Ep. 460: "Rikki-Tikki-Cancelled"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Happy Monday.
Merlin: Hey, happy Monday to you, too.
Merlin: And they just keep coming, don't they?
Merlin: One after another.
Merlin: Boom, boom, boom.
Merlin: It's Monday's all the way down.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, I would like to blame things on COVID, like I often do.
Merlin: I mean, it's definitely screwed with my perception, I think, like a lot of people.
Merlin: But I think I just maybe have forgotten how to manage my time.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: It's not relevant, but I mean, I did ask you for a little extra time today.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Got to get my head right, you know what I'm saying?
John: Yeah, you and I over the years, there's a little glimpse behind the curtain.
John: Ooh, I love this.
John: I know you don't like to break the fourth wall, but over the years, there have been times when, particularly when I was setting my alarm for 11.55 in order to record our 11, I'm sorry, 10.55.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: in advance of our 11 o'clock show, I would sometimes text you and say, can we just push it?
John: We love to push.
John: Pushing the bush, that's what we say.
John: And then you would say, hey, what if we push it?
John: And then for a while there, we were pushing it all the time.
John: This is the problem.
Merlin: Is that... Well, it depends, I guess, on the reason why one isn't ready on time.
Merlin: And I am ready on time for lots and lots of things.
Merlin: I just...
Merlin: Sometimes here's my problem.
Merlin: I got the ADHD.
Merlin: I don't know if you know this.
Merlin: And sometimes I get on a little bit of a little task journey in the morning because that's when all these different hooks are presenting themselves and saying, I'm a hook that could be into your attention.
Merlin: I'm a hook.
John: Is it like a Lemmy Winks journey?
John: I don't know what that means.
John: Oh.
John: What does that mean?
John: Weird.
John: That's maybe the only cultural reference I've ever made to like 90s, 2000s pop culture.
Merlin: You said it before, but I mean, I went straight past Snorks and started adopting it.
Merlin: Sometimes we say something wrong and I adopt it.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Let me winks.
Merlin: We can cut this out.
John: I mean, is it a sex thing?
John: No, it's a South Park thing.
John: And I think South Park maybe.
John: Oh.
Merlin: Oh, right.
John: No, no, no.
John: Was that part of your world?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: My first CD of stolen, we used to call it wares, stolen software and serial numbers that my friend gave me that basically helped launch my career.
Merlin: Thank you, Alan.
Merlin: Included the South Park video that started as, like, purportedly anyway, started as a Christmas card in whatever that was, 94, 95.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: What was stolen...
John: What was that now?
John: Stolen serial numbers?
John: Who can remember at this point?
John: Stole what?
John: It's the 90s, man.
John: We were all trying things.
John: Was this like a hacker thing?
John: Like a 2600 thing?
John: Were you guys phone freaking?
John: Yes, I had a Captain Crunch whistle.
Wow.
Merlin: And then I was able to make unlimited long-distance calls.
Merlin: Still a little bit like Austin Powers when they had to keep telling him that that already happened, that already happened.
Merlin: There's already a hole in the ozone.
Merlin: One million dollars is not a lot of dollars.
Merlin: That's kind of how I feel right now.
Merlin: All the advancements that we had.
Merlin: There's a famous bit that I think is very funny, still very funny, which is what purports to be, I believe it is actually a single...
Merlin: You know, like when you used to get the little blow-ins with your newspaper with all the—we used to call them circulars in my family?
Merlin: Yeah, circulars.
Merlin: And the Christmas—I think it's a Christmas—I'll see if I can find this for now.
Merlin: You called them blow-ins.
Merlin: I love that.
Merlin: Blow-ins are technically, I think, the little—well, you know this.
Merlin: You worked at the store with the diaper magazines.
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: And golf.
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: Golf and diapers.
Merlin: Diaper magazines and golf.
Yeah.
Merlin: And blow in, I think technically that's those business reply.
Merlin: Would you like to subscribe to the Diaper Magazine cards?
Merlin: Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
Merlin: Those cards.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: We don't have notes on the show, really, but I'll try to find it anyway.
Merlin: But it's a Radio Shack ad from, I believe, I'll say 91, 92.
Merlin: And somebody, I don't know who first pointed this out, but whoever they are, they're brilliant.
Merlin: Every single, like, electronic item.
Merlin: They didn't even, it's just weird timing.
Merlin: It didn't have anything like a remote control truck, probably.
Merlin: But it was like, you know, hey, Radio Shack, you can come in here and get your Christmas gifts.
Merlin: You can get a tape recorder.
Merlin: You can get a telephone.
Merlin: You can get a mobile phone.
Merlin: You can get a calculator.
Merlin: You can get a video camera.
Merlin: And somebody's pointing out,
Merlin: what is now certainly obvious, but bears remembering for people like you and me, every single one of those items is on your mobile phone right now.
Yeah.
Merlin: Isn't that crazy?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, not to anybody listening, but to me and you, that's pretty wild.
John: It's pretty wild.
John: And I told you, didn't I, that I bought a bunch of
John: cameras, security cameras to put around my house.
Merlin: Yeah, we haven't picked up on that in a while.
Merlin: Not inside the house, of course.
Merlin: This is how you discovered the swim team, right?
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: The boys who came to harass you.
Merlin: Came to harass me.
John: And I, you know, I nailed them up in all the trees.
John: Sure.
John: And it's the... That's right.
Merlin: They have special instructions for that.
Merlin: Is this drywall?
Merlin: Is this brick?
John: Is this tree?
John: Is this a tree in the forest?
John: And they all, um, and I can look at them on my phone.
John: If I picked up my phone right now, I could look one after another at all the cameras around the house and they, and it's one of these things that cameras were very cheap and they kind of record it.
John: You know, if somebody were to walk across in front of them, they kind of would record them.
John: I kind of would be able to play them back.
John: I kind of would be able to freeze on someone's face.
Merlin: I kind of would be able... Can I just add a somewhat substantial asterisk at this point, because you were describing a lot of my journey.
Merlin: Big asterisk, if everything works exactly properly all the time.
John: Exactly.
John: And unfortunately...
John: So from the standpoint of you and me and a dog named Boo in 1992, the idea that I would have any of this, that I would have believed in flying cars before this.
John: I would believe that we would be living on the moon.
Merlin: Oh, that's the basic science or sci-fi problem, at least as I understand it, is that for years we were predicting, haha, jetpacks moving sidewalks.
Merlin: And we thought more about light speed travel than we did about sending a message somewhere.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: That's what nobody saw coming, including Bill Gates, if I'm being honest.
John: My daughter's mother slash partner.
John: Partner.
John: She and I, you know, we watch episodic television.
John: It's one of the glues that binds us together.
John: And we watch a lot of these.
Merlin: Episodic TV.
Merlin: It surrounds us.
Merlin: It binds us together.
Yeah.
John: We watch these long television shows.
John: Use the episodic TV, Luke.
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.
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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.
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Merlin: Our thanks to Mack Weldon for supporting Roderick on the Line and all the great shows.
John: Turn to the dark side.
John: Luke, I am your remote control.
John: We're watching this show, The Last Kingdom.
John: which is about the Vikings.
John: Yeah.
John: There's a lot of Vikings out there right now.
John: There are.
John: And Saxons and angles and all.
John: It was just wait.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: It's just the one where the, um, it, well, there's one where there's a lot of like, Hey, that's Leif Erickson type stuff.
Merlin: Is that this one?
Merlin: Or is that a different one?
John: Uh, I think it's a different one.
John: Okay.
John: Sorry.
John: Nevermind.
John: Go ahead.
Merlin: You're watching episodic TV with the force.
John: Yeah.
John: And, uh, and you know, and it's just a, it's a perfect example of, of, uh,
John: of this kind of thing where she turned to me at one point and said, every single plot of every single episode
John: could be resolved if they had cell phones.
John: Oh, I know.
John: I'm happy.
John: If you want to open this thread.
John: That's true of 80s teen comedies, too.
John: There's no more plot.
John: The reason the world is so boring now is there's no more plot because no one ever... You never have to wonder where your partner is.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Like if they're, you know, God forbid, that they're dead in a ditch.
Merlin: Unless, of course, you just forget to call your husband for a long time and you're in an area with no coverage and you don't bother to check in.
Merlin: Um, yeah.
John: All these, all these plots are like, the king says, stop the battle and send a rider.
John: And the rider goes out, but he's too late to stop the battle.
John: And then the, and it's just like, uh, there's still ways to do that.
John: Sorry.
John: Well, no.
John: So I, all I was saying is all of this stuff,
John: Oh, I've got all these cameras.
John: I got six or seven cameras around the house.
John: I can lay in bed.
John: If somebody knocks on the door.
John: I am.
John: I am.
John: If someone knocks on the door.
Merlin: I already watched that episode 35 minutes ago.
John: I can, I can raise my head up off the pillow, pick up my phone, open it with a, you know, it's, and I've made a shortcut to it.
John: Right.
John: And then I can look at the camera on my phone.
John: And see who's at the door.
John: Now, who, even in 2005, who is it?
John: Even in 2015, if you had told me that.
John: I know.
John: And it didn't cost me $900 a month.
John: It was just something I bought on Amazon.
John: And yet also.
John: At the same time, Merlin, it doesn't quite work.
John: Oh, it doesn't.
Merlin: So, you know how I call Walgreens the store that has almost what you need?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: They rarely have what you need.
Merlin: They have almost what you need, which is worse.
Almost.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Um, I think the fact that so many of these things, the way I described this recently to a friend of the show, John Sarkoza was there are so many products where I feel like some product manager said, Hey, look, we've got a big announcement for this.
Merlin: And this isn't just Apple.
Merlin: It's, you know, all the, all the great companies, but they're like, Hey, look, there's this feature and you need to get to this just to the point where we can do a demo on stage.
Merlin: So like this has facial recognition.
Merlin: Okay, good.
Merlin: So I need to be able to go on stage.
Merlin: It's almost like they reverse engineered.
Merlin: I need to be able to go on stage in 2017 and say, hey, look, this identifies faces.
Merlin: And then you can say if that's somebody you know.
Merlin: And it walks right up to that point.
Merlin: Now, first of all, that barely works.
Merlin: And if it does work, you can't do fuck all with it.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Syracuse brought up a great point.
Merlin: I didn't realize how much I want this feature that he's so good at bringing up things I don't know I hate it.
Merlin: Which is like, there's no way to say, send me alerts if you see a face that's not familiar.
Merlin: It's the one thing anybody would want.
Merlin: I don't need to know that I'm here.
Merlin: I know I'm here.
Merlin: I need to know that everything but these familiar faces are there.
John: Is my mom futzing around down by the garage?
John: Yes, she is.
Merlin: Hang a bell on her.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: I don't need to see her.
John: We all know what she looks like.
Merlin: I know what she's doing.
Merlin: Uh, okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: But that's okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: I hate that shit.
Merlin: And actually I, I, this is for a different show, but I, I've recently like torn a lot of the wires out of my home automation stuff.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Well, it's just so much stuff was just not working and it's not even doing the most basic stuff that I've been able to do for like five years in any reliable way.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so we can talk about that if you want.
John: So did you tear it out in order to put it back together?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: See, now you think I'm Dr. Manhattan, and I'm not.
Merlin: I'm not taking a watch apart.
Merlin: I also just want to say in passing.
Merlin: A, there are still ways to do that in a good way.
Merlin: Well, we'll step zero before A. Gene Siskel, and I'll find this because I'm forever quoting it, but I think it was Gene Siskel.
Merlin: Roger Ebert gets all the good quotes, but I think it was Siskel who described some kind of like...
Merlin: I think it's, I don't know, the basic dumb plot, very much like a French farce kind of plot where one misunderstanding is the single cause of the entire plot.
Merlin: That's not a good plot.
John: 40 people die at the end because one person...
Merlin: Yeah, or like, I mean, like, and if you're Oscar Wilde, you pull that off because you got the wordplay.
Merlin: But, you know, just all kinds of stuff.
Merlin: But like, for example, last night, I was watching one of my favorite TV series, Veep, and I'm in that run, the amazing run of season four and season five, and where they bring in, you know, Tom James, you know, Hugh Laurie.
Merlin: And the Shondells?
Merlin: Shondells?
Merlin: Yeah, the Shondells are in there.
Merlin: You get the crystals.
Merlin: You get the Dixie cups.
Merlin: The Vandellas, but not Martha.
Merlin: They couldn't get Martha.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: She's expensive.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: In the street.
Merlin: Dancing in the street.
Merlin: But, like, for example, there's one where, like, long story short, Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights is the guy that she's running against.
Merlin: And she's about to concede...
Merlin: no spoilers well some spoilers she's about to concede the race to him when new information comes in and then and then mike the guy from upright citizens brigade he has to run down the halls to go and transmit that information because she's about to walk on stage there's no way the information won't get there fast enough that can work yes that can totally work here's the thing let's go back to the year of our lord 1999 you look at the matrix okay yes
Merlin: Where they got those awesome, I guess, probably Motorola phones.
Merlin: You know, those cool, like, where it looks like a Switchblade, but it's a phone.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: They were called the Switchblade.
Merlin: The Switchblade.
Merlin: Is that what they called it?
Merlin: But the basic conceit of that movie, which still feels, I have to say, it's such a fun.
Merlin: Good movie.
Merlin: I mean, and like, I can't tell my dumb kid, like when Trinity first does the bullet type thing and starts running on the walls, we had never seen that before outside of like Hong Kong martial art films and they put a new spin on it.
Merlin: That was amazing.
Merlin: But what happens?
Merlin: She's got to get to what?
Merlin: So she can get out what she got to do.
Merlin: Pay phone.
Merlin: Got to get through the pay phone.
Merlin: Got to get into the phone booth and she puts her hand up against the glass.
Merlin: I love that.
Merlin: And I mean, the phone is such a huge part of that movie.
Merlin: I mean, they could, you could do that movie without payphones, but I think that's part of what made it fun is it was a sort of winking, hey, we're having fun with this, that you have to use an analog, you know, inside the Matrix telephone.
Merlin: Sorry, spoilers.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: To get back to the ship where everybody's clothes are ragged, right?
Merlin: But I totally agree with you.
Merlin: It's frustrating because, but then again, let's bring all our themes together.
Merlin: In that case of my lady who likes to run, when she runs in Marin at this point now,
Merlin: You know, she's going to go out and do some trail running and see some coyotes, you know, and some mountain lions and stuff.
Merlin: And I'm like, look, I need to just know that, like, you're okay.
Merlin: Please understand I will fret if you're not available on Find My Friends for, like, hours and hours and hours.
Merlin: Because that's the kind of family we are, just to state the obvious.
Merlin: The three sentient...
Merlin: The three sentient adults in our house are the sole three people.
Merlin: We have a three-person Find My Friends network, which is, I can see where my other two family members are.
Merlin: They can see where their other two family members are.
Merlin: We always leave it on.
Merlin: It's always there.
Merlin: We never have to ask, where are you?
Merlin: Because that's pretty dependable, unless they go completely out of service, which is rare.
Merlin: But, you know...
Merlin: I mean, I guess the twist today is you're the creepy, not you, but one is the creepy boyfriend and put some spyware on there.
Merlin: You put an air tag on their truck or something like that.
Merlin: But like, I don't know.
Merlin: I wonder if that makes it more difficult for a young person to enjoy like an old movie where you just don't know things.
Merlin: You don't know.
Merlin: Okay, another one.
Merlin: One of my favorite movies, Little Miss Sunshine, we were watching again.
Merlin: When they accidentally, spoilers, they accidentally leave Olive at the gas station and they drive away because they're so fretful.
Merlin: And then they got to go back and get her.
Merlin: You think about Home Alone.
Merlin: Home Alone?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: There's no way any, I know they hand waved this effectively enough for the plot.
Merlin: There's no way anybody could get, they don't know anyone else, people with a house that big, don't know anyone else in Chicago who can go and check on Kevin?
John: No, not a living soul.
John: Also, the phones are down.
John: Also, they didn't have a quarter.
John: Oh, but then you get John Candy, who's wonderful in that.
John: Yeah, I want to, like you say, I want facial recognition to work, but I don't want the city to be spying on me when I walk around.
John: I want to be able to look out and have my cameras that I bought for $20 each tell me every single person that comes up to the front door.
Merlin: But you don't want the cops to subpoena that so they can still play with your ding-dong.
John: Well, and also I don't want it to, well, I don't play with my ding-dong out in front of the house.
John: Not anymore.
John: But I also don't want it to trigger every time a car goes by on the road 100 yards away.
John: And I want it all to be, and, and, you know, and I just, I just want my, I basically, I just want to look at the war in Ukraine on my phone and it does a great job at that.
John: Yeah.
John: But, uh, but, but it's so funny how, how they edge you up to, it's kind of like being in a relationship with,
John: With someone with borderline personality disorder.
John: Oh, tell me more about that.
Merlin: The technology.
Merlin: I think I might be in a relationship, not in my household.
Merlin: But in a separate one.
Merlin: Well, you know, I have dealings with people.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Who have a little bit of black and white thinking, a little bit of a fear of abandonment, a little bit of, yeah, those aspects.
John: Yeah, you live in Chicago, but you know other people.
John: Yeah.
John: Huh.
John: Oh, I see.
John: Kevin!
John: Yeah.
John: So, you know, being in a relationship with the borderline person... He's on the Pepsi Fuller.
Merlin: It's still funny.
Merlin: And his eyebrows go up like...
Merlin: And now he's in movies, that kid.
Merlin: That's the brother of Kevin.
Merlin: Did you know that?
John: Yeah, the brother of Kevin.
Merlin: That's what it says right at the end.
Merlin: He's on Fargo.
Merlin: He's in Fargo season two.
Merlin: He was on Succession.
Merlin: He's in Scott Pilgrim.
Merlin: I love that actor.
John: You know, every time he shows up on the screen in that movie, he's a scene stealer.
John: He's a real scene stealer.
John: In Home Alone?
John: Yeah, in Home Alone.
John: Oh, he's so perfect.
John: He really steals the scene.
John: He's so perfect.
Merlin: You want that stuff to work, but you don't... And this is part of all of this.
John: The thing about borderline personality is that they make you think that if you just get the next thing, if you just solve this problem that's right in front of us, then everything's going to be fine.
John: But until this problem is solved, everything's a disaster.
John: And so you're always... You always feel like, God, if we can just work out this one...
John: this one last dispute, it's going to be the thing, you know, we're going to finally have clarity.
John: We're finally going to understand what the, what the parameters are.
John: We're going to understand each other.
Merlin: I don't know this part.
Merlin: Is this, this is a part of it is like a whole, like, like our relationship hinges on this thing getting squared away and then we'll be fine.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: That's, that's, that's a big aspect.
John: And that feels like, in a way, my relationship with technology.
John: Like, oh, I'm just so close to... When I first bought this house, a friend of the show, Matt Howey, wrote me and he was like, oh, well, what you have to do is you have to put in Cat 7 line in all the walls so that you can have...
John: You know, you can have cameras everywhere, but also... You want to be forward compatible.
Merlin: You get the best cat you can.
John: Lightning fast computers and all this stuff.
John: Get that 5e out, get you some Cat 12.
John: Cat 12.
John: And then, you know, and I had guys over here and I was like, well, what if we put Cat 12 in all the walls?
John: Not even knowing what I'm talking about.
John: And they were like, oh, you can't even get Cat 12.
John: And then I was like, well, if you can't get Cat 12, I don't want Cat 11.
John: Yeah.
John: Now you're the sucker.
John: Now I'm the sucker, right?
John: So now I spend...
John: So, so I spend a lot of time.
John: So a kid came and doorbell dashed me the other day.
John: You know what they call it in New England?
John: They call it ding dong ditch.
John: Ding dong ditched.
John: Yeah.
John: He called me, you know, something.
John: And he was young.
John: He wasn't a, he wasn't one of these swim club kids.
John: Okay.
John: He, he was, he couldn't have been more than 12 years.
John: Right.
John: Maybe 13.
John: Was he being mischievous, you think?
John: Well, he was wearing a hoodie.
John: Oh, boy.
John: I don't want to give this away.
John: He was wearing a hoodie that was a baby Yoda hoodie.
John: So the whole, he had the ears on top of the hoodie.
John: It was like fleece.
John: And when it was zipped up,
John: It didn't make him look exactly like Baby Yoda.
Merlin: No, my kid had one of these from Minecraft where you scrape it over your face and it makes you look like a Minecraft.
Merlin: I know what you're talking about.
John: Well, but the, you know, you could see his face.
John: It was that the shirt actually had Baby Yoda's on it.
John: Do you remember in the 70s when you would buy- It's got Yoda's and shit on it.
John: Yeah, you would buy a deputy dog Halloween costume, and it would have a deputy.
Merlin: A cheap mask and then an apron.
Merlin: An apron.
Merlin: Basically like a medical apron covered with deputy dogs.
John: That's the thing.
Merlin: Which is not what deputy dog wore.
John: There you go.
John: See, that's exactly right.
John: I wanted a deputy dog costume that looked like deputy dog.
John: Not like deputy dog wearing a shirt with a bunch of pictures of himself on it.
John: Nobody does that.
John: Are you mental?
Merlin: Although that would be a great sweatshirt.
Merlin: Can you imagine you going as yourself and wearing a shirt with John Roderick's all over it?
John: If you had a sweatshirt that had just pictures of Merlin Mann all over it, kind of random.
John: Oh, that'd be so cute.
John: That would do that.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Why do we not have those?
John: Anyway.
John: We'll sell it through Cotton Bureau.
John: So I'm sitting in the bathtub, and I hear this.
John: And I'm like, what the hell is that?
John: You know, the middle of the afternoon.
John: So I go, I pick up my phone.
John: I'm like, I'm in the bathtub.
John: I'm going to look at the camera.
John: So I look at the camera.
John: Nobody's there.
John: So I go, oh, well, I'm going to look at the replay feature.
John: Okay.
John: So I look at the replay feature and here comes baby Yoda up the, up the walk.
John: He comes up to the front door and I'm looking at him.
John: It's 12 year old kid wearing a baby Yoda hoodie, but I can see his face.
John: And he knocks on the door real fast and then he runs.
John: And I'm like, well, that's sweet.
John: The camera didn't let me... The camera was pointed right at him, but because it's 2022 and not 2024...
John: I couldn't have told you, you know, he had, his hair had a little, somebody bleached a little, he had bleachy bangs or something.
John: It sounds like this kid comes from money.
John: He's a moneyed kid, and what I worried about, because, you know, this is where your mind goes, I worried that he was the younger brother of one of the swim team dudes.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: He's sort of an apprentice rascal.
John: Yeah, he's like the kid that—and all of the teens, all of the bad teens are around the corner going, go knock on his door.
John: Yeah, they're jumping him in.
John: And I'm really hoping—again, I'm just hoping that if I have become old man Smithers—
John: in this neighborhood and all the kids are like, yeah, weird old guy lives in that house and he yells at you when he come in your, you know, he's got cameras in his trees.
John: Go knock, go knock on the door and run.
John: You know, like that's fine.
John: I just don't want anybody to be like, let's firebomb his house.
John: Oh dear.
John: But, but so I had quite an escalation.
John: Well, you know, kids, they don't, you know, they don't have boundaries because I can't, I can't finish the thought.
John: Yeah.
John: But so I have this video of this kid in a Yoda shirt knocking on my door.
John: And I'm like, this is not worth anything.
John: Like I have it and it feels like I should.
John: And oh, and there are people I know for a fact that would go on one of those next door.
Merlin: Oh, anybody recognize this kid?
Merlin: Very next door shit.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Anybody recognize this kid?
John: He doorbelled that.
John: He ding dong ditched me today.
John: But I'm not going to put a picture of an 11 year old kid on the innocent thing.
John: But I, but I also, you know, I don't, why do I have a security system?
John: Oh, that's the thing.
John: I have the security system.
John: And so little things like that become emergencies in your mind in order to justify having, you know, I have the cameras.
John: This is what I worry about with guns.
John: I've caught a scofflaw.
John: I've caught something, you know, we need to.
John: The whole reason I got this was for situations like this.
John: Exactly.
John: Even though it's a non-thing, even though 99% of the time.
Merlin: But if it didn't work for that, who's to say it's going to work for the PLO coming to get you?
John: Exactly.
John: I'm worried about that.
John: But at any other time in my life, if I'd been in the bathtub and somebody had gone knock, knock, knock, knock.
Merlin: Wait a minute, not the PLO, the SLA.
Merlin: The SLA?
Merlin: That's the ones that got Patty Hearst.
Merlin: The PLO is Yasser Arafat.
Merlin: I think he passed.
Merlin: They also got Patty Hearst.
Merlin: Don't you ever want the PLO kidnapped Patty Hearst?
Merlin: I did not know that that's when they robbed the Hibernia Bank near our house.
Merlin: You know I live near the bank she robbed.
John: Oh, that's right.
John: That's right by there.
John: Don't be creepy.
John: The thing I was thinking about this morning, so I don't know.
John: Not that this show needs a Ukraine segment every week.
John: I'm fine with it.
John: I've got nowhere to be.
John: But, you know, there's all these things, all these fires.
John: Like there's fire in this fire.
John: There's fire in a hole.
John: There's fire in the gas plant.
John: There's fire in the science plant.
John: There's fire.
John: And then the train goes off the rails.
John: There's all these little things happening in Russia.
John: Miles and miles and miles.
John: In Russia or Ukraine?
John: In Russia.
Okay.
John: And Ukraine is not taking responsibility.
John: They're not claiming responsibility for any of these fires.
John: It's just like, oh, all of a sudden, how strange.
John: The chemical plant that makes all the solvents that turn out to be necessary for rocket fuel caught on fire.
John: And there's no other plant in Russia that makes that stuff.
John: Interesting.
John: Yeah.
John: That sounds like your former fake employer, the CIA.
John: Oh.
John: What it was, a cow knocked over a tar pot onto somebody's lamp.
John: It was a Mrs. O'Leary type situation?
John: So nobody's saying.
John: Ukraine is doing the thing where they're like, they're not even commenting on it at all.
John: And the Russians, of course, aren't going to say.
John: It's the Ukrainians.
John: They keep saying it was a short in the coffee pot.
John: But I woke up this morning because if you look at the... That's what I get for buying cheap coffee pots.
John: You look at the commentary and everybody's like, it's special forces and Ukraine's using drones and chirp, chirp, derp, derp, derp.
John: But I sat up in bed this morning and I was like, it's Stuxnet.
Merlin: It's Stuxnet.
Merlin: That's an Israeli network that causes things to... That's the Mr. Robot-ish thing where you can screw... It's not munitions, but Stuxnet was the thing that got into...
Merlin: A centrifuge.
John: Institutional, like, was it nuclear facilities that it was attacking?
John: Yeah, in Iran, they had centrifuges that were condensing, you know, physical material into whatever they needed to make bombs.
John: And the Stuxnet got in the computers that were running the centrifuges and made them spin really fast until they broke.
John: Okay.
John: And I just realized all these fires are just Stuxnet is turning the coffee pot on in the middle of the night and then making it.
John: Right.
John: Because it's a coffee pot that's probably linked up.
John: It's like one of these home network coffee pots.
Merlin: What you're saying is it might be defective, but it's nominally smart.
Merlin: It's a smart coffee pot.
John: It's a smart coffee pot.
John: It makes your coffee with nine colors of light.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Every once, you know, it can play push, push in the bush on its little 8-bit speaker.
John: And it's connected to your... Just what you want to hear at 630.
John: And you can control it from your phone.
John: And you think you're living in the future, right?
John: Like, I'm going to turn my coffee pot on.
John: Somebody knocked on the door.
John: I'm going to look in my phone.
John: And meanwhile, Stuxnet is in there like, you know, just turn everything on, turn the oven on, but turn it on to broil.
John: And just leave it on all night and then it's going to burn up and then all of a sudden the chemical plant explodes.
Merlin: That's what Mr. Robot did to where all the financial records were stored.
Merlin: He screwed with the HVAC system and then did some mischief that way.
Merlin: Was that season two?
Merlin: Was that Mr. Robot season two?
Merlin: Probably, but that's the kind of thing you worry about, right?
Merlin: Is getting into like dam systems or like anything where there's computers, right?
Merlin: That are, uh, cause they're not, as they say, air gap.
Merlin: The whole point is that you can get to them through a network.
Merlin: If you can get to them through a network and you can exercise vulnerabilities.
John: Yeah.
John: So although I know the PLO does not want to get into my phone in order to turn my cameras on so they heat up and I don't know what, make a black spot on a tree.
John: This will inconvenience him.
John: It's why I don't have any cameras in the house, right?
John: I don't want to be walking around and having the cameras, you know, uploading my underwear pictures.
John: You just have to pay for that.
John: It's an OnlyFans thing.
John: That's an, well, you know what I've thought about?
John: I've thought about doing that.
Merlin: Oh, I've thought about OnlyFans.
Merlin: It seems like a way you can get in the side door a little bit.
Merlin: It's the side door.
Merlin: Well, yeah, the side door, like this Patreon stuff.
Merlin: I mean, boy, that site is just really rough to use.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And OnlyFans would probably be very excited to go like, oh, my God, here's John Roderick.
Merlin: And so far, he doesn't want to put his dingus on camera.
Merlin: This is going to really raise our profile.
John: Yeah.
John: Somebody suggested that I just go on there and read Jabberwocky or Kipling or something.
John: Oh, can you imagine me reading Kipling?
John: How canceled I would get every week?
Merlin: Super canceled.
John: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Ricky Tiki canceled.
Merlin: It's...
John: It's for fans only.
Merlin: It's for fans only.
Merlin: Oh, and they wouldn't narc on you, you're saying?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Okay, I see.
Merlin: I used to think, no.
John: I saw so many mongooses when I was in Hawaii, too.
John: You're kidding?
John: No, there are mongooses everywhere, or mongoose, and I think ricky-ticky-tabby every time.
Merlin: Oh, of course.
Merlin: I used to love the cartoon.
Merlin: I don't know the book at all, but I loved the cartoon as a kid.
John: But I also, in front of the grocery store in Molokai, Merlin, there was a phone booth and it had a phone.
John: An operating phone?
John: Well, so I saw it and I leaned up against it for a while looking at it.
John: I was waiting for my daughter's mother slash partner to come out of the grocery store because the grocery store- And they wouldn't give you quarters to ride the rocket?
John: Well, the sign said, one family member at a time, please.
Okay.
John: So family, is that for COVID?
John: Yeah.
John: So you could only go in only one member of your family.
John: Like they stopped you at the door.
John: So I was like, well, I'll just stand in front of the store, I guess.
John: Huh?
John: And I was leaning against a, uh, I was talking to, uh, to a woman who was kind of in her sixties and she was telling me that, you know, she left Molokai when she was a teenager back in the,
John: 70s and she moved to america and she like did drugs and partied and she was she was right there in front of the grocery store she started offering this up she was she was telling me that she was you had you ask i yeah i did you know i'm always asking like what's your story yeah what's your deal
John: And she was like, I used to be so sexy and rock and roll.
John: And now I'm back here on Molokai because I'm, you know, I'm old, but you wouldn't believe the things I've seen.
John: I was like, I would believe them.
John: Tell me more.
Merlin: So now you're getting into Coleridge territory.
Merlin: This feels very rhyme of the ancient marriage.
John: But I was leaving again.
John: I should do that.
Merlin: You should go to weddings with an albatross.
Merlin: Nice wedding, huh?
John: I'm so glad I went to liberal arts school.
John: I know.
John: It all pays off.
John: It pays off in the end.
John: Now put the Coleridge reference back in your pocket, and next year there will be another opportunity.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: And Xanadu did Kubla Khan a Stanley Pleasure Dome decree.
John: That's for Citizen Kane.
John: Uh, so, so, so I looked at this phone booth for like 20 minutes.
Merlin: Quick question.
Merlin: Just real quick.
Merlin: Um, cause I, I'm hoping it's the full effect.
Merlin: Was it the kind with the door or just the kind where it's like a, like a kiosk?
John: It was a, it was a kiosk.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You just don't see the booths anymore.
No.
John: And then I got up the—because it's COVID, too, so I didn't want to just be grabbing any old public phone, even though I hadn't seen one in four years.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, Jimmy, yes.
John: But I grabbed it, and I put it to my ear, and, ah, it didn't work.
John: Oh, man.
John: No dial tone.
Merlin: People probably strip them down.
Merlin: You know the way you would take the screens out of a faucet so you can make a bong out of anything?
Merlin: I wonder if people were stripping existing phone kiosks for some kind of malign purpose.
Merlin: What could you do?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, I guess, you know, I know you could use time wise.
Merlin: You probably can't screw them off.
Merlin: Could you get free long distance?
Merlin: If you have your Cap'n Crunch whistle.
Merlin: Oh, I can't whistle like I used to.
John: Do you remember when Mad Magazine printed some fake money and there was a period of two weeks where you could put the money into the money changers and get coins back?
Merlin: You mean like at a video game place?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: A dollar, make it four quarters for a dollar.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Mostly quarters.
John: It was the rare instance where I had the magazine.
John: Uh-huh.
John: I heard that you could do this.
John: Did you think this actually worked?
John: Yeah.
John: And I did it before they had changed the, before they had gone in and fixed the bug.
John: So I put Mad Magazine money into the coin machine.
John: It wasn't at the laundromat.
John: It was next to the laundromat.
John: There was one of those self-car wash places.
John: Sure, yeah.
Merlin: The kind of place that heavy sat former athletes by.
John: Yeah, thank you.
John: That's exactly right.
Merlin: It's always big guys in suits that I've invested in the self-serve car washes.
John: I was at one of those little freestanding coffee kiosks the other day.
John: I pulled in.
John: It was right next to one of these car washes.
John: One of those ones like a photo mat?
John: A photo mat.
John: And I said, as I was getting the coffee, I was like, how long has this place been here?
John: I don't remember ever seeing it before.
John: And she was like, oh, it's been here like five or six years.
John: You know, we're open 24 hours.
John: And I said, this little kiosk in between a gas station.
Merlin: Somebody has to sit in there at three in the morning and wait for someone to get coffee.
John: This is what I want.
John: Because it's not on the way to anywhere.
John: It's not next to anything.
John: Right.
John: It's between a gas station.
Merlin: Frequently, you'll see those near like a, well, we used to call it cloverleaf.
Merlin: Like a highway entry.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: A place where you can buzz in, get your triple caff of skinny loca, and then just hit the road.
Merlin: And this place.
Merlin: Buzz in, buzz out.
Merlin: See, like the car wash place, that does sound like a little bit of a money laundering thing.
John: Well, so I'm expressing incredulity.
John: Yes.
John: Like, who is coming here at 3 in the morning?
John: And she said, yeah, and the car wash place, too.
John: They're owned by the same guy.
John: And he keeps them open 24 hours.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
Merlin: That's very interesting because it seems like labor is one of your big costs.
Merlin: That's got to be money laundering, John.
John: So I'm like...
John: the the wait a minute the car wash is open all night in all winter like yeah i can't sleep because my car is dirty yeah and that's right and i need a coffee and as we're talking somebody comes out of the car wash and like somebody and it's like it's like a it's like a like a zippity zapped up car and uh and they like peel out
John: And she rolls her eyes and goes, you wouldn't believe how many times a day that happens.
John: And I was like, wow, this is a, it's like a microcosm.
John: It's a mini world here.
John: Like it's a small universe.
John: It's a television show worth of content.
John: Absolutely.
John: As seen from the coffee kiosk.
John: It's like, I don't know.
John: It's a, I felt like I had fallen.
Merlin: It's a viewport.
John: Sometimes you get a viewport into a little bit of the world.
John: And I'm sure, I'm absolutely sure that it's owned by a very large former professional sports person.
John: Yes.
John: There's no other explanation for it.
John: No.
John: Mm-mm.
John: Mm-mm.
Merlin: No, I don't know why.
Merlin: Gosh, I'm trying to find this wonderful photo of the first time my kid ever saw a phone booth, toddler-ish aged.
Merlin: And yeah, we were on our way to the zoo and we were like fixing to go to the zoo.
Merlin: And like there was this one, I'm sure it's gone now, but like the kid actually, it was so funny, he had no idea.
Merlin: Other things like this, the first time you're in a hotel room with a kid who's old enough to watch TV, but not old enough to have been in a lot of hotel rooms, and it's like you can't just watch what's on the TiVo, or you can't just watch what's on the DVD.
Merlin: You have to watch whatever is on, and you can't skip the commercials.
Merlin: And, like, that's TV.
Merlin: And then, of course, I use that as a great teachable moment to go, there used to be like this when I was a kid.
John: And then when the Union Army came over the hill...
Merlin: They were covered with bed bugs and the buttons had rusted.
Merlin: Yeah, well, fortunately for me, I will occasionally do that because it's a fun thing.
Merlin: My kid believes that, well, probably mostly for good reasons, that almost every story I have to share from my childhood is sad.
Merlin: I have a handful of good, happy stories, but most of them are sad stories about privation.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: And sometimes I'll find a way to leverage to that.
Merlin: But I really have tried to move out of the, like, you kids have it easy.
Merlin: This is how, you know, blah, blah sort of stuff is.
Merlin: But I don't know if you got the thing.
Merlin: I might have sent it to the wrong person.
Merlin: I sent you that Radio Shack page.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Let me see here.
John: Did you send it to the wrong person?
John: That's the first question we have to answer.
John: Oh, no, here it is.
John: Oh, wow.
John: Look at this.
John: It's the president's birthday sale.
John: Zero percent interest, no payments until May.
John: This is from, this reports to be from 1991.
John: You get a Tandy 1000.
John: It's a little bit of a stretch, but not much.
John: 1599, which in 1990 dollars is like $7,000 now.
John: Quarter of a million dollars now.
John: Yeah.
John: Uh, 20, 20 memory speed dial phone.
Merlin: One thing that happens with this stuff, John, this is not news to you, but it's something I need to say because I need to be reminded of this is on the one hand you say like, well, technology can be used for all these different purposes, you know?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: What I was going to say is that just because the technology is available doesn't mean we need to pursue it, especially if we have not figured out how it will improve what we do.
Merlin: There are certain kinds of things in life that you're not going to appreciate.
Merlin: The idea of a microwave didn't make a ton of sense until you had one.
Merlin: And then, of course, everybody's like, how did we ever do without a microwave?
Merlin: Not everybody, but people like me, because I am the master of the microwave.
Merlin: But then there's another time where it's like, I don't want to bring the show down, but it really bums me out when you take something, some piece of technology like, again, another Israeli company, NSO, the company with Pegasus that can bust into your phone and...
Merlin: And the thing is, you say, oh, we make this product primarily to be used, you know, for finding, uh, it's always, you know, uh, think of the children stuff, whether that's child predators, whether that's, you know, people selling drugs or like doing something really, really malign and terrible.
Merlin: But like, that's the thin end of the wedge.
Merlin: And then it gets used for everything.
Yeah.
Merlin: And that's what I, it makes me so sad the way that, I mean, when's the last, I mean, for example, I started watching Slow Horses, which is pretty good on Apple TV, which takes place in England.
Merlin: And like, you no longer is, this was equally true in Skyfall.
Merlin: You don't even need to mention that London is a city where every square, as they say, centimeter is covered by CCTV.
Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And it becomes important at some point, Judy Dant, you're similar, or in this case, Kristen, uh, what's her name from the weddings in a funeral movie says, Oh, get me all the footage from that, you know, one centimeter place.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And because that's going to stop crime and this is going to do all of these things.
Merlin: And like, it's just how easily once that thing is something we use to catch child predators, that it becomes used for whatever.
Merlin: And I hate that.
Yeah.
John: You know, I've tried really hard.
John: We've tried in my family really hard to keep digital stuff away from...
John: our kid just because it was I know everybody it's we're not judgmental about it it's not a thing that we think that anybody else shouldn't you know like I've got a lot of friends you know including you that have digital relationship with their kid from young you know Jonathan Colton gave them the classic Colton versus Hodgman dilemma yeah right they all had phones like flight versus invisibility but for guys named John and we just didn't see a reason for it and we definitely didn't want
John: Her to have an iPad, even though you can extol the virtues of iPads to the heavens.
John: We just didn't want it.
John: We just didn't want it.
John: It's just not.
John: And so, but now she's 11 and she wants...
John: independence some some measure of independence she's like can i go to can i walk to the park by myself can i go do this on my own can i be left alone i think you've established there were some places that uh your kid can go on their bike yep and not other places you can go between these two houses you know but stay on the roads and out of the moors we're stay out of the moors that's right and we're looking we're looking now into the future and and
John: The thing is that a lot of the stories that I tell from my childhood, the ones that aren't about privation...
John: the ones that aren't about when I got off the road and into the moor are all about, you know, stuck into the pub to warm up a little bit.
John: Yeah, they all, but they all have the, the ones that I tell that are, that are happy, that are, that have a joyous element are like, you know what?
John: Nobody used to care where we were.
John: I'd walk out the door and I'd be gone all day and nobody even knew I was gone.
John: Oh, it was amazing.
John: And I would start fires in abandoned houses and, you know, and she, she,
John: She kind of rolls her eyes, but she's also, I think, very intrigued by a time when kids weren't monitored.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It was like that in my wife's family, where, as you know, she lives on a cul-de-sac and is the youngest of seven.
Merlin: And instead of, like, you have to be home by the time the streetlights come on, their edict, I think, more often, especially in the summer, was you're not allowed to come home until the streetlights come on.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, it's like there's this there's this like not a compound in the Kennedy sense, but like there's these six houses or eight houses or whatever.
Merlin: Everybody knows each other.
Merlin: You know, it doesn't mean nothing bad happened because, you know, it was Rhode Island, but like still you could go to the beach.
Merlin: You could go to the whatever.
Merlin: Like it was like you were encouraged to get out and do that.
Merlin: And there's about a million reasons that it's not that way today.
Merlin: But yeah, that's the dream.
John: Yeah, the parents were like, we don't want to see you at all.
Merlin: You're not going to be in here watching TV, that's for damn sure.
John: But the dilemma right now is that those times when she does get that measure of independence, she's like, I'm going to ride my bike to point X, which we all know, and it feels fine.
John: But then in that moment,
John: In between land, in the upside down, when she has left one place and isn't in another, we don't have an air tag on her and she doesn't have a phone.
Merlin: That's why, yes, sorry.
Merlin: This is something we actually practiced.
Merlin: And I said to my lady friend in one of my very rare moments of...
Merlin: wisdom, I think.
Merlin: I said, look, you know, the kid wants to be able to... First thing is, you've never had your kid not out of view when you weren't freaking out, right?
Merlin: The one time I lost, not lost my kid, but couldn't see my kid in public, was at a target.
Merlin: It was about 45 seconds, and I almost lost my mind, because I'm that particular guy.
Merlin: But what I was saying to Madeline was, like...
Merlin: Like our kid needs to practice not being able to see us.
Merlin: But I'll tell you a secret.
Merlin: We are the ones who really need to practice not being able to see the kid.
Merlin: And we need to learn to tolerate a lack of information.
Merlin: Otherwise, we're going to lose our goddamn minds and the kid's not going to get to grow.
Merlin: It's really hard.
John: Well, you know, my little girl and I used to rehearse this all the time.
John: It was a game that we would play if we went to a mall or to a big outdoor event.
John: Do you remember this?
Merlin: I would say, like, go all the way.
Merlin: For some reason, I'm thinking of Jimmy and The Wire doing front and follow with his two kids.
Merlin: But you're out there doing ops.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: We did them.
John: I would say, okay, do you see all the way at the end of the mall?
John: You can barely see it all the way through the Sears.
John: You go in the Sears and then to the other side of the Sears.
John: Do you see that place, that escalator?
John: And you can see the thing.
John: And she was like, yeah.
John: And I was like, go there.
John: And when you get there, turn around and wave.
John: Oh my God, I love this.
John: But is it in eyesight the whole time?
John: Well, but as soon as she starts to move, she's in a crowd.
John: You can't see her.
John: And she's littler than a lot of the people.
John: She's a little, she's little, right?
John: And so, and she's moving.
John: So I'm sitting and I'm, you know, I, yeah, I can keep an eye on her path and I would see her pop up and reappear and this and that and the other.
John: And she would get all the way to the end of the mall to the, you know, to just where the, where you start to see the.
John: the mists of the haze of, of distance.
John: Right.
John: And then, then her little head would pop up all the way down by the escalator and she would wave and I would wave.
John: And, and it was all part of this rehearsing, like front follow.
John: Exactly.
John: Like, okay, here's the, here's the operation.
John: Like you go to there and then I'll go to there and you'll see me in a third location.
John: But, but, but now we're at a point where we're not quite at a point where, okay, we're at the mall.
John: Meet me back here in an hour.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I mean, I totally feel you.
Merlin: I mean, just for what it's worth, my kid who was always so shy and sort of cautious, I guess I would say.
Merlin: I mean, the kid of today who rides Muni around town and announces...
Merlin: that they're going to go to the mall with friends after school.
Merlin: Like I could never, again, on Muni, like totally on their own.
Merlin: Like I, I still am, I still smile.
Merlin: Honestly, every time that happens that we got to this and nothing happened, but boy, that space from, I see you all the time to sometimes I just don't know where you are.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: You are right at that cusp right now.
Merlin: Aren't you?
Merlin: Well, I am.
Merlin: She's rattling the cage.
John: She wants to get out and go do things and to be not be seeable, probably.
John: She does.
John: And she knows.
John: And the thing is, what she wants is a phone.
John: And she knows that a phone is the solution to the issue, right?
John: Spoiler alert, it's the solution for you too.
John: I love being able to see where my kid is.
John: Well, and she would absolutely like sign off on that.
John: Like, oh yeah, you can see where I am at all times.
John: She'd probably feel more secure with that too.
John: But what a phone is, is a portal to hell.
John: Yeah, it has been for me.
John: The potential is definitely there.
John: And to take the phone and and fill it with restrictions so that she can't.
John: But, you know, the hell that's on a phone is just that she's up in the middle of the night texting her friends going, oh, my God, did you see what she was wearing?
John: Type of stuff that it's like.
John: No, I just don't want that.
John: I don't want that to be the thing that dominates her downtime.
Merlin: When you very first brought this up in talking about the not wanting the kid to have electronics historically, the thing that was going through my head that I imagine goes through your head is, well, there's a state that went right now, which is that's the default state.
Merlin: My kid is on an electronic device all the time.
Merlin: In fairness, so are all of their friends.
Merlin: That is the world now.
Merlin: It's not 1991 anymore.
Merlin: There is all of that.
Merlin: But, you know, we've seen upsides and downsides to that.
Merlin: But I can very much appreciate and sympathize with, understand.
Merlin: I have so much aloha for people who are like, hey, I don't want my kids to become another one of those kids that's always looking at a phone or an iPad.
Merlin: And that does make it somewhat about us, the parents, but I totally understand that.
Merlin: It's not particularly realistic if you know what kids are like today, but I totally appreciate it.
Merlin: Because we have all of our own misty colored memories, misty watercolor memories of hanging out on the cul-de-sac till the lights come on.
Merlin: But that's not, I mean, an 11 year old kid in my neighborhood shouldn't be out there too far away on their own because it's a city.
Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Although I remember the Hodgman's oldest girl, she got into one of those New York high schools that's like, oh, wow, that's the high school that you get into if you can get into that high school.
John: Was it a Waldorf high school?
John: No, it was some.
John: You take the SAT with blocks?
John: It's all the public schools, but it's like, you know, are you going to get into Yale from New York City?
Merlin: Oh, it's what they call it, a feeder school.
John: Yeah, but if you are going to get into Yale, like there's zero chance you're going to get into Yale, but if you are going to get into Yale, you're going to go to this school.
John: It will have been via here.
John: Spoiler alert, she did get into Yale.
John: Who, your kid?
John: No, not my kid, but Hodgman's daughter.
John: Well, Hodgman.
John: Oh, wow.
John: Good for her.
John: Yeah, congratulations to her.
John: That's supposed to be a good school.
John: It's a nice school, yeah.
John: And I think she's smarter than her father.
John: But she, at that point- Did she get a mustache?
John: Freshman year, no.
John: Freshman year or maybe eighth grade, she got into this feeder school and it required that she wake up in the morning, walk to the subway, take the subway out to Coney Island or some crazy thing.
John: And go to school and then take the subway home.
John: And she was so confident.
John: She was just like, I can do this.
John: And that's the last we're going to talk about it.
John: And her parents were like, okay.
John: You know, at this point, had she had any experience doing that on her own?
John: Oh, I think kids in New York take the subway.
John: Absolutely.
John: And they walk around their neighborhood.
John: They know where their friends are.
John: So, you know, living in a city...
John: We don't is the problem.
John: I live out here in the country.
John: For all I know, my own forest is full of child predators.
John: Because if you listen to the Congress, they're everywhere.
Merlin: Oh, they're what they call grooming.
Merlin: And they got ghillie suits.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: They can get out there and they fit right in with the bramble.
Merlin: I'm looking out the window right now.
Merlin: I see groomers everywhere I look.
Merlin: And that's not what I want.
Merlin: All you see is like push broom mustaches and ghillie suits.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I'm so chafed.
John: But she has never, so far, the digital thing, because she goes to Montessori school and they're all doing the SAT with blocks.
John: She has yet to come and say... You've earned your square pen.
John: She has yet to come and say, you are ruining my life by not letting me have a phone.
John: She hasn't said it yet because I don't think any of her
John: I don't think any of those kids, they all have parents like us, right?
John: Who are like, the newspaper.
John: And they're millennials.
John: A lot of those parents are millennials, so they've never seen a newspaper either.
John: Oh, right.
John: But they're like, I have an app on my iPad that emulates a newspaper.
John: Well, try to train your puppy on an iPad.
John: Huh?
John: Am I right?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: When your pet bird dies, are you going to wrap it in an iPad?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: When you buy a nice fresh fish at that big fish market where they throw the fish, are you going to wrap it in an iPad?
John: Wrap it in an iPad?
John: So I think every other kid at her school does have an iPad, but they have Montessori parents.
John: So they're doing like video games.
Merlin: They don't print them out.
Merlin: They draw them based on what's on screen.
John: Yeah.
John: And they're all education and McCall and whatnot.
John: And they're all playing Minecraft because of course that's educational kind of, I guess it's math because Legos are healthy toys.
John: But she's yet to say, like, if I don't get an Instagram account, then I'm a nobody.
John: Or if, you know, like, all my friends are texting each other at night and I'm not included.
John: Like, she hasn't done any of that yet.
John: Right.
John: You feel like you're sort of bracing for it?
John: I don't know.
John: I feel like... What'll happen?
John: I'm going to move to Italy and maybe an Italian...
John: It'll be even harder.
John: Monday, Tuesday.
John: Thursday, Saturday, Sunday.
John: But I... She's so pretty.
John: She's so pretty.
John: Oh my goodness.
John: I was such a late bloomer.
Merlin: How much of a late bloomer were you?
Merlin: I was such a late bloomer.
Merlin: Oh, wine sauce, not a problem.
Merlin: It sucks to have a crush on a dead woman.
Merlin: You know, pictures of Lily kind of thing.
John: Oh, my God.
John: All of my crushes are on women who were 40 years older than me.
Merlin: The pictures of Lily really landed on me, not just for the implied onanism, but for the whole, like, oh, my God, I have a crush on someone and I didn't realize they were, well, if I'm being honest, either really, really old or totally dead.
John: I, uh, I was on an airplane and I was watching whatever movie, you know, kind of just whatever movie, whatever movie.
John: And I came upon this black and white movie with Steve McQueen and Natalie Wood.
John: Oh my God.
John: And it's a very, it was a very progressive movie.
John: From the mid-60s, early to mid-60s, she had just been in West Side Story.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's not playing Misty for me, but there's one, that's Eastwood, but there's one with a name kind of like that, maybe?
John: It's this crazy movie where they had a one-night stand.
John: This is 1962 or whatever.
John: Had a one-night stand.
John: She got pregnant.
John: And then the whole first and second act of the movie are they're trying to get an abortion.
John: Are you kidding me?
John: An American movie?
John: Yeah.
John: And abortions are illegal.
John: Sure.
John: They're in New York.
John: So they go to this illegal abortionist and it's all this cloak and dagger stuff.
John: Run by Mickey Rooney.
John: Miss Go Reary.
John: I must protest.
John: But they're both Catholic and they're all, and he's like some jazz bow hipster.
John: But she is so captivating in this film.
Merlin: She was absolutely stunning.
Merlin: Even in the problematic John Wayne movie.
Merlin: She's, boy, her features.
John: Yeah.
John: But then she's, you know, this is a dramatic film, right?
John: And she is acting the fucking curtains down.
John: In every scene where you're like, whoa, holy, what's going on here?
John: Like, you're one of the great actors.
John: She's so young.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And she's so young.
Merlin: Because she was in Rebel Without a Cause, but then when she was, she must have been in her, like, 20s.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And Steve McQueen already, you know, an older guy, but obviously Steve McQueen is the most beautiful person.
John: He looks like an old wallet.
Mm-hmm.
John: But then, right at the moment where it's like, are they going to, because clearly they're going to fall in love.
John: They're already in love.
John: Oh, and then they're going to make the right decision.
John: Yeah, three quarters of the way through the movie, you're like, oh, they're in love, and I'm rooting for them.
John: I want them to have this baby.
John: This is it.
John: This brings everything together.
John: And then the pilot's like, well, we're preparing to land, so put your seats in the upright position.
John: And I was like, what?
John: No, no, I got to, you know, how can you play a movie where you can't see the end?
John: And, and then they shut the video system down.
John: Oh no.
John: I never found out what happened.
John: No, I had 15 minutes left to the movie.
John: Oh my God.
John: And, uh, and so I went on Amazon when I got back and I was like, I got to see the end of this movie.
John: And they're like five 99 to rent the movie.
John: And I'm like, I'm not going to pay $5.99.
John: Can't you just rent the end for two bucks?
John: Yeah, to see the end.
John: Just see the last 15 minutes.
John: So I'm in this crazy state.
John: Totally.
John: It's like being in love.
John: It's like you're in high school.
John: You fall in love with Natalie Wood.
John: And then...
John: she dies and it's never resolved.
John: And so you're always in love with Natalie Wood, right?
John: From then on, because there's never been a, there's never a reason.
Merlin: That's how you make a sex pervert.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Not you, but I mean like that, that's a way that, that's the kind of thing that's going to really mess.
Merlin: See, I was thinking more of, you know, uh, uh, Diana Rigg who had a big crush on, on the Avengers.
Merlin: And like when she's, uh, when she's like, was she a Tyrell?
Merlin: Like in, in Game of Thrones, where she tells, oh, sorry, spoilers.
Yeah.
Merlin: I want Cersei to know.
Merlin: And I'm like, I'm like, check her out.
Merlin: I showed my kid pictures of her from James Bond, you know, where she was in the George Lazenby, James Bond.
Merlin: And it's like, it's just, it's
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's, it's all just, it's all just so weird.
Merlin: It's like, like anything.
Merlin: And the reason I'm not, I'm not here trying to be a sex guy and being horny on Maine.
Merlin: What I am trying to say is a phenomenon I've been aware of since my first year of college is that no matter how much I grow up, no matter how much smarter I get, I will still always imagine everybody at the age they were when I knew them.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: So, like, my friend, my best friend from first grade, Rob, I discovered recently that he died.
Merlin: And it's just so weird.
Merlin: I'm showing my kid these photos.
Merlin: And he's a very fit, like, you know, handsome guy.
Merlin: But, like, it's just so weird.
Merlin: Like, I... And why do I say first year of college?
Merlin: Because you go back to the mall for the first time and all those quarterbacks, you know...
Merlin: gained a buck and they're pushing a stroller and you're like wait a minute you don't look like you did two years ago let alone like 40 I mean everybody I know is probably old now I was I mean I am don't you think that's weird though when you imagine people when you imagine your buddies and all your pals don't you kind of when you think of them don't you see the face of them as a young person
John: Well, especially in the last few years, we've crossed a certain line where... The dying's beginning.
John: Yeah, at the age that we are right now, there are some people that look amazing, and then there are other people that have fallen off.
John: I was down on the beach here in my neighborhood the other day, and kind of sitting in... I had been introduced to...
John: somebody, you know, like a, like a young couple.
John: And we were sitting and talking about, Oh yeah, they used to work in restaurants on Capitol Hill.
John: And I was like, Oh, you worked at Spinoza.
John: Isn't that interesting?
John: Although I felt a little bit thrown under the bus because I'd been told about this woman by my daughter's mother slash partner.
John: And she had said, Oh yeah, she used to work at Spinoza.
John: And I said to myself in my mind,
John: The restaurant's called Spinace.
John: It always has been.
John: Spinace!
John: But she just said Spinace, and she'd been talking to this woman that worked there.
John: Is that Italian for spinach?
John: I don't know.
John: Beats me.
John: Probably.
John: Maybe.
John: No.
John: Spinace is something else.
John: Okay.
John: It's... Gordo, they say.
John: So she'd just been talking to this woman, and I was like, oh, so maybe the woman that worked there pronounced it Spinace when they were talking to each other, and...
John: It's some kind of secret thing like the way the astronauts say Gemini.
Merlin: Oh, they do say Gemini.
Merlin: I hate it when I pronounce things wrong.
Merlin: Oh, it drives me nuts.
John: So anyway, then I meet this woman down on the beach and I'm like, oh, so, and I'm thinking to myself, she, my daughter's mother slash partner said Spinoff.
John: So I'm talking, so I say to her like, so, oh, I hear that you used to work at Spinoff.
John: And she's like, yeah, I did.
John: And we talked for a little while.
John: And then she says, yeah, back when Spinoza first opened.
John: And I was like, oh, oh, I got... So you got... You had it right the first time.
John: I know what the place is called, but I got, you know, bamboo.
John: I think your daughter's mother might be gaslighting you.
John: And I said to her later, I was like, oh, why did you do that to me?
John: You said Spinoza.
John: And she was like, oh, did I?
John: And then, of course, I realized, like...
John: That's her thing.
John: Like, Oh, I didn't even, what do you mean?
John: Did I?
John: Oh, classic.
John: But anyway, I was down on the beach.
John: I'm talking to the, to this young couple and I see a guy down the beach and I go, is that?
John: And, and so he looks like a Seattle rock musician from the early nineties by the name of Mark Olson, who, who played in the band Sage.
Yeah.
John: And I was a big fan of Sage Sage was one of those bands that was in that, in that little family of bands like around hammer box or not.
John: They weren't friends, but the, you know, the, in that era where it seemed like, okay, we know who the bands are that are going to be huge grunge rock stars, even though it hasn't quite happened yet.
John: but then who are the next bands?
John: Because Seattle's going to make new bands for, for the rest of time.
Merlin: And any band that's been in Seattle, this is how, this is like, maybe not of the same style or whatever, but this is how you get like the second wave of like, I don't know, fastbacks, flops.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Or, um, flop.
Merlin: But like people, people like that are pick their posies on some level, probably.
John: And, and, and Sage was in that, in that class.
John: Right.
John: And, um,
John: I thought they were so great.
John: But of course, most of those bands were slightly too interesting to be big.
John: all the second wave bands were indie rock for all intents and purposes.
John: And that's not what the culture was buying at the time.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, that was not, that was not the, like the, the thread.
Merlin: I mean, like, again, something like you can, you can hear the precedent of all these different bands and those bands, but like, yeah, that wasn't, that wasn't the, it wasn't the long hair.
Merlin: They wanted more like an Alice in Chains kind of thing.
John: Right.
John: Can you get some more?
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: You know, and, and Sage was like, or whatever they had.
John: They were using jazz chords.
John: It was very rock and roll.
John: Anyway, I was a fan of the band, and it was back before I, you know, when I was just like a worm, and I would go up to him after shows and be like, oh, that was so cool.
John: Like, what kind of knobs do you have on your amps?
John: Does your amp use 110 power, or is it 111, or what?
John: You know, just trying to...
John: Just that kid.
John: And he was always like, yeah, kid, you know, stay in school, even though we're the same age.
John: Yeah, drink your milk.
John: And I hadn't seen him in a long time.
John: And, you know, over the years it had been, he'd gone through, you know, some rough patches, some drugs, some this and that, you know, some hard times.
Merlin: It must have been really hard to get out of that scene unscathed.
John: Wow.
John: I mean, a lot of people didn't.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm looking down the beach and I'm like, is that Mark Olson from Sage on the beach in Normandy Park?
John: What would have to happen to get from the last time I saw him to now?
Yeah.
John: And he looked good.
John: He looked good.
John: His skin was good.
John: He looked healthy.
John: So much so that I was like... Maybe he did a duff.
John: Well, this is the question.
John: Did he do a duff?
John: Did he, like, get clean?
John: And now he's made of hope?
John: Well, you don't even know for sure if it's him, right?
John: You don't want to be a weirdo.
John: And so I'm standing in this little group of people, you know, the woman that used to work at Spinoff's.
John: And I say... She could have helped you.
John: I say to the group... She could have just leaned forward and with some familiarity go, it's... And then I would have been like, I know what the fucking restaurant's called.
John: Anyway, I go, is that Mark Olson from Sage?
John: And I look at the group of people that are assembled there, and they're all just five years too young to have ever heard of Sage or to know anything about what I'm talking about.
John: You know, they're all...
John: whatever that is millennial cusps who didn't, who weren't there, you know, they weren't there in 91 and 92.
John: And so they're all like, huh?
John: And I'm like, Oh no, what am I supposed to do?
John: Like, they don't know who he is.
John: I'm not just going to waltz up to some guy on the beach and say like, Hey, if, if you got, if, if you got clean 10 years ago, you might be Mark Olson from Sage.
John: And, but I couldn't stop looking at him because we're at that age, right?
John: He could be,
John: He could be in really good shape at our age, or he could be younger than us and in bad shape.
John: And in any case, he probably didn't go to the beach to have a discussion about who he is.
John: Well, and he's on the beach like I'm on the beach.
John: Did he have a metal detector?
John: Well, no, he's dressed like I am.
John: Oh, this is the other clue, right?
John: He's a hipster.
John: And this is a neighborhood where there are not very many hipsters.
John: And so...
John: I say, I can't, you know, I can't be on the beach with, with Mark Olson and not say hi, because it would be, that would be a crime.
John: And so I have to risk it not being him.
John: I get it.
John: And so I marched down the beach and he's talking to some other people and I walk up and I go, um, Hey Mark.
John: And he turns around and says, Oh, hi John.
John: But he says it too fast and
John: Because he had already seen me and thought, is that John Roderick?
John: And so he said, oh, hi, John, but fast enough that it was obvious that he had also been standing there going... Which would imply that he was avoiding the...
Merlin: Does that imply that he was avoiding talking?
John: Oh, just exactly the same as I was.
John: He was just there like, is that who I think it is?
John: Okay, I get it, I get it, I get it.
John: And so then we had this like hour-long conversation on the beach.
John: That's so nice, John.
John: And we were like, where do you live?
John: And he's like, I live by the fire station.
John: I'm like, how weird.
John: And you're both less crazy now.
John: We're both less crazy.
John: We're both clean and sober.
John: We're both doing great.
John: Everybody's, you know, he's got a couple of kids.
John: He's like living a life.
John: Never would have expected it, right?
John: Everybody that we knew along the way, they're all...
John: You know, they're all Soylent Green by now.
Merlin: Well, at this point, you're like Tom Hagen.
Merlin: You know, who is it?
Merlin: Is it Tom and Frankie Pintana?
Merlin: You're talking about, like, everybody's gone now.
John: You remember the Romans?
John: The Romans would tip.
John: Hey, Tom.
John: Tom.
John: It's good to see you, Tom.
Merlin: I'm going to shave you myself.
Merlin: Are those guys in ghillie suits?
Merlin: What are they doing with those push bro mustaches?
Merlin: Ah.
Merlin: Teach the part!
Merlin: Groomers!