Ep. 184: "Mr. Choöde"
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
I'm sorry I'm late.
That's okay.
I keep forgetting in the wintertime that I have to warm up my truck for an hour and a half.
How cold is it there?
Oh, right now it's not that cold.
It's in the cold range, but it's not like cold, cold.
But the truck doesn't know that.
The truck doesn't think for itself.
That's not really that useful.
I'm going to go look this up.
It's 40-ish.
42, let's say.
I'm just going to check the internet.
Okay, let's see what the internet says.
Let's say 42.
Well, first of all, when you go to this website and you search for weather in Seattle, Washington, it gives you the address of 490 James Street.
I don't know where that is.
490 James.
I probably revealed too much already.
It's downtown.
It's 37 and overcast, and it feels like 37.
so so i'm my calibration is five degrees off and i i'm gonna have to i'm just gonna have to chalk that up to feeling like uh to being an optimist oh i love that about you right you're always looking on the bright side it's like uh it's 40 no it's 42 it's not 37 yeah 37 is pretty cold yeah it's cold you're gonna have a scattered uh scattered light rain until about three o'clock and then it will be cloudy
I think that's consistent with my experience.
Does it say anything about, like, road, ragey, fat, middle-aged guys in F-250s?
Yeah.
It says here you can look for that to start a little bit before 4.
It will reach its peak at about 535.
And there'll probably be some injuries by 7.
Yeah, I got a little glimpse of it this morning, but I just turned my windshield wipers on and away it went.
You still listen to that Elias Smith song?
Yeah.
What are you driving now to get to where you go, if I could ask?
Well, you know, I've got my 1979 GMC Suburban, which I'm doubling down on the vintage GMC.
Sure, sure.
Welcome to the family.
Thank you.
But the GMC only has an AM radio.
And it only has one speaker, and it's in the middle of the dash.
And the one speaker was, I think, designed to communicate only in beeps in World War II.
I bet your Bible stuff still sounds pretty good.
The Bible stuff's good.
There is a great station in Seattle called KIXI that always used to play big band music.
But as the big band generation has died, now the old people are that strange, strange generation born in the 30s.
which nobody cares about.
They don't have a name.
They're the lost generation.
Oh, that's a shame.
It's terrible.
They're pre-baby boomers, but they're post-greatest generation.
And they, I swear to you, Merlin, had the worst music of any people ever.
Let's see.
Yeah, you know, they're sort of like an early version of our generation.
The in-betweeners generation.
If you're born in the 30s, you're going to be, you know what you're going to be?
You're going to be the people who screamed at Frank Sinatra is what you're going to be.
That's exactly right.
Vaughn Monroe.
But Frank Sinatra's early stuff.
No, no, no.
I mean like Sinatra 1.0.
Right.
Teeny bopper Sinatra.
Yeah, teeny bopper.
People forget about, you know, I think a lot of people don't really know about Frank Sinatra.
I think you're right.
Well, I mean, I think there's at least two, maybe three interesting things a lot of people don't know about Frank Sinatra.
First of all, they don't realize that he was maybe Rudy Valli before him, but he was one of the original giant national teen heartthrobs.
Pop star.
Big pop star.
That's right.
But basically, as we know from The Godfather,
that he was working for.
I always say Tommy Shaw when I mean to say Tommy Dorsey.
It would be kind of great if Tommy Shaw had a big band.
Yeah, it would.
And if Frank Sinatra was the singer?
Oh, mama, I'm here with life on the long arm of the law.
And so he was under contract to them.
He was basically, he was just another guy working for them.
And then, you know, and then the Don got him out of the contract.
The Don.
Was it Mr. Waltz?
Put the horse head in Mr. Waltz's bed.
My goodness.
My goodness, what a wonderful scene.
Frank Sinatra.
And then I had a funny CD of his in the 80s.
Excuse me, in the late 80s, which was...
Mr. Waltz.
You had a CD of his in the 80s?
She was the best piece of ass I ever had.
She, yeah, got on the heroin.
That's a shame what happened to that girl.
He ruined her.
Listen, Frank Sinatra.
He fucked my wife on the bar, on the bar.
He had several interesting things happen.
One of them was that, like, at one point, you know, there was a big strike.
The musicians went on strike in the 40s.
Do you know about this?
Oh, yeah, the big musician strike of the 1940s.
I hate you.
God damn it.
The musicians went on strike, and so they were debating, like, what are we going to do?
We cannot record.
And so there's this, I don't know if it was Columbia, there's this really weird series of songs he did that's just him.
Unrecorded.
It's just a hat in a room for three hours.
One take, one and done.
But yeah, and so he had recordings of him with basically just acapella background singing.
Anyway, it's not super interesting.
And then what people don't realize is he was a wash up.
And so that's, again, it always comes back.
All roads lead back to the Godfather.
Because the story apparently was true.
That like if he needed that role, he needed a second coming.
Well, before that, though, it was From Here to Eternity.
I think that's the movie they're referencing as a Romana Clay in The Godfather.
But it was true.
His career was on the skids.
And he was what?
He was maybe in his 30s?
And then he went to jail?
They arrested him?
You are so excited to tell the story of Frank Sinatra.
He's an American icon.
He's a horrible human being.
I've talked about this.
And according to something I heard on public radio, he's the reason, his family, his estate is the reason why we get all this, why there's more careful control of the IP on dead people.
Did you know about that?
You are blowing my mind here with the tendrils of the Frank Sinatra story.
Tina Sinatra, since his death circa 1990, has run his empire.
And basically what they were running into was that Frank Sinatra was being put on everything.
They said this has to stop.
Long story short, you can go listen to Planet Money on this.
It's a very good program.
And they basically came up with this new kind of law that said that, you know, and that's why the Elvis family, you know, the Elvis family puts his face on everything now.
But that's their money.
They control that.
Sure, sure, sure.
Whereas the James Dean family and the Marilyn Monroe family, they end up on like cocaine mirrors all across America.
James Dean in a red jacket pointing.
All those pictures that I see, I'm astonished that these have such a tremendous life and a varied life.
But those pictures of like...
Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Bob Marley, John Lennon, and Roy Orbison or something all playing pool.
Oh, it's like dogs playing poker?
Yeah, called the Legends or something.
Oh, sure.
You know, if there's bands got heaven, it must be a hell of a band, that kind of thing.
Yeah, Jimi Hendrix is in there sometimes.
That's so weird to me when people do that.
Yeah, and you see them, you see these, like, it's not really a poster.
I'm used to seeing it as an illuminated mirror.
In a certain kind of... It's more like a kind of painting in style.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a painting, right.
It's like if somebody... I think what happened is somebody noticed that the Traveling Wilburys had happened and they were like, what if we had the ultimate Traveling Wilburys?
It's like musical fanfic.
Musical fanfic.
That's exactly right.
But I mean, that band would sound awful.
Terrible.
Primarily because... What would James Dean do?
Play the drums?
Yeah.
I think bongos.
What's he even there for?
He would be in the Davy Jones part.
He would be the one with maybe like six maracas or five tambourines.
Remember Davy Jones always had way too many percussion instruments?
There were a lot of tambourines.
Well, and the thing is, I always wanted him to wear a Ricky Ricardo shirt.
Oh, man.
Ricky Ricardo was a talented guy.
You know, I miss all these heroes.
The thing about the 1930s generation.
I would watch a band with Ricky Ricardo and James Dean and maybe Roy Orbison.
Roy Orbison.
Marilyn Monroe would be playing drums.
They'd look like the Honeycombs.
It would be totally cool.
Frank Sinatra was right back.
He was the most, he's the only one of those guys we remember.
Which one?
There were dozens of crooners.
Oh, sure.
Oh, we got the crooners.
And they were making music.
They were making this treacly, terrible music.
Oh, you got Chuck Hatman.
You've got Michael Microphone.
You got Bobby Soxford.
Yeah, Bobby Sox.
Bobby Soxford.
They called him Bobby Sox for short.
I love that guy.
He always said everything two times.
He had to change it to Bobby Sox because of racism.
He had to change it to Bobby Sox UK.
But so that is the music that I can hear in my truck.
So as per usual, I generally leave the radio off when I'm traveling in the truck.
Yeah.
You know, to me, that's a little bit like reggae.
I can take a little bit of that.
I can take a little bit of that.
And there are some kinds of things.
There's a show I like a lot on public radio called Fascinating Rhythm.
And it's this guy who goes in and does like it's basically music of the early to mid 20th century.
He does something thematic and he'll play stuff like, you know, Bill Murray, the original Bill Murray, like the old Irish crooner.
He'll play these old songs from like like like cylinders and 78s and stuff like that.
I enjoy that.
I enjoy that.
But like like reggae, a little bit goes a long way for me.
Sure.
William William Murray was my father.
I'm Bill Murray.
Dr. Dr. Murray.
Right.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Story tears in his eyes, I guess.
That was what was so amazing about Nelson Riddle, right?
We think of Nelson Riddle as being kind of corny now, but at the time, those Nelson Riddle arrangements were like sweeping the slate clean of all these dumb violinists, this like lame-ass soft music.
Yeah, well, like you said, Triakley.
I mean, I'm not a scholar of this era, but so right now we got on there, Let's Fall in Love by Diana Krall is playing on KIXI right now.
You know, 50s at 50 for your afternoon drive is coming up.
So what's crazy is that that John Tesh has become a major, major figure in the he has a radio program.
It's the very first banner on the page.
It's him superimposed very poorly in Photoshop over the city of Seattle, looking like he's sleeping it off a little bit.
Yeah, and it's one of those syndicated programs where he comes on and he's a friendly guy.
He's got a voice that makes you trust him right away.
Sure.
And he's like, hey, these are the sweet sounds of our youth or something.
What is it?
Sound of our lives.
Yeah, and how the hell is... John Tesh is like 50, right?
I mean, he's not a member of this lost generation, but he's really selling them...
He's really selling them.
He's 63.
He's from Garden City, New York.
He was married to Connie Celica.
Nothing wrong with that.
You know, I was a little bit late getting in here, and it seems like you've had an extra cup of coffee or something because you are checking the internet with some alacrity.
I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry.
No, no, no.
It's fantastic.
490 James Street is the Metropolitan Management Company, just so you know.
Right.
Yeah, that's when you ask for weather in Seattle, they tell you about the Metropolitan Manage Company.
Oh, they got one star on Yelp, just so you know.
Well, I feel like what you expect is that they are going to give you the temperature at the airport.
That's what they usually do.
Oh, yeah.
But 490 James, I wonder how much they paid to be the weather source.
Oh, you think that's a placement?
Yeah, I feel like that's sort of like Costco field or something.
Okay, I searched for SEA.
Search engine optimization.
Where the fuck is my bell?
Who moves my bell?
Where did my bell go?
I don't know.
Where's my bell?
Holy shit.
Did somebody steal my bell?
Oh, wait.
Oh, it's hiding back here.
Wait a minute.
Mine's not hiding.
Mine is full on missing.
Search engine optimization.
Yeah.
At the Seattle airport at 17793 International Boulevard, it is 36 degrees, but it feels like 33.
Oh, wow.
Well, that's probably, that accounts, or that is accounted for by the wind that they get up there.
They're getting a little bit of light rain in 10 minutes.
That'll end in about 50 minutes.
Did you know that a fighter plane taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier... Is this a word problem, John?
Okay.
A fighter plane takes off from an aircraft carrier at 30 knots, and a train leaves Minneapolis headed the other way, and it's going 11 knots.
I'm going to have to do knots to miles, aren't I?
At what point does the fighter plane overfly...
The railroad train if you have no idea where the fighter plane is.
5.30 p.m.
at 490 James Street.
Wow.
Yep.
You have some math skills.
That's Common Core.
I learned the Common Core system.
But I feel like that was an imaginary number.
Oh.
Yeah.
Solve for X. So we got music.
We got Frank Sinatra.
We got bands.
But what I was saying is that what I didn't realize is that a fighter plane needs to have a 30-knot headwind
in order to successfully take off from an aircraft carrier.
But, not coincidentally, 30 knots is the speed that an aircraft carrier can reach when it's really gunning it.
Oh, see, those engineers are smart.
See, isn't that nice?
So they just, even if there's no wind at all, they can get 30-knot headwind by kicking it into high gear.
See, I don't understand this.
30 knots is 34.5234 miles per hour.
Why do you need a different thing?
It's so close.
It's so close.
It is close.
A knot.
Now, a knot is based on, they used to put actual knots in ropes, and that's how they would measure how far apart it was.
Yeah.
It was like as long as two knots on the king's rope.
They'd spin it out the back of the ship, and they'd be like, whoa, we're traveling, you know, 11 knots.
How many fathoms in a knot?
Oof.
These are things I... There's a very small part of me that feels like I should have this information, but a much larger part that is glad that I don't.
Glad that I don't have this clogging up my brain pipes.
And you know how many knots are in a league?
Well, a fathom is six feet.
Now, a story is 10 feet.
I would call, when I say it's 100 feet, I think of that as being 10 stories.
Yeah, I think it's about 10 feet.
Yeah, 10 feet, 10 stories.
Okay, all right.
Feet to stories.
So if it's like 800 feet, that's like an 80-story building.
What?
That's crazy.
There are hardly any 80-story buildings.
There's probably some kind of spooky action at a distance thing.
Like when it gets further up, it compresses, like forced perspective.
I wonder about that.
Yeah, I don't know.
Do you think that skyscraper builders are still using Greek perspective in their constructions?
Greek perspective?
Greek perspective.
That sounds like a show on C-SPAN that not many people watch.
Greek perspective would be a great show.
I'm actually thinking about starting a show.
a new show to to really flesh out my my nascent empire of podcasts oh that's a great idea a new show okay a new show that talks about the greek perspective so we'll go a lot of directions with that we'll have guests you can have spanakopita and all we all we the only thing that needs to tie the episodes together is what's the greek perspective
It just has to be something Greek about it.
Somebody talks about something.
Somebody talks about, you know, whatever it is, pressing suits or or repointing a brick facade.
Yeah.
And then it's like, well, what's the Greek perspective on this?
Right.
Because they've been around for a pretty long time.
They had a lot of time to look at things.
So they would have a perspective on a lot of things.
We could look at the old Greek perspective.
We could look at the new Greek perspective.
Like a classical Greek, a modern Greek, contemporary Greek.
Sort of that middle period Greek.
This is going to be huge.
Now you can do that show with Dan or you can do that on your own, you think?
I feel like I've got a podcast with you that I'm very happy with.
I've got a podcast with Dan that I'm also happy with.
And now I feel like we need some new blood in here.
This would be a chance to bring in some of your— John Sarcusa.
John Sarcusa could be on the Greek perspective.
Well, I wonder, you know, Sarcusa, right?
Well, he's Italian, which is almost Greek.
Yeah.
I think Italian is kind of between Jewish and Greek.
It's a little bit in between.
That's interesting.
Between Jewish and Greek.
Sort of Italian.
That would be another good show.
You could have a whole empire here.
You could be like Jesse Thorne.
You just need to get that creepy beard.
Yeah.
If I had a show called Between Jewish and Greek, listen, if I were going to have a threesome, that's where I'd want to be.
Oh, dear.
Oh, my goodness.
I know you don't like talking about sex.
Well, there's so many things I don't like talking about.
It's been a while.
I haven't been able to arrange a time.
To have a podcast with Dan in the last couple of weeks.
That can be tricky sometimes.
It's really tricky.
He's pretty busy.
It's been a little frustrating.
And I have these boxes keep stacking up.
I've got a lot of boxes here.
Oh, and that's the whole point.
That's the MacGuffin.
That's the Greek perspective is that you can't open those until you're on his program.
But I don't feel that way.
I feel like I've got to start working through this mail, but I don't...
I don't... Well, look, here's the thing.
I have three things we have to talk about today.
We already talked about Frank Sinatra, so that's settled.
We've got to get an update on your GM CRV, and we have to pimp our show at Sketchfest.
But that leaves us ample time for you to open a box.
Oh, thanks, Merlin.
That's fantastic.
Well, you know, I know how it is.
You don't want to get loaded up.
You've got to spend a penny.
If you want, go ahead and open a box.
That's right.
Take a penny, leave a penny.
Take a penny, leave a penny.
Okay, let's talk about our show at Sketchfest because I'm very excited about it.
It's only, what, our...
Fourth live Roderick on the Line show?
Are you going to count the one where you yelled at the people?
Remember that?
Remember how loud that room was?
Oh, did I yell at them and tell them to shut up?
It was very distracting.
Remember?
We've had mixed success with live shows.
Oh, right.
The first one ever when we were in the terrarium.
We were by a stuffed ape.
Lizard.
Maybe it was a dick dick.
I'm not sure.
We were by some kind of a stuffed animal.
Yeah.
And then people were having party drinks in the back of the room and shuck and jive and playing grab ass.
That's right.
We had a very attentive audience sitting in chairs.
And then in the back, it was like a meet and greet for some software ding-a-lings.
Oh, yeah.
It was like, hey, you guys shut up back there.
Yeah.
And then the whole room erupted.
They were not that receptive to your message.
Well, those guys weren't.
But, you know, they're not listening to anybody, right?
They're the young geniuses.
There's not that many venues in San Francisco where you can perform in a room with live penguins.
So that's, that's a nice thing about that room.
People are there to see the penguins.
Let's be honest.
I feel like we could maybe, we could be the ones that change that.
Yeah.
Live penguins, live penguins in every venue in San Francisco.
Greek perspective.
We're going to be at Sketch Fest this week, this Friday and four days from now.
This will come out today is Monday.
This will come out later today.
There's not really any really particularly good URL that I can give to you for this.
I made a URL for this that is kind of inscrutable.
You're kind of a maker.
I'm a maker.
I'm a maker bot.
You can go to i-zero.us slash rotl-sfsf-16, but I don't recommend it.
You can search for Roderick on the lines, Sketchfest.
Just, you know, iOS will probably, three times for me today, it has auto-corrected Sketchfest to sketchiest.
Three times today.
So, you know, buyer beware.
But Friday, January 8th, 7.30 p.m.
to 9 p.m., John and I will be appearing to do live Roderick on the line at a wonderful venue that I really like a lot called the Swedish American Hall.
I love that place, too.
Have you been in there?
Oh, yeah.
Well, we used to obviously play underneath it.
You know, you play Cafe Du Nord.
Yeah.
I played Du Nord a thousand times.
But I went up, I saw, let's see, a couple of bands up in the Swedish American portion.
including like an acoustic spoon.
Acoustic spoon, I would love that.
Spoon up there playing acoustic.
It was great.
I love that drummer, man.
His name's Jimmy, you know?
He's a very nice guy.
He seems like a nice guy.
He's a very good drummer.
He's a very good drummer and a very, very nice guy.
I think he's our generation's Ringo.
I'm going to say nicest guy in Spoon.
Nice.
Oh, that doesn't seem too hard.
You got the other guy, right?
What's this guy over here?
Where's the soup?
We got no soup.
So, yes, I'm very excited about it because last year at the second Sketch Fest we did...
I had a wonderful, wonderful time at that show.
That was really nice.
They gave me bourbon.
And remember when we met that lady who wanted to meet you and we took her away from her husband and brought her upstairs?
Oh, it wasn't that wonderful.
That sounded so much worse than it was.
That really sounded terrible when I put it that way.
No, but it was a wonderful time.
It was nice.
We had a nice chat.
We had a nice chat.
I'm looking at a photo of it here on the page.
You can see us holding microphones and it was green.
Very dynamic.
It's very Italian.
It was very Italian.
The one thing I regret from that show is that someone made a whole stack of five cards.
Oh, here we go.
Oh, poor John.
You think about stuff.
You remember stuff you did.
So she made this whole stack of these things that, from what I can tell, each 3x5 card had a reference to something from the program or an extrapolation from that.
And she had placed them carefully at the front of the stage.
I think she'd gotten other people to fill them out, too.
I think that's true.
I think she crowdsourced it.
They were in different handwriting.
And she intended it as a nice gift or maybe something that we would either treasure or utilize.
And I walked on the stage and I saw this thing and I recognized it as some kind of – some sort of offering.
But I assumed immediately that it was an attempt to usurp –
uh, what we were going to do by, uh, by, you know, by, uh, asserting some sort of fan ownership over, over us or the show.
And so I, uh, so I kicked the, uh, pile of cards and,
Into the audience.
Did I kick it or did I pick it up and throw it?
I think you flung it.
We talked about this in an episode.
You like to come out and own the stage.
You complain about things.
You move chairs around.
You berate the staff because that's part of your prep.
Yeah, I come out, I say, the lights are terrible, and these aren't where the chairs belong.
And, you know, you move it around, and I'm like, what the hell is this stack of cards?
I picked it up, I guess, and I thrown it.
You're like Dan Harmon.
That room was made for you.
Yeah.
But then later, I saw the young woman picking up the cards.
Oh, God.
With a kind of brokenhearted look on her face.
Oh, I was so, I felt like I was such a villain.
Would you recognize her if you saw her again?
I think I might.
I mean, maybe if her face wasn't so pained the next time I saw her, maybe I wouldn't recognize her.
Well, I think it's very unlikely that she will come to the show this year.
But if she were to come to the SF Sketch Fest performance of Roderick on the Line at the Swedish American Hall Friday, January 8th from 7.30 to 9 p.m.,
In San Francisco, California.
No, in San Francisco, California, I should say that.
It's in a great area.
It's accessible by Muni.
It's pretty safe.
It's near a safe way.
And I don't see, now, if we knew her name, we could put her on the list.
Right, see, that would be a nice thing.
We can't just say, look for a lady with a pain, look on her face, because that's most of our fans.
Well, and the thing is, now that you've said that, we're going to get like 11 people that's like, I'm the lady.
We'll have them fight.
We'll have them fight shirtless with sticks.
That neighborhood didn't used to be good.
That gas station on the corner?
Yeah.
Yeah, there's some pretty, you get a lot of people.
That's a very interesting area because it's kind of, it's on the edge of the Castro and kind of getting near DuBose Triangle a little bit.
But yeah, it's changed a lot.
Walgreens is way nicer now.
You know, I love that you decide the quality of an area by how nice their Walgreens is.
I don't decide anything.
I am an observer of these things.
Oh, right.
Okay.
That's right.
I'm sorry.
Here's what I'm going to say, though.
We haven't worked this out ahead of time, but first of all, anybody who hasn't come, please come.
Please sell the place out.
Otherwise, it won't be as funny.
But if that lady does come there and approaches us, I won't say that you'll apologize.
I will apologize to her, and we'll try to do something nice for her.
Yeah, it will be very hard for me to apologize.
Of course it would.
It's not part of my brand.
You could do a big city apology.
But listen, I've already talked about it.
I'm sorry you were upset.
I've already talked about it on two programs, which is my way.
I mean, that's worth like, well, shit, what is that worth?
You apologize via sleepless nights.
I say that's probably worth four grand.
Four grand worth of apology.
$4,000.
Yeah, just by referring to it and saying that I've been fretting about it for a year.
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Yeah.
Okay.
Anyway, let's close this up by saying, please, SF Sketchiest, please come out to Sketchiest at the Swedish American Hall.
It's on Market Street.
Where is it?
What's the exact address?
Everybody knows where this is.
It's on 2174 Market Street.
Right in the middle.
It's kind of in the middle.
It's not exactly the Castro.
It's kind of the Castro.
Yeah, it's the Castro.
It's the Castro.
Yeah, yeah, but it's a great place, and we'll be there doing yuck it up comedy.
Also, I guess I'm doing a thing with Thrilling Adventure Hour, and a very interesting thing I learned yesterday.
Oh, are they doing a Thrilling Adventure?
Are they still doing that?
I thought they quit doing that.
Well, you know, it's one of those things where they quit doing it, and then they keep doing it.
He can't be stopped.
They write a lot of material for that team, Acker and Blacker.
Ben's compulsive.
He used to listen to our show.
Did you know that?
Who, Ben?
Yeah.
Ben or the other Ben?
The other Ben.
The big Ben.
Oh, big Ben.
Yeah, a lot of people listen to our show.
A lot of people used to listen to our show.
I'm always surprised.
When I find out people that used to listen to the show.
No, the number of people that continue to listen to our show.
You know, and I think we're expanding into the billionaire class.
We keep mentioning them, and now I feel like they're putting us over the overhead speakers there at Facebook now.
I'm just going to say this, and then I don't want to talk about it, but I'm going to say this.
I keep noticing, and we have a large trans audience.
Is that right?
Yeah, maybe just because I notice it more, but that makes me feel good.
I like that.
Yeah.
I like that.
Yeah, me too.
I don't know why.
I mean, it's just a cool thing.
And it's just seeing more trans people.
It makes me happy.
Right now, 2174 Market Street is 51 degrees, mostly cloudy.
It feels like 51 degrees.
It's much nicer in San Francisco today than it is in Seattle, or much warmer in San Francisco.
Had some scattered light rain this morning.
Does your mom know about forecast.io?
She's a weather person, right?
Oh, yeah.
She follows the weather like nobody's business.
Forecast.io is really cool, though, because it uses this thing called Dark Sky, where it can actually tell you when it's about to start raining and when it's going to stop.
Dark Sky was one of my favorite Grateful Dead songs.
Beep, beep.
That was their biggest hit.
Biggest hit.
It was called Boop Boop-a-Doo, 1987.
They had the skeletons in the video.
Very end of their career, or the trailing off of their career.
Started their shitty career.
Come on out to SF Sketchiest.
You pile on so much, and I give you the Grateful Dead.
I say nothing.
You sit there on the internet, and you say terrible things about bands, and then I don't say anything.
I know.
I'm silent.
I just favorite A.C.
Newman's tweets, and I say nothing to you.
I know.
The thing is, a lot of people think that I'm trolling when I go online and I say there's nothing good about the Smiths.
You?
But I am trolling, first of all.
And I'm trolling just with the biggest, most delighted smile on my face.
But it's also 100% true.
John doesn't know what he's talking about.
John doesn't know.
The thing about Morrissey is he only ever learned five notes and he utilized them in every melody of every song.
I wish I could contradict that, but it's kind of true.
He kind of does a thing where he sings a couple notes.
Every time you go after the Smiths, I imagine you are secretly or not secretly just trying to needle Sean Nelson.
Well, Colin Malloy, too.
Oh, of course.
The Barrowsmith's boy.
Because Colin also, you know, a lot of his melodies are within a pretty narrow range.
But Colin's melodies I like.
Extruded violin columnar.
Ha, ha, ha.
Yeah, I'm trying to pull the pigtails of a lot of these.
Ow, ow, ow, ow.
Quit it.
And I roped A.C.
Newman in, and he was really mad.
He's back.
Hello.
He's changing his water filters.
But I do feel – the thing is my sister listened to Duran Duran and the Smiths compulsively during that era.
Oh, so you're obligated to not like them.
Well, no, but here's the thing.
I heard that music through the wall.
In equal portions, probably a little bit more Duran Duran, but tons and tons of Smiths.
That's pretty cool.
Well.
I mean, because if she's listening to Duran Duran, it probably wasn't later than 1986.
No, no, no.
It was very early.
So she was into the Smiths when they were still kind of obscure.
Oh, for sure.
Because she was one of those almost famous type of children who was working at the coolest record store in Anchorage when she was like 13.
Oh, man.
And she waltzed in there with that confidence that she has.
And she was like, I'm working here now.
And the rest of the staff, who were all in their 20s, adopted her.
And suddenly she'd gone from this girl that was playing soccer in knee-high stripy socks to being somebody who had platinum hair and was wearing vintage thrift store dresses and working at the coolest record store in town.
I was like, who the hell is this child?
Do you ever see any of your sister and your daughter?
I feel like I see...
They got a lot of moxie, both of them.
Yeah, they do.
They have a ton.
They have somewhat similar kinds of moxie.
A ton of moxie.
And one of the things that very much surprises me, when my kid was born, I was like, oh, my sister is going to try and corrupt her constantly.
She's going to be over here teaching her hip-hop terminology.
And...
encouraging her to become a skater.
And what it turned out is my sister is one of the chief disciplinarians in my daughter's life.
My sister just brooks no monkey business.
Wow.
And so they have all these sort of
They have a close relationship and they have all these little tete-a-tetes where Susan is like, listen, you can't do that.
You can't get away with that here.
That's so great.
You sit up straight in your chair, this type of thing.
Does she listen?
Oh, absolutely.
Because it's coming from Susan, which is like she's just enough outside the core machine that she can have
She has the greater impact.
But, you know, I always had this fear that Susan would be there like, you know, skater boys are the cutest boys.
Right, right.
You never know.
Just seeding, just sowing the seed of just future chaos.
I wish I could collaborate more with the people who are slightly outside the core because they have the hugest impact.
They do.
My brother-in-law and sister-in-law, my daughter adores them.
And they're so influential on her.
My daughter, who only eats a couple things at home, will try almost anything if Auntie Susie makes it.
And then she gets to watch movies with the F word in it and stuff.
And she gets to be grown up there.
And it's like, I wish I could seed them certain ideas.
Like, hey, wouldn't it be great if we brushed our teeth?
Wouldn't that be cool?
Hey, thumbs up, skater boy.
Hey, you put your retainers in.
That's awesome.
Radical.
Chaka bra.
Chaka bra.
Yeah, I feel like if I lived in San Francisco, I would be one of the people slightly outside of your core that had an enormous influence on your daughter.
oh man but unfortunately i live far enough away that every time i come it's like uncle john is here oh like hide all the breakable things oh no well she loved she loved the rv uh she thought it smelled kind of funny well by which she thinks everything smells funny but uh i didn't notice that i didn't notice that she thought it smelled funny but she really liked it she really wants oh i've got to say we're getting a cat what yeah we should probably talk about that at some point we're adopting a cat
Well, so the reason the RV smells funny is that I routed the exhaust through the cabin.
For performance issues.
Yeah, that's right.
It just seemed like a tailpipe was superfluous to my needs.
Oh, yeah.
You got open carry laws.
You shouldn't have an open beverage.
And you get a little bit of the exhaustion there.
It calms you down.
Calms you down.
That's right.
Shh.
Shh.
You're not going to make it over the mountains, but it's okay.
It's all right.
You're getting a cat.
Yeah.
That seems... I don't know.
I've never seen you to have a pet.
That's very interesting.
I think in life...
Well, in life, it's important to look at patterns of what people show interest in before you try to push them into things.
This is why I've never been a huge fan.
Nothing against the Girl Scouts, except it's not an organization I love.
We kind of pushed her into Girl Scouts.
She never had any interest in any Girl Scout things, and she hated it.
So a little bit against the Girl Scouts.
Yeah.
You said nothing against the Girl Scouts.
Well, of course I did.
That's what you do.
It's the internet.
A little bit against the Girl Scouts.
They're the world.
They're the worst.
They're the worst.
Oh, my God.
It's the worst.
Oh, you got a patch for selling cookies.
That's pretty weird.
But in this case, she really, really, really has wanted a pet.
And I have been pretty adamant about this, that, you know, this is not a toy.
Like all the toys that you open and play with for a minute and put away because, you know, the fun is opening, not actually caring for and enjoying and collecting.
Yeah.
That ain't going to work with an animal.
No.
Setting aside all of the money that it takes to have a pet that I'm not sure how many people account for until it's too late.
You're expected to have surgeries for your animals nowadays.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know about this, right?
You spend $60,000 keeping some dumb 14-year-old cat alive.
What an asshole.
It's like, you know what?
Just die.
Right into the Soylent Green machine.
We won't even notice the fur.
I couldn't agree more.
It's like, I don't know.
There's certain kinds of things I don't need.
And one of them is a cat that lives for a very, very, very long time.
Yeah.
A cat that's blind and smells bad and skin and bones and is like... I had friends who love their pets so much.
I had a friend who had this incredibly senile, angry, blind, deaf, incontinent dog.
And this dog would just walk around the house periodically barking at nothing, bump into something and shit.
Yeah, blind.
And we'd just go...
I dated a girl who decided in her infinite wisdom that the additional dog that she needed in addition to her Shih Tzu was a Great Dane.
See, that's like buying a bunny at Easter.
Do you know what you're in for with a Great Dane?
That's not a beginner dog.
She rescued a Great Dane who was, I think, already nine, which is already two years older than any Great Dane should live.
And this dog was lovely.
I mean, just a delightful creature.
God shined upon this dog.
I really liked the dog.
But she let the dog sleep in her bed.
And the dog weighed 400 pounds.
It was the size of a horse.
No, they are.
Every Great Dane I have met personally was great and calm.
But I mean, my sense is that, I mean, obviously this is true for things like police dogs or guard dogs, but there are certain kinds of dogs that, like a lot of people think, oh, you know, I like that dog from Frasier.
But if you get one of those little Jack Russell Terriers, man, they are... Pugs.
Pugs are super sweet, but they want all the attention all the time.
Or an Australian Shepherd.
They will herd everything.
The only reason to have an Australian Shepherd is if you have a sheep problem.
Or like a border collie.
They will herd your coffee table.
They can't stop.
I do personally have a sheep problem.
Oh, is that right?
You got an infestation?
Yeah, but I still don't need one of those.
I call them with a helicopter.
Yeah.
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But here's the thing about that Great Dane is that she let the Great Dane sleep in her bed and then the Great Dane started to shit the bed.
Oh, God.
But she's already made it okay to be there.
That's right.
So she's cleaning up Great Dane shit, which, I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen a Great Dane take a shit.
Copious.
But, yeah, it's like shitting out a printing press.
made of poop.
It's like a 3D printer for feces.
Yeah.
I'm a maker.
And she'd spend the whole day cleaning it up and then he'd climb in bed with her at night and it would all happen again.
What a ding-a-ling.
He's sleeping there.
Doesn't he know from pooping in bed?
I think that he's just so old that he doesn't know.
It's not under his power.
And I was like, listen, this Great Dane could feed a family of four for a month.
Just send him to the hamburger machine.
And she was just like, there's a reason you're not my boyfriend anymore.
You are a monster.
Okay, so here's a little life hack.
Yeah.
Are you ready?
Yeah, I'm ready.
I mean, I know that you are generally receptive to my life hacks, but this is a major one.
Oh, I love life hacks.
I went to a Christmas party that's thrown by my good friend Cal.
And last year at the Christmas party, he had a camel and a donkey.
And the kids all get camel rides.
Oh, it's kid-friendly?
Yeah, and or donkey.
It's not a classic donkey show.
Not a classic.
No, it's not a Tijuana donkey show.
It's a happy donkey show.
And the kids all wait and they line up.
The guy that owns the camel and donkey is a great kind of rancher type guy.
And all the kids ride the donkey and the camel while the adults get drunk and eat chili.
It's a Christmas Eve party that he has every year and it's a fantastic.
Something for everybody.
Yeah, that's right.
Get drunk, eat chili and forget about the kids because they are all patiently waiting in line to ride a camel.
Even the terrible kids are willing to wait in line to ride a camel.
But in the intervening year, the camel died.
And so everybody's going to Cal's Christmas party.
I bet there are not a lot of camels available.
You don't just go replace a camel.
I don't think you go to PetSmart and get a camel.
So the camel's not going to be there, and we're all like, well, what's going to happen?
I mean, the donkey is great.
He's a super nice donkey.
But that's going to put extra pressure on the donkey.
Right.
And also, you know, the goal of the pets is to distract the kids so the adults can get drunk and eat chili.
Yeah.
So the rancher shows up this year.
He's got the donkey.
He also brought two wallabies and a cavey.
What is that?
Well, so this is the life hack.
So a cavey is a giant guinea pig.
A cavey is a giant guinea pig that looks like you crossed a guinea pig with a deer.
Oh.
How do you spell that?
C-A-V-Y.
Oh.
So I get there and I'm interacting.
Oh, my God.
It looks like a jackrabbit guinea pig wallaby.
Yeah, that's right.
So I'm interacting with the wallabies at first because, you know, they're cute and they're recognizable.
And I'm looking over at this cavey, which is big.
It's the size of a dog.
But it's a guinea pig, deer, jackrabbit.
And I'm like, what is that little creature?
So the wallabies are kind of skittish, and you can pet them for a little bit, but then they do that weird little hop walk that kangaroos and wallabies do.
Yeah, like we're done here.
Malork, and then they're somewhere else.
And so I go over and I start, and nobody's paying any attention to the cavey.
Like the kids are all thinking about the wallabies.
But I'm looking at this guy.
In photos, they look kind of anxious.
Well, they do.
They look a little poised, right?
Poised to flee.
They definitely look like prey.
Yeah, but this guy was incredibly chill, like so chill.
And so I start petting him and he responds very well to being petted.
And we just get this symbiosis going so that I step into the enclosure and
And then I'm like, don't ever take this KV away from me.
This KV is a very good friend.
So I go over to the eventually when when the KV is like communicating to me, like, let's take a break.
I get out of there and I go over and talk to the rancher guy.
I'm like, what's up with this KV?
And he's like, oh, my God, they're amazing.
We bottle fed that one and it lives in the house.
That's crazy.
Lives in the house.
He's like, yeah, it's like a cuddly little pal.
He said, don't put them outside because they can dig out of anything.
They can dig 14 feet down, go under a fence.
Oh, wow.
They can dig under a pipeline.
They're foragers.
Right.
They're, you know, vegetarians.
Anyway, and I was like, so I said, so you're telling me that a cavey, you can get a cavey and you can keep it as a pet.
And he's like, oh, yeah, they're like hoppy cats.
It's a cat that hops.
Wow.
And I said, that's the pet for me.
A KV.
A short-tailed.
This is a new project.
A short-tailed, rough-haired South American rodent.
Yeah, I'm taking this medication still.
Yeah, sure.
And I don't think I've made a bad decision since.
And I feel like KV, a KV, a pet KV, is a way to get into the pet game.
But without all the cat, you know, cat is just a cat.
I mean, think about it now that I say the word cat.
Before you heard about a cavey, you said the word cat.
We were both like, oh, cat.
Sure.
But now post cavey.
The Patagonian Mara, it's also known as.
It's in South America.
And it is really freaky but cool looking.
It's very cool.
And they're very, very soft.
Ah, soft cavey.
A little soft cavey that wants to kind of curl up with you on the couch.
And they're monogamous.
That's nice.
Oh, that's right.
They mate for life.
Like swans.
Like swans.
It's like basically the swan of guinea pigs.
And it's the fourth.
It looks like a different animal from every angle.
Yeah.
It's the fourth largest rodent in the world.
Now that makes me.
What's a capybara?
Is that a rodent?
capybara is also sort of a rodent capybara i'm not sure if a capybara would be a good pet though no i've seen this at the zoo and man they are pretty freaky looking look at that it looks prehistoric but a cavey now what's involved in cavey ownership have you even look have you looked into this have you gotten onto the usenet and online forums to find out about this
No, you know, that's not my tendency.
No.
My tendency is just to go get a KV.
You just try to check for $8,000.
And then once I have a KV, I will learn the hard way for myself all the things.
I mean, if a KV wants to dig under a pipeline to escape, I wonder how they are with your upholstery.
All right.
You should get a try on.
Maybe you should just rent one for a weekend and see how it goes.
That's a good idea.
The thing is, just like your daughter, part of the thrill is unwrapping the baby cavey and bottle feeding them until they bond with you and feel like, I don't want to dig out of here.
I want to dig you.
I want to dig this relationship.
Was your kid at that party?
Did she get to meet the cavey?
She did, but she was more interested in the donkey.
And that's understandable because you can't ride a cavey.
Donkeys are such an interesting size.
If they were much bigger or much smaller, they wouldn't be as interesting.
They're a very interesting size.
It seems like a toy.
Well, we have a kind of a petting zoo, but then it has like a pen around it of stuff that you can just mostly look at.
And the donkeys are always very interesting looking to me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
To me too.
They're, you know, and they're very hardy.
Yes.
You can, you can go, you can go down into the Grand Canyon with them.
Yeah.
Uh, did you know a capybara can rate, can weigh a hundred pounds and grow to be four feet long?
Is that right?
A hundred pounds.
That's as big as a great thing.
It's bigger than you'd think.
And was that one of those ones they thought was extinct, but then they found them again?
Oh, look at that.
Oh, you should look at this, John.
Rock cavies.
Rock cavies are so cute.
Let me see.
Look at rock cavies.
You can find them in Brazil.
And they are very furry looking.
Rock cavies.
These look more like prairie dogs.
Oh, look at the rock caveys.
Man, you could be such a great super genius supervillain sitting in a chair petting one of those.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
You got a rodent that mates for life.
So you get a mom and pop rock cavey and they sit in your lap and you pet them whilst explaining to James Bond how you're going to take him limb from limb.
Huh.
Some pedophilic behavior has also been displayed with adult males courting juvenile males.
So they groom the rock cavies.
It's been observed.
I think this is a great idea.
I think you need a project.
Well, no, but I'm suggesting this.
I mean, think about this.
What if you and I both had rock cavies?
Oh, and they were like friends?
Well, and it's sort of like super genius, super spooky genius action at a distance.
Look at your phone.
Look at the photos I sent.
Oh, all right.
And you get an idea of what we're in for here.
Look at this thing.
Oh, you've already picked out a cat?
Oh, no, no.
Oh, you're talking about rock caving now.
Oh, no, no.
It's a known cat.
It's a great setup all the way around.
It's a known great cat.
You see that?
Let's see here.
It looks kind of like something you dust with.
You go to war with the cat that you have, not the cat that you want.
That's right.
Donald Rumsfeld on cats.
Oh, my goodness.
This cat is absolutely like a swifter or that thing my mom uses to take dust off the top of a lamp.
Yeah, a cat.
It's a Persian cat with a little smashy face, and it just sits in your lap when you pet it.
Oh, it's a smashy face cat.
See, these people have three or four cats and they have one cat that they refer to as the bad cat.
The name of the cat is bad cat.
And bad cat is mean to this cat.
And so this cat needs a place to live.
It's the sweetest cat in the world.
And so we're going to cat next month.
Oh, you can see that it's a sweet cat because it's kind of hunkered down like it's afraid an eagle is going to grab it.
Yeah.
It's got that look.
Yeah.
I'm just like, please don't let an eagle see me.
Look at that face.
You see that face?
I do see that face.
Isn't that a sweet face?
It's a very nice face.
I mean, it has that quality that small dogs have where you're not sure whether the...
weepy eyes are causing the discoloration in the face.
Yeah, I don't know what that is.
You know the thing about little dogs where it's like... No, I know, like poodles.
Poodles get those brown tear spaces.
Like, are you sweating?
Or are your eyes... Do your eyes have extra matter?
I don't know why that happens.
Leaking out?
Poodles' brown eyes.
Yeah, I find it kind of off-putting.
Oh, they call it poodle-eye tear stains.
Poodle Eye Tear Stains.
They were great.
Do you remember them?
I loved them.
They were a Smiths cover band.
Poodle Eye Tear Stains.
Poodle Eye Tear Stains.
Or Pets.
Pets for short.
Yeah, Pets.
Pets for short.
This is a common and troubling issue in which the hairs around the dog's eyes become discolored.
Ugh.
Yeah.
What causes it?
It could have been one or both eyes.
What causes it?
Poodle Eye Tear Stains.
What causes tear staining?
What causes tear staining?
Tear stains develop over time, and there are several reasons why this occurs.
This is great writing.
For some poodles, more than one of the causes will be at the root of the problem.
Okay, go on, Wikipedia writer.
No, this is on allpoodleinfo.com.
Even better, even better.
So completely unedited.
It could be a red yeast infection.
It could be a tear duct issue, an ear infection.
It could be teething, do stuff with the water.
It could be artificial coloring in food.
Oh, I don't want any of that explanation.
No.
I want one explanation for pets.
Yeah.
Poodle eye tear staining is a result of poodles having bad dreams.
I think Strunk and White would tell you that's muscular writing.
That's right.
Yeah.
Poodle eye tear staining is a result of bad dreams in poodles.
Omit needless words.
So anyway, that's happening.
Do you have any updates on the RV?
You still pondering?
You still got time.
I'm sorry you're in the mode where you're not thinking about it, right?
No, I can't continue to be in the mode of not thinking about it because the man, the RV, the guy that is storing the RV is giving me the very, very friendly but firm voice when he talks to me on the phone, which is, yes, we agreed that you can keep it here until February, but that is contingent on you...
getting it fixed here on you moving forward yeah he doesn't what i mean i'm guessing what he doesn't want to hear on january 31st is oh sorry i'll come pick it up in a week or so right and that and that worries me because you know what i don't want is for him to suddenly say like well if you want it then you have to pay me 100 a day for storage right um and we don't we have no agreement about that and there's nothing i don't think keeping him from doing that
And probably with the Redding cops or the Redding sheriff's office, it would be harder for me to negotiate with them than this guy who's like, I put a lien on the vehicle and now you have to come to the Redding courthouse 14 times.
But I'm not accusing this guy of that in advance, but it just feels like he sent me some paperwork the other day.
He's like, well, fill out this application for a NAPA
no interest car repair loan, and we'll just get right on it.
You can give me a $1,500 deposit tomorrow.
He's good.
He's moving, right?
No, you can't blame him.
I'm talking to other people on the blacklist.
It's already going to be very hard for me to go down there.
And here's the crazy thing.
The transmission was throwing chunks for sure, but it wasn't... I've run a transmission out of a vehicle to the point where it wouldn't go into gear and wouldn't move because the transmission had disintegrated.
This thing never stopped running under its own power.
It was throwing smoke everywhere, but...
There's a part of me that's like, yeah, everybody that looks at it says it needs a new transmission and it surely does.
But will this transmission get it to Seattle?
That is something that none of us have addressed.
And if the thing was in Seattle, I would have that six months of...
uh, you know, of time to gear up.
So this, this figures into your decision making, but it doesn't help with his need to get an answer.
Yeah.
And if I say to him, Hey, what are the possibilities of me just making it home, limping at home?
He's going to say – that's going to change our relationship.
Yep.
He wants you to come back with something decisive.
He wants you to come back with get started with work on this and I'll pay what it costs or I'm coming to get it tonight.
Right.
Right.
And the problem – He doesn't want to be a dad.
I'm a long way away and he's in Reading where –
you know the thing about about cathedrals uh yeah you could to be uh you can have uh yeah remind me what this is i think you have to be in a city to have a cathedral oh interesting that's not what i was saying but yeah that's oh no i thought you told me this
Right.
I think you do have to be, well, you have to be in a township or a lordship or a sailing ship to have a cathedral.
Okay.
But no, what I was saying about cathedrals is the reason that cathedrals and old architecture is so beautiful is that it was built at a time when labor was cheap and material was expensive.
Oh, no, that's true.
Yeah.
So you had these guys and it was like, well, it took a lot to get this stone here.
But it didn't take a lot to get you, Italian stone carver.
So spend some time making this stone look pretty.
Yeah.
With your little cherubims and your gargoyle-ims.
And now we have the problem of materials being cheap because they're all made out of glue and wood shavings.
Right.
But we have made labor very expensive.
Right.
So it's like, oh, well, we've got all this garbage lumber and garbage particle board, but the carpenters are getting paid $35 an hour, so let's just throw this thing up as fast as we can.
Right.
Well, in Redding, California, there's one thing I know, which is that property is cheap.
Right.
Not super cheap.
It's not like you can move to Redding anymore and just buy 40 acres right in the center of town and have a sheep problem.
Yeah.
But so this guy, if this RV was sitting at an RV place in downtown Seattle, they would be like, we need every square inch.
Get your damn RV out of here by tomorrow.
But in Reading, this guy could stack RVs for a year.
Right.
So in a way, he is creating a false sense of urgency because it's just like, you know what?
Push that thing out to the back 40 and forget it's there.
Yeah.
I mean, but he's been pretty cool.
What do you think?
I do think he's been cool.
I do think he's been cool.
But yeah, I need a dad right now who's like, listen, son, just relax.
Take the winter to think about it.
there's no way I'm going to be able to tow it anywhere.
I can't tow it to San Francisco or to Seattle.
I mean, you certainly thought of this, but is there any chance you could get a little help from the blacklist and the internet to find a place where you could store it for a couple months?
Interesting.
And then it would just be down to getting it towed somewhere that's not costly.
And whether that's him or somewhere else, you'd at least have a little bit of leeway to think about this without all the pressure.
Well, that's a good question, Merlin.
And you know what?
I'm going to get on the phone this afternoon.
You've just inspired me.
Are you making fun of me?
No, no, no, no.
There's a guy.
Let's just call him what he is.
Sure.
His name is Greg Birch.
He's a dentist.
Oh, yeah, Greg.
He emailed me.
Yeah, Greg Birch, the dentist.
Who has a pretty famous family member.
That's right, whose grandfather was the Birch, who was sort of like one of the head dudes at the GMC RV.
How important was he, John?
He was very important.
He designed an aftermarket screen door.
Yeah.
He was so important that the 23-foot version of the GMC RV is named after him.
The Birchhaven.
It's called the Birchhaven.
And they made much fewer 23-foot RVs than 26-foot RVs, but one of them is named after the man, Birchhaven.
So Greg Birch, who lives up in northwestern Washington,
And has a thriving dental practice there.
He's been very helpful in my GMC RV odyssey.
He's a young guy, the rare young GMC RV owner.
And dentist.
And dentist and legacy.
And so he wrote me yesterday, texted me even, and he said, listen, I've been talking to Manny and I think we might have a plan.
So when I get off the phone with you, I'm going to call Greg Birch.
He's probably going to leave some patient in a chair with suction happening.
He's going to be right back.
Just close and spit, and I'll be right back.
And he's going to sit and walk around the dental office talking to me on the phone.
And saying, here's the plan I cooked up with Manny.
I don't know what that plan is going to be.
Manny is a little bit crazy.
You know who he's talking about when he talks about Manny?
So I met Manny.
Now, Manny is a guy who bought, who did buy 10 acres of land in San Jose, California.
Back when you could buy 10 acres of land in San Jose for $15,000.
Whoa.
And his 10 acres is way up the hill to the east of San Jose and has a panoramic view of San Jose, California, which now, as you know, is part of the Silicon Valley family of towns.
And he sits up there in his eagle's nest.
And works on GMC RVs.
And who knows if I lived up there, I would shoot flaming crossbows down into crossbow bolts down into San Jose every night.
Uh, but I don't think he does, but he does have, you know, he's got this, this very strange ranch campus up there.
Is it a compound?
It is a compound, I would say.
It has a gate.
You probably shouldn't say too much.
No, no, no.
So he's up there, and he rebuilds GMCRV transmissions.
My impression is just for the fun of it.
Wow.
Like a lot of these GMCRV people, you ask them what they did, and they're like, oh, I was an aeronautical engineer, and I was a test pilot for Boeing or whatever, and now I restore.
uh, these turbo 400 transmissions in my garage, but you know, I don't want anything.
I don't want anything out of them.
You know, I sell them for a thousand bucks just to cover my costs.
It's like, huh, that's weird.
I mean, have you even seen Downton Abbey?
I mean, how, why is this relaxing?
But I, but it is, it's relaxing.
Yeah.
So Manny, but you know, I went up to Manny's place and the first thing Manny said was, ah, this RV is a piece of junk.
I was like, well,
Nine out of 10 old guys that I talked to about it said, oh, you got a good deal.
But Manny says, ah, it's a piece of garbage.
And I'm like, well, thanks, Manny.
Why do you say that?
And then he walks me over to his GMC RV, which he had built with pull-outs, with slide-outs in the style of a new RV.
He'd gutted the interior and built it all.
Oh, so that's his real labor of love.
Yeah, he's like one of these guys that wants to update the GMC RV to make it a space capsule.
Yeah.
And I'm like, well, I want to keep it stock, like original to the 70s.
And he got a look on his face like I had said, I want to fill it with fucking sheep dip.
And I want to live inside of it naked and piss on myself.
He was like, why the fuck would you want to keep it original?
Like he was offended.
Right.
And I said... Is this a classic rift in the blacklist community?
I believe it is.
And I think that most of them are older people who want their GMC RVs to continue to be contemporary.
Okay.
Which means a lot of that weird RV upholstery that's like big flowers and new furniture and new lighting.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
And I'm like, no, no, no, man, it's vintage.
I want it to look like somebody's rec room from 1974.
Like I want to fucking have a shag carpet and a round bed.
And they're just offended by it.
They just feel like that's so gauche.
It's gauche and it's counter to their aeronautical engineering background.
Uh, because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
And so anyway, so I know to feel, I know to discount somewhat his feeling that my RV is junk because he looks at it and he's like, ah, it's like old.
It's just, it's a stock.
It hasn't been updated.
But it did get inside my head, his comment, so that I'm walking around and I've discounted the nine out of 10 dentists surveyed who feel like sugarless gum is their recommendation for patients to chew gum.
And I've got this one dentist that's like, nah, fuck it, sugar gum.
And so when I think about repairing the RV, I'm like, oh, but maybe it's a piece of junk.
Maybe Manny's right.
So maybe the other four out of five dentists are being supportive and being nice because that's how you roll when you're on the blacklist.
Yeah, they're being nice or they're doing that old man mechanic thing where they're like, well, it's up to you.
You go, look, my RV's on fire.
Should I put it out?
And they're like, well, that's up to you.
That's a personal decision.
I'm like, no, give me some advice.
You've got 11 of these.
Tell me what I should do.
Well, you can either save it or not.
Well, it looks like your car's on fire.
It's like, fuck you.
Give me a, give me like a little piece of fatherly advice.
Right.
And these are the same guys that, that, you know, that's exactly what they say to their sons too.
They kick them out of the nest and they're like, well, you better sink or swim.
Anyway, so that's the update, and I'm still pawing over it.
I'm still thinking about whether or not – I got a lot of responses last week from people who listened to last week's podcast, expressed a lot of respect for our opinion or for our feelings about crowdsourcing, and then ultimately said, but you're nuts.
Please accept our money.
Please take my money or whatever it is that they say.
Right.
And so I'm still considering some version of that.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, wait.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Shh.
I have been setting up, Merlin, an eBay store.
What?
I've been setting up an eBay store.
That's amazing.
I know, right?
I've never done this before.
I'm setting up an eBay store.
Maybe you're going to tell your stories.
And I'm going to tell some stories about some coats and pants and boots.
Oh, my God.
And then I'm going to put those coats, pants, and boots for sale up to the people and say, listen, here's a coat.
Here's the story of it.
Here's my opinion about this coat.
Here are my feelings about it, basically.
You're buying a story.
It comes with a coat.
And you can either bid on it or not.
The starting price is going to be zero or 99 cents or whatever.
Like, it's pure auction.
No kind of reserve.
And you can just go to town on it.
Some of these items I've worn for years.
Some of them are pieces that I've had in my collection.
Worn periodically.
Yeah.
and I might even I might even every once in a while sell one of my dad's shirts this is very interesting John because my dad's shirts don't actually fit me and I've worn them for years and always kind of tugged at the collars tugged at the cuffs because they're just sort of an inch or even a half an inch too small in every direction
And so it's like, I'm going to sit on these dad shirts until what?
My daughter grows up and doesn't wear them?
How are you going to do the fulfillment?
Well, I'm making a commitment.
Oh, boy.
That I'm going to.
You're getting a cavey.
I'm going to get a cavey and I'm going to actually mail these things to people.
I'm not going to put 400 things up there at first.
I'm just going to put 20 things up there.
Baby steps.
See what people think.
You should put at least one up there that's a real dinger, though.
You should put up one that's going to be the one that everybody talks about and links to.
well don't you think don't you think you need one like marquee anchor item well this is i mean there are so many right i uh like i'm putting up my leather jacket that i bought in high school that i wore to soundgarden's bad motor fingers just the liquid paper on it that's got the liquid paper on it
you're kidding sound gardens uh bad motor fingers uh lp release party both of them there were two parties i went to both i've seen you know i've seen david yow and his uh his spectacular band the david yows yeah yeah um jesus lizard the jesus lizard thank you i've seen uh you know i saw babes in toyland really racist or pretend racist no i think he's pretend racist okay i still that's a bit
I never could figure that out.
I think it might be a bit.
I mean, you know, he takes his dick out on stage, or he did.
Liquid paper.
You know, some of the liquid paper has been... Liquid paper gets brittle over the years, John.
Well, some of it has been painted over with white paint pen...
And then that felt like too much, so some of that was painted over with indelible black pen.
You're a curator.
So there's white on it, there's old white on it, and then there's black on it.
This jacket has been through everything with me.
But it just isn't just not going to it's not going to go all the way to my death.
And partly it's because it's too big.
The jacket's too big.
It's always been too big.
It's a 48.
Wow.
Jacket that I got as a 48 at the time because I fit two women in that.
Yeah, I thought I was going to wear a bunch of big Irish fisherman sweaters under my black leather motorcycle jacket.
And, you know, that ends up being, yes, if I was going to work on the deck of a cross Pacific freighter, maybe I would need that much bulletproof protection.
But I've never taken that job.
Anyway, so that's one item that's going up there.
But is that more of a tentpole item than one of my dad's shirts that says Roderick on the tail where his dry cleaner wrote his name in black market?
I don't know.
You're going to have to decide, but you need some kind of fish food.
It's like any auction house would do.
You need one really big item.
Here's Elizabeth Taylor's underpants.
Right, right, right, right, right.
You need some tailor pants.
Hmm.
What's it going to be?
What's it going to be?
You'll get it.
You'll get it.
But I will continue to say, as I've said to you off air, because I love you, just get the infrastructure right.
That's the hardest part.
So that's the thing.
This is why we haven't sold bells yet, because the fulfillment.
The fulfillment.
So I'm lining these things up.
I'm ironing them.
I'm taking photographs of them.
And then my sense is that I'm just going to get those priority mail envelopes, or boxes, and I'm going to just put the stuff in the boxes, right?
And put little post-it notes on it that tells me what's in the box.
This is the coat or this is the boots.
And then they'll all be stacked there pre-boxed.
And when they sell, all I have to do is just write the name on it and then take it to the post office.
Can you type up the story on a card?
That would be kind of cool.
Oh, wow.
That's an extra step.
Well, yeah, but that's what you're selling.
You're selling the story on a card.
That's what makes it artisanal, isn't it?
Oh, absolutely.
You've got to have small batch cards.
Hmm.
Type it up in a card.
Maybe I'll use my cursive typewriter, which I hardly ever get a chance to do.
Oh, I like a cursive typewriter.
I got a cursive typewriter.
But I think if you found, especially if you had some old index cards and typed up a paragraph on the item, I think now you got yourself a stew.
Well, you think I don't have a stack of old index cards?
You think I don't have a shoebox full of index cards that are in a discontinued size.
They used to make better cards.
They're not three by five.
They're three and a half by five and a half.
Oh, my goodness.
They're four by six.
Yeah, the only file cabinets that can hold them are all made of oak.
so what's your time frame on this well so my ebay name is morgan rides free all one word morgan rides free okay because because my middle name is morgan as you know and when i was a teenager and i was hopping freight trains
I realized that all the hobos had little tags that they wrote on the trains to indicate that they had written on the trains.
And John Hodgman kind of blew this up with his 500 hobo names.
Yeah.
But hobo names were things that they actually kind of scrawled or sometimes like scratched into the rust of
of uh of of freight trains to you know to communicate with each other and to just say like kilroy was here right sure and so i needed something like that but i was you know 17 and i was like a i was a ding-a-ling and i was like what do i what's my hobo name
And I didn't, I couldn't decide.
The thing is, I feel like your hobo name is something that your fellow hobos bequeath to you or bestow upon you.
Oh, you don't choose a name, you earn it.
I'm not sure.
I tried to, best I could, avoid other hobos because it seemed like they were predators and I was just a boy.
Oh, it's just that we're back to the Big Rock Candy Mountain now.
Grooming.
So I didn't want to be groomed.
You don't want to be groomed by a hobo.
I do know.
Groomed by a hobo, I know, I know.
There's candy in the mountains.
Follow me, follow me, follow me.
Yeah, see, if I heard that music on KIXI and John Tesh told me it was from 1950, I would fucking believe it.
I would be like, barf.
Yeah.
I've got something in my throat.
I'm about to choke.
In any case... Slam rhyme.
So Morgan Rides Free ended up... So far, you got good feedback.
Great buyer, prompt payment, valued customer, highly recommended.
Yeah, see, there you go.
Boom, boom, boom.
Well, so Morgan Rides Free was my hobo name.
Shortened, shortened to Murph.
Oh, oh, it's a, what's an anagram?
Yeah.
Or no, an acronym?
Acronym.
Excellent to deal with.
A plus.
I think it should have probably been Morph.
Fast payer.
Yeah.
But like the comparative history of ideas always called itself Chid, and it really should have been Chod.
Chod or Chud.
Chode.
Chode.
Chode.
What, like the New Yorker?
Have a diuresis over it?
Chode.
Mr. Chode.
Chode.
Joad.
Joad.
So Murph was my – That's so stupid.
That's the stupidest joke in the history of stupid jokes.
Here we are.
Oh, my God.
I realized this the other day.
Emily Nussbaum was writing a review of the Jennifer Jones television program, and she referred to Jonathan Colton lyrics –
as though jonathan colton was a universally understood contemporary uh music reference she just played it off legit she was just like oh that jennifer jones kind of reminds me of the lyrics to jonathan colton's uh mad scientist story skull crusher mountain oh and then she quoted a long passage of his lyrics
And I read this thing, and she was making all kinds of references to the internet, to like insider internet kind of talk, the whole SJW.
Yeah, she's keeping up.
She's on the 4chan.
And I'm reading this thing, and I'm like, who the fuck is the audience for this?
It's like she's writing – it's like she thinks that I –
I am right up the middle of who the New Yorker readers are.
Right.
And then I got a cold chill.
You realized the call was coming from inside you.
That's right.
I am.
You are.
You're Mr. Joe.
The New Yorker is actually now designed for us.
It's for you.
It's for you.
And I was like, what?
What's in the box?
No, no, no.
Oh, my goodness.
That's true.
And so my whole life I have thought of the New Yorker reader as this person.
Like an old Tweety Fop.
Yeah, who has a lot of pictures on the top of his piano.
Not candelabras.
Right, and maybe a Tony Award, like on a shelf somewhere.
And he's sitting there absentmindedly tinkling on the piano and reading The New Yorker.
And now I realize that, no, your right-up-the-middle New Yorker reader is a guy with a GMCRV who's considering buying a KV.
Stop.