Ep. 445: "Gravy Cop"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Good morning, Captain.
John: It's you.
Merlin: There's that guy.
Merlin: It's been too long.
Merlin: It feels like it's been too long.
John: We had a big American holiday there.
Merlin: It has been a while.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: I am pretty proud of myself.
John: Did you get everything you wanted for Thanksgiving?
John: Did you open all your Thanksgiving presents?
Yes.
Merlin: yeah yeah um i also started buying jarred gravy just as a backup because no you oh my god tell me more because okay yeah i have a lot of thoughts on this well here's the problem so monday we do kind of practice thanksgiving we like to have uh we know we have theme nights theme dining nights and one of ours is uh you know kind of like a practice thanksgiving fun fun thanksgiving when it's not thanksgiving i like this
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So last week, early last week, before the Day of Turkeys, we had our own little private three-person.
Merlin: My wife made a really nice Thanksgiving-ish dinner just for the family.
Merlin: And it was really good.
Merlin: There were lots of leftovers.
Merlin: But alas, even though we had a quart of human gravy, we blew through it all.
Merlin: And then when it came time for leftovers, I got no gravy.
Merlin: And what's the point?
Right.
Merlin: I mean, nothing against my wife, but the gravy was so dang good, and I realized— It's not her fault.
Merlin: It's not her fault.
Merlin: We all know it.
Merlin: It's not her fault.
Merlin: She did what she's meant to do, which is she made us Thanksgiving, and we had gravy, a quarter gravy.
John: But the precious, precious gravy is—there's never enough gravy, Merlin.
Merlin: John, there's never enough gravy.
Merlin: If you doubled the gravy, it wouldn't be enough gravy.
Merlin: You need backup sauce.
Merlin: So that's what I started doing.
Merlin: I keep a jar of gravy around just in case I need to douse.
Merlin: But, you know, you got homemade stuffing and whatnot, you know?
Merlin: And with the stuffing especially, stuffing's good, but it's born for gravy.
Merlin: Yes, it is.
Merlin: Yes, it is.
Merlin: Not that good.
Merlin: We've talked about sauces here, have we not?
John: We have, let me ask, let me, you know, I've been chasing the perfect turkey gravy and the perfect beef gravy and the perfect cream gravy.
John: I've been chasing these gravies across the universe.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Pools of sorrow.
John: Literal pools of sorrow.
John: Yeah.
John: Possessing and caressing you.
John: Yeah.
John: Very few waves of joy.
John: Yeah.
John: As I have searched for all these gravies, and so I buy the jars, I get the little canisters, I go, I get the pods, I use astronaut gravy.
John: Gravy pods?
John: One of the great bluesmen.
John: I've never found... He always played sitting in a chair.
John: His name was Robert Gravy Pods.
John: I've never found a gravy that didn't have a little bit of...
Merlin: industrial processing taste it's such a the texture can be super wrong my daughter is addicted to a thing that a lot of youngsters like addicted now i got her on coffee and that's she on squeak is she well we're both now we're both on iced coffee and boy was that ever a mistake as i said coffee iced coffee's the devil
Merlin: Don't do that.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Okay, so anyway, I'm really deep in the stack here.
Merlin: But anyhow, she gets something called boba, boba tea.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And she gets a kind of tea.
Merlin: She goes and, you know, you go in the hood.
Merlin: There's a lot of boba tea.
John: There it is.
Merlin: And I'd never had it before.
Merlin: I can tell I don't want it.
Merlin: It's got balls.
Merlin: No, you don't want it.
Merlin: I don't want sucking balls for fun.
Merlin: No, there's nothing about it you want.
Merlin: I'm not judging.
Merlin: There's nothing wrong with that.
Merlin: I'm not judging people who suck balls.
Merlin: But we went and she got her tea and she got the boba with the – it's weird to hear her order a drink like an adult.
John: Yeah, that you've never heard of before.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I know she goes in and she says all this flibbity-jibbity, you know, Greedo talk.
Merlin: Two scoops of protein powder and a... 81% sugar, Han Solo.
Merlin: And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Merlin: She goes, you want to try it?
Merlin: And I said, I don't.
Merlin: And she said, you should try it.
Merlin: And I know, for example, because I saw a really good YouTube video about supply chain problems.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And boba in particular, which it looks like turns out was a little bit ginned up.
Merlin: But the point is, boba, it's basically like bread balls.
Merlin: And so I had a sip of her noxious drink, and it had all the performance characteristics of shit gravy.
Merlin: Yeah, it was lumpy, and it was grainy.
Merlin: It's like somebody didn't fully blend the flour in this.
Merlin: It tasted like milk flour.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Which I do not prefer.
Merlin: And that's a bad gravy.
Merlin: A shit gravy often has that poor viscosity to it, right?
Merlin: That's part of the industrial feel.
Merlin: Do you feel like it also might be like dioxin or something?
John: I taste the container.
John: I feel like gravy is such a delicate flower that as it moves through a processing plant, it takes on a little bit of the flavor of every machine it touches.
Yeah.
John: So I just feel a little – I just taste a little engine oil.
John: I taste some gear.
John: It's fluffing off or shuffling off.
John: Oh, like outgassing.
John: Yeah, it's outgassing.
John: So right now in the cupboard, I have two little boxes of –
John: Some turkey gravy I found at Trader Joe's, and sometimes you can trust Trader Joe's.
John: Does it have a cute name?
John: No, I don't think so.
Merlin: Sometimes Trader Joe's likes to give their food a just slightly casually racist name.
Merlin: I don't think they do that anymore.
John: I think they have a panel now.
John: Oh, they got rid of the Trader Jose's?
John: Yeah, I think somebody said no more.
John: But at our Thanksgiving...
John: which was at my daughter's mother's parents' house in Bellingham, Washington.
John: Okay.
John: Sorry.
John: They made a full spread, beautiful, beautiful spread, and, you know, and I'm –
John: Not invited to help, because everybody's got a job, and my job... You've got to be careful.
Merlin: You've got to be careful in those situations.
Merlin: You can offer to cut things, but you've got to... You mean like prep?
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: But you've got to be so careful about not stepping on the chef's toes.
John: The first time I ever met my daughter's mother's
John: Mother?
John: Stepfather.
John: Who is not a stepfather because he actually legally adopted her when she was a little girl.
John: So father.
John: And he plays a very large role in the family.
John: He's a towering person.
John: But the first time I ever met him, he came down.
John: It was her 25th birthday party or something like that.
John: And it was a gathering at Josh Rosenfeld's house.
John: And her father came down and he brought...
John: containers of ice cream from this famous Bellingham ice cream parlor called the Rusty Mallard or the Duck Larange or some kind of place that everybody in Bellingham swears are the best ice cream they ever had.
Merlin: The Sword in Regression.
Merlin: Like a terrible pub name, right?
John: But it's old.
John: It's older.
John: Legacy ice cream.
John: It's an 80s innovation.
John: All right.
John: And...
John: But it was one of the first, they all think it's the best ice cream because it was one of the first places that ever had ice cream that wasn't just chocolate vanilla strawberry.
John: You know, it's like 31 flavors except hippie.
John: And he brings five things of ice cream.
John: And then he has all of these, you know, all of these rock musicians that have come to celebrate her birthday that are in their late 20s and 30s, some of whom have been on national television.
John: He has us all line up at the kitchen bar.
John: one at a time with our ice cream bowls and he's going to dish out the ice foodie break and so we're like okay all right you know there's like you know concert from boss there's like big big rock stars here and her dad is going to dish out the ice cream that's an apron was he wearing an apron i think he might have been and so everybody comes up and he says what what two flavors do you want
John: And everybody, because it's Bellingham, everybody goes along and picks two flavors.
John: And it gets up to me.
Merlin: Do you have something more subtle than vanilla?
John: I say, well, you brought five flavors down from Bellingham.
John: They're sitting here on the counter melting.
John: I would like a little bit of each one of the five flavors.
John: Oh, hell yeah.
John: I'm somebody that wants a little bit of everything.
John: You never take the same route twice.
John: And he looked at me and said, pick two.
John: Ooh.
John: And I was like, oh, it's on.
Merlin: And this was a long time before my daughter's... One does not simply walk into Bellingham.
John: No.
John: My daughter's mother and I were not in any kind of relationship at the time.
John: I was just a friend of the family.
John: And I was like, pick two, you say.
John: And the whole pick two...
John: I've encountered this other places.
John: This isn't just a... It may be a Washington problem.
Merlin: I understand it in retail.
Merlin: When we go to our local, like our gelato place, and you get a small with two scoops.
Merlin: And you can get two scoops of one flavor, or one scoop each of two flavors.
Merlin: You can get durian, which is gross.
Merlin: Sorry, that was racist.
Merlin: You can get all the kinds.
Merlin: My kid, of course, always gets a chocolate and a vanilla.
Merlin: But what is...
Merlin: Is it a test?
Merlin: Why only two, John?
Merlin: It seems like he's bringing you something special and your interest in that, it seems like something that would pique the chef.
John: This is a variation on we can all agree on cheese, which is just that someone in the process has an idea of how it's going to go.
John: And when someone else comes along and says, I would like it a different way.
John: It's not okay.
John: They had a plan and this isn't part of the plan.
John: And the thing is, I got two scoops and then I ate them and I came back and I said, I'd like to try two more scoops.
John: You know, like eventually I'm going to get all five flavors.
John: And it's not like he was like, oh, we're running out.
John: You know, you can only have two.
Merlin: It's just it's just maybe it's like in a kid's party where you got to make sure everybody gets exactly the same size slice.
John: You know, except everybody there was 30 and there were only there were only like eight people at this party.
John: It's not like there were 45 people he's trying to serve.
John: Anyway, drive an ice cream back to Bellingham.
John: You don't win anything.
John: He and I have a long, long relationship.
John: It's a very good relationship, healthy relationship.
John: He's wonderful with my daughter.
John: And now, you know, the years ago pick two flavors of ice cream, that story has just gone deep, deep, deep into the archives.
John: Nobody remembers it anymore.
John: It used to be at the we can all agree on cheese level of legendary story about this guy and me.
John: And, you know, in a lot of those stories, I can never tell whether this guy is actually me and the other guy is actually me.
John: the me of this, you know, like, it's like, Oh, I do.
John: Get a load of this guy.
John: And then, then you turn around and you're like, if you can't tell who this guy is, maybe it's you.
John: If you can't tell who this guy at the table is, it's you.
John: Yeah.
John: And so maybe the thing is, it ends up that because I'm the storyteller, I get to say, get a load of this guy.
John: Cause that, this guy doesn't tell the story, but maybe I'm the guy that the story is actually about.
John: Okay.
John: Fair.
John: Yeah.
John: Anyway.
John: Um,
John: We're up, and he is stirring the gravy.
John: And he says, in what I consider to be a very generous gesture, you know, two dads standing in the kitchen.
John: He's like, try this gravy.
John: How's this doing?
John: You know, give me your gravy nod.
John: Gravy takes.
John: And I tasted the gravy.
John: It was delicious.
John: But looking at it, I was like, that's not enough gravy.
John: And I didn't want to say...
John: We got to double this gravy somehow.
John: And the gravy was very thick.
John: It was very piquant.
John: It was salty.
John: It had all the elements.
John: All we needed to do was double it.
John: And in a situation like that, I think you can.
John: I think once you've got the gravy going, I think you can double it.
John: You can throw a stick of butter in there.
John: You can throw some more.
John: You can go to the cupboard and get two things of Trader Joe's boxed gravy.
John: Somehow you can get ahead of this problem.
John: But I didn't have the power to do that.
John: It wasn't my kitchen.
Merlin: But in a situation like that, I mean, I don't want to overstate this for fun, but I'm nervous at that point.
Merlin: I was nervous.
Merlin: Because to me, and this is not a new idea, but for me, a lot of the main course dishes...
Merlin: are at least there to be a vessel or vehicle for gravy?
Merlin: And do I put it on everything?
Merlin: You bet your ass I do.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: I mean, everything, I don't, we're talking about turkey, turkey onion, green beans.
Merlin: We're talking about smashed potatoes, panados.
Merlin: We're talking about smashed panados.
Merlin: We're talking about, like, obviously the, you know, the Pilgrim Joe's turkey.
Merlin: All of the stuff...
Merlin: including stuffing it's gonna all be covered in gravy and then i might put more gravy on and like again you don't get any awards for getting it it's not a rally like you should there should be a terrine of gravy gravy boat more like a gravy tanker so here's what i'm looking i'm sitting at the so my daughter has set up the table yes and she's got um she's got her granddad at one end
John: And then she's put me at the other end.
John: So it's really, it's built.
John: It's built for this kind of situation.
John: The two patriarchs.
John: And it's like that scene in Brokeback Mountain.
John: And I'm... Probably not the scene I'm thinking of.
John: Not the scene you're thinking of, the other one.
John: It's not a tent.
John: And I'm sitting there, and I'm looking at the very small amount of gravy.
John: And I'm conscious of the fact that
John: These are Bellingham people, and they eat like birds already.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, their idea of what a portion is is this probably healthy and appropriate-sized portion for a grown adult.
John: But it is not what I think of it.
Merlin: They're probably following, like, FDA guidance from a different decade.
Merlin: My friend Dennis always used to say, if you're trying to eat the right amount, you know, he believed in that heuristic where you eat an amount of food that looks like a real-world object—
Merlin: And for example, in the 90s, we were told when you're eating your protein, especially if it's beef, it should be three ounces, which is about the size of a deck of cards.
Merlin: And I'm going to extend that and use a Las Vegas reference, gambling reference, blackjack reference here, which is no, it should be more like a shoe of cards.
Merlin: Give me six decks of cards.
Merlin: I want the thing where I tuck in my napkin and then get a ribbon if I finish it, because I will finish it and I will get the ribbon.
John: Yeah.
John: Right?
Merlin: That kind of thing where you're like, oh, this seems like a good amount.
Merlin: And then you go bloop, bloop.
Merlin: Like with a teaspoon, you put a little bit of gravy on it.
Merlin: Oh, that must be bad.
John: Yeah.
John: Think about the times in your life when you have sat down at a restaurant or at something and someone's put a plate in front of you like, voila, and it is a piece of meat the size of a deck of cards.
Merlin: like think back because yeah it's called sushi look it up and you go you give me a steak the size of a deck of cards and we're gonna we're gonna throw hands oh it's so beautiful thank you i mean that's where if you give me even a fucking filet mignon i want it to look like richard dreyfus's uh tower the devil's tower i want it to be jokey sized i want it to be like a sideways loaf of bread made of steer
John: The solution to this problem, of course, is slicing it very thin when you're eating it so that you get as many bites.
John: That sounds like an eating disorder, John.
John: No, no, no.
John: You get as many bites as you would.
John: And so you have as many flavor opportunities.
John: Yeah.
John: But it just – you don't have the – anyway, so I'm sitting at the table and I'm looking.
John: I'm like, okay, I know for a fact that –
John: Three, no, four of the seven people at this table eat like birds.
John: Yeah.
John: And so I'm looking at the gravy and I'm mentally measuring out the teaspoons of gravy that those four are going to use.
John: Totally.
Merlin: It's almost like some kind of like a fucking John Carpenter movie.
Merlin: It's like the thing with gravy where you're like, who will it be?
John: Right?
John: But then I look at my daughter and she eats with gusto.
John: Damn.
John: She eats with gusto.
John: Damn, you bet.
John: She does.
John: Nice pull.
John: And I look at her mother and she eats like a normal person, you know, neither like a bird nor with gusto.
John: And so I'm looking at my plate and I'm going, I'm going to need more gravy than anyone else here.
John: Do I say anything?
John: But I know that there's an optics issue here.
John: Because some people are going to interpret that as you don't like my food.
John: Well, no, the thing is what's going to happen, and it is what happened.
John: i put a little gravy a little gravy over here some gravy on that some gravy on that some gravy on that as you know everything needs it and by the time i put my fifth little tiny little dribble of gravy on my fifth portion i hear from the other end of the
John: says uh be careful with that gravy there's not a ton to go around oh really that's my problem now yeah be careful with that great you know don't use too much of that i'm glad your relationship with this gentleman is strong yeah it's strong but i'm but you know but i knew it was coming and i knew it was a i knew that the issue was this there's not enough gravy and
John: I need more than everybody else because I have more.
John: I have more.
John: I am more.
John: I have more.
John: But I also, you know, and this is, oh, wait.
Merlin: You should get an apportionment based upon, I don't want to say BMI because that's bullshit, just based on need, right?
John: Let me just say, knowing that this was an optics problem, I let the gravy go around the table already.
John: I was like, no, no, no, I'm going to be the last to take gravy.
John: So everybody is sitting in front of their plate already.
John: They've already got all the gravy they want.
John: And I'm telling you, the Eat Like Birds crowd is not going to have seconds.
John: But the gravy cop has his eye on you.
John: He does.
John: He does, because he knows the gravy is a precious commodity, too.
John: It's just that he was the one that was in a situation where he could have doubled that gravy, and then we wouldn't be sitting there.
John: It's too late now.
John: And I think part of it, part of the reason he didn't was because he wanted to sit at the end of the table and go, Hey, um...
John: Hey, can you, you got to be careful.
John: You know, as though, I get this a lot.
John: I got an email from a very good friend this morning that, you know, was just sort of telling me stuff that we both know I already know.
John: You got an as you know, Bob.
John: Yeah, but always phrased in a kind of like...
John: you know, like, well, let me, you know, let me push back a little bit or whatever.
John: Like, uh, the, the, uh, this is a situation where I'm a 53 year old and I know how much gravy there is.
John: I know how much gravy everybody, you know, like I'm seven steps ahead of him, but, um, but he still's got, he can't, he can't not say it.
John: And so at the end of the meal, there was, um,
John: everything except gravy.
John: There was no gravy left and I was not in a position even to go into the gravy terrine and try and
John: sop up.
John: Because that is a bad optic.
John: You don't want to be sitting there eating out of the tureen.
John: What kind of monster are you?
John: That's rustic.
John: I'll tell you what kind of monster I am.
John: A monster who's not going to leave a dram of fucking gravy.
John: If I headed out, if the apocalypse happened today, and I was here in the house, and I had 20 minutes to put together a...
John: the costume I was going to live the rest of my life in the boots and the belts and the knives and the stuff that I was going to go out the door and just keep going.
John: Never look back.
John: I would take that box gravy and I would add it to my Chewbacca bond bandolier.
Yeah.
John: No, I would have some shotgun shells, I'd have a Leatherman tool, and I'd have two boxes of gravy because they were the last two boxes of gravy on Earth.
John: I don't care what it smells like getting that terrine.
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Merlin: I can't do it.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Anyway, yes.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: And were you scrutinized?
Merlin: Are you scrutinized for your gravy desires?
Merlin: Because a lot of times, I mean, okay, listen, no offense to your daughter's mother's father chef, but I would be happy if people enjoyed my food.
Merlin: And again, sorry, I don't want to say anything that's offensive.
Merlin: I hope he's not a listener.
Merlin: Well, actually I do.
Merlin: We could use the help.
Merlin: But if I'm being honest, I can't imagine myself – because, John, again, we're so deep in the stack.
Merlin: I never want to give anyone anything that encourages disordered eating.
Merlin: And because I'm so anxious about that, I think I may actually be making it worse.
Merlin: But I try to never remark on somebody's food –
Merlin: how they eat it, whether they eat it.
Merlin: It's too stressful.
Merlin: I've seen too many family relationships go to shit because all the things they're scared to say about how they dislike and are disappointed by each other all happens at the dinner table.
Merlin: And you see issues of control and, you know, get in here.
Merlin: And no, no, the milk's got to be in a pitcher.
Merlin: And like all this, I have to go back and heat it up.
Merlin: And like, there's just all this stuff where all the emotional tumult
Merlin: of a nuclear family gets played out in how people eat.
Merlin: I would never say to somebody, you ate too much of my gravy.
Merlin: I'm not a gravy cop.
Merlin: But, I mean, a lot of people would take that as a compliment.
Merlin: My sister-in-law, who makes real Thanksgiving that we went to on Thursday, she's a chef.
Merlin: She's owned a catering company.
Merlin: She's incredibly gifted as a chef.
Merlin: And, like, she's thrilled.
Merlin: Like, she's thrilled when people are standing around in the kitchen eating their fucking food.
Merlin: She loves it.
Merlin: She would never say to somebody, in fact, she's the opposite.
Merlin: She's, don't forget the sauce person.
Merlin: You ever been around, don't forget the sauce?
Merlin: Again, I don't, oh, I don't like being told how to, I don't,
Merlin: john i don't like having food explained to me i know it's it's not it's not my first time dining here but if it were i don't want you to explain what tapas means please don't and please don't tell me how to how to deploy the gravy i know how to gravy i gravy good you know what i mean i don't like any of that but like i that makes me so it makes me uncomfortable hearing this because first of all i'm sad you didn't get the gravy you require but i also i mean were you the only one singled out for eating wrong
Merlin: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: He wasn't singling me out for eating.
John: It just makes me uncomfortable, John.
John: I don't like it.
Merlin: I don't want to give anybody disordered eating.
Merlin: I don't like it.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I don't think that you can give someone disordered eating.
Merlin: Certainly you can create in the same way that you can, when you want to change your team, you have to create the circumstances for better culture.
Merlin: If you want a happier, better family, you know, you have to create the conditions for that.
Merlin: I just don't want to create the conditions for someone's eating to become disordered.
Merlin: Sorry, by the way, content.
John: Yeah, I feel like if you're dealing with people at your dinner table that are older than eight years old, you can rest assured that their eating issues are going to be their responsibility.
Merlin: But isn't that like saying, is your hair supposed to look like that?
John: Yeah, but that's like – I mean it's – Did you really want to get that much?
John: If you say that, are you going to eat all that?
John: If you say that and they're hurt by it.
John: You hate your feelings, honey?
John: And you feel like an asshole.
John: You don't sweat much for a fat girl.
John: Or it hurts their feelings or whatever.
John: It's all your responsibility and their responsibility for their own thing, right?
John: Like you did not create their problem.
John: You are being you and you're an asshole.
John: But that's not the same as like you sending them out the door to go commit suicide.
John: No.
John: Like, I was at a restaurant.
John: This is a traumatic experience for me, actually, and remains one.
John: I was at a restaurant here in the neighborhood.
John: When we first moved to the neighborhood, a restaurant, and I'm just going to come right out and say the name of the restaurant, Shelly's, which is one of these diners that's only open until three in the afternoon type of thing.
John: And it had the look...
John: of like a beloved local institution.
John: Is it one of those sort of like where people go after church kind of things?
John: Yeah, it really has that.
Merlin: You know what I mean, right?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: It feels like a diner that's been there forever, and then everybody in the neighborhood loves Shelly's, and that's where you go to get your waffles, or, you know, it's the only place in the whole neighborhood that you can find a breakfast, just like a normal American breakfast.
Merlin: Just give me a normal goddamn breakfast, yeah.
Right.
John: And so it was very early on in our time down here in the south suburbs.
John: And we went in and we had our family and it had that feeling of like, this is our new place.
John: Like maybe every Sunday we go to Shelly's and we get a breakfast and how exciting.
John: And there's, you know, there are drawings on the walls that kids have done in crayon.
John: It just feels like, oh, we're home at Shelly's.
Merlin: Yeah, that's the kind of places we would go when I was a kid.
Merlin: That's a nice feeling.
John: Yeah.
John: So we're sitting at the big table and the server comes over.
John: She's a woman in her late 50s, early 60s.
John: And she's a little harried.
Merlin: She's a little bit, you know, she's business-like.
Merlin: Breakfast is a tough gig, John.
Merlin: As a waiter who did breakfast in a tourist cafe, it's coffee refills, Germans, like the whole thing's a mess.
John: I know.
John: And the thing about, and my feeling about that is that, you know, that a server has a multitude of jobs, and I know that every server has a story as long as your arm.
John: Yes.
John: But...
John: Uh, it's also a job and it isn't like, yes.
John: And so you can do it well, or you can do it poorly really like any job and all of the extenuating circumstances and the 7,000 things that are making you a lame server are still not a good excuse for being a lame server.
John: Just like being a lame anybody.
Merlin: Well, I mean like if you don't want to follow the law, don't become a cop.
John: Right.
John: And if you don't want to, you know, like, I know we all have to have jobs.
John: Everybody has to have a job.
John: And one of the things about doing a job, we should do that.
John: If it's public facing, if it's a job where you interact with people and you don't like people and you don't like your job, I mean, don't be surprised that I'm not excited about the job performance.
John: I know.
John: Anyway, so she's going around.
John: She's not doing a bad job.
John: She's taking everybody's order.
John: She's obviously a competent server in the sense that she's getting all the
John: She's not doing that that hipster thing where she sits and takes 40 people's breakfast order and doesn't write it down You're like come on.
John: Come on.
John: Everybody's right.
John: This table's got a special need.
John: You've got to write this down Nope, she's writing it down.
John: She's doing it.
John: She's doing a hell of a job and she comes to my daughter and at this point in my daughter's life, she's six seven years old and she's you know, she's
John: up until that point had been a little kid that kind of ate everything.
John: And now she's not eating everything anymore.
John: Now she's not eating anything.
John: And now she's realized that there are certain times of the day when you can legitimately just get a sugar bun and, uh,
John: And depending on who's there with you, you know, you can go an entire day and just eat like four sugar buns if you play your cards right.
John: You know, like if you have grandma give you a sugar bun and then you have daddy give you a sugar bun and nobody, it's like going to five different pharmacists to get your anxiety medication and none of them know that someone else is also giving you diazepram or whatever.
John: And so she says, I want, you know, I want a sugar breakfast.
Merlin: And I said, I want a sugar breakfast.
Merlin: I love the candor of that.
Merlin: It's like we'd be making food in the kitchen when my daughter was really little and there'd be butter in the thing and open.
Merlin: She'd come in and say, can I have some butter?
Merlin: And we say, you can have a little.
Merlin: And she'd say, I want a little and a lot.
John: I want a little and a lot.
John: And I do.
John: I totally understand.
Merlin: Exactly.
John: I want a little, but then I want a lot.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: One of the things about having a child is, like, you know that you're going to feed the child mostly bread, sugar, and cheese.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And, I mean, pasta.
John: Wheat via pasta.
John: Yeah.
John: Which I consider bread.
John: Right?
John: Used to be bologna.
Merlin: Used to be feed a kid bologna.
John: Oh, you could.
John: And my daughter's never even had bologna.
John: We sing the bologna song, but she's never had it.
John: O-S-E-A-R?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: She knows the song by heart because we sing it, but she's never, she doesn't know what bologna is.
John: So, so I lean over the table.
John: She and I are sitting across from each other and I say, what about, what about, what about an egg?
John: What about a sugar breakfast?
John: And you add an egg just to have a little protein, just to have a little something that makes it not just syrup on top of a cinnamon roll.
John: And the server says,
John: The waitress standing there in her kind of harried, henpecked energy that she's.
John: Yes.
John: Says under her breath, she can get whatever she wants.
John: Ooh.
John: Ooh.
John: Ooh.
John: And no one else at the table heard it.
John: And I didn't, I couldn't believe it.
Merlin: But I didn't respond to it.
Merlin: The way that she said it quietly like that, was it sort of, does it qualify as sort of voce, like under the breath, or was it just loud enough that somebody could hear it?
John: No, it was under the breath, but it was, I believe, coming from a place of, I don't know, but I think it was coming from a place of the kind of ginned up
John: Like she was aware of eating disorders.
John: She was aware of, I mean, it treads a little bit into, frankly, into bean dad territory where somebody on the outside looks at some evidence and says, my father used to tell me that I couldn't eat.
John: Right.
John: A sugar breakfast.
John: And now look at me, you know, I'm in the hospital.
Merlin: I used to encounter this, I mean, this issue in particular, but I feel like it's part of this larger pattern when your kid is small, which is, and I hate this, I don't want to sound like an asshole about this, but like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, don't talk to her.
Merlin: Talk to me.
Merlin: Because there's all kinds of ways where that starts out seeming really good-hearted.
Merlin: But the general pattern here is there's a certain entire set of questions and queries and, let's be honest, special offers that need to be tendered to me.
Merlin: Don't ask the kid if they want a piece of candy.
Merlin: Ask me if it's okay to offer a piece of candy.
Merlin: That is about as weird as I get about this stuff, but I am a little weird about it.
Merlin: And that's awfully familiar for you to be addressing my kid directly about something that I might have a strong opinion about.
John: That our family has a strong opinion about.
John: What she meant it as was as a rebuke to me.
John: Of course.
John: And I'm very okay.
John: Because now you're being bean dad.
John: Right.
John: I'm very okay with adults talking to my kid and saying like, hey, what do you know?
John: And my daughter and I have a great relationship where somebody says, would you like a piece of candy?
John: And she looks at me and goes, what do you think?
John: And I go, sounds good.
John: Or she looks at me and I go, it's an hour before dinner.
Merlin: It's not even that it's about candy per se, but it's just more about show some respect for somebody else's deal.
Merlin: But no, I take your point.
Merlin: I want the kid to learn how to engage with adults for sure.
John: Yeah, if there's a deal, right?
John: I mean, most of the time there's not a deal.
John: But in this instance, I was saying, what about an egg?
John: And the woman was trying to explain to me
John: In this busy restaurant that I think she's trying to explain to me that she had a problem with the way that her father managed her meals, which has...
John: Absolutely less than nothing to do with me or my daughter.
Merlin: He was that generation's, her generation's equivalent of a gravy cop.
Merlin: Who knows?
Merlin: I don't know.
John: And you know what?
John: I don't care.
John: And I didn't care then.
John: But what happened was when we left the restaurant, I did the thing where I was like, I'm never going in there again.
John: And my family was like, why?
John: And I explained what happened.
John: and my mom got really like mad at you no and turned around and went back in no shit did she not heard it the first time no no nobody heard it because the woman was just saying it to me as like holy shit john you must that's so gaslighty well so i mean this this has only happened a few times in my life one time i was i was um
John: I was chaperoning my daughter's preschool to the Ballard Locks.
John: And the Ballard Locks, you know, are this big, crazy scene.
John: I've taken you there.
John: Yeah, I was going to say you took Madden Me there.
John: Yeah, it's amazing.
John: Yeah, the whole school is there.
John: It's a bunch of three-and-a-half-year-olds.
John: And we've got 23-and-a-half-year-olds, and we're trying to navigate them through this very tight space where you can fall into the water on either side.
John: It's an industrial area.
John: It's not designed for three-and-a-half-year-olds.
John: There are boats coming.
John: There are guys from the Corps of Engineers.
John: It's probably almost the equivalent of a hard hat area.
John: It's a crazy zone, right?
John: But it's also a wonderful place.
John: And the kids are really... It's like something out of a Richard Scarry book.
John: It's really fun.
John: It's super fun.
John: And my daughter, even then, exhibiting her irascible nature, although there are four parents and two teachers, and we're trying to get the...
John: kids through this very confined space that is an industrial area and there are other people and, and doors are opening, you know, locks are opening.
John: She is in the middle of the space in her three and a half year old voice trying to direct the action.
John: No, you go over here.
John: No, you belong here.
John: No, you stand here.
John: No.
John: You know, she is trying to— She's assertive, as we say now.
John: She's trying to run the show.
John: And as you say, she's assertive, as we say now.
John: Yes.
John: Pound sign girl assertive.
John: And I have heard—believe me, I had read all the books and articles and all the opinion papers about how we, you know, knock down assertive women and elevate assertive men—
John: But this is a real situation.
John: It's a situation in the moment where the last thing that needs to happen is that this three-and-a-half-year-old direct the event.
John: And I have no fear that she's going to not grow up to be an assertive woman.
John: That would be, you know, if I could give her a pill that would take 10% of it away, you know, I would.
John: Yeah, take about 10% off that.
John: But I say to her, darling...
John: You know, this is not the time to boss this event.
John: And you use the word boss.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Because kids.
John: You're supposed to tell her to lean in, I think.
John: Yeah.
John: Kids know what the word boss means, right?
John: It's one of the first words they know.
John: Who's the boss?
John: What is the boss?
John: She's the sheriff, yeah.
John: She knows who the boss is.
John: And I'm saying, sweetie, the boss right now is not you.
John: And standing over to the right here is a guy in a US Army Corps of Engineers uniform.
John: So he works at the lock and he's, I'm probably 43 at this point and he's probably 37 and he's tall and he's very handsome and he's got tattoos, lots of tattoos and a beard and
John: He in general looks like the kind of person if you were going on if you were a Woman in her middle age and on tinder
John: and thinking like you know what i'm tired of dating software engineers i'm tired of living in this dumb indie rock world some tom hardy looking guy with light brown shoes that's exactly right he's he looks like tom hardy and it's like you know what i'd like a guy that works for a living i'd like a guy that's got a little bit of like a taste full neck tattoo just popping out a little bit above the collar yeah yeah exactly the guy but he's not afraid to go downtown
John: But he's in a uniform, too.
John: So he's got rank.
John: And he's not running the lock.
John: The guy that's running the lock is 65 years old.
John: But he's in there.
John: He's moving stuff around.
John: And he says, in this environment, out loud, we don't use the word boss to young women like that anymore.
John: Holy wow.
John: OK.
John: As though he at the lock had read a book that I hadn't, you know, as though he was hip to magazine articles and I was some guy from Spokane that not only didn't know, but also was going to be affected by his experience.
John: You know, like his intervention.
John: Right.
John: I was going to I was going to stop and go, huh?
John: What?
John: He was going to say he was going to explain it to me.
John: And then I thank you, Seaman.
Merlin: You're giving me much to think about.
John: And then one day my daughter was going to be president because he had stopped me before I before I choked off her her nature.
Mm hmm.
John: And I didn't say anything to him either.
John: I was just like, uh-huh, okay, you know, we got to get these children through this situation.
Merlin: You're working, and you got a lot to keep an eye on at this point.
Merlin: You don't have time for an entanglement.
John: I just don't want my daughter, or I don't want a kid to die on my watch and have it be my daughter's responsibility, because then it falls to me.
Merlin: Now you're having a conversation with, God forbid, the parent of a dead child saying, well, I didn't want to tell the kid not to be a boss.
John: Yeah, four kids went into the water.
John: I was admonished not to do that.
John: Only two came back out, but my daughter was being assertive.
John: So my mom goes back into Shelly's, and she says, I'd like to speak to the manager.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Was Susan there?
John: Susan was there, but Susan was taking a – she took a pass.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: She just said, Mom, you got this.
John: Well, no, nobody said anything.
John: Mom was just like, I'd like to speak to the manager.
John: And the girl at the cash register disappears and comes back, and it's the woman.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Who's the manager.
John: And she goes, can I help you?
John: Again, in a kind of hen-pecked and furrowed brow.
John: And my mom, confronted by this turn, this turn of events,
John: did the like, uh, and just turned around and walked out.
John: She didn't.
John: Oh, wow.
John: She was not prepared.
John: You know, my sister would have gone at her.
Merlin: I mean, your sister would have, I could see, I could see Susan.
Merlin: Well, given like the, remember your description of the person who wouldn't wear a mask in line at the one place?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, Susan, like, you know, frog marched the guy out of the place.
Merlin: Remember that?
Merlin: You told that story.
Merlin: I mean, and that is I can see Susan going like smacking her hands together and going, oh, perfect.
Merlin: Like, this is also the manager.
Merlin: This gives this is a unique opportunity for me to land this.
Merlin: But your mom didn't want to do it.
John: The thing is, Susan would have ended up best friends with her somehow.
John: They would have exchanged phone numbers at the end.
John: Susan would be working at Shelley's now.
Merlin: Well, the waitress, waitron slash manager would have said, thank you, Ms.
Merlin: Roderick.
John: Yeah, but my mom is not— It won't happen again.
Merlin: No excuse, ma'am.
John: My mom has, as we have explored many times on this program, my mom knows—
John: how the world should run.
John: And she has, she has rules upon rules, but she's not confrontational in the sense of like, she's going to go toe to toe with somebody in the lobby of a restaurant.
John: You know, she, she wanted to lodge a complaint.
John: She wanted somebody to come out from the back and go, can I help you?
John: And she would say, yes, this, you know, this waitress made what I consider to be an inappropriate remark while we were being served and inappropriate and kind of at a next level way.
John: Like don't,
John: tell your clients how to feed their children type of thing.
John: And it was not that.
John: It was this woman.
Merlin: And that would have necessitated that they— But also, you can't say this without sounding like the sort of person who says things like this all the time.
Merlin: But sometimes, you know, there's been times when I've called a restaurant where, you know, it's a restaurant we've been loving for years, we get delivery from for years—
Merlin: And there have been times like, you know, where I feel like something has really, I need to rise to this occasion and say, hey, look, really, really cool restaurant.
Merlin: I got this dish from you that I've gotten a ton of times and it was definitely off as in like, I took a bite of this and was like, I'm going to go to an emergency room if I keep eating this.
Merlin: Something is, you know, sometimes you have a bite of food and you go, oh, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: This is not right.
Merlin: I'm not even talking about like, oh, this box.
Merlin: Well, like the sort of like, you know, there's a sort of like, hmm, that's weird.
Merlin: This crab lake smells like ammonia, which I know is an indication it's probably like a little bit not right.
Merlin: And you do that out of saying like, hey, look, I love coming here and I'm not asking for anything free.
Merlin: I'm not trying to be an emotional bully.
Merlin: I'm just trying to give you a heads up.
Merlin: In that instance, it's a restaurant you all like.
Merlin: It's the only place that has the right breakfast, John.
Merlin: And you go in there and you want to say like, you know, hey, look, I like coming to this place.
Merlin: But that was really that was fucked up.
John: The thing is, we don't go to Shelly's.
John: We drive by Shelly's and we don't see it.
John: Now you know why you don't go.
John: We don't go.
John: There are plenty of other breakfast places in Burien.
John: Because this happened very early when we arrived here in the South End...
John: It wasn't a thing where we had established a great relationship with this restaurant and then had to have it rested away.
John: It wasn't a situation where I was like, I don't like that place.
John: And everybody else said, well, it's a great restaurant, so we're going to go anyway.
John: It was just a thing where we went in, we tried it out.
John: And we realized, oh, I guess, apparently, the culture of this place is the assistant manager.
John: Maybe she was having a bad day.
John: Maybe she was triggered.
John: But it was a thing where we don't go there.
John: And it's a tricky thing in this modern age because we're used to replying to things online that aren't our business.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: Like it's the very definition of Twitter is none of this is your business.
John: Anytime anybody posts anything on there, you think it's your business and it isn't.
Merlin: We were never supposed to know this many things about this many other people, let alone have an opinion, a strong opinion about it, let alone feel the perhaps obligation to dive in on it.
John: It's completely psychotic.
John: You're rewarded for how pungent your opinion about somebody else's shit is.
John: Yeah, I dumped on like five strangers today.
John: It was amazing.
John: Yeah, right?
John: If you have something really inappropriately shitty and not your business to say about somebody else's problem, you're given stars by other people.
John: right?
John: Like, good job.
John: Now do Jared Kushner.
John: You know, like, I don't know if this woman is on Facebook the rest of the day and she's used to commenting on other people's vaccine status or whatever, or she's used to like, she's, she has become that person or whether she's just always been somebody that is in other people's business.
John: And now the world is, I mean, she's definitely not living in a vacuum.
John: She's definitely, she said that to me out of
John: a sense of performative, righteous advocacy or, you know, something, right?
John: Like one thing we know is that she did not really care about my daughter or
John: Or did not really think that anything she said was going to make a profound difference in the way my daughter was being raised or our family dynamic.
John: Yeah, it was basically a drive-by.
John: She's just there and she thinks that her opinion matters and she wanted to perform her righteous indignation.
John: And I guess with the idea that it was going to shame me into something.
John: And I don't encounter that a lot because I'm not – increasingly I'm not –
John: I don't go to real world places where that's the temperature in the room.
John: I try to stay away from places now where somebody is going to lecture me or think that it's appropriate to make a comment on, you know, not even my daughter, but just comment on my clothes or something, that they indicate something that needs a comment, you know?
John: And I don't...
Merlin: No, I agree with you.
Merlin: I sometimes feel like I'm really back on my heels when I find myself in a situation like that because I've been thinking a lot about trauma lately and what it means in our lives.
Merlin: And I can really feel that cold feeling of, oh, shit, I'm 13 and I'm about to be bullied.
Merlin: I can feel, you know, and whatever.
Merlin: I wasn't like terribly bullied, but we were, we've all been pushed around by other shitty kids.
Merlin: And there's that feeling you get of like, Oh God, here, this comes.
Merlin: I don't, I don't like if there's places where there's going to be such, it's one thing for like a, like a, somebody driving by to be an asshole and flip you off and drive fast behind you.
Merlin: Like you can't avoid that in America, but like, I, I don't like being in potentially hostile situations.
Merlin: I have nothing to gain from it.
Merlin: I don't want to fight with people.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: In any way, there's nothing to be gained by arguing with somebody in a Target parking lot.
John: Mm-mm.
Merlin: Oh, so – that's so – But it's like – see, you get the feeling that there's some people where that's their whole fucking deal.
Merlin: I don't understand it.
John: I don't either.
John: I do not understand it.
John: Don't like confrontation, I don't think.
John: But I do... They didn't used to as much.
John: I feel like everyone now feels like they're a knight.
Merlin: A knight Aaron.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: They're picking up their lance, putting down their visor, and da-da-da!
Merlin: They're like marching once more, you know, Harry V, once again into the breach.
John: They're defending the... They're on a crusade, and they're tilting their...
John: Fucking Lance at Jerusalem or whatever, but they don't know – but they're Ronin, right?
John: They don't – they serve no master.
John: Right.
Merlin: They're not like a legit samurai.
John: They don't know who their master is anymore.
John: So each one is their own –
John: But they have that crusader feeling, right?
Merlin: They're not trying to— And it's certainly not peculiar to any one, quote-unquote, side.
John: No, they're not trying to accrue wealth and power to themselves.
John: They're trying to defeat injustice.
John: There's cosplay Knights Templar everywhere.
John: Everywhere.
John: Yeah, totally.
John: And and so I feel a little bit like I feel like someone in Time Bandits who, you know, like I feel like one of the one of the little people in Time Bandits, I get transported somewhere and I'm just trying to I've got the map and I'm just trying to get through this.
John: you know, this situation and it turns out, Oh hell, there's like a, there's the Knights of knee are here and also the devil.
John: And also it turns out where's my shrub also Julius Caesar is here for some reason.
John: And you know, it's a little bit Bill and Ted too.
John: I'm just flying through the universe in a phone booth, just trying to get the, the, the, the stuff together for my presentation.
John: So I don't have to go to military school.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: I used to think – I don't know if you've heard me say this before, but there's a phrase I think is really interesting.
Merlin: Ceiling and floor, high ceiling, low ceiling, high floor, low floor.
Merlin: Have we talked about that before?
Merlin: Go on.
Merlin: Okay, just real quick.
Merlin: So I think when you're thinking about how good or bad something can be –
Merlin: For example, before I get specific, let me just say this.
Merlin: A ceiling is like as good as something can be.
Merlin: So a high ceiling thing has the capability or the potential, like say, for example, you talk about something like, okay, meatballs, pizza, gravy.
Merlin: Like, can this be extremely good?
Merlin: Well, here's, yes, this can be extremely good.
Merlin: So like a high ceiling thing,
Merlin: item to me i take that i think about this a lot with different sorts of food not particular this pizza at this place but in general like if you're blindly ordering something in like you're in like a new location and you don't know which is the good pizza place and blah blah you don't look at yelp high ceiling is like wow this is capable of really really good can pizza be good yes
Merlin: It can be.
Merlin: San Francisco has not quite picked that up yet.
Merlin: But then you've got floor.
Merlin: And floor is where it gets interesting.
Merlin: Because to me, high floor means even almost every version of this will be okay.
Merlin: Low floor means, boy, the bad can be really bad.
Merlin: So when I go to places, I know this is probably anathema to your approach to dining.
Merlin: But I tend to think if I don't know what's going on, like...
Merlin: I would say, for example, chicken cordon bleu is a fairly low ceiling food.
Merlin: Like the best cordon bleu you've ever had in your life is fine.
Merlin: But it also can be a very low floor food.
Merlin: Do you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like I've had some really like, you know, having worked in restaurants, I know the kind of stuff to tend to avoid.
John: Sure.
John: Bad chicken, bad ham, bad sauce.
Merlin: That sauce, and it's been in that tray for who knows how long with saran wrap on it, maybe in a five-gallon fucking bucket.
Merlin: But for example, if the place has steak in the name, you should probably order steak.
Merlin: If the place has seafood in the description or has an anchor or a lobster on it, you probably want to get seafood.
Merlin: That don't make sense.
Merlin: I want to hear what you think is a high-floor food.
John: Meatballs.
John: Meatballs.
John: Meatballs.
Merlin: I have not had that many incredibly bad meatballs in my life.
Merlin: I have not had that many incredibly bad gravies in my life.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: To me, the high-floor food is interesting, and it differs, you know, person to person.
Merlin: But, like, I've had some pizzas that I really super didn't like and I thought was very expensive.
Merlin: It is not...
Merlin: a high floor of food.
Merlin: I mean, there are people who are like, oh, it's like the new bacon where people are like, oh, pizza, there's no bad pizza.
Merlin: And it's like, yeah, there's plenty of bad pizza.
Merlin: There's plenty of really, you're basically just eating.
Merlin: If you're like me and you tend to prefer not to have a lot of wheat and maybe you have one slice of, okay, I know this is weird and maybe a little disordered, content warning.
Merlin: But like sometimes after my first piece of slice of pizza, I will then just grab a handful of the toppings off two other pieces and I might eat just the toppings.
Merlin: I'm here to tell you, buddy.
Merlin: Wait a minute, what?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So now I got two pieces of wet bread, and I look at it and I go, I can't believe I was about to eat that much wet bread.
John: I mean, you're entitled to do what you want.
John: I'm not going to manage your food right now, Marlon, and create an eating disorder in you.
John: But that is a very antisocial thing to do, unless you are the only owner of that pizza.
Merlin: Okay, we're watching the Edgar Wright movie at home, and I think that's fine.
Merlin: Now, for example, when I'm going through an Atkins-ish,
Merlin: I'm trying to focus on eating less – all things being equal, I'm trying to avoid bread.
Merlin: Also, bread does not always agree with my tummy.
Merlin: And I'm going to tell you, bud, if I have like a couple burgers that I get or order or make and I take off all the bun except for a little bit and I look at that fucking pile of bread –
Merlin: That I've taken off.
Merlin: Do you see what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like, everybody's got that kind of thing.
Merlin: I go, ooh, that's crazy.
Merlin: Why would I eat that much bread?
Merlin: If I'm going to put, it's like the great Dan Benjamin says, hey, if I'm going to have a cheat day, my cheat food is not going to be corn.
Merlin: And I was like, that's actually a really good point.
Merlin: It's probably one of the smartest things Dan ever said, but I totally get that.
Merlin: If you're on one of his bizarre cult fad diet things that he thinks is normal, and you're going to have a day where you go, oh, let's be bad.
Merlin: Let's go out.
Merlin: Maybe you get garlic fries, because garlic fries, pretty high floor.
Merlin: But anyway, or you're at the ballgame, right?
Merlin: You follow what I'm saying?
Merlin: And so when I sit there and look at this giant pile of bread, and I think, oh, that's pizza.
Merlin: Pizza is like a ton of wet bread with shit on it.
John: If I go to a place and they don't have a double burger, I get two burgers.
John: Ratio.
John: It's the ratio, John.
John: Then I take two buns and I throw them away, and then I have a double burger.
Merlin: Well, think about a Big Mac.
Merlin: Big Mac's got three pieces of bread on it for two-tenths – wait, ten-one.
Merlin: Yeah, two-tenths of pre-cooking, two-tenths – one-fifth?
Merlin: – of a pound of beef –
Merlin: With three pieces of bread?
John: Is that what we're doing here?
John: So I agree.
John: I had just never applied the there's too much bun to pizza before.
Merlin: Well, okay, that might be an extreme example.
Merlin: But I'm not sure where I'm going with this.
Merlin: But I have to say that gravy, I consider, because I am so how I am about gravy, I'm practically a lifestyle graviest.
Merlin: And I think that's a fairly high.
Merlin: Now, you tell me.
John: I've stood in line behind you at a gravy bar.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Oh, shit, dog.
Merlin: You know, the day that I hit my number.
Merlin: Like, if Logan Roy handed me a piece of paper and said, do you want $2 billion?
Merlin: You know the first thing I'm buying.
Merlin: First thing I'm buying is, it's not even going to be a Coke machine.
Merlin: I want an in-house.
Merlin: What I want...
Merlin: is an in-house, in-built sauce deployment system.
Merlin: I want it to be somewhere between a soda gun and a car wash.
Merlin: And my wife would love this.
Merlin: Chili is a kind of gravy in some ways.
Merlin: But I want to be able to pull down a nozzle and just deploy a juice.
Merlin: White sausage gravy, not a problem.
John: Wouldn't that be gravy?
Merlin: Shit, dog.
Merlin: How would that change everything for you?
Merlin: If you could just have a juice, if you could have, what are some other ones?
Merlin: Oh, like a mushroom gravy?
Merlin: Like you get at a steakhouse?
Merlin: Like a York steakhouse?
John: I've thought about this for many years.
John: I've always wanted to open a restaurant where it was like the old school.
John: Do you remember back in the 80s, right?
John: That style of restaurant where it was in an industrial space, a reclaimed industrial space.
John: San Francisco is full of these.
John: And it had picnic tables in it.
John: And it was kind of a, you know, it was an echoey room.
John: It was before there were laptops.
John: And behind the counter, you could get like a... People just live in, John.
John: No, not a cell phone in sight.
John: Nope.
John: You could get sandwiches and you could get soups and you could get... It wasn't fancy.
John: Oh, I love places like that.
John: College towns have those.
John: It was just coffee.
John: College towns have them, right?
John: Yes.
John: I want it.
John: And I've always wanted to go back and open one of those.
John: And it had chili.
John: It had...
John: clam chowder it had chicken noodle soup like jj soupington's yeah exactly and i just you know the menu was like it was like that restaurant uh baliots in my mom's hometown where you where my mom and i went back to visit it in the 80s and they had a ham like a full ham a full turkey and
John: And like a full roast beef on the counter under those like serving.
John: Yeah, heat lamps, heat lamps.
John: Yeah.
John: And you could just like, if you ordered a ham sandwich, they would go over and slice the ham off of the freaking ham.
John: And I was like, what?
John: How far back in time did we go, mom?
John: Are we in the Middle Ages?
John: And she was like, what are you talking about?
John: This is what restaurants used to.
Merlin: I think this is why a lot of men join fraternal organizations because you get to go to a dinner like that and a man, let's be honest, usually a black man, in a white chef's toque cuts you up the beef that you want and never says you took too much.
John: That's right.
John: In a situation like that, if I say, how about two more?
Merlin: Yeah, how about a whole bunch of – I always think like Dan Aykroyd in the Blues Brothers when he holds up his glass and kind of shakes it.
Merlin: Like, more, more.
John: Or, yeah, Dan Aykroyd also in the Blues Brothers when he – did you just say Dan Aykroyd in the Blues Brothers?
Merlin: When they go out to try and get the maitre d, the horn guy, to be back in the van.
Merlin: You know, how much for the little girl when he throws the shrimp?
John: That's a funny movie.
John: I'm also thinking of David Cross.
John: Keep him coming, Gleep Clop.
John: Oh, absolutely.
John: I still say that 40 times a week.
John: Keep him coming, Gleep Clop.
Merlin: I love you.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: And so great.
John: Think about the restaurant.
John: Think about if you designed a restaurant and you called it sauce sauce.
John: or Saucier.
John: Yes.
John: And the whole restaurant was just designed.
John: A sauce-themed restaurant.
John: Just designed around the fact that you had every sauce.
Merlin: Could you check your text for something that I just sent you?
Merlin: Sorry, continue, but please, please, I just, I want to make sure people don't think I'm making this up because of what you just said.
John: Merlin sent me a link to a page on fives.
John: It's from 2006.
John: Five ideas I've had for family-themed restaurants.
John: bf skinner's original stuffers poultry skin of your choosing stuffed with a la carte selections that's very nice from bob the fixin's bar yeah from the the fixin's bar bobby b butterworth's old-fashioned dairy pun shack fun shack oh it's a fun shack i'm sorry my glasses are bad it's a fun shack a frozen quarter pound stick of salted creamery butter hand battered flash fried
John: served with your fun Dippin' Sauce.
John: Long John Silver's Dripper Hut, offshoot of the fast food seafood franchise, offers mini buckets of their leftover fried shortening flecks.
John: Also with Dippin' Sauce.
John: They all come with Dippin' Sauce.
John: Mouth Meat Mel's.
John: Mouth Meat Mel's.
John: 450 degree pizza.
John: It immediately scalds the roof of your mouth, served with Dippin' Sauce.
John: And, uh,
John: You can – oh, you get a colorful ribbon if the roof of your mouth – I really imprinted on ferrules, John, if I'm being honest.
John: And then dipping, dipping, dipping.
John: The dipping sauce of your choice is served with your choice of fun dipping sauce.
John: I want a sauce-based.
John: Franchise.
John: But you don't want to just eat sauce.
Merlin: No, no, I was doing that for fun.
Merlin: You know, on the internet, we used to have a lot of fun.
Merlin: We used to be fun.
Merlin: But honestly, what if we start, what if we reverse engineer this, as John Zaragoza says, what if we back-solve from sauce, title?
Merlin: What if we start with, hey, what sauce are you into?
Merlin: Excuse me.
Merlin: Sorry, excuse me.
Merlin: What...
John: sauces you don't get just a two scoops you pick all the fucking sauces you want you get a flight of sauces and then we bring stuff for you to dip in the fucking sauce so yesterday you know I have a whole set of not Tupperware they're glass they're glass sealed top freezer containers I've been living in this house now for a long time I had not yet done a cooking day like I did yesterday
John: Where I've, you know, because every time I go to the grocery store, I buy a pound of hamburger.
John: And then I get home and I realize, oh, I already had a pound of hamburger.
John: But I bought another one.
John: You can never have too many.
John: And then I go to the grocery store.
John: A little while later, I get a pound of hamburger.
John: And then I get home and I put it in the freezer.
John: I'm like, I have two pounds of hamburger in the freezer already.
John: But now I have three.
John: And then there's a cooking day where you're like, I got to deal with all this.
John: Like all these frozen pounds of hamburger aren't helping anybody.
John: And so I have a day where I put on my little apron and I cook all the hamburger.
John: Always cook all the hamburger.
John: All the hamburger.
John: And then I portion it out into what seemed to be somewhere between the bird-like three-ounce portion that you should eat and
John: And the 15 ounces of beef that I would eat, I put somewhere in the middle there.
John: So you brown it and then freeze it?
John: Brown it and freeze it.
John: So smart.
John: But then while I'm doing that, I also have all of the mushrooms and all of the stuff.
John: We should be roommates, John.
John: I make different sauces while I'm at it.
John: So I put two pounds of ground beef over here, just ground beef, because I'm going to use it in something.
John: And then I make a spaghetti sauce and I cut it into three different portions and I put those in the freezer.
John: And then here's the big one.
John: I get the biggest pot I have, the giantest pot, fill it all the way with water and I put as much spaghetti in it as I can get in there.
John: Sometimes four boxes of spaghetti.
John: You make four dry pounds of spaghetti.
John: That's a big pot.
John: It's a huge pot.
John: Four things of spaghetti.
John: The whole, it's just sitting on the, you know, you got to stir it with a wooden spoon because you're not a monster.
John: No, no.
John: And then you take the spaghetti, you liberally butter and salt it, put some pepper on it, and then you put it into these freezer containers in individual portions.
John: Wow.
John: And what you have is buttered spaghetti.
John: Ready to go.
John: Grab and go.
John: Grab and go biscotti.
John: You can put, and this is something that maybe is counterintuitive, but cooked spaghetti microwaves very well.
John: Interesting.
John: I want to try that.
John: So you just put it in the microwave, and then you heat it, and then wouldn't you, Merlin, if someone said, hey, would you like a five-minute buttered spaghetti to put as a side or under some sauce?
Merlin: It's like you invented a bespoke high-end Stouffer's dinner, basically.
Merlin: It's what you get in any spaghetti restaurant.
John: They didn't boil that for you.
John: No, that's from a month ago.
John: No, it's sitting in a big pot somewhere, and now you've done it for yourself.
John: So if I make...
Merlin: And just to be clear, just to answer your question here exactly and in a larger way, yes.
Merlin: I always want a savory treat.
Merlin: I never don't want a savory treat.
Merlin: You want a slice of cake?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Do you have any brisket?
Merlin: Do you have any mushroom sauce?
John: Could I have some mushroom sauce and literally anything else?
John: If someone gives you a chicken cordon bleu, if there's some leftovers from a restaurant.
Merlin: If someone sticks you with a fucking cordon bleu.
John: Or think about the times when you leave a restaurant and you say, I'll have the rest of this to go.
John: And what you get is a thing and a lot of sauce.
John: You have a lot of sauce.
John: And now you've got a big thing.
John: There's not very much meat, but you have a lot of stuff.
John: What do you need?
John: You need some buttered spaghetti under that.
John: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Merlin: You're telling me you back into this and you say, well, let me start with this leftover sauce on what can I deploy this?
Merlin: And the answer is butter salty frozen spaghetti.
Merlin: Yes, you're minutes away from a second and arguably better meal.
John: So I did this just yesterday.
John: I had some stew where the meat had, as people were serving themselves stew out of this crock pot where I made the stew, and it was a big chunky stew.
John: They had, as people do, taken the lion's share of the chunks because they have a ladle and they're dishing up stew for themselves and they're ladling out the chunks.
John: And so at the bottom, right, they've ladled out the chunks.
John: And so you've got –
John: stew but there's just a few you know there's meat in it you've got some detritus or as you say detritus but mainly you got stew sauce you got stew sauce plus you got some stuff so i put it over the top of some buttered spaghetti
John: Now, there are a couple of vegetables in a stew that you don't want on spaghetti, right?
John: Spaghetti and cooked carrots don't really work.
John: And spaghetti and little teeny onions...
John: So, but it's very easy to just eat those right off the top.
John: It's just like, I like Brussels, I like alfalfa sprouts and I like roast beef sandwiches, but I don't want sprouts on a sandwich.
John: Sure.
John: Yeah.
John: So what do you do?
John: You get a sandwich in a hippie restaurant, you take those sprouts off and you just eat them.
John: It's like a, it's like a, a muse bouche.
Merlin: Oh, not deconstructed is too strong of a word, but like, yeah, I like this thing, but like I wouldn't want it on popcorn.
John: No, exactly.
John: I like pickles.
John: I don't want pickles on hamburgers, so I take the pickles off.
John: Do you like pickles on a chicken sandwich?
John: You like pickles on a chicken sandwich?
John: I don't want pickles on a sandwich.
John: It's the same reason I don't want capers in my beef tartare.
John: Hmm.
Hmm.
John: Because you got capers in anything that tastes like capers.
John: Why would you even eat a beef tartare?
John: It's like in a bowl of oregano.
John: Yeah.
John: If you want olive tapenade, lick it off your hand.
John: Don't put it on the frequency.
John: I'll do that.
Okay.
John: So you had a very good Sunday.
John: I did.
John: So I'm sitting here right now, and I feel like a big fat hen sitting on a nest of eggs.
John: That's a great feeling.
John: Because I've got all this.
John: It's not like I've got a larder full of big roasts.
John: What I've got is a larder full of spaghetti underpinnings.
John: I've got this layer.
John: It's like a frozen toolbox of food.
That's right.
Merlin: The added characteristic of the salty, buttery spaghetti is what, if I can say, if you'll allow it, that's what takes us to the next level.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: It's one thing to say, oh, yeah, you know, I got a pork chop in here that'll take me, you know, half a day to thaw.
Merlin: But what you're saying here is, like, you've got the ingredients...
Merlin: And I hate to keep coming back to Stouffer's, but that was the very high end when I was a kid.
Merlin: I thought we talked about their French bread pizza.
Merlin: That was just such a treat.
Merlin: I mean, it had caraway seeds.
John: I still believe that their lasagna, Stouffer's lasagna is...
John: You have to have a pretty good homemade lasagna.
John: Oh, yes.
John: To warrant the seven hours it takes to make a lasagna.
John: That's a very high floor lasagna.
John: Whereas a Stouffer's lasagna?
John: Yep, yep, yep.
John: What are you going to have today, John?
John: Do you know?
John: Are you going to give yourself a treat?
John: Well, so I have a doctor's appointment right after we're done.
John: Oh, no.
John: The doctor said I wasn't even allowed to put cream in my coffee this morning.
John: So the last time I had a cup of coffee with no cream in it,
John: was a long time ago.
John: Probably like a Bush administration.
John: Yeah, I put a little cream in my coffee.
John: It's just how I have it.
John: Sure you do.
John: And if I'm in a truck stop and they don't have cream, I just leave.
Merlin: Oh, my lady's like that.
Merlin: I mean, my problem right now, just to get back to where we started, is we were driving home from our very nice Thanksgiving visit and we went to get a coffee and I needed to urinate and I grabbed one of those Starbucks brand
Merlin: cold brew unsweet it's like a little hand grenade of coffee oh yeah i've seen those and it goes down way too easy john but it's really you know like good iced iced coffee you know i personally don't think they need for me don't need sugar in half and half my daughter likes half and half in it because you know she's still forming her habit but uh i'll the problem is john that goes way too fast that goes down way too fast
Merlin: I want to do this now, John.
Merlin: I want to have basically Lego brand blocks for food.
Merlin: I would like to start a strategic reserve of things and then things to put on the things.
Merlin: You've really inspired me here.
Merlin: But you had no coffee.
Merlin: You're going to the doctor.
Merlin: You'll probably be admonished for something.
Merlin: And then are you allowed to eat after that or does he have a thought?
Yeah.
John: Well, I think I'm gonna be allowed to eat after that but the real you know once again having buried the lead I two days ago went and spent a
John: An hour and a half in a facility in a bunker down in Kent, Washington.
John: And I left there with my new CPAP machine.
John: Shut your fucking mouth.
John: And I brought it home.
John: John Roderick, did you buy the black market machine?
John: No, I ended up going.
John: Well, that's why it's been two months.
John: Oh, you finally, after two years, you're finally going to get some relief?
John: So I got an email from a listener.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Who said, listen, I'm a sleep doctor.
John: I'm in Alabama or whatever, but I will prescribe you a CPAP machine so you don't have to go onto the black market like a monster.
John: And I didn't reply to him because – This has all been worth it.
Merlin: This has all been worth it.
John: I was deep in the system.
John: I was deep in it.
John: And I was like, you know what?
John: I'm just going to walk.
John: I'm going to I'm going to methodically go through.
John: I'm going to do what they say.
John: I'm going to drive out to Issaquah three different times.
John: I'm going to stick this thing in my ear and this other thing in my other ear.
John: I'm going to do all these things.
John: I'm going to sit.
John: I'm going to sit on hold on a phone tree for 45 minutes.
John: five to find out you're on the wrong you're on the wrong phone to find to find out that i that i pushed three instead of four i'm gonna do all of it i'm gonna be this is just like how i got in that relationship with millennium girlfriend i was like okay everybody says there's a way to do things i'm gonna do it i'm gonna follow through i'm gonna do she tells me i'm her boyfriend i'm her boyfriend
John: These people tell me I got to sit on a phone tree.
John: I'm going to sit on a phone tree.
John: And I had this doctor that emailed me.
John: And the problem was that initially he tweeted at me.
John: And, of course, I'm not on Twitter anymore.
John: So it took a while to get.
John: But anyway, I feel like there's a listener, at least one of our listeners is a sleep doctor that's contacted me.
John: We probably have multiple sleep doctor listeners.
John: That's so cool.
John: Probably five of them are like, I'm not going to.
Merlin: Do you literally get like a prescription like you would for penicillin?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: They just write, they scribble their name incomprehensibly and just say CPAP for John?
John: So I went to this bunker and a woman sat across the table from me and explained how to use this machine that literally has one button.
John: And also an instruction manual that explains how to use it.
John: And also you couldn't, it's basically, you couldn't screw it up how to use it, but.
John: But that's good.
Merlin: You don't want the, you want to, you want to suffocate much less.
Merlin: You really don't want to suffocate, John.
Merlin: That's kind of one of your things.
John: It is.
John: And this is the, this is how the medical profession works.
John: So everybody's getting paid.
John: I'm sure everybody's getting $80,000 a year.
John: to tell me how a pencil works or whatever.
John: But so I come home.
John: I've got it here in a little bag.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And honestly, Merlin, for the last three days, I walk past and I look at it.
John: I'm looking at it right now, and I haven't opened it because I'm terrified of it.
John: You're afraid there's a diploma in it.
John: Well, because she put it on me in the office, and she turned it on.
John: That's hot.
John: Yeah, and I was like, I feel like I'm going to die.
John: And she was like, well, maybe we need a different style of mask.
John: And she put a different style of mask on it.
John: And I was like, I feel like I'm drowning.
John: What are you doing to me?
John: And then she got a third mask, which basically looks like – because there's all these masks that look like something – Maybe she looked like an elephant.
John: Or the original Dune mask.
John: You know, where it's like some little thing that goes in your nose.
Merlin: Yeah, or like Battlefield Earth.
Merlin: You get like that snot tripper kind of look.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Something that's like, is this supposed to be doing something to my mustache?
John: What is this thing?
John: Right.
John: And so she gave me a thing that looks like the oxygen mask for a B-52 pilot.
John: Oh, that's cool.
John: And I was like, yeah, okay.
Merlin: With a flight helmet?
Merlin: Like one of those cool, like, that would be an awesome look.
John: Nothing that looks like it's in my nose.
John: I just want, like, I want to look like I'm in blue velvet.
Merlin: Don't be clever and cute about this.
Merlin: I'm going to bed.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: I'm Dennis Hopper now.
John: And so, and it still made me feel like I was about to die, but I could manage it.
John: And so I'm sitting here.
John: Maybe it is this life-saving technology.
John: It's right over there.
John: Maybe when I finally put it on, Merlin, I'm going to dream of angels.
John: But it's absolutely like my diploma.
John: If I open it, if I don't open it, then it's Schrodinger's CPAP.
John: You don't know?
John: Okay.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: Oh, this show is so fun to do.