85. The Good Shit

MerlinI don't hear anything, so I'm going to sing this song.

AlexChris, why can't Merlin hear us? Didn't you test this before? I mean, I can just use...

MaxHello, hello, hello. Getting a little echo on the headphone feed? Is it like this every week?

AlexYep, basically. basically

MaxAlex you should try loop back

Alexhe's playing Dear Evan Hansen in the background yeah he's definitely

Speaker Alistening to Dear Evan Hansen I mean it's good it's fine

AlexI mean this could just be the show

Speaker Athe show is Dear Evan Hansen I mean

Alexand Merlin singing along that would be ideal this is Do By Friday a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann Alex Cox, Max Temkin, and Dr. Veronica Burns. This week's challenge, Watch Pitch Perfect.

Hello there.

MerlinAm I being punished? What's happening? What's happening? I don't know. Oh my God. Here's my idea. You guys should get a purpose-built studio for recording where you could record podcasts.

AlexWell, we were discussing, I think you just singing Dear Evan Hansen in the background is its own show.

MerlinOh, I could do it, buddy.

AlexI know.

MerlinThe moment when the two moms come in together is one of the greatest things. Isn't it great?

AlexIt is. It makes me very upset, though.

MerlinNow, this is a musical?

AlexMaybe, allegedly.

MerlinIt's got Benji in it.

MaxAre we recording? Is this the show?

MerlinI'm confused. Yes, this is the show.

MaxOkay, cool.

MerlinI can't tell what the show is anymore. Well, what I'm thinking is, though, if you could find a place in your office, a dedicated studio space where you could set up recording equipment. No, we should just use loopback. You'd have that ready to come in and you could record podcasts on it.

AlexLoopback. Loopback.

MerlinPigeon pose.

AlexWe were on the call at 1059. Just because you couldn't hear us doesn't mean.

MerlinOh, you guys, I'm sorry I'm late. I know. I should get a purpose-built studio.

AlexYou should. You know what would be cool if you added a trolley to that situation for some ambiance?

MerlinI don't know how the hell to do this. The trolley is out of commission for the summer, so it should be quiet.

AlexOh, no.

MerlinIt's not a trolley. It's a streetcar. Oh, sorry. But it's out of commission. It's all buses this summer, so it should be a quiet summer.

MaxMerlin, in so much as you can say without compromising your operational security, what is the trolley?

MerlinThere's no such thing as a trolley except on Mr. Rogers. Okay. There's streetcars and there's cable cars. There's five big streetcar lines that go to the outlying neighborhoods, and one of them happens to go about 20, 25, 30 feet from my front door here.

MaxIs this real or is this part of your mind palace where you go to hear an owl gives you some wisdom and there's like a king? That's my secret.

MerlinI'm always hallucinating.

MaxOh, dear. Is Dr. Doctor here? The doctor is here. Why is she not talking? What's happening? Hi. I think she's confused as to if the podcast started and what this is exactly.

Speaker AAlways be recording. Here's the thing. I listening to the show you always do this at the intro is is this the show are we recording and now it all makes sense because

MerlinI'm this is why it would be beneficial to have a purpose-built studio where you guys can record podcasts

Maxyou know Merlin loop back stop eating your quiche I have so much respect for our listeners that I have to the audience respect

Merlinthat I have to nourish

Maxmyself before the podcast to carve up. I'm going to take it away. No. People love to listen to me. Okay, but here's the thing.

MerlinYeah.

MaxIf we were to build a purpose-built studio where we recorded every week that was just set up for us to come in and record, I imagine that would be very costly. I mean, we'd have to have a lot of meetings about whether to build that or not. That might cost you over $1,000 probably.

AlexThousands and thousands of dollars. It would require Alex to sleep here on the weekends. would you need to would there be upkeep involved things to buy and replace like retractable cords um using my polish to speak ukrainian to some folks who are doing instruction it would it would require duolingo it would require a lot how hard would it be to gorilla proof it um

Merlinlike so people wouldn't come in and just tear up those wires oh no this one people actually don't

Alextear up the wires it's the it's the other boy but that's what i sounded so good last week because i

Merlinhad my preferred mic and now i'm back on this is my fourth podcast with my new mic and nobody's

Maxnoticed so i'm thinking i wasted oh you know so based on so marlon bought a new microphone and we we you sent us the side by side sound recordings and i must say based on the side by side sound recordings i really struggled to hear a difference now i haven't listened to it with like my my best quality headphones yet but but i listened to it with the airpods and i could and And I tried, and I really did not detect much of a difference.

Speaker AOkay, at that point, if you have to listen to it with your best quality headphones, and the moon needs to be in a certain place for you to be able to hear a difference, does it matter?

MaxWell, yeah, because you want it to sound really good before it gets compressed to like 48 kilobytes per S, and then it goes out, and people listen to it on the speaker in their iPhone in the shower.

AlexI do at 96.

MaxPeople listen to it at triple speed.

AlexYou know what? It's each their own, Merlin.

MerlinOh, I just got mic shamed for my $449 mic purchase, and now I'm the bad one? No, I thought it looks— Listen, I'm a millennial. I like horoscopes.

AlexI could hear—I heard it. The thing is, I was like, oh, maybe this only sounds good because I'm wearing good headphones. And then I played it over my iPhone speakers, and I couldn't tell the difference between the high pass and the low pass between the new mic, but between— You want a live demo? Yes. It's a live demo. Yes, yes, yes.

MaxOn the iPhone speakers, people can't even tell if I'm eating a quiche.

MerlinOkay, this is without the roll-off. This is with the bass on. I sound very authoritative this way. This is me talking, then I switch it over, and I sound a little...

MaxWith the roll-off, you get more of the Dickerson sound. But I want the compression. I want it to really clamp down on me. I want it to sound like I'm on an AM radio. So that's the Rush Limbaugh effect. Seriously, it's like you compress it to hell, and then he talks real soft, like close to the microphone, and you get that growly Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh sound.

MerlinI bought a Cloudlifter and put that on there and all that did was overdrive it. So the Cloudlifter, I think, is not going to be the answer for this.

MaxLet me introduce our guest this week. As long as we're buying pro radio equipment. This is why I brought a crossword. Yeah, Veronica does have a crossword.

MerlinIt'll be just like listening to the podcast normally. She's knitting last week and this week she's got a fucking crossword? What is happening?

Speaker AJust in case you guys decide to talk about Apple products. What's happening?

MaxWell, this week we are joined by Dr. Veronica, my partner, and she has conspired with Alex this week to come up with our challenge, which is to watch some musicals that I have very strong feelings about. We'll be talking about that in just a little bit.

AlexIt's not a musical.

MaxFolks, we've got a great show for you this week. Stay tuned.

AlexIt's not a musical. I'm most curious about, well, Now I'm interested in Veronica's crossword puzzle. Do you do like a daily New York Times thing? Or what's your crossword puzzle of choice?

Speaker AIf I'm going to do the crossword, it'll probably be the New York Times. But I am too scared of like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday puzzles. Well, Wednesdays are okay.

MerlinIt gets harder as the week goes on. Is that right?

Speaker AYeah. Thursday and Friday, I just don't even try.

MerlinWow.

AlexSee, you're very, very good at puzzles. so this surprises me actually and and the whole like ah but i'm bad at words oh hello

Merlini don't actually speak english these are words that i have memorized phonetically

Speaker Ayeah like the new york times the new york times puzzle has the crossword and then on the other side like right next to it is is the ken ken which is a logic puzzle and i do those in like two minutes and then i go back to the crossword and it usually stumps me did you ever did any of you

Maxever get into sudoku yes yes veronica has like books of sudoku puzzles at our house yeah that's for like airplane rides and stuff well okay well that's interesting yeah like black site torture for me is like trap me on an airplane for four hours with nothing but a sudoku book

Alexsudoku is the only time i feel good at puzzles i think they're really easy is this my only

Maxsuperpower in life is i can solve sudoku i feel good at puzzles when i do when i play professor latent games uh and then you say how much water goes in the jugs and it goes you solved it

Merlinprofessor can i ask another doctor doctor question yes please i i feel like i know that you have made some kind of graphic novel type thing about science-y things, and my daughter's very excited about that. Could you tell us about that?

Speaker AYeah. So I was working...

MerlinI put that really terribly. You made a comic about science. Is that right? I did. Okay. I'm bad at words.

Speaker AJust like me, it's okay. So I was working on my PhD thesis a few years ago in 2014, and I just had a bunch of time on my hands, I guess. So I decided to, while I was writing my actual thesis, I wrote a comic book version of the same thesis. So it has...

MerlinThat's so cute. You're in the Smithsonian Tween Tribune. What? Dugga, dugga, dugga. Student made comic book to explain complex chemistry.

Speaker AYeah, yeah. That's so cool.

MerlinThe 2015, look at that.

Speaker AYeah, so... I wrote it mostly with my parents in mind because they aren't scientists. And the stuff I was working on was really important to me and I loved it. And so I wanted to be able to tell them about it, but they don't know the language of chemistry. And so I put it in a language that they do know, which is comics.

MerlinAnd how do I get a copy of this? Do I have to kickstart it?

Speaker AIt was on Kickstarter at one point, but now you can find it on my website, which is just my name, VeronicaBurns.com.

MaxThere you are. Okay. I'll put it in notes. Digga. Digga, digga, digga, digga. Follow-up. This is on The Daily Beast, and it's a story about Curt Schilling. You guys familiar with Curt Schilling? He's a former baseball player.

MerlinI do not know.

MaxHe's a pitcher who became a ding-a-ling. Yeah, he always, boy, he's gone full ding-a-ling in recent years. So he is a video game studio destroyer. It's more of a hobby, but sort of a businessman now, I guess, and a Republican donor. I'm not sure how he's so rich. I guess baseball, do you make that much money playing baseball?

MerlinYes. I think you can make pretty good money with baseball.

MaxYou make like rich political donor money with baseball?

MerlinI don't know about that.

MaxWell, anyway, he posted – Schilling is a QAnon guy, so he's now sort of another celebrity like Roseanne who's come out in favor of QAnon. And he did a Facebook post about an even crazier version of QAnon, and I thought I would just read from this Daily Beast story because this is a version I hadn't heard about yet from talking with you guys about it. shilling's facebook post includes a link to a pro q anon video that presents a version of the conspiracy theory that's wild even by the already warped standards of the q anon community filled with images of hooded figures and secret society meeting the video's narrator posits that every

president since ronald reagan has been a quote criminal president allied with a global cabal responsible for all the evil in the world the video's narrator blames this cabal for among other things, orchestrating the Sandy Hook and Las Vegas mass shootings, hijacking North Korea's Kim dynasty to force them to make nuclear missiles, and, according to one especially surprising segment of the video, forcing Miley Cyrus to abandon her family-friendly Hannah Montana image in an effort to destabilize the American family structure.

MerlinOh my god.

MaxThe solution of these deep state machinations, according to the video, is an alliance between Trump, the military, and foreign figures like Vladimir Putin, who supposedly helped convince trump to run for president to stop america's villainous government bureaucrats quote it came down to two choices for america launch a military coup to seize the government from whichever cabal puppet was in the white house at the time or we legitimately take control of the nsa expose the criminals for what they are and arrest them all the narrator says the video shilling also includes allusions the this is not well written the the video shilling it's supposed to say the video

shilling posted but it does not uh also includes uh allusions to the pizza gate conspiracy which has been embraced by q anon believers the video shows an apparently random selection of celebrities including eminem jonah hill jackie chan and emma watson before showing an image of a child with his hand over its mouth quote they will be seriously punished the video's narrator says flashing to a picture of guantanamo bay a reference to the popular notion among q anon believers that elites including apparently the celebrities listed in the video, will soon be imprisoned there.

From Hogwarts to Gitmo. We're finally going to shut down that monster. Someone better be working on that script where there's a cell. There's one of those fenced cells in Guantanamo. And who's in there? It's Eminem, Jonah Hill, Jackie Han, and Emma Watson. I think that's comedy material.

MerlinBoy, talk about a super team. Oh, dear. The QAnon. Oh, the storm, you guys. The storm. The storm is coming. The storm is coming. Are you guys watching the water?

MaxBe honest. Oh, man. There was some sort of left. Now the left is doing these sort of something big is coming conspiracy theories, too. Like, I sent you guys some of those, too, this week.

AlexYeah, I want to be a part of that. I want to get really upset.

MerlinIt didn't really occur to me. I was doing dishes yesterday evening and listening to the news. And it's just to state some obvious things. If the future people are listening to this, this is a time when everybody on pretty much all sides are wondering. There's so many things that have happened that we wouldn't have imagined what happened five years ago or even like two years ago. So many things have happened, and even especially perhaps starting with the far right, there became this notion of—it seemed like an unprecedented amount of just believing what people wanted to believe.

Of course, now Max wants to bring the Flat Earthers on. Now we're seeing the left going a little bit nuts with what's possible. And it just seems like it's such a ripe time for the right kind of charlatan to come along, and not just politically. but like you know and actually it's funny i was listening to culture gab fest today and they were talking about the millennial interest in astrology coming back yes and this and this funny thing and

Maxi'm not here to to start it's fully it's fully mainstream the on the bachelorette and the season premiere of the bachelorette they had the the women in and they like burned sage in the bachelorette

Merlinhouse and i was like this is this is a lot well and it's in the the funny part of it is the the well actually by your logic people among us want to say like oh gosh don't you realize that's fake And it's like, it kind of doesn't matter if it's fake. It's fun. They're committed, but not committed. And they believe it, but don't believe it. And I don't know, it just makes me wonder, like, what is the next thing going to be? Maybe it's not going to be an Orwellian authoritarian figure. But like, are we going to see more stuff like The Secret coming out? Is there going to be more like magical thinking that we just institutionalize as a culture?

MaxWell, I think it's like, I think this, you know, I think this stuff definitely comes in waves. And I think it probably relates. To some degree, it probably relates to if the world feels really out of control and you do not get a feeling of stability and permanence when you're looking at the news, then I can see where it becomes very tempting to want to believe in some sort of order, even if it's a conspiracy against you or mysterious.

Witchcraft is a kind of an order that can be understood. It's a way to control the world. and the same with QAnon. It's like, well, at least you're in on the secret, right?

MerlinRight.

MaxAnd there's nothing with QAnon.

MerlinIt seems like there's nothing that doesn't fit. Right. It's very, I mean, I don't want to, you know, I'll cast an aspersion, but like it seems like one part of QAnon is like there is the authority called Q and there's no, it doesn't feel so far like there's anybody who's being excluded from the conspiracy theory for thinking something that's too nuts because the more nuts it is, the more it fits into this narrative of where everything fits together, it seems like.

MaxWell, I think also once you let something in to be part of your identity, you can go to enormous intellectual lengths to justify it. I mean, comical lengths. I was talking with, I'm reading this book about the satanic panic. Do you remember that, Merlin?

MerlinCan you describe that? Well, I mean, one that comes to mind, there's a couple things I think of in the 80s and 90s. One was that when I was in, I was high school aged, when there'd been a big rise in the early 80s with the moral majority, and then that translated into a lot of stuff like very prominent TV ministers, and it was a time, I don't know if this is the one you're talking about, but at that time, there was all kinds of, I guess you could call it satanic panic, about freaking out about the influence of secret Satanists on especially children,

and then finding instances of that, whether that's in backmasking or in the Procter & Gamble logo, or whatever it was, there are these very widely held urban myths and conspiracy theories. And then the other one that really I think of is in, I want to say in the 90s, when there was a family that ran a daycare facility that was accused of abusing the children as part of a satanic ritual. And then, I don't know, I feel like that maybe after Jim Baker went to prison and came back and started making buckets. I don't know if that was the end of it, but there was a time when we look at now, the idea that

people were saying D&D was an openly satanic practice that involved child ritual murders and stuff like that. And people honestly took it extremely seriously.

AlexGotta watch out for the gelatinous cubes.

MerlinOr Judas Priest. I mean, Judas Priest went to trial because of a song that supposedly encouraged this guy to kill himself.

MaxIt was like an occult kind of a panic. And then, but also it was like, I think there was like a feminist sort of angle to it as well. Like I think that at that time, like popular sort of feminism aligned with the satanic panic because it was against, you know, child abuse and stuff like that.

MerlinIt served to explain how—what's that word you always use, the phrase that I always forget about folk? Is it called a folk panic? The thing where you suddenly, like, oh, you know, the Jews are poisoning the water and everybody freaks out because there's this answer. There's a sense of otherness. I mean, that's proven.

Well, absolutely. They make them into crackers. That's why they have the empty chair. That's where they put the baby.

MaxYou save a little poison for Elijah.

MerlinMazel tov. It's not so far off Nextdoor. You know, next door is the more civilized version of that, where the sense of otherness becomes institutionalized. You find evidence to support how the sense of otherness is creating danger. You get all kinds of logical errors and strange cognitive decisions that lead you to think that, like, no, there's this race of hoodies that are, like, taking over our neighborhood, you know, with cameras and sharp sticks. And anyway, that's—I feel like if you look back on it now, we didn't—but people didn't have that sense at the time. If you opposed the moral majority thinking and you opposed the anti-Satanic thing, you were thought to be like part of the problem.

Right. You know, counter-revolutionary.

MaxWell, it has that tenor of like, well, if you're not on board with this, you're part of the evil conspiracy, which is always—

MerlinHow could you not want to save the babies?

MaxRight.

MerlinYou obviously are one of the rape murderers.

MaxRight. And when those moral panics get rolling and you're like on the wrong side of it, that's always a little scary moment in the culture. But I see a lot of parallels to that on the left and the right today. And I think it's just like – so the book I'm reading about, The Satanic Panic, the sort of thesis about it is that it was – that the underlying cause was that there was this big societal shift of women entering the workforce. And it created all this anxiety about what the role of men and women were and what was going to happen to kids. And there was the rise of like daycares and nannies and things like that.

And these were all like, I mean, they'd always been around, but they were becoming like very middle class and mainstream. And people just felt like society was changing very quickly. So it led to this like, like you're saying, these like grand conspiracy theories were like, you know, you're either on the inside of the conspiracy theory with us or you're like part of the evildoers. And it just felt.

MerlinAnd you're consequently, you are actively, even if you don't realize it yet, you're actively harming. This goes back to even in the 60s where women who wanted to be nurses were not allowed to be married. You would not be admitted to a nursing school. Wow. I didn't know that. And there was somebody, a woman a couple few months ago finally got her degree from the 60s. But it comes into such sharp relief only 20, 30, 40 years later where you look back and go, oh, well, that totally makes sense. Like, yeah, we were happy to have the women work in factories during the war. But once the men came home, we had to really rein that in.

And then you find all these instances that feels like journalism or evidence of the harm that this is causing. And, you know, so it's really just what you're saying. Like you kind of back solve it from hatred.

MaxYeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's just we're clearly in a time right now. You know, for all of the absolutely stupid culture war fights that you see on cable news every day, you know, people arguing trans bathroom stuff or people at the Red Hen and people through the Republicans were protesting outside of the Red Hen last night and someone threw shit at the Red Hen. So they're like throwing shit to own the libs now, throwing poop to own the libs.

MerlinAnd Melania's jacket. I mean, the grinding down to the axle about Melania's jacket. And that's exactly that's exactly what they want you to do. Yeah, they want you.

MaxBut it's just it's just like that that level of trivia of what people are fighting about. And oh, and Colin Kaepernick and kneeling and that whole milieu of like of these like culture war battles. like when i go on tumblr and just look at what's popular on tumblr like people have no idea the fucking reckoning that they're in for of social change that's coming with the the younger generation of kids like they have no fucking idea like if you think it's disruptive now that that trans people want to use bathroom they want to be part of society and use bathrooms and colin kaepernick

wants to protest on a football team like buckle up because the next 20 years are gonna be fucking

Merlincrazy they're gonna be fucking crazy pelosi says nancy pelosi says everything's fine yeah it's just

Maxone race and there's just one race it doesn't mean anything there uh that's someone who's uh you know that's a leader you know way out front not uh running behind going a week hang on let me lead you could you put that more nicely uh anyway max i don't know if this is gonna be funny

Alexbut i really want you to talk about the weird twitter situation that evolved last night well we don't have the video i don't think we've got to find it somewhere i it's i watched it like eight times and then it was gone. I'll explain it

Maxquickly and

Speaker AIs this the thing you were telling me

Maxabout? Yes, it's so funny but I'm just looking at Dog Boner to see if it got re... Oh, here it is. Okay, we do have it. It's on Vimeo.

AlexOkay, wait. Send it to me. I'm going to download it right now just in case. I haven't seen it yet.

MaxI want to see. So, you guys know the story with the red hen that they asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders not to eat there and gave her a cheese plate on the house. Yeah, they comped her dinner and asked her to leave. And then she got out, and she made a statement, and then Trump did a tweet, and he was like, the building is dirty. I always knew it. They have health code violations, which is very funny for him to say. Clean your awnings, sir. Which is very funny for him to say because, A, they have a sterling health record.

Like someone actually went and pulled the papers, and that red hen location has an excellent health record. But on the other hand, Trump's properties have very poor health records. It's like if you've ever seen that report of the warm, you know, the warm meats at Mar-a-Lago and the various. Warm meats and copious roaches. Yeah, it was really, really not good. As the president said when he went to the Holocaust Museum, not good. Yeah, very bad. Very bad.

Those are the children's shaggy. uh so he then tweeted about it and that that i would say that took it from sort of marginalia that was being argued about in like the washington post you know opinion pages some restaurateur to yeah yeah no no kidding but you know same thing right it's like he doesn't have to say

Merlingo do a blanket party on these people all he has it's the who will rid me of this meddlesome monk All he has to do is like, wow, these guys kind of suck and everybody just collapses on them. And they're collapsing on the wrong red hen. They collapsed on a red hen in D.C. Another one in Canada is being harassed now.

MaxThat will be an important part of our story in just a moment. But all I was going to say is last night there were these huge protests outside of the red hen. And the correct one in Virginia. The correct one in Virginia. And one Republican yelled out, make America great again. And he threw poop at the red hen. and then the first responders who were there had to have a fight about who was going to clean the poop up and the fire department wound up cleaning it up. I want to see that guy's

Merlinto-do list for Tuesday.

MaxSo, you know, we got attacked by the doodler. We have to respond. We have to have a proportional response.

Speaker AWait, where did... Important question. You're scraping that off your head. I'm the doodler. Where did he get the poop?

MaxI believe it was animal poop. So maybe from his farm.

Speaker ASo that takes planning then.

MaxYeah, he planned. Oh, yeah. He was working on this.

Speaker AThat was like the night before. He's like, oh, a little plastic baggie. And he's got like a shovel to collect it.

AlexNo, but I would be more upset if it was like just a spontaneous, like, I can just shit this out.

MaxWe could throw cat poop. If we wanted to protest something, we could throw cat poop at it. Just throw a hard little. Yeah, my cat has really hard poop.

MerlinI'd probably break a red hen window. At least crack it. She should really drink more water.

MaxDo you think he wore a glove? Did he wear a glove? I don't know. There's video of it. I haven't I haven't done that deep of a dive but the funny thing that I wanted to play on the podcast so um do you guys know the genre of weird twitter tweet where someone will it goes back to the I don't remember who did this but someone was like during the 2016 election I remember Trump was saying it's illegitimate the election's not going to be fair and and it was during early voting this guy did a tweet and he said I work at a post office in Ohio and any Republican ballots that come in I throw them out and i thought that was so fun it got it got on right wing twitter and right wing

facebook and people went fucking crazy and if you stop and think about that tweet it doesn't make any sense because how would you know who's a republican ballot and who's not right it doesn't make any sense and like if you looked at the guy's profile he's clearly like a comedian like it's just like it was like the just it's just a classic it's a classic troll yes it's a very and a very funny troll because it was done in precisely there's no way to really fight it it's

Merlinnot like saying no you are like he's saying something that's patently true that's just

Maxgoing to make people freak out for no reason but but but it's but it's engaging it's riling people up who have chosen to believe in a crazy conspiracy theory right and then it plays right it's like the worst and they're so dumb that they think that one guy on twitter would be like bragging about it would be the proof they need to break the story right well like the whole remember the

Merlinwhole antifa thing the antifa yes the the that was a weird twitter thing yes yeah and they were that antifa is going to go to like shopping malls and kill children and stuff like that and everybody

Maxthat he completely freaked out yeah yeah and there were people were doing the same thing they were riling up these right-wing facebook groups so last night someone set posted this this account rob russo posted my uncle actually owns a red hen franchise in south bend indiana and told me that when he drops chicken on the ground he transfers it to a special bucket and serves it to trump supporters when they come in lmao and it again if you look at this guy's account he is clearly joker he's like clearly a comedian uh he's like a writer for like he i think he's like he might be

like a like a magazine writer or something he's just like a like a weird twitter journalist guy like he's he clearly does not have any contact with a red hen in south bend indiana which i also don't think exists i don't think it's a franchise either i guess so what happened was this tweet got like re reposted like a screenshot got reposted on some like bill o'reilly facebook groups last night and then people found this guy's um maybe i want to say like his podcast co-host or a friend of his who had a google voice number in his twitter profile and they assume or maybe someone

even said that guy is my as the uncle or whatever and that account is at dog boner and so people started calling the google voice number in at dog boners twitter profile enraged republicans who were very, very mad about this, and they were complaining about this non-existent South Bend, Indiana, Red Hand franchise. So I'll play one of those calls now.

Speaker BYou want to put chicken that's fell on the ground? You want to feed your political opponent's dog shit? Guess what happens? You know what happens? People are so mad. You pay the consequences. I am going to put you out of business motherfucker. I am here to put you out of business and I want you to know that You spell my last name K- My first name is And when you go out of business I want you to know that I did this to you. You have that motherfucker. Do you understand it?

I did this to you. I put you out of business motherfucker.

MerlinK- K-U-Z K-U-R.

Speaker BK-U-R. K-U-R. I will put you out of this.

MerlinDon't be yelled.

Speaker BI am going to put you out of this.

MaxAnyway, there's eight minutes of that, of the calls that he got from people. Oh, my God.

AlexWhy does this make you sad, Veronica? I'm sorry, Dr. Burns.

Speaker ANo, please call me Veronica.

MaxDr. Professor Burns.

Speaker AOh, yeah. When people call me Dr. Burns, it just makes me sing in my head the They Might Be Giants song, Dr. Worm, but Burns instead of Worm. I am a real Burns.

Do you think you're getting good? Definitely. But I...

MerlinBe honest. Can you handle criticism?

Speaker AI can handle criticism. um yeah so it makes me sad because these people clearly believe what they saw right like they aren't thinking critically about the the original tweet or post or whatever it was they're just like going ahead and believing this and it says something about the state of the world right now that we don't handle that well in our education system well it's i mean but these are grown-ass

Maxadults like they're not they're not college they're not like college students and it's like what i mean what can you do like i guess what i what i like about this is like it's all there is is to make fun of them like you can't it's not like you can have a i don't think you can have a dialogue with these people and like change their minds like no i don't think so either but

Speaker Athe fact that they believe it in the first place is that's a problem that reflects that we did not as a society give them the tools that they need to succeed in life i mean the same thing happened

Alexremember when everyone had like all their panties in a twist because of chick-fil-a like the the guy is basically homophobic and there were a ton i knew a ton of people who like boycotted chick-fil-a i'm like what do you think you're doing what i see their fries are really good i actually just

Maxwell i do love the waffle fries oh my god chick-fil-a is so good i actually do just i mean i I somewhat disagree with that because it's not – just because they superficially look the same of like, oh, the right is boycotting a restaurant and the left is boycotting a restaurant, it doesn't mean that we can't interrogate further and see what is the reason for the boycott, what happened.

Asking the one person, the press secretary for the president not to eat there the week that they're separating children and putting them in baby jails, that is a very different character than blanket banning all gay people. It just is. I feel like it doesn't even need that much of a discussion. It's a false equivalency of asking one person to leave who's a public figure for this human rights atrocity versus banning an entire group, a protected class of people.

I got real mixed feelings.

AlexI have such mixed feelings about it. I've been to many a Chick-fil-A. And I think it's because, like Veronica said, there was no critical thinking. like when people

MaxIt wasn't that gay people were banned from Chick-fil-A. It was that Chick-fil-A was giving money to defeat gay marriage.

AlexNo, that was not true. Domino's fucking does that but not Chick-fil-A. Why don't you eat Domino's either?

MaxVery hard for me to give up and we all love their food. No, no. Okay, listen. Similar story, right? The Janus ruling today that's going to gut public sector unions that's from our state. That's Bruce Rauner basically brought that case to the Supreme Court. And it's funded. It's a case that was sort of manufactured and funded by the Uline family who makes the Uline catalog. They sell boxes and stuff like that. Oh, right. And they send me a catalog every single day.

They're the largest Tea Party donors in Illinois. They used to fund Bruce Rauner. And then recently they funded Jeannie Ives who did that anti-trans ad in Illinois. And you know what I'm talking about? the really nasty woman who ran to the right of bruce rauner so it's like listen don't don't use uline like if you use uline some amount of your money will be used for these kind of like it will go into the hands of the worst people in society who are trying to like discriminate against against protected minority groups and uh destroy you destroy the working people in this country so

Alexdon't don't buy anything from uline well genuine question then like we um i bought something from uline like four years ago now every single day like you've seen it there are just catalogs all over our office because anyone has is my time better man so to also like very occasionally

Maxcards does buy things from uline because they're the only place where we can get some stuff but we've made a huge effort to like anything we can get in this in this office or in our supply chain that's not from Uline, we do it.

AlexRight. And so is my time better spent? Like you said, there are some products that you need to buy from Uline. Should I call Uline and be like, hey, I'm not buying your products because of this or go to support unions directly?

MaxI guess that's where my next feelings come from. Here's my advice for everyone because people are also saying a similar question to what you're asking. You're saying how do you prioritize what to do? How do you pick what's the most important thing? And I think a similar thing people were saying this week about this whole civility debate with the Sarah Sanders being kicked out of the restaurant and everything is like, oh, we can't worry about this civility argument. We have to beat the Republicans in the election. And then, you know, other people were saying, well, no, we have to do all of it. And I somewhat agree of like, it's like every person individually maybe has to choose what to

care about. But there are, there's hundreds of millions of Democrats out there. Like we are capable of doing all this stuff in a way that's additive to really mean something. So what I would say the right way to think about it is not like, do I pick A or B, but it's like, how do I live a life where I contribute as much as possible to the solution and as little as possible to the problem? And you, you have to make those calls for yourself daily on like an ongoing way. So to me, if I can have another chicken sandwich instead of Chick-fil-A 90% of the time, like if I'm, listen,

like if it's a thing and there's Chick-fil-A being served for lunch, like I'll eat it or what, I don't drive myself crazy to avoid it or anything, but to not go out of my way to eat Chick-fil-A a lot is contributing as little as possible to the problem.

Or not ordering from Uline, you're contributing as little as possible to the problem. And then when you're saying, well, should I help unions, should you quit your job at Cards and go sit in a factory takeover as a union organizer? No, no, no. That's probably too much, but like there's probably something you can do to contribute as much as possible to, to helping and as little as possible to her.

AlexOkay. Yes.

MaxYou know what I'm saying? And, and that's, that's all you can do in life is as much as you can to help and as little as you can to hurt. And you have to also trust that you have, that's why I don't like the conception of politics that we have the very, that's the way people think about politics right now, where everyone are these like atomized individuals and every person has to, is an individual consumer of politics and you boycott this and support that and post that on your Twitter. It's like, that's not how politics works. Like you have to be connected to a movement where everyone does it and then it matters. Then the little thing, then having Chick-fil-A one less

day a month, right? Doing as much as you can to not be part of the problem, that adds up in a cumulative way and Chick-fil-A starts to suffer until they change their policy about giving money to hurt gay people.

AlexI, and I totally agree with that. I think where I get hung up is people, the whole idea of doing as little hurt as possible sort of negates some people. They think it's that they are doing good. So like I tend to stay quiet about stuff I don't know about and focus more on like the, like queer issues in Chicago and like homelessness in Chicago because I know that I can make a concrete difference or I would drive myself crazy every night thinking about everything that's wrong in the world uh and i guess that is where my like oh

because i people like oh i don't need the dominoes i don't buy i don't buy nike shoes nike shoes are

Maxreal comfortable guys what's wrong with nike they're made by children slaves yeah just like everything else yeah well our tom baden bags aren't no the the thing i don't think the thing is to be perfect i don't think that's possible i think that you're like your original sin is just living in capitalism and and just by i mean just anything you do i mean god damn like what would it i don't even know how you would how would you i mean i mean our friend brent lives a guiltless life in capitalism he's a vegan he's a vegan he like gets everything he owns like used and out of

the trash he only rides his bicycle everywhere he has like a rescue pit bull and he's currently like volunteering as like a firefighter in like a national park and you know and he does like urban farming for free in chicago so it's like yeah that guy lives a health uh he brent lives a guiltless life in capitalism but i'm not willing to sacrifice in the same way that brent is so what can i you know so then for me it's like well given my life and who i am like like i said like what can i what's the most i can do to help and the least i can do i'm not going to talk about it because i don't

Alexwant to extend this but you don't agree oh interesting go well now you have to talk about

Merlinit? I mean, I, this is such an unpopular point of view and I really don't want to hear about it. So I just keep it to myself, but I don't think that's the fight we want to have. I think we want to be, and I'm not, I'm not trying to make this about quote unquote civility. What I'm saying is if, if we start to think that the way to treat this is to use tactics that could be used against us. I mean, it's the same way that like people who carry a knife think that they're going to win the fight because they got the knife and they've never been tested at it. And the one time they pull out that knife, the person who wants it more is going to take it away and slice them up. And the problem is we're getting ourselves into a war that we do not want

to have. We do not want to relitigate the 1960s and the lunch counters. And that's what this is going to turn into. The sauce for the gander part is going to be when this comes back at us as a culture war, because we chose to fight in that culture war and say, oh, well, because what Stephen Miller does is so odious, he gets yelled at in Mexican restaurants. I don't think that's who we want to be. And I think it's a fight that we can't win. But with that said, when Chuck Schumer doesn't fucking stand up, and when Nancy Pelosi dissemble and get all flustered about all this stuff, it drives me fucking bananas and makes me—in my heart, it makes me happy that Sarah Sanders can't have a normal life because she's a fucking liar and a goon, and that makes me sad.

But I think we need to be careful about not getting into a fight that we will certainly lose, and it does end up very much helping, quote-unquote, the other side. That's what concerns me is once it becomes OK to refuse service to people because what you think they do is odious, we're going to fucking lose and lose and lose.

MaxMerlin, all I would say, though, is that I don't disagree with your analogy about the knife, but the Republicans already brought a knife to this fight under Obama. And and what are we supposed to do? It's like it's like this is the joke that we were.

MerlinHow will you feel when you go in a coffee place and say we don't serve liberals?

MaxWell, first of all, that literally already happens. Like, did you I mean, maybe you haven't seen it, but there's been all these people posting.

MerlinAnd how do you win that?

MaxYou win that by doing it more to the other side? It's not a war in that sense. It's just that the taboo of the polite society has already been breached. So Republicans already, there are bars throughout the country. I've seen a hundred photos of them in the last week where people are like, this is a redneck bar. No liberals allowed. Like on the door. Like it's part of the identity of the bar.

MerlinNot a good look.

MaxI don't disagree. Okay. I don't disagree, but I'm just saying the taboo is breached. You may remember Joe Biden. There was a sort of a trivia story during the 2012 Re-elect. Joe Biden was denied. He wanted to go to a bakery and the baker wouldn't serve him. And did Republicans decry the incivility of that baker not serving the vice president? No. The next day, Paul Ryan had the baker on stage with him at a campaign rally. So the guy was a hero in the Republican Party for denying service to Republicans. It's already happening. And all I would say is—

MerlinRight. And it doesn't look good. And it doesn't make classy people want to do the right thing.

MaxBut leaving aside the issue of classiness, which I think has already been breached by Republicans, it doesn't matter. They've already—the taboo's been breached. There's no—the civility at this level has already been destroyed by the other side. So we would be idiots not to fight on this playing field to some degree.

MerlinI'm not talking about civility. That word is being really heavily overused. One of the most galvanizing moments for the progressive agenda in the 60s was saying it's not okay to say that just because you really, really, really don't like somebody, you cannot accommodate them with your public service.

MaxYou are totally free to do that. But it's not that you don't like the person. It's that you don't like a protected minority class of people. And the last time I checked, press secretaries for the president are not a protected minority class of people. It's one individual. Like I don't hate press secretaries. I hate Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

AlexAnd Merlin, I want to agree with you, but like literally two weeks ago, we were driving through Indiana and I had to go in because my credit card wasn't working at a gas station. And the guy was like, there's two miles up the road, we don't serve dykes. And like that is, like I live in Chicago and I don't have to deal with that often.

MerlinHow'd that make you feel?

AlexLike a monster. But the person didn't say...

MerlinExactly. But the thing is, he really, really, really believes that. Exactly. He knows that's the right thing.

MaxBut he wasn't like, I don't like you, Alex Cox, you weirdo. Right, exactly. He is discriminating against a protected class of people in a way that should be, that probably is, but it should be illegal.

MerlinI don't think the other side is going to agree to those rules.

MaxWell, we have more people than them, and if we would just stand up for what we believe in, our people would show up to vote and this wouldn't be an issue. But a final piece of evidence I'd like to introduce on the record is a tweet from Mikey Dickerson, who ran the U.S. Digital Service under the Obama administration. Mikey tweeted yesterday, as a former Obama official – oh, I'm sorry. He was replying to an L.A. Times opinion piece that said, making Trump officials miserable isn't going to accomplish anything. Vote them out if you want change. Mikey replies.

He says, as a former Obama official, this is patently untrue. my productivity was directly vastly affected by variations and how miserable i was every time a trump official have them go home at three to drink every time a trump official knocks off at three to go drinking rather than power through five more meetings that is helping a little bit and what i like about this tweet in this way of thinking about it is leaving aside the they brought a knife we brought a knife escalation element which which whatever i feel like it's already been escalated so there's no harm in our side responding proportionally but

But leaving that aside, we are shut out of all branches of government. We have no institutional power. We have control so few state governments at the moment that they're almost able to do a constitutional convention and change the Constitution to put these kinds of discrimination into law permanently in the Constitution of our country. And furthermore, these elected officials are not – they don't – they're not accountable to the public, and they're not available to the public. So Republican congressmen don't do town halls. There's no way for people to talk to Sarah Huckabee Sanders and tell her how they feel.

The White House certainly doesn't solicit public comments or read them. So what is left? What is left? If you're mad and you are being discriminated against, you feel in some cases that your life, your livelihood, your freedom is being threatened, what are you supposed to do? Making people uncomfortable at a restaurant and yelling at them is the very least thing that you could do if you have zero access to institutional power. like if people are really worried about this like like like why don't they create institutional town hall meetings and ways for people to to have accountability to their constituents the

problem here is that these people don't talk to the voters they're not available or accountable in any way so it's like what are you going to do you have to go into a restaurant and yell at them

Speaker Awhile they're eating their tamales can this be the end of the part where we read twitter

Alexi will say one thing i had to get uh myself out of a sad thought spiral about all the bad things that happened to me in Florida and Indiana. And I was like, I would love it if I was recognized somewhere and they were like, we don't serve people who want to domesticate pandas. And then I was kicked out. I would enjoy that very much.

MaxAll right, well, let's talk about our musicals. All right, Alex, it's your challenge. Will you and Veronica explain what the challenge was, please?

AlexDr. Professor Burns I think that Max has a misunderstanding of what I had the challenge of. What did you perceive that the challenge was?

Speaker AJust to watch Pitch Perfect and Mamma Mia

AlexWhich, oh

Speaker AWell, if you didn't watch Mamma Mia, that's fine too

MaxI will say

Speaker Awe turned it on and watched maybe like until the first song hit and Max was like

Maxi can't take this i can't do it it had no plot it was just like they're it's like they own they're they're owning a struggling hotel just so they can sing the money song exactly i did like that

Alexum diane from the good wife was on it and in the there's meryl's i can't believe how they got

Speaker Ameryl streep to do this movie um meryl streep is is very musical theater talented i i know but the

Alexfact that they got her into mama okay i'll just do a quick summary of the film and musical mama mia did you watch this as bonus uh content merlin nope okay nope i watched uh i watched pitch perfect one and two okay that's totally fine um did anybody else watch pitch perfect three

Merlinyes okay we watched that last week yeah so no this is just to be clear just to stipulate my bona fides here my daughter we showed my daughter pitch perfect we can have two weeks ago and she got kind of obsessed with it so she blasted through all three in 24 hours and and on like a day off and so yeah so we're all pretty steeped in this right excellent it was it was funny timing

Alexthat this challenge came along the um all right so mamma mia is a musical that features the music musical being like it's actually on broadway um still still is it what they call a jukebox a

Merlinjukebox musical yeah but it was kind of the first because it's not written for the show they they fit the music the songs into they picked to make a narrative yeah they picked the songs they wanted

Speaker Ato use and then they like jigsaw puzzle a very thinly veiled plot around singing uh

Alexthat money song in the in the first act yeah um and you know this was kind of the first of its kind there's been others like american idiot which makes a little more sense because it was like a rock opera to begin with um but it basically a mother fucked three guys in one weekend and she doesn't know who the uh father of her child is and they base a plot around that's like the main crux of the story and um there's a wedding so they can have songs like dancing queen

and mama mia like oh no here i go again with all these guys and meryl streep is like she's getting

MerlinThey do that one song, Blackout Sex Party. Remember that one song about, hey, Blackout, sex with three guys on the weekend, you don't know who it is.

Speaker AThe classic ABBA song.

AlexOh, no, no, no. That's actually for the bachelor party. They put that song for that.

MerlinWas there a song around the Blackout Sex Party? Was there a song that was associated, or was that just purely a need to, is that a plot device? Was there a song associated with her crazy sex party?

Speaker AThat happened before the musical started. it opens with the daughter it's an unusual choice yeah oh what fuck what song is it i don't even

Alexthat's how unmemorable this movie is but the musical is great because the musical is very self-aware they're like we are here because you are all gay men or middle-aged moms and you just all like abba abba whatever and uh i am a big fan of poorly made films based on musicals that's pretty much all I have to say. If you are interested in that, you should also rent. It's very, very good.

MerlinIt's so hard to tell with you. Did you like the movie?

AlexI adore it.

MaxYou feel like it's a fun romp. It's not like a classic, but it's worth watching. I can't believe I forgot this. I brought you an entire baguette. Veronica and I went to the fancy bakery.

AlexIt's no strips of paper, but

Maxis this from Auvin Payne? No, it's from Floreal, the French bakery by the office.

AlexI got very excited.

MaxWe went and got pastries before the podcast, and I saw these baguettes, and I was like, I'll get Alex an entire baguette.

AlexVery good.

MaxNom, nom, nom.

AlexHave some respect for the listeners. Summary over. It is, I think, an objectively bad film.

MaxI couldn't do it. Once I realized that there was no story, and it was just an excuse for them to do expensive music videos for ABBA songs, but they were sung by like theater people by your favorite lady from the good shit but but okay but they're like doing like over dramatic like for some reason everybody on

Speaker Athat series of shows the good whatever are like all musical theater people and it is a lot of

Maxchicago theater people too like steppenwolf people and stuff right and i want them to like break out

Speaker Ainto song but they don't they just keep talking about the law or something

Alexoh god finally we have found the good

Merlinthe titular good shit has arrived

Maxi'll i'll say so i'm i'm about i'm about three or four seasons into the good wife now and i'll say to the show's credit there has not been a line yet where someone says she's the good wife

Merlinbut when i that's good when i watched when i watched the that's good but when i watched the

Maxgood doctor within within the third episode some wait that's that's related well i mean well it's all part of it's part of it's part of the gcu the good cinematic universe it's related but that's

Merlinthe kid that that's the kid from um finding neverland and charlie and charlie factory right

Maxyou're evan hansen and no freddie freddie highmore yeah so he plays he's so good he plays a very special doctor and his uh and and it's just sort of the it's kind of reminds me of house it's basically house it was crazy it's like house meets yeah it's like it's like the schlockiness of house basically but just i don't know it's a medical mystery drama show but he's like a savant

Merlinright i mean he's always one of those rain man type like he knows that knows remembers everything

Maxi found the show to be it's it's like good network tv it's like very it's like highly watchable it's just like it just goes down easy and then um uh it's like very well paced and it's very heartwarming and you know it's pretty self-contained episodes and things like that it's what you would call a

Alexsmart stupid show and i call like a stupid smart show like it's it's dumb but it makes you feel a little bit smart and it's made by the same people who did make house so i enjoyed it yeah it's good

Maxi the house cinematic universe yeah so well the good cinema the gcu the good cinematic universe you've got the well of course you've got the good place and the good fight which they are those are linked so that's like in the same way that you had you know um captain america and iron man or did crossovers before the avengers or whatever wait the good place and the good fight are linked no no the good yeah you have a good chef sorry the good wife and the good fight right and then you've got the good place and the good doctor good dress yeah and then good eats but that was

that was more of when it was that was more of a that was and that was when it was owned by 20th century fox and they didn't have all the characters so that one doesn't quite fit in thematically oh Veronica

Merlincan I tell you what my lady friend calls Glenn Hedrick on Face Off Goth Fieri oh yes

Maxthat's so perfect can I tell alright let me tell you about Face Off for a second because I've decided why I think that show is so funny to me he looks like he's going to explode he's slowed in his shower of tattoos what's so funny about me

Merlinhe's overinflated

Maxso this show it takes itself it has all the airs of Top Chef or The Bachelor, any of these sort of self-serious reality shows. Where it's about the craft and not so much about the drama apart from the like, oh, I don't want to get sent home. But I'm talking about in the way that it's shot and produced and edited. It is very self-serious. So leading up to the judging when they're doing last looks, for example, what you have is these people in there. It's quick cuts, and they're all frantic, and they're running back and forth in the studio, and they cut to the head-on interview with someone, and they're like,

I've got to get this makeup. My guy looks like a plucked chicken right now, and it's a disaster and I'm definitely packing my bags and going home if I don't get this. And I've got to, I've got to get my, it's like they require them to mention going home. Yeah. It's like, if I can't get this makeup looking right, I'm definitely going home. And the music is going dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And the clock is ticking down and they're all going. And then it's like time. And they all put their hands up and then they go to the judging and this huge wobbly silicone man comes ambling out. And it's like, it's like, It's so fucking funny.

MerlinRoberto, could you tell us a little bit about your slime man?

MaxAnd then it goes, and then someone goes, fuck up.

MerlinI was really inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge, and so I made this mashed potato man into a zombie. I really like the way the spatula appliance comes out of his ear, but I would have liked to see a little bit more detail around the mouth. His backstory is that he was killed in a kitchen explosion.

He started as an Idaho potato, but then he turned into a zombie man.

MaxBoy, the backstory on those sometimes, too, they're really searching. They're like, well, the backstory in this is that it's an angel who was cast down from heaven and she cries a lot. And so I imagine her living in the bottom of a lake under an umbrella.

MerlinShe's a tortured doll of a witch who was raised in the woods and now she steals men's souls underwater. Also, she's a root vegetable.

Speaker ABut, okay, don't you think, like, yes, there is this degree of floppy silicone mashed potato man, but... when you when you watch like uh top dress or even top chef sometimes they'll they'll be taking it really seriously and then they deliver a plate of like i don't know it was made from a vending

Merlinmachine or something right the word the word inspiration should be banned from that show i

Speaker Atook my inspiration from this building right yeah what does that mean nobody takes inspiration oh so

Merlinthey sent you out with your with your deli or hp pad and your little pen and you were like inspired by a curtain.

Speaker ARight, no.

MerlinI hate that. The worst of the comic challenge was so annoying with the Marvel comic people. Oh, yeah. Every year on Top Chef, they have one ding-a-ling

Maxthat they cast, and it's always the same guy. It's some huge meathead. Some huge fat meathead. Hot dog neck. Yeah, the huge hot dog neck, man. And he works in a... He works in like a... He's a Cajun. He's a Cajun. He was raised as a Cajun. He works in like a chop shop diner in like South Carolina. And he'll last like four episodes in because there's always someone who serves an entire eggshell to the judges in the first episode or something.

MerlinI didn't know I'd have to know how to use a pressure cooker.

MaxThe one guy from a couple seasons ago, they did this thing, maybe it was the Boston season, and they did a thing at the baseball stadium. And the guy's like, well, I took inspiration from baseball, and I made a fish ball, giant fish baseball. And the judges were appalled. They're like, what the fuck is this giant fish baseball? and he's like, back home in Louisiana, we love our fish baseballs. We always eat a baseball full of fish.

MerlinI was inspired by baseball, so I made this pate bat. I don't figure out how to make this makeup of, oh, did you see the one with the, oh, the worst of this. Oh my God, you guys just brought it all together. One of the most difficult to watch ones ever was actually from one of the greatest challenges. The challenge was, I think it was the art challenge that yielded the Cubism costume.

Speaker AI do remember that one, but that was like season three.

MerlinDo you remember what lost? Do you remember what lost?

Speaker AIf you say it, I will remember.

MerlinHe finally, he was going to come to terms with his,

Speaker Bthis is so bad, his abusive father.

MerlinSo he made a cigarette.

Speaker AOh, yes. He made a cigarette. No, no, it's not funny. It was so difficult. It was so sad.

MerlinIt was so poorly done. It was like, you know, like when you see a really bad political cartoon, it's like the government written on a pig. Like, that's not even a cartoon. You're not pointing anything out. He just made this, like, everything awful about his father as a costume. And it was very poorly done.

Speaker AYeah, you can tell that he, like, it meant a lot to him. And it was very important to him that all of his choices.

MerlinHe got notes from Mr. McKenzie about, maybe you want to dial that down a little bit.

Speaker ARight, yeah. But it just turned out to be bad to anybody looking at it.

MerlinI got to find a photo of this.

Speaker AI feel like it's a good segue to Pitch Perfect. At least Pitch Perfect 3.

MaxCan you explain the premise of Pitch Perfect for people who might not have seen it? Which, by the way, shout out to the Dubai Friday Discord server. On Saturday night, they did a Pitch Perfect viewing party. And they set it up on some cockamamie Plex thing where they could all watch the Plex file at the same time or whatever. But then they – Veronica and I went on with them and watched and chatted with them. It was really fun, actually. Just everyone watched the movie and kind of made fun about, you know, and enjoyed it together at the same time on the Discord chat.

Definitely, we'll probably think we'll bring that back for a future challenge. That was very fun.

Speaker AYeah, that was really fun.

AlexI watched Incredibles 2 instead.

MerlinOh, my God.

AlexWhat did you think of the short? Nope, we're going to do Pitch Perfect later. Later. After show.

MerlinOh, my God. What did you think of the short?

AlexNope, after show. After show.

MerlinMy daughter sobbed.

AlexNope, after show. I don't want to think about it. We're on a good Pitch Perfect.

Speaker AOkay, so Pitch Perfect. um it's perfect dig dig dig dig dig dig so the first uh movie follows our main character becca who is a uh rebellious teen who goes to college and doesn't want to join anything or be part of any groups but then she finds the bard and bellas and kind of rescues this uh wayward acapella group and brings them to victory.

But really, it's about the friends you made along the way. So that's Pitch Perfect 1. Pitch Perfect 2 brings the Bellas to Worlds, which is a thing, I guess, where they compete against a German group who's really angry and competitive with teen girls for some reason.

AlexDust sound machine.

Speaker AAnd then Pitch Perfect 3 brings them on a USO tour. And they run around Europe for basically the whole movie. The plots get thinner and thinner as it goes.

And I will say...

MerlinWhat do they call it? Riff-off with all the different bands in the third one is from a different movie.

Speaker AIt's a very strange scene. It's so weird. So I guess we can get to the third one.

Alexbut the spoiler horn for pitch perfect okay spoiler alert they sing the the third one enough

Speaker Astory in that movie to spoil it exactly i don't know there's too much story in that movie they just they took everyone's ideas and said yes to all of them and then that was pitch perfect three but i really think pitch perfect three highlights something that's true about actual real life acapella groups which is it it looks like they had so much fun doing it that you just feel happy like it doesn't matter that it was bad you just like you you feel their joy through the the movie

Maxor through the acapella group or whatever it is well the the maybe we can get into the plot of pitch perfect one i'm sure pitch perfect one all right i'm struggling with why this is such a beloved movie and why you guys don't like it. I thought it was like, so first of all, I thought it was like a, I thought it was like an okay teen movie. That's how I felt about it. I thought it was like, it wasn't bad. I didn't, I actually didn't dislike it. Like I thought it was, it's a perfect one. It was like very watchable. It had some genuinely like very funny moments. I thought it was a little too consciously

trying to rip off Mean Girls and trying to like, even to the point where they have a scene just like in Mean Girls where in the end of the second act where the girls all have to sit down and confess things to each other in a sort of moment of heartfelt stakes raising for the characters. It was very, very consciously, to me at least, chasing after the Mean Girls sort of cult phenomenon in a way that made me, I don't know, it was too conspicuous.

I guess people almost like the music because it's like good songs and stuff.

Speaker AYeah, it's good music. We were watching this movie actually before the whole Discord Plex server thing happened. And Max turned to me at some point near the beginning and said, this is funny.

Well, I didn't know that it was a comedy. Well.

MaxOh, you thought it was like a costume drama? I thought it was like one of these stupid dramas like you guys like where they all sing and cry.

AlexI mean, to be fair, people go into rent thinking it's a comedy. what's happening uh in in defense of the i mean i guess not in the the defense but this came a long time after mean girls and like all teen like chick flick genre films have have that so it's not like they were directly i i thought they had a nice little spin on what has now become a trope um the trope most or uh the the spin mostly being vomit and i really i really like puke jokes in the first one.

MaxI think that's where I turned to Veronica and was like, oh, this is funny. It's a comedy. It's so stupid and good. Yeah, I genuinely didn't know anything about it going in, and I was surprised that it was a comedy. I thought it was like a serious musical.

MerlinI feel like the very obvious thing that must be stated was that these movies, we would not be talking about these movies if it wasn't for Fat Amy. Oh, interesting. She really, you don't think so? And if you know about her ad-libs, She ad-libbed most of her lines and would just do them over and over in different things. And she changes the valence of every scene that she's in in a way that is genuinely very funny. It's like she is very funny.

AlexShe's a comedian.

MerlinHer confidence. Her confidence is so awesome. She does the mermaid thing. She just made that up. The mermaid dancing. That was a lot of floor work. Yeah, I see.

AlexWell, and that's the thing. That's funny. No, it's brilliant. She can do fat jokes without fat shaming. That's just hilarious because fat people can be funny. And she's like, I don't do cardio. And she 100% owns it.

MerlinIt's true. It's true to her. And she exudes that confidence in everything she does. And even when the joke is at her expense, it's still really funny and it doesn't faze her. She just flashed a beaver hanging from a rope. Well, that's just a thing that happened.

AlexOh, God. uh and i well and on like the fat amy and becca and i literally i refer to them to um the the ginger queer baiter the quiet asian um and the rest oh i love lily yeah but but what i think i keep a penny under my tongue oh satan's finally on my body i messed her but but the like the one through line through all of the films is is not just that you're

watching like the plot of like oh yeah all these women are having fun together but the cast genuinely is having fun together like yes it's you can tell yeah yeah and that's that's why they kept making these movies ultimately is like they not because they made money no no no pitch perfect two made like no money oh yeah um so cynical that's late capitalism is maybe cynical well it's the thing there are a ton of uh cameos by a lot of acapella groups and it costs so much money to make and it was i'm not a super fan like the plot there is like almost so thin that it's they

it's almost they wanted in three to into what what i loved with three they're just like fuck it like we're just gonna do what these actors want and what they're good at to do silly bullshit is dj

Merlincollege genuinely famous i mean i know he's a person but is he really like considered like an

Speaker Aimportant oh yeah dj college is a big fucking deal he's he's got quite a significant part in the

Maxpitch perfect three going back to pitch perfect one the plot is basically that who's the main

Merlingirl becca wants to becca's going to college she does not want to go to college her father's a professor at this college makes her go to the college because she goes for free she really wants to be a DJ and start earning her dues. So she's our agent of, not agent of chaos, but she's our main character, and she does not have any interest in this culture, but she ends up falling into it. What's the lady who plays her? Anna Kendrick.

Speaker AYes, Anna Kendrick.

MaxSo Anna Kendrick reluctantly joins this women's acapella team after they discover she can sing, and they're the rivals of the far better men's acapella team and the troublemakers. Who's the main guy on that, too? He's also very funny to me. Fake Jack Black. He's very good. He's super good.

But then Anna Kendrick does like, in this universe, she's invented the concept of the mashup. No one's heard of a mashup before,

Merlinbut she takes two songs. She gets real intense on her MacBook. She really gets into it.

MaxHer brow is furrowed as she fades one song into another.

MerlinIt sounds like one song, but it's actually different songs. It's almost like she's taken a swatch or a sample of another song and then kind of created this tapestry of song from different parts of other songs it sounds like one song but it's parts from other songs i don't know if you guys caught that but you can tell because there's two windows with wave of her and then she gets on the wheels of plastic and you know what else was weird this

Maxwas of course in a winter wonderland of course the discord immediately seized on this but like she's using this like in the first in the early scenes of the movie she's using this like mysterious unlabeled music software that kind of looks it's basically ableton but it's like off-brand Ableton but then later she's just using Tractor Pro and it's branded and it says Tractor

AlexPro on it. Also they had to uh she's got the like Sony MDRs but they have to tape over them and then they had like they clearly made a deal with Beats later because suddenly Beats headphones start

Speaker Ashowing up. I love it. Oh there's a lot of product placement especially in Pitch Perfect 3. It was

Maxreal bad. It's very obvious. Do you guys want to get in this Subaru and drink a Mountain Dew and have our famous song sing off yes the song sing off well you guys are getting way too deep into

Alexthe plot the plot of all three is a singing competition well she basically seizes control

Maxof the um this historic women's acapella group against everyone's wishes and forces because they've gotten lame and they keep doing she does like a coup she does like a hostile

Merlinthe 40 year old woman who's running the group vomited on stage and now she only wants to sing the sign and stuff like that.

MaxShe displaces the leadership. She jails. She doesn't understand DJs. The leadership is sent to jail. There's a military coup. And then her and her controlled opposition candidate, the other one, the redhead girl, they lead the group. She's only like 36. And they lead the group to do mashups. And in this world, no one's ever heard of mashups. and so when the acapella group starts doing the mashup,

Merlinwhat's happening?

MaxPeople, their jaws fall open, they get out of their chairs and applaud. They're just like, what is happening? How did you do that with hitting buttons? Are you a witch? I also did not like, so in the whole movie, the men's acapella team is way better. They sound better, they have better dance moves throughout the whole film.

AlexNo, no, no. Then in the finale,

Maxit's about as successful as they are being documented. In the finale of the film, the one girl with the red hair, she gets her nose surgery. And then all of a sudden they write this contrivance into the plot where she can sing the really low bass notes. It's hilarious. It's so funny.

AlexI love it.

MaxAnd then when they go on stage for the finale, they sound way better because they have a bass section, right? That's part of why acapella sounds good is if you have a guy with a real low voice, it's very surprising and sounds good. And you get the full range of instruments. And they didn't have that the whole time. and then they wrote this contrivance into the plot to have it. But ultimately...

MerlinThis is what happens with these movies we make for women. You end up getting fake bear towers.

MaxUltimately, it just reminded me of the fact, it just, all it made me think about was that men's acapella will always be inherently better than women's only acapella because they have a higher range. You have the real high castrati guy voices and the real low guys, but women, I mean, you know, what can you do there? Well, you can't have co-ed acapella without men.

AlexOkay, people need to know...

MerlinCo-ed acapella without men is just women

Alexand it doesn't work. At this point, I really don't know if you're parodying one of the characters who is Elizabeth Banks. Women lack a lot of subtlety in the conversation. That's another true line I like.

MaxYou couldn't have co-ed acapella because men and women are so different in their capabilities and abilities when it comes to singing. I mean, I can understand. I'm not saying women shouldn't sing, but they're not serious about it. It was so fucking funny to me in this movie that that was never floated of like, oh, if we combined our teams. and then the second one you know what's funny is that their their big thing is that they're going against the the german team and they have the german team has way more people and so they need and they need a way to get more people on the team and it's like well why don't you have a co-ed

why don't you have your increasingly puffy looking boyfriend sing with you

Merlinand benji dear evan hansen dear evan hansen i really gotta be writing those letters the final

Maxthing I want to say about the one, Pitch Perfect one, is that this movie, it does one of the cardinal sins that a movie can do.

AlexI know what you're going to say, and you're wrong.

MaxWhich is in the middle of the movie, it reminds you of a better movie by showing you an extended footage of The Breakfast Club. There's like a huge plot point where her shitty boyfriend, her awful boyfriend He's not awful? He forces her to watch the closing... You called my dad? He forces her to watch the closing moments of Breakfast Club because he likes the music choice and she watches it and is like what the fuck is this shit and then only later when she thinks to watch the whole film by herself does she like the ending and he's and then not only does he show her just the ending shot of Breakfast Club

and expect her to be moved by it but he's visibly disappointed and like leaves their date when she

Alexdoesn't like it and then he takes film music very seriously well I also like at the very beginning of the movie she's like i just don't watch movies i don't like movies and it's like okay that's a normal thing to say but it each each one gets more self-aware like even last one there's a line like okay that was a lot of exposition and they know what they're making and i just i i like when this happens you don't disagree with me that it was a bad that they

Maxreminded you of the breakfast club in the middle of this movie and you're like oh i can be i think

Alexthe breakfast club might be the most overrated movie yeah really you don't like the breakfast Club? It's fine. It's a very overrated movie. It's a fine movie, but this does not commit the...

MerlinI do take your point, and the pushy boyfriend who's going to make her watch a laptop, and she doesn't need that in her life. Plus, he does get pretty puffy in the second one. Do you think he looks a little swollen

Maxin the second one? Yeah. Do you think he's retaining

Alexwater and retaining movies? He might be taking some

Maxprednisone. He might be a little closer. What closer is a prednisone?

AlexOne thing... Okay, okay. One thing about this movie, it does not commit the cardinal sin of having actors try to do like do something that they're good at and like faking it like marvelous miss mazel or whatever where she's not actually funny like all of these are actually very good singers oh yes i love the singing in this i think it's great and i i don't think merlin man raves singing is the real star of this movie yeah if anything

Maxthe song sequences were the song sequences and the acapella competitions were very good and I do like the sing-off in the pool. I think that's a really good scene.

AlexActually, it's a rip-off. Whatever.

MerlinBut, you know, it's the other cardinal, it's not a cardinal sin, but it does make me want to watch Best in Show. Oh, yes. The commentary was very Best in Show, which I think both, I know Michael James, Robert Richard Higgins was in that. I don't know if Elizabeth Banks was in that.

Speaker AI don't think she was.

MaxNow, she came in just as talent on the first one or was she a producer from the beginning?

Speaker AShe was a producer from the beginning. Oh, oh, I didn't know that.

MerlinOkay, and then she directed the last one, right? or the second one definitely the second one

Alexare you eating a baguette Alex? I really respect the list it's so good

MerlinI think they're fun I think they're fun movies and I think it's it's a little window into a world I just didn't know very much about and it's now we're listening to a little bit of acapella music and it's not going to change our lives but it's

Speaker Asend me down an acapella rabbit hole here

Merlinwhat do I google?

Speaker Ayeah are you not an acapella fan from the beginning Merlin? no

Alexno anyone anyone else there's 15 some word jokes in the first film alone so when i was in

Speaker Ahigh school or middle school maybe even we had i don't know napster or whatever it was at the time and i would download acapella songs and i didn't know that all the groups i was downloading were like in college. And so I would go to a Sam Goody or CD store or whatever and try to buy like the Brown Derbies was a big one on my list. They're from Brown University. And I would like try to

buy this CD and the music people would be like, what are you talking about? But I was really into acapella music in high school. And then I got to college. And by that point, I realized I didn't want to sing in front of people anymore um so i was never part of an acapella no i was never part of an acapella group but um i was more like the guy with the clipboard at the beginning during

Alexthe audition well and another great thing is the the girl who throws up a bunch in the first one and in the third one is like i don't need to do this anymore and they all do their little spiel about how they're growing up and it's it's just cute yeah yeah there's a thing that happens a lot

Merlinin um this is not that funny but it's i don't know revealing a lot of times my wife and i'll be watching a movie and there's somebody who's supposed to be in uh college high school junior high and at some point one of us will turn to the other and go he's it's true in this one the two lead women who are great who are great and they're great singers and attractive and whatever but like oh my god you are so not 21 give me a break yeah that's true well i find that distracting i find

Alexthat distracting well the the thing with teen movies is you always assume like teen movies middle schoolers go to that so they don't really know what real high schoolers look like so they

Merlinjust assume anybody over 20 is ancient yeah so it works oh right uh where do you start running

Alexinto that alex it's a fun ride it's already happening i'm everyone's gonna die it's gonna

Merlinbe great but you made it through the whole movie max you made it through the whole movie

Speaker Ayeah when we uh we started watching pitch perfect 2 and you know they introduced the

Maxnew kid true grit girl sure that's true grit girl no shit really yeah isn't she awesome she's so good that's fairly forgettable honestly she wrote one song

Merlinoh right and they didn't even use us watches did um did you like her in true grit yeah she She's very good in True Grit.

MaxAlthough when you're that young and you're in a movie and you're acting at that level, I always do wonder, is it acting or are you just showing up and being yourself? Is it acting or casting? Do you know?

She had her confidence. The girl from Beasts of the Southern Wild, I think that's one of the best performances of a child actor ever. And I find it very moving. But is that the actress or is that the casting person? I think women shouldn't act.

MerlinI just think, no, no, it's not anything gendered. It should be like Shakespeare. It should all be men. Only men should. I don't think if you're going to have a female part, if you require that for the whatever, a man is going to be a better choice for that in a lot of cases because of their emotions.

I'm glad you watched it. Veronica, how did it feel? Did Max go on a journey? Did he ever find himself actually getting into the movie?

Speaker AI think so. I walked into the kitchen a couple days later, and he was watching YouTube videos of acapella groups.

MerlinI was. That's aca awesome.

Speaker AAnd he was smiling. It was a very adorable moment. He was just sitting there with his iPad and like smiling to himself. Aca-licious.

MerlinAca surprising.

Speaker AYou know, right? It was great.

Show notes

Transcript

85. The Good Shit

Show notes

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