Ep. 56: "We Paradise in Our Wake"
Merlin: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How are you doing?
John: Good.
John: I thought I'd start the show off with a throat clearing.
Merlin: It's a little warm-up.
John: It's just a warm-up.
John: Just a taste of what's to come.
John: Not the throat clearing.
John: This is the season.
John: Well, clearing and coughing are part of my extra communication level.
Merlin: John, as you know, I'm not an allergist, but I never had an allergy in my life until I moved to this godforsaken state.
Merlin: I used to get sick, knock on wood, I used to get sick about...
Merlin: three and a half times more often in florida but it wasn't until i moved to california that i started waking up in the middle of the night sneezing and sneezing and sneezing and i'm led to believe that where you live in the washington state area yeah it's very what's not vernal what do they call it verdant verdant it's verdant is it bucolic
Merlin: It's both.
John: It's sneezy, it's grumpy, it's dopey now.
John: But the thing about the Bay Area is that you have cat dander storms.
John: And a lot of it's not visible to the naked eye, but all the people that own cats up in the sort of wine country and Sausalito, that cat dander just sweeps down over the bay.
Merlin: You got to take that.
Merlin: I think it's called a closing when you go in with your real estate agent and you have to show.
Merlin: Actually, they prefer that you bring a cat with you.
Merlin: If you're moving into the wine country, you need to show it.
Merlin: You're going to need to show that it's yours.
Merlin: It's like that movie Green Card.
John: Yeah.
John: You show up with a cat on your shoulder with a little leash and they know that you're serious about living in wine country.
John: A little vest.
Merlin: A lot of animals have little vests here.
John: You know, they're closer to where you live.
John: They wear little leather vests.
Yeah.
Merlin: well if only it were a joke um now you had a cat allergy as a child according to my research yes and uh do you did you shake that or do you still are you still uh exposed to dander and it causes problems
John: Well, the problem is that I love cats.
Merlin: They're really precious angels.
Merlin: They really are.
Merlin: Everyone is precious angels.
Merlin: Would you look at that?
Merlin: Look at that.
Merlin: Look at him doing that thing.
John: The thing is, every cat is a shit.
John: You know what I mean?
John: I've known them all.
John: I've known every kind of cat.
John: And they're all shits.
John: If they were six feet tall, we would be fucked.
Merlin: oh absolutely i mean like you get a dog dogs well we shouldn't get into the animal thing too much because we certainly have respect as animus we have respect for all creatures that's right that's right but i mean i honestly believe that most dogs like if you if you fell down and were crippled and couldn't get to a phone they would do everything in their power to try and help you they would they would bring you a beverage they would they would try and with their little sweet paws try and call and i really think cats are literally just waiting to nibble in your toes
John: Well, yeah, if you fell down and couldn't get up, a cat would eat your face.
John: They do it all the time.
Merlin: It happens constantly, and the more cats you get, and that dander accumulates, I think they have cat meetings, and they're just waiting.
Merlin: They're waiting for an opportunity.
John: You're going to slip on some poop.
John: You know this business about cat poop?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I do.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I hope that's not a turns out because it really comports with my own experience.
John: But in any case, I decided I could not have cats anymore.
John: A cat showed up here on my porch and I fell madly in love with him.
John: He was a wonderful guy and he was killed by a car.
John: And it was devastating to me.
John: And then I got another cat trying to fill the void in my heart.
John: And that cat...
John: It was a terrible person.
John: That cat had a lot of issues, but as you know, I'm not one to forgive a person or cat being an asshole just because they have issues.
Merlin: John, you have a lot of tolerance for people of all kinds, including animals, but I think you also, it seems like if you've got a reason, you're going to look out of the corner of your eye when that guy comes around.
John: Well, it's this whole business of like, oh, the cat has issues.
John: I'm like, right.
John: Well, we all have issues.
John: Solve your fucking issues, cat.
John: I gave that cat a lot of opportunities to solve her issues.
John: I don't want to be gender specific.
John: I don't want to be gender normative.
John: But this cat...
John: Had some issues.
John: I don't think that they're necessarily gender related issues.
Merlin: It's so hard to tell because they're I mean, it really is.
Merlin: It's like somebody with a variety of physical problems and you kind of don't know where to begin.
Merlin: Except with cats.
Merlin: See, the thing is, cats are people who like cats say things like, you know, they are independent or they are aloof.
Merlin: And I think, with much respect to the animal companions out there, I think they come up with a lot of fucking bullshit excuses for having a really dreadful and potentially evil animal in their house.
John: Yeah.
John: Now, independent and aloof are great qualities.
John: Especially in a girlfriend.
John: Or a manservant.
John: If you're like, oh yeah, my manservant is a little independent and aloof.
John: That's wonderful, I think.
John: I don't want a manservant.
Merlin: Can I just say grocery store cashier?
John: Grocery store cashier, independent and aloof.
John: These are good qualities.
John: But in a thing that you are feeding and cleaning up their shit...
John: You want a little bit of love from that thing.
John: I mean, this is a thing I'm going through with my daughter where it's like, listen, I'm cleaning up your shit still.
John: I want a little bit of love.
John: Sometimes you just got to sit on daddy's lap.
John: Sometimes you sit here and give daddy a hug, whether you like it or not.
Merlin: At least with a goldfish, you don't get anything from a goldfish, but at least you know it's going to die pretty soon.
John: Yeah, you don't expect anything from a goldfish, and frankly, you know, there are machines to clean up their shit.
John: If there was some kind of filter that I could put in my house that cleaned up the cat shit and cleaned the air, like scrubbed the air of cat dander, I might have a better relationship with him.
John: Anyway, I gave this cat away to a friend, and this friend has no problem at all.
John: He's a younger person.
John: He has no problem at all with a cat that bites your face.
John: He thinks it's hilarious.
John: And I'm like, great.
John: Well, you guys are a match made in heaven.
Merlin: Again, I think they come up, the cat people, God bless them.
Merlin: I think they come up with every excuse in the world for why that animal is the way it is.
Merlin: They have what is essentially the kind of animal that really should be outside hunting things and being hunted in many cases.
Merlin: And let me just, I want to stipulate, these are sweet precious angels.
Merlin: There's no question about it.
Merlin: But for example, I mean, many of the cats I have known were dicks.
Merlin: And my mom had a very dear friend and I always dreaded going to her house for two reasons.
John: We're going to get some letters.
John: You dreaded going to your mom's friend's house.
Merlin: I'm not going to open them because that dander.
John: You just run the letter under your nose and you're like, oh, ammonia.
Merlin: Oh my God, the ammonia.
Merlin: I got a couple things here.
Merlin: First of all, this lady, she had, let's say it, and I don't want to be ping pong, she had a Siamese cat.
Merlin: There's no Siamese cat that's not a dick.
Merlin: Here comes John.
Merlin: So there's two reasons, and this is the thing.
Merlin: I don't want to get into the pit bull thing that upsets people, but here's the thing.
John: You're going to get letters from Will Wheaton.
John: Will Wheaton's got a pit bull?
John: Will Wheaton's got one of those pit bull dogs, some kind of dog that is like 50% of the people in the world look at the dog and say, oh, this is a dog that was bred to grab humans by the neck
John: And shake them until they're dead.
John: And then 50% of the people in the world are like, this is an animal that was bred to love.
John: This is a companion and a loving, sweet, child care animal.
John: This is an animal that I would trust my newborn baby with.
John: And these 50%, the one half of the people and the other half of the people are never going to see eye to eye.
John: The 50%ers.
John: And Will Wheaton is in the – if you believe his Twitter feed, if you follow his Twitter feed, he is a pit bull owner and someone who is in the – this is a love bug, this animal, this –
John: This murderous combat animal.
Merlin: Literal killing machine.
John: Is a love bug.
John: And a whoobums and a noobie dooboobums.
John: And he's a goo-goo-gooos.
John: And he's, you know, he will write some blog posts, as you know, which is the new...
John: which is the new friendship.
John: I don't know what it is, but he writes a, he writes blog posts that say, if you don't think my woobums is a no boom boobums, then you are, uh, you are an animal and a, and a hate, hate filled life is hard for former child actors, but you know, I'm just thinking if there were somebody who was going to be a drug Lord, you would not suspect Wil Wheaton.
Merlin: I, my, my sense is most of the people who own pit bulls don't, don't fully realize what they're there for or,
Merlin: Or maybe they like that.
Merlin: Again, I'm just saying maybe he has a lot of squeak in his palatial, I'm guessing, Beverly Hills house.
John: I told you this story, didn't I?
John: When my mom bought her house, we moved in there.
John: The guy next door was kind of a legendary drug dealer in the neighborhood.
John: And they had a big house.
Merlin: They have a cool name?
Merlin: What was his name?
Merlin: You don't have to say, but I mean, did he have like a Carlos the Jackal kind of name?
John: No, it was like Terrence.
John: Terrence.
John: Everybody knows Terrence.
John: This is one of these neighborhoods where the houses are 100 years old.
John: They're big, old houses.
John: The neighborhood fell into decline in the 40s and 50s.
John: And then there was some redlining happening where you couldn't get loans in that neighborhood because there were too many blacks.
John: And then the neighborhood fell more into decline.
John: And then people started calling it a ghetto.
John: And then you really couldn't get a home improvement loan.
John: And, you know, it's the classic American story of how we make ghettos.
John: And then, of course, the gays move in.
John: First, the punk rockers move in and the artists move in.
John: Right.
John: And they take over these houses and turn them into party houses.
John: And then the gays move in.
John: And then they fix up the houses enough that the white liberals decide it's safe, like the hip ones.
Merlin: The gays are kind of the real estate version of a canary in a coal mine.
John: You know what they are?
John: They're like the Gaia bomb in Star Trek 2 or Star Trek 3.
John: What was the Star Trek where Spock died and they sent down the... What was that bomb called?
Merlin: I'm really, really embarrassed to say this.
Merlin: It was the Genesis bomb.
Merlin: The Genesis bomb.
Merlin: I don't want no spoilers, but doesn't Spock die in Wrath of Khan?
Merlin: The second one?
Merlin: That's not the one with the whale in Monterey.
John: No, I think Spock dies in the Genesis Bomb one, which I think is three.
John: You're good.
John: But then he comes back.
John: Anyway, yeah, spoiler alert.
John: Spock isn't actually dead.
Merlin: And to your knowledge, Wil Wheaton was not in that.
John: As far as I know.
John: Okay.
John: He may have had a folding chair that said, Will, and he sat on the set waiting for him to call.
John: But the Genesis bomb is actually a component of the whole Supertrain project.
John: There will be a Genesis bomb.
Merlin: I hate to reveal myself.
Merlin: I'm familiar with Kobayashi Maru.
Merlin: I'm familiar with Tribbles.
Merlin: And like I say, I do know about the whales in Monterey.
Merlin: Could you just, for an outsider, could you give me a quick sense of what the Genesis bomb does?
John: The Genesis bomb, as far as I understood it, was a colonizing bomb where the Star Treks would fly out and they'd find dead planets and they would drop the Genesis bomb on it and it would create...
John: an atmosphere and then within the atmosphere, things would start to grow.
John: It would happen very fast because of magic.
Merlin: That is a really, really good idea.
John: Yeah.
John: So instead of going to Mars and sitting there like drinking your own pee for a thousand years until you can drum up, you know, enough until, until the mining pays for the construction of like a habitat, uh,
John: You just fly over Mars, you drop a Genesis bomb, and then verdancy happens.
John: It sweeps across...
John: You know, it's like if you drop a food coloring in a water glass.
John: Okay.
John: And so the planet all of a sudden is like this incredible jungle.
Merlin: So you skip right over living in a bubble and dealing with hydroponics and small robots and go straight into condos.
John: Go straight into like, holy cats, this place is like, it's like Hawaii.
John: The whole planet turns to Hawaii, basically.
Damn.
John: Anyway, so Genesis Bomb, what was I talking about?
Merlin: Well, you were talking about the gays being the Genesis Bomb and Super Train.
John: Gays are Genesis Bombs for ghettos.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
John: You drop a couple, you drop like a young, crafty, handicrafty couple of gays into a neighborhood, and they fix up their house, and then all of a sudden it's like the house next door gets fixed up, and then the house down the block gets fixed up, and then people like me,
John: move in and they're like, wow, this neighborhood seems really inexpensive for how cool these houses are.
John: And then we're fixing up our houses.
John: And pretty soon, you know, eight years later, all the little old black ladies that had lived there for 50 years can't pay their property taxes anymore because the neighborhood has become like expensive.
John: And then they are driven out by taxes and
John: To live further out, live out in the suburbs, which in the 50s were where people moved to escape the inner city.
John: It's a constant.
John: It's a constant churning of the American churning.
John: But so anyway, my next door neighbor.
John: was a drug dealer.
John: And everybody in the neighborhood, when we moved in, we were the first white people to move on to our block.
John: And everybody in the neighborhood was like, oh, yeah, you're living next to Terrence.
John: He's a bad actor.
John: And he walked with a cane because he had been shot by the cops.
John: And so he walked with a cane, but he was not much older than I was.
John: And he lived in this house because his wife had inherited the house from her father who still lived in an attic room or something like that.
John: But anyway, he kept his stash.
John: And we became good friends.
John: But he kept his stash in an upstairs bedroom that had a little covered porch out the window.
John: where he kept a female pit bull chained on a six-foot chain, and she lived on the roof.
John: Oh, God.
John: And the roof was covered with shit because she never went off the roof, and she never wasn't on this six-foot chain.
John: And as you can imagine, this full-grown female pit bull was furious.
John: She was so mad.
Merlin: You could store up a lot of angry living on a poop-filled roof.
Merlin: You could on a six-foot chain.
Merlin: Six foot is not a lot of foot.
John: And I don't know whether he periodically opened the window and threw a couple of cheeseburgers out there, but he kept his drugs in that room.
John: So this was his strategy to keep people from jumping up on the roof and then breaking into the house, was he just kept this dog chained up on the roof.
John: Well, of course, the roof where she lived was eye level and 15 feet away from my kitchen window.
John: So every time I would come to the sink to wash a cup, I'm eyeball to eyeball with the world's angriest dog.
John: And she's just like... You're probably the closest thing she has to a friend.
John: She's just inside.
John: She's just insane.
John: Just spittle everywhere.
John: And yeah, maybe she's trying to, you know, maybe she's saying like, no, she definitely wants to kill you.
Merlin: But that was probably the closest thing that dog had to a relationship.
John: And I would try to speak soothingly to her.
John: But, you know, the Humane Society on the list of city agencies I was going to call about Terrence.
John: The Humane Society was like sixth down the list after the DEA and everything.
John: But anyway, we had a reproachment, the two of us, where it was like, hey, man, how's it going?
John: You know, I am...
John: Looking the other way, while you basically run a crack house here, as long as we assume a bond of friendship in our little corner of the neighborhood.
Merlin: This is how urban and in some cases suburban America should work.
Merlin: We don't all have to like each other.
Merlin: We don't have to get along on every little thing.
Merlin: We have to overlook these little things.
Merlin: And how about the lawn?
Merlin: Did he keep up the lawn?
John: He did not keep up the lawn, and also he had five kids living there with him.
Merlin: Oh, jeez.
John: So the kids were great, and I actually, you know, like... I'm sorry, were they his progeny, or were they rentals?
Merlin: They were his progeny.
John: Okay.
John: And I, you know, I kind of, the kids and I had a good relationship, and the fact about him was that...
John: My trained eye never detected that he used drugs of any kind.
John: He didn't even seem stoned on pot.
John: I think he was probably a pretty good businessman.
John: He did not dip into his... So he kept the level of crag zombies in the neighborhood...
John: Down to a dull roar.
John: Like, he didn't tolerate.
John: He did not run a crack house in the sense of, like, zombies in and out.
Merlin: It was more like a crack warehouse.
John: It was a crack warehouse.
John: It was a crack distribution center.
Merlin: See, I learned this from The Wire, because almost everything I know about urban America I learned from watching a television show.
Merlin: But the idea there is you try and keep things compartmentalized at both a materiel level and a personnel level.
Merlin: You want to provide as much.
Merlin: This is why this is interesting to me, that a drug lord would keep that in the place where he resided.
John: That seems, you know, like they come in... You know, Seattle's kind of... And of course, at this time, this neighborhood was...
John: let us say, poorly monitored by the local police.
Merlin: I think once you call something a ghetto, you're saying a lot to the people who live there.
Merlin: You're basically saying it's a blank check for problems.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: What the fuck?
Merlin: We live in a ghetto.
John: But it was a neighborhood like a lot.
John: I mean, there's the ghettos where all the original housing have been torn down and replaced with housing projects.
John: Right.
John: where none of the people feel any connection to the neighborhood or to where they live.
John: In Seattle, the word ghetto doesn't really apply because these were single-family homes where people had lived, had raised their children and were, you know, had lived for a whole generation or sometimes two or three generations.
John: So there was a tremendous amount of house pride in
John: in the neighborhood.
John: The problem was that they were poor.
John: And they couldn't get loans.
John: It was the classic situation.
John: They're old houses.
Merlin: They're going to need some help.
John: Yeah, we need a new roof.
John: We need new siding.
Merlin: This one's got poop on it.
John: And and they would go to their local, you know, and they would say, look, I own my home and I just need a home improvement loan.
John: And they'd be like, not in that neighborhood.
John: Sorry.
John: And so the roofs would get shitty and the gutters would fall.
John: And and so as you drove through the neighborhood, you would think this is rough.
John: And there are lots of teenage boys standing on the street smoking cigarettes.
John: But in fact, you get to know the people, and it's like, this is not a ghetto.
John: This is a poor neighborhood, and it's a poor neighborhood where the poorness is exacerbated by institutionalized racism.
John: There's no other way to put it.
John: But so this neighborhood was self-policing.
John: You know, the little old ladies didn't let Terrence get out of hand because they all knew his mother.
John: You know, they all knew him when he was a little kid.
John: So he'd grown up in that house.
John: Everybody did.
John: This was the neighborhood Jimi Hendrix grew up in.
John: Like Jimi Hendrix's childhood home was two and a half blocks away.
John: And everybody in the neighborhood that was 50 years old, all the 50 year old guys in that neighborhood all knew Jimi and played with him.
John: played first of all played you know kickball with him and then they all had they all played music with him you know you'd walk through that neighborhood with any guy that age and he'd be like oh yeah over at this house that's where we used to jam after school and over here is where jimmy you know like had his first beer and you know everybody had stories
John: But so... And Terrence knew how he fit into the neighborhood.
John: He knew everybody was afraid of him, but he also knew that there were certain old ladies you didn't cross.
John: And I'm stepping into it.
John: I'm stepping into this neighborhood as a guy who's lived in Seattle for many years and who has family in Seattle going back to 1880.
John: But I also...
John: I crossed Madison Street and went three blocks into the Central District.
John: And all of a sudden, as far as they're concerned, I'm like, well, I'm the new guy.
John: You know, I'm the white kid.
John: And what am I doing there?
John: And, you know, and I would try and explain my bona fides to everybody like, oh, no, you kidding?
John: I've been, you know, my people have been in Seattle since 1860.
John: And they're like, we don't care.
John: Yeah.
John: Also, you had that tricorn hat.
Merlin: Yeah, what are you doing here?
Merlin: But you didn't, like, stand in front of their house and frown or anything.
John: Well, no, I mean, I'm down.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: No, I'd walk down the street and be like... You are nothing if not down.
John: I'd be trying to fist bump everybody.
Merlin: Did you do, like, a Fat Albert dance?
Merlin: A little jivey walk?
John: I mean, welcome to the neighborhood and everything, but not so much with the fist bumping.
John: Maybe you could just keep that down to a dull roar.
John: But it's been amazing to watch that neighborhood change.
John: And, you know, now my mom is one of the little old ladies that's lived.
John: She's lived there for she'd lived in that house now for 16, 17 years.
John: And she is one of the.
John: And there are just a few houses left, except for right across the street from my mom's house is still the Universal Church of God in Christ creation, which is a church that's in an old mansion, where the windows have kind of all been covered with plywood, but they still have...
John: they still have rousing church services in there twice a week.
John: Wow.
John: So, you know, it's still... I think if you were a real estate person, you would still drive through that neighborhood and say it was in transition.
John: But, boy, it has... Well, it has transitioned.
John: And the first transition...
John: The first major transition happened when Terrence set his house on fire.
John: And it burned.
John: He installed, what was the story?
John: He installed an electronic security system.
John: But he had a friend install it.
John: And it shorted out at one point and sent a fire up through the stairwell.
Merlin: It probably had ancient wiring, for one thing.
John: Oh, and that's exactly what happened.
John: His friend installed a new security system on some knob and tube wiring and I'm sure just put some Elmer's glue on it or whatever.
John: So the house burned down.
John: Not burned down, it was damaged by fire.
Merlin: If I were Terrence, I would probably...
Merlin: seek out people that I could pay in product where they would work privately for me.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: If you get a cracky electrician in an old house, I mean, that's kind of a recipe for disaster.
John: My feeling is the worst job...
John: the thing i i like to hear about the least is when i when i know someone is a crackhead and it turns out they're also a locksmith that's a that's a bad job what a terrible combination that's a bad job for any drug addict to have and i don't mean bad for them i mean bad for society i want my locksmiths if there's one job i want
John: I want to walk in and see like a Christian fish on the wall or, you know, or a Latter-day Saint.
Merlin: You want it to be somebody who's very tidy and maybe a little bit taciturn.
John: Super ethical, won't copy a key that says do not duplicate.
Merlin: It asks a lot of questions.
Merlin: Like, well, if TSA people were competent, like somebody who's going to ask you some questions.
Merlin: Like when I came to Seattle, they noticed my driver's license was expiring soon.
Merlin: I appreciated that.
Merlin: I don't like it when people touch my balls, but I do like it when their job is to notice things like that, and they do notice it.
Merlin: In that instance, you get somebody who pulls up in a well-maintained vehicle.
Merlin: It says that they're bonded, whatever that means.
Merlin: Have you ever considered becoming bonded?
Merlin: I'm not really sure what's involved in that.
Merlin: I should let you finish your story about Terrence.
Merlin: Did they get the dog down, or did it perish in the conflagration?
John: No, the dog was on a part of the house that didn't burn, but they got their insurance settlement.
Merlin: Did the dog have any water damage or smoke damage?
John: There was some smoke damage.
John: And they joined the exodus of people from that neighborhood who were moving out of Seattle and down to Renton, where rents were still cheap, where property taxes were still low.
John: And it was a tremendous thing that happened between the 90s and now, where what had been this...
John: core, super tight neighborhood and absolutely a black neighborhood going back to the founding of Seattle and a black neighborhood that was where the city enforced
John: it at a certain point like it was it was originally it was a neighborhood that formed around a very successful black hotelier who moved to seattle at the at the very founding of the city and started a hotel and was a very successful guy and built himself a beautiful house in this neighborhood and so as you know as blacks moved to the neighborhood they were encouraged to move into that area and
John: And then at a certain point, the city was like, well, if you're black and you're moving to Seattle, you have to move to that area.
John: And it was a gradual creeping change that happened where pretty soon you couldn't rent or buy outside of this neighborhood.
John: And it became this incredibly vibrant neighborhood, incredibly powerful culture.
John: It's where Quincy Jones came from.
John: It's where Hendrix came from.
John: It's like Ray Charles got his start playing music in this neighborhood.
Yeah.
John: And anyway, the entire neighborhood now has been kind of culturally decimated, not by...
John: anything except this sort of influx of middle-class whites that are like, Hey, these houses are pretty good actually.
John: And so cheap.
John: And so the neighborhood little by little has all moved to Renton and places far beyond kind of down here where I'm living too.
John: But so Terrence moved and the people that bought that house and poured 500 grand into rebuilding the fire damage were, were the classic couple of,
John: the classic sort of white Seattleites.
John: He is a psychiatrist and she is a videographer, a videographer, the ultimate job.
John: She video, she videographs the ultimate job.
John: That is not a job.
John: The videographer.
John: Whenever I open up the Sunday supplement in the Seattle Times, and they are featuring some new architectural house on the lake, you know, like, oh, this is modern, you know, green construction, super loft with heated, poured concrete floors.
Merlin: I think my friend Mike Davidson did that.
Merlin: I think he built a very fancy, like, over-the-top fancy... He has a blog about the building of his crazy house on a lake.
John: Yeah.
John: And then, as you read the description...
John: One of those people, the husband or the wife, is always a videographer.
John: That is super interesting.
John: Which is code for rich parents.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: I think we get that here with things.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: So there's this really unlistenable thing that they do on KQED called Perspectives, where people do a little five-minute editorial.
John: Do they play Pucklebell's Canon?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, I think it's like the Brandenburg Concerto or something.
Merlin: A little water music.
Merlin: But there's code, I think, in these.
Merlin: I've listened to these for so many years.
Merlin: And now a perspective from – it's always like a lady with a hyphenate name.
Merlin: And I think there's code names.
Merlin: There's code jobs.
Merlin: Code jobs.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, it's funny because as somebody who has considered himself from time to time a writer, I think a lot of people, especially professional journalists and authors, don't like the word writer because it really doesn't tell you much about what that person does professionally.
Merlin: And I think they look down their nose in the same way that probably a physician thinks that somebody with a PhD in medieval studies shouldn't call themselves a doctor, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But no, when someone says that they are a, something like they are a writer living in Marin County.
Merlin: I think that's the Marin County version or they're, you know, it could be they're a potter.
Merlin: Like I think that Mr. Racist, like that's kind of, I think that's our version of videographer.
John: Yeah.
John: He's a blogger.
John: She's a ceramicist, and here's a spread in Architectural Digest of their $11 million home.
Merlin: They had a couple investments that really, really, really paid off.
Merlin: So, ceramicist, you say?
Merlin: That's what I tell people at parties.
Merlin: When I meet people at a party, and you get into that L.A.
Merlin: thing where they obviously want to parry over status, I will frequently tell people that I'm a ceramicist.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha!
Merlin: They say, hey, how's it going?
Merlin: Yeah, man, this place is crazy.
Merlin: Lime for the bar is nuts.
Merlin: So what do you do?
Merlin: I'm a producer because, of course, everybody in LA is a producer, whatever the fuck that means.
Merlin: I say, oh, I'm a ceramicist.
Merlin: And the nice thing about that is I don't really want to try to describe to them what I do because they wouldn't be interested.
Merlin: Now, here's the beauty part.
Merlin: If I tell them I'm a ceramicist, I got to tell you, like seven out of ten times, the conversation ends because I got nothing for them, right?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: But you can sometimes meet somebody super cool that goes, what the fuck?
Merlin: We are obviously not a ceramicist.
Merlin: And I'll say, I make dick jokes on the internet.
Merlin: Cool, me too.
Merlin: And you can have a conversation with them.
John: Yeah, it's right.
John: It's a great filter.
John: It's like a cheesecloth that only the best part of the wine gets through.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: It's like employment decanting.
Merlin: And now in the 90s, this stopped being useful, as you can understand.
Merlin: I used to tell people, they'd say, what do you do?
Merlin: And I'd say, I do stuff with computers.
Merlin: And that was plenty to stop the conversation because nobody cared.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: even in the 90s even in the 90s you could say if I'd said if I said I make things for the internet then I would have had to listen to them talk about you know keywords in AOL and stuff like that but you say you do things with computers you know nobody cares I think you said that to me and I was like hmm next and then you were like but I love Sloan I was like hmm next I do love Sloan and you were like no no I really love Sloan you guys remind me of Sloan and I was like oh boy yeah I've compared you to a lot of bands that you're not that crazy about yeah
Merlin: No, you are sui generis.
Merlin: By the way, that would be a much better name than Trey Boucher.
Merlin: Sui generis.
Merlin: So I don't want to provide too much triangulation here, but you've mentioned on a couple occasions that at a point not too long ago, I'm guessing the house on the other side became kind of like a flop house.
Merlin: Or it became like a, not transient maybe, but it seemed like there was a lot of people kind of coming in and out of that place.
Merlin: Was it that house or the one on the other side?
John: Yeah, it was the house on the other side.
John: The house that was formerly owned by Terrence.
Merlin: So the videographers are still in Terrence's house.
John: Well, no, they then sold, I swear to you, I am not kidding, they sold that house for $900,000.
John: to a guy, to a French guy who owns a restaurant and his wife who is like a big shot lawyer.
John: $900,000.
John: This is a house that when Terrence owned it, it was worth $80,000.
John: And we are talking about a span of 10 years.
John: That is bananas.
John: Totally bananas.
John: The house on the other side...
John: It's the biggest house in the neighborhood.
John: It's a massive house owned by a Seattle cop who grew up in the house with his seven brothers and sisters.
John: And his father...
John: owned a local service station.
John: And he was one of these guys that he just sort of, he bought houses in the neighborhood as they came up for sale because you could, I think even as late as 1995, you could buy a house in that neighborhood for $20,000.
Merlin: Oh, like maybe like a distressed property kind of thing?
John: Not even, just like, oh, I want to sell my house $20,000.
John: That's what houses were worth.
John: Nobody, I mean, real estate was just nothing here for years.
John: And so this guy that owned the service station, he owned a lot of houses in the neighborhood, but this was the house where they grew up.
John: And so the cop and his family, as the old man got crotcheter and crotcheter and the houses around were selling, he was like, I'm not selling.
John: I'm never going to sell that house.
John: Screw you.
John: And he wasn't putting any money into it, but he didn't want to sell it.
John: And they were renting it.
John: There's a college nearby, and they were renting it to students.
John: And little by little, it was being rented by rinkier and rinkier groups of students.
John: Because what you do is you get a person that moves in, then his five friends move in, and then four of them move out to better places, and the rinkiest guy stays.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And this is a very interesting economic phenomenon.
Merlin: There's never going to be like a guy – it's not going to get better.
Merlin: It's not going to be like the next guy who comes in is the guy who always does the dishes and trims the lawn.
Merlin: It's always going to move downward.
Merlin: It's moving downward.
Merlin: Because moving out of that house is the way you move up.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: Exactly.
John: Moving out of it is like, I'm not living in a group house anymore where I have to have a padlock on my door.
John: I'm getting an apartment with my girlfriend.
Merlin: There's a poop on the roof just two houses away.
John: Just two houses away.
John: So the group in the house got worse and worse and worse until it was the type of thing where...
John: you know, you would go over there at four o'clock in the morning.
John: They'd be in the backyard, like banging on 50 gallon drums with ballots.
John: And you would say, it's four the fuck o'clock in the fucking morning.
John: And they would turn around and look at you like you were crazy for coming over.
Merlin: Did they ever buy themselves a cup of Marcia?
John: Well, so my mom is real good at managing situations like that.
John: And they all loved her and would do anything she asked.
John: But my mom also sleeps.
John: She's one of these people who has a white noise maker in a room.
John: i'm a big big believer big believer in that so she turns the white noisemaker on and you could they could be landing 747s on the street and she would just be like but i am not a white noisemaker i am a everybody in the neighborhood be fucking quiet after a certain hour that is my because you know what i'm here to help people and one of the things i like to do with college students is teach them how to be members of society your education starts when you walk off that fucking campus yeah
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And also, if I may say, John, I think, not to say too much, but I think you do some of your highest level thinking at three or four in the morning.
John: I absolutely do.
John: You need quiet for that.
John: So I was over there regularly, right up in people's faces, like, do you know what time it is?
John: Do you know how little I care?
John: Were you wearing scuffs?
Yeah.
John: I tried out a whole lot of different... I would put on a wizard hat.
John: Sometimes I would dress as a ring wraith and go over there and...
John: And I would say, you understand that no one that is older than 18 years old cares that it is St.
John: Patrick's Day?
John: You understand that, right?
John: It is not actually a holiday.
John: It's not a real holiday.
John: Cinco de Mayo is not actually a holiday.
John: You understand that, right?
John: It's not even like Valentine's Day.
John: It's just a shitty day for... That only gets circled on the calendars of alcoholics.
John: In Mexico, they do not celebrate Cinco de Mayo in this way.
John: The only people in Mexico who celebrate Cinco de Mayo are people who have lived in the United States and brought it back.
John: It's not a holiday to them.
John: It is not Mexican Independence Day.
John: You are making a mistake.
John: It's a day commemorating the victory in one stupid battle against some French.
John: That's not a victory.
John: No one celebrates victories against the French.
John: Come on.
John: Except Agincourt, and that was French against French.
Merlin: But, I mean, the odds were pretty long on that one.
Merlin: That was a pretty good one.
John: And I'm explaining this to people around a burning 50-gallon drug.
John: Did you carry a copy of Henry V with you?
John: At 4 o'clock in the morning.
John: And there were a couple of times when I had to grab a mallet out of someone's hand and say, I'm going to put this up your ass.
Merlin: What are you doing?
Merlin: Were they really hitting drums?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: It's like they think that they are living in a part of the city where their modern primitive philosophy can really be put into action because they've got three heritage chickens in the back.
Merlin: They got the sink stoppers?
Merlin: They got sink stoppers in their ears?
John: They got sink stoppers in their ears.
John: They got three heritage chickens, and the heritage chickens are going to last exactly as long as it takes the raccoons to figure out how to pull the stick out of the latch and get into the chicken coop, and it's going to be a bloodbath, and everybody's going to be sad because they named the chickens and they're their friend.
John: And, you know, and I'm over there like trying to explain civics to them and like, do you see your college?
John: We can see it from here.
John: Do you see it?
John: It's down the street here.
John: Fuck you.
John: You're not on the college now.
John: You are here in a town where people are living, me included.
John: I am the mayor here.
John: And one of these guys actually got a Ken string fellow came over to my house one day and some guy came out of that house.
John: He was all hopped up on goofballs and Ken in his way made some off the cuff kind of a waspy joke to this guy.
John: Like, oh, I see you have some sink stoppers in your ears.
John: That must be handy when you're trying to wash the dishes in your head.
John: Whatever.
John: And this kid got right up in Ken's face and was screaming at him.
John: And I was on the phone or something and didn't catch it in time.
John: And a fight was averted, but it had a profound effect on Ken.
John: I don't think someone had been in his face screaming at him in many, many years.
Merlin: Ken didn't know there were consequences.
John: Well, Ken was used to living in a world where a snarky, like...
John: A snarky comment made out of the side of your mouth was enough to devastate a room and everybody would go home and think about their lives and wonder if maybe they should just give it all up.
John: Ken was used to kind of owning his universe.
Merlin: He has a presence for sure.
John: He's a very smart guy and a very witty guy.
John: And he travels the world in a kind of... He travels the world in such a way that everywhere he goes, he is surrounded by people who already love Ken Stringfellow.
John: So he was not used to confronting people in the world in this way, where he's just like, oh, I see that you are... And the kid's like, what the fuck did you just say to me?
John: And right on his face... And by the time I got off my phone call and made it over there...
John: it the damage had been done and i was like hey this guy's a friend of mine don't yell at him in front of my house you go over you go be on drugs in your front yard and the guy's like well all right but you know you know and ken is like visibly like shell-shocked like like the kid never touched him but ken looked like he had been slapped with a kid glove and it was um
John: Yeah, it was a rough time in that neighborhood because the transitions can go a lot of different ways.
John: And in this case, it was transitioning toward bad zone.
John: But now that house, I swear to you, is home to an entire bicycle polo team.
Merlin: That's not a real thing.
John: It is.
John: It was invented in Seattle.
John: People play polo on old tennis courts on their fixie bikes.
John: I'm so fucking angry right now.
John: It's a very amazing sport to watch.
John: But I think it's sweeping the nation.
John: If it's not sweeping the nation, it's only because the nation...
John: It cannot handle the truth that's coming out.
Merlin: Do they have special attire and little helmets or anything?
John: It's a variation on bicycle messenger culture, which already has its own set of kind of modern primitive slash gearhead slash vegan Occupy Wall Street gutter punk.
Merlin: Willfully filthy.
John: Yeah, it's a kind of gutter punks who are not...
John: so committed to the cause that they actually want to live in a gutter.
John: Like they want running water.
Merlin: I totally buy that when people are 18 or 19.
Merlin: I just, when I see people in their forties who are doing that, it just makes me sad.
John: Well, these guys are all in their, I suspect they're in their twenties and they're doing the same thing.
Merlin: It's like the, it's like the guy in his forties who comes to a punk rock show.
Merlin: I say that as a guy in his forties, but when like there was this one guy, this one skinhead in Tampa who would come to all the hardcore shows and he was like in his thirties, late thirties, probably.
Merlin: And he just seemed ancient.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it was just always like, oh, it's, you know, that guy with the converse, you know.
John: Now, I wonder about this, Merlin, because all through my teens and 20s and even 30s, there were those guys that haunted the outskirts of the music scene and sometimes, like, managed to get themselves, you know, they're always real friendly people and they managed to insinuate themselves into...
John: Kind of close to the center of certain little adjunct rock scenes.
John: These guys who are conspicuously too old to still be dyeing their hair.
John: Conspicuously too old to still be wearing bell bottoms.
John: And I remember...
John: All through my youth in rock, you know, feeling that mixture that you're talking about, that same mixture of kind of pity and contempt for these guys where it's like, really?
John: Are you serious?
John: What are you doing here?
John: Shouldn't you be working in a bank or something?
Merlin: Shouldn't you be being an adult somewhere?
John: Yeah, right, right, right.
John: And now that I'm 44, I don't – what was clear about these people was that they did not have – they were not seeing themselves in the mirror.
John: They would look at themselves in the mirror and they'd be like, ha-ha.
Merlin: You don't think it's just simply that they didn't care?
John: I don't know.
John: I honestly don't know.
John: I tweeted about this not very long ago.
John: Whenever I see a man my age wearing a Paul Weller haircut, I'm like, no, no, no.
Merlin: Especially with frosted tips.
John: You are not mod now.
John: You are in your 40s, sir.
John: Stop having your hair done that way.
John: That is not appropriate.
John: But you see these guys, and they're like, you know, they've got a 19-inch neck, and they're wearing a Paul Weller haircut, and they're wearing clothes that only fit on someone with a 29-inch waist.
Merlin: And the thing is, what they don't realize is that, first of all, Paul Weller today, he looks super fucking cool.
Merlin: He looks great.
Merlin: He's like Nick Lowe.
Merlin: He's a cool-looking old guy now.
John: He looks like he's carved out of wood.
Merlin: Well, yeah, like maybe some driftwood.
Merlin: But that guy's thinking with his own body dysphoria, is that what it's called?
Merlin: He thinks he looks like Paul Weller, but he doesn't realize he's actually closer to Elton John.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: He looks like a large clam that someone pasted pubic hair on.
John: Yeah.
John: And what I don't... What I'm afraid of is that I have a similar...
John: 44, and I go to rock shows, and I stand there with a look of thinly veiled contempt for everybody, and I cut my own hair, and I'm wearing some dopey hipster glasses, and I don't know if I look like I am, which is the coolest guy in the town, or whether I look...
John: Like maybe I actually am, which is a big, dumb, dope 44-year-old hanging out in a rock club who should be working in a bank by now.
John: I cannot say for sure.
Merlin: I would never want to try to talk you out of a painful experience in self-realization because I get the sense that that's a valuable journey for you.
Merlin: Yeah, I enjoy those very much.
Merlin: But first of all, I think we should stipulate that there are various types of too old guy at a rock show.
Merlin: It seems to me almost every community has a savant or some kind of a super fan that everybody knows is probably a little bit autistic or something.
Merlin: Sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: And he gets to sing along on stage.
Merlin: Yeah, he's been to every show of everything.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: Yeah, and I mean he becomes like a mascot that everybody kind of tolerates.
Merlin: There certainly can't be – I'm thinking of almost like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.
Merlin: There is that kind of predator-feeling character.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But again, I don't want to try to talk to you – but obviously, John, I think you are an elder statesman of that entire community.
Merlin: People look to you for guidance and wisdom.
Merlin: Right.
John: That makes me feel better.
Merlin: And I think I think one direction to take it is that really you are there to to have that look on your face and to make people really think about whether they should be on stage at all.
Merlin: Or I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, maybe not for every show.
Merlin: But I mean, the thing is, these kids need leadership.
Merlin: you know that they're basically they're they're two months away from being in a backyard banging on fucking drums yeah you're right you know a lot of them just it's inappropriate to be in a band and you know and here's the other thing now a lot of these people today they have completely inexplicable haircuts that that's true that maybe somebody in england should have for a little while before they wise up but the i got a big problem with the frosted the frosting i don't like the frosting it takes too long not the frosting on the beater but the frosting on the tips not a fan
John: One of the things that I feel one of my jobs in Seattle is to demonstrate to people, younger people, the appropriate way to wear corduroy and tweed.
John: Because you see a lot of young people and they're like, corduroy, tweed.
John: And then they get it all wrong.
Merlin: You're like a professor of corduroy.
Merlin: It seems like you see subtlety and you feel in that whistling.
Merlin: There's something there that you are tuned into that other people are just playing with.
Merlin: And you must see that sometimes and go, that's a costume.
Merlin: You're not wearing corduroy appropriately.
John: Yeah.
John: If you are properly wearing a corduroy blazer, the tips of your lapels should curl up a little bit from where the jacket has been rained on multiple times.
John: Hmm.
John: If your lapels are lying flat, we can see that you've never worn it in the rain.
Merlin: This immediately calls me out as a corduroy piker because I think, I don't know if that's ping pong, but I feel like I would be worried to wear corduroy in the rain.
Merlin: Not worried, but it would be concerning to me.
Merlin: I would want to have a shell over the corduroy.
Merlin: And you're telling me that this is like you're working it in when you're in the rain.
John: If you don't wear your corduroy and your tweed in the rain, you're not wearing it.
John: Doesn't that make you smell like a St.
John: Bernard?
John: Absolutely.
John: Okay.
John: Abso-fucking-lutely.
John: If you live in Seattle and you don't smell like a St.
John: Bernard, then you're too precious.
John: You're not doing it right.
John: Also, if you live in Seattle and you wear a suede of any kind, it had better look like you just escaped from a fire.
Okay.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Suede is not an appropriate fabric for the Northwest because at any moment, a squall might knock you off the dock.
Merlin: The power goes out, mob rule, and you're going to be wearing inappropriate clothing.
John: You're wearing a jacket that needs to be brushed?
John: Give me a break.
John: So you can wear suede in Seattle.
John: It just has to look like somebody...
John: somebody just like cut the head off a cow with a with a uh like that scene in apocalypse now not a cow an ox an oxen like someone someone who had to have just chopped an ox with a machete and cut cut sleeves in it right in front and then yeah right and and made you a suede jacket that's the only way that's the only way you can wear suede in this
Merlin: Well, this is probably as good a time as any for me to bring this up then because you'll recall that when I was in Seattle, what, a couple weeks ago, you remember I bought those dad shoes?
Merlin: I bought comfortable dad shoes.
Merlin: Yes, you did.
Merlin: And then I made fun of them because of my large toe box.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: But here's the thing.
John: Not everybody made fun of you.
John: I thought they were perfectly appropriate.
Merlin: It was a little frustrating.
Merlin: They didn't check out my feet with a Braddock device.
Merlin: They had me stand on a computer, and the guy gave me some notes on my posture.
Merlin: a computer braddock device and then he he talked about your posture oh yeah here's the thing you go to this place and they had a good selection there which which i'm going to come back to but he says well let me just let's just check and see uh let's have a look and uh check out your shoe size okay so far so good and also this is a little bit did he have it was his tongue pierced he had a capitol hill impediment and and uh and so i stood on this thing and then i saw what looked like a functional mri and i went beep beep
Merlin: They said, well, you do tilt a little bit to the left.
Merlin: Tell me something I don't know.
Merlin: Because you dress to the right, right?
Merlin: I dress left, which is a little unconventional, I think.
Merlin: But then when he brought up the shoes, he also brought some orthotics.
Merlin: You know, I mean, that's like he's like a doctor.
Merlin: I mean, that's like that's like when you bring a show lady some makeup, you also give her a card with a Botox person on it.
Merlin: Like, I don't want to don't show me orthotics.
Merlin: But anyway, long story short, I ended up buying these dad shoes because they're supposedly like good in the rain.
Merlin: But can I tell you what I first held in my hand and almost bought was was your brand.
Merlin: The Clarks?
Merlin: My wife likes your shoes, and she has been encouraging me.
Merlin: At one point, I know you.
Merlin: You got free Clarks, if memory serves.
Merlin: And I said to the guy, these desert boots, or whatever they're called.
Merlin: We called them chukka boots when I was a kid.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I said, these don't fare so well in the rain.
Merlin: He's like, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: You do not want to wear those in the rain.
Merlin: Okay, so here's the thing.
Merlin: Tell me about – is this part of the larger apocalypse suede?
Merlin: Like you just get used to those things being all beat up and your feet being wet?
John: Yeah, this is the thing.
John: I mean now I understand there are cultures in America where you wear white tennis shoes and you clean them with a toothbrush every night.
Mm-hmm.
John: But in my opinion, in Seattle, if you are going to wear some Clarks that are made out of suede, they're going to look like shit after a while.
John: But looking like shit is a wonderful way to look great.
Merlin: If you do it with style and authenticity.
John: That's right.
John: If you look a little bit like... I mean, and this is ultimately...
John: A large portion of what we consider American style, by which I mean Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren and all these kind of classic men's stylists in America, they are 100% stealing English men's style.
John: And just stealing it whole cloth, bringing it to America and making it a little crass-er.
John: a little just more base, and then selling it to the masses.
John: And everybody in America, and everybody in Japan, for that matter, we're all dressing like English country gentlemen.
Merlin: Except... The pampered sons of industrialists.
John: Yeah.
John: We are dressing like people who are walking...
John: over our estate with a couple of golden retrievers following us with a double-barreled shotgun under the crook of our arm waiting for a pheasant to take flight like everybody in the country like preppy is just a version of this
John: American preppy is just a version of English country.
John: Well, my feeling about it is that English country is a great jumping-off point for fashion, but you have to actually look like you're walking across a muddy field with two golden retrievers behind you, with a rain falling on you.
John: Like, if you try and look too groomed, if you try and protect your suede shoes against the rain...
John: You are being a fop.
John: It is the wrong.
John: That is wrong by my standards.
John: But then again, I have never ironed a shirt.
John: When somebody shows me an iron, I always think, what is this?
John: What is this thing?
John: Why would you have that?
Merlin: It's certainly not the kind of thing you would want to have to depend on.
Merlin: It's heavy.
Merlin: It's unwieldy.
Merlin: It's sharp.
Merlin: It's hot.
Merlin: And you don't want to have to drag that around with you in order to feel like a gentleman.
John: You know, a friend of mine took his girlfriend camping in the Olympic National Forest a few years ago.
John: And she was sort of a city girl and not used to this experience.
John: But he was trying to bring her into his way of thinking.
John: Like, I'm an outdoorsy guy.
John: I'm a camper.
John: Like, come with me.
John: I'll show you what it's like.
John: And he shows up at her house to pick her up.
John: And she has a suitcase.
Yeah.
John: First of all, but he's like, okay, all right.
John: Baby steps.
John: He puts the suitcase in the trunk.
John: They drive out to the forest and he realizes, you know, that he is, he's going to have to carry this suitcase to the campsite.
John: But it's a gradual thing.
John: It's kind of almost car camping.
John: They're going to drive into the parking lot, and they just have to walk a little ways to their campsite.
Merlin: They can take multiple trips to the car without inconvenience.
John: So he's okay with the suitcase.
John: So he carries the suitcase.
John: They set up a tent.
John: He builds a fire, and she opens her suitcase, and she has packed a hairdryer.
John: and and to me that is that is how i feel about a clothes iron every day even living in a house like i see a clothes iron and i just feel like that is like bringing a hairdryer on a camping trip you don't think there's something slightly sweet about that oh it was incredibly sweet and i think that those two are married now uh and uh and have lived happily ever after and it's a wonderful example of like
Merlin: um opposites attract because here's here's what i well so first of all in addition to the fact that it reminds me of uh that very sweet movie uh moonrise kingdom it it also makes me think of what i wouldn't want so he's johnny outdoorsy so like first of all he did it sounds like he didn't ask her what she wanted to do right well but i think they i think up until she was into it up until that point he had been catering to her desire to fancy fancy meals and go to go to go dancing at the disco so she's she's really more like a cat
John: And this was one of these like, hey, let me show you what I like to do.
John: And I think they have made it work.
John: This was not a story trying to poop on their romantic – No, no, no, no.
Merlin: But I guess here's what I wouldn't want to see is somebody who goes to REI and spends $1,500 –
Merlin: on gear right that without even you know just and so she opens up her her uh i don't even know a name a north face north face pack even though they can't be trusted yeah and it's full of brand new patagonia everything brand new and there's like three different kinds of shoes for different where obviously they realized they had one on the line yeah right that rei is super nice too i bought i bought a jacket i really liked it that rei that's a nice rei you know i i
Merlin: That's like the flagship REI, right?
Merlin: It is, yeah.
John: And I've been a member of REI since 1977.
John: And my dad was a member of REI at the very, very beginning.
John: He was in the first handful of people that joined REI.
John: And I feel like REI has become a place that I don't recognize.
John: I mean, I used to buy everything there.
John: And now I go into REI and I walk around and everything is trying to wick sweat off of me.
John: Like, you know, I'll touch a garment.
Merlin: They call on my wife.
Merlin: Now, when she runs, she wears what she calls technicals.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
John: Technical stuff where it's like, stop wicking me.
John: I don't want to be wicked.
John: I want to have a coat.
John: And the coat is like, no, no, no.
John: I have all this technology.
John: I have this, I'm, you know, wicking is the least of the things I'm going to do to you.
John: And I'm like, I don't want a coat to do things to me.
John: I just want a jacket that has, that has snaps.
John: And they're like, no, we don't use snaps anymore.
John: We use this high tech, uh, the polypropylene, uh, Velcro that never, you know, and I'm like polypropylene Velcro.
John: That doesn't even make any sense.
John: I want a button.
Yeah.
John: Give me a fucking button on my coat.
John: No, no, no.
John: We don't have that anymore because when you're summiting Everest after running like a triple marathon, you're going to be perspiring and we need to wick that sweat off of you.
John: And I'm like, that's not what I'm wearing this jacket for.
John: I'm not going to summit Everest.
Merlin: And no one who buys it is.
Merlin: Oh, they... I think they could...
Merlin: As somebody who is an outsider who was not there in 1977, I think they are heavily trained to make you feel like you're fucking Sir Edmund Hillary.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: When you go in there, or maybe Tenzing Norgay, you're supposed to really feel like you're going to do something very important in these clothes.
John: I don't think you're ever supposed to feel like Tenzing Norgay.
John: He was working.
Merlin: He did all the heavy lifting, right?
Merlin: He did.
Merlin: Is that true?
Merlin: I heard Sir Edmund Hillary was a hardy guy, but really it was Tenzing.
John: I don't think that you can get to the top of Everest even now, even now that there's a quad lift to the top of Everest for rich ladies.
Merlin: I think you can have a Sherpa carry you.
John: I think you still need to be kind of a badass to get up there.
John: I don't care.
John: I read into the void or whatever, but you still have to be pretty tough.
John: But yeah, the Sherpas, they go up and down that mountain.
Merlin: But he didn't need wicking.
Merlin: He didn't need anything.
Merlin: He had like a funny hat and a smile.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: You go in and I think this is – it's all a very – again, it's like pole dancing.
Merlin: You go in there and you are part of a transaction where both of you know what's going on even if you're not admitting it.
Merlin: And so you go in there and you're like – you're Johnny Fleece Fest and you're like, well, I need to get some technical gear for some extensive camping.
Merlin: I'm going to be walking a quarter of a mile from my Land Rover.
John: I'm going to be sitting on the tailgate of my Volvo and eating soy hot dogs.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so I think this plays straight into the systems that they sell you.
Merlin: Now, the guy, that guy who wanted to sell me orthotics, I think he's used to offering people a suite.
Merlin: Like I never let him get to the socks, but I bet they're socks too.
Merlin: So today, I'm sure you're aware of this at these places.
Merlin: You go in there and they, knowing that there's a story that you want to tell yourself, they can convince you that you owe it to yourself to buy this multi-layered clothing system.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You don't buy a fucking jacket.
Merlin: You buy a system.
Merlin: So you start out with this wicking material.
Merlin: You buy a fucking $50 t-shirt so it'll wick.
John: And the arms zip off and the pant legs zip off.
Merlin: John, it's a tactical shirt.
John: In case you're in the jungle.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: But you go in there and they're dancing on a pole and you're throwing out the singles and you walk out of there.
Merlin: You run your card and you walk out of there and you get to really feel like you've gone somewhere very rugged where carabiners are going to be very important.
Merlin: Even though you mostly use it for the keys to your Volvo.
John: It's so annoying, and it's why I have... If I buy any new outdoor clothes now, I just buy them at Filson.
John: Filson is another Seattle company, and they were founded to provide...
John: Outfitting gear for the original people going to Alaska and mine gold.
John: The original Chilkoot Charlies who were leaving to go at the turn of the century to go mine gold in Canada.
John: Filson made them all their wool blankets and hats and jackets.
John: And Filson is this company where their flagship product is a pair of canvas pants that have been dipped in cold wax.
John: It's wax pants.
John: Wax pants.
John: And you put these pants on.
John: That sounds very uncomfortable.
John: They feel like they are made out of wet galvanized tin.
John: And the longer you wear these pants, the more they conform to you.
John: And you can actually go sit in a mud puddle.
Merlin: You got your pan.
John: That's right.
John: You got your pan and you are sifting for... You got a sluice.
Merlin: Whatever that is, you got a sluice.
John: You got your sluice.
John: And you are sitting in a mud puddle in these pants.
John: And let me tell you, Merlin, having sat in many mud puddles in these pants, you are not comfortable...
John: The pants are impregnated with cold wax, and that does not feel good.
John: And in a cold puddle, you feel not that great.
John: But you are as God intended.
John: Nothing is wicking.
John: Nothing is flicking or... Unsticking.
John: There's no ventilation of any kind.
John: You are there.
Merlin: The wax pants don't breathe.
John: The wax pants don't.
John: The wax pants don't breathe.
John: You are not meant to wash them.
John: The care... All you need is a minute and a hose.
John: The care tag on the thing says, don't wash these.
John: Don't put them in the dryer.
John: Don't iron them.
John: Leave them alone.
John: If they get dirty...
John: The next time you wear them, that dirt will provide an extra layer of protection.
John: So anyway, Filson, they have not succumbed yet.
John: And this wax impregnated canvas, they use to make suitcases.
Merlin: They use it to make... So basically, they take things that other people sell, the kinds of things you could buy at a store, and they dip it in wax.
Merlin: You could get a wax cup, probably.
John: I think you might be able to get a wax cup.
John: They also have wool.
John: They don't dip the wool in wax because wool already has wax in it.
Merlin: Lanolin.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: You got organic lanolin from the sheep.
John: Organic wax that doesn't need to... The care instructions of these things.
John: The thing is, in the Northwest, when you go out and you see a guy...
John: like a telephone lineman or an electric lineman who's up a pole or a guy whose job it is to all winter long stand knee-deep in water with a shovel in his hand.
John: A lot of these guys, the young guys are all wearing, you know,
John: probably Healy Hanson fishing gear or a bunch of North Face crapola.
Merlin: My wife has a Healy Hanson yachting jacket.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: It's got like a special sleeve to put a rope through.
John: Sorry, a line.
John: The 57-year-old black dude who's been a lineman for 30 years, in the Northwest, he is wearing Filson head to toe.
John: And that's how you know
John: That he is hardcore.
John: That's how you know he's the real deal.
John: When I see older-than-me guys in Filson around here, I'm like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
John: And I try and give them a fist bump, and most of the time they won't accept it.
Merlin: No, they shake hands like a gentleman.
John: Yeah, they're like, what the fuck are you doing?
Merlin: John, I don't know where to begin.
Merlin: Well, I don't know why.
Merlin: For some reason, maybe it's just being near you.
Merlin: I want to buy clothes, and I outfit myself when I come to Seattle.
Merlin: I don't know why.
Merlin: I'm not a big clothes shopper.
Merlin: I own five pairs of Levi's 501s, and that is it.
Merlin: Now, I think I should get just a small amount of credit at the appropriate authenticity level for how I wear the fuck out of some 501s.
Merlin: I don't wash them for six months.
Merlin: I sleep in them for the first five nights.
John: I don't take them off.
John: You have your space pen and your wallet and your other keys or whatever, and if you take your pants off and stand them in the corner, you can see the outline of your space pen and your wallet where they have been worn in
Merlin: yeah the pair that i'm wearing today i will send you a photograph of these uh they're just shy of the crotch blowing out so the pocket on the right side has blown out because the thing is pants will will tell a story about your life that's true whether you like it or not it will show you that where you carry in your case my case my my iphone there's an outline the outline wallet in mine you can actually see i have like a taxi driver's wallet you know it's got the little flap and you can actually see where the snap is there's
John: like a white spot i have the same wallet because you gave one as a gift you got rid of that big trucker wallet used to keep like six thousand dollars in i did because in the foreign currency it was causing me it was causing me back problems but you gave my mom one of these taxi wallets uh as a present one time for having stayed at her house and she i came over the next day and she was like merlin gave me this wallet and i was like what a thoughtful gift and she said i'm never gonna use this i don't wear i don't use a wallet i love your mom and she was like you take it i've been using it for the last 10 years
Merlin: I just replaced – the one that I just replaced, I checked because I went to Amazon.
Merlin: I think it's so fun to go to Amazon, and I search for something to buy, and it says this order shipped on May 5, 2004.
Merlin: So I can actually tell I've had this wallet, whatever that was.
Merlin: But it was 2004.
Merlin: I've had this wallet for eight years, and it fell apart, and I just got a new one.
Merlin: But no, here's how to wear 501s.
Merlin: I should just tell you quickly, though.
Merlin: My first REI experience – this is very quick – was – I think it was .com days when I was wearing a lot of tactical clothing for some reason.
Merlin: We went to REI.
John: You can eat it when you're sitting in an Aeron chair.
John: You need to be able to zip off those legs in a half a second.
Merlin: You never know.
Merlin: You need to commit some code real quick.
Merlin: You got to be able to move quick.
Merlin: You might need to unzip the bottoms of your pants in Menlo Park, California.
Merlin: So I went into the RAI probably after probably a $200 lunch.
Merlin: But I did have the presence of mind to go in there, and I was completely – I laughed out loud.
Merlin: This is 1999.
Merlin: I laughed out loud the entire time that I was in there because even then it was obvious that this was farcical.
John: It's a key chain, but it's also a flare gun.
Yeah.
Merlin: But it's only a slightly more sophisticated version of a morbidly obese man in a football jersey.
Merlin: Like, you don't play football.
Merlin: What are you doing?
Merlin: Take that off.
Merlin: It's official.
Merlin: It's official NFL.
Merlin: It's like, no, it's not.
Merlin: You have a canister of bear spray?
John: Where are you really going to confront a bear?
Merlin: You're the quarterback of Pringles.
Merlin: Take that off.
Merlin: So I go in there, and I said, I want some low-key hiking boots because it's just comfortable, like something I can wear around that's water-resistant.
Merlin: And the guy's like, well, this one has great torsion control, and it wicks away harbor, and it's authentic artisanal laces.
Merlin: He's like, maybe you want to walk around on this fake rock and see if they work.
Merlin: And in the loudest voice I could, without sounding like a sociopath, I said, ah, these are webpage-making shoes.
Merlin: And he didn't know how to respond.
Merlin: I don't think there was a tab in the binder for a guy who knew he was a poser.
Merlin: Like, how do you respond to that?
Merlin: It's one thing to come in and go like, oh, I need a new carabiner.
Merlin: Versus the guy who goes in there and he's read lots of outdoor magazines.
Merlin: He was unprepared for a thin-boned man who knew he was a fraud.
John: I remember walking up the stairs at a youth hostel in Vienna.
John: And it was one of these youth hostels that had probably formerly been...
John: Uh, well, it was, it was a, it was a collection point.
John: No, it was originally like a Habsburg, uh, like administrative center.
John: And then, uh, yeah, sure.
John: During the war it was, yeah, it was some kind of, um, Jew hut.
John: It was a, it was a place, it was a place where they, where they, uh, where people with clipboards walked around, uh, measuring noses.
John: Yes.
John: Saying, uh, saying, oh, we gasped a lot of people today, but, uh, so big wide staircase, uh,
John: And I'm walking up this staircase in the middle of the day, and it's a very busy youth hostel.
John: And there are probably 60 people on the staircase at one time.
John: People going up, people coming down.
John: It's like four flights of stairs, but it's a big winding staircase, so you can kind of see.
John: You can see people all the way up and all the way down.
John: And it feels like you're really walking up the stairs of a grand hotel at the height of the Gilded Age.
John: All these people.
John: It's lunchtime.
John: People coming down.
John: People going up.
John: And I'm halfway up this staircase.
John: And people are talking in German.
John: They're talking in English.
John: They're talking in Swedish.
John: It's an international group.
John: And some guy, but people are just kind of burbling.
John: Some guy says in a very loud voice, every single person on this staircase is wearing cargo pants.
John: And everybody on the stairs looked, and sure enough, everyone, including me, was wearing pants with cargo pockets.
John: And a sense of, like, mutual shame descended on us all.
John: Because...
John: Everyone had giant pockets on the sides of their pants and not a single person had anything in those pockets.
John: Like, we were all wearing cargo pants and that was how we... Like maybe a guitar pick or some Tylenol.
John: That was individually how we each had elected to express that we were travelers.
John: Right.
Right.
John: And it was like going to a punk rock show in Orange County, California, where every single person in a 700-person capacity show is wearing not Chuck Taylors, but Jack Purcells.
John: Like if you were wearing Chuck Taylor, that's the black ones, the black ones with the little, little smiley face on the, on the toe.
John: I was at a show down there at this place called the crystal palace or whatever, the crystal room, crystal house, glass house.
Um,
John: in Orange County, and I had to actually drop to one knee to verify what I thought I was seeing.
John: I dropped to one knee and looked at the shoes of a huge room full of kids.
John: There was not a single kid in the place that had a different pair of shoes on.
John: And it was like, we have all decided here what the uniform is.
John: And in this one instance, we were all wearing cargo pants.
John: And unfortunately, I was not able to
John: Rip those cargo pants off my body at that moment and burn them on the staircase in an expression of like tear off your own pockets like sergeant stripes.
John: Yeah.
John: How ashamed I was to be dressed basically like a sorority girl.
John: From that moment forth, I stuffed my cargo pant pockets with things.
John: It is so unflattering.
John: And it's really not a convenient place to carry things.
Merlin: I'm sitting here trying to think.
Merlin: In the REI webpage, period, I went through this thing where I was buying $60 cargo pants that were real tactical.
Merlin: Like 555 or whatever.
Merlin: I forget what the company's called.
Merlin: But they were like hipster.
Merlin: Like, oh, you know what they were?
Merlin: I would buy cargo pants at fucking – what's that super annoying store?
Merlin: You know the chain?
Merlin: Not American Apparel, but the one that sells – it's almost like anthropology –
Merlin: oh you know the annoying one that sells fake old things oh you're talking about uh urban outfitters urban outfitters and i was buying artisanal cargo pants and as i sit here right now and it had all kinds of hooks and shit i don't understand my backpack i have an amazing tom bin backpack that's like one of the greatest backpacks in the world and i still don't understand what all the straps are for but in this instance i was walking around like it was normal to have all of these clips and shit on my pants i don't think they knew i think they were just laughing and putting and putting loops on things yeah
John: That's exactly what they do.
John: They're like, I know.
John: Let's put a loop right at the end of the knee.
John: A place where if you clip something there, it will actually inhibit your ability.
Merlin: Let me ask you this.
Merlin: Do you have a pant with an integrated knee loop?
Merlin: and then but i'm sitting here and thinking like it's one thing to be like you're describing like the the wichita lineman kind of guys who are up there and they need that kind of stuff because they're doing work but like i honestly as i sit here i don't know what you're supposed to put in cargo pant pockets you know what they are an ipad a small like an ipad mini would fit in there they are modern the modern equivalent of of malcolm mclaren's bondage pains
Merlin: They're deliberately unpractical and a little overpriced.
John: They're like plaid pants with bondage clasps all over them and like some straps that are running.
Merlin: But they're shittiest pants and they'd be useless for bondage.
John: Shittiest pants and terrible.
John: And you know what?
John: If you want to practice bondage with somebody, first thing...
John: Get the pants off.
Merlin: Yes.
John: You know what I mean?
John: You're not going to fucking bondage somebody with pants off.
Merlin: You should not tie up a person in pants.
Merlin: No, get the pants off and then tie them up.
Merlin: Check them for tattoos.
Merlin: Listen, this is just standard stuff.
Merlin: No, this is day one kind of stuff.
John: When I was growing up, Levi's 501s, of course, were the only pants.
John: The only pants that you could possibly wear.
John: And I turned into a teenager right at the point that people started fucking with their jeans too much.
Merlin: You could go to the county seat and buy stuff to put in the washer with your pants.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: You'd bleach your pants.
Merlin: And this is even before stonewash, distress.
Merlin: But you wanted faded jeans.
Merlin: It was not cool.
Merlin: You wanted them to look faded.
Merlin: It was after designer jeans had come and gone.
Merlin: And we were back to the basics, so to speak, where you'd go and you'd buy, you know, weathered pants.
John: Yeah.
John: You buy these jeans, you'd throw something in the washer, all that stuff about how you're supposed to put your pants on and sit in a hot bathtub.
John: I do that.
John: Yeah, well, you're a child of the 80s.
John: Yeah, but then I keep wearing them.
John: I go to bed with them wet.
John: I know.
John: You go run into the ocean.
John: This was before Black Levi's.
John: This was, you know, this turning point moment.
John: And what burned into my head at that time was that the coolest thing, the only way, really, properly, to wear a pair of Levi's was a pair of Levi's that had the ring of a chew can in the back right pocket.
John: Where you'd been carrying a chew can back there until you had this ring in your jeans.
Merlin: That was SOP, where I'm from.
Merlin: SOP?
Merlin: Standard Operating Procedure.
Merlin: Oh, Standard Operating Procedure.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: Everybody had a can.
Merlin: I mean, even if you didn't do it, even if you were one of those pussies that would throw up when you had a little bit of fucking skull.
Merlin: Bandits, really.
Merlin: And you'd still walk around with that in your pocket.
John: Yeah, but you'd buy a can of Big League Chew, which was bubble gum, and carry it back there until you got that ring.
John: And in 1983, 1984 in Anchorage, Alaska, you had a ring in the back of your jeans.
Merlin: What did you guys have up there?
Merlin: Kodiak?
Merlin: You guys like the minty ones?
John: This was before Kodiak.
John: You chewed Copenhagen or nothing
Merlin: Copenhagen is the way to go, but a lot of people, Kodiak gets the best ratings.
John: Kodiak is a longer cut.
John: It's got more sugar in it.
Merlin: Yeah, and when Copenhagen introduced, they introduced the long cut.
Merlin: It was, you know...
John: The rumor, of course, with Kodiak was that they put a little bit of fiberglass insulation in.
Merlin: So it would cut your lip and you'd get more of an effect.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You can cut your Coke with glass, right?
Merlin: Isn't that a thing?
John: We all talk about this like it's absolutely true, but I have no way of independently verifying.
John: You can't possibly put fiberglass insulation in chewing tobacco.
John: That can't be real.
Merlin: I think that's one of those spider eggs and bubble yum things.
John: We all say it.
Merlin: You know what you can do is pour bourbon in there.
John: never occurred to me that's pretty good i chewed tobacco for a long time me too and i really enjoyed it um it's the it's the most addictive thing in the world but then i had to i had to quit it when i quit the other tobaccos you've gone on and off cigarettes too i i was i was amazed to see how quickly you go on and then you set it aside leave it oh it's hard i i used to it's really fun when i would have a i would have a huge dip of kodiak in my mouth and i would light a cigarette
John: Totally understandable.
John: Yes, except that it's basically like taking your stomach out and kicking it down the road.
John: You do not feel good with that much nicotine in your body.
John: You feel terrible, but you also feel great.
Merlin: You feel great, yeah.
Merlin: But I'll tell you, man, you get some Redman and a little bit of Bush beer.
John: That's North Florida, buddy.
John: That is North Florida.
John: That's some way down upon the Suwannee River.
Merlin: All right, I'm going to skip over the jeans.
Merlin: Can I tell you that I actually... Sorry.
John: I was in North Florida, and I was driving in a car, and I came to a bridge, and the sign said Suwannee River, and I said...
John: Suwanee.
John: Suwanee River.
John: And I said, whatever the hell else I was doing today, I am not doing it now.
John: I am turning left and I'm driving two way down upon this river.
John: And I drove for miles and miles and miles down weird swampy Florida place where the houses are all built on stilts.
John: And I drove and drove and drove until I got to the...
John: mouth of the Suwannee River and I parked the car and I got out and I walked until I was standing there with my feet in the water and I was like ha ha yes check I am way down upon the Suwannee River it's not particularly distinguished as rivers go
John: No, and there was like a little, like a shitty little community of people living in boats there in Florida.
John: I've wanted to do that.
John: I've wanted to be part of one of those communities.
John: It was a place where at any moment I expected Burt Reynolds to like jump a car or jump a jet boat.
Merlin: Oh, you're talking, I'm sorry, you're talking about like Wakulla County type shit.
Merlin: Okay.
John: I expect there'd be some kind of revenuers chasing moonshine.
Merlin: That's sticky country.
John: But I got out of there.
Merlin: There's a lot of things to be disappointed about in Florida.
Merlin: This is true everywhere.
Merlin: Really, anything where they're trying to attract you off of a highway, I think there's going to be a certain amount of snake oil to it.
John: I was actually kind of surprised about this.
Merlin: They didn't have souvenir shot glasses and spoons?
John: No, it was clear that no one was interested in people coming down here to be way down upon the Suwannee River.
John: There was not a way.
John: There was no place to park.
John: There was no facility.
Merlin: There wasn't a Suwannee visitor station that was playing banjo music.
John: There was not even a general store.
John: It was just some people living in boats and some houses on stilts.
John: A cracker barrel and an ATM.
John: Nothing.
John: Nothing of the kind.
John: And I was like, here I am.
John: My whole life I've been saying way down upon the Suwannee River, here I am.
John: I would like a flag.
John: I would like to get a postcard.
John: Not a chance.
John: There were people peeping out from behind their curtains going...
John: What the hell is that?
John: Why the hell is he here?
Merlin: He looks like one of them hipsters.
Merlin: One of the river newers.
Merlin: I don't want to obsess about this, but can you just, in the time we have remaining, can you give me just a very rough general idea of the place the Genesis bomb would have in Super Train?
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
Merlin: In as much as you can say.
Merlin: Because, I mean, you don't have to talk about it.
Merlin: I mean, it's your system.
Merlin: But I'm very intrigued by this idea because from reading comic books and science fiction things, I'm aware of, in general, the complexities of going into a new culture, a new environment, having to deal with that hostile environment.
Merlin: Again, you know, deliverance, great example.
Merlin: But, you know, having to go in somewhere where you really don't belong and then trying to make it like where you're from.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: The scene in Apocalypse Now Redux, where they show the scene with the French colonialists.
Merlin: Oh, I hate that scene.
Merlin: They could have left it out.
Merlin: I hate Apocalypse Now Redux.
John: You do?
John: Why?
John: Because Apocalypse Now is a perfect thing.
John: It's pretty good.
John: Apocalypse Now is perfect.
John: It does not need any reduxing.
Merlin: You think he was smart to leave that scene out?
Merlin: It's a little bit of a distraction.
Merlin: It's like the poppy scene in Wizard of Oz.
John: He was smart to leave all the scenes out.
John: The scene where they are huddled with the playboy bunnies in the rainstorm does not need to be there.
John: The extra scenes with kill gore, kill dare.
Merlin: Oh, the extra Robert Duvall guy?
John: None of that needs to be there.
John: All that needs to happen is that at some point Martin Sheen says,
John: Don't get out of the boat.
Merlin: Never get out of the boat.
Merlin: I still like Harrison Ford's Extreme Prejudice.
Merlin: He's pretty good, yeah.
Merlin: You know they shot that out of sequence.
Merlin: You've seen that movie, right?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You've seen Hearts of Darkness?
John: Yes, great.
John: Great.
John: Everyone should see it.
John: If you're listening to this program, you should go watch Hearts of Darkness.
Merlin: John, I just have to guess that movie.
Merlin: I'll just say that it resonates with me.
Merlin: The idea of having a project that seems pretty doable.
Merlin: And then you start doing it, and then pretty soon you're sitting there covered with flies, like rewriting on your manual typewriter every night and screaming.
John: Yeah, it becomes deeply, deep, profoundly undoable.
John: And your actors are tripping.
John: Here's the thing about the Genesis Bomb.
John: If you watch Star Trek 3, the Genesis Bomb is a giant planet remaker.
John: What Super Train is going to need is more of a Genesis Mortar.
John: Where...
John: We are recycling as we go.
John: We are churning all the old dumps.
John: We are churning.
John: We are recycling other trains as we pass them.
John: You know what I mean?
John: There are a lot of rusty old trains.
John: That iron can be put to better use.
John: We need to get all the precious metals and the cooking oil out of those rusty old trains.
John: And then, as we leave, we'll just, boop, lob a little Genesis mortar.
Merlin: Oh, I get it.
Merlin: It could even be a little bit like a Genesis grenade.
John: It's a Genesis grenade.
Merlin: It could be this is like a six or maybe like a one block area that needs to be a little bit more habitable for Supertrain.
John: Yeah.
John: We paradise in our wake.
Merlin: Did you just invent a transitive verb?
John: We paradise.
John: Huh.
John: So we paradise.
John: We come through.
John: We are helping people.
John: We are solving problems.
John: And then in our wake, we're lobbing little Genesis grenades and we're paradising as we go.
Huh.
John: It's like a soup to an apple seed.
Merlin: Do you have a saucepan on your head?
Merlin: Do you have a wax saucepan?
Merlin: Now, Stephen Foster...