Episode 9: He Was Apparently A Talented Baker

• John raked all the leaves that were there, then. But now it's raining on all of his leaf piles. 
  • They're no fun to jump in now. He’s going to have to shovel them up.  
• Sunset magazine 
• John's mom used to make him fill out ads for schools for troubled kids. 
  • Might not have been the best idea to have him fill them out himself. 
• Merlin’s advice to his daughter: "That's the largest body of water in the world. And if you're prepared to manage projects and put up with bullshit you can do anything."
• Merlin's toy organization
• 16:00- Goodwill
  • Cherry picking at every level.
  • Mothballs, mildew, and dreams deferred. 
  • John dated a picker. Maurice. 
  • Zooey Deschanel story. She's not Katy Perry. 
  • The key to picking is not obsessing over what you've missed. -JR
  • ~24:00- John went into a Goodwill in Philadelphia and found a wardrobe of perfect clothes, except the arms were too short. 
    • He was a giant of a man, or his suits were tailored so he could do the dishes without rolling up his sleeves. 
• John met a girl at NA who seemed perfect, all the same gifts, all the same problems. 
  • But she had a shrine to the Counting Crows that John couldn’t let go unmentioned. 
• John is not a fan of Jennifer Anniston. Nor is his mom (although she does like Meg Ryan). 
  • He couldn’t picture himself living in her house. He’d insist that she move, because John loves a bath.
• Merlin picks up silly magazines for his wife, because she’s the best.
  • Vogue, Bazaar, Lucky
• Apparently Christina Aguilera is a tremendous, hard-working professional. 
  • Never throws coffees at interns.
• The funny thing about O Magazine. 
  • Bonus colon!
  • Unleash the artist within. 
• 45:00- John saw a cute little old lady with a sweater she made herself with appliqué and tinsel and embroidery. And it said "Don't Yell At Me."
  • He used it on a Long Winters t-shirt to help the young indie kids who needed it. It sold out pretty fast. 
  • "You don't make one of those. It's like potato chips or intercourse with animals. You don't do that once and walk away." -MM
  • "She has one that says 'Don't Rape Me At The Kitchen Sink' or whatever." -JR
  • The Shins and the Decemberists weren't as committed to that many levels of weird, sad, not-that-funny in-jokes in their music. 
    • "And they were so much more reluctant to explain why you were listening to it wrong. And how you were listening to it wrong." -MM
• 52:00- John's plan to buy a $1200 Jeep, take the kid out of school and drive to Tierra del Fuego.
  • “A $1200 Jeep is not going to make it all the way to Tierra del Fuego… We’re going to drive as far as this Jeep will take us and then, when the Jeep breaks down or gets stolen, then we have to use our wits, either to keep the Jeep running using baling wire and chewing gum wrappers or by some other means, perhaps on the back of a burrow. We will continue our trek and we will goddamn well make it to Tierra del Fuego, and through this process the child will learn the value of a peso, the child will learn how to speak Spanish, the child will learn how to handle a burrow on a mountain trail, the child will learn how to respect his or her father, in this instance me.” -JR
    • John’s going to "fall in love with a beautiful Argentinian woman who’s like a dancer and who appears to be sort of one of the noble poor, but then it turns out later that she’s actually an heiress to a giant plantation on the pampas there, and she’s spending some time living as a noble poor woman before she takes over the management of this 100,000 acre ranch. And we fall in love. That’s probably what’s going to happen.” -JR
      • “And like so many incredibly rich Argentinian women pretending to be poor, she’ll just get, God, wetter than a hothouse window by you having a really fucked up kid and a burrow.” -MM
      • “Also we will have been solving mysteries the whole way.” -JR
        • “Our reputation will precede us. She’ll come to me needing a mystery solved.” -JR
        • What concerns John is that her father may be one of the German emigres who flooded in after the war. Maybe it’s her grandfather. 
  • “Do you see the logic of it? It’s a rehabilitation program for the kid. It’s a way of finding love for me, or of realizing that love is real. And we got to solve the mystery of who killed her Nazi grandfather, and we end up living on a giant ranch in Argentina half the year.” -JR 
    • There will be no Argentine gauchos for his daughter though. 
• 59:00- There was a serial killer in Anchorage. He was a baker. (Robert Christian Hansen. Always three names). 
  • He would take girls into the bush, set them free and hunt them with a rifle. 
  • Merlin wants to know who was making the bread while he was doing this. 
    • “That’s the thing about being a bush pilot that people from the lower-48 don’t realize, which is that you can fly out into the middle of nowhere, hunt a girl with a rifle, and make it back in time to watch your shows. You don’t have to go out for five days.” -JR
    • “I feel like if you are a baker and a bush pilot, that’s two strikes against you. If you have three names and if people call you by all three names? Probably a serial killer.” -JR
    • "If you get in an airplane and it isn’t also full of rifles, that would raise suspicion. You need to be carrying rifles at all times. And two people go up in an airplane and only one comes back? That’s not going to raise any suspicions. That’s the whole business of Alaska.” -JR
      • “Tourism, oil and disappearing. Is it a big state for disappearing people?” -MM
  • “I think I’m starting to understand one of the numerous reasons why your life is so complex, and it’s not just about wet leaves and it’s not just about appliqué t-shirts. It’s about you have two very, at least two, warring influences in your life. There’s the one hand that says you should be a crazy guy  in a shack out in the middle of winter and no-one knows where you are, possibly dropping ladies out of a plane. And there’s another warring part of you saying that you should be a crazy guy on a burrow dragging your daughter all the fuck over South America.” -MM
    • “Right.” -JR
    • This is what puts John in the bathtub. How do I have the shack and the bathtub? 
• 1:12:00- A Belgian girl gave John a bunch of Alain de Botton books. No thank you. 
  • John thinks she may be living in Nigeria as a Belgian diplomat. She’s fine. 
  • “I’m starting to really wonder how much of this is just completely fucking made up. I used to think… John, you have brought in more Belgians and Nigerians and Argentinians and Alaskans than any 500 people I have ever met. There’s no way you know anything about two Nigerians. That’s not a bad thing.” -MM
    • “But I do know a couple of people who work at the International Court in the Hague. I know a couple of people. One guy from Hungary…” -JR