Ep. 271: "Butterfly Ninja Girl"
John: Hello?
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Merry Christmas, Merlin.
Merlin: Merry Christmas, John.
Merlin: You got all your holiday shopping done?
John: Oh, you know, this was the first year where I, at least for my little girl, I started stockpiling Christmas presents a long time ago.
Merlin: Oh, I have an anecdote.
Merlin: John, let's just say what we've got to say.
Merlin: This is our very, very special annual.
Merlin: We never miss it.
Merlin: We look forward to this all year.
Merlin: This is our very...
Merlin: very special christmas day episode it really is it really is fun and you guys should go back and listen to all the christmas episodes great christmas episodes um uh no we just got to be we got to be straight with our listeners that we don't want you to miss a drop of this goodness uh so we're pre-recording the episodes that will run on christmas day and new year's day and uh so if you know uh we'll have these ready to post so if anything happens if there's any kind of i know you and ken are working on what to do in the event of an apocalypse
Merlin: so hopefully these will live on beyond this but if it seems a little strange it's because we're recording them a little early we recorded these in june in june oh my gosh it's so hot yeah it's just so hot okay here's the thing okay um i had reason to go to a retail store i want to say it was probably maybe before thanksgiving but for the sake of argument we'll say it was right after thanksgiving i think it was before thanksgiving i went in i was greeted
Merlin: by someone in the store.
Merlin: You know what that person said to me?
Merlin: Tell me.
Merlin: They said, y'all done with your Christmas shopping?
Merlin: Mmm.
John: Y'all done with your Christmas shopping?
Merlin: Y'all done with your Christmas shopping?
Merlin: I was like, what?
Merlin: I hope no one told you to say that, because that's a horrible thing to say to someone.
Merlin: No one's ever finished with her.
Merlin: Especially then.
Merlin: I mean, like, as we record this in June, I'm kind of just really getting into the swing of it now.
Merlin: But are you being straight up?
Merlin: Have you been thinking ahead about your little girl's Christmas?
John: Well, yeah, and I think it started back.
John: It started back around Halloween.
John: Well, actually, no.
John: So I made the mistake of celebrating her half birthday when she was three or something like that.
John: I feel like you've created a precedent there.
John: I did.
John: And her half birthday has since become just as, if not more important than her real birthday.
John: She knows she's going to celebrate her real birthday, but she really feels like she needs to assert her half birthday.
John: And so right around her half birthday, I think I ordered her some... You did this.
Merlin: It seems like such a sweet gesture, but you have no idea what is going to have staying power with a child.
Merlin: She's going to be 16.
Merlin: You hope it's Brussels sprouts or something?
Merlin: It could be the one time we decided we'll go out to dinner for your half birthday.
Merlin: And now...
Merlin: And now that's her official Jubilee coronation every year.
John: It really is.
John: And she's like, half birthdays are strawberry cupcakes.
John: She's like, she started talking about the theme of her half birthday.
John: I'm like, the theme?
John: She's like, I want it to be a superhero theme.
John: I was like, the theme of your half birthday?
John: There's a lot wound up in that sentence.
John: But so right around her half birthday, I ordered her several pairs.
John: I have a I have a close friend who wears toe socks.
John: But you wear under shoes, but over feet.
John: Yeah, she has these cute little toe socks that are, I think, made in Japan.
John: I don't know.
John: They're very cute.
John: They're really cute, and my wife wears them for running because you get fewer blisters and stuff.
John: That's what they're meant for, I think.
Merlin: But they're so cute and cozy.
John: They're cute and cozy.
John: And my pal, I don't think, wears them for running, but she wears them for, like, I don't know what, climbing walls.
John: I don't know.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: uh but uh at one point marlo i'm sorry at one point yeah marlo i've heard everybody knows her name hey hello welcome so did you know that john yes i did thank you very much tweet i stopped being able to control john's mouth a pretty long time ago that's the kind of tweet i'm looking forward to getting on christmas day so um
Merlin: We call him Gary the privacy concern clown.
Merlin: And he's the concern troll who shows up in your Menchies to say that you can see the reflection of your address in the toaster.
Merlin: You must get this a lot with the Instagram.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: Were you aware that that can of corn is only available at this one particular store near your house?
John: Yeah, what did somebody say the other day?
John: They were like, oh, bad opsec, sir.
John: Bad opsec.
Merlin: Yeah, that's a bit.
John: Yeah, that's my fault.
John: Because I posted a picture of an envelope that if you used, like, the same technology that they used to look under girls' shirts, you know, like some kind of Photoshop technology.
Merlin: You put up, is this the photo of your diploma-shaped envelope?
John: Yeah, my diploma.
John: And someone said, I can see the address, but...
John: Ha ha.
John: It's actually the address of my mom's old house.
John: Oh, ho, ho.
John: Who's so smart now?
John: Yeah, what are you going to do about it?
Merlin: They're going to go over there and they're going to talk to the current tenant and scrape some DNA off the pillars and stuff.
Merlin: Can I use your restroom?
John: There's a very distinct beard hair here.
John: You know, unfortunately, OPSEC people, my mom, when she sold that house, basically converted it into a new house because she's my mom.
John: And she was like, well, I can't sell a house to somebody if the baseboards need to be re-caulked.
John: She's like a getaway driver wiping off the wheel, but for a house.
John: Oh, insane.
John: I mean, you see so many houses where it's like,
John: Where people are, the photographs at the real estate listings, they have like real dolls sitting on the furniture.
John: I mean, there are houses for sale where it's really gross.
John: And she's in there.
John: She spent two and a half months.
John: She and Peter in there like scraping and painting.
John: Wow.
John: Scraping and painting.
John: Anyway.
John: So she wants toe socks.
John: We found a toe sock.
John: And she was like, I love this.
John: Where's the other one?
John: And I was like, I don't know.
John: I don't know how you find one toe sock floating around the house.
John: And so she had this one toe sock.
John: And then about, I don't know, a month later, another differently colored toe sock showed up.
John: At which point I couldn't find the first toe sock.
John: And I was like, I was very confused.
John: There was a pink toe sock.
John: There was a blue toe sock.
John: and i'm uh i'm uh and and and she was confused we were both very confused like i know the other i know the other one was pink i know the other one was a left hand foot but now that i found this blue one i'm questioning everything oh man and it was it felt like that but then it took me several months i guess to figure out oh
John: My friend who wears toe socks also has an individual affectation where she wears one shoe of one color and the other shoe of another.
John: Oh, that's fun.
John: It's a lot of fun, and I didn't realize it extended to socks, but in fact it did.
John: So I was able finally to find both and combine them into one off set of toe socks, but...
John: My daughter is not into that.
John: She does not want her socks to be unmatchy.
John: She wants them to be matchy.
John: So I ordered her a bunch of matchy toe socks for her half birthday.
John: But because of the miracles that are entwined in the Prime membership at Amazon, they did not arrive in time.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: But I but I'm not somebody that's like, you're going to get a big present on your half birthday.
John: I just they didn't come.
John: And I was like, well, they didn't come.
John: So I had them and I'm like, I don't want to be you know, I've already established a half birthday problem.
John: I don't want to be the dad that is trickling presents out.
John: I'm trickling half birthday presents out a week later.
John: Right.
John: That's that's another that's another bad precedent.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Or like our Midwestern thing where like whenever you make anybody, you have somebody over for dinner or something like that.
Merlin: Like it's, it's not, I still do this where I'm like apologizing through the meal for things I didn't do or I wanted to do differently.
Merlin: And it's like, you know, the thing is you don't stop for a minute and go like, well, first of all, that's not fun for the people who are there.
Right.
Merlin: And they don't know.
Merlin: They don't know.
Merlin: And it makes it about you for no reason.
Merlin: And now you're creating this expectation.
Merlin: We're like, oh, God, what's next?
Merlin: You know, that's oh, you're smart.
Merlin: So you caught yourself on the second one.
Merlin: That's good.
John: I did.
John: And so I put the now, you know, one day it's that one day there is a one percent chance that she will listen to these shows.
John: But certainly a less than 1% chance that she will listen to these shows all the way through to the Christmas episode.
Merlin: But she may have an AI or some machine learning that she can query.
Right.
John: So I'm going to give it away that what I did with the toe socks is I put them over the refrigerator in the cupboard over the refrigerator.
John: And that's where I think a lot of presents went.
John: When I was a kid, that's where my dad kept his pistol.
John: You know, the thing over the refrigerator, it's just like, that's the hardest thing.
John: That's the hardest place in the house to get to if you're a little kid.
John: So the toe socks went up there.
John: And then Halloween came.
John: And right, right immediately...
John: After Halloween, because we went through all this thing for three months.
John: She's like, I want to be this.
John: I want to be Moana.
John: And I was like, well, and then she changed it and she was like, I want to be Ninja Moana.
John: And I'm like, fine.
John: I'm trying to think of all the parts I need to get for that.
John: And then she's like, I want to be Ninja Moana from Frozen.
John: Oh, working on it, working on it.
John: Okay.
John: And then at the very last minute, she's like, I want to be a butterfly.
John: And I'm like, okay, change, changing course.
John: And then she's like, I want to be a ninja butterfly from the water.
John: And I was like, you know, and so we got her together for Halloween.
John: She had like three, three different events to go to.
John: And she had five different costumes because she likes to change costumes halfway through.
John: And then two days later, she says, um,
John: I got invited to a superhero party and I want to be super girl.
John: I was like, fine.
John: And she said, it's today or tomorrow.
John: Like tomorrow.
John: That's, that's pretty short notice for a super girl outfit.
John: So I went on my Amazon prime cause I still, I haven't been a prime subscriber for very long.
John: I know you have for a long time, but I still have this idea.
John: It has become like a habit to you.
John: No.
John: And I still have a sense of like, well, if you order it on Prime, it shows up immediately.
John: Somebody comes on a drone or there's a dirigible or something that it'll be there.
John: And so I ordered a superhero, Supergirl costume.
John: And I, you know, there are 25 different kinds.
John: So I got the one that I thought was, you know, going to last because I wanted to have it into, you know, take it to college or get married in it.
John: It did not arrive in time for the superhero cost.
John: And she was stipulated that.
John: That this was a real superhero party and not a superhero party where daddy gets to invent a kind of superhero.
Merlin: It needs to be like a known brand or franchise.
Merlin: I can't just be like a pickle lady or something.
John: No.
John: I actually did go to a Halloween party of hers one time as Mr. Pickle.
John: I just decided that that was a superhero and I was Mr. Pickle.
John: I don't know how you knew that, but that's actually one I've done.
John: And she wasn't that impressed with that.
John: And she knew in advance that there was a possibility that I was going to send her
John: as uh you know like miss flag hero uh dressed head to toe in like canadian uh nautical standards she was like i want to be a real superhero captain ticket stub yeah and she is she's very into supergirl so i was like supergirl it is well she's in the tv show
John: I think that a lot of this stuff she gets second or third hand.
John: She's super duper into Star Wars and she's never seen any Star Wars.
John: That's a thing.
John: She's got Dark Vader everything.
John: And I'm like, why is Dark Vader the one that you like?
John: She's like, why is Dark Vader the one you like?
John: What are you talking about?
John: It's Dark Vader.
John: I was like, yes, ma'am.
John: She's got a Dark Vader thermos.
John: She's very into it.
John: Anyway, so Supergirl costume arrives too late for Superhero Party.
John: And so she ends up going to Superhero Party as a kind of superhero that she and her father concocted.
John: But she took the lead on it, so she was fine with it.
John: I think that she was butterfly ninja girl.
John: So anyway, this nice super super girl costume arrives and I'm like up above the refrigerator.
John: Right.
John: Uh huh.
John: So now I've got toe socks and super girl costume.
John: I see.
Merlin: I get where you're going with this.
Merlin: She doesn't know what wasn't there.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: It's an elaborate, long con shell game involving Amazon Prime.
John: I have already established that she wants a Supergirl costume a long time ago.
John: And she's probably moved on from it, but only because she didn't feel like it was in the offing.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: So all these things are going to arrive.
John: And then there was a I held off getting her Barbie stuff for a long time.
Merlin: We tried to.
Merlin: It was it was it came in the side door from relatives.
Merlin: Yes.
John: Yep.
John: That's exactly right.
John: They they they show up.
John: I don't know how.
Merlin: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: But I was somewhere, maybe an airport a long time ago, and I bought her a Barbie bicycle with like a Bastic and a little dog, maybe.
John: It's got like 14 parts.
John: And I got it home and I felt like at the time she was two, she'd only just gotten her first Barbie and she was too young to have a
Merlin: you know this barbie has like in the basket it's got like a loaf of bread and a bottle of bourbon and you know like a like a pot pipe it's a it's juggalo barbie this episode of roderick on the line is brought to you by squarespace you can learn more about squarespace right now by visiting squarespace.com merry christmas squarespace happy holidays happy everybody happy everything you gotta get on the squarespace you know about squarespace why don't you start your you know what
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John: So that went up above the fridge too.
John: And now she's old enough for it.
Merlin: Just so we're clear, it is a typical... It's not like a Lego thing.
Merlin: It's an actual Barbie-sized Barbie set.
John: Yes, it is.
John: It's a full-on bicycle that Barbie can ride.
John: It's a pretty nice little thing.
John: And then the last thing that went up above the fridge was I was at a thrift store the other day, and I'm going through the lapel pins and cufflinks, as you do,
John: Because every once in a while you find a lapel pin that's like, World's Fair 1964 or something that, you know, some lapel pin that says, I'm one of the 12 people that walked on the moon.
John: It's like, oh, I'll pay 99 cents for that.
John: Sure.
John: But I found a very nice enamel lapel pin of the Superman logo.
John: Oh, wow.
John: Nice.
John: That some, I can only imagine the person that
John: wore this, right?
John: Like just like instead of a flag pin, just a little like Superman pin.
John: I mean, I don't know.
John: I'm not sure whether that was, whether it's a fedora that wore it or what, but it, but there it was.
John: And I said, super girl, same, same.
John: I'll get the super girl pin and then she can wear super girl pin even when she's not in super girl costume.
John: So there I've got four things.
John: No, I don't know.
John: And I don't want to be one of those parents that's got like 12 presents for your kid.
John: You compete with yourself.
John: Don't want that.
Merlin: I compete with myself.
Merlin: I'm competing somewhat with her expectations, but they're driven by my own, like, oh, there isn't a good big one yet.
Merlin: We still need a big one.
Merlin: Yeah, the big one problem.
Merlin: Yes, we've got to have a big one.
Merlin: There's got to be one where you open all the cool stuff and the angry socks and books, and then you go, well, I guess that's all of them.
Merlin: And then you have that Christmas story moment where you're like, wait a minute, I think there might be one more behind the divan.
Merlin: And you go, and it's, you know, what?
Merlin: I don't know what.
Merlin: I don't know what.
Merlin: I don't have the big one yet.
Merlin: Do you have a divan?
Merlin: Well, you know, I've got a 30-year-old couch.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Now, see, that would be a good one for me to get for my wife.
Merlin: She's really tired of having the second-hand couch that I got in the 90s.
John: She's really well and truly ready for a grown-up couch.
John: Do you feel qualified to pick a grown-up couch that she'll be like, that she'll find acceptable?
Merlin: Well, I don't want to take you up to the story because you're going in a very interesting direction here.
Merlin: All I'm going to say is this.
Merlin: I got beef with people buying furniture that is the wrong scale for a room.
Merlin: Oh, God, me too.
Merlin: I've had very, very dear, dear friends who I don't know if they thought it was going to fit in that room, but it ends up like you're playing trains with two different scales.
John: They got a big, giant, poofy sex couch.
Merlin: You get a Totoro chair that three people can sit in, and it's in one of these rooms in a San Francisco flat, like an 800-square-foot flat, and you're like, oh, dude, this is wrong.
Merlin: So ours is a very, probably from the 60s or 70s, Naga Hyde couch.
Merlin: It's very low profile.
Merlin: It fits nearly perfectly into the area we have now.
Merlin: Most of the couches we want and look at...
Merlin: First of all, they're very costly.
Merlin: A couch is not a cheap thing.
Merlin: But they're also almost all like six inches wider or higher than we want.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: And I feel like this is the kind of thing where you've got to visit it in the store.
Merlin: You have to inhabit it.
Merlin: You bring a tape measure.
Merlin: Maybe do some 3D modeling.
John: Yeah.
John: I know that couch that's in your living room quite well.
John: It's pretty comfortable.
John: It's pretty great.
John: And, you know, and I want to say that I've slept on it many times, but of course I haven't because Eric Corson slept on it many times.
John: You've been stuck with that bed that doesn't stay inflated.
John: Yeah.
John: You probably don't remember that bed.
John: I remember that bed, but for a long time, you actually had a spare bed that was somewhat taco-shaped, but it was an actual bed, and then the inflatable bed came out.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: We've gotten better ones since then, now that we've become somewhat camping people.
Merlin: We have some camping beds.
Merlin: We're back to your strategy here.
Merlin: You already got yourself in a little bit of a pickle with this half-birthday situation.
Merlin: And I've also experienced what you have.
Merlin: And this makes me sound like a, I don't know, terrible person.
Merlin: But I'll do stuff like I will keep...
Merlin: a treat in in the chamber or maybe in the magazine better put but i for example like a not too costly lego set i'll like keep around and hidden and if there's a particularly bad day or a particularly good day or particularly you just did a great thing you get a treat thing i'm able to produce a lego kit so i'm familiar with this i don't know what you call it this stockpile of potential presidents that can be deployed they're also great it's also good i don't know how much you run you're going to run into this more and more if you haven't already
Merlin: You know, like, say somehow you accidentally got two copies of a book, or there was some holiday where you got two copies of a present, or you just, whatever.
Merlin: This kind of thing happens, especially in the Amazon ecosystem.
Merlin: You keep those around.
Merlin: You know what those are great for?
Merlin: You go to a party.
Merlin: Last minute, you find out you're going to a birthday party.
Merlin: You get a gift.
Merlin: Oh, that's so good.
Merlin: Yeah, so if you keep around a small $10, $20 Lego set, but now you've got to resist the urge, but it's there.
John: I scored one time really big on that, and I felt like I kind of got my balloon popped one time really big on that.
John: The best one, the one time it worked, was the re-gifting one that you're talking about.
John: Somebody gave...
John: Marlowe a calligraphy set When she was three
Merlin: uh-huh we got a calligraphy set much later and it's extremely messy yes i mean it's there's not enough new york times in the world to accommodate the ink that is going to be everywhere please honey could you please do that only at the kitchen table please please please yeah three is very young to get calligraphy because also kids can't write yet
John: No, this was the thing where she was at the level of, like, put a green crayon in her hand, and she's like, green!
John: And it's like, here's this calligraphy set, like, thou art mine own thine.
John: And it's just like, what are you doing, old person?
John: This is not three appropriate.
John: So that went into a cupboard, and I kept looking at it, and I was like, ah.
John: It's too nice to give to a thrift store.
John: At the moment, because I feel like this is going to.
John: And then there was a birthday.
John: And I said, this is someone else's problem now.
John: I'm going to put this.
John: I'm going to wrap this.
John: I'm going to take this to this little boy's birthday party.
John: It seems like something.
John: He's pretty, you know, he's a pretty delicately attuned little boy.
John: He may enjoy this.
John: And it came out at his birthday party.
John: And he was surprised.
John: Yeah.
John: And my kid was surprised that she had thought of this wonderful gift.
John: And off we were.
John: It was like last minute birthday party and it was a big success.
John: The time I got burned was she loves my space pen.
John: My Merlin Man gifted space pen.
John: Because you used to give space pens.
John: I did.
John: That was a gift that you would give.
Merlin: That was a thing that I would do.
Merlin: That's another one of those things I'd stockpile those and give them away as a gift.
John: And I have one.
John: I carry one in my wallet at all times.
John: Always have my space pen.
John: And she always wants it.
John: She's like, anytime we go somewhere, she never forgets it's there, and she always wants the space pen.
John: So one time I thought, and it was for some half-birthday,
John: I was like, I'm going to get her her own space pen.
John: And they make them in purple.
John: Wow.
John: And I'm going to get her a purple space pen.
John: So I got one.
John: I ordered it from Amazon.prime.
John: Right.
John: And it didn't come in time.
Merlin: Oh, come on, John.
John: Why are they crapping you negative?
John: What's going on?
John: I thought that it was supposed to come the next day.
John: And it never does.
John: It's always like, your thing will be here in 10 days.
John: And I'm like, what is this?
Merlin: You've got to make sure to select.
Merlin: The problem is, here's how they get you.
Merlin: Just so you know.
Merlin: This might be a rookie error.
Merlin: It'll say on there, available for delivery today or tomorrow.
Merlin: And then you go to your cart and you click and you say, yay, I'm going to get it.
Merlin: You've got to remember to go in and double check that you clicked.
John: the fastest free option that's available because they will crap you negative and they'll say oh yeah we'll just deliver in two days or whatever yeah well sometimes it comes in 10 days oh see that's no good that's that's no good so this space pen went up above the refrigerator and it was there for months and then it was her first day of first grade and
John: I was like, what a great present to give on the first day of first grade.
John: And I took her all the way into her class.
John: And oh, oh, no, no, no.
John: You know what it was?
John: I was in New York and I flew back because I didn't want to miss her first day.
John: Oh, nice.
John: But I but I flew back and it was the type of it was like a flight that landed at 630 a.m.
John: And her first day of school started at eight.
John: Oh, God.
John: And so I ran through the airport and I jumped in a car and I had the car take me directly to her school and
John: And she was already in the school and they were already in the classroom.
John: And she's there just buzzing with the energy of the first day of school.
John: I still remember it was so exciting.
John: Just like all the smells and the wood and the halls.
John: And oh, my God.
John: Yeah.
John: And then her father arrives in the doorway of her classroom.
John: She hasn't seen me in a week because I've been in New York.
John: And I come into the class because I am like my father.
John: All the other parents like drop their kids off and then stand on the playground expectantly.
John: But I like walk in and introduce myself to the teacher and introduce myself to the assistant teacher.
John: And I walk around and put my hand on top of the head of every kid I recognize, which is like, you know, 14 of the 23 kids.
John: Hey, you know, how are you there?
Yeah.
John: Hey, you know, they're a little great.
John: Your name is Cracker, right?
John: I guess your name's probably Todd or Aiden.
John: I bet you're an Aiden.
John: Everybody's an Aiden.
Merlin: What's up, Aiden?
Merlin: How's it going, Chief?
Merlin: How are you, Harper?
Merlin: Are you Harper?
Merlin: Every year she's had at least two and sometimes three Aidens in her class.
Merlin: Aiden, and I don't know where that name comes from.
Merlin: Is that an Irish name?
John: I don't know.
John: It's often Asian American kids.
John: They can become an Aiden.
John: Aiden.
John: Well, we have two Harpers in her life.
John: One's a girl, one's a boy.
John: How about that?
John: Yeah, and I never even knew that Harper was a name you could give a kid, let alone that it was a unisex name.
Merlin: So you go in there, you're touching children's heads, you're introducing yourself.
John: I'm walking around.
John: I'm hello, hello.
John: And she's sitting over in the corner watching her dad do this, like, walk around.
John: Where, you know, and I'm like, I'm lifting up tapestries and looking at what's behind them.
John: And I'm opening the teacher's desk drawer.
John: And I'm just like, what's going on?
John: Okay, this class passes muster.
John: And I finally make it over to my little girl.
John: And I say, sweetie, I have a present for you.
John: And she's like, what?
John: But her eyes are barely focusing.
John: And I hand her this purple space pen, which I have been hoarding for at least six months.
John: And she opens it up and she's just like, oh.
Merlin: Anyway, Daddy, I would like you to leave now.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: So it begins.
Merlin: Well, that's a one-two punch.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I'm like, okay.
Merlin: The ingratitude pairs nicely with the dismissal.
Merlin: Ooh.
Merlin: You're getting dismissed already.
John: Out.
John: But then the purple space pen, here's the devastating part.
John: The purple space pen just sort of disappeared.
John: I have never seen it since.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And she continues to ask for my space pen.
John: And I don't want to be the dad that's like, whatever happened to your space pen?
John: So I dutifully hand my space pen over at times.
John: And I'm always trying to get her to like carry a bag that's got all of her stuff in it.
John: From your mouth to God's ear.
Merlin: She doesn't.
Merlin: She's not able to.
Merlin: No, basically you're a pocket with a checkbook.
Merlin: You just walk around and you're a pack mule.
Merlin: Like it's just your job to carry all the things.
Merlin: Am I the only one in this whole organization that's going to think about where things get located?
Merlin: No, you know what?
Merlin: Let's not carry a poster when we go to the grocery store.
Merlin: Why are we bringing a poster to the grocery store and who's going to have to end up carrying it?
Merlin: Spoiler alert, not you.
Merlin: A poster.
Merlin: Oh, just the craziest stuff and just the impractical shoes.
Merlin: And when she does get a bag, it's like a fancy bag.
Merlin: You can't even put anything in.
Merlin: She's gotten way better at that.
Merlin: We said when she got into fourth grade, she could have a roller backpack.
Merlin: And, you know, like a crate and barrel makes these really nice backpacks that every kid, whenever you see those backpacks everybody has, it's usually a crate and barrel.
Merlin: Great backpack, roller backpack.
Merlin: And now that's the locus of all activity.
Merlin: But I feel you.
Merlin: Well, the impractical shoes I can't stand.
Merlin: Oh, well, that's a bee in your bonnet.
Merlin: But I'm like, honey, we're going to be on Muni, and you're going to have San Francisco all over your feet.
Merlin: Think about how much San Francisco you want.
Merlin: You're going to wear sparkly shoes with no socks.
Merlin: Is that really what you want on your feet for two hours?
Merlin: Seattle is cold and rainy all winter long.
Merlin: And if it's not now, it will be.
Merlin: You leave the house, you plan ahead.
Merlin: Leave the house like there's going to be a fucking tsunami.
Yeah.
John: Yeah, because there will be a tsunami.
John: You'll be ankle-deep in water by the end of the day.
Merlin: Maybe not tomorrow, but you're going to be glad you brought a jacket.
Merlin: One day, one day on my deathbed, you'll come to me and you'll say, I'm so glad I brought a jacket.
Merlin: I should always wear layers.
John: So her mother likes impractical shoes, and she bought her, apparently, some black, what I would consider ballet slippers.
John: They call them, like, nice shoes.
John: I don't see anything nice about them.
John: Yeah.
John: Where it feels like, how are you going to climb a fence in those?
John: Like, what if, hey, sweetie, what if...
John: The shit goes down and we need to march.
John: What if we have to march, baby?
Merlin: Let me explain something to you.
Merlin: I learned this from General Eisenhower.
Merlin: Sometimes you don't even know what it is that you're planning for.
Merlin: All I can tell you is, again, to paraphrase Eisenhower, the plan is nothing but the planning is everything.
Merlin: I don't know what you're going to face.
Merlin: If there is a zombie apocalypse, and I'm not saying it's going to happen today, but if there is some kind of a virus that goes all throughout King County, is that really the shoes you want to be wearing?
John: I don't think so.
John: When the searchlights are in the sky, and the like...
John: Oh, the Claxton.
John: Yeah.
John: Seattle Claxton.
John: And your dad arrives at your school and everyone else is just... It's blackout conditions and they're all wide-eyed and staring.
Merlin: They all run by the cabinet.
Merlin: They grab their small bag that's packed.
Merlin: They flip it over their shoulder.
Merlin: It's like Battle Royale.
Merlin: You get your weapon and you just start running.
John: Let's go.
John: We're headed to the mountains.
John: And I sent her to school in boots and I pick her up and she's in these little fucking...
John: flats or these little black.
John: And I'm like, where did those even come from?
John: And she says, that's like shoes you have tea served to you in.
John: Yeah.
John: And they're, and they're tucked into her back act.
John: And I, and the first thing she says to me is, will you carry my boots?
John: Just like, will I carry your boots?
John: How did these little things even get, how did, when did you make this decision?
Yeah.
John: And I said to her, did you wear your boots today or did you wear these little things?
John: And she's like, oh, I wore my boots all day.
John: I just changed into, and I'm like, oh, I don't even know if I buy that.
John: Yeah, butter wouldn't melt in your mouth.
John: Give me a break.
Merlin: So, so.
Merlin: So anyway, it's a constant stuff.
John: So you gave her the pen.
Merlin: It's been a big deal.
Merlin: You're ready.
Merlin: And I know this feeling, this feeling of like, oh, boy, I'm going to kill it with this one because this is the thing I know.
Merlin: Finally, there's something you're going to treasure that you're going to take care of.
Merlin: It's going to be like me giving you the watch that's been in this guy's ass.
Merlin: This is going to be something to treasure for the rest of your life.
Merlin: Purple space pen.
Merlin: First day of school.
Merlin: Dad comes in, touches kids' heads, gives you a space pen.
Merlin: You're going to have that at graduation.
Merlin: You'll give it back to me in tears.
Merlin: That's right.
John: First day of first grade.
John: And this thing's going to be all battered and dented by the time you go off to law school or whatever.
John: And this will be the one that you sign the bill that allows lizards to have full rights in the United States.
Merlin: What if that's the pen that she uses to sign into law the Keep Moving and Get Out of the Way Act?
John: Ah, see?
John: The purple space pen that she says to the assembled group, as I sign this keep moving and get out of the way act, I use the pen that my father gave me on the first day of first grade when he went around embarrassing me by touching everyone on the head.
Merlin: I'll never forget it.
Merlin: I've kept it by my side every day.
John: Yeah.
John: And instead, it's just like it went into the bottom of a bag and never saw it again because she's got 40 bags.
John: Jesus.
John: And the thing is, I used to go into the Filson restoration department because I knew all the little bag makers.
John: And we would sit and talk about the bag that I was going to have custom made for her, a custom Filson bag.
John: And they used to say like, well, what if we sourced some sailcloth from like the USS Constitution and
John: And I was like, I don't know if that's enough.
John: I don't know if that's good enough.
John: Do you have any do you have any cloth that that actually went to the Yukon that you've been keeping in some back room?
John: And they're like, let's let us check, you know, and I would sit and say, like, well, when you get in a special bunch of leather that's been dyed purple, give me a call.
John: And I did that until the people that worked in the Filson Restoration Store ended up going to work for Patagonia, and a whole bunch of new characters are there now.
John: Oh, God.
John: And I'm cultivating them, but I keep thinking about that space pen, and I'm like, I'm going to hand her this Filson bag that I had custom made for her.
John: One of a kind.
John: One of a kind.
John: And it's like, what if we took the classic book bag, but we combined elements of the 256 and...
John: And I realized, like, oh, that's only what I'm thinking.
John: That's only what I care about.
John: She'll throw that into a pile with a bunch of other bags and say, like, it's too heavy.
John: I'm going to put my purple space pen in it and then throw it into a furnace.
John: Oh, my God.
John: So I don't know what to do.
John: I just have to keep buying her Supergirl costumes and hope that one day I get it right.
Yeah.
John: But I don't know, what's your big present going to be this year?
Merlin: You need a big one.
Merlin: You need a big one.
Merlin: You need a banger.
Merlin: You know, part of the thing is, this is... There are certain franchises and types of toys that she only seems to think about when it's time for a present-giving occasion.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Not exclusively, but her aunt gave her an American Girl doll a few years ago, which is this really costly, really nice doll.
Merlin: And she likes the doll.
Merlin: She takes good care of the doll.
Merlin: But it's not like Minecraft.
Merlin: It's not something she's looking forward to doing every day.
Merlin: But then, right around the end of November, she's like, you know...
Merlin: You know, you might want to let Auntie Susie know about time to get some more, maybe get an American Girl ski set with a little broken leg and all that stuff, you know, come to the cast.
Merlin: And, you know, that's weird.
Merlin: Well, right now, she, like so many kids her age, are just obsessed with all these little branded plastic things.
Merlin: You get the Tsum Tsums.
Merlin: Oh, like Tamakuchis and stuff?
Merlin: Kind of.
Merlin: But there's many.
Merlin: So I don't know if it's, it wasn't Shopkins that kicked this off.
Merlin: There's Shopkins, which you would love.
Merlin: It's a small toy about buying things.
John: It's very pure.
John: No, she came to me and said Shopkins.
John: And I was like, Shopkins is a restaurant in New York City where the guy yells at you.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: You get a big corned beef sandwich.
Merlin: Well, there's those things.
Merlin: And right now she's really into these like squishy things, like a squishy cinnamon bun.
Merlin: You can have a squishy popcorn box.
Merlin: That's very popular in her retinue.
Merlin: But yeah, but of course, you know, I'm trying not to inject too much of myself into it because, you know, it's the festival of lights and whatnot.
Merlin: And I don't want to keep my purple pen out of the situation.
Merlin: So you're not going to...
John: You're not going to get her like a Wilberforce car or something?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No.
John: No.
Merlin: The Wilberforce mobile?
Merlin: I have.
Merlin: So I'm pretty good.
Merlin: My wife is great at the stocking stuffer thing.
Merlin: She's very, very good at that.
Merlin: I think she buys a little too much and she overfills them a little bit, but that's the right kind of problem.
Merlin: I'm pretty great at the middle-sized present.
Merlin: so my wife is awesome at the i mean she's good at lots of stuff but one of the things she takes care of a lot of like the small stuff and the stocking stuffers and when i say stocking stuffers i'm talking about like you know there could be some really cool stuff and some skincare products and some toys and lots of candy and stuff like that she's great at that i'm good at the mediums i'm good at the 30 lego box i'm good at the uh electronics kit
Merlin: level of stuff, you know, your $20 to $60 range gift.
Merlin: Not to make this about dollars and cents, but, you know, the medium-sized, like a pretty good, pretty good present.
Merlin: Like, nobody's going to turn down a LEGO Creator set.
Merlin: That's a great set.
Merlin: Yeah, but then I struggle with the big one, because the big one does not always endure.
Merlin: The big one frequently reflects the aspirations about the future and the memories of the past of the parent, I think.
John: Do you know what I'm saying?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Well, my mom traditionally filled our stockings with walnuts and oranges.
John: Oh, that's so nice.
John: And then at the very top of the stocking, there were a couple of what you would normally call stocking stuffers.
John: But mostly it was walnuts where you would then have a nutcracker and you would sit during Christmas and crack walnuts, which none of us liked.
Oh.
John: Like the only one in the whole house that liked walnuts was my mom because it's such an old person thing to sit and do.
Merlin: I got you some hard candies.
Merlin: Are you going to finish your stocking walnuts?
Merlin: You want me to polish those off for you?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, and like filberts and stuff.
John: Like...
John: Who even eats filberts?
John: No, no.
John: So now when it's Christmas time and I'm filling stockings, now believe me, I am not
John: recapitulating this problem by filling her stocking with filberts.
John: But my mom arrives and she's got her nuts from 1820.
John: She's got her Dickens nuts.
John: Yeah, and she's like, let's get these nuts in the stockings.
John: I was a kid that was already wearing Dickensian clothes.
John: I could at least get
John: Get close to the idea that we would put another charcoal on the fire and Scrooge would get mad.
John: Yeah.
John: But she is my kid is so far away from a filbert.
John: But there they are in the stocking.
John: She just looks at him like they're dried pieces of shit, which is what they look like.
Yeah.
John: So there are some Christmas traditions.
Merlin: Yeah, actually, I did want to talk about this.
Merlin: Tell me your weird, well, you can tell me your normal ones, but I'd love to hear, do you have any weird holiday, especially Christmas traditions in your family?
John: Well, there are some good ones.
John: The top Christmas tradition, in my estimation, is that it's the one day a year that my mom will make me Welsh rarebit.
John: Cheesy toast?
John: Cheesy toast, but we put ham.
John: We put a slice of ham on it.
John: Oh, that sounds yummy.
John: It's homemade biscuits.
John: And then you take the biscuits and you cut them in half like you do with a biscuit.
John: But you lay the biscuits out on the plate.
John: And then you cover the biscuits with ham.
John: And then you cover the whole thing with cheese sauce.
John: Oh, that sounds so good.
John: And if you're crazy, you can cover... Surfers used to have a version of that when I was a kid.
John: They did.
John: That's right.
John: We always had homemade Welsh ribbit.
John: If you're crazy, you can put a fried egg on top of the ham.
John: Shit, dog.
John: And then cover the whole thing with cheese sauce.
John: And this is a meal, right?
John: You could make this meal every morning.
John: You could make this meal 250 times a year.
Merlin: On the continuum of special foods foods, that's on the very... That's pretty... I mean, leaving out filberts.
Merlin: That is a fairly not difficult meal to make.
John: It's not that hard to make.
John: And what a treat.
John: But she will only make it on Christmas morning.
John: It's the only time I've ever...
John: seen it in my life.
John: But I have it every Christmas.
John: And I think I'm the only one that likes it.
John: Wow.
John: Who the hell, what the hell kid wants Welsh rarebit?
John: It's like one more Dickensian weird.
John: And she puts a little tiny little bit of mustard in the cheese sauce.
John: It's like a crazy thing to fetishize.
John: But she still does it for you.
John: That's so nice.
John: I look forward to Welsh rarebit every Christmas morning.
John: And she...
John: And she makes it, you know, and it's not a thing where I have to say, like, it's Christmas, going to get the Welsh Ribbit.
John: It just shows up on Christmas morning.
John: She knows that that is Christmas meal.
Oh, man.
John: And it's not like we have a roast or a turkey or a ham or anything on Christmas dinner.
John: It is the Christmas meal.
John: Right.
Merlin: That sounds so good.
Merlin: I love these things.
Merlin: And I love that it's like, you know, really to your point, though, about starting to have birthday thing that starts out as this casual thing.
Merlin: It's interesting how many of these kinds of things start as a mistake or a lark or as some kind of like an accident.
Merlin: And then that becomes part of the that that becomes some of my favorite rituals are the things that started out as a stupid thing.
John: Yeah, I think one of our rituals is on Easter, when we have the Easter egg hunt, then we go in and we are like post-Easter egg hunt, and then we go out and we hide all the Easter eggs again.
John: Oh, okay.
John: And then the child or the children are also involved in the Easter egg hiding.
John: Oh, okay.
John: So then they get to go out and hide all their eggs again, and then...
John: All afternoon on Easter, we just hide and then find and then hide again.
John: We just are hiding eggs all afternoon.
John: You have so many simple pleasures in your life.
John: It's a very small thing, but every kid, they don't just want to find the eggs.
John: They want to then go be the Easter bunny themselves.
John: Oh, I like that.
Merlin: My daughter's Welsh rarebit is she's allowed to have Lucky Charms once a year, which is on her birthday.
Merlin: No, that's amazing.
Merlin: Yeah, well, there's this thing I picked up.
Merlin: I used to have a friend I used to work with in Florida.
Merlin: She's this wonderful woman named Tracy who loved her cats.
Merlin: And she loved her cats so much she had something called Jubilee.
Merlin: And we would laugh because every year Tracy would say, I got to get home early because it's Jubilee week.
Merlin: And Jubilee week is the one week to celebrate what she has decided are the cats, their rescues, with the two cats that she's decided it's their birthday.
Merlin: And so every night she and her boyfriend would have like special events for the cats.
Merlin: and i i thought it was uh at first i thought it was a little unusual but i that's a great i thought that's a great idea i love the idea of jubilee so now somehow at some point jubilee became introduced as a concept in our household that now has been heavily exploited and abused to me like all of christmas vacation or like oh your birthday's coming up it's jubilee you can stay up a little bit later
Merlin: It's Festus!
Merlin: It's like Festus, but, you know, Jubilee is like, it's not just that we're celebrating the coronation of the Queen.
Merlin: It's like an entire, like, you know, it's not an anise, but it's at least like a week of special celebration.
Merlin: So technically...
Merlin: like at the beginning of birthday jubilee week she gets to go through like a box of lucky charms but it started out simply enough as no you can't have this garbage cereal ever but then it became all right you may have it on your birthday and now it kind of squeaks through through a lot of birthday jubilee week wow
Merlin: But we don't get it again.
John: My daughter's mother believes that she that there is such a thing, first of all, as a birthday month.
Merlin: Oh, God.
John: This is how we get into this half birthday thing.
John: But I'm talking about she believes there's a birthday month for her.
John: This isn't for children.
John: Oh, this is like it's my birthday month.
John: So therefore, that's a form of Jubilee.
John: I think that's very much a form of Jubilee.
John: Well, it is, except I don't endorse it.
John: I'm like, you're a full grown woman.
John: What do you mean?
John: Like, like you get to do this because it's your birthday month.
John: But she's this is this is something that her mother probably started with her back in the 1970s.
John: And she still firmly believes that there's but certainly there's a birthday week on her, you know, during her birthday week.
Merlin: It's just like that's not negotiable.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: A birthday month, I dig my heels in.
John: But birthday week, I just have to wake up in the morning and I have to put my what can I do for you hat on.
John: And then it's just like I walk around with this hat with a big three by five card in it that just says what can I do.
Merlin: So that's one of those times when, you know, there's that dumb thing men do.
Merlin: One of the many things, dumb things men do.
Merlin: And I have tried so hard to stop doing this because this is maybe the worst.
Merlin: Is the whole like, do you want me to do the douches?
Merlin: Do you want me to do what should already be a chore for me?
Merlin: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Or like, you want me to take the recycling out?
Merlin: And like, what's she going to say?
Merlin: Oh, God, no, please don't inconvenience yourself by doing the thing that's already your job.
Merlin: But no, no, no, it gets much worse than that because it's so much smaller and dumber than that, which is like, I want to be acknowledged.
Merlin: I want to be acknowledged for doing this thing I'm supposed to do anyway.
Merlin: Don't ask.
Merlin: Just go do the fucking dishes.
Merlin: I'm just guessing when it's what can I do for you hat week?
Merlin: Like you never want to say something like, you know, oh, do you want me to pick up my socks?
Merlin: You just need to be picking up socks.
John: Well, fortunately, you know, we don't live together, so she can always walk out of my house and close the door and not have to think about where the socks are.
John: Right.
John: She doesn't have to be a good host, though.
Merlin: You need to be accommodating during what can I do for you week.
John: Well, during what can I do for you week, there is never any there's not even time for me to ask if there if I can do something for her because she lets me know.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And, you know, my little girl is learning this right at, you know, right at, she's there watching.
John: She's right at the, at our heels.
John: Um, and so this is all, I mean, this is, she said to me the other night, she's like, there's, there are not enough nightlights in my room.
John: And I said, how many nightlights does one person need?
John: And she said, you know what?
John: I know how you are about Christmas lights because I am a, I am a certain way about Christmas lights.
Merlin: You have strong feelings?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I feel like, A, I love Christmas lights.
Merlin: Okay, good, good, good.
Merlin: Do they need to be a certain color?
Merlin: Do they need to yes or no blink?
Merlin: Do you have strong feelings about what kind?
Merlin: Do you need big lights versus little fairy lights?
Merlin: Do you have strong feelings about that?
Merlin: Because there are people I've learned over the years, people have extremely strong feelings about Christmas lights.
Merlin: I am one of these people.
John: Okay.
John: I believe that you should decorate outside of your house with
John: In, like, white, but I don't mean clear, I mean white Christmas lights.
John: And I do not believe in LED Christmas lights.
John: Interesting.
John: They have to be traditional Christmas lights.
John: Should they be the Bulby butt plug type, or you don't want those little ones?
John: You don't want those little guys.
John: Well, both.
John: So I use the Bulby butt plugs, you know, like C9 size lights.
John: Or C7, whichever is the larger of the two.
John: I have both kinds.
John: Okay.
John: I put them around.
John: I decorate the entire what you would call the roof edge.
Okay.
John: of my house in large white christmas lights okay like so i so i basically like where the gutters are yeah i outlined the sketch of the house okay with uh with large white christmas i'm seeing that i'm liking that okay and then that defines a nice clear line
John: Yes, exactly.
John: And you have to make them straight.
John: Those are not droopy.
John: Those are like, those are taut.
John: Those are soldiers.
John: And then the little Christmas lights, which are not blinking.
John: Bushes.
John: Bushes and trees.
John: Bushes and trees.
Merlin: Bushes and trees, because you can also disguise them.
Merlin: There's many ways to weave the fairy lights into the foliage in a way that can look very natural and lovely.
John: Right.
John: So the big ones that are on the outside of the house have white strands because I have a white house.
John: Okay.
John: But the ones that go in bushes and trees have green strands because they're hiding in bushes and trees.
John: Yes.
John: And then there are lights that go, again, now these are white strand lights that go along the white picket fence.
John: Oh, that's nice.
John: That's a clean, very clean look.
Yeah.
John: It's very nice, and it goes up over the arbor, which I erect at the front gate only at this time of year, and then along the remainder of the white picker fence.
John: And then the giant blue spruce that is in the front yard gets decorated with colored spruce.
John: c9 lights large bulbous lights but does that one read as a christmas style tree it does oh that's nice i like that you're not just slathering stuff everywhere you you've got you've got thought you've got a persuasive theory for all of this i do and the large colored lights uh because a blue spruce is the finest of all christmas trees and in fact
John: There are evil, evil, evil people in this world who go because a blue spruce is a kind of native Northwest tree.
John: And they will go around and someone will have a giant blue spruce in their front yard.
John: Don't say this.
John: You're going to break my heart.
John: They'll do it.
John: They climb on the roof of their truck and they just cut off the top six feet of your blue spruce.
John: That is so un-American.
John: It's the awfulest.
John: And then the rest of your life, because a blue spruce will live 200 years.
John: Then you've got this blue spruce that doesn't have a top.
John: That's like cutting off a poodle's tail to stir your drink.
John: That's just wrong.
John: It's something.
John: It's zonkers.
John: Because a proper blue spruce Christmas tree, that's not a thing that you're just going to get at the store.
John: That's like a nice thing.
John: Blue spruce are beautiful.
John: They're blue.
John: Anyway, so I had so green.
John: They're blue.
John: Like Kentucky.
John: They are.
John: Yeah, they're like blue and they have this kind of white, not fuzz, but they have this whiteness to their blue.
John: They're wonderful trees.
John: But so I had my blue spruce is tall enough that I had to get on top of a ladder where I was like, eeky, eeky, eeky.
John: And then take the big colored lights, put them on the end of a long broom and put the broom up to wrap the lights around the top of the tree.
Merlin: You're sounding a lot like the first 10 seconds of a commercial on cable TV.
Merlin: The part that's in black and white.
Merlin: About how many times has this happened to you?
Merlin: That sounds a little dangerous, buddy.
John: And they're like, yeah.
John: And then it's an infomercial for like Christmas tree lighter pole.
John: Or Christmas tree lights pole.
John: Christmas tree lighting pole.
Merlin: It's only $39.95.
Merlin: And you can get a second one.
Merlin: Just pay a separate fee.
John: Yeah, you get a second one for shipping and handling.
Yeah.
John: And OK, so here's my second strong feelings about Christmas lights.
John: You cannot have a Christmas tree with colored lights that you illuminate all year.
John: You cannot have a fence line that has Christmas lights on it all year, nor can you have bushes.
John: But you are.
John: You should have your house outlined in giant white lights all year long.
John: Oh, yes.
John: So I have mine set on, I used to have it set on a timer, which over the course of the year I had to keep adjusting because it got dark earlier in the winter and then light, you know, like in the summertime I had it set so the lights didn't come on until 10 p.m.
John: Right, right, right.
John: And they went off at 5 a.m.
John: And now the lights come on at like 4 in the afternoon.
John: That's so crazy right now.
John: Because I switched out the timer for a photosensitive box.
John: Oh, that's smart.
John: So it automatically comes on at dusk.
Merlin: We use an Internet of Things related service, dingus, where I say turn on the Christmas lights a half hour before sunset.
John: Well, so my new light sensor has an app.
John: And if I want, I can turn the Christmas lights on from Uzbekistan.
John: I have yet I don't I don't need it because it also turns on at dusk and that's when I would turn it on if I was in Uzbekistan.
John: It doesn't change.
John: No.
John: But so I so I believe in I believe in light as a decoration.
John: And, you know, my house is kind of famous in the neighborhood because it's this big white house that has beautiful lights on it all year.
Merlin: But then at Christmas time, what about what about blinking?
Merlin: What about turning on and off?
Merlin: Are you some people are very against lights that blink at all.
Merlin: Some people like lights that are like tick tock.
Merlin: TikTok on-off.
Merlin: Some people like the blooming look of lights.
Merlin: I know this is not as strong an opinion as white versus colored, excuse me, African-American lights.
Merlin: What's your feeling on the blinking or on-off status of lights?
Merlin: Obviously, it sounds like the ones around your house.
Merlin: That would be really garish.
John: Yeah, no, no, no.
John: You'd look like a casino.
John: You'd look like a riverboat casino.
John: But when I was young, my mom and I had a tradition of
John: which was after Susan went to bed, my mom and I would sit in the living room with all the lights out and look at our tree.
John: Eating filberts.
John: Eating filberts and looking at our tree.
John: And this was a special thing because I was eight and Susan was six.
John: And so Susan had to go to bed, but then I could sit with mom in the dark and look at the tree.
John: And the tree had...
John: probably two strands of lights that didn't blink and two strands of lights that did blink, but not on any kind of pattern, random blinking.
Merlin: That's important.
Merlin: You got to say, I would feel like if you're, no matter what you're doing with lights, my lady disagrees on this.
Merlin: I think you started in the middle, you start near the trunk and you thread through in a way that you would not be able to detect any lines to where the lights are.
Merlin: No lines.
Merlin: Some people like that.
Merlin: Some people like that Christmas present style.
Merlin: Drupa, Drupa, Drupa.
Merlin: Some people really like that look.
Merlin: Especially with the classic butt plug, like blue, red, and orange lights.
Merlin: They like that look.
John: Oh, that it's sort of just drapey around the outside, like a strand of popcorn?
John: It's got a drapey dangle to the butt plugs.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: I don't want that.
John: You got to spend some time.
John: You got to twist it around.
John: It has to look like there are little fairies in the tree.
John: That's a nice memory.
John: Yeah.
John: So we would sit, and then as Susan got older, then the three of us would sit and watch the tree blink.
John: And this was back when...
John: Christmas was spooky still because at least we did not spend any time during the year thinking about the baby Jesus.
John: We did not spend any time during the year thinking about the three wise men or the manger or any of that stuff.
John: That's not a thing that we would think about in July.
John: But then right around Christmas time, you're thinking about
John: The gift of the magi and the camels and sleeping in the manger and the little drummer boy and all this spooky shit.
Merlin: holiday season in general, but Christmas in particular, the permission to acknowledge that as something that could be as far as depressing, but could very much at least be anxious, and as you say, spooky, I mean, you know, I'm sure that existed before Charlie Brown Christmas, but I still feel like even in the 70s, it wasn't something where you were like, it was not encouraged for you to go like, oh, this is kind of a weirdly reflective time when I think about loss.
Merlin: Or I think about, you know what I mean?
Merlin: There's so much of the whole Christmas story that's really like, whoa, like out of wedlock birth and they got to sleep in a barn and like, it's weird.
Merlin: What do you do with myrrh anyway?
Merlin: And there's just a lot about it that's very lonesome.
John: It is lonesome.
John: And in the 70s in particular, it was still very, very much a thing where not only all three of the television stations, but also public television and also all media everywhere, plus all government buildings, it was generally accepted that it
John: that everybody was like, oh, holy night.
John: And it wasn't just like, Santa Claus is coming to... No, and we didn't have as many funny songs.
Merlin: This is before Wonderful Christmas Time.
Merlin: You take before the late they didn't have Father Christmas, you might have had Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, you had the Beach Boys, you had the Jackson 5.
Merlin: Apart from that, they were more like hymns.
Merlin: It was much more dolorous.
Merlin: It was lonesome.
Merlin: Lots of hymns.
John: But when you think about those holidays, the religious ones in particular, Easter and Christmas, but also Halloween, they are the only times of the year when everybody, all the adults too, were acknowledging that there was a supernatural world.
John: The only times of the year where grownups would say,
John: Well, you know, in the middle of the night, spooky things happen.
John: People who are dead rise and people, you know, and you can follow a star and it will carry you around the world to find a like a poor baby who's living with some sheep.
Merlin: I heard this rumor that there might be a poor baby somewhere that I should see.
John: Has anyone seen a really poor baby?
Yeah.
John: And then it's like, but that baby is actually God.
John: What?
John: Who's making himself a poor baby just to fuck with everybody.
John: Mind blown.
John: To see if you'll let him sleep in the hotel.
John: But if you don't, the poor baby will.
Merlin: Like a witch in a Disney film.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Secret God that you fucked up, dude.
Merlin: You better be nice to all the poor babies.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: One of them might be God.
Yeah.
John: Even though you would think that poor baby God would destroy hotelier that made him sleep in garage.
John: No, no, no.
John: Poor baby God forgives.
John: For now.
John: For now.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: For now.
Merlin: And so Christmas to the quickening when he comes back and exacts his revenge.
Merlin: Jesus is back, but this time he's heavily armed.
John: He's brought two friends.
John: He's brought the Father and the Holy Ghost.
John: He's riding a T-Rex.
John: And then at Halloween, of course, you're just like...
John: a fucking headless horseman is gonna maybe ride so anyway those are the three times a year and we used to sit in the living room and I was just like totally spooked like there's a tree full of flashing fairies and there's like a poor baby somewhere maybe still around and a little boy is trying to sell matches but he dies or no that's a little match girl it's a little girl that dies of freezing because no one will buy her matches whoever bought a match but this is a thing
John: If you see a little girl, like the whole idea that there would be a little girl alone on Christmas selling matches to get enough money to buy heat.
John: Merry Christmas.
John: And she dies.
John: What a horrible story.
John: It was this whole time of year where it was just like, I'm just, you know, just waiting for the next story where it's like, oh, did you hear about the Christmas skeleton?
Merlin: You have an employee whose son that can't walk died because you just didn't spend enough money on your business.
John: Oh, sure.
John: Ghosts will sometimes come and take you time travel.
John: Yes.
John: Time traveling ghosts.
Merlin: Yes.
John: Time traveling ghosts will also sometimes come and show you what a fuck you are.
John: Yes.
John: So I don't know about any of those traditions.
John: We don't have them anymore.
John: We just have filberts and Welsh rare bits.
Merlin: We also we like to give my wife inappropriate things.
Merlin: This started a long time ago.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: I'm trying to think of some of our dumb traditions.
Merlin: We've got the sort of well-known traditions.
Merlin: You're allowed to open one small to medium-sized gift on Christmas Eve.
Merlin: That's something we allow.
Merlin: My sister instituted that.
Merlin: I think that's a good program.
Merlin: I like that program.
Merlin: Apart from that, you don't slide.
Merlin: There's no sliding on that.
Merlin: We always give my wife something inappropriate in her stocking.
Merlin: For years, it was an action figure of Chewbacca.
Merlin: We get a different Star Wars figure, or we recently got a Rick from The Walking Dead.
Merlin: Oh, we have another Walking Dead tradition, which is we hang our Marlon Brando Christmas ornament right next to our... Oh, jeez, what's his name?
Merlin: Daryl, the guy with the crossbow.
Merlin: And Daryl is usually standing on an orange with his crossbow pointed at the Godfather.
John: Is Marlon Brando in The Walking Dead?
John: I didn't realize that.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: He's in The Godfather.
Merlin: But we have a Godfather.
Merlin: We've got a Godfather ornament from Hallmark.
Merlin: And we have a Daryl from The Walking Dead ornament from Hallmark.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: So it's a trick that's happening inside the tree.
Merlin: It's kind of like Christmas fan fiction.
Merlin: It's the most wonderful time of the year.
John: The voice is coming from inside the tree.
Merlin: Yeah, like your daughter knows about Dark Vader.
Merlin: My daughter knows about oranges in The Godfather, even though she's never seen it.
Merlin: What else do we do?
Merlin: We usually make cinnamon buns from a tube on Sunday morning.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: We'll sometimes take a walk.
Merlin: The thing is, my favorite ones are the ones we almost forget about until it's time.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Where it's not like, oh, it's time to take out Grandpa's ashes and put lights on them.
Merlin: We don't have that many things like that.
Merlin: But I like the little dumb things that a family gets.
Merlin: So many rituals and things that would be too silly to even mention on air.
Merlin: But little things that you do that are just like your little family thing.
Merlin: That's my favorite thing.
John: When I was in high school, at a certain point, I found at the Goodwill...
John: A plaid three-piece suit, a wool plaid three-piece suit, and it was a bright red plaid.
John: Wow.
John: Like, I don't know who had that suit made or when they thought they were going to wear it, but it was a beautiful, beautiful suit made out of what I can only imagine was like the kind of wool you would use to make a kilt.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But it was a three-piece suit and it fit me when I was a teenager.
John: So we had a Christmas tradition where on Christmas Eve day, we would bake all day.
John: Cookies, fudge, cookies, more cookies, different kinds of cookies.
John: And then we would make two dozen plates of cookies.
John: And then I would put on my plaid suit and I would walk around the neighborhood and I would give cookies to all the neighbors.
Merlin: That's so nice.
Merlin: Do you guys sing?
Merlin: My family is not a singing family, and I don't want to force it, but I'm a singing guy, and I would have so much more singing in the family if I could get them into it.
Merlin: Do you do much singing?
John: My mom wants us to sing.
John: And she really loves all the Methodist hymns.
John: And the Methodist hymns that my mom loves are, again, Dickensian.
John: They're all just like, Lord our God.
John: Be grateful you aren't dead yet for now.
John: Exactly.
John: The Christmas skeleton arrived.
Merlin: God hears all prayers, but he doesn't always say yes.
John: She loves to hear them.
Merlin: You get what you get, and you don't get upset.
John: That's right.
John: That's one of the great Methodist hymns.
John: One of the great Methodist hymns, yeah.
John: John Wesley, I think, wrote that.
John: They're droney, and they're obtuse, and they all are very holy, holy, holy.
John: And she wants to hear them, but she doesn't herself sing.
John: And we have these hymnals that she'll hand me and be like, you know, come on, lead us in the hymns.
John: This should be your Welsh rarebit for her.
John: But I don't know the hymns.
John: You can read music, can't you?
John: No.
John: No.
John: It requires that you spend your life... Maybe you can play it on Spotify and just sing along.
Merlin: Oh, that's not a bad idea.
Merlin: Like a Spotify Methodist hymn channel, I'm sure they have.
John: That's not a bad idea.
John: Well, so she used to just kind of...
John: go toddle off to the Methodist church and listen to them sing the hymns.
John: But you're right.
John: I should go on my Sonos and just have Methodist hymnals playing.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: This is the real talk.
Merlin: This is something you could do that would not be very difficult.
Merlin: And luckily she won't hear this until the show comes out and you'll already have done this for her on Christmas Eve.
Merlin: You should go figure out what her favorite is and learn it on piano and sing it for her.
John: That is a wonderful idea, except I think these hymns all have like 350 weird medieval chords.
John: I'm not sure.
John: I've never tried.
John: I've never tried, but you know, I'm not like... Come on.
John: I bet you could do it with four chords.
John: All right, that's a good idea.
Merlin: I went to my daughter.
Merlin: My daughter has been... I don't like to talk about this publicly.
Merlin: My daughter has been taking ukulele, this term.
Merlin: And today, I went to ukulele share out.
Merlin: So ukulele share out... Ukulele share out.
Merlin: And that's when... So you have share out.
Merlin: Sometimes a class will come and do something.
Merlin: And she and her class got up and played Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and sang it.
Merlin: And it was a perfect delight.
Merlin: Children singing and terribly, terribly playing ukuleles was absolutely amazing.
Merlin: It was...
Merlin: Music gets into your brainstem.
Merlin: I'm just saying you could fake your way through it, and she would appreciate the effort.
John: It really does.
John: We just went to our little girl's Christmas concert because she is in a little girl's choir.
John: that she goes to all year, Little Girl Choir.
John: But they work on a Christmas pageant.
John: And it was actually surprisingly lovely to see this Little Girl Choir in which there are five little girls, five little Asian girls, two little girls from Pakistan, a couple of African-American girls, and they're all singing Oh Hanukkah.
John: oh wow and and uh they love oh hanukkah uh they get to you know spin the dreidel they're all just loving the song and they and marlo asked me the other day why don't we celebrate hanukkah and i said you know we can celebrate hanukkah if you if you like
John: Hanukkah is just as meaningful to us as Christmas is, really.
John: I mean, it's not as spooky, but there still is some spookiness.
John: Like, why do the lamps stay lit?
Merlin: Ghost will follow you home.
John: It's the Hanukkah skeleton.
John: But as miracles go, that is really a small one to base a holiday on.
Merlin: It's a stretch.
Merlin: It's sort of like, yeah, it's like finding a quarter on your couch or a pack of cigarettes you forgot about.
Merlin: I mean, it's miraculous in its way.
Merlin: It was only one day's worth of oil.
Merlin: It's not good for the brand building of the religion.
Merlin: I mean, it's not quite like, but they've already got kind of a bad rap, you know, for being a little bit tight with the buck and, you know, being able to like, just make the oil last longer.
Merlin: Not a good look.
John: It's not as, it's certainly not as exciting as like poor baby born in the garage.
Merlin: And, and also, you know, the problem is there's a lot of pressure on Hanukkah.
Merlin: Hanukkah is not a major holiday in that faith.
Merlin: But it's got to compete with the real banger of Christmas.
John: It's rough.
John: It does.
John: And Christmas is a banger.
John: But, you know, they that's like a holiday that kind of outdoes it because it's like, well, you get a present every day for like lots of days.
Merlin: Now, what about Kwanzaa is kind of like Esperanto, right?
Merlin: It's like a good idea.
Merlin: It started as a good idea.
Merlin: And then but it's got some nice concepts to it.
Merlin: But do you know much about Kwanzaa?
Merlin: Most of what I know about Kwanzaa, I've learned from things my daughter had to draw at school.
John: I feel like it is a holiday that derives from the Afrocentrism movement and it reflects, yeah, kind of a general... But it's like, isn't it based on like each day is a different kind of like value?
Merlin: Oh, so it's like the Stations of the Cross, kind of?
Merlin: Maybe.
Merlin: Kwanzaa, with three A's.
Merlin: I don't know about it.
Merlin: Oh, they've got candles, too.
Merlin: Look at that.
Merlin: Kwanzaa.
John: It feels like because of the contemporary sense of not wanting to commit a cultural appropriation, that there would be no way for us to...
John: multiculturally celebrate Kwanzaa.
John: If she came home and said, why don't we celebrate Kwanzaa?
John: Like, I think I could say about Hanukkah, like, yeah, let's celebrate Hanukkah.
John: Like, sure.
John: But I don't think I could say, because it's very complicated, this idea of cultural appropriation, because, of course, it's everything that makes up American culture is culturally appropriate.
Merlin: Kwanzaa is a very high concept.
Merlin: I'm not going to attempt to read these in the original words, but the English translation.
Merlin: So, seven principles of Kwanzaa.
Merlin: unity self-determination each day is a different uh quality or principle unity self-determination collective work and responsibility cooperative economics purpose creativity and faith that's kind of the only thing the only thing missing is have a special bag that daddy bought you that you carry everywhere or extra meat for a dollar oh that's the that's the real tradition
John: extra meat for a dollar i believe in every single one of those kwanza principles um and i feel like i could integrate them into my daily life and into our holiday celebration because they're all wonderful even the collective economics which i know is you know that scares cooperative economics to build and maintain our own stores shops and other businesses and to profit from them together you're talking about like uh you're talking about indie rock
John: Well, you are, but then the language, our own, again, that seems like a thing that is a little bit separatist.
John: Like hard to know exactly our own versus whom.
Merlin: I didn't know if it was more Ayn Rand.
John: I see what you're saying.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: Yeah.
John: So I don't know.
John: I mean, I'm very, very, I do not know what to do about Moana costume.
John: Because we were, again, at a thrift store and we were at a thrift store in Bremerton, Washington, which is like the Navy base town.
John: And my daughter found one of those sort of it's it's a little like brocade Chinese girl dress.
John: And she found this, you know, she found this beautiful garment.
John: And to her, it just seemed like this beautiful thing.
John: And then at the same store, she found a Japanese paper umbrella.
John: And she also thought that this was beautiful.
John: And she did not she didn't understand that they were Asian.
John: And she's she's she's clear about the fact that there are that there is China.
John: Right.
John: She's very curious about China.
John: But these are beautiful items.
John: Right.
John: They're just beautiful things to her.
John: They don't have.
John: They're fancy.
Yeah.
John: They're fancy.
John: So she wants to buy these things and she wants to put on the and she sees an association between them.
John: They're both fancy and she she sees an association.
John: So here she is in her little Chinese brocade dress with her Japanese paper umbrella.
John: And I'm standing there going, I'm not sure what to do now.
John: So I took a picture of it and I sent it to Jesse Thorne.
John: And I said, Jesse Thorne, what do you do here?
John: And Jesse wrote back thoughtfully and said, I, you know, like in order to like it is cultural appropriation that you're that you are traipsing into.
John: I think you either thing is fine, but you cannot have them both.
Merlin: And I was like, say to the child to explain that.
John: You cannot explain it.
Merlin: You cannot explain it.
Merlin: I bought her both things.
Merlin: There's something here you should feel bad about, but I'm not sure if I should tell you why.
Merlin: What?
John: No, I bought her both things and then said, you can't take the parasol outside.
John: It's not a functional umbrella.
John: Oh, you lied.
John: That's good.
John: Well, it's not a functional umbrella.
John: No, that's true.
John: That's true.
John: There's no lie there.
Merlin: Lying is really underrated.
Merlin: There are a lot of lies.
Merlin: Well, sometimes you have appeal to authority and lie, and you have to know when to deploy those.
John: In my case, there is no reason to burden her mind with...
John: The whole idea of cultural appropriation, because I feel like it is a fashion rather than a truth.
John: And by the time she is 15, there will be some other thing that people who want to be upset will be upset about.
John: And cultural appropriation will go back to being an American tradition rather than a thing to be mad about.
John: But right now, Moana is extremely popular with her.
John: She thinks it's an amazing movie.
John: It's a very good movie.
John: And she wants a Moana dress.
John: And I know from the fact that I am sometimes on the internet that this is very controversial.
John: Is it problematic?
Merlin: It's very problematic.
Merlin: Moana costume.
John: Because to wear a Moana costume is to, I don't know what, it's to something.
Merlin: Isn't there some role for intersectionality here, though?
Merlin: Is this something we need to, I feel like, but I mean, there's a but to the story of Moana that goes beyond that particular culture, and you're dressing up mostly as the confident girl.
John: Right.
John: This is very complex, right?
John: Because Moana is a wonderful example.
John: She's a sailor.
John: She's fantastic.
John: She picks stuff up.
John: It's a fantastic movie.
John: And it's also wonderful as an example of representation, right?
John: There are all these beautiful stories.
Merlin: Finally, The Rock got a role.
John: Well, thank God.
John: He needs the work.
Merlin: Merry Christmas.
Merlin: God bless us, everyone.