his head the same way that we have these broken brains where like, I think of an overpass in New Zealand, every time I think of talking about vocational wheel, like he, no, that’s, that’s that back to work podcast episode, but yeah.

[00:05:39] Merlin: Yeah. So like it’s. And you’re like, oh, and then, because he really is, I said to somebody the other day, it’s, it’s almost like he’s memorized a Markov chain, like somebody gave him an MD5 hash, and he somehow unintentionally memorized it, and now he can’t unremember it. 729 2202 was my phone number when I was 10, and I [00:06:00] will know that for the rest of my life, and I don’t need to know that.

[00:06:03] Merlin: But if I see the number 729 in the wild, I think of my phone number. If I see the number 207 in the wild, I think of my laundry number in military school. You can’t unlearn those things, and I think he is in such a state at this point. Cut all of this out. I’m so sorry, Jeff. Hi, Jeff. How are you?

[00:06:20] Jeff: I love it. I love it. I love it.

[00:06:21] Jeff: Um, and also you’re reminding me in that sort of, um, that space between saying insane asylum and saying Hannibal Lecter, I’m reminded, I know you’re a fan of John Dickerson.

[00:06:32] Merlin: really, I think John Dickerson is so smart. I

[00:06:35] Jeff: In the most recent Political Gab Fest, he, he coins the phrase Mean Time to Weird.

[00:06:41] Merlin: Oh, am I allowed to cuss? Forgive

[00:06:43] Jeff: Yeah. Yes. Please,

[00:06:44] Merlin: Hey Jeff, fuck you, because I actually wrote that down. I wrote, no, let me find it, um, no, it was so funny, and, cause he said it, and I was like, there’s no, wait, what, [00:07:00] that, that, okay, I have this from, in drafts, oh god, this is a really poorly taken note, on, uh, September 12th, at 3.

[00:07:07] Merlin: 44pm pacific time, I wrote down, John D, Mean Time to Weird. I literally wrote it down in drafts. That’s the only thing in the whole draft.

[00:07:16] Jeff: That’s awesome. He’s brilliant. He’s brilliant. He’s such a delightful thinker to follow.

[00:07:22] Merlin: was watching him after the most recent debate, um, with Kamala Harris and on Colbert. And one of the things I really admire about him is he does something that is so. unusual and so difficult to do well, which is like Colbert would ask him a question, and when every time he’d respond, he’d have a very thoughtful response.

[00:07:43] Merlin: But whereas a lot of people would hear a question and then go like, Okay, well, I have the training to know how to reframe this into the answer that I want to give. And that usually involves beginning a sentence with the word so period. And so you, you know, you do this thing where you go, so [00:08:00] the way that this, but in John’s case, he doesn’t do that.

[00:08:03] Merlin: And he doesn’t sound like an asshole, but he very gently acknowledges what the person says, integrates it into his answer. And then rather than necessarily exactly answering the question he was given, he provides the context that he thinks is necessary for understanding how the thing that person said fits into a larger landscape.

[00:08:21] Merlin: He never loses track of that. And even as he does that, he does not sound like a conservative. Conservative, small c, Ding a ling, like he’s a very active thinker about things and he never stops reprocessing things at levels that a lot of us who are obsessed with media and think everything is everything, like he’s really good at disassembling the parts of something in a very humane way, giving it back to you in a way that makes you both seem smarter, which is really difficult to do, believe me, I know.

[00:08:47] Jeff: It’s a great way to put it. I also love something he does often when he’s talking is he stops and says, what do I mean by that?

[00:08:53] Merlin: Oh, I totally agree. And I’m like, I like, even on that, if you go back and watch that Colbert interview, where he’s wearing a very [00:09:00] handsome suit, um, you know,

[00:09:01] Jeff: a very handsome man.

[00:09:02] Merlin: he’s really good looking guy. I mean, his face from every angle is, is, is very, is very, he has an S tier face.

[00:09:13] Jeff: From every angle. Oh,

[00:09:14] Merlin: angle, I’ve seen every angle of his face, I’ve photographed his face, I know it’s dimensions. The other day I posted a photo of him and me outside my office because I’m

[00:09:23] Jeff: I saw that. I saw

[00:09:24] Merlin: Now that was followers only, but I had to, I realized I know too many people named John. It occurs to me every time I look at my photos.

[00:09:33] Merlin: Persons area. And I’m like, I know too, I know too many men named John or some variation of John and like that I need to really cull this herd at some point. Um, yeah, I mean, but he is also, I find him, you know, I’m, I’m gonna say something Jeff. I don’t, I don’t use this word a ton because I think it has not only been abused, I think it’s not a useful word.

[00:09:55] Merlin: And I think on some level it doesn’t mean what people think it means. But I find him inspiring [00:10:00] in the sense, and I’m not saying like I want a poster of him or something, or get a. John Dickerson poster that says hope for some reason. I don’t mean inspiration in that way, I mean the way he rolls. The way that he conducts himself.

[00:10:12] Merlin: He is, in the true sense of the word, a gentleman. And, and being just very, very, very, very, very, very lightly acquainted with him. He’s like that. He’s really, really nice, and really warm, and really smart, and he’s, he has worked his humanity, his history, his background, his family, and his Catholicism into a worldview that I find very invigorating.

[00:10:37] Merlin: I wish there were more John Dickersons in this world.

[00:10:39] Jeff: And he’s someone like Colbert who works his Catholicism into his work in ways that are just really, really beautiful.

[00:10:47] Merlin: his nerd stuff! The same way the

[00:10:48] Jeff: And his nerd

[00:10:49] Merlin: is always fact checking the Lord of the Rings stuff.

[00:10:52] Jeff: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[00:10:54] Merlin: fact check. No, they couldn’t have taken the eagle, I know. [00:11:00] Um, but yeah, it’s I think Mean Time to Weird is good. I’m sorry, continue.

[00:11:05] Jeff: Mean Time to Weird.

[00:11:07] Merlin: One thing I really I was looking I’ve been looking forward to doing this with you despite what you could have guessed over the summer with our various

[00:11:15] Jeff: Oh, shit. Shh,

[00:11:16] Merlin: this.

[00:11:16] Merlin: Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. Settle, settle. No, no. I didn’t mean it that way. I meant to say, I really, I was just, uh. I, I would like to do this show probably more often than you would like, because

[00:11:29] Jeff: Nah, no such thing.

[00:11:30] Merlin: this tickles a part of my brain that begs for more use. And on the one hand, it’s fun because I get to go off with you about things that sound like, sound like Guided by Voices EPs.

[00:11:43] Merlin: But also, like, this gives me access to discussing the kind of stuff that I feel is so, sometimes so subtle. And yet so powerful, and yet gets kind of dropped out of the discourse in which everything is everything, and I’m really grateful that you put up with me to [00:12:00] schedule this, and, uh, I, I enjoy being here, and if you wanted me to be on more often, I would.

[00:12:04] Merlin: Not, not enough to be annoying, but I really enjoy talking with you. And I follow you on the internet now.

[00:12:10] Jeff: guess. Good to see you on Mastodon.

[00:12:12] Dingalings Failing at a Heist

[00:12:12] Jeff: Uh, recently a, a, a big hit on, on Double Indemnity. Um,

[00:12:18] Merlin: my God.

[00:12:19] Jeff: a movie I had honestly hadn’t even registered, or I probably heard of it. Hadn’t registered until,

[00:12:25] Merlin: I think everybody’s probably seen clips of Barbara Stanwyck walking down the steps or something. But you like, if you’re like me and you grew up with My Three Sons, you’re like, I cannot believe that it’s Fred McMurray. It’s, it’s, he’s so off, and Edward G. Robinson, all three of

[00:12:40] Jeff: Edward G. Robinson, my

[00:12:41] Merlin: good in that movie.

[00:12:42] Merlin: It’s really, it’s such a well played movie. Told Noir and I think it’s not only famous because it is a very good noir but also just it’s a very watchable noir in a way that like The Big Sleep is completely confusing. Don’t bother reading the book. The book does not make any sense at all but The Big Sleep is still a fun movie.

[00:12:59] Merlin: But like you [00:13:00] ever see DOA?

[00:13:01] Jeff: Nope.

[00:13:02] Merlin: Um, can I give you the log line?

[00:13:04] Jeff: Yeah. Give me the logline.

[00:13:06] Merlin: A guy realizes, I want to say that every guy realizes he has been poisoned and has 24 hours to find the person who poisoned him and why. And this is from the 50s.

[00:13:19] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:13:19] Merlin: How cool is that? It’s got been remade badly several times,

[00:13:22] Jeff: It sounds, yes, so I’m, I am kind of in love with 40s and 50s noir movies right now. I watched, like, I watched The Killing. I watched Human Desire, Double Indemnity, of course. And, and I am, I am amazed. I think when I was younger, I watched a lot of this kind of stuff. But I mean, I’m talking when I was like 16 or 17.

[00:13:39] Jeff: And as a grown ass man, it all just lands differently. Like it’s a, it’s,

[00:13:45] Merlin: I totally agree. And as a grown man, but also as if I could add to that, as somebody who then has unintentionally been loving movies and increasingly now TV shows that you don’t even realize are a noir, I mean, it’s [00:14:00] just, I’ll be basic. The Big Lebowski is a noir. There’s two big genres that we tend to think of as artifacts from other decades.

[00:14:07] Merlin: Times when they’re really, like, and less so, like, noirs, right? Like, I don’t think noirs were ever that mainstream. I mean, what is that Elliot Gould movie? It was a long, uh, the long goodbye in the 70s. There’s all these kinds of movies that are noir ish, but, you know, the other one’s westerns. Where there’s so many things, when you watch them and really pay attention, I guess Star Wars is kind of, in some ways, uh, considered a western.

[00:14:30] Merlin: But, like, Mandalorian. is straight up a Western down to like when he walks, there’s a spur noise.

[00:14:36] Jeff: yeah, exactly, exactly,

[00:14:38] Merlin: And, but like, you, you know what I’m saying though, what’s interesting about that is like, it’s to me, this kind of synthesis, contra my, my declaration that not everything is everything. I do think it is really.

[00:14:48] Merlin: Um, uh, it gives me life to be able to associate one thing to another and then to look at the, to compare and contrast. But even just on an aesthetic level, it’s so fascinating to [00:15:00] be, to be into the second act of almost anything. Everything the Coen brothers has ever done and realized, I mean, yeah, I get that this is about ding a lings failing at a heist, but I didn’t get how much so many of their movies are really a kind of a noir, but simple, I guess, obviously, but

[00:15:17] Jeff: Blood Symbol, so good,

[00:15:18] Merlin: oh my God, how great are those kids?

[00:15:21] Jeff: yeah,

[00:15:21] Merlin: But yeah, I mean, I, uh, I like stuff a lot, you know, and

[00:15:26] Jeff: love stuff.

[00:15:27] Merlin: I really, oh god, I love stuff.

[00:15:29] Music is the Best (Part 1)

[00:15:29] Merlin: Again, I told you, I was up till three last night for absolutely no good reason apart from I just kept listening to music that made me want to listen to more music. And

[00:15:36] Jeff: And what was the, what was the chain, what was the

[00:15:39] Merlin: do you really care? Christ, this is hard to meter because it involves YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Apple Classical App, but let me go look at my Mastodon because that’s usually, that’s usually the trails of my effluvium.

[00:15:58] Merlin: That I can, I can best. [00:16:00] I can see I ended with Freddie, Freddie Mercury. Oh, you know what it was? I got into a little bit of a jack. Oh, yes, you know what it was? Um, do you ever, there’s a really good YouTube channel that I recommend to people who like things. Um, Trash Theory is a YouTube channel. Yeah, so it’s this English guy.

[00:16:17] Merlin: I love it when people Really put effort into something and this guy makes these videos like the one I recommended the other night was hey Have you ever heard that song Common People by Pulp? It’s a song that I really like a lot It’s a very important song to me from that time. He does this amazing video about like how we got to Common People.

[00:16:34] Merlin: He does one about like pre 1976 punk. One of my favorites, for selfish reasons, is like Power Pop before My Sharona, like how we got

[00:16:44] Jeff: Oh, nice.

[00:16:45] Merlin: but he in particular has a series, because he’s an English person as far as I know, called New British Canon, where he’ll just do a thing on Suzy and the Banshees.

[00:16:52] Merlin: His one on Eurythmics is so thought

[00:16:55] Jeff: My eyes just hit it at the same time as you said it, yes,

[00:16:59] Merlin: I give you a [00:17:00] factoid?

[00:17:00] Jeff: please,

[00:17:01] Merlin: Um, so they, they arrived pretty big in, I think, 82, 83, 82, I think, with Sweet Dreams in America. You know, and of course, he goes through the tourists, the two of them, their previous pop band in England that I adore. But he goes through all that, blah da da blah da blah, but by the time, I think it was their second video, uh, uh, D k d k d k d k, Love is a Stranger, where she’s in the backseat of, like, a limo, and she’s got,

[00:17:25] Jeff: yep, totally.

[00:17:26] Merlin: yeah, um, MTV pulled that video until she agreed to show her birth certificate to prove that she was an assigned female at birth person.

[00:17:34] Jeff: Wow.

[00:17:35] Merlin: Now, I didn’t know that. And that’s just one of the indignities to which she was subjected. Who does that to Annie Lennox? She’s Scottish. It’s horrible. Check out The Tourist. Check out the tours. They do a cover of, uh, I Only Want to Be With You, that old 60s song. They do an amazing cover of that. It’s real, real earworm.

[00:17:55] Merlin: Um, and, oh, but like, okay, so I was listening to Trash Theory, and I was listening [00:18:00] to an episode I’ve heard before, but I actually really, really listened to it, which is Another one of those, so you get the idea, which is like, almost like, uh, Hit Parade, the way Hit Parade goes, the wonderful podcast Hit Parade is like, this is a song that was number one, fantastic podcast, where he’ll go like, and so that gives you, let me tell you the history of boy bands, or let me tell you the history of, one of my favorites is an early episode, UB40’s, the history of UB40’s Red Red Wine.

[00:18:24] Merlin: Which is a surprisingly compelling episode. Great

[00:18:27] Jeff: Awesome.

[00:18:27] Merlin: Ditto with this guy, where he’ll go like, how we got to Nevermind. And I, I love Nevermind. That was a super important season of music for me. That’s my season of Superchunk. That’s my season of my second wave of teenage fan club, um,

[00:18:43] Jeff: your seeds around. Around.

[00:18:47] Merlin: Cast Iron. Cast Iron. And seed toss. And then they, they, they, they, they, they covered two sedo songs. They cover, not only did they cover two Sedo songs on the same record, they released a [00:19:00] single that had a, and the B side were both Sedo songs, both from the same album. And actually, uh, I think it was from Weed Forton.

[00:19:07] Merlin: They covered two songs that were actually like, like in order on the Sedo album. That’s a ballsy move in

[00:19:12] Jeff: That’s an excellent move. That’s

[00:19:15] Merlin: know, any thought could be the beginning of a brand new tangled web you’re spinning. Anyone could be a brand new love. Um, but anyways, so I was watching this one on, on grunge and I have to be honest, like I’m in, in the many, many, many genres out there.

[00:19:30] Merlin: Grunge is not near the top for me as a thing, but like mainly there was a, we had a free jukebox in college that had. That Mudhoney, Keep It Out of My Face song on it. I knew that. I knew the drummer in my band really liked Melvin, so I knew Houdini. I knew a handful of things. I don’t know, I really lost you there, yeah.

[00:19:50] Merlin: I don’t mind stealing bread. But, like, going back and listening to what, like, actually what Soundgarden sounded like at first, all these bands sounded like at first, and that got me into a [00:20:00] Melvin’s Jag. Then, I

[00:20:01] Jeff: that’s a good jag.

[00:20:02] Merlin: rediscovered, oh my god, have you seen King Buzzo show you how to play, um, Honey Bucket?

[00:20:09] Jeff: I have seen that. And

[00:20:11] Merlin: It’s so simple, but it’s so cool.

[00:20:13] Jeff: was an HBO series at one point, I have a, we were on the same label, uh, Amphetamine Reptile Records. And

[00:20:20] Merlin: wait, I’m sorry, I’m having, I’m having some kind of a neurological event. Can you just, is there a way to just include once, what, you, you, you were in a band that was on Amphetamine Reptile?

[00:20:31] Jeff: yeah, yeah, the Meathead label. I mean, I say that lovingly.

[00:20:34] Merlin: Do, do, would I, would I know the name

[00:20:36] Jeff: You wouldn’t, we were at the end, we were a band called the Freedom Fighters. We were one of the last like four releases before Tom Hazelmeyer just like burned out and shuttered the whole thing and just spent all his time at the shooting range.

[00:20:48] Merlin: See, like, the kids don’t know from this. Today you say Homestead Records or Caroline Records and people are like, what? What? I like indie records. Anyway. But, oh, okay. So. Wow. Wow. My

[00:20:58] Jeff: And the AMRAP [00:21:00] offices were in an old dentist’s office here in Minneapolis, um, and the studio was downstairs where they recorded the records, but there was this one room that was just piles of weird shit like promo, like test pressings and, and VHS recordings of, you know, shows from the various bands over the past like 10, 15 years, and I’d been such a huge fan.

[00:21:21] Jeff: So I put in I just start putting shit in because there’s a TV and a VCR there and there was some HBO show that I’d never heard

[00:21:29] Merlin: And you don’t know. You have no idea. There’s probably a piece of masking tape on there that says show three or something,

[00:21:34] Jeff: exactly. Exactly. So there’s this I put in this VHS thing. It just says like, it just I think it’s just says Melvin’s and there’s just a bunch of random shit on it. And and Buzzo is on the HBO show where he’s going to buy a mansion, which he can’t do. And,

[00:21:47] Merlin: Wait. Approximately what year?

[00:21:50] Jeff: this must have been okay,

[00:21:51] Merlin: Did he have the big hair and everything?

[00:21:52] Jeff: yeah, definitely.

[00:21:53] Jeff: I would have been in there in like 98, 97. And so it would have been around around there. So he walks in with this realtor this [00:22:00] mansion and he’s carrying he’s carrying a lunchbox like a 1950s style

[00:22:03] Merlin: got to see this. Oh my God.

[00:22:06] Jeff: and

[00:22:06] Merlin: How so that now that’s an HGTV show. I would watch sort of like fishing with John. Yeah. Where you go

[00:22:11] Jeff: Fishing with John. Oh my God.

[00:22:12] Merlin: Yeah. Yeah. But I would, I would watch, I would watch an HGTV show where just King Buzzo goes to different places. Open houses.

[00:22:20] Jeff: Oh, yeah, totally. What? Fishing with John a, a mixtape favorite for

[00:22:23] Merlin: I bought a, I bought a, I bought a, the Criterion DVD of that. The Willem Dafoe episode of Fishing with John is very, very important.

[00:22:31] Jeff: and, and the Tom Waites one has a bit where he’s singing in the canoe along the river of men, of men

[00:22:38] Merlin: Can you imagine fishing with Tom Waits?

[00:22:41] Jeff: no, I can’t, but I can kind of ’cause of that show. Okay. So anyway, he’s, he’s, he goes into, and the realtor’s looking and I’m like, who the fuck? Fuck is this? I mean, of course, it’s like, you

[00:22:51] Merlin: For those of you who don’t know, King, uh, what’s his name, Buzz,

[00:22:54] Jeff: Oh yeah, we should do this. Yeah. Buzz Osborne.

[00:22:57] Merlin: these three guys, talk about a power [00:23:00] trio, these three guys who at first were one of the fastest punk bands of all time, but then in time became famous. Their contribution in the canonical story of Seattle Grunge, they were the ones who brought in very heavy, very loud, very loud music.

[00:23:15] Merlin: Um, people say Black Sabbath, I don’t totally agree, but like, for, for, but think

[00:23:19] Jeff: slow, but fast.

[00:23:20] Merlin: think about Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, one of the greatest songs

[00:23:22] Jeff: That’s a good. Yeah. Yep.

[00:23:27] Merlin: You know, like that, but so sledgey. Oh my God, going blind.

[00:23:31] Jeff: Oh, oh,

[00:23:32] Merlin: he, as a power trio, the three guys, all great musicians and Buzz, known as King Buzzo, how, I guess an afro? How do you describe what his hair was? It was like a weather system.

[00:23:43] Jeff: special. Yeah. It’s a weather system that works. Yeah. That works.

[00:23:47] Merlin: And he’s out buying a mansion. He’s buying a mansion, huh?

[00:23:50] Jeff: looks like the stills of the early nuclear tests, you know, a little bit.

[00:23:53] Merlin: Yeah, or maybe like, like you could have mistaken for like a silhouette of Sideshow Bob.

[00:23:57] Jeff: And his lyrics are complete gibberish [00:24:00] and yet evoke emotion in

[00:24:03] Merlin: You wouldn’t know, but he’s really

[00:24:04] Jeff: really smart. Really smart. So, so he’s buying this house and the, and the realtor’s like increasingly just like, who the fuck? This isn’t real. And, and when he gets the sense that that’s happening, he, he kneels down and he sets the lunchbox on the floor and he opens it up and he pulls out a magazine on which he’s, he’s on the cover.

[00:24:21] Jeff: And, and it just says, king BuZZo, god of grunge. And he says, he says, well, look, you

[00:24:28] Merlin: Well, that and 20 percent will get you a

[00:24:30] Jeff: like, yeah, he’s like, you can see here, I am the godfather of grunge, on which he tries to buy this house.

[00:24:36] Merlin: mean, like you can keep that copy. I’ve got more, but that’s now my, that’s my 20 percent is me on the cover of this.

[00:24:42] Jeff: Incredible.

[00:24:43] Merlin: sent you the, uh, do you remember when the solo records came out?

[00:24:47] Jeff: Oh, yeah, of

[00:24:47] Merlin: So, there’s three guys in the Melvins, and this, I posted this last night, and this is how I remembered this, was like, the, the, oh my god, the whole story of the KISS, the KISS solo albums are their own story.

[00:24:57] Merlin: Like, the cutout sensation of my youth. [00:25:00] The, the four KISS solo, the four KISS solo albums were in cutout for over a decade. Everywhere you went, there was copies of, like, the Ace Frehley one with, you know, New York Groove. So, when the Melvins did solo

[00:25:11] Jeff: was, was Beth on Peter Criss solo

[00:25:14] Merlin: No, Beth was on Destroyer.

[00:25:15] Jeff: I don’t do Kiss trivia well. Okay, go ahead.

[00:25:17] Merlin: I think they were on Destroyer 76.

[00:25:19] Merlin: Um, but anyway, there was that and that led me into, then I got into looking at one thing I love about Trash Theory also. Hi, my name is Merlin Mann and this is a podcast about things I like. Um, he does a really good Spotify playlist for every episode. And you’ll get why, like, like, you know, let’s talk after and I’m going to curate exactly the right first episode for you to watch of Trash Theory.

[00:25:41] Merlin: But then he does a really good, like, like Hit Parade, there’s a really good Spotify playlist where like every song that he played a portion of is in it. But then that led me into. Oh, then, then the Algo pulls up, um, Freak Scene by Dinosaur Jr., and I suddenly was struck. Here we go, Jeff. You ready? Write it down.

[00:25:59] Merlin: Here’s another [00:26:00] one. The very clear recollection of me, not arguing with, but bantering with Chris and Marty, the other guitar player and the drummer in my band in college, about whether Bug, the was just a little bit too poppy because I, I had cut my teeth on You’re Living All Over Me. That was what got me into Dinosaur, was then, which is a little heavier, definitely a little weirder.

[00:26:23] Merlin: It’s got Polito. It’s got that weird Sebedo song on it. And, but then the Algos, now it’s off the hook because now I get Love is All Right Tonight by Rick Springfield. And that is one of the This performance in particular is like, you don’t realize like how gifted that band was. You just think of like, oh, it’s the guy from General Hospital that had a pop

[00:26:43] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Heh heh

[00:26:44] Merlin: a Sammy Hagar cover. It’s really weird. But, um, but that’s really, and then that got me into Pat Benatar. They whisper

[00:26:50] Jeff: hell is for children.

[00:26:53] Merlin: and the one, two, three, four. And they’re still married. Did you know that? They’ve been married [00:27:00] since 1980. I checked chat GPT. I said, I said to chat GPT last night. Ooh.

[00:27:05] Merlin: You see how I bring it around? You see how I bring it around?

[00:27:07] Jeff: heh heh heh heh heh heh. So,

[00:27:11] Merlin: I,

[00:27:11] Jeff: to Chep GPT,

[00:27:13] Merlin: says to it, I says, I, and what had happened

[00:27:14] Jeff: is that, Derry Girls? So I says to myself, says I. Heh heh heh heh

[00:27:18] Merlin: I’ve been tied up with my own shoelaces! They tied me to the radiator! It’s just not as nice! Um, God, I love that show. Um, so I open up Chat GPT, I open up, uh, whatever, 400IO Preview, and I just type the sentence, Are Pat and Spider still married? No context. Are Pat and Spider, Spider with a Y, still married?

[00:27:40] Merlin: And it said As of my knowledge, cut off in October 23, Pat Benatar and her husband, Neil Spider Giraldo, are still married. They’ve been together since 1982. Does that make you feel good?

[00:27:51] Jeff: makes me feel super good.

[00:27:52] Sponsor: 1Password

[00:27:52] [00:28:00] [00:29:00] [00:30:00]

[00:30:36] Full Catastrophe Living

[00:30:36] Merlin: I’m almost done. Then the Algo brought up my favorite version of Somebody to Love by Queen, which is not, I, everybody’s like, you know, Live Aid’s a good show, but there are other shows, people.

[00:30:49] Merlin: Um, Somebody to Love in Montreal, 1981. This is all on my internet site, you can find. Um, and, and that got me into that, but then that got me into, I went off on a jag and somehow I [00:31:00] went off on an angle. And usually at this point I would open up Apoclassical and listen to Vivaldi’s Summer and try to go to sleep, but, which I shouldn’t do because the last, last movement of that is one of the most baller metal things ever written.

[00:31:11] Merlin: But I, and I found myself instead listening to lots of, I don’t know what you call this genre, but do you know the band Boygenius?

[00:31:16] Jeff: yeah, yeah

[00:31:17] Merlin: Okay. So like, I don’t know what you call that genre.

[00:31:20] Jeff: which is like a super group, right,

[00:31:21] Merlin: Yeah, there’s, it’s, it’s Lucy. I gotta say this right, it’s Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and uh, and um, and Julien Baker. These three women who are just super interesting.

[00:31:33] Merlin: And I got into like, and then I was listening to Hannah Eide, who I can highly recommend, and I ended up going back and listening to Torres, T O R R E S, one of the great records. If you like theatrical, musical theater, oh, oh, oh, I have a Torres video, it’s gonna change your life. Um, and that’s where I was and then I finally went to sleep according to my watch.

[00:31:51] Merlin: I went to sleep at like 3. 05 AM. But, but here’s the thing, Jeff. I made a logistical pivot at this point. uh, uh, uh, I, [00:32:00] I don’t, the listener is almost certainly not familiar with my work. But, but one of my thought technologies the last few years has been, uh, it’s one thing to feel bad and it’s another thing to feel bad about feeling bad.

[00:32:11] Merlin: And so I’ve discovered that applies very heavily to sleep in my case. Well, yeah, I mean, it’s the second arrow. Like it’s, it’s what the, the Buddhist, the Buddhist says, you know, the first arrow is the one that, that somebody shoots at you and hits you in the leg, but you feeling about bad about that is the arrow you shoot into yourself. And, and all of my, so many of my strategies to, to bring in another piece of terminology of mine, the mean dad voice. Sometimes when we’re not sure what to do in life, or when we’re vulnerable, or just in our repose, or just being alive, a mean dad voice tells us what’s wrong with us. And how we’ll never get it right.

[00:32:50] Merlin: And that is a uniquely terrible thing to be litigating as you’re theoretically trying to go to sleep.

[00:32:57] Jeff: Awful.

[00:32:58] Merlin: You can’t make yourself go [00:33:00] to sleep. You can’t, you can’t yell yourself into falling asleep. Like it just doesn’t work that way. And so, this little part of the concerto I’ll draw together by saying like, so, I think the practice in your words for this is to say to yourself, I mean, you could do something as glib works for me as like, I’ve decided, I’ve decided, I’ve decided not to worry about this or I’ve decided this is going to be okay.

[00:33:26] Merlin: And like kind of make a deal with yourself and it can may sound like happy talk, but like seriously, dude, has, have you, as yelling at yourself ever helped your heartbeat go down and let you go to sleep? And I’ve realized, and so I

[00:33:38] Jeff: knows I’ve tried.

[00:33:39] Merlin: And I’ll cut, flash forward through years of this practice, and I have a lot of practices about sleep I’d love to share with people, um, but one of them is I say to myself, hey, you know what?

[00:33:48] Merlin: What, what, what, what’s, what’s going to happen? What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? Like tomorrow is actually Thursday is my Thursday. Thursday is my day when I do things like schedule a podcast with my friends, but it’s also when I do a lot of my like power pottering [00:34:00] around the house stuff.

[00:34:01] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:34:01] Merlin: And so, like, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? I said, well, I know I need to be up to talk to Jeff at, you know, ten. So just set an alarm for eight. I had four, four and a half hours of sleep, and then it’ll be fine. You’ve done stuff on four hours of sleep lots of times, and maybe you’ll take a nap later and maybe you won’t, but you can’t really catch up on sleep, but you also, there is no benefit to stressing out about sleep you didn’t catch.

[00:34:30] Merlin: And knowing that before you, quote, try to go to sleep, I find more helpful than it seems. Does that make sense?

[00:34:39] Jeff: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, it just, it’s the worst thing in the world to be wrestling with yourself.

[00:34:44] Merlin: inclination then is to go, what the, what, what’s wrong with

[00:34:47] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, man.

[00:34:50] Merlin: on! Um, that, you know, another one, another, if you, in terms of these, I should write these down, but another nice thing to just very gently say to yourself, [00:35:00] you know, I’ve decided not to let it bother me. That’s the actual phrase that I, I

[00:35:03] Jeff: Mmm.

[00:35:03] Merlin: for lots of things, but, but another one is, oh, I’m going to put this right on my list.

[00:35:09] Merlin: Um, you ready for this? This is a thing you say to yourself. So, however you got where you are in a given moment, you find yourself thinking. You don’t yell at yourself. You find yourself thinking, um, it’s not the time for that.

[00:35:24] Jeff: Mmm. Yes. Yes.

[00:35:27] Merlin: how about just very gently, not now. way you’d say to a little kid, well, as much as you want to go to Disney World, we need to go return these batteries at Walgreens.

[00:35:37] Merlin: And

[00:35:37] Jeff: It’s a, the not now thing is a huge act of self compassion.

[00:35:41] Merlin: oh my God, do you think, do you do, do you do anything? No, honestly, do you do anything like that?

[00:35:46] Jeff: You know, it’s only, I don’t, I hope this is related enough, but it’s something that really

[00:35:50] Merlin: not gonna matter either way. I’m just like

[00:35:52] Jeff: I suppose, while, while you were talking, something that kind of came up for me that, that, that really made me think of. So I had a, I dropped my, uh, [00:36:00] oldest son, my first born off at college about a month ago, like 11 hours away.

[00:36:04] Jeff: And, and man, with two things. One is I did have to decide months earlier, I have to stop grieving this now. Because there’ll be a time to grieve it.

[00:36:12] Merlin: I’ve already started. I’m still, I’m still grieving stuff from sixth grade as my kid is getting ready to apply to college. I’m still, I’m still two wars behind at every juncture.

[00:36:25] Jeff: Yes, yes, yes, it’s hard. Well, so but here’s the thing. Okay, so I successfully, it took me a minute and it took me, you know, bringing it up in therapy, but I got to the point where I’m like, okay, I’m not grieving this anymore, because I can’t enjoy him here. Because everything makes me think about how he’ll be gone.

[00:36:42] Jeff: Right? I can’t do that.

[00:36:44] Merlin: Oh, oh my god.

[00:36:45] Jeff: I want to have here.

[00:36:46] Merlin: Oh my God, I’m so ashamed of how often I think that. I’m so, there’s one point, there’s one point in the early part of my kid’s transition where I were like, we just kind of quietly, not like banned photos of my kid on [00:37:00] devices, but there was a time when we were still like getting our hands around it, where it was weird to see a photo of our baby and be like, Oh my God, we’re adjusting to so many things.

[00:37:09] Merlin: In addition to everything about having a teenager, there’s another big thing. That wasn’t bad in any sense. I think. I don’t know. I hate to sound needy about it, but like, I fucking love my kid. But like, there was a point where like, you’re like, in the same way for you, like, the day that you dropped your kid off at college may not be the day that you come back and watch that video of your kid having a bath

[00:37:29] Jeff: it’s

[00:37:29] Merlin: he was, when he was one.

[00:37:31] Merlin: Maybe that’s not the best day for that,

[00:37:32] Jeff: It’s not the best. It’s not the

[00:37:34] Merlin: Or maybe it is. Maybe it is. I mean, I guess it varies.

[00:37:37] Jeff: The thing that I think was actually a, a first time truly integrated lesson in this was that, um, in the week before we were to take him, I was a wreck. I was feeling agony that was flavors of a terrible breakup, um, and, and flavors of a death where you’re like, I don’t have anyone to be mad at.

[00:37:57] Jeff: This, I mean, you know, some deaths, I don’t, let’s say a [00:38:00] natural death. I don’t have anybody to be mad at. I can’t reverse

[00:38:02] Merlin: Well, it’s hard to say you didn’t know it was going to happen. It’s like,

[00:38:05] Jeff: Exactly,

[00:38:05] Merlin: not surprising that it happens. It’s surprising when it happens.

[00:38:09] Jeff: So I was having these moments for that entire week. It really is kind of this, it’s this agony. And now I’m still, I don’t cry easy. And that’s not a point of pride.

[00:38:16] Jeff: I just don’t cry easy. Um, and, and as it’s getting closer, I am almost by the end, I’m in a constant state of sort of sniffling. And I can’t say words that are related to us taking him away. I can’t even say the words, right?

[00:38:30] Merlin: Talk about a deep down, complicated, like, knot of emotions. It’s not even, it’s not one emotion. It’s not like you go, I’m sad. It’s like, it’s so, it’s, it’s like almost the definition of the word bittersweet. Which is like, I have irreconcilable feelings right now, and it’s not one or two or three feelings. I have like seven irreconcilable feelings.

[00:38:50] Merlin: And they’re all real. There’s none of them that aren’t real.

[00:38:53] Jeff: And, and there’s this point where it’s like, yeah, This, I’m like, okay, agony. I can, I can sit with agony and figure this out a little [00:39:00] bit, because I’m doing this to myself right now, right? Like, I can be very sad, um, uh, without doing this to myself. And I was like, I had this thought, because I was really crying.

[00:39:10] Jeff: I just had to kind of steal away to cry all the time.

[00:39:12] Merlin: Especially if it’s not easy for you, right? I mean, you have to like almost like probably enter into some kind of like a chamber and like go, well, now here comes the process of me letting this happen.

[00:39:22] Jeff: I have to be like in a car or something. So, so I’m like, okay, I’m crying at this, and I need to cry through it. Like, I’m moving at this, but I need to move through it, right? Like, that’s,

[00:39:32] Merlin: only way out is through. Yeah.

[00:39:33] Jeff: Oh my God. And when I, when I had that, I was like, it still was hard. Next couple of days were really hard, but there was such a different feeling to it.

[00:39:42] Jeff: And again, it’s like one of those things where it’s like an accidental, I mean, I guess the act of self compassion was just stopping and being like, okay, fucking hold on. This is horrible. Let’s just take this apart.

[00:39:52] Merlin: Well, I mean the act of compassion is like you’ve accepted that You can’t, in the same way that you can’t yell yourself to sleep, [00:40:00] I, I, I say in that document, like, that I feel like negative, quote unquote negative emotions are like cockroaches, where like you can scare them away for a little while, but that, they’ll, they’ll come back.

[00:40:11] Merlin: They’re like the sand people. They’ll, they’ll be back in greater numbers. You know what I mean? You can’t, yeah, they, they, they, you know, that’s why they walk single file. To disguise their numbers. Feelings. Hi, I’m Merlin Mann and I think feelings are like Tusken Raiders.

[00:40:31] Jeff: But then it becomes like the, um, what’s the, the feist video for the 4 song where you think it’s one person and then the, yeah, it’s great. Um, yeah. So anyway, that was, you ha, I thought about that when, when you were talking about this, it’s like a, it’s a different thing. It’s a different space, but it is that thing of having to tell yourself, hey,

[00:40:50] Merlin: But you can’t do that. I can’t do that. Anyway, without a certain level of just to really state the obvious. I find it difficult to do that unless I make it a [00:41:00] practice or a special project or unless I basically say to myself, you know what, I, going in this, like a, it’s almost like a Daniel Kahneman thing.

[00:41:07] Merlin: Continuing in this first order thinking way about this is not great for me. Like, I can actively put all of my energy into avoiding this feeling or I can accept that maybe the feeling won’t kill me and it might actually make me feel more human in some way.

[00:41:23] Jeff: yeah. Yeah.

[00:41:24] Merlin: There’s a book, um, God, where is this from? Oh, it’s originally from Zorba the Greek, but a guy wrote a book, which, oh God, who wrote this book?

[00:41:32] Merlin: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. This is Jon Kabat Zinn. The, the

[00:41:34] Jeff: Oh,

[00:41:34] Merlin: writes a lot about, yeah, you

[00:41:36] Jeff: Also, weirdly, Howard Zinn’s son in law.

[00:41:39] Merlin: I did not

[00:41:40] Jeff: I built Howard Zinn’s website.

[00:41:43] Merlin: Are you kidding me?

[00:41:44] Jeff: No, I’m not kidding you. Yeah.

[00:41:47] Merlin: um, let’s can you put a pin in this one? We I want to talk about, um, fame famous pe websites for famous people we’ve made. Let’s let’s will you write that

[00:41:54] Jeff: Okay. That’s great. Yep. I’ll write it

[00:41:55] Merlin: My kid is currently I we had we had back to school night for my kid’s junior year, [00:42:00] uh, last week. And, uh, one of the things they’re reading is people’s history.

[00:42:04] Jeff: Oh, that’s excellent to hear.

[00:42:06] Merlin: I mean, you could do a lot worse. Yeah, this school, boy, they’re terrible. They, they include social justice in everything they try to do. What a bad school.

[00:42:13] Merlin: Oh, my God. I love this school so goddamn much. Um, yeah. So have you heard of this book, Full Catastrophe Living? You might

[00:42:19] Jeff: Yeah, it’s behind me.

[00:42:21] Merlin: Oh, really? Well, it comes from Zorba the Greek, but he refers to life as the full catastrophe.

[00:42:28] Jeff: Yes.

[00:42:29] Merlin: Does that, I’m, I’m not putting this well, does that, maybe you could explain it better than I, but is that’s kind of part of it, right?

[00:42:35] Merlin: Is instead of, instead of putting my, this goes for sleep, this goes for lots of things. Instead of taking all the energy from my, um, insert Star Trek reference, instead of putting all the energy into keeping my shields up, maybe it’d be better off to just kind of stop the air, stop the ship for a while, and really think about what we’re doing here because.

[00:42:54] Merlin: The shields I’m putting up are not helping, they are depleting my energy, and it’s not getting me closer to saving the people [00:43:00] on the, uh, Kobayashi Maru.

[00:43:02] Jeff: Yeah, definitely. I was reading this morning, I don’t have it in here, and it’s a name I don’t know I can say, which is Pema Chödrön, I think is her name.

[00:43:10] Merlin: She’s the source of one of my all time favorite quotes.

[00:43:12] Jeff: Which is?

[00:43:13] Merlin: Remember, you are the sky, not the weather.

[00:43:15] Jeff: Oh, that’s so good.

[00:43:17] Merlin: It’s one of the greatest quotes I’ve ever heard.

[00:43:18] Jeff: That’s so good.

[00:43:19] Merlin: also has two diureses in her name.

[00:43:22] Jeff: Uh,

[00:43:23] Merlin: She has two umlauts.

[00:43:24] Jeff: sounds, it gets too

[00:43:25] Merlin: Sorry, keep going.

[00:43:26] Jeff: stole the umlauts from my name at Ellis Island, I think.

[00:43:29] Merlin: Really? It used to be Umlautowitz?

[00:43:33] Jeff: Yeah, yeah. Whoa! Hey! So this book is, How We Live is How We Die. And it is

[00:43:42] Merlin: Happy birthday, Grandma.

[00:43:44] Jeff: yeah, I know, you know what’s funny?

[00:43:46] Jeff: I was reading it

[00:43:47] Merlin: I love you, Grandma. Here’s a book.

[00:43:49] Jeff: I was leaving, I was reading it as my youngest came down and I hid the cover like it was porn. I was just, I don’t want him to just have to take that and be like, what the fuck?

[00:43:56] Merlin: do that with my O’Reilly book about Pearl. [00:44:00] When my wife, when my wife comes in and finds me eating Snickers bars and listening to Valdi, I’m like, Oh, at least it’s wholesome.

[00:44:09] Jeff: exactly, exactly. Yeah, so her thing is like, Think everything’s always dying, right? Like, I mean, it’s a, it’s a dark turn in a way, but it’s like, maybe we can find

[00:44:21] Merlin: every glass is temporarily unbroken. But,

[00:44:26] Jeff: Bridges says, in, in season one of the, um, of the old man, everything’s always in free fall, uh, which is a little dark, but,

[00:44:35] Merlin: but that’s the full catastrophe though, is, is to, to realize it’s not, it’s not a way, and this is a very Alan Watts esque thing. Concept that I will very poorly mangle because I’m making this up as we go along. But like, the reason I keep saying stuff like this goes for sleep, one of my sleep technologies, and this is, I think, related, is that I started to realize things that tend to happen before I go to sleep.

[00:44:58] Merlin: Not that I brush my teeth or turn off the [00:45:00] lights, because who brushes their teeth? But like, but at bedtime, there are things that go through my, I think, I bet everybody has these things. It’s usually described as like, my mind is racing or blah, blah, blah. I’m thinking about tomorrow and all these things.

[00:45:11] Merlin: But I. Would sit with that and learned in time to sit with that and a funny thing we don’t time to get into this But like this is a huge deal for me is realizing there are three or four things That tend to go through my mind before I go to sleep. This was such a breakthrough for me. And, like, they include things like, well, first, I realize I’m, I’m, I feel bad that I’m not just going to sleep.

[00:45:34] Merlin: I’m not talking about, like, being up all night. I’m talking about every single night before I go to sleep. This is, which is important. If you only meditate when you’re sad Did that become something that just you associate with being sad if you just start instead start noticing something on a regular basis and you make it a practice or a project.

[00:45:49] Merlin: Nobody needs to know about it. Nobody needs to know about this, except that it might help. And I realized just in summary. Yeah, I tend to think like, Oh, man, I’m having trouble going to sleep. And then I tend to, like, [00:46:00] have a sudden jolt. of not panic, but I’ll suddenly realize something I don’t like thinking about right before bed.

[00:46:08] Merlin: And everybody’s got their own version of that. Then I tend to realize sometimes I have a really weird, like sexual thought, like that’s not not even my sex stuff. And it’s just but like, it’s weird and like upsetting to think about. And then I, you know, but what’s funny is, Once you just watch the traffic without getting in the car, that all becomes very instructive because guess what I have now?

[00:46:32] Merlin: Now I have a way of saying another phrase I like a lot. Oh, Here comes that feeling.

[00:46:38] Jeff: Yeah.

[00:46:39] Merlin: And because I’m the sky, not the weather, that feeling of that jolt. How about instead I realize that means I’m now in, for my purposes, step two of the falling asleep process? And like and now once I feel like a slight tingling.

[00:46:54] Merlin: On my skin or on my like this part of my body, I know now I’m about 10 minutes from falling asleep or [00:47:00] five minutes from falling asleep. And like, you can make, you can think of that in any way that works for you, but like, no, we’re not at Disney World yet. But we just took the exit with a big green sign says Walt Disney World.

[00:47:12] Merlin: So, Don’t worry, we’re still moving toward where we need to go. We’re not there yet. But once you’ve commuted on a route 50 times, you can have really, maybe even too clear heuristic for what happens. Oh, and when we see the water wheel, that means we’re five miles away from Auntie Susie’s house. Like you, you get more confidence why the way back is always seems faster than the way there.

[00:47:36] Merlin: The familiarity of that. And once you stop trying, what is the takeaway, as they say, about that? Instead of trying to reject Or, uh, reparse, or normalize, or just reject a feeling that you’re feeling. How about you just watch the car how about you just watch the stream without jumping into the water, [00:48:00] and now you know, okay now, yeah, just like every night I’ve moved on to step three.

[00:48:06] Merlin: And what’s weird is the weird meta part of that is once you know that that’s what you’re doing, and it’s gonna be different for everybody, but I encourage people to think about this and try this in sleep and life, but once you start doing that and it stops being something you fear or reject, It just becomes another thing.

[00:48:24] Merlin: I mean, it’s like, it’s like you don’t get as mad or sad or you don’t feel as vulnerable and broken. And this last part of this is what I realized over time. I can’t, I can’t prove this, but all those little thoughts that unbidden that come to me, those, like, I’m trying to evade those thoughts or outrun them in my head.

[00:48:45] Merlin: Like, First of all, yeah, well now that’s just part, I know that’s just part of the process, and that’s okay, you develop a certain familiarity with it, you start saying things like, oh, you know, here comes that feeling again, but the meta part of that is, now I’m not dreading [00:49:00] going to sleep, because I have a toolbox.

[00:49:03] Merlin: for at least putting some kind of a frame around this, and the ultimate life hack, in some ways, is to not need the life hack. Like, once you’ve found a way out of your own aversion to the full catastrophe, I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but that’s not a thing you get a vote on. You don’t get a vote on it.

[00:49:22] Merlin: Why do I cry? after something is over? Why didn’t I cry at the time? Why is it that like you’re kind of like you’re describing, right? Like, but also why? Why are there’s all these things where the emotional part of it seems like it comes at the wrong point? Well, what I’ve realized is that in the same way that my young person telling me who he is, was a gift.

[00:49:45] Merlin: My kid trusted me enough to tell me who he really is. I could be mad about like one, one could be mad about how your kid is not what you Expected and another one is to go, Holy shit, can you [00:50:00] imagine how brave that kid was to tell me who he really is? I’m the luckiest person in the goddamn world that they have a kid who knows who they are and then tells me who they are.

[00:50:10] Merlin: And I don’t, I don’t think honestly, I mean, you’d have to know me to know, but, um, I can’t imagine a greater gift than that. And I maybe wouldn’t even have learned at that point How good my kid was at life until I had the vulnerability to go, that’s, that’s great. I, I have nothing to add to this holler if you need money, like just do your thing.

[00:50:36] Merlin: But I don’t know if that makes sense, but, and so how do I attach that to sleep? Um, well, I start to realize that again, cause I have a practice of this, that vulnerability that I feel that I used to reject, that’s just an indication that I’m human and that I’m alive and that maybe. Is it possible? This is crazy.

[00:50:55] Merlin: Really follow me on this, Jeff, because this is what they call the big takeaway at the New York Times. The big [00:51:00] takeaway is that, is there a chance that I had that feeling I don’t like having, specifically because I’m vulnerable, specifically because when do you get vulnerable? So, you get vulnerable when you’re relaxed.

[00:51:13] Merlin: You ever had a cat?

[00:51:14] Jeff: Yeah. I have two cats. That’s Yeah, exactly.

[00:51:17] Merlin: a cat, and most cats, especially if they used, well, think about, think about this, you get a cat, and like, most cats like some kind of interaction, but, you know, some cats really like interaction, but most cats, in my experience, like interaction on their own terms. And so, they’ll come up and let you know when they want to scratch, or they’ll let you know when there’s a new box, or whatever.

[00:51:37] Merlin: And sometimes, if the cat gets very relaxed, it seems to want you to rub its tummy, and But the thing is, a cat will get so relaxed, this is, this is, I swear I’m going somewhere kind of with this, the cat gets so relaxed, it kind of unintentionally lets you rub its tummy. But what happens, a cat is an animal, the cat realizes it’s on its back, and it’s vulnerable, its belly is up in the air, and it’s [00:52:00] just, it’s like a deer at the watering hole.

[00:52:02] Merlin: And what happens when you rub a cat’s tummy, and then it realizes it’s getting its tummy rubbed? It might bite you, or it might scratch at you, or it might just simply leap out of your lap,

[00:52:10] Jeff: Whoa, hold on. Yeah.

[00:52:12] Merlin: because that’s the cat realizing it’s vulnerable, given a state of relaxation. Now, how can we, as just only barely slightly differently advanced beings, go, well, maybe that thing, that little, like, ah, I feel that maybe that’s life rubbing my tummy, where like, I feel I can cry.

[00:52:30] Merlin: Because I’m not actively experiencing the bad thing anymore. Maybe I can have this feeling and that doesn’t undo me. I’m the sky, not the weather. And then I get to laugh at myself a little bit because I’m like a sleepy kitty.

[00:52:43] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:44] Merlin: you, I mean, do you get that? Does that make,

[00:52:45] Jeff: Yeah. I totally get that.

[00:52:47] Merlin: But, but if you don’t, if you don’t accept that, that vulnerability is part of going to sleep, it’s going to be hard to get a good night’s rest.

[00:52:53] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And the thing that kind of occurred to me while you were talking about, you know, the whole watching the traffic thing is like, [00:53:00] you were talking on Mastodon the other day about your, your frustration about door management on The Walking Dead. And, and I feel like the way we instinctually

[00:53:08] Merlin: to say about door management. And it made me realize that door management in life is about so many more things than the gate at Alexandria.

[00:53:16] Jeff: it’s like, you left the fucking door open. And that is what you’re,

[00:53:19] Merlin: Yeah, the fucking priest, the guy from The Wire, left the gate open?

[00:53:23] Jeff: yeah,

[00:53:23] Merlin: What? Didn’t, I thought you were just specifically hung a lantern on it. One of the other guys, the guy who leaves his own door open on his cruiser, Grrrr, specifically said, make sure you close the gate, church guy. Doo doo doo doo doo! I guess some people wandered in.

[00:53:39] Merlin: Throw Rick out, he wants two of those strict measures! Anyway, door

[00:53:43] Jeff: Close the fucking door. Well, that’s it. That’s it, right? So the, so the, the other, the other thing that happens in Falling Asleep when you’re yelling at yourself is you’re, you’re treating it as a door management problem, right? Or it’s like, why am I letting this shit in? Why did we leave the fucking gate?

[00:53:58] Jeff: Who left the fucking gate [00:54:00] open?

[00:54:00] Merlin: And what do you do? You say to yourself, well you use phrases, and again this is meaningful to me, I like words, um, oh god, I can’t go to sleep. I can’t stop thinking about this. Talk about rehearsing failure. And I’m not saying don’t acknowledge the truth. What I am saying is, why do you have to add such a negative valence to something instead of just looking at it?

[00:54:20] Merlin: Like, why do you have to have a strong opinion about everything instead of just going, yeah, there’s a thing. There’s that feeling. There’s, you know, and like, I, or like, you know, what do they say in, in, uh, the, the singer in the Sondheim musical? I made it through all of last year and I’m here. Like, you know, the full catastrophe.

[00:54:36] Merlin: Boy, this is a deep podcast,

[00:54:38] Jeff: I’m gonna make it through this year if it kills

[00:54:40] Merlin: I’m gonna make it through this year. You ever seen Craig Finn sing that with Mountain Goats? This is, this is maybe the thing, I’m guessing in my head, this might be the thing that John Roderick probably most hates me sending to him. But, cause I love the whole study. It’s Mountain Goats, um, performing this year with Craig Finn singing the lead vocals with

[00:54:58] Jeff: Oh, I’ll have to look it up. You know,

[00:54:59] Merlin: [00:55:00] And, no, but like imagine Craig Finn, like you can tell he’s a nerd, right? Even in his coolest moment you can tell he’s a nerd. He’s writing songs about John Berryman, who you know from, you know.

[00:55:07] Jeff: yeah, of course he’s buried here. Yeah.

[00:55:09] Merlin: But he didn’t so he died, you know?

[00:55:11] Music is the Best (Part 2)

[00:55:11] Merlin: Um, I don’t know if you, do you like the Holt Steady?

[00:55:14] Jeff: So I have a very close relationship with that band going, going back.

[00:55:18] Merlin: Do you, do you know Lifter Puller? Did you know

[00:55:20] Jeff: Yeah. I, we used to play with Lifter Polar all the

[00:55:23] Merlin: No way! That’s so cool! Their performance of Stuck Between Stations on Letterman is one of my all time favorite things. He likes the warm feeling but he’s tired of all the dehydration! The guy’s always in a totally pressed suit, he sleeps in a van, but then he comes out and, and he does the little Stephen vocals on Stuck Between Stations.

[00:55:47] Jeff: yes, here’s the thing. So since we’re here and now we’re in, like, very obscure territory, and

[00:55:52] Merlin: Show notes for this are gonna be a bitch. You’re gonna need technology. You’re gonna need, you’re gonna need a new model to help

[00:55:57] Jeff: this is the only way Chippy T is going to come [00:56:00] into this conversation is when I throw the show notes through

[00:56:02] Merlin: We have pages and pages of notes about ChatsheepieT to talk about. We got to do a part two.

[00:56:07] Jeff: But let’s, let’s stay here because I. I absolutely loved Lifter Puller and I’ll, and I will send you this, but my band and Lifter Puller, I organized a Christmas show and, and we recorded a single together where we

[00:56:20] Merlin: Oh man! By the way, single is, is, is a trademark of IRS records,

[00:56:24] Jeff: yeah, exactly. And their song was called Bitchy Little Christmas.

[00:56:30] Merlin: Were Lifter Polar, and please, please help people out by explaining what Lifter Polar is and why they have a funny, they have a funny spelled name.

[00:56:37] Jeff: Lifter Puller was a, was a Minneapolis, was a Minneapolis band.

[00:56:41] Merlin: It’s the guitar player and the singer from the whole study, right?

[00:56:44] Jeff: Yeah, so it’s, well, Tad Kubler was the bass player, um, of the, of Lifter Puller, uh, and, and Craig Finn was the singer guitar player, and, um, they had a, Dan Monick was the drummer, amazing dude, amazing photographer, but anyway, Lifter Puller was this band from Minneapolis [00:57:00] that got a little bit, like, minor famous towards the end, and were on, like, Jenny Jones and Letterman.

[00:57:06] Merlin: Were they like, were they like regionally, they’re not like twin tone famous, but like they’re regionally well known?

[00:57:11] Jeff: Regionally. Yeah, exactly. People loved them here. People sang along. I mean, it’s hard not to sing along to those stories. And I guess the biggest thing, and you can say this too, the biggest thing about Lifter Polar and the Hold Steady is the stories are incredible. It’s like if Bruce Springsteen was one of us.

[00:57:25] Merlin: and seriously, Stuck Between Stations is not like, I’m not here to say that it’s about John Berryman and the Dream Songs, but like, you know, John Berryman is like, he likes the golden gophers, you know,

[00:57:37] Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

[00:57:38] Merlin: yeah, but like, it’s like, but there is

[00:57:40] Jeff: First time the Golden Gophers were ever mentioned on this podcast.

[00:57:44] Merlin: I think, I think this might be why. Like maybe perhaps, why I can’t know if Roderick’s ever actually listen to them I mean, I think he’s just naturally he naturally rejects bands that are kind of similar as his, but um But that’s what really got me when I very first heard Not [00:58:00] Boys and Girls in America, but the oh oh oh oh oh Shoot.

[00:58:04] Merlin: What was the one before, with uh, started out with, The Positive Jam

[00:58:08] Jeff: yeah, yeah,

[00:58:09] Merlin: you know the one, the first one, but when I first heard that and I was like, Oh my God, this is really, this is like MFA version of Bruce Springsteen

[00:58:17] Jeff: Yes. Yes. Yes.

[00:58:20] Merlin: with, with, with both of the things that make those two things wonderful, like reading, reading things like John Berryman, but also really enjoying something like Thunder Road.

[00:58:28] Merlin: Like that is reconcilable in a really exciting way. Lifter Puller, man.

[00:58:34] Jeff: Lifter Puller. Amazing.

[00:58:35] Merlin: you heard Nothing Painted Blue?

[00:58:37] Jeff: Heard what?

[00:58:38] Merlin: Nothing Painted Blue? So I mentioned a minute ago the Mountain Goats, uh, uh, Peter Hughes was, he wasn’t in, he wasn’t in Nothing Painted Blue for my favorite time. He was in a little earlier, but I will find a record for you, but check out Nothing Painted Blue if you like Too Clever by a Half, you know, kind of like listening to Jonathan Colton sing [00:59:00] about fractals.

[00:59:01] Merlin: Like, if you like that kind of thing, but like, a little more serious, uh, I’m gonna write that down. I’m gonna tell you about Nothing Painted Blue. Very, very smart band. Are we gonna talk about the internet, or not?

[00:59:13] Jeff: We’re getting there, I

[00:59:13] Merlin: people, people don’t tune in to hear us talk about life. They, they, they’re here for the hot tech tips.

[00:59:18] Jeff: Sorry, fuckers. Oh, God.

[00:59:22] Merlin: got, I got your model.

[00:59:24] Jeff: Yeah, no, we can do this. I have to say, having wound our way to Lifter Puller, I’m a little dizzy. Like, how is this happening? And starting with Matthias Jabs, by the way, which is great. Like, just a nice bookends to that part.

[00:59:38] Merlin: What was your, what was your, what was your first record? Was, was it, was probably, you’re probably younger than me, so probably the one with, uh, the Bitch is Hungry song on it. Dun dun dun. Rocky Like a Hurricane. That, that was probably like, see, I’m, I’m a breakout, I’m a breakout guy.

[00:59:50] Jeff: Yeah, and I mean, I got to break out. Uh, I can say that when I got a viola thinking I was going to be in band, the only thing I ever learned was, was rock you like a, was rock you like a [01:00:00] hurricane.

[01:00:00] Merlin: See, I would have thought you’d be into John Cale. I could see you being very into John Cale. Mmm.

[01:00:06] Jeff: time. Long time. Yeah. But, but since you asked, but let’s just pretend you asked what my first album was generally, and I will say that the first one that I bought of my own volition was the cassette of Huey Lewis Sports.

[01:00:16] Merlin: Oh my god, really, 1984. I, um,

[01:00:20] Jeff: when I came

[01:00:21] Merlin: so you’re also then, you’re also old enough to remember Columbia House,

[01:00:25] Jeff: Oh, yeah.

[01:00:25] Jeff: This, okay, so here’s the, so, okay, fine.

[01:00:27] Merlin: ten, ten for a penny. I owed four, I owed 40 to Columbia House for six years because of sports.

[01:00:35] Jeff: Oh, yeah. But they can’t come after you. You’re a

[01:00:37] Merlin: And I didn’t have the sense to have it delivered to our neighbor’s mailbox, you know? That was, that was the good way to run the

[01:00:43] Jeff: But Merlin, here’s what’s amazing that you brought that up, because I always have an asterisk in my head when I say that was the first one. What I really mean is that was the one that brought my first package of Columbia House

[01:00:55] Merlin: Oh, that’s, isn’t that, that is so momentous, [01:01:00] oh my god, I have

[01:01:01] Jeff: It was a

[01:01:01] Merlin: I have such a story about that.

[01:01:04] Jeff: Well, I don’t mind hearing it. I mean, I don’t know. Yeah.

[01:01:06] Merlin: When I was ten, uh, living in Cincinnati, Ohio, uh, the neighborhood was called Grosbeck. One day, long story short, I, I go out to check the mail, I’m ten, right, this is 1970. It’s 1976, so I had a record player, so it would be 76 or 77. The point of the story is, oh God, I’m going to mess this up a little bit. I go outside and there’s a big package, and I think it was basically that thing I described a second ago.

[01:01:32] Merlin: So the idea is, you would get these, there were these services where you, my parents did this, where you’d sign up for a service and you’d say, okay, um, I really like music. I’m going to, they’re going to send me seven 8 tracks cassettes or 10 or whatever. A Tracks cassettes, you know, for a penny or whatever, but then you’re signing up for this thing where like, if you don’t physically return, mail back a thing every month, they automatically send you a record.

[01:01:56] Merlin: But what everybody did was a scam. A lot of people, anyway, [01:02:00] would like, do a scam of like, I get seven free albums and now my neighbor is on the hook for that or whatever. I went out and I got a big, there’s a big package like between our screen. Screen Door and Our Door Door. And I think it was seven albums.

[01:02:13] Merlin: I’ll tell you the ones I remember off the dome. I opened this thing up, it was addressed, I guess it wasn’t addressed to me, but like, it was seven albums. I’m 10 years old. Now this becomes one of those stories that like in a shitty biopic, like this would be that moment like where Paul McCartney sees a bass in a window or whatever.

[01:02:31] Merlin: Um, it was the, it was the greatest, it was a Dolly Parton greatest hits that had like Life’s Like a Butterfly, that era. Um, yeah. Beach Boys Greatest Hits,

[01:02:40] Jeff: Mm

[01:02:41] Merlin: The Monkees Greatest Hits,

[01:02:42] Jeff: Mm hmm.

[01:02:43] Merlin: Kiss, Rock and Roll Over, Kiss, Destroyer, Um, oh, oh, one that I didn’t love, a Jefferson Starship album, and I’m probably forgetting another one, but I think it might be the one with the, uh, with the Cunnilingus song, you know, I got [01:03:00] a taste of the real world, when I went down on you, girl, if only you believed in miracles, baby.

[01:03:06] Merlin: It

[01:03:07] Jeff: John Berryman.

[01:03:08] Merlin: one that had the dragon on the cover, but anyway, that was my first, I suddenly had, An album by the

[01:03:16] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:03:16] Merlin: who at the time I was watching in reruns on UHF,

[01:03:19] Jeff: yeah. So good.

[01:03:20] Merlin: and I suddenly also had an album with stuff like Beach Boys In My Room,

[01:03:24] Jeff: Mm.

[01:03:25] Merlin: or like that era, the era, obviously, duh, I’m not basic, I mean, I like Pet Sounds quite a lot, but like, I also celebrate the catalog of the Beach Boys, especially right before Pet Sounds,

[01:03:38] Jeff: yes, for

[01:03:39] Merlin: even or especially stuff like Help Me Rhonda, but like In My Room and boom.

[01:03:48] Merlin: Don’t worry, baby, don’t worry,

[01:03:50] Jeff: Don’t worry, baby.

[01:03:54] Merlin: um, yeah, that was my experience with

[01:03:56] Jeff: was like their Ronette song.

[01:03:57] Merlin: Oh, absolutely. It sounds like Hal Blaine. [01:04:00] That changed my life a little bit. That day where I opened up those records, and even then becoming like a familiar, like I didn’t play the Dolly Parton as much as, Kiss Destroyer, which is like, I mean, that was T.

[01:04:12] Merlin: H., for people my age, that was T. H. E. Kiss album, like, if you, I mean, Alive 2, which is not very good, like, there’s all of those, and it sounds like you’re not a big Kiss fan, but Kiss Destroyer, it’s the one, it opens with, it opens with Detroit Rock City, it’s got

[01:04:25] Jeff: Which is amazing, which is incredible. It’s a shuffle. It’s a I mean, it’s just an incredible song. Yeah, is that as a drummer, it was how I learned shuffles was that beat?

[01:04:37] Merlin: end up being friends with drummers, it’s the weirdest thing.

[01:04:39] Jeff: Johns and

[01:04:40] Merlin: No, it’s the weirdest thing, all of my, all of my, all of my, my, my fake friends that have been in bands, the people who actually will talk to me, it’s invariably the drummers. I’ve made friends with so many drummers and I don’t know why. I mean, I guess, I guess because I can’t make friends with musicians. Oh!

[01:04:55] Jeff: oh, both sides of the mouth.

[01:04:58] Merlin: Are these, are these your drums? Are these [01:05:00] your drums?

[01:05:00] Jeff: what? My son’s in, my son’s in a band and his drummer, and they both run cross country and his drummer who I’ve come to know a little bit and he was running and I, and he was kind of way back in the race. So he’s the only one coming through and I yelled both sides of the mouth to him because you know this joke, how do you tell if the stage is level?

[01:05:19] Jeff: The drummer’s drooling out of both sides of his mouth.

[01:05:24] Merlin: That’s funny! That’s funny, bullseye! I like that!

[01:05:28] Jeff: I yell both sides of the mouth at this kid

[01:05:32] Merlin: And you can already hear it in your head, Dad!

[01:05:34] Jeff: It was a big mistake. That’s

[01:05:37] Merlin: Um, can I, can I give you one fact that you don’t remark about and then we go straight into the actual topic? Is that okay? But I want, can I do a, can I do a mic drop right here? I’m tired all together. Um, it means a lot to me. My kid means a lot to me, but a big part of my kid meaning a lot to me is me getting out of the picture, or, you know, [01:06:00] not putting myself into the picture that was taken of my kid, you know, over a decade ago.

[01:06:06] Merlin: It’s very difficult to do.

[01:06:07] dadblog.blog

[01:06:07] Merlin: I think, I think you know this, and yet I’m still very interested, and I’ve realized that, like, I only have access to parts of my kid’s life because that’s how it should be, but there are places where my kid is, you know, is, Himself and performs. I would, I would commend. It’s very important you put a link in show notes to his letterbox, because he’s a genuinely very funny writer.

[01:06:30] Merlin: I’ll get you a link for that. But

[01:06:32] Jeff: Okay.

[01:06:32] Merlin: for the fourth. Fourth, separate time last night. I signed up for Instagram.

[01:06:41] Jeff: For the fourth separate time, are they four separate accounts or do you just kill it and come

[01:06:45] Merlin: I’ve had, I mean, all the good, all my good usernames are gone. But like, I signed up for Instagram when everybody first got on it. And I somewhat famously bounced because I’m like this. This is back in the better days, that essay I wrote. Like, this is about where I was like, fuck this. [01:07:00] A bunch of people who work at Apple taking pictures of birds on wires?

[01:07:02] Merlin: No, thanks. of course, I did, I have, you know, Have my Facebook account like deactivated for like 10 years, but you know, everybody thinks I’m one of the hill people. So like, you know, hot dogs, ladies, that account’s gone. Um, so last night, uh, And don’t, I’m not, God, it’s so critical you’re not following me, but it’s just to say to you that like, I don’t know, you kind of, we’re familiar with each other enough that I think you would appreciate that like, that’s my bet noire.

[01:07:30] Merlin: Like Facebook and Instagram are like, I don’t, I don’t want to yuck on anybody’s yum, but it’s not a thing I want to do and they’re bad. And no, but last night I, unwilling horse, This is my new account and I’m just

[01:07:45] Jeff: hmm. Unwilling horse. Uh,

[01:07:51] Merlin: to see my kid, but that’s, that’s like I need to bring the mountain to Mohammed and he said it, he said it was okay [01:08:00] to, to, to follow him there.

[01:08:01] Merlin: So once a day or so I’ll.

[01:08:03] Jeff: yes. You have to go. Yeah. Yep.

[01:08:05] Merlin: was so bummed when I left Twitter, but I was like, and it was kind of abrupt where I was finally like, you know, imagine me clapping like, new dealer out of here. Like, I cannot be here anymore. And at this point, it’s just it’s just war criminals and war profiteers.

[01:08:19] Merlin: That’s all who’s left there at this point. And people still send me things. All my friends who are quote off Twitter keep sending me things from Twitter. And I don’t understand how that works. But no, I can handle one thing at a time. I can handle one social network at a time. I can handle as well.

[01:08:33] Merlin: Transcribed Probably talk about in some future episode, I can handle one. LLM with really mostly one model at a

[01:08:42] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:08:44] Merlin: I need to learn the hammer I’ve got before I buy more hammers. And I do not need more hammers, especially if they say Instagram on them. But I’m not covering myself with glory. I don’t fucking care.

[01:08:54] Merlin: I’ll probably deactivate it. It’s just not worth it. This is a signup process. The [01:09:00] entire time we’re sitting there and eventually mom and Billy switch seats so he could sit next to me and make fun of me while because he doesn’t think I know how to use the Internet.

[01:09:08] Jeff: Isn’t that funny? Listen, kid! Can you even spell angel fire?

[01:09:17] Merlin: Listen, listen, let me explain something to you. I had an internet shrine to, to, to, to, to that, to that gal from Paramore before you were even born. It was on Geocities and I don’t know where it is now.

[01:09:31] Jeff: And yeah, I couldn’t get the under construction thing off,

[01:09:33] Merlin: I couldn’t get it, but I had a blinking gif. I had a, I had another one. I used a pencil for an HR. That’s a horizontal rule.

[01:09:40] Merlin: Sit down. Let me explain to you. Um, but, like, you know, I’ll probably bounce off that and just see how it goes, but, like, you know, just to, the, the, crossing the T, I think, and I said this to my kid last night who, of course, looked at me very perplexed, uh, not perplexed because, because my kid’s dumb, but perplexed because I’m an idiot, but, like, um, I was like, you know, kid, [01:10:00] like, you know, perhaps know me, and I’m, I’m, I’m a, I’m a, I’m a laughing stock in our house in every conceivable way, which is okay, um, I, I don’t, I don’t draw that part of my life from my family.

[01:10:12] Merlin: That’s not what they’re there for. They’re not there to make me feel smart and good. They’re there to be who they are, for me to stay the fuck out of the way. I’m a, I’ve said this since my kid was born, I’m a, I’m a basically a mule with a checkbook. Just, if you, if there’s nothing to do being a mule, and there’s nothing to do being a checkbook, you’re not needed right now.

[01:10:28] Merlin: Nobody needs your opinion.

[01:10:30] Jeff: so you’ve got cocaine and a checkbook.

[01:10:32] Merlin: Well, yeah, they’re in my butt.

[01:10:34] Jeff: Yeah,

[01:10:34] Merlin: The checkbook.

[01:10:35] Jeff: it out. You gotta go and fetch it.

[01:10:36] Merlin: my, I keep all, I keep all my checkbooks in my butt because I’m a mule.

[01:10:40] Jeff: Cause I’m a mule.

[01:10:41] Merlin: Google it. Um, great. Now, now I’m going to have another thing on Urban Dictionary. Um, there’s Mann’s assumption and also checkbook, but, but, but, um, but no, I said, I said, yeah, I said, honestly, you know, not that it matters.

[01:10:54] Merlin: You can’t be earnest with a 16 year old. But I was like, you know, it means a lot to me to look at new [01:11:00] things. Because, I didn’t say this, but I’ll say this to you, Jeff, like, the, our, this is in the document, like, I think, I know, for myself, and I think in most cases, most of us tend to become, I don’t know if it’s conservative is the wrong word for it, we tend to become hidebound in our ideas about things, and blah, blah, blah, this is a different conversation, but I was like, you know I like new stuff, like, my family’s constantly making fun of me, like, there’s a joke on, Messed on my podcast that the joke that started with next hempkin which tracks max would say stuff like oh this new iPhone I need it for my work and that became like so that that’s a running joke now is I need this for my work But like honestly when I’m like Madeline if you’re gonna rent a car Please rent a car with Carplay, and she’s like I don’t what and I’m like Yeah, but like, if we’re going to have a car for five days, A, I want car play in the car, and B, all my, I learned this from Jason Snell, I mean, everything is copy, as Nora Ephron says, like, um, this is all stuff that is applies to other things.

[01:11:59] Merlin: And just [01:12:00] because you don’t understand what my job is, doesn’t mean I don’t understand what my job is. So I say to my kid, I says, I says to him, I says, you know, I like learning about new stuff. I said, but honestly, I’ve also learned that sometimes I need to revisit my priors about old stuff. Which, believe it or not, in this case is Instagram, because now Instagram is not just a place where they wheeze my juice and steal my data and try to sell me screen doors.

[01:12:21] Merlin: It also is now a place where my kid is. And that, I don’t know if I’ll be there forever, or I don’t, I don’t need to have a big position on this. My kid’s on Instagram. I’ll look at it there. I found out my kid likes Talking Heads a month ago, and I’m like, how could you, why have you not sat down and watched the Rome 1980 concert with me?

[01:12:39] Merlin: You need to tell me when you like things that are good.

[01:12:42] Music is the Best (Part 3)

[01:12:42] Jeff: Wait, is the Rome 1980 concert, is that on YouTube and not like an official release? Is that when Adrian Belew’s in the

[01:12:47] Merlin: Oh, it’s, it’s the best. I’m somebody who watches Exit… Stage Left once a month. This is, it’s the best, it is the best recorded rock concert I’ve ever seen. [01:13:00] And don’t even, don’t even mention, don’t even mention that later one that’s also a very good movie. That’s a movie about David Byrne. This is a movie

[01:13:07] Jeff: This is the one that is incredible energy, just unbelievable

[01:13:11] Merlin: It’s got Bernie, Bernie Worrell, yeah, Adrian Belew, arguably at the height of his powers. Oh God, the woman, the singer, McDonald is her

[01:13:20] Jeff: I’ve seen it and I actually sent it to my son and said this is, I literally said this is the best live performance I’ve ever seen on

[01:13:28] Merlin: It is. It’s the best live performance. And like, especially if you like talking heads anyway at all, especially if you’re one of those people who came in, quote unquote, late with Burning Down the House. We were like, no, Fear of Music

[01:13:37] Jeff: that was the Paramore

[01:13:38] Merlin: Fear of Music is kind of their best record in some ways. Like, it’s definitely like the low key.

[01:13:44] Merlin: Oh, yeah, this is like this. But Adrian Belew. And he has to play, he’s playing a Roland. He’s playing a solid state Roland

[01:13:52] Jeff: hmm. Sure is.

[01:13:52] Merlin: and, and his,

[01:13:54] Jeff: He made some weird

[01:13:55] Merlin: his weird, weird ass strat, it’s, he’s got, he’s, he’s taken out three of the five [01:14:00] springs in the back. So he’s got his whammy bar has two and, and he, but he, I think the thing is with that lineup, with like, Nine people on stage or whatever.

[01:14:09] Merlin: I think he can’t play as loud as he would probably like to to play the way

[01:14:14] Jeff: as many elephant sounds.

[01:14:15] Merlin: cuz think about how much it’s not feedback in the usual sense. Like you really got me sense Well, it’s more like but like he He has to, and like you can see him struggling to, I don’t know, you play guitar,

[01:14:27] Jeff: No, God,

[01:14:28] Merlin: okay. But like, like on a guitar, like you, there’s harmonics.

[01:14:30] Merlin: Like if you hit a harmonic on the B at the 12th, that’s a pretty easy harmonic. You can sound like the edge. Really easy. Do, do, do, do. Try and hit that one on the fifth string. And if you don’t have enough volume, you don’t get the overtones. And you can see him not struggling, but you could see all the effort he has to put into that.

[01:14:48] Merlin: To do what he’s doing, Donette McDonald, that’s her name, and that’s also, I walked away saying, these are three of the best rhythm guitarists I’ve ever seen. Because Jerry Harrison and David Byrne, guess what? You know what? David [01:15:00] Byrne is a really fucking good

[01:15:01] Jeff: Really great. Yeah, definitely.

[01:15:03] Merlin: wanna, I wanna underline this because a lot of you are gonna be really smart and say, yeah, I really love Stop Making Sense.

[01:15:09] Merlin: Here’s what I’m saying to you. Stop Making Sense is a very good movie. It’s a really good movie. It’s a movie about David Byrne.

[01:15:13] Jeff: that’s a great way to describe it.

[01:15:15] Merlin: I mean, this is a, like, you’re gonna, you’re gonna, oh my god, it’s so good,

[01:15:20] Jeff: You’re gonna love them without the big suit. I’ll tell you

[01:15:23] Merlin: it’s a good bit, it’s a good bit,

[01:15:24] Jeff: It’s a great bit. It’s so funny you bring this up because what I’m remembering now is that so I’d already loved Adrian Belew, but I kind of just like left him in my King Crimson records.

[01:15:34] Merlin: was your, what was your, oh, okay, so like, Discipline, Discipline,

[01:15:37] Jeff: my uncle’s King Crimson record.

[01:15:39] Jeff: The Court of the Crimson King. Yeah, it’s Unbelievable.

[01:15:43] Merlin: Friend

[01:15:44] Jeff: I still put it on all the time, but,

[01:15:46] Merlin: to sign

[01:15:48] Jeff: him, I left him there, you know, like I let him, he didn’t come out, uh, of that record, uh, for me. And so when I saw this, I was like, are you fucking kidding me? And then I went

[01:15:56] Merlin: and he’s playing the whole time he’s part of the band.

[01:15:58] Jeff: I went down such a [01:16:00] rabbit hole on YouTube that there was a point at which it was all it was feeding me practically was a new Adrian Belew content.

[01:16:05] Merlin: Oh my God. Dude. Dude. Like for those of you out there who have not gotten the, the gospel on Adrian Blue, I mean, I think in, in a weird way, he might be best known from King Crimson, which is already so crazy that that’s what he’s well known for. But like, treat yourself like I think. A good starting point might be, after Heroes, it’s the Lodger.

[01:16:27] Merlin: I think on the Lodger, on the Lodger tour, he’s on, I think he’s on, that’s mostly Carlos, um, Carlos Alomar, I think, but like, but there’s a live performance, but he’s wearing like pleated leather pants, and he introduces this young man from Georgia, Adrian Belew, and he’s still got hair and stuff like that, but then he was also in Zappa’s band.

[01:16:45] Jeff: I was just gonna say, there aren’t that many people who were in Zappa’s band, and I am a, um, I’m a, uh, here and there fan of Frank Zappa,

[01:16:53] Merlin: I, I like, I like Zappa songs and some Zappa. Zappa Records. And I like the way everything [01:17:00] sounds, but I can’t listen to like tons and tons of

[01:17:03] Jeff: Oh, no. No, no, no. But what I love, and this is where that, where that, oh, it’s great, where that, where that rabbit hole led also was just people talking about auditioning for Frank Zappa,

[01:17:14] Merlin: Oh my God. Can you imagine?

[01:17:16] Jeff: genre that I highly recommend.

[01:17:19] Merlin: That is so funny. And then what else? Uh, I’m missing another one. Then he was a do. DOA do. He’s on fear of music. He’s on anda you know that like, uh, what is that?

[01:17:30] Jeff: Digga, digga, digga,

[01:17:31] Merlin: Zimbra on Zimbra. Diga. Diga Dig. You know? Um, which does sound kind of like Fri uh, and then, oh, but he also has his solo album.

[01:17:38] Merlin: You know, I’m Lone

[01:17:40] Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:17:41] Merlin: Like that was my introduction. My friend put an Adrian Belu, so my friend made me this amazing high quality Maxwell cassette of like a bunch. ’cause we were both

[01:17:50] Merlin: XLII

[01:17:50] Jeff: or XLII-S?

[01:17:52] Merlin: it might have been XLII, as this is 85, so that might be an XLII, but it included, um, Mediterranean Sundance by Al Di [01:18:00] Meola, et al.

[01:18:00] Merlin: It included Hot on Your Heels by, um, the band was Steeler, but by Yngwie Malmsteen, which is

[01:18:06] Jeff: Mm hmm.

[01:18:07] Merlin: Um, it included, ba ga da da dum dum, da ga da da da dum dum, uh, uh, uh, some Iron Maiden. Like, and, uh, oh, a little bit of Stevie Ray Vaughan, but anyway, it was all the shredding, like, good, classy shredding guitar people, and he put a lone rhinoceros on there, because he could make his guitar sound like an elephant or a rhinoceros.

[01:18:25] Jeff: I’m going to blow your mind straight from Wikipedia right now.

[01:18:28] Merlin: Do it, bring

[01:18:28] Jeff: To say that in the list of contributions to records that he made, you, you’ve got a cluster of Laurie Anderson records followed by Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors.

[01:18:39] Merlin: What? Oh, I heard an Adrian Belew fact. I find this difficult to believe for reasons we can litigate, but, um, okay, so my kid is a kid, and, uh, love that, um, we’re a big Ryan Reynolds house, for better or for worse, and like that video, what’s the video game movie, Free Guy? My kid really liked Free Guy. And there’s a song [01:19:00] that plays a role in that movie, it appears several times, and it’s a Mariah Carey song.

[01:19:05] Merlin: Uh, it’s the one that goes, you know, it’s the sweet, sweet fantasy baby. Now what is the primary sample that you remember from Fantasy by Mariah Carey?

[01:19:15] Jeff: I don’t remember a sample from

[01:19:16] Merlin: It goes like this.

[01:19:17] Jeff: think I was so transfixed by the fact that she wasn’t Minnie Riperton. Anyway, that’s another story,

[01:19:21] Merlin: could totally hear that. Oh God, I rewatched Idiocracy last night with Minnie Riperton’s daughter

[01:19:25] Jeff: which I have not watched.

[01:19:27] Merlin: gosh, it’s awfully good.

[01:19:28] Merlin: I’m going to give you four notes and a rest. Well, there abouts. Ba dum, bum, bum, ba dum,

[01:19:35] Jeff: Oh, then it, uh, uh, fuck, fuck, fuck,

[01:19:38] Merlin: What you gonna do when

[01:19:39] Jeff: it’s not,

[01:19:41] Merlin: I’m gonna have some fun. What do you consider fun? Fun. Genius of Love. Oh, talk about the black private. Wait, let me get this right. Are you talking about the black private dick? Who’s the sex machine with all the chicks?

[01:19:58] Jeff: Yeah. No, but hold on.

[01:19:59] Merlin: just, I’m just talking about [01:20:00] Shaft.

[01:20:01] Jeff: that that’s yes. And then, and what follows that? Shut your

[01:20:04] Merlin: Shut your mouth. Oh, he’s listening to that cassette all the time. Um, so, uh, Chris and Tina and Tina’s two sisters. Sorry, sorry, sorry. The Rhythm Section of Talking Heads. Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz. Now, I think even at that point, they were at least dating, probably married. The drummer and the bass player, Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz.

[01:20:21] Merlin: She and her two sisters and Chris Franz did a really wonderful album, uh, called, I think Is it called Tom Tom Club? But it’s the one that’s got wording, opens with wordy rapping hood, but most famously has a song on it called Genius of Love,

[01:20:36] Jeff: Yeah.

[01:20:36] Merlin: is a song that I found completely beguiling, partly because of its wonderful animated video that I saw in 1983.

[01:20:44] Merlin: But, you know, that’s that, that, ba dump, bump, bump, ba dump, which is sampled on that Mariah Carey song. Guess who played guitar on

[01:20:53] Jeff: Was it Belew?

[01:20:54] Merlin: It’s Adrian Belew. Adrian Belew found out only recently. This is the part that I have trouble with. He [01:21:00] just found out recently that like, and this doesn’t make sense because it seems like he would have seen some checks, but I, I, maybe he doesn’t have a writing credit.

[01:21:06] Merlin: I don’t know. But point is, like you go and you see Free Guy and you’re going to hear that really catchy song. Sweet, sweet fantasy baby. Prominent sample. He discovered recently, he had no idea he had been sampled on like a top ten song. Can you imagine? That doesn’t happen to me.

[01:21:22] Jeff: No, that’s never happened to me

[01:21:24] Merlin: I mean, it just doesn’t happen in my day to day, at least not that often that I find out I’ve been sampled on something,

[01:21:29] Jeff: Also, you know what I realized years after not being in a band anymore? It’s like, I thought I knew what I wanted to be true for me in a band and my band, but what I realize now is what would have been really amazing is to be exactly where I am now, which is not with a band, but every once in a while a royalty check comes in.

[01:21:45] Jeff: Wouldn’t that be nice?

[01:21:46] Merlin: That is, I’m thinking about that, that is a really, it’s sort of like how my friend John Roderick wants to be, this is very specific, he’s always wanted to be a retired head of the CIA.

[01:21:57] Jeff: Yes. Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

[01:21:58] Merlin: And there are numerous [01:22:00] steps that are missing from that stack.

[01:22:03] Jeff: Yep. Yep. Yep.

[01:22:04] Merlin: It’s funny because I was thinking, when I was thinking about Dinosaur Jr.

[01:22:06] Merlin: and arguing with Chris and Marty last night, I had a thought. Which is like, I kind of miss being in a band and like, not again, not arguing, but like going back and forth with your friends about like what the best song on Trap Mask Replica is.

[01:22:19] Jeff: Oh, completely.

[01:22:20] Merlin: case, what’s your favorite? I really miss I miss the,

[01:22:23] Jeff: Got me?

[01:22:23] Merlin: I miss the, me and my girl named Mimbo, Limbo, Spam. That’s right, the Mascara Snake.

[01:22:32] Jeff: Very special.

[01:22:34] Merlin: a very special album, and it just goes to show you, you don’t really need to wear headphones in the studio if you can hear kind of a little bit through the

[01:22:40] Jeff: No. Fuck no.

[01:22:41] Merlin: Um, but I was thinking I do kind of, I, yeah, I mean royalties would be nice.

[01:22:46] Jeff: Just to say about bands, you had said this twice now, that there’s sort of a relationship between banter and argument. And I think that what I miss most about being in a band is that practice space world where banter and argument are the same, [01:23:00] are sort of the,

[01:23:00] Merlin: But also, also stuff where there wasn’t an answer. Like today, everybody’s obsessed. My, my, my, my, my dear worst friend, John Siracusa, who I’ve only recently realized mainly just cares about being right. He wants to be right, he wants to be right, and he wants you to know that we’ve already talked about this on the show before.

[01:23:15] Merlin: That doesn’t come up at band practice.

[01:23:18] Jeff: No, hell no. No

[01:23:19] Merlin: Because I mean like in the same way that like I’ve tried to say to my dear wife, sometimes communication is not about relaying information. It’s about bonding, right? And like, that’s really good to know about me. Because when one of the bits in our, every family’s got bits, and one of the bits in our family come up, I’m not doing that.

[01:23:37] Merlin: When I quote a Curious George cartoon, and there are Curious George cartoons that I quote constantly, like all the time. Anytime I hear, you know me, maybe a certain cadence. And I, I just, I just start quoting, uh, that’s a good amount, or a lot of cheese, or like whatever it is, or something happened in there, something monkey related.

[01:23:58] Jeff: All I hear is woo.

[01:23:59] Merlin: Ooh, [01:24:00] and he remembers Pigeon Compass. That’s such a good show. That’s

[01:24:05] Jeff: That’s good technology.

[01:24:07] Merlin: off Caillou. Turn off Caillou.

[01:24:09] Jeff: Oh, turn off Caillou forever. Turn on Pingu if you can’t get

[01:24:13] Merlin: What about that Mr. Hinkle? Has he ever been indicted? Remember, remember Caillou’s next door neighbor? That guy’s no Mr. Wilson, is what I’m saying. Um, we’re closing the threads on our threads. Um, useful things to, I sent you a screenshot, uh, useful things to say to yourself. Not now. Stay on target. Stop. Just keep doing the thing.

[01:24:37] Merlin: Eh, whatever, you’ll get it next time. What exactly are you saving this for? That’s to the chicken wing that my wife put in the fridge a long time ago and I said, you’ll never eat that. Cause now, now we’ve got garbage and the cost of a bag. I’ve decided not to let it bother me. Any, I mean, obviously we’re going to need to have, uh, maybe next week or something.

[01:24:56] Merlin: We will have another episode to talk about the dingus. [01:25:00] Uh, this feels, this feels like something good to do.

[01:25:05] Jeff: I love

[01:25:05] Merlin: I bet there’s some, one person, somebody who will like this.

[01:25:10] Jeff: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean,

[01:25:11] Merlin: I’m very deeply sorry.

[01:25:14] Jeff: I

[01:25:14] Merlin: is there a podcast? Are you listening to any good podcasts? Do you like, oh, you know, have you ever heard Serial?

[01:25:18] Merlin: Yeah, I’ve heard Serial. Yeah, but like, is there one where they talk about Glenn Fleischman and Lifter Puller?

[01:25:23] Jeff: of, have you heard the off week, uh, overtired?

[01:25:25] Merlin: my God, it’s so good. What about Franz Nicolay? What, what about that guy who plays keyboards in, in, in the whole study? Do they mention him at all? Well, I heard on that show that, I heard that he likes the warm feeling, but he’s tired of all the dehydration, is what I

[01:25:39] Jeff: it’s probably, that sounds about right. I’ve

[01:25:41] Merlin: The hardest part about this is going to be finding things for notes, because this would be a very good notes episode.

[01:25:48] Jeff: That’s actually the most fun part. Thank you, Merlin

[01:25:52] Merlin: Wait, is that it? I mean, how the fuck is that the end?

[01:25:55] Jeff: Didn’t you just say we’re done?

[01:25:56] Merlin: Oh, I probably did. Let me look at my notes. I think I said I’m done. Let me[01:26:00]

[01:26:00] Jeff: Feel free

[01:26:00] You Still Gotta Do Shit

[01:26:00] Merlin: Uh, what else did I wrote down? Oh, I wrote down the word, phrase, ditto health. Oh, oh, yeah. So one thing I was going to say, I realized this in life, but I really crystallized when I was, um, in the hospital in December for a while, a few days.

[01:26:12] Merlin: And, um, uh, I figure what this is related to, but it was related to something you said earlier. Oh, about your kid. Oh yeah, you’re talking about, like, we were talking about kids, and like, you know, sort of, however you think of it, like, your kid’s going to college, you’re fighting the last war, you’re like, and you’re talking about, like, I kind of got the implication from what you’re saying, I think, of like, hey, I need to get my head in the game.

[01:26:33] Merlin: Like, I’m not helping by being sad about who my kid is. I’m not saying you said that, but you know what I mean, like, and I realized while I was in the hospital, the thing that makes so many things so difficult in life is that everything keeps going on in life, no matter what is happening with you. Put differently, your entire life, your life that you’re part of, continues to go on even when you feel bad about life.

[01:26:56] Merlin: And that’s, that’s an observation. It’s not, That [01:27:00] doesn’t, you don’t have to go run around, do anything, change your schedule. But, you know, it’s what makes it difficult. Like, when you’re trying to get help for physical or, God forbid, mental health, ask your co host about this. Your life will continue to go on.

[01:27:13] Merlin: You still gotta do shit while you’re figuring out How to be who you are in a way that’s sustainable. All of life goes on without you. And the reason I say that here is for several reasons. Just in the generic. Well no, in specifics. With your kid, you’re losing actual time. Whatever time you have right now, Being how you are, you know, having the life that you have.

[01:27:36] Merlin: And I’m not trying to make this a binary or digital. I’m not saying like, oh, my kids ate, so now I’m not sad anymore. No, but like, the problem is, like, your head’s not in the game, and you’re not there for what you do have. And the thing is, that goes for everything. And that requires an extraordinary amount of tolerance and forgiveness in yourself.

[01:27:55] Merlin: And, and like, that’s why I try to avoid saying things like, you better do this or [01:28:00] like, you know, why don’t you just, or all those things that dumb people say. What I’m trying to say is like, everybody says, Oh, God, be sure to spend time with your kid. And it’s like, it’s true. Like, my tip was always free for, for, for, for.

[01:28:10] Merlin: Parents, get on the floor. Go be dumb.

[01:28:13] Jeff: on the floor.

[01:28:14] Merlin: Do what your kid wants to do, even if, even or especially if you think it’s stupid. You don’t need to corral them or have like a personal intellectual rodeo that’ll help them be proactive in life. Like, just get on the floor and build whatever dumb crap your kid wants to build, whatever.

[01:28:30] Merlin: But like, that keeps going. You can have relief from the feeling of always fighting the last war by not making it about yourself. And by saying, Hey, I’m Some days I’m the mule, some days I’m the checkbook. And some days I’m not needed at all. And that’s not bad. That’s just what it is. So instead of trying to constantly, in the same way that you cling to these pants that don’t fit anymore, and this chicken you’re never going to eat in life, find a way to disappear in Life’s chicken.

[01:28:58] Merlin: And find your way to disappear into the full [01:29:00] catastrophe. The most that you can at a given time, but as you said earlier, we never got to this, but then make that a practice. Make it a thing you keep coming back to. If you have a fork in the road, like if you’re trying to be healthier and you have the choice of eating more well or less well, well, you always have that choice whether you like it or not.

[01:29:18] Merlin: That’s the existential, that’s the Kierkegaardian dilemma of life. But like, you know, my kid will live with us, God willing, for a little bit longer. A year or so, and, and like, I have so many levels to that feeling, many of which I’ve gently tried to move aside, including, hey, why isn’t my kid, why doesn’t my kid like me as much as when my kid used to come crawl in bed with me before dawn on Wednesday mornings, because that’s when the new comic books came out, and we would read on the iPad, we would go see what’s new with Adventure Time, or, you know, or Spider Man, or whatever, and I miss that, but like, that’s That kid.

[01:29:57] Merlin: That’s that person. And also, that was [01:30:00] me, then. And, uh And then, like, the next level becomes like, oh, that is sweet, you have that memory, you must miss it. And it’s like, well, it’s not that I’m, I wouldn’t say I miss it, Bob. But you would, but it is, sorry, that’s, that’s, uh, that’s, uh, office space, not idiocracy.

[01:30:14] Merlin: But, like, you, but you know what I’m saying? Like, it’s, it takes a lot, the great Edgar, Edgar A. Guest, It takes a heap of living to make a house a home. It takes a lot of, like, gentle self awareness, or, Like, like non dad voice stuff to incline yourself toward accepting you are where you are. You’ve been where you’ve been.

[01:30:35] Merlin: And that full catastrophe continues whether you’re into it or not. And I’m not saying you have to go out and zone out and buy a iPhone app that has a gong sound in it. But like, there is a way that you can incline yourself toward the tumult of things you care deeply about. And in some ways, maybe that vulnerability might bubble up in ways that are both instructive and reassuring.

[01:30:57] Merlin: and useful, and will [01:31:00] help you transition to whatever your next thing is. And that’s that the full catastrophe goes on. If you’re living, it’s difficult.

[01:31:10] Jeff: This has been awesome.

[01:31:12] Merlin: This is the best. Thank you for having me. And thanks for playing with me and and tolerating me. And, um, hello, hello, hello, everyone. And sorry for how we are.

[01:31:24] Jeff: People died for us to be able to do this

[01:31:25] Merlin: Yeah, I watched. I didn’t watch my buddies die face down in the mud. Am I wrong?

[01:31:33]

…   continue reading

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#Tech #Brett #Terpstra #Christina #Warren #Geek #Technology #Gadgets #Software #Fitness #Mental Health #Cinema #Brett Terpstra #Christina Warren #Jeff Severns Guntzel #Tire #After Life

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