Ep. 367: "Inescape Room"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Oh, it's early.
Merlin: It's a shiny new year.
Merlin: It's early in the year.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Oh, it's early.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: It's early.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: How's your new year so far?
Merlin: It's been really good.
Merlin: It's been a really good Jubilee.
Merlin: Today is the last day of my daughter's Jubilee.
Merlin: She returns to school tomorrow.
Merlin: It's been good.
Merlin: It's been full of laughter and love.
John: Why not on today?
John: Why not on the Monday?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: she goes to a special school oh it's a special school everything's a little bit different there it's like small plates yeah it's been great man we had some uh we've we've had food and there were trees and and lights uh very large beanbag chair it's been um lights oh yeah slow down hold on
Merlin: Did you get one of those?
Merlin: It's called a fat boy.
Merlin: It's an improbably large chair.
Merlin: It's a chair.
Merlin: If you put it down on the ground, you can't really put it anywhere.
Merlin: I just want to be super clear.
Merlin: I did not get a vote on this.
John: It's right in the middle of the room.
John: It's like the mother insect in Starship Troopers.
Merlin: I guess so.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like saying, hey, let's have a thing that might be a chair that's the size of a dining room table, and we'll put that in the lounge.
John: If you put your hand on its head, can you sense its fear?
Merlin: Fear's the mind killer.
Merlin: I think it's 70 inches long, so I think it's just a tiny bit taller than me.
Merlin: But anyway, yeah, there's that.
Merlin: Whoa, taller!
Merlin: It's 70 inches long, but it's
Merlin: 5'10 tall?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And I'm just under 5'10, I think.
Merlin: I might be shrinking.
Merlin: My feet are growing, though.
Merlin: I think my feet are definitely growing.
Merlin: I bought some shoe stretchers.
Merlin: But my body is getting smaller.
Merlin: My feet are getting bigger.
Merlin: I'm approaching some kind of clown singularity.
Merlin: I wouldn't even fit in a tiny car.
Merlin: Shoe stretchers, that's such a, like...
John: We're just the last generation that ever even knew what that was.
Merlin: Yeah, I want to bog down the program, but I got a lot of problems.
Merlin: I got a lot of problems with shoe sizes and shoe size variability.
Merlin: It's very frustrating.
Merlin: First of all, I am almost, I have been historically almost exactly a nine and a half, which puts me exactly between the two English sizes.
John: I think of you as a nine and a half.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Nine and a half feet.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Anyway, so I got a shoe stretcher.
Merlin: I stretched out my new Pumas last night a little bit.
Merlin: Oh, my new Pumas.
Merlin: Because I don't want – I mean, if it's too big, it's too big.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And you can't – I learned this from a Doc Martens representative at a Nordstrom.
Merlin: He intervened on my behalf because I've been – I had been buying –
Merlin: foolishly, the first pair of Doc Martens I ever bought was on a visit to San Francisco in 1997.
Merlin: I was not aware of the English sizing problem, something I'm sure you're very aware of.
Merlin: Oh, very aware.
Merlin: And so I made... But Docs are sold in American sizes now.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure they're still made in English sizes.
Merlin: They slap a size on there, but I'm pretty sure you're still on your own to find something that fits.
Merlin: So I went the wrong way, and I got the equivalent of a nine.
Merlin: And I'm walking up, was it Haight or Fillmore?
Merlin: One of those really, I think it was probably Fillmore, where the sidewalk turns into steps.
Merlin: And my dogs were barking.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: And it was a lot of money.
Merlin: It was funny in 1997.
Merlin: I think I spent a C-note on these things.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And you can't really stretch Doc Martens.
Merlin: Maybe you can.
Merlin: They're a buck and a half now.
John: Huh?
John: They're 150 bucks these days.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: In this economy.
Merlin: And so I'm at the Nordstrom, which, you know, it's a very good store.
Merlin: And I'm looking at some Doc Martens.
Merlin: And it just so happens that a shoe representative...
Merlin: From outside of the Nordstrom company, I don't know if he was strictly a Doc Martens, but he says, oh, I can help you with that.
Merlin: Did he have a British accent?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: He didn't even fake it.
Merlin: Hey, hello, what's all this?
Merlin: Hello, Lord.
Merlin: What's all this, Dean?
Merlin: Little master.
Merlin: You can't fit into your, I can't, I don't know, caught in your arm in slang, and I don't want to say Jews.
Merlin: But something with shoes and pairs.
Merlin: You got to get your shoes and pairs.
Merlin: They do come in pairs.
Merlin: It's kind of like that movie, Call Me By Your Name.
Merlin: Anyway, so, and what he says is, he says, here's the thing.
Merlin: You go with the larger size.
Merlin: And then he says, he might have called her sweetheart.
Merlin: I'm not sure.
Merlin: He says to the Nordstrom lady, he says, could you bring me some of those little cheapy insoles?
Merlin: He puts some insoles in.
Merlin: He says, let's try one.
Merlin: If that doesn't work, we'll try two.
Merlin: What do I need to do to put you in a Doc Martens today?
Merlin: And you know it worked.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: Do you know what I'm talking about here?
John: How many shims were in there?
Merlin: I think we might have done two shims.
Merlin: Two shims.
Merlin: Because, you know, the provided insoles and arch support, we're not talking Converse here, but it's not a lot to write home about to begin with.
Merlin: But I learned this from Crocs.
Merlin: This is a shoe.
John: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: Okay, go on.
Merlin: Crocs.
Merlin: I have professional Crocs.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: It's not those kind of Crocs like a little kid wears.
Merlin: Are you a nurse?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Uh-huh, okay.
Merlin: Look at these teats.
Merlin: Anyway, I'm a picture of fecundity.
Merlin: I actually have two pairs.
Merlin: I have one pair at my office and a pair at home.
Merlin: You could drop a hypodermic needle on there and you'd be GTG.
Merlin: You could work in a kitchen.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Fire it on five all day, you know, that kind of thing.
John: Kitchen in a hospital, right.
Merlin: Yeah, la, la, la.
John: You can work in a kitchen on a hospital ship.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: If you buy Crocs wrong, which is really the only way to buy Crocs, if you buy Crocs wrong, you're buying a size, oh, these should be nice and snug.
Merlin: No, they should be more floopa floopa.
Merlin: Same goes for the Doc Smartin.
John: Yeah, it's just like buying wooden shoes.
John: I mean, you only get one shot at it.
Merlin: I see, I see.
Merlin: The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed, is what you're saying.
John: And they're in Dutch sizes, so you have to like... Dutch people are very tall.
John: You have to size up and then size down on the other side.
Merlin: I don't want to be racist, but Dutch people are tall.
Merlin: Some of them.
Merlin: A lot of them are tall.
Merlin: If you're running to plug a dike, as you do, claka, claka, claka...
Merlin: yeah so anyway um a lot of rhythm to the touch i got a shoe stretcher it's got it's got bunion strap-ons but i don't need those i don't have bunions but i i do i do want to get just a tiny bit more in my toe box i've learned so much well i i could talk to you about a lot of shoe technologies i i have i have many secret shoe technologies one of them is and this might be a jesse thorne thing i don't remember how i started doing this but i also i do utilize shoe trees and i rotate my shoes
John: Uh-huh.
Merlin: I rarely wear... Well, now I'm breaking in these Pumas.
Merlin: These are pretty sweet.
Merlin: These are suede, kind of light blue kicks, as they say.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, so I'm kind of breaking them in a little bit.
Merlin: And they're real good for riding my Segway, because they're basically kind of like a skateboard shoe.
Merlin: So I get a lot of stability.
John: You're wearing them for like a half hour a day, and then you put them back.
John: Put them back.
Merlin: Put them up until the air out.
Merlin: You know what they say, John?
Merlin: What they say is... I don't know if this is a 10,000 hours thing.
Merlin: What they say is, it is believed...
Merlin: That if you use a shoe tree and you rotate your shoes every day, I don't really understand the math on this, but they could last you twice as long, even accounting for the fact that you're wearing them less.
Merlin: It's like the opposite of blue jeans.
Merlin: Twice as long.
Merlin: Because you're airing them out.
Merlin: You're getting the moisture out.
Merlin: They're going to be way less stinky.
Merlin: yes change your socks every day you know i'm saying put in shoe trees good good god man yeah well you know um a friend of the show felix salmon asked a question uh not long ago on twitter how how often do you wear the same pair of shoes for um more than like a couple days in a row i don't remember the exact question but you know what it came down to is like women change shoes a lot men will basically wear the same shoes every day you know i don't know if that's racist but that is that is this is i've spoken you know what i'm saying
John: I am someone who often has 20 pairs of shoes in rotation.
John: And yet, since I sold my house and moved into the guest bedroom over here at Shea Baby Mama's, little by little...
John: It all shook down so that I've basically been wearing the same Blundstones every day for six months.
John: That's a good shoe.
Merlin: Now, that's another one where it's tricky to get the right size.
Merlin: But I like a Blundstone.
Merlin: You know, I wear those.
Merlin: We both have, I think, nearly identical models of Doc Martin shoes.
Merlin: And I believe the last time we appeared on stage together, we were wearing, in different colors, the same pair of Doc Martin boots.
John: Yeah, wasn't that fun?
Merlin: That was fun.
Merlin: They're Blundstone-ish.
John: And we're on our way to appear together again.
Merlin: I didn't know we were doing that.
John: I didn't know we were doing that, but we should promote that.
John: I don't know whether it's just now in the calendar.
John: It must be a standing date at this point.
John: Yeah, they just send us a thing that says like, Harvey Danger, you're playing Wednesday, you call to cancel, click.
John: It might be something like that.
John: Let me find this.
Merlin: Yeah, so like I say, if we talked about this, I don't remember it.
Merlin: But I think, like you say, it sounds like we might be just a, what would you call it, like a standing meeting.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Every year, once a year, we run into each other at the Gateway Theater in San Francisco.
John: I like that theater.
John: Good theater.
John: We do a show.
John: We do a live performance.
John: People that attend can see Merlin Mann in the wild.
John: Hello.
Hello.
John: In the town.
John: He's very gracious in person.
Merlin: I am.
Merlin: I leave the house and I stay and I talk to people until they make us leave.
John: That's right.
John: He gets all the way down.
John: And the Gateway Theater is not anywhere close to Merlin's house.
John: It's on the other side of San Francisco.
Merlin: It's an $18 Lyft drive.
John: He might as well be in Oregon.
John: And you can be there.
John: You can be there and you can shake hands and talk, ask questions.
John: We even do – sometimes we take questions from the audience.
Merlin: I do a fair amount of – I do some crowd work.
Merlin: A lot of crowd work.
Merlin: Some pretty sophisticated physical comedy.
Merlin: I will sometimes fall off a chair for comedic effect, which people like.
John: Yes, yes.
John: We need to update these bios.
John: Wow, these bios.
John: The size differential between us.
Merlin: Yes.
John: You'll see that in similar size chairs, we look... You're like a case for me.
John: Like I could fit in you.
John: The Gateway, it's a nice theater.
John: The sight lines are good.
John: There's not a bad seat in the house.
John: And it feels intimate.
John: We can hear you.
John: We can hear you when you say things in the room.
John: If you say...
John: Guffaw.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: We'll take note of it.
Merlin: Crowds don't engage as much as they used to, the thing is.
Merlin: And I know this is extremely true in the PNW.
Merlin: But sometimes people are having fun, but you can't tell.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Maybe people aren't used to going out anymore.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But I like the theater.
Merlin: The people are really nice.
Merlin: You could tell it's a San Francisco bathroom because there's a handmade sign that says, don't flush anything down the toilet.
John: Uh-huh.
Merlin: I met a guy from the TV show The Office there last year.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: What was that person doing?
Merlin: He was so nice.
Merlin: He was backstage for doing a real show after us.
Merlin: Probably a tribute to some show from the 90s.
Merlin: There's a lot of those.
John: That's popular.
Merlin: Yeah, but it was Oscar from The Office, and he was really gracious.
Merlin: Oscar?
Merlin: I handled it extremely well.
Merlin: I said, hey...
Merlin: I really enjoy your work.
Merlin: My family really likes what you do.
Merlin: Thanks for doing what you do.
Merlin: And he was very nice and very gracious.
Merlin: I walked away.
Merlin: I didn't touch him or anything.
John: Was I there?
Merlin: Did I meet him?
Merlin: You know, you move in different circles sometimes.
Merlin: You frequently bring a person with you.
Merlin: There'll be a woman there.
Merlin: There'll be a man there.
Merlin: There'll be somebody industry related.
Merlin: There's always people in different roles.
Merlin: I think the Roderick group rolls on as some kind of ad hoc operation from what I can gather.
Merlin: I'm always there.
Merlin: I'm, you know, oh, what a lonely boy.
Merlin: I'm just wandering around.
Merlin: I would not bring my family to this.
John: Sure, but if there was someone backstage, for instance, it seems like it's not like a huge backstage.
John: I would have met the person.
John: I guess I wouldn't know.
Merlin: You might have been in the front of house, as they say.
Merlin: Front of house.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not sure I would have recognized him as a person from the office is the problem.
Merlin: I've seen every episode several times.
Merlin: He's very, very good.
Merlin: He's good in other things, too.
Merlin: He's in a commercial also.
Merlin: That's a nice job.
Merlin: I don't know, cable TV or cars.
Merlin: I'm not sure.
John: Nice job.
John: If you can get it, you know, as they say.
Merlin: Oh, you know who else I met?
Merlin: What's his name?
Merlin: Is it Rick Overton?
Merlin: A comic that I just loved in the 80s.
Merlin: He was a guy who would pop up all the time on cable TV.
Merlin: Rick Overton.
Merlin: I met him backstage, too.
Merlin: And I said, hey, I've enjoyed your work since I was a kid.
Merlin: It's really I'm glad you're here.
Merlin: Thank you for doing what you do.
Merlin: And I walked away.
Merlin: I didn't even touch him.
John: This is another reason why people should come to the show because you might meet Rick Overton.
John: Rick Overton or the guy from the office.
John: The guy from the office.
John: One of the guys from the office.
John: Anyway, come to the show if you want.
John: It's in this month.
John: It's in January in San Francisco.
John: You have to be in San Francisco to come.
John: You have to be here for that.
John: Yep, yep, yep.
John: But otherwise, there are no height requirements.
John: It's accessible to all.
Merlin: I hope this isn't racist, but if you are pregnant, it's safe.
Merlin: The state of California needs to let you know that there could be certain chemicals in the environment, but you're good.
Merlin: Don't vape and don't drink, but you can come and sit down.
Merlin: We'll give you a chair.
Merlin: There's a chair that only you are allowed to sit in.
John: And I can't overstate the degree to which we are, and in particular Merlin, is accessible for this one hour only.
John: I wouldn't recommend that you reach out and touch him, but if you say, may I touch you?
Merlin: You can touch me.
Merlin: It's okay.
Merlin: It's okay.
John: See, this is amazing.
Merlin: This is privilege.
Merlin: I get asked, right?
Merlin: Is it okay to touch you?
Merlin: That's privilege.
Merlin: What's privilege if you don't use it is what I always say.
Merlin: It's okay.
Merlin: You can touch me.
Merlin: Yeah, we just got to make sure that we get out and let James Urbaniak or whoever come up next.
John: Sure, sure, sure.
John: There's always a cycle.
John: We can't just stand there and clog the aisles.
John: You know, I met him.
John: I met him once.
John: I know you did.
Merlin: He took a photograph.
Merlin: I have a very unflattering haircut at the time.
Merlin: But I met him, and now I see him on TV all the time.
Merlin: He's on that show Review that's very good with Andy Daly.
Merlin: I've never met Andy Daly that I can remember.
Merlin: but james urbaniak is on a lot of programs i really like him it's funny he's a great character actor and he'll show up you'll be watching a thing and you're like wait a minute yes it's that guy it's him you know we just don't get as many great character actors as we used to we have to appreciate the ones that we have you're saying a mouthful that's so true i mean like in the 70s you just see people you'd see a vincent chavelli or whatever you'd see like such classic characters you know you watch a barney miller
John: Yeah, well, and then they'd show up on Love Boat and they'd get their moment.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like they'd get their episode.
John: That's what I'm trying to say.
John: Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: Tom Hanks last night, Tom Hanks on the Golden Globe Awards was talking about how he'd been on Love Boat.
Merlin: I don't remember that at all.
Merlin: I remember him from Bosom Buddies.
John: Sure, of course, we all do.
John: If you are exactly the right age.
John: You had to have been exactly the right age to have watched Bosom Buddies on television.
John: And for whatever reason, Merlin, you and I are exactly that age within that window.
Merlin: Remember Holmes and Yo-Yo?
John: See, now, I do not remember Holmes and Yo-Yo.
Merlin: That was like, you know, it's classic, oh, cop's getting a new partner.
Merlin: And the cop is a character actor whose name escapes me.
Merlin: And then there's, what's the guy's name?
Merlin: Is it John Trunk?
Merlin: John Shuck?
Merlin: John, he gets partnered with a robot, played by John Funk.
Merlin: I forget his name.
Merlin: No, that's the guy from December, probably.
Merlin: No, I want to say John Shunk.
Merlin: I want to look at Holmes and Yo-Yo.
Merlin: Anyway, it's that kind of like, it's a buddy comedy with a cop and a robot.
Merlin: Speaking of robots, I got a robot.
Merlin: Tell me more about your robot, please.
Merlin: Anyway, it was a good holiday.
John: Well, so we still need to circle back to your sex bag.
Merlin: Also, also, it's so difficult.
Merlin: I'll put a link to this in show notes for this episode, which you can find at RoderickOnTheLine.com.
Merlin: But what you want to do is go just do a search on the internet, whatever internet you've got for RoderickOnTheLine, Sketchfest 2020.
Merlin: But I'll also put a link in notes and you can get tickets.
Merlin: Oh, it looks like Gabriel's going to be there.
Merlin: Sometimes they put your face up if you're going to be there.
Merlin: Hey, there's women that are coming.
Merlin: That's cool.
Merlin: Jeez, where do I see this?
Merlin: And here's the other thing.
Merlin: Here's what I learned.
Merlin: Everything I learned from Jesse Thorne, I could have learned in kindergarten.
Merlin: But here's what he says.
Merlin: You use shoe trees, you rotate your shoes.
Merlin: You turn your jeans inside out to wash them, right?
Merlin: And don't do it too hot.
Merlin: I learned a lot from him and Sandy.
Merlin: Other thing I learned from, he is adamant about this.
Merlin: When we did our Monsters of Podcasting tour, I learned this.
Merlin: You must sell out every seat at the comedy show.
Merlin: If there's one seat open, it's not as funny.
Merlin: So it's very important that you all come to this show, give us your money, and then you will be in the theater with a seat.
Merlin: I think they sell beer and bottles.
John: And then the funniness will increase with each additional seat nearing completion.
Merlin: But it's like a quantum thing, John.
Merlin: There's no way that Newtonian physics can explain why one open seat makes it an order of magnitude less funny.
Merlin: It has to be sold out.
John: There it is.
John: has to be sold out so let's shoot for sold out okay well no not shoot for that's our minimum standard sold it's the minimum viable uh show and so you will come back to my sex bag uh you're gonna tell me about your robot well and also let me just say that jesse thorne when he talks about shoe trees and talks about rotating his jeans cravat case cozies
John: Jesse is Jesse has learned these things from people that wore Alden shoes.
John: Then they paid four hundred dollars for a pair of shoes and they lived in Connecticut somewhere rotating your shoes when you're where when you wear Converse or something.
John: Some made in China Pumas.
John: It's all the glue is going to get brittle long time before the shoe wears out.
John: OK.
John: But, you know, I don't mean to – I don't want to drag on Jesse because it's too easy and this show is too short.
Merlin: But my robot – Suddenly a comma appeared and then we – you know, you got to keep your head on a swivel with John Roderick.
Merlin: You got a robot is what you're telling me.
John: So what happened – what had happened was –
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John: First you're on a helicopter and then you're on a hovercraft.
John: Okay.
John: What happened was this Christmas, I gave you my heart.
John: This Christmas, we decided that last Christmas was too much.
John: All you wanted for Christmas was me.
John: That's right.
John: There were too many presents last Christmas because we have in-laws.
John: Everybody felt obligated to get everybody a present.
John: Yeah.
John: As I've said before, what that usually means for me is that people are waiting in line at REI and they see something and it's like perfect for Christmas, $5.
John: And they're like, hmm, seems like he'd like that flashlight or X-Acto knife or whatever.
John: So I would get a lot of stuff like that.
John: Hard to buy for, they say.
John: But there were just a lot of presents.
John: It just took all day opening these little presents that nobody wanted.
John: Nobody wanted to have bought them and nobody wanted to receive them.
John: And at the end of the day, it was like, look.
Merlin: But also just importantly, nobody talks about it because you don't want to seem like a dick.
Merlin: But there's a lot of times you get stuff you don't want and it becomes this just obligatory circle jerk where everybody's just giving each other stuff that nobody wants.
Merlin: And now that's filling your house like a sex bag.
John: Yeah, nobody wants it.
John: And so we all looked around at the end of the day.
John: My sister's spearheading this.
John: with my mom, you know, trumpeting the chorus, uh, saying, uh, this is, this is, uh, we, we are not consumerists.
John: This is not the kind of just like, uh, blunt edge consumerism that we practice as a, as a family and as a community.
John: So we're putting a stop to this and we're doing a secret Santa where each adult has one person that is charged with buying them a gift.
John: Oh, I like that.
John: Yeah.
John: So each adult gets one gift and it's one other adult's responsibility to pick a gift for this person.
John: And, you know, and since each person only gets one gift, you know, you get one dinger instead of a bunch of different aftershaves or what.
John: Right.
John: And since you don't have to buy presents for eight people, you can you can presumably think a little bit longer about it than just getting somebody gifts from the end cap at the Walgreens.
John: Yeah.
John: Giant flask.
John: So it was nice.
John: I think you and I stood in a Walgreens one time and looked at that giant flask together.
John: It was a really, really big flask.
John: We were like, whoa, whoa.
Merlin: Oh, the mighty have fallen.
Merlin: They're like Pierre Cardin in the 80s.
Merlin: They'll just license their name to anything.
Merlin: Oh, Stanley.
Merlin: I knew a guy that worked for them.
Merlin: Well, you know, I did too.
Merlin: I knew a fellow back in their air purifier days.
Merlin: There was a juggernaut.
Merlin: They were the MySpace of air purifiers.
Merlin: Remember how he was like, they will never be beat.
Merlin: Like this is, they have, they have cornered the market on these pointless air purifiers.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, anyway, so, so we all, uh, we, well, yeah, we all, everybody gets nice, nice presents, nice stuff.
John: My gift giver actually got around the one present rule by getting me a lot of small presents and putting them in one box.
John: Basically bought eight little presents, but then it was all in one box.
John: So I got the added thrill of like, oh, look, it's a box of stuff that I might have found at a thrift store.
John: And it was very thoughtful, very thoughtful.
John: Anyway, my mom...
John: Called me immediately after Christmas and said, and my mom has started to become a little bit more eccentric at age 85.
John: Yep.
John: She's early.
John: That's right.
John: The eccentricity is starting to come out.
John: And she said, I didn't buy you a birthday present this past year because, and then she gave some reason.
Okay.
John: And I was like, all right.
John: And she said, and I didn't give you a birthday present last year for some reason.
John: And I was like, uh-huh, that's fine.
John: Okay, yeah.
John: i'm not counting and also i don't remember and uh and i'm sure it was i'm sure there was a reason and i don't you know it's fine i don't really celebrate my birthday i try not to god i wish i could just that's forced i wish i could opt out i i try every year and then they catch me they catch me going down the alley they're like they know they know all the routes i'm going to take to try and avoid it and then she said i didn't get you a present
John: Last Christmas, some of the things she's saying is like, I knew you were about to move, so I didn't get you a present.
John: I knew you had just moved, so I didn't get you a present.
John: So she lists all these holidays in recent years that she hasn't gotten me a present.
John: Does this imply that she's your adult?
John: No.
John: No, no, no.
John: My adult was someone else.
John: Okay, okay.
John: But she says...
John: so I owe you these Christmas presents or I owe you these birthday presents.
John: And I said, mother, dear mother, you don't owe me any presents.
John: And she said, no, I owe you three birthday presents.
John: And I said, honestly, sweetheart, I don't, it's December 27th or whatever.
John: I do not.
John: She said, no, I have them already.
Hmm.
John: I bought you these birthday presents, but I didn't give them to you.
John: And I have to get them out of my house.
John: She phrased it as though now she had these birthday presents that were burdensome, taking up valuable closet space.
John: And so she organized a birthday party for me yesterday.
John: Okay.
Merlin: Your canonical birthday is not then.
John: It's in September.
John: But yesterday, on January 5th... That's pretty eccentric.
John: We sat down and opened three birthday presents for me.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Two of which were very... One of them was a handmade pillow that sort of looked like a mandala.
John: Oh, nice.
John: That she said, I found a bed sheet
John: This is going to sound crazier than it is.
John: She said, I found some bedclothes, not a bedsheet.
John: I found some bedclothes at the thrift store, and I cut out the mandala in the center of the bedclothes, and I sewed this pillow for you out of it.
John: I was like, thank you.
John: What a lovely day present.
Merlin: It's nice to know the story.
John: Okay.
John: And it's a large pillow.
John: Okay.
John: It's not a sex pillow, but it's like a big throw pillow.
Merlin: Okay.
John: And then she said, and then I opened the next gift, which was very heavy, and it was imitation rabbit fur thunder blanket.
John: comfort blanket.
John: You know, like weighted.
Merlin: Oh, gravity, like a gravity blanket.
John: The thing weighs 40 pounds.
John: Yeah, I have one of those.
John: But it looks like it's very convincing sort of white rabbit fur.
John: Okay.
John: It looks like the greatest Game of Thrones robe you ever saw.
John: And it's humongous.
John: It's the size of a king-sized bed.
John: And I was like... Well, that's a very heavy model.
John: He said, I don't know what to say about this.
John: Like, thank you very much.
John: for this.
John: This isn't a thing I ever would have bought.
Merlin: It helps people with anxiety is the idea.
John: Well, it helps me with anxiety.
John: As soon as I had it on me, I was like, I'm fine.
John: You guys can go do whatever you want.
John: I'm just going to sit here under my thunder blanket and feel safer.
John: I like a heavy blanket.
John: But you like your feet out, right?
John: I like my feet out.
Merlin: I like it to be cold in the bedroom.
Merlin: I'm so with you on this.
Merlin: I believe in personal warmth
Merlin: and spatial coolness.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I think people who are from cold climes learn to appreciate that.
Merlin: I want to be able to regulate, and I go around with my family about this, because I think we should each be regulating our own temperature with things like clothing.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: A hot room is inescapable.
Merlin: It's an inescape room.
Merlin: Put on a sweater.
Merlin: Put on a sweater and another sweater, and then you can take them off as layers.
Merlin: Read a book.
John: Inescape room.
John: Okay, I'll get that.
John: Anyway, and then the third one,
John: The third box was the heaviest of all, and I opened it, and inside was a robot.
John: Okay.
John: A top-of-the-line Roomba.
John: Did you get the 960?
John: I got a 980.
Merlin: You got a 980?
Merlin: I've been looking at the 960 and telling myself I super don't need it, but I want it.
John: You can talk to it.
Merlin: You can map the room.
Merlin: It learns.
John: It's got a camera.
Merlin: Oh, man.
John: It can do – if you throw a pen on the ground, it comes up.
John: It addresses the pen.
John: It sweeps around it.
John: It addresses the pen.
John: Yeah.
John: It sweeps around it.
Merlin: Oh, John.
John: I'm so happy for you.
John: It'll take a knee.
John: If you walk in front of it, it'll say Malige.
John: I can look at it on my phone.
John: I can tell it to do things from far away.
John: I could be in Paris, France.
John: Paris, France.
John: And I could say Roomba.
Oh.
John: Sweep the room.
John: Sweep the room.
John: It'll do doubles.
John: Sweep the room, Johnny.
John: It'll sweep it, and then you can program it to sweep it again.
John: Jiminy Christmas.
John: It does it like cross-hatching or whatever.
John: Yeah.
John: Anyway, so now I've got a Roomba.
John: Now, my house is all torn apart.
John: I can't put the Roomba to work, but I took the Roomba over.
John: It's there.
John: It's ready.
John: The Roomba's customing.
Merlin: I imagine in my head it would be a little like a puppy where eventually you'll be fine, but I feel like I should be with you for this time.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, you can tell me.
Merlin: I've never used one, but I've admired them from afar.
John: Well, I haven't been clear about it, but I have never talked to somebody.
John: I haven't pursued them avidly, but I've never talked to anybody that had a Roomba that was disappointed.
John: They all seem to be like, if you go across the threshold into Roomba ownership, then you are like Roombas.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If you're the sort of person who would like a Roomba, you'd probably like a Roomba.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: Well, and I was like, tell me about a Roomba.
John: And I went on to the internet and the internet said, what do you want to know?
John: First of all, there are 60 Roombas.
John: I honestly read an article titled Top 10 Best Roombas.
Merlin: That we found in 2019.
Merlin: I saw the same article yesterday.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I saw the sample article yesterday.
Merlin: I just bought a new Dyson because my old Dyson got all plugged up.
Merlin: But no, I spent two hours yesterday looking at vacuum cleaners.
Merlin: It was the worst.
John: Top 10 Roombas we found in 2019.
John: Anyway, so now I have one of those.
John: So I have, up until now, lived my life without a robot.
John: And now I have one.
John: And it has a certain amount of autonomy.
John: It's going to come out.
John: I'm going to meet it sometimes in the hall.
John: I'm going to be headed down the hall with the robot.
John: Here it comes.
John: And I'm going to be like, hello.
John: Hello.
John: Oh, hi.
John: I mean, I don't know.
John: It's kind of like having a cleaning lady where you're like, hi, you're nice.
John: But you also like, you don't stop and they don't want you to stop and talk.
Merlin: And she doesn't want, she doesn't want you to talk.
Merlin: She just wants to do it and be done.
Merlin: You're not actually helping when you do that.
John: Right.
John: I'm just, I'm just trying to get through this part of my day and then I go clean money and get out of the way.
John: But the Roomba doesn't have another house.
John: The Roomba is just going to go back to its little parking spot, which has got to be somewhere.
John: I have to, I have to have a place for it.
Merlin: Probably it'll eventually imprint on you like a doc.
John: Yeah, I'm not sure how it's been.
John: I think I think I'll probably like it better than a dog.
John: It won't be have as many needs as a dog.
John: But what here's what I here's what you can tell me that no one else.
Yeah.
John: See, I have an unusually sized room in the basement of my new house.
John: It's it's long and narrow.
John: And.
John: It's long and narrow in a way, and the room is the room that I want to make into my TV room.
John: I don't have a TV room.
John: I didn't have a TV room at the farm.
John: I haven't lived in a house that had a TV room since I was in high school, since TVs were shaped like giant ice cubes.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Um, and now I have a room and because I have watched war movies for one of my podcasts, for my, for my work, I feel like I could buy a television, a thing that I have, I have studiously avoided buying.
John: I could put it on the wall.
John: I could say, this is the TV.
John: This is the TV, the TV room.
Merlin: Oh, and it's not going to impinge on your family living space upstairs.
Um,
John: It's in the basement.
John: It's part of the basement.
Merlin: We want to watch TV, we go to the TV room, but we're not going to always watch TV.
John: That's right.
Merlin: We go down to the basement.
John: It's not in the living room.
John: It's not in the bedrooms.
John: It's just down.
John: You go down, you make an appointment, you sign up, you go down to the TV room, you watch a TV.
John: But the problem is that the room is just narrow enough that the piece of furniture that you want in a TV room, namely an L-shaped couch, is
John: It won't really fit in the space.
John: Space is too narrow and too long.
John: So if you put the TV against one wall and you put the – I'm sure you know this, but there is some kind of mathematical equation of the perfect distance between the TV relative to its size and the seat –
Merlin: Yeah, because, I mean, you're getting into something where, again, we're getting into something of a quantum state.
Merlin: Excuse me.
Merlin: Where what you need to know is, like, you start with a room.
Merlin: Now, the room is mostly not something you can change a lot.
Merlin: The other thing that may not change a lot is like where the drop is for cable and stuff like that.
Merlin: Like in our house, we really deal with that.
Merlin: But you still have these two big factors, which is what are you going to sit on?
Merlin: How far away?
Merlin: How big is a TV do you want?
Merlin: Because if you get – there is a possibility where you could get too big of a TV for the room.
Merlin: You could certainly get too small of a TV.
Merlin: But it does come down to – and there if you go – I can tell you.
Merlin: I actually can tell you a website to go to to calculate this.
Merlin: Based on how far away you will be, they will tell you what size TV to get that will be optimally good for the size of the room.
Merlin: But I'm saying it's a lot like calculus, which I've never taken.
John: This optimal goodness is exactly what I'm learning about.
John: I'm learning about optimal goodness.
John: I'm learning that there is a place where there's a place in space and time.
John: This is the other thing.
John: If I'm going to get a TV...
John: which I am.
John: For the TV room.
John: If I go to the Costco, if I go on Brian Heater's Gizmodo website from 2014, I can find a TV that is stupidly big.
John: A TV that would be a TV that is like big enough to be a bed.
John: A TV that's bigger than a stretcher.
John: Bigger than a sex bag.
John: Right.
John: Huge, right?
John: A huge TV.
John: Yep.
John: If you put your hand on it, you cannot even sense its fear.
John: It's that big.
John: And you can go to Costco and buy one of these.
John: Where it has a resolution greater than anything, greater than the human eye can apprehend.
John: Yep, yep, yep.
Merlin: Especially if you're up close.
Merlin: If you're up close, you might be too close.
Merlin: It's not even the one, it's not even the expensive one.
Merlin: Oh no, it's hard.
Merlin: Just buying the expensive one, I just sent you a website to look at.
Merlin: Just buying the expensive one is absolutely not the solution.
Merlin: Nope.
Merlin: Nope.
Merlin: Cause then you also know you asked somebody like a John Syracuse and now you're going to get another thing.
Merlin: Does it make noise?
Merlin: Does it have, how's the remote that comes with it?
Merlin: Like, does it steal your data?
Merlin: There's all kinds of stuff where you're going to need to do more than just black enough.
Merlin: You get an OLED with a black, black.
Merlin: I love my OLED.
Merlin: Woof.
John: Well, so here we go.
John: And that's the thing.
John: Woof, right?
John: Woof is right.
John: Yep.
John: Yep.
John: Yep.
John: But so if I'm going to get a big one, if I'm going to get a big one, which I want, I want a big one, then I have to sit a certain distance from it.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: In order for it to be the perfect— And now you're adapting to the television, and that really should not be how it works.
John: And I can't just go by some big L-shaped couch that's like, you know, like, that's a sex couch, basically.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: where you sit down, you just plop down in the sex couch, and you're like, I'm here for the duration.
John: Fire up old Betsy.
John: And then up comes this TV that's like... The blackest blacks and the darkest whites you've ever seen.
John: And then I watch whatever garbage it is that is the actual... You should watch that in Glorious Bastards movie.
John: It's really good.
John: Yeah, thanks.
John: Um...
John: Anyway, studying the space, and I have spent a lot of time studying the space, picturing a big wall of television, picturing an L-shaped couch that would be weirdly... Because the thing is, you don't want just a couch.
John: It's a TV room.
John: You want... But, you know, like, for instance, our friend Ken Jennings, he has a media room because he's a rich person.
John: And they actually have...
John: That configuration where each member of the family has their own leather lazy boy with cup holders.
John: Oh, boy.
John: It's a whole thing.
John: I don't know if I'm ready for that.
John: And they've got a backward projection thing at some TV mounted on the ceiling.
John: Big Jeopardy.
John: Big Jeopardy.
John: You know, he's a hot dog, right?
John: Yep, yep.
John: But I'm like, I'm not one of these guys.
John: I'm not going to go into a room with a bunch of DVDs on the walls.
John: or dolls because i also want to be able to use this room for other posters would you get posters for classic movies would you have like a good the bad and the ugly oversized poster like in spanish or something no you know because it's also it's got to do double duty right if you're gonna have a sex couch it's also got to be a sex room so the ceiling's got to be mirrored okay it's got a mirror maybe you have a pole or a rack or something exactly anyway so studying the room
John: One day, I go, wait a minute, and a big, giant light bulb, three times as big as any light bulb that ever went off before.
John: Okay.
John: And I say, what if I fill the room with sex bags?
John: Giant beanbag chairs.
John: I've seen these things.
John: I've seen them on the internet.
John: Call them fat boys.
John: Beanbag chairs big enough for a human man.
John: Beanbag chairs big enough for two people.
John: It's your room.
John: So I went one time.
John: There's a gal that you've heard of.
John: You've met her.
John: She's a nerd musician.
John: I don't want to say too much.
John: Does she play a little ukulele?
John: Somebody, somebody, you know, plays an instrument, is a very just adorable, nerdy musician.
John: And she has a male friend that lives with her.
John: Okay.
John: And I'm not even sure these days.
John: I'm not sure what their pronouns are.
Merlin: Good for them.
John: They could be moving.
John: It could be moving around.
John: I haven't checked with them recently.
John: But when we met, that was how they identified.
John: Okay.
John: And I went to their house one time.
John: I don't know what it was.
John: I was picking up a thing, picking up and dropping off something.
John: And I went in and they had two matching giant pronouns.
John: Sex bags.
John: Right in the middle of their living room.
John: She's a real little thing.
John: And each one had a controller in it.
John: And they had televisions.
John: You mean like a joystick to move around like a WALL-E?
John: Yeah, and they had televisions mounted on the ceiling.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
John: doesn't feel so that they lay husband and wife why does that bother me but it does giant giant giant i mean sex bags in a ceiling ceiling tv when you had to climb into these things if i were if i were laying back on this sex bag with my joystick in my hand looking at this ceiling tv i would be five feet off the ground hmm
John: And as you say, it's not like they were a giant-sized people.
John: So it would probably take her 20 minutes to get in and out of this thing.
John: And they were weird colors.
John: They were like brown.
John: They were earth tones.
John: And I said, wow, that's quite a living room choice.
John: And honest to God, they said, you want to try it out?
John: You want to jump in?
John: And I was like, oh, no.
John: That feels like getting in someone else's underwear.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, you don't sit in another man's corn.
John: No, no.
John: And so I, it's like kissing somebody's parrot, you know what I mean?
John: So I said, but I walked out of there, like, certainly scalded, but also it planted the seed.
John: Wow, giant.
John: You could just do that.
John: You could just, there's no furniture in that living room.
John: Just two giant sex bags.
John: Tabula rasa, John, it's your room.
John: Right.
John: So then you tell me this morning, oh, by the way, our living room now, and I've been to your apartment.
Merlin: You've been there.
Merlin: It's not the kind of place where you would decide to, I mean, you might start out with a sex bag, but boy, 20 years in, you really fills a room.
John: It's confusing to me because you've lived there a long time.
John: You've really got it established.
John: You got it how you like it.
John: And you're telling me you brought a piece of furniture that's the size of a Dodge Dart.
Merlin: Wasn't me that brought it, buddy.
Merlin: They only wick me for the important meetings.
Merlin: There's so many things I just don't get a vote on.
Merlin: I just sent you a photo of my tween sitting in the sex bag.
Merlin: You can get a sense of scale.
Merlin: How many people can... Wow.
John: She's probably 5'5", maybe?
John: She's all grown up.
Merlin: She's the same size as my wife was.
Merlin: I mean, clothes-wise and everything.
John: I mean, and I love the way that she's wearing her hair.
John: I think that's... Isn't that a good cut?
John: That's great.
John: But boy, that's a big piece of furniture.
John: That's not even the biggest one you can get, right?
John: Makes the iPad look tiny.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: This is... Again, I don't know that much about it.
Merlin: I know carrying it up the steps in the box was quite an adventure for me on Christmas Eve, but...
Merlin: I just get a Casper mattress.
Merlin: You know, we have just the right.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Super, super train.
Merlin: You know, the thing about the TVs on the ceiling, I could see wanting that as a sometimes option where you get some kind of a Derek or a chassis or like a garage door.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If you had like a garage, imagine you had a garage door.
Merlin: Derek and Chassie, they were a couple of my closest friends in college.
Merlin: They were from the anti-folk movement, I believe.
Merlin: They were.
Merlin: Derek and Chassie.
Merlin: Yeah, it's like a hipster in Portland, Donnie and Marie.
John: Yeah.
John: They were from Chapel Hill.
Merlin: You know what's from there is Archers of Loaf.
Merlin: Oh yeah.
Merlin: Stuck a pin in your back bone.
Merlin: So anyways, uh, I think this is an interesting, and now one thing I will say about the fat boy is if you want to be able to sit in it to watch a Tarantino movie, um, it does help to have, it can, it can sit on its own.
Merlin: I should let my family answer this for you.
Merlin: They, they use it more than I do, but, um, you can sit on, on its own, but it kind of works best when it's up against something else.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I feel like, right.
Merlin: Maybe I just like to feel safe.
Oh,
John: Well, you know, we all like to feel safe.
John: But my thinking was, what if instead of buying a big piece of furniture, I buy five fat boys?
Merlin: I don't know if this is a bit, but I do have an idea here.
Merlin: First of all, you should look at that.
Merlin: Well, I might as well tell our listeners, this is not funny.
Merlin: This is just true.
Merlin: You must go to a website called, depending on if you want to be cute about it or not, it's R-T-I-N-G-S, R-Tings or Ratings.
Merlin: Artings.
Merlin: Do you know people that are affiliated with Artings?
Merlin: I don't, but everybody I trust uses this site.
Merlin: It's how I learned about this site.
Merlin: And so basically, yeah, this is where you're going to want to go here and look at some of their little robots.
John: Soundbars.
Merlin: Yeah, well, but the thing is, I'll find the exact link, but there's a link somewhere that's like, tell me what size TV I want.
Merlin: And like you kind of give it an idea what size your room is.
Merlin: Are you going to have a surround sound system?
Merlin: All that kind of stuff.
Merlin: So I have a 55 inch TV, which is it could be bigger, but like it would probably not super please my wife to have a too much bigger TV.
Merlin: But that works for the size room I'm in.
Merlin: Now, if I had if I had a larger than 66 inch model, that would be too big because our couch is not that that far away.
Merlin: And it's a little overwhelming, and now you're like a little kid on Saturday morning sitting way too close to the TV.
Merlin: But this site, I mean, real talk, is that this site, you'll find in here many things, and I would be happy to walk you through some of this, but you know how to use the web.
Merlin: There's some really useful stuff in here.
Merlin: Now, that's one thing.
Merlin: I'm going to let you finish in a minute.
Merlin: Here's the other thing.
Merlin: Tabula rasa, this is your goddamn room.
Merlin: Can I say, why don't you start by ordering a sex bag?
Merlin: Okay, so you're in for a little bit of money with the sex bag, but you get that, you put that in your house.
Merlin: Before you commit to anything, sex bags or sex couch, L-couch, L-sex, why don't you start, if I could say, with buying one sex bag chair, see how you feel about it, see how your family feels about it, try going down to the room...
Merlin: You know, you like to go in a room.
Merlin: You say, are there ghosts in this corner?
Merlin: You like to walk around and explore the space.
Merlin: Why don't you put your stink on that room?
Merlin: Get a fat boy in there, sex bag.
Merlin: And even before you can imagine a TV, maybe you could put masking tape up on the wall to give you an idea of escape.
Merlin: Masking tape.
Merlin: No, not Gaffer's tape, but easily removable tape.
Merlin: You get an idea, but then you'd see if you want a sex bag.
John: So the biggest ones, which are called... So yours is called, what, Fat Tony?
John: What is it called?
Merlin: We got a Fat Tony.
Merlin: I think we have a 70-inch Fat Tony.
Merlin: I think it is regarded as the standard size, which is hilarious to me.
Merlin: Because when you say beanbag to me, I think of a vinyl bag full of styrofoam that you can whip across the room.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: This is not that.
Merlin: You can't bend this.
Merlin: You can't fold, spindle, or mutilate this.
Right.
Merlin: So you're looking at sizes now.
John: So I'm thinking, I was thinking, so for some reason, and I don't remember when this got into my head, but many, many years ago, I got the mental picture of a swimming pool full of pillows.
John: And I thought of it as a thing that I wanted to experience.
Right.
Merlin: I really wanted... Sometimes you get an idea in your head, and you don't know where it comes from, but it's sure there.
Merlin: That's exactly what happened here.
Merlin: I wanted to tongue kiss with three Farrah Fawcett's at one point.
Merlin: Whoa.
John: You think I asked for that?
John: No, that's not a thing you sat and dreamed up.
Merlin: That was a thing that was given to you.
Merlin: She didn't even have to be in the swimming suit.
John: Well, and as you have intimated, or as you've gathered...
John: There was something about the time when the swimming pool full of pillows arrived in my mind that it was also part of a sexual awakening.
John: I believed that there was something about a swimming pool full of pillows that was going to be...
John: It was going to be sexy.
John: I was going to be in there.
John: It's decadent.
John: I was going to be in there with a naked girl.
John: Okay.
Merlin: And somebody you know or somebody you can imagine?
Merlin: Somebody I hope to know or somebody that went to my school, something like that.
Merlin: Somebody you aspire to have pillows with, yeah.
John: Yeah, I was going to swim through this swimming pool full of pillows and I wasn't sure.
John: And over time I started to say like, now down at the bottom, the weight of the pillows up higher is going to affect the
John: Your experience and there's gonna be like your specific gravity Yeah, there's gonna be a depth in this swimming pool full of pillows below which you're not gonna want to go because it's because of the claustrophobia problem Oh, it's like you're being buried alive, right?
John: Yeah, but but I but I still and I wasn't you know and this was before I'd ever seen a ball pit before I knew before I think ball pits had been invented mm-hmm
John: Swimming pool full of pillows.
John: And I knew.
John: And so the idea was that it would be that there would be a girl in there that was that also was naked.
John: And we would be swimming around looking for each other in a swimming pool full of pillows.
John: This was a thing.
John: This was a fantasy that I had over and over for a long time, starting at a, you know, at a like in bloom kind of age and going later.
John: And, you know, not like big pillows, right?
John: Just normal size pillows.
John: But the thing about it was different kinds of pillows.
John: Throw pillow, corduroy pillow.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: I was imagining a uniform twin size bed pillow collection.
Merlin: You're saying this could be, I mean, I don't want to work blue, but maybe even something like your gift from your mom.
John: Yeah, so that would be the biggest pillow that you could imagine.
Merlin: So that's in the mix.
John: Yeah, because part of it was if you jump in, you don't want to hit some big pillow.
John: You want to kind of almost like go swim down through the little pillow.
Merlin: This is the benefit of the ball pit is that they all kind of bounce off each other because they're uniform.
Merlin: In this case, there'd be a little bit of, as you say, friction, a little bit of resistance.
John: And I've never been in a ball pit.
John: Can you imagine that?
Merlin: I just think about the snot, John.
John: Can you imagine how much snot there'd be in there?
John: I feel like you and I were alive the first day that ball pillows came online and we could have run down there and gotten in them before they were coming to snot.
Merlin: I feel like I just missed the window on widespread adoption.
Merlin: I don't think we had this in Ohio.
Merlin: No, I'd never seen one until I was.
Merlin: We have hard chairs and apologies in Ohio.
John: Yeah, right.
John: You didn't even get a chair where I grew up.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And there was like a hand painted like like goofy on the wall, like like a collection of spoons.
John: But they were hand painted so that they so they didn't even look like goofy.
John: Mm hmm.
John: Mm hmm.
John: We were robbed anyway.
John: Mm hmm.
John: And the thing is now it seems like ball pits aren't deep enough.
John: Kids just get in there and their feet get to the bottom.
John: It's just sort of like wading through balls.
John: I wanted a ball pit that was like 30 feet deep.
Merlin: It would be like a foam party, which I've also never participated in.
Merlin: But if I were going to choose a ball pit sight unseen as a 53-year-old man that's never utilized a ball pit, I feel like I would want it above my waistline.
Merlin: At least.
Merlin: Maybe chest, maybe nipple high.
John: You know, I never went to one of those Ibiza, like MDMA dance parties where they filled the room full of foam either.
John: Is that what you meant when you said foam party?
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: I was aware of foam as a thing where there'd be foam.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I might have been to foam on a dance floor.
John: I never saw it.
John: I mean, I saw it.
Merlin: I used to go to the New Wave Nights.
Merlin: You know, New Wave Nights had some Venn diagram with gay clubs, and sometimes the facilities, the art, for sure, would be very challenging.
Merlin: And I wouldn't.
Merlin: But now, would you want a drink?
Merlin: Never mind.
Merlin: Let's get off the phone.
John: I talked to a friend the other day who's a little bit younger than us, and I said, just out of curiosity, he said, did you ever go dancing with your friends when you were young?
John: And this person, a little younger than us, looked at me incredulously and said, I was an indie rocker, sir.
John: We did not dance with our friends.
Merlin: Oh, that's not incompatible.
Merlin: We would go to New Wave Night and we'd dance and dance.
Merlin: There'd be drink specials.
Merlin: Gosh, that was a fun thing.
John: This is you and me.
John: This is you and me.
Merlin: I guess, man, but you would go to New Wave Nights and New Wave Nights frequently had crazy drink specials.
John: You could get an Amarillo Sour for a buck.
John: If you are 42 now...
John: i don't think you went to new wave night oh wow oh because you're more like a fleet foxer or something or i don't know i don't know they may be this is weird just kind of thing like when you looked at new wave night on the calendar you thought ho-hum or you were like okay boomer whatever people said i don't know i know you and i are from that generation where yeah we sat around with our heads i don't talk about it because one cheer coming
Merlin: down i'd dance it up to a head like a hole or a gigantic or a harley david son of a bitch i would get out there and move it i would i'm not above dancing to ministry but you would also you would also spin me rights around baby rights around like a liquor baby stock eight can waterman look it up are you telling me right you get a kylie minogue i'll be out there i'm not above that god godly and cream you're out there you're not gonna dance to kylie minogue what the fuck's wrong with you
John: Anyway, my thinking about a swimming pool full of pillows was that I could actually build my own that would be human scale size.
John: But out of sex bags, buy 15 of them.
John: That would be so heavy.
John: 15 of them so that you would have to climb up like a ziggurat.
Merlin: Yes, you'd be creating a mount sex bag.
John: Mount sex bag.
John: So that you could probably have nine people in there watching TV.
John: Not that I ever would.
Merlin: Are we back in the TV room now?
Merlin: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Merlin: Oh, I feel you.
Merlin: You're going to make like a dirty harem.
Merlin: Turn the TV room into a swimming pool full of pillows.
Merlin: I love this.
Merlin: I love.
Merlin: OK.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: OK.
John: And so then when you go on to when you go on to artings.com and you go to the you go to the TV size to distance calculator.
John: And you say, oh, let's see, I want to be 7.7 feet from the screen.
John: And it says, oh, well, it looks like you need a 55-inch TV.
John: But if you go like, well, wait a minute, I'm 10 feet from the screen.
John: They're like, you could have a 71-inch TV.
John: But if you have sex bags, you can be however many inches from the TV you want.
Merlin: Sometimes there are certain movies, I'll be honest with you.
Merlin: So I'm a size queen.
Merlin: I will only watch...
Merlin: programming that is at a resolution that I find acceptable.
Merlin: I mean, unless it's something I super, super want to watch, I rarely go below 720.
Merlin: I have trouble watching seasons of Survivor that are not in HD.
Merlin: I'm very into, at this point, Ultra HD.
Merlin: ultra 4k yes i'm talking about the full you're running i'm running it off a hard drive or i'm running it off an optical disc i'm talking about you're watching blade runner in 4 000 pixels is this on your oleg my leg my leg cassini yes yes i am i am but here's the thing there are some movies i told this to my pal the other day i mean on me if i watch the incredibles
Merlin: The scenes with Mr. Huff in his office are so beautifully detailed.
Merlin: I'll put my glasses on and get right up near the screen where I'm like practically on top of it.
Merlin: Now, I don't need to do that for every movie.
Merlin: But here's what you're telling me is that pool has wheels, buddy.
Merlin: You can you can move your sex bags into any configuration.
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: That suits you or your guests.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: If you want to pile them all straight up and do a princess in the pea type sex bag situation, not a problem.
John: But I'm saying there are so, there are going to be so many sex bags and they're going to be so big that you're not even going to be able to, you're not even going to be able to, what am I trying to say here?
John: To have a, you're not, your bag is never going to touch the floor because there's already a
John: a base layer of bags that no one even ever gets down to.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: There's no bad seating.
Merlin: You are literally making a mountain of bag.
John: Yes.
John: A mountain of bag.
John: Okay.
John: So right now, if you put in largest bean bag,
John: You get – there's something called ultimate – You're going to get something German.
John: There's something called ultimate sack 6,000.
John: Then there's the chill sack chill bag.
John: Okay.
John: There's the – I mean ultimate sack.
John: The largest bean bag is –
John: is... Oh, wow.
John: No, that's like a Guinness Book of World Records.
John: There's something called the Sumo Maximus.
John: Oh, there it is.
John: That's Largest Beanbag.
John: Yeah, but that's not a thing.
John: I don't want that.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: Now, see, I like that, but that is not... So that's basically... Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: I think there's some Peter Jackson stuff happening here.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: That's basically like an Ottoman...
John: It looks like CGI.
Merlin: That's what I'm saying.
Merlin: They're doing forced perspective.
Merlin: That looks like an Ottoman the size of a jacuzzi.
John: There's one here that looks like a Snorlax.
John: You mean like from Star Wars?
John: Yeah.
John: Isn't that the one that Luke Skywalker milks?
John: Yep.
Merlin: Oh, you're talking about the Blue Milk Mandalorian?
Merlin: Oh, I thought you were thinking like a Mandalorian goes into the space mouth for a thousand years.
Merlin: But go ahead.
Merlin: Well, there's one that looks like a sleeping grizzly bear.
Merlin: I don't know what that sounds like.
Merlin: Baby lovesack.
Merlin: Okay, here's one question, a practical question.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: love sack that's right and they didn't even put the k at the end they were they were so committed committed to like there's a love sack on the bottom of my stairs and it's about to get wild um the uh now here's a question i don't want to take you out first of all i want to compliment you i think for a sexual fantasy to be any fucking good at all it has to be at least implausible and probably impossible
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, all these sexual fantasies like, oh, I wanted to touch my dong.
Merlin: I mean, that's implementation details.
Merlin: But a man who wants a pool full of pillows.
John: Full-sized swimming pool.
John: And also that it would be
John: This was the, this was always the best part of the, of the, of the, of the fantasy was that here.
John: So first of all, I would have to know a girl well enough that she would go to a second location with me, which already was kind of a fantasy.
John: That's going to take time or bad judgment when I was 16.
John: Right.
John: And then I would have to have the resources to have a Olympic size swimming pool and also have the resources to fill it with pillows, which I knew was going to be expensive.
John: And then I would, we would arrive at the edge of,
John: And she would go, wow, a swimming pool full of pillows.
John: And then I would have to be, I would have to have the suavity necessary to say, wouldn't you like to get in the pool of the swimming pool full of pillows?
John: It might even be her idea.
John: Hopefully it would.
Merlin: And then I would say to you, I have always had, I've never told anybody this.
Merlin: I don't know if you call it a fantasy or wish fulfillment manifesting.
Merlin: I have always wanted to dive into a pool full of variously sized pillows and I can't believe this is happening.
Merlin: Is this real?
Merlin: Am I dreaming?
John: Yes, yes, yes.
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: Here's the thing in life.
Merlin: The thing in life, God bless you.
Merlin: If you can find a woman who will wear the cat woman suit, you are so much better than the rest of the world.
Merlin: If you can find a woman where it's her idea to wear the cat woman suit, you put a ring on that.
John: And then the last thing would be there are a lot of pillows in here of different fabrics, corduroys and whatnot.
John: And they tend to – if you really want to dive, if you really want to have the experience of swimming without a lot of friction –
John: then it's really best to just be in your underwear.
Merlin: Oh, I love that.
Merlin: That's so pure and wholesome.
John: Because at the time, I swear... You were a sex gold, like me.
John: Weren't you a sex gold?
John: I was, and at this time in my life, the idea of being naked in this swimming pool was too far.
Merlin: Underwear would be so much more fun.
John: I had it that we were in our underwear.
John: Yes.
Merlin: That's much more Wes Anderson.
Merlin: That's nice.
John: I like that.
John: Then you come through the pillows.
John: You're like, blah, and you can giggle, giggle.
Merlin: And then you meet each other under... Swimming under the pillows.
Merlin: Under the pillows.
Merlin: Because, oh, by the way, did I mention you can swim through pillows.
John: And she's in her little underwears, and I'm in my underwear.
John: Yes, yes.
John: And it's like...
Merlin: I mean, I couldn't go crazier than that.
Merlin: Ask yourself, was I talking about three women who look like Farrah Fawcett?
Merlin: I was not.
Merlin: That's the point.
Merlin: Three Farrah Fawcett.
Merlin: It's literally impossible.
Merlin: Here's one thing.
Merlin: This might be harder in the actual sense of the word.
Merlin: The beanbag that we got, it is very, very comfortable, and you can basically make it whatever you want it to be.
Merlin: But it's not...
Merlin: cushy in the same way as the beanbags of your youth.
John: Okay, now this is what I need to know.
Merlin: You need to test this out.
Merlin: You need to test this out.
John: What is the cushiness of it?
Merlin: It's much more solid.
Merlin: So like, you know when you sit in an old beanbag chair, the old, you know, the vinyl with the little pellets the cats hate in it, right?
Merlin: And those things are so light, right?
Merlin: And they're so like poofy.
Merlin: There's a part of me that, John, there's a part of me that thinks
Merlin: Our penultimate beanbag, our penultimate beanbag before this one was a corduroy model, an inexpensive, probably Target, corduroy model with the styrofoam beads.
Merlin: There's a part of me that wonders, well, obviously, step zero, you need to try all of these.
Merlin: But there's a part of me that thinks if you bought like 60 old school corduroy chairs and they were like a little bit understuffed.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Now you're swimming in the TV room.
Merlin: Because you don't think about this.
Merlin: What's luxury?
Merlin: Oh, hobos love a soft pillow.
Merlin: Fuck you.
Merlin: Try sleeping on a bunch of pillows as opposed to a bed, and it's not actually that comfortable.
John: No, it's true.
Merlin: Pillow is for head.
John: Did I ever tell you when I was in my drinking days...
John: I was living in an apartment in the university district and, uh, and I got kicked out and there was this place up on Capitol Hill where these three guys lived and they had an extra space because one of the guys, Tori, um, Tori was going overseas for some reason.
John: And, um,
John: And so I could move into Tori's room.
John: And it was right when I got kicked out of my place in the university district.
John: And I moved up and it was an apartment on Harvard.
John: And Tori left nothing behind.
John: And usually at that stage of your life, you know, it's like who's going to take a bed or whatever.
John: But I don't know if Tori even had a bed.
John: The only thing he left on the walls were a bunch of show posters.
John: Including...
John: the famous show poster of the Nirvana show at the Motorsports Arena, which Tori had just taken down off of a phone pole somewhere, and I still have to this day, and who knows whether it's worth anything.
John: It probably is.
John: It's probably worth $1,000.
John: But I moved into this place, and I didn't have a mattress.
John: I didn't know where to get a mattress.
John: And so, and I can't get back inside my head at age 22, but I got...
John: some pallets, some shipping pallets, and I covered them with pillows.
John: Twin-sized bed pillows.
John: You had like a bespoke personal homemade mattress.
John: And it was awful.
John: An awful place to sleep.
John: Every night I would go into this room.
John: I would lay down on this.
John: First you go.
John: You know, it's like 15 pillows I found at thrift stores or whatever on top of some pallets.
John: It would have been better just to sleep on the floor with one new pillow.
Merlin: Just buy a bunch of used socks.
John: I could have just been – well, this was the era when I would get holes in the toes of my socks, I would take them out and I would put them on the fire hydrant out front and they would be gone in five minutes.
John: Why?
John: Who is picking up socks off of this fire hydrant?
John: Sometimes I would put three pairs of socks out there with holes in the toes and they'd be gone in five minutes.
John: To dry?
John: No, no.
John: I would be like, put them in this.
John: Oh, you're putting them back in circulation.
John: Yeah, put them in the stream and see what happens.
John: All right, all right.
John: You know, I'd take three, put them on the fire hydrant, go back up to close the door.
John: And I'd look down and they'd be gone.
John: Gone.
John: But so I had a version of this dream and it was a terrible...
John: It was terrible.
John: And it was terrible because for some reason I thought I needed those pallets underneath it.
John: I thought that was the hack.
Merlin: Well, yeah, I mean, because it seems like it seems like you're using technology, right?
Merlin: Because you're combining something like, well, it's like a hobo box spring.
John: within a hobo bed kind of right isn't that the idea if you just sleep on pillows well now you're like you're like a fucking golden retriever you got a pallet as an undergirding yes yes i didn't even put a sheet over the pallet so every night i would wake up there would be like three or four parts of me that were on different pillows and then i would also be touching i'd just be sleeping oh that sounds like a real painful back situation to me it was
John: Awful, but I was young.
John: I was drunk so much.
John: And then eventually, I think somebody was like, hey, I have a mattress.
John: And you know what I did?
John: I put the mattress.
John: It wasn't a mattress.
John: It was a small enough mattress that I could fit it.
John: in the closet.
John: It was a small closet.
John: So what I did was I put one end of the mattress in the closet and the rest of it was sticking out.
Merlin: Oh, I've done that.
Merlin: That's a good look.
John: It's like a bespoke personal Murphy bed.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: So you kind of had to climb in.
John: It was pretty good.
John: It was pretty, yeah, it was all right.
John: It was all right.
Merlin: And that was probably your last mattress before the purple one you bought in the shipping container.
John: Well, there was a futon at one point.
John: I used to believe in futons.
John: I went to a place that was, the sign actually said $99 futon with frame.
John: And I was like, I can afford that.
John: I went and I bought it.
John: It was the unfinished frame and the futon had... It was basically a futon made out of Japanese cinder blocks.
Merlin: If you're going to get a futon, you got to get the one with the foam in the middle and then the cotton batting around it.
John: This thing weighed 600 pounds.
Merlin: And they're so fucking hard.
John: And lumpy.
John: Lumpy and hard.
John: Like a gravy.
John: Super lumpy and super hard.
John: And the great thing about it...
John: because this was the era where once you wanted to get rid of one of those things how do you get rid of it you can't get rid of it no that it's they're not recyclable well it's like sleeping it's like somebody said oh is there any way that i could sleep on both a bus seat and a com rag oh yeah here have my futon that's exactly what it was a combination but but a friend had a band and he was trying to sound insulate a garage okay okay
John: And I said, why don't you take this old futon of mine and like, and we'll bolt it to the wall.
John: And he was like, great idea.
John: And so I think I turned it stain side in or something like that or whatever, wrapped it in a towel.
John: And, uh, and we, we like, we got big, huge washers and like bolted it into the wall.
Merlin: You put like a grommet in that's, that's a good project.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Love a grommet.
John: So I'm now on a website called Amazon.
John: Okay, okay.
John: And I'm looking at largest beanbags.
Okay.
Merlin: Merlin, what I can't... Beanbag's net worth.
Merlin: Beanbag's feet.
John: Beanbag's wife.
Merlin: I get that a lot.
Merlin: You don't get the feet as much anymore, but you still get net worth and wife.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: What's feet?
Merlin: Oh, well... Are you talking about height?
Merlin: Well, now you can go straight to wiki feet.
Merlin: But it used to be anytime you searched for celebrity, it would automatically... The first return after the person's name would be person's name feet.
Merlin: It's not just me.
Merlin: It's not just me.
Merlin: Wikifeet.
Merlin: Browsing celebs, Wikifeet.
Merlin: Wikifeet, yeah.
Merlin: You'll end up on Wikifeet.
Merlin: Wikifeet is the only thing worse than Pinterest.
Merlin: First of all, I hate Pinterest.
Merlin: It has everybody's feet.
Merlin: It's got all the feet.
Merlin: I don't want to see anything from Pinterest ever.
Merlin: I have no need for Pinterest.
Merlin: I want Pinterest blocked.
Merlin: Because usually, let's be honest, I want to steal some images.
Merlin: And Pinterest makes it really hard.
Merlin: And I don't want to see most interesting ideas for coffee table hats or whatever.
Yeah.
John: I want Pinterest blocked for the exact same reason that you're saying.
John: And I also want Yelp blocked.
Merlin: Oh, fuck.
Merlin: Oh, do you want to use the mobile app?
Merlin: No, I don't want to use any of this.
Merlin: Well, it used to be.
Merlin: Time was.
Merlin: Back when I used Chrome.
Merlin: Don't use Chrome.
Merlin: I used to use Chrome.
Merlin: And Chrome had an ability.
Merlin: There was an extension you could get where you could block any domain.
Merlin: So I could say no Reddit, no Pinterest.
Merlin: I don't want to see any of these.
Merlin: I don't even want them to be available to me.
Merlin: And now I'm stuck on Safari like a sucker.
Merlin: No, wait.
Merlin: Why don't you use Chrome?
Merlin: It steals all your info and it's terrible.
John: Oh, no.
John: I don't want my info stolen.
Merlin: John Siracusa still uses it.
Merlin: Can't talk him out of it.
Merlin: I'm looking for where to buy fat boy chair.
Merlin: Where to buy fat boy.
Merlin: John, I really feel like I'm not saying you should do a full sex bag on it, but I really do feel like you need to get into one of these and compare.
Merlin: I'm guessing a target, maybe a large target.
John: What I'm worried about is that my impulse to start at one end of the room, I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but I went to a birthday party once.
John: I've been to birthday parties.
John: Yeah, well, at this birthday party, they got an adult-sized bouncy castle.
John: Okay.
Okay.
John: And I was like, that's the greatest idea.
John: Adult sized bouncy castle.
John: And I jumped up in it and I went bounce, bounce.
John: And then I ran and threw myself against the wall of the adult sized bouncy castle.
John: And I hit that wall like I had fallen out of a building and
John: In order to make an adult-sized bouncy castle, it has to be strong.
Merlin: There's probably code that they've got to get it up to a certain code for somebody who might fling themselves like they're falling off a building.
John: But also, it was not soft.
John: What I forgot was that it doesn't matter what the surface is.
John: When you weigh 230 pounds and you throw yourself in through the air, there's very little you're going to land on that is eventually going to compress to being a hard surface.
Merlin: Equal and opposite John.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's Newtonian.
Merlin: It hurts.
Right.
Merlin: It hurt like a shoulder?
John: Well, it just beat the breath right out of me.
John: And so I limped out of that adult-sized bouncy castle going like, oh, that's a lot of fun.
Merlin: You get to a point in life, the younger you are, the better you bounce.
Merlin: And yes, including babies.
Merlin: Little things bounce.
Merlin: They got soft bones and soft bodies.
Merlin: They can bounce.
Merlin: We get older and a little more rigid, we don't bounce.
Merlin: We hit the side of a castle, we do not bounce.
Merlin: That's not a bouncy castle now.
Merlin: That's just a wall.
John: You just ran into a wall.
Merlin: just a just a wall i can't even imagine how many heart attacks must happen or different kinds of cardiac events or maybe neurological too but like i imagine there's a lot of cardiac events that happen in an adult bouncy castle i i felt like uh know your limits you know i was just lucky that i didn't like try to land on my head or something you know
John: And I'm worried that some of these beanbags are going to have this thing that you're talking about, which is I'm like, oh, it looks so soft.
John: And I run and jump and basically I just landed on a big cement.
Merlin: It hurts me to think about it.
Merlin: When I was about four, I saw a hippie jump into two feet of pool.
Merlin: He thought it was six feet of pool and it was two feet of pool.
Merlin: I still think about it sometimes.
Merlin: I knew a fellow who used to run sound at the club in town, and he had a lot of marijuana one night and jumped off a diving board.
Merlin: And then he got one of those chairs with a tube.
Merlin: That scares the shit out of me, getting a tube chair.
Merlin: Don't get a tube chair.
Merlin: Get a beanbag chair.
Merlin: I sent you the link to the Target page for beanbags and lounge chairs.
Merlin: And I'm not saying these are good.
Merlin: I'm saying you have options.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Let's see if any of these are in store.
Merlin: Let's do that.
Merlin: Do you like this idea?
Merlin: I like the idea of the idea.
Merlin: I think the implementation is going to be tricky.
Merlin: You're a sex bag owner now, though.
Merlin: Well, it's my family got it.
Merlin: It comes in a really, really big box.
John: Have you been in it?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: See, I talk about this a lot on another program I do, but I have some ownership issues with my life where I feel like – now, okay, privilege.
Merlin: I have a 300-square-foot office all of my own.
Merlin: It has a couch.
Merlin: It's got – I could live in my office, right?
Merlin: I get that.
Merlin: My wife doesn't get that.
Merlin: My kid doesn't get that.
Merlin: Well, of course, the whole house becomes the kid's house.
Merlin: With that said, I feel like I ask not a lot.
Merlin: I do ask that I get to sit on this place on the couch.
Merlin: I want a place to put my phone down.
Merlin: I want to be able to grab a can of seltzer without moving anything.
Merlin: You understand?
Merlin: And so then somebody introduces a fat boy.
Merlin: And it's like, well, now that's already changed some of the geometry of the room.
Merlin: And now it's even more important that I keep my place on the couch.
Merlin: I don't want to be that particular dad.
Merlin: But let's be honest.
Merlin: I'm that particular dad.
Merlin: I want my fucking seat on the couch.
Merlin: And don't put all your soy milk there.
Merlin: But I like the idea of the idea, and I'll tell you why.
Merlin: I like it because you know in your heart it's not practical.
Merlin: Look, you had an opportunity to fill a swimming pool with pillows, and what did you put in the swimming pool?
Merlin: Memory service was lumber.
Merlin: Lumber, old logs, yeah.
Merlin: So you used it as a lumber storage facility, a log hole.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Forgive my saying.
Merlin: So even when you did have it within your grasp, you knew enough to know that you knew that this is an object of imagination.
Merlin: So on one hand, I want to say, I think you've shown admirable restraint.
Merlin: As a man who will get an idea for a project and then hang on to it like a dog with a bone, I admire that about you, like so many things.
Merlin: Now, in this case, I think you are...
Merlin: You're buying the Catwoman suit a little bit here and hoping someone will wear it.
Merlin: So you're already off the beam a little bit because it starts with somebody saying, hey, I have this idea for a Catwoman suit.
Merlin: And you go, okay, let's try that.
John: The problem is you don't know.
John: When you're sizing a Catwoman suit and you don't know who is going to wear it, that's a tough.
Merlin: It's extremely difficult.
Merlin: And let's be honest, it does not look good on most people, regardless of gender.
John: Right, right, right.
Merlin: So I wonder if it's my impoverished imagination and or risk aversion that makes me say to you, John Roderick, I think you need to dip a toe.
Merlin: It's a TV room, but it's also going to be a pillow room.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And what I'm saying you shouldn't do, and again, impoverished imagination, what I would not do is spend four figures on sex bags before you know if it's the one that suits your bridge to Fantasy Catwoman.
Merlin: Got it, got it, got it.
Merlin: And you could go to Target with some comfortable clothes and sit in some fucking beanbag chairs.
Merlin: You could say to the kid, hey, Rudy, going back, bring me five more of large microsuede beanbag reservation seating.
Merlin: Right.
John: This is the.
John: But I'm worried when I get a fixed idea like this, that I have to see it all the way through, even if I go to Target and I'm like, these aren't comfortable.
Merlin: But if I say that, then I'll say to myself, but if I had 15 of them and even the sensible voice, it's like it's like carrying in the little lies, except you're Warner Herzog and you are going to drag the steamboat across the mountain, regardless of whether somebody else thinks it's a good idea.
Merlin: Get me my fucking sex bags.
John: Yes, I understand.
Merlin: I understand completely.
John: I'm much more liable to take 15 lightly used sex bags to the thrift store and go, didn't work out.
Merlin: But steps are involved, John.
Merlin: There's steps going down, steps coming up.
Merlin: Are you okay with that?
Merlin: Are you a man that can handle carrying sex bags up and down steps that many times?
Merlin: You might want to get some help.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You could call Psalm.
Merlin: Maybe Psalm can help you with your sex bags.
John: I haven't talked to Psalm in a long time.
Merlin: You guys left on a slightly acrimonious note.
Merlin: I don't think I want him touching my sex bags.
Merlin: Get off the roof.