Ep. 299: "Mas Libros"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Early here.
Is it early?
Here.
Here, there, everywhere.
Hmm.
Hmm.
Making each day of the year.
Yeah.
I had okay good sleep last night.
Not the best, not the worst.
Oh, good.
Yeah.
I was up late, as usual.
You seem like you've got some projects going on right now.
You know, I have a bookshelf.
That's 100 miles long.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Is it some kind of interstellar thing?
Yeah, that's exactly what it is.
It twists around and turns, and it goes up and down through multiple levels.
That's binary, Murph.
Binary.
So I was hiding behind it, pushing books out, trying to communicate with people in the past.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
and i should do that yeah it's fun you know i owe a lot of people a call i should probably get up in their bookshelf super frustrating because you can't really do it you know that's the thing you can't really move the book as much as you would i wish i could plan ahead that well you know i could leave future clues for my daughter putting oh yeah oh yeah or you could just like you could just go with it you just menace people
Yeah.
Think about, think about all the people who deserve that little dust on their floor.
Well, it's a good feeling to know that you're torturing, you're torturing the daughter that you love with like psychological tricks.
Well, sometimes love isn't enough, but I was going to bend time.
You know what I was doing?
I was going through my comic books.
The devil you say.
Now this is what your beloved Harvey comics from when you were a kid.
Aren't you a Harvey man?
Uh, I'm not, I'm not above a Harvey.
Um,
But yeah, I've got an eclectic collection that doesn't qualify as a collection probably to anyone else because it has no theme.
There's no through line.
Nothing in it is valuable.
It's just a bunch of weird...
comic books but i was you know you worked in a bookstore yeah and i make a lot of i make a lot of you know gym jam about uh about comic books and nerds i do a little bit you kid a little bit i do a little bit of the the flim flams flubes but i've got an entire four shelf four shelves four book four shelf bookcase and
Of comic books, I guess you would call them.
Like a lot of trade paperbacks, graphic novels.
Yeah, that.
Early versions of that.
I found a... You know, there were some comic book artists up here in Seattle that went on to fame and fortune.
I have some of their early works.
You know the Jeffrey Dahmer guy?
Yep, I got a little bit of... Jason Lutz, I've got a couple of those.
But also a lot of like –
Ghost Tank comic books.
Is that a real thing?
No, no.
It sounds like a Markov chain generator.
Kind of, yeah.
Ghost Tank.
Spirit Boy.
I've got a few Dirty Plots.
Dirty Plots?
Yeah.
Oh, I love the blues.
Old Dirty Plots, they called it.
Julie Doucette.
Julie Doucette.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Canadian Doucettes.
And oh, lots and lots of old mad magazines and national lampoons.
And I just found, I didn't even realize this, but I found at some point along the way that
I don't even know if you knew this.
I don't know if anybody listening is even going to know what I'm talking about.
But there were standalone Fat Freddy's cat comics that weren't just like the Sergio Aragones sidebars.
Okay, you win.
Here I go.
Fat Freddy's cat.
They're standalone.
And they're small.
They're small.
They're little.
They're like...
you know, they're half size, half size comics.
Okay.
And I've got like, I've got four of them.
I don't even know where they came from.
Okay.
Fat Freddy's cat is a fictional orange tomcat, nominally belonging to Fat Freddy Freakowski.
Freakowski.
Oh, he's one of the fabulous furry freak brothers.
That's right.
You like these underground comics.
I like a lot of underground comics.
I have a lot of them.
I have a lot of those.
I have zaps.
You know, I have zap number one.
Somebody told me that zap number one is worth like a lot of money.
I had Wilberforce number one.
No.
I did.
I bought it off the spinner.
35 cents.
Boom.
Out the door.
You're kidding me.
You were early adopter.
I just thought the cover was so cool.
Did he go, shick?
Don't make me get my dolls.
Get my dolls up here.
Just arrange them around you in a little semi-circle.
I suppose you're wondering why I've called you all here.
They're like, you're fine.
We now have a shared enemy.
He doesn't know anything.
He knows nothing of your work.
Do you still have it?
Do you still have Wilberforce 1?
No.
No.
I don't even have my copy of Reckoning anymore.
I do still have my Me Puppets 2.
My Me Puppets 2 is down in the garage.
I don't know if I've ever seen any vinyls in your house.
No, no.
I mean, it's...
I don't know if your barn is like this, but with our garage, the garage is a... How does one describe it?
It's a regret sink.
It's definitely got a lot of half-empty cans of fizzy water.
Well, I do what I can.
I just had a pickup this weekend.
Had a pickup.
Well, I love doing a pickup.
The men come with their truck and take things away.
What did they take?
A lot of cardboard.
Oh, it was just everything that washes up against the shore.
Well, I'm quite a consumer, as you might know.
And we end up having a lot of things like things that products came in.
And we don't have nearly enough recycling room.
But also, we're on the brink.
of a purge and cleanup i can feel it i can feel because the house feels like it's getting smaller my daughter's stuff is really it's making uh it's annexed to sudayton land if you know what i mean and it gets really moving in as she expands personally it expands she expands her projects expand she has many projects going at one time anyway to cut a long story short yeah that's uh a lot of that and so it's some combination of a lot of known junk
And garbage stuff.
But then it's also like, you know, at the point where the little carriage for the doll, the little perambulator, it's getting mildewy.
She's never going to play with that again.
So you got to disappear it.
Do you keep boxes for potential returns?
No.
Oh, no.
No, no.
I don't return.
I should return.
I don't return.
Good, good.
But anyways, your comics, so most of it is underground-ish things.
Sounds like from the 80s and 90s a lot.
Oh, 70s, because I went back, when I was in the 80s, when I got interested in it, most of the good stuff was from the 70s.
Like, I got into a certain kind of underground comedy that...
that everyone at the time agreed was on its last legs.
Not as good as it used to be.
You know, it was the classic thing.
It was just like, oh, their first album was best.
You're talking about Nemo Phillips?
You're talking about Firesign Theater?
What are you talking about?
All those guys from the Harvard Lampoon.
Oh, sure.
Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure.
Well, I bought circa what?
1981 or two?
I remember I bought National Lampoon when I could afford it, and I had the one with the vacation story in it by John Hughes.
You did.
You had that one?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
When it ran as a... As a serial.
As a bit, yeah.
Yeah, that was about when I started, but I had a... Oh, it also had boobies.
It had boobies in it sometimes.
It had boobies, yeah.
Trots and Bonnie.
I actually contacted... More Trots.
I contacted the woman that drew Trots and Bonnie.
How'd that go?
Well, see, what I wanted was I wanted original artwork.
Yeah.
Um, I wanted to see if she would sell me, um, like just a drawing, just some kind of, some kind of drawing.
That's cool.
Um, her name is Sherry Flemmaken.
And, uh, you know, I, I, I wrote a letter to the woman that writes, um, for better or for worse.
I've told you this.
Lynn Goldsmith.
What was her name?
Lynn, that's something that we could find out.
Sorry.
It's okay.
This is what you do.
This is what you do.
I'm also at that stage where I read a lot of signs when we're driving around.
I go, hmm, shell.
So it's Lynn.
Extra meat for a dollar.
Lynn Johnston.
Lynn Johnston.
That's right.
I sent her a nice letter.
That was a good comic.
That was an unusual comic because the kids, the people in it were aging.
They were aging in time.
That's right.
I wrote her and I just complimented her on her work and she sent me a nice drawing no way that's so nice so I wrote so I wrote but this was a long time before that that I wrote Sherry Flanagan and I was like you know do you ever just have like a one of those strips that that you just don't know what to do with and you just want to send to a kid
But she didn't reply.
Just asking for a friend.
She didn't reply.
I didn't understand that there was, I don't know if this was true, probably it was even then, that there was a market for original comic art.
We haven't got an original comic a couple years ago.
You know Aplad?
Are you aware of his work?
Oh, sure.
Aplad, he's so interesting to me.
He does such interesting stuff.
His Tumblr's a lot of fun to follow.
It's an awfully long, complicated joke to explain.
But, you know, he had the Law Cats.
And then he had, oh, God, what was the actual name?
Was it Lloyd Cats?
And it was about this guy named Lloyd and his, like, wife or girlfriend.
And they had cats.
And he was terrified of the cats.
And my daughter and I used to read that over and over.
And I was just telling him, hey, just so you know, you know, you really, you delight us with this.
I just sent him a little, you know, little DM.
And, you know, he did.
He sent me some comics.
He sent me his original drawing of our favorite Lloyd Cats comic.
No.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I scanned it and put it up, but then I kept the original aside because I'm like that.
You kept it aside where?
Yeah, you did it on like blue, you know, the blue photo blue graph paper.
It's really cool.
It's got the drawing right on there.
So you copied it, you did a facsimile of it and put that up in a frame.
Yeah, my daughter made a frame out of a cardboard box because we have so much cardboard.
She framed it herself and put it up.
But then you kept the original in a file folder.
Backed and boarded.
I like your work, but I refuse to look at it.
VG+.
Dan does that.
Dan has some slab comics, I think.
I think some of his Spider's Men are slabbed.
Is that right?
Yeah, send it off to this place, and they grade it, and then they put it in, like, amber or something.
They make it into a little plastic.
It's no longer a book you can read.
It turns into a plastic box with a number on it.
Yay!
I've never interacted with comics culture in that way.
Some of the stuff that I have came that way.
And so when I'm done reading it, I put it back in its little folder because I don't want to get yelled at.
I never thought of it quite that way, though.
It takes a delightful printed thing and turns it into a plastic box.
It's really weird.
Here you go.
Now put it in a file.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, that stuff.
There's a big crash.
So when were you working at the bookstore?
Do you remember like about roughly what period?
Yeah, 1996 through 99, 1995.
So it was kind of probably after the big crash.
Oh, where comic books that used to be worth $50,000 were worth $0?
Well, yes.
I mean, where there'd been so much speculation.
Like, really, I mean, I think a famous example of this was the first... Oh, God.
My memory's not there yet.
The 1990-ish reboot of the X-Men is still the highest-selling single issue of all time.
I think it was, I want to say, Jim Lee...
Because everybody thought that it was collectible.
Yeah, and then you started having those 3D covers and Superman in a bag.
Were you working during Superman in a bag?
No.
But I was not working in a comic book store.
You sold a lot of magazines, newspapers, that kind of thing.
I was there.
I remember McSweeney's number one.
coming and and sitting there in my hot little hands and this is after uh that magazine after spy oh no what was the one what was the one was a cool one where was that we've talked about this seven times what was the one he did eggers did that was um like uh every month was a different theme what was that yeah it was hot stuff or something yeah what's it called we've talked about this a hundred times brand blink
Please don't email us.
That was good.
And the Grand Royal?
I bet you were there for the Grand Royal days.
I was there.
We saw the first Grand Royal come in.
Grand Royal with Scratch Perry on the cover.
And that was the era of, that was when like raw art was really a thing.
So all the new art magazines that were all about like raw vision.
Raw vision.
uh you know outsider artists saw the first first ones of all those all the british pop magazines were blowing up it went from a time when it was just mojo and q to that was when uncut arrived and a lot a lot of things it was big times if i had if i had kept some of that stuff rather than just reading it and then
Because I read 40 magazines a day, right?
Can you imagine if you kept more of that stuff than you did where you'd be now?
Think about that.
I'd have so many more bookshelves.
Because, like, it's kind of a one-way street with you, isn't it, mostly?
Like, if it enters into your Uber collection, it rarely gets culled, right?
Oh, so, here's the...
I just looked over at a different bookshelf, and there's this book that's like... Might, M-I-G-H-T, might.
Might, thank you!
I was there, saw might come and go.
Now, aren't you sorry you emailed me?
I was a little hasty in emailing you.
It happens a lot.
You resolved that issue 40 seconds later.
So, second bookshelf.
Oh, I looked over here and there's this giant coffee table book called Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead about Doug Kenny and the early... They made that into a movie on the Netflix.
Oh, they did.
Yeah.
It's a beautiful, big book.
And I remember... Because my oldest brother, David, who is still alive and who has lived a very checkered life...
david was sitting here in my living room at one point uh which is not he doesn't do that very often it was infrequent or a rare occurrence i think at the time david had really long fingernails and super long hair and and i can't abide that and um david you know was david
When he was young, everyone in the family was like, he's, he's, he's a genius.
He's the most brilliant one of us all.
And, um, you know, this obviously before I was born, but you know, like he was just the, he was the future of the family and he was this charismatic kid.
And I've read some of his homework assignments from when he was in junior high and he was very, very talented, amazing guy, but he's a baby boomer.
And he went through the baby boom period, which destroyed a lot of people with baby boomerisms.
Anyway, so he's sitting there in my living room.
He's got really long fingernails.
And it was his original National Lampoons that comprised the kind of like very earliest exposure to that sense of humor.
And I found them.
I found his old national lampoons in the basement of a house in Yakima.
And I was like, where did these, what are these amazing things?
And my other brother, Bart, was like,
Oh, those are David's.
I don't even know.
Those have been down there for 25 years.
And I was like, oh my God, these are the greatest things.
Anyway, so I had this book.
There's just times in life when that happens to you.
You just get a lightning bolt, right?
Yeah, I mean, there'd just be these things where I think of one visit to a friend's house, well, a friend mostly of my parents, and their son was getting rid of books.
And I went home with like 30 new books.
You know, it's like when you get pirated software in the 90s.
It's like your whole life changes.
It's incredible.
I had a friend whose mother was teaching college.
literature uh up at alaska or i guess she was teaching at university of alaska she was teaching lit and she was giving and he was you know he was studying i don't remember what peter said oh he was pre-law somewhere and so and she was one of those moms his dad was a lawyer and she was like a kind of eclectic flamboyant she was she wore her hair short and had scarves and stuff and she was a taught literature i kind of i had a crush on her mm-hmm
But she would give him all these books, you know, this sort of like, oh, we're doing a series on Czech authors or whatever.
And she'd send him this stuff.
And then he would send it to me.
Wow.
And so I had – and this was at a time when I had zero money.
I had no job.
I was just like living – I was crashing on people's couches.
But I was in touch with my friends through the mail because we would send each other letters.
And I would –
I would, sometimes I would, you know, I'd have them send letters to me like at a cafe or something because I didn't have a place.
Yeah, you said the internet cafe used to be your address, right?
Well, before the internet cafe, Cafe Roma.
And then Cafe Setiem, both of those in Seattle would accept mail for me.
Wow.
But so I would send letters to all my friends and then he would send, he would send books and packages.
I would get that from a lot of people.
And so I had this steady stream of like really great eclectic books from this circuitous path, you know.
And, and that stuff, some of those books are still some of my favorite books.
Like it just, it just hit me at exactly the right time.
I had nothing going on.
I was just laying around and these novels would show up.
Well, it's such a gift in a pre-internet age.
I mean, it's important to clarify that is you got exposed to what you got exposed to.
As we talk about a lot, there's like, you watched what was on TV when the TV was on and that was it.
You had the radio, you had stuff like that.
You certainly had the library, but like to have somebody like come in and like jet in with a worldview, right?
yeah that you had never been exposed to with different facets to it even if that was comic books or it could be you know i don't know highlights magazine it could be hardy boys whatever it was or like mike i used to love to get old textbooks i loved old textbooks i was just reading one they're so great i also used to collect old self-help books stuff like that but somebody jets in just like goes information bomb here's a bunch of stuff you have absolutely no context for and you are thrust into an entirely new world
You can't and you can't really research it.
Like stuff would show up or I would find these books and and it would just be a world unto itself.
We watched we watched the my daughter and I watched all the President's Men last night.
And we're laughing all the way through because there's just for her so much stuff in that movie.
Like they find out about Kenneth Dahlberg.
Oh, my God.
We've got to find out about Kenneth Dahlberg.
So Robert Redford has to go to the big room full of white pages and like look through all the white pages for every major city in America until he gets a tip.
But like, it's all, it's all done with like writing on toilet paper and the back of matchbooks.
And like, you know, there's one scene where Dustin Hoffman's drinking all the coffee and has to keep running to the bathroom to write down his notes.
And like, just all the ways you just, that's, you know, kind of in situ.
That's how life was.
You found out about the news from watching the news or reading the paper, but you know, I,
I feel like in some ways it wasn't until – I want to say – this is going to really sound dumb, but like research books, when the research books came out in the – Oh, and we sold those.
Yeah, in the mid to late 80s.
I mean, unless you were getting into a fairly seedy side of the back of magazines, research was my first exposure to a lot of very strange stuff as a 19-year-old person.
The body modification issue in particular was like – I mean, it was like –
a book of medical anomalies to me.
It was like seeing, you know, elephantitis testicles for the first time.
We were like, and I had a friend whose mom, my friend Chris, hi Chris, if you're out there, Chris's mom was a medical librarian.
And so she would give him the books that they got rid of at the medical library.
So he had this book he referred to simply as the tome.
And it's from a different time.
And it was a book that,
lushly photographed book from the early 1900s of medical anomalies.
Oh, geez.
But you know what I'm saying?
To me, that was research in some ways.
And when I think about where you worked, or I think about where I would go in Sarasota or later Tallahassee, there were these bookstores that were just like a little portal into another world.
Even then, even in the 80s and 90s, you still did not have that much exposure.
If you wanted to learn about Bob the Supermasochist or Betty Page, you had to go out and do that on your own.
I still have – it wouldn't have occurred to me to mention until you just said it.
I still have a little shelf of phone books from different places.
Oh, God.
Now, when one of those gets dropped off at your home or office, do you pick it up and bring it in?
No, not those.
Please say no.
Not those, but like I have a – I'll take theirs too.
Yeah.
The new phone books are here.
Oh, at the end, when the phone books, right before they stopped, I was getting like five phone books.
Phone books?
I mean, I used to take photos of it walking around the city where it was like, you would see like, okay, the new phone books dropped off.
You come back.
A week later, and not one of them has been touched.
They're waterlogged.
Check us out at yellowpages.com.
No, I would get ten or five of them because I was at like a borderland between two cities.
So I would get white pages, yellow pages, white pages, yellow pages for two different jurisdictions.
And then a fifth one that was like special yellow pages to keep.
Oh, my mom carried a phone book in her glove box.
Oh, it's like having an atlas.
Yeah, because it just makes sense.
You keep an atlas in the backseat.
Keep a phone book.
Yeah.
In fact, I got rid of a car not very long ago, and I opened the trunk, and there was still a phone book in it.
Oh, my God.
It was such a big deal.
I mean, Steve Martin joke aside, it was such a big deal because you could look yourself up.
You could look your friends up in the phone book.
The first time I appeared in a phone book, my name was John Ignatius Roderick.
Wow.
I put that in there.
That's good because you're a pyloric valve.
Oh, sure.
It sure was.
I wanted people to know how special I was.
Hot dogs, ladies.
In case you were browsing the phone book like, hey, this guy seems interesting.
He seems cool.
That's a pretty baller metal name.
Hot dogs, ladies.
Anyway, this book, Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead, my brother was there, and I was like, oh, hey, I've got a book that you would be interested in because I made this connection, right?
Oh, you're the guy that turned me on to this.
And I, without thinking, plopped this book down that in giant letters says, Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead, which are three of the four things you would use to describe my brother.
And...
he didn't get that he didn't know what it was he didn't get that it was about doug kenny or it just you know it had no context and he just kind of looked at me and i looked at him and i was like well or anyway so it was a little little bit of an do you do that a lot though do you have passive aggressive uh books you like to hand to people when they come yeah i do i do i've got i've got a great one for you
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Shut your mouth.
It's actually a whole set of encyclopedias.
Who was in the Netflix movie?
So Drunk Stone Brilliant.
I think that's a documentary.
But then they made a Netflix movie dramatizing it.
Oh.
It was just on the Netflix.
Yeah, yeah.
It's got that one guy in it.
You know what's got in it?
It's got Bill Weasley in it.
Oh, Bill Weasley.
You know General Hux?
General Hux.
You know who I mean.
That one guy.
The Gleason guy.
The guy from Ex Machina.
He's in it.
Beasley.
Oh, oh, oh.
Oh, the red-haired guy.
From Ex Machina.
Ex Machina's in it.
I like that.
Not the other guy, although they were both in Star Wars, him and Oscar Isaacs.
And I just saw Oscar Isaacs in another movie then I called Annihilation, which is a very, very weird movie.
Oh, hmm.
Probably.
Watch a lot of movies.
I wonder if I'm going to see it.
I also read a lot of signs.
I'll just be going on the street and I'll just read a sign.
Huh.
Huh.
Well, so here's my new, here's what I was actually doing when I was going through the books.
Because I've got a couple of old research books from the time, right?
There was a time when some of my friends were really into –
Not just vivisection photographs, but actually, like, crime scene, like, suicide photos.
Yeah.
Right?
Like, just, like, real gore.
Like, people that killed themselves by laying on train tracks and stuff.
And I didn't really get into that.
And I didn't want any John Wayne Gacy paintings.
You know, I wasn't, like... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There was a vibe for this kind of thing in the 90s, for sure.
But I did have other interesting things kind of peripheral to that.
You know that that that you know cuz I'm not just like oh that guy killed himself like that That's not cool, but like the like survival research laboratories Mm-hmm all day long.
I would I would watch their little robots.
Oh, that's the guys that like they shoot light bulbs and stuff like that.
They're right in San Francisco Yeah, they're right over Anyway, so I'm going through it because I'm because I'm planning on I'm planning on a move I'm planning on selling my house.
I'm gonna move so I so I so I have room after room of books and
I remember this girl from Spain came to visit me at one point and she was walking around and she was like, I thought there'd be more books.
I was like, what do you mean?
She said, I just always imagined your house would have more books.
And I said, there are books everywhere.
Mas Libros.
But she said, Mas Libros.
She said, yeah, but I just thought there'd be more books.
I was like, where would you put more books?
And she was like, well, all these walls could all be books.
I was like, oh, I see what you need.
You need more stuff.
You thought I lived in a used bookstore.
You thought I had 40 cats and I lived in a used bookstore.
Because I guess in Spain, you know, a lot of the people in Spain, they've been living in the same apartment for 400 years.
Mascatos.
That's right.
Mascatos.
Mascatos.
Mascatos.
Mascatos.
Mascatos.
So I'm going through.
I'm trying to cull.
I'm trying to cull.
I found a bunch of books that I wanted to get rid of.
And I'm going through and I'm just like, I can't get rid of this, but I can get rid of this and I have to get rid of this.
I'm putting them into piles.
Mm-hmm.
And I'm like, the problem is you take these books down to the thrift store, nobody cares.
They just sit on the shelves, you know.
But I had an idea last night.
They're going to turn them into bath mats or something.
They're just going to thresh them.
They use them to pave streets, build park benches.
That's what they say, yeah.
So I'm looking at them and I thought, you know what I'm going to do?
Now, this is the type of project that I don't need to add this to the things that I'm doing.
But what I was going to do, I was, you know, because I have a bunch of these like ex libris stickers.
Book plates.
I'm going to put book plates in them, ex libris.
And then I'm going to, you know, I'm going to take them and I'm just going to, I'm going to put them places.
Oh.
And then I'm going to take a picture of them in the place that I put them.
And then you can go get it if you want.
So I have, like, here's the autobiography of Henry Kissinger.
I don't want it anymore.
You should sage your house after you get rid of that.
It's the size of a shoebox.
A small coffin.
That's right.
A baby coffin.
Mm-hmm.
uh but uh so you put in you put ex libris now that means from the library of from the library of from the library doing a lot of foreign language this week from the library of john morgan roderick yeah here's kissinger's biography come get it here's kissinger's biography here's uh you know here's a special forces manual here is uh you know i have a first edition of uh of the the gulag archipelago what isn't that a multi-volume deal
It is his three volumes.
Oh, my God.
He had a lot to say.
He did.
It was – well, he was in the Google on a long time.
Yeah.
So I don't want to carry these things with me anymore.
But I do think that maybe somebody is going to want them.
But then I thought, well, here's the problem.
What will happen is I'll post a picture of Kissinger's autobiography and I'll put it in a phone booth or something.
And I'll say, here it is.
And then I'll probably get a bunch of replies from people saying, I'm in Australia, but I really want that.
And you're just making work for yourself.
They're going to want me to do something.
And I'm going to say, well, I'm not going to send it to Australia.
I barely can do this.
And then it's just going to be sowing disappointment.
There are going to be people that are like, and then probably there will be one person in Seattle that just drives around and picks them all up.
And I could have just taken them to that person.
in a box and not had to do the thing where I went, where I had, where I made it into an adventure.
Cause it would just end up being an adventure for like one or two people.
Complete.
Yeah.
But that seems, you know, that seems at least interesting.
Cause I don't, I don't like to just,
get rid of stuff.
I want there to be some kind of ceremony.
I want to, because every one of these books is interesting.
They'll have John's valence on them.
They have a valence.
They have a psychic valence.
They have psionics that need to be redistributed.
And they made an impact on me.
Maybe they will help someone else.
Maybe it'll be, somebody wrote me the other day a small tweet that was like, can you recommend a history book?
Hmm.
And I was like, that is so – I get a lot of people asking me for a book on World War I or a book on, you know, I don't know what, the New Deal or something, Vietnam.
People want – they ask for a specific book.
But this person said, can you recommend a history book?
And I was like, a history book?
A history book.
And I walked around for –
for quite quite a bit of an afternoon just kind of are you familiar with henry kissinger a history book and i ended up recommending wager with the wind the don sheldon story which is a book about an alaska bush pilot named don sheldon who was the first guy to land an airplane on mount mckinley not what you would think of when you're like a history book but
It certainly is about history.
It's about something that happened in the past.
It's a good book, and I remember reading it when I was younger and thinking, wow, it made an impact on me.
Now, maybe reading a book about an Alaska bush pilot isn't going to have the same impact on someone else.
I don't know.
Maybe this person lives in Florida or something, and they're not going to feel that immediate connection to the sport.
Yeah, but it's still nice to be transported.
Yeah, that was my thinking.
Because at first I was like, a history book, you mean like...
history like uh yeah i mean i i bet a lot of people when they say they're thinking of like uh 20th century or 19th century 20 probably 20th century european stuff that's that's on brand for john yeah yeah you got your baltics you got your moldovas and your moldrovas and your mulvas mulvas all your mulvas and your moldrova you explain that difference on one of your other podcasts
Mm hmm.
Mm hmm.
It's important.
It's important to know the difference between.
But you like to see it.
You like to find him a good home.
It's like almost like getting rid of a cat.
You don't just go through it in the road.
Because the thing is, if you don't want an autobiography of Henry Kissinger, you don't have to.
You don't have to go find it.
Don't have to do it.
It's only the person that's like that sounds amazing.
Mm hmm.
They can go find it.
And if nobody goes to find it, then it becomes an autobiography of Henry Kissinger that's in a phone booth.
Oh, that's nice.
It's like finding porn in the woods.
Exactly.
It's just there.
And somebody's bopping along that day and they're just like, oh, God, why doesn't the universe send me a sign?
And then they're like, why is there still a phone booth?
I need to make a quick call.
Took out of the rain for a minute.
I'm like, what the fuck is going on here?
There's an autobiography of Henry Kissinger in here.
So that's my plan.
So now I have four stacks.
Must keep.
Can keep.
Should giveaway and phone booth.
Wait a minute.
Run that by me again.
What are your piles?
Well, there's the must keeps.
Okay.
That's the easy ones are like, yeah, yeah, I got to have this.
Got to have this.
I'm talking about this is like, this is core.
And then there's the, yeah, can keep.
Like not, I mean, if the house is on fire, these are not the books that I would grab.
Yeah.
But also, they're not hurting anybody.
I'm not trying to get rid of everything.
If I get rid of half the stuff, I'll feel like I'm a champion.
So these are the ones I can keep.
And then they're the ones that I probably should just get rid of.
Boy, you got a lot of categories, John.
And then there's the ones that are like, I am...
definitely getting rid of this and it's going to be so fun because i'm going to put it in i'm going to put it somewhere i'm going to put it in a phone booth somewhere and i'm going to leave an instagram tag on it and then it's a scavenger hunt um so that so now i've got four piles boy you've really you've added a lot of nuance to this well
I hope.
This is why I like, I've said this on the show I do with Dan, but this is why I like the idea of the pickup.
I know the pickup is not in keeping with your valence model of psionics.
The guys come.
I love the idea of saying, and this is exactly, I've told anybody who's ever heard Back to Work has heard me say this probably, but there's key aspects to the pickup when and how.
You're talking about when the guys come.
When the guys come, the big burly man, the big burly truck.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, it usually is preceded by a period of angst and frustration about how there's no room anymore.
I've talked about this with Syracuse too.
We described it as being like those tile puzzle games, but you've got 16 tiles.
There's no way to move any of the tiles because everything's just all...
you know, chicken gel.
It starts with that.
It starts with this feeling of, man, we need to make room to make room.
Like, I just need, I need a means of progress to be able to even get started cleaning up.
And that means some stuff just has to go.
But one of the key parts of it is I don't believe, there's so many things where I really do believe in planning, or at least in thinking about planning.
Like, almost every aspect of my life is overwhelmed by the idea of some, like, what order should... Thinking about planning.
Thinking about planning, what order should these things go in?
Think about the angles and the branches and all that project manager stuff I used to do.
One key component is like, one morning I wake up and the itch becomes too strong to not scratch anymore.
And that's, I call and make an appointment for that day.
Sometimes I'll do it the day before.
Wait, how many times have you done this?
Oh gosh, I do it a lot.
Yeah, are they the same guys that come every time?
It varies.
If I plan further ahead, I have a dude who's a lot cheaper.
And if I'm doing it the last minute, there's a well-known company that will come and do that on the same day.
But, um, but the key part for me in this is that I need to get, this is me, not you, this, this, I need to pop out of the thinking mode and get into the things, leave my house mode.
And that's where it helps me to do it on the day.
Cause at that point I already have, there's enough bottled up junk to,
It's like just I feel like, you know, it's almost like a cartoon, a figure McGee closet kind of thing where it's like the door is going to burst on this thing.
So I know that there is a large amount of stuff that is a zero like no brainer.
This is garbage and needs to go.
That could be cardboard boxes.
That could be stuff like you ever get like like you get deliveries of like food stuff from like meal services and it comes with those ice things.
Well, what do you do with those?
Well, for a while, you keep them in the freezer just in case you don't have room.
You keep it in there with your own meat.
yeah but uh but and this is and like i say i admit that this is a this is a sort of a fancy white guy thing to do but like i but if the thing is if i do it on that day and i am repeating myself at this point if i do it on that day i have an incentive to find things to throw away and the clock is ticking oh because it becomes fun because it becomes a video game now it's how big can i make this pile with three hours notice
Come on, get it, get it, get it.
You can't have these guys come for just this.
But it makes sure you get the Terminator heads up display, right?
Everything flips and now everything is potential garbage.
Everything is garbage.
Everything is garbage or potential garbage.
It totally changes your POV because it isn't, you're no longer compartmentalizing and avoiding things like, ooh, I don't want to think about that thing.
Like, how would I get rid of a broken bicycle?
Well, you get rid of a broken bicycle, you throw it in the pile.
yes and so that that's why i love that fill up the cannon and boom and then they they go and the men put it on a truck and it goes away wherever away is thank you men and um i don't know but the reason i think that for me and my broken personality like if i'd schedule if i scheduled that for three weeks from now i don't know
If I didn't write it down, I'd certainly forget about it.
But also, I'm going to procrastinate.
And I'm going to think, okay, now I need to get a system.
And I've got to get a system for getting organized.
And for me, it's like putting that gun to my garage's head makes a huge difference in terms of what I will actively go and seek out.
And then it goes away.
And I say to myself, you know what?
Enjoy this moment.
I say, for once in your life, enjoy this moment.
You have just succeeded at something.
You got rid of junk.
Now, when those guys come, do they say like, hey, Merle?
No.
Oh, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
And I really don't like to talk to people in general.
But I don't like to talk about my groceries.
I don't like to talk about my mail.
I don't like to talk about my garbage.
We don't need a relationship for this.
Just bring my chicken sandwich.
I love a chicken sandwich, but I don't want to talk about it.
Are these the same guys that are bringing the chicken sandwich?
I wish.
Oh, my God.
That would be incredible.
I'm on a chicken sandwich bender at this point.
I've become an embarrassment to my family.
What kind of chicken sandwich?
I just wake up in the morning wanting a chicken sandwich and I don't know why.
Do you mean chicken salad sandwich or a fried chicken sandwich?
No, no.
I mean like a zesty fried chicken sandwich.
If we had a Chick-fil-A near me, oh brother, I'd be in trouble.
So a chicken patty?
A chicken, a fried chicken breast usually.
And what I like is I like it on a soft bun with some kind of zestiness.
It could be sriracha.
And then I like to put pickles on there.
Oh, you're a pickle on a chicken sandwich.
Pickle on a chicken sandwich.
That's a little bit heaven.
I'll make my own kind of AirSats Cubans at home with whatever I've got.
In that case, that's all about the mustard and the pickles.
Now, I know you like mustard.
Do you like pickles?
I don't like, well, wait a minute.
I like to reach into the refrigerator and bite a pickle.
You'll bite a pickle.
Oh, you get like a whole pickle.
I get those, what do they call them, bread and butter, those little sweet ones.
Those are real good on a chicken sandwich.
You put some sriracha on there.
Woo, brother.
If you go to Katz's Deli, you know, they give you the one pickle and the other pickle, if you ask.
Is that right?
They give you a full set, a full complement.
Well, because they say, do you want a sweet pickle or do you want a sour pickle or something like that?
I see.
And if you say both, then you get both.
And one of them's crunchy and one of them's soggy.
We went to a place yesterday where we got, it was a barbecue place, and they give you a little bit of pickle on the side.
It's called Pig and a Pickle.
Pig and a Pickle.
And I got a sampler platter where I got some pulled pork, I got some brisket, and I got some ribs.
Of course.
Always get the sampler platter.
Get the sampler platter.
And it ended up being for the table, turns out, of course, because my daughter dug into my bonus macaroni and cheese side.
I enjoyed the greens with peppery vinegar on it.
You understand?
My wife had some of the beans.
I do.
Right.
Yes, I do understand.
Beans and greens and mac and cheese.
Beans and greens and mac and cheese.
Beans and greens and mac and cheese.
Yep.
Ate it all up.
There was a place.
So I've taken now, I've expanded the pancakes for the table thing, and I have just started ordering a separate breakfast entree for the table.
Oh, shit dog.
Because I realized.
Who's going to complain?
Who's going to complain?
Who doesn't want a little bacon?
And if you don't, you're good.
Just don't eat it.
Everybody else is going to be like, thank you.
So there's four of us sitting at the table and five entrees arrive.
And one of them goes in the middle and it's got two pancakes, four slices of bacon, and a couple of scrambled eggs.
Go for it.
Now you guys, now you can get your eggs, Benedict.
Now you can get your Reuben sandwich.
Yeah.
Well, think about how that opens up your options.
I mean, the pancakes can be good.
Pancakes are very filling.
But something, especially I'm thinking something, could be something savory that then opens up your options for what you do.
You could do a twist and pivot and do the opposite of whatever the food for the table was, is all I'm saying.
Yeah, you be you.
You do you.
You get spaghetti for breakfast.
Oh, spaghetti for breakfast.
I'd have a chicken sandwich.
Oh, boy.
But you still get a little pancake.
Sometimes I buy two chicken sandwiches and I save it for the next morning.
See, of course you do.
I would eat both.
Actually, last night I made chicken cordon bleu for dinner and I had to resist eating all the chicken cordon bleus.
This is the thing.
My wife, we kind of split up the cooking.
I'm more of the day-to-day
Chicken sandwich guy.
Oh, God, I would eat them all the time.
I wish I could just deploy them the way you could get like a 12-pack of seltzer.
I wish I could just have them just waiting for me.
Just an auto mat across the street from your house?
My wife has a few signature dishes that everybody enjoys.
She's a specialist in chicken.
Like a chicken, like a whole chicken, or she'll do a teriyaki chicken.
We're talking a lot about chicken this episode.
Oh, I admire that.
I admire that.
Maspoyo.
Yeah, yeah, maspoyos.
But she'll do, like, you know, do, like, thigh meat into, like, a teriyaki.
Mm-hmm.
She'll do an air-dried whole chicken into a roast chicken that's very, very good and very, very crispy.
I'm impressed.
But here's the thing.
If we do the thigh meats into teriyaki, the thing is...
I think I'm glad she's the one who shops for that because I would order two to three times as much of the protein as she chooses.
We've never had leftovers.
But that's not a conversation that you have where you're like, hey, sweetie, can you get twice as much of this?
I tread lightly because that's her project.
right and i don't want to seem like i'm saying you did it wrong you gotta be real careful you gotta be real careful with people not to say you did it wrong i see what you're saying you know but but but you couldn't phrase it like i love this so much i would eat twice as much of this oh sure oh sure sure sure but you know she wants us to live and stuff
Oh, sure, sure.
But I'm with you on the cordon bleu.
And I mean, chicken sandwiches.
I can eat three of those.
I can eat three of them right now.
If that was a Chick-fil-A, I'd have three of those on the spot.
I don't want a pickle on it, though.
You don't like a pickle on it?
Have you tried a pickle on a chicken sandwich?
I have.
I have.
Well, the thing is, I often get a chicken sandwich.
I take the bun off.
It's got a pickle on it.
So I take the pickle off.
You don't want potatoes.
You don't want pickles.
But then there's a little, there's a flave.
Oh.
There's a pickle flave.
Believe me, I know.
Yeah, and I'm like, all right.
I mean, the thing is, I can go with a pickle flave.
I just don't want a pickle in there.
You don't mind a vinegar.
I don't mind a vinegar.
The thing is, I'm a chicken sandwich with mayonnaise guy, I'm sorry to say.
Oh, shit, dog.
I put them both on.
I do it all.
Yeah.
Now, if I get a Jack in the Box that comes with iceberg lettuce and a light pink tomato that I invariably take off, that's not a high-quality part of that sandwich.
I'm there for the bun, the mayo, and the chicken.
Oh, do you want to hear where a good chicken sandwich can be had?
Yes.
I know you do.
I do.
So I was driving through one of the regional bergs in the region here, a smaller berg.
Because Seattle has made a point to not have any fast food restaurants in it, in the entirety of the city.
They just ran them out one after another.
I feel like we did that here too.
We used to have like four Popeyes and now we have one.
You can't find them anywhere.
They even got rid of all the Denny's.
There's only one Denny's left.
Oh, that's kind of a bummer.
Everybody was like, isn't there another place that we could find to have artisanal cornichons?
Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, so we're out in the sticks.
My mom loves a red lobster, by the way.
And we have to drive 40 minutes to get to a red lobster.
Endless shrimp should be your reward.
Welcome, it's crab fest.
It's crab fest again.
Protect yourself.
The nearest one is in Tacoma.
Here come the crabs.
Endless shrimp.
We're out on the stick somewhere.
No, I don't want endless shrimp.
I want the shrimp to end.
Oh, I went to a place.
Where was that place?
I went to a place that had unlimited, what was it?
It's down in Des Moines.
There's a town in Washington called Des Moines.
Oh, interesting.
You pronounce the S. Oh, like a Houston.
Yeah, but there's a restaurant there with unlimited fish and chips, which I thought was my dream meal.
Unlimited?
That would make me pretty low-gy.
Yeah, but I mean, after you eat— Do you put malt vinegar on it?
A little, sure.
Okay, all right.
But after you eat two helpings of fish and chips, you're pretty cashed.
No, no, no.
When I was in Brighton, I made a point of having fish and chips, and I think I'm still digesting.
It was served in a cone of newspaper—
that was absolutely soaked all the way through, and it was so good.
It was good, but ugh.
Unlimited, though.
See, bottomless salad or bread, I mean, like an Olive Garden, I think that's a different kind of thing.
Well, Red Robin gives you bottomless fries, but I mean, all that stuff is just like... Have you utilized that?
Well, you don't eat fries.
I used to work at Red Robin, as you know.
You were the Red Robin.
It's like giving people a bottomless rice.
Bottomless rice.
Y'all want more rice?
The only place they don't give you bottomless rice is an Indian food restaurant where every time you're like, can we get rice for everybody?
They're like, each one of those is $11.
What do they call that?
Biryani?
Biryani rice.
Yeah, whatever.
We make a jasmine at home.
I can't make a jasmine.
I couldn't make a fried chicken here.
But I'm, you know, I'm a bachelor.
I'm living, I'm making chicken quarter.
Oh, the devil, you say, get one of those, you get one of those air dried chickens and it crisps up real nice.
My mom, my mom.
Oh, dear me.
Freudian blitz.
Everybody out of the pool.
My mommy, who's my wife.
I'm going to send her a little bit of a text.
My mommy, who's my wife, has a really good, I think it's a Thomas Keller recipe.
And it's basically air dried chicken, salt.
That's pretty much it.
Today, you have said air-dried chicken three times, and you have tripled the number of times I'd ever heard the phrase air-dried chicken.
Oh, it's the Beta Meinhof type situation.
Well, you haven't tripled it because three times zero is zero, which I've been trying to... Yeah, try explaining that.
I've explained this to my family a few times recently, three times zero is... You can have zero or undefined.
It's very confusing.
I get a little pushback on it.
Do you feel like you understand what undefined means?
Um...
In as much as I would use it to describe my existence.
Which is the one you're allowed to do?
One divided by zero is zero.
Zero divided by one is undefined.
Is that right?
Zero times negative one.
Whoa.
Right?
What are you going to do with that?
Bottomless rice, chicken.
Anyway, we're out in the sticks.
Des Moines.
And I look over and there is a Wendy's.
And I said to my passenger, when was the last time you ate at a Wendy's?
Exactly.
And the passenger said, I can't remember the last time I ate at a Wendy's.
That's going to change.
I said, I can't remember the last time I ate at a Wendy's.
You have Frosties.
And, you know, we're fancy, right?
The last time we ate at a Wendy's is irrelevant because it's not like there's going to be a next time.
But, in fact, I pulled immediately into the Wendy's.
And we went in.
We're sitting in the drive-thru.
Because my dad loved Wendy's.
Quality is their recipe.
I love Wendy's.
Yeah, and back in the 70s, like going to... I want to say in the 80s, that was the go-to reliably good burger.
Sure, if you were going to go to a fancy fast food restaurant, I mean, Wendy's was a cut above.
Well, they had the fresh meat.
They had the frosties.
Square patties.
Square patties as they turn into chili later, which is kind of gross.
But actually, you know what?
Can I just tell you?
Good chicken sandwich, too.
Gross.
Okay, so that's what I'm saying.
You pull in.
So I pull in and I get up to the thing.
And, you know, I like a sample platter.
I like a little bit of brisket, a little bit of pulled pork, some sausages.
Beans, greens, macaroni and cheese.
Beans, greens, macaroni and cheese.
And so I'm ordering and, you know, my compatriot gets a single.
Mm-hmm.
And a medium frosty or something like that.
And I said, well, first of all, I would like a double with cheese.
That's a good burger.
Not a single, because you have to get a double.
It's the only thing.
Did you get raw onion?
Don't get a triple.
Triple's too much.
Triple's too much.
That's joke food.
Get two doubles if you want that much.
Get two doubles or a double and a single.
I said, we'll see here at Dick's on Capitol Hill, I always get a double and a single.
I always get a Dick's Deluxe and a regular cheeseburger.
But here, I got a double, a large Frosty, because come on.
When's the next time you're going to be back?
You didn't come here to get a small Frosty, right?
We're not fucking itchero here, just singling into the infield.
Just building up our stats.
You're going to hit some dingers.
Dingers.
This is the all-star game, my friend.
You want a little boy with buck teeth catching your Frosty.
We're putting this out into the... We're going to hit it here and get a hamburger.
And then I'm looking at the menu.
I'm just about to close the deal.
Okay.
We got a double and a single, a large Frosty and a small Frosty from my little friend.
And then I said...
And a chicken sandwich.
Welcome sailors.
Changing the game.
And so I get up and, you know, it's fast food.
So the whole thing comes to $10 or whatever.
It's got a lot cheaper.
Well, and I don't want to know about it.
I don't want to think about it.
No, I know.
I don't want to think about it too much.
I don't want to know what happened between the farm and the table.
Okay.
Because the table is my dashboard.
Farming a fork.
And so I'm eating it, and it's a great chicken sandwich.
It's just great.
It's just great.
It's just great.
Their chicken sandwich, if memory serves, is pretty much a naked breast.
Is it fried?
I mean, is it fried up with a coating on it?
I feel like I remember it being a filet.
You can get either one.
Oh.
You can get it either way.
You can get one of each.
And I said, somebody, Daddy's going to start stopping at Wendy's every once in a while for a large Frosty and a chicken sandwich.
This is the royal daddy?
Or were you there with your, was your daughter friend there?
Or was it a ghost of my dad?
No, it was, it was, it's me, the royal daddy.
Oh, the royal daddy.
I have, I've just, I've just crossed the room.
We will be stopping it.
Referring to myself in the third person and also as the royal daddy.
His eminence.
It's pretty great.
His grace.
His grace.
Sir John of Wendy's.
That's right.
The royal dad.
There's a restaurant in Seattle that when it originally opened, it was called Von Trapp's.
Oh, it's always closing night.
So long.
They got sued.
They sued him.
Oh, no shit.
Those Austrians can be litigious.
Yeah, the litigious Austrians from Vermont or whatever, they were like, you can't do that.
That's our brand.
And so they changed the name of this place to Grinehaus.
Grinehaus?
Grinehaus.
And the thing is, it's built in my old neighborhood.
Yeah.
In an old warehouse that used to be a band practice space.
And they went in and blew it out.
And they made this enormous restaurant.
And it has bocce courts in it.
And it is, I mean, I hate to say it, but it's like really fratty in there on weekend nights.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and when, when it's not weekend nights, it's the kind of place that they have, they have big spaces.
So you'll go in and it's like this room reserved for the Xbox team.
You know, it's like, like a company will take their 25 employees there for a meeting.
Oh, like it's kind of an incentive meeting.
Yeah.
It's like, Hey, we're going to the Rhine house.
All right, everybody gets your fleece on.
Okay.
I'm putting on my special Uggs.
Pachi balling.
Going to play some bocce ball, right?
It's a destination resort.
And so there's everything about it that would suggest that I would not go there.
It's like pretty bro-y.
It's a drinking place.
It's sort of corporate feeling, but it's right in the heart of my old neighborhood.
And it serves people.
sausages sausages of every stripe there are like 15 kinds oh there's a place like there's a place like that in the lower hate it does that 15 kinds oh my god hot there's the ones with cheese baked in them there's like ones that have little bits of apples so much incentive to get something for the for the table so here's the try a little sausage there is a sampler platter oh
with one of each and it comes and it is it's it's like a garbage can lid it's the white sauce
White sauce, not a problem.
There's no white sauce.
Thanks for me for a dollar.
But there's a thing of sauerkraut that is like basically something.
There's a guy in the back with a catcher's mitt who's just dipping it into sauerkraut.
It's a catcher's mitt sized glob of sauerkraut.
And then 15 sausages.
And they're not small.
No.
Standard sausages.
They're like, if you had a bunch of Green Army men and you were making a Green Army man adventure and you needed a lighthouse, that's how big these sausages are.
That's the scale.
Yeah.
They're lighthouse-sized sausages.
And so, oh, and they also have a phenomenal goulash there.
And I challenge you to find a goulash anywhere.
I do not encounter goulash.
We had a Hungarian restaurant in West Borto for a while.
It's not there anymore.
That's stupid.
Yeah.
When your Hungarian restaurant goes, that's the death of your city.
That's how you know.
That's the canary in the goulash.
I challenge you and all of our listeners, find a goulash today.
Why don't you, I mean, can I take it and turn it?
Have you thought about what if you were to get a room reserved for the Roderick Group, where now you have an incentive bocce event, you could bring people in, ply them with sausage.
It's not a bad idea.
You could exclude the broies by basically – you could push them out real estate-wise by getting a room for the Roderick Group.
Well, so my family, my personal nuclear family or nuclear family depending on how you can go –
Uh, they love going to the Ryan house.
And the thing is that my daughter likes to watch bocce.
She wants to play it, but they won't let her decide to ride this ride.
And, uh, it's in the bocce areas in the bar area.
So the little girl can't go in.
But she can stand on the outside and watch people play bocce.
Like a Dickens character.
And every once in a while, I'll go to the waitress and I'll say, we're just going to go over into the bocce area.
The fire department's not going to close your restaurant down.
We're just going to go over there and watch it for a minute.
And if you get a person that's like a living, breathing human being that's not trying to make the world a worse place, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, sure, sure, sure, sure.
So we'll go watch some bocce.
But they love, the family, the gang, loves going to the Ryan House.
Because what happens is we end up going at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
There are no bros there.
There's just a smattering of people that work at Xbox.
And I invariably, I cannot get away from it.
There are other things on the menu, Merlin.
But I always get the 15 sausage platter.
This is very unusual for you.
You have a point of pride of very rarely getting exactly the same thing each time.
I get a different thing every time.
By design.
By design.
In this case, it's 15 sausages.
So, I mean, truthfully, though, I mean, that's variety defined.
It is.
It's the definition of variety.
You just basically bought a flight of menu.
But I've never gotten a schnitzel there.
I've never gotten a kapitzel or a knitzel or whatever the other things are.
Spatzel?
What about spatzel?
I've never gotten a spatzel.
I've never gotten a soccer tort.
I don't even know if they have them because I don't read that part down.
Soccer tort?
A soccer tort.
That's when you sue somebody over football?
No, it's spelled differently.
A with an umlaut.
S-A-C-H-E-R.
It's a famous Viennese cake.
But I've never gotten that far because my dessert at this place is another sausage.
Yes.
And I take them home.
I take some home.
I take a box of sausages home and I eat them.
You adopt them.
Three more days.
Sure.
Why not?
I feel the same way.
I think I could get a flight of chicken sandwiches.
If you get a platter with, like, six different kinds of chicken sandwich.
Yeah.
I mean, like, I'm not generally a fan.
I'm not generally a fan of what they call sliders.
I think that's a little cute.
Yeah.
But, like, if you could do me up a flight of six small chicken sandwiches.
how do you feel about a chicken salad sandwich boy it's not even a fair comparison it can be good i'm not much of a salad sandwich person i used to like um underwood deviled ham when i was a youth oh remember that can ham ham in a can yeah ham in a can and it was all and you put that on white bread and you could eat that how do you feel about uh
chipped beef on toast.
You know, I'll eat it.
I used to have a Stouffer's version of that that I would enjoy.
Stouffer's made one.
My father used to call it, well, we don't say it out loud, shit on a shingle.
Sure he said shit on a shingle.
After my dad came back, here's the problem, my dad came back from Korea where there was a police action and he couldn't eat chicken or rice ever again.
So bottomless rice, he didn't want it.
Didn't like fireworks.
What, he didn't like chicken anymore?
Because he had to kill fucking chickens and eat them.
Oh.
police action harry truman you know what i'm saying yeah you know my mom my mom killed so many chickens she said that her grandpa would take a chicken down into the into the root cellar and uh and chop off its head and then uh run and the chicken would run around with the blood shooting all over the place and they would sit at the top of the stairs and laugh they call it the buckeye steak oh