Ep. 456: "The People's Traffic"
John: They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
John: They may not mean to, but they do.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: You backing up?
John: Is that what you're doing?
John: You backing up there a little bit?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: A little bit of backing up.
Merlin: A little bit of backup at my office.
Merlin: No, it's going good.
Merlin: It's going real, real good.
John: Good.
John: So this hasn't interfered with any of your other podcasting, I'm guessing.
Merlin: No, and it doesn't bother any of the listeners.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I think I said this last time we recorded, but, you know, I'm trying to adopt a positive attitude about it.
John: You have maintained a positive attitude.
John: Congratulations.
Merlin: It's not frustrating.
Merlin: It's not annoying.
Merlin: It's, you know, like you used to say a long time ago, I think you were speaking in particular of the peoples of Czechoslovakia and how people say they don't like bureaucracy.
Merlin: Well, bureaucracy is what fixes a hole in the road.
Merlin: I think it was just about, not your exact words, but pretty hard.
John: There it is.
John: There it is.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: God does not make the rat.
John: No, wait.
John: God does make the rat.
John: God makes the rat.
John: It's the city of San Francisco that doesn't make the rat.
John: For one of a nail, the lady with a fly was lost.
John: Right.
John: The lady sold the fly in order to buy a nail.
John: And then the carpenter sold the hammer in order to buy a flyswatter.
Merlin: It's like the guy from Razorfish says, people don't really want a painting on the wall.
Merlin: They want to be happy.
Merlin: They buy a drill to get a painting on the wall.
Merlin: Here's the thing, John.
Merlin: I've decided that I'm going to focus on the positive.
Merlin: I'm going to, as the man says in the song, accentuate the positive.
Merlin: Are you going to eliminate the negative?
Merlin: I'm going to eliminate.
Merlin: Now, that should have been a startup name.
Merlin: Why isn't it?
Merlin: I bet it is.
Merlin: How about iLiminate?
Merlin: iLiminate?
Merlin: iLiminate's kind of cool, too.
Merlin: It is, yeah.
Merlin: But I think what it is is updates.
Merlin: I've decided they're just being extremely thorough about 26 frontage feet.
Merlin: of this particular road.
Merlin: They were really... We abuse the word masterpiece.
Merlin: Like so many words, we abuse what that really means.
Merlin: We abuse the word champion.
Merlin: It's a barbecue sauce, even.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: Stubbs.
Merlin: But I think this is their masterpiece.
Merlin: I think they are making
Merlin: the Grecian urn that we'll be looking at for many sides for many years.
John: Well, you know, when I was originally hiring a contractor, I'm sorry, I'm a little bit jittery because my mom has just recently realized that she can get me to do anything if she shows up at my house with two donuts.
Merlin: Oh, is that unannounced?
Yeah.
John: Yeah, she just shows up and she's got stuff for me to do.
John: She's got, you know.
John: Oh, is there an implicit promise of a third donut if you're good?
John: Well, no, but like she's like, here's the donuts.
John: Now here's what I need.
John: And, you know, I'm powerless to resist.
Merlin: Is it new?
Merlin: Is it tasks that are work that is new to you or work that's overdue?
John: No, neither.
John: I mean, it's not even generally work that is my work.
John: It's just she needs me, you know, she needs me to do chores and errands and things.
Merlin: Like get a box off a shelf?
John: Oh, I see.
John: Oh, no, she's at my house.
John: When she needs me to come, you know, that's at dinner.
John: She says there's two donuts in my house.
John: Two donuts in my house, right, hidden under a blanket.
John: But, you know, when the contractors originally talked to me here at my house, they said, listen, you know, some contractors will do a bid project.
John: bid bid on the whole project and we prefer to do it uh you know on a weekly rate because we feel like that gives you better value uh you know because the the project thing you know wow you gotta factor in all these things but just a weekly rate
John: And I was like, oh, better value, you say.
John: Oh, well, let's go that way.
Merlin: It certainly gives you every incentive to finish it quickly.
John: Yeah, the project just goes on and on and on, another week and another week.
John: And I'm guessing the people that are doing that masterpiece out in front.
Merlin: are on a weekly rate rather than a project rate then you know that could be right i don't know this is appears there appears to be someone who's been contracted a group that's been contracted to come in i guess on the city's behalf whoever runs the roads i don't know i you know as a retired project manager i have to imagine just so many steps of our project like this are crazy where you know there's all kinds of like for the previous five years there's been meetings and meetings and meetings about changes
Merlin: To the streetcar line where you can't have changes to the streetcar line without this other stuff happening.
Merlin: And in the end, for example, it looks like we might be getting a traffic light, which I'm really excited about.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: You would think that you would be able to tell that you were getting a traffic light by looking.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: If I look at the signage, it's not – well, because it's a project, it's not a sign.
Merlin: It's signage.
Merlin: And so I was looking at the signage that indicates at the intersection downhill, which is a stop sign that people just – I don't understand.
Merlin: Oh, they blow through it.
Merlin: And John, I've said this before, but it's people coming home.
Merlin: People in their – Irish people in their white trucks, God bless them, coming home at 5.15 p.m.
Merlin: with the sun in the west in their eyes.
Merlin: The sun is in the west.
Merlin: And they're blowing through stop signs anyway.
Merlin: They don't see a baby crossing the street.
John: No.
Merlin: Anyhow, there's a lot to it, and I have a lot of respect for the project.
Merlin: They're obviously working on a masterpiece.
Merlin: A new, is it a wrinkle?
Merlin: It's a new edition, which is singing.
Merlin: Singing is a new edition.
Merlin: And you know me, I love music, right?
Merlin: Singing?
Merlin: Yeah, it started out like all great musicals.
Merlin: It started out with one lone voice, and it was kind of a slightly more joyful look down from Les Mis.
Merlin: And
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: But then soon lots of people.
John: It's not swing low sweet chariot.
John: Oh, come on.
Merlin: Don't be differently racist.
Merlin: No, but then it became like the entire family from Coco singing kind of situation.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: And it's nice.
Merlin: Like this beeping, I don't know if that's considered like a regional instrument.
John: But it could be.
John: We have that up here.
John: It's one of our regional instruments.
John: Beep, beep, beep.
John: It gets played a lot.
Merlin: Yeah, that's terrific.
Merlin: It's like speaking Apache.
Merlin: You really want somebody to keep that alive.
John: It's an early memory of mine, that sound.
John: A very early memory, like a triggeringly early memory.
Merlin: A construction vehicle backing up?
John: Yes, because when I was a very young child, three years old, we lived in Alaska, and that is the sound that the snow plows make.
John: When they back up and backing up is a big part of plowing snow.
John: You go, and with your big blade on the front of your truck, and you push all the snow up into a mound, and then you back up and do it again.
Merlin: No kidding.
Merlin: My Roomba's the same way.
Merlin: Is this one of those things where, when you say a plow, like, I don't know a lot about this.
Merlin: Is that where it's at, like a diagonal, and it scoots it out onto the front of your yard?
John: Oh, there are so many different kinds of plows.
John: Oh, if only I had the time.
John: And I wish I had the knowledge to really, like,
John: go deep into plows.
Merlin: There are the greater... Any artisan is going to have different tools for different uses.
Merlin: You could even bring in a topic expert to talk about how plow is selected and deployed.
John: The greater...
John: is that big piece of equipment that kind of looks like a praying mantis and it has giant tires.
John: And then the blade is in between the front tires and the back tires.
John: And it's long.
John: It looks like a, it looks like a Chinook helicopter.
John: You know, it's like, it's a big thing.
John: And then the, the, the operator sits way up high in a little cab and those things, you know, the, the, the really big graders, they can, they can plow up, uh,
John: I mean, they can plow anything.
Merlin: Probably like an airfield.
John: Yeah, although these days it seems like all the big plowers use super, like, three-ton dump trucks that have big blades on the fronts.
John: They didn't have those when I was a kid that same way.
John: But then you've got blades.
John: Every fifth person in Alaska has a snowplow blade on the front of their truck because it's a way you can earn $50 real fast.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
John: Probably $100 now.
Merlin: So you just keep that in a two-car garage until it snows, then you go out and you make a little dough before work.
John: Exactly.
John: When it starts to snow, you drive around, and a lot of people with those have a list of like 10 friends that –
John: uh you're just on contract to plow their driveway wow so um so you know everybody knows the lawns yeah exactly everybody knows that when it when um when it snows it's going to cost them 50 bucks and if you're if you've got a good snow plow guy he comes in the middle of the night you know or he your your driveway's plowed by the time it's
John: by the time it's morning.
Merlin: I have a friend who lives outside Chicago, I want to say Naperville, and he frequently will not complain, but remark about that thing that happens where the plow goes down the street, but then in so doing, I guess they don't always take great care to avoid... They make a contiguous Scarface-style line of snow that might cover up the entrance to your driveway.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: That's a thing, right?
John: That's a frustrating thing.
John: That's the city.
John: The city goes through with its big plow.
John: All they care about is that roadway.
John: That's right.
John: Then you can't get out of your driveway because there's a berm.
John: But then there's the other.
John: It's not exactly shady, but like anything, there's a million different variations.
John: But the person with the plow blade on the front of their truck who drives around...
John: like a shark kind of looking for somebody whose driveway isn't plowed and then goes and rings their doorbell.
John: That's so freaking smart.
John: Plow your driveway for 50 bucks.
John: And, you know, most people are like, yeah, okay.
John: Right.
John: And so it's a way, you know, it's a viable kind of, it's like being a tinker or a potter.
John: Maybe not a potter.
John: A Cooper or a Fletcher?
John: Yeah, or a ceramicist like you.
John: You ring the doorbell, hey, you need any ceramics.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, that's true.
Merlin: Really, it's going back to our more agrarian roots.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: In some ways.
John: But so when you're plowing snow, as you said just a minute ago, there's got to be a place for the snow.
Merlin: Yeah, but it's like Michael Stipe said, right?
Merlin: Where does the snow go when you put it away?
John: Where does the snow go when you put it away?
Merlin: And then it'll snow again.
Merlin: You have to account for that too.
Merlin: This is a project management thing, but you should learn this in life.
Merlin: A lot of people act like something happens once.
Merlin: But no, it's going to keep happening.
Merlin: And the happening that keeps happening also has to become part of your plan.
Merlin: It's true with water.
Merlin: It's true with dirt.
Merlin: It's true with feces.
Merlin: It's true with all those things.
Merlin: You cannot plan for this to be a one-time event.
Merlin: Eventually, you need to figure out where all this shit's going to go.
Merlin: Think about trying to clear out New Orleans or Houston after a flood.
Merlin: I don't even know how you begin to do that.
Merlin: You've got to have a whole... Big plow.
John: Yeah, well, you've got to have somebody sitting on top of a pyramid.
John: It's going to cost you more than 50 bucks, that's for damn sure.
John: They're the Flood Czar.
John: The Flood Czar.
John: Flood Czar.
John: Flood Czar's got 20 people.
John: Is it a T or a C?
John: I think it's C, probably.
John: Yeah, C. Czar.
John: Czar.
Merlin: Because it's like Caesar.
Merlin: Czar's a R. Czar's a Rack.
John: But but in one of the things they do on the big streets is they plow the snow into the middle into a big berm between the lanes and then they come along later with a thing that will scoop up the berm.
John: And put it in a dump truck.
John: No kidding.
Merlin: Now, that must be a pretty well-to-do town that could do a two-step pickup.
Merlin: That sounds like a lot of work.
John: You know, you're a big town and you've got a lot of snow.
John: Those are the two criteria.
John: And then also in Alaska, of course, you've got all that oil money.
John: So everybody's got helicopters up there.
John: Or at least they did.
John: They've got personal Chinooks.
John: But then we would go out as teenagers because Kevin's dad had a Suburban.
John: And so Kevin got really good at driving along real fast and then he would just steer into the giant berm in between the lanes and the truck would launch up into the air.
John: What?
John: And then it would come down kind of high centered on the berm except we'd be like sliding kind of like –
John: Like if you were on a rail on a skateboard, like all four tires off the ground and just sliding on the berm.
Merlin: Did it feel like it was in slow motion?
John: Oh, it was so fun.
Merlin: Like it would be portrayed in a flashback?
Merlin: I bet that must have felt – I bet each time you did it, it felt just as crazy.
John: It felt crazy and it felt, of course, like you wouldn't want to be the person that bought that truck used.
Yeah.
Merlin: That should be in the Carfax, yeah.
John: But then the rear wheels would finally engage, and we'd pop over, and then he'd spin it.
John: Four-point slide, and then back over the berm.
John: I mean, he was really good.
John: This is when I was 15, so I was just along for the ride.
John: This is before your dad had sent you out to practice the car.
John: Yeah, or right about then.
John: But yeah, there was a time we had a great idea.
John: Jim McNeil and I had this idea.
John: We were going to buy a Suburban for 500 bucks.
John: Yeah.
John: We were going to bash.
Merlin: Your dreams of the suburban began early.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: It really did.
Merlin: It's exactly that.
Merlin: Just to be clear here, we talk about this automobile a lot.
Merlin: I want to make sure I'm thinking of the right thing.
Merlin: Real quick.
Merlin: When I lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, one house we lived in from 76 to 79, our next-door neighbors had what I believed to be a suburban.
Merlin: And at the age of 10, it just seemed...
Merlin: comically long not i mean not large as in like uh the the um you know like a truck like a full-on 18-wheeler what's it called not a trailer but a cab whatever that thing's called semi-trailer but in a suburban scene we had a catalina
Merlin: And that thing seemed comically long and large and kind of tall.
Merlin: It's that kind of car, right?
Merlin: Would you call it a big car or a small truck?
Merlin: It's a big vehicle for the time, longer than a van, right?
John: Yeah, and now you would call it an SUV.
John: Those terms didn't exist then.
John: Absolutely not, yeah.
John: If you Google right now, 1976 Suburban 4x4, you will get...
Merlin: a picture of the exact truck yes it is closer to it's a pickup truck like with a permanent hat on it it's a pickup truck with a double hat because it's got four doors and then a back door look at that you could have your terrible kids sit in the back seat oh you could have your kids you could have a surf you could even put them in the way back you could put everything in there this is the vehicle that i have presently
John: Although it's minus.
John: I haven't.
John: I haven't.
John: Doesn't yours have some minor electrical problems?
John: It's got a few electrical problems.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Mack Weldon.
Merlin: You can learn more about Mack Weldon right now by visiting MackWeldon.com slash super train.
Merlin: Hey, it's springtime.
Merlin: You know, it's on the way and everybody wants to look their best.
Merlin: I know I do.
Merlin: My best is not much, but you know, it's what I've got just as God made me.
Merlin: Mack Weldon is the expert when it comes to stylish essentials that are perfect for the new season.
Merlin: Whether you want to upgrade your sweats collection or you need gear that stands up to the changing weather, Mack Weldon has exactly what you're looking for.
Merlin: And if that's not convenient enough, let me tell you about Mack Weldon's daily wear system.
Merlin: All the clothes work together for real.
Merlin: So whether you're headed to work or going for a run or just hanging out on the couch, getting dressed takes no effort at all, which as it happens is exactly as much effort as I like to apply to it.
Merlin: I want to tell you about Mack Weldon's new Atlas collection.
Merlin: The Atlas collection includes the Atlas jogger, the half zip and full zip jacket.
Merlin: They're built for rain or shine with a comfortable water-resistant and eco-responsible fabric so that you can feel as good in them as you look wearing them.
Merlin: For anyone who's looking to step up their daily routine, do not miss these.
Merlin: I'm a big fan of Mack Weldon.
Merlin: I'm wearing Mack Weldon right now, which is probably no surprise, but they're my daily go-to.
Merlin: I don't want to go on about it.
Merlin: It'd be unseemly, but I am a big fan.
Merlin: And I think you should be a big fan, too.
Merlin: So what you do right now, you go check out Mack Weldon for yourself, and you're going to save 20% on your first order.
Merlin: Simply go to MackWeldon.com slash SuperTrain and enter our very special promo code SuperTrain.
Merlin: Once again, that's MackWeldon.com slash SuperTrain.
Merlin: Promo code SUPERTRAIN for 20% off.
Merlin: Find your perfect look for this spring.
Merlin: Our thanks to Mack Weldon for supporting Roderick on the Line and all the great shows.
Merlin: It's not always the same electrical problem, so why fix it?
John: Exactly.
John: I took it to a guy yesterday to get it detailed.
John: And I went down and their garage was like, I pulled up out front and I was like, oh man, this is shady.
John: And then the guy came around from the back and he was like, oh no, not up there.
John: We're not affiliated with that.
John: Oh, you have to go to like a secret bat cave entrance?
John: You have to come around behind through the fence.
John: And I was like, this totally shady place is too highbrow.
John: I'm not supposed to ring the doorbell.
John: Don't bother those people.
John: And I came around the back.
John: It's a front, John.
John: And it was the basement of this shady place that was like three times as shady.
John: And I went in and I'm really bad at negotiating in situations like that.
John: And the kid is like – he's tall and he's handsome.
John: He could use some lotion, but he – Oh, he's got sun damage?
John: Well, he just seems a little – yeah, he's got a little bit of a skin thing.
John: But really handsome.
John: He's really in that like super key kind of like –
John: 80 to 95 intelligence quotient.
John: It's Travis from Tiger King.
John: And his name is something like Travis.
John: Okay.
John: I think that'll do.
John: Is this for electrical, John?
Merlin: Are you getting backwoods electrical work?
Merlin: I'm just getting it detailed.
Merlin: oh sorry detail and that's is it are they actually going to use because i always heard the difference is you can go to the car wash and it rubs your vehicle you could go in and get it cleaned and they're going to clean it out but that's the distinction was they always that they use a toothpick do they still use a toothpick when they detail well so this so travis said to me it's going to be in showroom condition
John: Showroom shine.
John: I was like showroom condition.
John: That's nice.
John: And how old is yours?
John: Is it 76 you say?
John: 79.
John: Mine is a 79.
John: Looks the same as a 76.
John: These things are gorgeous.
Merlin: I'm just flicking through Google looking at these right now.
John: Kevin's was a 76.
John: This big guy here.
John: But, yeah, so he's showroom conditioning me, and I was like, really?
John: Showroom condition?
John: That's a tall ladder to climb, Travis.
John: Yeah.
John: And he was like, no, no, no.
John: Listen, we have – and then he was like, our credit card machine is down, though.
John: So if you could – Oh, dear.
John: If you could Vel-me.
John: If you could Vel-mo me.
Merlin: Oh, one of those services where you leave a remark and everyone can see it.
Merlin: Vel-mo you.
John: All right, fine.
Merlin: I don't like Vel-moing.
Uh-uh.
John: Hate it.
John: Hate it.
John: But that was all.
John: So when I was like, I don't want to belmo you.
John: Can you just figure this out?
John: He was like, oh, yeah, sure.
John: And he called some phone number on the side of his credit card machine.
John: And a guy answered.
Merlin: Just to be clear.
Merlin: This is the way.
Merlin: This is your first time visiting Travis.
Merlin: Is that correct?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: This is the way that.
Merlin: This is the interactions that occur.
Merlin: The handful of things, the red flags you have already pinned to Travis's blouse.
John: Yes.
Merlin: These are several red flags, given that this is somebody he doesn't even know.
Merlin: Well, yeah, and the guy that answers the phone— It's like seeing roaches in the dining room, and then you say to yourself, well, what's it like in the kitchen?
Merlin: What's it like in the kitchen?
Merlin: What's it like in the kitchen, Travis?
John: The guy answers the phone, and he's like, hey, it's the— Affiliated services.
John: Yeah, this is Melvin from Clearstone Bank.
John: And Travis is like, I'm a vendor and blah, blah, blah.
John: And they start talking.
John: And I was like, you know what?
John: I'll Velmo you.
John: I'll Velmo you, bro.
John: Just let me out of here.
John: Because everything in my head is like, oh, you should just back out of here and say, oh, you know what?
John: My phone is ringing.
John: Oh, I left a pot on the stove.
John: And get out.
John: But I want this thing detailed.
John: It's Sunday evening.
John: We also don't want to end up dismembered in a bog.
John: I don't want any of that.
John: And Travis is nice.
John: He's just trying to figure it out.
John: It's tough.
John: We all go through tough times.
John: Just some of us have tough times our whole life, and that's the thing.
John: An older guy comes in at one point, and he's got a long black ponytail, and Travis introduces him as like, oh, this is my business partner, Raul or whatever.
John: And Raul immediately says something to Travis like,
John: you know, Hey, why don't you shut up?
John: Ding dong.
John: And Travis was like, Oh, and then, and then Raul says something to me like, Hey man, you know,
John: Tries to be friendly, but you can tell that Travis is like totally bullied by Raul all the time.
John: Travis is just like desperately hanging on for dear life.
John: And then I'm feeling like, oh, I can't back out on Travis like Trav.
Merlin: Can you imagine how Raul would behave with Travis after you left?
Merlin: You'd worry about him a little.
John: He'd hit him, you know.
Merlin: Travis is, I mean, let's be honest.
Merlin: Travis is a simple man, but he is a man.
John: Travis is a lot bigger than Raul but Raul at one point in the conversation Raul said to me I've been in this business since I was 15 years old and the implication was that at 15 years old he was working in a chop shop like in Adventures in Babysitting where he's like you've been in what business since you were 15 years old?
John: Which business are we in?
John: Because the garage is full of like
John: there's cars in every state of, of like,
Merlin: chopped up but none of them are there's no Lamborghinis in there you know it's all like Fierros but still I definitely feel like Raul was throwing a little bit of a gangster vibe at me like I bet it's one of those places where you'd go see I think the movie Fargo when they go to visit Shep Proudfoot to like you know connect up with the Steve Buscemi character it seems like the kind of place where you could get a handful of slightly sketchy things done and maybe also get connected with some people that Raul had done time with
John: Yeah, I mean, I could smell Bondo in the air, but also there was, I don't know, there were some cars upside down.
John: I love that you're using the mute button.
John: I'm trying so fucking hard.
Merlin: Are you sure you want to do that?
Merlin: Fuck.
Merlin: Okay, hang on.
Merlin: Pause.
Merlin: We're going to talk about the show on the show.
John: I'm leaving this in.
Merlin: Do you really want to do that?
Merlin: Don't leave the mute button on.
Merlin: Just let it ride, bro.
Merlin: Is that okay with you?
Merlin: Because I feel like there's no way to save it, and...
Merlin: And like we have an ethos, much like Raul.
Merlin: Well, you know, Travis and Raul, we have an ethos in place here, which is whatever's in the show is in the show.
Merlin: And I think I'm being a little bit intellectually and if I'm being honest, emotionally dishonest with the listener.
Merlin: If I try to cover up, by the way, John, that is a new machine.
Merlin: This is a third kind of bang-bang machine.
Merlin: You could probably guess.
Merlin: I bet you know this one.
Merlin: This one's much more common.
Merlin: This is the one that looks – how do you describe this?
Merlin: It's a – so it's, you know, like the big bang – Is it a braiding?
Merlin: Is it an abrader?
Merlin: I don't know if it's – I think it's a tamper down.
Merlin: Oh, a tamper.
Merlin: Well, like, so you push it around like you're waxing a floor, and it just literally bangs the asphalt.
Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, it's an asphalt pounder.
Merlin: Asphalt pounder.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: So, wait.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: Show of hands.
Merlin: Leave it unmuted.
Merlin: Oh, I think leave it unmuted.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: We'll see how it goes.
Merlin: If we've got to change this and I have to move starting next week, we'll do that.
Merlin: Thank you all for sticking with us.
Merlin: John, you smell Bondo, and Bondo is the stuff you put in a car hole.
John: Is that right?
John: Bondo is the stuff you put in a car hole.
John: It has a distinctive smell when sanded that – Like a solvent probably, right?
John: Well, it definitely just smells like Bondo.
John: There's no arguing.
John: Okay, got it.
John: When I bought my first car, it was a 1974 Fiat Spider.
John: That sounds reliable.
John: Yeah, my friend Jim McNeil, who also... Takes it again, Tony!
John: Jim was the one that I had the plan to buy the Suburban and bash out all the windows, and then we were going to drive it wearing motorcycle helmets.
Yeah.
John: Like some cross between the Dukes of Hazzard and the Malachi Brothers?
John: We were going to knock out all the windows, including the front window.
John: Because we thought we were going to be like Demolition Derby around Anchorage.
Merlin: That's what I'm talking about.
Merlin: Do you remember when Fonzie and Pinky have to go up against the Malachi Brothers and they get them with the Malachi Crunch?
John: That was going to be us.
John: And, you know, it's freezing cold up there.
John: You get more tail than Sinatra.
John: Leave the windshield.
John: But we had this all thought out.
Merlin: It would not be street legal in a legal sense.
John: You never know up there, at least back then.
John: We were going to put netting in all the windows to keep logs and stuff from flying in.
John: Oh, and we were going to make the bumpers out of literally logs.
John: Holy shit.
Merlin: That's rugged NASCAR.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: If anybody out there would like to talk and work with John to turn this into an extremely good drawing, it would please me much.
Merlin: I want to see the log bumpers.
Merlin: Log bumpers.
Merlin: I mean, why isn't...
Merlin: That would be so cool.
Merlin: If you hurt your bumper, you just replace it with a different log.
Merlin: It's Alaska.
Merlin: They have tons of logs.
Merlin: They're chock-a-block with logs.
John: Why isn't this a demolition derby style?
John: All the Cadillacs are gone, but you could have old Suburbans.
Merlin: The wheel could be like a very rugged Dreamcatcher.
John: Oh, so awesome.
John: Anyway, Jim also, because Jim was from Arkansas, Jim also explained to me what Bondo was, and there were a few little rust holes in the Fiat
John: Just little ones?
John: Oh, they were just little rust holes that we were going to fix with Bondo.
John: But the first thing we had to do was get a disc sander and sand the paint off.
John: And when we sanded the paint off, it was revealed that the paint was what was holding the car together.
John: That's what Cindy Brady said.
Merlin: Were you wearing protective equipment when you did this?
John: We weren't, no.
John: So that's why I have a very strong feeling when I smell Bondo.
John: Because then we did Bondo it.
John: I bet that can give you a wang and headache.
John: yeah it's just it's got you know i mean think about all the all the uranium mines that people are working in bondo seems like small small beer okay we we ended up there were the holes in the fiat were so big that we i think at some point we started stuffing them with newspaper and chicken wire and then bonding over oh i see okay like you're making a uh say a piñata
Merlin: Yeah, and this is another example.
Merlin: I'm not a structural engineer, John, but my sense is that whatever Bondo is, which to me, I mentioned coming in a tub like turtle wax, but you put it on, you're not going to have exactly the same structural integrity as steel from 1976.
Merlin: Is that accurate?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Or in this case on the Fiat, that would be the steel from 1974.
John: This is why you don't buy a Vespa from Vietnam.
John: If you see a really beautiful Vespa for sale, and it's really beautiful.
Merlin: Oh, that's been rode hard and hung up wet.
John: Well, and it's from the early 60s.
John: It's like, oh, vintage 1961 Vespa.
Merlin: I'm going to write this down.
Merlin: Never buy a Vespa from someone in Vietnam or a Vietnamese Vespa.
Merlin: Never buy one of those.
John: That's the thing.
John: What you have to determine, because it's very rare that you would actually buy it from someone in Vietnam, although you can.
Merlin: It's changed hands since then.
John: so what you need to determine is has this vespa been to vietnam okay oh i see in vietnam what's the provenance as they say exactly and so there are very few 1961 vespas in the united states that were in the united states the whole time because in 1961
John: People in America weren't riding Vespas.
John: In 1961, people in Vietnam were riding Vespas.
Merlin: No, it's just Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.
John: And they weren't even in the United States.
Merlin: Hell no, they were running around that fountain.
Merlin: They were.
Merlin: So, and the way that you... It wasn't particularly about, if you could say Vietnam, it's not the salt, salting the roads.
Merlin: Is it something about the climate?
Merlin: Were they just driven in difficult circumstances, do you think?
Merlin: Maybe they didn't get the care and the love that you would get in, say, Sonoma, California.
John: I feel like the average Vespa from Vietnam has one trillion miles on it.
Merlin: Let's flip over, you're saying.
John: Yeah, it's like a 1952 Chevrolet that's lived in Havana.
Merlin: Okay!
Merlin: The kind where they stop, and then Mike wants to know why the cars are stopping.
Merlin: Because in Cuba, famously, they got old-ass cars that are fixable.
Merlin: And that's why even into, what, 60s, 70s, people were still driving, like, 50s cars, right?
Merlin: Oh, no, until today.
John: If you go to Havana right now, there are 1950s cars driving all over.
Merlin: Or taxis.
Merlin: That's why taxis are frequently, at least if you look at something like even a taxi driver, you would see a 20-year-old car.
Merlin: Somebody got their medallion.
Merlin: They bought this Chevy or whatever, and they're still using it 25 years later.
Merlin: That's amazing.
Merlin: Use is better than recycling.
John: But if you open the hood of any 1953 Chevrolet in Cuba, what you will find is that the carburetor is made out of a Pepsi can.
John: and all of the hoses and all of the everything it's all been it's all been jury rigged so many times that it's a whole new technology they have invented a whole new way to to do all the functions of a car using found items and not just found items like if you go into your own basement or garage and gather together all the found items yeah
John: Those would just automatically have a quality and modernity that found items in Cuba do not have.
Merlin: And found items that you can use at scale, maybe in the way that when you're in college, after college you learn to put toothpaste in your nail holes in the wall.
Merlin: And then why ever buy that compound stuff again if you know the toothpaste can at least get your deposit back?
Merlin: But you could do that at scale.
Merlin: You come alive with Pepsi, or as Pepsi found out in Espanol, bring your ancestors back to life with Pepsi.
Merlin: You get one of those cans, and now you're making carburetors at scale, and you can hang out a shingle.
John: The problem with that is, of course, that by weight and volume, toothpaste is way more expensive than spackle.
John: The devil, you say.
John: John, that's what turns out.
John: It only makes sense if you have toothpaste but don't have spackle, but you should never go buy toothpaste to replace spackle.
Merlin: Well, then by the transitive property, should I be brushing my teeth with spackle?
John: I probably shouldn't be brushing my teeth.
John: Maybe you should.
John: Well, yeah, sure.
John: But in Cuba, first of all, they don't have Pepsi.
John: So the only Pepsi cans you can make a carburetor out.
John: No, they float to you across the oceans.
John: A flotilla.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: all of the found items in cuba were already found many years ago i admire that so much john i mean even if you're even if you're 95 joking i know what you're talking about and i admire it so fucking much you see it you see it in africa you see it in in many what i was raised to call a third world or underdeveloped country you see so much fucking ingenuity like in burkina faso people making shoes out of old tires that kind of stuff so yeah so fucking cool
John: I've looked at beautiful 60s Vespas where you open one of the little lids and look in, and it is actually partly made out of cans.
John: They're really good at Bondo and paint, though.
John: Oh, the other thing, in addition to having one trillion miles, is...
John: A lot of countries where there were tons of Vespas are also the countries where there are two official lanes of traffic and 11 lanes of actual traffic within those two lanes.
John: The people's traffic.
John: The people's traffic.
John: And so every vehicle has been hit and dented 100 times.
John: But repaired with cans and then bondoed and painted so that they are beautiful.
Merlin: But they've gotten good at it, right?
Merlin: I mean, if you and I did that, it would be pretty half-assed.
Merlin: Like my Fiat.
Merlin: Oh, back to the Fiat.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
John: The Fiat didn't look good at all.
Merlin: You're going to get back to Travis, though, right?
John: At some point.
John: Yeah.
John: So, well...
Merlin: i mean the thing about the thing about my encounter with travis oh i believe me i still want to hear about the fiat i just i just didn't want to leave our listeners hanging because i'm wondering you know is there anybody you should call are you worried about the guy does raul seem like he's maybe you know a dangerous character that's between them that you know that's that my name is y'all y'all and paul my name is pool and that's between raul um
John: They're going to, you know, Travis is going to learn.
John: He's going to figure it out.
John: Right.
John: And the thing is looking at Raul and getting the vibe from him.
John: I know he's never going to beat Travis into his gang.
John: Like whatever.
John: However, though, he's not going to get jumped into the full on Raul gang.
John: Absolutely not.
John: Raul's.
John: So Raul's there for Raul.
John: Travis, who the hell knows how this kid got into this situation?
Merlin: Oh, he's like a what?
Merlin: Not a soda pop, a pony boy.
Merlin: He's like he's kind of like a junior member.
Merlin: Maybe he's like that, the trans person in the Jets, you know, somebody who's kind of like not really like an official member and they'll get fridged at some point to keep the story developed.
John: My sense is that he was getting some Bondo training at the local career center and got maybe apprenticed to Raul or Raul went by and was like, I'll take that one and that one and that one.
Merlin: Yeah, maybe they made a call to Raul's PO and said, can we do some placement?
John: It feels like a placement, but now he's got a business card and everything.
John: I mean, he's pretty wet behind the ears.
John: Right now, as we speak...
John: Those guys are returning my 1979 Suburban to showroom condition.
John: No kidding.
John: Showroom.
John: All in one day.
John: That's what they said.
John: And I'm going to have to go down there, and I'm going to walk around it, and there's going to be that moment.
John: Where if it isn't showroom condition, I'm going to have to be the one that says, hey, this isn't showroom condition.
John: You're prepared to do that?
Merlin: I mean, no, no, listen, just to be clear here.
Merlin: As you know, I've seen you negotiate with people, and it's extremely upsetting to everyone involved, Sean Nelson and I. I think we actually wet each other's pants while you were negotiating one time.
Merlin: But are you prepared to go in there and hold them to a showroom standard?
John: Well, so...
John: There's a lot of room between low showroom condition and high showroom condition.
Merlin: Oh, the ceiling and the floor.
John: Yeah, I do not expect it to be high showroom condition.
John: I would be incredibly pleased if it were only mid-showroom.
John: And I will absolutely shake hands and find it very acceptable if it is in low showroom condition.
John: But if it is in used car lot condition, I'm going to say, what about the showroom condition that we talked about?
John: You might have words.
John: And then they're going to go, oh, well, this and the other.
Merlin: Did you get a piece of paper out of like a, you know, like you would out of like a receipt book or when you pay your landlord in cash.
Merlin: Did you get any kind of piece of paper that says what it is they're doing?
Merlin: You approved something, signed, no bailment created.
Merlin: Was any paper exchanged?
Merlin: None whatsoever.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Well, okay.
John: I think what happened was I velmoed them.
John: I finally broke down and Velmoed them.
John: I did.
John: Did you leave a remark?
John: Not yet.
John: Okay.
John: You Velmoed them, and then I have that false sense of American Express security in my mind that if things don't go well, I will go to my bank and say, I Velmoed these guys, but they didn't return it to showroom condition.
John: I don't think Velmo is a bank.
John: Well, no, but Velmo.
John: So my bank has integrated Velmo.
John: Oh, I have Zelly or something like that.
John: Yeah, Zelmo, right.
John: Zelmo.
John: So this is something like that, right?
John: Where the bank is like, oh, crypto, we don't know what anything is anymore either.
John: But we're going to do this because everybody gets a piece.
John: yeah and and i'm like oh because at first he says you know do you have do you have zelmo yeah and i said no i don't think so but i went on to the thing and i was like i got i've got pray pal i've got these this one i've got that one he's like oh we can't use that one because one time my mom
John: had a a guy that scammed her and then we and he used our thing but then we got a bad rating and so we can't even use that one anymore they got burned one time and then and then there was a other guy who he had a hat on that said sure you know and i was like oh man so this just gets worse and worse you can't take credit cards and your mom got burned one time and and then but this one is okay and he's and then i realized oh my bank
John: uses Velmo
John: directly through its app.
John: And I'm like, wow, amazing.
John: Isn't this incredible?
John: Like everything's so easy now because technology and people and God and the Bible.
John: But so I gave him this money.
John: I just want to go.
John: I just want to leave.
John: Please let me leave, Travis.
John: I gave him this money because I feel at some level that there is accountability for
John: Because the banks in recent years have just fully fessed up to the fact that money is fake.
Merlin: Oh, a thousand percent.
Merlin: I mean, look at what happened over in Russia where it's like it's not it isn't that we're sending people over there with bandit hats on to take rubles out of giant vaults.
Merlin: It's we're saying like you don't have the means to liquidate any of your foreign currencies anymore.
John: Right.
Merlin: Nobody wants to play ball with you on that.
Merlin: If there's nobody who will receive like will be your catcher.
Merlin: There's no point in even hiring a pitcher.
John: That's right.
John: You're a world leader pretend.
John: Am I right?
John: Oh, this is his world.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And this happens with Amazon, too.
John: I got a thing.
John: I opened it.
John: I was like, there's a corner that's damaged.
John: Or one time I ordered a thing, and it was supposed to be next day, and it came two days later.
John: I went into Amazon.
John: I was like, you said it was next day.
John: Yeah.
John: And they write back and go, just keep it.
John: We'll refund your money.
John: Isn't that wild?
John: And then the time, you know, and there's like a lot of value on it, too.
John: This had a little thing about it.
John: And they're like, just keep it.
John: And, you know, you can't depend on them doing that because then there's other times when they're like, you have to repackage it and send it back.
Merlin: Well, it also doesn't really fix the problem.
Merlin: Like if people's birthday was ruined because you didn't bring us a cake, it doesn't matter that you said, just keep it kind of, I don't know what you just need unless you've got a time machine, you can't fix it.
Merlin: But yeah, it's just, you're, you're, the larger point is that like, what is the, what is the value of stuff?
Merlin: Well, maybe the value of stuff has always been extremely abstract.
Merlin: It used to just feel very real.
Merlin: Like when's the last time you took a fistful of money and put it into a night deposit slot?
John: Well, you know, things are real if somebody makes something and then hands it to you.
Merlin: Just look at Twitter.
Merlin: Twitter seems real.
John: Not anymore.
John: But when I go back to Travis, he's going to be standing there wiping his hands with an oily rag going, I got it into showroom condition for you, man.
John: And I'm going to go, that's worth money.
John: You spent a whole day getting this into showroom condition for me, Travis.
John: And that is worth the money if you got it there.
Right.
John: But for Amazon or for the banks, they're not even pretending that money is real.
John: They're just like, it's all part of everything, man.
John: And we send you a thing and a ship comes across the ocean, supply chain problems, and then you give us money and we take the money and we turn it into more money by investing it in crypto.
John: And it's like, so I feel using, using Zelmo that I can go to the, I can make one phone call to the bank because we live in a spaceship.
John: And I say, Travis said he would put it in showroom condition and it's like not even in used car lot condition.
John: And they'll be like, you know what?
John: Just forget about it.
John: We'll just – you know what?
Merlin: Oh, is it in that sweet spot of like it's enough to worry about but not enough to hire Dave Roderick to arbitrate somewhere in that liminal zone?
John: We'll give you that money back and then we'll just put a flag on Travis's Zelmo account.
John: Oh, shit.
John: And then Travis, the next time somebody comes into that shop, he'll be like, oh, dude, we can't use Zelmo because one time this guy –
John: said it wasn't in showroom condition.
John: And you know what?
John: He's wrong.
John: He's, dude, I worked on it all day, but... You're like Tommy Lee.
Merlin: You're just trying not to pay.
John: Yeah, and he's going to be like, can you pay in crypto?
John: And the person's going to be like, oh, man, I have that through my bank.
Merlin: Can you ask me?
Ask me.
John: I was thinking last night as I was driving along...
John: I'm just driving along in the middle of the night.
John: Nothing going on.
John: Nothing in my head.
John: Just thinking about nothing.
John: And Dogecoin, the word, comes into my head.
John: No kidding.
John: Just out of nowhere.
John: I'm like, Dogecoin?
John: Yeah.
John: Well, I don't even know what Dogecoin is.
John: Didn't Elon Musk into that for a while?
John: Yeah, but that's the thing.
John: It's based on a joke about a dog.
John: About a dog.
John: Yeah.
John: As soon as it popped into my head, my brain said, well, I wonder if you had bought Dogecoin.
John: Oh, then you convert that to F. Well, yeah, and then I could be paying Travis with Dogecoin, and none of it would be real.
John: You really fucked up.
John: You know what?
John: We could buy fractional interest in a painting, Merlin.
John: I read about this.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Let's not bite the hand of... Let's tamp it down.
Merlin: Ladies and gentlemen, I really like to check out Mack Weldon.
Merlin: See, now I'm wearing Mack Weldon as we speak.
John: Yeah, me too.
Merlin: Me too.
Merlin: Although... I wish we could put in some kind of a secret beep for the stuff we actually like versus the stuff where we go, I don't know.
John: Can we have a secret beep?
John: We do have a secret beep.
Uh-huh.
John: Beep.
Merlin: Last night I saw an RV.
Merlin: Somebody's been fixing up an RV in our neighborhood.
Merlin: And actually getting away with parking on the sidewalk for hours to fix it up, which is weird.
Merlin: I got a ticket the day I moved in for having a moving truck on the sidewalk, but times change.
Merlin: And I think this is the first time I ever heard...
Merlin: A vehicle that speaks in this particular... There was a time, a brief vogue of having your car talk.
Merlin: Backing up, backing up.
Merlin: But this one had what sounded like a pre-recorded voice of maybe the owner.
Merlin: It would sound like the voice of a woman in her earliest 30 going, The vehicle is backing up!
Merlin: The vehicle is backing up!
Merlin: It was very weird.
Merlin: What kind of vehicle?
Merlin: It's a Winnie.
Merlin: And how old?
Merlin: It was probably like a, oh, I don't know.
Merlin: They've been working on it forever.
Merlin: I'm terrible at estimating the lengths of RVs.
Merlin: But it's a, you know, I'm guessing probably an 80s wooded bagel.
Merlin: Look, it's in pretty good shape.
Merlin: They keep vacuuming it.
Merlin: Anyway, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm taking you off of this.
Merlin: So you're going to have to, so you're going to at some point, hopefully get a call from a dead drop or a pigeon drop.
Merlin: You're going to get a call at some point from the back room to say your showroom shine vehicle is ready to be driven off the lot.
Merlin: Here's what I want.
Merlin: What I want.
John: What I want is that the suburban and Travis disappear forever.
John: What I'm, where I'm at in life right now,
John: is that I wish that all of the things that I think are worth money, even though I know that money isn't real, I just wish that all the things and the money was just all gone.
John: I want everything to just be gone.
John: The new truck that I bought, I want it gone too.
John: I want this house gone.
John: I really, really want to live in a one-bedroom apartment.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Well, I've been working on some show art for this, which is a picture of a beautiful 76 Chevy Suburban pulling...
Merlin: an Airstream that's about the size of the one we stayed in at that camp.
Merlin: I sent you photos of that, right?
Merlin: So probably like maybe 20-some, 30 feet long.
Merlin: It's got like four windows, so it's the long one.
Merlin: And sometimes I will see something.
Merlin: I think it's why I watch stuff like Tiny House Things on YouTube or why I...
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: There's times where even this sounds really ridiculous, but you'll see those things where people live in huge Asian cities and basically live in a bunk bed cage.
Merlin: There's a part of me that goes, you know, if I could get that, but I didn't have to sleep near somebody, I'd be really into it.
Merlin: But if you get your own space, it's like no matter how commodious the space is, if you have to share it with other people, especially strangers, it sucks.
Merlin: If you get an area that is your own, that you get to control...
Merlin: I mean, I'm going to say no matter what, but you know what I mean?
Merlin: There's something really attractive about that.
Merlin: It's like living on a boat.
Merlin: You've got to rethink your shit.
Merlin: You've got to get rid of so much stuff.
Merlin: You've got to keep only the things you need to live in that space.
Merlin: And I love my family, but I'd be lying if I didn't think that was kind of attractive.
John: Yeah, I hit a wall just recently where...
John: In what I think is a very positive way, nothing matters.
John: And I think I need a two-bedroom apartment because I would like someplace for my daughter to keep her crap.
John: She could keep a couple of her Barbies there.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But, like, she gets a shoebox.
Merlin: First time she shows up, you give her, like, maybe three shoeboxes, but she gets something that can be, as we say in the business, stowed.
John: Yeah, but he...
John: He, she, she.
John: We.
John: We.
John: They.
John: The.
John: She needs a certain amount.
John: We're in a stage right now where she's very upfront to me about the fact that she's like, look.
John: Uh, all my stuff is at mom's and, uh, we can do this whole thing where we have a bunch of stuff at your house and that's fine.
John: And I'll, you know, I love hanging out at your house, but I'm going to go home to mom's if I can.
John: I'm not going to like stay here.
John: Wow.
John: Really?
John: Like, uh, well, and I remember it very well.
Merlin: She seems like she seems very raw in some way.
Merlin: She can be very like, not raw in a good way.
Merlin: And like, like vulnerable, like straight, like I'm just going to say this thing.
John: When I was a kid and had two houses, I wanted to stay at my mom's house.
John: Even when my mom turned my room into a guest room and said, go live with your father, I wanted to live in the guest room at my mom's house rather than at the room at my dad's house that had a kind of...
John: uh cheaper facsimile of what a child what my room would look like my mom took all my stuff out of the room and decorated it with pictures of flowers and it still felt more like my room than my room at my dad's that had video games and toys and posters your house room your your real room so to speak at your mom's house was sort of slightly degraded to a more public space while over at your dad's place you had something upgraded
Merlin: From something else?
Merlin: You were in two different liminal rooms?
John: In ninth grade-ish, my mom said, you are a misbehaving child, and so you are kicked out.
John: And this is where you went to your dad's and he made the eggs wrong.
John: Oh, no, that was a long time before.
John: No, I went to my dad's who lived a mile and a half away because she said you can't live here anymore.
John: And then she very definitely and purposely turned my bedroom into a guest room.
John: Your mom does not fuck around.
John: Quilt on the bed and no art on the walls and all my clothes in boxes in the basement.
John: And she has never had a guest in her life.
John: Like there has never been someone come stay one night at my mom's house in her life.
John: But she turned this room into a guest room.
John: And for several months, I wasn't allowed to spend the night at her house.
John: And I could come for dinner.
John: And then I had to go on your way home to my dad's and one night something happened where I was there late and Everybody went to bed or something and I snuck into the guest room and spent the night and then I tried it again some other time and
John: And pretty soon I had snuck back in and was sleeping in the guest room.
Merlin: How quickly do you think she copped what you were doing?
John: Oh, she knew it was happening, but she never said, you know, not pretty fast.
John: Your mom's crazy fast.
John: There's nobody sleeping in her house that she doesn't know about.
John: Right.
John: But she never said, oh, you know, you're welcome back.
John: I just gradually started spending the night at her house more and more and gradually hung up a couple of shirts in the closet.
John: And I mean, this was over the course of months.
John: And then pretty soon I was living there and I felt empowered enough to like take a picture of a flower down off the wall and put up a picture of the Beatles or whatever.
John: And eventually I was living there again.
John: And my dad didn't notice because he's like, I don't know.
John: I was out at a thing.
John: But no matter what, your room at your mom's house is your room.
John: Unless your mom is like,
Merlin: like right right right really uh you know off the rails it's rare for most of us for i mean when you see something on tv where somebody lives with their dad because their mom's incarcerated or whatever but it's pretty rare in america for even if you are primarily with your day i don't know i can't speak to this but the people i've known it's the house it's the room a house in the room with your mom and it really feels like home no matter what anybody else it's your mom your mom is always home as long as your mom is is reliable right yeah and so here at my house i don't have a television
John: She, her mom has a television, you know, and, and so staying at, staying the night at my house, you arrive at that time of night, seven 30 at night where at her mom's house, it's time to go watch, uh, star Trek rebels or whatever.
John: Yeah.
John: And at dad's house, it's time to get out the old uno cards or, or, you know, or sit down and look at a national geographic together.
John: 1955.
John: And so she's like,
John: So I've made no enticement.
John: But also I remember feeling so guilty about preferring my mom's house.
John: Yeah.
John: Because my dad was, you know, I loved my dad.
John: Of course.
John: But my room at my dad's house never felt like my room.
John: And my room at my mom's house was my room even when it wasn't.
John: Yeah.
John: And I never wanted to put that on my kid anymore.
John: So I was always like, hey, you spend the night wherever you want.
John: You never need to feel.
Merlin: But also really trying to put your back into it just to say, no, seriously.
Merlin: This is not coded.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: There's that way where you've got to break character a little bit and go, hey, look, honestly, it's really okay.
Merlin: I'm not going to hold this against you.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Because if you're around the wrong – or sometimes like a passive-aggressive person, they'll be like, oh, it's fine.
Merlin: Just go.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But you really leaned into it to say, hey, look, this is your choice.
Merlin: You're welcome here, but I understand.
John: Well, and I don't have to too much because this is – I established this in her life from the time she was born.
John: Guilt was used in my family so much from my dad almost entirely –
John: And I didn't want any of it.
John: So I never have guilted her.
Merlin: Because sometimes then that ends up creating an adult who feels like they've never really accomplished anything or lived up to their abilities.
John: Right.
John: And, you know, and that's how my dad lived.
John: You know, my dad was guilted by his people so badly.
John: It was, you know, the number one way they manipulated him.
John: So I've never guilted her.
John: And that's why she speaks so plainly.
John: I'm like, well, you know, I found these really cool Peter Max sheets at a crazy vintage store.
John: All these sheets for your room.
Merlin: The yellow submarine guy.
John: That have yellow submarine, but it's not Beatles stuff.
Merlin: The style of, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: It's Peter Max, but it's not Beatles stuff.
John: It's like a girl with wings and the stars and she's floating in a rainbow cuckoo land.
Yeah.
John: And my kid is like, that's amazing.
John: And she makes a fort out of them.
John: And then she's like, well, it's 730 and I want to go watch Star Trek Rebels.
John: Goodbye.
John: And then I've got a fort made out of Peter Max sheets in one of these rooms.
John: And I'm like, well, I can't tear it down because it was made by my darling.
John: But at the same time, that's a room that I would, you know, I was doing archery practice in there or whatever.
John: So it's, I need to have a room where she feels like it's her place to do whatever she wants.
John: But I know I'm never going to have a room that's the one that she – yeah.
Merlin: You can't recreate the vibe of her mom's house.
Merlin: You can't – I mean it's because there's no mom there.
John: You build a nest, right?
John: And you build a nest with your mom.
John: So I know that.
John: I just have to have – I just have to always have a two-bedroom.
John: And the thing is she's not a teenager yet and there may come a day when she shows up here –
John: And slams the door and goes, I'm never talking to mom again.
John: And at that point, I'll go, well, there's that room with the Peter Max shit all in it.
John: Your fort's still there.
John: It's still there.
Merlin: Throughout our kids' entire life, there's been this – I don't want to put too much –
Merlin: I'll put too much spin on this ball because like, I think everybody goes through this.
Merlin: Maybe you've gone through this too, but there's times where like the kid's really into mom for a while.
Merlin: The kid's really into dad for a while.
Merlin: The real, you know, but it's, and it isn't always just one or the other, but that happens a lot.
Merlin: And there are times in a young woman's life when her relationship with her mom tends to get pretty rough.
Merlin: I mean, almost everyone, well, it's, I'm not trying to say this is a woman thing, but there is a thing that can happen a lot.
Merlin: No, I'm going to speak truthfully.
John: It's,
Merlin: Most of the women I knew have had a very tumultuous time with their mom.
Merlin: I'm trying not to get in trouble, but this is a true thing.
Merlin: There's a time in almost every young woman's life, in her teens especially, where she and her mom will go at loggerheads.
Merlin: And the thing that you can't say at the bottom of it is, well, this person is becoming a person who's different than the mom thinks they are, thinks they were, thinks they should be.
Merlin: And that becomes very contentious.
Merlin: And you have to have it.
Merlin: You have to get through it.
Merlin: And God willing, you'll find a way to mend it and recreate a new relationship
Merlin: in the ashes of that.
Merlin: And this happens in lots of relationships, but don't you think, I mean, like you say, there could be a day where it's like, we just finally, it could be about hanging up the towels and it could be about who was that on the phone, but, or like, where were you?
Merlin: But there will be a time when there's a rift that feels like species ending or a relationship ending.
John: Yeah.
John: I, obviously I've never had a kid before this one.
John: And I and my sister and my mother's relationship is not a good example to draw on.
John: Right.
John: Like I did not ever see kind of what you would describe as a normal mother daughter relationship because my sister and mother are.
John: Oh, wow.
John: It's so weird how alike they are in the ways that you wish they weren't.
Merlin: They're very close, but part of their closeness is that when they rub up against each other, it can be a lot of sparks.
John: The problem is that the ways that they're not alike are so...
John: So dramatically important for there to be peace in the valley.
John: Because the way they're alike is that they are both ferocious and indomitable and you cannot dislodge them.
John: Undeterrable.
John: They are undeterrable.
John: They are indefatigable.
John: Yep, yep.
John: And they will fight both to the death.
Merlin: So their tactics, for lack of a better word, or their, yeah, their praxis.
Merlin: Their tactics are, like, just how they are in an interaction that gets to a slow boil is similar.
Merlin: But the things, the side they would take or the point they would make in that is they're very oppositional to each other in that way.
John: Super opposite.
John: Right.
John: Exactly.
John: They'll lock talons and fall to their deaths, but they cannot see the world through one another's eyes.
John: Of course.
John: And that means that all of the stuff that you see in the movies about like, oh, a mother and a daughter and they're having a tiff about something and somebody's slamming a door and it's like, mom, you don't understand me.
John: Like none of that is actually what this looks like.
John: This looks like the opposite, where they're both constantly trying to be friends and like, no, no, mom, after you, no, after you.
John: But they really are both full of murder.
John: And so there's nothing like that.
John: My daughter is like that, but I and her mother are not like that.
John: So she will try and lock talons and her mother's like, oh, I don't even have talons.
John: And I'm like, I'm made of fur.
John: Be careful.
John: I'm made of fur but also nails.
John: And it's very complicated.
John: Families, you know, families.
Merlin: No, it's extremely complicated.
Merlin: And God in the Bible.
Merlin: I'm not sure whose sort of fault it is, but like one... God.
Merlin: The fault's on our stars, what a lot of people say.
Merlin: One problem is that, you know, we do have these notions about love...
Merlin: such as it is that even if we could agree on what love is, it's very romanticized and very unrealistic.
Merlin: Not even just romantic, because in actual romantic fiction and stories, that's Romeo and Juliet.
Merlin: Romance just about nearly equals tragedy in a lot of literature.
Merlin: We forget that because we think being romantic is giving somebody a box of chocolate in the middle of February.
Merlin: But the but love love is very complicated.
Merlin: And if it's not complicated, it may not be love.
Merlin: If it's not if it's uncomplicated, it might be infatuation.
Merlin: If it's uncomplicated, it might be a love that used to exist.
Merlin: It could be love from a distance.
Merlin: It could be I mean, think about the thoughts that must have gone through John McCain's head.
Merlin: Like, when he was, you know, a prisoner of war.
Merlin: Like, think about the way, like, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, the way your brain, when you miss somebody, how you build them up to be this other thing.
Merlin: And the whole time you've been away from each other, you've both been changing slightly.
Merlin: And you won't know until you see each other again whether that part that changed was the part that ultimately was the Bondo that held your relationship together.
Merlin: The Bondo.
Merlin: Now that this person has a different job and a different haircut and you, you know, like playing this instrument, like maybe it's different.
Merlin: I just think it's, we've, it's, there's the, you know, like I say, the dumb thing, exception that proves the rule, which I've never known what that means.
Merlin: But what I do know is that if it's love, it's complicated.
Merlin: In almost every instance.
Merlin: And it's Anna Karenina because it's complicated in different ways.
Merlin: And yet we continue to feel we as a people continue to feel surprised that love is really complicated.
Merlin: The feelings that are that in can be that intense and that indelible aren't as simple as I love my mommy.
Merlin: It's like, well, yeah, I love my mommy, but sometimes I want to just end her.
John: Yeah.
John: Everybody hates dad.
John: I love that show.
Merlin: We could stop there, but I think we should keep going.
Merlin: Can I say one thing just to get something off my chest?
Merlin: Sometimes on this program in particular, certain kinds of things about the interior world that I don't realize I thought kind of bubble up and...
Merlin: The thing you said about with your kid and not wanting to guilt her.
Merlin: When you say that, at least what I think about is, well, it's kind of shitty to do that.
Merlin: But it's also like, ugh, like you said, yeah, I got that my whole life.
Merlin: The thick guilt and it's sort of...
Merlin: fraternal twin shame.
Merlin: Like, guilt and shame had such a role in my whole life in making me how I am.
Merlin: Is it anybody's fault for my own?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know, but that's not the point.
Merlin: The point is, from the day you met me, you knew probably that I felt guilty and shameful.
Merlin: You said I should get a shirt.
Merlin: It says governed by fear, I think was the shirt you recommended for me.
Merlin: Or another way to put that, though, is being risk averse.
Merlin: And why would a person like me become like that?
Merlin: Because I feel guilty and because I feel shameful.
Merlin: And because I feel if I'm the right kind of risk averse, I can delay or avoid a kind of pain that was traumatic at a different time.
Merlin: I'm not trying to build up a whole thing here.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: Here's what I do know from my POV, and I wonder if you agree.
Merlin: When we say things like, I don't want to try and guilt my child.
Merlin: You know what it is?
Merlin: And this is the realization.
Merlin: Guilt is so fucking lazy.
Merlin: It's such a lazy way to at the least win an argument and to at the most be
Merlin: best somebody with a... In the same way that people tend to think today in public that calling somebody a hypocrite ruins their life and ends the conversation forever.
Merlin: What is true is that if you're a parent and you can make your kid feel guilt, you could stop that argument anyway right now a lot of the time.
Merlin: But it's such an unfair move.
Merlin: It's so shitty and the results of it are so potentially long-lasting.
Merlin: Is it really worth...
Merlin: getting back to watching TV or even winning an argument to use guilt.
Merlin: And like that, it can be, here's the pernicious part is that that can come in ways that feel to people of our generation and older, maybe as completely normal shit.
Merlin: What are you talking about, man?
Merlin: Fucking guilt and shame is how you make a child good.
Merlin: If you're not making them guilty and ashamed, well then how the fuck are you going to get them to love the Lord and do their chores?
Merlin: And so if you do stuff like bring up,
Merlin: If you find ways to, like, and I say get back to your program, it could be something as dumb as, well, you know, blah, blah, blah, you want to do this?
Merlin: Oh, you know, maybe I guess I'll go clean your room for you while you're gone or whatever.
Merlin: Or you always do this thing.
Merlin: Or you never do that thing.
Merlin: It's a lazy way to hit a kid in the existential balls in order to abruptly end an argument.
Merlin: But the consequences of that...
Merlin: cumulatively especially, are so damaging.
Merlin: You've just taken a chunk out of their ability to feel whole and integrated in order to win that argument or to get them to clean their room or to get them to take a shower.
Merlin: Like, go take a shower.
Merlin: Well, if you don't take a shower, you're going to be stinky and everybody will hate you.
Merlin: Wow, that really sounds like your youth talking, not your kids.
Merlin: But anyway, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Isn't that one of the roles, though?
Merlin: It's like guilt is shitty because guilt is lazy.
John: I think about this a lot, of course, because I was raised with that, and it had a profound... I can't imagine being raised without that.
Merlin: I can't imagine my childhood.
Merlin: And it's not anybody one person's fault, John, but we can certainly pin a lot of the blame on a given person.
Merlin: I'll shut up after this.
Merlin: But it was so much a part of every aspect of my life, social...
Merlin: institutional like at school at in you know it was at the assembly or in class it could be in church it could be you know at home because you didn't eat your vegetables and this kid in China starving but like the answer to everything was you suck I wonder how much of it is is is just in me though
Merlin: And you now in a way that doesn't go out?
Merlin: No, I mean, innate.
Merlin: Oh, where you're doing it even though you're trying not to?
John: No, I mean, would have been there if I had been raised by the animals.
John: If I'd been taken... How did it get in?
John: ...by rabbits and raised as a rabbit.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know how much guilt...
John: I mean, we think of it as a cultural thing.
John: We think of it as a thing that's shoved into you.
John: But there are so many things that feel like so many emotional things because emotions are real.
John: And for them to be real, they have to exist outside somehow of just what your mom told you.
Merlin: It becomes visible on you like some kind of a medieval disease.
Yeah.
John: We talk about trauma being communicated through generations.
John: And if that's true, then every single person has it because every single culture has been traumatized.
John: There's nobody in the world that wasn't murdered at some point.
John: And so – but is guilt –
John: one of the one of the elements like is it yeah is it the same as i mean it's obviously not oxygen because not everybody has it but some compounds you know some some things some rare earths exist some places and not others but it doesn't make them less elemental and everything has hydrogen but not everything has
John: And is guilt just one of those?
John: Just like an element?
Merlin: I think I mentioned to you this book that's had a big impact on me, which is such a normie thing for me, but this book called The Body Keeps the Score, that book about trauma.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I bought five copies and I just give it to people.
Merlin: It's transformative in putting a frame and an understanding and in some cases names to things that I didn't even know existed.
Merlin: To learn that it exists and that it is a thing was huge.
Merlin: But as far as guilt and shame, one of the things that comes up in this book is the idea that I think at the heart of it, it's this guy saying there's a very old part of your brain and a very new part of your brain.
Merlin: The very new part of your brain, because it is so young, is never going to win in a fight with the old part of your brain.
Merlin: But we're just smart enough, given the front part of our brain, we're just smart enough to think that we can defeat the old part of our brain with will.
Merlin: That this new front part that does all this reasoning can have as big an impact as the part that's closer to a lizard.
Merlin: And what does that mean?
Merlin: Well, one of the things is that whether you realize it or not, humans are so social.
Merlin: We rely so heavily on our tribe, whatever that tribe is.
Merlin: But your brain is trying to protect you from even believing something is real if it will cause you to fall out with the tribe.
Merlin: And this is not, it's not optional.
Merlin: Like, this is just a way that your brain is, and it's trying so hard to protect you.
Merlin: And so the example I always mention here is, like, you cannot mention what Father Peter has been doing to you for five years, because everybody loves Father Peter.
Merlin: You're just going to sound like somebody who tried to entice the good priest, and you're the one who's going to get in trouble, not the father, because that's how life works.
Merlin: And it's like, okay, show me the lie.
Merlin: That is really true.
Merlin: And so here's the thing, guilt and shame.
Merlin: Guilt and shame, more with the fraternal twins.
Merlin: Guilt is the thing.
Merlin: I think shame is the thing in some ways that where you say, I'm worried that something about me will be found out and I won't be acceptable within the tribe.
Merlin: And that can include the tribe of your mom.
Merlin: And then guilt is the thing that in an ongoing way ensures that
Merlin: That you avoid the things that cause shame and guilt, but you understand on an almost atomic level that the shame you feel is earned and that the guilt you feel is permanent.
Merlin: But what if, in a thought experiment, you said, what if those are things that I had unintentionally, my brain had brought upon me to protect me?
Merlin: just as a thought experiment.
Merlin: Well, people don't even want to have that thought experiment.
Merlin: Well, I'm gay, so of course I should be ashamed.
Merlin: I had sex with a priest, so of course I feel guilty, right?
Merlin: But, like, we're just not situated to utilize those into red flags about our emotions and our bodies and our brains' workings.
Merlin: It's more meant to be like, I mean, just look at how everybody can capitalize on guilt and shame.
Merlin: Whether that's Listerine saying you can clean out your pussy and make your husband like you.
Merlin: Or whether it's the church saying if you pay us this indulgence, you get to go fuck the person you want.
Merlin: Whatever it is, people find a way to not just monetize, but to weaponize guilt and shame institutionally.
Merlin: And if we don't get that at an institutional level...
Merlin: I mean, it becomes even more difficult to get it on a personal level.
Merlin: So why do we do this?
Merlin: We do this because everybody does this.
Merlin: And not that we have to do it forever.
Merlin: Don't you think that has a role?
Merlin: It's like this is in the same way, oh, you know, my dad got drunk and beat the shit out of me.
Merlin: And look, I turned out great.
Merlin: It's like, are you sure?
Merlin: Like, are you sure you turned out great?
Merlin: Is that really something you want to continue to pass on, you know, in this Watchmen-like way, passing that trauma on to the next generation?
Merlin: That's in a very specific way.
Merlin: Anyway, one of my takeaways from that book also was that like a big thing about trauma, at least in my reading of it, is that the person, it's so horrible when the person who's supposed to protect you has not protected you from usually then a third party danger.
Merlin: But the worst in some cases is when the person who's supposed to protect you is the person who caused the harm.
Merlin: And you talk about guilt and shame.
Merlin: Holy fucking shit.
John: I feel like guilt and shame, we, you know, psychology is still a very young art and it's very compelling to talk about guilt and shame as things that are in the new part of the brain.
John: uh that we transmit to each other through action and we can change through behavior but i really increasingly think that guilt and shame are both deep deep deep in the old part of our brain same way like a monkey might have guilt and shame in their monkey way well and all the things that you describe the way that guilt and shame latch on to whatever and are exploited by everybody it just is more evidence that guilt and shame are like breathing and they're gonna find a thing to attach themselves to and
John: Whether or not – and it's very compelling or appealing to say that guilt and shame are somebody's fault or can be fixed by the application of the following thought technologies.
John: Because it's just another way of exploiting guilt and shame to tell you that there are cures for them or reasons for them.
John: And it gets you in the psychologist's office and it gets you to buy the book about it and it gets you to think that it's, you know, that you can talk, cure your way out of it.
John: And it's really much more, more and more I feel this way because I've been working on it for decades and it is immutable and
John: And it's in some of us harder than others.
John: There are people that have no guilt and no shame.
John: And it's almost never because they were.
Merlin: And yet are not like, what's the one, psychotic?
Merlin: You don't have to be like mentally ill.
Merlin: There are people who are mentally and emotionally healthy that don't have guilt and shame.
John: And it's not because they're.
John: perfectly you know they just don't have it and it's just exactly the same as being able to run a four minute mile or something you know it's like you can do it or you can't and those of us that have it it's in its it's the paradox of it it's in its very nature to look for reasons for it it's like so many mental illnesses you cannot see it
John: using the same mind that is full of it right you can't use so if your sensory perception stuff is occluded or distorted it's which everybody says it's extremely hard to see well it's it's just like i used to say about depression like when you're depressed you feel like you deserve to be depressed and so you don't seek a solution to being depressed because being depressed feels right it feels legitimate and
John: And with guilt and shame, it's like you have guilt and shame and that's the same mind you're using to figure out what they are and how to solve them.
John: And there's no, you know, when you go to a psychologist and they're like, why do you think, what did your mother say to you?
John: And it's all just a dance about a thing that is more deeply embedded and fills an important role.
John: in some of us and we attach it to crazy things you know we attach it to things that are that are modern and unreal and i feel guilty that i slammed the door because i hurt the door's feelings and that feels like something very primitive in me uh something very very ancient and then i feel guilty that i felt guilty about something as stupid as slamming a door so what is the way to harness it maybe it's not harnessable
Merlin: what is the way to cure it maybe it's not curable right right and like when i when i my my uh i had a couple sort of like dumb about to have a baby things the things that i wanted apart from a healthy baby where i hope the kid likes music and i hope the kid likes reading selfishly because i like both of those and they made my life good i like to think but the other thing that i tried to promise myself uh which i think came with a good heart was to try to not
Merlin: Not pass anxieties on to my kid, particularly the anxieties that were very damaging to me, which I discovered fairly quickly is its own problem because now you're anxious about feeling anxious and passing on the anxieties to the kid.
Merlin: But I feel like almost everybody who goes into parenthood with a good heart thinks, I just want to protect my kid from X, with X being the thing that fucked me up when I was a kid.
Merlin: So you could just be as simple as I want to protect you from poverty.
Merlin: I want to protect you from familial abuse.
Merlin: I want to protect you, whatever that is.
Merlin: But like, it's, that's not the problem your kid will necessarily have.
Merlin: And your recipe for keeping them away from that may have its own side effects.
Merlin: So even when we're doing our best, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Even when we're doing our best at it with a fully good heart and the best, best heart we could produce about another human being, it still becomes too much.
John: My mom and dad worked so hard to protect me from the things that tormented them.
John: And the things that tormented them didn't even exist in my life.
John: And a lot of the work that they did created a whole new situation in my life.
John: I mean, the thing about my relationship with my daughter is I get sad sometimes.
John: And I will sit in a chair and I'll be staring at a spot on the wall.
John: And I'm just sad.
John: It's just sadness.
Yeah.
John: And there are a lot of people who, when their kid was around, would try never to show that they were sad.
John: And that always felt wrong to me, dishonest and dangerous, because your kid can tell.
John: And if you're pretending not to be sad and they can tell something's wrong and also that you're being false, it's just bad.
Merlin: The parents know when the kid's gay before they're gay.
Merlin: The kids know when the parents are going to get divorced before the parents realize they're going to get divorced.
John: But even more deeply, like she just knows that I, and I've explained it, you know, like this isn't about you.
John: It's just that dad gets sad and it's not about anything.
John: You can't change anything in your life.
John: It's not because of anything that your mom did.
Merlin: I'm not anxious about any particular thing.
Merlin: You're not sad about any particular thing.
Merlin: It's just how I feel right now.
John: Just sad.
John: But she will sometimes come in the room and I won't notice she's there.
John: I'm staring off into space.
John: And she'll come over and she'll put her hand on my head.
John: And just stand there.
John: And she calls it giving me care.
John: And she'll just stand and give me care.
John: And I'll become aware of her.
John: And I won't say anything.
John: I'm still wherever I am, far away.
John: And she'll just give me some care.
John: And then she'll go about her way.
John: But there's an element of how she feels, I think, because I've asked her, that she feels a little – it pushes a button of guilt in her.
John: Even though there's no guilt, she's not – she doesn't feel any responsibility, but she feels guilt –
John: because she can't help and that is so basic that it and that it feels
Merlin: that it feels prehistoric.
Merlin: Do you know which, which part is making her feel guilty?
Merlin: That she's, is she seeing this or that she's interacting?
Merlin: No, no, no.
John: That I'm hurt and she can't help.
John: I see.
John: Oh God.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's not a thing I've, I haven't ever used guilt to manipulate her.
John: I don't use guilt.
John: There's no using of guilt in that situation.
John: She, and she knows very clearly that it's, that she's not responsible.
John: You know, that dad is on his own path.
John: It's a basic, fundamental feeling that I wish I could help and can't, and therefore I am responsible.
John: Yeah, you're unintentionally part of the problem if you can't solve the problem.
John: You can't solve the problem.
John: And she's not like a let-me-solve-everything person either.
John: It's like animal brain.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And that's the guilt I feel a lot of the time.
John: Most of the guilt I carry around isn't even my dad's guilt anymore.
John: It's just like, why can't I make this better for people?
John: Why can't I use what I know to make the world easier for others?
John: And I can't, you know?
John: And less so all the time, weirdly.
John: And that guilt is just a – it just kind of populates –
John: And nobody's putting it on me.
John: And I don't even hear my father's voice anymore.
John: It just feels like a kind of an element.