Ep. 542: "Mr. Mike"
John: Hello.
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Pretty good.
John: All right.
John: I'm a little stiff today.
John: Yeah.
John: Physically stiff.
John: A little physically stiff.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Is there anything you can talk about?
John: Well, I mean, my hamstrings are tight, let's be honest.
John: You got tight hammies.
John: I got tight hammies.
John: I got moons over my hammies.
John: That was my go-to.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: You got moons over my hammy.
Merlin: Hell yeah.
Merlin: That was my 1985 and 1986 late night Denny's order.
John: Where are you smoking cigarettes and blowing it right in your moons over my hammy?
John: Marlboro Lights, but yes.
Merlin: Lots and lots of Marlboro Lights.
Woo!
Merlin: Because I wanted to live.
Merlin: Good times.
Merlin: I'm so sorry to hear that.
Merlin: I mean, you know, it's none of my business.
John: Well, I've been working in the ravine quite a bit, but also up here, I don't know.
John: I don't know if down there, yeah, the pickleball craze has swept your region.
Merlin: I've read reports about the sweeping, yeah.
John: Pickleball.
Merlin: People are real hot about pickleball.
Merlin: It sounds like it's a noisy, small version of tennis.
John: It's a noisy, small tennis, or it's a big ping pong.
John: Oh!
John: And it's pretty close to... I don't think we say that anymore.
John: i think we now we say pickle american it's pickle america hi and uh it's very it's very popular here in the suburbs and also uh my daughter's mother slash partner is not um she would tell you uh you know that she's fine with everything but she's actually extremely competitive
John: And it doesn't come across, she's not like a yeller.
John: She's very quiet and studied.
Merlin: Well, you can tell she's the sort of person that has won a lot of stuff in life and deserved it.
Merlin: Even when you're just doing a back and forth, like trying to be clever, like you could tell, oh, yeah, yeah, she's, yeah.
Merlin: I don't think she ate alone that much in high school, I'm guessing.
John: Well, you know, we all had our struggles.
John: That's right.
John: In the end, we all eat through a tube.
John: In the end, we all eat through a tube.
John: But she, I taught her softball a few years ago when it was just like, you hold the bat.
John: You mean girl baseball?
John: Yeah, and I'm going to stand over here and I'm going to throw this ball to you and then you're going to try and hit it.
Merlin: You're talking about your mother's daughter, your daughter's mother slash partner.
Merlin: Mother slash partner.
Merlin: You taught her softball.
John: Well, a little bit, you know, just like here comes the ball.
John: Now here's what you do.
John: You keep your eye on the ball.
John: Just watch the ball all the way into the bat.
John: Here comes the ball and you're just going to watch it.
John: You're not going to look away.
John: You're not going to look out into the distance.
John: You're not going to look at the bat.
John: You're going to watch the ball all the way to the bat.
John: And she took about three pitches and then she cleaned one all the way over the back fence.
John: And I was like, okay.
John: She took one outside of the infield on her third swing.
John: Yeah.
John: And I said, all right, seems like you're getting it.
John: Now I'm going to stand a little bit further back and I'm going to, I'm going to huck them to you.
John: And now here's the thing.
John: Just watch the ball all the way to the back.
John: And I was kind of, you know, saying like, here's how you stand.
John: And here's where the, here's what the, and I hucked a one and she just, and then she realized that she could hit these softballs.
John: It's very gratifying, as you know, to hit a softball.
Merlin: It feels so good.
Merlin: I mean, it's satisfying to hit a baseball because you're like, I can have some self-esteem for five minutes.
Merlin: Hitting a softball, it sounds good.
Merlin: It feels good.
Merlin: Usually with an aluminum bat, right?
Merlin: So you get that tonk.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You get a tonk.
John: And so, you know, she got it right away.
John: She just watched the ball right onto the bat.
John: And then she realized that I, her human pitching machine, could be made through the special powers of a woman who has had your baby.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: uh, there in front of her and she could do like a Fox, like a Foxy uniform adjustment.
John: Does she like, Oh, she, she's got her own, you know, but her, her main tick is she goes one more, another.
John: And so then all of a sudden on a spring day, I was out throwing 50, uh, pitches.
John: I'm starting to see how this fits together.
John: And so, so we did that for a few summers and then there was pickleball and, you know, I grew up playing tennis and,
John: So I'd taken her out with the tennis, and she knew her way around a tennis court, but I was like, okay, here's the thing about a pickleball.
John: Tennis, it's a moment to learn and a lifetime to master.
John: Oh, isn't that sweet?
Merlin: It's really true.
Merlin: It's like Go or Othello or one of those things where there's a lot to learn in tennis.
John: It's a wonderful sport.
John: It's a wonderful sport.
John: But pickleball is also... I mean, wonderful would be too much... I mean, that's too much spin on the ball.
John: I feel like pickleball is a fine sport.
John: It's a fun sport.
John: And so I said the same thing.
John: I was like, just watch the ball all the way to the paddle.
John: Here it comes.
John: Just keep your eye on the ball.
John: Watch it all the way until it hits the paddle.
John: That's really all you have to do.
John: Did you tell him to follow through?
John: No, that's my dad.
John: Okay.
John: And then I said... Did you tell him to choke up?
John: So you do a backhand.
John: When you flip the paddle around, you have to kind of subtly change your grip as the paddle switches.
John: So it's a little bit of a grip change.
John: Don't try and just hold on to the paddle and hit it the same.
John: You got to subtly change your grip as it goes and then watch the ball all the way to the paddle.
John: And pretty soon she's just like...
John: And so then, of course, I'm the one who now, she doesn't really even see my face.
John: She just says, pickleball.
John: And I go, oh, I was doing something.
John: And she's like, pickleball.
Merlin: So one minute you're down in the ravine, and the next minute you're some kind of like, I don't know, third-rate Tommy John up there.
John: Yeah, I get just summoned with the one word text.
John: You're a pitching machine.
John: Pickleball.
John: A pitching machine.
John: And then, you know, our daughter got involved and she's actually getting better.
John: She's a groomer.
John: Attracting the young people into this new sport.
John: And I said to her, just watch the ball all the way to the paddle.
John: Here it comes.
John: Watch it.
John: And the thing is, you don't want to watch it all the way to the paddle.
John: You want to look off in the distance.
John: You've got other things to think about.
Merlin: Every single thing you're saying is true.
Merlin: All of these things are true, and yet it's difficult.
Merlin: You can't really grok all of that until you get several of the pieces in place.
Merlin: Yogi Berra says, he says, how's a fellow supposed to think and hit at the same time?
John: See, that's exactly right.
John: And, you know, if you're a major league baseball player, maybe the ball is going so fast you can't watch it all the way to the bat.
John: Maybe you're already looking into the stands.
John: But I bet you all those strikeouts that they get, if they just watch the ball all the way to the bat.
Merlin: You're saying a big cause of strikeouts is they're not watching the ball as it comes up to the bat.
John: I think the ball is going too fast, but to watch.
John: It's a fast ball.
John: But that's not how it is in pickleball.
John: You can look at it all the way to the racket.
John: Is it like a whiffle?
John: Is it slower?
John: It's a big whiffle, and it's slower.
Merlin: No, seriously, though.
Merlin: I honestly don't know.
Merlin: Is it like a hard whiffle-style ball?
Merlin: Is that what makes the talk noise?
John: Yes.
John: And you have a large ping-pong paddle.
John: So it's as big as a frying pan, but it's basically the shape and design of a ping-pong paddle, slightly more square.
John: And you're on a smaller court.
John: You're on a court that's in the middle of a tennis court.
John: In playing pickleball, you are ruining tennis.
Merlin: No one's playing tennis while you're playing pickleball.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: No.
Merlin: And also, if you came with a tennis— That could make things more interesting if you think about it.
Merlin: You know, you're absolutely right.
Merlin: Well, no, like one of those guys who has to play chess with 40 people.
Merlin: Like, what if you were playing pickleball and tennis?
Merlin: Maybe she could get to that level and become an influencer.
John: What they do is they take a tennis court and they cut it in half with the net, and so on one side of the net, it's a whole pickleball court, and on the other side of the net, it's another pickleball.
Merlin: Like a Fibonacci sequence?
Merlin: You're saying you take this side of the net, which has your back, your left, your right, and your out, and you're saying you cut that and then turn it sideways, and that's a pickleball?
John: Not sideways.
John: You put another smaller net halfway across the tennis court,
John: To make a plus sign or a parallel minus sign?
John: No, no, they're parallel.
John: And then on the other side, there's another smaller net.
John: So you can have two pickleball games in the same space as one tennis game.
John: Now, if you were also playing tennis, if two people were playing tennis while eight people were playing pickleball, that would be amazing.
John: Yeah, it would be like in wrestling.
John: I don't think it would work, though.
Merlin: It might not work.
Merlin: And I understand, though, real talk, that one of the frustrations you hear about is the noise, the pickleball noise.
Merlin: This is all just things I've read in the newspaper.
John: That sounds like a San Francisco Karen problem.
John: We don't have that here in the suburbs because we have all the space.
Merlin: Well, we believe Sharon is Karen.
Merlin: Ha!
Ha!
John: Here we have pickleball courts and they have trees around them.
John: I hate that word.
John: I have no offense.
Pickleball.
John: It's such a terrible word.
Merlin: Pickleball.
John: Pickleball.
John: Okay.
John: Yesterday we had for dinner shawarma lettuce wraps.
John: And I kept saying, you know, because I'm a dad now.
John: Oh, you're obligated.
John: Yeah, I kept saying shawarma lettuce wrap over and over.
John: Would you like a shawarma lettuce wrap?
John: How about another shawarma lettuce wrap?
John: Until my daughter was pounding the table in frustration.
Merlin: Because she didn't understand what she meant when you said shawarma lettuce wrap?
Merlin: I just feel like she... Maybe you should have added more words to that.
John: Would you like another delicious, delicious shawarma lettuce wrap?
John: Well, yeah, I probably should have added delicious.
John: But just saying shawarma lettuce wrap over and over, it just really got under her skin.
John: And of course, that didn't stop me.
Merlin: Quite the opposite.
Merlin: Oh, no, I deliberately annoyed my kid for like 10 minutes this morning.
Merlin: Just now that he doesn't like me as much anymore, I just needle the kid, the poor kid, mercilessly.
Merlin: I demonstrate dances.
Merlin: No, this whole morning, I had a short visit with my kid.
Merlin: He's not working today.
Merlin: And so he was at home this morning.
Merlin: And yeah, no, I won't go into details unless you want, but like, no, I know how to needle this kid.
Merlin: He says...
Merlin: So I'm telling him I'm making all kinds of speculations about what goes on in the world like I do.
Merlin: And he says this thing, a wonderful thing in a wonderful way.
Merlin: He said, do you – he said, you know people in San Francisco?
Merlin: And I was like, yeah, sure.
Merlin: Because I thought that was like an opening statement to like say how things are in San Francisco.
Merlin: He says, well, you know people in San Francisco?
Merlin: I said, oh, yeah, I do.
Merlin: And he goes, well, maybe you should go like out and visit with them more.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: Could you smell your hair burning?
Merlin: I said, look.
Merlin: I said, here's the thing.
Merlin: As you know, you're going to regret all of this.
Merlin: I'm not going to be around that much longer.
Merlin: And you're not going to have had an opportunity to appreciate how important I am.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: No, you're going to feel bad after I'm gone, for sure.
Merlin: And I hate to say this to you, John, because this is such a temple of your ethos, but I don't think my kid's going to listen to old podcasts of me.
John: I think this is it.
John: There's so much to learn.
John: There's so much to learn.
Merlin: Until the AI really kicks in and like, you know, you have to do it for like probate reasons or something.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But no, they're terrible.
Merlin: And you're obligated to.
Merlin: I'm just saying your kid has just gotten to the age where the needling needs to really start now.
Merlin: And I think your sense of humor is perfect for it.
Merlin: And really, the thing is, how will the youngster learn that repetition is funny if you aren't doing a lot of repetition?
John: Right.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: Repetition is hilarious, especially when you think that's the last time I've heard.
Merlin: When you know the mind of you think that's the last time and you, but you know how the child's mind works and you know that actually the kid is just sitting there going, he's going to do it again.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I know he's going to do it again.
Merlin: And he knows, I know that he's going to, and it's, and then, and then you do it again.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But that's what we're here for, you know?
John: I've started going up to other teens while I'm with my team.
Merlin: Oh, God.
John: And saying, man, that outfit is so Riz.
John: It's like really sick.
John: Did you know that Short for Charisma?
John: I learned that two weeks ago.
John: Yeah, Short for Charisma.
John: I think you taught me that.
John: Riz.
John: I said, you are the Rizly Bear.
Yeah.
John: everybody involved is covered in shame it's like they just feel so humiliated and and and there's nothing you know they can't do anything i've learned the slang and misusing it using it poorly is part of the dad game you know like oh my god that's so skibbity ohio
Merlin: And the poor kid gets so frustrated that you're not doing it right and you know you're not doing it right.
Merlin: It's almost not fair.
John: It's not fair.
Merlin: Because we have nothing to lose.
John: That's exactly right.
John: Doing it wrong, doing it right, I'm as cool as I'm going to be.
John: I can't be less or more cool now.
Merlin: I am a constant source of humiliation to everybody, but my child in particular.
Merlin: Yeah, it's going to change.
Merlin: But like...
Merlin: Well, cause like, here's the thing.
Merlin: And you know, I've had people in my life who said this to me before, Merlin, I want to help you, but I'm not sure you can be helped.
Merlin: And I think that's true.
Merlin: I don't think I can be helped.
Merlin: And that's, that's part of my power is that I'm just going to keep talking about that.
Merlin: Cause you got to distinguish it.
Merlin: Like, are you talking about it?
Merlin: You're not talking about a mooshu where you got a pancake.
Merlin: That's different.
John: Yeah, that's different.
Merlin: Or like lettuce, lettuce cups.
Yeah.
Merlin: is a delicious treat from the Orient.
Merlin: You're talking about something totally different from the Mideast.
John: Yeah, and I said at one point when she was infuriated, I said, now listen, shawarma lettuce wraps are something you're going to find around the world
John: Not everybody eats mashed potatoes and pot pie.
John: And she was like, I don't want to go anywhere where they don't eat mashed potatoes and pot pie.
John: And I said, that's what you think.
John: But you will.
John: One day you will.
John: And shawarma lettuce wraps now are going to prepare you for shawarma lettuce wraps then.
Merlin: Or something else wraps or shawarma something else.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: You're getting the constituent part.
Merlin: It's like you're building a Corsair model.
Merlin: You've got all the pieces.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: I just wanted to mention Corsairs because I watched a really good video about Corsairs last night.
Merlin: You're talking about the sailing ship or the airplane?
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Yeah, the airplane with the folding wings.
Merlin: You know what a wonder of engineering that thing is?
Merlin: It really is amazing.
Merlin: The engine in that thing is crazy.
Merlin: And it even had like a special wartime.
Merlin: They had a name for it, like a special wartime mode.
Merlin: Where you could like, you could gun it so freaking hard, but it would just, it would take the engine from lasting.
Merlin: Usually Corsair engines, see this is, this is, now you appreciate this is good dad stuff, right?
Merlin: The engine on a Corsair is a really cool looking little, little plane.
Merlin: And they had these wild engines.
Merlin: And the thing is, you usually replace the engine every 50 days.
Merlin: And the thing is, like, you know, under normal conditions, like, you know, in war, though, there's no such thing as normal conditions.
Merlin: Am I right?
Merlin: No, that's true.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: In this case, though, you could kick up the HPs on this thing way, way high.
Merlin: There's a Pratt & Whitney.
Merlin: It's got two different circulating sets of nine cylinders working at the same time.
Oh.
Merlin: Cylinders all working at the same time.
Merlin: All working at the same time.
Merlin: And you could kick it way up and that would take it down to like, you might get 50 hours instead of 50 days out of it.
Merlin: But you get your, you know, you got to be circumspect about that.
Merlin: Now that's something your kid probably didn't know about.
Merlin: You could teach your kid about Corsairs.
John: That's right.
John: I mean, if you're going to shoot down six zeros, burn the engine up, burn it.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like, which is more important, one engine or six zeros?
Merlin: Because of the unique noise, there's an air intake for cooling the air-cooled engine.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Right?
Merlin: And it made a whistling noise.
Merlin: And so our opponents in the land of the rising sun, they would call it whistling death.
John: Oh, the whistling death.
John: Because they also use them in ground support roles where they put little rockets under the wings.
John: John, do you want to talk about Corsairs?
John: Because here's what I learned.
John: Marines were invading Iwo Jima.
Merlin: You could have two 1,000-pound bombs.
Merlin: You could have two extra fuel tanks.
Merlin: Each 150 gallons, I think it was.
Merlin: You could have that.
Merlin: You could have kind of primitive rockets on there.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, I also learned about the Flying Fortress with the Browning 50 millimeter guns.
Merlin: 50 caliber.
Merlin: Calibers.
Merlin: How many calibers are, is that like knots in nautical work?
John: Oh, I see what you're saying.
John: There's an equivalent from caliber to metric?
John: I misspoke, but I like the fact that the engineer gets a gun, too.
John: Everybody gets a gun.
John: That's the thing.
John: It's a war, John.
Merlin: Not everybody has a sidearm.
Merlin: What'd your dad fly?
John: What was your dad flying?
John: He flew what was called in the Navy a C-47, but in civilian life it was a DC-3.
John: They don't do as many documentary features on that airplane, even though, honestly, it won the war.
John: According to your dad.
John: Like so many things, it won the war.
John: Like when I would go out to Chinese food with Jack Tanner and my dad, I was like, you two guys won the war.
John: And they would, you know, they would tell me to be quiet, but they also secretly believed that they did win the war.
John: But they don't do as many documentaries because it's not bristling with machine guns, which, you know, there's, I mean, actually in Vietnam, they did put machine guns on.
John: But they didn't.
Merlin: Yeah, that's the thing.
Merlin: And you could also, if you didn't want them gas tanks, you could have these cool little rockets that would drop down a little bit.
Merlin: Unguided rockets.
John: That's the best kind of rocket.
Merlin: It would drop down a little bit under your propeller.
Merlin: But you know also the Flying Fortress had blades on the props that if you lost the engine, you could turn it so it didn't cause drags.
Merlin: Isn't that crazy?
John: You can turn the blades so it didn't cause drag if you lost an engine to anti-aircraft fire.
Merlin: I thought they were going to say you turn that off the equivalent engine on the other side.
Merlin: They didn't say that.
Merlin: I think the Corsair is a beautiful, beautiful plane.
John: Oh, they're so beautiful.
John: The P-47 Thunderbolt is one that I really come back to over and over as a beautiful plane.
John: You know what's amazing about those things when you see them in the air is they're small.
John: They're like hot rods.
John: You know, they're not small.
John: I know.
Merlin: The Corsair was like, I think it's like...
Merlin: 30 feet long?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a lot smaller than you think.
Merlin: It has a very unusual shape, too.
John: It's very unusual because, you know, they had to bulk it up so it could land on the aircraft.
Merlin: DC-3 is a beautiful, beautiful airplane.
Merlin: I'm looking at it right now.
Merlin: It says here that Douglas DC-3, the plane that flew for almost a century, it changed the world, it says here.
Merlin: Changed the world.
Merlin: And won World War II.
Merlin: This is the thing about that particular... You wouldn't be eating that shawarma.
Merlin: I can promise you.
Merlin: Moments snap together like magnets.
Merlin: You wouldn't have even heard of shawarma.
Merlin: You wouldn't know what you were wrapping with what?
John: No, you'd be eating schnitzel and you'd be happy about it.
John: Oh, well... Schnitzel and teriyaki.
John: Somewhere in the middle of the United States, there'd be the schnitzel teriyaki line.
John: Yeah.
John: Somewhere in the Rockies, you know.
Merlin: You'd go somewhere where President Truman's from, you know, in the Missouri kind of area, the show me state, they call it.
Merlin: And you might have a shawarma schnitzel stand.
Merlin: Sure, there'd be haberdasheries all over the place.
Merlin: He was a haberdasher, wasn't he?
John: One thing that from that, right in that era, that post-deco era, pre-modernism era, God, they made things so beautifully.
John: Everything was beautiful.
John: And we don't make anything beautiful anymore anymore.
Merlin: But they also understood trade-offs.
Merlin: That's the thing is in war and the way that like you make, when you, I mean, one of the things that consistently blows me away the most watching these videos is just the incredible, America took a long time to get into the war.
Merlin: We had our reasons.
Merlin: But once we did, what happened between like,
Merlin: 42 and 44 is unbelievable.
Merlin: What happened here in this very town is crazy.
Merlin: The number of battleships they were able to build, the number of all different kinds of planes they were able to build.
Merlin: It's mind-boggling to me that that all happened.
John: If you think about what started two years ago and what...
John: is what they built from two years ago to now.
John: I mean, Tesla truck, you got to give it to them.
Merlin: It's a sweet truck.
Merlin: People in our neighborhood, you see plumbers all the time, all kinds of trades, people driving around their cyber trucks.
Merlin: No, you do not.
Merlin: Not at all.
Merlin: Do you really?
Merlin: No, they all have a white Toyota truck, just like everybody else.
Merlin: No, it's the posers that have the big diesel trucks.
Merlin: Like normal Irish guys with drywall on their pants all have like Toyota or F-150s.
John: The white Toyota truck is like the shawarma lettuce wrap of the world.
John: They're everywhere.
John: You're going to find them in Ethiopia.
John: You're going to find them in China.
Merlin: But your dad never would have predicted that in 1944.
Merlin: Never would have predicted people driving around in a Toyota pickup truck, huh?
John: No, it's true.
John: My dad and my mom wouldn't drive Japanese cars until my mom bought one in the 80s, but it was a Chevy Nova that had been built in Japan.
Merlin: In Mexico, that means it doesn't go.
Merlin: Nova.
John: Nova.
John: That's seriously an old thing.
John: But my mom drives a Japanese car now and she's happy about it.
Merlin: Well, it's really different.
Merlin: I told you how my grandfather worked in a Nash slash AMC dealership.
Merlin: There was only one adult in our family that had a non-American car.
Merlin: And who was that?
John: Was that your stoner cousin?
Merlin: No, my uncle had a jag he fixed up in the early 60s.
Merlin: He had a bug in the late 60s.
Merlin: And he was kind of ahead of the curve in a lot of ways.
Merlin: He's the one who told me in 1981, go to liberal arts school and get some kind of a specialty in technology.
Merlin: He told me that in 1981.
John: He was ahead of the game.
John: This is what we're talking about at the time Arthur was out.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And he didn't say plastics and then have another drink.
John: He said, no, seriously, I love the media.
John: I love the media.
John: He's funny.
John: He's funny.
John: I love that guy.
John: Did you ever watch The Night Manager?
John: No, that didn't have Henry Winkler in it.
John: That was something else.
John: That was Night Shift.
Merlin: Yeah, that was with... You're thinking of... Yeah, Radical Chuck.
Merlin: Radical.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: That was one of Ron Howard's first movies.
Merlin: No, just curious.
Merlin: There's a John le Carré series that's... Oh, I did.
Merlin: I did watch it.
Merlin: He's in Egypt.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah, he's a spy in Egypt.
John: He's Pine, and Pine is the night manager.
John: I had a problem with it.
John: I don't remember what the problem is now, but at the time, I was like, I have a real problem with this.
Merlin: Elizabeth DiVicki ruined you for all their women?
John: I don't know.
John: I problemed myself out of it.
John: That happens a lot with stuff.
John: I was just like, no, I don't believe, that's the wrong tie clip or whatever.
John: They would never have worn that.
John: Those shoes, and I couldn't stay in it.
Merlin: The thing in life, young people, they think they know what they think they know, and that causes them to think they know what they need to know.
Merlin: And almost none of that is true.
Merlin: None of that is accurate.
Merlin: None of that is, in the end, useful.
Merlin: If you clung to the things, only the things that you picked up when you had a time of certainty in your life, you're not going to grow as a person.
Merlin: So I think you're helping everybody in your household, your other household, with all of these things.
John: I think you're helping a lot.
John: Everybody around me loves the television show Bridgerton.
John: They all watch it all the time.
John: And I think it's a fine soap opera, if that's what you're looking for in life.
John: But...
John: The most important thing, which is the collars and the shoes or whatever, I find wrong.
John: I find them wrong.
John: And if you can't, it's just like they're in Halloween costumes and I'm not buying it.
John: And so I can't.
John: It just seems like a high school play to me.
Merlin: I don't know a lot about it.
Merlin: I just hear that it's sexy a lot.
John: Yeah, that's the thing.
John: It's sexy, and I don't need that either.
Merlin: That one girl, the blonde girl, she's great on Derry Girls, is what I know her from.
Merlin: About girls in Northern Ireland in the 80s.
John: Oh, that seems like a good thing.
Merlin: Are they punk rockers?
Merlin: Oh, it's very good.
Merlin: Well, and it's written, showrun, created by a woman who also did grow up during the Troubles.
Merlin: And it's about these girls, these families in Belfast.
Merlin: And it's very, very funny.
John: My friend Eric Singletary just posted a picture on Facebook this morning of some beams going down a hill.
John: And he said, if you know, you know.
John: Beams of light?
John: Well, no, beams like construction beams.
John: And what it was, was a picture.
John: So downtown Anchorage, there was a monument to Captain James Cook.
John: That was built.
Merlin: That's the Australia guy.
John: I mean, he went to Australia.
John: Yeah, he saw Australia.
John: He also found Hawaii.
John: Of course.
Merlin: There you go.
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: Yes.
John: And he went to Alaska.
John: And so he and he named a lot of things in Alaska because that was one of his primary jobs.
John: He named Mount Rainier.
John: He came here.
John: He was all over.
John: But there's a monument to him, and it's a deck.
John: It's like a big deck that's cantilevered out over a cliff.
John: And there's James Kirk, and he's looking out into the distance, or whatever he's doing.
John: James Kirk.
John: Not Kirk.
John: Cook.
John: And there's this deck, and you're supposed to go there.
John: Don't name him Tiberius.
John: You're going to look out over the cliff.
John: You're going to see the water there where he sailed his ship, and you're going to think deep thoughts or whatever.
John: But then the punk rockers...
John: in the early 80s started going down under the captain cook monument and hanging out on the beams that supported the uh the deck that looked out over the cliff and it was a it was a a steep drop
John: if you fell off the beams you would potentially fall to infinity jesus and they would go climb down there and i never figured it was like it was like actively like as dangerous as it sounds yeah yeah it was it was then they're just hanging out and so you know there'd be two punk rockers on this beam and then across this dangerous gap there'd be two punk rockers on that beam and sometimes there'd be dozens of them down there smoking marijuana and hanging out and being punk
John: It's a bad environment for punks, because punks should be in an urban wasteland, right?
John: A concrete jungle.
John: But these are Alaska punks, and so they're hanging out under the Captain Cook Memorial, or whatever they call it.
John: Yeah, they called it the Captain Cook Memorial.
John: They're hanging out down there.
John: Well, I never went there because I wasn't a punk.
John: I wasn't a ding-a-ling.
John: But my sister Susan, who at that time spelt her name with a Z, Susan, would go hang out under the Captain Cook, and then I would be charged.
John: My mom would say, go find Susan.
John: So you have to become an explorer of a kind.
John: Yeah, and this was when I had a driver's license, but she didn't.
John: And so I would go drive around town.
John: This is a thing that kids will never understand.
John: I would drive around town to the six different places that she might be.
John: And I would go look over here, and she wouldn't be there.
John: And I'd go over here, and there'd be some punks standing around.
John: And I'd go, hey, you punks, where's Susan?
John: And they would go...
John: me i would go yeah fuck you too and but after a time i realized the first place i gotta go is all the way downtown and look under the captain cook memorial and she's gonna be hanging out on these beams with mark watson and eric singletary and more often than not i found her although sometimes i would poke my head down you know i'd like scramble down and i'd be like susan here and they'd all go bad
John: and so then i'd have to go you know wherever else then she'd be having moons over my hammy somewhere some at the denny's on you know on latouche and uh so that was that was an old that was a blast from the past like you were just saying
John: a kind of oh this is this isn't belfast in the 70s but this is anchorage in the 80s and there weren't troubles specifically like against an occupying british but there there there were beams that you had to cling to so i mean i'm not saying it's equivalent it's not it's it's it's pretty similar though
Merlin: But you know, life is what Kierkegaard says.
Merlin: Kierkegaard says, you know, life goes on, like it or not.
Merlin: That's the thing is these girls, and I just want to really underscore what a very funny show this is.
Merlin: I'm going to look it up here.
Merlin: I think it's on Netflix.
Merlin: Teen girls, and they're up against...
Merlin: They're extremely Catholic, you know, upbringing.
Merlin: And like, it's not like they're against it, but like, there's the religious part.
Merlin: Then there is the like, but there's the troubles part.
Merlin: And like, it doesn't become like an, you know, like, there's not like a very special episode.
Merlin: There isn't like a MASH or Blackadder episode where everybody dies or something.
Merlin: But it's always there, you know, like sort of like us in the nuclear war, you know?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: That's right.
John: A constant threat.
John: And the kids today get to have climate change as their constant threat.
John: That's true.
John: And it's very galvanizing.
John: Yeah.
John: It's very like, oh, this is us and you don't understand.
John: And about as much power to directly affect it as we did.
John: That's right.
John: Exactly right.
Merlin: I stopped using straws.
John: Get used to it.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: It's, you know, it's a funny old world, isn't it, Merlin?
Merlin: It really is.
Merlin: Wouldn't want to paint it.
Merlin: Cover the world is the slogan.
John: That's what they say.
Merlin: I love Williams.
Merlin: Hate Sherwin.
Merlin: Hate him.
Merlin: Yeah, a lot of these people, the young people and the other people, they just don't appreciate what a dad brings to the table.
Merlin: I'll say he brings the table.
Merlin: Let's be honest.
Merlin: Yesterday.
John: So the reason I'm sore.
John: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: Yeah, so you'd been pitching pickles and softballs, and then you were also down in the ravine.
John: Well, and so I was down in the ravine.
John: I did a bunch of work, but then I'm told that we have invited my friend Brian Wallace to join us for pickleball.
John: And this is not a thing that we normally do.
John: We don't normally have friends come play pickleball with us.
John: Are you involved in the playing of pickleball?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Well, often what happens is it'll be my daughter and her mother on one side and me playing pickleball against them both.
John: Because, you know, I'm a big guy.
Merlin: I just want to make sure we don't just gloss over this.
Merlin: You are not just an instructor and father and partner.
Merlin: You are also a player of pickleball.
Merlin: I'm a player.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And somebody can even speak for you and say, Brian's bringing people over.
Merlin: We're going to play pickleball.
John: Yeah, Brian and his lady friend are coming and we're going to play pickleball.
John: Because normally it's like, I mean, they're both very good, Ari and Marlowe.
John: They're both good and I'm playing against them.
John: And, you know, like I say, I'm a big guy, but I'm a lovely mover.
John: You know, I can get across the court because it's a small court.
John: And, you know, I can do some leaps, small leaps.
John: But Brian, Brian, as astute listeners will recognize, Brian is a fireman.
John: Brian is the captain of the EMTs here in Washington, the medics, not EMTs.
John: I'm sorry.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: It's hard to keep a state.
Merlin: Our neighbor is one of those.
Merlin: He's in this nether space between.
Merlin: He's like, you know, there's like the fancy one.
Merlin: You got paramedics and EMTs.
Merlin: He's the fancy one of those, but he's also kind of a fireman and also a little bit of a cop.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Exactly.
John: They all think that, and they all think they're cops.
Merlin: He gets like cop magazines and stuff.
Merlin: He's got zip-up boots like a big boy.
John: They're medics.
John: They're the highest level.
John: In fact, Brian in the past has said, if we get to an accident scene before the EMTs have gotten there, it's actually kind of a problem.
John: And I say, why?
John: And he says, because the EMTs get there, they cut the pants off of them, they put them on a backboard, they get them stabilized, and then we can come do our work.
John: But if we get there and we have to put them on a backboard, it's just wasted time.
John: And I'm like, wow.
John: It kind of sounds like Brian's saying it's beneath him a little bit.
John: A little bit.
John: Yeah.
John: So Brian's a medic and he got promoted to captain during the COVID because he spearheaded Seattle's COVID response.
Merlin: Oh, so he's literally a first responder or an early responder.
John: In many ways.
John: That's right.
John: And then, you know, normally he just walks around with a bunch of gold leaf on his shoulders, but he's also, when they're short staffed, he gets his dungarees back on and he goes at me, you know, but he's a, he's a in shape guy.
John: He can, he can carry a hose up 10 stories and, um, and he's a competitive guy.
John: And here's the, here's the rub firemen play pickleball.
John: Apparently, within fireman culture, pickleball is what they do.
Merlin: I'm so confused.
Merlin: I thought they eat chili and watch TV and, like, play table tennis.
John: They do that when they're not cleaning their fire engines and sweeping out the invisible dirt.
John: But they also now...
John: use that chili to play very competitive pickleball with each other wow wow wow wow wow so brian says well now look i'm coming in here i know that this is a friendly pickleball game but i'm kind of i can't get this this death pickleball out of my head so there it's going to be a little bit of a problem in a nice way he's trying to say hey you know no quarter like don't expect me to go easy on you yeah i'm going to put this ball like where you ain't
Merlin: And this isn't just like Billy Jack where he says, like, I'm going to take this foot and kick you on that side of your face.
Merlin: And there's nothing you can do about it.
John: Nothing you can do about it.
Merlin: He's a fireman.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: So he shows up and his lady friend Becky has never played pickleball until today.
John: So she watches for a while, but she was a high school volleyball player.
John: So she understands sports.
Merlin: Everyone you know has excelled at life so much more than I have.
Merlin: This is why I don't see people in San Francisco.
Merlin: It's too embarrassing to go and meet people and be like this, how I am.
Merlin: You know a lot of people in San Francisco.
John: You know people in San Francisco.
John: I've been to places with you.
John: A lot of that's changed.
John: They come around, they're like, is that for one?
John: And then they come over and then you're like, you're so fun in a group of people before you.
John: I used to be.
John: I used to be.
John: Yeah.
John: But so we get down there and we're playing pickleball.
John: And of course, Brian thinks that he's because he's a fireman that he's just going to be head and shoulders above everybody.
John: But you know what?
John: He doesn't know what what the Duke boys didn't know.
Yeah.
John: was that that john you know big dad over here uh john's not uh new like if somebody's gonna put a pickleball right up my nose oh it's not your first day you're saying uh you're not precisely a slouch yeah like i'm i'm out here going like watch the ball into the paddle but i know how to watch the ball so we start playing back and forth and at first it's friendly and then brian starts putting it you know down the hose he puts a little bit of mustard on the pickle
John: Yeah, and he's, you know, he's singing it and he scores, you know, several scores.
John: And I'm kind of, I'm not, you know, I'm not like rope-a-doping him here.
John: I'm just trying to keep the ball in motion and just playing a friendly game with all the friends.
John: And Becky gets in and she starts to be, you know, pretty darn good at it.
John: She can move around.
John: She can get the ball over.
John: And so then, so Brian's like feeling pretty good about himself.
John: And then I start to just turn the knob a little bit.
Merlin: Are you doing, I think the term is, are you doing a little bit of a hustle?
Merlin: Were you sandbagging a little at first, not giving him both barrels?
John: If I had bet 50 bucks on the game after my early performance, he would have put his money down.
John: But then, you know, but then after a while, I have to let him get comfortable, let him get confident.
John: Cocky.
John: And then I start, I start doing the little bit of the, like, try and return this.
John: And a little bit, oh, some of, you know, because he cuts up on the net and he's, he's like punching these pickleballs at my little girl.
John: And it's all in good, it's all in good fun.
John: He's used to playing firefighters and you can't unlearn that.
John: That's right.
John: But I start to do the thing where I get it because he's like, oh, nobody can get a ball past me.
John: But I start doing the thing where I get it right over his head and then it lands like two feet behind his heels.
John: And he doesn't see that coming because that's not fireman pickleball.
John: Those guys are all strength.
John: There's no know how to put the ball.
Merlin: Initially, when I lost interest a little bit in tennis, at first it was so exciting when it became all about the ace.
Merlin: It became all about the serve.
Merlin: At some point in, I guess, probably the mid to late 70s into the 80s.
Merlin: I haven't followed it in years.
Merlin: Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe were the last time I was heavily engaged.
Merlin: Around the same time, my uncle taught me how to go to college.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: Around the same time.
John: But you're saying that the unreturnable serve made tennis boring.
John: It was exciting.
Merlin: Like Chrissy Everett, what she could do with the serve was really, really fun.
Merlin: It was really exciting.
Merlin: Bjornberg, everybody, so on.
Merlin: But then pretty soon, like it was just all about, it felt like it was all about the ace.
Merlin: And we'd lost a lot of the volleying and finesse, like more like a Jimmy Connors type situation that I had enjoyed as a young person.
John: And I agree with that.
John: And one of the reasons I agree with that is I never had a killer serve in my own tennis game.
Merlin: It's a different thing.
Merlin: It's almost like you have to have a separate position to be the pitcher.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And a pitcher can be a good hitter like it happens.
Merlin: But like you're focusing so heavily like isn't that kind of like it seems like good serving is seems like it's allied but very different from general good tennis.
John: Tony Hine and I used to go out and play tennis in high school.
John: And it's that thing when you look back at it and you think, you know, in high school, it seemed like every day had 40 hours.
John: Like, at what point did I have an hour to go play tennis with Tony Hine?
John: And also having that hour, how did I ever think to spend it doing that?
John: You know, my daughter never has enough time in the day to read seven books and lay on the couch.
John: Where did, where would she find this hour?
John: Oh, as I say it, I know she could find seven hours to do other things.
John: But Tony and I would go play tennis and we were evenly matched tennis players.
John: So we would play this really, this really, you know, fun, good game of tennis.
John: But Tony had the ace up his sleeve.
John: And so every time we were at match point or game point or whatever, he would just, he would just serve me to death.
John: He would just, he would just score because he could serve it past me.
John: And I always felt it's very in keeping with Tony because he had two brothers.
John: And I didn't have any brothers, so I didn't have that desire to defeat someone at all costs.
John: But the reason that Brian's playing pickleball with us
John: is that and eventually brian was like oh you duped me here like you you were pretending to be just like some suburban dad and now you're making me look like a dope and i was like i'm not making you look like a dope brian we're all just having fun here
John: but try and get this pickleball back over the neck.
Merlin: Well, that's what I was going to say about the ace part.
Merlin: And this is also why I said earlier, because I used to try pretty hard at tennis.
Merlin: I'm not John Syracuse.
Merlin: But I did try pretty hard at tennis.
Merlin: I played a lot.
Merlin: My mom played regularly.
Merlin: And around that time, and my mom and I would play tennis with other people, I got okay good at it.
Merlin: But the furthest I went was getting to where...
Merlin: I could do a backhand and spin it.
Merlin: My main move, this is as far as I ever got.
Merlin: I'm not saying I was good.
Merlin: But the furthest I ever got was, let's say you're over on, like, the left, my left side, you know, in doubles.
Merlin: And, like, you're moving over to your left.
Merlin: And I could do a pretty good – and this continued in my playing of Wii Tennis, which I'm also extremely good at.
Merlin: And I could do a backhand –
Merlin: with a spin such that, and you could see what it was.
Merlin: It was like noticing a cutter.
Merlin: Like you would see, but you could tell like this thing was gonna come and you just didn't know how hard it was gonna hit a little bit in front of you and spin hard toward the net.
Merlin: Which is different than using pure power to try and ace somebody with like basically getting a pitch past them.
Merlin: And if you do that to Fireboy, he's going to be a sad little Fireboy if you're able to drop shit right in front of him.
Merlin: How do you like that?
Merlin: Pick that up.
John: That's exactly it.
John: You use a little finesse.
John: You put things where, you know, you put it where they ain't.
John: You don't have to just, you know, run it through them.
Merlin: Here's the thing, John.
Merlin: You rob a bank because that's where the money is.
Merlin: And when you're playing baseball, you got to hit it where they ain't.
Merlin: Hit it where they ain't.
Merlin: I have a lot of this old-timey information, if you have any young people.
Merlin: Because you watched Pete Rose baseball, that's why.
Merlin: I did, and that was, by the way, I just want to cite Willie Sutton, and I believe Babe Ruth.
John: anyways well so we were at brian's birthday party you know people a week before yeah we both um but uh so brian this is this is the type of fireman he is right because he's an ossifer and uh he says come to my birthday party it's at the lawn bowling club at green lake and the lawn and i'm a member of the lawn bowling club
John: Brian is a member of the Lawn Bowling Club.
John: Lawn Bowling Club.
John: Okay.
John: I know people in San Francisco, and I also know them in Seattle, and I've pretty much been everywhere there is, but I had never been to them.
John: You've been everywhere, man.
John: I have.
John: Boston and St.
John: Clair.
John: You're a regular Hank Snow song.
John: And so, apparently, when you get off 99 at the zoo, there's a quick...
John: Not at the zoo.
John: At Green Lake.
John: There's a very quick right that you can only get to when you're coming off 99.
John: You can't, you know, there's no back way in.
John: You have to just start over.
John: And here, you have to start over.
John: You have to go all the way around the kitchen.
Merlin: It's like when you have a misstep at the airport, where you've got to go all the way back out and around.
John: All the way back out and around.
John: And that's how this is.
John: You can take this quick right.
John: Well, there's a lawn bowling club with like a mid-century modern clubhouse and like these perfectly manicured grasses.
John: Are any of the members white, just out of curiosity?
John: Well, I didn't meet any of the members because Brian- You weren't cleared for that.
John: He rented the whole lawn bowling club for his birthday.
John: I think you need to watch out for this guy.
John: There's a lot of red flags.
John: For like 300 bucks.
John: He's rocking a lot of red flags.
John: Well, you know, the problem is I've known him 30 years.
John: Back in the day, he used to make sculptures and then 9-11 happened.
John: 9-11.
John: And he came to our little group and he said, I'm joining the fire department.
John: And we said, Brian, that's not what, you know, like we support the United States and we're, uh, humanitarians, but we're artists.
John: We sit around in cafes and talk about, uh, uh, big ideas.
John: We don't join the fire department.
John: And he said, well, screw you guys.
John: I'm joining the fire department.
John: And we thought on the one hand that seems corny, but on the other hand, Brian might actually do it.
John: And then he did, uh,
John: and now here we are 23 years later and he's like a fire he's like the captain of the medics or whatever so brian's i i've watched him through a few iterations like 14 iterations but so we we show up at the lawn bowling club and there's all our all our friends all our you know group of friends from 25 some some cases 30 years ago
John: and uh and you know we come in but we're coming in the back way because i missed the turn and um i'm trying to see if there's a way through the fence and there's a you came in like accidentally went where the help come in that's right and there's a guy there in a full um like a chemical suit
John: with some roundup.
John: He's got a little, like a canister of a weed killer.
John: And he's walking around the outside fence.
John: And I said, hey, is there a way through the fence?
John: And he was like, you know, didn't understand what I was saying.
John: So I was like, okay, fine, thank you.
Merlin: I'm also, for some reason, because it's Country Club at Jason, he's wearing a white suit, and I'm reminding a little bit of Bill Murray in Caddyshack.
John: It's very similar to that, right?
John: Except he's got...
John: goggles on and some kind of respirator yeah yeah and i'm like right on so he's so we go around the outside cockatoodle and we come in and here's this wonderful uh there's this wonderful clubhouse we got a cake and everything brian's there all the all the friends are there michael from le piche scott musgrove it's the whole gang
John: And we're talking about lawn bowling.
John: And we get out and we bowl some bowls.
John: And it's very fun.
John: It just feels like we're Europeans, you know, in Spain.
Merlin: Can I ask just a quick question?
Merlin: We've got a place.
Merlin: So, you know, there's like Stern Grove just south of us.
Merlin: There's that big where they do concerts and stuff.
Merlin: And they used to have...
Merlin: I think they, I've seen people out there playing what I believe to be lawn bowling.
Merlin: It is since disused, just, you know, it's like they haven't kept it up.
Merlin: But Tom was, you would go by like, I don't want to say like a Sunday.
Merlin: And I feel like there's a lot of people dressed in totally white outfits.
Merlin: Is that lawn bowling?
John: I could be.
John: And, you know, in a lot of countries.
Merlin: You guys are all wearing civvies though.
John: Well, we got civvies on.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: In a lot of countries in Europe, it seems like there's just a bunch of roly-poly men with their pants pulled up over their bellies out there with their hands behind their back.
John: That sounds like Italy.
John: That's exactly right.
John: And they're just playing some version of this bocce out in the square.
John: But lawn bowling is long.
John: It's a long piece.
Merlin: How is it closer to cricket?
Merlin: It's like that whole situation?
John: It's kind of not like it.
Merlin: Are there breaks?
Merlin: Are there breaks?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: So how long does the long bowling game go on?
Merlin: I only say cricket because I don't understand how it works, and I don't understand the scores, and it appears to go on for a very, very, very long time.
John: Well, what you have is you have a little ball, like a golf ball, and you throw it out there, and then it's everybody's goal to get their bigger balls, their croquet balls, the closest to the little ball.
John: It's basically a prehistoric game in terms of how much complication there is.
John: Had you played it much before?
John: No, no.
John: And so there was a learning curve of like, oh, you can actually, the balls are actually not perfectly round.
John: They're a little bit, they're a little bit smaller on one side than the other.
John: So you can make them curve.
John: You can kind of spin them in.
John: It's very interesting.
John: But so this guy, this guy with the hazmat suit is going around and he's spraying all around and then he's putting up like caution tape.
John: And I'm like, you know, it seems weird that this guy is doing this in the middle of a lawn bowling game.
John: Like, this seems like something you do when nobody's there.
Merlin: And Brian has, wait, is this Brian's birthday?
Merlin: Is that what you said?
John: This is Brian's birthday.
Merlin: It's Brian's birthday.
Merlin: And he rented the lawn bowling place for his birthday party.
Merlin: He bought it out.
Merlin: He did a buyout, right?
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: And as it happens, that's also the day that Bill Murray is there with his weed killer.
Merlin: And he's also putting up signs about be careful of the roundup.
John: Yeah, yeah, and he's not, like, doing it, you know, where we're playing.
John: It's just interesting timing.
John: It's interesting timing.
John: So then we go in, we're having a little bit of cake or whatever, and I look out the door, and here's Roundup guy, and he's Roundup-ing right outside the front of the door, right where we were sitting and playing, where we're eating.
John: Hmm.
John: And so, you know, and I'm in a group of guys.
Merlin: Just to be clear, it's Monsanto, right?
Merlin: Monsanto?
John: It's Monsanto.
Merlin: Monsanto has lost...
Merlin: I worked at a company that had to handle some of these lawsuits.
Merlin: They've lost a lot of lawsuits.
Merlin: They've settled, let's say, a lot of lawsuits about Roundup.
Merlin: Roundup, time was Roundup would just rain from the sky.
Merlin: Like, there was just Roundup everywhere.
Merlin: We had Roundup, Roundup, Roundup, Roundup.
Merlin: And it was a way that, like, if you had, you wanted to keep your lawn nice, you wanted to keep your golf course nice.
Merlin: But, like, I just don't think of Roundup as being something that you spray that much that publicly at somebody's birthday party.
Merlin: Maybe I'm old-fashioned.
Merlin: I might be old-fashioned.
John: Couldn't agree more.
John: So I look around this group, and I'm like, okay, well, there's a bunch of guys in their 50s here, including a medic, but they're all artists, you know, excepting the medic.
John: And artists are not really problem solvers, if you know what I mean.
John: And I'm not either, but you know, one of my things that I'm always working on is that tendency for me to be the sheriff.
John: So the sheriff?
John: Yeah, and I'm always saying, like, don't be the sheriff.
John: Stop going up to these teenagers and telling them they're doing it wrong.
John: Like, stop it.
John: You know, you're just going to get in trouble.
Merlin: Don't be the sheriff.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: Don't always be the sheriff.
John: But I'm seeing him out there with the roundup, and I look around, and I go...
John: And I say to, you know, I say to the room, this guy with the roundup.
John: And everybody goes, I know.
John: And so I... Typical artists.
John: I'm the sheriff, right?
John: And so I go out and I say... Howdy, howdy partner.
John: Excuse me.
John: Hi.
John: Hey, could you...
John: uh we're having a party here uh could you not spray the roundup right here uh where we're gonna be you know like you were out in the far but now you're here close so can you not do that and he said through his respirator and his goggles he said mr mike told me i have to do this okay
Merlin: And I go, ah, Mr. Mike.
Merlin: So now you've got to find out who Mr. Mike is.
John: Yeah.
John: So I'm like, okay, Mr. Mike.
John: So we're standing around.
John: I go back in.
John: And then he's like still at it.
John: In the flowers and whatnot.
John: Right there.
John: And so, and everybody's inside grousing about it and like sad.
John: And so I go back out and I'm like, listen, I'm here to tell you right now that Mr. Mike doesn't want you to do this while we're having this party.
John: And here's what I'm going to do.
John: I'm going to contact Mr. Mike.
John: So if you will stop doing this right now, I will make it fine with Mr. Mike.
John: I guarantee this is going to happen.
John: I'm going to call Mr. Mike or Brian is, and we're going to tell Mr. Mike that it's our fault that you had to stop.
Merlin: And he kind of you're setting up a scenario where you're like, OK, I was not able to ask or persuade you to stop doing this.
Merlin: I just want you to know you can go ahead and stop because I'm going to make good on this.
Merlin: You're not going to get in trouble.
Merlin: And we're going to get to have our nice day with this bought out fancy people's club.
Merlin: Just so you know, you can probably just go ahead and bounce.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You can take the rest of the day off.
John: And so he has some, you know, he gets kind of like he's nervous or whatever, like, oh, Mr. Mike.
John: He doesn't want to cross Mr. Mike.
John: And I'm like, we rented this place from Mr. Mike.
John: And if Mr. Mike says that you had to be out here doing this today, I'm going to then have a problem with Mr. Mike.
John: And Mr. Mike isn't going to like that.
John: This is escalating now.
John: He might be your boss, but he's not my boss.
John: I'm Mr. Mike's boss.
John: You're a guest.
John: You're a guest at the Lawn Bowling Club.
Merlin: That's right.
John: And everybody, you know, and everybody... You're arguably the reason the whole goddamn Lawn Boyne Club is there.
John: Why the hell did they build this Lawn Boyne Club if not for the sheriff, right?
John: Right.
John: And so, and my friends are now, like, they're cowering a little bit because I have started to sheriff.
John: I've started a confrontation with the Roundup guy.
Merlin: Oh, and so what you're telling me is that your artistic and retired artistic friends have a similar reaction to, like, when your child notices you becoming a kind of sheriff.
John: It's a similar reaction?
John: But also, they're very not into the Roundup.
Merlin: It's a it's a they're not doing anything about it.
John: That's right I see and so and you know, and they're like, oh here, you know, here we go and I'm like, well, yeah, here we go He's spraying roundup on our birthday cake
John: And so he's like, it's time for the sheriff of lawn bowling to step in.
John: He's like, well, and he kind of packs up and he's like, okay, okay, okay.
John: All right.
John: And he starts to kind of pack up and, and move out.
John: And so, you know, we come out again and I'm like, there's roundup all over here.
John: So like, don't, you know, and so I look over and he's like over on the other side.
John: And I said, Hey,
John: Look, there's kids here and you are in a hazmat suit.
John: Like you're head to toe covered.
John: Yeah.
John: You got goggles on a respirator.
John: You know, this is poison and we've got little kids running around eating cake.
John: Do you get that?
John: That basically what I'm saying is you're not spraying anymore.
John: I don't care about Mr. Mike.
John: I don't care about what your justification is.
John: That's the end of spraying.
Merlin: And he... That's the lawn bowling equivalent of a warning shot.
Merlin: I'm like... The sheriff has just made it very clear, like, hey, look, we can do this hard or easy.
Merlin: That's right.
John: It's over now.
John: Take your stuff and go to your truck.
John: And that was the end of it, right?
John: Unfortunately, no.
John: Okay.
John: And he goes, okay, okay, okay.
John: And then he goes.
John: Oh, dear.
John: And I. Oh, no.
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I don't think I'm going to hear this.
John: lost it just because your daughter is there for this she's there and everybody there kids there's like six kids there yeah but that particular kid is there seeing you escalating your sheriff oh and this is what i'm this is what i'm this is what brings me shame right because now i'm doing it again
John: And she has many times seen me say, hey, we're in a restaurant and I already object to the fact that you brought your dog in here, but your dog is literally standing on the table and I'm just not going to have it.
John: To use an old term, John, you demand satisfaction.
John: And he's like, it's not your restaurant, it's not your table.
John: And I'm like, but right now it is.
John: It has turned into my restaurant when your shit dog is walking on the tables.
Yeah.
John: And, and my daughter has to stand there and go, daddy, daddy, daddy.
John: It's fine.
John: It's fine.
John: It's fine.
John: Don't worry.
John: It's fine.
John: It's not your, yeah, just.
John: And I'm like, I'm ashamed of this.
John: She's going to grow up.
John: She's going to talk about this in counseling.
Merlin: But the principal, right?
Merlin: It's the principal.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Here's what you need to know about your dad.
Merlin: He's the sheriff of whatever needs to happen because sometimes there's a... Well, you were elected in your mind, but it's a... Well, it's a principle.
John: It's a... Well, and also, it's poison in this case.
John: Literal poison.
John: Yes.
John: And he goes... And I said, you're done!
John: And I...
Merlin: starts to walk toward him in a way that suggests that i'm going to take the bottle of poison and his for some reason i don't know why you've seen portlandia for some reason i keep imagining he's going to take that thing off and it's going to be fred armison with his big saucer eyes staring you straight in the eyes as you come toward him and continuing to just gently go yeah
John: Mr. Mike told me to do this.
John: As I approach him in a way that might be perceived as with an energy that suggests that I'm going to take this bottle from him whether he likes it or not.
John: You're going to disarm him in sheriff's.
John: I'm going to disarm him.
John: He raises the sprayer and goes and sprays me.
What?
Merlin: He's, wait.
Merlin: So, okay.
Merlin: So there's coming towards him and then there's coming at him.
Merlin: You were, let's even say you're coming sort of at him.
Merlin: And did he do it in like, no, you're coming towards him, but you were very probably, I'm guessing, like somebody in law enforcement, a first responder like yourself.
Merlin: You had a sense of purposefulness and also you had just yelled really loudly.
Merlin: I think you said he's done.
John: Yeah, and this is the thing because what has what I have was it really towards you?
Merlin: Because either way, it's kind of a fuck you.
Merlin: It's kind of it was on He treated like a weed.
John: He treated me like a week and what I had done, you know is I had taken it I'd made it personal now, right?
John: I had said no
John: I had, I had asserted my authority.
John: I had said, we're going to solve this one way or the other.
John: I said, I'm going to get you off the hook with Mr. Mike.
John: I said, listen, you're wearing a hazmat suit and there are children here.
John: I, you know, four or five times I had tried to reason with this person and then, and he, he was like, okay.
John: And sort of sneaks off and then keeps doing it.
John: And it's like flowers and stuff.
John: Like, what is he doing?
John: What exact naps is he?
John: Anyway, he sprays me.
John: And like a mist of this is like now on me.
John: Like basically in my face.
John: I cannot wait to hear how your friend responded to that.
John: Well, everybody now is standing outside.
John: They're all watching this go down.
John: And there's, you know, and of course there's a lot of peanut gallery going on.
John: But then I'm tunnel vision and I'm like, now you have sprayed me with the poison.
John: Like before I was only going to, I was only going to relieve you of your, of your, of your tube and,
John: But now this is a, this is a serious issue.
John: And I happened to have a piece of pizza on a, on a plate while I was talking to him.
John: And generally a man with a piece of pizza on a plate is not a threat to anyone.
John: It's a, I'm still a very gentle.
John: It's not the pizza.
John: It's how you use it.
John: It's and there's the pizza and he has sprayed me and he sprayed the pizza.
John: Jesus.
John: and i go i go uh into the into the place and the place i try never to go to the bad place and so at that point i'm going to close the distance between us
John: Because now, and I'm saying even in my mind, do not abuse this poor groundskeeper.
John: But on the other hand, I say he just sprayed me with Roundup right in my face and on my pizza.
John: And so I huck the pizza at him.
John: and then i go to grab him oh jesus no john and and like tear him into pieces are you shitting are you sure you want to talk about this is okay he just he just poisoned me yeah and brian at that point firefighter uh 9 11 veteran jumps in
John: grabs me and says, John, no, no.
John: It's all I hear.
John: And, and that part of my brain is like, don't do this at a birthday party.
John: It's already too late.
John: You've already escalated it all the way beyond, you know, any sense of reason.
John: And the guy pulls his goggles off and I'm like right at him.
John: And then he pulls his mask off and it's Chris Cornelia.
John: Former member of the world.
John: No fucking way.
Merlin: John, you've got to tell people, this is like the first time I met you guys and you slept over at our house.
Merlin: Your keyboard player was Chris Cornelia.
Merlin: He's one of the funniest people I've ever met.
Merlin: He's completely, I say this in the nicest way because I love him and he's so fucking funny.
Merlin: He's insufferable.
Merlin: In retrospect, John, it seems like you should somehow have known that it was Chris Cornelia because that was such a Chris Cornelia thing to do.
Merlin: And yet he's completely covered.
John: He knew it was you.
John: You didn't know it was him.
John: And he has been slow rolling this prank for 45 minutes to an hour.
John: You've got to be kidding me.
John: The first 30 minutes I was at the party, he was all the way across the lawn bowling, spraying water on the fence and putting up caution tape so that he was... He spent a half an hour...
John: All the way around.
John: He was doing the whole thing.
Merlin: And so, but was this a setup?
Merlin: Did he, did, did, was he, did your friend, sorry, what's your friend's name?
Merlin: The farmer?
Merlin: Brian.
Merlin: Did Brian bring Chris in as a prank?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Oh my.
John: Brian.
John: This changes everything.
John: Brian was having his 50th birthday party.
John: Because Chris Coniglia, none of us have seen him in years.
Merlin: He was a stand-up comic.
Merlin: And then did he get a job doing like, was he doing like training stuff with companies or something?
John: No, he had like a photo booth that he carried around to weddings and stuff.
John: But he and I were roommates in the 90s.
John: Chris worked at the Crocodile Cafe.
John: Chris was like, he was in El Dopa.
John: He was one of my closest friends.
John: And as you know, hilarious.
Merlin: Really, really funny.
Merlin: But like the kind of funny, he's a funny person's funny person because he can be so dry that it is insufferable.
Merlin: He's like an Andy Kaufman character.
Merlin: Yeah, no, that's, I mean, like, honestly, if you just need a quick version of a handsome guy, but like, oh, it goes fast.
Merlin: And I think it was actually Chris Cornelia that shaved Michael's head in my kitchen.
John: That's 100% who he is.
John: He used to get into situations and conversations.
John: Is it in my kitchen?
John: He shaved his head in the kitchen.
John: Shaved his head in the kitchen.
John: Yeah.
John: He would go to parties and he would just stand there and be like, really racist.
John: Like a white supremacist from Utah.
Merlin: Like doing like an Elvis Costello.
John: Yeah, doing your thing where you're like, I'm a ceramicist at MC Hammer's birthday party.
John: Also 50th birthday party, if I recall.
John: It's all coming together.
John: So I'm standing there with my hands on his jacket.
Merlin: John, I don't like to use this term.
Merlin: I think you got punked.
John: And I'm about to kill him.
John: And I see that it's Chris, but I'm still in the red zone.
John: Of course you are.
John: Of course you are.
John: And Brian's like, it's Chris, it's Chris.
John: And Chris doesn't say anything.
John: He just stands there and looks at me.
John: And this is such an amazing elaborate bit.
John: Nobody else at the party was into it.
John: And as, as they're digesting it, Brian said, you know, Chris texted me out of the blue.
John: I said, get on a train and come up here and we're going to prank everybody.
John: And Brian said, you know, I don't know what's going to happen.
John: Like, Scott, it might be Michael's really tripping about it.
John: Because they all trip out in their own way.
John: Peter Kars.
John: And Chris said to Brian, is Roderick going to be there?
John: And he was like, yeah.
John: And Chris said, oh, it's going to be Roderick.
John: Whatever happens, it's going to be John.
John: And Brian was like, well, but, you know, Michael and Chris was like, no, no, no.
John: It's going to be John and it's going to be, it's going to go.
John: And so they and Brian rolled this out.
John: Never let on Chris.
John: Never like, I wouldn't, if I'd been pranking, I wouldn't have been able to spend that 45 minutes establishing the character that he did before finally.
John: And was it only Brian that was in on it?
John: Only Brian.
John: Oh my God.
John: And the thing is like when he started spraying out in front of the clubhouse, we were all inside.
John: Like it's masterful.
John: He didn't come and do it.
John: He waited for us to go inside.
John: So he waited knowing that I would notice it.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: And be like, Hey, what's going on out there?
John: And he went through five different times.
Merlin: It's Napoleon and Austerlitz.
Merlin: He's found a plausible way to make you believe something that is a thing you can believe.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: It's very plausible that this thing is happening.
Merlin: And the way this person acts, and you got pretty drawn into it, huh?
Merlin: Mr. Mike told him that he has to do it.
John: And he wound me up.
John: Mr. Mike is a MacGuffin?
John: There is no Mr. Mike?
John: Mike stands for MacGuffin.
John: It's short for MacGuffin.
John: What a perfect name.
John: So then I had to sit in a chair and spend 20 minutes calming down, but also then say to my little girl, I'm sorry.
John: It was a prank, but I'm also sorry that I took it all the way to about to bite this guy.
Merlin: I personally, I have mixed feelings about this in movies, but you think about a movie like in Men in Black, where, I don't want to spoil the plot of Tenet for you, but you will see in a movie, there's things where you're like, no, we need, spoilers, but we got to test out how much we can trust this person to be completely, it happens in Night Manager too, how much can we trust this person to be completely committed to this thing that no sane person would ever commit to?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like with that wonderful actor I love with three names in Tenet, like he ends up having to do something like pretty wild.
Merlin: And they're like, okay, that was a test.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That's kind of like what he did here.
Merlin: That is next level shit.
Merlin: It really is.
Merlin: And your friend and for Brian to like not break character.
Merlin: To go like John, you're going to embarrass yourself.
John: Stop.
John: And Brian has always been a pranker.
John: He pranks people all kinds of ways.
John: My feelings about Brian have changed so much since this episode.
John: Yeah, and this is the type of thing he does.
John: He's a goofer, and he's also... But it's always clever.
John: He's cleverer.
John: I would never have thought this.
John: He's clever in a way that...
John: That it just, you never see it coming.
John: Master tactician, I gotta say.
John: Yeah.
John: But then Chris was the perfect character because as you say, he, Chris would have done this for two and a half hours.
John: He would have missed the entire party if nobody had confronted him.
John: He would have just kept going.
Merlin: He would have been like, I think, you know, Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler where he would be so committed to this.
Merlin: I could see this going to different places that would be very surprising.
Merlin: And pretty soon he's like threatening Diana Nyad.
John: like i could totally see that i mean he we're all having a party and he is like not interested he would much rather be dressed as a as a groundskeeper and watching the party and provoking us with this with this insane subtlety huh did he stay in the suit the whole time after well no at that point he took the suit off and there he is he's he's you know he's my and there's nothing in the sprayer it's just water just water
John: And he had gone and bought a sprayer and had drawn a skull and crossbones on it.
John: And then the word peligro underneath it, but like hand drawn.
John: Oh, and that was the funny part.
John: He thought he was doing a Spanish accent, but through the mask, I heard it as an Eastern European accent.
John: And so I was like, oh, this guy's from Belarus or whatever.
John: And, you know, and so...
John: He's probably just taking this shitty job to get his family out of jail.
John: Exactly.
John: He was in Ukraine and now this is what's happened.
John: And, you know, not that I would have had less sympathy from somebody from another country, but just like that was how he sprayed.
Merlin: But also he waited so long.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm just I this is an unbelievable.
John: anecdote to me and like i just want to say to chris wow yeah that's no wow well and so then brian no this is the rest of your life now is you got to just deal with this brian had been filming it oh like like secretly had his going on the side filming the whole thing and so afterwards
John: the whole the whole uh footage from the whole event then is reviewed multiple times by everybody now i don't want to see it because i'm like i'm embarrassed of course but but they're all reviewing it reviewing it reviewing it because they think this is the greatest thing in the world and they're watching it and watching it and i'm sitting out there like
John: just you know covered in this like oh my god you know and then they come out of the of the shack and they say we have determined john that you did everything in your power to not have it end this way and the only reasonable thing that could have happened is is what did happen that you eventually wait they adjudicated in your favor
John: And then they watched it throughout the night and then after everybody went home and then they watched it at breakfast in the morning and called me and said, we feel like you of all of us were the only one that actually behaved like a like a grown up.
John: And this is not what I expected, because this is the crowd.
John: I would be careful, John.
Merlin: This could just be a setup for the next thing.
John: It feels like maybe, but because this is the group.
Merlin: What about the arriving at the wrong place and him being there?
John: That's just one of those things, just one of the luck of the draws.
Merlin: He was already in character and spraying when you arrived.
John: Yeah, and I'm sure he was already spraying before the first person.
John: But I'm sure, I picture us coming over that hill with our picnic baskets and
John: And me going over to him and like, hey, can you tell us is the gate open?
John: And he's like, meh.
John: And he's already deep in it.
John: He's got to be thrilled that this is our first meeting.
John: He's passed the first test.
John: And I'm like, okay, whatever.
John: Thanks.
Merlin: Thanks for that.
Merlin: Like they can tell it's not Tom Cruise.
Merlin: You know, it's a guy in a mask.
Merlin: Like he's already passed the first test.
John: But this is for sure the group of people that normally under normal circumstances would have mined that footage for five or six choice quotes.
John: And then they would be throwing those quotes at me the rest of my life.
John: Like, oh, you're going to call Mr. Mike, huh?
John: But what actually happened is that all the other people at the party in reviewing the footage all felt ashamed that they hadn't done anything.
John: Come on.
John: Because in the footage is all the other 55-year-old men standing there going, oh, this guy, you know, can't believe he's wearing the poison, but he's not.
John: But none of them.
Merlin: Because they think themselves a curse and hold their manhoods cheap that they weren't there to fight with you upon Chris Cornelia Day.
John: There it is.
John: You said a mouthful.
John: You got adjudicated by a jury of your art peers.
John: I come out smelling like a rose and Brian's like, let's play some pickleball.
John: Like Frank Brian becomes pickleball Brian within an afternoon.
John: That's a pro.
John: So...
John: i mean i'm still i'm still in my heart saying why of every one in the world did you get into a fight with peligro man about spraying roundup on everybody but then my the jury of my peers is like if if not for you we would all be dying of roundup poisoning right now
John: And I don't know what's happened.
John: I don't know what's changed in the world that I finally, because most of the time I do something like this and then my neighbors threaten a lawsuit.
John: Yeah.
John: Or whatever.
John: Most of the time.
Merlin: But in this case.
Merlin: You were just trying to do the right thing and step up.
Merlin: You were Gary Cooper, right?
Merlin: You were just trying to step up and do the right thing.
Merlin: And then you got committed.
Merlin: You got committed to the bit.
John: Gary Cooper never loses his cool.
Merlin: I think that movie's overrated.
Merlin: I think that movie's overrated.
Merlin: You do.
John: I do.
Merlin: I also do.
John: Really?
Merlin: There's nothing going on in that movie.
John: But you were kidding.
John: You actually do like the John Carpenter movie, The Thing, right?
John: I do.
John: I got so much weird energy when I said, oh, The Thing is a garbage movie.
John: I heard like 14 different- I thought you were serious.
John: No, I got all these emails from people, and none of them were confrontational.
John: They were, well, they were little.
Merlin: Did I just mishear?
Merlin: This is like me and Mike.
Merlin: My wife and I have, like, Madeline and I have a few movies where it's like, I still believe that she's confused about thinking she doesn't like a movie.
Merlin: I'm like, you think you don't like The Prestige.
Merlin: I think what you don't like is the Ed Norton movie that came out at the same time.
Merlin: You think you don't like Drive.
Merlin: There's no way you don't like Drive.
Merlin: Come on, you can't not like Drive.
Merlin: How do you not like Drive?
John: Just the soundtrack alone, you know?
John: But I did.
John: I got emails from people that were like, can you explain your feelings about the movie?
Merlin: Just don't even refuse to accept Wilford Brimley without a beard.
Merlin: Yeah, just give me the basics.
Merlin: And I'm like, I owe you nothing.
John: I owe you no explanation.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You're just, for what it's worth, you get as good as you get, which is like, and don't get upset.
Merlin: It's like, you fooled me.
Merlin: You fooled me.
Merlin: They fooled me, Jerry.
John: I mean, that's a low-level prank.
John: That was a prank.
Merlin: Do you know how good that dog is, that dog actor, how good that dog is?
Merlin: That dog is the star of the film.
Merlin: That's fucking amazing.
John: Well, I mean, except for the prosthetics.
John: Kurt Russell's hat.
Ha ha ha ha.
John: Anyway, you never know when you're going to be pranked.
Merlin: Is this changing for you?
Merlin: Do you see yourself?
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I mean, do you see this as something we're like going on a go forward basis?
Merlin: Do you see yourself increasingly asking, A, is this a prank?
Merlin: And B, could this actually be Chris Cornelia?
John: I don't know.
John: It has in the sense that I went over then to Brian and Chris at a certain point.
John: And I said, I've never been pranked like I was just pranked.
John: That's the most pranked I've ever been.
John: And God willing, let it be the most pranked I ever am.
John: Because I'm because and in a way, we were only three seconds away from this being a party ending brawl.
John: And Chris looked at me and said, I was I was prepared to take a punch.
Merlin: I'm just imagining you now.
Merlin: I mean, to state kind of the obvious, this feels a little bit like Game of Thrones, but like you taking off the you've you've pounded him.
Merlin: Maybe you get a hard punch and you got a lucky punch at the same time.
Merlin: Maybe you have broke this person's nose.
Merlin: Maybe their nose is now, like I learned from Bruce Lee, you've jammed their nose up into their brain and now they don't have lobes anymore.
Merlin: And you reach over to find out who it is.
Merlin: You take it off and it's a very handsome gray and Chris Cornelia.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, the thing is, I'm not somebody that's going to punch somebody with the meat of my hand where I put their nose into their brain.
John: I'm a grappler.
Merlin: I think you are a get somebody on the ground guy is my guess.
John: I'm a get somebody on the ground guy, but I am capable of throwing one haymaker.
John: that then enables me to control the rest of the situation.
John: He started beating him with his own roundup can.
John: And so if I had landed, if Brian hadn't grabbed my arm and I had landed that one haymaker, you know, it would have been a very different, Chris would have spent the rest of the party with an ice fan.
John: I think the jury might have had a different response.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know.
John: Chris said, looked me right in the eye and he was like, I was prepared to take a punch for this.
John: He's ready for me.
John: You want that guy on your team.
John: I know.
John: It's insane.
John: It's insane.
John: You're handling this very well.
John: I would still be very upset about this.
John: The thing is, everybody at the party was pranked.
John: Brian pranked everybody.
John: And in Brian's mind, it was still an open question, which of this group of 55-year-old... The thing is, everybody at the party is very fit, too.
John: They're not a bunch of artists that are just, like, sitting in their garret in the dark with a cigarette and a holder.
John: Like, they're all...
John: They're all muscular and they're all athletes.
Merlin: It could have, in so many ways, been so much worse.
Merlin: Because here, what we haven't talked about is, you know, that thing where, like, you get canceled on the internet and then everybody goes, I never thought he was funny at all.
Merlin: Like, what if that situation becomes, like, John, this is, like, is it still escalating?
Merlin: And you're like, John, this is a birthday party.
Merlin: You're being an asshole, just like you've always been an asshole.
Merlin: And, like, what if somebody said something they...
Merlin: very opinionated about you that you didn't realize they'd been holding back.
John: And then they had to take, they had to take response.
John: The thing is that in the end, the one thing that justified me was that Chris was literally trying to provoke someone to do this.
John: He was going to keep going until somebody did something.
John: So I got roped.
John: I got rope-a-doped.
John: Yeah.
John: But he was trying to do it.
John: So at a certain point, you know, it's just somebody's got to do it.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And it's daddy.
John: It's Sigma Riddles over here.
John: The sheriff of dad.
John: I'm the sheriff of the day, yeah.
John: Oh, yeah, rock the gas bomb.
John: I put the bomb down the minaret.
John: That's what I did.
John: Ch-ch-ch.