Ep. 27: "Bellinghamming"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: Good morning.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: I'm doing well.
Merlin: I had some tater tots.
Merlin: I feel pretty good.
John: That's a good breakfast.
John: I didn't sing your Merlin Mann theme because I'm tired of people thinking they know me.
John: thinking they know what I'm going to do.
John: And knowing your movements ahead of time.
John: Yeah, I don't like it.
John: So I'm throwing a curveball.
Merlin: I think it's great, and I think it's totally on brand.
Merlin: You've talked about this a little bit.
Merlin: You take different routes sometimes, if you can say.
Merlin: Well, every time.
John: Even if it means I have to drive up on the sidewalk for some portion of my route, I'm going to take a different way.
John: But in this case, you know, with our conversations, I started to feel like, you know, I was becoming thematic and I don't want to do that.
John: Wow.
John: I want to be my own man.
John: Good for you.
John: I didn't realize you even thought about these things.
John: Well, because I saw you this week.
John: Because I saw you in person.
John: You sure?
John: I'm pretty sure.
John: I got on an elevator and there was a guy in there.
John: He was wearing a leather top hat and he said his name was Merlin Mann.
John: Tall guy.
John: I know Merlin Mann.
Merlin: That might have been Castro Lincoln.
John: He was very convincing, though.
Merlin: I'd like to see what a term would be like for Castro Lincoln.
Merlin: Castro Lincoln?
Merlin: Castro Lincoln and his leather top hat.
Merlin: He lives in the Castro.
Merlin: Yes, of course he does.
Merlin: Well, I mean, that's his home.
Merlin: I think he used to live in Illinois.
Merlin: Now, he was born in Kentucky and then was in Illinois.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Abe Lincoln?
John: Yeah.
John: Listen, I didn't come here to talk about Abe Lincoln.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Have you had a bad, if I could ask, have you had a bad morning?
John: Here's the thing.
John: You know, the whole improv comedy philosophy that, you know, you never say no.
John: You always say yes and.
John: I don't believe in that.
John: Sometimes you just say no.
John: I think we can all agree that yes and is a good idea.
Merlin: I agree to disagree with that statement.
Merlin: uh uh i you know i don't like talking about computers but i did notice yesterday that uh i i looked in on my uh internet feed and saw that that someone had stipulated what we could all agree on to you directly yes i was i was tempted i was tempted to jump into a bunker or something a fellow podcaster but one who has never listened to my podcast i'm almost certain
Merlin: Oh, God, did you hear that?
Merlin: Did you hear my heart breaking?
Merlin: Because he can't get it on his Victrola.
John: Lately, my braces have been really bothering me.
John: And last night, they were really cutting up my lips.
John: So, you know, when you have braces, they give you this wax that you're supposed to put on the braces to keep it from...
John: To keep what is evidently barbed wire in your mouth from tearing your face apart.
John: And I slept with this wax on my braces last night.
John: I just realized that the wax is still in there.
John: So if you can hear it in my voice, don't be confused.
John: I didn't bite my tongue or anything.
John: I just have wax on my braces.
Merlin: Does it make you, what's the word, like marble mouth?
Merlin: Does it make it harder to articulate?
No.
John: I think it's the huge slashes in my inner lip that make it harder to talk.
John: Last night I was walking home about four o'clock in the morning and walking through the neighborhood.
John: There are these two people walking side by side very slowly, both dressed in kind of leather trench, not trench coats, leather car coats.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like a duster?
John: Not a duster, no, but like a puffy leather jacket that just goes down to the bottom of your wallet.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: Sure.
John: Like a mid length and it's, and it's 4am and generally like two people walking slowly in puffy leather coats at 4am.
John: It's a kind of thing that a lot of people would walk to the other side of the street or, or, you know, or ask themselves like, am I, what's happened in my life that I'm here with these two people?
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: Let me just interject.
Merlin: Cause I'm not super familiar with the culture.
Merlin: Are we talking like a Capitol Hill or neighborhood toughs?
John: Well, that was hard to discern from behind, but I can say in the great hipster fashion chase, where the hipster kids are always trying to find the last good thing at thrift stores and turn it into a new fashion meme...
John: The puffy leather car coat has yet to, they have yet to adopt it.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like if you see a puffy leather car coat, particularly two of them, you can be pretty sure that the people don't also have handlebar mustaches.
John: That is still the purview.
John: Puffy coats are still the purview of actual poor people or bad people.
Merlin: Oh, so it's 4 a.m.
Merlin: You had to size them up a little bit.
John: It's 4 a.m.
John: I'm trying to size them up.
John: And there are a couple of halfway houses on this street.
John: So I'm like, hmm.
John: And one of the halfway houses is for drug abusers and sex offenders.
John: And the other halfway house is for people who are developmentally disabled and have committed a crime.
Merlin: In between them, they make a whole house.
John: They're a whole way house.
John: I like to see the block parties for this.
John: But you know, the halfway house that's for just criminal people.
John: is scary because there are bad people there.
John: But the halfway house for people who have mental and emotional problems and are also criminals is really the one, as you're walking near it, you have to be ready for anything.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So it isn't just like a goodwill sort of like occupational therapy thing.
Merlin: It's like these are people who probably did a couple bad things to end up in the halfway house.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: They need to be washed for a while before they move to the other half.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Okay.
John: So anyway, I'm in this vicinity and I'm walking behind these two people in the car coat.
John: And then one of them, the bigger of the two, when I'm about 15 feet behind them,
John: And getting into, you know, you're about 15 feet.
John: You're within range now if they wanted to turn around and throw something at you.
John: So I get into a little bit more of a, my posture doesn't change, but my readiness is enhanced.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And then the bigger of the two suddenly starts crab walking like like sinks his butt down, splays his feet apart and starts like like crab walking like sideways.
John: Well, he still hasn't seen me.
John: They don't know I'm behind them.
John: Was he doing a kata?
John: He's kind of walking.
John: His feet are pointing in opposite directions and he's walking like a Charlie Chaplin, except if Charlie Chaplin was trying to walk over a yoga ball.
John: And so now my readiness is really enhanced because what's this?
Merlin: A little hairs on the back of your neck for reasons you can't explain are starting to dart up a little bit.
Merlin: Something about this isn't quite right.
Merlin: What's this new wrinkle?
John: And so as I go around them, the thinner one of the two is looking at the crab walking one and trying to figure out what's going on.
John: And as I go around them, the bigger one says, in kind of a lispy voice, he goes, Oh, I've got such a bad rash.
John: And I realized...
John: They had their own problems.
John: My readiness went back to zero.
John: I went back to DEF CON 1.
Merlin: Oh, that's miserable.
Merlin: It's pretty humid there, right?
Merlin: It's pretty humid.
Merlin: It's humid and cold.
John: Well, I don't think the rash is a product of his humidity.
John: I'd get rid of the puffy leather coat first.
Merlin: It doesn't retain moisture.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, you want something that's going to breathe.
Merlin: Yeah, you'll rust your undercarriage.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's a rookie mistake, though.
Merlin: There's something that tells you that you should wear something loose.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And I think looseness is the problem.
Merlin: I mean, in my experience, when I've gotten rashes, it's it's looseness is the culprit.
Merlin: I mean, certainly it's had its, you know, you know, it's had its agents provocateur, you know, like, you know, not taking showers enough and probably, you know, let's be honest, not being up to speed on hygiene.
Merlin: But in that case, I think tightness tightness helps a rash a lot more than looseness.
Merlin: He at that point, he's probably given up.
Merlin: He's probably wearing those giant ass puffy boxers and he needed he needed to take a break.
John: Maybe he went swimming earlier and forgot to bring a change of clothes and then sat in the back seat of a station wagon for the long drive home.
John: Vinyl seat.
John: And on a vinyl seat with his swim trunks on.
John: That's a sure way to get a rash.
John: It's right in the book.
John: I've had a few rashes in my day.
Merlin: I'll bet you've had some.
Merlin: You know, I'm...
Merlin: It's your show, John, but I'm super interested in rashes.
Merlin: And I have to imagine a man like yourself, you have walked more miles than most people have driven.
Merlin: And you've certainly driven more miles than most people have driven.
Merlin: By the way, I would like to circle back to this at some point.
Merlin: Your driving has taken on a degree of certainty that I don't remember being there before.
Merlin: It's really admirable.
Merlin: But you walk with certainty.
Merlin: You can scope out a crab.
John: Well, you know, when I do long-distance walks, this is not something I would tell anybody, but I'll tell you.
John: When I do long-distance walks, especially when I'm walking in Europe, for instance, I always go buy German underwear because the Germans wear those little... Makes it easier to get across the borders.
John: Well, not just that, but the Germans wear those little bikini underwear because there's something wrong with them.
John: But those are much better for walking.
John: than our big, our voluminous American underwear.
John: So on my especially long walk that I did, I traded all my American underwear very early on for German bikini underwear, men's bikini underwear, which is great.
John: Great for... Really, it's very supportive.
John: The worst rash I ever had... See, I'm allergic to a lot of laundry soaps.
John: Oh.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: The worst rash I had when I was a freshman in college, I bought my own laundry detergent for the first time.
John: Because when you're living at home, of course, you never buy your own laundry detergent.
John: So in my college, I bought my own laundry detergent, and I bought the cheapest laundry detergent I could because I was an idiot.
John: And since I was a freshman in college, I had worn every item of clothing that I owned before ever doing a load of laundry.
John: Right?
John: As you do.
John: It was three months in to my freshman year.
John: And I had worn every item of clothing as many times as you could wear them before I needed to do a huge load of laundry.
John: I needed to wash all my clothes.
John: And as you know, I'm a little bit of a clothes horse, so I had epic piles of laundry.
John: And I took it all downstairs to the laundry room in the dorm, and I did all my clothes...
John: 20 loads of wine.
John: Oh, no.
John: And I carted them.
John: It was an entire Saturday.
John: It was like dollar store quality detergent.
John: Oh, yeah, exactly.
John: It was 99 cents for a big, huge thing of what is probably like lye.
John: It's like the component parts are lye, like aluminum flakes, mercury,
Merlin: It's like when they put the glass in the cocaine, right?
John: Yeah, right, right.
John: It's like... It makes it seem more effective.
John: Fiberglass.
John: So I hang up all my clothes, and I have this tremendous feeling of accomplishment.
John: I am a full-grown person.
John: I have done my laundry, and I have all fresh laundry.
John: I could go another three months without doing laundry.
John: And I put on my first change of clothes, my new clothes, on Monday morning, and I go to class, and I'm sitting in class, and I start to itch.
Merlin: Ugh.
John: And by the time the class is over and I've made it back to my room, from my wrists to my ankles, I am red and swollen and puffed out like a puffy leather jacket, except red as a monkey's ass.
Merlin: Oh, God, no.
John: And I'm lying in my bed.
John: I'm in torment.
John: You know, I'm lying in my bed naked, like groaning.
John: Nothing can be done about this rash.
John: You know, it just has to, I just have to lay there naked.
Merlin: Every single article of clothing you own is going to cause the same problem.
John: Everything.
John: My roommate is appalled.
John: He was appalled by me to begin with.
John: And now, now I'm lying there, swollen and naked.
John: He's just like so grossed, grossed out.
John: So I think to myself, I spent $40 on, on laundry.
John: I'm doing laundry.
John: I don't want to go spend another $40 to rewash all these clothes.
John: So in the middle of the night, I take all my clothes down to the communal showers.
John: And I hang them up on the, you know, it's like a 20 person shower.
John: I hang the clothes up all around the shower and I turn all the showers on.
John: And I'm washing all my clothes in the shower.
John: I'm not washing them.
John: I'm rinsing them.
John: And so the next day I get called down to the priest who administers our dorm.
John: And he sits me down in his chair and he gives me a lecture on hygiene.
John: And says, you realize that you can't just take your clothes in the shower.
John: Someone reported that you were washing your clothes in the shower, and you know that that doesn't get them clean.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
John: It was too difficult to explain.
Merlin: Somebody narked to the Jesuit?
Merlin: Yeah, they were Jesuits.
Merlin: Somebody narked on you?
John: Yeah, some kid came down the hall with a towel over his shoulder at 1 a.m.
John: thinking like, I'll take a late night shower.
Merlin: And so they picked up the red phone and said, you know, Friar Syphilis, I'm really worried.
Merlin: I'm worried about John Roderick.
John: Yeah, well, they opened the shower door and I was in there like Mickey Mouse in his wizard hat.
John: Swollen and red, right?
John: Swollen and red with all my dancing mushroom clothes.
John: You know, I'm animating all my clothes.
Merlin: I just want to stipulate, though, you were not in there in a pair of 501s.
Merlin: You were naked, red, and swollen with all of your clothes.
Merlin: All of my clothes.
John: Man, I would have knocked first.
John: Well, yeah, especially since normally if somebody's in that shower late at night, you don't know what they're doing.
Merlin: I bet that guy still knocks to this day after that.
Merlin: That's scarring.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You got to finger some beads to get that shit out of your mind.
Merlin: And this continues to this day.
Merlin: Now, when I was a kid, I was very sensitive.
Merlin: I think this was pretty common when I was a kid.
Merlin: I have head cold kind of allergies now.
Merlin: I don't think I have skin allergies.
Merlin: I don't have penicillin.
Merlin: I had a friend who, Dutch chocolate, milk chocolate would make her sick.
John: Allergic to milk chocolate?
Merlin: Chocolate milk, chocolate milk, you know, like in Little Bordens.
Merlin: Can you imagine that?
Merlin: Isn't that the worst?
Merlin: That's terrible.
Merlin: I have a dear friend whose son can't have, like, he got sick getting the test.
Merlin: Like, he had to go to the emergency room while they were giving him the test.
Merlin: That's how little, like, milk he could have.
Merlin: I feel so grateful that I don't want that.
Merlin: For me, it was Mr. Bubble.
Merlin: And it only took one time for us to go, oh, my God, this bullshit is killing our child.
Merlin: I don't know if I was as bad as you, but basically every part of me that was inside the Cincinnati bathtub was pink as a Mr. Bubble box.
John: Oh, my God, you're blowing my mind right now because...
John: someone gave me a bottle of Mr. Bubble recently.
Merlin: Well, they claim it's hypoallergenic now.
John: But I used some Mr. Bubble.
John: I put it into my bubble bath rotation because I have several different kinds of bubble baths.
John: And so I was like, Mr. Bubble, why not?
John: Why not add it to the bubble bath?
Merlin: It's got bubble right in the name.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And it's in a pink bottle.
John: Honorific bubble bath rotation.
John: And so I put it into the rotation.
John: But I have to say, the bubble bath I took with Mr. Bubble was a shorter one.
John: But I did start to feel that telltale itchiness.
John: Like a tingle.
John: A little bit of a tingle, a little bit of pre-itch.
John: And I got out of there.
John: I got out of there fast.
John: But now when Mr. Bubble comes up in the bubble bath rotation, I'm not ready to take it out of rotation, but I keep skipping it.
John: I keep skipping and I go right to the tea tree oil bubble bath.
Merlin: Oh, I like some tea tree oil.
Merlin: Tea tree oil, you know, is a, what do you call it?
Merlin: It's good for everything.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yeah, it's an adaptogen.
Merlin: I was going to say apobizumab.
Merlin: I think people might take it for drug tests, too.
Merlin: Now, what about bath bomb?
Merlin: There's a whole bunch of stuff you can take.
Merlin: You take tea tree oil shampoo for a drug test?
Merlin: I don't know if you get the shampoo.
Merlin: You can get a tincture.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: It has a very distinctive smell.
Merlin: Very distinctive smell.
Merlin: It does, and it's tingly.
Merlin: I used to put it on cold sores.
Merlin: It's good for cold sores.
Merlin: I didn't know that.
Merlin: It's good.
John: It's good.
John: It tingles in the wrong way to put on your testicles.
Merlin: Oh, I wouldn't put it anywhere near my dingus, personally.
John: Well, I mean, I always try it with any kind of bath product.
John: I always try it out on my genitals.
John: Oh, you do like a little sample patch, like when you're trying out like a carpet cleaner?
John: You're kind of in there with it, and it's nice to know what's going to happen.
Merlin: Now, do you dilute that before you put it on?
Merlin: Do you do like a, what do they call it, a titration?
Merlin: Do you put just pure tea trail on your dingus?
Merlin: I'm not a diluter.
John: There are a lot of things that say dilute with water, and I always take it straight.
John: Fuck you, Dr. Bronner.
John: Yeah, and the problem, of course, with that is that there are a lot of concentrates now.
John: All the products are concentrated, and I use them undiluted.
John: At first.
John: Or, you know, I used the amount that I normally would have used in the unconcentrated form.
John: And I actually had to call the washing machine service guy at one point.
John: I was like, my washing machine's broken.
John: And he came out and spent all day with his tools splayed all over, taking it apart and putting it back together.
John: And he was like, there's nothing wrong with this washing machine.
John: And I said, well, it keeps shutting off.
John: It won't do a full load.
John: And he said, how much laundry detergent are you putting in?
John: And I showed him.
John: And he said, that's enough for 10 loads of laundry.
Merlin: Oh, man.
John: What's happening is you're creating so much foam that it's shutting the system down.
Merlin: Okay.
John: So ever since I learned how much laundry detergent to use, now everything works fine.
Merlin: I can't get my daughter to understand that.
Merlin: She likes getting lots of soap on her hands because soap is fun.
Merlin: But as a man, as you know, as somebody who has learned to shave, without soap, water is the most important part.
Merlin: It's a water, water, water.
Merlin: It's all about the water.
Merlin: Water.
Merlin: And the concentrated thing, I think that's something that's happened, especially, gosh, especially in the last 10 years, but really in the last 25, 30 years, because I think what they do is, what's concentration mean?
Merlin: Concentration means you take out water, you take out liquid, and you can put it in a smaller bottle
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You see where I'm going with this.
Merlin: It makes it less costly.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The shipping costs.
Merlin: Shipping costs.
Merlin: And I mentioned this in passing just because I have my detergent problem.
Merlin: I was at like, OK, so like you're in a Jesuit shower with all of your clothes and you're puffy.
Merlin: Like, isn't there some part of you that goes, OK, I hope I hope it doesn't get 100 times worse than this.
Merlin: Like this is this.
Merlin: This is bad.
Merlin: This sucks.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, like for me, I was at this nadir of, you know, the kind of nadir you can have when you're in your early 20s.
Merlin: But I was at a pretty low point.
Merlin: I didn't have a lot of money.
Merlin: I've been doing a lot of drugs.
Merlin: And I had a relationship that I really liked.
Merlin: And I think I was out of blank cassettes.
Merlin: Like there are a lot of things that were mitigating against me.
Mm hmm.
Merlin: And to top it all off, my mom, when I went to school that year, had been kind enough to gift me with a bottle of concentrated Aera, which is now not like your stuff.
Merlin: It's very high end.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Aera is good gear.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: I think it keeps the colors and it gets the whites white.
Merlin: I don't really recall.
Merlin: But I had this big red bottle of Aera.
Merlin: And let's be honest, like you...
Merlin: I don't want to say like you, but for me, like stench was a big leading indicator for laundry, but really rigidity when your clothes become rigid.
Merlin: And there's so many things that could become rigid about laundry.
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: That could be a towel.
Merlin: That could be a German pant.
Merlin: And for me, it was certainly the pits of my shirts where they would start to crack a little bit.
Merlin: Oh, that's disgusting.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You put on your dump truck shirt and it cracks a little bit.
John: Well, you see, I'm a person that doesn't, that has no body odor.
John: So my clothes I can wear many, many times.
Merlin: I'm not even writing that on a card.
Merlin: There's so many problems with that.
Merlin: The odor's coming from something.
Merlin: I don't know if it's your body.
Merlin: I don't know if you've got some kind of an Indian poultice that you're wearing.
John: If you smell a smell on me, it's usually what's in my pockets.
John: I don't smell.
John: It's just that I collect things as I go down the road.
John: Really?
John: They're in my pockets.
Merlin: Okay, I'm going to skip my era story.
Merlin: I want to hear about your pockets.
Merlin: All you need to know about this is that I had not done hardly any laundry the whole year.
Merlin: It's the end of the year.
Merlin: My life is falling apart, and I've run out of dish liquid.
Merlin: And so I start washing my dishes with a large amount of concentrated laundry detergent.
Merlin: That's brilliant.
Merlin: So now I'm drinking water and eating macaroni and cheese out of dishes that were washed with concentrated laundry detergent.
Merlin: And I lost my fucking mind and I wasn't sure why.
Merlin: It did not help that I was taking a lot of MDMA, but on top of it.
Merlin: You were getting high off of the laundry soap?
Merlin: I was getting something orthogonal to high.
Merlin: I wasn't even getting the opposite of high.
Merlin: I wasn't even getting, you know, I was getting concentrated.
Merlin: It was the problem.
Merlin: And my mom finally had to say she came and she drank a Coke out of a cup and she said, I don't think something's quite right here.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I don't really remember.
Merlin: My memory is really sketchy.
Merlin: I think she might have said, this tastes like air laundry detergent.
John: Moms are so good with that stuff.
John: They really can tell from the distance.
Merlin: Moms can be an important check valve in your 20s.
John: Yeah.
John: They're like, wait a minute.
John: So pockets.
John: Tell me about your pockets.
John: This isn't working.
John: You know what the best laundry soap is?
John: What's that?
John: Cheer-free.
John: Cheer free.
John: It's cheer.
John: Right.
John: But it's free.
John: Not that it's inexpensive.
John: No, I understand.
John: But that it has no fragrance.
John: No dyes.
John: No dyes.
John: It's just pure whatever soap is made of.
John: It's pure Tyler Durden fat accumulation.
John: And it's great.
John: I use cheer free and I never have a bad reaction.
Merlin: And that's been the cause of your concentration bubble problem is just too much cheer.
John: Too much cheer.
John: But it never gave me a rash.
John: Now, as for my pockets, there's a part of me that is still five years old.
Merlin: Leslie, your laundry.
John: One of the ways that manifests is that I fill out my pockets as I walk around the world with stuff that I find.
John: And at the end of the day, I disgorge my pockets onto the counter and I sift through all the little beach glass and snails and stuff that I've picked up along the way.
John: And sometimes, particularly if I put sand dollars in there or... I was on the beach the other day and there was a dead baby sea otter.
John: And it was everything I could do to not take the dead baby sea otter with me.
John: Because you felt bad for it?
John: Well, no.
John: It was just like, how often do you get one of those?
Merlin: I knew.
Merlin: It wasn't a question of Viking funeral.
Merlin: It was not a question of this will work in my otter collection.
Merlin: It was just something where you said, it'd be a shame.
Merlin: Again, like the suits that you encounter.
Merlin: It would be a shame if somebody who didn't appreciate it did something with that otter.
Merlin: You're a man who could appreciate a dead otter.
John: yeah well and the thing is the sea is coming in there are turkey vultures circling around there are a lot of things on this beach turkey vultures first among them uh and a lot and very many things in the sea that are going to uh they're going to want to find they're going to be very glad that they got this baby sea otter because it represents dinner to them or something but to me uh
John: I mean, there were so many things I could do with a baby sea otter, a dead baby sea otter.
John: But I realized that to take it with me was a very four-year-old thing to do because this baby sea otter was not going to travel well.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But it was hard for me to leave it on the beach.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Now, when you go through your beach glass and your crustaceans, is there any curation to it?
Merlin: Are you just kind of like rubbing your fingers on them and do you sort them?
Merlin: Or do they just go into like a larger pile?
Merlin: It sounds like you're doing a kind of, like we would say in productivity, it's a collection process.
Merlin: You're not really thinking about like exactly where it'll go or what it's for.
Merlin: But something in your brain or on the back of your neck says, this is a sea otter, a dead baby sea otter I could use, right?
Merlin: Or not, right?
Merlin: Yeah, oh no.
Merlin: So at what point is it at the point of emptying your pockets at the end of the day?
Merlin: When does the curation come into it?
John: Well, the curation is ongoing, right?
John: At first you sort, you empty your pockets, you got a sand dollar, you have some beach glass, a dead baby sea otter, half a sandwich that you made yourself.
John: I don't pick up somebody else's half sandwich.
John: But, you know, you've got a pocket knife.
John: So you sort it then.
John: The first sorting is how many of these things that were in my pocket belong together.
John: And then generally you don't pick up groups of things.
John: You have one wish rock.
John: You have one distortion pedal that you found on the side of the street.
John: They don't belong together.
John: So you put them with their like items in your home that you already have a collection of distortion boxes.
John: You already have a collection of wish rocks.
Merlin: Is a wish rock like a rubbing stone?
John: A wish rock is a rock that through some kind of geological process has a ring around it.
Merlin: Okay.
John: And it's a ring of other kind of rock that goes through the center of the rock.
John: And if you find one of those, you make a wish and throw it into the ocean.
Merlin: Sedimentary.
John: Well, it could be that there was a crack formed in some igneous rock, and then some different kind of rock came into the middle of it.
John: Some different kind of liquid rock went into the crack.
Merlin: You think metamorphic rock is a real thing?
Merlin: That always sounds kind of made up to me.
John: Well, I leave the geology to the geologists.
Merlin: Okay, let's circle back.
Merlin: So you've got your rocks with rings, you've got your otters, you've got your beach glass and sandwiches.
John: You're supposed to make a wish and throw it into the ocean, but I can't bring myself to throw them back, so I bring them home.
John: I have a big bowl of them, wish rocks.
John: So then you sort them, but then let's say it's a rainy Saturday.
John: It's a rainy Saturday.
John: And this is the thing about the dead baby otter.
John: I don't have other ones.
John: So I would have to start a new collection, A, or I would have to find some collection that a dead baby otter belongs in.
John: I'm still trying to think of one.
Merlin: But this is part of your gift, though.
Merlin: I mean, I think it's a little cynical to say I'm not going to pick up a dead baby otter just because I don't have six other ones.
Merlin: Well, how does that begin, right?
Merlin: At some point, you go, this is like a cool guitar pick.
Merlin: Or you go, this is a nice key.
John: Let's say you get a dead baby otter.
John: You could hollow it out and make a hat.
John: You could, if I think you'd have to hollow it out no matter what you were going to do.
John: I would do that real fast unless you're going to freeze it.
Merlin: Would you freeze it and then use like a tabletop saw or like a router?
Merlin: Is that what it's called?
John: Well, the problem with freezing something like that is you got to thaw it again eventually, and that's not going to be a good process.
John: That's not going to be fun.
John: You're right.
John: You want to get to hollowing it out right away.
John: And that's part of the inhibiting.
John: I mean, I'm on the beach, right?
Merlin: Oh, so you might have been thinking about your schedule.
Merlin: You might have been thinking, I need to pick up some brace wax or jacket swabs.
Merlin: And therefore, I may not have time to do the honor that it would need to be a really suitable hat for me, even though you already have literally hundreds of hats.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm on the beach, so I don't know.
John: I mean, this is not a part of town where I know all the taxidermists.
John: Not like, you know, if I was in my neighborhood.
Merlin: You ever been to a taxidermist?
No.
Merlin: My dad, my dad was a sportsman and one of his best friends was a taxidermist.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, my dad was, believe it or not, he was a real sportsman.
Merlin: He, you know, he hunted.
Merlin: Did he hunt water buffalo?
Yeah.
Merlin: He hunted the kind of things you would hunt if you lived in the Midwest.
Merlin: Varmints.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: Whatever needed killing.
Merlin: Big city Jews.
Merlin: See?
Merlin: I was avoiding the ping pong.
Merlin: We're near Indiana, so we have to be careful.
Merlin: That's Klan country.
Merlin: No, but he was a terrific fisherman.
Merlin: He would catch a lot of really amazing big mouth bass.
Merlin: Stuff like, you know, I think you're smaller kind of canines, you know, like a fox type thing, maybe something like that.
Merlin: Anyway, he had a buddy who was a really good, you know, the taxidermy.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I think taxidermy is a lot like dentistry or handjobs or whatever, haircuts.
Merlin: Like say you've got a comb over.
Merlin: If you've got a comb over, you keep going to that same barber.
Merlin: Oh, you do.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: So you go in.
Merlin: You don't have to say, make it look like I've got hair here.
Merlin: You sit down, and hopefully you don't talk to each other.
Merlin: You look at a sports page or a penthouse, and then you walk out of there looking more or less like you wanted to look, right?
John: Yeah, but the comb over is more an expression of the barber than it is of the person living under the comb over.
Merlin: You think so?
Merlin: I really do.
Merlin: You think you go to five barbers, you get five different comb overs?
Yeah.
John: Yeah, I mean, because like you're saying, the comb-over is an opportunity.
John: You're reading A Penthouse.
John: The comb-over is the opportunity for the barber to create a hair nest where there was none.
John: And if he makes some choices, if he makes you look like Moe from The Three Stooges, you're not going to question it.
John: You're not going to go, hey, because you already feel ridiculous going in there and having him...
Merlin: you know make a hair helmet don't you imagine there must be people who specialize in that i i have to admit i've thought about this a lot and i god bless you anybody's got a comb over i'm not i don't if you're listening to this show and you have a comb i'm not criticizing i'm not criticizing but really let today be be the day and and you know what if you got a goatee too let's just go ahead and give that a little extra thought too well now now what kind of goatee are you talking about because there are several kinds
Merlin: If you still got the 90s goatee, you know exactly what goatee I mean.
Merlin: Oh, I do know that.
Merlin: I'm not talking about Queens of the Stone Age.
Merlin: I'm not talking about Chinstrap Lincoln.
John: Sometimes I like to rock a Colonel Sanders.
Merlin: You like a Van Dyke?
John: Well, it's not a Van Dyke, exactly.
John: It's a Mark Twain.
John: It's like you got the mustache, but they don't connect.
Merlin: Okay, here's the thing, though.
Merlin: If somebody comes in, and I have no idea, I'm so curious about how this works.
Merlin: Look, you know the stories about how Andy Warhol had a guy, he hired a guy to come in every few weeks and act like he was trimming his wig.
Merlin: So there was a guy who would come in and I – so think about that for a second.
Merlin: How do you make that phone call?
Merlin: You go, hi, I'm this guy who makes really famous pop art.
Merlin: I obviously have a wig and I would like you to come over and pretend to cut it.
Merlin: Or it's probably something much more subtle than that.
Merlin: And this is why I should go to a prostitute because I know so little about how this kind of stuff works.
Merlin: But I'm guessing the guy comes over.
Merlin: He takes his tools out.
Merlin: Because he's probably doing a closet or something in Andy's house, right?
Merlin: He's a busy guy.
John: When Andy's getting his haircut, I bet he's doing it right in the middle of the room and somebody's making a film about it and somebody's doing an interpretive dance about it.
John: He's not going to miss that opportunity.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: This is not so different from the dead baby otter.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's a serendipity.
Merlin: Anyway, somebody comes over.
John: It's a part of a performance, and I was trying to think of how I could incorporate this dead baby otter into a performance.
John: I couldn't.
Merlin: I don't doubt for a second that you can incorporate it.
Merlin: But, I mean, what I'm saying is I thought about this a lot, because if it were me,
Merlin: And I'm fortunate to be, at least for now, a largely be-haired man.
Merlin: So I'm not in a position to say anything about this.
Merlin: All I'm saying is like when you first go in, it seems like there's got to be a first time where you come in and you probably speak in – and the thing is, again, now if you're getting handjobs every day, you know exactly what to say and you're not embarrassed about it.
Merlin: You say, I would like this kind of a handjob.
Merlin: I have this much to spend.
John: Well, this is the thing that's fascinating to me about people that talk about sex uninhibitedly.
Merlin: You're not going to let me talk about comb overs, are you?
John: All right, go ahead.
John: No, go ahead.
John: No, no, no.
John: I'm interested to hear, because I know you're fixated on your own hair.
John: I am so not fixated on my own hair.
John: I get a $12 haircut, John.
John: I know, but you get a $12 haircut.
John: But how much time do you spend talking about your haircut before you get it?
John: I'm sure that you could pay the barber.
Merlin: Time?
John: You want to time me?
John: You could pay the barber $50 and still not have compensated him adequately for his time.
John: I have very fine hair, John.
John: Your hair is tremendous, and that is why your haircut fixation is such a source of joy for me.
Merlin: We act like being a barber is a typical sort of blue-collar trade.
Merlin: And really, there's no such thing as a typical blue-collar trade.
Merlin: There's huge amounts of expertise.
Merlin: This is a person.
Merlin: Think about this.
Merlin: You're bringing in.
Merlin: If you're dealing with comb-overs, you're dealing with psychology.
Merlin: You are dealing certainly with physics.
Merlin: You're dealing with a lot of mechanical skills.
Merlin: And you also have to handle money.
Merlin: You're an artist.
Merlin: You are an artist because you're going to have to say to that person, and again, over time, should that not evolve, you probably can't rock the same color if you were doing the mow for a while and that was working.
Merlin: Right.
John: And dealing with natural hair, you're also a time traveler because you are cutting hair and you are extrapolating what this haircut is going to look like in six weeks.
John: Right.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: You're way ahead of everybody else.
Merlin: The guys at the halfway houses, they probably aren't always on top of their game financially.
Merlin: They probably have hard times, right?
Merlin: Correct.
Merlin: Is it possible at all that you could help them out by bringing that otter in and somebody could make that into a hairpiece?
John: I don't think that the skill set that the people in the halfway houses have, I don't think their skill sets overlap taxidermy.
Merlin: Taxidermy is hard.
Merlin: Taxidermy is not what people think it is.
John: Did your dad have taxidermy animals in the house?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Who inherited those?
Merlin: Oh, there's a very, very, very large Canada geese at my mom's house.
John: But you don't have a single little angry fox in your house.
John: A little angry fox perched on a log?
Merlin: I don't want to say the super obvious thing, but I find I'm incredibly impressed by taxidermy because I want our listeners to understand taxidermy is not what it sounds like.
Merlin: They say stuffing an animal.
Merlin: No, you're not.
Merlin: You're making a sculpture of that animal.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: People have no idea.
Merlin: They think when they hear stuffing an animal, you think you cut it open like a carp and stick a bunch of cotton balls in.
Merlin: Put some pillows in.
Merlin: If you've ever seen somebody's taxidermy dog that was done poorly, and I hope you never have to see that, but if you have to go watch television in an older relative's house and they have a small dog mounted on top of their TV, you're not going to be able to focus on the prices right.
Merlin: That guy's going to go over the mountain because you're staring at those little fucking googly eyes.
John: Oh, that's terrible.
John: And you're also, you're slipping on the plastic covered couch while you're trying to avoid the gaze of their poorly taxidermied former pet.
John: And the cats, all the cats.
Merlin: But the, um, now anyway, we can move on.
Merlin: But all I'm saying is when I was in there though, okay, so answer your question.
Merlin: No, I don't.
Merlin: Cause I find it incredibly creepy to have stuffed animals around when we go to the academy.
John: It's a skin of an animal over a plastic armature.
Merlin: Everything about it is made up.
Merlin: They look at and photograph.
Merlin: The fish one particularly interests me because it's – I don't know a lot about it, but all I'm saying is it's something that more people should respect as incredibly fucked up and creepy as it is.
Merlin: Imagine making a fucking deer look realistic.
Merlin: You have to build a sculpture of a deer.
Merlin: You choose.
Merlin: Those aren't the deer's eyes.
Merlin: They have to pick eyes that look like the deer.
Merlin: It's like, what's his head?
Merlin: The hyper-reality guy, Umberto Eco.
Merlin: It's like you're making a simulacra deer from scratch, practically.
John: Right.
John: Well, there are some deer parts that you do use.
Merlin: Which parts?
Merlin: You mean the little puffy tail?
John: No, the skin of the deer.
Merlin: So you cut that in a certain way that is going to keep it intact, kind of like you would do with an apple or an orange.
Merlin: Yeah, you peel the deer.
John: Okay.
John: And then you make a plastic deer.
Merlin: How do they get the insides out without tearing it?
John: That's the magic.
John: That's the magic of taxidermy.
Merlin: Now, unlike handjobs and co-workers, you can go into a taxidermy place and say, this is a fish that I caught.
Merlin: Please make it look like this fish.
Merlin: That's a transaction that seems very straightforward.
John: Well, you can say that in a handjob parlor, too.
John: You want it to look like this.
John: Well, you can say, this is a fish.
John: Oh.
John: I want you to make it look like this.
John: Oh.
Merlin: And the handjob purveyor goes, hmm, okay, I'm playing along.
Merlin: I've heard some people say, hey, if you like this haircut, take a picture of it and bring it back.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Do you think that you can do that with handjobs?
Merlin: Okay, maybe the first time, could you bring in, like maybe on your iPhone, you bring in a video of a handjob you've enjoyed?
Merlin: Just I'm asking for a friend.
Merlin: Or if you got a handjob, you've been shooting the handjob while it's happening.
Merlin: Can you bring it back later?
Merlin: Let's say Mickey's not there.
Merlin: You bring it in, and do you think you'd be able to replicate that?
Merlin: And maybe they say, you know what?
Merlin: That's not the kind I do.
Merlin: That's not my background.
John: I think that every handjob is different because every day is a new day.
John: This is why America is great, John.
John: It really is.
John: Unlike a taxidermied animal, which is stuck in time, right?
John: It's never going to grow more...
John: more fur.
John: Yeah, if anything, it's going to lose fur.
John: Yeah, you are constantly shucking off your skin cells.
John: So next week, your penis is a different penis than it was the week before.
John: You can't go in and say, I took a video of my last handjob.
John: I want you to do it exactly like this because you don't know what... You're different.
Merlin: Your penis is different.
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: Her hand is different.
Merlin: Her hand is different.
Merlin: This is fucking Heraclitus, day one.
Merlin: That's a really good point, John.
Merlin: Heraclitus would be a really good name for a handjob portal, by the way.
John: Wow.
Merlin: Heraclitus's... You never dip it in the same hand twice.
John: Heraclitus's parlor of mystery?
Merlin: I'm just trying to think of... No, the Parmenides parlor has a certain rigidity to it.
Merlin: It does.
John: So I yeah, I would feel like what you would do to get what you were trying to approximate the handjob you got last time by saying some, you know, by saying some of the same.
John: I mean, we have friends.
John: We have mutual friend now, you and I, who could address this topic just quite directly.
Merlin: Is this is this is this the friend that you ran into that day?
John: I run into people all the time.
John: When you were in the handjob district and you ran into somebody?
John: This was my run into the handjob friend.
John: It's your handjob friend.
John: You don't want to say somebody's your handjob friend.
John: You know what?
John: I shouldn't have gone to public schools.
John: I was in Seattle's handjob district.
John: You told this story.
John: This is a terrific story.
John: Anyway, but I feel like in order to get the handjob you want, you have to say some things directly and you have to say some things obliquely.
John: Do you really think so?
John: You don't go in and just say, here's what I want, get her done.
John: I disagree.
John: You have to have some amount of...
Merlin: Pretending that... May I adopt... May I briefly... Because I'm not in any position to do this with you.
Merlin: But may I get slightly Socratic for a minute?
John: Yeah, well, please do.
Merlin: Would you agree that doing hand jobs for a living is a kind of business?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Would you seed...
Merlin: That those people have probably... That's a poor choice of words.
Merlin: Don't use the word C. Okay, let me start over.
Merlin: Because there's two spellings of C. Okay, would you inseminate that the people that give the handjobs probably have more experience with giving handjobs than you and know the business?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And is it fair to say that with those things in place, that they are in a position to appreciate candor for their customers so that they can deliver the best product for the correct price?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I believe that's true.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So somebody comes to you and says, we want... So I heard you...
Merlin: I don't want to be creepy, but I like that stuff you do.
Merlin: No, you want somebody to go come and play a fucking concert at the club.
Merlin: It's this much.
John: You don't want to come in and Bellingham the people with a whole bunch of like, I don't know.
Merlin: Is that a verb?
John: Well, I'm turning it into a verb.
John: Well, that's good.
Merlin: Can you give me just a rough idea?
Merlin: Transitive verb to Bellingham.
Merlin: What does that mean?
John: The city of Bellingham is the city in the most northwestern corner of the United States.
John: Yeah.
John: You could say La Push out in the Olympic Peninsula is further west, but it's not as far north.
John: Bellingham is where the west coast sort of passive-aggressive, mealy-mouthed, we can all agree on cheese tendencies.
John: As you move further north and further west, those traits are concentrated until you get to the city of Bellingham where no one can make a decision...
John: No one can ever express an opinion.
John: No one can ever get into an argument.
John: It is impossible to get into an argument with someone in Bellingham because they will go, oh, I see.
John: Yes.
Yes.
John: You must hate Belly.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I mean, in the same way that the Mississippi Delta brought us so much rich blues music, is this where Don't Yell At Me music has its basis, do you think?
John: This is where Don't Yell At Me music came from.
John: It is where Don't Yell At Me culture comes from.
John: You go up there and people, you know, if you start talking in an unvarnished way about your feelings or about some ideas you had, people will throw Icelandic sweaters at you until you're so muffled.
John: Or give a redacted version of the anecdote on Tumblr tomorrow with lots of ellipses.
John: So I'm beginning to feel like just Bellinghamming things is the thing that I'm opposed to.
John: I want to put a stop to Bellinghamming.
John: But but so you don't want to go into a handjob parlor and and and Bellingham, the woman.
John: But at the same time, there is an element of fantasy necessary for for you to become truly aroused.
Merlin: You can't unless unless you're like a very unless you really are.
John: Unless you're a sicko, unless you're a sociopath and you're like, I want you to whack me off right now.
John: And I want to watch and I want you to start a little taxi cab meter.
Merlin: And I want, you know, I want some people like it because of that, though, the dirtiness.
John: Well, they like the dirtiness, but there has to be some element.
John: I think the people who like the dirtiness want there to be an element of degradation, and the people who don't like the dirtiness want there to be some pretend game where the woman actually likes this.
John: It's like going to Hooters.
John: She's doing it because she enjoys watching you have pleasure, even though the woman at the handshot parlor doesn't care about you.
Merlin: Now, a German goes in there.
Merlin: I can see a German wanting a taxi meter.
John: Well, a German wants the woman to take a poo on him.
Merlin: I periodically run across German pornography on the internet and I'm struck.
Merlin: I'm struck that there is any way that the German – well, not race.
Merlin: What's the word I'm looking for?
Merlin: I don't know how German people have babies because it seems to involve a lot of poop and hitting.
Merlin: You don't know what hole to put it in?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: There's very little penetration of the proper holes.
Merlin: It's a lot of poop and hitting.
Merlin: Yeah, poop and knitting.
John: The many years in college that I spent learning multiculturalism has taught me to respect and admire the German poop culture, poop sex culture.
Merlin: I don't judge.
Merlin: No, you can't judge.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: I guess what I'm saying is like, I guess we should not make it all about hand drives, but let's talk about haircuts.
Merlin: Let's say you go in and get a haircut and you want him to touch your balls.
Merlin: How do you ask?
Merlin: Is it something where you say that directly or do you, do you make like a, like a pointing South thing?
Merlin: Or like if you're getting, if you're getting a haircut and you want him to, to, to do it a little more rigidly at the top.
Merlin: I think you pull a Sylvester Stallone at that point.
Merlin: Eat eggs in glass.
John: No, the Sylvester Stallone is, at one point he was making a film here in Seattle.
John: Was he bellyhamming someone?
John: It was one of those Stallone movies where he's driving a car around and they're filming chase scenes in a city.
John: And if you live in the city, you realize that from one shot to the next, he's gone 15 miles and now he's headed in the opposite direction.
John: Wow, he just made great time.
John: He got to Potrero Hill really fast.
John: How did he do that?
John: How does he keep being on the top of the hill?
John: He keeps driving downhill, and now he's on the top again.
John: This must be when Van Ness had a trebuchet.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: So, yeah, he just flings himself all the way over.
John: So this Stallone movie is one of these terrible movies where he's a spy.
John: And there are no spies in Seattle, first of all.
John: I know that for a fact.
John: and uh he's a he's a spy and he's driving around in a puffy leather car coat because it happened during that era and if one minute he's on this side of the town and the next minute he's on that side and a lot of people i knew a lot of people in the seattle because seattle was trying to be a film town at that time uh a lot of people were working on this film and so i heard this story firsthand he had uh he had like he was miked for sound right while they're filming the movie and then uh
John: then he's not in this scene or something like that.
John: He's back at his trailer, but the microphone's still on him.
John: Oh, no.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: Is this really true?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: He's getting a blowjob from some production assistant.
John: A lady?
John: I'm pretty sure it's a lady.
John: Okay.
John: That part of the story was never stipulated, but I'm pretty sure it's a lady.
John: Oh, God, I don't want to hear this.
John: But everyone in the sound truck
John: They're all listening to him get this blowjob.
John: And I have never heard a recording of it, but I have heard the story from multiple people and it's always the same.
John: And the pull quote, the pull quote from Stallone is, cradle the balls, work the shaft.
John: Cradle the balls, work the shaft.
John: Two and a half on the sides, blended on top.
Merlin: Oh, gosh, gosh, gosh, gosh.
John: In the early 90s, when this story made the rounds, the idea, I think, that you could say to someone, cradle the balls, work the shaft.
John: That was kind of a revelation because, you know, you're used to when you're in your early 20s and you're getting your first or your late teens, let's say.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know when people get their first blowjobs.
John: Maybe that happens in their early teens, but not for me.
John: Talking about blowjobs here.
John: Yeah, it was something that I really kicked into gear with a little bit later in life.
John: But, you know.
John: He started out slow.
John: When you first start getting blowjobs, the only thing that ever comes out of your mouth, the only thing you ever say is, thank you.
John: It seems like an awful lot to ask of anyone.
John: Thank you.
John: That's so amazing.
John: Thank you.
John: Even if it's a terrible blowjob, which as you get older, you realize there can be really terrible blowjobs.
John: Absolutely.
John: But God, think about it from that person's end.
John: Well, I don't know.
John: There are enough of them happening right now as we speak.
John: People like it.
John: People like to do it.
Merlin: Yeah, you really think so?
John: Well, yeah, you have to like to do it.
John: Do you believe in altruism in general?
John: This is the Bellingham problem.
John: You think the blowjobs are a favor, but it's not necessarily a favor.
Merlin: You're talking about cottaging?
Merlin: Like, you go into a place.
Merlin: In England, they call it cottaging.
Merlin: You go into places, and there are apparently, not just in England, I guess this probably happens in Germany, too, you could walk into a place and somebody could poop on you, hit you, just because they enjoy that, right?
Merlin: Or maybe somebody's in there saying, this is occupied, please come in, mine hair.
Merlin: I would be happy to receive your graciousness.
John: Yeah, there's a side to everything.
John: The person who is walking down Broadway on a leash in assless leather chaps.
Merlin: You can't have an ass in leather chaps.
Merlin: They're all assless.
Merlin: Right, exactly.
John: Except he doesn't have any pants on underneath.
John: That's consensual.
John: They're happy to be chapped.
John: He likes to be the one naked in chaps just as much as the guy who's holding the leash likes it.
John: And so I think that is true for blowjobs too.
John: But in any case, it was a revelation in the early 90s to realize that you could speak so directly to someone who was fellating you and say, cradle the balls, work the shaft.
John: Like those are two instructions not incompatible with one another.
John: And he's saying like, you got two hands basically.
John: Put them both to work.
Merlin: What are you doing with the other one?
Merlin: Working a 10 key?
Merlin: Come on.
John: You got this other hand and you're like running it through your hair trying to look hot.
Merlin: You're called a production assisted, not a production distraction.
Merlin: You know, it's true.
John: There used to be an ad that ran in the local newspapers here for the hot tub place.
John: You know, the place where you go where you rent a hot tub for an hour.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Like the bathhouse kind of thing.
John: Well, yeah, except it was targeted for straight people.
Merlin: I mean, I'm sure 99% of people... Oh, so it was cedar instead of a porcelain.
John: Right.
John: And the picture that they had was a woman in a hot tub, in a bikini, and she was drinking a cosmopolitan with one hand, right?
John: And also simultaneously running her fingers seductively through her hair with the other hand.
John: And I don't know if you've ever tried to drink a cosmopolitan and seductively run your hands through your hair at the same time.
John: But it's a physical impossibility.
Merlin: No, they use it as a field sobriety test.
Merlin: It's like if you even agree to take the test, they know you're drunk.
Merlin: Especially if you're holding a cosmopolitan, let's be honest.
John: And I would look at this ad every time I opened the newspaper, and it infuriated me almost as much as those stupid Rosetta Stone ads where the Iowa farm boy is learning Italian so that he can get the Italian supermodel.
Merlin: I got a great job in automobile repair by learning Aramaic.
John: But the Rosetta Stone ads pissed me off mostly because the first time I saw that ad, it was very effective.
John: And then they ran the same ad for five years.
John: I was like, get a new ad company.
John: Get a new idea.
John: There's a second one of those, right?
John: He was a Florida auto mechanic.
John: She was a Japanese furry.
Merlin: I felt that way about a Crisco commercial in the early 80s.
Merlin: which I'm starting to think might have been, what's the opposite of a mass hysteria, personal insanity?
Merlin: It was where they would have testimonials, and they talked to a very old Southern woman, and they showed her name on the bottom of the screen, and her name was Toppy Smelly.
Merlin: How is it spelled?
Merlin: Like it sounds.
Merlin: Toppy Smelly.
John: How do you think she pronounced it?
John: I don't think she called herself Toppy Smelly.
Yeah.
Merlin: You think she pronounced it Topes Millet?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Topes Millet?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: This was a lady, you know, exactly like the kind of lady you would see on, like, candid camera.
Merlin: Like a kind of, you know, like a lady in her 50s, 60s.
Merlin: But, like, as I remember, and I could be remembering this wrong.
Merlin: I'm going to Google this and find out that I got this dead wrong.
Merlin: But do you remember there were just commercials that were on over and over and over again?
Merlin: Like, especially, like, local commercials.
Merlin: But in that case...
Merlin: You know, ancient Chinese secret, right?
Merlin: Like, that is so pounded into my head.
Merlin: And it was so awful and on so many times that, you know, now it's there.
Merlin: It's there.
Merlin: It's encoded right on the hard drive, whatever that is.
John: If you're looking for a better set of wheels, I will stand upon my head to beat all deals.
John: What's that?
John: Is that Alaska or Washington?
John: Well, it turns out, growing up in Alaska, the Ford dealer was named Cal Worthington.
John: That sounds completely made up.
John: Cal Worthington.
John: And he had this TV commercial where he sang.
John: We got our car from Cheapy McMarkdown.
John: No, Cal Worthington.
John: He was a respectable Ford dealer.
Merlin: There should be a whip crack every time you say his name.
John: Cal Worthington.
John: Well, he had a theme song where he would get up on top of cars, he would dance, and he would say, I will stand upon my head to beat all deals.
John: I will stand upon my head until my ears are turning red.
John: Go see Cal.
John: Go see Cal.
John: It sounds like Dr. Seuss.
John: And he would stand on his head in his TV commercials and you would think, I got to go see Cal.
John: And growing up in Alaska, these commercials were they ran every 20 seconds.
John: Yes.
John: For 15 years.
John: Right.
John: Everybody in Anchorage, Alaska can sing Cal Worthington's theme song all the way through.
John: And there are because he would buy 30 second spots, but he would buy one minute spots.
John: And I think sometimes late at night, there'd be two minute spots.
John: This song has six verses.
John: Like the Waffle House song.
John: It just goes on and on and on.
John: And he added verses as compact cars came in or campers and vans.
Merlin: Did he continue to stipulate that he would stand upon his head?
John: Yeah, if you're looking for a camper van, I will stand upon my head to get you a camper van.
John: And so what was kind of confusing was that in all his commercials, he was standing on his head in an environment where there were palm trees and it was very sunny outside.
John: This is before blue screens.
John: Right, yeah.
John: He's doing this out in the world.
John: It's before a green screen TV commercial where he would stand upon his head in a studio and then they would slide in a backdrop.
John: And in Alaska, we were so confused about what the outside world looked like that it never, I don't think it ever occurred to anybody that Cal Worthington also had chains in California.
John: Right.
John: And he was really a California car dealer who had one dealership in Alaska.
John: Right.
John: But we never put that together.
John: And it was just like, oh, sure, he's got palm trees because he's Cal Worthington.
John: Of course he has palm trees.
John: He might have been in Santa Monica.
John: He was probably in Santa Monica.
John: He probably had 25 dealerships in California and one in Alaska.
John: But we, I mean, when you meet an Alaskan, you sing the Cal Worthington theme song, and it's like big hugs all around.
John: Fist bumps.
Merlin: If you're from, you know, southwest Ohio, that would be Cash Ambergy.
Merlin: Cash Ambergy.
Merlin: K-A-S-H.
Merlin: Cash, last name Ambergy.
John: Well, he was one of the Ambergy Dukes.
Yeah.
Merlin: Take a journey to the center of my cash's big bargain barn in South Lebanon, Ohio.
Merlin: Save cash with cash.
Merlin: Follow the cards.
Merlin: Follow the signs to cash's big bargain barn in South Lebanon, Ohio.
Merlin: And that will just always be there forever.
John: Yeah, it's there in your mind.
John: Cash's big bargain barn.
John: Fucking love the 1970s.
John: Yeah, you could not.
John: You didn't make it all the way through calculus, I'm guessing.
John: But you have that in your mind until the day you die.
John: Is that right?
John: Did you make it all the way through calculus?
John: I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
Merlin: Really?
John: I didn't make it all the way through calculus either.
Merlin: I took geometry in 12th grade, John.
Merlin: I believe it's 8th graders that take geometry.
Merlin: No, wait.
Merlin: Is it 7th graders that take geometry?
John: I took geometry sometime pretty early there, yeah.
John: But I quit.
John: I quit taking math.
Merlin: I got a B in cursive.
Merlin: And cursive, huh?
Merlin: I don't think they teach that anymore.
Merlin: I was wondering about that.
Merlin: I was wondering if they even teach cursive anymore.
Merlin: I doubt they teach cursive.
Merlin: You know, when we were kids and we would call it cursive, our parents would, you know, people of my parents or my grandparents' generation would look at us like, what the fuck does cursive mean?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It means handwriting.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Longhand.
Merlin: Well, you know, yeah.
Merlin: And like everybody had great penmanship.
John: Which was Eric Clapton's original rock nickname.
John: Before people realized he doesn't have long hands.
John: He has a short guitar.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, you're saying it's forced perspective, like the Peter Jackson thing?
John: Yeah, he had a guitar that was made three-quarter size.
Merlin: You calling Eric Clapton a Balrog?
Merlin: It's like, call me Longhand.
Merlin: Do you think he's the one who would spray paint Clapton as God?
John: That's a good question.
Merlin: That seems like a brand.
Merlin: But you know, Brian Epstein, you know, the story where Brian Epstein would buy personally by.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like the singles, the early singles, he would make sure there was a sellout because he would personally buy them.
Merlin: Also, Brian Epstein very into cottaging and John Lennon and John Lennon.
Merlin: Now, what do you think?
Merlin: Do you think they ever fooled around?
John: Yeah, I bet you that he did.
John: I bet Lennon fooled around with him just to say he could.
John: And Lennon liked to fuck with people.
John: You know what I mean?
John: He liked to hold that over his head.
Merlin: Now, who do you think was the hander and the handy?
Merlin: You think John was getting the haircut?
Merlin: Pretty sure John was a top.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure John Lennon was a top.
Merlin: Okay, and so do you think he gave Brian Epstein instructions?
John: No, I think he probably giggled at Brian Epstein.
John: I think he probably used shame and fear of revelation to keep Brian Epstein.
John: But the thing about gay men is that they know how to give a hand job.
John: The penis is not a strange thing to them.
John: They've seen one before.
John: The challenge of giving handjob or blowjob instructions is that you're dealing with a woman who has never seen one before.
Merlin: I've heard this is one reason there's a lot of appeal on a strictly sexual satisfaction basis to doing things with somebody of the same gender.
Merlin: And at the risk of sounding provincial, I've never done anything with somebody of the same gender.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Even in college?
No.
Merlin: No, I was all fucked up on era back then.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: Who would have me?
Merlin: High on era.
Merlin: But they say, well, you know, you already got the equipment, right?
Merlin: You know how to work the tool.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: And so maybe it's a more efficient thing.
Merlin: You don't have to give those kinds of instructions.
Merlin: Oh, it's absolutely true.
John: As a gay man, you also realize that a little pinky up the bum helps the whole thing along.
Merlin: See, I didn't want to say it, but I think if you go into a place... Now, how do you ask for that?
Merlin: What, pinky up the bum?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, you say don't get it too short in the back.
John: Yeah, I think what you do is you do the international sign for pinky up the bum, which is you hold up a hand.
John: Put it in your ass.
John: You make a fist.
John: First, you make a fist, right?
John: Oh, God.
John: You're holding up a fist and then just raise the pinky.
Merlin: Are you sure that's international?
John: Yeah.
John: If you hold up a fist and then raise the pinky, that is pinky up the bum.
John: What else does it mean?
Merlin: Well, how about this?
Merlin: Nobody counts one to five starting with the pinky.
Merlin: You know, in Europe, I think they start with their thumb.
Merlin: My daughter counts with her thumb.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Starting.
Merlin: I think she might be European.
Merlin: But the thing is with that, okay, now there's all the different ones.
Merlin: To give somebody the finger in England, you do the little – I'm doing a thing with my fingers, my two fingers here.
Merlin: You do the backwards peace sign.
Merlin: Yeah, the up-butt peace sign.
Merlin: I just wonder from culture to culture if that might differ.
Merlin: I could see people in Romania and the Balkans wanting something pretty different.
John: People all around the world want a pinky up the bum.
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah.
John: And there's only one way to say it.
John: International language.
John: Make a fist and then raise the pinky.
John: Ding.
John: And then you kind of do a sweeping motion.
John: Kind of do a sweeping motion like, and then it's in your bum.
John: Right?
John: You're holding it up.
John: Here it is.
John: And sweep.
Merlin: If it was family circus, there would be a black dotted line to indicate movement.
John: Here it goes.
John: It goes across the yard, over the fence.
Merlin: I'll tell you where Billy is.
Merlin: He's got his pinky in my ass.
Merlin: That's where Billy is.
John: And then right in the bum.
John: Not me.
John: But that isn't a thing.
John: I think most young ladies are shy about putting their pinky in your bum.
Merlin: Even though you think they should know, they do or should know that everybody likes that.
John: Yeah, because I think putting stuff in a lady's bum is a different, that's in a different category.
John: You know, that's like, how long have we known each other?
John: That's a smaller slice of the pie.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, can be.
John: Can be a bigger slice of the pie.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't want to really get into that.
John: Now I'm revealing too much.
Merlin: Ladies are very picky about who cuts their hair.
Merlin: They're not afraid to go in and be very specific about how they want their hair cut.
Merlin: I want some of the ladies who are listening to this podcast to still have an element of surprise when they meet me.
Merlin: Oh, so they act like they don't know about the pinky, but then boom, no fist needed.
John: Well, when I hold up my fist and then I start raising the pinky, I want them to be like, what's going to happen next?
John: I don't want them to know like everything.
Merlin: Maybe they think they, please hit me.
Merlin: Maybe it's a German thing.
Merlin: You hold up a fist in Germany, they hit you and then poop on you.
John: Well, or you stick that pinky out and then hit them with the fist, but with the pinky and you break your own pinky and that's part of the hotness.
Merlin: Say thank you and leave a big tip.
Merlin: Actually, Germans don't tip.
John: They don't even tip.
John: Oh, you do.
John: That's not the kind of tip you want to leave.
Merlin: Okay, okay, okay.
Merlin: I'm shutting this down.