Ep. 173: "My Afflicted Eyes"
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is sponsored by Cards Against Humanity.
Merlin: This month, they invited Mike Lawrence of PunkBot to help me say hi to John.
Roderick on the Line, line, line, line, line.
Merlin: Talking news are fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.
Merlin: Hello John, hello John.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: Hi, how are you?
Merlin: It's a little early.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: It's very early.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: You know, maybe people get a different side of us when it's early.
John: I think that's true.
John: I think they get a side of us that isn't A, quite awake yet.
John: B, has not had a complete breakfast.
John: Or as my daughter would say, a complete breakfast.
John: Is that what she says?
John: A breakfast, yeah.
John: And she says breakfast so much that we all now say breakfast.
John: That's pretty cute.
John: So when I say breakfast, it doesn't sound right anymore.
John: Breakfast.
Merlin: What does she like to eat in the morning?
John: Well, I'll tell you what she doesn't like to eat, a hard-boiled egg and some cheese and some cold cuts.
Merlin: God, that would be ideal.
Merlin: It would be like staying at a German bed and breakfast.
John: That's exactly what I try to duplicate for her.
John: Listen, you're spending the night in Germany.
John: Just imagine every morning we wake up in Germany, and here's breakfast.
John: A hard-boiled egg, one piece of black bread.
John: You don't know what made it black.
John: You don't ask.
John: Some cold cuts that have some pistachios in them.
John: It looks like bologna, but then it's got pistachios in it and other things.
Merlin: It's like olive loaf except nuts.
John: Yeah, olive loaf with pistachios.
John: And then some other cold cuts.
John: Why would a little kid not like that?
John: I can't imagine.
John: If you go to France and you order off the kid's menu, here's the kid's menu in France.
John: Steak frites.
Merlin: And that's probably a sirloin with French fries.
John: That's right.
John: And so in France, what is considered to be a child's meal is some sirloin and French fries.
John: And the little French kids don't know any different.
John: And so that's what they get in restaurants.
John: No one gives them buttered spaghetti.
John: Nobody gives them grilled cheese sandwich, chicken fingers, fish sticks, tater tots.
John: They don't get any of that.
John: They get steak frites.
John: And what can you say?
John: I mean, if you're a kid in Germany, you get pimento loaf.
Merlin: You're lucky you didn't get a beating.
Yeah.
John: That's your breakfast.
John: You get some kind of blood sausage and you get an unsalted egg and a stern lecture.
Merlin: And a slap.
John: That's what I got every morning in Germany every time I've ever been there.
Merlin: Here's what intrigues me about this.
Merlin: I mean, for myself, I feel like I can blame myself.
Merlin: I guess I could, in a larger sense, blame the household for causing option paralysis.
Merlin: Like, do you want to have oatmeal?
Merlin: Or do you want to have cereal?
Merlin: Or do you want to have this?
Merlin: Or do you want to have that?
Merlin: I know when people do that to me, I get overwhelmed.
Merlin: And I'm not seven.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: But I'm guessing that has not been the case.
Merlin: I imagine you've offered the German breakfast over many years, and it seems like that would have sunk in.
Merlin: What do you think is causing the pushback?
Merlin: Is she developing a personality and preferences?
Merlin: What's happening?
John: uh it's very you know she has very clear preferences and and if i gave her any option at all uh i would still be there i'd still be sitting at the kitchen table talking about all the different things that could be and what i have to do is you know make sure there's some yogurt component right because it is a german breakfast you do get the option of yogurt
John: But if there's yogurt involved, she'll eat the yogurt, and then she never saw the egg.
John: Yeah.
John: So I have to sit there, and then she does the thing where she's like, I only like the white part of the egg.
Merlin: Yeah, that's pretty normal.
John: I only like the yellow part of the egg.
John: Yeah, it's totally normal, but a dad has to intervene and say, you know the best part of the egg is the part in between the white part and the yellow part.
Merlin: Eventually you get to the ninja level where you say there isn't different parts of the egg.
Merlin: There is egg.
John: right what do you mean i don't see any difference between the and she's like look this is yellow this is white no i don't see that you know a little bit of fucking with her head yeah what do what do kids in thailand have for breakfast this is i've never been to thailand i don't know i i seriously do not know the answer
Merlin: I'm going to guess probably like a rice or a soup.
Merlin: It seems like in a lot of Asia, there's a lot of rice and soup.
Merlin: This is a very broad guess.
Merlin: But I bet – see, part of my sense is that all kinds of – I want to say Asian food, but I'm going to say Asian American food.
Merlin: Asian American food in general feels like you take the most outlandish celebration food anyone has once every one to five years and then make it even more celebratory and you call it Chinese food.
Merlin: So like the idea of like two pounds of chow mein with like half a cup of oil in it, I don't think that's the kind of thing that people eat every day in China.
Merlin: For Thai food, I mean, who's going to go to all of that trouble?
Merlin: Who's going to have those beautiful little mushrooms in with the duck?
Merlin: I mean, the orchid duck, who's going to make that every day?
Merlin: That's banquet wedding food, I'm guessing.
John: My girlfriend at the time in the 90s went to China at one point because she had decided in true sort of punk rock form that she was going to major in Chinese at the university.
John: And whenever she was quizzed by a curious person, you know, like, oh, do you intend to like most people would say, oh, that's very exciting.
John: Like China is booming.
John: And if you had a knowledge of Chinese, like you'll be invaluable to companies.
John: And she would just like shake her head wryly at them because she wasn't taking Chinese for any reason.
John: That is very punk rock, John.
John: Other than that it was hard and obscure.
John: So she – Like Black Flag.
John: That's right.
John: Exactly.
John: She threw herself into a study of Chinese and like reveled in the difficulty and then like really stuck to her guns that she was never going to use it.
John: It was never going to have an application.
Merlin: She's like Superman.
Merlin: She'll only use it for good.
John: That's right.
John: Well, and I'm not even sure she's ever used it for good.
John: Good for her.
John: At one point, you know, I think now she sits and eavesdrops on people.
John: She doesn't even help them.
John: If there are two Chinese people standing with a map of Los Angeles and they're standing on a street corner and they're looking around, she'll just walk right past them.
Merlin: With all respect, much like a Chinese person.
Merlin: And much like Black Flag would do.
Merlin: Black Flag's not going to help you with your map.
Merlin: They've got to get in the van.
John: Get in the van.
John: Fuck you, they're not.
John: You're lucky Henry Rollins doesn't piss on you.
John: And that's not even, you know, Greg Ginn is the thing.
Merlin: Don't ask him for a check.
Merlin: It's not coming.
John: But at one point she went to China and was there for six months.
John: And I have a lot of regrets about this because she would write me all the time.
John: This is back when people still wrote one another.
John: She would say, come to China.
John: I am in China.
John: You are my boyfriend.
John: Come to China.
John: This is your big chance.
John: And at the time, I was like, ugh, China.
John: You know?
John: Seems like a lot of work.
John: It's a lot of work.
John: It's not really.
John: All you have to do is just go to China.
John: But it seemed like a lot of work at the time.
Merlin: You make it sound so easy.
Merlin: I've been to Belgium.
Merlin: Like, do I really have to go to China?
Merlin: But you've been to, like, Hungary.
Merlin: Like, you can't read the signs in China.
Merlin: That's a lot of work.
John: And this was back when Shanghai was still, like, all the buildings in Shanghai were five stories tall.
John: Yeah.
John: Like if you take a picture of China from this time when I could have gone and you compare a picture of Shanghai from then and now, they don't even resemble each other.
John: Shanghai now, it's like they took what was Shanghai and then they put Dubai on top of it.
John: But at the time, I could have gone and wandered around the back streets of old Shanghai and those would be memories I would be cherishing now instead of this memory, which is a memory of my girlfriend at the time being mad at me for not going to China.
John: But she said that everywhere she went – so she was a vegetarian in China too.
John: This is the other – this is the great part.
John: Listen, if you're going to be punk rock and you're going to study Chinese for no reason, also when you go to China, make sure that you are vegetarian.
John: Did she smoke?
John: And also chain-smoked, yes.
John: Okay.
John: Are you getting a picture?
John: Like this is – Did she wear combat boots?
John: She didn't, but she did wear bright red lipstick and dye her hair black.
Yeah.
John: anyway so she's in china black hair bright red lipstick i think the bright red lipstick went away pretty fast in china but the black dyed hair you know you're stuck with it but she said everywhere she went they would you know they would invite her to dinner uh the local people some somebody would say come to dinner at my apartment and they would lay out all these meats and
John: And she would say – and she would kind of, ugh, I can't eat meat.
John: I'm vegetarian.
John: Do you have any rice and vegetables?
John: That's what I really am excited about.
John: What I imagine is sort of the vegetarian Chinese meal, which is some vegetables on rice.
Right.
John: And she got the same response everywhere, which is like, you're a special guest.
John: We aren't going to give you our normal food.
John: Right.
John: The food that we actually eat.
John: We've put on a spread here and basically given her what you're saying.
John: American Chinese food, which is a huge platter of meat pieces.
Right.
John: And she was like, I just want to eat like a normal person.
John: Don't you see that I am punk rock?
John: I just want to be a regular, normal person, a normal vegetarian in China.
John: And they were like, A, there is no such thing.
John: And B, no, you're a special guest.
John: We went out and we killed two ducks for you.
John: So she is not a vegetarian anymore.
John: I really don't know how to end this story.
Merlin: No, you don't need to.
Merlin: I got lots to jump in on here.
Merlin: First of all, I want to just point out that I just – a few minutes ago did something that I hate, which is talking about an incredibly large group of people.
Merlin: I'm not talking about racism.
Merlin: I'm just talking about being a dumbass.
Merlin: Like here's my reckon about how half of the – of Earth eats –
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know, one and a half billion people.
Merlin: If anybody ever said that about America, let alone about Seattle, like you can't draw those kinds of broad conclusions.
Merlin: Here's how America eats.
Merlin: Are you ready?
Merlin: Ready?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Waffles and spaghetti noodles and instant coffee.
Merlin: All Americans eat that every day.
Merlin: And I think also we're kind of famous for drinking lots of soft drinks.
John: I've been thinking about this a lot.
John: When we were kids, did we not drink a lot of soft drinks?
Merlin: I drank tons of soft drinks.
Merlin: You probably saw the same thing I did probably in the New York Times about the incredible precipitous drop in the amount of soft drinks that young people are drinking.
John: I did read that article and I thought about the innumerable six packs of Dr. Pepper that I had consumed growing up.
Merlin: I mean, you know what it was?
Merlin: Soft drinks were the smoking of childhood when I was a kid.
Merlin: If you were an adult and you were anywhere where there hopefully was not too many combustible things, you were smoking.
Merlin: Inside, outside, bed, church, whatever.
Merlin: You're just always smoking.
Merlin: And it was kind of like that with soft drinks.
Merlin: You show up somewhere and you say, hey, do you want a Coke?
Merlin: You give somebody a Coke.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Or you're at school.
John: There's a Coke machine in the hall.
John: You'd stop on your way between classes and get a Coke.
Merlin: That was a weird thing because, I mean, I remember coming up, especially in Ohio, where it was – I can't even begin to tell you.
Merlin: I mean now it's been 40 years, so it's not surprising that there's been changes.
Merlin: But, you know, for example, like not only could you not wear shorts, but you were discouraged from wearing jeans.
Merlin: Like you were expected to wear like pants to school.
John: What?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: You couldn't wear jeans?
Merlin: You could, but you know, it's school.
Merlin: You should wear trousers.
Merlin: You were definitely never in a million years allowed to chew gum.
Merlin: There was stuff you had to do.
Merlin: Fifth grade, you're going to learn to play the recorder.
Merlin: How about that?
Merlin: It's fifth grade.
Merlin: Go get a recorder.
Merlin: There's something so...
Merlin: They surely must still be teaching the recorder.
Merlin: Oh, music is like half of a room over here.
Merlin: Like it's not a thing anymore.
Merlin: But what was my point in all of this?
Merlin: So certainly all of that has changed.
Merlin: But then – and my god, the idea of having – like you can have cookies and shit.
Merlin: Like nobody cares.
Merlin: But it's weird how all that has changed where you would never have soft drinks at school.
Merlin: And then fast forward to Florida in the mid-'80s.
Merlin: And that's when we first got – we had a Coke machine at our school.
Merlin: And I'm given to believe that that was partly revenue-based.
Merlin: I think there was a rev share on stuff like that.
John: Yeah, they were trying to make up for the fact that the tax base no longer supported schools.
Merlin: That was beginning then.
Merlin: And now today, flash forward to where we are now, and at least here in San Francisco, I mean, there's all kinds of stuff about this place that's – I mean, could you ever imagine that there would be an LGBTQ community dinner for the school district?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Where children, teachers, and parents, LGBTQ parents would come together at a picnic.
Merlin: Could you ever imagine that in the 1980s?
Merlin: Or the 70s?
Merlin: Or the 90s or the 2000s?
Merlin: Or the 2000s.
Merlin: I love that.
Merlin: I love that that exists.
Merlin: It makes me happy to see that in the newsletter.
Merlin: But now today, you are just – it's so weird and so oddly applied.
Merlin: You're not supposed to bring sugar to school at all.
Merlin: It's –
Merlin: Not quite like smoking, but you're not supposed to bring sugary stuff.
Merlin: They very clearly say at the beginning of the year, hey, if we want to celebrate a birthday, here's how we'll do it.
Merlin: Please don't bring gift bags.
Merlin: Please don't bring sugar.
Merlin: Part of it's a scalability issue, but I think a lot of it's a consistency issue, and it's definitely a health issue.
Merlin: They just don't want it to be that like we were.
Merlin: I mean, there was just sugar everywhere when we were kids.
Merlin: Everybody was always eating sugar all the time.
John: The road to school was paved with sugar.
Merlin: It was, or you could just go to the convenience store, and I think pound-for-pound stuff was cheaper back then.
Merlin: You could, in your sub-dollar price range, get a shit ton of candy when I was a kid.
John: My sister and I had a very different relationship to money, right?
John: If each of us were given 50 cents, she would immediately go and buy 50 cents worth of Smarties, which would fill the trunk of a car.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: and I would put the 50 cents in a shoebox.
Merlin: Oh, because you're a collector.
John: That's right.
John: And so then we would get another 50 cents, and she would get 50 cents worth of Smarties, and her 50 cents worth of wax lips or those little – Who would ever buy wax lips?
John: They were so dumb.
John: Do you remember those little wax Coke bottles that had tiny little sugar fluid in them?
Merlin: That's the worst of both worlds.
Merlin: It's bad wax, bad Coke.
John: Except that, you know, you chew the wax.
Merlin: You bite the top off and then you get a little bit of Coke.
John: It was before that bubble gum that had squirty liquid inside.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: The fresh blasters or whatever they're called.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Fruit, fruit.
Merlin: Fruit, fruit.
John: Fruity, fruit.
John: It was the only thing where it's the only thing you could bite into that you got that sensation of like squirting sugar liquid in your mouth, which is a great feeling.
Mm-hmm.
John: But yeah, so then at the end of our childhoods, she had only the experience of eating as much candy as she could get her hands on.
John: And I had the experience of having a shoebox full of nickels, dimes, and quarters.
John: Nice.
John: And who of us is living...
John: A fuller life.
Merlin: Oh my goodness.
Merlin: I couldn't begin to guess.
Merlin: I'd have to ask your mom.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know if my mom is a good gauge of which one of us, my sister and I are living a fuller life.
Merlin: Can I just say getting emails from your mom is a delight of my life?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She's such a thorough person.
Merlin: I love her thoroughness.
Yeah.
John: She's very thorough and she wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes and sends emails.
John: And of course, I'm often up in the middle of the night.
John: So one of the great surprises is to get an email from her in the middle of the night where she's decided that she has some information on the hermitage in St.
John: Petersburg and she wants more information.
John: So she's done some research.
John: And this is what she's discovered, but it's raised some questions and she's not sure.
John: She's researched those questions as best she can.
John: So she puts all that information in an email and then she has some questions for me.
John: Maybe I can help her fill in the gaps.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Nice.
Merlin: And sometimes it's a little bit of overflow.
Merlin: You're still having the previous day and she's got, you've got a late start on the previous day.
Merlin: She's got an early start on the next day and there's a nice sweet little Venn diagram around four in the morning.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Exactly where she's like, what is so explain to me how the nations of Central America all ended up with their current borders.
John: And I'm like, whoa.
John: OK, well, let me make some coffee, you know, and the thing is, she's not expecting a response right away.
John: She's thinking that that's going to greet me in my inbox.
John: When I wake up in the morning and she's forgetting, A, that I don't wake up in the morning.
John: Unless I'm under duress.
John: And B, that, yeah, I'm going to get this.
John: I'm going to reply to it.
John: And then so we have these email conversations in the absolute middle of the night.
John: About these, you know, these questions or, you know, or this is the other great thing that she does.
John: She makes a decision.
John: She makes a decision, which is sometimes a normal sounding decision.
John: Like I'm going to sell my car and buy a some kind of natural gas car.
John: And so I'm getting my car ready to sell.
John: In order to buy a natural gas powered car and I need you to detail the hubcaps for me or something like that.
John: It sounds normal.
John: It's not.
John: It's motivated by some crazy like four in the morning like I'm going to sell my car and buy a car.
Merlin: It seems so sensible because she's talking about understandable logistics, but she never got the chance to talk about the fact that she just decided to sell her car in the middle of the night.
John: Yeah, right, right.
John: But it would read as a normal email.
John: And then there are others where she wakes up in the middle of the night and she's just like, I have decided never to go into a building made of brick again.
Merlin: Because of outgassing?
John: And here's why.
John: And then she will explain that there's something about brick that is –
John: That's either offensive or untenable or she doesn't support it.
John: She no longer supports brick because big brick is ruining the world.
John: And retroactively, she's going to go back and erase all the brick building she's ever been in.
John: And she doesn't expect my support in this.
John: This is an informational email.
John: She's coming out.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Where I'm just coming out as being against big brick.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm not expected to say yes or no.
John: I just, this is a courtesy email.
John: Sometimes those are very long.
John: And then I, and then, you know, so I read the, and then she'll send me another email.
John: Like, I hope you read my last email.
John: And in general, for most of those, I just let them go without comment.
John: And for the most part, they solve themselves.
Merlin: There's nothing you need to do about it just then.
John: Right.
Merlin: Because, you know, I mean, I can't speak in this case for your mom, but in some cases, when somebody is having, I don't know, I don't call it a fugue state, but when they're having some kind of a an incident, sometimes, you know, you may not even want to initially be super supportive.
Merlin: You want to write it out.
Merlin: It's like the person who suddenly decides they're breaking up with their spouse.
Merlin: Like the last thing you want to do is go good.
Merlin: Never like it.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Never, never do that.
John: Yeah, or try and intervene in any way.
John: You just want to – you don't even nod.
John: You move your head slightly in a circle kind of like a Bulgarian person says yes.
John: You just sort of move your head around.
Merlin: This is where I wish we could just – there's certain sort of – there's all kinds of what I'll call control words that I wish we could use with people where sometimes I really wish –
Merlin: were a standardized response to things.
John: You're talking about Bill the Cat's signature line, ACK?
Merlin: No, it's ACK without an exclamation point.
Merlin: Somebody says, I want to know your thoughts about how chemtrails are affecting our ability to overturn gun laws.
Merlin: And my response to that would be ACK, which I think in the world of radio communications, it's just to say that I received your message.
Merlin: That's really all I have to say.
Merlin: I have absolutely nothing to say.
Merlin: I just want to let you know that it got through.
Merlin: I'm not even necessarily – there's an implied thank you.
Merlin: I'm not even really thanking you.
Merlin: I'm just saying your message arrived and it has been processed.
John: Yeah.
John: Somebody lectured me on the last Joko cruise.
John: Somebody pulled up a chair and was like, I just wanted to say that I'm very concerned about blank.
John: And it was an attempt on their part to make the story about them and to get some attention.
John: And at the end of their little sort of mini lecture, I leaned forward and I said, thank you for your message.
John: That's a really good response.
John: It was really wonderful.
John: They were very confused and asked a couple follow-up questions.
John: And I think I said, I just am glad that you feel safe enough to give me this message.
Merlin: I watch some people and their interactions with people, other people, and some people just seem to have, I don't know, some kind of almost magical ability to not get into a thistle with people.
Merlin: There's some kinds of people where I have friends that even when they agree with you, sound like they're arguing with you.
Merlin: There's other kinds of people that sound really tuned out like they didn't actually hear it.
Merlin: But people – I'll say in some cases politicians who are really good at having an interaction with somebody that combines that Obama-like – let's say a Clinton-like ability to have empathy and Obama-like ability to say like I understand and I'm gratified by the intelligence of your thought combined with the John Hodgman thing of like we're pretty much done here.
Right.
Merlin: But they could put all those together and you've got the super person of communication where you're ready to accept and be... This is kind of also where I wish I could say, God bless you and feel better about it.
Merlin: Isn't that a great response?
Merlin: Oh, God bless you.
Merlin: God bless you.
Merlin: Like somebody pulls up a chair, they got concerns, and you say, God bless you.
John: God bless you.
John: God bless you for saying so.
Merlin: Just God bless you.
John: Yeah, I don't have the ability to...
John: to do that either.
John: I'm, I'm, I'm getting in, I'm, I'm allowing myself to get involved in fewer fracases, crack eye, crack eye.
John: Um, and part of that is, is yeah, learning that kind of ninja like that, you know, thank you.
John: Thank you for trusting me with your comments.
John: Like, that's kind of what you're saying.
John: Thank you for trusting me that I will value your comments.
John: And, you know, it's very much like Ack.
John: Although, you know, I'm starting to think about Ack.
John: I think of Ack as a Bill the Cat.
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
John: But that's Ack!
John: But I bet you there are a lot of our listeners who immediately thought of Caffey.
John: Oh, of course.
John: So which act is the canonical act?
Merlin: I think we've got a problem here.
Merlin: In law, they call it a term of art.
Merlin: It's going to mean very different things in very different places.
John: Sure.
John: A Kathy act and build a cat act communicate entirely different things.
Merlin: With Kathy, it's more like, Ack!
Merlin: Ack!
Merlin: Because she's having some kind of an existential moment.
Merlin: She's trying on bathing suits.
Merlin: Irving is not calling her.
Merlin: No, Ack!
Merlin: Ack!
Merlin: And then with Bill, it's more like, Ack!
John: Right?
John: Right, he's got a hairball.
John: Right.
John: And I doubt Kathy had that many hairballs.
John: But which one is closer?
John: Yours has no exclamation point.
John: It's not quite a hairball, Ack.
John: But you're not worried about Irving either.
Merlin: I think we might have talked about this several years ago, but I'm on the page for voice procedure, which, as you know, is a very interesting Wikipedia page.
Merlin: Here, I want to talk about some fine distinctions here.
John: I hate to interrupt, but I swear to God, I thought you were about to say, I'm on the page for Kathy.
John: I thought you were going to say that you were part of a news group or some kind of...
Merlin: I've even got the t-shirt.
Merlin: I'm on the page for Kathy.
John: He's a mod for the Kathy page.
Merlin: Okay, so anyway, voice procedure.
Merlin: Well, let's close the thread.
Merlin: If you go to the Wikipedia disambiguation page for Ack, the last entry on the page is see also Kathy.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Okay, so I'm going to go through a few of these, and I'm doing what in academics is called problematizing.
Merlin: I'm going to give you a few different words that all mean things.
Merlin: You ready?
Merlin: 10-4 means message received.
Merlin: I understand.
Merlin: Okay, all right.
Merlin: Now, you also got affirmative, which means yes.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You've got, for example, come in, which means you can start speaking now.
Merlin: You've got Roger, which says, I have received all of the last transmission.
Merlin: And then let's make the distinction that people don't make.
Merlin: Wilco.
Merlin: Will comply.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You don't need to say Roger Wilco because Roger is implied in a Wilco.
Merlin: So if you say Wilco, it means I got your message and I will comply with it.
Merlin: So maybe, again, now maybe I'm being a little bit fancy here, but I think there's a big difference between 10-4 affirmative cop come in, in the case of saying, like, I understand you keep talking.
Merlin: Wilco versus Roger.
Merlin: I think those are all different things.
Merlin: These could be things we use in day-to-day conversation that could really help a lot if we all adapted the subtleness of this.
John: Yeah, and the problem is that Roger has turned into yes, I agree.
John: Like high five.
John: Right, and 10-4 has turned into yes, I agree.
John: You know, if somebody says something to you and you say 10-4.
Merlin: Everything's a Wilco with an implied Roger.
John: That's right.
John: That's exactly right.
John: Everything has become a Wilco.
John: Except for one.
John: Well, you know, I had a friend that used to say, copy.
Merlin: Copy means I heard what you just said.
Merlin: Yeah, I copy.
Merlin: Copy is similar to 10-4, it sounds like.
John: Similar to 10-4 or similar to Roger.
John: But copy retains, I think, a little bit of the ambiguity of, like, I register your transmission, but I pass no judgment on it.
Merlin: Copy.
Merlin: Oh boy, here's one I love.
Merlin: The definition of this one.
Merlin: I can't give you the term yet.
Merlin: The definition.
Merlin: To confirm that you have received and understood the contents of the transmission so far.
Merlin: You know what you say?
Merlin: Roger so far.
Merlin: Roger so far.
Merlin: How handy would that be on the Choco Cruise?
Merlin: I have never heard Roger so far out in the wilderness.
Merlin: No one has ever said Roger so far to me.
Merlin: There's several of these that involve – like if you're actually – if you're really using this and there's a reason they use all of these and they mean different things.
Merlin: And what's the one in artillery that you don't want to get wrong?
Merlin: Is it go ahead?
Merlin: I think in artillery, if you say go ahead – I believe it's go ahead.
Merlin: If you say that over the radio, that means you are free to fire at will at the last position that we fired at.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: I think go ahead.
Merlin: Yeah, you want to avoid that.
Merlin: Is it go ahead or is it again, come again or something like that?
Merlin: Anyway, we talked about Pan Pan.
Merlin: We talked about that one before.
Merlin: Ready to copy.
Merlin: But the idea is if you're sitting there and you're flying your aircraft, you don't have a lot of free hands.
Merlin: But there is information that has to be passed along.
Merlin: You don't always have the Dr. Strangelove machine in the file folders.
Merlin: So sometimes you've got to write stuff down.
Merlin: I'm just saying, Roger, so far, I kind of like that.
John: Roger, so far.
John: Roger, so far.
John: There's so much that we could benefit, I think, from returning to the age of military radio.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: How great is this?
Merlin: Roger, so far.
Merlin: Messages lasting over 20 seconds are prefixed by the pro word long message.
John: Long message.
Merlin: So you let people know, grab a chair.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: It's going to be a long message.
Merlin: And then you say, Roger, so far.
John: That's right.
John: There's more to this tweet.
John: Seven of 39.
John: So I – yeah, I wonder – you know, tweets are very much in this vein of like telegraph messages.
John: But there are no exclamation points in military radio.
John: Right?
Merlin: You never – Again, we're back to the punctuation.
John: How do you say –
John: I mean, how do you say stat, which is something you say in an emergency room.
John: You don't say that over the radio.
John: But how do you say, like, this is urgent?
Merlin: I think on MASH or possibly Hogan's Heroes, you would say it as on the double.
Merlin: On the double.
Merlin: Or Schnell.
Merlin: If you're a dad who served in World War II.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Schnell.
Merlin: Remember dads used to say that?
John: Sergeant Schultz.
John: Dads who served in the European theater might have said Schnell.
John: My dad was in the Pacific theater and so did not ever say Schnell.
Merlin: Did he ever say Muck Schau?
Merlin: I heard those things quite a bit.
Merlin: Muck Schau is what they used to yell at the Beatles.
John: I had you know I was friends when I was a little kid not little but like when I was in grade school in Seattle I had two friends twin boys Thomas and Peter and their father had served in World War II with the Germans and was a doctor and their house was very very interesting he was a he was a distant man
John: With a beard, which was unusual at the time.
Merlin: So he brought home a little bit of Germany back to the household.
John: That's right.
John: And his wife was German.
John: It was a very German family.
John: And Thomas and Peter spoke fluent German and English and would go in and out of German and English sort of unconsciously.
John: It was the first time I'd ever seen that.
John: They were both good friends.
John: They had a Marklin N-scale train set.
John: that maybe duplicated their father's hometown.
John: It was the most incredible thing.
John: You know, I'd seen HO train sets.
Merlin: It sounds like an amazing Charlie Kaufman movie.
John: It was fantastic.
John: Just fantastic.
John: They had a very sort of... Is N-Scale kind of the little one?
John: The little one that fits inside of a walnut.
John: It's not a Z scale, but it's an N scale, so it's a little bit bigger than a walnut.
Merlin: Used to be I could name every kind of nut there was.
Merlin: Used to be I could name every scale of train that would fit inside a nut.
Merlin: You got H, H-O, H-O fancy.
John: But they had one of those houses.
John: It was sort of a Brady Bunch house, but it was perched on a hillside, which was covered with trees and moss.
John: So it was a Northwest Brady Bunch house.
John: And Peter and Thomas, so they had one of those lives where their father would give them old radios.
John: And, you know, he would find old electronic stuff and give it to them and they had a soldering gun and they would take apart electronic things and rebuild them into other things.
John: And as a kid, you know, as a seven, eight-year-old kid, they just seemed like miracle workers.
John: They could speak multiple languages.
John: They had these crazy little trains.
John: They could rebuild radios.
Yeah.
John: And I was the same age as them and smart like them, but I was putting on my mother's lipstick and sitting in the sandbox covering my head with sand.
John: I was completely...
John: I was completely useless relative to them.
John: They could have repaired a Jeep, and I looked like a bipolar person having an episode throughout my entire childhood.
John: Had no useful skills unless you were doing like an all-kid version of Rocky Horror Picture Show, and then I could play any role.
John: Thomas and Peter and I looked them up later I went and found them again when we were all kind of young adults and they were like in a fraternity and they were wearing tank tops it was so confusing you know I really wanted to find them and they were like in a laboratory but they had they'd made a transition in a different direction they were wearing tank tops
Merlin: Hmm.
John: Were you ever friends with somebody that ended up in a tank top?
Merlin: Let me think.
Merlin: Well, I have to tell you, I came up at a time when it was much more acceptable for everyone to wear a tank top.
Merlin: We did not call them wife beaters.
Merlin: They were tank tops.
Merlin: And really, this is not so long before the era of the half shirt.
Merlin: But I wore a tank top.
Merlin: My friend John wore a tank top.
Merlin: We all wore tank tops.
Merlin: That's what you did.
Merlin: I think in the late 70s, a tank top was a look.
John: I enjoyed tank tops.
John: I really did until I became husky.
John: Oh.
John: And a tank top is not a good look on a husky kid.
Merlin: Kind of like you get sort of a Philip Seymour Hoffman in Boogie Nights kind of look.
John: Yeah.
John: Thank you.
John: That's exactly right.
John: And I did not want – I didn't want that.
John: But up until that point –
John: I was very pro tank top.
John: I have some great – I had great tank tops.
John: I had a yellow striped tank top.
John: I had – maybe I had a tank top with a baseball player on it.
John: They were good.
John: They were good shirts.
Merlin: I had a generalized problem with sleeveless shirts where I could get away with a tank top when I was 10 or 11.
Merlin: But as soon as I started to smell –
Merlin: I think I really benefited from shirts that had more cloths.
John: You're saying when you came into your agency.
John: My special time.
John: And started to produce pheromonal sense.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: But also I was a sweater.
Merlin: So when I wore my Joe Elliott, my off-brand Joe Elliott Def Leppard British flag shirt with no sleeves, I mean I would ruin that thing.
Merlin: I had some big pit stains on those.
John: Did you really wear a sleeveless British flag T-shirt?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: There was one kid in my school that wore a sleeveless British flag T-shirt.
John: His name was Ernie Demoski.
Merlin: Okay.
John: And I remember it to this day.
John: I felt like it was a bold choice.
Merlin: You think it was that bold of a choice in 1983?
John: Well, in Alaska, the sleevelessness was right away.
John: Like even the fact that I was wearing boat shoes with no socks –
John: Which is totally equivalent.
Merlin: Like a top sider?
John: Like a top sider, like a red colored top sider with no socks.
John: It's 20 degrees below zero outside and there's five feet of snow on the ground.
John: But I'm wearing this like Nantucket style because that's what –
John: Those were the poor choices I was making.
John: Ernie was wearing a British flag sleeveless t-shirt, also a poor choice, also a little culturally appropriative.
Merlin: Oh, good point, good point.
John: But from my top sighters with no socks perspective –
John: Uh, it just felt like, you know, what exactly are you, what exactly are you repping Ernie?
John: He could have easily turned the tables on me and said, what are you repping?
John: Both of us should have been in Sorrells with like – with parkas on.
John: But here we are both like repping some kind of other climate.
Merlin: They call it the Alaskan standoff.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Two guys in inappropriate garb.
Merlin: Who's going to go down first?
John: Which one is going to cop to the fact that they are a fashion victim, a high school fashion victim and not dressed appropriately?
John: And the kids that came to school in bunny boots and like foul – like US military foul weather gear, those were the only people that were actually dressed appropriately.
John: But –
John: I mean we heaped scorn on them because their fathers had obviously – their fathers were based at Elmendorf and they were wearing like military-issue winter clothes.
John: It was pretty sad from – again, from the perspective of somebody in red boat shoes with no socks.
Merlin: But who was the real fool?
Merlin: I would think it's pretty cool.
John: Well, it wasn't cool then.
John: It would be cool now.
John: Did it seem poor?
John: It seemed poor, yeah.
John: That was big.
John: To seem poor, no, you didn't want to seem poor.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness, yes.
John: And a lot of people worked really hard to not look poor.
John: But what became the costume of the coolest kids later, which is unwashed, dark denim rolled up at the cuffs,
John: hair that was kind of long in front, short in back, and dark rimmed Buddy Holly glasses.
John: That's a cool look.
John: And some kind of black t-shirt or some kind of shirt of, you know, even a white Oxford shirt.
John: You know, that is an extremely cool look.
John: And by the time I was at the end of high school, it had appeared again.
John: Or it was recognized as cool.
John: But when I first started in high school, when like the fashion was jeans, super tight jeans that had been bleached.
John: And, you know, like if you showed up in unwashed Levi's with cuffs.
Merlin: You could buy stuff.
Merlin: I remember at the county seat in Florida, one of the denim outlets, you could buy this stuff.
Merlin: that depending on how washed out you wanted your jeans to be, you could buy your, let's talk about it, then very cheap unwashed 501s, toss them in with some of this stuff, and get this really squirrely-looking, fake, faded look after a couple washes.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: I mean, 501s were $19 or something.
Merlin: You talked about this, I think, on your program with Dan.
Merlin: And I'm in the same boat.
Merlin: I recently bought a new pair of 501s.
Merlin: And it's the same deal.
Merlin: It's virtually impossible to figure out which ones you're supposed to get.
Merlin: And even still there, I think they're $50.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a little bit like Converse.
Merlin: Like Converse used to be $10 a pair, $20 a pair.
John: I'm so mad at Levi's that I can't even talk.
Merlin: There's so much to be mad about with Levi's right now.
John: But I'm –
John: I'm so mad.
Merlin: I just – I get so mad.
Merlin: I took you off your story.
Merlin: So anyway, you were wearing the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Merlin: What you were wearing eventually kind of came around.
John: Well, and that's the thing.
John: You just looked like your mom dressed you and you were poor, right?
John: If you were just wearing unwashed Levi's that were rolled up at the cuffs, it just was – it just indicated that you lived in an unheated house.
John: And that's the way – that's kind of the way I was sent to school.
John: And then later on, when that became a symbol of mega cool, I didn't have to change anything.
John: I just rolled right into the future.
John: But I don't think young people today, even people a little bit younger than us, can remember a time when
John: The geek look, the nerd look, especially the nerd rock and roll crossover when none of that had happened and nerd was actually shorthand for poor and it was a thing you tried to avoid at all costs.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It had a lot tied up in it.
Merlin: In fact, I mean if you look at a lot of the mid-'80s sort of John Hughes-ish movies from the early to mid-'80s, you can really see that being played out.
Merlin: People who look like –
Merlin: Oh, who was Blaine?
Merlin: What's the guy's name?
Merlin: James, you know, the guy who's on the Blacklist now.
John: Oh, Spader, James Spader.
Merlin: Yeah, you look at Spader.
Merlin: I mean, Spader, apart from looking like he's 30 years old in that movie, he looks the way that a lot of cool kids did look at the time.
Merlin: What we would then maybe have called preppy.
Merlin: I mean, but that look of like heavily self-consciously branded sportswear was the way to go.
Merlin: And like for the girls, in my case, like they would go to like Esprit.
Merlin: There was a lot of Esprit wear.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: So you get – you know what I mean?
Merlin: You get like the – I don't know if they call them clam diggers then.
Merlin: Or you get the striped shirts and you get the candy shoes and the multiple bracelets and that was the whole thing.
Merlin: But you wouldn't want to look like a farmer.
John: No, you didn't.
John: You wanted to – I mean, I can't go back enough.
John: I've thought about this sometimes.
John: I wish I could go back and stand in the student center of my school and watch the kids go by and see them with my current eyes rather than with my afflicted eyes, the afflicted eyes of teenage life where you're just like –
John: You know, loser, cool kid, loser, stoner, cool kid, loser.
John: I don't even see that kid.
John: He's such a loser.
John: You know, like there was so much of that.
John: in my culture in high school.
John: And I was terrified that I was a loser.
John: And I never succumbed to the brand thing or like, I'm not going to be a loser.
John: I'm going to dress right and I'm going to feather my hair or whatever.
John: But my way of communicating to people that I wasn't a loser was that I carried a copy of the Wall Street Journal tucked under my arm.
John: And nothing says loser more than a high school kid walking around with an unread copy of the Wall Street Journal tucked under his arm.
John: But I was convinced that that was the talisman that was going to protect me against other teens because they're going to be like, what's that, loser?
John: And I would be like, well, I'm just checking my stocks.
Yeah.
John: We'll see who's the loser one day.
John: And the loser one day is still me.
John: I still – I don't have any stocks.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Germany, kids, breakfast.
John: So I looked up the last name of Thomas and Peter just wondering what's going on with them because it was entirely possible that those guys could have –
John: gone on to own Microsoft or something.
John: I think if they owned Microsoft, I would have heard of it.
John: But I found one of the first links was to a German general in World War II who was part of the conspiracy to kill Hitler.
John: No way.
John: And I'm wondering, it's a fairly uncommon name,
John: And I'm just – I'm wondering if the boys and their father were some sort of like the son of this guy or the nephew of this guy.
Merlin: Who certainly would have left the country.
John: Left the country and been welcomed in America and started a new life here.
John: But yeah, I mean, he won the Iron Cross in World War I. Wow.
John: You know, he's one of those old Prussian guys who was never a Nazi.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: They were in the army.
John: Right.
John: Yeah.
John: So interesting.
John: I never really researched that before.
John: I always wondered about that family.
John: That's how it is in their family.
Mm-hmm.
John: Markland trains.
John: I decided not very long ago I was going to go to the hobby store and get re-interested in trains.
John: Oh, really?
John: And I was like, I'm going to build a Markland train set this time, not some HO garbage.
Merlin: My daughter has expressed an interest in becoming a train person.
John: And you haven't like enthusiastically run towards it?
Merlin: We don't have a lot of square footage at the house.
Merlin: But what happened was we went to Flax, as you do.
Merlin: And there's this thing she's been wanting to get.
Merlin: It's actually – it's kind of cool.
Merlin: They have a little – like a little spinner rack of these different packages of – what I would just – the easiest way to describe it is imagine you wanted to make your scale train set look like stuff.
Merlin: So you can buy corn stalks.
Merlin: You can buy trees.
Merlin: You can get apple trees.
Merlin: You can get orange trees.
Merlin: You can get all these different kinds of things.
Merlin: And you can get these little layouts that you can build this stuff.
Merlin: Yeah, and I mean it's – you can use it for lots of different things.
Merlin: I don't even know what scale – but she was so thrilled to get a few of those and put it together.
Merlin: And now I think she's coming to trains via set dressing basically.
Merlin: She's interested.
Merlin: She's most interested in where she puts the corn stalks.
Merlin: But trains are definitely beginning to enter into the discussion.
John: And so what scale are you starting with?
Merlin: I mean, off the top of my head, I don't know if it's a specific scale, but it looks like it would be closer to N. I mean, the corn stalks are like less than an inch high.
John: Right.
John: Okay.
John: So I think that that's a good plan.
John: If I had it all to do over again, even though HO is...
John: The standard, let's call it.
Merlin: Is HO the big one?
John: HO, not the, no, that's, I mean, the really big ones are like Lionel, like big, big scale.
John: I got a lot to learn.
John: But, yeah, yeah.
John: The thing is that HO is kind of the one that looks like a train set.
John: It just looks like you don't even register that it's a scale because it just seems like train set scale.
Merlin: Oh, I get it.
Merlin: Yep.
Yeah.
John: But like the smaller scales, like N scale, I just think is perfect because it's small enough that you can – it's big enough that you can still make very detailed things.
John: And I think in some ways the detail looks more authentic because it's just shrunken down.
Merlin: N kind of looks the coolest.
Merlin: N is 1 to 160.
Merlin: There's one below N called Z.
John: Yeah, Z is too small.
Merlin: 1 to 220.
Merlin: H and HO is what I remember.
Merlin: So HO here, it looks like is 1 to 87, all the way up to G. G. Which is 1 to 22, which is just that's asinine.
John: That's too big.
John: G, I mean, your cat could ride the train, right?
Merlin: That would be super cute.
John: It'd be really cute.
Merlin: You'd have a Kitty Express.
John: You'd have to tape the cat into the train.
Merlin: I don't think it would...
John: If you had a little dog but that also suffered from ennui, like a little dog that was sort of depressed and not like a skittish little dog.
John: Like it hadn't found its duck.
John: Right.
John: Exactly.
John: Maybe it could ride around in a G train.
Merlin: You got a fair amount of square footage in that place.
Merlin: You could have a train set there.
John: Yeah, I could, and I have not ruled it out.
John: But I feel like the end scale is the way that you get a tabletop train set that still has enough set dressing.
John: Because with an HO set, if you're going to build an oval on a tabletop, that's all you're going to get.
John: The train's just going to go around in a circle.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, that's all the room you'd have.
Merlin: You wouldn't be able to do any cool stuff.
Merlin: You wouldn't have stations and towns and waters and stuff like that.
John: Yeah, bridges and switches.
John: Here's the thing.
John: Train set is all about the switching.
John: Like I know you get into it through the set dressing.
John: A lot of people do.
John: A lot of people get into it through the like, oh, it's cute.
John: Look at the little cute train.
John: Then you build an oval and your train's zooming around.
John: You build a little town.
John: But then when you think, I need to get a switch here and build another, build it so the train can sometimes go on this other track, that's when the madness sets in.
Merlin: And it seems like you're never done.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, part of the fun of it is that it would just go on and on forever.
Right.
John: Yeah, you build it forever.
John: You're always tearing it down.
John: You're always like, oh, you know, I'm going to redo this little corner of the train set, make it, you know, make the waterfall more realistic or, you know, I never really liked like my challenge was in the town scenes.
John: And I think anybody that's ever done a diorama of a town is going to recognize this problem.
John: which is how do you place the pretend cars on the pretend road where they look like actual traffic and not – like how do you space them apart from one another so that they don't look like a kid just came in and put the cars evenly spaced?
John: Right.
John: How do you make it look naturalistic that it's traffic, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a rookie mistake to just set this stuff down without thinking, well, how would they pull out of that parking space?
John: Exactly.
John: How do you make it come alive and not look staged?
John: And that's a huge challenge in modeling, especially if you're going to go the whole hog and do a diorama.
John: I went to the state fair this year and walked through the displays and
John: And there's a whole area of the state fair where people put their little dioramas that they've made.
John: But also people just display their collections.
John: There was a guy.
John: That's all you need?
Merlin: You just bring your stuff and put it out?
John: Yeah.
John: That's very appealing.
John: There was a guy, and I know it was a guy.
John: It had to be a guy.
Merlin: There's no stagecraft to it?
Merlin: You just put all your stuff out?
John: There's a little bit of stagecraft.
John: He had the temerity to display his collection of Pendleton shirts that
John: And he did a whole display like, voila, my collection of Pendleton's.
John: And I stood there marveling at this thing because they were great Pendletons.
John: It was a beautiful display.
John: He had 20 plus Pendletons.
John: But I was like, I could fill this barn.
John: The standard is if you have 20 Pendletons, you're entitled to go to the state fair and arrange them in a display.
John: I was like, first of all, my candlestick display would win best in show.
Merlin: No, it would be more a question of like how many should I bring?
John: Yeah, my globe display.
John: Like, you know, look out.
John: I could probably match that guy with a Pendleton display.
John: And I'm walking around this thing and it's like all the normal ones where, oh, this person, you know, and I'm not going to generalize about who they might be, but this person has collected only butter jars that are shaped like pigs.
John: Like little covered butter dishes that are shaped like two pigs in love or whatever.
John: And they are able to fill up an entire display with butter dishes of different sizes shaped like two pigs in love.
John: And you think that's spectacular.
John: Like that's monomaniacal and I give it to you.
John: But then the display where it's just like every kind of Betty Boop doll that you can find.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Where it's not that weird.
John: It's not weird enough.
John: Like, two pigs in love, that's a theme.
John: That could be a life's work, John.
John: Right, but to limit it to butter dishes?
John: Like, okay, you are on something or you are on to something.
John: And where the line is between on something and on to something...
John: It's, you know, it's just, it seems very small, but it's, but it's like, I am always trying to find where the break point is there between on something and onto something.
John: So I'm walking around this thing and I'm like, where would my, if I were going to go to the state fair and put something in,
John: down here like what would it be and how would I blow their minds how would I how would I indicate that I am on to something and not just on something and then I then I come around the corner and there's a guy who has a collection of snare drums and it's and it fills a wall and
John: And I walk over to it very slowly.
John: And it's one of these things where when you pan back in the film, all the other people are moving around very fast
John: They're stopping and looking at stuff.
John: They're all in fast motion, and I am in regular motion.
John: I'm the only thing in focus.
John: I can visualize this.
John: I'm walking over to the drums, and I'm like, what the fuck is this?
John: Is this a bunch of junk, or is this the most amazing thing I've ever seen?
John: And as I get closer, I realize that it is amazing that this guy has...
John: old black beauties he has he has 25 different lucite uh snares of different rainbow colors from the from the ludwig years like he's got a snare drum from every era and representing
John: All of the super snare drum, it's snare drum porn basically.
John: He's got snares there that are worth $80,000.
John: His snare collection belongs not in a museum but on top of the Empire State Building with a giant flag.
John: indicating its presence like it is a masterwork of craziness because to have that many snares is insane but they were beautiful every single one of them was fantastic and i'm standing there i'm staring at this thing and people are walking by and my own family is tugging at my sleeve and saying come on let's go like there's so much more to see like we have to go get burned corn that's covered with mayonnaise and
John: And find some deep fried butter.
John: And I am mesmerized, not just by the beauty of these pieces, but I'm just trying to get inside this person's mind.
John: at some point early enough in the world that they could still acquire these snares without – because you could tell this guy had never paid $80,000 for a snare, right?
Merlin: It's a long game, right?
Merlin: It's something where he's been doing this for a while.
John: This is a lifetime pursuit, and he recognizes that some of these snares belong in a museum, and I don't even know if there is a museum for snares.
John: I think it starts with this man.
John: But he's been collecting them for a long time, and he has the 59 Les Paul of Snares, and he has multiple versions of it.
John: Wow.
John: And he knows enough about it.
John: He's got little three-by-five cards that he has typed with a typewriter.
John: that are talking about the difference in hardware, and there are a couple of drums where he's like, this is a very curious piece.
John: And he's only talking to me.
Merlin: John, this sounds very close to something you need to be doing.
John: Yeah, the fair has been going for three weeks, and probably five people have stopped and stared at this thing.
John: And the other four guys...
John: You know, all had really long hair and were wearing a sleeveless T-shirt shaped like a British flag.
Merlin: You're saying pigs in love would probably draw more foot traffic.
John: A lot more people at the fair are going to stop at the pigs in love butter dishes.
John: So I'm sitting and I'm reading these little cards and he's like –
John: Technically, this hardware shouldn't be brass, but it is.
John: And that poses several questions about the date of manufacture.
John: And my theory is...
John: That when they discontinued the model beforehand, they had some hardware left over and they built this.
John: And he's just talking about these drums like from a standpoint of exactly the kind of crazy that I am.
Merlin: So it's not enough that he's discovered something that probably nobody else cares about, let alone noticed, but he's got to reckon.
Merlin: He's got a theory on why it happened.
John: That's right.
John: And he's got to sit and go like nurk, nurk, nurk about it.
John: And I'm sure that he has clutched that drum to his chest and swayed back and forth like, at some point.
John: Because he's thought about the life that this drum has led, right?
John: He knows the date it was made, but he also knows that it has made its way through time.
John: Retaining certain characteristics that other drums have lost.
John: It has retained its, you know, he had a couple of drums that had a, where their finish was like a print of the signatures of all the great drummers of that era.
John: Like somebody got Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa and all these guys to sign a piece of paper and then they reproduced it and made it into a cover for a drum, for a snare.
John: And he had multiples of this that were different colors and he was like discursing –
John: Like this one is very unusual.
John: And I'm just like, oh my God, where are you?
John: You've got to be around here somewhere.
John: I have to talk to you now.
John: Because these things were rare to begin with.
John: But what makes them interesting is that they've made this journey.
John: And he has thought about their journey.
John: And the parts of the journey that he can tell, he wants to tell.
John: And the parts that he can't tell will always be...
John: He'll always be curious about them.
John: He wants somebody to call him up and say, that was my drum back in 1950.
John: Like, nothing would make him happier.
Merlin: Well, and the fact that it's something that's so rare and so weird that it must feel a little bit magical that it not only made it, but one of the few people in the world who could fully appreciate it is the person who has it now.
John: yeah yeah it's somewhat miraculous that all those things lined up in the way they did yeah here's the thing and it's and there were multiple multiple times in its life where it could have been where some teenage kid could have been like oh yeah i found this drum in my dad's basement let's start a band and let's spray paint it black
John: To make it look cool.
John: And that didn't happen to this drum.
John: You know, a kid did not did not sand the finish off of his dad's 55 Les Paul and paint it with Gene Simmons's face.
John: It was left alone, but not left alone in a moldy basement where it was destroyed, left alone somewhere where it was protected.
John: I mean, it's just like, ugh.
John: So eventually I had to be dragged away from this thing because I just wanted to stay there until the fair closed and until this person came to get these drums.
Merlin: So you never got to talk to him or her?
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
John: The drum collector remained a mystery to me.
John: I was just seeing into them.
John: I was looking into them through this weirdness.
John: And oh, oh, oh, oh, and the best part of it is
John: This is a person who thought to bring it to the fair.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: How does that – there must be some intermediary organization of collectors.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean is there like an RFP?
Merlin: Do they send out some kind of announcement?
Merlin: Hey, if you have a lot of something and want to bring it to the fair, here's how to do it?
John: Yeah.
John: I don't know.
John: I mean this is the type of thing I would expect to see up above the counter in a store in New York City –
John: Where when you walk in and ask the person behind the counter for something, he yells at you.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: Right?
John: This is the type of thing that you would see at Sam Ash Music in Midtown.
John: This is the only place in the world where you will see this.
John: Except it's at the Puyallup Fair in Washington.
John: And I don't know where it is now.
John: It all got boxed up and it's back in this person's living room or...
John: Or or I mean, the thing is, it's not in the attic.
John: It's too.
John: This is not a thing that just gets trotted out once a year.
John: It has it lives somewhere.
I don't know.
Merlin: Well, let's get to the really crazy part, which is in all of that chain.
Merlin: Now, who knows?
Merlin: Maybe the most salient part is you were there to see it.
Merlin: Of all people.
Merlin: Don't you think?
John: So, well, that's the thing.
John: So I'm wondering, like, if I'm going to go to the Puyallup Fair next year and I'm going to take up one of these booths and I'm going to put a collection there, like, what is it?
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: I return back to what I said before.
Merlin: I think you should do a little bit of research about how those folks got there because, first of all, make sure it's a party you really want to go to.
Merlin: This might great – you think about having – and first of all, I also cannot believe that the man was not standing there with his stuff the whole time because, I mean, like Gollum, I imagine he's pretty particular about who touches his snares.
John: Well, you couldn't touch them.
John: They were – if you could touch them, I would have touched them.
Merlin: A lot of crazy stuff happens.
Merlin: But, you know, and also you got to be careful because, you know, you might go there and for three weeks end up having lunch with the pigs in love lady or man.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: If you're if you're at a party like that and you get and you end up talking to the Betty Boop person and you're like, so when did you start collecting Betty Boop?
John: And they're like, oh, I've been collecting Betty Boop for 30 years.
John: And you go, right.
John: I can tell you've got like 10,000 Betty Boops there.
John: What is your standard of selecting them?
John: And the person looks at you kind of quizzically and goes, what do you mean?
John: I just buy all the Betty Boops.
John: I buy every Betty Boop.
John: Right.
John: And you go, right.
John: A lot of those Betty Boops were made in China.
John: And they're like, what does that have to do with anything?
John: Exactly.
John: Right.
John: You know, I'm not interested in just buying every Betty Boop.
Merlin: Because when you're looking, whether that's Betty Boobs or Pigs in Love or Snare Drums, what you're tacitly interested in, you're interested in the, let's say, 20 items that they have, but you're also incredibly interested by extension in the 50,000 things that they didn't bother with.
Merlin: That's part of the curation.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Part of what makes it special is like, oh, I got a whole – I got a storage shed full of Betty Boobs.
Merlin: Like, who cares?
Merlin: Those are all – that's the kind of stuff losers bring on Antiques Roadshow and go, sir, did you notice the 1973 copyright on here?
Merlin: Womp womp.
Merlin: I love those.
John: This Shirley Temple doll was made five years ago.
John: If you had a ton of money, if you had 500 grand and you wanted to go compile a collection of snare drums where your only story was, I bought this.
John: because it was expensive you could you could you could build a collection of snare drums you could build any kind of collection if you just went and bought it it's the it's that this that he he knew like he had looked he had looked at the threads of the screws right and had something salient to say about it so yeah like we walked by one that was a wall of winnie the poos
John: And I had the same – it was the Betty Boop story.
John: It was just like, yeah, it's a wall of Winnie the Poohs.
John: Maybe there are a dozen Winnie the Poohs in here that have something interesting to say, but I can't tell because you're just trying to overwhelm me with –
John: with quantity right and so you're at the you're at the party you're at the pre-party and you get you get uh you get cornered by the betty boop and the winnie the pooh person yes you're just like listen i really want to talk to the pigs in love butter dish person that is my kind of crazy and they're just they're over talking to the snare drum guy and you never maybe you get you get in the wrong click
Merlin: It seems like this must bring up a lot of questions for you.
Merlin: One of the questions I'm guessing must be, if you were, hypothetically, going to bring one of your numerous collections to the Polapuama affair, do you have a sense of, like, would it be globes?
Merlin: Would it be candles?
Merlin: What kinds of things do you feel like you need to share?
Merlin: What do you feel you could best curate for the audience there?
John: If I wanted to just overwhelm them,
John: I would just take my collection of little field notes books that I've never written anything in.
John: Right?
John: Because it seems like for the last 10 years, every single event I go to, in the swag bag...
John: is a package of three field notes books that 25 years ago I would have compulsively filled those things with crazy ranting.
John: But somehow – and so I collect them because they still represent to me this opportunity –
John: Because it used to be, when I was 20 years old, it was hard to get a little notebook that fit in the pocket of your jeans that you could write your screeds on.
Merlin: Well, they're handsome, they're well-made, and they're free, in your case.
Merlin: You're getting them for free.
John: I filled a thousand types of those before field notes were invented.
John: So when I see them, when I get them, I'm always pleased and I gather them to me.
John: But I could do nothing for the rest of my life but rant, like crazy scribble rant in a field notebook and I still would not fill all the ones I have.
John: I have enough for like the library at Alexandria –
John: Completely written.
John: I could be the guy in the movie Seven, but just with field notes books.
John: So I could just blow people's minds with all of the different – I could just do a whole display where it was just like, this guy is insane.
Merlin: Why is he – That doesn't even seem like a contender.
Merlin: I mean those are great notebooks.
Merlin: I've got a couple right here.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: See, I feel like this could be a nice clarifying moment for you because it causes you to – first of all, the idea of this being an opportunity, it's so interesting because it's so close to so many things you've been talking about doing.
Merlin: But it's also clarifying the sense of like, okay, maybe I am a collector of many kinds of things.
Merlin: But if I were going to decide like what's the one kind of these things that I'm on the one hand was interested in curating and sharing but also like okay with taking to like an open area in a barn –
Merlin: Like what would that be?
Merlin: Do you have a rough sense of that?
John: Well, you know, lately, the last few years, I've been very interested in wool blankets, like throws, the kind of blanket that you would – some of them would not be –
John: Right?
John: A collection of blankets.
John: They wouldn't be out of place, like thrown across your legs at a football game.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: I value blankets.
Merlin: It's just I don't know if that has a lot of zazz in a live performance environment.
John: You've got to see my collection of blankets.
John: I sure do.
John: Some of them really pop.
John: The guy with the Pendleton shirt collection, the unifying characteristic of them, they're all Pendletons.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Whereas I have... It's a little on the nose.
John: I have Pendleton blankets, but I also have Hudson Bay blankets.
John: I have blankets from the Fariboo Mill.
John: I have blankets from... There are a lot of regional...
John: And like fabric mills and looms in the old days that made their signature American blankets.
John: And I have some from a lot of those.
John: I have some from Scotland.
John: I have some that are made out of cashmere.
John: And if you put them all together, you start to go like –
John: Ooh, this is, this is a thing.
John: This is a real, this is something that I wouldn't have noticed, but now I'm at the fair and I'm being shown how little I knew.
John: right?
John: No, I understand.
Merlin: But I mean, I guess, I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking or overstating this, but it feels like this is the kind of thing that will come to you in a dream, and yet you actually lived it.
Merlin: Like, you had the opportunity to not just see that this can exist, but that it does exist, and you then had the experience of walking through it and seeing what worked and didn't work for you, and this puts you in the position that I feel like, if I may say, that you've been craving for two or three years, which is, what does, am I onto something, or am I, what is the phrase, am I onto something, or am I on something?
Merlin: Is that it?
Merlin: So, I mean, that must be clarifying to you because now you could say, well, given the amount of space I might have for this, what could I display best?
Merlin: Now this becomes a more artful thing because you can think about what would have curb appeal at a show like this.
John: Yeah, but the problem is I'm not sure that maybe I'm not just on something.
Merlin: You've got a year to find out.
John: When I think about it, it would be like, here's my collection, a few candlesticks, some globes, some historical atlases,
John: a couple of switchblades, some blankets, a few different kinds of, um, like land Yeagers, some beer steins that are stained with coffee.
John: Um, all of the U S presidents represented in dolls and
Merlin: You don't actually have that, do you?
John: I do.
John: Some rocks at the beach that have some kind of what are called wish rocks, which are rocks that have a ring around them, like a jar of those.
John: Like $20 in about 80 different currencies worldwide.
Merlin: I'm on the Washington State Fair page.
Merlin: And I have to be honest, I'm having trouble finding what this thing is called.
Merlin: But there are many interesting things at the fair.
Merlin: I will tell you that much.
Merlin: Is it Hobby Hall?
John: I think it might be Hobby Hall.
Merlin: Visit Hobby Hall for an amazing look at the intriguing world of crafts and collections.
Merlin: From Lego displays to toy collections to coins and everything in between, quirky is a great description for all the fascinating personal collections on display in the Hobby Hall.
John: Well, and so that's the thing.
John: If you just build some stuff out of Legos, you can put it at the Hobby Hall.
John: If you build a scale model of the house from Psycho,
John: and want to show it to people, I mean, they'll put that right in the center of the room.
Merlin: I don't want to put you on the spot, John, but the page concludes with a link.
Merlin: And the link says, do you love to collect quirky items?
Merlin: Learn how to enter your very own display here.
Merlin: You click the link.
John: So what I'm trying to picture now is the snare drum collector following, like going to this page at some point in their life and saying, you know what, I'm doing it.
John: Because I go to the fair every year and I always walk through Hobby Hall.
John: I see a lot of crazy stuff.
John: I see some stuff that really turns me on.
John: I see some stuff that really turns me off.
John: But the snare drum collection I've never seen before.
John: This person has come out of the woodwork.
Merlin: I'm now on the 22-page PDF that you can review when you're ready to get it.
Merlin: It lays out all of the different kinds of prizes that you can win.
Merlin: It's got an entire – John, I encourage you to look at this.
Merlin: It's got the entire taxonomy, including like a Dewey Decimal-like system, all the classes of different kinds.
Merlin: So let's say, for example – can I just toss one out for fun?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Let's say you're interested in egg art.
Merlin: OK, that's division.
Merlin: That's division 222.
John: I've seen some of these.
Merlin: And here's an important note.
Merlin: All entries must be real eggs.
John: Well, and this is if you've seen these.
John: Yes.
John: People make holes.
John: It's just like a train set.
John: Set dressing is the is the real appeal.
John: Mm hmm.
John: Except you're dressing eggs and they are interacting with each other.
Merlin: Well, so that's division 222.
Merlin: Then you've got classes starting with 4800.
Merlin: You've got diorama, hinge, mechanical, decoupage, hand-painted, beaded, jeweled, fancy cut, natural dye, wax resist, scratched eggs, holiday, miniature Vs, smaller than chicken egg, or 4865, you've got other eggs.
Merlin: Smaller than chicken egg.
Merlin: Smaller than chicken egg.
Merlin: Now that's just in the egg art division.
John: Smaller than chicken egg is not a subset of other eggs.
Merlin: See, I think if you got involved with the governing board here, I think you could help a lot of people.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Dolls, decorative arts.
Merlin: Oh, soft toys.
Merlin: Handcrafted soft toys and animals.
Merlin: Reproduction dolls?
John: There are all kinds of people that walk in and they're like, here's my Winnie the Pooh collection.
John: And whoever the judge is that's like, well, technically it says handcrafted.
Merlin: John, I don't want to take up the whole episode.
Merlin: Could I just point you to scrapbooking Division 218?
Merlin: Okay, so class 4320, you've got traditional layout, digital layout, hybrid layout, which is a combination of traditional and digital photography.
Merlin: Oh, they have juniors and adults in scrapbooking, so your daughter could do this.
Merlin: If she's under 16, go in and do a hybrid layout, that's 4336.
John: There was someone, you know, now I'm really reminiscing on the fair, someone who had a double wide booth, taking up the space of two booths,
John: Just for their Duran Duran memorabilia card.
Merlin: It's a Duran Duran Duran Duran.
John: That's right.
John: And frankly, I spent quite a bit of time studying it.
John: And my experience of it was two things.
John: A lot of that stuff was purchased not in the canonical Duran Duran era, but post Seven and the Ragged Tiger.
Merlin: Oh, they call it OOP, right?
Merlin: Out of period.
John: Out of period.
John: It was, you know, it's like, it's not brand new Duran Duran stuff, but it's Duran Duran stuff from 1994.
John: Yeah.
John: So even though I'm looking at this – I'm studying this thing pretty carefully.
John: I'm discounting a lot of that stuff.
John: Like post – I'm sure there's plenty of disagreement, but I feel like post even 84 –
John: Your Duran Duran stuff is not like your post 84 Duran Duran stuff.
John: You're like tour program from Indonesia in 2001 is not, that's not killing it for me.
John: And the next thought I had was I have some pieces that this person doesn't have.
John: I have the Duran Duran Velcro wallet.
John: I know if this person got a hold of the Durandran Velcro wallet, it would be front and center.
John: You think that's licensed?
Merlin: I bet that wasn't licensed.
Merlin: I had an unlicensed Adam and the Ants wallet that I treasured.
John: Probably not licensed, although you never know, right?
John: You should read the rules, John.
John: It's only 22 pages.
John: But another part of the joy for me would be to go around and kind of like...
John: get into a little bit of a disc battle with a lot of these people, like to walk up on the Duran Duran person and just throw down the... You're saying you'd step to them.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Throw down the Velcro wallet and be like, what do you got that can match that?
Merlin: It's like a rap battle, but about things no one cares about.
John: That's right.
John: Don't show me some picture disc.
John: Like, do you have some merch?
John: I'm talking about merch now.
John: Like a Power Station Coke mirror.
John: Yeah, right, or a painter's cap with two flaps hanging down the back.
Merlin: Oh, that's a great look.
John: From the movie Breaking 2.
John: Do you have something?
John: I mean, can you really come back with something that you didn't just buy because you are 30 and you got into Duran Duran at some later period?
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: There must be a lot of signal-to-noise ratio because of eBay and people making money.
Merlin: You can go in, you can start, you start paper in the walls with all this shit you bought off the internet.
Merlin: And like, that's, that's not collecting.
Merlin: That's just, that's just, that's just buying things and having a room.
John: Yeah.
John: It's like going, you go into a thrift store now and the, and they have, they all have, first of all, they all have racks of like more expensive clothes, better brands, as they say.
Merlin: Better brands.
John: Which back in the day they didn't do.
Merlin: No, they had shirts.
John: Here's shirts.
John: Here's shirts.
John: Go to shirts.
John: But now they have better brands.
John: And what cracks me up is that now – so they've had better brands for a while.
John: But now you walk into a thrift store and you search through the better brands and it's like American Eagle and Old Navy.
Merlin: And you're like, who are you people?
Merlin: I think to be a better brand, your shirt should probably have been made by an adult.
John: Yeah, but that's not the case anymore.
John: I mean, yes, I agree.
John: Better brand implies to me that it was made by hand by someone in America.
John: That's not a child.
John: That's not a child, right?
John: But that's not the case anymore.
John: Old Navy.
John: Old Navy and the better brands.
Merlin: Hobby Hall collections rules.
Merlin: There are some things you should familiarize yourself with.
John: I'm afraid to go down this rabbit hole.
Merlin: Well, you know what the first rule of Hobby Hall collections is?
Merlin: Don't talk about Hobby Hall collections.
Merlin: Hobby Hall collections.
Merlin: No, close.
Merlin: Previously displayed collections may be resubmitted after two years.
Merlin: Whoa!
Merlin: Yeah, so there's scarcity.
Merlin: No selling or soliciting.
Merlin: Number five, no suggestive materials will be accepted.
John: I think that there are some people that are pushing the envelope on that.
John: Betty Boop has – there's a lot of pain.
Merlin: Well, that's true.
Merlin: When do we get to number six?
Merlin: The fair reserves the right to remove any material from any exhibit that might be objectionable.
Merlin: Boy, that's worded very poorly.
Merlin: Said material will be held in a secure place until exhibit is picked up at the close of the fair.
Merlin: You can have it back when we're done.
Merlin: The exhibitor will be notified.
Merlin: Can you imagine that?
Merlin: Can you imagine?
Merlin: They go and grab his snare drum and go take it somewhere and he can have it back at the end.
John: Yeah, because it doesn't meet their standards.
John: Had some panty on it.
John: There was a guy who did a display in honor of the F4 Phantom.
John: And he'd obviously built several models of the F4, which were handsome.
John: He'd done a good job.
John: But then he had some photocopied boilerplate about the F4, which is like anybody walking through here knows all this stuff already.
Merlin: Obviously.
John: Right?
John: If you're going to walk over and look at the F4 Phantom display at the Hobby Hall, you already know about the F4 Phantom.
John: That's not a thing that somebody is like, oh, look at the pigs.
John: Look at the Betty Boops.
John: Oh, look at the F4 Phantoms.
Merlin: You know, no.
Merlin: Elvis Presley was a rock and roll singer?
Merlin: The devil you say.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: You're saying it's like obvious.
Merlin: Anybody here, that's a rookie information.
John: That's rookie information.
John: And you could tell after a while that what it was was he was trying to fill up his booth because all he really had...
John: was like four F4s that he'd built, which is great, a great start.
John: But then he had a couple of like F4 toys, like toys that you would buy.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: In academics, that guy would not get a presentation.
Merlin: He'd call it a poster.
Merlin: You get like a science fair project.
Merlin: You get this much area.
Merlin: You get a chair.
Merlin: You get a chair to sit on and hold up your one good thing.
John: That's right.
John: So don't go on the internet and copy off some – the F-4 Phantom was originally designed as a – it's like, no, no, no, no, no.
John: Tell us something we don't know about the F-4 Phantom.
John: And that's what made this display a little bit weird because a couple of the models that he'd built were not just your standard Navy-issue Phantom.
John: It was like these were – they had radar pods.
John: They were weird.
John: But he did say too that maybe not everyone knows that the F-4 was the first aircraft that was used by all the branches of the service.
Merlin: Oh, that's an interesting fact.
John: It's an interesting fact, right?
John: It was interceptor for all branches.
John: Boy, those were the days, right?
Merlin: I feel like I'm kind of letting you off easy.
Merlin: I don't want to pressure you.
Merlin: I'm just looking at just in large, broad swaths, just generally speaking.
Merlin: Well, first of all, let me ask.
Merlin: Let's go to step zero, the zero rule of Hobby Hall.
Merlin: Do you think you'd want to do this?
Merlin: Will you consider this?
John: I just don't know who my audience is there.
John: It's basically the population of Washington State.
John: Everybody comes.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's got to be a couple people that would be interested.
John: I thought for a while that I was going to collect letter openers that had been carved out of mahogany.
Yeah.
John: And I have... Both of them?
John: I have just enough... I have just enough letter openers...
John: Because the first few that I got, I was like, this is weird.
John: Who would make a knife out of wood?
John: Right, right.
John: I need to take this home and study it more closely.
John: And so I took it home and I studied it more closely.
John: And after a time, I realized, oh, these aren't combat knives.
John: I don't think.
John: Some of them are not very... They're correspondence knives.
John: Yeah, this is meant to sit on your desk and then you open letters with it.
John: So then I was like, oh, that's interesting.
John: And then when I would see them, I would say...
John: Not garbage ones, but ones that had been hand-made.
John: Right.
John: And so I have just enough of those.
John: But the problem is I haven't gone down the rabbit hole.
John: I haven't sought out other letter opener collectors, compared notes with them.
John: This happened to me one time.
John: I'd been collecting...
John: Cool Ray sunglasses.
John: What are those?
John: They're cheap sunglasses from the old days.
John: Is it a Ray-Bans knockoff?
John: They were made by Polaroid, I think.
John: And they were not Ray-Bans knockoffs exactly.
John: They were...
John: because they were cheap, they were, you could make them in a lot of different kind of crazy wacky styles.
John: And so you can really collect cool Ray sunglasses in like, uh, you can make a very cool collection of them because there are just so many of them and they're very, very cool looking.
John: It's the, it's the perfect sort of Etsy thing.
John: Cool Ray sunglasses.
John: Perfect kind of thing that you would find there.
Um,
John: um but i had a pretty good collection of cool ray sunglasses i thought and was at a party one day talking to um a punk rock photographer guy i know and um i was like i think he might have had some cool rays hanging off of the pocket of his 50s bowling shirt
John: And I was like, nice, cool rays.
John: He was like, oh, thanks.
John: I was like, yeah, I got a little collection of those.
John: He was like, oh, really?
John: And I already knew I was in trouble.
John: And I was like, well, yeah, I do actually have a pretty cool collection of those.
John: And he was like, hmm.
John: Well, so do I. Do you want to?
John: compare.
John: And I was like, fuck, I'm on the ropes already here because I've got a great collection of sunglasses.
John: The numbers in the hundreds, but I don't, but they're not, it's not like cool Ray.
John: Right.
John: And he's at this party.
John: He's got some hanging off of the pocket of his shirt, which is just like a fishing lure for exactly the big mouth bass of me and
John: who wanders up and is like, oh, yummy.
John: Oh, these old things.
John: And then he's like, now I've got a live one.
John: He knows what these are, and he thinks he's got something to say about them.
John: And so...
John: over the course of knowing this guy for a long time, I realized that he is a true cool ray collector and he has hundreds of them.
John: And so I'm sending him pictures, you know, and this is like basically like sexting between middle-aged collector dudes where I'm like, do you have this one?
John: Who happen to be eunuchs.
John: That's right.
John: And I say, do you have this one?
John: And I'm not sending him a picture of my best pair of cool rays.
John: I know enough about this game.
Merlin: You keep your powder dry.
John: Keep the powder dry.
John: Start way up the chain.
John: I'm like, what about... But not send him the one that everybody's got.
John: I'm like, yeah, what about these?
John: And he's just like, sends me back a picture of like 15 of them.
John: I'm like, fuck, okay.
John: So then I skip a couple ahead and I'm like...
John: These ones are pretty cool.
John: I'm not even trying to, I'm not even fronting to him anymore.
John: I'm just like, I like these ones.
John: These are cool.
John: Send him one and he sends me back a picture of that one and then the 10 iterations on either side of it.
John: I'm just like, I am beat.
John: I am beat.
John: And so I go immediately, I'm out of this game, right?
John: I go immediately to my best pair and he's got those two.
John: And then in desperation,
John: I take a picture of my entire glasses collection.
John: And I'm like, and I'm not, I'm not throwing it down like boom.
John: I'm just like, well, you know, sometimes it's hard to find all the cool rays that I have interspersed amongst all these other amazing glasses that I have that you probably don't.
John: How's your Varney collection, dude?
John: You know, like I send him this thing and what he writes back, he doesn't send a picture back.
John: He writes back,
John: I noticed that you shot your collection from underneath, from the floor.
John: You laid on the floor to take this picture to make your tower of glasses seem more impressive.
John: And I was just like, oh.
John: I'm defeated, utterly defeated by this.
Merlin: He didn't even feel like he had to come back at you.
John: He didn't.
John: And part of the implication was all of my glasses wouldn't even fit in a single frame.
John: Oh, gosh.
John: And basically, I have bigger fish to fry right now, Junior.
Merlin: He's got more important people to send pictures of sunglasses to.
John: Yeah, I just slunk away.
John: I slunk away.
Oh, God.
Merlin: Yeah, okay.
Merlin: I take your point.
Merlin: This may not be the thing for you.
John: So what would you – if somebody came in and they were like, listen, Merlin, we know that this isn't your thing, but you have to fill up a booth at the fair.
John: It's part of your parole.
John: It's part of your transition to the next layer, to the next level.
John: What would your booth – what would your glass case contain?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: One time I would have said Zippo lighters.
Merlin: I don't have a huge collection, but I had a dozen or so.
Merlin: I don't have a good current collection of things that aren't just purely garbage.
Merlin: I don't have that anymore.
John: You used to have – didn't you used to have figurines?
John: You used to have like –
John: Like Spider-Man?
Merlin: Yeah, I don't have anything rare or unusual.
Merlin: It would be more like if I went to Target, filled a few bags, and then happened to go to the fair and put it on a table.
John: So you don't have like Ren and Stimpy in their original box, that type of stuff.
Merlin: I don't have anything in its original box.
Merlin: No, it's a good question.
Merlin: I mean, it's fair enough.
Merlin: Jeez, I don't know.
Merlin: There's a time when I would have said maybe records.
Merlin: But what you're describing is so dispiriting because what you're describing is kind of my experience of dealing with a lot of folks like this where it's why nerds get a bad name is things like this where there's no way that this ends that anybody's actually happy.
Merlin: It's not joyful.
Merlin: It's not celebratory.
Merlin: It's like two guys with micropenises whipping it out as much as one can with a micropenis.
John: I hate to disappoint you, and you know this already, but the Zippo lighter guy?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: The Zippo lighter guy's got 800 lighters.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Right?
John: Yeah.
John: And they're from Vietnam.
Merlin: You're the one with the challenge.
Merlin: I'm trying to answer the challenge.
Merlin: I'm telling you, I think I would come up short.
Merlin: I'm looking around my office.
Merlin: No, I don't really have – I don't have anything useful that would interest other people and definitely would not be worth the kind of discussions I would have to have with sunglasses guy.
Yeah.
John: What about your collection of like USB 2.0 FireWire hard drives?
Merlin: Oh, I have a pretty good collection of SCSI 25 and SCSI 50.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: My zip drive, my zip and jazz drive collection would be very useful.
John: I wonder.
John: I wonder if there's not a collection right under your nose.
Merlin: Oh, you're right.
Merlin: Yeah, forest for the trees.
Merlin: I got a lot of really nice pencils here.
Merlin: I got some good pencils.
Merlin: See, I just feel like this is an interesting thought technology for you because it could help guide what you decide to do in the future.
Merlin: I'll just point out in passing, there is also another fair coming in April.
Merlin: There's a countdown, a JavaScript countdown at the top of the page.
Merlin: 194 days, 3 hours, 26 minutes.
Merlin: Oh, that's until the spring fair.
John: There's a state fair in the spring?
Merlin: It says it's the spring fair, and it's in JavaScript, so it must be true.
John: Huh.
John: I guess I just never – I always think of the state fair once a year.
Merlin: It could be an exercise.
Merlin: It could be a thought technology just for you to think about.
Merlin: You're not committing.
Merlin: You're not committing.
Merlin: You're not filling out any PDFs.
Merlin: You're just – because you know how hard those are to fill out, right?
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Try and do that on your phone.
Merlin: Am I right?
Yeah.
Merlin: What do they want me to fax it back to them?
John: Fuck you.
John: Disqualified.
John: I feel like my role in life and this is one of those things I'm still trying to figure out.
John: Maybe my duck is that I am an appreciator
John: Like I should be a judge.
Merlin: I was going to say it seems to me you should be adjudicating.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You should be deciding who can get in.
Merlin: You should be helping them create what they're going to bring there.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: You would be great on the executive board of the Washington State Fair Hobby Hall.
John: A facilitator, a judge, and an appreciator, chief appreciator.
John: But the thing is, I would be a pretty harsh mistress, right?
John: I'm going to walk around and I'd be like, yeah, all right, Betty Boop lady.
John: There are a lot of Betty Boops here, but give me the spirit of your collection.
John: Oh, this is a reality show waiting to happen.
John: I don't need to know the theme because I know the theme.
John: It's every Betty Boop.
John: But what is special here?
John: Give me the three that are going to surprise me.
John: Yeah.
John: Where's your first?
John: We all remember our first Betty Boop.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And then which one was the one where you unleashed the dragon?
John: Where was the, you know, you got to the third one, you got to the fourth one.
John: I don't think anybody gets one Betty Boop and says, I am, you know what?
John: I love this little thing.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Somewhere out there, there's a Carpenter's Cup.
Merlin: There's the one that you found where you go, oh, oh, like this is special.
John: This is the one.
John: And now I realize that I have become an insane person.
John: All right.
John: Let me take you over to your booth.