Ep. 356: "You Only See the Top"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hello, John.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: Welcome to our annual Charles Nelson Reilly episode.
Merlin: Oh, everybody looks forward to it every year.
Merlin: Remembering the great man.
John: Oh, God.
John: What?
John: Nah.
John: Just trying to peg the needles.
John: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
John: Yeah, just peaks.
Merlin: Peaks and valleys.
John: Peaks and valleys.
Merlin: Peaks and valleys.
Merlin: Yeah, here we are again, huh?
John: Yeah, how do you feel about birds today?
Merlin: Don't like birds.
Merlin: Oh, oh, oh, oh, right.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: I forgot it's a bit.
Merlin: No.
John: No, it's not.
John: We don't have bits on this show.
Merlin: Here's a funny thing.
Merlin: I think one goes through stages in life with birds.
Merlin: You know, like maybe when you're little, you're like, oh, it's a bird.
John: And you're like, hey, that thing flies.
Merlin: Then you say, it's a plane.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Faster than a speeding locomotive.
Merlin: But he's a good man and thorough.
Merlin: But you see a bird and you go through phases.
Merlin: And maybe at some point you're fascinated by birds.
Merlin: Then you learn to do the little drawing.
Merlin: You know, there's all those kind of like super simplified things kids learn.
Merlin: You do a little kind of a checkmark thing that looks like a seagull.
John: I thought you were talking about like draw fluffy and get into the cartoon academy.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: The Ernest Hemingway School of Longhand Drawing or something.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Flash forward a little bit because we got a show to do here.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: Imagine you're drawing like a furrowed brow.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Kind of like, you go, floop, floop.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: You make a seagull.
Merlin: You make a seagull.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about, right?
John: Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: What would you call it graphically?
Merlin: You've been to the Ernest Hemingway School.
Merlin: What is that called?
John: I'd called the, yeah, Jonathan Livingston.
Merlin: Oh, that's right.
Merlin: He soared and soared.
Merlin: Yeah, God bless him.
Merlin: No, you know, they told him he couldn't.
Merlin: They told him he shouldn't.
Merlin: My grandmother had that book.
Merlin: It always seemed real peculiar.
Merlin: You always wonder how your relatives find hippie stuff.
John: It feels like a pan to recklessness.
John: I read it.
John: I loved it.
John: I've been Jonathan Livingston Siegel every day since.
John: Good for you, man.
John: Yeah, you know what?
John: I just want to go as fast as I can.
John: I just want to fly faster.
Merlin: The headlines tell you that everybody needs more encouragement, but the dirty little secret is a lot of people could use more discouragement.
Oh.
John: You know, I like to think that we provide that.
John: We provide that.
John: Not discouragement, but a corrective, a necessary corrective.
Merlin: I want to talk about birds more, but it's related to pets.
Merlin: We went to a pet big box store.
Merlin: to get some lizard supplies.
Merlin: Is it called something like Pet Store?
Merlin: Yeah, PetSmart, yeah.
Merlin: I don't want to give my name out.
Merlin: But all we're trying to do, John, all we're trying to do, we walk to the Zebra, we cross, it's a huge parking lot.
Merlin: It's like a Florida-sized parking lot.
Merlin: There's ample, ample parking.
Merlin: What part of San Francisco is this?
Merlin: It's the part of San Francisco called Daily City.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Named after George Daly.
Merlin: George Daly or his associate, Robert Ciddy.
Merlin: And you're in a good mood today.
Merlin: I like this, John.
Merlin: This is a fun John.
Merlin: Oh, two minutes.
Merlin: Well, what are we in?
Merlin: Three and a half.
John: You know, I'm at that age.
John: I'm at that age, you know, where I have to pee eight times in the night.
John: I don't know if that's an age or if that's that I have cancer.
John: Okay.
John: But either way, it makes me jolly.
Merlin: That's so funny, because one of my bullets this week is talking about segmented sleep.
Merlin: Well, let's return to that and birds.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Anyway, all I'm trying to say to you, John Roderick, is, you know, the struggle is real.
Merlin: We walk to the zebra in the Florida-sized parking lot.
Merlin: We cross the designated crosswalk area.
Merlin: And, you know, there's that sort of like a concrete apron, like in front of you.
Merlin: You take your Target or a Bed, Bath & Beyond, or in this case, a PetSmart, and there's a concrete apron.
Merlin: and there's families walking all abreast they're all walking abreast like a great flank they they they are it's it's like they're doing some kind of a slow motion line dance and they're walking we've talked about this we've talked about the the the walking abreast oh john it's i don't think you're allowed to walk abreast unless you are having a unless it's a wedding photo
Merlin: If you two teens with your hands in one another's back pockets, I will allow it.
Merlin: That's as many abreast as you get, and otherwise you fucking move.
Merlin: You go two across to let two walk by.
Merlin: All I'm trying to say is I turn to my kid and I say, it's keep moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: A lot of people forget that.
Merlin: I don't think these people listen to our program.
Merlin: Because it's so fucking real, dude.
Merlin: It's like, how are you not thinking about your fucking six?
Merlin: There's people you're six o'clock behind you.
Merlin: People need to walk.
John: If you're traveling as six people, what you need to think about is traveling in the form of a DNA helix.
John: Okay, okay.
John: Which is to say that you are moving in and out of one another.
John: You are constantly weaving a rope around.
John: If each person was leaving some spidey webbing behind them, by the time you get through a crowd, you should have woven a beautiful rope of some kind.
John: A hemp spidey spooge rope.
Merlin: I mean, it's really an elaborate civic dance that we should all be performing.
John: And your children should be taught how to, if you see a knot, if you see a knot of people coming, if you see some kind of cluster, they should know, they should be trained to go wide.
John: You go wide.
John: I'm going in.
John: I'm going straight through.
John: Don't stick with me.
John: You go wide.
John: You take them.
John: You come at them from the side, right?
John: You're flanking maneuvers.
John: Everybody out to the side and then back in.
John: You cross me.
John: I'm going to cross over this way.
John: We're going to make it through this crowd.
John: We're going to be going three, four times the speed of the rest of these people.
John: It's a citizen march.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Here's one way to think about it.
Merlin: I haven't really thought this through, but keep moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: So you're walking six abreast like a bunch of fucking monsters, like a hexamonster.
Merlin: Not me.
Merlin: Don't say I'm doing that.
Merlin: No, you don't do that.
Merlin: They do that.
Merlin: And what I want them to think about is two situations.
Merlin: One is there's six people in front of you walking like that.
Merlin: How's that feel?
John: Oh, now we're a parade.
Merlin: Now we're a marching band.
Merlin: Around the flagpole.
Merlin: We're a drill team.
Merlin: And what if six people you cared about were behind you?
Merlin: Just trying to get on with their life and do the civic dance.
Merlin: Do you realize what a monster you are?
Merlin: You're annoyed by the people.
Merlin: Now all of a sudden, guess what?
Merlin: We're back at United Airlines and everybody's putting their fucking seat back.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
Merlin: Take your shoes off, why don't you?
Merlin: Oh, they did it to me.
Merlin: I like to put it on the bulkhead.
Merlin: I just like to be comfortable.
Merlin: What's wrong with that?
John: You know what I do with my little girl?
John: I've been doing it for years.
John: In a mall of some kind or a crowded situation like that.
John: But, you know, one within certain, like, confinements, I will say, okay, here's what you're going to do.
John: I'll pick a spot.
John: that I can see in the middle distance, someplace uncomfortably far away, but still visible to me.
John: I'll say, you see that up there?
John: You see that place?
John: You know, whatever it is.
John: See that green pole or see that big plant or that weird light?
John: I want you to go there.
John: And once you're there, I want you to turn around and find me and make eye contact with me and wait for my signal.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And when she started doing this when she was four or five.
John: Wow.
John: And she would wander, you know, toddle off through the crowd.
John: Wow.
John: And I've had my eyes on her the whole time.
John: And as you know, I have superhuman speed, and any parent does.
Merlin: And stealth.
Merlin: If you need to do it, you can transform and do what you need to do to stealth through the crowd.
John: So off she goes.
Merlin: It takes bravery.
Merlin: A kid that age, I think that takes a lot of bravery to let them go away from you.
John: Yeah, well, and it's the bravery that you enculturate in a person because what I'm teaching her is that we are in connection even though it seems scary, even though there's all this hullabaloo and you might feel lost.
John: You're not lost because if you can see me and I can see you, you're not lost.
John: And so off she would go.
Merlin: But it takes rehearsal.
John: Uh, well, yeah, I mean, we wouldn't, the first time I didn't, I didn't say like go on a mile and a half away, but you know, we, I would do things like if there was, if there were two entrances to a store and I could, and I could see them both, I would say, you go in, you go around this corner, a blind corner where I can't see you for a second and then come in the other door.
John: Oh, wow.
John: And she would go, okay.
John: So she would go around the blind corner.
John: I wouldn't be able to see her.
John: And then she'd come in the other door.
John: And those little things where she was out of sight for a second, even though I knew where she was, the only danger would be if a giant eagle from Middle Earth swept down in that three seconds she was out of sight.
John: But so we worked on it, worked on it.
John: And then the experience for her and for me
John: of her being a long way away out of voice contact in a noisy, crowded environment, but turn around and look at me and we would look at each other across a great distance.
John: And I could, and she and I had worked on hand signals, you know, like go left, go right, sit down, wait.
Merlin: Like crouching soldiers in a movie where you do the two in the point and you do this and that.
John: Yeah, we've had that since.
John: Right when she could talk,
John: I would send her across the room and I would say, all right, wait for my signals.
John: And I would kind of move my hands and she would sit down and then she'd stand up and run over there and, you know, like stuff at a distance.
John: You're training a super soldier.
John: But the fact that we could see each other across this crowd and then I would, you know, I'd give her a hand signal like, okay, like I'm coming to you, you're coming to me, we're going to meet in the middle.
John: Just the awareness of, I think what it is is,
John: The awareness that you are working toward a point in the distance and the people in between you, the obstacles in between you are immaterial.
John: That you are, you know, you're weaving not because you're, you don't weave through a crowd for its own sake.
John: You weave through a crowd because you are on an appointed path.
John: mission that is above the level of the snorks who are filling up the other human space.
Merlin: It's a metaphor for life.
Merlin: I don't want to make it too serious, but it's kind of a metaphor for life in the sense that there are going to be points sooner than either of us would like when we're going to have to have a certain amount of faith that will be underpinned by training in how we get to a goal even if we aren't always next to each other.
Merlin: whether that's getting to school or whether that's getting into college or whatever.
Merlin: There's a certain amount of trust that has to be built by rehearsing in low-stakes environments that lets you learn the basic skills before you have to deploy them in a military environment.
Merlin: What was the first time you were left alone?
John: How old were you?
John: Like at home?
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, the first time as a child that you were left unattended.
Merlin: Um, I have memories.
Merlin: I talked to my mom about this recently.
Merlin: I do have memories of, uh, it would be after my dad died.
Merlin: So I was probably eight or nine, but I do remember like being able to like go out and wander around, go to the playground, uh, near our house.
Merlin: That was kind of in eyeshot.
Merlin: As far as being fully home alone, latchkey style, string, string, uh, key on a string around the neck, uh, 10 or 11.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: What about you?
John: Well, you know, they used to take me to the airport and they would put me on a plane and then the other parent would be at the other end waiting for me.
Merlin: I did that when I was seven and it was awesome.
John: Yeah.
John: I had that experience a lot.
John: My mom trained me pretty extensively, trained me to take my little sister, who at the time was five probably...
John: take her on the bus with me and come meet her downtown.
John: And that involved riding the bus from the bus stop up at the corner, the city bus, down to Northgate Mall.
Merlin: How old are you here?
John: She's five and you're... I'm eight.
John: And then transfer at Northgate to the downtown bus, take it to the Bon Marche,
John: And then get off the bus and walk down Second Avenue to Pioneer Square with her and meet her for, you know, meet her after work when she was working at King County.
John: So, no, wait, I would have been, yeah, nine, maybe.
Merlin: But still, by today's standards, a pretty tender age.
John: Well, and, you know, and she, she, we, we did dry runs.
John: She taught me how to, um, she taught me how to, uh, read the, the bus schedule.
John: She taught me how to talk to the bus driver to make sure that, you know, make sure what was happening was, was, um, what was intended.
John: You know, I would get on the bus and I would say, here's what I'm doing.
John: I'm going to this bus and bus drivers are helpful.
John: But, uh, but you know, I, I was definitely a latchkey kid by 10, um,
John: where I came home from school and kind of had a key around my neck.
John: My dad never locked his house, so I didn't need a key.
John: But I've started to talk to my little one, like, what do you think about if I went to the store?
John: Where would you be at with that?
John: If I went to the store and came back and you were here by yourself, what would you think about that?
John: And she said, hmm...
John: I think I'm almost ready.
John: Yeah.
John: And I said, okay, all right.
John: Almost ready.
John: Let's be in that place for a while.
John: Almost ready.
John: And you know, and like, what if I just go to the store and get some milk?
John: And she's like, I'm almost ready for that.
John: And before I suggested it, I think she was like, I should, you should leave me alone sometimes.
John: And just like, let me just, you know, be in the, and I was like, okay, what if I go to the store?
John: And she was like, almost, almost ready.
John: I, you know, because I don't know.
John: What are you going to do when she goes to college?
John: I know.
John: What are you going to do then?
Merlin: This, this last for just real quick for how she's eight.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Eight.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Since last year has been, um, uh, like I, I just, I'm kind of still waking up to how much has changed in the last year.
Merlin: Uh, and selfishly, my biggest surprise is that I've survived it.
Merlin: But,
Merlin: But if I'm being honest, it really is incredible how much has changed in the last year.
Merlin: So for us, yeah, same kinds of discussions over time.
Merlin: And something I said to my lady a pretty long time ago, and I still really believe, is that when we do stuff that encourages her to be independent and to be in situations where she'll have to make decisions
Merlin: decisions and have situational awareness about what if this happened uh it's something we all three have to practice it's it's not just her and i i have to every time either my my wife or i get flustered about not being able to see her on find my friends or wondering what part of the park she's in or whatever we have we try to remind each other that this is for us too this is this is us rehearsing too um
Merlin: Um, anyway, long story short, the amazing part is like we, we went from, I don't remember how long ago it was.
Merlin: She started having time alone, but, uh, sometimes what we do is I walk, I go to school and get her and come home and then I'd walk her to the house and then I go to my office and then that became, you know, her walking home alone.
Merlin: And now she takes the train home from school by herself.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But like that happened, that happened so, uh, seemingly in my brain that happened so fast, but at each stage there's been more and more like a funny combination of like on the one hand, yes, go and do the independent thing.
Merlin: You have, this is what you've been training for, but also us being able to go like, just stay out of her and our way and,
Merlin: in letting this thing be what it is.
Merlin: Because the beauty of the low, I've talked to Syracuse about this a few times, is the beauty of middle school in some ways is it doesn't seem low stakes.
Merlin: It'll be 20 years before you realize how low stakes middle school was.
Merlin: It's horrible.
John: I know, it seems.
John: Right.
Merlin: In high school, stuff gets real.
Merlin: That's when you really develop a permanent record and stuff sticks.
Merlin: But you have the opportunity to screw up in middle school.
Merlin: And because you're so focused on the utter dumpster fire shit show socially, you may not realize that this is a chance that things can go a little bit pear-shaped and you'll be okay.
Merlin: So anyway, just to say, I feel you on that.
Merlin: And I think you're probably way ahead of me on this issue.
Merlin: But just to encourage the idea that it's training for everybody.
Merlin: That everybody's got to fucking chill out about this.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Not panic.
Merlin: When you feel like panicking, that's the opportunity to not panic because that's what you're training for.
John: Dry run, dry run.
John: Always a dry run.
Merlin: There's a great episode of The Wire, actually a very good episode of The Wire, I think in season one, where McNulty and his sons are walking around in Baltimore, and he sees Stringer Bell, and he goes, hey, you guys want to learn a game?
Merlin: It's called Front and Follow.
Merlin: And he teaches his sons how to do a police, I don't know if it's real, but it's a police thing.
Merlin: No, I love that.
Merlin: Yeah, he calls front and follow.
Merlin: So he enlists his elementary age children to track the, like, genius behind the crime family.
Merlin: I always think of that.
Merlin: Like, that's what you've been training for.
Merlin: Be ready to go and find Stringer Bell.
Merlin: You know, you come to the king, you best love this.
John: We were, she and I, we were sitting around the other day and she was like, what do you want to do?
John: Like, let's watch a movie.
John: And I was like, let's go for a walk.
John: And she always hates to hear that because it usually means like, here we go.
John: So we put on our stuff and we walked and walked and went down to this, to a neighboring town, walked down to a neighboring town.
John: And we got down onto the beach and the tide was out and there was a big sort of, there was a spit of land that went out into the
John: ocean, and there was a kind of an internal pond that the tide went out and had left this pond, but it was a big pond, like a tide pool, but it was, I don't know, like half a mile across by three quarters of a mile long.
John: I mean, a giant pond.
John: Maybe not that big.
John: Half a mile long by a quarter of a mile across.
John: Big.
John: Too big for a person to
John: Um, not, I mean, you can, you can obviously see people across it, but anyway, it was a big pond and she and I walked out on this spit of land and we got down and she wanted to walk on the pond side and I wanted to walk on the ocean side.
John: And so I was like, fine, walk on the pond side then.
John: And I'm walking along, I'm looking at crabs and whatnot.
John: She's now, you know, kind of far away from me, but we're still on the same spit.
John: And then, uh,
John: there's a little old lady walking along and the little old lady and she meet and they start up a big lively friendship kind of in the distance talking about whatever clams or, or whatever people talk about out on a spit of land.
John: I usually avoid people out there, but so I'm walking, I get over here to the end of the thing.
John: And eventually I sort of mosey over and they're just in a, they've been in this long animated conversation when I come over and the woman is from England.
John: And she's, you know, kind of marveling at how big the sea life is in the Northwest.
John: There's a sort of seal over there and there are big clams.
John: So we're all talking, all talking.
John: And eventually we split up and the British lady starts walking back and we go out to the end of the spit.
John: And when we finally get out there, I said to her, I
John: didn't this used to connect over here to the other side?
John: And she said, I thought it did.
John: And I said, well, it's not connected anymore.
John: And in fact, it's kind of a rushing, it's kind of a torrent.
John: And as we stood there, we realized that, oh shit, the tide is coming in.
John: Not only is it coming in, but it has washed out
John: escape.
John: It watered out your means of egress?
John: Yes.
John: The tide came in and now what was seemed like not that long ago when we arrived out here was a little land bridge now was under like four feet of ocean.
Merlin: That's a situation.
John: It was.
John: We turned around and looked back along this
John: very long spit that we were out on the tip of and realized that it was a much smaller spit than it had been only moments ago.
John: Ocean on one side and ocean on the other.
John: And I was like, sweetheart, we're in a little bit of a situation here.
John: Do you see the situation we're in?
John: Do you see where we are?
John: And she was like,
John: Is the tide coming in?
John: And I said, it's coming in fast.
John: And she said, let's run.
John: And so we started to run.
John: And, you know, as we run, we're seeing the, you know, the tide's coming in all around us.
John: And then we look up ahead and we see that the other side of the spit, the other connection to the land is now underwater.
Yeah.
John: So now we're on an island.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And it's a very low island.
John: It is an island that will be 100% submerged in not too long.
Merlin: You're not going to want to sleep on this, though.
Merlin: You need to get some nautical miles under you.
John: We're still a long way from the other side.
John: Oh, God.
John: And then I notice the little old English lady is just meandering around, not paying attention.
John: uh also still on this island now just sort of peering out la dee da dee da oh isn't it nice lovely and so she and i are running now and i call out to the english lady you know mum pip pip tide tide's coming in what
John: And so then she goes... Trouble down the mill.
John: And so we all start to head back to where we would have crossed back to land if it was still connected.
John: So she heard and understood your... I sort of waved my hands around and was like, look, do you notice that there's no... We have all made the same mistake.
John: So we all hustle to a...
John: And we get there and the three of us are now surveying a pretty wide stretch of sea between us and the opposite beach.
John: And the water's moving fast.
Merlin: Do you have a sense of how deep the water you need to get through at this point is?
John: Oh, it's a... Is it four feet?
John: Well, over at the other end it was.
John: At this point, no.
John: The water is calf height.
John: But it's, you know, it's filling up.
Merlin: That's the thing about water, though.
Merlin: You only see the top.
Merlin: You only see the top.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like you learn that when you're driving.
Merlin: When you're driving and you see a puddle, you're seeing the top of the puddle.
John: You see the top.
John: That's right.
John: You don't see the bottom.
John: And sometimes the bottom is all the way to hell.
John: You don't know if you drive into it.
John: You can see the bottom because it's covered with clams.
John: Oh.
John: And so we all look at each other and it's like, well, I guess we're getting wet.
John: And the English lady, and I'm about to like pick up my kid and the English lady and carry them across this torrent.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And the English lady says, yep, time to take our shoes off, roll up our pants.
John: And I said, right, of course.
John: What was I thinking?
John: I don't want to get in here and get all wet.
John: So we all take our shoes off.
John: You don't want to moisten your knickers.
John: You don't want to moisten your knickers.
John: No, we have a lot of ground to cover yet today.
John: And so we all take off our shoes and roll our pants up above our knees.
John: And the three of us wade in and the water's moving and people on shore are kind of
John: have all stopped to watch to see if the three of us survive.
Merlin: Imagine for locals, that's practically a sport.
Merlin: Because I really doubt you're the first people that this has ever happened to.
John: Oh, here's the thing.
John: We are locals.
John: We just don't know.
John: Because it's one of those things where where we were is also where a river enters the ocean.
John: And so the river is always changing.
John: You know, when the tide goes out, the river every time makes a sort of new path across the beach.
John: And then the tide comes in and it washes out what had been the riverbed.
John: And then the next time the tide goes out, maybe the river goes over here.
John: Maybe it goes over there.
John: So the beach is always changing from time to time.
John: And there are sandbars and spits and whatnot.
John: It's like always in motion.
John: Anyway, we crossed over to the other side, and I was impressed by the little old lady, but she had that English intrepidness where she was like, onward!
John: But I was really impressed by how little panic there was in my daughter when she understood the situation.
John: And I think when she was younger, she would have panicked because she didn't trust...
John: That everything was going to be okay.
John: When she was younger, she had that, and I don't know whether this is true of all kids, or that was true of her, but she just she never could be confident that everything was going to be okay.
Merlin: And that's what makes the unknown so scary is it's unknown.
Merlin: I mean, that's the problem.
Merlin: You can imagine the worst thing in the world if something's unknown.
John: she could imagine that we would drown and she had no evidence that we wouldn't, right?
John: Up until a certain point.
John: And now I feel like in her little heart, she has confidence that we are not going to, that she has confidence that everything's going to be okay.
John: And this is just a problem to solve.
John: And I've been waiting for that for a long time because, you know, we've done so many dry runs on like, this looks bad, right?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Not only do we run out of gas, but daddy's RV is on fire.
John: What do we do first?
John: Right?
John: Like daddy's RV is on fire and we don't have cell service because we're at Mount Shasta.
John: What do we do first?
Merlin: And she's like, no, I'm asking you.
Merlin: Tell me.
John: She's like, scream and run around.
John: And I'm like, no, scream and run around is not on our list of options.
John: And just sort of, you know, like walk her through like, well, here's what daddy's going to do first.
John: Get you out of the RV.
John: That's the first thing.
John: The RV is on fire.
John: Let's get out of it.
Merlin: The fire marshal is going to be fascinated to learn that this entire thing was happening in an ablaze vehicle.
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Merlin: All right, so the training has been leading up to this.
Merlin: Question, question.
Merlin: Because I feel like we've touched on this before, and I don't want to get to... How different would that be?
Merlin: How different would her reaction, and maybe I'm thinking of your kid circa two years ago, three years ago, but how different would her reaction likely have been if either A, the English lady hadn't been there, or B, it had been her and your baby mama instead of you?
John: So I don't know how it would be if she was with her mother, because there's a lot of performance, I feel like, in a mother-daughter relationship.
John: that doesn't reflect reality.
Merlin: I feel like there's a lot of performance in every relationship.
Merlin: They're just different kinds of performances.
Merlin: Sometimes you know what you can get away with, or you know, like the example I always give, my kid, she's become more, she's trying to mostly be vegetarian, so she's had to find more food options.
Merlin: But for example, for the longest time, she would go visit her aunt and uncle,
Merlin: And she'll try anything.
Merlin: Like she'd eat a squid eye.
Merlin: And with us, it's like, you know, if the gravy touches the rice, you know, it's a catastrophe.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like in different situations, there are not, maybe not implicit demands, but like almost like implicit expectations or how you want to perform for that person.
Merlin: She went on a trampoline, like when she was like, like this big trampoline thing or a bungee thing at the mall, like with her aunt when she was like six.
Merlin: And it's like, who is this kid?
Merlin: Like, she's scared to get in a different chair, which is with us, but with somebody else, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And you said before stuff, like, it sounds like she kind of, how does one say, she toughens up a little bit around you?
John: You make a good point.
John: I have no idea which is the performance.
John: The performance for me of being unflappable or the performance for her mother where she would
John: panic and become, you know, like unconsolable.
John: And I feel like maybe I have been training her or asking her to be unflappable around me.
John: Like that's the expectation is that we don't panic in a situation like that, but we become acutely
John: when things go wrong.
John: Like competence is super useful if you are just being competent when things are fine.
John: But competence is like, the only reason that you train to do it when things are fine is because you need it when things are crazy.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: The productivity guy like David Allen says, the last time, how is it he says it?
Merlin: The last time...
Merlin: How does he put it?
Merlin: The last time you want to be thinking about your training is when you're getting jumped in an alley.
Merlin: And that's why in the martial arts, you get hit in the face over and over, so that being hit in the face does not take you completely off your game.
Merlin: I mean, I'm not a martial artist, but that makes a lot of sense to me.
Merlin: I think being in a low-stakes environment where you train seriously prepares you for the times where it's high-stakes.
Merlin: And it takes that situational awareness to even realize it's high stakes and not panic and run in a circle.
John: But whether or not the...
John: Who she is with me or who she is – to what degree both things are a performance, I am super fine with the fact that she has at least learned to perform that way around me because hopefully she'll have access to that.
John: I totally agree, yeah.
John: When she needs it.
John: But I think in a situation like that, her mom –
John: Part of it is that her mom is more worried about her.
John: Her mom would be anxious in that situation, too.
John: The English lady didn't factor in because we didn't notice she was on the spit when we first started to try and solve the problem.
John: When she said, let's run, when we realized that we were getting – we were going to get washed out to sea, and she turned to me and said, let's run, it was a let's run with a lot of confidence.
John: It wasn't like, let's run!
John: It was just like – she recognized running is the thing now.
John: Yeah, absolutely.
John: This is the best thing.
John: And then when we saw the English lady, it became –
John: I think we both felt that she was a competent lady, and so it wasn't a rescue mission, but now we had a partner.
John: And the fact that we sort of worked together, right?
John: We worked as a team.
John: But that wasn't... That isn't how it would have gone a year and a half ago.
John: I think there would have been more panic.
John: There would have been more blame...
John: When we got to the other side, she would have been mad at me that I'd put her in that situation.
John: You know, like, Daddy, you should have known.
John: And now it was just like she just brushed it off her shoulder like it never occurred to her anymore.
John: because it wasn't anybody's fault like it was clearly that we were we just got into this situation i mean maybe the fault is that we ever left the house that's whose fault it is it is daddy's fault that we ever left the house but having left the house you're always wanting me to leave the house this wouldn't happen if we'd stayed at home and watch 30 rock that's that's right and maybe a year and a half ago that would have been her that would have been her um
John: her default she would have said why did we even leave the house we could have just been home and now we're wet and but in fact it you know this time it was a it was a big adventure and then you know the next adventure maybe the bigger adventure is how do we get our feet clean enough to put our socks back on now we're standing on a wet beach
John: how are we going to get our feet clean enough to put our socks on?
John: We can't put our socks on our feet in this condition.
Merlin: I'm going to ride it.
Merlin: This also, I feel like that underscores my other point, though, which is that when I say it's training for us as well, because I imagine we're not the only family where, you know, your little kid, you know, your baby, toddler, like, falls down.
Merlin: And, you know, at a certain age, if they're hurt, they'll cry no matter what.
Merlin: But at a certain age, there'll be this weird...
Merlin: in oregano where they, they get a panic look and then they look at you.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: Yep.
John: Yep.
John: And so at that point, are we going to cry or what's going to happen?
Merlin: Every family commits to a certain response to these things.
Merlin: Like, you know, most, most people in this day and age no longer say, Oh no.
Merlin: Or they'll say whoopsie doopsie or you're silly.
Merlin: Like everybody's got a different one that they do to like, um, um,
Merlin: I mean, obviously, if the kid has a massive head wound, you're going to intervene.
Merlin: But you have to train yourself to stop going, oh, no, and move to your silly or whatever your family's version of it.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I love whoopsie doopsie.
Merlin: Who ever heard of whoopsie doopsie?
Merlin: Whoopsie doopsie because they're looking at you with the panicked face.
Merlin: And if you get the panicked face, they are very sensitive to your cues.
Merlin: They're like dogs, right?
Merlin: That's the thing with a dog.
Merlin: I think dogs love me because they know that I love dogs.
Merlin: They see me coming, and I am just, I'm a dog myself.
Merlin: I am so goddamn friendly with a dog.
Merlin: It's all I can do not to touch all the dogs.
Merlin: I love the dogs, and I almost always categorically, especially a San Francisco dog, which is usually a very well-socialized dog.
Merlin: I'm not talking here about a Florida dog.
Merlin: That's a dog of a different color.
John: No.
John: it's not a Florida.
Merlin: That's a closet dog.
Merlin: You know, there's a dog on a chain protecting the meth.
Merlin: But, um, no, but like, uh, I think the little kids, I'm trying to say is I think it's a similar version of like, you're going to have to rehearse a lot of not saying, Oh no.
Merlin: And you're going to have to remember to say, oopsie dopsy and then not freak because that's how they're queuing.
John: Oopsie dopsy.
John: Oopsie dopsy.
John: Uh, you know, my, my number one reaction to all things when she looks over at me to see what the reaction is.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: is i look at her and i just raise both eyebrows like really like what do you make what's a person to make of that that's really strange because it could mean so many for me i see you do that that could mean so many things failing at seeing whether you're smiling or not like it could be uh see i told you
Merlin: Like, or, you know, it could be how, you know, how are you going to handle this ranger?
Merlin: What does it mean?
Merlin: What does it mean, John?
John: You're scared of me now.
John: It means all those things.
John: But what it means is to her is what's going to happen now?
John: Okay, exactly.
John: Makes sense.
John: A thing has happened.
John: You've fallen or you've spilled something.
John: You dropped a plate.
Merlin: Your eyebrows are saying, hmm.
John: And I'm like, hmm.
John: Now what?
John: Now what?
John: And now what is, you know, it throws back to her, throws the question back to her.
John: Cause she looks over like, Oh shit.
John: Yeah.
John: And a lot of the time looking over is like, am I in trouble or what?
John: I mean, she's looking at, at, at me saying what's next.
John: Like what, what are you going to do?
John: And I always throw back to her.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, now what, now what are you going to do?
John: And sometimes I do it when she is in trouble.
John: but I want her to, I want her to put herself in trouble, you know, like in the sense of, uh, if she looks over and like, am I in trouble?
John: Um,
John: I look back and go, are you in trouble?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, I spend a lot of time.
Merlin: This is a very frequent topic on the show I do at Syracuse.
Merlin: Is he in trouble?
Merlin: No, he's not in trouble.
Merlin: That's how I always begin our conversations.
Merlin: You're not in trouble.
Merlin: You're still a very valuable member of the team.
Merlin: But like I said before, I feel like Sisyphus pushing Cassandra up a hill.
Merlin: Where, like, there are things where I'm like, don't put your glass of milk there.
Merlin: Please don't put your glass of milk there.
Merlin: The glass of milk is very near my yearbooks.
Merlin: Please don't put that there.
Merlin: Please, could you not put the glass of milk there?
Merlin: Or the glass of water.
Merlin: Please don't put the glass of water there.
Merlin: The glass of water doesn't go there.
Merlin: Please don't put the glass of water in front of the TV on the floor.
John: It's right by my yearbooks.
Merlin: It's by my yearbooks.
Merlin: Don't put, bet on me for having yearbooks, but don't put the glass of water on the floor.
Merlin: And then you know what happens.
Merlin: What happens is the glass of water spills.
Merlin: And I am utterly calm.
Merlin: I'm utterly calm, and I don't do anything with my eyebrows.
Merlin: I merely come in with a towel, and I clean it up, because it's really just water.
Merlin: The water is not the problem.
Merlin: But wait, what if it's milk?
Merlin: If it's milk, that sucks, because now my yearbooks are milky.
Merlin: What I would say is, though, it's not really the liquid, really.
Merlin: It's the decision.
Merlin: It's the choice.
Merlin: And so a better choice would be for that not to be there.
Merlin: And I'm trying to... I wonder often if that kind of haranguing of don't put that there eventually becomes blah, blah, ginger.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: So I don't know, because there's no way out of it.
Merlin: But the thing is, I will, God willing, the creek don't rise, I will always be there to be the calm person when something goes wrong, I hope.
Merlin: Because I'm fortunate enough to have an ADD, and all that's going to do is give me the dopamine to be calmer than I usually am isn't that odd.
Merlin: So I'm a good Johnny emergency boy.
Merlin: Like when things go wrong, it's like, that's my entire life is waiting for things to go wrong.
Merlin: Because then the chemical gets shot into my body that lets me handle that well.
Merlin: But ultimately, it's the choice.
Merlin: It's the decision that I'm looking at here.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: Yeah.
John: I'm not somebody that dreams of having his leg cut off.
John: Okay.
John: But I am someone who has thought for many years about what would happen if my leg was cut off.
Merlin: You mean like outside of a medical environment?
Yeah.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: If you like lost it to a train.
John: Yes, exactly.
John: And I think that's probably where it started.
John: When I was hopping trains, there were all the number one thing that you would talk about when you met somebody else who was hopping trains or anybody even hopping trains curious.
John: Everybody has a story about somebody they know who got their legs chopped off.
John: within that environment, you know, like in a train hopping environment.
John: Yes.
John: It's you standing around, you got an open can of pork and beans.
John: Yes.
John: What are we going to talk about?
John: You know, there's always, it always ends up there.
John: And so I got into, I got into this habit, I think of imagining myself in situations.
John: I'd be in a situation and I'd be, you know, kind of confronting situations somehow.
John: And then the thought would pop into my head.
John: How would this situation be different if you,
John: only had one leg.
John: If you had lost your left leg, it was always my left leg.
John: You'd lost your left leg.
John: Now what would we, now where would we be?
John: And so I was, you know, sort of accustomed to, it's not a thing that I want.
John: I'm not somebody that's going to get his leg chopped off to satisfy something in his, in his heart.
John: But I do, I do run, I run that scenario.
John: And over time,
John: I've felt like, is this some sort of prophecy?
John: Am I dooming myself to having my leg cut off at some point because I've thought about it so much?
John: And then I have said, well, if that's true, I'll spend many years as the leader of the Rebel Alliance before that happens because I've spent much more time thinking about that.
John: Thank you for your service.
John: But you're welcome.
John: But lately, I've been thinking, talk about morbid.
John: I've been thinking, how do I prepare my kid for when I die prematurely?
John: Oh boy.
John: So that she knows, so that she knows what I would do.
John: say if I were there, right?
John: Like if my dad was here right now, I know what he would say.
John: I know in a situation, he'd say, where's the bathroom.
John: But if he, if in any situation I get into, if I need my dad's advice, I'm
John: I just sort of conjure him.
John: Are you, like, going to your mind palace?
John: Yeah, a little bit.
John: But, you know, but he's there all the time, right?
John: I don't even need to conjure him because he's always there going like, oh, you fucked that up.
Merlin: He'd be so happy to know that he's still there, not taking you down a peg.
John: He really would, too.
John: He really would be.
John: And I think the thing is, I say to her all the time.
John: Bart wouldn't have done that.
Yeah.
John: I say to her, my little girl, all the time, listen, you never met your granddad.
John: But the thing is, he loves you.
John: And I'm not saying that he would love you or that he would have loved you if he'd met you.
John: He does love you.
John: He loves you.
John: And she and I, the other day, she was like, what's a psychic?
Yeah.
John: I was like, well, here we go.
John: Grab a juice box.
John: Honey, there's a thing called orbs.
John: Yeah.
John: But, you know, we've talked about religion quite a bit and her grandparents are religious and, you know, and she's developing a sense of like what her own take on stuff is, you know, religious stuff.
John: What her take on like, you know, what it's all about.
John: But I, but so,
John: I think within her and my relationship, if I said like, your granddad is watching, she would say from where?
John: And I would go, yeah, you're right.
John: Okay.
John: Like it's, it's a metaphor.
John: But when I say, you know, he does love you, he loves you in the present tense because he exists still.
John: And even if he only exists in me and, and my sister and, and your Nana and the people that knew him, he does still exist.
John: And in that,
John: in whatever form he is, he loves you in the present.
John: And, um, and so you don't have to think of this grandfather that you never met as someone that you don't know what they would have thought or what, or, or how you would have measured up to them.
John: Like, like he is, I can tell you all about him and I can tell you exactly what he would say and do and
John: As regards you and I can tell you right now that he that he's over the moon about you.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: But when I try and imagine like she's only eight.
John: Right.
John: You have memories from being eight.
John: Yeah.
John: But they're not like they're not super clear.
John: And you lost your dad at a young age.
Merlin: Right.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And so to know what your dad would say and do must that must be something that you've always wondered.
Merlin: Oh, I mean, well, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, it's another thing like my feelings about birds.
Merlin: It's really evolved over time because for a long time I have absolutely known what I think my dad would say or think or do in a given situation.
Merlin: And then, of course, as I get older, I think, well, that's my seven-year-old brain's idea of what my dad would say.
Merlin: I don't really know.
Merlin: The odd thing is unless there is some kind of massive cover-up underway –
Merlin: people's estimations of my dad, especially, like, personally, are pretty uniform.
Merlin: Like, you know, he was a guy who would do anything for anybody.
Merlin: He really loved outdoorsy stuff, and he's the funniest person that most of them have ever met.
Merlin: And, like, you know, like a true friend to a lot of people.
Merlin: And he was a very gentle, very funny guy, knowing that he loved, you know, the Marx Brothers and Ernie Kovacs tells me a lot about...
Merlin: His personality, because I also like the Marx Brothers and Ernie Kovacs.
Merlin: But yeah, no, I know what you mean.
Merlin: We have a similar situation where, well, I'll throw it back to you.
Merlin: But my kid has met two of her grandparents.
Merlin: One, she knew a lot more than the other.
Merlin: But she had a dream about my wife's mother the other night.
Merlin: She's like, yeah, I dreamed Grandma Stinus lived in a hot tub in the garage and drank wine.
Merlin: And I was like, that's really cool.
John: She just died recently, is that right?
Merlin: Yeah, a couple, three years ago.
Merlin: But yeah, she's one of my all-time favorite human beings.
Merlin: And she loved my kid to death.
Merlin: But no, it's strange.
Merlin: It's strange.
Merlin: It's hard to know.
Merlin: You start to feel a little bit like, am I going weirdly Shinto in trying to think I know that much about these deceased people?
Merlin: But it's difficult to completely reject whatever is happening in my brain pan
Merlin: that lets me feel an extraordinary warmth and familiarity.
Merlin: Not exactly presence.
Merlin: I'm looking here at some old family circus cartoons where the ghostly grandfather is there, and it still is extremely upsetting to me.
Merlin: It's not that.
Merlin: Well, that or not me.
Merlin: I don't want either of them in my house.
Merlin: I want that fucking not me.
Merlin: I don't even want him in my neighborhood.
Merlin: He's always running away right when I need him.
Merlin: I set traps for him.
Merlin: I'm not that interested.
Merlin: I don't want to bust ghosts, but I sure would love to bust Not Me.
Merlin: Bust it makes me feel good.
John: Can you imagine getting Not Me in a bin?
John: Capturing him and having him in a bin?
Merlin: Well, that guy from the EPA would just come and complain about it.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: He's the real hero of Ghostbusters.
Merlin: So, yeah.
Merlin: But to your point, it's so strange.
Merlin: And I have to be honest with you.
Merlin: There's still just the tiniest bit enough of sentimentality in me that I don't over-question that.
Merlin: On the one hand, I'm not like Billy Batson going and talking to the elders about how I should be dealing with life.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And it's not like that.
Merlin: It's not prayer.
Merlin: It's not spiritual.
Merlin: But there is, I mean, something as simple as I exchanged some emails this week and as early as this morning with a musician friend of mine from Tallahassee that I haven't seen in 20 years.
Merlin: And we wrote really nice emails to each other.
Merlin: And he wrote an email to me today that just made me feel so good.
Merlin: And I really felt like I was in the room with him.
Merlin: Now, he's alive.
Merlin: But I haven't seen him in 20 years.
Merlin: But I instantly felt as though we were at the cowhouse or we were in his basement recording the audio for this Ubu play we did.
Merlin: Whatever it was, I felt like I was right there with Dave Morris.
Merlin: And it was the nicest feeling.
Merlin: So there's no reason you can't experience that and get something from it.
Merlin: I mean, you don't want to become a weirdo about it.
Merlin: You don't want to reach out to too many psychics.
John: Well, we've talked about this, I think, quite a bit, although not recently, which is that this that we're doing.
John: I know you never like to talk about the show because what's in the show is in the show.
John: But what's in the show is in the show.
Merlin: The show is the show.
Merlin: Yes, the show is the show is the show.
John: The show is the show is the show.
John: If it comes out, it's the show.
John: And so there is this incredible record.
John: Maybe I should walk back from saying incredible, but there is a record, a 10-year-long almost record.
John: Let's say it's an eight-year record.
John: It's eight years, right?
John: Isn't it eight years just recently?
John: Yes.
Merlin: I guess.
John: I mean, what even are numbers?
John: Well, I know.
John: Time is a flat circle.
John: But it's eight, let's say, eight years of just...
John: I don't know.
John: We don't plan.
John: We don't have a preparation for this.
John: So it's eight years of whatever is on our minds on Monday.
John: And that is available to anyone, even if we're died.
John: If you and I are died, it doesn't go away.
John: I mean, you could try and turn it off, but it's too late.
John: It's too late.
John: You can't put this not me in a bin.
John: You know what I mean?
John: This is the ROTL is the not me of the family circus of podcasting.
Merlin: Just a mischievous little ghost running away.
Merlin: Until he's in my trap.
Merlin: Who did this?
Merlin: Who said hashtag super train?
John: Who said all the great shows?
John: But anybody that ever wants to know about us.
John: I mean, they're not going to know us completely from this, but they would have more of a starting point.
Merlin: You say you can train an AI on this.
Merlin: You feed this into an AI eventually, and you're going to come up with something.
John: Well, we've talked about that, but more specifically.
John: We did that.
John: Well, yeah, that was my thought experience.
Merlin: Oh, wow, you had a thought technology about that.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
John: That podcasters were going to be the first AIs because you have hundreds and hundreds of hours of them just talking in their own natural cadence, not playing other roles, not pretending to be, you know, we're not pretending to be anything.
Merlin: This robot shows an extraordinary level of interest in Squarespace.
Merlin: It's a new kind of hybrid mattress.
Merlin: Hey, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Merlin: No, stop it, stop it.
Merlin: Walk it back.
Merlin: All right, all right.
John: So anyways.
John: I mean, you know, and this AI spends a lot of time in the bathroom, strangely enough.
John: I don't know what it is about that.
Merlin: Even eating chili and doing crosswords in a bathtub.
Merlin: It's like on chili dogs outside the Tasty Freeze.
John: But more than that, it's like if I were to die.
John: If you were to die, yes.
John: Let's say I'm died.
John: You're died, yeah.
John: And in fact, everybody that's listening to this show is probably like, wait a minute, is he died?
John: But let's say I am died.
John: There will one day be someone listening to this very show after we are died.
John: And they're going to wonder, why is he saying it that way?
John: And there's not going to be he's not.
John: Well, basically, he's going to go online, he or she.
John: And and they're going to find that there are other people wondering that, too.
John: But that's not that's not our business.
John: You are yours and mine.
John: The fact is that if my child wanted to know me, she would have this.
John: And I'm talking about when she's 24, right?
John: Like if you had 300 hours of your dad talking about Ernie Kovacs, well, this is an interesting question.
John: Would you listen to it?
Merlin: I can't talk about this too much because I'll cry.
Merlin: But I do have a cassette tape of me interviewing my dad when I was five or six because I used to like to do radio shows.
Merlin: And we talked about – I was asking about what kind of movies he liked.
Merlin: And so, yeah, I like the Marx Brothers and the Ritz Brothers and all that stuff.
Merlin: So, yeah.
Merlin: And that's an extraordinary document for sure.
Merlin: And it's very sweet but very difficult for me to listen to.
Merlin: But I do know what you mean.
Merlin: I feel it in real time, living as a person, a fleshy person.
Merlin: I've told you before, the relationships in my head that I feel like I have with people on the podcast.
Merlin: Maybe for you that could be music or books, but especially for me and podcasts.
Merlin: I really feel like I know people in a way that if I went back and listened to 400 episodes of, say, The McElroy Brothers...
Merlin: after they got for a bit, had passed, I would feel like they were very much alive.
Merlin: That's part of the beauty.
Merlin: I mean, I don't want to oversell this stupid fucking medium that I love.
Merlin: But it is really true.
Merlin: You do have, if you choose to, have an extraordinary level of access.
Merlin: I mean, on the bit level of like, that was a funny bit on the episode level of that was a, you know, C minus episode on the like longer arc of like, wow, this is when that guy was going through the divorce or on the big level of like, wow, there's these themes and evolutions over time that track to what was happening in this person's life.
Merlin: And that can be like really oddly satisfying.
John: Travis McElroy, when he was,
John: seven years ago, eight years ago, a different, he was just such a, he's such a little boy then.
John: Yeah.
John: Uh, and now look at him.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: A living monster.
John: Um, what do, have we ever lost a podcaster?
Merlin: Is there one that's... Do we have one that's died?
Merlin: Like in our... Have we had one that's died in our world?
Merlin: Yeah, like our world.
Merlin: But do we... I see this is on Metafilter.
Merlin: I'm at Howie's site.
Merlin: That's pretty weird because I've met a couple...
Merlin: Well, I met several people from Metafilter, obviously, like at meetups and stuff.
Merlin: But there are some titans of Metafilter that I have met who have died.
Merlin: And that seems really weird.
Merlin: You knew Leslie Harpold, right?
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: When Leslie Harpold died, that was a really big deal.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: She's not quite up there with Grandma Stinus, but I really think about Leslie Harpold a lot still.
John: She was wonderful.
John: And you and I have mourned her several times.
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, she was such a big personality, and she was, in John Kabat-Zinn, the name of his book, The Full Catastrophe.
Merlin: Leslie was The Full Catastrophe.
Merlin: She really was.
Merlin: She was difficult to deal with.
Merlin: She could be a real pain in the ass.
Merlin: She was sad, too.
Merlin: There was an awful lot of her.
Merlin: Yeah, she could have that, but she also was just extremely human, and I still feel...
Merlin: It sounds so weird and creepy to say, not like dead grandpa, but I still feel her presence greatly.
Merlin: I have so many people that I think about, like, even if they're not around me, I just think about the whole reason I contacted that friend of mine in Tallahassee is he used to do these hilarious radio bits.
Merlin: And I was wondering if he had, you know, copies of that or especially like, are they on YouTube and stuff like that?
Merlin: And of course, like every, everything from Tallahassee in the 90s, it disappeared.
Merlin: um but but like i still think that i wrote him because i was saying i still think about these sentences that you said in 1991 you said a sentence once in 1991 and i still think about it like what was it what is the lesson we learned from job um uh your friend is so your friends suck and god's a betting man something like that like he has these these there's but like that's not just him it could be anybody
Merlin: It's the same reason that I quote the McElroys.
Merlin: Like, I don't know.
Merlin: I have a very impressionable brain that where, like anybody, I suppose, if I feel emotionally strong about something, feeling emotionally strong is the basis for a lot of what I do in life.
Merlin: Like, for a long time, that was writing.
Merlin: Like, nowadays, like, I can super deeply enjoy a lot of media because I have such a strong emotional...
Merlin: And when one has an emotional response, whether that's a car accident or a bit about whether there's an Olive Garden in Austin, Texas, I imprint on that.
Merlin: Would you meet Joe Pantaleon at an Olive Garden, even though he keeps calling him Pasta Garden?
Merlin: Like, why do I remember that?
Merlin: Why do I care?
Merlin: You plan ahead, Griffin.
Merlin: You bring a crusty bread, buddy.
Merlin: Why do I remember so many lines of that?
Merlin: Because it had an impact on me.
Merlin: So is it odd at all?
John: Yeah, your friends suck and God's a betting man.
Merlin: God's a betting man.
Merlin: And, like, so why would it seem strange at all that we would nearly feel the presence of these people?
Merlin: You can feel your dad.
Merlin: You know, at this point, God bless him that he didn't live long enough that you both had to, like, compete for the bathroom.
Ha ha ha!
Merlin: You're in a real situation there.
Merlin: Me first.
Merlin: No, I'm the older.
Merlin: So, yeah, preparing for you to have died.
Merlin: What do you do to prepare your child?
Merlin: That's, I think, where you left it.
John: Well, I don't know.
John: I'm not sure whether this – I honestly think that one terrible thing that podcasts have done for my daughter because she – her mother cannot listen to this program.
John: Good for her.
John: For various reasons.
Merlin: For reasons of self-preservation.
Merlin: Insanity.
John: There are other of my four programs that she's like, well, you know, I sort of tune in, tune out.
Merlin: Well, Jeopardy guy is very palatable.
John: Yeah, and I don't think she's ever listened to Roadwork.
John: Or maybe she listened to it one time and she forced quit like 10 minutes in.
Merlin: Roadwork is John Roderick in difficult mode.
Merlin: If you were a video game, that would be difficult mode.
Merlin: But Friendly Fire... You are a very deep dungeon in that one.
John: Yeah, it is.
John: It's deep dungeon.
Merlin: Yeah, you're just going to run into some fucking bugbears.
Merlin: There's going to be some skeletons and shit.
John: but she loves friendly fire.
John: And I, partly it is her, her mom.
John: Well, yeah, because Adam is a sweetheart, but, but you know, she studied film at, uh, at Santa Cruz, you know, she's a film person.
Merlin: Shut your dirty mouth.
Merlin: So did my wife.
Merlin: No, she literally studied film at Santa Cruz.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: Okay.
John: We never know this.
Merlin: We're going to have to circle back to this, uh, offline.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So, uh, so she appreciates the, the discussion of film.
John: She does.
John: And so she listens to it in the car with the baby.
John: Well, so there are a lot of mature themes, right?
John: But also we do, I mean, I'm, you know, I don't swear that much.
John: You and I don't do a ton of swears.
John: When I do the show with Ken, we don't do any swears.
Merlin: There's a great phrase.
Merlin: I've talked about my kid, just real quick.
Merlin: I've talked to my kid about this where like, she's like, okay, can I watch this movie?
Merlin: And I'm like, no, you can't watch that.
Merlin: It has too much adult kissing in it.
Merlin: can i watch this one no that one has too much personal violence in it this one the one phrase that sounds like a cop-out that i think is actually extremely good is adult themes this has adult themes this has challenging ideas sort of like when it's candle nights you're not allowed to swear but you can still talk about difficult things challenging ideas that's the thing about some shows and there may not be swears or handjobs or whatever but it could have some challenging adult content
John: we've just we have just uh started to have that as part of our conversation now where i say adult themes and she seems to understand what that is because i do i do the same thing that you do i differentiate between like kissing this movie's got kissing lots of kissing and she's like and i'm like yeah i know i feel the same way and then you know it's no this one has a lot of
John: blood and guts and, you know, the last couple of times she's been like, well, I don't care about that anymore.
John: You know, like I can watch people get, get hit in movies all the time.
John: And I'm like, I know that's kind of the worst thing about them, but yeah,
John: But adult themes, and she accepts it, at least for now.
Merlin: They're all a flavor of this, but adult themes in particular are a way of, you don't want to say this because it sounds so corny, but you should be allowed to be a kid a little bit longer.
Merlin: You should not be burdened with an idea that will be inescapable to you soon.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Let's leave adult themes.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Leave them alone.
John: But the thing about listening to podcasts, listening to her father on a podcast—
John: And it's generally a podcast about war movies.
John: And one of the guys is a communist and he likes to fight.
John: He likes to cancel things.
John: And the other guy, Adam, just agrees with the last person who talked.
John: And then there's me, who is extremely grumpy about everything and also has a lot of arcane knowledge about about airplane propellers in the 1950s.
John: And my daughter is listening.
John: And of course she, it's just like when she listens to my music, right?
John: She's absorbing a lot more than anybody is aware.
John: Well, the other day we were out for a walk, she and I, and she said, your motto is,
John: is keep moving and get out of the way.
John: And I said, well, it's not my motto, but it's our motto.
John: It's one of our mottos.
Merlin: And she ignored me.
Merlin: It's ancient wisdom, and we're the conduit.
John: She ignored me as I said that.
John: And she said, my motto is always go further.
John: Whoa.
John: And I said...
John: Your motto is always go further.
John: And she said, always go further.
John: Sir, chin up as she as we're walking.
John: Always go.
John: And I said, OK.
John: And so we walked along for a while and we got we came to some intersection or whatever and trying to decide what to do.
John: And I said, always go further.
John: And she said, that's my motto.
Mm hmm.
John: And I said, oh, sorry, I can't use your motto.
John: And she was like, no, always go further is my motto.
John: Chin up again and sort of off.
John: But the other couple of weeks ago or whenever it was, she said I was she wanted to know about Adam and Eve or she wanted to know about, you know, the creation story.
Yeah.
John: And so I told her the whole story.
Merlin: And you said that her maternal grandparents are observant.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: And I was telling her the story.
John: And we got to the conclusion of it.
John: And, oh, God, why am I blanking on what she said?
John: She said...
John: You should do an omnibus episode on this, and you should call it...
John: What did she say?
John: You should call it something like the... Oh, God, Merlin, it's driving me crazy if I don't remember it, because it was a wonderful little thing.
John: I wrote it down anyway, because, of course, everything is a tweet.
Merlin: It would be an omnibus episode on the Genesis creation story.
John: Yes, but she had something...
John: some uh some observation about the apple and the the kind of the the trick inherent in it and and so forth i forget what it was oh i'm sorry oh that drives me crazy but it wasn't you know it was a cute little and the thing is it's out there to be searched if anybody knows how to search and i'm sure 50 people will tweet it at me as soon as this episode arrives but
John: But so so a couple of weeks go by.
John: We haven't talked about it since.
John: She just threw this title out there like you should do an omnibus episode on the tricky apple or whatever.
John: And I was like, yeah, the tricky apple.
John: That's a good way of putting it.
John: Although her thing was way better.
John: And then in our conversation about the psychic, she was like, well, you know, what's a psychic?
John: And we're talking about the apple of embarrassment.
John: Thank you.
John: There it is.
John: The apple of embarrassment.
Merlin: That's really good.
John: How did you find it?
Merlin: It's on the internet.
Merlin: I can see stuff you put on the internet.
John: She said, you should do an omnibus.
John: That's a really good name.
John: You should do an omnibus on it.
John: Call it the apple of embarrassment.
John: Apple embarrassment, snake of shame.
John: The apple of embarrassment.
John: Yeah.
John: So anyway, we're talking about...
John: psychics were walking along, we're talking, talking, talking.
John: And she says, yeah, well, it's sort of like, you know, the way that granddad believes in heaven or like the apple of embarrassment or whatever.
John: And she just drops it in there.
John: And I was like, are you, are you memeing me?
John: Did you, you've got, you've got memes already.
John: And I feel, I feel like, I feel like catchphrase.
John: She understands catchphrase.
John: She understands like
John: That interrogate is funny because interrogate becomes bigger than itself.
Merlin: And it is in the true sense of the original use of the phrase viral, mimetic.
Merlin: It gets passed around.
Merlin: Syracuse has talked about this.
Merlin: How is it that everybody in this certain little area has started talking like this and doesn't even know why they're doing it?
Merlin: Because there are a lot of people that do it now.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and, and, uh, and, uh, well, we saw that with all the great shows.
John: It started to pop up in places where it was like, there was some company that had, it was trying to use it as their brand, right?
John: Some, some podcast distributor.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: There was one of these podcast networks that was like all the great shows.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Just out there in the ether.
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: Well, whatever you say, but, um, but, but she wasn't trying to, she wasn't trying to meme it or I don't think she's, she understands what
John: that it could become viral.
John: It's something in the way she's wiring her brain to understand how humans communicate when they get, when they say something interesting, when they, when they, when they collect a bunch of ideas down into a single sort of nubbin, a little, a little aphorism, like basically she's developing aphorisms that,
John: And it's 100%, I think, from listening to the aphoristic nature of the podcast that we do.
John: And that made me, I was like, oh, is this a, should I, I don't know what else I would do.
John: I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't know what to do.
John: I mean, we listened to a lot of Led Zeppelin when we were young.
John: And so that changed how we feel about Mordor and
John: And is this like... Is this her...
Merlin: lord of the rings you know is she going is she going to be more influenced by the culture that are you know what i mean like yeah yeah well i mean like it's in it's interesting like the i was very resistant to a lot of the meme stuff for a long time because it was so willfully stupid and it's it's it's it's weird though like for example there's this tv show i'm crazy into right now called letter kenny which is this uh it's it's just this oh
Merlin: Really stupid and hilarious and wonderfully written like Cone Brothers to the Tenth Power show in rural Ontario, southwestern Ontario.
Merlin: And anyway, but it is on the face of it like kind of stupid, but it's brilliantly written in a way that the stupidity is hilarious.
Merlin: Like, again, like another podcast that I say this, and I hope the boys know that I say this with incredible affection, but another show on XFun, The Flophouse, that I love dearly is like the latest episode I said on Twitter.
Merlin: Like, I love when they lean into the stupid.
Merlin: Like, really just stupid, like, oh, this word sounds like that word kind of stuff.
Merlin: And you're like, but you have to be really smart to make something that stupid good.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And I think that's the funny thing about some of the meme stuff is that when that stuff is done well, it satisfies a lot of our like brain centers because it's, it satisfies.
Merlin: Sometimes it's the word drunk part.
Merlin: Sometimes it's the picture drunk part, but like, like all good humor, uh, it requires you to make a connection of some kind.
Merlin: And that's the connections to like spoon fed to you.
Merlin: It's not fun.
Merlin: But if you're the one who has to take those sort of, uh, clashing ideas and figure out what's special about it, like you're the one who has to connect those dots and
Merlin: Like the more and more sophisticated humor gets in some ways, the more it requires you to be the one who fills in the gap between these two parts.
Merlin: I don't know if this is making sense.
Merlin: But I think that's – I don't want – I would not prefer my daughter become somebody who just walks around saying I can't have a cheeseburger because there's not much meat on that bone.
John: But all our base are belong to us.
Merlin: I mean, it's funny, but it's, I mean, it can be funny again, but like, it's more that like, I do know what you mean.
Merlin: Um, so my kid and her mom just went out to breakfast a bit ago and she sent me, um, my kid sent me a photo at Walgreens and it's a photo of a plastic bag.
Merlin: Um, um,
Merlin: Is it the most beautiful thing she's ever seen?
Merlin: No, not that plastic bag.
Merlin: It's on a display in an aisle at Walgreens.
Merlin: And it's basically just this bag with, it says on the front of it what's in it.
Merlin: And it's the words, adult poncho.
Merlin: So she sent me that photo, and under it, she wrote, adult poncho.
Merlin: And then I replied by saying, adult poncho.
Merlin: of course and adult poncho okay it's not a meme but that was an extremely satisfying exchange because we both we both there's something i don't want to spoil whatever that non-joke is but there's something funny about adult poncho a picture of it and then us so like yeah i mean like i think the sense of humor stuff is kind of different like when's the last time you encountered somebody that's not a boom or walking around going hey
Merlin: I'm the Fonz.
Merlin: Stuff has changed.
Merlin: There's always been stupid pop culture that we feel clever repeating.
Merlin: I did a Monty Python bit, a somewhat obscure Monty Python bit earlier in this show, in passing, because that's the age that I am, because I'm a Gen Xer, and that's my idea of funny.
Merlin: So, I don't know, man.
John: For some reason, her mother has started to say to me, What's that?
John: Ha ha ha ha!
John: And I'm like, stop doing that.
Merlin: I bet it's cute when she does it.
John: It's extremely cute.
John: Well, so then she showed me the Super Friends mashup of the Budweiser What's Up commercial with
John: Super Friends.
John: And I was like, yeah, I'm aware of it.
John: And she said, isn't this amazing?
John: And I was like, yeah, you know, it's a Budweiser commercial.
John: And she'd never seen the commercial.
John: She had no idea it had any Budweiser connection at all.
John: She just thought it was a Super Friends meme.
John: that some people had done.
Merlin: We get that when we watch Vine compilations, where there'll be things where there's a six-second video that is extremely funny, and I find myself wanting to explain why it's funny, but she just gets that it's funny.
Merlin: Chris, is that a weed?
Merlin: I'm calling the police.
Merlin: hits 420 into the microwave, and then the X-Files theme plays.
Merlin: There's like five different difficult-to-understand things in that six-second video, but it's my favorite Vine.
Merlin: It's so rich with packed comedy.
Merlin: But like, you don't know why it's funny.
Merlin: But again, for the third time, Syracuse, this is what he says about English stuff is like, when we watch something when you're a kid and watching Monty Python, you may not know why it's funny.
Merlin: And you may not know what part of it is funny.
Merlin: Like, is that actually a word?
Merlin: Like, they say this thing different.
Merlin: And their whole attitude of British comedy is so different.
Merlin: But you know, it's funny, but you may not know why it's funny.
Merlin: But you know, people saying what's up is funny.
Yeah.
John: I woke up this morning thinking in Monty Python bits.
John: I don't know what it was.
John: I woke up and just immediately was like inside of Eric Idle.
John: And just sort of walking through some stuff.
Merlin: Did you do it for a few minutes before you realized it was happening?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Where I was just like, I'm just... Does she go?
John: Does she go?
John: And the Lodge.
John: The Lodge.
John: And I don't know what, I was just, I was sitting there staring out the window just saying, the Lodge.
John: The Lodge.
Merlin: I don't want to be like that, but I am.
Merlin: Sometimes I'll just go, antelope, gone.
Merlin: Where do I go?
Merlin: It's 50 years old.
Merlin: Why am I still doing that?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Where do I go?
John: Fishy, fishy.
Merlin: Where did he go?
Merlin: All right.
John: We're done.
John: That's it.
Merlin: Monty Python, the Flying Circus.