Ep. 526: "Some Nice of These"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How are you?
I'm good.
I'm sorry.
You can probably hear my 3D printer.
Oh, what's it doing?
Well, it's turning off.
Is the printer three dimensions, or does it print in three dimensions?
Let me think about it for a minute.
Because my printers are all in three dimensions.
You got me.
You know, when they can come up with a 2D printer that makes three-dimensional things, call me then.
Hey, it's supposed to stop doing this.
I'm really sorry.
It's going like this.
It's all part of its shutting down.
I mean, it's a very competent printer, John.
Standby.
It's right now.
Hang on.
Turning it on.
Listen.
Ready?
Ready?
Okay.
Is it off?
You can't hear that difference?
I thought you had good ears.
Well, see, I'm in an environment.
Oh.
I'm in a noisy environment.
Your living room?
No, no, I'm well, I'm no I'm not in my living room.
I'm you brought you brought it up.
I'm I'm I got a whole bit here I was gonna do about how sometimes Mondays feel haunted But you're pivoting to you've stipulated previously you sit in a chair you unsheathe your microphone Like like a like a paladin.
Uh-huh
I'm not so sure about that alignment.
And with your weapon unsheathed, you can begin dispensing what John has to share this week.
Now, you're telling me right now you're not, without compromising your OPSEC, you're in somewhere different than that chair.
I am.
I'm somewhere different than that chair.
I'm in a different chair.
Okay.
I've yet to embrace the stand-up desk, although I bought one the other day.
Oh, boy.
I was at the Costco, and there was a guy.
John, there's a reason most people call it a sit-stand desk.
Oh, well, not only because there's no way you're going to be standing at that thing.
What are you talking about?
Well, it was so there was a guy monkeying with it.
And I was there.
I don't know.
Looking for what?
Tomato paste.
What kind of store were you at?
Costco.
Costco.
Oh, I love Costco.
Yeah.
They're based in Kirkland.
Yeah, they are.
Yeah.
And this was a Costco not far from Kirkland.
And I was there wandering around, you know, just sort of like a lazy day.
Let's go spend 17 hours in a Costco.
And there was a guy raising this desk up and down with a touch of a finger.
Was he just a bored dad?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was just like me.
Jeez!
Jeez!
And so I stopped and watched it.
Desk goes down.
Desk goes up.
And I made a comment and he said, uh-huh.
And then we were in it together.
And I said, can I try?
And he said, sure.
And I raised the desk up and down.
And I said, boy, how could you live without one of these?
I'm just imagining you texting the person with the cart and saying, could you come over?
Look on Find My.
Can you find it?
Because there's something kind of heavy I need to put in my cart.
I did have to.
Can somebody help me get this in the cart?
I did have to figure out how to get one of those big rolly ones.
Well, I did.
And I didn't know how to do that.
I didn't know about that.
And so I got so I'm standing there.
I'm looking around.
I'm like, how do you get?
I tried to lift it.
You know, I'm like, well, I can't lift this.
How do you how do you do this?
And somebody said, get an orange cart.
And I was like, it's a lot like King Arthur.
If you can't figure out how to get the sit stand desk into your cart, you're not the true king of England.
There you go.
There you go.
Strange women laying around in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
You said it.
You said it.
Some watery tart lobbed a scimitar at me.
Anyway, sorry, sorry, sorry.
So I bought it.
You talked to the other dad.
And what grabbed you?
Was there a moment where you kind of went?
See, for me, there's a moment where I go, huh.
Yeah, yeah.
You ever do that?
You ever look at something and you go, huh?
Yeah, I had that.
Yeah.
I had that.
I looked at it and I said, oh, this is going to change my life.
Yeah.
Because the desk can be down here and then it can be in this middle place.
Who says it has to be sitting for standing or a desk?
I mean, that's a serving suggestion.
John, it could be you just want your drink a little higher.
And I was thinking, what if it's got a computer on it, you'd need longer cables.
Exactly.
You put it on casters, and now you're like one of those people in a hospital rolling it around.
Just look how powerful that would be.
I know.
I mean, you don't plug into Ethernet, so you're probably fine.
Who knows what I do?
But, yeah, my family said, don't you have a desk?
And I said, well, yeah, but it doesn't do this.
Weep, weep.
I'm just like Clark Criswell.
That's a very cynical response from your family.
I've turned into a character from an 80s movie, and they didn't even have these desks in the 80s.
Um, so, um, but that's not where I am.
I'm not at a standup desk.
Okay.
Well, well, I'm in a noisy environment.
That's why I couldn't hear your printers shutting off.
Wait, hang on.
So are you just going to leave the desk bit right there?
I got a whole thing here about whether Mondays might be a little haunted.
Yeah.
If you want to talk about where you are, that's fine.
But I'm very interested in how the desk fits into your life.
Do you have a place for it?
You know, that, that sort of thing.
So, so do you have a place in mind about like, Oh, this is a place I can fill.
One of the, one of the problems was see how,
At some point along the way, when I got a new Macintosh, I couldn't find my music anymore.
The new iTunes didn't have my music on it, and I felt that the music had been stolen from me by Apple.
And barring any better information, that's a pretty good guess.
Yeah.
Well, so who'd you buy the computer from?
Well, you know, just, yeah.
And a banana or whatever.
Oh, sorry, but it is an apple.
It makes sense.
Yeah.
They're all apples.
Yeah.
If you fill up your Tesla, I mean, technically it's stealing your electricity.
In that instance, yes.
I mean, like quid pro quo, I think, or, you know, a priori now, I think it's fair to say if these were things that you had on your Apple computer and they're gone, it's only reasonable to assume that they've been taken by Apple the usurper.
Yeah, stolen.
Right.
And so you remember in the 2000s when everybody went around ripping CDs into their iPods.
Yeah.
I was part of that culture.
And I also ripped other people's
iPods into my iPods.
And...
You know, when we were on tour with Keen, they gave us iPods as a tour present at the end of the tour.
They were like, you know.
That's so nice.
They were like, hey, lads, here's, you know, some nice Bev kit.
What did Colin Moy give you at the end of the tour?
Take your time.
It's a real softball.
Just anywhere.
Just take your time.
I'll give you a minute.
Hey, John, when you were done touring with the Decembrists, what did Colin Moy give you?
You know, around Seattle, the natural response to that would be herpes.
Yeah.
Because everybody in the Northwest just throws the word herpes at any joke opportunity.
But no, no.
I didn't even get an Orangina from those guys.
Well, it was on Colin's table.
It was very clearly marked.
That was Colin's Orangina.
But so the other day, I was going through stuff down in my recording studio.
And I started finding all these Apple computers.
Yeah.
And so I pulled them out.
And I turned them on.
And there was, you know, Apple computers from the 2000s, Apple computers.
There was an Apple computer from the 1990s.
And they all turn on.
You saw the one that we got a million years ago, the white laptop?
Well, that one got stolen in South America.
That one got stolen by a street thief, and I'll never forgive him.
But the other ones, all the desktop ones, I still have.
So I turn them all on, and I'm looking at them, looking through them.
And lo and behold, there's all my music on one of these old ones.
And I don't know how to get it off.
And somebody online saw the pictures of all my computers, and they were like, hey, I can help you with that.
I'm a Mac expert.
And I said, well, why don't you help me get this music off?
And they just disappeared, ghosted me, fully ghosted me.
Why don't you say something like that if you're not going to really actually offer it?
Well, I think it's just that they don't check their Instagram DMs except for once a year or something.
I don't know.
I was going to start texting John Circusa in the middle of the night, you know, because he's asleep.
And asking him how to do this just to get a special ringtone just for you.
And it's the Billy Joel song in the middle of the night.
But anyway, so then the red phone next to its bed starts.
The Roderick line.
So then I started finding all these hard drives, these old hard drives in boxes, and I'm kind of afraid to try and power them up.
Are they like external hard drives that you can plug in?
They're not naked hard drives.
Okay, all right, cool.
No, no, no, external ones that have cases and stuff that I bought at stores.
um i don't know how to oh my god this feels like a project john not in a good way this really feels like a project see this would be that would be absolutely a rabbit hole for me i'd set up a whole staging area my wife hates it when i put up the portable table i think she considers it you know the kind of thing you buy we bought one because there's all those times when your kid's little that you do stuff like bake sales and carnival and we finally just capitulated and bought one of those long plastic tables that folds in half
Yes.
And anytime my wife sees that, she's like, oh shit, here we go.
And I'm like, I don't like to bend over.
And in that instance, I would be creating an entire, I was about to say, John, I was about to diminish my own thought and say a miniature Mac lab.
No, a Mac lab.
I would create a staging area.
Right?
I would get all of those out.
I would go and find the cables.
I'd get them organized.
And, yeah, that would be probably in the living room or the hall or, you know, maybe the kid's room.
The kid's not using that space.
I need a place to find out where my keen MP3s are.
Yep.
Well, and so, as you know, first of all, my folding table is already so covered with stuff that I can't.
It's like gone.
It's underneath the pile.
Yeah, I have a history.
I have a history with that, and that's why she makes that noise.
Yeah, it's its own problem.
But then, you know, the problem was that at some point Apple converted over to Bluetooth keyboards.
And and so some of these computers had keyboards that I couldn't get to hook up to the computer anymore, either because they were solar powered and they don't work anymore or there wasn't there's no it's like before you could charge them.
But but they were kind of like one of those one of those things like you didn't have a career and so much of a career in the business world.
But those kinds of things where you get people together and go like, we have to learn how to think creatively.
So let's let's imagine you've got a bag of grain and a wolf and a chicken and you have to, you know what I mean?
Those kinds of exercises.
Yeah.
Settlers of Catan, like any kind of German board game.
Das Bordengommen, they call it.
But where you've got, let's not be way beyond a tile puzzle, where you'd have to go like, okay, so to find out if this works with that, I have to find a cable that does this, but to know where that, right?
Isn't that kind of it?
You've locked your keys into a succession of increasingly fractally tiny cars?
Well, and now this is one of the things that I've been yelling at you about since the 1980s, which is how many different kinds of USB are there?
I don't know.
I don't know.
John, when you first said that, it was funny, and the answer was two.
Yeah.
No, when you first said that, for our listeners out there, for practical purposes, when John first said that, it was USB-A and then the 30-pin jack that you still can find in the iHome alarm clock at your locally owned motel.
Right?
And now, John, I'm not even going to make a joke about it, how many USBs we got.
We got USBs that are USBs that are and aren't USBs.
We've got USB that sometimes thunderbolt.
We've got USB that's, I mean, it's really...
famously bad and actually about three times worse than the last time you were here.
So I can't even imagine.
And with the solar, you know, how are you going to get that?
Well, Matt Howey sent me a box not very long ago, and he said, you know, this box...
It's only powered by Thunderbolt Z, you know, 2.0.
Right.
He's good about clarifying.
He's a seasoned technologist, so he would know to frame that for you and say, he might even give you a link to where you can pick up a Technology Z. Well, but here's the thing, because I was like, oh, I got Thunderbolt, and he was like, hmm, do you, though?
That's a different Thunderbolt.
Do you?
No, you've got the one that looks like a USB-C.
The one that looks like what you so like there's a kind of USB that you forget is USB.
That's that square one that you plug into like an audio device.
Right.
But that's that's that's different.
That just looks like you want.
You're talking about a Thunderbolt that looks somewhere between Ethernet and and USB B probably USB B. But it's neither.
Yeah.
And also you don't have it anyway.
No.
And you have to be able to program in Linus.
You know, it's like the whole, I don't know how to do any of it.
But anyway, so I got five computers.
You never studied Linus at all though, right?
I mean, like, what was it called?
Dax or Dix or Cox?
What was the name of your program you went to?
The History of American Thinking?
Yeah, History of American Thinking.
And I studied him just as much as any fan of Peanuts did.
Okay.
All right.
But I... Her Franklin's finally getting his own show.
Is that right?
A lot of people write about Pigpen now.
Yeah, well, you know, don't differently shame him.
No, thank you.
Okay, so Matt, how I sent you a box.
What kind of box?
Well, no, it was some kind of box, but talk about boxes, because none of these boxes have the right cables.
Anyway, so I thought, stand-up desk.
Because what happened, what had happened was, the actual computer I was trying to use suddenly was on a desk with five other computers, and there wasn't room...
For all of that at the same time.
So what I was doing in the legacy setup that you had so Your family likes to make crack wise and say well don't you already have a desk and you say well It doesn't matter how many deaths I've got if they have things on it.
This would be a whole new paradigm It goes up and goes down.
Okay, so that's the thing if I put my real because I only had I had five computers, but I only had two keyboards and
So I had to keep switching keyboards from computer to computer.
You drop the chicken off on the other side because then the wolf's not going to eat the grain.
There you go.
Exactly.
So I had to take the keyboard across the stream, but I had to use that keyboard to go into the computer to switch preferences.
You might have had to ride Matt Howey's box back to the other side.
Well, you'd have the right cables for that probably.
I did get that working.
I did buy several cable adapter, like FireWire Z into FireWire C.
And you could daisy-chain those together and get all the way back to whatever.
A lot of initiative.
This is before you got the desk, John.
Is that right?
Yeah.
So the desk is still in a box leaning against the wall because I haven't quite finished cleaning up all the distortion boxes that were on the floor that would have been where the desk went.
It's kind of no wonder you had to leave today.
Once I get the desk...
up i'm going to put my real computer the current one that has firewire g okay and i'm going to put it on the desk and i'm going to raise it up it's going to be at a different level what if you decide later on you'd like it to be a couple inches lower what do you do well see i can do that i can bring it back down but if i put it up then visually visually and therefore emotionally
it's going to be at a different level it's not going to be down here mixed up in the hoi polloi with all these old legacy john you've got options you've got options and as my friend dan used to say you are your options another thing i want to point out as it happens i think i told you this i got a sit stand or as you said i actually i say standing desk too i got a standing desk did i tell you about this for christmas three or four years ago oh no kidding and it was so funny because people love you
Well, yes.
They love the idea of me.
But it was a, do you know what I mean when I say a message gift?
Was it wrapped in a newspaper with some fish?
No, it was just two people pointing and going, huh?
Huh?
As in like as in like you've got to.
So, you know, the Ikea kitchen, the little kids have the best toy in the world.
That one, of course, makes the sizzling noise.
It's the best toy ever.
I had one of those turned around in the front window of because it's where we used to brush our kids hair before school.
It was just we needed a place to put the kitchen when no one was playing with it anymore.
I started using that as a stand desk.
You're kidding.
And it was fantastic.
Because think about, you're not funning, right?
You know what I'm talking about.
Oh, absolutely.
We had one.
Yeah.
For sure.
And you know, that could be a cabinet or that could be a microwave.
Like, it's very fun to play with.
And at a certain age, a kid can take out the plastic sink and fit their head through it.
And it's very funny.
It's very funny to see your kid's head come out of the sink.
I highly recommend it.
But they were like, you know, and they're like, hey, you know, the implication, we've been pretty cool about this.
Like, you do a lot of stuff that's pretty weird here, and then we just don't say anything about it.
So I got a message gift, and the message gift was a sit-stand desk.
Oh, basically get the kitchen out of the living room?
I'm acquainted with someone who was once given towels and soap
by a boyfriend's mother for Christmas.
And that person, who happens to be my wife, claims it was a very sweet gift.
And I said, if I ever gave somebody towels and soap, I would consider that, for better or for worse, no matter how you look at it, that is a message gift.
Isn't towels and soap just what most people give and get for Christmas?
Mm-mm, scented candles.
Oh, but if you gave me Santa Candles, I'd throw them right through the window.
I'm not going to, I don't want Santa Candles in my life, but towels and soap.
No, no, I'm not saying it's useless just in the same way that the standing desk was not useless.
The standing desk was great.
Oh, I see.
I see what you're saying.
But the point is.
It's a message.
It's a message gift.
It's a message.
But, and so the family, and the family's saying.
You know what I did this year?
What?
What did you do?
I went to Nordstrom.
I went up to, you know, the makeup area where we run through on any department store?
We just sprint through this huge... You have to run through the volley of spritzes.
It's just this huge place where it's just like, what is this?
Get me out of here.
I went in there.
I braved it.
I put on my thickest jacket and I got my loins all girded and I walked up to a fancy lady with all the fancy makeup and fancy earrings and clothes and I said...
Fancy lady, will you help me make a gift bag of fancy stuff, face stuff?
I'm adjacent to a person who likes scents and cosmetics and skincare, like so many people.
So you went in and as a friend said, could you make me, you're basically saying, and I think this is smart, hey, I don't know anything about this and you do.
I'm going to tell you like two or three things about this person.
They're white.
That's right.
You know, they have a job.
And then fill this with things where they will go, at first they might think, oh, it's a bag of cosmetics.
But the idea is they open and go, oh, this is good stuff.
I would never buy this for myself, right?
Hi.
So I said, you know, I don't want any, I don't want any, like,
colors and I don't want a ton of smells what I'm thinking is like serums and potions and things probably poultices yeah things to tighten and things to lift moisturize these things these magical things I don't know I hear these words used I don't know what I don't want any of this done to me
I don't want anything on me, but I do know people want.
And so I, you know, and I went into some bathrooms, not public bathrooms, but bathrooms of people I knew.
And I looked at the magic potions on the counters and I said, I could not tell you what these do.
But I am familiarizing myself with the genre.
If nothing else, I mean, I know this from the things in our bathroom.
You learn the aesthetic.
The aesthetic, right.
As with marijuana today, cosmetics and skin care today should look like medicine.
Yes.
It should look like medicine.
It should have words you don't understand.
Precisely.
The stuff somebody in my house has and uses contain parts of speech that I don't understand.
Yes.
Have you ever seen something that's emollient?
I always thought emollient was a noun.
Well, I did.
Emollient is an adjective, and I would look like such a rube, such a hillbilly, if I wander into Nordstrom's and I say, could we get some emollient?
Yes.
Do you also want some white or some tall?
I encountered the word emollient in this process.
Very, very emollient, John.
I mean, what I remember, serums were necessary to combat polio, and yet these are things that people are putting on their faces.
Anyway, I said, I want these to be small bottles.
I know that you will charge me $700 for a bottle the size of a baby turtle, but what I want is...
What I want is like some nice of these more than more than five, less than less than nine.
I bet this is not the first time this person has heard that.
No, no, no.
I mean, I'm not.
No.
Oh, John, I'm not criticizing.
In fact, I'm saying I think I will let's like this, like the flowers.
I can go in and say not to my this person is not crazy about roses, likes daisies, but like whatever's freshest and most colorful.
And I mean, honestly, and say and try to keep it under 60 bucks.
OK, yeah.
No, no, but like, you know what I'm saying?
That's pretty good for a bouquet, right?
For sure, for sure.
But like in that instance, you go in there and you say, here's a C note.
Please fill this with face.
Give me all the good things.
Not too much smell.
Yeah.
It's like Michael Pollan says.
You know, make them fancy.
But I don't want anything that's like going to, don't give me anything too experimental.
They know.
So I'm nice of this.
They know.
Well, so what had happened was, at one point, here's the ruse.
Ready?
Ready?
At one point, I was sitting on the couch.
I got some ladies around, you know, more than two, less than seven ladies.
And I said, hey, what's in your makeup bag?
Your stuff.
What is that stuff?
As in the two to seven ladies, like you in particular?
Yeah, I'm just sitting on the couch.
You there.
Your name is probably something like Zima or some shit.
Zima, what's in your bag?
I'm the boy on the couch.
And I say this thinking that somebody's going to be like, oh, it's just a bunch of moisture.
Yeah.
And, uh, because, because I think people know that I am genuinely curious when I ask a question, when I ask questions, I'm, I'm not just making conversation.
I'm as curious, show me as much as you got.
But what I didn't expect.
was that they all excitedly disappeared into the other room.
They're into it.
They're into it.
And they came back out with their bags.
This is so much like my dreams.
And proceeded to give me, each one of them, a 15-minute long presentation.
John, this is like a woman walking up to you and saying, could you talk to me about the stomp boxes in your signal chain?
Yeah.
You'd be like, oh, I'm kind of busy right now.
Yeah.
Okay, I guess a little bit.
But the thing is, they were also- Make sure you keep the rod unplugged or the battery keeps running.
They were also giving presentations to each other, right?
Oh, God, this is hot.
And so they're pulling these little bottles out, and they're like, well, now this one does this, and this one does this.
And the thing I found is that if you put this one on first and then this one, then what you get – and I'm just – and they have no idea.
They're talking about layering serums.
Oh, and just like this serum does this, and this serum does that.
And you don't want to put this serum on and then that.
Duh.
Yeah.
um but and they all know what each other are talking about and i'm girl stuff what they didn't know was that i am doing like major undercover work here just trying to figure out what an emollient is and does and whether it's a noun or an adjective or an adverb yeah yeah so don't get over your skis like just play it play it real low key and you know like men everywhere today just listen
I was just listening.
That's right.
But also, I had no idea that to ask that simple question was to be given...
Basically like a full lecture and then each person went around the room and what was crazy was They started describing their process of having like it's like hidden camera of chimps When you get to watch what what what how these how they interact And yet it's still a little bit of a performance for you, which is insanely great But it was a hundred percent like distortion boxes because they all
Very strong feelings.
Very strong alliances.
Like I would never use a boss for that.
I would only ever use an Ibanez for this.
Yes.
And they had all discovered these products on their own through trial and error over decades.
So it's like so somebody would pull a bottle out.
And the reaction would be like, oh, my God, where did you?
And the answer would be.
They're learning things about each other, John.
I know.
The answer was, well, one time in Majorca, a man on a Vespa.
overturned on the highway and there was please miss you gotta hold this for me it's a very small bottle and i and this stuff splashed on me and i never felt so moisturized and then i just and then i went and i discovered that it was made in australia out of bees that were that had telepathy it's called multibani but it's spelled different and and and you know and they're all taking notes on each other i'm just like i'm like this is incredible this is practically pillow talk
It's where I learned the word serum in this conversation.
So anyway, now I know a lot.
And what I knew was to just go up to the Nordstrom lady and say, I don't know anything about this, but here are the words that I've heard.
And, um,
And she, of course, the Nordstrom lady couldn't have been happier.
So much better than whatever it was she was doing two minutes before, which was like, here's an amount of money.
Go around this place you know intimately and take the things you think are best.
It's like a cute girl coming up to you and saying, like, have you ever heard of this thing called shoegaze?
I just got a guitar.
I just got I just got a vintage Mustang.
Now, please tell me what I should do to sound like shoegaze.
mm-hmm just walk me through it okay i guess how do i you know stephanie wicker used to first of all we're gonna get you a whammy bar in the in the western state hurricane yeah she was terrific she was such well and she was a great guitar player she was a really good guitar player but she would do the thing where she would stand there a little pigeon toed with her um you know with her her black frame horn rim glasses and her and her faded levi's and her
her old vintage t-shirt, she'd stand a little pigeon-toed and look down at her four distortion boxes on the stage.
It was a sold-out crowd.
People, you know, a hundred guys standing at her feet, looking up at her, and she would go, oh, how do these work?
Oh, oh, oh, oh, I was just seeing people raising their hands.
Like, Mr. Cotter, Mr. Cotter, ooh, ooh, ooh.
It was just like throwing chum off the back of a boat.
Like, it was just...
Now I see what you're saying.
She's maybe holding a finger up to her mouth and turning her right toe a little bit.
How do I carry this amp all the way from there to over there?
I just heard this really good song called When You Sleep.
How did they make that sound like that?
At the time, it infuriated me.
I was like, Mike, Stephanie, goddammit, stop doing that.
That's not cricket, John.
You're up there in, what's the guy's name, Fred Ward shirts?
Yeah.
You're up there dressed in Stan Laurel shoes and a puka shell necklace.
Yeah.
And she's up there.
And, you know, have you ever seen a photo of Belinda Butcher?
I'm not going to make a big deal about it.
Have you ever seen a photo of Belinda Butcher?
The girl in my MBV.
You ever seen a picture of her?
I've seen a few pictures of her.
Oh, dear me, John.
I follow their work.
Oh.
I'm a big fan of her entire catalog.
Oh, my goodness.
Well, and, you know, Stephanie did not not resemble her.
But I used to, you know, at the time, I was like, I said, Stephanie, have some pride.
Turn your own goddamn amp.
And now I look back and I realize, oh, my God.
Stephanie, this is bad for women.
That's exactly right.
Stephanie, come on.
Jesus Christ.
You're a better guitar player than any of these ding-dongs.
And she never did say to me, like, yeah, but they're carrying my amp for me, dumbass.
Of course.
And I was like, come on.
That's just not how we do things in the 90s.
How did your loadout go?
It's the 90s.
Right.
Yes.
Stephanie, it's the 90s.
But now I look back and look.
laugh and laugh.
Those were the times.
We've grown a lot.
We've grown a lot.
So you Nordstrom, and you say, fill this with unguents and what was the word?
Oh, serums.
Serum.
Serum.
Fill this with syrup.
Give me the good stuff.
And here, what's been incredible in the time since Christmas has been
realizing that this was not none of these things they didn't all come out of these bags and get lined up and now they're the new products each one is getting debuted and tested in relation to the other things so in isolation of the others in order to leverage this the science it's science it's science that i didn't you don't try six serums and just throw your hands up when you don't understand why you look like a raccoon
So, I keep having these conversations where someone comes into the room and goes, do you notice anything different?
That gift keeps giving, it keeps giving, John.
And I'm like, do I notice anything different?
You got so much long, I'm sorry, do you know what I'm saying?
You got so much long-term value out of that.
It wasn't some stocking stuffer that ended up in a box that dad put together of all the things nobody actually wanted from their stocking.
You're talking here about Syrah that will have an impact and then an impact later.
Yes.
And then it's part of a process.
Yes.
And some of those things have not been opened yet.
I know that for sure.
Which means that there's between nine and 18 months worth of, do you notice anything different?
The answer to which, of course, is always, God, your skin is really glowing.
Is
Is there something different?
Your skin is glowing.
Can I give you an edit on that?
Yeah, go.
Oh.
I don't know.
Did you get a lot of sleep last night?
You look really good.
Oh, that's nice, too.
That's nice.
You've been getting good sleep lately.
Oh, my God.
You look really rested.
And I think the glow and the sleep, I think what that is is the serum.
Or the emollient.
Some of it.
But anyway, so... So the idea...
What I have in mind for the standing test.
Because the daisy chaining is going to have to keep going until I can take – because you must have done this before.
When you get a new computer, you take the old computer.
and you put it on the new computer, right?
You want to move your, so you're talking about here, it's like moving house.
You want all the stuff that was on your old Macintosh, you want it on your new Macintosh with as little need to reinstall or change things as possible.
Exactly.
And then you update and you update and you update and then you get a new computer and you move that computer to the new computer.
But what I've never done is then throw the old computer in a fire or delete it or whatever.
Or put a drill through it like Mr. Rabbit.
No.
I put it in a box and I put it on a shelf.
Well, now I have them all and I've turned them all on.
Well, they have different stuff on them.
Because somehow when I put this computer on that computer, it didn't take all my music, for instance.
And I thought the music was lost forever.
This is not a bit.
Because we're talking about several different things here.
And I just want, for those of you who are listening and going, oh, John.
John's doing his thing where he actually doesn't understand the world.
Well, here's part of this.
Is that some of those computers go all the way.
Yeah, it's a whole thing.
Yeah.
They talk on what's called Ricky's Van on Instagram, I guess.
I don't know what it's called.
About how I don't understand the world.
I don't know.
I don't have Instagram.
I didn't learn Linus.
Command Linus.
But here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
I feel you because we're talking about...
I'm not saying this to just have this be a bit and go like, oh, gosh, the world of technology is confusing.
This is actually crazy, and I have had this experience.
If there's any reason why I continue to keep these bizarre cables that I know don't go with anything, it's because there is a day every...
six to 18 months where I'm like there's only one possibility in the world I can figure out okay here's one my kid okay this is actually a really apt example cleaning out the garage my kid finds oh god you remember when I used to take your photo and you would get annoyed and it had that flash that flash effect that I was really into for a while
Remember that little silver?
I loved that.
I know.
It was bad.
It ruined a lot of photos.
But the point is that's called a little Canon camera.
You probably remember it's a little silver, like, you know, squared off, beautiful little camera.
I remember it well.
My kid found that.
And the thing is, I mean, I was using that a lot, obviously, in 2003.
I wasn't even using that anymore by the time my kid was born, right?
I had moved on to other cameras, including the Flip, including a better, like an actual SLR Canon.
Anyway, my kid finds that.
Right.
It has an old school SD card in it.
Not the little ones or the little, little ones.
No, the big ones.
Yeah.
And I'm like, well, fuck yeah, of course.
I'm going to see what the hell's on here.
Oh, my God.
This is John, right?
It's one thing to find like an old roll of film in a camera.
And you're like, that's probably not going to.
Unless something catastrophic has happened.
I'm going to have photos on there.
And I'm just curious of like what the last photo I took on this thing was.
I know, I know, I know.
But also, how do I connect it?
Can you get it working again so your kid can use it?
I hope so.
Here's the funny part is I'm how I am, John.
And so you know what my kid found?
You're just as God made you.
My kid found this camera.
But guess what?
That camera is in a little bag that included the USB cable for connecting.
Because you're Merlin, man.
Because you're Merlin.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The hard part right now is the battery.
I haven't figured out how to get the battery charged.
But, like, isn't that – that's the kind of thing we're talking about here.
Except with these computers, here's the thing.
You know the thing that's always going to be mostly the same kind of mostly is the way you get power to the thing.
If it's a desktop Mac, it's got one of those little three-pronged dinguses, and that's no big deal.
If it's a laptop, there's like three or four different ways you might need to power that up.
And I know you're saying like, oh, yeah, well, it's just going to be you're going to do USB-C.
Like, no, you're not.
Because if it's super old, it don't have USB-C.
You're going to need to find the charger that goes to, if probably a MagSafe.
And here's the thing.
It's a SATA adapter.
Oh, my God.
Nice pull.
Oh, my God.
I got to put it into my eyes, cousin.
The 50-pin adapter for my daisy chain.
No, but here's the thing.
But then, like, at every one of these, you're locking your keys into a different car, and you're like, okay, in order to get the chicken across, I'm going to need to leave the boat with the wolf.
Because how do you connect the keyboard?
Well, it's different on a lot of those.
Does it Bluetooth?
Does it not?
No, no, it don't.
No, it's Suntory.
It's weird connections at every single point of this.
There's no one way.
And like, you have to solve all of that.
And then we haven't even gotten to like, does it turn on?
And can you log in?
And like, do you remember this password?
Or blah, blah.
We haven't gotten to that yet.
You need a lab.
You do.
Well, and also you go online.
I don't know if you've ever been online, but it's really a mixed bag.
That's like a BBS kind of thing.
Yeah.
And you say, how do I get this stuff off this hard drive?
Well, you know, there's a thousand people want to tell you.
how to do it.
And 999 of them are trying to sell you something.
Yes.
And so I don't want to buy anything.
I just want to hook up this box.
I would love to help you with that, John Roderick.
Would you like a copy of Gladiator?
I just want to take this box and plug it into the box that it was originally plugged into.
It seems so simple.
It seems like such a simple thing to want.
It seems like you should be able to go to a page on apple.com and say, I have a thing that looks like this and a thing that looks like that.
Show me everything I need to get these things to talk to each other.
Yeah.
What Apple does whenever I ask them anything is they say, your iCloud storage is full.
We can no longer update your blankety blank.
Would you like to pay $10 a month for the privilege of using our products?
Yeah.
And I am up against a wall now, Merlin.
I've been telling them to go fuck themselves for a year.
And now they've got me.
I know it's absolutely no consolation to you now, ever, in the future, ever, ever.
But just so you know, all us nerds pretty much agree that the way Apple handles that is pretty poor.
That it's a really, really bad user experience that creates a really hostile relationship to something that...
First of all, it does not need to be that expensive.
That's a different issue.
But really, everybody should have.
And if Apple had any goddamn sense, they would give you a reasonable amount of that.
I mean, it's basically like saying, you can test drive this car as long as you never turn right or something.
It would be one of those things where you're like, well, why would I think about driving that way?
And whatever it is, the two gigs or one gig or whatever it is, is...
Just, you know, that is a criminally small amount for any human being full stop and could never really be that useful for anything except the most basic stuff.
Everyone hates it, John.
It's the drug dealer thing where they're like, hey, you know, it's free.
Enjoy.
And you're like, oh, great.
And then it's like, oh, first one's free.
But like, this is the shape of the pills you'll get, but they won't do the same thing.
Well, here's a buffer.
First one's free.
They say, oh, all of your stuff, all of the things that matter to you are now in our walled garden.
And we're not going to tell you how to get them off.
We're not going to tell you how to manage it.
Real nice music collection you got here.
We don't have any real public-facing tools that let you manage this in any kind of granular way.
No, they have a website.
Go to the website.
And every page you click on is going to tell you you need to buy a $10 a month subscription.
And it has more than anything.
Doesn't it make you feel hostile toward the company and the process?
More than anything in a decade, it has turned my goodwill into sour grapes.
Ashes.
Every single time I turn on the things that I love to do the things, the work that I need to do, it's telling me I need to spend money on a thing.
Apple might as well have a pop up every time you start your phone.
They might as well have a pop up every time that says, you just forgot to hate us.
Click to dismiss, right?
Because that's really all it is, is just a way of going, well, here's this thing again.
And they get logs on every time my computer crashes for some wackadoo reason or whatever.
I always think they got logs on all of this stuff.
They know exactly the point when you stopped using an app.
They know exactly where that app crashed.
I just can't believe that all that data accumulates somewhere, and there isn't the most basic kind of Excel spreadsheet to say, what's the thing where a thing crashes a lot and people dismiss it and it keeps coming up?
Doesn't that seem like something that would be valuable for them to know?
It seems like the only reason they would be logging all that.
Right is there another you had to come up with one reason everybody could agree is a good reason to do that People of goodwill at Apple and every single other person in the world would say so you can be like a French waiter You can swoop in and take my plate away without me even noticing fix your broken shit that I know you know about sorry continue.
It's so beautiful This world that you're describing is so beautiful
Can you imagine what it would be like if that were the world, the real world, the actual world where people cared?
All we have to do is just leave this one kid in a well and the rest of us can be happy.
You know, the thing is, Merlin, there are people behind every one of those screens.
It's not really.
Yeah, it's not the monster yet.
It's still people.
It's still people.
Just for a little bit.
Organic intelligence, OI.
It won't be people.
I had a problem the other day where I went on.
Did you go online?
I went on the internet.
I went on an app.
I was on an app for an airline.
Yeah.
And the airline app said, your flight has changed.
And I said, huh?
In what way?
Thank you.
And so I clicked on the thing.
That's how I feel about email alerts.
It's like, you have seven.
And I go, seven of what?
It's like, seven.
And this thing goes like, your flight has changed.
Is there anything more you want to share about that?
I was like, say what?
And it said, click here.
And I did, and it said, log in.
More inside.
And I said, but I am logged in.
I'm in the app.
That's how you knew to tell me that the flight was changed.
Did you put in your phone number, or did you send the code after it sent to your phone number?
And I couldn't do that.
And I went a couple of times, and I was like, I can't do this again.
I just can't do this again.
I'm an elderly man now.
And ask yourself, John, how many more of those you have in you?
How many more logging back ins?
Because no, honestly, orders of magnitude.
Do you have nine?
Do you have 90?
Do you have 9 million?
Because I don't think it's 9 million.
I think it's close to 90.
I think in fewer than 90 re-logins, you're going to be dead like fucking Trotsky.
That's the thing.
If I push the back button.
They're killing you.
It takes me back one iteration of screens, and I'm logged in back there.
I'm logged in still in the past.
Why do I have to log in again in the future, in the latter?
Sounds like you're causing unusual activity.
So then it says, and I'm back and forth, back and forth, and I'm like, I'm not going to log in primarily because I don't remember the password because it's only one of 75 passwords I keep in my head at any given time.
And is this the one that I put an exclamation point at the end because I was frustrated?
Don't guess too many times.
You might get locked out with your unusual activity.
Unusual activity, John.
Is this the one where I did my usual password, but then I put the word fuck at the end because I was frustrated?
That's good.
Oh, I just gave it away.
Oh.
Anyway, anyway, ironic original password was fuck.
So it's just fuck till the fuck, but numeral, numeral capital letter.
So, so there's a chat option, which is, and I was like, I said, okay, let's do it.
Let's do it.
Let's you and me do it.
And I jumped into the chat.
And the chat was exactly... Did you know we have a website?
The chat was exactly the phone tree conversation.
If you want, press one.
If you don't, press two.
If you're this, add your number.
Do you speak English?
But it's in a chat form now, not on the phone.
Right.
And so I start to puzzle it by using words that it doesn't know.
I'm asking legit questions, but it's just a little bit of a vocabulary test.
Because you know what?
Life is too short.
I only have 90 of these left in my life.
You have 90 left, and we're both at heart, whether we like it or not, whether we talk about it, we're both at heart writers.
And when I was a child, I thought as a child.
And now today, I think as a writer.
And I think the things that we write matter.
And I think about what I'm going to say.
And I don't always bat on me, but I don't always think about in terms of how could I put this in a way that a telephone tree that's been ported to a text bot will be able to understand.
I would rather be unambiguous and clear and interesting instead of going, login broke.
I don't write like that.
This is you and me.
Here we are.
Here we are.
We're doing some fucking cask of Amontillado.
There was a time not very long ago when we were monk seals that were just out swimming in a cold ocean with our silky pelts protected from the elements with special oils and serum.
They would see us gleaming in the sun and say, you know, your writing skills are useful for this job, even though that's not a job.
Yes, yes, yes.
They say, could you read this for me?
I have to send this letter to my wife's attorney and I want to make sure it makes sense.
Could you just make sure it's not stupid?
And I would say, of course, Rob, I would be pleased to read that for sending to your wife's attorney.
And they go, you know, good for you.
Go back to fixing the 9600 baud motor.
But you know what I'm saying, right?
People like this used to be something we this culture would celebrate.
I got a job once because I could type 60 words per minute.
That's a kind of writing.
On a typewriter.
I got a job.
They were like, can you do this?
And I was like, how do you like them apples?
And now I'm trying to phrase things a certain way.
Don't displace the chatbot.
chatbot to figure out how to tell me how my flight changed.
And as ever, you're asking, because this is the part that actually does make me want to tear my fucking brain out of my skull, is this same problem that we're really talking about with Apple, we're talking about anybody, which is like, is this your first day
Because it strikes me that there's really, there's just, again, orders of magnitude.
There's three things.
There's two things that almost everybody's calling you about.
There's five things that a lot of people call you about, and there's a long tail.
But those two things, don't you maybe think that that's the kind of thing you ought to put some resources on?
What was the change in my flight?
It does feel like Delta had a team, and I don't know where they are.
I'm trying to picture this team.
But it's the team that... They're on that Papillon island probably.
That's right.
And they've been charged with let people know when their flight has changed.
Yes.
And then there's a team that is figure out how the app can send people information.
And then there's a team that is concerned with security and logins.
And none of these teams are even on the same continents as one of them.
They're not talking to each other.
So eventually I confused this bot.
And the thing is, I know the bot is being, the bot is training itself, even as I am confounding it.
It's like, what does the word residual mean?
I'm putting that into my bot dictionary.
Residual, residual.
I will figure it out.
Adjective to describe the emollient effect of a serum that cannot be removed.
But eventually, the bot says, I'm going to get you to a live person.
And this is when I felt there are still people.
It admitted it's a robot?
Yes.
And there are people still behind them somewhere back there.
And I kid you not, his name was Ron.
The ultimate stepdad name.
Yeah, and here comes Ron.
And now Ron's name may be Ron Nish, right?
No, he's somewhere.
I didn't say he was nowhere.
I'm just saying we got it.
So, Ron.
But here's Ron.
And Ron says, how may I help you?
And I say, Ron, just between us, here we are now.
And I know we're being surveilled.
But you're telling me my flight has changed.
But I need to know.
It may satisfy the corporate bigwigs.
Yeah.
Just that you have told me, but I as the consumer.
They might feel like that meets the spec.
The spec was let them know when the flight has changed.
But you need to know how it's changed.
Because if you think about it, Ron, there's actually a fair number of ways that a flight could quote unquote change.
There it is.
And I'm as the consumer.
Sometimes it's just the equipment.
Sometimes it's just like there's all kinds of things like the amount of the stopover time in the city has changed.
Like if you get a really good flight tracking app, by the way, short answer, get flighty, buy it no matter what.
Oh, my God, flighty is the greatest app ever.
But that'll tell you.
But no, we're able to change.
What has changed, Ron?
What even has changed?
What has changed?
Ron, this is not nothing to me.
And I know that you can tell me.
And I don't want to put all this information in again.
You'll get home tonight, Ron.
I may not.
I have already logged in.
That's how we're talking, right?
And Ron goes away.
Oh, no.
And I'm thinking.
They sent him to the Papillon.
I'm thinking this could go a couple of different ways.
Ron has gone silent.
Yeah.
Maybe that was the one that finally pushed Ron over the top.
And my sense was.
Takes off his headset, throws it at the desk.
My sense was that Ron was on my team.
Because I think what Ron did was he sensed that he needed to just either get up from his desk and go to his neighbor's desk and ask a question.
He's not talking to a ding-a-ling who's just going to go away.
And Ron comes back and he says, yeah, the flight change is that your flight will be landing 10 minutes earlier.
Okay.
Yeah.
And I said, and I said, just so we're clear here, what Ron told you, the change in the flight that they sent and you went through all this was to find out that, that, uh, Hey, good news.
We didn't tell you this.
Why would we tell you this?
There's been a change to your flight, which to me makes this sound in my head.
Yeah.
And they're telling you, it'll arrive.
It's estimated.
Estimated.
We just want to give you, we've been estimating some things.
We don't really know this yet, but just so you know, we have a new estimate we wanted to let you know about.
The estimate is this doesn't have anything to do really with anything.
Now, if you see if it was 10 minutes later, you'd say, oh, well, then I'll just let Doris know the flight's going to be a little late.
There's nothing, as lawyers would say, forgive my misusing this term, there's nothing actionable about the information they didn't give you.
Let me just paint this a little bit, a broader picture.
The flight is in 27 days.
Oh, 27 days from the time you're, okay.
All right.
Did you say 10 minutes earlier?
10 minutes early.
27 days from now.
Still 27 days later, but 10 minutes earlier.
10 minutes earlier, you're going to be landing.
Okay.
And so thinking about the teams, right, the people behind the screens.
You put that, well, the different, like, you know, teams or business units or whatever, these people who each have probably at least a different budget, different bosses, and a different criteria for success on all of them.
And I'm guessing, you know better than I do, but I'm guessing they're not 50-person teams.
I'm guessing they're five-person teams, right?
Right.
I don't know what time about it, but I know I've heard this so many times about Apple.
About Apple in particular.
It's like people like to go, oh, Apple's worth 50 gajillion dollars.
And then you find out from a friend of an insider of a friend of an insider.
They're like, no, that one app you use has half a person on it.
By which I mean.
No, by which I mean, it's like, it is a thing where you go, there's this app that I use.
Like, how many people do you think, quote unquote, work on calculator?
I'm guessing not a lot.
And then you find out, oh, here's the way that works.
There's this team of people and dah, dah, dah, dah.
And that person works on that app half time.
And it's not, they're not building features.
I'm half a calculator.
Or calculator is half me.
It would be calculator asterisk 0.5.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, think about the teams.
Mm-hmm.
Where Delta, something happens where the flight is now estimated to arrive 10 minutes early.
Now, what that could be is unknowable.
I don't think anyone at Delta could tell you.
What kicks that off?
There's just some very basic thing was, I don't know, I'm going to check some.
But there's something that says, this thing is like this and something changed about it.
It's almost like quantum physics or something.
There was a gate and that gate got turned into that gate.
But the thing is, the wind.
Yeah, it's like that Donovan song.
The wind that cries Mary from where I am to London.
You can't find out it's Mary until you call.
Is going to change the arrival time by plus or minus way more than 10 minutes on that day.
On that day.
So 27 days from now.
That's really good.
So the number of cascading teams that that bit, that little pachinko ball of information had to go...
to 50 different teams to find its way to an alert.
It lightly touches a lot of people.
For that to land in a slot, that ball has to touch so many different pins.
And for it to arrive on Ron's virtual desk, where Ron, whose whole job is to sit on the other side of this shadow box, this Plato's cave, and he's like, this is my job.
I guess he enjoys volleyball and cooking.
Yeah.
And the thing is, Ron has to also be thinking of the 50 teams.
He has to be thinking, here we are again.
He's thinking about, is this going to make my day easier or harder?
Dealing with this one thing.
If I go and try to escalate this at the wrong time, it's after lunch.
I know Bobby's tired this time of day.
I do this at the wrong time.
I need to escalate this to Team Z. But really, is that a thing that I really want to do right now?
So when Ron gave me that information, I said, Ron, you have helped me a lot today.
I really appreciate you.
Thank you so much for solving this problem for me.
Have a wonderful day.
And Ron said, thank you.
Is there anything else I can help you with today?
And I said, Ron, no, you've done it.
You have done it.
You've done it, Ron.
I think you can sleep easily tonight.
Can you imagine how much they hate it when somebody says, actually, yes?
Nobody's ever going to say that.
It's calling, like, I have to pee really bad and I can't get in my house.
Please reset the code.
Like, is there anything else we can help you with today?
I'm good for now.
Like...
No, but that's also the indignity where it's like when there has been one of those, like, you know, once in a generation screw ups on their part, they've really messed something up.
And then the solution, they tried to fix it with, you know, these kinds of things that happen in travel and it's, hmm.
I'd like to think it's nobody's fault, but there are some fairly catastrophic things that happen when you're traveling.
And then the fix makes it worse.
And then the call ends with, is there anything else I can help you with?
Anything else I can help you with?
And you're like, no, just get my kid out of the well.
Find my luggage!
Get my kid out of the well is really plenty.
Just do this one thing that you obviously have no ability, interest, or...
Continuity of care to actually accomplish that's core to your mission.
But if I think of anything else, I'll drop you a call Ron Also, here's my vision, but not Ron different.
No, not Ron.
This is Delta Ron Ron's a saint Ron is somewhere.
He's the last I think he likes volleyball and cooking You know the bots handling games.
Maybe he likes games.
That's on his profile.
Probably I'm raw.
I'm Ron I think Ron sits behind a big desk.
I go to American College and I love games My problem was big enough to make it to Ron
No, my vision is that for a brief moment, Merlin, for a brief moment, I will have the big computer on the standing desk.
It will be a foot taller than the other computers.
The other computers will all be changed together.
Like Albert Spears' redesign of Berlin.
You're saying this will be like, you'll have this one in the middle that's like an icon, like the way the capital of Florida in Tallahassee looks like a dick and balls.
You have this one, right?
Metropolis machine.
Yeah, it's going to be like...
Like Mexico City in 1000 AD.
Like Mexico City, where you throw the javelin, it goes further because they left the door open.
I see what you're saying.
You've got a control center, but it can also go lower if you want it lower.
Well, and all I'm going to do, I'm going to find every cable.
This is the Indiana Jones quest.
I'm going to find every cable.
That belongs in a museum.
I'm only going to need to do it one last time in this life.
I'm not going to do this 90 more times.
Oh, shit.
You are Harrison Ford.
They need the old Blade Runner.
They're calling you out of retirement.
They're calling you in with noodles.
And then they get you in the flying car.
And Edward James Olmos, did you ever notice when he does that one little Mastic guy, he has an erection.
Remember that?
Oh, that's dirty.
It's really funny.
Is that in all the cuts or just in the erection cut?
It's in the...
Have you tried turning a Don and Doh?
Anyway, that's... So I'm going to find them all.
One last time, Merlin.
One last time I'm going around.
I'm going around one last time.
You're getting too old for this shit.
I'm going to get all of the stuff.
You're about to retire onto a boat with an ironic name about closure.
And each computer that I empty, that I empty of its contents, I'm going to put a drill through it.
It's just like Mr. Robot.
No, you're John Wick.
No, you are.
You're Al Pacino.
You're settling all the family's business today.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
Schlotze and Cuglio.
Schlotze.
Yeah.
Madukowitz.
Chimney.
I should have known.
It was Madukowitz all along.
That's right.
That's right.
So don't look at me and tell me that this scuzzy is going to connect to this Amnestos.
Oh, you know what I always like?
Whatever.
Stracci.
Stracci.
You don't hear about Stracci.
Hey, can I just say something here in passing that I think about sometimes?
Because, you know, I watch the Godfather movies a lot.
I know you do.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Wait, let me interrupt you.
Please.
Um, um, um, um, um, um, um.
There is an auction happening right now.
An auction.
Yes.
That's called the Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction on a site called Prop Store.
And it's happening in March.
I've been to that website.
When we were really into Star Trek, I was trying to find Billy a photo of McCoy's jumpsuit.
Do you remember the one that begins with Captain Kirk climbing the side of the mountain?
It's the really, really bad one.
I think it's the one that maybe Shatner directed.
It's that one.
And remember that cool disco fishing suit that McCoy wears at the beginning?
They had that.
You could just go buy it.
Yeah, disco fishing suit.
You could just go buy that on the site.
On this auction that's coming up right now, they have Vito Corleone's jacket as won by Robert De Niro in The Godfather Part II.
When he had the little flat cap, that era?
No, not that one.
It's like a peacoat that he wears when he goes back, I think.
When he says his father's name is Vito Andolini.
Yeah, that's right.
Oh, you took the name of your hometown.
The olive oil business.
And he goes, eh.
That's so cool.
It also has the actual Harley Davidson ridden by Peter Fonda in the one movie.
Yeah, I know the one.
The one with Dennis Hopper.
I know the one you mean.
Big chopper.
American chopper.
Jack Nicholson is in it.
Hold it between your knees.
You've got it between your knees.
American chopper.
It's called American chopper.
You can't land on a fraction.
They have some Back to the Future 1, 2, and 3 memorabilia.
They have the costumes from Thelma and Louise.
Anyway, I spent several hours in there.
Wasted hours.
And really, in some ways, don't you feel like the more obscure, the better?
It's one thing to go like, oh, this is the famous thing.
Like, here's the lab coat that, like, Christopher...
Whatever his name is, Warren.
Christopher Walken Warren, Back to the Future.
Dee Dee Mao, Dee Dee Mao.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That kind of situation.
No, but what I want is a screen.
I like the obscure stuff.
I like, oh, this is a teeny tiny can of peas from Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Yes, please.
No, I want the screen-matched pencil nub that sat on Deckard's piano.
Oh.
You know, not one of the pictures of his family, but just the little pencil.
If I could get those square glasses, I'd start drinking again.
Well, see, you can actually buy them.
They make them.
They do.
Yeah, they make them.
They decided that enough people wanted them.
I thought you had to be an A-lister.
That's smart.
I think you can make them now.
I bet they're not that fun to drink out of, but they do look cool, and then he fiddles around on the piano.
They're so cool.
It's the type of thing, though, that I bet you in San Francisco, every one of those painted ladies that's now painted black that everybody in San Francisco is so mad about, I bet you they all have those square Deckard glasses in there.
They might.
They might at that because everything goes through a mid-century modern phase.
Here's my only question for you, and then I'm going to hit the bell.
Don't you feel sometimes like you could really use a fucking Al Neary in your life?
I mean, the thing is, Al Neri, like, I think he's in the first one, kind of.
Yeah, of course he is.
He's the cop.
Yeah, he is.
But he has a bigger role in the second one.
He actually gets some speaking parts in the second one.
But if you go back and look at all the shit, I was about to say all the shit that Al Neri does.
The thing is, Al Neri doesn't look Italian.
It's what Al Neri will do for you that gets me.
That's the thing.
Al Neri dresses a cop and go shoot a judge or whatever.
Sure, I'll do that.
But also, he's the one who closes the door.
He does close the door.
Al Neary.
He's the guy.
And if you need Al Neary, like, you know, I'm just saying he does some good, you know, he deals with the guy who's been having the same heart attack for 20 years.
Al Neary never smiles.
But he's it was hard.
It was hard for me.
I mean, I just said he didn't look Italian and that he looked like Frank Sinatra, which is hilarious because Frank Sinatra famously Italian.
Yeah.
But there's different kinds of Italian.
Nobody ever talks about Northern Italy.
You're absolutely right.
You look at a Donatello Versace, you look at someone who looks like a catcher's mitt in a wig,
Here's what I meant.
He doesn't look Sicilian.
He does not look Sicilian.
Doesn't look Sicilian, and that always threw me.
How the hell is Al Neri?
Aborta.
Aborta.
Aborta.
I've got a lot to drink.
Al Neri.
Anybody else?
You know, I've got to say, I would take a Clemenza.
Here's my thing.
If you were rich...
Let's say you and I were rich.
All day long I'd bitty bitty bum.
So I know it would be very easy to find a personal assistant.
That's not the hard part.
It's like finding a wife, am I right?
That part's not hard.
And then to say to the personal assistant, listen, I want a chef that is going to make food that's good and control my portions and be available 24 hours.
That would not be hard.
But at what point do you find, do you say to the personal assistant, a person that you're going to have to work with all the time, who's presumably carrying a clipboard and wearing a pencil skirt, how do you say to them, I need an Al Neary?
I need an, you see, so you've already, okay, so you just misdirected me.
So you're saying you've got, you've got Miss, sorry, Miss, Miss, Miss, no, it's Miss.
You've got Miss Pencil Skirt.
And, like, she can be counted upon to, like, keep the Roderick group ticking.
She is a number one operator.
She's got everything going.
I know.
I'm already seeing.
I'm going to need to, like, have a minute after this.
I know.
I know.
But she would go, like.
Picture her.
Miss Pencil Skirt, could you bring your pad?
She's never far away.
She's always... But it takes her a while because her skirt is so tight and she has very high-heeled shoes on.
So she walks very slowly, you know?
Black pop.
I mean, Mr. Roderick.
40 minutes later, she comes in and you say, get me an Al Neri.
Yeah.
And would she know?
Would she know or would you have to show her the film?
Well, here's the thing.
You have to explain it to her also, probably, because she's a girl.
The whole...
The whole point of having an El Neri is that Ms.
Pencil Skirt never knows about it.
Is there a Mr. Pencil Skirt?
He's the one that does the things that she can't help us.
I see what you're saying.
You've locked your keys in the wrong car.
How am I going to get an El Neri out of this glove box?
Because we're not Sicilians, so it's not a question of just talking to somebody.
That's why you would never be a good wartime concierge.
So how do I find an El Neri without compromising?
Yeah, without having an El Neri.
You're trying to pick up the tweezers with the tweezers, which you can't do until you've already picked up the tweezers.
And you can't pick up tweezers until you have tweezers.
And to have tweezers, you need to pick them up with tweezers.
You can't pick up the tweezers until you have tweezers.
And how are you going to get those tweezers if you don't have tweezers?
This is Aristotle talked about.
It's called the first tweezer.
Ah!
The first tweeze, as Pauly Shore would say.
Yeah.
Tweezing the juice.
All right.
El Niri it is.
What a good movie, huh?
But how do you find an El Niri?
I don't know.
Craigslist.
Who wants Sicilian Riggs' Craigslist?
Fuck me gently.
Come on.
He's not Sicilian.