Ep. 235: "Where the Wind Lives"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Oh, hello, Merlin.
Merlin: Rather.
Merlin: Things are good.
Merlin: Oh, smashing to hear.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Pip, pip, charlie good.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Oh, one does enjoy one's Skype calls with one's friends in the morning.
Merlin: Yes, one does.
Merlin: Yes, it's true.
Merlin: Yes, one does.
Merlin: Quite so.
Merlin: Membership has its privileges.
Merlin: Mm.
Merlin: Mm.
Merlin: Mm.
Merlin: Mm.
Merlin: Mm.
Merlin: So you say.
Merlin: Mm.
Merlin: Oh, I got some really, really tangy espresso.
Merlin: Oh, tangy espresso.
Merlin: Tangy.
John: I love their first three records.
Merlin: Tangy.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: Everything's going pretty good.
Merlin: Pretty good.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: Telephone.
Merlin: It's going to be one of those episodes, huh?
John: Who knows?
Merlin: That's how it is in their family.
John: As you say, what's in the show is in the show.
Merlin: Everything that's in the show is in the show.
Merlin: It's happening in the show, and that's how you know it's in the show.
Merlin: That's precisely right.
Merlin: Precisely mont.
Merlin: It's early.
Merlin: Merlin, man.
God!
Merlin: John Roderick, he's watching you.
Merlin: That's in the show.
Merlin: That's in the show.
Merlin: Everything that's in the show, it's part of the show.
Merlin: That's how you know.
John: Someone pointed out to me the other day that every time you look at a picture of Hall and Oates, Hall is on the left, Oates is on the right.
Merlin: uh this is true i've checked this i have found a couple candid shots but pretty much every this goes all the way back to like 73 maybe is it you that told me this it might it might be i've told a lot of people about this yeah but yeah no it's uh it's always hall on our left
Merlin: Yeah, Hall on our left.
Merlin: Hall on our left.
Merlin: Is watching you.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: You know, they're underrated.
Merlin: They're really underrated.
Merlin: We've gone over this, haven't we?
Merlin: Oh, you know what?
Merlin: We can't talk about Hall on Earth.
Merlin: It's like time travel.
John: You're not supposed to talk.
John: What's going on in your world, Merlin?
Merlin: Oh, my neck of the woods?
Merlin: It's been a while now.
Merlin: It's good.
Merlin: It's good.
Merlin: Yeah, I got strong feelings.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I got strong feelings about The Walking Dead, but I also have strong feelings about REI.
Merlin: Well, let's start with REI because I don't know anything about The Walking Dead.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I don't want to talk about – let's not talk about time travel.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: But I want to talk about REI.
Merlin: See, I've got a history with REI, and it all comes back to this basic point.
Merlin: I go into that store for an article of clothing or gear that's going to have some kind of a fairly specific non-adventure role –
Merlin: in my life.
Merlin: Do you want it to wick away sweat?
Merlin: Well, I mean, I wouldn't mind that.
John: Do you want it to be lightweight but still durable?
Merlin: Yeah, that would be nice.
Merlin: I would like it to be a modern, technical, in a lot of cases.
Merlin: But I think I told you the story the first time I remember ever buying something at an REI.
Merlin: I went in and was buying a pair of what was then, you remember in the late 90s, there was a Vogue for kind of like high-tech cargo pants.
Merlin: like urban outfitter pants that were like 150 and also we were still wearing uh we in the dot-com biz we're still wearing uh like a hiking boot tour yeah hiking boot that was kind of a look it's an evergreen look and was it uh were they royal robins brand pants i've had i have a royal robins uh shirt yeah from around that time that i still wear it's been very durable and it wicks
Merlin: And lightweight.
Merlin: Durable, lightweight for my active lifestyle.
John: Right, wicks away the sweat.
Merlin: So anyway.
Merlin: Anyway, I mean, this just sets the tone for my REI problem, which is, I must say, my problem, not REI's problem.
John: You never know.
Merlin: Well, here's the thing.
Merlin: I went in there and I shop like a dude.
Merlin: You know, I tend to just kind of like I barely stop moving the entire time I'm in the place.
Merlin: I put on these shoes and then they offer me this device that they have this little device where you can like it emulates rock.
Merlin: And so it looks kind of like an organic hassock, like almost like the world's worst ottoman.
Merlin: Like if you had a stalagmite that was an ottoman.
Merlin: An organic hassock?
Merlin: Organic hassock.
Merlin: Hassock?
Merlin: Hassock.
Merlin: Hassock.
Merlin: I think a hassock is a dancer.
John: A hassock is, well, it's a kind of Russian.
Merlin: And rhythm is a dancer, is that right?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Rhythm is going to move you.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Do you consider yourself part of the Rhythm Nation?
John: I was.
John: Okay.
John: I was until Miss Jackson said I was nasty.
Merlin: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: And it all comes back to Merlin, man.
Merlin: So they had this... I tried them on, and they're like... And the guy's talking about things like torsion control...
John: Oh, yeah, you got to have that.
Merlin: And all this in the wide foot base.
Merlin: And he offered me the organic hassock to tread upon in order to test the performance characteristics of my new footwear.
Merlin: And he said, you know, what are you going to be doing with these?
Merlin: I'll never forget.
Merlin: I said, I was on lunch break for my dot com job.
John: And I said, I said, what are you going to do with these?
Merlin: I said, I said, these are web page making shoes.
Merlin: And he was not mad.
Merlin: I mean, I think he was maybe not even exactly disappointed, but I let him down because even then I was a middle-aged white guy.
Merlin: Nothing much has changed, but I don't think you're supposed to tear away the veil as abruptly as I did.
John: No, you're supposed to say, well, you know, I do a lot of hiking, a lot of weekend stuff and get out there.
Merlin: Sure, I get my Thule box and put it on my Subaru and I go to the front face of the mountain climb and, you know, get excited.
Merlin: All you have to say is try to get out there.
Merlin: Oh, you know, I always try to get out there.
Merlin: That's why I got a Subaru.
Merlin: You know, love is what makes a Subaru a Subaru.
John: Well, love and... Yeah, rockets.
John: Love and... And you know what?
John: Coexistence.
John: Oh, coexist.
John: Yeah, that's what makes a Subaru coexist.
John: Oh, and also, wagging less and barking more.
Merlin: Oh, wait a minute.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: I'm part of the Elizabeth Warren wing of the bumper sticker community.
Merlin: So now, fast forward to today.
Merlin: So we don't go to the mall very much, but I went to visit some friends in Corte Madera.
Merlin: And Corte Madera is where they have two really nice malls.
Merlin: When we go to Corte Madera or pass by Corte Madera, I make a point of saying to my ladies, I say, let's go to the mall.
Merlin: Because for one thing, they got a bookstore.
Merlin: They got a Barnes and Noble so you can go to the bookstore and buy some books.
John: I'm sorry to interrupt.
Merlin: Not at all.
Merlin: Please go.
John: When you say, let's go to the mall, you already stipulated two really nice malls in Corte Madera.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Let me look these up.
John: Does everybody know which mall you're referring to?
Merlin: They might.
Merlin: We've got Stonestown.
Merlin: We've been to Stonestown, you and me.
Merlin: That's near us.
Merlin: That's kind of a sad mall.
Merlin: And it's kind of on its way out.
Merlin: But Corte Madera, so there's two malls there.
Merlin: There's the village at Corte Madera.
Merlin: and there is the village at Corte Madera, and then there's the town center Corte Madera.
Merlin: Does center have an E at the end?
Merlin: No, it's not a centra.
Merlin: It's not a theatra.
Merlin: So they're across the highway from each other.
Merlin: Now, our friends live like a stone's throw from this mall.
Merlin: So we go to the mall.
Merlin: We go to the Barnes & Noble.
Merlin: And I go to the REI.
Merlin: Because I says to my wife, I says, I'm very happy.
Merlin: I says, wife?
Merlin: I says, wife.
Merlin: I'm very happy with my rain jacket that they got me for my birthday a year or two ago.
Merlin: I love it.
Merlin: I think it's a marmot.
Merlin: It's got a liner.
Merlin: It's really nice.
Merlin: It's blue.
Merlin: It's everything I could want in a jacket.
Merlin: And I think, let's be honest, I think we bought it at an REI.
John: Right.
John: It sheds rain, but it wicks away sweat.
Merlin: It's got performance characteristics and torsion control.
Merlin: So now, you know, flash forward, this is some 16, 17 years since my first REI experience.
Merlin: And I still feel like an utter fucking poser.
Merlin: Because here's me.
Merlin: Me is I want to go in there and I want to get some kind of a jacket that's not quite a rain jacket.
Merlin: I want it to be not quite a Pendleton shirt.
Merlin: I want something that's like...
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: With that said, I went in there and I looked at every single item they had in their jacket section.
Merlin: I almost made a slate for dinner because I was determined to find something.
Merlin: And it wasn't even a money thing.
Merlin: It was, I mean, because they're all kind of costly.
Merlin: I was ready for that.
Merlin: But I thought there's got to be something here I could wear where I don't look like I take yoga.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Where I don't look like, and nothing, again, nothing against the yoga community coexist.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: But I want something that, like, looks like something I would wear.
Merlin: And my cosplay...
Merlin: My default cosplay is to look kind of like a lesbian janitor, where I roll kind of a Carhartt Dickie look a lot of the time.
John: As we know, lesbians have the best haircuts.
Merlin: I would kill for a lesbian haircut.
Merlin: You always have a pretty good haircut, but you don't.
Merlin: I'm struggling.
Merlin: I'm struggling.
Merlin: That's a whole different issue.
Merlin: I'm thinking about my friend Alex, who's part of the tribe.
Merlin: She goes to a Supercuts.
Merlin: She has a great haircut.
Merlin: I'm thinking of going to a Supercuts.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know how it's done.
John: Hair's like grass, dude.
John: It just grows back.
John: But I've been following this phenomenon, the lesbian haircut, for 27 years.
Merlin: How do they do it?
Merlin: What is different?
John: I can't account for it.
John: What is it?
John: But anyway, so there you are in your Carhartt and Dickies looking for the perfect coat to communicate that you are you.
Merlin: Well, to communicate honestly, it's sort of the, I don't want to say the opposite of what you do, but I want to communicate as little as possible.
Merlin: At this point, I want to just not be noticed.
Merlin: But I want to do it in a way that's comfortable.
Merlin: Here's some of my points.
Merlin: I would like it to be something that doesn't look too much like a rain jacket.
Merlin: Because I've got a good rain jacket.
Merlin: I need something for when it's maybe going to rain, but probably not.
Merlin: I want it to be warm, but not polar.
Merlin: I would like pockets.
Merlin: I would like some pockets on it.
Merlin: Do you want Velcro closures?
Merlin: I like a Velcro sleeve dingus.
Merlin: I don't mind snaps, and they're a little classier.
Merlin: I looked at one by a company I think it's called, I want to say, Kuhl?
Merlin: K-U-H-L?
Merlin: I'm not sure.
Merlin: They had some nice things, but they had kind of a yoga construction worker vibe and a little bit of a snap clasp, which, as I say, I'm not against.
Merlin: they also have their own apparently rei has their own bespoke brand of super fancy it's called apteryx or something like that oh yeah and and those jackets are 750 which is a little bit out of my price range plus again we're back to the dot-com shoes i feel like i cannot live up to this clothing so anyway i walked out of there feeling kind of sad i went and i looked at shirts because i can always use another long sleeve shirt i ended up buying nothing
Merlin: Which is okay.
Merlin: But I'm frustrated with myself.
Merlin: I don't want to say I'm frustrated with REI because I'm pretty sure everybody that goes in there is pretty extreme.
Merlin: But I feel I have trouble finding the clothes that are for me.
Merlin: And now Sears, they're not going to carry the Trump stuff anymore.
Merlin: Macy's, they're not doing great.
Merlin: I don't know where to turn in.
Merlin: And I'm trying not to just buy things on the internet because that seems weird.
Merlin: Yeah, that's where I am.
Merlin: I'm frustrated with The Walking Dead a little bit, and I did not find a jacket that sang to me.
John: You've hit on a thing, I'm afraid, Merlin.
John: You hit on a real thing.
John: And this thing is what I would describe as the decline and fall of outdoor gear.
Merlin: Is that what I've hit upon?
John: I think you've hit upon the decline and fall of outdoor gear.
Merlin: when you you would you would bet your life on this equipment there was a time when you could be hanging from that zipper you could be sitting there with your with your with your with your your meister in your pocket dangling off a rock somewhere in germany you're not even sure where where you feel like you're wearing borrowed feet and you're hanging on by a zipper there was a time hanging on by a zipper um
John: There was a sweet spot, right?
John: I feel like there was a sweet spot when things had progressed from wool and waxed cotton.
John: Yeah.
John: There were new fabrics.
John: There was this new kind of science that we were saying like, oh, we don't have to wear...
John: Keely Hansen rubber every time we go out into the rain We can start to wear these lighter fabrics that breathe that wick away the sweat that have technology mm-hmm, but those items were still built as built in the fashion and of you know like with the accoutrements of earlier coats and
John: So what it was, I guess, was years and years of time-tested apparel design, by which I mean like the actual shape of the garment and the situation of the pockets, the shape of the hood.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: the use of certain kinds of clasp zip heavy zippers you know but we have these new fabrics and it was and now you could have a jacket that was red holy cow yeah and the and the wicking of course being a big thing i keep mentioning wicking's important oh my god wicking's important and then some wicking's one of those things like uh like a microwave where you don't really realize how much you need it until you have it and then you're like how did i ever do without wicking
John: How did I do it?
John: Although I know people that don't have a microwave, if you can believe that.
John: Also, I made my first egg in a cup.
John: We should come back to that.
Merlin: Oh, you did?
Merlin: Yeah, I'll come back to that.
Merlin: But no, I'm with you.
Merlin: I'm thinking here about also, and as you know, I'm not a ski person, but I'm thinking about when ski gear changed at some point, I'm guessing, in the 70s.
Merlin: Whereas when I was a kid and you got bundled up to go, as we would say, play in the snow, you had all these layers and you looked like Ralphie's brother in Christmas Story.
Merlin: And then they came out with these zazzy colors.
Merlin: in these more lightweight garments.
Merlin: But then things got very... To use a phrase I learned from my wife, she refers to her clothes that she wears to exercise, which she does every day.
Merlin: She calls it technical gear.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Technical gear.
John: That's where we got off the rails.
John: You think so?
John: Yeah, because as you say, it's not just you.
John: You're not alone in sitting in your technical gear and writing software codes.
John: Nope.
John: No, like one in a thousand people that buys this stuff that's advertised with a photograph of someone summiting Machu Picchu.
John: That's good to say, summiting Machu Picchu.
John: Yeah, they've never summited Machu Picchu.
John: Nope.
John: And never will, right?
John: But the gear, you know, it's like good.
John: Like you say, because you live in a climate, you're going to go outside.
John: Is it going to rain?
John: I don't know.
John: Is it going to, you know, like it could be 60 degrees when I walk out the door.
John: And by the time I get where I'm going, it'd be 40 degrees and like hailing.
John: And I want something that I don't look like a dope.
John: Partly that I don't want to look like a dope like I get there and I'm not prepared.
John: You want to be prepared for anything, even if you're not leaving the house.
Merlin: Because there's a hailstorm in your house.
Merlin: It could totally happen.
Merlin: Climate is a very complicated issue.
Merlin: You've got butterfly wings.
Merlin: I'm with you on the Seattle thing, though, in the sense that while I think it's sweet that my daughter likes an umbrella, I do not do an umbrella.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: I'm above.
Merlin: I love umbrellas.
Merlin: I got a hood, and I got my personal will, my will to power.
John: That's right.
John: Let's say it's a Walking Dead scenario, and all of a sudden there's zombies everywhere, and you've got to, I don't know what, go walking.
John: Amongst the dead.
John: Walking amongst the dead, and presumably hitting them with machetes sometimes, and you've got a souped-up truck.
John: I'm guessing about this from seeing billboards in the New York subway.
John: Yeah, you're not that far off.
John: But so you're out there and you're on this death trail.
John: And I'm guessing you've heard rumors that somewhere there's a community of people that have survived.
John: You're pretty good at this.
John: You're headed there, right?
John: To meet up with them.
John: And it may just be a myth.
John: This is going to be the one.
John: This is going to be the place.
John: May just be the myth that they're there.
John: But then you have to keep going because what else?
John: Why else?
John: Can't turn back.
John: You can't just surrender.
John: You have to keep fighting.
John: Are you going to be carrying a fucking umbrella?
John: Not unless it's a poison tip umbrella.
Merlin: Unless it's to replace your hand that was chopped off by the guy at the last community that was going to save your life.
John: All right.
John: So you got your hand chopped off, but somehow the poison blood of the zombies did not infect you.
John: Yeah, you haven't turned.
John: And now you can tape the umbrella to your hand and you become Umbrella Man.
Yeah.
John: Just like the guy at the Kennedy assassination.
John: Why is he there?
John: Maybe the zombie is coming.
John: Pretty weird day to bring an umbrella.
John: Looks like a pretty sunny day to me.
John: Maybe it's a situation where if you get infected with a cold, the zombie gets right in your face, but he can't smell you because they only want to kill well people.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yeah, that's one, just so you know, not to spoil anything, but one common way to disguise yourself is to cover yourself with guts, like zombie guts, and then they think you're one of them.
Merlin: And you can get yourself a poncho, and you put zombie guts on, and you can walk around.
Merlin: Now, you know, again, that poncho, you would want something with wicking, with performance characteristics.
Merlin: You want Machu Picchu.
John: Well, and Arc'teryx actually makes a zombie gut.
Merlin: That's it, Arc'teryx.
Merlin: You know the name.
John: Of course I do.
John: See, so Arc'teryx is not an REI brand.
John: They are a Canadian super adventure tech brand.
John: And they're made in Seattle like John Fluvog?
John: No, no.
John: Fluvog is a longtime Seattle company.
John: I think they're actually Canadian.
John: People were rooting you.
John: I know they are.
John: Jesus Christ.
John: Cut that out.
John: Arc'teryx, I think, is made in Bangladesh.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: If you're going to summit Bangladesh, you're going to want some performance characteristics.
John: Right.
John: And Arcteryx, if you pick up one of those jackets that costs $7 to $1,700, it's like you become lighter.
John: The jacket is so light that there's now like a bounce in your step.
John: The jacket is lifting you up off the earth.
John: It takes 20 pounds away.
John: But I cannot personally pay $800 for a technical jacket.
John: So I have to longingly paw through those things.
John: I can't even justify the cost of a Patagonia jacket, which is only $450.
Merlin: To me, it's like expensive wine where it's lost on me.
Merlin: It's dropped bits.
Merlin: It's a common thing idiots like me say.
Merlin: The difference between a $20 bottle of wine and a $1,000 bottle of wine, it's a lot of money, but I'm not sure I would appreciate it that much more than, say, a $40 bottle of wine.
Merlin: Where a $200 jacket, I go, hey, this is pretty nice.
Merlin: I've had some $200 jackets that are pretty nice.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: But, you know, $700 to $1,700 is a lot for an Apertix.
Merlin: It is.
John: And it's a lot for – the thing about – so I do not remember the first time I went to REI because –
John: I was going to REI when I was a little kid because my dad was like a very early member of REI and he knew all those people personally.
John: And like Jim Whitaker was, they weren't like pals, but they were high-fiving white guys for sure.
John: Like we would see Jim Whitaker and there'd be a lot of like high-fiving and joshing.
John: And so we were, I was just, I grew up in the REI kind of.
John: And then in Anchorage, the REI was like,
John: it was almost a social place if you went there you were absolutely certain to run into one or seven people that you knew and you'd stand around and somebody was there for cross-country ski wax and somebody was there because they needed you know five new pairs of wool socks and somebody was there you know and i was there because i needed some kind of shoelaces or you know it was like where you went it was sort of the general store
John: Um, and I, and all my friends, that was, you know, like if, Oh, and they also had the, they also had what was at one point called the attic.
John: Then it was the basement.
John: Then it was the attic again.
John: And Ari, I had one of those Nordstrom policies where you could return anything.
Oh,
Merlin: So you can get a lot of stuff on clearance.
Merlin: You get cutouts.
John: Yeah.
John: Somebody would buy a pair of rollerblades.
John: You use them once, break their arm, bring them back.
John: It was a pair of rollerblades that had been used once.
John: But it was like one-eighth the cost.
John: So, I mean, in fact, I got my first pair of rollerblades there.
John: It was also my last pair of rollerblades.
Merlin: Okay, all right, all right.
John: It was the one pair of rollerblades I ever had.
John: All right.
John: But I was an early adopter.
John: I got these rollerblades pretty early on.
John: Oh, nice.
John: And I enjoyed them, but it was very definitely a thing where it's like, oh, am I going to use rollerblades?
John: Yeah.
John: No, I'm not, is what it turned out.
John: But so anyway, but there absolutely was a moment where I started to feel...
John: alien in an rei and i and it was a devastating time because it's been such a like it was like felt like such a family operation to a general store a cooperative it is a co-op at heart right yeah oh and still is you know they still send me a check at the end of the year oh wow for my small portion of the profits um
John: And then you take the check down to REI and spend it on stuff.
John: You know, you get yourself a new headlamp.
John: Like I have 40 headlamps in this house because they never die.
John: And it's like an easy Christmas present.
John: Back in the day, like there'd be a bin of them by the cash register.
John: And you'd go, you know who'd like a headlamp for Christmas?
John: John Roderick.
John: And there they'd be in the stockings.
John: And I never – the thing is I never said –
John: I've already got a headlamp.
John: I was always thrilled to get a headlamp.
Merlin: I should get a headlamp.
Merlin: I'm like that with flashlights.
Merlin: I've spent more on flashlights than I should.
Merlin: Every time I see a flashlight that's nicer, brighter, better made than one I already have, I'll pick it up.
Merlin: And it's in the two-digit range.
Merlin: It's not always a cheap thing.
Merlin: But last night, for example, we were trying to find a cat fight back behind our house without going outside.
Merlin: And boy, that thing just, it bathes, it bathes.
Merlin: I think it's called the glide.
Merlin: It's got a nice, heavy, heavy lumens light.
Merlin: Plus, you can slide it open, and then you get a little lamp.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: And then you can hang it on a tree and illuminate your camp.
John: And it's got a badass magnet on the end so you can stick it on the refrigerator, which my wife loves.
John: Let me ask you this.
John: Can a zombie see light at night?
John: Is that a threat or do they go to sleep at night?
Merlin: Or are they only awake at night?
Merlin: Well, no, they are awake.
Merlin: There are some problems with science, with how zombies work.
John: Do you go into your townhouse at any point and close all the windows?
Merlin: Yeah, the problem with the walkers is that, especially when there's large numbers of them, there's not one of them that's going to figure out how to open your fence, but when there's 1,500 of them and they lean forward, your fence goes down.
Merlin: It's that kind of situation.
John: Do they hear dancing and noise and use one another's bodies to climb up over big walls?
Merlin: Well, as far as the dancing, they definitely respond to sound.
Merlin: They have used sound as a way to attract or distract walkers at various times.
Merlin: And that's one way you can really screw with somebody.
Merlin: If you play some loud music near somebody, you want to get walkered.
Merlin: Oh, booyah!
Merlin: In your face!
Merlin: I just walkered you!
Merlin: The rules have changed, my friend.
Merlin: The rules have changed.
John: Can you, in the Native American fashion, run a herd of walkers off a cliff?
Merlin: Oh, Lemming style.
Merlin: Well, that ends one.
Merlin: I don't want to spoil it for you because I know you're saving these for prison.
Merlin: No, that's Shakespeare.
Merlin: Shakespeare.
John: I presume I'll be in prison long enough to also watch these.
Merlin: They've tried that, and it seems like there's always some smart aleck that ends up screwing things up.
Merlin: But at one point, they were trying to run them all into a pit.
Merlin: That was a plan at one point.
Merlin: But I took you off your topic, though.
Merlin: So REI, for you and your family, was a place... Increasingly, you felt out of place there.
John: I felt estranged.
John: I would go in, I'd wander around, and what happened was all the technical fabrics, I think, allowed...
John: Oh, and also the pressure to have new stuff every season.
John: It turned Adventure Gear into this thing that wasn't, it was no longer being built for the best games.
John: What is a novel solution?
John: What's an inexpensive way to manufacture this while still maintaining the sort of false front that it is super durable?
John: It's technical without being durable.
John: Let's call it that.
John: They want it to blow up on you.
John: They want it to look like
John: five years ago so you have to get a new one and i'm not saying this is this is rei generating this from within their cooperative heart i think it's just the it's just a pandemic of outdoor gear and and well i i'll tell you something i heard now this is third hand but i remember i had a friend of a friend i heard from a friend of a friend who worked at the limited
Merlin: The girl's clothing store that was so popular.
Merlin: Also Canadian.
Merlin: and exchange it.
Merlin: I don't think they would give you cash, but they would do an exchange.
Merlin: Now, there's several interesting points here.
Merlin: One interesting point is, I mean, maybe setting aside the Esprit stuff, stuff that was very inexpensive to make, and they charged quite a markup on it, so there was some wiggle room to be able to afford
Merlin: That's how they get you, the wiggle room.
Merlin: That's how they get you.
Merlin: But then here, the other thing is what they discovered was, turns out, people who come in to do their free exchange, ha, ha, ha, put it to the man, end up buying stuff along with it.
Merlin: Hakuna Matata, the music goes around, and pretty soon everybody's wearing nothing but limited.
Merlin: You're basically returning limited or wearing limited all the time.
John: Right, because they can't, because, yeah, right, they're in the hole.
John: Sure, they're underwater, as they say.
John: I used to take my shoes back to Nordstrom,
John: Uh, and get a new pair of shoes and then wear them out and then take them back to Nordstrom because I was poor and I was, you know, and I still, I was poor, but I still felt like I should shop at Nordstrom.
John: Uh, and I brought, I finally brought a pair into a guy and he was a shoe salesman who was about my age.
John: And I was like, yeah, these shoes, I just feel like time to take them back.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: And he looked at me and he was like, I think you've gotten a lot of use out of these shoes, don't you?
John: And he shamed me into taking those shoes and walk me out the door.
John: And I was like, oh, my God, the salad days are over.
John: He didn't say no.
John: He just employed.
John: He did something much more effective than no.
John: Yeah.
John: He got you thinking.
John: Yeah.
John: He knowed me in a way that I never did it again.
John: Like, I don't take anything back now.
John: If I buy something and it doesn't work for me, I take it to the thrift store.
John: Let me ask you this.
John: If you were going to buy a house, I wonder why, I've never heard of this before, but if I were building a giant McMansion right now where I was designing it, instead of a panic room, I would build a wiggle room.
John: Why has nobody done this?
Merlin: I've never even heard of the idea for a wiggle room, and I'm fascinated.
Merlin: Build a fucking wiggle room.
Merlin: And then, first of all, it gives you wiggle room.
Merlin: It says it right there on the tin.
John: Right?
John: And then, who doesn't want a room where that's expressly the point of it?
John: Right?
John: Go in there and wiggle.
Hmm.
John: i love this idea yeah you got kids it's like god you kids go into the wiggle room get in the wiggle room and it wouldn't have to be that big it just has to be big enough to wiggle in well yeah but you'd want it to be you'd want it to be big enough for for uh you know if you needed wiggle room but also you know on friday night you and the lady looking for something you know looking for a little bit of a strange go down to the wiggle room oh man get your wiggle put the tarp on the floor
John: So what I'm saying is, why are people not having wiggles in every modern house?
Merlin: Oh, John, money on the table.
Merlin: Why aren't you on boards?
Merlin: You should be on more boards.
Merlin: You could help so many people with these ideas.
Merlin: I mean, you're pioneering this idea.
Merlin: You want to get the monk holes in there.
Merlin: You want escape valves.
Merlin: We've got secret walls, a wiggle room.
Merlin: I mean, this is just money on the table.
John: Money on the table.
John: So let me suggest, let me suggest a thing to you, which is that within the sailing community, which is a, so REI did a thing where they went from just sort of mountain Alpine.
John: They expanded at one point to prosumer goods.
John: Right.
John: And this happened to Eddie Bauer, too.
John: Eddie Bauer became more and more prosumer until they just prosumered their way right out of the pro, and they just became sumer.
John: REI still has enough pro, you can call them prosumer, but there's a lot of sumer in their pro.
John: But within the sailing community, which is, you know, a forgotten side of the adventure sport community, you know, they go on some gnarly adventures.
John: One might say even getting on a sailboat begins an adventure.
John: Hmm.
John: Because the sailboat could sink at any time.
John: And then where are you?
John: Oh, yeah, that's true.
John: What if you hit a shipping container in the middle of the South Indian Ocean?
John: What are you going to do?
John: What are you going to do?
John: You're going to try and build your boat back, but it's not going to work.
John: My lady's from Sailing People.
Merlin: Yeah, same way.
Merlin: They're very nautical.
Merlin: One of my brothers-in-law installs high-end electronics into high-end sea craft.
Merlin: So that could be your navigation system, your communication system.
Merlin: Often enough, let's be honest, it's an entertainment system, but that's what he does, and he's doing quite well with it.
Merlin: It's very nautical.
Merlin: Now, when I met my wife, she had, was it Helly Hanson?
Merlin: Was that the name of it?
Merlin: Yeah, it's pronounced Healy Hanson against all logic.
Merlin: See, but that's also how they get you, is the secret pronunciation.
Merlin: But she had a sailing jacket that she had inherited from her much, not inherited, well, this is before he passed away, but
Merlin: Anyway, she got her dad's old jacket, which is in beautiful condition.
Merlin: And I thought it was really cool.
Merlin: It was her go-to giant rain jacket.
Merlin: And it had a little thing where you could string a rope through it.
Merlin: How cool is that?
Merlin: Yep.
John: My dad's old tailored shirt.
John: Is that a spoon?
John: Tailored shirt.
John: Yes, it is spoon.
John: Good grab.
John: Good grab.
John: Fitted shirt.
John: Fitted shirt.
John: It was fitted shirt.
John: Fitted shirt.
John: Fitted shirt.
John: They don't make them like my dad's old fitted shirt.
John: Nope.
John: Nope.
John: But so sailing is the place where I have found there is still... Does it take you away?
John: It takes me away.
John: It does.
John: Sailing takes me away.
Merlin: Yeah, it's not far down to paradise.
Merlin: At least it's not for me.
Merlin: But when the wind is... Listen, when you see the Southern Cross, Merlin, that's when you know.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Think about how many times I have... Tried to... Yeah, right.
John: How many roads must a man walk down before...
John: He is before he's a bad man behind blue eyes.
Merlin: Yeah, before he's reluctant to travel because of his violation of...
Merlin: Anyway... He's out riding fences.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: So you go to... So you put in... You put into the Googs just something simple.
John: Okay.
John: I'm ready.
John: Like sailing clothes.
John: Sailing clothes.
John: Okay.
John: And you get this... You get websites like...
John: apps limited ap absolute absolute west coast sailing sailing pro shop and then you go in and you start looking at jackets in there and all of a sudden there are all these brands you never heard of okay and you go how is there how are there brands that i never heard of in what i would consider to be the outdoor adventure gear world wow there's these this this is these are some unusual designs
John: Because you're out there sailing and you're trying to, you know, when you come into the harbor, you've got a whole different group of people that you're trying to communicate with.
John: Oh, you're going to rep different.
John: You're going to rep a very different thing.
John: And if you're, if you, I'm sure there are people come into harbor in a, in an architerics, but the sailors know, oh,
John: You're trying to get away with the double duty here, right?
John: Were you recently skiing?
John: Like, I wasn't skiing.
John: I was just sailing.
John: And that's why I'm wearing this Gil or Zeke or Henry Lloyd outfit.
Merlin: Is it a little bit like wearing a football jersey to a baseball game?
John: Well, it depends.
John: How much do you want to culture jam?
Merlin: Especially if you're not actually playing the game professionally.
Merlin: I guess it doesn't matter that much.
John: But in San Francisco, if you show up in a jacket that...
John: is like sailing identifying.
John: If you sailing identify, 99% of the people out in there who are just coding, they're just writing codes for computers, they're not going to know the difference.
Merlin: I've got to be honest with you.
Merlin: I don't recognize, I don't read a lot of these as nautical wear.
Merlin: This is cool.
Merlin: This is one here, the Gil OS 2 sailing jacket.
Merlin: It looks kind of like the comic book character Deadpool.
Merlin: There's a lot of Nantucket shorts.
Merlin: I guess that gives you a waterproof butt.
Merlin: But no, honestly, if I saw a lot of this, this would not necessarily read as a sailing gear to me.
Merlin: Right.
John: And looking just at the first pull-down menu, you see things like shirts and rash guards.
Merlin: Rash guards.
John: Now, I don't think REI has a separate category for rash guards.
John: Hmm.
John: And then over here, this is an interesting combination.
John: Sunglasses, hats, and knee pads.
John: Like, those are grouped together.
Merlin: Sunglasses, hats, and knee pads.
Merlin: There's people in The Walking Dead that wear knee pads, just FYI.
John: Well, sure, because you're in combat mode, right?
John: They kind of look like umpires.
John: Well, you put together your own... This is one of the great things about a post-apocalypse environment.
John: You get to build your own armor.
John: Oh, that's true.
John: You get to build your own armor, and it's a very sort of Mad Max-y armor.
John: You're throwing together some bits and bobs.
Merlin: Yeah, it could be made out of old cans.
Merlin: You could get a helmet made of a water bottle.
Merlin: There's all kinds of things.
Merlin: Hockey helmet is a good one.
Merlin: Oh, my God, John.
Merlin: Oh, my God, John.
Merlin: I'm on Upslited, and I just got a pop-up live chat from Mike.
Merlin: Mike wants to say, hello, thank you for visiting.
Merlin: Can I help you in any way?
John: Oh, Mike is like, he's like paper clippy.
John: Oh, my God.
John: He's like, I see you're writing a document.
John: Would you like some help?
John: I see you don't know whether to shit or go sailing.
John: I see.
John: Yeah, I see you're writing a letter of resignation.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Okay, I'm closing that window.
John: Let's get out of here because I don't want to talk to Mike and I don't like Mike being there.
John: I hope he's gone.
John: I closed the window.
John: I don't know if he can still find me.
John: Well, he's there and he's like, well, gee, all I wanted to do was help.
John: Was that rude of me?
John: That was kind of rude of me.
John: Well, it depends.
John: Did you allow them to leave cookies?
Merlin: Well, this is my other problem.
Merlin: I don't like talking about coupons.
Merlin: I had to deal with that at the mall, too.
Merlin: But that's a whole separate issue.
Merlin: I just don't want to talk to people.
Merlin: I don't want to know that this coupon is good today.
Merlin: I don't want the coupon.
Merlin: And then when I use the coupon, I don't want you to talk to me about the coupon.
Merlin: I don't want you to tell me that you're going to give me the coupon to hang on to because I can still use it until February 14th.
Merlin: Now, do you have a Barnes & Noble membership card?
Merlin: No, I don't.
Merlin: I don't.
Merlin: Well, you know, if we can sign you up today and you can get a MasterCard.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: You know, what I want to do is be anywhere but talking about my coupon.
Merlin: Are you a member of any loyalty organization?
John: Yes.
John: Which ones?
Merlin: I technically... I mean, I have a...
Merlin: safeway number but i don't use it much the only one i use much is walgreens because it's on my watch which makes it easy you're there twice a day i'm there twice a day and it and it does sometimes if i frequently when i'm buying something there will be something i am purchasing at walgreens that is at their rock bottom prices but i only get the discount if i use my watch yep yep and do you is it a is it a is it a binger is it a fob or is it uh do you type in your number
Merlin: Well, you can also enter your phone number, which I don't love doing.
Merlin: But no, you hold your watch up and they scan it.
Merlin: Yeah, right, okay.
Merlin: They scan your watch, John.
Merlin: You think you'd want to do that?
Merlin: You think you'd want to have a watch people scan when you go to Walgreens?
Merlin: You think you'd like that?
Merlin: You'd beep some kind of fob.
Merlin: But you don't have an REI number.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I just don't have it with me.
Merlin: I might be on my phone somewhere.
Merlin: They gave me a fob.
Merlin: Basically, okay, I can tell you.
Merlin: I can tell you.
Merlin: I can look at my wallet.
Merlin: I can tell you.
Merlin: Not to be creepy.
Merlin: I've got a San Francisco Zoo card.
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: I belong to the zoo.
Merlin: You upgrade that every year?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: We used to belong to the Academy of Sciences, but that's super expensive.
Merlin: Remember that?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: We've done comedy there, you and me.
Merlin: Yeah, we have, and I've been there now several times.
John: They have a shark.
Merlin: Oh, they have a great aquarium.
Merlin: They have an albino alligator that you're not allowed to take pictures of.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: But see, we used to belong to that.
John: It'll degrade the paint on it over time.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: That's how they get you.
Merlin: I've also got a library card that I use very, very frequently.
Merlin: Good, good.
Merlin: What else do I have?
Merlin: Oh, I've got several sandwich cards.
Merlin: Oh, so you get punch cards from cafes and sandwiches.
Merlin: Only at one place.
Merlin: There's a place in my neighborhood where my daughter and I go a couple, three times a week, and I've got five full cards at this point.
Merlin: So I'm going to put that place out of business at some point.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Here you go.
John: I'm having a party.
John: They make a pastrami sandwich with crab salad on it.
John: So there's not a single fucking, I'm just going to say this, and we don't need to talk about it.
John: There's not a single goddamn deli in Seattle.
John: What?
John: Not a one.
Merlin: What has happened?
Merlin: Is it a diaspora, John?
Merlin: Have they all left?
Merlin: Why are there no delis?
John: There are places that purport to be delis.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Are they cute?
Merlin: Is it like a cute deli in air quotes kind of thing?
John: No, it's like... Artisanal Pickles.
John: It's not cute at all.
John: It's like real authentic New York City deli.
Merlin: Oh, it's like Angry Tattoos guys with the sink stoppers in their ears?
John: Yeah, where they're like, this is deli.
John: We're going to do it New York style.
John: And then you go in there and you're like, oh, no one in here has ever been to New York?
John: Because there is a New York style deli.
John: It is a wonderful thing.
John: And this is not it.
John: And it's not it in some simple ways that you could rectify in an afternoon if you had ever been to New York or knew at all what you're talking about.
John: And pound for pound, Whole Foods is probably closer to New York Daily than a lot of that bullshit.
John: Well, I think it's true.
John: And, you know, Seattle used to have a vibrant Jewish community that lived right in the center of town.
John: And now the Orthodox community has moved south of town.
John: But somehow, inexplicably, they have not built any delis down there.
John: And I think it's because Orthodox does something else.
John: They don't need to get matzah soup in a neighborhood.
John: I don't know where they're doing it.
John: Oh, that sucks.
John: There used to be a grocery store, a QFC, our premier brand.
John: Right.
John: I've been to a QFC with you.
John: There was a QFC that had a very large kosher section.
John: But then that QFC closed and the Safeway picked up the slack.
John: And so the Safeway...
John: There's a Safeway that has a kosher section, but it's also the Safeway that is the main Safeway of the hood, for lack of a better way of putting it.
John: And by that, I mean everyone in the South End, which is, as you know, America's most diverse zip code.
Merlin: Don't be creepy about it, but you live in the most diverse zip code.
John: In the United States.
John: The America's most diverse zip code.
John: So this Safeway is trying to be everything.
John: It's trying to be all things to all people.
John: Right.
John: And so you walk in and there's like, whoa, over here, you got a Jewish deli.
John: Over here, they got no soup.
John: There's like a big aisle.
John: Not me, not me.
John: There's a big aisle that appears to just be menudo.
John: There's like, I don't know how you have as many menudos as can be in a whole aisle.
Merlin: At our Safeway, there is...
Merlin: There's something like a deli, which is mainly, it's basically a step above a 7-Eleven hot bar.
Merlin: It's just basically uniformly golden brown foods and like salads from a five-gallon drum and frozen seafood.
Merlin: Fuck that.
Merlin: Our aisle, we have an aisle here, I believe it's called International.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: Which says everything you need to know about America today.
Merlin: At least they didn't say foreign.
Merlin: If you want something, if you are from anywhere in the continent of Asia, here's 11 feet that might interest you.
John: Or where's your paste picante sauce?
Merlin: Oh, right there at International.
John: With the Doritos.
John: So I have a little bit of an advantage here because my mom joins every program.
John: Every loyalty program.
John: Oh, okay.
John: They are all coded into her phone number, which I happen to know.
John: Oh, beep boop.
John: Right.
John: So if somebody's like, oh, you want to buy cupcakes, these are 99% off, but only if you have a loyalty card.
John: I beep boop hers.
John: You're also doing a little bit of culture jamming.
John: I like this.
John: And if there's any benefit to accrue, she can accrue it, right?
John: She can use those points.
John: I'm paying in.
John: I'm giving back.
John: But I don't have to deal with it.
John: Now, I don't know if you know the great Dan Savage.
John: Dan Savage has, you know, we all try to compensate for our lifestyles on the road.
John: We all have habits.
John: We all have little quirks.
John: Dan Savage did a very interesting thing.
John: which is he keeps every single key card from every hotel he stays in.
John: And because Dan tours extensively doing his Savage Love shows and various, you know, he does speaking.
John: He goes out with the It Gets Better campaign.
John: He's been all over the world.
John: And he has collected not just a stack of key cards, but he had to then move over and go to a second stack.
Merlin: I approve of this hobby.
Merlin: This is an interesting hobby.
John: Yeah, so he keeps a very small group of things right on his mantle, and it's just two enormous stacks of key cards.
John: And as you know from living at some point in your life in a key card economy, as soon as you leave the hotel, you can no longer look at the key card and...
John: And know anything about when you stayed there, what it was about.
John: It's just another Marriott.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: It's just like this is meaningless.
John: It has no dates on it.
John: It tells me nothing.
John: Now, maybe if I had a key card reader, I could put it in and it would say something about me.
John: Oh, I'll bet it does.
John: But as far as I know, and a lot of them are just blank.
John: But he's kept them all, and it's admirable, and it's up on the mantle, and it's like, that's... I love that.
Merlin: It's like my grandpa always used to grab a book of matches and then put it in a big brandy snifter on top of the TV.
John: So my dad had that exact collection, and I inherited it.
John: Oh.
John: Now I have a giant urn of 1970s and 60s matchbooks, which I cannot use because, of course, I treasure them.
John: And so somebody's like, you got a match?
John: And I'm like, nope, sorry.
John: Yeah, you're facing my ass.
John: It's still funny.
John: I wish somebody would ask me for a match.
John: You tap it all the time, and now it never happens.
Merlin: You're embracing my collapse.
John: You have a match.
John: I point over to, you know, I have 20,000 matches.
John: Yeah, I got a match.
John: I also have a swivel stick, you know, from every... You know, cards.
Merlin: Cards are interesting because I'll bet you they are.
Merlin: I would be surprised if large hotel companies were not using that data for money.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I'll bet there's all kinds of interesting stuff that they could get out of that data.
Merlin: I mean, at the very least, you can understand stuff like traffic patterns, right?
Merlin: You can understand that like, oh, you know, this person goes like in those places where you got to like run the car to get to the ice or whatever.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Just basic traffic patterns, because that affects their margins are so fucking thin on those hotels, and they're cutting corners all the time.
Merlin: And just think about the basic optimization.
Merlin: It seems to me that the most basic optimization, and probably one of the biggest cost centers, is turning rooms over with housekeeping, et cetera.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right?
John: And I'm a late checkout guy.
John: Every time, late checkout.
Merlin: Oh, I always ask.
Merlin: But, you know, I mean, for example, you know, they recently, a lot of the places have taken minibars.
Merlin: out of the rooms do you know why i'm grateful because i hate those things well here's here's why they do it because it turns out it was more costly to maintain them in the aggregate than the money that they were making so no kidding it wasn't even apparently it wasn't even worth the labor of that guy coming and knocking on your door at 10 45 why the fuck are you here i'm gonna check the mini bar okay still here still here yeah still there buddy so good
Merlin: All good.
Merlin: Well, that makes sense.
Merlin: But you know what?
Merlin: But there's a lot of data to clean.
Merlin: I'll tell you another thing.
Merlin: If you live in San Francisco and you're like me, you get what's called a Clipper card.
Merlin: You get a Clipper card.
Merlin: Clipper card is the thing that lets you basically, you can put money on it and use it on all the different Bay Area transit things.
Merlin: What a lot of people don't know is that you can go in and your history of where you've traveled, where you ran your car...
John: it's all in no dog really i've done it i've gone and looked at it because we have orca cards up here now because the orca of course is the symbol of the northwest yes and the orca card allows you to travel everywhere but there's a system apparently where you bloop your card and then i get i haven't read up on it but i guess when you get to where you're going you unbloop your card
Merlin: Oh, like on BART, for example, BART's weird because I still don't understand how this works or why this works.
Merlin: I guess it makes sense because the nature of BART is you pay for how many, like how far you went, how many stations.
Merlin: So you run BART.
Merlin: You've used BART.
Merlin: This is different from uni for people who don't know or care.
Merlin: Muni is the San Francisco one where if you're an honest citizen, you run your card.
Merlin: It charges you $2.25, and you can ride as much as you want for 90 minutes.
Merlin: With BART, you run your card, and it doesn't charge it.
Merlin: But then when you get off, to get out of BART, you have to run it again, and that's when it takes the credit off your account.
John: Right.
John: Well, so the way Seattle has decided their thing works is it's sort of like Amsterdam.
John: You get on...
John: There's no turnstile.
John: You just go down and get on.
Merlin: Touchless.
John: Yeah.
John: If you are an honest person, you bloop your card.
John: If you're not, you just are a scofflaw and you write it until some security officer comes on and starts walking down the thing asking to see everybody's thing.
John: And then he has a little handheld thing.
John: He bloops your card.
John: Yeah.
John: If you haven't blooped it, then you're – I don't know what.
John: You're in big trouble.
John: You go to subway prison.
John: You get a ticket.
Merlin: You get a ticket.
Merlin: Where you get to read Shakespeare.
John: But the thing about that – this is true in Amsterdam and it's true, I guess, in the Seattle thing – is if you're watching and the train pulls in and you see –
John: Because in Amsterdam, at least, they have five enforcement officers if the trains that day have five doors.
John: And so the train pulls up and a person gets on each door.
John: Oh, I see.
John: But they don't check the people who are getting off at that stop.
Merlin: So you just you just waited out.
John: Yeah, you look for him.
John: And if you pull up to a train and they're there, like all the all the scoff laws are like, this is my stop.
John: And then they're free.
John: And so it's only grabbing the scoff laws who aren't paying attention.
John: I don't know how it works in Seattle because I've never seen one of these guys get on.
John: But I'm a law-abiding citizen.
John: I want to do the thing.
John: I blew my card.
Merlin: I feel terrible.
Merlin: I feel terrible.
Merlin: If for some reason, like, it's so dumb.
Merlin: The two things I sweat are the library and Muni.
Merlin: I feel so guilty because I have a card for me and a card for my daughter.
Merlin: I pay full adult fare for my daughter because I can't be bothered to go and buy a kid's card downtown.
Merlin: And so it's cost us $5 each time we ride the train.
Merlin: No big.
Merlin: But sometimes it goes boop, boop, boop.
Merlin: And I go, oh, God damn it.
Merlin: What'd you do wrong?
Merlin: What'd you do wrong?
Merlin: Well, it's that means like we ran out of credit and I didn't realize it and I forgot to add more to it.
Merlin: And I'm like, oh, God, I'm scurrying to the front of the train to go pay cash because like I feel so guilty when I do it.
John: No, you don't want to be that guy.
John: But so I never unboop.
John: And I guess what that means is I pay full fare to go everywhere.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: It's like parking.
Merlin: It's like, you know, if you leave your car there, they just assume that.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Assume you've been there the whole time.
Merlin: You know what I mean, right?
Merlin: You get charged for the whole month or whatever.
John: You pay the maximum charge.
Yeah.
John: So I haven't quite figured out the Orca card, and I'm guessing that if I went and looked at my history, it would just say every time you get on the train, you go all the way to the end.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
Merlin: Well, there was a movement a while back, to go back to your membership cards, there was a movement a while back of people saying, hey, look, you have Safeway parties, where people would go, and it was just an excuse for, it might just be everybody at a table at a bar, but everybody would swap Safeway cards.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Why?
Merlin: Every time you meet a friend, you swap Safeway cards.
Merlin: Why?
Merlin: Because the discount is identical, and it screws with their chronographics and data gathering.
Merlin: Culture jamming.
Merlin: Culture jamming, because the thing is, you go, oh, you know, this 22-year-old woman is suddenly buying a lot more organic products and vitamins.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: What's your thingy?
Merlin: And so this is, that means she's going to have a baby.
Merlin: And so now you're into what's called chronographics, which is once you're able to figure out how old somebody is and what they do, you can tailor many things to them.
Merlin: And then at Walgreens, they give you a goddamn coupon.
Merlin: Coupons!
Merlin: Again with the coupons.
Merlin: I buy my Claritin, and then they give me a coupon for Claritin.
Merlin: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: People who bought this also bought Claritin.
Merlin: People who bought a clock also bought three clocks.
John: But here's what I'm worried about.
John: Why would I want to start getting special offers for being pregnant?
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: It's a lot like Tor.
Merlin: You've got to ask yourself, I don't know what Tor is, but if I did, I would say the problem is... It's the onion, right?
Merlin: Tor is the onion.
Merlin: Tor is the onion.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Joe Biden.
Merlin: And so the thing is, though, you got to ask yourself, well, you know, yeah, maybe it's going to cover up, you know, whatever it is that I'm doing.
Merlin: But remember, your IP is also being used for whatever somebody else is doing.
Merlin: So, yeah, exactly.
Merlin: You get what I'm saying, right?
Merlin: You got to ask yourself.
Merlin: You go and switch SIM cards.
Merlin: Is this my beautiful house?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: How did I get here?
John: Okay, so I get the culture jamming aspect of it.
John: So basically culture jam style, when I go to the supermarket, basically the supermarket is receiving two pieces of information.
John: One is coming from an 82-year-old woman who goes to the grocery store or the drugstore every single day and buys, like...
John: A completely random old lady set of things because my mom is, you know, she's not not a normal old lady.
John: Right.
John: She's buying like like who knows what she buys, frankly.
John: And then I go in there and typically the only things I buy anywhere are chocolate cake and cream for my coffee, right?
Merlin: Okay.
John: Half and half and a piece of chocolate cake.
John: And so they've got to be like this little old lady.
John: First of all, she's up at five.
John: Yep.
John: Because she's at the store the moment it opens to buy barrettes.
John: I don't know what she's buying.
John: Sure.
John: Little things.
John: She likes to go.
John: She's like old school.
John: She likes to go to the store every day, kind of like you.
John: And then generally at 11.45, 15 minutes before the store closes, she comes back and buys chocolate cake and half and half.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, what are we to make of this?
John: How do we tailor...
John: how do we tailor the the the circular they got uh yeah how do we shape the algorithm right do you think they ever want to just like pull the tape on that and go look and see what's going on it's all you know oh oh my god you're gonna love this my mom called a uh a phone tree the other day she called a place oh you know what it was it was a the printer stopped working okay and so she called the helpline and she made it through the phone tree
John: Uh, and she put in her, you know, her home address and her social security number.
John: Not really.
John: She didn't put her in her social security number.
John: I've told her not to do that, but she put in the, the number on the printer and all this stuff.
John: And then finally she got somebody who had never heard of her and needed her to tell them all that information.
John: And then, uh, she talked to that person for 20 minutes.
John: Person was like struggling to solve a problem.
John: And then they got cut off.
John: Oh, God.
John: Right.
John: All the thing back.
John: And the first voice came on.
John: Hello.
John: Welcome to Epson.
John: And she yelled into the phone.
John: I just spent 70 minutes talking to your person.
John: And I did, you know, and it, according to her, clicked immediately to an operator.
John: Wow.
John: And so we were driving in the car, and she was thinking about what had happened because she felt like she had discovered a hack.
John: If you yell at the phone, it will understand, and it will take you immediately to an operator.
Merlin: What she couldn't decide— I've done this.
John: Oh, is that right?
Merlin: Oh, yeah, because it used to be time—I'm sorry, I cut off your story.
Merlin: Please go ahead.
John: Well, she couldn't decide.
John: She was toying with two options.
John: Did the algorithm understand her words?
John: Did the algorithm understand her tone?
Merlin: I think it's purely volume.
Merlin: Try this.
Merlin: Next time this happens to you.
Merlin: So it used to be in the 90s, if you were a smart cookie, you knew a thing, which is in the early days of phone trees, everybody eventually learned if you just hit zero over and over and over, and eventually it'll go through.
Merlin: Well, now remember, your options have recently changed.
Merlin: I haven't done this in a while because I can't be helped.
Merlin: I won't call places anymore.
Merlin: I don't want to say the word, but just scream the F word repeatedly.
Whoa.
Merlin: I don't know why I'm suddenly so careful about this.
Merlin: No way, really?
Merlin: You scream the F word over and over, and it'll cut you over to an operator.
Merlin: Just for fun, try it.
Merlin: Call Epson and see if it works, just for fun.
Merlin: Now, you probably could be yelling, Tom Bombadil, and it would take you anyway.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Or Tom Bombadil would show up.
John: Which would also be cool.
John: Is he a troublemaker, John?
John: It's hard to know.
John: He may be the oldest living thing.
John: He may be the personification of nature.
John: Oh, my goodness.
John: But there is some suggestion that he's older than the rings.
John: Older than the oldest elves.
John: Wow.
John: And that he is chosen.
John: He precedes the ring.
John: He precedes it all.
John: And he's chosen to live, you know, self...
John: Constrained on this little plot.
John: Tom Bombadil.
John: The oldest of the old.
John: The most ancient.
John: And so if I could conjure him and he'd show up here at my house and I'd be like, Tom, God, I can't find my computer.
John: And Tom Bombadil, he never seems to get bored, right?
John: Tom Bombadil never seems to be bored.
John: All the photos of him, he looks like he's doing a little dance.
John: He looks very jolly.
Yeah.
John: You know what he's bored by?
John: The ring, which has no effect on him.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: He takes the ring, he messes with it for a while, he fools with it, and he's like, hmm, bored, gives it back.
John: The one thing that everybody else is obsessed with that he's bored by, the ring.
John: Hipster.
John: So here's my question.
John: Dan Savage style, do you think there's anyone listening to our program that has kept every fob?
John: Like all the room keys?
John: No, not every – well, like the room keys, but it's not room keys.
John: It's fobs.
Merlin: Oh, you mean like – okay, so like when you go to our library and get a library card, you get a normal size, like whatever that is, fobs.
Merlin: Four by two, whatever standard credit card size goes into your wallet.
Merlin: You get that.
Merlin: And then you get a little thing like your gym membership thing.
Merlin: That's what you mean by a fob, like the little guy.
John: Yeah.
John: The little one that's supposed to go on your key chain.
John: Yeah.
John: Is there someone out there who just their own little peccadilloes?
Merlin: uh they carry around the key ring with all of the little oh i see okay so you're saying is there anybody in our audience that's right who gets the fob uses the fob keeps using the fob and they just get a big ass keychain full of fobs a keychain full of fobs yeah that was an excellent spin doctor's record
John: Because you see, right, people that... I've seen them.
Merlin: There's a key culture.
Merlin: We've talked about this.
John: There's the key culture.
John: The 900 keys on their key ring.
John: But there's got to now be a fob culture.
John: Because I keep getting... And I'm not even talking about... Let's leave aside the ones that you get from Walgreens that are a little paper thing on your keychain.
John: People keep giving me fobs that actually are...
John: The size and shape of a cookie, like an actual, like, Keebler's cookie.
John: Like, Keebler elf who are still younger than Tom Bombadil.
John: And they, are they, because they're elves, not dwarves, right?
John: Are they dwarves?
John: Little people?
Merlin: Are you talking about the ones that live in a tree?
Merlin: Well, they call them elves, but they don't look like what we've come to believe elves look like.
Merlin: No, they're not like wood elves.
Merlin: They're closer to what we would think of, I think, as a dwarf.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: With the hat.
Merlin: They have the hat.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Elves I think of as being those elegant creatures that look like the guy from The Matrix.
Right.
John: Sure.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Or that actress, that actress with the father in Aerosmith.
Merlin: Like, isn't she an elf?
Merlin: I think she's an elf.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: What about Claire Danes?
Merlin: Is she an elf?
Merlin: Oh, well, she had wings in that Soul Asylum video.
Merlin: She's on Homeland.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: That's a really good question.
Merlin: She remember she she gets angel wings in that in that video.
Merlin: Oh, hmm.
John: No, I stopped watching Arrow Smith videos after a while.
John: No, what's the one, the one, the not Claire Danes, but the one who played Benny Davis?
Merlin: Oh, Cate Blanchett?
Merlin: Cate Blanchett?
John: Yeah, Cate Blanchett.
Merlin: Yeah, I think she's an elf, and then you got, I think his name is Hugo Weaving.
Merlin: He's the guy who's V for Vendetta, and he's also the agent with the sunglasses in the Jell-O movie.
Merlin: do you know what's he you know when i learned he was the uh v for vendetta i was i was very i was it couldn't have been a better guy because boy what an emotive performance you know what i heard i heard that was actually i heard that they attempted very briefly i'm just repeating something i heard on a podcast but i heard they attempted very briefly to have a stand in for him and have him just do the voice but i've heard pretty much that whole movie is that actor in a mask yeah and it's his performance is amazing i really like that movie
John: Yeah, it would have to be him because you couldn't duplicate that kind of body language.
John: That amount of sensitivity to the physicality of that role.
Merlin: A lot of guys on the internet, I really think that's how they look or seem.
Merlin: Like that.
Merlin: Oh, a lot of gracious gestures.
Merlin: Swords.
John: Yeah.
John: Jukebox.
John: Swords and sorcery?
John: Do you think they use sorcery?
John: Could be.
John: I've been to Ashland, Oregon.
John: I know how much sorcery there is.
Merlin: I thought, what about that place in Arizona?
Merlin: What's it called?
Merlin: Fredonia?
Merlin: Isn't there that place that's got, like, crystal energy?
Merlin: What's it called?
Merlin: Sedona.
Merlin: Sedona Fredonia.
Merlin: Babylonia, Arizona?
Merlin: Babylonia, Arizona.
Merlin: Got a condo made of stone up.
John: Well, there's that place north of Joshua Tree with the giant pyramid made out of copper tubing.
John: No.
John: Well, yeah.
Merlin: I've been to 29 Palms.
Merlin: Were you ever in the Marines?
Merlin: We were talking about this.
Merlin: I talked about this with your family.
Merlin: 29 Palms, they've got a nice-ass place you can go and stay there.
Merlin: It's very interesting.
Merlin: It's got a lot of military training and hippies.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: How'd that trip go, by the way?
John: Did they have fun at Joshua Tree?
John: I think everyone had fun.
John: I don't think they went to Joshua Tree.
John: That's partly why they had fun.
John: I think they stayed in Palm Springs the entire time.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
John: But I recently was looking at real estate in Joshua Tree.
John: Okay.
John: And here's what's confusing about buying a vacation home in Joshua Tree.
Okay.
John: So you go on your favorite real estate website.
John: Sure.
John: You go to your Truefin or Angliophile or House Bastard.
John: And you go on there and you put in Joshua Tree Vacation Home or Joshua Tree Home Real Estate.
Mm-hmm.
John: And up pops a lot of things.
John: And you can buy 50 acres in Joshua Tree for $5,000.
John: Or you can buy 50 acres in Joshua Tree for a million dollars.
Merlin: Location, location, location.
John: Right.
John: And looking at 24 pictures of both plots of land, they are indistinguishable as far as I can see.
John: There's no water on either one of them.
John: There is nothing green on either one of them.
John: They look like the surface of Mars.
John: And as far as I can tell, both of them have manufactured homes situated on them with enough parking for 40 vehicles.
John: And you go, hmm, I'll buy the $5,000 one.
John: It's time for a compound.
John: Right?
John: But I don't know.
John: Like, I guess, unlike almost every other place, you really would need to go to Joshua Tree.
John: Get a local by the short hairs and walk them out there and say, why is this one five thousand and that one is a million?
John: And then they are going to say, oh, the five thousand dollar one is haunted by the ghosts of our ancestors.
John: And the million dollar one is where it's where the ancestors had wiggle room.
John: There's good AT&T coverage there.
John: Sure, that might be it too, right?
John: But like, if you're going to build a house in Joshua Tree, like here in Seattle, you buy a lot, you get a bulldozer in there, you flatten out the dirt, maybe you dig a hole, build a house.
John: There, you would have to use dynamite.
John: Oh, because it's rocky?
John: Yeah, it's like lava-y, right?
John: You would have to use dynamite just to clear a space for the bulldozer to work.
John: So I got pretty close to abandoning the whole idea of a vacation home in Joshua Tree in one session.
John: One session of looking, I was confused enough.
John: that I felt like if I'm going to go to Joshua Tree for a vacation, I'm just going to Airbnb a place.
Merlin: You know, you could learn more, but I think you're talking about something that's just smart in general.
Merlin: You know that old line about like if you don't know who the asshole is, it's you.
Merlin: If you don't know who the customer is, it's you.
Merlin: If you don't know who the product is, it's you.
Merlin: Same here.
Merlin: Like, you know, in a case like that where you go like, wait a minute, beware of situations where you know less than any other person involved.
Merlin: That can be a very costly decision.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, sure.
John: Right.
John: You don't want to be the one that's like, you know what?
John: I got this.
Merlin: Oh, this seems nice.
Merlin: We're near a stream and there's a grocery store and you're like, uh-huh, but you don't know about the haunting.
John: Yeah.
John: What about the haunting?
John: You didn't think about the haunting.
Merlin: Or it could be like that place that the FBI keeps busting because they think all the terrorist cell phones are there.
Merlin: Did you hear about that?
Merlin: Well, is that out in eastern Oregon?
Merlin: There was a place, I forget where, but there was this big mystery about this one location.
Merlin: Nobody could figure out why.
Merlin: This nice little normal hipster couple lived in this house, and they kept getting raided by different places.
Merlin: Were they getting doxxed by 4chan?
John: No.
John: I don't know.
John: Because that seems like a good dox.
John: Yeah.
John: This house, this hipster house is full of terrorist cell phones.
Merlin: I'm just saying, beware of real estate agents bearing gifts is all I'm saying.
John: Well, sure.
John: Because, you know, there's another rule of thumb, at least in these rainy climes.
John: Yeah.
John: Don't buy the lowest house.
John: Oh, boy.
Merlin: right do not buy the geographically lowest this is the joke john and it's not even that funny once you understand why it's a joke but everybody goes oh you know what is it what is it the tornadoes have against mobile homes ha ha ha well what tornadoes have against mobile homes is they're built in the cheapest lowest lying place in the entire community which is always wiped out by tornadoes ha ha ha oh weather hates poor people stupid people keep building all their stupidness near the stupid tornado
John: We had a similar thing in Anchorage, which is there's a gap in the mountains outside of Anchorage that is basically a giant wind tunnel that funnels all wind, funnels the entire wind.
John: All the wind.
John: Every bit of the wind, it funnels down through this valley, and the valley is pointed like a blunderbuss at a certain neighborhood of Seattle called Muldoon.
John: And Muldoon is a place where there are trailer home parks.
John: And when the wind really gets cooking, which it does every, you know, it's like a hundred year storm that happens every eight years.
John: The wind comes down that blunderbuss.
John: And the thing about it is the gap in the mountains is not straight on.
John: Like if you're standing in Anchorage and you look up at the mountains, you don't see a valley pointed at you.
John: Okay.
John: It's coming at you at an angle.
John: So the mountains just look like a kind of contiguous mountain range with lots of interesting sort of depth to it.
John: But somewhere up there, there's a spot that if you look at it from the side, wow, you can see all the way up to where the wind lives.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And this thing shoots that wind down there and will pick up a mobile home and just take it.
John: Just take the mobile.
John: You'll never see it again.
Merlin: Is it a gust?
Merlin: I mean, does it come out of nowhere?
John: Well, so there are what they call sustained gusts.
John: And for me, that seems to be like a contradiction in terms.
John: A gust is, by definition, not sustained.
John: But sustained gusts, which...
John: At a certain point, you get these hurricane force winds, and they're just picking up trailer homes, and they are destroying them.
John: Flattening them like matchsticks, and also taking them up to the sky, never to be seen again.
John: Taking them up, and the yapping dogs inside, and gone forever.
John: Yeah.
John: and it's the same thing like why do they keep why does the wind hate the trailer homes it's like well those are the only things that get built in that area probably be for this very same reason tornado alley wind wind killer zone dust persistent gas i was uh sharing some of your wisdom with my daughter just last week
Merlin: The thing you taught me about learning to look at the land, like where people decided to settle and like why they settled there.
Merlin: And like notice how often it's like near a body of water that could be used for shipping or it's not on the top of a mountain because it would be hard to build a house there.
Merlin: And this is a good place for a railroad.
Merlin: I still think about that all the time.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Why is it there on the river?
John: Well, because that's the place that you could cross the river and everywhere else on that river, it would be much harder to cross it.
John: And also, that's the place where the water's running fastest, where we can build a wheel and use it for power.
Merlin: Somebody must have tried to teach me this in school.
Merlin: No, I don't think so.
Merlin: I don't think this is the type of thing that they try to teach us for.
Merlin: It's so interesting.
Merlin: I feel like some bleeding-hard liberal in the 70s, it must have occurred to them to go, you ever wonder why Cincinnati's built on what we call the Ohio River?
John: I don't think so.
John: I think they were so busy saying...
John: What year was the War of 1812?
John: Yeah, right.
John: They're just trying to tick off boxes, and they're not sitting there saying, let's think about this.
John: Let's go and take a look and see and dream.
John: Let's dream.
John: Even the hippie teachers didn't have the wherewithal.
John: Oh, that's so sad.
John: They just didn't have permission to dream.
John: They didn't have permission to dream.
John: In fact, their dreams...
John: Their dreams did not become reality.
John: Their dreams were thwarted and capped.
John: And I think what we've lost now is even the knowledge that there once were dreams.
John: Oh, my goodness.
John: Right?
John: Nobody's going into the schools and saying, why is Cincinnati built on the Ohio River?
John: I mean, it wasn't called Cincinnati or the Ohio River at one point.
John: Nope, nope, nope, nope.
John: We got the renaming rights.
Merlin: It's not like AT&T Park, but for a state.
John: But, you know, when people are coming into a turf, and they're coming in and taking a territory away from somebody that might have been already there, they're not bouncing them off of their territory that they spent 900 years figuring out was the best.
John: and then building something a mile and a half away just to be different.
John: They're bouncing them off the best land, and then they're building their thing there.
John: It's not very nice.
John: Well, you know, they weren't thinking in terms of nice.
John: No.
John: But what's the big – here, let me query you about Cincinnati.
John: Yes.
John: What's the big diagonal street in Cincinnati that is a major thoroughfare but appears to not –
Merlin: conform to the grid oh geez i don't know i wasn't there when i was of driving age we lived in the northwest part of town mostly so i mean i've been downtown a lot we drive by downtown a lot but i'm not sure i don't think i know the answer to that i mean their version of market street basically
John: Yeah, typically in a city there is generally going to be one, and this starts in the old part of town, one street that does not conform to the grid that's a major thoroughfare.
Merlin: Oh, that's like the Ur Road.
John: Yeah, that's the Indian Trail.
John: Okay.
John: Right.
John: That's the one that they built the road right along the Indian Trail because that was obviously the best route.
John: It's like Wacker Drive, right?
John: It's like Chief Wacker probably built that.
John: Right.
John: Wacker Drive.
John: And then they build the town up around it and somebody comes along and is like, we need to put this town into a grid.
John: But we can't do that to Wacker Road because Herr Wacker, the original chief of this area.
Merlin: Yep, the original Illinoisian.
John: Yeah, like all the buildings are on that road already.
John: But we're going to build a grid around it.
John: And then this road is going to be either the shortcut or the confounding conundrum road.
Merlin: That would be Market Street for us.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: What is that in Seattle?
Merlin: Do you have one of those?
John: Well, so there's, so Seattle is very confusingly built the following way.
John: One of the early, so the early settlers came and they all claimed a sort of, well, a claim of a certain portion of what became downtown Seattle.
John: And one person thought that the roads should be parallel to the water.
John: which made sense, right?
John: First Avenue, Second Avenue, Third Avenue, as they come up from the water, because the water, there was a shore that was fairly even.
John: That shore does not point north-south.
John: It is sort of northwest by southeast, but the streets downtown are parallel to that coast.
John: That was one guy's idea.
John: And then another person thought that the streets should be oriented true north-south, right?
John: So he started building, on his claim, north-south.
John: And then a third person thought that their roads should just be built according to their own whim.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And there might even have been a fourth person that thought that the roads should go according to the ridgeline plan.
John: of the hill, one hill back.
John: And so when they finally... But everybody's got their own program here.
John: Right.
John: And so when the city grew up enough that these areas needed to be connected, nobody said, all right, we're going to tear down your whole neighborhood and rebuild it because this is dumb.
John: They just connected it all.
John: And so if you look at an overhead map of Seattle, you will see that the streets go every which way.
John: It's like a broken window
John: Or if you gave LSD to a spider.
John: And I don't know if you've ever given LSD to a spider, but boy.
Merlin: I think I remember seeing photos of LSD spider webs in health class.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and they were basically every one of them a map of Seattle.
John: But the main thoroughfares are a Demi, which goes all the way up and over and down.
John: And that, of course, is named after Mr. Denny, whose area that was.
John: And then there's Boren, which goes the other way, Cattywampus Canoodle, over this way.
John: And that's named after Mr. Boren.
John: And, you know, then you got James, which is named after Mr. James, and Yesler, named after Mr. Yesler.
Merlin: Pretty consistent in the naming, if not in the implementation.
John: Right.
John: They're all going their own way.
John: They can go their own way.
Merlin: Call it another day.
John: That's right.
John: And it makes it, if you know what you're doing in Seattle, you can go from Denny to Boren to Yesler.
John: And you get there.
John: You get there a lot faster.
John: Take Denny to Bourne, Bourne to Yesler.
John: If you don't know what you're doing and you think that you just will drive down this one street that has a number and it will take you to somewhere else, you're a fool.
John: Because you will not get there.
Merlin: Can't get there from here.
John: That's right.
John: You'll end up going until somebody, until somehow you get funneled down to Bourne and then to Yesler.
Merlin: Bourne and Yesler.
Merlin: Tinkered ever is the chance.
John: That's right.
John: But I think, you know, like in New York City, you're going to get your Broadway that goes from hither to thither.
Merlin: Right, Broadway's up, Battery's down.
Merlin: That's right.
John: Well, yeah, it's the... Is that right?
John: Well, it's the... Most of what I know from New York, I've learned from musicals.
John: Yeah, the Bronx is up and the Battery's down.
John: Okay, which one am I?
John: You're the Bronx.
John: Okay.
John: You know, I went...
John: finally on a tour a self-guided tour of uh of the bronx proper oh nice just just a couple of months ago i was there i was giving a tour of new york uh to my lady friend my millennial girlfriend yeah driving around and we were coming back from somewhere up north coming back from poughkeepsie or something
John: And I was like, and down here, over here, off the freeway here, you'll see the Bronx.
John: And I started giving her a description of the history of the Bronx.
John: Bronx has got a long and storied history.
John: Fort Apache, they're in the Bronx.
John: Fort Apache, the Bronx.
John: And she said, well, I want to see the Bronx.
John: And I was like, oh, well, generally you don't see the Bronx.
John: Generally you just refer to the Bronx.
John: You point to the Bronx on a map or you look at the Bronx as you go over it on the freeway.
John: And she said, well, I would prefer to get off the freeway and see the Bronx.
John: I said, this will be fun.
John: And we got down off the freeway and we drove around the Bronx all night long.
John: And it was extraordinary.
John: Really?
John: A lot going on in the Bronx.
John: And you wouldn't know it by looking at it on a map.
John: You have to be down there on the streets of the Bronx looking at it.
John: And, yeah, so I learned a new thing.
John: Well, I learned two new things.
John: Listen to what my millennial girlfriend says.
John: Yeah.
John: And also then go to the Bronx.
Merlin: They're not just changing the way that wine is sold.
Merlin: They're also changing our idea of how we interact with the Bronx.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
John: We have a lot to thank the millennials for.
John: Oh, so much to learn from the millennials.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm learning every day, every single day.
Merlin: Do you look at it that way?
Merlin: You look at it as a learning experience?
John: Well, you got to look at it somehow.
John: And, you know, after 40 different people wrote me emails telling me not to use the term Bernie bro because it's racist.
Merlin: Oh, racist against whom?
John: Bernie bros.
John: Who don't exist.
John: By the way, BTW, they do not exist.
Merlin: BTW, so it's racist to white people?
John: yeah to bernie bros who are who don't exist but it's equivalent to racism oh it's equivalent to racism because everything now that hurts your feelings is equivalent to racism this is another thing that i learned from millenniums we've switched this generation's racism with folgers crystals let's see if they notice hey he never asks for another cup of my racism
Merlin: We prefer Bernie Americans.