Ep. 334: "Ms. Manager"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
John: Are you remembering to record this time?
Merlin: You got me with all your japes.
Merlin: That was a good one.
Merlin: um well you know i i take a lot of cues from the interwebs oh yeah i like the thing where they uh where they uh take the joke you made and then they either tell it back to you or they explain it to you yeah that's right that's where it's like being a lady
John: Yeah, nobody understands my joke, so they can't tell it back to me or explain them to me.
John: Oh, you think that stops them?
John: I've been there.
Merlin: I've been standing there when it happens.
Merlin: Head and hands.
Merlin: I know.
John: I keep waiting for somebody to come up and say, keep a small bag packed, am I right?
John: And then hand me a bag of money.
John: That would be somebody doing a great job of riffing
John: On one of our riffs.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: A lot of people... Well, you know how I feel about putting a hat on a hat.
John: Yes.
Merlin: You got to make one joke at a time.
Merlin: Unless part of the joke is that it's several jokes.
Merlin: That's a very high level.
Merlin: That is.
Merlin: To be operating at.
Merlin: But the thing is, you make a connection like that.
Merlin: And you know that John likes money.
Merlin: He's not made of stone.
John: Right?
John: Right.
John: What if you came up to me and said...
John: all the great shows and they handed you a raccoon no no no and then said handed me a business card that said producer of shows i would like to produce a show of yours huh yeah you turn that over in your mind sometimes like like obviously hoping that it's not a super fan who merely wants to wear your skin that it could be somebody offering you uh like some kind of an opportunity or for instance um somebody come up and go
John: Super Train.
John: And then it turns out that they work for Cal Trains.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: And they want me to be the boss of it.
Merlin: This is not utterly dissimilar from the Anchorman situation.
Merlin: Oh, sure, right?
John: If somebody said Mr. Anchorman and then they were an UFO.
Merlin: Yeah, it'd be hard to know at first.
Merlin: I mean, you're going to have to take... One imagines that you're going to have to take a lot of strange offers.
Merlin: You know what they say, just for the anchorman you want.
Merlin: You're going to have to take a lot.
Merlin: I don't want to say take.
Merlin: You're going to have to field a lot of strange offers.
Merlin: In a way, it becomes like kind of a brutal existential version of LinkedIn, which I think is called LinkedIn.
Merlin: Yes, and you want to make people part of the, I would like to make you part of my professional network, beep boop.
John: So I'm not usually somebody that likes to bring in
John: I like to blow up the outside world.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: God bless you for that.
Merlin: I'm looking at this right now.
Merlin: It says this is the 334th episode of this program.
Merlin: I don't know if that's correct.
Merlin: That's what it says.
Merlin: 334.
Merlin: I was looking at that.
Merlin: I'm in a reflective mood this morning because I haven't slept much.
Merlin: I was looking at that number and I said, huh, huh.
Merlin: Can you believe that?
Merlin: It's been a long time.
Merlin: 334.
Merlin: 334.
John: You know, sometimes you see those shows where you're like,
John: Oh, they've been doing that since 3-4, and you're like, hmm, wow.
John: You know, 3-3-4 is the area code of southern Alabama.
Merlin: No, you just knew that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Did you have a pal there or something?
John: You know, I have friends all over.
Merlin: Yeah, you've been everywhere, man.
Merlin: So you don't like to blow up the outside.
Merlin: I just wanted to say in passing, I'm so goddamn tired, John.
Merlin: I feel like it took a while.
Merlin: What does one say?
Merlin: I'm so fucking tired.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You've been real good about not bringing in the outside world because you know it's a bee in my goddamn bonnet.
John: I know.
Merlin: Maybe.
Merlin: I feel like that's a capitulation that you've allowed.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: And you've been good about that.
Merlin: You've stopped addressing the audience mostly.
John: Yeah, for the most part.
Merlin: And then we learned a lot about the contents of the show.
John: I've done a lot of this just to make you more comfortable and happy, just to make us more happy.
John: Do you think it's improved the show, John?
John: Well, you know, I think we bounced along for a while, but yes, I think we've improved the show quite a bit.
John: Oh.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I don't want to take off your topic.
Merlin: Go ahead.
Merlin: It's a goddamn topic.
John: Oh, well.
John: I woke up at 3.30 a.m., John.
Merlin: I'm not on a John Roderick schedule at this point.
Merlin: It's not working out for me.
John: I went to bed at 3.30.
Merlin: Oh, I almost texted you.
Merlin: I should have said, hey, buddy.
Merlin: You should have, because I was there.
Merlin: I don't know if you keep your phone on.
Merlin: I watched the program last night, and I went to...
Merlin: You know, as long as we're being pedantic, there's a trending, I'm going to say this and then I'll walk away from it.
Merlin: There's a trending search right now on Twitter for Cersei C-E-R-S-I.
Merlin: And that bugs me.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Yeah, that bugs me.
Merlin: I almost texted you.
Merlin: I went in and I made water.
Merlin: And I thought about saying, hey, buddy.
Merlin: But then I thought, I don't know if John keeps his phone on and rumbly at night.
Merlin: I hope you put it in Do Not Disturb.
Merlin: But I don't know if you do.
Merlin: And I didn't want to, you know, you don't want to wake up and get a bunch of messages from people.
John: Well, you know, I'm always happy to get a late night message from you.
John: I went to bed at 3.30 or 4, you know, somewhere in that range.
John: And then at 8, I was shaken awake by the family that I'm staying with, which happens to be my family.
Yeah.
Merlin: I thought maybe you'd become a boarder.
John: I am, basically.
Merlin: Biscuits are on, Mr. John.
John: And they were standing at the foot of my bed going, where are the car keys?
John: Oh, no.
John: And I said, huh, what?
John: I was asleep for four hours.
John: And they were like, where are the car keys?
John: And so I jumped up and I got a towel on.
John: And the little one is, you know, she doesn't like to be late for school.
John: So she's just like...
John: She's mad and yelling, but also somehow carrying a book and reading it at the same time.
John: Wow.
John: And so I go all the way down in the basement.
John: I'm like, is it in the backseat of the car?
John: And then I realize somebody's moved all the stuff.
John: So then there's a jacket on the floor.
John: Why do they move the stuff?
John: They do it.
John: I'm shaking the jacket.
John: I find a couple of sets of keys, not the right ones.
John: Oh, did I mention I'm in a towel?
John: I'm wearing a towel.
Merlin: Because you're a man, above all, you're a natural man.
Merlin: Not in the toxic masculinity sense, but you'll sleep, Commando.
Merlin: You enjoy it.
Merlin: Don't touch my feet, and I'm going to be naked, so bring a towel if you're going to yell at me in the morning.
John: Well, it's not that I can sleep au naturel, but that I must.
John: Oh, I'm going to put a fork in that.
John: If you invite me over, be forewarned.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I always felt like when we sat around in our underwear together, once again, like our sleep patterns, I was moving from clothed to less clothed.
Merlin: And I always got the feeling maybe you slapped on some shorts just so we could watch The Office and I wouldn't have to think about your dingus.
John: Yeah, I don't know.
John: I put on some pants to come out and hang out in your living room in underwear.
Merlin: That was fun.
Merlin: That was so fun.
John: We spent a lot of time just sitting around.
Merlin: Remember the times we would have?
John: I found a picture the other day of you.
John: We were in somewhere.
John: I don't know.
John: And you had picked up a bowl.
John: And it was a large bowl.
John: This was what was funny about it.
John: This was the funny part.
John: It was a very large bowl.
John: And you were drinking out of it like it was a small bowl.
John: But it was a large bowl.
Merlin: I was bringing humor with the exaggerated size of the bowl.
John: What was great about it, it was so funny at the time that I or someone thought it was worth photographing because I still have the photograph.
John: I was looking at it and going, oh, and I think Madeline was there.
John: She was looking.
Merlin: I bet it's when we went to the Thai restaurant.
John: Might have been a Thai restaurant.
John: Could have been a Thai restaurant.
Merlin: So you've got to find your keys.
Merlin: You're clad in a towel.
Merlin: Was it a good size towel, like a sheet?
John: No, it was not.
John: No, it was not.
John: It was a too small towel, which added an element of like to this.
John: And then and then one of the one of the people here in the house that I'm staying in that is owned by my family says, oh, wait.
John: And then she goes upstairs, and I hear her, she's wearing boots that are approximating horse's hooves.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: You know, because it's a power thing.
Merlin: Yeah, sure, sure.
John: You hear that coming down the hallway.
John: You know, that's Miss Manager.
John: So I'm downstairs, and the Miss Manager is upstairs going, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
John: That's a good look.
John: That's a smart look, too.
John: Very good.
John: And she comes to the top of the stairs.
John: She goes, I had them all along.
John: Sorry.
John: Womp, womp.
John: And so I go back and I lay down in bed and I'm like, I'm fine, I'm fine.
John: Four hours sleep.
John: I'll get another hour.
John: I'll get one more hour here before I talk to Merlin.
John: Then I started hearing rustling.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: That's triggering for you, John.
John: I heard some rustling and I was like, mm-hmm, that's fine.
Merlin: The one time you didn't check the rustling.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: And this was time two.
John: I'm not checking the rustling.
John: This is not my problem.
John: There's more rustling.
John: And I rolled over and I'm like, you just have a chance to get...
John: Now you have a chance to get four hours and 45 minutes of sleep.
John: So just come on.
John: Just focus now.
John: Russell, Russell, Russell, Russell.
John: Bonk, bonk, bonk.
John: On the roof.
John: What?
John: It's morning times?
Merlin: Is light out and stuff?
John: It's morning.
John: I'm like, there's something on the roof.
John: And the thing is, I do have a little bit of a thing about something being on the roof or in the walls.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And so I was like, I can't.
John: I can't.
John: Just sit here.
John: This is my responsibility.
John: Everything that's right now on the roof of this house is my responsibility.
John: Interesting.
John: I looked out the window.
John: Not even bothering with the towel.
John: And the gutter guys were here.
Merlin: The gutter guys, okay.
John: The gutter guys.
Merlin: Had you received any advance warning about the gutter guys coming?
Merlin: No, I had not.
Merlin: Okay, they only wake you for the important meetings.
John: Yeah, so I watched them at their work for a minute, trying to gauge, because I know a thing or two about men's work, men doing work.
John: I watched them and I was like,
John: Let me get a sense here.
John: Are these men starting to do a big job?
John: Are they gearing up to do a big job?
John: You know, they're out there putting on their safety harnesses, or are they sharpening their knives on a whetstone, or are they putting on several hats?
John: What are they doing?
John: What can I learn?
Merlin: There's a whole oral taxonomy that a learned person can appreciate.
Merlin: It involves things like how many doors slammed for a thing,
Merlin: Okay, good, good.
Merlin: Did you hear a claka, claka, claka of a ladder?
Merlin: There's all kinds of things where you know, and there's a lot of like Russell, Russell, Russell.
Merlin: Like, do they have large coffees?
Merlin: There's a lot of things that could be a cue as to how invested.
Merlin: Is there a tarp going down?
Merlin: Did they bring out a radio?
John: Right.
Merlin: There's a lot of stuff, I think.
John: Oh, you said it, mister.
Merlin: They bring a radio, you know, they're in for the long haul.
Merlin: Am I right?
John: Here we go, right.
John: And so I'm watching them, and I'm looking, and I'm like, these guys.
John: you know what they seem like they seem like some guys that are coming back around to do the thing they forgot to do not like some guys that are setting up here like posting up for the day okay they're there to mop up maybe something they forgot they're mopping up and a guy brings the the the rustling is they brought a couple of like uh those articulated hoses
John: that they're going to put at the bottom of the downspouts to direct the water away from the foundation.
John: That's the type of stuff that they were doing.
John: They were pulling stuff around.
John: But it was all this like, oh, we got to go back to that job site and do that last thing.
John: Maybe they didn't have any on hand at the time.
John: It was something like that.
John: And so I stood there and I was like, I'm going to go ahead and say this is going to be done in...
John: 10 more minutes okay sure enough seven minutes later they all piled in the truck and drove away at which point i had a few minutes to get some coffee going and come talk to you so that's where i'm at i'm sorry i didn't mean to take away from your story where you woke up at that hour no no no it's you know and i i don't want to criticize john you know we've been friends for a pretty long time but like it's a state of mind issue it's the state of mind this is
Merlin: And the state of mind is, you know, uh, uh, what am I, I've said this in other places, but what am I committed to?
Merlin: Am I committed to like saying, I'm going to get back to sleep?
Merlin: Am I committed to, I'm going to get up for a while?
Merlin: You know, am I committed to like, I'm all in fuck it.
Merlin: It's officially fucking morning.
Merlin: And now I'm out and about.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And like, it sounds like you were still in that state of mind of getting what I like to call bonus sleep.
Merlin: Which is when you wake up and maybe you sleep a little more than you wake up, and then you're in that horrible time.
Merlin: You have to adjust this for your own zone.
Merlin: But for me, that's like a 3 to 5 a.m.
Merlin: where I'm in a certain zone.
Merlin: You'll make coffee.
Merlin: You'll get up and make coffee.
Merlin: Well, but the problem is now you're rewarding the behavior, but right.
Merlin: Your commitment in that time, I don't put much for all stars.
Merlin: And then you, you're, so now what are you, what are your pot committed?
Merlin: You got to go on with your state of mind was, if I may say, using my words, you were going to go for bonus sleep.
Merlin: Can I get back?
Merlin: And ideally bonus sleep should be an other hour or two that you can get on top of what should have been a shitty night's sleep.
Merlin: And then you can wake up and go, ha ha bonus sleep.
Oh,
John: Bonus sleep.
John: I love bonus sleep.
Merlin: Well, like some days when you just go like, I reject bonus sleep, I'm up.
Merlin: And then you make coffee.
John: The thing about me is I almost never reject bonus sleep.
John: And part of what that results in is that I will, so if I have a thing at 10, I will sometimes set an alarm.
John: I'm not talking about hit the snooze button.
John: I'm talking about set an alarm for 9.55.
John: Now that's cutting it pretty close.
John: Well,
John: That means up and on.
Merlin: If you do the things you need or want to do, I don't want to be indiscreet.
Merlin: You do the things you need.
Merlin: Maybe you need to put on the towel.
Merlin: Maybe you need to drop a duke.
Merlin: Maybe you want to make some coffee.
Merlin: That's going to cause a lot of what I call compression.
Merlin: You got a lot of compression to fit into four minutes because now it's already a minute.
Merlin: It's already gone.
John: I don't really go to the potty in any serious way in the early part of the day.
Merlin: You're not fully engaged that early.
John: No, no, no.
John: I'm, I'm, you know, I'm much more of a, uh, you know, you wake up, you have to go to the potty, but it's not like, I don't like need to go to the, to the serious potty.
John: I just get up and I just do the bare minimum.
John: Right.
Merlin: You're not experiencing looseness that quickly.
John: Oh no.
John: Oh no, no, no.
Merlin: All right.
John: Uh, but, uh, anyway, not to bring in the outside world.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But many years ago, uh, we were talking about, I think we were talking about nine 11 and,
John: Which was a watershed moment.
Oh.
John: I think when we started this show, it had already become sort of legendary.
Merlin: They'd already been celebrating almost a decade of it.
John: Celebrate's a strong word.
John: Yeah, I mean, it's like you don't celebrate Passover, you know what I mean?
John: Believe me, I know.
John: But we were talking about 9-11, and I was talking about, I think, how there was a group of people that was convinced that...
John: I think maybe the second plane was a hologram.
John: Whoa.
John: And the hologram was being projected through holographic technology.
John: But in actuality, the World Trade Center was blown up by Jews.
John: Yeah.
John: With like satchels or I don't know what silver bars.
Merlin: Or like, is this a loose change thing?
Merlin: Was it was this part of the Bush administration thing?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: One world.
Merlin: New world.
Merlin: There was a lot of what they call the fog of war.
Merlin: As you know, I will periodically go back and watch the live coverage from the various news stations.
Merlin: And I'll watch 9-11.
Merlin: I'll rewatch 9-11 sometimes.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Do you watch it all the way through?
Merlin: Oh, I watch it.
Merlin: I watch it from how the markets are doing.
Merlin: through, like I think it's usually most of the ones you'll find on YouTube are around four hours or so, and it's really quite a thing.
John: How do you feel about Building 7?
Merlin: What's your feeling about that?
Merlin: I don't know a ton about Building 7.
Merlin: I do know that in the time, and I'll be done with this real quick, but I do know that in the time after the first one happened, everybody was so stunned.
Merlin: And, you know, a lot of people were saying it looked like a plane.
Merlin: Was it this plane?
Merlin: Was it that plane?
Merlin: And I think that's when a lot of the nutty stuff started was because there were conflicting stories.
Merlin: Is the mall on fire?
Merlin: Is it not?
Merlin: All the different things.
Merlin: And they're like, no, no, no, that wasn't really true.
Merlin: But one thing I can promise you was, at least on, I want to say the CNN shot, they did not have a clear camera image.
Merlin: of it happening, and even when they had to get different angles to go back in and show it.
Merlin: So I don't think you'll be weird at all to go, what was that?
Merlin: Because a lot of people were like, was that just another plane part that came through?
John: Oh, a plane part, right.
Merlin: I mean, you know what I'm saying, though?
Merlin: But it was like, I mean, we've said this so many times, but I've said this so many times.
Merlin: That morning, it felt like anything could happen.
Merlin: Anything could happen next, especially after you get the reports from the other places.
John: It did feel like that, but did it feel like the second...
Merlin: plane might have been a hologram it didn't strictly and i'll tell you why i know a little bit about trump loyal painting i'm not referring here i'm not referring you know me i'm not referring to the pixies album i'm talking about be careful when you're an italian restaurant because you might be walking into a wall my friend well you could be walking into a wall or into uh like the beautiful homes of santorini
Merlin: So you could be in Santorini or maybe you're going to go see Mr. Tumnus.
Merlin: Maybe it's a wardrobe.
Merlin: It looks like a delicious musrel.
Merlin: But it turns out you're going to be walking through some kind of a stone structure.
John: Yes.
John: I went to a Greek restaurant last night.
John: Yes.
John: And there were some trompe loyal paintings of people playing balalikas or mandolinas.
Merlin: Mandolinas?
John: Yes.
John: Yeah, whatever they're called.
Merlin: Okay, well, maybe you're off.
Merlin: Maybe you've had a little bit of ouzo, and you are in pursuit of a good-looking feta, and boom, you walk in.
Merlin: Now, here's the thing about a lot of these, and I know this.
Merlin: I just got my daughter a couple of M.C.
Merlin: Escher books.
Merlin: I know that it depends on a lot.
Merlin: Kids love it.
Merlin: They love it, and also you think about what's happening in something like a, what's the one with Joseph Leavitt and the kick thing?
Merlin: right you know the one with the the guy with the wall music that uh inception inception you got angles you got mc escher don't talk to me about time travel that yes very similar you know what he's into wait okay wow i'm tired
Merlin: So what I'm here to tell you is, though, if you're going to do an effective Trump loyal, somebody goes and they walk around and all of a sudden that lady from the Michael Cera movie who had the baby, she's going to go, now I know how to build the maze.
Merlin: Don't let anybody get my brain.
Merlin: I need a totem.
Merlin: You look at a Trump loyal from a different angle and you go, that's totes, a painted wall.
Merlin: I don't know how you do a Trump loyal building hole.
Merlin: that quickly you know what i'm saying you could have a hologram hitting a thing i don't know how you instantly unless you are somebody canny like a banksy i don't know how you make a building whole contiguous with the arrival unless you've got some special explosives well canny like a banksy is one way but also uh you could have like uh maybe they got up there early and hung up some sheets okay okay but the thing about it was when we talked about this before
John: And I expressed a little bit of doubt about the possibility of arranging holograms such that the entire world, except for a couple of people, could be fooled into thinking that an airplane had actually crashed into the world chain.
John: Arguably an unseasonably bright September morn.
John: Right.
John: That's right.
John: It was very clear in the sky.
John: It was gorgeous.
John: A gorgeous day.
John: Most of us, I'm going to say like thousands of us, maybe even into the hundreds of thousands of us.
John: Do not think that it was any Jews blowing up the World Trade Center.
John: But there are some people that do.
John: And, you know, both sides, Merlin, both sides.
Merlin: Well, in that lore of that community, how does one say?
Merlin: Isn't part of their basic beef that those people like things like trade?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Which one?
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: I'm trying to be canny, like Banksy.
John: Yeah, I see what you're saying.
John: But you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: It seems like that would be working at cross-purposes with their global goals.
John: Well, but this is the thing about the global goals of the Jews, Merlin.
John: We can never really know.
John: You can never know.
John: Okay.
John: But anyway, we talked about this just a little.
John: We just glanced off of it.
John: But I expressed a little bit of doubt.
John: And I actually got some...
John: replies from people that, and it's a very small, I think, Venn diagram that includes people that enjoy our show.
John: And people that think Bush did 9-11, or even less, the Jews did 9-11, even less, they did it using holograms.
John: I think that's got to be a very small group of people.
Merlin: There are people that could be listening to this program right now that still have a hologram theory.
John: I think there were, at least, because somebody approached me.
John: And you know, the thing is, we get this a lot.
John: We know when somebody is doing an ironical.
John: We understand if you're going to do like a...
John: If you're going to do Elvis on the Saturday Night Live, you know, like we see it coming, right?
John: They're having fun with it.
John: They're having fun.
John: But this person seemed completely legit or completely legit.
John: But yeah, they were very vested in their theory.
John: And they were giving me the like, I don't think you understand.
John: And I was like, ah, yes.
John: Tell me more.
John: And the problem with me is that I actually do want to hear them tell me more.
John: I'm not kidding.
John: It's like, no, no, no, no, no.
John: Tell me more.
John: This is good.
John: And so they did.
John: And it wasn't.
John: But it was, you know, I absorbed.
John: Anyway, so I don't normally bring in the outside world just for fear.
John: I like to think of our listeners as a
John: Has a motley group, a ragtag fugitive fleet.
John: Kind of a dirty dozen.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I mean, a little bit of, right, sure.
John: There's the Irish guy with the hat on backwards.
John: There's the kid from Brooklyn who's good at making suitcase bombs.
John: There's the gal that can do all kinds of jujitsu and get under a laser beam on her way to a museum.
Merlin: Could it be the Asian fella who can get inside the delivery cart?
John: Maybe.
John: Maybe.
John: That could be.
John: I think he's probably a listener to the show.
John: I bet you there are some hardy people that climb trees for a living.
John: Maybe.
John: You know what?
John: I hope.
John: I hope that the lady that's sitting in a giant redwood tree somewhere to keep it from being chopped down, I hope she's listening to the show.
John: Hello.
Hello.
John: Anyway, so the other day, I was doing a little bit of owl research as you do.
John: I saw your book.
John: And I discovered, this is from the outside world now, that there has been...
John: a dramatic uptick in the number of credible ufo sightings from navy pilots i heard about this navy pilots are they're saying stop trying to put the kibosh on our reports
John: yeah we totally saw something they're seeing ufos all over yeah and they and and they have like risen up together as a group and said we want you to reopen project blue book because we're tired of getting the pish posh from upstairs and they got them on film and they're like this is look all it says is ufo all it says is unidentified we've been through this a million times it doesn't say little green men
John: But you tell me what can go Mach 7 and doesn't have any visible.
Merlin: These are people who have a lot of, as you say, hours, right?
Merlin: These are people who've seen a lot of stuff.
Merlin: They've been trained.
Merlin: It's not like a cloud that looks like Evel Knievel.
Merlin: Oh, that would be pretty cool.
Merlin: They see something that is truly anomalous.
Merlin: Probably both of them saw it or more.
John: Yeah, or more.
John: You can't tell them it's a weather balloon or a sunspot.
John: They know from weather balloons.
John: A dust devil or whatever.
Yeah.
John: So, you know, I don't I don't want to start talking about it because it's from the outside world.
John: It might be holograms, but it's curious to me.
John: And, you know, normally when I when it's late at night and I'm reading about owls.
John: And I get myself into that like, oh, I'm giving myself like tingly hairs because I'm watching videos of Navy pilots going, what the, what is that?
John: You tell me what that is.
John: And they're trying to chase it and they're like having fun because they're these young kids that are like, woohoo.
John: But normally I give myself like chicken skin.
John: Yes.
John: But lately I haven't been.
John: And lately I'm just like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
John: And I think it might be that now that the UFOs are hip to the Anchorman concept, they're just like, you just wait.
John: This is all part of our plan.
Merlin: It doesn't benefit them to do observable, potentially dangerous observable things if they already have a candidate for the job.
John: The thing about it is, you know, they got to edge in slowly.
John: They've been working on this for 50 years.
John: They got a lot of patience.
John: They traveled all those many light years here.
John: Probably not directly here.
John: They're probably puddle jumping.
John: You know, it's probably just like...
John: They're everywhere, kind of popping around, and they're like, oh, hey, we got a live one here.
Merlin: They might have like an UFO holiday in behind Beetlejuice or something to go back to.
John: Or they're just like guys out screwing around, and then they see like a black and white Hitler broadcast.
John: Well, you worked in an office.
John: You're like, is that Hitler?
John: I guess it is.
Merlin: Let's go there.
Merlin: You remember what it was like.
Merlin: It used to be if you wanted to get written things from a place to the other, you had to put it in the FedEx package, right?
Merlin: Later, that became the fax machine.
Merlin: And then later, you get beep boops to bring it around.
Merlin: Now, if you told people you could send a letter by beep boop, they'd think you were nutty balls.
Merlin: And then 20 years later, boom.
John: Did you know that there are still bike messengers?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Doesn't that seem, hmm, they need to look into that.
Merlin: Do you remember?
Merlin: Do you remember how many bike messengers there were?
Merlin: So many bike messengers, yes.
Merlin: But there still are bike messengers.
Merlin: No, they're still, my lady used to run with that crowd.
Merlin: Oh, so did I. Yeah, like I used to hang out at Zeitgeist, that kind of crowd.
John: They're hard drinkers, these guys.
John: And lady bike messengers, too.
John: It's a certain kind of hard.
John: It's a certain kind of hardcore.
Merlin: Oh, they're crusty.
John: They're real crusty.
John: A lot of them probably became makers.
John: Oh, God, the same mustache.
John: Isn't it the same, right?
John: Or the same black jeans with the clip-on knife and the clip-on flashlight?
John: I bet they still have the calves.
John: They might still have those calves.
John: That's how they make now.
John: They use their calves to make...
John: They're hammering on anvils where they used to just be weaving in and out of traffic.
Merlin: You probably need to be able to do various kinds of extrusions.
Merlin: Probably you've got to use a chop saw from time to time.
John: But they still have to have bike messengers because there are still things that you can't... Now, I'm going out on a limb here.
John: I don't know this for sure.
John: There are still things you can't...
John: auto-docu-sign.
Merlin: Maybe I got Brady Bunch on... Oh, I was gonna say I got Brady Bunch on the head, because I'm imagining stuff like a blueprint.
Merlin: But you're thinking stuff like it's not something where you open that Adobe app that you love.
John: Right.
Merlin: You're thinking there's got to be stuff if you're going to, I don't know, sign a will or a deed.
Merlin: Yep.
John: Or some kind of legal document or a check maybe.
John: Big check.
John: A big check.
John: Because let's say you win the lottery.
John: But I don't think that's all the people that are bike messengering.
John: That doesn't add up.
John: It doesn't scale.
John: But the thing about DocuSign is that what it did is it relieved me from
John: What you were saying earlier, which was, can you print this out, sign it, and fax it back to us?
John: Yes.
John: Or worse, can you print this out, sign it, and mail it back to us?
John: Yeah.
John: And now I just go into DocuSign, and it really incompletely and unsatisfyingly puts some facsimile of my signature onto a document.
John: But that seems to satisfy it.
Merlin: They've done the heavy lifting of putting a web page into an extremely secure app.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And all of a sudden, everybody's fine.
John: And I'm like, hey, for fucking 15 years, I mean, if this is all it took, why is this fine?
John: This isn't Bitcoins.
John: This is just, I could have been doing this the whole time.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: copy it and nobody told you nobody told you let me just send you an email that says fine yeah just one word fine fine that should be illegally but you know more than like a like a thumbprint or the cvc on the back of your uh quote unquote credit quote card like you should be able to just say let's send the word fine
Merlin: And they say, Ack, Ack, we receive this.
John: Ack, because I already put in my password behind seven proxies.
John: I already have put it, every time I freaking do a thing, I got to put in the password.
John: It's me, it's me.
Merlin: You agreed to the terms and conditions already.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: it's me fine agreed to accept special offers and all you want to do is proffer a signature by saying fine yeah because the signature here's what's going to happen if i say fine um in most cases you're going to send me money so i don't need you don't need like a big hullabaloo about i'm signing the thing yeah fine fine who would who would hack into my system to say fine i'd explain checks to my daughter yesterday can you imagine that
Merlin: checks we're tidying we're tidying we found a uh a checkbook out of which one check had ever been sent as an experiment did you blow did you blow dust off of it i do i do explain like like how uncanny checks are i mean setting aside the seinfeld bit about how it's kind of an undignified thing to do but like i was like oh this is the area where you write the number but then you write the number with letters so nobody can fake it
Merlin: And then you sign it with your signature.
Merlin: And I shared an anecdote about a friend of mine whose car had been broken into and somebody stole her checkbook.
Merlin: And let's just say when he showed ID at the bank, he didn't look nothing like her.
Merlin: But it's OK.
Merlin: We got the money now.
Merlin: It's the 90s because that's how checks work.
John: Well, you know, we had a friend or not not not we you and I had a friend.
Uh huh.
John: Uh, by the, he was in the long winters.
John: His name was Chris.
John: I love Chris.
John: Maybe you remember Chris.
Merlin: He shaved Michael's, uh, uh, head in my kitchen.
Merlin: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: Oh, those were the days.
Merlin: Remember the days.
Merlin: We had some times, didn't we?
John: Yeah, we did.
John: We were all in our underwear.
John: He was funny.
John: Uh, Chris was funny guy, but he and I used to live together in a big, big loft that now would cost $12,000 a month.
John: But at the time it costs $600 a month.
John: And because it was in a neighborhood where there wasn't anybody, and now there are everybody's there.
John: And we were, how do you say it?
John: We were urban pioneers.
John: We were in this, it used to be a tire warehouse.
John: And we just were living in it like some cool kids.
John: We would have rock shows.
John: We found a piano and we wheeled it down the street and put it in the freight elevator.
John: And the freight elevator, Merlin, was controlled by water.
John: What?
John: It was.
John: They would pump water.
John: An aquavator?
John: It was an aquavator.
John: You'd get in the freight elevator.
John: You could put anything you wanted in there.
John: You could put 50 pianos in there.
John: Wow.
John: And then it would pump water into the hydraulicness of the thing.
Merlin: Did you live in a steampunk building?
No.
John: It was so steampunk.
John: Ah, so cool.
John: And it was the slowest elevator in the world.
John: You'd just sit there and listen to it.
John: Sloshing?
John: Yeah, put pressure into the thing by just putting water in it.
John: And then when you wanted to go down, it would just...
John: gradually empty the water out of it wow you know we had all the water in the world up here anyway so we had like i don't know how many pianos we had in this place but we had a lot there was so much there was so much room if you wouldn't have a keyboard you needed a piano yeah you know and and uh we used to teach ourselves to tune them we would just sit there and was that always the worst day of elementary school piano tuning day
John: It's the worst.
John: But this was, you know, it was a big, big, big place.
John: You could, I mean, one of the things we did is I would sit at one end, he would sit at the other, and I'd shoot crossbow bolts at him.
John: Wow.
John: And, you know, there'd be plenty of time for him to get up.
Merlin: The Lannisters send their regards.
John: But, we always pay our debts.
John: So, he had a guitar that he wanted to sell, and he put it in the newspaper.
John: And so he got a phone call on our phone, which was... Which was bolted to the wall.
John: A single phone that was made out of... Ahoy, that's right.
Merlin: It was made out of... I understand you have an interest in purchasing my guitar instrument.
Merlin: Oh, hello.
Merlin: Hi.
John: Automobile.
Merlin: Money machine.
John: It was made out of Bakelite.
John: I don't know.
John: We probably found it where we found the piano.
John: Okay.
John: And so, you know...
Merlin: A different city back there.
John: He lifts it up.
John: The guy goes, oh, hi, it's me, Luda, and I want to buy your guitar.
John: And so we're like, oh, Luda wants to buy the guitar.
John: And Chris is thrilled because it's a nice guitar and he's selling it for a pretty good amount of money.
John: Now, Chris was a bartender at a very cool club because did I mention that we were pretty cool?
John: And he was a bartender at the very, very coolest club.
John: And he was one of the coolest bartenders.
John: And so he would sometimes come home.
John: at the end of a night with like $300, which at the time was like, oh, well, why don't we just go buy a freaking car?
John: We don't even need to, we don't even need to find pianos.
John: We could just go buy them with your $300 a day that you're making.
John: And he was like, you know, man, you know, he, he used to, he would go on dates with people and they'd be halfway through the dinner.
John: And he would say, um, will you go to the bathroom and just take off your underwear and bring it to me?
John: And the person that he was on the date with would go, I'm sorry, what?
John: And he would say, just bring me your underwear.
John: This was at a time.
John: And like nine out of ten times, they would be curious enough that they would get up and they'd go to the bathroom and they'd come back and hand him their underwear.
John: And then he would say, that was great.
Merlin: Because he was living in a John Hughes movie.
John: Well, he would come home and he'd be like, yeah, I don't think I'll see her again.
John: It's like we had sex because we don't staple him to the wall.
John: We don't actually need to have sex.
John: No, no, no.
John: I wouldn't let him in the house.
John: Okay.
John: I was like, you keep those in your purse and box somewhere.
John: I don't want them in the, we're not collecting underpants.
Merlin: And Luda wanted a guitar.
John: So Luda comes over.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And we're all sitting around, you know, on some couches that we found in some old theater that was being torn down.
John: And we're sitting around.
John: Oh, you know, we actually had a stage.
John: We actually had a stage because they were cleaning out some old theater and they were like, we got to get rid of this stage.
John: And we were like, we'll take the stage.
Merlin: You're living in gray gardens.
Merlin: My God.
John: So we brought the stage up the Aquavator, set it up in the corner and we would have whole, we had like, oh, we were so, we were, it was the brilliant, the golden age.
John: We had a play reading series that we put together by putting flyers up on phone poles that said, do you want to come to our play readings?
John: What?
John: Because at the time, Capitol Hill in Seattle was a neighborhood that you could do that and only get –
John: only get cool actors.
John: And so like, so the next, the next Friday we were like, we'll be like from the era of little rascals.
Merlin: Like I, I just, this is insane.
John: So, so they, uh, so it was Friday and we were like, boy, I hope somebody comes to our play reading and like 15 people showed up and they were all, you know, 22 and beautiful.
John: And we all sat around and Chris had copied off, like for whatever reason, he had a vision copied off 20 copies of this script and
John: because I think he knew a girl that worked at Kinko's.
John: And so we all sat around and we each picked a part and all of a sudden we're reading Midsummer Night's Dream aloud.
John: Wow.
John: And the thing that's crazy is we kept doing it.
John: We did it every week for like... This wasn't a one-time thing?
John: No, we weren't just goofing around.
John: This was serious.
John: We were like, no, no, no, we're doing Chekhov this week.
John: Okay, we're doing Chekhov, I guess.
John: Anyway, Luda shows up.
Okay.
John: and luda's this kind of he's not one of us he's from the suburbs or he's from the outside world and he's got you know because he's got product in his hair and it's not just like it's not just bike chain grease it's some kind of thing that he bought at the store okay does he seem european no he doesn't he seems he's fast talking he's charming he's charming and so
John: He comes in.
John: He's like, hey, guys, what's up?
John: Cool place.
John: Hey, this is amazing.
John: Does this piano work?
John: Ding, ding, ding.
John: Cool, cool, cool.
John: Whoa, there's crossbow bolts in the wall.
John: And it's like, well, let me tell you about him.
John: He's like, nah, keep going.
John: And so Chris and I are both like, Luda is hilarious.
John: Like, I was kind of prejudging Luda because of his shoes.
John: But Lute is a fun guy.
John: Was he like a biz dev kind of guy?
John: A little, a little, but he was in his casual clothes.
John: Okay.
John: He was somebody that would have been all trying to get you to buy his book on entrepreneurship now.
John: But then he was, I don't think he was wearing a visor, but you know, he was like, he was in a certain world.
John: I bet you he could golf.
Okay.
John: So he's swinging through the place and he's giving us mad compliments about all of our, you know, all the found objects that we that we also thought were cool.
John: Like, whoa, is that a combine?
John: It's like, well, I'm putting it together.
John: And so then he's like, well, show me this guitar because I'm really interested.
John: And Chris pulls the guitar out and Luda plays it.
John: And Luda is not that good.
John: But, you know, it's like.
John: luda seems like the type of guy that would that would pay eight hundred dollars for a guitar that he's not that good at yet but he's learning yeah that sounds like a biz dev guy we sit we sit we chat and and after a while chris and i are like luda i mean we can just tell like luda we're gonna we're gonna keep in touch with luda like luda seems like he's got some stuff going on maybe luda knows about some things that we don't know yeah maybe you know maybe luda knows where there's a piano that we haven't found yet okay
John: So Luda is like, I want this guitar.
John: Will you take a check?
John: And we normally, you know, we're savvy guys.
John: Chris makes $300 on a Friday night.
John: Sure.
John: But we're like, Luda is, Luda's our bud now.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: And so normally you would say, uh, can't take a check.
John: Why don't you go down to the bank and get the money?
John: Yeah.
John: And then Luda would be like, okay, I'll be back in 20 or whatever.
John: But this time it was like, yeah, of course we're going to take a check from Luda.
John: Luda's number one.
John: It's number one Luda.
John: Yeah, he's hilarious.
John: So Luda's still, he's still rapping.
John: He's still hilariousing.
John: And, um, and he's just like, writes out the check and he's like, here you go, man.
John: You know, you use the money.
John: Well, believe me, I'm going to, I'm going to use this guitar to like get good.
John: And thank you so much.
John: And we're like, Luda, thank you.
John: And he's like, my name and address is on there.
John: So, you know, anytime you want to like hook up or whatever, just give us a ring.
John: And I'm like, totally give me a ring.
John: And he gives it to Chris, right?
John: Cause Chris is the guy who's selling the guitar.
Yeah.
John: Did he bite it to see if it's real?
John: He didn't bite it, no.
John: He just put it in his thing.
Merlin: At this point, I don't know where this is going, but at this point, it seems legit.
Merlin: You had a little bit of, but then you think, Lute is cool, he's hilarious.
Merlin: Obviously, this check is going to be a good check.
John: This check is going to be a good check.
John: Well, Chris took it to his bank, and the check was not a good check.
John: It bounced so high, as we used to say.
John: Bounced over the roof.
John: How high was it?
John: It was this high.
John: It was so high.
John: So high.
Merlin: Oh, that's frustrating.
Merlin: But okay.
John: What happened?
John: So the check comes back.
John: Chris brings it to the house.
John: And he's like, you know, this is in the day when you'd get the check back.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Endorsed on the back.
John: Yeah.
John: And he hands it to me.
John: And he's like, I don't get it.
John: I don't get it.
John: How could Luda have done this?
John: And I looked at the check.
John: And the check was from Ludmilla...
John: like Boscovich.
John: Oh.
John: And I was like, Chris, Ludmilla is a lady name.
John: Oh, no.
John: It's like a lady name from Eastern Europe, but it's Ludmilla.
John: That's not a boy name.
John: It's a girl name.
John: And he was like, oh, I didn't know.
John: I just, it seemed like Ludmilla.
John: I was like, oh, no.
John: He stole like a Polish lady's checks?
John: And so if, see, if he had handed me the check and I had looked at it, I might have said Ludmilla,
John: But then Luda might have said, ah, Ludmilla is my mother's name.
John: And who knows whether at the time I would have been so charmed by Ludmilla.
John: Which has a kind of logic, I guess.
John: Right?
John: Ludmilla is my mother's name.
Merlin: She's from my birthday.
Merlin: She wanted me to have something nice.
John: She's a saint.
John: Right about the same time, a lady came into my store, and it was the same type of thing.
John: She was talking fast.
John: She was having a good old time.
John: I was having a good time.
John: She gave me a $100 traveler's check, and we had a system.
John: But she was bamboozling.
Merlin: You can't fake a traveler's check because the first signature has to be in front of the teller, and then that second signature has to match.
Merlin: That's how you know.
Merlin: It's iron cloud.
John: And that whole thing, I mean, the signature's matched, and, you know, it's like, how are you going to fight that?
John: It's literally fraud proof.
John: It's fraud proof.
John: And so I took the $100, and she was like, I'd like a pack of gum and a copy of Time magazine, which was $2.90.
John: and i was like here you go have a great day and she was like i'll see you around and uh and then it turned out that the traveler's check uh that her signatures matched but the traveler's check was fake what it was a fake traveler's check and then i was the guy at work that had taken a fake traveler's check and everybody even though every single one of those ding-dongs would have taken it
John: Then I got tisk-tisked.
John: Okay.
John: Yeah.
John: Pretty hard.
John: Everybody was like, oh, well.
John: You got took.
John: I guess we all learned our lesson, didn't we, one of us that needed to learn a lesson?
John: And I was like, look, I'm from the streets.
John: Yeah.
John: So you would have been taken into, you know, old like triple dyed jeans.
John: And triple dyed jeans was like, I don't know.
John: Only one of us did, though.
John: Am I right?
John: A hundred bucks gone.
John: Well, you know, yeah.
Merlin: Because you had to give her change.
Merlin: You gave her cash.
Merlin: You basically converted her theft into a liquid asset.
John: This was when people were doing, they were running numbers.
Merlin: They were running scams.
Merlin: You couldn't do that now.
John: Who would even know what a traveler's check was?
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: And so my daughter's looking at this check thing and she's like, well, yeah, it started with this number and that number.
Merlin: I said, oh, yeah, actually, I had the option to pick.
Merlin: one of which out of this book i have ever ever ever used because i'm not a monster i don't write checks and i said uh i said oh yeah well time was you you i i got to pick what number the series started at which seems weird but do you remember do you remember when if you got check zero zero one it was pretty much definitely stolen from somebody's mailbox
John: Well, the thing is they wouldn't, you'd go in and you'd be like, here's my check.
John: And they'd look at the number and they would say, and what that would indicate is- Is this your first day?
John: Yeah, this is your first day.
John: We're not going to take this check.
John: You don't have any money.
John: You don't know what's going on.
John: So then you would get, your checks would start at 1,001.
John: Right.
John: Like that was supposed to fool us.
Merlin: It's a kind of informal credit check.
Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Sort of.
Merlin: It's like, wow, if you got checks in the thousands, you must be doing pretty good.
Merlin: Did you, did you pick your phone number?
Merlin: Uh, no, I haven't.
Merlin: Well, I mean, from an array, I think maybe, no, that was with Google voice.
Merlin: I don't remember the last time I got to pick my own phone number.
Merlin: I feel like maybe it might've been in Florida.
Merlin: It might've been in Florida.
John: Have you done it?
John: Have you done it before?
John: Yeah.
John: Wait a minute.
John: What about your cell phone?
Merlin: Well, here's what I'm remembering.
Merlin: And this is what I'm trying to remember.
Merlin: The last time that this happened, because I do remember at one point, I'm going to say probably for my Google Voice number, having the option of choosing...
Merlin: Pink choosing, like, the thing, this is confusing, because ever since the age of the fax machine, there have been way fewer, again with the faxes, there have been way fewer, like, big time, way fewer phone numbers in circulation.
Merlin: Now you've got cell phones coming along, uh-oh, now we need new area codes in San Francisco, people are mad, right?
Merlin: So there was this time when, like, I mean, it was just, you were lucky to get anything, right?
Merlin: pretty much but i do here's why i remember this is i feel like it was during the era of the web where one could at least go to a website and try to find uh like if i wanted my phone number to spell a thing what would that be so that's why i think it must have been after i moved here but no i don't spelling things with your phone number yes that was i know people that still do that have you ever done that you get to pick a number to spell something
Merlin: I got to pick a number, but it was... Nobody likes that.
Merlin: Nobody likes being given a phone number where they have to transliterate letters into numbers.
Merlin: It's not fun.
Merlin: That's fine for... Well, even Empire, 588-2300, they got a regular phone number.
Merlin: It isn't like 1-6-Empire or whatever.
John: Well, my mom still knows all the... The exchanges.
John: Yeah, all the old phone numbers in Seattle all are from exchanges.
John: So like 322... Love it.
John: Was like East Lake 7421 or whatever.
John: And so she still can talk about all the... Oh, you know, that's...
John: That's Alabama 7924.
John: I'm like, boy, I love this, but I have no idea why this is better than just saying the phone number.
John: But apparently what it meant was you could also tell what neighborhood they lived in.
John: So I think that's pretty cool.
John: Oh, it's very cool.
John: I'm trying to remember what ours was.
John: But I did.
John: I picked my own phone number, but it was one of those where the person at the phone store said,
John: Uh, well, you know, you, it can start with this.
John: And I was like, I don't want it to start with that.
John: What about something else?
John: And they were like, it could start with this.
John: And I was like, okay, I like that.
John: And then they ran down and said, what about this?
John: And I said, no, this was still available.
John: No.
John: Uh, and then there was one that, you know, it just kind of bounced.
John: I just felt like it, like the numbers bounced.
John: Um, you know, as you said, as you said it aloud, it was like, Oh yeah.
Merlin: You want to have, you want to have one you could almost sing.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And so I, so I got that one because I felt like, I felt like you could sing it.
John: Um, but now nobody knows anybody's phone number.
John: I don't know your phone number.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: I would have, I would have.
Merlin: No, no, I appreciate that.
Merlin: I would too.
Merlin: I know, I know my wife's phone number.
Merlin: Trying to look here, Seattle.
Merlin: Um, there is a very, this is a famously very slow website where you can go and look up phone exchanges.
Merlin: Um, um, but yeah, no, I think my wife's is the only one that I know off the top of my head.
Merlin: But you know, you're one from childhood.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, 7292202.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: 513.
Merlin: Don't be creepy.
Merlin: So, like, in Seattle, you could have Adams, Alder, Atwater, Avalon, Ballard.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And there's more.
Merlin: This is Page.
Merlin: This is a very old website.
Merlin: But, yeah, you can go in and basically look for – I don't want to problematize your info or OPSEC, but you can go – I'll get you started on here.
John: Oh, this is a terrible website.
John: Atwater27456.
John: Something like that, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, I love that.
Merlin: I love that.
John: Somebody still got it.
Merlin: I feel like in San Francisco, these hung around longer than perhaps in other places.
Merlin: But yeah, that's a nice thing.
John: Yeah, it doesn't feel strictly necessary.
John: Now, do you find...
John: Do you find that Google Voice is like the checkbook of 2019?
Merlin: That's a really good question.
Merlin: I don't know if that's precisely right, but I do.
Merlin: It has become like so many of the inputs in my life, a kind of like a ding-a-ling sync.
Merlin: Like it's just become a place where ding-a-ling stuff goes.
Merlin: I mean, that's, you know, like anybody, like that's the number I give out.
Merlin: You know, for stuff.
John: But wait, didn't they shut it all down?
John: Didn't they say like, oh, we're not doing any of that anymore?
Merlin: No, no, it's still there.
Merlin: I occasionally get weird stuff on there.
Merlin: But yeah, I mean, it used to seem like a godsend.
Merlin: Well, first it was called Grand Central back in the day.
Merlin: And then Grand Central got...
Merlin: Chattanooga 5-1000.
Merlin: I don't even know.
Merlin: Hey!
Merlin: No, what song is that?
Merlin: Come on, your dad loved that music.
Merlin: What's that called?
Merlin: It's Pennsylvania 6-5000.
Merlin: Pennsylvania 6-5000.
John: Which is some girl's phone number.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: WGN.
Merlin: And so, Grand Central and then Google...
Merlin: like so many google projects it got all tricked out and really cool and there's all kinds of stuff you could do with it and like you could even like you could even hit numbers while you were talking and it would start recording the call and there was so much feature rich things it's the future and then not so much anymore it's still there what happened why did they do that why did they take it all away
Merlin: well you know this is probably a different show but google has a habit of you've probably never encountered this but google has an odd or vexing habit of introducing products features uh so i it could be a full feature product like google buzz uh it could be uh what was google buzz right
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So yeah.
Merlin: Anyway, that's gone.
Merlin: But, but no, that was like, or like, uh, you know, there's all these different things where they tried to get into social networking stuff and have mostly been pretty bad failures.
Merlin: And, you know, they just have a pretty checkered history.
Merlin: And by checkered, I mean, terrible history of like, um, end of lifing.
Merlin: Well, that's terrible.
Merlin: Like doing away with, uh, services, products and stuff that people love.
Merlin: For example, uh, at the end of March, they got rid of their very good iOS email app called inbox.
Um,
John: But why?
John: Why do they do this?
Merlin: Why do they do that?
Merlin: I mean, the cover story is we want to be able to focus our resources on these other innovative things that we're doing.
John: That doesn't make any sense.
Merlin: Well, I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not the Google, but I think they just, they're like, this is not the thing now.
Merlin: This was the thing.
Merlin: But like, you know, the canary in the proverbial coal mine was things like what are called Google Labs.
Merlin: So Google Labs used to be this place where you could go and do the most banana stuff.
Merlin: Even while Google as a search engine was really amazing, Google Labs is where you could go and do all this tricky stuff.
Merlin: I don't even know what's there.
John: It was a place you could go.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Well, I mean, I don't know.
Merlin: No, no.
John: It was a destination.
John: Hi, Google Labs.
John: Ding dong.
Merlin: Hi, come on in, please.
Merlin: You can come in here and experiment with Gmail.
John: Well, no, no.
John: You tell me.
John: You tell me, Mr. Computer Guy.
John: Sure.
John: Mr. Talking to his phone.
John: Why can't you, once one of those things is going, why can't you just leave it up?
John: It doesn't take anything, does it?
John: Can't you just leave the lights on?
John: I don't know.
John: We'll leave the light on for you.
John: I know.
John: Can't you just keep it up?
John: You just keep one person whose job it is to just keep stuff away.
Merlin: No, it's true.
Merlin: I mean like on the face of it – and you'll probably get email about this.
Merlin: On the face of it, it seems like yes.
Merlin: I mean there is on the one hand the basic maintenance stuff and the bandwidth and all that kind of stuff.
John: Sure.
John: Somebody can do that.
John: One or two people for the whole company.
Merlin: But I mean like they used to have this thing – I'm sorry.
Merlin: This is really boring.
Merlin: But they used to have this thing called Google Reader.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
John: I like it already.
John: Did it read for you?
Merlin: Google Reader was an RSS feed reader, and it was really, really good.
Merlin: It came along.
Merlin: It did good things.
Merlin: Now, understand, Google Reader launched October 7, 2005.
Merlin: It arrived amidst an already pretty slamming market for independent RSS reader apps.
Merlin: I promise this is fast.
John: And they would read it.
Merlin: They'd rip it down for you.
Merlin: But this is back in the day when you'd spend $30 to buy my friend, my friend who makes this by his app, and like use that on your Mac.
Merlin: And it was really, really great.
Merlin: And there was a whole ecosystem of apps like this.
Merlin: You're going to see it pivot to Walmart in just a minute.
Merlin: So basically Google Reader comes to town.
Merlin: Whoa, whoa.
Merlin: Not only is this thing totally baller and totally like it's got like an API and you can do stuff with it and it's great and there's stuff.
Merlin: So they basically drive all the independent people largely out of business.
Merlin: And then eventually they go, eh.
Merlin: oh oh i'm so mad on behalf of all the people that were still fine i'm still mad about google reader because they did a walmart they did a walmart they they came in they drove out mom and pop and they decided that it wasn't that profitable so they they moved their thing somewhere else oh why do it why do it
Merlin: They do that, but they did this with inbox.
Merlin: There's a lot of people who are very sad, including me at the end of March.
Merlin: It's like all email programs suck, but this was the one on the phone that sucked the least.
Merlin: And now they say something, something, integrating these things into Gmail.
Merlin: I don't know how we got onto this.
John: here's the here's the here's the question here's the question yeah long tail long tail yes long tail right there's not that there's not that many people buying the pixies album tromp loyal today right today how many people do you think globally are buying that record long tail not everybody's gonna want to buy a surfer rosa
Merlin: Or come on, let's especially, let's be honest, come on Pilgrim.
John: No, you don't want that necessarily.
Merlin: See, now I conflate those because I had a cassette with both of those on there, so I confused them.
John: Yeah, they're one and the other.
John: I had Killers and Number of the Beast on a cassette, but I'll tell you what, I could tell the difference.
Merlin: Well, it's a whole different animal.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, that's a completely different bus, different driver.
Merlin: But here's the thing about long tail.
Merlin: Just leave it up.
Merlin: Just leave it up.
Merlin: And so even though there may not be a lot of people today that buy Come On Pilgrim, let's keep it in stock because long tail.
Merlin: Sure, long tail.
John: It's digital.
Merlin: There's no marginal excess overcost.
Merlin: It costs you nothing.
Merlin: Nothing.
Merlin: And you keep it up.
Merlin: And then every day.
Merlin: It's not like a necktie.
Merlin: It doesn't take up cubic inches.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's not affected by fashion.
John: Let me ask you this.
John: Did somebody buy Pretend to Fall today?
John: Oh.
John: Maybe there's somebody listening to the program that's like, hmm, I'll buy Pretend to Fall just to be the one person this is.
John: I feel like this might be a trap.
Merlin: Did somebody buy it today?
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: I'm going to say yes.
John: I'm going to say yes.
John: Okay.
John: And that's the long tale that every year at the end somebody goes...
John: somebody sends me a check for like some amount of money and I go, yeah, a long tail.
John: I faved it.
John: I faved it.
John: It's in my face.
John: A long tail.
John: And so why doesn't Google have this whole suite of things that's like, oh, this is all the stuff we were working on before.
John: It was fine.
John: Here it is.
John: But we're focusing on this new thing and yet long tail.
John: Instead of this thing where it's like, oh, we're just, we're like quote unquote not profitable.
Yeah.
John: And whoever it is that's making decisions based on that, I want to take him out into a field, Merlin.
Merlin: Who are you hurting?
Merlin: I mean, you're not hurting anybody.
Merlin: Just leave that stuff up.
John: You know those – you see these movies on the internet sometimes where it's – you can tell it's England.
John: It's England.
John: Yeah.
John: Because there's something about Inglang.
John: When you see it, you're like, Inglang.
John: And I don't know why.
John: I don't know what it is necessarily.
John: But you see it sometimes, you just clock it.
John: It's like, I can tell this has happened in Inglang.
John: And I can tell partly because they have built a fully functioning trebuchet.
John: And it's out there in a field.
John: And you can see what they're going to do before they do it.
John: And they hook up some Volkswagen bug.
John: that they've determined is not restorable and they trebuchet that freaking car all the way who knows how far okay okay yes and you're like trebuchets and the whole point of it is it's some it's some makers it's some former bike messengers who are like makers yeah we're gonna make a trebuchet to demonstrate to people just exactly what a powerful war engine a trebuchet could be yeah will it will it trebuchet and you're like hmm sure and then it happens and you're like whoa you are not wrong
John: This was a piece of medieval technology that actually would be pretty horrifying.
John: I've watched some.
John: I've watched them.
John: But if you took all the people in San Jose that made business cases for canceling products...
John: uh just because they weren't profitable anymore and you put them down range of the trebuchet in a field you could it's like all you have to do is be in this field you can you can put yourself anywhere in the field you don't have to i'm not you're not chained to the ground or anything but you're like rick on start like you get a little bit of running start yeah you're down it's right you're down there you're down range and then this trebuchet is going to throw between three and fifteen volkswagen bugs and
John: I'm a product manager.
John: You just stay out of the way.
John: Is it a deal?
John: Or do you want to keep Google Reader?
Merlin: I believe this is what Isaac Asimov calls a thought experiment.
John: That's a thought experiment.
John: That's right.
John: It's kind of like burying some shipping containers in the desert.
John: Run between the raindrops, except it's a thing shot from a trebuchet.
John: Yeah, it's just a different thing.
John: And so, you know, it doesn't have to be all Volkswagen bugs because sometimes and I don't know how effective trebuchets are at this, but a little bit of grape shot.
John: Right.
John: Like maybe one load is just alternators.
John: Oh.
John: Like if you went to the junkyard and you took a bunch of rusty alternators that no one's ever going to use again.
John: We don't need those anymore, do we, John?
John: Not as much.
John: Well, no, you kind of still need them.
John: Do you?
John: What am I thinking of?
John: You get them from, let's say, oh, you know what would be good?
John: Starters.
John: Okay.
John: Oh, because now we've got the fuel injection?
John: No, you still need a starter.
John: You're talking about a carburetor.
John: I've exhausted what I don't know about cars.
John: But a starter, at least for an old car, an old truck.
John: That's the part that goes rah, rah, rah, rah.
John: And it's about the size of a small melon, like a cantaloupe.
John: Like a cassava?
John: I don't know what a cassava is.
John: More like a cantaloupe.
John: Isn't a cassava like a potato?
John: I think it's a rhythm instrument.
John: Oh, that you might see on the wall.
Merlin: So you're going to put that in a trebuchet and shoot it in an engineer.
Merlin: Am I understanding this correctly?
John: No, no, no.
John: What you're going to do is you're going to put 40 of them in a trebuchet.
John: Oh.
John: They're all melon size.
John: Who's discontinued now?
John: They're irregular.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: They're irregularly shaped, but they're still going to fly.
John: But the thing is, I don't know if a trebuchet can fire grapeshot quite like it can just one big old Volkswagen.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I think tactically.
Merlin: I mean, you know, I'm not an expert on the ranged weapons, but I will say that tactically it might be tough to hit somebody with that, but it's going to hit something.
John: It's going to hit something.
Merlin: It's going to hit something.
Merlin: It's going to hit 40-somethings.
Merlin: You bet it is.
John: And, you know, 36 of those might be the ground, but there's going to be four of them.
John: We only need to be right once.
John: This is the thing.
John: There are so many of these people in San Jose that
John: Even if downrange is like, what, an acre, two acres?
John: Yeah.
John: Because it's Inglang, right?
John: It's not just wide open space.
John: It's not New Mexico.
John: Right.
John: There's like hedgerows.
John: There's bustling hedgerows all around it.
John: Don't be alarmed now.
John: Yeah.
John: You're allowed to walk anywhere.
John: That's the law.
John: But I feel like they would get long tail pretty fast.
John: Okay.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: after the first four volkswagens and like a couple of loads melon grape shot they they would they would be trying to um evade the arrival of the fruit and automobiles and they'd say you know what why don't now now i now i do feel like uh the long tail starts to make sense to me okay oh they get on they start on end of life in things they would resuscitate things they would uh they would they would bring it back
John: Our flip cameras would work again.
John: The driver.
John: If that's all it took.
John: I had a little two-channel preamp USB that went in, and you just plug your XLR into it, and it was a little preamp, and it took your sound and it put it into the computer.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And the thing worked fine.
John: But eventually they just stopped updating the drivers.
John: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: Get those guys on the course.
Merlin: Find them and put them on the course.
Merlin: The driver was up there.
John: You didn't have to take it down.
John: You didn't have to update it.
John: You just leave it up there.
John: It'll keep working.
Merlin: I mean, how hard would it be to update the driver sometimes?
Merlin: What are you talking about?
Merlin: You're talking about once a year?
Merlin: Yeah, what do you got to do once a year?
Merlin: Just update the driver?
Merlin: Update the driver.
John: That's not what they want.
Merlin: Now your thing doesn't work.
Merlin: Sorry, your movie expired.
Merlin: Better luck next time.
Merlin: Your movie expired.
John: That's right.
John: You think you own something?
John: You don't own anything.
Merlin: Now you license it.
Merlin: You only rent beer.
Merlin: How many things do you license?
Merlin: Personally?
Merlin: Oh, you mean like intransitively?
Merlin: Like from others.
John: From others, right?
John: You're not licensed.
Merlin: I mean, all of your software is licensed.
Merlin: Pretty much even your CDs of music are licensed.
Merlin: You don't own that.
Merlin: You bought the right to have the plastic and use it for a while.
John: But you have these things.
John: You have these licenses...
John: See, I try to not have them.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: But then I'm – because I don't have a digital video recorder.
John: So I'm not able to freeze Jeff Bridges going – Not too much.
John: I like line readings.
John: Line readings.
John: I saw a movie with him the other day.
John: Yeah.
John: And he's old now.
John: Yes.
John: And he really kind of is like my dad.
John: Oh, really?
John: He has a lot of the mannerisms of my dad.
John: Really?
John: I was watching this movie with the people I'm staying with here.
John: Your family.
John: My family.
John: Somebody's family.
John: And the person I was watching it with turned to me and said, it's like he's a cross between your dad and you.
John: I was like, there's no me in this.
John: I think the cross between your dad and you is you.
John: Well, sure, right?
John: Or some like interim me, some future me.
Merlin: Some kind of unspeakable homunculus that's an insult to God.
John: Are you saying me at 68?
John: Like, what's that going to look like?
John: Nobody wants to see that.
John: Yeah.
John: Except for hopefully all the people that still want to be my friend when I'm 60.
Merlin: Oh, you're going to – I think – what's his name?
Merlin: Jeff Bridges?
Merlin: I think he genuinely enjoys his work.
Merlin: I've seen interviews with him apart from that one Charlie Rose one.
Merlin: Even though we canceled Charlie Rose, we'll always have the TiVo.
Merlin: he was very stoned he was so stoned and i think he was probably talking about big lebowski is the funny thing oh really think about ah not too much ah but um the uh we watched it over and over you remember the times we used to have oh we'd sit in our underwear and we'd watch jeff bridges we he only had like uh 15 seconds of it but we watched it over we had some mr shows mr's mr's show on the tivo we had the british office british office
John: We would also sometimes just go on there.
John: Just go on and just watch some things.
John: The thing is, we didn't go click through things because you...
John: loved your DVR and you would save multiple things.
John: And so if we said, hey, let's watch some TV in our underwear, you would say, I've got some TV for you, my friends.
John: And then you would run us down the things that you had curated.
John: This is before people even used that word.
John: You were a very early curator.
John: It wasn't even that annoying yet.
John: No, you were just like, you're going to love this, and we did.
John: And then you'd be like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, you're going to love this, and we did.
Merlin: Yeah, that's...
Merlin: So, somebody writes in to Quora to ask, why does Google discontinue so many products and services?
Merlin: Someone who claims to work at Google responds.
Merlin: I'm going to give you a quick version.
Merlin: First, Google considers engineering time a very precious resource.
Merlin: So, running a product or service takes a lot of effort, a lot of people just to keep it up.
Merlin: Thus, closing down a product or service is a way to reclaim these engineers for something else.
Merlin: It's always about the money, isn't it?
Merlin: And then second.
John: Oh, reclaim the engineers like they are a finite resource.
Merlin: Reclaim.
Merlin: That sounds like something you would do after an oil spill.
Merlin: Like you want to get the bioavailable engineers like out of the drink.
John: Right.
John: You're going to take the engineers and what?
John: Soylent green them?
John: Yeah, probably that's what they're doing.
John: Soylent green.
John: They're probably throwing the engineers into some kind of hopper because they got to make room for the new engineers, which come out in profusion from like new engineers are like freaking roaches.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: They come out of holes in the walls you didn't even know were there.
Merlin: So what?
Merlin: You're saying they go to their vocational school and they come out.
Merlin: They're like, bleep, bloop, bleep, bloop.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You just buy like a half rack of engineers and just decant them.
John: Yeah, it's like control, alt, delete.
John: Have you tried turning your computer off and on?
John: I'm a computer science person.
Merlin: I canceled your thing.
John: I have four phones.
Yeah.
Merlin: And second, Google is pretty open to experimentation.
Merlin: Launching something is a good way to see.
Merlin: And then he's got some platitudes here.
Merlin: I just don't know, John.
Merlin: It doesn't seem that hard.
Merlin: They're a big company.
John: Everybody has Stockholm Syndrome now.
John: Have you noticed this?
John: Everybody's like, no, no, no, Apple.
John: And it's like, you're in prison.
John: Your mind is in prison.
Merlin: You're Patty Hearst in a closet at that point.
Merlin: You're going to be taking a lot of ideas.
Merlin: Now you're Tonya.
John: You're Tonya now.
John: Everybody does.
John: Now you're Tonya.
John: The only people that get criticized are the ones where people smell blood in the water and then they pile on.
John: Oh, actually, I've always hated them.
John: What's that guy?
John: What's he called?
Merlin: What's that guy's name?
Merlin: What kind of character is that?
Merlin: The guy who's there to opine that he never liked it at all.
Merlin: What's that guy?
John: Oh, yeah, right.
John: The guy who's like, oh, no, I was always against this.
John: Like the girl who was like the most billionaire who invented the thing where they were analyzing blood in a Coke can.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: She put a tiny microscope of blood into a Coke can, roll it down a hill.
Merlin: Yeah, you get a nanotainer, yeah.
John: And it was like, oh, now you're worth $400 million billion.
John: And then one year later, it's like, oh, we always hated you.
John: You're the worst.
John: You're a baddie.
Merlin: Did you?
Merlin: did you always hate her though?
John: Cause I don't think a lot of them did.
John: I don't think a lot of them did.
John: No.
John: Where did that a hundred million billion dollars come from?
John: It came from somewhere.
John: Came from somewhere.
John: You know what?
John: George Schultz, George Schultz, former secretary of state.
Merlin: Shit dog.
Merlin: You got to read the book.
Merlin: It's bananas.
Merlin: I don't know if I want to read.
Merlin: Oh, you want to read the book?
Merlin: Henry Kissinger.
John: Not really.
John: Henry Kissinger.
John: If you can take $100 billion from somebody, $100 billion and you can take it from Henry Kissinger.
Merlin: Well, I got an idea for a place he can live when he's broke.
Merlin: Dr. Kissinger, be careful going down the steps.
Merlin: It's a little dark.
John: No, he's going to end up living at Bohemian Grove because he's probably there now and they can't get in there to get him out.
Merlin: I like you refresh my drink.
John: I have to pee.
John: God, I'm so fucking tired.
John: Well, we don't get enough sleep.
John: Yeah.