Ep. 39: "Darth of Options"
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
It's going good.
How are you going?
I'm pretty good.
I think I sound a little hoarse.
Oh, well, don't sound a little lady horse.
Got a little pony throat.
You don't sound good.
You sound horse.
I'm a little horse, I think.
What have you been doing?
Have you been eating cats?
Just the dead ones.
See, that'll make you a horse.
I was out kind of late last night.
Oh, you were partying.
I wasn't partying.
How many Subway sandwiches did you have?
You'll have to ask them.
How many 2 a.m.
Subway sandwiches?
No, no, no, no, no.
I had a steak like a gentleman.
Oh, that's nice.
A late steak or an early steak?
It was a medium-time steak.
It was pretty good.
It was pretty good.
Yeah, it's funny.
I shouldn't talk about the internet.
You posted something on the internet not too long ago.
It inspired a whole new revolution in people's minds?
Yeah, now people are dressing up like steaks.
Yeah.
Steaks and Hitler.
What did I say on the internet that anybody cared about?
Well, it was in a very short format.
You recently said something along the lines – I'm not going to touch my keyboard.
But you said something along the lines of the big difference in quality is not between a cheap meal and a costly meal.
It's the difference in quality between a good $15 meal and a bad $15 meal.
That's right.
Yeah, I believe that.
I hope it doesn't sound like I'm pandering to say this.
I think there's like maybe 12 wise things in that.
Well, it's one of the interesting things about economics, right?
It's the thing that economics cannot account for.
Is why is this $15 meal in this town the most amazing meal I've ever had?
And this $15 meal across the street is like eating fresh abortion.
Right?
Is it locally sourced?
How is that possible?
So it's from that old, you remember, Mother Catherine's school for dirty girls.
Fresh every Tuesday.
Oh, there's a guy in a chef's hat just waiting out back.
It's another child by fire.
You'll be better now.
The one's better this way.
That's terrible.
We just lost 1,000 followers.
Oh, sorry.
Dominic, Dominic, Dominic.
We – I have – well, I think that was – I think abortion talk aside and that could be a different show.
I don't think we should get ahead of ourselves.
I think that was very smart and there's two parts in particular that I think are very smart.
First of all, you did something.
There's probably a Greek name for what you did but you took it and you turned it.
I turned it.
I twisted it.
I put a little twist in it.
Yeah.
Is that torsion?
Is that what that's called?
Or torque?
What do they call that?
The twisty twistiness.
I was reading about the world's strongest man this week and they say that there's a big difference.
You know, you can be a little bit strong and you can be really strong, but there's some kind of this.
I'm going to go into some scientific jargon for a minute.
So forgive me.
some kind of scientific excitability in your muscle parts that allows them to quickly like, like, like a great, uh, like what, like a bunch of panzers.
You get them all going in the same direction at the same time.
And you can do like this guy does and lift an SUV seven times.
He's extraordinary.
You know what?
I bet you a whole bunch of Panzers all going in the same direction could do better than just lift an SUV a couple of times.
Seven times, John.
Seven.
Still, I think Panzers, applying the right amount of force to a group of Panzers.
This seems, if you'll forgive my saying a little facile, I think if you get seven Panzers, in all fairness, you should have seven super strong guys.
I don't know.
It's your show.
The thing about being the strongest man in the world is it's something that's always... You can never rest.
You know what I mean?
You can't be the strongest man in the world for 15 years.
People are constantly... Exactly.
People are always picking a fight.
They're like, pick up my SUV.
And he's like, can't I just enjoy a meal with my family?
That's right.
I'm eating here.
I'm eating here.
Come on out, strong man.
Come on out.
Try to lift up this fucking cart of abortions I got on.
I see it being much more difficult to navigate than that.
If it was just drunk guys in bars that wanted to fight you, you could handle it.
In this case, it's like a suburban dad who's got like a two-year-old van – not even a van again.
Maybe he's got a Voyager.
It's an Aerostar.
He's got an Aerostar.
Did you live in an Aerostar for a while?
I lived in an Aerostar for a while.
Now, is Aerostar the proprietary electronics service or the van?
No.
Aero Star is a van.
I think there might be a proprietary electronic service also called Aero Star.
It has two great words within it.
Aero, meaning air, and star, meaning star.
Yeah.
I learned a great thing yesterday.
No, it's super good.
I was reading about the Zenith Space Command.
I never read gadget blogs.
Zenith Space Command?
Weren't they the enemies of G.I.
Joe and his friends?
That's right.
I think Josh just signed them.
They're based in Brooklyn.
Don't beep.
Williamsburg.
But it's actually Bushwick.
Is that the guy with one eye that's little?
They call it East Williamsburg.
Old school.
Just Bushwick.
The Xena Space Command.
I have to agree.
This was the first kind of popular consumer remote control.
Oh, yeah.
It made a big, huge, loud click when you touched it, and all it could do was go up in the channels.
Yeah.
It had no other controls.
Well, when you were like us and you had four channels, that's not so big a deal.
I had a stick.
4, 7, 11, 13.
4, 7, 11, 13.
I had a change in stick.
So I could still observe my mother's demand that I not sit in front of the idiot box.
So I'd be just slightly away from the idiot box, and I had a turning stick.
It was kind of like having a helper monkey.
That was expressed as a loud click.
I remember when people had these, old people would hang on to these TVs.
Remember the giant console TVs?
It was.
Sure, a record player on one side and then a big... A bar, maybe?
A wet bar that's shaped like a globe on the other side.
A minstrel show.
It was amazing.
And so, yeah, I think the big click is what you hear, but then there's like an, I don't want to say ultrasonic, I'm not a scientist, but then there's like a very, a pitch that the TV picks up.
It's pretty primitive.
But like they said in the stupid article, like how great is that for a name, though?
You just don't hear names like Zenith Space Command anymore.
Zenith Space Command.
Yeah.
It's a pretty good name.
I like it a lot.
I got away from muscles.
Give me one good reason why I shouldn't buy a white Trans Am.
Was this the one that you were... Is it really white?
It looks like it's a light silver.
Is that really white?
I think it's a white Trans Am.
Oh, and does it come with the vanity front plate bone?
I think that might be... That might be proprietary.
I think the vanity plate... The guy's going to keep the vanity plate.
Or maybe that's just something he slapped on there because of that weird Craigslist thing where people are afraid that if you see their license plate, you're going to steal their identity.
Have you noticed this on Craigslist now?
I'm noticing it right this second because he looks like he has used Photoshop to gray out his electric meter.
Did you notice that?
It looks like it's got a cap on it.
People fog out the weirdest stuff on Craigslist because they're like, oh, somebody's going to steal my identity.
They can see my electric meter.
Remember when that started?
There was a very famous thing that happened in the early days of eBay.
The guy was selling silver electronics and he kept taking pictures of it and only later did people realize that you could see his erection in the...
Yeah, I mean, there's only so much you can ascribe to the parallax effect.
It was a very, very heavy man.
I don't know if it's just the concave nature of a pot, but he was good and obvious that he was... It was really just... It was all together.
Yeah.
Okay, so I should have read further on this.
So John sent me something earlier today.
It sounds to me like you... See, I don't want anybody to steal this out from under you, so we won't provide too many details.
Right.
But let's just say that somewhere out there, there may be an apparently white...
Burt Reynolds looking Trans Am.
A 1977 Pontiac Trans Am.
And it's got a rebuilt 400 motor.
It's white.
It's very searchable now, John.
Silver Firebird on the hood.
It looks so heavy.
It's very heavy.
Yeah.
We had a Pontiac Catalina and it was very heavy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What year?
Oh my gosh.
Pontiac Catalina.
Well, it was really ugly green color.
I could probably find it.
I'm zeroing in on it.
I'm guessing what year it is.
I found out I was writing something about my late father and a nice memory I have of being in that car.
And so I went out and actually did some research.
I could probably dig it up.
You know, there's sites where you can find out all kinds of stuff.
It's very like my cousin Vinny stuff about exactly what was available on certain cars.
So you could find out if this guy's a scoundrel.
Like, you could find out if this is actually his electric meter.
No, this seems right.
This car seems right.
I mean, everything about it is wrong.
Is Everett a place you can trust people in Everett in general?
Everett is not a place you can trust people.
Everett, Washington is the home of what used to be the home of the USS Abraham Lincoln and all of its crew.
Hmm.
But I think the Lincoln has rotated out and now they have like the USS.
I don't know.
Maybe the Nimitz is up there.
But for whatever reason, it's a Navy town.
It's full of sailors.
And I'm guessing that is who owns this white 77 Trans Am.
Yeah.
With the license plate that says bone.
What do you think he rejected when he was there at the store and looking at license plates?
Are there ones he looked at and said, no, that's a little too pussy?
Were there anything he looked at where he went, no, I don't know if I can live up to, you know, Ribeye Jack or something?
You know, I bet you he went in there looking for bone and he found bone.
Yeah.
I don't think he had a list.
I think he was like bone.
Is it a suggestion?
Yeah.
Well, the thing is, it's not a real license plate.
It just says USA on the top and then bone.
So it's like a front plate in a state where you're not required to have plates on the front.
That's where it would always go.
In Ohio, you didn't have to have that either.
Yeah.
I think this is the type of thing where if you're a runaway and you are sitting on your suitcase in front of a motel in the morning...
you can't you can't you can't afford bus fare and there's a and there's a white trans am or a silver trans am what's the vanity plate bow do you as a runaway does this look like an opportunity to you or does this look like a potential it depends on which thin lizzy song is playing
If it's the boys who are back in town, I'm going to think twice and maybe stay on the suitcase.
I've got to tell you, Whiskey in the Jar, I might hop in.
Oh, wow.
All right.
You know what?
You just condensed it pretty well.
Well, it's off the top of my head, but I really like that version of Whiskey in the Jar.
It's very creative.
I mean, I guess some people are familiar with the Metallica version via Thin Lizzy, but I was also familiar with – it's an old folk song.
It's a widely, heavily covered folk song.
Wait a minute.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
Please go ahead.
I'm looking more closely at this ad.
I have so much to say about this ad, and I'm holding a lot back.
Please go ahead.
If you look at the cockpit photograph, how many pink Christmas tree air fresheners does he have hanging from his stereo knob?
Can you count them?
Oh, I haven't looked at the other ones yet.
Oh, he's got little trees.
How many trees?
It's hard to tell on this monitor.
I see at least two.
No, I'm seeing three, possibly four.
Now, if you need three, possibly four pink Christmas tree air fresheners.
Oh, no, I see the one you mean.
He's got four air fresheners in his car.
And he's got some, what are those called?
He's got some Japanese anal beads hanging from his Wu-Tang charm.
Yeah, he does.
He has anal beads hanging from his rear view mirror.
But, you know, you have to expect with the vanity plate bone.
Yeah.
It does what it says on the tin.
It's the Christmas tree air fresheners that are freaking me out because I don't know what flavor pink is, but I'm guessing it's like vanilla.
No, no, no.
I think it's berry.
I was very into the green ones.
Now in this guy's defense and I haven't met this guy at all.
I've never been to Everett, but I must tell you that in my, in my 1970 Volkswagen bus, I would accumulate those as you do.
Like some people have garters or, or restraining orders and I would let my green trees, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Did you also hang the tassel from your cap at graduation?
Human teeth.
I did.
I totally did.
1985 tassel.
It was 85.
Exactly.
Green tassel.
Oh, my God.
Green and yellow.
Nobody looked good in our colors.
Oh, your high school colors were green and yellow?
I never envied green and yellow.
You know what?
We have so much to talk about in this ad, and obviously we have a lot of things to cover here.
It is an automatic, though, right?
Oh, God.
That's sweet.
Well, that era, they stopped putting manual transmissions in cars.
You're just going to need a stick to wipe the ladies off the side.
The problem is, can you legitimately put a child safety seat in a Trans Am like this?
I think it'll reject it like a bad kidney.
It's a two-door dance.
I'm afraid it's a Raising Arizona type of situation where I would just be – something bad would happen.
Did you just call me Dan?
I'm cutting all that out.
I'm actually literally cutting that out.
Don't worry.
1337.
I got that.
I'll cut this out.
Don't talk anymore.
Okay.
Now I'm going to leave him in.
Fuck you.
Okay, so to answer your question, there's several things about this that we need to talk about.
Obviously, there are no airbags in a car like this.
There are probably no safety features of any kind.
I think it actually shoots a bong at you.
When you get into a crash, it's like a cat of nine tails starts swinging around inside.
And there's several things to point out.
I don't like to bring up a sore memory for you, but you remember what happened.
Like that time when you called me Dan a few minutes ago?
As with the bluing problem on your father's gun, if I may say.
Right, right, right.
I want to point out a few things about this.
I think the anal beads on the Wu-Tang Clan symbol are not original.
I think the trees are aftermarket.
No way did you get that particular shitty 80s cassette deck on this.
And what is the deal with the prismatic background on the dash control area?
No, no, that's stock.
What's that called?
What do they call that in the features, do you think?
That is called metal great finish or metal plated is what they call it.
I mean, obviously it's a sticker, but they call it a pretty badass looking sticker.
It is.
It doesn't have a feeling.
I don't know if you ever went to Disney properties, but it's got kind of a Tomorrowland feeling like in the future, your car will be shiny inside.
Zenith Space Command.
Yep.
That's what it says.
Hmm.
And then you got what else?
You got the trees on your mirror so your car won't smell.
You got – what else we got here?
I don't know, John.
I think you should go out and tender an offer.
Have you checked in?
Condom wrappers on the passenger side floor.
I think he went out and specifically bought a bottle of – Armor All.
Armor All because I would slide right off those seats.
That's just way too shiny for me.
He has Armor All the hell out of this thing.
Can you say that when you put your daughter's child seat in the back of this extremely dangerous vehicle, I would maybe scuff it up a little bit.
I would break in the seats a little.
You know what I'm saying?
You maybe go in there.
It doesn't have to be sandpaper.
The thing is, every time you hit the highway, you've got to spin the tires.
You've got to kick dirt up.
There's a lot of responsibility to owning a car like this.
I think it brings expectations.
Either that, or I found this the last time I owned a motor vehicle with a very large engine.
One of those engines that sounds intimidating.
You don't even have to see the vehicle.
You just hear it like...
one of those cars it's a very very satisfying feeling to have a car that makes that sound because when you roll onto someone's street if they're expecting you to arrive they hear that sound before they see you and it's everywhere you go you're just sort of blanketing the world with your like power yeah but in any case people can hate you a lot sooner than other people do
You know, here comes that guy.
But when I owned that car, I realized that I no longer needed to drive fast.
But in fact, the real power move was to drive incredibly slow.
And everywhere I went, I just basically drove at idle speed.
The car would just putter along at 15 miles an hour.
And everybody else on the road was like, too afraid to honk.
It was a great life.
The funny part is it wasn't like you just gave people like some idiot, some bald middle-aged guy starting as Harley.
It's like in this case, you're just plugging along, looking at people a little bit too long, and they're going, could you please drive a little faster?
And I would sit way down in my chair.
Of course you did.
So my nose was just on the windowsill.
I looked like an R. Crumb drawing of some guy with a big nose sticking out the window.
Here's my thing to you.
First of all, A, yes, you should go out and look at this.
Maybe bring a mechanical or someone pretend.
You should bring Jason.
Have him pretend to be a mechanic.
See if this guy freaks.
Right?
And then if you buy this, and I think you should – he's got an oboe on here.
It says 6900 oboe, so you might be able to talk him down.
Interesting trade maybe?
I'm just saying.
I think you can bring the – oh, did I say what the price was?
No.
Okay.
I think you could probably talk him down just a little.
It depends on the condition.
Oh, and then B, here's my promise to you.
If you send me proof that you have bought this from him –
Pink slip, as they say.
I will literally buy you a copy of Jailbreak today on cassette.
Wow.
Is it Jailbreak?
I think it's on Jailbreak, right?
Whiskey in the Jar?
Pretty sure.
That is a cassette player.
You're right.
Well, and it's got those 80s knobs that you can tell.
I need to get my Iron Maiden cassettes out of my gym bag.
Did I ever send you that photo of the Melted Highway to Hell cassette that I found in our garage?
I don't think so, but my friend... Wait a minute, I've already said too much.
No, okay.
No, I have a friend.
He's a good friend.
You know him, or you know of him, an artist.
And he is making a coffee table book of a certain kind of cassette.
Hmm.
It's going to be very beautiful.
I've already said too much.
There's somebody right now racing out to get a Tumblr of this idea, and I want you to stop doing that, whoever you are.
It's my friend's idea.
Fuck yeah, cassettes.
Fuck yeah, cassettes.
This is the last thing I'm going to say about this Craigslist ad, but he has made the classic error of saying, too much to list.
But he did not put two letter O's in the first two.
So it looks like, too much to lists.
He's made a classic Craigslist spelling error, which makes me think that I can really... You can trust him.
Not only can I trust this guy because he's a real American, but I can also chip him down on the price because he's a dummy.
Yeah, you should offer to help him with his commas too.
You know what?
This is not a comma worrying car.
This is where you put your comma worries behind.
You get down.
You put the fucking seat down.
You drive like a gentleman.
You jam out to a little bit of Phil Linnett.
You drive like a gentleman and then perhaps Sally Field is standing on the side of the road in a wedding dress.
To me, she's like Audrey Hepburn or maybe like Diana Rigg where she's all different kinds of pretty.
You know what I mean?
Young Sally Field.
Oh, gosh.
You know who's like a young Sally Field?
A young Valerie Bertinelli.
Is that right?
Well, I always equated the two.
I thought they had the same kind of cute as a bug-ness.
Cute as a bug.
Cute as a bug.
Yeah, I'm not going to talk about this.
You're not going to talk about Sally Field?
No, I'm just not going to talk about women.
It's awkward.
Oh, because you're married.
No, no, no.
Just because, you know, I'm a dickless wonder.
That's not funny.
Oh, that's not true.
You're not a dickless wonder.
I have to admit that I have been reassessing my feelings about Scarlett Johansson and it's getting complicated.
Really?
I think she might be pretty attractive.
She's a very attractive young lady.
She's kind of the same attractive, but like, even if you watch her when she was like practically a kid in that, you know, that one movie, Steve Buscemi.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Anyway, I stand corrected.
I'm going to have to buy you a different – I thought Whiskey in the Jar – no, listen.
Would you – in order to make good on my error and my promise, I'm going to send you – if I can find it, I will send you Jailbreak on cassette.
And I will also send you some like old greatest hits, if you like, or best of of Thin Lizzy, if you buy this.
That's only for today.
It's only for today.
It's today only.
You know, there's a lot of tumult in Thin Lizzy.
Yeah, I know.
They had a lot of tumult, but it was the times.
Well, and, you know, it's another one of those things where they went in.
I read this a long time ago, so I'm just scanning this now.
But I think there was a lot of time.
Brian Robertson, you know, who was one of the big guys in the band.
He wasn't getting the credit anymore.
Now, how did he die?
Was he a heroin guy?
You know, there weren't any big guys in Lindsay.
They were all five foot six.
Is that right?
Well, it's how they chose rock stars in that era.
Roger Daltrey.
Roger Daltrey.
You've seen Roger Daltrey.
He's a modest-sized man.
Yeah, there was like a height thing.
It had to be smaller than this yardstick to ride this ride.
Oh, that's super interesting.
Maybe the dressing rooms were like three-quarter size, like a cello.
Yeah, I think it was before that era in America when everyone was eating macaroni and cheese and tab and becoming super large people of the future.
Yeah.
There were still a lot of people from the past who didn't have access to the vitamins that were in macaroni and cheese and tab.
And they were small people.
They were maybe immigrant people that were from countries where they didn't have vitamins.
And so things were scaled differently.
Cars were smaller.
Well, you go anywhere.
You see roads used to be narrower.
What's crazy to me is how narrow our garage door is, given that it was built in the 20s.
Yeah, it's insane.
I don't know how you fit a car into that thing.
Well, first of all, you have to have a Volkswagen Jetta.
The Volkswagen Jetta is designed to be the same size as a Model T. You know what's nice, John, is if you ever come here and want to get in our garage, can I tell you the great part?
This is a very wide car.
This has a wider-than-normal wheelbase on the 77 Trans Am.
Is that correct?
It's a pretty wide wheelbase.
I'm going to say it's wide in order to maintain stability at high speeds, yes.
The good part is for you to get that into your garage, you'd have to go real slow.
In my neighborhood, I would be not even the 15th most intimidating vehicle on the street, just right around my house.
Because everybody down here is driving a villain car.
What's a villain car?
Well, the classic modern villain car is the Chrysler 300.
The new gangster car.
You know the Chrysler 300?
You know the car I'm talking about.
I'm going to know it in a second.
The Chrysler 300 is the new gangster car.
And you can customize it in a variety of ways.
Oh, I see.
Yes, yes.
But there's a guy around the corner that owns a Ford Ranchero, like an early 70s Ranchero that's all rusty and...
He doesn't even have a muffler.
The guy next to me has a... Patrick, the guy that comes out every once in a while and shoots his gun in the air.
He's got one of those Dodge pickup trucks, like a Ram pickup truck that you need a stepladder to climb into it.
Yeah.
Everywhere I look around here, the only thing we don't have is a Toyota pickup with a machine gun mounted in the back.
But if I had a white Trans Am...
I would go back to the top of the pile in this neighborhood.
I used to be on the top of the pile because I had six cars parked out in front of my house and everybody knew I was a player.
But I gave some of those cars to the people that train Capuchin monkeys to help disabled people.
And now I've fallen in my neighbor's esteem.
You were the guy with cars on his lawn?
Yeah.
I was the guy with like six cars out front.
Some of them were covered.
Some of them were on blocks.
There were none that were covered.
They were all covered with pine needles.
Raccoons living inside.
Mold growing in the rubber.
Raccoons will totally live in a car.
You know that, right?
You know, the other day, I was sitting in my kitchen.
I was actually standing in my kitchen.
There's no place to sit in my kitchen.
I was standing in my kitchen window, and I look out the window, and here comes a raccoon.
And it's the middle of the day, which is not, this is not customary for a raccoon to walk through your yard in the middle of the day.
She's just right out in the open, too.
And I'm like, hmm, that's unusual.
What are you doing?
And then I see trailing behind her is a little baby raccoon.
Hmm.
And so I'm watching them.
And then there's a second baby raccoon.
So the mom is like three quarters of the way across my yard by this point.
And then there's a third baby raccoon.
And the third raccoon is like, he's sniffing his little nose in every dandelion.
He's taking his sweet time, burbling across the yard.
Mom's all the way halfway across the yard.
The first raccoon's right behind her.
First baby's right behind her.
The second one's kind of, you know, loping along.
But this third one, he's a real dreamer, this guy.
Yeah.
And he's sniffing and he's looking.
And then there's a fourth baby raccoon.
And the fourth raccoon, he's a real, this one's, he's a real rebel.
This one's a poet.
You know what I mean?
Like he's looking in overturned coffee cans.
He is, he's fully 100 feet behind his mom.
Can I guess which one you identified with?
So I watch these raccoons loping across my yard in the middle of the day.
And, of course, I say, this cannot stand.
I cannot allow this.
It broke the uneasy detente.
So I race out the front door.
And the mother raccoon had to make a choice because the two lopers were far enough behind her that I was coming out the front door and I was going to get in between them.
And so she made some...
raccoon sound and all the babies turned and ran up my catalpa tree but she stayed on the ground uh oh so and she ran she she kind of went back and got in a position where she was between me and and the barn you deliberately went and stood between a mother raccoon and her lopers
Well, I didn't get right in between them, but I wanted to press this issue.
I wanted to teach... You wanted to do a flanking maneuver.
I wanted to teach those loping raccoons that there are consequences to being a poet.
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And I wanted that mother raccoon to recognize that she had lost control of the situation.
Yeah.
And this is going to be a learning experience for everybody.
So I got out in the yard and she's out, but she's by the barn and she's got a very concerned look on her face and the babies are all up the tree.
And I don't know if you have much experience watching raccoons hide in a tree where they hide in plain sight.
They can sit real still.
I've watched the raccoons go up a tree.
My daughter and I have tried to like the raccoons in that park across the street.
They go straight up a tree.
I know exactly where they live.
And even when they're staring at me, I still can't see them and they don't move.
Exactly.
Yeah, they grab onto the tree and they just kind of turn their bodies in such a way that they become part of the tree.
And you can be looking at them and they'll just disappear like a Cheshire cat.
But in any case, these baby raccoons, they understood the concept of this, but they have not learned exactly how to do it.
So all four of them are up kind of right where a raccoon would go to hide in the crook of a branch or whatever.
And they kind of try and hide, but they are plainly visible.
They are not fooling me, rookies.
And after a few minutes of being in the tree...
They can't resist starting to play with each other and try and knock each other out of the tree.
And they start roughhousing in the tree.
So the mom is over here.
The babies are in the tree.
I'm in between them.
And I sat down on the grass.
And I started to explain in a very calm voice to the mother that I had no evil plan.
I'm merely here to teach.
I said, listen, this is all going to turn out okay.
This is just a moment of anxiety in your life.
But I'm going to sit here and I'm going to look at your babies.
Because it's fun.
I'm going to look at these four baby records in the tree.
I'm going to watch them.
I'm going to have fun doing it.
I'm going to keep talking to you in a calm voice.
You're fine, and I'm fine, and they're fine.
And so we spent about 20 minutes with her.
And, you know, she's nursing, right?
She's got her little teats are pendulous.
And she never relaxed, I wouldn't say.
But she...
calmed down to the point where she was like, okay, this is not an attack scenario.
He's sitting in the grass, but it's still not a very cool scene.
And the babies were just having the time of their life by this point, climbing all around the tree, slap boxing each other.
And after a while I realized, okay, I think I've made my point.
You raccoons are welcome here in my yard, but there needs to be order.
There need to be some rules.
And so I said to her, I'm going to get out of your way.
I'm going to stay here in the yard.
But I'm going to get out of the way of this scene.
And so I backed up and I sat down in the grass a little bit further.
And she made this imperceptible sound.
And all four of the raccoon babies who had, you know, been like off in their world.
I mean, they weren't looking at her.
They were kind of looking at me, but they were really just goofing around in the tree.
All of a sudden, their ears all went up.
And one by one, they went face first down the trunk in a very orderly line.
And then the parade went off over the fence and behind the barn.
It was a very nice moment, and I feel like those raccoons that were a little dreamy
They still have their dreams.
There's just so many lessons in that.
Yeah.
I'm sorry, I'm a little choked up.
They still have their dreams.
It's hard when you're a parent.
They're going to suck it up.
When they're moving during day, when they're cross-country during the daytime, this is something I'm going to teach my daughter.
When we are moving cross-country during the day, you suck it up.
You get on my heels.
No grab ass in the tree.
That's right.
You're not sniffing in coffee cans.
Mm-mm.
I want your eyes on my shoelaces as well.
No turturremus.
I need two right here.
Come on, Dante.
Let's make this happen.
Two.
Boom.
And do you lay low?
Do you do that thing where you stoop and run really fast?
Like there's a sniper?
How do you move around during the day, if you can say?
Do you just get in your Trans Am and just lay low?
I mean, that's a very loud vehicle.
How do you play in sight?
How does that work?
When I'm on foot during the day, I hug the wall.
Oh, that's smart.
Yeah.
But when I'm in the car during the day, no, no, no.
You hide in plain sight.
You're the guy whose motor is saying, look away.
You're the Cheshire Coon.
Look away.
I'm looking at you still.
I'm driving by real slow.
I'm still looking at you.
The amazing part is there are so many people in your neighborhood who are so busy with their Chrysler 300s.
They would not take the time to sit down and explain something to a mother raccoon and then teach a lesson to the raccoon poet babies.
But it's amazing to me that not only can you share that wisdom just vocally – and I don't know if you were using mind bullets or specific – what was the vocalizations that you did this with?
Well, see, I was speaking to her in this voice.
It was very calming.
It was very calm.
I was like, I recognize right now that I am in between a mother raccoon and her babies.
And that is not strictly advisable.
It is not something I would tell a 10-year-old to do.
But I feel like in this situation, my calm talking is going to make everything happen according to plan.
And you give her something to think about.
It's a lesson, but it's something where when she scurries back up her own tecalpa tree, is that how you pronounce it?
Catalpa.
Catalpa.
Okay.
And when she goes up her tree, if I may say, she'll have a minute.
After she's put the poets to bed, she'll have some time to think a little bit and reflect.
You know what I wanted her to think about?
She was thinking about the next fence.
She was thinking about how to get across the street.
And she wasn't thinking about that last poet, baby.
She was, she was, she was future.
You want her thinking about that previous fence and the space in between.
Cause she's just blown right through there.
Like it's normal.
Well, I want everybody in my neighborhood, raccoons and crows included to recognize that the area within my fence is a special zone.
Do I remember correctly?
I don't know if you ever finished it.
Did you actually make a white picket fence yourself?
I do have a white picket fence in the front, which is kind of a Trojan horse.
The white picket fence is very inviting.
It makes the house look very friendly to the street.
It says, the person who lives here is a safe person.
It's kind of like an urban gingerbread house.
It's a little gingerbread, that's right.
And then every other fence in my house is booby-trapped.
LAUGHTER
Let me guess.
Different booby traps.
Oh, 100%.
If you use electricity for everything, the foxes are going to get your hens.
They're going to figure that out.
They're wily.
Raccoons are really smart and they're really heavy.
They can do a lot of damage.
They've just discovered our compost can outside.
You know, it's in San Francisco, so you get a compost thing.
And so now every night we can hear them.
They figured out how to knock it over.
I don't know.
I've lived here for 12 years, and I never had this until like this week.
So maybe this is one of those crow things, John.
Maybe the word's going to spread.
And again, let's take this to the 100th monkey level.
You want to open your scallop, you throw it off the cliff, right?
In this instance, this could be a raccoon, and I don't know if they're loners.
I mean, obviously the poets probably spend a lot of time masturbating and reading Bukowski.
But if she goes out and talks to other raccoons, A, that's going to save you the trouble of having to do that again.
It becomes a kind of raccoon folk wisdom that she isn't able to share, maybe as far as Everett.
Maybe nobody's ever going to go into that Trans Am because they understand that there's an implied fence there.
Here's the thing about raccoons.
If you can see a raccoon, there are four raccoons you can't see.
Oh, okay.
There are always more raccoons than you think.
Like roaches or business people.
Right.
Although I would never characterize... I have the utmost respect for raccoons.
And I would put roaches and business people in a separate class.
I'm going to come back to that.
I have a few of mine.
But raccoons and crows, I feel, are very similar to one another.
In the sense that they are territorial, but they also travel in groups.
And they're thinking ahead.
In most cases.
And I think this mother raccoon...
And her babies are all going to be now forward thinking.
They're always going to have one eye.
looking out.
You know what I mean?
Raccoons, you know, like crows, like any of these, it's like how I find myself attracted to a certain kind of superhero.
Like I'm not that into a superhero that's just strong, that's just fast, that's just wily.
I like the combination.
And in this case, it's kind of like you got the strength of the Hulk, right?
You got the wilyness of somebody who's not the Hulk.
You want a little bit of sarcasm in a superhero.
Oh, absolutely.
You know what?
Bordering on cockiness.
You know, and maybe you fall down, but you get back up.
Now, how seriously are you taking this car thing?
That's some chumbawombo realism right there.
Here's the thing.
Before you say that, if I could say it roughly.
Now, again, I don't want to bring up an old wound if you can do that.
But your van blew up a while back.
Is that correct?
Oh, yeah.
I'm still devastated by it.
I bet it still smells like farts anywhere it had been near, though.
No, no, no, no.
I'm sure they've cleaned out all the farts and they're using it to transport Capuchin helper monkeys somewhere.
Oh, the helper monkey people.
Yeah, it's full of monkeys right now.
Was it burnt around the front part?
Was it like the engine seized up or what happened?
No, it was a situation where at 300,000 miles, the Ford transmission just ate itself.
That's a goddamn shame.
That's it.
That's all you got out of it.
Yeah, I know, right?
And the engine is still, the engine absolutely is still running, the Triton V10 motor, great motor.
Is that a 10-cylinder engine?
That's correct.
And I would put that in any powerboat I was building.
It's a great motor, and I'm sure that they replaced the transmission on this thing, and it went to live on a farm.
It went to live on a monkey farm, and they're driving around.
It's probably the vehicle they use to teach the monkeys to drive.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
Let's be honest.
If the monkeys wanted to go on tour, if they put out another record and wanted to go on tour, it would probably not be something you'd want to put a lot of miles on.
You'd have to refurbish a lot of things.
But you know what?
It's like a fucking capuchin golf cart.
It's fine for getting around the compound.
You drive around the compound.
The thing is, if you're like a seeing-eye dog, you get tired.
You walk a lot.
You have to bark.
If you have a differently-hearing person, you have to let them know that's a doorbell, that's a microwave.
You're ready to rest.
They might have to take them from one area to another.
I'm sure that that's what's happening.
I have no doubt in my mind that that van... It's occupational therapy.
That's what it is.
And I left all of the...
All access passes from 15 years of touring that we had plastered all inside the van, they're all still there.
And I'm sure the monkeys treasure them.
But you get Tinkerbell out safe and sound.
And they think to themselves, wow, can you imagine what it would have been like to be backstage at a Decembrist concert in 2003?
Dreams.
Being chided for eating their crudités.
Dreams.
Inasmuch as you can say, what is your current vehicular situation?
Well, so currently, I have the choice of three Hoopties.
One Hooptie is a 2000 Volkswagen Jetta with a V6 motor.
What color?
And a five-speed.
It's black, which is the color of all Jettas.
Mm-hmm.
I'm sorry, John, I don't want to interrupt you.
Approximately how many miles was the condition?
It's got about 80,000 miles, and it's in fairly decent condition, I would say.
That is the car that I use to zip around.
If I'm leaving the house and I'm like, I'm going to be zipping around today, I take the zip around car.
And then there is the 1997 Chrysler LHS model, a large sedan that only an old person would buy.
It is a car that you have to, I think you have to be 75 years old to buy it from the showroom.
Is that power windows?
Power windows, power brakes, leather seats.
Mm-hmm.
This is a car that I inherited from my dad.
At one point, the band Mumford & Sons had come to Seattle, and after the show, they were like, Right, we're in Seattle.
Let's go get some Seattle food.
It's late at night, and we're going to have a great Seattle time.
Come on.
You just took a lingual tour of England.
You just went, in one sentence, went to five different cities in England.
He stopped in Yorkshire for a minute.
Come on, Mumford and Sons.
Pop in.
LHS.
And so we're driving around Seattle, and they are, all of them, all four of them, in the back seat of this car, sliding around on the big leather couch,
And they are marveling at American cars.
And they're like, this car is so big.
It's so amazing.
Look at all the room.
And it's got power windows and it's got power seats.
And we're sliding around with just a merry bunch of Englishmen.
Brilliant.
Brilliant.
It's brilliant, isn't it?
Wow.
And I was like, you English people are so cute and charming.
And we drove around in the car.
They didn't want to go to a restaurant.
They just wanted to drive around in my big American car and play slap and tickle with each other in the backseat.
It was hilarious.
So that's Hoopty Two.
Again, what year?
I'm sorry.
it's a 97 it's blue green it's a car that i get into a lot of arguments with my mom about because i say i'm taking the blue car and she says it's green oh and i say women have better women have better sense of a color but i disagree with that i say this is not a green car this is a blue car it is blue green but it is blue green shading to blue and she says
It's amazing you can't get your records finished.
She says you are wrong.
It is blue-green shading to green, and therefore it is a green car.
And I say it is a blue car.
We have never resolved this.
I'm trying to find out right now.
It appears that the 1997 Chrysler LH... I'm going here by the colors of touch-up paint that you can get.
Would you agree that that is a fair...
Yeah, I'd say.
All right.
Okay.
Well, the ones that we think we can rule out is drama gold metallic.
It's not that.
It's not that.
Black crystal stone white.
No.
Bright platinum metallic.
No.
Right out.
As they say in England.
Right out.
Wild berry pearl, which is going to be my new pole dancer name.
Candy apple red.
Oh, I love candy apple red.
I love that.
That was my favorite.
Great full dead wreck.
Husker Dew.
Nice try.
I think we're out.
We got deep amethyst up against deep amethyst pearl.
the spruce pearl metallic deep amethyst pearl is clearly like a midnight blue at least here on my with my color settings on my monitor and spruce pearl metallic is like almost a slightly darker gumby green so do you have a sense i can send you the url for this
Well, you know, I could be wrong.
This could just be touch-ups.
Maybe people, you know what?
Maybe people who get blue, almost green paint don't need touch-up paint.
I'm wondering if it isn't spruce, but let me look here.
Well, you know what?
It might have a patina.
It definitely has a patina.
97 Chrysler, LHS.
I can cut all this out.
Don't worry.
You know what?
It might be the spruce.
Let me ask you a question.
Crown Victoria.
Yeah.
What about it?
Well, what is the one thing that everybody knows about a Crown Victoria?
It is a taxi cab.
I think of it as being the cop car.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Oh, oh, right.
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I mean, like you see a crown Vic, if you're somebody who looks in the rear view mirror a lot and does so to see if it's a cop behind you, you get real good at knowing, for example, in the eighties, you could learn like, oh, that's a ski rack versus that's flashing lights.
If you were somebody that had a lot of weed in your car, you'd learn square headlights,
You got to start checking.
If they're rectangular headlights, you need to be looking at.
You learn what a Crown Vic's headlights look like.
You know, if they're round, it's probably some fruity European.
In the 80s, of course, all cop cars were Chevy Caprices.
I'm going to have to look that up.
But here's what I'm saying.
All I'm going to say is this.
When I see a Crown Vic, I know it's a cop car.
Right.
I see a Chrysler LHS.
That's not a cop car, but I think that might be a cop's car.
Right.
In this case, yes, it was owned by an attorney.
But in looking at the Chrysler LHS page on Wikipedia, which is an internet site, it looks very much to me like the first and second generation Chrysler LHS.
1997 is when – it looks like they redid it in 1999.
And the new ones look a little bit almost like a Fiat, like a –
what do you call that glandular problem?
Oh, a pregnant porpoise.
Yeah, like Andre the Giant car, or a Joey Ramone.
This looks so much like a cop's car.
The LHS is very much a cop's car, or a cop's wife's car, and it is a... It's a car that is so...
It's so featureless that it is the ultimate blend in car.
When I had that van, the van is a total blend into industrial areas.
If you're driving that van, especially the one that I had with tinted windows, if you're driving that van through a suburban neighborhood, every mom comes out and ushers her kids back inside.
No question.
It totally had that vibe.
It's a little bit too innocuous.
It's either going to be some kind of – if I may say a government spy or probably somebody who's a little bit rapey.
It can't be a little rapey.
Let's not get into that.
Circle back to that.
But in Seattle, for instance, there's a river called the Duwamish River and there are factories lining the river all the way along.
And one of my favorite things to do late at night is to drive down into, because the factories, you can drive down into them and then drive kind of through them along the river and go from one factory to the next.
It's a place where forklifts are.
It's not a place where anyone would ever think to drive, so it hasn't occurred to anybody to block it off.
Because you're actually just driving through factories while they're making lead ingots or whatever they do in factories.
And at 2 o'clock in the morning, it's the night shift.
There are guys down there.
They're making sparks.
A lot of these factories, all they do late at night is just make sparks.
Yeah.
There's just a guy with a... Is that for export?
It's just like he's got a carbide saw blade, and he's just sawing lead ingots and just making sparks.
I'm convinced that that's all they do.
That sounds like a New Deal make-work project.
It is.
Sending it out to the Sparks factory.
You feel like you're in a Billy Joel video from the mid-'80s.
There's some guy with a hard hat, and it's like 3 o'clock in the morning, he's just making sparks.
So I used to drive my van down through these factories, and you would go in through the loading door,
they just wave you through yeah you drive through this like like 50 000 square foot building where there are a dozen guys making sparks and by the time they look up from their carbide saws and go what the fuck was that i'm already out the out the door on the other side and driving through the next building and i'm going really slow right just
And in that van, I looked like I was on official business.
I looked like I was a guy that belonged there.
I was there delivering new carbide bits.
And so I never got challenged.
Security guards, they don't even wave you through.
They just don't look...
Oh, I don't even have to check that badge.
I just know there's a badge.
I would just drive right past these guys, kind of give them a little nod.
They'd kind of give me a nod.
And by the time they were like, who's that?
I was already like 100 feet down through the building.
And I used to love that.
It was one of my favorite late night activities.
But when the van went away,
try doing that in a black jedda as you know we have a similar car in that we have a black jedda and no matter you look like you're hiding something with a black jedda a black jedda does not belong there a black jedda looks like you have pulled over looking for a place to do a little line of crystal you don't belong you don't your key you
That's not true.
The problem is you don't belong.
You're a man without a country in a black jetta.
The only place that you belong is at a Morrissey concert, parked in the parking lot, doing bumps of shitty crystal off of your key.
The black jetta means nothing.
What's the next one up?
A Passat, right?
I think a Passat can be a super classy ride.
I think it's what my lady would probably like to have if she had a more successful husband.
But we have a mutual friend who's quite well-to-do that has a very, very nice Passat.
That's what he chooses to drive.
It's a very comfortable car.
Now, the problem is – the reason I say this, it's like you've discussed in the past – and I'm sorry to derail you.
I have a couple more questions about locks, and I want to hear about your third hooptie.
But just quickly, I –
I you've mentioned in the past that you felt like you were you were never in any nerd camp.
You were so nerdy that you weren't a nerd.
Right.
You didn't even fit in with this group over here that you didn't align yourself with the D&D people or with the fantasy people.
I was old fashioned nerd, which meant that I tried to learn big words and I like to read books.
I did not thought it was working.
And thought that adults – when I was a 10-year-old, I believed that adults considered me a peer.
Oh, I thought I was working from the inside.
It's like that story Paul's case.
Remember that short story about the kid who wants to go be fancy and he goes out and steals money and becomes fancy?
I was like that.
I absolutely thought there's no question I fit in.
I'm at least as smart as all of these people.
Look, I know words like anti-disestablishmentarianism.
That's right.
Serendipity.
Yeah, serendipity.
Did you pronounce it wrong, though?
There are so many words I pronounce wrong.
I think I said serendipity for a long time.
The other day I was driving along with a friend and I said, well, we certainly have a Darth of options.
And she said... There can only be two Sith.
I said, did you say Darth of options?
And I said, yeah, we have a Darth of options.
She said, I believe it's pronounced dearth.
Fuck you.
Did I pronounce that right?
I said, fuck you.
I said, fuck you.
Fuck you, bookie.
I imagine you shot the Roderick eyes and said, I know how to pronounce it.
No, I didn't do that.
I said, I'm pretty sure that this is one of those words that has multiple acceptable pronunciations.
Here's the thing.
Well, and the problem is she has an electronic phone.
Oh, brother.
And was putting it in my face where there was not... It did not say two acceptable pronunciations.
It said dearth is the acceptable pronunciation.
You don't know where that phone has been that could have been easily tampered with.
That's right.
Anyway, I felt in that situation that Honor compelled me to admit in this one instance that maybe she had a point.
Okay.
But I'm not going to see Dirt.
No, that's silly.
Dirt sounds way better.
And I think you would say that you misspoke.
It's like the difference between something being lost and something being mislaid.
People who say I misspoke deserve a kick in the balls.
Is that right?
And that's the word you'd use for it?
I don't believe in I misspoke.
What about mislaid and lost?
Oh, I will mislay something.
I don't like it when people say, I lost my keys.
No, you lose your virginity.
You mislay your keys.
When all of a sudden I'm fucking struck in white.
Struck in E.O.
Wilson.
Here's my only thought on this.
First of all, just to close the thread on this, Crown Victoria, first of all, sad news.
I'm sorry to have to bring it to you in this particular form.
It has been discontinued.
I knew that.
Okay.
That's just, that's a
bummer it was there only around for 20 years 92 to 2012 crown vic shared the ford panther platform uh the one we've seen as it's called the ford crown victoria police interceptor which is a fucking cool name that's up there with like a space explorer yeah those cars you can drive those cars into the ocean and they will be
No, you go out and try to buy a phone, and seriously, you will see on the poster, it's called the Lexus Nexus 35-15-0 Release 6 or whatever.
You've got to be fucking kidding me.
Police Interceptor, only full-frame rear-wheel drive passenger sedan having been built in North America and was popularly used in taxicab fleet cars.
and police service vehicles so yes i think we can share the credit on that one well uh and the thing is now cops are using all kinds of like these dodge hot rods that look like that look like uh coke dealer cars like they're not driving around anymore in crown vix where you're like that's a cop well cops are they still are they still kind of anonymous in silhouette
I think that's important.
Well, it's worse.
Not only are they anonymous in silhouette, but they can come right up on your ass, as happened to me the other night, as I was speeding along on a section of road that I know it is safe to speed on.
And I was speeding along, and I was getting past the dumb people that I have to share the roads with around here.
I was putting them behind me.
And then there was a guy right on my bumper.
And I was like, oh, this guy wants to play.
Who's this guy?
He's right on my bumper.
Holy moly, this guy.
This is so aggressive 3 a.m.
driving.
This is a raccoon that's ready to get an associate's degree.
So...
There are times in a situation like that where I will say, all right, buddy, let's see what you got.
But I was in a more fast but calm mood, and I pulled my hoopty over one lane, and I was like...
I'm going to let you go by.
Here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to let you go by.
You have grown.
Whoa.
I'm going to let you go by.
It's 3 a.m.
You're obviously a hot dogger.
I'm going to let you get on down the road.
And I pull over, and this guy pulls up next to me, and it's a fucking state trooper.
And he pulls up right next to me, and we're both hauling ass down the road.
And he glares at me.
It's not quite a glare.
It's like a...
you motherfucker you think you really think that you can just drive whatever speed you want and i was like oh hello officer suddenly you're the lady coon and i took i took my foot off the gas i didn't put on the brakes were you still going fast the whole time we were very fast at this point i took my foot off the gas and the car just kind of went boom
and i as i faded back out of his like you know as as he lost eye contact with me as i just sort of like i'm receding he like really stepped on it and and and flew off into the night what a dick i was like well he had somewhere to be but he wanted to take a little minute
to give me the juice.
But the problem with it was it was in some Dodge RT... I don't even know what the hell those cars are called.
It's not a Challenger.
It's a Dodge...
What the hell is it?
Dodge police car.
He's in one of these new Dodges that looks like just a guy that... Dodge Charger, my friend.
Dodge Coronet.
71, Dodge Coronet.
Dodge Charger.
It's a car that any guy that just got out of the Navy is going to have.
Oh, come on.
This is the same kind of car... Wait, Javelin was Starsky & Hutch, right?
This was Dukes of Hazzard?
No, Starsky & Hutch was a Ford Torino.
Torino.
Who had a Javelin?
Was that at an AMC job?
That was my grandma.
She did.
That's right.
My grandfather used to own a Nash dealership that became an AMC dealership.
Seriously?
Yeah, Cincinnati, Ohio.
A Nash dealership?
I don't know if he owned it.
I mean, you can make shit like that up and kids can't check it, so I don't know.
A Nash.
My dad shot down a Japanese zero with a .45.
yeah yeah profiles and courage boy this is a really stupid looking car yeah but the cops are using these things now and they're using them they're they're hopping them up with all kinds of hot paint uh they they're this car is this is so chicken and waffles this car does not know if you go search for it on the internet it really doesn't know what it wants to be it's having an identity crisis
I know a lot of people are buying them like, I'm a hot rodder, and then the cops are driving them, and then there's also Navy wives and stuff.
It's very confusing when you see the cars on the road.
I don't know what that is anymore.
But you know it's either going to be boring, trouble, or both.
Well, yeah.
And so I'm starting to, but, but you look at that and that's kind of a, that, that headlight grill configuration.
Dodge uses that on a lot of different cars.
So you look at your rear view mirror and you're like, is that a station wagon?
Is it a cop?
Is it a, it's, it's too much to, it's too much.
And also the cops around here are driving SUVs now.
It's hard to look.
It's getting harder and harder to know, know when you can speed.
Well, and also, if a guy comes up on your back bumper, is it time for a showdown?
Or do you pull over to the side of the road and let him pass?
But, you know, I mean, okay, so I think they're showing their hand.
Exactly.
I think they're showing their hand just a little bit.
Because, first of all, you know, it's funny.
I was going to send you this photo.
I went and looked at that Chrysler 300.
And the thing is, on first glance, I thought it looked like Jack Elam.
It looks a little bit wall-eyed.
But then if you really look at the front of it, it looks a little bit like, I don't know, like Wall-E or something.
For a long time, I thought it looked like a... It's real happy looking and wall-eyed.
At first, when that thing first came out, I was convinced that it was a Soviet car that they had discovered the plans for in some Russian basement.
It was a Politburo car.
It's got a family truckster kind of feel on the grill.
So now it does.
They've monkeyed it up.
But when that car first came out, it was very sinister looking.
I thought it was great styling.
Well, here's the thing on this one, and we still got to get to your third hoopty before we run out of time here.
This particular charger, it looks a little sinister.
It looks like it's kind of like its brows are, you know what I mean?
The classic kind of brows, not furrowed, but like... Yeah, they made it look like it's got...
Like Japanese anime eyes.
Yes.
Or a Power Ranger that is mad.
Not a Power Ranger.
Ultraman, maybe?
Yeah, somebody who is mad because their samurai sword has had a hard time killing robots or whatever it is.
Whatever anime characters get mad about.
What do they get mad about?
That some furry is trying to stick their pee-pee in their butt?
Yeah, or it could be that somebody bought their daughter's underwear.
Did you know about this?
Yes, you can buy Japanese girl underwear.
Well, did you know there's like a whole name for it?
Let me look up.
Panty fetish.
There's a name.
Here's the thing about Japan.
Yeah.
The Eskimos have 50 words for snow, and the Japanese have one word for every single weird thing you can do with your penis.
The Germans, you know, they'll just slap them together like men's penises.
They put shaisa on the end of the sex thing.
Yeah.
Let me see here.
It's a panty store.
Apparently, it turns out that – I'm trying to find the name of this.
There's actually – look, you know what?
I'm just going to search for Japanese panty store.
There's a store.
There are stores that you can actually go to.
Yes.
And I'm doing this from memory because I only read this about four nights ago.
You're talking about stores you can actually go to on the internet?
But the stores have a name.
Or stores you can actually go into a store, and you open the door, and the bell dings, and a person comes out to help.
I'm going to try and pronounce this.
I don't know.
I can't pronounce this.
B-U-R-U-S-E-R-A.
It's almost like the guy from The Godfather, Burusera.
Burusera.
Yeah, it's a Japanese word coined by combining buruma, meaning bloomers, as in the bottoms of girls' gym suits, and serafuku, meaning sailor suit.
And they sell used girls' gym suits, as well as school uniforms.
You can buy undergarments, swimsuits.
You can also buy socks, sanitary napkins, saliva, urine, and feces.
And so that's a kind of store...
So you can go in there, you know, let's say you're a kid, you're a kid, you want to make a little bit of extra, what is not yen?
What do they got there?
Yakitoris?
What do they call their money?
They got a yen.
They got a yen.
Then what do they have in China?
What's it called in China?
The Chinese dollars.
The chong.
Okay.
So anyway, you go in there.
You got a couple extra bat chong.
And you go in and you want to buy.
Yen.
Yen is the Japanese money.
I'm just going to guess.
The order that these are provided in on the Wikipedia page is roughly how they're laid out in the store.
Like when you go into a Disney store, the sailor suits first.
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Maybe, maybe it's just socks, just socks in the front.
When you go in the Disney store, the princess stuff is in the back, which thank God knock on everything I own my daughter's night into.
But like that's the target, right?
A lot of kids are there.
You know, okay, here's the thing, John.
Why is milk in the back of every grocery store?
Because they want you to have to walk through the store to get the single most popular item, eggs, milk, right?
All the staples are in the back of the store.
That's completely by design.
In this case, if you want tampons, saliva, urine, and feces, you're going to have to walk through some socks, some socks and panties, and some gym suits.
Right, and you might be picking up, you'd be like, you know what, since I'm here, I'm going to grab some of these dirty socks and some of these used gym suit bottoms.
Yeah, I mean, you might have a shopping list.
A bucket of feces from a Japanese girl.
Right.
On your bukkake phone.
The thing is, how can you prove that that feces came from a Japanese girl in a sailor suit?
You can't.
Here's the thing.
This is going to be our fifth property.
It could be prison poop.
Schoolgirls used to openly participate in the sale of their used panties.
So there was a law passed in 2004.
So in 2004, it was reported that some underage girls were instead, after they were banned from selling panties, allowing their clients, called cockies,
hajisea or sniffers to sniff their underwear from directly between their legs what oh those those little little minxes others chose to sell photos of themselves throwing in the used panties for free oh you're to swap me you want a beer buy this nut and bolt for a dollar and i'll throw in a beer listen you can't you can't
I am legally prohibited from selling you my panties, but if you pay to sniff my panties, I will throw the panties in for free.
It's a victimless crime.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
The thing is, it seems to me that if you're driving around in a car like that, this is the kind of thing that's going to be on your mind.
Are my daughters fancy bits at a Bruce era?
Maybe with a photo, maybe not.
Do you think a saliva comes in a jar?
Do you think it's attractively packaged?
Do you know how long you have to milk a little Japanese girl to get a jar of saliva?
Two and a half hours.
Yeah.
Oh, you do know.
Well, that's accounting for the time change.
Yeah, well, you know, they call it the Pacific Rim.
You hold up a giant lollipop.
You put a big bow around her neck.
And then, yeah, just a big bow that's holding a jar on her chin.
Right.
And you're like, here's the lolly.
Yeah.
So the Japanese have eight different words for tampon, but they don't have any words for missionary position.
It's just never come up.
It's never come up.
Do they have eight different kinds of tampons or just eight different words for the same tampon?
No, no.
It's just they're very, very small.
They have transistor tampons there.
Yeah.
Inscrutable.
They're small people because they don't have macaroni and cheese.
Third hooptie.
A third Hooptie is a Chrysler, another Chrysler product, because my family, although in the 80s, my family went foreign, like a lot of people did in the 80s.
You had to.
You had to.
They were literally falling apart on the lot.
They were so bad.
There was a crisis in America, and my dad started buying Audis.
And my mom went through, she cycled through, like she had a Peugeot for a while of crazy things before she settled on.
Your mom bought a Peugeot?
Well, I kind of forced her to.
There was this Peugeot 604, which is a Peugeot that you don't see anymore because they all rusted away and they didn't make very many to begin with.
But it was the Charles Duvall car.
It looks like a BMW.
It was a beautiful car.
Beautifully made.
It handled beautifully.
It was very stately, the 604.
And I talked my mom into buying this car because I was like, listen, I'm in high school now.
We live in a nice neighborhood.
We need a car that represents.
We need a foreign sedan, but I don't want us to get some Mercedes or Audi or something, a Volvo that everybody has.
I want us to have like a... And I was so crazy that...
I talked her into this crazy car and she bought it.
And it was one of those cars where like anytime you went up on the curb, you dented the titanium rims that cost $5,000 to polish and all this stuff.
It was a completely impractical car, but it was very fast.
In any case, we went through a bad period there in the 80s where we started buying foreign cars.
But up until that point, from the 40s to the 80s, both of my parents were Mopar people.
And they always owned some kind of Plymouth or some kind of Dodge.
And so anyway, I have two Chrysler products now.
And it is because I have...
I have inherited them from my parents.
But the third hooptie is a Chrysler Sebring convertible.
A white Sebring convertible.
And you used to wear those Stan Smith tennis shoes?
That sounds like the Stan Smith tennis shoes of cars.
I still wear Stan Smith tennis shoes, and I drive around in a white Sebring convertible, and people think that I'm gay.
Yeah.
Eating dinner at 3 o'clock.
They think I am a middle-aged gay man.
And I am.
I am happy to be mistaken for a middle-aged gay man.
Because who else would drive a white convertible around Seattle?
You like to let people know that you like the top-down.
With a big beard.
If you were a runaway, sitting on your suitcase from a motel, and I...
And I pulled up in this white searing convertible.
You could get in there and be perfectly safe because you know what?
I'm listening to Steeler's Wheel on the stereo.
There's nothing bad.
There's nothing bad can happen.
Right.
You could like talk about shoes and line dancing.
Right.
So that's my cruising hoopty.
Like I get in that car when it's a sunny day and I'm feeling like, but it also, it's got a, it's got a V6.
It's not a, it's no shirker.
so I cruise around the neighborhood in that.
And then it's also, you know, since I live, uh, since I live in the black neighborhood, it also gets respect from the, from the middle-aged black guys who are like, all right, that car has got a little bit of class.
Like you, uh, you're, you're a smooth operator.
Your shoes match your hat.
Hmm.
If you know what I'm saying.
Is that a, is that a, is that a pubic hair thing?
Never mind.
Okay, you got three hoopties.
You got three hoopties.
You got a 2000 VW Jetta, 80K pretty decent condition, Chrysler LHS sedan, 97, and then this is cop car.
You got the Chrysler Sebring.
You got the Stan Smith car.
That's right.
What I need to add to this...
Is, I think, a 1977.
Well, it may come as no surprise.
I have surmised that there's no fucking question.
There is plenty of room in this lineup for a fourth hoopty with shiny, shiny seats and lots and lots of air fresheners.
You know what, though?
You should go in.
Do you think you have a pretty good sense of smell?
Oh, yeah.
I have a sense of smell that haunts me.
For pretty much everything but yourself.
No, no, no.
I recognize that I have a very distinctive musk, which people equate with both masculinity and also virility, sexual prowess.
You have these amazingly Victorian euphemisms that you only use when discussing yourself.
Mm-hmm.
And I've found over the years that my shirts, my old shirts are prized, prized by young women in the Northwest.
If they can get their hands on one of my old shirts, they wear it to bed at night and they luxuriate in that musky smell.
And they say, I would like to make babies.
Have you thought about opening a modest store?
Well, it occurred to me the other day to sell my shirts on the internet.
Or saliva.
But I'm not going to sell my saliva.
That's all yours.
Nobody gets that.
But the question of selling your shirts on the internet is, do I stay anonymous and say, I'm just a guy who's got some shirts for sale.
I'm trying to clear out my closet.
Or do I come forth and say, these are my shirts, and risk that some creep is going to buy them?
I think the creeps are the least of your problems, John.
Just so they can wallow in the musk.
I have two contradictory answers.
First of all, if you are going to sell them on the internet, it's got to be made clear that it's John Roddick.
But my advice to you is to not – we'll cut all of this out.
Do you not sell it?
Can I say three letters DNA?
Somebody goes out and they buy a known John Roddick Musk shirt, and there's going to be – I know you're not a danderous person, but there's going to have to be a little bit of dander.
Unless you go in and do a full-on lice treatment type situation and comb it carefully and get a Helmac, there's going to be a little bit of John on there.
Now, my washing machine has a sanitize setting.
What if I sanitized it?
What the fuck does that mean?
It's not just hot?
Does it shoot some kind of jizzy sanitizing liquid?
I've never used it.
It's one of these fancy washing machines, and it has sanitize.
You should do an A-B test.
You should rip a shirt in half, sanitize it, and see what happens.
I'm thinking it might be a centrifuge that I can use to make some uranium-235.
Make some sparks.
236.
Whatever it takes.
Oh, so many.
I like Darth of Options.