Ep. 344: "One Hatchet Culture"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Oh, hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: Should we wrap it up?
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Is it too early?
John: No, no, no.
John: I'm fine.
John: I'm just adjusting levels here.
John: We're doing this today.
John: We're going no coffee today.
John: Why?
John: Why?
John: Well, I'm not doing it on purpose.
John: There's just no coffee in the house.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: Yeah, so we're going to do a just woke up and no coffee crutch show.
Fuck.
Merlin: Don't say crutch, John.
Merlin: You don't mean that.
Merlin: Just because you're under-caffeinated, don't say things you don't mean.
Merlin: I don't mean it crutch-like.
Merlin: You're not being ableist.
John: No, no, no.
John: I mean crutch-like hot.
John: It's just hot, you know?
John: It's something right now, something that would be hot that I would be drinking.
John: It's not that it's coffee.
John: It doesn't matter that it's coffee.
Merlin: Do you have other options?
Merlin: Do you have a tea that you could make or maybe you could warm up some oat milk or something?
Merlin: I'd be happy to pause if you want to go make something hot.
John: No, I just don't feel like a tea is quite the... I mean, I just said that it wasn't about it being coffee, that it was about it being hot, but it's not.
John: You were being gracious.
John: I was.
John: It's really about it being coffee.
Merlin: John, is this something you can fix today?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I mean, I'll have a coffee later.
Merlin: Okay, listen, listen, listen.
Merlin: Let's keep this short.
John: Okay.
John: Okay?
John: Well, you know, no, because the thing is, once we get going, it's going to be fine.
John: You can hear already, I'm fine.
John: I'm perfectly fine.
Merlin: Are you fine?
John: Sure, I'm just my normal self.
Merlin: You've got a lot going on right now.
John: I'm not fine in that sense.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Um, listen, go on.
Merlin: Uh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm doing a lot of tech things today.
Merlin: It's really upsetting.
Merlin: Um, uh, so, so John, John Roderick, um, uh, yeah,
Merlin: We left a lot of threads.
Merlin: Just so we're clear here, I probably had too much coffee, which is a goddamn shame.
Merlin: Talk about a crutch.
Merlin: I didn't warn you about this, but we left a few threads hanging when we took our little summer break.
Merlin: And I got three threads here, which I consider hung,
Merlin: And I'm going to let you talk about whatever you want because it's your show.
Merlin: But I've identified at least three things that I consider a hanging thread.
Merlin: Some hanging chads.
Merlin: A hanging chad.
Merlin: You know what I realized yesterday?
Merlin: I realized yesterday that that's when...
Merlin: everything started going to shit.
Merlin: The wheels came off right there.
Merlin: Yeah, I know.
Merlin: I was thinking about it because everybody goes, oh, 9-11, never forget.
Merlin: But then I was thinking about it.
Merlin: It's partly because I listened to a podcast about the 2000 election not too long ago.
Merlin: But if you really go back, you know, you remember how, remember how, who's the guy on Barney Miller?
Merlin: Who was the smart guy?
Merlin: Dietrich.
Merlin: Dietrich?
John: Dietrich, yeah.
Merlin: And Dietrich's a smart guy.
Merlin: And Dietrich says, oh, yeah, yeah, everybody started protesting Vietnam, you know, in 67.
Merlin: And he knew something was happening in the 50s because of the French and whatnot.
John: Oh, sure, the French, right.
Merlin: Okay, so everybody's going to say.
Merlin: He was sloppy.
Merlin: You know, he was smart and he was sloppy.
Merlin: He was a real role model.
Merlin: I love that guy.
Merlin: Boy, I love that actor.
Merlin: He was good.
Merlin: But I'm trying to pivot here to say that a lot of people are going to tell you 9-11, never forget.
Merlin: I'm just here to tell you, I think the true beginning of everything going to shit was that goddamn election.
John: Year 2000, never forget.
Merlin: Never forget.
Merlin: I'm looking at you, Florida.
Merlin: That's when the rails started getting gone off of, if you ask me.
John: Yeah, Brooks Brothers revolution.
John: Anyway, let's – I got three threads.
John: I got lots of things to say about that if I had a little bit more coffee.
John: But let's go – Let's save it for the show.
Merlin: Save it for the show.
John: Yeah, you're right.
John: Let's dive right into the threads.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And you can add to these if you've got others.
Merlin: I got three threads that I consider hung.
Merlin: I've got what's going on with your house situation writ large.
Merlin: That's number one.
Merlin: Number two, how things went with your trip or trips, how all that went.
Merlin: And the third one that I think— Captain Trips.
Merlin: Now, this may be too much to do without coffee.
Merlin: I know your listeners and fanfolk are going to want to know what's going on.
Merlin: The fanfolk.
Merlin: Oh, the fanfolk.
Merlin: They're in the Shire.
John: Yeah, they live in the little house.
Merlin: They like smoking their pipe, and they got their little round doors.
Merlin: The wizard's always hitting his head on the chandelier.
Yeah.
Merlin: And then the third one is the what's going on with the Western state hurricanes record.
Merlin: Oh, oh, sure.
Merlin: So you pick, you got house, you got trip, you got hurricanes.
Merlin: Are any of those of interest to you, John?
John: I know it's early.
John: Well, you know, it's all of interest, right?
John: I mean, this is all, it's all, everything's, everything's everything.
John: You know, it's really true.
John: Time is a flattened circle.
John: This is this.
John: this is this it is what it is well let's say let's so yeah yeah solipsism's a solipsism how about well i'll give you a little brief boy
Merlin: I wish to God you had some of this coffee.
Merlin: This is way worse than me drinking in front of you, isn't it?
Merlin: I can almost taste it.
Merlin: It's really good.
Merlin: It's low-acid coffee that we get.
Merlin: It's a company called Tiemens.
Merlin: We get Tiemens low-acid coffee.
John: It's Tiemens with goodness.
John: You can tell that it's hot.
John: Right, first of all, just by the way you're kind of gulping it.
Merlin: Because I'm doing the thing my stepfather used to do.
Merlin: Every drink he ever took in his life, he did this.
Merlin: It has three parts.
Merlin: It goes... He's having a second cup.
Merlin: God, I hated him so much.
Merlin: He never has a second cup of my coffee.
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John: Okay, so here's what happened most recently.
John: How about if I start with most recently?
John: Yeah, sure.
John: I got back from my trip.
John: I went by the house that has continued to be the best house.
John: I've been looking for a house now for a year.
John: And, uh, there was, uh, there was a house early on that was the, that was a house.
John: I went to tour like three times, um,
John: And then I went back one day when there was nobody there and tried all the doorknobs until I found one that was open, and then I just went in it and walked around it for an afternoon.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: This isn't just for our listeners and fanfolk.
Merlin: Is this the mid-century modern craveability that you had, this one house that was near your...
Merlin: Not too much OPSEC here, but it's kind of near where your daughter lives, and it's a mid-century modern that intrigued you.
John: Yes, well, but there was this original one.
John: There was the first one that I saw that intrigued me.
John: And here, there were a few problems with it.
John: There were a few great things.
John: First of all, you drive up.
John: It's a circular driveway.
John: There's a Japanese garden.
John: It's got real wood shingles, roof shingles.
Yeah.
John: It's very intriguing looking kind of wide, low house.
John: And then you walk in and the first problem, this house was 4,000.
John: 250 feet 4200 square foot house which is a large that's big house that's four times the size of our flat my goodness yeah unless you're talking about a mcmansion which they're often 15 000 square feet and most of it is just entryway or mud rooms they have a lot of mud mud room they do have mud rooms uh this was like a house built in the mid 60s
John: And when you walked in, it was a house built for entertaining, Merlin.
John: It had a living room and a dining room and a kitchen all on the main floor.
John: And each thing was a giant version of itself.
John: The whole front of the house was a wall of windows and you could see the ocean and you could see the distant mountains.
John: And then...
John: As you wandered around this first floor where you were imagining having a party with 400 people to benefit the local violin makers or whatever, people have parties to benefit.
John: Yes.
John: Then you realize, like, where do the people live?
John: And then sort of in the back, you go through a door and here's this beautiful bedroom, again, with the wall windows open.
John: And then there's another bedroom which has a has one of those.
John: Do you remember in elementary school?
John: This may not have happened in Ohio, but where they would turn one room into two by drawing a very thick vinyl curtain that was kind of accordion.
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: Uh huh.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: You've got something like today they call them a multipurpose room.
Merlin: multi-purpose room yeah but you could do that with acoustic panels that slide but no i totally remembered that that was like such a i'm gonna say 60s thing yes yes the vinyl uh but it's heavy vinyl it's not it's not light it's like the type of thing you would use it's sort of like a window shade in reverse but an accordion and sideways right sideways yes uh so there was a there was a big room but it had one of those in the middle
Merlin: Does it go into the wall or is it always accordioned up?
John: No.
Merlin: Is it like an Apple store where they have a door where they can hide the gate?
Merlin: Or is it something where it's just always sticking out?
John: Well, what it turned out in spending some time in this house is that this family had seven children.
John: That's a lot of children.
John: It is.
John: And so this was a room...
John: That was, I think, meant to be either two boys rooms or two girls rooms, but they could open this wall up and do that thing that every teenager wants, which is to have their rooms be all one big room.
John: And they had built in desks and stuff is very.
John: And then anyway, then you would go downstairs and.
John: And in the downstairs, it was an absolute warren of rooms.
John: There were five more bedrooms.
John: There was a giant room that would have been like the ultimate thing.
Merlin: Is this anywhere in your price range?
Merlin: This sounds very costly.
Merlin: It sounds like a bespoke home, like with a lot of customizations that people are going to, does somebody die?
Merlin: I mean, are they trying to unload it?
Merlin: This sounds very costly.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, the thing is, these neighborhoods that I'm looking in, everybody's dying.
John: It's basically – That's how you know they're good, huh?
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: It's a kill show down here.
John: And every hour, another 92-year-old is like, I can't live in this house anymore.
John: And their kids are like, all right, dad, we'll put you in a home.
John: And then they sell it.
John: They're trying to sell it as fast as they can.
John: This was a house – I mean a lot of these houses are occupied by the original owners.
John: This is one of those where it was.
John: It was – and there's seven kids, right?
John: That's a lot to take care of for an older person.
John: Like jokes aside, that's a lot to take care of.
John: Well, but also the seven kids, think about it.
John: They don't –
John: not one of them is like, I want to live in mom and dad's house.
John: And also they don't, because who, nobody has seven kids anymore.
John: And also they're like, I'm sure these seven kids have been fighting over stuff since they were all born.
Merlin: So there's a place you could, if it was zoned for, you could turn into an office for a startup.
John: Yeah, it's exactly what – it would be an incredible office for a startup.
Merlin: I mean, down to the curtains, you know, or the accordions.
John: But then in the basement, it's like there's another kitchen, there's a giant – Oh, my God, I got such a boner right now.
John: This sounds amazing.
John: Multi-purpose room, then five bedrooms, and then a room that was like their gardening tool shed that was big enough that they would drive their riding lawnmower right into it and park it.
Merlin: Oh, I just finished.
John: And then this band practice room.
John: Oh, and also the basement all had super tall ceilings too.
John: Oh, and did I tell you it was like wood-paneled ceilings?
John: Anyway, so I walked around this place.
John: So the downsides were it was –
John: It was forced hot water heating.
John: So kind of like if you had radiators, like in a New York apartment building.
John: Yeah.
John: But just in a normal house, there's like a boiler...
John: and then it's piping water up through all the rooms.
John: It looks like a radiator, like an electric radiator, a baseboard heater, but it's actually got hot water running through it.
Merlin: That's probably original.
John: It's original, and it kind of... Oh, that sounds like something that's just ripe to break.
John: Yeah, they were like, I'm not sure if it's working right now.
John: And I was like, okay.
John: But also...
John: There were like six bathrooms.
John: What I was going to need was a... Oh, I know.
John: You can have one just for diarrhea.
Merlin: You can have a bespoke diarrhea bathroom that you don't even tell people.
Merlin: Maybe put a bookcase in front of it.
Merlin: But that's your place now.
John: There was a bathroom in the basement that you... There was a bathroom and then like a big bathroom, two sinks...
John: And then you would walk down to the end and there was like a big shower, kind of like a gym shower.
John: But then if you went through the shower, you'd come out the other side in another bathroom.
Merlin: Oh my fucking God.
John: Because there's seven kids trying to get ready for school in the morning.
John: And so I always imagined there was a boy's side and a girl's side and they would like yell out like, okay, the shower's clear.
John: Oh my God.
John: Really something.
John: Anyway, no, I couldn't afford it at the time.
John: I hadn't sold my house.
John: I didn't have – no bank would loan me money.
John: I wandered through this place, and I had to kind of sit on the floor in the living room and go, okay, I can't have this house.
Merlin: Can I just ask in passing, when you didn't break in, you walked in.
Merlin: When you walked in, you spent the afternoon there.
Merlin: I mean, there's the analytical part of like, you could certainly be thinking about the money.
Merlin: I would certainly have an erection from all the bathrooms.
Merlin: But what did it feel like?
Merlin: Did it feel like anybody, were there ghosts?
Merlin: What was the feel of the place?
John: It really felt like I was inside the Brady Bunch.
John: Like inside them each individually.
John: And mom and dad and Alice.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
John: You're the ghost.
John: I'm the ghost.
John: It felt, I mean, everything was original.
John: So the kitchen was original.
John: There was like, there was a little desk, a built-in desk in the kitchen with a phone built into the wall.
Oh.
John: Where you would sit and talk to your friends while everybody else was sitting in the kitchen.
John: You could gossip and drink pop.
John: Oh, my God.
John: So much pop got consumed in this house.
Merlin: Inside the Brady Punch.
John: Outside on the porch overlooking the ocean, it was gas-plumbed barbecues that were just built in to the house.
Oh.
Merlin: And they were like... This must have just been the tits when it was built.
Merlin: It was dynamite.
Merlin: I mean, all this stuff is somewhat dated and probably in my mind, I'm thinking a lot of upkeep, maintenance, replacement is coming in the next five years.
Merlin: But this place must have been just a work of art when it came out.
Merlin: It was incredible because these barbecues... It's like when everybody suddenly wanted a sunken living room.
Merlin: There was these certain things that came along where suddenly you had to have that...
John: And this almost had, the living room almost felt like a sunken living room.
John: It's just that when the sliding glass doors were open in the front, oh, did I mention that most of the wall of windows were also doors?
John: Was this an architect who lived there?
Merlin: It was.
Merlin: Okay.
John: I don't know if an architect lived there, but an architect certainly designed it.
John: There's not another one in the world.
John: It sounds really unique.
John: But you could be at a party and walk out the sliding glass door of the living room and down the porch and in the sliding glass room of the dining room while in conversation with someone that was walking along inside the house the whole time, and you wouldn't even notice the passage of... You have so many good words, and all I can think is...
Merlin: everybody in the family doesn't have to poop in the same room.
John: No, they each have their own bathroom.
Merlin: You could poop in so many places.
Merlin: You could do, it would be like, it would be like fucking Disneyland.
Merlin: You could just, you could just go to Frontierland and drop a deuce.
John: But it was, it was, uh, you know, like the car, it was, it was wall to wall carpet in the living room because that was the style of the time.
John: Of course.
John: And it was like this kind of, um, I don't know, it was jello colored, um,
John: It was like, it wasn't, it was like lemon.
John: It wasn't lime Jell-O.
John: It was lemon Jell-O.
John: Okay.
John: Anyway, I was, I had to just go like, okay, this is a great home.
John: But at the time it was early in my search and I felt like, oh, well, I've been looking for a house for three weeks and this one came up.
John: So no reason to sound the alarm bells.
John: I'm sure that they're hanging down all the time, these chads.
Mm-hmm.
John: And so I let it pass onto another with no protest.
John: Okay.
John: And immediately out in front, a giant dumpster showed up.
John: And for the next nine months, that dumpster filled and was removed and came back and was filled and was removed and
John: So I could tell what was happening.
John: They were fixing it up.
John: I think they were getting out all the cool stuff.
John: But they were taking out all the cool stuff.
John: They were taking out the original kitchen.
John: They were taking out everything.
John: That makes me sad.
Merlin: That would have been so perfect for somebody.
Merlin: I understand somebody's investing in this place.
Merlin: They're probably going to try and, as they say, flip it.
Merlin: But for somebody, that would be so amazing.
Merlin: For me, it would be so amazing.
Merlin: It would be pretty neat.
John: And what happens is, you know, there's this cult.
John: It's not a cult.
John: It's a business fraud.
John: But there's a business fraud that came along a long time ago.
John: And I'm sure you're aware that green construction is... So much of the green stuff is a racket.
John: It's totally a racket.
John: And one of the ways that
John: that it's a racket is they come in and they buy a 100-year-old house that's doing just fine, and they tear it down, and then they build green.
John: Well, the whole thing, the whole exercise... You have so many resources going to that new stuff.
John: Yeah, it just basically costs the world 1 million tons of carbon in order to build this greenhouse.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: I mean, there was a Wonderful Planet Money recently that was just hair-curling about what the fuck exactly is going on with recycling right now.
Merlin: It just blew my mind.
Merlin: And basically, the thesis is, don't email me, the thesis is that at this juncture... It's all performance, right?
John: It's just fake.
Merlin: Well, plastic in particular.
Merlin: At this point, because of Project National Sword in China, they don't want our plastic anymore.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: There were unique economic circumstances in the 90s that made it, they needed something to put on ships coming back to China.
Merlin: So they said, hey, why don't we bring this stuff we can recycle?
Merlin: Oh, by the way, also, wages are really low.
Merlin: And if we don't like it, we can just throw any of it into the ocean.
Merlin: right which is what they did and so at this point it actually is better for the if you have a in their example a peanut butter jar with some peanut butter in it don't waste water trying to clean that out send it to the landfill it's actually better for the environment than wasting the hot water to put it onto a truck that takes it to another truck that takes it to a train that takes it to a ship that might go to indonesia at this point
Merlin: And then they dump it in the ocean.
Merlin: Yeah, so I've got that on the brain right now.
Merlin: Yeah, I know.
Merlin: But that's the thing with all this green stuff.
Merlin: I mean, some of it obviously makes a ton of sense.
Merlin: Solar, to me, seems like kind of a no-brainer at this point.
John: Solar's a great thing.
John: And a lot of this stuff, I mean, a lot of it is.
John: It's just that if you are replacing something old that already works fine...
John: What you're doing is just, I mean, all the sunk costs of that thing, you're burning.
John: I mean, reuse is better than recycling, but the thing better than reuse is just use.
John: Just don't fuck with it.
John: So the racket I'm referring to is the double-pane window racket.
John: You see, most single-pane windows are fine.
John: The heat that is escaping your house is not...
John: by and large, escaping through your single pane windows.
John: It's escaping through your uninsulated attic and your uninsulated walls.
John: But the double pane window racket
John: It works because people sit in their house in the winter and they sit next to a window and they feel a chill and they go, oh, these windows.
Merlin: They can't feel how much the heat is going through the ceiling because that's what heat do.
Merlin: Yeah, that's what heat do.
John: And so, but a lot, especially like these mid-century windows, they're thick glass.
John: I mean, if you move into an 1890s house and the glass is the...
John: The glass is turning liquid gradually and sort of sinking down in the – I mean that's not even going to happen in an 1890s house as much as like a 1790s house.
John: But anyway, when I moved into this house, which part of the reason I bought it is it has all its original windows.
John: Um, I'm talking about my farm.
John: I got so many flyers slipped under the door in the first nine months of like the time to replace those windows.
John: Hey, a homeowner.
John: And, and you can tell it's a racket because, because they send kids around with clipboards to knock on your door and say, Hey, I can get you a great deal.
John: And, and, and, and so, and so what they're doing, they're preying on the elderly basically.
John: And on dumb new homeowners where, um,
John: where you can tell the kid with a clipboard is just just a summer hire that's um that's basically working on some kind of really bad commission structure they sit on your porch and they try and like that they really pressure you to to hear their spiel they've got a they've got a spiel it's it's exactly like uh the jehovah's witnesses except you probably get more out of
John: believing in Jehovah.
Merlin: You could work for, if you have that personality, you could work for Greenpeace, you could work for Sonic Internet, just the classic door-to-doors, but I would also include a Jehovah's Witness.
Merlin: They've got a bit, they've got a thing they want to sell you on.
John: If you want to hear the patter, you know, you can have an afternoon of fantastic conversation.
John: Right here in River City.
John: Anyway, I'm sure that they were taking all these windows out at a great expense, replacing them with double-pane vinyl.
John: Which basically turns your house into a toxic terrarium.
John: But also the ubiquitous granite countertop, the ubiquitous stainless steel appliances, the things that every brand new cheapo condo downtown has.
John: Somehow people flipping houses also think that's what you want in your mid-century house.
Merlin: Got to get one of those deep sinks.
Merlin: Oh, deep sink.
Merlin: Got to get the deep sink.
Merlin: Oh, the granite.
Merlin: Everyone wants granite.
Merlin: Got to get the granite.
Merlin: Got to get the granite.
John: Granite.
John: It's the sign that you have arrived.
John: Your countertops are granite.
John: If you don't have granite, you're obviously a poor.
John: When I walked into my farm...
John: And I saw that they had granite countertops and they had put stainless steel appliances and cherry wood cabinets.
John: My heart fell.
John: But I loved my house so much that I bought it in spite of it.
John: Although it taunted me all these years.
John: Your kitchen was extremely modern.
John: It's very modern.
John: But not modern like, zoo, here's George Jetson.
John: It's modern like, hey, I went to Lowe's.
John: Right.
John: The designer at Lowe's showed me a palette of colors.
John: Anyway, I had to let this house go, and I had to watch it get desecrated.
John: And then in the month that followed, I did not see beautiful mid-century modern homes in proliferation, Sam I am.
John: I realized how rare that house was because I thought, Oh, you know, it's, it's a killing field out here.
John: 90 year olds dropping left and right and all their architect design homes coming up for sale.
John: Sure.
John: No, what I was finding is a lot of mid-century modern homes that had granite countertops and stainless steel appliances and canned lights and laminate floors that had already been... It's like I had to get some new glasses, so we had to go to Hayes Valley.
Merlin: And it's fine.
Merlin: It's hilarious.
Merlin: There is a row on one block.
Merlin: There's away suitcases, parachute sheets, Warby Parker glasses, and I think another one coming soon.
Merlin: But it's hilarious.
Merlin: It's like podcast internet ad row.
Merlin: And so many of the men, the men in their 20s, look like some kind of bad clone of Travis McElroy.
Merlin: It's like they all have a beard and an undercut.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And that's the thing with this house.
Merlin: You see these marks.
Merlin: And this is one thing that was so interesting about the Haight for the longest time until the probably late 90s.
Merlin: It had been such a shitty neighborhood.
Merlin: If you think about the Panhandle and Haight and some of that stuff.
John: To our international listeners, he's referring to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.
John: Yes.
John: Made famous by the hippies.
John: Hippies.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But, you know, I mean, what's interesting is for so long, these absentee, neglectful landlords didn't do fucking anything to these houses.
John: You're telling the story of Portland, Oregon now.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: They got strippers and they got houses.
John: Portland did the same thing that you're saying.
Merlin: It's like a time capsule.
Merlin: We're like, holy shit, this formica has not been touched.
John: And that ends up looking wonderful when you come in and fix it
Merlin: later and restore it but you don't have to have it grow a beard and get an undercut you could do something that's not the deep sink and the and the and the granitizing of the counters you don't have to do that that's gonna that's gonna be like canopies on chick-fil-a in the 80s it's gonna look so fucking dated in 15 years you're gonna you're gonna have the affluence of an earlier age in a way that you don't have the foresight to see right now
Merlin: Like JNCO jeans and fucking, you know, Dayglo colored sweatshirts with Frankie Say on it.
Merlin: It's just, anyway.
Merlin: Frankie Say.
Merlin: Frankie Say.
Merlin: Frankie Say Relax.
Merlin: See, I always thought I should say Frankie Say.
Merlin: I thought I always thought I should say Frankie Says, but they're saying Frankie.
Merlin: First of all, they're English, and they do vowels different.
Merlin: Frankie Say.
Merlin: Frankie Say.
Merlin: Relax.
Merlin: Don't do it.
John: Two times go to war.
John: It turns out that it's very hard and I think expensive to think outside the box in this instance because the mass production of kitchens has become like an industry unto itself –
John: And there aren't other options.
John: I went to a appliance store with a friend not very long ago because this is how I spend my time with friends.
John: Yes.
John: Hey, you want to go to the appliance store?
John: Sure.
John: And we went in and I said to the appliance salesperson, and this was, I'm sorry, this was not a big box store.
John: This was one of these like boutique stores.
John: only sells appliances appliance store.
Merlin: Oh, like a Vulcan range?
Merlin: Something like that.
Merlin: Those fancy silver refrigerators?
John: Yeah, the kinds of stoves that you get in France that just stay on all the time.
John: Whoa.
John: And the salesperson was not a young person on a summer break.
John: It was clearly, this was an appliance salesperson who had held this job for many years.
John: And I said, applied salesperson.
John: When we were growing up, you and I, let me just make this, let's just get chummy here.
John: When you and I, people of a similar age, not to flatter either of us, but when we were young,
John: There were lots of different colors of refrigerators.
John: Do you remember?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I mean, the standard for us was, I believe it was called avocado.
Merlin: Avocado.
Merlin: You could also get harvest, which is yellow.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But there were, yeah, no, there were lots of different ones.
Merlin: I mean, especially in the 60s.
Merlin: There was orange.
Merlin: There was a lot of day glow.
Merlin: Not day glow, but very, very bright.
Merlin: And then eventually it just came down to mostly like, do you want white or something else?
Yeah.
John: Well, yeah, you could get an oven that matched your refrigerator.
Merlin: We had an all avocado kitchen.
John: That's lovely.
John: That's lovely.
John: That's exactly what I'm looking for.
John: Anyway, I said to this person, everything I see here in your store, and it is a store stretching like the warehouse at the end of Indiana Jones.
Mm-hmm.
John: Which a lot of things are like, it turns out.
John: Yeah.
John: Poorly managed.
John: But like extensive.
Merlin: Yes, yes.
Merlin: But like your dream, like, you know, that house you walk through, I've had dreams like this.
Merlin: People who live in apartments, people in New York have dreams like this all the time.
Merlin: You ever have the dream where you discover a door and there's another house in your house?
Merlin: I've had that dream a lot.
Merlin: But you're saying the same case here, it's just that it's all silver appliances.
John: Well, and I said to the appliance salesperson,
John: everything in here is silver or black or white.
John: Yeah.
John: Not an avocado to be seen, ironically enough.
John: What would it take?
John: I know somewhere out there, there is a pink refrigerator.
John: Now, how do I get it?
John: How do I get from here to a pink refrigerator?
John: And the appliance salesperson put their hand on my shoulder in a chummy way and said,
John: Let me walk you over.
John: Now you walk with me.
John: And they walked me over to a refrigerator and they said, now this refrigerator, I can get you in different colors.
Merlin: It's probably like shrimp or salmon.
John: The color, yeah.
John: But scampi, shrimp scampi.
John: Uh, but in order to do that, it will cost 1200 more dollars.
John: Hachi machi.
John: To get this in a color because what they do is they put a different color on it.
John: It's a custom job.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I said rare that you have to get.
John: Wow.
John: And I said, is that just between you and me and the, all these refrigerators, is that a good deal in your estimation?
Yeah.
John: And the appliance salesperson shook their head ruefully and said, no, it's not because it's the same exact refrigerator as this one.
John: It is as they say what it is.
John: It is what it is, except in order to get it pink.
John: So he's I'm sorry.
John: So the appliance salesperson said the only people that do this are people that don't that have more money than God.
John: And the person who is designing their kitchen is not answerable to them.
John: There's no budget.
John: It's like make my kitchen what I want it to be.
John: And the designer comes in and says, I need a pink refrigerator and we make it.
John: And I said, this is bogus.
John: This is bogus.
John: So you're saying that the reason that all kitchens are stainless now is that there just isn't another option.
John: It is not...
John: It is not allowed even.
John: The world has denied the possibility that a normal person would want an avocado refrigerator.
John: And so all of a sudden I realized, oh, all of these granite countertop kitchens, it's an emperor's new clothes situation.
John: None of us want them.
John: We're just being told they're beautiful because it's all there is.
John: That's not exactly a synopsis of the emperor's new post story.
Merlin: I bet it's a little bit of the market and the market makers finding this common ground where, I mean, I guess an extreme example would be like, I don't know, is there a way to get European power plugs in your house?
Merlin: Maybe.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: You could.
Merlin: Well, there's probably some way to do that, I'm guessing.
Merlin: But the point being, you're going to be so much better off if you just get 110 stuff.
Merlin: Because that's what everything is.
Merlin: That's extreme.
Merlin: But what you're describing here also makes a lot of sense.
Merlin: You think about clothing.
Merlin: The same with clothing, which drives me bananas sometimes.
Merlin: Seven Mack Weldon.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: But a lot of places you go, like, I don't know why I can't find pants that fit me.
Merlin: I'm not that strangely shaped.
Merlin: I'm pretty much like a 35-30, but nobody wants to make a 35.
John: Oh, that's true.
John: It's 34 to 36, isn't it?
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, like, how do we, I mean, like, look at shoe sizes.
Merlin: Look at the English shoes.
Merlin: Like, when you buy Doc Martens, I got to buy Doc Martens big and stuff insoles in there because I'm exactly between, I'm exactly between the two English sizes.
John: Well, so this was the argument that
John: that was being made by the Travis McElroys several years ago, I would say starting 10 years ago, where the argument was, all you ever need is one hatchet, Merlin.
John: You don't need to keep buying hatchets.
Merlin: You don't need a new hatchet every year.
Merlin: You're talking about the undercut boys, not the specific Travis's McElroy.
John: No, no, no, not Travis's McElroy himself, although he exemplifies it.
Merlin: I love that guy.
Merlin: You can't afford...
Merlin: everything.
Merlin: You can only afford the best.
Merlin: That is right.
Merlin: Afford the best.
Merlin: They say that's a thing Millenniums feel strongly about.
Merlin: You're not going to have all the pens.
Merlin: You're going to have one nice pen.
Merlin: You're going to take care of it.
John: Nice pen.
John: Exactly.
John: So you just buy one bespoke
John: Hatchet.
John: I kick-started a pen today.
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: I spent over $100 to kick-start a pen.
Merlin: A nice pen?
Merlin: It's a space pen, but it's bespoke.
Merlin: It's really nice.
Merlin: It's got a PVD coating.
Merlin: I know you like a space pen.
Merlin: Does it ride underwater?
Merlin: You can ride in fucking butter.
Merlin: I can't believe they didn't include that in the video.
Merlin: Every demo I do, the only demo I ever do for anyone that succeeds is pulling out a space pen to ride in butter.
Merlin: It's the best demo ever.
Merlin: Give me some butter.
John: So that thing, the whole one hatchet culture, I mean, I was part of it with my whole Filson thing.
John: Like, oh, why do, you know, these jackets are $400.
Merlin: I don't think there's any reason to criticize somebody for wanting a nice thing.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Either for its niceness, nor for the fact that I don't want to have to buy.
Merlin: You go through this, there's so much shit where, like, I finally, like our coffee maker, where we had this, like, Cuisinart coffee maker that we like, but we had to, for one reason or another, buy a new one, like, every year or two.
Merlin: Well, you can, but I don't want to throw Cuisinart under the bus.
Merlin: I actually like their stuff a lot, but there's tons of stuff where you're like, and I try to get my kid to get, understand this is like, you don't want to buy six of something that's inexpensive.
Merlin: If you could buy one of something that might be costly, but not expensive and,
John: I wish someone had said this to my dad when he was shopping for stereos in the 70s.
Merlin: Did he get those ones like a Walgreens where it looks like a component system, but it's just a bunch of like... You know what I mean?
Merlin: You ever seen the back of one of those stereos you buy at a mall?
John: Oh, I had one.
Merlin: It's just like five wires and a bunch of particle board.
John: If you looked at the speakers...
John: which were also particle board, if you looked at them closely, the woofer and tweeter that was visible through the phone, that was just painted on the particle board.
John: It's a Trump loyal stereo.
John: Yeah, it was just like a four-inch.
Merlin: It's as seen as Batun Tunnel.
John: But so if you wanted to go spend $500 on a pair of custom Alden boots, they would fit your foot perfectly.
John: You wouldn't have to get...
John: a half size or wouldn't be able to find a half size.
John: But you don't want that.
John: You want to just go get some Doc Martens.
John: And I struggle with this all the time because there's Doc Martens that are made in England and then there are Doc Martens that are made in Indonesia or Vietnam.
John: And the ones that are made in England are slightly more expensive.
John: And honestly, when you put them on relative to the ones made in Vietnam, they're worse.
Merlin: It happened with Timbuktu bags.
Merlin: Timbuktu famously employed people at the cannery over on Third Street to hand make all of their bags.
Merlin: And when you ordered a Timbuktu bag, it was made by probably a Mexican lady.
Merlin: But working in the cannery in San Francisco made your bag.
Merlin: And then eventually they broke it off.
Merlin: to where there were like their bespoke custom bags and then their like bags for the proles and they are pretty definitely made in asia now it's difficult not to it's very very expensive to make those things well and honestly i will i i bet you that if you took them and put them side by side unless there were very clear
John: manufacturing clues that they put into the bags made here to make you know that they were made here?
John: Yeah.
John: I bet you the ones made in Asia are better.
Merlin: Well, I mean, think about Levi's and the H.O.
Merlin: in Mexico.
Merlin: No offense.
Merlin: But with Levi's, you really are better off to look at several pairs, even if they all are from the same lot.
Merlin: I mean, I had a girlfriend who...
Merlin: would try on, when she found something she liked, which took forever, and then she found it in the size she wanted, she would always try on three of that thing.
Merlin: And I said, you're out of your mind.
Merlin: She's like, I'm not out of my mind.
Merlin: Because this stuff, well, first of all, what does large mean?
Merlin: What does medium mean?
Merlin: What does large mean?
Merlin: What is a size four?
Merlin: Like, what does that mean?
Merlin: You have to try it on because each one, two of them might be the same and one might be different.
Merlin: And you're doing a little bit of Monty Hall, you know,
Merlin: And pretty soon, you know, you're wearing pants that don't make any sense with a weird rise.
Merlin: You gotta try them on.
Merlin: Huh?
Merlin: Nothing.
Merlin: Nothing.
Merlin: Nothing is the same.
Merlin: It is what it is.
Merlin: Countertops.
Merlin: It is what it is.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: Pink refrigerators.
Merlin: Little pink refrigerators for you and me.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Blood on the scarecrow.
John: Blood on the plow.
Merlin: Sucking on chili dogs.
John: Why does he suck them?
John: It's so odd.
Merlin: What an odd thing to do.
Merlin: It's a Midwest thing, I guess.
John: Yeah, Indiana.
John: It is.
John: Indiana.
John: It's not that Iowa sucks.
John: It's that...
John: Nebraska blows.
John: No, that's the other way around.
John: Was that Oscar Wilde?
John: No, I think it was.
John: No, that's the thing that they say.
John: Either this region goes or I do.
John: It's not that South Dakota sucks.
John: It's that Nebraska blows.
John: That's what it is.
John: The only thing worse than being talked about is being from Nebraska.
John: So later on that summer, last summer, we're talking about now a year ago.
John: Okay.
John: And we've talked about it on the show.
John: I saw a house come for sale.
John: And from the moment it arrived on the phone at 8 o'clock in the morning, I was like, there it is.
John: There it is.
John: That's the house.
John: And even though the open house didn't start till noon, I had somewhere to be.
John: And so I raced over there to this house.
John: And as I turned onto the street, I was like, I had no idea this street existed.
John: And it's incredible.
John: This is an incredible street.
John: Everything about this street I like.
John: It was like walking through a door in my house and there was another house.
John: Oh, fuck.
John: I drove up this street that was right by a bunch of other streets that I did know, but I didn't know this street.
John: And then there's the house and you can't really even see it from the street.
John: I went in there.
John: I drove up.
John: I could see the owners in the house and he was windexing
John: The mirrors getting it ready.
John: And she was still in her house coat.
John: But I walked up to the door and I rang the doorbell.
Merlin: And that got you the feeling that this is an early stage thing?
Merlin: Well, oh, what do you mean?
Merlin: Oh, what's the significance of the Windex in the house coat?
John: Oh, they're living in the house still.
John: The house has just gone on sale that day.
Merlin: Okay, got it.
John: They're getting it ready for the first open house.
John: So you're an early bird.
John: I'm very early.
John: And they open the door.
John: And I say, hi, I'm sorry to bother you.
John: I know your open house doesn't start for a while, but I, you know, I have to, I dropped my daughter off at school and I have to go do my podcast with Merlin Mann.
John: And I just thought I could come in here for a second and just take a look at the house.
John: Cause it's very beautiful.
Merlin: The shorter version being, hi, you don't know me.
Merlin: Can I come in your house?
John: Right.
John: But you know, I never give, I never give a short talk when I could give a long time.
John: I didn't have time.
John: And they were like, oh yes, of course.
John: Come in.
John: Wow.
John: So they give me Jehovah's Witnesses in reverse.
John: Well, what they were was a couple, 92 years old.
John: Oh, they built this house.
John: Uh, they, uh, from an architect's design in the fifties.
John: Oh my God.
John: They have lived here ever since they raised their family here.
John: They continued to live here into their nineties.
John: Um, I talked to the neighbors later and they were like, you know, they still play tennis.
John: That's so sweet.
John: He dyes his hair black still.
John: Good for him.
And,
John: and um you know and she's like i'm in my house coat and i'm like believe me i'm the intruder here don't you be you be comfortable i'm just i just want to take a look at your beautiful house so they walked me around they showed me all the things and everything i saw i was like this is perfect this is a perfect house you have a perfect house here and uh and so then i was like you know after i'd seen the house i said
John: I bid you adieu.
John: I love your home.
John: It's really perfection.
John: And they said, well, you know, we're in our 90s now and it's just too much house.
John: And I said, I understand.
John: You've cared for it so well.
John: And I left and I was like, ugh.
John: That's the house, but I can't buy that house because I don't have, I have to sell my farm, right?
John: As we've discussed, right?
John: The banks won't give me money.
John: Fucking banks.
John: So I watched this house sell.
John: I've described this to you.
John: Have I talked to you about this?
John: I watched this house sell and it broke my heart.
John: And I kept looking, I kept looking, but I was just like always thinking about this house.
John: I would drive by it.
John: Once I found this street, then I would drive by it.
John: The street is not on the way to anywhere, but I would purposely kind of go out of my way.
Merlin: What, are you going to turn down Brigadoon?
Merlin: Fucking A. Once you know where it is, the clock stops.
John: I think.
John: A few months later, the house comes on the market again.
John: What?
John: But it isn't that the sale fell through.
John: No, no, no.
John: The old couple have moved on to sunnier climes.
John: What happened was a young, presumably, tech peoples, and by young, I mean 45, bought it on the assumption they had a job lined up at...
John: Amazon, let's guess.
John: Oh, look, I see.
John: And the job didn't come through.
John: And so they had completed the sale of the home.
John: That's going to be costly.
John: Oh, that's going to cost you.
Merlin: Because you're still paying a lot of stuff.
Merlin: It's like when you drive the car off the lot.
Merlin: I don't know how to buy a house.
Merlin: I don't fucking know.
Merlin: But it seems like after you've gone through all this with the fees and the whatnots and the brokerages and the escrows and all that, it's not free money.
John: Like you always say, there's no such thing as free money.
John: I do say that.
John: It's going to cost you $50,000 to do this.
Merlin: Jiminy Christmas!
John: They put the house back on the market and it sold a second time.
Merlin: For more than before?
John: For more.
John: For more.
John: Each one of these times it sold for more.
Ugh.
John: And what was nice about this house is it's completely intact.
John: They built it in the 50s.
John: They lived there their whole lives.
John: They never had a problem.
John: The stove was avocado, and they were fine with that.
John: It kept working, and so why mess with it?
John: The bathrooms were pink.
John: There was a time they did the thing that I see a lot in this neighborhood where they put handholds in the bathroom.
John: That's good for everybody.
Merlin: I love those.
John: I love a handhold.
John: But other than that, they're the same.
John: I said, is there oak...
John: Because there's oak floors in a lot of the house, but in the living room, again, wall-to-wall carpet.
John: And I said, is there oak under the carpet?
John: And he said, well, we knew we wanted carpet in the living room, so we didn't put oak under it.
John: And he's like, they built this place.
Merlin: Isn't it funny that there was a time when it made you feel like a poor to not have carpeting?
Oh, I know.
Merlin: What does Vito Corleone do?
Merlin: One of the first things he does when he gets crooked is he brings his wife a rug.
John: He brings her a rug.
John: That's right.
Merlin: And I think he brings her a pair.
Merlin: It's all wrapped up.
John: You wrapped a pair in a piece of paper and some wax paper.
Merlin: So underneath, what would be underneath?
Merlin: Just for the record, what would it be?
John: Some sort of subfloor.
John: I don't know.
John: It wouldn't matter to me because I would also have wall-to-wall carpet in that space.
Merlin: That's what it wants.
John: That's what the room wants.
John: Anyway, I watched it sell again.
John: And...
John: It was worse the second time because that many more months had gone by where I was looking for a house and there was none to find.
John: None that I liked.
John: Houses coming on sale all the time.
John: One granite kitchen after another.
John: And this with its avocado stove is really what I want.
John: Now, am I crazy?
John: Yes, of course.
John: Of course I am.
John: I mean, I'm not sitting and trying on five pairs of Levi's at the Fred Meyer looking for the one that fits where the legs are.
John: A little bit like a passport.
John: A pant can call out to you.
John: But I want linoleum and I want shag.
John: Sells again.
Ugh.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: What is happening?
John: Now, talk about haunted.
John: What the hell?
John: Well, and so I say to my mom, this is terrible.
John: I don't know how many more times this house can sell than I can bear.
John: And she said, because my mom has been very influenced by my sister, and my sister was very influenced by the secret.
John: and they spend an awful lot of time saying i don't want to hear that about your mom i really don't just manifest it yeah and i go manifesting you probably weren't manifesting i go stop talking is what i say right but no so so all that manifestation talk has stopped you know several years ago because it because it morphed and it morphed and i'm sure that i'm sure
John: My sister doesn't want to renounce things.
John: I don't think she's renounced it, but she's not on that trip anymore.
Merlin: It's not an active project anymore.
John: No, you start with Elizabeth Gilbert, you move into the secret, and then eventually you're, like my sister, is leading guided meditations now in Guatemala.
John: Okay.
Merlin: You eat and you love, and then eventually you pray.
Merlin: That's right.
Okay.
John: So what my mom does say is, she says, I have a feeling about this house.
John: I have a feeling that you're going to live in this house one day, so just let go, let God.
John: And I was like, all right.
John: I don't know what shoebox full of belt buckles to put that in, but okay.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Let go and let God.
Merlin: That's a little bit of a spiritual it is what it is in some ways.
Merlin: It is what God says it is.
John: It is.
John: You need to let go.
Merlin: First you let go.
John: You can't let God unless you let go.
Merlin: Oh, you can't be picked up from the fall until you jump.
Merlin: That's right.
John: How's it going?
John: So we have – you and I have covered the long period of selling my house and all this shenanigans.
John: And now I'm living here.
John: I'm sitting in my living room.
John: This is why I don't have coffee because the house is kind of evacuated.
Merlin: That's kind of what I figured.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: So I'm sitting here just kind of like, well, I got some – actually right here next to me I have a box of pretend sushi that my daughter was playing with.
John: If that gives you a sense of how bourgeois I am.
Hmm.
John: Darling, that's the Maguro.
John: So in the several months, in the six to nine months since then, I have continued to drive by this house.
John: Drive by it, drive by it.
John: Nothing going on.
John: There's no dumpster out front.
John: There's no lights on inside.
John: There's no car parked out front.
John: Nothing has changed.
John: There was a big windstorm, and the driveway was just covered with pine cones and beebles for months.
John: For a month.
Merlin: And I was like, nobody's living in this house.
Merlin: Nothing's going on here.
Merlin: Now that seems unusual.
John: Very unusual.
Merlin: It seems like there would be some kind of activity of some kind.
Merlin: It does seem like that.
Merlin: Like it would be, at the very least, these moderns would make it into an Airbnb or something.
John: Something would happen.
John: You're right.
John: So I went, I started going up, I started parking and going up and peering in the windows.
Okay.
John: Well, nothing going on.
John: There are some boxes on the floor.
Merlin: Did you check the doorknobs?
John: I didn't check the doorknobs.
John: There are boxes on the floor.
John: There are some children's shoes in the entryway.
John: But no one's living there.
John: There was a very elaborate security camera setup installed.
John: But it's that kind of security camera setup that you can get now at Costco.
John: Like it's
Merlin: Like an all-in-one.
John: It looks expensive because there are 30 cameras, but it's just like basically you lick the bottom of a suction cup and you stick it to a window.
John: Yes.
John: And then after a few months, a very expensive BMW shows up in the carport that never moves.
John: What?
Merlin: You think it might be a safe house?
John: Well, what about the kids' shoes?
John: What about the children's shoes?
John: What's going on with those?
Merlin: It's information warfare.
Merlin: There's definitely not any CIA agents here, or Sherlock Holmes.
Merlin: Sherlock Holmes has several all around London.
Merlin: You get a safe house.
Merlin: You get a place where you can go.
Merlin: There's another name for it.
Merlin: Yeah, safe house.
Merlin: Like a bug-out room.
Merlin: Yeah, it's a bug-out room.
Merlin: Bug-out, bug-out, yeah.
Merlin: It's a bug-in room.
Merlin: Weird.
Merlin: Who leaves a BMW outside of an empty house?
Merlin: That's weird.
Merlin: It's an expensive one, too.
Merlin: This is all very suspicious, John.
John: It's very suspicious.
John: So I continued to do this.
John: I continued to do this for this creeping on it for a while, and eventually I got frustrated.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And I'm going to race ahead here a little bit in the story.
John: That's fine.
John: That's fine.
John: I completed the sale of my house, and I went by this house, and I wrote a little letter.
John: I said, hi, my name's John.
John: Yeah.
John: You might have heard of me from such popular shows as Merlin.
Merlin: Did you ever watch The O.C.?
John: Roderick on the Line.
Merlin: That song on The O.C., no big deal.
Merlin: With Merlin Mann.
Merlin: I would have gone with The O.C., personally.
John: I had done some research.
John: I was going to skip ahead, but I realized I need to fill in a little bit.
John: Yeah, by all means.
John: I'd done some research.
John: I found the tax records.
John: I found out where this person lives, the person that bought the house.
John: They live in Los Angeles.
John: I was able from that, I was able from those tax records to find their house in Los Angeles, which is a brand new super modern loft style townhouse in Silver Lake.
John: I reached out to the real estate agent that had completed the transaction and I found out a little bit about the person that had bought the house.
John: Recently divorced, bought the house in order to have a place to hang out with his kids.
John: But he's a Wheeler dealer.
John: Is he like a divorced dad?
John: Divorced dad.
John: Lives in Los Angeles.
John: Wheeler dealer.
Merlin: It's a marital bug out house.
John: Something like that.
John: But also, if you're going to get a place in Seattle to come visit your kids every other weekend...
John: Let me suggest, if anyone's listening that has this same conundrum, get yourself a three-bedroom apartment somewhere that when you lock the door and leave, it will be the same when you get back.
John: A house is a lot of maintenance.
John: It's a lot of work.
John: Just get a condo.
Merlin: That's really good advice.
Merlin: That's actually really good advice.
Merlin: Maybe he did it for investment reasons.
John: So I know some about him.
John: I know his story a little bit.
John: And he knew...
John: that I had talked to his real estate agent and he had indicated to his real estate agent that maybe he might be
John: convinced to sell.
Merlin: Now that's interesting.
John: If the price was right.
John: And I was like, okay.
John: Anyway, I let it ride because I didn't have the money, but then all of a sudden now my house is sold.
John: The thing is all cleared the bank and everything.
John: And now I'm here.
John: I am.
John: I'm in the position where the banks now will loan me the money that I need.
John: I have the down payment.
John: I'm here.
Merlin: I am.
John: Well, that depends on how Wheeler dealer he wants to be.
John: Oh, I see.
John: That's still a question mark.
John: When the house sold the first time, it was in my price range.
John: When it sold the second time, it was in my price range.
John: But now, if he wants to be like, you know...
John: But working in my favor, like the market is flattened.
John: There's a lot going on.
John: A lot of factors to take into consideration.
John: Okay.
John: So the other day I wrote a letter and I slipped it under his door.
John: And I said, I'm the guy that was looking at your house a few months ago, several months ago.
John: Still interested in talking.
John: Why don't you give me a ringy dingy?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: And he did.
Merlin: Now, that's interesting.
Merlin: This is all very interesting.
Merlin: He sounds at least slightly motivated.
Merlin: A wheeler dealer with a BMW and kids who lives in Los Angeles doesn't return calls unless there's something that he desires.
John: And he said, hey, I'm real busy.
John: Sure, everybody's busy, dude.
John: I fly a lot.
Merlin: Fuck you.
John: But let's hop on a call.
John: Okay.
John: Oh, yeah, sure.
Merlin: One ringy dingy?
John: We hop on the call.
John: And he spends the first half of the call telling me that how very busy he is.
John: But also how much he's fallen in love with the house.
John: He really he's been living there six months every other weekend.
John: So he's been there a total of I think I'm not sure between three and 13 weekends.
John: What are you his mom?
John: I'm not sure how many weekends.
John: Not a lot.
John: I've driven by quite a few times.
John: Oh, there was a – he did put a big, big, big, big, big, big, big TV in the living room.
John: And I drove by one time and saw him playing a first-person shooter game.
John: This man's lonely.
John: And he was standing.
Merlin: This man is lonely.
Merlin: This man is lonely.
John: Anyway, he says how much he loves the house.
John: He and his kids have really bonded with it.
John: He bought it because he was an architecture miner in college.
Wow.
John: And I was like, hmm, is that?
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: First of all, I bet he sometimes wears a hat.
Merlin: Yeah, but I bet he's also one of those guys who's got a big bag and he's flying first class and he's standing up near the line when there's not even a line yet.
Merlin: I bet he's that guy.
Merlin: Standing up by the line.
Merlin: He's talking on his phone about the Henderson deal.
John: And, you know, and talking to him on the phone, it is very Henderson deal style of conversation.
John: But I like him.
John: You know, he's not impersonal.
John: He's given me some background.
John: Yeah, he really likes the mid-century modern style.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And he's emotionally invested in it, of course, because they've been they've been there now for a while, really gotten into it.
John: I said, oh, so does your ex-wife live around here?
John: And he was like, huh?
John: No, no, no.
John: She lives over in Bellevue.
John: And I was like, that's weird.
John: So you're you come here once you come here every every other weekend and your wife and kids live 45 minutes from here.
John: why wouldn't you get a condo over by the, anyway, you know what?
John: It's not my business.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And he said, well, we've covered this already.
Merlin: You do wonder, right?
Merlin: You did.
Merlin: Well, and what he said, you can't help but wonder about my mind is reeling about what the fuck's going on with this guy.
John: His answer was that the house was close to the airport.
John: Okay.
John: Because he flies a lot.
John: Oh, because he's so busy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So it's by the airport.
Merlin: That's super interesting.
Merlin: Okay.
John: All right.
John: So then he says, now here's where we start to drill down to brass tacks.
John: Okay.
John: Because he says, well, I've got some money invested in it.
John: And I was thinking, I've been around the house several times now, as you can imagine, in the night.
John: And I don't know that that is true, that he has any money invested in it.
John: And he says, well, I did a lot of yard work.
John: Oh, sure.
John: Well, what that meant is that somebody, he hired somebody to come rake up all the leaves.
John: That could be up to $800 or $900.
John: That's right.
John: I think it was closer to $500, but yes, he did do that.
John: But he didn't lie.
John: He just was like, let me break down the money I've got into this.
John: This guy's insecure.
John: He's insecure and he's lonely.
John: I paid $800 to get the yard raked.
John: And he said, you've been there.
John: You've seen.
John: It used to be really overgrown.
John: Where's my parade?
John: Wow.
John: So overgrown.
John: Then he said, big fan of the mid-century modern style, but it needs some updating.
John: I hired an architect.
John: The architect has drawn out some plans.
John: I'm going to gut the kitchen and the bathroom.
John: I'm going to open up the kitchen into the living room into a more open plan.
John: I'm going to get – I swear to you, he said – I'm going to get granite countertops.
John: I'm going to get stainless steel appliances.
John: Bring it into the modern era.
John: Make it look cool and make it look –
John: And, you know, the bathrooms, too, and probably, you know, so it's going to be a big job.
John: I'm, you know, I'm looking to spend a bunch of money on this place.
John: It's like the Stepford douchebags.
John: So fucking weird.
John: And I said, at this point, really, really holding my tongue, I said, well, you know, it sounds like I'm a little bit more rustic than you.
John: And I would probably just live in it as it is.
John: And he gave a big laugh.
John: He liked the word rustling.
Merlin: You're not going to say it straight up.
Merlin: You're going to dangle it out there.
Merlin: Am I getting this?
Merlin: That you're kind of saying, well, I'm motivated to buy and you might not need to spend that dough?
John: So what I was saying was...
John: And I should have said this more like literally or I should have said this exact thing, which is, you know, for that amount of money, you could probably get a house.
John: What I didn't want to do was reveal that I had looked at his house in L.A.
John: Yes.
John: What I should have said was the house that you have in L.A.
John: sounds like that's the house you want in Seattle.
John: Modern granite.
John: You don't need a lot.
John: It's turnkey.
Yeah.
John: Uh, why don't you go get one of those closer to your kids in Bellevue and, or just abandon the whole pretense that you want to see your kids and just follow your career.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Let's listen to your heart.
John: Whatever.
John: You don't care about those kids.
John: But I did say to him several times, like, this is a lot of house.
John: It's a lot of upkeep.
John: And it seems like, um, you know, every other weekend, probably this isn't the best place for that.
John: And so, uh,
John: So he said, well, what are we talking about here?
John: What kind of ballpark, he says.
John: Don't go first.
John: Well, so what I said was, the way I see it, if we do this transaction privately without the use of an intermediary, we'd be saving...
John: ourselves $50,000 in the costs that it would cost you... To engage with an agent.
John: To sell this house.
Merlin: If you wanted to sell it... Is that right?
Merlin: You're implying that you're not going to have a buying agent and a selling agent.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: We're going to save...
John: We're going to save the- You're growing, man.
Merlin: You're busy.
John: This isn't your first day, right?
John: Let's just get this done.
John: Let's just do this between.
John: Let's just do this off the books.
John: What are we talking about?
John: At which point he says, well, you know, my sister's a lawyer that works in the real estate thing.
John: She could probably draw up a contract really fast.
John: And I was like, yeah, exactly.
John: See?
John: We're almost done.
John: We're almost done here.
John: Your sister's a lawyer.
John: My sister's leading a guided meditation.
John: She's meditation.
Mm-hmm.
John: And he says, so what are we talking about?
John: So what I do is I put a number on the table that is a number between the price he bought it for and the price he told his real estate agent was what he was willing to sell it for.
John: I put one right down the middle.
John: So I don't want to pay the amount that he wants.
John: Did he swing?
John: He said...
John: well, God, the money I've got into it, I feel like I just don't... I'm not sure I want to sell.
John: I really... I mean, we've said everything there is to say.
John: I just feel like I need some time to think about it.
John: Why don't I think about it over the weekend?
John: And I'll give you a call early next week, Monday or Tuesday.
John: And I said, great talking to you.
John: I really feel like
John: Talking to you has taught me a lot about how the world works.
John: And I look forward to hearing from you.
John: And he was like, great.
John: I'll talk to you.
John: I'll give you a call next week.
John: Well, here we are.
John: It's Monday, Marlon.
John: And it's anything could happen day.
John: Wait, this is the titular Monday?
John: This is the Monday.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: This is still very much not dead.
John: I don't know if it's alive, but it's not dead.
John: The phone could ring.
John: The phone could ring.
John: And so and the phone could ring and he could say, you know, I've thought about it.
Merlin: And he's very busy and put a lot of money into that house.
Merlin: And his kids have really bonded with his big fucking TV.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Or and he could say that as a ploy to get me to go, well, what's it going to take?
John: Or he could come back and say, I want X amount of dollars.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And it could.
John: The thing is that.
John: That if he wanted crazy more X amount of dollars when I offered the amount that I offered.
John: He would have walked away.
John: He would have laughed.
John: He would have gone like, what?
John: This house is totally worth blah.
John: Instead, he was like, oh, yeah, I. Yeah.
John: So I feel like he's Wheeler Dealer.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: He's still talking.
Merlin: If you guys are talking, you're still closing.
Merlin: That's what I'm saying.
John: Now, it could be that at the end of today, I've talked to this guy again.
John: He has said, you know what?
John: Yeah, I'm willing to sell the house to you.
John: Why don't we just get this ball going?
John: In which case, I would be in a transaction later this afternoon.
Merlin: Don't pre-jinx it.
Merlin: This is a lot to expect.
Merlin: It's true.
Merlin: I don't think this is a serious man.
Merlin: I don't think he's going to call you.
John: Oh, you don't think so?
Merlin: Well, not because of you.
Merlin: It has nothing to do with you.
Merlin: It has nothing to do with your offer.
Merlin: This guy sounds like a ding-a-ling.
Merlin: I think he's not a serious man.
Merlin: Those are who make the world go round.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: I flew on a United flight recently.
Merlin: I was in super business class, and there were a lot of insufferable people up there.
John: And the thing is, they're doing business.
John: They're very busy.
John: What's true about this transaction is that it is business.
John: This is a business transaction.
Merlin: Get them to sign on the line that is dotted.
Yeah.
Yes.
John: If you like business, like I like business,
John: Um, this is a, uh, this is an opportunity to do another business transaction, which will stand in place of having real feelings.
John: It will stand in place of going to church on Sunday.
John: Trying to understand why people don't like you instead of just that they don't like you.
John: This is a turnaround, right?
John: And he could, and what I'm saying to him is, look, maybe you're not going to get rich, but the market has flattened out.
John: He's not about crying.
John: Who, me?
John: Yeah.
John: No, it would be a performance, obviously.
Merlin: But have you thought about really just fucking bawling?
John: I don't think that that will appeal to him.
John: I think that that just hardens his heart.
Merlin: I'm going to swallow my tears.
John: What if you brought a tire iron and cried?
John: I think he's going to come back and want to negotiate.
Merlin: because that's... I think he's going to come back and say, I think he's going to come back and say, if he calls you, I think he's not a serious man, but he loves his business.
Merlin: And if a businessman, if a salaryman call you, I think he's going to say, well, actually, what I want is a J random number I gave my real estate agent.
John: J random number.
John: Well, so here is the difficulty with that.
John: The difficulty is that the number that he said...
John: isn't outrageous.
John: Oh, shit.
John: The number that he said is... So that would not represent the end for you.
John: It's perfectly reasonable, the number that he's asking for, and in fact probably represents the value.
John: Should we hold off releasing this episode until this is done?
John: Maybe.
John: And he kind of opened the whole playbook.
John: I mean... Yeah.
John: It could be... It could be that he does some...
John: He does some due diligence on me and goes back and listens to 50 episodes of our award-winning podcast.
Merlin: He actually says, listen, I'm a fan.
John: I love your show.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I really liked the latest episode where Merlin called me on Sirius.
Merlin: And I'll be like, well, you know.
Merlin: That was Merlin.
Merlin: That guy's so crazy.
John: He's never got a home.
John: If you love the show like I love the show.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Business.
Merlin: You know that Merlin, am I right?
Merlin: That guy.
Merlin: Do it.
Merlin: Sacrifice me.
Merlin: I don't have any dignity.
Merlin: Do whatever it takes to find a place to live.
Merlin: But I will say before I hit the bell in about 15 seconds, what I'm going to say to you, John Roderick, is you have just left even more threads hanging.
Merlin: Ha!
Merlin: So tune in next week for Did John Cry in Front of the Businessman?
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Why has everything got to be hard?
Merlin: It's so hard.