Episode 11: Everybody Knew What Mr. Finnell Did


 * John misses his orthodontist appointment because he was playing solitaire on his phone.


 * He is unsafe at any speed.
 * Even stacking rocks is better than playing solitaire on your phone.
 * 5:30- the principal was not John's friend. He beat him with a cricket bat. It had holes drilled in it.
 * John's dad: "Go ahead, beat the shit out of him."
 * He would walk around the lunchroom swinging a tennis racquet with weights attached.
 * If he could've taken his shirt off he would've done.
 * 13:40- the origin of ping pong. Merlin had a 400 pound teacher who had a big ping pong paddle.
 * 19:05: Mr. Fennell would paddle you, and everyone knew what Mr. Fennell did when he hit you with the paddle.
 * (John: What did he do? Did he groan? Merlin: He came prodigiously in his dolphin shorts.)
 * How many times can you cum while hitting someone before the school district steps in? There’s got to be some sort of form for that.
 * 20:25- In second grade, to distinguish himself from other kids who were just in the way of his path to greatness, John began publishing his own newspaper.
 * He was the only reporter, and the artist. Editor. They didn’t have an ombudsman.
 * When the teacher got tired of mimeographing the newspaper for him, they gave him special access to the teacher’s broom closet.
 * Death by a thousand cuts. It’s not an object lesson.
 * Also is "what happens when you subcontract sadism to non-sadists.” -JR (re: the morphine that was sometimes given to the punished).
 * Mr. Fennel would tape a star to the paddle and hit you until the star broke. And then he would stand by the door holding the paddle as class was let out.
 * John thinks that’s fine because to do any of that today you’d have to drive around in a van, kidnap the kids and then kill them and stuff the bodies in a culvert. “Even if you went to Thailand they’d find you.” -JR
 * Merlin: “What about the dolphin shorts. I bet he got rid of them. Those guys know what to keep and what to get rid of."
 * Elizabeth Taylor’s old pantaloons for auction. John is not a 50 year old gay male.
 * Merlin has had his mugshot taken in the same room as Peewee Herman.
 * Merlin lives near the police.
 * Zooey Deschanel would at least know whose call she was refusing.
 * John on the Hold Steady: "They sound like a bunch of guys on coffee break at a software company fake-singing the employee manual in the style of Bruce Springsteen."
 * "People like Phish! People will listen to anything!"
 * 47:55- Merlin doesn't have a lot of money but he'd take whatever money he has and pay someone to never stop kicking Mike Love in the balls for eternity.
 * The Decemberists are the Dylan to John's Donovan.
 * Mumford and Sons sounds like the Decemberists if you took most of the character of the Decemberists away. -JR, 52:40
 * The benchmark for being a Dylan fan has been set too high. -JR
 * ~58m, John is a fan of:
 * Talking about the potential causes of WWI.
 * Yelling about semantics, per Merlin.
 * Formerly, sitting in a room talking about guitars and amplifiers.
 * 1:00:30- The taxi driver problem: you don't want to talk about yourself anymore.You've told every story too many times.