Ep. 425: "The Car Bar"
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Got a little bit of a software, hardware thing here going on.
Hang on.
Are you having an AV issue?
I have an AD issue.
How's it sound now?
Oh, the same.
Do you want me to send my guy over?
I got a guy.
Well, the thing is, it sounds the same to you because my microphone was working.
It just sounds different to me because I switched the
The output mode.
Oh, the output mode, okay.
Because, see, I'm using a new interface.
Not new.
Oh, that's exciting.
We should talk about this.
This is the best type of show we do.
No, this is the old...
When I was on iHeartMedia... Okay.
You're still doing it, right?
You know that.
I'm doing what?
What am I doing?
Oh, sorry.
I'm still getting your computer sound.
No.
Are you really?
Computer sound.
Hang on.
Oh, because it says built-in microphone.
Hang on.
How about now?
iHeartRadio.
Is this good?
Does it sound... Yeah, you sound great.
Oh, see, that's the thing.
That was the source.
So when I was on iHeartRadio, you know, they tried to...
They tried to give us a bunch of gear.
Oh.
And so they gave me an Apogee Quartet.
Oh.
which is a kind of interface, an audio.
We used to say audio-to-digital interface.
It's a sound, a piece of sound.
It turns voice into computer.
It turns voice into computer, and then it will turn your computer voice back into voice to me so I can hear it instead of just ones and zeros.
Okay, that makes sense.
So this has got four XLR inputs.
I mean, you know, I could basically record...
a drum drum take on this wouldn't be that good but well anyway i mean you'd have to you have to do it a lot you get better at it you'll be a regular albini in no time a regular albini uh but the get it in a real wet room get a wet room
Get a wet room, maybe have you play in like a stairwell or something.
And then you have several sets of mics.
You could do, you know, a Bowie, a Visconti by way of Bowie type thing with a gate.
You love gates.
To be an Albini, I would then make some very disparaging comments about your band and about music in general and about the music industry.
Yeah.
He once referred to something, it might even be a Pixies record, which would be a bummer, but he once referred to something as a pinch loaf one-off, and I still think of that a lot.
I think he talked about in utero and called it, you know, a mediocre punk, a mediocre band making a mediocre album or something.
It's no rape man.
Anyway.
Anyway.
So I stopped using the... Apogee four-way.
Apogee quartet.
Because I switched over to the little red box because I was doing a lot of traveling and the little red box was easier to carry in my bag Do you get scarlet?
I got a scarlet a little scar.
Yeah, they're very they're cute and they fit right in your in your they're cute I got a scarless the scarlet folks right?
2i2.
There you go.
That's you know, that's all that's all a podcaster needs From Apogee is a big thing and honestly Merlin I have to say it's one of these boxes where it's got some buttons.
It's got a knob and
But all of the – what it wants you to do is it wants to direct you to its – Dip switches.
Well, no, to the onscreen.
Oh, I see.
It has an interface.
Apart from the interface.
So now to get your voice into computer, you have to, again, use computer and vice versa.
So you have a button that says one.
Well, you push one.
And then you push A, B, or C, and it changes what one does.
Thank you.
And so on an old mixing console, you had a lot of buttons and knobs because every one did a discreet thing.
Now you just have... And they think that this is graceful design.
Yeah.
It's what we want.
You just have one button, and the button changes depending on what the other button... It's like a digital watch from the 70s.
Yeah, right, except you... You know what I mean?
You got two buttons to do everything.
You can't even play Frogger on it, though, or whatever you could... Digital watches, right?
Remember?
Electronic quarterback.
Electronic quarterback.
Oh...
Oh, the hours we spent sitting at the lunch table in seventh grade playing electronic.
You can either do a passing play or a running play.
Kevin Horning had one.
Kevin Horning.
So that's what I'm doing here.
When I plugged it in, it threw a pop-up menu that was like, oh, the Apogee software isn't updated to the thingamabob.
And I spent a little time looking into that, and I ended up on a message board where they were like, yeah, it always says that, but that's just a bug.
And so then I came on, and of course it wasn't.
I see.
So what you're saying is making your life easier.
My life is 100% easier.
One of the reasons I stopped using it is that I did not like the interface at all.
No.
The interface...
The software interface, like so many software interfaces, just seemed kind of shabby.
Is it emulating a rack in the way that it looks?
It's trying to, but it doesn't do the thing.
Some of those things, it throws up a thing and it looks like a wood-paneled office space.
They call it skeuomorphism, where you try to make a thing look like another thing.
You try to make a fake world item look like a real world item.
It's skeuomorphism.
We don't have that here with the Apogee.
What we have is an attempt at skeuomorphism, and it did not succeed.
So it makes me feel like I'm looking at, you know, I have to confess.
Well, two things.
I'm recording from my house, my new house.
Oh, your new old house.
You're getting finished house.
Getting finished house.
I'm looking out the window at the trees and bushes.
But the real confession, that's not a confession.
That's just a setting.
It's more of an admission.
I'm setting the stage because if you have any questions, I know people are curious.
But the real change, there's been a major change, which is... Okay, should I brace myself?
I got a pen.
I'm not sure how this is going to be received, but I have finally purchased...
a motor vehicle that was made in the 21st century.
And that sounds very futuristic.
You're kidding me.
A 21st century motor vehicle, it sounds very futuristic, doesn't it?
It does, like a meet George Jetson type situation.
A ring car or something.
But actually, we're 21 years into the 21st century.
You could be born in the 21st century and be 21 years old.
A car that was – I'm not loving that at all.
A car that was made in the 21st century isn't actually necessarily a new car.
Now, my car was made in – my old car was made in 1979, right in the heart of the 20th century, really in the thick of it, you know?
Uh-huh.
My car that I'm driving now, a car I recently purchased, trying to solve the... Because the problem with the Suburban was that the headlights started going off on their own in the night.
I would be driving along and the headlights would go off.
While you're driving?
Yeah, you're driving along.
They say electrical is one of the most complicated things to fix.
That's what they say anyway.
And what was confusing about this...
Because I already had to do a thing when I put the key in the ignition.
I would turn the key, not to turn the motor on, but just turn it to get the electrical on.
And then I had to pull the gear shift lever back and to the right.
Back and to the right.
Back and to the right.
Then I would turn the key with my other hand.
I'd have to reach my left hand over, turn the key, and then the truck would start.
Now, if you just turned the key without moving the gearshift lever back and to the right, you would get nothing.
The starter wouldn't even click.
So some connection I have to make by pulling the gearshift lever back and to the right.
And then it will start.
Just real quickly, did you just discover this?
I mean, was this your known solution where you said, oh, out of the box, ha-ha, if this isn't working, I should do this?
Or is this something I'm guessing that you just discovered earlier?
Kind of accidentally.
I was sitting on the side of the road.
You basically found a secret panel.
The equivalent of like you're in a first or second level dungeon.
You're inspecting the walls and you find like a secret panel.
It was a panic situation.
It was right around Christmas time.
My daughter and I had gone downtown to buy a Christmas present.
To pick up a Christmas present.
Her mother...
you know, my daughter's mother slash partner and my mother are both people who will tell you the present they want.
They're not somebody like me who says, ah, just surprise me.
Because they know that that never produces the desired result.
And so they say, here's the item number.
Honestly, I know it's not very romantic or, you know, whatever, but it really saves both of you a lot of hassle and disappointment.
It really does.
It really does.
My wife wanted an immersion blender, and I ordered one.
Now, that's not the kind of thing that I ever would have thought, I should get a nice immersion blender.
Because I don't make coffee with cardamom, but my wife does.
I considered that a blessing.
Yeah, that's nice.
And for me, as somebody who wants to...
have a thoughtful gift but also will then turn that into a month of agony as i compare two turquoise necklaces to one another in a jewelry store where the people at the store are like you again and i'm like yeah i just wanted to see which one of these glinted in the sun it's nice to be told no i would like this lamp from cost plus world market and here's the skew number
Anyway, my daughter and I went downtown.
It was a rainy December night and we got the little lamp and we came back to the truck and it wouldn't start.
And it had been playing around with not starting for several months.
And I had always managed to kind of sit there and, you know, jiggle the key and turn the radio on and off and, you know, kick the tire and then it would start.
But she and I were downtown.
Sun was going down.
It was raining.
And the truck wouldn't start.
And it wouldn't start.
And it wouldn't start.
And, you know, my little girl, bless her heart, is she's somebody that really, really believes that things should go a certain way.
And she already did not believe that dad's old green truck was the way that things should go.
She'd had enough experience in cars that had windows that rolled down, not electric windows that rolled down necessarily, just windows that rolled down at all.
And she knew that dad's truck had a tendency to catch on fire and that also it was very noisy in there.
And it smelled like motor oil and mold.
And she was just over it.
She'd been over it.
And she's been in your daughter's mother partner's automobile, which I'm guessing doesn't have the same issues?
No, my partner slash daughter's mother, she's a lady that... She's a little fancy.
A little fancy.
And she likes a sinister looking car.
She likes a car that looks...
dangerous and bad and and sophisticated she grew up her her stepfather slash father uh raced um um launches uh the italian we we might say i think you mentioned this yeah lancia or even if you were trying to be fancy lancia but he says lancia which i guess is
I mean, CIA, that's one of the ways you can pronounce CIA.
Anyway, he raced cars and they would go out and do rally races and they liked old vintage-y cars.
So she drives a car that when it pulls into the scene, it just looks like something wicked this way comes.
It's the kind of car you wouldn't be embarrassed to hand over and have somebody park for you.
You don't need to tell them anything special about how the car works.
And you might even say something like, could you please be extra careful?
I don't want a ding in my door.
Well, that's the thing.
It's not ostentatious to the degree that you would pull in to pick up your child at the elementary school and everybody would go, ooh.
It's not like that.
Oh, she thinks she's all that.
Not that.
Okay, okay.
It's not the seven or eight, it's the five, which is the sweet spot right in the middle there where it's like, wow, that's really sinister and kind of fast and cool, but it's not the one where you're like, ah, what an asshole.
Anyway, my daughter is...
is well enough versed in the world to know that some cars have some cars you can talk to the steering wheel and it will call your mom.
Some cars have a little map that shows up.
Some cars have, you know, the locks go on and off.
Very high touch, but not too quirky.
It sounds like.
And then some cars, which is to say only one car that any friends have ever seen, have an AM radio that only gets KIXI.
And you need to pull the lever back into the left just to get it to start.
And so that night in December, I sat trying to get the truck to start and she was extremely dissatisfied and very frustrated with me.
and very vocal about her frustration and she's for a long time said like get a new car and i'm like i'm yeah one day you know she's like so anyway she's mad and and i'm getting stressed out because the sun is going down and the last thing i want to do is try and get a tow truck to pie or i was in pike place market like how would you even get a tow truck down there
I don't even believe that tow truck companies even recognize it.
It's one of those things like the Wild Wild West robot show, where if you say Pike Place Market, they don't even know what you're talking about.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Or like Dick Cheney having the Naval Observatory removed from Google Maps.
Yes, you can't even see it.
As they say, you can't get there from here.
Can't get there.
Can't get there.
You're going to have to get your broken car somewhere different.
So I started to do the thing anybody that has an old car does, which is, well, what happens if you hit the dashboard with your fist?
Nope.
What happens if you turn the windshield wipers on and off?
Nope.
What happens if you get out, walk?
Oh, here's the classic one.
Get out, open the hood, and look at the alternator.
Okay.
A lot of people think that's going to work, and sometimes it does.
Just give a real good stare.
Like, say, what's going on with this guy?
Yeah, go jiggle the wires that appear to be going from the battery to other things and from the alternator on things.
Didn't work.
None of the things worked.
I checked the oil.
Didn't work.
Sat there with her, and she is screaming bloody murder at me.
And I'm like, look, this is not helping.
You being mad is not helping me get this truck started.
And eventually in the process of jiggling everything, I pulled the, the, um, the gear shift lever back and all of a sudden from, and at the time I turned to her and I said, see, your father has figured it out.
But inside I was going, that's the most random shit I ever heard.
And thank God I got this truck started because we were just about, uh,
We were, we had reached like crisis level.
So then I had a new, then the truck had a new quirk, which is like, aha, no one could ever steal this truck because you have to do three things.
You got into the secret knock.
But when I started, and this was just happened about a month and a half ago, I was driving along in the dark on a rural road and the headlights went off.
Oh boy.
And you know, like nothing, nothing was different.
Nothing had changed.
Steady, steady pressure on the accelerator.
Lights off.
I'm driving along in the dark with the lights off.
And I was like, this is not up to code.
And what am I going to do now?
And so I, you know, I kind of did the thing where you...
You turn the lights on and off.
You pull the knob, push it in, pull it in, push it off.
And one of the first times the truck caught on fire, it was because of the...
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One of the first times.
Okay.
All right.
Because it has some aftermarket fog lights on it.
And I turned the fog lights on, and somehow the fog lights were not...
that it suffered a short and the fog lights cooked to the wires and the headlights went off and i had and i was in missouri i had to pull over and i actually had to get a tow at that point because i'm on the interstate in missouri you can't just drive along with your headlights off and it turned out it had cooked the wiring harness and i had to get you know i had to get a lot of it replaced just to keep on keeping on
Well, this time, headlights go off.
I know it's not, I don't have the fog lights on.
I know it's not the, it's whatever, a thousand things it could be.
But what happened, what had happened, I moved my foot.
Now, my foot's on the carpet.
It's not touching a button.
It's not on the brake.
It's my left foot.
If you're driving an automatic transmission car, your left foot should never do anything.
The only thing it should ever do is reach over and touch the button and
That turns your... It's the first thing you've got to teach a youngster.
There's two pedals in an automatic, but that doesn't mean you use two feet.
No, you only use the one foot.
Use your left foot for getting in and out of the car and for setting the parking brake.
And also your high beams, if your high beams have a floor button like the 1979 GMC.
You can also tap your foot if there's a catchy tune on KXIX.
Well, so this is what happened.
I moved my left foot just slightly and the headlights went back on.
okay and i hadn't tapped the floor i didn't it's not like i stomped it i just moved it and so i drove along for a while and i was like well now that's the interesting thing and the headlights went off again and so i moved my foot over to the area which is just an area on the carpet and the headlights went back on
And I realized, well, this is one that I could... This is something I couldn't even explain.
I have no idea why.
Putting my foot over there will restore the headlights.
So since then, the headlights have only gone off a couple of times.
And both times subsequent, I moved my foot and they went back on.
But this was in some ways...
the truly final straw where it felt like there will come it because this is how the the starter thing started right you mean there were several times when the truck couldn't get started and i jiggled the keys and it finally did this is a thing where i move the foot and the lights go back on but what happens the day they don't and i'm out where i'm out i'm out you know looking for abandoned gold mines or whatever and the headlights go off
So everybody, you know, they're all rattling my cage.
They've been doing it for four years, saying you need to buy a car.
They've been doing it for 14 years.
John, is it because of optics or safety or, you know, aesthetics?
Like, is it one of those, like, you know, we don't want John to get double canceled, you know, because he flipped the car, his foot was in the wrong place.
You mean, why do they want me to buy a car?
Well, I mean, as an observer of this, I could say, well, you should just get a regular car.
You're a grown man.
But what do you think is the driving factor?
Are they talking about this in hushed tones when you're not around or loud tones?
What was the primary driver?
Is this not a safe place for your kid to be?
Or is it just like we can't have this happen?
All of the above, right?
I mean, there is a general kind of sense.
I think you don't have to zoom out very far.
to say you're a 52 year old man and you need a car to live in the world.
You have a daughter that goes to things like, uh, used to go to things, but now increasingly we'll start going to things again, ballet and whatnot.
And, um, and also there are things you need in the world.
One of them is a car.
You go to the store, uh,
You go to your dentist appointment.
And it's been very cute and very quaint that you have chosen an old-fashioned car.
And you have to admit that a 1979 car is actually a 49.
A 42-year-old car, older than something.
Yeah, if you were in 1979, you would have been driving almost like an Auga kind of car.
You know what I'm saying?
If you do that little thing we do with the same amount of time, you'd be talking about a post-war automobile.
No, you'd be talking about a 1939.
Wait, is that right?
You'd be talking about it.
Oh, I dropped a decade.
Oh, so it really might have been.
It might have been a Stutz Bearcat.
But something with an Ouga.
Suicide doors, that kind of thing.
I mean, my dad, his first car was a Model A. Whoa.
And he would have been 16 in 1937.
And so that's what we're talking about.
So you've already got background social pressure for this.
And now on top of it, you've got what I'm going to call an accumulation of quirks.
Well, when the truck... Each on their own might not be the worst thing in the world.
But at this point now, your car seems haunted.
Right.
And when it caught on fire...
I had already, the GMC RV had caught on fire and it caught on fire outside of Mount Shasta.
And I had my daughter, my daughter's mother slash partner and my mother in the RV with me at the time.
And it caught on fire and we were in a place, we were in a place north of Wairika where there was no cell phone service.
And I had to climb up to the top of the thing with my phone and call the
triple a and we spent all day there because triple a was like we don't have a tow truck that can carry an rv and i was trying to explain to them it's not an rv it's a gmc rv and they're different they're front wheel drive you can hook it up to any big uh tow rig and they were like we don't believe you and when the guy finally got there he was like oh i mean and they had to get a special guy you know all this when he got there he was like oh it's basically like a it's basically like a
And I said, yeah, it is.
That's what I've been saying all day.
But my family lost faith in me.
They did not lose faith in me because I did get them out of there.
But that should have been a lesson learned.
As we were sitting next to the road with the smoke pouring out of the RV, and all of the bears came out of the forest to watch, and they were like, what happened to this guy?
And the family was like, we're going to cower inside.
We would cower inside the RV, except it's full of smoke.
Yes, yes.
So that was one of those where all of the...
All of the commentary, the general kind of running commentary of like, you know, you and your car thing and your Vespa thing, it's all very precious and it was super cute when you –
could just i don't know what when you could walk to the store when your truck caught on fire but we're in the more when you're a bachelor rock star bachelor rock star right well i mean that's exactly the kind of quirky thing a bachelor rock star would do but now you know that car has to be used for other things or that vehicle in general and and the fewer of your vehicles that catch on fire the less agita that's going to cause for your family and i had never purchased a car before the suburban uh
I mean, I bought cars over the years in the sense of like, oh, somebody's selling a Volkswagen bus in the Spokane Spokesman Review for $700.
And I have $700.
And I'm going to drive.
And that bus caught on fire, actually.
And then I bought that truck, that Ford F250 that had the Chevy motor when I had to come down from Alaska because my dad's stupid camper thing caught on fire.
Um, so it's, you know, this happens, this happens quite a bit to me, old things catching on fire.
But then for a long time I was, you know, I, I inherited my dad's Audi, which thankfully never caught on fire, but it did stop running.
And then I was driving that, uh, he had some Chrysler thing that I was driving and then my mom's Chrysler and, you know, I was just inheriting cars for a long time.
So my, my family stopped thinking it was cute.
And then my suburban caught on fire and I was on my way to pick up my daughter at her school and had to call and say, sorry, I can't make it.
I'm on the side of the road and the truck is on fire.
And it was just, you know, my credibility was just in the, in the tank.
Well, this has, it's been three years since then.
Oh boy.
Four years.
And I've just been limping along.
Yeah.
Limping.
Mm-hmm.
So fine.
And the thing is, the whole time I'm thinking like, well, like every ding-dong like me, I'm thinking like, I'm going to fix it up.
I'm going to fix it up.
One of these days, I'm going to fix it up.
Wasn't ever going to fix it up.
Or if I was going to fix it up, I mean, I would have to tear this thing down to the hubs to fix this electrical problem.
That's what they say.
So finally...
i was told that i needed to buy a car oh it's escalating and i went and i was oh i'm really really really having to confront the fact that that um i suffer from tremendous indecisiveness and um and it is a and it is a real handicap
My friend George was saying we went to a baseball game the other day and we were talking about our lives.
He's a little older than us.
And he was saying that he was trying to not say anything bad about himself.
And if he caught himself in the day saying something bad, he would note it and he would say, wait a minute, that's not, uh, that's not right.
Don't say something bad about yourself.
And even then he was like, you know, I'm trying not to say like, that's not right.
Cause that's also something bad.
He's just trying to notice and try not to say anything bad about yourself.
And, um,
And I, as he was talking about it, I was like, I don't think I could do it.
I don't think I could go a week and not say something bad about myself.
It's, I think for a long time I thought it was a way I disarmed other people.
Right.
Like, oh, you know, don't mind me.
I'm just a fat loser with no, who never graduated from college and can't fit.
Sometimes I'm doing that because I'm trying to reset the bar.
What does that mean?
Oh, not the bar as in a K bar, but the bar as in like, it's a classic, you know, you know me, I procrastinate and I, I, I,
But it became a way of saying, oh, yeah, yeah, I handed in that paper late.
So, like, it's actually pretty good considering that I stayed up all night doing it.
Yeah, yeah.
You could say lowering the bar.
But it's a way of saying, like, it's just funny, though, when that becomes somewhat permanent.
Not funny, tragic.
When it becomes somewhat permanent and you're constantly trying to sort of, I don't know if you're doing that, but in my case, it's not exactly fishing for compliments, but it's more like this is how I live with myself.
Yeah, right.
Oh, no, it's very much like that for me, too.
Um, and that, that thing of like, don't expect too much.
Cause I'm a fat loser.
I'm a professional disappointer.
Well, that's it.
And, and so, but the thing is, it's become, it's, it was funny, tragic 20 years ago.
Now it's tragic because it's all I do.
I mean, if you ask me any question about myself, I will, I will say something disparaging.
And George has been through a lot.
And George is saying... This is George from the TV show?
This is George Meyer, yeah.
The TV show George.
Original writer for the Letterman show.
Big fan.
And he's a very smart and wonderful and extremely sensitive person.
And he's also susceptible to this kind of internal narrative.
And he said, you know...
I just try not to say something bad about myself.
You say bad things about yourself all the time.
And I said, well, it's because I'm an idiot.
And he was like, see, see, you're doing it right now.
You're saying something.
Oh, I see.
Oh, right, right, right.
And so I said, I don't think I could do it.
And he said, try it for a week.
Try and go for a week without saying something bad about yourself to yourself.
And what he said was we're used to – like what it does when you say something bad about yourself, even if you're – even if you are on top of it thinking like, oh, it's ironic or – he said your animal brain hears it as an attack and actually has an attack response to it.
Even though it's self-inflicted.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It hears it.
And George isn't super woo, but this is all part of our model.
No, no, no.
I mean, in a different point in my life and career, I would have said that the easiest way to put this is whatever muscles you exercise are the muscles you will develop.
Right.
Right.
So it's advisable to understand that that concept exists.
It is real.
And if you don't want the muscles that have gotten big on yourself, you need to develop something different.
That's exactly what he's saying.
So it's been a struggle for me even to know what constitutes something bad.
Because I say so many bad things about myself that I can't even discern.
It's like telling somebody to breathe different.
Try breathing through your butt.
You're like, well, that sounds fascinating, but that's not really historically how I've done this.
It's a whole realignment of your self-doubt.
Your self-image, your presentation.
But of course, then, you know, a lot of us have that inside voice, inside the head voice talking to us.
You got your Welsh troll, right?
It sounds like George is trying to say, I'm putting that guy on notice.
My Welsh troll is no longer desired here.
I'm going to do a different thing.
And he's doing it in a very assertive way.
And of saying like, he's going to be the one who stops that voice by noting it and then saying, let's not do that as much.
I think that's, I'm going to try.
It's a very interesting exercise.
Well, and you know, and, and he's kind of a hero to me in, in that he is, uh, you know, he's, he's, um,
he's very sensitive, but he's also like, you know, he's an angry guy and he's tried to deal with his anger and he's tried to do all these things and he's a work in progress.
And so he's telling me like, this is just something, you know, you, you have to learn to breathe out of your butt or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You have to retrain yourself.
And it's just like, Oh my God, I'm trying to retrain myself so many different ways.
But yes, you know, this is something small.
It feels like something you can't argue with.
Like,
20 years ago, I would have argued with you, even 10.
I would have said, you have to say something negative about yourself because that's the truth.
It was the 90s.
That's what we did.
And also, you know, it's like, I'm interested in this idea of you kind of fighting oneself about this stuff.
And it's sort of like, well, you can't tell me how to think about myself.
And then you're fighting that.
He wrote, wow, he wrote Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington.
I love that episode.
He wrote a lot of things.
I am the American non-voter.
Yeah.
People like this in your life, John, I'm going to say it's good for you to have people like that.
Well, I agree.
I agree.
I have a lot of funny people in my life, but...
The ones that are funny and then can switch gears, you know, and then you're like that.
You know, you're and you can switch gears.
No, I'm not funny.
Oh, you're very.
Oh, you said something.
I did the thing.
I did the thing.
Yes, and yes, and so.
So when I say that going car shopping, I'm I suffer from indecision paralysis.
I don't know whether that's a negative thing I'm saying.
I think that's part of it.
But this is one of the ways in which you are like our worst friend, John Syracuse.
Yeah.
In that, like, for John Syracuse, there's a very, very, very funny episode of our program we do.
Just the entire episode is about him having to buy a replacement refrigerator.
Mm-hmm.
and everything that's involved when you live in that man's head, everything that's involved in that.
And the reason I mention it here, I don't mean to take it off track, but I would say, yes, maybe you're indecisive, you're probably indecisive, but you are, related to that, a ruminator.
You ruminate, but also you want the right one.
And in John's case, what could be more stressful than finding out that his refrigerator broke and he doesn't have any time to do... The man hasn't bought a new TV in like 16 years because there's always a better one coming soon.
He's always doing the research.
He's reading the trades.
And then the idea of like, you're in the same situation, if I may say, which is like, well...
Now I got to go buy a car and I feel like a sucker because yes, I'm indecisive, but also I want the good one.
You don't want to accidentally get the one that doesn't have the thing you want or you discover there's some whoopsie doopsie about it that you didn't know about.
And then like you're fighting your own nature as a ruminator by saying like, I'm just going to go buy a car like some kind of sucker.
It doesn't feel good or right.
No.
And it's the whoopsie doopsie every time that I don't want.
I hate the whoopsie-dipsie and I do it all the time.
I got the wrong one.
You know, I hate it.
I hate that too.
And I've been – so honestly, I've been looking for a car for four years because four years ago when the car caught on fire, I was like, well, that's probably the sign.
And somehow I limped back into life by taking it up to my mechanic and saying like how –
Hard would it be to paste this back together?
What I should have done is what any normal person would have done is gone to the insurance company and said, I have this thing insured and it caught on fire.
So therefore, pay me for it.
Car me.
Car me.
And what I did was go up to this wrench turner friend.
And who said, well, this thing's never going to be the same again.
And no matter what I do, it's just going to be a constant rats, a rat king of of of gremlins.
You don't even know what's going to go next.
That's what makes it feel haunted.
The left foot thing, though, John, I think you were smart to realize that's a point where you need to... And what I haven't said about it is that the speedometer doesn't work.
You know that.
You know how fast you're going.
You know how fast you're going.
The gear shift lever no longer has an indicator, so you have to kind of just feel what gear it's in because the little pointer fell off at some point.
This is a car that requires extensive use of the force.
There's a lot of the force.
It has no heater anymore or air conditioner.
Oh, okay.
The heater went.
And what did you say about the windows?
Windows don't roll?
Windows don't roll down.
Well, for a variety of reasons.
So it's like the opposite of the General Lee.
Yeah, exactly.
But then the windshield wipers...
are always on.
So what I have to do... You got some real chitty-chitty bang-bang shit going on here.
When it's not raining, I go out and I open the hood and I disconnect the windshield wiper engine, the motor for the windshield wipers.
I disconnect it from the power.
I pull out the little module that provides power to the windshield wipers.
And so I drive around without windshield wipers on,
And to everyone else, it appears normal.
But what that is is the windshield wipers are disconnected.
So if I'm driving and it starts to rain, I can drive for a while.
But if it starts to be – if it starts to – if it continues to rain, let's put it that way, I have to pull over and get out now in the rain, open the hood on the side of the road and reconnect the windshield wipers hoping that –
As your daughter scowls at you from the passenger seat.
Just scowling and complaining.
And the motor's running, and I'm reaching in there, and I'm working with some electrical.
I don't know enough about it to know for sure.
I mean, I unplugged a couple different things before I got the windshield wipers to stop, so I plugged those things back in.
You know, I'm not some expert, and I didn't look at a diagram.
But so in the summer, I mostly drive around with the windshield wipers unplugged.
In the winter, I kind of leave them plugged in with the assumption it's going to be raining.
So when you start the car, the windshield wipers are on, you know.
You think about like, this was true at my college.
I think this is true in a lot of like old New York apartment buildings where like you switch over.
And you say, like, okay, now it's time to have access to heat.
You don't just turn on the heat.
You've got to, like, say, this whole building is going to be able to have heat now.
And they flip the big switch, and that stays on for a while.
And you're saying it's rainy spider season, and it's time for me to have these on.
In the North Country, it was when you, and by that I mean Alaska, when you put your snow tires on.
Exactly the same, yes.
The day you put your snow tires on, and then there was a day you took them off.
And that marked the change of seasons.
But the indecisiveness.
So I need a table where I can sit and eat my food and where my children can play with their toys.
And I've been looking for a table again for two years.
And not as bad as a couch, but not a lot better.
And it's just a couch.
A couch to me is the ultimate.
I will never find the right one of these, but I can find a thousand wrong ones.
That's right.
So like, for example, my wife decided to surprise us with a new table.
You know, again, I was not consulted on this as a kind of table where like when you get in there, first of all, it's around, which I find very upsetting.
And then you couldn't fit your knees in there because like where the legs were.
And then I just had to live.
I just made this phase for two years.
You know what I mean?
You're like, this is it now.
I'm paying to store this in a house, and I don't love it.
And I will hate myself if I don't get a table I can love.
We're paying to store it, and we don't live far enough out in the country that we can take it out and burn it when we're done.
You know what I mean?
If you live... Yeah, you know, you could just be Saturday night, let's go make a bonfire out of table.
Let's go throw that table out there and burn it up.
You can't do that in San Francisco.
You need a place to eat and for your children to play with their toys.
That's right.
And so I continue to eat dinner every night sitting cross-legged on the floor, eating out of a plate that's on my lap.
And I have been doing that for a long time and it's time to get a table.
So yesterday...
I was at the store.
The people that run the store are people that now have become friends because I'm in the store a lot because they have tables.
And every time I run my finger all around the table and I get down on the floor and I look at it from the bottom and I talk to them about the table and I talk to them about the table's table and the friend.
I bet you also listen to the table.
I bet you listen.
You listen the same way you would listen for your passport, right?
You say, well, I'm waiting for the table that speaks to me.
That's right.
And I listen.
And that takes multiple visits.
Again, we went through this with couches for 15 years.
Before we finally bought one off the internet.
But there's a thing where you're like, I want the one that's going to speak to me.
I would go and visit albums at Vinyl Fever for half a year before deciding if I was really ready to go all in on this EP by The Alarm or whatever.
You don't want to spend your allowance on something.
I'm not made of money.
Well, that's the case here.
And so I'm at this shop.
And they have a table, and it's the first table I've seen in a very long time that I like.
It just is a likable table.
And it's been refinished, but I prefer the refinish because the original finish on these tables tended to be a little green over time.
And it's a walnut table.
They've refinished it, and it looks nice.
Now, let me explain that the table is part of the Broyhill Brasilia line.
Brijal Brasilia.
And they would sell, like we would say in Florida, like a bedroom suit or a living room suit.
You can get a whole, like, a phalanx of related things, and they have collections, you know, like, you'll love it at Levitt's kind of thing, right?
Exactly right.
And the... Brijal.
The Brasilia line was actually debuted...
At the Seattle World's Fair in 1962.
The devil, you say.
And so Brasilia is a style that's based on the city of Brasilia, which was designed by the architect Oscar Niemeyer,
and he and it's and it looks very much like future town you like like it's it's a completely completely planned capital city except unlike washington dc it's not uh greek classical it is like city of the future and so the world's fair in 1962 used a lot of these elements these kind of parabolas and and um
And so the Broyhill Company, capitalizing on the architecture of Nehemiah and his collaborators, they designed this furniture that has these big kind of parabolas and these interesting shapes.
And I'd never been very interested in the furniture because it had a kind of a green tint of
And it felt a little bit, you know, I didn't like mid-century anything because it all seemed so kitschy.
But this is also, if I could say I can't stop myself, this also becomes, I've never known what this phrase means, but it's the exception that proves the rule.
Because you think about another indecisive thing, I'm not going to use that word anymore because I don't care for it.
But another thing where you were deliberative in your pre-purchase vetting was your housing.
You wanted a place that hadn't gotten all goofed up and they hadn't stripped the green off.
Right?
Like, ordinarily, you're like, you want that original patina.
In this case, this is more in your wheelhouse.
Well, and the thing about it is that a table, you're going to ruin a kitchen table anyway.
Oh, Jesus, yes.
Dining room.
All the crafts.
It's just like, come on.
Glue gun.
Glue.
I'm going to have to strip this table a couple of times.
So let's just stop pretending.
Yep, yep, yep.
And so here's this Brasilia, but because it's been refinished, it's much, much cheaper.
You know, there's like everything that's collected by somebody there.
You know, there's there are people that have their whole houses done in this because they also made dressers and beds and China cabinets.
That's part of the suit.
We call it in North Florida.
You call it a suit.
You get a you get a dining room suit.
You can get the side sideboard.
all the different things and this is this is not part did you say it's parabolic john uh well the furniture is just square because all furniture is square but it has parable designs on it oh i love that okay see so it's kind of a googly sort of um uh like you know uh that that look that look of like you know big boomerangs and stuff like that but it's a table it's not a parabolic table you'd be eating at because again that would make me crazy it's a square table but it has parabolas and the table does it have a leaf john does it have a leaf in it it's
multiple leaves it has three shut your whore mouth this sounds amazing so I'm looking at the table and I'm like this is the first table I've seen in a long time that I like and it's very reasonably priced and I'm gonna buy this table right now this has been two years I've been looking for a table here's a table and it is affordable and I need a table because it was the other day and again my daughter is driving a lot of this we're sitting on the floor
crisp rocks applesauce and she's like she's like i want to live in this house but i cannot i'm hearing i'm hearing a couple other voices in this voice she says i can't because it's not this house is not ready for me it's ready for you you can sit on the floor
and eat but like she i mean she doesn't say like i have dignity because she doesn't she hasn't made those formulations yet but she's like i'll come live at this house with you when you're ready and i'm like wow okay all right okay well that cuts oh yeah yeah yeah right and you know and because i've got her bedroom here she comes over and she plays in her bedroom
But then when it's dinner time, she's like, I would like to have dinner in a house with a table.
So I'm ready to buy the table.
And then the woman says, you know, it has six matching chairs.
And I'm like, tell me more.
And she's like, they're in the back.
We haven't refinished them yet.
But we took the...
The upholstery needed to be changed, and so we took the upholstery off, and underneath the upholstery was the original upholstery.
And the original upholstery on these chairs was like gold, and it had eagles.
Oh, wow.
Gold eagles.
And so she brings the chairs.
Is that a Brasilia theme?
Well, I don't know about it.
I haven't.
So I've done.
But I mean, nobody hates an eagle.
Nobody hates it.
Except for maybe like a field mouse.
And this fabric is the type of thing that you can now buy.
You can buy reproductions of the fabric.
People have just a swatch of the fabric in a frame on the wall.
It's all this.
Damn.
People love textiles.
They really do.
And it's beautiful.
So she brings the chairs out.
They haven't been refinished, but they're nice and weathered and worn.
The original upholstery is on them and it's definitely weathered.
It's like used.
But the whole thing appeals to me and I'm like, oh, this is wonderful.
And I'm just – and she's like, we haven't done anything to it.
We haven't refinished it.
So we'll sell you the whole thing.
And it's extremely reasonable.
If you go online and look for this table and chairs, you know, and this is a used thing, right?
Even though it's collectible, if I went to a store, a regular store, and bought a dining room table that was made out of walnut and six matching chairs, it would cost three times what this thing is going to cost.
I'll tell you one thing just in passing.
This has been true of furniture since Christ was a corporal.
If you went to, I don't know about a Broyhill, but if you go to any of those chains, it's crazy what even crappy furniture costs.
It's crazy.
It's just, it's ridiculous.
There must be something to that, like the whole mattress store jam up.
There must be something to the pricing in those stores that makes sense to somebody.
But it always feels like the strangest example of like, the people who have tons of money to spend on furniture would not buy this because it's gross.
And the people who should know better do?
It's weird.
I think that the people that have a lot, a lot of money do buy those things because nobody knows that, you know, it's all got veneer on it, but nowadays it's all made a particle board or.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's all, you know, you go to West Elm or these places and the furniture.
Oh, I know.
I know.
It's expensive.
It's like 7,000.
England, they call it MDF.
Yeah.
We get a lot of that.
It's just blown together sawdust.
Yeah.
You know, with a price tag on MDF.
Sickening.
That stuff off gases.
You know that.
Oh, I know.
It off-gases, it out-gases, it gases.
It's gross.
Oh, that'll be $1,200, sir.
So I'm looking at this, and this is a woman at the store who has dealt with me many times where I've come in and I've touched everything in the store and then I've left.
And her brother...
uh is like about my age and i like him very much he's also somebody who is like a john the type who who touches everything and then leaves without buying it his sister was telling me an anecdote that he had an apartment in california one time where he lived for uh two years without a bed because he couldn't choose a bed so he just slept in a sleeping bag on the floor because he would go look for beds and i was just like you're singing my sister
Yep.
Yep.
So I'm about to, I'm just, I'm, I feel so ready and I'm like, I'm going to just buy this table and chairs right now.
I'm not going to look into it.
I'm not going to be indecisive about it.
And I,
And I call my daughter over because she's over playing with some thing that she found, some space oddity.
I would have been sitting in a rocking chair or a recliner.
You would.
Or I would have been touching swatches.
But is it all used?
It's not a Levitz.
No, it's all.
This is all used.
What they do is they go, the people that run this store, they go, when somebody posts a chair on Craigslist, they go get it and they come back and they fix it.
Okay.
And then they sell it in their little store.
Sounds cool.
They're like used store, used things store.
And so I say, hey, honey, come over and sit down and see what you think.
And so she comes over, sits down in the chair, and with no ceremony goes, it's hard.
And I said, well, you know.
Were the purveyors of the story there when she announced this?
We're all standing around clutching our pearls.
And she goes, it's too hard.
And she runs off.
And I'm like, oh no.
And then her mother, my daughter's mother slash partner.
Your partner, yeah.
She comes over and sits down in it and goes, now I had been sitting in the, I'd already spent an hour going from chair to chair sitting in them and rocking back and forth.
And I thought they were very comfortable.
And my daughter's mother slash partner sits down in the chair and goes, hmm.
It's a little uncomfortable, but, but you know what?
It's your decision, which is, you know, some kind of super code for like, Jesus Christ.
And so I was right there.
I was right.
I was standing.
My feet were over the edge and now I'm getting feedback that I cannot, I can't account for it.
And you know, and they're, they're, they're introducing doubt, introducing doubt.
And they walk over and sit down in a set of chairs and they're like, well, these chairs are comfortable.
And I'm like, those chairs are $2,700 because they are Herman Miller or something.
I don't want – like, of course they're – I mean, not even of course because a lot of that stuff is terrible to sit in.
But –
I was just about to buy this thing.
And then.
Don't tell me this put you off it.
So I came home and I had sitting crisscross applesauce on the floor and looking at the spot where.
Eating out of a bowl like a condemned man.
Looking at where I wasn't even sitting in the spot.
I was sitting across the room looking at the spot where the table and chairs would have been if I had purchased them.
So did you experience non-buyer's regret?
Well, I have no idea.
I mean, that's the problem with being deliberative, as you gently put it.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I look at it and I go, I don't want to get the wrong one.
I don't want to get one where I sit down.
You want to get the good one.
And this is my concern with the automobiles, which I assume is what we're getting to.
Because I've heard...
from reading the internet and listening to the news, that now is a very fraught time.
Because on the one hand, a lot of people have been buying or trying to buy used cars, so that stock of stuff is down.
And then you've got the problem with the chips.
And there's not as many new cars.
So I've heard it's difficult and costly to buy a car in a way that it was not, say, a year ago.
That's what I heard.
What it seems like is that car dealers are no longer incentivized to sell used cars at a great discount.
Because there are no new cars because of the chips.
So they've got... And also people are buying used cars like sight unseen, like sell it to me, get me out of here.
Oh, I know.
It's like a tulip thing all over again.
Like it's just put me in a Camry.
Put me in a Camry.
Yep.
So over the course of...
of several weeks with, um, with my, and my sister is involved in this and my mother, they're all like, you need to solve this problem.
And then all the, and the car dealers are like, well, you know, if you don't buy it, somebody will.
So you got any wiggle room in there?
Let's get off my nose.
Sorry, buddy.
And I don't like car dealers, you know, no offense to car dealers, but I just don't, I want to just buy a thing that is the price that it is.
I don't want to, I don't want to get into, I don't want to buy a carpet.
I just want to get a thing.
And so I'm dragging my family all around the city and its environs and we're test driving cars and we're all climbing in, you know, all five of us in the car.
five adults and a kid, you know, and I'm like, how does it feel?
How does it feel way in the back there?
You know, drive around.
How's the acceleration?
Oh, it's good.
What about the features?
And every car has so many different
Options.
Mm-hmm.
They call them trim packages.
Trim packages, Merlin.
Oh, my goodness.
And there's some cases, I've learned from John Saracusa, there's some cases where there's stuff you don't want that you have to agree to to get the stuff that you do want.
Like, if you would like, go try and find yourself, as John Saracusa has, try and find yourself a nice, fancy stick shift car.
Oh.
Uh-uh.
If you want this, and if you want the good interior, you're going to have to get the right package.
Because it isn't just something.
It isn't like a salad bar.
Yep.
Which is actually a pretty good idea.
They should do that.
We should be able to buy cars like a salad bar.
I don't know why they don't do that.
Because it makes... Cable TV.
If you want this channel, you've got to get all these other channels.
It's a whole thing.
And that's the worst, the cable TV thing.
All I want is these live channels.
I do not want the sports channel.
I don't want any shopping...
Anyway, the problem is that in the old days, when you bought a trim, you brought different trim packages.
Really, the heart of those trim packages was the motor.
And at the bottom, you had the six-cylinder motor.
And then you had the hot it up six-cylinder.
And then you had the small displacement V8.
And then you had the middle one.
And then you had the hot it up one.
And then you had the really blown out one.
They told John DeLorean, you can't put an engine this size into this GTO you want to make.
Like he was upsetting the apple cart.
He was mixing up the spreadsheets.
They got a system for how they like to do this stuff.
And I think the marketing, the geniuses from marketing and sales get a lot of input on these packages, which a lot of it might be based on almost nothing aside from undiagnosed personality disorders.
Well, yeah.
But now you got to live with that.
Bunch of young guys in suits walking around trying.
Bunch of hot shots.
Yeah.
anyway so i'm driving around i'm going to all these places and i'm like i like this one but i wish i had that i like the one i wish it was blue i did this thing i went out to i was like okay you know what why don't we try that why don't we try the nice one we'll just test drive it see what it drives like i was never gonna buy it but let's just go so we drive out to the lincoln dealer lincoln lincoln
The Lincoln, the Ford-based automobiles?
Lincoln Continental.
A, they still make Lincolns?
Barely.
And B, oh my God, that was my mother's dream car.
Lincoln Continental was my mom's dream car.
So what I was looking at was the Fords, but I was like, Lincoln's got all the things, so let's go see what the Lincoln's got.
And I get out there, and you know, here's the other thing.
All cars now are black, gray, or white, and I don't want a black, gray, or white car.
I want one other option.
Give me one other thing.
I don't want to drive around in a black car because I look like I'm for hire.
I don't want to drive around in a white car because I look like a real estate agent.
I don't want to drive around in a gray car because those are the people that couldn't decide.
That's the color of the snork.
So I get out there and there's this Lincoln.
And it's blue.
And not only is it blue, but it's baby blue sparkle.
And not only is it that, but when you open the door, the leather interior is blue with white piping.
Damn.
Is it four-door?
Well, so it's a SUV.
It's an SUV.
Oh.
I have a suburb.
A sparkly blue soothe with blue interior.
Yeah.
Did a pimp cancel?
Well, that's the thing.
The guy at the dealership says to me, yeah, are you sure you want this?
This is kind of a basketball player's car.
Are you kidding me?
It's all I ever wanted.
And he again looks dubious at me and he says, yeah, but a year from now,
Wait, what is happening?
Well, because he doesn't care, because he's selling cars hand over fist.
Apparently, there's no cost to honesty in this case, because he'll get some other rube that comes along.
It's unusual to hear that kind of candor coming from somebody who sells blue cars.
He's got his hands in his pockets, right?
And Seattle doesn't even have an NBA team anymore.
What about the Supersonics?
Well, they're gone.
They got bought and they got sold.
Where'd they go?
Well, they're in Oklahoma City now.
Oklahoma City.
Pfft.
Utah Jazz.
Give me a break.
So the Seattle Storm is a great basketball team.
I don't love a collective noun.
Yeah, I agree.
Okay, okay, okay.
So does that buoy you a little bit, or do you think it's a twist him up where he's trying to do some Jedi Mind stuff on you?
Oh, no, I don't think... I think that he thinks...
You know, this guy shows up at this camp train of women who are all standing there with their arms crossed, tapping their feet, impatient.
And I'm like a gaga over this powder blue Lincoln.
And he's like, I don't know what I'm looking at here, but it doesn't look like a guy that's going to plop down a bag of money.
But he lets me take it for a drive.
And the whole time I'm just like, what kind of world do you have to live in where you get to drive a powder blue Lincoln with blue leather interior?
A blessed life.
And it's just like in the stereo.
You need this car, John.
Was the board of directors in there with you tapping their foot in the Lincoln?
The thing is the Lincoln had everything.
And a lot of the things were – Can you give me an idea of roughly how old this car is?
Oh, this was a new car.
This was a thing.
I was going to – Sean, you looked at a new automobile?
I was going to drive it just to see what it was like.
Because what I needed was a benchmark, the high benchmark –
Yeah.
Then everything else I could measure against this.
I get it.
I get it.
It falls in this, as they say, a spectrum.
You know, you're the kind of guy that walks into a store and you're going to touch a lot of furniture.
It doesn't mean you're going to write a check.
In this case, you're resetting the car bar.
Resetting the car bar.
That's exactly what I was doing.
And the problem was this vehicle knew with all the things because it had a heads-up display and it had a thing where if you talked to the brakes, they would talk back to you.
And it was $110,000.
What?
What?
And the guy was looking at – How much?
$110,000.
The guy was looking at – Huh.
I better come with a basketball player.
He was like, you know, Filson jacket, sure.
You know, like those cost $300 if you buy them – if you're not on the Filson pro team.
But those are not the people that buy powder blue Lincoln cigarettes.
Oh, I see.
He's doing a little bit of a fight club on you.
He's kind of looking you up and down, and there's going to be price tags on everything.
He was like, the person that buys this truck comes in and doesn't even need to test drive it.
They just put down a bag of money because of whatever.
They're not comparison shopping because there's no comparison to this.
Yeah, see, I would have, if you, you know, asked, I would have guessed, and this just shows you so many things about me.
I would have guessed, and thinking I was out of my mind, $35,000.
Yeah, I know.
That shows you what I know.
I know, I know.
That seems like a lot of money for an American car.
Well, and that's the thing.
But the thing is that...
Either American cars are a lot better than they were in the early 1980s, which I think is true.
Hard not to.
And also European cars are not as good, or the gulf between American and European and Japanese cars is not so wide anymore.
It is said, you know, we're a long time from the days of Fix It Again, Tony.
Yeah.
Fix to repair daily.
That's right.
Which is a little redundant, but that's okay.
But I've heard it said that, like, you know, almost all the cars you get today are going to be mostly pretty good and reliable.
Yeah.
Yeah, they're all pretty good and reliable.
Yeah.
Used to be you could only really say that for a time.
You could really only say that about Toyotas, maybe VWs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and VWs are all cheaters now and everything's made out of plastic and the whole world.
I get it.
I get it.
But so I drove this powder blue Lincoln and then I was in trouble because I was like, well, there's no other car that's powder blue.
You can't get powder blue anything.
Oh, the bar reset you.
And I'm looking.
I can only afford a used vehicle, or at least that is the standard for me, because how the hell are you going to pay more than, as you're saying?
Yeah, like, do you want to be looking down the barrel of a what?
My car payment in 1991 was $263 a month.
which is a lot more money than I want it to spend.
I'm going to guess if you can get financing on a $100,000-plus car, I mean, that's going to be hundreds of dollars a month.
Well, yeah, it's going to be thousands, or it's going to be at least $1,800 a month.
Thanks for nothing, big basketball.
It's more than rent.
That's ridiculous.
So, of course, I'm not going to do that.
So then I've got the high bar and then I'm test driving other things and I'm like, well, this one isn't as good as the Lincoln.
But there were a few that were like, oh, yeah, this is fine.
But this car is black.
I don't want that.
This car is white.
I don't want that.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then so one day...
I've got this list of things and I don't want to be doing this either.
I'm not somebody that's like, I love test.
You never want to do this in the first place.
So I'm standing there.
It's a day.
It's just a day like any other day.
And the word comes down from on high, which is to say the the, you know, the coven that runs my existence.
The word comes down.
You're buying a car today.
Oh, boy.
And I'm like, I'm not ready to buy a car.
And they're like, you've been looking for this car for weeks.
Oh, that seems extremely arbitrary.
You've been looking for this car for four years.
And you know what you want.
You've narrowed it down.
And so having narrowed... I can feel my blood pressure going up right now.
Right.
And I'm like, but there are all the options.
What about this package?
What about that?
You know, I know I want this, but I don't want that.
They're like...
We're done.
You're done.
They can see you coming with their glasses off.
Here he comes.
Here comes Mr. Buy a Car.
Yep.
They're like, you're buying a car today.
Ugh.
And so I'm like, uh, uh, uh, uh.
And I called a dealership where I was like, okay, there's one that's intriguing.
I'll call them and I'll come up and I'll buy it.
I called the dealer and they're like, we sold that car two hours ago.
Jesus Christ.
Okay, okay, okay.
The noose is tightening.
I can't buy a car because that's the one I wanted, it turns out.
And they sold it.
And the coven that runs my life said, well, if you wanted it, you would have bought it yesterday.
So there's another one.
And you're going to buy a car today.
And I was like, okay.
You got a real coalition of problem solvers there, huh?
Well, they're just like, you know, is your issue over deliberation, let's just say?
If we're not going to speak negatively about ourselves, then we're going to solve that for you by making the decision that there's a hard line.
That's like telling somebody who has a fear of heights they've got to get in the plane and jump.
That's what it is.
Here, why don't you eat a bag of spiders, you know?
And so...
So I drive up.
Okay.
Sorry, just real quick.
I have to leave soon.
What car did y'all drive to get to where you're going to look at a car for this particular day?
We drove the Sinister car.
You took Johnny 79.
No, no, no, we didn't do that.
Oh, you took her sinister car, your partner car.
Okay.
And the thing is, all the dealers always ask me, you got to trade in?
And I was like, you want a 79 GMC three-quarter ton Suburban that you need to put your foot on the thing?
Gets AM, gets AM, pretty good, this one station.
Pull back and to the left.
What's my trade in on that?
So I was just like, no, no, no, let's not get... But so we go to this place...
And it's, like, a used car lot, and they specialize in, like, herpaderp four-weekers.
Ooh.
And this car is kind of an anomaly on the lot because it's not derped up.
It doesn't have a, you know, there's... Oh, it's the equivalent of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree?
Well, no, I mean, it's, yeah, but it's... But it's got no derp, and you don't, derp is something you don't like.
I'm not looking for derp.
I got enough, you know, I got enough derp.
Oh, no, I know.
This is just a car, and the problem is it's gray, but it is a, it's one of the cool colors of gray.
It's like a,
It's like a gunmetal gray instead of just like a bleh gray.
It's an attractive looking vehicle.
I get there and I drive it and it drives well.
And it has a trim package that I was not.
Aware of I wasn't focused on I was like I was looking at all these trim packages were like, oh, do you want loafers to go with it?
You know, this one has serious radio and this one and so I all the trim sometimes I want to say like a sports edition and this was something else never seen the trim I didn't understand what the trim package was I think I'd seen it but I didn't know what it was and I was standing there and it was seven o'clock at night and the dealership closes at seven and I get an elbow in the ribs and
that says buy it and i'm like buy it and it's like buy it and and there are people there are tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of people who have bought a car there are dare i say a million or more people who have bought a car merlin
And a lot of them just see a car that they like and they go buy it.
I know that because I see these cars on the road and I'm like, who would buy that?
Apparently, lots of people went in and they bought it.
They saw it and they bought it.
And so there's not very much sympathy for me past the four-year line.
Where it's like other people go buy cars.
They buy them all the time.
They buy them brand new.
They buy cars.
Cars are not hard to buy.
You go in and you buy it.
These people want to sell it to you.
Buy this car.
And so I bought it.
And it was awful.
I sat in a chair where a guy with like his hair, like a too short haircut and a polo shirt was like, how much are you willing to pay?
You know, all that kind of stuff.
And I was like, I don't want to deal with you.
I don't want to talk to you.
I don't want to make small talk with you.
I don't want you to give me a deal because I know it's not a deal.
I don't want you to act like you're helping me because I know you're not trying to help me.
just just the the kindest thing that guy could do or gal or whomever is to just make it quick just make this quick make it quick yeah i mean like like don't yeah you can just skip all the niceties just just screw me in the minimal way possible and please let me just get on with what's left of my life and it wasn't quick you know uh the talk about financing options all of that and at a certain point the ladies were like well it looks like you got it well in hand and they got in the car and left
They got it.
And they left me in this.
And then the dealership turned out the lights.
And so I was sitting in a cubicle at the back of the dealership with the finance guy.
Everybody else was gone.
And the lights on the parking lot were off.
I couldn't even see the truck anymore.
And this guy's like, my job is to get you the best possible rate.
And I was like, I know that's not your job.
No, it's not your job.
I know what your job is, but it's not that.
Just let me out of here, please.
And so I drove this car.
And the next day, everybody was like, aren't you excited?
Oh, wow, you got a new car.
Aren't you excited?
And it's not a new car.
It's a used car.
And I wasn't, I was like, I bought this and I thought I, and maybe I did the wrong thing.
Maybe this isn't the one I wanted.
Maybe this isn't the blah.
Maybe I don't.
And so I had that terrible experience that, that people that know me are baffled by, which is that something exciting happened to me.
And I'm like, eh.
Yeah.
I know.
I know that noise.
Believe me.
And it took me about a week to,
And what I did was I looked at the trim package.
I went online and I was like, I bought this thing.
I should know what it is.
Oh, John.
After you've already taken possession, you've driven it off the lot.
It's too late.
That's when you're going to find out what it does?
That's right.
It's too late for me.
And it's just like...
It's just like every time I, you know, these days, I don't want to see anything on the internet that has my name on it.
You know, if I have to look at something, I touch the finger very gently to the thing.
Like at the first sign that it's like, John Roderick, AKA, I'm just like, I'm out.
Yep.
But I go on and I'm waiting to read the review where they're like, this trim package is garbage.
It's not worth the money.
Well, it turned out that the trim package is this... It's not a trim package.
It's an option package that you get all this stuff that I think is cool.
It's fantastic.
I mean, I don't love the way that it went about and you found out about it, but what a relief.
What kind of stuff?
Well, so it is... So Ford...
making these SUVs, there were enough people who were like you were describing before that was like, why can't we put this package on that thing?
That eventually somebody at Ford was like, okay.
And what it was was all the off-roaders who were driving around in jacked up Herpa Dirt pickup trucks were like, why can't we have the Herpa Dirt package on this SUV?
Right.
Oh, the boys in sales hear something like that.
And they say, you know, make this thing happen.
Get the herpaderp on the climber boy and then blend those, right?
I would think that's what they would do, but most of the time they're like, well, our customers don't know what they want.
We're going to give them seven different kinds of satellite nav.
And so what this thing has on it, this is, for those listening at home, it has the FX4 package, Merlin.
The FX4 is the off-road equipment package on the SUV.
Most of the packages on the SUV are like, how many in-back-of-seat television screens do you want?
And this has got limited slip differential and jacked up shocks.
You're practically a first responder.
It's got a big radiator.
Wow.
Cop shocks, cop brakes, right?
It's got skid plates.
It's got a tow package.
It's got all this stuff.
And it wasn't even an option package I was aware of.
And all of a sudden, I'm driving the coolest one of these.
From the standpoint of somebody like me, who wants a bunch of stuff that is not just televisions, but is real.
You don't need a chocolate fountain or something.
If you're going to get the rugged vehicle, it's nice if it actually does rugged things.
Well, because a lot of those cars, people buy them because I like to sit up high or whatever.
It's like, yeah, but it's a toy.
Think about the Ford Explorers back in the 90s and 2000s where it's like, yeah, it's fine as long as you don't go off.
You're going to flip.
It's not made to do any of the stuff it looks like it's supposed to do.
It would be like buying a hammer that breaks the first time you hit a nail.
And this is the opposite.
Opposite of that.
One of the problems is all these trucks have the same engine.
All the way up to the Lincoln.
The basketball player Lincoln and the entry-level model Ford, they all have the exact same engine because nobody – there's not 10 engines anymore like there were in 1971.
There's just the one.
And so the difference between all these – and one of the cars sells for $50,000 and one of them sells for $110,000.
They all have the same engine.
So the package differences are like, does it have blue leather or not?
But this truck that I accidentally bought has all this like rough and tough stuff that I'll probably never use, except I will.
Except I'll drive this up logging roads.
I'll do wheelies in it.
I'll stand it up in a sand dune.
I'll do all that stuff.
And so I accidentally on purpose ended up getting a thing that now after a week of driving it,
When I get in, I'm kind of like, hmm, well, you know, FX4.
What do you say about that?
And it's very subtle.
It's got this little badge.
It doesn't have a bunch of graphics on the side.
Oh, my God.
How did you luck?
Aren't you anxious about how you lucked out?
Oh, yeah.
I now feel anxious about how it turned out kind of okay.
Well, I am.
I'm a little anxious, and I don't— I'm anxious, and I don't even like cars.
So I have to take it into the dealer because it's at—
It has a mileage that's now like, well, you're at this mileage, so you got to get serviced.
Like the mileage service, like you get it serviced at whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.
And so, but what they told me at the place that sold it was they're like,
Look, this was just something that the dealer drove, like some manager at a dealership drove this around and then handed it off to his friend.
And it's only had one owner, but it was a dealership that owned it.
And when I went on the little screen, it had like 42 different people's cell phones saved in the – it was just like every – Oh, right.
And I had driven this thing.
So I'm anxious because I'm going to take it into the dealer – the new dealer –
to get it serviced and say, has this thing been thrashed?
Cause I'm not sure if it's thrashed.
Like if it was me, I would thrash it.
It's a, it's a, but it's, but it's off road or, but anyway, so I think I dodged a bullet because I have a car now that doesn't at least so far catch on fire.
And it has a very subtle little badge on it that differentiates it from all the other ones that are just like,
Right.
Different levels of television.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's like I go out and I get in it and the windows roll up and down.
Do you worry that this is going to cause your coven to just move on to another thing to bug you about?
Do you get any relief from this?
Do you get any credit from this?
Well, they immediately moved on to telling me that the table, that the Broyhill Brasilia chairs weren't comfortable on their precious little bottoms.
I gotta go.
I gotta go get my drain snaked, if you know what I mean.