Ep. 188: "Crow Meth"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Well...
You know, I'm starting off with a little bit of a complaint.
I thought I had a life hack.
Oh, no.
Yep.
You know, I've been using the same coffee cup here for a while.
I really love my coffee machine.
but i was like it's bad to keep using the same coffee cup over and over without really washing it so i was like what am i gonna do oh right in the pantry i have a thousand little disposable white cups that people bring to parties and stuff i'll just take the cups down that'll be it's it's bad it's not eco-friendly
But these cups were already made.
They were headed to the landfill anyway.
It's like fur coats.
You don't want to have one made, but it's okay to adopt one.
Right.
Right, right, right.
So I get down here.
I got my stack of cups.
I'm feeling like a real smart guy.
I put them in the coffee machine.
Turns out the cup isn't quite big enough for the long shot.
So the coffee was pouring over the side a little bit.
And then I reached to pick it up and the cup is not made to handle hot liquids either.
It's too flimsy.
Oh, no.
So then it spilled on my pants and it spilled on my hand and it's hot.
Oh, my God.
What a horrible way to start.
I'm so sorry.
You want to start over?
Oh, no.
I mean, how do you push a reset button on something like that?
Do you keep extra pants at the office?
Trousers?
You know, the fact is I do.
But I just don't know if they're right for this weather.
Let me go look.
Let's see here.
Checked on the Seattle weather.
It's kind of a nice day.
It's getting there.
As we say, it's getting there.
Getting there.
Getting there.
Once again, back to 490 James Street.
It looks like it's mostly cloudy in 48.
Feels like 46.
It's going to be mostly cloudy for the next hour with rain starting this afternoon.
Okay.
These pants are some very old, very cool...
heavy heavy wool hunting pants pants that you could they're kind of last of the Mohican pants you know what I mean like they you could go down the st.
Lawrence River in a birch bark canoe in these pants and at least your legs wouldn't be cold that's nice that's super specific
Yeah, right?
The pants of Cooper.
James Fenimore Cooper pants, we called him.
And so, I mean, he wouldn't have had access to these pants.
No, he was writing about the pants.
It's Ramona Clay.
Yeah, right, exactly.
He was wearing deer suede pants.
Deer stalks pants.
These are what the people of the 40s built for.
to not make you have to wear deerstalker pants.
Listen, the 90s are going to make the 60s look like the 50s.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
I don't like to brag.
No.
You know that about me, right?
No, that's the last thing you like to do.
And I'm kind of mostly out of the life hacks racket at this point, but I kind of killed it last night.
Oh.
Oh, you lifehacked?
I lifehacked.
You know, I dress the same pretty much every day.
And one of the staples of my wardrobe is just under half a dozen of these American apparel long sleeve T-shirts.
It's a good T-shirt.
It's a T-shirt with long sleeves and it's very comfortable.
American made in an American made sweatshop.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
But my problem is between bacon grease and bleach, I end up ruining a lot of shirts.
Oh.
The thing is with bleach, you need very, very, very little exposure to bleach.
Yeah, you got to be careful with bleach.
So I've had this one that I really like.
It's one of my favorites.
It's a black one.
And I've had it for, I don't know, three, four, five years.
And it had a bleach, like an orange-white bleach stain right on the abdomen, like the size of a pin.
Like just big enough to be noticeable and make it look like you're wearing a shirt with bleach on it.
And can you guess what I did?
Did you speckle the whole shirt with bleach so you looked like an American apparel bleach leopard?
Get over here, you.
That was good.
I would be boiling the ocean that way, although I think that's a good direction.
Listen, we don't want to boil the ocean.
If you're heavily committed to the bleach lifestyle.
One word, Sharpie.
What?
Oh, Sharpie, pow.
I was sitting there.
I was looking.
I was like, oh, I already look so shitty as it is.
I'm wearing my pants that I always wear, my pants that can stand on their own.
And I thought, you know what?
I'm going to class it up.
I had to go out somewhere.
I had to visit with people.
Yeah.
And so I took a Sharpie with two little strokes of a Sharpie.
Nobody knows the difference.
That's wonderful.
Isn't that a life hack?
Yeah, that's beautiful.
You know, I've used a Sharpie for a similar purpose.
You know, I had a leather jacket for many, many years starting in the 1980s.
This is the one with the liquid paper on it?
Yeah.
And at a certain point in the early, early 90s, I was like, you know, this leather jacket would be better with some white accents.
So I put white out on it.
All over it, frankly.
Did you make a skull?
No, no, no, no.
I didn't draw on it, but I just went down all the seams, you know.
You did sort of like military tunic highlights?
Yeah, right.
Like a little bunting.
Like the blazer of the guy on the prisoner?
That's right.
Except I did it with whiteout on the leather jacket.
And I really liked it.
It just, you know, it really popped.
You see the brush strokes.
You see the impasto.
Well, yeah, but I mean, you know, I did a few layers.
I used a couple of things of liquid paper.
And then as the years went on, so that was, you know, early, early 90s, wore that to some Soundgarden shows.
In bars, you know, back in the old days.
And then at a certain point along the way, I discovered white ink pens.
Yeah.
And, you know, the whiteout kind of crumbles.
That's the kind of laundry marker you can get that is, I don't know if that's what you're talking about.
It's almost like a little can of paint in the shape of a pen.
And you push down on this big nib.
And that works really well.
They're beautiful.
Little paint things.
And some of them have a little pearl essence to them.
So I got one of those and I went over the stuff with this little paint pen.
And then I was really popping.
But then at a certain point in the 2000s, kind of long past the point that I should have been wearing around a leather jacket full of flare.
Like a motorcycle jacket.
Mm-hmm.
I was like, that's a little too flash.
I kind of went overboard.
And so then I took a Sharpie and I went back over the liquid paper in select ways so that I toned it down a little bit.
Almost like a cover-up tattoo.
Yeah, right.
And the Sharpie more or less returned the jacket to its original sort of leather color.
And I was like, wow, all you have to do, really, a Sharpie is so good for everything.
And I think I'm actually, Merlin, I'm actually going to put that jacket on the eBay store.
You've been talking about this for a while.
It's too big for you.
It's a little too big.
I mean, you know, I used to wear it with a sweater, even though that's not the canonical motorcycle jacket vibe.
That's not unusual, though.
I mean, like, I buy my Doc Martens a little bit big because I'm exactly between the two British sizes.
So I just know to wear fluffy socks.
That's just part of the ensemble.
yeah yeah yeah that was uh that was my thinking at the time you know the at the time right i mean i probably said this before but you know when you're big it's hard to find things that fit you well and then when you do find stuff you're like oh i should get the biggest because you're so used to you know to having things that don't fit so it was like i'll get the biggest ah
and then you know it was fine it's great for layering but um but yeah it's you know that the the when i wear a motorcycle jacket out now it just looks uh like a dad in a motorcycle jacket i hate i hate to say that
Have you done any more stuff to get started with the eBay store?
Well, far be it from me to come on this program and talk shit about eBay.
But I put a lot of work into getting my stuff up there.
I probably did 20 items where I put in seven pictures and long descriptions of them and filled in all their...
Their categories.
And then you know how I am.
I didn't want to just launch it.
I wanted to kind of let it stew a little bit and think about it.
I didn't want to just go live.
Because once you're live, it's an auction.
It's like you can't take it back.
It's running.
And so I didn't want to let the rabbits out of the gate, you know, in the big rabbit race.
And so I sat on it for a while and I thought about it and I looked at it and I sat on it.
And it said right there, these things go, what happens?
We keep these, they say it real casual.
We keep these for 30 days.
And I was like, yeah, well, I don't know.
Why would you ever, why would you, you could do a Skype thing where you're like, your money has gone dormant.
Yeah, money gets dormant on the internet.
Yeah, that doesn't mean anything because you go on, you push a button, and then money comes back.
But it must be some tax thing, right?
So you got to get it off the books after a certain amount of time.
You get it off the books.
It went dormant.
You push a button, the money comes back.
This is why I don't like banks.
The whole idea of money going dormant is very troubling to me.
Hmm.
Seems like to me, if it can go dormant, it wasn't money.
Well, yeah, exactly, because money's fake.
But on Skype, they've conned me into putting, I don't know how much I have on Skype now, 50 bucks or something like that, because every time I go on, they're like, you don't have any money.
And I'm like, shit, all right, I put more money in.
What do you spend money on on Skype?
Are you buying clothes for cats or something?
No, I mean, I put money on Skype because I like to call people in Europe.
Oh, okay.
Or something.
You know, I like to call people on their phones, and Skype's like, you can't do that.
You have to pay money for that.
So I go, all right, all right, all right.
I put money in, and then they're like, oh, do you want to go over here where your other money was?
I did that with Google Voice.
I still have $10 in Google Voice, and I have no idea how to spend it.
Yeah, right.
What is it for?
I'm not sure why I did it.
Seeing something with a zero balance, it's troubling.
Yeah.
I don't like a zero balance, but I also, you know, I also don't mind a zero balance if it's a thing I'm not going to use.
Yeah.
But so anyway, I did all this work to get my eBay store ready.
And then I was like, you know, I kind of wanted to have some fanfare when I launched it.
I wanted there to be a, like maybe hire a band, uh,
uh you know maybe some rip torn confetti you know like wow rip taylor rip taylor not rip torn he didn't have rip taylor he's a larry sanders guy rip torn i think so no wait a minute rip taylor rip taylor is the colorful comedian with the confetti buckets and rip torn is the uh is the hollywood actor oh i see and and rick rick taylor was the was the guitar player for the for the faces
No, no, I think you're thinking of Mick Taylor, or you might be thinking of Charles Nelson Reilly, or possibly Ric Flair.
Oh, it's Ric Flair, that's what I was thinking.
Ric Flair was the guitarist with Ronnie Lane in the faces.
Right.
Okay, so anyway, so I finally went back on my eBay store a couple of days ago, kind of ready to, I wasn't ready to launch it, let's be honest, but I wanted to look at it again and get it more ready.
You need time to sit with it, right?
You want to make sure it's all right.
Like you say, once it's up, I mean, I totally know what you mean.
You want to be able to just, I'm going to come and look at this.
I might not look at this for a while.
It's like drafting something.
Like I want to spend a lot of time on this and then I want to not think about it for a week or so.
I come back, I look at, I might just look at a little bit.
Like what's the, what's the hurry here, Johnny?
That's right.
What's the hurry?
I'll come back a little bit later in the, in the fullness of time.
I will know when this is ready.
This will tell me when it is ready.
Yeah, thank you.
That's exactly right.
I'm not saying when the eBay store is ready.
The eBay store is telling me when it's ready.
And when I launch it, I want all those people that are interested in it to be sitting out there with their virtual catcher's mitts, ready to receive the pitch.
With their virtual money.
That's right, with their dormant money.
Hopefully non-dormant money.
Ready to reactivate the money to bid on the things.
I go back there, and so the...
All the words that I wrote is still there, which is nice.
I'm glad for that.
But all of the pictures are just have grayed out or they've turned into those little those little fake like placeholders.
Yeah.
Polaroid looking things.
Polaroid looking placeholders.
And I'm searching all around.
And then, so I have a pretty new laptop, let's be honest.
I bought it when, well, I bought it when everything got stolen in the great possum caper.
Oh, so you've had it for almost exactly a year.
Well, I didn't buy it right away.
But less than a year.
Definitely since Steve Jobs died.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a post-Steve Jobs one.
Okay.
I mean, it's not worth anything, right?
Not like those pre-Steve Jobs.
Do you remember what you got?
What model it is?
It's the – I didn't get the Air.
Did you get the MacBook with one port or you got a MacBook with more than one port?
I got that.
I got more than one port.
Okay.
I didn't just want one port Mac.
No, it's very controversial.
It's very controversial.
Oh.
Okay.
Good, good, good.
Got it.
Okay.
That's a good computer.
It's a nice computer.
But so I'm doing this on the, I'm doing this on the, I'm looking at my eBay and I'm like, where'd my stores go or my, my, my pictures go.
And then what pops up?
Oh, your Adobe flash plugin isn't current.
Oh, because I'm using Chrome.
Sorry.
I should have said.
And so I go, oh, shit.
So I'm going around trying to update my Adobe.
And then I get to a place where I'm trying to update my Adobe.
And Chrome says, well, listen, if you update your Chrome,
It automatically updates your Adobe.
I'm like, oh, so I got to update Chrome.
And then I'm in there monkeying around and it says, hey, wouldn't you like to update your OS to El Capitan?
Oh, sure.
Sure.
I'm like, I don't know, I guess.
Yes?
I mean, when Apple offers you the opportunity to update your software, that's usually a mixed bag of fruits and nuts.
It used to be an easier to answer question, and I think the answer over time has become more complicated.
I think the answer is, I'm not sure.
Can you tell me more about what that means?
That's right.
That's exactly how I feel.
It used to be it made your computer work faster.
Now it might make your computer not work as much.
Not work as much is exactly right.
And so I'm like, it's a very new computer.
So I feel like upgrading to El Capitan is a thing that if this computer, which is seven and a half months old, can't handle it, it feels like that's a betrayal, right?
Like I'm not going to update my desktop here.
You're a little – don't you have like an old –
Did you have like an old white laptop for a long time?
I did.
I did.
But somebody stole that from me in Chile.
Oh, that's the one we bought.
The photo of us on the show art, I think, was buying it that day.
Isn't that a shame?
That's such a beautiful computer.
And we really loved it here at the Roderick Group.
but i took it down to chile and i was sitting in a i was using it let's be honest in a bus station in chile and somebody saw me use it and then i i put it in a bag and i said to my partner um you know watch the bags and she said of course and i went to the bathroom and i came out and the it was gone and i was like i thought you were watching the bags and she was like i was also make sure to pull over the rv before we get to the mountains
She wasn't.
That's right.
Different partner.
Oh, okay.
Good, good, good.
But same problem.
She was playing solitaire or something and somebody came over and I think somebody probably walked by and was like, look at that over there.
Adios.
So that is gone.
But, you know, here I'm using a 2.16 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo here on this computer.
I'm not going to put El Capitan on this.
Wow, that's amazing.
Yeah.
I got a 4 gigahertz Intel Core i7.
Woo!
4 gigahertz.
You can almost hear them.
Kapow!
Woo!
I'm most excited about my graphics card, though, which is an AMD Radeon R9 M295X with the 4096 megabytes.
Let me see if this will even tell me what my graphics card is.
Go to your Apple in the upper left and hit about this Mac.
Well, I did that.
Okay, so this is an iMac.
It's Intel Core 2.0.
It has one processor, two cores, a four megabyte L2 cache, two gigabyte memory,
Two gigabytes?
Two gigs.
Oh, my goodness.
It's got a 660.
I got 32.
It's 32 gigs?
What do you do with all those gigs?
Podcasts.
You just harness those up and ride to town?
The less memory I get, the more memory my computer gets.
Oh, I see.
That's smart.
So it says, hey, John.
Here I got graphics.
Here's my chipset model.
Oh, good, good, good.
Oh, okay, sure.
It's a Radeon X1600.
Oh, that's nice.
That's nice.
Yeah, it's got 128 megabytes of VRAM.
Oh, good.
It's called Victory RAM.
Oh, yeah.
I feel like it's got a lot of victory.
So the computer says, hello, John from Cupertino.
Would you like to upgrade to El Capitan?
Yeah, and so I go, all right, you guys, you've done this to me 50 times before, but sure, sure.
I want to see my eBay pictures, and I want to make sure that the reason I can't see it is that Adobe has decided that I needed a new thing, which they seem to do every week and a half.
And then, oh, I got to update Chrome.
God knows I don't want to have the wrong Chrome.
And then it's like, all right, let's go the whole hog.
Here I am.
Here I am.
I got my pants on.
Let's get the new El Capitan.
At which point the computer immediately says, I'm going to need an hour to think about this.
I'm going to tell you it's 28 minutes, but it's really going to be more like an hour.
Yeah, I think of all the improvements Apple makes, progress bar accuracy is not one of them.
Yeah, right.
So then I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh shit, I was already and now I'm diddling.
I'm spinning my thumbs.
You got something to do here.
You need to get an eBay store up.
I want to see my picks.
That's right.
So all this stuff happens.
Yes, I upgrade to El Capitan.
Yes, I get a new Chrome, which came with a new Adobe.
Everything checks out.
I restart the computer a couple of times just to make sure that everything's settled in.
You've got to shake it a little bit so that all the stuff settles to the bottom.
And then, no, the pictures were gone.
It wasn't Adobe.
Yeah, because the pictures, I don't imagine that would have to do with Flash.
Who knows?
Why would we need to know?
We're just the users.
Who knows what Flash does?
It's telling me all the time to upgrade my Flash, and when I do, all it does is it makes the intrusive advertisements happier.
I can help you with that.
I'll help you with that, buddy.
You put the Flash on there, and all of a sudden, all the things where it was like, oh, can't play the ad, now it's like, I can play the ad!
Ah!
so anyway suffice to say that ebay inexplicably decides after 30 days for no good reason that i can tell just because they don't want to use their memory because they're probably in the clued and there it's like oh you're taking up our clued memory and somebody in cupertino is charging us extra extra virtual dollars and so dormant bucks so they don't make the pictures dormant they just say oh they're gone
So now I got to go and put all the pictures back in.
I can't believe these words are going to come out of my mouth because I'm going to have to do this phonetically, so be patient with me.
All right, okay.
Have you thought about using Etsy?
Because I think Etsy might be more what you're looking for because Etsy is a place where you make a little store.
I think that's what you're doing here.
You're not really doing an auction.
You're doing kind of a store, I think.
Well, it's true, except that I have thought about it, and I think I may have even been contacted by somebody from Etsy who listens to this program.
They're a very good company.
A lot of the stuff on their site is pretty wackadoodle, but I know a guy who's one of the big shots there, and he's the best.
Oh, nice.
Well, I love to go on Etsy and say – Chad, if you're a listener, raise your hands.
Because you go on there and you're like, ooh, oh, look at this.
Somebody really – this is nice.
But the thing about Etsy is that you have to decide what you want to get for the thing.
And, you know, I don't want to say to somebody, oh, this is worth $100 because it's like, yeah, I don't know how much of that, how much of this thing is really worth $75, but there's $25 of emotional investment that I want to get paid for.
I feel like a lot of stuff on Etsy is like, yeah, all right, I guess $98.
But, yeah, I'm buying this thing sight unseen.
I can't try it on.
You put three pictures up there.
$98?
I think there's a way you could strategize this a little bit.
First of all, I mean, like I said before, and I don't know anything about business, so take that with a grain of salt.
Sure.
But I'm thinking you need at least one marquee item, what I referred to previously as Elizabeth Taylor's panties.
You need something you can put up that's going to be – that's the real fish food, the wowser that gets people to go like, oh, my God, I've been hearing about this thing forever.
Mm-hmm.
And there are five people out there who might actually pay a premium for it.
And then I think you get a handful of, like, medium-priced things in, like, the $50 to $100 range.
And then maybe have something where you've got a lot of something, like TITACs.
Or kazoos.
Or kazoos.
See, I think – for you, you haven't asked me about this because why would you?
But I think you should have little packages you could get where you could mail out.
You get a TITAC and a kazoo and a this.
But it's, you know, AQ, like, as available.
Yeah.
But for like 10 bucks, 15 bucks, whatever you charge for that.
But I think the key is you find out what kind of stuff is selling, what kind of stuff makes money, what kind of stuff ends up being the biggest pain in the ass to do.
You have a pilot program.
Pilot program.
But you also, you go out of the gate, you launch with something where everybody can go, wow, John's jacket that has cover-up tattoos.
That's something I'd pay $500 for.
Well, sure.
But, you know, that's the big question.
Is this thing worth $100 because it's got whiteout on it or is it worth $500?
It's worth it because you talked about it on the program.
Sell your bathrobe with a scimitar.
Oh, I do have that bathrobe.
You know, you were mentioning whales last time we visited.
We should mention we're recording this a little bit before it'll come out.
We're recording this on sometime.
You're really going to give away the whole game?
Well, because otherwise people are going to go look at the – somebody like Captain Marm is going to go check and see if I got the weather right.
You know what?
She doesn't have to check because she just has it in her mind.
Pretty wild stuff.
I don't know how it works.
She needs 20 seconds to access data that's in a salt mine in Utah.
She pulls up some stats that are pretty precise.
If you're not aware of who Captain Marm is, ladies and gentlemen,
That is someone you should research.
She's a Scientologist?
A Scientician?
A Scientician.
She's a Scientician.
She's not a Scientologist.
She's a Scientician.
She has a laboratory.
And she's an artist.
That's true, too.
And I think she's cataloged everything.
Have you ever seen what she does with an Etch-a-Sketch?
I have seen... Well, are you kidding me?
I mean, that was my introduction to her before I even realized she was a scientific... Scientist.
Scientist.
I knew her primarily as an artist who made fantastic art on burnt toast.
She sent me a Wilberforce one day.
She made a Wilberforce for me just because of you.
You know what?
I should get the Wilberforce.
I'll hang on.
People keep sending me gifts to give you.
I got a whole stack here.
I don't know what I would do with a Wilberforce.
I guess I would... Put it next to your head, phony.
Isn't that what you guys do with those things?
You sit and stroke them with your thumb like worry beads?
What were we talking about?
We were talking about your store.
So here's what I want.
What I want is a guarantee.
No more attempts on my father's life.
You got it all wrong, kid.
I'm the hunted one.
To tell you he's a pimp.
You never could have fought Santino.
But it wasn't until this day that I... Barzini all along.
It was Barzini all along.
Hey, Tom.
For old times' sake.
Can you get me off?
Sorry, Sally.
Can't do it, Sal.
Can't do it.
This screws up.
You can't do that.
It screws up all my arrangements.
I want to get an Etsy store.
I had such a good thing to tell you, and I forgot what I was... Do you renounce evil?
I wish I could make an organ chord with my mouth.
Oh, so you got Captain Marm.
Oh, the weather.
Let's go back.
We got... John Syracuse says we need to back-solve this.
So we got... Syracuse.
Syracuse.
Syracuse.
Syracuse.
Syracuse.
John Siracusa.
I have a recording of a friend of ours who lives in Rome saying his name almost to John's satisfaction.
Really?
I can send it to you.
From Rome.
Oh, yeah.
Direct from Rome.
You ready for this, though?
John makes a distinction between the way the Italian city is pronounced and the way his name is pronounced.
Well, of course.
Even though he's Italian-American.
Because, sure.
Because he's John Siracusa.
Sure.
Did I tell you I was on an airplane with somebody the other day and I was like, oh, yeah, my people are from Latresant.
Oh, that's it.
Wales.
That's how I got to talking about Wales.
Yeah.
And she said, she said, where?
And I said, Latresant.
It's outside of Cardiff.
And she said, where?
I'm from Cardiff.
And I was like, yeah, I know.
Latresant.
And she said, oh, I think I know what you're saying.
Latresant.
It's not that different.
And I was like, La Trissant?
And she said, no, no, no, no, no.
La Trissant.
This is like the French.
It's all one big parlor trick.
You'll never pronounce anything right to those people.
And I did it again.
La Trissant?
And she was like, no, no, no.
La Trissant.
I was just like, I just wanted to throw my Dasani water on her.
No, no, no.
Ooh, ooh, ooh.
So that's funny you actually nailed it.
What I remember was you talking about whales, and I went and looked up the Cardiff Giant, which I remember doing an SRA card on in fourth grade.
And the Cardiff Giant.
Do you remember the Cardiff Giant?
Is it some kind of golem made out of clay that avenges the Jews?
Could be.
Could be like Sammy Davis Jr.
Go look at the Cardiff Giant page.
And so this is a great hoax of the 19th century where this guy in Cardiff found this what appeared to be some kind of a body of this guy with a giant cock who was like 10 feet tall.
Hello.
Well, you see this guy.
It's like a beer can.
And so basically it was revealed to be a co-hoax.
Why am I telling you this?
A co-hoax?
A co-hoax.
That's how you say it in Wales.
I see.
Co-hoax?
It's called a Welsh pronunciation.
No, no, no, no, no.
Co-hoax.
No, no, no, no, no.
No co-hoax.
Co-hoax?
So cutting down to where it currently resides, Iowa publisher Gordon, so eventually it was revealed to be a fraud.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
I Google Cardiff Giant, and I've come up with Syracuse Cardiff Giant.
Oh.
Is this some kind of flipper-oony?
This might be a switch-em-up.
Go look at the Wikipedia page.
You want to see the cock?
I'm looking at it.
That's him on display.
10-foot-tall pit.
Oh, that's him on display in Syracuse, New York in 1869.
I get you.
Well, I'm looking at a picture now, and there's a woman sitting.
This picture was taken in 1920 or something.
There's a woman sitting strategically...
Basically on his lap so that you cannot see his peanuts.
Oh, I see.
The woman in the performance fleece?
No, this one is in some kind of jazz age dress.
Oh, look at that.
Oh, man.
Anyway, why did I mention this?
I mentioned this because eventually the Cardiff Giant was acquired.
Iowa publisher Gardner Cowles Jr.
bought it later to adorn his basement rumpus room as a coffee table and conversation piece.
Rumpus room.
I love that word.
In 1947, he sold it to the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, New York, where it is still on display.
By the way, the Farmers Museum in Cooperstown, the second largest, second most famous museum in Cooperstown.
So what I'm trying to say to you is, John Roderick, that jacket could be somebody's Cardiff Giant.
There might be some Paul Allen type person out there that is just waiting for the piece to finish their collection.
You say that they're going to mount it in a frame and put it on the wall of their rumpus room.
They could put it on a creepy doll.
They could put the bathrobe in a scimitar, two bits, like put that on a dummy.
I'm just saying fish food, fish food.
You should explore Etsy.
All right.
Well, I've explored Etsy quite a bit, and I feel like I've almost pulled the trigger on some $60 pocket squares.
before I realized that pocket squares were just hankies, that you could get like 20 hankies for $1.50.
And so I stopped believing in the whole pocket square racket.
I went on, I'm not even going to say eBay anymore because I'm getting frustrated now.
Sure, you don't want to give them publicity.
No, more and more people are going to use it when really I should be directing people's attention to Etsy.
As long as you don't spell my name wrong.
You know what?
I could probably buy Captain Marm's toast carvings on Etsy.
You can buy anything on Etsy.
But I went on the other site, which shall not be named, and I ordered a thing that was 25 vintage hankies from Poland.
And they came – they cost me $2.
And they came and they were things of utmost beauty.
These Polish vintage hankies that – Wow.
That I use now as pocket squares and I challenge you.
I challenge you to A –
Find a reason why they are not also effective as pocket squares because they're gorgeous.
100%.
And B, they're from Poland.
And C, fuck you.
You know what I mean?
And a C is always fuck you in whatever list I'm making.
When I diagram a thing, A is the main thing.
Or you know what?
You do that thing where A is not the main thing, B is the main thing.
I want to start with my minor point.
I start out with the number two.
Number two is just the minor point, and then I want to save the big banger for number A. Right, because that's what you do.
You say two, B, minor point, A. Then you go to A next, major point.
C is, fuck you.
Lieutenant Colonel point.
Lieutenant Colonel Point.
Did you ever, when it was up, did you ever look at Regretzi?
No, I have never even heard of Regretzi.
Unfortunately, it's gone.
I sent you a link to a Tumblr that is in its spirit.
There's a site called Regretzi, and the deck, the description of it was, what did you make that with your feet?
And it was just regretful things you could get on Etsy.
See, now this is something I don't understand.
There are still web pages up for auto parts stores where a little 8-bit man is down at the bottom waving his hand, and there's some kind of balloons.
Yeah.
Why the hell are those still up?
Everything's in primary colors.
Obama.
That's Obama?
I don't know.
Those are still up, but regretsy is gone.
Well, you know, maybe you forget the password or, you know, you lose the account for some reason.
It's a shame.
It's a known issue.
It's a big problem.
Well, here's a pug with boobs.
So this is a bug.
Huh?
This isn't a feature.
This is a bug.
Well, there's lots of reasons it could happen.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't understand it though.
Somewhere on the internet it exists because the NSA has got to have it to cross-reference things.
That's a good point.
So have you thought about any more about fulfillment or you're still at the getting it up, figuring that part out phase?
Well, my mom and I have had a big argument about fulfillment and frankly, an ongoing argument.
Yeah.
Where I said, here's what I want to do.
I want to picture these things and then I want to box them up.
And then when it's time to fulfill them, they're already in a box.
We put a little post-it note on the box that tells us what's inside.
This felt like a life hack.
Then you got them all in boxes.
And then they're over.
Like I just print the label out and put it on.
Yeah, you just print it and off they go.
And she said, well, we don't need to put them in boxes.
Let's just hang them up on this clothes rack.
And then we'll put them in boxes once they sell.
And I was like, no, listen to the life hack here.
We put them in boxes now.
We're dealing with them now.
Put them in boxes now.
Put a little post-it note on it.
We know what it is.
And then print out the label and off the... She said, no, no, no, no.
Why don't we just hang them on this clothes hanger rack?
And I said, because that's another thing to do once the thing sells, once the auction's over, then you got to go.
The clock is ticking at that point.
Yeah.
Then you got to go get them and get the boxes.
And then I'm going to, you know, it's going to be hard enough to print the labels out.
Yeah.
That takes time and thought.
And she was like, no, no, no, let's just say.
And she was just casually.
But she did that thing you hate where she didn't exactly argue with you.
She just kept saying the same thing over and over.
She just casually.
You don't like that.
Dismissed the thing.
She was not acknowledging what was so great about the life hack.
She was just saying, oh, no, no, no.
It'll be perfectly fine to just do something.
To just ignore your life hack.
And I and I said, Mom, are you not listening to me?
This is this is the thing.
This is the science here.
And she did it again.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
It'll be easy.
We'll just put it on.
And so I don't know.
I asked her, why are you?
What do you what advantage is there to not doing this?
And she just had some vague thing of like putting him in boxes is just then I just have a bunch of boxes sitting around.
Yeah.
Well, to quote Mike Tyson, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.
And so the only thing I would say here.
He said that like this.
Everybody's got a plan.
Sorry.
That was the voice of your pants, right?
The only potential flaw and see, I like your plan a lot because that's the way I think.
Thanks, thanks, thanks.
You bet.
The only potential downside is I think there's an extremely good chance that there are going to be people who – good people, people of good heart, people with actual non-expired money who want to buy your stuff.
And I think there's a pretty good chance that more than one person is going to want more than one item.
Uh-huh.
And it might be frustrating to them to pay the full freight on two separate boxes if it could easily be combined into one.
But that still doesn't mitigate against what you're doing here, which I think is very sensible.
Getting the right size boxes that stuff fit in, I still think planning ahead on that is smart.
Yeah, I agree with you.
And now that you say it, there's every chance that someone will ask a question on eBay.
As you know, that is a feature.
I used eBay once in 1998.
Did you buy some vintage Air Jordans or something?
I bought a remake of a vintage pavement shirt and maybe a Weezer shirt.
I think about a pavement shirt and a Weezer shirt.
But I bought one of those classic, you know, that green pavement shirt everybody had, the green shirt with the weird device like in yellow on it.
Yeah, I guess so.
I'm sure I've seen it a million billion times.
It's going to be the show art this week.
You love pavement.
I do love pavement.
Do you?
We are underused.
It's like, how are you getting away with singing like that?
I know you can sing like a normal person.
It never sounds more normal over the years.
You just go back and listen to it and it still sounds so weird.
How do you do it?
I don't know how you can do it.
How does it get so high?
I wonder, does he speak like an ordinary guy?
I know, and it does.
Well, then you're my fact-checking cuz.
It's all amazing, wonderful music, and the fact that he sings like that is a major advantage to the music.
I just don't understand how you can do it.
I don't understand how you can know how to sing and then fail to sing so utterly.
It's just it's so snotty.
It's so dismissive.
It's so snotty.
And that's why the British people loved it, because they think that snotty is real.
They don't like people with self-esteem in England.
I've seen this at length over the years.
I've been able to observe how much British people are suspicious of anyone who doesn't hate themselves.
I'm not saying that's bad.
I'm saying that's important.
Like really seeing that can help a lot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's very interesting.
You've got to hate yourself a little bit more.
Well, that's the thing that nobody in Europe likes about Americans.
We don't hate ourselves enough.
Right, right, right, right.
They've all got Kierkegaard in their water.
And we're out here with our, like, can-do spirit and our rabbit, run, rabbit, run.
Look at me.
I'm going to start an eBay store because people want my used clothes.
Oh, really, governor?
USA, America.
Pow, pow, pow.
Chicago, bang, bang.
And people in Europe just roll their eyes.
They're like, you're too friendly.
Look at the British media.
Look at the British media and how they love to tear down somebody just at the point when they become well-known.
Got a little bit too big in the britches there.
Yep.
Well, except for Robbie, what's his name?
Oh, the guy from that song, that 1999 song?
Robbie Coltrane.
The cute guy that somehow is like fun and funny and also like got big in England, but nobody in America has ever heard of him.
Robbie Johnson.
The guy did that song in 1999 that I liked.
I guess so.
Yeah, Robbie.
That in my head sounds like Bittersweet Symphony, even though I know it's not.
Robbie McNamara.
He's had that.
The end of the world's coming.
Robbie Williams.
He did that thing.
Robin Williams?
Robbie Williams.
He did the thing that Chris Cornell did, which is he made a disco album.
Mm-hmm.
He tried a thousand things to get big in America.
He'd been in a boy band before that.
That's right.
Robbie Johnson.
Robbie Williams.
He used to be in a band.
Robbie Williams.
He's in a band called Take That.
Exactly.
That's the guy.
He was the Justin Timberlake of England, but he was snarky.
He was funny.
He was like the comedian that used to be fat that now is a drug addict.
Or not even a drug addict anymore.
Now he's a post-drug addict who's like smart and goes on American talk shows.
Just one?
Just one?
Makes people feel bad.
Makes them feel not smart enough.
Oh, huh.
But I'd like to learn more about that.
Well, you know the one.
He's in all of these movies now.
He's the British guy that – oh, he remade –
Caught between the moon and New York City.
Oh.
And it wasn't any good.
Huh.
Just like when Steve Martin remakes the Kato.
Right.
So I'm looking for Arthur English fat drugs TV show.
Yeah.
Let's see what happens.
Let's see.
Mycroft Holmes, Artie Lang.
Nope, nope, nope.
Russell Brand.
Yeah, there we are.
Russell Brand.
Wait, are you kidding?
No, Russell Brand.
Oh, Russell Brand.
Sure, he used to do lots of drugs and now he looks like Weird Al.
Sure.
Sure, he's fun and funny and smart, but also annoying.
He's an activist comedian.
Oh, I see.
Didn't he used to be with Katie Holmes?
I don't know.
She's not related to Mycroft Holmes as far as we know.
Katie Holmes is the one that married the Scientologist?
No, no, no.
Oh, that's Katie.
Oh, right.
Okay, so who am I thinking of?
Katie Perry.
Katie Holmes is the one that married the Scientologist.
Katie Perry is the one that married Mycroft Holmes.
Katie Perry is the one that looks like Zooey Deschanel if you just turned the volume up on all of her features like two notches.
Oh my goodness, that must drive her crazy.
Well, it's the opposite.
You were at a ball game with her and this happened, right?
Yeah, I went to a Mariners game with Zoe and somebody was like, hey, you're that lad.
You're the one.
You're that girl.
And I was like, wow, I'm surprised that these drunk guys at a baseball game know who you are.
And she was like, they don't know who I am.
They think I'm Katy Perry.
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Wow, really?
And then they were like, yeah, you're the girl with the song about the girl, kissing the girl.
She was like, just rolling her eyes like, yeah, thanks.
Okay, thank you.
She's gotten that a lot.
Well, yeah, and when you put them side by side, you're like, oh, sure, this is that dumb thing where it's like, it's like me and Josh Rosenfeld.
I don't know why I just had so much trouble saying Josh Rosenfeld.
Josh Rosenfeld.
But, you know, if you stand Josh Rosenfeld and me next to each other, people are like, are you guys brothers?
Are you guys twins separated at birth?
No.
And you go...
What are you talking about?
Like, you know, like Josh's people are from Poland back to the shtetl days, and I'm some Celt from all the way over on the seaside.
You guys look like the places that you're from very much.
We do, and yet our coloring is kind of the same, and people are just like, you guys look like brothers.
And so Katy Perry and Zooey Deschanel, same thing, except all of the Katy Perry's features are just a little bit like bigger, like packed.
I don't know.
Zooey Deschanel's got pretty big eyes.
I think it's kind of a Barbie and Skipper situation.
You got the Barbie doll and then you got the Skipper doll.
They're supposed to be sisters.
They look pretty much the same, just ones a little smaller.
I think Zooey Deschanel is the Skipper to Katy Perry's Barbie.
Interesting.
Who do you think is taller?
Is it raining?
Ding!
uh chanel height uh i think that let's say katie perry is taller i because i feel like she has the bigger she's the bigger version or the barbie right she's the one that's yeah in this particular model yeah absolutely so is she yeah according according to the internet uh zouie chanel is five six and katie perry is five eight
See, that acquits with my impression.
Okay.
And I think you're right.
Katy Perry dated Russell Brand.
Yes.
And that seemed to be.
I think it did not go very well.
Well, it just seemed crazy.
Like, first of all.
How would you make your schedules work out?
Well, that's the celebrity problem that I don't understand.
How I feel like they are more comfortable with each other, celebrities.
Oh, sure.
Because they can both check into, you know, like you could have, like if you were dating Zoe, you could check into a hotel and you could be Franny and Zoe, but Zoe would be Franny.
You know what I'm saying?
And then you would be Zoe.
Oh, that'll show.
That's a switch them up.
So people are like, oh, hi, is there anyone named Zoe staying in your hotel?
And you'd say, yes.
And then you'd say, can I get their room number?
Well, sure.
And then you'd go up the elevator and you'd knock on the door and the door would open and it's Russell Brand.
Pow!
No, I'm Franny.
Right?
No, I'm Zoe.
Mr. Franny is my father.
Exactly.
uh zoe deschanel has a sister yes she does who's also a famous television emily deschanel and she's in a she's in a spider-man she's in the good spider-man movie and she's in something called bones yeah that's right she does she's one of the you know the bones she's one of the titular bones i feel like there's a there is a thing i was i was at a show uh the other night that i was doing there in san francisco during the sketch fest party
And I was backstage in the theater.
Sometimes you talk a little bit like Sarah Palin.
Like a lacrosse being Sarah Palin in Yoda.
I am from Alaska.
You can see Russia from here.
It's part of our lexicon.
I was backstage at this theater party, and several of the actresses, who are all wonderful people, have all at one time or another played some kind of forensic detective on a television show.
Ah.
And they were all, oh, and Adam Savage was there.
And he was talking about how Mythbusters had just ended.
And these women who had all played forensic detectives, some of them multiple times,
we're all commiserating with him and saying, oh, isn't that, I know exactly that feeling when your longtime, very popular television show has been canceled.
It's really like losing, it's like losing a child.
And they all said, they're all like, oh, and Adam's like, I know it's like, it hurts so much more than I thought.
And they're like, oh, when I, when I lost, when, when, when, uh, when like, uh,
pet detective got canceled or whatever or or or when uh when like dead body show got canceled i was devastated or you know uh viscous liquid detector las vegas right and then i got you know and then you know it was great when i got hired on a floor special microscope squad right florida based fake science show as the as the pretty science lady yeah as the as the pretty forensic scientist who spends all her time pretty science ladies on tv
And so I think Emily Deschanel also plays a pretty science lady who works in a cold room full of cadavers and who every once in a while pulls up some implausible thing on a computer screen that furthers the narrative of the show.
She asks the guy with the messy t-shirt if he'll be able to crack the encryption.
Well, yeah.
She says, look here.
I found a fiber and it turns out that this fiber has been to the moon.
I can tell because it has enzymes.
Yeah.
So go get the killer.
He found a number of chemicals in the environment.
There were chemicals in the environment that could not be replicated.
They have to wait for the assay to come back from the lab.
Honestly, I have not seen the show.
Maybe Emily Deschanel is the detective in a dirty t-shirt.
She might be the bone.
It's called Bones, right?
I think she's the titular Bone.
She's probably the Bone.
Maybe she's Mr. and Mrs. Bone, and it's just called Bones.
Could be.
That would be a clever thing, right?
Because she's probably a doctor.
Who's the other Bones?
Was it somebody on MASH?
Oh, you got Trapper John.
You got Bones.
Oh, Bones is on the Star Trek.
Oh, Bones.
Right.
Of course.
But he's not.
He is a doctor.
Yeah, but he's a real worm.
Jim.
I think I'm getting better at the drums.
That's a really complicated, stupid joke.
Oh, that's very good.
They call me Dr. Bones.
Jim, they call me Dr. Bones.
I can handle criticism.
You're not doing a bones impression very well.
No, it's all right.
It's all right.
I am a real doctor.
I'm not a real worm.
I'm an actual worm.
I live like a worm.
I'm looking at Regretzi, and there's a knitted glove meant for two lovers to hold hands in.
That's right.
It's like, oh, we want to hold hands, but we also want to wear gloves, but we don't want to hold gloved hands.
No.
We want to touch each other's natural hand skin.
It's a little German.
It's the kind of thing a German would get.
It's very, it's creepy.
It feels a little bit like, what was the movie where Robert Duvall had to have sex with his wife through a sheet?
Oh.
The Princess Bride.
No.
Muzzletop.
It feels a little bit like that.
Uh-huh.
Like, if you have to have sex through a sheet because you're a member of a patriarchal religious cult, then you would also want a hand-knitted glove to hold hands, but not visibly.
I think it feels German.
I mean, the forced direction of intimate body parts feels like a very German concept to me.
Also being cozy.
Everybody likes to be cozy.
Oh, and Germans do like to be cozy, let's be honest.
Yep, yep, yep.
Boy, this site is just full of, whoa, chocolate turkey on a pretzel rod.
Look at that guy, huh?
What?
Yep.
You notice it's brown.
Sure.
So anyway, yeah, I used to watch shows like that.
You know, when my wife got large with child, we had to stop watching a lot of TV shows about crime and suffering.
And in particular, for some reason, up to 2007, we used to watch a show called Law and Order Special Victims Unit.
And we used to watch a lot.
I have been a big Law and Order fan for...
20 years i used to watch it all the time like when i was working i'd be watching a and e at home all day uh but special victims unit is is horrible like what happens on that show is horrible the acting is horrible and it's just all about innocent people being sexually exploited well this is a question i've had for a long time does special modify unit or does special modify the victim
That's a really good question, because the unit that takes care of special victims would be pretty fun.
Well, it's a special unit.
I've always felt like it's a special unit that takes care of victims.
I think it's the victim's unit that is special.
But a unit for special victims would be very interesting.
So you're talking about special, and then it's, oh, it's, so there are normal victims units, and then this is the special victim unit.
That's what you're saying.
So special modifies victim units.
Let's, for any variety of reasons, let's get off this.
Okay, all right.
We've gotten better.
We've gotten better over the years.
Yeah, we have.
We can get off things now.
I went back and I was listening to a couple old episodes recently, and wow.
We packed a lot of stuff in at the beginning.
There's a lot of crow talk.
Were you first introduced me to hydrogen peroxide?
It's all in there when you first tell me about crows?
Well, and this is the thing.
I have become now a place for people to send things about crows.
That technically makes you a post office box, I think.
I don't know.
You've become a place.
I am become post office.
I think the presumption is that there is stuff about crows happening on the internet that I haven't already seen.
If it's about crows and it's on the internet, oh, I've seen it.
But there's always this steady trickle of like, oh my God, did you see this one about the crow that brings gifts to the little girl?
Yes, I did.
Yeah.
Did you see the one about the crows?
Yes, I saw that one.
What about the crow that does?
Yes, I saw that.
And so most recently, there's a thing about crows, about crows like...
Oh, shit.
Now I'm blanking on what the crows do.
Well, if anybody has a link, make sure and send it to John.
They hold grudges.
What is it?
Oh, no.
It's that they're paranoid.
Crows are paranoid.
Crows are paranoid.
So it's not just that they're cautious, but they have an abundance of caution, maybe based on not that much.
Or concern that people are out to get them.
I think that they have concern.
I think that they feel like if they...
If you know where their shit is, they behave differently than if you don't know where their shit is.
Oh, kind of like a meth user.
That's right.
Like if they have hidden their shit, if they have hidden their light under a bushel.
Their crow meth.
Right, right.
If they put crow meth under a bushel.
Mm-hmm.
then that's fine.
But if they feel like you were watching them when they put their meth under a bushel?
They'll never feel safe again.
No, no, no.
They don't feel good.
And that means that if they're doing that with their meth, they're doing that all the time.
Their aluminum foil, their baseball caps, their popcorn chicken, any of the things that they've been gathering.
But also I feel like the message is that they are sitting there, they're tripping on you all the time.
And this is what I've been saying to people for years.
When you walk out of the house, the crows are watching you and they are marking what you're doing and they are judging you and they are deciding about you.
And you had better – somebody wrote me the other day and it was an interesting email.
He was like, I think I've offended the crows.
Now what do I do?
And I said, tell me more.
And he said, well, I had some – I threw a McDonald's bag at them or I did something.
I disrespected them.
And now I feel like they're watching me all the time.
And I was like, yeah, well, you're right.
They are watching you now.
And the only thing – you can't apologize because they won't accept it.
The only thing you can do is start very patiently just being like, hello, crows.
Hello, I see you.
I see you, crows.
And just work your way slowly back to a place where they aren't going to one day all come down your chimney or whatever it is that they've got in store for you.
But anyway, so yeah, people are like, crows.
Here, did you see this crow?
I'm like, I fucking saw the crow, dudes.
I'm on, I mean, I got a Google search.
Google alert.
And you had mentioned in this episode also that
the thing where you and your mom had gotten into cars to try and figure out where the crows go.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, let's just take it as red.
The crows are very protective, at the very least, about where they live.
So if you found where they hide their meth, and you can kind of triangulate where they probably live and use the meth, I mean, think what that's going to do to a crow, and they're going to pass that on from generation to generation.
It's the selfish gene.
It's just going to move it on.
It's like you put Cheetos out in a snow-covered parking lot, try and capture a crow in a basket.
Yeah.
First of all, they're never going to eat a Cheeto again.
Nope.
Not any crow in the world.
They've seen every basket, all kinds of baskets.
They've seen net guns.
They've seen masks.
Yeah.
Because crows, I feel like crows have spooky action at a distance.
Everything aligns just one way.
Right?
There are crows in Pasadena that know not to eat a Cheeto.
Somebody had a basket back in maybe like Boston.
Well, or Alaska where that guy chased him around with a mask on throwing Cheetos out.
But yeah, so I love the fact that you are going back and listening to the archives.
I feel like there's a tremendous amount of information there, but I've never listened to our program, so I don't know what it could be like.
You know, for a long time I was hoping that people would transcribe them because I do like reading our program.
I like to sit and... What?
That's so strange.
Why is that strange?
That's like somebody sending you a transcript of sexual intercourse.
I mean, you might get all the facts right, but you're kind of missing the feeling.
Have you never read a transcript of sexual intercourse?
I've read a lot of transcripts of sexual intercourse.
I had to summarize some from depositions, yeah.
I like a transcript because I feel like there's a kind of court reporter...
What I like to do is go through a transcript and figure out all the ways in which the transcriber has misread or misjudged some strange little reference you're making.
And then the strange pivot that I make off of the strange reference.
And then you take the pivot and run it in for a touchdown.
Except right before you, then you get blindsided, tackled.
by some other football player that I have put on the field.
Well, yeah.
Ordinarily, you think about the way you make a dish to make for people.
They could see all the ingredients on the table.
You're preparing the food.
You put all the ingredients in.
You cook it.
You eat it.
And you might be able to identify those ingredients.
But in this case, they're eating a meal where they still haven't found the salt.
Yeah, but it's in there.
Well, it might be in there, but they don't read it as salt.
They're missing.
It's almost like they're eating a different dish because they can't know what all the ingredients are.
And one of those ingredients, I'm not using a lot of it, but there could just be a little bit in there.
It's some kind of Szechuan battery acid.
It could be a Sichuan pepper.
But I feel like reading transcripts of our show is in the same field.
Family of behaviors as religiously reading movie reviews for movies I will never see.
Oh, I like that.
I like doing that.
Oh, yeah.
I've read the reviews, sometimes multiple reviews of movies I would not see if you paid me $100.
But I love reading the review of them.
I'll go in a couple times a year and go to that page with all of the movies that Roger Ebert gave like half star or less to.
And those you want to see, but Ebert really came into his own in his later years.
But boy, you can find some really good Ebert in there.
I have never done that.
And, you know, I like a good Ebert.
Oh, God, he's great.
What's the one?
What's the John Travolta movie, the Scientology movie where he's an alien that looks like his boogers coming out?
Oh, the dreadlock.
Battle Royale.
No, that's a Japanese movie.
I thought that was the first James Bond reboot.
Battle Royale.
Right, Battle Royale.
Yeah, Three Steps Over the Komodo Dragon.
Well, sure.
And that's where the guy with the bleeding... It's the bleeding eye.
The bleeding eye guy, the guy who eats people on TV.
So I feel like... Battleship Earth?
Battleship Field.
Battlefield Earth.
Battlefield Earth.
I felt like he looked like one of the people from the later Matrix movies.
Except in the later Matrix movies, they were the heroes.
And in The Battlefield Earth, he was the bad guy.
And he's supposed to be like 10 feet tall.
So he's wearing like Frankenstein shoes.
Oh, Forrest Whitaker.
Oh, they dragged in poor Forrest Whitaker.
Oh, poor Forrest Whitaker.
What was the movie where he was the weird Brooklyn ninja?
Oh, Brooklyn Ninja.
He was a Brooklyn Ninja, Forrest Whitaker.
Oh, that sounds interesting.
Kind of an independent spirit award movie.
Oh, huh.
I'll have to think about that.
I don't think I know that one.
Are you watching that O.J.
Simpson movie?
Are you watching that on the TV?
No.
Is it good?
No, it's terrible.
I'm still watching Jessica Jones.
Good, good.
Good show.
Yeah, well, John Travolta produced this and appears in it as Robert Shapiro, and the makeup is exquisite.
Yeah.
John Travolta is Robert Shapiro.
I like that.
I'll send you a photo here.
Yeah, it's full of stunt casting, like hilarious stunt casting.
Uh, like who else is in it?
Like, um, Oh, uh, uh, uh, the guy, the other guy from law and order, uh, uh, that guy, like the African-American guy, he plays a Johnny Cochran, uh, David Schwimmer from the friends program is Robert Kardashian.
Uh, are you talking about iced tea?
Oh no.
Good, good pull though.
Uh, Courtney B Vance is who I'm thinking of.
I see.
But that is a special victims unit.
Ice-T is special victims unit.
Oh, yeah.
He's the one who comes in and he's the one.
What's the term in TV trips?
What do they call it?
I think it's called something like As You Know John or As You Know Bob.
He does a lot of the As You Know Bob.
Is that sort of like an actually?
Well, it's a terrible form of exposition that involves one person talking to someone else about something they both have always known about for a long time for the benefit of the audience.
Oh, right.
Well, as you know, Bob, the photon torpedo has to cool off for 20 minutes before it can be used again.
Right.
As you know, Bob, that time that we did that thing, it was this thing that you already know.
Yeah.
I feel like, do you remember when Ice-T...
was authentically a real, dangerous person.
I remember when Ice-T, the brief period where Ice-T had put out a song that made him, I think arguably for a while, the most hated and most feared man in America.
Right, he was the cop killer.
Yeah, he was the cop killer.
He was basically, people today who were not around when this happened, you have no idea the uproar that that song caused.
And he defiantly stared it down like the, the, the PMRC, the parents research, uh, mania council.
Got so Al Gore's wife got so up in arms about cop killer and cops across America were understandably mad.
And Ice-T just stared them all down, stared them in the face and was like, fuck you.
It was very bold and very of the time.
And he was a tough character.
And now he's the, as you know, Bob, on the TV show.
And LL Cool J is making weird country songs.
Oh, yeah, Game of Gate.
That's that thing where they go after women in media and technology.
As you know, Bob.
As you know, Bob, that's sweeping the internet.
Oh, yeah, I heard about this.
There was actually one that's actually about some people that I know who got a lot of grief from the Gamergate people, and they did a Law & Order about it, and it starts out with them going to a game convention.
It's the first Law & Order I've watched in probably seven or eight years, and it was really funny.
Oh.
Torrin, rip, rip, rip from the headlines.
As you know, Bob, furries are not all.
Oh, yeah, I read about this in Wired Magazine.
Furries are like normal people, but they're like dressing up like animals.
Suddenly, I think I might be John Travolta from Greece.
Yeah, you are.
Hey, Mr. Goddard.
I feel, oh, my God.
Here is on Missing Regretsy.
A cozy, a koozie for a turtle that makes the turtle look like a roast turkey.
Isn't that sweet?
Isn't that sweet?
Oh, oh shit.
Oh, that reminds me.
Merlin, I had a very hippie experience recently.
I was in Hawaii on Maui, as you know, down a little bit south of Kihei.
And I was, I was going snorkeling and you may not know this about me, but
I've been snorkeling quite a bit.
I like to snorkel.
It's wonderful because you feel like you're flying in another world.
You feel like you're on that movie where the big blue people fly around and you can inhabit a blue person.
Oh, you're talking about the Avatar?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I've never seen that.
You inhabit a blue person and then you can fly around and I think you have a springy tail like Digger or something like that.
That sounds adorable.
It's really wonderful.
That's what scuba diving's like.
It's like being Tigger underwater.
Yeah, you spring around on a coiled tail, and you go, Tiggers are Tiggers, or whatever.
I don't remember what Tiggers.
Well, the wonderful thing about Tiggers are Tiggers are wonderful things.
There you go, exactly.
And so as far as I can recall, that was the premise of Avatar.
But so I was in the water and I love to be, first of all, in the water.
And second of all, snorkeling because it's like flying.
And fish come up and look at you.
They do.
They just look right at you.
And you're like, hello.
And they don't say hello.
They don't speak.
But it's extraordinary to be in their world.
But in any case, I don't like to snorkel in rough water.
Because I'm a little bit of a panicky snorkeler.
Okay.
Because it's a foreign environment and I'm very accustomed to breathing air.
And I like to breathe air and I don't like to breathe water.
And so I like very calm seas and every time I put a snorkel on, I have to kind of put my head under the water, feel some panic, back off, then do it again, feel less panic, and then pull my head out of the water, make some jocular comment to no one in particular, and then put my face back down in the water, regulate my breathing, get calm, and then start to fly.
But there have been several times when I've been snorkeling in rough water and water's coming in my hose and I'm bouncing up and down and I can't overcome, I can't get my breathing straight and I can't overcome the panic.
So anyway, I'm out, I'm snorkeling on this reef and I panic.
And I'm way, way out.
I've gone too far because I hadn't yet regulated my panic.
I was just like, oh, yeah, I'll get I'll master this.
And I head out way out.
And then I realized I haven't mastered it.
And I start to, you know, and I start to the panic starts to rise.
And it's not like I'm scuba diving.
You know, it's not like I'm going to it's not like that panic is going to cause me to die.
But I start to panic and then panic compounds upon itself and now I'm freaking out.
And I pop my head up out of the water because I'm hyperventilating through a tube which I don't know if you've done that recently but that's not the way to hyperventilate.
I pop my head up and I realize I'm a long way from shore.
And so I'm like, got to get back to shore.
This is a bad situation.
Now I'm panicking and I'm a long way away from shore.
And I start to swim to the shore, but I don't want to put my head back in the water.
I don't want to put it in the tube.
I'm just like, now I'm dog paddling.
And I've got flippers on, but the tide is moving in such a way that I'm paddling to the shore and I appear not to be making any progress.
I appear actually to be, I feel like I'm being pulled out by the undertode.
I'm pushing and pushing and now I'm really starting to panic because now I'm tired and I'm flailing.
And I say, like, put the tube back in.
At least you can breathe through the tube.
But I don't want to be in the tube.
I'm hyperventilating.
I'm panicking.
I'm swimming.
And now I'm scared.
Oh, my God.
And so I get tired enough and scared enough that I roll over on my back because I've learned that if you roll over on your back, you can at least float along and try and regulate your breathing.
But I just can't.
I just can't.
I cannot get calm.
Oh, because it's a high C, right?
The waves are crashing.
And I just don't, you know, I'm just not, I don't like to be in that.
If I'm on a boogie board, I love to be in that, but I'm going to snorkel.
So I barely make it back to shore.
And I get there and I'm heaving and all the people that are there on the beach trying to have a nice time with their kid are suddenly dealing with this ectoplasm that's washed up on shore, some dead whale that's still wheezing a little bit.
Is that you or an analogy or something else?
Oh, that's me.
I'm the dead whale in this thing.
And so I'm scaring all the kids.
We were having such a nice day.
Having such a nice day.
And then this guy decided he was going to snorkel and then he couldn't handle it.
And so, oh, it's awful.
And so I get back in and now not only am I hyperventilating and panicking and feel like I almost drowned, but now I'm covered in shame because this is a simple little why lay a snorkel beach and daddy can't fucking get his shit together.
And daddy had a panic attack.
Oh God, I'm so sorry.
Couldn't swim.
That was bad.
So the next day, fast forward to the next day, and I'm just like, I'm mad at the ocean.
And I'm more than being mad at the ocean, I'm mad at myself.
And I'm like, listen, you cannot let yourself, this cannot be the, you can't go back into the real world with this hanging over your head.
You're going to have to go find the horse and get back on it.
That's right.
You like to snorkel, you need to get back on this horse.
And so I go down to the beach and I'm like, oh, the waves are big and I'm going to boogie board.
I like to boogie board.
And I don't feel worried about the waves, even when they tangle me all up.
I do that for a while and then I'm like, all right, your snorkel's sitting over there on the beach.
You got to get back on the horse.
And I put it on.
And I go over to a different part of the beach and I do my like three or four times putting my head in the water.
And then I get trapped in some like adjust my face mask OCD where I'm standing there like chest deep in water adjusting my face mask for 20 minutes because I don't want to put my face in the water.
So your head's still not really in the game.
Not in the game, but I'm like, listen, you got to get right here.
You got to get right with Jesus.
So I finally, I finally kind of, okay, here we go.
And I put my face in the water and I'm like, I'm breathing a little bit too heavy.
I'm not in a calm space, but I'm not panicking.
And I'm like, listen, you know, I'm a little hard on myself here.
I'm like,
you know you figure this out like don't go back out here when you're panicking but don't you go back to the beach either so you get regulated and i get out there and i start paddling and i'm like you're fine you're fine and i'm breathing fine and i get out there to the reef and i'm looking around and i see some reef stuff
some coral and some starfish and some fish that come look at you.
And it's like, okay, this is all fine.
I did it.
I'm fine.
I have, I've conquered the thing and I'm still breathing a little heavy and I'm still not feeling comfortable out here, but I, I got back on the horse.
So now you can go back to the beach.
Like you paid your dues here.
And rather than go into the beach by the reef where the waves are crashing, I kind of swim out parallel to the beach where there's nothing to see.
It's just sand on the bottom.
And I'm kind of just floating along.
It's like I'm done looking at stuff.
I'm just trying to get back to the beach and keep my breathing calm and I'm just floating over sand.
And then out of the gloaming, I see a swimmer coming to me.
And there's a lot of other swimmers out there.
So I'm like, here comes a swimmer.
That actually is, you know, that's calming.
It means that there's another person that is surviving this experience.
And then I'm watching the swimmer and then out of the gloaming comes the swimmer and it is a giant tortoise.
What?
As big as me.
Are you kidding?
A tortoise that is six foot in circumference.
And he is swimming with his tortoise wings slowly and chill.
And he looks at me and I'm like, whoa.
And instantly my breathing just goes to like...
And then all of a sudden I can hear the whale song.
There are whales all around us and I'm hearing all this fucking whale singing that I wasn't hearing before because I was breathing so hard.
And this turtle is super slow-mo and he turns just a little bit and just comes straight at me head on.
And I'm like, what are you doing, guy?
And as he gets closer, I see that he's enormous.
And he, by choice, there's a whole ocean that he could be in.
He flies directly underneath me and six inches away.
So that I'm like, is he going to nibble on my peanuts?
What's his plan?
And he just goes right underneath me like,
like sending me some turtle love or something.
And I'm looking at his big shell go underneath me like it's the opening of Star Wars.
Turtle crawl.
And so where it's talking about how the Empire is in a trade dispute.
That's right.
And so then I flip around.
And I get up alongside of him and my kicking and floating can match his like we're swimming side by side.
And he's flapping his wings.
And so I start flapping my wings, which are hands, in sync with him.
And we sail together in this like... And he's looking at me.
And I'm looking at him.
And he's fine with this.
And I'm fine with it.
We're grooving.
And we swim all the way back across the beach together.
And I'm taking about one breath a minute at this point.
I'm just like...
I'm in all panic, all panic that I ever felt has disappeared.
Panic about seventh grade math tests is gone.
Wow.
And I'm hearing like whales all around us and the tortoise is hearing the whales.
He hears it every day.
It's no big deal to him.
And he flies me back over to the reef where I had been kind of hesitating and scared and just like, okay, I see the reef.
All right, all right, all right.
And he flies me then into the reef.
like in like over it and into the canyons of the reef.
Now I'm just following him and he stops every once in a while.
It doesn't really stop, but he like bends down and eats some little bit of something off the, off the ground or off the reef.
And I'm just right behind him.
And then he flies me over and there's another tortoise.
This is the mama tortoise.
Wow.
It was smaller than me.
And then I,
The big guy kind of takes off and he like hands me off.
And now I'm flying with the mama tortoise.
And so I do this for a while and I'm like, the waves are still kind of crashing.
And I'm like, okay, now this has been something.
And so I bid you adieu tortoises because you've got your own lives to lead.
And I head back off the reef and I go again back out across the sand to get parallel to the beach so that I can turn and go into the beach.
Because I'm like, not going to get any better than that.
That was some heavy ass tortoise like connection where the tortoise said, somebody's freaking out.
And I'm going to go.
Got to have a tortoise intervention.
That's right.
I'm just going to go intervene.
I'm going to take him.
I'm going to calm him down and I'm going to chill him out and take him over the reef with me.
So I'm floating out, swimming along, back along the beach, just thinking about what happened, listening to the whale song.
And then out of the gloaming,
comes another giant tortoise at the same place that I met the previous tortoise.
Jeez.
And this tortoise flies underneath me and basically says, would you care to join me on a trip back to the reef?
And I say, I would.
And so I turn around and this tortoise and I fly together all the way across.
And now I'm taking about a breath an hour.
Wow.
Just like...
All is right with the world.
These tortoises are doing some heavy lifting with me.
And this tortoise, the second one, actually appears to be syncing up its movements with me.
Whoa.
So it's like, are you going to flap here?
I'm going to flap with you.
And we're looking at each other and just cold chilling.
I go back to the reef with that tortoise.
That tortoise kind of interacts with the mama tortoise some tortoise way.
And so all told, at this point, I've been out there an hour plus, you know, just like... Your family must have been worrying about you.
Well, you know, I think you can look out and see... Well, I mean, from the beach you look out and it's like, is that little stick sticking out of the water my guy or is it some other guy?
But, you know, they don't really worry about...
They figure that either I'm going to live or I'm going to die.
Yep, yep, yep.
So I finally get back to the beach and I'm in this state of what I can only describe as like total hippiness.
Where I get out and I'm just like, whoa, man.
I mean, it's like, whoa.
And then I go, like, that afternoon, I go to the grocery store to get some food.
And there's some little cheese ball, like, tortoise candy dish carved out of koa wood or something on sale at the grocery store.
Some real tourist crapola.
Stuff I see at thrift stores all the time for 99 cents and I don't buy.
But I look at this little koa wood tortoise and it looks just like my tortoise.
Wow.
It's got his little face.
I'm like, I got to have this.
And so now I'm such a hippie that I'm buying tortoise crapola.
Because I want to stay connected to this guy.
You want to breathe once a minute again.
Yeah.
And so I bought this thing and now it's sitting on my piano full of keys.
I look at it every day and I'm like, what a piece of crap that is.
But it looks like my guy.
It looks like my spirit tortoise.
And now I just don't know anything.
I don't know.
I don't know anything.
What an experience.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's pre-tortoise and there's post-tortoise.
Well, the story's got lots of parts to it.
I mean, there's the scary part about how you're having some trouble in the water.
The story got a little crazy when you were approached by a giant tortoise, but I think the story got special when you were handed off to a second tortoise.
Right?
Hand it off.
Like, here you go.
Talk about hive mind.
I mean, there's something going on there.
They, you know, they're like, they must be like the Coast Guard, the Turtle Coast Guard.
Well, they're old, right?
So they know the deal.
They've seen every kind of thing.
And they've watched the attack ships burn off the shoulder of Orion.
Absolutely.
And so this guy, I don't know what he was doing.
He was sitting on the bottom or he was way, way off from the reef.
He was doing turtle business.
Wow, these turtles, I looked up to Hawaii turtle on Google images, and they look like they have, it was a kind of, was it a sort of leopard spotty face?
Leopard spotty.
They're amazing looking.
They are amazing.
They really do look like fantastical creatures.
Yeah, and the thing is, I expected that because they are living in an ocean environment, that they move fast.
They're not hanging out with you.
They're on their way to somewhere.
And they're slow on land, but they're fast in the ocean.
But they are not.
They are swimming.
They are flying in super slow-mo.
And that's what's amazing about snorkeling is that you are flying, but you're flying in slow motion.
And these guys are – I mean I could easily keep pace with them.
And maybe they were slowing down just to chill with me.
Mm-hmm.
But yeah, they heard over the whale song, they heard some kind of like huffing and puffing of a guy.
Here comes a panicky snorkeler.
Yeah.
Here's a guy trying to master his domain, and he's making it.
He survived it.
We're not going to go over to somebody who's flailing in the water.
This guy's doing it, but he needs a little extra push to realize that the ocean is his friend.
Yeah.
And so here I am.
Now I'm walking around and I feel like I'm going to buy a puka shell necklace and I feel like I'm going to start carrying a yoga mat with me.
I just feel like everything is always right with the world and all I need is some positivity and some Eckhart Tolle.
And I'll be back in the game.
I don't know what to say.
That sounds like a very moving experience.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
How often do you have that?
I mean, most of my experience with wildlife is I'm out feeling like the crows are watching me or I'm in the woods and I'm ringing a bell and I'm saying, Ho, bear!
Ho, bear!
Ho, bear!
Or there's a possum in my walls.
How did your family respond to the anecdote?
Your mother in particular.
I'm curious what she thought of it.
Well, mom wasn't there.
My daughter is at that age where she doesn't believe that things exist that she can't see.
So I was like, the sea is full of giant tortoise.
And she was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
She was like, airplanes are funny.
I'm like, yeah, all right.
Well, one of these days you're going to snorkel and you're going to see a giant tortoise and then we will be commuting at that level.
And then my daughter's mother is an avid snorkeler and she was, when I had had my panic attack the day before, she was very supportive, but there was also an angle of like,
I'm not exactly sure, but she was sympathetic, I'd say.
But it was a kind of sympathy.
Like she was tolerant.
Yeah, she was like, I'm sorry that you had a panic attack.
I've scuba dived in Sumatra.
Sumatra now is my new meme.
I've scuba dived in Sumatra, but you had a panic attack off of Waimea, the gentlest of all places.
So I'm, I'm very sympathetic to you, but not really.
And so I was like, I, you know, I'm not getting any sympathy around here.
I'm going to have to do, I'm going to have to take this trail on my own.
But I came back and talked about the tortoises and then it was revealed that that was fairly unusual and that she had never had that experience.
No tortoise had ever come to her in the...
And she's done a lot more of the snorkeling.
Oh, tons.
And scuba.
She's a scuba-er.
Scuba-er.
And so when I was following this tortoise through the reef, there were snorkelers all around me.
But they had not been invited into the reef by a tortoise.
And so they were having a very different experience.
They were floating along and tortoises seemed to them to be things that dwelled down below and that they could see and have that experience of like, I saw a turtle.
I saw one.
But like my tortoise was taking me into his world and saying, Hey, I want you to meet my friend.
So that was a thing where I was like, who's scuba dived off the coast of Sumatra now.
Right.
Right.
So I don't, you know, so now I don't know anything.
All my cynicism is gone.
I'm breathing once an hour.
You're still thinking about the turtle.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I think about it now because my little key, because he's like sitting on my piano full of keys.
So what's a brother supposed to do now?
I don't know.
You know, I'm starting to see that the Regretzi is largely turkey-themed.
I think it's because it was probably around Thanksgiving.
There's like 80 things that look like turkeys.
If you go back, it's Halloween right before that.
Oh, I see.
I see.
I see.
Now, you've had one of those peak experience type things that people talk about.
Now, how do you think that'll end up affecting you?
You're probably still processing this.
I mean, is it something now where you're going to go seek out more of these... I mean, can you even seek out this kind of adventure?
Because it seems to me like the turtle came to you.
Well, yeah, but I feel like this is that whole industry of... This is the whole hippie eat, pray, love industry of people that are out seeking...
transformative experiences.
And I do not want to get into that racket where I'm like, oh, I'm going up to Machu Picchu.
That's kind of two things you don't like.
It's a form of substance abuse, like chasing the dragon, and it's kind of an eel.
And it's a little bit of an eel.
It's a little bit of an eel.
I mean, it's like saying, I want a new habit.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah.
All of a sudden, you're a frequent flyer on Malaysia Airlines.
Yeah.
You're going to dolphin tours everywhere.
You're going to dolphin tours.
Having dolphins help deliver kids for you and stuff like that.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't want to swim with the dolphins.
No.
I feel like that's exploitative.
If the dolphin were to swim to you serendipitously, that'd be a different matter, especially if it was an off-brand, non-corporate dolphin.
A wild dolphin, if you like.
There you go.
If I'm out on the ocean listening to whale songs and a dolphin comes over, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
However they talk.
Chicka, chicka, chicka, chicka.
I sound like charro.
I would say, yee, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo.
Coochie, coochie, coo.
That was her trademark.
That's when you know you're around the bend, when you start talking to wild dolphins.
They sound like Charo, like on The Tonight Show.
Yeah, they're wearing a banana hat, and they're going coochie, coochie, coo.
Coochie, coochie to you also, dolphin friend.
If that happens, fuck yeah.
But I'm not going to go to some place off of the coast of Israel where the dolphins are, like, manacled.
Yeah.
Or worse.
Disputed dolphin territory?
Yeah, that they've been psychologically abused.
Oh, they got Shamu'd.
They got Shamu'd where they can't leave the beach now because they are addicted to dolphin chow or whatever humans have done.
They've been dosing their dolphin chow.
Yeah, they're handing out little kibbles and bits.
How do you know the dolphins aren't out there chasing the dragon?
Maybe they want to have a better human experience and they just can't afford it because they're hooked on dolphin chow.
That's the thing.
They say that they're smarter than us, John.
I don't know.
They're sitting around the beach.
They hear a guy panicking somewhere off of Haifa.
He's snorkeling.
He's not having a good day.
The dolphins all turn and they're like, should we go help this guy?
Should we go take him on a spirit quest?
And then there's some ding-a-ling waiting out with dolphin chow, ringing some bell.
Ding, ding, ding, ding.
Come and get it.
Or the little covered wagon comes out from under the kitchen sink.
I love that wagon.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And the dolphins are like, ah, well, that guy's on his own.
The snorkeler's having a bad day, and he's going to have to solve that for himself because I'm not leaving.
Can't save everybody.
And that seems like a bummer.
That's not the kind of experience I want to have.
It would suck to die knowing you're being ignored by a dolphin.
They're dolphins.
You can hear them.
You're like, help me.
Help me get over this.
I'm sinking fast.
And they're like, or you're like on some Yeti tour.
New dolphin phone.
Who dis?