Ep. 261: "Two Swords in Da Nang"
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you by Mack Weldon.
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Merlin: Mack Weldon.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin, man.
John: How's it going, John Roderick?
John: Good.
John: Does anybody ever call you Merlin Mang?
John: Merlin Mang.
Merlin: You know, I don't get that one too much.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I was telling my daughter that you're one of a very small handful of people who still call me Merle.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: And she's heard that name like twice ever.
Merlin: She thinks it's really weird.
Merlin: Merle.
Merlin: Merle.
Merlin: Because we've been to the comic shop and talked to the guy at the comic shop.
Merlin: He's not technically the owner, although he's kind of the owner.
Merlin: You know, it's a co-op.
Merlin: But the owner's name is Christian.
Yeah.
Merlin: And so he's a little bit younger than me, but he came up at a time where people go, oh, like Sister Christian.
Merlin: So as soon as he discovered that Night Ranger was coming out with a song called Sister, he preemptively told people to call him Chris.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: And that got us talking about the name thing.
John: He knew that.
John: He knew that.
John: Even then, he knew to say...
John: I'd better get ahead of this.
Merlin: Yeah, he got in front of his skis on that, which I think is kind of smart.
Merlin: Don't tell me you love me, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: And so who calls you a memorial?
Merlin: You, my lady friend, sometimes.
Merlin: She doesn't really refer to me by name.
Merlin: It doesn't come up very much.
John: But it's kind of like a familial...
John: Familial.
John: Familia.
John: Familia.
Merlin: Sounds like a kind of Italian cheese.
Merlin: Familia.
Merlin: Familia.
Merlin: Familia.
John: Memento Mori.
John: Yeah, it's a little, you know, it's a diminutive.
John: It's like, hey.
John: I knew a kid in elementary school named Clark, and his mother called him Clarky.
John: Oh, I think that's sweet.
John: Well, it is sweet, but that's a tough name to put a...
John: To put a little like E on the end.
John: Clarkie.
John: It makes it extra clicky.
John: Clarkie.
John: It is.
John: Clarkie.
John: There was a girl in my high school named Charkie.
John: Charkie?
John: Charkie.
John: Like C-H?
John: C-H-A-R-K-I-E.
John: Charkie.
John: That was her name.
Merlin: The guy from Creeper Lagoon was named Sharkie.
Merlin: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: Sharkie.
Merlin: He just started a new service where a touring band can rent a van from him.
Merlin: That's a profitable business.
John: Anyway, Sharky.
John: Well, you remember Sharky's Machine starring Burt Reynolds.
John: Oh, yes, I sure do.
John: Sharky's Machine.
John: So there's more than one person named Sharky.
John: I've never met another person named Sharky.
John: I still know Sharky.
John: Sharky.
John: At the time in high school, you would never have thought that Sharky and I would know one another differently.
John: 30 years later.
John: But she lives in Seattle, and she sometimes comes to my shows, and she's very supportive.
Merlin: That's so nice.
Merlin: I don't know anybody anymore.
Merlin: Yeah, well, I barely... Well, no, that's not true.
Merlin: No, you keep up with a lot of people.
Merlin: I guess I do.
Merlin: You really do.
Merlin: First day of fourth grade, 1976.
Merlin: Back when school started in September, like a normal thing.
Merlin: Got out in June.
Merlin: Those were the days.
Merlin: I started in my new class.
Merlin: Ms.
Merlin: Hare was my teacher.
Merlin: And Ms.
Merlin: Hare, with an E, said, I'm going to read your name, and if there's anything that you prefer to be called instead of that, let me know.
Merlin: And I don't know why, but this is a couple years after my father passed away.
Merlin: I've been Merlin the whole time.
Merlin: And for some reason, I said, I would like to be called Merle.
Merlin: I kind of took it as a way to honor my father.
Merlin: And I thought it was a cool name.
Merlin: And that's what I went by probably until into college.
Merlin: That's what I was known as.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Now it seems kind of weird.
John: Yeah, right.
John: But if you ran into some old pal from the neighborhood, that pal would call you Merle.
Merlin: Probably.
Merlin: I mean, do you think about your name very much?
Merlin: I don't think about my name that much, which seems weird.
Merlin: People assume because they call you by your name.
Merlin: They think about it.
Merlin: But I don't think about my name very much.
Merlin: Yeah, but Merlin Mann is like one of the all-time greatest names of all time.
Merlin: It's a pretty good name.
Merlin: A lot of people assume it's a made-up name.
Merlin: I mean, I guess technically all names are made up.
Merlin: But no, it's my birth certificate name.
John: Yeah, I mean, it's really extraordinary.
John: And yeah, John, especially somebody my age, I mean, they named every fourth boy John.
John: So it doesn't really ring out.
John: And plus, of course, I mean, the proof is in the fact that you and I, in our immediate social circle, know like 11 Johns.
Merlin: I mean, there are a lot of Johns.
Merlin: I have two ongoing...
Merlin: Regular podcasts with people named John.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: I frequently podcast with other people named John and then I know I know some Jonathan's as well Yeah, and then they're the large there's the wider not even much wider circle of John's and also I am
John: for whatever reason, have always been very, very nickname-resistant.
John: For yourself or others?
John: No, no, no, no.
John: I always wanted a nickname.
John: I thought a nickname was great.
Merlin: I'd kill for a nickname.
Merlin: I've had so few good nicknames.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: My uncle called me The Kid, which I thought was kind of a cool nickname.
Merlin: It was a little bit, you know, diminutive, but that's kind of the idea of a name like The Kid.
Merlin: I like that.
Merlin: I don't think...
Merlin: But the thing is, a lot of nicknames come from stuff like wetting your pants, or one day you don't wear a jacket, everybody starts calling you a snot boogie.
Merlin: Yeah, some tribal stuff.
Merlin: Yeah, some tribal stuff.
John: Because my family is... Well, I mean, the people in my family are late breeders, and late breeders all the way back.
John: So, you know, my dad was 47 when I was born.
John: But his dad was in his 40s when he was born.
John: Now, that's weird.
John: And his father before him.
John: And looking through the records, there are people in my family in 1750 who had...
John: a child who had one of my forebears in their 40s.
Merlin: Was it sometimes a first child?
Merlin: Because that's the weird part.
Merlin: Sometimes you get miracle babies, but I think at least in my mother's age and really into our time, it was considered pretty weird to have your first kid in your 30s.
John: often a first child, and more unusual, a lot of the moms were in their mid-30s to even late 30s, as far back as the 18-whatevers, early 18s.
John: And so we have no idea how far back that goes, because it fades into the fog of time in a lot of those cases.
John: So what that means is that my people are less evolved than
John: If you go back 50,000 years and you have a group of people that are breeding that much later... Oh, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: Over time that accumulates, there's fewer time for your forebears to be alive in some ways.
John: Yeah, I am fewer generations removed from er-humans than anyone else.
John: And in fact, I dated a girl whose mother was 22 when she was born, and her grandmother was 22 when her mother was born, and her great-grandmother was 22.
John: And we just sat and calculated it.
John: And even back just to the 19th century, it was very easy to see, like, she was already, like, two generations ahead of me based on the number of relatives it took to get back to 1805.
John: Got it.
John: Got it.
John: And so what that means is that within my family, there are all these anachronisms, all these strange verbal tics that
Merlin: And the weird preferences, like you having exposure to so much like big band music or me having like way more exposure to the comic style of the 1930s than, say, the 60s.
Merlin: Mm hmm.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like, you know, like, you know, my dad was really into the Marx Brothers and the Ritz Brothers and Evan Costello and all this kind of stuff.
Merlin: So that stuff was always in Jimmy Durante.
Merlin: That stuff was just always around, like to the point where when I was in a talent show, when I was like eight, I was doing a Jimmy Durante impersonation.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Who does that in 1975?
Merlin: That doesn't make any sense.
John: I dressed as Groucho Marx for Halloween in like 1980.
John: Wow.
John: Groucho was still alive, but it's related all the way.
John: I mean, I hear it in a lot of the things, a lot of the affectations of my people.
John: I may have even mentioned this to you before, but my mom...
John: refers to Napoleon as Bonaparte.
John: Derisively.
John: Yeah.
John: Because if you trace her family back, like she, her people were on the receiving end of Bonapartism.
John: In a way that she, and not just with, she doesn't just say it with contempt, she says it with admiring contempt.
Merlin: Like the way you talk about General Sherman or something.
John: Yeah, he's the bad guy, but also like...
John: you know he's well i mean enough that you refer to him by his uh by his patron and often enough that your son notices it as kind of an odd bit yeah right or my mom's complete contempt for appalachian people well which is which is because her what was it her great-grandfather was a civil war veteran and
John: and she knew him and you know we ohioans let's be honest we ohioans like to believe that we are at the top of the appalachian food chain i know you do i know oh west virginia give me a break but my people call me my my older relatives called me john john from the time i was born john john and they still call me john john to this day
John: which feels like a nickname from another time.
John: You know, like nobody really calls people John John.
Merlin: You think John Hodgman gets called John John?
Merlin: I don't think he'd have it.
Merlin: No, I don't think so.
John: My sister decided at some, I don't know if she decided or maybe I decided, but we started calling her Susu.
Merlin: Oh, that's sweet.
John: Yeah, and it becomes its own little, you know, it becomes kind of a name, S-U-S-U.
John: Susu.
John: But no, my friends have tried to nickname me a thousand times, and it usually bounces off.
John: There was a little period in high school where I was called Rad Dog.
Merlin: Rad Dog.
Merlin: Now, just to be clear, these are nicknames that were given to you by others.
Merlin: Yeah, no, no, no.
Merlin: This is a T-bone type situation.
John: No, or like when my dad tried to, when my dad at some point in his life tried to convince me that in college he'd been called Spider.
John: And I was like, nobody ever called you Spider.
John: He was like, no, no, no, I was nicknamed Spider by my fraternity brothers.
John: I was like, no one called you Spider a single time.
John: Don't kid a kidder.
John: That's a retcon, you know?
John: Yeah.
John: But there were some kids in my...
John: You know, I went partly in high school to a school within a school that went over.
Merlin: You had to go down the hallway.
John: Right.
John: And there were some kids in the school within a school that I think later as a group of people, as a group of like five friends, all became born again.
John: Oh, my.
John: But but they were they were pretty hilarious and they were a year ahead of me.
John: Right.
John: So they were juniors when I was a sophomore and they were like funny dudes and nerds, funny nerds.
John: And one day one of them called me rip-roaring, rad-dog, radical, rockin', righteously rascalin', reeferin' Roderick.
John: And somehow this group of nerd dudes took this up and could all say it.
John: And it was an honor that this group of five older, funny, like, school-within-a-school nerds had this long, complicated nickname for me.
Merlin: That takes some effort.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Well, but it was the type of...
John: It was the type of people they were, right?
John: I mean, they also had a thing where at one point some AV person was trying to get a film strip to work or trying to get some movie to work in a class they were in.
John: And all of a sudden a scene somewhere in the middle came screaming on with the volume full up of some woman saying, no mustard.
Hmm.
John: And then, you know, they would each say no mustard probably 32 times in a typical school day.
John: You know how these things work.
John: It's early meme.
Merlin: No, no, it's a thing.
Merlin: And I mean, that's an age where you're more intensely aware of mimetic things.
Merlin: And, you know, I got bits today.
Merlin: I got stuff I'm still saying today that like I started saying in like junior high and high school.
Merlin: It's a very meme-y time.
John: Yeah, no mustard.
John: I haven't said it in a long time, but I'm sure she said it a long time ago.
John: No mustard.
John: And it would be a reaction to anything that...
Merlin: to anything really i love these things i i we got we got tons of these in my house we have so many of these just between the three of us in our house that are not very interesting to other people but like i love those i mean it's it's there's certain things where if one person says something like a certain word or phrase everybody else will automatically say something sometimes in a funny voice
Merlin: More like there will be like like a certain cadence to how you say something that makes everybody didn't say the catchphrase.
Merlin: I love that stuff.
John: Mm-hmm Somehow rad dog rad dog red dog percolated out of this rip-roaring rad dog business and It got shortened to that and then it went and
John: Let's just say it went viral in my high school among people who knew me.
John: Not everybody called me that, obviously, like my girlfriend didn't.
John: But they're aware of it.
John: Yeah, everybody was aware of it.
John: And people did call me that.
John: And I think there are still people in the world who might say that to me.
John: if it popped into their head.
Merlin: I'm not going to say it.
Merlin: I respect the meme.
Merlin: In this case, that's an important meme, but that doesn't suit you.
Merlin: Rad dog.
Merlin: Well, it's not that you're not rad nor a dog.
Merlin: It's not on brand for John 2017.
John: No, it's the nickname of somebody that every time he goes off a mogul, he does a back scratcher.
Merlin: See, I'm thinking I like the Anchorman.
Merlin: I think that's one that could definitely...
John: It's good, but it feels like something that people who were talking about me would say to each other.
John: Nobody's going to come up to me and say, like, hello, the Anchorman.
Merlin: Have you seen the Anchorman today?
John: Yeah, or like, oh, yeah, he was talking to the Anchorman.
John: And I don't think it's that sticky that it's going to turn into that.
John: Most people I have found, and I bet this is true, well, maybe not of you, but most people call me by my full name.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I have known, I have known, I see, I hate to say names because then people are going to go look them up, but I had a friend in college.
Merlin: His name was Patricia Frew and her, her name, her canning was Patty Frew.
Merlin: And you can never call her Patty.
Merlin: You wouldn't call her Frew.
Merlin: You call her Patty Frew because it feels great to say Patty Frew.
Merlin: Patty Frew.
Merlin: F-R-E-W.
Merlin: Don't look it up.
Merlin: Patty Frew.
John: And John Roderick is just, it's still, it's a lot of syllables to, to get out, but it's just, it's what makes sense to people.
John: It's got a nice rhythm to it though.
John: Yeah.
John: john roderick uh and i guess that somewhere somewhere recently somebody oh oh yeah i've told you this before my first my first email address was hotrod at capitol hill dot oh get rid of that the little cafe there yeah and there are a lot of people that would still call me hot rod i've referred to you as hot you know i want to put that on the list i've called you hot rod yeah hot rod hot rod i've called you that that's that's what you are in my uh when i get a text from you that's the nickname i've given you in the apple contacts app
Merlin: Oh, that's wonderful.
Merlin: Hot Rod.
Merlin: Well, I'm glad that survives.
Merlin: That one kind of works.
Merlin: That's got aspects to it.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Yeah, it does.
John: It does still work, but it doesn't feel like something I would want somebody younger than me who doesn't know me to come up to me on the street and call me that.
Merlin: Yeah, that's a little familiar.
John: Yeah, it's a little bit of a friend nickname, but I wouldn't want somebody to come up and be like, hey, Hot Rod, I really loved your show.
John: I'd be like, hmm, I'd give a little bit of a gas face to that.
John: Whereas Rad Dog, if somebody came up and was like, hey, Rad Dog, all the great shows, I'd be like, okay, all right, I'd give them the finger guns.
Merlin: Okay, you're making that an opening.
Merlin: You're saying if somebody sees you at the mall,
Merlin: They can say that to you.
Merlin: Is that okay?
John: I mean, it's not like I'm saying do it.
John: I'm not recommending it.
John: I'm just saying, like, don't call me Hot Rod is more of what I'm saying.
John: Don't call me Hot Rod.
John: And then Joko turned all of us into Joe Rose and Joe Hoes.
John: And you know what I mean?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Because we're all sort of Joes.
John: Oh, like a John Scalzi.
John: Is he a Joe Scal?
John: Joe Scal.
John: I don't think it goes that far.
John: Okay.
John: Josie.
John: But Joko, Joro, and Joho, those three.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But that is all... It sounds kind of Scooby-Doo a little bit.
John: It does, and it's all...
John: It's all Joe Co dependent.
John: I mean, you know, I'm never going to be Joe Ro outside of that.
John: Although I did have a girlfriend that called me Johnny Rod.
John: That's a pretty rock and roll nickname.
John: That's a lot to live up to.
John: Johnny Rod.
John: I mean, that's the kind of nickname that you got to have a cool car if you're called Johnny Rod.
Merlin: I just remembered one.
Merlin: There was a local chain of barbecue restaurants in Pasco County, and a guy in my English class decided that I was fat.
Merlin: And so he called me Fat Boy Barbecue.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Fat Boy Barbecue.
Merlin: Fat Boy Barbecue.
Merlin: He'd say the whole thing.
Merlin: Hey, Fat Boy Barbecue.
Merlin: How's it going, John?
Merlin: I think his name was John Watson.
John: He had a real plain name.
John: Yeah, John Watson.
John: There was a kid named John Watson in Anchorage, but he was a member... I think he was either a member or the brother of one of the guys in a punk band called The Exhumed.
John: And The Exhumed were famous in Anchorage for being really...
John: really bad dudes who would go i mean they would like find dead cats and nail them to a cross some some real stuff yeah real real real stuff and they were they were the you know they were the real deal uh but they you know they were just like some they were just some kids they weren't
John: They weren't like whatever the real deal is.
John: And I have no way of knowing whether or not they nailed a dead cat to a tree.
John: I just heard that.
John: Sure.
John: That's all you need.
Merlin: I mean, that's right.
Merlin: Once you get the rep.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Boy, it's a crazy day.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: You might have heard my Echo device talking.
Merlin: I did.
John: What did your Alexa say?
Merlin: Well, see, today is a fraught day, John.
Merlin: I hope that by the time that this airs, something will have been fixed.
Merlin: But there's a huge problem right now.
Merlin: So right now, I'm leaving this in.
Merlin: Right now, the encryption that secures Wi-Fi...
Merlin: has been mostly hacked, kind of mostly.
Merlin: So pretty much, it's unclear what the full extent of this is, but it's safe to assume right now that anything you're doing over Wi-Fi can be unencrypted.
Merlin: So this is actually an opportunity for you to rewrite the encryption?
Merlin: I'm in.
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Merlin: Listen, team, this is a new sponsor for us, and I am legit excited that they're here, and I'm going to tell you why, first of all.
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Merlin: All the great shows.
Merlin: Every hacker in the world waits for these moments.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: That's living.
Merlin: That's living large.
Merlin: Yeah, no, I'm in full lockdown mode.
Merlin: I turned off Wi-Fi on everything that I have.
Merlin: I've turned off my Wi-Fi routers.
Merlin: I've turned Wi-Fi off on my devices.
Merlin: And that was my Amazon Echo telling me that it can't find the Internet.
Merlin: I got my security camera bleeping red right now.
John: My lights are off because it didn't see me come in the room.
John: So I can't say, Alexa, what is the average rainfall in the Amazon basin?
John: What does she say when you ask her that?
John: She's got to have some witty retort.
Merlin: That's one of her witty retort questions.
Merlin: That's a witty retort.
Merlin: But sometimes, you know, she just it's you got to say it a certain way.
Merlin: But, you know, you can say stuff like how much does the president weigh and they'll usually get it.
Merlin: So, yeah, that's a huge deal.
Merlin: This is a big deal.
Merlin: I hope that gets fixed.
Merlin: How did this happen?
Merlin: Was it the Russians?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Maybe we got hacked.
Merlin: Supposedly, yeah, this is an exploitation that's out there in the wild.
Merlin: It has to do with the four-way handshake.
Merlin: It's the four-way handshake is the problem.
Merlin: Anyway, if anything weird happens, I'd just write it down to that.
John: So is this a situation where, like, a la Matt Howey, your garage door is going up and down?
Merlin: Oh, you don't know.
Merlin: It could be Vladimir Putin opening your garage door.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: I do know.
Merlin: He's in.
John: He's in.
John: Can you imagine the insanity if the Russians opened every garage door in the country at once?
John: Oh, that would wake some people up.
John: Yeah, dogs and cats sleeping together.
Merlin: Yeah, that would change the body politic if you didn't control your own garage door anymore.
Merlin: He who controls the garage door controls the destiny.
Merlin: Somebody could come in and steal your cordless drill.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: He is your density.
Merlin: I want to ask you something, and you can feel free to ignore this.
Merlin: You can feel free to tell me to cut this out, but I wanted to share an anecdote about something that happened yesterday because I feel like it's something we need to explore.
Okay.
Merlin: Can I share what happened yesterday?
Merlin: Yeah, no, I'm dying to hear it.
Merlin: Well, at some point, as we record this, it's Monday, October 16th.
Merlin: The Wi-Fi is not working.
Merlin: I think it was on probably, I guess I can go look back.
Merlin: I think probably on Saturday night, maybe.
Merlin: Uh, you texted me and, uh, oh yeah, here we go.
Merlin: Here we go.
Merlin: Uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, okay.
Merlin: So yeah.
Merlin: So on the 14th, uh, which would be Saturday, I was telling you some offline administrative things.
Merlin: You said, that's exciting.
Merlin: And you said, uh, and then you said yesterday at 9am being Sunday, you said on at 10.
Merlin: And I said, you bet.
Merlin: And then a certain time later, I believe around 10.01, you texted me to say, except today is Sunday.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then I felt bad because I thought, oh my God, I would personally, I ain't bragging, but I would never, if there are any two days, I would never confuse.
Merlin: It's Sunday and Monday.
Merlin: But somehow you had an alarm set, you were planned and ready to go, and you thought Sunday was Monday.
John: Yeah.
John: Saturday night at 11 o'clock at night or whatever, I leaned over and grabbed my phone and was like, better set my alarm for the show tomorrow.
Merlin: We should tell our listeners we're trying an experiment inside the experiment, which is going back to our 10 a.m.
Merlin: recording time.
Merlin: Going back to 10 because 9 wasn't working for us.
Merlin: Yeah, that's a wrinkle.
John: And what happens with me and this show is that I set my alarm for 9.45 because I know that I have 15 minutes after I wake up.
John: to microwave one cup of coffee and open my computer.
John: And that's all I need.
John: All I need is 15 minutes to, like, come awake.
John: And sometimes I don't come all the way awake, you may have noticed.
John: until you start talking to me and then i'm like what and then then i am there it's you know it's it's ambitious 15 minutes is ambitious but you uh some of the time uh have been here at 10 a.m that's absolutely the case and i like to fly a little close to the sun just enough that the wax in my wings softens without melting
Merlin: You can soften wax without it melting.
Merlin: It's a lot like you jumping on the plane at the last minute, jumping off the Muni at the last minute.
Merlin: That's right.
John: Just recently... Fewer ways to telegraph your movements.
John: A couple of days ago, I flew to San Francisco for 24 hours.
John: And as I was leaving for the airport...
John: I said, I'm only going to be in San Francisco for 24 hours.
John: What should I pack?
John: And I thought about it and I was like, I'm going to, I didn't have a hotel arranged yet.
John: Oh my God.
John: I said, I'll get a hotel on my phone while I'm at the airport.
John: And then I was sitting there and I'm thinking like, what do I bring?
John: I'm going to be there for 24 hours.
John: And then I said, Oh, I know the answer.
John: Nothing.
John: I'll bring nothing.
John: So I put my coat on and I walked out the door and I went to the airport.
John: And at the airport, I thought I did something I never do, which is download an app.
John: which was some kind of app that said last-minute hotels because all of the hotels that I normally stay at.
John: Oh, like a Hotel Tonight.
John: A Hotel Tonight type of thing.
John: Most of the hotels that I normally stay at in San Francisco, when I went to their websites and said, what's the chance of me getting a hotel room tonight?
Merlin: That's an open table type situation where it's like, sorry, nothing.
Merlin: Well, the answer was the chances are great.
John: $600.
John: $600.
John: And I'm like, no, $600 is the same as no hotel room.
John: But I went on this thing, which was something like Hotels Tonight.
John: And I got a hotel in what they describe.
John: This is the great thing about San Francisco.
John: They describe it as Union Square.
Merlin: Yeah, one time my mom found a really good bargain.
Merlin: She's like, it's great.
Merlin: It's like the Ambassador Hotel in Union Square with a Commodore or something like that.
Merlin: Never get anything with a military title.
Merlin: Never get anything that sounds fancy that says Union Square.
Merlin: Unless it says Marriott, do not get it.
Merlin: My hotel was the Bijou.
Merlin: Ooh, the Bijou.
John: And I knew when it said Union Square that what it meant to say.
John: It meant a little west of Union Square.
John: Little west.
John: Tanderloin.
John: Yep.
John: The one neighborhood in America.
John: That has not changed one iota since 1972.
John: Like you still go down in the tenderloin and it looks like an R crumb drawing of people just like, I mean, it's bad.
Merlin: It's just, it's, it's, it's not, it is not funny.
Merlin: And it has gotten super shmooper bad.
Merlin: It's shocking to people who come to town now in the last two, even in the last two years, like what, what is happening on sixth street is like unbelievable.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's extraordinary.
Merlin: It really is.
Merlin: And it's not like we're saying, oh, it's really sad.
Merlin: There's lots of people sitting on the street.
Merlin: I don't even want to tell you on a family podcast what kind of stuff is.
Merlin: The extreme, Hieronymus, Bosch-esque human misery that is happening at a scale an order of magnitude greater than you think right now.
Merlin: There are literally people shitting publicly up and down the street, shooting up, screaming and crying.
Merlin: It is really, it's very Bosch.
Merlin: Speaking as someone who just stayed there.
Merlin: Okay.
John: You're talking about in the Union Square area.
John: In the Union Square area.
John: What's incredible is that right there on market are the headquarters of Medium and Uber and Twitter and a dozen other... Twitter's right in the heart of darkness.
John: Yeah.
John: A dozen other tech companies.
John: The hotel, the Bijou, that I stayed in, has in the downstairs...
John: A craft cocktail bar where the bartender had a handlebar mustache and was playing Tupac.
John: But when I went up to the desk to check in, the receptionist said, would you like a quiet room or a normal room?
Merlin: Ha ha ha!
Merlin: Oh, that's an unusual level of candor.
John: It was.
John: And you know what I said?
John: What did you say?
John: I'll take a normal room.
John: Oh, she didn't see that coming.
John: But on a high floor.
John: And so she put me on the top floor where I was able to hear in the course of the night at least one person who screamed almost continuously for two hours.
John: You could tell it was the same person.
John: For two hours.
John: And then at some point around four in the morning, six shots fired into the air or what I presume to be the air.
John: And this is like two blocks from market.
John: Where the next morning when I woke up, it was just a swarm of like techie-weckies on their way to workie-workie on their little hoverboards.
John: And it's just like, how in the world does this work?
Merlin: Importantly, these are people who are, one might say, commuting in.
Merlin: They don't live in the Union Square area.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: They zoom in.
Merlin: They zoom in.
John: They zoom in on the... But so I arrive...
John: There are big fires outside of San Francisco.
John: The whole city is shrouded in the... It looks like Tatooine.
John: Everything's orange.
John: It's super weird.
John: Shrouded in the dashed hopes and dreams of hundreds of thousands of people.
Merlin: It's just the ashes of Sonoma covering everything and the air.
Merlin: It smells like a campfire and it's really weird.
Merlin: That's a very strange time for you to be here.
John: It was strange.
John: And, you know, Seattle had a big fires this year, too, up in British Columbia.
John: And that smoke kind of came down over Seattle.
John: But those British Columbia fires were happening mostly in like untouched forest.
John: So our forest fires were like it just smelled like a burning forest.
John: But, yeah, your fires were like burning towns.
John: Yeah.
John: Which was some heavy, heavy duty stuff.
Yeah.
John: But this is all by way of describing the fact that I went to my show and then I woke up in the morning and I did a podcast with a friend.
John: And I met another one of our mutual friends at his man cave for a little while.
John: Nice.
John: And then I got and I was doing and this was all walking around.
John: And then I got on a train and I went to the airport and at no point did I have any kind of.
John: There was nothing even in my hands.
John: I was wearing a jacket.
Merlin: Did you bring a backpack or something?
Merlin: I brought zero.
Merlin: Shut your mouth.
Merlin: You are a brave man.
Merlin: You got on a plane and flew to another state with the clothes on your back?
John: Yeah.
John: Not even like an overcoat, but with a blazer.
John: You're Batman.
John: So when it was time to get on the plane, it was like...
John: I'm back to last on the plane because what the fuck do I care?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I don't.
Merlin: You can't do anything to you.
Merlin: I mean, like you have nothing to tie you.
John: I don't need any.
John: I don't need to put anything on.
John: I'm going to go over to Sbarro and get a lasagna just because I can.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm going to sit here.
John: Right.
John: I'm going to sit here and just stare at the gate agent while they call my name three times because I'm eating a lasagna still like it didn't.
John: Nothing mattered.
Merlin: I was I was truly free.
John: Yeah, I was a free man.
John: Just like, you know, I think I probably told you, but my first trip to Europe, I got robbed about halfway through.
John: And I had a backpack that had everything you could want.
John: Oh, yeah, I remember this, yeah.
John: And it was another situation where I spent a week just in deep mourning over all my lost socks.
Yeah.
John: And, you know, I lost a carton of cigarettes and my Walkman and all this stuff.
John: And then that period of mourning ended suddenly when I realized, oh, shit, I don't have anything.
John: Like, I don't have anything.
John: Yeah.
John: And it was really liberating.
John: I traveled in Europe with nothing.
John: For, I don't know, three months.
John: I didn't have a thing.
John: I just washed my clothes in the sink.
John: I mean, I'm sure I smell terrible.
John: I'm sure I look terrible.
John: But, you know, you're a fucking student.
John: Like, compared to the French hippies that were staying in the same youth hostel as I was, I looked pretty groomed.
John: Speaking of groomed.
Merlin: I'm listening, I'm processing this because I'm thinking about, as I'm sure I've mentioned to you, I did this thing when I packed where I, and I don't do this as much anymore, but I used to pack as though I were not only a different person than I am, but I was perhaps two to six different people than who I am.
Merlin: Right now, I wear, I don't say I wear the same clothes every day.
Merlin: I wear the same type of clothes pretty much every day, including our sponsor for this episode.
Merlin: Thank you, Mack Weldon.
Merlin: I frequently will just all wear jeans and a t-shirt and a long sleeve shirt over that and then like a hoodie or something.
Merlin: And somehow when I'm preparing to go anywhere, to quote Seinfeld, I turn it into Diana Ross.
Merlin: And I'm bringing evening gowns for events that I have not been invited to.
Merlin: And I'm bringing changes of socks that have absolutely no association with how often I would actually change my socks.
Merlin: I've never needed in the modern era to change my socks more than once in a day.
John: Right.
John: And it's you're going on a four day trip and you take 11 pairs.
Merlin: Exactly right.
Merlin: Well, the only thing I fall short on when I go to a warm climate, because I'm so used to not being in a warm climate, I sometimes forget that I need more bottom layer shirts than I think.
Merlin: That's the only time I have less than I need, but I way overcompensate.
Merlin: So the reason I'm saying all of this is you're describing a dream to me like what you did.
Merlin: It was very, very brave.
Merlin: And I'm very impressed.
John: Well, it's phenomenal.
John: And also, I think one of the things that helped was I knew that the two people I was going to see on Friday were not people I was going to see on Thursday.
John: Oh, sure.
John: After seeing me Thursday night, they weren't going to see me Friday.
Merlin: Hey, look, it's the red dog wearing the same clothes.
Merlin: There he is.
John: And so not only did I wear one outfit, but I didn't even wear like a blue shirt and a blue blazer.
John: I wore a bright orange blazer with like an orange plaid tie.
John: So basically I was saying to the world, like if there's even a, if there's even a delay of my flight, I'm the guy in the two day old orange blazer.
John: But as it, as it was like, I rolled into my house more or less the same time that I left it the following day.
John: And I took my coat off and put it on a hanger.
John: Like,
John: fucking Mr. Rogers.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And I was like, what's next?
John: And it was pretty good.
John: Pretty good.
John: That is really impressive.
John: I know, I know.
John: It felt like the next... Oh, and I got the chance.
John: I was sitting next to somebody on the plane who was kind of unfriendly to the stewardess and fairly curt with me and was actually...
John: transcribing things off of his phone onto a notepad.
John: Hmm.
John: Like we're looking at his phone and then writing it down on a notepad.
John: I was like, Hmm, interesting.
John: And he's wearing a pole, a polo shirt.
John: He just sort of looks like a, he's one of those people that probably is my age.
John: But when I look at him, I'm like, what's up, dad?
John: I know, I know, I know the type.
John: Yeah.
John: And so, and, and like the, the, the flight attendant asks him what he wants to drink.
Um,
John: And his reaction is, what?
John: Instead of, like, how many things is she going to say to you?
John: Don't be that guy.
John: You win nothing when you do that.
John: What do you mean, what?
John: Anyway, so he keeps working.
John: And then I look at him again.
John: And he said one other sort of curt one word reply to the stewardess.
John: And he hadn't spoken to me in the entire first half of the flight.
John: Yeah.
John: Except to kind of be like, what?
John: When I asked him some question, I looked over at him and I was like, oh, wait a minute.
John: And I said, are you Dutch?
John: He's a Dutch.
John: And he turned.
John: And he said, what?
John: No, he turned excited, eyes wide open.
John: He was like.
John: Yes.
John: How can you tell?
John: And I was like, oh, how can I tell?
John: Oh, you're beautiful.
John: And then he immediately could not stop talking and talk to me for the entire rest of the flight.
John: We talked about the political situation in every single country in Europe.
John: We talked about Brexit.
John: We talked about and his opinions of Brexit from top to bottom.
John: We talked about Trump from top to bottom.
John: He just opened right up.
John: Because I recognized him as Dutch.
John: And it was just a little something in his accent.
John: And then it all came together.
John: I was like, wow, no, wait a minute.
John: It's all fits.
John: Of course he's Dutch.
John: And he lives on the coast.
John: He lives on the coast in a town that I've been to.
John: So we had all this stuff in common.
Merlin: Is that the place where you were in the sand?
John: That's the place where I was in the sand, yeah.
John: In fact, I was in the sand.
John: The cement gravy boat of suffering?
John: Yeah.
John: And I was probably three miles from his house at that point.
John: I'll be hornswoggled.
John: What are the chances?
John: I didn't bring that story up to him because it's always weird when somebody, especially from Europe, is like, oh, yeah, I live outside of Castle.
John: And I'm like, I've been to your town.
John: And they go, really?
John: I'm like, yeah, well, you know, I was passing through.
John: I leave it at that because if you're just meeting somebody and you say, yeah, I walked through your town on the way to Istanbul, it's sort of like you pull up next to somebody at a bar and
John: And you go, how are you going?
John: And the bartender says, you know, what would you like?
John: And you order some really, really complicated, uncool drink.
John: And then you turn to the person next to you and like, so what's going on?
John: And it's just like, no, you're not going to.
John: You turn to the guy next to you who's got a boiler maker.
Merlin: When you give one of those pregnant kind of remarks that is basically begging people to ask you questions about what you just said.
Merlin: This reminds me of the second time I sold a sword in Da Nang.
Merlin: It's like, oh, really?
Merlin: Okay.
John: Why'd you have swords in Vietnam?
John: What?
John: Yeah, right.
John: So anyway, I usually say to people, oh, yeah, I was just passing through.
John: You know, I was a tourist and I was on my way somewhere else.
John: They're like, oh, anyway, I don't care.
Merlin: That's that's your version of like I'm a ceramicist, right?
Merlin: We'll just lay this down.
Merlin: This is fine.
Merlin: If you ask more questions, you can ask more questions.
Merlin: But you're not on the hook to ask me about sleeping on a beach.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And we are not going to go there normally because most people do not follow up.
John: Right.
John: Most people are just like, oh, right.
John: Well, anyway, more about me.
John: And I enjoyed this guy, and he was very, very Dutch.
John: He was an executive at a company that you would recognize the name, a multinational company.
John: Philips.
John: Something like that, although headquartered not in the Netherlands.
John: It's the rarest occasion where a multinational company with a Dutch executive wouldn't actually be.
John: I'm trying to think of Dutch companies I know.
John: Well, but this was an American company.
John: They just had a... Oh, see.
John: He took it and he turned it.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: He turned it, right?
John: It's not LG or whatever.
John: It's like another thing.
John: Okay.
John: And he had been trapped in San Francisco by the fires because 80 flights got canceled.
John: Right.
John: And he was only flying to Seattle with me in order to get on another flight to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam the following day.
John: So he wasn't coming.
John: He was like, oh, yeah, Seattle's a nice city, but I'm just I'm laying over, baby.
John: Anyway, it was very it was very enjoyable to interact with him.
John: But I did have the one two swords in Da Nang moment where because I had, of course, developed a good rapport with the flight attendant because when she said.
John: what would you like to drink, sir?
John: I said, well, I better not have another ginger ale because I've already had two and that's my limit.
John: Or whatever kind of dad thing my dad would say that I just ejaculate without even hearing myself.
John: You don't even have to try.
John: I don't even remember what it was.
John: The dad jokes just fall out of you.
John: It was something like that.
John: It was like, what am I going to have to drink?
John: I don't know.
John: What would you recommend?
John: He got a Hertz donut.
Okay.
John: What's the house special here?
John: You know, and she's heard it all, right?
Merlin: She's heard it all.
John: Oh, you.
John: But exactly.
John: That's her response.
John: Oh, you crazy.
John: Can I give you an extra bag of peanuts?
John: But she said something to me at one point, and I said, oh, well, you know, I travel without luggage, so it won't be a problem for me.
John: Oh, you're like, I don't own a TV guy.
John: Yeah, but the rare occasion where you can be the I don't own luggage guy.
Yeah.
John: And even as I said it, I realized, oh, this is two swords in Da Nang.
John: And they both looked at me.
John: He turned and looked at me and she looked at me.
John: But again, neither one followed up on that.
John: And I didn't press the issue.
John: I just sort of looked away and was like, wow.
John: Wow.
John: I just dropped that little bit of science on them.
John: But then when it was time to get up and get off the plane, I stood up and
John: I mean, I didn't make a gesture like, you know, like wiping my hands off.
John: See you later.
John: But I did, you know, I just stood up and walked off the plane.
John: What are you going to do?
John: There's nothing holding you down.
John: No, I could go down.
John: If the plane had crashed, I could have gone right out the emergency exit, been right on the raft.
Merlin: You wouldn't hesitate because your Windows laptop is in the overhead.
John: No, exactly.
Merlin: Nothing.
Merlin: Nothing.
Merlin: Did you bring a phone charger?
John: I had a phone charger in the pocket of my blazer.
John: Okay.
John: I did do that.
John: I did have one thing.
Merlin: Did you get a toothbrush at the Hotel Bijou?
John: The Hotel Bijou provided a toothbrush.
John: Nice.
John: And some other things.
John: But, you know, a toothbrush is like a cheap one wrapped in a piece of plastic.
John: That's all you need is a toothbrush.
John: You know, the Hotel Bijou, when I walked in the door, there was a section of the carpet that had been so...
John: I don't even know what it was, probably a bloodstain.
John: But what they'd done was they'd just cut it out.
John: They'd just cut a square out of the carpet and put another piece of carpet in there.
John: But the new carpet was a darker shade than the old carpet because the old carpet was either impossible to match or had faded so much.
John: Maybe they stopped making it.
John: They stopped making that.
John: That's right.
John: And I walked in and I looked at the room.
John: And it was clean and it was nice and the bed looked nice.
Merlin: Oh, you're talking about you had a fresh square carpeting in your hotel room?
Merlin: On the floor of my hotel room.
Merlin: I was thinking it was the lobby or something.
John: No, no, no.
John: This is dead on in the center of my room.
John: So it's not a where spot.
John: It's like somebody... Yeah, shit went down here.
John: It's like somebody cleaned a salmon in there.
John: But I looked at the bed.
John: I checked the bed.
John: It was nice.
John: It was clean.
John: It was newish.
John: I called down to the front desk and said, I need some non-feather pillows.
John: And they scrambled.
John: They said they didn't have any.
John: But I have the feeling that the service was good enough there that some manager might have gone over to Kohl's and bought two.
John: Because eventually someone came upstairs with two fresh foam pillows.
John: And I realized in the last several years, most of the hotel rooms I stay in have been paid for by someone else who's like, come to the thing and here's your hotel.
John: And so those hotels are of a class that I normally wouldn't book for myself.
John: where i walk in and i'm like oh voila you know like ring ring garcon bring me a steak sandwich the kind of place where you could ask for just a bucket of ice and they would bring it to you and they wouldn't groan right right or like where i where i say you know what i don't like everything would you change it and they're like of course wow so i walked into this place and i realized
John: oh, this is actually the class of hotel room that I am.
John: You found your class.
John: Yeah, this is not a hotel room that someone would buy for me because they wouldn't say like, oh, let's get him one in Union Square, quote unquote.
John: They would say, oh, we have to put him up somewhere.
John: You know, we have to put him up at the Hotel Kabuki.
John: Uh, and so I was, I, I kind of felt great.
John: I, there was a feeling washed over me of like, yes, this is for 20 years.
John: This was the hotel that I stayed in.
John: Uh, and it felt like coming home.
John: And so I sat there and I listened to the people screaming in the street and I looked at my little patch of carpet and
John: And, you know, what it did have was a bathroom that had not been restored where the bathtub was taken out and replaced with a stand-up fucking shower.
John: It still had the bathtub with the tile around it.
John: It was like, it still had wind.
John: Oh, Merlin.
John: It was on the sixth floor.
John: When does it open?
John: Windows opened all the way.
John: Oh, my God.
John: All the way.
John: I opened them all the way out.
John: I leaned out.
John: I could have smoked a cigarette.
John: There was a fire escape.
Merlin: I've been looking at pictures of this place.
Merlin: It's a hell of a place.
Merlin: It felt like coming home.
Merlin: That's a good feeling, and it's just pure, John.
Merlin: You didn't have any hindrances.
Merlin: You got in, you got out.
John: I hung up my blazer on a hook.
John: And then in the morning and I hung up my tie on a hook.
John: And then in the morning I got up, I put the blazer back on and didn't even have to put the tie back on.
John: Good for you, man.
John: And went out into the world just like just like Willie Loman.
John: You wear every part of the Buffalo.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Fucking yay.
John: So good.
Merlin: How'd your gig go?
Merlin: Oh, the gig was great.
John: You know, it's Litquake down there right now.
Merlin: Oh, is that right?
John: I haven't even set up my cards.
John: Litquake.
John: There was a time, I think you remember, several, several years ago where I made the commitment to myself to begin to think of at least the West Coast as essentially one contiguous area.
John: urban area.
Merlin: Oh, like one long urban corridor.
John: Right.
John: So if somebody in Portland said, hey, we're having a literary festival, will you come down?
John: I would never say, ah, it's like a two-hour drive.
John: I just said yes.
John: And when someone in San Francisco said, will you come emcee the World Series of Poetry at Litquake?
John: I said, yeah, it's an hour and a half flight that costs $150.
John: Yes, I will do.
John: And if someone said, I'm your girlfriend and I live in L.A., will you come down here 14 times a month?
John: It's right on the corridor.
John: I would say, yes, of course I will.
John: It's a two-hour flight.
John: It costs $160.
Merlin: And so I got in this habit.
Merlin: Oh, hang on.
Merlin: So Seattle to L.A., Seattle to San Francisco, those are both virginable.
John: They are.
John: They're Alaska Airlines.
Merlin: Oh, but you're still mobbed up with United, right?
John: Delta.
John: I will not go on United.
John: I wouldn't take United if my city was on fire and I had to get out.
John: I wouldn't go on United.
John: Mr. Roderick, free flight out of town.
Merlin: Nope, sorry.
John: It's on United.
John: Nope, nobody, nope, nope, nope.
John: I mean, I'm agnostic about American Airlines, and I like Virgin, but, you know, Virgin was purchased by Alaska.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, but we're still in the period where it's still its own thing.
Merlin: We flew it this summer, and it was terrific.
Merlin: You pay a little bit more, you get one of those big chairs with room in front of you, and I'm going to miss that airline, John.
Merlin: I'm really going to miss that airline.
John: You know, I went to an event with Richard Branson earlier this year.
John: Me too.
John: Which one did you go to?
John: I call him Dick.
John: He was doing his Richard Branson thing where he arrives in a balloon.
John: He arrives in a balloon.
John: He for whatever reason he travels.
John: Well, I don't know.
John: I mean, I when I say for whatever reason, I know what the reason is.
John: He travels everywhere with eight.
John: Stewardesses dressed in 1960s stewardess outfits like super tight pencil skirts and pillbox hats.
John: Squad goals.
John: Who just roll into a venue before he gets there and just situate themselves around the room.
John: And then in he comes.
John: I don't hate that idea.
John: Wow.
John: Jeez.
John: But then he sat up on the stage and had the kind of temerity to talk about income inequality.
John: Well, yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And how men in business need to get hip to feminism and promote women in other white guys.
John: You walk in like this.
John: Exactly.
John: And you're just looking around the room like there's a cognitive disconnect because none of these, none of these,
John: air hostesses are older than 26 years old just nodding along in their pencil skirts they have not been chosen dick is so woke they were they were not chosen for their like superhuman ability to to serve drinks fast well i'll tell you that right uh but so i'm at this actually i'm i met a nice air hostess and we had a wonderful time uh chatting she was i love talking to the air hostess it's a joy of my life
John: And she said, actually, as I quizzed her, that her job was exclusively to air hostess on Richard Branson's jet when he flies around the world.
John: Huh.
John: So I follow her on Instagram now, and her Instagram posts are just like, here I am by the pool in Dubai.
John: Here I am by the pool in Johannesburg.
John: Here I am by the...
John: of like 60s attired air hostesses.
John: Five wouldn't be enough.
John: No, no, no, no, no.
John: Sometimes I bet it's 14 of them.
John: I wonder if they know kung fu.
John: I wonder if they each have like a special martial arts skill.
John: This gal definitely knows kung fu or is able to pick locks or can throw a knife.
John: Oh, she could be like the bomb guy.
John: I bet she is.
John: No, no, no.
John: The bomb guy would have a British accent.
John: Oh, she did have a British accent.
John: Wait a minute.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Oh, she had a British accent?
John: Oh, man.
John: They all have British accents.
John: They're from British.
Merlin: When I talk to the air hostess, let's get something straight.
Merlin: First of all, well, second of all, yes, I want to be liked.
Merlin: I want to be liked by everyone.
Merlin: The first thing with the air hostess is, though, I want to let them know I'm not going to be a problem.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: I'm not a problem.
Merlin: I go way out of my way to make sure you know I'm not going to be like Dutch, right?
Merlin: I'm a nice guy, but I'm not a creep.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And I mean, this is any kind of host or hostess.
Merlin: But really, when I go in there, it's like a soup Nazi thing where I'm just like, I just want you to know I am I am not going to be a problem.
Merlin: I'm going to be grateful.
Merlin: I'm kind of be quiet.
Merlin: I'm not going to ask for extraordinary things.
Merlin: And if there's a pinch, you can count on me.
Merlin: I got your back.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: I will help you.
Merlin: And I hope that does make you like me.
Merlin: But like, first of all, first things first, you know, eat your brain.
Merlin: Like, I want you to know I am not going to be a problem here.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You're Merlin Mann.
Merlin: You don't think she's just a waitress in the sky.
Merlin: I'm Merlin Mann.
Merlin: They have a new album out that's very good.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: There's a new Alive Replacements record from 1985 or 6th.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: No, they're good.
John: It sounds good.
John: I saw them in 1987, and it was not good.
John: That's when they take it on the mantle of, like, we'll just be drunk in public a lot.
John: Yeah, it was terrible.
John: And in fact, at the end of the show, Little Brother...
John: The last thing he said into the microphone was he quoted Johnny Rotten at the final Sex Pistols show at the Cow Palace or whatever when he said into the microphone, Do you ever feel like you've been cheated?
John: Because the show was so awful.
John: And he said that into the mic, which was he was referencing another shitty band.
John: Oh, there's levels to it.
John: Yeah, where he was just like, you ever feel like you've been cheated?
John: But he said it in his Minneapolis way.
Merlin: Now, there's a good nickname for you, though.
Merlin: His older brother was known as Smokin' Bob or Smokin' and Drinkin' Bob.
Merlin: Smokin' and Drinkin' Bob.
Merlin: Smokin' Bob is a pretty cool nickname.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: He had a lot of problems.
Merlin: He had a lot of things going on, Smoke and Bob.
John: I thought you were going to say Cheater.
John: Cheater would be a killer nickname.
John: Cheater.
John: What's up, Cheater?
John: Cheater.
John: And who is the guy, your guy, Skeeter?
Merlin: skeeter yeah skeeter skeeter died but cheater cheater our local our local guy that my my adoptive local guy is having a real rough patch right now yeah yeah hitting bottom bumping along yeah yeah yeah you know we got on the train for our daddy daughter afternoon we do on the weekends and uh and our local guy was on there and he had to they had to throw him off the train
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, here's the problem.
Merlin: I'm not going to say his name.
Merlin: He's my guy.
Merlin: So here's the deal.
Merlin: If there's somebody in your area, you adopt them.
Merlin: And that means every time you see them, you give them a certain amount of money.
Merlin: Every time I see them, I give them 20 bucks.
Merlin: I know it's not helping, but it's helping a little bit.
Merlin: But that'll make his life a little less whatever it is for a little while.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Email John.
Merlin: But he's my guy.
Merlin: And we know each other.
Merlin: Now, for a long time, he was confrontational and violent.
Merlin: At the time when my daughter was a baby, he was real scary, and I was super sensitive to his scariness, and we had lots of yelling matches.
Merlin: I've seen this guy.
Merlin: The guy with the beard.
John: Yeah, we went out one time.
John: We were going to your local Taco Bell Kentucky Fried Chicken.
John: Yep.
John: uh we were not going in there because i wouldn't let you we were walking up to the dirty hands dim someplace but we had a confrontation with this guy sleeping by the atm right he was sleeping by the atm and there was a little bit of like and you gave him a little oh yeah well so then things got better he got something happened he got picked up cleaned up medicated and the heartbreaking part is like we would have conversations
Merlin: Not heartbreaking to me as this dumb white guy with the house, but like we would, me and the dude would talk and he was funny and had a sense of humor and seemed a little bit, maybe even kind of literate.
Merlin: Like, like maybe like he had been a professor or something.
Merlin: Like he was fun to talk to.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And it's just one of those things where like, you don't see him for a while and you go like, is this it?
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Did he not make it?
Merlin: No, he was on the train yesterday being pretty rough and confrontational and he's dropping some F-bombs.
Merlin: And you know my daughter and I you know you just kind of ignore it because we're gonna do you're on a train and I just turned to her I said Yeah, name a guy's having a rough day Yeah, I'm not sure why I'm saying this but it made me sad.
John: Yeah, that is that is sad I mean my mom adopts People who are struggling and does the same thing but but also like tries to get them in touch with their families and
John: tries to find them housing and so forth.
John: And she will have, you know, she has a kind of string of these guys that she is sort of caring for in the course of her daily routine.
John: Hasn't she like brought people home?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Okay.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I thought I remembered that, yeah.
John: She, you know, bought them plane tickets, like really trying to help people.
John: And she'll lose them.
John: She'll lose one every once in a while where they die or they spin out or, you know, or they go from...
John: clean with a job and an apartment through a process, through a whole process of getting them on medication, getting them back into the world.
John: Clean job and apartment all the way back down to sitting in front of the supermarket, insensible, doesn't recognize her.
Merlin: People who've never been through a super bad thing.
Merlin: I know everybody feels like they've been through super bad things.
Merlin: But you look at that and you go, oh, that poor person, they're always going to be on this...
Merlin: you know, one step away from everything falling apart.
Merlin: But I mean, if there's anything that we learned from Trading Places, one of the great movies, I think it's important to realize that, like, well, you know, maybe you just haven't fallen hard enough yet to now be vulnerable to future falls.
John: Yeah.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Well, and the thing about mental illness is that there's no... There's just a lot of mental illness that there isn't a... There's no cure, you know?
John: There's just...
Merlin: There's just monitoring and... Yeah, there's like monitoring, management, amelioration.
Merlin: I mean, we should get Richard Branson on this.
John: Oh, well, the thing about Richard Branson... I also want to get back to Sunday, but go ahead.
John: It was very interesting in the course of this talk where he was chastising everyone in the room for not paying women the same that he was paying these air hostesses.
Merlin: His sextet of air hotties.
John: Followed him everywhere.
John: And when he decided to go water skiing, they all tried to see how many of them could get up on his shoulders in bikinis.
John: That's fun.
John: That's fun.
John: Like the Go-Go's.
John: Cover the Go-Go's record.
Merlin: That's all he ever wanted.
John: At one point, he digressed because he's a very good digressor.
John: He's not somebody that's going to stick to the script.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: He said, yeah, well, you know, Alaska Airlines bought Virgin America.
John: from me earlier this year for an undisclosed sum, large sum.
John: But when they were negotiating with me, they promised that they were going to keep it virgin.
John: They were going to keep Virgin Airlines alive.
Merlin: Of all the brands out there, maybe even arguably more than... I could see United buying a JetBlue and turning it into basically United.
Merlin: But especially with Virgin, the brand equity in that is just bananas.
Merlin: The well-earned brand equity, I have to say.
John: And he said the same thing.
John: He was like, as soon as they completed the purchase, they were like, oh, sorry, we lied.
John: We're turning it all into Alaska.
John: And he said...
Merlin: It's not that Alaska's bad.
Merlin: I would put Alaska probably right under JetBlue, which is right after Virgin.
Merlin: I've had a lot of really good experiences.
Merlin: Especially back in the day.
Merlin: Back in the day, you could upgrade to first class for $50.
Merlin: Do you remember that?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: I mean, I was an Alaska, never a gold member, but I was an MVP until...
John: Until Jason Finn got involved and told me that I needed to be on Delta because Alaska didn't go to Bahrain.
Merlin: Laying the groundwork for the long game.
Merlin: Also, apparently that's not Leonid Brezhnev on the tail.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: In fact, I remember as a kid, Alaska Airlines, the tails of Alaska planes had like 10 different little things.
John: There was a totem pole.
John: There was a little the little girl.
John: There was a there was a lady.
John: There were there was an eagle or whatever.
Merlin: There were different things that were evocative of Alaska.
Merlin: It was all Alaska.
Merlin: I don't think if that guy is an Inuit in a hood.
Merlin: The problem is that does not read as a hood.
John: No, it doesn't.
John: The whole thing does not translate to a young audience.
John: It looks like Brezhnev as the MGM lion.
John: It's sort of like what happened to Colonel Sanders.
John: He's become a thing where you don't even recognize that he used to actually be a dude.
John: Yeah.
John: But in the 70s, Alaska livery...
Merlin: was very evocative and i think he i think that man in the hood had not been cartooned to the degree he is now okay and you could see that he was in a parka oh i'm seeing oh this is cool okay i'm looking at an alaska alaska's uh signage in the 70s was much more to be honest much more american airlines looking it looks like they've got a helvetica ish typeface i see a is totem pole is that the right word for so were we allowed to say that
Merlin: Yes, we are.
Merlin: Okay, and it's got Brezhnev, it's got some kind of a tower, and it's got a miner guy, a guy with a pickaxe.
John: There's a miner guy.
John: There was a little girl in there somewhere.
John: The miner.
John: Oh, the miner.
John: I loved the miner.
John: It's got the thousand-yard miner stare.
John: Yeah, he does.
John: Wow.
John: But, so Branson says...
John: in his way where he's like look i don't want to toot my own horn although that is 92 percent of what i do yeah to my own horn but he said virgin is the is one of the great brands what was alaska thinking
John: And then he does a big comical shrug and he goes, well, you know, that's business.
John: And we're all meant to be like, wow.
John: Wow, he's really wise.
John: Wow, he just Ted talked the shit out of us.
John: I'm going to go pay my female executives the same I pay my male executives.
Merlin: Shame on me.
Merlin: So was this an unusual thing for whatever reason, you mixed up a Sunday and a Monday?
Merlin: Is that an unusual thing?
Merlin: Are there other days of the week that you will occasionally mix up with any regularity?
John: There is very little difference in my life between a Sunday and a Monday.
Merlin: See, okay, this is the thing that I don't understand.
Merlin: It's like you do kid things.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: My life is entirely described by the five-day school week, pretty much.
John: I woke up at six in the morning today to get baby ready for school.
John: But here's the thing.
John: Because I have an unconventional family relationship, both with my mother and my daughter's mother, there is, on any given day, I might be getting up at six to get baby ready for school.
John: I might be
John: not doing that i might be the one that picks baby up from school i might be the one that goes to school because there's a field trip that day and and there's a parent that needs to go along with the field trip or i might be left completely alone and no one has no one asks anything of me or i might have a meeting that day and
John: At any hour from 8 a.m.
John: to 8 p.m.
John: that I have to go do like it's all everything comes out.
John: of a blunderbuss like i have a blunderbuss calendar and we all just work around each other because her mom travels for work her mom has things to do after work her mom wants time alone to clean up her house and get her life back in order her mom has all kinds of you know normal human needs too yes and my mom also is like right in the mix because she gets up at 4 30 in the morning so
John: Like 7 a.m., she's raring to go.
John: If I would get up at 7 a.m., my mom and I would get so much done before noon.
John: Like that's her dream son, right, who gets up at 7 and is like already digging a hole by 7.45.
Merlin: So I've done that at times.
Merlin: There have been times where a variety of different circumstances have made it smart for me to get up super early.
Merlin: And it is incredible.
Merlin: And you do get so much done before sunrise.
Merlin: But it's also a lifestyle.
Merlin: To which your mother is not only committed, but that is her preferred lifestyle, obviously.
John: That is her preferred lifestyle.
John: That's right.
John: She wants a house that looks east because she likes to sit...
John: In the morning, already halfway through the newspaper and watch the sun come up.
John: Anyway, so this also this sort of like randomness also continues onto the weekends.
John: So there are Sundays where I might get up in the middle of the, you know, I might get up at the crack of dawn to go have to do something because of the flying everywhere for the show business.
John: So all by a way of saying that there is no clear pattern in the course of a week.
John: And when my kid was very little, I was talking to her pediatrician.
John: I mean, she was little, like a little, just a little pupa.
John: I was talking to her pediatrician and I said, here's the thing.
John: My life is like coming out of a blunderbuss.
John: And I have sucked everyone in my larger orbit into a world where my thing is accommodated.
John: What is going to happen with baby?
John: And she said, children really love a dependable, reliable schedule where everything happens the same every day.
John: They want to get up at the same time.
John: They don't know they want it.
John: They don't know they want it, but they want it.
John: They don't know they want it, but they want it.
John: They want to have dinner at the same time every day.
John: They want to do homework at the same time every night.
John: And I was there, and I thought about it as I was talking to her, and I'm taking it all in.
John: I'm thinking hard on this.
John: And I did that thing that I do, which people of our generation can do, which is think back to all the people we knew,
John: Who came home to a house where the dad was an alcoholic who sat in his chair in the living room with steam coming off the top of his head.
John: And all the moms that ashed cigarettes on their kids and had them go get whatever.
John: Get them another 7-Up out of the fridge while they watch their shows.
John: And all the one all the kids who got, you know, who one parent died and they went to live with their aunt.
John: And I thought, yes, kids want to have dinner at the same time every night.
John: And that is not a thing that my child is going to be.
John: She's just not going to have that option because it isn't because it would require that I stop.
Merlin: doing what i do and i can't do that and it doesn't benefit her that i do that well yeah i mean it's it's it's there's there's things where like yeah i mean i mentioned you have to ask at some point like do i have to do all of these things do these things all have to be this way like all the time it's like because that's not tenable
Merlin: And anybody who thinks it's against this, you're teeing up this thing that at least I know I suffer from all the time, which is the like, I'm terrible at this.
Merlin: I'm, you know, but you're teeing that up.
Merlin: You're, you're creating the condition in which you've already set yourself up for failure by thinking that like, there's no way I can save this.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And so I was just like, I shook my pediatrician's hand.
John: and said or her pediatrician's hand i don't anymore have a pediatrician good for you uh thank you um but my pediatrician sat me down at one point my dad obviously said to him like will you talk to him about the birds and the bees because i tried to get him to go to a brothel and he wouldn't so uh would you tell him about it and the pediatrician who was like talk about two swords and denang it was something else
John: He was like, John, do you have any questions?
John: And I was like, no, sir.
John: He was like, I'm glad we had this talk, son.
John: And he looked like Norman Rockwell, if Norman Rockwell had been put in a microwave.
John: That's a terrific look.
John: But yeah, so when I wake up in the morning, it's anybody's guess.
John: And I don't usually think that I'm going to record Roderick on the line on Sunday morning.
Merlin: but i don't it's not out of the realm of possibility right right i just you know there's some people like some people have a sense of direction i think probably you you have this i know my wife has this there are some people so like i see people who have a sense of direction or i experience people with with a sense of direction and it might as well be like a magic
Merlin: skill to me.
Merlin: You could just spin them around and they're just going to know which way to go intuitively.
Merlin: I've seen you have this.
Merlin: You just show up somewhere and you have some intuitive sense of how to get from here to there that I find absolutely magical.
Merlin: I have something much less useful, which is I can't stop thinking about what time it is and what day it is.
Merlin: Which is not it's not useful.
Merlin: It's not it's not really helping anybody but like you mixing up a Sunday and a Monday I'm not criticizing but you mix up a Sunday and a Monday to me is on the level of like How would you not know how to walk one block to your house?
Merlin: Like I am constantly it's it's it is a source of stress in our house that you know you wake up and you say what's the uniform of the day I wake up and I start walking around the house and talking about what day of the week it is and what that means I
Merlin: I go, today?
Merlin: Good morning.
Merlin: Today is Monday.
Merlin: Morning briefing.
Merlin: Well, that's another one of our bits.
Merlin: Someone says family meeting and then somebody else says standby.
Merlin: And then you all gather together.
Merlin: That's a Howl's Moving Castle joke.
Merlin: And so anyway, family meeting, standby.
Merlin: But usually I don't want to upset the progress, the usually very slow progress, because I'm obsessed about what time it is.
Merlin: And I start walking around and I say, good morning!
Merlin: It's Monday!
Merlin: Monday!
Merlin: Tonight we have pick-up at 4 o'clock, and what would everyone like for dinner?
Merlin: And they're very busy trying to get out of the house, and I'm walking around trying to talk about what day and time it is.
Merlin: So you're like the principal.
Merlin: You're the principal of your high school.
Merlin: I'm doing morning announcements.
Merlin: Morning announcements.
Merlin: But it's a little bit like, you know, I think I prefer to be cremated.
Merlin: But if someone wanted to bury me, you could probably put, it's 721 on my tombstone.
Merlin: Because I am the walking, talking, angry morning clock who's constantly reminding everybody.
Merlin: And then when everybody else is like...
Merlin: 721 that's i feel completely crazy because i'm like you know there's clocks my daughter's wearing a fitbit there's clocks all over the house how do you not know yes it is already 721 and then then sisyphean pyrrically like a pyrrhic sisyphean every morning i walk around that i keep saying it's 721 and everybody's mad at me because i'm johnny clock mouth oh
Merlin: So that's my, I mean, I think this is one of those things, though, where people have these different sorts of things where you can't imagine the rest of the world not being the way that you are about something.
Merlin: Your story of traveling without a bag, I'll put there's people out there right now that are like sucking air out of a paper bag because they're so freaked out about the idea of not having three suitcases and every conceivable dongle for the three computers they brought.
John: Yeah, I'm sure that's true.
John: The equivalent in this family is that my mother and sister both independently
John: follow the weather like it's a like it's a constant emergency like a constant CNN emergency it's like it's like hurricane CNN hurricane time all the time for them yeah they have they both have I mean my sister has multiple apps
John: If you ask my mom at any time what the high and low temperature today will be and what the seven-day forecast is, she will be able to recite it.
John: Wow.
John: And also what the highs and lows will be for the seven days.
John: My sister knows with the same amount of granular detail, not just the regional weather, but I would say the hemispherical weather.
John: Like, I don't think she knows what's going on in the Bay of Bengal unless there's something exciting going on.
John: But she certainly knows American weather and what the highs and lows are in Denver.
John: Well, you got the Irish pseudo hurricane happening.
Merlin: Is there a pseudo hurricane happening in Denver?
Merlin: Well, it's under hurricane force as we record this, I believe.
Merlin: But, yeah, it's this crazy-ass weather system that was lashing because it has to lash.
Merlin: Yeah, they do.
Merlin: It was hitting the Emerald Isle with winds up to 100 miles per hour.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: Talk about something you're not ready for.
Merlin: Talk about an unusual weather event.
Merlin: That's what I'm saying.
John: Well, you know, we're about to see the whole Gulf Stream or whatever, you know, the Atlantic circulation of ocean currents and weather.
John: We're about to see it flip.
John: It's going to flip, Merlin.
John: It's going to switch around.
John: You think it's going to flip?
John: It's going to be like when the poles switch and all of a sudden south becomes north.
John: Except the circulating gyre is going to do a flipperoo because of the melting polar ice caps.
John: Oh, is it changing polarizations and magnets?
John: Well, it's not going to change the magnets.
John: But what it's going to do is right now, the cycle comes up the east coast of the United States, hits Ireland with some nice warmth.
John: That's why that southern coast of Ireland, it's like almost tropical.
John: It's like beachy.
John: It's really nice there, really beachy.
John: Yeah, you don't think of it because you don't think of it.
John: But there it is, right?
John: And then it goes up there and it brings some cold air down.
John: And then it cycles back down along the west coast of Europe and Africa.
John: And then it does it again.
John: It spins that direction.
John: It spins clockwise.
John: But they're saying when the cold water that's coming down from the poles...
John: gets extreme enough, it's going to flip the switch.
John: Oh, no.
John: And it's going to make it start cycling counterclockwise.
John: No, we're not set up for that.
John: No, we're not.
John: It's going to change everything.
John: And what it's going to do is it's going to make the East Coast
John: freaking cold way colder than it is now is that right yeah it's going to change it all it's going to screw it it's going to screw the pooch no i'm not liking this at all no it's a pooch screw and who knows what that does to everything else you know what i mean the kind of knock-on effects i i don't like these kinds of things i find this very troubling no it's going to be freaky ben my sister the thing is when it happens my sister will know all about it a long time before anybody else
John: I don't know why they follow the weather so obsessively.
John: I mean, growing up in Anchorage, it was a thing, I guess, that you did because the weather could kill you.
John: But we haven't lived in Anchorage as a family for a long time.
John: And yet, it's just like you.
John: It's not that they know what day it is.
John: It's that they walk into the house and they're like, you know what the seven-day forecast is?
John: My mom said to me this morning at 6.30 in the morning.
John: She said, well, here's what I want you to do today.
John: I want you to go outside and do the following things because it's going to rain for the next seven days.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: That is some ninja shit.
Merlin: That is a superpower.
Merlin: So what she did, she joined together two different realms of her personality, Razzmatazz, to be able to combine her amazing planning ability with her amazing weather ability.
Merlin: Yep.
John: Oh my God.
John: Actually what she said was it's going to start raining either late tonight or early tomorrow.
John: Giving me this sort of window where, where,
John: where it's a little bit of an out because I can say like, well, if it's, you know, that probably means it's going to start raining midday tomorrow.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And she might've left the or early tomorrow morning as a, uh, as a potential.
Merlin: I told you so, well, I told you it could have started last night and it did.
John: Yep.
John: Yep.
John: That's right.
John: So that is, I mean, that's one part of my world where I'm never at a loss for, uh,
John: for having outside information, right?
John: I don't have to go read the newspaper.
John: I don't have to step outside.
Merlin: I already know what the weather is because it's been... And just because you're around people who are constantly telling you what the weather is, it does not make you more aware or more desirous of going out and finding out on your own.
Merlin: I say this because it's kind of like me being morning clock mouth.
Merlin: Well, right.
John: I mean, but nobody walks around my house saying it's Monday, Monday, Monday.
Merlin: So I go, you know, I'll go three days and not know what where I am.
Merlin: I don't know how you could not feel that in your bones.
Merlin: It's not a criticism again.
Merlin: It's more like a legit like, oh, my God, how am I broken like this?
Merlin: Why is why am I like this?
Merlin: I mean, I feel I feel like I feel true north.
John: I believe it.
John: In my bones.
Merlin: You got more oxide magnets in your nose.
Merlin: You're like a hawk or a falcon, right?
John: If you put a blindfold on me and spun me around 30 times, I just feel like my nipples would point north.
Merlin: What if it was air hostesses that did that to you?
Merlin: Wouldn't that be a hell of a thing?
Merlin: I would pay first class prices for a coach ticket.
Merlin: Fly those friendly skies.
Merlin: Jesus Christ.
Merlin: I call him dick.