71. Cheese Tits

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, present a harebrained theory.

Speaker AYo-ho-ho!

AlexAh, hello!

Speaker AYeah! Hey, it's Doobar Friday.

MaxWait a minute. This isn't Merlin, man.

Speaker AIsn't it?

MaxIt's a famous occasional podcaster, Adam Lisagor.

Speaker ACasual caster, Adam Lisagor. At your service, netcasts you love from this guy you trust.

MaxDo you have the ukulele lying around? I don't know where you're casting from.

Speaker ANo, I'm casting from the office, from the podcasting slash VR suite at Sandwich Video, which gets rarely ever used for either of those things. That's a lot of gear for stuff that you guys don't do.

AlexThat's, I thought you were joking at first.

Speaker AThat's very cool. No, it's true. We've got all the gear and none of it gets used. That's just how it happens.

MaxYeah, we can relate to that. Alex and I are more of like a, we're more of like a camera buying company than a media production company.

Speaker ASure. Well, that's fun too. Yeah.

AlexIt really is. Well, Merlin. I genuinely don't know where he is, so meh.

MaxHe didn't tell us either. This is a really, it's a pretty critical mission. I mean, I think it's some sort of special op. Maybe he's, maybe he's, George Soros has hired him to be like a crisis actor at a school shooting.

AlexOh, no.

MaxAnd, you know, you can't tell anyone about that.

AlexOr he was just, he's just bored of us. It's like, no, no. Could be.

Speaker AHe's going through one of his leave me alone phases. I think those come up from time.

AlexYeah, he pulled Adam. He was like, listen, I know that you don't want to talk to these people for a couple hours, but I need you to do me a favor, buddy. And that's why Adam's here.

Speaker ANo, I've received no communication from Merlin re this podcast episode at all, even on the email thread. So I don't know what to...

MaxHe's been hands off.

Speaker AOkay.

MaxBut he knows that we had to bring in the big guns to replace him. He's a busy guy. so we've we've already decided that this is like our uh you look nice today cover band and and i'm merlin merlin is scott and alex is adam so now we so now we sort of have two atoms

Alexwe don't speak of this that is a far too flattering title i i think it's just because um i'm have glasses that looked similar to yours it works no i love it i think it's a wonderfully

Speaker Aflattering comparison for both of us and um i don't know i'm flattered so who do i get to be

Maxwell i mean you're stew that's an interesting question i mean i guess i guess you're you're the new scott well merlin's not here so yeah yeah when merlin gets back it's gonna be like when uh when ringo joined back with the beatles it's like oh they now they sound like the beatles again i

Alexmean what if we upgraded what if what if he's like the new gruber and then by association he's ryan johnson and then we just keep going up the stack do a little fractured read for us let's

Speaker Ahear it out say uh have you ever i i don't okay let me preface i don't listen this is kind of It's like a Gruber ad reaction.

MaxAll right. So we had a couple of topics to talk about. Adam, I don't know if you're part of the Dubai Friday Powder Nation, but the format of the episode is usually we sort of have all of our follow-up in front matter and then we kind of try to cram the challenge in frantically at the last five minutes although we should try to leave a little more time because it's actually a very good

Speaker Achallenge that you've given us this week cool cool no whatever you do i'm at your disposal so um

Maxyeah i'll just roll with it however you want to do it cool um well let's see i had a do you have any where do you want to start alex do you have follow-up i have a i have a bunch of items of

Alexfollow-up i i literally have max keeps his notes secret from merlin and i so that it can be like

Maxa big reveal yeah you mean so that you're so that you can genuinely be surprised by the things that we talk about on a podcast and have authentic reactions and it's like that's what Scott used

Speaker Ato do too he would just say like he would come up with the topics and he would never reveal them to us he would just be like trust me just trust me it's gonna work we we didn't even get a trusty

Alexit's like uh dig dug the president's penis like I think that's gonna be what happens one day well

Speaker AWe didn't see it.

MaxI wound up watching almost 40 minutes of college basketball last night to not see the president's penis. So that was a bit of a rip off. I do think in my imagination, though, it kind of looks like Alf's nose.

AlexI don't know why you keep going back to that. Because it just does. I don't know.

MaxIt's just something going to be weird with it. It's like an elephant's trunk, maybe. What if it's like a perfect pyramid?

AlexOh, interesting.

Speaker AI think it's mostly head, no shaft.

Maxso it's like a it's like a strawberry coming off of his he's got sort of a he's got sort of a fold and then just a strawberry coming out of that seeds on the outside i would say

Alexoh adam i have to say max and i you know i have some front matter um max and i are big fans of your filmmaking so much so that when I showed someone a one of my college films they're like oh did you just rip off Lonely Sandwich I'm like yeah that's exactly so thank you you you got me

Maxreally great grades uh in film school I have to say I built a whole nominal career out of like ripping off Adam's videos and doing them for like Kickstarter videos I mean they're not good rip offs like I'm not I'm not comparing them but it was like a style that I saw and I was like that's what I want my stuff to feel like and then I just did and then I just sort of muddled through like making videos that sort of felt like how sandwich videos made me feel awesome well everybody

Speaker Arips off somebody that's how art is made and and I ripped off plenty of people too so it's it's all in the circle of life continues hakuna matata that was that that was that whole the whole Cam

MaxDavis ad that I put together was like I got this we can get into I don't know if you if you want to get into this, Adam, but we can talk about the whole story behind this. But like, basically, basically, so I got an email, I was working on some other campaigns in the Illinois primaries, I get an email from my friend Deborah Shore, who's on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Cook County, a big political office. And Deborah, I know, I actually worked on one of my first jobs in politics, I worked for one of her reelection campaigns doing like events for her.

But she gave me an email and she's like, listen, there's this crazy situation going on where Bruce Rauner might get to appoint the guy because basically what happened was that one of the commissioners died and he died like right before petitions were due. So there wasn't time for Democrats to file. And then there was like one guy who had some money and some union support and some resources, but he filed incorrectly. So then Cam was like the only person left. And she was like, listen, we got to get Cam. she's like cam's the most qualified and also like if he's not if we don't somehow figure out a writing campaign we're screwed because then there won't be a democrat on the ballot and bruce

arounder just gets to like appoint someone and conventional wisdom of like everyone who had been looking at this race was like it's just not done like i mean you just don't he needed what i think it was he needed like 8 900 write-ins or something along that line and it was just i mean that's just like just like anyone who knows anything about local politics knows like you cannot get 10,000 write-in votes for the water, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. Like people don't know what that office is. They don't know who the guy is. It's just not possible. Um, but, uh, yeah, but she emailed me and she was like, can you think of some way to get people

to care about this? And I just sort of started, sort of did like, started doing like, um, like mashups in my head of like, what if we did, what if it was like this video or like, what if this director did it? Like, what would it look like if, you know, uh, Quentin Tarantino or Spike Jones did a video for this guy and then I was like oh what about like some sort of um what about some sort of like uh commercial maybe yeah well like a sandwich for like a ripoff sandwich video basically like an off-brand like an off-brand sandwich video and what what I liked about it was like to me there had to be some sort of acknowledgement of if you're going to do a an

ad and say hi I'm the most qualified guy for this office but I'm not on the ballot and you have to write my name in in a special case, there's some kind of disconnect there, right? Like, the guys, you have to acknowledge that the guy's not on the ballot. So I felt like there's something very candid and disarming about the way that, you know, I feel like people, like, what's fun about sandwich videos, or at least my favorite sandwich videos, is there's so much bullshit in the world of tech. And there's so many bad commercials, and there's so many tropes. And it's all so slick,

and everyone's selling some sort of crazy bullshit. And I feel like there's just something so disarming about sandwich videos where they sort of acknowledge that it's an ad and it's fun and it kind of meets your gaze. I don't know how to put it, but it's like it's not.

Speaker AYeah, I heard it described recently as vulnerability, and I hadn't heard that before. Yeah, that's great. But yeah, just allowing anybody on camera to be vulnerable or even allowing the brand or the product to be vulnerable. And it's just not something you see done in advertising all that much. So I liked I liked that expression of it.

MaxThat's that's exactly what I'm what I'm trying to say is like, yeah, it's like you have like you have to acknowledge that there's something weird that you have to write the guy's name in. There's no like you can't like trick the voters into thinking that there's nothing weird about writing the guy's name in that he's not on the ballot like every other Democrat. So I feel like there just had to be some sort of humility. And and and and like you're saying, like vulnerability of saying like, listen, this is screwed up. Would you guys bail us out? And then I also felt like once I was thinking about it that way, there was kind of a comedy angle to it of like it just rung true in a funny way with modern politics to me of like, boy, the Democrats just cannot get their shit together.

But also like we really need the people to bail us out. So I just felt like that was sort of a funny tone for the video.

Speaker AAnd then I just sort of. I love it. I think it's perfect. And I love how she has this kind of Fran Leibovitz persona. right she's so good uh she's super down and she's super game for whatever and max you sent me the script before you shot it and and i and my first thought was there's no way that anybody any politicians ever gonna say these words but she totally did and then cam is sort of just like her wing her wingman a little bit he's or he's she's on she's sitting at her throne and and he's he's

at her call and in and the tone was absolutely perfect and what happens now with it well so the

Maxthe election happened and we have uh the i didn't even vote i feel terrible uh well that's okay because you don't live in cook county um so wouldn't have helped but uh oh you can really

Speaker Ayou can vote anywhere these days

Maxhere's how much of a ripoff it was was i sent it when i was cutting when i was doing different cuts i sent was sending them to adam and i was like what do you think and then i was like maybe i should put some bleep bloop music in like how um uh like how uh uh some of the sandwich videos have and i was like don't do that and i was like no no i said never say that again never say that again never say bleep bloop again and then and you know the honestly like I uh I

liked it a lot better without the music but I made the critical mistake of sending it with music to the the committee and I shouldn't have done that because once that was out there was no it's all

Speaker Aright there's a good version of every decision like that so as long as it's the good it's the

Maxgood version you're fine um how did you disseminate it we did um so I did uh Instagram uh I did paid Instagram ads, you know, like Cambridge Analytica and paid Facebook ads and paid Twitter ads. And then also just organic. Like I think we probably got, we probably got 40,000 views just organically. And then the rest was all paid. So probably over another hundred thousand paid. And it had a, on the paid views, we had a 40% completion like view rate, which is, which is

which is very high for a paid video ad.

Speaker AYeah, I've done a couple of political ads and they were so last minute that they didn't, I'm sure they had some maybe marginal effect on the campaigns, but we forgot to do the part where you put it out there into the public view and then try to seed it and let it grow. And something can't be seen by enough people in two days. So my bad. but it was sort of experimental in the first place we lost both those races i would love to

Maxsee those races i i've never seen those ads i want to see them uh so we have this site i have

Speaker Athis separate like spin-off company called special projects and it's the website specialprojects.co oh that's so good um and so that that's kind of where i stick those videos and don't tell anybody and they're not just political stuff. They're like social good campaigns and things like that.

MaxYeah, I feel like, oh, look at this. There's a little something for the EFF here. That's awesome.

Speaker AYeah, we're ball toon day.

MaxYeah, I feel like what I was thinking about when I was making all the decisions for the Cam Davis ad was I felt like political ads are very slick right now. So like you're seeing a lot of like 2012 like tech videos. So like it's like a guy on a white background and there's like sort of cheerful ukulele music in the background. And he's like, I believe in three values, honesty, integrity and public service. You know, it's like like the other guy is going to have yard signs going like dishonesty.

Like I'm going to screw you. Fuck the public. and I just feel like that's so false for the same reason that those tech videos were false I mean it's just such a manufactured it's such a it's such a suburban like antidepressant ad or something like it just immediately sets your alarm bells off of like this guy's full of shit so like I liked for the what I tried to carry through with all the things for the Cam Davis ad in every aspect of it was like what's the most real version of this of just you know you want

Deborah going to the voter and saying we fucked up could you please help us and so it was like let's put her like in a film studio because the reality of it is she's in a film studio and she's being filmed so like let's let's acknowledge that on camera and you know we tried to do all of the all of the effects and jokes and everything in that sort of you know one take like you could see how everything worked

Speaker Akind of a vibe to it yeah it was so good and and i love the choice to i love the choice to show the crew and the equipment and and just have that be the trope is that we're sort of i don't know I don't even know really story-wise what's the purpose of seeing equipment in the shot. It's as though you're shooting a different video and this is just like a side video during the shooting of that video. But somehow it works.

AlexIt's as though you threw it together in two days and there was just... Well, it was.

MaxSo A, there was a little bit of that. I mean, it was really hasty. But B, I just had this idea. I don't know. I guess I had the idea that it, I mean, I didn't worry about over explaining it too much. But in my head, the idea was maybe that Deborah's just going to a film studio to sit down and do this like one take. Like we're just going to, you know, like that thing from the West Wing where the guy who takes Princess Leia does his commercial in Iowa in one take. That story didn't make any sense. But anyway, there's probably one listener of the podcast who's with me.

Jimmy Smits. Anyway. Anyway, yeah, and then, oh, the only change that Debra made that I thought was very funny and very telling was the original ending of the ad. She said, if you're writing Cam Davis, I give you permission not to use a low-flow toilet for one year. And Debra was like, I can't, she was like, I love the ad, but I can't say that. That's awesome. She's got principles. She's like, I can't give people, she's like, people can't not use low-flow toilets for one year. well what what it really what and then i was so i met with uh so i had dinner with uh my some of my comedy friends uh scott goldstein and tom fell and we just sat there making water puns for like

an hour like getting drunk and making water puns and tom eventually came up with don't shit where you eat and i was like and i brought it i printed it out like at the office while everyone was in the studio i was like deborah would you do this version and she was like yeah i guess let's i

Speaker Aguess we're doing it let's go it's so good and you had a i saw on instagram you had like a legit crew and everything too it was like a real shoot yeah that was all steve delahoyd so shout

Maxout to uh shout out to steve delahoyd if you're in the chicago area or i guess really anywhere and you need a very very good director to do anything hire steve delahoyd he does a little field notes

Speaker Avideos which are outstanding yeah they are award-winning awesome yeah um it's funny you mentioned about the tropes of political ads that were just and with every generation of of of a genre like that it takes a while for for the the back of the pack to catch up and realize what are the things you just don't do anymore um so there's there's still just like loads and loads of bad bad content in in that in that genre um and i so i last year i last year i went to dc and i

did a talk which was really an awesome opportunity i did a talk for this group called running start which is it's a week-long training program for young women to learn to run for public office. Oh, cool. And so I went and I spoke to them about, like as a video expert, about being the most authentic version of yourself, how you represent yourself authentically, either on camera or otherwise.

And so what I did as part of that talk was I just showed – I collected a whole bunch of different political ads, both bad ones and good ones. And I showed them to the to the audience who's all, I think, 14 through 18 year old girls. And they picked up on stuff on the in the cues of inauthenticity faster than adults would. That was really fun to experience, actually.

MaxYou know, it's interesting. I met with a lot of people running for office this cycle in Illinois. And they were all you know, I know all the weird candidates that that like don't have a chance to win. but they're cool and they, you know, they share my, my beliefs and they're like, how do I break through and how do I, how do I reach people and how do I get people excited? And, you know, especially young people. And it's like, well, and they're like, what they're like, could, you know, a lot of people were like, could you do a video for me or, you know, figure out digital strategy or whatever. And like, the issue is like people vaguely know that what they're doing is

inauthentic, but then they're not willing to do any of the things that are actually authentic. So my advice to a lot of people, especially people that I thought were like genuinely interesting people and like funny and compelling was I was like, you should do a vlog, like just turn your cell phone camera on and talk into it and be like, Hey, I'm in the car on my way to this debate. And here's what I'm thinking, you know, and this is my day. All right. Thanks for watching. And just do that every day. And it'll probably connect with an audience the same as tons of people on YouTube who do a vlog connect to an audience. And everyone was like, well, you know,

everyone had a million reasons of why that wouldn't work. But I feel like that's a great I feel like the world is waiting for the first, for like the Casey Neistat, you know, political candidates.

AlexSo I got this drone. One of my favorite things that you always ask or try to get candidates to answer at debates is, so what do you do? What does an alderman do? What does the attorney, and they're so resistant to that. And I don't like you.

MaxI worked for one. I worked on a really rough campaign that it was the campaign that broke my spirit. And I stopped doing working in politics full time and decided to do cards. And, you know, that was that was around the period when cards got started. But basically, I was working on the statewide campaign on the controllers race for the Illinois State controller. And the candidate was a real menace. Like he made us like wear suit. There was a very small staff, like three or four of us. And he made us wear suits every day. and we were working on the fourth floor of this un-air-conditioned brick bank building, and we were just sweating.

No one saw me. I was working on a computer all day. There's no reason for me to wear a suit, except he wanted to feel important when he came in the office. So he had a huge ego, and he was really rough on us. We were all pitching in and doing speech writing and staffing him at events and stuff. We would frequently say, I think when you speak, you should probably start by telling people what the controller does. You should say, this is my name, and I'm running for controller. and here's what the controller does because no one knows. And he would always say, he would say, everyone knows what the controller does. The fourth highest constitutionally ranking office in the state.

Everybody knows what the controller does.

AlexWhat does the controller do? I have no fucking idea.

MaxYeah, I mean, but most people don't. I mean, even most people at a political event, I don't think they deeply know what the controller does. Like they probably, maybe they know the guy who used to do it or whatever, but I think people deeply, like I don't, like I know a lot of elected officials and I don't deeply know what they do. Like, I'm always curious, like, is it a full-time job or do you do other stuff? Or like, what do you have for breakfast? And like, how do you get around? Do you have a driver?

Speaker ALike, you know, what difference between the con, the controller and the comp controller?

MaxYeah. The difference is the comp controller is how you say it. If you don't know how to pronounce it. Oh, so there is a difference. Yeah. I looked up, uh, uh, we actually, when I was working on that race, none of us knew how to say it. And some people would say comptroller and some people would say controller. and so I looked it up in my trusty dusty um Garner's Modern American Usage and it literally has that joke in it he's like the difference between comptroller and controller is comptroller

Alexis how you say it if you don't know how it's pronounced great I'm I I've actually this is one bit of front matter that I really wanted to ask Adam um in sort it's sort of related to the Trump stuff do you like wearing suits Mr. Lisegore um no well not really no I I

Speaker AI guess my category of daily wear sort of changes maybe every six months or so. And for a while, it was like for a couple of years, actually, it was button down shirts at the very least. But now when I put those on, I feel like a dad. Like most of these days, I'm just trying to avoid feeling like a dad. So for a while, it was a lot of Henleys, but I never wear suits. And I don't, and even when I wear a suit on camera, I feel like a poser and I feel like everybody's, you know, I feel like a fraud.

And I feel like that comes through in the presentations. I don't, I never want to, never, I mean, that's the frustrating thing about style is even if you want to try something because you think it's the coolest thing. If you're not fully there with the confidence, then you, then not only are you feeling like everybody's judging you for not having the confidence, but actually, you know, it has the, the if that ultimately has the effect of not having confidence even worse confidence so no yeah

Maxlong answer no i i look i look forward i really look forward to an opportunity to wear a suit like i did this like speaking thing this like politics event on friday and i had to like get dressed up and wear a nice suit but and i felt great when i was there because like i knew i was like all right i'm like fit in and i have like a suit that fits correctly and like you know like i might i like matched all my colors like i was like i you know i i don't know that's a cool feeling but then immediately um no didn't do the pocket square because it was kind of it was kind of it was like a lunch more businessy it was more businessy yeah i didn't want to show

boat but um you know what i did i wore like like like a new pair of white sneakers dressed it down a little bit great oh you did a seinfeld which and which veronica makes fun of me for but i think it's a cool look i think it's definitely the way to wear a suit if you're not trying too hard if you're trying to make it look if you're trying really hard to make it look like you're not

Speaker Atrying too hard yeah i saw uh jason candor got dragged on twitter for wearing a suit jacket with

Maxjeans the other day yeah well do a sport coat i mean the suit the suit jacket looks like you've

Speaker Aborrowed your dad's oh well maybe not a suit yeah maybe it was a sport coat sport coat and jeans is

Maxdefinitely the seinfeld yeah yeah it really is yeah i don't like when people wear like a black suit jacket with blue jeans because it looks like you showed up to the restaurant and you had to borrow a jacket you're on a date the sleeves are hanging over your hands yeah that's that

Speaker Acomes off as surprise funeral that you weren't prepared for

Maxyou point to the waiter and you're like and uh my lady will have the pasta and lobster and you knock over a glass of water with a huge sleeve.

AlexAdam, to answer your question, the reason I asked is because apparently, Max says this, but I can't find proof of it, is that Trump is killing the way of the suit. Well, we haven't gotten into the harebrained theories

Maxsection of the podcast.

AlexOkay, sorry, sorry. Oh, is that the theory? One more.

MaxThat's my theory. I think Trump, I think that the men, well, no, I wasn't going to do this one, but now I will. but uh i feel like just a teaser we can talk about this this is what the pros do yeah we're gonna we're gonna give you a teaser for later uh no it's like uh i feel like there's a i feel like the men's suit is already on the way out because there's sort of the men's suit started as like a power thing because it was showing like oh like look how much fabric i can afford like i don't even need this to like uh you know for for my like uh work beasts and my you know my

my house like I have excess fabric and I can drape it on my body you know luxuriously it's like the lawn of a man yeah it is actually or like yeah it's like or like how women wear like high heels because it's meant to show that your women don't need to work right so it's like a wealth it's like a what do you call it like a cultural capital it's like you're you know you're displaying the that you have like power and wealth because you have all this extra fabric and that's already lame because it's like obviated by like the new power symbol is to show that you don't need to wear a suit so you're like you know you're like mark zuckerberg and you like you like

roll into a meeting in a black t-shirt and then everyone has to take pictures of you at weird angles so you look taller than everyone else but so the suit was already on its way out and i think it might be like the final nail in the coffin for for the relevance of the men's suit that just

Alexjust trump see i'm glad that you're saying men's suit because i have like so many weddings to go to the summer and i've finally been like no more fucking dresses and i'm gonna get a suit tailored and I'm very excited about it. And I'm like, I need, both my wife and I are like, okay, we're going to go do this. And they were looking at like pocket squares. Oh yeah, yeah. That's awesome.

Speaker ADo you go to someone who specializes in that? Or do you go to a men's suit tailor that- Yeah, do you get a normal suit or a gay suit?

AlexExactly, that's the problem is like there's some nice gay suits.

MaxI'll have a one gay suit, please.

AlexMaddie's like, I'd like the trans option. I hope I don't get in trouble for that.

Oh, well, one more style question for you, Adam. I'm going to send you two links Wait what's the answer? Where are you getting the suits? I don't know I have not done my research yet

Speaker AGo to check out suitsapply.com Sabrina who works for me got just the most finely tailored suit I've ever seen and I could get the site from you

MaxNow did she get professionally measured and then send those measurements to the suit website? Yeah I believe so

Speaker AI believe that's how to do it

MaxSo I've seen a bunch of ding-a-lings in our office like trying to measure themselves with like a with like a like a for like the black tux or something yeah yeah for like a with like a straight edge ruler trying to like you know measure their in like three people like gathered around a guy trying to measure their balls to like send it off just one of those like suit by mail places and i'm like just go to a suit company like you're

Alexwhat is this you're saving like ten dollars like well there was there was a day like that i remember when like me undies first came out and then there's a bunch of like bra companies online and And we just, like all of the women in the company, we just like, okay, how do we do this? And I don't know. I just don't trust measurements online. I don't know. Plus, I want a fancy man to be like, yeah, yeah, that definitely looks good. Even if they're lying to me.

MaxYeah, have a professional do it. There's a place in Chicago called Suit Supply that our friend Fancy Ben took me and Tommy to.

AlexOh, I love Fancy Ben.

MaxAnd I would just talk to Ben, honestly, because he knows like actual tailors. but Suit Supply did a hell of a job for me.

AlexOne more question, Adam. I'm going to send you two links and these are just two bags and I really, especially ever since the, oh, dang it, what was it called? Jesse Thorne's series. Put this on. Yeah, put this on. I was always so impressed and there's just two bags and I'm just interested in which one you find more aesthetically appealing.

Speaker AOh, okay. Sure, well, I'm no expert. Okay, so there's, oh, the second one.

AlexDo I get to see this? Ah, yes! Do I get to see this? Well, here, this is the second one. Okay. And this is the first one.

Thank you, thank you so much, Adam. You just made my day.

MaxThat's Alex's backpack and my backpack. I think Alex's backpack looks like something out of like Starship Troopers. It's like some sort of futuristic carapace. That's okay. It's an urban ninja backpack.

AlexYeah, it's specially tailored.

MaxYeah, it's got special compartments for all your shurikens in case you need to battle a rival dojo.

AlexAdam, do you have any front matter or anything you would like to ask us? Or we can just keep telling you how impressed we are with everything.

Speaker AI have none. I want to circle back to the suits really quick because I feel like it was because Trump is just whatever Trump has always been Trump he's an older fat man and he looks a certain way in a suit I feel like Mike Pence could do better and it was actually Mike Pence that destroyed the suit in this administration because I feel like his he did it with intent and his intent was not to look sexy ever no matter what he's uncomfortable with the idea because you can a man looks sexy in a suit unless you actually actually make a concerted effort to not look sexy to look unsexy you have your computer in front of

Maxyou adam yeah look up kickboxing dummy okay i do a little google image search for kickboxing dummy got it that's mike pence yeah oh no oh absolutely doesn't that look exactly like mike pence it really does he i think his body i mean this body this guy is pretty shredded though and i think mike mike pence i think he looks like a duplo man under that suit like i think it's all i think it's all it's all kind of perfectly smooth and

Speaker Ait's got like a lot of right angles and and there's just gotta work hard to cover that up

Maxthere's just there's just a a plastic hinge where his dingus would be

Speaker AJust a smooth... A full-size Ken doll.

MaxYeah, exactly. Just a smooth little radius of plastic down there.

AlexBut really, what is it with politicians never having good ties? Why can't just one politician have a nice tie?

MaxWell, Obama got made fun of a lot for any sort of experimentation with his wardrobe. There are some male politicians who have pretty good style. Not a lot, though.

AlexName one.

MaxWell, I mean, I think famously Obama's suits were pretty great.

Speaker AProbably anybody running for California governor right now has pretty good suits. Yeah, we thought Arnold looked terrible in a suit. Yeah, he's a big guy. He's got, it's not his fault. He looks like a, he looks like an earth mover. He could only wear those, um, those suits that are made out of sweatpants material.

MaxHe's like, uh, he's like, uh, what, what, what animal is it that like poops in a cube so it doesn't roll downhill? Like that's his, that's his body type. Uh, all right. I had a quick followup from the Chicago Tribune. So I don't know if people, uh, uh, the, uh, avid, uh, listeners of Dubai Friday, the real ax heads out there who follow me on Twitter might have seen me complaining about, they might have seen me complaining about the, our priceless Bleck Lorette graffiti that got destroyed by the city of Chicago last week.

Basically the story on this is we had, oh boy, it was about a year ago actually, I think it was in like March of last year, this French graffiti artist, Bleck Lorette, who's called the father of street art, or street graffiti art, I guess, who, he sort of originated, I guess what you might call like the Banksy look or the Banksy style in Paris in the 60s and 70s.

He did a show, like a retrospective show at a gallery in Chicago. When he was in town, he put out word to a couple of sort of artists and designers and street artists. And he was like, is there, you know, space where it would be allowed for me to do a mural? And I put our building up and he came and scoped it out and he liked it and he did a paste up. and City of Chicago was awesome. I mean, we couldn't have been more excited and it was a really cool paste up. Alex put the link in the show notes. And basically, the City of Chicago is really bad about street art.

I mean, it comes from overzealous graffiti cleansing in the Daly administration that has never really been reformed or changed or reexamined. And the city really doesn't draw any distinction between gang tagging and art. And they have this thing called graffiti busters and it's just big trucks with power washers and they just come by and wash your graffiti off and they assume this is what people want. And I've done battle with graffiti busters many times trying to preserve different pieces of artwork and they always come on and take it down.

AlexAre they contractors or?

MaxYou know, that's a great question. I mean, they drive, so, okay. So the meter maids are contractors, right? That's a private company now that does the parking enforcement and they do not drive city of Chicago vehicles. They drive their own vehicles. and the graffiti busters drive city of Chicago like fleet vehicles so I think they are probably a city agency but um yeah so graffiti busters came three different times over the last year and tried to destroy the black or a piece and someone saw them and ran out and was like no no we want to keep it and on a couple times we even had to call our alderman alderman hopkins and

or someone from his office and like talk talk to the graffiti busters and say no no that's it's art they have permission to keep it up which is crazy because it's our private property but But anyway, last week, Graffiti Busters rolled up early, 7.30, 8 a.m., before anyone was in the office, and it was gone. I actually got a – someone texted me, and they were like, hey, Graffiti Busters is outside your office. And it was done by that point. So I was mad, and actually later that day our alderman called me and apologized, and they've been actually great about it. And I'm going to talk with them about coming up with some system to fix this in the future.

But the follow-up I wanted to read on Dubai Friday, this is a piece from Lauren Zumbach at the Chicago Tribune. So as you know, Chicago is like a finalist for trying to woo Amazon to build their HQ2 here.

This is from March 22nd from the Chicago Tribune. They said, The city and Chicago real estate developers did a lot of sprucing up over the past week, but it was no ordinary spring cleaning. City crews were blasting away graffiti near proposed sites for Amazon's planned 50,000 employee second headquarters in the lead up to the online retail giant's visit, city records show.

Owners of the proposed HQ2 sites were busy cleaning up vacant land and adding signs showing glossy architectural renderings of their projects. And then it specifically lists what they're trying to sell as Lincoln Yards, which is the 70-acre site across the river from us where the Finkelsteel site used to be. That's like the leading place for the Amazon thing. It says they dramatically stepped up graffiti cleanup near some of the city's sites being pitched to Amazon in the week leading up to the company's visit. In the month leading up to Amazon's visit, the city completed 233 requests for graffiti removal in the Fulton Market area.

During the same month last year, the city handled only 14 graffiti removal requests.

AlexI want to throw up.

MaxSo that's what happened. It's like they were trying to look cool to Amazon. Mayor Rahm was trying to look cool to Jeff Bezos, and they came and destroyed our street art. So I feel like Jeff Bezos, basically my conclusion is that Jeff Bezos owes us a priceless piece of art. It's the only thing that can make this right.

AlexAt least like a fleet of like fire phones or something that are laying around. Oh, that could be funny. Yeah. Just give us a bunch of echoes.

Speaker AHow about a competing tribe of graffiti buster busters that's out there just busting the work of the graffiti busters?

MaxOh, okay. So you put up giant nets? Yes. Like tripwires. Like they get their power washer up and then suddenly you hear like a branch crack so you hear a spring and they shoot up into a giant net. Gotcha, bitch. Power wash that.

AlexThey literally go to the giant axis. Little to the left, little to the left. There's no way that HQ2 is actually going to be here, right?

MaxIt is a leading contender. Have you seen the fucking renderings for this thing?

AlexYeah. It's like people who wanted the Olympics to come to Chicago. Look at this.

MaxGoogle. I think it's just do a Google image search for Lincoln Yards. Let me see if that finds it. Yeah, that's it. Look at this. It's crazy. It looks like the Starfleet headquarters in all of the 90s Star Trek shows.

AlexOh, God. I hate it. I hate it so much.

MaxAlex, they're going to build a 20,000 person soccer stadium across the street from our office.

AlexI hate it all so much.

MaxYou know how we always drive around and we're like, you know what this neighborhood needs is 20,000 cars. You know how it's so easy to park outside our office and we're like, if only there were 20,000 more cars.

AlexMaybe they're like, well, this neighborhood in Chicago has basically the last Barnes and Noble in all of the Midwest. So we just want to take them down.

Maxman they showed some new renderings this week of the Lincoln Yards project and one of them had like a shopping center over the river and had a canoe store on the second story they were just selling canoes on a second story walk up store

Alexis there anything like that in LA Adam like one you're in LA right not to compromise your obsec but you're not in San Francisco no I am absolutely

Speaker Adefinitely not in San Francisco I'm absolutely 100% in Los Angeles. Thank you for qualifying, yeah.

AlexIs there, like, has, may I ask, like, has your area already been completely gentrified? Or is it, like, is there cool startups, like, slowly creeping in?

Speaker AThis one, the neighborhood we're in is on the tail end of its gentrification. It is absolutely the coolest neighborhood in L.A. right now, I believe.

MaxIs it Echo Park?

Speaker ANo, it's. um it's the the arts district ah okay um so the arts district in downtown sort of on the outskirts and it's called the arts district because arts artists used to be here and they're not anymore just shinola is here now um and salt and straw they've been making uh detroit watches since uh

Maxwhat do they say since like 19 1950 or something like that sure yeah i i actually don't know i've

Speaker Anot been in but there but it's it feels like it's on the way and and if startups come in a meaningful way if startups are here in a way that you know them and see them then yeah there goes the neighborhood as it as it is right now it's starting to creep into a little bit of venice territory where everything is a little bit too perfect to be bohemian we're on the edge of bohemian the edge where you can still see plenty of um relics of the old of the old warehouse he passed um so it's not fully converted yet which is a nice place to be adam you ever go to that place the pie hole

sure oh definitely they've been in they've been here since we've been in the neighborhood as well there were there were sort of like two two restaurants in the neighborhood and now it's

Alexit's it's more restaurant than neighborhood is this a bakery or a gay club oh a little bit of

Speaker Acolumn a little bit of column b it depends is a turkey pot pie kind of a thing like a gay thing i i i guess

AlexIf you are a gay man, please tweet at Max Stemkin and give us some follow up.

MaxYeah. Tell me what a turkey pot pie is. Everyone's going to do the same one joke is the problem.

AlexIf you have a joke that's funnier than, wait, what's the one joke? Something, something penis?

Speaker ANo, I don't know.

MaxWhatever the most obvious thing is, 30 people are going to tweet me that now. They're going to be like, oh, it's when you take a shit on someone. Oh, okay. Turkey pot pie. Thank you.

Alexdick talk uh adam uh i i am i kind of really want to get into our challenge right now uh i keep saying adam because i'm like yeah adam on this podcast um can we can we call you mr sandwich is that acceptable yes absolutely i um i honor that and respond to it and prefer it All right, Mr. Sandwich, could you present the challenge that you brought to us?

Speaker AYes, absolutely. I challenged us, the three of us, to bring to the table a harebrained theory. And a harebrained theory is one which you feel is possibly something of like a revelation or an epiphany, quite possibly stupid, most likely very wrong. but at least it puts a new perspective on your way of thinking about something commonplace.

MaxDid you come with more than one, Adam?

Speaker AI have a few different flavors.

MaxCould you give us one to sort of set the tone? Start us off with a good one here.

Speaker AYeah, okay. This is a lowball one. I was showing the movie Hook, the 1991 Spielberg movie Hook, to my son, my five-year-old son yesterday. And when you haven't seen an older movie like that, like an older big budget movie like that for a while, and then you go back and watch it, you notice the artifacts of its time, of when it was made. and to me that's always been uh exemplified i guess in things like film grain and gateweave

what they call gateweave where you can see like the the very very subtle motion of the film weaving back and forth in its gate as it's scanned digitally and those kinds of imperfections but but um because this was the last vestige of analog um special effects and set building and things like that before everything went digital what you get is this imperfection in the sets which i can only um kind of characterize as a wobble and you're and and i realized that the

the the way that we of the nostalgia generation think about our childhood has a lot to do with that wobble in that the objects in the frame actually wobble the the sets wobble the the the animatronic plants wobble, the camera wobbles when it moves around because they didn't have a way to digitally stabilizing it. So my theory is, is that I guess if I were to sum it up, we came of, I came of age at least in the, in the,

in the wobble film school of film.

MaxWell, there's, there's that, there's that idea that like the artifacts of one generation become the next generations, like aesthetic and like nostalgia. So like the hiss of like a record player, like I'm sure when people were limited to records they would have done they probably went to enormous lengths to get rid of that hiss and that analog sound and now people are go to you know now now that we have clean music readily available everyone's like hungry to recreate it yeah because you you if you

Speaker Arecreate it in order to evoke the passing of time that's the only reason you do that and because you assign characteristics of that era that no longer exist and therefore have some sort of an emotional content whenever the mix on this podcast

Alexis fucked up it's because i'm you know i'm an auteur i just i want to give give a different

Speaker Ayou should add a subtle warble to yeah just the final pass when you master it i think in i think

Maxin 50 years if people are still doing podcasts they're going to add in like skype artifacts because they're going to be like it's part of the medium it's like what people used to do who'd you join the call um okay i have one about hook that this wasn't actually on my list but it's fucking incredible so it's from uh it's from our friend um uh c spike chopman who's uh at iron spike on twitter um spike is a independent comic publisher but she's also one of the most she's like one of the most well-read and and like like like she just has like an unbelievable wealth of

art history knowledge and she just drops it in these twitter threads that like blow my mind sometimes and she did one about peter pan so she did a tweet the other day of like she's like yeah peter pan is like a classic like psycho pomp and a bunch of people like what what is that and she's like well it she's and so i'm just going to read her twitter thread here but this in terms of hairbrain theories this one this one completely blew my mind she says peter is modeled on a dead child, the author's older brother. He's shadowless, clad in quote, autumn leaves and cobwebs,

plays a pipe like the pie to piper, and appears in night to spirit children away to a land, quote, where they never grow up, in an age with sky-high infant mortality. Parents at the time would have understood the metaphor completely the same way that they understood paintings of kids blowing soap bubbles, how they were about child death too. Kids were beautiful, fragile, and potentially gone in an instant. And then she shows all these sort of Renaissance era paintings of children looking at soap bubbles and blowing soap bubbles. Peter is also described as canonically appearing very young

having his first teeth so younger than six or seven prime age for being taken out by a childhood disease. And then she gives this great quote from the original Peter Pan. My three children flew away in the night. They were fine when I put them to bed now they're gone to a place where they'll never grow up.

That kind of changes hook a little bit.

AlexJust a bit. just a bit oh my god there were some pretty aren't there some pretty scary parts of hook oh yeah they put scorpions they put a guy in a box and then they put scorpions in the box and i'm not traumatized by that at all there's full-on murder in that movie and it's a kid

Speaker Aso much oh yeah yeah did you remember by the way do you do you kind of remember you guys aren't as old as i am but if you go back and watch some of your favorites from the from your childhood there's a lot more swears than than i think we would get away with movies now and it was always just like cute to have some chubby little kid go well fuck you asshole and and it was just like uh it was a laugh line you know but i don't you're like wait what did he that was not only rude but

Maxinappropriate disrespectful well now now i'm old so i don't want kids to curse at me it's my worst fear i gotta walk by the cbs the kid the parking lot are gonna curse at me no thank you get a scary yeah i have some discipline god damn those ruffians you know what that reminds me of is do you guys remember there was like an article that came out last year that was like uh people trust you more if you if you swear if you use curse words and then for like for like three weeks a bunch of congressional democrats started cursing so like all of a sudden like chuck

Schumer was going like, yeah, Donald Trump, he's a, he's, he's a, he's a fucking liar. Like just like trying to sound cool to his, to his friends.

Speaker ALike, Oh, what's that from? There's a, you're a fucking, that's from Fargo. I think with the truth.

AlexI mean, I, I like everyone jokes about the whole shithole thing that Trump was saying, but just there needs to be a compilation out there of anchors just glee either gleefully saying it over and over or they look like they're about to pee themselves because they're so nervous like everything in their body is like nope nope nope nope nope that would be a great supercut wouldn't

Speaker Ait just be the the overton window of swears um on the on the nightly news

MaxAll right. I've got a good, so I have a couple of them here. I have my dumbest one I'll do first, which is, I hope I haven't said this on the podcast already, but I think that the secret, do you guys know the chips Cheez-It?

Speaker AThey're like the crackers.

MaxI think that the secret of Cheez-It is that they, so Cheez-It are pretty good, a nice like salty, like Parmesan, like tanginess when you first bite into them. And then they taste, they have this aftertaste of like of like of like ash like they just taste horrible they just turn to dust in your mouth i mean they have one of the they have a terrible terrible aftertaste and i think what happens is people start eating cheese it and they're like oh i love these things and then you get this horrible lingering aftertaste in your mouth and you're like god i need something

to get this taste out of my mouth and what's left is more cheese it it's like sitting right in front of you so you start eating them and then by the at some point you realize you've had like the entire box in one go and you're like i must love cheese it i should buy more of these i think that's the

Alexwhole secret i mean well first of all uh are you saying cheese it like you're saying lego why it's

Speaker Acheese it's no it's not collective noun it says on the bottom i think he's right on this one yeah

Maxlet me check yep he's right for what i assume is intellectual property reasons because they didn't like get a trademark on cheese it's the plural of cheese it is cheese it so like i had a handful I ate four of Cheez-It. I ate six Cheez-It.

AlexI can see that. Like there was the whole, that wonderful New York Times article that I read about once a year about how Doritos are the most chemically perfect food. And I'm enjoying a Diet Dr. Pepper right now, which is also the, it is just, it doesn't taste like anything. It was invented to taste good to humans. And I just, I love it. Oh man. That's awesome. I don't think this is a harebrained theory. This is just, the scientists at Cheez-It, I don't know if they were intending to do that,

but they definitely want, I think, it also leaves a coating, so it's almost like there is, I don't think it tastes like ash, but it's definitely like, oh, I'm in the Cheez-It state of mind. I need to continue to be here.

MaxThis is from, I think, from that New Yorker article that you're talking about by Michael Moss. He says, the food technician stopped worrying about inventing new products and instead embraced the industry's most reliable method for getting consumers to buy more, the line extension. The classic Lay's potato chips were joined by salt and vinegar, salt and pepper, cheddar and sour cream. They put out chili cheese flavored Fritos and Cheetos were transformed into 21 varieties. Frito-Lay has a formidable research complex near Dallas where 500 chemists, psychologists and technicians conducted research that cost up to $30 million a year.

And the science core focused intense amount of resources on questions of crunch, mouthfeel and aroma for each of these items. Their tools included a $40,000 device that simulated a chewing mouth to test and perfect the chips, discovering things like the perfect break point. People like a chip that snaps with about four pounds of pressure per square inch.

Speaker ASo I just did it as an experiment because I couldn't recall the flavor of a Cheez-It, but I remembered that we had some on the counter. So I asked Mike Merrill, who works for me, to bring me some, and he fetched me a bowl of Cheez-It.

I'm not getting the ashiness, but I definitely remember the solidification in your teeth.

MaxIt's like a Greek tragedy. It's like a curse from a Greek tragedy. It's like, you know, may water never slake your thirst and all food turn to ash in your mouth. That's what eating Cheetos or Cheez-Its is like.

Speaker AIt's good, but it doesn't hold a candle to a better cheddar, if you remember those.

AlexNo. Better cheddars.

Speaker AWas that a regional?

AlexBetter. California? Better cheddar.

Speaker AHmm. Show notes.

AlexYeah. Oh, you know, Kansas City.

MaxIs this some sort of like Annie's, some sort of like the better cheddar?

Speaker AIs this, what is it, a jarred cheese? No, better cheddar was a chip, a competing chip to cheese it. Oh, Nabisco better cheddars. Yeah.

AlexInteresting. Let's see if they're.

Speaker AAnd they were wafer thin and delightful. Oh, I definitely have had these and they are good. Yeah. Wow. I had these when I was a kid. Yeah. I think so they kept me company on many a blockbuster night when I was a teenager.

AlexI, well, I'm going to expand on this harebrained theory. Are you both familiar with cheese nips? Yes.

MaxThis is a George Carlin bit.

AlexNew DeBasco tits. Cheese tits.

MaxTits doesn't even belong on the list, man.

AlexWell, here's the thing. If you go down the aisle, the cheese tits are right next to the cheese its.

I'm sorry.

MaxYou'll get it.

AlexOh, everything's fine. It's a real product.

MaxI can't believe this is real.

AlexBut they used to have... Oh my God.

MaxWhat a fucking name. What do you think they left on the drawing board? Cheese dick was definitely up there They actually are by Nabisco too This really is God this really is the George Carlin bitch God damn Nabisco cheese nips Baked snack crackers New from Nabisco

Speaker ACheese nips

MaxHey guys you want some cheese nips? You guys want to come over to my house And eat some cheese nips after school?

AlexI just realized.

MaxThey make them in different flavors, too. They've got Nabisco cheddar cheese nips.

AlexWell, not just different flavors. And this is where the theory comes from. You can't really find basic, normal-flavored cheese nips. They're always in some sort of children's shape. And I think that's because, not in the shape of children, but like Spongebob or BB-8 or something. and I think it's because the mouthfeel is just so much better when they have little ridges in them because it can't hold a candle to the cheese it.

MaxCheese nips originally styled as cheese dash nips were introduced in 1955. Wow. Today cheese nips is the biggest rival of cheese its.

AlexI'm really glad we've gone down this road. I really want some nips right now.

Speaker ASo you actually sought out cheese nips in their pure form and they only exist in their sort of merchandise form. Is that what you're saying?

AlexYes, because I prefer the ridge nips and especially for some reason BB-8 and Spongebob are the best flavors to me. the How to Train Your Dragon not as good. I don't know why.

MaxOh, I saw Death of Stalin this weekend. It was phenomenal.

Speaker AOh, okay.

MaxThe Iannucci movie.

Speaker AYeah.

MaxI think it was my favorite comedy that I've seen in a movie theater in like 10 years.

Speaker ADoes Steve Coogan play Stalin? Or am I misremembering?

MaxSteve Coogan, Death of Stalin. He might. That actually sounds... No, actually, I don't think so. It's got Jeffrey Tambor and Steve Buscemi.

AlexThis looks like it has a very Dr. Strangelove type of feel to it.

MaxIt's like In the Thick of It, if you've seen that, or Veep. I don't know. Well, it was banned in Russia, wasn't it? Oh, that's funny. It's very, very funny. The guy who plays Lucius Malfoy is in this and is so fucking funny.

AlexOh, he's Stalin.

MaxNo, he's the head of the army whose name I can't remember under Stalin.

AlexHe was just wearing a lot of medals in this poster.

MaxYeah, I don't think the guy who played Stalin was a huge name, but also he's dead for most of the movie. Spoilers. I highly recommend this. It's a really, really, really good comedy. I feel like movies haven't been funny in a really long time. And I feel like what passes for humor in movies is usually pretty lame now. And it's usually moments that are telegraphed of like, you should laugh now. And this was a genuinely very funny movie.

Speaker AWhat did you think of Popstar?

MaxI didn't see Popstar. And you're not the only person whose taste I really like who's told me that I should watch Popstar and that it was funny.

Speaker AIt is really funny and underappreciated. I think that's the reason I mention it. And as a parent of young kids, I don't get to see movies very often. But that was one that stuck out.

MaxI actually should go. Pixar movies are very funny.

Speaker AOh, yeah, most definitely. Oh, no, no, no. My choice for the funniest movie in a long, long time, especially as a kid's movie, is Captain Underpants. I don't even know if people who are not parents know about it, but it's the funniest kid's movie I know of.

AlexI read the books when I was a kid.

MaxYeah, I should check that out. I finally got around to watching Paddington, and I thought the first two acts of that movie were phenomenal. I thought that was one of the best kid's movies I've seen in a long time.

AlexI'm really excited to hear your takes about Paddington versus Winnie the Pooh when that comes out. Because I'm still upset about how he touches Christopher Robin's face in that slow, sensual manner.

MaxYou guys should both watch Paddington. The third act is a little bit of a mess. They do like the bad thing that third act comedies do where they have to raise the stakes to such a point that it makes the movie not fun anymore.

Speaker Abut uh but no you you're not the i mean i've it's been recommended a whole bunch of times and i can't believe i don't know why i haven't seen it yet it's just doesn't come up on netflix it's just

Alexso it's just so impossibly charming is it do they do like the marvel thing where he's like oh i've lost my hat and now the hat contains all the gemstones and the the aliens oh no there's like

Maxa there's like you'll see it's like a whole they have to concoct some crazy life or death scenario and it's just it was way more funny when he was just like a menace like like bumbling around like Mr. Magoo and destroying this English town and like ruining this family's life but in a cute way

Alexall right Alex come on get conspiracy theory and we're um uh hair brain theory hair brain

Speaker Ahair brain theory oh you raise a good point you raise a good point Max which is is a hair brain theory are all conspiracy theories hair brain theories and I think your cheese it theory was a bit of a conspiracy theory but that which which would make sense Alex I'm excited to hear your

AlexThis is like one of the low stakes ones. Either people are, I've talked about this before, but I don't think on this show. Either Steve Jobs or Johnny Ive must have loved Orange to the point where it was just like he compulsively needed it. One of them needs it on a product. And I think there was that.

MaxThe color orange? The color orange.

AlexEvery iPhone that's, for some reason, there's still a mute switch, and I hope it never goes away. But they have orange there. Like, why? Like, you could have a neon green. Like, it just doesn't make sense. And I guess it does because orange isn't necessarily, isn't like a trigger in society the way green and red are. But also on the original iPod Shuffle, they sold like a sports case that was on a lanyard.

Do you remember this? And it was encased in orange rubber. And all of the Apple products now, the ones that are smaller, like the accessories, all have little orange tabs on them. There was a brief period where they were green, but that was when they were really pushing like their environmental initiative. And that's when the little leaf on top of Apple stores was green.

Speaker ABut yeah, I think I think also the iPad, the iPod app is orange, isn't it? What what are the other signature Apple apps that are orange?

AlexiBooks, which I guess is now books. But but also you you reminded me the original.

MaxFind Your Friends or is that more that's yellow? That's like a yellowy

Alexicky I don't know I'm not I'm not a fan of it's a different orange but the original oh I'm sorry not the original iPod but the second or third generation iPod that wasn't a click wheel it just had like this haptic like it was what the other click wheels eventually became it was just based on touch but they it had four buttons on the top and they lit up orange and it it feels like blue is the natural color for that uh but i absolutely loved it and also the the um the

little like lock uh switch so that you wouldn't move the buttons was also orange now do you like

Speaker Athis or do you not do you have a feeling one way or another i don't know i go back and forth all

Alexthe time the there's a watch band now that's orange and i'm like is this is this the johnny ive orange or is this like the steve orange and i i don't know typically i max likes the color

Maxorange so there's lots of orange accents in our office i do but so orange looks so i like black and white um because for a cop for a variety of reasons related to me not being a very good designer and using a lot of and just leaning on crutches and things like that so like I generally work with black and white in one color and uh orange looks really good with black and white like it's really pops and it's very very loud and also I think as a as an interface designer you're always looking for something how do you signal to the user like this is the thing you

want and if you make it orange that's kind of the universal sign of like pay attention to this So I think that's why.

AlexIt's weird though, because it's, I think you're right. It's like, pay attention to this, but it's not associated with a verb like stop or go or.

MaxIt is though. It's like blaze orange is like if you're hunting and you're trying to not be shot by another hunter, you wear a blaze orange vest.

AlexIsn't that just because it's easier to make neon orange?

MaxIt's easier to, like the easiest color to manufacture. Sure.

AlexIt's like, I don't know. Maybe this is another harebrained theory, but it's easier to make fluorescent or neon orange vests than yellow ones.

MaxDoes that make sense? No, it's because orange is not a color that that kind of orange, that safety orange does not appear in nature. It's anti-camouflage. It's high-vis. So fluorescent, I mean fluorescent yellow too, but fluorescent yellow you can't really recreate on a screen in the same way.

AlexOh, here we have a, we solved the mass shooting crisis. We just put orange fests on kids.

MaxYeah, arm the teachers with high-vis gear. No, I mean, I think that's what it is, is that I think that probably a lot of designers, a lot of minimalist designers pick orange for the same reason I've picked orange over the years and other people have, which is like, it looks great with black and white and it sort of signals importance. I think it hasn't aged well in a lot of Apple stuff, though.

AlexI mean, it definitely feels weird on the side. It feels weird on the side of the 10. But now, and my harebrained theory is backed up not only by my anecdotal evidence of seeing orange everywhere. There was that tweet from an ex-Apple employee talking about how Steve wanted the specific color of a Sony remote that had a big orange button. Oh yeah, and then they didn't use it. Yeah, and then he's like, oh, fuck this. It looks terrible.

Do you have another harebrained theory, Mr. Sandwich?

Speaker AOkay. Well, no, I shouldn't do that. Well, fuck it. Yeah, the Trump one. I have a Trump one. Okay. Yes. All right. So, you know, George Lakoff and the neurolinguist George Lakoff, the Berkeley professor emeritus. Do you guys know that guy?

AlexI can pretend I do.

Speaker AYeah, I do. But do you want to give us a quick summary? lake off is the the guy uh don't think of an elephant this is oh yeah yeah famous work um and he just goes uh he goes into how uh the language that we use informs so many of our so much of our political nature i guess um and he has these all these theories about um you know the left the left end of the spectrum representing there's this parenting model right so the left

the left subscribes to the ideals of a nurturant parent and the right subscribes to the ideals of a strict father. Does any of this sound familiar? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Really super interesting stuff.

MaxThere's a, I would recommend if you're, if you want to, if you're a listener of the show and you want to learn more about this, go on YouTube and look for George Lakoff's Berkeley lecture called Moral Politics. And that's kind of the foundation. That's the lecture that he basically got transcribed as the book, Don't Think of an elephant, but you're going to go on YouTube and look for moral politics. Alex will put it in the show notes. And, uh, it's that, that's a very formative talk for me. Like that really, that really helped me figure out a lot of stuff about American politics. It's fascinating stuff. And

Speaker Ayeah, everything falls in line when you start thinking of it, uh, of his framing that way. So like that's his whole thing is framing. He's even got a podcast called frame, frame, frame lab. Oh, is that good? Is that good at all? It's good. I mean, you know, it's, it's good if you're like really into lake off um it's him and his friend gil gil faizan um just kidding it's not gil faizan but it sounds it actually kind of sounds like the oh hello guys um you know uh nick kroll and um john mulaney's characters it sounds a little bit like that what's it called

one more time frame lab frame lab i've only listened to a couple episodes anyway so it's It's got a brain on it.

MaxAs a rule of thumb, I don't usually subscribe to podcasts with a brain in the logo.

Speaker AIt's a good policy.

MaxBecause you always wind up with, who's that guy who sounds like Kermit the Frog, who's like complaints about Disney movies on Twitter. There's like a whole thing about him right now.

AlexI don't know.

MaxThat Kermit the Frog sounding motherfucker. And he's like, oh, Disney. Disney is ruining the discourse with their fairy tales.

Speaker AI can't even do a good. Not Jordan Peterson. Jordan Peterson.

MaxYeah.

Speaker AThat's it. Yeah.

MaxThat fucking guy. He's doing some sort of talk in the logo. I saw a tour poster of his for his Trigger the Libs college tour, and it's like a brain hand grenade. That's the logo of the tour. I think this is really going to blow some minds. Right.

Speaker ASo there's a lot of talk right now about evangelicals supporting Trump and how—and he actually went into this in his podcast. How is it that the conservatives took nearly took Clinton down over his affair while he was in office and the same base is supporting Trump basically no matter what he does, even with this infidelity and everything. And Lakoff has this whole thing about moral hierarchy, man above woman, country above man or God above man.

I forget what the hierarchy is, but it's all this kind of like, you know, man versus nature kind of stuff that you learn in junior high. But it's about hierarchy. And so I guess my harebrained theory is that God at this point, I mean, sorry, Trump. Whoops. I blew the gag.

We'll fix it. We'll fix it in post. well the title of this uh harebrained theory in my notes in my in my bear app is donald j god so that's why i fucked it up uh anyway it's the harebrained theory is that um to trump is infallible in the same way that god is infallible to many people a God who permits bone cancer and kids and devastation in the third world can be forgiven

for those transgressions just by the nature of being God. And if God, if Trump represents the ideals of everything that the conservative base wants in, in, in a politician and a leader, then he basically can do anything in a, in a God-like way. And that the only way that people, And so really the key to how do people give up their belief in Trump is to sort of think about it, reframe it as a question of how do people give up their faith in God? That's my harebrained question.

MaxOh, shit. So I need to become sort of like some sort of like Sam Harris motherfucker and like write provocative books like, oh, so you're still clinging to your childish fairy tales and illusions. You still believe in Donald Trump.

Speaker ARight. Right, right, right. Yeah, that's right.

MaxI like when you...

Speaker APatronizing, it works.

MaxYeah, people love being told how dumb they are. They find that very persuasive.

AlexI can't believe he has more patrons than us. Who, Sam Harris? But he only has one tier.

MaxI don't want to get into yelling about Sam Harris, but I did like when Christopher Hitchens went on Bill Maher and called Most Deaf Mr. Definitely. All right, I have a good one. I hope, again, I can't remember which of my conspiracy theories I've talked about on the show before. But I have a harebrained theory that's like a grand unified hipster theory of our whole generation. Have I ever told you this, Alex?

AlexI'm not sure. It sounds like something you would say, though.

MaxIt's pretty awesome. I'm very proud of this. Okay. This is usually once I've had about two beers, and then I'm like, all right, let me explain everything. Give me, you guys got 20 minutes? Give me, who's got a pen?

Okay, so I think the defining thing of our generation is that we were denied a counterculture. So a counterculture is like a thing that's like responding. It's like outside of and responding to the mainstream culture that can give you a feeling of belonging as like something different than the mainstream culture. So like hippies were a counterculture against the, you know, the...

Speaker AThe rigid post-war nuclear family.

MaxThe Mad Men, early 60s Mad Men worlds. And I've heard a lot of people say the hippie counterculture died when you could go to Kmart or Walmart and buy hippie clothes in the section. Because it exposed that the hippie counterculture had been fully subsumed into capitalism and into the mainstream. And it was just being sold back to you. And it rendered it powerless and inauthentic. Not as some sort of plan. Like that wasn't like anyone got together and was like, let's destroy the counterculture this way.

It's just that's just the natural progression of physics of capitalism. Yeah, right. Like there's this idea in critical theory that there's no heresy in capitalism, meaning like capitalism can tolerate really can tolerate anything. There's like nothing that's so egregious that capitalism won't market it and sell it back to you. And I think the thing that happened with our generation is the mechanisms for capitalism to do that got really, really fast. so you could have occupy wall street happen one day and like by that afternoon or by the next day that it was like cafe press sign selling we are the 99 t-shirts online or you know whatever like

we saw that happen with the women's march right there were people already merchandising and selling women's march things or there was even a thing going around conservative twitter this weekend because there were people who were selling um march for our lives merch there's like you know there's street vendors who do you guys know what i'm talking about right there's like these are not officially sanctioned they're just guys and they're like i'm gonna make march for our lives like buttons and shirts and magnets and bullshit and sell it and there was going on conservative twitter there were like craigslist like jobs posting saying like i will pay you 300 a day to sell t-shirts at march for our lives and then the conservatives are like look they're

paying the protesters so you know but anyway just another sign of the way but basically what i'm saying is like the the treadmill is very fast now like as soon as people can come up with a counterculture or a protest, it's like sold right back to them. So I think like hipster culture, at least of like my generation, and when I was in college, this was like really prominent, and it's still going pretty strong. Hipster culture is the conscious embrace of stuff that can't be sold back to you. So you're trying to find things that are shitty, unlikable, thrift, used, worn down, bad, and then you're embracing them ironically so that when they

inevitably, because even if you wear like, you know, vintage t-shirts with holes in them and you drink shitty beer at a dive bar and you like bad movies and you ironically, you know, the idea is that even then you have to ironically appreciate those things because when they eventually become marketed back to you with like, you know, Kanye West selling a vintage t-shirt with holes in it for, you know, a thousand dollars and people creating new shitty dive bars and beer, you know, Miller High Life, like consciously marketing their shitty beer to hipsters, even when that stuff gets starts to get marketed back to you when the unthinkable happens then you're like well i

never really liked it it was only a a joke to begin with so it's this like armor people put together it's like the whole aesthetic is just this armor of like not getting not getting wounded by liking things i buy it that's my harebrained theory about our that explains our whole generation so whenever you're like why do people like this shitty thing or why do they ironically like why do people like the room ironically like why did they catch on with our generation because the room was supposed to be the one thing that couldn't be sold back to us and of course it was

Speaker Ainteresting so you you think that the the the popular or the the the triumph of the room the fact that there was a movie made of it of the story actually effectively kills the room

Maxno because i actually have complicated feelings about the room but i actually view it i never liked the public screening i went to a public screening of the room like in the really early days of that and I was uncomfortable with it because I felt that it was that it was mean spirited the way that people were engaging in it but I always thought the room was was kind of cool because I felt like it was this this track I felt that it was a little bit tragic but it was this crazy guy but what I liked about it was that it just has this really earnest feeling like he really

Speaker Afucking went for it like it doesn't oh I agree I feel like and did you see the disaster artist

Maxyeah yeah I read the book and and saw the film yeah right and and I feel like the way to best

Speaker Aappreciate the room is to do so by yourself contemplatively and like on your own private screening and think about life and and um wonder how to what degree you are actually Tommy Wiseau

Maxright well I think a lot of people do work that doesn't even rise to the level of Tommy Wiseau because they'll never they will never actually try that much they'll never put that much on the line for fear of being made fun of the way that he was and as a result their shit will always be ironic and it will always suck and it will always be a c plus that's why that's why my feelings about

Alexthe room that like it's really complicated because the first time i saw it it was it was like off someone's laptop and we were just gathering around and you know it was like a bad movie night or whatever but it was like wait what what is going on hold on hold on and there was all of this mystery surrounding it other than this guy just made a movie and it was truly him and like you know we all know the credit sequence it's just tommy was so tommy was so and it's like oh

it's not it's it's truly truly earnest and even uh it's not being it's not being served up to you it's very raw yeah and and even the uh when i even when i read the disaster artist like i i loved it as a story and like learning more about him but i'm like slowly as we peel back this like who he is is he just being sold to us more like i i really enjoyed the disaster artist um just on

like it was it was it was fun but uh i don't know it's it's kind of sad like because he he wants to be sold to us and he it's it's like i feel like there was a better i feel like there was a higher

Maxa more aspirational version of the disaster artist film that looked at at tommy wiseau as a as maybe more of a tragic figure, but more of like a true artist who like at least he went for it and put himself out there and tried. And I feel like instead it never really had that depth. It never like really looked into his character because it was always sort of making fun of him.

AlexYeah. Maddie had a good review that I enjoyed. They were like, I mean, it was pretty basic. And it is. It just distills him down.

MaxIt was an incredible, it was an unbelievable impression.

AlexI mean that's pretty good

MaxI mean I feel like that was the whole premise for them doing the movie Was that what's his name can do a really good impression of Tommy Wiseau

AlexNo it was because James Franco wanted to be like He wants to be Tommy Wiseau He wants to be mysterious and earnest Maybe it seems like that's what he wants Adam do you have another one for us?

Speaker ANo I don't I mean, I sort of I have a follow on to Max's counterculture one, which is that I feel that our country is a culture of rebels. The dominant spirit of Americans is one of rebellion. And the reason that we had what happened in 2016 happen is that the rebels got to be on that side of the political spectrum. and I feel like it constantly swings back and forth.

Whoever gets to hold the rebellion, depending on the time. So it's always, I feel like it's pretty trite to say that the pendulum swings back and forth, but I feel like it's useful to think of it as whoever gets to hold the grievance gets to sort of wave that banner of rebellion.

MaxCan I give you the materialist interpretation of that, which is that maybe it's just that the vast majority of people in America are kind of getting screwed. And they know that. Not in a way where they believe in some sort of socialist program to improve their own lives, but just in the ways that people generally have a pretty keen sense of fairness and they know that they're not getting their fair cut, especially if you look at how people live in other parts of the world. and so the reason that it's like the rebels win so often is that people are just in general they're

dissatisfied and they have short memories so it's like if you're dissatisfied for eight years under obama then you're going to rebel against obama but if you're dissatisfied for eight years under trump then you're going to rebel against trump so it's i actually don't think that it's like the narrative is i think it's like i think it's basically that people are just mad and that they keep voting out the party in power and in cycles like pretty consistently in every election because they're very dissatisfied and their lives kind of suck. And then they get to, there's a lot of post hoc reasoning of like, oh, they were the rebels or they used Facebook better or whatever.

And like none of that stuff, that's all like 1%.

AlexI'm wondering, Mr. Sandwich, do you think it is, like I kind of buy this harebrained theory. Is this like a good thing or a toxic thing? Because I don't want us to be a country of rebels. I want us to only rebel when things get real, real bad.

Speaker AWell, yeah, I think it depends on what you're rebelling against. I feel like change is always good or energy is always good, but wide swaths of change probably are not good. And yeah, I don't know what the next phase of that argument is, But I think we can all agree that more engagement, at least participating in the process, gives us some agency over the change that happens and gives us agency and appreciation over smaller, smaller change incrementally rather than stasis and expectations of large changes that never come.

AlexNow I'm talking myself out of this harebrained theory. Do you think it could just be that it's just easier to have the appearance of rebellion? Like it's really easy to make a sign and put it on Instagram.

Speaker AThat's where I'm coming from is that there's something sexy about rebellion and something valued in our society of rebellion. So it's what makes it possible for these horrible, horrible sentiments, you know, things that you nobody should be saying to become suddenly fashionable because they come under the guise of of rebellion, rebelliousness, you know, political incorrectness under the guise of just saying it like it is kind of thing.

AlexYeah. Yeah. I that is very interesting.

MaxWhat appeals to you about these theories, Adam?

Speaker AMostly just that it's exercise and it feels good. And I don't know. And I told you guys this in my email to you about the challenge that I really wanted to start a podcast called Hairbrain Theories in which I would just invite a guest on to share a hairbrain theory and then we talk about it. That would be fun. And it's just because there are some people that I have really excellent conversations with. And it's always about that. It's always starting the conversation with, I have this theory that dot, dot, dot.

And I'm sure you can identify with this. Both of you are smart people that share your, I have this theory, dot, dot, dot all the time. So I feel like just that exercise, it keeps your mind agile. It keeps, and it's just interesting. Like what else is there to do in life?

MaxI have a text file in my bear app that I call just like dichotomies. And I'm really interested in whenever anyone, whenever I read an essay or I hear a speech or something and someone poses something of like, you know, an interesting dichotomy of like, it's this versus that, that kind of, I think that those are, I mean, they're not true per se, but I think it's fun to sort of, how do I put it? Like to like reorient your thinking along those lines and just see how the world looks.

Speaker AYou know what I mean? To see if you can make systems out of the world or recognize patterns out of the world, even if they're wrong. What's the word for recognizing patterns where none exists? I forget. There's a word for that.

AlexOh, I know what you're talking about.

MaxSynesthesia.

AlexNo. I didn't know if that was a bit or not.

MaxMordelon's disease.

AlexI have a text file in Bear called Stoned, which is exactly what you would think it is.

MaxYeah, I have a YouTube playlist of things that I laughed at when I'm high. and then I'm like I wonder if I'll laugh at this when I'm not high it's an interesting playlist. Epiphenia

Speaker Ais the tendency to perceive connections

Alexit was in the tip of my tongue oh yeah I was just about to say that alright one more I'm always sneaking this in Is this the after show now? This is, well, maybe. We'll see. Adam, do we have, can you stay for a little bit more?

MaxOf course. How are you doing on time? I'm good. I should go in a bit, but I want to hear Alex's last one. All right. Well, welcome to the after show, everybody.

AlexOkay. So the singularity has already happened. Yes. Yes. We, it is. Thank you, Mr. Sandwich. uh it's it's already happened and but artificial like the intelligence that was inadvertently created in some lab is much too smart to even acknowledge human existence and they like it is living and existing in some way that we can't we can't even comprehend and we're all like was this

Maxin your high ideas folder? Are you,

Alexare you, are you, are you, are you a harebrained ideas folder? This is, this is the harebrained. Okay. And, and it's like, people often think the singularity is like, oh, it means that one day a machine is going to talk to us and it is going to, it's, it's what we perceive as consciousness. And Max and I don't really see eye to eye what consciousness is. It's also very hard for me to say, so I don't talk about it.

But I think you never know. It could be like right now, the little compressor in my microphone could be like, oh, yep, yep, she's right. She's right. I don't know. You don't know.

MaxYou don't know. It could be, but it's not. And I do know, because that's empirically testable. do you think we're living in a simulation do you subscribe to the simulation theory i don't josh josh josh has showed me there's alleged um math behind this like there's someone figured out some way to express the probabilities of this and in a way that sounds extremely like made-up bullshit to me but whatever but josh showed me the math and he claims that we're

Alexmost likely living in a simulation i i agree but i don't think it matters you can use math to prove

Speaker Athe opposite too but i but i believe it i believe we are i think this is a simulation um but with no no uh gravity more than like is it possible to say whether there's a god i don't i don't know not possible for us to know but it sure is fun to think how could we be living in a simulation if

Maxsomeone made a simulation why would they make it so that my fart smelled like the thing that i ate That's way too specific. No one would have put that much thought into it.

AlexYes. Think about, I mean, fucking Monster Factory. Like, why are they like, ah, this is Bort Samson. Why do we enjoy any sort of, when we play with dolls, why do we make them, like, why does the 11th Doctor have a really specific green sonic screwdriver? Like it's because we as masters, it's fun and cool.

Speaker ASo by the way, the simulation didn't make your fart smell like what you ate. You made that.

MaxBut I'm saying no one would have programmed that into the simulation. Like at some point, because if you've ever made a game, you know that at some point you have scope creep and you have to start cutting and that would not make the cut.

AlexWell, that's why we don't have.

MaxThere's no way that that was on the bug tracker and someone's like, I'm going to escalate that.

AlexThat's why we don't have telekinesis. that's why we're not that's why we can't create a holodeck is because then it stops being fun for the people who've made the simulation if we create our own simulation

MaxAlex I'm buying you a copy of David Chalmers book The Conscious Mind come back after you've read it

Alexoh my god

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