142. Macintoshes Temkin

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox, and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, read a children's book that's not Animorphs.

Hello.

Speaker BHello.

MerlinHello.

AlexHi.

MerlinYou gotta wait for the call recorder to catch up.

AlexI know. I don't know how yours works.

MerlinWell, if I'm the only source, if my cloud is truth, we have to be careful.

AlexMm-hmm.

MaxMm-hmm.

MerlinThat's funny how. Hi, how are you guys?

MaxIt's truth. I'm eating an ice cream sandwich.

MerlinI'm calculating drives for my NAS in Solver.

AlexOh, how are those going?

MerlinI'm doing NAS calculations. It's pretty, pretty sexy. Where are you guys?

Speaker AYou people, you team, you magnificent bastards. No, that's next week. Huh?

MaxRight now, we're just in the studio. It's just a normal week. What the fuck? It's next week that Alex is talking about. Yes. Her text message was confusing and poorly worded. It was. I apologize for Alex's conduct. I know.

AlexI know.

MaxHuh. Okay. It's next week. It's all next week.

AlexIt's next week. Everything's next week. Everything's next week.

MaxOkay.

AlexOh, Max, what's happened next week? What are we doing?

MaxHey, what are you even doing? Oh, yeah, that's right. Cards Against Humanity next week. Let's see. People are hearing this on Friday. So it's about a week from today. Cards Against Humanity will be in Indianapolis at Gen Con We have two live shows The Cards Against Humanity Late Night Writers Room You can join Alex and I at the show If you come we will give you a Dubai Friday wind jacket For free Compliments on the house And it will be signed by Alex Not me I don't like to be handed

I don't like to be handed things

MerlinShe's going to sign the wind jacket herself?

AlexI can sign my tumor and people can poke it I'll do it.

MerlinIs it in a jar?

AlexNo, it's still in my hand, unfortunately.

MerlinOh, okay. Cool. But you don't have an art fit yet.

MaxWhere can people go if they want to come to the hilarious, amazing... Oh, and I think I might do magic tricks, too. Maybe while people are waiting to come in, we'll have like a milling...

MerlinDo you consider that a threat or a warning?

MaxIt's like a shot across the bow. Okay. But there's going to be like a milling about. There's going to be like a milling about period. And I might do some magic tricks for people in the lobby. Might. You know, come or don't come based on that. I don't know. But where can people go?

AlexOh, man. You can go to, we care so much, we made a URL. Cardsagainsthumanity.com slash Gen Con. Oh, wait. No, no, no. Cardsagainsthumanitygencon.com. There we are. Try all of those.

MerlinJust try all of those.

MaxOne of those will probably go.

MerlinJust bang your hand on the keyboard until magic appears.

Maxso I'm actually very these shows are going to be good and please come to them and they're are you going to get a massage while you're there primarily oh boy they're primarily I think they're mainly they're settling very well actually but we do have seats basically we've opened up a balcony seat and they're cheap and you can come in and last minute and come and hang out with us in Indianapolis Alex every fucking week now the chairs are different in here no they're the same as last week no look there's arms first there was no arms first there were chairs with arms and wheels and they were just normal

and they were fucking chairs.

AlexJordan, why does Max's chair have arms? Okay.

MaxThen I came in and all of a sudden the arms were off the chairs but there were still wheels. And then the next week the arms were off and the wheels were off. And I felt like the chair was like a leopard. It was just falling apart. It was like losing parts every week. And now I'm in. And now it's like It's called Hansen's disease. And Alex, you're sitting here every week with your little gremlin interns

Speaker Aand you're like, let's try arms on, wheels off. What about wheels on, arms off? You know she's got a spreadsheet

Speaker Bwith dates and a rollout plan.

Speaker AWell, I also... What is the... I mean, listen...

Speaker BToby, Toby, let's try one arm, one wheel.

Speaker AIt's so infantilizing. It's like, oh, do you want those wheels? Do you want to be able to move? Can we trust you with that? Is that too much?

Speaker BIt's your company, Max. Can you believe that? You started this. You started this, and this is how they're treating you, the little gremlins.

AlexWell, we're getting some new... You know, we, of course, need to spend more money on the studio.

MaxI did get a little bit of my ice cream sandwich on the control button here.

AlexIs that bad? No, no, no, no, no. But we're just trying to see what will make people happy. But clearly, it doesn't make Max happy. So we just need to go. I just want everything to be normal. I just want it to be normal from one week to the other.

MerlinTell me. Tell me. I know this. But for our listeners, what is Gen Con? What's the game?

MaxGen Con is the, I think it's the, well, it's definitely the biggest gaming convention in America. But it might be the biggest gaming convention in the world.

MerlinAll kinds of games, though.

MaxTabletop. All tabletop. Wow. So it started as, so it stands for Geneva Convention. That's what Gen Con is called for. And it was from, it was, and it used to be.

MerlinOriginally held in the Hague.

MaxOriginally held in the Hague. And it was where, it was, you know, Dungeons and Dragons was created in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. And so they would have people over every year to play Dungeons and Dragons. And it got, and they just called it Geneva Convention. You'd come and play D&D. And it got bigger and bigger and bigger. And now it's in Indianapolis, but they still call it Gen Con. and it's primarily the biggest tabletop. I mean, it used to be primarily a D&D convention, but now I think it's spilled over to all role-playing and all tabletop. And one thing that's cool about Gen Con,

I've said this before on other podcasts and I actually got in quite a bit of trouble for it because nobody liked what I had to say. I'm already in trouble, so I might as well repeat it. A lot of gaming conventions, like we also go to this one called PAX, or not anymore, but we used to. That's the Penny Arcade one? That is the Penny Arcade Expo. And that's a video game show for the general public. It's a fun show. I actually, I enjoy Gen Con. And I think that's one that John Syracuse goes to sometimes. He used to, yeah. Syracuse. Syracuse. I think he was at PAX East, and I didn't see, he came into our room in the Kickstarter Cars Against Humanity room, and I didn't see him.

MerlinHe's like a lanky ninja.

MaxAnd now, so PAX kind of has the government structure of like a fascist police state. Okay. Or like, you know, there's like a few key decision makers at the top and they control all of the resources and they tell everyone what to do and where to go. And you know what? I'll say this. The trains run on time. Like it does. It works. It's for the most part, it's a safe, well-run convention. But people occasionally, including cards, butt up against the rules. And they're like, well, they're like, we want to do something.

And they're like, well, that's not state policy. And we're like, well, can we appeal this decision? And they're like, there's no mechanism for that. Now, Gen Con, on the other hand, is like an anarchist state. There's no law. There's no one in charge. Just anyone can do any event. Like, it's crazy.

AlexThey bring massage chairs. That is a booth.

MaxIt's amazing to me that Gen Con works, but it does. It has a great energy. It has this really chaotic grassroots. Like, everyone's there doing their own thing, and they're all colliding off each other thing. And when you get the book of events for Gen Con, you know, when you get the book of events for PAX, it's a single sheet. and it's like here's the shows and here's the schedule. When you get the Book of Events for Gen Con, it's like a phone book. It's huge because it's everything. It's like, hey, you want to play D&D with your friends in a hotel room? Boom, in the Book of Events. No, it's just like that's, it's there, right? We're playing Battlestar Galactica LARP

in a hotel conference room. Great, boom, it's in the program. That's an official event. It's just every, and you just go through alphabetically and it's just everything is in there and it works. Everyone finds their special thing. That's cool. And they have an amazing time.

MerlinThat sounds like a lot of fun.

MaxYeah, it's very earnest. I always wind up in line like a Noodles and Company behind some guy dressed as Gandalf trying to pay with a spell.

Speaker BChip and pin, you shall not pass.

AlexMerlin, you'd find your special paints there. Huh?

MerlinWhat?

AlexAren't you a special painter now?

MerlinOh, yeah, I am a special painter. Really, I've got some kind of Jack disease, or like a Brad Pitt thing where I'm getting worse at it.

MaxThis is a whole other little sub branch of Gen Con, but there's people who do tabletop miniatures and then the, what do you call it, the scenes? Sand table scenes. Oh, wow. So it could be a little dungeon or it could be a little landscape with a windmill and a farmhouse on it. But they have fucking lighthouses that light up and rivers with moving water. Oh, it's like a train set but with cloaks. Yes, but it's for your little guys. Toot, toot. And every year I go through this little area of the convention hall and there's all these companies that make these things.

And I'm like, maybe if I got into this, I'd be happy. Sounds about right.

MerlinYou got that basement, man. You could do it right. You could wear a little conductor hat. You look so, it'd be so fun.

MaxMaybe if I started making like sand table dioramas and I had like a medieval village and I spent $70,000 and it had like a smoke machine built into it, maybe then I'd be happy.

MerlinBut Alex would keep changing the chairs.

MaxI could have people over.

AlexWhy is this caboose not have its amenities?

MaxI could have people over to play D&D and just get furious and be like, don't touch it like that. You're looking at it wrong.

Speaker BNo, no, that's HO scale. You could have a conductor cap that says GM on it because you're the general manager.

MaxMerlin are you playing Dungeons and Dragons with these little creatures that you're making you're just making the creatures

Merlinmy little guys no no no it's purely a fun painting thing

Maxis this a is this a is your daughter into this or is this a sort of dad are you sort of jagooning her into your painting

Merlinthat's a good question it's another one of those it fits into that rat king of like nerd encouragements like going all the way back to whatever X-Men Pixar movies you name it I mean I guess Pixar movies are pretty popular but yeah yeah yeah But no, she legit is super into it. And we've kind of both thrown ourselves into it. And like D&D itself, when I was a youth, I'm much more into the gear than the doing. I think, you know, I'm a fake geek girl in a lot of ways where like it's not only am I not, you know, on that nerd hierarchy or the geek hierarchy, you know, that famous geek hierarchy, Brunching Shuttlecocks graphic.

I'm way far down. I'm like someone who cosplays. No. I'm someone who's a seamstress for fanfic cosplay. Like, I'm so far down the credibility. There's no pronoun for who I am. Like, it's so bad.

MaxYou know, whenever you start a new hobby, like, whether you get into it, you're like, I should get into role-playing games. Or for me, it's getting into magic. And you sit down with people. Occasionally, you'll sit down with someone who's, like, has a lot of subject area knowledge. They're, like, an expert. And they've been doing it their whole life. And they're like, and I'll always ask, like, what advice did you wish you knew when you were starting? Or like, tell me what I need to know to get into this hobby or to become good at it. And everyone always says the same thing about whatever hobby, which is, you know, man, it's not about the gear. Yeah, buy the least amount of stuff.

MerlinStart small and do it. It's like Matt Howey's advice for having a baby, which is like just try to get some sleep and buy a bunch of onesies. Like, that's it. That's really all you need. You do not need a shelf. But you know what? This is interesting to me because – go ahead.

MaxOh, all I was going to say is whenever anyone tells me like, it's not about the gear, man. It's not about.

MerlinYou got to be fucking kidding me. It's lies.

AlexShut the fuck up.

Speaker AIt's all lies.

MerlinLike I'm here for the brushes.

AlexYes.

MerlinThis must be, this might be the most fundamentally true Venn diagram for us that I can think of. Like this is our, like in the third act of the movie, we would figure out that this is our power move is that we all love the gear. I feel like for whatever it is, we're here for the gear. It could be an insane or psycho brush and it could be a strap on. But whatever it is, we are here. We are here for the gear is what I'm trying to say. And so the great part for me is like here's the thing you realize in life at some age is that you kind of are how you are.

So I spent all those years as a – back when I was a productivity guru, like first of all, gearing up and then reacting to my own gearing up by saying, hey, I've realized it for myself. You don't really need the gear. If you want to write, just write or whatever. And then I was done with that. I moved on to other things. But people are how they are. And how I am is I want a fucking notebook. And I want that new pen that Max talked about. I fight it in myself constantly. And so here's what I end up doing. I end up going, oh, we'll go into this place.

And we'll buy a couple of these. You get these sets of these. Wiz Kids makes these really great little. The minis that I paint are like two for $5. You can get a fucking dragon for $15. and then you get the starter set of paints. That's 30 bucks. At this point, I'm in for less than 50 bucks. But then I get home and I'm like, I watch a YouTube video. I go, ooh, you can get this thing called a wet palette. I need a wet palette. Wet palette is really sweet because you have this wet piece of paper on a sponge and you put a lid on it and your paints stay exactly where you're going. I'm so busy.

I'm here for the gear to the extent that I spend so much more time acquiring and mastering, quote unquote, the gear than I have painted. And it's exactly like D&D. Back when all I wanted to do was write things on hex paper and graph paper. And with writing, all I really wanted to do was put stickers on my notebook.

AlexI mean, you can leave your bag by the door so you don't forget it, but it has to be a cool bag. Otherwise, it's not worth it.

MaxIn order to leave the bag by the door, you got to have a bag and a door. No door, Jerry, no door. Okay, so what I'm hearing is I need a bag and a door.

MerlinOh, okay, so to get started, here's what you're going to want to do. You're going to go to Lifehacker. They had a great series recently on door backpacks. They had a whole series on the best combinations to power charge your turbo moment by going in. And you get the right combination. And then you put an index card on your arm.

MaxIt is so funny because it's like when we had Kevin Budnick on the podcast and we were talking about drawing.

Speaker AAnd I was like, Kevin, I was like, OK, yeah, yeah.

Speaker BBut what markers do I need?

Speaker Ayeah Kevin was like well I think the key to being an artist and learning how to illustrate is you have to walk through the world with like an attentiveness and like see how things like really look and like try and see the shapes and the relationships like yeah but what kind of pen

Merlindo I buy Kevin? It's like it's like Trump talking to the woman who was trying to save her family and community from ISIS and she has to stand behind his desk while he stares straight ahead and she

Speaker Btalks about her entire family being killed and he goes, well, where are they now? And she goes, they were killed.

MaxAnd then... We're looking at it bigly.

Speaker BWe're just looking at it very strongly, very strongly. I feel very badly because I'm a dumb guy and I think adverbs sound better than adjectives. And then finally he remembers that she has a Nobel Prize and he kind of perks up and he's like, you did that. They gave you the Nobel Prize. What did they give you that for? It's like a Mr. Show sketch. It's like, I'm fighting for the dignity of my people. And she's like this totally like, you're like, oh, your heart is going out to this woman. And Trump is like, so is there like a certain form that I need to fill out?

How, how does the Nobel come? I'm here for the gear.

AlexYou sound like the evil red in the great mouse. You've got, you know what?

MaxYou've got a little bit of the Colbert Trump impression going on. Oh, I have to say, I don't think it's a very good, not your, I mean, the Colbert, the Colbert take on Trump, the sort of, henchmen. What is that? It's very... Like a Renfield?

MerlinEvil. Like Dracula's assistant? Like, what do you mean when you say henchmen?

MaxYeah, it's like a little... Colbert does a very evil Trump.

MerlinUh-huh.

MaxBut the Trump that really sticks with me, to me, the best one is the more like choppo one where he's just sort of a vein. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, where he's like always mad about Graydon Carter from Vanity Fair.

MerlinNot so small. Well, you know what it is? The one I'm doing, I'm not doing it well because I haven't spent a lot of time on it, but it's when I read what he's typed with his tiny fingers, drum, pumpkin man, when he types his words that he wants to say to the world, that's the voice that goes with his dumb guy confidence. That is his dumb guy confidence. I am killing it. I am killing it. Why don't we just pop in? Let's pop in. It's Mueller time! It's Mueller time today, and so let's go see what kinds of things.

He relies very heavily on saying badly when he means bad, for example. There's lots of things where, let's see.

Speaker BOh, you know, stuff like the lovely Lisa Page, that kind of stuff. That's the voice of him being so fucking stupid. So Robert Mueller has now asked for his longtime Never Trump or lawyer to sit beside him and help with answers. What is this all about? his lawyer represents the basement server guy who got off free in the Crooked Hillary case. This should not be allowed. Rigged witch hunt. What's your Trump? Give me your Trump.

MaxIt's really bad. I just do the Felix. I mean to me it's the Felix Biederman Trump is the one in my head. Like when I read his quotes it's like folks we love

Speaker Athe wall. We love it.

AlexYeah. Alex do you have a Trump? No. No. He's always

Speaker Bwhispering a secret to you. Like that's the most the one where he gets very hoarse and he's like yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't want to do it. I don't want to blow up Afghanistan. I don't want to do that. I'm turning into Brando. It is not my desire to blow up Afghanistan.

MaxI'm looking at quotes, funny quotes from his Nuremberg rally that he did the other day. There's some funny ones in here.

Speaker ADo it, Felix. Let's hear it. Folks, you remember the last election? Donald Trump will never, ever get the women. Then we got this tremendous number of women. Folks, we love the women. We love them.

MerlinI listened. The thing that you played, I think, in the after show last week, the bit of— Is that the guy who left the show, Brendan? Is that who that was that did that bit?

Speaker AOh, make a tremendous deal with his brain?

MerlinIt was Brendan, right? Isn't that funny?

MaxYeah, Brendan, yeah.

MerlinIt's like an old episode. But I listened to that probably four times, and I made my wife listen to it. And I was like, holy shit. Like, I love that show. Milkman. But the idea that Trump's brain, he loves deals so much. His brain is always trying to make a deal with him. Say Milkman or I'm out.

Speaker ABut exactly.

Speaker BI'll walk away.

Speaker AI'll walk away from the deal. Believe me. Believe me, bigly. He goes home now to mommy and he gets reprimanded and that's the end. Sorry, mommy. Sorry, mom. Didn't mean to embarrass you, mom. Oh, my God. Is he emo? he was talking to a protester he gets interrupted by a protest and Trump goes he goes home now to his mommy and he gets reprimanded and that's the end sorry mommy sorry mom getting shivers

Speaker Bsorry mommy it's mother time guys

Speaker Awe got him

Speaker Bwe got him this time

Speaker ACortez someone said that's not her name they said that's not her name sir I said, no, no, I don't have time to go with three different names. We'll call it Cortez. Too much time. Takes too much time.

Speaker BI don't say Democratic. I say Democrat. I say Democrat Party. Oh, God. So.

AlexThe doc. The doc. The doc. The doc. The doc. Oh, you were busy. It's Mueller time.

MerlinYou're busy in here. You're milling around in here.

AlexOh, was I? No. Oh, I was a lurker this week. He's so senile.

MerlinOh, God, the syphilis. It's just. No, it's like. It's like it's still in a mostly solid state.

Speaker AWith conducting brutal medieval-style killings. You know what medieval style is, okay? Little pieces, little pieces, little pieces. Medieval style, including the dismemberment of their victims. And they enjoyed every minute of it. No, do it as droopy.

Speaker BNo. Do it. Do it. Do it as droopy. Oh, oh, oh.

MaxI've got to find a good one. Sorry, you're not my monkey. Here we go. No, no, that's okay. I can find a good one.

Speaker AHe checked his blood and found out that many, many, many, many, many, many, many years ago, there could have been somebody, and he could have been Indian. And then the Indians got together and they said, we don't want to.

Speaker BOh, my God. What is this?

AlexOh, this one's so good. Wait, I don't know. Do it, do it, do it. Oh, no.

MaxThese are all real quotes from this fucking, from his Kristallnacht announcement rally.

MerlinYes. No, I think it's on now. It's officially on. They're still squirting the Reichstag.

Speaker ASo we did through our friend Dan Scavino, we did a Time Magazine cover. I was on so many times, and I don't even read this thing, and it says Trump, 2014, 2018, right? But it says 20. Here's where we go. We start at 16. We go to 20. We go to 24. Did you see it? Then it says 28, 32, 36, 40, 44. What?

What?

Speaker BJust got back only to hear of a last minute change. I can never drop her attorney.

MerlinWe watched, my daughter is suddenly very into the Batman movies. So we've been watching one a night and then we wrap back around. Wait, the three Nolan movies. Really? Yeah, yeah. She really, she really, I finally got her to watch The Dark Knight and she really liked it.

Speaker AYes. Good, good, good.

MaxSo what do you think about those movies?

Speaker AThey're kind of better and worse than I remember. They have not held up as well. No.

MaxI re-watched them somewhat recently, and I was like, no, these weren't as good as when

MerlinI first saw them. Well, the one problem is the Dark Knight's reputation as what some people have called the greatest superhero movie of all time, just because at that time, I think it came out the same year as Iron Man. I mean, it's, I think that's right, something like that. Yeah, that's right, 2008. It's also, I've said this maybe here, probably on Rect Diffs, but Christopher Nolan just also has this style that feels like you're always in the middle of a montage. The way he, all of his intercutting between short scenes starts to feel kind of odd after a while.

It's true in Interstellar. It's true in this. It's true in The Prestige. It's true in the dream movie.

AlexWait, Christian Bale's in Interstellar?

MerlinOh, sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm thinking of some other movie. You know, it's confusing because Anna Kendrick's in a lot of those. Christopher Nolan, director, Alex.

AlexOh, okay. Sorry. I was literally gearing up to defend Christian Bale and stopped listening to Merlin.

Speaker AThis is a guy who used to go, hey, Don, how are you doing? Let's go to dinner. Now you're, sir, and is everything, you're doing good, sir. I said, Richard, call me Donald like you always did. Call me Donald. Always call me Donald. Okay. Thank you, Donald. Thank you very much. And then two minutes later, Mr. President, it's been so great.

MerlinI'm so glad Daniel Dale's sir alerts are finally getting some attention. because I've actually seen him now. He's been on, I think, on CNN and a couple other things because he's been doing, you know, he's got the unenviable job of trying to track down the truthfulness of everything that the president says, which, you know, gets tiresome, but that's his beat. His beat is, like, I try to track down whether this is accurate or not. And he does it kind of in real time for just about every public appearance. And it's tiresome, right?

Like, oh, this is the 17th time that he said that Lisa Strzok or, you know, whatever. Lisa Page did this, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, he has, he finally is getting credit for noting that whenever he calls it the Sir, he says, uh-oh, Sir alert. Because whenever he tells a story that involves someone calling him Sir, it almost always, like, didn't happen at all.

Speaker BBig, big, big, big miners coming in. The man, one of the biggest guys, like, from Central Casting, he comes in and he says, Sir, Sir, I wanted to follow you on Twitter. I wanted to follow you on Twitter and they wouldn't let me. And there was one segment.

MerlinThere was a 19 sir segment. I think there was 19 sirs.

Speaker AWe have a 19 sir alert.

Speaker BOoga! Ooga! They said, sir, this is the klaxon. They wouldn't hear the klaxon, not the siren. They wanted to be very loud. I tried to follow you. Instead, I was following the very conflicted Robert Mueller and his angry Democrats. Aw.

Aw.

MerlinOkay, Alex, Alex, Alex, you went doc nutty. Tell me some things.

AlexForever 21. Oh, man. I watched the whole rally, and now I'm just reliving the rally, and I just want to talk about the creepy Epstein house. Is there more Epstein news?

MerlinKind of. I mean, there's the eyes from England on the wall, But one of my favorite details from the interview with that woman, Savannah Guthrie interview with that woman, is that, supposedly, he has copious fake boobs, like, over the faucet in the bathroom that he can diddle with while he's bathing.

Yeah, imagine that. Hey, can I borrow your bathroom for a minute? Sure. Check it out. Yes.

AlexMm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Yep.

MerlinHe's got big, well, no, he's got, like, boobs that he can play with.

AlexWhat does that mean, copious fake boobs?

Speaker ALike marble sculptures?

AlexIt's like stimming, but with nipples, basically. What?

MerlinExactly. On the Epstein spectrum. That's so upsetting. Squeezed my neck in 1998. About $100.

Yeah, no, no. More and more and more.

Speaker AFolks, I hate to say it. He's got fake nipples.

MerlinYeah, he's very classy.

Speaker AI have to tell you, I hate to say it. I hate to say it, but his house is full of nipples.

Speaker BNever a fan.

Speaker AWhat about Boris Johnson?

MerlinOh, shit.

MaxI can't fucking believe it. What the fuck is going on with the world?

MerlinThat's not where a capo goes. Give me a fucking break. You don't put a capo that high up. Maybe it was an open...

Speaker AIt might have been an open tune.

MerlinOh, right. It's doing its line of youth cover. My violence is a dream. I don't know. I mean, isn't this bad? Isn't this bad for lots of reasons? Yes, it's very bad.

MaxIsn't he a Brexit guy? I think... um well so one thing so i don't i have to say i i haven't followed the i've been so busy this week i haven't like super gotten into the news but i depending on how the election went down they might have enough for a vote of no confidence so maybe he won't actually become oh no he's

Merlinalready prime minister as up today no he's in yeah that's what oh aren't they gonna vote of no confidence then uh i think may officially fully resigned and i believe he is officially

Maxprime minister now well i don't know what i'm talking about but it seems like there should be enough conservatives who voted against him and i feel very they fucking hate him that they could make a deal with the uh with labor and do a vote of no confidence i know we've talked about this

Alexbefore but i just love all the shouting that happens and i wish we had the shouting like questions questions to the prime minister oh i love oh man it's um and and oh what are what are the questions to the the one guy who's not he's he's supposed to be the neutral party or the neutral oh man what is it they were talking about um hello internet it's a similar is it a similar thing yeah they just shouted they just shout questions at this guy but he doesn't i used to watch i used to

Merlinit was the only thing i would um like deliberately watch on c-span in the 90s was questions of the prime minister because it was just always so funny and what my distinct what my distinguished colleague agree that he's a terrible

Speaker Bcock-sucking dick licker who should probably be... I would refer the gentleman to my previous answer. Oh, okay. They just get up there and like... It's so wild.

MerlinIt's a terrible episode.

MaxI have two podcast recommendations for Dubai Friday for people to listen to. I just got through them recently. They're not really new, but there was the Michael Lewis podcast called Against the Rules, and it's about... It's an examination of the role of referees and umpires in American life. And so it was a wonderful podcast. It was very, very good.

MerlinIt's a short series. You can really mainline the whole thing.

MaxMaybe seven episodes or something.

MerlinSo it starts off where he's like literally talking about referees. Like calling back, was it in basketball, right? In basketball, right. It's a really good way to start the show.

MaxAnd then it becomes more abstract where he talks about referees in all kinds of American life. like the people who decide if paintings, oil paintings are originals or not. That was an amazing episode. Or, oh my God, The Negotiator, the guy who settled the Asian Orange case. Oh, yeah. That was awesome.

MerlinOh, that was really good. Yeah.

MaxYeah. Anyway, it was a wonderful podcast. I loved it. And then the other one is John Ronson, the guy who did the butterfly effect about Pornhub and internet pornography. He had a follow-up podcast called The Last Days of August Ames, and it's about a porn star who died. And it's really sad. And it was a great podcast and I felt like it was handled, it was as good of one of these shows as I've ever heard. It's the best one, actually, of like looking, you know how there's these sort of exploitative,

like looking for Richard Simmons or whatever? Yes, yes, yes. This was not that. It was that. Oh, okay, cool.

MerlinLike shit town kind of thing.

MaxYeah, it was that, but amazing. Cool, Ron Johnson. I really enjoyed it. I don't know if you guys listened to Butterfly Effect. I also really enjoyed that podcast. He grinds my gears, but I can see why you like him.

AlexOh, he, I, I, like, I would never stomp on his stamp. He's the one person where I would like, you could never give me a number for me to satisfy you. But his stuff is. You don't like his voice?

MerlinWhat is it?

AlexHis whole thing?

MerlinHe's not, he's not a snack.

AlexHe's, yeah, well, not like Syracuse said. But we talked about this when we read.

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah.

AlexWe read books for a challenge.

MerlinWe read a Ron Johnson book. Which was it?

AlexI think it was So You've Been Publicly Shamed. No, no.

MaxIt was the one about Trump and Alex Jones.

AlexOh, yeah. He did the short one, The Elephant in the Room.

MerlinI don't think he's a bad – I don't think he's technically, in his writing style, I don't think he's a bad writer. I just don't like what he has to say. I'm always like – the points that he's making fall short for me.

AlexI thought that I was just too dumb to understand the points he was making. but when he started talking about things I understood I'm like oh no you're just bad at this yeah like peak podcast yep oh are we gonna talk about oh no let's not let's not

Maxyou know what no one who listens to this show fucking knows about that article there was a fucking stupid stupid trend podcasting trend piece that was going around and we were all dunking on it in our super secret private channels and I guarantee I mean it's funny to us but I really don't think anyone who listens to this show is gonna get that reference

MerlinOh, no, no, no. I popped off about this a little bit on Back to Work. You did.

MaxI mean, listen, my... Yeah, you posted that on Twitter, right?

Speaker AOh, yeah. There's a thing from the Slack where I was... We'll put it in the show notes. It's really all that needs to be said about it.

MerlinThe way I described it on Back to Work, if you had to get it down to a couple sentences, off the dome, I'd said it's like the people who write articles like this are what I described as tourists who a day after they've gotten their hair braided have decided they've gone native. There's this kind of temporary expertise that turns out writers bring to themselves where they go out and they talk to a few people. They don't have a deep fucking catalog on this stuff. And I'm sorry to be that guy who's done this stuff for a little while. But on top of which, I hate when people guess my motivation.

I stand by my box analogy. I think people are just out of ideas. People are out of ideas and they just want to feel. I actually, I just, you know what I said to you, Alex, about like how people, teen and teens drive recklessly. And I think about how I used to drive. And I think what I said to you on our channel was that as I get older, you know, I understand the appeal of doing things that make you feel intensely. One, feel intensely. But I think, especially when you're younger, maybe you're a hustling writer who

used to be at a blog and now you got a byline and a headshot. And it's like, they just need to feel They're just putting their hands into a flame because they need to feel for this week and they've got a deadline.

MaxThere was a really good ContraPoints video the other day. And one of her things she was talking about are there are ages of reason and there are ages of aesthetics. And I think it's pretty obvious if you look at the world right now that we live in an age of aesthetics. And to me, Merlin, what you're saying is a lot of these articles are just someone who wants to feel something. That really is it. I mean, these articles are aesthetic. They're not reasonable. They do not hold up to the slightest bit of scrutiny, but they just want to be seen a certain way. They want to look a certain way. They're thinking, how will I come across? How will this come across? It's all about image.

What will people think of this? What are the optics? You know, and feeling a certain way is part of that.

MerlinNot even getting into the clickbait nature of this, although that is certainly related. And the other thing is it's sort of like what they call about the, oh, shoot, what's the name for this? The replication crisis in turns out science, where it's increasingly difficult. I guess I don't think this is a new problem. I think it's a newly discovered serious problem, not just of recent things, but suddenly I guess there is a lot of effort to replicate people's research, right? If something gets published, if it survived the file drawer effect,

what's the file drawer effect? The file drawer effect is where you did five experiments and four of them proved something really boring. And so you put those away and you publish the one that didn't. No, four of them didn't work. Or they didn't produce the result that you wanted, right? Right, correct. So in any case, like what gets published is like, hey, turns out. And then that gets reported by the university in a press release. And it goes, hey, turns out. And then a turns out writer goes, whoa, turns out. And pretty soon you're on Hidden Brain. Yay. But so like when that, that's a whole racket and we know that.

But it's so fascinating to me. And this again gets back to Johnny Anatas and the work that he's done at Stanford, which is so fucking interesting. which is like just how riddled with errors so many scientific results are. But then on top of it, even stuff that like we consider like, as much as science can consider something nearly canonical in terms of like, we're pretty sure this is a thing, how difficult it is to replicate. You know what I'm saying? But like, that's not, I mean, that's such a fucking goulash of like, oh my God, like what does that really mean

for what we think we know? Like epistemologically about the world, holy shit. but you're not going to get an article on Jay Random used to be a blog site if it's just about, oh, yeah, you know, here's just a thing. It's got to be, you've got to feel. There's got to be a finger in the flame about it that's going to get people mad or get people yelling. I'm here to tell you, man, just writing about Max back in the day, you would get so much fucking traffic from people who were gay bones for Max and people who hated Max.

You would get just as much screaming from both sides. Wait, what? What? Not Max. Max.

AlexOh, Max. I know. Max and Toshes. Like, have I missed something? No. Max and Toshes.

Speaker BTriggered. Max Tensky. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. Game modes for Max.

MerlinOkay. That's a title. Title.

MaxI think people, no, you're totally right. I think a lot of stuff also, I mean, yes. So I think part of it is like we live in this age of aesthetics, but also it's driven by business case for like publications and everything needs to be shared. And if you think of like what the stuff that's going to get shared is the things that make, like you said, they make people feel very intensely. But there's emotions. Think of the emotions that people feel when they share things. And it tends to be either awe, like they're like amazed by something and they're like, I have to share how I feel with other people.

The two kinds of screaming, right? Yes. that it's either awe. Oh my God, it is the two-piece screen. So it's either awe or anger. It is. And if you feel good and mad, you're like, I have to get everyone else mad about this.

MerlinThe visor goes down and you grab your spear and you go into battle.

MaxYeah. You're like one of the avatars of those games that are always in the top 10 games.

MerlinOh, the Screamy Face King?

MaxScreamy Face King.

AlexI love King Screamy Face. But you know what I mean?

MaxThere's something about the special, about the feeling of anger or the feeling of like awe where you're just like, oh my God, everyone has to know how I feel right now.

MerlinThose articles are fuel, what you're describing is those articles are fuel that keep that fire stoked so you can keep feeling something in your finger for a minute.

Speaker AThey're high arousal emotions. You know, when you feel awe, when you feel mad. Oh, like high glycemic index content. Yes, like you don't just feel a little mad. You go from zero to 60. And we're talking about

Speaker Bit so it must have worked. Plaques.

AlexI mean, it worked with me when I saw that Logan Paul video. It wasn't even like I was mad. I caught myself. I was just like, whoa.

MaxI almost retweeted it. I had my finger hovering on the retweet video.

Speaker ANo, no. And then I was thinking, you know, he went on the news and did this so that I would hit retweet. Yeah. Like I'm part of the plan if I do this. Do you think it's a bit?

AlexI think it's like Kanye. It's like half a bit.

MerlinI mean, did he have too much coffee? Like what was wrong?

MaxIt's like Kanye or Trump. I think this is a guy who has an incredible instinct. It's not always, it's not part of his, he's not playing three dimensional, four dimensional chess, but I think he has an incredible instinct for attention. And he just sort of impulsively does these things. And he's just wired this way.

MerlinAnd he knows if I act this way. Oh, I see what you're saying. I know this will get a reaction. It's not a strategy. It's almost, it's almost like a, like how sharks are like a pure like killing machine. Like they're not, they're not, they're not sitting around thinking about the ramifications of like.

Speaker ADon't you think Trump has this? and Trump's not a brilliant brain genius. He does have that instinct. He's like the Joker. He's like, you folks think I have a plan?

Speaker BDo you want to know how I got these handjobs? My father was a drinking man. Fight Trump. I went to all the best colleges.

Speaker ADo you folks want to know how I got this comedy long tie? Some men just want to watch the world burn. I don't think he's thinking ahead. I think it's instinctual. He's a shark.

MerlinHe's a fucking black dead-eyed shark operating on instinct. He doesn't say, should I swim today? He just keeps moving and eating.

Speaker AI think his back gets into the corner, and something is going wrong for him, and he knows, oh, I better say send her back to her country, and that's going to get everyone good and mad. Do you think he actually processes? I'm not trying to be contradictory.

MerlinNo, no, I think it's pre-thought. I don't think he processes it on that level. I think he just happens to be saying exactly the kind of thing. It happens to be exactly the thing. He's programmed the same way as the people who think he's a savior, who think he's like a golden god. He doesn't need to think about it. I mean, it's like, you know, if you're really into eating shit, you can date anybody. You're really just there for the shit.

MaxI think Obama was a tactician. So he would, Obama would have some legislative hurdle and he'd retire in the evening to his, to the living quarters in the White House. And he would sit there and eat his seven almonds and he would sit there with a notebook and he would write his speeches in longhand and he would think and he'd go, how am I going to get myself out of this? And he'd be a strategist and he'd be calling people and he'd be thinking through it.

Speaker AYou think Trump's doing that? No, fuck no. It's completely instinctual. But I think he does. I think Trump is incredibly gifted for sort of knowing. I think he just has this instinctual power instinct.

MaxHe just knows sort of where to put pressure and how to, it's a kind of like way to dominate people, to control so that they're always thinking about you and they're always mad about the next thing. And he just knows how to keep it rolling.

MerlinI don't think it's, I think you're still giving him, I don't want to say too much credit, but I think what we're missing in this, what can be missed in this, let me put it that way, is the extent to which he and the people who love him think the same way. And if you think the same way, think about when you're a kid, all right? Think about if you're lucky enough to have a handful of weird friends, what do you have? You have the same in-jokes. You have the same fart jokes. You have the same homophobic jokes. Like whatever it is. Maybe it's the same car jokes or Beatles jokes. I don't know.

But if you're in a group with two, three, four friends, You don't have to think before you fart on your hand and stick it in their face. You know that's going to be funny.

MaxI think there's more going on there than—there's more to unpack there. Because I would say that the people who support Trump in this country, I don't think it's a really—I think there's some semiotics happening. I don't think they really are supporting Trump. I think that it means something.

Speaker ADoes that make sense? Oh, yeah.

MerlinNo, that's what people are saying. It's way bigger than Trump. It's Trumpism. That's the thing that the centrists don't understand is there is no normal to go back to. The Trumpism is what he just represents for now.

MaxLet me put it this way. Like, because I can relate to this a little bit in the sense of that, like, if the election were today, I would vote for Bernie Sanders. That's how I would personally vote in the Illinois primary. And for me, it's not – I actually don't love Bernie. Like, I don't feel this cult of personality around the guy. Like I don't agree with him on everything he says or does. But to me, it means something to support Bernie. It's like it means something broader in the culture. Like Bernie becomes this vessel for the kind of change that I want to see in the country.

You know, it means more.

MerlinHe becomes an envelope for the things that you want.

MaxCorrect. Like I'm not out here like part of the Bernie Sanders revolution wearing a T-shirt. But like it's the way forward for the things that I want in the world. Like I see the path goes through Bernie for the things that I want. And so it's like, yeah, cool. I'll vote for that guy. It's pragmatic. I think there is an element for a lot of the Trump people of like, I think they're, I mean, I know actually from polling that they are sort of repulsed by the guy. They don't love him and they don't, they don't have hold him in high esteem, but I think it's more pragmatic. It's like, oh, well to get from A to B, it runs through Trump.

MerlinYeah. But whether it's like Tom Green, South Park, you think about those, that kind of entertainment, for example, if you said to somebody, even when you were a kid, if you were, I imagine you were kids when that stuff was popular, that kind of like, or, you know, Johnny Knoxville and that kind of stuff. If you ask anybody, it's like first, it's like thinking fast and slow all over again, where if you slow think and you say to somebody, oh, you know, don't you think that that's kind of puerile and pretty stupid? You go, yeah, it is. It's really stupid and puerile. That's not going to stop you from being super into it.

It's what? It's what? Puerile? Did I say it wrong? It's stupid. P-U-E-R-I-L-E. Am I having a stroke? Oh.

AlexHow would I say that? I have never heard that said out loud. I don't think I've ever heard it either.

MaxIn my head, I would say Pure Isle.

MerlinOkay. So let's say you're Purell and you like fart jokes. Cut that out, Quinn. Cut it all out. Cut it all out. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I did the show. What?

AlexOkay. So South Park is Pure Isle. You know what?

MaxWrite us in. Send us an email at hotdogsladies on Twitter.

MerlinNo, it looks like it's Pure Ill. Pure?

Speaker AReally?

MerlinPueril. Pueril.

Speaker AIt's not puerile.

MerlinI like puerile.

Speaker AI think it was puerile.

Speaker BIn Espanol, it would be puerile. Puerile. Go back to Guatemala.

I want the drugs to come through the border. It's very easy to fix.

AlexFix now. This is the worst episode.

MerlinWorst episode I've ever participated in, for sure.

AlexWhy? It's bad. It's a bad episode. you're making me feel much more you're a very smart Merlin and so is Max Macintoshes yeah those Macintoshes

Merlinthat's actually his full name his full name is Macintoshes Tempkin

Alexit's actually the Apple Macintosh

Merlinno it's Macintoshes it's gotta be plural

AlexMacintoshes Tempkin

MerlinTempkinu and Tyler too

Alexanyway wait Max is playing something on his phone. I don't know.

MerlinSomething was making noise.

AlexYeah. Oh, no. Oh, no.

MerlinWell, let's check in. Let's check out on a molar time, see how things are going. Did you see my fake drill tweet? I had a fake drill tweet.

AlexThat was, I was just going to bring that up. Will you please read?

MerlinI couldn't get, I couldn't get the misspellings quite right, and I didn't want people to, I didn't want to put a hat on a hat, so I just went with straight content.

AlexAll right. I can't read it in drill voice. You got to do it.

MerlinNo, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to read it.

AlexYou can't read it. It's a tweet. It won't make any sense. Please, please. Stomping around on...

MerlinStomping around the garage, screaming it's Mueller time while the boys throw cans and food at my dick.

Speaker BIt's so... I love the boys. I'm thinking about getting some of those little Les balls to put on the wall and hang out with the boys.

Maxlet me ask you this what sort of dnd stuff what sort of accoutrement do you want alex and i to

Speaker Abring you back from gen con um you know uh if you're if you're asking i mean i i am should i

Merlingive you a budget no we'll take it out we'll take it out petty cash so okay so i um i mean i had shown her my, I'm not going to say my original TSR AD&D books because I've repurchased used ones. She'd seen those, but the new, not AD&D, whatever it was, five? I'm sorry.

MaxWere the ones that you had the original ones, were they the ones with Gary Gygax?

MerlinNot the original original ones. I did have the original original box set, but I had AD&D, like basically early, the stuff that, yeah, the early 80s stuff with always demons on the cover.

MaxYeah. We're not talking about the ones where Gary Gygax did the drawings himself in pencil.

MerlinNo, no. With the little booklets? No. I did have a re-release box set of those in the 80s. But no, basically, she's loving the new books. They're so much nicer.

MaxFifth edition is good. They fixed all of my problems with you and me.

MerlinAnd it's gorgeous. And so really visual things, especially things with dragons, if you see cool dragon stuff or cool elf stuff, anything with a drow elf would be awesome. I don't know how this is going to be received by you.

MaxBut this is very controversial. but if you actually wanted to move into the realm of playing dnd or playing let me say playing a role-playing game i actually don't think dnd is the is the best thing i'll say more about that dnd is a classic there's a lot i mean it's it's important historically fifth edition is a really good release of dnd but the how do i put it the mechanics technology of role-playing is so more advanced than what dnd has to offer there's so much more cool shit out there that you can do

with dice and there's better systems, better stories, better storytelling technology.

Speaker AAnd it's not as boring.

MaxAnd it's not as boring. Yeah, D&D has a lot of...

Speaker AI'll say it. I'll say it. I mean, D&D has... What do you recommend or like? So I think... So I really...

MaxThere's a designer that I really like named Luke Crane and he works at Kickstarter and he's a friend of ours. But Luke has made a bunch of indie RPGs. The most recent one is called Torchbearer. And his thing is that he has a sort of philosophy about role playing that it should all be about your character and telling the story of your character.

MerlinOh, interesting.

MaxEverything you do is about your character, your character's relationships.

MerlinA good DM knows that, but a bad DM just wants to try to kill your dudes. In that case, and you see that on something like The Adventure Zone where obviously it's going to be very much about the characters. I love that approach. Right.

MaxSo Torchbearer is a system. So you're not fighting the system to tell a story about your character. the system is making you tell a story about your character. Yeah. There's also the one that Keith... Alex, what's the one that Keith Baker did where you...

AlexIllumine... No. Illumine? No, no, no, no, no. Oh, yeah. That's an RPG. I was actually going to recommend Mouse Guard, the role-playing one. Oh, those books are good. And then I was like, who made that? And it is Luke Crane.

MaxNo, no. Luke was a contributor to it.

AlexHe designed by Luke Crane.

MaxOkay, fine.

AlexI don't know.

MaxMouse Guard, cool. Mouse Guard is phenomenal. So there's other ones. One of the ones that I was really impressed by is... So the premise of it, I'm going to get the name of it in a second. Oh, it's called Phoenix Dawn Command. So the premise of it is... We shipped it. It was so good. So the premise of it is you have this... You're a demigod sort of a character, and you protect the realm. And when you die, and you're meant to die. In your life, you're going to die, like, I think, seven times. and every time you die that's how you level up oh wow when you come back you become more powerful

but the way that you die affects your skill tree so like if you die like heroically sacrificing yourself to protect others then you get paladin points and if you die like high hindu fantasy suiciding yourself it's so that's so cool it's a what and it's an awesome world the character creation is really fun like you you have to start with like a tragic backstory like really fucking fun. And then the other one that I would recommend, and that's a, you can play it as a one shot,

Alexlike it's not. That is, so, and the reason I like that too is it's not like kid focused, but a lot of times there's this pressure of, you know, you're sad when your character dies, but this is the, it feels like the opposite to me. So, okay, so then there's another game

Maxdesigner I really like, Rodney Thompson. He was actually one of the primary designers on D&D 5th Edition. And after he worked on D&D 5th Edition, he came out with his own indie role-playing game called Dusk City Outlaws. And the premise of this is it's set in a, almost like a steampunk renaissance Venice or Florence. And so there's these wealthy families that are like politically important and they're feuding. And you're a thief and you plot heists to like steal art and jewels. But everything has sort of steampunk and steampunk magic.

Very cool world. There's a lot of like jumping from rooftop to rooftop and you know, whatever. Like, we wound up having to steal, in the campaign I played, we had to steal this, like, safe for a client out of their rival, like, lord's house. And we, like, lowered it in the night into, like, a canal, into a gondola and disguised it and, like, brought it up the river and evaded the guards. But what's cool is sometimes, gameplay-wise, you get backed into a corner, right? So we have this safe on the gondola, and a guard boards the gondola, and he's about to pull the cover off of the thing.

and there's a mechanic in this game where you go right before he's, but he has his hands on the cloth. He's about to pull it off and you go, stop, pause. And you go flashback. And now you get to make, you have a certain number of these. Oh, wow. Oceans and oceans 11 style flashback. And you go yesterday before the gondola was here.

MerlinHere's, here's the part of the story you didn't know. It was actually about getting these diamonds.

MaxExactly. I got, I hired a team of archers to hide. Oh, wow. That's so cool. And they're secretly in place. And when he steps this way, he trips the trip wire, and it fires a flare and alerts them, and they shoot him, and they silently kill him. So you get a certain number of those, but it's like very narratively, you feel so clever. You're like, yeah, fuck yeah, I planned this heist down. Oh, that's exciting.

MerlinCan we put these in show notes?

MaxYes. Oh, of course. Already adding them. There's another one called A Quiet Year that's really beautiful where you draw this map together by a designer named Avery McDaldineau. the indie RPG scene is so creative it's so cool it's so beautiful and it's so it fixes a lot of the things that frustrate me as a player with D&D of like this huge startup cost of having to like learn this arcane knowledge. Is there gear? Oh yeah there's ones that are very

Merlingear. This is what I was going to say earlier was that I don't know I kind of avoided I knew when I was on the Joker Cruise I knew that somewhere in very very very very low decks probably near an engine room or something I knew there was a room full of people playing games. And I put off going down there for a real long time. I don't know exactly why. It seemed like even maybe too nerdy for me. But at one point, the three of us went down, down, down, down, down, down, down to the bottom of the ship and went into this room. And it was like a fucking, it was like, it was like the cantina scene, but everybody's wearing a hat. And everybody was so fucking nice and like welcoming.

And like, it was, I don't know, we were greeted as liberators. Like we just came into this room full of people playing wackadoo games and like they were, everybody was so nice and it was just, it was, I don't know. It was just such a great environment. It's like, I know the, the, the phrase nerd or whatever has been like, you know, made stupid possibly partly by people like me, but there is something special about like getting to be around other people, uh, who share, who share common cause and interest in these things. and like why they're not at a singles bar is not precisely important. But let's just say that like these,

there are things that you find and you make friends that way. And so I mentioned something like Gen Con must be great for stuff like that. It's just like, it's okay to be your weird self here.

MaxRole playing in general, I think in a lot of ways is almost the bottom of the nerd totem pole. Like it's so like, it's so nerdy, right? It's so vulnerable.

AlexWell, they're LARPing right below that. Yeah, you're probably right.

MerlinAre you making fun of my Settlers of Catan cosplay?

AlexNo, no, no, no. Cosplay is its own thing.

MerlinI'm doing that thing Syracuse of Hates where I'm making like two jokes and I don't understand either joke.

AlexThere's so many hats I don't understand.

MerlinWhat about Ticket to Ride? Could that be cosplay? I could be what, like a train?

AlexSure.

MerlinYeah.

AlexTwo jokes.

Speaker BIn Max's basement? Welcome to the Max Zone. Threat level midnight. I will be your conductor tonight where you will cosplay a train.

Speaker AAlexa, update the train schedules.

AlexOh, Dick Tug, we have a challenge. Are you sure we have a challenge? I don't know. We did. Did we? Did we?

MaxAlex why don't you tell us if you did it

AlexI mean potentially from now

MerlinUntil whenever the show ends Why don't you tell us about how good you did On the challenge with teeth

AlexI mean I have displayed in front of Max a stack of books

MerlinKeep going this is interesting I'm going to mute but I want to know the rest of this

AlexAlright

Speaker AKeep going

MerlinOkay alright here's what I did The challenge this week was Alex's and the challenge was to go back and find a book that you loved as a kid or a youth and to reread that book. And I downloaded the Kindle sample. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

AlexIt was just read a childhood book except Animorphs. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Someone you fondly remember because some of mine I don't. All right.

MerlinI just wanted to say that I downloaded the Kindle sample of The Outsiders.

MaxFor my book, I selected David Foster Wallace's classic novel, Infinite Jets.

AlexAll right, good job. Good job. Merlin, what did you do?

MerlinWell, I downloaded the Kindle sample of The Outsiders, and I read almost all of the first page. What did you do, Max?

MaxI read the—so I recently found a little payload online of e-books of all of the Bruce Covel novels. Bruce Cobble was like my favorite author when I was a kid, and he wrote sort of sci-fi YA books. And I read through, I sort of sampled a bunch of them, and then the ones that I got really excited about were, I might have talked about this previously on the show, but it was called The AI Gang.

AlexMm-hmm. Oh, yeah. We read those. We literally read those as a challenge. It was a challenge.

MerlinI don't know if we read them, but it was definitely a challenge.

AlexI read them. I read the whole series, or trilogy rather. I'm fine.

MaxAnother one that I, and then what were some of the other ones I found? There was another one called Goblins in the Castle that I really like. And then there was like the famous, there was Aliens Ate My Homework. That was another really good dude.

Speaker ADid you read that when you were a kid?

MaxOh, yeah. That's probably his most popular one.

Speaker AWell, yeah, it's like My Teacher's.

MaxMy Teacher's. Oh, shit. I did reread those. I read that. I actually read through that entire series.

AlexOh, fuck.

MaxYeah, those ones hold up pretty well.

AlexThey are. All right. So.

MerlinNo, the thing is, okay, ha ha. We mostly peanut butter. Tell us what you did, because it sounds like you said you were disturbed by this challenge, which was your challenge. What happened? Oh, God.

AlexIt was a dark time. I was just on Amazon sort of scouring books that were like picture books. So I vaguely remember the theme of the book, but I have one of those flashbulb memories of I know exactly where I was and exactly how I felt. and this one's kind of cheating but did you ever have bath books, either of you?

MerlinBooks that you would only read in the bathtub? Oh, yeah.

AlexYeah, oh, you didn't only need to read them.

MerlinI still have bath books. But they're just regular books that I read in the bath. So now I'm confused. What's happening? You get a paperback, you read in there and it gets all curly?

AlexNo, no, no, no, no, no. You do like a John Roderick. No, no, no, no, no, no.

MaxYou eat a charcuterie platter.

Alexyou get a book that is like cover what it's about it's a bath book what what's happening that's the best episode i've ever heard um not really it was but it was very very okay so so so

Merlinyou had a bath book it's about ai what i'm sorry i'm really i'm concentrating i'm holding a bell in my right hand and my head in my left hand i'm trying so hard to understand what you're talking

Alexabout is this the book you read okay the books i read were bath time by sandra boyton love you forever by uh robert oh a man wrote this explains a lot um the monster at the end of this book i guess by grover yeah that's a good one i don't want to spoil the ending but it's got a little twist at the end right that's a good one we had that one big turns out we had a board book we had board book of that yes do you did you read elmer by david mckee did you mean board book when you

said bath book no no no no no no a bath book i will let me send you a picture of this a bath book is a book that a child can take into the bath and not really because it's plasticky okay it's

Merlinlike a board book but for a maritime okay it's a maritime board book it's a maritime bath book

AlexOh, God. I can't believe you don't know what bath book. I guess maybe this technology came about.

MerlinThis is probably a Chicago thing. No. Okay, I'm going to search for bath book. I'm sorry. I don't mean to take you off your story, but I'm not sure there's a story.

Speaker ABath book. There's not a story. I was just listing my books. It's not a Chicago thing.

MerlinOh, you're talking about plastic books.

AlexYes, they're bath book. That's called a bath book.

MerlinOkay.

AlexThis isn't like a wind jacket thing. They're bath books, like children's bath books. It's not.

MerlinIs AI one of those or is that an anamorph? Okay, got it. Baby BB floating bath. Baby BB floating baby bath books. Oh, look at that. You sent me a link. Oh, bath time. Buggy bath books.

AlexYeah, bath time by Sandra Boynton. Oh, cute. Hey, hey, what do you say? It's time to take a bath today. And then you got a little squeaker at the end. Listen, listen.

MerlinOh, I love that. Squishy squeaking fun.

AlexIt squeaks. You squish the pig's nose at the end.

MerlinI want a baby again.

AlexAll right.

MerlinI didn't assign one to you. I said, I want a baby again.

AlexNo, I just can't. I don't know what went through my head. It was just like this Pavlovian response where my ovaries just shriveled up.

MerlinSo you get no interest in that.

AlexI don't know.

MerlinI feel like you said one time that you had an interest in that, but that can change.

Alexit's a lot

Merlinit's a lot did you see the queer eye where they help the guy adopt the dog

Alexis there more

Merlinyes

Alexthere is there's a season four

Speaker Await there's a season three

Merlinyeah we're on season four we're halfway through season four already

Maxwait the first one was the guy with the red face

Merlinthe second one

Maxwas the trans girl who plays cards against humanity no that's the third what's the second one

AlexThe second season has a lot of church folks because it's in.

MerlinYeah, like Black Lady makeovers.

AlexYeah, and Bobby gets mad at some point.

MerlinBobby. I always forget his name. Bobby's sad because his church experience is wrong.

AlexYeah, yeah. And also he needs to redesign a church. Wait, was this the one where they had the racist police officer? That is season three. Did I see season two? I don't know. Maybe I didn't. You can probably go into. Do you use Netflix or does everything go into Plex?

Speaker AAnyhow, did you watch the one where the two ladies own the restaurant?

MerlinYes, the barbecue one. I love that one.

Speaker AThat was season three.

AlexYeah, that was a good one.

MerlinI like the one where Anthony explains to the Mexican lady how to open a jar for Mexico. Boy, he's insufferable this season. He's so handsome. He's so handsome. I said to my lady friend in coded language because my child was there. I said, Anthony strikes me as the kind of guy that would be appealing to a range of partners.

AlexAre you saying he's a twink?

MerlinI don't want to use your made up sex words. What I would say is. I'd say he's more of an otter.

AlexNo, I don't think he's hairy enough.

MerlinSo anyway, thank you. What I was not a thing I super want to get into for the point of the story, except that his role as Jonathan becomes the clearer, clearer and clearer every episode, the breakout star of this show. Bobby is the one who is a, I'm not saying he does the most work, but I think he's associated with what becomes the most work. Karamo, is that how you say his name? Like he's so great and he's so handsome and he's so charismatic, but mostly he stares ponderously in types and stuff like that.

But like, Anthony, man, I feel for the guy. where he's got to go and explain to this man what Croatian food is and it's like yeah he knows dude he's Croatian did you see that one Alex

Alexno but I saw the one where he explained guacamole can we make this a challenge for this week possibly well and there's also another podcast recommendation at some point we should do this I don't think I don't have time to watch Merlin did you read a book

Merlinno I downloaded the Kindle sample of the outsiders i said it four different times quinn will have cut out three of them because we talked over each other i love the outsiders i've never seen the movie i loved se hinton books i love that was then this is now now this is meow meow uh my only note on this that is interesting is like in like um trying to get my kid into certain books that i loved as a kid i did return to some things from my youth like there are so many books for very young children that endure for a reason you know what i mean like yeah i mean like a good night moon just the art's not that great but it's

a sweet thing there's lots of just really great i mean i could i could reel off a million of these but like one is when she got a little bit older and was uh just past pre-literate to kind of pseudo-literate was like reading encyclopedia brown together holy shit some of those don't make it's like riddle me piss some of the solutions in encyclopedia brown make zero the one where the guy could not have put the baby on the car because on the hood of the car because he'd been driving for four hours love it, canonical

and there's other ones like well because Robert had red hair there's no way that he could have gotten out of the Safeway so quickly

Speaker Bwhat? what the fuck does that mean? give me my nickel back

Show notes

Transcript

142. Macintoshes Temkin

Show notes

Transcript

0:00

0:21

0:23

0:24

0:24

0:25

0:27

0:30

0:34

0:34

0:36

0:39

0:41

0:45

0:46

0:53

0:56

1:07

1:07

1:10

1:12

1:13

1:16

1:46

1:48

1:51

1:56

1:58

2:00

2:03

2:13

2:16

2:36

2:48

2:48

2:50

2:53

3:23

3:24

3:26

3:44

3:50

3:51

3:54

3:56

4:03

4:10

4:15

4:19

4:34

4:41

4:48

4:49

4:58

4:59

5:29

6:02

6:04

6:35

6:50

6:53

7:25

7:37

7:38

7:49

7:52

7:55

7:56

7:57

8:06

8:41

8:57

9:04

9:13

9:16

9:18

9:21