Ep. 580: "A Queue of Snorks"
John: Hello?
John: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: I'm five minutes late.
John: I'm sorry.
John: Oh, that's okay.
John: I know you really prize punctuality.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Do I?
John: I mean, I don't know.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: I make a note.
John: Yeah.
John: A little note right at the top of the three-by-five card.
John: Mm, five minutes late.
Merlin: Yeah, well, I mean, I make a note.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, they're all here.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: You're forgiven.
Merlin: Ha, ha, ha.
Merlin: Well, I'm glad we're off to a good start.
John: Yep, off to a good start.
John: It's the beginning of a new week.
Merlin: Yeah, whether you like it or not.
Merlin: They just keep resetting the clock every week.
Merlin: Here we go.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, I feel good.
Merlin: I feel good.
Merlin: I'm doing all right.
Merlin: Are you doing all right?
John: Well, I think I... Yeah, I'm good.
John: I think I might have broken my toe last night.
John: Okay.
John: But I just don't have time for a broken toe right now.
John: So I feel like... You don't have time for a broken toe?
John: You're just going to play through it, as they say.
John: I think so.
John: I think I'm going to let it ride.
John: It's one of those, like, is it, though...
John: You know, like, it's broken, but maybe it's not.
Merlin: Now you find yourself, if you're me, you find yourself asking yourself, what are they going to do anyway?
Merlin: What are they going to do?
John: What are they going to do anyway is exactly what I'm saying.
Merlin: First, you're going to have to recover all the homework that I haven't done yet, all the tests I didn't get, all the... Yeah, like, I'm going to, what am I going to do?
John: Spend eight hours trying to get some, you know, going through a doctor, like, dog obstacle course.
John: In order to get what?
Merlin: It's a medical agility course.
John: You have to run.
John: Yeah, you run through a little tube, then you turn around, you go backwards over a barrel.
John: My little paw hurts so much.
John: It's like, I don't need that.
John: I don't need that today.
John: I don't need that any day.
John: And they're not going to do anything.
John: What are they going to do?
John: Hit it with a rubber mallet?
John: They're going to put a Band-Aid on it.
John: I don't think any of those would help.
Merlin: I'm not a physician, but I don't feel like any of those would help that much.
Merlin: And let me ask you this.
Merlin: So how do you do that?
Merlin: How do you get your toe in front of a medical professional?
Merlin: Do you go to the emergency room, as we say, the emergency department?
Merlin: Do you call up an advice nurse?
Merlin: What's your first step?
Merlin: Because I don't know if you've been into one of those emergency rooms lately.
Merlin: But they're not running great.
John: No, they're not.
John: And over here, I got my mom, who I think for most of her life, always had some kind of broken digit and just worked through it.
John: And then on the other hand, I got Ariella, who goes to one of those 24-hour emergency things.
John: You know, if she slips when she's putting on her nail polish.
Merlin: Oh, I can highly recommend the Amazon product, One Medical.
Merlin: They are outstanding at producing homework for people who like doing medical things.
Merlin: And what's neat is, if you're like me and you get a primary care physician who is in front of four large monitors...
Merlin: from her home in Michigan, you know, that a lot is being covered and you're going to get a lot of updates through your email, giving you reminders of the homework you haven't done yet.
Merlin: So she might be super, I don't know if you guys want to maybe get some, uh, plant plans, plan Z. I don't know what the plan is, but you, you add that on.
Merlin: And then pretty soon, Michelle is wanting to know if you've done that yet.
John: No, see, I'd like, that's one of the things I don't have time for.
John: I don't have time for that at all.
John: And, um,
John: You know, I'm pretty good at managing pain and I feel like sometimes, you know, I feel like life is pain, right?
John: There's always something.
John: Life is pain.
John: Yeah, there's always something poking it.
John: Yes.
John: You're saying you feel the pain, but you do it anyway.
John: You feel the pain and I feel like talking about it is fine, but like fretting about it doesn't make it better and definitely like...
Merlin: you know making pain sounds i think a lot of pain is just exacerbated by making pain sounds i mean you want to do a little bit of like really you think it does it's not helping the the the i don't know what you call it nowadays the pain feeler it's just mainly uh causing discomfort to the the pain feelers uh retinue
John: Do you think it helps?
Merlin: Does that help at all?
John: No, I don't think so.
John: I should stop doing it then because I do that a lot.
John: I think you should just sort of focus on the area between your eyes, right at the bridge of your nose.
John: Put it there.
John: That makes me want to have a headache when I think about that.
John: Well, that's the other thing.
Merlin: The thing is, now I'm hoisted by my own petard.
Merlin: I know we don't say that anymore.
Merlin: I think what you're saying to me is you put that behind your own eyes and now you're feeling it, but life goes on.
Merlin: You've got to keep doing it.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: I got some walking around here I have to do.
Merlin: I have some other things on the docket.
Merlin: Stay out of that ravine, though, John, because that's kind of the thing is, you think about it, like, you know, you ever wear a pair of shoes, doesn't fit very well, and you've got to walk up and down hills, and you're getting your presumably slightly broken.
Merlin: At this point, it's, what would it be?
Merlin: It's like the, not the Heisenberg uncertainty, it's Schrodinger's toe, because at this point, it's in what scientists call a liminal state.
Merlin: Where we don't actually know if it's broken until six weeks from now when you can get an appointment with somebody.
John: Yeah, it's observing its brokenness that makes it broken or not broken.
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: My mom's, you know, old lady, thank God, and is having some health stuff right now.
Merlin: And we were talking on Sunday, yesterday, and I called her and just check in and, you know, she's 90, so she's got a lot of pain.
Merlin: And I was commiserating with her because I said, well, the reason I didn't call you till now is that I'm laying supine on the bed that my wife and I sleep on here in our bedroom.
Merlin: and uh... appendix
Merlin: I wasn't sure.
Merlin: I don't think so.
Merlin: But what I'd done was I got a new carpet cleaner for the house to clean the carpet, especially to clean the steps.
Merlin: Because, you know, you go up and down the steps all day, you bring in the outside, that kind of stuff.
Merlin: And I'd been working on the steps for, I'd listened to two full episodes of Hip Parade.
Merlin: So probably at least two and a half hours, I was sitting on part of a step turning sideways.
Merlin: Now imagine using the handheld device.
Merlin: To very actively clean.
Merlin: So I don't know if you've ever done this.
Merlin: They're pretty cool.
Merlin: This is a nice one.
Merlin: It's by the shark people, and they do good work.
Merlin: And what it does is it shoots out hot soapy water, and then when you pull it back, it draws it back into the dingus and sucks it up into the water thing, which is very satisfying.
Merlin: It's full of sand and dirt.
Merlin: It's very satisfying.
Merlin: I see that now.
Merlin: I'm there with the handheld, though.
Merlin: And I'm doing it, and you have to do it in a certain way.
Merlin: You've got to, like, you pull it this way to make it go, and then you can make it more upright to suck it back up.
Merlin: But you've got to get the angle right.
Merlin: I mean, how big is a step?
Merlin: Not that big.
Merlin: Right.
John: You're tweaking yourself.
John: Every one of these, you're tweaking yourself, right?
Merlin: I'm putting myself into positions I'm not ordinarily in and holding that position.
Merlin: And so what I said to my mom was, I'm sympathetic because I feel right now like somebody folded me up and stored me in a box.
Merlin: You ever had that feeling?
Merlin: So when I got up from the steps, I grabbed the railing and pulled myself up.
John: You made a Johnny Carson sound.
John: That was on me, though.
John: I'm just trying to please my family.
John: But how did your mom feel about that commiseration?
John: Was she like...
John: That's nothing like I have.
Merlin: Well, as it turns out, we do a fair amount of commiserating because this is what we call inside house talk.
Merlin: I don't usually say this sort of thing outside the house.
Merlin: But one of the inside house conversations with my mom is how broken and corrupt and dangerous, when it's working at its best, the American medical system is.
Merlin: I'm not even talking about the insurance stuff.
Merlin: I got plenty to say about that, but I'm just talking about, like, let's say you got the Rain Man suite.
Merlin: You got it all.
Merlin: If you're a member of One Medical, like I am, and you can get to Dr. Michelle on some amount of notice, and she can ask whether you went back to LabCorp again.
Merlin: Lab Corp.
Merlin: And so, yeah, we do pretty good commiserating on that.
Merlin: And then we can talk about something that happened a long time ago, and it's really nice.
John: I like that.
John: That's one of the nice things about having a mom.
John: You ever do that with your mom?
Merlin: You ever talk about something that happened a long time ago?
John: Something from a long time ago.
Merlin: My mom and I got a lot of good stories like that.
Merlin: I should write them all down.
Merlin: And the nice thing is she's 90, so she remembers less than I do, so I get to give her a little goose by reminding her of something funny that happened to us when I was a child.
John: And in remembering less, is she not doubling down on the confidence that she has in her memories?
Merlin: Oh, dear.
Merlin: We should save that for a special episode because my mom, you think I'm a magical thinker.
Merlin: Well, I know I'm a magical thinker.
Merlin: My mom's magical thinking is nothing short of magical.
Merlin: It's absolutely incredible what my mom reckons, especially about causation in the world.
Merlin: I can't get into it on the show, but it's always interesting.
Merlin: And like I said, I can always change the subject to something that happened in the 70s.
Merlin: Remember when Pete Rose hit his head on that lamp and we all laughed?
Merlin: yeah do i ever yeah yeah yeah yeah or uh you know remembering all kinds of different stuff like the little boy on vacation who a little boy in tennessee who couldn't bring himself to call her mrs man so he'd always call her mrs missus i think that's a sweet story
John: That is Mrs. Misses.
John: Yeah.
John: Want to go to Ohio?
John: Can I give you an Ohio story?
Merlin: They are basically food for me.
Merlin: Well, this is a Southwest Ohio story, so you'll have to, like, translate it for Northwest Ohio if you tell it to your mom.
Merlin: It's a very different culture.
Merlin: But my grandfather passed away right around the time my sixth grade ended, 1979.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: So we're helping my grandmother get ready to move out of her house in Clearwater.
Merlin: And we heard that, you know, it's really good for a lot of stuff.
Merlin: You don't want big boxes.
Merlin: You want medium sized boxes.
Merlin: You go to a liquor store.
Merlin: You go to a liquor store and you say to them.
Merlin: Booze boxes.
Merlin: Remember how there used to be booze boxes everywhere.
Merlin: And you could go and they would sometimes just like almost like the way Costco does now.
Merlin: You could just be like, hey, we don't want to break these down.
Merlin: Some some weird widowed family will come here and want them.
Merlin: Um, and anyway, we go to the ABC on, uh, it doesn't matter where it's in clear water.
Merlin: And, uh, and my mom says, um, I'm sorry, is there any chance that you, um, have any liquor boxes that we can have?
Merlin: We're moving.
Merlin: And the man said, um, is there any chance you're from Cincinnati, Ohio?
Merlin: Mom said yes.
Merlin: He said, that makes sense.
Merlin: Because the only people I've ever met who begin a sentence with I'm sorry to a stranger is almost always someone from Cincinnati, Ohio.
Merlin: We've never been able to prove it.
Merlin: And it could have been a license plate thing.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But...
Merlin: You know, some mysteries I don't want answered.
Merlin: And we had a good laugh about that.
Merlin: And then she told me about how my dad got esophageal cancer from a boat accident.
Merlin: That was also in Tennessee.
Merlin: But we're working on it.
Merlin: I should check in with Dr. Michelle.
John: I feel like I sometimes start sentences by saying, I'm sorry, can I... Now everybody does it.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: So it's a normal thing.
Merlin: In 1979, we were still, you know...
Merlin: Yeah, sure.
Merlin: You're a little bit... We were on the cutting edge of that.
Merlin: But yeah, I mean, it's a very apologetic county, Hamilton.
John: Is that right?
John: Hamilton County?
Merlin: I feel like it's a very... I don't know.
Merlin: When you say Midwest, what does that mean?
Merlin: Well, that could mean, shoot, that could mean Minneapolis, St.
Merlin: Paul, all the way down to St.
Merlin: Louis, probably.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Big area.
Merlin: Well, I don't know, man.
Merlin: I consider where I'm from to be where I'm from, and that's the Midwest.
Merlin: And we try not to bother people.
John: Is Arkansas the Midwest?
Merlin: To a fault.
John: I don't think so.
Merlin: I think that's the New South.
John: That's the New South.
John: Okay.
John: Okay.
John: I like this.
John: Thanks to Globo, Cam.
John: Because in Iowa, they talk about what is the Midwest a lot in Iowa.
Yeah.
John: Oh, really?
John: A surprising amount, considering that most of us would be like, well, yeah, Iowa's the Midwest.
John: Parts of Iowa don't agree with that.
John: Parts of Iowa seem to not disagree with it.
Merlin: And we both live in cities where there are innumerable
Merlin: You know, neighborhoods and sub-neighborhoods and areas and sub-areas, and it's a long-running joke and source of humor to my wife that I always call something the slightly wrong name.
Merlin: She's always correcting me.
Merlin: I'm like, oh, this is – God, I always wanted to live in Dubose Triangle.
Merlin: And she's like, oh, I would actually call this –
Merlin: Lower Popa Heights or whatever.
Merlin: I don't know what that means.
Merlin: Lower Popa Heights.
Merlin: Yeah, but you know, right?
Merlin: I mean, Capitol Hill, is it Capitol Hill or is it, you know, or you know, they get the funny ones here.
Merlin: You know, some of these, we have euphemisms here.
Merlin: I think we've talked about this.
Merlin: You get an area like what a lot of people who live here will call the tenderloin.
Merlin: You know, sometimes they call it the tender knob because they like to bring in knob hill.
John: Yeah, don't be so San Francisco about everything exactly that's how I feel yeah But you know different do the do the funny do the funny people make maps of San Francisco Where there are concentric circles and they say if you say you're from San Francisco and you're from here I
John: You are from San Francisco, but if you say you're from San Francisco and you're from here, then you're not from San Francisco?
John: Absolutely.
Merlin: Except they're not circles and they're barely concentric.
Merlin: It's more like if you want to see the most gerrymandered ass looking idea of identity.
Merlin: You know, part of that's like real estate stuff.
Merlin: But, you know, ultimately, I don't care.
Merlin: And I don't derive a lot of self-esteem about knowing those kinds of things.
Merlin: Whereas somebody like you or Madeline, who I would also know, both have an extraordinary sense of direction.
Merlin: I think Madeline's got that thing where she's got like magnets in her nose, like a bird.
Merlin: I think she just knows where directions are.
Merlin: Can you generally know what direction, cardinal direction, mostly you're facing?
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: In a strange area you even know.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: There's only two places that I get backwards.
John: And it is Budapest and Portland, Oregon.
John: Okay.
John: In my whole life of all traveling, I always know where north, south, east, and west are just by my antenna.
John: Really?
John: Yeah.
John: Portland, it switches like 45 degrees.
John: So I think that east is...
Merlin: north and north is west like it goes halfway or no it goes one quarter to be clear this is this is two places amongst all the other places in the world you got a sense like with me i go okay if i want to describe something and sound like an adult i want to be able to say something like oh it's on the you know the southern wall or something because that's the kind of thing adults say to each other i have to think about where we live how if you look out the window that's the ocean and that's west and
Merlin: And then I pop up about a quarter of a mile into the air and imagine a map, and then I know what direction to say.
Merlin: That's the only way.
Merlin: It's sort of like when you're a little kid and you do the thing where you hold up your hands for L, which is left and which is right.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Because your left hand makes an L. I mean, if you've got thumbs, it must be nice.
Merlin: You can do that.
Merlin: I think I do a similar thing.
Merlin: But what do they got in common?
Merlin: Language, Portland's flat, what else?
John: No, but that's the other thing.
John: Budapest, it's 180 degrees.
John: I think north is south and south is north in Budapest.
John: And I don't know, I have no idea why, and I've been there enough times.
John: That's north of the equator, right, Sean?
John: It is north of the equator.
John: I think there's a magnetic field.
Merlin: Could there be a geophysical anomaly?
John: I think there is.
John: I think there's a geophysical anomaly in both places.
Merlin: Do you feel different when you're in those places in general?
John: Well, yeah, very, for sure.
John: I do in Budapest, but in, uh, in Portland, I think it actually might be related to the fact that the freeway turns in a weird way and the town feels like.
John: The river is running east-west, but it's really running north-south, or maybe.
John: And this happened to me when I was a little kid, and I just never, at five years old, I was like, oh, got it.
John: The river runs through it.
John: And then it just got baked in somehow, and now I'm fighting my directions.
John: I'm fighting cardinal directions all the time when I'm down there.
John: Everywhere else I know where I am.
Merlin: But it's also frustrating because, for example, you look at a map of New York City.
Merlin: New York City.
Merlin: Get a rope.
Merlin: Get a rope.
Merlin: You want Manhattan to be a north-south operation.
Merlin: If you look on a map, and sometimes they even portray it this way, certainly on the brilliant old-school subway maps, they don't make any attempts to go, well, actually, it's 14 degrees this way.
Merlin: But that gets confusing.
Merlin: Because Manhattan is not a straight up north and south thing.
Merlin: It's kind of at a little bit of an angle, and that gets confusing.
Merlin: Now, here's what screws me up.
Merlin: This is nobody's fault but my own.
Merlin: Most of that, so a lot of my life I was raised in Ohio until I was 12.
Merlin: Then we went to Florida.
Merlin: Everywhere that I lived in Florida, mostly...
Merlin: Was very organized.
Merlin: White Castle's lab out of India's sacred cow.
Merlin: Was that a Captain Beefheart line?
Merlin: Oh, wait, was that Butthole Surfers?
Merlin: Going down to Florida.
John: Going down to Florida.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: They mentioned that on that episode I listened to.
Merlin: You know what I listened to?
Merlin: I listened to two episodes about grunge and post-grunge and the effect that grunge had on alternative rock is what I was listening to.
Merlin: It's a show I like a lot.
John: You loved alternative rock.
Merlin: That's the thing about it.
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: We talked about this.
Merlin: We talked about a topic weeks ago.
Merlin: What's alternative, what's college rock, etc.
Merlin: This is quick, and then I'll stop.
Merlin: But I'm awake, so you're stuck with me.
Merlin: Almost everywhere I lived was, how can you put this, oriented around the north-south corridor.
Merlin: And in fact, some places I lived were very much overtly built around a north-south corridor.
Merlin: So a huge one where my grandparents lived, and this is true all through the southern part of the Suncoast, is US-19.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So U.S.
Merlin: 19 just runs straight up and down.
Merlin: U.S.
Merlin: 19 is like everywhere that I worked a job there in Pasco County.
Merlin: Really, probably four fifths of the places I've had jobs were on or for practical purposes on U.S.
Merlin: 19.
Merlin: which goes north-south.
John: It just goes right up and down Appalachia, right?
John: Isn't it?
John: 19 is like... I think it's U.S.
Merlin: 19 is like especially, you know, going down.
Merlin: So I grew up in Pasco.
Merlin: Below Pasco is Pinellas.
Merlin: Pinellas, you get down, and that's like St.
Merlin: Pete and Clearwater.
Merlin: You get down into Tampa.
Merlin: Tampa's a little different.
Merlin: But, you know, U.S.
Merlin: 19, it's like, it was very meaningful, right?
Merlin: You're either on that side of 19 or you're on this side.
Merlin: Not in terms of like railroad tracks, but you know, the bad side of the tracks, but just in terms of like everything was oriented around that.
Merlin: Why?
Merlin: Because everything grew organically, semi-organically around that arterial.
Merlin: Like that's where they built rooms to go.
Merlin: That's where they built them all, like all that stuff, which of course then just leads to more things like that.
Merlin: All the way up to like then down in Sarasota was US 41, AKA Tamiami Trail.
John: 19 goes through Pittsburgh.
John: It's the one that goes from the lake all the way down to Atlanta.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I think of US-19 as going up the western side of the state.
Merlin: I'm not sure where else it goes.
Merlin: We weren't allowed to leave.
John: The Western side of Florida.
John: Yeah.
John: But I mean, as someone who has driven America's highways, I feel like 19 is the, yes, you there, is the arterial that goes, it's like a, it's like a, it's a North South, but it's on the West side of, but it's also the main drag, which is weird as hell.
Merlin: And as it happens, I don't like to make a big deal out of this because I realize I'm, I come off as a pill to people about the way that, Oh no.
Merlin: The single most deadly thing.
Merlin: statistically single most deadly stretch for pedestrians in the united states was where i lived it includes the mcdonald's i worked at it includes the steakhouse i worked at it includes the hardware store i helped clean up remodeling for like it's just there's just people die and die and die on that stretch of us 19 because people are hauling ass down the road and there's nowhere to cross or well because you know because of strode's like you know it's what's a strode a strode is a neologism
Merlin: that describes, well, you know it when you see it.
Merlin: Let's put it that way.
Merlin: I'll try describing it first.
Merlin: But a stroke is a combination of a street and a road.
Merlin: Well, what's the difference?
Merlin: Well, the main difference, it's not about orientation north-south, like avenues and streets.
Merlin: Not in that sense.
Merlin: A street is a place that has destinations on it.
Merlin: This is my version of this.
Merlin: A street is a place that has destinations that are desirable for people.
Merlin: And a road is a place... This is where you pull in like a Wendy's drive-thru.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: A road, though, you can think more of is a place where people are like, get the fuck out of my way.
Merlin: I just want to get down.
Merlin: This is a US 19.
Merlin: It's a highway.
Merlin: Everybody get out of my way.
Merlin: I want to go 65 miles an hour.
Merlin: So think of almost any off ramp anywhere in the United States where you pull off into this area where there's a lot of red lights.
Merlin: walmart um wendy's like all those things yeah and it's like when we try to combine the elements and this is what they do so much better in dutch but when we try to combine the elements of a street and a road we tend to bring along the exaggerate the worst parts of both and minimize the good parts of each
John: As you're describing it now, my mind is just like one of those end-of-your-life fast-moving montages.
John: Yeah, sure, your greatest hits.
John: And it's like America's just stroads.
John: I'm not going to send you down the rabbit hole.
Merlin: I know I already send you a lot of YouTube videos, but there's some very good YouTube videos about this.
Merlin: And the second you see the first drone shot, you're like, oh, fuck yeah, that right there.
Merlin: And then what happens?
Merlin: That leads to other things, right?
Merlin: Now you're getting into, eventually you're going to get into zoning, which I know interests you.
Merlin: It stroads all the way down.
Merlin: Well, and like, okay, but like, so a giant, like some fucking corporate Mexican chain has moved into this area and built this place.
Merlin: And it's basically a parking lot with a taco hole.
Merlin: And like, when that place goes out of business, what will replace it?
Merlin: Well, it's probably not going to be a cobbler or a barbershop.
Merlin: Cobbler.
Merlin: Let alone a store.
Merlin: let alone a storefront that somebody could live in like they have for years.
Merlin: It's very inelastic.
Merlin: And suddenly all these little blind spots about planning over the last hundred years start to really accumulate when you say, well, like it's hard to do a lot with what we have and what we had.
Merlin: And it's even more difficult to change to the kinds of things we might want for completely understandable reasons.
Merlin: But are we going to start talking about traffic circles?
Yeah.
John: I love traffic circles.
John: They're building traffic circles now.
John: Traffic calming, John.
John: We're doing traffic calming.
John: We do a lot of traffic calming here.
John: Washington is one of these places that just absolutely once...
John: You know, conceptually, traffic circles, somebody, you know, at every level of Washington state planning, it's like traffic circles.
John: Hey, yeah, three thumbs up.
John: But I think it's because it feels European.
Merlin: Even if people don't like them, they think they like them.
John: Exactly right.
John: But they don't know how to do it.
John: And when they first started rolling out traffic circles here, they put stop signs on them.
Merlin: See, that's very strody.
John: So strody.
Merlin: It's also this dumb fucking thing that we do, even or especially people on my side of the political spectrum, try to act like you can change one thing about something and say, wow, you know, traffic's really crazy.
Merlin: Let's get traffic circles.
Merlin: So without any accommodation for like the changes in how people would need to get around, it just makes angry people angrier.
Merlin: And takes the beauty, because what really is, I mean, it's basically a prisoner's dilemma.
Merlin: You take a traffic circle, and everybody has a job to play, and it works if everybody plays their role and doesn't try to get cute.
Merlin: But Americans love being cute.
Mm-hmm.
John: and then a stop sign really i mean we've got this one they're building right up here that it used to be two two lanes going into uh an interchange over a freeway and the right lane was the get on to the southbound and the north on the left lane went across the bridge and then did a little cloverleaf
John: Also to the right, but to get on northbound.
John: So both the entrance to south and the entrance to north were to the right.
Merlin: Instead of the typical sort of highway thing where you like the south is here and then in like a quarter of a mile is north to get off, that kind of thing.
John: yeah but the so this was a thing where you would get you'd line up next to two lanes of traffic at a stop light and it's like okay i'm going to assume you people are going that way i'm going to assume you people are going that way and there's room in this in this middle zone where you can kind of you can accommodate the people that don't know what they're doing
John: You can get around problems before you have to make your final choice.
John: But they've built some traffic calming there now.
John: And now if you're in the right lane, you are committed to going south.
Merlin: It's already too late.
John: It's already too late.
John: And if you're in the left lane, you are committed to going north, even as you're at the stoplight.
John: but there is still this very problematic hundred yards where if you have made an error, you think you can still correct that error.
John: And so you get, the light goes green, traffic starts to move, and then someone in the right lane goes, oh wait,
John: i don't i don't want to be here oh and then there's nowhere there's no merge opportunity there's nowhere for them to go everybody behind them is like we all know what we're doing and they then with the blinker on come to a full stop and there's no opportunity even if you're trying to be polite no opportunity to let this person in because of the way that the traffic calming has kind of forced the choice
John: And this never used to happen.
Merlin: Is it probably a labeling and habituation problem?
Merlin: Or do you think it's just purely like inadequate planning?
John: I think the planning is great.
John: What it doesn't account for is that every 30th person is not thinking even two seconds ahead when they're in their car.
John: they're sitting in the car they are i don't know what they're doing they're looking at their phone they're in an imaginary and they're thinking very they're if they are thinking at all i suspect they're thinking about jesus christ i just wish i could get to work right what they're not thinking of is am i positioned correctly yeah for the next thing
John: And then they get there.
John: And I don't know whether every 30th person has only just arrived from Fartistan and is just like, I don't know.
Merlin: Maybe people from Fartistan are still getting used to the steering wheel being on the other side.
Merlin: And the road being on the other side.
John: Or maybe that person's lived here their whole lives, and the fact that there's something new, they just can't get it into the processor.
Merlin: I think there's a lot of people who almost have an accident all the time, and then eventually they have an accident.
Merlin: And they go, oh, I know I had an accident.
Merlin: And it's like, no, dude, you almost have an accident all the time.
Merlin: And I think that's how a lot of people drive.
John: I think about that so much now because there's, you know, when somebody's like, well, give me one example of a time when, you know, this hasn't led to fascism.
John: And I'm like, the thing about it is that what you don't see is all the times it didn't.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Survivorship bias, but reverse.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: Like every day bad things don't happen.
John: Yeah.
John: And we've been counting on that for a long time.
John: And now even all that's falling apart.
Yeah.
John: it's very hard anymore no there are no days that no bad things happen but it used to be no bad things happened and then and nobody you know you don't notice anyway i love the traffic calming i'm 100 in favor of it but up here and i think this is true where you are up here there's a whole universe of guys with beards that if you make any comment about traffic at all
John: other than a comment that's very coded to say there should be no cars and we should all uh we should all live in a tilth community uh where we ride bikes 40 miles to work every day if you make any comment like oh this road should be different because it makes it hard to hiss john what you know people that have you know like urbanist on their bio
John: Urbanist, he, him.
John: All right.
John: Okay.
John: All right.
John: Jeez.
Merlin: Right here.
Merlin: They're going to.
Merlin: People who don't even drive.
Merlin: People who don't even fucking drive have big opinions about cars.
John: I'm an urbanist.
John: You know, like, hey, number one.
John: My little bike bell.
John: Your little bastic on the front.
John: Yes, yes, yes.
Merlin: With a little dog in it.
John: I said the other day on some forum, I was like, you know, Seattle made a bunch of downtown one-way streets in the 1970s because that was the fashion and saw how we felt like you moved traffic.
John: But those one-way streets are no longer good.
John: It's bad.
John: It turns streets into Strodes.
John: And now you're on First Avenue on Seattle, and from Virginia all the way down to freaking Union, there's no place you can make a left-hand turn.
John: It's just like you're trapped.
John: And there was inevitably, there were these guys that were like, well, there shouldn't be any roads.
John: The city would be a lot better if the car never... Is it a summarizable...
Merlin: I wonder if I could summarize this in such a way that removes some of the unintentional idiocy of that to say anywhere my car should fit anywhere my car can fit it should be allowed to go.
Merlin: Well, no, because think about my neighborhood and how there's no left on.
Merlin: Well, it's very inadvisable to take many left turns in my neighborhood, but in some cases you simply can't.
Merlin: A train's going to get you.
Merlin: Maybe, but say you're coming down Lincoln by the park, the south side of the park, and there's a lot of places you can't make a left turn.
John: Oh, Jesus.
Merlin: And you wouldn't dare.
Merlin: I mean, you know, at certain times of day, you could really be the source of a lot of, you could be the source of gridlock by making what you think is a pretty well-advised decision.
Merlin: But then other ones are- Gridlock that went all the way down to Daly City.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But like, think about that on 19th.
Merlin: Like, there's just a lot of places you can't take a left or whatever.
Merlin: But can I tie this back to something that, may I share something with you?
John: I would like that.
Merlin: Briefly, briefly.
Merlin: First of all, here's a photograph.
Merlin: That is my young person and I at a sports game on Friday night.
Merlin: We went to see the local baseball team.
Merlin: Oh, they're a popular baseball team.
Merlin: Well, here's what I'm here to share with you.
Merlin: There's a tenant that has become associated with this program.
Merlin: And it hurts me to say that the arguably primary tenet of this entire program for 14 years continues to elude a lot of people.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: And I faced this from the moment we got out of our Waymo self-driving cab to entering into the large stadium.
Merlin: You're saying tenant.
Merlin: T-E-N-E-T.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I have one word for you.
Merlin: Tenet.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: I don't know what I'm saying, but people do not understand how to keep moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: And I think it's related to what we're talking about here because it's all related.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: But think about like those lanes you were talking about, the new traffic calming, and you're committed to north here, you're committed to south there.
Merlin: I mean, I think this gets at something, even if we take, even if I take out this thing that I feel very strongly, which is that people tend to be very self-involved to the exclusion of helping, you know, other people or just not being a pain in the ass, a very Ohio, admittedly, idea.
Merlin: But let's even take it out of the...
Merlin: Everybody seems to think they deserve to be exactly where they are and no one else should be there And like they'll knock everybody out of their fucking way to get to the place They want to be to stop and look at their phone in the middle of the crowd and everybody's looking at their phone And if one thing I said hang on just a second.
John: Yeah, he's knocking at my door, which never happens.
Merlin: Just oh, please go right ahead I can continue Um, but John come back in a minute, but I just want to get it out.
Merlin: It's really frustrating because
Merlin: i i have a source of pride for me is how good i am at keeping some guy with the sales like some kid with a clipboard like gosh don't screw off i got i got i got a recall guy the other day
Merlin: Recall.
Merlin: Who was he recalling?
Merlin: Oh, a local guy who used to.
Merlin: It's funny because the last time somebody knocked on my door was the guy that he wants to recall.
Merlin: So Hakuna Matata, I guess.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: The point is just this, which is like, I'm not saying I'm better than other people.
Merlin: That's for others to say that I'm better than other people.
Merlin: I say it all the time.
Merlin: Just the extent to which pure American id continues to evidence itself.
Merlin: Just everybody's mad.
Merlin: Everybody's filming themselves.
Merlin: And I'm not trying to be anti-whatever, internet or whatever.
Merlin: But there is a whole weird performance thing going on.
Merlin: And a lot of middle-aged guys in clothing they've bought that says Giants.
Merlin: And they're all very torqued up about everything and screamy.
Merlin: I wonder if there's a relationship there, though, between...
Merlin: And, you know, there's certainly times probably in my life I didn't even realize I could have kept moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: It's not or.
Merlin: Do people know that, John?
Merlin: Is this something we need to get back to is really helping people understand, keep moving and get out of the way?
Merlin: And I'm not doing it as a bit.
John: I stay it all the time.
Merlin: I'm doing it because I said it to my fucking kid when I'm just trying to get a bacon-wrapped hot dog and everybody here is busy shooting a TikTok about their hat.
John: I feel like we have raised our kids correctly because my kid says keep moving and get out of the way all the time under her breath.
John: That's what a good person does.
John: And, you know, like spatial awareness, that's another thing.
John: And situational awareness, like how do we remind people to teach their children well and never not know what's, you know, check your six every day.
Merlin: But there's always a little more you could do to keep moving.
Merlin: And there's almost always a little more you could do to keep moving.
Merlin: And there's certainly almost always more than you could possibly realize to get out of the way.
Merlin: Which is why, if I want to find out the exact location of the bacon-wrapped hot dog place, you know what I do?
Merlin: This is leading to a very short anecdote.
Merlin: This is a very long setup.
Merlin: But I do a thing where I dip out of whatever the mass of people is.
Merlin: Like, imagine, like, you know, you're walking down this area.
Merlin: You're on the view level.
Merlin: I go fully to the side and put my back against the wall.
Merlin: probably because now I don't have to check my six.
Merlin: If I got to look at my phone to find out where the hot dog place is or whatever, I get out of it.
Merlin: You know what I don't do?
Merlin: I don't stop in my tracks and stare at my phone.
John: I don't do that.
John: No, get as far to the wherever as you can.
Merlin: I was trying to tell my kid a combination, a very long story and an anecdote.
Merlin: And I had an opinion at the end that I wanted to share.
Merlin: And I'd begun doing this while we were going through on sort of the main level where all the stuff is, like where the baseball glove and the Coke bottle are.
Merlin: Because he wanted to get a hot chocolate, and I wanted to get a bacon-wrapped hot dog.
Merlin: And I could tell you he was getting frustrated, because I was trying to keep telling him this story as we were moving.
Merlin: And I want to note that as I was doing this...
Merlin: My body is turning, angles, moving, making room for people.
Merlin: Because when I make room for me, I'm also making room for others.
Merlin: And I've got to just keep gliding.
Merlin: And I could tell he was frustrated.
Merlin: And so then I did a very dad thing, which is I said, do you want to see how I can really roll if I want to?
Merlin: I said, here's the thing.
Merlin: I said, I don't want to embarrass you.
Merlin: And in a minute, you're not even going to see me anymore.
Merlin: Because the way that I can move through a crowd will shock you.
Merlin: You will be catching up for the next 25 minutes if I just get an opening.
Merlin: Because zip, zip, zappa, zappa.
Merlin: And notice as I'm doing it, I'm still turning my body because I'm watching where people are coming at me.
Merlin: Like I always say, if you want to get on a busy sidewalk, don't look at the ground.
Merlin: Look over the heads of the people in front of you.
Merlin: That's what's going to happen to you.
Merlin: Turning in the widening gyre.
Merlin: Gyre, gyre.
Merlin: Pants on fire.
John: And did you do it?
John: Did you cut loose?
Merlin: I was the fucking Jabberwock, baby.
Merlin: You should have seen me move.
Merlin: And of course, that made him mad.
Merlin: Because, you know, he's a teen.
Merlin: But could he keep on your tail?
John: Or did you just turn into mist?
Merlin: Well, you know, I was a gorilla in the mist.
Merlin: And mist her.
Merlin: I barely even know her.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: Kipling.
Merlin: I hardly kippled.
Merlin: But Kipling...
Merlin: I don't know what my point is, but it's frustrating to me because you see it.
Merlin: You see people doing this and then they stop and they make a movie or something.
Merlin: I want people to have fun.
Merlin: But I also think there's just such an opportunity, if we're all moving and getting out of the way, we're also doing something kind of exciting as a group.
Merlin: We're all doing God's will.
Merlin: We're booking on us, right?
Merlin: We're each getting out there and doing our shit, but we're also helping other people.
Merlin: And you have to turn your body and not look at your phone while you're walking on the main floor at Oracle Park.
John: Yes.
John: Yes, queen.
John: Yeah.
John: I have a kind of admission.
John: Yeah.
John: That I've been scared to make.
John: Really?
John: Here on Roderick on the line.
John: Are you sure you're okay with this?
John: Well, I don't know, but it's, you know.
John: Okay, we'll find out.
John: Guys, chime in in comments.
Okay.
John: Nothing's ever planned or thought about in advance.
John: When things happen, they happen.
John: That's the definition.
John: I've been making this argument basically to imaginary police officers for a couple of years now.
John: Where as I'm traveling through space and time.
John: Preparing yourself for something?
John: Yeah, I'm conscious of the fact that one day I may have to talk to a policeman and explain my logic.
John: And of course, policemen love you explaining your logic to them.
John: Yeah.
John: And so I know that that's not even.
Merlin: They're very curious as a vocation.
John: That's not a thing, right?
John: I know that they're not going to be interested.
John: But I still, like a lot of Americans.
John: Go slow.
John: Tell me that part again.
John: That was interesting, Mr. Roderick.
John: I desperately want to sit with a room full of policemen and explain my thinking.
John: Not policemen, state patrolmen.
John: It's the state patrolmen in particular that I want to describe.
John: Well, whoever needs the training, you could probably be hired to come out and talk to a room full of them.
John: So as you know, I'm someone who has a very complex and well-ordered internal system of ethics, a very Kant-derived idea that there are true things and that there are universal truths.
John: The critique of pure Roderick.
John: And as part of that, I have never driven in the carpool lane unless I am a carpool.
John: And that was always a first principle for me.
John: If the carpooling is empty and people are zipping by and you are stuck in traffic because you are one person in a car, that is philosophically what you were meant to be doing.
John: That is how God intends.
John: In Seattle because we are built on an isthmus and because the highways were poorly built and poorly designed and Never meant to accommodate four times the people that live in the city now than that did in 1960 right there are four specific places where traffic is getting on on the right hand side and
John: People are trying to merge to get off right after that on the right-hand side.
Merlin: Sort of like with exit 41, exit 42.
Merlin: The people from exit 41 that you see are moving to the right lane maybe later than they would have liked.
Merlin: And people are then coming back on from 42.
Merlin: So there's that spot in between where there's a lot of zipping around.
John: Yeah.
John: Cars are trying to get packed.
John: These guys are trying to get on.
John: These guys are trying to get off.
John: They're occupying the same space.
John: But then because it's Seattle up ahead, just another little mile.
John: Yeah.
John: Entrance to the express lanes is on the left and all downtown exits are on the left, except for the ones that are on the right.
John: So you get into this cluster and it's right around the Rainier Brewery is where it starts.
John: And there's cars coming in from everywhere, and everyone is trying to get somewhere that they aren't.
Merlin: Yeah, we run into this sometimes going up north here, like you get into this around like up north of Oakland, you get up to around Vallejo, and there's just so many different things happening with people not, you can clearly see that almost nobody is where they want to be right now or where they need to be, right?
Merlin: There's a lot of like readjusting to be in the place.
Merlin: Even if you just want to go fast, it's hard to get to that area, right?
Merlin: Because there's just all of this like activity.
Merlin: Again, very strody in some ways.
John: and there's no in washington there's no sense of a zipper merge there's no consensus on a zipper merge so some people believe as they do in places like missouri that if the turn you know if it if it's like this lane closes in 15 miles people will start to stack up in the other lane because there's a lane closure somewhere over the horizon
John: And then there are people that are like, well, I drive right up to the lane closure.
John: One of those last-minute Johnnies.
John: A last-minute Johnny.
John: But then there are the people that are like, well, I'm a last-minute Johnny, but they're not.
John: And they get over there, and they're in that lane, but then they're like...
John: turn signals not on their foot isn't on the gas and they're looking for what they imagine is an opening that's going to appear surely there must be an opening somewhere something's going to happen yeah and so all the last minute johnny's who are last minute johnny's are packed up behind them going like this is the wrong you're doing it wrong
John: And then the people that are on the right that are like, I've been over here virtuously waiting for an hour and a half.
John: I'm not going to let any last minute Johnny's in.
John: And it's just like, you're all fucked.
John: Everyone here is fucked.
John: Every single one of you is fucked, except for the, like the two people that know exactly what they're doing.
John: And you're, and part of how you're fucking them is you're in their way, right?
John: You're in the way of the people that know what they're doing.
John: And at some point, you know, my sister has this philosophy because my sister is a very aggressive driver.
John: And her philosophy is if I'm ahead of you,
John: then i'm not your problem anymore if i'm ahead of you i'm gone i'm not traffic you're traffic because you're in front of me but once i'm around you whoa i can't be traffic if i'm in front of you yeah i'm not you are definitionally now someone else's traffic i'm just the people the people that are ahead of me are my traffic
John: But you are behind me, so I'm not your traffic.
John: That's a form of American exceptionalism.
John: It is American exceptionalism 100%.
John: And she lives in a rural area where the concept of like ahead and behind is pretty binary.
John: Yeah.
John: They're an agrarian people.
John: They're very simple.
John: And it's just like there's only two lanes here.
John: You can either be ahead of me or behind.
John: On a freeway, of course, that's a thousand times more complex.
John: You're always somebody's traffic.
John: It's so true.
John: You're always somebody's traffic.
John: You're always somebody's traffic.
John: You know what?
Merlin: Unlike the president's notion of his financial worth, it's the kind of thing that can't change depending on how you feel about it.
Merlin: You will always be everyone else's traffic.
John: In some way, shape, or form, right?
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, definitionally, yeah.
John: I gradually came to this place where I was like, okay.
Okay.
John: The idea of this high occupancy lane, this carpool lane, the idea dates back to a time when we're trying to get people to not just be single driver cars on the road and we're going to give this option, this express option for people.
John: It's a reward, basically, a virtue reward.
Merlin: And at first, at least in my recollection here, it was purely...
Merlin: This sounds silly to say now because it's because of how everybody goes in that lane if they got the little sticker But time was it was literally like what you've got three at least two or three people in the car, right?
John: Yeah, right, but not because you had a Prius No, no, it was generally because you had a Cadillac DeVille and you had all your work buddies in it Was a my mom was in a carpool in the 70s, you know, it was a thing They were cooler and then it was and then it was the buses, you know, the buses go over there.
John: Yeah, yeah And
John: And here in Seattle, we still don't have a sticker that allows you to just be a rich person over there.
John: I think on the east side, like Bellevue, rich people area.
Merlin: You've got one of those little stickers.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't get in a car anymore.
Merlin: But, like, it used to be that it was not HOV.
Merlin: What's it called?
Merlin: But it was, like, high occupancy.
Merlin: But also, essentially, it was Priuses.
Merlin: If you had that little weird.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like, if you had a partially non-gas car, I guess.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Did you guys do that there?
Merlin: No, I don't think we did that.
Merlin: See, I like the purity of yours.
Merlin: It's like giving two excuses for why you can't do something.
Merlin: Only ever give one excuse why you can't do something.
Merlin: Never say, I'll be out of town that week, plus I'm sick.
Merlin: That undercuts your argument.
Merlin: It's either for lots of people or it's for people with fancy Toyotas.
Merlin: And let's just call it one thing or the other.
Merlin: Let's just call it what it is.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Well, the east side here now has a thing where it's like, if you want to pay...
John: You can be in that lane and we'll charge.
John: Come on.
John: That's the Disneyfication of everything.
John: And the thing is, sometimes I think now I've seen, I've actually seen screenshots of people where it's like $20.
John: If you want to drive in this lane at this hour on this day, it's $20.
John: For the honor of doing it that one time or for the year?
John: No, for the honor of doing it that day.
John: It's like buying your way into the Star Wars ride.
John: It's for the people that are like, $20.
John: Who cares?
John: I'm in a Bentley.
John: I'm a very important businessman.
John: $20 is nothing to me.
John: So people legitimately are like, okay, this actually sucks.
John: But the state says, you know how much money we're making from these ding dongs?
John: Like we're, we're filling potholes with this money.
John: I don't know.
John: Yeah.
John: But so anyway, in this, in this particular area, there's one of these areas on the first Avenue bridge.
John: That's also like, everybody's getting on, but the other people are getting off and the thing of the thing.
John: And there's this over here.
John: I have come to an inner peace with the idea briefly in these areas that if I am in the express lane,
John: I am not part of that problem.
John: I am not their traffic.
John: And this moment is the one instance where I don't feel like this lane over here is for virtuous people or for buses or for moving in a, you know, like in the,
John: What it is, what this lane should be is it should, there should be a sign over it that says this lane is for people who don't want to fuck anything with that business over there.
John: Like we're not trying to get on or off.
John: We're just going, we're getting, we're out of here.
Merlin: Well, I mean, what it is is what a highway is supposed to be.
Merlin: Which is an un, like, right?
Merlin: I mean, at its best, a freeway is a way to not have to have the sorts of interruptions and sort of bumps and disruptions that we have on a street.
Merlin: Because streets are where you go to things and roads are how you get quickly from one way to another, right?
John: Right.
John: And highways are trying to do both things.
John: It's like, oh, it's the, you know, just go from here to there in your neighborhood by getting on the freeway and then getting on.
John: Oh, that's very South Florida.
John: And what Seattle probably should have done and what every major city probably should have done in 1960 is say, okay, there's going to be one lane of traffic that essentially goes into a tunnel at the start of the city and there's no way on or off until you're on the other side of the city.
John: A true express lane.
John: Like, there are so many people that drive...
Merlin: It's not an express lane until you feel like getting off when it suits you.
Merlin: An express lane, like an express subway, you can't get off.
Merlin: You'll die.
Merlin: Don't get off in the tunnel.
Merlin: There is nothing to stop in the tunnel.
Merlin: That would ensure purity.
John: If you're in Portland and you're trying to go to Vancouver, Canada, you have no choice but to go through Seattle.
John: And depending on the wrong time of day, and we saw this on tour all the time where it's like, hey, we're not playing in Chicago tonight.
John: We are...
John: in milwaukee and we are playing in uh south bend indiana and there's just no way to get there right right except going through chicago and we're going to get to chicago right about the time that everybody is looking for a hot sucks at that is boston boston is rough there's so many things where like you've got to like some part of you has to go through a really difficult part of boston highways
John: And there are so many roads in Boston that you're like, is this really a road?
John: Am I on a sidewalk right now?
John: No, it's a prank.
John: What the hell is this?
John: Is a horse going to come at me?
John: And so there should be in Seattle a way for people who are over here to get over there without having to deal with all of the MOOCs and
Merlin: Interesting.
Merlin: This sounds a little bit about your attraction to the TSA Clear or whatever.
Merlin: You don't want to have to be in some kind of a queue of snorks, which is a terrible George R. R. Martin book.
Merlin: But if you're in the queue of snorks, you're stuck with all the people who have their five-gallon water in their giant hobo bindle full of pills and hypodermic needles.
John: They're like, what do you mean I can't take this full bottle of shampoo and conditioner?
John: I'd like to argue about that for a while.
John: I mean, even now at CTAC, they've tried to do this.
John: So they've tried it and tried it so that now there's a security checkpoint that is both clear and TSA.
John: And you basically have to be both.
John: You definitely cannot even be around there if you're not TSA pre-check.
John: But then there's also like a clear element to it.
John: And even there...
John: where they have your face on the video screen.
John: Even there, there's somebody that's like, should I take off my belt?
John: It's like, dude, you're in the wrong airport.
John: SeaTac is not an airport for country people.
John: You should be at the Yakima airport.
John: Wow.
John: The truth comes out.
John: Yeah, you should be flying out of Remington.
Merlin: What you're saying is it's like you accidentally let somebody into the Iowa Writers Program when they don't know how to read.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
John: It's not fair to them.
John: You belong in a community college environment.
John: It's safe for you.
John: It'll be a gentle time.
John: Yes.
John: You need whatever you get before an AA.
John: I'm here to bet that unless you're going to a funeral, which I bet you are, there is no reason for you to be on an airplane today.
John: Like, you think you're going somewhere and that it's important, but it really isn't.
Merlin: It should factor into it, like how important is this trip, you know, for you and for me.
John: Well, there it is.
John: You should get a vote in that.
John: Are you making the world a better place by going where you're going?
John: I'm not sure.
John: Are the people on the other end excited for you to be there?
John: Interesting.
Merlin: Or are they dreading it?
Merlin: It seems to me your role in that, if you have a role, would be before they ever book the flight.
Merlin: They'd need to be vetted, right?
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: I feel like... If you're going to Las Vegas, chances are you don't need to go to Las Vegas.
Merlin: Almost no one needs to go to Las Vegas.
John: Although I feel like Las Vegas is a perfect magnet for all the people that shouldn't be doing things.
John: Ain't that ironical?
John: And it's like, hey, everybody that shouldn't be on an airplane... It's like a ding-a-ling honeypot.
John: yeah and there should be specific i mean it should be they should there should be their own airports around america where it's like want to go somewhere hey i know do you want to go somewhere come to the go someplace airport and we'll take you to cabo san lucas or las vegas or some other place for people who want to go someplace but don't have any place you know that that needs them
John: And then the regular airport should be for people that are like, hey, I have to be at this thing.
John: And then I'm, you know, I'll be back in three days.
John: Something you actually need to.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm putting a pair of underwear and a paperback book into like a brown paper bag.
John: And that's I'm going to.
John: And there's a banana in there.
John: but that but you know that's a delta airline sent me an email the other day they were like hey guess what we're improving your service by aren't you excited we're improving your service by by introducing a whole other new layer of status that isn't necessary that nobody asked for that only makes things worse like now you pay the
John: for the you're actually it's a different class of ticket if you want to get miles on your flight and at the lowest level of ticket because they feel like they're giving away too much stuff with that as it is it's just you know you know how it is in a corporate environment somebody sitting at their desk uh like uh like paul riser in aliens uh
John: Oh, yeah.
John: He rolls up his shirt collar or he rolls up his collar or his cuffs.
John: I don't care for that collar.
John: He's like, hey, I know.
John: Here's the thing.
John: Why don't we make it so that the people that are flying economy have an even shittier time and the people that had maybe hacked the system enough that they were like, okay, I'll pay the extra for Delta Comfort or whatever.
John: Now we're going to make them...
John: We're going to put the pressure on them to go up a notch.
John: It's all this, like, let's make everybody pay to go up a notch.
Merlin: It's almost like the way you, like, rebalance powers in a video game.
Merlin: We're like, okay, well, obviously, the people who've learned how to game the system and collect miles and read the blogs about all this stuff, they've accumulated too much power, and now they're getting away with too much vis-a-vis.
Merlin: We're not making the money we could be making by forcing these chodes to actually pay for Economy Plus or...
Merlin: business or whatever.
John: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Because that's where the money is.
Merlin: That's the whole way I heard from a YouTube video anyway.
Merlin: I heard that's the whole way they stay in business is from flyers like that.
John: 15 years ago, all those websites where it's like, I'm the mileage guy and I'll tell you what seed on Alaska Airlines is the one that has the most free bubble gum
John: And then all the airlines were like, oh, we can figure that out, too.
John: And now it costs you $20 to sit on the aisle.
John: $20 extra to sit in.
John: We know what all the good seats are.
John: You think that you're the only ones that know that?
Merlin: Yeah, you're the only one that's got flight guru or whatever.
Merlin: Like, I know that's the one that has a little extra wheel well area for your giant feet to go into.
John: Your giant barefoot feet.
John: Right.
John: And we're going to take all of that fun away of the treasure hunt and the, like, I'm a knowledgeable person, so I can, like, there are a lot of snorks all around me, but I'm the one that knows that for the next mile, I'm just going to be over in the carpool lane.
John: And part of the secret of it is...
John: Is that there's no state trooper in the world that is going to fuck with that clusterfuck that's already a clusterfuck by fucking it up more by pulling a guy over for driving in the carpool lane for one month.
John: Interesting.
John: And yet you're prepared.
John: You've been training your whole life for that conversation.
John: I'm ready for the one Washington state patrolman.
John: and you know washington state patrol they wear smoky bear hats and black bow ties it is kind in some ways it's a very ludicrous cop outfit
John: Because it's got a bow tie and a smoky bear hat.
John: Do you think it's a clip-on?
John: Probably.
John: I think a lot of them are.
John: Most of them are.
Merlin: Except that's going to change it.
Merlin: If you could pick what kind of bow tie, like what you like, for example, like some kind of like a fun like Tony Curtis, Fred Astaire, like large or like a Marlon Brando that's really almost more like a cravat.
Merlin: You could bring a lot to that.
John: I know, but it's not bad.
John: I think these guys, what it is is it's a Colonel Sanders bow tie.
John: the colonel sanders bow tie but they cut the little dangly ones off so it's just a very small very tight very clipped on bolo tie bris but those guys are so serious about those uniforms sure that what it's one of these things it's like the swiss guards at the vatican i get it they they turn they look cool
John: oh yeah and they turn that corny uniform into a point of pride sure where when one of those people steps to you you're like holy shit it's the this guy's like he's got the murder bow tie on like oh my god but there's gonna be one because they have the hotted up cars those guys are you know they're the the the state troopers in this state like their jurisdiction extends something like 20 miles off
Merlin: And I bet sometimes they like causing a little chaos.
Merlin: I could see them.
Merlin: One of them was having a bad day.
Merlin: One guy who's like a little, you know, let's be honest.
Merlin: He probably didn't, wasn't very popular in high school.
Merlin: Maybe he's a little on the small side.
Merlin: And now he's a man in a bow tie with a sped it up car.
Merlin: And maybe he didn't like the way they spelled his name on his coffee or something.
Merlin: And now he's just going to go fuck shit up and make people wait.
Merlin: Like, that's a kind of power.
John: These are the guys, you know, I think they trump the city cops and they trump the county cops.
John: And I think that every once in a while, one of them is just like, you know what?
John: I'm going to teach the city a lesson today.
John: If that happens.
John: And the thing is, I also have spatial awareness.
Merlin: I'm going to teach the city a lesson today.
Merlin: That's the thing I should say to myself.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm going to teach the city a lesson today.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Today's the day.
Merlin: I may not have a bow tie that I can put my hand to right this minute.
Merlin: I mean, I have a bow tie that you tie like a gentleman.
Merlin: If I put that on and got a Smokey Bear hat, I could go exact a lot of vengeance.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: If you walked out of your office right now with a bow tie and a Smokey Bear hat on, you'd be teaching your city a lesson.
John: Yeah.
John: For sure.
John: I sure would.
John: But so the thing is, you know, I, I know where the troopers are.
John: Like I'm scanning, scanning, scanning all the time.
John: I know every car that might be a cop car, even the ones where they're like, you think you know what the cop cars are, but you never see, you didn't see this coming.
John: And I'm like, I saw you coming.
John: I see it.
John: Type two Mustang.
John: I didn't know those were cop cars.
John: No, they have their own license plates.
John: Sure.
John: You scan them enough times that you're like, I see that F-150.
John: You're not kidding me.
John: But even so, there might be one that sneaks in for that brief second or whatever.
John: And I'm waiting because the reason I rehearsed this speech is that I know that I'm going to be talking to the trooper that thought today's the day I'm going to teach the city a lesson.
Merlin: He thought that today would be... But he's also, at that point, maybe he's a little bit vulnerable.
Merlin: And with the preparation that you've done, you might be able to bring him around and maybe at least make him a better bowtie-wearing police officer.
Merlin: But you might bring him around to your way of thinking.
John: You might pull him out of a real dive.
John: I'm going to start off and I'm going to say, you know, officer, or rather, trooper.
John: Doctor?
John: I am an urbanist.
John: And...
John: Listen first.
John: Listen.
Merlin: License and registration.
John: First of all.
John: I know you're an urbanist.
John: You can't not be one because you're on these mean streets every day.
John: You know.
John: You know.
John: You're the real urbanist.
John: Yeah, you know what it is.
John: Well, you know what I mean when I say that the people that are getting on from the West Seattle Bridge and are trying to get on the express lanes going north, you know who those people are.
John: Oh, he's lived it.
John: He's lived it.
John: You wished that they would go to another place, another plane of existence.
John: Today's the day he finally cracked, though.
John: This is the day he finally broke.
John: And, you know, that trooper maybe is going to go, have a good day.
John: Yeah.
John: Or that trooper might be like, get out of the car.
Merlin: Or you could hand him your wallet with a hundred dollar bill sticking out and say, well, I thought we could settle it right here in Fargo.
John: No, if you wear a bow tie as part of your trooper job, you are not, you're not going to take bribes.
John: You're not like, you don't think so.
John: Really take a compliment.
Merlin: I don't even think so.
Merlin: No, it's hard to know you got it because you're not going to know until you know how mad that little guy is.
Merlin: That's the thing.
John: You could say like, I really like your spit curl, sir.
John: You look like Louise Brooks and that you may be up against the car at that point or the trooper might be like, have a good day, sir.
John: Slow it down out there.
Merlin: I mean, it's not to say you'll ever be done or you'll ever be ready, but to keep rehearsing this as you wait endlessly behind people who don't know how to move and get out of the way.
Merlin: But you have time to play this out in your head as long as it takes.
John: I do feel like it would be a good YouTube or TikTok series.
John: uh where i mean and by good i mean who knows uh but you know driving and so it's a it's a i'm driving okay and then on one side of the screen there's a map of the city that shows you where i am and then you can also see cameras on the car that are pointed out to show you what i'm talking about what i see
John: Okay.
John: And then I'm saying like, okay, right now I'm this person's traffic, but do you see that over there?
John: That's happening.
John: And then up here, you'll notice that there's this happening.
John: And now here's what we're going to do next.
John: And I'm going to go into Merlin mode, Merlin at giant stadium mode.
John: Right.
John: And I'm going to turn into a whisper.
Merlin: You're going to see me for a very short period of time, and then you're going to wonder what happened.
Merlin: You're going to wonder what happened.
John: That's right.
John: Because I'm not going to be these people's traffic anymore.
Merlin: Because also other people are moving more freely now.
Merlin: It's almost as though he created a kind of human tunnel for allowing people... First, yes, maybe primarily, yes, now Merlin is gone.
Merlin: He's a ghost.
Merlin: We don't even see him anymore.
Merlin: But also everybody else seems to be moving very comfortably.
Merlin: It's like he's opened up a whole new world.
Merlin: Like he's busted open some secret sally port that now everybody can get through.
John: Come with me if you want to live.
John: You know what it is?
John: It's that where you were standing before is now a space that's available for others.
Merlin: And I demonstrated, I modeled it by turning my body as I moved.
Merlin: Do you understand the angle changes so I can become more slender?
Merlin: And I'm moving almost like a Valentino, kind of just moving through the floor, knowing that there's a hot dog with my name on it.
John: You go right between a guy's arm and his... John, I can see where the hole... Here's the thing.
Merlin: If I had to get it down to one thing that I cannot describe, this can only be experienced.
Merlin: I will try to describe it.
Merlin: I don't see where the hole was.
Merlin: I don't see where the hole is.
Merlin: I see something much more important, which is where the hole is going to be.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: So, you know what I mean?
Merlin: You hit them where they ain't.
John: You are the wind.
Merlin: I did get my hot dog.
Merlin: I actually had two hot dogs.
Merlin: Ate a lot of it on the way back to that.
Merlin: But, you know, there's a lot to think about here.
Merlin: Are there other kinds of things like this?
Merlin: Because obviously you've given this a lot of thought, probably while you're in traffic.
Merlin: I guess you're probably thinking about a lot.
John: What else is there to think about?
John: I don't listen to the radio.
Merlin: No, that's a good point.
John: Is your radio broken?
John: No, I just find that music is very distracting.
John: Unless it's a wide open highway where I'm just like la-di-da, like arm hanging out the window.
John: If I'm in traffic, like I'm in a mode.
John: I'm in a mode where it's like a Terminator mode, right?
John: The screen is like lots of data going and data over here.
Merlin: Oh, fuck you, asshole.
Merlin: I get it.
Merlin: You got the pop-up HUD.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Sounds to me like what you're saying is there's these people who are wearing, let's be honest, they're dressing essentially like ventriloquist dummies and riding around in 1978 type 2 Mustangs that can't be identified.
Merlin: It sounds like it might not be that hard for you to become, I don't know, we'll call it a private cop.
Merlin: Or we'll call it a, to become your new public servant.
Merlin: Like, you're a guy out there with whatever car you have, you're not listening to music.
Merlin: I don't know if you got a hat on at the time, but you got a lot of good ties.
Merlin: Maybe you should be out there
Merlin: I don't know, pulling people over?
Merlin: Is there a way that you could be getting in front of this?
Merlin: Maybe you get them on your side.
Merlin: I don't know if you'd want them on your side.
John: That's the thing.
John: The other thing I would really like is to just be able to, just for my disembodied voice, to just appear in their car in a quiet way.
John: Well, ventricles do that.
John: They can throw their voice.
John: That's exactly right.
John: Where I just say like...
John: Your lack of a turn signal at this moment is causing problems.
John: I find your lack of a turn signal disturbing.
John: 40 minutes from now, people will be wondering why traffic is fucked up right now.
John: And it's because you didn't put your turn signal on.
John: They were looking for where the hole was.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Good luck.
Merlin: Good luck.
Merlin: Oh, guess what?
Merlin: That's not a hole anymore.
Merlin: Now it's just ground.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Well, how about this?
Merlin: How about I'm making tunnels everywhere I go and I'm moving sideways.
Merlin: I don't know if you can turn on my body a little bit.
Merlin: I become more slender.
Merlin: I'm surfing.
Merlin: I'm surfing through it.
Merlin: I'm like Tommy Tune, just dancing on those beautiful, gorgeous, long stems, just moving through the audience.
John: Yes, no regerts.
John: I feel like what you're doing, not only is the space where you were now a space that somebody else can be, but every one of those micro spaces that you create as you move through space and time becomes empty space behind you for other things.
John: Space accumulates.
John: You're building space.
John: You're making space.
John: You're creating space.
John: I'm leaving tunnels.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: No, it is like pursuing holes and leaving tunnels.
Merlin: And obviously my 17-year-old son.
Merlin: But that's his problem.
Merlin: He was warned.
Merlin: If he'd heard me tell the whole story about this four-hour-long video that I'd watched, he'd get to hear the whole story and my own addendum to it.
Merlin: We had to wait until we get back to the seat for that.
John: You know, I'm a big guy.
John: Yeah.
John: But I can move through a baseball stadium in a way very similar to the one you're describing because of my years in the concert industry.
John: Oh, boy, yeah.
John: That's another example.
Merlin: That's another example.
Merlin: What do we say about Bottom and the Hill?
Merlin: Great place.
Merlin: But no matter where you stand at Bottom and the Hill, you are in someone's way.
John: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: I mean, because first of all, and I don't know if you remember this.
Merlin: We talked about this, and I don't know if you think I'm just pulling this out of my ass, but think about the way that place was set up.
Merlin: You had that one ostensible path.
Merlin: If you came in through the front door and wanted to get to the smoking area and the green or the dressing rooms or whatever.
Merlin: And the bathrooms and everywhere else.
Merlin: But that's the point, though.
Merlin: Here's the thing.
Merlin: You're moving past there.
Merlin: On the one hand, you've got the stage on the left and the people standing area on the left.
Merlin: On the right, you've got the bar.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: You're walking behind the people waiting in line at the bar.
Merlin: You're walking past the bathrooms where, believe me, hope to shout, people are waiting in line for the bathroom.
Merlin: As people are rolling out, like Ben Gibbard's rolling out a big case with an amp in it on your left, you've got to get through all of that.
Merlin: Good luck finding a place to stand in that place because there's no tunnel left there unless I've been there ever since.
John: Except, as you know, then the best place or one of the best places to watch the show is standing right there.
Merlin: Go to the very, very, very cross the stage.
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: The best place.
Merlin: Well, I don't know.
Merlin: It's probably not true anymore.
Merlin: They probably have space speakers there now.
Merlin: Time was you.
Merlin: I don't know what you call stage by stage left.
Merlin: You're looking at the band.
Merlin: You go all the way up to the front of the stage, go all the way to the left, and there'll be a big like speaker over there.
Merlin: It'll be a place where you can stand where for some reason no one will bother you.
Merlin: I have one of these for almost every bar.
Merlin: I have one of these for Slims that's very important to me.
John: Yeah, you stand there, and the problem is in Seattle, somebody is going to come along and put a no parking sign there.
John: Are you shitting me?
John: Or a two-minute load unload sign.
John: That's a wide area now.
John: Why why do we're loading and unloading on me?
John: Why are there people who are so invested in taking away all of the secret spots of the world?
Merlin: Why is that?
John: The secret spots are what gen that's how generation X survived It was it was by hiding in the secret spots that were in plain sight, but it's like a turtle mode
John: you could just go over here yeah yeah yeah all the places where the sidewalk has a driveway but you know that the garage door has been boarded up on the inside uh-huh so a tourist says oh that's not a parking space it's a driveway but you've been in that warehouse you know that no one's ever going in that door again and that's a maybe maybe like for example i don't know it's something i've heard examples of like maybe you live near a
Merlin: police station where the people are really corrupt and nobody on your street has ever gotten a parking ticket.