Ep. 168: "The Room of Stories"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: There was a storm up here in Washington, and I left my office windows open a crack, and the storm opened them up.
John: all the way and filled the room with storms.
John: Oh, no.
John: They breached your perimeter.
John: Yeah, so everything is covered with a fine layer of ash, and amazingly, like, the ceiling is suddenly peeling.
John: I don't know how it got up to the ceiling.
Merlin: You sure this isn't a dream?
John: And the curtains were all skew, and it was...
John: Very exciting, because when I pulled up, I saw that the windows were all the way open, and I was like, who's been in my office opening the windows?
John: And then I came in, and I was like, oh, the storm was in my office.
Merlin: It's a non-rain storm?
Merlin: It was a wind storm?
John: Yeah, we get those in the Northwest quite a bit.
John: When the seasons change, we get a big wind storm.
John: And they are accompanied by rain often, and this one was, but my sense is...
John: It's mostly wind that got in here and did its dirty business.
Merlin: Oh my gosh, and that's ash from all the fires, huh?
John: Who knows where the thin coating of greasy ash came from.
John: It's like living in a bong.
John: It's so like living in a bong.
John: Your office has resin, dude.
John: Yeah, except there's no water bug.
John: Where's the carb?
John: Where is the carb?
Merlin: Where is the carb, John?
John: I told you the story, right, about the friend of mine from Florida that woke up and took a big hit off his bong and then realized that a water bug had been hanging out in his bong and was now in his mouth.
John: One of those flying Florida cockroaches that's the size of a tennis shoe.
John: Can you imagine?
John: You're just like, oh, I'm going to wake and bake.
Yeah.
John: Oh, no, dude.
Merlin: Was it alive when it entered?
John: Oh, dude, it was so alive and it was probably so high from living in a bong.
Merlin: Dude, that must have harshed his mellow.
John: Dude, he was just chilling in his bong and then all of a sudden he's like, oh, no, I'm in a mouth.
Merlin: Oh, my God, it's totally in your mouth.
Merlin: Get me out of here.
Merlin: Oh, fuck.
Merlin: Do you need to do any kind of, I don't know, like reclamation damage control?
Merlin: What do you do?
Merlin: You just scrape it off your stuff?
Merlin: What do you do?
John: So I cleared a little area right here for my elbow.
Merlin: Are you wearing a blazer right now?
John: No, I'm not today.
John: You know, in fact, I've already encountered one person today who made a comment.
John: My good friend Jason Finn saw me and he said, So, uh...
John: You've just let yourself go to shit now.
John: You're not even wearing a button-up shirt.
John: Once a supporter, always a supporter.
John: No blazer, no tie.
John: Now you're just in a t-shirt and jeans.
John: And I was like, you know what?
John: Fuck it.
John: Season's changing.
John: I got nobody to impress anymore.
John: I took a shower today.
John: The only reason I took a shower is that my family...
John: including my darling daughter, had started to comment that daddy smelled funny.
John: Oh.
John: Because I had just let myself just go to hell over the weekend.
John: And I was like, all right, fine.
John: I'll take a shower.
John: I'm not above it.
John: But I'm not going to put, I'm not, you know, I'm wearing white socks today.
John: I'm not dressing up for anybody anymore.
Merlin: Well, it's not Labor Day yet.
John: True.
John: That's right.
John: You can still wear white socks.
Merlin: John, is that the only?
Merlin: I feel like you've got Memorial Day and Labor Day, and those sort of bookend the it's okay to wear informal clothes and white shoes.
Merlin: Are there other days in the year that change what you're allowed to wear?
John: Good point.
John: Good question.
John: I think that there's a limited number of weeks in the year that you can wear socks.
John: Any item of clothing that has a wreath or a reindeer on it.
John: Right?
John: So if you start doing that before... I mean, personally, I feel like Thanksgiving is the day before which you should not wear or have anything to do with a reindeer.
Merlin: It's going to seem like the washer broke.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: That's a laundry day type apparel.
John: I feel like...
John: If it's before Thanksgiving and a reindeer comes up to you on the street and tells you that his fan belt broke and his wife and daughter are waiting in the car around the block and all he needs is $5, you tell him to fuck off before Thanksgiving.
John: After Thanksgiving, you go, yeah, okay, I'll bite on the story.
Merlin: That's just part of the holiday spirit.
Merlin: Help a reindeer out.
John: So that's one thing, definitely.
John: I feel like...
John: You know, I was thinking about this the other day.
John: In my mind's eye, on September 1st, the year, and I don't mean the calendar, I mean the year, as the year occupies physical space, the year takes a right turn, a 90-degree right turn, September 1st.
John: And the implication of that right turn, in my mind's eye, is that the year is square and
John: And that every four months, it takes another right turn.
John: But that is not actually how the year is built.
John: That would be a rectangular year?
John: Well, no, I mean, four... Oh, I'm sorry, every three years.
John: Every three years, it would take a right turn.
John: I'm sorry, every three months.
John: What am I talking about?
John: Every three months... You are so high right now.
John: I'm pretty high.
Merlin: September, October, November, December.
Merlin: So it's the last third of the year.
Merlin: It's like you turn the corner on a triangle.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: Well, so... But here's the problem.
John: There's definitely a right angle turn September from August.
John: August, you're headed along...
John: In an east-west direction.
John: And then September 1st, you take a right-hand turn.
John: 90-degree turn.
John: And now you are headed, in my mind's eye, you are headed south.
John: into fall and then you get in your headed south into fall and and you know and maybe a little bit downhill but then sort of after thanksgiving you start to go uphill and then christmas is there and then at new year's you definitely take another 90 degree right hand turn now headed west into the new year
John: Right.
John: But then somewhere in January, February.
John: You start to edge to the right.
John: You're not taking a right hand turn, but you're edging right.
John: You're you're veering right into March, April.
John: And that's kind of a rounded turn.
Merlin: Mm hmm.
John: where you're headed you know you're headed north again but in a little bit of a you know it's a little bumpy the ride but definitely by by may you're headed north you're headed in a northerly direction and then in june
John: There's a kind of an... It's not a gradual turn.
John: It's an angled turn.
Merlin: Kind of like an obtuse turn?
John: Like an obtuse turn.
Merlin: Nice easy turn.
John: You're definitely headed north at this point, but you're headed kind of at an angle so that when you get to July again, you have to comp the rest of that turn if you're going to make it to that...
John: If you're going to make it back to September.
John: So July and August are headed, I think, kind of in a, I mean, through a series of minor turns, they have to end up headed back east.
John: But it's very funny that the spring and summer is a series of gradual angled turns.
John: Whereas fall and winter are defined by these two right-angled turns.
Merlin: I should have been drawing this instead of just strictly listening.
John: Yeah, it's complicated.
Merlin: Maybe somebody could draw that up for us.
John: And I feel like somewhere in February, March... The shape of the year.
John: the shape of the year i feel in february and march there might actually be turns that are kind of back to the west a little bit like it's not it's not clear that it's always rounding back to september some of that some of those weeks like right around especially around a leap year you know you're going uphill and to the west and
John: Maybe you just added a third dimension.
John: You know, before you level off and you're sort of headed down and to the north back into spring.
John: So there are several days in there where I feel like costume changes are maybe not mandatory, but certainly new things come into play.
John: Like, I'm wearing a tweed hat today, and I feel like... It looks good on you.
John: I feel like that is pushing it for August 31st.
Merlin: Does that seem more like a fall headgear?
John: Yeah, I feel like a tweed hat is... You shouldn't even wear it in September.
John: I feel like it's an October, November, December thing.
Merlin: Yep, yep.
John: But then by December, you should be transitioning into kind of a fur hat or a knit hat.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
John: And then in the spring, you're going back gradually as time goes on from knit caps to whimsical hats.
Merlin: Like an arrow through the head type thing?
John: Well, no.
John: I mean, I do have a baseball hat that has moose antlers on it.
Merlin: Oh, I wanted one of those so much when I was in, like, seventh grade.
John: And that's when I got it, and I've been wearing it ever since.
John: But, you know, that's when you start to wear your chapeau, your various chapeau, your newsboy cap and your felt fedora-type hats, something jaunty in the spring.
John: And then in late spring, you can bust out the baseball hats.
John: I mean, all that stuff, it's really seasoned to taste.
Merlin: I know this is not on the list for John's next project, which we should talk about at some point.
Merlin: But I see possibly a thin volume John on fashion.
Merlin: All aspects of fashion, not just men's clothes, but fashion as the elephant in the cultural room.
John: Fashion versus style.
John: Fashion versus preference.
John: Yes.
Merlin: There's all kinds of little shades.
John: I went to the junkyard today.
John: I had a very busy day.
John: You had a busy day.
John: I woke up this morning.
John: I put the baby in the bath.
John: Then I made her some bagels.
John: And then I put her on an airplane to Paris.
John: Au revoir.
John: Au revoir.
John: Here's how you say thank you.
John: Merci.
John: You can say merci bien or merci beaucoup, depending on how funny you want to sound.
John: Then I left the airport.
John: I went immediately to the junkyard.
John: I spent an hour at the junkyard, and I honestly felt like, you know, I could just do a TV show of just me wandering around a junkyard because there's so much to talk about.
Merlin: I think people would watch that.
Merlin: There's so much at a junkyard.
Merlin: Are most of your remarks about the things that are in the junkyard or just you're thinking about life?
John: Well, the thing is, if you can walk around a junkyard and not think about life, I'll put in with you.
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Merlin: I feel like definitely... It's because you're surrounded by it.
Merlin: Yes, that's right.
Merlin: It's like when somebody dies or something, you're bound to think about life.
John: So you can comment all day on the stuff that's in a junkyard, but cars are very personal.
John: They're very personal for people.
Merlin: Oh, I forget how personal it is for people.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: You know, I have to tell my daughter, like, you know how kids, they walk around, they walk real slow and touch everything.
Merlin: And I always have to remind her, like, don't touch somebody's car.
Merlin: She's telling me about her day.
Merlin: She's walking along.
Merlin: And then she starts kind of, like, handling the logo on the car.
Merlin: And I'm like, you can't do that.
Merlin: Like, somebody in some places, somebody sees you, like, handling their Mercedes logo.
Merlin: You do not want to get that person.
Merlin: You do not want to provoke somebody.
John: That's right.
John: Even if you're walking along absentmindedly just drawing one finger along the side of a car, somebody's going to be mad about it.
John: Yep.
John: So walking around a junkyard, you're looking at, you know, there's 10,000 stories in the Naked City, and every one of them ends up in a junkyard.
Merlin: But also... I think about that a lot with the coroner.
Merlin: Every time I see a bad tattoo, sometimes I'll actually say it to my kids.
Merlin: You see that?
Merlin: You see that?
Merlin: Someday a coroner is going to have to kind of draw that in a notebook.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Someday that person's going to be dead, and they're going to have to draw that tattoo for the record.
Merlin: Or describe it.
John: The last person that's going to see it and really appreciate it is the guy at the crematorium that's making like $18 an hour.
Merlin: It appears to be a German black letter, Gothic.
Merlin: And I think it probably originally said, trunk full of junk.
John: Ha, ha, ha, ha.
John: I'm sure they have just a picture book of tattoos and you just circle the one it is.
John: It's like, oh, a symbol for Shanti on the back of her neck.
John: Circle.
John: Kanji symbol for regret.
John: Looks like Winnie the Pooh flying a yin-yang kite.
John: Circle.
Merlin: So anyway, you're in the junkyard.
John: But also the junkyard is the story of 20th century industrialism, right?
John: I mean, there were cars there that, I mean, you don't see a lot of cars from the 30s anymore in a junkyard, but you definitely see them from the 40s and 50s if you're lucky.
John: And then all, they're full of cars from the 70s and 80s.
John: And just all the stories that are... But then your mind starts to wander and you're thinking about, oh, life and times and the wars and, you know, and Herman Goering.
John: And then pretty soon you're thinking about dim sum and it's getting late in the day and what do you have to do?
John: How do you have to get out of here?
John: On the way out of the junkyard...
John: I'm talking to the guy behind the counter who's calling me boss.
John: He calls me boss.
John: Oh, nice.
John: Which is really nice.
John: I like boss.
John: I feel like getting called boss by the guy at the junkyard is exactly right.
John: And he's not suffering fools.
John: Because, first of all, the guy working at the junkyard sees more fools per capita than anybody aside from a reporter for Entertainment Tonight at the VMAs.
John: They're going to see a lot of fools.
John: But the guy at the junkyard sees a different kind of fool.
John: I'm talking to him.
John: And he looks over my shoulder at somebody coming through the front door.
John: And he says, hey, buddy.
John: Hey, you know, you got to put that back.
John: Don't just leave it.
John: And so I turn around.
John: And the guy had walked in the door.
John: And somehow something in the door jam had fallen down.
John: the pneumatic door closer and the guy had walked the guy walked in and he's wearing a baseball hat that's camouflage and it has a deer on it and he just he'd seen it and the guy behind the counter had seen him see it and he just kept going and so he's disciplining him the counter man is disciplining the guy and he's like you gotta you know like fix that you don't just walk in and leave it so the guy goes back and he starts to try and fix it fix the door
John: And I'm in the middle of asking the counterman a question.
John: So I figure, okay, the guy's fixing the door now.
John: Now it's my turn.
John: So I say, so anyway, is it possible that... But the counterman isn't paying attention to me anymore.
John: He's focused on the door.
John: And he says to the guy, hey, pal, you're making it more complicated than it needs to be.
John: You just got to...
John: And at that point, a second guy walking in the door stops and starts helping the camouflage baseball hat guy fix the door jam.
John: But I can see that the two of them together have now made it a hundred times worse.
John: Now the entire top of the door is loose.
Merlin: And the junkyard guy, he's not going to go out and do it himself on principle?
John: On principle, he's not going to.
John: So then he says...
John: So then he's getting and I'm looking at the junkyard guy and I'm thinking, OK, my job right now is graceful exit because I've already asked.
John: I've already started to ask the counterman my final question twice and two times.
John: I haven't made it all the way to the end of the question.
John: And now the door is falling apart.
John: And I just want out of here.
John: But I can't get out of here because these guys have got the door blocked.
John: And it's like literally now that it's falling down around them.
John: So I can't leave.
John: But I'm not going to stand here and repeat my question a third time.
John: And I'm not going to put myself over to the side and wait in a inchoate line somewhere.
John: for the attention to go back to me, because when it finally does, there's going to be six guys in the room, and they're all going to turn to me and go, now, what was your fucking question?
John: And my question does not rate that amount of attention, right?
John: I'm at the junkyard.
John: There are guys here that are rebuilding four-barrel carburetors.
John: That's not what I'm doing.
John: Now I just want out.
John: And so I start to make my way to the door, at which point the camouflaged baseball hat guy and his completely unrelated dude who's in like a camel jacket, the entire top of the doorframe starts to fall.
John: It just falls completely.
John: I don't know how they did it.
John: And the counterman is like, oh, my, you know, he's like, you guys, come on.
John: And at a certain moment, the one the camouflage baseball hat guy is holding up the holding up one side of the frame and kind of leaning back and looking at it with his head.
John: And the other guy is on the other side of the door holding up the frame and they make a perfect like like a like a perfect Moorish arch.
John: One hand up here.
John: The guy's back is arched.
John: The other guy's back is arched.
John: The door is falling down, and I just make for the gap.
John: And as I leave, I turn, and I point at the counterman, and I say, I'll catch you later.
John: And poof, right through.
John: And right as I make it through the gap, it's like the Millennium Falcon...
John: leaving the worm's mouth in the asteroid.
John: The whole door just completely comes apart and these guys are juggling parts and they're bumping into each other and it's a catastrophe and I just barely made it out.
John: um and i for all i know there's the half a dozen guys still stuck in that auto parts store because nobody knows nobody knows how to leave you got the last chopper out of saigon you know what i fucking did and uh i'm grateful you know i'm grateful and part of that is i surveyed the situation i knew going in
John: Whatever the conversation I was going to have with that counter guy could at any moment be interrupted by somebody who was a serious wrench-turning guy who had a serious question.
John: I didn't foresee that the portal would be closing so fast.
John: So this day has had a lot of adventure already.
John: And then I went to the Dim Summits.
Merlin: Oh, hang on.
Merlin: So pretty much everything I know about junkyards comes from like a scene in Slacker.
Merlin: I used to think a junkyard was like a dump.
Merlin: I thought it was a place when I was a kid.
Merlin: I thought, oh, junkyard, that's a place where you take an old car that's dead and it goes and lives there.
Merlin: And it's like it's like it's like automobile heaven.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But Slacker helped me understand that there's a reason for junkyards, which is you go there and you get parts.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: from your model car in the junkyard to put in your own car.
Merlin: Is that how a junkyard works?
Merlin: Is that correct?
John: That is one of the things that you can do at a junkyard, yes.
John: That's a very good idea.
John: It's a great idea.
John: And back in the old days, when cars were things that normal people could work on, and they had more or less interchangeable parts, a lot of them, like if you had a Chevy,
John: as my mom would say.
John: My mom is teaching my daughter to say shivvy.
Merlin: You've got to stop that.
John: Well, I can't.
John: She's very strong-willed, John.
John: It's part of her vernacular.
John: It's not like she's correcting her when she says Chevy.
John: It's just that my mom pronounces it shivvy.
Merlin: I've never heard that.
John: Chevys?
Merlin: I've never heard Chevy.
Merlin: Is that an Ohio thing?
John: Must be.
John: It's a Western Ohio thing.
John: And so my kid has started to, because she likes to call out all the different kinds of cars.
John: She can identify cars?
John: She knows every kind of car.
John: She knows every kind of nut, and she knows every kind of car.
Yeah.
John: And so we're driving down the street, and one of the games she likes to play is, you know, Nissan, Toyota, Ford, Ford, Chevy.
John: And I'm like, Chevy?
John: Oh, my God.
John: I've been hearing that my whole life.
John: And now my kid is saying it.
John: Chevy.
John: But it used to be you could go to the junkyard, and if you had a Chevy...
John: you knew that you'd find a whole bunch of Chevys in the junkyard, and you'd find the Chevy part that you needed, and it would bolt right onto your car.
John: And now, of course, cars are just made by 3D printers.
Merlin: They're basically computers with wheels.
John: Yeah, they're all injection molded, and none of them, you know, they're not really fixable in the same way.
John: But there are enough people that, I mean, when I was, the hour and a half I spent walking around the rainy junkyard looking for the particular part I was looking for,
John: There were a dozen other people out there.
John: And, you know, you bring your own tools to the junkyard, isn't it?
John: And so a bunch of people walking around with their toolkits.
John: And they're taking the trim off of the passenger side door of a Ford Aerostar.
John: Or they're trying to figure out how to dismantle the air conditioning system.
John: hoses from a from a caprice classic and people still enough people doing that kind of work that there's um that there's still cause for there are a lot fewer junkyards than there were i think i mean i used to spend a lot of time in them when i was young because i i was trying to
Merlin: customize my car or whatever i mean if you if you own the land it's got to be a pretty good deal it's like a parking lot right i mean like you're it's not going to cost you that much to have it right and over time somebody will eventually get the uh the manifold cover case off that chevy exactly and then when the car has been completely stripped then you crush it
John: and then sell it for the scrap metal value.
John: So when you see those semi-trucks driving down the road with 25 squished cars on the back, they're going from a junkyard to a metal yard.
Merlin: Circle of life.
John: That's right.
John: Circle of life.
John: That's right.
John: So wandering around, I was looking for a specific part, but I got caught up in the lives of some of these cars.
John: Where it was just like, oh, if that car could talk.
John: I mean, that car can talk.
John: Because all you have to do is look at it.
John: And it's telling you so much about itself.
John: And what it's seen.
John: The miles it's traveled.
John: Literally and figuratively.
John: So what it made me want to do is go back to the junkyard.
John: I hadn't been to one in a long time.
John: I was looking for a specific part.
John: But really, I don't want to...
John: I don't want to need any one part.
John: I want to go there and find the part I didn't know I needed.
John: You know?
Merlin: It's like a Joseph Campbell thing.
Merlin: You're on Bildungsroman, except you're not young.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: It's like a young man's journey.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You may not know what your grill cup is, but you want the one that a carpenter would use.
John: That's exactly it.
Merlin: You want to find a carpenter's cup.
John: You walk around...
John: I mean, the first thing you have to do is have faith that you step into the abyss and that you're not going to fall.
John: But I mean, I know a lot about one of the things about a junkyard is for it to be useful for you at all.
John: You have to have a pretty good knowledge of what all cars look like such that you can see them in their completely dismantled state, wrecked and picked over and still be able to tell what kind it is, right?
John: Because if you're in there looking for a part from a Nissan, say...
Merlin: Yeah, you got to start make, model, year.
John: You got to be able to look across a field strewn with junk cars where all the doors have been taken off and the hoods are up and the glass is all broken and the roofs are crushed.
John: And you have to be able to use your encyclopedia of cues to say like... Because, for instance, I'm looking for a Chevy truck from a certain era.
John: GMC truck from a certain era.
John: Well, there are a lot of trucks in a junkyard.
John: But if you don't know the difference between a Ford and a Chevy, you're going to spend all afternoon walking all the way over to a Ford...
John: What are you going to do, try and look for the logo?
John: The logo's long gone.
John: Give me a break.
John: That truck rolled off the Pacific Coast Highway and down a hill and sat in the tide pool for four years and got towed out.
John: You better be able to tell that's a Ford.
Merlin: Well, let's say the obvious.
Merlin: It's probably not too cool to be using your iPhone a lot at the junkyard.
John: Well, no.
John: You probably look a little bit like a ding-a-ling.
John: Certainly if you're like, what is this car?
John: Yeah.
John: And also, one of the rules of the junkyard is when a body meets a body coming through the rye, you don't really acknowledge the other person.
John: Catch her in the Chevy.
John: Exactly.
John: Because you are fucking scavengers in a boneyard.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: It's sort of like a men's room.
Merlin: You keep your own counsel.
Merlin: Yeah, you're not like, hey, pal.
Merlin: I'm there to make friends.
Merlin: Yeah, what are you looking for?
John: Like, no.
John: Is this car metric or imperial?
John: Exactly.
John: No.
John: You don't ask to borrow somebody's tools.
John: It's one of the few areas where people are going about their business such that you don't even nod and make eye contact.
John: If you come upon somebody out there, it's basically already two steps toward the apocalypse.
Yeah.
John: So your first concern is if you meet somebody in one of those places, you have to assume that they want your water.
Merlin: Do not become addicted to water.
John: Right?
John: Do not become addicted to water.
John: It makes you weak.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Once again.
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Merlin: Just a quick side note, and I should write this down.
Merlin: I know you've got a lot of projects on your plate right now, but another one would be just put out the fucking rule book for all the stuff that a lot of people don't know about.
Merlin: You could do it anonymously, maybe, but some kind of a book.
Merlin: The rules were not even allowed to talk about.
Merlin: And I'm just here to tell you, I didn't even know a junkyard had rules like that.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: You could save me so much indignity.
John: Somebody from Vice Magazine wrote me not very long ago, and they said, would you write a book or write an article at least?
John: They know how to write there?
John: Well, that's why they're asking me.
John: Would you write an article about all the rules that people should know before they act like citizen journalists videotaping people?
John: police brutality or whatever because I had made some comments over the years to the effect of to the effect that people that such a such a volume needs to be widely disseminated because people's citizen journalism is being somewhat hamstrung by the fact that they don't understand portrait mode
John: And they don't understand not to say, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Merlin: These are good rules.
Merlin: While they are videotaping something.
Merlin: John, you do not know how much intestinal fortitude it takes for me every day to not walk up to people, grab their hand, and turn it 90 degrees.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I'm like, do you have a different shaped TV than I do?
Merlin: Do you know what that's going to look like?
Merlin: Do you have any idea what this is?
Merlin: I know people are taller than wide generally, but just do me a favor and hold it sideways.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: It's a basic rule.
John: I mean, when that city in China exploded...
John: There was some amazing footage of it, once again, taken in stand-up camera mode.
John: And you're like, oh, my God, this is an incredible moment.
John: You are watching an entire city explode, and no one has taught you how to hold your freaking camera.
Merlin: It's also just so incredibly dorky to watch.
Merlin: It's painful to watch because you're going like, ugh.
Merlin: It's almost like their thumb is over part of the lens.
John: And the person from Vice was very nice and actually seemed like a really kind of smart editor guy and was like, hey, do you want to write this or do you want to collaborate on it?
John: I was like, I do want to collaborate on it with you.
John: I think that would be really useful.
John: It would be good for people.
John: We should collaborate on a guide, a citizen's guide.
John: To, you know, to be an amateur journalist.
John: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Especially with the camera.
Merlin: Because I could think of like about half a dozen things I wish everybody knew about using the camera on their phone.
Merlin: That could make so much of a difference.
John: Well, and the other thing is like...
John: Don't pinch zoom in.
John: No.
John: And don't ever.
John: First of all, move.
Merlin: I think the very first thing almost everybody needs to know is like, and you see this in like when the first time dad gets a camera in the eighties, it's like, do not do a bunch of like, don't treat it like vine.
Merlin: Don't do all these like three second shots.
Merlin: Don't, don't do short shots.
Merlin: Don't move the camera.
Merlin: Keep the camera in one place.
Merlin: You think you need to move, you move your eyes.
Merlin: Don't move the camera.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: Turn the camera on, put it sideways, and then walk as close to the action as you can.
John: Stay quiet.
John: And if you're going to move or if you need to move to get a better view of it, slow movements.
John: But move your body.
John: Don't wiggle the camera.
John: There are so many things to say.
Merlin: And setting aside all that, would you also go into the stuff like Know Your Rights type stuff?
John: Well, absolutely.
John: You have to talk about that stuff.
John: And all of that is part and parcel of saying like, what is interesting?
John: That's another thing that a citizen journalist needs to think about.
John: What is interesting about this?
John: And because so often you see some footage where...
John: the action that they think is interesting is completed and they they stop filming but that wasn't the end of what's interesting about it or that wasn't you know that wasn't actually the end of the scene oh right because like the instantiating event or the the action is just one part of it and especially in police cases what happens next could be even more important exactly i mean in terms of like what happens with the actual story
John: If you're watching a confrontation and then somebody gets shot, the end is not that the person got shot.
John: The end is like what happens in the next 10 minutes.
John: That's the whole case.
John: So all of that.
John: And so the person from Vice was awesome, sent me a long email with their thoughts and their construction of it and how they imagined it.
John: And then I just completely just dropped the ball and didn't reply.
John: which I feel terrible about, and I should maybe go find that and dig that up because I have so much to say on the topic.
John: But I also have this show about the junkyard that I'm working on.
John: I mean, there's a lot to do.
John: So many rules.
John: I mean, the volumes, it could be kind of like the 33 and a third series of little books.
Merlin: I was thinking something similar.
Merlin: Yeah, it's bigger than a pamphlet, but shorter than a novel.
John: Yeah, and it's just a series of rule books, how to behave at the junkyard, how to behave backstage at a concert where you are not actually a friend of anybody in the band.
John: But somehow got backstage.
Merlin: Boy, you know, I got to tell you, I think something like this could be super interesting.
Merlin: I'm thinking of a book.
Merlin: I've mentioned this book before, but it's a book that I adored in college.
Merlin: Because, you know, I'm an almanac guy.
Merlin: I'm a book of lists guy.
Merlin: I love these books of trivia and rules of thumb and all those kinds of things.
Merlin: Actually, there's a wonderful series of books called Rules of Thumb that were just fantastic.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Like, you know, you can calculate how long you're going to wait in line at the bank, take the number of people times 3.5 or whatever, like how to pick a line, all that kinds of stuff.
Merlin: But there's a book called The Modern Man's Guide to Life, which is not quite as mooky as it sounds.
Merlin: But it was full of advice that people had written into this guy about how to do different stuff.
Merlin: And none of them would achieve, you know, would rise to the level of needing a chapter, but they would be collected into, like, you know, different kinds of, like, you know, how to not look like a doofus in a restaurant, like how to do all this different stuff, you know, how to basically fix your car, this kind of stuff.
Merlin: I think something like that, John Roderick's Guide to Life, revealing a better title, could be extremely useful.
John: Fuck yes, there's so much to know.
Merlin: Just start writing it down.
Merlin: Write down the kinds of things you want to collect and then start, you know, gleaning the tips.
Merlin: Hmm.
John: How do you get a tow truck driver in Missouri to let you ride in the cab?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It could be even better if it was just extremely specific to you.
Merlin: How do you... I mean, there's so much.
Merlin: How to help Gary remember that you've met.
John: Yeah.
John: How do you get... If you are at a Mayan ruin...
John: And you want to go into the part that's fenced off.
John: Who do you talk to?
Merlin: Yeah, you've taught me a lot of these things.
Merlin: I mean, one of my favorites, I can't do this, but I love that you can do this, is your whole thing of like, you know, if you want to walk in somewhere, walk in like you own the place.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Nobody will hassle you.
Merlin: You just walk right in.
John: No, they assume you own the place.
Merlin: And then this also gives you lots of opportunities to tell anecdotes.
John: Right.
John: Well, the thing, of course, when you're young is that one of the best anecdotes is getting thrown out of a place.
John: When you get a little bit older, it's a lot harder for me to get thrown out of a place now because I kind of do look like I should own the place.
John: And to get unceremoniously booted out of a place that you look like you should own...
John: It just, you know, I have to dust off my hat.
John: Because, you know, the guy throw you out and then throw your hat in the street.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Dust off your hat.
John: It's not really official until they're throwing your hat in the dust.
John: I beg your pardon, sir.
John: I am as God made me, sir.
John: And then you went to dim sum.
John: And then we had our regular dim summit where it was decided...
Merlin: This is you and Jason?
John: Jason and I meet with two other friends, Cal McAllister, who owns an advertising agency called the Wexley School for Girls, and Matt Dresner, who owns an advertising slash PR agency called MAMA.
Merlin: This is your extended marketing team I've been hearing about.
Merlin: Is this where you get all the terrible ideas for stuff you should be doing?
John: This is the team, and the team's decision today was... Please stop meeting with these people.
Merlin: The decision of the team today was... You never seem like more of an old man than when you've been talking to these people.
Merlin: I hear there's some kind of a way I might be able to promote my Twitter feed.
John: They're my advertising agency friends, and they're trying to expand my social media reach.
John: Oh, sure.
John: Yeah.
John: But the decision was, listen, we should just figure out how to be multi-millionaires.
John: And the best anecdote was Cal...
John: One of his close friends from high school is the king of the yard pool.
John: King of the yard pool.
John: Yeah.
John: If you want a little pond in your yard...
John: He started out, this guy, started out putting ponds in people's yards.
John: Like a lot of people, like a lot of pond guys start out.
Merlin: Oh, you get your residential consumer ponds.
John: Yeah, you start out probably working for a guy that's installing ponds, and then you build up a little nest egg, and then you start your own pond installation company.
John: But what this guy figured out was, in the words of Mark Twain, when there's a gold rush,
John: You sell pickaxes.
John: So he's out there putting in ponds, and he's looking up the chain at the guy who's making the ponds, who's making the pond equipment.
John: And he says, this guy's not moving refrigerators.
John: He's not installing color TVs.
Merlin: That's the way you do it.
Merlin: That's the way you do it.
John: He's sitting by the counter somewhere fulfilling pond part orders.
John: And so this friend of Cal McAllister's, he systematizes the pond business.
Merlin: Oh, like vertical integration.
John: And so now he's not installing 500 ponds in a summer.
John: He's selling 50,000 ponds.
John: 50,000 ponds all across America to people, all the pond people.
John: have to go through.
John: He moved out the pawn food chain.
John: That's right.
John: He became the, he became pawn man.
John: And so, and I have a friend in, I have a friend in Seattle who figured this out too.
John: We legalized weed here and everybody was going, you know, there was like, oh shit, I better got to, I got to get a warehouse.
John: I got to start growing weed.
John: I got to start selling weed.
John: I got to get in this weed business in on the ground floor.
John: But I've got a pal who went to China and
John: And figured out the weed appliance, the weed delivery appliance that was going to be the industry standard.
John: And then he cornered the market on the weed delivery appliance.
John: So he never has to touch a weed.
Merlin: You're talking about for a consumer to get it into their system?
John: Yeah, I'm talking about the vaping gear that the weed people are going to put the weed into.
Merlin: You don't have to grow anything.
John: That's right.
John: It's some kind of...
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, it looks like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's where you get the more intensified.
Merlin: You're not, like, really sucking on it.
Merlin: Like, there's a whole, what are they, there's a name for this.
Merlin: It's like vaping, but for weed.
Merlin: What do they call it?
John: Yeah, I don't know.
John: It's some kind of Jabba the Hutt technology.
Merlin: Yeah, I've seen people use it.
Merlin: I remember when they were talking about whether there should be legal weed, I guess, maybe in the early 2000s, there was this one go-to woman they would always interview in California.
Merlin: And if you imagine, like, the plastic... We don't call them go-to's anymore.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: It's from another time.
Merlin: But you know like a big bag that your Sunday New York Times comes in?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It looked like she was doing something with filling that bag with smoke, and it was really disturbing to watch her use it.
Merlin: But then you get a big hit of the weed.
John: Yeah, that might be something else.
John: We used to cut the bottom off of a milk carton and stick it in a sink full of water.
Merlin: Time was I could make a bong out of anything, or a pipe at least.
Merlin: It used to be a hobby of ours.
Merlin: You could make a pipe out of pretty much anything, out of things from McDonald's that children would get as toys.
John: What the hell good is that skill now?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Tears and rain.
Merlin: So this guy goes, and part of his strategy, though, is not just that he doesn't want to be pushing weed.
Merlin: He also, he wants to go and get exclusive deals with the, if I could say, Chinese makers of the weed delivery system.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: So the idea is that nobody else can get exclusive deal.
Merlin: He's got the Northwest, he's got the PNW district locked in.
John: Well, yeah, he's pioneered the technology.
John: So all these guys that are like, oh, man, I sold 1,000 weeds.
John: He's like, I sold 100,000 weed pellets or weed pressurized weed rods.
John: And, I mean, it's money in the bank, this guy.
John: And he never has to touch a weed, although I think he likes it.
John: But I had a friend in college whose big idea was he was going to make bongs out of chew cans.
Merlin: Out of like snuff?
Merlin: Like out of like a skull can?
John: So at the time we were all, I don't know about y'all, down at the new college in Florida.
John: Yeah.
John: But up in the Northwest we were all chewing tobacco all the time.
Merlin: Dipping.
John: We were dipping snuff, yeah.
John: And so we all had Copenhagen cans in our back pockets creating very appealing rings in our jeans.
Yeah.
John: And my friend, he took a chew can, and he made a hole in one side, on the rim, on the edge, right?
John: A hole.
John: And then 90 degrees around the circle, he made another hole.
John: And then he had a stem...
John: With a bowl that fit inside one of the holes.
John: This sounds Appalachian.
John: It's super good.
John: And then if you filled the chew can one third full of water.
John: Oh, God.
John: And then put the lid on it.
John: It was watertight.
John: And then you turn the can at an angle and put your mouth over the one hole.
John: And the bowl is in the other hole.
John: And it's a fully functional bong.
John: And he honestly was like, I'm going to make a million dollars.
John: Because then the thing is when you want to break it down, you just dump the water out, take the stem out, stick it in the chew can, and stick the chew can in your chew can circle in your jeans.
John: Chew can Sam.
John: Chew can Sam.
John: If he had called it Chew can Sam, he would be a millionaire.
Merlin: You can, Sam.
Merlin: Come on.
Merlin: I just sent you a link.
Merlin: This idea has been colonized.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: I just looked up dip can bong.
John: Oh, my God.
John: If I see a picture of my friend, I am going to lose my shit.
Merlin: Well, there's a lot of variants here.
Merlin: Still not entirely sure why you would want to do this, but I don't know if you can see this.
Merlin: Not sure why you would want to do it, because the thing is then... That's American ingenuity at the heart of it.
Merlin: It's Etsy for weed.
John: yeah the bong is just the bong is with you oh my god you can't bong there's hundreds of them
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Look at that one, though.
Merlin: Look at that handsome one.
Merlin: It looks like it runs USB.
John: Well, this guy's got some kind of holster for it?
Merlin: Yeah, it looks like he's got, I guess that goes in your utility kilt.
Merlin: Oh, look, it's camouflaged on, so people won't be able to see it.
John: So this is called, oh, it's called the AK Files.
John: I thought that meant the Alaska Files, but then I click on it, and it's a website for people who have AK-47s.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Here's one made out of a Heinz ketchup bottle.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: My goodness, these are some strange images, John.
John: So this guy, so he's a heavyset guy.
John: He's blacked out his eyes.
John: He's cradling an AK-47.
John: He's wearing a stripy sort of French or Russian commando shirt.
John: And he's got a chew can holster.
John: And he's calling it a tactical.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: AK files.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Tactical tobacco pouch.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: It's got, they don't call it Velcro anymore.
Merlin: It's got the cloven hitch or whatever it's called.
Merlin: Yeah, tactical.
Merlin: Hook and loop.
Merlin: Hook and loop.
Merlin: Tactical hook and loop.
Merlin: Oh, look at that.
Merlin: Boy, this is a richer subculture than I realized.
John: I instinctively don't like that guy just because, come on.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, there's something at the level.
Merlin: Whatever it is that a person enjoys, there's always the desire to complicate it.
Merlin: It's like drinking games.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, but even with drinking games where it's like, really, you've got to have a game to drink.
Merlin: In this case, you've got to have a pouch for everything.
Merlin: Some people love to be organized.
John: Yeah, people are bored.
John: In all honesty, I'm going to tell you a little story.
Okay.
John: Last night I was cleaning a room in my house that hadn't been cleaned in a long time.
John: And I was getting some help.
John: I was getting some help cleaning the room because I was not able to do it myself.
John: Because this was the room of stories.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
John: Yeah.
John: And so the room of stories, it's very hard for me to clean it.
John: I can clean other rooms in the house, but the room of stories, it's hard because everything you pick up has a very long story attached to it.
John: And I don't want to throw it away because then you throw the story away.
John: But anytime I ask somebody to help me, they end up sitting on the floor while I tell them stories about things and the room doesn't get cleaned.
John: And so I had a friend helping me clean the room.
John: And she was very unsympathetic, which is what was needed.
John: Yeah.
John: But I had to say to her, like, listen, you have to be somewhat sympathetic because, you know, these stories, they all matter.
Yeah.
John: And at one point she picked up a pouch, which was a tactical Velcro hook and bead pouch, which I actually got from you.
Merlin: Oh, is it the one with the flag on it?
John: Nope.
John: It's a pouch that was designed to go on the strap of a messenger bag.
Oh.
John: So already it's like bike messenger connected, and I believe it was for an iPod or maybe an early iteration of a phone.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I know what it's for.
Merlin: You could put your candy bar phone in this Velcro holder, and the Velcro would then go around your Timbuktu strap.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: So you could access your phone.
John: It was Timbuktu branded.
John: And she said, what is this?
John: Does this fit your phone?
John: And I was like, no.
Merlin: Oh, but that's got to be good for something.
John: Well, that's exactly what I said.
John: And she said, does it fit any item that you currently have?
John: And I said, no, no, no.
John: But that's not what matters.
John: It's a perfectly great little pouch.
John: You could put matches in it.
Merlin: If I could say, and I'm not sure who you're talking about here, but whoever that person is, they're not understanding.
Merlin: That may have been designed to have a Nokia phone in it, but that doesn't mean you've got to put any fucking Nokia phone in there.
Merlin: There could be 1,500 paperclips in there.
Merlin: You could put popcorn in there.
John: Thank you.
John: You could put popcorn in there.
John: That is not a thing I thought of.
John: Tactical popcorn holder.
John: But I should have said that.
John: You could put a bunch of short pens in there.
Merlin: Oh, you could have a handful of space pens.
Merlin: A handful of space pens.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: What if you're going to a conference?
Merlin: You could have space pens made that you give out to people and you're saying to myself, oh, I don't want to have to dig it in my bag every time I want to give away a pen.
John: What am I going to do?
John: I have a pouch for that.
Merlin: You can put hand sanitizer in there.
John: You could fill it with conditioner.
John: You could put coffee beans in there.
John: There's so many things.
John: So I'm fighting her on this Timbuktu tactical strap holder.
John: Like, you know, a toothpick bindle holder.
John: And she said, she gave me the look, the stern look, the unsympathetic look.
John: And she said, seriously, you're going to fight me over this thing?
John: And I was like, no.
John: And she said, good.
John: And she put it in the go to the thrift store bag.
John: And I was like, okay.
John: I mean, that is a... I agree, but seriously, that is a perfectly good tactical pouch.
John: And then the next thing she held up was a piece of green string.
John: And...
John: It's a beautiful piece of green string that I have been keeping around because I knew it was a special piece of string and I knew that it was going to be useful.
John: I hadn't yet figured out how it was going to be useful, but it was definitely going to be useful.
John: And I realized as she was holding it up that I had been carrying it with me for 23 years.
John: And then every time I pulled it out of something, I was like, oh, this is killer string.
John: It was about one foot long.
John: And then and the thing is, it's just a piece of string.
John: So I would move it whenever I would be cleaning out an earlier box.
John: I would just move the string to the new box because it seemed crazy to throw away this incredible one foot length of string.
John: And she was like, and again, she gave me the like, seriously, this is.
John: I mean, before I even protested, she was like, what is this even?
Merlin: In both of these cases, also, there's not particular stories associated with these, but there is, to you, obvious utility in these.
Merlin: Massive utility.
Merlin: Potential utility.
John: Potential utility.
John: There was always going to be a moment when I was like, God, you know what I need?
John: One foot of really awesome green string.
John: Or six inches twice.
John: Or six inches twice of green string.
John: But string, it has to be string that has a kind of specialness, a magnitude.
Merlin: You could wrap a tiny gif for a mouse.
John: Well, that is exactly one of the things that I thought of.
John: But in any case, she's holding up the string.
John: So I had already acquiesced to the Timbuktu pouch going in the thrift store thing.
John: But the string was a bridge too far.
John: And I took the string...
Merlin: You're defending string saving.
John: I tied it around my wrist, wrapped it around twice, tied it with a jaunty knot, and I said, look, now it is decorative.
John: And I'm not somebody who wears a lot of adornment.
John: But now I have, so today I have this spectacular, I think, green sort of rope wrists.
Merlin: It's like a personal Kabbalah thing.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Like a Madonna bracelet.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Well, well.
Merlin: Isn't she the one who made the Kabbalah bracelet popular a few years ago?
Merlin: Everybody's wearing string.
John: This is the problem.
John: The next thing that Jason Finn says to me after he notices that I'm wearing a T-shirt is he says, what's with the Coldplay bracelet?
John: And I'm like, I'm fucking getting it from all sides here.
John: This string has been with me for 23 years, and now I'm rocking it, I think, pretty well.
John: I think it's pretty jazzy.
Merlin: see but the thing is you're like somebody like think about all the things that you just in this visit of ours alone talking about being able to tell the stories and feel the past of the cars right you think about the way that those uh startups out there are pulling the memories out of old men's clothes you look at a string and you see a story you're like somebody in an m night Shyamalan movie like you're seeing stuff that other people can't see and it's not because you're hallucinating it's because they uh they don't have the sensitivity to the vibrations that
Merlin: You see what these objects are putting out there, and they're all just walking past going, what, really, string?
Merlin: And you're like, yeah, string.
John: They do not make string like this anymore.
John: If you went to a store that was called Just String.
Merlin: There's probably a store in Portland.
John: I bet you there is.
Merlin: Well, or that's the type of store that's called Stringing Along, Positively String, Strung Out.
Merlin: And they have artisanal streets.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: It's also the type of store that would be on the main street of an otherwise failing town.
Merlin: Oh, right.
John: Right?
John: Like it would be inside the former Tandy Radio Shack.
John: there'd be a place called like strings and things and you'd go in there and it's every kind of string maybe the maybe the gal and i'm and i'm pretty sure it's a gal who's running strings and things in downtown full of cats downtown aberdeen the cats are batting the string yeah
John: I bet you if I went in there with this string and said, can you duplicate this string?
John: She would, first of all, she would take a moment and be like, wow.
Merlin: She'd put on a loop.
Merlin: That's incredible string.
Merlin: She'd get a little jeweler's loop.
John: Yeah, she'd get it out and she'd be like, that's incredible.
John: I haven't seen string like that since the 80s.
Merlin: Replicating the string, it is not possible.
John: She would go back in the back and she'd bring some string out.
Merlin: You're crashing.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: She'd be back there for 20 minutes.
John: She'd come out and she'd have a really apologetic look on her face and she'd say, this is as close as I can get.
John: But it just wouldn't have the heft.
Merlin: It's just three inches of light green jute.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: It wouldn't have the waft.
John: Or the wove.
John: And we would both agree, no.
John: In fact, that isn't it.
John: And I would walk out of there with the string that I have, the string that I came in with.
John: You know what I mean?
John: And I'd be like, that's right.
John: My foot, and it's basically a foot, 12 inches of great string.
John: And no one can take it from me.
Merlin: I'm so glad you saved it.
John: I did allow for a lot of things to get thrown away, though.
Merlin: Let me ask.
Merlin: What were some, pound for pound, what were some relatively easy ones to let go of?
Merlin: And was there anything where you were like, I'm glad somebody brought it up?
John: Well, there are two things to stick out.
John: One of them was about 15 years ago, I took a correspondence geology course.
John: And I really enjoyed it.
John: And the way that you did the course was you did your homework.
John: mailed it in to the professor, and the professor corrected it and mailed it back to you.
Merlin: You're kidding me.
Merlin: We said correspondence course, but you literally sent it in the mail?
John: Mailed it in an envelope.
John: Oh, my God.
John: It was a long time ago.
John: And so I carried on this correspondence course, and I really enjoyed the studying, and I enjoyed the geology, and I enjoyed the homework, and
John: But when – and the thing was that you would send the homework in and also send in a self-addressed stamped envelope.
John: So the professor would send the homework back.
John: In an envelope which had your handwriting on it.
Merlin: I remember that used to always feel so weird to get a letter in my own handwriting.
John: Yeah.
John: Self-addressed stamped envelopes.
Merlin: Especially when you can't remember what it was for.
John: Right.
John: Even weirder, right?
John: When they're gone for a long time and then you're like – You don't get the self-addressed stamped envelope thing so much anymore.
Merlin: But that used to be a thing.
Merlin: If you wanted free stuff, you'd say, oh, we'll send you some stickers or get our catalog or something like that.
Merlin: And it used to be so weird to get mail and it was like a folded up envelope with your own handwriting on it.
John: creepy yep so i got all the homework assignments back but i never opened uh the envelopes and now now that i've said it a couple of times i don't know whether to pronounce it envelope or envelope so i'm gonna go with envelope from here on out they were envelopes to begin with but now they're envelopes
John: But I enjoyed the class so much that it wasn't like I wanted to throw them away.
John: I didn't care about the grade.
John: I just never opened them, but I kept them.
John: So I had 10 or 12 pretty thick envelopes in my own handwriting that I knew had an entire class of geology in it.
John: And now it was 15 years old.
John: I couldn't bring myself to throw it away.
John: And my unsentimental friend was like, again, I mean, she really only needed one look, which was, seriously?
Merlin: See, it's sort of like not cleaning out your couch all the way.
Merlin: You kind of want to leave something, though.
Merlin: Please tell me you opened at least one of them.
John: So I was like, all right.
John: The thing is, my job at this point in the cleaning had become just sit in a chair and things end up in my lap and I'm telling the story of them and she's ignoring me and figuring stuff out.
John: But so I opened up the first one and here's this geology homework from 15 years ago.
John: And there's red teacher marks all over it from a teacher that I had never met.
John: saying great job really interesting you know really interesting uh uh idea or whatever because i you know it was like i was i was expanding on it wasn't just like is this schist or what it was like i was talking about uh geological ideas
John: And so then I opened another one and here are all these red marks from this teacher where she's like, John, I really thought that this was, you know, great job.
John: And this is, you know, and here are a couple of more things to think about.
John: And so then I'm opening all the envelopes and I had been having this whole conversation with this teacher, but I wasn't aware of it because I'd never opened the envelopes.
John: And by the end of the class, she was writing all these long red envelopes.
John: remarks like you know what a pleasure having you in the class you know this you did you know exceptional work throughout and this is clearly an a paper at every level and and you know and at one point she was like i'm from alaska too and started oh my god you never even knew never knew and this had just been sort of sitting there on my uh you know on really actually on top of a dresser in the room of stories and
John: For all this time.
John: And, you know, now I feel like, God, I should look her up.
John: We had a really great conversation going.
John: And I was communicating exclusively in...
John: geology homework but she was you know sending me all this sort of like personal chatty professor stuff oh my goodness and uh and it was really it was pretty heavy and so i got to the last assignment which was the final paper which i barely remember writing it's like a 15 page paper on the island of santorini and
John: And it's covered in her remarks.
John: And so I was like, all right, you know what?
John: I can throw away all of these, you know, all of these worksheets and all of these maps and all of this colored pencil stuff.
John: I can throw it all away, but I'm not going to be able to throw away this final paper with all of these personable remarks on it.
John: And so my unsentimental friend had provided for me by this time a multi-pocket file folder, which the truly uncullable items could go in and be safely stored.
John: And so it found its own slot.
John: In the bag.
Merlin: You feel good about that?
John: I think I can live with it.
John: I mean, I feel like, you know, 12 envelopes gone, but the report got saved.
Merlin: And the string.
Merlin: Glad you got that string.
John: And the string got saved.
John: Now, the final thing that I'm really torn about.
John: Do you have time for this?
John: Yeah.
John: Do you have somewhere else to be?
Mm-mm.
John: In fifth grade, I liked downhill skiing quite a bit.
John: And my dad liked to downhill ski.
John: And the two of us were... We bonded a lot over downhill skiing.
John: And in fifth grade, there was some sort of pottery module that came through our class where we were all making... We were too old to make handprints in a circle of clay.
John: We were to the next level to make pencil holders or something.
John: Do you remember making anything in the pottery?
Merlin: Yeah, I remember making ashtrays.
Merlin: You can make ashtrays and later on you make a pipe when you're in college.
John: Exactly.
John: Okay, so I'm sure a lot of my friends... It all comes back to marijuana.
John: It does, it does.
John: Eventually you're going to make a bong.
Merlin: But no, it's funny.
Merlin: It's funny how much ashtray making there was when we were kids.
Merlin: That's just something you made, whether it's Sunday school or regular school or whatever.
Merlin: If you'd gotten past hand and footprints and you maybe weren't up to pencil holder, you could at least make a rudimentary place for your mom and dad to put their Winston's.
John: Yeah, and nobody in my family smoked by the time I was in fifth grade, and so I had no ashtray to make.
John: And so what I made was a little, not little, actually, it's about the size of a paperback book, and I wrote the word ski in clay, on a clay square.
John: And I painted it, and I fired it, and I gave it to my dad.
John: And my dad put it up on the top of his kitchen cupboard, and it was there, and it moved with him, and it went with him all the way everywhere he went.
John: And then when he died, I inherited it again.
John: And I put it in the room of stories up on the top of a shelf.
John: And so I'm cleaning the room of stories.
John: And my unsentimental friend picks this thing up.
John: And without even batting an eye, cocks her arm as though to throw it.
John: She's not even looking at me for approval.
John: She cocks her arm to throw this thing in the thrift store bag.
John: And I was like, wait a minute.
John: And I tell her the story.
John: And she's just rolling her eyes.
John: And she says, what good is it?
John: And I was like, it never occurred to me.
John: It's not good for anything.
John: And she was like, is it beautiful?
John: And I looked at it for the first time.
John: I had never really seen it before this moment and I realized that it was a piece of shit that I had and I was embarrassed that in fifth grade I mean in fifth grade there are children who can play the cello there are children who have played the cello for the president of the United States of America yeah in fifth grade spelling bee winners jugglers
John: kids that have survived famines, and I made this little shite thing that's not even an ashtray?
John: It's just a nothing.
John: It's just a shite.
John: It's not even square.
John: I wasn't even careful enough to square the edges.
John: It's just a piece of shit.
John: And I was astonished to discover that this thing that had been with me my whole life, it had always peered down at me from some top shelf somewhere.
John: It was just a hunk of garbage.
John: If it went into the thrift store bag, it would go to a thrift store, and they would price it at one cent, and it would sit there on the shelf until somebody knocked it off and it broke.
John: No one would mourn it.
John: And yet, I could not allow it to...
John: Go.
John: And now what does that say, Merlin?
Merlin: I don't know what to say.
Merlin: That's super complicated, and there's a lot of angles to that one.
Merlin: And the ending, you shummel on me with the ending.
Merlin: That was quite a twist at the end, because it sounds like as you looked at it, it had accumulated the value of being something your father hadn't hung on to through his life.
Merlin: But as you looked at it, you didn't feel like it was anything super special.
John: I mean, he put it up on top of the shelf because his son made it, but he couldn't possibly have been proud because the first time he saw it, he must have looked at it and said...
John: Oh, shit.
John: Now I have to carry this with me.
John: It's not useful.
John: It's not decorative.
John: It's just shit.
John: It's just a piece of garbage.
Merlin: Yeah, I don't want to overcomplicate this.
Merlin: So is it gone?
John: Well, no.
John: So that was one of the few things that got put into the limbo state, into the between universes place, which is like balanced on the corner of a table.
John: Everyone who walks into the room has to look around and say, wow, the room looks great.
John: You cleaned up the room of stories.
John: Amazing.
John: And then their eyes will fall upon this ski sign.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Well, I have exactly one thought on this.
Merlin: This is not to try as much just because I want to share the story.
Merlin: But this is not to persuade you to keep it because it sounds like you probably don't need to.
Merlin: Maybe you could take a photo of it and that would be enough.
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: That's what I did with a lot of my stuff that I had trouble getting rid of during one of our big purges was I would photograph anything I wanted to keep a memory of.
Merlin: But I have to say – excuse me – that one aspect of this that's complicated is that the fact that it's fucked up and ugly and old and stupid becomes part of the charm to me.
Merlin: And I –
Merlin: You know, just because you were shitty at it doesn't make it not valuable on its own.
Merlin: And I only mention this because of this one time when I was, I don't know, maybe probably four or five.
Merlin: It's whenever I was still playing with Play-Doh and would have had a Disney-related Play-Doh set.
Merlin: i made the world's shittiest snow white out of a single piece of red play-doh for my grandmother it was super ugly and super dumb but i mean it took me what who cares i was a little kid you know it's just it was just a dumb thing i made it i was at their house i made this i gave it to her she was thrilled with it and she put it on the mantle right so this is probably about maybe maybe 1971 or two maybe she put it up there and she kept it there and
Merlin: And it got old and stupid.
Merlin: Like, Play-Doh is not made to be kept over a fireplace for many years.
Merlin: And it got kind of whitish.
Merlin: And over the years, she had to insert needles in it to, like, make it hold the head on.
Merlin: And it was just the most ugly and dreadful crumbling thing you'd ever seen in your life.
Merlin: And, of course, by the time she passed away in 1987, it was truly awful.
Merlin: But, you know, at that point, it had been up there for, whatever, 15 years.
Merlin: And, yeah, we did.
Merlin: We threw it away.
Merlin: But it was quite a moment for me to realize my grandmother had kept that since I was really young.
Merlin: And as ugly and as stupid and as broken as it was, it still made me remember her well.
Merlin: But I didn't feel like I needed to keep the broken snow white, but it was a nice memory for me.
Merlin: So, you know, I think if you can let the ski thing go, let it go.
Merlin: But you can still appreciate just because you don't have that in your hand anymore doesn't mean that you don't appreciate your dad and the fact that he kept it because of you.
Merlin: I still think that's a perfectly...
Merlin: sane kind of sentimentality to have it doesn't mean you have to keep every piece of that because you still have him in your heart even if you don't have his ski on your shelf yeah yeah my you know my dad didn't have very good taste either he might have actually thought it was good so many twists