191. Sequinkle

MerlinHello.

AlexAh, hooray.

MerlinDo you have a call recorder?

AlexI do have a call recorder. I've been blessed by the Skype gods, Ecamm gods. I have no idea who makes any software anymore.

MerlinOkay. Never mind. Actually, that makes me think of something. You are blessed. Do you feel like maybe we should always begin the show with a prayer? Have you thought about that?

AlexI don't like this joke.

MerlinWow. I guess you really have strayed from the flock, haven't you?

AlexOh, wow.

MerlinSomebody threw the acorn pretty far from the tree.

AlexWe've talked about it a bit, but when you go to church or a Catholic mass, it really is like a test of how long have you been here? What are the updates? It's a freaking hazing every time.

MerlinAll right. How about it? Would it help if I let me kneel? Ow. Fuck. Okay. I'm kneeling. Does that help?

AlexI mean, it might be helping somebody, whoever else is in the room.

MerlinStand up. Kneel down. Stand up. nail down. We are the Catholic Church. A lot of rules. Can you imagine having a drink what's left over in that wine glass? Can you imagine that?

AlexI think about, well, yes, yes, because I do imagine being an altar server. And he has to gobble up all

Merlinthe bread. Yep. Leave no Christ behind. That's what they always say. The Marines say that.

AlexMerlin, I had to do it a few times.

MerlinYou had to gobble the gobble the body?

AlexI had to gobble the body and slurp

Merlinthe blood because... Wait, were you an altar there? Yeah.

AlexI remember, in fact, the announcement being made at our school that we have altar servers. Not altar boys. Oh, like a waitron. Yes. I don't say

Merlinwaiter or waitress.

AlexWe're no longer having categories for the gendered servers. Everyone's welcome at the altar.

MerlinOh, but don't worry. Jesus knows. He knows. Sorry, they know. God. Well, that's not on rectives. I thought I did such a good... I was so proud of myself. You came up a few times and I know I nailed it. I know I nailed it at least twice. And I was listening back to a part this morning. I was like, oh God. I also blew it twice.

AlexAbout my Catholicism? What? Yeah, your Catholicism. No. I don't know. No, I'm truly confused and now afraid, but I guess we will hear.

MerlinNo, the pronouns. I mean, I'm trying. Here it is. I'm fighting. I'm fighting the. This is not an apology nor an explanation, although it will serve as an apology and an explanation.

The part of me that wants to be a better human being is fighting the pedantic English major in my brain. You know, it really is. It's like when Jerry is, you know, his brain and his penis, Seinfeld's brain and his penis are having an argument. It's like that, except in this case, the penis is school.

Wait, let me start over. Okay. The thing is, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten. So if we did start with a prayer, would you want to conduct that? Would I just say amen or maybe hit some organ swells now and then?

AlexListen, I don't think I should have to say prayers, considering when I was in school, we had to, of course, rewrite passages of the Bible, but then we needed to change. God, this is so.

MerlinRewrite or copy out?

AlexWell, that's the thing. is it rewriting it is it rewriting or is it copper copying or is it lightly like plagiarizing and pull what was the guy who did um the weird bob dylan quote uh we had to write out passages from the bible but but change the language to quote um what fits the new millennium as well as using gender-neutral pronouns and keeping the correct grammar intact.

MerlinI'm sorry, Alex. Is this a fucking fever dream? No. What the fuck are you talking about? First of all, we've got to come back to what Bob Dylan means.

AlexYep.

MerlinBut you're saying when you were a youth in your Catholic parish.

AlexNo, my Catholic school, and this was in a religion class taught by a nun, or, well, pardon, a sister.

MerlinOh, thank you.

AlexI will get emails from our Catholic listeners. I don't want to be a fake Catholic.

MerlinIt's a koan. How many sisters are there? None. What?

AlexWell. That was a stupid joke.

MerlinOkay.

AlexAll right.

MerlinSo they want you to copy out. You take this out. So you take a verse.

AlexYes.

MerlinAnd now you are expected to, there's a couple of things I'm hanging up on, and I do want to hear every cubic inch of this fucked up thing you're telling me. You had to go take a verse or probably a few verses from a chapter from a book. And then you had to adapt those. You had to make a cool teen Bible version of that. And tell me about the pronouns.

AlexWe just had to use they them pronouns. But in every single case, I mean, I don't want to speak for Ruth, but I'm pretty sure that Ruth didn't give a fuck about pronouns. And I'm pretty sure that she would have been okay. So that honestly built in this immediate resentment towards singular use pronouns and just continued that cycle of internalized transphobia. But the point being that that was the most fucking ridiculous thing I've ever had to do in the name of lip service for social justice that I'm just still blown away.

MerlinOkay. Oh, I see. This is part of the whole Catholic vroom vroom justice thing. oh yeah that's cool okay okay this is like a dickersonian kind of thing yeah it was super weird it was super weird we all hated it this is like a good this is like a good christian thing this

Alexno i mean this is bad this is okay weird we had like it was it was basically hey everybody it was like social justice cosplay uh yes but also it kind of felt like a little bit of a dog whistle of like if you don't do this you're not woke enough in whatever woke was in 2009 um or i was worried that if i was too liberal with um my translation if you will uh i would get in trouble

because yeah i don't know it's a freaking you're like reporting to a freaking priest i don't know

MerlinNo, I have to say that like to me as a secular exercise, it sounds really interesting. Like at my totally very secular liberal arts school, there were some really good Bible classes, some of which I kind of like would not sit in on. But for example, my friend Michael, my best pal in college, was in a really good class called Reading the King James Version Aloud.

AlexOh, fluff.

MerlinWell, no, it was actually really cool. So it was put on by this really cool gay prof who was a humanities teacher. He taught, what did he teach? He taught mostly American and English lit, but he also spoke Greek.

And so he was able to do things like read passages from, what, the New Testament, right? Old Testament's Hebrew, New Testament's Greek? Yeah. Spoke Aramaic, written in Greek, right? And so he was able to read. And boy, it's like listening to poems in Italian. It's like, yeah, this language was just made for this. It's just so beautiful to hear. And so because it was that kind of weird school, there would be evening events where you could go and listen to your pals read passages from the King James Version aloud.

Not because they were religious or spiritual people, but because it was really more aligned with the kind of poetry classes that you would take. so the exercise to me the exercise of taking a bible passage and being given a challenge to how to like restate that is interesting because it's all a translation to begin with right i don't know if you know this alex a lot of people don't realize oh they they don't realize that yes okay so you go out on the street okay spoiler alert i don't know the answer to this question but you go out on the street and you ask the the the typical you know cross-bearing person who wrote ruth and they

They're either going to say Ruth or God. So God sat down. He got his little glasses down at the end of his nose like Chuck Schumer. He took out his big quill pen. And then he put in some Easter eggs. For example, do you know who judges Ruth? Joshua.

AlexLike 7, 8, 9?

MerlinThat's a funny joke. And a pretty good Lyle Lovett album, Joshua Judges Ruth.

AlexDon't know that reference.

Merlinbecause that's the sequential three books keep up with me alexandra i know that's the sequential three books of the bible no now why was why was not never mind never mind seven eight nine is a

Alexfunny kid joke it is a seven seven eight nine is a funny kid joke the sequinkle oh god it's already okay got that one the sequinkle the sequinkle that sounds like a nice you know what that was a nice word I meant to say and I just happened to make it up um but I am constantly fascinated by the bible because of its translation kind of in the way that a lot of people including myself are just interested in the ways that Shakespeare is translated and interpreted because Shakespeare

is fucking funny but it takes literally like an entire year of your life to sort of actually comprehend why it's so funny. I always felt like I didn't I didn't learn this until well into

Merlincollege. And really, I had a couple, I'm gonna say I had three pretty big weaknesses in my liberal arts education that were nobody's fault, but my own. One was that I did not take a language, which is what I would have needed to get into Johns Hopkins. Like I had a, the guy I wrote my thesis about was at Johns Hopkins and was willing to help me get in there. But he's like, you don't have a language and you don't have any Shakespeare at all? I'm like, no, no, I had no Shakespeare. Of course, the third huge one is I took zero actual hard science or math.

So bad on me for all of those things. But shout out to Mark Crispin Miller, good writer. But, you know, there's a thought that I've had. It's not a kind thought, but it's a thought. So imagine that in the state of Illinois or California, in order to drive a car, you need to take a written test and a driving test. And then you have to pass those in order to get a license to legally drive. There have been moments in my life where I have thought that this is an analogy.

But there are people who are much more interested in how well you've memorized the manual you got at the DMV than you are a good driver.

AlexMm-hmm. Yeah.

MerlinThe actual practice of driving in a safe, sound, defensive, cool, social, non-deadly way can fall so far down the list of priorities if all you're focused on is whether you stand in front of a church holding up a DMV driver's manual. The manual is just there to help you be a good driver. It's not there for you to hide behind. It's not there for you to quote. it's not there for you to use to criticize others it's just a it's a process you're going to pass

through and return to as needed to be a good driver it's not an it's not a perfect analogy but like that's you know you're it's the good works are not going to get you in but you know what else isn't going to get you in memorizing chapter two of the dmv right and i had to take

Alexa written uh written test and a driving test where you you know make circles around the parking lot and do a bunch of wild maneuvers that i haven't ever had to use in my life what i mean is there a term for when you back a car around a curb i think you might have been trained to be one of

Merlinthose high-end chauffeurs were you taught to do crazy driving to like protect a rich man well

Alexthat's honestly it felt like that i'm like when am i going to have to learn how to like there's these tactical parking techniques that sort i know you're supposed to put the wheels

Merlinin towards the curb or whatever in you cut the wheel whatever way so imagine that everything that stopped your car from being in the brakes didn't work the parking brake didn't work if it was just you, your car, and physics, would it run into the street or would it fall back on the curb?

AlexAnd I think that that is an important concept to know, just the basics of physics.

MerlinIn San Francisco, it's an extraordinarily important concept because A, there's a huge amount of parallel parking here, and B, I don't know if you've heard, but there are a fair number of hills.

AlexOh, have I experienced them.

MerlinAre we still in the analogy? Yes, hold on.

AlexWe're still at the analogy because when I had to do that, I should have failed my actual driving field driving test, as they called it, where I drove around a lovely old lady who was about 75. And I failed to turn in reverse around a corner within a perfect set of lines. The lines were also arbitrary. They were just like in a course. uh it wasn't like on the real on the streets as they say oh you're looking safe here in safety

town yeah basically um and so half car half boy yeah yeah and at the end of it she said you know and i knew this too i was like well but failed it and she says you know it's my last week working here are you going to drink and drive and i said no ma'am which i still think is the only time i've ever said no ma'am in my life she's like all right you're good you've passed and i don't

know how many people have that experience and i think i shouldn't be allowed on the road for many reasons but that isn't one of them but you know it's kind of like believe me lady yeah me and

Merlindrinking is the least of your worries.

AlexYeah, I was like...

MerlinIs it just me or is the sky full of angry cockatiels right now? Jesus, take the wheel. Literally.

What was the other part? But, you know, I mean, And we could really squeeze this analogy within an inch of its life. Because I would be willing to guess that before the professionalization of driver's testing and certification, there were people who were able to conduct a vehicle in a way that was sensible in their community. Let me put it that way. So if you're the kind of person who, in a more rural area, drove a tractor around, you knew how to safely drive a tractor down the road.

Wait a minute, a tractor on the road? Well, yeah, roads used to not be just for cars. Roads used to be, I mean, there was a time before automobiles where that's where people walked and that's where carts or vendors, you know, sold their wares. And certainly it's where a bunch of horses took a shit. But, you know, now road is for car. And so we have to professionalize that. So all I'm trying to get at is like if you're somebody who grew up in Nevada in, say, the 30s, I bet you were pretty comfortable driving at a high rate of speed where you just didn't even see another car maybe for a few miles.

If you grew up in Manhattan, like a lot of people who grew up in Manhattan, you never learned how to drive a car because you didn't need to know how to drive a car, et cetera, et cetera. What I'm trying to get at is that there are all these regional and community differences in how to safely conduct a vehicle or not conduct a vehicle at all, and that all for many years, I'm guessing, existed in the absence of professional driver training. So the point I'm trying to make is that once your interest becomes about enforcing the certification of new drivers, it becomes much more about passing my test than it is about spending the rest of your life not killing somebody or yourself with a car.

And I think that's, to pivot back from the analogy, that's one thing that's a little troubling sometimes about, let's say, religion versus faith, which some people find a ridiculously nuanced distinction. I do not. I think there's a big difference. I think that it's the difference between enjoying driving and being obsessed with manuals in some ways. Yeah. And it's like if you somehow found a way to conduct your vehicle, now I sound like a libertarian,

if you found a way to conduct your vehicle in your community in a way that's safe and everybody else is okay with, shouldn't that be all right? That was about religion, Alex, just so you know.

AlexI know it was.

MerlinDid you think that was about religion? I wasn't sure if it was clear that was about religion.

AlexI caught up, I caught up.

MerlinNo, no, not you. I'm talking past you. I'm looking over your shoulder like I'm trying to find someone more important at the party.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinI'm talking, no, no, there's no one more important. Listen, I got two on you right here. I'm just speaking to the listener because they may not have realized that was about religion.

AlexI mean, I've always struggled with the concepts of both organized religion and faith because of the obvious reason of the gay.

MerlinOh, you mean the fact that you weren't welcome?

AlexThe fact of being, you know, publicly and privately shamed constantly.

MerlinOh, that's right. Okay, now I understand where the part about who you basically are as a human being should be hidden or destroyed.

AlexYes, yes.

MerlinAll right. I could see how that would be frustrating sometimes.

AlexBut there was always something written in very large letters at my high school from something from. I don't know if St. Francis wrote it. I would like to believe somebody smart did at least, but it's just preach the gospel always when necessary use words. At least that's the translation I have seen everywhere.

MerlinThat's really good.

AlexAnd that is kind of my core guiding light, I guess, in terms of how I interpret and try to pick out the pieces of Catholicism and Christianity that still resonate with me. Because I don't have a problem picking and choosing if other people can. Let me pick apart the ones that hint a little bit that Jesus was gay. not that or uh oh have you seen the have you watched the most recent queer eye um i've seen

Merlinthis one i saw was the impossibly beautiful uh asian pediatrician i have not seen that one um but so what have i seen i also saw well yeah i've seen we've seen like three or four yeah

Alexuh the one with the pastors hit home in a way that i did not expect um and i was expecting for trying to i know i'm really spacing which the queer eye episode of um this season season five

Merlinit's the very first one oh i must have seen it why am i spacing it okay i'll find it probably because it wasn't emotionally scarring the one the one with the guy who uh a season or two ago who's uh who wanted to sing in a choir and like uh i don't know if he's like maybe not officially out and remember they take him to the the gay chorus oh my god it was so freaking good you can just tell bobby is getting just torn apart by all of these visits to churches you might as well be

Alexwearing like a fireproof suit i don't know if that is a actual that is a that is a joke from this

Merlinepisode oh really oh sorry so i probably have seen it i i might be blacking out um god damn it now i

Alexwant to find it okay keep talking about it i'll find it uh it's just the very similar version of what happened in the previous episode of this guy gets to go sing amongst a bunch of other gay dudes

Merlinoh my god the queer church of course oh yeah and and i think yeah yeah yeah it was like it's like this beautiful island of misfit toys it's so cool i love that guy i i got a lot listen i i'm not I'm not going to talk about it. We can talk about this on the after show. I got a lot of bones to pick with Tan this season. That's all I'm going to say about that right now.

AlexRight? Hasn't he just, I think he's been a dick.

MerlinI think Tan has really lost, I think he's lost the story here in a lot of these outfits. I don't know if it's tie-ins. He's lost the thread. Or what it is, but it's like, my daughter was yelling at me because I was saying, would he put that beautiful lady doctor in? It looked like she was going to be in a Janet Jackson video. And she's this beautiful, petite woman with some kind of mild body dysphoria. And like, she's empirically gorgeous. And she's like, I think my thighs are big. And I was like, oh, God.

As Michael would say, oh, sweetie. Like, she's so beautiful. But then Tan puts her in this outfit. I'm like, what the fuck is happening with that hemline? And my kid goes, what are you talking about? I said, sweetheart, don't interfere. You don't understand this yet. A hemline is a very special thing. You could take the most beautiful and shapely woman in the world. She could be nine feet tall. If you put that hemline at the wrong place above her knee, she's going to look like a troll. You need to get that hemline right. You need to go higher or you need to go lower or you need to change the tailoring.

You need to change the line and the silhouette. That is doing that lady zero favors.

AlexAnd there is the whole aspect of, sure, it's on camera, but that doesn't matter in the end. I don't think...

MerlinOh, I'm sorry. How do you mean?

AlexYou know, the hemlines appear different in real life than they do behind any sort of camera. And I've learned this especially while listening to one of my favorite podcasts you're wrong about as they go through the Jessica Simpson autobiography.

MerlinOh, yeah. They're on the Bronco Chase. They started the Bronco Chase today.

AlexI saw it this morning. God.

MerlinOh, my God. I listened to it in the shower. Oh, my God.

AlexMerlin, the worst part about my marriage right now is agreeing that both of us will wait and listen to the episodes together.

MerlinOh, and you don't want to be disloyal.

AlexI don't want to be disloyal. But then I found out that Matchy has been disloyal to me many times. And I'm like, you know what? We can heal from this process. But I don't know.

MerlinReally? And you don't have a formal arrangement where that's okay.

AlexYeah, I should have had like a pre-pod.

MerlinYou don't have a Bill and Hillary situation. I'll just look over here. I'll watch Cable in the other room. You do your thing.

AlexYeah.

MerlinOkay, look. I want to return to this. I want to talk more about the Lord, but I want to come back to the tan problem because you go back and you look at... I'm sorry. I'm going to keep saying this. Best episode of this show, arguably. I imprinted on S1E1 of this series so hard. You can't fix ugly. Now, I know there was exaggerations in that. You can tell that there are things. Maybe that guy's not perfect. But what they did with Tom was so transformative and appropriate.

What they did to his little apartment was so meaningful for what he had available to work with. What they did for his appearance and his clothes. He looked really cool. And he got to go to the car show with Abby. And of course, not through the years. They're still together. That's the story. And also the guy who proposed on stage, supposedly they've double dated. Oh, my God.

AlexOh, God. It's so cute.

MerlinBut we should come back to this. But we were talking to Emma, who, by the way, her pride flags did arrive. One in the window, one as a blanket. Isn't that the pride flag arriving tomorrow? We're very be flagged at our house.

AlexFlags are flying, not for hanging. Sorry, that's my favorite. That's my favorite Bobby quote. I'm sorry.

MerlinOnly they can call themselves flags. We were talking about something Emma didn't know, which is that for the entire time, my wife's youth-ish time in San Francisco. So she moved to California in 89, moved to the city in 91. And her roommate and very best friend was a lesbian woman, like very, very butch. but you know the kind of but the kind of which where she's like she's in a punk rock band

she's you know like a like a they're all these my wife was a bike person she hung out with the bike people these are all bike people and they go oh did she have the cuffed leg places they got she's got the bike lock so she can hit your window or whatever the whole nine and like you know they drink large beers on stoops and that kind of thing where every backpack kickstarter

Alexis like you can hold your u lock right here and i'm like no i'm just gonna put my camera there

MerlinYou know what? We just get a hose and clean all of these people, including my wife. But anyway, her best friend was a lesbian. And I was like, hey, I don't think you ever knew that, did you? And she's like, yeah, but like, I was like, well, I only ever hung out with her once because they had sort of drifted apart as my wife became like a professional person. And not out of acrimony, but just because they went different ways. And she had a very long-term girlfriend that she still has today. But what I didn't know was that she had found God and became, I believe, a Presbyterian minister.

And this is a girl who's like 5'2", and every time she goes to a lesbian bar, they're like, well, who brought their son here? But now she has her own flock at a queer church.

AlexOh, God. That's so...

MerlinSometimes it goes the other way is what I'm saying, Alex. It doesn't always go the one way. Sometimes it goes the other way.

AlexThere's a lot of great churches in Chicago that have been excommunicated from the Catholic Church, obviously. Good. Yeah.

MerlinDon't throw me in the fire patch. Get them out of there. Here's one here across the street from a grocery store we go to. It's actually a giant purple church. It is a hilariously gay church. and um but just looking i mean like it's so joyful and i really do miss i've said this before and i don't you know i don't want to make a scene about it but there's a lot i really do miss about the uh well the closest we are we're called non-denominational christians so the closest would be church of christ but like pretty like the most vanilla kind of in a good way kind of um

of protestant christianity and it was just a lot of people just being really kind to each other There's a lot of singing and there's a lot of eating. There's a lot of helping each other out. There's a lot of like, you better look at the bottom of the final page of the bulletin because that's going to tell you who needs a hospital visit. That's going to tell you who could use a covered dish. And when my dad died, I cannot even tell you how this entire building full of strangers collapsed on us with affection to try and make our life easier. Whether that was a potted plant or some green bean casserole or babysitting, strangers,

total strangers, not doing it for any reason other than they wanted to help. You could even say, you could say, quote, unquote, it's because it's the right thing to do. I don't think that's what drove a lot of these people. I think a lot of these people had a mission of service that I'm not, I don't know how much, it's sort of like, why do douchebags become biz dev people? Or is it that biz dev, you know what I mean? You don't know who created whom. I don't know if people arrived at that flavor of Christianity because of their kindness and works.

or vice versa, but it worked out really nice. And I really miss that.

AlexI miss it almost every day, honestly. I mean, I've had similar experiences with family members dying and other health stuff that happened when I was in grade school and high school. that the church wasn't always super into hearing about mental illness or thinking that it was a real thing. That turned around pretty quickly.

MerlinWhen it became cover for other things.

AlexYeah.

MerlinHe's just confused. Let's send him to Philadelphia.

AlexYeah, he's another parish. It'll be fine. It'll be fine.

MerlinIt'll be fine. Don't worry about it. You know what? It's probably the climate here. it's very human and diddly here we should send him somewhere else

Alexno i mean that's it's something i miss every day because that was the quote unquote safe space where you could express how the discomforts you felt the fears that you had uh all with without any expectation that you were a bad person, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk.

MerlinAsterisk, asterisk, double dagger. Yep. Cross, cross, cross. See after notes.

AlexYep, yep. And, you know, honestly, a lot of my former teachers and my T-shirts came out and talked to me. They were in the closet too.

MerlinThey're religious t-shirts.

AlexA lot of my former t-shirts. Oh, my God.

MerlinGod said it. I believe it. That settles it. Anyway. You see it. You have my shirt. There are many. This is my t-shirt shirt. It was raising many questions.

So, your t-shirts.

AlexI think a lot of people are changing and it makes me happy, especially the sizes of my t-shirts. Anyway, this is the show.

MerlinAll right. Before we get to the challenge, can I potentially introduce a new segment that I just realized should maybe be a segment?

AlexYes, please.

MerlinIt's called Driving with Grandma.

AlexGo on.

MerlinThe new segment is called Driving with Grandma. It's a Jaren, but it has the driving, no G, driving with grandma. because I realize how many anecdotes, short anecdotes I have about being in an automobile with my grandmother.

AlexAh, yes.

MerlinHave I ever on this particular program told the story about the first time that pot affected me?

AlexNo, no, no. Please go. Please go on. Please wait. Is this the passing out? I mean, I know that you passed out, but I don't want the details.

MerlinOh, no, no. The passing out is much later. That's from the eating.

AlexOh, please, please, please.

MerlinAll right. I'll make this. I'll try to make this quick.

AlexNo, no. Take as long as you want.

MerlinShall we savor it?

AlexOh, I'm going to take my espresso shot. Woo!

MerlinWelcome to Driving with Grandma, Chapter 1. We'll try and get some music for this. Driving with Grandma, Chapter 1. 1980, diggity four, probably. The first time I had smoked pot was with my girlfriend and her best friend and boyfriend, who was a little bit of a bad apple, and he'd gotten us some of the marijuana.

AlexOh, bad boy.

MerlinAnd so we went to see Cheap Trick and we smoked some of the marijuana. And they, as people who, I guess everybody knows about marijuana now, but it used to be it was understood, especially with some shitty Florida shakeweed, that, you know, how you were affected by it might vary. And in the conventional wisdom, even at the time, a lot of people would say, I think the conventional wisdom was, you know, the first time you smoke pot, the first time, probably nothing will happen. Right? Such bullshit.

Well, but here's the thing. So the three of them were having a great time, surrender, surrender. And I was like, hmm, it's maybe cough, whatever. But at least now I have smoke pot. I've crossed that particular Rubicon. And now I can consider myself a proper teenage reprobate.

AlexGood, good.

MerlinAnd then so we had acquired some more of this because my girlfriend liked it. It made her fun and silly. And she liked it. And sometimes, sorry, Mom, sometimes after school, we would have a little bit of marijuana. But at home, in a safe way. And so this went on for a while. And we would occasionally have the marijuana. And I had, I guess, in the period of a few weeks, and we weren't doing it more than like probably once a week. But I had gotten to where I'd just fallen into the habit of, this is a thing I do with her that's fun for her.

and it makes me feel kind of cool, to be honest. And I can tell you very specifically that this was a Friday afternoon. I know it was a Friday afternoon. It's so important that it was a Friday afternoon. And yes, there is a fives about this.

I had some of that marijuana at probably like three.

AlexOh no, oh no.

MerlinAnd I kind of lost my mind a little bit. I mean, basically I started hallucinating and had no sense of what was actually happening. And I knew that it was bad. Now, you young people may not remember this, but it used to be when you went to the chain restaurant Denny's, as a child, they'd give you a kid's menu. And the kid's menu could be turned into a mask that you could wear. And it was a really cute, fun thing you could do with your menu after you ordered your eggs over my hammy or whatever. I looked at my girlfriend,

and she looked like a Denny's menu mask of Elizabeth Taylor. My girlfriend looked like a cardboard punch out mask of the late Elizabeth Taylor. And I said, oh, I think something.

AlexWhoa. Yeah.

MerlinThere's always that classic, like, do you feel anything? Do you feel anything? Like when you're taking drugs and you go like, oh, do you feel anything? Like, I think I might feel something. I'm not sure. I felt something, Alexandra. I felt pretty, pretty wrecked.

AlexAnd not in a good way?

MerlinNo, no, no. Well, this was the beginning of many years of me probably having a stronger effect from this thing than it should. But, you know, who knows why? Moments snap together like magnets. Point is, my girlfriend was a Denny's mask. Now, you ask yourself, how would you possibly remember that this was a Friday. I can tell you, because I had to go to work as a busboy at a steakhouse where I would be

carrying 40-pound trays of precarious dishes. Now, the tricky part is, I don't know how I got to work that day, but I got to work at 4.30, and I'm doing that thing where I'm like, oh, thank you, Wall. Thank you, Wall. Wall is tall. Wall will let my hand Hand will go on wall.

Hole in wall is door. I go through hole in wall. A bow tie. I wear a bow tie. Oh, I am at work. And so I started the business. I started bringing out the water glasses. I'm being very, very careful about everything I'm doing because I'm crazy fucking high. And so I would bring out the glasses. I was wrapping up silverware. I'm switching over from lunchtime table settings to dinnertime table settings and all the things. that I have to do. And I increasingly am feeling, at this point, it's been probably an hour or an

hour. I couldn't tell you how long. See, also, I don't know how I got to work. But I do know that I felt reality slipping away from me. And so I grabbed wall and pulled wall and I pulled toward phone. And I had a phone call with my mother who was who was at work. And I said, No.

I don't, I think I'm sick. I don't, can you come, can you come get me? Mommy. She said, mommy, mommy, please. Mommy, please. Wallace, Wallace's friend, but need mom. And she said, well, no, I'm at work. I can't leave here until, what, 530 or 6 or whatever. I said, do you want me to have grandma come get you? And I was like.

Yes. and I said hey boss and you know I'm not feeling so good I'm I apologize I gotta clock out and go and I went I went and I and I waited outside I should mention at this point in her later years um this is not funny before her death from Alzheimer's she had a very very long and relatively, at first, slow journey to dementia. But she was still conducting

herself. As you'll hear in future episodes of Driving with Grandma, she would sometimes just show up at the house with a new dent and say the stop sign wasn't big enough and stuff like that. So, what I do remember is that she pulled up and she had a Kleenex stuck up her nose because she had a horrible, horrible nosebleed. I don't know why she had a nosebleed, but I'm pretty sure that was real. I got in the car and I was like, hey, hey, grandma, thanks for giving me, I appreciate it. And my grandmother, who was a very garrulous and talkative, very

sweet lady, she's like, she's talking and talking, and that's what it sounded like. I'm just sitting there trying to figure out what a seatbelt is. And so, I don't know how familiar you are with the geography of the Suncoast of Florida, but you have these main arterials, usually north-south, east-west roads. but a big one where I lived was US 19

Alexso wait this is the like big straight on road where there's

Merlinvery few yeah like any community in Florida so you might know 41 for example right so like 41 19 you know in our case like 54 any of those but it'll be like it tends to these communities tend to grow around a state or US quote unquote highway which is really just a giant like 8 lane road with strip malls and Arby's and stuff.

And so we get up to, not a light, but like a stop sign. And my grandmother turned left, meaning she was now driving northbound in the southbound lane of a U.S. highway.

AlexOh, oh no. Oh no. Oh, no. Just tell me, does this story end with her getting hurt?

MerlinYou're not in trouble.

AlexOkay, go on.

MerlinI'll cut to the chase. And I'm going, ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha, having a little ad hoc improvisational song about the end of my life. Ha-ha-ha-ha. And I'm trying to remember exactly what her exaltation was. Yes, she was a woman of the Lord. I think it was, oh, oh, Jesus, oh, Lord, oh, Jesus, and screech. She has the presence of mind to do a left turn off into the shoulder, you know, in a big puff of smoke. And apparently I eventually did make it home from that. But that was the day that pot took.

AlexWell, real quick question. Do you think it took or that you weren't smoking it correctly? I know that sounds really dubious, but.

MerlinNo, I mean, it was all, I mean, let me go further and say I was probably smoking it wrong the whole time. But just for whatever reason, that's when it hit me. And it's like they always say, there's only two doses of drugs, you know, not enough and too much.

AlexI have never heard that, Anna.

MerlinYou're kidding me. No. They practically printed that on the new college flag.

Alexuh well i mean there was a saying at my school in your body not on you when you return to the

Merlindorms or into the classroom what wait in your body not on you in you not on you as in we don't care

Alexthe drugs you take we just don't have them on the premise oh it's the opposite of cool mom yep you can do it anywhere you want as long as it's not in my house yep i'm not a cool ra i don't

Merlincare you know what you can the worst ra i'm in like the ra hall of shame i was so bad you were

Alexare in the ra oh okay i know we're i know we're losing the thread uh oh god i have so many

Merlinquestions but i was an ra at new college still still i mean you were it's like you were a cop Like being a prison guard in a children's game.

AlexYou were a child cop.

MerlinNo, I gave out light bulbs, toilet paper, and condoms, and I mostly slept in the room of my girlfriend, who was also an RA, and I was really bad. Also, I knew where the master key was. Oh, such power. So I dubbed the master key, and we were able to get into the maintenance tunnels under the dorms. Oh, shit. So sometimes when we'd all had some drinks or whatnot, Your friendly RA from second court would say, hey, what do you say we all go down in the tunnels?

These big, sort of like imagine you're in Kansas escaping a tornado. There's giant but like corrugated metal doors. You open them up and it opens up into this entire, it's like going to see Desmond, you know, down in the tunnel.

AlexI'm kind of picturing the Disney tunnels. but if they had been abandoned like for a hundred years and that's what you're going to do i'll try

Merlinto find photos they they really were they were they were so okay so long story short the dorms were designed by i.m pay the guy who did the pyramid at the louvre and lots of stuff oh wow yeah they're called the pay dorms p-e-i um and so uh they're brutalist brutalist uh 19 60s buildings that are super ugly. But also his choice of materials and construction was bananas. So as an RA, I worked for the director of housing,

who in turn worked for the director of student affairs, a hilarious guy named Pete Fazio. And Pete was always like, oh, I can't believe this guy. Like he, the doors were these amazing like metal frames with a translucent, like, beautiful panel inside of it, these amazing handles and locks. And I think they each came from a different country. Like, the handles had to come from Germany, the door replacements, and it's all bespoke.

None of this is, like, off-the-rack stuff. All of the HVAC stuff was impossibly difficult to fix because of the way he had engineered all of these buildings. But, yeah, so they had these service, I would call it a service tunnel or a service area underneath the dorms. And they were like solid enough that you could walk around without fear of death. I mean, it wasn't like a mine, but it was also sort of rustic enough to feel like kind of wild and crazy. Like you might find a pirate skeleton down there or something.

AlexThat would be fucking awesome.

MerlinThank you for joining us for this week's segment of Driving with Grandma.

AlexDriving with Grandma. And you know that for whatever we do next week, I have quite a few driving with grandma stories. I'm so

Merlininto this. Yeah.

AlexI still am incredibly close with my grandma and grandpa on my mom's side. So nice. They're the ones who made me a Polish Yeti, so

MerlinI gotta... Like for your birthday?

AlexNo, I mean you've met me. Oh, they

Merlincaused you to be a Polish Yeti? Yeah, yeah. Polish Yeti. Polish Yeti's a family name. They changed it.

AlexYes, yes, we took Kaminsky.

MerlinHey, it's Alexander Poloschetti.

AlexYep, yep. God.

MerlinWhy are you not laughing? That's funny. I'm writing it down. Because it hurts, Merlin.

AlexIt hurts. What?

MerlinWhat hurts? Laughing? No, no, no. Does anybody remember laughter?

Alexoh everyone i remember how all of the the men in my family can't grow beards but all of the women

Merlinare just covered with hair ever everywhere oh you guys you're so woke as a family oh yes oh i'm i'm

Alexsorry my male identified uh brother sorry i'm what is happening right now what is happening what are you drinking today what are you drinking oh um would you would you like a bulleted list I have. I suppose I will.

MerlinYes.

AlexI have a plain Dasani water.

MerlinDasani?

AlexYes, I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Tiff. I know. What's Tiff drinking today? Tastes like it's filtered through a raccoon. You know what? I think I'm in a... I'm in a...

MerlinYou should like what you like. I apologize. I apologize. I'm trying to grow as a person,

AlexAlex. You know what? People mess up with pronouns and I am okay with this. However, respect my right to like the airport water. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But I got a Dasani here.

MerlinI'm a Dasani girl.

AlexI'm a Dasani filled with the noon dissolvable sports and caffeine supplement.

MerlinOh my God, that was words. Those were words. Sports noon?

AlexNoon is the name of the product.

MerlinNot the time. It's not Noom that helps you develop better habits. It's Noon.

AlexIt's N. Yes, it's N-U-U-N. And I think I've been told it's Noon.

MerlinLike from the Dutch.

AlexYeah, exactly.

MerlinI think it's called Sister.

AlexI can tell that it's a play on something, but I don't know.

MerlinYeah, they say Sister.

AlexIt's killing me.

MerlinLike Sister Noon 2. So you get the dissolvable Noon drink in your raccoon water.

AlexI've got, yeah, it looks like piss water. I have a now empty shot glass of espresso because I don't know I own shot glass or like real espresso glasses. I just the amount of espresso just happens to fit in shot glasses. And I thought I was I was going to.

MerlinI think that's cool. I like to drink wine like that. I like a little glass. I feel like an old Italian man. It feels cool.

AlexI just was like, well, I guess I'm not going to Marie Kondo all of these shot glasses from college because they have this great utility now. And then I have an open Diet Coke and a Diet Coke for a backup. Oh, and a Smart Water underneath the, that's like my emergency reserve, though. Like it's one of those one liter ones that's, you know, just in case.

MerlinI imagine you're like, is it Shiva? Is Shiva the god with all the arms? I don't. I just imagine you're like.

AlexYes.

MerlinLike Octo-Alex. Yes.

AlexYes.

MerlinGet in my mouth. Yeah. I'm a Polishetti.

All right. Dig dog. Challenge.

AlexChallenge.

MerlinChallenge this week was mine.

AlexI think so. Yes. Yes, it was.

MerlinThe challenge this week was to get and play with Lumi cube lights, which Alexandra introduced me to less than two weeks ago, probably.

AlexYeah.

MerlinWould you please describe these these donguses to our listeners?

AlexThese little dongai are small cubes that when you look at them, you would think that's a weird way to make a flashlight. But what it is is...

MerlinOr like that's a slightly oversized fidget cube.

AlexYep. It looks like a big old fidget cube, but with a big hole. And that's where the light is.

MerlinOh, that's so sweet. The light at the end of the hole.

AlexThat's the guiding light at the end of the cube. And it was initially designed to just put on top of a DSLR to fit in the shoe mount so that you could have something that was better than a photographic. Photographic? What the fuck? You know, a...

MerlinLike a strobe flash.

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinAnd I think it feels like... So we know this is a Kickstarter. It started as a Kickstarter. It was very initially, from what I can gather from their materials, it was initially focused especially on GoPros, right?

AlexOh, hmm. I haven't seen that.

MerlinWell, GoPro has its own button in the app, for example.

AlexYeah. Yeah, but I didn't know it was initially for that.

MerlinBut it's also, they're waterproof. They're rugged and waterproof, supposedly. I'm not going to test that.

AlexI did.

MerlinAnd the notion is you get these little small lightweight lights that you can deploy. It's not a clever pivot, though, to go from this could be a replacement for your strobe flash to, like, this could be an ad hoc lighting system for a small studio.

AlexYes.

MerlinIt's a pretty good pivot.

Alexit i have a lot of new feelings about it not all positive me too me too well first let's get some

Merlinmore f's and b's out um to their credit um in in the right boy there's talk about asterisks and daggers and crosses um in the in the right setting boy these things would be or they would be or are so great. So there is an app that I imagine we'll talk about. One of my favorite features of these is

Alexthat

Merlinif you get the big set, like the second time I bought more of these, I got a big set because I wanted all of the filters

Alexand gels. How many do you have right now? Actual cubes.

MerlinOkay. Oh, cubes. I have four. I have four cubes and I have what's that thing? Never mind. We'll come back to this. So basically on the front of the cube where the light comes out are four tiny little magnets. And you say to yourself, well, what could that be for? Well, this is the coolest thing. It comes with all of these filters. So if you imagine if you've ever seen a slide, a photo slide from the old days, approximately two-thirds of the size. What?

AlexWhat do you consider to be the old days?

MerlinWell, I don't know. When people say slideshow now, they think of a PowerPoint demonstration.

AlexTrue. Fair, fair, fair. Yeah.

MerlinIt's not, you know, the carousel. It's a time machine. You know what I'm saying?

AlexYes, yes.

MerlinSo, but each one of these, I'm not describing this well. So on the front of that.

AlexIt's hard because of the problems that. Okay, go ahead.

MerlinThere are gels and there are filters that you can attach to this camera that just snap on real easy with the magnets. And it's really cool. So what are some here?

AlexWell, I'm going to be the well actually reply guy right now. The difference between gels and filters, if people aren't sure, basically gel changes the temperature of the or the color of the light, whereas a filter can usually change just the temperature or basically how many how many lumens you have.

MerlinYeah, I mean, I don't know the technical terms. There are a bunch that do things like diffusion and warmth. There are some that expressly change color. I'm not sure why you want CMY color filters, but they have them. If you're high. But if you're high, they also have, like I say, diffusion. They also have, what was these really cool like hexagonal pattern ones? they also have one that will focus the light into a small circle that you can direct if you want a

circle of light they also have i don't know what it's called alex but the old-timey movie light thing with the little hinges that can help you direct the light to only be in a certain area you know on each of the four sides it has a hinged flap yeah i really wish it would work it's a great idea and now here's the neat part i want to get the good f's and b's out because i Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We will be discussing my very useful FaceTime call with consulting producer Todd Vazir yesterday.

Here's the neat part, though, is you can do more than one. So like, and they also have one that's this really cool, like a bubble. It's like a half, what is that shape? A sphere, half of a sphere that like diffuses the light more. So you can stack these. You can do multiples of these if you want to try and get a certain effect. so before we I cannot tell you how my opinion about these things has changed in one week through no fault of their own through no fault of their own well so have we set this up

correctly these things are cool and they're clever I could definitely see the use I have a lot of little nits to pick I think the form factor of the way the the bottom where the screw in part goes there are very few things that fit well if you're mounting it you know okay so you've got like the little whatever it is quarter inch one of the classic um you know screw-in mount that you would use with a tripod yeah um and none of the apparatuses that i've used on there because i'm not is it what the one that you slide in is that a shoe

mount the sliding kind okay so i've been using just straight mounts like the mounts that come on that didn't sound good the amounts that arrive with i prefer missionary mounts but okay All right. Oh, so you're a Mormon, huh?

AlexYeah.

MerlinYou know, they just changed the outfits. McKay Coppin says they're changing the outfits you can wear when you do your mission.

AlexOh, breaking.

MerlinDid you know that?

AlexExcited. No, no, no. Breaking news. No, cool.

MerlinAnd so the point being, yeah, like, that's frustrating. Like, the little tiny screw-in for my Gorillapod, there's no easy way to make that fit. I've got the Gorillapod 3K and the little Mountie Boy for that, that little tapered Mountie boy there's no way to get it like either quite flush or it's just it's kind of a wreck but anyway hey you know thumbs up for for a cool idea but let's talk turkey alexandra tell me about your

Alexlumicube lights first the things that i don't know if it's their fault or not um i ordered this in in a rush for a previous challenge to get something from bnh it was back ordered but i went with you know a certified provider to get it within two days and you brought to my attention that you couldn't charge it with anything except the which i what what i had what i had said was

Merlini feel like i'm losing my goddamn mind because if i use my really crappy commodity chinese hydra multi-headed charging beast with a really crappy adapter it works fine to charge but if i use any of my apple usbc big boy chargers with a us with an official apple usbc it doesn't do anything i try with four different ones and in each case and i i think i just texted you to say

am i losing my mind because i i don't know why the apple ones don't work my guess was my reckon was it's a safety issue where if the wattage is too high it's not gonna allow it because of safety reasons was my guess but you had not been able at that point to verify or exclude that i tried this

Alexwith so many freaking usbc cables you're kidding me so you you got it it happened to you too

Merlinwell oh god oh alex i'm so relieved that you had a problem thank you not only that

Alexgod damn um well first of all i have i have since lost the original usbc charger they sent along in

Merlinthe box um and that's on me they give you two they give you two two lights two cords and i think you

Alexbring your own dongus yes which which again that's the thing if you're bringing your own charging brick shouldn't there be some documentation of hey that's a really good point i i could not find

MerlinAlex, I went, I went, I looked at their all caps, their Ruby all caps FAQs, and I couldn't find anything about it except to say USB-C is how you make the charge.

AlexYeah. And I tried USB-C to USB-C, which, USB-C to USB-A, tried Thunderbolt, basic ass USB-C.

MerlinI got a, I got, I bought shit, those shittiest little tiny Apple ones, the very old school ones from Prime. I got two of those little boys and A to C did work with a very underpowered charge thing for me. Didn't work for you?

AlexWell, I am kind of paranoid about voltage issues because I'm in hotels so often and I don't want to bring a surge protector everywhere. So I pretty much just always use whatever the closest to the 30 watt one is for Apple laptops.

MerlinThe one that comes with like an iPad Pro?

AlexNo, that's 18 watts.

MerlinOkay.

AlexThe slightly bigger one that comes with the 13 inch MacBook Pros is like my standby. But with this one, nothing worked. I have mostly Apple cables, but I also really trust Anker, honestly.

MerlinI've had great luck with Anker.

AlexYeah. And those were my USB-A to USB-C ones that I tried out. I tried every charging brick, including the crappy ones from old cell phones. I have a box of things to donate. I don't know who wants these shitty charger bricks, but I feel like somebody will. And I've got the box of like, okay, these will power like an iPhone and an Android or any sort of cell phone fine, but like get these out of here.

And I tried seven of them. And at that point I gave up. And then my second cube arrived. That one didn't have magnets that worked.

MerlinIt just didn't turn on. You're blowing my mind. I thought I was a crazy person because I could not for the last – I was still trying to figure out how all of this works. The documentation was not terrific. But I could tell in the first kit that I got, I did get, I think, Diffusion 1, two of Diffusion 1 or whatever it was. And it said that it came with two of warm. And I never saw those. I was like, did I just drop these? Did these fall on the couch? So now I'm wondering if I got – if they just didn't include it in mine.

Alexyeah and i was a ding-a-ling who threw away the initial packaging that i got with the first one because it worked great until it needs to be charged again so now i have it's like people who buy a cat buy new cadillac whenever the ashtrays are full yep yep and and i was just kind of like well i don't know whose fault this is i don't know if it's bnh i always blame myself exactly I'm like there must be something

missing you know

MerlinI'm the only common problem in all

Alexof these problems my childhood priest texted B&H and was like listen

Merlinjust so you know I'd like to speak to I'd like to speak to you for a moment about my own alter day

Alexokay all right sounds like you're just warming up all right i mean lighting itself has always been the most difficult part of filmmaking for me you're the third person to say that to me who

Merlindoes this professionally yeah um and especially todd said the same thing todd was like it's this

Alexis there's so many factors to getting this right yes and he has to oh gosh uh he has to deal with so much because he's dealing with real light as well as fake light and i mean wow and when you're working on documentaries especially when you're in the field you are dealing with uh natural light as well as possibly lighting you've brought along. And, you know, you always want that eye light

and that hairline. I guess I should say eye light is the stupid fancy term for making people not look dead on camera

Merlinso that there's like a little glint in their eyes. I tried, you texted me about this and an app that you and Quinn like, and I spent-

AlexI can't find it anymore.

MerlinAt least four minutes trying to figure out what the fuck you were talking about. I was trying to use your actual words, which might have been my first mistake. Yes, definitely. But I'm searching for eye light, color, temperature app. And all I found is a bunch of really shitty looking light meter, old light meter apps. Will you find the app you were talking about for notes, please?

AlexNo, I can't. I reached out to Quinn and I was mistaken. The thing that he was using is something that measures the distance of your eyes to calibrate VR stuff.

MerlinQuinn, our producer?

AlexNo, I'm sorry. Quinn 2, Snazzy Labs Quinn, who's a fantastic YouTuber.

MerlinOh, I thought I just got another pronoun wrong. Shit.

AlexNo, no, no. Yeah, got to keep up there.

MerlinCan you get me on like a listserv or a major demo or something? Could you get me some push notifications, some gender push notifications?

AlexOh, man.

MerlinI now identify as timey-wimey.

AlexI'm sorry, Quinn number one.

Merlinuh i've got it welcome to my fourth gender review party this month oh god um but okay okay okay that's cool i i don't know that phrase i like it and that's so i've been looking at three point oh

Alexi'm surprised oh i'm surprised no no no only because that's like really important in my opinion

Merlinwell here's what i know what i know is three-point lighting and i found a couple good actual tutorials including some really good youtube videos uh the spoiler alert here is that I am so constrained by the space available to me in my current setting that I would need to change a lot for that to be possible. But the basic, the three-point lighting, as I understand it, is over here on your one side, you're going to want a key light that's about 45 degrees off axis and about 45 degrees down at you. That's the main source of light. Over here at a complementary angle, you have a fill light. It's going to fill in the shadows, not the shadows behind you.

Those are impossible to get rid of because of your tiny area. But the shadows of your face, you get to make a dramatic effect. You can get a hair light behind you that provides definition against a background. And then, I mean, there's just, and some of these tutorials are really good. Even if you're not interested in doing this for yourself, learning how that effect of three-point lining, it's one of those things, I guess, like the 180-degree rule where like once you know it, you're like, oh, it's really interesting to see how people, what they do with that.

AlexRight. It doesn't make it easier, but it makes it easier to understand.

MerlinIf you can find me in anything about eye lighting, I would appreciate that. I can look it up. Is this eye lighting is what it's called? Eye light?

AlexYeah, yeah, yeah. Just eye lighting camera.

MerlinCatch light? Eye light, catch light. Catch light is a light source that causes a specular highlight in a subject's eye in an image. Whoa, I've never heard of this catch light.

AlexDamn. Neither have I. Well, this is also like the time someone talked to me about what I thought were called lever. I don't know. The slidey things on a mixer. Apparently, they're called pots to people in the industry.

MerlinOh, you mean like attorney or a slidey?

AlexA slidey.

MerlinSlidey is a fader. Attorney. Attorney? Attorney. Lawyer. What? No, like on a guitar, it's usually called a pot. A potentiometer.

AlexYeah, what the fuck? But that's also what I thought sliders were. This guy from BEZ.

MerlinThere's no middle sliders, Alex.

AlexNo middle sliders.

MerlinThere's only Zool.

AlexThere's a lot of sliders. I can't keep up.

MerlinSliders are also small burgers, but they have nothing to do with your eyes. Unless your eyes are bigger than your stomach.

AlexJust my butt.

MerlinAm I right? Okay. Oh, boy. So I have been asking anybody who will listen, Please help me. I've tried to help myself. I'm just as God made me, sir. I've been looking for solutions because everybody's like, well, why do you care about this shit? Well, okay. So you look nice today. Let me make this very, very short. The whole reason we had the second show with a different name was we wanted to give ourselves runway to do something different.

Now, at first, we did something not different at all. We did the same show. That's what we knew how to do. Then that kind of became like, well, maybe we'll do some of the Zoom stuff and see how that goes. And so far, that's been going pretty well.

AlexYou might say that some podcasts are going to grow and change. I don't know. Sorry, go on.

MerlinYou could say that. You could say that. You better say that. And so where we got to, though, was the last two that we did with the Zoom that we published, we published, I think, two of those. We had a couple we threw out. But how that turned out was like, yeah, I thought that turned out good. Like the ring light parade was, I thought of fun for being what it was and unedited. I thought it was pretty funny. And so I don't know what's going to happen next. But I know that, A, we all need to look way better on Zoom.

No, especially me and to an extent Scott. Adam's got a pretty good setup there because he's Adam. But like we should look the same.

AlexCan we buy Scott a new microphone? Like I will help with that.

MerlinHe still uses his Rode, right? Do you know sound wise you don't like the sound?

AlexOh, no.

MerlinI can never hear the difference in these things.

AlexWell, it's weird because I really don't have great hearing, which is or eyesight. Wow. I've picked a great profession.

MerlinYou sure did. But at least you do with your hands and tying up them cables.

AlexI mean, I've been told. But the. I'm sorry.

MerlinOh, good day.

AlexThe reason that or the reason I get hung up on lighting isn't even necessarily because I want things to look good.

MerlinIs this about Scott's mic?

AlexThis is about Scott's. This is about video in general.

MerlinOK, because I want to finish the thing, but go ahead.

AlexYes. So what I really appreciate about what you guys are doing is you're trying to look better. But at least how I've been interpreting it is you don't want to make your lighting or your sound or anything that appears on screen to distract from the show. And that's what is always most important to me about lighting. And I don't think most people are going to notice that Scott uses a road podcaster from a decade ago.

MerlinThat was my original. Well, OK, so this is where it gets complicated and weird. So what is my motivation? I'm asking myself aloud. What is my motivation for spending all of this time and money? I spent a lot of time and a lot of money on getting a setup that will let me do better video. And there's lots of reasons. One is I have a feeling video is not going to be going away anytime soon. There will be more occasions. I mean, if I had my druthers, we'd lock way the fuck back down right this second. Don't get me started.

AlexAgreed.

MerlinI do feel like the video is here in ways that it was not in, say, January or February. And we need to not just be using our Max camera from now on because it's not really good. I think part of what makes this also tiresome is everybody, the connections suck. People's video looks bad. You can see already when you see people doing hits when they're doing their bits for MSNBC or CNN, you can see some people have gotten much better setups. Anyway, so why do this?

Well, I want my video to be better if possible. If we keep doing the Zoom call version of California King, such as it is, I would prefer that we look the same and pretty good. But then this is not a commitment. It's more of, I guess, a teaser. I don't know if you know this, but one of the guys on our show is a really talented filmmaker.

AlexYou don't say.

MerlinHad it ever occurred to me that we could be making funny movies, it had not.

AlexWait, really?

MerlinThink about it. If I got my shit tight, what could we do with three guys remotely shooting footage that becomes a funny short movie?

AlexI think about that. Oh, man, this has actually got to be in the after show. All right. I don't want to distract from this. I'm sorry, but our number one, our editor and I were talking about this quite a bit yesterday. And I completely agree with you. And I'm really, really glad the idea of there are very interesting things that you can make remotely. And I hate that I initially hated doing video podcast stuff.

But also I realized I didn't hate it.

MerlinI hate video podcast stuff insofar as it harms the audio thing. I still have concerns about that with You Look Nice Today. I feel like we need to go kind of all in on one or the other. And there's RSS. It was disappointing to me when, to be honest, to be candid, I enjoyed doing MacBreak Weekly. But when that became, at first it was just let's watch each other on video. And it very quickly became actually this could be a video show. And that's when I really lost interest because I wanted to make a great audio show. and I still think you,

I, for myself, I'm broken inside. I make a better audio show if I can't see the other person because I don't even want to be able to refer to something in frame. I want the experience of the listener. I'm really, I do feel like I'm kind of a purist in this way. I want the experience of the listener to be not dissimilar from my experience of being the person who's participating in the talking which is I don't know what's going to happen next and it's all diegetic. I don't know. It's like whatever's in the show is in the show. whatever's not in the show has never been in the show and like when you're saying when you're

having jokes about what you know somebody holding up a tampon or something that's rough for the people who want to be immersed in a totally first order audio experience but if we were able to make i'm not saying we will but if we had the technical faculties to do things a la the noises rest which i still think as silly as it was turned out pretty good doing stuff like that uh that would make me happy and be a good project. So that's why. And then finally, I just want to know how to do this stuff.

I like learning new things. Very few projects are more fun for me than one where I do have a goal. I have an outcome that is needed in the real world of my life or career, such as it is. I still need to add that. But I also get to learn a new thing, which is why Descript was like a four-quadrant big-titted hit for me. It's like, it's a delight to use. It's fun to learn. and I use it for my job now. I use it, it's what I exclusively use for Roderick on the line and it's made it so much more fun for me.

AlexYou don't even import into Logic or GarageBand? You just export straight from Discord? Or sorry, not Discord, good Lord, Descript?

MerlinYeah, so basically because of the way we record, I go into Ecamm, split the tracks, drop them in. Now I even record my ad spots right in Descript and then all those are in there. I just dupe the file every week. So all my assets are in there. And then it's just drag and drop.

And now, for example, oh God, did you see what they added, I think yesterday?

AlexYes, I haven't tried it out. I'm so behind on Descript.

MerlinIt works. Search for silences of greater than n seconds and take them out.

AlexOh.

MerlinAs well as, did that alongside filler words? Holy shit. So anyway, I'm sorry, that was really long. But I mean, really, ultimately I'm learning it because I want to learn it. And I want to learn the right way to do it. But I also want to be able to do it within the constraints of my office in a way that's not disruptive to the other stuff I do. So I don't want to have to build a second location to do all of this. And I want to be able to continue to use a good mic. So I'll tell you, if you want to hear more,

I'll tell you more about the Todd experience because it was very funny. But tell me more about what you've been doing with them.

AlexThe lights? Well, they don't work. Nothing.

MerlinOh, because no charge.

AlexYeah, I've ordered a backdrop. I'm sorry, I haven't ordered a backdrop, but that is something I need to figure out or I need to be kind of one of those douches who makes the background look YouTube-y and like, here's my books and this is my office, even though it's in the corner of my bedroom, which is fine. but I you know I don't want a bunch of stuffed animals of Pokemon behind

me when I'm on a call

Merlinwell you know in that case we should probably dip soon because it's running long but let me tell you what Todd said to me because it was really impressive you know how Todd's really really nice like too nice yes and you know how Todd is sometimes he kind of beats up on himself a little bit in a way that makes him seem like he's not confident even though I think he really should be

Alexcan't relate to that

Merlinhe gave me such good honest, straight, not hard, but honest and straight advice yesterday that I think has the potential to change a lot of shit for me. And it was awesome. But he was really honest. He treated me like somebody who could tolerate hearing the truth. And it was awesome. So basically, we've been going around with this. And he's been very kindly, you know, sending me some notes and stuff. And I was like, hey, listen, if it's not a pain in the ass, is there any chance you would want to hop on a FaceTime real quick? and just kind of let me try some things

and you tell me how it looks. And so to cut this very long story short, he's like, yeah. He's like, it's along the lines of, you got a lot going against you right now. And I was like, yeah, I believe it, I know.

AlexYes, yes.

MerlinAnd I was saying, and I was so focused, if you like, on the lighting component that there's a lot I was overlooking.

AlexYes, snaps for Todd. Full on JVN for Todd.

MerlinYeah, so he says, well, first, so he texted me and I took a nap and woke up and read his text and I was a little confused because he's like, go watch the Josh Gad Ghostbusters thing. And I was like, yeah, yeah, we watched that last night. And he's like, yeah, but like notice the angle of how he's shooting and like what's behind him. And I was like, I'm not really getting this. So what I tried was, because apparently I'm so left brain that I can't understand words. I tried moving my gooseneck iPhone holder further to the right and shooting it at me at an angle. That's not what he meant.

And I was like, oh, is this better? He's like, no, here's the problem. And he says, right now, the things you have going against, you have a mostly white wall behind you with no texture or sort of interest or objects to provide depth.

AlexYep.

MerlinIt's going straight at your face, which will never not look like a mugshot. And what was the other thing? The lighting's not really the problem. He's like, if you go and look at anybody. And then he did a demo for me where he's like, okay, here's me with this. Basically, it's him at his desk with the Star Trek poster right behind him. He's like, not that interesting, right? But if I go this way, and now I've got, even though that's still a straight shot, I have a whole bunch of room behind me that's providing cues for depth. Or I could do this. And he turns such that he's basically just slightly off axis with the corner of the room.

He's like, now there's all kinds of depth cues here and interesting stuff in the background. So the problem is that short depth with the boring wall, with the straight shot all together, like you've got to break that up. And I suddenly like slowly starting to get it. Oh, you're saying there's got to be depth cues. There's got to be interesting stuff in the background. And I need to not worry about lights so much as creating an arrangement that doesn't make me look like I'm sitting in a school locker.

AlexYeah, I mean, that's but that's also another OmniFocus project in itself with I know that's a that's a folder. And God, there's so there's so much there's so much work to be done. I have so much work to do. I can't even reference Hamilton anymore. That's where I am. Oh, we are finished.

Thank you.

Show notes

Transcript

191. Sequinkle

Show notes

Transcript

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