Ep. 505: "Steamin' John & the Rebel"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: What's funny?
John: Oh, I don't know.
John: Yeah, there's only so many ways you can say hi, John, and every time you find a new way to do it.
John: I'm a professional.
John: Yeah.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, John.
John: Sometimes you sound like really in it.
John: Sometimes you're like, hey.
Merlin: This is the problem with, I'm still ill, much like the Smiths song.
Merlin: There's a problem with humor.
Merlin: One of the problems with humor, especially when you're trying to make humor, is that more is not always better, unless you really know what you're doing.
John: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: It's a self-admonition, if I could say so.
Merlin: I got to be careful.
Merlin: Because, you know, it turns into, you know, wackety, shmackety, umbrellas inside, having a crazy time, family fun, comedy hour, you know?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But, you know, we don't do that.
John: No, think... Our love is real.
John: In another life... Yes.
John: Imagine you and I being paired...
John: In like a, like a Richmond, Virginia morning DJ team.
John: I'm listening.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: Think about that.
John: Like an Eastern seaboard.
John: You know, I-95 corridor.
John: I think I got it.
John: I think it's Stephen John and the Rebel.
John: Stephen John and the Rebel.
Merlin: In the morning.
Merlin: Yeah, in the morning.
Merlin: I'd be the Rebel, unless you want to be the Rebel.
John: No, no, no.
John: You should be the Rebel.
John: Of course I'm Stephen John.
Merlin: I would have my own version.
Merlin: My Rebel Yell would probably be on a soundboard.
John: Oh, you mean like a sound effect?
Merlin: Because it's Richmond, Virginia.
Merlin: Isn't that the Sea of the Confederacy?
Merlin: That's right.
John: Yeah.
John: That's right.
John: And you'd hit the cart.
John: And what would the rebel yell sound like?
Merlin: See, that's the thing.
Merlin: According to the Ken Burns documentary.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I almost said Ken Nordine for some reason.
Merlin: Ken Nordine.
Merlin: Ken Nordine, I think, did an Escafe commercials.
John: Oh, okay.
Merlin: He also did this poem.
Merlin: It was about colors.
Merlin: Remember that?
Merlin: Colors.
Merlin: Colors.
John: I'll die for your life when my shotgun scatters colors.
Merlin: Hey, hey, was that iced tea?
Merlin: I'm afraid it was iced tea.
Yeah.
Merlin: A lot of people leave off the D. Both the D's tease.
Merlin: So, see, more humor is not always better.
Merlin: Oh, I lost you.
Merlin: Yeah, you're back.
Merlin: Oh, I never lose you.
Merlin: We had a big old broad smoky fart last week in the middle of the show.
Merlin: Like a big technical error, and I totally forgot to cut it out.
Merlin: But I left it in, because you know what they say.
Merlin: A clit?
Merlin: A glitch.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: It was a clit.
Merlin: I have a lot of physical problems, John.
Merlin: I don't want to make a big deal out of it, but I'm still kind of getting over COVID.
Merlin: I'm so full of snot.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I want to talk about the rubble.
Merlin: I like that bit we did about Richmond.
Merlin: That was funny.
John: Usually, if there's a glitch in the show, I usually hear about it from five or six people that obviously listen to the show carefully enough to know that I'm the one that fixes tech problems.
John: No, you're the one who listens, more salient.
John: And a lot of people will write and say, people know how to reach you.
John: They'll say, will you tell Merlin the following four things?
Merlin: What about, have you gotten any, is there any chance, any chance, wild, wild chance that you've gotten some kind of a, I don't know, maybe one or two notices in the past, say, three years from users of the Google and Android platform who say that our certificate is not correct on the website?
Merlin: Is there any chance anybody has ever mentioned that to you once?
John: I have heard about our certificate.
John: Yes.
John: And I replied by saying, I didn't get a certificate.
Yes.
Merlin: Oh, that's funny.
Merlin: You know what you did?
Merlin: Saying it's on brand is a little cute.
Merlin: You do you.
Merlin: But where's my white ribbon?
Merlin: Where's your white ribbon?
Merlin: That's the original rebel flag is the white.
Merlin: Oh, see, now I'm doing liberal humor.
Merlin: Do you like that?
Merlin: I'm going full on Air America now.
Merlin: His ding-a-lings in Congress.
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: Okay, so, okay.
Merlin: I was a fan of that kind of radio when I was a child.
Merlin: I think we could do a good... Is there a way that we could... How does one say?
Merlin: Is there a way that we could pre-tape our morning show for a more commodious hour?
Merlin: I don't know what that hour would be between you and me, because it really is no good hour for us to do anything.
Merlin: But it does strike me that at least when I was listening to the Q Zoo in the morning on Q105, the place where they invented the morning zoo, I always wanted to know.
John: Oh, I did not know that.
John: I did not know that.
Merlin: Scott Shannon.
Merlin: He essentially – who knows today?
Merlin: Today, who knows?
Merlin: Who knows what gets recorded?
Merlin: You know, who lives, who dies, who tells your morning zoo story?
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: But – oh, God, I have so much snot.
Merlin: But the – So, you know, this amount of – Six to ten drive time, John.
Merlin: 6 a.m.
John: is really early.
John: Ben Benjamin would have written me and said, I can't do the show.
John: My vocal quality is not up to the standards.
John: I'm afraid I can't do the show.
John: It calls it morning lunch.
John: But you are willing to power through.
Merlin: You know, I'll tell you a funny story.
Merlin: Actually, it's not a funny story.
Merlin: It's not even really a story.
Merlin: There was a time where you look nice to it, guys, and we had this really dumb idea that we would have a morning show, that we would try to record a show every morning.
Merlin: Oh, unedited.
Merlin: And like, it sounded like shit.
Merlin: And, and it was not, but you know, you got to break some eggs, right?
Merlin: You got to, all I'm saying is that like today, you know, John, it's not, you know, this, you see this reflective when those big checks arrive from Sweden with all your money, they send you all the money for the Spotify streams.
John: They do.
John: That's, that's, they're probably comically large.
John: They back up the check truck, and they drop off all the checks, loads of them, Swedish checks.
Merlin: Right, and you're Jerry Seinfeld.
Merlin: Your hand hurts from sliding all those checks.
Merlin: But it's all streaming now, right?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: You said it, man.
Merlin: Really, does a morning zoo need to be in the morning?
Merlin: Can't you just choose when you want to listen?
Merlin: Maybe that's part of our contract.
John: is it's a big deal because richmond in the morning i don't know a lot about the richmond mark john tell me everything you know about richmond from a media standpoint oh richmond media well i know they've got a cool little underground rock scene there okay cool and like is there is there a club you played more than once there uh you know richmond we played a lot in the dc area uh-huh
John: and only made it down to Richmond a couple of times.
John: It's dense.
Merlin: It's real dense around there.
Merlin: You've got a lot of options, right?
Merlin: It's not like our classic Gainesville versus Fort Lauderdale question.
Merlin: There's a lot of places.
John: Yeah, but the vibe felt very much like one of those towns where it had a small scene that was very insular.
John: And I know a lot of bands come through there.
Merlin: And did not feel any particular need to, say, ally themselves with, I don't know, I'm just pulling this out of my ass, 11-6 to the southwest with DC Hardcore to the north.
Merlin: They didn't feel the need to ally themselves or, you know, Research Triangle, Carolina stuff, right?
Merlin: They did their own thing.
John: You know, my problem as a touring musician is that I only see what I'm shown.
John: That's so, you know, that's actually really profound.
Merlin: No, I'm serious.
Merlin: It's really true.
Merlin: And this is why it's such a joke, you know, haha, like Bo Diddley making fun of, you know, Spinal Tap because they don't know where the stage is.
Merlin: Why would they know where the stage is?
Merlin: Why would they need to know what city they're in today?
John: People for that.
John: And I learned it when I first went out on tour with Amy Mann.
John: You know, the story of me going out with Amy Mann the first time.
Merlin: Again, I don't know if I do, but I did watch Magnolia last week.
Merlin: Oh, that's a good movie.
Merlin: So even if I've heard the story, that's a hell of a movie.
John: Well, it's not so much a story as it is, you know, like, Amy Mann and I, at that time, a fairly unlikely fast friend.
Merlin: Have you been sort of sideways approached by her about collaborating or something?
Merlin: Something had happened where you first got in contact, right, and she was interested in collaborating on something?
John: This was the wonderful thing about Twitter at the time, right?
John: I played a show at Largo.
John: I covered an Amy Mann song because it was from Magnolia.
John: I loved the song.
John: Did it save me?
John: It was not Save Me.
John: Oh, oh, oh.
John: What was the song?
John: Do you remember?
John: Oh, I remember, yeah.
John: I'm not going to make it easy on you, though.
Merlin: I'm not going to make it easy on our listeners.
Merlin: Okay, well, it starts out with a cover of a song best known as a cover.
Merlin: I cover the song, and then... One is Loneliest Number, which I think might be by Paul Williams or Hoyt Axton.
Merlin: I'm not sure.
John: That's by, what's his name?
John: John Lennon's Drunk Friend.
John: Oh, of course.
John: Nielsen?
John: Nielsen, yeah.
Oh.
John: Anyway, so I cover this song by her and then after the show backstage the owner of the bar comes in and says, you know Amy was here
John: And I was like, oh, that's exciting.
John: But also terrifying.
John: And then, of course, she comes backstage because she... Cut to a shot of her in the audience with her tail.
John: She and Michael Penn, you know, they live there, right?
John: Yes.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: She stands up and her tuxedoed boyfriend is so... This is outrageous.
Merlin: And you can hear the sound of monocles shattering all over Largo.
John: So she comes back, and the first thing, of course, she says to me is, you fucked up my song, because I had.
John: It was in the wrong key or whatever, and I missed a lyric or something.
John: And I was like, I did, I did, I fucked up your song.
John: That would have normally been the end.
Merlin: But that's like the listeners of our program.
Merlin: And we kid.
Merlin: But honestly, people, I'm sorry, I can't get everything right.
Merlin: I do try.
Merlin: But when people notice, people notice when people tell you something, that's because they're listening.
Merlin: They're listening.
Merlin: And that's a nice compliment that Amy Mann was listening to.
John: Well, yeah, that she was there.
John: I mean, can you imagine Amy Mann?
John: She's there, she's in the audience, and then this somebody that she's never heard of says, oh, I'm going to play a song by Amy Mann because, you know, she's... And just to clarify, you did not know she was there.
John: I did not, no.
Merlin: There's no way in a million years I would have thought she was there.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: You think I'm going to roll up and play Nora, and I don't know you're in the audience?
John: No, no, it's just like, why would I have known and why would she...
Merlin: Well, it's a little on the nose to assume that Amy, just in my head, that's like when I spent a week walking around Wellington, New Zealand, hoping, hoping I would run into the Finn brothers.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: There's no reason.
Merlin: I don't even know if they live in Auckland.
Merlin: They live in Wellington.
Merlin: They live in the third place.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But I just kept assuming I would run in to like Neil Finn.
John: You can't want it.
John: You can't want it.
John: You have to just let go of God.
John: That's such a good point.
John: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
John: You can't look.
John: You have to just see, you know?
John: And so you – wow, that must have been so weird.
John: Well, because Largo, you know, she's famous for Largo, right?
John: That's her, like – she's famous for being there just like – Her, John Bryan, Michael Penn.
John: That's their scene.
John: And so I just was paying – what it was was in leading up to the tour –
John: I was trying to think of songs to play, and I guess I had just seen Magnolia or something.
John: That particular song really resonated with me.
John: You're killing me.
John: You're not going to tell me, are you?
John: And I was personally moved by it.
John: And sometimes I learn a song because I'm moved by it.
John: Hell yeah.
John: And so it was one of those things where it was like, oh, I'm here at this place.
John: It's famous.
John: for her and this is a magnolia bar kind of you know they were all here and and so i'm gonna play the song la la la la la but because of because what twitter was then the next day or maybe that night she tweeted at me oh boy you know like haha you fucked up my song or whatever and i tweeted back like yeah sorry and that also could have been the end of it but then she came back you know then she came back over the top
John: And so pretty soon we're tweeting at each other.
John: And that was the magic of 2011 or whatever it was.
John: Totally agree.
John: And then she wrote and she said, so then we were buddies.
John: And she said, oh, I got asked to play a Simon and Garfunkel cover in Central Park at a ceremony for Simon and Garfunkel.
John: And so naturally I thought of you.
John: Do you want to go do this with me in New York?
Yeah.
John: And I said, do I want to play a Simon and Garfunkel cover for Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park?
John: With Amy Mann.
John: With Amy Mann?
Merlin: In Central Park.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: I mean, you know.
Merlin: The sound of rifling through papers.
John: Let me just check my schedule.
John: Ah, good.
John: So I flew out there.
John: And the funny thing was, I was in New York.
John: We're supposed to rehearse.
John: She and I have never met, except for this time.
John: backstage at largo and so she's like well meet me at this clam bar and and then she then she was like oh no no don't you know don't meet me there to meet me therefore and then she changed it again something else so by the time i showed up there you didn't write any of those down no you didn't have anywhere to write them down probably right yeah and so i showed up there and i was like
John: uh you you know you changed our meeting time a couple of times what are you nervous are you nervous to meet me and she was like i am nervous to meet you i've never met you before and we're we're gonna do this you know you could be a total kook yeah and i was like i could be a kook and so and i am a kook you're you're also an awkward way for both of us to find out and and so then from then on and so then the next thing she did was she said do you want to go do you want to open for me on tour
John: And I was like shuffling through papers.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: I think I can put that together.
John: And so I went out with them and she's got this great band, this great team of people.
John: She's got her sound guys and her guitar techs and they're all great.
John: They've been with her forever.
John: And I go out and I'm playing all these markets with Amy that I've played dozens of times as a musician, except I'm in a different bar.
John: Bars and venues I've never heard of that are different different different different seating probably Three blocks from the bar that I've played seven times Here is this bar and when you walk down the corridors of when you walk down the halls of this bar you're in the dressing room at this bar all the posters on the walls are like Bands that I know Some of them friends of mine
John: Who have played this bar multiple times and they've never played the bar that I played in the same town.
John: And I'm looking at these posters and I'm like, Amy, you play here every five months and have for the last 15 years.
John: And she's like, well, it's the only bar in Richmond.
John: And I'm like, I'm here to tell you it's not the only bar in Richmond.
John: She's like, what are you talking about?
John: There's only one place to play in Anacortes, and it's this bar.
John: And I'm like, there's another bar in Anacortes.
John: It's two blocks away, and I've played there five times.
John: And realizing that there were – and that was – I mean, I should have known it.
John: But that there were like these neural networks across the country –
John: And there's also another bar where all the, like, hardcore kids in Converse tennis shoes, you know, with, like, Weezer t-shirts, there's another bar that's just that.
John: And I suddenly realized, you know, what a...
John: What a small, small, small little man I was.
Merlin: Jeez.
Merlin: How little I knew.
Merlin: You think of yourself as a well-traveled person, but here's a bar you've never been in.
John: A bar I've never been in, and it has showbills.
John: Where my, you know, like, people that I see in Seattle, I'm like, hey, buddy.
John: And they're like, yeah.
John: Yeah, I just played in Richmond.
John: Oh, did you play at the one place?
John: No, never heard of that place.
John: I played at the other place.
John: Well, I've never heard of that place.
John: Right, right.
John: Weird.
John: Weird.
John: Band of Horses, they never played a single bar that I ever played.
John: They just kind of came out of nowhere, didn't they?
John: Mm.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Doesn't everything come out of nowhere?
Merlin: I think in some...
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: Oh, you sound terrible.
Merlin: I am muting.
John: Oh, Merlin.
Merlin: I am muting so much.
John: Oh, baby.
Merlin: And you're probably still hearing it through the muting.
Merlin: Is this COVID?
Merlin: It's, yeah.
Merlin: I mean, I started, well, how does anything begin?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, everything comes up.
Merlin: What did you say?
Merlin: What did I say?
Merlin: Everything comes out of nowhere?
Merlin: Somebody said that.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: No, that's what we're saying, you know, but no, I'm a mess.
John: I read a thing this morning in the New York Times that said COVID is finally over.
John: Uh-huh.
John: I mean, what they describe as the excess deaths.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: are down to zero.
Merlin: And when we talk about that as laypeople, I was listening to a podcast this morning about the... I don't know why I listen to stuff like this.
Merlin: You know, the problems of, you know, the things that we're going through with climate change, but especially with regard to flooding and how difficult it is to, like... It would take $3 billion to update all the floodplain maps that we use to decide, you know, the government basically subsidizes flood insurance or, like, you know, is the...
Merlin: is the sort of like they're the ones who are on the on the hook if that really has to pay out and that depends a lot on stuff like how close are you to this flood you know the idea whole idea of the one percent flood or like what we've come to call a hundred year flood that's all based on really old information and that's why everybody's like hey we just had a hundred year flood aren't we supposed to not have one of those for another 99 years and it's uh
Merlin: It was very upsetting to listen to.
Merlin: What was my point?
Merlin: How is that related to – oh, COVID, COVID.
Merlin: COVID, COVID.
Merlin: Well, I'm so sorry.
Merlin: What's funny is that – and I've said this privately to people I've talked to.
Merlin: I just think it's really boring to talk about your health.
Merlin: But I have said to several of my friends, it's pretty wild.
Merlin: Of course, for me, the biggest thing is, I hate that I lose my bragging rights.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: You know, three years, three years Novid.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: And then in one week, all three members of our household get it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But like, that's, and that's, of course, everybody's all, COVID's over, it's all fine.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Floodplain.
Merlin: Excess deaths.
Merlin: There's these terms that we as lay people hear and think that sounds really callous.
Merlin: But, you know, there's things that have a term of art.
Merlin: And I know you know this, but I think sometimes when we say, oh, these people are so heartless, all they care about is, well, no, but that excess death is a meaning.
Merlin: We should not see this many deaths coming from, say, small cell carcinoma.
Merlin: Now that people aren't smoking as much, we shouldn't see – to see many more deaths than we expected should tell us something.
Merlin: Those are excess deaths beyond what we have modeled or could have been able to figure out.
Merlin: It's, you know – but then the funny thing is everybody in my family got this within, you know, a week of each other.
Merlin: But then also, like, who was it?
Merlin: There was –
Merlin: A couple people I know, in town and out of town, both got it for the first time.
Merlin: This is as the front page is saying it's the lowest level of risk and blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: And then on top of it all, Bob, Dr. Dr. Dr. Bob.
Merlin: Dr. Bob Wachter, Bob Wachter, MD, who is all due respect, you know.
Merlin: I think he's the head of medicine at UCSF.
Merlin: Head of medicine.
Merlin: And he's been so sweaty for three years about COVID.
Merlin: He's just been like, he's a poster now.
Merlin: He posts and he posts and he posts.
Merlin: And it's just these threads.
Merlin: And you're like, don't you have to go operate on anybody?
Merlin: Don't you have to go talk to a resident or something?
Merlin: Don't you have a paper to claim credit for?
Merlin: Don't you have other stuff to do?
Merlin: But he's just always on Twitter.
Merlin: And you know how it is.
Merlin: You've had Twitter brain worms.
Merlin: You know what it's like.
Merlin: You get weird.
Merlin: Especially when you're in this new thing.
Merlin: So Dr. Bob Wachter, the Bob Wachter MD is how I would prefer.
Merlin: My preferred appellation would be.
Merlin: I think if we're going to call people doctor, we should stop beginning by saying doctor, and we should start including their actual terminal degree.
John: Oh, so give me an example.
Merlin: The librarian at my college, whom none of the students liked, she was really not a good fit for the school.
Merlin: Her name was Althea Jenkins, and she demanded to be called, understandably, she's a doctor, she demanded to be called Dr. Althea Jenkins.
Merlin: Dr. Althea Jenkins.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But, you know, it was an EDD.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: Like, you know, like Joe Biden.
Merlin: Like a lot of people.
Merlin: It's like, I understand.
Merlin: That's still, that's kind of a degree called a doctorate.
John: I'm not going to get into it.
Merlin: Doctorate.
Merlin: Doctorate.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But, but Bob Wachter,
Merlin: Who has been posting through it all for three years and talking about where we stand with COVID and excess deaths and emergency room visits and a lot of really good information, just a lot of noise because he's so sweaty.
Merlin: He got COVID like around the same time we did.
Merlin: And he had, this is not funny.
Merlin: It's just crazy that the same week we got COVID, Bob Wachter, MD got COVID.
John: The guy, yeah.
John: The guy.
John: Dr. Bob.
Merlin: And here's the thing.
Merlin: It hit him real hard.
Merlin: And the story, I didn't read the story.
Merlin: My wife told me about it because, you know, she works at UC.
Merlin: And he, like, kind of, I guess, sort of passed out in an elevator and, like, double pinballed off two sides of it.
Merlin: And so I pull up our dumb local website and there's this whole terrifying photo, like, almost like a Nick Nolte mugshot level photo of Bob Wachter all, like, stitched up with his eyes swollen and everything.
John: Oh.
Merlin: It's just so weird because – and like what does so much of this get at?
Merlin: So many things we've talked about in the last 22 minutes have had to do with some kind of a form of availability – not availability.
Merlin: Well, a kind of availability heuristic or a kind of provincialism.
Merlin: But it's that kind of thing we all do where we base stuff –
Merlin: you know, on our own experience or our own reckons or like whatever it is.
Merlin: But like statistically, it's the least COVID ever.
Merlin: And Bob Wachter looks like he just got his ass beat.
Merlin: And I'm still coughing up snot here on an award-winning podcast.
Merlin: I think it's also hurting my other immune system problems.
Merlin: Like a couple different autoimmune things with which I deal are sort of kicking in as well.
Merlin: So I got a stress bump.
Merlin: That's one also.
Merlin: Oh, the worst.
Merlin: Yeah, I got a little, yeah, upper right lip, which is better than lower left lip.
Merlin: Lower left lip is the one I despise.
John: Lower left.
John: Yeah, that's terrible.
Merlin: So you get the real puffy ones.
Merlin: This one's like two little, very well-defined blisters.
Merlin: I did the process that we do.
Merlin: Oh, you did.
Merlin: Oh, I did.
Merlin: I put on gloves.
Merlin: I know we're good.
Merlin: I think we talked, I shouldn't say this on air because we haven't formalized this, but I think we talked about our, we're going to do something, record something separate from this for our Patreon supporters.
Merlin: We're going to do an episode, I think, about airplanes we talked about.
Merlin: At least that's something I would love to do airplanes airplanes because you gave me I gave me a truth bomb last week that blew my mind I didn't realize that the plane that Dave Roderick used to shoot down a Japanese zero Was not it's a see see what he was a DC 3 which was a C 1 30 C 47 C 47 um
Merlin: So we're going to do that.
Merlin: But I think also for really, really, really, really people who are paying a lot, I assume you have a way with like spreadsheets to find the people who are like the Matt Howey's who are giving us like $1,500 a month, I'm thinking.
Merlin: Hear that, Matt?
John: Hear that?
Merlin: Well, you know, my friend Harry used to say, if you want something in life, ask for it.
Merlin: That's the standard.
Merlin: We talk about him all the time.
Merlin: We charge nothing.
John: Yeah, Jason Finn.
John: Jason Finn pays one dollar.
Merlin: Jason Finn is currently my favorite friendship.
Merlin: Because we have exactly like one text exchange every couple weeks, and it's perfect.
Merlin: It really pleases me.
Merlin: He sends me articles that he saw on the SF Chronicle about how San Francisco's going down the tubes.
Merlin: He had a really good guide in the cron this morning about the open-air drug market.
Merlin: And I was like, I saw that, and I thought of you.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: but um uh there was a point to this which oh yeah you were talking about the you're talking about your technique just like and like but like it's funny because of my whatever i got a cognitive bias some kind of dumb thinking that i do it's funny that like and on top of it all i thought oh i probably won't get it my family might get it but i probably won't get it and for five days i didn't get it but then i did now poor bob walker's pinballing all over that that goddamn elevator up on parnassus avenue you know is maddie okay is everybody back
John: Are you all better?
Merlin: I won't go way into it, but she had a time with it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: We had a couple emergency room trips, and she's doing... Oh, jeez.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I got to go to... Too many Christmas.
Merlin: I got to go... Because I don't know how much you know about emergency rooms, but you can just basically...
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Merlin: I know a little.
Merlin: Yeah, okay, okay.
Merlin: But, you know, I mean, like, I...
Merlin: I don't like dealing with the system at all.
Merlin: She was in a really bad way, and I thought, well, you know, it's worth going there.
Merlin: We got there, and it became obvious that no matter what, every single person in this room, you will see everybody in this room for at least part of five hours.
Merlin: Every single person here.
Merlin: There was a guy there, this poor kid.
Merlin: I think he was pretty profoundly on the spectrum, and he had to have his fucking shunt cleaned, and they were giving him the runaround at this place.
Merlin: It was absolutely, I'm starting to overuse a word I have never ever used in my life, except it keeps becoming relevant.
Merlin: Kafkaesque.
Merlin: Just bizarre, hostile, unnecessarily.
Merlin: And you know, you don't have talked about this, right?
Merlin: Last like month, we keep talking about like why life is hard for us sometimes.
Merlin: But like, it was like five hours.
Merlin: And by the way, that is about five hour, five or six hours into my COVID.
Merlin: First testing positive.
Merlin: It was like going to the emergency room.
Merlin: So I've made it all about me.
Merlin: You're welcome.
Merlin: But no, she's doing way better, but it was bad.
Merlin: I think she had a really bad reaction to the Paxlovid.
Merlin: So, you know, some people, you take that and it tastes really bad and it makes you really sick.
Merlin: So I don't know.
Merlin: I kept up with Bob Wachter.
Merlin: I hope he's doing okay.
Merlin: You have a sense of that.
Merlin: You have a sense of what's the bar.
Merlin: You have a sense of where does it flood.
Merlin: You have this sense of all of these things.
Merlin: And then on the other hand, you find yourself saying stuff like, well, not you, but like I or one might find oneself saying, hey, you should have warned me I was on the floodplain.
Merlin: And you're like, there's no way we could more deeply let you know that you are in the floodplain.
Merlin: You are in the area.
Merlin: Like Florida is just like, I know this is happening oddly enough in California in some ways too, but Florida, like insurance companies are just like, we're just not going to cover a lot of stuff there anymore.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: It's right there in the title of your house.
John: Are you on a floodplain or not?
Merlin: I think it is.
Merlin: And I think the, like, I mean, you know way more about this than I do.
Merlin: And, like, my in-laws out in gold country, they live near, like, a creek that rises really high.
Merlin: And they get it all there.
Merlin: Like, basically everything you can get.
Merlin: Crawdads.
Merlin: Do they get crawdads?
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: They call them crayfish.
Merlin: Crayfish or mudskippers or dinglehoppers.
Merlin: They got funny names for everything out there.
Merlin: But, you know, but then you say, oh, you should have warned me.
Merlin: Like, oh, if I'd known there was so much COVID, I'd want to wear a mask.
Merlin: It's like, you know.
Merlin: But there wasn't that much COVID, and we mostly did wear a mask.
Merlin: But, like, sometimes your number's up.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But anyways.
John: I had this terrible – I'm not going to say that I had a terrible experience because it had nothing to do with me at all.
John: But scrolling through Facebook and, you know, a woman that I know –
John: She's somebody that just recently had posted like, oh, happy Mother's Day.
John: My mom is so great and had done a couple of posts to the effect of how close she was with her mom.
John: And then five days ago, she was like, hey, sorry to be a downer, but my mom got COVID and we're in the emergency room.
John: But don't worry, you know.
John: whatever, she's tough old bird.
John: And then the next post was like, sorry, my mom died.
Merlin: Oh my God.
John: Of COVID.
John: Of COVID.
John: And this was like three days ago.
Merlin: And it happens so fast.
Merlin: An excess death that really matters a lot to somebody.
John: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Yeah, there's, I don't know, this is certainly a phrase you've heard before, but it's something CGP Grey did a pretty interesting video about on YouTube a few years ago.
Merlin: Like when you're trying to end a war and like trying to think about, again, think about Quint and the USS Indianapolis story, like where they've dropped off the bomb and like think about all the troop transports coming back in the summer of 1945.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And like how extra much it sucks if your kid died, got hit by, not probably not a U-boat in Japan, but like, you know, you got hit by zero and it brought down a troop transport with like, you know, hundreds of people on it.
Merlin: That sucks.
Merlin: Your kid made it through the whole goddamn war and then died on the boat ride home.
Merlin: It's like, that is one of those things that is so intolerable.
Merlin: Who's going to be the last person that the dragon eats?
Merlin: You know, it's like... The boat ride home.
John: The last guy to die in World War I.
Merlin: Yeah, I had a little bit of a World War I thing last week.
Merlin: I rewatched, I really, did you mention it to me?
Merlin: Did it come up here?
Merlin: It might have come up with Syracuse of the, Peter Jackson, They Shall Not Grow Old.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And then I was rewatching that, which is just, what an extraordinary movie that is.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And not just because, oh, look, they colorized it, but just because everything, including the creative decision to, like, add in the voices of people talking and stuff like that.
Yeah.
Merlin: Ugh, just unbelievable.
Merlin: But no, absolutely.
Merlin: This whole life thing, it's kind of a tenuous operation in a lot of ways.
John: Oh, we're so strong, but we're so vulnerable at the same time.
John: We're still so strong until we're not.
John: Yeah, we're very fragile underneath being extremely strong.
John: Like, we live for a long time.
John: We live, I mean, maybe not as long as blue whales, but we live longer than any cat.
John: Even the biggest cats, even the best cat, the average person lives a lot longer than the best cat.
Merlin: I saw 22, what claimed to be a 22-year-old dog on Twitter.
Merlin: I follow a lot of dogs.
John: A dog claimed to be 22?
John: That's impressive.
Merlin: It was very derpy.
Merlin: It wasn't claiming anything.
Merlin: But, you know, they do that thing like you do with all old people where you kind of like, you put them in a bib and a special chair and then you put down a cake in front of them and they grimace at the camera and then they send them back to their room.
John: So this was an old, infirm dog.
John: Yeah.
John: You could have been dead at 22.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: Easily.
John: I mean, the thing was, they weren't even giving me wet food at that point.
Merlin: You were just on a dry kibble special diet.
John: I was just getting kibble, yeah.
John: Teen kibble.
John: They fed me teen kibble a lot longer than I... You got kibble for teens?
John: Yeah.
John: For all the various stages.
Merlin: Are there other kinds of food like that you've gotten over time that you can remember?
Merlin: But special needs diets?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, I'm living on it now.
John: It's called Stouffer's lasagna.
John: Stouffer's?
John: Boy, that French bread pizza was good, wasn't it?
Merlin: You know how good that was?
Merlin: I would burn my mouth so bad.
Merlin: There's fucking caraway seeds.
Merlin: And I would burn the roof of my mouth so bad on Stouffer's French bread pizza.
John: See, I never got Stouffer's French bread pizza for a couple of reasons.
What?
John: One, we were not toaster oven people.
John: Okay.
John: So I didn't have a toaster oven.
Merlin: That is a food.
Merlin: You could make it in a conventional oven, but that is a food very made and marketed for toaster ovens.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: And then the other reason was, at some point along the way, I started to figure out that companies...
John: That are making food.
John: Yeah.
John: They fill up the box with a bunch of bread.
John: Oh.
John: And really the stuff that costs them money.
John: Oh.
John: The fixins.
John: The fixins.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: They literally want you to fill up on bread.
John: Fill up on bread.
John: That's how they get you.
John: So they're charging you $9 or whatever for a little bit of sauce and some pepperoni.
Merlin: But you call it French bread and it seems fancy.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You're filling up on French bread.
John: So I'm in the process right now of teaching my daughter some of this.
John: The other day we were at the grocery store and I said, come here.
John: Come here for a second.
John: And she came over and, you know, rolling her eyes.
John: And I was like, all right, look at these two kinds of toilet paper.
John: Now, what can you tell me about these two kinds of toilet paper?
John: I'm just bean-dadding the shit out of her here.
John: What can you tell me?
John: What do you see?
John: Show me what you see.
John: And she goes, you don't stop being a good dad just because it's unpopular, John.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You don't stop being a good dad just because the Internet thinks you're a terrible dad.
Merlin: Just because your career should be ruined for a misunderstanding.
Merlin: But get over here.
Merlin: Get over here.
Merlin: Get over here right now.
John: We're going to learn some stuff.
John: We're going to look at these price tags.
John: Yes.
John: And so we go through the whole thing.
John: She's like 13 rolls, 75 square miles.
John: Yeah.
John: $0.42 a thing.
John: And I was like, right, right.
John: And I'm pointing at it.
John: I'm like, all right, now where do they get you?
John: Where do they get you here?
John: And she's looking at it and she's trying to calculate.
John: Where do they get you?
John: Yeah.
John: And I spend a lot of time at the supermarket going, okay, where do they get you?
John: They're going to get you.
John: Hell yes.
John: And what's the get you?
John: I feel like all those ice creams that have cookie dough in them,
John: They're just putting bread in there.
John: It's just a bunch of bread in the middle of the ice cream.
John: They're fluffing it up.
John: They're fluffing it up with marshmallows.
Merlin: That's because the production, shipping, and marketing of bread is less costly than other kinds of foods like pepperoni or caraway seeds.
John: Exactly.
John: It's much harder to find a caraway seed.
Merlin: You know a 10,000 Maniacs song?
Merlin: Hey, Jay, caraway.
Merlin: That's...
John: I'm still very sick.
John: They made really cool British cars, the Caraways.
John: Is that right?
John: Huh?
John: No, not right exactly.
John: I wouldn't call it right.
Merlin: And so were you able to, was she able to figure out how they get you?
John: Well, eventually, you know, it's one of those, like, the scales fall from your eyes, and you're like, oh, wait, this one says it has more, and it technically does have more, but actually it's less.
John: Because when you compare... Because the bread.
John: Well, when you compare this, it's not the square footage you're looking at, but it's the ounces.
Merlin: Some settling may occur.
John: Totally.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: This, that, and the other.
John: And so her eyes opened, and then she said...
John: But wait, this one is scented with Febreze.
John: And she found in the corner a little like... It'll be Febreze.
John: Scented with Febreze.
John: And we both took a step back in recoil.
Merlin: Like, ugh!
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Scented toilet paper used to be such a thing.
Merlin: And it was just presented as something you needed.
Merlin: And nobody really ever interrogated what the scent was supposed to do.
Merlin: Was it supposed to make your bathroom smell less like shit?
Merlin: Because I don't think toilet paper is going to really carry that for you.
John: No, you're actually applying the scent to your bum.
John: It's scent on the bum is what it is.
Merlin: Scent on the bum.
Merlin: Scent on the bum.
Merlin: But that smells good to you.
Merlin: You're seated there.
Merlin: You're probably feeling a little vulnerable.
Merlin: You just literally took a shit.
Merlin: And maybe that's like a little special thing for you is this smells like, well, what does toilet paper smell like?
John: I think it's meant to be a little gift to the next person that smells your bum, frankly.
John: I see.
John: But Febreze, I have a bad relationship with Febreze.
John: Yeah.
John: Because I order things on eBay, and there's like 10% of eBay sellers try to either conceal some musty smell...
John: Or they really are living in a Febreze-based society where they think Febreze makes a thing smell fresh.
Merlin: Or maybe they're like scent people, like perfume or cologne people, where they've stopped noticing how they're using too much, you know?
John: Yeah, so what they do, you open a package and you're like, oh, I just got this...
John: There's a wonderful vintage thing, and it's just like, oh, Febreze, you can never get that out.
Merlin: But like, okay, when I think of used clothes or old clothes, I think of like, well, the generalized musty smell of an 80s goodwill, but especially mothballs.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's what I, when I think of old clothes, that's, so does, is it one of those things where, again, you go in, you get some potpourri, and you go spray this, and now your bathroom smells like shit and potpourri.
John: People don't use mothballs anymore.
Merlin: Which is a very bad Bell and Sebastian album.
Yeah.
John: I never smell mothballs anymore, but people overuse Febreze because I think they put it on stuff that maybe had somebody smoked cigarettes.
John: Yes.
John: Or they put it on stuff that, yeah, just sat in storage for a long time and to them smells musty dusty.
John: You know, musty dusty is a sign of quality to me as somebody that's buying things that...
John: I hope was sitting in granddad's closet for 50 years.
Merlin: I think just to, to state what might not be obvious to the listener, but it's very obvious to me.
Merlin: Like, don't, don't play with this.
Merlin: Don't mess around with this.
Merlin: Don't do stuff to this.
Merlin: Like to be able to open a box that got sealed when, uh, so sorry to say, say grandpa died in 1968 and all his plaid JCPenney shirts are in there completely unmolested.
Merlin: That's so much nicer to me than a big box of Febreze.
John: Yeah, don't give it to me.
John: Well, so she noticed the Febreze.
John: And then we started walking around looking for the toilet paper that did not have some kind of added garbage on it.
John: And we settled on, oh, here are the toilet papers that because we're not going to use Scott because we're not in college.
Merlin: We're not in prison.
Merlin: You and I had this conversation the first time you stayed in my house.
John: Yes.
John: Do not buy the cheapest toilet paper.
Merlin: The first time that you had reason to notice, you exited my bathroom and you were a grumpy, grumpy bear.
Merlin: I was shaking that toilet paper right at you.
John: What the hell is this?
Merlin: You were shaking it at me.
Merlin: A fistful of toilet paper.
Merlin: You're a grown man.
Merlin: What are you, in college?
Merlin: You can't afford to get a grown person's?
Merlin: Because that is like rest stop.
Merlin: Oh, a nice dense wax paper.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's not pleasant.
Merlin: It doesn't even have any little cushions or anything.
John: No, it needs a little cushion.
John: Sure.
John: You're going to pay a little extra for that.
John: I mean, I'm not a monster, but so, so then, you know, of course, then she's, she's on fire.
John: Right.
John: And we're walking around and she's looking at all of the things.
John: And I'm like, right.
John: Do you see, do you see how this is marked?
Merlin: This is like her version of like falling in love with the blues.
Merlin: You just created a relationship.
Merlin: For her.
Merlin: Now she's got something to look at everywhere.
Merlin: Oh, look at this.
Merlin: Most of this potato chips is there.
John: Yeah, most of this potato chips is there, as we say.
John: Right?
John: But this one, you got to buy three.
John: But I said to her, you know, this whole like buy five thing.
John: And then they're $2 off?
John: A lot of that is baloney.
Merlin: If you get two more, you get one for free.
John: Yeah, but a lot of that's baloney.
Merlin: I know it's baloney, and I object to being told that I'm overlooking a very valuable offer.
Merlin: No, I don't want to enter in my phone number, and then I don't need you telling me, well, you know, I don't know, you can get a second box of MaxiPads for, you know, just go pick up another one.
Merlin: I'm like, we've got all we need.
John: Don't keep me out of your system.
John: Also, there's no cashier at any grocery store in the country that if you go up there and go, hey, I don't have a coupon for this, but I noticed there's a coupon deal.
John: They have the coupons right there, and they will scan the coupons for you.
John: Even if you don't ask them to.
John: Even if they don't.
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: At the Safeway, they'll often, and I appreciate this as a kindness, is they'll offer to put in some kind of generic phone number, which I'm guessing the Safeway Corporation of Pleasant, California does not love.
John: Look, 8-6-7-5-3-0-9 works in any grocery store in the country.
Merlin: Huh, for a good time call.
John: 8-6-7-5-3-0-9.
Merlin: But here's the other thing.
Merlin: I go see my friend at the Walgreens, and we talk about what we're watching.
Merlin: We've done this for many years.
Merlin: He's gotten to see my son grow up, and we're always like, what are you watching?
Merlin: What are you watching?
Merlin: And we'll talk a little bit, and he'll say as we're checking out,
Merlin: I went there to buy some COVID tests the other day.
Merlin: And as we're checking out, he says, do you want to use any of your points?
Merlin: Oh, your points.
Merlin: My Walgreens points.
Merlin: And I always say what I always say, which is like, no, no, I'm going to hang on.
Merlin: I'm going to hang on.
Merlin: You never know when you'll really need them.
John: I do that too.
John: I've got points saved up at my coffee shop here.
John: And they're like, you sure you don't want to use your points?
John: And I'm like, no, man.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: I think it's a latchkey kid thing.
Merlin: I was about to say a poor kid thing, but I think it's true for latchkey kids, too.
Merlin: Up until the last year or so, I wouldn't eat the good piece of chicken first.
Merlin: I would always eat a lesser piece of chicken or the less good piece of pie or whatever.
Merlin: I don't know who I thought I was preserving.
Merlin: Maybe the Pope is going to come and he's going to want a thigh.
Merlin: But you've got to eat the good one first.
Merlin: That could be a book.
John: Merlin, this was a conversation in my family last night at dinner.
John: Liar.
John: Because I save the best bites for last.
John: I always have.
John: Always have.
John: Always have.
Merlin: That's the one I save in the refrigerator in a plastic bag in a 25-cent plastic bag.
Merlin: I save the good one instead of eating it like a person.
John: You eat the stuff that you don't want to eat first, and then you make your way to the great little bits.
John: Well, the problem is that my daughter's mother-slash-partner
John: is one of these eat the best parts first.
John: And so over the years, we've had several, we've had several events where I will have a completed 89% of a meal,
John: And I've got the little steak bits here that are the best little tender bits.
John: And I've got the little vegetable bits here and the little pasta bits here.
John: And they're all the best.
John: It's all been leading up to this.
John: That's right.
John: The best bits.
Merlin: And this is like everything else is like an opener.
Merlin: I mean, it's just an opener.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, with all due respect to openers, but like everything that's been a day long festival.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And it's all been leading up.
Merlin: Now, finally, I don't know the band that you like, you know, that's right.
Merlin: Pulp is going to come out.
Merlin: The Grateful Dead goes on at 2 a.m.
Merlin: Yes, that's right.
Merlin: And they're the last steak bites with the noodles and whatnot.
John: But at this point in the meal, right, conversation, most people are now transitioning to conversation.
John: The food has gotten sort of lukewarm, which is where I like it.
John: And my daughter's mother slash partner will be sitting next to me and she'll go, oh, you're not going to eat that?
John: Boom.
John: No way.
John: That is not cricket, John.
John: She'll just snag.
John: And before I even have a chance, she bombs your bites.
John: She's a bite bomber.
John: Takes the best bites.
John: And I go, I'm saving those bites.
John: And she goes, saving them?
Merlin: Were they already allocated on your plate?
Merlin: Well, what do you mean?
Merlin: Well, was it a group family-style serving dish, or were these already things that you had on your plate?
Merlin: Oh, no, they were on my plate.
Merlin: I just want to verify that that's not okay.
John: I'm not leaving the best bits in the terrine.
John: No.
John: No, the best bits are here, like right on the plate.
John: Oh, you're not going to eat those?
John: Boom.
John: And I go, I don't know why I saved the best bits for last either.
John: But it seems crazy to eat the best bits first.
John: Then the rest of the meal is just trailing off into the, oh, now I got to eat this rind.
John: I got to save the rind for last.
John: Eat the rind.
John: You know, put the rest in your pocket.
John: You know, put the good stuff in your pocket.
John: And then after a week, you've got only good stuff in your pocket.
John: You know, as you're crossing the mountains or whatever, trying to get away from... I understand some pocket tots.
John: I get that.
John: I get that.
John: Yeah, the flood stuff freaks me out.
John: It's the floodplain is what it is.
John: And the bread... The chicks can't hold their smoke.
Merlin: The who?
Merlin: Oh, man, I'm trying to find this photo of Bob Wachter.
Merlin: It's probably out there somewhere.
Merlin: But yeah.
Merlin: Falling on the stairs.
Merlin: I think, I think, poor Bob.
Merlin: I think it's, I think what you're doing is valuable.
Merlin: I don't know if it can be taught.
Merlin: Or I don't know if it can be learned, but it's very valuable.
Merlin: There's that test you do with little kids, and there's a name for this in psychology and perception.
Merlin: But the thing where a kid will generally think that something tall has a larger volume than something wide.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: There's different things where our brain works a funny way with those sorts of things.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I think there's actually a guy, and I'm not going to look this up, but I'm pretty sure there's a guy out there, and he's a nut, but he's a fun nut.
Merlin: There's a nut.
Merlin: There's a guy who's a nut.
Merlin: And he's, with all due respect, I've never met the man, as far as I know.
Merlin: But there's a guy, and his whole deal is, ah, this is how they get you.
Merlin: And he's that guy who, like, first did the whole, like, hey, did anybody notice that this is the same size can of coffee, but it's got less coffee in it now?
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: All that kind of stuff.
Merlin: And he's very into this and he's ready to show up.
Merlin: If we wanted to have, what's the name of our show?
Merlin: Roderick and the Rebel?
John: Yeah, Roderick.
John: No, it was the Rebel and Stephen John.
John: Stephen John and the Rebel.
John: Stephen.
John: What?
John: Stephen John and the Rebel.
John: Oh, Stephen John.
Merlin: I think it's Stephen John.
Merlin: Stephen John.
Merlin: I would never do a morning show with somebody who has two first names.
Oh.
Merlin: Stephen John.
Merlin: Stephen John and the Rebel.
Merlin: Roderick and the Rebel's good, too, though.
Merlin: But Stephen John, and we could probably get this guy.
Merlin: I know we could get him on Zoom, but we might could even get him in studio, assuming we have a studio in Richmond.
Merlin: But he would probably come on.
Merlin: He would talk about, you could have him on.
Merlin: You could have your daughter on.
Merlin: He could sit on your couch.
Merlin: And you guys could talk about how they get you and bread.
John: You know, the problem with being both, as you and I have talked, you know, I have attention deficit disorder and you have hyperactivity disorder, two versions of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
John: And I don't believe that my daughter has those things, but I also combined attention deficit with stoner disorder.
John: And what that produced was many nights where I would be in a 24 hour grocery store walking around going, well, that's how they get you.
John: And I would spend two and a half hours trying to buy four things and I would leave the grocery store with nothing and
John: Because I had found all the ways that they get you, and I had not decided which was the way that they got you the least.
John: Right.
John: And so I would walk out of there.
John: Because it's all contextual.
John: Yes.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: I mean, even if you get into stuff like, oh, you know, if you buy three, you get a freebie, and you're like, ah, if you're offering me something, I know it's a jam up.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: It's all related.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Is this a jackpot?
Merlin: I don't want any kind of jackpot here.
Merlin: I don't want jackpot.
Merlin: I'm not going to pay for bread I don't want.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Merlin: So you wander around, you're a little stoned, and for some amount of time, you would go around and you would really read the labels, you think?
John: Oh, well, I'd sit there and there's four kinds of sun-dried tomatoes packed in olive oil here.
John: And they're all from Italy.
John: But this one's that and that one's this.
John: And it's impossible to parse, right?
John: Because they're all, like, this one's a different size, but, you know, it's also on sale.
John: And this one, you know, and you're stoned, of course.
John: So you're trying to carry all this information in your mind at the same time.
Merlin: And then you've got to remember, did I do that aisle yet?
Merlin: Did I do that aisle?
Merlin: So back this aisle seems familiar.
John: And it's like there's nine kinds of toilet paper.
John: This is too much for me right now.
John: I'm going to come back to this after I go look at the cheese.
John: And then you're like, I got to go back to the toilet paper.
John: You go back.
John: You feel like, okay, I gave it a break, right?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And now I'm ready to really take this off.
Merlin: You get back into the thick of it, yeah.
John: Yeah, and it's like, okay, I've narrowed it down to these three.
John: Everything else is a non-starter.
John: But between these three, I'm really – how do you put a price on comfort is the thing.
John: Right.
John: This is all knowing that knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
John: Oscar Wilde.
John: Right.
John: Like how.
John: Yeah.
John: I think that was Abraham Lincoln.
John: But yeah.
John: Might have been Mark Twain.
Merlin: But absolutely.
Merlin: But again, context, context, context.
Merlin: It's all related, including you being high.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's certain things where when one was, I remember once when I was fairly high in college, I remember a couple of friends and I did what we would do, which we made macaroni and cheese, you know, from a box.
John: Sure, sure.
Merlin: And we read the instructions and we couldn't stop laughing for half an hour that they wanted us to boil eight quarts of water to make macaroni and cheese.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: If you go read the instructions, go read the instructions.
Merlin: And the thing is, here's the thing.
Merlin: I use a lot more water than other people in things.
Merlin: My wife, really, I don't know who she thinks she's saving when she uses not enough water for the pasta.
Merlin: Everything should be floating free, in my opinion.
Merlin: With that said, go find a pot that somebody in college has that can accommodate eight quarts of water.
Merlin: Do you know how much water that is for the amount of dried macaroni that's in one of them boxes?
John: You know, this is a good example, right?
John: You can get Kroger brand macaroni for pennies on the dollar compared to your craft dinner.
John: But you're not going to buy Kroger macaroni.
John: Anybody that's ever lived is not, you know, that's where you splurge.
Merlin: That's one way I would occasionally try to, you know, to save a little bit of my dignity is I would buy the second cheapest ramen.
John: But then you realize Annie's comes in over the top with their like organic.
Merlin: Are you talking to me about Annie's macaroni and cheese in a box?
John: I'm flying in.
Merlin: Are you aware of how fucking good that macaroni and cheese in a box is?
John: It's really good.
Merlin: It's twice as expensive.
Merlin: Yeah, I don't want to oversell it.
Merlin: We eventually started buying it because, you know, I don't know if your kid has done this, but my kid will go through a phase where there's like, there's a world the way it was.
Merlin: And then one day there's the way the world is.
Merlin: And it's going to always be that way until it's not.
Merlin: Where the kid will go through like a phase for a week or two years and you never really know.
Merlin: And so I've stocked up on all this shit in the past that the kid suddenly just bounced on.
Merlin: Like, oh, I'm not really not into stoke iced coffee anymore.
Merlin: Well, I got like six of these here and they're kind of expensive.
Merlin: Annie's, I think it's called Annie's and it's a white cheddar.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: with uh they use shells they use a lot of shells that's right they do they do but boy oh boy is that ever that is a tasty and you cut you cut you up some ham put it in there wieners we had wieners last night my kid will not uh will not turn her nose up at anything that says annie's on it she feels like annie's is quality stuff cheddar bunnies
John: At Cheddar Bunny, she likes them.
John: If you put Annie's out there in front of her, she's like, this is the good stuff.
John: And I'm like, you know what?
John: Don't just get used to the good stuff.
John: Like life deals with some slings and arrows.
John: You know, you're going to have to sometimes pivot to top ramen.
John: I'm sorry.
John: I'm sorry to say not even the good stuff.
Merlin: And the thing is, if you don't, I mean, I struggle with this because on the one hand, I realized that the sense of privation that I grew up with was very traumatic in a lot of ways for me.
Merlin: And I'll always be kind of like fighting that war.
Merlin: But I don't want my kid to be weird about only being able to eat this or that.
Merlin: Ultimately, I just don't want the kid to have an eating disorder.
Merlin: If I can just squeak through with that one, I'll be happy.
Merlin: But also, if you can't enjoy crappy hotel coffee, you're missing out on one of the great things in life.
John: What are you going to do when you pull over at a truck stop in Iowa and there's only one kind of coffee?
John: I mean, you can not drink coffee.
Merlin: I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but when you do that, you're robbing yourself of the joy of something turning out better than you expected.
Merlin: Ah.
Merlin: Which I think is really important.
Merlin: It's like there was a family member in my family.
Merlin: I don't know why this story always pops top of mind, except this really was such a thing that this person would do.
Merlin: She went on like a fancy like vacation to like this beautiful, like remote beach spot.
Merlin: And the story goes that she was miffed for a day because she couldn't get any recent magazines.
Merlin: And it's like, well, it took me a while to learn that you have to learn to enjoy what the place is good at.
Merlin: And to perhaps, maybe you differ, but I would say avoid the things that they're maybe not so good at.
Merlin: Stop ordering the room service pizza in the Dominican Republic, mayhaps.
Merlin: Maybe not the best thing on the menu.
Merlin: Oriental night, that's where they really shine.
Merlin: Literally called Oriental night.
Merlin: but no but here's the thing and that way if you show up somewhere and they've got fucking highlights magazine you're like that's cool I haven't looked at highlights in years and now you just got a little treat instead of something you're disappointed about and like if the coffee's not as bad as you expected you can we went to this
Merlin: convenience store in new jersey a couple weeks ago it's one of my favorite things i've ever been to i love this place so much there's a guy this is i think a seek man he's making breakfast sandwiches so many breakfast sandwiches they got every kind of everything in this place they got phone cables and john they have an area with a cafe table with two chairs that is just for people to scratch off their lottery tickets oh wow which i'd never seen before this is what you get in a city with with more you know room
Merlin: But like, that's a little, now if I'd gone into that place saying I wonder if they'll have the latest Vogue, and they didn't, I'd be bummed.
Merlin: Not to hang that person out to dry.
Merlin: But that's what I worry about.
Merlin: You will never realize how many times you've missed the chance to enjoy something for what it is rather than what you think you wished it were.
John: I get a lot of flack around here.
John: I mean, it's not like we grew up in the Depression, but we did grow up in a time when nobody was minding us.
John: And I get a lot of I get a lot of teasing, let's call it, for my my frequent meals that are made up of all the leftovers put together basically certainly on one plate, but maybe sometimes in one pot.
John: And they will look at me and they'll go, okay.
Merlin: Very permissive, very permissive, inclusive approach to leftovers.
John: Yeah.
John: So somebody will say, now, wait a minute.
John: Those are Thai noodles.
John: That's basmati rice.
John: That is, you know, almond chicken.
John: All that needs is a gravy and you're done.
John: Well, and the thing is, it will make its own gravy if you put it in a pot with a half a cup of water.
Yeah.
John: Just like gravy train.
John: The rice comes back to life.
John: The noodles come back to life.
John: Now you're frying it a little bit.
John: You're putting a little crust on it.
John: You got the Chinese food, the Indian food, the Thai food.
John: You put in chives, maybe?
John: Chives?
John: Yeah, you throw in a little bit of beef stew.
John: And they sit and watch me do it.
John: And they're like, what the hell are you doing?
John: And I'm like, well, A, I'm eating all the leftovers.
John: So I'm cleaning out the fridge.
John: You're welcome.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: I'm keeping this stuff.
John: And obviously, the oldest of this stuff is like 10 days old.
John: But it's going to be fine.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: Because that's what they call it.
Merlin: In stats, they call it a reversion to the mean.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: If the average is four days old.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: As long as you mix it up and you put in some stuff that's fresh, it offsets the other ones.
John: Now, here's the genius.
John: Yeah.
John: At the same time, I'm making a small pot of spaghetti or scabetti, as we call it around here.
John: Right.
John: And then you put it all on top of a little bit of scabetti.
Right.
John: Okay.
John: And the whole place goes up in flames, right?
John: Every single person in my family, their mind is on fire.
John: Are they worried you're going to expect them to eat it?
John: No, no, no.
John: They know.
John: They know.
John: I mean, I know better.
John: You know.
John: You know.
John: That anybody's going to have anything to do with this.
John: And here's the thing.
John: Two out of seven times, it's a disaster.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, it is not.
John: First of all, it didn't belong on spaghetti.
John: That is not bad at all.
John: Two out of seven, right?
John: Two out of seven is not bad at all.
John: You know, sometimes Chinese food doesn't go on spaghetti.
Merlin: No, I mean, what I'm saying is the implication being five out of seven is palatable enough.
John: Yeah, five out of seven.
John: Well, the thing is, I'll eat the two times that is a disaster.
John: Of course you will.
John: That's the point.
John: I'll sit there and go, ah, plum sauce and, you know, and like spaghetti sauce, it's not actually, you know.
John: But...
John: I'm going to eat it anyway because God made the rat.
John: And you made the leftovers.
John: That's right.
John: That's what I'm here to do.
John: Because what the hell are we going to do when the shit hits the fan and all we have is almond chicken spaghetti.
John: And Thai noodles.
John: Well, we're going to eat it and we're not going to be saying French bread pizza.
John: We don't have any.
John: We're going to be glad for this.
John: And, you know, and at least one of us is grateful for it all the time.
John: Grateful for what you got.
John: What if mom doesn't come back?
John: Tonight.
John: I would assume that a lot of times.
John: Every time mom goes out, you got to be prepared for mom not to come back.
John: Have a plan.
John: Keep a small bag packed.
John: From 1972 to 1979, I was never sure anybody was going to come back.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, they go out, and it's like, I don't know.
John: Sometimes they don't come back.
Merlin: Everybody talks about the importance of education, but do we really, really sit with the importance of just learning?
Merlin: When you learn that sometimes people just don't come home.
Merlin: And sometimes that's good.
John: I mean, you know, that's right.
John: In some families, the longer it takes for them to come home, the better.
Merlin: It was a relief to me when my stepfather threw us out of the house.
Merlin: In some ways, in the long run, I can make anything palatable.
Merlin: Just put enough sauce on it.
John: You know, my dad would sometimes come home at two in the afternoon.
John: He would sometimes come home at 11 o'clock at night.
Merlin: Would he go straight to another room without saying anything?
John: No, he never did that.
John: But he was always glad to see me.
John: But he did not know about...
John: You know, time was a flat circle to him.
John: And if he got to a point when he was sitting at the office and he was like, I don't want to sit at this desk anymore, he would get up and say to his staff, I'm leaving.
John: And they would go, Roger, chief.
John: And then he would go out and I don't know.
Merlin: Which was very, very unconventional.
Merlin: Like you just you'd like you don't leave work.
Merlin: You don't miss work.
Merlin: You're not late for work.
Merlin: I'm so happy that our society has finally broken on this idea that that's the only way to live.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's like it's just it's always been so stupid.
Merlin: But you got to treat yourself.
John: I was talking to somebody the other day that's in the real estate game.
John: And he said, listen, housing prices are still going up.
John: But what nobody realizes is that right before COVID started, everybody that owned a downtown business signed a five-year lease.
John: It's just the way it was 2020.
John: It was a cycle.
John: Everybody's on a five-year lease.
John: All those leases are about to come up and not get renewed.
John: And we're going to watch downtown real estate continue.
John: Go bonkers in every city in the world And he said it's gonna throw the global economy
John: It's going to make 1979 look like 1929.
John: Wow.
John: Because of Skylab.
John: I'm like, come on, no.
John: And he's like, I'm telling you, look, go around.
John: Because we were in an office building.
John: And he said, when you leave here, go around this building and look in the other offices on this floor.
John: Then go down and look at the other offices in this building.
John: And he said, with in mind that as soon as our lease is up,
John: Like two years from now, we're out of here.
John: And I went and I looked around through the little, the long, thin glass pane next to the door of all these offices.
John: Yeah, where you can kind of peek in and see what, you know.
John: Yeah, all empty.
John: And there's just, there's conference tables in there.
John: I'm telling you, it's so odd.
Merlin: That's weird.
Merlin: I mean, like, we've got the big – as in front of the show, Jason likes to remind me, the doom loop narrative here.
Merlin: Oh, doom loop.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: There's a lot going on here.
Merlin: What's the doom loop?
John: Is this something you get articles from Jason Finn about?
Merlin: Yeah, but I mean, it's –
Merlin: It's a lot to get into, but I was more to say that I don't think this is peculiar to San Francisco.
Merlin: It's just that we not only see it, feel it, experience these problems more acutely here, but we're also very into reading about these problems here.
Merlin: Whether that's car break-ins or, you know, whatever it is.
Merlin: And it's...
Merlin: I have thought about that an awful lot.
Merlin: And some of the, just some of the sort of paradoxical things that happen, like, just like in San Francisco, there's all these things that again, start with a good heart, probably, but too much, too much, you know, good heart and not enough strong head and a lot of implementation stuff.
Merlin: Strong head.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Strong head.
Merlin: I should sleep.
Merlin: Um, no, but like just this idea of like trying to like make sure all these kinds of laws and like, you're going to force people to do things and you get to really, it's hard to get permits and there's all this stuff and all the kind of notoriously famous San Francisco stuff.
Merlin: And, but it's, you guys don't enforce the laws there.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: Is that what I've been reading?
Merlin: No, they're, they're pretty enforcey here.
John: That's part of the problem.
Merlin: Is it some of the laws, but not all of the laws?
Merlin: Well, I mean, I'm trying to avoid going into one particular thing, but let's just say in general, like, the whole thing with, like, what you can do with zoning, what we're doing with drugs, what's happening with drugs in the tenderloin, and, like, there's just a lot of crazy shit going on, but, like, you've got all these laws about, like, if your place, your business is vacant, and this is all, there's so many asterisks on every single one of these things, you can get, like...
Merlin: The equivalent of I would not call this a tax, but the equivalent of a tax.
Merlin: Like if you if your place is empty for too long and it's like on a commercial corridor or it's this or that.
Merlin: And of course, that has to meet all of these requirements.
Merlin: If it has there's their residencies above it.
Merlin: You know how it is.
Merlin: You know, zoning stuff works.
Merlin: It's the big you've talked about this.
John: It's so they're going to penalize people for having empty buildings.
Merlin: Now, that is actually weirdly unevenly sort of enforced.
Merlin: Either the, like, do you meet the zoning for this area that's incredibly strict because of this?
Merlin: But it's also, it's just not, I mean, here's what I can say, and I'm a big, dumb liberal.
Merlin: And, like, unlike my land... I'm a big, dumb liberal.
Merlin: Hey, look at me.
Merlin: Hey, everybody.
Merlin: Look at me.
Merlin: I'm Homer Simpson.
Merlin: But, you know, like, when our...
Merlin: someone absentee landlord had to fix our sidewalk.
Merlin: Oh my God.
Merlin: He went into such a rage.
Merlin: I can't even tell you all the things because the sidewalk's cracked.
Merlin: You got to take care of this.
Merlin: You got to take care of your own graffiti.
Merlin: You got to take care of your own, you know, pack your own shoot kind of stuff.
Merlin: And he's so mad.
Merlin: The liberals made him pull all these permits just to like fix the sidewalk that didn't need to be fixed.
Merlin: But it's kind of, there are elements to that where it's, do you remember that place?
Merlin: Remember a place that used to be arts TV?
Yeah.
Merlin: Remember, they had that cool mural.
Merlin: I took photos of you and Josh.
Merlin: It had the Star Trek.
Merlin: Anyway, that place got renovated into this wild pub, I think, over five years ago.
Merlin: But because the guy who was developing that was in a war with this very powerful Chinese lady from the west side of town, she had a house that he was renovating declared...
Merlin: historic landmark in the middle of redoing it right as he was finishing this punch in the nose yeah that's the kind of stuff that happens it's very some real chicago back room oh i get it it's a gang war but it's also just it's just weird because like there's there's this thing happens all over i'm sorry i'm talking so much i'm sick i don't know but if you the you know you do all this this fucked up stuff to like
Merlin: Fix what you imagine is the problem.
Merlin: So like with Rudy Giuliani, you just say like, oh, we're just not – we're going to have an M&M store here and homeless people aren't allowed to be here.
Merlin: Problem solved.
Merlin: And like in San Francisco, it's like there's all these wars of like, oh, was this DA too soft on crime?
Merlin: And what about the mayor's belief in this and all this stuff?
Merlin: And it's all just – it's so vacuous and unconnected.
Merlin: disconnected and it's it's again even when you start with a good heart there's just a fuck ton of places nobody wants to rent here and when the when things think about like we're watching some uh i don't know if you're watching a good show on hbo called silicon valley it's about you know a tech startup it's very funny mike judge show and but like even that show from just a few years ago there's the whole bit about how martin star's character who i met at max fun con
Merlin: Martin Starr's character, like he's getting all these offers, these gift baskets from all these different companies just to like be aware that they want to talk to him.
Merlin: And like how that's, there's so much stuff that we were counting on along the lines of that five-year lease thing you're talking about.
Merlin: Like, hey, this thing will continue to thrive.
Merlin: Rising tide raises all boats, all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: But I, maybe I'm just apocalyptic in this way of thinking, but there are times when I wonder like, when is the next really big chunk going to fall out?
Merlin: That's not climate change.
Merlin: And like I said, I think it could be Florida.
Merlin: Florida's going to drag the whole goddamn thing down, I'm telling you.
John: Well, hopefully it just sinks into the ocean.
John: And believe me, I love Florida and I love all the people in Florida.
John: I don't want anybody to sink into the ocean.
John: But a lot of people are saying, well, why don't they just convert all those downtown offices to apartments?
John: And of course, what is true is those kind of...
John: old 1920s, really solid downtown office buildings that are all 25 to 30 stories tall, those actually are pretty easy to convert.
John: Not easy, but they're easier.
Merlin: They are more, for a variety of reasons, including infrastructure, they are more conducive to that kind of conversion than stuff that was built in the 90s.
John: Yeah, all those big glass towers, there's no converting those into apartments.
John: That's crazy.
John: But what I'm hoping is
John: is that you'll be able to rent a whole floor of one of those skyscrapers for, like, pennies on the dollar, at which point there's going to be all... You remember, you know, all the stories.
John: We just missed it.
John: You and I just missed it.
Merlin: All the stories of, like, all those people that went down into Soho in New York and they rented these... Right, like, when the loft stuff started in the 70s, when you could, like, get, like, an entire thing that used to be a slaughterhouse for $8 a month or whatever.
John: Yeah, I was, you know, I was just in Tel Aviv, and...
John: There's this neighborhood in Tel Aviv that's like the – it's the old port, like the ancient port, Jaffa.
John: And there's these neighborhoods that clearly for a long time were just shabby falling down little nothing kind of garbage neighborhood that –
John: just recently got discovered by hipsters and artists and cool kids.
John: And now all of these little tumble down sort of warehouses are just full of people making custom skateboards and, you know, and knitting beanies that have SpongeBob on them.
John: And, you know, but also like playing rock and roll in the middle of the night.
John: And there's cafes.
Merlin: It doesn't have to be a great and sustainable idea to take a throw.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, you don't have to have the capital or the investment to like say, oh, here's my business plan for how this works over the next five or 10 years.
Merlin: You could you can do something that's a little bit wild and crafty.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Because the overhead is so different.
John: Well, and the problem is that Jaffa now is like the most expensive neighborhood to live in.
John: Like and so you walk through and you look at all these guys with tattoos on their faces that are making that are carving surfboards.
John: And you're like, how the hell are you here?
John: Well, the thing was they were there, they got in there back not that long ago when it was shit.
John: And so they're still, you know, they can still afford to be there.
John: It's why it's expensive because the rich people are like, I want to be around those guys because that's how hip-dee-da-ba-dee-do.
John: But I'm really hoping for an escape from New York scenario where I can sell this house in the suburbs with all the trees that nobody can get anywhere else.
John: Like, hey, you want trees?
John: I got trees.
John: And then rent an entire floor.
John: Wind chimes, I'm going to leave them in the trees.
John: Yep, yep, yep.
John: I hurt my knee the other day and so I haven't been able to climb a ladder But when I get back when I get back on ladders, which is coming any day now I'm gonna put I'm gonna move the wind chimes from the house to the neighboring trees because the house Isn't getting the wind that I want I'm looking out.
Merlin: I can see the trees moving but the wind chimes are silent You it was frustrating to you because when you first installed these you you were having a certain stillness
John: There's too much stillness.
John: Yeah.
John: And that's wonderful.
John: You got to go where the wind is.
John: You got to go where you got it.
John: You take the chimes to the wind.
John: The wind doesn't follow the chimes.
John: But so can you imagine me like living in a gutted, you know, one bathroom on the whole floor, but it's got 15 urinals and the elevator opens right into the window at all.
John: Well, you couldn't even open the windows because the windows don't open on those things because I'd be on the 75th floor.
John: That's true.
John: I feel like there'd be no wind chimes there except, like, hanging in the building.
John: I'd put wind chimes in the apartment, and then I'd point fans at them.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Because that's the kind of nut I'm going to be.
John: Yes.
John: Like a 60-year-old nut living on the 75th floor of an abandoned high-rise.
John: Yeah.
John: Can't you see it?
Merlin: You can see it.
Merlin: I absolutely can.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, when I first got my e-bike last year, I became somewhat radicalized beyond how I was already radicalized.
Merlin: Long story short, I discovered a bunch of, well, I mean, the things I always feel the need, I'm defensive about this, I feel the need to distinguish between being anti-car and being pro-options.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Like I'm not against cars.
Merlin: I just, I don't like a world in which a car is the only option and everything else has to die or be actively killed.
Merlin: And that's where I first learned about this concept that has become really important to me, the idea of the Strode.
Merlin: It's kind of a street.
Merlin: It's kind of a road.
Merlin: It's like every time you pull off of a, you know, highway and like, there's like a, like a Bob Evans and a Best Buy there, that's a Strode because it's a Strode because it's,
Merlin: it is a road in the sense of being a place a lot of people want to get from one place to another very quickly.
Merlin: So it functions as a road.
Merlin: But it's also a street because there's a lot of places that people are going to stop and want to get Bob Evans or Best Buy.
Merlin: And anytime you've had to walk on the shoulder of a road like that, you instantly know when you're around it.
Merlin: But there's this whole culture of, I don't know, there's just really interesting.
Merlin: Again, I discovered it through e-bike stuff, but I've found a lot of people have common cause about these ideas about how do we make our cities
Merlin: more sustainable and to provide more options for doing all kinds of different things in a city.
Merlin: And yeah, sometimes that means we can't have cars always win and get all these crazy laws about opening a place.
Merlin: Again, all the laws about how many parking spaces you have to have
Merlin: If you want to open a store and it's like, okay, whatever.
Merlin: But one of the things I ran across in that is just this idea that think about the things you see on Strode's where you'll see like a giant, like not to cast any shade, but like some kind of like a, like a popular new kind of fast casual dining.
Merlin: Like you can even say like it's a super Arby's or whatever.
John: Fast cash.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But a place comes in and they get dropped in.
Merlin: It's like if it's like a Chili's.
Merlin: I mean, every floor plan is exactly identical.
Merlin: The parking lot's all exactly the same.
Merlin: But there's all kinds of problems with what can happen in the future.
Merlin: Whether it's a big box store or that's a Chili's or a super Arby's.
Merlin: One way that we have broken from a lot of urban traditions in America is it used to be what you described, that there were all kinds of spaces that could be a lot of different things, unsafe things.
Merlin: But I've known people whose apartment used to be a store.
Merlin: I've known people whose maybe their store used to be an apartment.
Merlin: There was room for that in the kind of building that we used to do that we just don't do anymore.
Merlin: Who's going to want the two-year-old Chili's?
John: Who's going to want to live in a super Arby's?
John: Maybe it's me.
John: We have the meats.
Maybe it's me.