Ep. 208: "Coney Island Horniness"
Merlin: Warning.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line contains spoilers for popular holiday characters, candid discussions of never-nudes, and graphic depictions of penises and snack food.
Merlin: Listener discretion is advised.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: Hello?
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Super good.
John: Super good.
John: Super duper good.
John: I'm just reading about Dexy's Midnight Runners and eating my new special breakfast life hack.
Merlin: Is that something you'd want to share?
Merlin: I'd love to hear about both.
Merlin: What's your breakfast?
John: It is egg in a cup.
John: Are you down with egg in a cup?
John: Have you ever had an egg in a cup?
Merlin: Is that a variant of egg in a basket?
John: No, I don't think I have.
John: Chicken in a basket.
John: Hmm.
John: Chicken in a basket.
John: Picking out dough.
John: Granny, does your dog bite?
John: Kicking out.
John: Kicking out the chicken out.
Merlin: No, I've done the Girl Scout thing where you use a shot glass.
Merlin: Girl Scouts love shot glasses.
Merlin: This is a typical Girl Scout thing.
Merlin: Well, you know what?
Merlin: This is a Girl Scout life hack.
Merlin: You drop a shot glass of egg into a beer?
Merlin: They call that the gentleman's mimosa.
Merlin: A little mayonnaise on the side.
Merlin: No, I've done the thing where you, oh, I have a whole method for this that we probably don't have time for, but I've done the thing where you knock out some bread, usually toasted bread, and you make an egg in the middle of that.
Merlin: Oh, you're talking about toad in a hole.
Merlin: Toad in a hole.
Merlin: Yes, it's a toe in the hole or egg in a basket or gentleman's mimosa.
Merlin: No, egg in a cup is totally different.
Merlin: I want to guess.
Merlin: All right, go.
Merlin: No, I'll never get it.
Merlin: Egg in a cup.
Merlin: See, the thing is, to me, that feels like something a go-go yuppie in the 80s would do.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: It involves poaching in a coffee cup in the microwave.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're right on it.
John: Here's what you do.
John: Oh my God.
John: This is a thought technology.
John: Here it is.
John: It's going to blow your mind.
John: It's going to blow everybody's mind.
John: I've moved everything important out of the way.
John: You know what?
John: After today, I'm going to get convicted of being a serial killer.
John: Because of all the blown minds.
John: I'm going to blow so many minds right now that there's a trail of death across the... They will know me by my trail of death.
John: Take an egg, drop it in a coffee cup.
John: You put a fork in.
John: I'm sorry to interrupt.
John: Do you crack the egg?
John: Yes, yes, you do.
John: Yes, you do.
John: You crack the egg into a coffee cup.
John: These things are important.
John: You got to pick out all the little shell parts because you don't know how to crack an egg.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And then you stir it once with a fork, just quick.
John: Break the yolk?
John: Just break the yolk and just kind of like zhip, zhip, zhip.
John: Not three zhips, two zhips.
John: Zhip, zhip.
John: So it's definitely not scrambled in the conventional sense.
John: Nope.
John: Most of the egg is still intact as an egg.
John: You just kind of break it a little.
John: In the microwave for 30 seconds.
John: Oh my goodness.
John: You pull it out, you go now, zhup, zhup, zhup.
John: Three zhups with a fork.
John: Just kind of scraping it off of the sides and the bottom of the cup.
Merlin: It's still going to be a kind of a... That's not so much for the... It makes it easier to enjoy.
Merlin: You're just kind of sluicing it.
Merlin: You're carving it off the sides of your coffee cup.
John: Just getting it off the sides, and you're just kind of giving it a couple of more stirs.
Mm-hmm.
John: 20 more seconds in the microwave.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I mean, even taking into account the jup-jups, it's a minute.
John: It's a flat minute.
John: And then perfect egg.
Merlin: I honestly don't know where to begin.
Merlin: Scrambly egg.
Merlin: This changes so many things.
Merlin: For one thing, I got to tell you, I have the basic office cooking setup, which means I have the second cheapest microwave from Target, and I have the Costco dorm refrigerator that everybody has.
John: I've seen your setup.
John: I've seen this, yeah, of course.
John: The microwave is almost certainly not dangerous.
John: No.
John: Right?
John: It's like probably 84% certain that it's not iridating you.
Merlin: right and i i keep i keep the door closed you know when i'm not using it but this would mean for me this is now okay so do you put in any kind of fixings do you do you do a mix-in i have i have you you know a couple of little bits of cheddar oh my god a little bit of salt and pepper a little pow pow with the salt and pepper oh jimmy if you put two eggs in a coffee cup
John: You're pushing your luck.
John: But if you put two eggs in like a slightly larger, like say for instance, a beer stein, then, you know, it's a mug that makes like a meal.
Merlin: It seems to me like you could literally just drop a cracked egg in there.
Merlin: But I'm thinking also if you put in some thinly sliced like shaved butter, you would get some serious poaching going on.
John: Or like thinly sliced butter.
John: prosciutto ham.
John: Oh my goodness.
John: That would cook so fast.
John: And you've got to pierce it because if you don't, the thing will explode.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: What you're doing the whole time is you're managing the amount of time in there.
John: You want to cook it without having the whole thing explode.
Merlin: You've got to account for physics.
John: You've got to account for physics, science, and as we know, science is love.
John: Love is music.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: So, yeah, 30 seconds.
John: Just don't push it.
John: And then a couple more gyps.
John: Maybe that's when you add the cheese and the prosciutto.
John: And then 20 more seconds and that's all you need.
Merlin: That's all you want.
Merlin: You've had so many good life hacks.
Merlin: But I got to tell you, I'm still going to try this.
Merlin: Because I'm trying to eat less bread and less sugar.
Merlin: I continue to struggle with that.
Merlin: Because every convenience food in the world...
Merlin: Mostly.
Merlin: It involves bread and sugar.
Merlin: I'm not, I mean, I'm not, I don't, it's not that I won't eat bread and sugar.
Merlin: I just don't want it all the time.
John: That's the thing.
John: It's not an all the time food.
Merlin: And then, well, but yeah, and it's, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And John's pyramid.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: But you, you know, the thing is, my problem is I forget to eat.
Merlin: I've done this for years.
Merlin: And it's totally at odds with my family who are snackers, cereal snackers.
Merlin: I mean, they eat dinner like a snack.
Merlin: And I'm like a dad in a 50s sitcom.
Merlin: Like, I want to sit there with a TV tray and have my Swansons and like, you know.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Four helpings of green beans.
Merlin: But I want to have stuff around that I can eat quickly that isn't total junk.
Merlin: And eggs have been good to me, John.
John: Here's another thing about eggs that people of our generation don't know.
John: Are you ready?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Eggs do not need to be refrigerated.
John: What?
John: You can leave eggs out on the counter.
John: All right, all right, all right, all right.
John: You can leave eggs out on the counter.
Merlin: I will take a certain amount of your unconventional outsider wisdom about things because it does help a lot of people.
Merlin: As you sit here today, you're telling me you do not need to refrigerate an egg.
John: I'm saying that, I mean, I'm not saying leave your eggs out on the counter for a month.
John: It's not like you live in Florida.
John: Right.
John: But you can put a basket of eggs on the counter for a lot longer than you can put a container.
John: More than a day?
John: A lot longer than you can put a container of cream on the counter.
John: And the eggs are just fine.
John: They're just fine.
John: Where do you stand on butter?
John: Do you leave butter out?
John: I do leave butter out on the counter.
John: I leave it out on the counter covered in a little butter dish.
John: On hot days when I look down and the butter is clearly softening, I'll put it in the fridge to put it back together.
John: My mom has a strong feeling about rancidness.
Merlin: Yeah, I have a friend.
Merlin: My friend, Dr. Don, is always advising me on these things because there's differences.
Merlin: You get spoilage.
Merlin: But there's a difference.
Merlin: There's different things that happen to food.
Merlin: There isn't one way that food can go bad.
Merlin: There's a variety of different ways.
John: And fat, all fat.
John: based foods uh will get rancid which affects the taste of them but not necessarily the edibility you can eat rancid butter yeah it's a bad word it's a bad punk band you if i remember correctly john you've enjoyed living on this particular edge for a long time you're a fellow who will see some leftover spaghettios in a can and just kind of go at it
John: I feel like the bleeding edge of spoiled food is a place that I am the Chuck Yeager of the sound barrier of eating almost spoiled food.
Merlin: You're out there, you got the training, you got the helmet.
John: I can see the curvature of the earth.
John: I can, you know, I, all I can hear is the sound of my own breath in my helmet.
John: And I'm, then the thing is my, you know, my mom has this like farm gal wisdom about things that's obviously now transmuted through 50 years of, or 60 years of city life and,
John: Like if you were to give my mom a live chicken and let's say a plastic fork.
John: I gave her a wallet once.
John: You did give her a wallet.
John: That's true.
Merlin: I still carry it.
Merlin: But for the sake of argument, you gave this, what do you call it, country gal?
Merlin: You give this gal a live chicken.
John: If you give her a live chicken and a plastic fork and you say, we're hungry.
John: Would my mom?
John: Yes.
John: She would be able to turn that chicken into a food, food quality chicken.
John: It wouldn't be pretty, but she has, she has, she has knowledge of every step and
John: And she has a lack of queasiness and a lack of sentimentality.
John: Both things.
John: She's perfectly suited to a live chicken.
John: So, you know, she's seen her grandfather kill a chicken by swinging it around by its head.
John: that doesn't seem efficient she's seen so in the old days apparently uh you know you have this image of like granddad with a hatchet and a stump out in the yard and you put the chicken on the you know you pull the chicken's neck across the stump and you whack it with the hatchet and then you you know and then supposedly right a chicken will run around blood spurting out
John: This is all old world farm imagery for me that totally rings true.
John: Yeah.
John: Here's the chicken.
John: Here's the headless chicken running around in the yard.
John: All the kids screaming because it's like turning the sprinkler on, except it's chicken blood.
John: Chicken sprinkler.
John: This is how farm people lived.
John: Yes.
John: They didn't know any different.
John: Well, you know, you want chicken.
John: Yeah.
John: You're going to have to make a sprinkler.
John: One of the amazing things that my mom has told me is that they canned chickens, which is to say – Oh, like put them up, as they say.
John: They put a whole chicken into a jar.
John: Yeah.
John: And then canned it in the old style, boil it, and then stick a lid on it.
Merlin: Not a bell jar, but like a mason jar, but like a canning jar.
Merlin: What's it called?
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about.
Merlin: Yeah, bell.
Yeah.
Merlin: But not the bell jar.
Merlin: But no, not like Sylvia Plath chicken.
Merlin: Yeah, we're not talking about a bell jar.
John: But we're talking about a bell jar.
John: I wouldn't leave Sylvia Plath to do the cooking.
John: And then you go into the basement.
John: Get her out of that kitchen.
John: And there's on the wall in the larder are all these canned whole chickens.
John: Chickens in a jar.
John: Uncooked.
John: Well, no, cooked in the sense that you have to cook it to can it.
John: Oh, sure, sure, sure.
John: But you don't need to refrigerate them, right, because they're pasteurized or something.
John: They're not pasteurized, but in the canning process, you have eliminated the...
Merlin: This might be a good place to just mention in passing that as much as John and I know about many, many things, before you go real deeply into storing chicken in a warm room, you might want to do your own due diligence on this.
John: Yeah, I'm going to assume that there... We're storytellers.
John: We're folk people.
John: There's a certain number of people listening to this program who already know all about chicken.
Merlin: They're writing all this down.
John: Okay?
John: Swing the chicken.
John: Okay?
Merlin: You put it in a jar.
John: All right?
Merlin: I'm going to larder.
Merlin: I've got to get a larder.
Merlin: I've got to get a larder.
John: So, uh, so, but she tells the story of her grandfather and I don't understand this.
John: I've never quite figured it out.
John: This is the type of question that I'm so busy taking mental notes when my mom is telling stories that there are, there are additional questions that I just don't have time to ask because there's so many, there are so many other questions working down.
John: But a grandfather, her grandfather would take chickens in the basement and
John: And chop their heads off.
John: Oh boy.
John: And so the chicken would run around in the basement with the blood spurting and the kids all running like, well, this like headless zombie chicken is, is like spraying blood all over the room.
John: And it's like, why wouldn't you do it in the yard?
John: That is the question I didn't ask because I was so stunned by this image of like granddad, uh, um, killing chicken.
John: This is my great grandfather killing chickens in the basement.
Um,
Merlin: and i'm and you know in my mind was like what is the it's probably not like it's probably not like a rec room basement i'm guessing it's not a finished basement with bumper pool and a farrah faucet poster no no the bar is open light and stuff like that i think it's a classic basement which is full of potatoes
Merlin: You ask anybody in America.
Merlin: The classic basement.
Merlin: Are they in a pile or are they on shelves?
Merlin: Are they organized in any way?
John: I think that there's like a giant bin full of root vegetables.
John: Okay, you get a potato bin.
John: There's maybe a hopper.
John: There's probably a way in which the coal man can deliver coal through an outside door.
John: Similarly, you can call the potato man.
John: Well, you're the potato man.
John: Right?
John: In this situation, you and I would be the potato men.
John: But the coal man comes and there's a little door he opens on the side of the house and coal goes down the coal chute into the coal hop.
Merlin: So if you're upstairs and you're busy cooking chicken in a jar, you don't have to be disturbed.
Merlin: You just hear, coal man!
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: You hear the coal coming down the coal chute.
Merlin: And he's got a coal truck probably or a coal cart or a coal lorry.
John: Yeah, I think it's probably a coal truck by this point.
John: Okay.
John: And then you've got shelves which are full of jars with chickens and what other?
John: You probably want to put up some vegetables, put up some fruits.
John: Lots of vegetables.
John: Well, because all of your fruits and vegetables, they arrive on the scene when they are ripe and then immediately begin rotting.
John: And you have no, there's no grocery where these things are available all year round shipped to you from Chile.
Yeah.
John: And so you, as soon as things are ripe, you immediately begin this assembly line process where you are putting them in jars so that you can eat them, so you can survive the winter.
John: And this is, you know, this is post-modern society for most people.
John: This is talking about the 40s here.
John: Yeah.
John: But, you know, all around the world, people still doing this because the winter is the hard time and there's no supermarkets.
John: So she talks about all this stuff and she has a very low opinion of the sort of back to the landers.
John: She had a low opinion of the back to the landers in the 60s who were like hippies that were like, we're going back to the land.
Merlin: Like the Foxfire people, but she has no higher regard for, say, an artisanal pickle store.
John: But that stuff, like the twirly mustache stuff, her feeling about it is, do you know how hard that is?
John: You have no sense of how hard that is.
John: No one does that because it's cute.
John: Maybe like selling ugly dolls made out of corn stalks.
Merlin: That's not funny.
John: You think that's funny?
John: You think that's cute?
John: Well, people are doing it.
John: I just opened Sunset Magazine the other day and there were like ugly corn stalk dolls for sale.
John: They're only $425.
John: But yeah, she's like, you know, I mean, it's cute.
John: It's great to have like six chickens and go out and get eggs from them.
John: Like that's adorable.
John: But if you are really trying to live off of those chickens, your life becomes like a Hobbesian hellscape very fast.
John: And then you've got headless chickens running around in your basement.
John: And the kids are laughing with glee because it's the only exciting thing that's happened in weeks.
John: It's so, so cold outside.
John: You know, she talks about like...
John: Uh, we would take the wet sheets out and hang them, uh, in the, in the winter, we would hang them on the, uh, on the clotheslines, the sopping wet sheets, because there's no better way to dry them.
John: And then you'd go out after a while with a, with like a tennis racket type of whisk or whipper.
Merlin: They probably couldn't afford a tennis racket.
Merlin: I thought it was a laundry racket.
John: A laundry racket, that's right.
John: But yeah, it's not that they couldn't afford a tennis racket, but it's not like there were any tennis courts in Van Wert, Ohio, probably in 1940.
John: And then so they go and they beat the sheets and the ice would break off.
John: Oh my God.
John: And that was how you dried your laundry.
John: But the humidity is so low when it's that cold.
John: Yeah, you let the ice freeze, and then you break the ice off of it, and, you know, voila.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Anyway, I didn't mean to go so far, so fast into farm life.
John: No, no.
John: A thing you and I know so much about as we talk about microwaving eggs in coffee cups.
John: But, yeah, different, you know.
John: Oh, so, all by way of saying eggs.
John: Butter?
John: Oh, eggs.
John: Eggs.
John: Well, eggs and butter.
John: You left them out on the counter.
Yeah.
John: And you left a big pot of like lard on the stove.
John: And whenever you needed to cook an egg, you just, you didn't use butter.
John: You dipped a spoon into the lard pot and fry the egg in lard.
John: And I think that's something that's been lost.
John: We're not even, we don't even know what eggs taste like.
John: We're not even living.
I think you
Merlin: I've had eggs in sometimes in fancy artisanal places, but especially in New Zealand and Canada.
Merlin: Man, they know from eggs.
Merlin: You realize the eggs we get here seem really kind of light yellow.
Merlin: And when you get a nice, like a dark orange egg, it's like a different egg.
Yeah.
Merlin: Those New Zealand eggs, famous.
Merlin: Well, they also got incredible bacon there.
Merlin: I mean, their bacon is like, it's even beyond Irish bacon.
Merlin: It's amazing.
Merlin: It's like a little bacon, hamish bacon steak.
Merlin: Oh, hamish bacon.
Merlin: I loved his books.
Merlin: He was great.
Merlin: That was the guy from Aztec Camera, right?
Merlin: Hamish bacon?
Merlin: No, that was his father.
Merlin: Okay, sorry.
Merlin: Mr. Bacon.
Merlin: Don't call me.
Merlin: Mr. Bacon is my father.
Merlin: Actually, actually.
Merlin: Actually.
Merlin: It's Baconstein's monster.
John: You know the Canadians have 40 different kinds of bacon.
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah.
John: 40 different kinds of bacon.
John: Well, they don't call it Canadian bacon, obviously.
Merlin: No, I mean, that seems silly.
Merlin: Do they call Wham UK Wham?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: In England?
Merlin: They do.
Merlin: Now, what about the charlatans?
Merlin: The charlatans, at one time, I think they were legally required to be charlatans UK.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Now, what about Dinosaur Jr.?
Merlin: Is that legal?
Merlin: I think that was legal.
Merlin: Originally, there was some old band called Dinosaur, and so they had to call themselves Dinosaur Jr., I think, with no period.
John: Yeah, I think Dinosaur, if I recall, was like one of those German bands like Cannes or Cannes.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, like the film festival.
John: Yeah, where they, you know, it was like sprockets.
Merlin: Adrian Ballou guitar.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I thought it was like an old hippie band.
John: But in any case... That's what they were doing.
John: That's what the hippies were really doing.
John: The hippies were really doing kraut rock.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: Huh.
John: 99% of all hippies were actually doing kraut rock.
John: Did they know it, John?
John: It's pre-kraut rock.
Merlin: So you're saying it's like calculus.
Merlin: We all just kind of discovered it on our own.
Merlin: We all got the motorik sound.
Merlin: If you were living in West Virginia, you might find yourself playing kraut rock and not know it.
John: You might find yourself living in a shotgun shack.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: You ever listen to Noi?
John: Sure.
John: They're pretty spectacular.
John: Did you ever listen to Einsgraten?
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, I'm aware of them.
Merlin: See, it's weird.
Merlin: To me, say, for example, Kraftwerk is to Krautrock as Nirvana is to Grunge.
Merlin: Where it's one of those things where I go, hmm, you really think of that?
Merlin: Like if you listen to enough Krautrock, Kraftwerk doesn't really seem like a Krautrock band.
Merlin: I think Noy and Cannes are more like classically what I would consider a Krautrock band.
John: Yeah, I think what you, and I don't mean to paraphrase you or to correct you.
John: Not at all.
John: Lord knows, but Kraftwerk is to Krautrock as Nirvana is to punk.
John: Because Nirvana basically defined grunge, which didn't exist before.
John: I took the ACT.
John: I never took the SAT.
Merlin: So I'm not very good at these things.
Merlin: I've always thought, I've said to you for years now, the thing is, even with all this time behind us, at the time, Nirvana sounded nothing to me like the canonical.
Merlin: We've talked about this so many fucking times.
Merlin: Nirvana at the time did not sound to me like other things that were considered grunge.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And even now you go back and listen, you're like, well, there's some stuff like the bleach era stuff where you go.
Merlin: Yeah, I can kind of see that.
Merlin: But they're closer to like a mud honey to me.
Merlin: Damn slight closer to them than they are to like a Pearl Jam.
John: Well, but this is the thing.
John: The word grunge.
John: And we have talked about this a lot.
John: The word grunge was a was a retroactive appellation.
John: So Nirvana didn't sound like grunge, but until Nirvana, there was no such thing as grunge, right?
John: I mean, it's not like Mark Arm ever described.
John: I mean, he actually coined the term, but he did it sarcastically.
Merlin: It's in some ways not totally dissimilar from the Beatles and the British Invasion because the British Invasion bands don't sound that much like the Beatles except for the ones who basically just sound like the Beatles.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, do you consider the Animals and the Kinks?
Merlin: I mean, the Animals and the Kinks to me are British invasion bands, but like Paul Revere and the Raiders, a great band.
Merlin: Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.
Merlin: Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Well, you know, like, what about Dytotenhosen?
Merlin: Dytotenhosen?
Merlin: You know, see, I think that, I'm going to call that a canary trap.
Merlin: I think that might not be a band.
Merlin: I think you're testing me.
Merlin: Dytotenhosen actually means... Keep saying it, doesn't make it real.
John: It means the dead trousers.
John: Okay.
John: Or the dead pants.
John: I don't know if Germans call their pants trousers.
John: They call them hoes.
Merlin: Yeah, pants or underwear.
John: Hosen.
John: Hosen.
Merlin: It's just the super class of lower body crotch covers.
Merlin: Yeah, it's all hosen.
Merlin: It's all hosen.
Merlin: Hosen all the way down.
John: But Dytotenhosen, literally all the way down.
John: Dytotenhosen are the tot... Toten... Hosen.
John: How are you not a professor?
John: Toten means apparently dead.
John: Oh, okay.
John: And so dead pants.
John: It's basically dead milkman.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Oh, it's a jokey name.
Merlin: Yeah, but about pants.
Merlin: That's a very short name as German things go.
John: Well, and I'm not even sure, like, you know, what constitutes a joke in German band names?
John: I don't, I'm not even sure.
John: But they, Die Totenhausen, are like a, they might even still be a band.
John: It's like they're the scorpions of weird, punky German hip-hop, maybe.
John: I'm not, I don't know that much about Die Totenhausen.
Merlin: But I do know that, you know, more than most people, according to Google Translate, die Toten Hosen translates to the dead pants.
John: I'll see.
John: There is dead pants.
John: I had a I had a Hungarian friend that was very into die Toten Hosen.
John: OK.
John: And actually traveled around with them.
John: Uh, but he was, I don't think that, that they have a, like a grateful dead vibe at all, but they do have a grateful dead component, which is that people travel around with them and sell things in the parking lot.
John: At least my friend did.
John: And what he sold in the parking lot, he had a friend.
John: My friend's name was our pod, which is a popular Hungarian name.
John: And his friend was named Zoltan.
John: That's a terrific name.
John: It's a great name.
John: And Zoltan actually was a Hungarian living in Romania.
John: And Zoltan made magic tricks out of matchboxes that he would sell.
John: It was like for kids.
Merlin: He took an aftermarket matchbox and turned it into a magic trick.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Like it's a matchbox.
John: And then I think it's a thing where because matchbox is still a big industry in Romania.
John: And he would make a magic trick out of it.
John: I think it's one of those things where you'd put a quarter in one side and then you'd close the matchbox and then you'd push it out the other side and like, where'd the quarter go?
John: Classic.
John: Type of like... And you'd sell that for a couple of fennings or whatever at the parking lot of the Daitoten Hosen show.
Merlin: German word...
Merlin: Salvatrick.
Merlin: Let me see if I can get you here.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Salvat.
John: Salvatrick.
Merlin: What was that?
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Who did you just have to say that?
Merlin: Oh, that was Google Translate lady.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Salvatrick.
Merlin: Salvatrick.
Merlin: At the Totenhausen.
John: But then R-Pod didn't do magic tricks.
John: He made like little, what am I going to say?
John: Friendship bracelets?
John: No, because he didn't believe in friendship.
John: Okay.
John: Something else.
John: Something harder.
John: Darker.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: It's like the opposite of a grand faloon.
Merlin: It's people you just shouldn't be with.
Merlin: It's a petite faloon.
John: Petite faloon.
John: Ah, la petite faloon.
John: Ah, la petite faloon.
John: But we had friendship.
John: We believed in friendship, the three of us.
John: And I never went to a Dietotenhosen concert, but I did play many times with the little contraptions that they built out of, like, kind of found materials.
Merlin: People who enjoy Dietotenhosen, they find themselves thinking, you know, this is a good show.
Merlin: I'm having fun.
Merlin: As always, I enjoy hearing this music.
Merlin: I could use a Matchbox magic trick.
John: Yeah, or you're coming into the show or you're going out of the show and you're like, what am I going to get my young nephew?
John: Something for the kids, yeah.
John: But I also feel like maybe they were selling those things.
John: We had a pretty complicated relationship, and I did actually go to a couple of European Ren Fairs with these two, and they set up a little card table and were selling their wares at the Ren Faire.
John: So it was a thing that they did kind of a circuit.
John: And while they were selling their stuff, I was just wandering around the Ren Faire.
Merlin: It's not so much about whether it's precisely suitable for the topic of a given event.
Merlin: It's more like how you are able to sell things.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Like, we have these things.
John: We need money.
John: We actually don't have these things.
John: We aren't going to make these things in order to make enough money to go to the Dytotenhausen shows.
John: Oh, okay.
John: To buy Ramones themed clothing items.
John: Okay.
John: Which were also popular, at least with R-Pod.
John: Zoltan didn't, he wasn't into the Ramones the same way.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: Anyway, so yeah, we traveled together for a little while.
John: I went to a couple of rent fairs, heard a lot of stories about the, you know, the, the like heavy metal parking lot, alternate life that they would lead.
John: But I didn't have any firsthand experience with it.
John: I did try to meet our pod outside of Vienna one time for a Metallica concert.
John: And when we arrived at the site of the Metallica concert, there was no one there.
John: Giant empty field.
John: I was coming from one direction.
John: He was coming from the other.
John: we met at the appointed time.
John: I said, what the fuck?
John: I spent a lot of time and effort getting to this field.
John: There's no Metallica concert here.
John: And he said it was canceled like a month ago.
John: Oh no.
John: But neither one of us had any way of contacting the other one, but he came anyway.
John: Well, but he didn't know either.
John: Oh, so there was no way if one of us had known, we could have contacted the other, but apparently there was also no way to know.
John: that this thing had been canceled because this was pre-cellphone.
John: These are simple country ways.
John: So we just were like, you know, riding our little horse carts or whatever to this field.
John: What'd you do instead?
John: Did you jam?
John: We went to, we went back to Vienna.
John: We hung out and there was a, there was actually a summer concert in Vienna on one of the little islands that are in the middle of the sort of old Danube because, you know, they channeled the Danube.
John: a long time ago and made it into a giant sort of super fast moving death canal.
Merlin: Oh, really?
John: Yeah.
John: But you got to have a lot of meetings to do something like that.
John: Well, see, the Austrians were really good at that stuff.
John: They wore tall hats, very tall boots, and they were like, but you know, the reason that Vienna is where it is
John: Let me not just – I don't want to just go completely here.
Merlin: Yeah, I was hoping you'd give some context because I don't want you to just go out of nowhere with how the Danube got rerouted.
Merlin: I imagine there's a lot of meetings.
Merlin: You've got cultural significance.
Merlin: You've got some geographers in, right?
Merlin: You're going to have to talk about – Right, right?
Merlin: You've got some – probably a volcanologist.
Merlin: Well, so here's the Danube.
John: Okay.
John: Oh, I see it.
Merlin: Okay.
John: All right.
John: It starts up in Germany.
John: That's up here.
John: Here it comes down.
Okay.
Okay.
John: And it gets to this sort of plain where Vienna is now.
John: And it's sort of the mountains are over here.
John: The other mountains are over here.
John: But there's this big wide flat plain.
John: And the Danube like went spidered out into a huge sort of delta.
John: But, you know, it's nowhere near its head.
John: It's nowhere near the mouth of it.
John: So it's not a delta like you would like the Mississippi Delta where the blues were formed.
John: Right.
John: It's just a big.
John: Das Blaus.
John: Das Blaus.
John: It's das Mississippi Blaus.
John: It's just an area where the river separates out into a thousand little rivulets and a big swampy morass.
John: Yeah.
John: That's no place for a guitar.
John: Swampy morass?
John: Well, no, that particular one.
John: Oh, I see what you're saying.
John: So there's no Viennese blues?
John: I don't know if there's Viennese blues.
Merlin: Also, they don't have as many black people there, I don't think.
John: Soccer tort is what the Viennese blues.
John: Soccer tort.
John: Did I say Vietnamese?
John: No, no, no.
John: I think it's Vienna calling.
John: Vienna called.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So you got Germany up here.
Merlin: You got this guy over here.
John: Right.
John: So in the olden times, as you're traveling around, the Danube would be a very difficult river to get across because it's a very large river.
John: But here it like spread out into this wide swampy area and it enabled you to get across it because all you had to do was get across this little river and then that little river.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: So it was a it was a place that even though it was a kind of swampy, pestilent place, it was a spot that you could you and your camp train could get across the river.
John: So Vienna was situated there as a sort of like this was a trading crossroads.
John: And then as the Austrians really gathered themselves into the uniform wearing giant cement eagle building empire people of much later, they were like, we no longer want a pestilence swamp here.
John: And so they channeled.
John: They channeled and channeled and channeled the Danube.
John: This is in the 20th century.
John: No, prior to the 20th century.
John: No kidding.
John: Yeah, they were doing this work a long time.
John: Channel, channel, channel.
John: Sounds like a lot of work in the 19th century.
John: It started even before that.
John: Jiminy.
John: Yeah, they were saying, like, let's get this river into some kind of ship shape.
Yeah.
John: And as they channeled it, of course, the river became deep and fast moving.
John: But that wasn't their problem.
John: And then all the little spidery little rivers that used to make up the Danube wide spot became little ponds, long thin ponds.
John: And on one of the islands in the middle of one of those ponds,
John: our pod and I happened upon wait for it.
John: Hmm.
John: A Sheryl Crow concert.
John: Hmm.
John: Hmm.
John: And she was playing with, uh, uh, Oh,
Merlin: Why do I... Is it a band or artist that we would know?
Merlin: Yes, it's Joe Cocker.
Merlin: Joe Cocker's opening for Sheryl Crow.
John: No, Joe Cocker and Sheryl Crow were somehow playing together.
John: They're co-headlining.
John: I think Sheryl might have been opening for Joe, but they were playing together.
John: Okay, good.
John: They were on stage at the same time.
John: It was a great... That's an unusual thing to just kind of run into.
John: It was.
John: And the only way that we were walking along and there was music playing and, you know, it's like Austria in the summer.
John: People are out nude sunbathing and unicycling and all the things they do.
John: The Germanic peoples love to walk.
John: They are big, big, big walkers and nude.
John: They like to walk nude.
John: Yeah.
John: They're nudes.
John: Are you familiar with the concept of a never nude?
Yeah.
Merlin: Just from a TV program.
Merlin: That's not a real thing, though, is it?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: No.
John: Yeah, they had the never nudes.
Merlin: That's different from Mormons.
Merlin: Sorry, Latter-day Church Saints.
John: Latter-day Saintists.
Merlin: They're different from Saintists.
John: Yeah.
John: No, no, no.
John: That's a different thing.
John: They have special underwear, as we know.
John: You're not just making a Tobias Funke joke.
John: No, no, no.
John: Never nudes are a kind of people.
John: I'm sure there are some never nudes listening to our program who just never will ever let anyone else ever see them nude.
Merlin: Never nude, never knowns.
John: Never known, never nude.
Merlin: Never known, never nudes.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: But I mean, they're part of them.
Merlin: They're quietly part of the lifestyle.
John: Yeah, it's a thing where... Is it a lifestyle, John?
John: Am I being normative?
John: I don't think that this is the thing about never nudes.
John: My sense is that they do not congregate.
Merlin: Oh, so they're never nude in solitude.
Merlin: Never nude solitude.
John: Never nude solitude.
John: I think that it is possible that you could go on several dates with somebody.
John: Oh, it just wouldn't come up.
John: And it would never come up.
John: And then you're like, you know what?
John: I love you.
John: I'm talking about olden times.
John: Sure.
John: You would say, I love you to somebody that you'd never taken their clothes off.
John: And they would say, I love you too.
John: And you would say, let's get married.
John: And they would say, great.
John: And you would say, I think we should save ourselves for marriage.
John: And they would say, I agree.
John: And then you would get married and then you would be in your wedding bed and you would try to take off their blouse or their... Or their knickers.
John: Their hosen.
John: Their hosen.
John: You would grab the hosen and try and pull them off.
John: And the other person would say, ah, ah, ah.
John: I do not take off the hosen.
John: We need to have the talk.
John: And then you're like, whoa, I just got, I just like got invested in a thing I didn't even know was a thing.
John: You bought a never nude and a poke.
John: A never nude, that's right, never nude and a poke.
John: And so I don't know, at that point, I don't know enough about never nudes to know like how they do other things, how they poop.
Yeah.
Merlin: But like, for example, like what are some of the classic examples?
Merlin: Like if you found yourself very attracted to somebody who had a very different diet than you, for example, if you are a ravenous carnivore and you fall in love with a man who's a vegan, like that's going to come up within the first, probably the first date, the first time you spend any time together.
John: You're going to think, yeah.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: Or for example, like I read an article recently about how many relationships are quietly troubled by how much the people hate the TV shows the other person watches.
Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, it's the whole classic, like, do I get the remote thing?
Merlin: But there's a lot apparently, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: These are the kinds of things that in today's society would come up.
Merlin: In this case, you're saying a never nude walks to the altar.
Merlin: And then later on, the next day or two, there's a big reveal, which is that there won't be a reveal.
John: Right.
John: So I think if you are somebody who, if you're somebody who's like, let's leave the lights off.
John: When you're having a special time convivial relationship, especially again in olden times, right?
Merlin: That's that was considered OK and normal.
John: Well, but there weren't lights, right?
John: The sun went down and it was time to do a little thing.
John: And if the moonlight was coming in the window, it's not like you're going to light a candle in order to in order to make a whoopee.
John: Candles are expensive.
John: Candles are expensive.
Merlin: They used to set birds on fire.
Merlin: I learned this this week.
Merlin: There's a kind of New England bird that went extinct or almost went extinct just because it was the cheapest way you could basically tear the head.
Merlin: Again, with the head tearing, you tear the head off this thing, you put a wick in it, you can set the goose on fire.
Merlin: And goose oil or whatever it was, the equivalent.
Merlin: Again, you should go check this out before you do it on your own.
Merlin: Don't just go kill a bird and set it on fire.
Merlin: But apparently, yeah, that's a thing.
Merlin: Just specifically because candles were so expensive.
John: Would the goose remain on its feet?
John: Would you be able to move the goose around like a lamb?
John: Like a goose Roomba?
John: Well, I don't know if it would keep walking, but, like, let's picture a goose.
Merlin: Oh, you're saying, I get what you're saying.
Merlin: If you get it in the right position before you tear the head off, you might have a nice table lamp.
John: Yeah, like a lamp.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: It's like, you know, taxidermy meets practical lighting.
John: You know what?
John: I feel like three issues of Sunset Magazine from now, we're going to see an artisanal goose lamp.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Braintree, code for easy online payments.
Merlin: If you're looking to set up payments for your business, Braintree gives your app or website a payment solution that accepts just about every payment method with one very simple integration.
Merlin: You just drop in some code and you're good to go.
Merlin: Plus, Braintree will give you the first $50,000 in transactions fee-free.
Merlin: You can learn more about this right now by going to braintreepayments.com slash supertrain.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: Maybe you're working on the next Uber.
Merlin: Maybe you're part of the app class, and you want to make the next Uber, the next Airbnb, GitHub.
Merlin: Well, then, heck, why not use the same simple payment solution that helped them to become what they are today?
Merlin: There's literally no reason not to.
Merlin: Braintree makes mobile payments so fast and easy and seamless.
Merlin: It is almost magical.
Merlin: I think for legal reasons, they're not allowed to say that it's actually magical, but I can't say I'm not a lawyer.
Merlin: You add this thing to your app with literally just a few lines of code, literally.
Merlin: I think that's the fourth time I've said that.
Merlin: And now you're instantly ready to accept Apple Pay, Android Pay, PayPal, Venmo, credit cards, perhaps you've heard of them, even Bitcoin, space dollars.
Merlin: And if some other way comes along,
Merlin: you can bet Braintree will be there to support that too.
Merlin: Braintree's fast payouts and continuous support mean you'll always be ready whether you're earning your first dollar or your billionth dollar.
Merlin: You're going to see fewer abandoned carts and more sales with Braintree's best-in-class mobile checkout experience.
Merlin: To check this out for yourself, which you really should do, and to get that first $50,000 in transactions fee-free,
Merlin: please visit braintreepayments.com slash supertrain braintreepayments.com slash supertrain our thanks to braintree for taking the pain out of online payments and for supporting roderick on the lawn it may not be made out of a real goose somebody just carved the goose out of wax yes yeah so anyway where are we now we're at the cheryl crow concert in uh on the danube
John: Well, I'm wondering when you were first beginning to know others.
John: Oh, biblically.
John: In their altogether.
Merlin: In a biblical sense.
John: Were you in a dark room?
Merlin: Um, the, uh, this is awkward.
Merlin: How dark, how dark was it?
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: I mean, I can think specifically of, you know what I'm going to say?
Merlin: I'm going to say in the important first, uh, touches, it was almost always in a, in a dark place, not least because there was not a place for, you know, 14 year old kids, 15 year old kids to go to do these things.
Merlin: So you had to do it during ET.
Um,
Merlin: Oh, in the movie or something.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So one of the first times I was ever visited upon was during E.T.
Merlin: This isn't a thing where you cut a hole in the bottom of popcorn.
Merlin: That's a whole next level kind of thing.
Merlin: You know, I got to tell you, that feels like – I don't want to derail this.
Merlin: That feels like an urban myth to me.
Merlin: I don't understand logistically how you pull that off with anybody.
Merlin: Well, I mean setting aside the hot butter –
Merlin: Like, how do you get a hole in a popcorn container?
John: Don't set aside the hot butter.
John: The hot butter is a key.
Merlin: But like, I mean, just the very, the very mechanics of like, imagine doing literally anything in the world with your dick out in a movie and somebody not noticing it.
Merlin: But also, also, by the way, I have to get a popcorn container and put a hole in it.
Merlin: That seems, that seems, you know, that seems to me like the lady does protest too much.
Merlin: That feels like one of those, maybe that just guy just likes fucking popcorn.
I think.
Merlin: And he wants the woman to watch.
John: There's probably a German name for that.
John: Almost certainly there is.
John: I don't know the German name for popcorn.
John: Pop cuckold.
John: I think that there is a kind of adolescent horniness.
John: Yes.
John: We all have a different version of adolescent horniness from extremely adolescently horny to not at all.
John: Yeah, let's be honest.
John: But there's this sort of Philip Roth kind of Neil Simon play style of 1940s
John: adolescent Coney Island horniness.
John: Oh yeah, sure.
John: You know, where you're just trying, there is no sec, there is no possibility of like sexual gratification except by doing these like weird, I mean, I think putting your, yeah.
John: And for those of us, for those of you listening who aren't aware of what we're talking about, isn't it a scene in Porky's or something like that where the, you know, where you cut a hole in the bottom of your popcorn container and
John: And I can see it happening.
John: You get into the theater.
John: You're sitting next to your date.
John: I can't see it.
John: You've got a pocket knife.
John: And so you pull out a knife in the movie.
John: But you've got the popcorn sitting on your lap.
John: She's watching the movie.
Merlin: This entire thing makes absolutely no sense.
Merlin: The idea is, here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's the problem statement.
Merlin: You go to a movie with a young lady, and you want her to touch your dick.
Merlin: So what do you have to do?
Merlin: Well, obviously, you have to trick her into touching your dick.
Merlin: So the notion is, you get, like a gentleman...
Merlin: You bring in a box.
Merlin: This can't be a bag.
Merlin: It's got to be a box of popcorn.
John: Well, you know, a tub.
John: It's a tub.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: The old-fashioned tub of corn.
Merlin: If you bought a tub of corn at the movies lately, they are big.
Merlin: You're talking about a 50s tub.
Merlin: Okay, so let's just get through this because it's important to understand what we're talking about.
Merlin: So the idea was, number one, you want a lady to touch your dick.
Merlin: And number two...
Merlin: You have to trick her into it.
Merlin: You know she's going to be thrilled to accidentally touch your dick for a little bit of a second.
Merlin: So what you do is you get your popcorn container.
Merlin: And we're not saying this is a good or bad thing.
Merlin: This is just historical reporting.
John: You get your tub.
John: Same thing about cutting a chicken's head off in the basement.
John: Absolutely.
John: Don't try this at home.
Merlin: We're journalists.
Merlin: And so the notion is you cut a dick-sized hole.
Merlin: And remember, you're probably, well, you're a teenager, so you might be erect.
Merlin: But I think it's important to remember that you're nervous while you're doing this.
Merlin: You might not be erect.
Merlin: You might have a little acorn of a man sitting there.
John: I think it is predicated on the fact that you have enough teenage horniness.
John: I have so many problems with this.
John: That you are erect all the time.
Merlin: Okay, all right, fine.
Merlin: Let's take it as red.
Merlin: All right, may I continue, Your Honor?
Merlin: Yeah, go ahead.
Merlin: Let's talk about this.
Merlin: Let me be the prosecuting attorney for Dixon Popcorn.
Merlin: Let's just presume that even the thought of doing this is exciting.
Merlin: Your Honor, we will stipulate that the young man had an extremely erect penis.
Merlin: And we'll even assume for the sake of argument, it's an extremely erect penis.
Merlin: Small in length and narrow in circumference penis.
Merlin: I don't know how you can say that.
Merlin: I want to make this easy on you, Your Honor.
Merlin: This case, I could walk away from this case.
Merlin: I could do this with one dick tied behind my back.
John: I'm telling you, Your Honor, point of order.
John: Yes, you there.
John: There are a lot of different sizes of male members.
John: There's a lot of different shapes.
John: I don't see, as we're reporting this, how we can speculate.
Merlin: I'll make this case with any dick.
Merlin: So you got your tub.
Merlin: Let's say you get a nice, relatively rigid, but cuttable tub of popcorn.
Merlin: So you cut a dick-shaped hole in it.
Merlin: It could be any shape hole, but it's a hole.
Merlin: Well, but it's at least big enough to accommodate a dick.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You somehow manage, let's say, let's say I use your fly and you're wearing Hanes.
Merlin: So you're somehow able to get this giant dick of yours out of your pants without anybody noticing.
John: But the thing is that an erect penis is helping you along the way.
John: All right.
Merlin: It's not like you have to reach in there and like...
Merlin: find it.
Merlin: It's trying to get out.
Merlin: You've got a hard-on, you've got some popcorn, you've got a pen knife, you've cut a dick hole, and now you somehow are able to manipulate your erecting penis into the food.
John: Listen, you are making this sound difficult.
John: I could do this right now.
John: You think you could do it right now?
John: I could pull a pen knife out.
John: If I had a tub of popcorn, I could very subtly... Look, we're watching a movie, right?
Merlin: Your Honor, point of personal preference.
Merlin: I know that John wears fancy internet underwear that has silver threads in it that do not accommodate a dickhole entry.
John: No, it's true.
Merlin: You have to pull way down.
Merlin: You're wearing Levi's 501s, which have buttons, Your Honor.
John: All right, all right, all right.
Merlin: I mean, it's not like...
Merlin: It's effortless.
Merlin: Your Honor, I am not saying this is impossible.
Merlin: Part of the thrill is the effort.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Fair enough.
Merlin: I stipulate the point.
Merlin: So anyway, now you've managed to get your dick into the popcorn dick hole.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And then you just wait.
Merlin: You wait like a panther behind a log.
Merlin: It's precisely the same theory as a cigarette load.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You don't put a cigarette load in the... What?
Merlin: You got to do it when they're not there and then just be patient.
Merlin: It might not be that cigarette.
Merlin: It might be 10 cigarettes from now.
Merlin: That's right.
John: You stick the cigarette load deep into the cigarette.
John: Hopefully you have a paperclip.
John: Or you've emptied the tobacco out halfway down and you stick the cigarette load in.
John: Then you fill the tobacco back up and then you put the cigarette back in the victim's pack.
Okay.
John: And then you wait.
John: And you wait.
John: And sometimes you wait and wait and wait.
John: The game is afoot.
John: The game is afoot.
John: And you have just added the extra wrinkle of not being able to borrow a cigarette from this person.
John: Oh, and also now you don't know which one it is.
John: That's right.
John: So you can't say like, hey, can I bump a smoke?
John: You've just eliminated one of the people at the table from your smoke borrowing racket.
John: And you're waiting.
John: You're just waiting for this person to pull that cigarette out, not notice that it's been monkeyed with, light it, and then smoke half of it before the cigarette explodes hilariously.
John: So it's the same.
John: Like, once the dick is in the popcorn, you're waiting.
John: The thrill is in the wait.
John: It's in the wait, but I'm also going to dig in there.
Merlin: You're not eating popcorn anymore.
Merlin: Well, you're not going to eat your own corn.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So now you've got this poor woman who's there with you and pretending to be interested in you to begin with.
Merlin: She then says, well, maybe as a diversion, while we're enjoying the trailer for this program, I'll have a little bit of popcorn.
Merlin: And so she grabs.
Merlin: And so how do how do most teenage girls eat popcorn?
Merlin: A little bit at a time.
Merlin: You grab one or two.
Merlin: Maybe you put three or four in your hand like a little bowl.
Merlin: So basically, you've got half a cup of popcorn out of this entire bucket.
Merlin: How long is it going to take?
Merlin: Because you're a 15-year-old girl on a date.
Merlin: Are you going to fucking dive your hand into the shared bucket of popcorn?
John: I agree that you're not.
John: And find a glancing dick?
John: I agree that you're not.
John: I think there are a lot of problems with this case, Your Honor.
John: It's going to take a long time.
John: But the waiting is the hardest part, if you know what I mean.
John: That's right.
John: And here is the thing.
John: Here's the thing that you're not taking into consideration, which is that, and as soon as she understands what's happening, she's going to run out of the theater.
John: It's going to be a terrible experience, right?
John: But what you are doing as a teenage boy is creating something that you will revisit, sort of like Ted Bundy
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: You make a lady into a vest.
Merlin: This is where the Coney Island horniness comes in because you're looking for something.
Merlin: I don't like to use this word.
Merlin: I think it's an ugly old word, but you want something that is perverse.
Merlin: It's the same, not dissimilar from guys who like to expose themselves.
Merlin: there are guys you go on the subway and a guy whips his dick out on the train like why would you do that like why do you have to masturbate right now well he's actually he's uh he's banking up some uh some imagery as part of it right he likes the shock of somebody seeing his johnson on the train because he's terrific terrific smith's album by the way johnson on the train but in this case it's not so much it came right out johnson on the train
John: And the shock in the eyes, the shock in the eyes were so surprised.
John: I told you, I told you, right, about the guy that I was sitting at my newsstand.
John: You better not be changing the subject away from the dick corn.
John: No, I'm not.
John: I was sitting at the newsstand in my old job at the newsstand where I sat on a slightly raised platform behind the cash register and read magazines about like quilting and model training and foreign affairs.
John: And I was sitting up there at the cash register.
John: It was not a busy day.
John: People were, there was somebody over here reading Vice, or no, they were reading.
John: Might.
John: Might.
John: Might.
Merlin: No, not Might.
Merlin: Byte the computer magazine.
John: What was the pre, oh, 2600, the hacker magazine.
John: But what was the, what was the pre McSweeney's one?
John: Might.
John: Oh, was that Might?
John: The Dave Eggers one that was really good and not around that long?
John: No, that was a great one.
John: That was terrific.
John: The one where they said that, what was it?
John: Not Corey Feldman.
Merlin: Oh yeah, they started the rumor that somebody died.
John: Somebody died.
John: Somebody died.
John: It wasn't Corey Feldman.
John: It was like, oh, it was Donnie Bonavuce?
John: Danny Bonaduce.
John: Ducey.
John: Danny Bonaduce.
Merlin: Maybe it was him.
Merlin: And each issue was so lovingly designed.
Merlin: Like the layout was gorgeous.
John: I should have had a subscription, but I didn't because I worked in a magazine.
Merlin: I learned my lesson.
Merlin: I learned my lesson three different times with Harper's, with The Atlantic.
Merlin: My problem is as soon as I get the subscription, by the time the next issue arrives, I'm not interested.
Merlin: Whereas if I have to go to the newsstand and buy it, I enjoy it a lot more.
John: Yeah, I think you're right.
John: I agree.
John: And that was part of the business model of having a newsstand.
John: So you're on a stand.
John: So I'm sitting there on the stand.
John: I'm reading a magazine.
John: The guy walks in.
John: walks up to the stand and he says uh can i ask you a question and i said yeah of course that's what i'm here for i was pretty sarcastic working at the newsstand sure kind of famously a guy came in one time kind of in a hurry and he was like you got the local paper here and i looked up from the magazine i was reading at the time and i said very slowly what kind of a newsstand would we be if we didn't have the local paper
John: And he said – What was his response?
John: He said, thanks for making me feel like an asshole.
John: And he turned around and stormed out.
John: And about three years later, I was involved in a group of people who – and I can talk about this now.
John: But we would dress all in black and climb up in the middle of the night and deface billboards.
John: Oh, you were a culture jammer.
John: Yeah, we're culture jamming.
John: That's right.
John: We had this whole thing where we would look at billboards and then we would print out new words in the same font and we would get up and wheat paste so that the heartbeat of America, Chevy, the heartbeat of America truck ad would say, I have a small penis.
John: Oh, nice.
John: Some real culture jamming shit.
John: Sure.
John: Nobody's going to see that coming.
John: right so i was in a group of these people and one of my fellow culture jammers uh was talking to me and you know we tried to use only code names oh nice in case we were busted but he was like um where do i know you from and i said i work at the newsstand and he said oh one time i went in there and uh and that guy that works in the middle of the day was like what kind of a newsstand would we be if we didn't have a local paper and i was like fuck you man and stormed out and i never go in that place anymore and i was like oh
Shit, that was me.
John: But I didn't say anything.
John: Boy, I know that guy.
John: He's a real – I was the guy.
John: You're going to have to give up a lot of yourself for the cause and things like that.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: I didn't want to say like, yeah, now you know who I am.
John: I'm the midday guy.
John: I mean we were all wearing balaclavas or whatever.
John: But anyway, so this guy comes in and he says, do you have any magazines about diapers?
John: And I kind of – I looked up from the magazine I was reading and I was like, what do you mean?
John: Because we had a lot of magazines about stuff, right?
John: Like –
Merlin: When you get a really good magazine store, you go to like the craft section and you're gonna find just like a magazine about baskets.
John: Yeah, we had four different magazines about being a ham radio operator.
John: We had so many magazines about baskets and figurines and just every kind of thing.
John: And I'm like, huh, there's a magazine about diapers.
John: Let me think about that.
John: What would that be?
John: So I'm like, what is it?
Merlin: Is it a parenting thing?
Merlin: Is it like an environmental thing?
John: i'm like tell me more and he's like oh you know like uh like diapers like uh poopy pants oh man and i said say what now and he said and he gets this like he gets literally a shit eating grin on his face and he goes poopy pants like poopy poop poopy diaper diaper baby diaper baby and i was like get the
John: fuck out of my store and he's just so proud of himself now oh he's he uh he squicked you he did and he's about you know 30 years old and he's and then as he as he backs up he's not like turning and running he's backing up from my thing and i'm standing now like
John: Get out of here, you pervert.
John: And he's wearing diapers under his pants.
John: You can see that his pants are bulging from his diapers.
John: And he's like, poopy pants, poopy pants, diaper baby, diaper baby.
John: And I come around.
John: Now I'm down off of my thing.
John: And I'm like, get out of here.
John: And I'm laughing, right?
John: And he's laughing.
John: But he is laughing because this is the most fun he's had all day.
John: He's a bad boy.
John: He is a very bad boy.
John: And he's about to go get a spanking from himself.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Casper.
Merlin: To learn more about Casper right now, please visit casper.com slash super train.
Merlin: Casper is an online retailer of premium mattresses that you can get delivered to your door for a fraction of the price that you'll find in stores.
Merlin: It's a new kind of hybrid mattress.
Merlin: It combines premium latex foam with memory foam.
Merlin: These two technologies come together for a terrific night's sleep.
Merlin: It has just the right sink and just the right bounce.
Merlin: It's an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price.
Merlin: Now, let's speak the truth here, people.
Merlin: Retail mattresses can often cost well over $1,500, but Casper mattresses, so affordable.
Merlin: Prices start at $500 for a twin, go all the way up to $950 for a king.
Merlin: Go and compare that to what you can find in retail stores if you can stand being in the store.
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: All Casper mattresses are made in America, and
Merlin: Now, honestly, for me to understand how Casper is different, you have to start by looking at how the mattress racket has worked historically.
Merlin: I don't have time to go into this in huge detail, but I can tell you that on the handful of times that I have gone into a mattress store, I walked out with a rictus of fear, loathing the experience that I had.
Merlin: Mattress industry has inherently forced customers into paying notoriously high prices.
Merlin: But Casper is literally revolutionizing the mattress industry by cutting the cost of dealing with those resellers and showrooms.
Merlin: And they pass those savings directly to you, the sleep desirous consumer.
Merlin: Now, Casper understands that buying a mattress online, this is a new thing.
Merlin: Oh, we're living in the future.
Merlin: It's the Jetsons.
Merlin: I can get a bed on the Internet.
Merlin: Might make you think it's a little weird.
Merlin: Is it even possible?
Merlin: Well, let me tell you, friends, buying a Casper mattress is completely risk-free.
Merlin: They offer free delivery and returns within a 100-day period.
Merlin: That means you can try out your Casper mattress for 100 nights.
Merlin: If you don't like it, they'll come pick it up.
Merlin: Lying on a bed for four minutes in a showroom has no correlation to whether it's the right bed for you.
Merlin: That's Casper's Razor.
Merlin: You can go look it up.
Merlin: They understand the importance of really trying out the mattress.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: This is a mattress that's shipped to you in a box.
Merlin: You can carry it up the steps by yourself.
Merlin: You open it, and your mattress just comes to life.
Merlin: Everything you need right there for a great night of sleep.
Merlin: Now, listeners of this show can get $50 toward any mattress purchase by visiting casper.com slash supertrain and using that very special offer code supertrain
Merlin: $50 off.
Merlin: That also shows your support for the show.
Merlin: And let's be honest, it also will support your back for wonderful sleep.
Merlin: That's a freebie.
Merlin: They can run with that.
Merlin: I'm just an idea guy.
Merlin: Got to go to casper.com slash super trainer.
Merlin: Thanks to Casper for all the great night's sleep and for supporting Roderick on the line.
John: He's going to think about this diaper-made poopy pants conversation for a month and a half.
John: He's going to give himself something to cry about.
John: He might still be thinking about it.
Merlin: and i you know and he just loved the idea that he looks like he was transgressing so much yes and this is this is the whole dirtiness thing again the coney island horniness as you say which is that you the fact that it is like a dirty bad wrong thing is part of the sexy so i think you've i mean at length i though i think you scored some points here for the side of uh of a penis in the popcorn
Merlin: Well, thank you.
Merlin: Picking out dough.
Merlin: Granny does your dog bite.
Merlin: You bet your ass she does.
John: Yeah, except it would be on Coney Island, so it'd be like... Okay, all right.
Merlin: So it sounds like you feel like the error in my logic is I'm assuming that this boy wants a legitimate hand job.
John: Yeah, he's not trying to get off right then.
John: He's trying to get off later.
John: Because it's going to be, at best, a glancing blow.
Merlin: And also, you ever get popcorn stuck in your teeth?
Merlin: You know what the underside of those kernels feels like?
Merlin: Do you want that on your glands?
Merlin: You're welcome for that image, America.
John: You don't even care.
John: No.
John: So, but I'm wondering now that you've brought this up, whether the never nudes, actually there's something dirty about it for them.
John: Oh, that's true.
John: Like I never show myself.
John: And so therefore, like I'm the one that's a little bit transgressive.
Merlin: Wow.
Wow.
Merlin: And do you think how coupled or decoupled do you think it is from other kinds of sexy things?
Merlin: Like, is it something where they are like a on the bell curve?
Merlin: They are a 50th percentile American sex person, except for the fact that they never take all their clothes off.
Merlin: Or is it on the one hand, are they super prudish on this?
Merlin: Maybe I'm being too digital about this.
Merlin: Are they super prudish, which is what it kind of feels like?
Merlin: That's an easy take on this.
Merlin: Or are they actually super fucking weird?
Merlin: And they've actually got like robot parts down there because that's their thing.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: You know, people are so weird.
Merlin: People are real.
Merlin: The thing is, and the more you learn, it doesn't get better.
Merlin: As soon as you think you understand people, you will find that there's already a community of people that you now don't understand even more.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: But it feels like there are certain subcultures where everyone within that subculture does not recognize that they are part of a subculture.
John: Like every one of them is a rogue agent.
John: You know, like never nudes by definition are probably not going to publicize that fact about themselves.
Merlin: Yeah, I was just thinking that.
Merlin: When you think about what's normal and what's not, a lot of the stuff that's not normal is because you can become perverse.
Merlin: It's Anna Karenina.
Merlin: You can become perverse in your own way because you're doing it in solitude.
Merlin: You're finding some special thing that makes this extra special dirty thing that's just your spin on it.
Merlin: Where if you did get in a room with a lot of garden variety perverts, they might go, what's wrong with this guy?
John: yeah like i i think there are probably you're you're you're fucking the corned beef wrong yes exactly right if you i mean so for instance like here's i'm thinking now i'm trying to put my myself into the mindset of a never i hope okay all right we're not gonna go too far we're not gonna get too uh no but into like liver cutlets and stuff right like what you would like for instance i would think i'll get a union suit
John: and then i will so the union suit right there is plenty of excuse because you're going to you know if you're if your partner is not down or is just sort of tolerating never nudeness a union suit would would allow you to say like oh i can't sorry i can't take it off because it's one single garment oh but it's got a flap like a kid in a cartoon it's got a flap right and you could have you could you could like so but but things not not a problem
John: Well, or you could arrange a front flap.
John: That's true.
John: So there are going to be some never nudes that have sex-specific garments.
John: Yeah.
John: And then there are going to be others that are like, you know, that are slapping the hand away.
John: I mean, I don't know exactly how each person would do it, but I do feel like it's a thing that now that we're talking about it, if there are any never nudes listening to the program, which almost certainly there are,
Merlin: Just statistically, it would have to come up.
John: Yeah.
John: They can feel like, oh, I'm a member of an existing subculture and maybe I should go online and try and meet up with some other never nudes or at least connect with them on a Usenet group.
Merlin: Well, I don't mean to be – I guess I want to apologize.
Merlin: I don't mean to be whatever normative, heteronormative, nude normative.
Merlin: I'm not trying to shame anybody.
Merlin: I just thought that was a joke from Arrested Development.
Merlin: I didn't know that that was a real thing.
John: Yeah, well, the only reason I know about it is that I know a never nude.
John: You do not.
John: Yes, I do.
John: Is it a boy?
Merlin: No.
John: Oh, she's not just shy.
Merlin: Is she down to clown?
John: She says she's she I think that in her description of herself, she would say that shyness was a factor.
John: But in the rest of life.
John: She is nobody's patsy.
John: That's a saucy gal.
John: Yeah, she's a deal-driving, you know, she's at the wheel, if you know what I'm saying.
John: Is that right?
John: But she's just like, you know what?
John: Long time ago, I just decided that nobody was ever going to see me, so never nude.
John: And I was like...
John: That's a strong stand, and now it has set in motion this clockwork, if you will, this Deuce Ex Machina, which is another great Smiths album, where I'm trying to put it all together.
John: like uh what's uh what's how's this you're trying to uh trying to get into a birthday suit situation is it because of the challenge well no no i'm not saying that i am trying to put it together with her i'm just trying to put it together in my mind i see because i feel like if you encounter a never nude and you're like oh this is a challenge for me that's kind of gross yeah you're gonna that's like trying to trick a vegetarian into eating meat that's that's not that's not cool
John: Yeah, that's not, it's like putting acid in somebody's, uh, uh, like, uh, red flavored Gatorade.
John: Ha ha ha.
John: Right.
John: Not cool.
John: Yeah.
John: Did you ever, so you were never dosed.
John: Not that I know of.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Um, well, we got a lot on the table here.
Merlin: Um,
John: Do you want to go back to when you were starting out?
John: At what point did the lights come on?
Merlin: Oh, sure, but I was actually thinking of going back to butter, but let's set that aside for now.
Merlin: The two are related.
Merlin: Sure can be.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yeah, you learn a lot.
Merlin: You learn about a lot of things that seem like a good idea but don't end up being a good idea.
Merlin: I'm going to put butter on the list.
Merlin: I'm going to put the product Vaseline on the list.
Merlin: Yeah, hand cream.
Merlin: It seems like such a good idea.
Merlin: It does, but it's not.
Merlin: See, and I think we disagree on this.
Merlin: I feel the same way about intercourse in water.
Merlin: Like, there are people, like, growing up in the late 70s, becoming penis aware in the late 70s and early 80s, that's what we called it then, I became, I saw so many images of people having intercourse in water.
Merlin: Now, I saw the whole, like, you get such a boob in water.
Merlin: That seemed pretty cool.
Merlin: And then you see so much intercourse in water or underwater, and it becomes like a whole thing.
Merlin: It's like a gorilla sits in quicksand all over again.
Merlin: Right, but it doesn't work.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: With my first Lady Paramore, at one point, we were doing these sorts of things.
Merlin: We tried it.
Merlin: I found it extremely difficult.
John: Yeah, no, it's next to impossible.
Merlin: I don't want to be unkind here, but to the point where people who act like that is a normal thing that people do all the time, I think maybe haven't actually done it because it's not actually that pleasant.
John: Right.
John: Well, there are a couple of types that do work.
John: One of them is the from here to eternity style.
John: Where you are in the – you're right at the tide line.
John: Right?
John: So the waves are kind of washing.
Merlin: And also she seems pretty into it.
Merlin: I think you would have some assistive technologies biology-wise.
John: Well, for sure.
John: But also like as the tide comes – let's say the tide is coming in.
John: As the tide is coming in and you're spending more time underwater, you just scoot up the beach.
John: Right?
John: That's what's happening.
John: And from here to eternity, as they're going at it on the beach in the surf, the camera pans away.
John: But they're not underwater.
Merlin: They're underwater for a second.
Merlin: I'm talking about being in a hot tub or in a pool.
John: Yeah, but that's impossible.
John: You can't have sex.
Merlin: But that's what people – that's what I was sold.
Merlin: And when we tried it, we were both like, this is not fun.
John: It's a lot of work.
John: We were sold a bill of goods in a lot of ways.
John: Oh, there's so much out there.
John: But the other thing about a hot tub – Just ZZ Top alone.
Merlin: Well, since he topped it a job on me.
John: Is that right?
John: Because you decided you were going to be a sharp-dressed man and it turned out that nobody cared?
John: Couldn't grow a beard.
John: Oh, I thought you had a tuxedo on and some white gloves.
John: You were like parking cars and then all of a sudden...
John: You had the white gloves on and you were like sharp dressed man.
John: Why am I so interested in watching pole dancers try on shoes?
John: This is weird.
John: No, the thing about having sex in a hot tub or in a swimming pool is that there's always a step, right?
John: There's a step in the hot tub.
John: There's a step on the swimming pool.
John: Oh, that's true.
John: You just raise up out of the water just enough so that the area of contact, primary contact.
John: Accessibility is good for everybody, John.
John: That's right.
John: So it's just right out of the water.
John: That's true.
John: And then you can both be in the hot tub.
John: but not in the hot tub, if you know what I'm saying.
Merlin: Oh, you're saying you open the pod bay door before you... I see what you're saying.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: That makes sense.
Merlin: That makes sense.
John: But that's not how they show it.
John: Certainly not in a PG or even R-rated film.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: The whole point is you're underwater the whole time.
Merlin: And I'm saying your head is above water, but all the business papers are below the surface.
Merlin: That's not going to work.
Merlin: You're not a fish.
Merlin: I don't think it's how fish do it.
John: We have so much more to talk about.
John: All right, let's go.
John: Let's get off of this, so to speak.
John: Do you want to keep going?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Just sent you a photo.
Merlin: People having sex in a hot tub?
Merlin: No, my daughter made her first crazy wall the other day.
Merlin: What is a crazy wall?
Merlin: A crazy wall is any scene in a movie or TV show where somebody has put a whole bunch of documents and usually photographs on a wall and then often connected them using yarn.
John: Oh, I see.
John: Oh, hello.
John: Hello, crazy wall.
John: Yeah.
John: It seems like there is some, there's a lot of weird supernatural.
John: Oh, hello.
John: Now I'm starting to really dig in here.
John: Yeah.
John: There's a lot going on on this crazy wall.
Merlin: It's a really good cartoon show she likes that features elements of the Illuminati.
Merlin: So now she has started not only researching the Illuminati on the iPad, but she has now made her first crazy wall in her bedroom, having all of these things go together.
Merlin: Well, I love what I love is the question mark.
John: She's got several cyclops triangles, all wearing top hats.
Merlin: His name is Bill Cipher, and he's a character on this TV show.
John: And at one point, he's sort of in a Masonic circle.
John: Each one of those points on the circle represents a character on the show.
John: And it's strange to me that there's a pentagram there.
John: It seems like there would be some moms and dads that accepted the llama and accepted the stuff you should know flying rainbow star.
Merlin: Yeah, that's from Mabel's shirt.
Merlin: The pine tree is Mabel and Dipper Pine are the two kids, and that's the pine tree that Dipper has on his hat.
John: But that star with the rainbow is actually from like a...
John: yeah like what what is that thing things the more you know the more you know there it is yeah but then so she's got she's got her string going to all these different things including lots of like little thumbtacks that aren't connected to things or there was something this is her first one i think for a first draft this is pretty good
John: And then they all kind of are pointing to this piece of paper with just a red question mark.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And that's a picture of a photo of a statue of him that was found somewhere.
Merlin: Oh, that's a real thing.
Merlin: Supposedly, yeah.
Merlin: Supposedly.
Merlin: Supposedly.
Merlin: Supposedly.
John: So that's good.
John: Yeah.
John: So is this on display in her room?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And the cat plays with the string.
Merlin: It's pretty cute.
John: Have you been telling her about the Illuminati?
No.
Merlin: I haven't.
Merlin: I think this is one of those things like religion.
Merlin: I'm not for or against it, but I'm super glad to know the research is being done.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Because the problem is if I go to her and I say, she says, did you used to go to church?
Merlin: I'm like, yeah, I used to go to church.
Merlin: I really love going to church.
Merlin: It was very, very important up until the age of about 14 for me.
Merlin: It was really big and I'll answer any questions you want about it.
Merlin: What I don't want to say is this is this or that is that.
Merlin: Is she a Wikipedia-er?
Merlin: Yeah, didn't I sing the picture of her Amelia Earhart report where she put out the Wikipedia page?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, she's especially big on finding Shopkins on Google.
Merlin: But yeah, she'll read a Wikipedia entry.
John: What's a Shopkin?
John: You mean Shopkin, the guy that runs that strange restaurant in Manhattan?
Merlin: I think you're thinking of the Melwood book, The Fixer.
Merlin: No, it's a horrible, horrible, horrible toy.
Merlin: I'm sorry, there should be a trigger warning here for anybody who has children that enjoy Shopkins.
Merlin: I feel like there should be a trigger warning at the very top of this show.
Merlin: Okay, I'll put something in.
Merlin: They'll know.
Merlin: If you're worried, you'll know.
Merlin: No, it's a horrible, horrible toy.
Merlin: You need to keep your daughter away from these things.
John: Says moose toy.
Merlin: it's shopkins are self-referential uh toys about consumption so you buy you buy like mini toys you buy it just to buy it but it's also kind of like a it's not even a game it's collecting shopping yeah yeah but you know the thing is you you you grown but go ask anybody who's got a kid between like three and nine
John: Shopkins.
John: Shopkins.
John: You know, I have a kid between three and nine.
John: No.
John: You could ask me.
John: She's not three.
John: But she's between three and nine.
John: There's no way she's three years old.
John: Oh, you're saying that she's still too young to be three?
John: She's about a year and a half old.
John: She was a year and a half old now three and a half years ago.
John: You sure about that?
John: I'm pretty sure I saw her this morning.
John: Okay, with respect, with respect, that's totally fucked up.
John: Incidentally, she lost a tooth, her first tooth.
John: I don't want to turn this into a parenting podcast, but we talked for several days about what our familiar relationship to the tooth fairy was going to be.
John: Interesting, interesting.
John: She was like, does the tooth fairy know Santa?
John: And I was like, I think so.
Merlin: I'm kind of surprised you went with the Santa.
Merlin: That doesn't – it seems like a little off-brand for you.
John: Well, but we haven't completely – we haven't arrived at an agreement.
John: Oh, you got a non-denial denial.
John: Between the two of us, it's like she asks questions about Santa and I answer them.
John: Sometimes very –
Merlin: You know, like on Wikipedia, for a while they used to say, like, the part you're about to read is about an in-universe explanation, but then they stopped doing that and then just told it like a story.
John: I definitely feel like if you're going to say Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, they have to be in the same universe.
John: oh good point good point there has to be a continuity and if you see a if you see a boom mic appear in one of those stories you know that boom mic had better be in every one if you don't know who the boom mic in the scene is that's right so you she's like so she's got these questions how does the tooth fairy get into the house
Merlin: But they share intel.
Merlin: You have to imagine that all of the magical gifting creatures share intel on the best ways to deal with home security systems and stuff.
John: And that was her conclusion.
John: I didn't say anything about it.
John: She was like, so do you think the Tooth Fairy and Santa both know?
John: She said, I know how Santa gets in.
John: Okay.
John: Do you think the Tooth Fairy knows?
John: Do they share that information?
John: And I said, here's all I'll say about the Tooth Fairy.
Okay.
John: i think that when a child loses a tooth the tooth fairy becomes aware of it and that and that becomes a thing on the tooth fairy's mind oh interesting now until the tooth goes under the the pillow right the tooth fairy is mostly powerless
John: Because – not powerless, but the Tooth Fairy is aware and it's kind of like a – it's like a pea under her mattress.
John: And so she's thinking about it.
John: But if you don't put it under the pillow, then you have not – you've not made – you've not solidified the contract with her.
Merlin: We took it even further, which was really mean, which is the tooth fairy can't even know about it until it's under your pillow and, importantly, until you've been asleep for an hour.
Merlin: The fairy doesn't even find out about it.
Merlin: Are you with me on this?
Merlin: I am.
Merlin: Like Bruce Lee says, you don't hit the board.
Merlin: You hit two inches behind the board.
John: So I'm trying to like put together the differences between your and my like sense of contract.
John: I'm trying to get into her mind that the supernatural world is aware of things.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
John: Because how is Santa going to know if you're good or bad?
Merlin: But there should be a plausible explanation that seems logical.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I mean, Santa doesn't show up in your house and make an independent determination of whether you've been good or bad at that point.
John: You're not going to pull like the whole like a wizard did it thing.
Merlin: You're trying to get past like simple magic.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Because magic can explain anything.
John: Santa's in the North Pole.
John: He's compiling toys.
John: He's basing those decisions on whether you've been good or bad.
John: Yes.
John: So he has pre-knowledge.
John: Okay.
John: And so that must also be true of the tooth fairy.
John: She's got to know that it would seem to me in the tooth fairy universe that when the tooth comes out, that's the like bing that on her switchboard, a light goes on.
John: And she's like, tooth is out.
John: But then there's this pregnant pause and some kids get it right under the pillow that night.
John: In my daughter's case, she kept that tooth out for five days.
John: She turned it over in her hands.
John: It's a very little tooth.
John: Showed it to everybody.
John: Thought about it quite a bit.
John: And then her grandfather said, you know, if you put it under your pillow, the tooth fairy brings you a silver dollar.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Which she immediately began calling the silver D. And she was like, so if I put this under the pillow, I'm going to get a silver D. I was like, yes, you're going to get a silver D. But now you're on the hook for a silver D. Well, so last night she's like, I'm ready.
John: It's going under the pillow tonight.
John: And I'm going to get a silver D. Yes, honey.
John: So she put it under the pillow.
John: It just so happens that I have a briefcase full of various silver D's.
John: Some of them are just your normal ones, right?
John: Your Eisenhower's.
John: Eisenhower's, yeah.
John: And your Sacagawea's.
Merlin: Was there a Kennedy at one point?
John: That's a half dollar.
John: Half dollar, sorry.
John: And your Susan B's.
Merlin: Wait, is it Susan B. or Sacagawea?
Merlin: Well, both.
Merlin: The Sacagawea one really suffers from a poor carving job.
Merlin: Because they wanted to get her face on, and that's no way to carve a coin.
John: Well, she's also got the papoose.
John: She's got a papoose.
John: And Susan B., she's very ferocious looking.
John: She's not a very friendly, that's not a friendly picture.
John: No, we don't take no junk.
John: But Eisenhower dollars are hard to get your hands on anymore.
John: And then I also have like Morgan dollars and peace dollars.
John: Morgan dollars?
John: I have quite a few Morgan dollars.
John: It's got JP Morgan on it?
John: No, it has like Liberty on it.
John: But they're called Morgan dollars because I think Morgan, JP Morgan probably had a hand in them.
John: I even have a dollar, a US dollar, a coin from 1856.
John: Wow.
John: It's a very small coin.
John: Anyway, so I'm going through my briefcase of silver Ds, and I'm trying to decide which one of these silver Ds meets her, like is the fantasy silver D in her mind?
John: Because when somebody says silver D to me, A, I think it's made of silver.
John: It's got a different sound.
John: You drop it on the table, it sounds really different.
John: Clank, right?
John: But a Morgan silver dollar is worth like $50.
John: She's not ready for that.
John: No.
John: And an Eisenhower dollar is...
John: Like, what if she takes that in and tries to buy a candy bar with it?
John: The person working at the store is going to be like, what the hell is this?
John: Probably they haven't ever seen one.
John: They assume it's Pokemon.
John: That's right.
John: They think, like, catch them all.
John: Catch them all.
John: Got to train them.
John: Anyway, so she goes to bed.
John: Where'd you fall on this?
John: Well, I'm looking through the Silver Ds.
John: I'm like, what's a brother going to do here?
John: And I decided on a Susan B.
John: And the reason is in 1979 when they were introducing the Susan B. Anthony dollars, everybody thought – because this was the first silver dollar.
John: Well, so the Eisenhower silver dollar nobody used because it was too big.
John: This was the silver dollar that the U.S.
John: Mint was – It was really big.
John: When I would get one of those as a kid, it felt like it would practically fill my hand.
John: An Eisenhower dollar?
John: Yeah.
John: They're as big as a pie plate.
Mm-hmm.
John: So they're introducing the Susan B and the mint is, wait for it, banking on the idea that everybody's going to use these things.
John: And so they mint in 1979.
John: Let's make them really close in size to a quarter.
John: Let's make them look just like.
John: They look like a fraudulent quarter.
John: That's right.
John: And they feel like a quarter.
John: If you reach into your pocket and try and pull out a quarter or a Susan B. Anthony, you can't tell the difference.
John: It really is just slightly larger.
John: And what's crazy is that the English pound coin and the Spanish 100 peseta coin are smaller but thicker.
John: So you reach into your pocket, pull out a one pound coin.
John: It feels like a pound because it's like got some weight.
John: It feels thick, you know, but it's smaller.
John: And the U.S.
John: Mint, I don't know how they failed.
John: If they had made Susan B. Anthony dollars that felt like little hockey pucks, we'd still be using it.
John: But so they minted millions and millions and millions of these Susan B. Anthony dollars.
John: And the only way that they got used was when they came out, everybody said, this is a collectible.
John: Oh, right.
John: And everybody grabbed as many of them as they could and put them in a sack somewhere because they were sure it was like.
Merlin: That's good for your currency system to have a lot of stuff not in circulation.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Oh, let's talk about pennies someday.
Yeah.
John: And the problem is every single 1979 Susan B. Anthony dollar is worth precisely one dollar because it's still legal tender face value.
John: But there's I mean, there are a few that have certain mint marks or certain, you know, there are some that are rarer than others.
John: Oh, like you get an upside down Denver or something.
John: Yeah, but Denver – the Denver Mint is exactly the one that made millions and millions of these.
John: So if you have a 1979 Susan B. Anthony Dollar with a D. It's got a D. Silver D. That's right.
John: Silver D. So I have some of these not because I ever fell for this dumb thing but because my dad –
John: Collected a bunch of Susan B. Anthony dollars that he was sure were going to be worth money someday.
John: And then I ended up with like a poke.
John: Let's call it a poke of Susan B. Silver Dees.
John: So I figure through her baby teeth, I got enough silver D's to cover the debt.
John: And if that's what she thinks a silver D is, because a Pocahontas dollar, of course, is silver.
Merlin: No, it's horrible.
Merlin: It's an ugly color.
Merlin: It's nothing against Pocahontas.
Merlin: It's just it's not fun to look at.
Merlin: I mean, to me, like a U.S.
Merlin: American quarter is like the classic coin.
Merlin: Like, I love the way Washington looks on the quarter.
Merlin: I always have.
Merlin: But, you know, this is a famous thing in – what's the word I'm looking for?
Merlin: Engraving.
Merlin: There's a reason everybody's done in profile on coins because a profile, you only have so much depth to a coin.
Merlin: You cannot get the depth of a full-on face in a way that looks realistic with that amount of thickness.
Merlin: So that's why they always do a silhouette.
Merlin: But they couldn't because she's got a papoose.
Merlin: They got to get the papoose on there too.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: I never thought about that.
Merlin: You could go read about this.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure this is the case, is that that's why they do, so like, I'm repeating myself, but a silhouette, you can get, there's enough to show like, oh, this person has like sunken cheeks or this kind of chin.
Merlin: That reads much better than you would.
Merlin: And that's why everybody's face looks so smashed on a coin.
Merlin: I wonder how many other coins there are with two people on it.
Merlin: None, right?
Merlin: I can't think of another coin that's got two people on it.
John: Maybe there are some Roman coins where Caesar is vanquishing somebody, but I don't even think there are.
John: I mean, I think that's Trajan's column.
John: If you want something like that, you're going to go with a column rather than a coin.
John: But that song.
John: Silhouette, silhouette, silhouette, silhouette.
John: Silhouette's on the coin.
Merlin: That's a pretty song.
John: Yeah, that is nice.
John: It's 1950.
Merlin: We had an important day yesterday.
John: What happened?
Merlin: I think we've already done too much to spoil this for kids that might be listening.
Merlin: But I'll just say in broad terms.
Merlin: We do sometimes get tweets from 15-year-olds.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Well, they'd be safe.
Merlin: But yesterday was a very, very important day.
Merlin: It was Sunday, July 17th.
Merlin: She knows.
Merlin: So much for the evergreenness of this show.
Merlin: She knows.
Merlin: no yep she revealed we've known for about a year that this was coming we knew that we were just hanging on by a thread but yesterday my daughter the illuminati conspiracy theorist who has in the past uh caused my wife and i to provide handwriting samples that she could compare against the easter bunny yesterday she laid out in extreme detail her entire case for the santa problem
John: Whoa, and this is happening in July?
John: This is anti-Christmas in July.
Merlin: Well, you're not going to believe how it came up.
Merlin: The way that it came up is that I had purchased a new can opener, a hand can opener.
Merlin: The hand can opener is on the cardboard, tied on with those little annoying plastic ties.
Merlin: And of course, any time we get a product in the house with anything annoying in the packaging, my daughter is inclined to bring up...
Merlin: The very famous Christmas of 2010.
Merlin: The Christmas of 2010, I remember as being possibly the greatest Christmas that has ever Christmased.
Merlin: How old was she in 2010?
Merlin: She was three.
Merlin: And it was a pretty good year.
Merlin: And, you know, we had a little extra dough that year.
Merlin: So, and we really wanted her to have, you know how parents are.
Merlin: They're stupid dumbasses.
Merlin: Greatest Christmas ever.
Merlin: It was the greatest Christmas ever.
Merlin: She got a really cool Ikea kitchen.
Merlin: Ikea makes a nice kitchen.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's not expensive, not costly.
Merlin: It's a nice kitchen.
Merlin: She got a lot of really, really great stuff.
Merlin: I think she got a really cool dollhouse.
Merlin: I remember the night before, my wife and I watching Goldfinger and putting so much stuff together and watching Goldfinger.
Merlin: I'll never forget that.
Merlin: But the important part of the story is 2010 is the year of Toy Story.
Merlin: That summer, we got into Toy Story right around the time that Toy Story 3 came out.
Merlin: Those three movies were on constant repeat at our house like twice a day.
Merlin: They're amazing movies.
Merlin: They're such great movies.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: Let me just interrupt for a second.
John: Is Toy Story 1 a good movie?
Merlin: It is a good movie, and especially for – there's a lot of asterisks.
Merlin: For its time, it's – I mean, what do you say?
Merlin: I mean, it's an incredible achievement, the achievement of which story-wise is greatly surpassed in Toy Story 2.
John: Toy Story 2 is a better film than Toy Story 1.
John: It's a much better film.
John: Because I've only seen Toy Story 3.
John: Oh, really?
John: That is a film – that is, I feel like, my rosebud.
Merlin: It's rough.
Yeah.
Merlin: It's pretty rough.
Merlin: Yeah, Toy Story 2, yeah, Toy Story 2 is more subtle.
Merlin: It's really awfully good.
Merlin: But so for that Christmas, remember, this is going to be the greatest Christmas ever.
Merlin: She got, like, you know you can buy, like, different, like, nicenesses of toys?
Merlin: Like, you can get, like, this little junior version.
Merlin: She'd had a little Buzz Lightyear that wasn't even, the joints didn't move.
Merlin: She not only got a really nice Woody, she got a really nice Buzz.
Merlin: She got...
Merlin: She got a really nice Buzz.
Merlin: Don't make it weird.
Merlin: She got a really nice Woody.
Merlin: And the thing is, I know you probably don't buy a lot of dumb toys for your kid, but dumb toys for your kid, unless you get the Amazon frustration-free packaging, what you could pretty much be promised, if it's anything that has a clear window on the front for viewing, it's going to take an hour to get it out.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: And this happens in the collectibles world, but especially with kids' toys.
Merlin: So Buzz Lightyear was rubber-banded,
Merlin: uh and wired wired into this package and the way that they do this i imagine little hands somewhere in indonesia do this there's a way that they use imagine a bread tie but a lot thicker and it's doubled over it's turned a couple times one way and then a couple times the other way and there's like there was like 30 of these you don't want bows let you're to get out
Merlin: This actually comes up in Toy Story 2.
Merlin: It's pretty funny.
Merlin: But the point is, greatest Christmas ever.
Merlin: What she remembers, this is how it came up yesterday, because she was looking at the can opener in the little cardboard thing, and she said, you remember that Christmas?
Merlin: I'm like, yes, honey, I remember that Christmas.
Merlin: She goes, you said the F word.
Merlin: I didn't know what it meant then, but that was the day you said the F word.
John: Whoa, she remembers.
Merlin: And that's how Santa came up.
Merlin: Funny, other funny story, though, is that you come up a lot with the F word.
Merlin: The first time that she remembers hearing the F word and knowing what it was was from you.
Merlin: How?
Merlin: You were at our house.
John: No, I didn't say the F word.
Merlin: Remember you're in the bathroom and the door wouldn't close?
John: And I said, well, yes, I do remember that.
John: And I said the F word.
John: Oh, no, no.
John: Well, you know, we've both said the F word.
John: I said, you know, fart maybe.
John: Sure.
John: I said flabbergast.
John: Do I sound mad?
John: No, no, I guess not.
Merlin: But she remembers it.
Merlin: Well, and then yesterday, chapter and verse, she laid it all down.
Merlin: why was there the same wrapping paper in this place how come i found a photo on your phone of this thing okay oh i just realized that my tp came from the land of nod and i'll bet you santa's not going to the land of nod catalog oh well i hate to be this guy
John: Although, you know, of course I don't hate to be this guy.
John: Everybody that says I hate to be this guy is actually like very proud of being that guy.
John: Oh, it's like people who say I hate to correct you, but.
John: I hate to correct you, but.
John: You don't hate to correct me.
John: You live to correct me.
John: When I was a kid, right, my mom would spend that whole evening of Christmas Eve, you know, not just putting together the dollhouse.
John: She's getting potatoes out of the larder.
John: She's taking heads off the chickens.
John: That's right.
John: But she would unwrap the presents.
John: that needed to be unwrapped so if it was a if it was a if it was a present where the where the box oh like needed to be decanted from original packaging that's right if you need if you if you're not gonna be able to play with this doll until you spend 16 minutes uh fighting the packaging or if you can't play with this thing until it is built oh i get it build it
Merlin: It's like when you go to a nice restaurant.
Merlin: I mean, cooking a lobster is really not hard.
Merlin: It's getting the meat out of the lobster that's hard.
John: Right.
John: You put a put a whole lobster on the plate in front of you.
Merlin: As Gordon Ramsay says, you don't have too much food waste.
Merlin: You've got to learn how to get all the knuckles out.
Merlin: You've got to get the legs out.
Merlin: It's a lot of your mom was basically cleaning a lobster for you.
John: She's cleaning a lobster.
John: That's her number one game, right?
John: So I have become a lobster cleaner.
John: And so it's not like she gets a lot of this kind of present.
John: But the kind of present that comes in the packaging, I know that there's not going to.
John: So, oh, my God.
John: The other day, someone gave her a vintage doll from the 1970s called Star.
Right.
John: And Star is a Barbie style doll, but she's like a typical high school girl.
John: She has friends.
John: There's a whole Star universe where they're like in a band and they have a yearbook and Star is like cool girl.
John: She's like the cheerleader, but she's also artistic.
John: And her boyfriend is a guitar player, but he's also like a football player.
John: Like they really cram a lot of backstory into Star and her friends.
John: And somebody – I don't even know who because this just appeared in my world all of a sudden – gave her star in the original packaging with her little shoes and her little hairbrush and it was all still in the box.
John: And I didn't – I wasn't there for this.
John: So if I had been –
John: Because of my proximity to nerd culture, I'm afraid I would have grabbed this star out of her hands and been like, hang on, honey.
John: This might pay for a month of college someday.
John: Let's take a look at this star doll and let's go on eBay and figure out what star is all about because it's very important that we not take it out of the original packaging.
John: But, of course, somebody handed her this star doll and said,
John: Or Staldar.
John: Staldar.
John: Bow before Staldar.
John: How are we going to kill the Staldar?
John: Meat moop.
John: It's just like shooting wamp rats.
John: She grabs this thing, and that Staldar is ripped apart.
John: The box is just shredded.
John: It's all just strewn.
John: Oh, so much value lost, like tears in rain.
John: But here's the thing.
John: I go online.
John: I go on to eBay, and I'm like, oh, I don't even want to know what is a vintage.
John: What do you get for a Staldar today?
John: I remember Staldars at the time.
John: I vaguely remember them.
Merlin: I'm Googling them, and I can't find much.
Merlin: There's a modern Staldar, but I can't find the vintage one.
John: Well, so type in vintage Staldar, and you'll find it.
John: But so an original one of these in original package is like $60, $50.
John: There's nothing that I would be willing to take this thing out of my kid's hands.
John: Yeah, sure, sure.
John: And so she's playing with Star and she's loving it.
John: And I'm like, you know, like Viacondios, Star.
John: And your little yearbook and your comb and your shoes are already lost.
John: And your yearbook is shredded and crayoned over.
John: And that is how you were meant.
Merlin: This sounds like your next song.
Merlin: Do it again.
Merlin: What did you say?
Merlin: Your comb.
John: Your comb is already lost.
John: Your comb and your shoes are already lost.
John: And your little yearbook is torn apart.
John: Star doll.
John: But I definitely I pursue that same idea with her new toys which is like there is nothing we are not participating in this collectible culture.
John: If I buy this for you it is to be destroyed.
John: I want you to cut this doll's hair.
John: I want you to draw on her face.
John: I want you to chew on her and let there be nothing left of this doll when you are done playing with her.
John: So I take it out of the packaging and I sit it as though she has entered the house under her own power and sat down under the tree and then deanimated.
John: Um, sort of like press, right?
John: Like all the dolls in the house are like, are like press ready to come alive and karate chop you and grab a boiling egg.
John: But, you know, but for now, like they are your, they are your little friends.
Merlin: Yeah, I want I want her to enjoy and treasure her things in a way that she currently does not.
Merlin: But I that whole like keep this nice thing just for collectability sake is is really a gross conceit of old men.
John: Yeah.
John: When did you discover that Santa wasn't real?
John: Spoiler alert.
John: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: Sorry, 15-year-olds.
Merlin: I told her yesterday.
Merlin: We had an amazing talk.
Merlin: I didn't cry, but it really went well.
Merlin: And just to finish the anecdote, basically, then we went into something I've been preparing for for years, which is when this day comes...
Merlin: uh gauge how she feels about it and and in this reveal of this she's known it for a long time i think she's been doing it for us um but uh she's she's fine with it and i said well you know now like there's a couple important things so the first important thing it's the same thing as uh empire strikes back it's really important now that you are on this side of it don't be that kid that's right so even if other kids ask you about it you don't tell them right which brings us to part two which is now
Merlin: You're in on the secret.
Merlin: You're part of the Illuminati.
Merlin: Welcome.
Merlin: You're part of the...
Merlin: You're welcome.
Merlin: Welcome to the scene.
Merlin: Because now here's the thing.
Merlin: Here's the part that's going to sound crazy to you is we want to keep doing this in our household.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: And the thing is, we need your help.
Merlin: So believe it or not, as crazy as this sounds, you know what?
Merlin: You know the note with the weird left-handed cursive handwriting?
Merlin: Because Daddy can't really write in cursive to begin with.
Merlin: Like, you know what's crazy?
Merlin: You're going to help us with that.
Merlin: Even though those cookies are for no one.
Merlin: And that's why it's important.
John: Boom.
John: Mic drop.
John: Wow.
John: I love that.
John: You know, my mom and I still give each other presents from Santa.
Merlin: Of course you do.
Merlin: And that's and the thing is, she didn't blow a gasket and freak out and go, this makes no logical sense.
Merlin: No, I think she's still because she's a she's an eight year old girl.
Merlin: She's probably still going to use this as leverage when needed with other kids.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: You know, you bring a gun to school.
Merlin: You know, today you tell you tell the truth.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You bring the knowledge of Santa.
Merlin: It's kind of a relief, and it's a super-duper relief that it went well, and there were lots of hugs when it was done.
John: Well, you're going to be teaching her to parallel park pretty soon.
John: Oh, God, I could teach some people to parallel park.
John: Well, you've got to get it in real fast because there's going to be self-driving cars, but don't let me get started.
John: You want to see when you can see the back bumper start turning.
Merlin: And don't turn a little.
Merlin: Turn hard.
Merlin: Turn harder than you think.
Merlin: Turn hard.
Merlin: And then turn all the way back.
Merlin: And the thing is, people come to San Francisco and they're so confused.
Merlin: This is the boot camp for parallel parking because you would be surprised.
Merlin: You will be amazed.
Merlin: I'll tell you, soldier, you're not going to believe what can fit into what once you've been to San Francisco.
John: Yeah, well, I'll say, especially on the Castro.
John: But if you are on a hill.
John: Go to Union Suit Square.
John: If you're on a hill and you're trying to parallel park, well, first of all, do not let your co-pilot get out and stand on the sidewalk.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
John: Don't do that.
John: Just put your balls in the popcorn.
John: Yeah.
John: If you need that, then just stay in your car.
John: Just sit there until you die.
John: Just drive somewhere else.
John: Put, put, put, put.
John: Or they're parking.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I learned about Santa right when I was the same age.
John: I was eight years old.
John: But I had a younger sibling.
John: So I was brought into the fold...
John: And not just like you have to be careful around other kids, but now our whole family is engaged in a conspiracy to keep this secret from the baby who is six years old.
John: But I think that my sister, my little sister knew that Santa was fake a long time before I did because she's a very practical person.
John: But then we were all engaged in a conspiracy, including my little sister who was humoring us all.
Merlin: to continue to santify it's a what would you call like an open secret open secret but you know i mean but is that the right word for it but it's something where like we all know that what we're saying or uh open lie like but we're all agreeing to act like this is different than how we all actually know it is and we don't need to talk about it
John: Yeah, it's like it's like the entire country treated the Bush administration.
John: Right.
John: Like we all know that this person.
John: Let's just get through this.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And we all know that there's no actual real threat to America.
John: And we all know that this is all a trumped up thing.
John: But each of us has a military base in our congressional district.
John: And we do not want that base closed because then are we going to sell Mustangs?
John: And selling Mustangs is a big part of our economy.
Merlin: You know, it turns out most Corvettes bought by lieutenant colonels.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: Oh, sure.
John: I do not doubt that.
John: I think most of the Dodge Challengers and Mustangs, Mustang GTs, are sold to new recruits.
John: Those are guys that put their dick in the popcorn.
Merlin: I'll bet you.
Merlin: Dimes the Donuts.
Merlin: Dollars, dollars, dollars to dames.
Merlin: I'll bet you those are the kinds of guys that were penknifing into their popcorn hole.
John: Thank you for your service.
John: Thank you.
John: Thank you for your service.