234. Barbarino at Birth

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast. This week's challenge, use a new voice assistant.

MerlinAre you there? What's happening? Are you muted? What's happening?

AlexI'm not muted. I was just, I was, I was testing if, okay.

MerlinWhat do you have against my Comdex shrimp?

AlexNo, I don't like...

MerlinIt's a big bag of shrimp. Do you understand that when you go to Comdex, people expect shrimp?

AlexI know, and that's why I don't like it. I don't like it.

MerlinIt's a big bag of shrimp. The cooked shrimp.

AlexYou know, I have not watched season two yet of Halt and Catch Fire because I am a loyal spouse. But in season one, when they went to Comdex, I was quite triggered because, oh my God, that's right. That's what conferences are for. Oh, yeah, that's right.

MerlinThat's what he's got to write. He's got to write. He's got to write a check.

AlexOh, that's that's what building a booth is like. I remember that. I hate it. Oh, oh, thanks. I hate it.

MerlinThey call it pipe and pipe and drape. Pipe and drape.

AlexOh, oh, God.

MerlinYou're Alex, I'm getting you from your computer. It seems I know. I know. I know you are. I know you are. I hate it. You come in hot. I swear to God, I'm gonna throw shrimp at you. Comdex. Now, here's the thing for our listeners. I'm not gonna do that fake whisper thing you do to our listeners. Alex somehow manages to get a recording that goes into the final show where you can't tell that they are talking into their computer.

AlexI know.

MerlinAnd so I sound like a weirdo going, you're on the wrong mic. Now, I'm going to guess, is this the thing again where your camera picked up first?

AlexYes, it switches.

MerlinIt switches. Oh, there you are. Hello.

AlexI'm going to. Yeah, yeah. And I wanted.

MerlinIt's fluid. It's audio fluid.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinI'm going to come in hot on you, see how you like it.

AlexQuinn has the evidence. As I was watching, you know, I started the audio hijack recording, started the Zoom call, and I'm like, all right, set to same system. It should just go to my Scarlet. It should just go to my Scarlet.

MerlinNope, nope, nope, nope. Scarlet, my Scarlet.

AlexSwitches to my Razor. What is it? Razor to X-H-I-L-G-B-T-Q.

MerlinThis is where the phrase comes from. Switches before bitches. I'm going to grind you into a powder this week I'm going to destroy you I'm going to get to see what it feels like

AlexOh, I mean, stomp on my stamps Ruin me

MerlinI don't think you even have stamps I think you're a fake stamp girl Hey, hey, Jess, stamps I have. I have. I have. I have. I have. I have. I have. I have. I have. I have. I have.

I'm in a strange mood.

AlexI know. I love it. I love it. I love it.

MerlinNo, you don't. It's annoying.

AlexOkay. You sound like me.

MerlinI'm worried we're going to lose listeners because of technology. Nobody wants to hear about computers. We're getting complaints from anonymous accounts that we talk about computers.

AlexWho? Do people only wake me from the nice messages? What's happening?

MerlinYou know what? I should do that thing you do with me. I should just come up with fake things and pretend people say it.

AlexYeah. Do do like. Yeah. One time someone told me how much you influenced their life as a kid. Totally made up. Totally false.

MerlinFalse.

AlexFalse. False. Yep. Yep.

MerlinI'm going to do this. I'm going to do this to you. I'm going to cosplay you. See how you like it.

AlexYou are. You are cosplaying me. It's very upsetting. And I don't like it.

MerlinI got a flat top comb. Nobody can tell. I'm doing a very subtle. I'm transitioning to a flat top.

AlexSo are you doing this yourself or have you employed your hair lady again?

MerlinIs this the show? I don't know. I have – you know, it's like Morrissey says, I want the one I can't have and it's driving me mad. It's driving me mad. It's driving me mad. There are things in life I've always wanted. And some of these – and by the way, there is a challenge that I've invented very good – several very good challenges this morning because I'm in a weird mood. um but like Morrissey says you know and sometimes what we want is a shameful thing yes um and one of the shameful things I've always wanted is what I would just describe as better hair

where I've always like the this goes way back to pivot have you ever had that feeling three two one go oh god you're cucking me I I I do I have often felt in life as I've said on numerous occasions in public that I never got the manual for lots of different things.

AlexRight?

MerlinI didn't get the manual for being a human. I didn't get that apart from the word of our Lord. But I never got the manual for being a human. And I certainly never got the manual for being an adult or a father.

AlexYes.

MerlinAnd I've looked. I've checked. I've gone on the WorldCat to see if it's available in my local library. There was a time where it just seemed it's there's always hair trends. Like, you know, we've got a certain kind of hair. And I could never make my hair do what everybody else's hair was doing. And I think part, the small part of the problem is I have dumb hair that doesn't want to do anything.

AlexWho has hair that does exactly what it wants? There's no sentient, it's dead.

MerlinWell, it's like Morrissey says, I want the one I can't have and it's driving me mad. All right, all right.

AlexI'm sorry for interrupting.

MerlinThe ladies with the straight hair want curly hair. Yes, exactly. The ones with curly hair want the straight hair. The Yetis, the Yetis want to be smooth like a Brazilian.

AlexI do. I want to be a manatee. All right. I'm sorry for interrupting you.

MerlinPeople carve Trump on you. Or you're fed cabbages.

AlexNo. Okay.

MerlinI would never want a manatee working for me. They just don't seem super bright. Now, a panda, they're playful.

AlexKevin hasn't sent me his drawing yet. So are you giving yourself... You haven't answered my question. Are you giving yourself...

MerlinIt's like Morrissey says. Now, there was a time when the hair that everybody had mostly when I was coming up, and this is a long time before you were ever even considered, I always wanted the hair that other people had, and that could be Vinnie Barbarino from Welcome Back Cotter. It could be Fonzie. I told you about the time I put Vaseline in my hair because I thought that's what Fonzie did. Bad idea. Very frustrating to my mom. My hair basically got a lot darker, and what they don't tell you, what Big Petroleum doesn't tell you is that's basically,

you know it's it's you're putting oil in your hair you're you're smearing you might as well

Alexhave carved trump into a manatee and taking taking that lubricant and it's it's like whale fat in

Merlinyour hair you say i scrape i scrape a manatee i scrape a manatee and i use that as some kind of

Alexa salve you use the fat in your isn't that isn't petroleum like a horse or a whale isn't that what

Merlingelatin is oh yeah yeah like quick quick yeah yeah yeah yeah i get what you're saying they shared a bed yeah yeah yeah a little bit problematic um call me fonzarelli first line of the famous book uh skipped a lot of those chapters and so but you know a commonality between uh for a lot of hair uh of all genders let's be honest through i'm gonna say starting at least in the mid 70s and and through the mid 80s was some version of hair that was parted in

the middle and then did an interesting thing oh so if you're vinny do you know do you do when i say vinny barberino do you know who i mean nope not even kind of google vinny barberino in fact

Alexi don't even know what show you reference vinny what is it vinny bar bar it'll it's google fills in the rest for you vinny barberino oh no i use duck duck go and it really doesn't uh okay welcome Welcome back, Cotter.

MerlinYeah, you get safe results that don't really say anything.

AlexYeah, it's very bad.

MerlinLet me see what comes up for Vinnie Barbarino. I'm guessing it's the actor John Travolta.

AlexIt is indeed.

MerlinBob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Barbarino.

AlexHi, Bob. This hair is quite luscious.

MerlinLuxurious. He has the classic kind of, you know, laughing at my helmet hair. Like, this is very much helmet hair of the time. This would be probably, probably, I'm going to say, 76 or so. And a lot of guys and I was an ACAB. Is that the term? I was Barbarino at birth, title. And I assigned Barbarino at birth.

Is it bastards or bad? My daughter says it's bastards.

AlexIt is bastards, yes.

MerlinOh, I thought it was ACA bad.

AlexThat is what I think people who say it think that that's what it's mean. But, you know, back in the fuck 12 days, all cops are bastards.

MerlinIs that Coney? Are you talking about Coney?

AlexWhat?

MerlinConey 2012? Is that it?

AlexNo, no, no, no.

MerlinFuck 12. Coney Island?

AlexYeah, yeah. Gullah Gullah Island.

MerlinFantasy Island.

AlexOh, I miss that frog. We are serving two separate generations.

MerlinHis is not parted in the middle. It's actually parted on the side. and my memory is parted in the middle.

AlexOh, wait. No, no, no. This is the... Oh, I see what you're saying. If this was a Kinsey scale of hair, it would not be... Yeah, yeah. Hmm. Hmm. All right.

MerlinYep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Hmm. Kinsey scale. Oh, boy. Did you listen to the eating disorder episode?

AlexNo, not yet. Not yet.

MerlinOh, shit, dog.

AlexI didn't want myself sad.

MerlinWe got to talk about that. That was an education for me. I learned a lot from that episode. Hey, welcome to Do By Friday, where we talk about main and phase. Mm-hmm.

AlexMm-hmm. It's a really good show.

MerlinMank. We're talking about Mank.

AlexMank.

MerlinMaintenance phase. Okay, let's start the show. I never got my hair to do what I wanted. So at that time, I thought, and like I had two heroes around this time from television, which was Vinnie Barbarino. I thought he was very cool. And they would say things. They would have insults. You know, they would be Cannon High School in Brooklyn. And they would say, and they'd say to each other, up your nose with a rubber hose, you know, and stuff like that.

AlexWait, does that mean something different? Like when someone says, oh, you're being like, like I was always called a not not always. I wasn't smart enough to always be called a smart aleck.

MerlinAnd I didn't realize you're doing the thing again. You're doing the thing again.

AlexWhat thing?

MerlinPeople are always telling you something. What were you always called?

AlexNo, my parents would say I was a smart aleck. And I didn't realize.

MerlinSweet.

AlexNo, I didn't realize in that smart ass.

MerlinI told my daughter the origin of the word druthers last night.

AlexI don't. Oh, please continue. What?

MerlinWell, my understanding is when you say if we're as I mentioned to you last night, when I gave her some wisdom, we'd gone to Walgreens because she's going on a journey with friends today and she wanted to get some candy. And and and I said, you know, something like if I had my druthers, I'd blah, blah, blah. And that comes from, you know, I'd rather be doing this. I think is where it comes from.

AlexOh, oh, interesting.

Merlinbut I could never get it to do what I wanted to because okay this is where the manual comes in Alex is like there's like some people know things I don't know okay let's take the ACAF version of this which is if you're

Alexsorry it was just me taking this shot

MerlinI didn't even know what to call things so are you familiar with the actress Farrah Fawcett later Farrah Fawcett

Alexmajor yes yes okay well she had

Merlina kind of hair that really caught on. I don't think she invented this, but, but she had, I didn't even know what to call this. Like she had what I would call hoodles. Like I've heard it called sausage hair, but I used to call it hoodles cause I didn't even know what to call the thing that I, that I didn't have, you know, I didn't want it cause, cause again, I'm, I'm, I'm assigned Barbarino, but you know, but I learned in a, in Espanol class in eighth grade that the girls would create ladies, ladies, they would create hoodle hair with a, with a curling iron. Oh, so you thought that just happened. It doesn't just happen. Now, isn't it if you're

somebody like me and you're watching TV, you know, you don't know how stuff happens. Now, you look at Vinnie Barbarino. I'm just going to say that that is not a hair that happens on its own. No, definitely not. I'm going to say there's blow drying. It's obviously the cut is important. I imagine there's just the superclass of what I'll call styling. But there's probably some hairspray. And I'll bet you between takes

Alexunder those hot lights, you've got to touch it up.

MerlinAnd this is why Lisa, what was her name? Lisa, it doesn't matter. But there were girls in my Espanol class in 8th grade, Ocho clase, who would deliberately sit in the back near an outlet so they could refresh their hoodles.

AlexOh, I see. All right.

MerlinBecause the thing is, if you make the sausage hair, if you make the hoodle hair, it doesn't just stay that way. You're going to need, you got to touch it up, you know, with the curling iron and then you give it some final net. You know what I'm saying?

AlexYeah. I actually sort of made the opposite assumption, I think. And in that, like, I assume that any sort of hairdo, as they used to say, was required constant maintenance. As in, like, it took many, many trips to the bathroom.

MerlinOh, I think about it all the time now.

AlexAnd now I'm kind of coming back around because I haven't seen a lot of fancy hair on Zoom calls. Not that that is a problem, but I am wondering, is this just like a one-time set it and forget it? no no no i think it requires all day long like barbara no yeah but all all of the the the renos

Merlinthe sausages everything janet reno i think janet reno had a very practical haircut oh did you're talking about who you're talking about reno oh barbara no barbara oh i see you're doing uh you're

Alexdoing okay i did a bit i did a bit uh no but even janet reno's hair i think that that tiny bit of a puff that required something otherwise that's gonna go straight down well my friend i'm my

MerlinMy dear friend DJ, who was a very dear friend, and we drove to school. He drove me to school. We worked at McDonald's together. And DJ was one of those fellas who was kind of losing his hair a little bit, even in high school.

And he was very – so he had that thing where you get kind of like a front bagel of fuzz.

AlexOh. Oh.

MerlinLike sometimes you see a fella, and someday we'll talk about men's hair because it's a thing I think about a lot. Because, you know, Octothorpe me, Octothorpe me, I don't struggle with that hair-wise. As with so many things, I don't want to be ableist, but I would be fine to be just really bald in a stupid way, like in like a, not Wallace Beery, what's the guy's name? The guy, the dinosaur from Toy Story. I don't mind having Wallace Shawn hair, I don't think, because, you know, he's a playwright. great thing about him all the money he earns he puts back into plays it's amazing he was the

teacher in clueless you'll remember but like that's not a great hair now today a man you could be a michael chiklis and you could do a whole makeover with the lack of hair that you have because men have that option now it didn't used to be okay to not have hair and so you kept that little weird lobot thing around the sides you know what i'm saying but i feel like i i wouldn't mind I say that, but that could be Octothorpe me. Like, I don't know. I can't imagine. I can't actually inhabit the lived experience of not having what I have.

You can't choose to join the proletariat.

AlexWell, St. Francis did.

MerlinI mean, well, oh, what about Anne Seton Hall? What's her name?

AlexWell, I mean, no, no.

MerlinThere should be more action figures of her, and I've searched.

AlexThere should. There should.

MerlinI don't know if I'm ready to commit to a statue that big. we'll get back to Barbarino. Go ahead. Talk about, talk about anything.

AlexOh, no, I'm just curious. You've never had a shaved head or like what's, cause your hair is really, I've seen your hair both relatively short and relatively long.

MerlinThis came, this came to a head. This came to a head. So what I'm trying to establish here and I hope you people out there, the five or six of you who, you know, don't hate synologies. I hope the five or six of you out there will know what I'm talking about. I think it's, I hope it's a human condition that we sometimes feel like we never got the manual. And another way of putting that is like, there was nobody in your life to like, I didn't have a dad to teach me to shave. Like I had to like, I didn't need to shave, but I wanted to. And I'd heard that if you shave, it grows back darker and thicker.

So I would do that with my armpits because I kept hoping I would get armpit hair. I was a late bloomer. Yeah. With a BIC. Yeah. Use a BIC. And BICs are terrible. Woof. Woof. That's a terrible. I mean, no offense to the Bic Corporation. They make an okay pen.

AlexOh, sidebar, how did you get that razor? Did you purchase it yourself? What age are we talking?

MerlinLike Winston cigarettes, I lifted them from my mom.

AlexOh, it's so cute. Can you still hear mom's razor?

MerlinI'll do some experiments with tampons just to see what they did.

but this got is this never so many things where i didn't get the manual i i know you know octothorpe me i don't i don't i don't want to bitch about this you know merlin i know that this might be

Alexa shock to you okay but um i think that your pain and suffering is just as valid and okay you can you can please continue octothorpe merlin okay yes yes alex this is this is silly

Merlinrambling, but I think this is actually a kind of important thing, which is, doesn't it feel sometimes in life, like every, it's not that everything's easier necessarily for everybody else, although it does definitely feel like that a lot of the time. I mean, you know, your problem is a bummer, but my problem is, you know, uh, species ending. Like your problem, wow, you know, sucks to be you, but like my problem's really like a problem. Like I'm, you know, you know what I mean? I think that's a pretty common, at least American condition is feeling like everybody gets it but you especially at say 13 right or 30 yeah i wanted so badly to have feathered hair

oh and i didn't even know i didn't even know really i didn't even know the word feathered for a long time i mean but like all the dudes and the ladies at school like they seem to have no problem at all developing cool feathered hair and like do you know what i'm talking about it's parted in the middle. I think it's usually what today I would consider a layered cut.

And then you had the ability to various degrees of drama, you do kind of a flip with your hair on the sides and you get kind of this cool aerodynamic look. Oh, do you know who Sean Cassidy is? Go look at Sean Cassidy. I think he might be a good example of this.

AlexAlright. Sean Cassidy

Merlinis David Cassidy's brother. Sean Cassidy, that's some pretty good feathered hair.

AlexAre we, okay, so are we looking for the Canadian illustrator or the American Singh? Okay, I answered my own question. Never mind.

MerlinWow. It's so difficult to even, like, know. We don't have a baseline for discussing things like this.

AlexYeah, okay. It's a boomer.

MerlinBut look at Sean Cassidy. Like, look at that one from Ideas About Sean Cassidy on Pinterest. Like, that's some pretty good. Oh, you know what? Look up Andy Gibb. He's the Bee Gees' brother.

AlexAndy. Welcome to Dubai Friday, where Alex looks at haircuts.

MerlinWhere we Google pictures of hair. Now, okay, look at Andy Gibb. Look at Andy Gibb.

AlexOh, my God. That, all right, this is interesting. Okay, you laugh now because we're in the woke age.

MerlinBut, like, that was very bizarre. And look at that loose tie. He doesn't care about anything. He's Australian.

AlexUh-huh, uh-huh.

MerlinShit, dog.

AlexLook at those necklaces. Hmm, someone's secure.

MerlinFor so long, you had me be fine. Unfortunately, my Aaron Neville and all of my Gibb brothers sound the same.

AlexOh.

MerlinI feel that I feel that you are more than stronger. Andy Gibb, he died young. It was a real bummer. And let me give you one more. Oh, Leif Garrett. Are you aware of Leif Garrett? You might have seen the behind the music, the world's most famous probably behind the music, Leif Garrett.

AlexOh,

Merlinlook at Leif Garrett.

AlexWow.

MerlinLeif Garrett played the desirable child, beloved of the pedophile, in Death in Venice. Death in Venice you ever see that movie Death in Venice when he was young?

Alexno but I want to hear about a pedophile

MerlinDeath in Venice is by I want to say Thomas Mann I want to say and it's rich people oh look at that

AlexI hate it yep sorry I've put in our super secret

Merlinyou sent me a picture of Justin Bieber next to Leif Garrett it might be Leif

Alexit's very oh god it's so upsetting they don't look similar but then you look at it more

MerlinThis is a very highly sexualized boy, Alex.

AlexWell, wait, you mean boy bands and teen heartthrobs are over sexualized?

MerlinI mean, pretty, pretty sexualized. But you see, with all of this hair, I can look at this now as a 54 year old man and go, well, Jesus Christ. This is a project. Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, this is this is no different than like any of the people on like Dallas. Like this is a lot of work. And now I can look back and like so many things that seem catastrophic at the time, including puberty, you go like, oh, well, no wonder that was confusing. How could I ever develop this? It's like calculus. You know, it shows up in different places around the same time.

How would I just discover the calculus of this hair on my own in Cincinnati, Ohio? But I wanted it so much. I wanted feathered hair so much. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know how to do it. And my attempts to emulate it were so bizarre. I might as well have been visiting from another planet. With what I did to try and approximate cool feathered hair was such a tragedy.

AlexI mean, I'm putting together sort of like old pictures in my mind of family members where I'm like, oh, they were trying to do this, weren't they? It's just failing real hard at it.

MerlinWell, I mean, if you go to the right place and you know what to get. And so a challenge I want to work on is developing, and I put this in the sheet this morning, I would start developing sort of what Rich Hall used to call a, what did he call it?

Oh, damn, what's the word for this? A sniglet. And a sniglet is itself, it's a recursive sniglet. A sniglet is a word where you have to come up with a new word for something that doesn't currently have a name.

AlexOh.

MerlinAnd I want to develop our own. I would like one of my challenges. I want us to get because we need you know we need this. Like you have a name for the feeling. And this is because of shrimp. Because of shrimp. You know why I have shrimp, Alex?

AlexWhy do you have shrimp?

MerlinBecause I wanted to get a refill of Mrs. Myers lemon for being a hand soap.

AlexGo on. Go on.

MerlinAnd I discovered again the very confused tab interface of the Washington Delivery Company. I think it's called. I realized, I was made to realize the only way that I could get this in a reasonable amount of time, because I want my hands to be clean, not a monster, was to, and I get the big one. I don't get the pumps every time. I refill the pumps with a more environmentally sound, large, large lemon verbena.

AlexYeah, you're still going to use the Washington Shipping Company, but you're not a monster.

MerlinAbsolutely. You know, I'm not made of stone. Exactly. But in order to get that, I needed to add items to the order to get to where I could have the minimum for a Whole Foods delivery via the Washington Delivery Company app.

AlexOh, interesting.

MerlinDon't we need a name for that feeling when you're buying stuff you don't really super need in order to either get to a minimum or a free shipping? I think that, for example, needs a name.

AlexI mean, this, I mean, like uber capitalism is...

MerlinWe don't have to do it now. It's a challenge. It's a challenge.

AlexNo, you're right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm putting, I'll put my...

MerlinAlex, is it fair to say that there are certain elements of the lockdown of the last year that you, that one very shamefully is glad about?

AlexOh, no shame.

MerlinYou don't feel any shame about not wanting to go back to work and wear a mask in a meeting for two hours?

AlexWell, why should I feel ashamed about that?

MerlinBecause you're bad.

AlexI mean, I know. There are many things that I feel bad about constantly. Don't worry.

MerlinDo we have a name for that? I think we need a name for that. I think we need a name. It's probably German. But there should be a name for the, like, you know, Schadenfreude is shameful joy. Schadendemic. I don't know. That sounds like something on Shudder. But, like, you, there's so many things we need a name for. Wouldn't that be a good challenge to come up with names?

AlexWe, yes. This is like a sort of sort of a BDSM, a non-sexual BDSM. Like you want to shame.

MerlinMy safe word is Amazon. Twice.

AlexBezos, Bezos.

MerlinBezos, Bezos.

AlexOh, goodness. Wait, I want to know what you feel guilty about in terms of ending the pandemic.

MerlinI don't know. I mean, should we talk? Okay, so anyway, the point being, I finally bought a...

AlexAre we doing the hair?

MerlinHang on, I'm going to close this parenthesis. I got this thing, and it's like, it's this joke size. It looks somewhere between a ping pong paddle and an Afro pic. And really, it's just a big... I showed it to you, right? It's got a thing with a handle, and it's got slots. And it's for losers who don't know how to do a flat top. And in the same way that you might think of the number two on your cat clippers, what they call a guard. this is a guard where you like it comes with instructions you know like a lot of men and you put that into your hair

and then you go and then that helps you get a proper flat top it also Alex uses science because it has a level it's got the little green bubble

Alexoh my god I love a good level didn't I put that in the sheet

Merlingive yourself a flat top

AlexI thought it was in the sheet maybe I said no with a lot of confidence and I don't know why. That confidence was unearned. Let me go to the sheet.

MerlinBut I'm ashamed of wanting things for my hair. But I thought, because part of it is I have a somewhat, I guess you could say probably, I don't know what you would call my face. Call me by my face. I have a somewhat angular, like fairly super rectangular face with what some people consider a prominent jaw. And so like in the past, I've thought I don't want a flat top because that's going to exaggerate it and I'm going to look like, I don't know, like Biff. from Back to the Future or Sergeant Carter from the Gomer Pyle TV show. But then I thought, you know what?

The thing is, I want to try it. A short flat top. Now, you've got a new product for that. I don't have product for that currently. If I really want to make it work, I probably got to put Vaseline in it. I should put that on my Amazon. Washington Shipping Company. Why am I ashamed? Now we close the parentheses.

Because even setting aside all of the, like, I don't want people to yell at me about this. And I feel like, didn't we talk about this last week about the, because my lady and I have been talking about this a lot. What is it we talked about that's related to this? You know, the coming out of the pandemic stuff being sort of difficult, you know, and the sort of like, you know, even if you let's just set aside everything that is actually legit hard about this. like you know it's like i used to say you know you worry about one worries about procrastination

one worries about distractions one worries about interruptions but like somehow we manage to successfully have intercourse and masturbate and like we don't get distracted right if you're super into doing something like they said at the derrick showman trial well you know i'd be doing my job if i was taking care of my job i wouldn't worry about being distracted by by 10 people saying don't kill a man like somehow be able to manage oh man yesterday was wild what a wild day um

Alexdid all right we'll uh table that are you writing all this now are you writing all this down i'm okay uh what happened what oh trial we also got matt gates gates yeah uh what happened okay i'm

Merlinsorry listeners um talk amongst yourselves i'm writing down i'm writing down matt gates uh oh cemetery gates would also be good we could spit you know spitball some names for this that would be good um we've got what uh guilt what else do we have alex oh uh i'm not sure i i mean my

Alexmy milo series is still in here milo hippopotamus hippopotamus okay oh the milo phone i realized

Merlinthat's milo i thought you sent me when you said do you know who this is i was gonna guess macaulay

Alexculkin uh okay okay so so uh listeners hello we're back hello no we're not no we're not back

MerlinWhat are you talking about? Sorry, sorry. All right.

AlexMilo, Matt Gatesgate.

MerlinOkay, Milo goes to college. We've got guilt. We've got Gatesgates. We got, what was the other one we missed? Oh, and I think actually it would be ABAB, a signed Barbarino at birth. Is that right?

AlexYes, yes, yes, yes. ABAB.

MerlinAnd so that's why I bought the paddle with the slots is because I wanted to give myself a flat top. And it's very subtle. If you watch the latest You Look Nice Today video, that's not a performative statement. but if one sees it you could probably catch a little bit of a glimpse of me transitioning

Alexinto a flat top a little bit oh again spoilers but but all right uh the oh no okay the thumbnail

Merlinwas a spoiler in itself never mind um i think it looks good though i think i think i look i mean i agree i'm not like a handsome man but i think it's i think it's not a terrible look i you know

Alexwhat i will strongly disagree with do you think i'm handsome alex oh you're incredibly handsome You do have a strong jaw.

MerlinOh, my God. Thank you. That means so much to me. Thank you.

AlexWe're moving on. And if you properly Google.

MerlinI love compliments. A lot of people claim they don't like compliments. I love compliments.

AlexI love a post compliment. I don't like receiving them. I like that they have happened.

MerlinIt's like writing. No one likes writing, but people like having written.

AlexOh, I'm the opposite. I love writing and no one's allowed to read any of it ever.

MerlinAnd you just never stop. You have what they call graphophilia.

AlexOh, is that what the, is that what Abby has in Work in Progress? Wait, is this a real thing? The, um.

MerlinYeah, yeah. Oh, with the journals? Yeah, yeah. Graphophilia is a thing. It's not that bad. Yeah. Also, we need to talk someday about philia versus phobia, please. Can you write that down?

AlexYes. Oh, God.

MerlinBecause I think we really need to work on that.

AlexUgh.

MerlinAnd at least in our language, philia and the suffixes philia and phobia are mostly treated as antonyms. And I think that's a bad idea. I don't think we should say, and you know what, you can cancel me for this pound sign me, but I don't think we should call it homophobia. I think we should call it hating gay people. It's really different. You're not really scared of

Alexthem. Correct. Correct. And the thing is, you just hate them. Why don't we just call that what

Merlinit is? What about Anglophilia means that you like English things? And I think that works. Philia, can you think of a city in Pennsylvania that has a similar name? Philadelphia is called the city of brotherly love because the philia in Philadelphia is from it's from the Latin you're thinking of Pittsburgh which is the pits and it's we're going to cut that out Quinn cut out everything bad I've said today and we'll just take it from three

to I think philia and phobia are very misleading and I think words mean things and so when we say a word over and over when we say transphobia, do you really mean transphobia? Are you actually, now in that case it might be true, you know, because of what's happening with sports and bathrooms. Everyone's extremely very concerned about that. But, oh, and also we've got to talk about your podcast. Because I think I should listen to this latest episode. It looks like you're really selling it. So I'm guessing

Alexyou dropped some. Wait, how am I selling it? No, it's just the, it's literally the episode we did. And I was like, can I just put the

MerlinYeah, no, no, no. Okay, no spoilers.

AlexIt's not a spoiler if people, Oh, you know what? Hey, if you haven't heard, no, we put it in the main feed too. Gosh, we are both in moods. Hey, everybody, are you enjoying whatever this show is right now that's happening? Maybe the program Dubai Friday?

MerlinSometimes I feel like I'm living in Windows 95 with you sometimes. Okay, hold on. And then the problem is I hit the wrong command and I'm in a DOS prompt.

AlexNot even OS 9? I'm Windows 95? I am not Windows 95.

MerlinNo, no, no. You misunderstand. You're not a terminal. you're a DOS.

AlexOh, I am. I was not assigned DOS at birth.

MerlinYou were going to, I think you were about to promote something. You use your promotion voice.

AlexHi. Hi, everybody. would you like to support more of this conversation well you can go to give us your fucking money.com and that will take a take you to do by friday's patreon and for only only five dollars a month you get a second show every single week another another one of these

Merlinoh gosh it's kind of like being in like a one hour of a 72 hour hold yeah you get to be there for that you got baker acted bitch the way they call that they call it 51 50 some places oh you 812 in florida they call it the baker act where they call it in illinois oh opportunity for joke

Alexfeel free to use it oh nope i thought we were talking about the brady bill i thought we were

Merlinmaking fun of republicans getting shot sorry oh the brady bill this is the story about a shot press

Alexman um brady brady bill brady brady bill oh well i okay okay uh circle circling back to to um

Merlinwhat you put on the table.

AlexNo, no, I think...

MerlinSee, we talked a lot. We had a really... You know, things have been going good with the kid lately. I really... Hooray! I really love her. And I do, I hate to admit it. Controversial statement. That's a real normie kind of thing, but gosh, I love her so much. Oh, man. And so we went to Walgreens last night and we talked about a lot of things, including my tip, you know, to not try to please other people. I think sometimes... I think... You know what? I'm going to cancel for this. I do think sometimes women need to hear that they shouldn't try to please everyone.

AlexYeah. No, controversial statement. Controversial statement.

MerlinI sound like Bobby Newport. I'm against crime. Remember that moment in the debate where he's like, I'm against crime. You know, people don't like that.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinThis is my dog, Raclette. It was given to me by the pretender to the crown of Alsace-Lorraine. So I should probably, and I also mentioned, I said, I said to her, I said, I said, And I haven't been sure quite how to, you know, bring her into this set of updates that I'm still putting together.

AlexBut I said, so do you listen to How to Grow?

MerlinAnd she's like, yeah, I listen to a couple. And I was like, because, you know, I feel like you might want to check in because I think Alex is, you know, dropping some knowledge these days.

AlexYou're not dropping knowledge.

MerlinAnd then I told her my understanding of what the journey is at this point.

AlexOh, I mean, the.

MerlinAnd then we tried to figure out whether you wish that Matt wore a Pokemon.

AlexOh, gosh. No.

MerlinDon't say it. Don't say it. There's no way to win.

AlexThere's no way to win. No, you're right. I've returned. No.

MerlinIt's like imagining somebody else's face. Just put Cubone's mom on his head. Remember when he hits the man with the stick? He's so cute. She has a 3D printed Cubone keychain.

AlexOh, what?

MerlinWe made the little skull on our printer.

AlexOh, my God. I love Cubone.

MerlinCubone. Am I saying that right? Is that ableist? Cubone.

AlexCubone.

MerlinNo. Cubone. He hits the man with the stick. It's really funny.

AlexCubone. Cubone. Cubone. Cubone.

MerlinJamadi. Jamadi. Anyway.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinWe should start a third podcast called 72 Hour Hold. you'll be bouncing off the walls with laughter

Alexwould you like to monetize your issues hi i'm alex cox

Merlindo i have news for you do you enjoy hearing about periods this is to leave your boobs whether you're gonna have a camera inside your pokemon hi i can throw a ball um so we got comdex shrimp matt gates guilt milo abab podcast and then there was if we're gonna pop up the parentheses oh what was the thing you were promoting

AlexI oh no I apologize

Merlinoh listen yeah you know the thing is we've had our ups and downs and so we don't make as much money from this show as we used to we'd like to make more because this is part of how we pay for things in life so if you enjoy the show and you'd like to support it you don't even have to listen to it there's a lot of stuff I don't even listen to that I support because I'm just like that me but you can go to do by Friday or excuse me patreon.com slash do by Friday or give us your fucking money.com

Alexand you can give us any amount of money. Or stomponmystamps.com and I love that I own that year.

MerlinYou got the .com for that.

AlexI think I did. Yes, because we discussed how, oh my god, that's available. Stomp. Yep, stomponmystamps.com

MerlinAlso, I have a secret I haven't told you, I don't think. Oh. It's not a secret, it's just something that's merely information I've withheld from you.

AlexOh.

MerlinWell, I shouldn't say. I shouldn't say but

Alexam I in trouble what's happening no no

Merlinno you know I shouldn't say I shouldn't say I shouldn't say

Alexokay okay

Merlinbut you know it depends you know the thing is we have a couple couple different tiers that you can tie that and the thing we said explicitly is that unless you tithe this particular amount of money you know that's the people who get the after show but the truth is for several months now anybody who gives us any money

Alexcan get the after show

Merlindo you hate that do you hate it

Alexno no I noticed

MerlinI feel like in these now more than ever amidst these troubling times, like that's kind of a nice thing to do is like, if you can do a dollar a month, you can still like hear the show.

AlexYeah. Don't, don't, don't tell anybody.

MerlinBut don't tell anybody. Okay. Cause we really seriously. And so the, oh, so here's the thing. Let me put it this way. Oh God, this is so good. Okay. So the thing is, I can't promise you, you know, uh, no copyright implied. I can't promise that's always going to be that way. But if some of you wanted to, wanted to pay, you know, $5 a month or $10 a month, it would help, you know, subsidize the folks who are given a dollar a month. We can't give it all away. You know? If you milk the cow, you get ejaculated for free. You know what I'm saying?

AlexWelcome to Do By Friday, the official socialist podcast. Now endorsed by Merlin.

MerlinMrs. Waterford is going to hold you down during ceremony. Boy, the stuff they do to Rory in that.

AlexOh, oh, have you? So you were?

MerlinWe're up to five in her view of this.

AlexOkay, let's, let's. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Do By Friday. Last week we talked about how Merlin was showing his child Handmaid's Tale. And I'm just curious how that's going and where you're at. Have you gotten to the sexy place?

MerlinWell, we got to Rory having the thing with... I mean, there's a lot of stuff in that show that really freaked me out. But the first one that legit super freaked me out was... It's something involving Rory from Gilmore Girls and another woman getting punished for something. and then Rory doesn't receive the same punishment, but there's a very troubling image. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yes. When you're in the van. Yep, yep, yep. And then at the end of that episode, she wakes up and Aunt Lydia comes in

and she's got a bandage on. Do you remember that?

AlexOh, yeah. Yep, yep, yep.

MerlinShe won't be distracted. Make it easier for her.

AlexThere's nothing, I think, from that show, with the exception of one thing that was burned into my mind more than what happened or not what happened to Rory as if it was an accident. Like, no, no.

MerlinLike when they see officer involved shooting.

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinThere was a Martha involved clitorectomy.

AlexYeah.

MerlinThat's what I said yesterday on the internet. It's like Major the Dog. Don't say dog bite. Say dog involved biting.

AlexYeah.

MerlinGod, I love that actress. She's so good in that. She's so good in The Leftovers. She's so good in everything. And she's good on Law & Order back in the day.

AlexOh, that's right.

MerlinYeah, she was totally on Law & Order back in the day. She's a wonderful actress.

AlexIs she what you would call a character? I never really know what a character actor is, but it feels... Does it just mean good actor? I don't... I truly don't know. She just pops up in strange places.

MerlinI imagine. I mean, you know, the thing, though, is like a lot of it for me... Not a lot of it, but a part of it is like just a, hey, good for you. Like when you run across somebody who does not fit – and I'm not trying to be controversial here. But, you know, when you meet somebody who gets to excel or is able to excel despite all the things that would keep them from succeeding, you know, she's a woman in her what? Probably at least 50s. And she's had just straight off the dome two of the most memorable roles in my mind of like the last 10 years.

the the i forget her name but the smoking uh you know the guilty guilty remnant white ladies the

Alexsmoking ladies she's great in that and she's great as aunt lydia and she has two of i think the the it's in season two but she has a conversation yeah we learn her backs when we learn her backstory oh yeah and uh um also the scene that involves a cabin in the leftovers like those scenes are

Merlinjust burned into my mind oh god yes oh god god god that's your question um kids get radicalized by lots of things kids get radicalized in weird ways by as people talk about this a lot today for a good reason which is like youtube youtube really wants you to get whatever you're interested in or whatever you happen upon it is said i feel like i do not get this as much as other people you know what i get i get if i watch a dumb video i suddenly get a lot more of that kind of dumb video but I don't get like and I got it with Russian dashboard cams

where it went very quickly from haha to like oh somebody got stuck under a bridge to like 16 deadly motorcycle accidents but I don't get that the way a lot of people do I don't go from like the history of the band The Jam to Nazi stuff I don't get that but it is said that that happens a lot for kids like whatever it is you're there for whatever you're interested in they will take you to a more intense and perhaps slightly radical version of that. Maybe not by design, but by algorithm. It just knows, the machine seems to know

what'll make you, not that it's there to radicalize you. I think they would say quite the opposite, but I want to radicalize my own kid. If she gets mad about a clitorectomy and a hanging, let it begin with me. I'd rather she do it at home.

So that's good. Also, Party Down is very good.

AlexOh, I need to watch. Oh, Jane Lynch.

MerlinParty Down. Ken Marino is such a gift. Oh, my God.

AlexHe is such an underrated human.

MerlinOh, he really is. But the cast, are you aware of the cast of the first season of Party Down? Are you aware?

AlexYes, and I'm aware it exists, but then it was taken away from all streaming services.

MerlinWell, I can help you. It's all on Hulu right now. Exactly. So you got Ken Marino. You got Adam Scott. You got Lizzie Kaplan, who, I mean, my goodness. She's one of my dark-haired, big-eyed girls that I get kind of twisted about. You get fucking season one, you get Jane Lynch being so fucking funny. You get Martin Starr. So you know this is done by the guy who did Veronica Mars, right? Rob Thomas?

AlexYes, which is so weird in the moment.

MerlinThe name of a guy in a band also, I think. But did you ever watch Veronica Mars?

AlexI love Veronica Mars, yes.

MerlinSo you know the, what's his name? Not Owen, but like the guy. I want to call him Owen because he looks like Owen Wilson. But you know the bro guy with the blonde hair? Oh, fuck, not Luke. That's the one from Gilmore Girls. But yes, right. And there's a Scientologist guy. Logan's a Scientologist, like Elizabeth Moss. And but then you've got but you know, the blonde guy, he is in Party Down. And he is terrific. Guest spots. Let's talk about guest spots. J.K. Simmons. So fucking good. Uncle Rob. Rob Corddry is in one we watched last night. Rob Corddry is in one.

oh the dad Mathasar from Galaxy Quest the dad from Veronica Mars Mr. Mars

Alexokay so these all sound good I was afraid that it was going to be like Simpsons territory

Merlinbecause the more I watch it the more I think you know this is a little bit like The Office but it's more like the uncut shit Martin Starr oh my god I love him so much

Alexanyway

MerlinMartin Starr is the guy from Freaks and Geeks and Silicon Valley

AlexAnd the car commercial. Yes. I am getting into arrested, not arrested. Oh, RIP Jessica Walters. That made me so sad. But I'm getting into.

MerlinYou said the bit today on Twitter. Somebody said she shows up in heaven and she's disappointed to discover that St. Peter is actually Jean Parmesan.

AlexOh! Oh!

MerlinAnd that's why you always go straight to heaven. you're getting into what not arrest development but something else oh archer uh no oh no but

Alexarcher if if people have fallen off archer people should get back on archer archer would be an

Merlinincredibly inappropriate thing to show to a kid.

AlexNo, no it isn't.

MerlinOh, it super is and that's why I would never do it. Are we just not doing phrasing anymore?

AlexOkay, so some of the later season

Merlinmaybe. Well, Pam.

AlexLove Pam.

MerlinOf course everybody loves Pam. But then the other lady at the desk is Kitty from AD. Did you know that? Yes. You're never going to see these again.

AlexNot my supervisor! Goodbye, Michael.

MerlinWelcome to Dubai Friday, where we radicalize our children.

AlexYou know who radicalized me this morning? Who?

MerlinMatt Gaetz.

AlexAre you familiar? Oh, Matt Gaetz. All right. All right. Shall we get into what happened yesterday?

MerlinAlexandra, who radicalized you this morning, please? I'm sorry. I'm monopolizing this, and I apologize.

AlexWell, I believe we're doing two separate podcasts, but they're both good episodes.

MerlinAre they? that that's the thing if you don't know who the podcast in the room is it's probably it's it's definitely did i hit record i really hope i hit record oh boy um oh yeah i did i'm good well don't don't don't worry that's that's my thing i never worry never never worry never apologize that's the that's the first rule of hosting second rule is you don't talk about hosting what oh god clubhouse

Alexuh this morning i was reading the gq article about seth rogan and because i uh i don't know Twitter was angry about.

MerlinIs this about what's your name storming off the set?

AlexExcept she didn't.

MerlinI saw a headline about it, so I don't know.

AlexYeah, there was there was some like, oh, my God, Emma Watson stormed off the set of this is the end. One of my favorite movies. And the narrative became.

MerlinOh, is that the one with the hole?

AlexYes, that is the one with the hole. And it is probably one of my favorite movies of all time.

MerlinAnd that's got McLovin in it, right? McLovin's in that one.

Alexbriefly. It's not...

MerlinWho is it? Seth Rogen? There's pot smoking. Oh, no, and it's the other guy. It's the other guy. It's Jay Bear.

AlexJames Franco. The guy from...

MerlinJay Bear. The guy who's the voice of... He's the voice in of... What's his name? In How to Train Your Dragon. He's the voice of... What is that guy's name? Is Tickle? Jiggle? What's his name?

AlexOh, I thought you were talking about the guy from... What's his name? Uncut Gems is also in it. Like all of Seth Rogen's pals, basically.

MerlinI want to say Jay Baruchel. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that.

AlexThat sounds familiar. Like the Judd Apatow crow.

MerlinHiccup. He plays Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon.

AlexOh. Oh, yes, yes, yes. He is one of the, yes, sorry. He is the main character, one of the main characters. Oh, God, I love this movie so much. But there was a big controversy saying Emma Watson stored off the set.

MerlinYeah.

AlexAnd, spoiler, she didn't. And this movie has one of, okay, this is going to get me canceled, but it has one of the best. It has an amazing rape joke involving.

MerlinOh, Alex.

AlexNo, no, no, no, no, no. It has one of the most amazing jokes because it's about, like, I don't even want to spoil it. You should watch it. And Emma Watson helped write that joke. and there was this controversy saying and it's not, it's about women who are vulnerable. God, just watch the movie. I'm going to put the clip in. It's so good.

And that was the controversy of like, oh, Emma Watson doesn't have a sense of humor. No, Emma Watson

Merlinactually... So the implication, just if I can go from Alex to English, what you're saying is that the idea was that she was put off by a joke. That she

Alexhelped, right. Well, yeah, yeah.

MerlinBut I mean, but the, and again, I'm not going to, I don't read those headlines, but basically she stormed off the set because she was expected to do something that she considered gross and bad.

AlexYes. But it wasn't for that scene. In a different scene that involves, let's just say cannibalism. She was like, oh, Seth, this wasn't written in the script. I don't want to do it. And he's like, oh, okay, cool. And the GQ article even really fairly portrays that. And God, this is so boring. Anyway, Emma Watson and Seth Rogen are friends. Everyone calm the fuck down. It's so stupid.

MerlinI watched the GQ video about how to shave your head.

AlexOh, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

MerlinNow, what they call shaving your head, it's actually a really good video.

AlexOh, oh. I watched a video of Seth Rogen doing ceramics and creating his own ashtrays because he just, oh, what a delightful.

MerlinBecause he's a marijuanaman.

AlexHe is a very much a maromen.

MerlinDid you watch the pickle movie?

AlexOh, American Pickle? No.

MerlinI never finished it, but I really enjoyed what I saw. Well, no, no. Here's the thing. When you've got a probably 12 or 13-year-old kid in the house, it's like, I can't get the kid to finish watching Spy. It's like, this movie's so fucking good. I watched Spy all the way through. Again, dear friend of the show, Paul Feig, who is a genius, I watched Spy all the way through two nights ago. So good. And I think, I mean, that movie, the first act of that movie is so fucking funny. The second act is extremely funny. The second half of that movie, you've seen the movie Spy.

AlexYes, many times.

MerlinOnce you get a lot of high quality Melissa McCarthy versus Rose Byrne interactions, holy fucking shit. Melissa McCarthy, I just, I don't even know where to begin. I love her so much. I love, I just, I love her. She's so goddamn funny. And the outtakes, if you ever want to have a larf, go watch some of the outtakes. Also the thing, Paul Feig does a thing on set. Some of these that he does with Alice and Janney are so fucking funny. where they'll do a take. It's not a fun run, but it is a thing. They do fun runs too, probably.

But he'll do a thing where there'll be a take. And then he, on set, in the moment, says, okay, now do it this way, and gives somebody a line that they have to on the spot learn and say. And it's an alternate, like an alt, a take. But they've never heard the line before until that moment. And then they have to say it and get through it. And so I knew that the Jason man, Jason, what's his name? Jason Bateman. Jason, who's the guy? Statham. Jason Statham. I knew of him, but I'd never seen him in a movie

except to know that he seems like a very serious action man. He seems to be having such a good time. Sitting in the hotel room in Paris, I've shot out enough chips to make a computer. And that was an alt take. That's one where in the moment you hear off screen, Paul Fee goes, okay, now try this one. I've eaten I've swallowed and shot out enough chips to build a computer so so he did a uh

Alexbasically a uh John Mulaney with um Stefan like he didn't know what he was saying oh yeah yeah yeah very similar I think yeah yeah yeah oh that's wonderful I've uh I tore off this arm

Merlinbut reattached it with this arm oh okay I drove I drove off the freeway onto a train on fire. Not the car. Me. I was on fire. I don't know if I believe you on that. Remember when they gave her all the things and they gave her the toe fungus? The toe fungus. You guys, go watch Spy. It's so good. Paul Feig is a genius. Yes.

AlexHe directed also... Have you seen A Simple Favor? He did

MerlinA Modest Favor, A Simple Man. A Simple Favor. I love that movie.

AlexOh, God. It's so good. It's so good.

MerlinThe music, the queer vibe, like all of it. Anna Kendrick, has she ever been more fun? Oh, my God.

AlexAnna Kendrick is always fun.

MerlinBut also Blake Lively, who'd have thunk it?

AlexI mean, it's, I don't know.

MerlinOh, and that one guy, the guy from the Mormon movie or Mormon play, that one guy from, you know, the guy, the guy who was in Book of Mormon, the singing man. It's like him and the comedy lady whose name I always mispronounce. Remember the other parents at the school? Do you remember?

AlexWelcome to Dubai Friday. Alex, the Alex's guest is actually.

MerlinGo see Spy. Go watch all the Paul Feig movies. The man's a genius.

AlexYeah, including especially A Simple Favor and Last Christmas, which is not.

MerlinOh, I don't know that. Oh, wait. Is Last Christmas the one with the girls?

AlexNo. Oh, no. No, no, no. That's a, it's not the gay one. It's the.

MerlinThat's a Christmas restaurant. What's it called?

AlexIt has. Oh, boy.

MerlinBut it's got your girl in it.

AlexIt's got. No, it has Amelia Clark in it.

MerlinIt's got San Junipero, right?

AlexNo, no, no, no. This is Amelia Clark. And it's just, I don't know. It's very wholesome.

MerlinOh, right. I did. I heard things about that. All right. OK. You know, Paul Feig.

AlexPaul Feig.

MerlinWe stan him.

AlexOh, so much. great dresser too he always wears a necktie on set yeah yeah it's it's very much like a um oh god i'm just thinking a lot about john mulaney i guess like he he likes wearing a suit on stage because it's like yeah this is this is my office space so of course i'm gonna wear i dance and i

Merlinprance um also you know a thing i think i feel like it's a little bit of a i don't say a bummer but like a not obvious thing is i think first of all it's not obvious at all you buy something on iTunes. I bought a lot of things on iTunes or whatever it's called now. I bought a lot of movies and TV shows, especially movies. I have many, many movies. And when I went to watch Spy the other night, I think it's kind of, I'll say it's a bummer. It's a bummer that it's difficult to see whether there are special features that come with the movie, a la a DVD or Blu-ray, right?

I mean, it's under some kind of like a two-word thing you can choose to click on. But it's very unclear how much stuff is in there at all. Is it just going to be one of those lame ones, one of those old school, well, here's a gallery of images.

AlexRight.

MerlinIt's unclear how much stuff is in there. But if you go to things like Mad Max, I mean, or Fury Road, like, holy God, there's so much stuff, including, I believe, the black and white version, if you like that kind of thing.

AlexWhich takes you about a half hour to find if you, oh.

MerlinWell, here's the thing. I finally clicked on it for Spy because I've gone to YouTube. I am very much that sort of person that will just watch all of the blooper reels from The Office or Parks and Rec or whatever. And he always famously has great blooper reels because of stuff like this. Because, like, that beautiful swan like Allison Janney has to, like, memorize and get through some ridiculous line about bats being in the ceiling. Anyway, the whole bit with the bats, the bats and the mice just kills me. But I clicked on iTunes extras. And, yeah, sure enough, there's scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.

there's like tons of stuff, including all those alt takes, including bloopers, including like a short reel of the hilarious, like on on set comedy magic between Paul Feig, like shots of them just goofing Paul Feig and Melissa McCarthy. But then you scroll down and there's like this fairly innocuous looking link called, I don't know, something like Paul's Diary. You click on it. Guess what? There's another level. There's even more stuff under there. Oh, my. So here's what I'm saying to everybody. Go watch the movie Spy. I know that Paul Feig has a very editorial sort of style, as we used to say on Project Runway, Top Dress.

It's not for everybody, maybe, but I think the guy's a genius. I love his style. I love that he works in the Goggle-Eyed Guy from Silicon Valley all the time. He has a role in Spy. Jared?

AlexI think so. Oh, I don't know the names. I know people. The only reason I know Emma Watson's name is because I've had a—

MerlinBut he's the guy from The Office. He's the guy who's in love with Aaron on The Office.

AlexYeah, yeah. Gabe. Did you watch Silicon Valley? Yeah, I enjoyed it.

MerlinWhen he's all sleep deprived, he's been in the box in China, and then he shows up in San Francisco. How would you feel about a service where anyone could see where your children are? Go watch Spy. If you buy Spy on the Apple thing, you also get all these great things. Or you know what? Remind me to do this. Or me. You know what? I'm a grown man. I can remember this. I will find some fun, the fun, like, super, not super cut, but somebody basically took all, I think, took all the extras from Spy and turned it into one YouTube video.

And I will find that. Maybe we can watch it in the after show.

AlexWell, this could be a potential. Hey, hey, hey, hey, everybody. Merlin, don't listen. In the after show, we also picked the challenge for next week. And I so that's also why you should go to stomp on my stamps on cob. But anyway, Merlin, I I think it would be interesting, possibly as a challenge to like find a good director's commentary, because that is what I sort of lament the most about not having those DVDs.

MerlinI can tell you straight off the dome. I got a couple beloved ones, all the stuff with Edgar Wright.

AlexYes. See, I don't have him.

MerlinHe does so many commentaries. He does writer's commentaries. He does actor's commentaries. Like he does so many different ones for all the things.

AlexHave I, were you ever a TV director's commentary type person?

MerlinI'm not sure. I mean, I think about things like even as recently as the Game of Thrones things, which God, I apparently just keep buying upgraded copies of.

AlexI'm convinced they filmed it in 3D and eventually we're just going to get one of those.

MerlinI hope that never happens. I've got the super what do they call it? You know, the 4K UHD super Blu-ray box set on top of the regular Blu-ray box set. It's very embarrassing. Oh my. But no, only just to say that I feel like historically when you get say DVDs of a TV show, there will be commentaries for certain episodes. Right? Like with something or like, I want to say with like The Simpsons or something where you might get like certain groups of people for certain episodes. Yes. But it's a little bit catch as catch can. Were you that kind of person, Alex?

AlexOh, you're going to throw it at me?

MerlinI'm trying to keep you involved.

AlexI absolutely 100,000% was, especially because, you know, when I was, oh gosh, I don't even know. But before, you know, even laptop-y time, I had, oh yeah, because my first laptop didn't have a DVD player. Wow. Anyway, the, you know, the little portable.

MerlinBecause it was too early or too late? Too late, right?

AlexNo, no, no. Too early because I was an Octothorpe privileged girl that had...

MerlinDo you have an iBook?

AlexNo, no, no. I had a 12-inch PowerBook, which is still the best computer that I've ever had. My MacBook Air is coming close, but...

MerlinI even like how heavy and thick it is.

AlexIt's... Yeah, it has heft. It's very...

MerlinYes, it's substantial, but it has a tiny little itsy-bitsy screen. Yeah, yeah.

AlexOh, gosh. I mean, I was bummed it wasn't Titanium. But anyway, did you ever have one of those little DVD, portable DVD players?

MerlinI'm trying to think. I mean, the first DVD player I had, ironically enough, or coincidentally enough, was in my, I can never remember if it's Wall Street or Pisma. I think I had a Wall Street. My Wall Street power book, which was such an unusual computer. It was beautiful. It looked like Darth Vader. And it had two, it had a bay on either side. and both bays could be used. So the bays could be used for extra batteries or optical drives. So you could have one battery and an optical drive, go on a plane, swap out that battery,

or you could just put in two batteries and have like this 40 pound computer that worked for six hours, you know?

AlexHonestly, that's like the, oh gosh.

MerlinIt was, I loved it so much, Alex. And then I bought Rushmore. Rushmore was my first DVD.

AlexRushmore was my first Blu-ray.

MerlinNo kidding.

AlexI think we talked about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

MerlinWe probably talked about this.

AlexOh, man.

MerlinHe's the worst student we've got.

AlexOh, the thing I couldn't quote last week. I saved Latin. What did you ever do?

MerlinI like your nurses. Hey, guy, I like your nurses. I am. What did you think, Mr. Little Jeans? Best play ever, man.

Why don't you go and get everybody a root beer? I don't want to.

AlexCircle, circle back.

MerlinI saw the geometry teacher at Amoeba Records in San Francisco. First time I visited here.

AlexOh, my. Oh, my.

MerlinBut in terms of consumer DVD players, gosh, it's so funny. Like when I moved to San Francisco and moved into the house that I'm in in 99, it's such a snapshot of a certain time. We had DSL for our internet, which is like faster than dial-up, but like, you know, not awesome. But we had an AT&T cable box, which was this before we got a TiVo. So our first TiVo was a direct TiVo, where in an afternoon, we went from AT&T cable box to having a satellite dish with East Coast feeds at TiVo.

And it was like, oh, and that beautiful remote. Before that, though, we had this AT&T box, which was crazy. I mean, imagine a Mac LC, but even wider. like this giant thing and then we finally got a dvd player to put on top of our vcr it was really it was really big so my first consumer household dvd player was i don't know there was a point where like vcrs and dvds like it's like it you know how like um apple has that target 10 hour battery life it seemed like there was a point when like all

consumer video electronics got stuck at 200 oh wow you're right holy shit because like there was a point when vcr vcrs used to be super costly that was a four-figure buy then like a 400 buy by the time i was in college you get a vcr for 200 bucks and it stayed 200 bucks but the features got usually better um so yeah that was mine do you remember how dvds dvds it looked like dvds looked so freaking good compared to vhs oh god and now i'm a i'm now i'm a 2160 cuck oh boy i'm a size

queen, Alex. I've got to have it big.

AlexWe should talk about... You know what? I'm going to size queen. Size queen. Media size queen? I think I might have become a size queen. This has been a topic

Merlinon the Rectiv stock for I don't even know how long, which is like when you rip stuff, what is the minimal thing you would watch? For me, there's stuff I watch. I'm having a big kung fu movies phase right now and sometimes it's very difficult there's such a mix to get right to find something from the 70s sorry wait so so i got a lot of 576 i'm watching right now that i'm not loving but

Alexthere's no other way to like find it i okay yeah yeah uh yeah well i was gonna rip i was like should i rip simpsons dvd like i don't know i guess the i i don't know this is i i you know what i i this

Merlinis another one of those things probably like the black magic the shameful black magic camera i've gone through such a succession of increasingly better ripping things i'm up to the one i've got here at the office now is one of those recommended an asus blu-ray player that is also i think i learned about this from snell like i basically bought a version of this from this dude it's as weak knees is to tivos there's a dude who will sell you um blu-rays that work work are optimized I don't know how this happens, but I bought it from this guy.

He was great to work with, would buy it again. And he sells you this Blu-ray player that is very amenable to working with stuff like Handbrake or –

AlexOh.

MerlinWhat's the one I'm thinking of? No, what's the one before Handbrake?

AlexThat's what I –

MerlinOh, MakeMKV. It's optimized for working with MakeMKV.

AlexOh, interesting.

MerlinBut like I reached the end of my rope so quickly. Just literally yesterday, I got some kung fu movies that I wanted to go from, God, one was AVI, Alex, the other was WMV. Pretty soon, I imagine I'll be at the level of .RMs.

AlexI don't even know what that, wait, what are .RMs?

MerlinOh, that's real media, like real player?

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinNo, don't do that. Remember that back in the day, that blue logo? Yeah. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, some porn, you're only going to get that way. But WMV, not loving that. Windows Media, no, well, I would really rather. So I'll drop that into usually iFlix.

AlexOh, yeah. I didn't know they're still around.

MerlinYeah, but like if you go into Handbrake and it's like, I know I should have mastered this by now. But like it literally crashed my computer, my iMac the other day. I came back and it had crashed in the middle of trying to rip from, you know, from an AVI to or whatever it was. And I never even got to see. I don't even know if I got the right subtitles out of it because I might have picked that wrong. do you pick fast 30 it's like i i always reach the end of my rope there are other people there are the syracusis of the world who have like mastered that that's like part of what they do now is because syracuse i think somewhat famously wants all the media he owns to be available for

plex like bit for bit exactly what was on the absolute highest exact quality everything i'm

Alexi think getting there because i've i other than i think um a few of uh no oh no i didn't because it fell off the back of a truck. But I don't think I've ever ripped any sort of DVD, or sorry, any Blu-ray. Like, I just got, I don't know, external optical, this, oh god, I don't know, someone told us, and when I say somebody, I literally don't remember who, which is probably a bad thing. It's just a basic-ass Blu-ray player with, I mean, it has USB-C, yay, I guess.

but if I'm going to rip all of these Blu-rays, like if I'm going to rip Brushmore, I feel like I should do just the whole shebang, even if I don't watch it at full resolution. Won't I? I don't know. This is boring.

MerlinWell, in a teaser that will hopefully turn into a pivot for this increasingly very long podcast, I can tell you I explored this and it didn't work for me, but it may work for you. There is a, I want to say a Docker container that you can get on Synology. I mean, basically, you can get... I don't know if it's... I'm trying to remember. I always get them confused. I think it's Handbrake. It's not MakeMKV. So my problem is I don't want to tie up my computer with something that spins up every single fan to get a thing where I won't even know if it worked.

You know what it is, Alex? It's the new CD burning.

AlexYeah.

MerlinRemember that feeling of, like, basically, if one in... I feel like I was at a point where, like, one in three CDs I burned. didn't work. Like I had a very bad record of CDs working, but it ties up your computer. You don't want to fuck around on an old Mac. You don't want to fuck around while you're trying to burn a CD. One bad little sector and you're donezo. And like, I certainly don't want to tie up the only like big boy computer I have in my office to like get some, something of unknown quality. FWIW.

There is, I believe I could not get this to work, but there's a Docker for everything. and one of them is at make mkv so if you were to with your i believe or soon arriving sonology more on that in a minute you can hook that up with usb and now you can make a cue and have it go and it's not going to tie up your computer if you can make that work hakuna matata docker's got a lot of

Alexstuff going on oh it it does and i did not i mean i kind of knew what it was yeah i'm still scared

Merlinof it i'm still scared of it but it's all there i'm scared of all of this but i'm being told that I should to get the things that I want to make my network more secure, I should run Piehole, which I've run a little bit in the past. I know Casey's a big fan. It's not the ads I don't want. It's the like outbound, you know, BS I don't know about. But, you know, and I last night I stopped just short because I'm like, you know, this is probably such a side benefit of getting older as I do sometimes catch myself and go, stop, wait. Do you really want to remotely, do you want to use the web interface

to set up a Docker container to create an entire new DNS system for running your entire office remotely, right? Not that it would be that much better in person. And then do you want to, like, risk having all your HomeKit and era stuff just go tits up because you got something wrong now that – so you know what PuyHole is? It's like a DNS that you run yourself.

AlexYeah, which is why I've never used it.

MerlinIt does. It feels cool, but, like, unlike some of this stuff, where I'm like, you know, on Home Assistant, like stuff from the community store or the whatever. I always do a full snapshot before I dick around.

I'm sure we'll be talking about this more, much to our listener's chagrin.

AlexIs one person tweeting the audience? I mean, I know at least two people must listen to this show.

MerlinAs you know, I'm the one who brought this up in the after show last week, GiveUsYourFuckingMoney.com. I'm concerned. I don't want people to think this is turning into some kind of computer show.

AlexNo, no. We are not accidentally making a show.

MerlinI was told by this anonymous account that they think it's boring and it's just going to be us. Not because it's boring, but because we just bitch a lot.

AlexYou know what's exciting? Talking about haircuts for 45 minutes. That is what you're listening to us look at pictures of love.

MerlinBarbarino at birth.

AlexYep.

MerlinChallenge. We've gotten to the point now when I clone. It's my job inside baseball. It's my job, I don't know, not formally, but informally, to be the person who clones the document each week. And I generally rough in. I change the episode number. I change the date. I change all the things. And I rough in, you know, a TBD name for the challenge. For the last two weeks, I had no idea.

So it just says TK, TK, TK. Alex, what's the challenge this week? Do something with your voice? Is that it?

AlexIt was, well, it was specifically to use Almond, which is the open privacy preserving virtual assistant.

MerlinThis is alongside, astride, over, underneath this ongoing idea we have of, let's start, and this is very amorphous, But Alexandra and I would like to talk about finding a role. Well, I think the sexy way to say it is we want to learn more about the potential role of ambient computing in our life and the way that expresses it. Is that fair?

AlexYeah. No, like all bits aside, you know how we've talked about like forest from the trees person. And normally I am, I think, well, hopefully I hope I'm becoming more of a forest person. And I think this.

MerlinOh, God, I wish. If I got the right medication, I would love to be a forced person.

AlexDude, I think it's literally because I changed some meds. I literally, like, thank you, my psychiatrist. Oh, God, if he ever listened. Oh, anyway. But my sort of attitude towards all this is.

MerlinMy libertarian shrink used to listen to my podcast.

AlexOh, my God. I would.

MerlinHe had listened to Back to Work at the time I first saw him.

AlexOh, well.

MerlinYeah. Sorry, Forest and Trees, which also would be a great name for an 80s heart-to-heart style ABC detective drama. That's my boss, Mr. Forest. That's his wife, Mrs. Trees.

AlexThat didn't deserve that big of a laugh. No, no.

MerlinThat's their chauffeur. That's how he talks.

Alexi i i'm i've just always very been in i've not always but i guess since the original siri like pre-acquired by apple siri i've been very much were you aware of it before it was acquired yeah um some guy with uh 73 folders used to i think wrote about it and initially um but uh no it was on the app store and stuff it was like a big was it called what was it called then it was called siri which was wild because it yeah yeah and and uh oh uh let me write in uh i i got three quarters

of a page of notes here the yeah because i found the icon on an old uh screenshot of my phone and i was like oh wow that's a that's right i can't believe they kept the name but i mean the that That was the first time I was like, oh, yeah, no, we're just going to have not only are we going to have a computer everywhere, we are just going to be talking to our computers more and more and not just.

MerlinI like the way I accidentally phrased it a couple of weeks ago, which is what does computing look like when there's what's computing without computers look like? Which you've already gotten a flavor of, like your car is kind of a computer, your phone is kind of a computer.

AlexOh, my car is absolutely a computer. Well, half of it.

MerlinBut like what does it look like when there's stuff happening and you don't have to do stuff like think about rebooting it as often or like whatever.

AlexOr how do you reboot it if you can't see it? Like because –

MerlinBut also just like the way that we come to think of certain things almost like a utility. Like think about the things in your life like electricity, water, internet where like when it goes out like you're really bumming. You're not thinking about so much. It's about usually, you know, hashtag me. But like you're not thinking a ton about how your internet works until it doesn't. like i had to i had to do some pokery jiggery this weekend with the my euro beacons because they for some reason were getting confused about you know some of them were just not doing great but they weren't fully disconnected and that's not that's very unusual not just for euro but in

general of like you having to think about like or you know john syracuse of wondering about the water in his pipes that kind of thing and like what what does it look like when that goes next level and there's computing going on like you don't have to think about your i don't know even know car parts your carburetor or your battery you think about putting in the key you don't even need to put in a key anymore on some of these goddamn cars it just runs weird yeah it's super weird but you know what i mean like that isn't that kind of what we're talking about like what's you know and then the fun part to me is the journey the the the very hairy jungle

on foot trek to getting to that through shit like trying to make you know presence detection work and doing automations. And I think that's expressing itself, just to bring people up to date with Alexandra and I talking about, in particular about Synologies, about hosting more of our own stuff, to use Alexandra's phrase, having more agency over our stuff, our data, as well as the functionality. And that brought us to, accidentally, to Almond.

AlexAnd I basically peanut buttered on most of this, but this is...

MerlinI tried, Alex. I can't make this piece of shit work. It looks very promising. I can't make it work.

AlexI don't think it's a piece of shit, but I didn't realize it's like –

MerlinBut like, okay, here's the thing. When you go, when you do a Hello World, you show up on a new thing, whether this is – what was her name? Eliza or like – no, remember the one, the computer thing that would talk to you?

AlexYep. The first chatbot was Eliza. Oh, God. Am I a fake –

MerlinIs that right? Or like the one that – what's her name? That Mackenzie Davis made for the Cardiff Giant. like I do feel like if you walk up you know just preload it with this when you walk up and you say you say like hi and it says hello and you say something like what can you do or what can I do with you or what you know what I mean like I that's always sort of my first like I can I have a pretty good idea how this is going to go depending on how that goes and once I'd hooked it up with home assistant which was wonderfully easy I just couldn't make it do anything and I

It just kept saying, I don't know. I'm probably just stupid. You know what? I should accept that a la hoobs, a la all of these things, there's always going to be extra configuration, sometimes requiring a YAML file. But yeah. But almonds, did you just play with almond as a thing? Stanford Project that's doing, it's voice but not voice. Like it's, that's confusing to me too.

AlexExactly.

MerlinLike I wanted permission to use the microphone, but then it grayed out all the text. And I'm like, I think I'm doing something wrong with Almond.

AlexI just I tried using it at first in the browser on my phone because I'm like, all right, someone going to this website and it says try Almond now. Like if you want this to be a consumer product, it's like, all right, let's go to this. Oh, this isn't clear. I guess I get what they're saying and want me to do.

MerlinAll right, Alex, I'm sending you a screenshot. But clearly, this is going to be one of those examples of me holding it wrong. This is just, okay, look at this texting. Would you please read to our audience the exchange I just had with my Almond, where I am logged in as me, where it has my data. It knows all of my stuff. So what did Almond say first?

AlexMr. Almond, welcome back.

MerlinAnd then I say, I say, hello.

AlexSorry, I didn't understand that. Can you rephrase it? I don't know why that's the almond voice.

MerlinOkay. Aloha. Oh, it says, okay. So at Aloha is allowed to call any number. Is that correct? Okay.

AlexThis whole thing is a very promising project, but it's not open source, I believe, because there's no like API that I could find really.

MerlinYou know, it might be one of those. it might have a a nice license but i'll bet stanford owns the ip you know well installment owns the ip and his toe pickings but once you've hooked it up so basically when you go in and flip on this integration in home assistant uh so i was very encouraged to see well here's this next one this happened so i couldn't figure out i couldn't get the interface thing to work i couldn't get the port 3000 thing to work any of the stuff that it says to do and of course i've learned you know this is actually all this stuff, this bullshit has been such a good journey for me,

Alex, because it really reminds me stuff. I should always be remembering every day, which is I'm probably missing something. This is a long scrolling screen that I'm sending you, but just so you know, after you go in, you turn on the integration and you enter your account information. Guess what? Look at that. Under enabled skills. Now all the entities from your home assistant will show up, which looks really promising, right?

AlexOh, interesting. And Oh, wait what is oh wow this has much more than I would have expected

Merlinso just real quick because I know people hate this but Home Assistant there's a lot of nomenclature it's valuable to learn with Home Assistant you can learn more about this at I think it's Home just go fucking Google Home Assistant but one thing that's really cool so you can see for example they have an iCloud integration that's the best so you get your iCloud integration going and you and your Find My Friends stuff all shows up

Alexin here which is weird i feel like i don't know i'm surprised that something has access to this

Merlinwell no but you're seeing so for example you see like um don't say all of these because i don't want to be creepy but like for example you can see you know bathroom dehumidifier and it's saying that's an interface for switch that is a wemo that i've got in the bathroom for turning off turning that on and off but like for example your iphone once your iphone is on here it knows so much cool shit. It tells you what your altitude is. It's pulling that out. It's got your lat long. It knows your altitude. It knows your battery level charge. It knows the last time you did this or that. It knows what kind of motion you're in

right now. That's all addressable as attributes that can be automated. Imagine, this is just to remind people why I care about this. What if the most obscure dumb shit could be actually incredibly useful to me? Like to know, I mean, an obvious one, like tell me when any device on my network is under 10% battery charge. Give me a push notification for that, that kind of stuff. And so again, so here, like you see there, closet sensor temperature.

And that's because we have a hue sensor in our closet that we use to, unsurprisingly, turn on the overhead light. And then after a few minutes, it turns off. So let's say I say to Almond, what is the temperature in the closet? That seems pretty straightforward, right?

AlexAs a human, yes.

MerlinNo closet that doesn't fall on you. And then it says you don't seem to have a recording device enabled. Did you do anything else with voice you're excited about?

AlexNo, I played with my Google Mini. That's awesome.

Merlinthat uh because we've been admonished not to bitch i'm not gonna bitch but everything's melting down right now alex everything is you and i have talked about numerous i don't know what the fuck is going on with so the word and is is as the opposite of what they usually say the word and is not doing a lot of work here the word and is just the word and here there's some shit going on right now with homepod and there's some shit going on with shortcuts i don't i imagine some of it is related but I don't know what the fuck is happening.

And you agreed, right? Your shortcut stuff on HomePod is being weird.

AlexYep, yep.

MerlinAre you on the beta? Are you on the beta on your phone?

AlexNo, no, no, no.

MerlinAre you on the beta on your HomePod?

AlexThe, wait, no, I am not.

MerlinOkay, well, that's, because I always just assume, you're not allowed to bitch about anything if you're on a beta. I'm on production, normal production one on my HomePod and I'm on the latest developer beta on my phone. So I just assumed something broke there. Like, for example, the cool jittery thing with the HomePod Mini when you want to hand off. It worked, and then it didn't work, and then it worked again. Like, I just feel like I should get a part-time job just finding a way to get paid for resetting my HomePods.

AlexOh, yeah, like a job at Apple because no one has it, obviously.

MerlinWell, that is a fairly classic example of something crazy frustrating. You hate it when somebody's advice to you is log out of iCloud. I'm like, really? I, anything where the solution quote unquote is to log out of iCloud really throws a red flag for me because I mean, I, so what you're really telling me is the classic unplug it and blow out the dust, which I bet that fixes some stuff. But when the official advice is log out or when the official advice is reset your HomePod, I always, for some reason in my gut, I'm like, you don't really know how to fix this, do you?

AlexNo. Well.

MerlinYou know, like even an annoying solution like, oh, your HomePod's not working for personal requests. This is weird, but turn off Siri on your phone and then turn it back on.

AlexIt's so frustrating.

MerlinBecause there's some stuff where they say you've got to turn off Siri on your phone. So here's a huge thing with personal requests. It does a really theoretically smart thing, which is HomePod will not, if it recognizes your voice. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. There's all kinds of stuff with that. even to get any of this stuff working, you've got to do stuff a lot of normies aren't going to do. Like you've got to have 2FA. You've got to do all this stuff that I've already done since the first day I could. But then for personal requests to work, and personal requests being things like accessing your calendar, like doing

things that could be very sensitive. There's a lot of flips and bits and stuff. And to all the trouble, there's a lot of troubleshooting of like, make sure you're on the same network. Make sure you're doing this. Because for a lot of stuff it's trying to be clever and say when merlin asked for this kind of thing my one of my first obviously i want to get the information that has been asked for and i very quickly want to suss out is merlin's phone nearby like whatever device has been identified as the the the phone like is

location services on is it on the same network is all the things which i get they're trying to be secure and a little clever and so when that stuff breaks i understand i guess i understand it's the

Alexsecond part that's not a great

Merlinbut like one of my favorite shortcuts I was telling Dan this this is really embarrassing but one of my favorite go to dumb shortcuts this could hardly be a more simple shortcut to get you know to get the like there is a thing as Gruber has talked about where you can get a pop-up that your watch has charged but like that's a result of having turned on sleep tracking which I don't do which is I don't do the Apple version of that but I do want to know my watch is charged so you know what my dumb answer is i made a shortcut that could not be any stupider which is when i say hey dingus charge my

watch it basically just sets a reminder and in an hour it says your watch is charged why is that that dumb i i because that all i want all i want to do is be able to there's two parts because it's you know i i will second yeah i want my watch to get charged but i want an easy way to know when it's charged is there anything you've ever forgotten see also pasta timer is there anything you've ever forgotten where you just want to be able to create a reminder? Well, I want to have the exact same reminder with my cool little Apple Watch emoji, and it says your watch is charged.

And so since, I don't know, at least a year, when I arrive home, there's a couple things I do when I arrive home, both of which are broken right now. One is I go up, I put my watch on the stand, and I say, hey, dingus, charge my watch. And then it responds with something like, you're good to go. And then in an hour, I get a reminder, right? The other thing I often do is I walk up and I say to the HomePod, this is a more recent one, but I say, hey, Dingus, watch live TV. And as I explained to you, that's when I swipe from this dude that's super clever. And I bet a lot of folks don't know this. If you have a HomePod and Apple TV and you say, hey, Dingus,

you can control your TV with it. You can control the volume with your HomePod. There's so much you can do. You could do the classic. When you want to do, for example, what did he say? One of the great bits of Siri stuff where when you say to your Apple TV, let's say you hold up your dumb diving board remote and you say, what did he say? It rewinds a few seconds and turns on subtitles.

AlexI can never get that to work.

MerlinAnd I don't- Well, it should work, right? Or you say, find Spy or find the TV show Party Down.

AlexThat works for me.

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. Siri Remote. But a lot of that stuff you can do with your HomePod. I know you know that, but there might be people out there who don't. So you can say, hey, dingus. I think this just works straight out of the box. Mostly is, hey, dingus, turn on Apple TV. But here's mine. I say, hey, dingus, watch live TV. And this is such a clever, to me, a very clever shortcut I stole from somebody. I don't know.

AlexIt's very.

MerlinHave you tried it?

AlexOh, no. But I do not have the equipment to.

MerlinClassic.

AlexI don't. Boy. Wait. I think I'm thinking of the same or something different.

MerlinThe first time you fill it in, right, the shortcut you steal from this man, the first thing you do is there's some questions to answer.

AlexOkay. No, no, no, no. There's no stealing of shortcuts when someone has publicly shared it. No.

MerlinWell, I just don't want to. No, I'm not trying to front like I wrote this from scratch.

AlexI understand.

MerlinThat's all I'm trying to do. Yeah, yeah. I don't mean stealing. I just mean the sense of like I don't want. I'm not trying to put myself out there as the new Casanelli or something. So the first time you open this, very importantly, you need to be nearby and on the same network as your Apple TV. This becomes important as we'll discover. But because, you know, it needs to know the things. So first question, hey, so there's three parts to this. Which Apple TV? And you go, okay, Lounge Apple TV, cool. What app do you want to open on that? You say, on Lounge Apple TV, open the app Hulu.

And then third, I'm going to turn your device into a remote. So which device? And I say, horses in the drift. And then once you're done with that, you can, like, let's just say on your phone, you can say, watch live TV. It turns on your TV because I got the CEC thing John Syracuse hates. It turns on the actual television set. It turns on Apple TV. It opens the Hulu app, and it turns my phone into a remote. So I'm still walking around, doing stuff, getting settled,

and if I want to watch me some Chris Hayes or whatever, I'm good to go. And until very recently, that worked on HomePod. I would say, hey, dingus, watch live TV. And now it says I can't do that on HomePod. but guess what broke guess what else broke hey dingus charge my watch and it says something inscrutable like I don't have a battery here or something like that

Alexyes but it used to work I swear to god

MerlinAlex it used to work and I reset it all I reset the home pods I didn't reset my Apple TV I'm not a monster I reset you know I re-ran through the shortcut setup to make sure that it had access to everything oh god we're doing the thing people hate i'm sorry no no well what's happening alex what's happening with with shortcuts and

Alexhome pod help me out i just pulled up um if you if you go to matthewcassanelli.com um he has a statement from apple we are aware of an issue where previously shared shortcuts are currently unavailable newly shared shortcuts are available and we are didn't they fix it uh nope nope and we are working to restore previously shared shortcuts as quickly as possible are they alex are they working i feel are they working on that i don't know uh but but i so when i i used the

watch your watch live tv and set it to netflix um because i was just like oh this this is cool and it pulled but i'm wondering if it's because i only have one apple tv that it's like i only have one also well i see why because i select it's in my living room it's in living room it's

MerlinI mean, it's almost certainly pilot error on my part, but...

AlexOh, no, no, wait. Actually, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Hey, Matty?

MerlinRight now, Alexandra is addressing their Pokemon. So my daughter and I were spitballing some names that could be... It seems like you get like a Bulbasaurus. Maybe you get a Matasaurus. You could get a... Who's the electric man everybody likes? His name's... What's his name? Pikachu? You could have a Mathew? A Pikamat?

Alexthat um i don't really know that many other ones what hi hello hello hey i'm back um so so uh this is it works if my tv is on but i have another shortcut that is just turn on apple tv and i i love that this turns into uh the the remote that was the that was delightful um but and it's it's Just turn on Apple TV and set the volume for the HomePods?

MerlinI haven't tested this, but I imagine you cannot... For example, I don't know if there's a way to say... Could you say, for example, Alexa is actually great at this because it's such a boneheaded approach to routines. But with Alexa, you can enter literal act as if I just said this, which I love. Did you know you can do that in Alexa routines?

AlexNo. As in you can go into like the Alexa app and type it like type to Siri.

MerlinBut yeah. So this is one of my, wasn't one of my routines, Alexa play the news. Of course. Alexa, stop. Alexa, go home. So that was just the literal, the string literal, Alexa, stop the string literal. If you like of, uh, when I say Alexa, Oh my God, Matt Gates, Matt Gates.

Okay. Okay. When I say, Hey, dingus, play the news. Act as though I just said, play MSNBC on Hulu.

AlexOh, oh, oh, oh, okay. That is very cool.

MerlinSo wouldn't it be great if you could say to your, when I say this Siri device, act as though I just said, you know, or I don't know if it's even work, but like open a party down in Hulu.

AlexMm-hmm. That will not work.

MerlinSo it'll get you to launching an app, but then you're on your own. That's where the remote part becomes handy.

Alexand well and i i why can't you open uh for i i apologize um to your shortcut for uh saying it didn't work it just uh my apple tv apparently no longer well i don't know i don't know because it

Merlinturns on if i just go to remote well i mean it's not just me though right are there other things independently where you're struggling oh yeah there's a bunch of stuff what's the kind of is there one that you think of because you know that thing where you're like you're trying to solve a problem you're like i know i'm gonna do this thing and i know it's not gonna work eventually it'll work but i'm gonna keep doing this thing are there things where you're you dread doing a thing because like it just keeps not working do you have any of those right now yeah i oh i mean

Alexall of my uh so i've got like a bunch of different timery timers which are uh it's made by the wonderful oh oh my chair is found my my chair was running away uh by running away i mean i come back buddy come on

Merlinwho did this to you sorry Cherry show me show me on the chair doll

Show notes

Transcript

234. Barbarino at Birth

Show notes

Transcript

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