Ep. 442: "Recognizably Dylan"
Hello.
Hi, John.
You sound like you're about to say something really important.
There it is.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello, Merlin.
Hello, John.
Gotta get my bell ready.
See here, I turned the volume on my microphone down, and now I'm going to turn it back up.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Feeling good?
Sorry, was that a loaded question?
A little bit, yeah.
Oh, a little distortion there.
Yeah, it's a little bit of a loaded question, as you know.
Am I feeling good?
What is good?
You got a bee in your bonnet?
What's going on?
Oh, no.
Are you fighting City Hall?
What's going on?
Always.
I got a text message from the one neighbor that I don't like this morning asking for the phone number of the other neighbor I don't like.
Oh, no.
And they really don't like each other.
super-duper don't like each other.
Oh, boy.
I get advice on this.
Oh, boy.
Yeah, I don't know.
This is the beginning of a new... I don't think it's the beginning of a new era of rapprochement.
I believe that there's...
That they're going to go at it over something?
I don't know what.
Can't they just go to the person's house?
Like a person?
They're right next door to each other.
But I think they're going to want to settle this over email.
I'm not sure what it is.
Would you forgive me on this November 1st, Rabbit Rabbit?
Would you forgive me for jumping in here with something?
It's not exactly advice, but it is an observation.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I want to hear it.
I don't think you need this, but our listeners might.
Mm-hmm.
Every day somebody's born who's never seen the Flintstones.
You know what I'm saying?
Yabba-dabba-dee.
Yabba-dabba-don't.
My lady friend, my very special lady friend, recently found her... I'm going to try and keep this slightly redacted.
My very special lady friend recently found herself in the middle of some family drama.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
I think I have an inkling about this, but yeah, go on.
Well, then the nature of the family, I don't want to throw anybody under the family bus here, but these are, these are grown ass people.
Do a lot of her family members listen to your shows?
I don't think so.
I found out my brother-in-law follows me on Twitter, which is pretty weird.
Because I don't want to think about that.
He's a grandfather.
So let's just leave it at this.
There's a disagreement about the dispensation of my late beloved mother-in-law's, one of her belongings.
Okay.
Okay.
And it, which, you know, that happens sometimes, right?
Is it a valuable thing or is it just a sentimental thing?
It's definitely sentimental.
It's her wedding ring.
Oh, so also valuable.
Oh God, I'm already saying too much, but so two, two of her family members,
start going at each other about what, first of all, it all begins.
Oh God, I'm in so much trouble.
It all begins with the most passive aggressive text message.
Oh, I thought you were going to say it all begins when two people meet and fall in love in the shadow.
It all started in December of 1929 when Pauline Cudworth was born.
Um,
What a great name.
Um, and, but like, it starts with, Oh, Hey, yeah.
You know, the thing we talked about a long time ago with mom's ring and, um, you know, Oh man, I'm fucked.
We, you know, and like, isn't there like a, um,
You know, I don't know if you watch Succession, but it was a very, you know, Cousin Greg sort of way to do it.
Like, isn't there some kind of a rule everybody follows about who gets that, like, based on who has the oldest daughter and stuff like that?
Isn't that a thing?
You know?
And...
it escalated very quickly.
And I think you'll, you'll know this style.
I think I, you've seen you participate in this style and I've definitely received this, this style from other people in a different time.
I was the kind of person who would rep this style, which is when a person is texting to you and begins by saying things like hand to God,
thank you for your input on this.
And then they stop speaking in a way, they start speaking in a way where they do not use contractions anymore.
And they text like that back and forth.
And I don't know where it stands right now, but I said, just like I'm giving you advice you didn't ask for, I said to my lady friend, because she's getting texts from both of them, like, can you believe this?
And do they not get along?
Well, they're older, you know, in the birth order.
They are, one doesn't say senior, they are veteran siblings.
I see.
Veteran siblings, I see.
And did I mention they're grown-ass people?
They're both grandparents also.
And anyways, it's, you know, this kind of thing happens between people.
I think, I love you so much, John.
Text is not the place to settle these kinds of things, I feel like.
Right.
And especially if you can smell that escalation.
Oh, yeah.
Anybody could smell it, right?
And know, okay, this is not going anywhere good.
And we stopped using interactions.
And I just, I said to her, I said, look, I said, but I'm going to tell you something.
I said, it's just like a couple that gets into fights and like they both turn to somebody to like pick a side and be a, you know, a sympathetic ear.
And once it is resolved, you, first of all, you've had all this aggravation, but you will not come out of it looking good.
If anything, they will gang up on you in many cases.
I don't know if it's always true, but the same kind of people that stop using contractions could be very much the kind of people who then go, oh, yeah, well, now we're going to gang up on this third party.
I would try to stay out of it.
Can I ask what you said when you texted back?
Oh, well, all she wanted was the neighbor's... Did she use contractions?
Phone numbers.
My relationship with these two women...
could not be worse i don't think it could be worse i guess we could be suing each other but it's not but it's not an you don't find it an easy convivial generative enjoyable uh relationship you have with these two neighbors no one of them i mean what we have for a very long time uh
with it my relationship with each one of these women has for a very long time been very strained very uh fake friendly fake polite texts and fake polite kind of over the fence head nods but like what i would call maybe north florida discourse we all know what the deal is uh-huh uh the deal is just for clarity here is one of these the people who throw trash
One of them is the people who throw trash.
It's not her trash.
That's somebody who was out there partying.
She's not involved in it.
It's definitely not her drug addict son.
It fell from the sky.
Okay.
And it's not even her drug addict son because further layers of excavation have revealed that she who...
you know the matriarch has also thrown i mean her kids learned how to do this somewhere and they learned it from her because she's watching her yeah she's thrown all of her gardening detritus all i mean there's stuff over the fence the feet deep that could only have come from her there's no other was there also a wheelbarrow of like dirt involved at one point all that all that everything but like with a smile
Oh, no, that's the other one.
That's the other one.
Oh, shit.
Okay.
So both of them have, you know, both of them traditionally for decades encroached on this property when it was owned by an older couple that couldn't
They couldn't keep it up anymore.
And so, you know, what happened is the ravine got overgrown with blackberries.
And then these two neighbors, because the former owners couldn't see through the bramble, just started dumping their garbage over the fence.
Which is insane.
You know, it's just insane.
It's insane.
It would be insane if we lived in North Florida.
It would be insane if we lived in Nairobi.
And it is insane here in Normandy Park, Washington.
Okay.
But they both, when confronted in their own way and style, became not apologetic, but defensive and
And defensive in a way that suggested both that they had not done anything wrong, but also they had every right to do these things.
Oh, classic.
That is the, you know what?
Yep, yep, yep.
Similar to a thing my lady's dealing with.
Same attitude.
Like, oh, no, that wasn't me, but also that's how we've always done it around here.
Yeah.
And so I didn't do it, but if I did, it's not a problem.
And so I, you know, and the thing is Merlin, we've talked about this so much.
I I'm, I'm, I'm watching myself, the drone footage of me that I can see in my own head as I'm talking to them.
And I'm saying, this is a situation where you know, in the past, you, John, just trying to say the right thing and do the right thing.
Somehow you managed to escalate these situations.
I don't know how.
It's so confusing to me.
Why do I escalate these?
All I'm doing is being polite.
But you didn't know in the moment.
You didn't feel like what you were doing in the moment was escalating.
Even when I look back at these moments, I go, how did I escalate that?
All I said was, I'm, you know, like, please.
I said, please, six times.
It's something in my voice or something in my face that makes people get defensive and makes people then fight.
And there's something in my voice and in my face, in my tone, that when I talk to police officers, they call me sir and they apologize for disturbing me.
But that same thing, or maybe it's a different thing, but something in my face and voice when I talk to a neighbor and say, hey, it's three in the morning, can you turn your stereo down?
Or hey, can you stop throwing your old paint cans over my fence?
And they always, and this is the thing between me and my sister, because if Susan had gone over there, oh my God, we'd be having Christmas together.
But I'm like, hey, can you stop?
And they're like, they A, blow me off, and then B, get mad.
So I'm in the...
Not good terms with either one of them.
I had Hunter McLean build a fence between me and the daycare, but that's only just kept the, the, the, the garbage, you know, the, the plastic garbage bags from blowing over the yard.
Yeah.
And then, I don't know if we talked about it, but the county, the whole creek restoration thing, it's all in motion.
I had 20 kids over here.
The whole thing is happening, and it's only the beginning.
It's only the beginning.
And I wrote both these neighbors, and I said, hey, you're going to notice a lot of people in the yard.
They all have reflective vests on and are wearing floppy rain hats, and they're all...
In their early 20s because they're hippie environmentalists with degrees in biodiversity.
And they're going to be in my yard.
And my yard goes to where the survey stakes are.
My yard doesn't end where you put your last rhododendron.
It ends where the survey stakes are.
And there's a difference in some cases.
You're fighting some kind of like an invisible legacy line and invisible legacy behaviors.
Well, but...
I made it clear like the day that I first met them, I was like, Hey, you know, that whole thing where you just keep taking someone else's yard and then it just becomes the new normal.
Oh yeah.
That thing.
It's just sort of like the thing they say about like, if you, you know, one reason you have to fight and if it's true, but it is said you got to fight copyright, even if it's not a big deal.
Because that becomes sort of like a precedent.
And if you don't fight it, you know what I mean?
That kind of thing where you're like, if you're just in a neighbor thing, if you see too much in terms of what I will generally call boundaries, you end up unintentionally just reifying whatever that busted ass behavior was.
Right.
And the thing is, I've spent a lot of time...
reading about this stuff and thinking about it just because it's in my wheelhouse to know about adverse possession.
You'll ask the truck driver about how the water system works.
You want to know how things work.
I want to know how things work.
And so the first conversation I had with either of them, I was like, hi, I'm your new neighbor.
That whole thing where, you know, you're, you're like a great gardener and you just keep on gardening.
You just keep on gardening right over the line.
Is that a reverence?
You just garden, garden, garden, garden, like a little, like a, like a, like a little head.
hedgehog or something, you know, you know that thing you're like terraforming your neighbor's yard.
Well, that's a great thing.
And I'm amazed by everything you've done, but the property line is here and I know it's here.
And I've been here for not very long.
And I just want us both to know that the property line is here and I know it's here.
And so it's not a thing where I live here five years and then you say,
Oh, I thought that was just, it's like, let's just establish we both know where it is, right?
Because you knew where it was when you went over it the first time.
And the 95-year-olds that you were taking advantage of didn't know or care, but I do.
I'm the middle-aged guy who does care.
So it was never going to be a thing where they, there was never going to be a thing where they said, but, but.
It was always from the very moment.
And I didn't do it in a dick way.
It's just, it's just right there.
It's just, it's like, here's the, look, there's an old post in the ground.
See the old post that was put there a long time ago.
We both know it's there.
Let's just be friends.
Let's be friends and have this post be our friend too.
The third friend, or in this case, the fourth friend.
And we can all be friends.
Mm-hmm.
You're presenting something very rationally and you're providing what feels like a very natural and realistic, very rational solution to a mutual beef.
Yeah.
I think, Merlin, winter is coming.
Winter's coming right now?
I think there is a war brewing.
Oh, no.
The big winter.
My sweet summer child.
I don't know.
I know there's a war brewing with me.
I hope, I really do.
I really hope there's a war brewing between them.
Yeah, that would help a lot.
Do you think they're going to go to the mattresses?
I don't think so.
I don't think either one of them, there's a lot of mutual animosity, but I don't think they have quite the, there aren't the stakes between them that there are between each of them and me.
I just want to kind of encourage them to tilt against one another because maybe they'll use up some resources.
Maybe they'll have a boundary dispute where they squander resources and then they'll leave their flanks unprotected.
Mm-hmm.
The enemy of my neighbor is also my neighbor.
That's right.
I'm swearing.
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Swearing up for this.
Oh, boy.
You know, and it's, so last night was Halloween.
Yeah.
And, uh, and I was pretty, I was pretty concerned that I was going to get toilet paper.
Really?
Call them a law, you think?
No.
Payback is a pitch.
Some teens, some teens, because I got into a, I got into a, a conflict with some teens.
Oh, right.
You saw people outside and you went and confronted them and you chased them down and it seemed like douchebags from the swim team or something, right?
Yeah, that's right.
And on further reflection, you know, I keep thinking about it.
Oh, what was I doing?
I overreacted.
It was so stupid.
I was in a bad place that day.
I was, you know, I'd been having a really bad day and it was the culmination of a really bad week.
And I heard these kids in the yard and I just, I don't, you know, I just kind of lost.
If you, if you listen back, if, if, if, if there was a recording of the event and, and I listened back to it, I would sound like Howard Dean shouting off the, the names of states.
You know, I just, my voice cracked in this, like, what are you doing at my yard?
And when I think back, it's like, yeah.
It doesn't matter what actually happened and what he actually said.
What matters is the, and I listened to a podcast episode about this, the anomalies of the way that room was miked and it made him sound crazy when he wasn't actually crazy.
But the thing is, he still did sound crazy.
However, it happened.
And what you're saying is you roll back that tape and you're going to be the one talking about, you know, leaving New Hampshire to go to Iowa or whatever.
Yeah, right.
And, and so as Halloween approached, I was like, there, there, there are two possibilities.
And one of the possibilities is that that group of swim team, uh, you know, fifths.
It's Tyler, Chad, Todd.
Although these days, it's Jaden, Caden, Dylan.
Oh, it's all the bell tones.
Yes.
But so option one is those kids were juniors and this is their senior year.
If that's the case, if this is their senior year, I'm definitely getting toilet paper tonight.
Do you think they still think about it like you think about it?
I mean, obviously, you must.
I was on a trip.
I don't remember where I was, but I was out of town.
Oh, no, it was when I was driving across the country with my family.
This was a couple of months later, and I had installed around the property a whole set of...
um internet security cameras that were invented by a company here in seattle that are kind of good not great so the company the uh the cops like to work with is it or did the cops the cops love getting footage off this and so does it rhyme with ding
Uh, uh, no, no, it's the other thing.
Oh, it's something else.
It's a different one.
And the, and it's, you know, it's local to, to the Northwest and the cameras are like $25.
The like upfront investment is very low.
Um, and they're, and you know, and they're battery powered.
You put them around.
I got them.
I got them.
Certainly ruggedized.
So you can put it outside.
Little ruggedized.
I got it.
Trees all around the house.
I got an app.
It's one of those apps where every time you pull it up, like something's got to get updated.
Oh, I know it.
I know it.
Oh, and some, you know, it's got, oh, it's buffering.
It's loading.
But when it's all working, you can in real time from your phone.
look at the six cameras i've got the six 25 cameras i've got nailed up in the trees around here okay i can look at my house from a variety of john's panopticon yep and it will record 25 seconds of video in response to motion detection or sound or whatever so i'm in ohio and uh
And my phone goes, you know, something's happening at your house.
And normally it's an Amazon delivery, but this was at night.
And so I went and I looked on my little cameras and here up the driveway comes...
uh dylan recognizably dylan he's basically wearing his swim team t-shirt he marches up the driveway i see him in one camera then i see him in the next camera oh i love this he comes to the front door he looks for a doorbell there is none
And then he goes... He's smart.
He's very smart.
Uh-huh.
Keep looking.
He goes... He goes... Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock.
And then he turns and runs as fast as he can.
Run, run, run, run.
No, he did... My wife used that.
I would call it... What do I call it?
Ring and run.
She calls it ding-dong ditch.
Yeah, ding-dong ditch.
Ring and run.
Although in this case, it's... Knock, knock, knock.
Knock and... Something.
Again, I'll workshop it.
And so...
I watch it 10 o'clock at night.
And this kid was doing something on Friday night.
And he was like, oh, you guys pull over, pull over.
You know, he's obviously not alone.
I didn't see any of his friends because I don't have cameras pointed at the, you know, at the street.
Yeah.
You're not a crazy person.
I'm not a crazy person.
Well, also, they would, you know, they would ding motion detection at me, you know, 60 times an hour because cars are going by.
Sure, sure, sure.
So somebody in his crew, some wag, some nut was like, oh, there's that guy.
Let's go knock on his door.
Yeah.
So I do think, I did think throughout the summer, like I'm still in their, I'm still on their radar and I'm still in their minds.
And as a teenage vandal, as a teenage problem causer, yeah, you get a, you get a, you get your crosshairs on a crotchety old man.
Cause you got, you got, if you feel, especially if you got a rise out of them.
Yeah.
You got a rise out of them.
It didn't cost anybody anything.
Nobody got hurt.
Why not go yank this old man's chain for a while?
The other option, of course, is that they were seniors and that all of this, you know, like going in my yard in the middle of the summer, you know, and that all happened.
You're trying to establish a baseline.
Yep, that's right.
Oh, I get it.
If they're juniors, you're going to see an escalation.
And if they're seniors, they've already gone off to community college.
They're gone.
And so Halloween came and I did the thing where I turned all the lights off in my house because I was not prepared for trick-or-treaters.
And also my house isn't in a safe location for trick-or-treaters.
They would have to cross the street and all this stuff.
And I don't want to make it a problem for them.
Right.
Classically, that was the, if you wanted to throw the shape of like, hey, you know, I'm a noncombatant, you know, and you don't know what to be hostile about it.
But like, if you have your lights off, that used to mean no kids here.
Now, in San Francisco, especially if you're in West Portal, you're in like, I want to say like Hayes Valley, you're in these places that are famous, trick-or-treat, like...
uh destinations sometimes people will like put up police tape and stuff and they'll be like no no no seriously we're we are not part of the fund and i bet those people get a little jazz from from from youngsters i saw i saw a couple houses around here that had police tape up and i was like what's that about and kids were like don't ducking under the tape and going up and ringing the doorbell it was like yeah i hope you didn't cancel anything important to buy that tape
Yeah.
Right.
Like what a weird, like, okay, fine.
Yeah.
But here, uh, turning all the lights off, it would, it just, my house is located.
It's situated on the street in such a way that no kid or parent is going to look across the street and mistake this as an opportunity, unless you're a teenage vandal.
So I turned all the lights off, but I turned all the cameras on.
But then I had fatherly responsibilities.
I had to take my own child out trick-or-treating.
So I couldn't be here doing what I really wanted to do.
You couldn't actively defend your perimeter.
That's right.
What I wanted to do was be in camouflage in the trees waiting.
Of course.
But I was out with my child.
I was dressed as a werewolf.
Can I ask if you can say what your daughter did for costumes?
So we had a few Halloweens this year.
I have a thing for kids in costumes.
I think it's the best.
So she wanted to be Hermione.
My kid's been Hermione two years in the past.
She got all of her Hermione gear.
She had a very cute outfit, but she didn't like the wig.
And so I said, well, true to the true to the book.
It's more tangly.
Wait, are you saving those?
No, you read those in the brig.
It's Shakespeare.
You're saving for prison.
Is that right?
Shakespeare.
I'm saving for prison.
We've, we've, we've been through all the Harry Potter.
She knows she, and she just like more tangly hair than the actress Emma Watson has.
Yeah.
And it was tangly.
It was a big, it was a big rug.
And she was just like, I hate this.
And I said, well, you know, everyone who ever went to Hogwarts, who else could you be?
And she was like, oh, sure.
I'll just be.
And she named some character.
Maybe Cedric Diggory.
Whoever she is, she said some combination of vowels and consonants.
Yeah, sure, sure.
Cho Chang.
Oh, right.
Is that racist?
That might be racist.
Slobodik Milosevic.
Oh, so Slobodik Milosevic.
Yeah, right.
So I was like, sure, he was a great spellcaster, you know.
Right, right, right.
You know, Vicuninus, Vicusobinus.
Yeah, or like, you know, Joseph Savimbi.
But somebody, somebody who like brings the ruckus.
So that was her.
And then she and her mother went to what's called the Boo in Burien, which is the new style of thing where the kids go up and down Main Street, USA, and all the stores have a little person out front giving those little candies out.
It's great innovation.
They didn't do that when we were kids, of course.
West Portal has been our jam in the past.
And yeah, the neighborhood, the residential neighborhood around that, but also the stores are real good about that.
I like that.
The mall makes me sad just because, I don't know, it makes me a little sad.
But I'm not against retail Halloween.
No, it was great.
And so she was out there as Milosevic and her mother was...
Her mother was Beatrix Lestrange.
Oh, are you shitting me?
Yeah, and Marlo's mom loves to dress up.
Well, she's hot to begin with, but then she dressed up like Beatrix Lestrange?
She puts all the money into it.
Did she have cool boots?
She had the corset and the boots and all the lace and then a giant black crazy wig.
She looked just like her.
Uh-huh.
And so I was like, well, okay.
Uh-huh.
She's a bad girl at Bellatrix.
I was like, I'm going to drive around.
I'm going to drive around to the local furniture stores while you guys have fun at Boo and Bury because there are too many people here for me and too many of them have dogs and there's just too much.
There's not, no one is keeping moving.
No one is getting out of the way.
I can't be in this.
So they did that.
They had a wonderful time.
And then-
They ran home, completely changed their outfits into zombie costumes and went and did the Michael Jackson thriller global dance off.
It's across America, except for Jesus juice.
So they had been practicing for weeks.
Oh, that's so cute.
Learning all the moves.
And then they bought, um, like eighties business lady suits and then covered them in fake blood and ripped them all up and put zombie makeup on and they ran down.
Okay.
I thought it was good.
Like a working girl party or something.
No, it was, it was like, uh, it was like, we're, we're, we're zombies from the eighties.
I get it.
I like that.
This is John.
This is, this is not just an evening.
This is a project.
Yep.
So they had, this was all, this wasn't even on Halloween.
This was on Saturday before Halloween.
That's fun.
They did the thing.
Apparently all around the world, people are doing the thriller dance and then they sync it all up into one giant super cut video.
Sure.
It's like Paris, Taipei, Seattle.
darkness falls across the land.
Whoa to you, earth and sea, for the devil sends the beast with wrath.
Jabberwocky.
So, um, so then last night,
So it spiraled back around.
Hermione was back in play.
And then her mom was the little old lady witch from Hogwarts.
The nice one or the mean one?
Dolores Umbridge?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Dolores Umbridge is the one that makes them right on their hands.
Maybe it's the one with the big glasses?
Is it Professor Trelawney?
No, it's damn Maggie Smith.
Maggie Smith!
Yeah, yeah, she's the head of the house.
Yeah, she's the head of the house.
Love Dame Maggie Smith.
She's terrific.
Marla's mom had a whole other Hogwarts-based costume.
This is ringing a lot of my bells right now, John.
I don't want to make it creepy, but my goodness.
She put gray stuff in her hair, and she looked all like a little old lady and had the witch's hat and everything.
And so I was like, boy, I need to come correct.
And of course, this is one of the problems that we've always faced.
And I think it's a universally understood problem, but it's very true in our family.
which is that Marlo's mom will spend an hour and a half getting ready for a fancy ball.
And I'll be sitting there smoking a pipe draped in a bear skin.
Sure.
And then I'll say, are you almost ready?
And she'll go, I'm ready.
You know, I'm just about ready.
And I'll go in at that moment and put on a suit and come out
And it will have taken me five minutes to get ready.
And by societal standards, we will look equally ready.
Although, you know, she looks like something that belongs in the heavens.
And I look like a guy that just put on a suit five minutes ago.
Yeah.
I had an ex whose dad always, uh, who was a businessman, like classic businessman, eighties businessman, three piece suits.
And every Halloween, uh, he would just be something where he could wear a suit.
So I think one time he was, this is a different time.
Her, uh, my, my, my, my ex's mom was like a harem girl, like an, I dream of Jeannie.
And, uh, and her dad was like a, like an oil baron.
So he, he had his three piece suit and a slightly racist, like a towel and ring on head.
Yeah.
shake your booty am i right in my case i found a couple of years ago this uh this wolf mask that's just the top half just the eyes and ears oh fun and nose but my mouth is my own yes and just by luck absolute luck the rubber of the wolf mask the rubber hair is
is the exact same color and the same coarseness as my actual beard and hair.
Oh, what a get.
Boy, take good care of that, John.
You might even want to buy a backup.
That'll serve you well.
That's the thing.
So this is like a $7 rubber mask, and I put it on my face, and it immediately blends into my own hair and face, and it becomes terrifying.
People are like...
And it was like the simplest, you know, all around me, there are people wearing masks that cost a lot more money and just aren't as effective because my, you know, you put it on and the wolf ears just kind of come up through my own hair.
Oh, I get it.
And I'm just like, rawr.
And it really is.
So it becomes, um...
It's, it's the basis of, I can make it whatever I want.
I can put, I can put a top hat on and I'm like a werewolf with a top hat.
I can put a, you know, chain mail on and it's like a werewolf in chain mail.
So I get, I get off a little bit easy.
And so I put this on and I have, I have not one, not two, but a selection of different colors of velvet cloaks.
Because over the years, what do you see a velvet cloak?
What are you going to do?
Not get it.
Uh-uh.
And then you see another velvet cloak in a different color.
I was there when you bought a cape one time at a drugstore, and it was a tremendous look for you.
That cape is still in play.
I think you wore it on stage one time, if memory serves.
I've worn it on stage.
I've worn that cape.
We went to my local Walgreens, and you bought a very handsome Walgreens Halloween cape.
And like your werewolf mask, it was like it was made for you.
Yeah.
You put it on, and it was just like, well, why have I not been wearing a floor-length cape the entire time?
I think a lot could change in my life if I started wearing a cape.
A lot changed in mine.
Yeah.
I wore that cape.
We were playing a show.
You guys ended up using some of the photos I took of you.
Barsouk used those as promo photos.
They wanted you in profile, smoking a cigar, wearing a cape.
And it's a powerful, powerful look at night.
And there was also a cop there with the, with the cop lights on.
I will.
I, you know what?
I don't usually put things in notes, but I will put a link to that series on notes.
I wore that cape on stage at a show, um, where it was one of those where we, we never used to do this because I remember there, there, we, we were playing a show at the old sit and spin, which was the laundromat slash rock club downtown and
And the headliner was a band called the Park Boys, and they were an evolution of the band.
They were called, what was the band in Almost Famous?
Sweetwater.
Oh, I see.
Sweetwater.
This band was actually called Sweetwater.
The almost famous band was fake, but this was a real Seattle band, and they were a big deal in the early 90s, Sweetwater.
Sweetwater had evolved into the Park Boys, and this was kind of happening in the transition between...
post-grunge glam and pre-indie like integrity wars that would be like like a murder city devils or uh almost like uh like uh urch overkill ish sort of like glossy yeah but but and and um and
The park boys were trying to do a thing where they were pivoting to like, they were all playing through giant Mesa boogie stacks and their sound was really, really, really, really trebly, but it was still glam.
It was like glam proto pop metal something.
I don't, I can't exactly say, but it was an interesting time though.
People were trying stuff.
I don't like a lot of bands that did that, but I admire their trying something different.
Yeah, they were doing something, right?
They had some feather bubbles.
There was a lot of like more, people were trying to do, I say Motor City Devils, but like they just stick in my mind.
But bands like that that maybe had a big rented truck and did a little more of a stage show, there was a little more showmanship to it.
Right.
Right.
But six months later, Death Cab for Cutie was on that very same stage playing Fisher-Price instruments.
Staring at their feet.
Yeah, pretending they didn't know which way the microphones were pointing.
They were definitely shaking.
Thank you.
The Park Boys did this thing, and I'd never seen a Seattle band do it.
Where the band got up on stage and started... No shit?
But the lead singer wasn't there.
And it was like... Wait, were you saying they started playing the riff from Thriller?
Oh, no, no, no.
They were just playing some generic, like, you know, everybody on he just... Oh, I see.
A groove, a vamp.
And then, because the stage was set up where there was a long ramp up one side of the venue that went up to the stage.
And then here comes the lead singer.
Now, he's been in the room the whole time.
We all knew he was there because the band was all...
it's one of those clubs where the band is, there's no backstage, right?
You just, you wheel yourself up on the stage and put your instruments up there.
He'd already been on the stage, like setting up his stuff.
Yeah, I get it.
But then the band goes up, down, down, down.
And then he like comes up the ramp, full swagger, sunglasses on,
boa trailing behind him oh my like whoa and and you know and the room really reacted like whoa right because it was not seattle it was not a seattle thing to do it was really that's much more la or anywhere else you know like you could you could you could do that anywhere but here in seattle to do such a thing would be to do such a thing in earnest would be a a real step over
Like if you're coming out to do, well, this sounds like something you would do, but like if you came out to do a set as ZZ Top or like something like that, like my band Parachute Pants, we used to dress in silly 80s garb.
That's one thing because you're having fun with it.
In this case, they're unironically coming out to try and put on a show.
Yeah, but they're, you know, they're having fun with it, but they're from Bellevue.
Like they're from the east side, right?
So there's not, they're not quite...
It may not even be that they're not tuned in to Seattle so much as they don't care.
They're from Seattle.
They're just from the Kirkland Redmond side of it.
And the vibe is different.
It's way more Pearl Jam over there than it is Mudhoney.
Anyway, after I bought the cape with you, I came up here.
We were playing a sold-out show at the Crocodile.
And I had the cape and I was like, Hey, you guys go out on stage and just start playing like down, down, down, down, down, down, down.
And they were like, uh, okay.
And so the band goes out and I was like, that sounds like your, that sounds like your band.
I was like, okay.
You guys, you guys.
And I was like, go, you know, go out one at a time.
Like, uh, uh, okay.
Okay.
You know, go, you're like, send the drummer out first and then the bass and then, you know, then the keyboards and then the whatever.
And everybody go, everybody's out there and it's like, dang, dang, dang, dang.
And of course, at a long winter show, like everybody in the audience, what the fuck is happening?
What is this about?
You know, because whatever they're jamming on, it's not even one of our songs.
It's just like everybody just pedaling E. We're not going to then shift gears into our hit tune.
Yeah, sense of line.
And then I came out
with that cape on a full vampire cape.
And I came out and just like swooped across the stage and did all this, you know, sort of Dracula stuff with the cape.
And, um, you know, and I had my guitar and,
And really, really took the, you know, took it into the paint, Merlin, with the amount.
You were committed.
Of vampire showmanship that I brought to that.
And this was peak, like, high water, stay pressed jeans and two tight t-shirts, indie pop.
There were very few capes in rock and roll at the time.
Right.
And I did.
And then, you know, we tried our best to like shift gears right into the first song, which I think was probably car parts.
And it's very hard to go from like down to swagger to like, but we did.
And eventually I took the cape off and swooped it around my head and threw it over.
And I heard later.
In the audience, there was a guy who, I think he's appeared on our program before, Andrew McKaig, who's like a, he's like just the ultimate kind of rock guy, you know, black Les Paul, long hair.
He's very handsome.
He's got a lot of charisma.
He's played with a lot of rock bands.
He ended up being the, he's the longest serving guitarist in the presidents of the USA.
Oh, wow.
And he turned to Mike Squires.
I heard this from Mike.
And he said...
this is the most rock and roll thing that's happened in Seattle in 15 years.
And he said, and no one in the audience has any idea.
Like none of, no one here can possibly appreciate how rock and roll this really is.
He thinks he's going back to almost like a screaming Jay Hawkins, like Jerry Lewis back when it was like bad boys on stage doing bad boy stuff.
And like, ah,
I was trying to be Alice Cooper, you know, I was like, because once you're up there in the lights and the music's going and you're wearing a cape, Merlin, something happens inside.
You know, I was like, I don't want to take this cape off.
And also no one in this audience actually wants me to take this cape off.
Or if I do, if I do take this cape off, I should have nothing on underneath it because fucking this cape is like...
How are you going to top the Cape?
What are you going to do now?
Rickenbacker's a pretty large body guitar, so that could give you a little bit of coverage.
It's not like you're playing like one of those Eddie Van Halen little guitars.
You could credibly go out there.
Yeah, I don't like the no clothes on stage.
I don't think that's a good... It's been done.
There are bands that do that, and it's fun.
But, you know, G.G.
Allen, 5'8".
Like, there's some bands.
5'8", the singer would be naked every show, and that was part of the bit.
Also, he had a lot of, you know, psychological issues.
But John Roderick, a big bull of a man, comes out there and they're vamping on E. Man, a cape comes out?
Show some respect.
Anyway, I think that might have been, it was a kind of peak.
It was a place.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
But last night I had on a cloak and I had on my wolf mask and Marlo said, oh, uh, you're professor Lupin.
Of course.
Professor Lupin's having a really tough night.
And I was like, professor Lupin, of course.
I love professor Lupin.
And she, and so she did the thing where she immediately converted my thing into something better because she knew.
Were you opposed to it?
No, I didn't.
I didn't know that Professor Lupin existed.
He's very cool.
He's always giving people chocolate to help him calm down.
Yeah.
And, you know, he's Johnny.
Johnny!
Oh, I love that actor.
Johnny!
Sure, he's been in everything.
And I can see a David Dulles resemblance.
He and I don't look like one another.
But there is a resemblance.
Do you know what I mean?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's like, I can never remember which is which, but it's like an impression versus an impersonation.
You know what I mean?
Like, with that, like, the thing is that you both have the gravitas of a well-regarded English actor, if I'm being honest.
Thank you.
That's exactly right.
Whatever he's in.
I mean, he's so committed.
He's actually done a lot of good comedy stuff, too.
Like you.
He's very funny.
He's very funny.
Just like me.
He's very funny.
Very funny.
Mm-hmm.
But...
So the movie Naked, do you remember when the movie Naked came out?
Did you see it when it came out?
Were you, where were you then?
Uh, I, the name sounds familiar and I'm going to have to use the internet for a second.
Is it the nineties?
Ninety three.
It was a time, it was a time I was still on drugs.
Okay.
And it was this, it was like this independent, uh,
This was a weird movie.
Yes.
It's a Mike Lee movie.
Okay.
And it was only in arty theaters and only arty people went to it.
And a girl I was seeing took me to this to see naked.
And I was like...
didn't have money to go to the movies, let's say.
So she was like, I'm going to take you to the movies because I, because I want to see this movie with you.
And we went and it's a movie about a guy who is a drunk asshole.
And he uses all the people around him.
And he talks incessantly about, you know, just like running a constant litany of bullshit.
And he's kind of violent and also pathetic.
Well, for you, that would be what they call a stretch role.
A little bit of a stretch.
And this was like his debut role, right?
And he's crashing on people's couches and he's getting in fights.
And the lead actress is playing a role of a working girl who's trying to...
trying to do good and make it in the world, living in a boarding house.
And he comes in and he, and he destroys everyone's life.
And I'm sitting in the theater and I'm watching, it's a very uncomfortable movie because he's so, you know, he's so kind of despicable.
That was like me going to see Pretty in Pink with a girl who I didn't take to the prom.
You ever have to sit and we have to sit.
Well, like where something's happening in the movie, that's a little too close to something that happened in real life.
And you, the movie's not over yet.
You got to just keep sitting there.
Exactly.
And we're both sitting there and it's, it's very much like, Oh dear.
This movie is a, is uncomfortably close to my real life.
And although I'm not despicable like this character, I'm not so far from despicable.
There are all of the things that he's doing that are despicable.
I...
I probably like put on the brakes 13 inches from the, from the line that he just, that he's just one inch over.
And so it's sitting there.
It's just like, Oh no, he, he's not the hero of this film, right?
Like he's the star of it, but not the hero.
And yeah, it first for sure was, it became an indelible,
role of an indelible performance in my mind because it was because i don't think she took it to me i don't think she took me to the movie as an intervention i think she'd read something in the newspaper that was like edgy cool you know junkie movie for you know for cool kids that wear all black go see this if you're really if you're really a dark girl and she was like let's go see this movie and then yeah we were in it and it was like uh-huh
And, you know, and basically I went to the movie because I was going to lean over halfway through and go, can I crash at your place tonight?
But, but halfway through, it was like, oh no, asking to crash at her place right now is like really a bad move.
I think I did crash at her place.
Sure.
But it was, uh, but David, if awkwardness were a bar to things being done, you know, there'd be a lot that didn't get done.
Right.
He became a kind of familiar to me in the acting world.
Anytime I saw him, I was like, oh, there he is.
He doesn't look like me, but he resembles me.
And then a later girlfriend, a serious girlfriend I had a couple of years later, because his name was Johnny in the movie.
And a later girlfriend would always say to me, you know, when she was teasing, upset but teasing, she would say, Johnny!
Which was the way the lead actress referred to the David Dillis character.
Johnny!
And I would then wince again.
Yeah, sure.
For sure.
Another wince in a long series of winces, Merlin.
And I'm like a senior winces.
Oh, come on.
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And all the great shows.
Jesus Christ.
And, you know, his little pup in the box was named Johnny, if memory serves.
Johnny!
Johnny!
It's all right.
Senior Winston's is funny.
His hand does the talking, and then there's the guy in the box.
Oh, we got him in the box.
So, but you clocked Dylan on a camera.
Huh.
Oh, well, so the long and the short of it is I got back last night and my house had not been toilet papered.
And I did a, I did a lengthy perimeter check and there were no, none of my traps had been sprung.
Nobody had, nobody was thinking about me at all.
Nobody's stolen your silver ingot.
Nope.
So what it meant was that it was their senior year.
All those boys were now off somewhere.
I love how much this hinges on which year of high school these kids were in.
They're at the University of Northern Arizona right now.
You're extrapolating so much about Dylan and his retinue.
They're never going.
And the thing is, by the time they get back at Christmas, they will not remember me.
It won't even be a thing where they're like,
Hey, let's go, you know, let's go raz that guy from back in our high school days.
Because I just, it was just something that happened on the, on senior week for them.
And then the, and then Dylan remembered it, you know, in August one time.
But so I think I'm off the hook.
Okay.
I think that, I think at least...
At least the... I'm off the hook with the teenagers.
I'm not off the hook... With the neighbors.
And I think it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Do you think you'll be... Do you think you'll find yourself being drawn into this?
All of the things being equal.
Do you see yourself being... Where they might try to draw you into this more... They won't give you the time of day as a neighbor, but as an interlocutor...
uh, your services may be required.
I am the only one that has bridged the communication gulf between them.
I don't think they've talked in over 10 years and I think it's been only hostile.
Oh God.
God, people suck.
But the one, the one over here, the one that, uh, the one that not the daycare lady, but the other one,
She's pulled a little bit of a switcheroo on me.
She did the old switcheroo where you're, where you've got a dispute with somebody and then they say, well, what about, and then they bring in some irrelevant.
Yeah.
She sent, uh, she sent somebody over to my house, an arborist.
And the arborist, you know, was just some guy who was just- She sent an arborist over to your house?
Yeah, he was just some random guy that she had employed.
He had no idea that he was being used in a psychological terror.
And he said, hey, hi, I'm Joe from Joe's Arborist.
And your neighbor has a tree that's on your property that she's worried is going to fall onto her driveway.
Oh, I see.
Okay.
And so she asked me to come...
you know, take a look at the tree and then, um, you know, make an estimate for, for removing the tree.
And she says, she'll split the cost with you of having the tree taken out.
And I was like, huh?
But that presumes a lot of pre-existing agreement that you had not agreed to.
Right.
I'd never heard anything about this.
So I walked down with the arborist down to the tree in question.
And he's like, well, you see, like the top of the tree is dead.
And this part of the tree is fine.
But that, you know, this could break off.
And it also could live for another 20 years.
But, you know, this and that.
And I was like, huh, all right, well, so what are your estimates?
And he's like, well, to take the whole tree out is probably $5,000.
And I was like, $5,000?
It's a very big tree.
It's an old tree.
Well, it's a very big number.
And I said, if it falls, is there any chance it's going to fall on her house?
And he's like, no, her house is too far away, but some part of it could fall in the driveway.
Yeah.
And I was like, you know, I'm prepared to pay to clean up the tree that falls in the driveway.
I don't, if it's not.
I see.
I see.
If it's not going to fall on her house, then let's let God decide.
Absolutely.
But you're already kind of back on your heels a little bit because you're being presented.
And I think I know this about you and I know I know this about me.
The phrase I have agreed to nothing comes to mind, which is like you're opening salvo about this.
First of all, you didn't even come over like a person.
You sent your workman here to tell me how much I'm supposed to pay him for something.
That's hostile.
That's really hostile.
And it's like a thing that doesn't, it's a non-thing, right?
I mean, she's sitting in her house and she's like, this guy's going to take my garden away and replace it with native bushes because I put my garden on his property.
And he's got some trip about native bushes, whatever that's about.
And so now I'm going to turn the tables on him.
I'm going to find a problem with the tree in his forest.
And so I told her...
That I was not going to split the cost of.
I was not going to pay $2,500.
Did you tell her in person or through her?
I did.
I did.
I said, you know, I think that it's fine.
And she was like, I don't think it's fine.
I think it's going to, you know, every time I drive under it, I'm scared.
And I'm like, I guess.
I guess so.
But I think also, no, I don't think that's true.
It's not, you know, even if the tree fell, it could fall.
It would have to be.
Like, there's no indication that the tree is even going to fall where she thinks of it.
How far do you take this?
In terms of, like, I understand that idea of, like, if she's that concerned about it, I think she could say, hey, can I get your permission to do this and I'll pay for it?
But this whole, like, abundance of caution, let's guess what the future's going to be and here's your bill stuff is for the birds.
See, that's the thing.
If she had said, I'm, can I...
Can I pay this guy to take this down?
And, you know, everybody, she is a wealthy person, right?
It's not a question of the $5,000, I don't think.
Yeah, but now you've learned less from Merlin.
Man, what do you want 10 times more of?
Like, do you want, do you want to escalate your relationship with this person by now having a shared money project?
A shared money project.
No, thank you.
Well, and what, but so what it's going to, what's going to end up happening?
It's all, everything is going to end up.
Well, at one level, Merlin, everything's going to be fine.
Right.
Everything's going to be fine.
In the grand scheme of things, you think everything's probably going to be fine?
Everything's going to be fine.
I think in the grand scheme of things, everything's going to be fine.
I think you're... Yeah, I think you're right.
It'll be fine.
There's going to be a lot of stuff that goes wrong.
There's going to be bad things.
There's going to be a lot of, you know, hurt.
There's going to be sorrow and sad.
But in the end, everything's going to be fine.
Everything's going to be fine.
Yeah.
But in the meantime...
There's all this stuff.
Like in the very short term, I've got to do the freaking laundry.
Like this house, I have let it go too far.
And everywhere I look now, there's some unfinished thing.
I got to take the trash out.
I got to do the dishes.
I got to do the laundry.
I got to...
Hang up all this other stuff.
I got to send these packages back.
I got a package and now I've got to send it back.
You got to take care of that because they don't give you unlimited time for that.
You could have theoretically unlimited time for laundry, but who wants to live like that?
A house is for living.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm afraid that I might've already gone past the line of unlimited time.
Well, then that's something to cross off your list.
You know what I mean?
Everything will probably work out fine.
We'll find out.
Everything's going to work out fine.
But in the short term, I got to do the laundry.
But in the medium term, I think I'm going to have to get Hunter McClain back out here and build some more fences.
Do you think it's helping?
The fences?
Yeah.
You can't... I mean, I'm aware of the, I believe, Robert Frost line about fences making good neighbors.
But there's also just this thing of, like, the more...
it's kind of like why I try to never do anything with my PayPal account.
Cause I feel like I'm putting my hands in a dragon's mouth when I do the most trivial things.
And I imagine myself being chewed up by, by gears at PayPal anytime.
So I just, you know what I'm saying?
I mean, we all have things like this where you're like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it kind of stuff.
But it's like, once you find yourself engaging with,
Obviously you're not, you don't want to engage in affirmatively saying, oh yes, let's do this project.
But even if you find yourself just doing shit to deal with these people, you're still, you know, it's like Rush said, you know, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You're kind of getting wrapped up in their bullshit, right?
I don't know.
No, I don't know.
You're the homeowner.
One of the other issues... You can't fix a personality disorder with a pile of wood.
One of the other issues, of course, is that I... There are two things.
This may come as a surprise.
You may not even want to know this.
Oh, no.
There are probably a lot of people that don't want to know this.
Are you taking my headphones off?
No, no, no.
I think you could, but you know, but take one headphone off, be cautious about what I'm about to say.
Okay.
I'm ready.
But you know, I am a, am someone who sleeps at night in the altogether.
I do not prefer a pajama.
I want to just be my natural self from head to toe.
And when I live alone in a home, as I do in this one, most of the time, and I get up in the night and
You know, I do not put on a garment to go from here to there, right?
There's no one else here.
In your house?
Where you live?
In my house?
Yeah.
Where your children play with their toys?
My children sometimes are here to play with their toys.
And so in the morning, often, you know, I get up and I make it all the way to the kitchen to put the coffee on.
Put a kettle on.
Here comes morning, John.
I walk around.
And then pretty soon, you know, on a summer's day, I'm walking around.
And the house is on the ravine side.
It's made out of windows.
It's got windows, windows, windows, windows.
A lot of windows work both ways.
A lot of windows work both ways.
And to really put the icing on it here, I don't have curtains.
Yeah.
Oh.
Because the windows unto the world are like curtains.
Why would I ever have curtains?
They don't need curtains.
You know, it's your view.
It's your house.
And if you want to dangle your way to some coffee, that is John's choice.
And as far as these windows, guess who those windows belong to?
Me.
That's right.
My windows.
My windows.
And the house is situated in such a way that you cannot see the neighbor's.
It's only forest out the window.
So it's me and my forest.
And I'm floating above the forest in my little area here.
And I'm going from coffee pot to bedroom and back and sitting and walking around.
Everything is fine.
It's all God's children.
Mm-hmm.
But as the county begins to remove the invasive species, there will come a day when youth will pass away.
Bumsy bumsy bop.
Someone...
One of these neighbors could conceivably, from an upstairs bedroom with a powerful pair of binoculars, begin to see through the foliage.
And perhaps if they were super devoted and creeps, the thing is, it doesn't matter.
If they could see, then I'm going to presume that they are.
As I walk through.
They're going to, they're going to spy, uh, you know, a glance at little John.
But that's on them.
I mean, again, I don't want to beat this to death and I hate to make everything about property.
You know, the only, the only real wealth is, uh, is property.
You're absolutely right.
You've got, you've got real wealth, you've got windows and you know what, if they get a free view because of the, uh, the, the, the, not defenestration, the deforestation of, of the, the, the ravine.
You know, well, hakuna matata, no charge.
But I am not an exhibitionist.
I'm not walking around naked.
You wouldn't even play naked on stage.
You'd wear a cape before you'd be naked on stage.
Would you consider going to get coffee wearing a cape?
Because that could make, John, this could make things extremely interesting.
Go on.
If you start present, well, I'm just saying, we have a lot of fun here with your umbrella stand full of swords and your bathrobe.
But I'm just saying, if you are just walking around,
Just as God made you, but wearing a Walgreens cape as you do your morning ablutions.
Yeah.
I think that could settle a lot of stuff.
Now, who's going to come over and intervene in that case?
Who's going to come over and give an estimate on you, you know?
Can we split the cost of getting your windows frosted?
I don't... I want...
what i want what i want for for many years that was my number one some my sister said to me the other day she we were sitting in the living room and she was reading some magazine and she said she looked up at me and she said what is kinky
And I was like, what?
Are we really going to... Do you really want to know what kinky is?
Wait, your sister Susan said this?
Yeah, she's like, what do people mean when they say kinky?
Are you kinky?
Okay.
And I was like, well... And we start talking about it, and I kind of explained to her that, like...
Kink at a certain point.
Kinky went very mainstream.
It became, especially in San Francisco, a real shibboleth that you were a certain kind of hip.
Yeah, that's a very like 70s word.
It is, but it became a thing just in recent years, 2015 or whatever.
Everybody in San Francisco, all the young Taylor people were.
We do say kink as the thing about which one is kinky, but I think it used to mean pretty much anything that wasn't procreative, you know, cis missionary sex.
Right.
Well, and so she's saying it, Susan's asking about it in the sense or in the context of like, okay, you're on a dating site and you click somebody's profile and they're like, I'm kinky or are you kinky?
They send.
He probably wants to do foot stuff.
Who knows, right?
And so I'm saying to her like, yeah, it's a category of thinking about sex, but also if someone leads with it, you can kind of guess that they've got a lot of stuff they want to tell you about how they feel about.
Yeah, it's not even coded.
It's not coded to say, like, I'm adventurous.
I like, you know, there's lots of ways you can code that, but that's almost more like, hey, just so you know what you're in for, like, I will be stealing your panties.
Yeah, and it often felt, in the 90s in Seattle, when people led with it, it often felt like they were going to read you their kind of smug text about how vanilla sex was boring and vanilla people.
Yeah, but it's probably like pink fuzzy handcuffs shit.
Well, okay, so there's that, which is the, there's that, which is whatever that is.
That's a thing.
But no, it's the people that are like, I can't get off unless...
somebody unless somebody's pinching my nipples or whatever you know it's like an it's the i can't get off unless conversation okay where you're like oh well that's too bad that actually seems kind of sad can you really not get off unless one specific weird thing has happened too bad yeah but you know every every uh you know all cutlery finds a drawer in life
But I know I, I take, I take your meeting and just so I come clear here, she's on the dating scene and she's asked you to help parse the short description one gets on a, on a dating app.
Yeah.
She's just trying to figure out, you know, it's a thing I did an episode of omnibus, uh, not very long ago on the Merkin, the, uh, the fake pubes.
Yeah.
And, uh, it's because, uh, or one of the things is in 2015, uh,
All of a sudden, zero body hair became the fashion in the world.
And I know some people who made some LASIK choices, some laser-based choices.
They've got like a permanent baby bottom?
Yeah, assuming that there would never be a day in history where they would ever want to have pubic hair again.
And it's like, you know, when you're 28 and you've got a little money to spend and you can get it done, that's, you probably do think it's going to be forever.
But like, you can already see pubic hair coming back.
It's already a thing again.
And God bless it.
Yeah.
In my case, when I think about my own kink, and this, you may not want to know this.
I really super don't.
But go ahead.
But my own kinks.
Oh, boy.
And it all boils down into one thing.
Okay.
And that is just show up at my house wearing nothing but a puffy coat.
Okay.
That's it.
Huh.
If you do that, anything else is fine.
Talk about like one of those work for work, like Colorado vests.
Yeah.
If you come, if you come in like a coat, like a, like an ankle length sleeping bag.
Ankle length sleeping bag coat.
One of those eighties coats with kind of puffy sleeves.
Oh, like a Russian lady coat.
Like a Russian lady coat.
I know what you're talking about.
Russian ladies always, they love those coats.
They're basically walking around to blanket with sleeves.
Yeah.
It's a blanket with sleeves, a sleeping bag with sleeves.
If you come, you ring my doorbell.
I open the door.
You're there in a sleeping bag coat.
Okay.
And I'm like, oh, it's cold out.
And you're like, it is.
And then you come in.
No, you should.
And then you come into the house and I'm like, oh, you know, can I take your coat?
And then there's nothing on under the coat.
Oh, God.
It just, you know, then anything.
It wouldn't be the same if you wore it on Saturday mornings.
No, no, no.
I think if I showed up in a sleeping bag coat with nothing on underneath it, that would be, you'd be able to press charges.
Court order for sure.
Yeah.
But the other way around, like, I don't need you to pinch my nipples, just, you know.
Well, you know, this is the thing about a salad bar.
If you went to a salad bar and it was all iceberg lettuce, it really would hardly be something you could call a salad bar.
It wouldn't be at all.
It would just be a big trough of lettuce.
But do you want to go to a salad bar that's just pinched nipples?
That's not my judgment to make.
I want everybody to be happy.
I just don't want them to talk about it.
That's the critical thing for me.
My kink is you not talking about sex.
What is it?
Was it a, there's a slot for everything in the cutlery drawer?
I don't think you used the word slot.
No, I don't like that either.
I don't think we say that anymore.
Gash, what do we say?
I guess the feeling is that you, there's a couple of ways you can run this and you know, time is a flat circle, but like you may choose to have an approach to,
You could choose to antagonize one of them.
You could choose to play them against the other.
You could do a little bit of zibba zaba with like sending false flags.
Or you could just, you could make it really fucking weird where they're basically terrified to contact you.
Because these are like NPR ladies.
Are these like wine moms?
I'm sorry, was that racist?
One of them is a, one of them for sure, oh, wine moms.
No, I don't think, I don't think they're wine moms exactly.
I think they both drink wine and they're both moms.
I bet they were both into Fleetwood Mac at some point.
One of them for sure was.
Okay.
One of them seems more like a Jethro Tull.
Oh, dear.
But now I just feel, you know, what I really, what I really want is
this guarantee is these is both of them they're both in a moment in their lives and they're different ages you know one of them's 75 and one of them 65 okay which to our listeners in their 20s may seem like uh like splitting hairs but but to quote uh mr show you know we're from different generations i'm into star wars and you're into that empire strikes back shit right
It's one of those distinctions that seems small because all old people are old, but they're different boomers.
They're different boomers, right.
And there's a class difference between them, too.
One of them feels like she is high class, upper class.
Oh.
And one of them is very decidedly middle class.
Okay.
And middle class proud.
Okay.
And there's a, but what I sense in both cases is, you know, your houses, both of your houses are worth more money to you as money than they are as houses.
And let me explain.
You're both at a point in life when you could do something new.
You could move into a smaller place, get a two-bedroom apartment somewhere.
You know, you could move to Mexico.
You could, you know, you could go... Pull up stakes and see what life has in store for you next.
That's right.
You know, you're both single ladies.
That's what I was going to ask.
Are there families or partners involved?
These are two independent...
Uh, all the single ladies and they're, and they're in their place, but the, the, do they have like kids that come to visit?
So this is the one problem, which is that they both, they're both divorced.
Oh, we have the drug son.
I forgot about him.
Both have grown sons who are, who, uh, failed to thrive.
You could turn them against each other.
Well, they're both like, they're idiots.
They're going to start a band.
The thing is, they're idiots in different ways.
Okay.
And I can't... There's a gash for every silverware drawer.
You raise a great question, which is, these two boys surely knew each other.
They were next door neighbors.
They're both 30 now.
Oh, yeah.
Somebody probably pants the other one at some point.
But how do I not hear from the neighborhood?
Because I've got my ear to the tracks.
Yeah.
How do I not hear the story of the... I've heard stories about both boys, but I've never heard any story and have found no evidence that they interact with each other at all.
Oh, that's super... You should keep that in your pocket.
That's super interesting.
What's going on with that?
Because they must have gone to school together.
They must have ridden the bus.
They might have been in Scouts.
We went to school together.
They shared a fence.
They shared a fence.
Their mothers are both throwing shit over the common fence into the forest that borders their... I mean, there's a forest that borders their yards.
Right.
That they, what, never hopped over the fence and went down and met each other?
Not bloody likely.
So anyway...
What I want to do is convince both of these ladies that they should sell their houses.
They should sell their houses to young families.
And by young, I mean, you know, they're in their 40s because they have children that are about... School-age kids, maybe.
Yeah, they're about 10 years old and they could be playmates of my time.
That would be so nice.
And then the screamy, loud, like only half-licensed daycare center will go away.
I see.
Just for the neighborhood you want, not the neighborhood you're in.
Thank you.
That's what you're saying, right?
That's what I'm saying.
And literally, you can wear a sleeping bag coat or you could just, you know, rock out with your cock out.
You're enjoying your coffee.
There's windows.
The forest has been defenestrated.
But like, how do we get these boys involved?
Because I think you got, it sounds like this could be some real complimentary agents of chaos inside of these organizations.
I don't, but the boys are what scares me.
the boys well because they're loose cannon they're both 30 year old failure to thrive in one case drug addict in one case yeah like flop and i don't want them activated i want them in front of medieval studies or do you mean like can't keep a job at graders yeah the latter okay i don't think either one of them is like oh they were they had such potential they've probably never been the red robin
No, I don't think that they have worked at a service station.
I think that they sit in front of the television because they have wealthy mothers.
A little bit of Jenga, right?
Like, what blocks do I start pulling out without having this shit fall down on me?
Exactly.
Like, what do I do?
It's not like I can file a false police report.
What do you need to do?
What are you fighting here?
Do you need to do anything?
Yeah.
I mean, what I need to do is just chill out, you know, go let go, let God.
But if you just keep doing your thing and put up a series of fences, you just keep doing you, right?
I mean, like, what are they going to do to stop you?
If they don't like it, they can move.
I'm not going to do anything to stop me.
They're just over there.
I can, they're just vibing.
I think they're talking about you.
This is the problem, right?
I can feel vibes.
I know.
Me too.
I get vibes coming through the trees.
I hate vibes.
I, I hate vibes and it's difficult to call people on it because it's just a vibe.
But vibes are real.
Like, like, like Mike Squire says, vibes are real.
Vibes are real.
Why are you over there vibing me?
I don't want to get vibe.
Don't vibe me.
Just.
Like, why can't everybody just fucking calm down?
Everybody needs to calm down.
That's what I'm saying here.
If there were two new young families, I could go over there.
You know, there's a young family that moved in over on the other side, and we're great.
She texted me the other day.
She was like, can you look after our house?
We're going to be gone for a day.
I was like, of course, I'd love to.
We're just so friendly and tight.
We'll just have a couple of new families where I go over and say... Do you need to get rid of both of the houses or could getting rid... Could you focus on one and put a lot... Because if you put effort into one, I mean, I'm no... What's his name?
Lao Tzu?
No.
Who's the guy?
The Sun Wu?
I'm not any of the military strategists, but it seems to me defeating one of these enemies would be...
probably two orders of magnitude easier than fighting both of these enemies is there a way you could focus on the one you like the least and then maybe think make them think their house is on it or something i would i would uh i would pick the daycare center 1000 interesting because she is i think i think she is a bad actor
Just because of the pure tonnage of garbage that she threw over the fence over the course of 30 years.
It just feels to me like there is a moral failing.
People don't do that one time, John.
If they do it one time, they apologize like a gentleman.
This is some serial shittiness.
And one of these people needs to be expunged.
Making somebody think that their house is... Maybe you could get Dylan involved.
Like when he's home on break or something, you could have him wear a sheet and go over there or something.
You could be up there in your sleeping bag coat.
I just feel like creative options.
It's one of those things where if you pick a fight with somebody, you need to be prepared to go the distance.
That's true.
And I feel like she, there is darkness over that fence that they're prepared to go away.
Oh, you're bringing a knife to a daycare fight.
I get it.
Right.
I mean, if you're going to throw old cans of paint over the fence into a forest, at what point are you going to go, Oh my God, you're right.
I'm sorry.
We'll move.
Serious haunting.
Yeah.
And so, and I don't want to file false.
We'll cut this out.
Could you file false reports about shenanigans going on there?
Like maybe the juice boxes aren't clean or something.
I have a friend that works in early childhood development in the, in the region.
Um,
And she said, you know, the, the, the thing about daycares is they are what they are.
There's like anything to do with children in education.
There are all kinds of, um, there are all kinds of regulatory agencies and people that come and inspect and you have to get approved and all this.
You got to have a count of like, who's, who's where there's all kinds.
There's a lot of rules.
And she's like, you just don't want to even, you know, don't even dip your toe in that.
universe because there's no including like going over dressed like a giant baby and saying school me yeah
Something.
I'm just saying, if you were to wear an oversized diaper and had a rattle and went over there, what's the worst thing they're going to say is, like, do you still take naps and make wetsies?
And you'd say, well, I want a juice box.
And just, you know, really kind of, you know, a situationist.
Like, really bring it to her.
You know what I'm saying?
If you start doing that every day and the kids see it and they're screaming...
The kids are already screaming every minute of every day.
The thing is, there are also 10 families who, for whatever reason, rely on this woman to watch their kids.
So you get in a white van and you just rev the engine all day.
You know, like, just ride by really slowly with a big sign on the white van that says baby kidnappers.
Well, no, no, no, don't be weird.
It would say something like locksmith or every rose has its thorn.
Maybe it's a custom van.
But, like, instead of, like, playing turkey in the straw, it could be something like, I am an ice cream van.
I am an ice cream van.
On Saturday, I was walking down the street in the neighborhood.
And there's a, this is the day before Halloween and there's a white van coming toward me.
Here comes a white van.
I'm walking along the sidewalk.
White van slows down.
And I was like, oh, white van slowing down.
And you know, it's just, and it's, we're in, we're in a neighborhood, but it's kind of a busier street.
And so the white van is slowing down, but it's not, there's no place to turn.
It's kind of somewhat conspicuous that it's slowing down.
And I look over at the white van and now the white van slows way down.
And as it crosses the line where the mirror, the driver's side mirror is blocking the view of the driver.
And then as the mirror goes past and the driver's face is revealed.
Yeah.
It's a murder clown.
Like a scary, scary, scary clown.
That's not cool.
And he has slowed the van down to a crawl.
And he's staring at me as he rolls by me.
And I'm like staring at him.
And the murder clown is such a good murder clown.
that i am chilled to the bone you should see the charges and i'm like that is the greatest halloween costume i've seen in years because oh no no because it's not like oh i'm a sexy hobo like that's a vision of horror yeah he's just driving around in this white van wow he might have even had to rent the white van he's just driving around slow rolling on people
And, and after the horror passed, you know, and he's only 15 feet from me.
I was like, bravo, bravo, sir.
And he like pulls off.
But of course the murder clown face is, it shows no emotion.
All it shows is that he's a clown that wants to murder you.
And I was inspired.
It's the remnants of a life of pain.
That's why they look like that.
Yeah, well, that's exactly what it felt like.
I could feel that.
I could, you know, talk about vibe.
Oh, boy, that's a vibe.
And I realized, oh, my God, what have I been doing?
Like, this person's really taking it to the next level.
And...
I could get a white van and drive around with them.
It doesn't have to just be on Halloween.
You know what I mean?
You've owned a white van, I think.
Are you saying you feel like you phoned it in with half a werewolf face?
I feel like if that had happened and it was in March, it would have not been less scary, if you know what I mean.
It would have been more horrifying in March than in Halloween because no one expects a murder clown...
And so, like, am I a professional?
Just let me go.
Am I a professional or not?
You mean at Halloween?
No, at all.
Oh.
Like in life.
Oh, you're very, people give you money for things, don't they?
Do I care enough to send the very best?
I don't know, man.
I mean, you could, I don't know.
I, there's some, something's got to give John.
You can't, you can't let your mind be, uh, be carried away by these people.
You're going to, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to have to do something.
What the fuck is this?
I don't know.
Jesus Christ.
Super weird episode.