Ep. 332: "Three Adjacents Apart"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Oh, hello, Merlin.
Merlin: Hi, how's it going?
Merlin: Merlin, man.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: Oh, it's me, it's me.
Merlin: Say hello, it's John.
Merlin: Is it me you're looking for?
Merlin: John.
Merlin: My scanner's not working.
Merlin: I got a lot going on.
Merlin: Do you have a lot going on this morning or a lot going on?
John: You seem to get a lot going on.
John: A lot going on.
Merlin: I got a lot going on too.
Merlin: I got a lot going on.
Merlin: How's that feel?
Merlin: You know, so far it feels great.
Merlin: I'm not – it's difficult because, you know, I'm doing pretty good in general.
Merlin: But sometimes I have trouble – I'm looking – this is the problem.
Merlin: This is it right now.
Merlin: You're experiencing it.
Merlin: I'm having trouble getting the clutch thing to work with the transmission thing sometimes where –
Merlin: I got a lot of energy and I'm revving hard.
Merlin: I got the torque, but I'm not always getting it into gear quite right.
Merlin: And that's, that's the thing I'm dealing with.
Merlin: But, but I got a lot, I got a lot, a lot going on.
Merlin: I got, I'm, I'm, you know, I, you're not late.
Merlin: You're, you're here, but in this, I've been using the time.
Merlin: Well,
Merlin: And, you know, I feel good.
Merlin: I've been looking at Game of Thrones dolls on Amazon.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I've been dealing with some flies on my plant.
Merlin: I've been dealing with that.
Merlin: What else?
Merlin: I made a joke about the president.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Five by five.
Merlin: I'm doing fine.
Merlin: Just fine.
Merlin: Hot diggity.
Merlin: There's a lot of dolls you can get for the Game of Thrones TV show.
Merlin: Which one are you looking for?
John: Khaleesi?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I ordered Daenerys.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Daenerys Targaryen.
John: Mother of dragons.
John: Yeah.
John: That's right.
John: It turns out.
John: Turns out.
John: Spoiler alert.
John: What?
John: No.
No.
John: Spoiler alert, Mr. What's-His-Face.
John: This was all a reveal last season.
John: Are you talking about George R. Martin?
John: No, not George R. Martin.
John: He's stopped giving a shit.
Merlin: He's got to be so fucking frustrated right now.
John: The king in the north, King James John.
John: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
John: Snowy Joe.
Merlin: We call him Snowy Joe.
John: Yeah, Charles.
John: He was lord of the nightlight.
John: Yep, yep, yep.
John: Yeah, turns out he all along, all along was a flim flam.
John: What?
John: You're saying he was a flim flam all along.
John: He was a fleege, and they didn't know it, and so he's all, like, on the knee.
John: He's on the knee.
Merlin: He's, like, down on the knee for Khaleesi, but it turns out... He's a joint bender, and then you've got the happy librarian who's getting new facts, and he thinks it's time to bring the rockets.
Merlin: Like, it's time...
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Ironsides is over here giving the stink eye to the guy on the horse.
John: There's a lot going on.
John: He's got the three-eyed raven, and he's just like, oh, you're the one that pushed me off the wall.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: Oh, you know it.
John: He's waiting for a friend.
John: Yeah, but homeboy's got, all of a sudden, he's got dark hair and a dark beard.
John: When did that happen?
Merlin: He got a different wig, and he's got a cloak.
John: He was LeBlonde before, and now he shows up and we're like, oh, I guess we're just supposed to accept that all of a sudden the dad in the Brady Bunch is a different dude?
Merlin: The Lannisters always repay their continuity problems.
Merlin: Anyways, I got a doll on the way.
Merlin: It's for my daughter.
Merlin: I got my daughter a doll.
Merlin: I didn't get the one I would have preferred, but I got one for my daughter.
John: Is this like the other dolls that you have in your office that have boobs, big boobs?
Merlin: No, the big boob one, which is your term, not mine, is on the wish list.
Merlin: I'm not ready to commit to a scale-sized Daenerys of my own.
John: Oh, I see, I see, I see.
Merlin: I got it for her because she's enjoying Game of Thrones by proxy in that weird way that a kid does.
John: Oh, the kids aren't actually watching it.
John: They're just conscious of it in the universe.
Merlin: Well, kind of.
Merlin: I don't want to just talk about Game of Thrones, but here's the thing.
Merlin: Okay, facts.
Merlin: Spoiler alert.
Merlin: House Flim Flam.
Merlin: You know what?
John: I don't care.
John: The Iron Throne.
John: No, the Iron Castle.
John: See, the white zombies can't make it to the Iron Sea.
Merlin: Do you understand the importance of iron, John?
Merlin: Iron?
Merlin: Iron.
Merlin: There's a reason all the statuary have iron swords that they're holding because iron becomes important.
Merlin: Iron is the throne.
Merlin: Iron is the thing.
Merlin: Iron is like Kryptonite to the Blue Boys.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing.
Merlin: You get your Valyrian steel or your dragonglass.
Merlin: I don't know the terms.
Merlin: It's the dragonglass.
Merlin: No, of course you don't.
John: They don't like iron.
Merlin: They don't like iron.
Merlin: See, it's all going to come together.
John: Are you telling me that the dragonglass killed the white goombas because it has iron in them?
Merlin: Well, I'm not saying anything, but I've watched...
Merlin: Let's just say, lightly, dozens of YouTube videos.
Merlin: There's a lot going on in the community right now.
Merlin: And there's a lot of thought that maybe, I'm just going to say, maybe Statuary's a blue boy.
Merlin: And they put the iron there to keep it in the Statuary because of the connections.
Merlin: There are connections that go far back in the prehistory.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Well, who are the Valerians?
Merlin: Oh, the – I'm not sure who the – I mean, no, no, wait.
Merlin: Now, what's the language?
Merlin: So it's not – anyways, so there was an article I should find because I refer to it a lot in trying to defend what I call parenting.
Merlin: Okay?
Merlin: And so there was an article –
Merlin: I want to say in the failing New York Times a while back, years ago, there was an article about the phenomenon by which little kids across the United States are very into Star Wars, although they've never seen, this is before Star Wars got so many properties, they'd never seen a Star Wars.
Merlin: They'd never seen a Star Wars.
John: That was my daughter until two weeks ago, Merlin.
John: She'd never seen anything about Star Wars, but she knew all about Dark Vader, and she knew all about Princess Leia.
John: And she said to me at one point, when does Leia learn that Luke is her brother?
John: Spoiler alert.
Merlin: Oh, come on, John.
Merlin: You're going to make me put a warning.
Merlin: I'm going to have to do a trigger content warning at the beginning of this.
John: I know.
John: I should have said spoiler alerts before.
John: But I've been saying spoiler alerts.
John: So you have to know that listening to the show, you're going to get some spoilers.
Merlin: Well, like many of my friends and myself, I think you've probably gotten in the habit of using spoiler alert as a dependent clause.
Merlin: Where you go, spoiler alert, blue guy's in the flim flam house.
John: Right.
Merlin: Or what have you.
John: Spoiler alert.
John: The ironborn are from the house of Greyjoy.
John: Oh, no.
John: Are killing them with the iron with guns and ships.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: So she's like, when does this happen?
John: And I was like, do you know anything about what happened?
John: You know, nothing.
John: John's daughter.
John: Yeah.
John: And she was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John: And then I went, she's like, what's that?
John: And I was like, what's that?
John: And then I said, ask questions, you will, or whatever I said.
John: And she was like, I got no idea what you're doing.
John: What are you talking about?
John: You got to lay it out for me.
John: So I was like, sit down.
John: I know.
Merlin: That's what I did.
John: I required sitting too.
John: Yeah.
John: And I had never, I just put it off.
John: I put it off.
John: I put it off.
John: And I know every other kid in her class has seen it a hundred times.
John: So I sat her down.
John: We watched the first Star Wars.
John: The movie called Star Wars.
John: Star Wars.
John: She enjoyed it.
John: She enjoyed Star Wars.
John: She wanted to know when Luke and Leia found out, spoiler alerts, that they were brothers.
Merlin: Is that after you sat her down?
John: Did she know going into it that there was a situation going on?
John: She knew.
John: She had heard many situations, but she had not threaded them together into a narrative.
John: Okay.
John: She just was like.
John: And the problem was we were watching Star Wars as a family.
John: And every time some of the new hope.
John: garbage came on the screen, my daughter's mother sitting at the end of the couch was like, nope, no, no, no.
John: And I was like, just settle down because, you know, my daughter's like, what, what?
Merlin: But you got to tell her the truth about Greedo.
John: right well i mean she she can't live that lie these days hands shot ninth or tenth right there's like who knows they keep changing it every few months yeah there's all this digitalis in it there's all these like stormtroopers riding giant worms and and uh and all of a sudden like uh jabba the hutt shows up and he's dancing around and it's just like what
John: And so her mom.
John: Why is he a different size now?
John: He's completely different size.
Merlin: He's different size.
Merlin: He's like half the size.
Merlin: I mean, is he a shapeshifter?
John: He's like human size.
John: And so Marla's mom is down at the end just like refuse.
John: She just refuses to accept.
John: No.
John: And I'm like, you seem to have this movie pretty well memorized to know that that little like 42 frames is
John: what doesn't belong.
John: And she, and she's not, she's not responding to me at all.
John: She's just zoomed in on the movie.
John: Like, Nope, Nope.
John: And everything on, uh, you know, everything around the cantina in, um, in that den of villainy.
John: Yeah.
John: Scum villainy.
John: Yeah.
John: Uh, is, uh, yeah, that's all just been just like, like dog humped by somebody up the chain that,
John: But but our little girl didn't know anything about it.
John: So then she got to the end of it.
John: And the following night, I was like, all right, sit down.
John: Here we go.
Merlin: You got to have the talk.
Yeah.
John: And so we go through Empire, and Empire didn't look like it had been trod upon.
Merlin: I understand from people with technical knowledge and more information and memory than me that that is the least trodden upon of the three original films by far.
John: There's some stuff out there in the snow, and there are some scenes where you're like, is this...
John: this is seems superfluous i remember just sort of jump cutting to to this and now we're we have to run to it through a through some there's extra running but i didn't get quite as many like no from the end yeah and then after a few days we watched the third one oh wow
John: And with the Muppets.
John: Did she like the Muppets?
John: And the Greebles and the Mogwai.
John: You got that rat puppet, you know?
John: Oh, the rat puppet that's like, or whatever.
Merlin: He has a name now.
Merlin: Oh, he's got a name?
Merlin: I believe his name is Salacious B. Crumb.
Merlin: Salacious B. Crumb.
Merlin: I believe he has a middle initial.
Merlin: Salacious B. Crumb.
Merlin: I'm not sure.
Merlin: Yeah, it's Salacious B. Crumb.
Merlin: I don't know what the B stands for.
John: It's like a lot of the song titles of The Long Winters, it does not appear – the title does not appear in the song.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Salacious B. Crumb does not – nobody ever calls him that.
John: No.
John: No.
John: No.
John: Anyway, so she watched it.
John: She got her – she got the satisfaction of learning –
John: Now she knows all the, she's got the backstory.
John: Really, all it changed in our household is now she comes around and says, do Luke, do Luke.
John: And I'm supposed to go, no, I'll never join you.
John: Nice.
John: And then sometimes I say, Luke, turn to the dark side.
John: Give in to your anger.
John: Good, good.
John: Do not know the power of the dark side of the force.
John: And she adores it all.
Yeah.
Merlin: And you're going to stop there, though, right?
John: You're not going to... Oh, no, I'm not going that way.
John: That's good.
John: That's good.
John: You're doing the robot.
John: That's the robot.
John: Yeah, that's the robot.
Merlin: That's the game on the robot.
Merlin: Yeah.
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John: I do.
John: I do a little bit.
John: I do a little, a little bit of all of it.
You know,
John: Just like being a dad anywhere, I'm basically like a marionette.
John: Pop it, pop it.
John: And all she has to do is like... I used to do a pretty good job.
John: You know, you can do so many of those voices where it's just like Frank Oz in a swimming pool.
Merlin: I know, it's serious.
Merlin: Okay, all right.
Merlin: So she's up to date with the Canonical 3.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So now.
Merlin: And she's talking about it too, huh?
John: She's talking about it.
Merlin: And you've shared it as an experience and it's been integrated into your life.
Merlin: That's so perfect.
John: And I don't, I could not, I can't.
John: So when she's like, why is mom yelling no?
John: I'm like, well, let's just leave.
John: And her mom wants to explain.
John: And I'm like, just, you know, just like leave it, leave it for a minute.
John: I don't want to already be telling her that this is wrong.
Merlin: She's got plenty of time to be disappointed in life.
Merlin: Just, just, yeah.
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I go through this with the goddamn remote.
Merlin: This is super fast.
Merlin: I fucking hate this so much.
Merlin: So we have an Apple TV, and we use an app called Hulu to watch regular TV.
Merlin: Sure, I understand.
Merlin: So I've got to use, and I don't know if you've ever experienced the Apple TV remote, but the combination of the Apple TV remote and Hulu is about the worst.
Merlin: Have you both experienced?
Merlin: Are you?
Merlin: Are you?
Merlin: Hulu.
Merlin: And it's so like taking a shit on a shit.
Merlin: It's the worst.
Merlin: It's...
Merlin: It's the remote sucks and the app is the service is good and the app sucks.
Merlin: And every time I go and try to do anything, it flies off in its own direction and does its own thing.
Merlin: And I'm like, and I say, cause I'm trying to stop cursing.
Merlin: I say, this is a very bad remote and a very bad app.
Merlin: And she says, no, it's not.
Merlin: It's a great remote and a great app.
Merlin: And I have to say to her, you've never used a TiVo remote.
Merlin: And she looks at me like I'm speaking, speaking Wookiee.
John: Wookie, yeah.
Merlin: I forget what Wookie's speaking.
Merlin: I don't really care.
Merlin: But she doesn't, because she's never known.
Merlin: She's never known from a good remote.
Merlin: All she knows is this dog shit app.
Merlin: Sorry, pardon my French.
Merlin: This terrible app and this terrible remote experience.
Merlin: And so what am I going to do?
Merlin: I'm going to pull her aside.
Merlin: I'm going to give her the history of ergonomic remotes.
John: let me ask let me ask you this because you're you're you're plugged into these people right i'm pretty plugged i'm a little plugged yeah you walk in you walk into the uh to the grand uh ballroom and they put a sash on you oh yeah yeah i get a medal and so my question and she and uh did she notice that she noticed there was no medal she did she very much noticed she was like why uh why does the wookie not get a medal yeah
John: And I was like, oh, no.
John: And then she said, why doesn't Leia get a medal?
John: And I was like, Leia's handing out the medals.
John: Leia doesn't need a medal.
John: It's like tipping the owner of the restaurant.
John: It's bad form.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, right.
John: You don't wear your own band shirt to the show.
John: You're that guy.
John: Then you're that princess.
John: And she was like, she accepted that.
John: I was like, no, no, no.
John: The princess is the one that she holds the key to the sack.
John: She's the one who medals.
John: She medals.
John: That's right.
John: But but my question is, for decades now, we've had the technology to communicate with televisions.
John: Right.
John: For a long time, they sat over there and you had to go get up and like massage them.
John: You had to move the rabbit ears.
John: John, you set up an entire Rube Goldberg device to control your television if memory serves.
John: I did.
John: I could pull on a string and it would rotate the knob.
John: It would only rotate it one way, but I could go from one day at a time to David Letterman's midday show.
Merlin: This is life, the one you get to go and have it all.
John: Or no, Flo's Diner.
John: What was that one called?
Merlin: It was called Alice.
Merlin: Alice, right.
Merlin: And there was a, yeah, then there was a, like most of those CBS shows, had an unsuccessful follow-up spinoff.
Merlin: I think it might have been called Flo's Diner.
Merlin: Flo's Place?
Merlin: Flo?
Merlin: Anyways, you and Rue Goldberg had a way to interact with your television, and it was, as they say in the Star War, light years away from where we are now.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: So we had yet to find the Rosetta Stone where we could translate hieroglyphics into whatever that middle hieroglyphic language and then into Greek.
John: But you could go over and touch the television, and it would understand what you wanted.
John: Absolutely.
John: There's never any misunderstanding about what volume means.
John: Exactly.
John: And then my dad got a remote.
John: And I don't know if you ever had one of these TVs, but the remote, you could push a button to change the channel, but it only went in one direction.
John: You could not go up and down.
John: So if you were on channel seven and you went to channel eight and then you wanted to go back to channel seven, you had to go all the way around the dial.
Merlin: Is this an old, old style chunk of chunk of?
John: This was a chunka-chunka where you pushed the remote and it went ka-chunk.
Merlin: Yeah, it's like a big console TV probably, yeah.
John: Yeah, so then as you went around the horn, as we used to say back in our seafaring days, you would go ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk, and get there.
John: So we now were speaking to the TV, but it was still just like...
John: Comment allez-vous?
John: Je vais bien.
John: Merci.
John: And then it's like, then you stare at each other and it's like, je m'appelle Jean.
John: Je m'appelle la bibliothèque.
John: Je m'appelle la bibliothèque.
John: Right.
John: From a bourgeois and bourgeois.
John: Maybe answer.
John: And they would say, you know, yeah, right.
John: The various fromages, but also phrases.
Yeah.
John: And the TV would be like, mm-hmm, you want to go to Channel 7 or 8?
John: You got a few options.
John: Yeah.
John: Then Merlin, then we changed it.
John: Then all of a sudden, the world opened up.
John: The babble fish went in the ear.
John: Yes.
John: And you could make a TV do whatever you needed.
John: Wow.
John: You go to this channel, you go to that channel, you punch it in, you go to here, you go to there.
John: It happened instantaneously.
Merlin: Like a 90s cable remote where you have all the control?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Even in the 80s.
Merlin: Even in the mid-80s, I could say – By the time I could afford cable, the remote that came – by the time that I could afford cable that didn't have a tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-turner, it came with a remote that was very capable for what it needed to do.
Merlin: Which means the second – the nanosecond I hit the button, it moved to the next station.
Merlin: The nanosecond I said go to channel 48.
Merlin: It went to channel 48.
John: MTV was channel 27 in Anchorage at the time.
John: It was just like kapoosh.
John: And there was none of that like, okay, now we've switched to the channel.
John: There's a little thing that says what the show is, but the screen is black.
John: Thank you.
John: Thanks, satellite.
Merlin: Thanks, satellite.
Merlin: Big improvement.
Merlin: Yeah, then it comes on.
Merlin: You change the channel and you just wait for 10 seconds?
John: It's fucking annoying.
John: You used to be able to go channel, channel, channel, channel, channel, channel.
John: And you would just, you'd get a split second and you're like, nope, nope, nope, nope.
John: Yes.
John: Yeah.
John: Anyway, so now we sit down in front of the TV and we do this thing.
John: So leave aside.
John: The 20 different way, you know, leave aside, first of all, the five remotes that are on the coffee table.
John: Listen, this is bad stand up that I'm doing right now.
John: Right.
John: This is just like this is some hack.
John: This is some.
John: Well, they make the whole plane out of airline food.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Did you ever notice?
John: What is the deal?
John: But I sit there and I'm like, how did, the thing is T9 on my Verizon flip phone was able to know what I was trying to say.
John: And the TV acts as though there was never a Rosetta Stone.
John: Napoleon's, whatever, whoever that lieutenant colonel was that found it,
John: under a wall of bricks and was like this stone seems important henry blake and then the and then the british stole it from him and then oh now it's in the albert and victorian albert museum or wherever it is yeah um the egyptians want it back it's like we never found it it's like we're still looking at hieroglyphics and going like i don't know what it is improvements are not improvements you're moving in the wrong direction guys moving in the wrong direction
John: But here you are, Merlin.
John: You've got an Apple TV.
John: You talk to Marco Arment.
John: You walk around in those circles.
John: When I meet somebody famous in San Francisco, they're like, oh, you know Merlin.
John: And I'm like, but you're like a superstar.
John: And they're like, yeah, but I owe it all to Merlin.
John: And I go, how do you owe it all to Merlin?
John: And they're like, you have no idea.
John: When he used to be a Merlin man?
Merlin: Yes, yes.
Merlin: When he talked into his wallet all the time?
Merlin: Surely he's not suffering from this.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Merlin's not going to have a problem in the air.
Merlin: And he's just like, he's the guy who invented a three by five card.
Merlin: So like, what problem could he possibly have with getting his television bent to his will, getting my TV to bend the knee?
John: Yeah.
John: Take me to Hulu.
John: I know.
John: I know.
John: Syria.
Merlin: No, it's the worst, John.
Merlin: It's like it's to quote a friend John Syracuse.
Merlin: It's, you know, worse and more diverse.
Merlin: Like it's not improving the thing that we want improved.
John: He's very clever that John Syracuse.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: He just he drops rhymes like a bad habit.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, it's crazy frustrating.
Merlin: And again, the kid's not going to know.
Merlin: The kid's not going to know.
Merlin: They don't know from control.
Merlin: They don't understand.
Merlin: I mean, how about this?
Merlin: As long as you're doing airline food, how about it used to be you'd sit on the phone and you could hear everything the other person was saying?
Merlin: Remember?
John: I don't know if you're on the internet.
John: No, I mean, yeah.
John: Earlier this day,
John: Uh, I'm going on the internet.
John: I'm looking around, you know, as you do, you kind of, you're opening doors.
John: You're like, uh, what's in here?
John: What's in there?
John: And, uh, spoiler alert, uh, uh, Matt Howie, Matt Howie's on there.
John: Our good friend and a friend of the program, Matt Howie.
John: Uh, and he's like, I've finally solved my wifi dropouts.
John: And he posts a picture of a stack of boxes, uh,
John: Like if Sonos decided to outfit your house and it's like a stack of boxes and they got all these ethernet, uh, you know, hookups and other things.
John: And there's a, there's a, one of those little, the satellite dish that's on the top of the millennial.
John: Oh, I see.
Merlin: Oh, this is just so you know, this is a fancy one.
John: Well, so I'm so he's like, this is this is this is fancy.
Merlin: This is very fancy.
John: He's like, boom, chakalaka.
John: This is now all my problems are solved.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And so I texted him and I was like, well, I want my problems to be solved.
John: What am I supposed to do?
John: Yeah.
John: And he sends me something like 40 texts and he's like, oh, they came through really fast.
John: They did.
John: Boom, boom, boom.
John: And he says, this is super nerd stuff.
John: This is like, he says, all this prosumer stuff is in my past.
John: And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: I'm not even at the prosumer level.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And he says, this is what tech companies and schools and universities use.
John: And now it's in my house and I'm never, I'm never going back.
John: I was like, we'll do it.
John: Is that what I want?
John: Do I want that?
John: What I want is a magic box that does all the things, right?
John: I just, I want to be able to say like, uh, can you just, uh, here's what I want to watch.
John: I want to, I want to see, uh,
John: uh, hell, hell divers of the Navy or whatever.
John: And then I want it to, I want it to appear on the screen.
John: I don't want to be like, is this on who?
Merlin: Can I jump in here, John?
Merlin: Cause I think part of the problem is, is it's no fun to wonder.
Merlin: It's no fun to wonder where you go like, huh?
John: Can I, can I run that down?
John: Can I, can I take, it's no fun to wonder and put it over here on my list of potential lyrics that I'm going to put it.
Merlin: I would be so honored.
Merlin: You also write down fan, uh, uh, fan death.
Merlin: Did you get that?
Merlin: what was fan death again jesus christ i'm gonna give that to somebody else if you don't use it um fan death oh korean fan death for the love of god oh right okay no no that's actually an omnibus is it gonna happen coming up yeah okay all right so you say it's no fun to wonder and i'll tell you what i mean what i what i mean is what i what i mean is uh you know it feels like the thing whatever the thing is
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: It feels like the thing is not really working.
Merlin: Well, not the thing.
Merlin: Whatever has led to me being in the situation I'm in right now, huh, huh, something isn't quite working.
Merlin: I wonder what it is.
Merlin: I wonder.
John: What is it?
John: Tell me what it is.
Merlin: I'm going to wonder.
Merlin: Tell me what you want.
Merlin: you really what i really really want what i want is i want to i want to i want to be able to know what broke is a guarantee that i will understand what shit broke is it just not to look at look at siri look at siri do you ever wonder do you ever wonder about siri
Merlin: I wonder.
Merlin: I wonder why that didn't work.
Merlin: I wonder if it didn't hear me at all.
Merlin: I wonder if a different dingus heard me.
Merlin: I wonder if it made it to the ubiquity Wi-Fi.
Merlin: I wonder if it made it to the clued.
Merlin: If it made it to the clued, was it able to make anything of what I said?
Merlin: If it made anything of what I said, was it able to return anything?
Merlin: And then it comes back and says, bleep bloop, I didn't understand something.
Merlin: You're like, I wonder.
Merlin: I wonder, wonder, wonder.
Merlin: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Merlin: why why why why why why i wonder why that didn't do what i expected and why she ran away but but in this instance why did she run away well i wonder if she'll stay you know why she cried yeah and why she lied to me anyways you don't want to wonder it's no it's what i'm trying to say is it's no fun to wonder no fun to wonder because then now you're thinking
Merlin: Now you're not doing a thing.
Merlin: Now you're thinking.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And in the case of the Wi-Fi, that's one piece of the wonder chain.
Merlin: I wonder if this is working.
Merlin: I wonder if I need to do something differently.
Merlin: Do I need to turn it off and on again?
Merlin: What do I need to do?
Merlin: I wonder.
Merlin: And it's no fun to wonder.
John: Here's what I wonder.
John: What do you wonder?
John: And in San Francisco and in the San Francisco environs, I know, I know for a personal fact that there are tens of thousands of
John: of, uh, of, uh, young guys who are about five foot nine and every once in a while a package arrives in the mail where somebody has curated some clothes for them, right?
John: Some Brown shoes.
John: And they are dressing like somebody sends them their clothes in a box.
John: It gets them like a slim fit pant.
John: Slim fit pant.
John: They went to a college somewhere and studied computer maths.
John: And now they carry between two and five iPhones and Androids on them at all times.
John: They're making $280,000 a year doing something I don't understand.
John: Before benefits.
John: Yeah.
John: They're disruptors.
John: Yep.
Yep.
John: And yet none of this stuff works.
John: We're behind, we're, we're worse than we were before.
John: Yes.
John: So what are they doing?
John: Stop disrupting and go back and make, yeah, right.
John: Like make the fucking television remotes work and make it so that what happened to Siri, right?
John: Like, like make us stop wondering and start reaping the benefits of
John: of the fact that now Matt Howey can talk to his garage door opener.
John: Yes.
John: Faster.
Merlin: Faster and more reliable.
Merlin: Hopefully more reliable.
Merlin: You don't want Matt to wonder.
John: No, no, no.
John: Faster, like a pig in shit.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, or like a...
John: Better, faster, stronger.
John: Able to leap capital T's in a single bound.
John: We can rebuild them.
John: That's right.
John: It's a word.
John: It's a plan.
Merlin: Panama.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: 100%.
Merlin: 100% agree.
Merlin: And if you allow me to borrow your barrel, I'd like to load it with some fish and shoot them.
Merlin: And here's one.
John: Would you send me a 100 emoticon, please, for that?
John: I would just like to get a 100.
John: Can I get a 100 emoticon?
Thank you.
Merlin: You know, well, when I first acquired my Apple TV, my fourth or fifth Apple TV, because you need to keep up or they're garbage anyways.
John: So you told me to get an Apple TV many years ago.
John: Did I?
John: I did that?
John: You did.
John: And I got one.
John: And I didn't have a TV.
John: So it wasn't.
John: Useful immediately.
John: Because you don't own a TV.
John: Because I didn't own a TV.
John: But then I gave it to my mom, who I bought a TV for on her birthday.
John: And I hooked it up.
John: And none of us could understand how it worked.
John: But it did turn her TV into an Apple slideshow at times when we didn't understand why.
John: But that was fine.
John: I wonder why it's doing that.
John: We couldn't get it to do it reliably or to actually put the pictures up we wanted.
John: Yeah.
John: Nor could we use it to watch TV.
John: But it didn't matter.
John: There it was.
John: And then she gave me the TV back and I took the Apple TV back.
John: And I was like, okay, now I'm watching shows on Amazon.
John: Let's see if I can get this to work.
John: Or iTunes.
John: I'd be fine.
John: iTunes.
John: Yeah.
John: And I plugged it in and it was wrong.
John: It was wrong.
John: It did not work anymore.
John: You're probably holding it wrong.
John: Well, and so I went on the internet and I opened some doors.
John: I looked around and I was like, why is this not working?
John: They were like, oh, that one's not compatible with anything anymore.
John: It's a hockey puck.
John: And I was, let me just say, pretty disappointed because this thing...
John: But you cost and ended up just being a slideshow facilitator for a slideshow you didn't really want.
John: Yeah.
John: For a couple of years.
John: And then now it's just like it's just kind of like your flip camera where you not not your flip phone, but that wonderful little flip camera.
John: Yeah.
John: That only lasted for... Idiot proof.
John: Idiot proof.
John: Nine months?
John: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, I own three of them, one of which broke and one of which I upgraded.
Merlin: And it was the best because you just hit a button and it got video and you put it on your goddamn computer like a gentleman.
Merlin: I'm entirely with you.
Merlin: And like, you know, all I was going to say was like, you know what?
Merlin: I don't need an Ikea app for Apple TV.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: There's an Ikea app.
Merlin: From whom?
Merlin: Kohl's.
Merlin: Oh, no, you don't need that.
John: KOHL.
John: They send me an email every day.
Merlin: Yeah, I guess I accidentally sign up for a lot of stuff, and I still get so many special offers.
Merlin: I get a lot of special offers.
Merlin: I don't want the special offers.
Merlin: And in that case, like, it's not Apple's fault that Ikea made an app and I downloaded it.
Merlin: Bad on me.
Merlin: But it's like, yeah, you know, chop, chop, guys.
Merlin: Like, you know, drop the Soylent and pick up the remote.
Merlin: You know, let's make this happen.
John: What's your DJ's name?
John: Cut Creator.
John: Cut Creator.
John: Yeah.
John: That's exactly right.
John: Yeah.
John: So I don't know.
John: I don't know what's happening.
John: You know what I think it is?
John: Like, people stop smoking cigarettes is one thing.
John: Oh, talk about that.
John: Well, you know, when you used to smoke cigarettes, you spent a lot of time standing outside.
John: Yeah.
John: Talking to other people you wouldn't normally talk to because they also were cigarettes.
John: Oh, shit, man.
John: That's so insightful.
John: What's your deal?
John: And they're like, I'm doing this.
John: And you're like, oh, that sucks.
John: And they're like, yeah, I know.
John: But we're working on it this way.
John: And you're like, oh, that's interesting.
John: Yeah.
John: And, uh, and then you see them again cause you're back out there smoking cigarettes again and pretty soon you got a relationship with somebody you wouldn't know otherwise.
John: It's like that thing that happened at UCLA when they closed the, they closed the engineering dining room and all the engineers had to go eat lunch.
John: All the engineering professors had to go eat lunch with the English professors, and then all of a sudden they solved for X. Turns out.
John: It turns out that that was how they figured out that particlons wiggle in the moonlight or whatever.
John: That's all because of X. That's amazing.
John: Yeah, it's all because they closed the engineering faculty lunchroom.
John: And so, but cigarettes, I feel like it slowed everybody down.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: It made you recognize that life was finite.
Merlin: And you really, you nail it, though.
Merlin: You are compelled, you are, you are really, you know that emoji where you got your brain coming out of a crack in your head?
Merlin: That's me right now.
Merlin: Because this makes a lot, this actually makes a lot of sense.
Merlin: I mean, it's not just about cigarettes, although that's a fantastic jumping off point.
Merlin: It's the like, hey, you know what?
Merlin: Here's why also why people don't know how to stand in a line anymore.
Merlin: People don't know how to be in public anymore because they don't have to be in public anymore.
Merlin: And I'm patient zero for this.
Merlin: You know, I get my paper towels delivered from a drone these days.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I don't need to talk to anybody.
Merlin: But if I was going to try and solve problems, it'd be nice to talk to people who have the problem.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: Don't make them wonder.
John: No, don't make them wonder.
John: I was a full-grown adult for at least...
John: 10 to 15 years during a period when I still would stand outside of a phone booth waiting for the person to get done talking on the phone so that it would be my turn to talk on the phone.
John: My turn to dig in my pockets for...
John: for metal coinage to pay for the privilege of calling someone on a phone that they may or may not answer because, not because they were screening their calls, not because they looked down at their phone and they saw it was me and they were like, ah, I'll let it go to voicemail, but because it meant that they were actually not home at that point.
John: And if they weren't home, the phone would just ring and ring and you couldn't turn it off.
John: It would just ring.
John: Ring, ring.
John: And sometimes when you were mad at a person or when you were really upset,
John: and you thought maybe they were hiding under their covers not answering the phone, you could passively, aggressively let it ring for 40 minutes.
John: You could sit.
John: I called the Greyhound bus station.
John: Off of that same quarter, you could just let it go and go.
John: You could just hurt somebody.
John: I called the Greyhound bus station in Washington, D.C.
John: one time, and nobody picked up the phone.
John: And I had this vision of Washington, D.C.
John: people saying,
John: sitting there doing something else.
John: I don't know what, I don't know what, uh, and the phone was ringing and I knew it's a bus station phone.
John: I knew it was loud and I just, I was so mad at them.
John: I was so mad at Greyhound at that moment that I just let this thing ring for 40 minutes.
John: They'll know.
John: And they know what they did.
John: If somebody's sitting in there just like, God damn it.
John: Right.
John: And, and, uh, and the thing is after a while I realized, uh,
John: I'm punishing myself here because I'm also standing in the cold, listening to this phone ring and just trying to send like pure hatred, like across the country through the wires here.
John: Yeah.
John: uh but that was how we lived that was how we lived yeah and yeah how many how many times did you stand out in front of a phone booth and start sweating the person with your eyes oh yeah because it was it was clear they were just having like a la-di-da conversation and you're like dude i'm standing outside this phone booth clearly i am also wanting to use the phone like show some courtesy yeah yeah absolutely yeah
Merlin: Yeah, and now we have other ways of passive-aggressively bothering people.
Merlin: You can sign them up for a newsletter or something like that.
Merlin: But I don't know how you sign Greyhound up for a newsletter.
Merlin: But yeah, it's not – but I take your point though of the –
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: See, this is going to turn into a thing, and I don't want to turn into a thing.
Merlin: But you wonder how much of any variety of micro and macro problems comes from just not enough exposure to other people.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: I'll pee on the third rail here.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: The whole thing of like everybody who voted for what's-his-name is a ding-a-ling.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, maybe.
Merlin: But also all those people who never – all those ding-a-lings, you know, they haven't met enough black people in power.
Merlin: And that's why they're the way they are.
Merlin: They haven't met enough gay people that aren't Satanists.
Merlin: It's just all lack of exposure to other people in an environment that isn't dangerous.
Merlin: And increasingly there are fewer and fewer opportunities –
Merlin: to be around people who aren't exactly like you without it feeling a little bit perilous.
Merlin: Those things don't exist.
Merlin: And this is not a pitch for some kind of a New York Times bestselling book about our differences, but I do think that's part of it.
Merlin: I mean, all around, it's just not enough exposure to people who aren't actually the worst, who aren't actually dangerous, but to people who just aren't-
Merlin: If you were out smoking cigarettes, you would have to leave because an office, let's be honest, an office, a floor, an office, a suite, that's a tribe.
Merlin: You need to walk out of your tribe and it takes a while.
Merlin: You got to take the steps of the elevator.
Merlin: You got to go outside.
Merlin: It's the 90s.
Merlin: So you have to go to the smoking area and then you meet a bunch of other people.
Merlin: Where suddenly you're in the same caress and you never knew it.
Merlin: You're all in the same smoking caress and you're hanging out together and you got to get along because guess what?
Merlin: You're addicted and you'll be back.
Merlin: You don't have the opportunity to be a homemade dick.
Merlin: You're going to have to make some friends.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And you will make a friend because you all are addicted.
John: Now you're addiction friends.
John: Do you remember when I used to come over to your house and we would sit in the backyard for an hour trying to smoke cigars?
John: Yes.
John: I mean, not trying to, but it takes an hour to smoke a cigar.
John: You can't do it fast.
Merlin: And the thing is, Eric would always try to smoke it.
Merlin: First of all, he would get a really bad light on it.
Merlin: He was terrible at lighting it.
Merlin: And then he would try to smoke it like a cigarette.
Merlin: And it was very upsetting to watch.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, you know, young people need they need time to figure it out.
John: You got to watch people smoke cigars for a while before you really like can switch gears.
John: I remember the first couple of cigars I smoked.
John: Yeah, I smoked them like a joint.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then I was sick, sick for a month.
Merlin: That'll hurt your tummy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But but but I'm not I'm not here to stand for cigars.
Merlin: It's you know, I don't have so many of those as I used to.
Merlin: But but, you know, it does slow you down a little bit.
Merlin: One problem is that all the people who are famous cigar smokers are mostly terrible, and so that's something to keep in mind.
Merlin: That's true, too.
Merlin: Yeah, you never see Gandhi on the cover of a magazine smoking a cigar.
John: No.
John: You know what's interesting about that?
John: You hardly ever see Gandhi on the cover of a magazine.
John: Just in general.
John: Full stop.
John: Yeah, except for like Passive Resistance magazine, which I used to subscribe to.
John: I loved the back page.
John: They always had some hilarious.
Merlin: Oh, is that where you do the fold over to make a picture?
John: Yeah, a picture of somebody like passively resisting the police.
Merlin: Yeah, that hilarious.
Merlin: Those Don Martin cartoons.
John: Oh, the best.
Merlin: Oh, Passive Resistance.
John: What a great magazine.
John: You know, this is something that I think you might find interesting.
John: Are you familiar with the personage...
John: Uh, uh, in the, in the form of Allie Gertz.
Merlin: Have I ever, Oh, I, I, I, I believe I hang on.
Merlin: No, I do know her from the internet and I think she's on one of my Twitter lists, I believe.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yep.
John: Yep.
Merlin: Well, so there's different Allison's and I get confused.
Merlin: Allison Gertz.
Merlin: There she is.
John: Yeah.
John: Uh, she's a young person.
John: She was born in the nineties.
John: Uh,
John: Uh, and I met her over, uh, I met her a long time ago because she was, uh, she was a comedy song person.
John: Oh, wait a minute.
Merlin: She's not on Twitter.
Merlin: Is this the Alison Gertz American AIDS activist?
John: No, different one.
John: Maybe two L's.
John: Two L's and Gertz.
John: But she had songs about, I don't know, Star Wars or whatever.
John: I don't remember exactly.
John: But she was adjacent to people who were adjacent to some of the comedy songwriters that I know.
John: Okay.
John: Although never directly adjacent, always three adjacent apart.
John: Okay.
John: And now she's born in the 90s.
John: Now, she is, I think, editor of Mad Magazine.
John: Oh, wow.
John: Editor of MAD.
John: I'm not even sure if she's an editor of MAD or if she is the editor of MAD.
John: I don't even know.
John: G-O-E-R-T-Z, Gertz.
John: Gertz, yeah.
John: G-O-E-T-Z.
John: Some sort of German way of saying Gertz.
Merlin: Got it, got it, got it, got it.
John: Gertz where there's no T, you know what I mean?
John: Uh-huh, uh-huh.
John: And so it's just like I never thought I would know an editor, an editor of MAD, let alone the editor of MAD.
John: And especially not that that person would be somewhere on the order of 23.
John: five years younger than me right i mean like how are what are the chances that math that math doesn't add up no you would imagine that somebody was archie bunker aged to get that kind of job yeah right it should be uh mort drucker or somebody or or it should be uh yeah somebody that's like or the black spy
John: Black spy, right.
John: That guy's mischievous.
John: It should not be white spy, right?
John: Well, not anymore, no.
John: It should be Alfred E. Newman, although he's young.
Merlin: But wasn't he like the Stan Lee of Mad Magazine?
Merlin: I mean, he gets executive producer credit on everything, but he makes a cameo.
Merlin: He was in Up the Academy very briefly.
John: God, I want to be the Stanley of something.
John: Oh, shit, dog.
John: I mean, that's the equivalent of being the retired director of CIA.
John: Oh, even more so.
John: Oh, man.
John: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I like that so much.
John: Yes.
John: Just to be this.
John: Just something.
John: You know, you don't want to be the Sergio Aragonis of something.
John: No, because you're just in the margins.
Merlin: Yeah, he's literally a marginal character.
John: Yeah.
John: He's like 142 and he's still at Comic-Cons, you know, drawing things that people are going to get tattooed on their buttocks.
John: Now draw Ray for me.
John: What does Stan Lee do?
John: I mean, he does less work than George R.R.
John: Martin.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: Do the R's stand for anything?
Merlin: he's so mad he must be so fucking mad right now he everybody's all mad at him to write more books and and the tv show lapped him and now he's like well fuck it like what now what do i do what am i gonna do i'm gonna write to the show like there's a team of writers writing for the show what am i at yeah i can't deviate too far i'm sitting here with my hat in my head my dick in my hand like what am i gonna do
John: Maybe the RR stands for Rex Reed.
John: Maybe it's George Rex Reed.
Merlin: That would be fun.
Merlin: I think he still has that live journal, right?
Merlin: It could be Ronald Reagan.
Merlin: Huh?
Merlin: It could be Ronald Reagan.
Merlin: It could be Ronald Reagan Jr.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Stanley of something.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I took you off what you were saying.
John: Star Wars.
John: No, I was so far off what I was saying.
John: Oh, so now here, speaking about the Stars War.
John: Yeah.
John: You tell me now what to do.
John: Do I take her back, take her forward to back to the one with the Rastafarian whatever llama, the Rastafarian llama or whatever.
John: Yeah.
John: Or do I pretend that those three never existed, which really for all intents and purposes they didn't, and just jump ahead to Rey and the stuff that's come subsequent where it's just like, okay, this is fun again.
John: And we're not, there's no Imperial Senate.
John: We're not talking about trade wars.
John: Yeah.
John: There's no Rastafarians.
John: War!
John: There are heroes on both sides.
John: Yeah, that kind of stuff.
John: Yeah.
John: And just jump right into the latest stuff where it's like,
John: hey, this slim young woman is dressed all in jute and linen, and she can jump up and down, and maybe she's Luke Skywalker's daughter.
Merlin: Spoiler alert.
Merlin: Well, I'm going to say something here that seems like it's one thing, but I hope it'll be another thing.
Merlin: Because it seems like what I'm going to say is, skip all the prequels because they're the worst.
Merlin: And, you know, I mean, they're...
Merlin: They're not that bad.
Merlin: Are they not?
Merlin: Well, I mean, they're not.
Merlin: Here's what I'm going to say, though.
Merlin: I'm saying this to you.
Merlin: You know, I don't like to do this on the program.
Merlin: I'm going to say this to you, dad to dad.
Merlin: This is a dad to dad thing.
Merlin: OK, so here's the thing.
Merlin: Just take all this out.
Merlin: Just cut all this.
Merlin: I'll cut all this out.
Merlin: Okay, so do you ever find yourself – this is not just about media.
Merlin: This could be about lots of things.
Merlin: But like – well, I'll speak for myself.
Merlin: I have definitely found that I will limit my daughter's exposure to things that I don't want to have to deal with a lot.
Merlin: So we do try to like – I mean cursing is a bad example because she's heard a lot of that.
Merlin: But like I don't want to expose – for example –
Merlin: We do not and will not ever have the video game Fortnite.
Merlin: um because of a variety of reasons that include every kid she knows you don't get a little into fortnight you get all the way into fortnight and that's all the things you do now she can play her a little bit of her zelda game and that's fine minecraft she can walk away from i don't want to get i've said this has been my business advice to you for years is ask yourself if you want 10 times more of whatever the thing is right do i want 10 times more huh
Merlin: Ten times more?
Merlin: Do you want ten times more?
Merlin: Ask yourself, whatever it is right now, you want ten times more of that?
Merlin: So, in the case of this, what I'm going to say is tread lightly because it has been theorized that the prequel movies...
Merlin: something we had a little bit in Jedi that gets you see a lot more in the prequels is like, these are kind of movies for kids.
Merlin: So like, do you want to be watching the prequels a lot?
Merlin: What happens if she likes the prequels a lot more than the other ones?
Merlin: So I'm not just here to go, there were terrible, but you could show it to her.
Merlin: It's fine.
Merlin: But the thing is, is the quality where you need it to be for this to become a thing.
Merlin: And,
Merlin: And does it represent a – and as we say in law, does it represent an attractive nuisance where if she gets too into it, you're going to want to like throw something on a wall?
Merlin: That's my advice on that because there are other Star Wars properties that are very high quality that aren't the prequels.
Merlin: And I think you should consider some of those.
Merlin: So first of all, first of all, am I making any sense at all?
Merlin: I've had a really busy morning and I might not be thinking straight.
Merlin: Does that make sense?
Merlin: What do you want 10 times more of even with your kid?
John: Well, here's the thing about things that are made for kids.
John: I don't necessarily think that they are good.
John: They are made for kids have terrible, terrible taste.
John: They do.
John: And when we were kids, the things that were made for kids all involved either a cat getting hit on the head with a mallet or a coyote falling to his death repeatedly or being blown up or set on fire.
John: Sometimes like a fat-headed man with kind of like a side lisp would try and shoot a rabbit or a duck.
John: And then he'd get on the floor and run in a circle.
John: What's that?
John: He'd run in a circle.
John: And he'd say, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.
John: The barrels of his shotgun would somehow get twisted or tied in a knot such that he would explode.
John: Maybe sometimes some, like, teenagers, including, like, a Zaftig, one that was, like, kind of cuter than the rest of them, would get into a very cool van.
John: and uh and they would and then there would be kind of a like a wicked landowner from a nearby town who would dress up like a ghost yes for for business reasons but they would find out about it yeah right right right uh what else there was um oh there was a dog that had a cape that could fly through the air that was like sort of a hapless superhero dynamite there was there was a there was a pink in color
John: And a couple of Russian spies who also like their plans always went awry.
John: Mm hmm.
John: There was a super dumb Canadian Mountie.
John: These were the things that they gave to us, and we lapped them up.
John: Oh, they were wonderful.
John: Never got tired of them.
Merlin: We also didn't have unlimited exposure to them.
Merlin: If you wanted to see the results of seven people on a three-hour tour, you were going to get that at 4.30 and then a 5 o'clock Star Trek came on.
Merlin: You couldn't just make a Gilligan's Island anytime you wanted or say, let's watch that again, right?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You could not ever see it again, right?
Merlin: Economists would call this, I believe they call it scarcity.
Merlin: There was scarcity.
Merlin: Scarcity.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: But once you own Star War and you own it in your home, you can Star War anytime you want.
Merlin: It's like pizza on a bagel.
John: Can't do it.
John: I know kids that have seen Frozen 100 times at least.
John: 100 times.
John: Yeah.
John: Because every time anybody gives them a lollipop and they start to sugar freak...
John: uh their mom sits him in front of the in front of frozen it's like i prozac yeah it's like i prozac yeah that's that pbs show i remember that i prozac i prozac yeah uh it was the isaac asimov record wasn't it uh is that the one carl sagan sent into space yeah that's right it was chuck berry and isaac asimov a gold record that had a guy doing jumping jacks
Merlin: This will be clear to them.
Merlin: It's in proportion to the size of the capsule.
Merlin: What aren't you understanding?
Merlin: Is this guy in motion?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It doesn't seem like you can stand that way.
John: Wait a minute.
John: So is the water molecule actually that size?
John: Because that seems really big.
John: You guys must have huge water.
John: What am I supposed to learn from people saying hello in 400 languages?
John: Yeah.
John: That we edited poorly.
John: Yeah.
John: Even if I learned that all of them are saying the same word over and over, it helps me in no way.
John: In no way.
John: Unless I'm Jodie Foster's dead father.
John: Oh, right.
John: In which case, they know things that would blow your mind too much.
John: She can still hear the lambs crying.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I don't know, man.
Merlin: That's my thought on that.
Merlin: Now, here's what I'm going to recommend you check out if you're open to this.
Merlin: It's a show called Star Wars The Clone Wars, and it's animated.
Merlin: It's available on Netflix, and it's very high quality.
John: Reeb.
John: So will that, Star Wars, The Clone Wars, will that put me in a posture where I can get to Rey, or does that make me need to go watch the Rastafarian Llama?
Merlin: Don't ask me how I know or remember this, but if memory serves, Clone Wars, the cartoon show, happens in the run-up to episode three.
Merlin: of the prequels you haven't seen.
Merlin: You don't need to have seen the prequels to watch this, I don't think.
John: So three is the one where Dark Vader goes into the lava pit and then comes out Dark Vader.
Merlin: Oh, right, right, right, right.
John: Is that three?
John: Isn't that where Anakin gets his comeuppance?
John: That was the one.
Merlin: It's like he's basically the Black Knight, right?
Merlin: And like he's just a flesh wound.
Merlin: And every time we would watch that scene, my daughter and I would look at each other and go, wow, he's having a really bad day.
Merlin: It's like you thought your day was bad.
John: He has a car that turns into a motorcycle?
Merlin: Yes, I think.
Merlin: Are you talking about Spider-Man?
Merlin: Who are you talking about?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Spider-Man.
John: Hong Kong Phooey?
Merlin: Hong Kong Phooey.
Merlin: Number one super guy?
Merlin: Hong Kong Phooey.
Merlin: That's problematic.
Merlin: That's problematic.
Merlin: Now, Skyman Carruthers, you know?
John: come on what's my scream doc i'll never say a bad word about scat oh love the scat man i'd kill for that pain he has in the shining although although scatting yeah is one thing yeah but to be a scat man is a little bit shy
John: You're saying it would be Das Scheissemon.
John: Yeah, Das Scheissemon, and that's a different kind of film.
John: That's a film that comes in a brown wrapper.
John: Das Braun wrapper.
John: That's Robert Brown.
Merlin: Robert Brown.
Merlin: It's as brown as the shite you should receive, my Scott man.
John: So I know that there's this side universe of Star Wars fan stuff and cartoons and comic books and other things.
John: And my assumption with all that stuff is it's just people running around in a circle because there are enough people that want to see...
John: uh, C3PO that they'll read a comic book where he just runs around and it doesn't like, you mean like, like the beast man that runs on the ground?
Merlin: Kind of like that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It doesn't.
John: Oh dear.
John: Oh dear.
John: Oh dear.
John: Oh dear.
John: Oh, Master Luke, Master Luke.
John: The thing is, like, you can't advance the plot or take the plot somewhere else, right?
Merlin: Because there's fixed, like as the doctor would say, there's fixed points in time.
Merlin: If you're doing a show between the shows, you do a show between the shows, you know where that needs to land, you know?
Merlin: And when you watch a prequel, you're like, I'm pretty sure that guy makes it because he's in the other movies, right?
Merlin: That kind of thing?
John: Yeah, I mean, a parsec is a measure of distance, not of time.
John: Absolutely.
John: And you're never going to be able to change that.
John: Yeah, you can't land on a fraction.
John: The man who shaves his neck, you know, the bull the bullfrog with the with the with the the chin strap.
John: Oh, yes.
John: Making decisions about the universe that the rest of us cannot control.
John: And so make all the comic books you want.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But something's going to happen.
John: There's going to be a trade war.
John: The Universal Congress is all going to sit in their Whoopi Goldberg hats.
John: Yeah.
John: And, you know, they're going to make some choices.
John: At one point, there's like... I vote present.
John: At some point in time, there were multiple Yodas, right?
John: I mean, the first question Marlo asked... You think he's the last Yoda?
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, there had to be other Yodas.
Merlin: Well, I mean, one assumes if Yoda procreation works the way we think.
John: Exactly, right?
John: Oh, my finger was chopped off, it was.
John: And now it's a female Yoda.
John: Changed into CGR, it was.
John: My little girl said, is Yoda a boy or a girl?
John: And I said, I don't know.
Merlin: That's a little bit problematic.
Merlin: I hope you had to talk.
Merlin: I hope you hit pause somehow.
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: If you could figure out your remote, you hit pause and you say, let's talk about how problematic it is to gender or misgender the Yoda.
John: You don't want to misgender Yoda.
John: Yeah.
John: But it raised a lot of questions.
John: It's not necessarily just because Yoda has a beard doesn't necessarily mean anything.
John: Hmm.
John: And so.
John: Oh, you know what?
John: Thank you.
John: That's super woke, John.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, I'm not you.
John: It's not your first day.
John: But what are we going to do when the question comes up of what happens when two Yodas meet coming through the rye?
John: You know, like Yoda's 900 years old, but 840 years ago.
Merlin: Oh, you say it's the law of large numbers.
Merlin: There's got to be another Yoda out there.
John: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Merlin: Unless he's literally dying off like one of those Szechuan turtles.
Merlin: You know, they just lost the last turtle over there.
Merlin: They lost the last turtle.
Merlin: The last female turtle just died over in Asia.
Merlin: And we don't want that to happen to Yoda, whatever his gender.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Whatever their gender is.
Merlin: Whatever his gender is.
John: We watched Yoda walk through the curtain to the other side, or at least he might have just been going to sleep.
John: It's unclear within the film.
John: You don't actually see his...
John: Little his or her or their little chest rise and fall and then stop.
John: He just sort of goes, oh, and then he's like, then he stops.
Merlin: He might just be resting so he can steal more snacks.
John: Who knows what a Yoda does, right?
Merlin: And who knows what a Yoda needs?
Merlin: That aloha is still there for you, John.
Merlin: You are looking hard at what you're seeing and making sure it's what you're seeing is what you're seeing in that case.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: I say aloha to you.
Merlin: You get this.
Merlin: But what comes next?
Merlin: Where do we go now?
Merlin: Do we go to the rye?
Merlin: Do we go to the rye and look for two Yodas that happened to meet?
Merlin: Spooky Yodas at a distance?
Merlin: What happens now?
John: There were two Yodas hugging at some point in history.
John: In pre-history, let's say.
John: At least there were at least two Yodas.
John: We don't know what happened to the other Yoda.
John: The other Yoda is never described.
John: But I believe... He probably joined a Reddit about incels.
Merlin: Yeah, that's... He's on a Yoda Reddit.
Merlin: Is Yoda a name?
Merlin: I'm not going to look this up.
Merlin: Is Yoda the name of the character or is that the kind of thing he is?
John: Well, this is the problem with Chewbacca, right?
John: Chewbacca speaks Wookiee.
John: He's never actually said Chewbacca.
Merlin: oh right all he can do is go so how do we know his name is chewbacca oh who named him that that could be like like it could be like calling him chief what's it exactly kakashi kayashi i forget what he's from the name of the place he's from it's got lots of y's in it kashi but maybe that's like calling him chief or a ranger welsh planet oh um
John: Is that on Discovery Channel?
John: Where is that?
John: The Welsh planet.
John: Everybody takes their promises back.
John: No, I'm Welsh, so it's a thing I can say.
John: It's okay for you.
John: It's affectionate for you.
John: We're trying to take that slur back.
John: But...
John: But yeah, so when Chewbacca's talk to each other, they just call each other.
John: And so Han is like, Chewie, get us out of here.
John: But it's like, where did Chewie come from?
John: That could be a slur.
John: He could be calling him like.
Merlin: It's the same way that a dog knows.
Merlin: Let's say you get a bird and the bird, you say, pretty boy.
Merlin: And the bird turns around and goes, what?
Merlin: Like he looks at you.
Merlin: He or she looks at you and knows the pretty boy is the canning for me.
Merlin: I am bird.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
John: Right.
John: In that case.
Merlin: I am bird.
John: That's how he says on.
John: I am bird.
John: Hear me roar.
John: And so so he could be saying like, hey, ping pong.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Get on the you know, like, where does the word even come from?
John: I know.
John: So there are lots of Chewbacca's, but they're called Wookiees, but they've never said the word Wookiee either.
Merlin: We know the job is is is the hut.
Merlin: And I think he speaks Huttese.
Merlin: That might be his family's language, but I'm not going to look it up.
Merlin: So in the same way that you go on the internet and open a door and you say, hmm, I wonder what's going on in here.
Merlin: You're saying, what doors do I provide?
Merlin: Will they open?
Merlin: And am I prepared for what's behind the door?
Merlin: What's behind the door?
Merlin: You know I'm not afraid.
Merlin: You're going to have to deal with that with your youngling, as we say.
Merlin: Sorry, you haven't seen that one.
Merlin: But your youngling.
John: So if I was going to read a Star's War comic book, I would buy...
John: A comic book about the Hutts.
John: Oh.
John: Right?
John: Like, there are other Hutts.
John: The reason that he's, it's like Jabba the Hutt is like Zorba the Greek.
John: Huh.
John: Right?
John: Oh, I see what you're saying.
John: Zorba's a Greek.
John: There are other Greeks.
John: Okay.
John: And when Zorba's with his people, they're not like, hey, what's up, Benny the Greek or whatever.
John: It's not necessary in that context.
John: Right, right, right.
John: The only reason we call him Zorba the Greek is because he's the, well, because actually he's in Greece.
John: It's the other guy, the non-Greek guy, the narrator, who's like, this is Zorba the Greek.
Merlin: And if, God rest his soul, they ran into Jimmy the Greek, he would need to say, are you the betting man?
Merlin: He'd say, of course I am, I'm Jimmy the Greek.
Merlin: You know that already.
Right.
Merlin: If Zorba and Jimmy met one another going through the rye, they wouldn't need to talk about that.
John: You're like, Zorba, what's up?
John: It's Jimmy, yo.
John: Yeah.
John: So it's only like calling him Zorba the Greek.
John: It's very colonialist because really he's only calling him that when he gets back to the Explorers Club and he's talking to the other people not from Greece.
John: Whoa.
John: Yes.
John: So that's why the movie's called that.
John: We don't say Gandhi the Indian, do we?
John: No, we do not.
John: We do not say Churchill the Briton.
John: No, no.
John: But we do say Jabba the Hutt, and it's because he's the only Hutt on Tatooine.
Merlin: i don't i don't know if that's right we had a sticker in a book and this might come from clone wars of a little of a little hut there's a little hut uh in a backpack and it was really cute it was a little hut a backpack i know i know it's serious jesus