Ep. 191: "My Weird Money"
This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Braintree, code for easy online payments.
To learn more, visit braintreepayments.com slash supertrain.
And by Squarespace.
Start building your website today at squarespace.com, no credit card required.
Enter the offer code supertrain at checkout to get 10% off Squarespace.
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
Good, good, good.
You got some coins there?
No, that's my keys.
I couldn't find my keys this morning, so I picked up my other keys.
And then when I got here, my fob didn't work.
And then I reached in my pocket, and my first set of keys was right in my pocket.
Right where...
I looked there 16 times.
How is that possible?
What happened?
Somebody's... I got thoughts.
I got thoughts.
It could be gremlins.
Could be gremlins.
I got thoughts on this.
Gnomes?
You know, it's like they say on the internet, where first there used to be banner ads, and then people developed banner blindness, they called it, which is you got so used to seeing this certain size ad unit that your mind kind of unconsciously skipped past it.
Oh, yeah.
I skipped past those certain sized ad units.
You do that unconsciously?
Yes.
Good.
All right.
Did you do that unconsciously on purpose?
I do that unconsciously and consciously, both.
That's terrific.
Oh, God, I wish I could do that.
Oh, you see them.
They are, like, in your eyes.
No.
No.
Hmm.
Hmm.
No, the Bain unconsciously.
Yeah, that's good.
My problem is that these days it's the popover JavaScript window takeover thing that wants you to get the app or the newsletter.
Are we going to talk about this today?
Is that what you want to do today?
I'm writing down one word.
I'm writing down Forbes.
I want to talk about Forbes.
Time Magazine.
I can't see Forbes anymore.
They won't let me look at their website.
The venerable Time Magazine has become a clickbait bullshit party.
Okay, I'm making clickbait bullshit.
Okay, let me write that down.
That's good.
Okay, so here's my thought.
Bullshit.
Because I have to write all these down.
I've gone digital now.
You're typing them instead of writing them on a card.
I've gone totally digital.
I do everything digital now.
When I want to leave a note in my daughter's lunchbox, I do it on a brand new iPhone 6S Plus.
She knows the code.
Do you have a paperless office there now?
Not a scrap of paper in here.
You've been here.
All I have is Marvel dolls with dead dark eyes and a computer.
Well, that must be much more efficient.
I got a thought on this.
And this is a thousand flowers will bloom here because this leads to a larger thought technology for me.
I think when you look in your pocket 16 times and you don't notice your keys, I think that's kind of like a form of banner blindness, excluding magic.
Which is something I think we could also talk about.
Yesterday, I tried to explain the difference between science, fiction, and fantasy to my daughter.
I'd like to get your thoughts on how well I did with that.
Okay.
Now, when you say magic, do you mean with a K or without a K?
Like the magics.
Yeah, magic.
Let's come back to that.
We've got clickbait, bullshit, party, and magic.
Okay.
I think one thing that happens is – let me pivot a little bit here because I struggle with my family.
Okay.
Yeah, wow.
Well, no, I really like my family, and they're great.
They're wonderful.
Mostly get along pretty well.
But one of the things that drives me a little bit crazy about my family is that they don't understand the basic innovations required to find something that they can't find.
Oh, yeah.
And so, you know, like the famous Mutt and Jeff comic, they keep looking by this one lamp because that's where the light's good.
That's where the light is, right?
Okay.
So every morning, the following happens in our house.
Okay, brush your teeth and hair.
I don't know where my hairbrush is.
Okay.
All right, I've told you this before, but we now have purchased, we have five of the kind of hairbrush my daughter likes.
I figured we could deploy them tactically around the house, and the law of averages would indicate it would just turn up.
Like scissors and scotch tape, though, it just disappears into some black hole, presumably in my daughter's room.
Well, here's a life hack right here.
You ready?
Yeah, put it on a chain like at a bank.
Well, that's exactly what I was going to say, except do it like a Midwestern gas station and attach it to a license plate.
Oh!
The hairbrush on a chain attached to an old license plate.
That's pretty hip.
It's not going to get lost.
It's got a throwback vintage quality to it.
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
It clangs when she's brushing her hair.
Kids love that.
And she can learn about geography.
You change it up, and it's like, oh, it's a plate from Georgia.
It's a plate from Massachusetts.
Live free or die.
Mm-hmm.
And so I know there's no point in my saying this to my daughter, but I say, honey, there's a couple of facts and evidence.
These are the same facts and evidence we talk about every day.
You have five of these, which is not helping.
And you are literally the only person in the house that uses this hairbrush, which means you're the only person who has any agency over what hole it gets dropped into.
Mm-hmm.
And so then, and this is where the whole family problem kicks in, because then the great quest begins.
It's like a Bildungsroman or Joseph Campbell.
You start wandering around the house looking for brushes.
And my wife and my daughter are like a confused Roomba, because they both tend to circle in these two areas.
My wife keeps checking on the table in the front hallway, because that's frequently where things end up.
And she keeps looking there.
My daughter just walks in a circle in her room, kind of making a noise like this.
Mm-hmm.
And meanwhile, I am under the coffee table.
I am under the dining room table.
I'm looking behind the cat box.
Because you know what?
We've already looked the places where it should be.
Right.
And the two Roomba of the house are still, you know, like sharks in that area.
Oh, you just said cat box.
I just remembered that you have a cat now.
I'm a cat owner.
Whoa.
We have two cat boxes.
In case the cat loses the first one?
One in the chamber.
So do you think this way?
Because my thinking is, look, you know, we've already tried all the places where it should be.
And that's the problem.
The problem is that.
And then, of course, people say things like it's always the last place you look, because normally people keep looking for 15 minutes after they found something.
Yeah.
You just I think that's a Eugene Merman bit.
Oh, really?
No, I don't think so.
But you sounded just like him.
Oh.
Which is great.
Do you watch Bob's Burgers?
No, I don't have a TV.
Okay.
No, I don't either.
I watch it on my daughter's lunchbox phone.
See, I'm all about life hacks.
You know me.
I'm all about solving problems.
You know, it took a while, but it seems to me that you are, as we speak, one of our great nation's foremost progenitors of life hackery.
That's right.
You're always – you know what it is?
The thing is you find a better way and you notice it and then you share it.
That's what I want to do.
No ads.
No ads.
I want to spread the love.
And here's my thought.
You're already clearly fully devoted to raising your daughter as a nerd, as like a – Just because on the way to the new animated Disney movie, I told her about the Dernstein Sci-Fi and Magic.
You're like pot committed to this, right?
Mm-hmm.
I actually am.
She knows that this is a thing we're doing.
When she was 18 months old, she was already wearing Spider-Man pajamas.
I looked at you with confusion.
Merlin, what is that?
It's already too late.
I can see it in your eyes.
Don't call her Spider-Girl.
She's Spider-Man.
Let her be Spider-Man.
So my question is, why have you not introduced the fanny pack?
into her universe.
Does she not have a fanny pack?
Oh, dear.
Fanny pack is where the hairbrush goes, where the iPhone goes, the tiger balm.
What else goes in a fanny pack?
Get some lewds.
Keys.
Maxi pads.
You know, the keys to the house, the keys to the barn.
She sounds like quite a catch.
You hear my barn keys?
A couple of dead-eyed dolls in there.
She could probably carry a little... Well, I mean, she doesn't have comic books anymore.
It would all be on her phone.
Oh, no, no.
She's got comic books, buddy.
All right.
Well, they'll fit in a fanny pack if it's big enough.
And fanny pack could be made out of supple, like, goat skin.
Right?
Sure.
So she'll look like she's homeschooled.
And here's the thing.
She'll know the difference between sci-fi and fantasy at that point.
She'll have plenty of time to read alone.
Well, because, yeah, people on the bus will say, hey, want to talk about sci-fi and fantasy?
Yeah.
She'll be part of a guild.
You won't even have to do anything.
Mm-hmm.
So that's what I think it should be.
I think fanny packing is the way to go.
Fanny packing.
Fanny packing.
Fanny packing.
So anytime things get confusing, you just introduce another fanny pack.
Just fanny packing.
And it's fanny packing TM.
And you have a fanny pack for dress-up days.
You have a fanny pack for, you know, for sitting around the house.
Oh, sure.
You get one for you can wear to work day to evening.
It's slightly fancier.
It's a smaller one.
You keep a lipstick in there.
Mm-hmm.
And then the one that you wear around the house is made out of the same material as your snuggie.
Yeah, terry cloth.
Yeah.
Terry cloth fanny pack.
Yeah.
I hear you.
I should see how she feels about a fanny pack.
My thing is I feel like in the absence of organization, one of the worst things you can do is introduce more containers.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Yeah.
Merlin, no, I object.
I know, and that's kind of your problem.
Shut up!
I don't want to talk about this anymore!
This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Squarespace.
Start building your website today at squarespace.com.
Enter the offer code supertrain at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase.
When it comes to giving yourself a place online, there's nowhere better than Squarespace.
They put all the power you need into your hands and take away all the pain points, stuff like worrying about hosting, scaling, or what to do if you get stuck with something.
With Squarespace, you can build a site that looks professionally designed regardless of skill level, and there is no coding required.
With their intuitive and easy-to-use tools, you can make your website look and feel exactly how you want.
Squarespace has state-of-the-art technology to power your site and to ensure security and stability.
They are trusted by millions of people and some of the most respected companies in the world.
Their site templates are just, they're stunning to look at.
They all feature responsive design.
That means they're going to look great on any device of any kind, any size.
You don't have to do anything.
It just works.
Now this is just getting started.
Squarespace has tons of awesome features.
They have 24 by seven support with live chat and email.
They have the Squarespace commerce platform that allows you to add a store to your site and sell stuff that you want to sell.
Pretty cool.
You can have the cover page functionality.
That means you can build great looking single page websites.
The whole thing's rock solid.
They got fast hosting.
There's so much more.
And if you want to stretch Squarespace even further into the Nerdosphere, you got to check out their dev platform.
This is what lets you dig into the code of your site and tinker with your Squarespace website behind the scenes.
You will get code all over your hands, but you'll never have been happier.
Cool thing is if you sign up for your year with Squarespace, you also get a free domain name.
That means you get to choose exactly what your site is going to be called.
And the Squarespace plans start at just $8 a month.
This is one of the best deals in town.
Roderick on the Line is hosted on Squarespace.
We've been with them for years.
I'm a huge fan and evangelist of their stuff.
I just think Squarespace is the best.
So go on in, start your trial site today.
No credit card required.
You go to squarespace.com.
Now, when you decide to sign up for Squarespace, pay for your site like a gentleman, make sure to use the offer code supertrain at checkout, and that's going to get you 10% off your first purchase, and it will show your support for Roderick on the Line.
Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting Roderick on the Line and all the great shows.
Somebody said to me the other day, I bought some Prada sunglasses.
Do you want the box?
And I was like, do I want the box?
Yes, I want the box.
I'm not an animal.
God.
That's such a good size.
You can put so many things.
You can put sunglasses in there, regular glasses, things that are smaller than sunglasses.
You can put pins, Merlin.
You can put wheat pennies.
I was at the store the other day and there was a little buy it now kind of thing next to the cash register that usually has candy bars in it.
USB drives?
Yeah, thumb drives.
And this one had little American flag pins.
So I bought two.
I was like, you can never.
That's the kind of thing I got to tell you.
That's the kind of thing where you should just buy a whole box.
It would look so much cooler.
If you move some of your tiny presidents, you could just put an entire full box.
Wouldn't that look cool?
I've done that with two things in my life.
One time I bought a whole box of Carmex so I could have the box.
Oh, that's nice.
That made me feel like I think I had gotten like a grant check around the time.
And I thought, you know what?
Carmex for everyone.
I will have Carmex in my home that I will dispense to people.
Right.
I used to have a Carmex problem, like most Americans.
Oh, I remember.
It's like you were putting them out like a candy bowl.
Oh, they're the worst.
And, you know, like the internet, it creates the problem that it solves.
And then the other one I did that with was, you know, the trees on your mirror so your car don't smell?
You know, those little pine tree things you hang on your rearview mirror?
uh no i just arrived on earth okay well those come more those in the late 1980s when i was pretty into those uh they i don't know if you remember they came on a really cool like completely vintage retro cardboard stand yeah i mean it looked like and it wasn't even like fake retro it looks like they literally had not like carmex it looks like they hadn't updated it in years right and you bought one of those well there were like five a lot of times you go into the store and you say to the kid hey there's five on here if i buy these five can i also take the stand
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, so I've done that.
I have owned fanny packs.
All right.
I'm here.
I'm listening.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
I'm just trying to pop the stack here.
We got a lot to cover.
We got magic.
We got barn keys.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Pop the stack?
That's a giant Syracuse term.
Oh.
So anyway, you know, I'm alone in this.
But the thing is everybody else in the family does everything so much better than me that I really can't piss from the high ground about the hairbrushes.
I literally bought more.
I went to Amazon and I bought three of this brush.
We keep them in the closet.
We don't tell her.
Right.
Oh, that's a good one.
But it's, you know, this is, and this gets back to the question I was going to ask you, which from the very beginning, which is, do you, when you arrive at your home, I know you take off your pants.
Do you generally put your pants and life related stuff in the same spot every time?
Because I think that's important.
Do I do it because you think it's important?
No.
Let me start over.
Big week.
I understand what you were asking.
I have a key bowl.
My life changed when I introduced one technology into my house, which is a bowl that we liked a lot that had a small crack in it.
Mm-hmm.
So it no longer had the performance characteristics of an eating bowl.
That's right.
But it had great characteristics of the stuff from your pockets bowl.
Yeah.
That is always in the same place in my home.
And it's always exactly where I take off my Carhartt hat.
I stick my wallet, my passport, my notebook, my headphones, my pen, my keys, and anything else I have in there, my maxi pads or whatever.
I stick them all into the hat and the hat goes in the dish.
I have several coffee mugs, all of which have either broken their handles or have cracks in them and make them unusable, that are all filled with different collections of vintage ballpoint pens.
You kind of organize separate them out?
Oh, for sure.
And then every once in a while you have to go through and cull them.
The BICs are over here, the paper mates are over here.
Well, no, I don't do it by brand.
I do it by sort of, you know, like this will say like Al's defunct auto supply place, Barney's typewriter repair shop.
I mean, all these things that like don't exist anymore, but they used to give away pens.
Oh, I see.
Promotional pens.
Promotional pens.
Like a funny one.
Like my kid's orthodontist gives us one of those funny ones that's got a bend in it.
Yeah, I don't have any.
Which would be funnier for a chiropractor.
Not sure what it means for an orthodontist.
uh well your teeth are all fucked up is what it means but um here's why you'll give me all of the money but no i don't have any funny pens i don't want a fucking funny pen no keep your funny pens somebody somebody else in the world's got a collection of funny pens yeah and if i if i was part of a network which i should be
When I found one of those things, I could give it to that guy and then he could give me good.
That would be a nice new version of the blacklist is a way to share the dumb shit you have that somebody else will want.
Yeah.
Do you have promotional pens from auto parts stores?
I want those.
Just remember someday that's going to be part of your estate.
Someday someone will be paid to write all that on a piece of paper and then no one will buy it.
Or sure.
But so I have a bowl and it's a silver bowl.
And it is full of keys.
And then I have one of those long, long sushi plates.
That's meant... Long, thin sushi plate that's meant to have like a dragon roll.
Oh, like you get a tataki or a rainbow roll on.
That's right.
A big, long rainbow roll plate.
Except it's really nice.
You can find those that are like gorgeous.
A little curved up on the sides.
Curved up on the sides.
It's got dimples.
It's hand.
You know, the glaze is like intentionally...
It's got a little wabi-sabi.
So that's a much longer plate than the silver bowl where my active keys go.
And the wabi-sabi plate is for inactive keys.
Now, inactive keys are...
Oh, interesting.
Inactive keys are the two Vespa keys, which I'm not currently driving because it's winter and also they're not running.
But they're the only two keys to those two Vespas that exist in the world.
I have never had duplicates made in owning those things for 35 years.
I have never had a spare key made.
So I cannot lose those Vespa keys.
Then the spare keys for the RV, the spare keys for the house are in the inactive wabi-sabi plate.
And then there are a couple of heirloom keys.
Oh, I got those.
Right?
Like when I was a kid, I was a latch key kid.
I wore a house key around my neck on a red piece of yarn.
And I still have the key on the yarn.
And I keep that in my inactive key wabi-sabi plate just because.
Conceptually, this is really smart.
You got the active keys and you got the inactive keys.
What do you call it?
The inactive wabi-sabi keys.
But you know where they are.
There's one place where that stuff goes.
You know where it doesn't go?
Anywhere else.
It does not.
When I walk in the door, the keys go clink.
I hear the satisfying clink of that silver hole.
John, I meet people who do not adhere to this system, and I just can't imagine what chaos their life must be.
Here's another life hack.
Let's go ahead and make it the life hacks episode.
I think we're going to have enough that we could probably monetize this.
Okay.
All right.
We'll hack it.
We should come up with a website.
We'll growth hack it.
I have a giant... Not giant.
That's a misnomer.
But I have a... Do you remember those old plastic pitchers from the 70s that we made Kool-Aid in?
Or you would take a container of frozen orange juice concentrate and you would plop it in a plastic pitcher and then you would add three cups of water.
Offer and Tupperware with the attorney top.
There you go.
It's the Tupperware one with the attorney top.
That exact size...
and shape, but it's made out of blue glass, translucent blue glass.
Ooh.
And that is sitting right next to my door, front door.
And into that goes every receipt that I have accumulated during the day.
Oh.
So all the receipts in my pockets, in my wallet, every little note of a transaction of any kind.
First thing I do when I walk in is open it up, dump all of the receipts.
I make no attempt to organize them or fold them.
That's not what it's for.
It's just receipt dump.
It's a receptacle.
That's right.
Thump.
Thump.
And all mail that I don't want to open right that second.
Wow.
You know what you just did?
You just made yourself an inbox.
Kapow!
It all goes into the blue jar.
You are literally getting things done, trademark.
And the blue jar is not an inbox.
It's not a pile of undifferentiated mail.
It doesn't look like some garbage.
It's a beautiful blue vase.
Mm-hmm.
that is just tinted darkly enough that you can't really tell that it's full of envelopes and receipts.
So it's decorative.
And it makes me feel... And also, it's just small enough that after it's got...
let's say, 11 envelopes in it, you got to do something about it.
So it's decorative, it's functional, and it's super functional because when it's full, you know it's time to look at your mail.
Yeah, you got to look at your mail.
You got to do something.
You got to go in there and sort it out and flatten all those receipts out and write little words on them.
So those are systems.
The wallet in the pants system is leave the wallet in yesterday's pants.
Yeah.
Because today, I am not so far from yesterday that I can't remember yesterday's pants.
It works, especially if you wear the same pants every day, but it's got problems.
One of the problems is it can fall out.
My wallet cannot fall out of my pants.
You got like grip tape on there?
No, I have, you know.
You got a big wallet.
You got a big wallet.
I got a big wallet and I'm also a big man and I wear tight pants.
Big man tight pants.
So the wallet is somewhat, you know, you know the way if you wet a piece of paper and you lay it over something and then the paper dries, it dries.
You know, the new shape of the paper is the shape of the thing that you laid it on.
That's true of my pants.
My pants were like wet paper at one point.
and now they are dried into the shape of my wallet.
All of my pants, right?
Well, this is the thing I'm sure our listeners, we should share with them, that one of the big life hacks is, if it works for you, go with it.
If you don't mind your pants being like paper, keep your wallet there.
Oh, except...
There's a corollary to that, which is if it works for you, but it's wrong, don't do it.
That's true.
That's a life hack.
Right, right.
Yeah, I guess for me.
It seems to me like you're carrying a utility belt worth of stuff.
What did you say?
You were like, my wife.
wallet and my flashlight and my my multi-tool and my blackberry my my nose clippers mini nunchaku my sunglasses and my slightly less tinted sunglasses and then my normal glasses yeah that's true hair bows and you're just you're unloading your your pockets every day
And it seems like, frankly... You're asking yourself, why not the backpack?
Well, or the fanny pack or the utility belt.
I just don't know about... What if you had a police utility belt?
Where your flashlight... Oh, with that weavy leather on it?
Yeah, the weavy leather.
Several pockets.
I see that on the cops near our house and I admire it.
I think that's nice because you can take that off and everything is in there.
So what kind of life hack would that be?
If you showed up at some software dev con...
some sort of group meet or whatever they're calling it now.
Open office plan.
You sound like the spark notes for something by George Orwell.
You got a group concept pack.
You got a group pack.
P-A-K-T-M.
Go to BeltCon.
And you show up and
And you're wearing a utility belt and it's got a little fucking holster for everything.
But it's not like a jokey, look at me, I'm Batman belt.
This is a grown man's utility belt.
Grown man's utility belt.
Maybe you have or we have one of our friends or fans who makes this type of thing to make like an artisanal.
You know it exists.
Start with a Filson double belt.
Right.
And then build out from there.
And all of a sudden, who's the superhero?
Right.
Yeah, you look like a cross between a comic book nerd and Cyclops from the X-Men comics.
You know, if I'm not mistaken, see, I don't know your whole universe here.
I don't know which universe you're in, quite frankly.
Oh, right.
Earth 616.
Whether it's Universal or Marvel.
Sony.
Sony.
New Line.
But...
My question is, there are some superheroes who have supernatural powers that they get from UFOs or mutants or magic.
This gets to my conversation.
Magic with a K. Magics with a K and an S. Then there are superheroes that have technology-assisted superhero powers.
Yes.
They are billionaires usually and disturbed and they have a lab and they build some, like Doc Ock.
Yeah, or you could just be a rich psycho.
Rich Psycho.
And so then they've got their robot arms and they're out fighting somebody that's got magical UFO power.
And somehow they're evenly matched enough that the comic book never ends with the gruesome death of one or the other.
Yeah, you don't usually see a three-page comic.
You just beat the living shit out of somebody.
Here comes Doc Ock, and it's like, laser eyes.
See you next time, true believers.
So you need to start embracing the fact that you're probably not going to become a mutant at any time, but you could, any more of a mutant than you are.
I'm not going to become a mutant in a useful way.
Right.
But you could be like a crazy scientist-style superhero, and I think that starts with a utility belt.
Yeah.
Yeah, because the rejection of your peers is a nice way to get you good and angry about using your science.
See?
That's really good.
I could do that to my daughter.
It's like a boy named Sue type situation.
Yeah, you make her crazy.
I'll make her horrible.
I'll make her completely objectionable.
The key thing also is to make somebody the kind of nerd that even nerds don't like.
Well, what's the story with the green onion or whatever?
The guy that... Oh, he puts his ring in the onion, he fists the lantern, and that gives him onion powers?
Yeah, exactly.
The one that was riding like the... It's not a surfboard.
It's more like one of those hoverboards, except it's green and he's mean.
He's got a long chin.
Yeah, that's the guy that's in Deadpool now.
He played the green onion a few years ago.
Well, so that's, I mean, Green Onion is... He's got a theme song.
He's also the... That would be a great theme song.
Are you kidding me?
Where's that R&B coming from?
Here he comes, the Green Onion.
The Green Onion.
He's a mutant who also uses technology.
Now, that's a whole separate category.
I think he got gifted with space powers.
And that's an interesting edge case for talking to my daughter about this, which we should come back to later.
But I see what you're saying, though.
I see what you're saying.
The pouches and belt deployment is a good idea.
See, I think of this in these layers or concentric circles.
And this is a little bit, I don't mean this to be a George Carlin bit, but it ends up kind of being that.
But you've got the stuff that you always have to have on you.
And at the most basic level for me,
Okay, like for example, I had to run home right before we started recording our program to pick up something that Amazon had left.
I didn't bring even my usual Go Pack.
I brought my phone.
Right.
With my headphones on because I listen to a podcast, as you do.
Your golden lasso.
I brought my golden lasso and I brought my keys because that's really all I needed to cover that small distance between my – And this paddle ball game and this chair.
My favorite chair.
But so normally I have all the things I described that I store in my hat at home.
That's on my body.
Now, there are a lot of people you look at somebody.
Let's go back.
Yeah.
Well, you store them in your hat.
Oh, sure.
I store them in the hat.
Hat goes in the bowl.
Oh, you put the stuff in the hat.
The hat goes in the bowl.
Yeah, I have about eight Carhartt caps, but I have one going at a time.
But didn't you just tell me that container fatigue is a problem?
Yes.
I had another container.
Okay, well, here's where I think container fatigue is a problem.
Like, for example, you go like, oh, I keep losing my keys or I keep forgetting my wallet.
I'll keep my wallet in this container and I'll keep my keys in this container and now I'm organized.
I see.
So the hat is like a catch-all.
The problem is, and now you're shading a little bit into a different life hacky part of my life, but I think part of the problem is when somebody starts with the idea of wanting to be, as they say, organized.
And most people think of organization as taking all of the unnecessary shit in their house, roughly sorting it into piles, and then buying new clear plastic boxes to stick in it.
That's not organization.
Well, wait a minute.
What if you take all the stuff in your house, roughly sort it into piles and then put it in vintage cigar boxes?
Now, see, that's different.
That's different.
Thank you.
Because, you know, part of before you organize, you have to you have to like throw out.
You have to give away like you should only keep these things that are that are very valuable to you, except in your case, it's all valuable.
Well, yeah, and the thing is when I'm organizing stuff in my house, I have no intention of trying to work more efficiently or to have things be more useful.
I'm just organizing them for the pure joy of the act of sorting things into boxes.
It's like Sudoku for pens.
That's exactly what it is.
In fact, when I first started playing Sudoku, a good friend of mine, Chris Cornelia,
looked over my shoulder for a while, and he was like, it's like doing the dishes.
You've given yourself a pointless chore, but you don't even have clean dishes at the end.
I had a work-study job my first semester in college working at the library.
And so I worked at the desk, which was, you know, super easy.
But the one part that I kind of enjoyed was shelving books.
Because there was something, you know, I'm just saying, man, like we all could think we're like, oh, you know, the smartest kid in the class.
But like it's really sometimes it's nice to do something a little bit mind-numbing.
Now we're back to Csikszentmihalyi and the graph.
But I'm just saying.
Csikszentmihalyi and the graph.
Csikszentmihalyi and the graph.
Remember you got your challenge versus your skill?
Oh, I see.
Like the thing is, though, it was really I thoroughly enjoyed arriving in the evening.
I'm there for the evening until closing time at the library.
And somebody has already prepared a like a professional librarian has prepared a large cart full of books that have to go on the shelves.
Closing time.
You don't have to get books.
Just give us your school ID.
My school ID had my social security number on it.
What?
Oh, that was the older days.
Older days.
And I would do my thing.
I would go.
And a lot of people hated this.
They considered it a drudgery.
But I loved the ritual of get the cart, go to the elevator, go upstairs, and then you go start in the A's.
I think there's A's.
I was always a B man.
But then you go all the way through.
And so what do you get to do?
You get to pick up a book and you look at it.
for a second and you know this is not complicated work that nobody's really like as long as you don't throw the books away you're not going to get in trouble you can take as long as you want you look at the books you open it up you pull up you pull out the card to see like when it first arrived and people from the first class who checked it out i i stole a card from a book once a book of the collected poems of a.e houseman that had been checked out by my best friend's dad in 1966 oh that's fantastic history you don't get that anymore
Sometimes I will buy books at remainder sales that still have the card in them.
I love the card.
And the pencil's all smeary.
So you pick up the book.
That weird thing where it's like this book was checked out seven times between 1953 and 1956.
And then it wasn't checked out again.
Until 1978.
And it's like, why was this book so popular for three years in the 50s and then sat on the shelves for 25 years?
And that's part of your education.
It's free.
It's free.
So you get to pick up the book.
You look at it.
You say, hmm, this is an interesting book.
You look at the table of contents like a gentleman.
Flip through the index.
This is how you start a book.
That's right.
And then you go, okay, I guess I'll put it on the shelf.
And you go, BN, 33, 35.
And then you find it and you say, is it a mic or a Mac?
Like, where does it go?
Does it go here?
You do that.
Does it have colored plates?
Then you do that over and over again, like 80 to 200 times.
That's a nice way to spend an evening.
When you've been thinking about Descartes all day, you get to go just put books on shelves.
Literally the sexiest conversation we've ever had.
It's so satisfying.
And the thing is that it's a job that anybody could do, but it isn't a job that anybody wants to do.
It's a job that anybody could do.
It's all these people coming here from Mexico taking our bookshelving jobs.
All it requires is that you know the alphabet.
But it's a job that is so specific and weird that it actually is not only a major, but you can get advanced degrees.
Oh, they're the best.
Librarians are the best.
They really are.
They're so good.
Librarians and project managers should run everything.
They're so smart.
I'm continually surprised by how many librarians I know because I don't actively go to librarian events.
It's not like I sit on library steps and ask people what time it is.
You a librarian.
Hey, do you have a light?
I mean...
uh so but still like librarians they're all around me i know so many librarians and i don't think i know a single like uh rifleman although i might in any case uh i i i feel like i feel like the utility belt can i give you a life hack for the library
You have library life hacks that you think I don't know about?
No, because it's a life hack show.
I don't have anywhere to put these things.
Okay, go ahead.
That's right.
I taught my daughter this because she's not taught this in schools.
It's like, you want to get a book off the shelf?
You don't know if you're going to want it.
You look at the book.
You take the book directly to the right of that book, and you turn that book down on its spine.
You take out the book, and you look at it.
Can you guess where the book goes back on the shelf?
Hey, now.
You pick up his little buddy, flip him over, and you're done.
No harm, no foul.
They don't teach that in schools anymore.
It's the simplest life hack in the world, but it'll change your life.
You should do that in bookstores, too, because, you know, bookstores, you're looking around and you're like, where is this?
Where is where's Jesus's son again?
And it's a very small book, big books all around it.
Is that Christopher Lamb who wrote that?
No.
Jesus's son.
Is that the one about Brazil?
No, it's the one about it really.
Jesus doesn't even appear in it.
Is it the guy from Almost Famous?
He was in the film adaptation.
And this is the book.
Yeah.
The book's by Dennis Leary.
Dennis Leary.
Yeah.
Hmm.
That's not the guy from the TV show.
No.
And it's not the guy who owns the restaurant.
Different guy.
Different guy.
No.
There's three Dennis Leary's.
It's actually, it's Roman Johnson.
Roman Johnson.
Roman Johnson wrote it.
Dennis... Lehane.
Dennis Roman Johnson.
Okay, Dennis Roman Johnson.
The Dennis Leary we know is the guy with the restaurant.
The Dennis Leary we know is the guy with the restaurant.
He got a lot nicer.
He's a nice guy.
He's a nice guy.
He owns some nice restaurants, and once you pass owning like five restaurants, what do you got to be mad about it anymore?
Got a lot of miles on those tires.
I think one restaurant, you're mad all the time.
Two restaurants, you're even madder.
Three restaurants, you can't, there's so much to be mad about, you can't be that mad.
That's like drug habits for children.
Once you get enough of them, it all just kind of evens out.
Yeah, you're five restaurants in.
You're not mad anymore.
No, you're just sitting on a porch somewhere.
The utility belt.
What about a Chewbacca-style utility belt?
I thought about it.
See, do you know what I'm talking about when I talk about Cyclops?
He's the guy from the X-Men that shoots the beam out of his sunglasses.
Oh, I thought we were talking about the Cyclops that turns your wife into a pillar of salt if she looks back as she's running away from your burning town.
You're telling me Cyclops is in the Book of Job.
I'm saying that Cyclops lives on the Isle of Rhodes.
Oh, of course.
In a giant maze.
constructed to hide the snake hair lady.
Right.
And if you can answer the riddle, he gets you a fanny pack.
If you answer me these questions, you get his pot of gold.
And the pot of gold is in it.
It's actually a fanny pack of gold.
And then leave a dollar bill under your pillow.
Now I know what you're – I'm sorry.
I was confused.
You're talking about that Neil Gaiman book, New Gods.
You go to Google on Cyclops.
So this guy, Rob Liefeld, the guy who invented Deadpool, can't draw feet to save his life.
He also did a reboot of Cyclops where Cyclops has mini, mini pouches.
And you can see he's got quite a Johnson on him, too.
But in one redo of 90s Cyclops, he had all these pouches.
And the question all along has been, what does he have in all of those pouches?
Cyclops has got a lot of pouches, you're saying.
All right, I'm going to image search.
I see some old-fashioned Cyclopses or Cyclops I.
You'll see he's got a little bit of a Chewbacca suspender type situation.
Okay, I'm looking at it here.
It's a Marvel versus Capcom.
I don't know what Capcom is.
See, now if I go search for Cyclops on image, oh, there's a horrible photo on here.
So he's got a big... Oh, no, there's a kid with one eye.
This is awful.
What?
Really?
Oh, this is terrible.
Oh, this Cyclops.
Oh, you're talking about the Cyclops from the Island of Rhodes that has the horns.
Yeah, but I'm now looking at the one you're talking about, which is a guy in yellow panties, and he's wearing a kind of Y-shaped...
He's got new wave sunglasses and tousled hair.
Okay.
I see him.
Yeah.
I see him.
He's very, his musculature is impossible.
Yeah.
Right.
You see this a lot, right?
Where it's like, no one could have wrists that, uh, I mean, his wrists are, his wrists are, have a greater circumference than his knees.
How would you draw that?
I would go back to drawer school.
Well, we've got a lot to talk about, but I'll bring it back to the artist Rob Liefeld at some point because he's done some very special things with the human anatomy.
His people, they look like oil barrels with oak trees for arms and then little ballet feet.
Because he can't draw feet.
He goes way out of his way to find a way to not have to draw feet because when he does it, it looks like half a slipper falling on somebody's foot.
My question about Cyclops, the superhero, is when he takes his glasses off and we see the laser beam, it's never really clear what his anatomy is.
He has to wear the sunglasses because the ruby quartz crystals in that enable him to control it.
He has this little lever on the side that he uses to turn it to be able to turn the visor on or off.
Because with the glasses off, depending on what story, of course, he can't control the beam.
with maximum power.
It'd be like having a microwave with no door.
Was he a little baby that was like that?
Yeah, he's got a brother.
They're both mutants.
He saved him from falling out of a plane.
But I mean, when he was a baby, when he was first born, was he just killing everybody?
No, most mutants developed their powers around puberty.
Oh.
So there was a day when he was a normal kid walking around, and then the next morning he woke up and he lasered the ceiling of his bedroom.
He did laser some things unintentionally.
Yeah, Katie Pryde just woke up one day with headaches and she was phasing through walls.
She fell through a floor.
Well, see, I'd be super into that, fall through the floor, but, like, laser eyes has always been a confusing thing for me.
Don't want it.
Because it seemed... But also...
They call him Cyclops, but does he still have two eyes?
He's still got two eyes.
The Cyclops refers to the sunglasses Professor X made him.
Right, the sunglasses.
So why didn't Professor X make bicameral sunglasses for him?
Well, he has sunglasses that he can wear when he's in civvies.
So if he's taking the kids to the museum, because he works at a school.
So when you take the kids to the museum or something.
He works undercover at a school?
Well.
Like they don't know he's a mutant?
It doesn't work very well because they still blow up the school every few years.
But sometimes, yeah, they're teachers.
The school's been run at different times by Professor X, by Storm.
They're teachers at a mutant school.
So it's not a real school.
Well, yeah, it's near where Marco lives in Westchester County.
Yeah, but it's like a private school.
There's a lot of problems to it.
For example, their basketball court has a giant jet under it.
So if you live in Westchester County, it seems like you just notice a giant black jet flying out of somebody's tennis court.
I mean, David Letterman's got a giant black jet that's got a Chevy motor in it.
But who do they think they're fooling?
I don't know.
Who do you think you're fooling?
Fool if you think it's over.
Yeah.
You know what it is?
It's vanity.
It's pure vanity.
I've had a fanny pack.
Wait, the gal that just recently died that used to play with Prince?
Who's that?
Vanity?
Oh, I think you're thinking of Apollonia.
Was it Apollonia or Vanity?
Who died?
Vanity died.
I think it was Vanity.
If Apollonia died, boy, that would be a whole other ball of game.
Sheila E. favorited a two to mine one time.
It was kind of confusing.
You can't be serious.
Did you know that Lil B, the based god, follows me on Twitter?
No kidding.
Lil B?
Lil B, based god.
Wow.
Follow me on Twitter.
I don't know what I'm not sure what we're talking about.
He and I but I got followed by an actress whose adult work I've seen before the other day.
Oh, really?
That was I can't say wouldn't say it says too much, but it was a little bit older.
Was it Annie Sprinkle?
No.
I think she's gone legit now.
She's in legitimate theater now.
Oh, Annie Sprinkle is a renowned academic.
I'm not going to get into this conversation.
See, this is the first time in our whole friendship that you have admitted that you even know what adult material is.
Oh, no.
I mean, you're an adult.
You've got to know about these things.
Adult material.
I'm aware of the material.
Right.
It used to be that there were newsstands that were just out on the sidewalk, little kiosks, and they sold adult material in addition to the Washington Post.
So it's mainly vanity.
But you don't wear a Chewbacca-style pouch belt.
But, you know, I've had stuff that's not far off that.
Before I got old and my back hurt, I would have a messenger bag, which is a terrible design for walking around the city.
It's an awful design.
And all you have to do is put one cell phone case and a beeper case on the strap of your messenger bag, and you're basically a Chewbacca.
Yeah.
um i remember one time i was at your house and there was a what's the what's the messenger bag company that has the little swirl for a logo timbuktu timbuktu we have many many oh i know we have we have a contractor but we had a contractor bag full of timbuktu bags
So it's a bag full of bags.
I have a closet full of bags full of bags.
You should get a closet full of closets.
It's one of my favorite Pink Floyd albums.
This episode of Rodark on the Line is brought to you in part by Braintree.
Code for easy online payments.
To learn more right now, please visit braintreepayments.com slash super train.
If you are a mobile app developer, and I know many, probably dozens, hundreds of you are, please go and check out Braintree.
Because Braintree is the payments solution that's used by companies like Uber, Airbnb, Hotel Tonight, Living Social, and Munchery.
Braintree has made the payment experiences in these apps seamless and magical.
And now you can add a similar experience to your own app.
With excellent customer service and simple integration, Braintree gets you ready to receive payments quickly.
And isn't that the best way to receive payments?
It is.
Braintree also has continuous support.
They've got fast payouts.
That means you'll be prepared as your company grows from your first dollar to your billionth.
BrainTree is even helping solve the problem of mobile cart abandonment by offering a best-in-class mobile checkout experience.
With BrainTree, you're going to get a full stack payment solution.
That means support for all payment types your customers might want.
You can start accepting PayPal, Apple Pay,
Bitcoin, Venmo, credit cards, and more all with this one single integration.
They tell me it really is just a few lines of code that you drop into your app and then that's just going to go.
It's that easy.
And if you have any problems, you can go contact some of the nerds and boffins at Braintree and they will help you out with their problem.
They are that useful.
They are that brainy.
They presumably have a tree.
This works across all platforms with superior fraud protection, customer service, and fast payouts.
To learn more and for your first $50,000 in transactions fee-free, please go to BraintreePayments.com slash SuperTrain.
Our thanks to Braintree for taking the pain out of mobile payments and for supporting Roderick on the Line.
I want a basement full of closets full of bags full of bags.
That's my dream.
Sounds like the Golden Compass.
What kind of world would that be?
That would be pretty badass.
That would be fucking killer.
If I went downstairs and I was looking at a real estate listing the other day and it had a big basement.
And I was like, if I owned that big basement, I would immediately build closets and those closets would have shelves and those shelves would be full of bags and inside those bags would be bags.
Wow.
Think about like when you go to a storage facility, a rental storage facility, and you can pick what size you want.
You got the rolly door with the lock on it.
Imagine like a bespoke home version of that in your basement.
Well, so this is the thing because, of course, as you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I would do if I suddenly had $5 million in euros.
It's a duffel bag in a tree.
It's a duffel bag in a tree.
Here I am now.
I've got a duffel bag full of euros.
And the reason I pick euros is, first of all,
Euros come in larger denominations, right?
There are 500 euro notes that are in regular circulation.
So if you are in Europe and you pull out a 500 euro note, nobody blinks an eye.
So in all these games, they're talking about getting rid of the hundred in America.
Which is insane.
That's insane.
We got pennies, but they want to get... The hundred is a fantastic bill.
Yeah, they should make a $500 bill.
They should totally make a $500 bill.
So in gangster movies and in all these movies where people are like, here's a briefcase full of money, and they open it up and it's a bunch of hundreds, I'm like, if you were doing that in euros, that bag could contain five times as much money.
Yeah, that's right.
You could have one bag that was like...
Really full of money, right?
A lot of money.
And so I always want my fantasy bag of money is always full of euros.
Also, euros are worth more than dollars, which I object to personally.
But I was just in Canada and their dollar has absolutely fallen through the floor.
No, really, because the first time we went to Canada, we made a killing.
It was like $1.60 to the dollar, and we were living large.
And then for a long time, they had us beat bad.
They were at parity with us, and they were looking down over their northern border at us.
Can you even imagine that, having the same?
That's just unbelievable.
It was wonderful for them.
They were so glad.
They were like, ha-ha, we are a real country now.
And then now their dollar is just back down to being like the Australian dollar.
No offense.
You're not going to get that headphone-y.
And so it's back to being like, everywhere I went in Canada, when I would buy something, the person behind the counter would make some comment about like, well, must be nice.
I was like, I mean, I still have to pay for things.
And they're like, yeah, I know, but...
Our dollar is just pretend money again.
I'm like, no, it still costs money.
It's just less money.
Right now, US dollar is 1.33 Canadian dollars.
Yeah.
I think it was $1.60 in 2001 when we went to Canada.
There was a time when it was appalling.
Yeah.
So in any case and any way, I...
I'm always thinking about those storage container facilities.
Oh, sure.
Because when you have a ton of euros in duffel bags, what do you do?
Put them in your house?
Yeah.
No.
It's too much matter to put in a safe deposit box.
But you can't put them in a bank because you don't have receipts for it, right?
The tax implications of suddenly – Yeah, it gets weird.
When you start dealing with large amounts of cash, it gets weird.
That's why there's such a thing as money laundering.
Right, sure.
So how are you going to launder this money that you got because you encountered like a drug dealer shootout somewhere or you've been given this money in a duffel bag by –
A rich young industrialist who's been listening to your podcast and credits the podcast with having given him the strength to become a billionaire.
He's probably got duffel bags of euros packed and just sitting around like so much Carmex.
Ready to dispense it to the person he thinks deserves it.
Well, presumably, if he's listening to the right podcasts, he has a whole set of Filson luggage full of euros.
And he's got it there with a couple of guys in mind to give it to.
He just isn't, he's waiting for the right moment, right?
He's waiting for the right moment.
But when that arrives, how do you account for it?
What do you do?
Yeah, I don't know.
So what I want is a guarantee.
No more attempts on my father's life.
You know, for me this month, that's once again.
Every time I say, well, once again.
Once again.
I send my Imperator Furiosa.
Once again.
Anyway, what I want.
I want some kind of storage facility where I have ready access to my weird money.
But where it's secure, right?
I don't want the building to be.
I don't want to.
This is like one of those things where you say you make some deal with Genie.
Where you say, genie, I want to live forever.
Boom, cancer.
Yeah, or the genie cuts off your arms and legs.
Right.
And it's like, great, now you live forever.
Puts a dick on your forehead.
Yeah, I'm a fucking genie.
Booyah.
And you don't want to have like, I got all the money in the world and then my glasses broke and I'm all alone.
Can't read my books.
Or whatever, you know.
Yeah, no, I know.
I mean, here's the thing.
I mean, maybe in terms of like the O. Henry type situation, is it possible that that duffel bag was in the tree, not because of malfeasance or nonfeasance, but because they thought that was a pretty canny place to store some euros?
Uh-huh.
Right.
Right.
You don't want to hide in plain sight.
It's a lot like the keys in your pocket.
Last place you would look.
But the terrible thing about the euros, the bag of euros, is that you would... The genie would claim that it was a typographical error, and he gave you a giant bag full of Greek sandwiches.
A bag of euros.
You have a lifetime supply of euros.
Joke's on you, Stavros.
The terrible thing about it, as you know, would be if, like, for instance, if you had a duffel, if you have a Timbuktu bag, let's call it, full of euros that was in your house right now, how calm would you feel right this moment?
This is the problem with money.
You know, more money, more things to worry about.
Mm-hmm.
You would not feel very calm.
No.
You would feel very stressed out about it.
Yeah, you're very exposed.
Because you've got this money and it's sitting there and so then you're like, well, I got to move the money.
I got to move the money to somewhere.
But then you're moving the money.
You don't feel comfortable doing that.
Then you get the money somewhere.
Let's say you – Because if you can see it and look and check in on it, it's not really safe because it's too close.
If you can put it somewhere that you don't see it where it really is safe and it's obscured from where you can see it, now you feel unsafe because you can't check on it.
Sure, you go to the storage space, and the two guys that are parking cars in Ferris Bueller's Day Off are working there.
Oh, sure.
And they're like, what country do you think this is?
And then you go away.
It starts out as just another simple duffel bag heist, and then they realize there's money in it.
And they realize there's a lot of money in it.
A lot of euros.
And so where is it safe?
So then you become like this weird person where all of a sudden this great bounty...
your wonderful money that's supposed to make you, that's supposed to free you.
You're supposed to go to the Batman bank or have the Joker watch it for you.
Well, see, but that's the thing.
Look how that turned out.
Remember the movie where they put all their money in the banks in Panama and then Johnny Depp all of a sudden didn't have his money anymore?
Oh.
Was that Black Mass?
No, I think this is a real story of the big-time drug dealers of the 80s
They kept all their millions and millions of dollars in Noriega's banks because Noriega was like, sure, man.
Interesting.
I didn't know that.
And then there was one day where Noriega just nationalized the banks.
And he was like, oh, we're nationalizing the banks.
And the drug dealers were like, what?
I had like $80 million in there.
And he's like, what are you going to do about it?
And it's like, oh, you... Hello, your call is important to us.
Manuel, that's you.
I can tell that's you.
It is not me.
Your call is important to us.
Oh, come for a ride with me and my little mule.
I will take you to your money.
It is in the sabatoir.
So anyway, so at the end of this whole fantasy, I'm just like, you know what?
You should never have more money than you can carry in a Chewbacca bandolier.
Oh.
Right?
Because you should.
It's like sewing Krugerrands into your vest.
Yeah.
But the problem with a Krugerrand vest is.
When somebody borrows your vest.
Well, not only that, but what if you have to cross a river?
Now you've got your Krugerrand vest on, and it's one of these, it's like a biblical story, right, where you drown because you don't want to take your Krugerrand vest off.
And then who's the rich?
The only true value is property.
I was saying that exact thing on my drive-in this morning.
Wait, what's the exact quote?
What's the exact quote?
That's a quote from you.
It's something you said to your family, and they stared at you.
It was like the only... Yeah, the only wealth is... The only true wealth is property.
The only true wealth is property.
Mm-hmm.
So we're waiting for the train to come.
And I say, I don't know if this is exactly the right definition, but here's my understanding of this.
You got science fiction and you got fantasy.
And science fiction is the inside of that universe.
Almost everything that's happening is explainable.
Even if it's not explainable by the kind of science we know or have today, there's something that's explainable.
It's internally consistent.
Yeah, right.
There's reasons that stuff happens that aren't magic.
And then in fantasy, all that shit goes out the window and there's tons of, fuck tons of magic.
Right.
Do you think that's even close?
Let's see.
I think it's pretty close.
Because you take a Lord of the Rings, there's not that much science in that.
Just a lot of walking around.
What about worlds in which the, like for instance, the movie Avatar is within the setup of it
is science fiction because it's explained kind of the premise of being able to inhabit – I don't know.
There's a lot of science – I feel bad I've never seen it.
I'm not sure.
It's such a garbled idea that I'm not sure I could explain it.
But then within the actual film –
It's really a fantasy movie because it's just like magic.
But it's like science fiction fantasy, I'm sorry to say.
No, no.
I know.
No, it's two great tastes that taste great together.
That's fine.
I mean, there's all kinds of stuff I like where you have both.
Are you watching that James Franco Go Back and Save Kennedy show?
James Franco is a personal bugbear for me.
Oh, sure.
All right, all right.
He's like one hair in a delicious dessert.
It's like, this is a delicious dessert.
He's the dessert and the hair.
You're like, I got this hair on my tongue now.
And it's called James Franco.
But also the dessert is called James Franco.
So what do you do?
Tom Hardy is a dessert with no hair.
Absolutely.
Everything I see Tom Hardy in, even if the rest of the movie is fucking shambles.
Oh, I know.
Tom Hardy stands in the center of it and is Tom Hardy.
And I go, he's my Scarlett Johansson.
James Franco is too winky.
He's winking all the time.
I don't want to get winked at by somebody.
Yeah, he's a little winky.
It's an interesting idea, though.
It's got him and Chris Cooper, and I think it's a Stephen King book or story.
And I enjoy Stephen King and Chris Cooper.
And basically, you know what?
It doesn't matter.
You're not going to watch it.
It's got Franco all over it.
You don't want to watch it.
But they go back and save Kennedy?
Basically, Chris Cooper owns this.
This is the premise.
It's not ruining anything.
The premise is that we discover that Chris Cooper, who is the owner of a diner that the teacher James Franco goes to, he discovers that basically Chris Cooper's diner has this closet.
Can you get me thinking of the closets where you walk into it and you come out at exactly the same time, 11 something a.m.
in this day in 1960.
Every time.
It's just a door to 1960.
If you come back, you start over and nothing's changed.
You've only been gone for two minutes.
Now, first of all, I have many faults, but one of them is I love anything related to time travel.
I love time travel stuff.
I love it.
Did you see Predestination?
No, I don't have a TV.
Okay.
I'll send you one of my daughter's phones.
And that's an interesting premise.
And I especially like the premise of it's two minutes here.
And when you come back, it resets.
So if you have to, and I haven't gotten to him hitting the panic button yet, but if he hits the panic button, he comes back.
Everything that he's created in that 1960 world resets.
I guess it's a parallel timeline type situation.
So, but is there a button that he can push where everything that he created in that universe becomes true in his contemporary world?
Yeah, he just stays there.
Oh, he stays there and lives his life again.
Well, because he goes there in 1960.
Right.
Because there's all kinds of stuff he's going to have to do in the run-up to this.
He's got to go create this world.
He's got to make bets.
He's going to let him make money.
And it's this whole little world-building thing.
And I'm sure the John Syracuse of the world can find many problems with this, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Well, and the thing about this is that why would you bother saving Kennedy at that point?
Why wouldn't you just go to Las Vegas and bet on Kennedy dying?
Right.
Chris Cooper was in Vietnam, his character from 61 to 73.
His main thing is, I want to save my friends and make sure that Vietnam never happens.
Oh, see, that always feels like small potatoes.
If you have time travel...
This feels like that movie where Matthew McConaughey is throwing books off his shelf.
Oh, that's when he throws the sand on the floor to talk to Murph.
Yeah, he throws the sand on the floor.
You are in a parallel universe where you're multidimensional and you're trying to tell your daughter that you miss her?
Fuck you, screenwriters.
Fuck you up your nose.
I keep telling myself I'm going to watch it again and give it another chance.
I'm going to watch the second two-thirds.
I'm going to make it through the whole movie.
I keep telling myself that, but every time I look at the poster, I get angry.
pure garbage so if you're if you can go back to 1960 really your your friends the five guys that you knew in vietnam that's the extent of your of your vision interesting that is you're you're saying think big like you're not doing true time traveler thinking you're doing oh let's go back and make sure i don't spill milk on my shirt thinking yeah you're saying like think big like big
Yeah, who the fuck are you?
Your friends are nobodies.
You are a nobody.
Yeah.
You have this incredible opportunity to go back to 1960 and do amazing things, crafty things.
I realize this is a lot to spring on you.
Do you have just a very, I mean, would you invent the euro?
What would you do if you could go back to, if you had a closet and a diner you could walk into?
Let's say you've had a nice breakfast, you've evacuated your bladder, you walk into the closet.
What do you bring with you and what do you do once you're there?
Dot, dot.
You can bring your phone, but you won't get a connection.
I can bring my phone.
You can bring money that would work at the time.
Okay, but I can bring my— And also, things that that guy has brought back from his previous trips can be used, too.
But I cannot access the contemporary internet while I'm there in 1960.
You're going to need to print it out.
You can bring maps.
You can bring printouts.
You can bring three-ring binders.
Oh, boy.
But remember, you've got to carry that around and not look like a lunatic.
Okay.
Right, right, right.
Also, there's a guy there who keeps winding around.
Every time you go and appear there, the guy says, you don't belong here.
Oh, there's one guy that can see you with his They Live glasses.
Yeah, except he's got a hat.
Yeah.
You don't belong here.
Fingertips.
You don't belong here.
I hear the wind blow.
Please pass the milk, please.
Finger tips.
You don't belong here.
Something got a hold of mine.
That's when all my... Oh my God, it was so great.
And you know what was great with that album?
You put it on, you can put it on Shuffle.
Oh, put it on shuffle.
Put it on shuffle and like a seven second song would come on.
Leave me alone.
It's so great.
Down darkened corridors.
I walk.
So let's not worry too much about what you bring with your bags unless you want to talk about that.
What's your general idea for a plan if you're thinking big in 1960s?
Oh, it's so fun.
Oh, what matters?
What really matters?
You know, 1960, you could stop Pol Pot.
1960, you could... You want to stop Pol Pot, but not Vietnam writ large?
You're saying don't save your buddy, stop the whole everything.
Exactly.
If you're going to stop the Vietnam War, you have to go back before 1960, first of all.
Well,
Without making this an incredibly dreadful, hard science fiction thing that only losers watch, the basic idea is that if I go back to keep Kennedy from getting assassinated, Johnson will not become president, and then Johnson will not get into the long slog of Vietnam that
Well, yeah, but this is that whole fantasy world where Kennedy wouldn't have gotten us into Vietnam.
Like the whole business of like, he was rethinking Vietnam right before.
No, he wasn't.
We were in Vietnam.
We were going deep in Vietnam.
He was banging cocktail waitresses, two at a time.
He was like, where's the soup?
Listen, you don't tell me.
I'm not dumb.
I'm not like they say.
I'm smart.
I got stepped over.
You don't hit my brother.
You understand?
You Italians are all the same.
I buy you out.
I was making my book when you were still in diapers.
I'm Mo Green.
Mike, you don't talk to a guy like Mo Green like that.
Did I ask when Mo Green, did I ask who gave the order?
I said nothing because it was business.
anyway uh do you want to go back to they might be giants there are so many things that you could do in 1960 you could not stop the vietnam war i'm afraid yeah uh you could you know you could alter the course of it hopefully to save your four friends that are outside of don ang how long are you going to turn over all these big-hearted things before you admit your your way of becoming fixing everything that's wrong in your family and making you rich forever
Isn't that what it would ultimately be?
Wouldn't you focus on fixing your family and being rich forever?
Problem is that there's no way you could fix my family if you went back to 1960.
You would have to go back to 1760 and just stop the whole thing.
You'd have to grab somebody and throw them down a well.
Throw a Hitler baby at them.
What would you do?
There's just so many directions you could go.
TikTok.
So much energy and so many resources were wasted during the Cold War, but I still don't fully understand whether or not it was necessary, whether it was the lesser of evils.
We would not have had the same space program in the same way.
Well, right, or just whatever like the...
Whatever the teleplay between capitalism and collectivism that we've been trying to work out for the last 150 years or longer, however that soap opera...
needed to play out.
Yeah.
Was the Cold War a lot better than other options?
Maybe.
I mean, this is the whole, like, butterfly flaps its wings problem.
You get in there in 1960, and you're like, well, I'm going to solve the Cold War, and then you incite a nuclear war.
Right.
Right.
I mean, you remember at the end of the movie where the aircraft carrier goes back to Pearl Harbor Day,
Was this some parallel 1980s that you didn't come along for?
Is that a TV movie?
No, it was a movie movie, and it was called Time Bandits.
No, it was called Aircraft Carrier.
The Final Countdown.
The Final Countdown.
It was a movie about a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
Oh, look at that.
You got Catherine Ross.
Nothing wrong with that.
Wasn't Kirk Douglas in it or something?
Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, James Ferentino.
And they go through a time storm.
And they arrive on the other side of the time storm having thought, wow, that was quite a storm.
And then all of a sudden on their radar screens, I don't want to give too much away, but they are back in time.
And then they have a quandary, Merlin, which is they have F-14s.
They have 1987 technology or 1984 technology or whatever.
They have F-14s.
I get it.
What do they do?
It sounds like most of the movie is them debating this.
Well, there's a lot of flying around.
I mean, there's some exciting footage.
It's one of those films where they had five A-6 Texans that they painted like zeros, and then they try to make those five A-6 Texans look like 700 zeros by flying them back and forth across the screen all the time.
They're like, that's the same plane.
I mean,
I mean, it's a good paint job, but A, it's not a zero.
And B, you can't fool me because you never see more than five planes at a time.
But hey, that's no fault of theirs.
There are probably a lot fewer A6 Texans painted like zeros now than there were then.
Yeah.
It's a lot like Doctor Who with the Cyberman.
You only show a few at a time.
I only show a few at the time.
Right.
Or it's like the sleigh stacks.
Oh, sure.
How many sleigh stacks can you show at once?
I cannot use the word sleigh stack in a sentence and not get my tongue all tied up.
Sleigh stacks.
And those were Lakers.
Those were Lakers.
Sleigh stacks?
Did you know that?
They're played by Lakers.
L.A.
Lakers' Fast Break Fakers?
L.A.
Lakers played the Sleestacks.
I didn't know that.
I'll verify that.
Go ahead.
So, yes, at the end of the – well, I don't want to give too much away because I'm assuming that a lot of our listeners – I don't know spoilers on a movie from 1980 with Martin Sheen.
Yeah.
You're going to go back and watch The Final Countdown now.
But it addresses, it's an early version of addressing some of these time travel quandaries where it's like, if I could go back to 1960 with an aircraft carrier, if I could go back to 1960 with my iPhone,
And it worked.
Or like a sports almanac.
Or a sports almanac.
You can go back and make bets.
Right, you go back and make bets, right?
You would have to be really dumb to not get rich.
But you're also flapping your butterfly wings.
And then all of a sudden, you know, like Nancy Reagan's got two heads or whatever.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Also, not to spoil this one, but in this one, this guy's got to make money to keep himself alive.
So basically, he makes a bet with some small-town bookies on a 35-to-1 bet and wins.
So you don't want to do anything too suspicious.
That's going to arouse a lot of interest if you do something that is only explainable by magic or graft.
So now I think about this all the time, as I'm sure you do too, which is you are transported back, not to 1960, but to 1972.
in which world you are already alive.
You are, what, five years old in 1972?
Something like that.
Right, okay, so here you are, you're 48, 49, whatever, sorry, 49, 49, almost 50.
Let's round it up to 50.
You go back in time, there's already a Merlin Mann, he's six years old.
I know, right?
But,
The only people you know in this world are your parents.
You don't know anybody in 1972 except for your mom and dad.
You now don't know anybody back then except your mom and dad and your uncles and aunts and whatever, grandma.
Yeah, people from the neighborhood.
So what are you going to do?
You're going to go back to 1972 and just ignore the fact that your whole family is there and just go live in a townhouse somewhere and make sports bets?
No.
That first day you arrive with nothing?
I got a good feeling about these 75 reds.
Like how would you go introduce yourself to your own mother?
Oh, now this.
Was this your actual point?
Oh, this I've thought about a lot.
How would you prove that you were who you were given that she would almost certainly recognize you in the sense of recognize something about you?
yeah and like and also i mean there's all kinds of things i would think about taking into account the bootstrap paradox and all these kinds of problems it's like is there a way that i could seed myself with some kind of a little test yeah and know what that test is uh that nobody else could know and i haven't come up with one of those but also doorbell right and you're like hi uh uh mrs man hi um
I came out of your vagina.
Do you have a moment?
I am a relative.
Right?
I am a relative of yours.
This sounds like a movie.
And I am... Was there a movie about this?
This sounds like a movie.
It should be a movie.
Has a movie been made where this happens?
I don't know.
I don't have a TV.
Right.
But like, either do I. But the guy, you know, you're like, I'm a relative and I can say some very... Could I be holding my finger up under my nose like a mustache?
Hello.
Hello.
Perhaps you... With a monocle?
Yeah.
No, but you would first of all tease your way into the house by saying, I am the son of Aunt Maisie Glotz.
And she's going to know who Maisie Glotz is.
Right, right.
And she's going to go, oh, really?
And you're like, yes, distant relative Maisie Glotz.
I am her son.
I could say that I'm going to go work on a mission somewhere.
I'll work in a Christian angle and a family angle.
And so then you're invited into the house and then you sit down and you're like, you know, funny.
Could I have 25 minutes alone with your child?
Well, you're not there yet, right?
Then you're like, do you believe...
in mysteries you suck at the how do you feel about pick a card have you ever seen a movie about time travel they pick a card out of the deck and it's literally it's a polaroid of them holding up the card what
Wow!
Like, how do you get... The thing about my mom is... You don't want to come off as David Blaine, basically.
You don't want to go like, what the fuck was that?
Well, it's not that.
You don't want to come off like you're a scam artist, right?
Because the only person that would try to do this would be somebody that was trying to rip...
your parents get their hands on the man fortune yeah so the man fortune exactly the fortune of like uh chick comics that are in the garage but my but you know my mom was always into science fiction all the way back so i i have an in with on this idea when i am eventually transported back in time that i can go to my mom and say look
you know, like, let's say initially, like, I'm the grandson of, you know, of Henry Pretty or something like that.
And she'd be like, really?
I think I know all the grandsons of Henry Pretty.
And I'd be like, well, I'm one of these, I'm a long lost grandson.
And she would look at me and she would see in my face a resemblance enough to her people that some bullshit story like that would get me in the door.
And then I could say, listen, I know you like science fiction.
Don't ask me how.
But let's imagine a fantasy science fiction scenario where time travel was possible.
Are you with me so far?
But wait, there's more.
And just lead her down a thing where she's like, yeah, I believe in science fiction.
Oh, do you believe in, say, for instance, past lives?
You know, I'd be in her head already where I'd use her own tendencies to make the case that it was possible that I was her own son appearing back in time.
I mean, she's always going to be like, because then you're like trotting out family secrets little by little to prove your case.
Yeah, I just think that's so creepy.
Well, it is.
It'd be massively creepy.
And the thing is, at any moment, she could stand up and go, who are you?
My God, get out of my house.
I'm calling the police.
Yeah.
You don't want that.
It's over.
It's over at that point.
It's over.
You're never going to get back in.
So you have to slow, slow.
See, because I think here's the problem is I think when people first mull this scenario over in their head, I know you're not doing this.
I think the main problem is people think, OK, if I overwhelm them with a huge amount of information that is incredibly specific and could not be coincidental.
There's no way they won't believe it.
You say, listen, I know this is hard to believe, but I'm your son and the doorbell is about to ring and somebody's going to sell you a magazine thing or, you know, or, you know what I mean?
Or whatever it is, you know, exactly tonight's Sanford and son is a rerun.
You go, wow, that's crazy.
How'd you know that?
Yeah, or every screenplay that would ever do this, you would always be transported back in time on some momentous day in your life, right?
Or the day before a momentous day.
Right.
Like, yeah, tomorrow is the day that Uncle Charlie loses his arm, and I can either stop it or use it to prove that I am from the future.
Or I can make money.
Hey, great question.
Anybody want to make a bet on Uncle Charlie's arm?
34 to 1.
What?
I don't know, Merlin.
The problem is that I have spent so much time, mental energy.
I have consumed...
Bushels of food to give me the strength and power so that I can power the engine of my brain to think about time travel scenarios where I reintroduce myself to my mom.
Like what possible good can come of that?
Why?
Why?
why did Jesus make me this way?
What are we doing here on this planet if this is the kind of Ouroboros that occupies my days?
I could be out digging, I could be building habitats for humanity, but instead this.
And I'm not even – I don't even have a utility belt.
I think – you could go to your mom as she exists today in this universe and you could go and say, look, I got to be honest with you.
There's a reason I haven't been working much.
I've been thinking a lot about what happens if I could go back in time and meet you.
So I think you do – they call it social engineering.
You go to your mom of this year as far as we know.
Right.
Because she might have traveled here, too.
We don't know.
But you go to her as she is now, as she appears to you, and you say, help me work this out.
You give me something.
What could I say to you?
Like, tell me a family secret.
And she'll probably think you're trying to guess her pin code or something.
But you get her to help you figure out how little Marcia would do it.
Ooh, that's interesting.
Interesting, interesting.
I'm wondering if there is still stuff that my mom is willing to tell me that she hasn't told me, right?
Like my dad was never going to tell me the Phi Gamma Delta secret handshake.
I could have...
tortured him with a branding iron and he never would have given it away.
Not because anybody gives a shit, but just because the Phi Gamma Delta secret handshake is the thing that he decided he was going to take to his death.
Even though there are, I mean, right now in Seattle, they're,
5,000 total ding-a-lings.
But if you could time travel back to the Phi Gamma Beta meeting where he learned it, and you become a brother.
Well, that's the thing.
But that's a lot of work just to learn this one dumb thing.
And all it would prove is that I was a Phi Gamma Delta, which is like...
Or Fiji, as they call themselves.
But, like, my mom, I mean, I know a lot of secrets about her.
I could go back and say, like, hey, mom, what about this?
Hey, what about that?
But nothing really that you wouldn't... I mean, the only way you could prove it is to tell them a story about something that happened to them when they were all by themselves that you can guess they've either never told anybody...
Or, you know, told so few people that it couldn't possibly be a thing that you knew.
Or you've seen and enjoyed the film Looper back when you had a TV.
Don't talk to me about time travel.
I don't want to spoil that because I enjoy that movie a lot.
Although we are talking about it.
We are.
We'll cut all this out with time travel.
Yeah.
But there's something I've never seen before that they do in that movie that involves things that happen in the past that are then become part of the present because they happened in the past.
Right.
So they torture the guy in the past.
And then the results of that are happening to the guy in the present.
Oh, yeah.
He's sitting there.
Yeah.
Suddenly can't drive so much anymore.
Sorry to spoil that for you.
Well, here's an idea.
Here's a question I posed.
So what if you cut off your mom's finger and said, look at your finger and say, I just did that.
No, no, no, that's terrible.
I'm not going to cut off my mom's finger.
Come on.
I can't believe I spoiled that movie for that terrible one.
But here is the question.
What could somebody tell you?
What if somebody shows up?
I've thought about it.
About a middle-aged guy shows up on your, I'm sorry, a middle-aged woman, beautiful woman, wearing a fanny pack and a Batman costume.
Oh, I get it.
Shows up on your door and says, I am your daughter from the future.
From the future.
How would she prove that to you?
I said, where's your hairbrush?
She says, I don't know.
I love you, honey.
Yes, and.
Yes, and yes.