Ep. 108: "Jim Here"
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is sponsored by Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website, portfolio, or online store.
Merlin: For a free trial and 10% off, visit squarespace.com and use the offer code supertrain at checkout.
Merlin: A better web starts with your website.
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Well, I'm trying something new.
John: Are you typing with one hand?
John: What are you doing?
John: At some point, Jim here.
Merlin: I said to John on the robot, are you ready to record?
Merlin: And he said, Jim here.
John: So I was cleaning out an old guitar case yesterday.
John: And I found my old rat petal, which had been missing.
John: And then I found this bag of Starbucks, basically like little Nescafe tubes.
John: Did you ever experience Nescafe?
No.
Merlin: No, I'm just trying to put this all together.
Merlin: Is this sort of like the things you get, like European sugar holders?
Merlin: Is it that kind of shape, like a tube like that?
John: Yeah, it's a little paper tube.
John: In Europe, you'll often be in situations where the only coffee that you have available is Nescafe, which is just instant, like...
John: Pour the little grounds, pour some grounds in, pour some hot water over it, and your coffee appears.
John: And when I first discovered them, I thought they were a revelation.
John: I didn't realize, of course, that it's just Sanka or it's just flavor crystals or whatever.
John: America has had instant coffee for years.
John: But growing up, I didn't have coffee until I moved to Seattle.
John: And so I never experienced...
John: Coffee that comes in cans.
John: I mean, that's the coffee that adults drank when I was growing up, but I never had it.
John: It was only espresso.
John: That was my introduction.
Merlin: When we say in a can, you mean the same way that we would have Nestle's Quick.
Merlin: You take a spoon, you put it into the canister, you dump some hot water on top of it.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I mean, I don't even know what Folgers is.
John: I don't know.
John: Would you put Folgers into a modern coffee maker?
John: You would, wouldn't you?
John: It's just like ground coffee.
Merlin: You don't even know what it is.
Merlin: It's been a really long time.
Merlin: And for some reason, I got two fault cards on this.
Merlin: One is, I remember the Nescafe commercials.
Merlin: And I remember they would show in the commercials they had cool little mugs that looked like a globe with a handle on it.
Merlin: I would just like to say to listeners, I would kill for one of those today.
Merlin: And the other one was when I had one of my first freelance jobs and I was just discovering coffee, I would work late at night at this real estate office and I would put – I basically would make hot chocolate and then dump coffee, instant coffee into it.
John: Right, right, right, right.
Merlin: Because I didn't know any better.
Merlin: But it was so chocolatey that it covered up the nastiness of the caffeine and gave me a giant buzz.
John: The first couple of times that I did European rock touring where I was...
John: Where I would show up at a venue and there would be a box that had the equivalent of 50 cups of coffee in it.
John: But it was all in little tubes, little paper tubes.
John: Wow.
John: I was like, this is genius.
John: And I would grab the whole box and stuff it in my bag.
John: And I'd be like, I have coffee now forever.
John: No one can ever tell me there's no coffee.
John: Well, at the very least, you never have to worry that there won't be coffee.
John: Right.
John: There's always coffee now.
John: I'm going to carry one of these in my wallet at all times.
John: It's like a confession.
John: It's like a condom for coffee.
John: Yeah, it's a condom for coffee.
John: Caffeine condom.
John: And so, anyway, so I'm emptying out this guitar case and I find this bag of Starbucks branded paper tube Nescafe grounds.
John: He's selling a Guided by Voices song title generator.
John: And I'm like, I don't remember...
John: I don't remember seeing these before.
John: I don't remember secreting these in my guitar bag, but finding these is absolutely consistent with the kind of coffee hoarder mentality I've exhibited before, which is in any situation where I'm in a backstage environment or like a gift bag situation,
John: Where a lot of gift bags now that you get at events will have a pound of coffee in them.
John: Really?
John: In the Northwest at least.
John: Like if you go to a conference in Portland and you're one of the speakers, they'll give you a gift bag and it always has a pound of Stumptown coffee.
Merlin: Oh, you get an Infinity Scarf, a Slater-Kenny CD, and a bunch of coffee.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: And so I definitely will wait around in situations like that to see the three or four gift bags that don't get claimed.
John: Sure.
John: And then I will go nab the coffee out of that.
Merlin: To use the vernacular of the poor kid at lunchtime in elementary school –
Merlin: I'll have it.
John: I'll have it.
John: That's right.
John: I'll have it.
Merlin: You can eat that hamburger, I'll have it.
Merlin: I used to do that in elementary school.
Merlin: I could totally see you being the I'll have it guy.
John: I would be like, you can eat that bun.
John: You can eat that bun.
John: You're not going to eat the pickles?
John: It's completely consistent with me that I would have been in a situation where I would have seen this bag of coffee envelopes.
John: And I would have looked, you know, taken a look to the left, taken a look to the right, realized that, like, this is my backstage.
John: These coffee envelopes are here for me.
John: And then I would have stuffed them in my guitar case without even remembering having done it.
John: I don't think I ever had one.
John: So anyway.
John: You're like a squirrel.
John: Like a squirrel.
John: Or like a raven.
John: I've got my little baubles.
John: But they're all coffee.
John: Anyway, so I found this in this guitar case.
John: And I sat there and I'm looking at the guitar and I'm like, when did I play this thing last live?
John: It's a weird guitar.
John: It wouldn't be like a primary tour guitar.
John: No, this isn't a guitar that I grab without thinking.
John: This is like a local gig?
John: Or I could have traveled with it, but to an event where my expectation was that I was going to do something fun and dumb rather than that I was going to seriously use this guitar to play some tunes.
John: Sounds like a cruise.
Yeah.
John: Yeah, but I didn't bring it on the cruise.
John: So anyway, that's problem number two.
John: I can't remember where I was.
John: It was so long ago that I cannot have these Starbucks tubes.
John: I cannot have Starbucks tubes.
John: Do they have dates on them?
John: No, I don't think so.
John: They're not sitting here right in front of me, but they've been sitting in a guitar case for at least a year.
John: So they got to be good.
John: They got to be amazing.
John: So anyway, I took them downstairs and I just made one.
John: And here's how I did it.
John: I took a Starbucks tube and I had to really resist the impulse to use two of them.
John: But I just took one, the recommended serving size.
John: I poured it into a beer stein, filled it with tap water, and stuck it in the microwave for two minutes.
John: And now this brew is sitting in front of me here.
John: I have yet to taste it.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I'm standing by.
Merlin: I'm on tenterhooks.
Merlin: I can't wait to hear.
Merlin: It's strangely granular.
Merlin: John is addressing the stein.
John: Here we go.
John: It's like a weird cut.
John: It's very muddy.
John: Here we go.
John: It's nice and warm.
John: It does have a kind of chocolatey smell.
John: It smells like international coffee.
John: I like it.
John: All right, hang on.
John: Here we go.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the line is sponsored by our very good friends over at Squarespace.
Merlin: You know, Squarespace, they are the only one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website, portfolio, or online store.
Merlin: Heck, you can even use it to make a podcast.
Merlin: That's what John and I did.
Merlin: We have had this show hosted at Squarespace since the very beginning.
Merlin: It's been a dream to use all along.
Merlin: It's simple enough for a podcaster to use.
Merlin: They have a fantastic drag-and-drop interface, very easy to use, beautiful free templates that you can tweak to suit your needs.
Merlin: All the designs are responsive, so they look great on every device.
Merlin: If you're not even as smart as a podcaster, don't worry, because if you run into problems, they have help.
Merlin: Squarespace has 24x7 support with dedicated teams in New York and Dublin.
Merlin: Squarespace plans start at, can you believe this, $8 a month.
Merlin: And that comes with a free domain name if you sign up for a year, which I highly recommend.
Merlin: Every plan also comes with the ability to create your own online store.
Merlin: So if you have things you want to sell, you can do it right from your very own site.
Merlin: So whatever you're doing, whether you're a podcaster, a musician, a writer, a photographer, anything that you want to get online, please go have a look at Squarespace and tell them you heard about it from your friends here at Roderick on the line.
Merlin: If you go there now,
Merlin: You get a free trial plus 10% off any package you choose by using the special offer code super train.
Merlin: When you check out, it helps us very much.
Merlin: If you go and visit the site, it's going to help you out very much.
Merlin: If you sign up for a site, John and I want to send our thanks to Squarespace for supporting Roderick on the line.
Merlin: We could not do it without them.
Merlin: The verdict is a thumbs down.
Merlin: Oh, it's terrible.
Merlin: What is the flavor?
John: Hang on.
John: Okay, first of all, you really taste the tap water.
John: And then there's a...
John: There's almost like a burnt meat flavor to it.
John: It feels like the crusty end of a prime rib.
Merlin: I guess that would go under other on the tasting card.
John: Meat comma burnt.
John: It's like burnt meat.
John: That's one of the flavors.
John: There's the chocolate smell and then a tap water mouthfeel and then burnt meat.
Okay.
John: Yeah, I really can't get away from the burning meat.
John: It is coffee, though.
Merlin: It couldn't be the stein, right?
Merlin: Is the stein clean?
John: No, no, no.
John: My steins are all perfectly prepared for coffee preparation.
John: Showroom shine.
John: Yeah, let me see here.
John: Wow.
John: And then, yeah, then there's something dirty about the finish.
John: Like...
John: It's kind of like Mercedes exhaust.
Merlin: Like a bus station seat?
John: Yeah, like a little bit of a diesel component.
John: Wow.
John: You would have to be really... And it's sour, too.
John: You would have to be really, really, really in need of some coffee.
John: But I often am.
Merlin: Okay, well...
Merlin: Two things.
Merlin: First of all, like how does it compare?
Merlin: Well, I guess first thing is that when soon as you mentioned this, I really, really, really wanted a coffee and there's no way I can make a coffee right now without making a ton of noise.
Merlin: So I'm not doing that.
Merlin: But then after you didn't enjoy it and you said it tasted like a German car, I'm not as into having a coffee now.
Merlin: Isn't that a funny thing?
Merlin: Turns out.
Merlin: Power of suggestion.
Merlin: Turns out.
Merlin: The other thing is, on the continuum of bad coffee, how does it stand alongside things like gas station, outside of town, last third of the pot coffee?
Merlin: How does it stand next to days in your motel room coffee?
Merlin: Conference at a hotel coffee?
John: So the...
John: So, it seems to me that coffee that has been sitting all day and brewing all day and gets that kind of burned taste, the burned, overbrewed taste is throughout the coffee experience, right?
John: It becomes a thicker, like...
John: more... It feels... The coffee itself feels like the taste is opaque.
John: It is throughout.
John: Whereas this, the burned coffee flavor, is a taste that is floating on the top of a kind of watery base.
John: So that it's not... It doesn't have the full...
Merlin: You don't get the full majesty of the Kenyan tang that you would at the bottom of the tank.
John: That's right.
John: The Kenyan tang.
John: The proximity to a restroom that's being used by truckers.
John: The hot cases on the other side with some Jojos in it.
John: All of that you taste in the truck stop coffee.
John: Now, a day's in...
John: Like in-your-room coffee does have that.
Merlin: Those disgusting little coffee makers that lots of other people have used.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Isn't that a horrible thought?
John: That has the same kind of watery quality.
John: Yeah.
John: But they go to great lengths to take the burn out of it.
Mm-hmm.
John: And I feel like the burn element has been injected into these Starbucks pouches in order to give you this, in order to maybe try and conjure the sensation of like dark roast.
John: Right.
John: That's what it feels like.
John: It feels like somebody in a laboratory has figured out what dark roast tastes like.
John: And then they put it... And then they made it into a powder.
Merlin: And they think, well, you know, fuck it.
Merlin: They're having coffee out of a tube.
Merlin: What do they know?
John: Exactly.
Merlin: They've probably had Starbucks and they're slightly burn-tasting coffee before.
Merlin: This is going to be fine.
John: Yeah, this is really... And then, to top it all off...
John: The crystals do leave just a slightly granular... It's really mesmerizingly bad.
John: Do you think you'll have another?
John: I'm definitely going to keep them around.
John: I'll probably serve them to guests.
John: You know, when somebody comes and wants to talk to me about... Better than a sharp stick in the eye, I always say.
Merlin: It's better than nothing, right?
John: The guy that comes to the door and is like, have you ever considered replacing your windows?
John: I'm going to say, would you like a cup of coffee?
John: Let's sit and talk about this.
Merlin: Are you cooking meat, sir?
John: Because, you know, it never occurred to me to replace my windows until now, until you showed up.
John: I mean, obviously, 25 people have come and asked me the same question over the last 10 years.
Merlin: You're not going to believe this, but I was just sitting here preparing a coffee for myself and thinking about how I needed new windows.
Merlin: Do you believe people still come door to door for anything?
Merlin: Isn't that amazing that that still happens at all?
Merlin: I just assume it's a burglar.
John: Well, and the thing is that sometimes you get people coming door to door when you live in a neighborhood as I do.
John: You get them coming door to door where you get a sense like, oh, this is somebody who belongs in sales.
John: This is somebody who would be a good salesperson if they just had the Glengarry leads.
Yeah.
John: But what they've got is they showed up somewhere to a, they answered an ad in the newspaper, showed up to a seminar, learned to sell windows door to door.
Merlin: Went to the days in, drank the coffee.
John: That's right.
John: Had the starter kit, did the day long thing.
John: And now they're out here and they're selling windows.
John: And the only reason that you, that you, that that would be your life.
John: The only reason you would, you would be a 45 year old guy standing on my porch, not taking no for an answer.
John: is that you've fallen on hard times.
John: Some twist in the road resulted in you needing to decide this late in life that door-to-door sales are going to be your thing.
Merlin: Nobody gets the results from their job-o when they're 17 and go, yay, middle-aged window salesman.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: Like, this is a guy who's probably living in his car.
John: but he's not but you know what he's not he still presents well so i always sit and look at him and i'm like what's the problem is it alcoholism is it like what is the what is the failing is it gambling debts recent divorce or like boeing you know layoff but i don't think about you know like sales yeah can i give you a freebie though yeah windows the clear choice
John: That's got to be somebody's slogan already.
John: It's pretty great, huh?
John: Windows, the clear choice.
John: That's a great title for our seminar.
Merlin: Boy, that is good.
John: But I do feel, were you a member of Junior Achievement by any time?
Merlin: No, that was totally opaque to me.
Merlin: The Junior Achievement, Future Farmers of America, there were all of these groups that really seemed like cults to me.
Merlin: I remember Junior Achievement had a cool logo in their ads.
Merlin: It said JA, but it was very stylized.
Merlin: I think one of them was a triangle, if memory serves.
John: Well, and the thing about Junior Achievement that I liked was that it attracted the brassy girls.
John: The entrepreneur rixes.
John: That's right.
John: I like a brassy girl.
John: And so in high school, I got roped into Junior Achievement at one point.
John: And, you know, I think there was a time in my junior year when I really was trying to decide what my course of action was going to be.
John: I guess that's not uncommon.
John: That's what your junior year is for.
Merlin: If you spend a lot of time alone in an orange flight suit, there's going to be things you need to figure out.
John: And even as a junior, I was like, well, what my course of action is.
John: is is to be the retired director of the cia what are you talking about like how do you get there it's too late for me to go to yale which would be a shoe-in
John: But, like, how am I supposed to – and there were voices whispering in my ear that business, business, business.
John: You know, that's what they – that's the cult that they really try and put into kids.
John: Business, business, business.
Merlin: It's one of those weird things, though, because, like, there were those phrases that you would hear.
Merlin: And I would even hear them and use them and not even really know what they meant.
Merlin: The two that come to mind are business and marketing.
Merlin: We had a class called marketing.
Merlin: And it was kind of about advertising.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But if you – here's the weird part.
Merlin: Am I – yeah, right, right.
Merlin: But see, I didn't even know.
Merlin: Did you know what the phrase public relations meant when you were in junior high?
Merlin: I thought it meant like meeting people.
John: Well, I did – I had a better idea because people used to say to me – this is one of those things that adults would say to me when I was 13, 14 years old.
John: Like, oh, you should go into public relations.
John: Because you're good with people.
John: And I would say, what is that?
John: And they'd be like, oh, you could be IBM's public relations guy.
Merlin: My mom used to say, I think my mom didn't know what it meant either.
Merlin: And she would say, you know, if I weren't in real estate, I'd really like to be in public relations because I like working with people.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But I mean, I had an idea.
Merlin: It's not begging for articles about you.
Merlin: That's really what public relations is.
John: I had an idea that it was like being the president's press secretary.
John: That you stood at a podium and reporters shouted questions at you.
John: And you were like, I'm the public relations man.
John: And let me answer that question.
Merlin: You'd be a jolly, garrulous fellow, full of bonhomie.
John: Well, and that was when adults said, you should go into public relations.
John: That's what they imagined.
John: That I would be the great spokesperson for a company...
John: Right.
John: Who was like, let me answer your question.
John: That's not what that means.
Merlin: That's not what that means.
Merlin: It means you're a greasy link beggar.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, now.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: The industry's changed a lot.
John: Every Monday, I get 40 emails from all the publicists that have me on their list that are just like, hi, friend.
John: And it's just like, delete.
John: Could you tweet about this?
John: But so I joined Junior Achievement and I sat in the meetings.
John: And at one point, and the adult supervisors were trying to get us to walk us through the entire process of starting a business.
John: And we had to choose what our product was going to be.
John: You got to sell widgets.
John: And we decided it was chocolate.
John: We were going to make, what was it?
John: like chocolate brittle and nut bars and like, uh, white chocolate figured prominently in it.
John: Oh, and so much like the real world.
John: You just decide what product you're going to sell.
John: That's right.
John: And then you decide that I'm a window man.
John: It's the clear choice.
John: And then we went into manufacturing, so we bought bulk nuts and chocolate, and we actually, in junior achievement class, cooked them down and made them into bark.
John: What a charade.
John: Packaged them up, and then began the real process of basically selling them to our friends' parents.
John: And it was a total Girl Scout scam, where Junior Achievement just became door-to-door sales, or you'd stand out in front of the Costco at 8 o'clock at night with your Junior Achievement podium.
John: Yeah, your vest and your little folding table, and you'd be like, buy some chocolate to support Junior Achievement?
Merlin: That's super interesting to me, because we did the same thing in Key Club, which was not what it sounds like.
Ha ha!
Merlin: I was in the Key Club.
John: I'd like to be a member of a Key Club now.
Merlin: And Key Club was like Junior Kiwanis.
John: Junior Kiwanis, right.
Merlin: Junior Kiwanis, one of the many, many clubs I joined because there was a girl that I liked in it.
Merlin: And we, the government teacher.
Merlin: Was she brassy?
Merlin: No, she was worried about offending her clothes.
Merlin: She was in there and I went.
Merlin: And Mr. Sherwood, who taught Americanism versus communism, was also the sponsor of the Key Club.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And he – the entire – all I remember of any of these meetings, anything, anything, all I remember was the cookies.
Merlin: And the cookies was he brought in – Well, the cookies and the anti-communism.
John: Well, yeah.
John: Nothing says Kiwanis like anti-communism.
Merlin: But that was an actual class until the year I took it in 1984.
Merlin: It was still called comparative government, colon, Americanism versus communism.
Mm-hmm.
John: Isn't that great?
John: It's very smart because, of course, it's not capitalism versus communism.
John: It's Americanism.
Merlin: I don't think that's really a word.
Merlin: But Mr. Sherwood brought in – this is so great.
Merlin: He brought in – I'm sorry.
Merlin: I don't know why I'm remembering this.
Merlin: He brought in his wife's world-famous recipe for cookies.
Merlin: And can I tell you what the chief selling point of these cookies are?
Merlin: They never go bad.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Cookies that never go bad?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So think of all the foods that you've had.
Merlin: Think of all the coffee you have drunk out of your guitar case.
Merlin: Think about how many things on your list of favorite foods are there because they never go bad.
Merlin: And these were – we made them like to the last teaspoon.
Merlin: We made these exactly right and they're the worst thing I've ever had in my mouth, inclusive.
Merlin: And then we had to go out and sell them.
Merlin: So what I'm trying to say to you, John, is I think these are all cults.
Merlin: They're all moneymakers.
Merlin: It's like going and selling flowers at the airport.
John: Right.
John: Well, you know, I want to live in a world, Merlin, where the Air Force has to have a bake sale to buy a bomber.
Merlin: And the bumper sticker industry needs larger cars to fit all the... That's not a bumper sticker, it's a paragraph.
John: The problem, obviously, is that adults have no imagination.
John: Adults in schools...
John: They have no sense of what business is because they're teachers.
Merlin: Maybe if they're into communism and not Americanism.
John: And they are cooking up these, like, I mean, there was nothing that pushed me away from business faster than the idea that if I went to business school, I would just end up outside of Thunderbird Business School selling fucking white chocolate bark.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You want a nut bar?
Merlin: Now I have an MBA and I'm selling nut bar?
Merlin: Can I market you a nut bar?
Merlin: But, you know, it's all a scam.
Merlin: By the way, just can I say that Mr. Sherwood, whose name I'll cut out of this, Mr. Sherwood was awesome.
Merlin: He was great.
Merlin: He wrote me my recommendation letter for college.
Merlin: He was fantastic.
Merlin: But he's also a huge double dipper.
Merlin: He was a retired, I think, lieutenant colonel.
Merlin: I think he'd been in Korea maybe World War II.
Merlin: And he had a full-time job as a teacher.
John: see see so he's getting his full retirement that's americanism and he's working as a teacher imparting to the next generation all of the hard-won lessons that he learned running up the hill at incheon in fairness he is combining elements of americanism with elements of communism that's a pretty good gig he is in a position to help us reflect on that and his wife has a killer recipe for cookies that don't go bad
John: Well, so I'm thinking about this a lot.
Merlin: These are all scams.
Merlin: Every one of these is a scam.
John: Well, they're deeply scammy, and all business is a scam.
John: Business PR and marketing.
Merlin: Sales?
Merlin: Sales?
Merlin: I would like...
Merlin: To see most people contrast, sales, marketing, PR, publicity.
John: Sales, marketing, PR, publicity.
John: They're all part of the same wing of a corporate flow chart, right?
John: Sales, marketing, PR, publicity.
Merlin: Some of the marketing bleeds into product.
John: But they're all – well, but I mean that's all under the VP of sales, isn't it?
John: I don't think so.
Merlin: There's a VP of marketing, right.
Merlin: You got social, cloud, platform, cookies.
Merlin: But think about it.
Merlin: Buddy, I don't know if you noticed it, but this year the Girl Scouts were out of control.
Merlin: I'll tell you, I want to be supportive.
Merlin: I want to be supportive of the young ladies.
Merlin: I know you like to support the Girl Scouts.
Merlin: I like to support the girls.
John: You have a girl.
John: You've got to decide if she's going to be a bluebird or a brownie.
Merlin: It's very frustrating to me that all at once, at the same time, like the entire city, if you go to this neighborhood near our house, the place where we went to Goodwill that time, West Portal, every corner there's an encampment of Girl Scouts there.
John: Do they have their rifles stacked in a pyramid and they're standing around a fire?
John: It's a lot like The Wire.
John: It's a lot like Baltimore.
Merlin: Don't give me the money.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's troubling to me, though, that obviously this is their earner.
Merlin: This is how they pay for Girl Scouts.
Merlin: It's just weird to me that they do it by selling sugar once a year.
Merlin: It's odd.
John: Well, and I'm thinking...
John: This was what terrified me about sales when I was young was the palpable desperation in the eyes of everyone else.
John: that ever talked to me about sales.
John: Gil needs this one.
John: You know, you know, that, that feeling of like every, like every sale is every sale.
John: It's, it's, it's a make or break situation.
John: Like the last year, you're only as good as your last sale or you're only as good as your next sale and watching people in sales.
John: And, and I mean, actually the last time I was in San Francisco, uh,
John: I talked about this on Roderick on the line with you.
John: I think I might have talked about it on You Look Nice today.
John: I'm not releasing that episode, John.
John: But I went into that preppy clothier that I was very excited to finally visit.
John: And I went in there and I bought two suits.
John: Remember this?
Merlin: Oh, right, right.
Merlin: I do remember this, yeah.
John: Remember I bought two suits?
John: And it's taken me several months to unpack the entire experience.
John: Because I have a tailor now here in Seattle who has taught me...
John: An enormous amount about how clothes fit, how clothes are meant to fit men's clothes.
John: And in in so doing, he has like kind of the scales have fallen from my eyes.
John: He has taught me what to look for in clothes.
John: And I've realized that a lot of the clothes that I thought.
John: A lot of the clothes that I thought fit me, that I owned, did not fit me.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: It's kind of like your Palestinian mechanic.
Merlin: Like, you've got an insider's view now.
Merlin: You understand the industry now.
John: A little bit.
John: A little bit.
John: And the problem with the way clothes fit is you put them on and you're like, oh, well, it fits me here, it fits me here, it fits me here.
John: It fits.
John: And my tailor looks at the same suit and he's like, oh, boy.
John: This thing...
John: Not only doesn't it fit, but it's too... It fits so poorly that it's too hard to fix.
John: Like, you can't just shorten the sleeves.
Merlin: You're talking about one of the ones you got here?
John: So this is the thing.
Merlin: Wow.
John: One of the suits that I bought at the San Francisco Clothier that I was very excited about turns out does not fit me at all.
John: And...
John: In reflecting upon it, when the little tailor came out from behind the curtain to fit this garment to me, because alterations were made to this garment.
John: Alterations that added a considerable expense to the purchase price were made to this garment.
John: When he came out from behind the curtain, a look, a dark look crossed his face.
John: And the salesman, who is also the owner of the store and the son of the founder, had a very fast-talking, like, chummy car salesman kind of patter.
John: And he looked at the tailor over my shoulder, and I'm looking in the mirror at myself in this suit, thinking to myself, boy, don't I look sharp.
John: And what I'm looking at is this is the kind of suit I want.
John: This is the color of suit that I've wanted for a long time.
John: This is the kind of suit that I've wanted for a long time.
John: And the aspects of it that aren't fitting...
John: The salesman is saying like, oh, well, we're going to tailor out here and we'll get this taken care of.
John: You know, this is no problem.
John: We'll just get him to do it.
John: And so I'm looking in the mirror and I'm pretty proud of myself.
John: And I'm imagining, oh, he's just going to take up the sleeves.
John: He's going to shorten the collar.
John: It's going to be.
John: And I see this dark look go across the tailor's face, which I did not recognize at the time because I was in the excitement of the moment and because the salesman was pattering in my ear.
John: I see a dark look, and then I hear the salesman say, over my other shoulder, he says, Ricardo, we're trying to sell some suits here.
John: What?
John: And then he goes back to talking to me, and what he's saying, now I have unpacked that moment.
John: Ricardo came out from the back, saw that the suit did not fit me at all,
John: And the salesman saw the look and preempted any comment from Ricardo by saying, we're trying to sell some suits here.
John: It seems so obvious now.
John: Now it does.
John: Wow.
John: So Ricardo just didn't even visibly shrug, and he went about what I imagine from a tailor's perspective is this deal with the devil, where he's employed by this guy, and he is being asked to make suits that don't fit.
John: He's being asked to do tailoring on suits that are, in his profession, an abomination.
John: He's turned into a monster.
John: He's basically serving his master.
Merlin: But he's like the guy who gets called in once a month to trim Andy Warhol's wig.
Merlin: That's a good look for you, boss.
John: Well, and I'm sure at the end of the day or when he goes into the darkest room in the tailor's guild and sits down before the tribunal, he has to go into the confession booth and say, I have made size 46 longs.
John: I have sold 46 longs to a 44 long.
John: And there was nothing I could do.
John: And they have said, no, you do not get into heaven.
Merlin: but it's an Apollo type situation where you just empty out the box and like, just, you've got to make this thing fit together, even though it was never meant to work.
John: Well, yeah.
John: And so, and so what, what has happened is it's taken me this long.
Merlin: I feel so bad for Ricardo.
John: Well, I do too, but I feel also bad for myself that I put on this suit now.
John: And now that I have, now that I've been shown how a suit is meant to fit, I go, Oh, to get this suit to fit, I am going to have to have my tailor remake it basically at great expense.
John: Or I can say this is a loss and it was a very expensive learning experience.
John: But I continue to get email blasts from this company.
John: You get clothier blasts?
John: I'm on their mailing list and they send me these like, come on in for a special fitting, 50% off, all men's shirts.
John: And when I first started getting these email blasts, I was like, you know what?
John: I'm not going to put a Google filter on these and consign them all to the garbage dump.
John: I'm going to look at these because I had such a nice experience at that, Taylor.
John: And maybe this is the beginning of a relationship.
John: Maybe I'm going to buy ties from this guy for 40 years.
John: For your daughter's wedding, you go there to get a tux.
John: You get a tux, that's right.
John: This is heartbreaking, John.
John: This is going to be my place, the family-owned little clothier.
Merlin: This is your airport in California.
John: This is my airplane mechanic.
John: And as the weeks have progressed to months, and I've realized that this guy, in his salesman frenzy...
John: To get me out the door that day in a suit.
John: And his willingness to sell me a suit that didn't fit.
John: He knew it didn't fit.
John: And he enlisted his tailor in a conspiracy to not reveal to me that it didn't fit.
John: These emails that I get from this company have gone from little missives of joy, little imaginings of myself being an old man wandering around the house in my smoking jacket made by this company.
John: now they are little reminders of horror and i am and i want to and i feel like now that this guy probably was on cocaine
John: And I want nothing to do with this store.
Merlin: Maybe he's got the goods on Ricardo.
Merlin: And maybe Ricardo's father worked for his father or something, but now he's not allowed to work anywhere else.
John: I think Ricardo probably worked for his father.
John: Ricardo was an old man.
John: That's a no good boss.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: And he lives back there behind the curtain, probably in a refrigerator box that has a window cut out in it.
John: the faulty hot plate and this guy is like this guy holds the papers on his kids or something yes and and you know and now and it's all because of that salesman moment where this guy was thinking this guy was thinking i'm gonna sell this the suit today trying to sell some suits here and he was not practicing what i'm sure his father practiced
John: which is like, hey, let me make you a customer for life.
John: And all he had to do was say, you know what?
John: That suit doesn't fit you.
John: We don't have one in your size.
John: Sorry, I don't think you should buy it.
John: And I would be like, you, sir, are a man of integrity.
John: And instead, you know, I'm basically, I have committed myself to a lifetime at war with this person.
Merlin: I want to shame this guy.
Merlin: I want him outed.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: He gave you what you wanted.
Merlin: He saw you coming.
Merlin: He saw you coming.
Merlin: He knew when you came into that store, you were looking for some old world fucking suits.
Merlin: And we're looking to be a dad.
Merlin: And I bet he saw that coming.
Merlin: He's just a tourist in town.
Merlin: I'm going to give this guy the business.
Merlin: I'm going to sell him that 46.
Yeah.
John: That's right.
John: Here comes the rube.
John: Here's the guy from the sticks who doesn't wear a suit.
John: He doesn't know how a suit's supposed to fit.
John: Get in your box, Ricardo.
John: Get in your box.
Merlin: Kettle, Ricardo.
John: Kettle.
John: Hang on.
John: And he rings the bell and Ricardo's like, oh.
John: I'm so sorry.
John: And he comes out and he's just like, oh my God, no, please don't make me fit this suit to this guy.
Merlin: And so anyway, I mean – But now you've got somebody showing you the truth.
Merlin: You've got somebody who's teaching you.
Merlin: Now you feel like you trust this guy though, right?
Merlin: You're a Seattle tailor you trust.
John: Well, the Seattle tailor I trust implicitly because he says things like, you know, this is going to cost $100 to do, and, you know, I mean, I will do it if you tell me to, but I don't see how you're going to win.
Merlin: Yes, again, like a good mechanic.
Merlin: That's what I always liked about our mechanic.
Merlin: He'll always tell us, like, this is – you're not going to be able to drive out of here without fixing this.
Merlin: This is broken.
Merlin: This is a thing that you're definitely going to need to take care of in the next –
Merlin: year, better to do it now.
Merlin: And here's a bunch of stuff that you could do or don't do.
Merlin: And I, and that has given that guy so much credibility with me over the years.
John: Yeah.
John: You know what I mean?
John: And my new mechanic is like that.
John: Now my old mechanic was a guy that, uh, that I took my stuff to for years and years and years.
John: And the falling out that he and I had was, he said, your, your truck needs a new brake job.
John: It needs an entire brake job.
John: It's, you know, 1200 bucks.
John: And I was like, well, in all honesty, do you think it's worth it?
Merlin: Given the likely lifetime?
John: Yeah, this is one of those questions.
John: Friend to friend, do you think it's worth it to do this work?
John: And he...
John: Uh, you know, and a, like a cold light shown on him and he shrugged his shoulders and said, it's up to you.
John: And I was like, Hmm, after all the work that I've had done here,
John: you're you're gonna you're gonna just fade you're gonna suddenly turn into not a human you're just like a you're just a fixer bot now and it's entirely up to me and you're not going to give me any advice and you know what he was saying was well i want the 1200 bucks so i'm not going to tell you not to do it right
John: but I'm not going to sit here and argue against you paying me for work that is like good money after bad.
John: And I guess it's that good money after bad thing where that's where somebody really shows me their integrity.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, where they can introduce these other axes to it.
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: I have one piece of automotive advice, which is if Jerry the mechanic tells you you really, really, really need to replace the timing belt in the next month –
Merlin: And then over the next year, your wife literally begs you three different times to fix the timing belt.
Merlin: And Jerry reminds you that if the timing belt breaks, it's going to be extremely, it's going to be like an order of magnitude more costly to fix than if we just do this one simple fucking thing, Merlin.
Merlin: If that happens, go ahead and just get the timing belt fixed.
John: Yeah.
John: Because it's a lot more expensive after it breaks.
John: What I end up doing is wandering around the parking lot of a Fred Meyer holding a broken timing belt.
John: And saying, hey, I'm from out of town.
John: My wife and kids are in the car around the corner.
John: And I just need $5.
John: It's 1 o'clock in the morning, but I just need $5 to get this timing belt replaced.
Merlin: Want to buy a window?
Merlin: Comes with a free nut bar.
John: I do.
John: When I was at the conference on world affairs in Colorado.
John: Which time was that, John?
John: Most recently.
John: Okay.
John: The gal, the student who was assigned as my student ambassador, who was supposed to drive me around town and be helpful, I said to her on the first day, like, what are you majoring in?
John: And she said, business.
John: And I said, so what are you doing...
John: What are you doing at this conference on world affairs?
John: Why are you engaged in that?
John: And then I said, wait, wait, wait.
John: Don't tell me.
John: Let me guess.
John: You're majoring in business because advice was given to you that that was a practical major for successful people.
John: And she was like, yeah.
John: And I said, but your heart really lies in the arts.
John: And she said, yeah.
John: And I said, and so you're dabbling in the conference on world affairs because you want to be involved.
John: You want to be engaged with people who are like doing interesting, thoughtful work.
John: She was like, yeah, but you're still, you're still like putting in the hours on your business degree because you don't want to disappoint your parents.
John: She was like, yeah.
Yeah.
John: I was like, but eventually you feel like you're going to try and use your business degree in the arts in some way doing art business.
John: And she was like, how do you know all this?
Merlin: Is this your card?
John: I was like, oh, oh, young lady.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, you poor darling.
John: How do you think she'll turn out?
John: Well, she seemed like a great... I mean, as an individual, she seemed great because she seemed like absolutely a terrible fit in business and the business understanding, whatever that constitutes, whatever business understanding they manage to actually impart to you in business school, which I imagine is at the level of, like, white chocolate bark.
John: Keith Lumpkin.
John: It's not going to hurt her as she moves into wanting to work in the arts.
John: And she's 21 and already has this knowledge of herself.
John: So it's not like she's going to spend 15 years in HVAC sales.
John: Before she realizes that what she really wanted to do is write a novel.
John: She's already transitioning.
Merlin: There's more and more stuff.
Merlin: There's more and more reasons to discover stuff like that sooner than there used to be, I think.
John: Yeah, that's absolutely right.
Merlin: You see your friends come out of...
Merlin: I mean, John, I'm sorry to keep returning.
Merlin: I feel like I used it as a drinking game, me mentioning college.
Merlin: But my entire college career, I mean, a year of college in 1986, including... That's like six years of college now.
Merlin: Well, yeah, exactly.
Merlin: I mean, in-state tuition at...
Merlin: one of the best uh public schools in america uh was that's the that's the new new college the new school yeah no new college it was like the top among the uh they call it the public ivies and um yeah but it was out the door like uh including i mean if you include like tuition all that it's it was under six grand a year oh wow and then i think that included housing maybe not books and stuff like that but you know like 60 grand now probably right
Merlin: Yeah, well, this is the joke.
Merlin: When I met my lady, I was working in Menlo Park.
Merlin: She was working at Stanford.
Merlin: And we would joke.
Merlin: We would laugh.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: We would laugh because Stanford – you know what Stanford undergrad costs then?
Merlin: $40,000 a year.
Merlin: Then?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And, and, but I mean like, oh my gosh, can you even imagine?
Merlin: And now go ask people in college now what it costs for your college.
Merlin: It's, it's, I mean, that ain't that unusual anymore.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so can you imagine coming out?
Merlin: I mean, knowing the meager things I accidentally picked up in college, even taking all of that into account, I can't imagine being 22, 23 years old and having over a hundred thousand dollars in debt.
Merlin: It's crazy.
Merlin: Entering this fucking job market with your business degree and $100,000 in debt?
Merlin: Well, particularly since... You've got plenty of chances to figure out that ain't for you, lady.
John: Particularly since I would say conservatively 60% of what's being taught in colleges now is trade school education.
John: Like if you have a degree in computer science and I don't, I don't, I know that there are a lot of our listeners who have multiple degrees in computer science, but let me just say, and I, and I, and I appreciate you all.
John: I love, I love our fans.
Merlin: You're about to talk about something you don't know about, aren't you?
John: But computer science is a trade.
John: Computer science is a trade.
John: It's a math.
John: It's a bunch of math classes.
John: At what point did we decide that math... It's not about learning to program.
John: It's a lot of math.
John: At what point did we decide that math was like... And I'm talking about not math, but computer math.
John: Say the last paragraph in your dad's voice.
John: Listen, computer math is different from math.
John: If somebody is sitting with math, somebody's sitting in a room...
John: and the light is streaming in and there's a shelf of bookcases and they're staring out the window and they're thinking about math then yes that's an art i agree that that is that that that those that that kind of maths and i and i would put an s at the end sure because it's an english style yeah english maths oxford maths those are those belong in the college of arts and sciences
John: They're wasting their money on computer maths.
John: Computer maths?
John: You could get that at the ITT technical school.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: And that's where that should be taught, computer maths.
John: They should learn it on the street like we did.
John: Well, because more and more, every time I talk to a computer person, they are saying, oh, now I'm using XTHMLs.
John: And these languages now are easy to use because all you have to do is say to the computer, computer, make me an app.
John: What's my safe word?
John: Get me out of this.
John: You put a couple of colons and backslashes and then the math is done for you by the machine.
John: The thing is...
John: i don't understand the episodes you do and don't let me put out i don't understand it most of it is being taught in colleges now and business the entire business trade school it's a trade school it's a trade school the entire of you know like if unless you unless your education involves a certain number of hours sitting in a window sitting in a room staring out the window
John: then you don't need to be in college.
John: College is basically a building of windows made to be stared out of.
John: And every once in a while, you talk to somebody in a Tweed jacket, and in answer to your questions, he asks you more questions.
Merlin: Look to your left and look to your right.
Merlin: One of those will fail out of trade school maths.
John: If you ask a professor a question and he gives you an answer that is not phrased as a question, you know you belong in trade school.
Merlin: I think I blacked out at some point.
Merlin: So you're saying it's not a good deal?
John: I'm saying that college, that what we've done as a country is at a certain point, 50, 60 years ago, we decided that college was the symbol of upward mobility, that my parents didn't go to college and I'm going to go to college, or I didn't go to college and I'm going to put my son through college.
John: And that's how we know that America is growing and that we are providing opportunity to people.
Merlin: You're just getting your ticket punched for an office job.
Merlin: That's all it is, too.
Merlin: That's pretty much all there is, right?
John: That's right.
John: And we have increased dramatically on the technical side the amount of technical knowledge that's required to have a basic job now.
John: You've got to know about colons and stuff.
John: You've got to know where to put the backslash.
John: And your JTML.
John: You've got to know about a bit.ly.
John: And you've got to put stuff in a cloud.
John: But all of that is the equivalent.
John: It's basically the equivalent of knowing how to operate a steam engine.
John: It's not true!
John: Operating a steam engine was very difficult.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
John: It was very difficult.
John: And now the steam that is powering the steam engine is bits.
Merlin: And it's cloud.
John: It's basically cloud.
John: Platform, social.
Merlin: Yeah, full circle.
Merlin: Hakuna Matata.
Merlin: Steam to cloud.
Ah!
Merlin: I feel bad for that gal.
Merlin: That's tough.
Merlin: Boy, I haven't heard all that advice.
Merlin: But the thing that occurs to me is like if you think about like almost everybody we know just fell ass backwards into something and who knows, right?
Merlin: It's just equus, right?
Merlin: Moments snap together like magnets.
Merlin: Who knows why anything turns out the way it does?
Merlin: It could just be by virtue of the fact that college mostly kept you out of trouble for four really difficult years.
Merlin: It's a good thing for a lot of people.
Merlin: It's difficult to control for all the different ways the college leads to success.
Merlin: But you have to include things like networking.
Merlin: You have to include – I mean but the thing of it is though, in retrospect, I feel like so much of what actually got me jobs had absolutely nothing to do with liberal arts.
Merlin: It had everything to do with all the other shit I picked up and learning how to put up with bullshit.
John: Well, and this is what I'm saying.
John: There has been a college inflation to the point that, I mean, honestly, Merlin, there was a time before World War II where a very small percentage of people went to college.
John: So you're playing the GI Bill?
John: It's basically the Jews.
John: They have to stop you right there.
John: No way.
John: No way.
John: I am on a roll.