Ep. 514: "Q.R. Crabs"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Well, it's a little cold here today.
Cold here?
What are we talking about?
It's a little cold and dark.
Cold and dark?
Yeah, it's drizzly, cold, dark.
Yeah, it's sunny here because it's October.
Oh.
Oh, the coldest summer I ever spent was the summer I spent in... Yep.
San Francisco, that was Omar Khayyam, I think his name is.
It might have been Rumi.
Oh, Rumi.
I'm feeling a little Rumi today.
That's the thing.
San Francisco.
Nothing if not Rumi.
It's true.
Bring your seersucker suit.
It's 59.
It's 59 and 100% chance of rain right now here.
Huh.
You guys are prepared for that, though.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we got furnaces.
That's true.
I turned my furnace on.
Oh, is that right?
Huh.
Yeah, normally I don't, but now I have.
We've really come a long way with the show over the years, haven't we?
Mm-hmm.
Talk about, you know, how to heat our house and... Yeah, a lot of people... Weather anomalies, you know?
A lot of people might say, oh, you've got a furnace, oh.
Yeah.
Must be nice.
Jeez.
Yes, yes, yes.
Pound sign blessed.
Pound sign blessed.
Yeah, I was out in the islands.
This weekend.
I should know this.
What islands are you talking about, John?
Well, you know, the Puget Sound region.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Full of islands.
Legendarily full of islands.
Is the Puget Sound the stuff of legend?
It is.
It really is.
You know, we have the largest ferry system in America.
Hmm.
and I think the second busiest in the world, maybe.
I've grown a lot that I didn't make a joke about that.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, you have.
I didn't say something like, I figured that would be the West Village.
Right.
That would have been funny back in... They don't even have funiculars, if you know what I mean.
Back when you would have made it.
Yes.
Now you can just point to it and say... There it was.
That's a thing I wouldn't say.
Hey, everybody, look what I almost stepped in.
Yeah, you know, people come up here and they ask me what I should see...
What should I see when I'm in your region?
There's a regular line outside the door a lot of days, probably, right?
Yeah, and I'm like, oh.
Joe, what should I see?
You should go to the museums.
Here's a nice place to get a sandwich.
I don't know how many people believe.
Are you aware of the Seattle dog?
Oh, I don't think I am.
Well, there's a style.
Oh, is that a kind of hot dog?
Yeah, it's a hot dog.
Apparently, apparently.
All right.
If you go online, you'll see a series of videos I did for the city of Seattle or for Visit Seattle, tourist videos, where I go around the city and have a little mini talk show on
And I meet people in the city and I go, hey, what do you like about stuff?
And then they talk to me about stuff.
Real man on the street type stuff.
That's right.
And one of those was down in Pike Place Market.
The fish throwing place.
Fish throwing place.
Don't they throw fish there?
Oh, they throw them every day.
There's a guy throwing a fish right now.
Hmm.
And I had a guest on the program, Faye Pink, a friend of mine who came on, and we were talking about the Seattle dog, which is, yeah, apparently a hot dog that's got, it's like Chicago style.
It's got a bunch of stuff on it, but what makes the Seattle dog different is it's got cream cheese and some other things.
I was going to guess salmon.
Yeah, well, it should have salmon.
Like sliced in, like a sashimi.
Yeah, that would make more sense than cream cheese, a thing this region has no connection to whatsoever.
I can think of another city east of where you are that's probably better known for cream cheese.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And the thing is, growing up here and then living here all through the 90s, I don't remember anybody ever saying anything about a Seattle dog until –
Just not very long ago.
Interesting.
They tried to just kind of slip in like you wouldn't notice.
It's one of these things.
Of course.
We've always had a hot dog.
Oh, the Seattle dog.
Yeah.
It's like Seattle dog.
Of course, I bet everybody has a make-believe opinion about the best place to get a Seattle dog.
I mean, there's only a couple of places to get them, and they're carts down outside of venues, basically.
A guy pulls a cart up outside of venue and wants to know what you want on your hot dog.
I didn't know that there was a formulation.
I don't think there is.
I think it's like you wake up one morning and there's a bunch of fiberglass cows in your town.
You know what I mean?
Like on every corner there's a painted cow.
Real culture jamming.
What has this got to do with anything?
There are no cows in this town.
No, no, no.
This has always been a thing.
It's always been a thing.
Giant painted rabbit.
Move over, Philadelphia.
Yeah, that's right.
There's the cream cheese place.
Right?
That says it's right in the name.
Okay, here's the thing.
You know what?
I'm sorry.
This is a rocky beginning.
Let's get a couple things out of the way.
First of all, there should probably be some sliced fish on there.
Because nobody's actually going to eat this monstrosity.
You might as well make it seem normal and regional.
Also, can I just say, two words, Pacific Rim.
Put some mayonnaise on there.
Oh.
mayonnaise.
Because, you know, that's a secret treat in Japan.
You know, I was thinking you put a little roe on there, a little fish egg.
I love that.
Don't call it caviar.
I got my daughter the other night.
We were at sushi, and she's always complaining about sushi.
Load up the tobacco.
Well, you know, and so a roll comes and it's just covered with little red fish eggs, and she just, of course, thinks it's candy.
Even though it's on top of a bunch of
raw fish she cannot imagine that this beautiful thing is not i get bonus tobiko on my california roll yeah see it's it's so and she puts it in her mouth and she's and you know it's got that little pop to it yeah and she's so excited what's that candy that killed mikey it's like that pop rocks it's like pop rocks but more uh but finny
And she doesn't have any objection to it at all.
She's just loving it.
She has a guilty look like, ha ha, I'm stealing the candy off of your raw fish.
And then her mom has to go and ruin it.
Oh, boy.
You know the phrase they use a lot of times?
They say, you know, if you like sausage, never watch it being made.
I see.
And people refer to things like making laws or not making laws.
I'm not going to get into it.
But I would just say I think I'm pretty sure I have a pretty good idea how they get those little candy boys.
And, boy, that's not a video you want to show at dinner.
Oh.
Is it sturgeon, John?
Is it sturgeon they come from?
Well, probably not those little tiny ones.
Oh, right.
The sturgeon caviar, that's what you call caviar.
That's caviar.
We're talking about you saying small fish, small eggs.
Small fish, small eggs.
Well, I don't know.
I think they might be salmon.
No, salmon roe are the pink ones.
That's the big ones that are more like a drink, those drink bubbles.
I don't know what they are.
This is one of the rare instances.
It's a thing I don't even care about.
But the thing is, she scotched the deal, forgive my saying.
You don't go and say that if you're pulling it off with a child.
Yeah, you don't go, ha, ha, ha, those are fish eggs.
You save that.
Save that for when you're tucking them in bed at night.
There you go.
You pull out your lifelike fish puppet.
Guess what you did today.
I love you.
Where's my kids?
But so I did a thing.
I went over on the ferry.
And I went over to the town of Winslow.
And Winslow was a town that, you know, a lot of these towns are like, we're the ferry docks.
Winslow was a little working class town when I was a kid.
My mom always had a story about, there was some white cat that lived in a laundromat that I knew by name when I was three years old.
And all these were working towns.
That's nice.
There wasn't anything cute about it anywhere then.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Was there a spider outside your window?
All the eggs?
You just ate that.
That's not really your memory.
It was like your spider, different eggs.
But then we went from Winslow to Palsbo.
Palsbo used to be a real, like a Norwegian working class fishing village.
And then from Palsbo, we went up to Langley, and then we were in...
And we were in Coop Bill.
Oh, and we went to Port Townsend.
We went to Port Gamble.
And then we went to Port Orchard.
And as I as I was going through this, all these towns have been cutified now.
They're all cute as hell.
Oh, and it's and it's if it's anything like here, it's like, oh, we've made a little funny attraction out of what this thing used to be.
Well, except, you know, except it's all very seafaring here.
Yeah, seafaring, exactly.
But it's like the Norwegian town's got a bunch of sweaters for sale.
Okay.
This one over here's got pottery.
That one's got... Everyone is selling expensive women's clothes.
I bet handmade jewelry, John, they got any of that?
A lot of handmade jewelry.
There's some... Yeah, there is some like, arr, seafaring stuff.
In the big town in Port Townsend, there was actually like a very handsome couple in their...
late 60s who clearly had been going to Indonesia for many years and bringing back artful furniture.
Treasures of the Orient, you think.
That's exactly it.
Except very sophisticated people.
They're not cornball.
Neither of them was wearing sandals.
Not a turquoise in sight.
No, they're people you would invite to a party.
Yeah.
And did they get every joke I made?
Did they even get that they were jokes?
Not really.
A lot of people in retail are pretty serious.
They're serious.
They want to know if I need any help today.
What do I need to do to put you in this turquoise today?
But what I realized at the end of this weekend was that you could actually put a day trip together where you hit every one of these cute little towns...
In a giant loop.
It'd be a long day.
Don't get me wrong.
But it's like a pub crawl, but with ports?
A pub crawl with ports.
Port crawl.
A port crawl.
You would take... Oh, and your symbol... Do you guys have crabs there?
Oh.
You know from crabs?
What if the mascot was a little crab?
And you call it... Oh, you're a crabby.
You don't want to get too cute.
I wouldn't go with K's, because K is actually Pollock, and we don't say that anymore.
That kind of crab.
But, like, the crab crawl is you go port to port, every port of call.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
You're doing this by ferry.
Pardon my say.
Yeah, you're kind of crab... You're crawling.
You have to be in a car, too, so it's a crab crawl.
Car crawl.
Okay, okay.
But you would...
Yeah, you're kind of crabbing around, sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sure, the problem with calling it a crawl is that then it's a drinking game, right?
Right away, it doesn't become a drinking thing.
In that case, you might want the K. I see what you're saying.
But that, to me, I feel like that could be church groups, scouts, scouts could crawl.
What I was thinking is it's always people coming to town who are like, I'm here for three days, what should I do?
Exactly, exactly.
And the thing is...
With me, I'll be kind of like, do you want me to just tell you the things you think you want to see?
Or do you want me to actually tell you a cool thing that will be memorable?
And I'm like, just tell me the cool thing.
I'm like, all right.
You've been watching TV as long as me.
Rice and Roni, San Francisco Tree.
Go ride on the goddamn cable car.
Yeah.
It's really, really not that interesting.
Yeah, it's so fun, the cable car.
Whereas you could spend an afternoon in the Castro you would never forget.
You know what I mean?
Well, but the thing is, you would say, you would probably, if it was up to you, you'd say, go to an art supply store.
You spent two hours at an art supply store.
The flax they closed.
Oh, my God.
You know, I would.
I would.
You know, I could say, but I could work it in sideways.
I'd say, here's the original art crawl.
We've got a flax.
Our flax closed.
That's the one where my kid met Adam that time.
I remember.
Yeah.
He couldn't hear very well.
But they got another one that's up by, you know, in the northern part of town where the shipwrecks are, the marina.
You go to that flock.
So maybe I bring in a little side door fun, and I tell you, oh, look, you can go eat soup out of bread.
And that'll get them.
Go down to the waterfront, wait in line for some chocolate.
Have a side of rice-a-roni, which now makes me think I should do my own.
You know what?
I'm going to get Jason.
Jason's got a lot of money, right?
Yeah.
Sure.
OK.
Well, Jason and I, as you know, are very heavily involved in what's happening in San Francisco.
And I think it's about time we look into some business things.
I think maybe if you want to get in on this, this could be a whole West Coast thing where we take you on a tour of the thing you think you want to see.
And it's all just completely, completely made up over the top touristy stuff.
What was the last when was the last time you took a cable car?
Oh, goodness, probably before my kid was born.
Wow, you have not even hopped on one and gone up a hill?
You know they cost more than the regular Muni.
The cable cars do.
I mean, the cable cars were up, and I'm not about to lecture the funicular guy about this, but the story goes, and you are a man who has spit on a cable car.
That's not true.
I spit over a thing, and there were cable cars below.
There's no evidence that I hit a cable car.
You can make me call him Ben Gibbert.
He's pretty busy.
I think he's on tour right now, but I will call him in for this.
You were at MC Hammer's.
No, you can't make this up.
You were at MC Hammer's birthday party, and you spit on public transit.
No, I spit down.
You know, it would probably dissipate.
But the cable car was confused.
It responded to you and said that.
It did.
Okay.
What a weird town.
That was back when the cable car had a Twitter account.
Yeah, right.
And we were partying.
Us and Willie Brown and MC Hammer's mother.
Willie Brown and MC Hammer's mother.
I promise not to touch her.
And the cable car company, it turned out, followed us.
Yeah.
The Muni.
And they were like, hey, don't spit on me.
Ding, ding.
Ding, ding.
And then it became a whole relationship.
I went to college for this job.
I was talking to the cable car person all the time for a while.
Absolutely.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I got you off topic.
I don't want to make this about money.
If what you're saying is you could productize this and do it right.
Well, it's a lot.
And the thing is, you know, you don't.
I'm always doing the thing that you're doing, which is like you and your spouse and two kids.
How much time do you really want to spend in a car?
Right.
Yeah, for one, just go to Muir Woods.
It's really nice.
It's where they made Star Wars.
It's really good.
You get to go across the goddamn bridge.
You get to go, and you get to go see where those little George Lucas monkey guys used to run around.
The monkey guys.
You know, yub-nub.
The thing I always want to know is, is there a hot tub in your hotel?
Is there a hot tub in your hotel?
Why are you asking me what to do?
Make sure you ask if it's operational.
I think a lot of places have hot tubs, but it's not up right now.
Oh, ooh.
You really got to know what to ask.
See, this is the kind of expertise that we can offer.
Real locals, local crawls.
The local crawls.
Local crawls.
And our, I almost said ascot.
Our mascot is a crab.
The crab is wearing an ascot.
And then he has different funny regional features.
Like in your case, I don't know, he's wearing a Mariner's hat or something.
Oh, you know what we'll do?
We'll put – Captain's hat.
He wears a captain's hat there.
What are those little squares that – little digital squares that you point your camera at and it tells you all – Oh, QR Crab?
Is that his name?
Yeah, well, QR Crab.
Hello, and welcome to QR Crab.
Is this your first time dining with us?
We do things a little bit different here.
All in all these little towns, there'll be little QR crabs.
QR crabs.
QR crabs, they suddenly really want to also be the restaurant.
Is that okay?
It should be.
We should make sure that we get that URL before the end of the day.
QR crabs.
QR crabs.io or something.
Yeah, QR crabs.ru, sure.
Sure, sure, Russian crabs.
But I definitely feel like it's a tough day, but I feel like I'm going to start challenging people with it.
Oh, you get him out of that green, get him into the yellow a little bit.
Yeah, how much cute do you want?
How much cute can you handle?
How many cute towns do you think you can get in a day?
So, I mean, it is similar in some ways to, like, you know, in Hollywood back in the day, you could go and, like, get the tours on a double-decker bus and find out where Angelina Jolie used to live, right?
Or you can even do crazy stuff.
Like, there's probably, like, I don't know, I'm guessing, like, a Martin Scorsese tour in New York.
But there's things where you go, right, on tour buses is one.
You're saying this is, and I really want to get away from the word ferry, but you're going to have some way of getting to going to Port Charles, Port Arthur, Port-au-Prince, all the great Pugets.
Yes, all the ports.
One of the things about the Northwest is that we didn't invent cream cheese here.
We perfected it.
That's what QR Crab says.
That's right.
We perfected it.
I'm a pedantic crab.
It's not the cradle of civilization here by any means.
Really, like, taking an old fishing town and making it cute.
Real Tigris and Euphrates type situation.
I mean, this is only the third iteration of these towns, right?
If you go to Philadelphia, Philadelphia has been through 70 iterations.
I don't think they invented cream cheese.
They probably found a scalable way to make a lot of it.
Philadelphia, you're saying?
It's mostly people from Germany there.
They're not super bright.
I mean, that's the problem out here.
What do you got in Pennsylvania?
What do you got?
You got Germans.
You probably got a lot of Italians.
I've seen the deer hunter.
What are they, Italian in that?
uh italians let's call them italians yeah yeah is that racist no to call someone an italian call them portuguese that would be racist i don't i don't know i'm trying to think of a situation where calling somebody italian would be racist hey hey italian hey oh maybe that's something commander crab says because because also he's guiding the tour right
We'll have Jason Finn do all the voices for Commander Crab.
Hey.
For Q.R.
Crab.
Keep your arms inside the car at all times.
Hey, it's me, Q.R.
Crab.
Welcome to the show.
Don't touch the fairy.
But so, let's join the back.
I do feel, you know, it had not even occurred to me, Merlin, until you asked to try and monetize this.
I was just doing this as a public service.
They're not mutually exclusive.
You think George Washington stopped cutting down trees when he became president?
No.
No, he was a farmer.
Right, right.
You can still have your business.
But he was one of those foggy bottom swampers.
He sure was.
Yeah, he didn't need to cut down any trees.
Those were all felled.
Fell by a swamp.
Yep, yep, yep.
Swamp felon.
Swamp fellers.
Yes.
Oh, those are the bad guys.
Like when the Native Americans attack your train on a cowboy ride.
Oh.
Hey, here come the swamp fellers.
The swamp fellers.
You know what?
I don't know.
I'm just saying if you want this IP, you know what I'm thinking of, John?
You might have done this, and if you haven't done this, you need to do this.
There is a thing, and I don't know exactly what it's called, but it's a thing my family's done several times.
I've done once.
It's a thing where there's this chain of attractions in different states, and you ride on old railways with a car, an electric-powered kind of car, and you go on a little tour, and then you go and have lunch.
I like that stuff.
And we did that in, where did we do that?
Up in, oh, we did it up near Sonoma.
And it was really fun.
They've done it a few times.
So, like, you can, when I say productize, what I really mean is, you know, make money.
Yeah.
But you could, the thing is, if you put this all together under the aegis of QR Crab LLC.
Yeah.
Like, there's a thing.
There's crabs everywhere.
You know, they say in America, you're never more than three feet away from a crab.
What?
Really?
I'm pretty sure someone said that.
That's an American saying?
It might be a Midwestern saying.
You know, abundance of caution type situation.
But there are all kinds of places.
You know, you think about that thing.
A funny joke this time of year is we make jokes about Spirit Halloween and how that used to be a thing and now it's a Spirit Halloween.
More and more things could become part of the QR Crabs empire across the U.S.
And not just for October, my friend.
Well, you know, this is a thing that I – the first time somebody told me that they were an entrepreneur, I think I might have either – I was either with you or I was with Hodgman and somebody – and I asked somebody, oh, hey, what do you do?
And they said they were an entrepreneur.
And I know you just – you throw up a little bit when somebody says something like that.
If I ask a normal person what they did and they said, I'm a small business owner, I would think that's strange because if a normal person had owned a small business, they'd say, I have a hardware store or a painting business, like a person.
But instead, you talk about how fancy you are about owning a business and that's what you think your job is.
I'm an entrepreneur.
And that's why we like to add serial entrepreneur.
Oh, serial entrepreneur, which means that you're bad at business.
Yeah, and you love sugar smacks.
Yeah, so that's the thing.
The first time that I asked somebody, like, what does that mean?
Yeah.
And they were like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I said, well, but.
That's how they talk, all entrepreneurs.
It's a kind of can't.
It's like a thieves sort of spirit.
Yeah.
I said, do you make things or sell them or is it an experience?
They add a lot of value probably.
So then I started to say, well, wait.
Anytime somebody proposes a business to me, I'm like, now, okay, that's the business proposal, but what is the actual job?
That's such a good distinction.
Honestly, that's a good – What's the job, right?
And everybody that ever comes to me and says like, oh, I'm going to buy a cafe –
I always say, so you're giving yourself a job in a cafe.
Yeah, where you're kind of the last person to be paid.
Where you're the last person to be paid.
You have to be there first in the morning and last at night, and everybody turns to you for everything.
There's a woman about my age that runs our coffee place, and she's...
Unbelievable.
She's absolutely unbelievable.
Like I see her, she's there and doing coffee before I get to the office and she's there like cleaning up the sidewalk and like hosing out and taking out trash as I leave the office.
And she does that every day and she's my age.
I sit very still and wait for a podcast to start.
That's what I do.
Yeah, there's no other way to be a small business person than to be that, right?
That lady's not a preneur.
She works for a living.
Call me sergeant.
She's got a place.
And everybody, the people that say like, oh, I'm saving up to, you know, one day I hope to own a restaurant.
They're always saying that as a way of saying like, I'm not just going to work in this restaurant the rest of my life.
So don't just call me a waiter.
Yeah.
I'm not just a waiter.
I'm going to own this place one day, and I'm like, and you'll be a waiter.
I'm an aspiring, failing business owner.
In addition to being a waiter, then you'll also be that waiter's manager.
Everybody else gets tipped out first.
Exactly.
You're not even going to get tips anymore.
That's how bad this job that you're giving yourself is.
And you've got to deal with the government.
Oh, the government.
You know who hates governments?
It's Q.R.
Crab.
I don't want to have to pay the tax.
Holy crap.
That's quite a way to look at it.
I see Q.R.
Crab now as Lieutenant Akbar from the Disneyland ride, Force Awakens.
Yeah, right.
The government.
New York City.
It's a trap.
I've watched several 4K ride-through videos of that attraction.
Yeah.
I'm apparently the only person I know who has not been to the new Star Wars land.
My wife and my child have been there, and I haven't.
Why?
Just because it didn't work out that way.
They were doing their own thing for that.
I see.
I see.
And you and I don't get to go to Disney together as much as I'd like.
Maybe after this crab thing takes off.
Okay.
I agree.
And that doesn't even sound like a job.
Oh, it sounds like a crabtrepreneur.
You know what?
You know what would happen if you and I went to that Disney thing?
If we went to the Star Wars land?
Yeah, you and I would sit on a bench somewhere, and we would look around, and we would each be thinking of all the things they should do.
Oh, my God.
You know what they should do?
The most important is the sitting part.
You know what they should do?
You know what they should do?
Here's what they should do.
Dexter or Jetster.
They should give him a place here.
I feel like for 60% of the dads that go into that Disney thing, they look around.
No, you know what?
I always say something like 60%, but then when I go and I look around, I realize... Oh, it's a bunch of fucking snorks.
Yeah, it's only 2% of the people that are looking around going, you know what they should do?
Everybody else is like... Where do I get my pineapple whip?
Snorks is exactly what the fuck it is.
It's full of snorks.
So many snorks.
Well, you know, I watched... Sorry.
You know what they should do?
What should... What ought they do, John?
Oh, they should do... Mr. Krabs.
You know, the thing that's great about Disney's Star Wars Land... Yeah.
is that the rides don't even matter.
Oh, it's like you just get to go even just look at the Lionel Falcon.
You just get to go be there, right?
I know, I know.
And the thing about being there is Disney's always thinking in terms of rides, like, oh, rides, it's got to have these big rides.
Attractions, they call them.
Attraction.
And then in this newer age, this is something that really kicked off a million years ago with stuff like Space Mountain, or really, to an extent, parts of the Caribbean.
But make waiting in line part of the attraction.
And they do that.
They do that.
When you get to see you, don't you get a little, so you go see the Mon Calamari guy.
He's in your boat with you on the ride, right?
Yeah, he is.
But isn't there one where you see a really cool C-3PO?
Isn't there one where you see a really cool 3D ray and stuff like that?
Yep, those are all in there.
Is that the ride?
Well, yeah, it's part of the attraction.
Yeah.
Well, you're on the other side of the ticket wall.
And they got the Omnimover, not the Omnimover, the new system.
They got that new system where you can move anywhere.
But, you know, I was leaning up against a wall just kind of like looking around.
You know what they could do here.
Well, that's what I was doing.
You know what they could do.
And then all of a sudden, here comes Darth Vader.
What's his butt?
The young one with the cracky face.
Yeah, Kylo Ren.
Yeah, cracky face.
And he comes waltzing over, tall.
Big fella, yeah.
Yeah, he's got two stormtroopers.
He is a Marine, sorry.
He walks right... I'm just standing there.
Right, right, right.
He walks right over, comes right under my face, and he goes...
Do you support the new order, the new contemporary order?
I'm just on vacation with my family, guy.
So, you know, me, I did improv in college.
I am just a simple crab entrepreneur.
I did.
I said, I'm just a humble shopkeeper.
Yes.
And he said, do you support the new... What is it?
Not New Order?
Yeah, I know.
That's the band with Bernard Sumner.
Yeah.
No, it's confusing.
They've got different names for it.
I know what you're talking about.
The First Order.
First Order.
Do you support the First Order?
And I said...
I just, I'm a little confused here.
I'm just, you know.
And, of course, then there's a crowd of people all coming around.
I don't want to know trouble.
I just want to run my shop.
I make a blue milk over there.
And he's right in my face.
And I said.
Are you sure he worked there?
No, I think so.
He's very convincing.
I don't know.
That seems a little confrontational.
And then he was.
And then one of the stormtroopers goes, you know, sir, you're going to, don't frustrate him or something like that.
And he said, do you support the First Order?
Oh, boy.
And I said, and all I could think of to say was, I'm a little drunk.
Okay, that's pretty good.
And both of the stormtroopers did the very exaggerated head shakes.
Like, oh, no, he didn't.
Like, really gave me the comedy.
Like, oh, here we go.
Uh-huh.
We got a live one.
And one of them stepped forward and said, just tell him you support the First Order.
And I was like, I support the First Order.
And they marched off and it was very good.
It was very good kayfabe.
I was extremely glad to have been in that experience.
I heard when you enter that room, there's a room where you go in.
My family told me about this because they went and I didn't.
Not that I'm angry.
But the room where you go in and there's like all these stormtroopers lined up and you're like, wait a minute.
Are those all dolls or are those all people?
No, some of them are dolls and some of them are obviously people.
It sounds like it was a very upsetting effect.
Yeah.
It's a massive.
Hugely effective effect.
But if Disney went 25% more toward Kylo Ren walking around.
You put that politics into increasing your sales.
But then 25%.
I don't need to be on a ride where Mon Mothma is telling me some Mon Mothma stuff.
I need to be standing on a street corner and see somebody push a bunch of buttons on a wall and a door opens and they go in and then you go over and push those buttons and the door doesn't open.
Like I need more of that.
I think this is kind of what they tried to do with the hotel.
Yeah, they're trying to do it with the hotel, but that's like $10,000 an hour.
No, it's gone.
It's gone.
They closed it.
Oh, they did?
No, it's donezo.
They lost, I believe, trillions of dollars.
Oh, that's true.
Yeah, it's really weird.
How few people wanted to go on a minimum four-person, minimum several-day thing where you just went... It sounds basically like going on a slightly overfunded company...
like like trust building exercise kind of yeah like like be down be down in the lobby at four because we're gonna learn how to make space yo-yos or whatever yeah well and the thing is all it needs but it's a girl with a foldy hat you know you got one snork on your team who like doesn't who can't improv who can't be like i'm a little drunk haha
But but so I'm thinking here in the northwest as we go around.
Right.
We're not going to we're not going to have like forced encounters with like cartoon pirate craft.
No, yours would be much more organic.
But that's the thing.
You're in a store, say you're looking at some Indonesian crafts and then, oh, hey, look, it's Jason Finn of Seattle's Presidency of the United States of America Band.
Right.
Like we could we could do that.
We could.
How is how would he be dressed for that?
Oh, in his usual pirate costume.
Oh, I thought maybe he'd be wearing this.
He's kind of like a Patagonia kind of guy, right?
No, he could be.
Doesn't he wear a lot of fleece?
Well...
In the 90s, he was an absolute perfect cartoon version of the 90s.
I showed my child the video for Peaches and Lump.
Like the cutoff Dickies with Long Johns and Doc Martens.
It was like if a Christian comedy show on a local network decided to do a grunge parody.
Yeah, exactly.
Except then he would also have the Grungers Sonics jersey over the top.
Oh, that's all.
It was it was comical.
And people actually dress like that.
He was not he he he was a parody of himself.
But nobody here realized that that's because you're a parody doesn't mean you're authentic.
That's right.
Sometimes sometimes it makes you extra authentic to parody yourself.
Then he got a little bit of money, but he went that way where he was like, oh, I'm buying really nice merino wool technical fabric zip-up cardigans and stuff.
What kind of thing you look askance at, if I could say?
A little bit.
I mean, you've got it in your wardrobe, but if you're a man with those kind of means...
Here's what I don't have.
Wax pants is what he needs.
Zip up Merino wool.
Let's just call it that.
Maybe this is the name of his character.
Zip up?
No, no, no.
Sergeant Crabb has to deal with somebody.
Maybe he gets into a little bit of fisticuffs with Merino grunge or whatever his name is.
Marino Grunge.
No, Marino Wooly.
But you know what I mean?
It'd be cute if he showed up at the fish place and goes, ah.
And he's the bad guy, and they have to fight.
And then you say, like, say you support the band New Order.
I bet he likes New Order.
I bet he likes New Order.
He does.
He does.
Well, the thing is, he's from the Northwest, right?
So then he went through his fancy Marino phase.
But then.
Hello, fancy Marino.
He still bikes everywhere on an electric scooter.
And so all of his sweaters started to get holes in the elbows.
The moths?
No, well, maybe.
A little bit from Maz, a little bit from Tumbles, a little bit from, like, everything here is just a little sary.
Oh, so he's a little bit shop-worn.
As we've seen in the Star Wars game, he'll be a little bit kit-bashed.
There's a little bit kit.
He's a little kit-bashed now.
Yeah.
So it's hard to tell.
Okay, all right.
It's hard to tell.
The thing is, I don't think he listens to the show.
We need his money, so we should find a way to fool him into doing this.
He's probably got more money than either of us by a long shot.
Mm-hmm.
Okay, but I bet he's got access to capital.
Is he a preneur?
Is he a rocktrepreneur?
So a lot of people up here in the rock business realized, oh, the preneurs are where the money is.
But they made the absolute massive error of thinking that it was restaurant preneurs.
This is what happened with the Bruce Willis's and Arnold Schwarzenegger's's.
Yeah, they invest in restaurants.
Oh, right.
Isn't that kind of a basketball thing to do?
Yeah, it's just like pouring your gold into the ocean.
I think football players buy car washes.
Sure.
I bet basketball players buy restaurants.
Baseball players get Pontiac dealerships.
Pontiac dealerships.
That's right.
Come and see.
It's new for 2024 Catalina.
Mm-hmm.
But who were the ones that get restaurants?
Oh, I was thinking that – it seems like a basketball player thing.
Oh, basketball player.
Yes, yes, yes.
I'm sorry.
I'll put it in your local vernacular.
Would that be a wizard?
No, no.
We have – A Sonic.
It would be a Sonic.
I feel like Shaquille O'Neal actually owned a Starbucks in Seattle at one point, a big Starbucks.
That guy's not afraid to cash in that fellow.
Well, but that's the thing.
There's always – in any restaurant, there's one person that makes money and everybody else loses their shirt.
Oh, interesting.
Again, not to make this weird, but again, who gets paid when?
Like if you've set up your – I'm going to use some business terms I'm making up.
If you've done your entry event and your exit strategy in the right way, you get paid prima nocta, like before the others do.
It's just that if you own a cafe and you're a preneur, you definitely get paid less after the government.
Yeah, and I think Jason has owned enough restaurants that he's thrown all his gold into the ocean.
He's molten gold.
I do feel, I feel like that's probably the case.
I only just recently bought into a restaurant.
Oh, really?
And I might have just, well, it's not like big.
I just, my friends were, were saving Pichet, Le Pichet.
And I went to Ken Jennings and I was like, I know you love Pichet.
And he said, I do.
And I said, we got to help my friends out because they were struggling.
And so, uh, you know, Ken is in a position to help them a lot more than I could help them.
But it was one of those things where when we were helping them, interest rates were at an all-time historic low.
Right.
And so they're like, listen, I know interest rates are only 2.5%, but we're going to pay you, wait for it, 4%.
And I was like, 4%?
Wow, that's a whole percent and a half more.
And then, of course, now interest rates are like, what, 80%.
Is it harder to get a loan, though?
Well, I don't know.
I don't have to get any loans.
All I'm doing now is getting every month a tiny little check that represents a 4%.
For me, this conversation we're having right now is basically like I was in a car driving somewhere, and I asked where the nearest McDonald's is, and they explained internal combustion to me.
Oh, dear.
No, no.
I just – I don't understand anything about what you're talking about.
I remember interest rates were high in the 80s, and that made everyone sad.
That's right.
And when my mom sold houses, that was a big deal.
It was.
So when you're offered – so when you're offered by Pichet or similar, they say, look, it would be like a bond almost, right?
So, yeah.
So here's – You say, in this amount of time, I'll give you your money back plus this percentage, correct?
Yes.
And so when you're looking at any kind of investment –
You're thinking, here's this amount of money.
Oh, versus if you just put it into the market.
Yeah, if you just put it in the bank, you're going to get 2%.
If you give it to a stockbroker over time, they're going to give you 6%.
If you put it in real estate in San Francisco in 2002...
In 2022, it's going to have increased 1 billion percent.
It's all this stuff.
Everybody's trying to tell you that they're going to give you- It depends on your risk portfolio, I'm guessing.
Thank you.
Yeah, right.
In a situation like that where you had a low interest rate,
for a long time not a long time but for a while people just got pretty used to it though right yeah and a lot of assumptions about personally and in the economy it seems like there were a lot of assumptions made about how long that environment would stay that way yeah and the mortgage thing as you're saying it made it really if you could afford to put a down payment on a house you're you're going to be paying really low interest for the rest of the mortgage for 30 years
It's a great deal.
If you lock that in.
If you lock that in.
That's not a variable.
That's a fixed.
It's a fixed rate mortgage.
Okay.
But what happens is the market will all of a sudden flip-a-roo, and then you're at 6%.
then the whole equation changes.
And when the interest rates changed just recently, I think it threw the whole financial world upside down because a lot of people had put money into a thing and all of a sudden it was not worth anything close to what they could be getting just on the... They say that the economy doesn't like surprises.
No.
No alarms and no surprises is what it says.
That's true.
Right on the box.
Yes.
So there's a lot of that going on now.
That's pretty good.
I didn't know you could do that.
That was pretty good.
Yeah.
I'm like, oh, I'm getting 4%.
Oh, no.
Now I could be getting 7% if I just took it and gave it to the paper boy and said, go right around the block with this money for a weekend.
Come back and give me the lint that it collected.
It's called appreciation, right?
It's called appreciation.
A priori appreciation.
I appreciate.
I appreciate.
I appreciate you, Merlin.
Merlin.
I appreciate you too, John.
I'm always reluctant to go into any kind of business, but I'm pretty excited about what we're looking at here.
Oh, you're talking about our Krabby Patties.
Well, I'll give you what I can.
I'm going to have to see what the interest rate looks like.
I'm a podcastpreneur.
The thing is that you're never going to leave San Francisco.
Am I right?
I don't know.
I don't really care.
Anymore?
No, at all.
No.
But no, I don't know.
I mean, who knows?
Does Madeline want to leave San Francisco someday?
I don't know.
We have no agency.
No one in America has any agency over their life anymore, which just makes you realize all the agency it seems like people had in previous generations was just no bus oblige.
Like, oh, you were in the army, so now you get to go to college.
And we realize how much stuff that seems like part of what has become to be called the American dream was actually just a weird anomaly.
Things like, you want to talk, was that here or somewhere else?
Talking about, oh yeah, what a jam up recycling is, right?
Oh yeah, it's a jam up.
We talked about that here, right?
Like where the price of fuel for barges to China went up.
So guess what?
No more recycling.
Well, what happened?
I thought we were recycling.
Yeah, yeah, but there was a giant asterisk in that, which is like – the problem is, though, don't give those boats a reason to just push a bunch of plastic in the water because that's actually cheaper than taking it somewhere and cleaning it.
Interest rates, am I right?
Interest rates are the – that's the stock and trade of the preneur.
Interest rates are when you take int and you rest –
Are the ints, the ints are, they're like orcs?
Ruh and eights.
Oh, is that a mnemonic, John?
Easy to remember?
That's easy to remember.
I think people have less agency than they think.
I think people like to act like they have agency.
If you say shit like, yeah, well, here's my plan.
And I love those ads.
Those ads on TV.
Because I've been, please don't talk about this.
Don't get me in trouble.
But I've been watching a little bit of cable news to just see what's been happening.
Lots going on.
And I'll see those ads for apps.
And it's two beautiful 25-year-old people who are meant to be married.
And they're sitting there both looking at their phones.
And they just have a bunch of things.
And you know the way you slide to unlock back in the day?
They're doing that, but with everything in their future.
It's like projected retirement, age 42.
Slide.
And it's like, oh, I just need to get an app.
Look how easy it was for them.
They got it all planned out.
The app, all you got to do, you go to the app and you slide left to right and it gives you all the things that you need.
All this time I was thinking that was out of reach for me.
I should have that agency if I get that out.
The crazy thing about advertising is that there's the kind of advertising that's trying to reach the maximum number of people, like for the McD—not even the McDLT.
That's fancy.
Yeah, kind of brand advertising.
Just like the Whopper.
NASCAR-style advertising.
Home of the Whopper.
Yes.
But if you're selling something like—
retirement stuff oh i see casper mattresses you're trying to reach a very select audience sleepy people with podcasts podcast listening people who are sleepy and have money and like to get they still owe us for the greatest ad rate of all all we should be getting we should remember your paisley mattress do you remember that
Oh, sure.
House Trotter.
Sure.
It's floating in the ether somewhere.
I still think about that meal.
But those ones that are like retirement, all they care about is if they get one in a million people to look at that and go, hey, that's me.
Hey, that's me.
I think about the Jenga game in the big short, you know, in the big short where they show the A's and triple A's and everything as a Jenga game.
And I just think about like, hey, give us your little piece of wood.
We'll draw letters on it and say this is what it's worth.
I'm just now at the at the age and I think you're at this age, too.
where I'm realizing that families, families, are younger than us.
Oh, yes, oh no, that's, it hit me that our mayor is younger than me.
There's all these little slow dawning things, but yeah, there are actual families.
So all of the houses that you see anywhere you go, that have children's stuff,
On the lawn, in the backyard.
You're saying it's like Michael Corleone's house and there's a little race car out in the snow.
Or any house that's got five bedrooms where you feel like there's some teens living above the garage and then the littler kids.
All of those are younger than us.
Because most people our age are starting to see their
youngest kids go off to college.
And so that means to me that all the neighborhoods that you drive through where you're like, every one of these houses either has a 75 year old, a couple of 75 year olds in here who are, who are still living in the house because of their grandkids or a young family that's filling up these bedrooms with, with kids.
And we, you and I are neither group,
And no one cares about us, but that's always been true for our whole lives.
Yeah, it's really only become incontrovertibly obvious more recently, but yeah, it's always been true.
Yeah, no one has ever cared about us.
I'm basically a human rounding error.
And that's fine.
That's fine.
We never wanted anybody to even notice us.
It's actually become kind of a relief.
but realizing because i went i went i took my daughter to over to a friend's house to play and the friend had moved the friend's parents had moved and i was talking to the dad and i was like yeah i like your house you know and he's like oh yeah it's great we're living up this road and all four of the houses around us are our parents our age with kids in our same age group so the kids are all just running around playing
And I said to the dad.
Did they all just like find Nazi gold separately?
Well, this is what I'm wondering.
And I said to him, are you 40 yet?
And he said, no, no, no.
My wife and I are both 37.
That's nice.
They own a house where other people their age own houses.
Is that right?
Yeah.
That's good for them.
And it's a bunch of 37-year-olds who all have houses and kids that are, wait for it,
Like 12, 11, 10, 8.
I hate these families so much.
So they were all married.
I bet they play sports and violins.
They were all married and started having kids in their early 20s or in their mid-20s.
And now they have homes.
And this story is, if you believe the internet, that none of this is happening.
All these people are saddled with student loans and they're just complaining on Twitter all day.
But in fact, the world is actually made up of people that age who are owning the homes.
And I'm the anomaly.
I should be in a home in another couple of years.
Right.
Although you did not misspeak.
You meant what it sounded like.
You should probably be put away somewhere nice where you can cornhole all day.
We were in a museum and we were looking at pictures of people.
And she said, why is it?
Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
It wasn't that.
It was after we left the museum.
We went to a graveyard.
Oh, and we were walking around a Victorian graveyard.
And she said, why are all of the men dead before they're 50 or 55?
And I said, well, life was hard.
And also, I don't know if you knew this, but daddy has exceeded his life expectancy.
Every day is a gift for me.
Otherwise known as the talk.
I don't know if you know this, but Daddy has exceeded his life expectancy.
Sweetheart, everything on you is breaking down.
Daddy loves you very much, but he should be deceased by now.
You're going to have to care for Daddy.
I don't know if anybody told you that.
That's just a statistical burden right now, but get ready for that to get a lot bigger.
Really, we're talking about like a hospital bed in the living room type situation.
And then I put my hand over next to her ear, and I just slowly made a fist so she could hear the...
That's terrifying.
I was just like.
Oh, your little sinews crack?
Here it is, baby.
Listen, that's what it sounds like.
That's what it sounds like inside daddy.
It's a lot louder and more disappointing in my own head.
Yeah, it's ringing every one of these joints.
It rings in my own head, like humming.
It sounds like someone organizing a rubber band collection.
Just a terrible, terrible creaking.
So there I am, you know, I'm out there.
I appreciate your candor, if I could say.
I'm glad you're not my dad, but I'm really glad you laid it out like that.
But does that give you, does that put, as they say, put a fire under your irons?
I don't know what the phrase is, but are you thinking, because maybe I'm obsessing over this, but I don't know how much you have to do with yourself.
It seems to me you could work with some of these folks at the various ports and start putting together some kind of a package.
Where you would be, what do you call it, Admiral Neptune?
What's your name?
Yeah, Admiral Neptune.
The famous character, Admiral Neptune.
It's a trap.
I think it's so lazy that he's...
Mon Calamari.
Now, there's Mon Mothma.
Yeah.
Who we know, who's hot.
Yes.
She's really hot on Andor.
Yes.
And then you've got Mon Calamari, if I believe, and I don't know if I really don't want to be ableist or racist about this, but I believe that Admiral Ackbar...
is a breed, an alien type, called Mon Calamari.
Yeah, from the one Clone Wars episode where they live on a planet where there's also shark people.
Oh, nice.
There's Calamari people, there's shark head people.
I like the Lerman.
It's not their finest moment.
This is taking too long.
Roger, roger.
You know, it didn't occur to me that Mon Mothma was right out of typecasting for you.
Mon Mothma, she is so right over the place.
Like a competent ginger.
She's just a Merlin man mom.
Oh, that's a mothma I'd like to be friends with.
A milf, if you like.
Space milf.
A milf.
A milf.
Milf.
I just think it's so lazy that her... Well, first of all, the kind of person who could come up with a name like Dexter Jetster is very funny to me.
Thank you, George.
Thank you for that.
But also, you got Mon Mothma, who we met in, I believe, Return of the Jedi.
She's the one who talks about the Bothans.
And then we meet a younger, I believe, Mon Mothma in Andor.
And she's got maybe the greatest vehicle in Star Wars history, that blue space car she has.
It's great.
Wasn't the vehicles in Andor so good?
I mean, everything in Andor.
Andor's the best Star Wars, full stop.
But the vehicles in that were all so good.
The problem with Mon Mothma is that it feels like he was – George Lucas was –
kind of half remembering the Mons pubis from biology class?
I just, I half remembered it too, and now you fixed it for me.
We don't need all these different Mons, though.
You couldn't have, in all the galaxy or whatever, you got a Mon Mothma and a Mon Calamari?
Am I remembering wrong?
Doesn't that seem like a lot of Mon?
It's a lot of Mons, and it's like... It's like a Jamaican bar around here.
Does Mons mean... Three little birds.
Shut up.
Don't worry.
Does Mons mean the same thing in his world as it doesn't are?
Mons pubis.
Now, that would be a good name.
You know that little wrinkly lady with the glasses that Ray gives the lightsaber to?
That would be a good name.
Mons pubis would be a good name.
What's her name?
Flapjack?
Flapjack?
Crackjack?
What's her name?
Flapjack?
Crapjack.
What's her name?
I know this.
Crapjack.
Crapjackpreneur.
No.
What is her name?
I know this.
I don't know.
She's got funny glasses.
And it's that woman from the movie that I like.
She's the woman from the movie.
Wait.
She was holding Luke Skywalker's Jedi sword for the daughter.
Yeah.
In a box.
She had the Jedi sword in a box.
In a box.
Yes.
In the basement.
Mm-hmm.
Why?
Why?
Why anything?
I mean, Ray meets somebody for two minutes, it becomes the most important relationship.
Nothing against her.
I heard she made almost $60 for doing those movies.
That's what I heard.
Well, you know, she appears in the Disneyland as a hologram.
That's true.
You know, that's what SAG-AFTRA was fighting against.
The problem for that was, you know, that ride costs extra and we paid for it.
No shit, really?
Yeah, and we came out.
That's for, what is it called, Rise of the Resistance?
Rise of the Resistance.
We paid for it because you got to do it.
I didn't know that.
And we came out and we were like, wow, that was amazing.
Oh, awesome.
What a world building.
And then we were at Disneyland for a couple of more days.
And on the last day.
Toward the end of the day, we were like, let's go back to Star Wars Town one more time.
It's so fun over there.
Let's go back to Star Wars Town.
And we did.
And we're walking around, just soaking it up.
Don't do the trash cans walk around and stuff?
No.
See, that's the world building I'm thinking.
They used to do that at Tomorrowland.
They had walk around trash cans.
Like a mouse droid.
Wouldn't that be cute?
They should have a lot more.
You know what they should do?
They should have you and me sit on a bench and say, you know what they should do?
And we would come up with...
Five good ideas, totally affordable, that could make that place better.
We've become the kitchen cabinet, right?
Yeah.
We're there to serve informally.
They have these in places like Pixar.
You've got this board of hairy old men or whatever they're called.
Yeah.
And they just sit around in the park.
What I was going to tell you much earlier was I like to watch Disney things.
And I watched a official it was it's a Disney produced movie, but it's a promotion for Disney World.
Sorry, the Magic Kingdom from maybe 1972, 74, which is around the first time I went there, which is interesting because like it's been open for a couple of years.
They kind of know what's going on there.
And, you know, it's wonderful and delightful.
And they still have the old offensive song for Pirates of the Caribbean and everything.
But I was looking at Main Street, USA, which to me was always a place I would tear ass through to get to the good stuff.
And then I would only stop briefly in on the way back because famously in my family, I would always buy a pound of fudge to eat on the bus ride home from the Magic Kingdom.
But it comes in a little aluminum foil thing with a plastic lid and a little – yeah.
But now I look at that.
You walk in.
Remember there used to be – well, I don't know.
It's like at Disneyland.
At Disney World, they had lockers.
You go through this little underpass thing where the train goes over, right?
You go through this, like, covered area, and then, boom, you open up into Main Street, USA.
Which is just, you know, it's just fun, the forced perspective and all that stuff.
But there's this little area you're probably, I'm guessing, about 11 feet into the park.
And there's an area with trees where you can sit down.
And this is the first time I saw it and went, ooh, looks pretty nice.
You can see everything.
You just sit there.
You just sit there under a tree.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, with your pants pulled up high.
Oh, we want the redhead.
We want the redhead.
I feel like I have a warning to everybody and to you.
Okay.
Which is that on the last day, the last night, sun was down.
We were in Star Wars town.
And I said, maybe we should do Rise of Skywalker one more time or Rise of the Resistance one more time.
Right, right.
And, of course, my daughter was like, let's do it.
Yeah.
But my daughter's mother, in her wise ways, said, should we or should we leave it?
Because you already enjoyed it so much the first time.
I hate that she's right.
I hate that she's right.
And that goes against every impulse I have, which shows you that it's good.
That's the thing.
You know, she's absolutely fucking right.
We're here.
But you're both kind of like as one, like, but mom, this is our last.
Wouldn't it be great to cap it off with just one more?
That's right.
A little bit.
We've been to every cute town.
We've taken every ferry boat.
This was true of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and I'm guessing it's just as true for this.
The one time was plenty.
The second time you ride 20,000 Leagues, you really do see that you're 18 inches underwater.
Yeah.
And we went...
And I said, come on, we're only here, you know, another hour.
Real quick, are there two different paths?
Because I kept bugging my family.
I was like, I saw this amazing video about when Kylo Ren's trying to, like, attack you down a hallway.
And there's, like, a self-healing hallway where they do these amazing effects where, like, part of the roof gets blown away.
But it's not physical.
It's all done with VFX.
But do you get, like, a different, is there a chance you get, like, I don't know, on Kings Island you had the Red Racer, the Blue Racer.
Do you get a different path, different times you ride the, you know what I mean?
Yes, I do know what you mean.
And yes, I think that is part of how it's advertised.
And yes, that was part of the way that I said, come on, it's going to be different.
We've got to get the other one.
Roll the dice.
Yeah.
And so we did.
Kylo Rylo is coming after us.
And it was and we did take a different path.
But the problem with taking the different path is that you then could see alternate you over there.
Whereas the first time you go, you're like, it's an infinite number of other worlds.
And this time you're like, oh no, this time you just come in through this door instead of going in through that door.
And we came out the other side and it was like, the little one didn't.
The little one was like, I would do it a thousand times.
But but she and the mom and I looked at each other and we're like, did you have to did you have to sort of like you were kind of right?
Oh, no, I was like, you were 1000 percent right.
And that was like that was like taking our gold and dropping it in the ocean.
Oh, no.
Yeah, because give that to us.
That's the thing.
We could have gone over and ridden on some, like, 1959 Disney ride where it was just like, oh, scenes from Peter Pan.
I love Peter Pan's flight.
And I also, yes, Peter Pan's flight.
The flight with the green boy was my favorite ride as a child.
I loved it.
And I love the fact that it was so ballsy about, like, yeah, you're in a plastic ship floating through the air.
But, like, how fucking amazing is it that you're in a boat, a ship, a plastic ship flying through the air at Disney World?
You're like, fucking A, yes!
And you get seen Nana, the big dog?
Yeah.
That's a good-ass ride.
What I don't understand, and, you know, Generation Z. Huh?
They're all there in their little tight-fitting prom dresses.
Oh, dear.
But there's lines around the block for those 50s Disney knots.
Oh, like Dumbo and stuff, right?
They love that stuff.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And rightfully so.
It's the best stuff.
But, you know, you would think, oh, everybody's going to be— When I was 10, I was really not thinking about, say, for example— Again, I know Magic Kingdom, not Disneyland.
I've been to Disneyland twice.
No, but for me, I was like, oh, do you want to take a tour of Cinderella's Castle?
No.
No.
Hard no, thank you.
Do you want to ride on the carousel?
No, I do not.
Snow White, Scary Adventures.
You know what?
Those are delightful.
That entire Rat King of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Peter Pan's Flight, Snow White, that's fine.
That's fine.
I'm going to go just wait in line for Space Mountain over and over and over, please.
And then see the House of the Future from RCA.
Oh, I think that the stuff that I wanted most to see at Disneyland...
uh was that stuff was like oh my god yes because the first time i went to disneyland the land of disney was 1977 and there was a picture on the cover of where she can do his arm of where she can do his arm okay in the teacup in the teacup and which by the way great ride it's well that ride will still fuck you yeah that ride will fuck you up don't let your head get outside the circumference that's daddy's tip
For sure, I was – in 77, it was still a lot of stuff like the future.
And now it's covered.
A lot of it was still sponsored by like Monsanto.
Yeah, or General Electric Presents.
Did you have 360, Monsanto 360?
Carousel of Progress, right?
Before they had redone all the rides, back when it was like.
It was still a little janky.
It was closer in spirit to the World Expo of 1960, whatever, 4.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
And I really loved that stuff.
I really wanted to take her on one of those sort of janky sky rides and be like, it's a shame you couldn't go to Epcot when it was still like really Epcot.
Cause it was so dorky and like going to see the lands or horizons or like even the, I mean, it's the, what's it called?
Battlefield earth.
I think that's the John Travolta movie, whatever the big, uh, uh, what's the guy's name?
Hieronymus Bosch who made the dome.
The big dome was boring.
You could basically see like a drop ceiling in it.
It was so lame and,
But they also had – anyway, a different world.
But I know what you mean, and it's part of that very – But you got to see the Eiffel Tower for the first time.
Yeah.
We had one of those in Cincinnati at Kings Island.
An Eiffel Tower?
Yeah, a one-tenth size Eiffel Tower, which is still pretty big as towers go.
Oh, yeah.
But but but but this is all part of the bittersweetness of all of these things, whether it's like watching Toy Story three or going to Disney.
Like there is something about it that's like impossibly painfully nostalgic in the Don Draper sense, like a kind of pain about the past.
It's well, especially now that families are younger than us.
And have houses.
That's pain.
Families where it's like, oh, this is a family neighborhood.
And so for me to move in here would be, I would be unwelcomely old.
Like, hey, this is a thing for families.
Does your wife work outside the house?
Oh, no, she doesn't need to.
I've been really rich since I was 23.
I invented a USB technology, and now we have kids in a house at the end of a block.
Yeah, I'm a technologopreneur.
Yeah, right.
Well, wait till you get that crab guy out there.
Shit's about to happen for you.
No more pouring gold in the sea for you, my friend.
Yeah, but the one thing that would happen if I got really successful with my Krabby Patty ride.
Yeah, yeah.
is that one thing that will never happen is that it will make me younger.
Oh, well, that's a pretty big, as you say, ask.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, but it's true.
It's not going to make me able really to...
To be like a young dad.
Would you want to be that?
Well, that's the thing.
Of all the parts of me, whenever my kid was little and I would have to call upon reserves of energy, the desire to have been younger when I had a kid, personally, just totally personally, was almost completely offset by an order of magnitude by how grateful I was that we waited until we were old to have a kid.
I don't think I would have handled it as well.
That's the problem.
I saw that energy, but boys, the energy is not a problem when you're young.
It's like you're you've committed to something and it'll turn out fine because you love your kids or whatever.
But like, I'm really glad we waited personally when I we were on the ferry and I looked over and a car pulled in next to our car on the ferry dock or on the ferry deck.
And it was a Subaru Outback.
And it had a young dad, a 37-year-old dad and his two kids.
And I'd been thinking about 37-year-old dads for the whole weekend because I'd had this experience with the 37-year-old dad living on a street of 37-year-old dads, and they all had kids that were 12.
And here's a 37-year-old dad, and he's got kids that are a little younger, not 12 years old.
They're five, five and six.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
And I think back to when I was 37, when you were 37.
And what were we doing?
We were listening to indie rock.
We were going to rock shows three nights a week.
We were going to rock shows all the time.
And in my case, traveling around the world.
And I had that moment that you're just describing now where I was like, oh, the thing about 37-year-old dads and envying them, their youth, and all their bright futures –
is that when I was 37, I still did not have the skill set to be a good dad.
I could not have done it at 27, and I probably could have done it at 37, but the fact that I... And people have made it work for years, and I think we would have made it work, but I agree with you.
I mean, I've...
I was just too much of everything.
Yes, me too.
Too much.
Too much of everything.
I thought it was charming, but I think it was an awful lot of a lot of things.
Very charming, Merlin.
You lit up every room you walked into.
Yeah.
You think so?
Oh, you did.
And then I was just going to stand by the door.
No, even when you were just standing by the door, everybody wanted to look over to the door and see what was going on over there.
Why was it so sunny over there?
Who's that guy in the backpack?
Smoke bomb.
He really looks like he wants to leave.
Did he just throw a batarang?
How did he get in here?
Yeah.
Wasn't this show so bad?
I'm not wearing hockey pants.
I'm not wearing hockey pants.
That's the worst Christian Bale I've ever heard.
Okay.
Oh, man.