Ep. 522: "Cafeteria Californian"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: How happy Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Day.
Merlin: Hey, hey, happy, happy day.
John: It is a happy day.
Merlin: I'm really on the horns of a dilemma about whether to make even a joke about that.
Merlin: See, the thing about holidays is I think most people don't do things on the holiday that are about the holidays.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: I mean, are you, I mean, like Memorial Day, we would go to graves.
Merlin: You would wait wait wait.
Merlin: What's the one?
Merlin: What's the one for just general dead people not veterans?
Merlin: That's my is that Memorial Day?
Merlin: I think which one is in November?
Merlin: Oh, that's our Armistice Day Armistice Day is for World War one veterans see there's okay I think there's a day for veterans and this this is not any disrespect and I'm not stealing valor.
Merlin: We got a day For for I like Armistice Day.
Merlin: Yeah, of course.
Merlin: That's that why did we change that?
Merlin: It's a minute of silence at 11.11 on 11.11.
Merlin: Yes.
John: That's great.
Merlin: It's so great.
Merlin: And I think maybe part of it is America doesn't like an anti-war holiday.
Merlin: I'm a little bit sick.
Merlin: But don't you have one that's for fallen veterans?
Merlin: What's the one where you just remember the dead?
Merlin: Is that Shinto, John?
John: I'm really bad at these.
John: There's Remembrance Day.
Merlin: I think that's where you put on a poppy.
Merlin: Yeah, we were in Canada to see Sloan on a Remembrance Day.
John: Everybody's wearing poppies.
John: Yeah, eight stars of gold on a field of poppies.
Merlin: In Flanders Field, something happened.
John: There's that, and then there's Democracy Day.
Merlin: I swear to God, if you're just Googling, if you search for public holidays U.S., I'm going to be so mad.
John: There's May Day, where the Soviets run tanks down the middle of the road.
John: Oh, in Estravia.
John: Yeah, but also May Day is like a global holiday.
John: We don't celebrate it at all here.
Merlin: Is that a worker holiday, John?
Merlin: Is that a holiday for workers?
John: I think so.
John: So you get the day off.
John: You get the day off.
John: See, that's tidy, logically.
John: Formula One.
John: Well, you know what it was.
John: Formula One?
John: I think.
John: I don't know.
John: They put Formula One everywhere.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: My wife likes a program about that.
John: About Formula One?
John: Oh, she likes a program about it.
John: She doesn't like it.
Merlin: She knows everything about who's hot in Formula One, and it's freaky.
Merlin: But continue.
Oh.
John: Oh, well, I think that the reason they give you May Day off is so that otherwise I think this is the genius of it.
John: Otherwise, they would strike on May Day and it'd be a big disruptive communist people street, you know, people.
John: And so they were like, oh, well, we'll just give it to you off.
John: What do you think about that?
John: And then they all went and had barbecues instead of like protesting and burning cars and stuff.
Merlin: Pretty smart, right?
Merlin: Well, I understand what you're saying.
Merlin: You're saying it's a form of hegemony.
Merlin: Like, let's encompass and integrate and, if you forgive my saying, denude this protest, potential protest, by the true laborists.
Merlin: Let's just include that, and we'll make that a day your kid doesn't have to go to school.
John: Yeah, it's like if you take your old pagan holiday where you're burning witches and snarfugs and stuff,
John: And then you say Jesus was born on that day.
John: And they're like, oh, right.
John: Okay.
John: So that's a pretty big conversion.
John: Yeah.
John: All the snarfugs that we used to burn on this day.
Merlin: And then you're not allowed if you're pro snarfug, whatever.
Merlin: I'm not sure what that is.
Merlin: But if you're pro snarfug, it kind of sounds like you're a little bit anti Jesus.
John: Well, so it comes around.
John: I know.
Merlin: This is a gem.
Merlin: John, I did what I just accused you of, and I went to a website called Checkaday.
Merlin: Checkaday.
Merlin: C-H-E-C-K-I.
John: Checkaday.
Merlin: Checkaday.
Merlin: Checkaday.
Merlin: And I did find things that it's holidays around, holidays that are today.
John: Oh, what are the holidays today besides Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King?
Merlin: Would that interest you at all just for a minute while we're kind of settling in?
Merlin: I'm a little bit sick.
Merlin: While we're settling in, do you want me to go over some of the other things that are holiday today?
Merlin: I would.
Merlin: I would.
Merlin: Let's begin with the banger.
Merlin: It's Martin Luther King Jr.
Merlin: Day.
John: Yes.
John: Or Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Merlin: Day, as I have to say.
Merlin: It's honorific day.
Merlin: Observed.
Merlin: And, you know, I think what I know from a 1984 U2 album, this is not the day that he passed away, that he was assassinated.
Merlin: I think this is the day he was born, the day of the year.
John: Oh, I didn't know that.
Merlin: One morning, April 4th, a shot rings out from the Memphis Sky E. But that's when he died.
John: Oh, April 4th.
John: It's not April now.
John: I get you.
Merlin: Do you know the shape of the year?
Merlin: Have you ever heard about what the shape of the year is?
Merlin: Have you ever seen that?
John: Yeah, we're on the top now.
John: We're on the top part of it.
John: We haven't gone around the first corner yet.
Merlin: Yeah, go back and listen to all the old episodes.
Merlin: All right, so we get that.
John: Okay, so, but wait.
John: Right, you wouldn't want to commemorate somebody getting assassinated on the day they were.
John: That wouldn't be a good holiday at all.
John: This is a nice one.
Merlin: You better hope it's a good Friday.
Merlin: Isn't that assassination day?
John: Good Friday?
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, for Jesuses?
Merlin: Well, yeah.
John: That's when all the Jesuses were killed on Good Friday.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: Order 66 went out.
Merlin: What the fuck?
Merlin: You know what I'm talking about.
Merlin: This is taking.
Merlin: Order 66.
Merlin: It goes out to all of the clone troops.
John: Roger, roger.
Merlin: Roger.
Merlin: This is taking too long.
Merlin: But let's keep it.
Merlin: Let's keep it serious.
Merlin: I'll just give you a few of these.
Merlin: Oh, look at that.
Merlin: Today, by the way, we're recording this.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: January 15th, 2024.
Merlin: It's National Fresh Squeeze Juice Day.
Oh.
John: That can't be true.
Merlin: It's the day of national fresh squeezed juice.
John: And I hear giving up sugar, and I can't even have a Fruity Pleaser.
John: Yeah, I know you gave up sugar.
John: I did.
John: I did.
John: I gave up sugar on the new year.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: I might want to write that down.
Merlin: It's been going pretty good.
Merlin: Do you want me to speed around these?
Merlin: Cause it's not actually that interesting.
John: Well, no, I bet you there are other good ones.
John: What else is there?
Merlin: I'll give you a few and you stop me anytime.
Merlin: Uh, elementary school teacher day national.
John: I'm just going to leave that.
Merlin: I'm leaving off the word national because it's, it's repetitive.
Merlin: It's bagel day.
Merlin: It's Day of Service.
Merlin: It's Hat Day.
Merlin: What does that mean?
Merlin: It's National Hat Day.
Merlin: In the UK, it's National Pothole Day, National Strawberry Ice Cream Day, and it's National Booch Day, which is a day, I think, where they celebrate kombucha.
Merlin: Oh, man.
John: Not really.
Merlin: Wikipedia Day.
Merlin: Wikipedia Day.
Merlin: I hadn't heard of that one.
Merlin: Oh, I'd support that.
Merlin: I mean, not with money.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: They already get so much.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Isn't that terrible?
Merlin: They get those big banners.
John: Boy, I use Wikipedia a lot.
John: I do, too.
John: I really use it a lot.
John: 60 to 600 times a day, but I still have never quite gotten...
Merlin: Isn't that funny?
Merlin: I give money to so much dumb shit.
Merlin: And I don't give money.
Merlin: If that's odd.
John: I know.
John: I should give them $1,000.
John: They give me more entertainment.
John: And it's such a major part of my life.
John: If there was one thing.
John: I want it on my phone, it would be Wikipedia.
John: Even before, I don't know.
Merlin: You've probably covered this on one of your programs about the afterworld, the afterlife, what you want after the event.
John: After the big one, yeah.
John: You'd want it printed out, though, probably, right?
John: I'd want all of Wikipedia printed out.
John: God, I went to one the other day where it was obviously, you know, sometimes you go to the Wikipedia page and it was clearly written by a fan of whatever that is.
Merlin: That and the one that, not new, but the one that I feel like I noticed, yes, fans, but the other one is like this was almost definitely written by someone's assistant.
John: Oh, right.
John: Right, exactly.
John: So they couldn't publish it.
Merlin: And then James' 15th album was released in 1984 to much acclaim.
John: The ones I like are the ones that are really officious, like
John: Really, really already kind of defensive.
John: A little bit of attitude.
John: Yeah, like attitude, like already defensive about you doubting that this person deserves a Wikipedia page and then full of typos.
Merlin: And some seem to like, I mean, there's a famous, I haven't kept up with the trades, but it used to be time was anybody could go in and do it.
Merlin: I think over time that got more locked down.
Merlin: The role of editors...
Merlin: on wikipedia the people who are in a position to lock or let people in and out i don't know if i'm using the right words and i don't care but what i can tell you today is it's real different than it used to be and that there are people who are watching almost every wikipedia page like hawks i think they they break up the duties by topic but it is so reason i say all that is prelude to like it's so funny to me what sometimes stays up and you see the last edit of something was you know weeks ago yeah
Merlin: The typos are bad, but sometimes it's also just like, you can tell there's people who are doing drive-bys where they'll just be going.
Merlin: There's those funny ones that are like, this is a page about Linnaeus or no better.
Merlin: Like what's a better one?
Merlin: Like this is a page about Thomas Edison.
Merlin: And then it's like, also Thomas Edison was in the song by the ping pong band called Thomas Edison.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Under like cultural references.
Merlin: Now, I think they've cracked down on that, but I imagine there's somebody, maybe a super fan, that just goes in and adds their references to everything.
John: I would really love the ability to just...
John: a spot edit, like, nope, that's not what you're trying to say.
John: You're trying to say this.
John: It's really just a word order problem.
Merlin: I think what you're describing, if I could say it, because I've wanted the same thing, I'm going to call it a heads up.
Merlin: A heads up.
Merlin: I wish I could just select text.
Merlin: Like, this has gotten better over the years.
Merlin: There's apps I use for reading stuff that makes it easier to highlight text.
Merlin: It would be so nice if I could just highlight text and just add a heads up.
Merlin: And it's not a shameful kind of everybody sees it heads up, but just kind of like a, hey, you know.
John: You know, I'm just gonna flag this go have a look at this.
John: I got into the I know I've told you But pretty early on in Wikipedia I went on there and and there was a I was looking up the star caster that guitar that I that I have that I famously have and And then at the bottom of the star caster page it had notable users
John: And I wasn't on there.
John: And I was like, well, you've forgotten a major notable user here.
John: Because the notable users were like, Johnny Greenwood, sure.
John: And then Chris Walla, who only had a Starcaster because he played my Starcaster.
John: Hello.
John: Bandmates gave him a Starcaster.
John: That needs some clarification for sure.
John: And then a couple of nobodies, a couple of no names that nobody ever heard of, like Joe Starcaster and whatever else.
John: Somebody else had found a Starcaster in a barn.
John: And I was like, at the time, I felt like there's another Starcaster player on here.
John: And so, you know, I logged on unawares that you're not supposed to edit.
John: You're not supposed to put yourself in.
Merlin: Because it feels intuitive once you grok the basic idea of like, hey, Wikipedia, the wiki part of that is, is that there's links to things.
Merlin: And we encourage the public to come in and add things and make corrections.
Merlin: That once you grok that, that it seems sensible.
Merlin: Like, hey, who knows more about Chris Wall, quote unquote, Chris Wall is Starcaster than John Roderick.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: You also added the discourse, if I could say.
John: I went in and I added a thing.
John: And then some point, not very long after that, I went back to see if it had gotten starred or whatever.
John: I didn't understand the concept quite yet.
John: I wanted to see how many faves it got.
John: Yeah.
John: And I went back and it was gone.
John: And so I put it back.
John: And then I went the next day.
John: They hate that.
John: Let's see what's going on here.
John: It was gone again.
John: Yes.
John: And then I realized, oh, wait a minute.
John: How'd they figure it out?
John: There's an invisible hand.
John: Adam Smith.
John: I don't know.
John: I think back then it was probably only two or three articles were getting added a day.
John: I don't know.
John: But you'll hear that sometimes.
Merlin: Because you can mostly, unless you're behind seven proxies, you can reverse look up an IP address.
Merlin: And of course, if you're like me and you're a student of nuts –
Merlin: It's fun to go in and I like to just, whether this is Amazon, whether this is wherever, if I see a crazy review, I really want to see the other person, the other reviews by the same person.
John: Oh, it's a Yelp thing that you do.
Merlin: Same thing.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Or like this, you just click on that and you're like, oh my gosh, this person has like such a hard on about, I've told you this one before, but on IMDb, you know, there's the goofs section.
Merlin: I think I told you specifically this, but I discovered this accidentally looking at some movie that happened to have people wearing uniforms in it.
Merlin: It might have been something like Taps or whatever.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Some old movie.
Merlin: And this person was so seemingly keeping it together, but out of joint about how the... I'm not sure what the exact word is.
Merlin: What do they call the ham salad or whatever?
Merlin: There were things that were wrong about the uniform.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That they were wrong.
John: Oh, the scrambled eggs.
John: Scrambled eggs.
Merlin: Tossed salads.
Merlin: And I was like, huh, that's interesting.
Merlin: They seem like, wow, they're really concerned about this.
Merlin: And then you click through and you're like, oh, it's a one issue guy.
John: Oh, they do this everywhere.
Merlin: I'm so interested in people like that.
Merlin: And that's my only viewport into their life.
Merlin: And like, who knows?
Merlin: That could be like, it might be you for all I know, somebody who contains multitudes, but I mainly know them as the person who's mad about the epaulettes.
Merlin: Yeah, the ham salad guy.
John: Yeah.
John: We watched the last episode of The Crown last night.
Merlin: Oh, did you finish it?
John: And it or the other one, you know, Prince Philip, back when Prince Harry got yelled at for wearing that Nazi uniform.
Merlin: I remember that.
John: And then Prince Philip called up the costume shop and yelled at him because the uniform was inaccurate.
John: The Nazis, the Rommel African Corps didn't actually wear that swastika on their uniform.
Merlin: Are they not aware of their history?
John: He was just pissing up a rope.
John: He was having fun.
John: Like Philip was like, well, this is dumb.
John: So I'm just going to add my two cents.
John: You don't think of them as a fun-loving people, the British royal family, but they get their fun where they can.
Merlin: And yet, Dominic, I couldn't finish that last season.
Merlin: But I loved all the other ones.
Merlin: I stopped after two.
Merlin: Because all the people I like aren't there.
Merlin: I like Dominic West, love Dominic West, but I do think, based on the little bit I know about the former Prince Charles, I think they really dressed him up and made him seem a lot more charming.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Because he's not very charming.
Merlin: There's a reason.
Merlin: They did a documentary.
Merlin: The BBC came in and like with, at the time, I think, full access in, I want to say 1968.
Merlin: And of course, you've seen this over the years.
Merlin: A couple times a season, there will be a point...
Merlin: And you really do get this in the movie that's with, I forget which one it is.
Merlin: It might be called The Queen.
Merlin: But it's the one that starts with Diana's death.
Merlin: And it's got Michael, that actor I love, the Welsh actor I love, as Tony Blair.
Merlin: But like a couple times a season you get this whole like, wow, should we be less horrible now?
Merlin: should we like stop conspicuously consuming?
Merlin: And should we, I'm like, should we let people, should we maybe let people leave flowers for Diana instead of, instead of having like a bulldozer move them?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And it's, you know, I understand this, this their job.
Merlin: It's complicated, but it is complicated.
Merlin: How'd you feel about this season?
John: Did you know Dominic West is younger than us?
John: What?
John: Not by much.
John: Not by much.
John: One year.
John: He's one year younger than I am.
John: And so, I don't know.
John: I'm seven years younger than you or whatever.
John: I'm afraid so.
John: Playing Prince Charles, who's, I don't know.
John: Well, you figure.
Merlin: You know, those horses is the queen.
Merlin: The literal crown.
John: Yeah.
John: The last couple of episodes of The Crown, very emotional, very, very...
John: Oh, good.
John: It's a nice wrap-up.
John: Oh, did they get up to her dying?
John: No, that's the thing.
John: It appears that they ended the show 20 years.
John: She still had 20 years left.
Merlin: Isn't Meghan Markle in it?
John: No, Markels.
John: No.
John: What about the other one?
John: No.
John: What's your name?
John: Pippa?
John: What's the other one who married a prince?
John: Pippa's the younger of the... No, but... No, what's the first marriage one?
Merlin: Not Meghan, the one before that.
Merlin: You're talking about the future Queen of England.
Merlin: I mean, I think that is so presumptuous.
Merlin: What's her name?
Merlin: It's not like me having three seventh generation bottles of seventh generation dishwashing liquid and going, oh, this is the heir to the crown, because I know I'll get to that third one eventually.
Merlin: But, you know, if you're third in line for anything, so he's second in line now, right?
Merlin: Who, the next king?
John: The one who's married to the other one.
John: Yeah, the Prince of Wales, they call him.
John: Huh.
John: Did you know that Charles was my age...
John: In like 2003?
John: I know.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: This is the value of that Google Sheet I sent you that I've now turned into a GPT where I can ask you questions and say things like, how old was Grandma Stinus?
Merlin: On what date was Grandma Stinus the age that Billy is right now?
Merlin: Oh.
Merlin: What's a popular song the year that Grandma Stein has turned 30?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: See, that's cute.
Merlin: And I would do that for the Royals as well.
Merlin: You know what was good?
Merlin: That season with Charles Dance.
Merlin: That first Diana season, that was a good season.
Merlin: Yeah, that was a good season.
Merlin: I love Charles Dance.
John: Everybody the the you know, what's interesting is that when I was a kid there were not I didn't see that many photographs from my dad's childhood My dad didn't have that many pictures of his own childhood remind me where he where he was born and grew up he well, he's born in Frederick, Maryland, okay, but his mother was born here in Seattle and
John: And so she had just moved to Frederick, Maryland for one year, uh, because my grandfather had a, was a minister in the first Methodist church of Frederick, Maryland.
Merlin: Okay.
John: And then that didn't pan out.
John: And so they moved back to Seattle.
John: So my dad was only, there's a story there.
John: There is.
John: They only, they, he was born there, but, but all of his siblings were born here and he grew up here and his, you know, great grandparents and so forth.
John: Um,
John: But according to my mom, my dad had blocked out most of his childhood parents.
John: He just didn't he didn't remember it and he and if you asked him questions about it He would just kind of not not really reply.
Merlin: So When I was you didn't get the sense that it was something he if it's something he didn't remember It wasn't something he wanted to pursue to try and remember.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, that's right And so the very few he and I had conversations about his childhood, but it wasn't like my daughter and and My childhood because every six minutes
John: I will say, oh, you see that stoplight?
John: Well, you know, when I was a kid, stoplights looked exactly like that.
John: And we would stop just as we're stopping now.
John: And she's like, why are you telling me this story?
John: Yeah, it's something we do.
John: You know, stopping.
John: Stopping is a thing.
Merlin: I've done that.
Merlin: I've said, you see that 7-Up sign there?
Merlin: In the 1970s, the manufacturers of the beverages would give, we called it a pony keg.
Merlin: Some people call it a bodega.
John: Sure, there were pony keg fridges.
John: A fridge.
Merlin: I've never known.
Merlin: A pony keg was a kind of keg.
John: So if she ever murders me, it will be because I say something.
Merlin: That sounds a lot like those.
John: Yeah.
John: You see that light bulb?
John: The light bulb was invented by Thomas.
John: She'll just murder me.
John: But my dad, his whole, it only started during the Kennedy administration.
Oh.
John: So, or, you know, the 50s, maybe.
John: Which part?
John: Which part started in the Kennedy administration?
John: Just his constant reminiscing about... Oh.
Merlin: Oh, and the point here being, he's not a man who's uninterested in talking about the past or his past.
Merlin: It's just he doesn't want to talk about Fredericksburg or whatever.
John: Yeah, and he doesn't want to talk about the 1920s, let's say.
John: A little bit.
John: A little bit.
John: But, you know, he was...
John: my daughter's age in 1933.
John: Jesus Christ, that is sobering.
John: He did sometimes say things like, oh, I used to be a delivery boy for Bartels.
Merlin: They haven't made that.
Merlin: We'd pick up the old bottles of Bartels and put down new ones.
John: He'd ride his bike down to Chinatown and take big bags of saltpeter up to the tongs.
John: What?
John: And the guys are up there playing dominoes.
Merlin: Were they making gunpowder?
Merlin: What was he doing with saltpeter?
John: Who knows?
John: Saltpeter.
John: Saltpeter.
John: Who knows?
John: And so he'd walk through these gambling parlors, 1920s Chinatown, with these bags of saltpeter and go into some back room where there's five guys smoking cigars and hand them this, you know, and they'd give him two bits.
John: he's like you know and so but i didn't see pictures i didn't i i all of that just seemed like some kind of uh american gibberish right some some lingo that was like what the hell are you talking about anyway um but now because there's so much
Merlin: Internet and they're just you know that content I've as you can tell from what I sent you I have just while we're speaking I spent the last few minutes a I just sent you a Johnny a picture of Johnny Greenwood playing his star caster with a bow with a bow and it's a box it's a great picture and I sent you a picture of the kind of seven up sign that my my my kid does not find interesting yeah opens all of this up well and so I'm I'm I'm on a lot of local history groups
John: And so I'm getting every day these pictures of like, here's Seattle in 1890, here's Seattle in 1905.
John: But, you know, my great-grandfather and his two brothers arrived in Seattle in 1883, let's say.
John: 1883, yeah.
John: And so you see these pictures of Seattle that are clearly, you know, they're like
John: historical photographs.
John: Seattle had a population of 15,000 people.
John: The streets were dirt and there are guys in top hats.
Merlin: I was saying this to my kid.
Merlin: We were just watching something.
Merlin: I might have been Fargo.
Merlin: No, it could have been Fargo.
Merlin: We watched something that had a flashback to Seattle from a pretty long time ago.
Merlin: And I was like, I'm pretty sure that until like a certain, well, you know, and there's, there's also, there's Alaska in this show that we're watching.
Merlin: And I was just talking about like how like there's communities in America that are like big cities now that were just not a huge deal.
Uh,
John: early in the last century i mean wasn't it mostly paper or like logging like the wood industry in seattle you know what we did you know what seattle did we built we built san francisco after your fire we sent you all the logs and kind of like how west virginia won the war with coal that's right it was west virginia that won the war and seattle that built san francisco oh
Merlin: I'm so sorry I didn't know that.
John: No, it's okay.
John: That should get a day.
John: You know, you don't owe us anything.
John: That's what I'm here to say.
John: I don't really consider myself a resident.
John: Of San Francisco.
Merlin: No, I never have.
Merlin: You've lived there 30 years.
Merlin: I think that that is factually correct, but I don't think of myself as in any way an essentially San Francisco or California person at all.
Merlin: But thank you anyway.
Merlin: I mean, I do live here, so I need that.
Merlin: But it seems still pretty basically Florida in a lot of ways.
Merlin: Well, you do.
John: Above average Florida, but Florida.
John: Wait a minute.
John: He doesn't seem like you're – you don't seem like a Californian at all.
Merlin: I'm a cafeteria Californian.
Merlin: I mean, there's stuff I do like – I said this the other day on the internet.
Merlin: One of my very first impressions when I first came to San Francisco for work.
Merlin: I was here for a job.
Merlin: My friend Michael –
Merlin: My dear friend Michael, who you know, ferried me around and introduced me to the city.
Merlin: And one of my first positive impressions of San Francisco was the ease with which strangers briefly join one another's conversations.
Merlin: Oh, that's nice.
Merlin: No, but like you're waiting at a stoplight and you overhear something somebody says and you say something.
Merlin: And it's not anywhere near as weird as other places I've been.
Merlin: I love stuff like that.
Merlin: Like I say, you do that in Florida, they're going to throw a pit bull at you.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: You don't just start talking to people at the Costco or the Sam's or whatnot.
John: We do do that.
John: You know, Seattle has this reputation of being unfriendly, but I'll tell you what, anytime somebody goes, it's like, uh, it's like when Kenneth Parcell gets on the elevator and he goes, what is this?
John: The local?
John: And everybody laughs.
John: It's like that.
Merlin: He's an eternal.
John: It's really like that here.
John: Every time I go down the aisle in a supermarket and somebody's pulling some granola off the shelf, I'm like granola.
John: You know, I just met her.
John: And, you know, and then it's like not funny.
Merlin: And if it's like the clicker because it's got a water bug.
John: If it's if it's if it's a single mom, she always, you know, hurries away.
John: But, you know, you sit and talk to the checkers.
Merlin: There's this there's this there's this moment where you make a point of visiting with people who aren't allowed to leave.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Like, oh, so how's your day?
Merlin: I'll talk to that gal.
Merlin: Talk to that gal at Ralph's.
John: Talking to the lady carpenter.
John: She has a name.
John: It's Karen.
John: But I for sure now look at those photographs and think, wait a minute.
John: My great-grandparents were here then.
John: And firemen are still on a horse-drawn firetruck.
John: And I can see the photograph, and there's every possibility that that woman in a giant hat and a bustle is actually friends with my great-grandmother.
John: How is this possible?
Merlin: Given the size of the community, they might have at least been in the same, I don't know, church, or been in the same area at the same time.
John: There is a size of hat.
John: Where you a size of Sunday hat where, you know, every woman that has a hat that big knows one another in a town that small, especially during the Gilded Age.
John: I think you knew from hats.
John: You knew from hats.
John: And so now that's tripping me out because every time I see a historical photograph, the first thing I think is my dad was nine.
John: Was he in that crowd?
John: Right.
Merlin: Or like, for example, like, maybe not D-Day, but things were like, you know, my dad was in Korea, a terrible time in Korea.
Merlin: But like, you see things and you're like, huh, I wonder if my dad, like my dad got a tattoo when he was in Tokyo.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: There's those kinds of weird things, like that little kid sort of thing where you're like, wow, I wonder if my dad was ever there.
Merlin: Your dad was a handsome man.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: He really was.
Merlin: I appreciate that.
Merlin: I'll send you a photo.
Merlin: He's very handsome.
Merlin: I've got a few.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Tell him I said hi.
Merlin: But maybe cut down on the Winstons.
John: I think in the 20 plus years that you and I have known each other, you've sent me three photographs of your dad and he's very, and he looks very much like you.
John: Very handsome.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But like, I know that's a little bit like magical thinking, but to think like, oh, people with big hats probably know each other.
Merlin: But like, that's a way that we, as I say, it's a little kid thing because it is.
Merlin: It's especially a little kid thing of trying to find ways to make connections with
John: the past or with the past even in ways that maybe aren't the most rational and I think that's I think that's part of like we yearn for those kinds of connections don't you think I Know you do I feel like I know you do I desperately do yeah Seattle's population in 1880 which would have been right before they arrived was 3500 people
Merlin: This sounds like a dumb question, but how different was the size of the community?
Merlin: How much real estate are we talking about for that number of people?
Merlin: Because probably the city got bigger and spread out.
Merlin: Was that in a smaller area as well?
John: Well, but the thing about it is the thing that makes Seattle so interesting is that it's on an isthmus.
John: Isthmus.
John: And the isthmus, it's one of only two cities in America that's built on an isthmus.
John: No, I did not know that.
John: Yeah.
John: And the thing about the isthmus is that it really concentrates the available land because you can only go so far before you hit a body of water.
John: There's a lake over there.
John: There's a lake over there.
John: There's an ocean over here.
Merlin: Maybe a body of water going through the rye.
John: That's right.
John: And then there's this big swampy river down to the south.
John: And so all the land that currently is like what you would call Seattle proper was all understood to be part of Seattle.
John: I mean, you had to take a trolley car that was made out of logs to get there.
John: But you could get there.
Merlin: Which way are you going?
Merlin: Are you going to the foot or are you taking a log?
John: Yeah, log flume out to the roller coaster.
John: We didn't have horns yet.
John: So, so the night, but I think what happened is between 1880 when the population was 3,500 people and 1890 when it was 40,000 people was the gold rush, the Klondike, the Klanduck gold rush.
John: And Rebuilding San Francisco.
John: Thank you.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Imagine if you had Klamath-Ithmus.
Merlin: That would be so hard to say.
Merlin: Klamath is an Oregon thing.
Merlin: Klamath-Ithmus.
Merlin: Oh, sorry.
John: Klamath is a different area.
John: You're all the same to me.
John: Yeah, I know.
John: I know.
John: But we're not the same to each other.
Merlin: No, that's what Freud calls the narcissism of small differences.
John: It really is, except... Contiguous states hate each other.
John: It's not a small difference because they are hippie hayseeds and we are sophisticated adult people here.
Merlin: Always have been.
Merlin: 1880, 3,500 people, 1890.
Merlin: Now, are you looking at numbers for this or are you just going doing this off the dome?
John: No, I'm looking it up on Wikipedia.
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
Merlin: Well, no, no, you win.
Merlin: Oh, see, we got to give them money.
Merlin: We should find it.
Merlin: I'm going to ask ChatGPT how much money I should give Wikipedia.
Merlin: Are you going to ask him right now?
Merlin: You wouldn't know if I did, but yeah, I probably will.
John: No, but don't you have to talk?
John: Don't you say, hey, chat GPT.
John: No, no.
John: Turn on the furnace.
John: Thank God I don't.
John: Hey, chat GPT, open my garage door.
John: Siri, stop.
John: Hey, Siri, stop.
John: Hey, Siri, stop.
John: Hey, Siri, stop.
Merlin: Turn up the volume.
Merlin: Turn down the volume.
Merlin: Echo, stop.
Merlin: Echo, stop.
Merlin: That is most of my communication with these devices.
Merlin: It sounds like you want to get some kind of surgery for pleurisy.
Merlin: No, that's not.
Merlin: I didn't say anything.
Merlin: I'm watching TV in another room.
Merlin: Piracy as a condition.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: You have seven packages that have been delivered.
Merlin: Would you like to know more about conditions?
John: I don't have any electronics in this house, in my house.
John: What I have is two amplifiers from the 1950s.
John: I have a microwave oven.
John: And I have the laptop that I use to record this program on my coffee table.
John: And I am, as usual, sitting on my couch, my green couch, looking out the window.
John: And that is the extent of my connectivity.
John: But at my daughter's mother's slash partner's house, she has all the little bleeps and blobs, the machines that are listening.
John: Does she utilize them?
John: They talk to that thing all the – more than they talk to me.
John: Yeah.
John: Hey, Siri, put on the block.
John: Hey, Siri, what about a box?
John: And then the box is talking back to him and about 16% of it is useful information.
John: Sometimes.
John: Oh, but here's the thing.
John: I plug one out of six isn't even all that great in hitting.
John: I plug my phone into my truck.
John: That's one thing I do do.
John: And I push the button on the steering wheel and I go directions to the nearest video game parlor and the machine comes up with it.
John: But if I say, who was the second bass player in Journey?
John: Yeah.
John: I get gibberish.
John: Or I get, you know, there's an answer.
John: Is it Ross Valerie?
John: I think it's Ross Valerie, yeah.
Merlin: Would you like to know more about Ross Valerie?
John: I'm just going to call you.
John: Hey, Merlin, who was the second bass player in Journey?
Merlin: Jonathan Cain was married to Tawny Katane.
Merlin: Their name's Rhyme.
Merlin: Would you like to know more about Rhymes?
Merlin: Tawny Katane.
Merlin: Tawny Katane.
Merlin: Do you remember her hit single, Holding On?
Merlin: I don't know if I do.
Merlin: You'll know about it after we're done here.
John: Are you going to say it?
John: Tawny Katane is a very hot 80s name.
John: It really is.
John: I feel like she was the 80s.
John: And I was not somebody, I doubt very much that you were somebody who had posters of girls.
Merlin: No, I mean, like, I think I know where you're going with this.
Merlin: I mean, apart from stuff like being deeply attracted to every girl who was ever in a ZZ Top video, like, I didn't have terribly pedestrian tastes in make-believe women for that long.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, right.
Merlin: I mean, they didn't make posters.
Merlin: I mean, I got weird fast.
Merlin: I was into Catwoman as a child, so, you know.
Merlin: Sure, sure, sure.
John: They didn't make posters of the girls that I really idolized.
John: Like, if they had made a poster of Mary Lou Henner in Johnny Dangerously.
Merlin: Or Martha from MTV.
John: Oh, Martha Quinn.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Wasn't she one of yours?
John: Well, Martha Quinn seemed like a girl that I actually would know in school.
Merlin: I would have followed her for six months in college.
John: And then when we started following each other on Twitter and badmaging back and forth, it was like, well, see, I knew this would be true forever.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: I'm starting to see a pattern here because didn't you also follow Molly Ringwald?
John: Well, sure.
John: Molly Ringwald and I are almost exactly the same age.
John: You both love France.
John: And I'm sure I've told you this before.
Merlin: You're both frustrated by the donger.
John: I, the first five, this is, I'm going to use a sex term now for those of you.
Merlin: So cover your ears.
Merlin: CW sex stuff.
Merlin: That sounds like a song about trucks.
John: CW sex stuff.
John: Sounds like a Frankie Goes to Hollywood record.
John: i didn't know if the cop had seen us because right now there was a bear down on my penis but i got a cw sex guy the first five women that i had uh congress with emotional congress yes uh were all redheads and i didn't realize it until after until years after it would be useful to know well and at the yeah at the time i was like
John: I thought that what I liked was dark haired girls with big eyes.
John: But what it turned out I actually was doing was meeting and loving redheaded girls.
John: Yeah.
John: And I didn't notice a pattern.
John: Until looking back later and going, well, wait a minute.
John: What is that?
John: What is that all about?
John: Like, is that some Celtic thing coming through?
John: Yeah.
John: You know, where it's like I covered this with seven layers of butcher paper, but there's still there's still ink.
Merlin: Making its way through I don't understand how that could have been but it's also it's also like a distinction between like the thing That's your bizarre mostly media generated fantasy object Versus like what when you actually kind of get your hands around it like and you have access That's that's that you you pushed through to get to the redheads But then even so like all of all of the real the girls I really liked they were
John: Molly Ringwald, Mary Lou Henner.
John: First of all, their names all started with M. Yeah.
John: Monty Mittain.
John: And they were all redheads.
John: But not Marilyn Monroe, because she was dead.
John: Well, by that point in time, yeah.
John: And also, she had been turned into a caricature by the time we came around.
John: Yeah.
John: Goodbye, England's Rose.
John: Yeah, goodbye, Norma Jean.
John: I say goodbye to Norma Jean all the time.
John: John wasn't in The Crown, though, was he?
John: I don't remember.
John: I think he might have been referenced.
John: Do you know Elizabeth Debicki's 6'3"?
John: I don't know who that is.
John: Oh, the woman who played Diana.
John: Yeah.
John: I did know that because she was in that other movie.
John: It's Tenet.
John: A Tenet, where they actually kind of made her height a thing, whereas in The Crown...
Merlin: They're playing it down.
John: Yeah, they didn't do the thing where they shot her from angles and put her co-hosts or co-stars on boxes.
John: You can tell she's very tall.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But they didn't make it up because Diana wasn't that tall, was she?
Merlin: No, no, no, not at all.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I think I'm taking off every single thing you've tried to pursue.
Merlin: You were getting back to the Battle of Fredericksburg and your father.
Merlin: But along the way, we've touched upon the Gilded Age.
Merlin: And I only know about the Gilded Age because of the TV show, The Gilded Age, which I know starts in the early 1880s.
Merlin: Oh, and by the way, it was Gilded, but here's the thing.
Merlin: If you had a manse, as they say in online magazines, if you had a mansion that was on, what would that be?
Merlin: But like right by what was in Central Park when it was literally just a park, of course you knew everyone.
Merlin: Sure you did.
Merlin: Especially if they had a big hat.
Merlin: Based on what I've learned from the Gilded Age, you also knew who other people's servants were and whether they were drinking.
Oh.
John: Well, the thing is, we're now living in another Gilded Age, except it's a glitzy garbage age.
John: But it's the same thing.
John: It's the same amount of income disparity.
John: It's the same like going to Metropolitan Opera.
John: You're on Instagram or you're on some kind of Tesla loop underneath Las Vegas.
John: That's not there for any good reason, except that they built it.
John: And, you know, and but the thing is, the protests that, you know, the protests that we're having now against income inequality are not new.
John: There were anarchists in 1892.
Merlin: I read I read yesterday on the Internet that DEI is out.
Merlin: The who?
Merlin: Oh, DEI, you know, diversity, equality.
Merlin: Oh, it's not cool anymore?
Merlin: Well, we know it's not cool in certain communities.
Merlin: I am continuing to take the, I'm so sorry, I'm a little bit sick.
Merlin: I have a lot of snot.
John: What is your sickness right now?
John: I have a cold.
John: Isn't it refreshing?
John: Wow.
John: Just a cold, a normal cold.
Merlin: As far as I know, I'm negative for COVID and I've got snot and I'm not like totes out of it.
John: It's not like when I had liver disease.
Merlin: Is that what happened?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I got a dose of thrush from licking railings, much like the character in that Bell and Sebastian song.
Yeah.
John: The boy with the Arab strap.
John: Yeah.
John: He strapped himself to death.
Merlin: I, God, I remember that.
Merlin: I was on the green cover.
Merlin: I remember that.
John: Yeah, I know you do.
John: Oh, I love, I like Tiger.
John: Who was the second base player in Bell and Sebastian?
Merlin: Uh, see, that's tough.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: See, I stopped.
Merlin: This is, but this is also our problem is I stopped learning things after a certain point.
Merlin: Oh,
Merlin: Well, but I don't think I know the singer I think the sewer singer is I think he's called Stuart Murdoch there you go and they had a David cellist whose name I used to know and I know Dan Behar was in destroyer and then and then the new pornographers Well, but the thing is I think it's not that you stopped learning things.
John: It's that it's not remember No up until 1990 there were only 40 bands and
Merlin: And I was reading Circus Magazine cover to cover.
Merlin: I was reading All Music Guide or Trazer Press cover.
Merlin: I actually did own both of those.
Merlin: And I read them like other people read regular books.
John: Starting in 1994, there were suddenly 10,000 bands.
John: How could you possibly know every In-N-Out?
John: I mean, I do know a weird number of facts and trivia bits about...
John: indie rock bands but that's obvious i'd love to come back in a few minutes and do a pop quiz with you oh but see i'm i am oh all of a sudden no my brain for you my brain is starting to turn to mush right in front of my eyes i wish i was that lucky i'm like
John: What was the word for the thing?
John: Oh, John.
John: What was the thing that you used to open cans?
John: I got in trouble about it.
John: What?
John: The thing you used to open cans?
John: What is the one?
John: What are the things that have food in them that are round?
John: Mine's funnier, but yours is worse.
John: It's bad.
John: It's bad.
John: But I'm pulling it off still.
John: I'm like one of those people that's slowly going nuts, but manages to keep
John: a brave face on.
John: So people are like, John's still exactly the same.
Merlin: I think if you're amusing, like both, both either and both of us can be, you can find a way to play it off legit for a long time, for a while.
John: What are those little spiky things that come down from trees?
John: Caltrops.
John: No, it's, um, no, they're like, they look like poops.
John: Oh,
John: Oh, I know what you mean, the helicopter seed guys.
John: No, no, no.
John: They're bigger.
John: They're brown.
John: They look like a goblet.
John: No, no.
John: No, they're sort of diamond-shaped.
John: They have seeds in them.
John: They only come down from certain trees.
John: No.
John: No, we don't have those here.
John: Oh, they come down from the trees that are green all the time.
Merlin: The other thing one starts to do is we start to derail an entire story because we can't remember one arguably tertiary detail.
Merlin: What was the name of that fella?
John: What was that guy?
Merlin: Can I tell you a story?
Merlin: I know that guy.
Merlin: No, you keep doing yours.
Merlin: Keep you doing yours.
Merlin: But there's one I've just got to share with you.
Merlin: Share it.
Merlin: Which will only really probably be funny to you.
Merlin: It won't be that funny to our audience.
Merlin: A funny thing happened because I'm definitely... On the way to the forum?
Merlin: Uh, yes.
Merlin: Sorry, that's a reference that... Three people are like, yay!
Merlin: Comedy tonight.
Merlin: But I, uh, well, do you ever have moments where you just forget stuff that you know you know?
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: Okay, well, that's the thing, right?
Merlin: And, like, you start, you still are copious enough to realize and...
Merlin: Fucking John Syracuse, you are not allowed to.
Merlin: I know he'll hear this episode probably tonight or tomorrow.
Merlin: You are not allowed to ever bring this up, John Syracuse.
John: But isn't your whole other show with John Syracuse just you guys bringing up stuff that you and I talked about that he's mad about?
Merlin: I mean, his whole life is like a rectal thermometer in search of my anus.
Ha ha ha.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Well, so real quick in terms of prologue.
Merlin: So yeah, like, and I'm putting that in a fairly specific way because we all know about tip of the tongue phenomenon and the thing where you're like, oh, I know it starts with a T and like, it is getting worse.
Merlin: I am definitely, obviously I'm getting older, thank God.
Merlin: I am getting older.
Merlin: I do think I had some COVID problems and I also have some cognitive screw ups.
John: Now wait, are you saying that you had some version of long COVID that has affected you longly?
Merlin: I mean, because I have not been like cognitively tested on the reg or at all, apart from the cognitive test that is my life, I can just tell you anecdotally that like I sure do lose my train of thought a lot more than I used to.
Merlin: And I don't think it's just the edibles, though that probably helps.
Merlin: But I do stuff just, the way I keep phrasing it to my poor family is like stuff just slides off my brain.
Merlin: But here's the part that's...
Merlin: Somewhere between it's not really it's not really certainly a consolation, but it's definitely a bizarre feeling is like when you're young and you go like, oh, I know I know that.
Merlin: And then you're like, all I see, I think I described this to you once as being like, I can't see the thing.
Merlin: I think we were talking specifically about what's that called threshold effect, where you go from one room to another and forget why you're there, which I've been doing for years.
Merlin: But it's like you look to your mental right and expect to see the thing that you're there for, and all you see is a hole where you know that thing should be.
Merlin: So whatever feeling you have in the past of this is something I know that I know I know, but I can't get to it right now, has become so much more profound for me in a way that I'm trying to deal with.
Merlin: But it's definitely a thing.
Merlin: And this came to a head a few weeks ago when, long story short, we were watching Righteous Gemstones.
Merlin: Which features this latest season.
Merlin: By the way, great show.
Merlin: Great seasons all the way through.
Merlin: Great show.
Merlin: But the woman who was on Third Rock from the Sun, I think her name's like Kristen something, but she was like the pretty lady who was on Third Rock.
Merlin: Anyway, she's on Righteous Gemstones.
Merlin: And then I said something to Madeline about, oh, yes, she was on, I think I at the time called it 30 Rock.
Merlin: which is a thing I do constantly.
Merlin: So let's just get that one out of the way.
Merlin: As I call things, I would call third rock from the sun 30 rock because I'm turning into your dad.
Merlin: It's like, oh, you know, she was the, like, you know, with the guy.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And she goes, yes.
Merlin: And she, now the thing is, my wife is so much more copious than I am, but she's also much more resistant to admitting that.
Merlin: where this is going, which makes it funnier.
Merlin: So I go, oh, because it's me, right?
Merlin: I open it.
Merlin: I'm like, oh, come on, the actor.
Merlin: And she goes, I know, Garp.
Merlin: I'm like, yeah, he's the football player who, you know, in Garp.
Merlin: Like, yes.
Merlin: Anyway, neither of us could remember who John Lithgow is.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: We could not remember the name John Lithgow.
John: But you could name six movies that he'd been in and... Oh, well, I mean, it's... Yes, yes.
Merlin: It's not just prelude to say that literally last night, we were talking about this phenomenon.
Merlin: This is not going to be funny, but you need to hear this.
Merlin: We're watching TV.
Merlin: We're probably watching... Oh, yeah, we're watching The Curse, the last episode of The Curse.
Merlin: And...
Merlin: Anyway, it came up again, and we were talking about, like, when you can't remember things in particular.
Merlin: And Madeline said, you know, the one that always blew my mind is Adam Lissagore, a.k.a.
Merlin: Lonely Sandwich.
Merlin: She's like, do you remember when he didn't know the name of that actress?
Merlin: And I go, I don't remember that.
Merlin: What was it that happened?
Merlin: And she's like, poor thing.
Merlin: Remember, the point of the story is that Adam didn't know this famous actress.
Merlin: And Madeline says, oh, you know.
Merlin: Oh, then she doesn't remember the actors.
Merlin: She goes, you know.
John: The one.
Merlin: She's in the.
John: The one.
John: When our friend didn't remember them, it was hilarious.
John: But now.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, what was her name?
Merlin: Catherine.
Merlin: I said, Catherine.
Merlin: Like, Catherine.
Merlin: Off the dome, I was like, Catherine Zeta-Jones?
Merlin: Because at this point, she's completely.
Merlin: She can't even do the like, oh, they were in the world according to GARP.
John: Right.
John: She's lost.
Merlin: She's like, it's all like that.
Merlin: This is all Tara incognito.
Merlin: There be dragons.
Merlin: Shit is like, I know there's a person whose name is like Catherine who was in movies and I can't believe Adam didn't know who she is.
Merlin: And I said, okay, Catherine.
Merlin: And then we were finally like, we finally, we kept at it.
Merlin: And of course my kid is really, really enjoying hearing this.
Merlin: And then we finally get to, oh, she was in like, I was like, oh yeah, she was in Romancing the Stone.
Merlin: And she goes, she goes, oh, she was, she goes, she was, yes, she was in Romancing the Stone.
Merlin: I said, and she was in Body Heat.
Merlin: And at this point, her poor heart alone.
Merlin: I was like, so we're, at this point we are laughing at how fucking funny this is.
Merlin: And then how meta funny it is.
Merlin: And we're like, yes, Catherine.
Merlin: And she was in Body Heat with John Hurt or William Hurt.
Merlin: She was with one of the Hertz.
John: Yeah.
John: William Hertz.
Merlin: They lived in a big circle house.
Merlin: In the end, it was about four or five minutes that we could not.
Merlin: I had to finally go on the Internet to remember the name Kathleen Turner.
John: Yeah.
John: It's not Catherine at all.
Merlin: It's close, though.
Merlin: I mean, it's adjacent.
Merlin: It's an adjacent Turner.
John: Do you do this?
John: Does this happen to you?
John: Well, what happened in my family was this.
John: My mom and my dad, both very articulate people and both remained articulate till the end.
John: My dad had a funny way and my mom is 90 now and still she does the thing every once in a while.
John: She's getting old, but she is sharp.
John: Yeah, but she is doing the thing.
John: Like today she wrote me and she said, you forgot to change that light bulb in my house.
John: And I said, I didn't forget to do it.
John: It's just that a fire alarm went off when I was
John: Standing on a ladder and you said go get out get out and so I ran out Of the house holding a light bulb, but I didn't forget to do it and she was like, oh, right And then she tells me like a six-minute long story about what happened as a result of the fire alarm and I'm like that I I don't care so your mom had an errant errant smoke alarm go off.
John: Yeah, there was something like and and but what what happened in in my little family was my sister was
John: always made up her own words for things.
John: Oh, wow.
John: And, um, and it's just that, you know, words were not a, a fixation and a fascination for her like they are for a lot of us.
John: Uh, and by a lot of us, I mean in our tiny little pool of nerds that are our friends, like for you and me, an interest in words is
John: was one of the things that initially attracted us to one another.
Merlin: I didn't know it at any of the times, but it was a huge consolation to me growing up how much words meant in my life.
Merlin: I didn't realize it until I was in my 30s that it's not just a nice thing to be able to speak.
Merlin: Words were like...
Merlin: Words were my sports.
John: I really loved words.
John: I know.
John: And the first time we met and are driving back across the bridge with you to your house.
John: Stringfellow was hitting on my wife at the time.
John: He was.
John: And you were like, hey, do you guys need a place to stay?
John: How about my house on the exact opposite side of San Francisco?
John: Yes.
John: Completely away.
John: You might as well drive to L.A.
John: for how far my house is.
John: And we were like riding in the car.
John: And just to the fact that you were using words the way you were, I was like, who's this guy?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And then I said the same way about you and Sean.
Merlin: I always give short shrift to the other guys, but the two of you, I was instantly so in love with both of you for the same reason.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You were like words.
John: And then we were like, well, also words.
John: We like words, too.
John: So Susan didn't have that, but she was in a world of people that were all about words.
John: And so she just started making up her own words.
Merlin: That's so funny.
John: And her words were, in some cases, more accurate in terms of... There's always an element of onomatopoeia to what she's saying.
John: And she sometimes will capture the moment...
John: better with a made up word than with the word.
John: That's such a gift.
John: And I, so I was always fascinated by it.
John: And then over the years I kind of started to understand her internal grammar and
John: And started to sort of imitate it at first in a teasing way where I was just like, oh, yeah, you know, it's the whatever I said at the beginning of this episode, the Gravnorfs or whatever.
John: It's like, well, that everybody understands what that what that is.
John: Right.
John: It's some kind of Krampus, but it isn't Krampus.
John: We certainly know just from context what it's probably not.
John: What it's not.
John: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You've got me for years now.
Merlin: You've got me saying snork and I'm not sure I know what a snork is.
Merlin: I think it might have been a cartoon show or a candy, but I know exactly what it means in this context.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: Which means like normal civilians who are not that smart.
John: Yeah, snorks that are like – yeah.
John: People who are not in on it.
John: The people that in the montage are either moving a lot faster than us or a lot slower than us and their faces are blurred.
John: Yes.
John: Because we're walking in a different – At the correct velocity, yeah.
John: But as time has gone on, I've become – I stopped doing it in jest and started partly just living in a world –
John: Where I where I feel like, well, there's not necessarily a word for everything.
John: I'm just going to use my own like a different grammar that that just seems to work better.
John: And now I'm just absolutely every day I'm just making up words for things.
John: Oh, I love this.
John: And it's going along with my decrepitude in the sense that when I don't remember the word for something.
Merlin: Do you remember your word?
John: I just make it up.
Merlin: And by the end of the sentence, I don't remember what word I use.
Merlin: We're not talking here about dingus or who's he what's this.
Merlin: We're talking about like you come up with a bespoke noun for the thing that you don't know the name of and can't find.
John: And talking to you and talking to Ken every week.
John: Both extremely smart guys.
John: I'm using words and I know you know what I mean.
John: I know Ken knows what I mean and neither of you correct me and the audience knows except that I get a lot of feedback from the audience.
John: where they're like, do you know that that wasn't the word?
John: Is that a bit?
Merlin: To which I am increasingly, and I don't do it, but I'm increasingly so inclined.
Merlin: I say this sometimes when I feel bad.
Merlin: I don't know what you're talking about, but if that makes it funnier for you, that's good.
Merlin: Because they know the word right there young people or they know the snork word They know the snork word right, but they don't they don't know, you know, it's not even that Bastic of potatoes Everybody is out there bastardizing words in journalism ease and likes in saying impact when they mean effect And they're doing all this bullshit with where we have a perfectly good word for something I don't want to hear a syllable
Merlin: about you and me coming up with new and often better, more novel words that are also sometimes more specific and contextually aware than the existing words that you snorks that John meant to say.
Merlin: Without respect.
John: Isn't imfect what they really mean?
John: They mean imfect.
John: Like, stop using impact or affect, because it's imfect.
John: Right, and you get an infection.
John: Or amfernorms.
Merlin: It really is a big...
Merlin: It is a big ask.
John: Halfway through a word sometimes, I take a turn, and I come out of the back end of the word.
John: You steer into the skid.
John: Yeah, there was a Y juncture, and I just was like, well, take the road less traveled by.
John: Yeah, you frosted.
John: And it's not just like, oh, that's a Latin word, and you put a Greek suffix.
John: Oh, I hate that.
John: It's like, oh, no, that's a German word.
John: I put a Native American suffix on it, and Bob's your uncle.
John: Yeah, Chautauquilology.
Yeah.
John: I'm feeling more and more like I'm creating a world.
John: I'm going to be sitting in a chair.
John: I know you for shit for sure you're creating a world.
John: Yeah, but I'm going to be sitting in a chair with a blanket over my knees talking about snurf nabs.
John: Did you mean thorax?
John: No, I didn't mean thorax.
John: And I'm just like, well, it's a snurf nab for long enough.
John: Long enough.
John: Who are you to tell me it's not?
John: Nobody.
John: Ugh.
John: And, you know, and I guess people are just going to say, oh, it was charming until he started.
John: I mean, I don't know.
John: People say that about sex pests, too.
Merlin: You know, the people, yeah, yeah, for a long time, like, oh, that guy's so charismatic.
Merlin: He's a real ladies man.
Merlin: And then pretty soon, you know, but like, you know, so we have to be careful.
Merlin: But I...
Merlin: Listen, I am resigned to so many things in life that other people, I wouldn't even say that I'm resigned, except that it's clear to me how not resigned to life most people are.
Merlin: I'm not even trying to be like a Buddhist here.
Merlin: I'm just saying like, again, our mutual friend, Dan Benjamin, frequently would say things like, ah, you're getting old.
Merlin: And I'm like, do you know what the other option is?
Merlin: Like, has it not occurred to you?
Merlin: You're in your 50s and it still has not occurred to you that there's only two options.
Merlin: There's temporarily being alive and getting quote unquote older versus literally being dead.
Merlin: It's like they say in Ireland, like whatever they say there.
Merlin: I mean, but every day on this side of the turf is a good one.
John: Oh, is that what they say in Ireland?
John: I don't know.
Merlin: I thought they said... You know, the thing about Dan Benjamin is he would never record a show with me if he had a sniffle.
John: But he would... Because it was a sign of weakness?
John: Maybe.
Merlin: He would go straight to the doctor.
John: He has to go to the doctor.
John: But he never cancels your show to go to the doctor.
Merlin: He has a prescription lunch.
Merlin: He's got to have it.
John: He used to cancel my show all the time because he had a snipple or the hinge had a creak in it.
John: He contains multitudes.
John: He does.
Merlin: And I think what I'm embracing or what I'm cutting you off because I don't need it.
Okay.
Merlin: I don't need some fucking narc out there.
John: Oh, do they do that?
John: People narc on each other.
John: Oh, Merlin was talking to John about... Oh, no, let's not do that.
Merlin: At Flummoxed Feminist, did you hear Merlin...
John: That's how they talk.
John: The thing is, I only mentioned it because you mentioned it, and then I realized... I know, I'm sorry.
John: No, no, no, but I realized you still do a show with him.
John: I thought that nobody ever talked to him again.
John: Are these pictures you sent me both of Tawny Katane?
John: No, they're not at all.
John: The top one... They're both about Mary Lou Henner.
John: That's Mary Lou Henner carrying a case... Okay, stop.
Merlin: I thought the entire time... Oh, my God.
John: She's carrying a half-rack of Miller High Life on one shoulder, and then she's... She's wearing a real...
Merlin: Flattering outfit in the old days, but you notice her shorts have pleats So you can kind of date where it comes from she can sit comfortably well see and so Like a little outfit, but but do you want to just guess doing everything we've talked about?
John: Yes, but then she became like a lifestyle coach of some kind.
John: Do you know about her memory?
John: Mary Lou Henner has a memory.
Merlin: Yeah
John: Is it a, what is it, what happened?
Merlin: Well, I'll tell you in a second.
Merlin: The first thing I just want to say is, do you, based on the last 59 minutes and 11 seconds, do you want to just take a guess at who I kept imagining every time you said Mary Lou Henner?
Merlin: Was it Tawny Katane?
Merlin: No, it was the gymnast girl.
Merlin: Wasn't there a gymnast girl with a similar name?
Merlin: Mary Lou Retton?
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Mary Lou Retton.
Merlin: I thought you were talking about Mary Lou Retton every time.
John: Isn't that terrible?
John: Mary Lou Retton, also very cute.
John: No, that's not the point, though.
John: But she was not on the television show.
Merlin: She has an extremely rare...
Merlin: Situation.
Merlin: I don't want to say condition.
Merlin: But like, you know, the kind of thing like the first time you ever heard about people with autism.
Merlin: Like Kim, what's his name?
Merlin: I think was pretty famous for like his extraordinary memory.
Merlin: One of the guys that was like half of the inspiration for Rain Man.
Merlin: The guy who can tell you like the weather and the score for every baseball game or whatever.
John: Did you ever see the David Letterman show where a kid came on and he knew the whole New York City subway and Dave just sat there and was like, how do you get from here to here?
John: And the kid would tell you the subway route.
John: That was such a good show.
John: It wasn't.
John: We all were like, wow, what is that called?
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Well, she has this.
Merlin: I don't know the name for this.
Merlin: She was on 60 Minutes one time talking about this.
Merlin: She has a rather extraordinary skill, ability, condition where she's one of those.
Merlin: There's a name for this.
Merlin: It is that she remembers everything.
Merlin: Like she remembers everything.
Merlin: Mary Lou Henner remembers everything.
Merlin: Look up Mary Lou Henner remembers everything.
John: Tony Danza.
Merlin: Tony.
Merlin: Hey, look, she's, is she the boss of the sheriff?
Merlin: I never remember.
John: Mary Lou Henner.
John: She's the boss.
John: Remembers everything.
John: Yeah.
John: Tell me what you find.
John: Everything.
John: You're saying everything.
John: She remembers every time she opened a packet of Splenda.
Merlin: Yeah, it depends on how we define that.
Merlin: But yeah, she has that.
John: Every time she went to the bathroom and it wasn't a good experience.
Merlin: No, I'm not saying it's good.
Merlin: I don't want it.
Merlin: Thank you.
John: Highly superior autobiographical memory or HSAM.
John: And then what does that mean?
John: HSAM, Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory or HSAM.
John: I mean, that's what it means.
John: It's recursive.
John: HSAM means this, which means HSAM.
John: It means the ability to recall the slightest details of nearly every day
John: And she ellipses and then under the many advertisements.
John: Yes.
John: I can't even.
John: It's like throwing up.
John: I think it answers your question, though, John.
Merlin: I bet if you got access to Mary Lou Retton, you would be able to ask her about her packages of Splenda.
John: Well, here's Brain and Life magazine, a rare condition.
John: There's only 100 people worldwide.
John: I think that's what Dorothy Parker wrote.
John: Dorothy Parker, yeah.
John: It was a Wednesday, she says without hesitation.
John: I was in Cancun, Mexico with my boyfriend at the time, who was soon to be my first husband.
John: But what?
John: What then?
John: I could remember that.
John: You were in Cancun.
John: That's a memorable time.
John: I'm talking about Wednesday, March 6th, 1982.
John: Somebody right now listening to the program is like, March wasn't a Wednesday.
John: Actually.
John: That was actually a Tuesday.
John: I didn't have Wednesdays then.
John: But so she remembers everything.
John: I wonder, would you like that?
Merlin: No, I would hate that.
Merlin: The guy I was talking about, by the way, and I've seen a documentary just about this guy, and I've also seen a documentary about him.
Merlin: There's been several things about him.
Merlin: He was kind of one of the first autistic people who was really famous for that particular... Because, of course, when we first learned about autism in the 80s, hey, everybody, shut up.
Merlin: This is what it was.
Merlin: It was like there's a kid who spins plates, and you can't talk to him.
Merlin: But then you also learn some of these people have these... This is before Rain Man.
Merlin: People with extraordinary abilities.
Merlin: And this guy, his name is Kim Peek.
Merlin: And he's from, oh, he's from the SLC.
Merlin: He passed away in 2009.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: And he has, oh, he had a damage to his cerebellum, his corpus callosum.
Merlin: You need that for the two hemispheres.
John: Who was the one that could ride in a helicopter over London and then draw a perfect, like a perfect landscape of London?
John: And he got every window and every building, right?
Merlin: But isn't that, from my point of view, that's so terrifying to me?
Merlin: As somebody who thinks about trauma, oh my God.
John: When we grew up, you and I grew up, people said we only used 10% of our brain.
John: That's what they'd say in ads, in periodicals.
John: And so there was 90% of our brain that was a mystery.
John: I heard less than that.
John: I heard we used a lot less than that.
John: And so somebody with autism would do some amazing thing, and we would marvel at it because it suggested that we had that ability to, but our ability was capped.
John: That's like deciding to become tall by getting Marfan syndrome.
Merlin: Huh.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, like, you know, I'm saying like, but like there's a lot of downsides to what these folks are dealing with too.
Merlin: Look at Joey Ramone.
Merlin: Although he didn't die of morphine syndrome.
John: But I do feel like part of this is that I do use my memory to re-suffer past insults.
John: I could see that.
John: And that itself is a trait that I don't necessarily need to have.
John: If you remembered everything but you remembered everything in a sunny light, it might be nice.
John: If I remembered everything, I'd spend all day going like that one time that a guy at a cash register told me that my shoes looked like Boris Karloff and I wish I could find that guy.
Merlin: Did somebody say that to you?
Merlin: I'm sorry to laugh, but someone did say that.
John: No, I was standing on the street somewhere and some guy with a New York accent.
John: Because this was at a time when people from New York were thinking, hey, maybe I'm going to move to Seattle.
John: I remember that time.
John: Seattle is going to be the new place.
John: Forget about it.
John: New York is a shitty place now.
John: King County, baby.
John: And so every once in a while, you'd be standing in Seattle and there'd be these people like, hey, I moved out here and it's not that great.
John: What the hell?
John: You can't get a slice of pie.
John: You can't even get a decent bagel.
John: Hey, well, the gravy.
John: And so I'm standing there and he walks by and not even to, he doesn't even say it to me.
John: He just says it to the air.
John: Oh, that's worse.
John: He waves at my shoes and he goes, wait, why does everybody in Seattle dress like Boris Karloff?
John: Look at this guy's shoes.
John: Hey, he's a fucking vampire.
John: That's a really fun reference.
John: And I was like, he didn't say Frankenstein.
John: No, he said Boris Karloff.
Merlin: He said Boris Karloff specifically.
John: Hey.
John: I'm like, hey, well, why don't you fucking fuck?
John: No, I had something to say at the time.
John: I said something to him like,
John: Well, you know, it's darkness falls across the land.
John: The midnight hour is close at hand.
John: Oh, right.
John: And he's like, hey.
John: But I'm walking here.
John: And he keeps walking.
John: Yeah.
John: Did you go follow him?
John: Did you have a second pass?
John: No, the thing is it didn't strike me as an insult at the time because we did have a very distinctive thing.
John: I bet this is the early 90s.
John: Early 90s.
Merlin: This is going to be Boris Karloff shoes.
Merlin: And forgive my saying, because I know you did this for your reasons.
Merlin: This is also the beginning of the wallet chain time.
John: Wallet chain time.
Merlin: I wrote a song making fun of people who dress like this.
Merlin: He's sad.
Merlin: He missed the height of punk rock dancing.
Merlin: He's got a wallet chain.
Merlin: Yeah, so that was a whole thing in the 90s.
Merlin: And people I knew started wearing wallet on a chain, like a trucker.
John: Well, we were all also wearing like 60s Levi's.
John: No, I guess it was early 70s Levi's cords.
John: Get the date right, John.
John: Brown cords.
John: Brown cords.
John: With the white Levi's tag that we were finding in thrift stores.
John: Like, that's the look.
John: boot cut cords or whatever yep and and and so he walks by and i'm like yeah we're not all wearing nets jerseys or whatever hey get out of here with you and you know that guy moved back to new york of course i bet he moved to new jersey let's be honest oh sure now he does now sure sure he lives in hoboken no he can't afford to live in hoboken anymore and now i don't know he's living in east orange
John: Oh, or West Egg.
John: Or West Egg, but no, he's not living there.
Merlin: Which one's the good egg?
John: West Egg is the good egg.
John: No, one of the eggs is good.
John: Is there a green light?
Merlin: Is there a green light, John?
Merlin: Can he see it in the different egg?
Merlin: Doesn't he see a light?
Merlin: It just reminds you.
Merlin: It reminds you of all your lost times.
Merlin: Sam Waterston can see a light across the water.
Merlin: This is, this is my problem.
Merlin: I'm always seeing the light across the water.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: I'm going to, we got to go.
Merlin: I'm on a webpage for a site called applied behavior analysis, edu.org.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Can I tell you?
Merlin: No, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: I just want to read you five.
Merlin: I'm just reading this off the internet.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Which, you know, this is five mind blowing things.
Merlin: Kim peak could do that.
Merlin: You can't Kim peak.
Merlin: He could read both pages of an open book at once.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: He could provide instant driving directions between any two cities in the world.
Merlin: Some of these are a little pedestrian, but, you know, I couldn't do it.
Merlin: Figuring out what day anyone's birthday was on.
Merlin: Now, this one, recite any Shakespeare play verbatim.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Even Dame Judi Dench can't do that.
Merlin: Hamlet is really long.
Merlin: It's dense.
Merlin: It's a dense text.
Merlin: I mean, I think people see that and they go, oh, I see the upside of that.
Merlin: And you're like, mm-hmm.
Merlin: But, you know.
John: Well, but it's got to be crowding out the ability to talk to somebody in a grocery store.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: What if you had an anecdote about corduroy pants?
Merlin: How did you know that means the heart of the king in French?
Merlin: Sir, there's a self-checkout.
John: Sir, this is a Wendy's.
Merlin: There used to be a gal here.
Merlin: Her name had a noun.
Merlin: And it was like it had a vowel in two parts.
Merlin: That was 60 years ago.
Merlin: Oh, that was.
Merlin: Do you remember back then they would deliver the carts to your house and they had a cattle train?
Oh.
John: The hats were so... The problem is that onion on my belt line.
John: I hear that six times a week now.
Merlin: Because you went over to Shelbyville to get a heel for your shoe.
John: Yeah, and I'm like, oh, you know what we used to do?
John: And somebody will go, oh, wear an onion on your belt?
John: And I'm like, why do you have that cultural reference now to use against me?
John: Thank you, Simpsons, for giving everybody a comeback.
Merlin: We're not all Grandpa Simpson.
Merlin: Like, some of us are Jasper.
Merlin: That's a bad one.
Merlin: Wait, I can't even do it right.
Merlin: Let me do another one.
Merlin: That's a paddling.
Merlin: That's a little better.
John: Yeah.
John: Isn't that racist now?
Merlin: You have to stop doing that?
Merlin: That's a paddling.
Merlin: You do a Simpsons voice now.
Merlin: You never do voices on here.
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: You do a squeaky voice sometimes.
John: I do it, you know, my own voice.
John: Oh, you know what?
John: The other night, the other night I said, it was time for my daughter to go to bed.
John: Yeah.
John: And I said, time to get into bed and put on your jammies.
John: And she said,
John: You're doing the voice from the sleep app.
John: The Go to Sleep app.
Merlin: Like a Calm or something?
John: A Calm app.
John: And I said, I don't know what that is, but no, I'm not.
John: I'm just saying go to bed.
John: And she said, you should do that.
Merlin: You should record Sleep app stuff.
Merlin: Well, that would be smart just because of revenue stream.
Merlin: You can't leave money on the table.
Merlin: But also, I would like it if you did start specifically and perhaps only talking to your daughter in a way where you leaned in and said things like that.
Merlin: Now find yourself closing your eyes.
Merlin: That would not be creepy.
Merlin: I think...
Merlin: I think everybody would appreciate it.
Merlin: You know, maybe your sister partner, daughter friend would like that.
Merlin: You go in, you just give her a little shake.
Merlin: And you say, you know, you are competent at what you do and like computers.
Merlin: And like you give her something that's kind of like, you know, increase your vocabulary or something.
John: I just worry that if I did it all the time,
John: That all of our listeners with ASMR would not be able to keep their pants on.
Merlin: ASMR is not a condition.
John: Their pants would all fall to the floor every time they listened to a show.
Merlin: Did you enjoy the whooshing sound of your pants being removed by?
John: I might have to get a different compressor.
Merlin: Fender Starcaster.
Merlin: Klamath.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: I got a few more.
Merlin: Let's do a few more.
Merlin: Klamath Falls.
John: Klamath Basin.
John: Seattle is built on an isthmus.
Merlin: Archipelago.
Merlin: The Gulag Archipelago.
Merlin: That's not... First edition.
Merlin: First edition.
John: I think you need to weigh...
John: At least 250 pounds to be able to have the resonance.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And you do sound like you're slowly chucking somebody with a screwdriver while you're reading them the Bible.