Ep. 313: “Man on the Boat”
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi John.
Merlin: Hi Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
John: How are you going?
Merlin: I'm doing great, man.
Merlin: They're my second podcast of the day.
Merlin: No, what'd you do already?
Merlin: I already did another program.
Merlin: That's not your regular schedule, is it?
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: You know, there's a song I like a lot called The Week Between.
Merlin: That really was just last week.
Merlin: Already the madness begins.
Merlin: Oh, so you're doubling up because people got to go places.
Merlin: It's the crazy season.
Merlin: It's already starting.
Merlin: And it's just like, it's, it's like a child's tile puzzle.
Merlin: You can't just move the two.
Merlin: You got to move it around.
Merlin: One through 15 inclusive.
Merlin: You only get one blank spot, you know?
John: Yeah.
John: And if you do, if you do.
John: So Circusa is going to Tahiti or something.
Merlin: Oh, you know, no, it's, it's just, it's, it's,
Merlin: Scheduling is hard.
John: Tell me more.
Merlin: Well, it's a very interconnected ecosystem when you're in the casting of pod.
Merlin: And one rarely does a podcast by oneself.
Merlin: And if one person has a change, that can end up affecting other people.
Merlin: You see this a lot in the summertime.
Merlin: Did you do Korean fan death yet?
John: Uh, uh, did we do?
John: Yeah.
John: Did we, we, we talk about it all the time.
John: Uh, uh, no, it has not.
John: We have not done it.
John: He and I have spoken about it.
John: We've talked about it.
John: He actually did a, he did a, uh, he did a little, you know, Ken Jennings televisions.
John: Ken Jennings has a lot of different gigs.
John: We have one of his books.
Merlin: I didn't even realize we have one of his books.
Merlin: My daughter apparently likes his books.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yes, he has written quite a series of books for children.
John: I want to say it was about Egypt.
John: I'm not sure, but I think it was Egypt.
John: There you go.
John: And he writes, you know, he writes little columns.
John: You know, didn't he have a thing in Parade Magazine?
John: Is he the new Marilyn Vos savant?
John: He likes quizzes and games and stuff.
John: You don't write him in and say...
John: Ken, what do I do about my neighbor?
Merlin: He's not an advice columnist.
Merlin: It's not something my teen keeps making a mess in the towels.
Merlin: What should I do?
John: No, no, it's just... You should ask him that.
John: He says, I do not want to know.
John: My teen keeps messing the towels.
John: He says things like, Korean fan death...
John: LOL.
John: Oh, okay.
John: So I guess he wrote a thing about it somewhere.
John: Oh, geez.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: I'll take up some better ones.
John: No, but the thing is, so what he said all along from the very beginning, first omnibus, I was like, I don't know if I want to do that topic.
John: And he said, you know what?
John: We're going to end up doing them all.
John: And I was like, oh, we're going to end up doing them all.
John: And he's like, yeah.
John: So if you get a topic and you're like, no, you're going to end up going back to it.
John: So just do them.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, that seems wise.
John: And he's coming from this standpoint of like, he's been writing a weekly column in the newspaper for however long.
John: And it's just like, you end up doing them all.
Merlin: That's smart.
Merlin: We do that with the show I do with John Syracuse.
Merlin: We've got a Google Doc with probably 20 things we'll eventually get to.
Merlin: And almost every week, something else makes it to the top because it's on our mind.
Merlin: But it's comforting to know there's always more there.
Merlin: You can go back to the well whenever you need to.
John: It's true.
John: Although I find that I have this list.
John: Oh, wow.
John: I just pulled it up first on the list.
John: Korean fan death.
John: Underneath that, Ben Franklin's farts.
John: Ben Franklin's farts?
John: Yeah.
John: Walter Winchell.
John: Walter Winchell.
John: The book Naked Came the Stranger.
John: Yngwie Malmsteen.
John: That's a topic.
John: Yeah.
John: Trucker culture.
John: Mike the Headless Chicken.
John: I like all these.
John: Japanese who are still fighting World War II.
John: There's one guy 30 years.
John: They couldn't talk him out of it.
John: Yeah.
John: Ramjets versus Scramjets.
Okay.
John: The History of the Escalator, you know, they all end up on there, and then I read them all every week, and I'm like, ah, History of the Escalator, yeah, but, and then something else, you know what I mean?
Merlin: And so for almost all of these, you have some combination of, you got a file card of your own on that, plus you've done at least a little bit of light research on, say, escalators.
John: Yeah, I mean, you know, like History of the Escalator, that's one of those where, like,
John: I've got a pretty big file card on Japanese still fighting World War II.
Merlin: There's a whole Gilligan's Island about that.
John: Yeah.
John: But I didn't have a huge one on the history of the escalator, although I'm curious, certainly.
John: I know there used to be wood escalators.
John: I know escalator fires used to be a problem.
John: Oh, really?
John: Oh, yeah, down in the London tube or whatever, some grease would, I mean, I don't want to give the whole show away whenever it comes up, but some grease would catch on fire, and the escalators were made of wood, so they would just catch on fire.
John: And if you're on an escalator and it's on fire, that's not where you want to be.
Merlin: Can I give you an additional file card, just for what it's worth?
Merlin: Google BART escalator poop.
Merlin: Please.
Merlin: Is this for the show?
Merlin: This is a freebie.
Merlin: This is a freebie.
Merlin: This is a freebie for you.
Merlin: The escalators in the Muni slash BART stations are suffering from an unusual mechanical problem, which is people keep pooping on them, and then they don't work so good.
John: Oh, no.
Merlin: Fancy San Francisco.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Yeah, poop's an issue on the escalators here.
Merlin: I'm just saying, it's something that's one to keep in your pocket.
John: How do you poop on an escalator?
John: I mean, it would seem like you're not going to get a chance to luxuriate
Merlin: now all of a sudden those guys that are sometimes like have the escalator torn up and they're all down in the gears working now i feel really bad for them and i never used to i always thought they had a killer job yeah you're making people you're making people happy yeah there's all kinds of um uh uh things related to human issuances uh in town it's it's we it's a it's we have a lot of things going on
Merlin: Yeah, but you're right.
Merlin: I mean, even if you're a fairly fast pooper... Mm-hmm.
John: Okay, well, let's take this.
John: Why would you set an egg timer on your poop?
John: Like, I'm getting on the escalator, and I gotta be done by the time I get off.
Merlin: Okay, don't overthink it.
Merlin: How long is an escalator ride?
Merlin: I'm gonna say, for a standard going into the subway escalator ride, I'm gonna say no more than 15 seconds.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: 1530 tops.
Yeah.
Merlin: It could be you got a man on the boat.
Merlin: It could be that you've got a situation.
Merlin: You could have a little turtle down there.
Merlin: You could have something that comes up, you know, when you weren't prepared.
Merlin: But so often that it becomes an actual problem in escalators?
Merlin: I guess often enough.
Merlin: It's sort of like, see, here's another thing.
Merlin: Pooping is a problem.
Merlin: Back in Florida, back in Sarasota, there was a Publix right near where I live where they had a character that people came to know called the Phantom Pooper.
Merlin: And the Phantom Pooper was somebody who went into the ladies and ruined it on a regular basis.
Merlin: This is something that people do.
Merlin: There are people who just ruin bathrooms.
Merlin: I've seen it happen personally.
Merlin: I've seen people deliberately ruin a bathroom.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Maybe it's a cultural thing.
John: By ruining it, you don't just mean making a stinky poop in it, but you mean like throwing towels all over?
Merlin: Can I give you a sub anecdote?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: My daughter, who at the time was probably three, she was walking, but she was probably three.
Merlin: We go to our local library.
Merlin: And this is back in the time when I would bring her into the men's room to do her business.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You wouldn't just send a kid into, into the ladies by herself or God forbid the men's by herself.
Merlin: You couldn't, but I would wait.
Merlin: And so, so the, uh, the one stall in our local was occupado, not a problem.
Merlin: We can wait a couple of minutes, but you know, it gets to be kind of a situation.
Merlin: The guy's in there.
Merlin: He's obviously doing some business.
Merlin: A man walks out and I kind of give him this face and we promptly go in and first he has left his assuance and
Merlin: in the toilet, but he's also taken every single available roll of toilet paper and put it into the toilet.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: There's some possibility that he arrived with it in that situation.
Merlin: I'm no Encyclopedia Brown, but it seems to me it's very likely that this guy dropped a duke and then put every single roll of toilet paper into the toilet, leaving quite a situation.
John: Oh, dear.
Merlin: And so I come out and I says, hey!
Merlin: And I yell.
Merlin: Yeah, he's just calmly walking out the door.
Merlin: He's done.
Merlin: He's done.
Merlin: He's left his issuance.
Merlin: And now he's leaving the branch library.
Merlin: And I say to the desk guy, I say, hey, that guy just ruined the bathroom.
Merlin: And he gives me a face and a noise that says, oh, it's that guy.
Merlin: So he's a regular.
Merlin: He regularly comes in and ruins the bathroom.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: Double no.
Merlin: Back in Sarasota, you had a phantom pooper, and it was theorized by the assistant manager that somebody was going into the bathroom, and the only way that they could make any sense of what was happening in the bathroom, how widespread this bladder pattern was, was that somebody was standing astride, standing on the toilet seat with their drawers down, and then, can you see me kind of doing like a slow, sexy hula dance in kind of a lazy, counterclockwise motion?
Merlin: Uh, hula dance counterclockwise.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: That was what the assistant manager theorized was happening.
Merlin: And that person, male or woman, I don't know.
Merlin: They don't check your ID at the door.
Merlin: That person would go in and regularly ruin the ladies at the, uh, at the, uh, at the public's there on 41.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: So, so, so people do that.
Merlin: Now, I'm not going to rule out that somebody, as I say, somebody had a man on the boat and they only, and they, and they had to just say, this is something I'm doing now.
Merlin: And they happen to be riding on the escalator.
Merlin: I would not get on an escalator if I thought I had a man on the boat.
John: Uh-uh.
John: No.
John: Oh, but this is a problem of being down in a BART station is there's no place to go to the bathroom.
John: There's not even a place you can hardly throw out trash down there because of 9-11.
Merlin: Everything's hard.
Merlin: Well, and also I should mention in passing, also after the 9-11, they closed pretty much every public restroom in Muni and BART.
Merlin: Oh, they did.
Merlin: So people go in the elevators, too.
Merlin: Oh, the elevators.
Merlin: Don't get me started.
Merlin: The Kester Street elevator.
Merlin: Voicontrade.
Merlin: You want to be super careful.
Merlin: It's rough.
Merlin: It is rough, because then you get a little private room, right?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I want to be clear.
Merlin: I'm not making fun.
Merlin: It's that whole piss town thing.
Merlin: It is very, very difficult for a person to find a place to go to the bathroom.
John: I'm sure I told you the story about the night I spent in an elevator.
Merlin: John Roderick, as I sit here today, Veterans Day 2018, I don't remember ever hearing... I think I need to hear this story.
Merlin: Oh, hang on one second.
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Merlin: John, tell me about the time you were stuck in an elevator.
Merlin: No, not stuck.
Merlin: Oh, oh, oh, oh, you're stuck.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: That was really normative of me.
Merlin: The time you chose to spend the evening in an elevator.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: You got there.
John: John in an elevator.
John: Second guess.
John: I was wandering around.
John: I was very young.
John: I was still 17 and I was on my own.
John: I was in Portland, Oregon.
John: I'd already spent the night in the Riverfront Park a couple of times and I decided that sleeping in Riverfront Park was not
John: It wasn't that I felt especially unsafe.
John: There was so much unsavory activity going on all around me that it was unsavory.
John: I just didn't want to be in Riverfront Park.
Merlin: Your heartbeat stays up, and you can't accept Morpheus's embrace.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: There was a lot of drugging.
John: There was a lot of sexing happening, and I was just another warm body out in Riverfront Park.
John: I was just trying to sleep.
Yeah.
John: So I'm wandering around Portland and I'm just dragging.
John: I'm so tired and I'm so just like worn and I just need a place to crash.
John: And I head up into the hills, you know, the area right behind Portland.
John: We think of it behind Portland because Portland faces a river and then its back is to this set of hills.
John: And like in a lot of towns, like in Los Angeles, for instance, or San Francisco, you go up the hill and the house is getting nice.
John: Nice houses up there on the tops of the hills.
John: You don't see it in Portland.
John: You don't think of it because when you visit Portland, you're always oriented sort of like, oh, go across the river, go over hither, over yon.
John: But looming up above the city in Portland is mansions, this neighborhood of mansions.
John: People live in Portland 20 years.
John: They don't know what's up there.
John: They have no reason to go.
John: but it's like Hollywood Hills up there.
John: So I'm wandering around up there and I'm thinking, you know, and I'm just, I have a tendency to daydream as you know, and I'm wandering, I'm thinking, Oh, you know, maybe, maybe if I, if I shuffle past this mansion, some,
John: mom will come to put the trash out and she'll see me and she'll say, oh, young man, you seem so bedraggled.
John: Oh, like a folktale.
John: Yeah, come in and I'll make you some soup and you can sleep in my son's room.
John: He's gone off to the Navy.
Merlin: Whatever you do, don't put your dick in this hole.
Merlin: Don't talk to my daughter.
Merlin: She can just feed you like a raccoon out of an old pie pan.
Yeah.
Merlin: You can curl up here by the compost.
John: I think I was probably misjudging how much compassion rich people have for people shuffling through their alleys carrying a bag.
Merlin: Were you looking pretty rugged?
John: Well, I was just, you know, I was a 17-year-old who was sleeping outside.
John: So I wasn't like, hey, you look just like my kid.
John: I just seemed like a shadowy lump.
John: Anyway, I'm wandering around and I'm ready to... As you keep saying about a man on a boat, I had a... I was just exhausted.
John: I was going to fall down and sleep.
Merlin: You were in the chamber?
Merlin: Oh, you just needed to rest.
John: No, I just needed to rest.
John: But I was now... Trying to get away from the park, I'd now gotten myself into a neighborhood where there were no public parks because everyone's living in their own private park.
John: And now there wasn't anywhere to lay down.
John: Not only not in a...
John: not somewhere better than a park, but like now I would have to lay down in someone's yard and that I knew was a bad plan because there just wasn't any public space up there.
John: And I'm wandering around, I'm wandering around and I come to a, um, I come out onto a, like a kind of a main drag and there's an apartment building.
John: Now it's a very nice apartment building, but they have a garage and
John: And I walk into the garage and I'm like, oh, you know, but it's brightly lit and it's cold concrete floors.
John: And I'm like, oh, no, you know, I can't sleep anywhere here.
John: I'm just about to fall asleep on my feet.
John: And I push the up button on the elevator because I figure if I'm going to sleep on the concrete in a garage, I want to go up to the top and find a little corner.
John: Oh, that's also a more defensible position.
John: It's a defensible position, right?
John: So I get on the elevator.
John: This is the 1980s, so it wasn't a thing where you needed a key card.
John: It wasn't locked at night.
John: I was part of what caused the 80s to turn into the 90s.
John: I got on this elevator and I, and, and I, and the elevator was like, it was kind of warm in there.
John: It was protected from the wind at least.
John: And about halfway up carpeted floor, it was carpeted floor halfway up.
John: I had this, this, uh, this like a moment and I reached out and I pulled the stop button and it didn't, there was no bell or anything.
John: It just stopped the elevator.
John: And I was like,
John: I waited for something to happen.
John: Nothing happened.
John: So I took my sleeping bag out and laid it on the floor.
John: Took my sleeping bag out of my little bag.
John: I went to sleep.
John: Damn.
John: Nobody was using the parking garage.
John: Everybody was tucked into their beds.
John: They were all in their nice apartment beds.
John: And I slept there.
John: I woke in the morning to the sound of someone walking on the roof of the elevator.
John: Oh, no.
John: Presumably the elevator repairman.
Merlin: They sent in the pros from Dover.
John: And now I was really embarrassed because, oh, dear, I have inconvenienced everybody.
John: And so much so that they sent an elevator repairman.
John: And now he's on the roof.
John: And so I very, very hurriedly threw all my stuff into my bag and the elevator repairman could hear me in there.
John: He had not opened the trap door yet.
John: So he was like up above and I kept waiting for that, for the roof to open and some guy to be like, but he could hear me rustling.
John: He could probably feel the elevator, you know, shaking and I could hear him, you know, and he said like, Hey, what's the hell, what's going on?
John: something something loud male voices and so I just in a rush I just threw my stuff in my bag crammed it in there and pushed the on button you know pushed it on and the elevator immediately went and started to move down and I was waiting to you know and I was standing there by the doors just waiting for the doors to open and the street to be filled with police and paramedics
John: But the door opened and there was no one there.
John: Really?
John: You lucked out.
John: Not even a truck that said elevator repairman.
John: And the guy on the roof, who's now riding down with me, but on the roof, and I was lucky that he wasn't like, probably if you're an elevator repairman and you get on an elevator roof, you're not, you make sure not to be in a compromising position because the elevator could start at any moment.
John: Oh, yeah, yeah.
John: You're not Tom Cruise.
Yeah.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: And you're probably not like hanging, you know, you don't get with one foot on the elevator and one foot like held by a vice over a saw blade or anything like that.
John: Right.
John: The door opens and I don't even run.
John: I just walk out of the elevator like a normal person.
John: It's a nice sunny day and I just walk down the street and I can hear him shouting at me.
John: Yeah.
John: And I just, I joined the, I joined the human throng.
John: That was it.
John: You just blend in.
John: That was it.
John: Just, yeah, that's right.
John: I just, at that moment, I was Tom Cruise.
John: I hopped out of my Camaro.
John: I stepped over to the bus station.
John: The bus station people recognized that for some reason, even though I was being chased by a thousand cops, that I was one of them.
Merlin: What I learned from movies is if you take off your jacket or reverse your jacket, you do something like that, you can just blend in.
Merlin: The guy next to me handed me his baseball hat.
John: Exactly.
John: Dark glasses.
John: Yes, dark glasses.
John: But I always remember that elevator.
John: I'm grateful to that elevator because of what it did for me.
John: I've actually gone back to visit it.
John: No kidding.
John: See, now today I bet it's all computers.
John: Well, the configuration of the whole operation changed somewhere along the line.
John: I tried to find the elevator and I could not.
John: So it may be that I precipitated a situation where they were like, no more elevators or something.
Merlin: The other thing is like today in these times, these troubled times is I think a lot of times people think about being liable legally for things.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: Legal liability.
John: Yes.
Merlin: And so so, you know, now I wonder if you need a key to do it now.
John: Like if you have a fob, you rub on it.
John: If you can, it's probably a fob, but I couldn't even find the door to the elevator is what I'm saying.
John: Oh, wow.
John: Oh, that is some configuration.
John: But it's entirely possible, too, that I was like so tired that I went further into this complex than I remember doing.
John: I remember it being just like the elevator door.
John: You were very tired at the time.
John: I was.
John: I was so tired.
Merlin: What brought you to Oregon that particular time, if you can remember?
John: Uh, well, um, that Merlin, we've talked about that adventure, uh, because that was, um, that was the, the same trip.
John: I mean, I entered Oregon and immediately pitched my tent on a garbage dump.
John: Oh, you're kidding.
John: Oh, same.
Merlin: Wow.
John: I sure know that one.
John: Yeah.
John: But it just, that, you know, at that age, uh,
John: The adventures just kept coming hour by hour.
John: Oh, yeah, what did you say?
Merlin: Columbia River?
Merlin: Was that it?
John: Yeah, Columbia River.
Merlin: I do remember.
John: That's when you were the tent trash.
John: Tent trash.
John: Yeah.
John: I probably could do a very long and full episode of this show with you for every single day of that year.
John: Because I walked out of that elevator and down into the streets of Portland and then...
John: We could just keep we could keep going.
John: I could tell you about what I could tell you about that miserable day and on and on and on.
John: But, you know, that was that was the time.
John: Oh, well, I won't.
Merlin: Well, no, I want to hear all you got.
Merlin: I mean, I'm I'm I'm it's just I didn't do things like that.
Merlin: Like, yeah, I would drive to Gainesville.
Merlin: for a couple days i would buy records in tampa i never found myself sleeping in an elevator it's one of the handful of ways you and i are different did you ever have loving and ella we are that reference the other night my wife took a shower before bed she uh collected her hair into a bun
Merlin: And for some reason I said, Maddie's got a bun.
Merlin: And now we can't stop doing that.
John: So that's terrible.
John: I'm living with that now.
John: You think that she's going to stop wearing her hair in a bun as a result?
John: I hope not.
John: Dude looks like a lady.
Oh!
Merlin: That's stupid.
Merlin: I heard an anecdote the other day about a time, I think this was on, wait, wait, there was an anecdote I heard on the radio the other day of Tyler and Perry sitting in a bar at some point, probably in the 80s, and a song comes on the radio and supposedly Tyler says, wow, man, this is really good, we should cover this.
Merlin: And Perry's like, you fucking idiot, that's our song.
John: Yeah, there it is.
Merlin: Because of cocaine.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: Because of the cocaine.
Merlin: I only mention it because, you know, I've never had adventures like that.
Merlin: One time I wrecked a car and had to sleep at a stranger's house, but I don't have adventures like you've had.
John: Well, you know, my best friend in high school was someone who...
John: He really struggled – I think I struggled a lot with what the expectations – what my parents' expectations – obviously, I've struggled a lot with my parents' expectations.
John: But what the cultural expectations were, you know, I was in a group of friends that were all sort of –
John: that thought about what college you went to and that really mattered and thought about what role you played, what station you occupied in middle-class society when you got out of college.
John: And, you know, we had a lot of... Nobody in my group fantasized about going around the world or about going to live in Thailand for a year.
John: There just wasn't any of that.
John: And partly I think that wasn't a thing.
John: Certainly it's a thing now, and it was... It was probably more of a thing in like the mid-60s.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: There was a time when there was still the option.
Merlin: But we come from an age when it was very much like, you know, not whether you were going to go to college, but what's the best one you can get into and how will you pay for it.
John: Yeah, and what you're going to do immediately after, right?
John: You're not going to go travel the world.
John: You're going to do stuff...
John: job stuff, house, home stuff, people stuff.
John: And, um, and so of all of my friends, I was the only one that was interested in traveling.
John: I think, um, when I think about the, when I think about like my 10 friends in high school, I'm probably pretty sure that, that any traveling that any of them have done,
John: has been either in the context of something they had to do for work, or maybe when they got established, they took some family vacations.
Merlin: There are a couple of people like a formal funded, budgeted, planned out excursion of a finite departure and return.
Merlin: Right.
John: And I've talked about Peter Nosek on this program.
John: Peter traveled very extensively.
John: He was someone who had a travel bug, although he's somebody who lived who remained in Anchorage.
John: Like he always wanted to go back to Anchorage, but he traveled all around the world.
John: Our friend Sheffer traveled all around the world.
John: Um, so there were people in Anchorage that did have that.
John: It just wasn't my friends from East High School.
John: But my friend Kevin, who was my best friend, he wanted that.
John: He wanted to...
John: have extensive traveling.
John: You could tell about him that he understood it was a good thing to have.
John: It was part of, you know, part of, of how you built yourself into an interesting person.
John: But he also felt very strongly that he needed to achieve the achievement and make the
John: hit the numbers, right, on what was expected.
John: And he was the guitar player in my first band, the Bunn Family Players.
John: Actually, my first band was Chautauqua, and Kevin wasn't in Chautauqua.
John: So I was in a band called Chautauqua here in Seattle, and we made a demo tape, and I sent it to Kevin.
John: Kevin was a guitar player.
John: Actually, my first band was the Truly Awful Band.
John: rick garnett was the guitar player in the truly awful band kevin was a fan of the truly awful band not because we were good but because in high school rick and i sat and drew album cover art for the truly awful band all day in class like we would pass pieces of paper back and forth where we had drawn the truly awful band logo wow truly awful band associated merch you know we we were really like
John: We had the whole thing sketched out.
John: Now, musically, we were terrible.
John: We only ever played like three gigs.
John: One of them was at his sister's eighth birthday party.
John: But our friends loved that we had a band.
John: And so...
John: Kevin started to draw Truly Awful Band artwork, and Eric did, and all these people that weren't in the band.
John: And so then we had fans.
John: We had friends that were fans.
John: Again, none of them had really even heard us play.
John: It was just like, this is what we did.
Merlin: They're fans of the idea of you.
Merlin: Yeah, we were wild stallions.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
John: So Kevin, I think, learned to play guitar partly because...
John: He was inspired by the idea of the Truly Awful Band and the degree to which the Truly Awful Band had a fan base even not having any music.
John: Kevin learned to play guitar and it turned out he was a better guitar player than any of us because he was very devoted to it.
John: But he didn't want to drop out of school and become a rock musician.
John: And his vision of it was that he would go to school, he would get a master's degree and also be playing rock and roll.
John: And then he would have all his bases covered.
John: He would have a master's degree and then be a rock star.
John: And from my perspective, living in Seattle, where I was getting my eyes opened every single day about how little you had, how few grunge rockers had master's degrees.
John: Let me just put it that way.
Merlin: Not everybody's a Dr. Brian May.
John: that's right and i think um dexter holland of the offspring also the guy from uh the guy from uh bad religion also educated person i think he's also a phd type yeah so i mean it happens but you know kevin wasn't trying to get a phd in astrophysics he was
John: getting a master's degree in conflict resolution from the university of Hawaii.
John: So it was, it felt like, I mean, he definitely was pulled as I was between these two worlds, but he believed in himself that he was going to be able to get all of the brass rings.
John: He was going to get the, he was going to satisfy his parents and his culture by being educated.
John: And he was also going to, and not just educated, but like have the,
John: It was very much about having the accomplishment.
John: Not so much about like, I'm driven to study this because of a passion in my breast.
John: More like, I'm going to have a master's degree because it's something they can never take away.
Merlin: Just in passing, that's worth mentioning, because I do remember, I feel like there was, it wasn't so much like pressure to, there was certainly a pressure to do something practical, but really it was about getting that piece of paper.
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: Wherever you ended up getting it from.
John: And that is a liberal arts problem, right?
John: If you want to be a doctor, it's not about the piece of paper.
John: It's about you have to be able to do the doctor stuff.
John: But if you're getting a master's degree in sociology or something, you're just getting a piece of paper.
John: It's not that you give a care about the topic.
John: And I say that with almost 100% confidence that there are people listening to this show that have a master's degree in sociology and that they're nodding their head in recognition now.
Mm-hmm.
John: But we came along to that first year or so after high school.
John: And at that point, I had gone and I'd spent a year hitchhiking across the United States.
John: And when I came back to Alaska, I was the only one of all of the kids that I knew at any high school.
John: I was the only one who hadn't gone to college.
John: with the exception of my friends, Kel and Randy, who had stayed in Alaska and were like commercial fishing.
John: But, you know, those guys like never really, they didn't, they weren't part of the college guys.
John: You know, they were part of the career center guys.
John: I had a lot of friends, but my, my 10 close friends from school.
John: Um, and so I've, I felt like
John: like had happened to me a lot in school, that my failure, the fact that I graduated last in my class put me in that top rank somehow.
John: Because as Don Shackelford said, being last was something I'd worked really hard at for four years.
Merlin: And your contention is they mostly just really wanted you to get out of there.
Merlin: The word on the street was that you were being antisocially promoted.
John: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
John: so i came back and i remember i was at some i was at some dance because and in my town they continued to throw cotillion dances for college kids uh a college cotillion and i i think you probably remember the story of the cotillion club where i was very decidedly not invited to the cotillion club by the parents who made the decision who the
John: who the bright young lights were to invite to cotillion yeah that sounds familiar and then the other kids mounted a mounted a resistance they mounted a campaign with their own parents that i should be invited to the cotillion club and because the first the first dance the first big dance i was not there i was not invited and it and the kids were like
Merlin: Cotillion Club was not just the people who organized the party, it's the people who were invited to the party?
John: So Cotillion was a thing that I think every junior year, a new class of the Cotillion Club was initiated.
John: And it was...
John: It was a thing organized by parents, but it was a formal club.
John: You had like ID cards.
John: Wow.
John: Wow.
John: It was a formal club, and it was all of the nice boys and girls.
John: The wealthy and upwardly mobile families.
John: It was debutante stuff.
John: Like, you know, the... That's kind of anointing.
John: Yeah, it was a dance club.
John: But like, you know, yeah, like a dance organization for proper young men and women who were going on to great things in life.
John: And because it was citywide...
John: I think it was meant to be an opportunity to get to know the kids from the other schools that are at your same social level.
John: This was the presumption.
John: And those parents definitely intentionally excluded me from the invite list of Catillion Club.
John: But in the case of the Catillion Club representatives at East Anchorage High School, their daughters...
John: said, you have to invite John Roderick.
John: And there was some considerable pushback from the moms and dads.
John: Because you had a rep?
John: Yeah.
John: Because I had a rep, and the idea was that I was not cotillion caliber.
John: Not because I did not come from a good family, but because I was a black sheep.
John: And if you invite one black sheep, Merlin,
John: That black sheep infects the other sheep, and then you get people gatoring.
John: And nobody wants gatoring at a Cotillion Club.
John: No parent does.
John: They don't even understand what gatoring is.
John: It feels like an animal house thing.
John: It is.
John: It is, I'm afraid to say.
John: It's an animal house thing.
John: They don't even want conga lines, let alone gatoring, and they certainly don't want nobody.
John: A little bit ethnic.
John: Yes.
John: They don't want anybody to drop trow.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: They don't want any of that frat boy 1960s.
John: I wonder why they wouldn't want that.
John: They don't want any kid in the 1980s practicing stuff that they learned from 1970s.
John: You bring a girl home in a grocery cart one time.
John: About the 1960s.
John: Because the 80s were going to make the 60s.
John: So anyway, I get this belated and begrudging invitation to the Cotillion Club.
Merlin: What do you think?
Merlin: You think it was just to keep the girls happy to like placate them?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Because were they, were they like threatening to walk out, walk out of the cotillion?
John: Something like that.
John: Although none of them would have, but this was, you know, these are the debutantes.
John: So of course their parents are wrapped around their fingers and it's, and I think honestly that the, that the reason that the debutantes wanted me at the thing was that they recognized that of course you want the black sheep at that party like that.
John: Of course, everyone's seen animal house.
John: Um,
John: Of course you want somebody who's going to wear an irreverent tuxedo and not a proper one.
John: Overalls and a bow tie, maybe?
John: Converse high tops.
John: Yeah, Converse high tops, right?
John: Or where you put the cummerbund on upside down.
John: Was it before or after you'd worn the leopard tuxedo?
John: After.
John: Okay.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: I'm sorry.
John: It was the same year.
John: It was the same year.
John: Uh, so Cotillion became a place where we met, uh, the kids from around the town that were also all, um, on their way to the, to, to the, to the show, man, on their way to law school, on their way to the place.
John: Whoa.
John: And, uh, I'm not alien to that culture at all, right?
John: That's, that's my culture too.
John: And I think other schools, the Cotillion Club parents at West High School were – all it took was the five parents that were –
John: running that group to have a different mentality.
John: Like there were kids from West High that were very much wearing Converse with their tuxedos.
John: The aforementioned Sheffer Ely and Peter Nosek, both people from well-to-do upwardly mobile families who were expected to go on to great things, who had a slightly different attitude about like,
John: whether or not you should be drinking all day, you know?
John: Yeah, sure, sure.
John: But so fast forward, the Catillion Club definitely shaped me in a way.
John: But after I got back from my walk or my hitchhiking around, I went to a Catillion.
John: And this is precisely why they didn't want to invite me to Catillion three years prior.
John: Because here I was now, not only did I not go to college, but I long haired and my skin, I was always kind of sweating drugs.
John: And I just like, I had all of the, I looked like everything they didn't want their kids to have become.
John: And none of their kids had become that, right?
John: They should have been rejoicing that I was there as an example of what bad things could befall you.
John: Oh, you become a cotillion cautionary tale.
John: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: I was like, here's what happened.
John: I'm sure the parents pulled their debutantes aside and said, see.
John: But so I'm there at the college cotillion, which is like all the kids in Anchorage that were in college and had been cotillion club members.
John: And I am actually a fixture of a lot of fascination.
John: People are coming up.
John: They want to hear the stories.
John: You actually jumped on a freight train.
John: Like, what was that like?
John: You went all across America.
John: Oh, my God.
John: You know, a lot of real interest in the story.
John: In fact, Sheffer Ely, again, who went to West High School and had gone to the University of Vermont that year, came up to me at that cotillion club and said, dude, if I had known you were going to do that, I wouldn't have gone to college.
John: I would have come with you.
John: Like, why didn't you tell me?
John: Like, I would have been a great adventure partner on your freight hopping.
John: I was like, I don't know.
John: I didn't have a plan.
John: I didn't set off to do it.
John: I just, like, accidentally did it.
John: He was like, oh, man.
John: Like, I think that hearing that story inspired some of my friends to imagine, like, oh, wait a minute.
John: I don't have to.
John: I don't have to go to college next semester.
John: And I actually do think I went to that cotillion and I screwed a couple of people's lives up.
Merlin: Well, you know, you drop a toaster into the bathtub, stuff's going to happen.
John: That's right, that's right.
John: Toasters is doing what toasters do.
John: And I looked like shit, but I think I looked pretty exotic.
John: Like I had long hair at a time then when long hair had yet to become a thing again.
John: It was the mid-80s, go-go 80s.
John: And I think I looked like shit before looking like shit was a thing.
John: You're ahead of your time.
John: I was.
John: I think I had a long overcoat on that I got at a thrift store in Minneapolis, and it was made out of... I think it was even cashmere.
Merlin: You sound like a Bedouin pimp.
John: It was just... I was such a...
John: Fucking kaleidoscope of bad decisions.
John: But it seemed pretty interesting, I think, to a room full of 18-year-olds.
John: Anyway, Kevin decided after he graduated from – I forget exactly what the timeline was.
John: I think he left one college and went to another.
John: Something like that.
John: He decided that he was going to go around America.
John: He was going to he was going to do as I had done and go across America.
John: And those words across America had a lot of.
John: Wait.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely, 100%.
Merlin: Do you remember Across America?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, it reminds me of that Simon and Garfunkel song.
Merlin: Just the idea of there's this whole big bunch of stuff out there, and you need to see as much of it as you can, as it's going away and changing, especially.
Merlin: I mean, I think that's always been part of it, is you're never going to see the same America that people saw 10 years before, 100 years before, and you need to see this.
Merlin: There was, yeah.
John: That was a big part of it.
John: You're absolutely right.
John: That feeling in the mid-80s that the America that we knew, the John Cougar Mellencamp America, was disappearing.
John: And once it was gone, it was gone.
John: It was like the old growth forests.
John: Once they were gone, man, they were gone.
John: But Kevin...
John: Bought a Ford Aerostar.
John: That's a minivan.
John: It was a minivan.
John: A minivan.
John: A minivan.
John: And when he did, I was like... You know, when he said he was going across America, I was excited for him, but I also was like, that's pretty out of character in that... You know, I'm not... Like...
John: He was also going to get a master's degree, you understand, right?
Merlin: I mean, in order to... So remember, Kevin's the polymath.
Merlin: Kevin's got all the stuff he's going to do.
John: Yeah, he's going to do a lot of things.
John: He's going to be a rock musician.
John: He's going to be a business person.
John: He's going to be an educated person.
John: And you can't really set out, I guess.
John: Here was the thing.
John: You cannot leave Anchorage with a plan to go across America...
John: Because I didn't.
John: I mean, I left Anchorage with a plan to, I don't know what.
John: That was the plan.
John: I don't know.
John: And then what happened was, what happened?
John: I couldn't, and I think what Kevin and some other people were trying to do was reverse engineer that and start with a plan.
John: Like, here's what I ended up doing, so that's what they want to do.
John: Let's just have that be kind of written down as a
John: as a, um, outline.
John: And so Kevin bought a Ford Aerostar and he drove in a giant circle around.
John: He drove in a loop around America.
John: I think he slept in the minivan, but it felt very much like the master's degree program of two
Merlin: driving across america you know it was a thing it was it was in a way it was getting the piece of paper you know or at least kind of like the comfort plus version i mean i'm thinking about um i don't know you can tell me if i'm wrong but like i think uh i don't know why i'm thinking of the gilmore girls but there's a time in gilmore girls where um lorelei and rory decide they want a backpack
Merlin: um in europe and their their their fancy duchess mother is like oh you can't you have to stay at this hotel in that hotel and a big part of the journey in that case is like no no we want it we want it to be not planned ahead and we want it to not be guaranteed to be easy like we're looking for adventures like we don't want to be dangerous but like we don't want to go into this with a european triptych in our hand the part of it is like just you know seeing what you see
Merlin: And there's a not-too-subtle difference between that and saying, well, we've got a hotel this night, and then we've got a hotel this other night, and then it becomes a series of hotels that you go to, which is pretty different.
Merlin: And then what happens in between is just you not being at the hotel, at least for somebody like me.
John: And you have reservations, so you have to get there by a certain time.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
John: You have to leave this place by checkout time, so then you're just talking about the periods between checkout and check-in.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's an inversion of what you're looking for.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And I don't, you know, I don't mean to, I don't mean to say it in a way that, I mean, I think for a long time I probably felt...
John: that a lot of my friends trying to have middle-class adventures were not as good as my version of having middle-class adventures.
Merlin: Everybody thinks that way when they're young.
John: Yeah.
John: Now I just realize... Everybody else is doing it wrong.
John: Everybody's doing it wrong, right.
John: Now I realize every one of those people was doing it the way that they could and the way that they did, right?
John: I mean, I spent a lot of time
John: I mean, sleeping in that elevator now, 40 years later, or whatever, 30, 33 years later, seems like, I mean, it's an anecdote.
John: At the time, it was terrible.
John: And nobody would have chosen it.
John: I wouldn't have chosen it.
John: Nobody could have chosen it.
John: I wasted a lot of time in my youth not having a plan where other people could have hit the highlights.
John: And I guess it's that not having a plan, like all the miserable stuff in between ended up being the stuff that maybe I learned more from.
John: Say that again.
John: All the miserable stuff in between the interesting things is what I learned stuff from.
John: I didn't learn anything by looking at the St.
John: Louis Arch.
John: I learned something by trying to figure out where I was going to sleep that night and the night before and the night after and figuring out that stuff.
John: But that didn't seem like, that's not something you can plan for.
John: I had a devastating encounter in Anchorage one of those summers.
John: I went to a party.
John: I was headed to, where was I headed?
John: I was headed that fall off on some future adventure.
John: I was at this party and I was talking to people about my plan.
John: They were all going back to college and I was going on some further adventure to somewhere.
John: And there was a kid at the party who was, this was, you know, we were now halfway through college and so
John: the social lines had started to blur a little bit in anchorage because it because it it became a thing where with each increasing year the people that were in anchorage became a smaller group of people and so you started a little bit like world war ii ends and what i guess 1918 um and then it's but like even in the 20s it's not like you can say well that's settled
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, I remember going back and like I remember going back the very first Thanksgiving after I went to college and being like, oh, my God, I hardly recognize this place.
Merlin: But I would continue to keep going back.
Merlin: And it started to seem weird and home seemed weird and wilted in so many ways.
Merlin: There were so many like to me, like high school ending was like such a big deal.
Merlin: Like that's what we've all been building up to.
Merlin: And like most of my peers, I was not thinking much about college.
Merlin: But when I did go to college and went back,
Merlin: Going back home seems stranger and stranger.
Merlin: The signs are different.
Merlin: The streets are different.
Merlin: The people have kids and guts.
Merlin: I don't want to say litigating high school, but I feel like I still saw my hometown through the prism of my youth there, much more than taking it for what it was or what it had become, even 10 years later.
Merlin: Do you know what I'm saying?
John: Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I heard this thing recently where somebody who said this, I wish I could remember who said things, but saying that the music that sticks with you the longest is the music you were into when you were 14.
Merlin: How you imprint on certain things.
Merlin: I'm just saying in this case, just because you're halfway through college doesn't mean that the past is settled.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like, once you go back, you're back in this time capsule.
Merlin: You're like a 14-year-old kid again with your family.
Merlin: All your old friends are there, and some of them have a mustache now for whatever reason.
Merlin: And it's very strange to go back to that, and it doesn't get that much less weird each time you go back.
John: No, it kept getting weirder.
John: At this particular party, although it was a party in a neighborhood where up until that point, any party that would have happened at that house, there would not have been any surprise guests.
John: You know, it would have been very much a cultivated guest list of kids.
John: And honestly, I don't think I would have been invited to the party.
John: It was a house with...
John: you know, with a daughter and their culture was slightly elevated from any that I would have been allowed to go to a party there.
John: But I was at this party.
John: And even crazier, an alternative kid was at this party.
John: Not visibly alternative, but very noticeably alternative.
John: He wasn't repping on the same scale you were.
John: Nope, nope.
John: Coming from a different world.
John: This kid was like, you know,
John: this kid was suffering from depression let's say yeah he had a ring on something you know something that but he definitely was not from our school he went to the alternative school and i think everybody knew it and he was at this party too and he had that he had a kind of 80s punk rock sarcasm
John: that was not accessible to everyone at this event.
John: You know, there, there were a lot of earnest people in that, in the cotillion club culture, not a ton of, of, um, of really good sarcasm or even humor.
John: You know, they, they took things pretty literally.
John: And this guy had a kind of brokenness, uh, that a,
John: Obviously he and I gravitated toward one another and we knew each other through friends or something We stood and talked throughout the party and then he got too drunk and somebody needed to take him home and I helped him out of the house and into a car and I thought I was being you know pretty good to him and as he got in the backseat of the car and
John: And I was like, good luck, man.
John: You know, see you around.
John: See you down that long road.
John: He said, yeah, man, have a good time on your trip.
John: I hope you get lots of cool scars.
John: And then the car drove off.
John: And it cut me to the quick.
John: Really?
John: It did because it was because I thought I found it very scathing.
John: That you were some kind of put on?
John: That the form of me getting the paper was in the form of cool scars.
John: That that was the diploma I was looking for.
John: Did it bug you because you thought it might be true?
John: Yeah.
Okay.
John: And I sat in it.
John: Well, I've stewed in that comment for... You?
John: Yeah, since 1988.
John: Can you believe it?
John: That's so difficult to believe.
John: Huh, you.
John: If you can imagine, I've turned that one over and over and over.
Merlin: Well, you think high school is bad?
Merlin: You end up reprocessing stuff after high school.
John: Who knew?
John: Yeah, just I can I couldn't pick him out of a lineup, but I can see him slouched in the backseat of this car.
John: Oh, the people that were driving him home were doing it reluctantly.
John: They didn't like him.
John: He had insulted everybody at the party and they were taking him home just to just to solve a problem.
John: Yeah.
John: And he was in the backseat and he was being like mean to the people that were driving him.
John: But he wasn't being mean to me because I was the cool person at the party that understood him.
John: I was helping him out.
John: I was the one guy that got his dark carnival.
John: But then he turns out to be a disloyal drunk.
John: And he was a disloyal drunk.
John: He said, good luck.
John: I hope you get lots of cool scars.
John: And I was like, fuck.
Fuck.
Merlin: Lots of cool scars.
Merlin: Coming from a very sarcastic person who's drunk, I don't... In my head, in my reading of that, just here, 2018, Veterans Day, it doesn't seem that bad.
John: Well, you know... You've had worse.
John: You've had worse insults than that.
John: Sure, worse insults from better people, but... But, you know, the problem was that it...
John: It did the thing that I often do, which is it located my insecurity.
John: He saw my insecurity and sent an arrow fast and true into the heart of the bullseye.
John: And, you know, I used to do that a lot.
John: And it's a it's a thing that I still, you know, I still possess the ability to see somebody else's.
John: Oh, you've got a Terminator heads up display for that.
John: Yeah.
John: But I am not accustomed to other people being able to zero in on mine like that guy did and put an arrow there, an arrow that has festered for 30 years.
John: And there are a few, I mean, as you say, there are a few of those arrows in me, but most of them not in the heart of my insecurity.
John: Most of them are like sticking out of my shoulder.
Merlin: You're like a slightly winged St.
Merlin: Sebastian.
Merlin: You're good.
Merlin: You can still ambulate.
John: I can still ambulate.
John: What I did is I broke the shaft of the arrow off.
Merlin: That's such a baller thing to do, and then just keep going.
Merlin: Yeah, you just keep going.
John: Like Rambo or something, yeah.
John: But but I had to and I and I think I I constantly look back and go, you know, I say that none of the things I did were planned or intentional, but there was an overall plan, an overarching plan.
John: And I suppose it could be reduced to.
John: get cool scars.
John: You know, when I left home, I didn't have a... It's almost like you're helping the arrow.
John: I know.
Merlin: Like the arrow is headed in your direction, you walk into the path of the arrow, and then at the last second, did some John Woo wire work to make sure it landed in exactly the spot where you knew it would hurt the most.
John: Well, and I sit, if I'm ever feeling down, I just go get one of those little plastic lemons out of the refrigerator, and I just squeeze lemon juice all over the arrows.
Merlin: Your arrow wound.
John: I'm just like, squeeze.
John: How would you like some salt with that, sir?
John: Hydrogen peroxide.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: It's tough.
John: It's tough to reevaluate your life.
John: Yeah, it can be.
John: Constantly.
Merlin: Well, no.
Merlin: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: In your case, yes.
Merlin: You think you'll stop doing that anytime soon?
Merlin: Give yourself a couple days off.
John: What about mindfulness?
John: What if I start to practice mindfulness?
John: Yeah, fuck that.
John: I'm going to get into biofeedback.
Merlin: Do you need a machine?
John: Do you have to buy something online?
Merlin: That's the problem.
Merlin: I'm aghast that there's not some dumbed-down version of biofeedback you can do with your phone.
Merlin: But to do the full modern biofeedback, there's all kinds of stuff.
Merlin: Well, it seems like an Apple Watch thing.
John: People are always asking me, what would you do with an Apple Watch?
John: And I didn't realize biofeedback was a thing.
Merlin: Well, okay, here's one, as long as you're asking.
Merlin: One thing I would love to be able to do with my watch is I have two different apps that can measure heartbeat.
Merlin: But then the screen goes black.
Merlin: And I want something between the Breathe app and the Heartbeat app.
Merlin: Because when I did biofeedback that one time in 19, diggity, 87, 88, whatever it was.
Merlin: Diggity, diggity.
Merlin: That's the sound of me remembering the 80s.
Merlin: No diggity.
John: No diggity.
Merlin: Uh, I thought it was super interesting.
Merlin: The guy, uh, Mike Alexander over in the, shout out to Mike Alexander, if you're still out there in the, uh, whatever the, whatever a wellness clinic was called then, I think it was the nurse's office.
Merlin: Um, he, uh, he said, here, let me just, let's try this thing.
Merlin: Cause I had all kinds of stuff going on.
Merlin: And he said, let's try this thing.
Merlin: And he said, uh, now, well, I could be remembering this way wrong, but I remember being, I feel like I remember being as simple as something on your finger, like you're in the hospital.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There must have been more to that.
Merlin: But he said, sit here in front of this machine.
Merlin: Again, this is just my recollection of 30 years later.
Merlin: He's like, I want you to look at this light.
Merlin: That red light is on.
Merlin: I want you to figure out how to make that red light green.
Merlin: And I was like, doing what?
Merlin: He's like, well, you'll figure it out.
Merlin: And he leaves.
Merlin: And I sat there and I was like, well, I mean, is this some kind of like, you know,
Merlin: Am I supposed to do Professor X-ing this or something like that?
Merlin: But if memory serves, I tried to calm down a little bit and watch my breathing and stuff like that.
Merlin: And the light turned green.
Merlin: And he said, well, you figured out how to do it.
Merlin: What did you do?
Merlin: I was like, I'm not sure.
Merlin: He's like, hmm, interesting.
Merlin: So, I mean, I don't know if that's exactly what biofeedback is, but I'm very interested in the idea.
Merlin: I don't want to go full-on holding soup can Scientology, but I'm very interested in the idea of something where I could – I can promise you, and I've looked into this just a little bit.
Merlin: It's not easy or inexpensive to do this at home.
Merlin: I'd love to have a little dingus I hook up to a couple times a day and get better at controlling my –
Merlin: my physiognomy so it's helpful for lots of stuff you know what it's really helpful for i found out um actually if you google uh biofeedback uh incontinence it's very useful for people who have incontinence issues but it's it's not utterly dissimilar from any variety of meditation practices so it's not just a mood ring
John: Although it sounds kind of like a mood ring.
John: You ever sit and try to get your mood ring to go green?
John: Of course I did.
John: Orange?
John: Of course I did.
John: But this says it's a non-drug treatment in which patients learn to control bodily processes that are normally involuntary, such as muscle tension, blood pressure, or heart rate.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Or chronic pain, urinary incontinence, high blood pressure,
Merlin: headache.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing about meditation.
Merlin: These meditation people aren't going to tell you this because they want to be fancy.
Merlin: Some of them want to be fancy because of science.
Merlin: Some of them want to be fancy because of spirituality.
Merlin: But almost all of the... If you go into meditation... I don't utterly disagree with this, but...
Merlin: People will say, okay, well, you know, why are you going to meditate?
Merlin: Well, because I want to be enlightened.
Merlin: You're like, oh, it's a terrible reason to meditate.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I want to meditate so I can relax.
Merlin: Oh, it's a terrible reason to meditate.
Merlin: You need to meditate just because you're going to meditate.
Merlin: Well, what if we take out the word meditation and I say, I want to do, I want to do whatever fucking could be scars, whatever fucking bullshit it takes for me to be less of a basket case.
Merlin: I want the outcome when, after I pass through this tube, I want to come out on the other side, more in control of my shit.
Merlin: And I want to be less, I'll give you a very specific one.
Merlin: I want to lower my heartbeat at night.
Merlin: I would sleep better if my heart was not beating so much at night.
Merlin: I know this from looking at my data.
Merlin: This is one benefit of looking at your data.
Merlin: Did you do a sleep study?
Merlin: No, I've never done it.
Merlin: Have you?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: um but you know and so let's take away the meditation part because i'm not fancying cool enough to meditate because i have all these dumb meat world reasons for wanting it if i could hook myself up to a dingus twice a day and get better at calming the fuck down bringing down my heartbeat bringing down my breathing rate work on my heart variability uh heartbeat variability um heart variability was is a very good name for an album and you may totally use it heart variability
Merlin: But yeah, I have a real practical reason for wanting to do this, which is left to my own devices, my brain races, my heart beats for no reason.
Merlin: So instead, yeah, it's nice to do some cognitive behavioral things.
Merlin: It's nice to do mindfulness things.
Merlin: I would like to be like, I'd like to get more in touch with the actual physical part of it.
Merlin: Because here's one thing I'll tell you.
Merlin: When I'm up at night and I can't sleep, I get up, I go to the bathroom, I come back to bed, I've had the anxiety...
Merlin: For some reason, I'm getting up to pee.
Merlin: I come back to bed.
Merlin: That's when I'm anxious.
Merlin: I don't know what's the cart and what's the horse, and I'm not sure it matters.
Merlin: But I can tell you that I will not feel better as long as my heartbeat is at a high rate.
Merlin: Okay?
Merlin: This is really important.
Merlin: Because your body, if you take it as red, your body's telling you, you need to panic right now.
Merlin: And you can tell because your heart's beating fast.
Merlin: Well, what if you tried to back solve and say, well, I wonder if I'd feel less stressed out if my heart wasn't beating as fast?
John: Hmm.
Merlin: Because if you just listen to your lizard brain signals, your body seems to be telling you to freak out.
Merlin: When you know, you're fine.
Merlin: You're fine right now.
Merlin: And so I want to reverse engineer that or back solve that and say, okay, if I could get better, call it whatever you want.
Merlin: Whatever it takes to calm the fuck down, bring down my heart rate, hopefully even out my breathing a little bit.
Merlin: It doesn't need to be about the Buddha.
Merlin: I'd take a fucking metal box that could help with that and a heartbeat, so to speak.
Yeah.
John: Do you suffer from nocturnal bruxism?
John: I don't think I know what that is.
John: That's teeth grinding.
Merlin: Oh, I think I probably do.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: No, not super bad.
Merlin: Not super bad.
Merlin: But all my dinguses tell me the same thing.
Merlin: One in particular says, you know, like if you get exercise of greater than this number of calories during the day, you tend to sleep better at night.
Merlin: And what they're saying is that that's not just because of all the old school reasons.
Merlin: It has very much to do with your heart.
Merlin: And I have pretty good heart health, but it is faster than a normal heartbeat just sitting around.
Merlin: But one of the things I get scored on in my sleep app is how much, what is the name for it they have?
Merlin: What percentage from your heartbeat that day...
Merlin: It's early.
Merlin: How much is your heartbeat lower when you sleep than it was during the day?
Merlin: And if that number's not coming down 15% or more, that's a really clear indicator for why you're not having... Whatever caused that, whether it's stress, whether it's coffee, whether that's carbon dioxide, I don't know.
Merlin: But whatever it is, I've come to believe that the heartbeat is what's telling me it's time to freak out.
Merlin: So I want to go route around all these other things.
Merlin: I'm going to walk right past the Buddha, say thank you for your time.
Merlin: And I'm just interested in, like, if I could bring down the physiognomy stuff, I'd be into that.
John: Tell me...
John: what your watch tells you your resting heart rate is.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: I'm opening.
Merlin: I'm clicking.
Merlin: I'm unlocking.
Merlin: I have several apps.
Merlin: The one that's best for this, I find, is called SleepWatch.
Merlin: As with all these things, you know, you can...
Merlin: I will sometimes not agree with the results that it finds, but it's doing the same thing over time, recording the same thing.
Merlin: So that's beneficial to me.
Merlin: So here's trends and go to trends.
Merlin: So like it'll say total sleep time in hours last night, 8.7 hours.
Merlin: Oh, nice job.
Merlin: Yeah, estimated heart rate while I was sleeping last night, 79.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Not great.
Merlin: I'm usually in the 70s, sometimes in the 80s.
Merlin: Let's jump down to sleeping HR dip.
Merlin: And so this is that difference, the delta.
Merlin: So I'm only 8% down from my daytime.
Merlin: It's telling me.
Merlin: So I can even look at that for the month or the week or what have you.
Merlin: So during the day, you're at 85, 90?
Merlin: I'm going to go to my bespoke heart app, and I'll tell you.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And that app tells you what your resting rate is, what your heartbeat is when you woke up, which is a good indicator.
Merlin: what it is when you sleep.
Merlin: And so it's grokking the data.
Merlin: Grok, grok, grok, grok.
Merlin: So regular heartbeat, 91.
Merlin: Waking heartbeat, 71.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: Sedentary heartbeat, 89.
Merlin: Sleeping heartbeat, 79.
Merlin: And I'd like to bring those numbers down.
Merlin: Yeah, of course.
John: Am I making sense here?
John: Absolutely.
Merlin: I think there's a way of saying like, well, your problem is you're anxious or your problem is your brain's doing this and that.
Merlin: And I don't disagree with that.
Merlin: But I have, I'm speculating, apropos of nothing, that one reason is just my heart's beating too fast.
Merlin: And if I could have some way to control my heartbeat, that would reduce the signals that tell me I should be freaking out at a time when I absolutely should not be freaking out.
John: Right.
Merlin: Now, you have a pretty high heart rate, right?
Merlin: Yeah, I think.
Merlin: What's your dingus say?
Merlin: I think my numbers... I'm going to do mine right now as we speak.
Merlin: And if you hit the heart button and look at it, it's always higher.
Merlin: It'll say, okay, so seven minutes ago, 92.
Merlin: That's pretty high.
Merlin: I did have two coffees.
Merlin: And right now, it's thinking, it's thinking.
Merlin: Oh, you know it's going to be over 100 just to piss me off.
Merlin: 81.
Merlin: See, that doesn't sound right.
Merlin: That doesn't sound right.
John: But that's my theory.
John: I look at my dingus.
John: It always says something right about there.
John: My numbers sound like your numbers.
John: Yeah.
John: I have it set to buzz me if my heart goes over 100 BPMs if I'm at a resting thing.
Merlin: Yeah, to let you know something might be goofy.
Merlin: It can do high and low now.
Merlin: But it doesn't, it never buzzes me.
Merlin: I got buzzed once.
Merlin: Yeah, maybe once I got buzzed.
Yeah.
Merlin: It'll tell you.
Merlin: If you look in the health app, it'll tell you when it has done that.
Merlin: When it's bumped.
John: But I see what you're saying.
Merlin: I'm not sure where I'm going with this.
Merlin: It has very little to do with high school.
Merlin: But I would take a dingus I could hook myself up to for sure.
Merlin: I think you need an EKG.
John: You would need to wear a hat.
Merlin: Oh, like a brain hat with wires.
John: Yeah.
John: When does the Apple Watch, when does a third party come out with a hat, like a baseball hat?
John: Uh-huh.
John: Maybe one that says... Make my brain great again?
John: San Francisco Giants or something.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: but it's full of ekg monitors supposedly supposedly that is coming ecg i want to say but one of the egs is coming to the watch i think probably by end of the year it's just not rolled out in the software yet really i think that's right let me find out apple watch ecg i don't know the difference
Merlin: How to get ECG on Apple Watch.
John: I bought another Apple Watch yesterday.
John: What?
John: As a gift.
John: Oh, nice.
John: I'm doing the thing.
John: There was one Christmas where my mom bought every single person an Echo Dot.
John: That's adorable.
John: She was like, this is amazing.
John: You can just say like, Siri, play Led Zeppelin.
John: And the room would fill with Led Zeppelin and she would go like, amazing.
John: I was at a dinner party last night where the host asked me to say, to give a command to Siri.
John: And the command was, Siri, play modern jazz in the dining room.
John: And, you know, and so I said it and everybody looked, you know, there was, you could hear a pin drop.
John: And then, as is so often the case when someone says, let me show you something.
John: And then they talk to Siri, like everybody freezes.
John: Yeah.
John: What's going to happen?
John: And then Siri said, and the person at the standard party had a male voice.
John: Oh, wait, no, not on Siri.
John: Siri is always Siri.
Merlin: Siri can be male or female.
Merlin: I think the Echo product is always a woman.
John: Yeah, she has...
Merlin: My name has an English accent.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: My Siri has an English accent.
Merlin: But you say play modern jazz in the dining room.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: Alexa.
Merlin: That's who I was talking to.
John: Don't do that.
John: Alexa.
John: Don't do that.
John: Who is Merlin Mann?
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: Alexa, stop.
John: The system works.
John: Play jazz in the dining room.
John: Yeah.
John: And there was a pause.
John: And then Alexa said, playing modern jazz in the dining room.
John: And this music came like cranking on all the speakers in the house.
John: Yeah.
John: And there were children asleep in bed and so forth.
John: And so I was like, Alexa, volume down.
John: And the volume went down for a second and then boom, back on, you know, just like.
John: Oh, that sounds very modern.
Merlin: Jazz, you know.
John: And so I said, Alexa, volume down.
John: And, you know, the volume went down while Alexa was listening and then right back up.
John: And I was like, oh, wait, the music's coming from inside the house.
John: Like, it's not just the dining room.
John: And so I'm shouting commands at Alexa, and everybody's running around.
John: And eventually, the host has had to go manually turn the volume down in different places.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: Because it was connected to the headphones.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: With ours, we have a speaker group called Upstairs.
Merlin: We have a speaker group called Everywhere.
Merlin: And so, yeah, whatever volume it's at at that point,
Merlin: yeah you can have a routine that fixes that but yeah that's a known issue that's a real that's really weird i think my neighbors really love that when i say hey dingus play kqed everywhere yeah okay live stream is brought to you by turn it down turn it down but uh but so i bought an apple watch as a gift yesterday uh for a lady friend and um
John: And so we were working on it, working on getting it set up.
John: And she said, so what's cool about this?
John: I mean, she immediately loved it and was fiddling with it all night and loves it.
John: But she was like, you know, what should I download for it?
John: And I said, honestly, I'm hoping that you'll get really into it and find some things for me to download because when I go look at things to download, all I see are fitness apps.
Yeah.
John: I want other things.
John: And she said, well, like what?
John: And I said, I'm not the one that should be telling them what.
John: No, exactly.
Merlin: That's not my job.
Merlin: My job is I just gave you money.
Merlin: Try just press record.
Merlin: Have you tried that?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Just press record.
Merlin: You get a persistent button where you click.
Merlin: You just hit a button, big red button, and start talking.
Merlin: And it records what you say and transcribes it.
Merlin: And does what with it then?
Merlin: Puts it wherever you want.
Merlin: It's synced anywhere that you want it to be synced.
Merlin: But if you would like to, beyond being able to talk to Siri to do things, it's just like a good case would be like you want to remember a dream.
Merlin: Like you just wake up and hit just press record.
Merlin: You could Michael Jackson it.
Merlin: You could write a little song.
John: But you could also surreptitiously record your conversation with somebody if you were sitting at a cafe and you were like, tell me that again.
John: Yeah, you could roll an Omarosa.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Omarosa.
Merlin: So you gave it to your friend who's a lady.
Merlin: It's set up and running.
Merlin: That's cool.
Merlin: That's a really nice gift, John.
Merlin: Wow.
John: Well, you know, once you start giving Echo Dots, just keep handing them out.
John: Keep handing out, you know, because now the thing is what I want.
John: I only have two people on my Apple Watch walkie-talkie setting.
John: One of them is...
Merlin: adam pranica and one of them is you it's the worst and i've never i've never walkie-talkied anybody i don't know if i would know how my daughter my daughter did it to me when she was on a play date a couple weeks ago just just a blast annoying music at me and what is it oh it works pretty much like a walkie-talkie they're not as dependable you hit the button and as long as you're like like a walkie-talkie as long as you're holding the button down it theoretically is listening and sending it to the other person
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Yeah, because I need more ways to have a voice just come into my life.
Merlin: Well, so what if I start walkie-talking you?
Merlin: You don't want to do that.
Merlin: I'm like, hey, Marilyn.
Merlin: Neither of us wants that.
John: Hey, Marilyn.
John: Hey, buddy.
John: Just thinking about you.
John: What are you doing?
John: Hey.
John: Did you see BoJack Horseman?
John: Burp, burp, burp.
John: I wanted you to hear this.
John: Oh, there's this gal in Canada.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Who has started to send me private Instagram videos of herself in the dark listening to Sade.
Merlin: That is really complicated.
Merlin: There's a lady in, is it Canada?
Merlin: Canada.
Merlin: Who sends you videos of herself in the dark listening to Sade.
John: That's right.
Merlin: Is that something you ask for, John?
John: No.
John: Okay.
John: She's not visible.
John: She's drunk.
John: Oh, this is the other thing.
John: Oh, see, that's so good.
John: It's the sweetest taboo.
John: She's drunk, and she's, like, listening to...
John: or whatever but when a man does it and and she's uh and she's she's a loyal listener of uh to the podcast oh hello and she says Canada I think not very long ago she just decided that like you know what like I listen to him all day long I'm just going to share some stuff oh that's good when I'm drunk
John: well drinking is she really actually is she legit drunk i don't know because she doesn't really i'm not 100 sure at a certain point i i i became very shy about watching these videos all the way through yeah because it was like i just wanted you to hear and then it just she basically just points the camera at the speaker of her oh like bastards of young video yeah yeah and i can tell you i tell you the speaker is a jbl nice and um
John: And and then just plays the music.
John: It does not come with any commentary from her.
John: And so I don't weeping or groaning or anything.
John: No, no.
John: But she says in the text portion of it, like, I'm drunk.
John: I'll probably regret this tomorrow, but I just wanted to send this to you.
John: And, you know, when I forgot that first one, I was like, oh, boy, something exciting is going to happen in this video.
John: I'm drunk and I'm going to regret this tomorrow.
John: But here's a video I made you feeling cute.
John: My God, are you kidding me?
John: I live for these moments.
John: Accept, accept, accept.
John: I live for this.
John: Jesus, I have an entire hard drive full of this.
Merlin: Don't get behind on those, though.
Merlin: You don't want to have to go through a lot of those.
Merlin: You probably should watch them as they come in.
John: No, no, no.
John: You can walkie-talkie-er.
John: Ask if you can walkie-talkie-er.
John: I do.
John: I know.
John: I don't want to walkie-talkie anybody.
John: I think now that I know that I can walkie-talkie you, please don't take that privilege away.
John: Please let me just send you every once in a while.
John: Hey, Merlin.
John: You know what?
John: You'll never know when it's going to come.
John: There's not enough ways to get to me in real time.
John: It might be Christmas morning.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
John: Hey, Merlin.
John: Hey.
John: Hey.
John: This one did some Sade.
John: But I'm a little concerned.
John: I'm a little concerned about this situation just because, you know, I'm concerned.
John: What's the end game to the Sade?
John: Yeah, I'm not concerned for myself.
John: I'm just concerned in general.
John: I want everybody to be doing fine.
John: Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
John: This seems like...
John: It seems like I understand being drunk at night listening to Sade.
John: That seems... Do you think she sends them to other people as well?
John: Don't know.
John: See, this is all the stuff I'd be thinking about.
John: These are many other things I don't know.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Yeah, right.
John: You feel like, hey, I'm her special Sade friend, but then you realize, oh, she sent that to 30 people.
John: It's like somebody sending a picture of their kid to everybody.
Merlin: You're not special anymore.
John: Right.
John: When you get that picture of your friend's kid and you're like, oh, that's weird.
John: And then you talk to your other friend and they're like, I got the same picture.
John: And you're like, oh, that's worse.
Merlin: It is worse.
Merlin: Sweetest taboo.
Merlin: John, we've got to go, but I want to let people know something.
Merlin: This is awkward because there's nothing about this that's not awkward.
Merlin: We don't ever end the show this way where you're ending the show.
Merlin: Well, I feel like we should mention this because there's only a limited amount of time.
Merlin: We're recording the show, as I mentioned, I think it's 2018 on Veterans Day.
Merlin: It is the 100-year anniversary of the Armistice Day of World War I. I'm going to go check my Gmail about this one more time, but I do know that we have shirts coming.
John: Isn't that correct?
John: This is actually the day after Armstice Day.
John: Yes, we are making shirts for the holiday season.
John: Yes.
John: They're shirts with one of our most famous coinages.
John: Brand new shirts.
John: Save it.
John: We've never made a shirt with this coinage on it.
Merlin: According to this message from the t-shirt robot...
Merlin: this shirt so hey we got a brand new shirt starting as we record this tomorrow morning tuesday november 13th you will have until monday december 3rd and then it is gone so it's my understanding from the t-shirt robot that we have a new design that you and i have both approved and think is very good it's something people have been asking for and it's also my understanding that all of our previous designs mostly
Merlin: are also going to be available also available online all the great shows the orange ringy bell um all going to be out there and available so i just want to encourage you it's not a very pretty url to give um and i haven't done a bitly on it but uh there'll be a there'll be a link in notes look for a tiny blue shirt and the word shirts exclamation point you can click on that it'll take you there but it's cotton bureau.com slash people slash roderick dash on dash the dash line
John: Yes.
Merlin: Or you could search for Roderick on the Line shirts.
John: Yes.
John: But yeah, Roderick on the Line shirts at Cotton Bureau will probably get you there, right?
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, I don't want to sit and tell you how to Google things.
John: No.
John: No, you can always Google how to do that.
John: And I'm sure there is going to be some, I'm sure we get this every time, people from overseas, by which I mean the overseas territories of the United States and other countries, apparently,
John: The usurious rates that they will be charged.
John: The vats and what have you.
John: So many vats that you have to pay.
John: We don't control that.
John: We have absolutely no control of that.
John: I'm really sorry about it.
John: I am too.
John: If you have a friend in America, they could probably order you a shirt and then mail it to you.
John: They call it a front.
John: You get a front.
John: I don't know how all that works.
John: I'm not a scofflaw of international trade rules.
John: Are you saying it's kind of benevolent smuggling?
John: There's some kind of thing where somebody in America— A pass-through or a cut-out.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Somebody who can do that for you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's a hole in the wall.
Merlin: Yeah, where the rain can't get in.
Merlin: Do not stick your dick in it.
John: And don't talk to my daughter.
John: Don't touch my mustache.
John: But it's very important—
John: I think that everyone listening to this program have at least one t-shirt from this show.
John: You need one you can wear on the other days, too, though.
John: That's true.
John: So at least one, probably three.
John: Also, how am I going to recognize you if you come to an event that I'm at?
John: How am I going to look out into the crowd and know it's you?
Merlin: Learn your name like a monster?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But here's the important thing, because now I don't want to sound bitter, but there will be people who say on December 4th, after it's too late, they'll say, why didn't you tell me there were shirts?
Merlin: And I'll say, who are you?
Merlin: I don't know who you are.
Merlin: But we'll say that this is your opportunity of November 13th to December 3rd is the window to do this.
Merlin: If you would like to have the new design of the Roderick on the line shirt, do we want to tell people what it is or should we surprise them?
John: No, no, no.
John: Let them see it.
John: Let them see it.
John: You know, there are going to be people that go to the URL, they see the whole group of shirts, and I guarantee you they won't be able to tell you which one is the new one.
John: Right.
John: That's just how it works.
John: Even if they've been there before, they'll be like, oh, they all, I think I already have it.
Merlin: Because we only cater to blackout drunks.
Merlin: So go and check that out.
Merlin: The other part is John and I are having a bye week on next week's show.
Merlin: We're taking next week off.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: I'll be in New York City.
Merlin: New York City!
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You're going to be hobbiting around with the Colton's.
John: Yep.
John: Yep.
John: Doing various things, playing the last Walt show in Port Chester, New York that I do every year.
John: So we won't be doing a show, but then we'll be we'll be back in action.
Merlin: And let's see.
Merlin: Oh, so we won't see our our audience before before Thanksgiving, will we?
John: No, this is going to have to double as our Thanksgiving show because we'll be back the Monday after Thanksgiving.
Merlin: Take a load off, Fanny.
Merlin: Imagine us up here.
Merlin: Happy Turkey Day.
Merlin: Happy Turkey Day.
Merlin: Neil Young's nose just dripping with cocaine snot.
Merlin: Well, no, we blacked it out with a Sharpie frame by frame.
Merlin: Frame by frame, they fixed it.
Merlin: There's still some photos out there.
Merlin: He had a pretty good, pretty good little cocaine boy in there.
Merlin: I think it was just a boog.
Merlin: You think it was just a boog?
Merlin: I think, you know, everybody's like, oh, it was cocaine.
Merlin: It could have just been a boog.
Merlin: Every junkie's like a setting sun.
Merlin: That's what I always say.
John: So please go buy our shirt.
John: Yeah, oh, and get one as a gift.
John: Get several for gifts.
John: Get them for your friends.
John: Get one for your small bag.
John: If you have friends that you know listen to this program but aren't like 100% up to today's episode.
John: Yes.
John: So let's say they're a month behind.
John: That's a good point.
John: Right.
John: They're not going to hear about this until it's too late.
John: So you have to tell people about it because maybe they're not as caught up as you.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's a very good point.
Merlin: It's like when you're in Little League and you got the thing where somebody calls somebody and then somebody calls everybody else.
Merlin: You say, it's going to rain.
Merlin: Don't come to the baseball.
Merlin: Right.
John: But there are a lot of people... Phone tree, they call it.
John: A phone tree.
John: A phone tree.
John: There are a lot of people listening to the program who probably don't have...
John: friends IRL right okay and so dying to see how you land this one well so if you suspect that you or someone you love may be someone who doesn't have friends IRL you're gonna have to get that message out to people somehow
John: It's got to be online.
John: I don't know whether you go into Xbox Community Forum.
John: Okay.
John: Or Discord.
John: Be a friend, make a friend is what I would say.
John: That's right.
John: Go to Slack.
Merlin: Go on a Slack channel.
Merlin: ICQ.
Merlin: ICP.
Merlin: IRQ, TCP, IP.
Merlin: Yep.
John: Any of the network protocols.
John: All the great network protocols.
John: HTML.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
Merlin: Big ding.
Merlin: Ding.
Merlin: And I'm proud to be an American where at least Stanley died.
John: Oh, really?
John: Yep.