Episode 58: Squirearchy of Monks


 * Benjamin Franklin
 * “I’m convinced now that Benjamin Franklin is more or less responsible for the French Revolution.” -JR
 * “Hmm, I’m gonna pause and just do a little tidying around the office. Just continue.” -MM
 * “We’ve got to get rid of this king. The Americans are onto something. This Ben Franklin is such a character, we want a little more of this action. You know, they’re pooping behind curtains and doing that whole French thing, all dressed in pink silk. And Franklin’s just, you know, he’s wearing his tweeds his American- he’s probably got sweatpants on. And they’re thinking, ‘This is what freedom looks like.’” -JR
 * Franklin was shagging fräuleins and spreading sedition.
 * “Anyway, then French Revolution, then Napoleon, and we know that leads to World War I. So, basically, Franklin- responsible for the holocaust.” -JR
 * “I’m gonna need to make a chart for that.” -MM
 * “I woke up early this morning.” -JR
 * Adulthood: “No one has half an hour in the morning to lay in bed and let their dreams manifest.” -JR
 * “My kitchen chairs match because I found them in the barn.” -JR
 * “Well, my forks don’t match, and that’s a source of personal pride.” -JR
 * Irish politics: Tiling over a whole in the wall.
 * 32:30- The fleeting satisfaction of iPad ownership when there’s always a better model coming out.
 * John’s twitter argument with a thoughtful Dominican monk.
 * He might not be a Dominican. John no longer remembers the squirearchy of monks.
 * John never bought a CD player.
 * Sarah Silverman was weird about using the bathroom in John’s trailer.
 * 44:15- The story of the Roderick on the Line show art
 * The day John bought his first Mac.
 * 1:07:00- John’s thoughts on (not) documenting the walk across Europe, 1999.
 * The trip and the social networking would be inextricable. He would be gone, but not completely gone.
 * The anxiety of being in places where no one would ever find him.
 * Remote villages where it was inconceivable that he didn’t speak Romanian.
 * “We no longer want to explore places in silence.” -JR
 * How the nature of photography has changed.
 * Autumn de Wilde and Elliott Smith.
 * 1:17:30- The moment where John stopped being a picky eater in Innsbruck, Austria.
 * Asparagus for the first time.
 * “Now if I had documented that restaurant…If I had checked in or blogged about it at the time or written it down and Yelped it, then that restaurant would not be a flag in my imagination in the same way. It would be a place that I could, that I would have pictures of or that might still exist. That I might have tried to go back to at some point. But instead that experience happened, happened in my memory in a way where my memories are like fairy tales or nursery rhymes. That version of Innsbruck, Austria exists in my mind as something out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. And I have no scrapbook about it, and I don’t want one.” -JR
 * Merlin’s photo of his mom and dad with an old can of Coke.
 * “Yeah, right, I’d look at a picture of this woman and she’d have ‘White Power’ tattoos on her knuckles that I didn’t notice at the time.” -JR
 * Merlin’s Adderall
 * Ambien