Ep. 593: "These Are the Days"
Merlin:
Hello.
Merlin:
Hi, John.
Merlin:
Hi, Merlin.
Merlin:
How's it going?
John:
Happy Labor Day.
Merlin:
Rabbit, rabbit.
Merlin:
Happy Labor Day.
Yeah.
Merlin:
Yeah, these are the days.
Merlin:
These are the days.
Merlin:
These are the days.
Merlin:
Do you do anything special on Labor Day?
Merlin:
Forgive me if I've asked you this something like 14 times before.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
I don't know.
Merlin:
I got your lights up, sent your cards out.
John:
Yeah, I got my Labor Day lights up, but I leave them up all year long.
John:
Oh, I bet they hate that.
John:
You know.
Merlin:
What can they do?
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Every time they come over and complain, you just loudly play the Internationale.
Merlin:
The Internationale.
Merlin:
That's right.
Merlin:
I march around.
Merlin:
I'm sorry.
Merlin:
I can't hear you.
Merlin:
Labor Day.
John:
Play it on my trumpet.
John:
I just walk around playing it.
John:
Do you have good luck with holidays?
John:
No.
John:
Yeah, I don't either.
John:
Nope.
Merlin:
I don't feel like I have very good luck with them.
Merlin:
No, no.
Merlin:
That's on a very long list of things that I'll get to eventually.
Merlin:
There's other things before then, but as long as you brought it up, I feel like...
Merlin:
I was never fully briefed on how holidays are always about someone else.
Merlin:
Including birthdays.
Merlin:
And especially weddings, ironically enough.
Merlin:
Weddings or holidays.
John:
When I look back at my history, my life, my whole life.
John:
When you look back on it, what do you see?
John:
Well, I see this archipelago of holidays, every one of which has been not as good as I was led to believe.
Merlin:
Here's the thing.
Merlin:
Because it's not, and this so goes for the popular winter holiday, it doesn't mean that it can't be quote unquote perfect.
Merlin:
And we have all had good experiences with these things, but I think they really oversell how likely it is to be a good outcome.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Do you be honest?
Yeah.
John:
Have I said this before?
John:
I've had so many awful New Year's Eves that when I think about New Year's Eve now, I have like a PTSD flinch.
Merlin:
Even in the middle of the summer, if somebody's like, oh, New Year's Eve, I go, ugh.
Merlin:
I don't know if it's the most overrated holiday, but I do feel, off the dome anyway, it is the most overhyped holiday.
Merlin:
Even more than Christmas.
Merlin:
Because Christmas can be cool when you get presents.
John:
In the show business, we talk about amateur nights.
John:
And St.
John:
Patrick's Day is amateur night.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And Cinco de Mayo is amateur night.
Merlin:
The streets of the outer sunset run green.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
domestic beer you know where it's like look man we're in these bars every night of the week all year long and then it's 9 30 it's 9 30 dude you've got to just start drinking water it's you know there's now there's 1800 people in here all of a sudden really i've been sitting on this barstool for 15 years
John:
But the worst amateur night, and people will disagree with me on this because there are other show business types that are like, what?
John:
No, New Year's Eve, blah, blah, blah.
John:
But I just feel like, oh, the amateur-ness of it.
John:
And I just always get sucked in.
John:
Somebody's like, you know what?
John:
I'm going to fly up there.
John:
Or somebody says, hey, you know what we should do?
John:
We should rent a house.
John:
Hey, you and me and Bobby McGee.
John:
And I always show up with my party hat on and a big bastic of grapes.
John:
Traditional New Year's Eve presentation.
John:
Yeah, I brought a jigsaw puzzle and I brought this painting kit.
John:
And then it's just like two of the people get into a screaming fight.
John:
One person gets shot.
John:
Somebody, you know, steal somebody else's wife.
John:
And it's just like, I just should have stayed home.
Merlin:
Well, I'm thinking now, cause I don't know why I did not excel at things like graphing, but like in my head, I see this almost on two axes where there's the amount of pressure and the amount of impact and
Merlin:
And I think that differs for a lot of us.
Merlin:
But I'll just say, because, you know, I've been unhappy on February 14th a fair number of times.
Merlin:
I think one of the highest amounts of pressure is Valentine's Day.
Merlin:
And I know for some people the stakes of that can be quite high.
Merlin:
And a theme that will come up, I imagine, is like you think you're the weirdo.
Right.
Merlin:
I think the pressure for Christmas varies from person to person and family to family, but I feel like with Christmas, the pressure is almost as high and the stakes are almost as high.
Merlin:
And with New Year's Eve, maybe there's a third axis of addressable fun.
Merlin:
I just don't think there's that much addressable fun to a typical 50th percentile New Year's Eve to make it worth the amount of pressure and the amount of impact.
John:
yeah does that make sense mathematically to you it does i feel like i have i watched a marriage disintegrate on new year's eve i've ended two relationships on new year's eve why pressure why pressure i don't yeah nobody wants it like uh so anyway lately i've just been staying home but labor day it feels like it feels like a holiday for people that own flat bottom boats
John:
Or clean pools.
John:
You mean a holiday for people who clean pools or who own clean pools?
Merlin:
Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin:
I mean, it seems like it's for people who have a Ford F-150 and don't need it.
Merlin:
Yeah, see?
Merlin:
That's just me.
John:
And I don't... Summer is hard enough without it coming to an end.
Merlin:
Especially now with the wackadoo school year.
John:
And that's been weird.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Kid's been in school for two weeks.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
No, I know.
Merlin:
It's completely bananas.
Merlin:
But, like, it's... I don't know.
Merlin:
This is why I'm trying to avoid... I promise I won't take this off in a sad direction.
Merlin:
I don't promise.
Merlin:
Okay.
Merlin:
I will try not to take this in a sad direction.
Merlin:
But this is one of those things that I really do.
Merlin:
It continues to be a theme that keeps coming up in...
Merlin:
My reckoning about the world and my life where I go like, oh, hmm, if I look at that differently, it makes a ton more sense, if not at least just a little more sense, which is like, okay, well, Christmas, that's about your parents being weird.
Merlin:
or you as a parent being weird.
Merlin:
And you're the one, like a baby doesn't care about Christmas.
Merlin:
Like you're the one who's trying to make, you know, obviously you want it to be nice.
Merlin:
That's like a normal thing.
Merlin:
But like that whole, like, have you ever had that feeling of like, I didn't buy enough presents yet?
Merlin:
That's not really so much how I am in my day-to-day.
Merlin:
And so it makes it even more upsetting to me when I feel myself being carried along by somebody else's decades-old idea about what the day is for.
Merlin:
And it feels like you get hijacked from being able to turn it into a thing that could be memorable and fun for everybody by constantly setting it against some standard, whether that's a Hallmark movie or...
John:
Rudolph's shiny new year or whatever it is and I I don't I do I dislike that pressure whether it's a vacation whether it's a holiday any any like theoretical time I'm like it's about everything but with leisure it's calling yeah we've been trying to hack Christmas I've talked about it with you we've been trying to hack Christmas for for what level 20 years well you know the original hack was after there was just one year in the I think in the 90s
John:
where my mom looked at each other, my mom and I looked at each other, and Susan had either stormed out or not come home or something.
John:
And we were both, you know, sitting there, as you can imagine.
John:
I'm 28.
John:
She's 65.
John:
We both have little Santa hats on.
John:
And we're sitting looking at each other across this, you know, with a bowl of walnuts on the thing and some tinsel.
John:
And, you know, and I was like, Andy Williams warbling on the hi-fi.
John:
I said, you know, here's a present.
John:
It's a skill saw.
John:
And she said, you know, here's a present for you.
John:
It's a, you know, it's a thing that I saw that you left in the laundry room.
John:
And I'm like, why are we doing this?
John:
And she said, I don't know.
John:
I hate it.
John:
And I said, let's not do it anymore.
John:
Did you stick to it?
John:
Well, for years, my mom and I would, on Christmas Eve, no, no, Christmas Day, we'd go get Chinese food, and so we'd walk into the Chinese restaurant, and there's every Jewish person in Seattle, and they'd all be like, John!
John:
Hello, all my friends!
John:
And we'd all have this sumptuous Chinese meal, and
John:
And then my mom and I would go to the movies.
Merlin:
Oh, that's so good.
Merlin:
I saw a movie on Christmas once and I loved it.
Merlin:
It's the greatest.
Merlin:
And then we realized that we wanted to see... California Suite with my mom, probably 1977 or 8.
Merlin:
So fun.
John:
We went on Christmas Day, like people.
John:
We realized that we didn't want to see the same movie and so we went to the movies and went to different movies in the movie theater.
John:
And then the one that got out first waited for the other one.
John:
And it was like, happy Christmas, mom, happy Christmas.
Merlin:
And it was perfect for years.
Merlin:
That feels like something your mom could sign on to.
Merlin:
Let's just agree that we'll do everything we can to minimize our annoying impact on one another.
Merlin:
Super perfect.
John:
We didn't get any presents.
John:
I think she probably put up a little like tinsel Christmas tree on a coffee table.
John:
Um,
John:
I just avoid I it was this sort of blissful thing where like I didn't even realize it was Christmas that kind of feeling of just like what joy joy to the world yeah I don't it's like is it Christmas did you find it replicable well until my daughter was born
Merlin:
And why don't I'm not don't mean to sound like a dumb guy.
Merlin:
And what about what about that changed for you in particular?
John:
Well, for me and for my mom, I think at first we were like, so we're just going to keep with the no Christmas, right?
John:
The baby is like nine months old.
John:
Baby doesn't care.
John:
I already changed your diapers.
John:
What more do you want?
John:
And no, that was not allowed.
John:
And there was a lot of, you know, it just all came rushing back in.
Merlin:
Did any of that come from the child's mother?
John:
Well, you know, she's somebody who wants, so she and I have then started re-trying to hack Christmas.
John:
Because what she wants to do is go somewhere and do something.
John:
She doesn't want to be.
John:
I bet she wants to go to a pool.
Yeah.
John:
She wants to go to a pool.
John:
She would love, she'd love, you know, she's like, let's go spend Christmas in Estonia or whatever.
John:
You know, she's an adventurer.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And what she doesn't want to do is just the same, but she's also, she loves the trappings.
Merlin:
And so it's a constant fight.
Merlin:
And you can remember when you were – I remember one time after we'd gone to a Christmas Eve service at our church, and when the service was over, it had started snowing outside.
Merlin:
And at whatever tender age that was, again, 9, 10, 11, something like that, I remember, because you're kind of encouraged to look for signs that something special is happening, I remember that being thrilling.
Merlin:
But to use a phrase that I finally understand after years, it's the exception that proves the rule.
Merlin:
It's in the sense that like, well, yeah, there's actually not that many times something magical happens and more often everybody's extremely anxious about not disappointing someone else, which can be very stressful.
Merlin:
And the ways that we respond to that are sometimes a little maladaptive.
John:
Yeah, I think that one of the problems, of course, we had was we had one child, as you know.
John:
Just the one.
John:
You're only going to have the one?
John:
Just the one.
John:
I love people asking about that.
John:
all of the adults and so if every so we would say things like okay everybody just get one present it's we're we don't need stuff and it's too much so everybody just get one present it's like okay great everybody just gets one present
John:
But then everybody wants to get one present for the baby and pretty soon the baby's got 20 presents.
John:
It's like, well, now Christmas feels weird because every adult is sitting with one present on their lap, which is some point of purchase sale key ring that they got at REI when they were waiting to check out.
Merlin:
Oh, yeah, like Ikea, Container Store, REI.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
Hey, look, it's a flashlight on a keychain.
John:
It's a pocket knife that has a spoon.
John:
Yeah, it's a pair of socks that says, fuck you.
John:
And then... The baby is sitting on the floor, you know, practically buried under presents.
John:
It's like, well, this isn't good either.
John:
Like...
John:
this and so but you know what are you gonna do say you can't buy a present for the baby no and so we've tried every one of those two where it's like all right secret santa everybody just has to buy one present you could spend you could spend let's just say for the sake of argument you could spend four years
Merlin:
With a tacit agreement that Barbie, for example, will not be introduced in the house for, you know, for your own personal reasons.
Merlin:
Let's say you're in a couple and both of you go, you know what, maybe we should kind of minimize the amount of Barbie we encourage.
Merlin:
Not that you can't want to have Barbie or like, but like what I don't want to do.
Merlin:
I don't want an assigned female at birth child to be handed a costly pile of pink plastic and told to integrate it into their life for a lot of my own personal reasons.
Merlin:
But then maybe somebody, you know, you get somebody in the family who's like, I know.
Merlin:
I'm thinking Dreamhouse.
Merlin:
I'm thinking Corvette.
Merlin:
And now guess what?
Merlin:
Now you're a Barbie family.
Merlin:
Yeah, the whole nine yards.
John:
You know, you could spend a little bit of money on a Barbie family.
Merlin:
Even if you're not inclined toward Barbie, you still want stuff to put in the car.
Yeah.
Merlin:
Right.
Merlin:
Or my big gym.
Merlin:
The big gym I had.
Merlin:
And I wanted Josh.
Merlin:
I wanted the whole group, the entire gay-coded crew of the big gym.
Merlin:
And I had their RV full of technical equipment, which I could really see you thriving in.
John:
I loved an RV full of technical equipment, you know.
John:
Scuba diver, G.I.
John:
Joe.
John:
You see, scuba diver, G.I.
John:
Joe, all the G.I.
John:
Joes.
John:
And then when G.I.
John:
Joe went into the minifigure era.
John:
Uh-huh.
John:
uh where they were like six inch figures or six inch figures oh my god i was too old for those but i still love them i was not too old for them merlin it got gimmicky it got a little gimmicky but at first stuff yeah the a million the million uh adventures that my little guys went on whoo did they save the world
Merlin:
So here we are.
Merlin:
Sometimes you have to negotiate these things.
Merlin:
Another one is, like, I have a lot of Christmas hacks.
Merlin:
What are some of your Christmas hacks?
Merlin:
How am I not signed up for that newsletter?
Merlin:
Well, I appreciate your asking, and I think you're probably just asking out of politeness, which I appreciate even more.
Merlin:
But I'll just give you the most important one.
Merlin:
The most important one, because...
Merlin:
The new podcast I want to do or the new website I want to make is going to be called something like Power Tools.
Merlin:
And it's going to be about the six or eight items that have changed my life.
Merlin:
Oh, they're the tools that have given you power.
Merlin:
That have surprising amounts of flexibility given how seemingly quotidian and normal they are.
Merlin:
Ah.
Merlin:
Uh-huh.
Merlin:
Like, if I advise somebody, like a doofus, to say, hey, make sure you got a bag with you that's not the bag your stuff is in.
Merlin:
People are like, what?
Merlin:
Why would I need a bag that's not the bag of my stuff?
Merlin:
You know, whatever.
Merlin:
And then, need a bag.
Merlin:
I discovered 55-gallon contractor bags a pretty long time ago.
Merlin:
Uh-huh.
Merlin:
And I would say, and depending on the aesthetics of this and what your household can tolerate, there has to... Okay, I'm going to say how I do it.
Merlin:
I'm in charge...
Merlin:
of wrapping paper going into bags.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Oh, you're the one that sits at the end of the couch and all the wrapping paper and the ribbons and everything, it just all gets funneled down to daddy.
Merlin:
One of the things Santa drops off on Christmas Eve is a 55 gallon Husky bag.
Merlin:
And, um, and that's where all those go.
Merlin:
And then, uh, also like one of my hacks is like each one of the ribbons that comes off, I wear around my neck like a Dickie bow.
Merlin:
OK, that's fun.
Merlin:
But like that, that's a huge one because you can kind of do it sort of as you go in real time.
Merlin:
You know, same kind of thing is like at a wedding or at a like a baby shower.
Merlin:
Somebody writes down who the president is from.
Merlin:
So, you know, who to write a thank you note to.
Merlin:
If you do this stuff long enough and you have not operationalized these kinds of things, you're a sucker.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, what ours is there's always an elf.
John:
And the elf allows all the grownups to just stay in their seats.
John:
And the elf brings you a present.
Merlin:
A kind of ad hoc delivery elf.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And it's always the youngest.
John:
And in our family, that means it has fallen to the baby forever.
John:
It used to be my sister.
John:
Do you open in order of age?
John:
We open in order of age.
John:
Good.
John:
American.
John:
And when someone is opening a present, everybody has to focus on the person opening the present.
John:
You can't just sit.
John:
Nobody's sitting and playing or opening presents simultaneously.
John:
Each person gets their present time.
John:
The problem with that, of course, is that my mom and Ariella's mom just love each other.
John:
Oh, that's so nice to hear.
John:
I'm sorry we're in Christmas, but that's nice to hear.
John:
They sit down next to each other at Christmas.
John:
You can't separate them.
John:
What are you going to do?
Merlin:
I bet they bring out a lot of the other in each other.
John:
They do.
Merlin:
And they sit in there just like... That's rough sometimes.
Merlin:
The synergy of the in-laws can be rough.
John:
They just check to check check check.
John:
And so you have to say and it's just this friendly little chat about just pretty much the whole world I guess is contained within the you know It's it's basically like a zip file, right?
John:
It's like if you could unzip it it'd be the entire universe Yeah, but it's just it's compressed to travel across the the tubes of the internet and
John:
And so we routinely have to say, like, okay, now.
John:
The elf has delivered a present.
Merlin:
It's time for us to refocus on it.
Merlin:
That's right.
John:
Yep.
John:
Ari's opening a present now, and they're like...
John:
Okay, ladies, hello.
John:
And then they both focus briefly on the next thing.
John:
It's all very cute.
John:
You know, Christmas, I think we've hacked it to the point that Christmas can't be a disappointment anymore.
John:
Oh, you wish.
John:
Except, right, we have a member of the family who's now suffering from dementia, and it has gotten, it's been a precipitous drop in the last couple of years, and it has dramatically changed.
Merlin:
It's really like it's a...
Merlin:
Forgive me, but it's like a turn in the punch bowl when something goes awry with the dementia.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Because it's kind of hard to avoid if somebody like, you know, like my grandmother thought I was my father and stuff like that.
Merlin:
There's those kinds of things that can be like, okay, I guess we have to address this again, but it won't help.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And, you know, there's so many different reactions and kinds of dementia.
John:
And our beloved person is, yeah, just sort of anxious.
Merlin:
Is it Susan?
John:
Susan?
John:
No.
John:
Susan has her own.
John:
She's still pretty sharp in her way, right?
John:
She's extremely sharp.
John:
A little too sharp?
John:
No, no, no.
John:
It's Ari's stepdad.
John:
No, that's okay.
John:
You don't have to say.
John:
And, you know, he's physically very strong.
John:
But it just he was always a sort of Anxious and physical person like let's get going.
John:
Let's go outside, you know time to go And you know, let's walk the dog but then it it became clear like oh Something else is going on and then in the in just the space of three years It was like he doesn't recognize people anymore and now he's like why am I here and
Merlin:
And so in the thing like Christmas where you ever have the like mentioning of somebody who died a long time ago.
Merlin:
Well, oh, for sure.
Merlin:
But also for little kids, that can be a weird one.
John:
You know, Marla's 15 now.
John:
She's she's smarter about all that stuff than I am.
John:
But he's definitely, it's one of those things where if you say, in 1948, when you were living in Bemidji, and he's like, oh, well, the guy across the street had seven, you know, parakeets.
John:
Like, he knows the past.
Merlin:
Every detail is things that happen in the 20s.
John:
But, like, doesn't, you know.
John:
But so, and it goes from moment to moment.
John:
So, you introduce yourself to him, like, 16 times a day.
John:
Yeah.
John:
and so it changes christmas for sure because it's just an additional level of it's there's already everybody's like i'm kind of bracing kind of like like i don't know i hope that doesn't happen i don't want to ruin christmas yeah it's just you just you do you go to you go to war with the with the deck of cards god gave you yeah
John:
and you know and everybody's everybody's being a champ yeah yeah but but it also that also complicates matters in the sense that now you don't want to just like oh we're going to estonia we'll see you fools on the flip side
John:
Because it's like, well, you know, what you've got is the grandmas who aren't going to live forever.
John:
And, you know, you're going to take away the Christmas from them.
John:
As funny as that sounds.
John:
Don't take grandma's Christmas.
John:
Don't take grandma's Christmas.
John:
You know, the teen is only a teen for a little while.
John:
And the grandmas are only on this planet for a little while longer.
John:
Shit, me with my diabetes and my numb foot, I could go any time.
Merlin:
Is that a fact?
Merlin:
So you should really – well, also, people should probably get you nicer gifts if you think about amortizing it over time.
John:
I mean, the only problem with that is there's absolutely no gift you can get me.
John:
Is there a gift somebody can get you?
John:
Oh, God, yeah.
Merlin:
But they'd have to know about me and care what I like.
Merlin:
Well, there's that.
Merlin:
I guess I should have mentioned that.
Merlin:
So when I meet somebody like that, who knows?
John:
Christmas, you know?
John:
Honestly, I have to say when I open a thing and it's a flashlight keychain from REI, I'm actually like, yeah, I can use that.
John:
I can find an application for a flashlight keychain, whereas...
John:
Like, I can't really use a tie or a pair of socks that say fuck you or, I mean, really a set of wrenches.
Merlin:
I've got a few of those.
Merlin:
Well, that's the problem.
Merlin:
I mean, this is not a criticism, but it's something that will tell you, inform you on how I, one of the ways I think gifts are complicated is, well, first of all, you got to be careful because sometimes a gift says a lot about who you think that person is, but that can also be a funny bit.
Merlin:
Like, for example, in our house, as long as my kid's been alive,
Merlin:
I've told you this, but this is another family thing that I love and that is funny to me anyway, which is that one year Madeline was like, I really want to, I want a really nice broom.
Merlin:
And I was like, Oh, I'm going to buy you a broom for Christmas.
Merlin:
Do you know how that looks?
Merlin:
Like that looks real.
Merlin:
I even, I know that that looks really bad, but then that, but she went on wire cutter and you found the, I try to get her off that site, but I, I, um, no, but now every, every Christmas we buy her a different broom and we wrap it.
Merlin:
And part of the fun is there's a very obvious, and my kid does the wrapping, and there's a very obvious wrapped broom under the tree.
Merlin:
And that's, to me, part of the fun.
Merlin:
Or it's just horribly insulting, and I just won't let it go.
Merlin:
I don't know.
Merlin:
No, that's a marvelous tradition.
Merlin:
I really like that.
Merlin:
Again, this is one of those things where I should get a podcast, but like in thinking about things like the high voltage events, like high voltage, like, uh, you know, Christmas, birthday, Valentine's, there is a tremendous amount of, well, first of all, like the world expects you to demonstrate value.
Merlin:
So like if you don't get a bouquet at the office and everybody else did, uh,
Merlin:
Even though it has nothing to do with any of those people separately, you stick out as the person who didn't get flowers.
Merlin:
And like, God, you don't want to screw that up.
Merlin:
So now what do you do?
Merlin:
You overcompensate?
Merlin:
You do some kind of big demonstrative thing?
Merlin:
I guess what I'm saying is for all of each of those, there's this external pressure and there's sort of an internal pressure.
Merlin:
But like, I really feel like...
Merlin:
with the best heart and the kindest attitude i really i'll repeat this i feel like a lot of the trouble we run into is worrying about messing it up for somebody else and but that isn't always good-hearted because sometimes that's my dad was this way or my mom was this way or i was blah blah or like they shoved barbies in my face so now i'm buying my kid nothing but stem you know toys
Merlin:
or like, you know, baby Mozart or whatever.
Merlin:
But like, I feel like on the one hand, it's nice that there's the, it's like stage fright, right?
Merlin:
Stage fright, a little stage fright's good because it means you care.
Merlin:
Too much stage fright and you may not be cut out to be a professional entertainer.
Merlin:
And I don't know, but like, I feel like with things like those, it's easy to like unintentionally, of course it's easy to unintentionally send the wrong message.
Merlin:
But like in the case of like Big Jim or like G.I.
Merlin:
Joe, I mean, look at it this way.
Merlin:
Christmas of 1977, I did not want the $2 cheaper version of something that looked like Star Wars.
Merlin:
To everybody else in the family, that was the same $3 doll.
Merlin:
Whereas I'm like, that is not Greedo.
Merlin:
Or that is not, you know, Boba Fett wasn't around really yet.
Merlin:
But you know what I mean?
Merlin:
You have a very specific idea in mind.
Merlin:
You want to think about the hilarity.
Merlin:
Again, I was mentioning earlier Christmas Story.
Merlin:
I made a racist reference from Christmas Story.
Merlin:
But think how specific he is about the exact BB gun that he wants.
Merlin:
And if you got a different daisy, like, he'd probably be happy.
Merlin:
But you know, when you're a kid, you know with such specificity what you want.
Merlin:
And it's like, if you didn't get that bike, or you didn't get that stereo, or that, or the video game, or whatever it is, you have to keep up a brave face.
Merlin:
And your parents know that, but maybe they can't afford it.
Merlin:
And like, suddenly, it's Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas, and I'm losing my fucking mind.
Yeah.
Merlin:
They didn't have a lot of money, John.
Merlin:
They're otters.
Merlin:
I know.
Merlin:
That might be a rented boat for all I know.
John:
Do you remember when the fashion was, this is very specific to a very short window of time in your and my exact overlapping Gen X lives, but do you remember in high school when white Nikes with a red swoosh
John:
were, at least out here, white Nikes with a red swoosh.
John:
And they were expensive.
Merlin:
They were $50 or whatever it was they were.
Merlin:
I wanted and craved and eventually got white Nikes with a blue swoosh.
Merlin:
Nike Dynasty, which was the best model of Nikes ever made.
Merlin:
Look, Oxford's.
Merlin:
Hot tops were cool.
Merlin:
But if you go look up Nike Dynasty, you'll find lots of...
Merlin:
disgusting looking used shoes, but they were so badass.
Merlin:
They were suede and they were leather and they were mesh.
Merlin:
They had a blue swoosh.
Merlin:
They looked totally better.
Merlin:
They were kind of look closer to tennis shoes almost.
Merlin:
Yeah, that's right.
Merlin:
But I know exactly what you mean.
Merlin:
There was a certain kind of, at least when I was in junior high and Nike first got big, it was the white leather or sometimes, you know, but like with the red swoosh, very simple design, but it just boldly screams, I've got the shoe.
John:
The shoe.
John:
And the America's shoe store, Kinney.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
Kinney had a brand.
John:
I think maybe it was a Kinney brand or maybe it was just a. Oh, no.
John:
No.
John:
Do you remember Stadia?
Merlin:
Oh, no.
Merlin:
I had the JCPenney ones with the fake swoosh.
John:
Stadia shoes in place of a swoosh.
John:
It was a little what looks kind of like an orca whale.
John:
But it's a swoosh-ish shaped orco shape.
Merlin:
But it's like when you see some 40s cartoon, Donald Duck is actually making a bomb that has a swastika on it.
Merlin:
In other 40s cartoons, you don't want to directly invoke the...
Merlin:
German, you know, National Socialist Party.
Merlin:
And so you make some kind of, or like Charlie Chaplin did this, right?
Merlin:
In The Great Dictator, where you make a slightly funky looking swastika.
Merlin:
So it reads as swastika, or like the wall, right?
Merlin:
You make a swastika-like device.
Merlin:
But if you're super into something with a swastika on it, like that ain't no swastika.
Merlin:
And if you're a kid who's been looking and craving Nikes for two years and you open that up and you've got like an upside down swoosh and just an utterly embarrassing knockoff of Nikes and now that's your shoes.
John:
Yeah, and somebody has, you know, spent money on them.
John:
They were free.
John:
$40?
Merlin:
90s were $40 when I was a kid.
Merlin:
$40.
John:
Now you're the kid that's like, now I'm going to school in my stadias, and I know that it looks the same to you.
Merlin:
I can see you using a magic marker to make the thing that you want, kind of like when you put alligators on your shirt.
John:
Well, what I did was, I think I might have even started doing it at this moment, which is that you just have to go all in.
John:
If you're going to show up in Stadia shoes, you can't just be like, oops, or try to pretend.
John:
It's like clown shoes.
John:
Don't act like it's normal.
John:
Lean into it.
John:
You have to say, I'm here in my freaking Stadia's.
John:
Here comes Floppy John's.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So then I was Joe Stadia from then on and just like walk through the mall like Stadia because it had a little song.
John:
Stadia's shoes had a little song.
John:
Everything had a song back then.
John:
It did.
Merlin:
Always a good song.
Merlin:
Live, live, live in Britannia.
John:
I'd sing my little, my home is Seattle, but I live in Britannia.
John:
I know every jingle.
John:
I'm sorry.
John:
I know every jingle.
John:
I know you do.
John:
If you said them... Oh, last night I was... Somehow, Life in a Northern Town by the Dream Academy came on.
Merlin:
Christmas, Christmas 1985.
John:
I worked at catch-22 the music video television station that right then Christmas 1985 and And so that song is just like it started to play and I was like, I'm in my senior year I'm like all of the feelings that I had as a senior are Apparently wrapped up in life in a northern town
John:
Isn't that funny?
Merlin:
Because it felt very seasonal.
Merlin:
That's why I feel like I remember it being around Christmas.
John:
With John F. Kennedy.
Merlin:
A little bit of a lazy couplet there.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And the Beatles.
John:
No, it's a vibe song.
John:
It was all about vibe.
John:
It was very vibe.
John:
It was very vibe, yeah.
One hit wonder.
Merlin:
I...
Merlin:
I'm not going to try to find this right now, but I guess, oh God, it looks like it could be 1974.
Merlin:
I think this is from the first season of the beloved Gary Marshall TV series, Happy Days.
Merlin:
I think this is from 1974.
Merlin:
But there is something that happens, you know, moments snap together like magnets.
Merlin:
You don't get to pick what traumatizes you, John.
Merlin:
But there's a scene where Richie had gone to see Fonzie and Fonzie works and lives in a garage, a grease monkey, although I think we don't say that anymore.
Merlin:
And he'd gone to, I think he'd, I think he'd even gone to say, maybe, maybe Mrs. Cunningham had said, you know, see if Fonzie wants to come over for dinner or whatever.
Merlin:
Anyways, he goes to the garage to invite, and Fonzie's like, hey, no, I got lots to do.
Merlin:
Hey, like, I'm a cool guy.
Merlin:
And, and Richie leaves, but then he like looks back in the window and
Merlin:
And Fonzie's in the garage by himself.
Merlin:
And I don't know if this is what happened, but what I remember is him having something like a can of SpaghettiOs directly on a hot plate in solitude.
Merlin:
Whatever the details of that scene were, I found that...
Merlin:
It made me so sad.
John:
I know.
John:
You didn't realize that even Fonzie was lonely.
John:
Even Fonzie gets lonely.
John:
Even Fonzie gets lonely sometimes.
John:
You know, it's all a show.
John:
It's all a big act.
John:
Fonzie's just eating SpaghettiOs out of a can.
Merlin:
No, they domesticated him pretty good a few years after that.
Merlin:
Yeah, they did.
Merlin:
They made him a school teacher.
Merlin:
He lived in their attic.
Merlin:
He jumped a shark, Merlin.
Merlin:
That's right.
Merlin:
He did.
John:
He did.
John:
He jumped it.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Are there things to look for here?
Merlin:
Are there, how do I say, are there improvement opportunities, gentle American ideas that we could offer people for making these sort of events less fraught, more enjoyable, less stressful?
Merlin:
Are there things that, you're a knowledgeable man.
Merlin:
You've been around the block.
Merlin:
Mm-hmm.
Merlin:
You've been to Estonia.
Merlin:
What are the kinds of things, gentle things that we could do to make this less stressful for everyone if they exist?
John:
What I have what my family hack I guess that the way that I have Tried to navigate all kind of complicated family things is that I I realized really early on what you need to do is just bring people in on the You need to read them in to the to the issue to the conspiracy if you will so
John:
What I've done with my daughter and with my daughter's mother slash partner partner, you know is Is kind of the same thing that my mom and I did with Christmas where instead of saying that phrase read them in I'm rewatching Night Manager right now.
John:
Oh, I know it's right in the middle of that, right?
John:
Instead of saying like, here's what we're going to do to deal with the commercialization of Christmas.
John:
I say, Hey, just between us, Christmas is like really commercialized and we, you know, should really like think about how we're going to do this.
John:
You know, us, how we are going to, um,
John:
As make our own decisions about this.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So that it's not a thing that I'm trying to get, you know, I'm not trying to push the family to do something.
John:
I'm not saying anything like there's no basically.
John:
Yeah, you it's a Tom Sawyer a little bit.
John:
We're like, boy, painting this fence is really fun.
John:
And also, wouldn't it be fun if we weren't like other people?
John:
It's kind of the opposite of Tom Sawyer in some ways.
Merlin:
Wouldn't it be fun if we didn't have presents?
John:
Don't throw me in the briar patch.
John:
And you realize really fast what...
John:
What the things are that people do feel sacred about?
John:
Oh, for sure.
Merlin:
You know, because my little daughter will say— You've got to boil off some of the water sometimes, but you will find out that there is a load-bearing tradition that you just didn't know about.
Merlin:
You know, and it's like the first time I gave you steak without noodles and you look like you were so crestfallen.
Merlin:
Where the fuck are the noodles?
Merlin:
Well, you were like, are there?
Merlin:
No, what you said, I made a nice steak.
Merlin:
I probably made in the broiler like a little bitch, but like I gave you the steak and you looked at me like a little boy who had not gotten his big gym and said, are there noodles?
Merlin:
Which at the time I thought was a little bit of a non sequitur But now there's always noodles because I've learned not just because that's the please you but just now there's noodles We should be noodles three times a week.
Merlin:
Sure.
John:
Sure.
John:
You put down a steak There should be some egg noodles and and my kid always was that she was like look if we're serious I mean she's like six years old and she's like we're serious about this I don't really need any of these these these these these and these but do not
John:
Tell me.
Merlin:
Christmas cookies, caroling, pajamas, new pajamas the night before.
Merlin:
I mean, it's different for everybody.
Merlin:
We happen to have almost all of these.
Merlin:
Not caroling.
Merlin:
My family doesn't sing and I hate it.
Merlin:
Oh, yeah.
Merlin:
That's Madeline's family, I think.
Merlin:
That one comes from.
Merlin:
Everybody gets new pajamas the night before.
Merlin:
What about opening a gift on Christmas Eve?
John:
Well, so this is one of these retcon things, right?
John:
Where we never did that.
John:
And then my sister at some point in adulthood was like, oh, well, we always opened a present on Christmas Eve.
John:
And I was like, that's not true.
John:
We never did that.
John:
And she's like, we did do that.
John:
It's one of those Oprah memories.
John:
And so then it was like, oh, I guess this is a longstanding tradition in our family that we've always done.
John:
What's your mom say?
John:
She probably was go along, get along.
John:
She goes along to get along.
John:
The thing was that we did have...
John:
In the 1970s, routinely, we would wake up on Christmas morning at Mom's, we would have Christmas, and then sometime in the middle of the day, we would drive to the airport, often in our pajamas, and get put on an airplane, like back before TSA when she would walk us out to the gate, put us on an airplane, wave goodbye, say Merry Christmas, and then at the other end would be very dark, very cold Alaska.
Merlin:
And your father's waiting for you with runny eggs?
John:
Yeah.
John:
My dad's standing there in a, you know, what to me always seemed like the biggest coat I'd ever seen.
John:
And I'm there in my pajamas and my sister with her thumb in her mouth.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And he's like, happy Christmas.
John:
And then we would, and it's, you know, absolutely pitch black, dark with blowing snow in the air.
John:
And then we would go to his house and we would have this strange like midnight Christmas and
John:
Where, you know, dad often would buy presents and just put them in like brown paper bags and staple them once, you know?
John:
And so it was always like, what is this?
John:
That's got its charm.
John:
And he had that dad thing where it was like, well, dad, I'm seven and this is a present for a four-year-old.
John:
And he'd be like, oh, geez, they grow up so fast, you know.
John:
Or the alternate, like, oh, it's an erector set.
John:
And it's like, well, Dad, I'm four and I've never used a tool.
John:
Oh, shit, it's a chemistry set that, you know, that I...
John:
that i've had since the 60s so christmases were always like did we open a present on christmas eve no but we heard we had a lot of there's a lot were you guys strict about the don't open till christmas policy don't open don't christmas what was the first
Merlin:
Oh, you know, there's like a tag you'll put on a present, like in, you know, don't open until Christmas.
Merlin:
Did you, like, okay, like one that sometimes you get on the bubble about is if you've gotten somebody something that's super cool and also weirdly practical, if you and the elf decide, do you and the elf ever decide contextually that before December 25th, we're going to give you an early Christmas present because you could really use it for this thing?
Merlin:
No, we've never done that.
Merlin:
No, most families don't.
Merlin:
My family didn't do that.
Merlin:
We've done that occasionally.
Merlin:
But that's, you know, you want to keep the magic.
John:
I do the thing where we're doing all the stuff.
John:
It's all the whatever Christmas Eve-ness, the music and I don't know, all the things that happen.
John:
And then one by one, everybody goes to bed, right?
John:
Like my mom goes home and goes to bed.
John:
Then Ari goes to bed.
John:
Marla goes to bed.
John:
Then my sister stays up and she likes to stay up and she's chatty Kathy.
John:
And so she and I sit and talk.
John:
And then eventually she...
John:
goes to sleep and then it's me alone in the house and then i go out to my truck where all the real christmas presents so you're you're the you're the designated secret elf yeah and then i'm the one that does all the last minute wrapping i'm the one that puts up all the presents that aren't
John:
They're too big to be wrapped.
John:
Put the Ikea kitchen together.
John:
Yeah, put the kitchen together, put the... Wow, that's a great present.
John:
All that stuff, right?
John:
And then I'm the one that takes little presents and tucks them in the tree, and I...
Merlin:
You're cut out for this, John.
Merlin:
This is right up your alley.
Merlin:
You're going to be up anyway, let's be honest.
Merlin:
That's right.
John:
And so I put all the magic on the whole house.
John:
And I, you know, during the era when she was really into Star Wars, I would, you know, bring out Dark Vader.
John:
Yeah, well, and the weird little figurines, and I'd hide them around the house so that, you know, Greedo would be peering out behind a book.
John:
And she always had that eagle eye that only kids have.
John:
Oh, I know.
John:
Where she'd look at a... Yeah, they can notice change, like a dinosaur.
John:
Yeah.
John:
She'd look at a huge bookshelf just covered with... And she's like, what's that?
John:
And it's just some little, you know, tiny little thing poking out from behind a thing.
John:
So she'd find them all within the first three hours.
John:
But then I always wrote a note from Santa in my most elaborate calligraphy.
John:
I'm going to take that with a grain of salt.
John:
Well, you know, I took calligraphy.
Merlin:
I was a child in the 70s.
John:
I can see your penmanship being pretty bad.
John:
I don't know your penmanship.
John:
It's pretty bad.
John:
It is.
John:
But I do swirly, swoopy cursive.
John:
I've tried to do that.
John:
It's difficult.
John:
I think for years.
John:
Well, I think maybe even still.
John:
marlo may think that she at the at a certain point she was like wait a minute there's no tooth fairy but i don't think she ever connected the swoopy cursive to me really i think she thinks she thought if she looked at it i was clocked practically from the beginning but also b i'm not going to go into this because it's not my story to tell but there was a thing that happened one time where i
Merlin:
mentioned to a child of a certain old enough age about the secret.
Merlin:
And the kid was really sad and upset that we weren't doing the bit.
Merlin:
And I never did that again.
Merlin:
I mean, of course, as I got older, I just sent you my Christmas notes.
Merlin:
You can see they become sillier because we're kind of in on it, but there's still the conceit that no, Santa's hooked on fentanyl and has joined QAnon, like whatever it is, but it's still from Santa.
Merlin:
And you still got to take a bite out of the carrots and the cookies.
Merlin:
That's part of the deal.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
And I always made a little bit of a mess.
John:
I mean, at one point when she was little, it did snow outside.
John:
And I went out and very elaborately, my God, I made some stick that looked like a deer hoof at the bottom and went out and made reindeer prints in the snow.
Merlin:
I did that for Easter one year.
Merlin:
Reindeer prints?
Merlin:
That would be strange.
Merlin:
Yeah, I fucked up.
Merlin:
No, I had little, I started with a, I don't know if I used, what did I use, confectioner's sugar or flour probably?
Merlin:
But I made rabbit style footprints that started darker and more pronounced downstairs and then got a little lighter as they got to the door.
Merlin:
So when the kid opened the door, they would see the light tracks and then follow it.
Merlin:
I think if you do the bit, you got to commit.
Merlin:
You got to commit?
Merlin:
Unless half-assing it is fun and half-assing it can be fun and it depends on the kid.
John:
Yeah, I mean, there's half-assing it and there's half-assing it.
John:
Absolutely there is.
John:
I don't think like a detective from the Seattle Police Department would have been fooled.
Merlin:
Well, you know, it's the opposite of plausible deniability.
Merlin:
It's implausible reality.
Merlin:
Impausible reality.
Merlin:
And you both go.
Merlin:
Well, same way that you go to a magic show and very few people lose their goddamn mind because they think somebody actually got cut in half.
Merlin:
You're experiencing it on different levels.
Merlin:
And if you don't take that into account, you're not going to do a good job evolving with the Christmas spirit.
John:
Do you remember a moment when Santa Claus was revealed to be unreal?
John:
Or did you just kind of always, or what's your history with that?
Merlin:
I don't.
Merlin:
But I'm going to speculate on what I think I remember, even though this would be a pretty long time ago, was that I remember a continuum.
Merlin:
of yeah sure there's santa claus too but i remember there being a continuum if you know what i mean like over and like my young person at the time like i i liked that part of it i thought that was fun like and okay so here's another one god i i should write all these down because not not for anybody else but myself but like here's another one we've always maybe other families do this too there's some presents that are from santa and
Merlin:
There's some presents that are from mom and dad.
Merlin:
And as the kid got older, there were some presidents that were from mom or dad presents rather.
Merlin:
Right.
Merlin:
But like the kind of like the fun sort of like pop culture stuff might be from Santa.
Merlin:
And then like the big stuff might be from the parents and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin:
But you got to keep it straight.
Merlin:
And I think my wife is great at this.
Merlin:
She commits to using the right paper for the right present.
Merlin:
Like you shouldn't, the paper that's used for a Santa gift cannot be the same paper that's used for a mom and dad gift.
John:
Absolutely.
Merlin:
Absolutely.
Merlin:
I mean, I imagine being from another, like a rational European country and hearing that.
Merlin:
Let me understand this.
Merlin:
For you, Noel, you buy many different kinds of paper for wrapping things they don't need.
John:
All of those traditions we maintain.
John:
Because it's fun.
John:
Put the ribbons around you.
John:
We have two bags.
John:
One of them is the wrapping paper bag that nobody still wants that's going to the recycling.
John:
And the other is the bag maintained by my sister.
John:
where the ribbons and the tags that say to marlo from santa oh and really some of the wrapping paper itself that is treasured and very carefully untaped each time and folded again every elderly woman in my family took him 40 minutes to open every present
Merlin:
Grandma, just open it.
Merlin:
It's a heating pad.
John:
Grandma, it was 20 cents worth of paper, please.
Merlin:
This is too nice.
Merlin:
I need to save this.
John:
And so that all goes in a separate bag.
John:
So when it's Christmas time, out comes that bag.
John:
And you sort through and you find all these old, like, to John from Santa written in my mother's handwriting.
John:
Oh, jeez.
John:
And it's been used for 40 years.
John:
And you put it on the package.
John:
But yeah, Santa is the one that gets all of the...
John:
The ones that that you could say like I wouldn't get you that that's from Santa and Then there's the ones that's like well, that's clearly from dad and We all just you better believe Woody and buzz were from us From you.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
Oh, yeah 2000.
John:
Yeah, and you know, Ikea kitchen was probably from from Santa from Santa That's exactly who gets you an Ikea kitchen
John:
But the big hack for me through her early teen years was that she was one of those kids, and I was exactly like this, where I was curious about things like
John:
Dungeons and Dragons or she was curious about Pokemon, but she didn't really want to play Pokemon.
John:
It wasn't interesting to her to understand.
Merlin:
And if you don't know a lot about it, how do you navigate that?
Merlin:
You've got to thread a needle with your knowledge and their knowledge and what's available and all that stuff.
John:
But what she wanted was the Pokemon cards because other kids had them and they, although they, although she was never going to play the game, although the rarity of them or the, their powers, I mean, it was none of that meant anything to her.
John:
She loved the cards with the pictures of the little critters.
John:
And so I could go online and say, uh, you know, a bid on five different lots, uh,
John:
Where somebody's like, 500 undifferentiated Pokemons.
John:
On eBay?
John:
Yeah.
John:
And I'd be like, $14.
John:
And they're like, you won!
John:
And over in the used cardboard section.
John:
This huge box would show up just full of cards of these little critters, you know?
John:
And it's like, this is an evolution of that.
John:
And this is a water sign.
John:
And that's a...
John:
And so I would just put these Pokemons and I, you know, and so I could disavow them because I'm like, I don't know anything about Pokemons and I think they're dumb, frankly, but Santa apparently.
John:
Yes.
John:
Got you 100 million Pokemons.
John:
And so she would go off and just endlessly fascinated.
John:
She had a binder.
John:
She filled it up.
John:
And she'd do the thing that, of course, I would do, that you would do, which is like, well, now they're sorted this way, but they used to be sorted that way.
John:
And now I've got a new one, so I have to redo the whole book because it fits in here.
Merlin:
Yeah, take them out and start over.
Merlin:
Take them out and start over.
Merlin:
I would do that with my Batman cards.
Merlin:
I inherited a set, a full shoebox of 1966 Batman trading cards when I was a kid.
Merlin:
Oh, my God.
Merlin:
Yeah.
Merlin:
I treasured them.
Merlin:
I mean, I love my baseball cards too, but like the set of Batman 66 trading cards, we had a puzzle on the back.
Merlin:
You could make the Joker, all that kind of stuff.
Merlin:
I would just look at them and sort them all day long.
Merlin:
It was truly a different time.
John:
Yeah, right.
John:
Sorting your cards and then resorting them and then unsorting them and sorting them again.
John:
And she had that experience.
John:
I mean, all through the pandemic and she would carry this binder and then she'd interact with other kids.
John:
And it turns out a lot of them had binders of Pokemons and she would have her binder.
John:
Now she didn't know what any of the rest of it and she couldn't have been less interested.
John:
Like she never felt like, oh, well, they all know about these Pokemons.
John:
Couldn't have cared less.
John:
Because she had invented a whole world.
John:
She's like, well, this is Effie, and Effie is this, and Effie goes to that, and this, that, and the other.
John:
And she would sit and use them as basically storytelling devices, and I would go, oh, so that's its fourth iteration?
John:
interesting and she'd be like oh yeah you don't know anything I'm like you tell me more and Santa kept just bringing her Pokemons every year and I mean she's still got it around here somewhere massive massive 50 pound binder of things that neither she nor I knew knew or know anything about or will ever know but it was like a big feature I feel like those are I feel like eBay is actually a pretty killer Christmas hack I wish I could get over the hump with eBay
Merlin:
Really?
Merlin:
Oh, really?
Merlin:
I've bought a handful of things on eBay, mostly new.
Merlin:
But whenever it first came around, I started using Amazon and eBay, I think, around the same time.
Merlin:
The first thing I ever bought on Amazon was Confederacy of Dunces, of all things.
Merlin:
Oh.
Merlin:
Did you buy it as a gift for somebody?
Merlin:
No, because I hadn't read it.
Merlin:
My bass player was like, you should read this book.
Merlin:
He was my personal bass player.
Merlin:
You didn't read it in high school?
Merlin:
No, no, no.
Merlin:
I didn't read it in high school or college.
Merlin:
It was Brent, our bass player in Bacon Ray, was like, you in particular should read this book.
Merlin:
I think you'd really like it.
John:
But that has to be early Amazon.
Merlin:
Mm-hmm.
Merlin:
Yeah, like $98.99.
Merlin:
I bought a Weezer shirt on eBay.
Merlin:
I think I bought a pavement shirt on eBay.
Merlin:
And I'm tempted by all these things on eBay, but I look at it, and I'm like, because I'm not over the hump.
Merlin:
I'm like, this is used and weird, and I don't know who this person is.
Merlin:
And all of the stuff that for whatever, 25, 30 years, people have gotten over, I still have never really gotten over.
Merlin:
I buy stuff on Etsy before I buy it on eBay.
Yeah.
Merlin:
Interesting.
Merlin:
Also, do you still bid on stuff?
Merlin:
Is that a door deal dash thing now or like do you still bid on stuff on eBay?
Merlin:
Yeah, you can bid on stuff.
Merlin:
Do you usually do buy it now?
John:
Well, people put stuff up there and they're like, it's just like any kind of auction situation where it's like when you sell your house and the realtor's like, well, we're going to put it up $50,000 under what we're hoping to get because maybe people will bid it up to $100,000 over what you're hoping.
Merlin:
That sounds like a bad real estate agent.
Merlin:
That's how it works.
Merlin:
See, that's why I'm not a real estate agent.
Merlin:
My mom was, I am not.
John:
That's right.
John:
It's just, it's all gamified.
John:
So people put stuff on eBay and they're like, sure.
John:
You know, it starts at 99 cents.
John:
And what they're hoping is that, that will see that.
Merlin:
Yeah.
John:
People are like, I'm going to get it for a deal.
John:
And then pretty soon it's twice.
John:
They chum some of this shit.
John:
Whereas if you, you know, and I experienced that kind of all the time here because I'm like, well, I want to put this on eBay and sell it.
John:
I don't know whether it is worth $20 or $200.
John:
I honestly don't.
John:
And if I put it for $20, I know it'll sell.
John:
Maybe if I put it for $200, it would sell, or maybe it would sit there all year.
John:
So I put it up there for 99 cents and just like, see what happens.
John:
Is that worth it though?
John:
Is he even like deal with it for that amount of money?
John:
No, because it's never, it never sells for 99 cents.
John:
It always, I mean, I'm sure there are people that just, they're throwing, but if I put something up and I put something about it up on social media and like, Hey, go to my eBay store.
John:
You know, I'm not gonna lose.
John:
Yeah, I get it.
John:
I get it.
John:
You're in the game.
John:
But I buy things on eBay a lot.
John:
uh and mostly it's mostly it's this stuff like you know oh stadia shoes i haven't thought of those in in 40 years but now i for weirdly want to see what they're going for on ebay and then you'll see like well here's a size a pair of stadias your size still in box never used and nobody wants somebody like me goes 40 year old used shoes no thanks yeah exactly
Merlin:
I've looked at the Nike dynasties, but most of them are extremely discolored and have had other men's feet in them.
Merlin:
Right, totally gross.
John:
But Ari yesterday said, yeah, I was on, I don't know what I was doing.
John:
I was watching Kramer vs. Kramer on an airplane or something.
John:
And I'm like, okay, checks out.
John:
And she said, and at some point, Meryl Streep has a Gucci suitcase on it.
John:
And so when I landed, of course, the first thing I did was look up what kind of Gucci suitcase it was.
John:
And then I found one on eBay.
John:
There's like three of them on there.
John:
One of them is $5,000, which is impeccable.
John:
One of them is $300, which looks like somebody beheaded someone, put the head in the bag, and then threw the bag into a dumpster.
John:
Which somebody might still want.
John:
That's right.
John:
Is it Gucci Savoy?
John:
Well, that's an interesting question.
John:
I don't know, but it might be, I'm just looking at these pretty suitcases.
John:
They're very pretty.
John:
And, and, um, and so then we had that conversation, the eBay conversation, which is where she's like, I really want this, but I, but I know there is no practical reason why I should have a 1979 Gucci suitcase.
John:
And I, so then my job is to go through it with her.
John:
What's some of the possible justifications for her?
Merlin:
Exactly.
Merlin:
That's so interesting.
Merlin:
I used an, I did a similar example recently with, might've been you, I forget who, but I was talking about like, okay, like your whole life you've wanted a, I think it was with Alex, whole life you've wanted a Viking range, Viking range, Viking range, Viking range.
Merlin:
And it's like I was in the context of saying like, yeah, but you always want to sleep in a race car bed.
Merlin:
We're like, have you updated your idea about what it is about a Viking range?
Merlin:
Is it the name Viking?
Merlin:
Is it the form factor?
Merlin:
Is it what you want to be able to do with it?
Merlin:
Well, no, you want to feel like you got a thing you've always wanted that was a high status item.
Merlin:
But if you get the wrong thing, like you actually get the Viking range versus the Viking range.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Or if you get the wrong Gucci.
John:
Well, and it feels like, you know, part of it is, what does Ari want?
John:
She wants to be Meryl Streep in 1979, or she wants to be... Hope to shout.
John:
We all want.
Merlin:
She wants to walk away and leave you with all of it.
John:
I didn't even think of it that way.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
Merlin:
Oh, man, that is a long con, John.
Merlin:
John, could you get me a... John, could you get me a 1979 Gucci suitcase like...
Merlin:
Say the one Meryl Streep packs to leave her family.
Merlin:
Yeah, I could do that.