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

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, th