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.