126. Pink Uber

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, share your inner mind moments.

MaxAlso, video games are bad and they should be banned. They should be illegal.

AlexOh man, it was so great.

MaxIt should just be dating simulators. It should be the only games that are illegal to play. Hey, pick a rubber band color. Which one should I?

AlexRemember, I have a tumor. I can't use my hands. All right, I want the orange one.

MaxIs there an orange one here?

AlexOr red, whatever that color is. Orange? Is this okay? Yes.

MaxOkay, check this out.

AlexVery good. That is very good. Oh, man. Is Merlin on the line just listening to this happening?

MerlinGood morning. Hello, Merlin.

Alexoh god am i i'm back to work what happened good morning i think we need to address something right off the bat merlin yeah by all means uh there was an issue where you didn't put push a button and then something didn't record and max and i both said don't worry about it i know you guys are super nice about it but and you're like oh don't worry i won't and i was like oh good and every fucking podcast you've been on yeah why thank you for listening i appreciate you guys want

Merlinway to go ahead and read it.

MaxDid you prepare a statement of apology? Is it an apple? First of all, I just want to say, I don't know. This is actually serious. It's not a bit, but you do sound a little weird right now. I do. You sound a little different. I don't know. It's not bad. You sound different.

MerlinIt's because of my dip switches and all that setup stuff.

MaxOkay, you sound good. You have a good radio tone right now.

MerlinI can touch my dip switches later if you want.

MaxNo, no. Can I watch? It sounds nice and crisp, and I like it. I just wanted to make sure it was intentional.

MerlinOkay. Let me just get this out of the way. You guys ready?

MaxYes. No, I'm always ready.

MerlinHello. I am Dubai Friday co-host Merlin Mann. And I've been asked by the other hosts to read the following statement.

Speaker ANo.

MerlinI'm a very bad person who is directly responsible for the terrible sound quality of Max's audio in episode 124 entitled Goodbye Dance. through a series of events that could have been avoided if i weren't such a fucking cuck max's audio was not properly recorded and that's why it sounded like max was talking with a blue apron box on his head owing to the fact that i am a dumb diaper baby who poops in his baby diaper and makes pp in his baby diaper i fucked up the recording session and caused our listeners

to have a terrible experience more more importantly i prevented max from effectively popping off on one of his patented rants about water district policies and hot milk. I'm very sorry for my actions and for my lack of actions. I brought shame to the podcast and deprived our listeners of important insights on water district policies and hot milk. Although this blight on our program can never be rubbed off, I will carry its indignity on my shoulders and mind for the rest of my days. Alex and especially Max deserve better. I promise I

will try to stop ruining things with being so stupid all the time. Thank you for this opportunity.

Speaker ABravo, bravo Thanks

MerlinSo Alex, to your point You've only heard the partial versions The full version The full version will be revealed On the Reconcilable Differences that goes up tonight

AlexNo

MerlinThe full version of The Apology? Oh, is there another one? Is this the redacted bar version? No, because of course, because he sharpens me like a knife, John Syracuse interrogated this topic.

AlexOh my God.

MaxI mean, listen, I'll say like, if there's one thing I know, it's that people, why do people tune in to do Back Friday? Yeah, why? And I think it's because they're here for the sound quality. And the mouth sounds.

AlexThe brilliant mixing I used to do.

MaxI would say that most of our listeners are probably working in the, they're probably audio engineers. They probably work in audio. And why are they here? They're here because they can detect the expensive microphones that we speak into. And they're like, this pleases my ear.

MerlinWell, I'll work on my dip switches. But yeah, it was pretty bad. But I do want to say, if you think it sounds bad there, You should have heard it before Alex and Quinn went at it.

MaxWe did Mike Hurley's magic loudness fixer. Well.

AlexThat's doing a disservice to how well Mike's.

MerlinI mean, it's kind of like, you know, in Blade Runner where he's like up and left, 23, zoom in, enhance, enhance. It's like there ain't that much to enhance. In the words of John Syracuse, it was the bleed that saved you.

AlexYeah, at some point, it was kind of like I could, we were like, let's just turn these knobs until it sounds good, like the Cardi B guy.

MerlinAnyways, I'm sorry about that, you guys. And I'm recording this one. This time, I'm now part of my penance is, it's a Catholic idea, is that henceforth, I will, for the rest of my days, like a big scarlet letter, I will, I'm recording this in Audio Hijack.

AlexOh, both.

Merlinyes I'll send you both

Maxyou know I just want to say Merlin that I can't possibly overstate how much I don't care about the listener experience

Merlinof the podcast you guys could not have been any nicer about it I don't care

Maxif I hadn't spent like weeks weeks weeks and hundreds of dollars preparing for it it would have been fine I would have been but why do we Merlin the thing to learn about buying expensive microphones it's not the destination it's the journey oh it's the friends we made along the microphone why do we do a podcast

MerlinWhy do we do a podcast?

MaxIt's so that there's an excuse to buy the whatever, the new Tascam.

MerlinYeah. Yeah, I guess so. I got to play with my dip switches.

MaxAnyway, thanks for being nice, you guys. Sorry, everybody. Woo-hoo. I got a lot to talk about. We had the election last night. Coming in hot. I won four out of five of the races that I worked on, and the fifth one is a toss. It's too close to call right now. We got to wait for the mail-in. It's like 25 votes, and so we have to wait for the mail-in ballots to see, but we're losing right now.

MerlinIt's a critical Waukesha County.

MaxYeah. It's not even – I mean the problem with city council is it's so small. It's only a handful of precincts in each ward. It's like we have – Chicago has the highest ratio of public officials to people I think of any city in the world. Yeah. That's so interesting. We have 50 aldermen for a city for – I mean I guess what's now like it's the third largest city in the U.S. But like most city have like a dozen city council people. We have 50 of them. So it's so it's so provincial. Right. And the other thing is the all the way the city's structure is structured.

And Alderman is quite powerful. Like there's this thing called Aldermanic prerogative where like you're the king of your where the thing is like you're the king of your castle. And you sort of unilaterally get to make like zoning decisions and you're a little turf. So it's like you have a tiny number of constituents. Your territory is just like literally like you could walk it. I mean, it's just like it's like blocks like it's not there are these tiny, tiny little like molehills of a kingdom. but you have a lot of power within it. So it's like corruption at scale. It's very, very corrupt.

It's a cast model. Corruption as a service.

MerlinI heard your new lady's going to clean that up.

MaxWell, I'm pretty... I am cautiously optimistic about Lori Lightfoot. What's your name? Lori Loughlin? What's her name? Yes. Alex, who'd you vote for?

AlexOther, Perkwinkle.

MaxThere was this sort of last minute woke push of like, Well, Lori Lightfoot is pretty bad on police, to be honest. And so there was this sort of last minute, like, oh, the more woke thing is to vote for Preckwinkle because she'll be a police reformer.

AlexOh, you didn't call me out on that. I did not vote.

MaxOh, you didn't vote.

AlexYeah, I can't vote. Six.

MaxOh, right. No, that's the correct. That's actually the correct. What's that mean?

AlexI vote against Republicans in DuPage County.

MaxYeah, that's the. DuPage.

AlexYeah.

MaxYou've made the correct choice. You've made the correct choice.

AlexBut canvas for Preckwinkle. Oh, did you? Oh, interesting.

MaxYeah. I have no a ton of people who sort of flipped over to like once they kind of dialed into the race, they flipped over. You guys are so active.

MerlinI tip my DoorDash people really well, if that helps.

MaxYeah, no, I think that's.

AlexThe problem is I have a 4.6 rating on Uber and you can't come back from that. So I got to do anything I can. Wow. Uber really? Not go to hell. Yeah. Wow. OK. Well.

MerlinYou don't use pink Uber?

AlexHold on. Before we let Max finish his victory lap, I use Uber exclusively for work because it's just easier to not mess up the credit cards and be like, I'm sorry, here's a $12 check to the company. Hey, can I be reimbursed for this $12 check? I just so use Uber for that.

MerlinJust more convenient for you to use them.

AlexYeah, because I'm a bad person. But often, often.

MerlinI have a statement I'd like you to read.

AlexI would like to make this statement to all Uber drivers. I don't choose to bring a large 200-pound sound system case everywhere. It was a group choice we made, and I apologize for ordering Uber XLs with the assumption that you can fit a 200-pound, what is it? Cameron, how big is our audio rack? Like, four by three, maybe? I don't know. But the point is it's 250 pounds.

oh my goodness you you really need it yeah uh and we put that into the back of vans and i do not get good ratings after that but this morning i had a nice lyft driver and she said i have a 5.0 on lyft so yeah good job oh good for you congratulations look that up there's a way to look that there's a

Merlinway to access that i don't want to know i don't want to know yeah lyft is harder to get that's like reading the comments don't do that how to look up your lyft uber it's right there staring

Alexyou in the face. I need a reason to be

Maxmore needy. Oh, you just ask Lyft and they

Alextell you. Yeah, yeah. I've been too afraid until this morning. I engaged with the conversation willingly. It was very... I don't know. I'm feeling weird today. Well, there was a fire in Chicago last night and no one got hurt, but that's kind of like the big thing that everybody's talking about. Kind of like when we get snow. You guys gotta get

Merlinrid of those cows. Yeah.

AlexThey just keep kicking. I'm just going to keep kicking.

MaxHow can I see my Lyft passenger score?

AlexMerlin, do you do the pink lady or the black boy? Oh, boy. Wow.

MaxOh, here are the top reasons a driver might give you a bad rating. Okay. Being drunk, drinking, smoking, or vaping. I don't do any of those.

AlexLiterally none of those things have ever happened to me in an Uber.

MaxWhat about having a skateboard?

AlexYeah.

MaxTipping, tipping. Now, but here's the thing. I always in the lift app you tip like it like you basically only tip the next time you get a lift. Right. Because that's when I get the pop up before the door closes. Oh, interesting.

AlexI have that disabled, I guess. Yeah. I get the pop up like 10 minutes later. And by that time I'm already like doing something. I just do a swipe away. And so I lift or I tip the next time. But usually that's about six months later. I give a nice tip. I always do 20 percent. Yeah.

Max20 percent. I always do 20 percent. Whoa.

Alexis that i realized recently that 20 is not standard maybe it's a midwest thing but like when someone doesn't tip 20 and it's just been normal service i'm like what the fuck is wrong

Merlinwith you 20 for everything yeah do you do you do 20 on postmates the well yeah the other day i went

Maxto the coffee shop um and and i just i wasn't buying coffee or anything i was just buying a bag of beans like for my house like i wasn't i didn't get any food i didn't get a pastry I didn't get a drink all I just I went to the shelf a display shelf I picked up a bag of beans I walked over to the register and they rung it up and then you know when you do the like the coffee shop register it doesn't they don't know what your what the context is so they display the tip screen right and they were like do you want to leave a tip and there was a line of people and I hit no tip and I could feel oh they were trying to set me on fire with their eyes but I

was like I do not think I need a tip in that scenario that's that is a different scenario

AlexAnd also, I've talked to people who work in—

MaxI'm right about that, right?

AlexNo, they—

MaxThey didn't even get it off a shelf or recommend it to me. Like, I stood in front of the shelf. I chose it myself. All they did was ring it up.

AlexYeah. You don't need to tip for that. That's a retail transaction. They feel awkward about it.

MerlinIt's so goddamn complicated. There's been so much—I mean, I—boy, forgive me for how this sounds, but there's been so much tip inflation. My local hardware store that I love, I'll find any reason to spend money there because they're so great. and I mean I go on and buy a couple screws and also buy a $50 flashlight just because I love them so much they have a tip jar they have a tip jar at the hardware store which I've never asked about it but I mean you know yeah I guess you should always do that but like there's times

where like it's super confusing do you guys do you guys do Prime now there

Alexin case I mean not regularly oh are you talking about the one

Merlinbut you know but the distinction between Amazon Prime and Prime now the two hour Prime now Okay.

AlexYes, yes, yes.

MerlinSo like their default tip for most things I get is $5. But I bought some. This is so bad. I got reverse Marco. Marco was talking about how he doesn't like the LiveX bulbs, that he prefers the Hue bulbs. And I thought, huh, because he's trying to get into the Max lifestyle and go full switch. He wants all switch, no bulb, right? He wants smart switch, dumb bulb. I have no idea what's happening. I thought, huh, huh, I want to try the LiveX bulbs. I want a Livex bulb because they got more wattage. They make more lumens.

So I thought I'm going to get me some Livex bulbs. So what I got was, I think it was, I ordered four Livex bulbs and like another thing. And the tip was like $19 or something. And I was like, now wait a minute. When I order like four or six cartons of seltzer, you know what I'm saying? Like it's not, it shouldn't be based on the dollar amount. It should be based on the hassle.

AlexOh, that is, I see what you're saying. Yeah, there have been times where I want to, like, for various reasons, I had to buy six of those, like, gigantic storage bins on Prime now. Yes. And there was, like, not enough. I could tip that person.

MerlinThey'll bring you a garbage can, buddy. They will bring you a garbage can.

AlexAnd I was like, ugh.

MaxSo the next criteria is promptness.

MerlinThat's promptness of you, the Uber-ee.

MaxI think so. The Liftee. The Liftee. Now, I know, most people I know, when they order an Uber, they go, I need to go outside to order my Uber. So they stand on the curb. That's what I do. And then they open the app and then they order it. And then they stand there for like seven minutes until it comes. I order the Uber before the check comes. And then I get a little thing on my phone and it buzzes and it's like the guy's here. And I'm like, I should probably think about getting up and going. And I'll show up. I mean, they leave after 10 minutes. But to me, that's a freebie. And you're supposed to.

How it's supposed to work is they're supposed to wait there. It's a ride. They're supposed to be there. Slave. They're supposed to be there. That's how it's intended to work. You're supposed to go outside and get into the car. I don't think that's how it's intended to work.

AlexNo, that's not how it's supposed to work.

MaxCameron, back me up here. You're supposed to be able to walk out of the restaurant, and you go out hot, and your Uber is waiting there for you, right? It's idling.

AlexThat is why they send those notifications of they're about to arrive. That's a lie, though.

MaxThat's not accurate.

AlexBut it's no one's fault.

MaxSo you guys all stand out there. You all stand out there just waiting for the country, hoping it shows up.

AlexYou're standing in the cold. Hence my 4.6 rating, because when I have a gigantic thing or I'm carrying a ton of bags, I do not want to stand in the cold.

MerlinThis call started at 9.09, so I'm just saying. We should send you a push notification. It's almost time to do the thing you do at exactly 11 your time every motherfucking Wednesday.

Maxyou know i was on time i was in what sense Alex is late

Alexno no no no no no no no Alex you weren't here

Maxand so I went out and went to go talk to Sandy and then Cameron came out to find me and Cameron looks at me and he goes she's here and then walks away

Alexat 11 I was here sitting with my headphones on the crow was in the nest at 11am

Merlineagle one has landed

AlexI'm on vacation in theory on vacation well this playing with Max is if Max has a number of rubber bands in, and I'm sure they're totally normal rubber bands. So, and I hope I've definitely broken this one.

MerlinMax has a bunch of rubber bands.

AlexYep, Max has a bunch. That's the whole story, Merlin. That's the whole story. I can't, there is no beginning, middle, and end. Max has a bunch of rubber bands in the studio.

MerlinOkay, so you were doing a magic trick and you discovered a tumor. That was such a good episode, you guys.

MaxNow, the next one is friendliness and respect. Yes. Now, I always say in the most respectful possible way, I'm just gonna listen to music thank you for your service yeah I'm just gonna put my headphones in you don't have to oh me too

Merlinyou say that out loud you have to say it out loud or you look a douche

Maxyeah I say I'm just gonna listen to music is that okay and they're always like yeah that's fine

Merlinno no no no no no you gotta say hey listen if you need me holler I need to listen to something for my work

Alexokay I've said that and it's been true so it's true I've done show notes for this show in the back of Ubers the next one is location

MaxAnd I don't know what that means.

AlexI don't either.

MaxIs that like they don't want to go to where? That sounds racist.

AlexYeah. That sounds like. Yeah.

MaxIt's like if you live in a bad neighborhood, they'll give you less stars.

AlexThat's very weird.

MaxOr is it that you are where you say you're going to be? Oh. Interesting. Probably. That's super interesting. Because sometimes that's a real thistle. Sometimes the car gets there and it's like, they're like, I'm here. And they're like blocks away. They're like nowhere near where it's supposed to be. My response to that is always, so am I.

MerlinYes, wherever you are, yes, you are there. And I'm over here.

MaxI'm here where the little blinking dot is. My response is usually, I haven't gotten the check yet, but I'll be out in a few minutes. Oh, God. Okay, the next one is cleanliness. Now, this is one where I guarantee that I score higher than both of you. Oh, I doubt it. I'm super clean. 100% sure.

MerlinIf you're going to roll with the appearance that I have, you better be fucking clean. You know what I'm saying?

MaxMerlin but no one's gonna give no one's gonna review the app and be like I'm gonna give Merlin points for cleanliness They're gonna be like I wish these homeless people would stop ordering cars Okay, if I shit here

MerlinAre you gonna be a dick about it? I've received a fee for shitting in a Prius I just want to say I would like to contest this fee that I've incurred

MaxThe next one is bringing a child without a car seat Oh, okay. Expecting them to have a car seat. You're supposed to have your own car seat.

AlexThat's fair. I had not thought of that.

MerlinWhat an odd thing to... Now they're mad and they rate you lower? That's odd.

AlexNo, honestly, if I... Yeah, no. That's... If you get a person... That's kind of like rate somebody morally, but I'd do it.

MaxI don't know. The next thing is long travel time to your pickup location when you're going on a short trip. That's your fault? How? Long travel time to your pickup location when you're going on a short trip.

AlexAnd this is also why I have a low rating on Uber because I don't want to carry the 200 pound thing, but it's just like half a mile away.

MaxHow are you supposed to control that? I don't know what the... Did the drivers think that the passengers assign themselves a car?

AlexI actually, I understand that.

MerlinIsn't that what their little robot's for? The robot is for figuring out who's nearby.

AlexNo, no, no. What this is, is if you are ordering a car and you're at a hotel. I can think of a perfect example. I was at a convention this weekend and my hotel was really close to the convention center. So I would just walk there. It was maybe half a mile. No big deal. But a lot of people just order Lyfts or Uber from there and then go to the convention center. But how do you know if that person can like walk? I don't know. It's just weird.

MerlinAnd can't they? And can't they? I mean, I could be way wrong here, but I thought this was owing to the one of the things that props up this wobbly idea that these folks are contractors is that they choose to accept a given ride. Isn't that part of the part of their whole sham?

So if they accept if they accept that they're going to go two miles to take you three blocks, that's on them.

Alexwell but also this isn't like the official what i'm i assume x you're looking at like the reddit

Maxor the i'm looking at some sort of random bullet point yeah oh this is not on the lyft website right no then the last one the last one is bringing more people than are legally allowed to travel in the car which i don't think i've ever done yeah that that is fair uh you know one thing i do is do you eat in a lyft no no i'll eat in a lyft i have brought an open

AlexDiet Coke into a lift before and then I braced myself. I got like a hot chicken

Maxsandwich when I was in San Francisco.

MerlinLike a Nashville chicken?

MaxYeah, and I got right into the back of a lift and I ate it and the guy was like, boy, that sure smells good. I was like, buddy, you have no idea. It tastes so good. Were you like once? Yeah, I was just getting chicken skin all over the back of his car. I wiped my hands on the back of his headrest.

MerlinYou know, I mean, as long as we're being problematic, There have been times when we were out of town with family. There are opportunities that we had to get into a cab versus call a ride sharing service. And like on one occasion, we did take the cab and it was disgusting. It's like, I'm sorry, but like, first of all, you guys know that I have it in for cabs because you know, I mean, you may know, Max, it took a while for you to get here on the train. You realize I'm in, by San Francisco standards, a far-flung neighborhood of San Francisco.

MaxYou know, there was a lot that went wrong on my trip out to you as well. Like, not everything. Not just sound quality.

MerlinOn the train? You didn't tell me about it.

MaxOh, it doesn't always work as advertised.

MerlinYou should give Muni stars. Yeah. But, like, the thing is, I can't even tell you how many times before the era of the ride sharing. I'm sure I'm going to regret this when Amazon is the only way you can get anywhere. But like, you know, we would call a cab and we call another cab. We call in cabs. And the thing is, the way a cab works, and this is very sensible, is they'll hang on. There's different kinds of cabbies, right? There's good cabbies and bad cabbies. Some of my best friends are cabbies. But they like a certain corridor. Some people really like doing the airport route.

You know what I mean? But there are people who hang out in one area, say, near Moscone. And they'll just be going up and down Howard because they know they're going to be able to do lots of short trips, which I think is where the dough is. So that's fine. But if we call, I'm sorry, this is just such a fucking bee in my bonnet. It was like the times that we would call for a cab where the babysitter was upstairs with the child and we have waited two hours for a cab before we gave up. Not one cab, but cab after cab after cab. And it's not like they're going to tell you, oh, this guy ditched because he got somebody on Van Ness

and that was easier. But you just keep calling and calling and calling and nothing happens. And so I have to admit a certain level of smugness, even when it was a black car service. Well, I don't think we say that anymore. But when it was a dark car service, even then we were like, yeah. I mean, like if we know that we can have – you know, in a babysitter, you're going to spend $100 on a babysitter. So let's be clear about that. Before you've left the house and you've spent $100 plus whatever they steal from you. And then, like, you're going to wait. We're in our, like, going out on a date, close, and, like, sitting on the steps for two hours.

So I was very happy when these services came along. I know they're going to ruin everything. But, like, the cabs are so disgusting. One time we took a cab to the airport, and the guy was clearly, he told us he'd been up all night DJing. He'd been DJing all night. And then he cabbed us to this, and he was vaping while he was driving. He had one of those little R2D tube rigs with lots of ohms blowing sick cotton with the kid in the car.

AlexI've had that in lifts and Ubers before as well as a lot of vapors, a lot of Darth vapors. Have you day trader Vader?

MaxNow, let me read you something that I just saw on this blog post. Cash tipping. A cash tip will pretty much wipe out all of the previous wrongs. If you made your driver wait five minutes but left a generous $7 tip, he will forgive you and happily give you five stars. Oh, good to know. That is bad. The reason we say you should leave a cash tip is because if you tip through the app, the driver won't know that you tipped until long after he rates you. Oh, God, that's so good.

MerlinYou guys, challenge. Challenge, bring up your numbers by dropping a 20 on them. Let's do it. Let's see what we can do with these numbers. Oh, shit.

MaxOkay, so we're going to take.

MerlinYou just bring a wad of 20s and you're just tipping.

MaxWe're going to take petty cash. We're each going to grab like three or four $20 bills out of petty cash. This is actually pretty good. Put them in our wallet. Yeah. And just give a $20 bill to the Lyft driver afterwards and say, this is for you. Thank you for the ride. Oh, my God.

AlexSee, I've done this before. Do you know that would make their day? But, well, you know how there's a fee for if you make a mess in someone's car?

Speaker AYeah.

AlexAnd I've, of course, thrown up in the back of a Lyft. What? Actually, oh, you weren't there for that. In the old office, someone gave me something with cashews. And so, you know, I'm on. And on the way to the emergency room, I had a plastic bag.

MaxBut you took a lift to the emergency room?

AlexDo you know how, at the time, I didn't have.

MaxThey should have valet parking.

AlexDo you know how expensive? Say it. No, you go ahead. Say it.

MerlinYou go ahead.

Speaker ATell them you're shot.

Merlinso cashew consumption plastic bag old office i was like please please tell them that i threw up

Alexin like i i didn't know at the time like i was not in my right mind i'm like i don't know if i got any on your i'm sure you're the rest of your day's ruined can i give you like a 50 and he's like oh yeah totally totally because and so then i he wasn't like okay i'm sorry point of information were you able to keep it in the bag i don't know i think you might have splattered sick and i'm sure there was a smell you know what i mean like that guy's day is done no matter oh god but i there here's the problem though some lyft and uber drivers are so like i i've seen people

try to give a cash tip to somebody and they refuse it because they're supposed to i don't

Merlinknow who's gonna like narc on them well you know they're getting tested they probably got shoppers they probably you know this is how it works no this is what orwell said i am i assume is that like something something eventually get people to police themselves right when you've got when you've got the uh what they call panopticon when you got the panopticon going you assume the camera is always on that's from philosophy max right that's the whole point of the panopticon is we don't need to be watching you you just need to know that you might be being watched and there consequences. So I'll bet they send people out. I'm overselling this, but I bet they send people

out to offer a cash tip, et cetera, or have a Nashville chicken. And you see how they react. And now we've got a third level of rating. I'm sorry about the vomiting. Do you feel like you

Alexvomit kind of a lot, huh? Oh yeah. That was a no big deal. That was a, I don't want to

Maxruin this. But wasn't that also a scam? Like there was, isn't there a scam around? Yes. There There were people who were, so basically there were like false.

MerlinCleanup fees?

MaxYeah, they were assessing false cleanup fees. And they were saying people vommed in the car when they didn't. Now, the final thing I'll say is, because I was actually wondering this a minute ago. And I was thinking like, why do I care though? Like, I don't care what Lyft's rating for me is. Is that for people who cared about their getting a note in their permanent record when they were in school or something? But the reason is, according to this blog post, they say if your rating is anything below like a 4.4, then drivers won't pick you up when you ask for a pickup. Oh, wow. So you'll get done. That'll send you to the next furthest driver, the next furthest driver, the next furthest driver.

But it can take a long time to get a driver.

MerlinYeah. You ever get a lifter? You ever get a lifter? We had two lifters when we were on our little visit out of town. And you usually get a lifter. And, of course, it usually says five stars or 4.7 or whatever. You ever get a lifter where it says zero five-star reviews? You ever get that? We had two of those. And I wonder, do you think it's a new boy or do you think that's probably what it is? It's lots of new boys.

MaxI've never looked at the ratings in my life, but that's good messaging. Oh, really? That's good messaging. I mean, that's like the Pete Buttigieg campaign, right? Zero five-star reviews. But five-star reviews isn't a big font.

AlexI remember when they started putting the faces and names of your drivers, And I'm like, okay, this is just a recipe for performative racism. And I'm like, oh, boy, oh, boy. But now when I see a white guy with an Irish name, I immediately order a new lift. This will be the one where I die.

MerlinYou know how to be an ally.

AlexNo, I'm terrified. At one in the morning, when you're going from a weird location back to your apartment where you're alone. No, I'm not going to take a gamble. No, no, no, no.

MaxHow about this for a think piece? How about this for a woke think piece? Before ride shares, I only ever in my entire life saw a female cab driver in Portland. I never was in another American city. That might have been an art project. It could have been. Who knows?

MerlinIt's Portland. It's a weird city.

MaxIt was a performative thing. I never got. I mean, I took up a million cabs in cities all across the country, and I never had a woman as a cab driver. And now it's obviously it's blown. That's so interesting.

MerlinI feel like I've gotten or so this could be a cognitive bias of some kind, but I feel like I've noticed it more in places that aren't big cities. And that could be by virtue of the fact that there's I don't know, but I've been places the most unconventional cabs and ride shares I've had have been in more like regional areas. Like when I went to like, where's Madison, Wisconsin. And you're like, it's, you know, and it's like a like a dad in a sailor hat or something. You know what I mean? You're like, oh, I got a colorful guy. Like, he's got a whole thing going on. We did have one. We had one lifter and an American flag shirt.

So the day before, we had this African-American lady that we were kind of, we were talking to and trying to cozy up with. And over time, you know, because I like to figure people out. I like to figure out what their deal is. And we talked about something or other. And both us and her had said things that were slightly like, yeah, that thing. and then she says I just feel so she says it's not that I don't like Hillary Clinton you know I just feel so sorry for Bill being married to her and I was like what ooh this is interesting

and I'm like is this a person of faith and then I'm like I'm trying to drop some knowledge bombs to like suss her out she's taking us to the CVS to buy goggles for my daughter and like as you do and I'm trying to suss her out and I can't tell I don't know if she's maybe like a Seventh Day Adventist or something but it's difficult to know so the next time we got in We were about to get into the lift. I had learned my lesson. And I see the man. And you know the guy. He's like Johnny Rifle, 35, wraparound sunglasses at AOL.com. He gets out. He's about to get out.

And I see his American flag T-shirt. And my head whips to my wife. And I say, watch the politics. Watch the politics. Because he holds our life in his grubby little wraparound hands. It's definitely a land of contrast

MaxOh boy Let's talk about politics for a minute Lots of news The Mueller report Is out and exonerates the president Yes, thank you It's a good thing that that was the One crime that we decided to investigate

MerlinJust shows you what a jam up this was for poor Paul Manafort What have they done to that man? He feels very badly about it.

MaxI'm looking forward to him being pardoned now.

MerlinHe has to find the oranges. He has to find the oranges of the investigation. We have fun.

MaxWell, he's going to catch the real...

MerlinHe's going to go to the golf course with OJ.

MaxYeah, he's going to catch the real collaborator. He's going to catch the real colluder.

MerlinIf you're a good dude, you didn't collude. Folks, do we hate this collusion?

MaxI don't know. Merlin, you, you, you probably, you got relatively into the, into the, you were following it pretty closely. Like what, what, how are you, how are you feeling?

MerlinWell, you know, um, I, I, uh, I, you know, it came and, you know, it came and it went for now. And, uh, I have to say, I.

MaxWould you agree it's probably going to be a big, at this point we can be pretty confident saying like it's kind of be a big nothing now.

MerlinWell, I think, well, a couple of things. I mean, the one big nothing part of this is that, like, knowing what we know, which is not much, that this is a man who's not going to – he's going to investigate down to the last letter and page, but he's going to be probably conservative in what he decides to prosecute and stand behind. He only prosecutes cases that, like, he can really, really, really, really prove. And obviously it goes without saying that we need to see the reports and know more, blah, blah, blah. But with that said, holy shit, you've got to give it.

You've got to give it to them for controlling the story, the Trump folks. Because now basically we look like dicks if we keep talking about this, right? They have so perfectly in like 24 hours set this up to be a thing. We're like, even if it's obviously, even if it's not true. But now it just seems like, oh, God, are you guys ever going to let this go? You're still mad about Hillary, right?

Maxyou know it's well it's just like it's like the one i mean i again i know i say this all the time on the podcast but i really think that the some of my favorite sort of political analysis and discussion is on the chopo trap house program yes their last episode uh who was the guest it was matt taibbi i think right who sounded pretty high uh the uh he's very just so you know matt taibbi

Merlinis very unpopular on necktie twitter right now because he's not respecting the troops by which I mean the journalists.

MaxInteresting.

MerlinNext time Twitter is good and mad at that guy.

MaxHow dare, sir, how dare you do that to the journalists who, well.

MerlinIt was a good episode, very good episode.

MaxI thought that it was probably the smartest sort of stuff that I've, the smartest analysis I've heard about the Russiagate. I thought like to me the main point that the Chapo guys made are like, this is the one crime that Trump probably didn't do or he didn't do in a way where we can catch him. But it's not as though he's like an innocent guy. Like he's done like you name almost any other crime and he's done it. Like he's and he's bragged about it openly.

MerlinAnd do and doing it. It's just a matter of like what you can find in every I mean, there's all corruption in his cabinet. He's got like a worrying orangey hearting level of bullshit going on right now. But no, exactly what they said, which is like the one thing that is going to be difficult to prove is that this complete human fucking dumbass honestly didn't know how owned he was. That's very, very likely. You got the Manaforts and the Stones and all these people who are like running around like, you know, like some kind of silent film villain. And he's just like wandering from room to room.

And he's so self-involved that he has no idea how fucking owned he was. And as you say, Max, he has no shame to make him go, wow, I wonder if that meeting in Trump Tower was like worse than it sounds. No, couldn't be. Couldn't be. You're absolutely right.

MaxIt's just like the Russian collusion, it was the thing that the party establishment sort of seized on because if it was true, it would let them off the hook for having done anything wrong strategically in 2016, right? The people who were in charge of the party could still be in charge of the party and not really change anything about who's doing anything or change anything about structurally how the party works or change our strategy in any way. and everything would go on and it would be business as usual and it would be, oh, Russia did it.

MerlinAnd then we could, as people have liked to say for two plus years, go back to normal as if that's a thing that's possible for any variety of reasons that we could get into. But there is no normal to go back to. There's a reason that fucking guy got elected. And there's not a normal to go back to at this point. But you're right. That was going to be our get out of jail free card or how do you want to put it? It was going to be the Kevin Durant slam dunk. Like it was going to be the thing that made all the bad things go away.

MaxThe other thing there's like, I do think it is, I mean, again, I'm paraphrasing. A lot of this I'm sort of, it was said more in a more funny and better way by Chapo. But, you know, I do think it is QAnon for libs. It is this sort of like exciting action movie, James Bond conspiracy theory that you can sort of follow along at home. Yeah. And, you know, part of that is a consequence of the media class and the sort of commentator class reducing politics to like an entertainment. entertainment and a sports and uh you know just a brand of like are you red team or blue team like

a horse race in a soap opera yeah like all all form and no content right and if that's the case why wouldn't you want it to be entertaining like of course you'd want it to be a good plot right like i like a good i i like it when the when the like when there's a james bond plot and it doesn't make any sense like the guy's goal is to start a war so he can sell more newspapers or whatever like i'm like that's a lame bond villain and then he kicks by bond kicks him into the paper and he He goes, I'll print anything these days.

That was outstanding.

AlexNo.

MerlinAs you know, I am heavily steeped in the world of the Theranos things. I listened to the entirety of the Dropout podcast. I watched the 2020 Dropout special. I watched as much as I could tolerate of the extremely not very good HBO Alex Gibney film.

AlexIt was all right.

MerlinIt was not good.

MaxAnd I'm currently on chapter 20 of Bad Blood, which is very. Bad Blood was my shit.

MerlinOh, it's so well done. It's a very well done book. His sort of bloodless form of like, not bloodless, but like his very just straightforward, you know, Joe Friday way of reciting the facts and showing the receipts is super duper effective. But I saw an interesting thing that a lot of people saw probably in the last couple of days was people saying, you know, it was a think piece that said basically, here's what people are missing about the Theranos story, especially the Alex Gibney movie, was it's all about the pathology of Elizabeth Holmes. And it's all about, oh, my gosh, how did she get away with this lie?

and she's got blue eyes and there's that photo of her over and over holding the thing. And like, ah, and it goes on and on and on. And the person in this article said, you know, well, yeah, okay. But like, why don't we look at the entire power structure around her? Whether that's George Schultz or whether that's her former neighbor who was the investor, whether that's the guy from Stanford. Like all of these people at any point could have asked better questions about what the fuck was going on with any of their busted ass machines.

And to hear how busted ass their machines are is a great reason to read that blood. It's farcical. Nobody could even see inside of them. And then when they finally did, they're like, you've got to be kidding me. This is a glue gun. Like this is not a scientific device. But okay, so the pivot being Elizabeth Holmes is a different kind of like character, a similar character to Donald Trump in terms of the storytelling, which is we fixate so heavily on what this one person does that's bad, bad, bad. and then like we're kind of glancing right past all the people who should know better around them

and i know that's a twice told tale at this point but like you know what the fuck is going on with congress still like how many people like have suffered this in the same way that they allowed elizabeth holmes to basically and sunny to like boldly lie and intimidate people all along the

Maxway sunny's fucking suing everybody you got affidavits coming out the ass i keep bringing i keep bringing this i i know i've talked about this before on the podcast but there's this great Tom Guerra article and he was kind of writing remember the Anna Delvey case the girl who was like scamming everyone in the New York sort of elite New York scene so he wrote this piece about the golden age of scammers and he said we're living in a golden age of grifting for an ambitious scammer in 2018 this is like being a sculptor in the 1500s in Florence every major force at play in our world is like a wind at your back and it's so true

and it's because to me it's because like a lot of the news gets generated and a lot of of like like a lot of newsrooms i i know this for firsthand like a lot of newsrooms sit around and they open up like facebook trending stories and they're like what should we be covering today like what are people reading about what what what what do we need to put resources into and and it's crazy because like the the these there are people who are very skilled at manipulating i don't mean people like russia like like state actors i mean

there's grifters who are really skilled at sort of manipulating images and manipulating how people feel about things like the abilities the tools of sort of control and deception are so advanced and the public's um ability i mean the idiot public's ability of sort of like media literacy and telling real from fake is is so low like i i really feel like it's it's very hopeless right now and uh grift is a good way to describe both the way that trump got into office his whole career in his whole life. He's kind of a pioneer of this,

and he's kind of one of its highest practitioners, I think. But also the Mueller investigation. Like how much grift is there around the Mueller investigation, right? And like even Renato, like we've had on the podcast, who's made quite a name for himself like talking about Russia. He's like constantly exasperated by the other people in this world and their misinformation.

MerlinOr Ken White talking about, oh my God, do you guys have any idea what kind of the Pope had? Talking about, do you have any idea what kind of bullshit prosecutors do every single day? And I realize now we're, you know, whatever. Now it's easy to say that. But there's that Latin phrase, qui bono? Who benefits from this? For whom is this beneficial? And that's an interesting question to ask. In retrospect, it's easier to ask. But in the case of Theranos, which again, a little pivot, but like in the case of Theranos, we're talking, you know, my kid listened, all three of us listened to the entire Dropout podcast,

mostly while we were driving. But like we were talking about it. And my opinion was that, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound. Like once you're involved in the big grift of Theranos, there is never a good day to say what the fuck is going on here. And if you want to keep your job and you want to get your 10x as a VC, like whatever it is. I mean, it's pretty venal. Like everybody in that chain who could have had some role in, I mean, let's be honest what we're talking about here. The chapter on people getting bad test results is absolutely chilling.

Like the ridiculous test results like you've got diabetes, your potassium level is too high, you're going to have a heart attack any second, all that kind of stuff. And every signal that could have said, guys, like we really need to work on this. But everybody had their reasons. You know, a terrible thing in life is that every man has his reasons. Like all these people would do it. And that's kind of what's going on with Trump. I mean McConnell and Lindsey Graham, not my favorite people historically, but they're the worst right now because they need to – Lindsey Graham needs to win that election. There's not a good day for him to come clean.

MaxWell, they want – they're getting their stuff done. Like Trump's great for them. They're getting – they're filling the courts. I think they know that this is a last gasp of the conservative movement. And so they're structurally damaging our politics and cramming the courts full of these conservative justices. So it doesn't matter what happens in elections for the next 50 years.

MerlinYou know that's McConnell's thing. It's just it's all about the judges.

MaxRight. Well, because he knows that he knows that what they're doing is a last. Like people keep looking at McConnell and they're like, oh, he's going to lose an election. Like he's doing things that are unpopular. And like, no shit. He knows that. But he's also at the same time, he's making it so the results of elections won't matter for at least for 50 years.

Alexthat's what I don't understand about Mitch McConnell and a lot of the people just fighting so hard to get justices in the court. Like they're going to die. And they're not like Theranos. It's easy for me to understand because like the only one who like got out Scott free was like Avi Tavanian. Cause he was like the only one who was like, Oh, this is, this is bad.

MerlinThis is very unconventional.

AlexHe's the apple guy. Yeah. Yeah. He's the apple guy. And it was like, Oh, Nope, Nope, Nope.

MerlinAnd the stuff that happened to him is just bananas.

AlexIt's, yeah.

MerlinLike the stuff that he saw and like his whole thing was like, hey, the reason I'm on the board is because I ask hard questions. Like that's why you get me here. That's why she wanted, she wanted Avi because, I call him Avi. She wanted him because, oh, guess what? That's Steve Jobs' right-hand man. Well, yeah, he was Steve Jobs' right-hand man. Steve respected him and would listen to him say, like, here's a point of view that you're not seeing right now. Right? And that was like the whole value. And then like he's getting the threat of a lawsuit at 11 o'clock on Christmas Eve. Like that's the kind of shit that they were doing. Go ahead, Alex. Sorry.

AlexOh, no, I just I don't like why does Mitch McConnell care so much? Does he truly believe in all of this thing? Like does he have like what?

MerlinWhat is his big motivation for the judges? Kind of.

AlexYeah. Like I understand why I understand his political motivations. I want to.

MerlinI honestly don't know.

AlexBecause I can understand like the I can understand someone like Elizabeth Holmes. I can understand someone like Peter Roskam who truly believes these disgusting things. But like, does everybody actually like.

MaxWell, the first thing is McConnell is getting very he's become very wealthy. Yes, exactly. Through his political and business relationships. He's become very wealthy and we don't know where his money comes from. But it's almost certainly because of sort of lobbying kickbacks and business deals and things like that. That's number one. But number two. So that's an obvious. I mean, that's probably the most cynical thing. But also, like, I don't say like that's not, though.

AlexLike that. But but that's what I mean. He has all of that.

MerlinWhy continue as it as against Jeff Sessions? And I don't want to sound unkind, but I truly believe Jeff Sessions deeply. I don't get in trouble for this. I think he deeply loves doing racism. I think he does.

MaxHe's a very racist.

MerlinI think he's much more ideological in terms he has been was much more ideological in terms like he's going to connect the dots and do his job and show up on time and wear a suit to do what he needs to do, even if that means, you know. Okay.

MaxLet me give you a couple of thoughts here. So the first thing is, I think that it is hard often to understand. It's so hard often to understand kind of conservative conceptions of morality that it's easy to say, well, they have no morality, so it must be something else. And that's not the case. They do not believe. I don't think the conservatives believe themselves to be acting immorally. Like I think the day, like you said, Merlin, everyone has their reasons. And if you are a listener of this show and you're interested in understanding what do they think their morals are, I really recommend the book.

It's by Jonathan Haidt, and it's called The Righteous Mind, Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. And it's a really, really smart book that gets into what accounts for conservative morality and liberal morality and how do we understand that. I highly recommend that book. And the other one I would really, I've recommended this before, but Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff. And you can also find that.

MerlinYou can't unread that book. You can't unread that essay. Like once you've read that essay, like it's just, it's totally indelible for me.

MaxYou can find the whole thing as an audio lecture that he gave at Berkeley if you go on YouTube and search for Don't Think of an Elephant. It's probably one of the first things that comes up. It's probably one of the first things that comes up. Like just that essay is plenty.

AlexI think the lecture is better.

MaxWell, the lecture, the book is a transcription of the lecture. Yeah. I believe. So anyway, but I definitely recommend that. And there is theory there. Like you can seek to understand it and it helps to know what's in their head. That being said, I can also relate to part of this personally, which is why do I like got into politics and I still, you know, I think about like I care about like justice, for example, and I care about equality and things like that. That's like why I get into politics. But like day to day, like I wake up and I'm not I don't necessarily have like energy. Like I'm not necessarily thinking about abstract philosophical concepts of of justice.

I'm thinking about beating Republicans. Like I'm highly motivated by beating people that I hate or corrupt democrats like like a lot of these elections last night Like I mean yes, like I know Philosophically that I I want to beat them so we can have reforms in the city that make it a more equitable place for everyone to live

MerlinAnother way to put it is you don't want them to win

MaxYeah, but I fucking hate these people and I like like Like it is the emotional component of me is largely driven by beating these people that I hate and I and yeah I sure I have reasons that I hate them But like I really think – don't forget how big of a factor that is. And also like don't pretend like you don't have that yourself. Like how much – like do you really care about like the nuances of all these little policies or do you just sort of like hate Mitch McConnell and hate Donald Trump and you're intuitively against everything they do?

MerlinI mean there's a lot of angles. Another angle is I don't like seeing bullies win. It's just – it's some – I mean I was not extensively bullied. I was kind of like just psychologically bullied by culture. But, you know, sports. but you know nobody but everybody's got their own thing that they i mean yes yes i agree with you i

Maxagree with you like i do like i i am intellectually don't get me wrong like i am on an intellectual i

Merlinagree with you that we all should interrogate so like you know it's one thing to say like this it is appearing increasingly true that there are this is this is i've heard some podcasts about this recently that have been really shocking how long this meme of hating immigrants uh of this modern meme of hating immigrants has been around to where we now have these guys. When they said, Jews will not replace us or you will not replace us, there is an actual, like real, people have a concern that they as white men in particular are being castrated and replaced. They actually

Maxreally, really believe that. Yeah. I want to make sure, like, I know I'm saying something that people are going to misunderstand and I'm not saying like I care about, like I have intellectual and moral reasons for caring about politics. Sure. And I do read books and I think about them. But when I wake up and I see the news and I have a surge of emotion, it's most of the time it's because people that I fucking hate with every fiber of my being are succeeding and winning. And I feel that it's deeply wrong and it upsets me. And I don't know, maybe everyone is going to say that I'm, maybe I'm going to get made fun of for this or people are going to say, oh, not me.

I only think about the policy outcomes or whatever. But like, I don't think that's true. I really fucking hate these people. I think a lot of people do. and it's okay to hate them. It's okay to hate people. It's okay to say they're shitty people and I want them to lose. I wish them ill. We should be at peace with that. There are. They're awful people. I hope they all wind up in prison.

AlexThat's not... But okay, I almost think you're oversimplifying your own emotions because you can hate all these things but it is abstract. It's the people who are putting these terrible things into place that you hate. And yeah, the like the lizard brain emotion is just like yes beat beat these people bad thing go away and i i don't think there's anything wrong with that that's how it's knowing that it that's the good thing that makes us look at like okay why why do we hate jeff sessions oh because he's an actual

racist and it's like yes we we hate brett kavanaugh because he's a predator and it's not a casual racist he's an activist he's an actual racist who wants to put racist he's a professional

Maxyeah and like you know you gotta do you do what you love you know if I dress for the job you want you know it's a good thing we didn't have a challenge we wanted to talk about this week

Speaker AOh, boy. We are out of time.

MaxAll right, everybody. Thank you for listening to Dubai Friday. Hey, listen, you can catch the after show if you subscribe to our Patreon. That is giveusyourfuckingmoney.com. You give us $5 a month. We do a whole second episode every week that you can give us $5 to listen to. If you're a subscriber to the Dubai Friday Patreon, last week you were offered photographs of me having just been struck by a car. You look so sad.

AlexEdited by friend of the show, Jen Bane.

MaxI was hit by a car. Yes, I was hit by a car.

AlexIt's not funny.

MaxNo, but that's what happened. It's not funny. I mean, I do look sad. I was hit by a car. You want to ride?

MerlinGet in my death mobile.

MaxThis week's challenge, I am actually very excited to talk about it. Oh, the other thing I did want to say was Trump, did you see yesterday? I know we've got to move on, but he said the sound of the windmills is causing cancer. It's causing cancer.

Speaker AYeah, that's amazing.

MerlinA lot of people are saying windmills cause cancer. The noise. The noise. We hate the noise. folks what is his thing with windmills well first of all like as pointed out by several people this is a very very this is like wi-fi concern this is one of those very old far right wackadoo memes that like yeah wi-fi is giving you wi-fi and phones are giving you brain cancer and and there's how the fuck though do you come he's got so many problems with windmills he thinks

Maxthey're ugly you've got to hear this hang on i have to play this i know we've talked about this a little bit on the show before, but that just Trump, his voice is very funny to me and it really contrasts this image of Trump that you see in these conservative political cartoons.

MerlinYou can just hear the syphilis eating away at what's left of his brain.

MaxThere's this image of him when he's in these conservative political cartoons as this sort of alpha male, this ripped manly man's man. He's this like, oh, he's bringing pride back to men or whatever. And what's funny is like when you listen to him talk I definitely don't hear that in his voice and so I would just encourage you to listen to the contrast of Trump the alpha male and now I'm going to play this little clip of him talking about wind power is this one of those bullshit oh here it is

Speaker Byou'd be doing wind windmills and if it doesn't if it doesn't blow you can forget about television for that night darling Darling, I want to watch television. I'm sorry. The wind isn't blowing.

I know a lot about wind. Oh, God.

MaxAlex, my microphone just fully broke, but could you play the one with the Great Lakes, please? Oh, yeah. That was the other one I super enjoyed.

MerlinHe's always supported the Great Lakes.

AlexWhat is wrong with us? What do you do with this microphone? I don't do anything. It fell down. They're tight every morning, and then yours just collapses.

MerlinIt's like a bunch of gorillas come in there. You got it? I have it.

AlexWait, Max, go ahead.

Speaker BI support the Great Lakes. Always have. They're beautiful. They're big. Very deep. Record deepness, right? And I'm going to get,

in honor of my friends, full funding of $300 million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

MerlinThank you. Thank you. record deepness record deepness no it's true he's such a mincing equivocal man I know I know a lot of people are saying did I eat the bologna did I eat the bologna the bologna is gone did I eat the bologna I don't know I don't know who can tell question mark did I masturbate in the sock many people many people are talking about footwear

Maxwe love the sock folks folks Who's the celebrity he used to post about all the time? Who?

AlexRosie O'Donnell, Kathy Griffin. Who else?

MaxIt's Graydon Carter.

MerlinOh, the guy from Spy.

MaxYes. Trump tweets. I have to find these tweets.

MerlinNot so small, right?

MaxYeah.

MerlinI remember this.

MaxSissy Graydon Carter of Failing Vanity Fair Magazine and owner of bad food restaurants has a problem his Vanity Fair Oscar party is no longer hot

Merlinoh my god Yas Queen

Maxmy goodness I'm gonna retweet that that's so funny

Merlinso there's all kinds of stuff the Spy Guys of course very famously did a project Spy was such a good magazine they sent out a bunch of checks to celebrities and then kept sending checks and kept sending increasingly smaller checks and smaller and smaller checks to see who would cash them. And Trump won, I think, with something like a 13 cent check he cashed. But then the thing he would do, the thing he's famous for doing that's so awesome is he does look at the papers for his coverage of himself. Of course, he loves his Sharpies.

And the famous thing that he constantly does is circle things with a Sharpie and then send it to people. And there was an anecdote of him. I think it was Graydon Carter or the other guy, might have been the Studio 360 guy, where, I forget his name, but anyway, basically sent him a picture after they'd called him a short-fingered Bulgarian. Many years later, every time there were pictures of him in the paper where he thought his hands looked big, he'd circle it with a marker and send it and say, not so small.

MaxSo what's short, you know what's funny about that too, is what short-fingered means is that you're cheap.

MerlinWas that the, I might have gotten the quote wrong. I think that was pretty close.

MaxShort-fingered means that your pockets, you can't reach into the bottom of your pocket. What? You can't get a coin. Turns out. Are you shitting me? So short-fingered vulgarian. The reason that they said that in that piece.

MerlinBecause he doesn't pay the polls. He doesn't pay the polls. He has them deported.

MaxCorrect. Wow. Short-fingered vulgarian means he's cheap. And Trump is such a fucking idiot, he thought that they were saying he had small hands. Oh, my God.

MerlinThey got me. They got me, Jerry. They got me. That's where the small hands thing comes from. Oh, my God. You.

MaxDouble, triple turns out.

Speaker AYou know what?

MaxTake a Malcolm Gladwell out of petty cash. all right i have to get a wall i have to can i get a water bottle i'm dying

Alexyes i'm so thirsty diet coke yes these anecdotes are making me thirsty

Merlinnot funny no yes not funny diet coke Alexandra, we listen to John Mulaney every morning before school. And my daughter is finally...

AlexThat's got to start to warp your brain.

MerlinShe's finally doing something that I used to do when I was her age. For me, it was Steve Martin. And for her, it's John Mulaney. And she can quote full section. Once again, my condolences, gazebo.

Jedediah, I believe you had something. You ever wanted to be indoors and out of doors at the same time? Cause Zeebo. There are adults who are very attractive to you and may have to kill you for it.

Speaker ASo good.

MaxDigga digga digga digga digga digga. Digga digga digga digga challenge. Challenge. This week's challenge was, I honestly, we were. I think we did a double play on this one. was there a there was kind of was there like maybe like a cocky post I think about this and it was like the idea was like little rituals

MerlinI am prepared for may I may I please I think this is a Merlin via max challenge and by the way all you people on fucking necktie twitter you don't understand what via means anymore via means where you got the link not the link that you're

Maxgod damn fucking linking to well because we've the idea of find the idea of finding links has been fully devalued to the point where it's not even a thing anymore

MerlinOh, God. Try doing a Twitter search on Spark Joy children or kids. There are no new jokes. You came across this on the site of a Mandarin blogger, not Mandarin, Cantonese blogger, Jason Kotke, in a post called Tiny Private Mind Motions. And this has been, may I say on our behalf, this has been a very powerful thought technology for us for the last few weeks.

AlexThat's a word for it.

MaxNow, as soon as I saw this, I just I knew it was like very on brand for Merlin. This is just such a Merlin thing to notice these about yourself, to celebrate them, to like even recognize that it's funny. And it's like it's a thing that you have.

MerlinJust to give context, you provided us this link via Max. Can I? Here's what he says. So Kotke says, prompted by a line from a poem by Tracy K. Smith. Sam Anderson writes about the thoughts that come unbidden to our minds during the course of our day. Quoting. Every morning when I screw the lid onto my steaming thermos of coffee, I think to myself automatically the phrase heat capture. I have no idea why. I've never used that phrase in any other context in my life, and yet I couldn't stop if I tried. Going on further, he mentioned this to his wife. Every night when she shuts the bedroom blinds, she thinks to herself the ridiculous words, sleep chamber complete.

She said she kind of hates it because it makes her feel as if she's living in an episode of Star Trek, but she has no choice. this is a powerful thought technology that has infected our private text channel and our own private mind so the challenge for this week which we've been accumulating for a few weeks is start tracking and capturing as much as you can

Maxsome of your tiny private mind motions Merlin I hear you talk about these all the time and often the way that you say it is this has taken over our household yes and it's like a little affectation or a little thing that you've started and everyone does it and I'll tell you like I get them from you and then I start doing them. Sometimes I don't even know where they're from. Well, that's because they are truly mimetic.

MerlinLike I've heard, like you and Roderick are the worst because there's things that I do. Now I'm saying aminal. Why am I saying aminal? Because that's what John Roderick says, posposably. Bastic. Bastic. Bastic ball. I write that out. It autofills for me at this point. Mine begin. I don't want to get to mine yet. I want to talk about this more, but mine begin. What do I want? What do I want? I started saying that and I didn't even know what it was from

Maxbecause it doesn't, honestly the bit that you guys do doesn't sound anything like the film, it's just your own it doesn't sound like Al Pacino with a broken jaw no, it doesn't it doesn't, it has nothing, like once you said it I was like, oh yeah, that's where it's from

Merlinhow's the Italian food here? yeah, but like, no, that's just a thing that you and Roderick say what do I want? oh, there's, okay, so mine begins with this single line I am leaving out literally dozens and dozens of these in my family. I did three in a row this morning with my wife. We have so many of these. I'm not going to do them here because we talked about this on Back to Work. Back to Work yesterday, the time that Thorin was dying in The Hobbit and Madeline yells out to Eleanor, Baby Thorin's dying.

She didn't imply a comma there, so the notion of Baby Thorin is dying. Baby Thorin is like a bit in our house now. Like a little baby, what is he? Dwarf? Yeah. We have so many of these. But here's just to be clear here. Now, for my own, I want to do jumping off here of like, I hope we've all collected some of these. They're going to be very, very strange and embarrassing and difficult to talk about. But I would encourage you to talk about things that include things you always think for some reason, especially when an event happens.

I also it's very important to me that we talk about completely stupid and pointless physical things that we find ourselves doing like sort of like Wendy with her OCD you know and when she touches her head in the challenge in the challenge

MaxI have not seen the last episode okay we're not saying anything but the boy with Veronica and I pulling for her oh I want her to win so

Merlincan you imagine her doing the one where she has to keep her statue on a long stick could you even fucking imagine that one but I really want to talk about the physical things. So the three kinds, major classes of things I was tracking are things I always think to myself and maybe don't say out loud, things that I do find myself saying out loud, but I also really like the physical things that you do for no particular reason. It's not technically a mind motion, but mine are so peculiar, and I hope you guys have some too.

MaxYou know, I thought about this a lot, and I can't say I don't have like a super long list, but I have some good ones. but Merlin I feel like you're gonna have the longest list

Merlinno no no no I don't see now I don't want to do the challenge yours is bigger what all right I can start out Alexander do you want to go first do you have something you want to start with you go first so we can make fun of you

Alexthis is the strangest one I think it is just something that I pops into my mind all the time and I can't pinpoint why it does but do you know the Monty Python bit where I think it's from Life of Brian and it's like a fish, a fish, a fishy-o. And like, where did that fish go?

MerlinOh, it's from Meaning of Life. Fishy, fishy. Yeah, it's from Meaning of Life.

AlexYes. However, I did not know. That is not what pops into my mind. What pops into my mind is a family guy cutaway of some guy in Iceberg as Peter and the gang are trying to catch a fish. I don't know. And there is that character going, a fish, a fish, a fishy-o. So at the time I saw it, I was like eight years old and did not know what the reference was. It just pops into my mind all the time. I don't know why. I don't even like sometimes I'll say it out loud like when I'm alone.

But yeah.

MerlinAgain, again, unbidden. I woke up. I've woken up for the last three days with a line from a song I don't even like in my head, which is a song by Bad Company. Don't you know that you are a shooting star? It's not even a good song. And it heard it first Beatles song. Love me do. I think it was. That's in my head every morning. It's better than Skylar sisters at this point. But like, where the fuck did that come from? Why do I wake up with a fucking bad company line?

MaxSometimes I'll be I'll be walking around or I'll be doing something. I'll be in a meeting and I will just think to myself. The scene where Jim Carrey and Ace Ventura to Pet Detective. Oh, no. When nature calls when he's inside of the rhino and he goes,

Speaker AOh, no.

MaxKind of hot in these rhinos. No, no. And it's so funny to me that I will start laughing. Like I will start kind of hot in these rhinos and I will start laughing to myself. That's stupid. That's so stupid. It's one of the best lines. Watch, try it. The next time you're hot or you're walking around or you get a little sweaty or something, you just think to yourself, kind of hot in these rhinos.

MerlinEvery time I hit the button, every time I hit the button for the garage door, I go vroom.

AlexI have every time a car starts sometimes verbally sometimes just mentally beep beep vroom vroom and and yes that is where Scoot Scoot comes from I could not stop myself I was just like Scoot Scoot and now that is so that infected Matchy's mind and then it turned to it turned into you know just something we say It's a bit. Now it's a bit. And now it's when it's like an electric car or someone just honking.

We're like, beep, beep, no, vroom, vroom. I do that whenever someone honks their horn.

MerlinI go, mack, mack. Back at them. I yell back at them. My daughter hates it.

AlexWell, and that's another thing. I do the one, the Brian Regan bit.

MaxMerge. Everybody merge. That is what I do every time I'm upset. You know the one where that car is honking and he's like, go team, go team. Do you know what I'm talking about?

AlexYes, that is not one that affects my brain.

MaxHe has like a rental car and the horn is broken and it goes off every seven seconds. And so he's embarrassed and so he pretends that he's listening to a sports game and he's really excited. He goes, bam, bam, bam. Go, go, go, go squad, go. I hope you prevail in the contest.

MerlinYou guys, we're going to see him Saturday night.

MaxOh, he's so funny live. Oh my God, yay. Whenever you are on the highway and someone starts honking and they go, I always go in my head, I go, go squad, go. Another one, here's another stand-up comedy one. Anytime I walk past any food ad for a new burger, does anything where they're like, check out our new ex, this line pops into my head. I think that this is time-coded. It is. Please play this. I'll just do it on my computer. Is that okay? Yeah, go. Yes. Okay, it's a David Cross stand-up bit and he's,

and I'll just play about 30 seconds of this, but he's reading an ad from Cozy about a new bagel that they have.

Speaker AWhat's for breakfast at Cozy? I don't know. I'm going to assume it's a bagel. I don't know.

Speaker BI don't know. It's a bagel. It's a bagel.

Speaker ANah, dude. Not at Cozy. Not a bagel. Try squaggles. Squaggles. Bagels, yeah, that's right. Yeah, square bagels. Finally, man. It's him to be square. Remember that fucking dumbass song from that dumbass group nobody gave a shit about 20 motherfucking years ago? Squiggles, square bagels. Finally. Don't be oppressed by the tyranny of round, man. That's bullshit.

Your generation has a new shape bagel. Hail, man, here's you eating.

MaxAnyway, anytime I walk by a food ad, I go, I go, don't be oppressed by the tyranny of round, man. That's bullshit. And I say it to people and they're like, what are you talking about?

MerlinI realize we're a little off topic here, but like I have a million Mr. Show ones that like you've heard me be triggered with Mr. Show stuff probably a million times.

MaxIsn't there something about that aesthetic that it becomes your own little note card?

MerlinYeah, he takes it personal and makes it personal.

MaxAnd it's like small comedy, right? Yes. It's like small moments.

MerlinSan Francisco, dirty city. Filled with criminality. Old limber legs. There's a million of them that like just in any kind. I mean, like I start to feel like some kind of a fucking Skinner box where like an event happens in the world and then beep boop. The fucking idea just falls out of the hole like that.

Speaker BSomebody hit the lever and this idea fell out and it's really fucking annoying.

MerlinAnd I have no control over. I have zero control over it. There's thoughts, thoughts all day long. Bits, comedy, stupid, song. Like, I will find, do you do this? Do you find yourself singing a song? And you're like, why am I saying like meeting, why am I singing Meeting in the Ladies' Room by the Mary Jane Girls or whatever? And you're like, I don't know. I guess maybe somebody said Ladies' Room two hours ago. And that has been churning in my head that entire time. A line from a song.

AlexWhenever someone says phenomena, I go, phenomena. Yeah, it can't stop it. can't stop it well i for you guys have mr show for me it's like the simpson just everything like just just this the line i call the big one bitey is the like funniest fucking thing i've ever heard and i from um what is it last train out of spring the monorail one yeah um and yeah is there is there

Merlinchance the track could bend not on your life my hindu friend yeah but but it's not but it's not

Alexit's not like the the funniest bit it's just to me it like sticks and because he's so proud he no

Merlinbecause he's so proud to be giving bart like yeah he's giving him a tour of the cockpit he opens the door and it's got what possums in it is that it oh yeah yeah yeah and then uh there's

Alexthe one where millhouse like the school bus has gone off the rails and otto's freaking out and Millhouse goes, it's like speed two on a bus. Every time I'm on a bus.

MerlinWhy, Bart? Why? Certainly everything's coming up Millhouse a couple times a day for me.

MaxSame, same. Big one for me from The Simpsons is when anyone makes, when I'm in a meeting, or anytime someone makes a claim that's just impossible on its face, Like when we're talking to our construction guys and they like give us like a time estimate that I just know is wrong by half. I always go at this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen.

AlexI've got whenever someone says hi, everybody. Hi, Dr. Nick comes in. There's the good news. um and that or when someone says oh good news uh professor farnsworth good news everyone pops in um we got the muppet song oh if anybody says hump day i hear pam from archer go and just see her humping something um yep uh the but these are all most of mine are absolutely

pop culture bits. Like, they, there are very few, like, anytime I see eight, there's, say eight. So BB-8 being a favorite character of mine just in the world, Brian Regan's hospital bit, like, where he's like, say eight, say eight, is just, it's in there. You can't change it.

MaxIt's so weird that Brian Regan got lodged in all of our brains. I before E, except after C. on tuesdays and mondays and all throughout may

Merlinthat's a hard rule uh i i okay so i'm easing into my truly truly obscure ones that will be

Maximpossible to explain oh do you guys ever do do you guys ever think you too in case you ever fly

MerlinOh, God, come on.

MaxI say it almost every show.

MerlinYou too. It's just, it's constant. Just in the event that you're. Here's one I picked up from my wife. I don't know how she started doing this, but now this is something that I do. And after this, this is something that you will do. Imagine that you're doing almost anything. Let's say, okay, for example, for example, for example, I am pouring, I am pouring cat food into the cat's dish. and some of the kibble bounces out onto the floor. You know what you say?

Speaker AAh! Oh, fuck you.

MerlinSo no matter, no matter, no matter. But you have to, you have to do it in this, in this fake panic voice where you just go, ah! So anytime, anytime, anything even slightly goes wrong, the most petty, useless, dumb thing, you overfill the coffee filter.

Speaker AAh!

MerlinAnd I do that. We do it. It's not even weird in our house anymore. Or from the other side of the house, you just hear, ah!

MaxOne that I got from Veronica that I invite you to do is that it's called the squirrel chomp. So basically, anytime you're out walking and you see a squirrel, your goal is to make eye contact with the squirrel and sometimes the squirrel will look you right in the eyes and when he does that's his moment of vulnerability and then you go and now you've eaten the squirrel it's the best game it's a great game

Alexit's a curse I still rue the day when I asked her what her twitter oh god

Maxand that's the squirrel chomp and then I encourage you to text someone and say I just chomped a squirrel

Alexoh no no

Maxoh god

Merlinum one that's i mean this is really obvious uh uh i'm obsessed with babies so anytime whether i'm with my family or by myself okay this is important are you a 30 year old woman i point i point and i go baby this happens so often in san diego i would just say to my wife baby and then I'd say that's a very high quality baby I guess we do that with cats

MaxI mean of course we photograph yeah anytime you see a cat one of mine is there's this great tweet that someone made I don't even it's lost to the winds of time I don't know who said it but someone just tweeted chimps and salsa chimps and salsa chimps and salsa and I encourage you never say chimps and salsa again just always say chimps and salsa chimps oh that's pretty good there we go Chimps and salsa. Yeah, and we'll get some chimps and salsa for the table. Chimps and salsa. I welcome you to the cult of chimps and salsa. I also – a new one that I've decided – it's kind of an affectation,

but I've decided this weekend that I'm going to really go for it is I'm only saying espresso from now on. And I make espresso, and I know a lot about espresso, and I think it's really going to drive people crazy around me. But it is genuinely more fun to say.

MerlinBecause most people think you're over that. We remember the period when everybody said espresso, and then we learned, no, actually, it's espresso. but you're doing a

MaxI've decided to do it I think it's funny and I know a lot about expresso and I think it's very funny to get into really high level conversations of like what kind of race you're using for that ristretto shot for when you make your expresso that's very triggering

Alexthere's a lot of things I say to my cat especially his god given name is Frankenstein

MerlinI hadn't even thought of these

AlexOh, well, but like, that's, that's the thing is though, like they just kind of bleed over into the world. Like his, so his name is Francis and whenever he does something bad, like I audibly say, Francis J. Underwood. And then sometimes he'll do this thing where he flops in front of you when he wants a belly rub and like, God damn it, Floopster McGee. And like just a bunch of dumb bullshit. And I mean, I think we did the thing where it's outside the list of like, you know, 35 different names I have for my cats. but oh yeah and oh god and oh stretchy i'm like stretchy stretchers then when he gets all

like oh that is so cute i know these are the bad this is he's a bad um every time i walk by

Merlinwalk by my cat in the hallway and and she's sitting there doing nothing i say what are you doing in the style of patten oswald and a traumatized i say what are you doing and she and she she just looks at me and she's very perplexed. And then other times I'll just turn to her. She'll just be sitting there on the couch. I'll say, what do you think, Savvy?

Sort of like in the style of, what do you think, Mr. Little Jeans?

MaxBest play ever, man. Whenever Veronica and I are watching a movie that one of us is kind of not that into or sort of needs to be sold on or whatever, you'll like turn... So if Veronica's trying to show me some sort of romantic comedy, I'm like, what's that one with Billy Crystal? Oh, See You in Seattle?

MerlinBack in Seattle? Reckless in Seattle? No, what's it called?

AlexNo, no, no, no.

MerlinOh, the good one. The good one. Harry Met Sally. Yeah, When Harry Met Sally.

MaxYeah.

MerlinIt's a very good movie.

MaxYeah, it was fun. I wound up enjoying it, but I went into it a little skeptically. And when it started, you always have to wait for your right moment to strike and then you lean in and you go,

Speaker Athat's When Harry Met Sally.

MerlinThat's chappy. Every time my wife and I walk by somebody

Maxwearing jean pants and a jean jacket we go jean jean um another good one is another chappy related one is veronica when i first got the airpods veronica decided that they that i looked like a robot when i was wearing them yep and so she was like and she was like are you are you chappy and i was like and i was like what and she goes you have chappies in your ears and now in our household they're just called the chappies like have you seen my chappies where are your chappies can i borrow your chappies are your chappies charged and i really recommend that you call them your chappies it's a it's honestly it's a better it's a frankly frankly i know that apple

probably spent a lot of money on like r&d but chappies is a better name remember when the um

Alexpolice cars in chicago changed their siren like they're a little angry like i they sound like a duck to me so whenever i hear a police car go like i'm like i audibly have to go quack quack at them and it's that's i guess my fuck the police is audibly saying quack quack to an officer

Merlinoh i'm so glad i'm white um can i slide into my more difficult ones oh yeah i'm getting to

Alexyeah yeah let's get into the weird ones oh do you know do one of yours do oh uh there's some of these i don't know if it like i left off my like like diagnosed ocd ones but there's a couple like when i am turning or i see the volume numbers on a television it has to be an even number or there must be a three or a seven at the end of it like 27 is an acceptable volume

but 29 fuck no 33 fine why uh exactly it's not even a prime number thing nope nope nope nope it is uh i always prefer a prime number for anything oh well yeah it's it's and then if i see it happen i'm just okay now as i'm talking about this this is clearly one that goes into the oh no no no

MerlinNo, no, no. Don't. Please, please, please, please. This is going to get so much worse.

AlexBelieve me. I get, like, itchy and just I need to, like, and then in my head, or I'm sorry, not in my head, in my pocket, I click the volume buttons on my phone up to the acceptable number at which I wish the volume was at. That's so good. What? That's so good. No, no.

MaxIt's real, real bad. I've definitely been driving and you kind of zone out. Like I'm on like a highway for a long time and I kind of zone out and I'm trying to turn the music up because it's like hard to hear or something. And I wind up turning the air conditioning up. Like I just reach for the wrong knob and then I get frustrated. I'm like, why isn't the thing I want changing?

That's the human condition.

Speaker AThat's yeah. That is the human condition. Why am I not happier?

MaxIt's certainly not through any error of my own. another one is we call any hot drink is a wormy anything that comes in a mug oh I call my cat's wet food wetsies oh well that's mush our cat eats the mush and then Veronica would start asking did you mush the cat and then we started calling her mushy and so now it's all mush so she's mushy and it's like do we have mush is there enough mush

if we go out of town? Is there enough mush until we get back? Did you mush the cat? How many cans of mush are there? When she's following us around, like looking at us expectantly, hoping for food, we call that mush patrol.

MerlinOh, precious angel.

MaxSomeone's pushing for a mushing. Someone's pushing for a mushing.

MerlinThe cats are stupid. In the very early days of our relationship, I wasn't going to do more family ones, but there's one that I just love so much. In the early days of our relationship, it was kind of in the dawn of the age of commercials where you couldn't tell what it was for. And so we had a game in the early 2000s where my wife and I would just start both start like often yelling what we thought the commercial was about beer, insurance, trains, or whatever it is. And at one point, a commercial comes on. And before I had a chance, my wife goes metal.

So for some reason, in our house, three times a week, someone will say with a question mark,

Alexgo metal and it's stupid there's uh my one that's oh god i i have never heard the song what's it called uh it's by dj assault and called ass and titties and now that i'm looking at the lyrics they're a bit upsetting are they problematic uh well but but whenever i see anything that looks somewhat like a breast or a bottom, like, titty, titty, titty, ass, ass, ass, ass is

in my head. Not as the song. Bottom. Just the words. Bottom. Just the words. Titty, titty, titty, ass, ass, ass, ass. Aw. Oh, yeah, so cute. I think that's wholesome. No, I'm saying titties in my head so many times a day.

MerlinI do that a lot when we're watching Survivor. I'll just yell, big boobs. I'll just be like, oh, there they go. They had to blur out. Blur the big boobs.

AlexBlur it. I left out all of my new Survivor ones, because who knows if they'll stay. No, I want them.

MaxI want them. Tell me them. Give me the best ones.

AlexYou know, come on in, guys. Come on in, guys. I've started staying. Worth playing for? 100% in my real life when someone asked me something like this. I'm like, oh, yeah, 100%. 100%. I've never said that until I.

MaxThe funniest thing is when we were watching Survivor at my place.

MerlinDoes not count.

MaxDoes not count. Whenever the show would come back on from commercial, Jen would just yell. she would just scream out come on in guys I can tell just from our

Merlininteraction I can tell that that is her catchphrase that's all Jen

MaxJen is Jeff Probst she's going to become Jeff Probst she's going to wear his skin yeah

Alexshe's going to have to fight me for it alright so

Merlinokay let's get to the let's get a little deeper I watched there's a scene in Toy Story 3 and I this is not even funny It's just fucked up. There's a scene when Andy is throwing his toys into the garbage bag. And I thought I could find this and screen cap it or like video it for you. I think I've overestimated this. But there's a point when he throws, I think, Slinky Dog into the bag and he makes this face where he kind of it's kind of just the slightest little wince of like, oh, that didn't go exactly right.

And he kind of goes like this. This is less than an.

Speaker BAh!

MerlinBut at a level less than an ah, I'll do, I will physically make exactly what I imagined Andy's face and shoulder did, which is kind of this, and I'll just do that.

MaxIt's so funny. I've heard you do that in real life and in conversation, and I always thought you were doing your Syracuse a character. What?

MerlinOh, no, no. That's the sound of the internet.

MaxNo, that's different. That's a different, that's yet a different one. Yeah. There's a thing when you get slightly frustrated with something when you're just like, And I always think that's like a Syracusa thing. I don't know. It's also bleeding into a Linda Belcher a little bit.

MerlinWhich is different from Tina.

AlexOh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

MaxOne of mine is in Arrested Development, Jason Bateman, who plays Michael, when he gets really harried by the family, in one of the episodes, he says to George Michael, he's like, get your coats. Here we go. and he just says here we go all the time and I always say that when I'm trying to like move people along it's just like a thing it's like a thing I picked up and it's kind of a meaningless phrase here we go but it really does like kind of it kind of works it's motivating yeah and it's and it's like a very hairy

like just try it out give that one a spin here we go here we go here we go yeah oh yeah you do do that you do that yeah okay I've heard that sometimes if I'm really trying to go even if it's even if no one has a coat I'll go get your coats here we go like if I'm trying to start a meeting I'll go okay

Merlinget your code here we go doesn't matter who are you guys are you guys familiar i don't want to get problematic here but are you familiar with the concept of stimming stimming oh yes yeah um i've only fairly recently realized that i have a series of personal physical tics that i can only write down to it being a form of stimming well do you want to explain what stimming is like

Alexespecially for people

MaxI would do it but I'm too busy playing with these rubber bands

MerlinI stim myself I stim myself

Alexoh interesting go

Merlinno I think it's thought of often in terms of people who are on the spectrum the further down the spectrum you go the more extreme these sort of physical gestures become in the PBS special everybody saw in the 80s it could be sort of a flapping of your hands one of my daughter's friends does this she does this kind of flapping thing but it could be much more subtle. It could be a rubbing thing that nobody even sees. But like one of my, I don't know, for some reason I just do this. I'll be walking around and I realize I'm doing this like with my fingers and I don't know why.

And I only tell you that because once I started realizing this, I started realizing the one that is best known in the house is when I'm in the middle of doing a thing and then I realize I have to do another thing, like get ready to leave the house. I freeze apparently I freeze in place I make finger pistols wave my arms up and down like a robot and say got that got that got that so imagine me just doing the robot with like cowboy hands oh boy got that got that got that got that oh boy

AlexI don't know if that's stimming as much well because I have a lot oh no no there's more Oh, yeah. Okay. Okay. Keep going. Keep going.

MerlinOh, no. There's some upsetting magician flourishes that I do. Okay. Here we go. Here we go. I don't know. Please. I don't want to be diagnosed, but I know there's something terrible going on. When I wake up in the morning, there's several things I do in the morning. One of the things I do in the morning is I go to open the four sets of, what do you call them? You know, like Venetian blinds, we used to call them. You know, like blinds, right?

And I'll walk over and I'll go to grab the cord with the dingus on it and you pull it. And for some reason, right before I do that, I act as though I'm revealing a card with my right hand. I flip my hand over as though to either reveal a card or show that my hand is empty. And I do it every single time for every set of blinds. And I don't know why. I don't know why I do a magician flourish to open the windows but I do it I go ha ha like this

and I don't know I think it's because it's just at a level where I'm like I'm still kind of warming up for the day I'll be on videotape if you know you can't share it but ha ha I just do a hand flip

Alexfor each of the blinds there now that I'm thinking about it there are a lot of physical ones that I have in like my childhood home or in my grandparents home where I'll do something specific with a doorknob or a faucet but i don't have any in my own apartment maybe because please everyone stop telling me i need a lawyer it's not that bad it's fine you need to move out today

Maxi know it's weird i can't tell you how oh my god it's what when you're killed and we do the memorial episode for you i'm gonna have i'm gonna have a whole thing i'm not gonna make fun you can have I wish she listened. I tried to warn her.

MerlinIf she'd only had hot water sooner.

MaxIt's like, this is like, did you guys see Free Solo? Yes. About the rock climber? No, not even. And it's always like, all these people are like, why would you do this, man? Like, why would you do this to your loved ones if you die? And he's like, I don't know. He's like, I assume they just move on if I die. But he's like, utterly doesn't get it.

MerlinWell, let's just say I think he's doing his own form of stimming, and let's leave it at that.

MaxI would agree with that. But yes, I would fully agree with that.

MerlinOh my God. Somebody get his girlfriend and take her out of the situation now. Get her out. We did a whole thing on Rectives about this. We had very different POVs about that movie.

AlexAcademy Award win it.

MerlinI hate that guy so fucking much. It burns in my nose. I hate him so much.

MaxOh, I thought, I don't, we'll get into it another time. But I liked him. I just, it's not good to the other people in his life the way that he goes about this.

MerlinBut anyhow, there's a reason that you don't see many people from the south side of Chicago climbing a mountain.

MaxIt's the baddest part of town. There's a, this is you with your Blue Lives neighbor landlord, right?

AlexNo, no, no, no. You're just like, everyone's going to die sometime.

MaxI assume everyone will just move on. No, you're concatenating two characters.

AlexYou're two beloved beloved characters. Yes, yes. Blue Lives Matter guy is the ex-not-ex-marine perhaps maybe. Now he put a couch in the garage. He got rid of his Jeep, and now there's just a couch in the garage. For sitting on or for storing? I don't know, because his car is gone. It depends.

MerlinIf he's sitting on it, it's for sitting.

AlexYeah, you know, both, both. The one real weird one that I must say now, because it keeps happening, is whenever I think about a peanut butter sandwich, I think about, like, my grandma used to use cookie cutters to, like, cut out little peanut butter sandwiches. No jelly. No jelly. Just peanut butter. And would use a Mickey Mouse cookie cutter. And that texture, and, like, I can, like, feel a Mickey Mouse cookie cutter.

MaxThat sounds like a vocal. It sounds like a vocal warm-up. Mickey Mouse cookie cutter.

AlexYes, yes. Red leather, yellow leather. Right now, I can feel white bread and the indents of Mickey Mouse's ears and face on my tongue right now. And it's very upsetting and weird. It happens all the time. That's nice. I think that's nice. Yeah. Well, this is also the one who said that, oh, crusts are where the vitamins are so that we would all eat our crusts.

MerlinIron helps us play.

AlexAnd I believed that until I was 12. Hello, Joe.

Speaker ALisa needs braces.

MerlinDenzel plant. Anyway, Lisa needs braces. Okay, this is one. My wife, no, never mind. I don't want to do this one.

AlexNo, do it, do it, do it.

MaxNo, you have to. You have to. Oh, my God. You're in it now, buddy. Let's go.

MerlinMy wife doesn't know that I do this. But sometimes when I'm at home alone in the afternoon and I walk down the hallway, I walk like a fancy lady gymnast.

Maxcan you make it can you make a little video for us nope what does that well we don't we can't how are we supposed to how are we supposed to picture it without a video send us a video of another person doing no make a look put your iphone merlin how's alex supposed to imagine it without

Merlinyou sending a video to us how can i not constantly make this okay so you're watching floor exercises and when you're doing the floor exercises you focus very heavily on the flips and the flops and the dealy bobs and the diddles and the pauses in the corner but imagine when they're just walking around for a second between exercises and they do this thing where they take a big step, big fancy steps and they fling their wrists up into the air

Alexand for some reason

MerlinI will take four to six steps down the hallway doing a fancy

Alexlady gymnast. Oh, fuck. I just oh, this is fuck. Okay, so you know when you're on your hands and knees cleaning

MerlinIt's a very, there's a lot of dignity. It's a lot of dignity. You hold your head up and your wrists your wrists bend and go toward the sky Uh-huh.

AlexHave you ever been you're familiar with the film Lion King, yes? Yeah. Okay, so sometimes when I'm on my hands and knees cleaning or like shoveling snow, I will Why would you shovel snow on your hands and knees? No, like when you're You gotta like get a weird part out of I'm trying to think of an example

MerlinNo, you're talking about when you're really getting in there

AlexYeah, when I'm really getting in there I curve my fingers in such a way That it looks like I When I was younger We would play Lion King And I would make my hand look like a little paw Like a rawr No, no, I'll send it

MerlinMore like boop boop?

AlexWhat?

MerlinMore like a boop? Like a playful cub's paw?

AlexYes, yes, yes. But it's not like a rah. No, no, no, no, no. It's more like a playful cub paw. Okay. Max, this is what I'm doing. This is the motion I do with, like, this is how I, like, cleaning.

MaxOh, it's like if a little kid is, like, being a cat.

AlexYeah. And just, but because I have gloves on, and it's not even, it's just something that happens.

MaxOh, of course. That makes sense.

AlexThat totally makes sense. It's also Balsos paw.

MaxI see that sometimes at a convention when someone is cosplaying a cat.

AlexNo, no.

MaxAnd they lick their paws and then they do their ears.

AlexYeah. And then, you know, I go upstairs and I put on my furry costume and it's all fine. Wow.

MaxYeah, it's all fine. Alex, you've had that happen at a convention where you're trying to check someone out at the register and they're a cat and they won't speak in English. They won't talk to you. Yes. No. No. Oh, this has happened to me.

Speaker AYeah. This has happened to me probably.

MaxOr they'll speak in Vulcan. Probably a good 10 times. Yeah. Where someone is an animal or a cat and they'll only sort of lick their paws and stare at me.

AlexYeah. But, well, it's not just furries. Okay.

MerlinSo it's like a Robert De Niro thing. They're staying in character.

AlexYeah. Yeah. It's a Ludovico method. Yeah. I hate Beethoven. Jen, in the after show, Jen and I both do this. Sometimes we run upstairs on all fours because that's when we're following our dogs. because this only happens when I'm at home. Like very, very quickly. You can get up the stairs. You know what I mean? Like it's like a workout.

MerlinKa-dump, ka-dump, ka-dump, ka-dump, ka-dump.

AlexYeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's it. That's it for me. Yeah.

MerlinGot that, got that.

AlexOh, I yelled you sit on a throne of lies a lot at people. What's that from?

Speaker AThat's from Elf. From Elf.

MaxYou sit on a throne of lies.

AlexBut you got to yell it.

Oh.

AlexYes. Merlin, I feel like you have...

MaxIt's kind of hot on these rhinos.

AlexNo!

MerlinVroom. Oh, also when my neighbors... My neighbors wear sandals a lot for some reason. And when I'm sitting up there at my standing desk at home and they leave, I always say to myself, huh, they really love their sandals.

Show notes

Transcript

126. Pink Uber

Show notes

Transcript

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