Ep. 297: "Chicken in the House"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: Is it?
John: It's early.
Merlin: Oh, is it?
John: You don't mind if I just sleep through the first 45 minutes?
John: No, I'll do all the talking.
John: Okay, great.
Merlin: Well, let's see.
Merlin: It's Monday, July 16th, and everything's going great.
Merlin: I woke up around 3 and couldn't really get back to sleep.
Merlin: That's exactly the same story with me.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, let's compare notes.
Merlin: So I get up and I realize I'm going, hunk, hunk, hunk.
Merlin: What is that?
Merlin: That's my left nostril.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Sometimes I can't breathe.
Merlin: I should probably get a CPAP, but I just, no offense, but I just, I don't know, I just seem very undignified.
John: Yes, it is.
Merlin: I mean, you know, I feel like once you're on the CPAP, you're always on the CPAP.
Merlin: There's got to be a better way.
Merlin: Well, I found myself thinking, I wonder if I could go on YouTube.
Merlin: We watch a lot of YouTube videos about life hacks.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Things like you can make your own bug catcher with a plunger and stuff like that.
Merlin: I wonder if I could make a homemade CPAP for myself with some straws and a bellows and maybe a hamster on a wheel.
John: It seems to me like a home tracheotomy would be better.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Well, you know, you can make your own... You can make candy at home.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I learned how to make... You can make your own dish soap at home, I learned.
Merlin: I'm curious about this plunging flycatcher.
Merlin: Well, there's a funny... Just as a side note, there is a funny, sometimes funny YouTube channel that's ostensibly a life hacks channel.
Merlin: It's a bunch of dumb shit you can make where you really should probably just go buy it in a store.
Merlin: My daughter loves these kinds of videos.
Merlin: Every morning when I brush her hair...
Merlin: She watches this thing called, I think it's called five minute crafts or five minutes.
Merlin: It's just this Russian farm of content about like dumb stuff you can make with hot glue.
Merlin: Anyway, we watched one called household hacker and we discovered it because he has a series called overcomplicated life hacks.
Merlin: So he has regular life hacks about like how to make your shoes not stinky and stuff.
Merlin: But then he has some that are very, very funny.
Merlin: Like, well, they're, they're funny.
Merlin: Build a better mousetrap.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Build a much worse mousetrap.
Merlin: You can make a comb out of plastic forks, stuff like that.
Merlin: It's fun.
Merlin: It's not super well done, but we get a laugh out of it because we get the genre.
John: I'm getting a laugh out of it right now.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: And so one thing he did was he tested several as-seen-on-TV pest solutions.
Merlin: Have you seen the bug vacuum?
No.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: There's a thing you can get.
Merlin: It's very, very simple.
Merlin: You know there's like the regular kind of classic plumber's helper that's just like a plunger on a stick?
Merlin: There's another kind you can get that's like an accordion.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: So you get an accordion-style plunger, and you attach it with some tubes and a vacuum cleaner dingus, and you silver tape it all together, and now you can make your own bug sucker.
John: Oh, bug sucker.
Merlin: So what does a CPAP really do?
Merlin: I don't want to look it up.
Merlin: I'm imagining it makes your nose breathe better.
John: A long time ago, I was, you know, I was carrying a little bit of extra weight, let's say.
John: And, you know, I was seeing a gal and she one morning said, you have sleep apnea.
John: And I said, kind of like when that doctor said, you have sleep apnea.
John: bipolar disorder yeah she said you have sleep apnea you're not the first you're not the first one i was like to confront me in the morning about my noises well and then she was just saying like you fall you've you like stop breathing sometimes and i was like sure who doesn't she was like everyone else you have to breathe all the time yeah and i was like well you know that's why i don't sleep on my back and you know
Merlin: so i went through this whole like do i need a cpap do i what do i do do i get breathe right strips do i it starts with having to google cpap yeah you know you're on you're already you're already on a journey at that point that's gonna that's gonna screw up every instagram ad you see for the next two years don't do it it's too late we've even just because we're talking about it
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: The big eye in the sky is going to hear us.
Merlin: And then pretty soon we're going to be getting stuff for nearly painless catheters and selling our life insurance policy and all the kind of MSNBC ads I see all the time.
John: A friend and I were talking about a brand of children's shoes called Play.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: P-L-A-E.
Merlin: Play.
John: Is that dip thong, John?
John: It's some kind of Swedish thing.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: It's a Swedish finish.
Mm-hmm.
John: Play.
John: Play.
John: And I said, does Play make shoes for grownups?
John: And she said, I'm not sure.
John: Seems interesting.
John: That'd be a good idea.
John: And she Googled Play on her phone.
John: Came up with no results.
John: Although, no, no, no.
John: She went to Zappos.
John: No results.
John: No Play.
John: No Play.
John: I got home, opened my phone, which was not even with me at the time.
John: That was the day that I forgot my phone at home.
John: Went on Instagram.
John: And within a minute, there was an ad for adult play shoes.
John: And now my mind is boggling at how they got to me.
Merlin: I hate to spoil this for you because it is a wonderful mystery, but there's actually an extremely logical reason why that happened.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It's not a happy reason.
John: Is this like Slugbug, where you never see Volkswagens until you see a Volkswagen?
Merlin: Like an availability heuristic, kind of?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Some kind of a cognitive bias, probably.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: There's a podcast that did a couple episodes on this.
Merlin: And the ongoing thing of like...
Merlin: are your dinguses listening to you?
Merlin: Cause gosh, isn't it strange that pretty much exactly what you described, how is it even possible?
Merlin: Or a lot of people say like, cause we talked about this thing and then I started getting ads.
Merlin: Yours is actually, I think pretty straightforward.
Merlin: Um, you were both on the same IP address when she searched for that.
John: But that's what I'm saying.
John: I didn't have my phone.
Merlin: Yes, but you have an IP address.
Merlin: Let's just call it 7.
Merlin: You're on the IP address 7.
Merlin: So you're saying you didn't have your phone at all?
Merlin: It was not in my possession.
Merlin: It was not at that location.
Merlin: That could be because you're pals and you've been associated with that person.
Merlin: I will send you... I know you love listening to podcasts.
Merlin: I'll send you a copy of this.
Merlin: The crazy part is that it is really disturbing to think that you mentioned purple underpants and then purple underpants start showing up in your ads.
Merlin: That's super creepy.
Merlin: But it's only just slightly less creepy how it actually works.
Merlin: It's actually kind of more creepy because...
Merlin: The deus ex machina explanation would be, oh, these creepy devices are listening to me.
Merlin: It's actually way creepier than that because of the kind of demographics and chronographics and geographics that they use.
Merlin: It's not interesting, but it's fucked up.
Merlin: But it's real.
Merlin: It's real.
Merlin: Oh, no, it's really real.
Merlin: I talked to a pal of mine who has bought.
Merlin: Have you ever done this?
Merlin: We have a sponsor on the show that I happen to like quite a lot.
Merlin: And I recently purchased something from that sponsor.
Merlin: And now the thing that I bought from them keeps showing up all over the Internet, even though I've got ad blockers out the ass.
Merlin: I still get ads.
Merlin: Now I'm getting ads for the thing that I bought from them.
Merlin: and so that's fun thank you to our sponsor um but uh so those things are weird like you know how he had this he uh he looked up a porch light he opened his garage door one time he tried he tried
Merlin: Uh, this is, no, no, no, this is a different time.
Merlin: It's funny how poor Matt Howey is our sink for everything that's fucked up about the internet.
John: Just if you hook your phone to your house.
Merlin: It just happened a phone in the house.
Merlin: Now you're being geolocated and there's drones and shit.
Merlin: He had, like, searched for, I think, like, it's one of those things where you would really notice, he'd look for, like, a porch light, a replacement for the lamp on his porch.
Merlin: Everywhere he went for months, he was like, porch light?
Merlin: Porch light?
John: Porch light?
John: Porch light?
John: I'm so punch drunk with lack of sleep.
John: Oh, let me get back to that.
Merlin: But the other one that drives me crazy, and this has been going on for, God, 15 years, but I really hate the whole email that's like, hey, hey, it looks like you put something in your bath stick.
Merlin: You should go buy that from your Bastic?
Merlin: It's something in your Bastic email.
Merlin: It's something in your Bastic, and it just keeps coming back again and again.
Merlin: I'm like, no, no.
Merlin: No, Google.
Merlin: No, Google.
Merlin: I don't want that.
Merlin: I put that thing in my Bastic to see if you could ship it to me at a reasonable price, and you can't.
Merlin: I checked again.
Merlin: Leave me alone.
Merlin: Leave me alone.
John: You know, what's weird is I spend so much time Googling hentai porn, but I never see any ads for it.
John: Isn't that strange?
Merlin: But see, that's still feeding into the big profile.
Merlin: It's got their tentacles into you.
Merlin: You were just researching it to like...
Merlin: Somebody probably dared you to see if it's real or not, right?
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: I mean, when I was a child, there was a lot of scheisse born in my family and I just wanted to research it for a book I'm reading.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: There's a whole culture of that because of the whole boarding school thing and the spanking and Pink Floyd and all of that.
Merlin: You need to go out and you need to get into like 16 Chan, find out what the fuck's actually going on.
Merlin: How can I have any scheisse if I don't eat my meat?
John: ah i watched two documentaries about pink floyd this week no really yes wait a minute did i just like uh did i just like drone google you you triggered me i'm a snowflake i didn't even know no i didn't even know you were listening to pink floyd and here i am now i'm asking you if you put things in your basket
John: Oh.
John: Did they get to me?
John: Is it in my instant coffee?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: The call's coming from inside the wall.
John: Oh, no.
John: So, Merlin, how about the Pink Floyd reference?
John: Oh, what a coinkydink.
Merlin: Oh, look at that.
John: Shit.
Merlin: Getting ads for videos where you spit on people.
Merlin: I'm Matt Howie's garage door open.
Merlin: You are.
Merlin: You were the garage door all along.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I watched one video.
Merlin: There was just kind of a kind of...
Merlin: Not very good, like BBC one hour history of Pink Floyd, which is not nearly enough time.
Merlin: You could do one hour on 1973 to 1975.
Merlin: You could do five hours on 1973 to 1975.
Merlin: And they breeze right past, you know, a lot of the most interesting stuff.
Merlin: uh i you know actually i'll tell you the truth i like um if i had to pick i like uh wish you were here more i think it's a better record it's a great record it's a really good record no question about it and they tell the story about sid barrett coming in the studio and it's so sad they all cried they didn't recognize him did i ever tell you you ever seen the photo of him in the studio 1975 yeah it's very sad
John: In fact, I'm not sure whether you and I have talked about this many times over the years, but there was one time I was in one of those bookstores, one of those bookstores that put Meg Ryan out of business a long time ago, back when they were bookstores.
John: You've got books.
John: And there was a book, a big, beautiful book.
John: That was all the beautiful old pictures of beautiful old Pink Floyd when they were beautiful and the world was beautiful.
John: Dave Gilmore's always been beautiful.
John: And this book was the size of a manhole cover.
John: Like a coffee table book.
John: Yeah, and it was expensive.
John: And I sat in this bookstore and I was like,
John: Well, look, this is a must-have book.
John: Yeah.
John: It says a lot about you if you buy a very large Pink Floyd book.
John: Yeah, but, you know, I'm on my way to the dentist.
Merlin: Most people only have one coffee table.
John: This book was the coffee table.
John: Okay.
John: I could put it on four cinder blocks and it would make the room, you know?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But I was I had a dentist appointment.
John: I was in Manhattan.
John: It was Fourth of July.
John: It was, you know, reasons.
John: And I so there was just I couldn't buy this book at the time.
John: But I was like, look, here I am.
John: I'm at a big, stupid bookstore.
John: This is this is the most this is the largest book in the rock book section.
John: the the next time i'm next time i'm in here i'll just get it and i have never seen it again looking up pink floyd coffee table books and apparently there's one called their mortal remains and it looks pretty big this book was this book was not there was no like
John: There was no chaff.
John: There was no big pig outside of Battersea Station.
John: This was all bell-bottom denim.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Cool, cool.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Did I ever tell my Battersea Station story?
John: You got a Battersea Station story?
Merlin: Shit, dog.
Merlin: I was on a train in London.
John: Did you emerge in London rain?
John: And she was waiting there.
John: Swimming through apologies.
Merlin: Oh, wait.
Merlin: Berlin?
Merlin: Yes!
Merlin: Still got it.
Merlin: I remember hating you for loving me.
Merlin: This actually happened.
Merlin: This is in the era of the iPhone.
Merlin: I'm on a train and I'm in some kind of a tunnel, if memory serves.
Merlin: And I remember thinking to myself, I know that album cover is like some old factory.
Merlin: I wonder if I'll see.
Merlin: It's the craziest thought.
Merlin: This is such an American thing.
Merlin: It's like, oh, are you from Brazil?
Merlin: Do you know Gilles?
Merlin: you know that kind of thing yeah oh you're at hollywood and vine are you gonna run into yeah right there yeah yeah joaquin phoenix yeah and so uh hand of god it couldn't have been more than a few minutes we emerge we come out and i'm like what the fuck
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: There is an upside-down table.
Merlin: I went into the Maps app, and boom, kapow, it was actually the Pink Floyd factory.
Merlin: And I saw it.
Merlin: I saw it right there.
Merlin: You saw it with your own two eyes?
Merlin: No pig.
Merlin: Did you wipe off that grin?
Merlin: With my naked eyes, I saw you.
Merlin: What?
John: Did you wipe off that grin because you knew where you'd been?
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: This is going to be a good one.
Merlin: I can tell already.
Merlin: You should have gotten it.
Merlin: I'll get it for you if I can find it.
Merlin: Large book.
Merlin: Pink Floyd large book.
Merlin: George Syracuse has taught me something important about Google, which is stop thinking.
Merlin: Stop thinking.
Merlin: Just mash on the keyboard.
Merlin: Make finger bangs on the keyboard until a thing comes out.
Merlin: You could do stuff like, you know, movie with blonde girl, cheerleader kill.
Merlin: And like, you'll find you don't think it.
Merlin: Don't don't don't treat it like a computer.
Merlin: OK, OK.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Reinventing Pink Floyd.
John: I do that all the time.
John: You know, I ask Google full sentence questions.
John: Of course you do.
John: Like an old man.
John: How does the wrench fit onto the socket if it's raining and you don't have gloves?
John: And more often than not.
John: Google's right there with the answer, one or two answers down.
John: It's there.
John: They're good.
John: They're tuned for that.
John: Last night, like a dum-dum, and this is the thing, I'm always surprised at the ads I don't see.
John: Last night, I was scouring the U.S.
John: records of former Nike missile-based sites.
Merlin: Oh, we got a couple of those here.
John: Yeah, oh yeah, they're fascinating.
Merlin: They're sometimes a little bit hidden, but yeah, we took a hike a few weeks ago and there was one, we walked right by one.
Merlin: I was reading a... There's a whole website, it's just dedicated to that, you know this by now.
John: Yeah, of course.
Merlin: It's like a Wikipedia of former Nike missile sites.
John: All the spelunkers out there, but the problem is, it's an incomplete list.
John: Oh yeah, the numbers aren't always sequential.
John: The numbers aren't always sequential.
Yeah.
John: And, you know, and I've got interests, but also...
John: When I was growing up, there was a Nike Missile Base.
John: This is the one for those of you in the audience who are keeping track.
John: The Nike Missile Base outside of Kingston, Washington.
John: When I was a little kid, it was one of the bases that was still active pretty late in the game.
John: They decommissioned them over the years a lot.
John: A lot of them, they were decommissioned in the early 60s.
John: But this one went all the way into the 70s in Kingston.
John: And it was just right...
John: It's just right next to our house.
John: So Nike missiles are still a big part of my whole, you know, the, the 747 first flight was like,
John: 10 days after i was born really and everett that was a big deal at the time it was and everett everett uh was ever you know pain field was like right the the flight washington had a bunch washington had a bunch spokane cheney medical lake deep creek saddle mountain othello rattlesnake mountain priest rapids yeah yeah okay it's all here on the wikipedia on the internet science site
John: Anyway, I was reading this.
John: I was doing that thing.
John: You know when you're in an old-style cafe and there are pictures on the walls of what the building used to be?
John: Yeah.
John: I picked up one of those magazines that's for small neighborhoods where a neighborhood has its own magazine.
John: Like, hey, it's the Ballard Times.
John: And it's just a bunch of ads for real estate agencies and places.
John: Yes.
John: I was reading one of those because, you know, you got to keep up to date.
John: And there was a picture...
John: From ye olden times, 1950 whenever, where they were like, here's a picture of the excavation of the original supermarket for this neighborhood before they put in the foodway.
John: And over the left, over the back fence, you can see the Nike missile base.
John: And I was like, what?
John: There is no Nike missile base in that neighborhood.
John: I'm sorry, my I'm sorry, but I happen to do every Nike missile base in the area.
John: And so then I was like, well, somebody's got the somebody's because then I'm looking at the picture with my little my little pocket loop.
John: Yes, your loop, your little monocle.
John: Can't make out anything.
John: pro or con, but I, but here's the thing.
John: I know the area and I know there are some old buildings in that location that are old and weird and old government buildings that have been repurposed into some kind of city landscaping spot where the driving lawnmowers park.
John: And so I'm like, some of this is starting to line up, but the Nike missile base, but dead database is,
John: says no such thing no such you know no such zoom in who you know what i'm saying that's right huh that's right no such number no such zone oh uh i'm trying to send her god
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John: Uh, so anyway, now I'm really tripping because I need to figure out what's going on here.
John: Sure.
Merlin: Something's not adding up.
John: Yeah.
John: But, but so, so far internet, Google, I mean, I typed in like cheerleader kill and it came up, came up nothing.
John: Small boobs, small boobs.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Hey, Google.
John: Hey, Google.
John: Clear my history.
John: Hey, Google.
John: Do you have a silent search mode?
John: I noticed the Apple thing has some kind of secret search mode, too, now.
Merlin: Oh, secret search mode.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: That's good for lots of things.
Merlin: Sometimes you can use that to look at stuff like Wall Street Journal articles.
Merlin: Oh, see, that's such a pain in the ass.
Merlin: You can?
John: You can do that?
John: You can do that?
Merlin: I find it, John, I find it very hard to believe that that many people subscribe to the Wall Street Journal.
Merlin: All I get, I get a paragraph and a half, and then I get a little fade, and I get an eh-eh-eh.
Merlin: I mean, I'm not a fan.
Merlin: I'm not a fan, but sometimes there's an article in there I want to look at.
Merlin: Sometimes I get it.
Merlin: Sometimes I can't.
John: No touchy.
Merlin: So there's two ways you can do that.
Merlin: So the way one is you can try the incognito mode or whatever it's called.
Merlin: And then the other way is if you go in, look at Google News and follow a link from Google News, sometimes it'll let you in that way.
John: So so first of all, yes, I do not understand.
John: There are people all the time in my timeline who are like, you got to check out this article.
John: And it's like, do you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal?
John: I don't think I don't think you do.
John: I mean, I hope you don't.
John: Maybe Peter Sagal does, but I don't even think he does.
John: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There used to be like a widely known secret password that journalists could use.
Merlin: And then I think they closed that.
Merlin: But like still today, like especially on political Twitter, people are always linking to the Wall Street Journal like they read the fucking article.
Merlin: And I'm like, really?
Merlin: You subscribe to this?
John: Maybe they just read the first two paragraphs.
John: And when it ghosted out, they were like, I got to forward this to everyone.
John: Nobody's going to read it anyway.
John: Well, you know, we have a listener to this program who is an editor at the New York Times.
John: No.
No.
John: Ladies and gentlemen, the FBI.
Merlin: I pay.
Merlin: I pay for the New York Times.
Merlin: I pay for the Washington Post.
Merlin: Those are two that I pay for.
Merlin: So he said to me a long time ago.
Merlin: Don't get cocky.
Merlin: Just because you guys still, you need to get your fucking opinion page sorted.
Merlin: That shit's got to stop.
Merlin: I can hear you.
Merlin: Okay, here's the thing.
Merlin: The right centrists need to go.
Merlin: If you're going to bring in a serious ding-a-ling, instead of pulling my fucking chain with these fucking centrists, it's got to stop.
Merlin: Show what these people really think.
Merlin: You want the right centrists to go.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: The centrists, they're helping so much.
Merlin: They're very concerned.
Merlin: They're very concerned about many things.
Merlin: They're in the center.
Merlin: Fucking centrists.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: They're walking around the public square.
Merlin: I mean, you get a few dealings, you get banged together, you make yourself a stew.
Merlin: But like all this, you know what?
Merlin: If he can fix that, I don't know who you're talking about, but like if he can fix that, that would be awesome.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: I'm paying your salary, sir.
Merlin: I don't think Patrick can.
John: But he did say a long time ago that if you follow a link from the New York Times Twitter account to an article, you can read it.
John: If you get there by a different method.
John: They're using technology.
John: Yeah, but then they close that back door too.
John: And now I've got my like 10 free articles a month or whatever, and then those ghost on me.
John: And you know what?
John: I'm sure there's somebody right now, it's probably Marco Arment, who's yelling at us about paywalls, about not skipping ads.
Merlin: Why Marco?
John: That's really random.
John: no because uh you know didn't he didn't didn't he invent a company he sold the company and as of today the company has announced that they're going back to being independent independence didn't he write a like a really simple little app that blocked all ads and then he he built an app called instapaper for book which is an excellent uh excellent app and a former sponsor of this show
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I have that.
Merlin: And so Instapaper had two very, well, at least two interesting parts.
Merlin: One is that it would let you pile up with a bookmarklet.
Merlin: You could go in a browser extension.
Merlin: You could say, add this to Instapaper.
Merlin: But the really canny thing he did was is that a lot of people have copied.
Merlin: I don't know if he was the first person to do this.
Merlin: He's the first one I knew of where he had a canny, like basically like a parsing engine that could look at especially popular pages and using the CSS or the HTML markup, he was able to like take out everything that wasn't the article you want to look at.
John: aha oh that is candy but then he that's built into safari now you've got a thing called i think it's called reader mode where if you click on that ghosted it though didn't he didn't he say that he sold it he sold it for money there was something i remember where it was an all i know is marco armand loves paywalls maybe it wasn't marco yeah it was somebody of the magazine somebody in our in our in our larger social world
John: Who had a thing that you could block all the ads.
John: Oh, he made that too.
Merlin: Yeah, he ghosted it.
Merlin: He ghosted it because he felt bad.
John: Why were you ghost lighting me a second ago?
Merlin: He ghost lit you because he had feelings.
John: He felt like it wasn't right or something.
Merlin: He felt, well, here's the thing.
Merlin: It's one thing to have an opinion and have a thought.
Merlin: And it's another thing to have to deal with all the people who don't like your opinion.
Uh-huh.
Merlin: I'm speaking for myself.
John: Go on.
John: Is there a life hack involving a plunger that's going to walk us out of this?
Merlin: So, God, we're pretty deep in the stack.
John: Look, Marco is not my proxy.
John: He's not my stand-in for a garage door opener.
Merlin: No.
John: I'm just saying there are times I wrote him.
John: Right after that, and I was like, hey, I know you stopped giving that to people, but would you give it to me?
Merlin: I don't want to talk about computers on the show, but I'm happy to share with you what I use, which is very good.
Merlin: I run a variety of things that... You know what?
Merlin: Fuck it.
Merlin: I'm not going to talk about it.
Merlin: No.
John: Because I don't want to hear the opinions.
Merlin: Get on it, Patrick.
Merlin: Fix the opinion page.
Merlin: What's happening?
John: One time I almost bought a Corvette from Tiffany Arment's dad.
John: One time you almost... Okay.
Okay.
John: We're going to buy an Ohio Corvette?
John: Uh-huh.
John: I was going to get a Corvette.
John: He had a Corvette.
John: What kind of year are we talking about here?
John: I was in the 70s Corvette.
John: Shit dog.
John: A 70s T-top Corvette Stingray.
John: Does it come with a stick to swipe the ladies off the side?
John: And she said, my dad's got this Corvette.
John: We're trying to sell it.
John: We thought of you.
John: And I was like, I need it.
John: I need it.
John: And we went through what they call in the business a back and forth.
John: We went through a back and forth.
John: And I was like, look, all I got to do is get the funding.
John: All the funding's got to come through.
John: Funding's got to come through from the network.
John: You have to say never spend your own money.
John: Yeah.
John: And then we're getting this.
John: We're getting this.
John: This Corvette is going to, it's a license to print money.
John: Would you fit in a Corvette?
Yeah.
John: I think that, given the dudes that you typically see driving Corvettes, I think I would fit in a Corvette.
John: Well, they're certainly unencumbered by hair.
John: Well, and they're also, like, you know, they're American dudes.
John: I don't think I would fit into an Austin Healey, which...
John: And maybe not even an old Porsche 911.
John: And both those things break my heart.
Merlin: I know it can be surprising.
Merlin: I have a friend who's quite tall.
Merlin: He's an oak of a man.
Merlin: My friend Jeff is like, I think he's like 6'6", something like that.
Merlin: He's an oak of a man.
Merlin: What a nice way of putting it.
Merlin: He's a real tall, he's Dutch.
Merlin: So, you know, the Dutch are tall.
Merlin: Oh, they are.
Merlin: Don't care for the Dutch, but I like Jeff.
Merlin: They're tall and yet strangely not good at basketball.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I never thought of that until right now.
Merlin: It's the shoes.
Merlin: They wear those wooden shoes.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Cloppity-cloppity-cloppity-clop.
Merlin: Shoot!
Merlin: I'm working on my skyhook.
Merlin: Why am I Sean Connery?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: He got himself a Mini Cooper Mini.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And he fits in it just like a hand in a glove.
Merlin: He says it's amazing that it'll accommodate a large man.
Merlin: You ever been in a Mini Cooper Mini Cooper?
John: I have.
John: And the first time I got into an old Mini Cooper.
Merlin: Is it Cooper Mini or Mini Cooper?
John: You would say Mini Cooper.
Merlin: Mini's the company Cooper's to make.
John: No.
John: Well, now BMW is the company.
Merlin: Mini's the make.
John: Cooper's the model.
John: Cooper is the doctor.
John: Okay.
John: Mini is the secretary.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
John: So, have you been in one of those?
John: So, a long time ago, I was hitchhiking.
John: Did it accommodate you?
John: I was hitchhiking in England.
John: And a kid pulls over.
John: And he's in one of those old, you know, like a 60s mini.
John: And I was like, come on, this is great.
John: Like an Italian job car.
John: Yeah, this is wonderful that you're stopping to pick me up.
John: But like, this is going to be hilarious.
John: I have to fold you.
John: And the kid was like, get in.
John: Or he said, get in, mate.
John: Get in.
John: Something.
John: Oi.
John: He's listening to Mumphren's.
John: Put another shrimp on the barbie or whatever they say.
Merlin: It's not a knife.
Merlin: Sorry, that was Tasmania.
Merlin: My bad.
John: You climb down into the old minis.
John: You could put an elephant in there.
John: They're enormous.
John: Here's how they get away with it.
John: The bottom of the car...
John: is seven inches off the ground and is made out of particle board.
John: So when you're in a Mini, you're basically driving, you're basically like, the Flintstones had more of a car than a Mini.
John: Oh.
John: And it's amazing.
Merlin: It's wonderful.
John: Can you eat ribs in it?
John: If they put that giant rack of ribs on there, is it going to make it flip over?
John: Well, in order to honk the horn, you just grab a bird by the ass and yank it.
Merlin: It's a living.
What?
John: but i love i loved being in this car but it really was like riding a skateboard like you're so low yeah my friend had an austin healy sprite and it really was like riding a skateboard but it's great but like in modern traffic when there's like lorries and there's like torches torches sure it was scary you know to be around other cars that were made out of wait hang on hang on is this in london
John: Well, so he picked me up outside of Bath.
John: Okay.
John: And we drove along and then got out.
John: You know, I probably got out of that car around Slough.
John: Ooh.
John: Yeah, because I had a meeting with a guy at a paper deal, paper company.
John: Nice pull.
Merlin: Thanks.
Merlin: Bing, bing, bing.
Merlin: You're a cock, you're a cock, you're a cock.
Merlin: You shouldn't show it to a 10-year-old, just so you know.
Merlin: That show?
Merlin: A little racy for a 10-year-old.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: We did watch Die Hard.
Merlin: A lot of, oh, you watched Die Hard.
Merlin: Watched the shit out of Die Hard.
Merlin: Twice.
Merlin: Gentleman.
Merlin: Fuck F. B. I.
Merlin: No, I've got a machine gun.
Merlin: Ho, ho, ho.
Merlin: Such a good movie.
Merlin: So, a spotty British boy picks you up in his coop, coop, mini.
Merlin: We should get more sleep.
Merlin: I'm so fucking tired.
Merlin: Oh, OK.
Merlin: So you got picked up by the crown of the realm.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're getting ridden around on a skateboard.
Merlin: Low clearance.
Merlin: Low clearance.
John: It seems to me like like England should be a place where I would have lived.
John: But I never I never lived in England.
John: i've tried hmm i've been there hmm a bunch yeah this kid picked me up and i was like hey you and me i mean you need a roommate like i like hang up hang out with you as much as i could hang out people say that i have a bunch of friends just went to yng lang and they're all like man i could totally live here yeah but on the other hand maybe not you know they got all those different cultures you have free glasses
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: The health thing.
John: The British health system, it's called.
John: A woman bandaged me one time.
John: And then afterwards, she was a nut.
John: She had chickens in the house.
John: But she asked me for money.
John: She asked me for five pounds for the bandages.
John: And I was like, those are national health bandages.
John: It says right on them.
John: She was like, well, you know.
Merlin: Now I'm out.
Merlin: Oh, I get.
Merlin: She's doing a little number on you.
Merlin: Yeah, she does.
Merlin: She ran.
Merlin: She sees a yank coming in and she thinks I'm going to take a few pounds off the yank.
Merlin: It was like this guy needs bandaging.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: It'd be free for me.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: But not free for you.
Merlin: I was going to pay a TV license there.
Merlin: To watch a TV?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You gotta pay a license if you want your Doctor Who.
Merlin: If you're gonna have your BBC, you're supposed to pay a license for your TV.
Merlin: And they used to have trucks with like, you can go Google this, but they had like these enforcement trucks in the 60s, these trucks that would drive around.
Merlin: with i think like fake satellite dishes on them and like oh hello hello we're detecting i haven't paid that tax on it on the telly yeah yeah yeah well that's what they get for compliance you know i'm saying hiring chimney sweeps to do that
Merlin: Have Dick Van Dyke come and talk to you until you pay the fee.
John: Okay, so you got in the car.
John: Luckily for me, I don't even have a TV.
Merlin: No, I wouldn't even know where to pay.
John: So here is something on a website that says, so Dan writes in,
John: Dan writes in and says, I'm 6'3", which is how tall I am, about 185 pounds, which is a lot less money.
Merlin: Oh, that's pretty close.
Merlin: That's pretty close to you.
John: No, not anymore.
John: He's riding from Ridgefield, Connecticut.
John: Okay.
John: I'm 6'3", about 185 pounds.
John: And I think he's lying.
John: Sounds to me like, uh, sure you are, 185 pounds.
John: He's probably about 205.
John: And I'm wondering.
John: How many stone?
John: How many stone are you?
John: Roger Stone.
John: And I am wondering if I can fit in an Austin Healy.
John: Get me Roger Stone.
John: Can I fit in an Austin Healy 3000 or should I just scratch this one off the bucket list and move on?
John: And then scroll down here a little bit.
John: Let's see.
John: Howard from Akron.
John: Oh, no.
John: He's from Rittman, Ohio.
John: Howard Morris says, Dan, I am 6'2 and 285.
John: Well, that's bigger than me.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: In the weight, for sure.
John: I'm between these two, let's say.
John: If you say you're 6'2 and 285, I bet you he's edging up on 300.
John: But let's just, you know, this is the thing people don't talk about, how big men kind of like, they underestimate their weight.
John: They under-report.
John: Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I have a drink sometimes on the weekends.
Merlin: I know.
John: I know.
John: I know.
John: Just a beer every night just to unwind.
John: Like a half beer, like a grandpa beer, like one of those little buds, one of those little eight-ounce boys.
John: Oh, a little half buds.
John: I'm 6'2 and 285, and there are certain tricks you must use when entering and exiting a Healy.
John: That's what they call an Austin Healy.
Huh.
John: I fit.
John: Now, this is a little bit of Akron syntax.
John: You're going to recognize this being an Ohio kid.
John: Sure.
John: Only Ohio kids will get this.
Merlin: Pretty big state, but yeah.
Merlin: Is this your BuzzFeed list?
Merlin: 17 things only Ohio kids will get.
John: i fit not well and it takes me a minute or two to enter but once i'm in i'm comfortable so this guy now owns a car that it takes him a minute or two to get into that's that's already that's health and safety that's already a problem i have a 1961 bt7 two by two never mind that and when i restored it i move he didn't he forgot his his syntax now or his uh tenses are wrong and when i restored it i moved the seat bracket
John: paren holes drill d-r-i-l-l-e in the new floor i'm beginning to feel like howard morris is from brazil when i restored it i moved the seat bracket holds holes drill as in grill in the new floor pan as far back as i could go i also have a fiberglass hardtop and i have had it on the racetrack
John: Okay, I'm sorry.
John: I'm reading something from a crazy person.
John: But the point is that you can get into an Austin Healey if you are prepared to be in a car that takes you several minutes to get into.
John: And if you re-drill the seat brackets.
John: Oh, I see.
John: That's, you know, that's an accommodation.
John: I'm not going to do that.
John: I have to cross that off my bucket list.
John: Just like old, what's his name?
John: Threatened to do.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You want to Yahoo?
Merlin: This is user... Sorry, something has gone wrong.
Merlin: Why most gay guys I know drive the Mini Cooper?
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Was it like genetic or something?
John: It's not that...
John: It's not that everybody he knows that drives a Mini Cooper is gay.
John: It's that everyone he knows that's gay drives a Mini Cooper.
Merlin: Why most gay guys I know drive the Mini Cooper?
Merlin: Was it like genetic or something?
Merlin: Not 100%, but I say most of them think the Mini Cooper were created for their desire.
Merlin: They have to drive it to be gay.
Merlin: If you were gay, do you think the Mini Cooper were cute?
Merlin: For example, my uncle drove the Mini.
Merlin: He's gay.
Merlin: I know more than 10 guys.
Merlin: I know more than 10 guys drive it and they're all gay.
Merlin: I was wondering, is this coincident or just trending?
John: Sure.
John: Show boobs and vagina.
John: Show pictures of your feet.
John: Show bobs and vagines.
John: Okay.
Merlin: So I woke up around three.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: And it's actually, I don't have that much to say.
Merlin: I took a shower.
Merlin: I read a book about anxiety.
Merlin: Well, you stayed up.
Merlin: Huh?
Merlin: You stayed up.
Merlin: You know what it is?
Merlin: We talked about this.
Merlin: The key part is, and this is actually a big, big issue in my, in my anxiety book is like, there's one thing to, to feel bad.
Merlin: And it's nothing to feel bad about feeling bad.
Merlin: Told you what?
Merlin: Yeah, well, no, it's real.
Merlin: The struggle is real.
Merlin: The problem is, well, one of the big points in this anxiety book, which is really good, is that most of the time we're having trouble distinguishing signal versus noise.
Merlin: And a lot of times we are reacting to our reaction about something.
Merlin: Anyway, long story short, it's a good book.
Merlin: But people will ask.
Merlin: It's called Stopping the Noise in Your Head.
Merlin: Because people will ask.
Merlin: Stop making sense.
Merlin: Stop making sense.
Merlin: I got a girlfriend that's better than that.
Merlin: That was the wrong song.
Merlin: Shit.
Merlin: Did it?
Merlin: Nothing but flowers.
Merlin: you know who's great is johnny marr like i can play a fucking guitar he's really great and you know he's not that much older than we are yeah like you could just be hanging out with him and you'd be like what's up you know whatever i mean you know him for stuff like how soon is now but like just just fucking listen to like this this charming man it's just how does he do it i can't i can't listen to it so part of
Merlin: How even do they do this?
Merlin: Well, they do lots of stuff.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Squarespace does this by giving you beautiful templates created by world-class designers, powerful e-commerce functionality that lets you sell anything online, the ability to customize the look and feel of your site, the settings, the products, all that stuff, just a few clicks.
Merlin: It is actually crazy easy to do.
Merlin: Everything is optimized for mobile.
Merlin: right out of the box.
Merlin: And they have a new way to buy domains.
Merlin: You can choose from over 200 extensions.
Merlin: They have analytics that help you grow in real time, built-in search engine optimization, free and secure hosting, nothing to patch or upgrade ever.
Merlin: And of course, they have their 24 by seven award-winning customer support.
Merlin: They're encouraging people to make it.
Merlin: You go make it, you make it yourself.
Merlin: You stand out with a beautiful website.
Merlin: I'm going to tell you, as you probably know, I'm a big fan of Squarespace.
Merlin: Listening to the show right now, you are already technically a user of Squarespace because that is where Roderick on the line is and has always been hosted.
Merlin: All of our audio files, our notes, everything is on there.
Merlin: I also use it for stuff like announcing my ungainly X-Men meetup.
Merlin: I have a new place you can go.
Merlin: You can go to merlinm.com slash playlists and you can see my Squarespace site where I put up links to the music and video playlists that we make, several of them for Roderick on the line.
Merlin: Go check those out.
Merlin: I promise you, you know, I don't know if Squarespace is perfect for everybody, but it's perfect for someone in your life.
Merlin: If anybody in your life needs a web presence, you got to tell them about Squarespace.
Merlin: Get out of the webmaster business and put up some great stuff.
Merlin: That's my tip to you.
Merlin: So you go head out right now.
Merlin: You go to squarespace.com slash super train.
Merlin: You get a free trial.
Merlin: And when you're ready to launch, use that very special offer code super train to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
Merlin: Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting Roderick online and all the great shows.
Merlin: The show might be over.
John: That one was so far away.
Merlin: It just wasn't like the old days anymore.
Merlin: So I read the book about anxiety.
Merlin: Singing the third, the third, the third.
Merlin: So 3 a.m.
Merlin: And oh, so but here's the thing.
Merlin: And this is the thing.
Merlin: I never got this about.
Merlin: Fuck me.
Merlin: We've talked about this before.
Merlin: We're at 297 episodes.
Merlin: There's got to be some repeats.
Merlin: We're at 297 episodes?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: I don't do anniversaries.
Merlin: So the thing is... The problem with my wife... The thing... I'm really fucking tired.
Merlin: The problem is... I now know this, and I know you know this, is that it's one thing to not be able to sleep.
Merlin: It's still another thing...
Merlin: um to feel bad oh that you can't sleep yeah and it's still another thing when people talk about insomnia i think a lot of times what you really should be talking about is like oh shit i'm terrified to go to sleep because i know i won't be able to sleep and now it's a whole kind of like meta meta anxiety about sleep
Merlin: And so the key, this is a little trick.
Merlin: My wife, my wife told me about this actually, cause she struggles with sleep stuff is like, and from this mindfulness thing she's been doing where they basically say, look, when you get up, just decide that it's okay that you're up.
Merlin: Like quit freaking out about it and stop obsessing as it's not easy.
Merlin: It is simple, but not easy, but you, you gotta tell yourself, dude, it's going to be okay.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Go be up for an hour and then say, I'm going back to bed in an hour.
Merlin: But the thing is, you can't feel bad about it.
Merlin: If you feel bad about it and try to make it, you're doing two things wrong now.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Yeah, two things wrong.
John: Now I'm really stressed.
John: Do you do that?
Merlin: You do that.
Merlin: Because I'm doing two things wrong.
Merlin: You do that, right?
Merlin: You lay there and you feel bad, right?
John: Well, I try not to feel bad.
John: anymore about anything.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You did an extension course on psychopathy.
John: But sometimes I'll just stay up.
John: I'll wake up in the middle of the night because I have some like
Merlin: three second loop from a pretender song in my head and it just won't i'm gonna use it it won't it's a very catchy band they're super catchy soup dupe soup dupe i get i get their songs in my i wrote one of their songs one time and didn't even realize i wrote back on the chain gang and as i said you know it's back on the chain gang i was like oh it kind of is i just wrote that ah it's a three chord song it should be public domain
John: I used to rewrite Dazed and Confused all the time.
John: The walk down?
Merlin: A little chromatic walk down.
John: I was like, this is amazing.
John: It's like, you did it again.
John: You did it again.
John: But yeah, I was laying in bed the other night just humming Don't Get Me Wrong or whatever.
John: You ever get Tattooed Love Boys in your head?
John: All the time.
John: I just I did a little bit of an anxiety hack.
John: Bring it.
John: So I was sitting there and I was so I was asked to do this thing.
John: OK, that's right.
John: That's trouble already.
John: Right.
John: This is the thing that we've been through before many times.
John: You and I get asked to do a thing.
John: Yes.
John: You get asked to do a thing.
Merlin: You get asked to do the strangest things.
John: And this was this was like asked to do a big thing.
John: And I was like, I'll do a big thing.
John: Oh, yeah, a lot of money could be in this, and this could be a big opportunity.
John: There's definitely going to be exposure, John.
John: It's a big operation.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And I was like, all right, well, tell me more.
John: You know, I'm open to this.
John: I've heard of this.
John: Yeah.
John: And the person sent me, he was like, well, you know, first you should, like,
John: here's like not not two not six but 10 different people who have done it before and here are links to their performances and so go check them out okay and i was like oh that's not gonna happen i'm not gonna go check out 10 people's prior question is this a one-off performance an mc thing no it should give the game away it's a talk
John: Okay.
John: It's a talk that is available online.
John: Oh.
John: But it's not one of my usual 15, 20-minute talks.
John: This is like an hour and a half long talk available.
John: Hour and a half long talk.
John: So it's not a TEDx.
Merlin: It's not a TEDx.
John: Okay.
John: And, uh, and so I was like, all right.
Merlin: So that's a lot of preparation, John.
Merlin: That's a fucking long talk.
Merlin: It is the big, first of all, that is twice as long as any talk should ever be.
Merlin: It's way long.
Merlin: 40 minutes should be how long a talk is on the outside.
John: But this is, you know, a talk that's got it.
John: That's the thing.
John: How do you fill up 90 minutes?
John: You got to figure that out.
Merlin: And so then question and answer.
John: Cause that always goes great.
John: I'll put you in touch or no, not put you in touch.
John: He said, you're going to work with, um,
John: a content producer in order to come up with this talk.
John: And I was like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
John: I don't want to do that either.
Merlin: My penis just went into my body cavity.
John: I don't want anything to do with this.
John: A content producer.
John: But it's a big opportunity.
John: It's a lot of, you know, this could turn out.
Merlin: Are you kidding me?
Merlin: This could work out.
Merlin: Look at these guys.
John: This could be a big thing, right?
John: I mean, this is how Johnny Marr got his start.
John: He was sitting around.
John: He got an email.
John: Bow, bow, bow, bow, bow, bow, bow, bow.
Merlin: Shut your mouth.
Merlin: How can you say it?
John: So fucking tired.
Merlin: I'm sorry, John.
Merlin: I know this episode is a shit show.
Merlin: I'm just so fucking tired.
John: Well, so we go back and forth in emails multiple times.
John: I'm like, well, I don't really, you know, like super great.
John: And I want to do a few more red flags.
Merlin: You can start a used car dealership.
Merlin: Jesus Christ.
John: And the thing is, his email tone is somewhat not imperious, but a little bit like haughty.
John: Well, yeah, this is how things are done, and you're getting a big opportunity here.
Merlin: At this point, this is the content producer you've been passed off to.
John: No, I have not yet spoken to the content.
Merlin: Oh, you're still getting pitched.
John: So then he says, we're firming up the lineup, but I'm going to need a firm commitment from you.
John: This is a thing that's happening in September.
John: Oh, God.
John: And I'm like, ah, firm commitment.
John: So then I said, I wrote him, I'm trying to manage my, I'm trying to manage this, right?
Merlin: And I wrote him and I said- Real quick, at this point, what's your take?
Merlin: At this point, at that point in the process, is your take that this is worth what I'm going through right now because this could be a good thing?
Merlin: You're still in the bubble.
John: See, I'm not, I have not been through the Merlin manification of dealing with this stuff yet personally.
Mm-hmm.
John: Which is to say that I still feel, when I get a thing like this, I still feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility.
John: Not just to it, but to everything.
John: Because you're a performer.
John: Yeah, and it's just like, this is a thing.
John: You don't turn down gigs.
John: You don't turn down gigs.
John: How am I ever going to get a picture?
John: How is Steve Aggie ever going to take my picture out at...
Merlin: at harriet and and bob's or whatever well let me give you a reframe here you've done a lot of good work but at this point you have not earned a very large coffee table book you're going to put some more numbers on that board to get a coffee table see see that's right that's right it's either either you it's either get a cadillac or fuck you yeah um and so you get you get you ask yourself is this getting me closer or further from my very large coffee table book
John: And you never know.
Merlin: This could be the thing.
Merlin: This could be the thing.
John: But I feel that responsibility.
John: Somebody's offered me a thing.
John: I have to take it seriously.
John: Okay.
John: And so, ba-da-ba-da-da, and I'm like, I'm talking to the ceiling a lot.
John: I'm walking around waving my hands.
John: I'm like, 30 minutes, no problem.
John: I could talk for 45 minutes, and I don't even need anybody there.
John: But after 65 minutes?
Merlin: It's almost the difference between writing a review of a book and writing the book that the review is going to be about.
Merlin: That's a fucking lot of preparation.
Merlin: When you go over an hour in a talk and you don't want it to suck, you're going to have to do a lot of preparation.
John: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
John: And also, but here's the wrinkle.
John: There's no clear sense of like, is this going to be...
John: $50,000, $5,000, $500.
John: Right.
John: In the end.
John: You know that trick.
John: That's a good trick.
John: What's that trick?
John: The orders of magnitude trick.
John: Oh, the orders of magnitude trick.
John: Right.
John: If this is $50,000, that's totally worth working on for a month.
Merlin: To vet somebody, if there is money involved, first establish, is there money involved?
Merlin: You know what they usually say?
Merlin: Yeah, there could be.
Merlin: Could be.
John: That's what this guy said.
Merlin: There could be.
Merlin: Well, that's weird.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You should call your plumber.
Merlin: Call your plumber and say there could be some money in this for you.
Merlin: I want to talk to you a little bit more about how we do this.
Merlin: You know what you do?
Merlin: You just say, give me an order of magnitude.
Merlin: Your budget is between which two orders of magnitude.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And you would be amazed how often the call ends right there.
John: Between $500,000 or $5,000.
John: Between $500,000 and $5,000, that's all you got to say.
John: 500 or between 5,000 and 15,000.
John: 50,000.
John: Between 15,000 and 50,000.
John: And so anyway, and then so I write them and I say, you know what's going to help me here?
John: I'm already Merlin Manning him just by doing this.
Merlin: They rely on people not Merlin Manning him.
Merlin: They're so used to people who they're like frat boys.
Merlin: They just love to fight.
Merlin: These people are monsters.
Merlin: They're literal demons.
Merlin: And they will do everything they can to try and leverage your own feelings of being a performer who wants to please people.
Merlin: Or in my case, to please and help people.
Merlin: And they're going to leverage that to make you do dumb shit.
Merlin: Ask to be treated like a plumber.
Merlin: So I said to him... Plumbers don't do a series of emails about whether you're going to come out to the house.
Merlin: This is how much it costs for me to pull my van onto your driveway.
Merlin: Are you into it?
John: Listen, I do not want to get treated like a plumber.
Merlin: Whether it's $5, whether that bench fee, whether that service call, whether it's $5 or $5,000, if they cannot commit... Yeah, you get me?
Merlin: If they can't commit to there's a certain amount of money I get no matter what?
John: Yes.
John: Shit.
John: That's the problem.
John: But I said, here's the idea that I'm having.
John: If you're going to put me in collaboration with a content producer, how about you put me in touch with the content producer you have in mind for me prior to me agreeing to do the thing?
Merlin: I like this.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You're taking it seriously.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You're showing that you're taking it seriously.
Merlin: If you guys are taking this seriously, you will not have a problem with this.
John: Yeah.
John: I don't want to start working.
John: I don't want to say, yes, I'll do this.
John: And then I get assigned...
John: like some bottom of the barrel content producer.
John: I don't even know what a content producer is.
John: I don't wanna do it.
John: They asked me to do the moth one time and they were like, we're gonna put you in touch with a content producer.
John: And I was like,
John: To tell a story?
John: I'm not going to workshop it.
John: I'm going to make it up as I go.
John: That's how I do.
Merlin: They probably just put you in contact with the contact producer's assistant.
Merlin: Could you talk to my assistant?
John: I said, no, thank you.
John: Anyway, so I wrote this, and he wrote back and said, hey, John, A, you are the first to ask about this, which I think is really smart.
John: Exclamation point.
John: And I was like, wow.
John: That's the bread part of the sandwich.
John: I'm the first to ask?
John: Am I really smart?
John: But then he said, unfortunately, the producer you'd be working with is on vacation right now.
John: She's not reachable, but she's super talented.
John: Anyway, we're finalizing and locking in the lineup.
John: All the great shows.
John: We're locking in the lineup for instructors, so we're going to need to have a commitment if you're interested in doing this before she returns.
Thanks.
Merlin: And, and so at this point, by my count, you are at at least four and probably five red flags.
John: Well, so now I feel a little dissed and I'm, and I'm walking around.
John: I've got my hands behind my back.
John: I'm in my Napoleon March.
John: Right.
John: Or I'm in, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm Churchill.
John: I'm Churchill on D day minus one and marching around.
John: I'm chewing on my cigar.
Merlin: You know, you should do, you should ask to speak with his manager.
Yeah.
Merlin: He is the manager.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: You would totally cock him.
Merlin: Can I speak with your manager?
Merlin: Because just how he reacts to that would be so great.
John: My manager's on vacation.
John: My manager?
John: I'm a professional, sir.
John: Sir?
John: I wear a white collar.
John: Drumpf.
John: My mom happened to be over at the house after I read this email.
John: And I'm marching.
John: I'm walking around, hands behind my back, chomping on my cigar, muttering.
John: And she says, she looks up from her magazine.
John: Because we still read magazines in this house.
John: And she says, what's the matter with you?
John: And I said, this thing.
John: And she said, she said, she basically, she took a page out of the Merlin book.
John: And she said, there's nothing about this that you want to do.
John: Why are you even putting this amount of emotional energy into it?
John: And I was like, well, because it should work out.
John: And it shouldn't be this way.
John: And she said, write him a one-sentence email that says, no, thank you.
Merlin: I was like, yeah, but... Just in passing also, you're feeling a bad feeling about the bad feeling.
Merlin: Yeah, I feel exactly right.
Merlin: So you know you're doing the thing.
John: I woke up in the middle of the night, and now I'm upset that I can't go to sleep.
Merlin: Yes, well, I'm just saying.
Merlin: I've been aware of this concept for many years, but I'm trying to become more sensitive to it.
Merlin: Are you reacting to a thing that happened in the world, or are you reacting to how you feel about that thing, your own interpretation of a fact or not in the world?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It sounds like you are reacting to pure interpretation.
Merlin: For good reasons.
Merlin: You got a good heart.
Merlin: You want to be a fucking performer.
Merlin: You want to do your thing, but you're tearing yourself in knots.
Merlin: You think that guy's tearing himself in knots?
Merlin: No, he doesn't care at all.
Merlin: He's got 10 more suckers like you.
Merlin: He's got them lined up out the door.
Merlin: So I wrote him.
John: It's very prestigious, John.
John: I know.
John: I wrote him an email, and I was like, hey, I really appreciate being asked to do this, but the dates just didn't line up, is what I said.
John: The dates just didn't line up.
Merlin: I can see your mom shaking her head looking at the magazine.
John: She's a fucking loser.
John: She's just looking at the magazine, just shaking her head.
John: The dates didn't line up, I said.
John: Please consider me in the future.
Merlin: Oh, God.
John: Oh, John.
John: But the burden was released.
John: Whether or not my email was garbage, it doesn't matter.
John: I was out.
John: I got out.
John: And then he wrote me a thing that was like, no problem, thanks.
John: Have a good one.
John: And I was like, whew.
John: I mean, maybe I'm never going to be at Pappy and Harriet's with Steve Agui.
John: He's never going to take my picture and put it up next to Sarah Silverman.
John: But you want to be there for the right reasons.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: That's right.
John: I do.
John: I don't want to get in there just because I moved the seating bolts on my Austin Healey.
John: I want to get in.
John: I want to drive a car that's made to fit me.
John: Yeah, like a grown man's car.
John: I drive cars that shift themselves.
Merlin: The largest car you could afford.
Merlin: I don't want a shifter car.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: We used to have a shifter car because we thought we, you know, we both like stick shift.
Merlin: And for, I don't know, 10 years, we drove a shifter car in San Francisco.
John: That's insane.
John: I have a shifter car in Seattle and it's insane.
Merlin: It's insane.
Merlin: I mean, it's not necessary.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
John: You know what?
John: No.
John: No.
John: It's like for a long time I wanted a motorcycle, but having a motorcycle in Seattle is stupid.
John: It definitely feels not practical.
John: No, if you have a motorcycle and you live in Santa Barbara or you live in, I think the ideal place for a motorcycle is San Diego.
John: Oh, it's so flat and dry.
John: Yeah, or Bakersfield.
John: If you lived in Bakersfield, you'd be stupid not to have a motorcycle.
John: But Seattle, come on.
John: Yeah.
John: But I sure wanted one.
John: Didn't keep me from wanting one.
John: Yeah.
John: I woke up at 4 o'clock in the morning.
Merlin: Okay, okay.
John: Catching up.
John: I had three seconds of a Pretender song cycling in my head.
John: But I am super, duper, duper, duper, duper, duper, duper, duper, duper anxious right now.
John: Oh, shit.
John: Because...
John: I just don't know.
Merlin: We haven't even gotten to my whole thrust of the call.
Merlin: Well, the call was going to be today, which is a spider shit falling on your face.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: There's a lot.
John: I've got rat poop all over me still.
Merlin: Oh, that's it.
Merlin: That's what it was.
John: Even though I scrubbed myself with a steel.
Merlin: God, that photo scared me.
John: Anxiety.
John: But I'm almost 50.
John: Yeah.
John: I turned 50 in two months.
John: Well, yeah, two months.
John: Give or take.
John: And my family came to me and said, we want to celebrate your big 50th birthday party.
John: Oh, God.
John: By renting a house on the Oregon coast.
John: And we're all going to go there.
John: Oh, can we not?
John: And I said, that's amazing.
John: Thank you.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And, you know, they are trying so hard to do something nice.
John: You know, they love me so much.
John: They take care of me so much.
John: And so...
John: So, but the problem is, the problem is, I don't, A, I don't like being celebrated in that way.
John: Ugh.
John: And B, I don't feel like being celebrated right now.
John: I'm not going through a phase where I feel like I'm very much of a success.
John: Ugh.
John: I'm feeling a little bit like 50 years old and not much to show for it, frankly.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And sitting, you know, sitting in front of like a cake with my loving and
John: pretty small nuclear family of people that I matter to maybe some speeches and blowing out the 50 candles and then going and staying in some kind of in some kind of like rented house and
John: And walking the beach, it just felt like Richard Nixon.
John: No, no.
John: At least he had something to show for it.
John: He had Alger Hiss.
John: He believed that history would vindicate him.
John: And now he's right.
John: If the president does it, it's not illegal.
John: So so I wrote them.
John: I wrote my whole family a letter that said, I am so grateful for this wonderful thought.
John: But will you please cancel it?
John: And please not.
John: Let's not talk about my birthday again.
John: No.
John: Until the day before when somebody can go, oh, isn't tomorrow your birthday?
John: And then we can get a Safeway cake.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And Safeway has a really good icebox chocolate fudge cake.
Merlin: That's a good fucking cake.
Merlin: And you want a cake?
Merlin: Safeway is the best cake?
Merlin: We were talking about this in my house last night.
Merlin: It is the best cake.
Merlin: They're the best cake.
Merlin: That's a fucking birthday.
Merlin: You can go to a fancy... One candle.
Merlin: One candle.
Merlin: One candle.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And then maybe you guys, you watch a Pixar movie.
Merlin: That's a nice night.
John: And then I take the rest of the cake home because it's my birthday.
Merlin: It's your birthday.
John: So I get to take the birthday cake home and then I can eat it when I want.
Merlin: I told him just in passing what I told my family.
Merlin: I'm past 51 now.
Merlin: But what I told my family was, you want to give me a treat?
Merlin: You know what I want?
Merlin: Let me go to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom by myself for two nights.
Merlin: I just want to go to bed early and then ride roller coasters all day.
Merlin: By yourself.
Merlin: By myself.
Merlin: You can't take kids on a roller coaster.
Merlin: That's no fun.
Merlin: I want to go.
Merlin: I want to get the Rain Man pass.
Merlin: I want the really nice pass where you get to skip line, which you can do at Discovery Kingdom.
Merlin: And then you just ride the fucking Joker roller coaster all day.
John: I love roller coasters and nobody in my family wants to ride on them.
Merlin: Oh, shit, you should come here.
Merlin: This should be for your birthday.
Merlin: You and me will go to Discovery Kingdom.
Merlin: They've got a really good Superman roller coaster that's bananas.
Merlin: What is Discovery Kingdom?
Merlin: I've never heard of it.
Merlin: It's up just in Vallejo.
Merlin: It's a roller coaster park.
John: They've got some good-ass roller coasters.
John: I once spent a summer in New York City where... Oh, just passing and passing.
Merlin: Opened in 1968.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: It's the 747.
Merlin: That's when you were open.
John: Ah!
Merlin: I had no idea about this place.
Merlin: Go look at it.
Merlin: Wonder Woman Lasso of Truth.
Merlin: I'm telling you, though, the Joker and the Superman in particular are very, very high-quality roller coasters.
John: Well, the only time I'm ever at amusement parks, of course, anymore, I'm with my kid.
John: Yes.
John: And, you know, she's too little to go on roller coasters.
John: Nobody else in the family wants to go on roller coasters.
John: That's all I want to do.
John: And so I end up walking past the roller coasters with, like, that...
John: sheepish chagrined like head down look where i'm like but i could just go and just yeah be on the roller coaster and i'll i'll meet you guys over at the cotton candy apples or whatever yeah you guys go ride the teacups i'm gonna go over here but i never can i never can quite do it and and uh don't talk about this in the parenting classes this is the kind of shit you get oh no
John: Back when I was a single man, back when I had no responsibilities, I spent a summer in New York and I went to every roller coaster in New Jersey.
Merlin: I bet there's a lot of roller coasters in New Jersey.
John: Oh, there are.
John: New Jersey's got so many roller coasters.
John: Great roller coasters.
Merlin: I just sent you a link.
Merlin: Look at this.
John: And the crazier, the rickety you're the roller coaster, the happier I am.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: I want my head slammed around.
Merlin: I want you to put a hurtin' on me.
Merlin: This is my version of Scalding My Balls, probably, is going to a place like this and having these machines try to destroy me.
Merlin: Look at all those rides.
John: Oh, this is just the list of thrill rides.
John: That's just the thrill rides.
John: The Cobra, the Boomerang Coast to Coaster, the Daredevil Chaos Coaster.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Oh, and I love this here.
John: They have minimum heights.
John: No kids allowed.
John: No kids allowed.
John: No, the Joker's a serious deal.
John: The Joker's a wooden coaster that'll fuck you up.
John: Something weird is happening here.
John: Hammerhead Shark is temporarily closed.
John: Oh, no.
John: Harley Quinn Crazy Coaster is not open yet.
John: See, that's how they get you.
John: We got Kong.
John: We got Medusa.
Merlin: Well, you got to be tall to ride Medusa.
Merlin: I was there for an early ride before it was officially open on the Joker.
Merlin: But the Superman one is real crazy.
Merlin: The Superman is one of those crazy rides where basically you sit in the car in this little station and immediately goes up to like, I don't know, 60 miles an hour.
Merlin: Like a boom.
Merlin: Like a bullet.
John: It's magnetic.
Merlin: And it goes up and then it comes back down, back through the station.
Merlin: And then it does these fucking twirls and shit that are...
Merlin: Can make a 50-year-old man very happy.
John: Vertical Velocity.
John: You got the Joker, the Tasmanian Devil.
John: They got a lot of thrill rides.
John: There's a lot of thrills.
Merlin: You feel like you're settled and sorted with this whole event thing.
Merlin: We're done with that, right?
Merlin: You're not going to do that, right?
John: The thing... I'm not doing the event for sure I'm not.
John: And also...
John: And my family wrote me back and was like, we don't want to make you go to the Oregon coast.
John: We were just trying to do something to celebrate your birthday.
John: Oh, everything's coming up, John.
John: I said, well, then let's celebrate my birthday with my favorite form of celebration, which is not celebrating.
John: I know.
John: I know.
John: And they were like, great.
John: Whether or not they actually feel disappointed or are fine with it, I can't tell, but I'm trying to not have that be a problem.
John: I feel like I'm just going to be like, listen, it's my 50th birthday party and that's what I wanted.
John: Yes.
Shit.
John: So then what else did you do when you woke up at four?
John: So I got up.
John: You already foreshadowed it with a little bit of like Google ads or whatever because I got up and turned the shower water on really hot and scalded myself.
John: Happy birthday to me.