174. My Magic Friends

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge. Have a potato night.

MerlinHello. Hello. Good morning. Good morning, Merlin Mann. How you doing? I'm good. How are you?

MaxOh, see, now my level seems weird again.

MerlinOh, there I am.

AlexHello. I thought we had fixed it.

MerlinAh, pre-PC, pre-PC. How are you?

AlexI'm, well, well, let me show you a screenshot of how I'm doing today. Nope. Oh, let's, oh, man, I don't, don't, I don't prepare. I know you don't like the ones where I don't prepare.

MerlinI don't like the ones where you don't prepare. We have fun.

AlexThat was, the reference is what that was. Hmm.

MerlinAh, it's so early. It's very early.

AlexIt's very... It's really not that early here, but we'll get this out of the way. Come to C2E2. And if you don't know what that is, it is the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo.

MerlinAre you speaking to me, Alexandra?

AlexYeah, I'm speaking to you. If other people just happen to overhear it, you know, that's fine.

MerlinIs there eavesdropping on our private conversation?

AlexYeah, yeah. Who knows? Who knows? you can, you know, we have, Cards Against Humanity has this theater all weekend long at this comic and entertainment festival and it's in room S402. You can go to c2e2.com and see all the shows we're doing. All right, that was a half decent plug if Max doesn't show up.

MerlinWhat do they get out of that? What do they get out of that?

AlexThey get shows. They get shows.

MerlinAll the great shows. Comedy shows. Oh, comedy.

AlexYeah, yeah. You'll find out at c2e2.com.

MerlinOh, I will. Okay, all right, cool.

AlexYou will. Thank you, thank you. I look forward to seeing you.

MerlinOh, no. This is bad, Alex.

AlexI know.

MerlinAlex has just sent me their sleep data.

AlexIt is. Also, it didn't track heart rate.

MerlinThis is categorically shitty.

AlexYes. So hopefully.

MerlinThe only thing that could make this worse is if you got my little slices.

AlexMy problem is little slices.

MerlinI'll send you some examples of little slices. But for the hour of sleep you did get, you got some pretty good one hour deep sleep.

AlexYeah, yeah. I think it was in preparation for the Cards Against Humanity Theater at C2E2.

MerlinOh, C2E2 and C44402.

AlexWhere is it?

MerlinWhere are we going for this?

AlexC2E2.com or Cards Against Humanity Love Chicago.com. You get to see some comedy shows. See some shows. So if you're in Chicago, come on down. Come on down. I don't care. I'm not doing any shows.

MaxNo.

MerlinOh, okay.

AlexNo, it'll be fun if you like the rest.

MerlinAre you formally required to promote these things?

AlexI have no idea. I was just trying to be nice. I don't think so. No.

MerlinLet me check my sleep last night. I keep staying up too late. Oh, that sucks, Alex. Alex, can I reveal your sleep time here?

AlexOh, please do.

MerlinSo this is in the sleep app called, which one is this? Sleepwatch.

AlexThis is the Sleep Plus Plus, I believe. Or no, no, no, you're right.

MerlinSleep Watch, yeah. Yeah, and so you slept from, this is Chicago time, central time, as you say, 2.35 a.m. to 3.55 a.m.

AlexMm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah.

MerlinThis is as long as a Merv Griffin show. That's really all the sleep anybody needs.

AlexI'm going to pretend I know what that show is.

MerlinWow, wow, okay.

AlexSometimes, well, here's the thing. So early. Sometimes, like, I know that, like, ad for Bernie with Dick Van Dyke came out. And I know that Dick Van Dyke is a person. But I don't know what he's been in. Oh, my God. Except for the Dick Van Dyke show, I think, is a thing.

MerlinYou just, you never saw, like, Mary Poppins.

AlexOh, is that him?

MerlinOh, my God.

AlexOh. Well, okay. I guess I'm a fan, then.

MerlinHe has the great American version of an English accent. Hey, Spikes like this, he does.

AlexWow.

MerlinYeah, it's pretty bad. And then he dances with penguins.

AlexOh, man, that movie is too long.

MerlinIt's boring. I know I've told you this story, but you find out you're going to have a kid. You think about all the things. And certainly one of the little side benefits of knowing there is a young one on the way, a little human, as they say. Who is that? Who says that? Is that Lexi?

AlexI don't know.

MerlinSure.

AlexYes. Yeah. Yeah. Lexi.

MerlinShe's the pedo fellow. A fun way to needle my wife who works at a medical school is to call the peds department the pedo department.

And she still gets mad when I do it. It's so fun. They're little humans. And so you say to yourself, oh, this is so cool. at least one side benefit of this is I will get to inculcate the little human into what I consider to be the good things and the good culture. And sometimes a lot of times, especially with a little kid, you're going to want to watch the movie or the TV show first yourself, right? To remember, like, is this as okay for a very small child as I thought? And that continues to where like, you kind of want to show him Parasite, but you probably shouldn't. Yeah. Or like you show a

A little bit of work in progress. And they're like, I should go to bed.

AlexOh, there's one scene that like maybe not, but I think the rest.

MerlinShe hasn't had enough time to fall in love with her yet. And I know she will. But one of those was Mary Poppins, which I remember loving as a kid. I had my parents.

AlexI always hated it.

MerlinWell, my parents had got me the eight track of that. So in the same way that my kid will listen to a musical 50 times without ever having seen it. Right? I mean, that's something youths do today. I mean, how many times had I listened to Hamilton before we saw the show? Probably three years. It's so fucking boring. I put the movie, and it's just, it's like, oh my God. This movie has been on for an hour and nothing. Wait, it hasn't been on for an hour?

It's been on for 20 minutes? It feels like it's been on for an hour. And nothing happens in it.

AlexNope, nope.

MerlinMax just typed the word hello.

AlexOh, all right. Cool. Wow.

MerlinHe says I'm on Skype.

AlexOkay, because I can definitely see that and know that that's happening. Cameron, you want to – let's add Max. He's on Skype.

MerlinI'm not done with you yet.

AlexI still have – Oh, okay.

MerlinI want to make a couple announcements. It's probably better that he's not here for this.

AlexWait. Cameron, Cameron, hold. Hold.

MerlinNo, no, bring him in. It's fine. I'm just going to shut him down.

AlexOh, good, good. Okay, Cameron, bring him in.

MerlinA couple things. First of all, kudos on this morning. We will be getting the, as of this week, we will start this show exactly on time, regardless of who's here. That means there may be episodes where I alone am talking for 20 minutes, and that's going to be a new thing. That's a new rule. So I need this time with you. I value this time with you. I will not listen to the grape jam being eaten.

But I have more things for you. I want to talk about my dongle bag, and we can skip Grey's Anatomy for now. But we're in a real rough patch on Grey's Anatomy.

AlexThey're not ready for Grey's Anatomy. And Max isn't either.

MerlinNo.

AlexHe's not ready.

MerlinIt's a journey. And where we are right now in the show is pretty fucking wild and weird.

AlexIt only goes down. So, hey, buddy. Hello.

MerlinThe season, one season ended with, okay, so spoilers for Grey's Anatomy. One season ended with the plane crash.

Alexoh my oh do you know about the you do you know about the outcomes uh well i mean i get so as

Merlinyou know um i get some information from the lady that works at the medical school where she apparently knows things because she reads things and i knew so i knew about george getting bullied by the guy with the crampy hand and that's why he left and then was in saw izzy in the elevator i knew that that's a doctor who moment yeah yeah very doctor so doctor who moment uh qed but But hey, Max, let's just be a second. But here's the thing, though. So they had this, you know, they're very good at a Sweeps Week episode that is so bananas.

And they're pretty good at a season ending terrible cliffhanger because the show is terrible. But I love it. There's a plane crash.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinAnd a lot of our favorite people are in really, really bad shape.

AlexHave you already gotten?

MerlinWe're on season eight or nine.

AlexHave you gotten to the car crash then?

Merlincar crash involving...

AlexYeah, I realized when I said... As soon as I said that, it's like saying, have you gotten to the disaster in Seattle yet?

MerlinWell, I mean, I was... Okay, so we've been through the shooting, which was wild and are actually really good. We've been... It's getting louder.

AlexI think it's right up in there. Right up in there.

MerlinOkay, okay. And we've been through the shooting, the aftermath of the shooting, the PTSD of the shooting, and then the whole year of trying to heal about that. We've been through when the ambulance is, when the mayor pushes somebody out of the way and the ambulance crashes and the husband dies and then there's a guy who doesn't want Bailey to work on him because she's black.

AlexOh, love the Nazi.

MerlinSo now we're up to plane crash, boom, go down. Lexi, not looking good.

AlexNot looking great for Lexi.

MerlinMcSteamy, McSteamy. not... It's getting so loud.

AlexYep, it's just getting...

MerlinOkay! You know what, buddy? As it happens, I have a case of playing cards here, which I'm scared to open because I think there might be a trick in one of them. What's with the playing cards? It was the thing that you insisted we make to give away.

Oh, right!

AlexThat's right. I got a book here. Oh, that's very... Alex,

Merlinthose episodes, second of all, Those episodes, then the season, the beginner of the next one, season premiere, they're told in this very arty Tarantino out of sequence style that's a little hard to follow and very weird. But what I want to say is, God damn, this show is gross.

AlexYep.

MerlinMy kid doesn't seem to mind it. But, wow. But McDreamy's arm? Oh. Wow. That's really gross. Or the girl with the foot, the surfing girl with the foot. Remember the foot? She's surfing, and then her tibia and her fibula are showing, and her foot, if she wants to get back on the sailboat.

AlexOh, the around the world.

MerlinI'm so distracted at this point.

AlexYou know what? I just need to know, have you gotten to the musical episode?

MerlinI don't think so. Okay, okay. You've gotten to the alternate universe episode. Oh, my God.

AlexI think he's just crumpling things against his face. Is he doing Foley for something? I don't know.

MaxCoffee. I don't know. What? Coffee, coffee?

AlexWhat?

MaxCoffee? I'm trying to make coffee.

MerlinCoffee, coffee. Pizza, pizza.

AlexPizza, pizza. Hot pocket. All right.

MerlinWell, then, fine. We'll talk about that next week in our pre-show. But I also want to talk about my new dongle bag I got based on Dan's recommendation. And I'm re-interrogating my bag-in-a-bag approach. Not that I still think bag-in-a-bag is the ultimate approach.

AlexAbsolutely.

MerlinYou got a bag and you got a bag. I have a box of bags. I have bags of bags. I have bags and bags and bags. It's bags, as they say, all the way down. But based on this new bag, and I'm putting a pin in this, I'm wondering, I wonder how loose my cable should be.

AlexOh. Do I want them in compartments? I see. Oh, my God. What's happening? Max, what is he doing? It's action figures, I think, now. It sounds like he's ripping apart an action figure, like the plastic without scissors.

MaxI'm opening up our delivery breakfast to try and extract some food.

AlexOh, is there jelly?

MaxYou're going to eat while we're recording? Yeah.

AlexWhat do you think?

MaxOkay.

AlexI mean, I have taken several sips of Diet Coke. I apologize.

MerlinI must have dropped my cans more. I got three here.

AlexOh, let me. I'll show you my setup. This is a media-heavy episode for our audio listeners. Oh, man.

MerlinOh, do you think this is somebody's ASMR?

AlexI wonder.

MerlinProbably somebody who has a live clown in their basement is very into the way this sounds.

AlexI imagine there's someone out there who has like a fetish for, oh, I love when they talk about things I can't see. Yeah. I hope so.

MerlinI don't know. Also, Alex, did you know that I have a GIF? Did you know that I have a gift where I recognize everybody from everything? Did you know about that gift of mine?

AlexNo.

MerlinI have a gift. I have a gift. So as you know, when I watch TV, I'm kind of watching TV, but I'm mostly figuring out what else that person was in. This is what I do. And so we got to the episode of the girl who fell into the ravine. This is a while back. This is like a season or two ago, a couple days ago. So the girl, okay, the girl who fell in the ravine and got all banged up. And then when they did the x-rays, they got the films back. And they were all, oh, my God, she's had these breaks that didn't heal. What is going on? Could this be that girl that's been missing since she was really little?

Do you remember that one?

AlexOh, yes, yes, yes.

MerlinAnd so I says to my family, I says, I know her.

AlexI know her from some point.

MerlinAnd I couldn't land on it until I went and looked. You know who she is? Luke's daughter April from Gilmore Girls without glasses.

AlexOh, yep, yep. Now I remember. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

MerlinYep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

AlexOh, this is actually one of the few serial dramas that iJustine has not been on as a character who shows up dead. She's a corpse in a lot of things.

MerlinWell, iJustine, the lady with the hat camera?

AlexMm-hmm, mm-hmm, yep, yep.

MerlinInformation, Justine. Wait, I'm so confused. iJustine, huh?

AlexInformation Justine, yeah.

MerlinOh, you're a little bit quiet. Your cards are loud. Your voice is quiet.

AlexYeah, it's very unnerving.

MerlinBut I think that's probably Cameron responding to my bitching about the distortion on your slide when we record. Thank you, Cameron. You guys want to start the show?

Jam, jam, get my grape jam. They got to give it to you. Grape jam. Don't Bogart that jam.

MaxI've had a lot of positive feedback on the grape jam. I know.

MerlinIt has been a phenomenon, and I came about.

MaxPeople are saying more and more. They're talking about the grape jam. Where's Max? Whenever Max is on screen. Anyway. They're talking about him. More and more, they're saying that they love the grape jam. Well, it must be working because they're talking about it.

AlexYeah, especially on our Twitter account, who someone just got the password to recently.

MaxOh, yeah, that was pretty funny. Merlin, could you share the cable bag? I would like to see it.

MerlinYeah, sure. So this came up on Back to Work yesterday, and because I'm broken inside, I ordered it for same-day delivery, and it arrived last night.

MaxOh, my God, that's so loud, Max. I have to root around in the bag to get the coffee accoutrement so that I can drink the coffee.

MerlinI would like just Mac. Okay, so I don't want to make work for Quinn, but I'm going to make work for Quinn. I would like a separate track that's just a super cut of Macs making very, very loud noises.

AlexYes, and that'll be on our Patreon.

MerlinThat'll be on Patreon. Where would you go for that?

AlexYou know what? You would go to giveusourfuckingmoney.com. Why would you go there, you say?

MerlinGive us your fucking money.

AlexIs it? Wow, we should probably get the other one.

MerlinBecause we already have our money. Now we want your money. You have money and we want that money.

AlexMm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And what do you get when you give us money? Well, in a completely new show, when we hang up this phone, just kidding, we don't hang it up. We talk for another half hour about Grey's Anatomy. And what's another thing people love? Survivor.

MerlinDunglebags.

AlexJam.

MerlinMarkdown.

AlexYeah. Bambuamans. Large Max. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So if you subscribe to our Patreon. Fluffy Rubs. I say Grispy L. I was almost getting through it.

MerlinI almost got through it. I may need to get a new belt.

MaxPizzle.

MerlinPizzle.

MaxCan I tell you, Mike, I have some cable thoughts. Okay, so first of all, I sent... Oh, that's a handsome bag. I like this.

MerlinAlex, just so you know, that's my slice problem, what I sent you in your private channel. The slice. Look at my little slices. Little slices of awake and asleep. That's my problem.

MaxOh, this is called the Power Packer. Interesting. That's like a power bottom. They call it a twink. When you pack it, it generates an enormous amount of power.

AlexYeah. This is not a Chastain accessory or a Pete accessory. Okay.

MerlinI like Liz. Now, here's the thing. I got this. And look inside. Look at the second image. Side-by-side travel tech bag organizer. Cables and EDC. That's everyday carry. Gear pouch. Electronics and cord case. power packer by side by side power packer by side by side oh it's pretty you know what i thought it

Maxwas smaller based on the product description and now i'm seeing the man holding it and it's quite large well it's i transitioned last night congrats man faster than so i get to use the squid i get to

Merlinuse the squid i get to use the squid bathroom now i get to use the cthulhu can um my genitals are not understandable i present as eldritch horror look at me i'm wearing shorts on a float you can't tell what i am where will i pee can i pee do i have a urethra so this is the debt ceiling uh and so is this overworked like in practice so what i do is last

night i transitioned from my tom bim brain bag little little boy bag inside to put my stuff into this which packs small and is stretchy am i gonna like having all of my things in little compartments like this or is it better as a big jump now when you do this alex how do you manage

Alexyour cables i recently and also transitioned okay good for you isn't it kind of isn't kind of pretty

Merlinthough max and it's got velcro on the outside it's kind of cool i have evolving thoughts about my cable situation which i'm happy to share with you i would love to talk about this and we've got the best person we could possibly have here to discuss it with us. Marco? Yes. Knives, flashlights, knives.

AlexAll right. So there, you know, we all know the Snake Charmer, the classic cable and dongle bag from Tom Bin. But recently they released a new little bag within a bag. Ah, here we go. It's the HLT or Handy Little Thing pouch. and it is just, it looks a bit more like what you just sent us, but it's way more compact

and it's less, I don't know. Here's my thing. I love the bags that are-

MerlinThis is so cute. This is like your little personal effects bag.

AlexYes, I love it.

MerlinThis would be your airplane bag.

AlexI used it as a purse the other day and a lot of people made fun of me, but it was great.

MaxCan I show you a Tom Bin product that I've been enjoying? Yes. Yeah, I'll check this one out. Okay. It's the Travel, I think it's called the Travel Cubelet with a shoulder strap.

AlexOh, yeah, yeah. I forgot that one, yeah.

MaxSo it's a four inch by six inch little cube and it's got little zippers and all kinds of little zippers and compartments and it's basically like a, it's like a little purse, but for men. Yep, yep.

AlexIt's a cubelet.

MaxSorry, it's a Seinfeld joke.

AlexEvery man's favorite accessory. The cubelet.

MaxThe travel cubelet. Travel cubelet. And this thing is so fucking good. I bring it to, this is what I take to Disney. Because I can fit like a sunscreen and like a few little items in there. I take, I'll put my magic tricks in there. If I'm going out to somewhere where I need to take magic tricks. Your effects, your pocket effects. My pocket effects.

AlexI feel so much better about myself. Keep going, keep going.

Maxyou could fit anything in here this is like if you know how you're good sometimes you're like mary poppins bag yeah yeah it's so boring yeah sometimes you're going out sometimes you're going out and you're like you know what i don't really want the whole backpack nope nope correct yeah

Merlinwe were talking about this on back to work this is the beauty of bag in a bag is that it gives you flexibility if you have confidence in your system which is a great feeling especially if you're if you're living the double cable lifestyle maybe merlin you're going to a second location

MaxOh, I should have thought about that. How they abound. If you're going to go to a second location, you want to shed your big bag and you take your small bag. Max, people have stuff.

MerlinAnd they need a place to keep your stuff.

AlexMm-hmm.

MerlinYou know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah, right. I thought you were a George Carlin fan.

MaxYeah, no, I got it.

MerlinWhat is he doing? Now he's tearing the sides off of old printer paper, I think.

AlexYeah. The little, what is it called? Not correlated, but...

MerlinColated?

AlexIs it? Yeah, collated. Talk about machine paper? Yeah, in the before times. I feel like I would have really enjoyed that. Like, it seems like a-

MerlinOh, it's such a good feeling when your paper's done

Alexand it prints out.

MerlinAnd then you fold it over and neatly tear it off and try not to have an edge. Oh, man, that's such a good feeling.

AlexOh, or it would drive me crazy-er.

MerlinYeah. While I was in college was the transition, at least where I was, from like, if you were in the PC lab, as they called it, with like so many PCs.

AlexCan't say the F word there.

MerlinThe printer with the frilly paper sides. But then also we had the laser printer in the Mac lab. So that's where we'd put our regular old, this is really boring. Okay, packing cube backpack, handy little thing. Packing cube backpack. Oh, that's cute, Alex.

AlexYeah, it looks way better than what Max has. It's just a cute little backpack.

MaxWhat's yours called again, Max? The manlet. It's called the the manlet.

AlexThe manlet. Is it like a youngling? Yeah.

MerlinMost popular yeoman duffel cadet travel cubelet side effect. That's the one. Oh yeah, this is really effeminate.

AlexOkay, well.

MaxNo, no, no, in a good way.

AlexThis is a Chasten bag for sure.

MaxWow, if everyone's gonna shame me for expressing my... Is that a voice you should recognize?

AlexNow, if you were gay,

Maxwould you take a pill? I didn't realize it was that kind of podcast where I'd be attacked for my gender expression. Who's the squid now, bitch?

I just, maybe some of our listeners would want to send a comment on Twitter. Okay, listen. Since this show started, I have re-transitioned.

MerlinAnd I now identify as Shiz. That's my pronoun. My pronoun is Shiz. Shiz? Shiz, yeah. Shiz or Shea.

MaxNo, we're so canceled after this week.

MerlinAnd I am a chimera creature. And if you want to make a bathroom for me, I'm half a Cthulhu, okay, and half a Lexi. And they couldn't save the arm.

AlexAll right. Oh. Oh, it's going to be more than the arm. You know, here's the thing.

MerlinHere's the thing is that Calliope thought she was doing the right thing. She had stuff to do. She said, take the foot.

AlexYep.

MerlinTake the leg, right? Yep. Sweep the leg, Lexi. No, wait. Who am I talking about? Arizona? Is there Arizona?

AlexArizona. Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. You're saying, oh, you're there. She lost the leg. You're there. You're there. Oh, God. Oh, I'm there.

MerlinAnd then they show it.

AlexThey show it.

MerlinAnd you can see the, I don't know if Stomp is ableist, but you see her leg partition.

AlexI mean, she calls it that. Stump. She identifies her leg as a stump. Stump.

MerlinI want bags. Everyone's favorite musical.

MaxWe need another bag challenge. Here's where I'm at in terms of cables. Yeah. Okay, go on. I like having a nice collection of short little nubbin cables. Do you know the cable where it's like a two or a three inch cable? It's basically just two connectors.

MerlinYeah. I mean, there's a whole family in the last few years of these. When I came up, you didn't get cables that were shorter than even a foot. It was a six-foot cable for everything. Yeah, so you turned me on to those. I've gone through different brands of this, but the one that has the USB and then it clips on either a Lightning or a USB-C onto that, and you can get pretty short versions of those.

MaxI've kind of ditched those because what happened was in travel situations situations where I really needed one of those cables to work, I would discover at the long time that it was broken.

MerlinOh, there's, yeah, one of the brands of those were really shitty and would just be very unreliable.

MaxWell, a lot of them, they're just, they're a bad product because those little tiny plastic adapter heads that go on the, that connect the micro USB to the lightning or whatever, they're just extremely flimsy. But what I have now are just single cables and it's like three inches and it's like lightning on one side, USB-C on the other. And I just have, I don't know, four or five of those. And they're in the little bottom compartment of my Tom Bim. And really, whenever I need to connect something to something else, I'm holding both of them in my hands. I don't need it to go across the room. But then, I have a new product that I'm very excited about.

This solves a huge problem in my life, which is a new thing from Anker. It's a charging... It's one of those things where you plug it into the wall and it has USB ports on it to charge all your nonsense. And it's got two USB-Cs and two normal USBs.

MerlinI have so many of these. And these are in production at my home, as in production, as in like, this is the permanent way that we have a charging station on my side of the couch.

MaxIt's incredible. And what's really, really, really good about this one, especially for travel, is it's got about a six-foot cord, power cord, coming out of the back of it. and so you can put the brick with all the little receptacles on your nightstand and you know a lot of hotels do not have an outlet near the nightstand you have to go all the way across the hotel room to get to an outlet because the hotel was designed by sociopaths yeah keep saying that word i don't

Merlinthink i know what that means yeah or you get you get an i-home an i-home clock radio with a 30 pin

Maxusb with a 30 pin dot connector yeah and you're like i i'm gonna get two different kinds of viruses if I touch that.

AlexOh, don't even.

MaxNo, yeah, exactly. And don't lick it, whatever you do.

AlexI would like to be acknowledged in our super secret chat that I have already had this product and use it, and I was into it before it was cool. Okay, what is it? That's my short bit. Oh, do you not? Do I? Fuck, I might be wrong. Is that not the anchor? Like, it has a little, you plug it in.

MerlinI have white. No. I have a white one. Wrong. I have two or three different kinds of the anchor. There's one, and I'm very into, like, I want the high wattage ones. So you have to check the balance of what you're getting in terms of ports as against how much power the thing's putting out. And then, of course, you have to think, how is this going to figure in my travel? If I'm going to need just one carry-on bag, I don't want to have a heavy thing I'm toting around.

MaxYou know what? I think this thing that I have right now is actually so new that it's not even on Amazon. You can only get it on...

AlexAnchor's website. Yes. My version's only on Amazon. I see. Yep, yep, yep. Ooh, look at this.

MerlinSo what I love, in the top photo, I don't need this, but I think it's such a clever addition. So you can see where the tile is, because of course, the day I got it, I put a tile in it. You'll see behind that, where the tile is in that little mesh thing, is this little, like, a card case that comes with, you'll see the SIM card ejector. I should just photograph this. But it's also got little pockets if you want to put in like memory cards and stuff like that so i mean i my 2fa thing doesn't fit in there and i wish it did but you see here there's a lot of different ways and then down here you see i'm moving into these new products now when i when i'm moving around i

want those airfly things that are going to let me do uh airpods things with multiple devices now this is just this is my my as they say edc this is not my travel bag this is my bottom of the backpack bag.

AlexOkay, okay.

MerlinOh, and Max, you see your pen? I'm all in on your pen. What's my pen? Tool. Oh, isn't that... It's such a baller pen. T-U-L. The pencil? It's such a baller pen.

MaxOh, no. Wait, the tool. Yeah, it's a good pen.

MerlinYeah, you told me about a pencil too, but these, man, you take that little nipple

Maxoff the end,

Merlinand then, boy, you're right with it. Fine line, brother. Woo! Oh, you love to pop off the nipple.

MaxThat's the whole fun of opening a new pen.

AlexThat is so true.

MerlinIt protects the gel.

AlexMm-hmm.

MerlinMm-hmm.

AlexMm-hmm.

MerlinMm-hmm.

AlexYeah.

MaxHere we go. I found it after much searching. This is the shit. Look at this. It's 100 watts. Oh. It's 100 watts, and it's got two USB-Cs and two regular USBs and, like, a six-foot cord. You purchased this item on November 4th, 2019. There you go.

AlexOh, no. I do have this, but this isn't, like...

MaxThis goes in my... This is the new... This is the new thing. It's always in my suitcase. I get to the hotel room. The first thing I do, I plug it out. I put it on the bed stand.

MerlinIt's great. It's great. And so they've got this proprietary, they call it PD and IQ. But I think that just means you're pushing a lot of watts through that port.

MaxYou know, I was sleepy. And when I got in, I had depleted the battery on my 16-inch MacBook Pro on the airplane. And I got into the hotel and I was sleepy. And I did not want to go rooting around in my bag for the charger for the MacBook Pro. Sure. And so I just plugged it into the USB-C thing on the 16-inch, you know, on the anchor. I just plugged did usbc right into the anchor and that macbook pro started up right away which you

Merlinknow it only does if it's got if it's being if it's being fed a lot of yeah power in the moment

Maxyeah yeah it's got to be it's got it's very it's very thirsty when it falls asleep and it needs a

Alexlot of juice very quickly oh did you get the new 16 inch no oh you're still using a broken laptop

MaxYeah. Oh, no.

AlexOh, boy.

MaxI think I'm out of the Apple laptop game for the foreseeable future.

MerlinIt's a really good laptop, Max.

MaxThe new 16-inch?

MerlinYeah, I know it's not exactly what you want, but, like, for example, I was telling Dan this. I'm a cuck.

MaxWait, you have? You got one?

MerlinNo. And so, yes. And I was running Sprite Juice. Yes. No. Yes.

MaxOkay.

MerlinWhich one? Have you played with it or not? I got it as soon as it came out.

MaxOh, okay, cool.

MerlinI just don't want to talk about money. it's unseemly um i uh i run fruit juice and so fruit juice will automatically about once a month go hey you haven't been running on i'm usually a real dork about making sure i run on battery power as much as possible just because i come from that age where you've got to condition a battery and it's just part of being a mac owner fruit juice is one of those there's lots of apps like this but fruit juice basically lives up in your bar it looks like just it's a little battery gauge, but it will let you know

when you've achieved the amount of electric, like AC, for the day, and say, okay, now unplug it a little. Do that. It'll give you gentle reminders. And importantly, once a month, God, this is boring. Once a month or so it goes, okay, time for maintenance cycle. And now maintenance cycle is you run it all the way up to 100. You unplug it. It stays, it forces the screen to stay on. It helps to make the screen real bright. And when it gets down to 20%, you plug it back in and now that's making sure your battery doesn't get what we used to call

Maxmemory i don't know if that's even a thing anymore but merlin i heard you you know years ago i heard you talk about fruit juice maybe on this show or maybe on one of your other programs uh-huh and i thought damn that's awesome i would love to like have my laptop have a longer and better battery life so i purchased it downloaded it immediately put it in the menu bar and then i would find myself like sitting down to work and i'd get into some little piece of writing or some whatever fucking bullshit I had to do. And all of a sudden, I'd get a little thing, and it's like, woohoo, time to unplug your laptop! And I'd be like, fuck! Or worse, or worse,

it would go like, you've reached your target for the day! And we'd be like, okay, thanks, buddy.

AlexYes, and I'd be like,

Maxfuck off with this. I found, I just, I mean, it is a, listen, it works, it does what is advertised, I just found that it was not for my lifestyle, because I didn't like the, like like i like that moment of being able to sit down and actually accomplish some work is so fleeting and like fragile to me i do not want i don't want anything to talk to me i've become

Merlinmuch more sensitized about those particular kinds of notifications and i realized that i have gotten lazy or careless about especially calendar alarm sanity and really literally just moments before Alex called, I was like, fuck, not because of Alex, but like, fantastic, Alex, stop. Like, why do you have to keep throwing these up everywhere all the time? I went and I looked, and I guess I had done this on our weekly recording session event that we are participating in right now.

I think I had five or six notifications, like five minutes before, 16 hours before, hour before, and like that explained a lot. And like, but how did that happen? I don't know, but it happened. And I think the functional component, as you say, is to realize when that is happening. And, of course, you do realize it in the moment that you go, hmm. You know?

AlexYeah.

MerlinBut you've got to convert that hmm into part of a larger omnibus effort to reduce the number of notifications that are totally non-nutritional.

MaxI'm using a pretty fun – is this episode already not getting published? Can we do more? Yeah, of course. This will never come out. Yeah, yeah. So I've kind of gone full Mike Hurley.

Okay. You got reminders for your reminders? Go on. I do. I have, like, I'm looking. So I right now have three reminders apps on my home screen, and I'm using them all. Remember to check do. Remember to check do. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. So here's what I have. So the problem is I have some, like, new responsibilities related to running this restaurant. You know what I'm saying? And it's hard. I found it like really challenging to reliably like get into a routine and like incorporate all the new things I have for the restaurant, the new responsibilities I have into my day.

And so an example is.

MerlinAnd the result is stress, I'm imagining.

MaxYeah. Well, and it's disrespectful to everyone who I work with who is like. But it's also it's also the word.

MerlinI mean, if I could say just to comment, and it's the worst of both worlds, because on the one hand, you have a system in place that's doing some things. And I'm sorry to be my wrong man here. But that's good. but if it's not complete, it's not everything. So you get this terrible classic cocktail of, I know there's the shit that's on my calendar that is just close enough to the truth to be useful, but also far enough from the truth to be really frustrating. I know there's stuff uncaptured and undone here. It is not your new word that is huge,

looms large in my life now, operationalized. I've not figured out how to integrate all of these things into my life. So you've got a combination of the shit here that may or may not be good enough to date The shit over here that I know is not in there and then I know I'm letting somebody down all the time It's a terrible feeling. Let me give you one of the examples

MaxSo we have every day one of my responsibilities at the restaurant is to open up our bookings Go through the whole list and flag anyone who I recognize and these could be who am I looking for? First of all, I'm looking for people that I know and then I can put a little note in being like this is my friend please give them a glass of wine or you know just treat them treat them well or whatever put a little note in for them sometimes i'm looking for people that i recognize from the restaurant industry because generally like it's kind of nice if you know someone from the industry comes into your place you want to hook them up a little bit maybe give them a special amuse bouche

or something so yeah a little something from the kitchen you know we do things a little bit differently here yeah small plates make sure they get the whole they get the whole talk you give

Merlinthem especially tiny plates plates that are even difficult to see without some kind of assistive vision device or AR, your dish is here. You just can't see it.

MaxIt's extremely small plates.

AlexThat's an illusion.

MaxMaybe I see Alex is coming in and I go, do not season their food at all.

AlexNo flavor.

MaxBut sometimes it's really important. Sometimes there's someone coming in who's a really important like VIP who we wanted, you know, someone who's like, let's say maybe they're like a game designer and we really want to like have them do events with us. And I want someone to like say hi to them and greet them. Or maybe it's a food critic or something. So just, you know, this is like part of my job is like, I'm supposed to go in every single day and put those notes down. Do you do that? You do that in the morning? Well, here's the thing. We have booked, some people book same day. So here's the challenge is I can't like batch it and do it all at once for the

upcoming week it kind of needs to get done at every day and we open it for and the our our leadership team at the restaurant does their their pre-service meeting at three o'clock where they go through and they discuss every guest coming in and every table and how they're going to accommodate them and they go through allergies and vip status and just whatever it's like you make your game plan you know the the executive chef our gm everyone kind of gets together for the first couple weeks we were open i went to that meeting every single day and i would help out and do whatever that's not sustainable, I can't go to that meeting every day. And also they don't need me. It's just

unnecessary. So my job now is before they meet at three o'clock, I need to go into the thing and put my notes down. And if it doesn't happen, if they see that there's no notes from me or I haven't done it, it's really stressful for them because they don't have more time. Like they're scrambling

Merlinevery day to get the restaurant ready. Now you're the gating factor. You're the...

MaxCorrect. I've now made their lives difficult. And so what I did is I start... First thing I did, I made a recurring event on my calendar every single day that we're open 1 p.m. Do the pre-service check on it. And what happened almost immediately is like the thing is like putting that on my calendar. Well, that isn't the same type of job as show up to this appointment on time. Go to get to your doctor's appointment on time. Those have there's a really different because the doctor's appointment is like a calamity. If you're five minutes late and the pre-service thing, it pops up and I'm like, I'll do that in 10 minutes, which is fine.

I can't I can't actually do it in 10 minutes.

MerlinIt needs to be, you're in that weird place, that weird liminal space where it's like, there's certain kinds of events that need to be done at some point without a lot of urgency. And then there's these certain kinds of tasks that have not top urgency, but also not specific date time. Those can, I think those can be the trickiest. This just needs to happen, quote unquote, this morning. And you're like, can I put this off for like an hour?

MaxExactly. And here's the other problem. It pops up on my calendar. Of course, when it pops up, I'm in the middle of something else that's critical. And so I go, I just swipe the notification away. I'm like, I'll deal with this later. And then now it's, now it's done. Game over. Like I'm never going to think about it again until everyone's texting me and they're like, why didn't you do this? So that's where do comes in. So I put that app do on my phone. And right now I only, I actually only put, I only have two items in do, but I found it in the last week. I found it super handy. So the first one is 1 PM. Remind me every five minutes to add

pre-service notes for the game cafe until it's done. And then the other one is when I basically, when I wake up, remind me to do a review of things so that I keep remind, you know, it's like

Merlinthroughout them, like it reminds me of comb through and make sure everything is up to date.

MaxAnd just like, look at the items like, well, that's, this is a, I have to have gotten this from you Merlin, the idea that like, it's very important to look at your to-do list before you start to dive into your email and everything, because otherwise it's chaos.

MerlinIt's a big David Sparks thing I picked up back when David was primarily an attorney, before he was mostly a podcasty guy. But David, the thing I learned from David was that if you're doing OmniFocus and GTD well in the David Sparks style, you should be able to basically look at OmniFocus and, as I like to say, think about your work. Think about your work and look at OmniFocus twice a day. You should be able to do that in the morning and you should be able to do that at night and then proceed through your day with some degree of confidence. Not

everybody, but I think that's a very sane thing. Actually, somebody just relinked to this talk I did at an OmniFocus event about this issue. I'll come based thinking in OmniFocus. So good. Oh, thank you. I'm a little manic in it.

AlexOkay, real quick. uh, this is, I would say an amazing Merlin man, like starter pack. If you were to get, you know, like Pokemon trading cards, they have like a starter deck. This is definitely in there. Okay. Dig dug interjection over.

MerlinIf I think for, I think for like, I think I would recommend it to somebody. If you want to determine whether you can tolerate my style would be one way to watch it. Cause you could tell I'm quiver, I'm quivering with Adderall. I'm just quivering with Adderall.

MaxLet's say you've listened to 400 hours of Dubai Friday, and you're out there going, can I tolerate Merlin Mann's style? Exactly.

MerlinThis is the uncut shit.

MaxYeah, you already listen to him saying that he identifies as an attack helicopter, and you're like, hmm, I like this guy's style. How much of it can I tolerate? Listen!

AlexI don't even know who we're making fun of anymore.

MerlinMy adoptive, my homemade family is now, oh gosh, it's 943.

MaxYes, we've all heard Merlin come out as an otherkin on the podcast.

MerlinI'm one-eighth squid person. Can you tolerate his style? I'm one-sixteenth Jareth. I'm a contact jungler. I'm a midnight toker. Anyway, the point is, in that talk, I do call out D. Sparks, who's in the audience. We'll put this in show notes. But that's not for everybody. But what I would say is, as in so many things that I think are valuable, it isn't that you have to adopt this particular system. You do not have to adopt Max's Reminders lifestyle.

You do not have to become like David Sparks. But you need to find out what will work for you and then let that evolve with the shape of your career and your day.

MaxHere's the big Merlin thought technology that's deeply gotten inside of my brain stem just because I saw some of these talks and stuff when I was in college. And I was learning how to handle responsibility in my life. And the idea is when you wake up in the morning, who should decide what you do that day? Is it you? Is it you? Or is it literally anybody who has your email address?

MerlinWho am I talking to here?

MaxWho am I talking to? Am I talking to you? Yeah. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. Who's allowed to capture and redirect your attention? Yeah. And if you ask me who decides what you do every day, I'd go, what are you talking about? I do. I pick my priorities and I decide what's important and that's what I do every day. In reality, most days what I wind up doing with my time is I wake up in bed, open the email app on my phone, look at just this huge dumpster fire of all the problems that everyone has. It's been my whole day just dealing with that.

And I never do anything on my, let's say, on my to-do list that's what I've decided is important to me. Yeah.

MerlinYou end up responding to what David Allen calls latest and loudest, which is definitely a thing.

MaxYes. And then I get home at 7 o'clock at night, and I sit down at home, and I'm done with work. And I'm like, finally, I can do some of the things that are important to me on my to-do list. Like, now the work... Time enough at last. Yeah. Yeah. Now the work begins. Yeah.

MerlinNo, I... So, I'm struggling to make this point well. is that if there's anything, the big thrust of that talk and of my larger Weltanschauung is that you do need infrastructure in life. You do need a glass in which to put the water of your life. You do need those things. But you also, I hope the thing that gets teased out in that talk is that the smarter you think you are, the dumber you may be. Because you think that you can think about your job all the time and that will make you better at it.

There are times when you should be thinking about your job, But there are times when it would be nice to be a pure doing machine, which is why we set aside time, not just time for reviews, but it's why we set aside time to parcel out what work will be done by sundown or whatever. And, like, whatever your needs are. And I said for a long time that I think people used to just give me so much stick about this. It's like, oh, it's fun for Merlin. But I was like, if you get three really good things done today, you're having a better day than 80% of the most, like, effective people.

AlexOh, yeah.

MerlinYou'd be amazed how many people don't feel like they got. And it's not even three things I intended to do. It's not even three important things. I'm talking about, or three urgent things, like three good things you produced. And I'm not just talking about artsy fartsy stuff, like whatever it is. The thing is, your attention gets so fucking shredded with all of this different shit you've got to do. You never get to refocus on the contract you made with yourself.

MaxThe other piece of it is like, you don't have to be very, like, how do I put it? Like you don't have to like, at a certain point, people in their career responsibilities or whatever, people get really tired of making decisions. You get like decision fatigue because you have so many responsibilities. And you don't need to be like an executive in a Fortune 500 company to feel like that. I think a lot of like artists, game designers, like people who make shit for a living, by the end of the day, they're just like, holy fuck. Like I cannot decide more things because you're dealing with your business, your marketing, creative decisions, like conventions, like partnerships.

Like it's overwhelming, like the amount of things that you're supposed to do just to like make a piece of art and put it out into the world. And you're doing yourself no faith. Like the thing I'm trying to avoid is to is to make the same decision over and over and over and over, especially in the same day. So what I what I want to do is when when I think about something, I want to try to again, I'm just this is just I'm just saying Merlin things now. But like, I don't want to be like, I don't want to like, think about it, like turn the problem over in my head, like think of everyone that it affects, like really mull it over and then be like, I'll think about it more later. Like, no, now you have it. So it's like, no, no, it'll be endless. That'll be, no, I think, but there's also a thing, I'm not saying you're saying this, but I could see someone saying this is like, okay, I just got interrupted, quote unquote.

MerlinI just got interrupted with my third, fourth, fifth, oh, I need you to make a decision about this thing today. There must be a certain point of fatigue where you're like, what the fuck did I hire you people for? Like at a certain point, is there no way that you could mostly make this decision and say to me, is it, I mean, I think this is an effective project management technique. Don't say, what should we do? What should we do about the offsite meeting? You're like, what the fuck does that mean? What you could say is, well, you know that off-site meeting is coming up and it's kind of my main thing right now.

What would you think of this budget for that and me hiring this caterer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? Can you sign off on that, yes or no? That kind of decision to me, I don't know about you, but I love a decision like that. If I disagree with the premise of a question, I will always fight back because I'm a contrarian. But if you're a team, you should be able to put things in front of people and say, hey, this seems like you hired me to do this thing. Here's what I want to do. Cool with that? Yes. Done. Boom. that's that's like a uh the best kind of like uh decision on a plate that you can hand to somebody

Alexwhat do you mean by the premise of the question like someone coming to you and being like what

Merlinwhat choice is it well the classic example obviously is when you say to somebody have you stopped beating your wife right and so well no that's not no i know so you don't know mary poppins you don't know that cliche have you stopped beating your wife no no have you stopped being their wife and so you you say um wait a minute if no matter how i answer that there's something implied that i have never stipulated to in what you're asking so i reject the premise of that question right the problem is if you i guess what i'm trying to say is i'm sorry i'm talking a

lot when you're on a team you got to get along with people you got to make it easy on people now max max let's interrogate this you what what are you in as much as you're comfortable saying what are you looking at when you're looking at the list of people what is that an app is that a site what do you what do you where are you and what are you doing when you look at that yeah yeah so

Maxwe use this platform called talk that does all of our bookings and people sort of is that by nick kakonis that is that's by a friend of the show and nick kakonis so we use that cafe yeah and i can uh and i can um basically i can go to my talk dashboard and it pulls up a list of all the reservations that I can click on. I can do it on my phone too. It's very easy. And then I just need

Merlinto click on it and add notes to each one. How many people, if you're comfortable saying, I don't know what your capacity is, how many names will you have to look at in a given day

Maxto be done with that? Yeah. So our busiest night that we've ever had was about 300 covers. And that's going to be an average. I'm trying to do the math in my head. Is that two seatings? Yeah, it's one turn a night is what we need. And we're doing a little bit more than that. And then it's about six people per table. So I don't know, we might be looking at 20 to 30 reservations a night. Okay. And then plus, we have like walk-ins and stuff.

MerlinThe resistance to that or the frustration, difficulty, stress, where can you identify the pain point of getting into that or completing that?

MaxSo it's a really easy task to do. It only takes me five minutes. And the thing is I have to find five minutes to do it. The pain point is that it always seems like it can be done later because it's such a lightweight. It's such an, oh, I just log on to this little website and click on some things. but if I don't do it it's a big problem for everyone and it just always seems like one of those things that can I'll do it later, I'll do it later, it's only five minutes, it's only five minutes and then suddenly it's way past due. What's the earliest that you could do it and know?

Like noon, like noon, you know, 11 or 12.

MerlinOkay, so generally between like 8 and noon probably?

MaxYeah, I should do it, like the later in the day I do it the better. It's a little bit of a game of chicken because I want to get, I want to see as close to the final picture of reservations as I can see but not wait so long that I forget to do it.

AlexOkay, well, does Talk have any sort of API? Because I know that you have a database of like all the people you know in Chicago, right? Is there a way to pull?

MaxOh, you're thinking, can I automate this?

AlexWell, but then it just leaves the people who are like, it just checks the people off.

MaxI bet you could pull it out, you could scrape it, but it would be difficult to add the notes. That would just be an extra step. Alex, my database of people is just my Google contacts. And then, and basically I just exported my, like, so it's basically everyone I've Gmail, I've exchanged email and Gmail with. And then I've tried to like put them in a spreadsheet and flag if I know, if I like personally know them or they live in Chicago so I can like invite them to things. But that would be such a nightmare to like cross index that with Todd. Like, I don't want to, like there's people, I've emailed with people who I do not want to send a free bottle of wine to.

MerlinAnd so we're talking about, we're really, what we're really talking about here, it's not the tech. It is the, how do I put this? It's you. It's something where you've got to find a you solution to this. Yeah, I'm the problem. Shit. Could you do it while you're taking a shit? Can you do it on your phone while you're taking a shit?

MaxI don't have a time to take a shit during the day.

MerlinOh, that's a shame. What do you do? Do you do it in a lamp or what do you do?

MaxNo, I just don't shit. Have you guys seen Jojo Rabbit? Did you guys see that?

AlexNot yet.

MerlinI haven't finished it, but I love what I've seen. I love Taika Waititi. I love that my daughter loves a little boy in that.

AlexThat's such a Merlin. She's seen it!

MaxThat's such a Merlin thing. I started it. I started it, but I haven't finished it. I have a busy lifestyle. I don't have time to shit.

MerlinOkay.

MaxThat movie, I finally just saw Jojo Rabbit, and that movie slaps. It was so good. I loved it. Best five minutes ever, you said. It was one of the best opening sequences of any movie I've ever seen.

MerlinWhen he first shows up in the slow motion and him dancing around, you see him walking into frame and all of that. But also just the scenes, it's such a classic, almost silent film performance because his face is so wonderfully expressive. And there's the scene where he's talking to the – they showed this during the Oscars, but the scene where I think he's talking to a girl, and Taika Waititi's over there on a settee, just like rolling his eyes at him like go do it go talk to her but i like that he keeps offering

Maxthe kid a cigarette too it's very funny that little kid is so delightful yeah that movie man fuck that movie was so good i i was before i saw that i felt like this was a pretty bad year for film i guess i still feel like that but that was just like what damn what a good movie are you

Alextalking about. No. Okay there, Mr. Trump.

MaxI didn't think 2019 was a very good year for film.

AlexOkay. All right. Moving on. Oh my God.

MerlinAlex, this is also, I feel like this is something that oh, what's the guy's name? Dr. Hunt ran into. And in some ways, McDreamy ran into too. When they had to move into management, they became very different sorts of people.

AlexDamn it, I'm a doctor is something that is said often. Oh, yeah.

MerlinI'm a doctor, not an engineer, Jim. Or you got, it also happened with McSteamy when he becomes anybody. When Homer Simpson puts on reading glasses, you know he's about to do something dumb. When you see a man in a suit with a Bluetooth in his ear, you know things are going to go wrong. So when McSteamy puts in the Bluetooth, oh, Jiminy.

AlexOh! No, no, no. Alex, did you ever see

Merlinthe movie Trainspotting?

AlexYep, I sure did. Where's this going in terms of productivity? Go on.

MerlinMy mind just got blown. I think I declare it earlier in this episode that will never air that I'm very good at recognizing the guy from the thing.

AlexRight.

MerlinKnowing what else somebody was in.

AlexRight. Oh, no.

MerlinDid you know Dr. Hunt was in Trainspotting?

AlexNo. I mean, that makes sense because he's a big accent boy.

MerlinHe's Tommy. He's the guy with the big yellow glasses.

AlexI hate Hunt. I hate Owen so much. I fucking hate that guy.

MerlinHe is a guy who does not adhere to GGD. I never liked him.

AlexHe is just like flying by the seat of his pants.

MerlinHe is. And he's, oh, look at me. I'm a troop. PTSD. Give me a break.

AlexNothing happened.

MerlinDo-go-do-go-do-go-do-go-do. Cafe.

AlexOh, Max, do you want to, I know there's some OPSEC issues, but do you want to talk about where you are right now?

MaxWhere is he right now? Oh, I'm at the cards. I'm at the cards retreat. Cards retreat. All right. Get that air filter going. It's, I'll be, well, I'll be home by the time this comes out. So do not come to my house. I will be sitting by the door with a shotgun.

MerlinWhat about your drill? How's your drill?

MaxSecured. The drill is highly secured. It's in an undisclosed location. I'm not going to say where it is. I will be sitting there with a shotgun. Do not come for my drill.

MerlinSecurity by drill obscurity. Yes.

MaxIf we have like infrastructure breakdown due to coronavirus, I will defend the drill. Do not come to my house.

MerlinProtect the drill at all costs. I'm so scared.

MaxOh, God.

Merlinyesterday was a turning point guys whoa woof our mayor just declared an emergency yesterday well because because linden breed not a fan but god bless her she's doing what the fucking federal government is not which is saying this shit's serious and it's just a matter of time holy

Maxshit i don't have any of the masks i mean i i don't mean to i listen maybe i'm wrong in this and this will like wipe out human civilization but like people should probably worry about getting a flu shot go ahead and get your flu shots people and then and then and then fret about the coronavirus

Alexaffecting your life all right so i've done that and now i'm now i am fretting i'm on all right

Maxwell no now go go go buy a one of those masks they don't have like a mask and they don't have

Merlinrubbing alcohol and you'll be fine they have two orders of magnitude fewer protective gear than they need just for responders yeah it's it's a seriously fucked situation that you're not

Maxgoing to realize how fucked it is until it's fucked okay well i'm not panicked no no no i

Merlincould be i could be wrong but yeah i don't think it's one thing to say like there's this there's this outbreak and uh you know on the one hand you get the the bullshit at the highest levels of federal government going ah you're good all right put a marker down five dollars five dollars five dollars no i think trump's i think trump's got the right read on it i don't know whoa

MaxI think it's, I think if, if, listen, if it's probably, you know, it's a little bit like my views on global warming, which is, I actually, like, I do think global warming is like a catastrophe. But even if it wasn't, even if some of the science turns out to be wrong, I think like all the things you would do to fight global warming are good things to do anyway.

MerlinDoes that make sense? Right? Like, no, it's like accessibility. It's one of those things where like, there's nothing harmful about doing the right thing.

MaxCorrect. Like, well, and people are like, well, the science is wrong. So we shouldn't cut down on air pollution. how about this let's go ahead and it snowed today it snowed today so there must be yeah and it's like well okay maybe that maybe maybe you don't believe the science but like how about this let's go ahead and cut down on the air pollution anyway regardless of that because it'll make our lives better i said like fine like cities we should be more prepared for like a pandemic right but i i

Merlindon't know i'm not i'm not i could i don't know a heat wave in antarctica melted 20 of one island's snow in nine days. Well, that's

Maxdefinitely going to fuck us. Global warming is the thing that I'm much more worried about.

AlexThat's the end. I'm glad they didn't

Maxtalk about it too much, or by which I mean

Merlinat all, because I think we should really be focusing on the electability of a given Jew.

AlexOh, okay.

MerlinYep. Oh my god, I hate Bloomberg

Maxso much. I hate him so much. Well, who knows if Bernie can win an election? There's literally no way to know if people would vote for him. There's no way

Merlinto know. Just because he gets the most votes doesn't mean he won. Exactly. Because he didn't win right. Merlin, you ready to come on in? The waters are so nice, man. We'd love to have you. I just want people to be happy, Max. I'm glad the cafe is going well.

MaxCan I advertise something before we talk about the challenge? Is it C2E2? Oh, yes. Alex will talk about C2E2. You do that first, Alex, and then I have something else to advertise.

AlexWe've already covered it. Again, C2E2.com and Cards Against Humanity Love Chicago.com.

MaxYou can high-five Alex. She will sign things for you.

AlexYep. I'm so excited.

MaxThey will give you a Dubai Friday windbreaker if you ask.

AlexPlease don't touch my hands. A wind jacket. Please don't touch my hands. You said it once and it was so funny.

MaxA wind jacket. A Dubai Friday wind jacket. Yes, you can get a commemorative official Dubai Friday.

MerlinHe's drunk on words. Drunk on words. Wind jacket.

AlexWe actually have Cards Against Humanity wind jackets now. and they look like FBI jackets and it's great. I get to dress up like a cop at events. They're so bad.

MaxI almost hate to tip this publicly because it's such a good, it's so powerful, but I had jackets made up for our whole team that does conventions and they're basically sort of a, I think the style is like a coach's jacket is what it's called. It's one of those very FBI looking windbreakers. And it just says, what does it say? like staff on the back i think it just says event block letters event staff yep and let me tell you if you wear one of those like because occasionally like we're not doing anything illicit but sometimes

i will have a situation for example where i'm trying to come into the theater there you know a lot of these the conventions have a prohibition against entering the theater once a panel has started and sometimes because i'm working in the theater i need to come in while while it started because i'm like for example like working on tech or whatever bringing a person who's in the show in or something like that. And I will get into altercations with the volunteers who are like, you're not allowed to come in. And I'm like, but it's my theater. And they're like, but these were the rules I was told to enforce. Now, if you show up in a little wind jacket

that says event staff on it, no one even asks any questions. They go, oh, that guy's not wearing that for fun. He's supposed to be. Federal board game inspector.

AlexYeah, no one would put that on willingly.

MaxYou know what? Federal board game inspector is very funny.

AlexNo, it's not. It's not.

Maxit. It's not that funny. I might have to make that. That's a very funny win-jack. That has a very Max Temkin feel to it. Yep, it sure does. All right, here's my advertisement. So please do come to C2E2. We do have some treats and giveaways, and you can touch Alex's feet. There are real actual treats and giveaways. That is a thing. So come on, yes. So I am going to, fuck, I got to look at the dates for that i wasn't prepared for this uh this advertisement that i have to get oh i think my

first pitch was that okay go on sorry sorry let's uh yeah it will be the week of march 16th is that

Alexright yes it is the it is the week of march it is the week of march 15th i will be doing a road trip

Maxwith a few magician friends we will be doing a trip through the south so we will be going to St. Louis, we will be going to Nashville we will be going to Chattanooga we will be going to Atlanta and we may be possibly also adding an Orlando stop so we can go to Disney World. Pack your bags and move away. Because the

Merlinmagicians are coming to town. I will

Maxbe there. I will be traveling to these cities with some of my magic friends as we road trip to a magic convention. My magic friends.

AlexMagical, magical. If you would like

Merlinto. Hello, my magic friends. several of them are woodland creatures could you stop making fun of me so I can do my hello the magic

Alexhello

Merlinoh you have coins in places you didn't know a coin you were I'm a fawn

Maxwe would be We will be driving through these cities the week of March 16th on our magical road trip. Not stopping.

MerlinJust passing through.

MaxWe are interested in doing and hanging out with listeners of the show, friends of the show in those cities, and possibly doing house shows. So this would be a gathering of like 10 people, a dozen people, very small. We just hang out and have some drinks, and everyone will do a little magic so we can practice some material and meet interesting people. If you would like to host us for a house show or show us something fun to do in one of these cities, please email me. Oh, wait. No, wait a minute.

AlexDon't do that.

MaxNo, wait a minute. I'm thinking, thinking, processing. You will go to MaxEssentialism.com slash Road Trip. And there, there will be a Google form where you can contact me.

AlexSo are there regular house shows? Like it's 2003 emo scene? Like what the? Yeah.

MaxThat's like what the double, like the double clicks have done house show tours.

AlexThey're really cool. I know, but exactly, exactly. That's, that's the, I've been and enjoy house shows that like some of the best concerts I've ever seen are house shows, but I did not know there was a magician hot, uh, uh, house show scene. Well,

Maxthere isn't where we're, there isn't.

AlexOkay. All right. Do it. All right. Now, now this is checking out. Okay.

MerlinWe're, we're, we're, we're, it's just like an underground railroad of personal assault.

AlexOkay. Yep. we thought it would be please invite us into your home

Maxtake me back to the plantation this is terrible if you would like six Jews who are very good magicians to come to your house and do magic tricks they won't leave the house

Merlinleave in it for hours

Maxin the cities of St. Louis Nashville, Chattanooga Atlanta or Orlando go to maxessentialism.com slash road trip. And Alex will put that in the show notes.

AlexI mean, I will. I'm excited to see how this goes. Is this ill-advised? I'm a centaur.

MaxDo you guys think this is ill-advised?

AlexNo, I am excited. I have men have horse

Merlinand I do magic. You're experienced. I'm a magic friend.

MaxAlex, it's such fucking good people are coming on the, so it's Jordan and Simon and then Adam Rubin who's like, I don't know him. I think you should maybe see him in Chicago. He's like, He's really funny. He does some magic with cards against humanity cards. He's incredible. And then this dude, Andrew Goldenhirsch, who he's a regular at the Magic Castle, but I think he's probably one of the best living magicians. That dude is on another plane.

AlexAnd yet he wants to go to strangers' houses, so great opportunity for everyone out there. Well, it's cool.

MaxIt's so much more cool to go do magic and have it be small and personal for someone rather than be like, come to this theater and I'll stand on a stage and pop out of a box or something.

AlexI agree. It's the coming into the home part of, you know, I am excited for this experiment.

MaxOr just, like, invite your friends and we'll go out and hang out at a bar.

AlexI don't know. People, just go to a bar. I don't know. Okay, Max, think of this from your end.

MaxI've had house shows in my house. I think they're cool.

AlexNo, no, no. No, no, no. as the performer going to a house that you have not seen it's like an airbnb of theater like this

Maxis a big oh like you don't know what's there you think it's going to be like that something awful

Alexhouse you i don't i don't know what that is but you don't know what's going on in the basement the grover house the it's gonna there's gonna you're gonna be in at least one sex house there's going to be at least one orgy happening what's a sex house oh i mean let me tell you i'm in a sex

Maxhouse right now i'm in a major sexy cocaine house right now i am i'm in my i'm doing a little laps around my room and there is a mirrored a credenza that is clad in mirrors that is a cocaine credenza that is oh wait if you're you're telling me you have a fancy house in la and you have all this mirrored furniture that my friend is a cocaine that's where you get a line going yep oh and And there's a framed painting of a $100 bill. What? And a mirrored credenza.

MerlinAnd they knew that that was going to be an Airbnb that people come to?

MaxIt's a Hollywood. It's a guy. We're in LA. We're staying in the house of a Hollywood sicko.

MerlinOh, shit. Yeah. They pump them full of drugs. You know? I mean, people don't. And then pump them full of other things.

AlexKids don't do cocaine like they used to.

Maxnope nope it's a shame i think this is this house has huge cocaine energy this sounds like you know what we cannot say it on air but i'm going to send you a picture of something very funny in this house maybe we'll say it in the after show but we probably shouldn't see merlin i bet people

Alexjack off to this 100 they love it all right people jack off everything alex send it it's a movable

Merlinfeast you can come on anything oh god everything everything's food if you're hungry okay let me

AlexI also update

Merlinthat the picture on IMDB is wrong

Alexthat guy is

MerlinTommy not Spud so don't email me IMDB is wrong not me

AlexI was like wow that looks really really different but

MerlinTwitter is telling me that that is a person called it's a different person is what they're telling me on Twitter

Maxlook at these pictures that I just sent this is the house

AlexHolds for messages Okay got it got it got it Oh god

MerlinOh god What oh god Oh my god

MaxThat's the person's house

AlexThat's the person's house Oh my god

MerlinOh no this is so Without saying anything identifiable Let's just say this person is in an industry And they have terrible Taste in relationships

AlexI mean I mean, they've come so far.

MaxThese are the awards that they've won in the entertainment industry, and it is for producing things that I...

MerlinThis is X-Grabble. X-Grabble, early 2000s music?

AlexMm-hmm. Yep.

MerlinAll right, good for them. Wow.

AlexYeah.

MerlinOh, boy, it's so gaudy.

AlexYep. In the end, it didn't even matter.

MaxLook at that chair. That is a chair for fucking. It's definitely well the whole house is for fucking and for cocaine. I cannot emphasize enough but look at that chair

AlexLook at that chair. It's oh, I had to think of the mechanics for a second, but there we go. Yep. Yep. Yep Every chair is for fucking but this chair is for capital F fucking yep And it wipes clean with a damn cloth exactly that exactly exactly this

MaxThere's a lot of cocaine surfaces a lot of cocaine. Where's my sex squeegee? squeegee has anybody seen my sex squeegee a lot of the lights in the house are like purple i think

Alexthey must be like hue lights and they're all set to purple oh oh you know what oh oh oh no i just

Maxthought of why that would be you got a lot of out of tune guitars hanging out everywhere oh no oh no

Alexall right uh people if you want to hear the after show go to give us your fucking money.com

Merlini bet when they have sex they make a lot of sex noises and that's probably still in the air too there's probably there's probably aspirated what's the word i'm looking for like when you flush the toilet it's it's probably like um atomized atomized jizz and and shrieks of pleasure

Alexwait can that happen wait wait wait so like how you like how you flush a toilet every every time

Merlinyou every time you come you're ejaculating a molecule of napoleon i i it's like sourdough

Alexbread oh my god dick dog challenge challenge this week is mine and uh just to review a little bit um

Merlinwe talked about this a lot in the after show but i was very enthusiastic for this challenge because there's something i started doing with my family that has been a huge hit it is called potato night and potato night is or also known as uh what max calls oops all sides but don't erase all sides Oops, all sides. Potato night is my invention because I realize that the family, the ladies in the family most like the sides. I'm there for the meat. I've come to love the sides. But so we do a thing called potato night where, yeah, sure, I make big steaks, but it's also

all about the sides. So the challenge for this week was to, ideally, with the input and assistance of a loved one, make a dinner of a lot of your favorite sides. You could experiment. You could do classics. You can make comfort food. But sort of like you play, let's have breakfast for dinner, or let's have appetizers for dinner. This is let's have sides for dinner. And so that was the challenge. It's potato night, colon, oops, all sides.

AlexOops, all sides.

MerlinI believe this is a rare week where we all did the challenge. Yeah. And we all did it well. I'll go first because mine's really simple. I made the classic. So as I said, we are essentially, this began as us trying to emulate at our home a visit to House of Prime Rib, where they have prime rib in a Zeppelin, but also have great sides. So I made the classic. I made baked potatoes with all the fixings. Wait, I'm going to look at my list. So I do baked potatoes, the Elton Brown recipe, which is very basic but very delicious.

So baked potatoes with butter, sour cream, fresh chives, and bacon bits. We get Oscar Mayer bacon bits, heat them up. Cream spinach. I made asparagus tips because I accidentally overbought on asparagus. and when I overbought on the asparagus, I realized I could do just the tips, which is what I did.

MaxAnd then we made what my daughter used to. Oops all tips.

MerlinOops all tips. That's right. You rub it and it turns into a briefcase. Just the tips. And then I also made a non-side, which is what my daughter used to call red steak. And so I made a tomahawk chop, big ass steaks in the sous vide with a sear and then had all the sides. So I made the most conventional one that we have. We didn't make Yorkshire pudding because it turned out we didn't have eggs, but we usually make that too. But we made it. It was great. and everybody loved it. And that's my boring one. I am very excited to hear both of you because from photographs, I realize this heavily reflects

the ways that both of you are broken. Or special. Who goes first?

AlexI don't really. All right. Oops, all sides. I'll go.

MerlinOh, boy.

AlexOur friend, Kathy Campbell, Mrs. Soup on Twitter, sent actually her Yorkshire pudding recipe to me. And I'm like, this seems like something I won't mess up too bad. got all the ingredients and realized we did not have a muffin tin to cook it in. Oops. So really all sides. Oops, no sides.

MerlinThere's also a pretty passable. It's silly. I mean, it's a little bit like any of those kit foods where you're like, well, you know, it's flour, eggs, butter, usually big and fat. But there is a little kit that you can get in a box that makes a pretty passable Yorkshire pudding. And I do like the type setting on the box.

AlexOh, good.

MerlinJust FYI. I'll put it in notes.

AlexWell, I don't. So what did you make, Alex? Listen, I don't go to the grocery store very often. I order my nuts from nuts.com, which I discovered independently myself. And I have a scoop of peanut butter.

MaxYou told Marco about it.

AlexYeah, I told Marco. Also Linode.

MerlinYou told him about Linode?

AlexHave you heard of Tumblr?

MerlinReally, a lot of the things that are. Dogs, he suggested dogs. Reblogging. was your idea.

AlexMm-hmm, mm-hmm. I feel bad. Okay. Dig-tug.

MerlinWhat if I want to read this later? How would I do that? I want something that's a little bit like instant paper, I guess.

AlexYou know what?

MerlinInstantaneous paper.

AlexYou're so good at this. Fuck you.

MerlinYou're so good at this. You should write comedy. And so you sent me a photograph of you and your pal, and it looked to have been possibly the most Alex Cox meal of all time.

AlexSo I had recently the cafe.

MaxAlex, it looks like you've been, based on that photo, I would guess that you had been in orbit for several weeks watching television, trying to figure out how what humans eat.

MerlinAnd then you came down to our planet and you're like, I must consume the vehicles in parking lot of roast beef place. This is food.

MaxWhat are food?

AlexWhat are food? Oh, God.

MaxAnd then at the end of the meal, you did your update and you were like, commander, we've secured the nutrients. We ate as the locals do.

AlexLook it. I eat human food. I mean food. I bit it. I bit it real hard. Well, the idea again, there was going to be Yorkshire pudding. And then I wanted to do, as I'm eating too many carbs again, we wanted to emulate the fries, the waffle fries from Chicago Diner, which has some of the best fries in Chicago. They're waffle fries.

MaxThose are so good.

AlexThey're amazing. But they had, and I'm like, you know what? There was no stipulation about like frozen food. So let's just go get some frozen waffle fries. Did not have frozen waffle fries. However, they had frozen sweet potato fries. So we got those. They were actually pretty good. And also there was Arby's.

MerlinAs long as you don't think, I'm sorry, I stepped on you. As long as you're not thinking, oh, these are going to be like delicious McDonald's fries. If you get sweet potato fries and you have an open heart and open mind, can't lose. Holy shit. They can be so fucking good.

AlexYeah.

MerlinThey're so sweet.

AlexThey're not as savory, but they're so good. Those were wonderful. But also in the frozen food section, I saw a package. Arby's seasoned curly fries. And to my knowledge.

MerlinBut it's like a mirage. I would be rubbing my eyes like, is this something I'm allowed to have at a store?

AlexRight? Yeah. And there aren't any Arby's to my knowledge, like anywhere close to me in Chicago. So it's kind of like White Castle. Like you gotta make a trek, I'm sure. And so I'm like, all right, I haven't had curly fries in what? Like at least five years. And I'm like, all right, yeah, this is a side that I enjoy. And then later, just we were going down the like baking aisle. And I see on sale, red lobster cheddar bay biscuit mix.

And I'm like, oh, that's something I've eaten and very much enjoyed.

MerlinAlex, isn't that a destination food? Isn't that a thing where people will go to Red Lobster just to get the biscuits?

AlexWhen they fuck me good, they take my ass to Red Lobster. And I don't enjoy lobster. I don't know if people who...

MerlinI don't want to circle back to that ass remark, but go on. What? They take your ass to what?

AlexOkay, people are going to know that reference. I refuse to...

MerlinI thought it was something to do with Matchy's parents and a gift card.

AlexNo, no. I mean, that's one of the, thank God, there's no, I hope there's no red lobster in Chicago. Don't tell me if there is. I don't want to, I don't like fish.

MerlinNo, no, no, no, it's bad. No, red lobster's just bad as an enterprise.

MaxI love these cheddar bay biscuits. I think they're like just a miracle of like processed and fast food items. And you don't need a special mix to make them at home. You can make them using basically three ingredients, which is, if I remember correctly, you should google this but it's it's uh bisquick like you know the pancake mix yeah and then cheddar just an enormous amount of cheddar cheese and water and i think you mash that up into a paste and bake it and you put butter on top and it's it turns into like it's basically like making corn

bread it's that easy it's it is like it's like three ingredients it is so easy to make crap and um i love i will do like the only the only difference i'll you can look google like cheddar bay biscuits bisquick and there's probably a thousand recipes out there of how to clone these they're so easy to make they're you know what they're really good for you make them for breakfast you cut one open you put an egg in there oh grape jam a little bit of grape jam well grape jam you got a stew going now i'll like to get a i'll like to get a real sharp cheddar in there a zesty

Alexcheddar well that's the thing the the back said uh a quarter cup of sharp cheddar cheese and i'm like well i don't that's the the only critique i have about these red lobster biscuits is always that there's either too much butter too much cheese or too much garlic and i'm like oh i know what i can do i went and got mild cheddar and then yep and i i only used half the amount of the like garlic salts they used and i only alex why not just can i ask you a question why not just

MaxWhy not just eat the powder with a spoon? Why don't you just eat the box?

MerlinYeah. Biscuit, biscuit, biscuit. This is biscuit?

AlexI did take a little taste of the batter because I was just curious.

MerlinJust to make sure it doesn't have too much flavor. To say you had a taste of it might be stretching it a bit. You put a rudimentary paste on your face.

AlexIt was just a little bit. It was by far less than a spoonful. It was like a pea-sized amount. But then a number of things happened. It says very much don't over stir, which is a thing with baking any type of bread or starchy stuff, I guess.

MerlinIt turns into like a playground ball.

AlexExactly. I made the mixture without adding the cheese, and I'm like, uh-oh. So I definitely over-mixed it.

MaxI can't believe you messed up this recipe it's like add water and mix

Alexwell as I mean I'm technically on a raw food diet if you think about it because I mean well because nothing I eat is cooked well some of my almonds are roasted yeah my peanuts are roasted never mind joke retracted but it's I don't cook or bake or it's it gets very hot in the kitchen I don't like it

MerlinI bet your landlord doesn't like you preparing food.

AlexWe finally got our dishwasher back. Hooray. Oh, nice. I know. And then apparently you're not supposed to microwave butter for more than like 10 seconds. But I put it in for 30 seconds and it splattered all. Splatter.

MerlinSplatter all over the microwave.

AlexSplatter. Yeah.

MerlinYou got to work those percentages, baby.

AlexYep, yep. And I just kept telling Matchy, like, unless I'm going to do something dangerous, just let it happen. And he was like, okay, all right, all right.

MaxOh, so Matt knows how to cook.

AlexYeah, no, he is actually, like, pretty, he got into cooking, like, last year. And so it was, like, slowly, like, that's becoming his thing.

MerlinAnd cooking, is cooking for you a component of that? Cooking things you will eat.

AlexThat is the thing is how to make a dinner for what would be a three-year-old as well as an adult human who enjoys flavor. And he's very good at that. And he knows, all right, these vegetables definitely need to be seared and burnt and not salt, but not too much salt. Anyway.

MerlinSeared, burned, and salt. That's the recipe for which vegetable?

AlexI don't know. Like stir-fry. You know what those words mean? He makes good stir-fry that I like.

MerlinSlow-broasted with the sea salt.

AlexI enjoy it in a blender.

MerlinThat's food.

AlexOh, I got a little salt grinder. That's, wow, that is a game changer. Putting that on my air-popped popcorn, that's delicious. Wow.

MerlinYou should also try yeast. Try yeast.

AlexOh, I did. I did. It's better than you think. It is, yeah, the nutritional yeast. I don't know why it's nutritional, but a bunch of my friends have been like, who use that instead of like the cheese powder, are like, yeah, it's great. It's weird tasting, but it's nice. The final problem that happened, and I'm not entirely sure why, is they came out completely raw on the inside. I kept hearing Paul Hollywood in my head,

like just looking at, just saying that and looking at me with disappointment. But I don't know what happened. I don't know. Like I did it for-

MerlinYou had two kinds of French fries and cheese bread. Is that right?

AlexYes, yes. Did you preheat the oven? Yes, yes. Before you... To 425, the correct temperature that the box instructed me to do. I did ask Matchy, should I put it on the top or the bottom of the oven tray thingies? And I put it on the top. So the outside was cooked and very good. It was crunchy. So basically I ate crust, which was delightful. Oops, just all crust. And the insides, I ate one.

And I'm like, no, it can't be that raw. But when I was throwing up a half hour later, I was like, that probably was raw. But otherwise, a success.

MerlinSometimes, I don't know if it'll work for these, but for some kinds of bready things, there's a pretty easy trick where you just stick a toothpick in and see if it comes out cleanly.

AlexOkay.

MerlinSo that'll give you some idea.

Alexabout no no i'm not trying to shame you i'm just saying it was just a little moist and i'm like it's got to be and maddie just kept making this look of like so it's not a biscuit so much as a crusted it's a crusted batter puck it basically was especially the ones i made too tall and they were like completely burnt too tall biscuits that's what we call it too tall biscuits

Maxlong cars

Merlinholy shit that sounds so good now what now what are you as a Syracuse and I like to say tell us about your side's results were you pleased with what you did is this something you would consider doing again what would you do differently next time um matchy makes everything

Alexbut no oh we also just said

Merlindid Maci like did Maci like the concept did he like the concept of the sides dinner

Alexloved it loved it because if you can't go wrong because it's like who

Merlineverybody likes at least one side yes like you think about and everybody says this about not everybody but a lot of people say this about Thanksgiving you know my favorite part is you know leaving and having sides and that's the best part you get to leave after you've had sides turkey's good but man the fucking sides everybody brings a side you get green bean casserole you get all these great things. This is the ultimate crowd-pleasing, I think, fun event meal in some ways. I was thinking about

Alexthis, and really our family Thanksgiving dinners have just been they end up being oops all sides because there is a turkey, and the turkey's very good, but that's what people take home as leftovers, not

Merlinthe sides. The turkey's a MacGuffin.

AlexYes, yes. You know what I'm saying?

MerlinThe turkey's there to go like, hey, it's Thanksgiving, but man, I'm all about this side

Alexand then leaving.

MerlinYeah, I love leaving.

AlexThat's the best part. Best part.

MerlinYeah.

AlexAnd then you just wave like, oops, oops, gotta go.

MerlinWhoops, oops, gotta bounce. So it sounds like, you know, for a first try, you're satisfied with the idea and some of the results?

AlexOh, yeah. I had no resistance. You discovered Arby's Curly Fries, dude. Well, I had like five years ago, like there's an Arby's in the suburbs. So I've definitely had, I don't remember when I've had Arby's Curly Fries. I just remember them being very good at some point. And the bowling alley in my neighborhood also had amazing curly fries that were very crunchy. But yeah, no, we also got a bunch of pots and like real mixing bowls and shit for Christmas,

which is very exciting. So now we can do this without it taking three hours. Yeah. Success as a concept. Execution, you know.

MerlinHey, you know, first try. It's the first pancake all over again.

AlexYou know what I'm saying? Exactly. Yep, yep.

MerlinWell, we turn now to the person who, from this photo and his entire life, will just shame us. Shame us with his sides. Let me just ask you about those Arby's frozen fries.

MaxYes. I feel like when I was a kid, my family had frozen french fries occasionally that you'd get from the grocery store or something like that. They're never like a particularly good product. They're always a little bit like, they're just soggy.

AlexOh, no. Right. Right. And so this is something that later, Matt, she told me, was like, if you put a little water on top of them before to crisp them up, or like we should have done. Water? That seems wrong. To crisp them up. I am confident that then it is wrong, and I wasn't listening. But there's something to do to-

MerlinI would say canola oil, maybe?

AlexThat might have been. It was some sort of liquid, or seasoning.

MerlinOh, wow.

AlexWhat a journey. I was watching the debate. I was we were watching the debate. Oh, you watched it, huh? The whole thing this time.

MerlinOh, no. That was weird. It was fucking weird. We watched Grey's Anatomy.

AlexBut no, Max is right. It's never going to be as good because, I mean, it's frozen.

MaxThe thing about being a grown up that's incredible is I can go get a McDonald's French fries literally anytime I want. I mean, I can press a button on my phone and have a man bring me McDonald's French fries.

MerlinI have a recommendation I can't say that these will be the sort of fries that would make you happy in life but if I do make oven fries I am partial to the Orida extra crispy fast food fries and I think they cook up better than most fries and they are pretty crispy and you can put them on a baking sheet now if you're like me you might do a combination of like some french fries and some like frozen meatballs because that's going to be a nice late night treat as long as you don't fall asleep and the smoke alarm goes off

and your family thinks they're dying. Extra crispy fast food fries by Orida, $4.29, 26 ounces.

MaxI have an endorsement on this topic, which is if you want to have sort of French fry caliber potatoes come out of your home oven, I recommend Kenji Lopez-Alt's recipe on Serious Eats called Ultra Crispy Roast Potatoes.

MerlinMmm. Has it got rosemary? Well, you can do however you want. I do a little, you know what I like? Lowry season salt. Oh, of course. It's so good. That or accent, boy. Woof. Yeah. Yeah, no, no, those are good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. These, this is, now he does them with duck fat.

MaxYou do not need to do duck fat, but I have purchased duck fat and made them with duck fat, and they are so fucking good. They get real crispy. They're very good. These are, these potatoes are.

MerlinIs the nature of duck fat, so duck fat's going to add a lot of flavor, but it's also, is it, I don't know what term. I know just enough to say, if you're doing high temperature stuff, use canola oil rather than olive oil. Is it something also about the temperature that it can accommodate?

MaxYeah, animal fats, I hope I'm right about this. Don't contact.

MerlinI think you are. I mean, like tallow, the tallow that used to be in McDonald's fries was a big part of what made them so good.

MaxCorrect. Well, don't contact me if I'm wrong about this. No, not at all. I think all animal fats are saturated fats. And saturated fats, which are solid at room temperature, are going to be your best option for high temperature cooking. They're going to be able to remove the most water from the food and crisp the food up the most. And taste the best. And give you the most heart disease. You don't need a lot. This recipe does call for a quarter cup of duck fat. That's a lot of fat. That's a lot. You will need a lot.

I've also cooked these with chicken schmaltz. Fucking delicious. Chicken schmaltz. Chicken schmaltz. Schmaltz.

MerlinIn jacket. Just a stickle.

MaxMy Yiddish is a little rusty. You gotta get a little schmutz. You gotta get a little schmutz on the potatoes.

MerlinOh, you gotta get a little schmutz on your schmazel? Uh-huh. And your schmuck. Just a little schmuck. A schmuck of bagels. Schmuck, schmuck, schmuck, schmuck, schmuck, schmuck.

AlexAm I getting in trouble for laughing at this? No, Max is here. Max is here.

MerlinI don't recognize that voice. You're both already canceled.

AlexOh, I know.

MerlinOh, really? Because we're not in the tribe?

AlexI aspire to be a problematic fave. I'd be fine with that, really. Like, you know.

MerlinI aspire to be a bathroom chimera. Max, tell us about, God, your home is so nice. I hate you. Tell me about, you don't have embarrassing pictures of your house. Your house is always pretty and clean. Tell me about these beautiful, beautiful sides.

AlexWith fresh flowers in the background. All right, go.

MerlinI know, and labeled cabinets, serviceware, extra baking. He's got labels on the cabinets.

AlexOh, I have labels on my cabinets. What the fuck is wrong with you people? How are you supposed to?

MerlinYou get a label gun. You get a label gun. You're going to talk to me about a label gun? Let me just be real clear about this. You're going to come at me about label makers? Is that what we're doing here?

MaxI think that we should have a label maker. You know what? I think this is a great challenge. We should have a fucking label maker off. Oh, my God. I practically invented label makers.

MerlinCall me Avery. Not that Avery. The other Avery. The Avery with the blue eyes. It looks like Derek Jeter.

MaxHere we go. We'll talk about it in the after show, but I think we should have-

MerlinOkay, I'm putting it in the sheet. Putting it in the sheet.

MaxWe should have a classic Dubai Friday label off.

MerlinOh, I love this. First thing, step zero, label the label maker. We all know that.

AlexNo, you just label where the label maker goes, which is how I label my label makers.

MerlinI'll draw an outline around it, like in Law & Order? Well, no, no, no.

AlexThis is where it was murder. You just say it. We have a label maker for the studio, and then we have a label maker for the supply. area and they both have tiles on that actually i think my tile fell off um but alex's label maker yeah let's say i put a tile on my segway oh good idea that's really cool yeah uh all right my oops

Maxall sides i will confess was mostly veronica was was sort of the creative director of the project manager and did most of the cooking i i got some assignments and cooked some of this stuff but she really did the she really did the heavy lifting here which is why it looks so good i have

MerlinI have so many well I don't have questions

Maxbecause you'll tell us about it this looks so fucking good I have I actually have a better picture I'll send you but I do I'm happy to post a picture of this in the show notes but we have so we just did some cheese and crackers I feel like people what kind of cheese is that

Merlinit looks really fancy

Maxit's a aged Gouda have you ever had an aged Gouda where it gets real hard and crisp it gets those yeah yeah

Merlinit's got the rindy thing on it

Maxoh damn is that good it's like the best parmesan cheese you've ever had it's a very flavorful cheese so I think the cheese and crackers, when do you ever have that's always something that you go to someone's party and they have a little cheese and crackers

Merlinwell this is also Max this is another thought technology, my ex-wife's grandparents used to have something they called happy hour and they were sweet old people and at like 3 or 4 every afternoon they'd get out the TV trays, they might have a drink but it was really mostly about having a little snack at 3 or 4, happy hour is a nice thought technology just for what it's worth

MaxI love that and you know I only ever

Merlinit's sort of like an American version of tea, tea time

MaxI only have cheese and crackers when I go to some party And then you can never have as much as you want You always have to have like a fifth as much as the cheese and crackers As you actually want to eat out of politeness

MerlinYeah, because of society

MaxYou never really, yeah, we live in a society And you never really have At least for me, I never really like Eat cheese and crackers in my own home

MerlinYou're a grown ass man, you should be able to have all the cheese and crackers you want

AlexPlus there's the politics of Picking which cracker Like you don't want to hog the fancy crackers You know what I mean? when there's like a...

MerlinOh, very true. Well, you don't want to take the last... Right. Oh, I see. Or you get the... Actually, you get the Ku Klux Klan kind or something.

AlexYeah. I never have that problem because I go straight for like the Ritz or whatever.

MerlinThere's a reason they call them crackers.

MaxSo this is a... This is a... I believe a Smitten Kitchen recipe. It's a bean lasagna. So it's lasagna, but instead of pasta, it has beans in it. Oh, that's really good. I did this Brussels sprouts and... I did this Brussels sprouts and bacon. And then we did the Pau de Keijo. I'm sure I'm saying it wrong, but it's those little Brazilian popovers with the cheese in them.

MerlinOh, those are terrific. I've had those at the Chara Scura place.

MaxYes, that's like a classic. You'll get those at the Brazilian steakhouse. They're also, it's a really easy recipe. In my opinion, a very easy recipe to make. And then this was a, oh, this was this potato and kale salad with brown butter vinaigrette. Veronica made this from... Oh my God, that sounds so good. It was, that was the winning dish of the meal. And that was something Veronica found in one of our favorite cookbooks of 2019 called Roughage by Abra Barons. I think that, I think it actually won a bunch of awards for being the best cookbook of 2019, but I definitely endorse that book. And it will, she, there's a lot of vegetable cookery in there and she really takes vegetables.

MerlinIs Veronica a vegetarian?

Maxum yeah for the most yes well i mean i'll come sorry like like for example like there's bacon

Merlinin the brussels sprouts which is i do want to talk about the brussels sprouts but yeah i think there's a totally valid form of vegetarianism which is like i just don't eat a main course of animal i think that's a very that's a very practical way to approach it i think i think

Maxfor i think for veronica like i will occasionally have meat in the house but but we both mostly vegetarian at home and veronica will also make like um what this was this here's a good thought technology from our friend Mary Robinette, who is also vegetarian, but she has this thing called the cultural exception, where if you're sort of having an important cultural experience and you're offered some meat, just eat the meat. You only live once. And it's like, what are you going to go to a foreign country and someone offers you a meal and you're going to be like, I can't accept

Merlinit? Yeah, that's one thing that bugs me. And again, I don't have a dog in this fight, but Like you could be a person. See, now I'm going to cause trouble. I don't need to. But it's frustrating to me because like if you're somebody who primarily prefers and chooses to eat non-animal products, like, but there's this weird like straight edge feel to it.

MaxLike, oh, yeah, well, at Thanksgiving, like, you know, you had turtle soup or whatever.

MerlinAnd now you're a bad person. It's like, well, if 80%, 90% of what you do is non-animal, like, does it have to have a label? Can't you just be a person that prefers to eat a certain way without getting the whole crowd mad at you?

Maxit so weird so uh definitely recommend that book roughage i've made a lot of recipes out of that book they are all incredible and the best recipe in that book is uh seared cucumbers it's a seared cucumber salad yeah like a which sounds so weird no it sounds so weird but i'm telling you that recipe got a lot of attention in like the food world and it is so surprising and so good it's a really special recipe. So definitely check that cookbook out called Ruffage.

MerlinI'm here to stand for, as they say, as the youth say, I'm here to stand for roasted Brussels sprouts because I know it's become like a normie thing to say, but I hated Brussels sprouts my whole life. I think people should hate Brussels sprouts because the way people usually prepare Brussels sprouts is the worst. It's no shade, no lemonade in England, but holy shit, you people can sure cook the shit out of something roasted brussels sprout balsamic vinegar uh kosher salt bacon

roasted maybe 35 40 minutes at uh 400 holy fucking shit and it's still a little bit blackened or

Maxbrowned oh my god big game changer is going to be not using frozen brussels sprouts but getting fresh brussels sprouts are you being serious yes people do that well oh when i was a kid i mean i feel like all the brussels sprouts i had maybe i'm wrong we were we were a canned family we were

Merlincan like sometimes we would really pop and have like frozen peas instead of canned peas sure but all asparagus my entire life i didn't know asparagus could be served fresh they're fresh

Maxbrussels sprouts at least for me are readily available at the you know at the jewel like it's

Merlinan easy food to get well let's go let's go one step further in the first world you can i understand get them already peeled and cleaned so you don't have two-thirds of your it's so good and already

Maxhalved well you well i'll do a little i'll do a little raw brussels sprout the leaves in a salad you throw that into a salad that's a great it's a great little delicate little lettuce to put in a salad but yeah the recipe for these uh these uh fried brussels sprouts are so easy to make so i take you take a couple pieces of bacon you're going to chop it up cook the bacon on a low temperature to render out all the fat now you take out the bacon pieces into like a little side jar and so you just have like a what you want is a cast iron skillet with all the cast iron skillet with all the bacon fat. Toss the Brussels sprouts in. Not too many.

You don't want them to be sitting on top of each other in steam. You want them all to be making good contact with the pan. You're going to let them burn a little bit and get crispy and toss them around. And then, yeah, like what Merlin said, I like kosher salt, a little lemon juice, and then you toss them back in with the bacon pieces. That is a very, very easy dish to make, and it's so good.

MerlinYeah, and also it's weird because I feel like a lot of the worst or most objectionable aspects of Brussels sprouts are highlighted by, for example, being frozen, being oversteamed, as with cabbage. But the truth is that cabbage-ish vegetables are a very tasty vehicle for other flavors, I think.

MaxIt's all about the texture to me. When those outer layers of leaves get fried and crispy and they snap when you bite into them, oh, man, that's a good vegetable.

MerlinI will make this as a snack. that's how weird i am especially if i realize like my my my costly cleaned and halved brussels sprouts aren't going to last forever and it starts to smell a little like cabbage in the fridge oh come on that's living you think you'd like that alex would you like some brussels sprouts

Maxwell i i don't know i do like i was i was a little bit of a skeptic of oops of oops all sides because i don't normally think of i i normally am i don't identify as a sides person i identify as a main

Merlincourse person okay what is the what is the sign like on your but now you've transitioned

Maxbut well i haven't transitioned but i'm side but i'm side curious i tried it and i found and i found that much to my surprise i liked it a little more than i thought i would there needs to be less

Alexof a stigma for people to experiment with their sides yeah so that's why i'm i'm in favor of side

Maxvisibility that's why i fucked this gouda cheese in front of a corn poster com

Show notes

Transcript

174. My Magic Friends

Show notes

Transcript

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