Ep. 508: "A Collerary of Bastiks"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: Do you have a preference?
Merlin: Would you want to try some different ones?
Merlin: Let's workshop it.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: I need your help.
Merlin: So what do you say?
Merlin: You say hello, right?
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: No.
No.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hey, guys.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: We can try the other way around.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: That sounds right.
Merlin: Yeah, I don't know, man.
Merlin: That's it.
Merlin: It is what it is.
Merlin: Yeah, I know.
Merlin: Do you agree?
Merlin: Yeah, no, no, no, I do agree.
Merlin: It's a corollary to being in the show, I think.
John: Or a collarary.
Merlin: You're not supposed to make fun of that.
Merlin: Oh, a good con, con, con, con Larry of the neighbors.
Merlin: Uh, Skibetti.
Merlin: I say that a lot now.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: That makes me happy.
Merlin: Oh, well you, I mean, I mean, I don't like to draw the connection cause you know, we're, we're trying to be nice, but, and do what we're told by our children.
Merlin: But, uh, the big one is Bastic.
Merlin: Oh, that's, that is, that is canon in our house now.
John: It is.
John: It became a, it became a thing.
John: Oh yeah.
John: I just put it in the Bastic.
John: Oh, you know, you and I go back and forth a lot where we say, say things to each other on the texts.
John: And I noticed when I just was having a little computer problem, I said, Oh, I'm having a pure problem.
John: And you said, Roger in reply.
John: And I remember very distinctly,
John: A friend, a guy by the name of Peter, was the one that started me saying...
John: Roger in reply to huh your friend Peter from like high school no he was a he was a Seattle guy a grunge era friend he said Roger in the 90s he said Roger yeah and I was you know I came up in airplanes I mean I'd certainly heard Roger used that way but I didn't it hadn't it wasn't part of my lexicon it wasn't like if somebody said all right we're all going to meet at seven I wouldn't
John: I wouldn't have said Roger.
John: I would have said, oh, okay.
John: And so this guy, Peter, said Roger.
John: And I adopted it.
John: And then it became a thing that I just said, and then Johnny Appleseeded everywhere.
John: You know, because I say Roger in reply to everything.
Merlin: Just so you know, I mean, Roger and Wilco, they can do mean different things, correct?
John: Oh, for sure.
John: You know, Roger is message received.
John: Wilco is will comply.
John: Will comply.
John: Interesting.
Merlin: And you, Johnny Appleseeded that.
John: Yeah, I feel like I have said Roger for so long in reply.
John: And it's such an elegant way of saying act.
John: acknowledge right um that i it's a little friendlier to the non-dorky lay person yeah it's they're gonna think you're doing kathy or build a cat it's a thumbs up roger is a is is a thumbs up emoji right yeah but uh but the real one for me was scott danbaum a piano player of the late great centromatic band mm-hmm
John: Scott Danbaum, I'm outing myself now, was the first person in my adult life to call somebody a ding-dong.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: Ding-a-ling came from somewhere else because that has been widely adopted now by me and others.
John: Well, but ding-a-ling was a... We talked about this at least once.
John: It's a corollary.
John: It's a collary.
John: It's a collary of Aztecs.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, but so we were down in Texas.
John: We were in Denton, Texas.
John: We're sitting around and some... I don't remember exactly what it was.
John: Probably some guy drove by blowing coal or something.
Yeah.
John: and uh and as he goes by uh dan bomb says man that guy's ding dong ah that's pretty good i was like with a southern accent especially ding dong it just it was like the skies opened up i said ding dong ding dong and i'm i immediately started using it and then i think ding-a-ling because sometimes you're talking to somebody's mom or grandma you don't want to say ding-dong right right in front of her no and i think ding-a-ling came as a
John: like a gentler way of saying ding-dong, I started using them both interchangeably.
John: But I really want to give credit.
John: It's like all those Instagram accounts where they –
John: They steal a photo and they don't credit the photographer.
John: Yeah, you even kept his watermark on.
John: I want to... Peter.
John: Thank you, Peter.
Merlin: Peter, you know, Peter's kind of a dick in other ways, so I'm not going to give him... Can I give you my mental model on the distinction and you tell me if you think I'm anywhere close?
Merlin: I feel like...
Merlin: Believe it or not, ding-dong is also a word that my wife has used as long as I've known her.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And this, I will see to you that this is probably just a result of my own exposure to one person's usage.
Merlin: But I think of ding-dong as a temporary space cadet state and a ding-a-ling as being somebody who's, let's reserve ding-a-ling for a minute, but she'll go like, oh, geez, I'm such a ding-dong.
Merlin: Like, and now I say that, oh man, that was, I forgot to, I forgot to put the color area in the Bastic.
Merlin: What a ding dong.
Merlin: And I think of a ding-a-ling as being somebody, and maybe now this is probably affected by the internet, but you know, I think a ding-a-ling is somebody where you're like, ah, you know, when you see it and it's like, you really haven't thought about that, have you?
Merlin: That's one of them.
Merlin: Like, how do you distinguish, if you distinguish?
John: Oh, for sure.
John: For sure.
John: I think I lean a little harder on Ding Dong being somebody who's actively being stupid.
Merlin: You may not be a professional jackass, but you're acting like a jackass right now.
John: That kind of usage?
John: Well, yeah, but Ding Dong feels like the harder edge of the two.
John: Ding-a-ling...
John: you seem like a yeah it's what you would say cops yeah kind of like a batty spinster aunt you know like dingaling um yeah and you could you know like i i would call my uh my daughter if she was engaged in some dingaling activity i would say hey dingaling don't don't uh set fire to the see this is and john i i feel like this could be a rich vein um
Merlin: I don't know if you have other topics top of mind, but... No, I never do.
Merlin: Okay, me neither.
Merlin: I listened to a record of yours this weekend, and I wanted to mention that.
Merlin: But there was that.
Merlin: There was one other thing.
Merlin: That's one.
Merlin: I think I have a long COVID.
Merlin: And I... So Ding Dong, Ding-A-Ling.
Merlin: These are also great...
Merlin: Dad words.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: One of the greatest dad words from our time that I'm pretty sure you also enjoy.
Merlin: Quit being such a turkey.
John: I do love calling somebody a turkey.
Merlin: Isn't turkey good?
Merlin: Now, I don't know.
Merlin: That might be offensive in other lands, but in the U.S., it just means you're being a turkey.
Yeah.
John: So Sean Nelson used to say turkey.
John: It's a funny word.
John: But he would say it.
John: I got three strikes in Wii Bowling on Sunday, and I said I got a turkey.
John: Oh, a turkey.
John: Yeah.
John: Sean would always do it in the voice of Richard Dreyfuss in the movie Goodbye Girl.
John: Turkey.
John: Turkey.
John: He had this perfect ability to imitate Richard Dreyfuss only, I think, in that one instance.
Yeah.
John: But he would say... Oh, I would love for him to develop that.
John: Yeah, and it would put you right in... We'd be in the van.
John: It would put you right into the center of the movie Goodbye Girl, a thing that only people of a certain age and temperament... That was the golden age of the PG movie.
John: It really was.
John: Right in the heart of it, you know?
Merlin: You really could take Graham on.
Merlin: There'd only be a couple scenes that were objectionable.
John: There was a... Apart from all the Jews.
John: There was a little bit... There was a goddamn...
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Woo!
Merlin: Grandpa, tell me again why they can't be Masons.
Merlin: Well.
John: But yeah, Goodbye Girl, he was drunk that one point.
John: I've never seen it.
Merlin: I only know it from references.
Merlin: I know the David Gates song, and I know it from a reference on Seinfeld.
Merlin: I've never seen the movie.
John: No, you're kidding.
John: You're kidding me right now.
John: It was 1977 condensed into a single film.
John: Don't talk down to me.
Merlin: When I say whatever the fuck I said a minute ago, the golden age of PG movies, I'm thinking here things like you think about you're from like 76 to 82.
Merlin: Yeah, I was there.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I'm not going to talk down to you.
Merlin: It's your show.
Merlin: But I think about something like California Suite, like something that used to be on like HBO or Showtime a lot.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, and back before they put to Taze and everything.
John: Richard Dreyfuss won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
John: He was the youngest, youngest actor to get an Academy Award.
Merlin: huh this it's one of the that's not accurate at the time at the time there have been younger ones well i mean there was there was you know tatum o'neill and yeah that's best actress oh i used to make a distinction that that that is that is accurate i
Merlin: I've had, you know, Richard Dreyfuss Renaissance in the last year or two where I've returned to Jaws numerous times.
Merlin: I finally returned to Close Encounters a couple times in the last year.
Merlin: Both movies so much funnier than you remember.
Merlin: And Richard Dreyfuss is so funny in both.
John: He's so funny.
John: Yes.
John: Although Close Encounters.
John: It's funny, but it's slow.
John: And all those scenes with Terry Garr, they make me sad inside.
John: I want to save her.
John: I was watching Mr. Mom last week, too.
John: Oh, Mr. Mom.
John: The thing about Goodbye Girl, it was my first Neil Simon movie.
John: It was my first introduction to... The same from bread?
John: To that whole thing about... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: My first exposure to a thing that wasn't Masonic.
John: right oh oh but but also the troubled relationship movie yes that's right and there's there's a there a single mom and uh and a precocious child that that speaks above her her years but is still emotionally which was fine at the time we overdid it in the 80s a little bit a little bit yeah but it's also one of those movies this is the amazing thing about it you'll watch it
John: And you realize that, oh, the people in the movie are – not only are they supposed to be, but the actors themselves are under 30 –
John: But you look at it, and they seem 45.
John: Right, right.
John: And nowadays, it's like, I don't know what happened.
John: It's like looking at an old photograph.
John: It's like looking at my mom's yearbooks.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: My mom graduated in 1956.
Merlin: And we talked about this.
Merlin: Your mom talked about wanting to listen, like my mom listened to Nat King Cole, not the Beatles and Elvis or whatever.
Merlin: You said your mom wanted to be an adult.
John: Yeah, she wanted to be jazzed.
Merlin: Put aside the childish things.
John: That's right.
John: So watching it, it's a time capsule in so many ways.
John: And I sat and watched it with my kid and she was like, there is no fighting in this movie except for people yelling at each other in the kitchen, which is not the fun kind of fighting.
John: There are no car chases.
John: There's no... Yeah.
John: Like, who is the star of this movie, and why are they doing Richard III?
John: I don't know what that is.
Merlin: I say this, nothing against your daughter, nothing against the world, but I do think there are a lot of people who grew up and learned to love movies, new movies, based on a certain kind of IP thing.
Merlin: At the very least, I mean, we've always had movie stars, right?
Merlin: It's one thing to go like, oh, here's Marsha Mason, right?
Merlin: Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss, and you know them from other things.
Merlin: But like...
Merlin: I wonder if there are people who watch a movie like that and go like, what is, what is this like about or for?
Merlin: It's just about people, you know?
John: It's about people, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I think, I think, I don't know, I can't speak to your taste, but I think a goodie from the classic era of maybe, maybe toward the, the twilight, the last days of PG, good PG movies is, is Tootsie.
Merlin: Tootsie still bangs.
Merlin: Tootsie.
John: So that's, I haven't showed her Tootsie yet, but, but, but we will, that'll be problematic as, as you would guess.
Yeah.
John: Especially compared to Mrs. Doubtfire.
John: We watched Mrs. Doubtfire.
John: Oh, boy.
John: A movie that I hated when I first tried to watch it.
John: I didn't go to see it in the theater, obviously, because I'm not like a little baby.
Merlin: You're not a 40-year-old woman.
Merlin: But I did.
Merlin: I'm not a baby.
John: I did watch it the first time it came on cable or something, and I couldn't even get past the first.
John: I don't... It was just so awful.
John: You like when he says, hello!
John: So bad.
John: And I watched it with my kid, and we didn't make it to the end, and it was her.
John: She was the one that was like, can we... It's really late.
John: They made Sally Field look like kind of a dick in that.
John: Yeah, and Sally... They're doing Mr. Mom, essentially.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Right.
John: But I watched...
John: goodbye girl when i was her age right i was younger i was 10 i was 10 and i watched it and it was what i i mean i'm not saying that i i just wanted to be an adult and be jazz and didn't want to be a kid because i was 10 of course i wanted to be a kid
John: But, you know, I had divorced parents.
John: Yes.
John: These were divorced parents.
Merlin: It felt a little bit sophisticated.
Merlin: When you'd see something in the TV dial or whatever your newspaper's version of the free TV listings were, you'd see when we had the one o'clock movie.
Merlin: um every weekday at one and it was usually like 90 minutes to two hours and it was always like you'd see in parentheses it would be like drama 1953 and you're like two strikes because drama always meant like default movie like it wasn't funny it wasn't it didn't have robert shaw like trying to climb something right
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: But those kinds of movies, and sometimes if you're in the right mood when you're a little kid and you're watching TV, it really grabs you.
Merlin: Did you feel a little bit urbane?
Merlin: Or did you feel sad?
Merlin: John, did you feel sad?
John: I think my whole life I've been partly steeped in the cult, the American culture.
John: culture of the upper west side in the 70s so annie hall and neil simon and so and and and the what we were seeing back then was middle class culture new york as a middle class place right they cover this in fleischman is in trouble which takes place now in that area and it's just a send-up of
Merlin: Is it a movie?
Merlin: Fleischman is in trouble?
Merlin: It's a Hulu series with Lizzie Kaplan and the Mark Zuckerberg guy, whose name I never remember.
Merlin: But that guy – anyway, it's good, and it's based on a wonderful novel.
Merlin: But anyway, I know precisely what you mean, because it's really just a send-up of all the status nonsense of, like, getting into the right – like, you've got to go to the Jewish center for this drop-off and do that thing, and the parents are divorced, and it's a whole thing.
Merlin: But back then –
Merlin: I mean, Jesus Christ, go look at something like Rosemary's Baby.
Merlin: Have you watched Rosemary's Baby?
Merlin: Have you seen that apartment lately?
Merlin: I mean, I realize it has... No spoilers.
Merlin: There are downsides to the location of that apartment.
Merlin: But that, first of all, movie's extraordinary.
Merlin: But also, they get like a... It's a horror movie, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: I wouldn't call it, it's not like a slasher.
Merlin: I think horror has come to mean too many things.
Merlin: It's an occult thriller that is very upsetting.
Merlin: But they move into this, like, and I understand.
Merlin: If you see the movie, you'll know that there's, oh, that's why.
Merlin: But they get this incredible, like, Central Park apartment.
Merlin: It might have been in the Dakota.
Merlin: It might have been in the John Lennon building.
Mm-hmm.
John: But like people normal people used to be able to like find an apartment and rent it at prices They could afford in New York City Well or it was just you know, New York was no place you wanted to be in 1977 Jesus if there's a time you didn't want to be in New York that might have been it But it was still it was still making culture and it was culture.
John: I was consuming Yeah, and I lived in Alaska
John: Right.
John: And oh, wow, shit, we grew up on Sesame Street at a time when it was very New York set.
John: So in New York and then the concept behind Sesame Street.
Merlin: It's considered pretty jarring for the time of not being like whatever that was, 68, 69, like not being the bright and cheery local morning shows that a lot of people grew up with.
Merlin: There's literally a character who lives in trash.
John: Well, and, you know, my first introduction to Puerto Rican kids and the idea of opening a fire hydrant in the street because you couldn't go to a park.
John: You know, I'm surrounded by trees out here.
John: There was no – nothing even close to urban in that time.
John: Seattle was – is a western suburban city, right, kind of defined by the sprawl.
John: And watching, growing up, seeing New York as this foreign land.
John: And then all this culture coming from it.
John: So there's a part of me, deep, deep, deep part of me.
John: That feels like growing up in an apartment on the Upper East Side with a mom that had to go to rehearsals in the afternoon because she was trying to get cast in a, you know, in a... Like in White Noise, when the woman has to go teach her posture class.
John: Yeah.
John: And, you know, dad is some kind of playwright, but he's a drunk.
Merlin: He's played by Jeff Daniels, like a squid and a whale type, maybe, right?
Merlin: But you've got some kind of a dad with patches on his elbows.
John: Little bit patches.
John: Back when we would fund the humanities.
John: Remember that?
John: And when we talk about our childhoods where they were like, kick you out of the door and go run around and don't come home until it's dark outside.
John: But in New York, you got that same thing kicked out of the house, but you're riding the subway out to Coney Island.
John: I don't know what they were doing.
John: I've got it in my head what people in New York were doing, but I don't know.
John: I always run errands.
John: There's a lot of errands to run in New York.
John: Oh, so many errands.
John: You got to carry a basket full, or a bastic even.
John: Full of coloraries.
John: Full of coloraries.
John: But, you know, because all of my New York friends all grew up in Connecticut and Massachusetts and then went to New York in college.
Merlin: I have a lot of friends from bedroom, like I think what they used to call bedroom communities.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like Westchester or New Rochelle, you know, places like that.
John: And I have some envy about what that must have been like to be in your 20s living in New York.
John: But that's different.
John: That's different than people that never didn't live in New York, which is – You meet them out here.
John: People who don't drive, for example, have never driven.
John: You meet them sometimes in the West, or at least I did in my 20s.
John: People that had never been out of New York that decided at the age of 24 –
John: that they were going to figure out what all this talk about Seattle was, and they'd show up out here like, I'm leaving New York.
John: New York sucks, and I'm going to make a new life for myself.
John: And they really fell into two categories, and one was the people that were like, I had no idea this was here.
John: It's so green and it's so beautiful and everyone's so friendly and, you know, they just – they felt like they were blooming in a way and like I'll never leave.
John: Right.
John: And then there are the people that were like, what is wrong with you people?
Right.
John: Like I've been here for three weeks.
John: I've met 40 people.
John: Every one of them can't get such one food at three 30 AM here.
John: It wasn't that it was that they didn't understand.
John: They didn't understand how people could a be so friendly and be so disinterested in actually making a friendship.
Uh,
John: And I met a lot of people that were like, I'm going back to New York.
John: I don't understand how you can live like this.
John: Because people say that they're glad to see me, but they don't seem glad to see me.
John: And people are like – Interesting.
Merlin: You know, it takes – you have to have fallen in love to have your heart broken.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: I mean, in a sense, well, I mean, if you came out there with an expectation, well, first you're going to be like, you know, looking for all the things you hope would be the way you hope.
Merlin: And if you're like me and you're real basic, like the first time I went to New York, I could not have been more basic, as you know.
Merlin: I made my poor sweet girlfriend.
Merlin: We've been to whichever the museum, maybe the Met.
John: At first I thought you said you made your portly girlfriend.
John: I was like, is that, did you really?
John: She was zofting.
John: She was so portly.
Merlin: When she sat around the house.
Merlin: But I made my pork girlfriend.
Merlin: We actually had a... I think I had a... Your pork girlfriend?
Merlin: What are you trying to say?
Merlin: She's married now and has kids.
Merlin: She married the drummer from my band.
Merlin: But it was, I was like, I made her get on a, not made her, she was really sweet about it.
Merlin: But this is, of course, the source of that me and the Henderson jacket.
Merlin: But we went to, went uptown, and you can probably guess where.
Merlin: I was like, I need a photo of myself.
Merlin: Moving on up.
Merlin: Oh, worse.
Merlin: Where did you go?
Merlin: Up to Lexington.
Merlin: 125?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: I didn't feel sick and dirty.
Merlin: I felt terrific.
Merlin: And I still have the photo.
John: I bet the neighbors thought you were amazing.
Merlin: The Henderson jacket, though.
Merlin: Well, in the photo that I still have, there are two different professionally produced signs with typos on them.
Merlin: Which feels great.
Merlin: But then I could say to people, this is at least where Lou Reed has said that he used to go and get heroin.
Merlin: Yeah, he stood right here.
Merlin: I thought that would be fun.
Merlin: I did a lot.
Merlin: So anyway, you show up.
Merlin: You're from New York City.
Merlin: But I think always it starts with, whether it's a vacation or whatever, there's some part of you that's full of hope.
Merlin: And like you go out and he's like, I thought, you know, I kind of knew it was going to be like this.
Merlin: I'd heard people were not as, you know, tightly wound.
Merlin: And then you get there.
Merlin: So are you saying then that people get there?
Merlin: What's the thing that makes them want to go back to New York?
Merlin: They feel like people are the bad boundaries, expectations.
Merlin: They don't want to actually be your friend.
Merlin: What is it that sends people back to Manhattan?
John: It's I think that in New York, at least in my experience,
John: There's, there are so many people and everybody's got so much to do and they're all so crowded together.
John: There really isn't any room, any emotional space for artifice, right?
John: You can't, I mean, there are plenty of people faking it in New York, but you just don't have time to say, Hey, we should get together sometime and then have them call and go, Oh, we're really busy that weekend.
Merlin: Can we try next weekend?
John: Right.
John: Out here, everybody's nice.
John: In New York, if you're like, hey, we should get together sometime, people, I think, will legitimately say, yeah, I mean, you know, maybe.
Merlin: Well, if I could say, at least for me, a lot of the time, and then you leave it at that.
Merlin: And you leave it at that.
Merlin: You know, like some countries, you got to ask for something.
Merlin: Like, say you want to get divorced, you got to ask three times or whatever, right?
Merlin: Those kinds of things.
Merlin: I think it's something where somebody goes, you know what, we should hang out more.
Merlin: The other person goes, yeah, we should.
Merlin: Now, that's a nice exchange, even though it's never going to happen.
Merlin: But you're saying to each other, I like you, and I'm going to at least...
John: Create present the guise of being interested in actually doing something about that and then you seem like a creep because you keep calling the person I think even that is a West Coast idea You know when I was when I lived back when I lived there in Whatever that was 2001 for it.
John: I was only there for a summer.
John: Yeah, but I would meet people and I would say Hey, you know, we should get together and they would go great.
John: Give me your number and I would give them my number and
John: which in Seattle was no indication of anything.
John: That meant nothing.
John: Oh, you've got my number?
John: Yeah, give me a call sometime.
John: And then they would call me and they would say, let's get together.
John: And I would say, well, I just met you.
John: Like, why would I want to get together with you?
Merlin: I hardly know you.
Merlin: I think there's one, you can call this a cliche, but in my experience, this is very, if you want to just do, some people seem to love these East Coast versus West Coast things.
Merlin: And it's like a whole thing you're supposed to have a strong opinion about.
Merlin: But here's one thing I will, I do think is,
Merlin: pound for pound true, is that people in New York or, you know, on the East Coast in general, but let's focus on New York.
Merlin: This is actually pretty good.
Merlin: We'll say East Coast in general, New York in particular, and then you got West Coast in general and say San Francisco in particular or Seattle.
Merlin: It works for both.
Merlin: If you make a plan, you show up.
Merlin: You do things.
Merlin: You say you're going to do something, and you do it.
Merlin: And that's why I think in an odd way that I did not pick up at first.
Merlin: The boundaries of people in New York are very wholesome in some ways.
Merlin: Well, it's a bright line.
Merlin: You really understand what you're dealing with.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And you oughtn't inconvenience people, and you oughtn't tell fibs to people.
Merlin: And out here, there's this whole kind of wavy gravy, I'll just show up whenever thing.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: If I show up or I might just, as we say, it's in the 90s, I might just flake.
John: I hear, when I was young, I heard a lot as I traveled around that people didn't think I seemed like I was from the West Coast.
John: I would talk to people and they're like, you sure you're from the West Coast?
John: You really seem like an East Coast person.
John: And it was because of the way I talked, right?
John: I was direct.
John: I was not interested in, you know, just sitting and blathering.
John: I was just like, oh, tell me more about that.
John: Like, who are you again?
John: Are you sure you're in this busy monster?
John: I would care.
John: I would get really in really fast.
John: And so people.
John: That's really interesting.
John: I get that.
John: In this general way would just be like, and people would ask me all the time, are you Jewish?
John: And I would say, no, I'm not at all Jewish.
John: And they would go, oh, I'm sorry.
John: I just, for a second there, I thought I just detected a mannerism or something.
John: And they would always be Jewish people, right?
John: They were like trying to figure out, are you Jewish?
John: Because you kind of talk like a Jewish person.
John: And it was that directness and it was that curiosity, I think.
John: And it was not characteristic of what people thought of as West Coast behavior, which is like, oh, yeah, hey, man, cool, whatever.
Merlin: Try to never actually say anything.
John: And so I really felt akin to other places.
John: When I went to New York, I felt, in a way, weirdly at home.
John: because it was like everybody was trying to get to the point as fast as they could to decide whether or not they were going to punch out of this or stay in it.
John: And so, you know, they meet you and they're like, so what's your deal?
John: What's going on here?
John: Why are you here?
John: What's, and then they're like, okay, great.
Merlin: Sitting at a desk with like six telephones.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Oh, another great dad phrase.
John: Oh, my kid learned Rouse the other day.
John: Really?
John: She was like, what does Rouse mean?
John: And I was like, it means get out.
John: It means go.
John: And she was like, Rouse.
John: And now she's walking around.
John: Rouse.
John: Oh, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: I usually associate that with 70s dads in station wagons.
Merlin: Yeah, Rouse.
John: Or, you know, for a while in the 90s, everybody was saying, Diddy Mao!
John: Diddy Mao!
John: Sure.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: You can't do that anymore.
John: Or maybe you can.
John: Who knows?
John: Nobody watches Vietnam movies anymore.
John: Is that true?
John: That breaks my heart.
John: Yeah, I don't think they do.
John: I know.
John: It was a time.
John: It was a time.
Merlin: You know, this is kind of a random thought, but it seems like kind of up your alley.
Merlin: So the basic thesis that I'm just tossing out for discussion is that, well, okay, so I have this idea about cities that I've sort of glommed onto in the last year, and
Merlin: And if I were to, this is just one aspect of the introduction.
John: Your city right now, by the way, is in all the newspapers.
Merlin: I don't know if you know about it.
Merlin: This is, Jason keeps me completely up to date on what's happening.
Merlin: He even has a hashtag for it when he texts me.
John: Aw.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Hashtag Cron.
John: Cron?
John: What does Cron mean?
Merlin: San Francisco Chronicle.
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: Oh, the open air drug market's opening and they can't keep a Walgreens open.
Merlin: Somebody stole three Walgreens this weekend with a push cart.
John: There's no way that you can know Jason Finn and know him for any length of time without eventually imitating him.
John: I adore him.
John: And when you imitate him, you always end up sounding like Krusty the Clown.
Merlin: I almost swallowed some of the juice.
Merlin: Boohoo, you're breaking my heart.
Merlin: And so this comes out of, admittedly, out of getting an e-bike and riding it around.
Merlin: E-bike.
Merlin: E-bike.
Merlin: And as somebody who has...
Merlin: five years and several thousand miles on Segway scooters of various kinds.
Merlin: So if I was going to summarize this, when I'm being sensitive with people who love their goddamn cars, I end up finding myself saying to them, for example, I'm not anti-car, I'm pro-options.
John: You should have a custom sweatshirt made.
John: I might.
Merlin: We could sell that.
John: We need to make a shirt.
Merlin: Don't yell at me and on the back say... Excuse me.
Merlin: They should print that on the money here.
Merlin: Excuse me.
Merlin: Oh, I'm sorry.
Merlin: Was I bothering you being alive in an intersection?
Merlin: Is that a problem for you?
Merlin: Were you on your way to go and do strike breaking?
Merlin: And I think that's meaningful.
Merlin: And the way I phrased this in that document I always refer to was to say that a great city is defined in part by the number of options that ordinary people have.
Merlin: This is kind of a big thought.
Merlin: Is this Thomas Jefferson?
Merlin: No, it's Merlin.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: A great city is defined in part by the number of options that normal people have for getting from point A to point B, but also exploring points between point A and B and beyond point A and B. Point A and B and beyond.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So, I mean, you take a classic example of, like, I need to go pick up a prescription or I need to, you know, get seltzer water or whatever.
Merlin: And that is, you know, kind of an A to B thing.
Merlin: It's never A to B, as I learned from the TV show Patriot.
Merlin: It's never just A to B. But you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: You've got the stuff you've got an errand to run, like they do in New York.
Merlin: You need to go buy some ibuprofen or a best pick of potatoes.
Merlin: And...
Merlin: And I don't think those are incompatible ideas at all to say, I'm not anti-car, I'm pro-options.
Merlin: That only becomes a problem when so many decisions, legacy decisions that are like 60, 70 years old and more recent decisions constantly favor one option over the others.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: And if there's any option that's always going to win, I think we mostly know the option that's going to win.
Merlin: But anyway, and to expand that a little more broadly, I wonder how much, should we think about the vitality of a community in some ways based on the number of employers it has?
Merlin: Because when you said that about Seattle, my first thought was, and I didn't want to interrupt you, my first thought was, oh, like Boeing.
Merlin: Like a lot of people, those bedroom or those suburbs were people who worked at Boeing, but also supported the needs of people who worked at Boeing and probably other places.
Merlin: And this goes back to a thing I saw in the Tallahassee Democrat in probably 1991.
Merlin: And it said it had a list of the biggest employers in Leon County, which is where Tallahassee is situated.
Merlin: And I don't remember the exact order, but it was Florida government, Florida State University.
Merlin: Florida State Hospital.
Merlin: Well, FAMU, the historically black engineering school, and Walmart.
Merlin: And there's something about – yeah, there's something about – and I know that that's not a conclusive way to look at it, but like –
Merlin: probably like a plurality of people in tallahassee leon county whatever are employed at one of those places or importantly a lot of what enables their employer to pay them comes out of people who work at one of those places yeah i used to say about pasco county which you know i love it's like it's people who working work at 7-eleven helping other people who work at 7-eleven there's nobody makes anything here
Merlin: Now, is there anything to that?
Merlin: Do you think there's any vitality to be found?
Merlin: And I'm contrasting that with New York.
Merlin: Because it is very fair to say New York, at least at one time or another, has been considered the capital of finance.
Merlin: It's a big deal in publishing.
Merlin: But it's not all that's there.
Merlin: When those people run around doing errands, they're doing errands about a lot of different shit.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Does that resonate at all with you?
No.
John: Yeah.
John: Potentially.
John: You know, New York until very, like, this is the thing about New York in the 70s.
John: There was still an incredible garment industry.
John: They were making clothes there for all of America.
Merlin: Not just designing and not just pushing around those carts like in movies, but like...
Merlin: In the same way that if you bought a Timbuktu bag, the really cool, you know, messenger bags in San Francisco, up until the 2000s, it was made by a Mexican lady on Third Street.
Merlin: Like, they were made in San Francisco by American people.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't mean to – I'm not trying to press there on, you know, the American part.
Merlin: I don't know if they were, you know, documented or otherwise.
Merlin: But, yeah, that went to China in, like, 2005, and they're really not as good.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: The first few times I went to New York, you could still walk through the garment district and look in any open door, look in any window.
John: And there are buildings for blocks and blocks full of people with sewing machines.
John: And they were literally making the clothes that I now buy in thrift stores.
John: Making triangle shirtwaists.
John: This was made in New York City.
John: New York City?
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Yeah.
John: But also, you know, I mean, the meatpacking district was full of people packing meat.
John: That's the thing.
Merlin: And this is this is a big I'm interrupting my request for an explanation to just say this is what happens fucking everywhere.
Merlin: And especially with this has been part of the post reconstruction history of black people in America is migrating to where jobs are.
Merlin: And a lot of times those jobs were, you know, not high tech.
Merlin: It was working in like like in Cincinnati or Chicago.
Merlin: Big meatpacking.
Merlin: stuff going on and slaughterhouses and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: We saw the Oppenheimer movie this weekend and I was thinking about how like Oak Ridge, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which I've been to is again, we used to go to Gatlinburg all the time.
Merlin: But Oak Ridge is where they enriched.
Merlin: I don't know if it was uranium.
Merlin: I think it was uranium, maybe plutonium.
Merlin: But they spent $2 billion on Trinity and Manhattan Project.
Merlin: And so all of that, all those jobs, I think kind of came and went.
Merlin: Oak Ridge, I know, remains.
Merlin: We have a mutual acquaintance who has worked adjacent to engineering things at Oak Ridge.
Merlin: But I don't know.
Merlin: It's just that you think about, I guess, if we want to get real dumb and lefty about it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So Walmart comes in.
Merlin: Mom and pop places close very inefficiently run, hostile companies.
Merlin: And it's replaced by a corporate hostile company.
Merlin: And then when they leave, because they went, it's like Starbucks.
Merlin: You open a new Starbucks, it makes money.
Merlin: You just keep opening new Walmarts, close the ones you don't like, and now you're fucked.
Merlin: So like that, and that's, let's look at, you know, we're living here in Allentown, you know.
John: I went to a weird event a couple of days ago where a woman I know named Erin Jorgensen was playing the marimba.
John: And it's like space marimba.
John: Do people keep checking their phone?
John: No, no.
John: You don't dare.
John: I always feel like the marimba sound.
John: No, no.
Merlin: Just because the marimba sound now has become so synonymous to me with an iPhone.
Doop.
John: But she's doing like marimba through delay pedal.
John: And it's a real marimba.
John: It's like 14 feet long.
John: And she's a small woman.
John: It's not an e-marimba.
John: It's not an e-marimba.
John: It's not something that you would get at a music store.
John: This is something that was handcrafted by Balinese people or something.
John: And then after the marimba concert, a man of my acquaintance got up.
John: And he's a philosophy professor at the local University of Washington.
John: And he got up and gave an hour-long lecture on how AI is not...
John: actually thinking and not capable of of uh of thought per se it keeps it keeps solve it you know it passes turing tests and then they change the turing test and it passes the new turing test and he's saying we we we keep making tests to to figure out whether computers are intelligent based on
John: what we think is an impossible thing for a computer to accomplish.
John: Turns out they get there by a different method.
John: And our test was poorly conceived.
John: But he was trying to reassure everybody that AI wasn't ever going to be able to think, really.
John: And as part of this, he's describing what thinking is.
Merlin: So everybody show up, marimba concert, followed by AI lecture.
Merlin: AI lecture.
John: Was it scheduled?
John: Well, yes, yes.
John: This is a Seattle type of, you know, this is, in New York, those would be two separate concerts, and each one would cost 50 bucks.
John: Here, it was pay what you want.
John: It was put $5 in a jar, and she's going to play the marimba for an hour through a delay pedal, and then he's going to talk about AI.
Hmm.
John: it's kind of amazing the end it was very clear that the to me at least that the problem was not that ai was going to take over uh in any meaningful sense that the computer would know anything but this thing that that you're
John: partly describing, which is, you know, the transition from an America that made things to an America that wrote about people making things.
Merlin: And since then, our number one export was like... To a country that just hearted photos of people making things.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And now we are... It's kind of...
John: hard to know in an information economy what exactly all those people in the Salesforce building are doing.
John: Absolutely.
John: And COVID came along and we realized that, well, 60% of them obviously weren't doing enough to stay employed by that company because everybody got gone.
John: To really need that many managers for doing things.
John: And in Seattle now, especially a city that used to be their main employers were Boeing and Weyerhaeuser and then...
John: Everybody else was trying to exploit nature in some way.
John: They were going out into the ocean or the forest and trying to steal things.
John: Running resources.
John: And now, what do we do?
John: Like, none of us really make anything.
John: None of the people here make anything.
John: They're just making computers.
John: And...
John: Thing about AI is that AI is gonna be really good at making computers Well, yeah AI is gonna not only be good at making computers, but it's also going to be writing all our sitcoms.
John: It's going to be Drafting all the letters.
John: It's gonna be I mean, it's gonna be making the music right there's no difference right now but in between half the pop music and what a computer could already do and
John: once you are feeding in good pop music into the machine, it's just going to figure out it's not, it's formulaic, right?
John: It's not going to be hard for the computer to be like, here's the latest tune.
John: And so at that point, what are we going to be making?
John: Um, like what, what would, if, if,
John: We've been laughing about the fact that our thousands of hours of us podcasting is going to be ripe material to be mined by some future bot.
John: But really, it is.
John: And if we were doing a podcast that was about...
John: stuff rather than the one we're doing.
John: Yeah.
John: Which is about no stuff.
John: Right.
John: I think it'll be very hard to duplicate a no stuff podcast, but it would be really easy to start ginning up stuff podcasts.
John: Right.
John: Because every time you go on Instagram now, there's some robot voice that's like, this girl has a cat.
John: The cat is jumping on a tree.
John: Right.
John: Look at the cat jump on a tree.
Merlin: They do that on the tech talk.
Merlin: They do it on the TikTok.
Merlin: Yeah, my kid shows me.
Merlin: I don't have a TikTok, but I've seen – I know what you're talking about.
Merlin: And this is concerning to you.
Merlin: We're already not making much.
Merlin: Are we heading for a future where we make even less?
John: Is that the question?
John: Well, we'll always improvise, right?
John: But the whole question of all the money going up to the top 1.001% of the mega rich –
John: Um, there's always going to be people that are cleaning hotel rooms cause there's always going to be hotel rooms and, or presumably, Oh no, that's right.
John: That'll be robots too.
John: What am I talking about?
John: There's just going to be when the trucks are driven by robots, which is, which is right on the horizon.
Merlin: It's going to continue to be tough.
Merlin: However you want to slice this.
Merlin: And I don't say this, I don't mean this to sound unkind, but I think in, in numerous ways, as has already been happening for years,
Merlin: 50 years, 40 years, is that people who do not have the skills that are in demand, that are doing, and some skills are super in demand.
Merlin: Like, have you tried to get anything fixed on your house lately?
Merlin: It's really hard to find people to do all kinds.
John: That's what I'm saying.
John: Don't send your kids to college.
Merlin: No, teach them how to pick up a hammer.
John: Teach them how to answer a call.
John: That's right.
John: It's the one thing that computers and robots will not be able to do is restore a mid-century modern kitchenette for a while.
John: It's going to be a long time before you can program that into a computer.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: But, you know, like Photoshop?
John: How long before you can just say, hey, take my daughter out of that picture with her friends and put her in a picture standing next to style?
Merlin: Put her in a more presentable skirt.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Can you make her seem a little less petulant?
John: And the computer will just be like, your warp.
John: Could you please soften her eyes a little?
John: So all of the people right now that I'm paying $200 an hour to make my daughter look less angry in Photoshop...
John: You know, they're all going to be out of work.
John: I guess, yeah.
John: Right?
John: I mean, how hard is it to write a sitcom?
John: I watch TV a little bit now.
John: I'm watching this show called Silo.
John: Yeah.
John: I love that actress.
John: They do a good amount of world building that's based on a world that Blade Runner built for us all 40 years ago.
John: Thank you, Blade Runner.
John: Thank you, Blade Runner.
John: But they I cannot tell yet a half a dozen episodes in whether this is all just drama
John: About drama and there's no there there, you know I do I watch it's like Marvel movies in general.
Merlin: Like am I just here to connect dots?
Merlin: I've watched I like that.
Merlin: I thought I love Rebecca Ferguson.
Merlin: I love her I think the whole cast is great and like all Apple TV shows It seems like it's been heavily desaturated to like where I don't know It's just but it's so dark.
John: Why is all television so dark now?
John: The lights on you guys are gonna ruin your eyes
John: Halfway through every TV show now, I have to stand up from the couch and go turn off every light in the house.
John: Because I'm like, what is happening?
John: Is that a dragon?
Merlin: We were watching Good Omens, which I can highly recommend.
Merlin: And my kid's obsessed with this show.
Merlin: And yeah, the famous one...
Merlin: I, in particular, was like, even me, like, I've got a TV.
Merlin: It's got a bunch of settings.
Merlin: I know how to use it.
Merlin: I know what to generally expect from things.
Merlin: But there were a few episodes of that last season of Game of Thrones that were comical.
Merlin: There's one where they've got the whole, like, siege on a tower, you know, scene.
Merlin: And it's just a bunch of people with beards running around in, like, near full darkness.
Yes.
Yes.
John: Yes, yes, and well there was another show just so hard to open it just It just felt like it felt like you're getting paid millions of dollars to make house and you're basically just You're just throwing dirty clothes at a camera in the dark and this is the show yeah, yeah, yeah I think that I I think that For I stood up at this lecture
John: And I said, because he was like, any questions?
John: And then a bunch of ding-dongs asking ding-dong questions.
John: Like, it's one of these, it's a Seattle thing, right?
John: They'll tire themselves out.
John: Yeah, the question and answer page is also... Were there any that were actually more of a comment than a question?
John: Oh!
John: It's really a performance of the audience.
John: Like, I have a question.
John: Here's the thing I know.
John: No!
John: I said, because I like to wait until the very end when it's like, okay, one more question.
John: Everyone's exhausted and wants to leave.
Merlin: Too much Gamelon?
John: Why don't I wrap this up for everybody?
John: Why don't I take all of your questions and comments and condense them down to one?
John: You've got a basket full of punctuation.
John: I'm just going to finish this up.
John: Yes.
John: And I said, look, I'm not worried about AI replacing me because I've got style.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But I'm worried about AI replacing all of you.
John: Yeah.
John: And by worried, I mean, not really that worried.
John: As long as the, you know, as long as there's macaroni and cheese in the cupboard.
John: Yes.
John: You know, what are you going to do?
John: Well, I mean, somebody's got to make the macaroni and cheese.
Merlin: This is the affliction that I developed in the mid 80s when I went to college of being a liberal arts student who says things like it depends.
Merlin: And I think I see both sides.
Merlin: But with that said, I absolutely understand that.
Merlin: And I don't have a mean thing to say about, oh, well, your shitty press release should have been more interesting.
Merlin: No, I mean, it's going to have an impact, but...
Merlin: I think a somewhat modern example of this that I think it's not directly related unless you take an actual historical point of view.
Merlin: But I'll bet there were people who first saw spreadsheets and were like, we're not going to need bookkeepers anymore.
John: Well, you remember when the fact computers are going to put everybody out of work.
John: No, it was going to be a paperless office.
John: Oh, I know.
Merlin: If you make an ENIAC, then there won't be any people to do the... What do they call that?
Merlin: Every 10 years, the... Remember... The what?
Merlin: The thing.
Merlin: The thing where they go around and see how many people live in America.
Merlin: Oh, the census.
Merlin: Like, you know, that's going to put census workers out of work, or IRS workers, or whatever.
Merlin: Yeah, but... Yeah.
Merlin: But, like... If you want some complexity for this shit...
Merlin: automobiles put a lot of buggy whip salesmen out of work.
John: It's true.
John: And then they figured it out.
John: I'm usually a guy that is right there with you on that.
John: You know, I'm the like, I super am, it's all going to work out guy.
Merlin: Well, just to be clear, just to state my own case, I'm not saying, I don't know if it's going to be all right, but I do think it is valuable sometimes to pump the brakes on something that's being presented almost purely emotionally.
Merlin: And without people having any fucking experience at all with actually using this stuff, which is fine, that's people's prerogative to have a strong opinion about something they've never even used.
Merlin: If you use this shit, you're going to go, oh yeah, this is going to be, fuck, I always think of things like cooking in the kitchen.
Merlin: Well, my grandmother got a microwave in 1979, but she still kept cooking.
Merlin: I have a microwave today.
Merlin: I still keep cooking.
Merlin: We have a coffee maker.
Merlin: That doesn't mean that we, you know what I mean?
Merlin: It's like these things do come along and sometimes it's for the worst where you go like fax machines.
Merlin: Will we ever be done with fax machines?
Merlin: It was this technology that was very innovative and disruptive at the time.
Merlin: And now, you know, it's just such a nuisance that you only use with lawyers and accountants.
John: I feel like the difference though, and it's a key difference.
Yeah.
John: It's really more of a comment.
John: This is really more of a comment.
John: Is that we're talking now about these algorithms being able to make low-grade culture.
John: And we're talking about that at a time when there has been a steady decline in the quality of culture that is mass culture.
John: Like an AI is never going to be able to write.
John: Yeah, I think so.
John: I mean, there's a lot of garbage.
Merlin: There's a lot of really good TV shows that didn't used to be.
John: There are a lot of TV shows.
John: Some small parts.
John: proportion of them are good.
John: If you go on, I mean, I know, I know I don't have to tell you about going on and looking, but if you go on and look, there are a lot more good, there are a lot more TV shows than there are good TV shows and somebody's watching them all.
John: And most of them are,
John: are bad, right?
John: I mean, even blockbuster movies, well, there have always been bad blockbusters.
Merlin: They did a funny bit on SNL a few years ago where it was a fake Netflix commercial.
Merlin: And I think the name, they're like, there's so many shows and all the shows and like, including Kenny Mead Junction.
Merlin: And only one person watches it.
Merlin: And it's a very elderly Kate McKinnon going, I love Kenny Mead Junction.
Merlin: And sometimes you're like, wow, it's funny that alongside the sort of public riffs we see in the discourse, it's just also we're all so in our – I'm not saying in our own bubble.
Merlin: But, like, there is stuff where, like, somebody's going to be heartbroken if you, you know, if you cancel, you know, Flip This Boat or whatever.
John: But, you know, there are also really great shows that are getting canceled.
John: So, clearly –
John: There nobody's making a great TV show and only one person who's watching it, you know There are the the shows that are that have hundreds of millions of viewers I guess are all these ones where you put 15 beautiful people on an island and And and then wait for them to have great intercourse and fight Yeah, one guy with a with an Elmer Fudd hat and a rifle is chasing them down That's the that's my pitch
Merlin: The deadliest rifle.
John: Right now, the majority of people that vote Republican believe that the election of 2020 was illegitimate and stolen.
John: So there is an audience of tens of millions of people that are prepared to consume very low-grade people.
John: Ideas right and they're prepared to believe really dumb things and they don't care and
John: And that group of people is now leading us into a time when computers that are owned by a very small cadre of people are capable of generating material at least that good.
John: How smart does a writer have to be to say, oh, all of the liberals are –
John: are eating babies.
John: Like how, like you, if a writer wrote that, you'd be like, you're fired.
John: Uh, but that's the culture of millions of people.
John: Right.
John: So, so we're just now, this isn't, I don't think the same as fax machines.
John: We're, we're in a place where there can be this regurgitating, like a, like a cultural sink, like a, like a whirlpool of,
John: of the information that people will believe and enjoy and consume.
John: Now, the standard is so low that it really could be made by machines, and it's just a garbage gyre all the way down.
John: And, you know, you and I are going to be sitting somewhere watching –
John: Prestige television that you can't even see because it was filmed in the dark and we're like, oh, yes Watching iClaudius on an eight-inch Sony portable It's the only true way to watch it, but you know but even that stuff like the like this movie silo the the the lead character is named Juliet and There's uh, and that's taken as like oh, that's you know that you know what that's a reference to a famous play, huh?
John: And, you know, and the show is giving us these little like, oh, it's a Pez dispenser, but they don't know what it is.
John: It's the past.
John: It's the future.
John: All these little cookies that are that if you step even one step back, you're like.
John: Oh, when they go down into the thing.
John: Yeah, they're just pandering to us.
John: They know who the audience is.
John: And it's just going to be little, oh, what's the next one?
John: A lot of us love post-apocalyptic TV.
John: We love it.
John: We love it.
John: We love zombies.
John: But it's not smart.
John: You know, it's just smart-er.
John: Yeah.
John: None of us really have the bandwidth for smart anymore.
John: What's the last actually smart thing you consumed or did?
John: And I don't mean listening to pavement.
John: Like I used to do smart things all the time.
John: I used to go to marimba concerts.
John: I got so much style and it's wasted.
John: I got a lot of style.
John: So much style.
John: Most stylish person at this AI lecture.
John: And it was a room full of very stylish people.
John: Did you get a trophy?
John: That all had comments.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Let's go ahead and call up Professor John Roderick, who obviously is a sharp dress man.
Merlin: Hello, hello, hello.
John: Let me just wrap this up.
John: I know this was supposed to be an app.
Merlin: Okay, everybody.
Merlin: That was funny.