193. Joke Jazz

MerlinHello. Hello. Good morning. Rabbit, rabbit. Rabbit, rabbit. Yes.

AlexYes.

MerlinYes.

AlexYeah. I did the thing.

MerlinYou're going to make it through this year if it kills you.

AlexOh, man, that song.

MerlinHalf of the year gone, Alexandra. Literally gone.

Speaker AIt went somewhere. Welcome to the new March. Woo! Oh, that's right. That was the month that happened.

MerlinYeah, well, I was just, we were talking to Roderick about how it feels like, I was speculating that it feels like March all over again, because now we had farcically made some small, very small plans to do things. And it's exactly like the first week of March all over again where we're like, yeah, we're not going to do any of that.

AlexOh, no, no, not even kind of. No.

MerlinNot even once.

AlexNo.

MerlinDid you see Florida? Did you see Florida?

AlexI have never been happier that my grandparents. Let me finish. Let me finish. Easy now. Everybody calm down. Everyone calm down.

Speaker ACalm down. Jazz girl.

AlexI've never been happier that my grandparents went against our advice and traveled from Florida back to Chicago a couple weeks ago. And I was like, oh, thank God.

MerlinOh, wow. Could you even have imagined two or three months ago, given the lead time we had on this? This can't be the only thing we talk about, but it's really all there is. It's all there is. Hey, everybody. There's nothing else. Hey, hi. Thanks for...

AlexThanks for coming back.

MerlinBut I mean, with all the lead time we had, would you have ever guessed when New York was going, New York and New Jersey and all these places were going through the roof, would you have guessed that it would move to so many red states so hard, so sort of suddenly? It just seemed like such an urban problem. And I don't mean that in the coded way where people mean black people. I mean, in the sense of like metropolitan urban centers to now, you know, meatpacking plants. I mean, on the one hand, it's entirely predictable if you don't do fuck all about fixing the problem.

But, you know, isn't it wild that it's just have you seen the Florida graph? Have you seen it?

AlexYeah. It doesn't seem wild to me, though, because local restaurants, a lot of them are still closed because they're like trying to get their staff back on board. And like, you know, there's still so many logistical things to go through by township. Whereas, you know, all of Chicago opens up or like all of someplace in Miami, then you're going to get a bajillion people going to one bar or one restaurant despite social distancing. I feel like I've gone back in time.

New March. Never going to go outside again. No more looking at chimneys for me.

MerlinOh, no, no, no, no. You have to do it a little bit. One day. I don't like to talk about this too much for a lot of reasons, but let's just say that, how do I put this? In the time since we've been locked down, where have we gone that's not the locations I'm about to refer to? We took a hike once. I've been to the pharmacy probably four times, like once per month.

I've been to, I don't think I've been, I've been inside. Oh, at the beginning, I was in a grocery store a couple of times, but we've been doing Instacart. But, you know, I'll put my cards on the table. As you know, I have a house and I have an office that are farcically close to each other. And that's where I spend my day at the office. And that way, the two other members of my household, let's just put it this way. You got three people in a house our size all the time for four months and don't utilize the office I'm paying rent for.

That's crazy. So basically, what I'm trying to get at is I do leave the house and come back to the house, quote unquote, once per day normally. Right? So in the morning, I come to my office. Understand, it's creepily close to where I live.

And then I go home a little before five and we have dinner and we hang out. And everyone's in such a better mood because if I were there all day long, because basically my wife and my daughter are in different sides of the house. And me being there as well, why would we do that? So it's all in the service of saying, so I have occasion to get on my scoot-scoot and go a very short distance. I'll just say it's less than the time it takes to get to the final chorus of Mexican wine.

AlexOh, no, now you made me sad.

MerlinWhich is my every Monday morning song that I listen to. I have a schedule for different things I do. And so I go there. I go in my office. I don't leave my office until I go home. But even that very short glancing amount of travel is a real insight. I mean, apart from like looking out my front window, it's an insight into like how the masks stuff is going. So like this morning, I always count. I count on my way home. I count on the way to the office. I count on my way to the house.

I only saw five people on the way in today and masks were one for five. Not including me.

AlexOh. You know, that sounds better than Chicago right now, which is very upsetting.

MerlinI sent you the photo. I'm sorry to rehash stuff. I've talked about other places, but I never assume people hear it all. I sent you that photo of the place near where I'm located, right?

AlexYeah, that's wild.

MerlinI don't think John, I don't know if you've heard Roderick yet, but I don't think he even did justice to how fucking insane that image is. It is literally nine people around a table, a small table. The table is very small. Nine people, seven men, two women. One of them I saw had a mask around his neck, which is good for his neck.

AlexYeah.

MerlinNot a single one of them wearing a mask and all just drinking and literally howling. That's what attracted me was the noise. I was like, what is going on out there? And it was all these people who look kind of like cops, just like.

Speaker AOh, that's always good.

MerlinAnd like, you just see stuff like that and you're like, I, you know, you know, I mean, we've said all along or I've said all along, there's such a muddled message that's gone out. It's become no less muddled. It's not getting that much clearer now. I'm happy to, I'm not sure, I'm not sure what impact this will have, but more and more Republican leaders are now saying, please, for the love of God, wear a mask. Surgeon General, begging people. Please, just do it.

Speaker CPlease.

MerlinYeah. I mean, it's just, it's so bizarre that we have to keep coming back to it. I think a lot of people, the thing that I can definitely see is that people are tired of this and they're numb to all of this. And maybe they just don't know enough people who died or got sick. But, you know, it's bananas that it's the same as it ever was. I know you're tired of Dr. Birx telling you to wash your hands, wear a mask and socially distance. But you know what you really need to do is wash your hands, wear a mask and socially distance. I don't know if you heard it the first 900 times.

If every single person in America stayed locked down and did that for three weeks, it's my understanding this would necessarily disappear.

Alexi don't think that people grasp the severity and it's not necessarily anyone's fault it's not anyone's fault who is not grasping the severity who lives in an uh you know a rural rural rural in a red somewhere where they feel like you can't touch them when they're in a red state uh you know everyone's always trying to take your guns there you're you have to pay too many taxes

you there's potholes in your roads and it's like wait so we weren't supposed to wear masks and now we are supposed to wear masks like what the fuck and sure you can the answer is obvious when you start to think about it oh there weren't enough masks for people so who are we're working in health and food service so we did not want to panic people alongside not enough tests to not

Merlinenough tests to be able to, and even now that we have the test, they don't have the capacity for the testing. There's huge bottlenecks. So many of the places where you could get tested are shutting down because they just, sorry, we just can't do anymore today. That's today. Remember when Mike Pence said there'd be a million tests next week and so forth? And that was four months ago.

AlexYes. Yes. Oh, boy.

MerlinBut that's all together, taken together, that's a pretty deadly cocktail. And to your point, though, there's another part of this that I feel like is the, I don't know how you look past this. I feel like there's this game of chicken that everybody wants to play.

Do you remember the episode of Mabim Bam where they go into this really, really hilarious, very stupid bit about like a bachelorette party where Tatum Channing is stripping and exposes his entire butthole? Yes. Yep. Yep. And the bit is, like, you must look at Channing Tatum's butthole for 25 minutes. And if anybody in the room looks away from Channing Tatum's butthole during the 25 minutes, it has to start over. You're the only person I can make that joke with who would get. That's how this feels right now.

Every time you drop your mask and go outside to get an IPA, everything starts over for everybody. And the game of chicken that's really troubling to me is I get that impulse. I get the need people have to work. I do get all of that. None of that will matter if everybody becomes gravely ill. And the game of chicken that's killing me, so to speak, is this idea that we can always, you know, if this gets bad.

If it does. If. Well, let's not be hysterical, Alexandra.

AlexLet's not jump to conclusions.

MerlinYeah. I mean, if this gets bad, we can always wind it down and we'll close a beach or two. We'll close a couple beaches and it'll be fine.

Speaker ABut no genie, no bottle. It's all genie.

MerlinWe are going to be, as Dr. Fauci said, we're looking at, if this is not fixed soon, get ready for 100,000 new cases per day. I realize you people probably don't follow this stuff as much as obsessively as I do, but I personally would prefer we not see 100,000 new cases a day. Once you round a corner like that, I don't think closing a beach is going to help.

AlexI have a very controversial opinion.

MerlinOh, my goodness. Please share it. I love your controversial opinions. You're virtually, you're arguably my most inscrutable friend. I look forward to this all week.

AlexOh, oh, I was, my controversial opinion is I rather people, you know, stay alive and not get sick, but.

Speaker AWhoa, what about the economy, dude? What about the economy?

AlexAre you familiar with Navy Pier?

Speaker ANavy Pier.

AlexNavy Pier is the.

MerlinIs that the place you buy the shorts and the performance fleece?

AlexNo, no, no.

MerlinOh, no, no, no. Oh, that's the old Navy Pier. Okay, sorry.

AlexThis is...

Speaker AGonna take my horse on Navy Pier.

AlexNo, it's Chicago's, like, not number one tourist attraction, but it's up there with the Willis Tower. And there's a Ferris wheel and boats and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All the great piers. And that opened before bars and restaurants could. And it was like, no.

And that's how it's getting further out as fast as possible. Because one family goes to Navy Pier. Okay. Then they go to the suburbs.

MerlinThey take it back to wherever they were. They're basically Instacart for coronavirus.

AlexYeah. Yeah. And the people who, I don't know, we've gotten, by we, I mean, the collective left or whatever gets so much shit for being like, well, people need to work and people need to go back to their jobs. And I haven't seen a single person who has gone back to their job and gone back to work not wearing a mask and gloves. And to be fair, that is about three places and not food service places. But I really don't think that this is being transmitted across, you know, GoPuff.

Not GoPuff. GoPuff is in Chicago, though. Like, what is it? Instacart or Puff Daddy. What's the other one? My God. DoorDash. Postmates. There we go. Yeah.

MerlinOh, you're talking about DoorDash, Postmates, Grubhub.

AlexYeah. Or even like Peapod or whatever. Yeah. I'm Peepaw

Speaker AI'm Peepaw I'm gonna bring you out your ass sidebow it's me your Peepaw sorry I have to wear this mask I'm very old

Speaker Coh god

Speaker Athanks Peepaw you can leave it outside honk honk

Alexoh I mean that's the one upside I never need to talk to a delivery person ever again. It's great.

MerlinWow. I feel like I have a pretty warm relationship with delivery people. Because I, you know, I got an Instacart from a guy that, shockingly, my order included alcohol. And like, I was so proud of this guy. Because I have a thing I do, which is depending on where I am, what I'll do is, because you have to give him your license. And I had left my license, like sitting where the person could just get it. And I was in another part, like waving and saying,

hey, there you go, it's okay. And you can sign for me, it's all fine. And the guy said, would you mind turning it over and holding it for me? I'd rather not touch it.

Speaker AAnd I was like, you know. Damn.

MerlinSure, man. I mean, it's probably better we not be near each other because that's the big problem. But I respect that. If that makes you feel safer, I will absolutely do that. And tip rather egregiously.

Speaker AOh, yeah.

MerlinBut yeah, I mean, like there's no, this is this is all so old and so recycled at this point alex but like there's no there's not going to be an economy to go back to that's what people cannot get into their fucking head they they keep looking away from channing tatum's butthole and it's killing people and i i know

Alexthat that's anecdotal right there but it shows like workers aren't the ones putting themselves or other people in danger intentionally like they're essentially like uh medical workers

MerlinThey're doing everything they can to protect themselves and others, I feel like.

AlexAnd just because that one guy didn't know, like, oh, guess what? The new research shows touching things kind of fine, breathing towards each other way worse than we thought. Like, it's not their fucking job to know that. I would argue it might be, like, the president's job or the CDC's job. But, you know, people disagree.

MerlinAre you talking about the lone warrior? You're talking about the lone warrior. The thing that's really twisted my melon right now, in a very happy way, for a variety of reasons, is that at least so far, as much as anybody can tell, the George Floyd, you know, and related everything, protests, especially in New York City, I read something this morning, I've only been up for a little while, but I read something this morning that was really interesting, where they're saying, lots of people are saying that, you know, there was an interesting confluence of things that didn't happen.

as a result of the protests. And let me tell you why. Well, one thing is most of the protesters were wearing masks. And they were not, I think this is so critical. And I know, I keep repeating this over and over, a huge confusion of the messaging is not rationally being able to lay out the factors you need to sweat. Factors you need to sweat are, and I'm going to repeat this over and over, because one life might be saved by you not being a knucklehead, people. And so like outside is almost always better than inside on its own, right?

Wearing masks is better than not wearing masks. Social distancing, way better than not social distancing. Another one that's huge, amount of people, amount of time. And it strikes me. So anyway, to close the loop on the, like New York City, outside, people mostly masks. Guess what? You're really not super close to the same person for a very long time. I can't do the exact arithmetic on that, but I imagine that had something to do with it. Another thing, this is such a turns out, but is that the New York cases were already going down at the time of the protests, in New York in particular.

AlexYeah, we didn't see a spike in Chicago either.

MerlinIt makes it so farcical when the president says, well, we're going to go do a rally in Tulsa. Again, I don't know how much that has caused, but inside, long time, no masks, no social distancing, and you're around roughly the same people for a very long time? Not great, Bob.

AlexNope. Nope. Ugh. I'm never going to meet my niece. Ugh. It'll be fine. Well, meet her when she's sentient.

MerlinHmm. She won't remember anything, you know, after she's five.

AlexI know. That's, you know what?

MerlinIt's really just for you. you're just really being selfish that you want to have memories.

AlexI am. I'm being very...

MerlinWhy do you want to have a future? Why won't you debate me?

AlexI want to see my best friends.

MerlinOh, man. What is the left's obsession with having a future?

Speaker AI don't know. Join my death cult!

AlexIf America isn't great again, I don't want to be here.

MerlinAnyway, we'll cut all that out.

AlexDo you have a note card?

MerlinYeah, sure.

AlexI was surprised to hear that you have note cards for shows. And I just wanted to know if we had a note card.

Speaker AWhat are you talking about?

AlexUh-huh. Yeah. Well, who's the cipher now? I believe it was your other show, Back to Work, in which you had-

MerlinWe're going to need to cover what you've been drinking this morning, Alex. Not now. Not now.

AlexJust a dive room.

MerlinBy the way, I don't know if you can hear that. I buy thick cards.

AlexOh, yeah. These are these-

MerlinI get thick boys.

Alexthese are uh let me give me give them a good shake oh this is just one oh even that's better

Merlinthan my measly this is that's a little higher pitch than i would like but yeah it still works for what you need uh i don't know what you're talking about back to work where did i talk about

Alexwhat are you talking about you maybe maybe it was recontirable good gosh um what have i been drinking maybe it was rectifs maybe maybe you should wear less mask i'm using the wrong filter It was the wrong Instagram ad.

MerlinYou're holding it wrong.

AlexOh, no, it was. It was Roderick on the line where you had a note card of topics that you could talk about if you were too depressed to talk about anything else. And I just was like, wait, wait, wait, wait now. Is there a card for each show? Is there a group of cards for all shows? Do you have like a, you know, like a hipster PDF just in your pocket still for like, okay.

Speaker ADid you do that one again? What is it I have?

AlexI just found...

Speaker AA hipster PDF?

AlexI thought we were going to move past it. I really thought...

MerlinYou thought you were going to get away with that?

AlexI really did. I really did.

MerlinOh, you remember there's that one guy who's mad at me for being the guy who checks notes.

Speaker ASays throw out your email and write it down. He'd be so fucking angry.

Speaker COh, God.

Speaker Adebate me no I'm good I'm good I got a whole bunch of stuff I'm doing over here cancel everything I have to go argue with this man sorry honey no Chinese foods in my daddy has to argue about the things he can't

Merlincontrol so do do do do do do kind of kind of kind of i do um so yeah i try to what i do with roderick uh is i check out his instagram his twitter and i look at all the recent uh episodes of

Alexhis show with dan what you you do you you spy you spy sorry go go on go on no i just want to

MerlinWell, first of all, I want to make sure they're alive. But also, because that would be so embarrassing if I started recording with a dead person. Unless that was the plan. Unless. So I'll do that.

AlexWell, they do it with Biden every day.

MerlinI try to have, for Roderick, I try to have an evergreen couple, three topics I'm pretty sure would be fun for him to talk about. It's his show. And I do that. And sometimes I'll have something in particular, like I say, the Nora Ephron, everything is copy, which I'm kind of obsessed with thinking about right now. in the case of Circuso we have a very very very very large document with all of our many main topics regular topics etc etc so we've always got stuff there and I try to check in with him the afternoon before we record just to say you know

again it's his show every show is a John's show but I just check in and say is there anything I need to be prepped for you know to be able to discuss like you know examples of something that's a theme we want to talk about or whatever with Dan it's fucking hard right now because I have been going to bed later getting up later and I just I don't have time to get my shit together and I am prepared just enough to be dangerous most of the time we're like throughout the week I write down things I want to talk about but um

and then here this is kind of related to something I texted you about this morning and you were again very inscrutable about which is that um you know this is not a bad time to move pieces around on the table. If you have something, like in my case, I have these, I like my calendar. I like my schedule. I live for it. But like, I can't believe how long it's taken me to say, hey, you know, Alex, the show's kind of different now. Is there anything you want to do differently, including like the time we record? It seems kind of rude that I've never even brought it up in all

this time. Like, is there a better time that you would want to do this? That's not a leading question. But no, no, just in that instance, ditto with like Syracuse, where like, I kind of wish we could do that show at a different time. 6.30 every other Tuesday does put a little bit of a hole in the evening that I would prefer to avoid if we can, but I don't want to disrupt, you know.

AlexDestiny time? No. You can't, yeah. Gotta get those raids in.

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, no, that's that. I used to prepare more for things, but, like, with this show, I mean, who knows what the fuck we're doing.

AlexI, well, I started creating cards, because I'm like, hmm, is that something we should do? Because... It's a great

Merlinhabit. If you get a hipster PDF, you are going to be so relieved. And I'll tell you, bud, it's better than, so what did I write down? Oh yeah, so we're doing a new thing with Erectifs and Relay. And like I have one new task that I have to do. And I just intuitively knew last night, I just want to write these four words on a card. I don't want to put it into a text file. Sometimes my gut just tells me that's where this goes. I have to explain what it is, but we're doing a member thing and I need to do a new interstitial guitar riff for Reconcilable Differences.

And I was demoing that for Syracuse last night. And I was like, I'll do it. Put it on a card. My PDF.

AlexWhen you say demoing, do you mean like you get on a little video call together? And did you serenade him? Or what does that look like?

MerlinJohn Syracuse and I are on the Relay Network.

Speaker Aand Relay is changing the way that they do membership things.

MerlinAnd so this is not a promotion. It's an explanation. And so we're going to do at least one episode per month with bonus content. And it will generally be all I do by Friday, making the other person do something.

AlexOh, well, well, well. Go on.

MerlinOkay. Well, this just canceled. So I got to make the dough where I can.

AlexYeah. Well, we're not even releasing this.

MerlinAnd so the first episode will be, well, the first episode was last night. It will come out next Thursday. You should have called in during the pet care show if you wanted to talk about elder care. And you get to hear us argue about the name for the new feed.

Speaker AOh.

MerlinAnd also I demoed some ideas for the music for him. The next one, I have to watch Millennium Actress. one after that he has to watch the sullivan generator episode of shark tank yes the one

Alexwith blondie's cookies and the sullivan generator oh my mouth hasn't closed

Merlinand then the guitar line i'll probably just end up mostly just doing this

Something like that. Which is yet another Bacon Ray song.

Speaker AMmm, I was glad. I dive into blue And that's the wreck of you The way you screwed me over in the parking lot It's not a concern Oceans rise and wave goodbye Summer heat Ice cream melts and dives down to the Orion Belt

MerlinMen who drive drunk feel enormous pain

Speaker AYou should re-release those. That'd be so fun. I think we're gonna. That's a Mike song, not a me song. Oh, would you really?

MerlinThat's why it sounded weird when I tried to sing it.

Speaker CThat'd be so cool.

MerlinMy idea is to take everything we've ever fucking done, anything we can find and basically put it on Bandcamp for five bucks.

AlexOoh.

MerlinSome of them are good.

AlexA lot of them are good.

MerlinPalavar's remastered our last CD to make it sound not excruciatingly atrocious. And we've got that. So whatever that is, we've got like three cassettes, two CDs, two or three, seven inches. Let's stop talking about me. Let's talk about something important.

AlexWell, I like talking about, we're not talking about you. We're talking about Bacon Ray.

MerlinI like playing music. I got to play more music. Music makes me happy.

AlexOh, man. Music is great. I don't know how to respond.

MerlinI've dropped it a little bit on my podcast listening, not least because probably everybody's doing the same thing I am, which is going, oh. But, okay, you know, here's, I got a banger for you. Fucking election profit makers.

AlexYes.

MerlinThey continue to come into their own more and more with every episode. And it's a delight.

AlexI feel like maybe seven episodes or so ago, it became a different show, and I am here for it.

MerlinOh, yeah. No, it's very creative now. I mean, where they have bits. The Helicopter Tony thing fucking slays me. Their morning zoo show with Starly Quinn and Long John Silver. It fucking kills me, Helicopter Tony, with traffic on the ones.

Speaker AIt kills me. And then there's a new thing where David does a fake ad at the beginning.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinHe's on fire lately. He's so goddamn fast and so funny. But the show also at the same time is getting more structure to it in a way that I don't usually enjoy in a show, but I love in this show. It's got sort of like segments and like, what's your bet last week? What's your bet this week? Here's letters from people. And yeah, it's just so freaking funny. Questions for Helicopter Tony.

Alexthis this was on my card the word fast you use that word many many times right what does that mean to you and why is it a good thing the thing i know about me is uh

Merlinthere's always two things well there is that but it's also that um i don't know if i'm correct when i say when i take a pause for a moment to say do i want to say right or do i want to say correct. Do I want to say hard or do I want to say difficult? There are meaningful distinctions in words for me. And something I realized, I feel like I realized about myself, again, I don't know if this is true, a long time ago, I don't think I'm a smart person. I think I'm a clever person. And even more than a clever person, I think I'm a fast person. I would rather be smart,

but I'm stuck with fast and clever. I don't have anything very useful to contribute because I'm not that smart, but I can unintentionally make your head spin with a Robin Williams level of like, what the fuck is he talking about? He pivoted to that, but four people will understand the bizarre jazz-like link between those two things you caught and the two things you didn't. And the person out there who can put all of those together is in my caress. Well, what is a caress? It could actually be a grand flute, but keep your head on a swivel.

that's fast it's not good but it's fast that's what i think of do you make a distinction between

Alexum smart and clever yes but i think you upholds cleverness a bit higher than i do i don't know it's what they mean clever gets people into trouble uh

MerlinOh, oh, oh.

AlexMore often than I'd like. And I wish I had a good concrete example of that.

MerlinThere's no context for anything anymore. This is the Twitter problem again. It's utterly free of context. When I wake up on July the 1st and I yell to my family, rabbit, rabbit, and then I go on Twitter and I post the words rabbit, rabbit, then everybody brings their own joke, which is fine. But they're not realizing that that's the thing that you're supposed to say first thing out of your mouth in the morning on the first day of the month. And then you'll have good luck all month. And then people just start posting, you know, whatever black lady reaction gifs of rabbits or whatever. And it's like, okay, that's cool.

Or like, if you don't get the sexy Garfield joke, that's okay. But when Angela gets the sexy Garfield joke and then riffs on top of it, that makes me really happy. Angela gets me. Do you follow Angela?

Alexno from the office

Merlinyou should follow Angela Angela's a runner and she's she's very cool and and she's as deep on the bim bam as as I am afflicted and so then we go back and forth like do you want to go with Pam Pam Head Pam Face Garfield body and then I riff on that with Face Dog versus Hand Cat but I want I want Face Dog Face Dog body and and

Speaker Aand and now we're having some fun because we're riffing we're making we're making And joke jazz.

AlexWell, that's what I guess I'm trying.

Speaker AYou put a little bit of four-on-one in a mix of batch? You know what I'm saying? Make some jazz. Make some jazz juice.

Alexthe reason i ask though is because it's sort of interesting how you value that level of in i don't want to say exclusion i guess almost inclusion it's like yes that person gets me but why is it that that one thing you share why is that a good thing or or i'm not saying it's a bad thing. I just find it really, really interesting. You mean like something that

Merlindoesn't where you have to bring your own context to why it's here and what it means?

Speaker ANot just that, but sort of the riffing. No, no, it's a legit question. I'm just trying to clarify.

AlexMore of the riffing, I guess. There's more value put on that now. And I think increasingly in isolation and i just i guess i find it weird not you necessarily well you're weird but not

Merlini like that it filters out the snorks in some ways um but like i um why are we talking about me so much i hate this um i as you know enjoy improv i like stand-up comedy but i really like improv because like or in the case of like middle ditch and schwartz or recently some folks turned me on to Dave and TJ. Have you ever seen them? They're in Chicago, right?

AlexI have not seen them.

MerlinApparently, they are said to be legendary for their improv shows. And I bought the whole, like all of their shows on Vimeo. And I think in fairness, the person who sent this to me is correct. Middle Ditch and Schwartz are basically doing their thing. I mean, I bet lots of people do that thing. But like down to the like, this is Middle Ditch, this is Schwartz, that's TJ, this is Dave, blackout. but theirs is a little more brainy and strictly Chicago in some ways. But I,

something I used to say to my lady friend, I remember when, when she was pregnant and we were at this point, we were at a TiVo and we're still watching a lot of like just normie TV. And we'd watch, you know, law and order shows and there were several law and order shows we would watch. And then we got into the wire and then we got really, really into the wire. And it was really difficult to go back to, to, after The Wire, it was hard to go back to Law and Order, not because it's a bad show, but because the bar had been raised to such an extent that it was hard to just, I mean,

you could enjoy it as comfort food, but it wasn't the kind of thing where you go, oh, oh boy, that celebrity you see at minute eight, somebody who was a celebrity 15 years ago, I wonder if they're the killer. Well, it's always the killer.

AlexCould it be Robin Williams? I don't know.

MerlinThe thing I found myself saying to her back then was, first of all, I think our baby will probably be born coming out of the birth canal saying, way down in the hole, because the child has heard the song so many times. What I really said was I really started to love, and this is, again, pretty early on, not early, partway into like peak TV, like Platinum Age, but I'm very, I'm really thrilled by something that rewards me for paying a

Speaker Aridiculous amount of attention to it.

MerlinLike, if I go sit around, I'll fucking sit around and have some drinks and watch YouTube, whatever, listen to Rick Beato play songs he knows, or whatever. But, like, sitting down and watching Middle Ditch and Schwartz, even on repeated times, for example, is just so enriching to me.

AlexIt's arrested development all over again for me.

MerlinOh, yeah. That's a really, that's actually a really good example that's contemporaneous with that time. But, I mean, you know, I don't mean to sound like a snob or something, but, like, this also goes, this could go for math rock. This could go for some prog rock even. This could certainly goes for like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, where like, you're going to, you're going to be so confused the first time you listen to Salt Peanuts, but then like you listen to Night in Tunisia, you start listening, you know, and then you hear the different versions at different times and you start recognizing the patterns. And it takes a self-education in BOP to be able to appreciate what the fuck is actually going on. It's not noise,

trust me but like that becomes so rewarding to be where you could be say like somebody like marco where like he really enjoys like this particular performance of this particular fish song and he's paid so much attention to them and i love stuff like that and i i don't know if i

Alexprecisely make stuff like that but it's just are you kidding what pretty much most of the podcast joke lexicon is Merlin Man Bits. Other than After Show. Sorry, TM, TM. But like, but again

Merlinand again, that's yet another reason. So I have a few unread messages here from Scott and Adam. My God, can you imagine how fun it is to do that show with those guys? Can you even fucking imagine how lucky I am to get to do that show again? It's such a fucking joy to like, and it's Dave and TJ talked about this. Did you ever listen to that Radiolab interview with them? I have not.

AlexIt's in the queue. I also bought all the Vimeo shows.

MerlinBut they talk about, that doesn't matter, it's fine. But they talk about how, I think it was Dave saying that when he's out there on stage, it's such a good interview. Remind me to put it in show notes.

There's nothing else in the world. He's 100%. The show starts with these two men, Blackout. Lights come on, and it's two men. Well, the two improvisers. It's not important that they're men. What's important is that they're standing there. Now you're canceled.

AlexSorry, what?

MerlinThey're standing there. Well, no, because we don't know if they're men in the bit.

AlexExactly.

MerlinThey're just standing there staring at each other with the most awkward silence you could ever imagine. Everybody's fear out there about public speaking, this is your worst fucking nightmare, is the lights come on, you're on stage, and the most important part of this bit that you don't know about yet is you don't know what it is. You don't know who you are. You don't know what has happened before. You don't know who can, will, or should speak first. And then there's just the tentative steps of one person talking.

Speaker AYou know, you're going to get through this.

MerlinYeah, yeah, I know. No, you're going to get through this. Well, what the fuck does that mean? We don't know yet. And then what they say in this interview is so wonderful. The thing that makes that, and I hate to spoil this because it's a great like eight minute interview. And also they have this documentary about them that you can buy on iTunes in SD. But the thing that they're doing is what they realize or they say they've realized in their process is that they're not making this up. They're joining something that started a long time ago. And now it's just their job to be there for what was started a long time ago and their interaction will now develop.

There are potentially thousands or millions of different situations that are all happening at the same time on that stage. And it's almost like you're time traveling to these different things and becoming different people and inhabiting that. But you are ultimately the improviser who can pull a thread through all of that. But staying 100% open to what the other person is doing is the most exhilarating thing in the world. And he just talks about, Dave talks about, like, when I'm up there, it's the greatest thing. There's no phones. There's no emails. There's no just living in the moment.

And, yeah, I think that's exciting. And I just, I really, I really, I really, the thing, one of the million things that sucks, it's far down the list of what makes Twitter suck. but the thing that a long time ago started making twitter less fun was all the fake earnestness

Alexdid you listen back to work this week yeah it was very cathartic thank you thank you me too

Merlinum it's um but it's let's just let's just do the earnestness of the of the y'all folks folks like i'm about to ruin your fucking day with what you never knew before just strap the fuck on because, and so like there's, it's nothing, it's just so much context. It's so much context. It's so much throat clearing. It's so much framing. It's so much like this is the truth that you will now accept. Okay. So for example, this didn't get a ton of likes probably because I was watching YouTube and

having some drinks, but do you get this joke? Let me. I'm about to text you. Start with reading the president's tweet. Well, so click through and then go read the president's tweet.

AlexAll right.

MerlinI just sent Alex a quote tweet of me quote tweeting the president. The president 14 hours ago said, here talking about, oh, I think, was it a woman at, no, fired from CNN. Oh, yeah, she says, she gets fired by CNN for giving Crooked Hillary the debate questions and gets hired by Fox News. Where are you, Roger Ailes?

AlexAnd it's the chair lady.

MerlinChair model. I quote tweeted that with a single image that will make sense so like this is again now you're gonna have you're gonna you don't bring your own joke you have to bring your own context what do you understand the joke?

AlexYes I understand the joke and I also like this reply

Merlinis a picture of Michael Scott holding up the catalog with the chair model in it Michael has to pick a new chair because it's a budget time you gotta pick a new chair Pam desperately wants him to please order the chair because she's going to get Michael's old chair. It's a classic, wonderful The Office plot. And Michael falls in love with the woman sitting in this chair, who becomes known as the chair model. Michael decides to go and seek her out and to find her. I think it was a Creed or Dwight.

But anyway, somebody does some research and finds out that, alas, they did all kinds of detective work and found out that this woman has died. See how this is already not funny because I'm explaining it?

AlexOh, yeah, no, it's absolutely terrible. It's true.

MerlinRight, right, right. So what happened? Well, no, is it done? No, it's not done. Michael is still in love with the deceased chair model and begins a mission to seek her out. And I think at one point they go and don't they try to visit her grave?

AlexThey do visit her grave. He and Michael.

Speaker AJust the beauty of the fact that Michael will not even realize how much he just never does his job. Oh, it's movie day. We watch some of Varsity Blues every Monday. You know, he just wants to be loved. And in this case, he wants the chair model, the late chair model to love him.

MerlinWhy is that funny? It's funny because the president seems to think that Roger Ailes is still alive.

Alexand not just that but he just texted him i'm like well then of course he does clean up a little

Merlinwhile later he goes of course i didn't i didn't hear that phrase that the guy in the golf cart

Alexsaid oh yeah you're talking about that with the villages the villages i feel like i have been to that place but i i'm it's more likely that a lot of people feel like they've been to that place

MerlinIt's an M. Night Shyamalan planned community.

AlexYeah.

MerlinTurns out.

AlexAlso, side note, the reason that this only got a few likes is because it was at 3.44 a.m. Central Time. So 4.44 a.m. Eastern Time.

MerlinI like to get one in before I go to bed. Oh, okay. I put in my earplugs. I put in my earplugs. I pull the hat down over my eyes. I turn on the electric fireplace and I go to bed with my wife in my big boy bed.

AlexDo you have a self-destruct tweet?

MerlinI'm going to say no.

AlexOkay. All right.

MerlinI don't think I know what that is.

AlexOkay.

Speaker AOh, is this like a dead man switch?

AlexAfter show. But what I think is really interesting about all the stuff you just said is.

Speaker AYou think any of that was interesting?

AlexNo, no, no. It was until we got to the dead girl chair part. Because if nobody knows what that. You made your point with that. That's my life.

Speaker AThis is my fucking life though.

Merlinis I can't not see those two things next to each other. And in a flash, that's the thing, is your brain, your synapses light up and you either see it or you don't. And in my case, I was like, how could I not share this with the people who love this program as much as I do and hate this man as much as I do? I got a beloved Dave Itzkoff fave yesterday because you know he's the pro at doing the Simpsons reaction. He has the Frankie Act for fucking everything that happens. and it's so fucking funny.

And he's very generous sometimes about throwing a star at somebody. So like, that makes me so happy because when I see the president, McEnany saying that the president has now read the PDB from February, of course I instantly think of Milhouse's mother at the book party saying, now let's all go around the room and talk about why we didn't read the book.

Speaker AAnd he gets it.

MerlinHe doesn't need that explained to him. Why did you send me a cartoon? Well, it's a drawing of dignity.

AlexOh, everything you're talking about has to do with time and attention, which someone taught me a lot about a long time ago.

MerlinThat's actually that's a very good point, especially attention, especially attention.

AlexYeah, because now my new obsession is constantly what is art going to look like? What are people going to focus on next? What is going to be the thing? And I kind of am worried about not so much the, you know, reactionary meme type things, but kind of those, you know, those long running jokes, those long, really rewarding bits. I feel like we're possibly losing that in while we're in isolation.

MerlinTalk more about that. I want to know. I want to understand what you're talking about.

AlexI've been obsessed with TikTok. Not just because TikTok is probably stealing. Definitely is stealing all of our information.

MerlinAlex, I'm terrified to look at my kids screen time. It's all she does. It's really all she does.

AlexI turned off my screen time.

MerlinOh, yeah. I haven't filled a ring in I don't know how long.

AlexNo. Oh, yeah.

MerlinPacking more bowls than filling rings.

AlexBut that's, I'm like.

MerlinThat's art. It's absolutely art.

AlexIt is. It is.

MerlinIn a way that Roger Ebert would never cop to. But I mean, like, you just, you see so much of this, like, the women are killing it. Our women, our beautiful women. Women are destroying it on TikTok right now. Oh, my God.

AlexBut is it, is it smart or is it clever? and I try to mean that in the least bitchy I don't know I think oh fuck what's her name is it Sarah Cooper

MerlinI know who you mean this is the woman who does a lip sync a pantomime a mime of Trump's words and then usually her also as the person the beauty part the John Cleese beauty part of it It's usually her doing Trump in her visual of what Trump, it's not what Trump looks like, but she's done a Dana Carvey here. She's redefined the president based on how she makes him look. And it's fucking glorious. But the best, my favorite part then is the cut to like her as a reporter or her as somebody else like writing something down.

As the doctors. Out of lobster. and just this utterly bewildered look right straight back to that class like classic Ashley Parker moment I think it was during a Sean Spicer thing the thing about concentration camps do you remember that that's the long shot of Ashley Parker having reaction after reaction to what was being said and she just keeps her eyes squint oh I do not remember that oh my god It's so good.

Is this clever? Is it smart? I feel like I rarely find stuff that's really, really smart.

AlexWell, I think that is smart, though. Like, it takes a ton.

MerlinTell me, what's the distinction for you? What's the distinction for you? I'm not getting it.

AlexClever is a quick, like, got it there. And clever can also snowball into just memes that go out of proportion. Like, for example.

MerlinOh, so clever is like, I see what you did there. And smart is like, I understand what you did there.

AlexI guess like the loss meme, right? When I say that, do you know what I'm talking about? The lines for, see, that's the thing. The loss meme is one of supposedly the most famous memes on the internet. And it's-

MerlinI have no idea what you're talking about.

AlexExactly. Okay. This happened in one of the many great canceled super secret text channels. And we were referencing this comic called Loss. Loss meme. And it's completely uninteresting. Like, it's just... Oh, here we go. Here we are. I actually wonder if Quinn is going to know what, now that we recognize the editor behind the curtain

I wonder if Quinn is even going to know what this is

MerlinOkay, let me look here

AlexThe

MerlinYou don't need to

Alexread it, but if you don't know what

MerlinIs this Penny Arcade? Now what is this?

AlexNo, I don't even know. It's some old internet comic and the

MerlinControl-Alt-Delete by Tim Buckley

AlexYes, there we go Um, and oh gosh. And I was, maybe the machine I'm using has Safari on it and it's, something's broken because I have an ad blocker on as well as Safari's built in thingamajigger. Um, oh yeah. Challenge. We should get to that. Uh, but basically it's this funny comic and in this particular one, the main character's girlfriend or wife had a miscarriage.

MerlinIt's a four panel, a two by two comic.

AlexYeah. Yeah. And the girlfriend has an abortion and it's really, or I'm sorry, it has a miscarriage some it's something like um very it's a personal tragedy and it like came out of nowhere yeah but did the original not have words as well right yeah the original didn't have words and someone ended up making this four panel comic into just lines vaguely looking like the four panels and

Speaker Athe more i'm talking oh god oh my god this is funny yeah well it's it's clever but now like

AlexIt is like such a thing. It is such a meme where it's become like, thanks, I hate it, which is something I do. And it's just like a reflex. And I don't want to say that any of these things are bad, but they feel like two separate things. Like Milovitch and Schwarzkopf feels like something different than a dance TikTok. And I don't mean, well, and a dance TikTok feels different than a Sarah Cooper.

God, I hope she's so good.

MerlinYeah, but I got to give credit for the jazz, man. The jazz juice, which is the recontextualization, if I could sound a little bit like a, I guess a structuralist. But like the way that you, God, fuck me gently, recombinate. The way that you take pre-existing stuff and then everything's remix, as you know, then you remix it into something else in a different context. The memes that are funny to me are when you take, boy, I'm feeling so pretentious today. Like Arthur Kessler talks about in The Act of Creation, these two matrices you're going to bang together to make this new thing.

And take these two seemingly incompatible things. I mean, that's what art is in some ways, is like some kind of a somewhat irresolvable tension expressed in some way or another. But you get that synaptic snap when you go, oh, I get the two things. That's pretty funny. And then you find yourself laughing on a meta level because you're like, I can't believe I'm still laughing at this meme from five years ago. It stopped being funny, and then it became funny again, and then it stopped being funny for a really long time. And then somebody found a way to bring it back.

I was riding my scoot scoot yesterday, and the phrase, all your base are belong to us, went through my head. And I laughed behind my mask. It's still funny. I've never played that game. I don't know what it is. I'm a fucking video game.

AlexNobody's actually played that game.

MerlinBut like all your bases are belong to us. It's still a very, very funny sequence of words. They sutured the hell out of him.

Speaker AHe's a good looking guy. He lost his middle third. Very good looking young flat man.

AlexOkay.

Speaker ADid you get the gif?

AlexGet the... Oh, I don't think I've ever seen this. But like I feel...

MerlinI love her so much. She just had a baby and she's advocating really strongly. for women to be able to like keep working and we got to open schools before bars. And I love Ashley Parker so much. I enjoy every appearance of hers. She always seems to have such genuine relish for the appearance that she's having. Like she's always having fun with what she's doing. Like Emily Jane Fox, that kind of like, there's these certain, especially female reporters where I'm like, I'm so glad they're here. I really,

Speaker AI love Emily Jane Fox. Her work is so great. She's always got this shit on Michael Cohen, baby.

AlexI feel burned by Maggie and now I'm just kind of like, Oh fuck. I just,

Speaker AThe entire...

MerlinI don't type that URL as much as I used to because I'm pretty convinced they're gaslighting us. I think the New York Times is systematically, deliberately fucking with us, not even for the understandable reason of clickbait. I think they are constitutionally incapable of picking a fucking side and saying the truth about this one thing. And not in the usual way. I don't mean in the orange Cheeto way, but in the sense of like, Peter Baker is too good of a writer and too smart of a thinker to not realize

butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Give me a fucking break, man.

AlexWhich is why.

MerlinSo fucking mad.

AlexYeah, I.

MerlinMolly's canceled party. Molly canceled party.

AlexYeah, that was a, that was, that one hurt. I was like.

MerlinBut I also feel for her for the way she got screwed about the book deal.

AlexYeah.

MerlinYou know about that, right?

AlexYeah, exactly. There are so many little, like there's so many tentacles like seeping into everybody's brains and lives, which I got to go back to the clever versus smart thing. Like all your base are belong to us is very funny to me and like rewarding in a chuckle. But like nobody made that. And when it's recontextualized, it's great. But is it rewarding to the folks who make it? And like, is Maggie Haberman up there saying those things because she does believe them or just because she now has to be a corporate shill?

Like, I mean, I basically this is turning to chap out right now. God.

MerlinPart of it also is the access journalism part of this. I don't know. It's like she she and the president are in this weird folie a do like kind of joined at the hip where they both kind of need each other.

AlexYeah.

MerlinHe craves her approval ever since when she worked for the, what, the New York Post? Oh, yeah.

AlexI totally forgot. Yeah.

MerlinShe was like a gossip reporter that covered Trump. And then she went to, I think, BuzzFeed or Politico and then New York Times. I'm not slagging her. She works hard. I mean, I've seen that documentary. She works really hard. But, you know, I think they do need each other. I think she needs the access that she's got. And so she's able to do those like, my sources can verify that. It's like, yeah, okay, so Steve Bannon called you. We get it. Like I have a feeling that for a lot of these folks, maybe not her. I bet she's got a pretty fat Rolodex.

I think for a lot of these folks, they've got a couple Bannon types on speed dial that they can always go to instantly to get like the T, as you people say. I wrote down we need to do our thing. I wrote down for after show. Oh, self-destruct tweet. What was the other thing? We got lots to talk about.

AlexOh, so many things.

MerlinI'm going to find something that I want to read you briefly. But I would like you to tell people how they can listen to the Dubai Friday after show. If we're here tomorrow, July 2nd. Oh, God, Hamilton. Two days to Hamilton. I know. I know.

AlexThat's...

MerlinOh, you sent me satisfied.

AlexIt's so... I mean, in our... Okay, Hamilton's a great example. Like, I think it is a... Fuck everybody. I think it's fucking brilliant. And I love all the...

MerlinOh, everybody shut your fucking pie hole. It's a fucking miracle.

AlexYeah. I got my hundred likes out of that tweet that I wanted. Thank you, everybody.

MerlinThis is the opposite of the Smiths. The Smiths are what I call a gimme. Just let me have this. Let me just enjoy the Smiths. This is the opposite of gimme. This is... You're fucking wrong. Just because it's popular and you're sick of hearing about it, fuck you. It's really extremely good. And to the person who wrote the thing about it, you could just listen to the music. Nah. Nah. Two turntables. Literally two turntables on the stage.

AlexMy mother-in-law doesn't know about that. And I am so excited for her to just.

MerlinOh, God. The duel. When you see the duel. Oh, my God. It's so on the bullet when my Hamilton girlfriend is the bullet. Oh, my God. I hope she's in this.

AlexI think she is. I thought I saw her.

MerlinShe's my Hamilton crush. Who's your Hamilton crush?

AlexThe, um, oh, who's my Hamilton crush is such a good.

MerlinOh, probably, uh, probably, um, Angelica.

AlexYes. But like that feels too basic. Like there is some person. Oh man.

MerlinBut did you see her in the, in the documentary in the, um, PBS? Hamilton's America.

AlexOh, no, no, no.

MerlinShe's such a good hang. You can tell she's such a good hang.

AlexOh yeah. She, I see, that's the thing. I would want her to be like my best friend. but if we're doing like a Hamilton fuck, marry, kill, like they're like, I want to marry her,

Speaker Abut there's a number,

Alexthere's a number of, uh, uh, casting company or sorry, company members in the Chicago production that, you know, all right.

Speaker ABobby, baby, Bobby.

AlexOh God. See, there are people who are really going to enjoy this episode for many reasons.

MerlinI hope Quinn likes it. That's all I care about.

AlexThat's, that's that's interesting because i agree but i wonder if her name is betsy i want uh the yeah no she she i'm almost positive is in the um uh uh wow yeah the one the one they the one

Merlinthey shot they shot two full shows and then edited it together the only thing i that's worrying me a little bit just the tiniest bit is where they said almost the entire original cast and I've seen all my boys and gals in it I'm pretty sure all the major characters seem to be

Alexthere oh are you saying you don't think there's not like of the main cast you might there might

Merlinnot be everybody well I mean like it depends I see I have to imagine that they shot it in such a way I mean obviously like hey you know we're winding down from the entire original cast we need to get this in the can like make sure we get these I believe they shot two shows and then

Alexedited together is that right something like that that is i i tried to avoid spoilers but then i was

Merlinlike ah fuck it but and i'm pretty sure that's right it looks so good anthony ramos i mean you just ah fucking uh geez um leslie odom my god what a talent that guy is and now there's that

Alexfun discourse of uh well linman Miranda isn't the best Hamilton and it's like okay sure fine

Merlinwhy well it's just it's like it's like having a favorite doctor it's okay to disagree yeah and

Alexit's i i don't know this whole god i hamilton is this could be the tipping point of like oh they did this so well and yes disney is backing them and but but at the time that wasn't the case like sure he was a huge deal but right right right but this goes to you am i correct to say this goes to your point about what comes next for art kind of yeah that's this this is me con i'm i'm just you know it's it's compulsive at this point um because i've kind of accepted that quote

art or entertainment is uh sort of what i do for a living i really like how max put it which is like hospitality is my job taking care of people kind of yeah and and even more so now uh hospitality is harder than ever. Art is harder.

MerlinWhen you're here, you're family. Let's be honest.

AlexYeah. And, and, like, I don't know.

MerlinSorry. You can get the after show they're going to Give Us Your Fucking Money. You can go to GiveUsYourFuckingMoney.com and for $5 a month you can hear the after show assuming it still exists after uh july 2nd how does a bastard dropped a forgotten spot in the caribbean i drew by i did indeed drive by an olive garden

Alexand it was exactly like that tweet it was fucking packed really why why why are and also this is in chicago like they're what why why before before i read you before i read you something and before

Merlinwe get to our challenge, can I get you to look at something on the internet? Yes, please. GiveSyracusa your money.com

AlexOh boy, oh boy.

MerlinBought it last night while we were recording. Oh god, Kate Blanchett. Woof. My Kate has developed a serious crush on Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem. She wants a poster.

AlexOh, oh, hold on now. Hold on now.

MerlinSave it for the after show.

AlexWe'll save that for the after show, but I have some thoughts for your teenage daughter about.

Speaker ABut she's so cute. Is she not?

AlexSave it for the after show.

Speaker ADo I not bleed when I'm cut?

AlexIt takes me to the rec diffs page, correct?

MerlinYeah, exactly. But now you can give us money in a different way.

AlexYes. You can join for $5 a month or join for $50 a year.

Speaker AThis is so confusing.

AlexYeah, it is. I am so excited to get complaints for this episode. why why would people complain this is a great episode I agree this is a great episode and I just really like when people complain about make valid complaints about why they don't like something because which part which thing when folks are like ah something's too disjointed or too

Speaker Aoh well then you shouldn't listen

Alexto the show well that's the thing I was like yes we're doing something right that was clearly a fucked up like manic episode yes thank you That's exactly what I need someone to stomp on my stamps. I can't have someone say to me, that was good.

MerlinI wish you could. I wish you could move away from that. That's a goddamn shame.

AlexMaybe in another 30 years.

MerlinTwo great tributes to Carl Reiner that went up yesterday. And yes, I'm going to read a couple paragraphs from one of them. Oh, the other thing I wanted to read. We had another reading series idea. That was the other after show thing. Damn it, damn it, damn it. Reading series on something.

AlexAnd also someone is ringing my doorbell. Fuck, I'm sorry. I'll be right back.

MerlinOh, go ahead. Oh, there's a gas leak I wonder what I'll have for lunch I wonder if Mel Brooks is okay

Speaker AI wonder Wah, wah, wah, wah, wonder

MerlinI'll play I'll play some music while we're waiting Oh, so The Reconcilable Difference's current theme song It comes from another Bacon Ray song Let's see

AlexI'm back. Everything's fine. Hello. Hi. The one time the landlord actually rings the bell instead of just coming in.

MerlinYou usually just wait. Is he there?

AlexNo, he was like, oh, hey, saw a package for you. Here you go. And so he brought a package for me inside, which I guess thank you. Oh, that's nice. Does he live there? No, I don't know where. He lives in the suburbs, I think.

MerlinIs he just a putterer? Is that it? He's a putterer?

AlexWhat does that mean? Like he...

MerlinHe putters. Oh, like in Europe.

AlexYes.

MerlinNot power putter, but more like ambles. Is he an ambler?

AlexHe's a professional ambler, though. Like he started in like the prosumer puttering type situation. Oh, I see.

Speaker AI see.

AlexAnd now he's like, okay, now I'm going to... Oh, those are nice sounds.

MerlinDid you know the Reconcilable Difference song is based on a Bacon Ray song?

AlexI did know that, but I don't know which one it is based on.

MerlinI can't help thinking that there's trouble in sight when she says there's something wrong with me.

Speaker AI can't help thinking that it wouldn't last long if she couldn't get along with me.

MerlinI gave my all, you know I've loved till I was sick. By this time she is thinking that I'm just another dick

AlexYou've got, that's, there's a little bit of pop punk in there, my goodness Me? Well, well, well Me? A little bit

MerlinTwo great tributes to Carl Reiner of the many, many, many, many, many great tributes to the wonderful Carl Reiner Who passed away at 98 yesterday, last day of June Yes There's the one that went around of the wonderful Anne, I won't spoil it but the wonderful anecdote about the guy whose father basically got into writing because of Karl Reiner. I won't spoil it. It's a great anecdote. Love the one from Michael Schur about his appearance. I'm going to explain a joke now because I love this anecdote so much.

There's an episode from, I'm going to guess, probably season three or four of Parks and Rec, where Leslie's running for office. Oh, God, yes. And she's up against Bobby Newport. Bobby Newport.

Speaker AHe never had a real job in his life. Bobby Newport everything's been handed to him Bobby Newport that was really mean what you said Leslie nice to meet you I'm Bobby Newport hope I can count on your vote

Merlinwe've met before Bobby

Speaker Ahey is Shulay's here

Merlinokay so anyway and there's a wonderful cameo from the wonderful Carl Reiner and it's from one where So basically Mike Schur tells the story in this piece from The Hollywood Reporter that I hope I remember to put in notes. They did a lot of research about the show and trying to learn about small communities. And they discovered, of course, that if you want to win your city council race, you're going to have to get the old people on your side. And there's this totally alpha old man who we've never heard about till now. And he's played by Carl Reiner. And so Leslie's trying to like ply him with this idea of like ramps.

We're going to put ramps everywhere for everybody. And of course, Bobby Newport, you know, beats her to the punch by putting in like little elevators everywhere. And okay, here we go. In the fourth season of Parks and Recreation, and listen, if this is too boring, Quinn, cut it out. In the fourth season of Parks and Recreation, Leslie Knope runs for city council. In our research, we discovered that in towns like Pawnee, senior citizen figures, DLED, needed a godfather figure, we wrote it for Carl Reiner. Carl saying yes made us feel like we'd been knighted or something. Like the emperor of comedy had decreed us worthy of his attention.

I'm not sure if he understood the power he had, though we told him certainly when he showed up on the set. We bowed and scraped and genuflected, and in my memory, he was lovely and self-effacing and thought we were being a bit silly, but we didn't care. Adam Scott brought in a movie poster of The Jerk for him to sign. I asked him to tell me stories about the Dick Van Dyke show, which when I was a kid taught me both what a writer's room was and how to make one funny. It also introduced me to Mary Tyler Moore, a crush I never really got over. He told me she was one of the most talented people. he'd ever known.

I privately noted that he didn't say women, but people, and told me I'd chosen wisely. Carl was 90 years old, and we were a little unsure how the actual shooting would go, but he knew all his lines, of course, and did a million takes, funny in all of them, always funny. We had a line where he told Leslie she reminded him of his brother, also named Leslie, which she took as a good sign. And then he said he lost a third of his body in a motorcycle accident. The point was just that she'd be a little off balance, not sure how to take it. Dan Gore, who was

directing, asked him if he wanted to improvise a little. His eyes lit up. Dan pitched him the joke. He lost a third of his body in a motorcycle accident. The middle third. The absurdity of it made him laugh out loud. I am endlessly jealous. Eight years later, Dan made him laugh, and I didn't. He added the joke and then just kept going. He lost a third of his body in a motorcycle accident. The middle third. But they sutured the hell out of him. He's fine now, much shorter, but a good-looking young flat man.

Everything about it is wonderful. They sutured the hell out of him. What 90-year-old man pulls that sequence of words out of thin air, and the way he hits flat man at the end is like Simone Biles nailing a balance beam dismount. We used it all naturally, though only after editing out both Adam and one of our camera operators giggling off screen. It's just one tiny moment in his oeuvre, a couple scenes in one episode of one show 70 years deep in his career but good gravy was he funny

Alexoh my god that's lovely

Speaker Aa good looking young flat man

Alexthe middle third

Speaker Awhat a great joke and he runs with it

Alexoh that's clever and smart and like him and Mel Brooks

MerlinMel Brooks would drive over to his house every night and they watched Jeopardy together oh my god eat off of tv trays how cute is that man i hope no brooks is okay you know he doesn't have ann bancroft anymore now he doesn't have carl reiner but his son is very good to him

Alexthe writer of world war z um which is a book that i've read now twice oh they're very close oh that's good i don't know i'm trying to provide some comfort so after show we got

Merlinself-destruct tweet fuck Mary kill Hamilton's Gloria Steinem reading series on something I'll remember later

Speaker Achallenge challenge hour and 10 minutes oh boy

Merlinthat's okay that's okay nobody's listening anymore

Alexthat's alright that's alright

Merlinjazz baby jazz juice

Alexthrow all the jazz out the window

Merlinput the jazz

Speaker Ainto the put the jazz in the jar and shake it around you pour it on the piano has been drinking not me oh sorry oh no oh wait hang on wait are you on your iPad big sir I was just making some clicks challenge this week

Merlinlisten listen let's get this out of the way I don't care whether you like this or don't which is to say I don't care if you put betas on your little boxes or don't if you have a strong feeling about that fine. That's fine. This is what we did. What we did is we put some betas on our shit because we were going to do it anyway. And we want to talk about it. And I'm so fucking excited. You know, I go back and forth. It's always two things with me. I'm excited about Apple stuff again. It's weird. It's very weird. I'm hopeful. I'm weirdly hopeful. I'm not hopeful for macOS,

Alexbut I'm very hopeful for all the iOS things. I didn't realize how bored and disillusioned I had become with tech in general um which is not something i expected i thought that maybe i was just kind of uh growing up and i'm like well it's okay i don't care about the shiny things as much like well except for phone cases um and like you need a whole show just for that oh there's been many pilots made um and i gotta wait till you have three that you like

eight episodes god anyway i i thought that maybe like okay i have you know i have a spouse and like a life and people who i can talk to who are friends maybe i just you know it's it's not a big part computers aren't going to be a huge part of my life they're just going to be a tool

Merlinwell like they feel like you're like maybe growing out of it a little maybe yeah i'm like okay this

Alexis maybe they're they're just my tools and that's okay i still love using them like i'm not i'm not super enthusiastic about the um like pot holders in general in general but i like the ones that i have and use uh so i was like literal pot holders uh or uh oven mitts what's the oh i gotta hear about that i hate my oven mitts yeah the exact see exactly i wouldn't call myself in But they're not quite oven mitts. That's after show.

MerlinAre they silicone?

AlexBut parts of them are.

MerlinOh, like grippy parts?

AlexYeah, big.

MerlinI don't like an all fabric or an all silicone.

AlexExactly, exactly.

MerlinI want extremely, I want to be like a proctologist. I want an extreme level of detail in what I can do with my fingers without getting burned. But I don't want to have to feel like I'm manipulating a rubber puppet.

Speaker BYep. Hello. I'm Rubby. I'm Rubby the rubber puppet. I'm going to help you with your heat hands.

Speaker AOh, thanks, Rubby. Have you been here the whole time?

Speaker BYeah. I know you used to love to cook, but you got so busy, and now with the quarantine, you make banana bread with me.

Speaker AOh, thanks, Rubby. Were you born a rubber puppet?

Speaker BI wasn't born at all. I was hatched by the Lord.

Speaker AAre you a manger baby?

Speaker BI might be. I'm a rubber puppet. Rubber puppet.

Speaker CYou turned into Towley.

Speaker Ahe likes to get high

Speaker Coh man

AlexI don't know man just this announcement of I like I've always been excited about the new announcements for iOS right and I and I thought like oh that's just the new thing. It's kind of where we live, you know? Yeah, it is. It is absolutely where, well, that's the thing. Inside now, not so much, but we'll get to that because you had an issue with

your iPhone that I could not replicate until I did a certain thing. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, we'll get to that. It's on the list. Yeah. But I was really kind of like, all right, as long as they just make it stable you know i like i like using shortcut automations we've got drafts i love there are certain things that i love about my computer has anything ever been

Merlinas actively developed by such a small team as drafts that guy's a fucking machine no i was i was gonna say the buttons this morning the button the fucking widgets oh my god the widgets

AlexHoly shit, that guy's wild. I'm like, Greg, what did...

MerlinWhen do you sleep? He's got twin boys.

AlexI know.

Speaker AAnd he's in Texas. Texas, Alex.

AlexYeah. Well, actually, maybe since Mr. Greg is a smart man, maybe it's because he just doesn't leave his house and just makes widgets all day. Oh, shit. Thanks, Greg.

Speaker AThat's his life hack, his growth hack.

AlexHis widgets. Oh, God, I don't know. I had a note card too for this actually. I don't know why. I think I just had note cards the other day and was like, hmm, hmm.

MerlinI came very close to utterly over-preparing for this and actually asking you to delay for half hour because I had so much more I wanted to write down. But given that we're an hour and 16 in, I guess it's probably better. Yeah. I would have written a shorter letter, but, you know.

AlexWell, you know, the public beta is going to come out soon too.

Speaker AA week or two, yeah.

MerlinWell, that's what led me to have to go track down and, you know, basically, you know, heal myself was like, I did all the checking. It was like, if past this prologue, it'll be July, like into July before we see another like seed two. I was like, oh, shit, I got to fix this fucking thing. But I'm sorry, I keep interrupting you. I'm sorry. I had my go pills.

AlexI mean, I'm having a Diet Coke, which is essentially a go pill because I took myself off of caffeine.

Speaker Awe're energetic enough for any three people like it or not

Alexoh boy um thank you everybody for this new show listening to the new show as we figure it out because i'm having a good time

Merlinand right now that's all i need to that's really all i care about wish my kid could go to school but i am having fun oh yeah so um i suggest for some structure unless you have a different idea why don't we talk about what we did what we put on where and when

Alexokay uh about 20 minutes after the keynote i talk about an early adopter

Speaker Ai was the same way i couldn't wait to get on my ipad well i mean typically i don't i wait until

Alexthe public betas to put stuff on but i'm not going anywhere and no shit i so like my number you're worried find my friends isn't gonna work right right yeah i literally don't have a phone number right now like i have nothing to lose except a phone being bricked and then i can't like oh no and and i'm really i i understand that i'm really lucky to be in that position but I so I'm going to take advantage of it I'm going to have fun with my shiny toys uh and so I

put immediately I put the beta on my 12.9 inch iPad Pro uh and then I was like okay the things that I need to work work which is pretty much drafts and slack all I needed was drafts and slack and uh then I put it on my phone and I put big big sir the big sir on a really old laptop that's barely running so i don't i don't really have much to say about it because it doesn't really work that well it's it's the um boy it sure is ugly it you don't think those menus are painful

it's ugly on an 11 inch non-retina screen i will say that i just i can't unsee that

Merlingreen battery icon oh i know it's like it's like a penis inside of a coke can on fire

AlexI don't think I think it's very iOS 7 and it's gonna kind of I bet they tone a lot of that down yeah it's what you you said this on back to work actually I I liked Scott Forstall and I I liked a lot of the the shit and I yeah I don't think it would have been as successful if it looked like

MerlinAndroid I really don't oh fuck no well and it looks silly now when I look at screenshots from 2008 or 9 it's hilarious the tiny little screen with the it's like two thirds bevel but it was distinctive and it had dimensionality to it that would have looked if they had gone with a too simple like even so what's the Microsoft one with the tiles if they'd gone with a too simple look for that at that resolution it would have been a bummer it would have been depressing to look at yeah

Alexand it would have like people would have been like oh I'm going to spend

Speaker A$700 on this screen.

AlexBut instead it was like, oh, fuck, look at it. It's like there's real buttons. There's shadows. Ah, which I don't know. I liked it.

MerlinWell, it's got that thing that, you know, Marco talks about from time to time. What's the phrase that he uses for this? Delight. You know what I mean? The unexpected delight. And for me, that's stuff like I'll go and I'll say like, hmm, I have a feeling that if I do this, I've never tried this before, but if I hit this key command, it would be awesome if this happened. And then that happens. and you're like, holy shit, that's delight. The one that Marco talks about a lot that I totally agree on, the pulsing heartbeat light on the old laptops, on the old, I guess, power books.

I miss it so much. Yeah. Oh, but it was like so beautiful and like, I'm charging, I'm charging, I'm charging. Delight.

AlexWell, here's what we're all cancel, Marco. He took away those lovely waveforms in Overcast and I understand why. But I miss that little detail. Do you remember that?

MerlinSomething pulses now, I feel like. Something changes while it's playing, I feel like.

AlexIt does, but there's another talk show? Jesus. Wow.

MerlinYeah, what's going on with that guy? Is he okay?

AlexYeah. Oh, dear.

MerlinHe's still got sponsors. You guys know Fracture.

AlexJust the right amount of glass.

MerlinThey bought the factory.

Alexit's german oh we're doing it again this is why i started gabi if you want to trust somebody with

Speaker Aa blade why did you start gabi i wanted to start gabi because of the insurance market confusing i was about to make fun of that dude until i found out his office is like two miles from my house you don't talk about what's his name his name's like bobo or something like that like bobo this is why i started gabi the the guy on msnbc uh yeah the i oh why am i gabi

Merlinand i can just imagine him coming with all of his gobby buddies and just throwing a fucking blanket party on bitch boy like i'd be dead meat that german would beat the shit out of me

Speaker Athis is where i started gobby this is where i started gobby why are you hitting yourself i don't know it hurts i don't like this uh-huh now perhaps i hit you with your scoot scoot because now I'm Dr. Strangelove and no one knows why.

Animals would be raised and slaughtered.

AlexOh, God. Dig Dug, what do you like about the new betas?

Speaker AWe've got to get the fuck out of this.

AlexWe've got to get out of here.

MerlinOh, God. Okay, so I did, like, really with, I mean, I'm not saying this is smart, but with virtually no hesitation, I put it straight onto my big boy iPad Pro, which also has the cool case name I can never remember. The Magic Keyboard. Magic Keyboard? Smart Face?

AlexNo, no, no. The Smart Keyboard is the one that's just like a floppy dingus. The Magic Keyboard's the one with the two hinges. Yeah.

MerlinOh. But not to be confused with the Magic Keyboard.

AlexCorrect. Correct.

MerlinNow streaming on Apple TV plus Apple.

AlexYep.

MerlinImmediately put that on there. And then I was like, fuck, this is really cool. The second it came back up and, oh, you know, can I say one more thing in passing? You know, I don't have an opinion about whether or not you should do this. I would, my only, this is your dear friend Merlin. You know, we kid a lot. We have fun on here. But I'm going to tell you something. And I think it's, I'm going to give you a very, what I consider to be a very good piece of advice. It's one thing to download MP3s. It's one thing to download movies.

Whatever you're feeling on all of that stuff is. I mean, I don't know. On a Mac, that seems like it's not deadly. I would really, really implore you, please, to not get a... I hate the word pirated. If you're going to put the shit on your phone, spend the dough. Spend $100. Get an account. Look at your palace.

AlexOh, sorry. I had no idea where you were going with that.

Merlinokay so so so here here's the thing like yesterday i mean i hate the internet so much right now i went in i just want i want the simplest goddamn advice there's entire websites that just do nothing but what i need but i have to get through all the bullshit to get there it's like trying to buy boner pills or german plane tickets and you go and i'm like i'm trying to find ios 14 beta 2 or seed and date. Like when is the next seed of this going to come out?

And the entire first, like at least the first page of Google, no matter what you search for related to iOS 14, what it wants to jam in front of you is here's how to get this on your device. And some of it is the extremely useful advice of go get a developer account. Wow, thanks, buddy. But a bunch of it is like jailbreak shit and like go get this off, go torrent this or whatever. Do you have my back on this? I really would say do not install OSs on your devices that are not from the people who made it.

That sounds so obvious, but you have no idea how fucked you could be and never realize it. Or you could be so fucked and realize it immediately. Wouldn't you say, though, don't put unknown source stuff on your phone?

AlexOh, absolutely. And I used to be...

MerlinBut it shouldn't go without saying. We should really underscore this. Don't go cheap on this. If you're going to do it, spend the $100.

AlexYeah, and it's not even a matter of, like, give the app dev team your money. I used to absolutely be Team Jailbreak, like, for years and years. But that's before I was a legal adult. And also...

MerlinBut that's like cutting a hole in your front door because you're tired of locking it.

AlexYeah, well, exactly. I didn't have a front door, though. And, like, there weren't many doors to begin with. It was like a tiny little hole in a cinder block that was the iPhone at the time. And it like iCloud was a thing.

Speaker AYou were a youth and you were probably on Kazaa.

AlexKazaa, LimeWire.

MerlinNames I know better than my own grandmother.

Speaker AJust trying to find out who did this. I'm going to take these shirts if nobody wants this hot dog car.

Alexum but the the thing i i do want to tell people because this this has fucked me up is also remember that if you're installing a beta onto this and you are signed in to your iCloud account that you primarily use for everything it could fuck it up it hasn't for me but that's my that

Merlinhas happened a lot in the past but you also can there was the the total cock up with like oh there's these new features in notes, but you have to go, or reminders or whatever it was, you have to go all in on this on iOS in order to be able to use it on all your iOS devices and your Mac. Oh, and by the way, did we mention it's not available for anybody yet on your Mac? So vis-a-vis, if you decide to go in on this, it will break on every non-beta iOS device you've got, and it literally will stop working for you and your family on your Macs.

AlexYep, yep.

MerlinLike that's a big asterisk, but they're very clear at every point of this, And that's why I say I knew what I was in for with this. But anyway, that was just the proviso is to please be careful. So to cut this a little shorter, I put it on iPad, big iPad with the keyboard. I put it on. I did, I think the next day, Wednesday or Thursday, put it on my phone, my regular old phone. And I put it on, I put Mac OS on my home use laptop.

Should we just do a whistle stop of some stuff we like and are excited about? Weird bugs. We should probably close with my excellent bug.

AlexI love the bug.

MerlinI love my bug. This is the best Apple thing to come along in so long. People who work at Apple saw me talking about this and went, how the fuck is this even possible?

AlexWell, considering we are an hour and 29 minutes in, I think we should put... What's... You made a sad bando noise.

MerlinOkay, so tell the anecdote and go to After Show.

AlexYes.

MerlinOkay, so I'm sorry we were cucking you on. You don't get to hear us talk about tech.

AlexWe're pivoting to tech. Everyone's favorite tech show, the Alex and Merlin show.

MerlinRubber puppet, rubber puppet, rubber puppet.

AlexBut your story.

MerlinI'm a rubber puppet. I had something happen. I had a crazy thing happen. And, God, poor Syracuse. This will be discussed on the Reconcilable Differences that comes out next week. So cut it as short as I can. Something strange started happening probably on Wednesday or Thursday. So like, no, it must have been Thursday. But I started having this weird thing where I was getting strange errors in Safari that felt like my connection dropped or something. But it got curiouser and curiouser. So, for example, I'd open up Safari and I'd like go to Google something.

And it took a really long time to come up. And while I was waiting for it to come up, I couldn't click in the location field. It became unresponsive, essentially. and then it would you'd see the little left to right you know progress little strip and it would get to like a third it would go back a little bit back to a third get to maybe half and then in a minute or less it would poop out with the throw the error of I should get the name of this right like I keep forgetting what the actual name of the error was but it's like a problem repeatedly occurred

unable to load this site so that was that was all pretty fucking weird to begin with very fast whistle stop lots of stuff started to break. Gmail became totally unresponsive. I would still get push notifications, but I could not click on slide, do anything with emails. It just didn't work. The really interesting, so the fact that I get the notification, but the app is unresponsive should and kind of did tell me something was up, which I felt was very much, my hunch was there's something with a web view here.

and the fact that I could go to Amazon, the Amazon app, which I'm pretty positive is a web view and I could get some things but not other things. I got the Chrome but like the page would be blank. I'd click on my account and I got all the links to my account. But if I clicked on orders or I clicked on settings or whatever, it just went to a white page and failed silently. Figured something with WebKit. What do I do with this? Do I go and just like a fucking human being follow John Syracuse's advice and talk into Google to describe my problem?

No, I got too clever. And I got too clever with the quotation marks and trying to go to definitive sources. And so then I started pissing on a spark plug because this got really intolerable by this weekend. It was driving me nuts. And so I tried, oh, Alex, I deleted all my side-loaded fonts. That was the second to the last thing I did. So you know I've reached the bottom of the barrel.

Speaker COh, no.

MerlinI deleted, I checked all of my, I deleted, so basically, which is to say,

AlexYou deleted years of your life, basically.

MerlinNo, no, no, no. It's just, you know, it's still a pretty big pain in the ass to get those on there. And it's very onesy-toosy. Literal hours of my life has been taken too long. It's only like, it's basically IBM Plex. And what was the other one? But anyway, the ones I'd like to use in drafts everywhere. But anyway, I deleted all that stuff. I went and double-checked everywhere I could think of that would affect this. Yes, of course, I went to Safari. in Safari settings. I did not delete all of my website data because that's such a pain in the ass. I did reset the network, which I believe I'm not a genius in any sense of the word.

I do believe that for some reason, there's a lot of voodoo mojo and other racist terms in resetting your network settings. That sometimes fixes a lot of stuff for reasons we don't always understand. I did that. That's pretty easy. You just basically say, oh, reselect this access point. What else did I try? I tried, I turned off all of my content blockers. I double checked. Now I'm getting crazy. Now I'm getting to like trying to help John Roderick territory where I'm like I'm going in and making sure the time is correct

because that can screw things up. I'm going in, I'm double checking that I have the right language and location selected because that can screw stuff up. I'm not having any luck with any of this. And finally, I think it was yesterday. I think it was yesterday or Monday. Yeah, finally I went into the website Google. So basically I was sitting on the can. I was taking a dump and I was looking at my phone, as you do. And I went to search for the text. Of course, nothing was coming up. I'm sitting there and I'm waiting, you know. And then Safari's not working.

So what do I do? I go to the location bar on my phone and I type in, problem repeatedly occurred Safari. And of course, I get a link to the Apple developer site. Whoopsie doopsie, that won't come up. because now I've locked my keys inside of my phone. I thought that was funny. I posted that to Twitter and said, you're never going to believe what I was searching for when I had this result. I thought it was kind of funny. Then I went, I finished pooping, I got back to the computer, and I typed in those exact same words, and one of the first returns took me to the Apple developer site

where someone said, basically they were having the same problem I did, a large phone, not my small phone. They basically said, what's going on? I keep getting this on a three-day-old post. I'm getting all these errors on iOS 14 beta seed one. And why am I not, why is this not working? And the first response was very, very helpful.

And it was someone saying, and I should bet on me for not finding this on my own earlier, there's a known issue in iOS 14 beta seed one that you will get that error if you are using a phone in a smart battery case.

AlexMm-hmm. And what is a smart battery case?

MerlinI don't think it's better, but it gets more interesting because there's a couple more parts to this.

AlexOh, go on, go on.

MerlinWell, no, this is the part where I was talking to Syracuse about this third part of this is the most bewildering to me. So part one, huh? You get a web kit or web view error and, you know, Syracuse says, well, you know, that is a pretty big footprint. There's a lot of memory that goes into that. an acquaintance on Twitter said this could be something related to your battery case misreporting the amount of energy and throwing something off with tracking prevention. I was like, oh, I hadn't thought of that. Number one, you get this error on iOS 14 Beta Seed 1 if you are using

it in a smart battery case. That's pretty interesting. Number two, if you take your phone out of the case, it will instantly be fixed. Third, you can put it back in the case now, and after you've used Safari once, you should be good for a while.

Speaker CMm-hmm.

MerlinWhat in the, I cannot wait to find out what is happening with this.

AlexI don't think we're ever gonna know.

MerlinIs that not one of the great bugs?

AlexI genuinely love it, and not just because it's like, what the fuck, that's ridiculous. it shows how intertwined software and hardware is for Apple.

MerlinThat was the wrap on Windows for so long, was that the problem with Windows is everything is way over-connected, and you're going to get these bizarre, it's sort of like in Caddyshack when Carl puts the hose into the gopher hole and it starts shooting up all over the golf course. You have no idea if you're going to get the gopher or the golf hole when you have that much connection. And in fact, it makes me deferential and humbled by how well they fix most of this stuff. If like in the first beta, there's a bug that bizarre. How many of these things have they fixed for us that make absolutely no sense?

AlexIt's wild. And I honestly, I think part of this story kind of like pushed me over the edge into realizing, oh, yeah, I am excited about, sure, Apple again, but like tech in general, because it's like, holy shit the chip is talking the chip in the battery case is talking to the phone and that like it's that's so fucking cool yeah exactly exactly so cool i mean it's annoying but why

Merlindon't we why don't we each pick one what let's just so we don't leave people hanging why don't we each pick one banger to go out on then we'll take a break and come back for an after show does that work yes i'm trying to think my i mean the widgets are my first ones well you go first like

Alexmy first one's a no-brainer oh oh i where'd my note cards go there's so many things i mean my i am a little bit has i'll let you talk about widgets but the one widget in particular uh the shortcuts widget which seems to be at this point the most interactive first party widget that apple has uh i didn't know you could fucking stack them until the other day so like you install one widget on your home screen you can have multiples of the same widget yeah and holy

Merlinyou can have difference you can have different smart stacks it's crazy wait was that was that

Alexgoing to be your thing i have a different thing i have a real quick no mine's the the one you can guess that's an accessibility feature that's fucking balls out amazing oh okay okay the yeah the the oh man i well first of all like shortcuts has a ton of new automation stuff that uh I mean, that's really what I use shortcuts for. By automation, I don't mean, obviously, like it's all automation, but you can trigger stuff.

Location, I believe now, like NFC tags, locations, you still need to confirm that the automation runs, but you can have stuff just happen at times of day now.

MerlinI think we've temporarily lost personal automations in HomeKit, which I hope come back soon.

Alexi'm pretty sure that that is that always happens right doesn't that always happen

Merlinoh yeah it goes away and comes back yes because those are amazing like especially with the new home kit stuff oh hachimachi there's so much great stuff that you can do where you don't need a third-party suck-ass app anymore that now apple shortcuts can handle that for you so much of this

Alexstuff first i mean speaking of uh uh machi uh matchy might actually let me abandon the abandon the uh echo uh amazon ecosystem in favor of the home pod because he was like oh that that i understand that that makes sense and i'm like yes right um but yeah having the being able to have stacks of shortcut widgets wow just getting a new picture of my kid every once in a while just

Merlinpops up or it has gotten so i'm not saying this is perfect yet i still don't understand how i make this thing understand that i always want the rooks the do you want to turn on dnd your meeting is coming up i don't know i've gotten that three times five times ever ever ever I wish I could say, please always prompt me to do D&D, stuff like that. But with that said, even in the smart stack, the suggested Siri stuff is getting better. Yeah, this is the time of day when I always do that thing.

And it's really getting that.

AlexI'm actually surprised. I have not gotten that yet. Which? It's still not suggesting anything useful.

Merlinor well it'll suggest for example there's like a shortcut that i i do there's a shortcut i do in the morning there's the same shortcut in the afternoon um it'll be things like sometimes it's pretty random it's like do you want to send a message to our family group it's like well i guess you think i do that a lot at this time that's cool but yes i don't know again i don't know what the secret sauce is i don't know how you smash the side like fonzie to make it like re-engage with Zorp, like, do all my things.

Speaker AWelcome, German prisoners of war. Re-engage with Zorp.

Speaker COh, God. So, Merlin, Merlin, man, what do you... Yes, Twilight!

MerlinMake me Bob. There's so much great stuff squirreled away under, same as it ever was, there's so much stuff squirreled away under accessibility. One that I've done from the beginning that nobody but me seems to like or understand. Have the flash on my camera flash when I get a notification.

So I usually have sound turned off, the side switch turned off. But even through the pocket of my jeans, I'll see the flash to let me know and I'll feel the rumble. Right? Stuff like that that's been around for a while.

AlexI mean, I know that. But how do you see it if it's in your jeans?

MerlinWell, I generally do the thing. I don't completely understand what this causes to be different. But I do do the thing where I put it face down, you know? But then, so I'll have that on my desk or something. And then I'll get the flash. There's that. There's other things like, oh my gosh, triple click. Oh my gosh, please learn about triple click. Learn that there are things that you can associate with a triple click. Mine is because I'm 53 going on 54. Triple click and it instantly turns on magnifier.

Speaker COoh.

MerlinSo you can cleave or you can, what's the word for it? You can attach an accessibility feature to triple click. And I think you can even do multiples of it. It's really cool. So that's great. Another neat new one that I turned off immediately after getting the fact that it does work is sound recognition. Sound recognition. Have you done this one yet?

AlexNo, I don't know what that is.

MerlinOkay, settings, accessibility, sound recognition. Is there running water? Is there a horn honking? so like if you have like a hearing issue it can like warn you that there's someone screaming right now or something it's and it works it's really cool the same way that the hand washing detection some people have no luck with that i have 100 luck with that the hand washing has been

Alexperfect for me it uh has not been for me and but there is there's something that i just i want to know if people have tried it and i want to know i just how how does it know versus how you're doing

Merlinsomething like there's three things yes first i think it kicks off by noticing a rubbing motion and then oh yeah going going four on one then uh mixing up some batter yeah first it's the number one the motion number two the sound of the water running but apparently the secret sauce is they've really super tweaked it. It took years to get this to super tweak it

Alexto where it can recognize the squishy sound of soap. And what distinguishes soap from,

Merlinso does the water need to be running the whole time? I mean, I don't know. Sometimes it kicks in a little later than I would like, but what the hell, I just ended up washing my hands longer, which is good. That's, you know, two thumbs up. No, I don't know. I just read a thing about it

Alexon fucking nine to five Mac or something. I mean, what I'm trying to say people is if you

Merlinhave masturbated with the if you're finger blasting if you're finger blasting with somebody it might say you do this for at least another 13 seconds it yeah just just uh if anybody knows

Alexdr burks recommends i i want to know if it if it's like up up you've and also too with like it's there's got to be similar motions so if you if you've jacked off with the apple watch 7 beta. Well, I keep it on my left wrist.

MerlinI'm mostly working the balls with this side. Or, you know, I'm just filling in some forms. I love spreadsheets. I just want to know. I'm just asking the question. My pick hit though, which is, I think, such an exciting idea. And again, what do we know? Accessibility is great for everybody, right? Accessibility, there's nobody harmed by accessibility except for the people who had to pay to put a ramp on their building. But it's great for everybody. So all this stuff is great for people, people with disabilities. What the fuck does that mean? We all have disabilities. We all need stuff like this or will need stuff like this.

But, you know, if you have problems with motion, you know, there's all kinds of things where you could even be like fucking John Gruber and slice your thumb off and like have it be really hard to type for a while. This one is magic. I'm doing this the most quotidian version of this right now, but it's still magic. Tap on the back of your phone to do things. I imagine Android had it. I don't care. I mean, Android might as well have a basketball franchise. It wouldn't affect me.

Two taps takes me to the home screen. Three taps takes me to App Switcher. Now, combining that with shit like widgets, I have a line here that I want to talk to you about in the after show. I can see an Android-like future where, like, first of all, I've turned off everything except for the first screen, and I am just about ready to go all the way in on just widgets. Like, once there's an overcast widget, shit, dog.

AlexDrafts and Overcast.

MerlinThat's all I'm going to want. That's all I'm going to want. I'm just going to want a big bunch of fucking buttons on the, I don't need the Arlo app to be on my homepage. First of all, that is now, thank God, subsumed by HomeKit mostly. But that's wild. And then, Alex, let's leave them with the amazing part. You can attach it straight out of the box to so much shit. When I double click with my fingertip, and it's funny because I do have a nervous habit of doing that anyway, so I'm trying to stop doing that because it keeps taking me home. but that could launch drafts that could but you know what it tells the nice people what it can do

Alexwhat can it launch shortcuts is that what we're any shortcut yeah oh yeah any

Merlini want people to sit with this for a minute though if you haven't played with this i want you to think about that tap twice on the back of your phone and it just runs a shortcut any shortcut

Alexholy shit yeah i i can't believe they did that for a number of reasons especially security yeah

Merlinit's just like there's another thing on the slide here's another thing on the slide oh by the way now you can tap on your phone and you can do literally anything you've automated yeah i just

Alexoh god they're the first thing that i always uh think about when it comes to shortcuts is uh what are some pranks that i can pull with this and uh this seems very wholesome i well i'd like to bring

Merlinjoy and delight whimsy i don't know if you have listen if you have woof if you have been experimenting

Speaker Awith the timing on your finger blasting keep it to yourself tell the rubber puppet

Thank you.

Show notes

Transcript

193. Joke Jazz

Show notes

Transcript

0:00

0:30

0:30

0:31

0:33

0:36

0:38

0:42

0:50

1:12

1:16

1:17

1:18

1:19

1:28

1:33

1:44

1:56

1:58

2:30

2:35

3:06

3:11

3:34

4:06

4:26

4:56

4:59

5:30

5:38

5:46

5:55

5:57

6:19

6:20

6:34

6:35

6:59

7:00

7:30

7:39

8:11

8:33

8:52

8:54

9:09

9:40

10:08

10:13

10:16

10:23

10:29

10:55

10:58

11:06

11:14

11:17

11:18

11:19

11:20

11:23

11:24

11:28

11:29

11:32

11:57

12:07

12:13

12:48

13:01

13:05

13:11

13:19

13:22

13:35

13:42

14:12