Ep. 424: "The Beaver, the Badger, and the Buckwheat"
John: In a world where everything is good, nothing is garbage, and things are priced accordingly.
John: Hello?
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Oh, I'm going to have to do a little hot plug here.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Here we go.
John: I'm going to hot plug.
John: Here we go.
John: You're not supposed to do that.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: That'll be fine.
John: Oh, wait a minute.
John: Hold on.
John: Hot plug.
John: Did I hot plug it?
John: I did.
John: I got it.
John: You sound good.
John: It didn't used to work.
John: It used to hurt your computer to do that.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: It depends on what you plug in.
Merlin: And one imagines how hot it is.
John: Right, right, right, right, right.
John: Well, that was the thing that was always confusing about it.
John: Some of the things were not hot at all, but still you hot plug it and then you lose all your memory.
Merlin: I've known people who like to dare the fates and to hot plug things that oughtn't be hot plugged or hot unplugged, unhot plugged.
John: Do you ever lose any data?
John: Do you ever know anybody that lost any data?
Merlin: Oh, I've lost data.
Merlin: You have?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, back in the day, it was a real big deal.
Merlin: But like today, people are like, oh, I'll just pull out this USB thumb drive because it's an SSD and who cares?
Merlin: I say that all the time.
Merlin: It's going to work until it doesn't work.
Merlin: That's what I say.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: I still have that hard drive that I couldn't get to work.
John: And some nice person wrote me and said, hey, I work on those.
John: I'll fix it for you.
John: Send it to me.
John: I'm in Scotland.
Hmm.
John: And I was like, I just don't know about sending this broken hard drive to Scotland and back.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, you know, there's probably at least one concerning thing on there that you wouldn't want a Scott to see.
John: Don't give your info to a Scott.
John: I don't, you know, I don't.
Merlin: I wouldn't know.
Merlin: Are you thinking about going off on Scotland?
Merlin: Or data?
Merlin: Is it data?
Merlin: Hot plugging?
John: No, I had a nice conversation with a Scots person not very long ago, toward the beginning of the year.
John: And I already had a high opinion of Scotland.
John: I'm a fan.
John: I'm a big fan.
John: But this guy, this conversation, long conversation I had, oh, it just put me right over the top.
John: From now on, I feel like Scotland can do no wrong.
John: Is that right?
Yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: You know, there are reticent people.
John: There are taciturn people.
John: They seem to clean up pretty nice when they talk to us mostly.
Merlin: I think it's with each other that they're the most coarse.
Merlin: They're seemingly coarse by American standards.
John: I see, I see.
John: I don't know.
John: Just a thought.
John: You know, they're just – I mean, they're a –
John: They're humble people.
John: They have a lot of, I don't know, grace.
John: I don't know if you'd call them graceful people.
John: I don't know if I would either, John.
Merlin: I think they can be rustic and hardy, gregarious.
Merlin: I think they can be kind of no-nonsense.
John: Right.
John: There's a stoicism in the Scottish character, wouldn't you say?
Merlin: I guess there's a band I like a lot from Glasgow that I've been listening to.
John: Wait a minute.
John: You like a band from Glasgow?
John: Believe it or not.
Merlin: Not as much as Canada, but it's up there.
Merlin: Glasgow, what do you got?
Merlin: You got Roddy Frame.
Merlin: Is that his name?
Merlin: Rowdy Roddy Frame, the guy from Aztec Camera.
Merlin: You got the Teenage Fan Club and BMX Bandits.
John: That's what I thought you were going to say.
Merlin: I know, I know.
Merlin: I'm very on brand for me.
Merlin: But no, this band Churches, which they play synthesizers and sing, and they're one of my favorite bands.
Merlin: They're the V for you, right?
Merlin: They've got a V for you.
Merlin: They've got a V for you, and they've got a funky E. But it's Church of Virtues, and they're really good.
Merlin: And so I watch concerts of them a lot, and I listen to interviews with them.
Merlin: oh bless your heart yes and they say you know if you're from glasgow there's always a little bit of that in you wherever you go i guess they call it glassing that's when you throw a glass at someone's head right oh oh i didn't know that was real oh i don't know it might be a soccer hooligan thing which yeah maybe you know could be a hysteria they're a very good band john they uh their their shows are a lot of fun um yeah well you know as as i'm fond of saying yeah um
John: Well, I guess I can't say it anymore.
John: It's just song lyrics on song lyrics.
John: It's song lyrics all the way down.
John: Oh, I see.
John: I see.
Merlin: Yeah, but you got the pastels, or the pastels, as my lady would say.
Merlin: I listened to a lot of Shoegaze.
Merlin: I returned to the glory days of Shoegaze this weekend, and I discovered some new things.
Merlin: I'd never heard the band Swirlies, and now I've heard them.
Merlin: And I like them very much.
Merlin: I'm very familiar with the Boston band called, I don't know if they're Swirlies or The Swirlies.
Merlin: I tend to err in the direction of leaving off the definite article.
Merlin: But I think you should check them out.
John: Did you know that Kelly Deal, speaking of Boston.
John: Yep.
Merlin: I was listening to a lot of Pixies recently, too.
John: Kelly Deal.
John: Oh, Kelly Deal.
John: Twin sister of Kim Deal.
John: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
John: Kelly Deal knits scarves.
Merlin: I think I heard that.
Merlin: I think I heard the thing that she did on tour, and now is that like an Etsy thing for her?
John: Yeah, and I've written her a few times about making a scarf for me.
John: Oh.
John: But they're not knitted scarves.
John: Or are they?
John: There's some kind of repurposing happening.
John: It's a craft thing that she's doing.
John: She's got an angle.
John: There's a craft angle.
John: And I'm curious about it.
John: And there's a part of me that, you know, I love a scarf.
John: And I was having a conversation the other day with somebody that said they hate a scarf.
John: They won't wear scarves.
John: They feel like if it's cold, you wear a big jacket.
John: If it's not cold, you wear a lighter jacket.
John: When are you ever going to want
John: This in-between state, which would be a jacket too light for the weather plus a scarf, which is too much.
John: They're missing the point, I feel like.
John: They're missing it, right?
John: My eyes were just rolling back in my head like, I don't even understand what you're saying.
John: A scarf, I mean, I would wear a scarf in swim trunks.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: A scarf.
John: There's so much you can do with a scarf.
Merlin: oh absolutely it's almost like a towel i mean or like me like me with this i always wear this carhartt uh caps and even when it's warm out i used to wear it because i was cold and then i wore it because i needed a haircut and now i just wear it kind of out of habit it's been hard with the mask thing thing with a scarf for anybody who says this thinks a scarf is some kind of i don't know i don't know what but is that one of those things like an umbrella john is that like a seattle umbrella situation do you think with this person ah
John: I mean, I – well, what I – I mean, I did say if you lived in our temperate clime here in the northwest –
John: Sure, if you live in Arizona, I guess.
John: But even in the mountains of Arizona, you're going to want a scarf.
John: You get one that wicks?
John: I mean, maybe no one in Hawaii has ever worn a scarf.
John: That seems a little racist.
John: Well, but I just feel like even if you were up in the cold part of Hawaii, it's not going to be cold for long.
John: Not long enough to own a scarf.
Merlin: People who are used to a warm climate are sometimes the ones who get cold as fast.
Merlin: So if you went to a cinema-
Merlin: You go inside and maybe it's a little over air conditioned.
Merlin: You want a scarf.
Merlin: My advice for anybody out there, if you think you're reticent about scarves, that's okay.
Merlin: I just want to say scarves have come a long way.
Merlin: Scarves.
Merlin: It's like dwarfs.
Merlin: Is it dwarfs?
Merlin: It's like dwarfs.
Merlin: Scarves.
Merlin: Scarves.
Merlin: They've come a long way.
John: Scarves.
John: It's the scarvesdale diet.
John: Scarves have, but the thing... No, don't think that.
John: Don't take that.
John: It was a pity thing.
John: The thing about a scarf is that what you're talking about, I think, if you're talking about a Hawaiian scarf, is maybe something that's not made to be a scarf, but you're purposing it as a scarf...
John: for the time that a scarf is required, right?
John: Oh, interesting.
John: So it could be something like a night shirt.
John: Yeah, you could wrap a shirt around your neck and call it a scarf for some period of time.
John: I think really every piece of clothing is a serving suggestion.
John: Well, see, there it is.
John: Any piece of clothing is a scarf if you need it badly enough.
Merlin: Well, because you could wear it like a gator.
Merlin: I don't mean like a crocodile.
Merlin: You could wear it kind of just like put a shirt.
Merlin: You put a T-shirt over your head and just not put your arms through it.
Merlin: Now you've got a scarf.
Merlin: You've got a Hawaiian scarf.
John: That's right.
John: But I'm talking about purpose-built scarves.
John: I hear you.
John: And my – this Kelly Deal situation.
John: So I really want a scarf.
John: It sounds like this is weighing on you.
John: Well, it is a little bit because I really want a scarf by Kelly Deal.
Okay.
John: And I have to be quite honest.
John: To those of our listeners who don't know what Kelly Deal is, she was the guitar player of The Breeders.
John: Yes.
John: And the fact that she makes scarves just fills me with joy.
John: But I haven't found one of her scarves, to be honest, that I like aesthetically.
John: Because I'm very particular about my scarves.
John: If you gave me a Bastic of scarves, and I keep most of my scarves in Bastic.
John: She's got a lot of options.
John: She does.
John: And if you gave me a bale of scarves, I very easily could go through there and find...
John: Not very many scarves that I chose for myself, right?
John: I would look at them and I would say, this is a beautiful scarf.
John: This belongs to someone.
John: This scarf is...
Merlin: You know, go with God.
Merlin: Oh, you're saying like in a pinch, like a cute girl says, it's cold out, let me lend you a scarf, and maybe it smells a little bit like her.
Merlin: I have so many.
Merlin: Pickers can't be choosing, right?
John: Sure, sure.
John: And I have scarves that people have said, oh, I made you this, or I want you to have this, and I never give them away, of course, because they're important.
John: Sure.
John: They were gifts, but when I'm choosing a scarf for myself, when I look there at the –
John: at the universe of scarves, like, I have pretty... I have a... My list of requirements is not short.
John: Oh, this is interesting.
Merlin: And so... Any port in a storm.
Merlin: So, like, you're stuck... If you're stuck in, like, an Airbnb and they got a DVD player and two... This is how I ended up watching the Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr.
Merlin: I would never in a million years have picked that out.
Merlin: But we were in this horrible...
Merlin: this horrible rental a couple three years ago.
Merlin: It was very, very haunted.
Merlin: It had a lot of child ghost energy.
Merlin: But they did have, they had a DVD player and some DVDs, and we ended up watching Sherlock Holmes, and it was fine.
Merlin: Now, in a million years, I never would have picked that out.
Merlin: But here's the thing.
Merlin: If I go into a blockbuster video, I have so many options.
Merlin: I might even get hung up on the options.
Merlin: It's like going to the library.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: But if somebody says to you, you want this book or that book, you can eyeball that.
Merlin: But in this case, if you want a bespoke scarf of your own choosing, a bail or a bastic of options, then one gets picky.
Merlin: It's, you know, the paranoia of choice.
Merlin: I'm anybody, you know.
John: Yeah, you're very rustic.
John: And if you – I'm any old port in a storm about a scarf.
John: I'll wear a Hawaiian gaiter as a scarf, sure.
John: But if I'm going to write Kelly Deal and say, hey, make me a scarf, or hey, I want – Bing, you're a scarf.
John: Here's the problem with that, though.
Merlin: Remember that in the cartoon, make me a sandwich?
Merlin: He goes, Bing, you're a sandwich?
Merlin: Yeah, I love it.
Merlin: It's still funny.
John: You know what it is?
John: This is the problem.
John: Yes.
John: The problem is that I don't want to bother Kelly Deal to ask her to do something custom because I'm sure she's a busy person and she's got some scarves for sale.
John: And she doesn't know me.
John: She wasn't put on this planet to make my personal scarf dream come true.
John: Thank you.
John: But I do want...
John: a special scarf and I want a special, I want, I want a special scarf.
John: And so in my conversations with her, I've been very appreciative.
John: I've been very like, I love your scarf.
John: You've contacted her about this.
John: Oh, for sure.
John: She's written me.
John: We're, you know, do you know her from rock and roll?
John: No, no, no, no.
John: This was, this is entirely about the scarf.
Merlin: Did you have an entree or did you just, you just slide into her DMS?
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: It's none of my business, but I'm just curious how you got in touch with Kelly Deal.
John: Is this the kind of thing I should be doing?
John: There was no entree.
John: I was on her website and it had a contact button, contact me.
John: And so I wrote her an email at her contact and I said, hi, I really love your scarves.
John: I really love to get a scarf.
John: And I think at the time, maybe all of her scarves were sold out.
John: They're all sold out right now, according to her site.
John: I didn't want to break it apart.
John: Yeah.
John: So I wrote her, and she was great.
John: She wrote me back.
John: She was like, yeah, there's a lot going on right now, but I'm going to get back on the horse.
Merlin: Well, this episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Headspace.
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Merlin: I think one of the best things, it helps you to establish a habit of meditation.
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Merlin: Our thanks to Headspace for supporting Roderick on the line and all the great shows.
Merlin: I wasn't going to say anything.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: No.
John: Oh, no.
John: Oh, no.
John: Okay.
John: No, I would not wish that on anyone.
Merlin: No, just not even once.
Merlin: You got to stay away from that stuff.
Merlin: It's no good.
John: Not even on New Year's Eve.
John: No, sir.
John: But she came back.
John: She came back to me and she was like, hey, great to hear from you, you know.
John: And then, oh, and so later...
John: She was like, I've got some new scarves and check them out.
John: See if there's any that you like.
John: This was the problem.
John: She had made a bunch of new scarves.
John: Okay.
John: And I went and I looked and I was like...
John: The thing is, I like this about that one, and I like that about this one.
John: That and that and that.
Merlin: You sound like every client I've ever had.
Merlin: You're the Frankenstein client, the one who's like, oh, yeah.
Merlin: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but this is a thing that happens to clients.
Merlin: As you talk to somebody, this is why one of the most important things in the business is to develop a sense of not showing people too many things and to have the one that you want them to pick.
Merlin: It's like they say, a lawyer never presents a design he doesn't know the answer to.
Merlin: In this case, somebody comes in and you go, oh, can I call a man column B?
Merlin: Can you make the logo bigger?
Merlin: And then how about we do the fonts from this one and that from that one?
Merlin: Which would be like me coming to you and saying like, oh, can you make this part like ride and this part like swerve driver and that part like my bloody valentine?
John: Yeah, and in fact, that probably would make a song more interesting than any one I ever wrote.
Merlin: Almost every, not yours, your songs are flawless, but almost every song would be improved by some of those things.
John: And so this is, you're exactly right, and this has inhibited me, you know, so writing back to, you know, and I'm also excited, I'm writing back and forth, Kelly Deal about scarves.
John: And I'm, you know, there's no way that she almost certainly when she gets an email to her scarf website is not then like reverse Googling the person and going like, who's this who wants one of my scarves?
John: Yeah.
John: So I'm just somebody that's out there in the world wanting a scarf.
John: And so I don't feel like I'm in any position to like give her any creative feedback.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: she's got some scars for sale i want one she wrote me when she had some more available and then i i did not choose one and so now i'm in a situation where i feel like yeah
John: I got to write her again.
John: I got to say, hey, still into the scarf game.
John: But you don't want to write and say, like, just waiting for one that's good.
Merlin: Setting aside the Googling thing, I hope nobody does that.
Merlin: But also just that she can recognize your name and know your Johnny Nell reply from last time.
Merlin: Yeah, I hope not.
Merlin: I had that happen recently with a freelance knife sharpener, and I still feel kind of bad about it.
John: Where you wrote them?
John: I contacted them.
Merlin: I wanted my knives not honed.
Merlin: I wanted them professionally sharpened by a professional.
Merlin: There's a man in a van from just south here down Daly City, I believe.
Merlin: He's a man in a van.
Merlin: He'll come and he sharpens your knives.
Merlin: He's got a plan.
Merlin: He's a man with a plan, Panama Canal.
Merlin: And I wrote him, I wrote him a very, very, I know how to write emails, John.
Merlin: I wrote him a very, very good email.
Merlin: I said, hey, I could really use your help with some knives.
Merlin: We've got, you know, I've got these chef's knives and I've got these.
Merlin: And he has this one special service, his like special like white glove service is he'll take a folding knife and he'll do this super, super edge for it.
Merlin: And I have a couple of folding knives because, you know, I'm a knife guy.
Merlin: And I wanted him to do my knives.
Merlin: And I made it clear I was willing to spend a little bit on this.
John: Sure, sure.
Merlin: He wrote me back from a Hotmail account, which is fine.
John: But, you know, red flag.
John: No, he pulled up in front of a Panera Bread.
John: Oh, to get on the Wi-Fi.
Merlin: He loves that soup.
Merlin: And he wrote me back.
Merlin: And first of all, he did a thing.
Merlin: This shouldn't bother me.
Merlin: But my name is in my email.
Merlin: My name was down there as a signature, my full name.
Merlin: Because I am a gentleman.
Merlin: And he botched my name in a weird – I'm not even put off that it was a feminine way.
Merlin: But I was put off by the fact that he tried to say Marilyn, but he even spelled that wrong.
Merlin: And I was like, whoa, I don't know if I want this guy on my CKART, like my fancy folding.
Merlin: I've got a tactical World War I-based Ken Onion knife that you can take apart.
Merlin: It's a real nice Ken Onion knife.
Merlin: And you can take it apart.
Merlin: You can field strip it and clean it.
Merlin: And I've been wanting that one to get fixed up.
Merlin: But this guy can't even tell a Merlin from a Merlin.
Merlin: I just thought, that's not careful.
Merlin: I'm sorry I'm carrying on, but I am excited about this.
Merlin: But then he big-timed me a little bit.
Merlin: Oh, geez.
Merlin: I'm not coming up.
Merlin: I said, maybe next time you're around.
Merlin: And I thought the man in a van would come.
Merlin: That's what is implied by the man in a van.
Merlin: It's very prominent on his website.
Merlin: I don't want to embarrass him.
Merlin: But then he got a little weird about it.
Merlin: And he's like, I only come to your house for like 12 knives or something.
Merlin: He didn't even ask if I wanted 12 knives.
Merlin: He basically just big time me and acted like he poor mouthed me a little bit.
Merlin: reverse poor mouth and you know what and I didn't like his attitude and so I didn't write him back and I kind of feel bad because what would I say sure you know I'm sorry guy but like I had a bunch like John over here look at this I got you know I got a I got a I got an impromptu I'm gonna send you this knife I have an improbably long bowie knife that I wanted like it's like a 15 inch knife are you gonna get letters that you didn't say bowie knife do you even care about that he died at the Alamo right
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Booey.
Merlin: Oh, and you know what I got, John?
Merlin: You know what I got?
Merlin: Boo.
Merlin: Look at this.
Merlin: Hint.
Merlin: I could kill a bar with this.
John: Oh, you got a K-Bar.
Merlin: Got a K-Bar USMC in this really nice smelling sheath, but this one in particular is a favorite of mine.
Merlin: Now, this is the canned onion knife.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: Are you sending me some pictures of these?
Merlin: Oh, I sure will.
Merlin: You can strip this.
Merlin: It's got three parts.
Merlin: You take it apart.
Merlin: If it gets gummy and gritty, you can take it apart.
Merlin: It's without tools.
Merlin: Without tools.
Merlin: It's by Ken Onion.
Merlin: He's one of the greats.
John: You don't even need...
Merlin: No.
Merlin: A Kenanian knife to strip the Kenanian knife?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Now, I run into that with things I bought from the Seattle shipping company.
Merlin: Sometimes, like, even if I buy something for opening packages, you need something different from opening packages to open it up.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: Like, what's the deal with airline food?
Merlin: Anyway, and so I didn't write it back, and I feel kind of bad.
Merlin: Now, in this instance, you're a thinker.
Merlin: You don't want to waste Kelly Deal's time.
Merlin: She's got a lot going on.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: She does.
Merlin: It's something where you feel like you really want to know what you're asking for before you bug her again.
Merlin: You don't want to blah, blah, blah her.
John: The problem is that I do this all the time about everything.
John: I hate to be this client.
John: Yeah.
John: Every single thing I want.
John: I mean, you've been to restaurants with me.
John: Like, my sign of a good Mexican food restaurant is not anything to do with, like, walking in, what's on the menu, how they talk to you, this, that, or the other, even whether or not the food is good.
John: Did they put potatoes on your plate?
John: No, I don't want that.
Merlin: You see, you tell them, I'll send it back.
Merlin: If you put potatoes on this plate, I'll send it back.
Merlin: You said that to people.
Merlin: You've heard me say that.
Merlin: Oh, I've been there.
Merlin: You did it in front of your millennial girlfriend.
John: I wasn't sure it was a power move.
John: Don't touch my plate.
John: Don't touch my feet.
Merlin: If you touch potatoes, go wash your hands and then... You know, hands that have touched potatoes will not touch mine.
John: But if I'm in a Mexican restaurant and I say to the server, can I get half chili Colorado, half chili verde?
John: If they hesitate at all...
John: If they're like, or if they go, well, I'll have, you know, even that.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm like, this is no good.
John: Interesting.
John: The best Mexican restaurants are the ones where you say, can I get half chili Colorado, half chili verde?
John: And the server, without even looking up, just nods and writes it down.
John: You can get anything you want.
John: You can get anything you want.
John: Because you know what?
John: There's only 11 ingredients in Mexican food if you take it all the way out.
John: Let's not be precious about this.
John: Just split up my chili.
John: And the thing is, if you're cooking Chili Verde over here and you're cooking Chili Colorado over here, it takes nothing to scoop one scoop of both.
John: If you're not doing that, if you're pulling something out of a cooler and putting it in a microwave.
John: A white five-gallon bucket.
John: That's not what we're talking about.
John: One chili only.
John: Uno chili solamente.
John: So I do this constantly.
John: And what I love in life, like a guy wrote, talking about knives, a guy wrote me a while back and he said, I make knives.
John: I'm an artisanal, I'm an artisanal knife maker.
John: Yep, yep, yep.
John: I got a mustache.
John: I got a leather apron.
John: Oh, he's got the whole thing.
John: Topicaj.
John: I don't even know if he has a mustache, but I picture him with one.
John: Of course he does.
John: He's got a leather apron.
John: He's got tongs.
John: He's probably quenching.
John: He's doing all this stuff.
Merlin: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: He's quenching.
Merlin: He's doing all those things like on that Netflix show, right?
Merlin: He's doing all the knife things.
John: He's doing knife things.
John: He's pounding on things.
John: He's honing.
John: He's honing, he's quenching, and then he's honing, and he's quenching.
John: And he's heating it up until it's red hot, and then he's dumping it in the cold water, and he's doing it right.
John: He's not doing it wrong.
John: And he says, I want to make you a knife.
John: And, you know, of course, I'm thrilled.
John: Absolutely.
John: Yeah, I would take a knife.
John: Because the thing about somebody who wants to make you a knife is that, as you know, then you not only have a knife, but you have a knife that somebody made you.
John: Oh, man.
John: Come on.
John: Yes.
John: It's like somebody writing me and saying, I'd like to make you a car.
John: Right.
John: Like, yes, make me a car.
John: Yeah.
John: But then the next thing, of course, when somebody says, let me make you a car, I'm like, but what kind of car?
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, now it's already changed.
John: Look at that knife.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Merlin, that's a considerable knife.
Merlin: I also said the wrong thing.
Merlin: I always say it's Columbia River.
Merlin: CRKT is the name of that.
Merlin: That one at the bottom, the World War I-inspired CRKT knife.
Merlin: Look at that Bowie knife.
Merlin: Now, you have the USMCK bar, so you can compare that Bowie.
Merlin: You can see where I've honed it a little on my own, but I really worry about ruining a knife.
John: No, that thing.
John: Yeah, that's that is really.
John: Yeah.
John: That's upsetting.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, boy.
John: You could.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: If you're running to Crocodile Dundee.
John: If your Volkswagen Golf goes off the road somewhere outside of Escondido.
Merlin: I can't get NPR out here.
John: Anyway, so my knife-making friend did it exactly right.
John: He said, here are your options.
John: I can do anything, but here are some options.
John: Here are some options.
John: That's what he said.
John: And it was basically like, pick one of these.
John: And I realized at that moment that unlike scarves, I knew so little about knives and
John: In the full breadth of what you could know about Knives, I know so little.
John: Oh, I see.
Merlin: It's like you think you're a fan, and then you meet the real fans, kind of.
Merlin: And you're like, ooh, I really don't know that much about this.
Merlin: That could be D&D, Cunnilingus, whatever it is.
Merlin: But there are things where other people know more.
John: Know more, and he knew more.
Merlin: The real heads know more.
John: He was very generous about it, and he just managed me very well, which is that he gave me a small number of options.
John: And he encouraged me to pick from, you know, and it was a wide variety.
John: It was like, I can make you a broadsword.
John: I can make you a pocket knife, you know, like.
John: And, but then, but, you know, he was mostly like talking about kitchen knives, chef knives.
John: Oh, I'd take that.
John: And I said, okay, well, I like ones, you know, I like cars that shift themselves.
John: And I like knives that look like this.
John: And doop, doop, doop.
John: And I said like a couple of things and he was like, great.
John: And then I realized that the, that what I was doing now was saying, you know, uh, physician make me a knife.
John: And I had no, I was not going to say another thing because I was putting this in the hands of this person.
John: It's like telling your plumber how to fix your pipes.
John: That's not your job.
John: No, no, no.
John: Go, you know, go artist and, and art.
John: And he said,
John: With only that, and that's, of course, all really he wanted, was just that little bit of like, you know, I have made, and that's all I wanted.
John: I made one or two choices.
Merlin: I feel like you're describing a phenomenon though, John, where it's like if, and there are things like this in life where something comes along.
Merlin: It could be food.
Merlin: It could be somebody says, hey, come to my restaurant.
Merlin: You say, what do you want?
Merlin: I make anything you want.
Merlin: And you say, I think you can give one piece of data.
Merlin: Like you could say, obviously you say something like, I don't eat shrimp or don't put potatoes on my plate.
Merlin: But there's this Chinese restaurant, I forget the name of it.
Merlin: There's this amazing, famous Chinese restaurant in Chinatown where they're really nasty to you.
Merlin: They're so mean.
Merlin: It's really funny.
Merlin: They give you a dirty glass of water, whole nine.
Merlin: I love this place.
Merlin: His name is escaping me right now.
Merlin: But you walk in and the old guy just stands there.
Merlin: He doesn't even talk to you.
Merlin: And, uh, and you, anybody who the real heads know, you go in and you say, well, you know, what's good.
Merlin: And he goes, you'd see food.
Merlin: And you go, yeah.
Merlin: He goes, and he just nods, walks away.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: Or sometimes he'll say, can you eat spicy food?
Merlin: And you go, yes.
Merlin: And you just, whatever he brings you.
Merlin: And it's the best, you know what I'm saying though?
Merlin: You don't go in there and go like, you know, he's, it's not an interview and
Merlin: It's not a commission.
Merlin: It's not like my friend John Syracuse had a character he plays in a video game drawing.
Merlin: Now, the whole nature of that is specificity in this case.
Merlin: Somebody says, I want to make you a knife.
Merlin: I want to make you a bladed weapon.
Merlin: Do you have any choices?
Merlin: Now, I would say, hey, you know what?
Merlin: If you can make a paring knife, I would love the world's greatest paring knife.
Merlin: I think that's one of the neglected knives.
Merlin: And if he says, no, I don't do little knives, I'd say, okay, just give me like a 10-inch chef knife that you think would be great.
Merlin: That's the thing that you think would be great, right?
Merlin: It seems great.
Merlin: It feels like you're saying, whatever you're good at and you think is right for me, do that and we'll both be happy.
Merlin: There's room for disappointment if you're too particular.
John: Well, you're absolutely right.
John: And so what I try to – the knife edge that I try to balance upon, to hone – I'm not honing the knife here, though.
John: I'm dancing on the knife.
John: Man, you're good with words.
John: You're so good with words.
John: Is getting what I want.
John: What?
John: while also allowing the artist or craftsperson to do what they want, bringing it in at a price point that we both want, and not doing the thing where I let someone make me something that I'm never going to use, and I know it before we even start because they have specified their –
John: They specified their taste and my feeling about – like I went to a restaurant one time on a date with a woman from – a younger woman who was part of a – she'd grown up in the culture of the sort of cult of chefs.
John: When we were growing up, there were cooks, and if you were a chef, I think you had to live in New York or Paris, right?
Merlin: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: That's a pretty good distinction.
Merlin: A chef, what's the implication?
Merlin: Education, leadership, expertise.
Yeah.
Merlin: right michelin star yeah i mean and i've i've had some short order breakfast breakfast uh where it might as well have been a chef because they're so good at being a cook but chef i think and also you wear the toque which has the folds in it like i suppose if you cooked in a hotel if you worked in a if you cooked for a at a fancy hotel chef sure you know but it's it's like the ceo problem right like
John: Before I was 40 years old, not only had I never met a CEO, but I'd never met anyone who had met a CEO.
Merlin: There used to be a time once you didn't run into CEOs.
John: No, they weren't anywhere.
Merlin: If you ran into it, you would run into a small business owner, but you would rarely run into an entrepreneur, let alone a serial entrepreneur.
John: I met a lot of presidents of companies and vice presidents, certainly.
John: But if you were a CEO, you lived in New York.
John: That's where CEOs lived.
John: They lived in New York or London, maybe.
John: I see.
John: There were no CEOs in Seattle.
John: There wasn't a single one.
John: Safeco Insurance or Boeing, they had presidents.
John: Boeing had a president.
Merlin: This is a new phenomenon, John.
Merlin: Everybody thinks they're a goddamn CEO.
Yeah.
John: Anyway, this younger woman, I'm on a date with her, and she has spent her entire adult life living in a world where there are chefs everywhere.
John: And not only are there chefs everywhere, but you call them chef.
Merlin: Oh, like a top chef where you say, yes, chef.
Merlin: Thank you, chef.
John: That kind of thing.
John: Yeah.
John: Or it even has that part of speech problem where –
John: where you'll say, well, Chef said – Oh, I see where they're doing the English.
Merlin: They're dropping the article.
Merlin: I need to ask Chef.
Merlin: We have to take Chef down to a hospital near university.
John: Wow.
John: Yeah, got to get back to Mill.
John: So we're in this restaurant, and it's a fancy restaurant.
John: Yes.
John: But it's Seattle fancy.
John: It's got peanut shells on the floor.
John: It's just that they're selling –
John: The same freaking little clams that you can get... John, do they have charcuterie?
John: They might, but this is one of those Seattle restaurants where...
John: You know, we have these oysters, these wonderful oysters in the Northwest.
John: I know you've tried the Northwest oysters.
John: We had oysters week before.
John: Last thing was the best.
John: I love oysters.
John: They're very small and crisp here.
Merlin: Like a kakamama?
Merlin: Not kalamata.
John: That's an olive.
John: See, you're talking about an akamakanakanaka.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
John: That's their word for scarf.
Yeah.
John: The oysters that you'll find here, a lot of them are from British Columbia.
John: A lot of them are from Washington State.
Merlin: I feel like Prince Edward Island.
Merlin: You get mussels and stuff from there.
Merlin: You get PEIs, right?
Yeah.
John: Prince Edward Island is on the other side of the country.
John: Oh, that's true.
John: You're on the left.
John: Yeah, we're over here.
John: And those oysters on the East Coast, well, I've talked about this before.
John: I don't like those East Coast oysters.
John: Interesting.
John: I'm just going to come right out.
John: She grew up with chefs.
John: So she grew up with chefs.
John: And I'm sitting in this oyster bar, and the waiter comes over, and he's got on a hoodie.
John: He's just like everybody else in Seattle, and maybe his hoodie costs $500.
John: I don't know.
John: But it's just – there's peanut shells on the floor, but somehow this restaurant's got five stars all around.
John: All right.
John: And you can get –
John: you know a wallapa bay oyster i swear to you in a gas station in half of the counties in western washington you drive into a gas station the guys like fill her up and you're like yeah like a hoagies in pennsylvania you just go to the wah-wah yeah give me give me and also give me 12 uh oysters on the half shell but in this place yeah
John: And the thing is, and they're a dollar a piece.
John: Jeez Louise.
John: But up here in this fancy restaurant, it's the same goddamn oyster.
John: It's not like they tickled it under its chin and called it and said goo goo gaga to it.
John: It's just a fucking oyster they pulled out of the bay.
John: But at this place, they're $5 a piece because I don't know what.
John: Because chef, right?
John: Because chef waves his magic hands.
John: Because chef.
John: It's not like chef is making a thing here.
John: It's just an oyster.
John: Yeah.
Yeah.
John: Anyway, everybody's lined up to go to this restaurant.
John: I'm sitting here with this young lady, and the waiter comes over.
John: And we've talked about steak tartare before, you and I, I know.
John: Yes.
John: The waiter comes over, and I see steak tartare on the menu.
John: And I said, I see steak tartare on the menu.
John: And the waiter goes, mm-hmm.
John: And I said, let me ask, do you prepare it with capers?
John: And I don't even remember whether this was one of these fancy restaurants, whether a waiter actually had to go ask.
John: Right.
Merlin: If that's the case, I should have gotten up and left.
Merlin: Is it one of those things like unintentionally, we ask for like ketchup for your eggs and that makes you look like a rube?
John: Well, so this is, but this is the problem.
John: This is not between me and the waiter because I don't give a shit what a waiter thinks about me.
John: This is between me and my date.
John: But eventually it comes back.
John: He says, yes, the steak tartare has capers.
John: And for my money,
John: Throughout my entire life, I have felt, not from my entire life, because, of course, like anybody, most of my life, I felt steak tartare was probably pretty gross.
John: But once I had it and enjoyed it, and the first time I had it, it was in Hungary, and it was Hungarian-style steak tartare, which, like everything in Hungary, and I say this as a credit to Hungarians, it had paprika on it because Hungarians...
John: They put paprika on everything.
John: Oh, like a paprikash.
John: You know, they sprinkle it on their pillow before they go to bed.
John: Is that right?
John: Well, it keeps the dead babies out or whatever it is.
John: I don't remember.
John: But it's some Hungarian thing.
John: It has to do with the Turks.
John: But in this restaurant – oh, but in America, so you'll get at some point along the way, the steak tartare culture –
John: started putting capers in their steak tartare.
Merlin: Oh, and it became one of those things where they don't even ask because you always put that on in the culture.
John: So reading the menu, it doesn't say capers.
John: It says steak tartare prepared by chef.
John: And my feeling is that if you put capers, if you're doing steak tartare, which should be a thing where the whole point of it is that you're eating raw meat,
John: The meat should be so good that you can eat it raw, Merlin.
John: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: This is a thing these kids today don't know about because we're all scared of meat, which is understandable.
Merlin: A lot of it, boy, you know, some places.
Merlin: But what people may not get about steak tartare, I feel like, is that it's not –
Merlin: hamburger in the sense of like, we don't know how many cows, the cows are out there in the field, you know, abiding.
Merlin: And then like 60 different cows are what goes into your quarter pounder.
Merlin: Now, they start with some very high end, very fresh, very like grade, high grade meat.
Merlin: So you mix in usually some diced onions.
Merlin: If you're hungry, they put in paprika, that kind of thing.
Merlin: And it's a treat.
Merlin: It's very unusual.
Merlin: I wouldn't eat it every day.
Merlin: But don't just think of it as like you bought a pound of hamburger and put it on a plate.
Merlin: That's not how it works.
John: Right.
John: And I think steak tartare could also be – it's like beef or horse.
John: Horse.
John: Yeah.
John: You're not eating it because –
John: Because you don't – you're not trying to gobble it down, right?
John: You're not trying to get it in you.
John: And I know that there are – I know there are people out there that are like, oh, capers are a part of the –
John: And it's like, no, not necessarily.
Merlin: They're not part of the, right?
Merlin: That's a choice, right?
Merlin: That's a choice.
Merlin: In Hungary, I imagine, they probably put paprika on a boiled egg.
Merlin: We do that here when you make a deviled egg.
Merlin: There are probably people that don't like that.
Merlin: But this is the kind of place where chefs are going to make the way chefs make, right?
John: Well, so this is it.
John: It's the concern.
John: Steak tartare, it should also have a raw egg on it.
John: Oh, right, of course.
John: It's like this whole thing.
John: So I make what I guess is a category error, a classic, you know, like here I am, just some middle-aged buffoon who walked in off of the prairie.
John: Oh, John, right in front of your date?
John: With his floppy hat.
John: Well, no, it's my date that's doing it because I say, can I get the steak tartare without capers?
Mm-hmm.
John: hmm and the waiter did that was she worried about that because of her background being around chef this is it right the waiter says i'll go check because he's he's disempowered oh i see and she says to me not to him she says you know i wouldn't or no i i turned to her i guess and said would you eat some if i if i get this
John: And she says, I wouldn't eat a thing that wasn't how the chef – or wasn't how chef intended it to be.
John: Oh, dear.
John: And it was a – you know, it was a rebuke.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And –
John: I certainly will take a certain amount, maybe even a fair amount of rebuke from my dates.
John: There are a hundred things.
John: I think that's priced in.
John: You know, right.
Merlin: It can be part of the fun flirting.
Merlin: You make each other a little bit.
Merlin: But this was... You could feel the table cooling off.
John: Well, I cooled right off.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: Understandable.
John: But I understood it to be a culture clash.
Right.
John: Because I am not someone who goes into a restaurant to serve the cook.
John: Oh, I agree.
John: Right?
John: Like, I didn't come here to pay my money to...
Merlin: let you take me on a journey and i think that that and but there are times of course there are times when you walk into a place you go to chef's table omakase kind of thing if you go somewhere where that's i i think you're in an interesting gray area and you'll notice this sometimes first of all number one when they list the prices does it have a decimal point if it just says seven okay
John: Right.
Merlin: Which is for their Cretaceous salt.
Merlin: Then you're going on a journey?
Merlin: Oh, I think if you see seven on the Cretaceous salt, that's a real good signal that this place thinks a lot of themselves.
Merlin: But then also they don't often, like most places you go, again, I got an Irish breakfast yesterday and it tells you everything that's on there, right?
Merlin: Now, a lot of these restaurants with chef, chef is going to say this is what the item's called.
Merlin: I'm going to give you some general pointers, but unless you have a legitimate, like a doctor's note for your medical condition, it is a lot of places that is not expected that you will, you could ask questions, but you're not going to, you're not going to, this is like, this is how we make it, dude.
John: This is how chef makes it.
John: That's how chef makes it.
John: Right.
John: And some of the best meals I've told you, I think about the time, it was now several years ago, but I was, I was,
John: I walked into a restaurant.
John: My friend Kurt Timmermeister was there.
John: I went back into the kitchen because I knew chef and I knew other chefs and I knew, you know, and I was like, hey, everybody, how are you?
John: And Timmermeister walks in and Kurt is like among Northwest chefs, like he's a kind of legendary figure.
John: He was one of the first sort of table to table.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: That movement, the movement, the table to table movement.
John: Yeah.
John: He wrote the book about the book about table to table.
John: Damn.
John: He walks in, and they're like, oh, it's Kurt.
John: And so Kurt and I knew each other from all the way back when he was running Cafe Setiem, and he was just bringing me coffee, right?
John: And now all of a sudden, he's this guy who's got a paper crown on.
John: He's Mr. Guy.
John: And I'm back there shaking hands with Chef and Chef because of the kitchen.
John: Was he wearing his paper crown?
John: Like the guy who gave the Christmas popper?
John: It's in his wallet.
John: He pulls it out.
John: The kitchen is the size of a walk-in closet, right?
John: But we walk in and they're like, he's here.
John: And so they sit us together down.
John: And this is one of these crazy things that I didn't realize.
John: I was not that in at the time to understand that this kitchen was actually set up.
John: in such a way that two stools materialized.
John: And I didn't know there was room in this kitchen for two stools.
John: Like, where were they keeping them?
John: But they showed up and the two stools were placed in such a way that all of a sudden what had formerly been
Merlin: the uh the chopping station or something had become a little a little bar so this wasn't the kind when i say chef's table there's those places where like because people know about this phenomenon of like oh you know my my my in-laws are in town so we're going to serve them a special meal in the kitchen but there became places where you can like buy that
Merlin: where you can like order, like call ahead and you know what I mean?
Merlin: Get a special French laundry style reservation to go get to sit in the kitchen where there's actually a table, right?
Merlin: They're making space in what I would call, John, an active working area.
John: Yes, they scooted a 50 pound bag of rice over to the side or whatever.
John: And put these two, you know, and these stools were just overturned apple carts or whatever.
John: But Kurt was there to say hello.
John: And I have to, I cannot know
John: Because this was at a time when the number of restaurants in Seattle was still a knowable number.
John: It was a speakable number.
John: It was a number – there were restaurants in Seattle that you knew well.
John: There were ones you had been to a couple of times.
John: There were ones you had only been to once, and there were ones you'd never been to.
John: And that was – there were only those.
Merlin: But also maybe one of those things, I think about the most storied Cincinnati restaurant of my youth.
Merlin: The youth was called Masonette, which is this French restaurant my parents had been to like twice ever.
Merlin: And they had baked Alaska.
Merlin: And it was famous for being like the most expensive restaurant.
Merlin: Is it one of those things where the famous expensive restaurant in Seattle was kind of the same for 20 years?
John: Oh, it was the same for 70 years.
John: I mean, Canless was the restaurant.
John: Canless.
John: Okay.
John: And Canless was the restaurant that was the best restaurant in Seattle when my parents were courting.
John: And it was the best restaurant in Seattle up until 10 years ago.
John: Okay.
John: But I'm saying that in 2004 –
John: All the restaurants in Seattle fell into one of those four categories.
John: What there were not were any restaurants in Seattle I had never heard of.
John: I get it.
John: I get it.
John: There were ones I had been to many times.
John: There were ones I had been to a few times, ones I'd been to once, and ones I'd never been to.
John: Now, there are more restaurants in Seattle I've never heard of.
John: than that i've even heard of let alone been to right and that that happens and one day you know and then one day you don't know and suddenly it's just like wait a minute and you know and you and you walk past the thing you're like oh i'm gonna go get my typewriter repaired and you walk over you carry your typewriter over to the typewriter repair guy and it's a restaurant now they got a pig on the side on a fork
John: Well, and it's called Typeface or something.
John: And you're like, ding, ding.
John: And you look at it and you're like, all the typewriters, they're all here.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: There is a place with typewriters.
Merlin: Isn't it near the video game place?
Merlin: Isn't there a place with typewriters in the window?
Merlin: I feel like I've seen that.
John: And it used to be where you got your typewriters repaired.
John: And now it's just called Typeface?
John: They call it Typeface and now it's a restaurant.
John: Have you met Chef?
John: The menu items are all like 45.
John: Ha, ha, ha.
John: But I had this wonderful experience before that all happened where Kurt and I sat at basically they're chopping vegetables right in front of us.
John: And he and I are chatting, talking about the old days and talking about, oh, what, you know, because he had some old Land Rover that was always on fire.
John: And this was before I could even afford a truck that caught on fire all the time.
John: And Chef is a friend of ours both.
John: And he's, you know, what am I?
John: I'm 30.
John: He's 30.
John: Kurt's 40.
John: And so, you know, we're just in the prime of our lives.
John: And chef just keeps throwing these little tapas plates at us all night long.
John: And we sat there.
John: And in the course of the night, everybody in the restaurant that ordered something, chef made a second helping of it and gave it to us.
John: Whoa.
John: And we tried everything.
John: That's amazing.
John: But it was spaced out over the course of six hours.
John: So that there was – you never got – we weren't full.
John: I never did that thing where I was like, you know, two hot fudge sundaes for the table or whatever.
John: It was just like – It's paste.
John: It's a hangout.
John: You're having a hangout with really good food.
John: That's so nice.
John: And as they're cooking, because the kitchen staff was probably four or five people, as they're cooking, they're telling us what they're doing.
John: And they're telling us because they care about what Kurt thinks.
John: They don't care about what I think.
John: Right.
John: But I'm there, you know, like, I love that more than anything, listening in on two experts talking about something.
John: Oh, I know.
John: I know.
John: And they're just like, and Kurt's asking these kind of questions that are like, oh, where did those quail legs come from?
John: It's like, oh, well, would you like to meet the quail?
John: She's right here.
John: Yeah.
John: And, you know, I walked out of that experience just feeling like, oh, what I don't know about food would fill a galaxy.
John: And I knew so much less about food at the beginning of the night than I do now.
John: You weren't proximate to chef growing up.
John: And there it was.
John: Like, this isn't – but –
John: What we're really doing here is cooking, right?
John: This is cooking.
John: We're not chefing.
John: You're not chefing.
John: I know you.
John: Like, you're going to leave this bar and like most chefs, you're going to go across the street to the other bar and get drunk because there's something very deeply broken about you.
John: Like, which is true of all.
John: Yeah.
John: Good point.
Merlin: Although I don't.
Merlin: God, this sounds so fun.
Merlin: And it wasn't, it didn't feel like, to call it the obvious, they weren't putting on airs.
Merlin: Like, they wanted to, like, talk in the patois with your friend, but it wasn't feeling like they were, like, trying to be, like, fancy.
Yeah.
John: Well, because there were no airs you could put on, right?
John: Because Kurt had done that.
John: Kurt was one of the guys that had done that thing that the English do, which is like you come into the restaurant in your muddy boots with a covey of quails draped over your shoulder.
John: And it's like there's nothing – there is no tuxedo more formal than Kurt Timmermeister's extra tough boots.
John: Okay.
Yeah.
John: Because it's real, right?
John: No airs to put on.
John: I get it.
John: Right.
John: And so they're... They're not going to get a pitch past that guy if they wanted to, right?
John: Thank you, right?
John: Yeah.
John: The guy's not going to shake something full of pink salt and be like, look, pink salt.
John: Nobody's going to... You're a Himalayan asshole.
John: Nobody's going to honk a horn for that.
John: It'll scare the quail.
John: No, she can't lay.
John: Shep is sad.
John: Shep is sad.
John: Quail can't lay.
John: You know, and it falls off the tartare.
John: Slides down the caper.
John: So for sure, like I get culturally, I get where there are times and places where you want to be like,
John: Chef, take me away, right?
John: Take me where I'm going.
John: Put me on your gossamer wings.
John: But there are other times when you're on a date and you just want some oysters and you don't want to pay four extra dollars for them just because some restaurant reviewer said that the way that this person waves their hands over the oysters makes them some kind of other thing.
John: Yeah, it's for snorks.
John: Right.
John: Oh, you know, it's for snorks.
John: You're right.
John: It's for rich snorks.
Merlin: It's for rich snorks.
Merlin: And it's like, it's like, and forgive me, people.
Merlin: Wine is fine.
Merlin: You know, whiskey's quicker.
Merlin: Ah, damn it.
Merlin: I got it wrong and wrong.
Merlin: But, you know, but wine, you know, I don't want to become a wine guy.
Merlin: Not least because like, I don't, it's like, there's all kinds of things where like, I just don't want to become a guy, but like, I really don't want to become a wine guy.
Merlin: But even Northern California, that's where the wine people are.
Merlin: I had oysters.
Merlin: We went up to wine country for my sister-in-law's birthday, not that I'm angry.
Merlin: But we had a great time.
Merlin: We had oysters and stuff from wine country, and we had some wine, whatever.
Merlin: I just got a bottle.
Merlin: I got a glass of the red.
Merlin: Very, very classy.
Merlin: But no, I just don't, you know, I did the idea of like being blindfolded and like looking and feeling a bottle and trying to smell it and stuff.
Merlin: So you can show that your fonts here.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm glad you enjoy it.
Merlin: But like, it just, there's so many levels of it's worse than comic books, John.
Merlin: And like, just the idea of going into a place still like you, you're in the best situation, right?
Merlin: Like you, you get to go in and it's nice to not be noticed.
Merlin: It's like hanging out with Ben Gibbard.
Merlin: It's very freeing.
Merlin: MC Hammer wants to talk to him, not so much to me.
Merlin: I'm just having fun.
Merlin: I'm saying hi to Willie Brown.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: MC Hammer didn't really want to talk to any of us, let's be honest.
Merlin: I liked that his family was there.
John: I thought that was really sweet.
John: He seemed like a nice guy.
John: I never understood the boat.
John: How do you have a boat in a restaurant?
Merlin: That is a famous bar with very, very overpriced drinks.
Merlin: And yes, there is a boat.
Merlin: First of all, there is a body of water inside of the lounge.
Merlin: And it's very tiki.
Merlin: And anyhow, the point being that you're in a great situation, you're 30 years old, you know, you got your wits about you mostly.
John: I was.
Merlin: Your heart is open to new experiences and you, the pressure is off.
Merlin: Like you don't have to be, you know, it's not like the Chinese family in a Christmas story, which also makes me think of scarves.
Merlin: I'll come back to that.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And they sing in that real racist way because they're having the duck with the head on it.
Merlin: oh sure and like i i don't like being like feeling like micro observed let alone micromanaged in this case you could just have a hangout yeah you've got small plates and they never ask you is this your first time dining with us no they don't they don't uh they don't come back and say how's everybody doing how we doing how we doing over here i i want to live i want to live in a world
John: In a world where everything is good.
John: Nothing is garbage.
John: Things are priced accordingly.
John: If you want something that's nice and good, you have to pay more for the thing.
John: But you're not paying extra just because somebody waved their hands on it or because somebody heard about it.
John: I don't want to live in a world that's for snorks.
John: No.
John: But I don't want to live in a sequestered world.
John: What I want is the world to not be for snorks.
Merlin: A lot of our culture is snorks first culture.
John: Snorks first.
John: I ordered something on the company that is based here in Seattle that brings things to you in 24 hours.
John: Yeah, the Washington Delivery Company.
John: And the thing is I order something from them and it costs $20 and I feel like, ah, it's only $20.
John: And then it gets here and I'm like, oh, I needed the other thing.
John: And I order it and it comes in 24 hours more and it was only $20.
John: And little by little, $20 at a time, this company is –
John: sucking the life force out of everybody.
John: That's the truth I hate to hear, but you're right.
John: I ordered a thing last night because I had ordered a thing, and it came, and it needed another thing, and it was only $20, and so the second one was only $20, and I ordered it, and it was the final thing that made me feel like, oh, something desperate has just happened.
John: I have just ordered...
John: One $20 thing too many.
John: Huh, okay.
John: And you really felt it?
John: I felt a disturbance in the force.
John: I felt like millions of people all crying out at once.
John: Because I personally felt like I had gone too far.
John: And what it was, was I ordered some pillows.
John: Cases for pillows that could be outside in the rain.
John: Oh, yeah, like for an outside room.
John: For an outside room.
John: You know what they call it?
John: Yeah, an outside room.
John: I had some chairs that I sit on when I'm outside.
John: They needed some cushions.
John: But I knew that I was not going to bring the cushions in reliably.
John: So they needed to be able to be rained on.
John: And I ordered these things and they were advertised on this company's thing as pillows.
John: They got here and they were just pillowcases.
John: I needed pillows to put in the pillowcases.
Oh, really?
John: And so if I had read it carefully, although I'm pretty sure that it was worded in order to create this confusion, but if I'd read it, I would have said, order these pillowcases and pillows at the same time.
John: But I didn't.
John: So I had to go order the pillows now to have them delivered the following day.
John: And I just felt like, oh, I've done it.
John: I've gone over.
John: And I did feel like I had...
John: at the beginning of the year or the beginning of the month, you allot yourself a certain number of like, okay, I can order from this company this many times because they're the only ones that can do this particular thing that they do, which is get me something tomorrow to, to, to plug a hole to, you know, this is something I need desperately and, and I can't get it anywhere else.
John: And so I, I, I've allotted myself a number of get out of jail free cards, but now I'm in, now I've become a,
John: Someone who's just like, oh, just get it from the place and it'll be here tomorrow.
John: And it's totally me.
Merlin: Well, and I mean, no, I mean, I'm the I'm the biggest snark.
John: Well, but what I think my fear was that what it does, every dollar of snork money that you put into the snork machine creates more snorks.
Merlin: Yes.
John: Right?
John: It's not just that it makes these guys rich.
John: It's just that everybody – like the girl that I went on the date with that's like, oh, if chef doesn't want me to – if chef wants me to eat this oyster with a soup spoon, then that's what I'm going to do because that's what chef wants.
Yeah.
John: Behold my trolley.
John: I feel like it's on a spectrum of like more and more I am only able to get what Chef wants.
John: Right.
John: Because I'm empowering Chef every day by buying...
John: Little pillowcases from Chef because Chef's the only thing going.
John: Okay.
John: And the more I do it, the more I do that, then whoever it was, whoever the young woman was that was making pillowcases for outdoor patio furniture in a little –
John: storefront in a mini mall in North Seattle who had saved up her money and had bought this place and gotten an industrial sewing machine.
Merlin: And not every scarf maker is Kelly Deal.
Merlin: So Kelly Deal sold out because she's kind of a big deal.
Merlin: But somebody else out there, like the lady in that blockbuster documentary that sells scarf and things online, that's now becoming her primary hustle.
Merlin: And the thing is, the snorks are not going to go to her or, let's be honest, Kelly Deal.
Merlin: They're going to go to the Washington Delivery Company.
John: Like me.
John: It's just that I think that the gal up here in the mini mall with the sewing machine is going to have to find a way to get her pillowcases put on Big Snark.
John: Kelly Deal clearly has something else going on because she's not making scarves.
John: fast enough that it's a that this is her main source of income and you know from what i know about her which is to say a lot because i read all of the magazines during during a period of time yeah sure i uh i feel like whatever it is that she is doing on a day-to-day basis is even more interesting to me than i mean i would like to do a ride along with kelly deal like you would do on a chef's table but like in her in her car
John: Yeah, just be like, what are we doing today?
John: Kelly, what do you do?
John: She's like, well, I got to take these, you know, I got to take these hats over to the old folks home.
John: And then, you know, I apprentice with a cheese maker and then I'm doing some scarf work.
John: Oh, I love this.
John: Oh, that would be so great.
Merlin: You know, if you go to a Thai place and you say make it like you eat it, like be careful if you do that at a Thai restaurant.
Merlin: In this case, you're saying let's hop in your pinto and you show me the real deal.
John: Show me the real deal.
John: Show me the big deal.
Merlin: And so, via waiter, what did Chef say about your caper question?
Yeah.
John: In that moment, I looked at my date, who very, very definitely was looking down at her menu while saying this, was not looking at me.
John: She was still studying her menu because there were some mysteries that Chef had put on it that she hadn't discovered yet.
John: There were some one-word descriptions that –
John: of some miracle dish where a chef pulled a creature out of the ocean, threw it in a pot of boiling water, and put it on your plate.
John: Oh, I see.
Merlin: And next to the price line, it says AQ, right?
John: But no period.
John: No period.
John: And it was in italics.
John: She's staring at her menu real hard because she's just rebuked me and wants the world to know.
John: And I looked up at the waiter who's looking at me with a look of a professional waiter who...
John: Both isn't going to get into it, but also really appreciating that I was served by – Oh, as in you got served.
John: I got served.
John: And I said, I will pass on the steak tartare.
John: Thank you.
John: And so everybody wins, right?
John: I don't get –
John: steak tartare prepared a way that chef didn't intend so that's a buddhist gift if i could say i'm now i'm just i'm kind of interpolating here but i'm guessing that was not a long lived relationship after after the caper uh caper uh well what's interesting what's interesting about that particular relationship is it was one that evolved over over the course of several years it was just that there was never a um
John: You know, there was never a, there was definitely a beginning.
John: There was never really an end.
John: It was just a kind of, you know, it's like the wind whistling through the trees.
John: It's kind of, you know, it's like Spanish moss.
Merlin: But it could be a Buddhist gift in a situation like that.
Merlin: And I've heard a lot of people say this.
Merlin: I thought I invented this, but now other people do say this.
Merlin: You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat the Waytron.
Merlin: And let's be honest, sometimes you can learn a lot about a waitron by how they treat you.
Merlin: But if somebody tries to boss around somebody who's not in a position of power, that's real good to know.
Merlin: If you get somebody who castigates the barista because their name wasn't spelled right.
Merlin: Actually, it's Douglas.
Merlin: The H is silent.
Merlin: And you're like, oh, wow, I'm not going to hire you.
Merlin: You're a bad person.
Merlin: And in this instance, if you know there's somebody who's going to privilege the history of chef above the future of John, that's good to know.
John: That's a Buddhist gift.
Yeah.
John: Except the problem is that in your analogy, I may be the bad customer.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: In her opinion and perhaps in the waiter's opinion and perhaps in a great many of our listeners' opinions, my desire to have the steak tartare without capers is in fact the position of like disgusting.
John: It's what Maloy would call gauche.
John: Gosheness, precisely.
John: And not only gauche, but that I would take umbrage at it is not only further gosheness, but is this kind of what you're saying, the person at the barista who's like, uh, you know, like everything.
John: I'm absolutely certain there is someone listening to the show who believes that I was not only wrong to ask, but wrong to be offended.
John: And also my day was a hero.
Merlin: Okay, I'm going to learn from that.
John: That's an interesting POV.
John: And so in that, and the thing is, like in so many things in life, I cannot say for sure that they are wrong.
John: I know.
John: Because the culture has changed, and I've been here for the whole time.
John: It's like you put a lobster in a pot of boiling water, you put a frog in a frying pan or whatever, and the heat goes up and you're like, I don't, that's sure warm in here.
John: Especially if the chef's a scorpion.
Merlin: It's really something to think about.
Merlin: I don't know, John.
Merlin: You've opened the door, and now I'm thinking about it.
Merlin: I feel like I remember hearing it.
Merlin: I think I told you before that as a child, I was very lonely.
Merlin: I was a lonely latchkey child, and I read a lot of books.
Merlin: Sometimes books we had around the house, sometimes books at the library.
Merlin: But for some reason, we had a couple books on etiquette, like hardcover books, one of which was illustrated by a young Andy Warhol, as it turns out.
Merlin: But we had Emily, was it Amy Vanderbilt?
John: Emily Post.
John: Emily Post and Marilyn.
John: Marilyn Vos Savant.
John: No, it wasn't Marilyn Vos Savant.
John: It was Miss Manners.
John: Brady's Bits.
John: Miss Manners.
Merlin: Something like that.
Merlin: Yeah, Judith Chautner, I think her name was.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Anyhow, I remember reading those and like, you know, I'm the opposite of J.D.
Merlin: Vance.
Merlin: Like, I'm incredibly curious about what the forks are for.
Merlin: And I want to know like, but then I remember some years after that and learning how to like, you know, that's where I first learned how to stand up.
Merlin: when a lady arrives out or leaves the table.
Merlin: I still do that, even though it's probably sexist.
Merlin: I do it for anybody, really.
Merlin: If anybody comes in the room, I always do that.
Merlin: And I try not to look askance to the people who don't because maybe they weren't lonely.
Merlin: They were extroverts who didn't need books, you know, illustrated by Andy Warhol.
Merlin: But then I learned one day a truism that I know you know, which is that etiquette is not something that we deploy to make other people feel bad.
Merlin: Etiquette, more if you like manners, in a more, as you say, rustic way,
Merlin: is a way that we put people at ease.
Merlin: If everybody knows what fork to you, there's nothing to worry about.
Merlin: But also, in the same way that I think every cook could learn from the phrase, never explain, never worry, I think you could also learn from the phrase, just be cool.
Merlin: That's a good phrase.
Merlin: Be cool.
Merlin: Make people feel welcome.
Merlin: And the worst kind of fancy restaurant is the fancy restaurant that's performing how fancy they are.
Merlin: Now, I know a lot of people are mad at French Laundry these days because of Gavin Newsom.
Merlin: But the truth is, the time that I went to French Laundry, it began as I've been once.
Merlin: And it began as one of the most fraught experiences you could imagine.
Merlin: I was terrified something would go wrong.
Merlin: I've never been put so at ease by the staff of a restaurant ever.
Merlin: Because like a good, quote unquote, fancy restaurant, like a good restaurant, they'll do everything they can to make you feel good.
Merlin: They'll adjust to you.
Merlin: If they realize that you bristle, you bristle when the waitron says, how we doing?
Merlin: Or stoops down in a very undignified way.
Merlin: They don't do that.
Merlin: They modulate.
Merlin: I made a joke, John.
Merlin: I made a really bad dad joke about all the salt.
Merlin: mentioned on the menu and as a bit the waiter happened to go went to the kitchen got a book and brought it back but not in a throat in my face way but in a funny playing with me in the space way that's a french laundry space for many years considering the best restaurant in america and my god it's such a difference but when you go someplace where it is like the david mitchell like fancy waiter thing it's just yeah but that's not exactly what you're describing here you're looking at this as a teachable moment is that right you're still pondering was i the snork
John: I'm pondering because this is exactly the question, right?
John: Here I am.
John: I'm in a restaurant.
John: Now, am I paying for – there is a calibration.
John: There should be a sign at the door of every restaurant that's kind of like fire danger today, right?
John: Fire danger.
John: Oh, that's a good idea.
John: Like they post outside the parks.
John: But it should be a sign that says –
John: Am I paying to have what I want or am I paying to be guided by the master to something I did not know I wanted?
John: Right.
John: And every restaurant and kind of every consumer – not every consumer, but not every consumer experience, but every experience where you are –
Merlin: um because you said earlier right you've had you've had uh you've had bacon and eggs that belonged in a museum my irish breakfast yesterday i don't know how those people do it how do you keep the home fries delicious i try to make home fries at home and it's always a disaster because i'm not chef but what i'm saying is how do you keep the home fries or the bacon good and while you're making poached eggs poached eggs for me it's like everybody get out of the house i need to concentrate
John: Yeah, me too.
John: I'm 100%.
John: If I'm in a kitchen and I'm doing, like if I'm making a white sauce.
John: Not a problem.
John: I want you, and by you I mean everyone else in the house, to go stand in the front yard.
John: You call a bechamel alert.
John: Go stand in the front yard.
John: Don't touch my roux.
John: And hold your hats in your hands until I am done with this sauce.
John: Because I don't want you walking around.
John: I don't want the refrigerator opening behind me.
John: No, John, this is where the phrase comes from.
Merlin: It's an active working area.
Merlin: Don't put your empty fresca can where daddy's going to slice the roast.
Merlin: Just because it's setting up doesn't mean that's now become a garbage can.
Merlin: It's an active working area.
John: This is an active working area.
John: It's an active working area.
John: Don't put your wallet there.
John: This is inside the fence, not outside the fence.
John: You stand outside the fence.
John: Yeah, in a peripheral way.
John: Go outside while I bechamel.
John: Chef is busy.
John: All of us have eaten three meals a day, presumably, if we're lucky, or in my case, one meal every day or so.
John: For most of our lives, we eat in restaurants.
John: Even the ones of us who have eaten in the fewest number of restaurants have eaten in restaurants.
John: And all of these meals, all of these preparations, all of these times, day in and day out, I understand that there is a religiosity that's kind of been...
John: reverse engineered into eating by contemporary culture that's looking for meeting.
John: Like we've turned back toward eating and toward these basic things and imbued them with tremendous significance where probably for 25,000 years, the only significance was that some food made it to you.
John: Yeah, I found something that didn't make me sick or kill me.
John: And now it's all back to, you know, now we're all on bended knee about it because food or whatever is the latest thing.
John: But somewhere in this – there are multiple axes, right?
John: Like is this – am I paying extra money for this to be incredible and so therefore in paying extra money, I also have less say in it?
John: Like yes, at a certain point.
John: You don't go into French laundry and say, can you put cheese on it?
Right.
John: Or as you say, fromage.
John: Or fromage.
John: But at the same time, are you going into a situation like I've done in a lot of Seattle restaurants where you end up getting food that you don't want?
John: And I think the answer to that from a lot of people would be like, well, then don't go to this restaurant.
John: Or if you want cheese on it, just go to Denny's.
Merlin: And you use that phrase, the wonderful phrase, category error, which is such a great phrase you taught me.
Merlin: But one element of that category error is thinking, for example, that you could go to see a Broadway show and jump up on stage and participate in the show.
Merlin: Or that you could, at intermission, you could ask to speak with the writer because you had some notes.
Merlin: You're there to appreciate the performance.
Merlin: You don't get to go to MoMA and doodle on the Demoiselles of Avignon, although people in France did.
Merlin: That's a different story.
Merlin: That's why they're Demoiselles.
Merlin: But you'll follow, like that's a category error, is misunderstanding what this is.
Merlin: And so like if you go, I mean, let's put an extreme example.
Merlin: Well, this is how the whole set the place on fire discussion started at the place, by the way, where we got Irish breakfast the other day.
Merlin: When I go in there and I say, I want a cheeseburger and hold it between your knees and don't put anything on there because it's for a kid.
Merlin: And if they put stuff on the cheeseburger at the diner, you've been there.
Merlin: They put cheese on, they put all this crap on the diner.
Merlin: Like I'm going to have to deal with that.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That's that's much less of an Alexander Hamilton and a lot more of a kid's burger.
Merlin: That's the category error is like you go in somewhere and, you know, you brought it you brought a knife to a Patois fight.
John: And I think food is the what makes it confusing is that like so many things and and and we've discussed this a lot in terms of my feelings about computer math.
Mm hmm.
John: is that there's this spectrum of things where –
John: A thing that formerly was a trade became a profession.
John: What used to be a job has become a career.
John: Right.
John: What used to be a craft has become an art.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Yes.
John: And there are a lot of things, and cooking is like this.
John: It went from a trade to a profession to an art.
Right.
John: And yet all of these things exist simultaneously.
John: And there's a restaurant here where the guy thinks of cooking as a trade.
John: And right across the street in what used to be a typewriter repair place, there's a restaurant where the person back in the kitchen is certain that it's an art.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And both places are serving poached eggs.
John: Uh-huh.
John: And as a consumer or as a person in the world who's trying to navigate these things, you know, like I know that when someone's doing graphic art for me commercially, like I'm working on an album cover with them, there are some people that when you hire them, like I was thinking about the Long Winter's music video for Fire Island, which is a music video that breaks my heart because we spent a lot of money on it.
John: It was an opportunity to make a music video that –
John: that would be on youtube for the rest of my life that i would look at and go wow you should see my video and instead it turned into a video that i that i that i don't i don't like to watch and i and i hope no one ever watches just because it's not very becoming it's not very flattering that's such a bummer to feel that way when we when people were pitching videos to us in that moment there was a guy somewhere who pitched me this music video for fire island
John: That was his, he was, it was going to be a stop motion thing where somebody, you know, some crazy guy in a room was building a house of tissue paper and the house got, and he had this whole vision for the thing.
John: And the vision was of a, he was going to tell a story in a music video that had zero, zero, zero relationship to the song.
John: Right.
John: Um, and my feeling in reading his treatment, which was, which was cool and fascinating.
John: was that he had just come up with this treatment and was pitching it to everybody that had a music video budget.
John: Oh, right.
John: Okay.
John: Because this song couldn't have inspired this treatment.
John: The treatment has nothing to do with the song.
John: But what was crazy was that if you had added one little thing to his video treatment, it would have the big house of tissue paper built inside a warehouse by a stop motion crazy person.
John: would have told the story of the song fire island alaska and i wrote him back very excited and was like hey this is fantastic if you just had the final card say you know uh or whatever if you just had if you if you change the color of the thing from green to blue
John: then this whole thing would just be like incredibly symbolic.
Merlin: You felt like a relatively minor note that takes it from, if I'm understanding, a relatively minor note or a request that takes it from something that you really, you couldn't do anything with to, this is like weirdly perfect if we just do this one thing.
John: Weirdly perfect.
John: And he wrote back and he was like, this is my vision.
John: And, you know,
John: It's like an all or nothing situation.
John: Like, no input from the art.
John: He loves putting those capers on.
John: And this wasn't, you know, it wasn't Jim Jaramouche.
John: It was some guy that was making music videos for indie rock bands, you know?
John: Yeah.
John: But this was his idea of himself.
John: And of the purity of his vision.
John: And I was like, well, I'm going to go with my friend Bex then who's going to make a music video.
John: Bex Schwartz?
John: Bex Schwartz.
John: Bex Schwartz.
John: He's the director of Fire Island Alaska.
John: That's Bex on the internet sometimes.
John: Yeah, and Bex is wonderful and a wonderful friend.
John: And it was just the way that everything panned out.
John: in the making of that video that, and, and a lot, and I attribute a lot of its failure to me personally as a performer, um, because I just didn't, I don't know what to do when there's a camera on me, but you know, like that, that was, that was an event in my life where it felt like if I could go back and hand the video off to that kid and let him do whatever the hell he wanted with no input from me,
John: I still was so, I just objected fundamentally to his like no input, his very kind of curt email in reply.
Merlin: John, there's a completely different scale, but it's not really so different from my experience with the man in the van, what sharpens knives, where I was like, well, just based on this, I bent over backwards to be like an easy to deal with guy.
Merlin: And you came back at me with this weird thing.
Merlin: And it's like, that's not a good sign.
Merlin: So like, I totally understand because if you feel like, like you don't want to get worked by somebody, but it's nice if they could collaborate with you a little bit, take some notes.
Merlin: And like you say, it's not, I mean, you know, what did you go to NYU?
Merlin: You're out there.
Merlin: You're like a regular Scorsese.
Merlin: Like it's a music video.
Merlin: Relax.
Yeah.
John: Somewhere on the – like as a trade goes to a profession, like right on.
John: You're no longer a drafts person.
John: You're now an architect, right?
John: As a craft goes from a craft to an art, like right on.
John: You used to make scarves and now your scarves are hanging in MoMA and like I celebrate you.
John: Now you're a textile artist.
John: But in this, somewhere from the trade all the way through to the art, and this is like video game designers, right?
John: Like I would have always considered video game designers as something that you did, that you learned to do at the career center because you weren't going to graduate.
John: And so you went over to the career center.
John: As you fall back.
John: You got into video game designing.
Merlin: If you couldn't become a chiropodist, you could always make PS2 games.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: It was like you're going to be a landscaper or you could take this class over.
John: Oh, I see.
Merlin: You're not a lawnmower, man.
Merlin: You're a landscaper.
John: Yeah.
John: Landscape.
John: Yeah.
John: But but but somehow now, you know, being a video game designer.
John: is uh like the they're the new da vincis and they and we you know and we we we clothe them in ermine um and and it's like and the thing is i've been standing here in the world the whole time the world has gone past and i've and i'm just i'm my shoes have been size 12 since 1986 yep so i'm wearing the same boots
John: But the world shifts around here and I still sometimes walk into a restaurant and go, can you put cheese on it?
John: When it's clear that chef is taking me on a journey because it's not on the sign out front.
John: Right.
John: And then you just hold it between your knees.
John: Because they're both on a mini mall.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: I wish I didn't know what you're talking about, but I do.
Merlin: And on top of it all, I've got my thoughts, just like you have your thoughts, but you're absolutely right.
Merlin: What did I miss?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And is it anything that I need to stop missing?
John: Right.
John: I don't want to be a snork on either end of it.
John: No.
John: The thing about canless is it is
John: It's the nicest restaurant in Seattle and it was in 1959 because it is cantilevered mid-century modern architecture perched on a cliff overlooking the bay with light fixtures hand hammered out of John Wayne's yacht.
John: Yeah, Virgin Zank and stuff probably.
John: When you pull into the parking lot, you know you're in the nicest restaurant in Seattle.
Merlin: That can be an exciting feeling.
John: When I pull into a mini mall that's got, you know, like a pizza delivery spot, a nail salon, a restaurant that's called the Beaver, the Badger, and the Buckwheat.
John: And then, you know.
John: The Beaver, the Badger, and what?
John: And the Buckwheat.
Merlin: The Beaver, the Badger, and they got that X on there with the forks.
John: There's an X and there are no prices on the menu.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And then there's like a...
John: Like a blown out former nail salon that now has four Aeron chairs in it and a bunch of people with headsets on.
John: And they're either doing sex talk.
John: Or they might be talking to video game developers.
John: One of them is a CEO and the other is a CFO.
John: Jesus Christ, the mall has changed.
John: I can't believe how this mall has changed.
John: Well, and that's the thing.
John: Which one of these do I go into?
John: I want something from all of them.
Merlin: Well, obviously, you're the idiot, John.
Merlin: Figure it out.
Merlin: I'm the dum-dum.
Merlin: You're the dum-dum.
Merlin: You're the perma-snork wearing those old boots.
Merlin: And you come in here?
Merlin: You come into my restaurant experience?
Merlin: You come into my typewriter cafe, and you don't want capers?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, so I reach into my pocket.
John: I pull out my paper crown.
John: I walk into the place.
John: I sit down and say, you know, I'm here at table.
John: What does chef want?
Yeah.
John: Thank you, chef.
Merlin: The name of the restaurant is House of Nanking.
John: Oh, House of Nanking.