Ep. 523: "A Grocer You Haven't Met Yet"
Merlin: speaks latin that satin doll i'll give her a whirl your dad probably listened to music like that right
John: Speaks Latin.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: Last minute.
Merlin: You got to get a rhyme in there.
Merlin: That's the kind of music your dad enjoyed.
Merlin: I know you like Count Basie.
Merlin: It was one you mentioned a lot.
Merlin: So you like big bands.
John: Oh, the big bands.
Merlin: Tell me more about that.
Merlin: Well, you know, he was.
Merlin: You know, you grew up hearing.
Merlin: Like when music was on, he was put on stuff like that.
John: Yeah.
John: I posted the other day on Instagram that my dad was a member of the Washington crew four years after the boys in the boat.
John: Okay.
John: He joined the Washington crew in 1940.
John: Okay.
John: And then he was – well, he started – wait a minute.
John: He started the University of Washington in 1940.
John: He joined the crew.
John: He was on the JV crew.
John: Oh, this is the rowing thing.
John: The rowing.
John: That's right.
John: Like the Winklevosses.
John: That's right.
John: Okay.
John: Not – no.
John: At the time, in Washington State, crew was the biggest sport of all sports.
Right.
John: What?
John: Yeah.
John: Oh yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: The whole city turned out front page news and all the, because the Washington crew had won the Olympics in 1936.
John: Have you not seen boys in the boat?
John: No, it keeps coming up in my recommendation.
John: Should I watch it?
John: Oh, you really should.
Merlin: You really should.
Merlin: I think it's like frontline or American experience.
Merlin: So I'll give it a spin.
John: If you want to know the story, if you want to know.
John: I thought it was about English people.
John: No, it's about killing.
John: It's about crushing English people's dreams.
John: With Seattle power.
John: This is the year in, was it Munich?
John: Yeah, Jesse Owens and Adolf Hitler.
John: Adolf H. Hitler.
John: Yeah.
John: And the thing is, it's the University of Washington and Seattle, Washington that basically set the stage to destroy Hitler.
Yeah.
John: Only 10 years later.
John: They created the conditions.
John: Only 10 years later.
John: A lot of people say the war started in 37.
John: But it's not their fault.
John: No.
John: Where did you go?
Merlin: No, I'm here.
Merlin: I'm just realizing how horribly I'm interrupting you.
Merlin: Are we having latency, maybe?
Merlin: Merlin.
Merlin: Okay, you are there.
Merlin: Hello, hello.
Merlin: Let's try again.
Merlin: Merlin.
Merlin: Okay, I lost you.
John: Hello.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: We have terrible latency that I'll have to fix.
Merlin: I thought this was the week, I figured this is, I think about this every week, every podcast.
Merlin: This is the week the person finally just doesn't let me interrupt them.
Merlin: And I can accept that.
Merlin: But what happened?
Merlin: Oh, it's what we in the business call latency, which is like- Oh, you got latency.
Yeah.
John: I'm plugged into Ethernet.
John: Are you?
John: Yeah, I'm behind 17 proxies.
John: That's your problem.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: They're all good proxies.
John: Oh, and they're all like integrated?
John: Well, yeah, and it's like the top one is the tallest, and then it goes down to all the lower proxies.
John: Proxies all the way down.
John: Yeah, but it's moving fast.
John: It's moving downhill.
Merlin: The question to you is, do I keep all this in and just fix it a little bit, or I think I should just keep it in, and I'll try to make it funny.
Yeah.
Merlin: Whatever this new thing is, I'm really into it.
Merlin: Because it's better than the emoji shrug, but that's kind of what it is, right?
Merlin: It's a horse sound.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
John: Washington Crew.
John: Washington Crew.
John: So, anyway, my dad showed up.
John: Same coach, same everything.
John: Showed up, got elevated to the varsity in 1942.
John: Whoa.
John: And then Ulrichson, the famous coach, you know, they won against California.
John: They beat everybody.
John: But then the war, the war, the war that they they set up the conditions for.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: The war that Washington had basically had basically like tripped the wire and and lit the fuse.
John: And so at the end of that year, all the big rowing meets back east where Washington could have beat Navy and beat Princeton or whatever, those were all canceled.
Merlin: You're seeing this place at this point, it's been several years since the Olympics, but this is a dynasty.
John: Oh, for sure.
John: Oh, yes.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: My dad, my dad, I'll send you a picture of my dad.
Merlin: I'm looking at the WashingtonRowing.com 1942, and I'm trying to find a photo.
John: Well, no, that's the thing.
John: There are very few photos of 42, and it's one of those where you... Because of the war.
John: Because of the war.
Merlin: They had to use the film for the war effort.
John: Yeah, if you've got a friend named Selena Gomez and you try to Google her, it's going to be really hard to get down to where...
John: where the results are going to be meaningful to you.
John: Yeah.
John: I've run into that more often than you'd think.
John: Yeah.
John: But anyway, so, so dad, if you think about his formative years, right, he's 21 in 1942.
John: Yeah.
John: And he joins the Navy ROTC and he goes to war.
John: And does he have a poster of Betty Grable on the wall of his hooch?
John: Yeah.
John: Down in Corregidor?
John: Does he?
John: Oh, you bet he does.
John: She's a handsome woman, John.
John: And every one of those war movies you watch, World War II war movies, where young guys with crew cuts wearing...
John: khaki uniforms uh are are dancing around in a in a quonset hut to oh of course so you get though probably like i want to say like the andrew sisters
Merlin: Oh, the whole bit.
Merlin: All of it, yeah.
Merlin: Benny Goodman, you know.
Merlin: Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum.
Merlin: That song is so punk rock.
Merlin: Sing, sing, sing.
Merlin: I think I use it for like fast food commercials now, but it's still beautiful.
John: Every single... I mean, my...
John: You could not have enough horns, right?
John: If you had 50 horns on stage, he would have wanted 50 more.
John: And he never lost his love for and appreciation of that music, which some might say is another way of saying that he never liked any other music, despite many, many forms of music coming and going.
John: He could listen to rock music, but he wouldn't.
John: It's not what he wanted.
John: He didn't like... This is the kind of thing that's much easier to understand as you get older.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, no, and where it's not just like, oh, you're playing Kiss too loud.
Merlin: It's just like, yeah, it's really, that's not my thing.
John: Right.
John: All of my friends are constantly making jokes where they put up the poster of Coachella and they circle two things they've ever heard of.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, right.
Merlin: I've seen that.
Merlin: It's true.
Merlin: It really is true.
Merlin: But he... If I see one, I'm lucky.
Merlin: I'm like, hey, I know Boy Genius.
John: Yeah, but I've never heard their music, but I know.
Merlin: I'm hip to the jive.
Merlin: Oh, Dua Lipa.
Merlin: Doge Cat.
Merlin: Doge Cat.
John: Doge Cat.
John: Major Domo Cat.
John: But Dad did not like modern jazz.
John: He thought it was just everybody soloing all at once.
Merlin: You know what Cab Calloway called it?
Merlin: What did Cab Calloway call it?
Merlin: Little problematic.
Merlin: He called it Chinese music.
Merlin: He's talking about like bop.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So peanut, so peanut.
John: So peanut.
John: He did not, dad had no affection for the Brat Pack, any of that kind of .
Merlin: As previously stipulated, your parents, like my parents, we discussed this from very early on, were both sets of parents were into music like that.
Merlin: And you talked about your mom in particular, I feel like saying, hey, I was a grown person.
Merlin: I was attracted to the things that adults liked and was open to elevating my palate in a way that made me more sophisticated, kind of, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And I mean, again, if we're prefacing everything by saying, not to be racist, but my mom- I think that's implicit, but it's probably smart.
John: My mom looked at the Brat Pack and was like,
John: Why would I listen to all these rapey Italians?
John: Oh, dear me.
John: This is garbage.
John: Oh, dear me.
Merlin: Coming in with their guinea charm.
John: With their slick suits.
Merlin: And just to show you that I am not a hard-hearted man.
Merlin: Into this clean country?
Merlin: That's exactly true.
Merlin: And he'd appreciate it if he paid for it himself.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
John: They're pushing Klingman out.
Yeah.
Merlin: Sorry, everybody.
Merlin: Sorry, two significant parts of the population.
Merlin: It's me, Tony Bennett.
John: I ate of the mushroom or whatever.
John: Frank Sinatra.
John: He fucked my wife right here on this bar, and it was an honor.
Merlin: You know what that book should be called?
Merlin: It should be called Yes, I Can, and Frank Sinatra says I can because he tells all those guys what to do.
John: You know the problem with these British musicians.
John: They don't respect their culture.
Merlin: He's in the Godfather 2.
Merlin: Godfather as well, Godfather 2.
John: Godfather 2, Godfather 2.
Merlin: I don't want to sound racist, but he plays our Beast Clemenza.
Merlin: Oh, Beast Clemenza, of course.
Merlin: Oh, Beast Clemenza.
Merlin: And then Clemenza wanted too much money to be in Godfather 2.
Merlin: He's the rug-stealing Clemenza.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It was all real proud of you, Mike.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I watched Master and Commander last night, and then I watched the first two and a half episodes of The World at War again.
John: Oh, nice.
John: Oh, that's so fun.
Merlin: The 73 TV series with Lawrence.
Merlin: Oh, it's so freaking good.
John: You know, not to make us go immediately into old man stuff, but I went to the model train show yesterday.
Merlin: Oh, terrific.
Merlin: Were you home in time for Wapner?
Merlin: It was.
John: You watched Master and Commander for the 40th time and then a 1970s documentary.
Merlin: You better hold fast.
Merlin: Yeah, and then, yeah, I was busy going choo-choo.
Merlin: How'd that go?
Merlin: Was it all the same scale, John, or were there different scales?
Yeah.
John: Merlin, I don't know if you know about the scale wars.
Merlin: I feel like there's H, HO, and BO are three that I remember.
John: No, they're nowadays.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: This is like, that's my Les Paul.
Merlin: That's the thing where I know a lot about a thing where it's not really a thing anymore.
John: Well, I mean, there's always, listen, there's always going to be HO, just as there's always going to be an American flag flying over the Capitol.
John: Thank you.
John: But...
John: There's always going to be some 400-year-old man that's still building Lionel train sets.
John: I don't know who those vampires are.
John: They'll never die.
John: I'm going to be real clear.
Merlin: I do not find it unattractive.
Merlin: I don't have the space for it.
Merlin: It's already bad enough with the 3D printing.
Merlin: I'm serious, though.
Merlin: When I see people who make a whole environment on a big piece of plywood, I'm very attracted to it.
John: But here's what's happening in the industry.
John: Here's what's happening in the train culture.
John: First of all, Lego trains, a certain segment of the people, and it's younger neckbeards, obviously.
John: Lego trains are beautiful things.
John: They're really beautiful.
Merlin: This is all new to me.
Merlin: And is there like a fairly standard way that they power those?
Merlin: Or does everybody do their own thing like soapbox derby?
John: No, no, no.
John: Lego actually makes train sets.
Yeah.
John: In Lego scale.
John: They're not in any of, they're not in HO or N or any of the other scales.
John: Thanks for nothing.
Merlin: I do not need to know.
John: They're in L. Okay.
Merlin: Because we haven't done Thomas trains in like 10 years.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: We bought the powered ones.
Merlin: We had like four or five powered ones.
Merlin: So I am looking that up right now.
Merlin: So that's been an ascendant, you're saying.
John: Oh, well, I mean, when you see someone who has built an entire Lego train set, what you find is that it is compatible with all Lego buildings, all Lego worlds.
John: This is not that expensive.
John: Well, and considering that it interacts with all your pre-existing Legos.
John: Exactly.
John: It's backwards compatible with your Lego and your Duplo.
John: At this train event...
John: um the lego train which took up about an acre of land at one point goes into a lego city that has lego skyscrapers lego skyscrapers that were like 15 20 feet tall modern all glass skyscrapers i can't believe it never occurred to me till now it makes so much sense oh yeah and
John: And you can do old-fashioned.
John: You can do super modern.
John: You can do European town.
John: You can do American country town.
John: Just let the Legos...
John: drive the train set right instead of the train set driving the oh boy that's good so that's a whole universe and model train people are like oh okay it's yes it's what we've been doing all along right this sounds like a major potential fracture because well but the fracture is everyone else building model railroads is 80 and
John: And then over there at the Lego set, there's a bunch of 35-year-olds and all the kids, right, are just like, oh, my God.
John: And, you know, and, of course, they do all the – This Orient Express is pretty sweet.
John: They're amazing, right?
John: Somebody built a Lego space needle that was basically to scale.
John: Yeah.
John: And then at the top they put a little Jimi Hendrix –
John: standing up there a little leg of like king kong and all of the well he was up on the top sure yeah all of the kids walked by and i heard him one after another like there's a little guitar player on the on space needle what's he doing oh my god guitar player up there and i just thought well this is the greatest right but then the new the new deal many many years ago they introduced the n scale
John: which is which is small n scale okay which is small oh i see but still still very detailed it's one to 160 and you can build on a tabletop a very elaborate train set okay with n scale and so when n scale first came out all the ho people who dominated the scene were like oh
John: What is this?
John: This is something.
John: Those are the little ones.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's just for some German weirdos and somebody that lives in a, in an efficiency apartment in Tokyo.
John: Who's who else is going to, a train set should be the entire basement.
John: Right.
John: But it's, it's a form of manifest destiny.
John: And I think what's happened is that gen Xers have embraced end scale in a way I did not, I had never seen before.
John: Okay.
John: And, and I talked to a lot of them because that's my nature and,
John: The other day we were at the grocery store and I was there with my daughter's mother slash partner.
John: But we had arrived separately because we each had our own groceries to get for the separate homes we maintained.
John: Easy peasy lemon squeaky.
John: But we were at the grocery store simultaneously.
John: And then she had left the grocery store and had gone home.
John: And she said later, I see why it's so hard for you to do things, why it's so hard for you to go to the grocery store.
John: Because every time I came around the corner, you were talking to a different grocer.
Merlin: It's good that she saw that and now she understands.
John: You were leaning on your cart, not grocery shopping, but instead in some kind of elaborate conversation about butter with some grocer that had an arm full of lettuce and was trying to get down the road.
John: And I was like, well, I happen to know that grocer.
John: And we were catching up.
John: I have a song about butter that might interest you.
John: No, that grocer had to fill me in.
John: I was walking down the island.
John: Another grocer stopped and said, I was just looking at your Instagram and you were at the train show.
John: And I said, I sure was.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Is this somebody you're acquainted with or had you given them like a card or something?
John: No, Seattle's a small town.
Merlin: I live in the community, sir.
Merlin: Oh, gosh.
Merlin: I'm so sorry.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: So you know everybody.
Merlin: Your old Lyft driver, Joe.
Merlin: A little bit.
John: So she's like, it's so hard for you to get through the world because you got to stop.
John: And also, even the grocers I don't know, I'm interested in their grocery ring.
John: It's just a grocer you haven't met yet.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: There's no enemies in the world.
John: Right.
John: Anyway, so N scale, everywhere I went, it was a guy my age.
John: And I said, I would walk up and I'd go, N scale, huh?
John: And they would all say, well, you know...
John: Of course, I was HO.
John: And I'm like, yeah, me too.
John: And they said, but, you know, I got kids.
John: I got, you know, my wife's not going to be like, oh, take up the whole basement and then end scale.
John: And I was like, I see.
Merlin: The opposite of a minivan.
Merlin: Like, you're like, oh, I got to take Tyler's cleats places.
Merlin: So I need this big crossover SUV.
Merlin: In this case, you're like, because I have so many SUVs now, I don't have room for anything but end scale.
John: Yeah, I have a corner somewhere that has been allotted to me for this hobby, and I am really into it.
John: And I can see it.
John: They're beautiful.
John: Right, right, right.
John: But then, Merle, there's Z scale.
John: Oh, geez.
John: And Z scale.
Merlin: Is that the one that's really extreme?
Merlin: It's so small.
John: It's so tiny.
Merlin: Oh, I think the one I'm looking at doesn't even include.
Merlin: Oh, look at that.
Merlin: It is much smaller.
Merlin: That is 1 to 220.
Merlin: And just so you all know, if you're not a dork, we're talking about ratios here.
John: Ratios.
John: That's right.
Merlin: It's all about ratios.
Merlin: So if you want to look at it this way, if there were, for whatever reason, something in that world that's 220 feet long, it would be represented by something that's one foot long.
John: Yeah, so it's like if some evil genius had a shrinking ray that he had set to 220 reduction.
John: 220, 221.
John: And then he accidentally slipped and his head hit it and it shot at an entire railroad.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: So, I mean, there was actually a person there who had an entire train set, including mountains and villages, that was in a briefcase.
Yeah.
John: A big briefcase.
Merlin: John, if I could say that's just about your dream in some ways.
Merlin: If you think about, oh, you're on an airplane.
Merlin: You talk about being Mr. Guy.
Merlin: You show up and they go, the businessman's here.
Merlin: He opens it up and there's an entire train set in it.
John: An entire train set.
John: And it's not some dork train set.
John: It's like nice.
John: It's real.
John: It looks great.
John: Think about that, where you show up at a party and they're like, oh, what'd you bring in the briefcase?
John: And then you open the lid and then you're the hit of the party for the rest of the night, right?
Merlin: It's almost as good as bringing a 12-string guitar.
John: You bring a 12-string?
John: You know, a lot of people walk in.
John: I gave my love a cherry.
John: They've got a half rack of Strohs and they think, hey, I'm the king of the walk here.
Merlin: And they're like, we asked you to bring ice and a salad.
John: No, I did you one better.
Merlin: You put on your cap.
Yeah.
John: I got little eyes and little sound.
Merlin: You put on a tiny little hat.
John: No, I hand out hats.
John: Are they Z-scale hats?
John: Well, there were some paper locomotive guy hats.
John: But a lot of people at the train show still are wearing classic locomotive engineer hats like I had like a peak peak caps or yeah, well and it's made out of that that Yeah, it's ticky.
John: It's like a mattress hat and then I had my white corduroy Alaska railroad hat which When people noticed it
John: Because the Alaska Railroad is extremely popular as a format for doing railroads.
John: Because Alaska Road is a closed system.
John: It doesn't connect to any other railroads.
John: Okay.
John: And it goes through the most amazing scenery in the world.
John: So if you're somebody that loves to build ravines, or even if you're somebody that wants to build like a switching yard...
John: the Alaska railroad switching yard is very small, very manageable.
John: You could build it on a piece of plywood and it would be, you know, there's an old train station, there's a bunch of car barns, there's a roundhouse.
John: So people love it.
John: And it's, and the livery is,
John: is beautiful.
John: All the logos, all the colors.
Merlin: That's the color pattern, almost like the way you have FSU as garnet and gold.
Merlin: Liver is also like race cars and stuff, right?
Merlin: That's right.
John: Wow.
John: So I had my hat, and a lot of times when somebody saw it, they would frantically reach into their pocket and pull out some Alaska Railroad button or they'd flip their hat around and it said Alaska Railroad on it.
John: It's a real...
John: It's a real train person.
John: Hat brother, yeah.
John: Yeah, where it's like, oh, Alaska Railroad.
John: And then, of course, I got the top story of all.
John: Like, oh, yeah, you into the Alaska Railroad?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: You ever ride on the back of one of those throwing paper you just set on fire?
John: You know, I've got an Alaska Railroad-based train set, but I built it in the 70s.
Merlin: Before, when you were just riding this.
Merlin: For real, were you doing this one?
Merlin: Did you have any of these ones?
Merlin: Because they're a little bit costly.
Merlin: But like you – did you actually have powered trains?
John: When my dad got – when he got his job as the chief counsel of the Alaska Railroad, the first thing he did was buy me a train set and have it custom –
John: Out with Alaska rail for are you kidding me before that was so much cooler than me giving my kid a podcast metrics account And and looks like we're at some drop-off after they're out when I was living with them so when I lived in Seattle he bought this and my mom said I
John: And there's nowhere for this train set.
John: We're a humble people who live in a mid-century flat-roofed house with no basement.
John: There's no place for this.
John: Yeah.
John: And then her boyfriend, Bobby, took the challenge.
John: And said, oh, I've got a solution.
John: And he built a train set that was on chains that you could raise up until it was flat against the ceiling.
John: Oh, today they call it a home hack.
John: And then we'd lower it down.
Merlin: You raise it up.
Merlin: It's like a transportation portcullis.
Merlin: It's like a whole platform.
Merlin: And you raise it.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Bobby sounds handy.
Merlin: Bobby was great.
John: Mom's favorite boyfriend of all time.
John: Bobby was, uh, Bobby was Susan's, you know, she, she thought of him as a, as a stepdad.
John: He was great.
John: Bobby was great.
John: But then when I moved up to Alaska,
John: My dad and I lived in a three-bedroom condo, and it was just the two of us, so one of the bedrooms was the train room.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And not only did it have— He's not against this.
John: He's for this.
John: Not only did it have a full train set built in it, and he would come home from work sometime with some craftsman at the railroad who had built a new—
John: Little Alaska railroad locomotive based on the ones that were right outside his window And dad would come home with these things in a little box and be like look what I got But insane also he was coming home have it cuz he my dad loved loved every grocer and
Merlin: and loved every previously uh discussed your father also was like a a pretty legendary talker oh and he i think at one point you said that he would he was a guy who would fix his plane who was at i want to say nevada but there was a guy the guy who fixed his plane he would just kind of go there so he could visit with the guy yeah he it was down in uh alturas california northern north uh eastern california he'd go down there just to
John: You know, it's a four-day trip or whatever.
John: That seems less crazy to me all the time.
John: I know, right?
John: At the time, I was like, Dad, you flew over 20,000 aircraft mechanics in order to get to this guy, Cliff Hudson.
John: No, Cliff Hudson was a bush pilot in Tolkien.
John: No, I forget what this guy is.
John: That's okay.
John: But Dad was, and I just thought, what are you doing?
John: Alturas is nothing.
John: It's like a cowboy town that fell in hard times.
John: And my dad was like, well, he's got his hanger out here because it's cheap.
Merlin: I like that you're also, you've adapted this to be his voice before he got the voice that we... Yeah, he was a younger guy.
John: He wasn't quite where he had his later voice.
John: Just the beginning.
Merlin: I miss when you do that voice.
John: He was only 60 at that point.
John: He was not like 80.
John: I had to check the livery.
John: But he would also, he'd go out to the shops and
John: And those guys out there would hand him things.
John: He would come home with the old switching lights that used to be oil fired.
Merlin: And they're like, we're just going to throw them away.
John: Well, or they're just lying around in the corners.
John: And so they're like, dad's like, oh, that's nice.
John: And they're like, take it.
John: So I had in the train room, not just my train that was gradually being built.
John: Oh my gosh.
John: But also all these things.
John: 1920s railroad lamps that were three feet tall you know like i mean it was decked out signs on the wall that said railroad crossing the whole thing oh my goodness well then my sister moved in with us oh jeez and we love we love her and without any hesitation i said well i'll live under the train set
John: And so Susan got the bedroom and I put a mattress under the train.
John: And that's how I went through sixth grade.
John: That's not true.
John: Living under a train.
John: And your father let that happen.
John: Loved it.
John: You had like a little bivouac down there.
John: So I would crawl under the train set and had my little bed and blankets and stuff and lived under there.
John: This is not a story I've ever told.
John: Nobody knows about.
Merlin: I mean, it's so cool.
Merlin: Some people may go, ha-ha, like you have enthusiasm for something.
Merlin: I think that's so cool.
Merlin: I think it's cool that you got away with, however long, that you got away with sleeping under it for some period of time.
John: But here's the attention deficit disorder issue.
John: Not a, not disorder.
John: I don't even want to call it a disorder anymore.
John: The attention deficit, uh, advantage ADA, which is that unlike the old men that spend all this time building things that they think of as static environments, I was constantly changing the layout because I was like, well, wait a minute.
John: What if this track went over here?
John: Well, what if it looped around?
John: Well, what if there was a little thing over here?
John: And so it was never fully understood.
John: It never solidified it was a it was a kinetic environment.
Merlin: It was all it was all in a way that a regular Real-world railroad couldn't it was it was always evolving and it was a process a project for you We're like you're thinking like oh and maybe next time I'll do this or I'll do that and like rearrange and like it's not about making this one perfect mise-en-scene It's about like this evolving Little biome
John: Exactly.
John: But every change I made, unlike a lot of my other projects, the goal was always to get it running again.
John: And so every change I made, I would keep, I had, it was just a small enough, you know, it was just a, a simple enough goal.
John: Yes.
John: Take it apart.
John: Yes.
John: Change it around, but get it running again and don't just leave it as a pile of garbage.
John: And so it was always evolving, but I wouldn't
John: I could stay focused long enough
John: to get power back to it and get trains moving.
Merlin: I had, I don't know if they're called slot cars, but whatever that was called, we had the race cars on a track and there were like little kind of feelers on the bottom, right?
Merlin: And it went around electric.
Merlin: I've played the quarterback or the hockey game or the quarterback game that's like electrical stuff.
Merlin: I've had terrible luck with all of those things.
Merlin: And then eventually, it didn't take long before the tracks didn't connect together very well.
Merlin: And it was really, that's what I kept thinking about.
Merlin: I realize it's not the same thing.
Merlin: But I kept thinking about that when you were describing getting it running again.
Merlin: Part of getting it running again is like it's more than just putting up trees you like.
Merlin: It's like getting all the track in place.
Merlin: And it's not really a train set until the train can make a loop.
John: Exactly.
John: And sometimes you make changes to the train that seem really good.
John: But then at full speed, the train's just going to derail because it can't handle that kind of.
Merlin: I went through that with the Thomas trains for sure.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You got to give it enough room to really get some speed up before it goes over a hump.
John: I learned something interesting about Thomas trains.
John: which is that severely autistic kids, for whatever reason, really respond to Thomas.
John: His face.
John: And so much so.
John: I've heard this too, yeah.
John: Yeah, that how a kid responds to Thomas is part of a diagnosis or a diagnostic process.
John: Sure, sure.
John: That if they're like, well, we're not sure about this kid, let's get some Thomas trains in here and see what they do.
Merlin: And maybe kids who are normally not as sort of engaged with the outside world will kind of perk up sometimes.
John: Just totally open up to Thomas.
John: So much so that a person I know who works with kids on the spectrum actually refers –
Merlin: to those kids as friends of thomas that's sweet i know isn't that nice yeah we've got a thing here where you can go on a real life thomas train um i mean in the sense i mean like it's you know somewhere here somewhere near the bay area it's not like super nearby but yeah and it's it's a big destination of course they have parties and stuff like that but i've i've heard this a similar thing i i would never want to say anything hurtful about people or try to make a cliche but
Merlin: I mean, trains, I mean, that's already, you know, that's kind of in the wheelhouse of a lot of kids I know.
Merlin: And then I've just, I don't know, I've always heard that the faces in particular are very appealing.
Merlin: I guess maybe because it's so broad and grokkable and it's on a train.
John: It's the best of both worlds.
John: Best of all worlds.
John: And so anyway, but I was there at the train show with my daughter.
John: And of course, she's already like dad talks to every grocer.
John: And now he's here.
Merlin: That's a dream come true.
John: All these strange men are all wearing the same hat.
John: And they're all building these incredible things.
John: And so it actually she was very engaged for a while.
Merlin: She let go kid.
John: Well, yes.
John: And so we got over to the Lego.
Merlin: I asked that partly because of the Lego set, but also just because if you're somebody who's into Legos, I think that is definitely an entree into things like the way I'm interested in miniatures, like whether that's D&D miniatures or 3D miniatures or maquettes or like whatever that is.
Merlin: Blue naked girls and... Yeah, like when Velma lifts her sweater and she has giant, giant boobs and makes a big open mouth face.
Merlin: I went to that guy's thing to get something to help me with my PTFE tubes and make sure they aligned correctly and didn't withdraw the filament incorrectly and get clogged.
Merlin: But then he also had something he'd made.
Merlin: It was Velma.
Merlin: And she was pulling up her sweater, and she had huge boobs and was making an O face.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Well, you know, at the time, in the Scooby-Doo era, as we call it, you know, Velma was like the kind of comically dumpy, you know, unpretty nerd.
John: It's Ginger and Marianne all over again.
John: But as time has gone on, that has become the model of a totally sexy sex pot.
John: And all of the people, I think it's partly like Ghost World.
John: Oh, like the Thor Birch character.
John: Where Thor is basically a Thelma.
John: And then all of a sudden it's just like, well, Thelma.
John: The amount of Rule 34 Thelma material that's out there is... Valentine's Day is coming up, just so you know.
Merlin: And every occasion of any kind really brings out a lot of enthusiasm on the 3D printing sites.
Merlin: Which I'm not here to yuck on a yum.
Merlin: But sometimes it is very, very funny.
Merlin: And I'm this close.
Merlin: I don't want to shame people.
Merlin: But I'm this close to curating a collection of... I'm going to call it Thanks Honey.
Merlin: And it's a collection of things you can print out to give your wife or girlfriend for Valentine's Day.
Merlin: And you know those little, like a canonical, like a ticket, like a ticket you'd get at a carnival.
Merlin: It's got the four kind of scooped out corners.
Merlin: You print out two of these tickets to Pound Town.
Merlin: And you can give that.
Merlin: You can say, Happy Valentine's Day.
Merlin: Here's two tickets to Pound Town I printed for you.
Merlin: Now, that's on the same machine I used to make that Christmas morning before you and the spoon holder you don't use.
John: I've got it all here.
John: I can't laugh because I've just talked for 20 minutes about going to the train show.
Merlin: It's an entree to two things.
Merlin: If you like Lego, I think it's an entree to, which is a very likable thing.
Merlin: And it's something I think a lot of kids, more than when I was a kid, are into Lego now for a variety of reasons.
Merlin: But whatever.
Merlin: But it's an intro to stuff.
Merlin: Obviously, if you're interested in things like these sets and these trains, but in the miniatures, I used to just like looking at the little dudes holding the lantern next to the tree.
Merlin: Some of my favorite stuff was like, oh, my God, there's an ice cream stand.
Merlin: That was the stuff that really appealed to me.
Merlin: And, you know, somebody wanted to talk about like how like smoothly the train was moving, which is interesting to me now, but was not at the time because I wasn't part of the culture.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and I love those too, right?
John: And I think what my daughter loved was she already plays with Legos.
John: And the idea that there could also be a train running through there and all of her little town that she is working on all the time could have –
John: like some context like a like this isn't just some little town this is like a working thriving community thriving community so i think i got her at least uh at least the idea and the thing is once you see a lego train in action
John: Uh, you can't help but go why I've been waiting.
John: What have I, what have I been doing?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: What have I been doing this whole time?
Merlin: It's like when I used to use a Mac before, you know, I used a Mac for 15, 16 years before I was ever on the internet.
Merlin: And like now I have to imagine now if you put a Mac in front of somebody and sat down and you, and they're like, well, where's the stuff?
Merlin: And you're like, well, it's all on there, all your apps, all your files.
Merlin: And also you can print if you need to.
Merlin: And they're like, yeah, but where's the rest of the world?
Merlin: With a Lego train?
Merlin: Oof.
John: That's a lot of the world is in the palm of your hand now.
John: Yeah, and you could do a space train, for that matter.
John: I mean, you could do a super train, because it's Lego.
John: Wait a minute.
John: Why has no one built a Lego super train?
John: And why are we not making any money from it?
John: This seems like a thing where right now somewhere in the, in the, uh, the going places gang in the, in the, the rhetoric on the line verse, right?
John: Someone has just swept a pile of papers off of a table.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And I weren't recording a podcast right now.
Merlin: I would not be recording a podcast right now.
Merlin: I would be going home and I would be bringing up the tubs and
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Bring up the tubs.
Merlin: There are many.
Merlin: Bring up the tubs.
Merlin: So many tubs.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The tubs.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: My wife would love that.
Merlin: Crocketts and tubs.
Merlin: Oh, dear me.
Merlin: Yeah, something's coming in the air tonight.
Merlin: Don Johnson.
Merlin: He came in the air.
Merlin: Man, he used to play with Jeff Beck.
Merlin: Isn't that wild?
John: You know, all those guys knew each other.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Highway Jam.
Merlin: That was his highway jam.
Merlin: Freeway Jam.
Merlin: He had some kind of jam.
Merlin: We were talking about the video real quick for Jan Hammer.
Merlin: We must have talked about this.
Merlin: You talked about Journey last week, or we talked about Journey.
Merlin: Have you ever seen, remember, not HSAS, but... That's Hager, Sean, Aronson, and Shreve.
John: And I've met Michael Shreve.
John: Really?
John: Did you ever meet one of the Hall brothers?
John: You mean Daryl Hall and John Hall?
Merlin: Yes, and John Hall.
Merlin: No, I was thinking of Hans Hall's sons played with David Bowie, and they were like a really good rhythm section.
Merlin: Oh, no, I didn't meet them.
Merlin: I didn't meet the Hall brothers.
Merlin: And what was I saying about trains?
John: You were saying?
Merlin: Oh, my goodness.
Merlin: Uh, I would, I would be all over.
Merlin: I'm looking, now I'm looking at old, old, uh, Thomas train photos.
Merlin: Cause, cause I would go in and I could send you one here, right here.
Merlin: Here's your one around the dome, which is like, I would introduce my stuff into the mix.
Merlin: So for example, here you'll see my action figure of Walter Sobchak from the big Lebowski.
Merlin: Yes.
John: How is he going to interact with Thomas?
Merlin: Well, if you see there, like... Oh, hello.
Merlin: He did not watch his buddies die face down in the mud to let the strain go by.
Merlin: He's twice as big as your coffee cup.
Merlin: The scale is different, and I'll own that.
Merlin: Okay, so she... Like, for real talk, you think there were things about it she liked?
John: Well, what happened?
John: What had happened was we went to the state fair this year.
John: And I'm starting to give the impression that we that I take my daughter on crazy missions to like watch people quilt.
John: And it's not wrong.
John: I do.
John: I also make her stand there while I talk about butter.
John: But you don't let her eat any.
John: No.
John: And, you know, and I take her to the top of high rises where I know the elevator operator, you know, all this stuff that my dad did for me.
John: Take her to the Washington State Senate.
John: It's a legacy.
John: Yeah.
John: Listen to them pass bills.
John: So we were at the state fair and my daughter's mother slash partner was there with us.
John: And I was walking around the craft barn because we go, you know, I've got a limited amount of
John: of interest in looking at a thousand jars of pickled herring.
John: Because you can't taste them.
John: You're not in the community.
John: How the hell are you going to?
John: Who cares?
Merlin: I can't even tell you which one's a better goat.
John: Well, okay.
John: So that's a thing.
John: Yeah, I don't know.
Merlin: I watch those dog shows and I get so mad because they're all precious angels.
Merlin: How can you say that one Border Collie is better than another Border Collie?
Merlin: They have their reasons.
Merlin: They touch its wiener and they look at its teeth.
Merlin: And then somebody with cankles runs a little bit.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And then they, yeah, I guess they shake it.
John: I don't know what they do.
John: They're not snow globes.
Merlin: They shake the dog.
Merlin: I would expect less of a rattle and more of a rumble.
John: Yeah, they shake it and see what it does.
John: Mardisian Ridge back.
John: Shaka, shaka, shaka, shaka, shaka, shaka.
Mm-hmm.
John: So, so we're at the craft barn and I'm walking around and I'm looking at, oh, you know, yeah, this is the bow and arrow section or whatever.
John: Over here, you've got the people that are, you know, building like a house out of cheese.
John: And I looked around and my daughter had found the looms and there were six people back behind a little like barrier who were working looms and spinning wheels.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: And so she's gotten into knitting a little bit.
John: And so it was just like, what is going on over here?
John: And the people working the looms and spinning wheels were all too happy to explain to her what they were doing.
John: And invited her back behind the barrier and were like, here, you try.
John: And I was like, she's going to prick her finger and go to sleep, and then it's going to be this whole thing.
John: Rumpelstiltskin is my name, the interior self in two.
John: And they said, no, no, no.
Merlin: Remember that he stamped his foot and tore himself in two?
Merlin: He did.
Merlin: He was so mad.
Merlin: That guy's so crazy.
Merlin: He was so mad.
John: But then I was like, where's your mom?
John: And she was like, I don't know.
John: I'm here watching people make yarn.
John: And so I'm wandering around.
John: I'm like, where did she go?
John: And then I see her and she's in the miniature dollhouse section.
John: Oh.
John: And she's walking around looking at the dollhouses.
John: I've never seen this look on her face.
John: Oh.
John: Does she have or want doll things as a kid?
John: Well, this is something I don't know.
John: Her mother's a seamstress.
John: And so her house is just full of wedding dresses.
John: And, you know, there's like fabric everywhere.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: But I had never seen in her what was happening here.
John: And I walked up cautiously and was like, you like the dollhouses, huh?
John: And she said, look at the little miniature carpets.
John: And it's got a little teapot.
John: And they've got drapes.
John: And I was like, have you never seen a dollhouse before?
John: I think they're hypnotic.
John: Well, so at the end of this,
John: She had clearly exhibited a willingness to go into the train set world of moms, which is dollhouse world.
John: And so I found her a British magazine all about making mid-century modern dollhouses.
John: Oh, my God.
John: You're a good partner friend.
John: And I gave it to her for Christmas.
John: And so she's looking, you know, and it's just got, it's like an Ames chair, except it's for a little, for little.
Merlin: There was one in a window.
Merlin: So you know West Portal, that place you bought a pair of shorts one night.
Merlin: I do, I do.
Merlin: Yeah, you know West Portal.
Merlin: But like, I'm so happy to see this has come back for Christmas, but there was this real estate office that always had a dollhouse in the window all the time.
Merlin: And it was fun to look at, but what was really fun about it, and you can understand why, like it's a place for kids whose parents are at the real estate place to have some kind of diversion and keep them busy.
Merlin: And so it was different every time we walked by.
Merlin: And there was this woman, there's a little woman petting a horse and sometimes there was no horse.
Merlin: So there's nothing she was petting because somebody moved the horse, but they had this little tiny bucket of, and I'm talking, this has got to be like, I don't know what kind of scale it is, but you know, the whole three story thing is like eight, six or eight feet tall.
Merlin: But, but like it had a, I was always obsessed with this tiny little like tub of bottled Coca-Cola with real looking ice in it.
Merlin: It's weird.
Merlin: I mean, moments knopped together like magnets.
Merlin: You don't know the thing that's going to get you super interested in this stuff.
John: Yeah, for me, it's always a lamp.
John: That lamp looks like a lamp.
John: It's even hanging there like a lamp.
John: Yeah, it's so little.
Merlin: And I think little... When you brought this up to her, was her response like, cool?
Merlin: Because you weren't going like, ha-ha, you're a baby.
Merlin: It was gentle, and you could tell that this is something that was interesting to her.
John: Well, one thing about walking around a crafts barn...
John: Where everybody from Washington State has brought their doily or whatever the hell they worked on all year.
John: And again, it's like some judges touch its penis and shake it.
John: And then it's like, this is the best doily.
John: You can't walk around that barn without being very humble about what fascinates people.
John: Because it's like, I mean, you not only pickled all this herring, but you brought it here and were prepared for that jar of pickled herring to go up against all the other herring picklers in the whole region.
John: Yes.
John: And you had confidence here, you know.
John: And so seeing her respond to this dollhouse, well, what she doesn't have in her, she works all the time.
John: She's a powerful business person.
John: And she doesn't have a diversion process.
John: Because unlike her mother, she does not sew or knit.
Merlin: Take this in the way I mean it, because this goes for me, and it goes for so many other people, and I don't know if it goes for her, but it would be nice to have something to do with your hands that's more than playing with your phone or watching TV.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Something where you go and do whatever you want.
Merlin: If you want to have HGTV on, that's your thing.
Merlin: But it's funny how engrossing it can be to have something like that.
Merlin: Lego's a really good example where
Merlin: You know, like there was one summer where my kid and I would do Lego every day and listen to The Adventure Zone.
Merlin: And like, it was just like this habit and a fun thing.
Merlin: And I think we both really liked it.
Merlin: And like to provide that for her and like a starter thing would be really cool.
John: Well, and realizing that everybody loves Lego.
John: And she loves Lego.
John: Who doesn't love Lego?
John: You have to be – Monsters.
John: You'd have to be a monster.
Merlin: Yeah, I don't know what you would do.
Merlin: How do you not love Lego?
Merlin: It's okay to like other things too.
Merlin: Like Playmobil is incredible.
Merlin: What are those little animals that I like?
Merlin: Like the critters?
Merlin: Like the little fuzzy critters?
John: Oh, Pokemans.
Merlin: Yeah, no.
Merlin: Pokemen.
Merlin: But the little, like, when you get a family of rabbits in a RV.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: No, no, they have houses, too.
John: Calico critters, we call them here.
Merlin: And little trucks, yeah.
Merlin: I love all, but the thing, here's the thing about Lego and the thing about Playmobil and the thing about what we in the U.S.
Merlin: call calico critters is that,
Merlin: They are all pound for pound as toys, astonishingly well-made.
Merlin: I know that sounds weird, but like it used to kill me.
Merlin: I'd be like, I would really much rather buy you a rabbit family or a hedgehog family than like some kind of like, just, just, I sound like my mom, but some kind of pile of crap, plastic crap.
Merlin: That's, you're just not going to be interested in for that long.
John: Well, because they also have, they make RVs for them and little houses.
John: We have it.
Merlin: We have the RV.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: So, so, uh.
John: That's not a GMC, but.
John: No, no, of course.
John: It's a different time.
John: But you can get those from the old Hess Oil Company or whatever that are Calico Critter sized.
John: But, uh.
John: Then the thing was, after we were at the train show, which was down in Puyallup, which a lot of people that aren't from Washington don't know how to pronounce.
John: We were down in Puyallup and we drove past one of those big, big, uh, like, um,
Merlin: antique barns a lot of barns down there oh it's not it's like a like an upscale flea market like people at booths or is it like okay yeah and so i was like that's really cool because you could if you really want a certain kind of plate or a hummel that might be a place or a yadro i don't i don't can't think of other old things yeah or an unplayable clarinet or somebody's there's no playable clarinet sorry benny goodman
John: I call it a licorice stick.
John: I said, let's go into the antique barn.
John: And at that point, my kid who spent half of her life in antique barns is just like, come on, God, I'd rather do anything.
Merlin: For me, that was always like when you talk about the craft store, I love a craft store now.
Merlin: But when I was a kid, going to what I would just call the sewing store is just there's nothing fun.
Merlin: It's like, how long can I look at bobbins?
John: No, I mean the one everybody's wearing a frock.
John: It's horrible Some of the some of those sewing stores.
John: They let the kids.
John: I don't know sit on the fabric But a lot of them don't know to go into the antique barn and I'm walking around how many antique barns have been in a thousand yeah, but something had come over me where I walking around and I just felt like Gradually
John: it dawned on me that once an item has no practical use anymore, they're all the same.
John: None of them have any value.
John: Nothing in here has any value.
John: As its own, on its own practically, you mean?
John: In any way.
John: Apart from the value that we, how we feel about it, sort of?
John: That is a scythe.
John: It used to have tremendous value as a scythe.
John: to harvest a thing.
John: Now it is not used for that.
John: It has no value except decorative.
John: That is a poster of the Bee Gees in the garb of Sgt.
John: Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
John: And Peter Frampton.
John: And Peter Frampton.
John: And it's three feet by two feet.
John: It has no value at all.
John: Fold out from Dynamite Magazine.
John: This person has collected an incredible shelf of uranium glass and they've put a fluorescent light under it to show the glass glowing.
John: It has no value.
John: And none of it has, this entire barn, there's nothing in here of any value.
Merlin: And because I'm looking at all this stuff and going... It seems like what you might be implying is also that, like, if it had value, it wouldn't be in the antique barn.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: And I'm thinking about my own house and the things that I'm seeing in this antique barn that I have equivalents of in my own home.
John: Oh, yeah, sure.
John: Where I'm like, oh, wait, all those things that I'm like, but, you know, but this.
John: It's an heirloom.
John: It's like, no, it has no value except for.
John: what it does for you emotionally or whatever.
John: And every one of these booths is some version of what will happen to my house when I die.
John: It's just like, it's an estate sale.
John: Oh, sure.
John: And everybody takes, and people come in and they're like, yeah, like what the, what is this?
John: And it's like, oh, if I, and my ghost is over their shoulder going, well,
John: Read the card.
John: Read the card.
John: In 1942, that was... Actually, there's a funny story behind it.
John: That's right.
John: Have you ever heard of an enigma machine?
John: No.
John: None of it has any value.
John: The invitation game got a lot of things wrong.
John: And then I saw some guy had collected beer steins from Bavaria that all had connections to the U.S.
John: Army in the early 60s.
John: Okay.
John: And I was like.
John: Oh, that's some old guy's dream.
John: And he had a whole collection of them.
John: And I found one because I don't know if you know this about me, but I have a large collection of German beer steins that I use as coffee cups.
John: Yeah.
John: and a lot of them are from the same.
Merlin: Just for our younger listeners, could you distinguish how does a Stein differ from either a normal beer mug or from like a typical coffee cup?
Merlin: How does it differ?
John: Well, the ones that I like are one liter, and they are ceramic.
John: So for instance, the one I'm drinking out of right now,
John: uh, is, uh, from 1966.
John: I'm drinking out of a one liter beaker.
John: Ah, yes.
John: A beaker.
John: No, this, this is from Munchen, uh, in, uh, in 1966.
John: It appears to be from an ophthalmologist's convention and it has underneath it, all of the stamps of all of the different beers, uh,
John: Spot and Brow and, you know, like, what are some of these?
John: You know, like Tomas Brow.
Merlin: Varietals of beer?
Merlin: All the different beers.
John: All the different big beers of the Oktoberfest.
John: And so I have, you know, probably not a dozen.
John: I'm not crazy.
John: Crazy, yeah.
John: Probably eight of these.
Merlin: I mean, like, that's just one more than days of a week.
John: There it is.
Merlin: And just because you can reuse them doesn't mean they aren't useful.
John: I mean, read a book.
John: As someone who loves coffee, I feel like a liter of coffee is a fine amount of coffee.
John: I'm going to remember that.
John: That is really interesting.
John: A liter at a time.
Merlin: Okay.
John: I'm not saying all I drink is a liter.
John: I'm saying that you go from liter to liter.
Merlin: No, you've already said plenty.
Merlin: You can see next to Walter Sobchak, you can see my coffee cup I got in Hawaii, which is a pretty big coffee cup.
Merlin: It ain't no liter.
Merlin: You know, a liter is generally the capacity of the bladder.
Merlin: Oh, interesting.
Merlin: I didn't know that.
Merlin: I don't think it works exactly like that.
Merlin: It isn't like one in, one out.
Merlin: But just so you know, if you've ever had to like, let's say your wife's in the bathroom in the morning and you had to go pee in a one liter beaker.
John: Let's say for instance.
Merlin: But like you wouldn't want to do that necessarily first thing in the morning because you might be a little bit over capacity.
John: Do you feel like your pee beaker and your coffee beaker are like in some kind of kosher shelving?
Merlin: I think I...
Merlin: This is for meat and milk.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, actually, it's on a shelf.
Merlin: It said daddy's urine glass.
Merlin: I'm not saying not to use it.
Merlin: I just it's just disclosure.
Merlin: It's legal.
John: I don't know how you'd have to wash it a lot of times to get to wash it out of your mind.
Merlin: Thank you for thank you for sharing that.
Merlin: And so do you keep those on a sort of on display or the cabinet?
John: Nope, they're in the cab.
John: They're treated like coffee cups.
John: It's not like they don't have – it's not like they have lids and are – these are meant to be – these are meant to have beer in them.
John: I mean, you're not in the SA.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: It's not some Yod-Leh-He-Who thing.
John: Ein Prosit, ein Prosit.
John: Yeah.
John: No, these are working man's beers.
John: beer steins yeah so i find a guy that's got a whole booth of them and i'm already saying to myself he saw you coming none of this has any value this is all pure garbage and there's so much stuff in it that it's one of those where you could walk around it look at every booth and then immediately walk around again and see 100 different stuff the second time you went around
John: Because the first time you went around, you looked at some stuff.
Merlin: And then the next time you came around, you're like, oh, I do a fast, that initial kind of, I think I know what you're talking about.
Merlin: This is true in lots of places where you do the initial fast gloss.
Merlin: But then when you pass back by and like kind of like second order thinking, you like process it more.
Merlin: Like for me, it was always like, and you make fun of like, oh, Cinzano posters or whatever.
Merlin: But I always did like, like just, well, actually one time we were in Washington, we went to something like this.
Merlin: maybe near the fish place.
Merlin: And remember where there was like, I bought that time magazine with Howard Hughes from when I was a kid.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I don't know if you remember that.
Merlin: I've always loved stuff.
Merlin: It was an amazing episode issue of time magazine.
Merlin: That was all about Howard Hughes.
Merlin: When the melt, when the, when the book came out by that guy and I still treasure that.
John: I mean, I have not one, but not 20, but somewhere in between, like newspapers about a man walking on the moon, which apparently happened.
Merlin: I'm just curious, and I don't want to continue to take you off this, but just out of curiosity for our listeners, have you any magazines for adult men who have vision impairment?
John: Well, I do have I mean that seems like a really random question But like if there was a guy you knew whose site wasn't what it used to be Are there any kind of men's magazines that you'd be able to give him while he's there to You know flip through if you wanted to read the articles, which is I think why men buy magazines of that kind I do have you know a four-volume set of Braille Playboys which we've discussed before and
John: But in this case, I'm going through.
John: It says here Jimmy Carter has lust in his heart.
John: I'm going through.
John: There was a rabbit, a weird swimming rabbit.
John: But I'm going through these beer steins and I'm like, yeah, I've got that one.
John: Yeah, that's cute.
John: Oh, that's cool.
John: But I don't really support the 10th Mountain Division at this juncture in my life.
John: It's not that I don't support them.
John: It's just I don't need their mug in my cupboard.
John: And then I find one.
John: I should have just kept walking, but there's one that has all the different regions of Germany, all the different states of Germany, if you will.
John: The Hesse and Brandenburg and all these things with their little shields, their little shields.
John: And it's all on a map of Germany with the lines and then the largest city of each region.
Merlin: It's like a placemat when we were kids.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: But it's so perfect if there's anything you want.
Merlin: I mean, you're probably not going to get a very cool Wehrmacht one.
Merlin: Those are probably locked up somewhere.
Merlin: No, no, I'm talking about the Wehrmacht.
John: I'm talking about the OG army.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Right?
John: There they are.
John: They're not Nazis.
John: They're just the regular army.
John: People had their reasons, and I'm not here to defend Hitler.
John: No.
Merlin: No, but I don't know how you walk past that.
John: Well, so I grabbed it and I'm walking around the store because I'm holding it and I'm looking at it.
John: And at one point in time, I knew all the states of Germany.
John: And I remember being on tour and our German label guy at one point.
Merlin: It's called the Lobelmeister.
John: The Lobelmeister.
John: He said, why do you know the states of Germany better than I do?
John: I'm not sure I could say all the different states of Germany.
John: What is this?
John: And I was like, I don't know.
John: I don't know what your problem is.
John: There's not there's not 50 of them.
John: There's a lot fewer.
John: There's not that many.
John: But I don't know.
John: I couldn't name them all now.
John: Schleswig Holstein and whatnot.
John: And so, Bob Wurtenberg.
John: So I said, I need this.
John: This does have value because every morning when I drink my coffee, or not every morning, once a week when I drink my coffee out of this mug, I can study the states of Germany.
John: So it's a thing I need.
John: I know.
John: It's not a thing I need.
John: No, it's like an extension course.
Merlin: You get to enjoy your coffee and maybe you learn a little something.
Merlin: You learn a little something.
John: Yes.
Merlin: And so I walked around.
Merlin: So this is from the 60s.
Merlin: So is it representing, I don't know how much those German states have changed over time after the war.
Merlin: After Napoleon.
Merlin: Oh, don't get me started.
Merlin: You know, the seas are a battlefield.
Merlin: Bone apart.
Merlin: Bone apart.
Merlin: Old Boney's going to be coming around.
John: Well, no, this map of Germany does not reflect the Iron Curtain.
John: It is a map of a unified Germany.
John: But I don't know if this is some kind of revisionist.
John: So it butts right up against Czechoslovakia.
John: Yeah.
John: So if this is a 1960s version where they're like, we don't acknowledge that this is two countries.
John: or whether it's like, the fact that it's now two countries is not relevant to these states, or whether it's either, I don't think it's pre.
Merlin: Or maybe it's evocative of a time when it all was one thing, which is, I'm given to believe, part of what drives a lot of German pride, is having all your lands.
John: Yeah, but there's so many little duchies and principalities in that universe.
John: So it's not, it doesn't reflect any of that.
John: It's not like, oh, here's the, you know, the Duke of Fartenstein.
John: Yeah.
John: Dot dotted line around the Sudetenland.
John: You know, and fart means a different thing to the Dutch than it does to us.
John: Yeah.
John: But Ausfahrt, for instance.
Merlin: Oh, that's when you reunite with your fart.
John: Einfahrt and Ausfahrt.
Merlin: Anschfahrt.
Merlin: That's right.
John: Anschfahrt, right?
Merlin: Do you know he was greeted with flowers in Austria?
John: Oh, he was.
John: I know.
John: Well, he's Austrian.
Merlin: And that's the thing.
Merlin: It set a really bad standard.
Merlin: Did Anschluss really set kind of a bad standard?
John: You know, his grandmother was Jewish.
John: Or maybe his mom, who knows?
John: We'll never know now.
John: Comes through the women.
John: But anyway, so by the time it was time to leave –
John: Uh, and I, and I looked at my daughter and her mother and they both had spirals for eyeballs because it was like, there's no, they're hypnotized.
Merlin: Mr. Kylie.
John: And I said, okay, I'm sorry.
John: You guys ready to go?
John: Here we go.
John: Here we go.
John: Moving, moving out the door.
John: But I did stop and buy the beer Stein with the States of Germany and I have it now.
John: I'm not, I'm not using it cause I'm using this Munchen one, but, um,
John: But yeah, I did buy a thing.
John: But I walked out of there and I was like, this has no value other than the value I impart to it.
John: And that is important for me to say as I look around the room here.
John: And I go, oh, wait.
John: No value.
Merlin: For some reason, I'm hung up a little bit on that statement.
Merlin: You think that's true?
Merlin: Like, we say no value.
Merlin: You're being a little silly, right?
Merlin: Like, it obviously has value as some kind of a coffee thing.
Merlin: We haven't talked about prices, and I don't think we need to be unseemly in talking about prices.
Merlin: Sometimes it comes down to, like, what this thing costs.
Merlin: Like, if you want that Shinzano poster, and it's $160, well, you better really want that particular one, and it better be in the condition that, if you're a collector...
Merlin: I'll bet they capitalize a lot on them.
Merlin: I mean, you know, we've got that thing in our hallway, a table in our hallway that is T-H-E table that was always in science classes when I was a kid.
Merlin: We had a lab partner, had the super heavy, very, very strong wooden basin legs, and then that kind of like black top.
Merlin: The black top that if you put anything wet on it, it leaves a little...
Merlin: so much but one time i was at one of those places that where i didn't think i need anything and i don't want 160 chenzano poster um and we ended up driving away with a lab table in our volvo i know i know i mean i'm sitting here i'm still using it that thing didn't know me and nickel still got boogers and uh and bubblegum all over i mean every single thing in my house was previously owned
John: And so looking around, it's just like, well, yeah.
John: I mean, right now I'm looking at a globe that is slightly bigger than a basketball, and it doesn't have a stand.
John: It's just a globe, just the ball.
John: It was never meant to be on a stand?
John: It was built at a time when it was meant to sit in a Bakelite little, like,
John: Not Bastic, but cup.
John: It would sit in a... Like a cradle?
John: A cradle made out of Bakelite, and it was meant to be handled, picked up and held in the hand.
John: Handled the cup.
John: And it's bigger than a Bastic ball.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And so we had, I've had it for years and for some reason, I don't know where it was living before, but all of a sudden it's living in the living room and it's basically just in a corner of the couch.
John: And anytime you sit down, so this is the thing.
John: So I pick it up and I have a lot of globes and dating globes is like one of my fun things.
John: Like, Oh, you see a globe, an old globe.
Merlin: There must be ones where you can like quickly, there must be a heuristic.
Merlin: where you can go, I don't know, what's Rhodesia called or whatever, right?
Merlin: There's got to be quickies where you can do that.
Merlin: Bosnia, Herzegovina, maybe not.
Merlin: That kind of thing where you probably have a handful of things where you jump straight to it and go like, oh, even something like Alaska and Hawaii aren't there or whatever.
John: Well, 100%.
John: That's exactly how you do it.
John: You immediately go to Africa and you go, oh, French West Africa, eh?
John: Okay.
John: I get it.
Merlin: French Indochina.
John: So now then you go to Mongolia and you're like, what's Mongolia?
John: What's the state of Mongolia?
John: And then you're down in, you know, there are various regions, right?
John: Where you can point at things and go that didn't exist before this, but it didn't exist after this.
John: So we know this is before we called it Mumbai.
John: And so we're looking at the globe.
John: Well, my daughter has this interest in geography.
John: And so we're passing the globe back and forth.
John: And I'm like, see this here?
John: You know, like this means that this was before this.
John: But, you know, if this says United Arab Republic, then it means we're here.
John: But if this says like Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, then it means we're here.
John: And so we're going back and forth.
John: And I had never spent...
John: that much time with this globe, but we both are kind of increasingly amazed.
Merlin: And the more you look at it, if it were me, I can very much imagine that becoming more and more, not a mystery, but more and more of an adventure or a puzzle of like, yeah, but what about this and what about that?
Merlin: And there might be some that they missed and where you would try to almost, not that it matters, but you would try to go like, I think this is from the first half of 1968 or whatever.
John: Exactly right.
John: And what I wasn't prepared for
John: was we were pretty sure that it was like, oh, this has got to be from pretty soon after the war.
John: And we were more and more amazed as we dug deeper into it.
John: Like, oh, this seems like it's kind of from the war.
John: And then... That's been a tough time for Globe people.
John: Well, that's exactly right.
John: And we were like...
John: extremely It was getting weirder and weirder and we realized that this globe was from 1939 Oh, come on and I had no idea that I from before it from the year that I mean we there's a couple things that happened by that point but like by the time you've like committed to what's on that globe That's gonna come out around 1939.
Merlin: That is an old world.
Merlin: Oh
John: It's an old world.
John: And so we're looking at an Africa and a Central Asia that these borders are as you would have seen them at the very beginning of World War II.
John: Jesus.
John: And the thing is, the way this globe is, there's no other time that it could have been.
Merlin: Like a snow globe.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's kind of trapped in chronological amber.
John: Yeah, we shook it and then it snowed.
John: And, and so all of a sudden this globe that had been bouncing around on the couch that was like, oh, it's another one of daddy's globes, but it's the, you know, but it's like a basketball because it doesn't have a stand.
John: All of a sudden we were both like, oh my God, like this is an artifact.
John: That you hardly ever see.
John: Yeah.
John: A thing from that moment.
John: And I have no idea.
John: I don't remember what thrift store I bought it in.
John: No.
John: And I had never spent the time.
John: I looked at it and I was like, oh, this is a beautiful thing.
John: And I'm sure I gave it the cursory like, oh, look, it's got Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
John: That tells me a lot about kind of where it's from.
John: But I hadn't spent that time to find that little thing.
John: the one little key that was like that didn't exist before and it didn't exist after and of course you have to you have to compare it with like oh yeah it was from 1911 but this other thing wouldn't have been true right right right and so league of nations she's so incredible and i'm looking at it right now and i'm like but actually golds were made a year later uh would be the same for a thousand years
John: Ha ha ha ha