Episode 25: Supertrain


 * John has gotten a late start to the year. It is March.
 * There was a catholic tree growing on John's street.
 * John has made a pact with himself not to talk about the Balkans anymore on this podcast.
 * First mention of REM: "Michael Stipe says, 'When you throw something away, where is away?' — MM
 * ~5:00: John had a phase of hopping freight trains as a teenager.
 * Sometimes freight trains stop before reaching their destination. John learned this the hard way, after which he mistakenly, in the middle of the night, camped out at a dump. He awoke surrounded by bulldozers.
 * ~13:00: Uncapping dumps for petroleum:
 * “The future is mining trash.” — JR
 * "The only future we have is melting a Mr. Potato-head.” — MM
 * “My real plan is to go out there to those giant floating seas of plastic detritus in the ocean. To find the big Sargasso Sea-sized dead zone of floating garbage and just go out there with some kind of long-net fishing trawler and gather it all up and process it up on my converted Exxon Valdez future-ship” — JR
 * John’s father was a bigwig lawyer in the Alaskan transportation scene. Because of this, John was to drive a locomotive just before he got his pilot's license, at 17. John also used to throw ice and flaming paper off the 18th floor of his father’s hotel rooms.
 * “At the time there was no such thing as child abuse—they didn’t have a name for it, it was like autism—it was more, ‘Oh, I don’t understand why these kids are so sad. Let’s sue the schools!”
 * Lessons from John’s inevitable self-help ebook:
 * Don’t pitch your tent at a dump.
 * Don’t have a fake patois to impress people.
 * If you’re going to lean out a window, have stuff to throw.
 * John’s plan is to offer his services to hip, internet start-up companies as a man with “real world experience” for the board of directors.
 * “I interact with a lot of people who are part of the machine here. The corners of power. And I don’t even have to say it, its just understood, among these people: 'Uhh, I don’t know what Roderick does. I don’t even know why he’s here at this meeting. Isn’t he a singer songwriter? Why is he here?'” —JR (~49:00)
 * "Why is he so involved in civics?” —MM
 * “Its how everybody in power starts. You just show up places, and people go, ‘Why is he here?’ And then they go, 'Well, I better not cross him.' And if enough people do that, pretty soon, you walk in a room and everyone applauds.” —JR
 * Extended discussion of John’s dystopic future empire—“Supertrain”
 * “Its like the Treaty of Versailles, lets be honest, people are going to be looking for a hero. I think there are a lot of great trains out there that are unhappy with their work. There are so many trains that are held back.” —MM (59:00)
 * "I think if you had it magnetically levitated and you had no air resistance, you could go conceivably faster than light." —JR
 * "Is that based on science?" —MM
 * "Faster than fast." —JR
 * Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen look almost exactly alike, if you put Valerie Bertinelli in a fruit dehydrator.
 * "I think they both look like they've been in a smoker." -JR
 * 1:08:00—REM again
 * Mike Mills drunkenly accused John of being a homophobe (“homophonophobe”) in a Todd Rundgren sparkly 1972 getup
 * "He’s probably putting cocaine in his penis."