Episode 87: I Speak Sea Plane

• John goes on the bus (in a Latino part of town) with his daughter, and feels like a rockstar because he’s a dad. 
  • Every man on the bus smiled at him. 
  • He almost high-fived everybody.
  • Merlin has had similar experiences (when his wife was pregnant). 
• Merlin when someone affects overfamiliarity:
  • “You suffer fools maybe less than anyone I know.” -JR to Merlin
  • Merlin can make John uncomfortable as a bystander when he goes after those “found wanting."
    • John squirms in his chair like a little boy. 
    • “I’m laughing and all of a sudden my chair gets big and my feet don’t touch the floor anymore.” -JR
    • Merlin leads them down the primrose path. Gets them a little out on the pier. 
• Standup comedy
• ~30:00- John roped into a local politics imbroglio and has to give a press conference. 
  • "We found local unemployed man, John Roderick, standing in front of a bar." -MM
  • ~35:00- The mayor's staff suggests John should be on city council. 
  • John imagines his campaign brochures, walking through a field with his family, "with my out-of-wedlock child."
  • "I'm that guy who cut your tree down, and I'm running for office." -MM
  • "You might've seen me in your yard, in a bathrobe, with a sword at some time recently, chasing the neighbor's dog. But now I'm running for the city council, and I feel like together we can rid the neighborhood of stray dogs and loud stereos. We can improve all of the guard towers I have been erecting in the forest."
  • John would be elected on a “Cool Dad” platform. He’d be Scalia, the gadfly. Booger. 
  • “Are we still talking about this?"
• ~52:00- Ziplines and gondolas.
  • As a form of public transport. There are hills all over the city, but how many ziplines?
  • “Why is there no Capitol Hill to Ballard gondola?” -JR
    • If they can do it for the Matterhorn...
• 1:00:30- John for City Council, in two years:
  • Standing by his record. 
    • “Given the sheer amount of crackpot shit I have said over the years, in print and in public, no one’s going to be able to say, 'Well, uh… the candidate had a drinking problem or whatever. The candidate is a known womanizer,' because well you could also say ‘The candidate has called for a re-evaluation of Hitler’s legacy.’” -JR
      • “Read the rest of it, it’s not what it sounds like.” -MM
        • "The candidate believes that all teenagers should be put on work farms.” -JR
    • “Listen. I put on arguments like other people put on jackets. And I like the look of myself in all these different arguments. I think I’m very handsome in them.” -JR
• 1:05:00- “I think it should help everyone but Portland, and I think that’s going to keep you in office.” -JR
  • “I think if I were elected to the City Council, that by itself would antagonize Portland, because Colin Meloy would be so mad that it would reverberate through the whole town… It would just be Colin Meloy sitting at his new farm and fuming that I was elected. He’d just be so mad."
    • “Playing an accordion on a toadstool.” -MM
    • But there will be a Portland to Seattle gondola.
• Elon Musk
• The zipline will follow the Seattle tradition of transit that has only two stops. 
  • “You might have to rent people rollerblades…” -JR, on Poma lifts.
  • "The ziplines and the Poma lifts are just the beginning.” -JR