Ep. 326: "The Cat and the Kettle"
John: hello hi john hi merlin how are you i'm fine i've been up for a while this morning i feel like this may be the last day i use my old computer you don't have equipment failures here too
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Well, I don't want to make it about me, but I'm struggling with my kettle.
John: Oh, your tea kettle.
Merlin: Yeah, I have a really good kettle that I like a lot, but as I said to you in our super secret private text channel, it's giving me some grief.
Merlin: It's become a little bit like our aged cat.
John: I see.
John: It farts?
Merlin: Sometimes it leaves a turd behind the fig plant.
Merlin: For no particular reason, I just changed your box!
John: Is your kettle connected to your nest by any chance?
John: No, no.
John: That could be the problem.
John: It has a microphone in it, you know.
Merlin: And his bow tie is really a camera.
Merlin: No, anyway, it's just, it's like, I don't know how old Lewis got, but our cat is, as you know, we were sold a bill of goods on this cat regarding its age and health.
Merlin: Have you ever heard about that?
Merlin: Maybe she's not actually the age they said.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Thousands of dollars just removing teeth.
John: Yeah, when you showed me a picture of the cat initially, I was like, hmm.
John: That's not low mileage.
John: That's got some miles on its tires.
John: Isn't that jalopy?
John: As they say on Bring a Trailer, there's no way that has 100,000 miles.
John: No, no, no.
John: They say there's no way that has less than 100,000 miles, by which they mean the odometer has rolled overboard.
John: Somebody took a drill to it, right?
John: You know what you do?
John: Yeah.
John: Take a drill.
John: Well, what they do is they, I suppose you could do that, but no, the old cars, they don't have, they weren't meant to go 100,000 miles, so the odometer doesn't get that big.
Merlin: Oh, right, yeah, it rolls over.
Merlin: They call it rolling over.
John: Yeah, so you see one, it says like, oh, 65,000 miles, but the professional car people can look and say, the upholstery gives it away.
John: Too many butts.
John: Too many butts in the seat.
Merlin: And it's not entirely unlike a senior Hollywood actor who's trying to sell himself off as like somebody in their 30s.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Like there's actually maybe, you know, there's cosmetically, maybe you've tried to do some things, but yeah.
Merlin: Anyway, like the cat, I, you know, I don't want to get rid of it.
Merlin: Like the cat in the kettle.
Merlin: That's one of the great Grimm Brothers stories.
Merlin: And it ends with blood and murder.
Merlin: Stamps his foot and tears himself in two.
Merlin: So that's my feeling about it.
Merlin: But it takes a lot of, like the cat, it takes a lot of
Merlin: caressing so it used to be i just put it on the stand it's a cuisinart it's a very good kettle it's kind of old nice brand cuisinart yeah but like you hit the hit the boil button and nothing happens and then it doesn't happen and sometimes you have to kind of reboot it do they still boy yeah do they still make it oh yeah yeah i mean we've we've bought like four of these i'm just trying to get some miles out of it you love your amazon.com just just call amazon fresh and they'll bring it right to you yeah
John: With a giant roll of toilet paper.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I have, as we record this show, I will have six, eight packs of seltzer and a pack of rechargeable batteries delivered.
Merlin: I'm not against the delivery.
Merlin: No, I know you're not.
Merlin: So tell me about your weekend.
Merlin: Let's make sure we save a little bit of time constraint today.
Merlin: If we can, let's save a little bit of time to hear about the Aloha.
John: Oh, sure.
Merlin: Tell me, because I have to tell you, I don't like to address the audience.
Merlin: No, you don't.
Merlin: Me either.
Merlin: we received an overwhelming, meaning at least three, responses from people about the last program, and people really enjoyed your story.
Merlin: They liked hearing about the shoes.
Merlin: I wanted to pass that on to you.
Merlin: I thought you could use an attaboy.
John: That's nice.
John: That's nice.
John: I'm still holding on to some aloha.
Merlin: You can put a fork in that.
Merlin: We don't have to talk about it now.
Merlin: You talk about whatever you want.
Merlin: It's your show.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: You're the named character on the show.
Merlin: Sure, nominally, yes.
Merlin: You can replace me anytime.
Merlin: Just bring in a new guy.
Merlin: You can have Adam do it.
Merlin: Adam's got all kinds of materials.
Merlin: You can have Adam do it.
John: I could have Adam do it.
John: I could have Adam Lizagor do it.
John: Oh, he's a good man.
John: He is.
John: He's got a lot of time to spare.
Merlin: Yeah, he's... Every time, you know, I think about Adam, but then I'm in a hotel room, and Adam's always on my TV, and it's really weird.
Merlin: He's selling Hondas.
Merlin: He's...
Merlin: He's always got a phone.
Merlin: Adam's always holding a phone for a service.
John: And he's this lovable Stanley Kubrick character.
John: Yeah, that's the thing.
John: He represents the modern Stanley Kubrick.
John: Kubrick, who isn't afraid to use his phone.
John: But he's very picky about his lenses.
John: Sure is.
John: He's very picky about the apps that he puts on his phone.
John: That's probably true.
John: Maybe we could get Scott Simpson out of retirement.
John: He could host the program.
Merlin: You know, I've been in talks with Scott Simpson.
Merlin: We've been in talks.
Merlin: I like that guy.
Merlin: We almost had lunch.
Merlin: Yeah, well, that's close.
John: For Scott, that's really, that's like a once-a-year thing.
John: We almost did something together.
John: I was talking to Jesse Thorne, and he said that he almost talked to Scott.
John: Really?
John: Yeah, things are changing.
Merlin: He's kind of like a long-torsoed Yeti.
Merlin: Like, sometimes you just see him out in the wild, and you're like, man, that guy's got a long torso.
Merlin: What's he doing?
John: Where'd he go?
John: Is he vaping?
Merlin: Is he vaping?
John: Where did he go?
John: He needed a vape break.
John: Disappeared into a cloud of vape and dim sum.
Yeah.
Merlin: Give me that.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you by RxBar.
Merlin: You can learn more about RxBar right now by visiting rxbar.com slash supertrain.
Merlin: RxBar is a whole food protein bar.
Merlin: Well, what the heck does that mean?
Merlin: It means their bars are made with real, whole ingredients.
Merlin: They want to be transparent and upfront with their customers, which is why they label the core ingredients, egg whites, dates, and nuts, on the front of the package and the flavor components on the back.
Merlin: Include stuff like real unsweetened chocolate, coconut, and apples.
Merlin: Beyond being a go-to snack that checks off a number of nutritional boxes, RX Bars actually tastes delicious.
Merlin: They found that creating a bar made from real whole food ingredients actually tastes better than anything out there.
Merlin: They don't need the fillers, the additives, the chemicals, or the added sugar.
Merlin: It started in 2013, and they called BS on protein bars.
Merlin: They couldn't find a bar out there that wasn't full of artificial ingredients, fillers, preservatives, and just BS, or what they call bad stuff.
Merlin: That's why they set out to create a bar with a few simple, clean ingredients where every ingredient serves a purpose.
Merlin: And I got to tell you, these RX Bars, they're great for any number of occasions in your life, good for breakfast on the go, snack at the office to push you through your 3 p.m.
Merlin: slump,
Merlin: You can throw some RX bars in your bag for the plane.
Merlin: You can put them in a backpack for a bike ride or a hike or just have a pre- or post-workout snack.
Merlin: Yum's delicious.
Merlin: Egg white proteins stand out as a source of protein that is easy for your body to absorb.
Merlin: See, I didn't know that.
Merlin: This is new to me.
Merlin: RX bars come in 14, 14, 14 delicious flavor varieties.
Merlin: and I'm going to tell you about all of them right now.
Merlin: Mango pineapple, chocolate hazelnut, peanut butter and berries, chocolate sea salt, that's my favorite, coconut chocolate, mixed berry, blueberry, maple sea salt, apple cinnamon, mint chocolate, chocolate chip, peanut butter, peanut butter chocolate, and coffee chocolate.
Merlin: Plus, you guys, they even have seasonal flavors too.
Merlin: That's so many flavors.
Merlin: And now RX Bar has debuted in RX Nut Butter.
Merlin: which contains a few simple and similar ingredients like egg whites, fruits, and nuts.
Merlin: Each single-serve packet contains delicious, creamy nut butter with 9 grams of high-quality protein.
Merlin: It's squeezable and spreadable, and it pairs great with fruit, rice cakes, pretzels, or straight out of the pouch.
Merlin: It's nut butter, and they got flavors.
Merlin: There's honey, cinnamon, peanut butter.
Merlin: They have peanut butter, vanilla, almond butter.
Merlin: There's so much nut butter, you guys.
Merlin: Oh, my gosh.
Merlin: I actually am a huge fan of these.
Merlin: I love to keep these around.
Merlin: Like I say, the chocolate sea salt is my favorite, but there's lots of good ones.
Merlin: And, you know, I got to tell you, these are good for kids.
Merlin: They taste really, really good, and they're just so convenient.
Merlin: So, you know, I like to say get you some of these in whatever flavor or butter you like and just have them around so you can deploy them at will.
Merlin: You know, it's an RX bar.
Merlin: And so, listen, right now, for 25% off your first order of the best-seller variety pack—
Merlin: Visit rxbar.com slash supertrain and enter the promo code supertrain at checkout.
Merlin: This is valid in the U.S.
Merlin: only and for a limited time.
Merlin: It's RxBars.
Merlin: Our thanks to RxBar for supporting Roderick on the Line and all the great shows.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: He's like Batman.
Merlin: He just throws down a little ball.
Merlin: Um, what's good?
Merlin: Jesus effing Christ.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: We've got to rewind.
Merlin: Rewind, rewind, rewind, rewind.
Merlin: And we're going to rewind to what feels like weeks and weeks ago, where in preparing for your various travels you were going to be taking, it was also under consideration.
John: The Couve to the Arubes, right?
John: The Couve to the Arubes.
Merlin: Oh, is that what that was?
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: But you also had, this is even before the Uncle Jack adventure, I think.
Merlin: Yeah, this all fell apart.
Merlin: You were in the market actively for a new computer.
Merlin: You had a friend and another friend, and you were getting advices.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: And so if you can, as much as you're comfortable saying, where do we stand today?
Merlin: Where even are we with the computer situation?
John: Well, so here's what happened.
John: John Sircusa.
John: Sircusa.
John: Sircusa.
John: Sircusa.
John: He got on the line.
Merlin: What if he replaced me?
Merlin: How great would that be?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: He'd just yell at me for an hour and a half.
Merlin: It would just be like 70 minutes of him telling you what you're doing wrong.
Merlin: Which is given to me via iMessage every week.
Merlin: What I'm doing wrong and what you're doing wrong.
John: Well, the first thing that John Syracuse thinks that I'm doing wrong is that I like all the wrong sports cars.
Merlin: Oh, is he like Italian and German?
John: Yeah, he likes all these Lamborghinis and stuff.
John: And I'm like, no, no, no, no.
John: We exchanged one time lists of our top 10 favorite sports cars, and there was no overlap.
John: Do you prefer the American models?
John: Yes.
John: I mean, there are some European sports cars that I would happily have.
Merlin: Are you more interested in like a muscle car, something you could like listen to Foreigner in?
John: The thing is, I'm not looking for a sports car for the sports.
John: You know what I mean?
John: You're not looking for the sports.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, keep going.
Merlin: I'm genuinely curious.
Merlin: My neighbor just bought this totally sweet Mustang.
Merlin: I think it's called a Mustang GT, and it's black, and it's so cool.
Merlin: Did I lose you?
Merlin: John.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You lost me for a while, but you're back now.
Merlin: My neighbor.
Merlin: I'm not going to edit that.
Merlin: My neighbor bought a totally badass Mustang out of nowhere.
Merlin: He got a Mustang GT and it's black.
Merlin: It's like jet black.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's so badass, but it's got the classic styling.
Merlin: Not like that Mustang 2 bullshit.
Yeah.
John: No, I mean, but the Mustang with the classic styling, it's had this classic styling much longer than the classic styling had it.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Oh, that's a very good point.
Merlin: You get to a 68, you get a fastback or so, and you're talking about a different model.
Merlin: And me, I always wanted a 64 and a half with a hex grill.
Merlin: That's what they all want.
Merlin: That's what they want.
Merlin: Pony interior.
Merlin: I had a friend with a 64 and a half Mustang, hexagon grill, pony interior.
Merlin: There were literally horses running across the seats.
John: Yep, yep, yep.
John: That's not a safe car, John.
John: Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
John: My mom always wanted a classic.
John: She loved the 64 and a half Mustang.
John: She also liked that little Mercedes 280 SL.
John: She always wanted one.
John: And then right when she could get one, she was like, these cars have no safety features.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I was like, yes.
John: What are we talking about, 90s?
John: Oh, well, when she wanted to buy one?
John: Yes.
Okay.
John: So here's what my mom does.
John: Every time she needs a new car, she goes through this period where she really gets me amped up.
John: She's like, I think I'm going to get like a 68 Mercedes.
John: And I'm like, do it.
John: and then she comes back and she's like no i was thinking what about uh and she runs down this list of like super hot cool cars that she's always wanted yeah and then in the end she buys a honda fit she buys a honda fit with the with the smallest motor and no electric windows right she's showing restraint yeah and i'm like what the what the what happened
John: and she then she has a long list of things oh well it didn't you know those cars didn't have any safety features and i'm like this car is made out of like recycled cardboard yeah uh this is no good and the it's got no pickup it's loud it's rough ride
John: But she just, you know, you can take the depression out of the girl.
John: Out of the Ohioan, yeah.
John: Yeah, but she can't take the Ohioan out of the depression.
John: Right.
John: So, anyway.
John: But she's considered it.
John: Well, yeah, she thinks about it all the time.
John: But John Syracuse, he likes Lamborghinis.
John: I wouldn't even fit in a Lamborghini.
John: I don't think he would either.
John: Isn't he a little showy?
John: It's incredibly showy, but he lives on Long Island.
John: Well, he used to live on Long Island.
John: Well, he lives over there somewhere.
John: There's a lot of stuff on Long Island.
John: People of Italian heritage who live on the East Coast are allowed to, you know what I mean?
John: They got a barber pole out in front of their house.
John: They're driving around getting different, way more kinds of sausage than I'll ever know.
John: They're buying mortadello.
John: Yeah, and they call...
John: They call spaghetti sauce gravy.
John: They do all these things.
John: They don't even call it biscotti.
John: Yeah, they roll their window down and they make that like... Oh, they do this thing with their hand like this.
John: And then they're driving Lamborghinis.
John: And out here, none of that would fly.
John: None of that would fly.
John: You can't have pointy shoes in Seattle.
John: You've got to have some other stuff.
John: Okay, all right, all right, all right.
John: So anyway, so Circusa.
John: Circusa.
John: He sent me a list of what I should get on my computer.
John: He was like, you don't need this, but you do need this.
John: He built this thing.
John: He built this Lamborghini, but it had manual windows because he was like, if you go into the water, if you go off the Chappaquiddick Bridge, you're going to want to roll down your window.
John: He had all this.
Merlin: Go custom.
Merlin: You're going to get a bigger trunk and a plusher driver's seat.
John: You know I like a big trunk.
Merlin: Where are you going to put all that ass?
John: anyway so then so then i go to the apple people and i'm like todd what was his name yeah the todd todd i say todd uh here's the specs that i got from and uh todd's like oh well that's a custom job and if they order it and you don't get it within three weeks they send it back that's right and he said this has got to be made by hand by elves in cupertino and
John: And I was like, I thought they're made in China.
John: He was like, yeah, well, that's what we call China now is Cupertino.
John: Designed in California.
John: Designed in California, sure.
John: Anyway, so I waffled for a long time.
John: Oh, I might be out of town.
John: I might be this.
John: I might be this three-week window where I have to pick it up.
John: Anyway, I ordered it anyway.
John: And it arrived.
John: You have a box with a computer in it?
John: Yeah, it arrived, and I went to the Apple store.
John: I picked it up.
John: Sorry, quick.
John: Point of information.
Merlin: Before or after you left for Uncle Jack?
Merlin: Before.
Merlin: You've had a computer sitting there in a box.
John: So it came like two days before.
John: I went to Hawaii, and I was like, I don't need to deal with this right now.
John: Nope, nope, nope, nope.
John: Going to Hawaii.
John: Yep.
John: I got my laptop fixed.
John: So I'm taking the laptop to Hawaii.
John: Now, the laptop was sort of fixed.
John: The laptop was fixed.
John: but then it started doing something else equally weird okay uh but then i figured out a workaround okay i actually i actually texted john and i said uh my laptop's doing this and he was like well that could be this or it could be that you're diagnosing it wrong yeah and i was like ah that doesn't help and then i then i figured out something else i figured out oh you just leave it
John: Well, you just hot plug it.
John: Yeah, hot plug.
John: Hot plug.
John: Remember when you weren't supposed to do that?
Merlin: Oh, I remember very clearly.
Merlin: When you got a SCSI, you can't hot plug that.
Merlin: No, don't hot plug a SCSI.
John: You lose all your data.
John: Right.
John: But I learned now you can.
John: Anyway.
John: Okay.
John: So I was using the laptop.
John: It's fine.
John: Well, I got home from Hawaii.
John: uh holding on to my aloha for dear life and then i went to whistler almost immediately like two days later is that for skiing for skiing nice i got uh yeah so i was so nice i was very nice it was nice to be on skis i was i was carving some big turns you still got it
John: It took me a while to remember all of the things that your body is supposed to do, because my body— You had a different body last time you skied, probably.
John: Well, I had a different body the last time I skied well.
Merlin: Well, no, no.
Merlin: I know that's not a, you know, a sizer—not a joke.
Merlin: Yeah, it's not a sizer joke.
Merlin: I'm trying to be careful here.
Merlin: I don't want to be replaced by John Sarkozy.
Yeah.
Merlin: I like this job but it's a but no no no I mean I face this all the time I'm doing stuff like oh it's a long story but last night I ended up sleeping in my daughter's loft bed which just requires because her mom had been away and they wanted to sleep and you know rebond I get it I get it so I gotta go up like
Merlin: five wooden steps into a child's bed and his feet are like ow i'm just i really it's like watching a jack probably i was just like step step okay don't don't accidentally step on the bottom of your sweatpants because you'll die in a child's bed
Merlin: Don't fall.
Merlin: You'll break a hip.
Merlin: You will.
Merlin: And so you, but you got it back.
Merlin: You went to Whistler and you found your bliss.
John: So I strapped everything together.
John: I got a big knee brace for the one knee.
John: Then I got a little knee brace for the other knee.
John: I've got all the different stuff, all the ski gear that I've bought.
John: Over the years in remainder bins, slapped it all together.
John: And I took the lift, took the gondola up to the top and I skied down to the lift and I took the lift up to the higher top.
John: And then way up on the higher top.
John: So I'm on the black comb side for those people who are listening.
John: How many diamonds is that?
John: Is that a lot of diamonds?
John: I don't know.
John: The diamonds keep going up.
Merlin: Is there diamond inflation?
Merlin: Well, because the higher you go, the higher you get, the higher you get.
Merlin: The higher you go, the higher you get.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: So like I was on the Donald Duck Hill where you grab that cable that's moving.
John: No, there's no rope tow.
John: But what's crazy is after you get to the top of the top, there's an even further top.
John: Which is a T-bar, and a T-bar is a very old-fashioned way to get to the top of a mountain.
John: Okay, okay.
John: Where it's like a rope tow, except there's a...
John: There's a T, an upside-down T, made out of wood or plastic.
John: It used to be wood.
John: Now it's probably plastic.
John: Anyway, you step out.
John: Maybe you have a friend who also steps out.
John: The guy that's running the lift grabs this T that's on like a – it's like – you remember Schneider from One Day at a Time?
John: Absolutely.
John: Tremendous vest.
John: And Schneider carried a ring of keys.
John: Yeah.
John: famous ring of keys, and it was on one of those retractable cables.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, sure.
John: My wife has that for her ID badge.
John: Right.
John: So the T-bar is on a retractable cable, and the lift attendant puts the T under your butt.
John: It's only the size of a broomstick.
John: And then the retractable cable goes... This sounds harder than skiing.
John: It's crazy.
John: And then at the last minute, the retractable cable catches, and then the T...
John: grabs you by the butt and pulls you up and then you're on your skis but you're standing and it's basically okay i get it okay well so you know part of the fun or part of the reason you have a ski lift is so that you're not standing you get that little breather where you can relax because you're up in an elevation too right
John: Oh, yeah, you're very high up.
John: You're not so high up that you don't have oxygen, but you're high.
John: That's hard on your heart and lungs over time.
John: But for me, the legs were tired.
John: Anyway, the T-bar took me up.
John: Now, 90%, it seems like, 90% of the people that were taking the T-bar up to the tippy top were actually trying to hike over the summit so they could ski down the back bowl.
John: Now, I don't care about the back bowl.
John: I'm not somebody that's going to take two lifts and a T-bar to get up to the back bowl.
John: Because that's just a bunch of, you know what that is?
John: What is that?
John: That's security theater.
John: Oh, really?
John: Oh, it's ski theater.
John: You know, you get up there and you're like, I'm going down the back bowl.
John: And who knows?
John: Maybe it's amazing.
John: Maybe.
John: All right.
John: All right.
John: You know, but I don't care about it.
Merlin: You're just you're doing it for clapping.
Merlin: It's a thing where you like, you know, it's like you went on like, you know, difficult mode, that kind of thing.
John: Yeah.
John: But also it might be there's a bunch of powder.
John: back there, but I don't care about that.
John: That's not what I want either.
John: I'm not like some powder hound that's skiing in blue jeans.
John: That's for the Lamborghini types.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: I don't have a suppressor in my back pocket.
John: Or happy to see you.
John: That's kind of like a salami, right?
John: Yeah, suppressor or something.
John: Anyway, what had happened was...
John: Right under the T-bar, they had groomed the bejesus out of it with their caterpillars, their big snow cats.
John: They just groomed it so that it was this perfect groomed, what we call groomed slope.
John: It had like little, the snow had been flattened by the cats.
John: Who knows why they did it?
Merlin: That's like the ski version of Zamboni?
John: Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
John: The ski Zamboni had flattened the slope and nobody was skiing on it because everybody was hiking up to do this ski theater up over in the back bowl.
John: So the T-bar would drop you off way up here at the top and then everybody takes their skis off and starts climbing up this golden staircase.
John: And I would turn and ski down the slope.
John: And the slope, of course, the first thing you want to do when you're skiing, when you're a good skier, is you want to ski under the lift so all the people on the lift can admire you.
Merlin: Okay, that makes sense.
John: Yeah, right?
John: Because you don't want to just be out skiing by yourself down some stupid bowl.
John: You want to be making big, huge turns where everybody can be like, oh, look at this piece of suppressor.
John: Shush, shush, shush.
John: And then I was like, here's what I'm going to do.
John: I'm going to take up this entire mountain because nobody's skiing this slope.
John: So I'm going to ski it from one side to the other.
John: And I started.
John: So at the beginning of the day, I was like, oh, I don't remember how to do this.
John: And I was kind of, I mean, I'm still, I'm still good, even if I'm not good.
John: But then as the day went on, I started to hate the T-bar.
John: I just hated it, loathed it.
Hmm.
John: but it took me up to the top of this wonderful place where you could you know i was making those big water ski turns where you're laying all the way out oh that's beautiful to watch you're just making these big rooster tails while you you know one time when i was a when i was a ski racer uh 1 000 years ago i was up on the ski mountain with my ski team and we had our ski coach
John: And we were skiing together.
John: You know, one of the things about being on a ski team is sometimes you ski like five or ten of you all together where you're just following one another kind of in a big snake.
John: Oh, sure.
John: And the ski coach is in the front and he's like taking you down routes and you're all following him.
John: And then you stop at the bottom and you look back at what you did and you talk about it.
John: So we're standing there in the middle of the mountain.
John: We're talking about our big turns that we've been doing.
John: And here down the mountain comes Tommy Moe.
John: Now, Tommy Moe is a couple of years younger than me.
John: Maybe a year or two younger than me.
John: Okay.
John: And Tommy Moe, at the time, he wasn't super tall.
John: And he's skiing by himself.
John: And he's on the ski race team.
John: And we all know that he is a good ski racer, even at this age.
John: He's probably 14.
John: Anyway, he comes skiing down and he skis past us and gives us a little like, hey, what's up, as he goes by.
John: He's going fast, but he says, hey, what's up?
John: And the ski coach goes, after he skis by, he says to the rest of us, he's like, look at that.
John: And he kind of skis over to the divot that Tommy Moe made as he skied past us.
John: The...
John: The perfect arcing turn that he had made where there was no chattering.
John: There was no sliding.
John: There was no... His edge was not slipping.
John: It's like calligraphy.
John: Yeah, that's exactly right.
John: He had dug this trench with his...
John: with his amazing edge and our ski coach made us all go stand there and look at the ski track that tommy moe had made and and we were supposed to be like stunned and odd is there lots to learn from the path they leaves
John: There was, because he was like, this is the turn that you guys want to learn to make.
Merlin: You'll know you've succeeded when you make a calligraphy mark like this.
Merlin: Right.
John: Okay.
John: Right.
John: Once you have walked across the rice paper and left no trace of your passage, you will have learned.
Merlin: You get a snatch of pebble and then you get the tattoo from the hot pot.
Merlin: That's exactly it.
John: So Tommy Moe, for those of you listening who are like, who's Tommy Moe?
John: Tommy Moe went on to win some gold medals in the Olympics.
John: Tommy Moe.
John: Okay.
John: Tommy Moe.
John: M-O-E-M-O.
John: He was a surprise American gold medal.
Merlin: Oh, look at him.
John: He's an Olympic athlete.
John: He is, yes.
Mm-hmm.
John: Tommy Moe and I went on to go to a Metallica concert together and also the first tour of Lynyrd Skynyrd when they came back in the late 80s after a long period where they decided that since their singer was dead, they couldn't play.
John: And then Tommy Moe went on to win the Olympics.
John: So it was true even then, even when he was 14 years old.
John: Or maybe he was even 13 and I was 14 or 15.
Merlin: He's born in 1970.
Merlin: So yeah, he's a couple years younger.
John: Yeah.
John: So even then, he was just a natural.
John: You could just see him.
John: You could just see him.
John: You could see the turns.
John: And so ever since then, I have been trying to make those Tommy Moe turns.
John: When I get on a big groomed slope.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: Got it.
John: Got it.
John: Got it.
John: And by the end of the day, after I had broken all of my muscles down into just jello, I had I remembered all the ways in which you are meant to make those turns with as little effort as possible.
John: At the start of the day, I was making a lot of effort.
Merlin: You're still a little stiff probably, right?
John: Yeah.
John: So I'm like, as I'm going through these big, big turns.
John: Like you're trying to knock a door down.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And by the end of the day, I was like, no, you put your weight forward.
John: That's your rice paper.
John: That's right.
John: And so by the end of the day, I was making these.
John: Big turns and then, you know, as you come up to go into your next turn, you're like, you hop up so much that you're almost flying and then you drop down into the next turn and it's not, it doesn't hurt.
John: It's just like, and all day long I skied on this hill and there was never anybody on it.
John: And this mountain is full of people.
Merlin: Is everybody on the backbowl?
John: Well, so most people are not taking a gondola to a lift to a T-bar to get up to the top of this place anyway.
John: Okay.
John: Because it's, you know, a little windy up there and everybody's looking for something else.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like everybody on the mountain is looking for something else.
John: They don't even know what they're looking for.
John: They're looking for something, though.
John: They think they want to go down a chute or they think they want to go down over this and down.
John: This thing's called banana pants and this one's called... And you're supposed to want to do it.
John: Anyway, the best skiing was up at this slope.
John: The only thing that made it terrible was the T-bar.
John: But I skied it all day and it didn't make any sense, I guess.
John: I wasn't looking for anything.
John: I was just looking to do these...
John: Half mile wide super turns.
John: And I got there.
John: I got I got to a place where where I was in a different kind of aloha state of aloha.
John: That was that was there were no turds.
John: Mm hmm.
John: but i was in i was one well i'm not gonna say i was one with the mountain i was like i was one half with the mountain yeah right and and one half with the constant threat of an emergency room i was you know yeah i was you halfway up a child's bed thinking just don't
John: Just don't fuck this up.
Merlin: This is not how I should have put my Kindle on the loft bed before I went up because I could really use that other hand.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You're holding on.
Merlin: Go read my book about anxiety before bed.
Merlin: So anyway, I skied once.
Merlin: Boy, that sounds like a successful day.
Merlin: And you must have been dog tired at the end of the day.
John: Well, I was.
John: So I did this two days in a row.
John: Oh, was the second day better?
John: The second day was better because I didn't have – I wasn't fighting it as hard at the beginning of the day.
John: And by the end of the day, I was – you can't say balletic because from the perspective – I don't think you're allowed to say that about yourself.
No.
John: You know, everybody on a ski mountain now, first of all, they're all wearing helmets.
John: Everybody.
Merlin: Oh, because of Sonny Bono.
John: Yeah, or something, or whatever the Kennedy was that hit a tree.
Merlin: Claudine Lange, I think she had her lover shot.
John: Sure.
John: You've got to wear a helmet out there.
John: Be careful.
John: Well, and they're all skateboard helmets or crazy ski helmets.
John: And the thing is, I'm not wearing a helmet.
John: I'm wearing a stupid Cowichan, Cowichan hat.
John: Oh, boy, still.
John: I thought we talked about that.
John: I look like some kind of weird old-fashioned.
John: And I'm wearing a bright red ski jacket, and nobody does that either.
John: Everybody's ski jacket is some color of mauve.
Merlin: Isn't ski fashion very homogenous at a given time?
Merlin: I think about the movie Hot Tub Time Machine.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Where everybody's wearing the neon 80s look.
John: Exactly.
John: Or unitards or whatever.
John: All right.
John: I don't think we use that word anymore.
John: Yeah, I do.
John: It's just as anachronistic as my hat.
John: But I'm in this bright red jacket from 1985.
John: You're in Canada, right?
John: I am.
John: Okay.
John: And bright yellow pants.
John: Pants brighter than the sun.
John: Hmm.
John: and uh and i'm sure that people photos you could share with me i'm making these giant turns with my with my stupid hat with a with a ding dong on the top and i'm sure that people on the lift are like man that candied apple is really going fast like i just don't look i'm not
John: I'm not like slim.
John: I probably looked like I was like I was an emergency room on wheels.
John: You know, like everybody, everybody on the lift was looking at me like the yard sale that's going to come off of this guy when he finally goes down.
Merlin: It's going to be one for the ages.
John: He's going to take 15 people out of this T-bar because, you know, as I was making my turns, I was going real close to the T-bar just to like spray everybody with.
Merlin: I'll do like a little flyover.
John: Yeah, because, you know, like I wanted to spill the guy's coffee.
John: And he's like, damn that Maverick.
Oh.
John: Roderick.
John: Give me your gun and badge.
John: You're a loose cannon.
John: Anyway, it was great, but it was also wonderful.
John: Was it just you alone?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: There's nobody.
John: I was all by myself.
John: You went to Canada to ski by yourself?
John: Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
John: My family was there, but my daughter was in ski school.
John: Okay.
John: And her mother was at the spa all day.
John: Oh, good for her.
John: Getting spa treatments.
John: Getting spa'd, yeah.
John: The hardest part of the day, actually, was after my little girl got done with the ski lesson, I went and got her and said, why don't you show me what you learned?
John: And she's like, okay, great.
John: She said, we have to take the gondola up because that's where my ski hill is.
John: So we took the gondola all the way up to the very top of Whistler.
John: And up there, there was a little kid bunny slope.
John: And what they did was they skied on this little bunny slope all day and then they took the gondola down.
John: Okay.
John: That makes sense.
John: Yeah.
John: But I said, well, why don't you just show me what you learned on this green circle easy slope that goes this way?
John: And she said, well, that's not the way we went.
John: And I'm like, I know, but it's like, it's still easy.
John: And so she trusted daddy.
Hmm.
Merlin: and then it got not easy uh and then she was it's the momentum that gets you right even if you make a pizza slice you're still dealing with momentum well and also like trails get get uh small they're not all start to hesitate you're lost right that's right isn't that part of it isn't it part of it you gotta let go and let dad like you you need to like have some confidence that you can do it
Merlin: That's exactly right.
Merlin: You have to have courage.
Merlin: Courage.
Merlin: Courage is not that you're not scared of something.
Merlin: Courage is that you do something despite your fear.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I know you know that, but for our listeners, I think that's important.
John: Well, and we talked about that for the entire hour and a half it took us to ski from the top of the mountain to the bottom.
John: Your legs must have been very tired.
John: Well, they were, but what was more tiring for us both was...
John: her feeling that i had betrayed her fundamentally by uh by taking her away from the bunny hill okay and then little by little because we kept stopping and i would point up and say look how far we've come and she would be proud of that but then turn and face the next challenge and be like dad
John: She doesn't know the word bastard, but that's what she was saying.
John: She's an implied bastard.
John: But we got all the way to the bottom and that was a triumph.
John: But that was the final, like that was what my body was not prepared for.
John: At the end of the day, after all of the big turns, it was not prepared for an hour and a half of snow plowing.
John: But no yard sale.
John: Nope, never fell.
John: I fell one time as a... I was showing her because she said, very interestingly, I said, you know, what is your main fear right now besides crashing?
John: And she said, I don't want to be embarrassed to fall in front of everybody.
John: So I said, you mean like this?
John: And I did a big comedic...
John: ski pratfall you gotta embarrass me like this um don't do a joke ski fall and i used to do well she actually delighted in it because i clearly i'm not allowed to do anything like that that's anathema in our relationship now well because your your daughter's a little older she's older and i'm very very embarrassing to her she's no longer fooled but uh but please stop singing please stop singing oh
John: Oh, you know what?
John: I took her to school this morning.
John: She made me take off my baseball hat.
Merlin: What kind of baseball hat?
Merlin: Does it say anything?
Merlin: Oh, just the existence of a baseball cap on dad.
John: No, a fan out in the world made a trucker hat that said Omnibus.
John: Oh, that's so nice.
Merlin: Wow, that's so nice.
Merlin: So you were kind of that guy.
Merlin: I almost wore a Roderick on the line shirt to the Apple store yesterday, but I figured that would make me that guy.
John: i never get recognized anymore like who do i have to blow to get recognized you should have done it man you should have just been like i could have gotten like a little keep moving and get out of the way yeah you could have worn a bacon ray t-shirt olivia who didn't recognize me olivia somebody uh somebody actually on uh the omnibus facebook page mentioned bacon ray the other day oh my goodness yeah
John: Because we were talking about bands that were named after food.
Merlin: We were underrated, really underrated.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Uh, cassettes and singles and a CD, two CDs.
John: Yeah.
John: You were an optometrist.
John: This is better or worse.
John: It's worse.
John: Uh, but so I made, well, here's the thing.
John: I made a comedy pratfall fall.
John: Yeah.
John: But I used to do that all the time.
John: I used to be able to crash.
John: I used to be able to.
John: That's how you know you're good.
John: If you can fall and not get hurt, that's that's the basis of Aikido.
John: Yeah, that's exactly it.
John: I could funny crash in a way that looked like a real crash.
John: One time in college.
John: I joined the college ski team and they had tryouts and they had everybody up at the top of the mountain and you were supposed to one at a time ski down in front of everybody and show off how good of a skier you were.
John: And then they would put you in whatever level of ski team they were trying to do.
John: And I was a dick.
John: Of course, because I always was until just recently.
John: Yeah.
John: I bet you were a handful.
John: I was a lot to take in.
John: In fact, back then my ski costume was...
John: surplus Swedish army trousers in, like, green-gray wool.
John: And some kind... I don't remember.
John: Some kind of suit jacket.
John: I don't know what I was doing.
Merlin: He's like a character in, like, a young adult novel from the 60s that was always getting thrown out of boarding school.
John: Exactly.
John: It did not look... I never looked right.
John: I always looked especially wrong.
John: Anyway, so then it was my turn to do the ski test in front of everybody.
John: And I...
John: was very good.
John: You know how it's hard for a singer to sing like somebody that can't sing?
Merlin: Oh, I know what you're talking about.
Merlin: I have a thing where I really enjoy... I really enjoy movies and TV shows where the actors are playing actors.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You can see a lot of nuance to when they're having to do a character as a character.
Merlin: That kind of bends my brain.
Merlin: But I especially like when an actor can do bad acting and not just ham it up.
Merlin: It's difficult to do.
John: If an actor can do bad acting... Yeah.
John: that is super good acting absolutely if a singer can do bad singing yeah it's very rare that you can actually duplicate
John: what actual bad singing sounds like and not sound like a singer doing bad singing i mean the best at it was steve malcolmus because steve malcolmus can sing he can actually he could he could actually really sing if he wasn't sounding snotty but all of pavement sounds like steve malcolmus it can't sing right that's the whole sound of pavement is is a guy that is like can't doesn't know how to sing that's a that's a that's a good example yeah anyway i was really good
John: at looking like I didn't know how to ski very well.
John: You're a good funny crasher.
John: I was a good funny crasher and a good funny ski, like, whoa!
John: Like, yeah!
John: So I was like off balance the whole way, leaning back, looked like I was about to crash the entire time, and I'm sure everybody watching was like that feeling in your stomach where you're watching somebody that is about to crash really badly, and also you're embarrassed for them because they're skiing
John: And then about the last quarter of the ski hill, where you could just see they're all riding on their clipboards like, nope, like this guy.
John: I did something where I suddenly like did a...
John: really nice swooping turn flipped around skied backwards for a little while and then really can you do that oh yeah and then finished with some kind of uh and this was before you they made skis that skied backwards these were just like regular skis like a fin on the back or something well the new ones are the new ones are front to back they look the same well they curl up a little on the ends like elf shoes
John: Yeah, because there's a whole style of skiing now where people flip around, they ski front, they ski back.
John: They don't, it's no difference to them.
John: Like skateboard.
John: What do you call that kind of, freestyle?
John: No, what would you call something like that?
John: Yeah, I think freestyle is what I would call it.
John: I'm sure it has some new name.
John: I'm sure it's called something like, yeah, banana pants or whatever.
John: Banana pants, yep, yep.
John: Unitard.
Merlin: So you're coming down in there.
John: And then I do this and then I do something where I flip up on my on the heels of the skis and flip around.
John: I just did this whole like performance and I come to a stop and I, you know, and I oh, that's the worst part.
John: I sprayed everybody at the bottom with a big.
John: You were such a dick.
John: I was the worst.
John: Literally the worst.
John: Such a show off.
John: You're looking for a place on a team and being very un-team.
John: Yeah.
John: But I got a big round of applause from everybody because it was actually funny.
Merlin: Is that helpful in skiing?
Merlin: Now, I feel like snowboarding is a popular thing that people like to do where that kind of toot, right?
Merlin: That kind of like 90s bad boy is valued.
Merlin: You might have been a little bit ahead of your time because you were a dick when it wasn't as fashionable.
John: Yeah, skiing then was still just for snobs, just for, like, socials, you know?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: You were more of a greaser.
John: Right.
John: Or a rocker.
John: But it was college.
John: Right.
John: I was like acting like a townie.
Merlin: Oh, you're a cutter.
Merlin: I was a cutter.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Not in the self-harm way.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But it was, you know, it was at a time when everybody had it was still very conformist.
John: It was still very white.
John: It was still very rich kid.
Merlin: It was more like golf, right?
Merlin: I mean, it was more like in the sense of like, who plays this?
John: Well, and not a big urban golf league.
John: Well, you remember the John Cusack, the Cusack movie where he's the townie and the better off skiing, better off skiing.
Merlin: No, it's got that other guy in it, the guy with the hair.
Merlin: And yeah, I remember that.
Merlin: John Cusack is a very good actor.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So that was the other one.
John: was ski team, ski team, uh, party to ski, ski tub party, something, something like that.
John: better off dead was that the one that's not the one he had he was like the marx brothers for a while where he had a lot of better off dead better off dead it's a 1985 american teen comedy uh the the the suicidal and his girlfriend breaks up with him before this is really problematic there's a lot going on in it steers was in it winchester was in it 1985 would have been my junior senior year and uh that was the that was peak skiing year for me okay
John: So anyway, I was a dick, but I was also, you know, I could walk the walk.
John: I could back it up.
John: I could walk the talk.
John: I don't know which one I could do.
Merlin: I can never remember which is which, but you could ski the ski.
Merlin: I could do it.
Merlin: Anyway, so I did this.
Merlin: Do you have knowledge for that?
Merlin: Did they say, okay, you're in?
Merlin: You're the loose cannon?
Merlin: I mean, yeah, totally.
Merlin: We need an agent of chaos.
John: I was either the best skier on that team or I was...
John: The best skier on that team was the guy that had all the gear that skied really perfectly and flawlessly.
John: I did not ski perfectly.
John: I skied like a...
John: Like you can imagine, like a runaway locomotive.
Merlin: You're like a Charles Barkley.
Merlin: It's not pretty, but you get the job done.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: And what about Tommy Rowe?
Merlin: Was he a... That's the singer.
Merlin: Tommy Moe.
Merlin: Was Tommy Moe, not Rowe, was he, Moe versus Wade, was he on the ski team?
Merlin: You're talking about college here?
John: This is college.
John: Tommy Moe was on my high school ski team.
John: Oh, sorry.
John: Tommy Moe had that thing where he was absolutely poetry in motion, but he was also his own man.
John: He did not ski just flawlessly.
John: He skied at a different level where even the perfect skiers had to stop.
John: He's like James Harden.
John: Like, we don't have a name for what he does.
John: Yeah, like, what the hell just happened?
John: Yep, yep, yep.
John: Because the only way you can win an Olympic gold medal in downhill is that you...
John: you absolutely are out of your mind.
John: You're going so fast.
Merlin: And so do that half pipe thing with the snowboards.
Merlin: I think that, I think that like, there's the, is that what it's called?
Merlin: Snowboarding that like where you do the pipe and you got to do the compulsory stuff.
Merlin: And then some people choose to do the really crazy stuff.
Merlin: And you're like, even the compulsory stuff looks extremely dangerous to me.
Merlin: It's very crazy.
John: Have you seen, let me, let me give you a little bit of fun YouTube hole, which is go look at some Tony Hawk skateboard videos.
John: Oh, he's the skateboarding guy.
John: Yeah.
John: But Tony Hawk is the same age as us.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm the same age as Luke Perry.
Merlin: That's really bone in my head.
John: Well, who knows what he's doing now, right?
Merlin: He died today.
John: Luke Perry?
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, I was about to say something.
Merlin: You did a massive stroke.
Merlin: Tony Hawk is 50.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I saw a sweet video of him teaching his daughter, and she had courage.
Merlin: Yeah, wasn't that cute?
Merlin: That was a sweet video.
John: She dropped in for the first time?
Merlin: I think Tony Hawk probably has a lot of money.
John: Well, you know, Tony Hawk's one of those crazy stories where he invented a lot of skateboarding and then he fell out of fashion because the style of skateboarding changed.
John: Oh, really?
John: And everybody was skating street style.
John: Oh, more Lords of Dogtown, kind of.
John: Well, I think Tony Hawk was one of those dudes.
John: Was he a dog counter?
John: Okay.
John: Well, I think he wasn't part of that gang, but he was at that time.
Merlin: My knowledge of skateboarding stopped at approximately the Bad News Bears and Jackie O'Reilly.
John: Did your skateboard have a palm tree on it?
Merlin: I had a skateboard that was like a piece of plastic.
Merlin: with four roller skate wheels on it and it didn't really turn you had to do that kick it up thing to make it turn yeah that's that was my first skateboard too yeah skateboards used to be real different and that was why i didn't adopt skateboarding as a hobby because it seemed like suicide yeah okay so so tony hawk is analogous to you skiing in college yeah
John: No, Tony Hawk is analogous to Tommy Moe.
John: Oh, Tommy Moe.
John: He can do all the things, but then he can also do things that no one else can do.
John: Like an actor doing acting?
John: Well, or like a space-tronaut.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: He's 6'3", so I don't think they put him in one of those cans.
Merlin: But if they had a proportionally sized capsule, he wouldn't mind having his face against the wall, probably.
John: He flies through the air with the greatest of ease.
John: You're talking about going up the stair on a child's bed and being like, oh, no.
John: And meanwhile, Tommy Moe's like 60 feet in the air.
John: They don't have teams for that.
John: And so is Tony Hawk.
John: And the thing is, how do you even get a name like Tommy Moe or Tony Hawk?
John: I don't know.
Merlin: Is it, what do they call that?
Merlin: Pseudonym Destiny?
Merlin: No, nominative determinism.
Merlin: Nominative determinism.
Merlin: I think it's nominative determinism.
Merlin: This is why you don't name your daughter Jeeves, because there's no jobs for butlers anymore.
John: See, it's like onomatopoeic.
John: Onomatopoeic.
John: Okay.
John: But you have a name Merlin Mann.
John: You have the ultimate name.
John: I sound like I was named by Stan Lee.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: You could have been a sword fighter.
John: You could have been a wizard.
John: Yeah.
John: Could have been any kind of wizard.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But also you could have been, I mean, like, no, we've talked about this before.
John: What's your character alignment?
Merlin: Oh, I mean, you know, I like to think I'm a Hufflepuff.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But I'm probably chaotic good.
Merlin: I hope.
Merlin: Maybe chaotic neutral.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I always wanted to be a ranger or a bard.
Merlin: Bard came along a little later, but I always liked rangers.
Merlin: They had a nice mix of fighter and thief, and they could do cool stuff and do tracking.
Merlin: What was your alignment?
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: I always thought of myself as chaotic good when I was younger.
John: And then as time went on, it was pretty clear I was chaotic neutral.
John: But I just recently was like, huh, I wonder what I am now.
John: And I took an alignment.
Merlin: You might be lawful evil, let's be honest.
Merlin: No!
John: Come on, you'd be an anti-paladin.
John: I'm not lawful anything.
John: Really?
John: But I took a... You cross a lot of T's, John.
John: Well, yeah, but whose laws?
Merlin: Oh, exactly.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Fair enough.
Merlin: But this is the problem with the Hufflepuff thing is I'm not really a Hufflepuff.
Merlin: I'm not any of those.
Merlin: I'm not particularly loyal and hardworking.
Merlin: You're pretty Ravenclaw.
Merlin: I have a Ravenclaw scarf.
Merlin: I have several scarves, and I wear the one that feels like how I'm doing today.
Merlin: I don't know how I would actually get sorted.
Merlin: Supposedly, you get sorted partly on where you'd like to be.
Merlin: I don't want to be a Gryffindor.
Merlin: I think those are the dicks.
Merlin: Those are the Lamborghini mortadellos.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: As far as I'm concerned.
Merlin: Gryffindor?
Merlin: Yeah, no shade, no lemonade.
Merlin: My family keep coming up.
Merlin: My daughter aspires to be, obviously, a Slytherin.
Merlin: She has some clothes that are Slytherin.
Merlin: But, you know, my culture is not your costume, is the thing I think.
Merlin: Yeah, of course.
John: Well, there are a lot of Gryffindors right now listening to this program going, I beg your pardon.
John: Anyway, I went on the Wizards of the Coast website and took a character alignment test.
John: Okay.
John: And according to Wizards of the Coast, I am now... So when I was 14, I was like, I am chaotic good for sure.
John: Absolutely.
John: But then when I was like 29, it was like, you're pretty chaotic neutral these days.
John: I took this test at Wizards of the Coast.
John: They think I'm a true neutral.
John: Oh, that's difficult.
John: And I was like, true neutral?
John: That seems like a lot of work.
John: Well, and they were just like...
John: I mean, in some ways, true neutral is the best alignment, but in some ways it can also be very, very fucked up because it may not be that you are true neutral.
John: It may be that you are so many different kinds of chaos that it evens out to neutral.
John: You think you're like, would that be like a libertarian?
John: Well, I do not feel libertarian.
John: No.
John: See?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, see, I still feel chaotic.
John: Good.
John: But but I just I keep trending more and more neutral all the time.
Merlin: You're trending neutral.
Merlin: See, this is the problem with the Hufflepuff thing.
Merlin: I think there's the aspirations and maybe you like the colors.
Merlin: When I was a kid, I would like a certain football team just because I liked the Rams because I thought they had cool helmets.
Merlin: That doesn't mean I'm a Ram in real life.
Merlin: It doesn't mean I'm a physical Ram.
John: Well, I always wanted to be a magic user.
John: And I think the question is over time, what are you using that magic for?
Merlin: It's just like if you're going to do the thing where you go, okay, we want to do something where you need to be 6th, 7th, 8th level.
Merlin: So now we're going to roll and you get to be a magic user.
Merlin: That's a little more fun.
Merlin: But an opening magic user is not a lot of fun if memory serves.
Merlin: You do a lot of naps, don't you?
Merlin: Don't you take a lot of naps?
John: Magic users always end up having some ineffectual thing that somebody else rolls a defense against, and then it's just like, oh, well, sorry.
John: I thought my bag of holding was going to be the solution here.
Merlin: It's a lot like wanting to be a ram.
Merlin: There's nothing wrong with having aspirations to be an animal or a Hufflepuff.
Merlin: There's nothing wrong with that.
John: My junior high mascot was a ram.
Merlin: A what?
Merlin: A ram.
Merlin: Did you say junior high?
Merlin: Junior high.
Merlin: My junior high mascot was a ram.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Yeah, we were the Ridgewood Rams.
Merlin: We were the Wendler Rams.
Merlin: No kidding.
John: Yeah.
John: What were your colors?
John: Orange and blue.
Merlin: Really cool.
Merlin: Those are cool.
Merlin: We were green and white.
Merlin: My high school was green and yellow, the Buccaneers.
Merlin: Green and yellow is awful.
Merlin: And they had painter's caps made up in October for football season, and they misspelled Buccaneers on the hat.
Merlin: It said Buccaneers.
What?
Merlin: So, you know, everybody's looking for blackface in their yearbook.
Merlin: Well, you got my yearbook.
Merlin: You're going to find a lot of kids wearing Boussiniers hats.
Merlin: Boussiniers.
Merlin: Boussiniers.
Merlin: Lamborghini mortadello.
Merlin: Feminesium.
Merlin: Can I ask you two questions?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: There's always two things with me.
Merlin: Answer in as much detail or not.
Merlin: You said you were on a ski team.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So the team has competitions.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: How was your skiing as a team evaluated vis-a-vis points?
John: Well, in ski racing.
John: Is it like figure skating?
John: No.
John: No.
John: That's all freestyle.
John: And freestyle free dogging, as we called it when I was in high school, was very much looked down upon as something that stoners did.
John: Uh, that's the, that's the like ski and blue jeans with a, with the ones who ended up on the boards.
Merlin: I bet.
John: Yeah, yeah, they are.
Merlin: They all, they're all vaping and, and listening, uh, listening to, uh, EDM.
John: Well, no, they're in there.
John: They're in there.
John: Those guys are in their fifties now and they're still, they're still listening to Led Zeppelin.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: Actually, you know, I was a part of being at Whistler.
John: We went on the tubing hill because it's tubing and we were on the tubing hill and they were cranking some tunes and all of the people working on the tubing hill were 20 years old and they were cranking precisely classic rock with no deviations.
John: And also a very good playlist of classic rock.
John: Like classic rock, including Wings and ELO.
John: Oh, wow.
John: Right?
John: But also like all the Zeppelin.
John: Classic FM fair.
John: That's right.
John: And so at the end, I was like, I walked up to some kid and I was like, who made this playlist?
John: And he said, I did, dude.
John: And I was like, holy shit, you're a time traveler.
John: And then I realized, no, no, no, this is a type of Hufflepuff.
John: Stoner, ski,
John: dudes are are an eternal kind that's his class he's just leveling up that's right okay and so he might be a 12th level uh ski stoner so led zeppelin will be it's not just because i've always thought like oh well so led zeppelin is now thrown into some melting pot with stained and uh allison chains it's funny how led zeppelin comes in and out of favor for sure
John: But it's not.
John: There's actually still a classic rock demographic.
John: And maybe they use a different style of apparatus to get high.
John: Yeah.
John: But I bet you this dude had a graphics bong, frankly.
John: Okay.
John: I bet you he's still like...
John: He's still like smoked out of a proto pipe because he was so perfect.
John: He was perfect in every way.
John: He's done.
John: Some ways, right?
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: The thing is, this is, this is part of having focus and expertise.
Merlin: If I could say, it's like, yes, I say you, uh, I don't love the term.
Merlin: You'd be pick a lane.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: Well, but the thing is they don't even make transams anymore.
John: Not at all.
John: I guess he could have a Camaro.
John: He could have a Camaro.
Oh,
John: So a ski team that is ski racing, they care about one thing, which is the time it takes you to get through the poles to the bottom.
Merlin: Okay, you have a clock for that and you can tell who won.
John: That's it.
John: And in really good ski racing, you are down to one hundredth of a second differences between skiers.
John: Okay.
John: And even at my level, we were at tenths of a second.
John: Really?
John: It's that close?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Because you're all good skiers, and the ski course has a perfect...
John: Theoretically, it has a perfect line.
Merlin: I'm hearing there's not a lot of tolerance for errors.
Merlin: You really need to nail – are you going around those flags?
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
John: And you can hit the flag and bend it, but that's okay, right?
John: When I first started skiing, those poles were made of bamboo, and if you hit one hard enough, it would break, but it would also break your shins or hurt very badly.
John: And then they developed what they called breakaway gates, which are gates –
John: Those are called gates.
John: And at the bottom, there was a hinge, like a kind of thing.
John: Okay.
John: So you would run into them and they would go and then come back up and it wouldn't hurt you as badly.
John: It still hurts.
John: Sure.
John: But the reason that you hit those gates is that the best line for your skis to take does not mean that your body necessarily is going to
John: clear the pole because your body and your skis are different yeah the skis are getting as close to the pole as they can and that means that three quarters of your body has to be leaning over such that you're just going to go right through the pole boy this is a lot to think about or not think about because there must be some element of thinking about and not thinking about
Merlin: You think about the right thing, but then you got to not think about the other thing, right?
John: You're looking way ahead because the problem with gates is you're going through them, you're going through them, and then there's a trick gate.
John: Uh-oh.
John: And if you're not looking ahead, you're going to go straight out of the side of the course.
Merlin: A trick gate?
John: Yeah, they put a trick gate in.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Where your line has to shift in order to be able to get through this next gate.
Merlin: You just can't go down on autopilot moving 40 feet this way, 40 feet that way.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You don't just go pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
John: You go pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
Merlin: We didn't have that in the Atari game.
Merlin: In the Atari game, they were pretty regular.
Merlin: You had a chance to see where it was going to be.
Merlin: But in this case, it sounds like you have to make in-the-moment decisions.
Yeah.
John: You do, although you look at the course beforehand so you know what you're doing.
John: At least you have a sense of where you're supposed to be.
John: But there is absolutely no room to fuck up.
John: But there are also differences in the ability of some people just to go faster.
John: Tommy Moe won a gold medal because he just could go faster.
Merlin: It's very, very frustrating.
John: It's so frustrating.
John: And part of that faster is that at that moment when you come over the rise and you're going too fast and you look ahead and something in your body, even if it's not visible to anyone else, something in your body goes, oh, shit.
John: And now you're thinking about it.
John: I don't know what happens.
John: Somewhere deep inside you, something clenches for a second and it slows you down.
John: But if you come over that rise and you are so aloha that that thing doesn't clench, your toenails don't curl.
John: Okay.
John: You're that one one hundredth of a second fast.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: It's like Dr. Katz says, you're not cooking individual grains of rice.
Merlin: You're cooking a rice.
Merlin: So sure, there's going to be trees.
Merlin: But you know what those trees make?
Merlin: They make a forest.
Merlin: And you need you need to have a big picture and be thinking like defensive driving.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You got to be thinking a little bit ahead.
Merlin: Right, right.
John: Well, yeah, in a rice, there are going to be some rices that are slightly undercooked, and there are going to be some rices that are slightly overcooked.
Merlin: That's what makes it rice.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Yes.
John: The rice, a rice, is perfectly cooked.
Merlin: Yes.
John: It's just made up of differently cooked rice.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Second question.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You got a lot of exercise.
Merlin: And I feel like I know that when I'm at elevations, let me just ask you the question.
Merlin: How did you sleep while you were there?
Merlin: Did you have improved sleep?
Merlin: I did have improved sleep.
Merlin: Because it really, I bet you got tuckered out.
John: I did get tuckered out.
John: I no longer have, my relationship with sleep is so changed now that
John: That I no longer... I mean, I'm working so hard right now not to judge myself all the time.
John: It's my number... Somebody asked me the other day, what would it take for you to be happy?
John: And I said, one thing.
John: I've narrowed it down to one thing.
John: Stop judging myself constantly from morning...
John: Okay.
John: Like stop just every second of the day.
Merlin: I got to tell you, buddy, as a friend, that's a good observation.
Merlin: It is very, very hard not to constantly judge myself.
Merlin: It's one of your core characteristics.
John: Yeah.
John: And I don't know.
John: I have no idea how to do it.
Merlin: When it comes to sleep, though, it's one of the worst things you can do.
Merlin: Again, believe me, I have a Kindle book about anxiety.
Merlin: The other thing with anxiety is like anxiety creates anxiety.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If you can't sleep and you yell at yourself about it, that's not going to make you sleep.
John: It's counterintuitive.
John: That's happening to me all the time now.
John: I was on an airplane.
Merlin: John Syracuse says you got to pop the stack.
Merlin: You got to get out of that state of mind.
Merlin: You got to go to a higher level.
Merlin: You need to get out of the trees and move to the forest.
Merlin: And you can look down and see the mortadella from wherever you are.
Merlin: It's critical.
Merlin: It's critical to make that big leap.
John: It's critical.
John: And I so anyway, I get this great night of sleep and then I wake up in the morning like fully rested.
John: And the first thing I think of is I should have woken up a long time ago because I have should have been doing all these other things like I don't know what like sharpening my fucking broad sword or something while you're at the ski place.
John: Who knows what I'm thinking?
John: You know, like, I'm always, I'm always, I've always got something.
John: Is that your first thought, though?
John: It's your first thought in the morning.
John: First thought, I've already, I'm already down on myself about something I haven't done.
John: Anyway, right now, I'm sitting here at my desk.
John: Yeah.
John: Next to this brand new Circuza designed Apple iPhone.
John: computer, which is bigger than any TV I ever had.
John: Is it an iMac?
John: It's an iMac.
John: Oh, they're such good computers, John.
John: You've chosen well.
John: Well, so I put it down next to my other computer.
John: I didn't want to make the other computer feel bad.
John: No.
John: Although the other computer barely, barely, barely, barely.
John: You can hear the little... Well, you're not Susan Roderick.
Merlin: You're not going to look at it and say you're going to die.
Merlin: No, no, no, I'm not.
Merlin: I know you're old, but you're going to get your shoes.
John: Shoes for the computer.
John: I can hear the habit trail in it just like... It's like my cat's meowing.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: That's how you know it's working.
John: This computer...
John: this computer was here and I was like I'm not ready to hook it up yet and it sat there for a couple of days and I was like I don't know I'm uncomfortable with it just sitting there so I put an afghan over it so now the computer is sitting in the room with an afghan it was an afghan that was knitted for me out of crazy wool by Christine Connor Jonathan Colton's wife she's awesome
John: It's a very interesting Afghan and it sits there.
John: So anyway, everybody that comes in now says, is that a computer under that Afghan?
John: Because it's kind of obvious.
John: A giant computer-shaped box.
John: It's none of your business.
John: And I say, well, maybe.
John: And they look at it a little more closely.
John: That's a Schrodinger situation.
John: It could be anything.
John: Is that the new computer that you've been talking about buying for years?
John: Is that a very small shiatsu chair?
John: And I'm like, and they say almost universally, almost to the man, why don't you take the computer out and set it up?
Merlin: Just the kind of thing somebody with no aloha would bring into your house.
Merlin: Right, right.
John: And I say, I don't know.
John: Maybe I'm not ready yet.
John: You spent months with a maybe diploma envelope.
John: You can take your fucking time.
John: Yeah, well, two years, I think, with the maybe diploma.
John: So I want to bring this thing and I want to hook it up, but there's all this, I don't know, there's all this juju.
John: And I don't, I'm not sure, like, honestly, I don't know, honestly, I'm not sure whether computers are Aloha.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: You just took it to a new level.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Especially maybe a new computer.
Merlin: And then the agita, as the Italians say.
Merlin: The Lamborghini people, right?
Merlin: Agita.
Merlin: You're going to have agita about this.
Merlin: And it might lead you to a state out of Aloha.
Merlin: I find this with new devices all the time.
Merlin: I get new devices all the time.
Merlin: And it does not make me happy sometimes setting it up.
Merlin: Sometimes I say a curse word out loud.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But now with my kettle, I'm very gentle.
John: Well, sure, because it's just like your cat.
John: It's like an old cat.
John: What am I going to do, yell at the cat?
John: Sure, if you step on a squeaky toy, the cat might die.
John: Everything's going to die.