Ep. 214: "Tinder for the Google Man"
This episode of Roderick on the Line is sponsored by America Votes with Cards Against Humanity.
Cards Against Humanity asks Americans to vote this November.
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Oh, it's going so good.
Oh, good morning.
Good morning.
Oh, boy.
Oh, now what?
Huh?
What?
Who?
Say who?
What?
Yeah.
Catch a what?
It's the human condition.
I was...
On a plane all night.
Oh, that's no good.
You don't want that.
No, I arrived in Seattle at 5.15 a.m.
You were on a plane five hours ago.
Yeah, that's right.
And then I woke up with a sore throat.
and you know if i was our podcast partner pal dan benjamin i'd already be at the doctor's office you'd be at the doctor twice by now i would have canceled this episode of the show for sure doing your ropes training because i would have needed some medical attention oh my god but i am not dan benjamin i am me and i'm here in the chair oh man you sound like you're about to blow
No, here's the thing.
I realize that you're, you've been flying and you're, you're a little bit sick, but just so you know, you also sound like you could just blow up right now.
Like you could really, this could be it.
This could be, if you ever need to emulate the feeling of this is the last straw, that's, this is the voice.
listen i i do not want to miss my chance to blow a guarantee you know because no more attempts on my father's life opportunity comes once in a lifetime well i will try to join you in this tone all right all right why why were you traveling i'm going to do this entire program with clenched teeth was it for business or pleasure it was there is no pleasure in flying
Well, hold on.
All right.
I went up to the nice lady and I said, listen.
Now you sound like Uncle Remus.
Now you sound like a genial old black man.
You know, inside me.
Uh-huh.
There are a lot of selves.
Oh, you're like Walt Whitman.
But I was booked on a flight that left at 2 a.m.
and got in at 6.55 or something like that.
And I went up to the counter.
Here's the thing about Alaska Airlines.
You can change your flight right there at the kiosk.
So I changed it to an earlier flight.
But then I was on a middle seat in the middle of the plane.
It was going to be awful, Merlin.
It was going to be worse than bad.
Well, how far?
I mean, if I could ask, were you flying from L.A.?
Are you saying that if it was a one-hour flight, that that would be somehow more tolerable?
I guess it would compared to an 18-hour flight.
I need to have more facts in order to propose some kind of preposterous theory about you could probably suck it up for two hours.
But...
Dignity.
Dignity comes into it.
It was a three-hour flight, but I went up to the lady.
You know, you got to know the deal, right?
And 45 minutes before the flight takes off, they close the flight.
Oh, yeah.
I don't understand that.
Especially considering that they quote-unquote open the flight usually about five minutes before that.
You sit there, there's nobody there.
There might be signage about what's going to happen there at some point later in the day.
Eventually, one harried person shows up, a lot of white men run to the counter, and then they close the flight.
That's right.
The flight is closed.
And I'm one of those white men.
And I say, listen, I know you're about to close the flight and I really can't be in this seat for a variety of reasons.
I'm a very special person.
And I have right here, I have my service horse.
I've trained to tap his hooves.
in order to communicate how desperately i need this chair i won't be able to interact with winston and she took yeah my service turkey and she took me she just like very very cash on the download just put me right in an exit row right on the island an exit row that didn't have a person in the middle seat it was just it was full flight the the the woman prior had told me there were no seats available
They closed that flight, and that's when those exit seats come online, Merle.
Anyway, I was flying from Anchorage, Alaska, my hometown, because I went back to attend my 30th high school reunion.
And I don't know if you remember the film Peggy Sue Got Married.
No.
Yeah.
Probably.
I think that was one of the early Nicolas Cage films.
Yeah, it was an 80s film where Kathleen Turner went back in time to her 30 years when she was in high school.
Yeah, okay, that's ringing a bell.
And that came out when we were in high school, and Kathleen Turner was enviably thought to be an actress who could go back and play herself in high school.
She was the Michael J. Fox of the story.
But now it's the standards.
Let's be honest.
The standards have changed.
It's true.
It's like, you know, sometimes they measure the economy by how much Big Mac costs.
I think today you can judge the health of what it means to be an actress in Hollywood by how old you have to be to play Peter Parker's aunt.
Which was originally, I think, Mrs. Cunningham, and more recently it was Marissa Tomei.
Marissa Tomei is such a good actor.
Oh, yeah, she's good.
I really admire her.
I feel like, yeah.
Sorry, I took you off your topic.
So an actress travels in time with Nicolas Cage, and we were in high school.
Scarlett Johansson plays...
the the um the sexually unappealing matron in a film because she's okay she's got to be pushing 30 now she's 35 or whatever oh my gosh that old that would be the day that i check out no i don't know i remember feeling uncomfortable about finding her attractive in that uh in that steve buscemi movie with the other girl because she's a teenager she's supposed to be a teenager right she was playing a teenager and yeah it made you feel uncomfortable
A lot of things make me uncomfortable.
I love movies.
How do you feel about songs from the 50s, 60s, and 70s that reference younger women?
I won't hear your anecdote, but that's a big topic.
It actually keys into something that I think about a lot, which is the coded language language.
of men over time and i was i was sitting around the other day as i was urinating and it occurred to me you know because there's always been code there's always been code where you say stuff like you know when you say stuff like you know oh there's going to be girls there and for a long time when i was younger i would think that that meant oh i can get a date or like or i'll have a chance to try out my social skills oh there's gonna be girls there
And then as I got a little older, I started to see, like, oh, yeah, that's probably some girls I can kiss on.
Oh, yeah.
And then as I got a little earlier, when there'd be a scene where the guy said, let's go to this party, there's going to be girls, I'm pretty sure that was code for we're going to have intercourse.
Oh, wow.
And now I find myself, as I'm older and urinating, I think to myself, I wonder how many times that means I could force a girl to do something with me.
You know, there's certain kinds of codes in earlier times.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Hmm.
And as for, like, chasing around teenage girls, well, you know, Chuck Berry ran into a little trouble with that.
I thought he ran into trouble because he was hiding in toilets.
Yeah, that's the thing with Chuck Berry.
You find out, you know, it was around the time, you know, Day the Music died, and you're like, oh, all those guys died in a crash, and then, you know, Chuck Berry violated the Mann Act, and you're like, and then, you know, in that case, you know, what's her name, Kathleen Quinlan?
Who was the girl?
Kathleen Turner.
Yeah.
You know, the funny thing going back in time is, oh, all he did was try to transport his cousin over the state line for Nikki.
But, like, who knows?
He might have had some prototypical Russian spy camera in the bus station bathroom, because that's really his thing.
So I decided... I think he's a dookie man.
I decided to, yeah, to figure out what the real story of the...
Whoever the character was that actually was hiding inside a port-a-potty because they wanted to watch people go to the potty.
Yeah.
To put a little point on it, I think he had some partial ownership in an establishment, like a restaurant.
Right.
And so at some point he caused cameras to be installed where he could watch ladies go to the bathroom.
But there was someone who actually was in the toilet.
That's right.
He had to fill out a form for that probably.
So I just tried to Google hiding in toilet.
And that's going to go on my permanent record, right?
Google has put that now.
Dropped in cabinets.
Dropped in cabinets.
That has put in.
Google is Sergey Brin right now.
That's there now.
So you're going to get ads based on hiding in?
Hiding in toilet.
So whenever I put something into Google, I imagine Sergey Brin sitting at a big desk.
This is interesting.
With Google Glass on.
And an entire heads up display, an array of things spin out of that.
He clicks.
He clicks.
There's like three pathways he could choose for you at this point.
It's like it's like a job for your sexuality.
Well, no, but this is my this is my imagination.
Right.
So he's he's he's got heads up displays that because this is a cinematic imagination are visible to us, the viewer.
right out there in virtual space in front of him.
The desk is completely clean of any other, no accoutrements, no pen holder, no picture of his family.
It's a Google pen.
Clean, broad desk.
He's sitting there in a black turtleneck in homage.
Sure.
And he's wearing Google Glass.
And then a secretary walks in and puts a piece of paper
on his desk does he scan it with his google glass she puts it face down on his desk piece of paper and he picks it up and it says hiding in toilet there appears to be a new wrinkle in the sexuality of john roderick he's monitoring me in a different way
And he doesn't want the record on his Google Glass.
Oh, wow.
That any information he finds about me, it's on paper, and then he burns it.
Has he been doing this for a while, John?
In my imagination, he has.
Since he's had the ability, you've been on his glass screen.
But here's the wrinkle.
I went to write Hiding in Toilet, and I swear to you, accidentally, a finger fumble,
I wrote hiding in Turlet.
That's an Archie Bunker fetish.
That's right, which is a little bit of encoded language.
It's actually much more appropriate.
Whoever it was that did hide in the toilet probably pronounced it Turlet.
Yeah.
But now Sergei, who's not a native English speaker, gets that on a piece of paper.
Oh, boy.
Hiding in Turlet.
And he's...
That's hard to parse.
And the thing is, you could Google it probably, but he wants no record.
So he's looking at hiding at Turlet.
Oh.
And he's making no sense out of this.
I guess you could just Google Turlet.
Suddenly, somewhere down in Mountain View, you hear boop.
Grace, clear my calendar.
Grace, will you come in here, please?
Because he's Chekhov.
Cancel everything, Grace.
I will require a moment.
So now there is an article here after Googling hiding in Turlet.
There's an article here on the Huffington Post, which is never wrong.
The port-a-potty peeper.
Huh.
From Boulder, Colorado.
Port-a-potty peeper.
Port-a-potty peeper.
Prompts.
They use some alliteration.
Port-a-potty peeper prompts port-a-potty... Probe?
Policing.
Oh, no probe, huh?
But then I clicked on the article...
And what came up was an inspiring way New Orleans youth persevered 11 years post-Katrina.
Oh, boy.
I think Sergei's going to have to take some personal time.
Another piece of paper is gently slid onto his desk.
Wait a minute.
Down the page here, toilet terror as Python bites man's penis while he sits on the loo.
That's Huffington Post.
No, this is somewhere else.
This is, well, they say Lou, so you know it's got to be some kind of... You know where that comes from?
British potty talk.
You know where that comes from?
Lou?
Supposedly, turns out.
It comes from that the toilet in a public building in England was often room 100.
Really?
Turns out.
I don't know if that's true.
You could Snopes that.
Personally, I think, John, at this point, you should probably just stop searching.
I think you've given plenty of Tinder to the Google man.
I just clicked on... That's one of my favorite guys, Stephen.
Tinder for the Google man.
Tinder for the Google man?
Well, I...
I'm being followed by.
I clicked on toilet terror as Python bites man's penis while he sits on the lube before bloody battle ensues.
That's the rest of the headline.
So now that piece of paper is getting slid across that desk right this very moment.
And, you know, he's got other work to do.
He's up in the Google Glass moving billions of dollars around.
He's buying yachts.
He's doing stuff.
See, I'm imagining that because most of what I know about running a large corporation comes from watching TV shows in the 70s.
I imagine that periodically somebody comes in to interrupt him.
He's frustrated.
They thrust a giant pile of papers and say, sign here and here and here and here.
So he's still he's still splitting his attention.
He occasionally has to do something.
He has to decide that something needs to be purchased.
He maybe orders a couple of Teslas.
He signed some merger and acquisition documents.
But the whole time he's thinking about the turtle pythons.
The thing is that the number of situations in my life presently where people send me an email where they want me to use some kind of app to sign the email and send it back, a secure app.
Sign it now or sign with a Z.
And I've got some of these programs, and I sit and try to navigate them and sign my document virtually and send it back.
You're often kind enough to include me in the thread for this.
I'm on my phone.
I conduct my business on my telephone, and I frankly don't understand why I would need to virtually sign a Z on this form if this application is not loading properly on my telephone.
Yeah, what I say is, can you not accept an email authorization of this contract for $5?
It's like, yeah, exactly.
See, that's the part that kills me.
It's like, you know, I'm not Boeing, right?
You want me to come and do a little puppet show for 42 minutes.
Yeah.
We're talking about what you spend on light bulbs in an afternoon in this one building.
We're talking about roundy air levels of money here that I won't see for six months, and yet I have to fill out the Boeing form.
No, I don't have a million dollars in insurance.
Nobody has a million dollars in insurance.
Who are you?
I have now spent more time trying to sign this form than I did during the presentation you hired me to give.
Wow.
My show was not this long.
I'm two hours in to trying to sign your fucking contract.
You know what it is also?
It's a professional eel.
Those organizations, and God love the people who are in charge of putting those forms on my phone, but they have a bunch of people who just sit around all day doing nothing but making those little gears turn just a tiny little bit.
But the thing is, I'm over here and I got stuff to do.
It's not important stuff.
You got no soup.
Well, I got no soup.
You got this guy over here, not me.
I'm not an important man, John.
And as I like to say, John, I'm not busy.
I'm time constrained.
I'm not busy, but I've built my life for 49 years getting to where I can be time constrained without being busy.
When you make me sign something with a Z on my phone, you're making me busy and you're attaching an eel to my phone.
That's right.
We see this all the time.
Yes.
People who...
They are getting work credit for sending emails.
Oh, they get paid to not make that gear turn, buddy.
And I am sitting here not getting work credit for receiving their emails.
So it costs them nothing to send me five emails a day to make sure that I'm going to be there at load-in time.
It costs them nothing.
It's their job.
They're being rewarded for it.
But every one of those emails I have to use my eyes to look at.
And all those forms I have to sign.
If you ignore it, it still takes a minute to decide to ignore it.
You don't get paid for ignoring things.
Well, then I get 14 more emails just checking to make sure that you got my email.
Circle back.
Make sure you got that Z form.
I don't know if we talked about this, but, you know, I was getting phone calls to make sure I'd seen the email that...
that was making sure that I'd seen the text that was telling me what time to be a place where the thing, where the time to be a place had been carefully stated in five or six emails I'd already received.
And a great, great part is those people will get to retire.
Those people have a job where they get paid the same amount of money every month and they get to retire.
Their kids get to go to college and you're sitting there answering emails about, did you get my phone call about the email about the phone call about the gig and load in?
Yeah, like send me this signed contract so I can send you the money I owe you.
Oh my God.
For a thing you did already that I asked you to, you know, that I said I would pay you to do, but I can't pay.
I, there's an outstanding one right now.
I am owed money by a music company in England for a, for some work I did on an album.
Was this before Brexit, John?
This is right circa Brexit.
Yeah.
And they, and it's like, it's like when you become a Microsoft vendor, I went online and somebody sent me an email and they were like, just click here.
and sign up as a vendor for mca.uk or whatever and that then we'll be able to pay you and i went online and i filled out the whole form and then i clicked on send and it and it asked an inscrutable question like it went to another page
upon which there was an inscrutable question and I tried to answer it and it did not accept my answer and would not accept the form.
And, you know, I hurt no one but myself when I say, go fuck yourself.
I've now gone to a third location with a hippie.
Yeah, never do that.
And I do not want to be here anymore.
Go fuck yourself.
You're the weirdo.
You're the weirdo.
That is inscrutable to them that you would not want to take another couple days out of your life to just go deal with the content management system again.
Because what it required is that I then email the person back who sent me the email.
And I have to just wipe all the work I've done so far because I can't get back to that screen.
I have to email that person and say, what is this question about?
The question was, who was your...
reference oh yeah name the person that was your reference and i put in the name of the person that sent me the email obviously we don't have access to the system that you spent all that time we have to go find it was it joanie yeah yeah and you're like well no joanie emailed me i get these emails all the time about who's my new contact i think i think joanie might be three people ago yeah you ever get those i know you've gotten those hi i just want to introduce my replacement
Yeah.
Cheers, Joni.
It's like when you're at the airport and you type, do you have your flight number?
No.
Here's my name.
What's your final destination today?
Here's my final destination.
All right.
Now you have my name and my final destination.
Tell me that there are more than one John Roderick right now that are going to Seattle.
Can't do it, sir, because security.
And so then it's like, oh, well, which flight are you on?
And here's a list of five flights.
Pick the one that you're on.
All right.
I don't remember which one I'm on.
This one?
That one?
Sorry.
You're now back out at the front.
Back out at the gate.
Push the button.
Can I get in, please?
I want it all to die, Merlin.
I want it all to die, and I want it to go back to...
triplicate remember triplicate yeah surely do i remember the goldenrod uh golden i love the golden i think the goldenrod was usually my copy do you remember did you did you smell mimeograph paper we've talked about this of course i did
I smelled all the things.
I passed it on to my daughter.
She's a huffer now.
She smells.
Oh, she'll enjoy a Sharpie.
Do you remember sitting at a gas station when there were no things that kept chlorofluorocarbons from just pouring into the atmosphere?
Oh, the triplicate age.
And just huffing that gas.
Oh, that gas.
Yeah.
The leaded gas, Merlin, that we huffed.
Oh, I missed the gas.
I missed the mimeograph paper.
So it's 1985.
Peggy Sue Bodell sets off to her 25-year high school reunion with her daughter, Beth.
She's just separated from her high school sweetheart, now husband, Charlie, and is wary of attending the reunion because of everyone questioning her about his absence as they have been married since Peggy became pregnant right after graduation.
I had this very conversation just last night with one of my high school classmates.
This is directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
Were you aware of that?
I was not aware of that.
Someone getting divorced just now after having been married since high school.
That's heavy.
The entire time that you and I have been doing this podcast, and before that even, these two people were married all the way back to when I was in high school, and now they're getting a divorce.
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of become the default assumption
I recently reconnected with a pal from college.
I noticed somebody following me and responding to me.
I was like, hmm, that person has the name of somebody I was pretty good friends with in college.
And so I did that thing that's really awkward where I said, is there any chance?
What's your final destination?
What's your final destination?
I said, is this any chance, is there any chance that this is the thus and such person that I knew in college?
Which, you know, it's a fairly unusual name, but I thought I'm probably going to sound like a loon because who knows?
And she was like, of course it's me.
And so I went, I was like, oh my God.
You sent an is this thus and such message?
I did.
I sent that message.
And then I went and I was exploring what she's been up to.
And it's like, she's still with me.
The guy that I mostly, those closer friends with, in college, they're still together.
And I was like, wow, that's, I mean, that feels like the exception.
Yeah.
You just, you can't assume, you can't go like, you know, oh, how's Christine?
Or whatever.
Or, you know, oh...
What about James?
How is he?
And it's like, I don't know.
We haven't talked since 1992.
And you're like, wow.
Sorry.
Oops.
Yeah.
I said that to a guy, too.
I was like, hey, you still seeing Natasha Rasmussen or whatever?
And he was like, not since 1994.
Yeah.
I was like, oh, what's been happening since then?
Well, I have three kids.
One of them's 22 years old.
Shit, I haven't talked to you in a long time.
Yeah, I know.
It's been about 22 years.
I feel about forms.
I still feel very close to you.
Yeah, well, here's the thing.
We went to high school together.
This is the ugliest part of it.
I really wish you could tell me more about your story.
But the ugliest part of this is that when I sit here and I realize, when I go in and Google somebody, and so many of my friends, they're still out there.
Some of them are still writers.
A lot of them have become developers and stuff like that.
And I'll go and I'll look somebody up and I'll go, wow.
Shit, man.
That guy, he looks like he's pushing 50.
Shit dog.
Shit dog.
And I'll be like, and then I'll go like, it's weird because I know they were mostly my age in 1986.
And the crazy part is they're still mostly my age today.
Because in my head, they will always be 19 or 20.
I know this is an obvious thing, but like when you actually are confronted with like, holy shit, you're older now than your dad was when I met you, which seems impossible.
Now you're even older.
And now you're older still.
Did they email you about this?
Did they email?
How did they let you know, John, it's time for the 30th reunion?
Yes.
So it's your high school.
You went to the high school that wasn't the good high school.
You went to the other high school.
No, it was a good, perfectly fine high school.
But you're not the high school that got Ozzy Osbourne.
No, we weren't.
We were the second high school.
I feel like you've always portrayed it as like you were the also-ran.
You went to White Ribbon High.
We were high school number two.
High school number one for many, many years was the only high school.
And they also had the auditorium that seated 2,000 people.
So everyone in Anchorage, when there was something to do, when there was an event in 1960,
Everybody in the city went and sat in the West High Auditorium.
And on the side of the West High Auditorium is a giant bald eagle shrieking through the sky with its talons outstretched to catch a giant anchor.
A giant befouled anchor.
Like in relationship to this screaming eagle.
It is a truly badass logo.
And then it was determined that the city was growing and it needed a second high school.
Oh, also West High's colors were black and orange.
Very tough.
See those letter jackets?
Do you recall what yours were?
Oh, sure I do.
What were yours?
Well, let me get there.
Okay.
Because when they started, when they built East High School,
They did not give it a 2,000 seat auditorium.
And the mascot was the Thunderbird, a mythical animal.
And the Thunderbird was represented in sort of Native American, like general, vague Native American iconography.
But a Thunderbird is not...
That's not part of the Eskimo.
That feels more like a Southwest, like of the lower 48, like a Southwest Native American kind of thing.
You see a Thunderbird thing, I feel like, maybe in an Arizona or in New Mexico.
and even like Pacific Northwest.
Yeah.
You know, I can also see a Vancouver type Thunderbird.
There's all kinds of, what do they call it?
Indigenous?
No, Aboriginal peoples, whatever.
That's, that's a huge thing.
When we were in Vancouver, it was like, it was unironically a big part of the culture.
There was like this awareness of that culture.
Let's let's call it a let's let's call it an indigenous myth mythology.
My wife and I went to a fancy dinner at a place that was all like it was like kind of fancy, but like authentic ish upscale.
Like I don't want to say something racist, but I don't want to say Indian, whatever the term they use there is.
But what's the whatever the the tribes of the like British Columbia?
They're still very aware that they got totem poles in the park and there's a whole thing.
The Haida and the Tlingit, right?
The Tlingit are from a little bit further north, up the coast.
The Haida are from right around there, but there are a lot of sub-tribes.
Right, right, right.
The, you know, the tribes from right around here, I mean, I could name 40 of them, but they're all related to the Haida, the Supra tribe.
Okay.
But one thing the Thunderbird is not is either an Eskimo-like icon, nor is it really like a central Alaskan – I don't think of it as an Athabascan image.
And Anchorage is not really part of the turf –
of the of the plinket who you know their turf ends down there in the wrangles somewhere i know i'm using a lot of words that don't mean it's word salad but i'm riding the wave and so but it sounds a little bit like saying it's like it might as well it's as meaningful as saying like hey we're the pirates well we never really had pirates here or whatever they're they're adopting some kind of a culture
Yeah, but even – yeah, right.
It's not – there's no – there are no hurricanes on the West Coast.
So you shouldn't be – you shouldn't say like the East High Hurricanes.
They – you know, it should be cyclones or whatever.
But yeah, this is some –
There aren't totem poles in Anchorage.
Let's just put it that way.
There are no totem poles, but the East High logo looks like it came from a totem pole.
So right away, you're feeling like, and then to make matters worse, our colors were red, white, and powder blue.
So our letter jackets were, the body of them were powder blue.
That sounds kind of like maybe like Eastern European.
Well, and my lady friend went to my reunion with me and she said, I find those very attractive colors.
And I said, but yes, okay, but are they butch sports colors?
She's a millennium.
She's a millennium.
So she's like, I don't even know what you're talking about, butch sports colors, but I think it's a very attractive jacket.
In any case, so here we are against the fighting eagles of West High.
And we're like the powder blue Thunderbirds.
It was tough.
And what drives me crazy is were there no other fierce animals in Alaska that could have been the mascot of the second high school?
Yeah.
How about a bear?
What about a wolf?
These are there.
There are these.
You could have even gone with, you know, something that seems to be a touchdown for you, which is the hardy stock of the various peoples that have come there over time.
So like in the case of the San Francisco 49ers or something like that, you could go with something that's about the people, but instead they transplanted a Thunderbird.
Sure, the Anchorage anchors.
Or no, the West High already had the anchor.
Let's say they had the eagle and the anchor.
It's so infuriating.
And if they had a secret society, I bet it was called the eagle and the anchor.
Here we are, the Thunderbird and the cultural co-optation.
And we could have been, so the third high school or whatever, Bartlett.
I think that Bartlett was the third.
Fucking Bartlett.
Maybe Diamond was the third.
It could have been, yeah, I think one of those.
You know, they're the Bears.
The Diamond are the something else's.
So here's East High.
We fought.
We fought.
Just going there was a fight.
Were you scrappy?
We were.
We were the scrappy upstarts.
Mm-hmm.
And so I'm back at the reunion.
East High Thunderbirds.
Go T-Birds.
And my classmates, at least the ones that came to the reunion, are in fine shape.
They're in fine fettle.
There were a lot of people there that did look the same, like looked the same or better than they did in high school.
And I was thinking when I went to the 20 year reunion, you know, everybody had kind of thickened up and it seemed to bode that by the time you got to the 30 year reunion, we were just going to be flesh mounds.
But people were in good shape.
They, you know, they looked sharp.
They had, they had sparkle in their eyes.
A lot of them, they're, you know, their third kid was graduating from high school and they were ready to start a new adventure in life.
And I was standing there like in my banana Republic blazer that I bought at a Salvation Army for a dollar and thinking to myself, Christ almighty.
What a good-looking bunch of people.
They are older than my friend's parents were when I was in high school, but my friend's parents looked like meat piles with hair.
They needed to trim the hair on their ears.
And here, my high school classmates look like they're the freaking Kennedys.
So times have changed, and the expectations are up, up, up.
I went immediately to a drugstore and bought Just For Men mustache dye.
Oh, nice.
You should see me now.
I look like Tom Selleck.
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I would love to see you now.
That's Tom Selleck.
He's a good guy.
Good, handsome guy.
I'm on my way.
I'm on my way to you.
Are you glad you went?
I am.
You know, there's a lot of people didn't go to the 30th.
And I got a lot of feedback from people online.
that indicated a kind of, a kind of sort of smug consensus that like, why would you go to your reunion?
Herp derp.
And I feel like, I feel like some of that attitude comes from people still not realizing that life is short and there aren't, and it doesn't last forever.
Your reunions are like, uh,
They're just a demarcation of life, time progressing.
And when I walked in the door of the reunion, I had a natural apprehension.
What's this going to be like?
I haven't seen these people in years.
Do I even have anything in common with them?
They're like moms and dads from Anchorage, Alaska.
But then you get there and you know all these people.
You know them now for decades.
Even if you haven't seen them, you know them.
I can't remember when I meet somebody at a party and they're like, hi, my name's Andy.
Their name goes right in one ear and out the other.
I have no recollection of who they are one minute later.
And I lean over to their friend or mine and I go, what's this guy's name again?
And they go, Andy.
That's my secret shame.
I'm like, right, Andy.
And then I turn my head back and look at Andy and I've already forgotten his name.
But I walk into this ski chalet where my 30th reunion is, and every single person that walks up to me, I'm like, holy shit, John Lindsay, how are you?
I'm like, oh my God, it's Chili Kikuchi.
Like, I know them.
I'm sorry, Chili?
Chili Kikuchi.
That's a terrific name.
It sounds like somebody from Greece.
He's amazing.
Chili Kikuchi is amazing.
He lives in Denver.
You can look him up.
He's a real person.
I will.
You know, I know them all.
And we had a very, like, an excellent high school class.
And at the time, I didn't think so.
But like really interesting, excellent people who are still thriving.
So I think that those things, like those little dumb flags that
Your high school reunions.
Little dumb flag.
Aren't you too sophisticated for that now?
You've moved to San Francisco.
Oh, no, no.
This is the irony.
I like to think that's the case, but it's really just because I'm scared.
Well, and I think that's true for a lot of people.
You know, the people that are like, I don't go back to my hometown.
I got out of there.
Now I've got 700 channels of television in my town.
I'm not going back to that.
But yeah, you go back to that and it turns out that you thought you were a nerd, but none of your classmates did.
They all thought you were great.
Or you remember everybody hating your guts, but in fact, they all really liked you.
And they're all nice now.
They're all nice people, and they're not little high school jerks anymore.
They grew up too.
This is what everybody says.
This is what everybody says, and it makes me feel terrible that I don't go to these things.
I think everybody should go.
I know.
Because people are great.
I mean, there's only one guy at my high school reunion that is still working out the whole problem of cool.
There's one guy who every time I see him online, he's very nice to me.
Every time I see him in person, he lurks over on the other side of the room because he's not going to come say hi to me first.
There's one guy in a whole room of people that went to high school that's still worried about that level of thing.
And he's a super interesting guy, but he's just got this, he's just still got, you can see it in him.
But it's not like you're walking over to him first.
You're going to wait it out.
Oh, no, no, no.
I mean, I'm talking to people who are coming up to me to talk to me, but I'm looking across the room and I see him over there and he's just looking at his fingernails.
When I get done talking to the people who are brave enough to come over and say hello, then I do go over and say, hey, man, because I want to relieve him of this stress.
But it's very funny to think that you wouldn't go to one of these things and you're like, oh, Jesus, everybody's going to be high school on me.
But nobody is except for one guy.
There's always one guy.
But this reunion was put together in answer to your original question.
It was put together on Facebook.
Yeah.
There were no emails.
It all happened on Facebook, including all of the threads where people were saying, ah, maybe I can come.
Maybe I can't.
How much is it?
When is it?
Oh, my daughter has a dance recital that day.
And it's like, yeah, this is your 30th reunion.
Like reschedule the dance recital.
There's a lot of that kind of Facebook chatter.
And I just was, you know, I was glimpsing it.
And then I made my reservations to go to the reunion.
And then I was sort of getting on the plane.
And I got a text from one of my friends.
I was like, all right, we'll see you in a couple of hours.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
Well, the reunion's tonight.
The reunion's tonight?
Friday night?
I naturally assumed it was Saturday night because I never read the invite.
I didn't read the Facebook description of the thing.
And so I made a plane reservation that landed in Anchorage one hour after the event starts.
And so I rented a car.
I ran through the airport like a disgraced football star.
Yep.
Jumping over suitcases.
Jumping over suitcases.
Nothing but smiles.
Some little old lady says, go, J-Rod.
I make it into my rental four by four.
And I careen across the city, a city I know intimately, all the way over to the mountains.
where the reunion is being held in a ski chalet.
And you know what?
I wasn't even late.
They were just getting started.
Wow.
And I had the whole reunion with all my, my pals and then got in the
Four by four and raced back to the airport because my lady friend was flying in on a later flight.
I did all of this.
And one night felt like I didn't need to have flown in a day early because I could have driven back to the airport and flown home.
I could have done that whole thing.
Flown in, landed, gone to the reunion, had a great time, gone back to the airport, gone home.
Nobody would have, I mean, I could have left a pot on the stove.
You know what I'm saying, Merlin?
I do.
It seems like you're getting closer and closer with, you know, sometimes you just need to flip that flight around.
Like you're getting, recent history indicates that you're a man who's happy.
If you have to, you hop back on a plane and just go straight back.
You're jet setting.
How many years of our lives have we thought, oh boy.
I got it.
Better get those plane tickets.
It's only six months till I have to fly.
Oh, yeah.
You know, like flying.
Got to buy your travel insurance.
Yeah.
Going on trips is a big, big deal.
Changing flights is an enormous deal.
You might as well just stay home.
You could get stranded.
If something goes wrong with your flight, you may never go home again.
Yeah.
And now I'm realizing that everything you do with Visa via an airline costs $100.
That's good to know.
You know what I mean?
Like you've got a wallet with hundreds in it.
And every time you talk to somebody, you should just throw a $100 bill at them.
But it's only $100.
Once you understand that, it's less shocking.
Yeah.
This is just how this works.
Hey, can I do this?
They're like, yeah, that'll be $101.95.
And you're like, yeah, I knew it was going to be $100.
And so here's, I have some hundreds already earmarked for this purpose.
And then you get, the thing is that $100 allows you to be on an airplane in one hour rather than get a hotel room and wait until tomorrow.
Get a $250 hotel room and wait until your originally scheduled flight or whatever.
You know, like that $100 is just the thing that is required.
And you can leave whenever.
I mean, I was in L.A.
a couple of weeks ago, and I said, I'm leaving L.A.
right now.
This did not work out.
This trip didn't work out.
I'm leaving.
And I was like, $100, and I was on an airplane in an hour.
So it has really stripped away the feeling that getting on an airplane is a big deal or that all that stuff, all that like, we got a plan, we got to prepare, what are we going to do when we get there?
It's like, what are you going to do?
You're going to peel off another $100 and throw it at somebody.
And then it's just like you planned.
It's just like you planned.
It becomes a kind of thought technology where you're really realigning your whole idea of how this is going to work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
Because if the trip originally, if you had budgeted $1,000 for a trip, let's say.
I mean, that's $10, $100.
And if you buy the flight today for a flight tomorrow and it costs whatever, even $500, you still have five hundreds to throw and you're still within your budget.
So it was, I mean, I flew up to Anchorage on Friday and I left Sunday night.
And that's ludicrous.
to fly to Alaska for the weekend.
Except it's not.
It costs $300 to, you know, I bought my tickets with Miles.
Ooh, look at you, Mr. Medallion.
I know, see?
And then I rented a car.
That was $200.
I threw $100 at somebody for something.
I don't remember what.
Don't need to know.
Just know they're going to go.
I don't even care.
It's like, how many dinners have I bought for Jason Finn that costs $100?
At least six.
You go into a place, Jason orders some Negroni, you get some appetizers, maybe a little blanched spinach.
Pizza for the table.
Then the thing comes and it's $97, and you're like, fuck, that was a lot more money than I thought it was going to be.
How many Negronis did you get?
But he's already under the table.
Yeah.
I guess this one's on me.
And that's the amount it is.
It's basically the same amount that it costs to get Jason Finn under the table with a plate of blanched spinach is the cost of being able to fly at the drop of a hat.
You don't get rich in life by spending money.
Isn't it the other way around?
You do get rich in life by spending money?
No, no, this is the thing.
Whenever somebody goes, wow, isn't it funny how rich people are the cheapest people?
And you're like, well, that's spoken like a poor person.
You know what I'm saying?
Sort of?
Oh, yeah.
Jason Finn, he's got more money than Sinatra.
And you're out there buying his Negronis and he's under the table.
You think that's a mistake?
I see what you're saying.
He pats at his fleece that he's always wearing.
I'm not mature like I'm a Wally man.
You do a better Jason friend than I do.
Hi, Jason.
I don't know if he still listens.
I'm sure he does.
He listens on his runs.
So a lot of the podcast to him just sounds like a truck's honking.
Oh, I remember what the $100 I threw at somebody was.
I got back to the car rental place and they were like, oh, you're two hours late.
Drop on the car off.
It's an extra day.
And it costs $100.
And I was like, seriously, $100 for...
for being two hours late.
And they were like, it's right here in the contract, sir.
And I was like, yeah, I don't read your stinking contracts.
And I stood there and I was like, okay, I can get all heated up about this.
I get mad.
Just peel off a couple of the C notes and walk away.
Yeah.
I was like, I used to demand satisfaction in a situation like this.
You sure did.
But now the satisfaction comes from flipping another hundred through the window and being like, this problem is gone.
It costs $100.
And I'm not talking about $100.
There are going to be people listening to this podcast that are like, well, it's nice if you can afford to throw $100.
It's fine for John Roderick.
That's right.
But the problem is that everybody's budgeting to do things, and these $100 bills, they're spending them too.
They're just in different categories.
They don't see it as peel off $100, throw it at a thing, and the problem is solved.
They're like, well, then there's $100 budgeted for this and for that and for this and for that.
It's like if you buy those tickets six months ahead of time, they're not any cheaper.
It doesn't give you any relief from anxiety to have all that stuff in a folder sitting on your desk.
This is my trip six months from now and I've got it all squared away.
At least for me, it doesn't.
It's cheaper to just...
To just spend that $100 in terms of like, right, let me through this little portal.
Let me through your spider web.
TSA pre-check.
Yeah.
Just get her done.
Get her done.
Get her done.
Yeah.
We went through that.
We went to Disneyland, as I mentioned off air.
We went to Disneyland a few weeks ago for the first time.
And I felt something similar where I had basically said that in order to have this trip and for me to not be stressful, this is actually something I've learned from our friend John Syracuse, which is like, be a rational person all the time.
And here's your rationality.
When it's time to go...
on vacation be prepared and plan for everything to cost way more than you expected like build that into the budget don't take the trip until you know you can spend way more than you think you should because even if you don't just buy a bunch of shit still you're still going to have the hundred dollar problem everywhere you go as in you know in your parlance and we had a wonderful trip partly because i just got used to like well that meal cost a hundred dollars shit
Like she just had macaroni again and somehow we spent $100.
I'm not sure how that happened.
Yep, because it was $18 macaroni because it had two bacon bits on it.
Yeah, well, and I think part of it for me is that I'm just budgeting my money toward living this life rather than budgeting money toward living a different life.
Well, you need to get one of those jobs where you circle back with people about how the forms are going.
I can't stop.
I got to tell you, buddy, I can't stop thinking about that.
You make money in your job.
God bless you.
God bless you.
You make money in your job when I'm not doing mine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just, it's vexing to me.
I don't want to take you off your Peggy Sue or your potty cam, but my goodness, that frustrates me.
Well, you see them all the time.
You see them walking around with their jobs, making money, doing nothing.
It's really changed a lot of what I do because this could be a personality flaw where I just don't have the patience to, in the worst case, have a series of phone calls with different people for six months about whether something will happen.
Ugh.
And then you go through what I learned.
It was eventually it's called the engagement process, which is where we figure out if the thing we definitely, we took six months deciding we definitely want to do with you, whether that money exists and who could potentially pay for it.
Even though we've spent that entire amount of money months ago on the amount of time that you guys were in meetings about whether you wanted to do this.
See, that's when you're, when you're a loser like us, who's never going to retire, that's the way you think, but they're on a different level.
You know, when, when I, when I did this, this little television talk show thing,
Did I ever tell you about the... I arrived for Wardrobe.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You talked about Jeannie Turner.
Yeah, they were fitting me.
They were fitting me at Wardrobe, and somebody came out, and I was interacting with about five people at this point.
The producer, the writer, the producers...
the representative from the agency, the representative from the other agency.
And someone came out and said, well, they're all having a meeting right here, right next to where we are.
And, uh, they'd really like to meet you there.
And I think that in a minute they're going to be ready for you.
And I had other stuff to do.
The wardrobe person was putting shoes on me.
And I was like, oh, all right.
When they're ready to talk to me, I guess I'm here already.
And I'm not being paid for this day, right?
This is pro bono out of your help arts in the city work.
Yeah, but they contracted me for two days worth of work.
And then they said, but there's going to be a fitting day.
I'm like, all right.
Fitting day, they're not paying me for the fitting day.
That's just, you know, that's presumed.
Oh, so there's some money in it, but it's very circumscribed.
Oh, I'm making money for day two and day three, but this is day one.
Okay, I see, I see, I see.
Day one, this is the fitting day, and I'm not getting paid for this.
And that was fine.
I was like, sure, I'll go for the fitting day.
But then they're like, okay, they're about ready to meet you.
And the person that said that walked away and went through a door.
And somebody else came out.
Hi, nice to meet you.
I'm the person that's doing this.
They are about ready to meet you.
And then that person walked away and went through a different door.
I got shoes put on me and a tie put on me, and I was like, I'm having a fine time.
Somebody came and asked me if I wanted a wrap.
And I said, I'll have a wrap.
Oh, wraps.
Oh, sure, sure.
It's like a burrito sandwich.
Sure, get me a chicken wrap.
That's wonderful, thank you.
And then they realized that there was just a tray of wraps in the kitchen that hadn't been eaten by the they.
I was like, I'll take one of your old wraps.
So I'm sitting there with new shoes on, eating an old wrap, and finally somebody comes out and says, it's going to be a minute.
They're not sure if they're ready to see you yet.
I'm sorry.
I'm already losing the thread here.
Who are they and why do they need to talk to you?
I had no idea either.
But the implication is, or what you inferred, is that these are some kind of big stakeholders in whoever's behind the scenes, behind the scenes.
And it's going to be like kind of a meet and greet and maybe a little bit of like, here's the reason for the season.
Yeah, exactly.
And my assumption in all these situations is, look, I'm the talent.
I'm the one they want to meet.
I don't care who they are.
They could be president of the goddamn world.
It could be Sergey Brin sitting on a magic carpet, sitting Indian style on a floating magic carpet.
He's going to want to meet me because I'm the talent.
Sure.
Crisscross applesauce.
Bring him in.
So I'm out there and I'm like, hey, I'm not getting paid for today already.
Whoever's timeline we're working on is fine with me.
Part of my brand is that I don't give a fuck.
I got a used rap here.
And a pair of new shoes.
And I'm already negotiating with the costume lady that I'm going to get to keep these shoes at the end of the shoot.
You think that's her decision?
Well, so I lean in and I go, what do I got to do to keep these shoes?
And she's like, well, I got this budget.
I got this and that.
I don't know about it.
It's going to be tough.
And I'm like, hmm.
but I'm going to keep these shoes, right?
And she's like, well, I can talk to the guy.
I can do this.
I'm done.
You're doing a little bit of a Jedi mind trick on her.
Well, see, the thing is, I know that's not her decision, and I don't want to put her in an awkward position.
I'm just sowing the seeds.
So the first person I've talked to already thinks that I'm going to keep the shoes.
Eventually what happens is the person, I figure out who the person in charge of that process is,
Later on in the production, a day and a half later, and I'm like, I love these shoes.
How about me keep these shoes?
And that person by that point in time is so focused on keeping me happy because they've been bringing me waters the whole time.
Even though it's below their pay grade, they're doing it because I'm the talent.
You developed a relationship.
They got some skin in the game.
And then that person makes the decision like this.
What?
You want the shoes?
Oh, yeah.
Done.
And the wardrobe lady is standing there and the production people are all standing around and they heard the person say it.
And then I just walk out in the shoes.
I don't, there's no form to sign at that point.
Because the person already, the person who's bringing me the water said so.
Anyway, so I'm sitting in this room and finally someone comes out and says, they're ready to see you now.
i'm ready to see them and it was ostensibly that i was going to come in and show them the costume and they were going to decide that the suit was right huh right so all right i'm realizing like oh this is um this is a situation where they want to meet me and they want to be entertained by me but but they've justified it as that i'm walking in there like a
like a monkey talent, like a dumb mannequin, to show them my clothes.
Oh, that seems like a status move a little bit.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
And so I walk in, and you will not believe it.
A U-shaped table...
There's 20 people.
Oh, for goodness sake.
20 people.
I walk in.
I like am taken aback.
Holy shit.
This is a big meeting room and there's 20 people in here.
There's the row of stakeholders in the chairs around the U. And then there's the back row of chairs of their assistants or somebody.
I don't know.
People that are actually holding pieces of paper.
What do all those people do?
Well, there's the agency person.
Oh, sure.
You got the person from the other agency.
Yes.
There's the person from the client.
There's the client side person.
There's the person from the other client.
There's the people that were contracted.
There's the boss.
There's the boss lady who's above the boss.
Oh, sure.
Right?
Head lady boss in charge.
And the thing is, everybody in this room is in charge, right?
All the people that aren't in charge are outside the room running around telling me when things are going to happen.
And so, you know, of course, I walk in and I go, hey, hey, it's Dave Roderick.
How are you?
You want to see my costume?
Let me turn around.
Do these pants look good on my ass?
And everybody is immediately disarmed and charmed because the talent is fun.
and then i say i'm keeping the shoes and every single one of the 20 people they go around the table and everybody's got something to say there's a person from california that has very very casual hair you know somebody that used to work at geffen who's not wearing socks and then there's the person that is very you know like high and tight haircut who came from new york
Every single one of those has some kind of say in the decision.
And as I'm standing there in front of them doing this little dance, not getting paid for today because it's a fitting day, I look around the room.
I'm like, the top person in this room is probably making $700,000 a year.
Yeah.
The bottom person in this room is making $220,000 a year.
And I'm not getting $750 for today because it's a fitting thing.
Well, okay.
And here's the thing.
From me being a karma suck, being the Holden Caulfield of the operation, if somebody said to me, hey, what if we paid you whatever your ding-a-ling rate is to come and be fitted with clothes for a day?
And then be inspected by a crew of people at our leisure and to give you notes?
If somebody gave me that as the entire proposition, I would say, fuck no.
Let alone, will you then go do a talk show on the back of a truck?
I'm just here to say, like, when you look at it from that point of view, no, you couldn't pay me to do that.
That's ridiculous.
So, but, oh, this is just a little bit of extra.
It's kind of like saying, like, hey, we're going to pay you to come over.
We're going to pay you to come to our house and watch the prices right.
Oh, but also there's a day where you paint the exterior of our house.
I figured you'd know.
I figured you'd know that that's pretty standard in the industry.
Wasn't so sure about that exterior house painting stuff.
Well, and that's why in those situations, I'm like, I feel no shame about taking these shoes.
None at all.
I feel no shame about...
about asserting the fact that even though everybody in this room has a 401k, everyone in this room is going to retire one day.
I walk in and say, look at my ass, you dummies.
What are they going to do?
Replace you?
Yeah, exactly.
I'm the talent.
You're like Greg Brady.
You fit the shoes.
Yeah.
How do you like them apples?
How do you like me now?
What if I pull these pants up really high?
Is that funny to you?
That's a really interesting point.
Here's my ass.
Am I a clown to you?
Any questions?
Can I make you laugh?
Have a little more ass.
I'm keeping these fucking shoes.
And they can't do anything.
What are they going to do?
Say, tone it down?
Fuck you.
Look at my ass again.
Because I went to high school with these same people.
You sure did.
Yeah.
You're Peggy Sue.
That's right.
I'm the Peggy Sue in this story.
I'm scared to go back to my reunion because I just got divorced from my husband for 35 years.
It's my 25th reunion.
Greg and I don't really talk much anymore.
Oh, it's complicated.
I told you, right?
I went to a Denny's a couple of years ago and the server came over and he was wearing a, and I recognized that the server was about my age.
And then I looked at his name tag and it said, Denny's employee since 1986.
I was like, that's the year I graduated from high school.
Oh shit, that's the year he graduated from high school.
Absolutely.
And I ordered a pancake and I had a real moment of feeling like all that time that I felt like I was
Just throwing time down a turtlet?
Sure.
Well, there's an alternate universe, Black Mirror version of this, where what if we lived in a world where each of us had to wear a name tag about the thing we'd mostly done since high school?
In that case, his was pretty simple.
His might actually seem pretty honorable.
Yeah.
I have worked at this location since then.
Yeah.
Somehow managing to fuck it up since 1986.
And what would your name tag say?
That's pretty much it.
It might be... It might be...
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it would be something along the lines of, you know, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory since 1986.
Not working up to his potential since 1986.
Yeah.
For me, it was 85.
That's interesting.
So you were young for your grade.
I was old for mine.
And we graduated a year apart.
That's interesting.
I graduated in 85.
85.
I always thought 85 was a good year, although... It was a terrible year.
I'm the bottom of the barrel for every part of my generation.
Also, our school colors were green and yellow, and not a nice green or a nice yellow.
I always thought green and yellow was like if a high school had green and yellow, it was by that point in time, all the other color schemes had been taken by better high schools.
And somebody was just looking at a pallet wheel.
Oh, it's like they found it.
It's like from lost and found who picks green and yellow.
And it was like a kind of like a sickly yellow.
It looks like you got some kind of like a like a liver problem yellow.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think I told you this one before, but when I was in 10th grade, they made painter's hats for school spirit and sold them, and they misspelled the name of the mascots on the back.
So, you know, 670 people had painter's hats that said Boussineers on it.
1C.
Oh, the Boussineers.
Hey, hey, hey, we're the Buccaneers.
The Boussineers.
But at least where you were going to school...
There were historical Boussineers.
No, I think they just called it that because of the football team.
I don't know.
You know what?
That's a really good point.
Because the football team from Tampa, I think, came around in the 70s.
Tampa Bay Boussineers?
The Tampa Bay Boussineers.
And I think my high school predated that.
So I don't know if they did a pivot to become Boussineers.
They might have been the New Jersey retirees up until then.
I'm not sure.
Something more appropriate for the setting.
In Anchorage, in the 70s, I was in a Little League baseball team that was called the Padres.
Oh, the Pot... Oh, I see.
For some reason, I thought that was a Star Wars reference.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Like the San Diego's.
San Diego Padres.
Yeah.
Which in San Diego makes sense.
Because you've got missions and stuff.
That's right.
There's some historical Padre.
Yeah.
But there are no Padres in...
You think we had any fucking Boussineers in Newport Ritchie?
I felt very much like I was very confused because we also kept the colors of the Padres.
Oh, that's shameful.
Southwestern orange and brown.
Boo.
Boo.
You would look good in the Astros.
I think 70s throwback Houston Astros colors would have looked really cool.
You guys could have been the Astros.
That would have been cool.
Well, but there's no... Like the Houston Astros were the Astros because Astro is short for Astro Not.
Because of space.
And Houston is Spacetown USA.
The Anchorage team should have been...
Either the East High oil profiteers or the East High genocidists.
Oh, that's nice.
You know, the East High.
You know, you could get one of those names like, you know, Stanford's team is the Cardinal.
They have one of those cool, like, plural names.
You could have been the East High awkward silence.
That sounds like a Doctor Who film.
The East High Assimilationist.
Uh-huh.
The East High Chevy Short Beds.
The Chevy Shorts.
Because it was the early 80s.
Sure.
And what you want.
Oh, no.
We would have been the Chevy Stepsides.
Oh, the step side.
The step side sounds a little fancy.
You could have top hats.
Right?
The step sides.
That sounds like a gang from the Warriors a little bit.
Yeah.
Right?
The step sides, they wear baseball shirts and top hats.
And their weapon of choice is the feather duster.
Step sides.
Come out and discuss the property lines.
They're all spinning feather dusters.
And you're like, feather duster.
And then they put it right in your face.
And they're like, ow.
And then you're like, touch it.
And they kick you in the balls.
Oh, that's kind of asynchronous gang warfare.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Well, I was thinking about this the other day.
What happened to the stepside pickup?
Stepside pickup.
That's when you get one of those big ones that's got to step.
Well, you know, it's like the one where the wheel wells in the back stick out because the bed itself is made...
Smaller, right?
Like Google's step-side pickup.
You're going to see that it is the classic pickup look.
Well, because the thing about clearance is you're constrained by axles.
The only way to get your axle... And that's the Guns N' Roses story.
All right.
That's good.
You're done.
You're done.
Go heel.