Ep. 429: "The January Project"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: How are you?
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Yeah, the tone keeps changing, but I like it.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Yes, if we do this the right way, it will not be offensive in a way that how you say specific group no like.
Merlin: No, it can be anybody.
Merlin: It's a good deal for you, phone charger.
Merlin: Happy belated Father's Day, John.
Merlin: Oh, thank you, Merlin.
Merlin: Many blessings of the day to all who celebrate.
Merlin: I'm thinking about becoming a guy who says shit like that.
John: Yeah, that's nice.
Merlin: Many blessings for all who celebrate.
Merlin: And even though I'm not a Jewish person, I think I'm just going to start seeing Mazel a lot online.
Merlin: Oh, Mazel online.
Merlin: Mazel online.
Merlin: Check out my new site.
John: Yeah, I mean, I'm not online, so I don't know how you people do.
Merlin: Okay, listen, I got a lot to talk about.
Merlin: You're not sneaking at all, you don't sneak?
No.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Did you actually delete stuff?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Like apps, I mean.
Merlin: Nope, nope, nope.
Merlin: I mean, it's all there.
Merlin: Oh, it's a cigarette on a doorway, la, la, la.
John: I haven't heard – I haven't – so I've got a little thing on my phone.
John: You know how you put your apps into a little folder.
John: And I put a little folder that was called –
John: Uh, something like, uh, like pain corridor.
John: No, so social dump, I think is what I called it.
John: Social dump.
John: And, uh, and that's what I, so I dumped all my social is dumped.
John: And that's where that is.
John: But I have not – I'm sorry.
Merlin: Was this part of your omnibus project to – I'm going to call it John's January project.
John: Yeah, it was John's January project.
John: And there is nothing to be gained by me going on the internet.
John: Particularly social media.
Merlin: That really constitutes what your job is at this point mostly.
Yeah.
John: I mean, there's just nothing there that is going to make me feel better than not.
John: Oh, sing it, sister.
John: And so, you know, like the other day, what was I doing?
John: Oh, so I'm trying to do – I'm trying to get this apartment for my mom.
John: An apartment for your mom?
John: Yeah, my mom has been living on Capitol Hill this whole time.
John: And we've all moved to the suburbs.
John: And she's just not conveniently located.
Merlin: She's still very independent, but the family and her participation in it, I have to guess, is a big part of all of your lives.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And what happens is we get around an hour before dusk, which right now, because we live in the north, is like 9.45 or something.
John: But in the winter, it's 4.00.
John: And he gets around dusk and she's like, well, I'd better get home.
John: I don't like driving after dark.
John: Sure.
John: And so there's no chance of having dinner together.
John: There's no chance of any kind of – Yeah, it's just far enough.
Merlin: Isn't that a funny thing in life?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's a weird – and you're probably not like this.
Merlin: You're wired so differently.
Merlin: But I do feel like – I do have this larger theory about how –
Merlin: The amount of resistance it takes to unconsciously stop doing something is really easy.
Merlin: And there are these weird lines you don't realize until you've crossed them where it's like, oh, like for me, an obvious one, like, oh, want to come to a party in Oakland on Tuesday night?
Merlin: And it's like, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: No, so many no's.
Merlin: But like even during lockdown, I got some thoughts about this.
Merlin: There's certain kinds of things that became so easy and so difficult.
Merlin: You have to really like pause and go like, is this just enough resistance to screw up our deal?
Merlin: And we're not going to realize it until it's already become fraught.
Merlin: It would be nice for her to have an apartment nearer to you.
Merlin: She could dine with the family.
Merlin: And then in her mind, you say like, okay, I'm okay driving this amount.
John: You know, during the time that I lived at the farm, which was 11 years or whatever, we started to orient ourselves toward the south end of Seattle, which is typically not where we –
John: We're oriented.
John: When I bought the farm, I was driving around neighborhoods that I'd never been to.
John: And I didn't think there were neighborhoods in Seattle I'd never been to.
John: But I didn't know where I was.
John: I was like, how did I even get – I know where that is.
John: I know where that is.
Merlin: But where am I?
Merlin: When I looked at the house I've been in for 20 years, my friend Michael, who I think you've met, my dear pal, said –
Merlin: And he didn't usually say stuff like this, but he said – and he became like my guide to getting situated in San Francisco.
Merlin: And he was like, no, it's too far away.
Merlin: I was like, what do you mean?
Merlin: He says, it's not near the beer.
Merlin: Like you're too far away.
Merlin: It's exactly the kind of thing that your mom and you are kind of going through where it's like, yeah, it's all in the same town.
Merlin: But there's a big difference between I can like walk to this Walgreens versus I can take a bus to that Walgreens.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: And I wasn't near the beer.
Merlin: And it worked out okay because at that point I was less beer inclined.
Merlin: But I do think – I think that's a big deal.
Merlin: And does she want to have a place situated in such a way?
Merlin: Well, this is the weird thing.
Merlin: It's very independent, John.
John: Yeah.
John: For many years, she was the one that was directing the energy toward the great town of Burien, Washington.
John: And Burien, Washington is not what you would have ever called a great town.
John: Burien, Washington is a town –
John: That's just one of these towns that had a hardware store and a drugstore and a little store that sold model trains.
John: And an inaccessible library and a couple of groceries.
Merlin: An inaccessible library?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Was it like a skills challenge for somebody in an assistive device?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And then there was an Italian – That would be a terrible reality show.
Merlin: Tonight on Inaccessible Library.
Merlin: Well, you know, all the libraries have been torn down.
John: The libraries out here have all been torn – the inaccessible ones have either all been torn down and replaced with very accessible libraries.
John: Comically accessible.
John: Or the ones that are like Carnegie libraries, which we have several of.
John: are now these like legacy libraries where you kind of tiptoe around them and then you go to the accessible library.
Merlin: Oh, I get it.
Merlin: They're sort of grandfathered in.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like with the historical place, you're like, you're not going to change like the New York Public Library with the Lions.
Merlin: You're not going to turn the steps between the Lions into like a super long ramp.
John: No, it's going to be something else.
John: And there's at least one of the Carnegie libraries has been turned into a brew pub, as you can imagine.
John: Oh, that's nice.
John: It's the future for all libraries.
Merlin: Well, you got to earn – they had to put in a really, really janky aftermarket elevator.
Merlin: I say elevator.
Merlin: A lift, if you like, at our KFC.
Merlin: KFC near our house with all the pigeons.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And they have an outside, they had to install an outside lift.
Merlin: And I'm glad that, you know, they made it accessible, but it was made in such a way that there's no way somebody's getting up these little, even like, you know, eight, nine, 10 steps to get inside.
Merlin: So they had to put this really weird, it looks almost like a vertical dishwasher.
Merlin: It just puts you up a little bit.
Merlin: There's a secret creaky door they let you in with.
Merlin: And you're like, hey, finally, KFC access, which is important because accessibility helps everybody.
Merlin: Well, that was – Carnegie.
Merlin: Is Carnegie based there?
Merlin: Is this the steel guy?
John: Yeah.
John: He just – he went around – I mean this is something I should probably do an omnibus on.
John: But he funded the construction of libraries across the United States as part of his belief –
John: Which lasted 100 years.
John: It was a belief in America that lasted 120 years.
Merlin: I thought Scottish people – maybe because he's an immigrant.
Merlin: I thought Scottish people didn't like books.
John: Well, they believed that they could make a better world by educating people.
John: Thank you.
John: Now, we no longer believe that.
Merlin: No.
John: Because we've seen over and over that it doesn't work.
John: But anyway, my mom – so Burien is one of these towns that's got a family-run Italian restaurant that has like not super good –
John: food but everybody still goes there because it's every town every town has three and then this one burion right you're you're you're already ahead of me there's a competing one that everybody that the old people are like all the kids would come home because they wanted they obviously they want to go to fsu they go they go let's say they go to canesville
Merlin: And then when they come home, they're always like, oh, let's go to like, you know, Papa Douche or whatever.
Merlin: And it's this one place that makes that like amusement park pizza.
Merlin: It's basically just like that's made of sauce on matzah or whatnot.
Merlin: Or like in our neighborhood, we've got these crazy overpriced Italian restaurants that suck.
Merlin: But it's where everybody goes.
Merlin: And you're saying in Burien, that's a destination for third tier competing restaurants.
John: Yeah, there's two.
John: And in Anchorage, there was, you know, I was a Sorrento's guy.
John: And then there were families that were Romano's people.
John: Okay.
John: And I only ate at Romano's a couple of times in my whole life because I felt like I was cheating on my girlfriend.
John: I was a Sorrento.
John: We ate at Sorrento's.
John: That is very real.
John: Yeah.
John: When I go back to Alaska now, we always go to Sorrento's at least once.
John: I don't even know if Romanos is still there.
John: And you know what?
John: If they tore down Romanos to build a space station or something, I wouldn't shed a single tear over Romanos.
John: But Sorrento's, if Sorrento's ever closed, I mean.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: It's like somebody takes a early chapter out of an important book in your life.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like you feel unmoored.
Merlin: When I go on, I do Google Street View to go.
Merlin: I had to fact check a joke.
Merlin: And I was looking at Google Street View of the place where the department store that my dad worked for, the McDonald's that was my McDonald's, this sort of like proto strip mall where my mom's real estate place was, all on this like quarter of a mile area on North Bend Road.
Merlin: And like I look at it now and I'm like, oh, shit.
Merlin: It's like when you just find out that somebody you went to high school with is in their 50s.
Merlin: And you're like, how's that person in their 50s?
Merlin: You're like, well, you've always been the same age.
Merlin: But now you go there and you're like, oh, it's just as fucked up and stupid looking.
Merlin: It doesn't look like the quaint, remember the brown paneled McDonald's?
Merlin: Remember the classics where you go in with your report card?
Merlin: That kind of thing.
Merlin: I was there when they debuted the Egg McMuffin.
Merlin: And now it's just all, it's all, it's like check cashing places and shit.
Merlin: It breaks my heart.
John: I remember my first Chicken McNuggets.
John: We went in and it was like, what are these incredible things?
John: What is this?
John: It's like a little puck.
Merlin: Oh my God, how did they do it?
Merlin: John, I'm sorry, I need to write this down.
Merlin: Please tell me again, what are the names?
Merlin: I want to make sure I get this right for Cannon, as my daughter says.
Merlin: The restaurants, this is not in Burien, but we're talking about Anne Romano.
John: In Anchorage, Sorrento's and Romano's.
John: Did I ever tell you the Sorrento's story?
John: I was like, I was in fifth grade,
John: This is back when my dad would sometimes say, like, I've got a thing.
John: He's back.
John: You'll be fine.
John: I'll be home at some point.
John: What?
John: And I would go, okay, all right.
John: He would say, you know, I'll be home.
John: I guess I'll have a couple of guys.
John: And so it was a summer.
John: It was summer.
John: And, you know, this was at a time, of course, when nobody gave kids anything to do in the summer.
Merlin: And you weren't allowed to watch TV.
Merlin: It was brutal.
John: Right.
John: But, you know, I was out collecting polywogs and, I don't know, shooting off bottle rockets, whatever kids do in the summer in my cutoff shorts.
John: And I knew that dad wasn't going to come home.
John: Because he had a thing.
John: There were some guys.
John: He might have gotten in an airplane and gone somewhere.
John: It's a good chicken with the mechanic.
John: And so I was at a certain point, it was like, oh, I'm going to need dinner.
John: And you know what I really want?
John: I want a pizza.
John: I want pizza.
John: How old are you at this point?
John: I'm in fifth grade, sixth grade.
John: Oh, my goodness.
John: And I'm like, I want a pizza.
John: And so I went.
John: I went to my room or whatever and I turned over my piggy bank and I had this big pile of dollar bills and change and so forth and I put it all into a leather poke or whatever kids do with their money.
John: And I walked up to the corner and – this was like –
John: not the corner i had gone i had to go up on fireweed lane and walk down fireweed a ways over you know and sorrento's was right across from the fireweed theater you know i was in the town now i was in the city carrying my polka gold and i went into sorrento's and it was the you know it was the sun was still in the sky which it's alaska in the summer so it could have been any time between 7 p.m and and 2 a.m okay but i walk in and there's a
John: like a bar there inside the door.
John: This is when, this is before Serenos expanded when it was just a one, a one storefront, well, with the place.
John: And sitting at the bar, there's like five mustache Pete's.
John: Okay.
John: Five guys with big mustaches sitting there.
Merlin: Probably guys with real calloused hands.
John: Well, yeah, but, you know, like your classic, you know, hey, kind of Italian guys.
John: Oh, Mustache Peter.
John: I get it.
John: Yeah, like, you know, like real, real looking – the kind of Italian guy that if you put him on a poster –
John: The poster would be from the 50s.
Merlin: Oh, it got kind of a Sacco and Vansetti vibe.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
John: Okay.
John: And so I walk in and there's a woman at the cash register and I say, how much is a small pepperoni pizza?
John: And she says $5 or whatever it was.
John: This is 1978.
John: Sure.
John: And I turn over my little poke of gold and I shake it out and I'm sitting there counting out my quarters and
John: And I don't remember what I had, $4.50.
John: Oh, God.
Merlin: Nothing sadder than watching somebody count coins in public.
Merlin: And I'm just, you know, I'm a 10-year-old, right?
Merlin: Well, still, it's, yeah.
John: And I'm like, oh.
John: And I'm sitting there like, 50 cents is no small amount of money.
Mm-mm.
John: And I am short.
John: And I had gone – this is like I'm about to put down five American dollars on this pizza.
John: But I'm feeling very independent right now.
John: This is the kind of – this is maybe the first meal I went and tried to buy myself in a restaurant.
John: Man, that's so cool.
John: And I'm standing there and I'm like – I'm not putting on a sad face or anything.
John: I'm like – I'm trying to think like is there a lawn I could mow?
John: Like I've read in books that you could offer to wash the dishes.
Right.
John: But I'm not sure I'm ready to go all the way in.
John: And the woman's kind of looking at me.
John: And a guy down at the end of the bar, black hair, slicked back, big black mustache.
John: But he's like the big one.
John: He's young and strong.
John: He's not one of the 60-year-olds.
John: He's like a 35-year-old.
John: He stands up and he goes, how much is a kid a short?
Yeah.
John: And the lady says, Chef Boyardee, can I drink?
John: The lady says, 50 cents.
John: And he says, hey, it's on me.
John: Hey, that's a little good boss.
John: Get him the pizza pie.
John: And I'm like, what?
John: And he says.
John: He comes over.
John: He starts rocking the tarantulas.
John: He puts his hand in my hair and he shakes.
John: He like roughs up my hair.
Merlin: I love mustache Peter.
Merlin: What a guy.
John: Hey, you're a good kid.
John: Hey, a bambino.
John: Have a pizza.
John: Huh?
John: Huh?
John: Look at you.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I make it myself.
John: Just throwing the dough in the air.
John: And all the guys, you know, all the guys sitting at the bar like, aha, look at the kid.
Merlin: What did you have to say?
Merlin: I got my food.
Yeah.
John: And I am so thrilled.
Merlin: What a nice moment.
Merlin: That's a great moment.
John: I'm flying, you know, because these are like, God, these are ethnic guys, you know.
John: These guys are from, like, the world.
John: They're really from the world.
John: Hearts gravel, yeah.
John: And this guy's, this might be Mr. Sorrento, or maybe it's Mr. Sorrento's son.
Merlin: I don't know.
John: Señor Sorrento, he's my father.
John: But they make me this pizza and they put a small pepperoni in a box and they send me out the door and I walk home and eat that pizza like in triumph.
John: And I have never intentionally ordered a pizza from any other restaurant in Anchorage.
John: But Sorrento's from that day in 1970.
John: You imprinted on it.
John: It was where we went for my birthday.
John: It was where we went when I came home from college.
John: It was where we – it was what – if I was a good boy –
John: I would get a – we would order Sorrento's.
John: It was like the – it was the reward.
John: It was the prize.
Merlin: Well, it's one of those things where like – I don't know.
Merlin: This gives me a warm feeling, these kinds of things.
Merlin: And I treasure just the dumb bullshit in life so much.
Merlin: It's just the best.
Merlin: It's one of those things where if you said to somebody, hey, should we have a pizza party?
Merlin: Should we get some pizza?
Merlin: Nobody has to go, well, which of these 11 pizza places should we go to?
Merlin: Or when you need a pair of nice shoes, you always go to the same place.
Merlin: I realize this is real normie, but I think that stuff is nice.
Merlin: I think it's important for families and families.
Merlin: And people to have that.
Merlin: It's just there's something – I mean it doesn't have to be about commerce.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It could be just a certain park or whatever or a certain like all those traditions you have in your family, things you say, things you do.
Merlin: I love that stuff so much.
Merlin: So this is Sorrento's?
John: Sorrento's.
John: Sorrento's Pizzeria.
Yeah.
John: Are they still around?
John: Do you know?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I was there when we went back when we were in Alaska in January.
Merlin: Will there still Mustache Peters there or has that changed?
John: It's the same.
John: They expanded at some point in the early 80s.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: You said as much.
Merlin: They went two store.
John: They went two widths.
Merlin: Two widths.
Merlin: And they did the thing where they –
John: You know, they painted like a Trump noir on the wall with like hanging grapes and some scenes from Vesuvius and Little Pompeii.
Merlin: I love that.
Merlin: Oh, La Rosa's on Cheviot Road, they used to have a really nice, they had big oil over the jukebox with the John Travolta songs.
Merlin: They had two big portraits of like gladiator guys painted.
Merlin: Yes, gladiators.
Merlin: I love those booths.
Merlin: You got to do two, three slides to get all the way in.
John: Well, this was big booths and I don't think they have Chianti bottles with the – Oh, with the wax on them.
John: With wax on them because I think they went a little bit classier than that.
Merlin: Looks to me like Sorrento's – maybe they've got – I want to say it looks like escargot.
Merlin: They've got different pizzas and they've got – it looks like they've got plates or secondi or whatever.
Merlin: Oh, see, see, see.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I don't know how to say it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I know one listener is just going to be loving this.
John: The thing about Sorrento's is this is not where pizza for the table as an actual power move originated.
John: As a gastronic technology.
John: But this is where my family...
Merlin: developed the everybody wants pizza so we get a pizza and then you order your entree okay i see i understand this is you know the john the baptist to your jesus this is that a sort of like well who's this for and it was before the age of like getting out nothing else be bad and get fries kind of like for the table i see what you're saying it's it's not exactly an appetizer it's a first course for the table it's a thing
John: We're all going to have a slice of pizza.
John: And the thing is no one ever in history, no one ever threw leftover pizza away.
John: Oh, they say they won't have a piece.
Merlin: They'll have a slice.
John: Don't worry about that.
John: Yeah, they'll have a slice and then you put the rest in a box.
John: It's not going to go to waste.
No.
John: But pizza for the table, of course, is a later technology where you walk into a restaurant and you just take the person at the front of the side and you say, let's just get a pepperoni.
Merlin: John, I don't even know where to begin in terms of the thought technology you've introduced to, well, initially our audience, but really that have made its way into the world.
Merlin: And I get notes.
Merlin: I probably get 50 notes a day from people telling me how it changed their game.
Merlin: To order, walk in, first thing you do before you even sit down, you order pizza for the table.
Merlin: Get a pepperoni pizza for the table.
John: Let's get a pepperoni for the table.
John: All right, can we get that going?
John: While everybody else is like trying to figure out how to get their coats off, you've already got a pizza going.
John: You're already winning dinner.
John: But the thing about Burien is it's got these two competing Italian restaurants.
John: And honestly, neither of them are good.
John: Now, I don't know.
John: At Sorrento's, I would get, you know, because my dad was always a half and half guy.
John: He would say, you know, I'll get a half and half.
John: Oh, that's a lawyer.
Merlin: Am I right?
Merlin: It's a lawyer.
Merlin: Instead of arguing about cheese, instead of ordering three pizzas, instead of like... Wait a minute.
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: Fuck me, John.
Merlin: Your dad, later in life, wasn't he a mediator?
John: He was, yes.
Merlin: Wasn't it one of his jobs to take two people who couldn't work it out on their own and figure out what to do?
Merlin: He did that through his whole career.
Merlin: He's the real Solomon.
John: Do you know what a half and half is?
John: Do you know what a half and half is?
Merlin: I assume it's the kind of thing where they charge – you know what?
Merlin: They give you the scrooge because they charge you extra.
Merlin: But like say you got a kid and the kid legit really does just want cheese.
Merlin: And then somebody else wants anchovies and jalapenos.
Merlin: I thought that's what you meant.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
John: No, no, no.
John: This isn't about pizza.
John: My dad never had a slice of pizza in his life.
John: Pizza?
John: Pizza is for the, I don't know who pizza's for.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: The guys with the mustaches who installed a marble.
John: Yeah, yeah, I get it.
John: Pizza is some kind of food that they brought over our boat.
Merlin: He's happy to represent the people who eat pizza, but he's not going to become one of them.
John: No, half and half.
John: All you say is half and half.
John: And what the waitress brings you is half ravioli, half spaghetti and meat sauce.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Is that on the menu or is that considered off menu?
John: This is just what you say in an old style Italian restaurant.
John: Call it a mezzo mezzo.
John: Can I get a half and half?
John: And the woman like licks the end of her pencil and she writes it down on a pad.
John: And then you get half ravioli, half spaghetti.
John: That's pretty good.
John: Yeah, half ravioli, half spaghetti, and then a quarter of a head of lettuce with blue cheese dressing and bacon on it.
John: That's an iceberg wedge.
John: It's a classic.
John: You grow to be six foot four.
John: That's how I am who I am.
John: Is that right?
John: Because the halves and halves.
John: But the two places down here, one of them is like a steak place that you can never get.
John: You walk in and it's like,
John: they say, Oh, it's a 45 minute wait.
John: They always see you within three minutes of saying it's a 45 minute wait, but it's always a 45 minute wait.
John: It's just that you just stand there and then you're, then they're like, here, I got a table for you over here.
John: And then there's the other place where they put the pizza on like a little – On a stand?
Merlin: On a stand, yeah.
John: My mom was the one that was pioneering even thinking about Burien as a place.
John: I didn't care about Burien.
John: There was a Fred Meyer, which was nice.
John: There's a Valley Village in Burien.
John: I would come down here for those things.
John: But Burien, why would I get off First Avenue?
John: Why even turn off First Avenue?
Merlin: It's not on your readers.
Merlin: It's not a place that comes up.
John: No.
John: I was on AMBOM one time and I was like, AMBOM?
John: What even is that?
John: Well, AMBOM is some other – Is it a boulevard or an avenue?
Merlin: Yeah, it's a boulevard.
Merlin: You don't want to get into that.
Merlin: I'm not going to get into that.
John: But so mom then sells her house on Capitol Hill and buys a condo two blocks away.
John: From the old house.
John: From the old house.
Merlin: That's a great neighborhood.
John: I love that neighborhood.
John: You were talking about – well, it's nice, sure.
John: But I was like, you were talking about Burien this whole time.
John: We're all looking at Burien now.
John: Yeah, what happened at Burien?
John: We're thinking about Burien.
John: And so we all moved down here.
John: Yeah.
John: And now she's up on Capitol Hill, which is a – now it's a nuclear-free zone or whatever it is.
John: Capitol Hill has become –
John: Like the center of every major American city, like a republic unto itself.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: You had like a cup food situation there, right?
John: Well, and she's walking through tear gas on her way to the grocery, pushing her little basque stick on the way to the grocery to get some arugula.
John: And it's like – they let her pass through the barricades or whatever.
John: And so the other day she calls and she says, I've got this apartment in Burien that I found and I really want it.
John: And I talked to Dan about this.
John: The banks won't give a 30-year mortgage to an 87-year-old.
John: They won't give any kind of mortgage.
Merlin: That seems pretty pessimistic because it's a new kind of red line, really.
John: Well, that's exactly – so what ended up happening was I needed to be the person that was on the loan.
Merlin: You're the front, as they say.
John: That's right.
John: I'm the only one that has like a foot in life.
Merlin: I've got one foot in the world.
Merlin: Like from an actuarial standpoint, I'm not an actuary myself.
Merlin: I don't read the trades.
Merlin: But from an actuarial standpoint, pound for pound, dollar for dollar, minute for minute, you've got more of a foot in life.
John: I've got a little bit more of a foot in life.
John: That's right.
John: And so anyway, mom's got this apartment and now I'm –
John: In a real estate transaction and the banks, you know, they don't like me either.
John: Oh, God, no.
John: I don't even bother.
John: Why bother?
John: They look at me and they go, you what now?
John: I mean, that's literally the legal term.
John: You what now?
John: You what now?
John: You what now?
John: Because they're like, demonstrate your income.
John: And I'm like, wow.
Merlin: You're going to come into my bank and you're going to expect me to participate in some kind of dignified pantomime about your credit?
Merlin: My credit's great.
Merlin: My credit's great.
Merlin: Good for you, man.
John: Yeah, thanks.
Merlin: I wish.
John: But it's a thing where...
John: When they say demonstrate your income and I say it's really more of a story.
John: It's like a story form.
John: How long do you have?
John: And they're like, no, that's not how it works.
John: It has to be on paper.
Merlin: You don't want to do the blue book test.
Merlin: You want somebody to hand you a sketchbook.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean I want to just be able to like sing a little bit, dance a little bit.
John: Like, hey, first of all, let me explain what –
John: There needs to be a glossary because I'm going to use some terms that you probably haven't heard.
Merlin: At some point you will be using the phrase, it's like radio but on the internet.
Merlin: It's like radio but it's on the internet.
Merlin: Yeah, it's on the internet and it's kind of like radio.
John: But it's not really on the internet.
Merlin: It's via the internet.
Merlin: It would be easier if I just played this song for you on the ukulele.
John: I could download it to your phone right now.
Merlin: Do you remember the guy from Jeopardy?
John: Know the other guy from Jeopardy?
John: That phone doesn't have this capability.
Merlin: But listen, if we got you a phone... I want to put you at ease, Ms.
Merlin: Banker.
Merlin: I want to put you at ease.
Merlin: This is going to be good for everybody.
Merlin: I have a foot in life.
Merlin: A foot in life.
Merlin: Via internet radio.
John: But I think in the next day or two, she's going to have... This real estate transaction is going to come to a conclusion.
John: And I don't know...
John: I wish that I could be more of a like, I wish that I could say, hang on, mom, you know, like hold my beer while I solve this real estate problem.
John: But of course, without my mom, I wouldn't know what a 1099 was.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: So and I'm producing all this stuff.
John: And frankly, Ken Jennings has been great.
John: Because he knows where the – he actually has file folders where he puts papers.
Merlin: And so when I'm like – So he retains them and then he can find them again if he needs them through some kind of an organizational system.
Merlin: It's paper for paper.
John: Yeah.
John: And he says things like, I sent you that email on Tuesday.
John: And I go, wow, okay.
John: Let me go see.
Merlin: He did and he remembered it.
Merlin: And he remembered the day.
Merlin: That's a mental folder.
John: Sometimes you go to Tuesday and you look through and there's like, sure enough, there was an email from Ken.
John: Oh, sure enough, it's the one I was looking for.
John: Wow.
John: How would he know?
John: And then he says something like, well, there's a search function to your email.
John: You can put in keywords and stuff.
John: And I'm like, oh, okay, okay, okay, okay.
John: I'll write that down.
John: And then I don't write it down.
John: But demonstrating that Omnibus was actually a business, demonstrating that Dan Benjamin is in business in some way, that is definable.
John: Yep, yep.
Merlin: It's all been really a challenge.
Merlin: It's like a combination of provable money, understanding, and sort of credibility.
Merlin: So if you can come in there, you can drop down a W-whatever and go, listen, I made $10.5 million last year, and the government knows that.
Merlin: Here it is.
Merlin: This is the thing.
Merlin: That's going to remove most obligations.
Merlin: They may hold it up to the light, like a $100 bill, make sure it's got the seal and stuff like that.
Merlin: But really, I mean, it's really more like...
Merlin: feel like there's a creeping, understandable, creeping skepticism, the more things that aren't a piece of paper that says $10.5 million.
Merlin: The further you go down that, and you go, no, no, I actually did pretty well.
Merlin: This and this and this.
Merlin: But then you have to explain.
Merlin: And it's like, why are you explaining?
Merlin: You're explaining to somebody to bank.
Merlin: I know this sounds nuts.
Merlin: I've been facing this since the 1990s and trying to, quote unquote, explain my job.
Merlin: I like whatever the fuck it is that I do is great.
Merlin: Except for when I have to explain it to somebody, especially when I have to explain it to somebody where they have no interest or domain knowledge of that.
John: Yes.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: And it's like, it sounds like you're being a douche, but like, that's why you end up saying stuff like it's like internet, but on the radio and we sell ads.
Merlin: Like you have to get to get to jump to the chase, but even sell ads.
John: It's like most, most people that work in businesses that sell ads are,
John: They don't directly profit from selling ads.
Merlin: Well, because if you can pin it to something and go like, oh, you could say something like, oh, have you ever seen this show?
Merlin: God, I'm so into this show.
Merlin: I just started watching it last night.
Merlin: Have you seen the show The Other Two about the brother and sister of the YouTube sensation?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm the second unit assistant manager on that, which means – you know what I mean?
Merlin: If you have something where you can pin it to reality –
Merlin: But you going like, you remember that one guy whose name you forgot from Jeopardy?
Merlin: I do an internet radio show with him.
Merlin: And that's one of the ways I make money.
Merlin: One of the ways?
Merlin: One of the other ways.
Merlin: I mean, you like fix pots and pans.
Merlin: You're like, Jesus, fuck.
John: Yeah, I'm a tinker.
Merlin: I'm a ceramicist.
Merlin: Check out my online store.
John: Tinker's Damn, a place for ceramics.
John: Here's the nutty thing.
John: The nutty thing is that banks try to manage their risk by not looking at what you made last year because that could be anything.
John: You could have just sold everything you own in the last six months and it looks like you're a millionaire.
John: It looks like you're a thousandaire.
John: You make $1,000 a week selling stuff online.
John: No, they go back and they look at your tax returns for the last three years or so.
John: And so I don't know if you remember the financial panic I was in in 2019 –
John: Because Omnibus wasn't making any money.
John: Oh, right.
John: Friendly Fire wasn't making any money.
John: As you and I both know how much money Roderick on the Line makes.
John: Yeah.
John: Which is not putting anybody into a house.
John: We have aspirations to become hundredaires.
John: And, of course, road work, like –
John: I don't know.
John: Does anybody listen to Roadwork?
John: I mean, if you're out there, blink once.
Merlin: Yeah, there's probably a spreadsheet for it somewhere.
Merlin: I don't want to know, John.
Merlin: I don't want to know.
Merlin: That's the ironic part.
Merlin: Holden Caulfield comes into your bank.
Merlin: You're talking to Ms.
Merlin: Banker, MX Banker.
Merlin: And you come in there, and I'm like, I'm fucking Holden Caulfield.
Merlin: It's like, you know what?
Merlin: I don't want to know.
Merlin: I don't want to know the stats on any of this stuff.
Merlin: I don't want to...
Merlin: I'm avoidant about certain kinds.
Merlin: Well, no, because like, you know, if there's a flow, but like, what am I going to do?
Merlin: I'm going to get into arguments with people about download counts.
Merlin: No, thank you.
Merlin: Hard pass.
John: I don't have to explain that to MX banker.
John: But for me, the last few years has been a real roller coaster, right?
John: Because in 2019, I was having anxiety attacks.
John: I had turtles.
John: I was walking around.
Merlin: You were seeking aloha?
John: i feel like i was seeking aloha i was yelling at jesse thorne on the phone all the time i remember that and then in the then in 2020 no i'm this is 2018 that was happening right and then in 2019 all of a sudden friendly fire was making money and omnibus was making money a little bit you know and i was like and the turtles had had had had uh
John: Now the turtles are swimming with you, am I right?
John: The turtles were swimming with me, and I was like, wow, all I had to do was just yell at people on the phone for a solid year and breathe into a paper bag every evening.
John: You're Robert De Niro.
Merlin: You've got to go talk to Maury.
Merlin: Maury's getting a little bit cute about it.
Merlin: You know, you say, fuck you, pay me.
Merlin: Fuck you, pay me.
Merlin: You go in there and you say to Maury, you know, hard or easy, buddy.
Merlin: You got money for these goddamn commercials.
John: But then, since January, whatever friendly fire I had gotten up to, so it was a job, and then it's fucking gone.
John: And then the Patreon shows up over here, and then there's this guy over here.
John: We got no soup.
John: We got no soup.
John: And I'm sitting in this banker's office, and he's like, show me your tax returns from 2019.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm like, ah, do you – these are not representative of what has happened from 2018 to the present.
John: And he's like, I don't care because he's used to dealing with somebody that made some money in 2018, 19, 20, 21.
John: And I'm like, between 2018 where these tax returns – the story these tax returns are telling about 2018 and the present, I have been through seven financial realities.
Yeah.
John: But I'm also here to tell you that I am a stable individual who is making a reliable and stable income so that I can sign on this loan from my 87-year-old mother to live in Burien, literally across the street from the lesser of the two Italian restaurants.
John: Could she see it from her notional front window?
John: She can sit in on her balcony and watch the 4th of July parade, Merlin.
John: She can sit there.
John: She can see the accessible library to the left, the newly accessible library.
Merlin: That's going to be like having an apartment during the Macy's parade.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're going to have a place to go.
Merlin: I don't know if you want to get on the roof.
Merlin: She's probably not going to get on the roof, but you would be able to see the rocket's red glare, the freedom walking by.
John: It's a one-bedroom apartment, but it's on the top floor.
John: Oh, is there an elevator?
John: There's an elevator.
John: Oh, that sounds nice, John.
John: It's nice you can watch the airplanes land.
Merlin: I don't want you to hop a sec, but it's high enough up that she's got a little bit of a view, maybe?
John: Oh, she's got a view.
John: She can see the mid-century modern furniture store.
Merlin: Oh, that place is great.
John: Yeah, it's nice.
John: There you see it.
John: So we're really hoping that all this is going to happen.
Merlin: But where did you leave it with the bank person?
Merlin: I got a little... Did they say something like, we'll do the best we can?
John: Well, so they came back at the end of last week and they said, the underwriters say that they can't do it.
John: And I said, well...
John: Here's what I said.
John: I said, you're a mortgage broker, and the implication is that you broker the mortgage.
John: I see.
John: It's right there on the tin.
John: Do your job, sir.
John: Broke this.
John: Yeah.
John: And he's like, well, ever since the financial crisis of 2008 –
John: We're not allowed to do anything fun anymore.
John: And I hearken back to the mortgage that I got in 2007 where I walked into the guy's office with a sheaf full of papers and he said, I don't need to see those papers.
Merlin: It's on podcasts that I've heard.
Merlin: Sorry, internet radio shows I've heard.
Merlin: It got to where they say it is said.
Merlin: that you could go in there and you could do basically no credit check but also no income check.
Merlin: That's, according to internet radio shows I've heard, that's part of the problem.
Merlin: Of course, you get into the bundling and all that stuff.
Merlin: Go see The Big Short.
Merlin: It's really good.
Merlin: But the whole thing was that they were just giving out six-digit loans to people who not only couldn't show that they could pay it back but literally could not pay it back.
John: Well, it wasn't just that.
John: I mean, I got this loan in 2007.
John: Because I had a song on the OC and I had another song in a Fiat ad or whatever.
Merlin: Mini Cooper?
John: Was that it?
John: A couple of things.
John: There was that one from Miller Beer where they gave me the money.
John: They went all the way through the production and then they were like, actually, we're going in a different direction.
John: We're going to be more emo or whatever.
John: But they had to pay me because they'd sign the company.
Merlin: My business, we used to call that either buyout or call it a kill fee.
Merlin: Like there's a certain amount of money.
Merlin: Do they have to pay the full amount?
Merlin: The full amount.
Merlin: Fucking A, yes.
John: They paid the full amount.
John: So I could make a 20% down payment on a $400,000 house in 2000.
Merlin: They should show your credit as a moving average.
Merlin: As a moving average over 30 years.
Merlin: Like I love their 30-year mortgages.
Merlin: How about a 30-year moving average where every quarter it updates, but like you get a sense of this is the velocity of not just my finance, but my existence.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I think they do do that.
John: I guess.
John: My bank sent me a thing, and they were like, want to know what your credit score is?
John: That just seems like a bunch of bullshit.
John: Not really.
Merlin: That was 2007, before the big short.
John: I sat in that guy's office, and he had like a guitar on a stand in the corner of his giant corner office.
John: And he was like, listen, you're putting 20% down on this house.
John: I'm going to recommend against that.
John: I think you should be buying a house that's twice this expensive.
John: You can put 5% down.
John: We'll get you a balloon mortgage that comes to, you know, and the interest rates are going to be.
Merlin: Well, you know, you're looking for the security of a house and like investment in your life.
Merlin: We found all kinds of ways we can fuck that way up.
Merlin: Oh, he was so excited for me.
Merlin: A really uncertain house poor future for you.
Merlin: What do I need to do to put you into this ill-advised mortgage?
John: He believed that if I bought an $800,000 house at that point in time, that just in appreciation alone, two years later, I would be a millionaire.
John: Nobody loses money on real estate.
John: Why did I hate money is his question.
John: And I was like, look, I have 20% down for a 30-year mortgage.
John: And that's what I want.
John: I just want to put 20% down on 30-year mortgage.
Merlin: Isn't this fairly standard, John?
Merlin: It's fairly standard.
Merlin: There was a time in San Francisco during – well, I don't follow this shit anymore because it's all horse shit.
Merlin: But during the boom, the first boom, the bubble, bubble boom, you tried to buy a place like near the panhandle or like someplace like in a central neighborhood that's kind of cool and –
Merlin: I think 20% was kind of table stakes.
Merlin: I feel like the barrier to entry got higher financially.
Merlin: 20% seems like a good amount.
Merlin: And I think that one of the revolutions over the past 100 years is the change after Roosevelt, say what you will, but after those 100 days, there's a lot of stuff to change.
Merlin: Not all of it advantaged the black people.
Merlin: But one thing was that you could get more stuff with a down payment rather than needing to go buy a house outright.
Merlin: That there was ways that they were improving lending and stuff like that.
Merlin: And that was a democratizing thing, right?
Merlin: You're a veteran.
Merlin: You get a VA loan.
Merlin: You get a FHA loan.
Merlin: You can get all the letter loans.
Merlin: Is it still like that today?
Merlin: Is 20% table stakes for that time?
John: What they did, there was a – within a year of when I bought my house before, where –
John: where I'd been encouraged to buy a house that was twice as large.
Merlin: You buy half that, but we're talking about the farm here.
John: The farm.
John: Okay.
John: A year later, I would not have been able to buy the farm or any house for any amount of money.
John: If I had had cash, they would have turned it down.
John: It got so tight, and people like me and you that have –
John: uh, an income that is from internet radio, uh, banks were just like, no, no thanks.
John: Nope.
John: Nope.
Merlin: If I don't understand it, it necessarily makes this more risky.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: And you can just rent or you can go fuck yourself as far as we're concerned.
Merlin: Cause we're a bank.
Merlin: That's free.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And you know, Washington mutual dried up and blew away.
John: So, among others, but that money didn't go away.
Merlin: Was that Wachovia, maybe?
John: No, they all fell apart.
John: Wait, WAMU's gone?
John: Gone, completely gone.
John: That's why everything's Chase now, huh?
John: Yeah, and Chase bought the remaining assets of WAMU, including they bought my old Seattle First National Bank...
John: Um, you know, my, my account number.
Merlin: Oh boy.
Merlin: I just went through that.
Merlin: I just went through that with my internet bank and it was not very smooth.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Oh God.
Merlin: So it's going to be very exciting.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: So mom, so you're going to find out we don't want to get, as you say, or Susan says over our skis on this, but it is hoped that if everything works out, this will be something where your mom will get to live in Burien and
Merlin: and that's close enough to where you are that it will afford the sort of close relationship that you would love to maintain with her.
John: Is that right?
John: It would be wonderful.
John: Like, for instance, this morning, last night, we were down in Oregon over the weekend.
John: Last night we came home, and there was this guy that came around my daughter's mother's house, kind of showed up during COVID, knocked on the door, like, hey, do you need your windows washed?
John: And he was definitely like,
John: uh he was pretty cracky okay but uh my daughter's mother is a soft touch and she was like i do need my windows washed and so all of a sudden pretty soon you're gonna have a gary type situation yeah we got a junky wash in the windows and i'm like but you know you're the homeowner and i'm just kind of i don't really want him looking in here for 45 minutes
John: I'm sitting on the couch doing a crossword puzzle.
John: So he would come around every once in a while.
John: He's one of these industrious crackies.
John: You love to see that, yeah.
John: Yeah, he's got a habit, but he's making money.
John: He's not burglaring, you know?
John: He's going to the pawn shop.
John: He's getting his $80 prosumer pressure washer out of Hawk.
John: He goes around, he pressure washes everybody's, he half-assed pressure washer.
Merlin: It's so funny the word pressure washer is in my notes from today.
Merlin: I wanted to talk about leaf blowers and pressure washers because I just discovered YouTube pressure washer videos.
Merlin: It started out with a Polish man who cleans rugs slowly.
Merlin: You ever get that internet?
Merlin: I know you're not online anymore.
Merlin: You ever go to YouTube and see stuff where people clean stuff?
John: There was a while there where some women that I knew were like, oh, yeah, I watch those pimple popping videos.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
John: And I do not.
John: And so I went and looked and I was like, oh.
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: But the Polish man cleaning rugs is – I think they're a little long.
Merlin: I think he could tighten it up.
Merlin: But I was feeling proud of myself because in the last few days, there's three different things I realized I don't need and that made me feel good about myself.
Merlin: I thought to myself, huh.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I should get a leaf blower.
Merlin: I'm like, what are you talking about?
Merlin: You don't need a leaf blower.
Merlin: That's horrible.
Merlin: You hate leaf blowers.
Merlin: And I said, you're right.
Merlin: I hate leaf.
Merlin: The other one was I should get a pressure cleaner.
Merlin: My lady says, you know, we can just rent one of those.
Merlin: And I said, well, let's rent one of those.
Merlin: I want to do that.
Merlin: I don't want to make a video of it.
Merlin: I'm not a monster.
Merlin: But like that made me feel good about myself.
John: Well, in this case, I think that my daughter's mother slash partner was feeling good about herself, keeping the local junkie in his cups.
Merlin: I mean, well, you know, you know my theory on this, which is I adopt.
Merlin: I have an adopted person.
Merlin: I adopt a person.
Merlin: Larry is my adoptee and has been for years.
Merlin: And I give him a certain denomination of Bill every time I see him.
Merlin: But in this case, she's doing, I mean, this is hakuna matata, good for everybody.
Merlin: Let's get cracky on these windows.
John: Yeah, unfortunately, he came by at some point and was like, hey, I need pressure washer walk.
John: And she was like, oh, sure.
John: And he was like, I'll be right back.
John: And then he disappeared for six days, never heard from him.
John: And then when we were in Oregon, he just showed up unannounced at her house and
John: we were in this country and not available.
Merlin: Oh, did you use an internet doorbell to see it or something?
John: Well, no, he, my, my sister was staying at the house.
John: He shows up and he's like, Oh yeah, I'm here to pressure wash the thing.
John: And my sister's like, I guess, okay, whatever.
John: So he does this cracked out pressure wash.
John: And then we get down, we get back.
John: Does that affect his performance, John?
John: In this case, yes.
Merlin: Okay.
John: You're getting remote reports from Susan about – Well, no, we hadn't heard about it at all until we got home and there was a –
John: There was an invoice on the table that was all in this cracky scribble that was like, I pressure washed your thing.
Merlin: Sounds like a Dickens character.
John: Yeah.
John: Cracky scribble.
John: It was 400 bucks he's invoicing.
John: And then he says, he leaves his number and he's like, I need to be paid immediately.
John: Sure.
John: You know, very important.
John: Yeah, this is probably not a fellow who says, take your time.
John: Well, and so, and my, you know, if I had been the first one in the door and had seen this invoice, I would have gone, oh yeah, okay, well, I'll wait for you to call me.
John: But of course, daughter's mother, uh,
John: is like, oh, you know, this is 10 o'clock at night on a Sunday.
John: She's like, oh, he says he needs it right away.
John: You know, I'll text him and tell him I can get it to him tomorrow.
John: But she doesn't say this out loud.
John: She just does it.
John: If she'd said it out loud, I would have said, no, no, no, don't text him now.
John: Text him tomorrow when you're going to give him the money tomorrow.
John: So she texts him.
Merlin: You don't want to create an expectation.
John: No, don't create a situation with a junkie after dark.
John: And so she texts him and he immediately texts her back.
Merlin: Is that rule number one?
Merlin: Say that again.
John: That's rule number one.
John: What is it?
John: Never?
John: Never create a situation with a junkie after dark.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You know, John, that really seems like that could be true in a lot of times and places.
John: 100%.
John: Do not.
John: Do not.
John: Poke the bear, right?
Merlin: I used to say this about business stuff because you go out with your friends.
Merlin: Well, it's a person like me.
Merlin: You go out with your friends.
Merlin: You end up talking about whatever.
Merlin: You're having drinks.
Merlin: And I didn't socialize this widely enough to have it be like a thing that I'm known for.
Merlin: It's no man's assumption.
Merlin: But I did often say, hey, this is fun.
Merlin: But, like, business conducted in a bar is not business.
Merlin: Business conducted, I mean, I guess maybe if you're a shaker and a roller and a cracky, a midnight toker maybe, but, like, for me, it's like none of this happened in an actual – we're having fun, right?
Merlin: We're having fun.
Merlin: We're hanging out.
Merlin: We're doing things.
Merlin: You know, we're painting the moon.
Merlin: But, like, this isn't really a thing until we talk about it in the cold light of day, not in a bar.
Merlin: And I think that's a more professional way to say, like, this is great.
Merlin: Here's our numbers, right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And in this instance, you're saying, like, do not do not encourage the cracky to don't release the cracky in such a way that he's going to start thinking that it's pretty normal to have business calls at 10 o'clock about an invoice while they're out of town.
John: This is the problem, because he says, I'll be over in 10 minutes.
John: And so she comes into the room and she's like, oh, no, this guy and I don't want him over here.
John: And, you know, I'm living in my own house now.
John: I was about to head out the door to go home.
John: And she's like, there's this, you know, and I'm only vaguely aware of this guy.
John: I've only heard of him kind of.
John: And I'm like, wait a minute, you've got a crackhead coming over here at 10 o'clock at night.
John: And she's like, he says he needs the money right now.
John: And I told him I can't do it.
John: I'll pay him tomorrow.
John: And he's like, no, he needs it now.
John: And in his text, he said, it will be really bad for me if I don't get it tonight.
Merlin: Oh, no, I hate this.
Merlin: Now, is she going to be the mustache Peter and step up here and say, yeah, that's no good, boss.
Merlin: Here it is in fives.
John: The problem is that she does not want to get on the bad side of a crackhead at 10 o'clock at night.
John: And so I go out and I look at the patio and I see that it is what we call a junkie job.
John: where he did buy a pressure washer at a thrift store.
Merlin: He did a junky job?
Merlin: That's your grade?
Merlin: There's no box on Yelp for that to tick off, right?
John: No, it's just like, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: Did great replacements, found the right items.
John: This is not a $400 job.
John: This is not a $200 job.
John: You came when we weren't home, and you worked for a couple of hours on this, and now you're invoicing her for $400 because he feels like he's got a live one.
John: And so she had written a check and put it in an envelope.
John: And I was like, listen, we can't do this.
John: This cannot be the relationship that this guy thinks he has with you.
John: So I said, you know, you go in, you know, put baby to bed.
John: You go to you go look at your phone and I'll deal with this.
John: And so I sat on the front steps.
John: And the guy drives up.
Merlin: What were you wearing?
Merlin: Do you remember?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: I was wearing an Aloha shirt and some striped shorts because I had just come from Oregon.
John: And that's, you know, what you wear in Oregon.
John: What you wear in Oregon.
John: And he gets out of the car and he's, you know, and it's dark and we're having this exchange kind of in the dark.
John: He comes up the steps and he's like, hey.
John: And I'm like, hey.
John: Oh, here's the thing.
John: He left the pressure washer in the backyard.
John: kind of halfway across the patio where he had stopped working at some point.
John: He didn't finish the job.
Merlin: John, I'm trying to evolve, but this sounds like a serious classic junkie job.
John: It's a bad situation.
John: Yeah.
John: And he said, hey, and I said, let's go down and get your stuff and get your pressure washer and stuff and have you pack it up.
John: And he said, have you got the envelope with the check?
John: And I said, I've got your money.
Merlin: But we need to get your stuff and get you out of here.
Merlin: Yeah, there's an order of operations for business.
Merlin: Starting with, I mean, what are you going to say to this guy?
Merlin: And I've been that guy.
Merlin: I've been the, like, no, seriously, I cannot wait 90 days for this payment.
Merlin: Like, it's extremely important.
Merlin: The next time the phone rings, it could be really bad.
Merlin: Like, I know.
Merlin: I've done people.
Merlin: Like, I'm a doneer.
Merlin: I done.
Merlin: But, like, the order of operations is not, like, you dive into this, like,
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's just – but you're – why am I saying this?
Merlin: I'm saying this, John, because you're expected to participate in this fella's personal pantomime where you're supposed to go, yeah, you're a good pressure cleaner and stuff.
Merlin: And like we cannot wait to give you envelopes full of cash and we should probably start doing this weekly.
Merlin: It's like who knows what's going on in that fella's head.
Merlin: We all have our own little, you know, seven-sided lighthouse made of dreams that we like to pressure clean.
John: And you don't want to create the wrong impression.
John: What's going on inside of his head is that he's a junkie and he needs to get high right now.
Merlin: He wants to get high right now.
John: Or he owes $400 to his dealer or something.
Merlin: Does he think he's pulling it off?
John: If he owed $400 to his dealer, he would have already pawned the pressure washer that afternoon.
John: It's like selling your trumpet.
John: I get it.
John: He left the pressure washer so he doesn't owe money to somebody violent.
John: Or the pressure washer would be gone a long time ago.
John: He's just trying to get cash money so he and his girlfriend can get high.
John: And this is the plan.
John: You know, he's got a plan.
Merlin: And the problem is that he told her he'll get the money.
Merlin: No problem.
John: And he probably said to her, you can't argue with a junkie because a junkie is in the business of arguing.
John: Because they're constantly rationalizing to everybody like, no, no, no, no, I didn't steal your lamp.
John: I just borrowed it and I'm going to bring it back.
John: And why are you always picking on me?
John: I always said I was going to bring the lamp back.
John: I just I know.
Merlin: You know what it is, John?
John: I gave me 50 bucks for it.
Merlin: We all get this, but especially junkies and a cracky and like nothing.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I don't mean that we're having fun with these words.
Merlin: But the truth is everybody in life in America believes that the bad shit in their life is mostly because of bad timing and misunderstandings.
Merlin: Or bad luck, if you want to put it that way, right?
Merlin: In this case, he's got a reason for everything.
John: You know what I mean?
John: The problem with being in recovery is that you know too much.
John: Oh, it's like when you've been a waiter.
Merlin: Like, you know bad service.
Merlin: In this case, you know cracky obtainment journeys.
John: And I can't save him.
John: At 1030 at night when he shows up at my daughter's mother's house demanding money for a job nobody asked him to do that he did while we were gone and that there's no oversight over.
John: And I'm looking at it with the light from my phone at 10 o'clock because it's the first I've heard of it and trying to say.
John: You're still in your Oregon clothes, John.
John: Well, and the thing is that a journeyman carpenter, a union carpenter in Seattle makes $25 an hour.
John: So a union carpenter would have to work on this project for two straight business days to have it be worth $400.
John: This guy with his one-horsepower pressure washer is not going to get 80 bucks an hour or whatever he thinks he's going to get for the three hours he spent on this.
John: So I'm in the backyard and he's coiling up his stuff and he's like, oh yeah, you know, just blah, blah, blah.
John: And I was like, listen.
John: Did he drive there?
John: Do you have like a pickup or something?
John: Oh, no, he had a car.
John: His girlfriend's in the car.
John: She's got the passenger seat leaned all the way back.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: What's late?
Merlin: But he said to her, he probably said to her, you know, I'll take care of this.
Merlin: Yeah, this will be real quick.
Merlin: This one's on me, yeah.
John: And so I said, look, I'm going to give you $200 in cash.
John: And you are going to not ever come back here.
John: You're not going to come knock on the door and offer to wash the windows.
John: You're not going to have any contact with the house anymore.
John: You're not going to come to the neighborhood anymore.
John: Because this situation where you did this job without...
John: Without a bid, without prior authorization, and then invoice for $400 for a $120 job isn't going to happen again.
John: You're not going to come around here at 1030 at night.
John: And he starts going, oh, well, all it needs to do, I just need to broom it off.
John: Like, it's all clear.
John: I just need to broom it.
John: He's trying to grab for a broom.
John: And I'm like, no, no, no.
John: It's 1030 on a Sunday.
John: You're not going to broom it off.
John: Like we're – you're moving on.
John: Here's $200 and he's arguing and he's going this way.
Merlin: He's going that way.
Merlin: Take the money.
Merlin: You even gave him the Susan Roderick dignity option.
Merlin: But he's invested in – Do you know what I mean though?
Merlin: Like you're giving him the opportunity to be dignified about this and say, oh, he could even say, oh, I'm sorry it didn't work out but I appreciate the work and he could go.
John: Yeah.
John: This is the thing.
John: The lady behind me here is going to argue that she's never thrown a single thing over the fence into my yard.
John: She's going to argue it until she dies of choking on the garbage.
John: She's going to say shit like sometimes they party back there.
Merlin: Like that's anything but a non sequitur.
John: People are crazy and people on drugs are crazy.
John: And so he's going back and forth to me and I'm just like, I'm doing the thing where I'm just like guiding him up the stairs like, nope, you're not going to broom it off.
John: You're not going to come back tomorrow.
John: We're not going to talk about this.
John: I'm not going to text you.
John: You're not going to text me.
John: I'm going to give you $200 in cash and I'm never going to see you again and you're never going to see me again.
John: And the whole thing was just like,
John: As somebody who also is in a situation where in a completely different set of conditions, I could be sitting with this exact same guy and saying, listen, man, the day you quit drugs is the hardest day.
John: But the next day, you will feel slightly saner.
John: And you're a young guy still.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It seems hopeless now, but through a program of recovery, you're going to have— Sorry, this is going through your head as having been somebody who's lived in a van with an extension cord.
Merlin: Sympathize, empathize.
Merlin: You've been in a situation like that, and you're very much in a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I kind of situation.
John: In your head, you're thinking, I want to— He does a hand wave at one point, and he's like, well, you don't understand what it's like to work for a living— Oh, does it give you an act?
John: No, he's spinning, right?
John: He's like, you're a guy that lives in this fancy neighborhood, and so you don't know what it's like to have to – and I was like, you know, you don't know what I know, but also – you don't know whether I know what it's like or not.
Merlin: He brought a knife to a John Roderick fight.
John: He has no fucking idea.
John: We're not going to talk about that.
John: We're not going to talk about any of the things you want to talk about.
John: No, we're done.
John: Go.
John: $200.
John: It's not an argument.
John: It's not a negotiation.
John: And so –
John: So off he goes, full of conviction that he has put in 16 hours of work on this thing and he charges $50 an hour.
John: And so then my daughter's mother says, well, you can't go home to your house tonight.
John: Like, what if he comes back?
John: What if, what if he comes back?
Merlin: I learned this from MASH.
Merlin: I learned this from MASH.
Merlin: When they steal the wine from Winchester and they're like, oh, we got to go.
Merlin: He says, no, but if you, if you just stole a case of wine, like what's the first thing you would do?
Merlin: Remember that episode?
Merlin: Realize is they can go and get their stuff back because the guys in a little while are probably going to be drunk.
Merlin: In this case, unless you peg this guy super wrong, you,
Merlin: The last thing he's going to want to do is come back for some kind of Manson style, Manson family retribution.
Merlin: He's got things to imbibe, correct?
John: He doesn't want anything to do with me anymore, for sure.
John: But in order to make everybody feel comfortable, I spent the night there at the house.
John: It's like old times, John.
John: And what had formerly been my bedroom and is now the sparsely decorated mid-century spare bedroom, guest bedroom at the house.
John: And so, you know, so I'm there and I'm, and I'm doing some perimeter checks.
John: You know, every time there's a bump, I get up and I go outside and I, you know, walk around.
John: Well, so this morning at seven o'clock in the morning, my phone rings.
John: It's my mom.
John: She says, where are you?
John: And I'm like, uh, I'm, um, you know, I'm, I stayed over here last night for reasons I won't get into.
John: And she's like,
John: One of your trees fell in the middle of the street.
John: A giant tree fell in the middle of the street.
John: It's blocking the road.
John: Wait, wait, wait.
John: A tree from your property?
John: From my property fell in the night and is blocking the whole main road of the town.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And I was like, oh, I'll be right there.
John: So I jump up.
John: I drive over here.
John: Sure enough, this tree.
John: And I knew it.
John: And I talked to the city about this tree.
John: And the neighbors and I had talked about this tree.
John: There was this tree.
John: That every time somebody in a box truck that was going too fast went through the town, the box would break through some branches.
John: And this tree was leaning.
John: And it looked like it was going to take out the power lines.
John: Oh, no.
John: It was a 40-foot tall tree that was really in trouble.
John: And it was in trouble like above my pay grade level.
John: But also by a quirk of zoning fate.
John: And you know how much we like to talk about zoning.
Merlin: We have to.
Merlin: I mean, really, you don't understand America until you understand zoning.
John: Well, the city, when they laid out the plats.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Here we go again.
John: They laid it out with rights of way.
John: We're back to the egress, John.
John: Yeah, that are much wider than the roads.
John: Okay.
John: And so the right of way.
John: Oh.
John: extended the tree it encompassed the tree no shit the right-of-way went to like one is never your tree john no it never was it was never your tree pre-platted tree and so i show up and and there's a whole city crew here okay and i walk over to the foreman i'm like so what time did this tree fall
John: And he said, the first call I got about it was one in the morning, but I wasn't going to do anything about it.
John: So I sent somebody out to put like some caution tape around it and everybody in the neighborhood can just go around it if they, you know, it's one in a, one in a.m.
John: I'm not going to have eight guys out here with chainsaws at one in the morning, like, which is worse.
John: I was like, hmm, good point.
John: What am I, a cracky sprayer?
John: Come on.
John: Yeah, and the thing is, I wouldn't have known.
John: I'm not sure if I was in the house.
John: I mean, I definitely would have heard it, and I would have gone out.
Merlin: You would have heard the thud, but I bet you especially would have heard a crack.
Merlin: All the cracking.
Merlin: Oh, sorry, again with the crack.
Merlin: But, you know, cracking sound, unless it's like our neighborhood with these fucking invasive exotics and the goddamn eucalyptus tree and their six-inch deep roots, which is some bullshit.
Merlin: What kind of tree was it, John?
Merlin: I know it's not your tree, but what kind of tree was it?
John: Do you remember?
John: It was a, I think, we talked about it, including the city arborist, and we were all like, is it a- The city arborist was there?
John: City arborist.
Merlin: Did they get a special vehicle like a fire chief?
John: He had chaps.
John: You're saying like cowboy pants?
John: He had cowboy pants and a hard hat.
John: Not waiters?
John: Nope, chaps.
John: Leather chaps.
John: They had no ass?
John: Nope, because he had jeans on under him.
John: Damn.
John: But one of the best things about it was watching the city produce larger and larger chainsaws as the day wore on.
John: Because at first they were out there with their little handheld, you know, the chainsaws that you would get.
John: Basically at the checkout next to the M&Ms.
John: You're like, I'll take two M&Ms and I'll take this chainsaw.
John: And then a guy came up in a truck and he's like, I found these chainsaws that were 12 inches long.
John: And then somebody else drove up and they were like, I've got a two-foot chainsaw.
John: And I'm like, still not enough of a chainsaw.
John: This is the West, right?
John: So we know chainsaws, or at least you've seen chainsaws.
John: And I keep waiting for them to show up with the big dogs, and then eventually somebody did come up.
Merlin: But then I just lost in the lights a little bit.
Merlin: But in thinking about, sorry, just rewinding a little bit, you had talked to the city about this, and you knew that it touched upon some interesting things, not just necessarily with zoning or easements, but you were concerned, obviously, the box trucks go by, how do we deal with that?
Merlin: It sounded like you'd mentioned something where it might have been entangled with wires, but it didn't bring down wires.
Merlin: How did that happen?
John: The great thing is a month ago, there was a guy in a reflective vest with Oakley blades on standing out in front of my house looking at something with a clipboard.
John: Yeah.
John: And I went out and I was like, hey there, fella.
John: And he's like, hey, and I said, hey, while we're standing here.
John: What about this tree?
John: Seems a little bit.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: As long as you're here, let's talk tree.
John: Seems like this tree is in a little bit of a precarious situation.
John: And so a guy from the city with a clipboard and Oakley blades looked up and down at the tree and said, well, guess we'll have to wait and see.
John: Huh.
John: So I had a little bit, and that guy was at this project this morning.
John: He was at the party, and he and I gave figures.
John: The guy with the blades, he's back.
John: You got an arborist, you got, that sounds like quite a crew that pulled together.
Merlin: City manager, the city manager was there.
Merlin: Somebody really pulled together the super team here, it sounds like.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Well, he said that it was today was the first day of the summer hire.
John: So they had four young guys that had just this was their first day on the job.
Merlin: So if this were the movie, if this were a movie, this would be the like, you know, sort of like the first first episode of Grey's Anatomy type situation where you go like, oh, it's going to be a hell of a day for you.
Merlin: Or like, you know, rescue me.
Merlin: That kind of thing.
Merlin: Crazy first day to be working here, going out to the old Roderick place.
Merlin: And the arborist is going to be there.
John: Let's get it done.
Merlin: Be on your best behavior.
Merlin: The arborist will be there.
John: It was very exciting.
John: Shit, yes.
John: So at 7.20 in the morning, I'm standing out there with my beer mug full of coffee supervising this situation where they are.
John: And the thing is, the tree fell, missed the power lines, missed the neighbor's mailbox, missed the neighbor's flower beds.
John: What the heck?
John: All the neighbors are standing around.
John: Somehow this tree, this giant tree...
John: Perfectly placed itself in its final death.
John: Swan dive.
John: Yeah.
John: Perfectly placed itself right up the middle of the street where it blocked all traffic, but hit nothing.
John: What are the chances, John?
John: What are the chances?
John: I stood there just marveling.
John: I bet they were marveling, too.
John: This is not their first rodeo.
John: We were all marveling, and we all said to each other, couldn't have been better.
John: Couldn't be a better rodeo.
John: The hell was the first day, John?
John: My goodness.
John: They picked up the log.
John: The guy, at one point, they had the log in the claw of the backhoe.
John: The guy said, do you want this log?
John: I was like, I don't think so.
John: He was like, I mean, for firewood or something?
John: I mean, this log is like...
John: It's 15 feet long by five feet in diameter.
John: That's got to weigh hundreds of pounds.
John: Yeah, and he was like, I mean, I'll give you the log.
John: And I was like, I think you should take it.
John: It kind of sounds like he wanted it.
John: He wanted the log.
John: Is he a chipper or do you think he's a chipper?
John: They had their own chipper, and it was an industrial chipper that you could throw a log the size of a mailbox.
Merlin: in and it would turn i would totally watch that maybe he's also maybe like like my polish rug cleaner maybe he's got a youtube channel where he's like can you believe this look at this this is it didn't hit anything this is my good luck tree and that's why i make it into making it into this i don't know like maybe maybe you could do like a sculpture of uh of warren g harding or something maybe i get the sense yeah no i don't think he's a chainsaw artist i think that what they do in the city is they take those big logs and they go use them to support
John: They put it in a bog somewhere.
John: In a bog.
Merlin: Oh, like it's sort of an urban reef.
John: Yeah, it's an insect habitat or something.
Merlin: They do that kind of stuff.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: Yes, I do.
John: I do.
Merlin: It ends up being a... Because there's probably somebody who was an environmentalist in the 80s with a Jonathan Colton beard, or maybe a little bit like Mr. Hooper in Jaws, right?
Merlin: You got somebody who's installed in a lot of those positions.
Merlin: Maybe I watched too many movies, John.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: It seems like you had stationed a Mr. Hooper there.
John: It's exactly the guy you're describing.
John: The guy with the chaps had a Mr. Hooper beard.
Merlin: Not Mr. Hooper from Sesame Street, but I'm talking about the great, what's his name, Dreyfuss?
John: Yeah, Hooper.
Merlin: Mr. Hooper.
Merlin: Mr. Hooper.
Merlin: You all know me.
Merlin: You know what I do for a living.
Merlin: That's Quint, because I want to be Quint.
John: Listen, this was no boat accident.
John: That's what the guy said.
Merlin: A what?
What?
Ahem.