241. Auncle

AlexAll right, well now, Merlin, I'm ready whenever you are ready. I wonder if Quinn has ever heard me use the bathroom because I try to put as many physical and audio barriers between my bedroom and the bathroom. Well, anywhere because my apartment's a bit small. So, like, if someone's in there, you know what's going on.

Usually. So sorry, Quinn. At least you couldn't see how yellow my pee was. I must be dehydrated.

Oh, I heard, I think I heard a scooch of some sort. Hang ten? What is this, Johnny Tsunami? No.

Ready and waiting? What's the... Copy that. Over. Over. Biker. Biker. 520.

Scooty. Scooty. Over. Scoot. Scoot. Over. I don't like that I'm making myself giggle. That's never a good sign before recording. Oof. Okay. Either full-on hallucinations are happening, which would be very possible, perhaps probable, but it's either hallucinations, ghosts, or Merlin is power-puttering about his office.

Just, just, it was so yellow. I am, is it a hallucination if it's a real ghost? I don't know. Is this the ghost of my COVID productivity?

MerlinSeems about right.

AlexOh, I was just talking to Quinn about whether or not I was hearing you, ghosts, or my own brain, or a mix of all three. All are fine.

MerlinOkay. Was it any good?

AlexOh, was what good?

MerlinWell, given the fact that I guess my microphone just turns on and I was in the bathroom. So you're probably hearing the exhaust fan, I hope. You might have heard me groaning.

AlexNope, none of that. None of that. You know what? I thought I heard what you call power puttering, you know, stuff moving about and some, like, things placing. And maybe it was a toilet seat? I don't know. I don't know.

MerlinWow. Well, let's restart. Is that okay?

AlexYes. Yes.

MerlinOkay, I'm going to stop recording and restart.

AlexOkay.

MerlinAll right. I am recording.

AlexAs am I.

MerlinHmm.

AlexHmm. I apologize. I don't know.

MerlinWhat are you apologizing for?

AlexI would like to decipher that noise that you just made. Or, you know, is there nothing there? Want to unpack that?

MerlinWell, Alex, didn't the show just start?

AlexYes.

MerlinSo how would anybody know what you're talking about? Do you want me to talk about diarrhea? I will.

AlexNo, no, I don't want you to talk about diarrhea. Want me to talk about diarrhea?

MerlinDo you want to restart the show?

AlexHot mic! I did what I would consider the loosest of tight fives about how yellow my P is into my microphone. So.

MerlinOK, well, we should probably restart the recording again, because the whole point was we weren't going to talk about that.

AlexAll right.

MerlinOh, my God. All right. I'm stopping and restarting. Oh, hello. Now I almost feel obligated to include the four previous times we tried to have this call. But you keep talking about diarrhea.

AlexThis is Dubai Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann and Alex Cox. This week's challenge, remix a snack.

MerlinI probably shouldn't have coffee.

AlexOh, well, the very first topic I have is I want to know what velocity you are at today. What's your energy level? Because I've already had...

MerlinThe thing I texted you when I was in the bathroom having diarrhea.

AlexOkay.

MerlinAnd I said to you, I said, Alex, I love... I forget what I wrote because I was busy. But your topics that you put in here are very interesting. And I think they could comprise the episode. So I thought maybe we could play a fun game where you pick the topics and I pick the order.

AlexOh.

MerlinAnd my first topic was going to be, what are our velocities today?

AlexMm-hmm.

MerlinDo you like this idea? I do. Well, let me ask you this. Are these in an order where it would screw them up?

AlexNo.

MerlinShould we start for a fifth time?

AlexNo.

MerlinWell, then you've got to stop talking about diarrhea.

AlexSee, I'm like angry. I'm super Saiyan Tina from Bob's Burgers right now. It's not even like.

That's the noise I make when I listen to Don Jr.

MerlinWe should take a week. Maybe just take a week off. I ate my McDonald's too fast. Here's my velocity. My velocity is I captured some bonus sleep. Okay, so I'm not answering your question. I'm sorry. On redirect. My velocity is, I think, once things get into the proper gear, I'm going to have a really good B-plus day. But it's been a little bit chaotic up until now. How's your velocity today?

AlexOh, I'm not sure.

MerlinOh, interesting. You know, they say lawyers should never ask a question they don't know the answer to.

AlexRight? I mean, it's noon where I am. So I'm not halfway through my day, but, you know, it's been a day. Not in a bad way. It just is the middle of the day, sort of, kind of. And I don't know if I'm hydrated.

MerlinOh, I know. I'm sorry. Does that screw you up? See, I benefit from our starting time, and I bet you don't.

AlexOh, no, no, no.

MerlinIt puts a big old hole in the middle of your day, huh?

AlexWell, that's what work is for. I mean, yeah.

MerlinYou're saying one should fill one's holes with work?

AlexOh, no. You can fill your holes with whatever you want, be it, God, or other things.

MerlinI think you should fill your holes with love. Hey, Quinn, put in some awes and applause right there. Let me give you another take on that. Oh, yeah, really? I think you should fill your holes with love. Aww. No, but I'm feeling pretty good. I'm having kind of a slightly chaotic day. I've been trying to work on my sleep, like I do, and one of my things is I've been doing this relaxation audio that I listen to that's been helping a lot. But there's just some days where try as I might.

Actually, I want to talk about this. I'm not going to tell you to capture it. But I want to talk about reversing somatic loop. Okay.

So the thing I'm learning is you've got to start with your body. Stop trying to solve problems with your brain. Start with your body.

AlexOh, sing it, sister, as you say. Do you agree? Oh, a million and one percent.

MerlinShould we make that the topic today? Or the challenge, as you say?

AlexI, sure, fine, yes. Well, I mean, spoilers, the challenge today was to remix a snack, which I don't know.

MerlinMy, what I came up with is extremely not interesting to talk about on a podcast.

AlexOh, it's, well, let's just say.

MerlinIt basically involves, I bought a new kind of bottle.

AlexOh, well, I would like to briefly hear about that. But I'll just say that I've been jabbed a second time. So I'm fully vaxxed. And I went to what is an open air restaurant. But I think I sent you a photo. And it looked pretty inside to me. But whatever. That's wrong with the baby. I'm with the baby. Oh. And I got to. I love the baby.

MerlinAnd the baby's going like, what? What? Matchy's holding the baby and smiling. The baby goes, what? What?

AlexYeah. Well, that's because I took away her iPhone. And well, I mean, my iPhone. She likes to play with it. She's very smart. She likes to take selfies.

MerlinWhat's Matchy going to do without an iPhone?

AlexYeah, exactly. Well, no, no. And the baby's like, well, why'd you take it? Why? And she doesn't cry. She's just very curious. So then I gave her an Apple Watch, and she licked all of that. So I'm glad that infants hopefully can't get sick. That's how it works, right? Sure, it's fine.

MerlinI hope. Oh, real quick in passing, though. What's your honorific to the baby?

AlexOh, that is a topic of not debate, but discussion.

MerlinBecause a lot of times, a lot of times, it was easy for me, or at least so far, but where I would introduce my baby to somebody and say, oh, that's your Uncle Jake or your Aunt Finn or whatever. And I rarely had to make any kind of a guess about it. Do you have a preference? Will you come up with a – wait, wait, let me do this. I can do this. Do you want to come up with a Neo-honorific?

Maybe they can just call you Neo.

AlexHere, childs, red pill, blue pill.

MerlinNo, there's got to be something cute. There's got to be something cute. Maybe you don't need an honorific. Maybe you'll just be Alex.

AlexNo. When it's cute, well, that's, I mean, that's the thing. Will it be Uncle Alex and Maddie?

MerlinWhat if it's uncle? What if you're both uncle?

AlexUncle.

MerlinKind of like you're those chimeras on a unisex bathroom.

AlexHonestly.

MerlinThat baby's so cute, Alex. No wonder you like that baby.

AlexCan we just clarify real quick? this is indeed my niece and I do not have a baby. This is not a baby psyop.

MerlinHow long would you have to have not listened to the show to wonder that? Number one, didn't they used to have three people on here? Number two, when did Alex get a baby?

AlexWasn't that one a girl at one point?

Merlinuh yeah you should have heard my contortions yesterday i'm back to work uh talking about you and dan share feelings about the airtag keychain oh how horny i am for them oh god yeah but also the it's better to skip it but basically me trying to i walked myself into a thistle of uh of uh the small pants uh so excuse me small pockets and women's clothes oh yeah oh because oh god that key chain and then i found myself saying and also alex you know wears women's

clothes sometimes and i'm like how is this gonna turn out great oh i've said this many times but

Alexi think that we are going to look back at the uh 20 hopefully not hopefully not until the mid 2020s but we're gonna look back and be like oh we really overthought that didn't we oh we could have really been nice to each other. And by that, I do mean queer people.

MerlinI saw your toot. I didn't even favorite your toot because I don't want to be put on blast, but that was a really good toot you had.

AlexOh, that's another whole thing. Oh, boy.

MerlinBut I think you're probably, well, how does one say? You're right. I mean, it's going to be one of those things where, I mean, like Leonard Bernstein and his wife throwing parties for the Black Panthers. It's like 50 years on. That's not nearly as cool as it probably seemed at the time. Or just anything where like, you know, I watched Hurricane Nettie. Of course, Alex, you know how we love Hurricane Nettie. And I watched Hurricane Nettie last night. And of course, we've quoted that numerous times. But there's so many lines.

Okay, here's just two. Just two lines that I forgot how much I love. One is when Ken Brockman says, And if you think it's sexist to name a hurricane after a woman, And you've never seen those ladies going at it at a bargain sale. And Marge says something like, it's true, but he shouldn't say it.

And the other one, which is what you're talking about, reminds me of not what you do, but what you're talking about. The whole like bending over backwards to perform some kind of deep and empathetic understanding of the others in our lives.

AlexOK, because all of my tweets are deleted, I believe I should. Let's put this in context. There has been some, you know, Octothorpe discourse about what it is and isn't OK to say about LGBTQ people.

MerlinWords that words that in the in the mainstream used to be considered very unkind.

AlexYeah, exactly. Some of them weren't even slurs. They were just cruel. Like gay was never really a slur. It was just something that in the 90s until until like 2008.

MerlinWow. Yeah. But on the way the queer the way the queer went from an unkind adjective. It was like, oh, that's a little queer to a very cruel noun to then being reclaimed.

AlexYeah.

MerlinBut that doesn't make it OK for me to just walk around talking about queers.

AlexYeah. Well, and that's the thing. some people don't use that word and still don't like that word, which is fine, great, good.

MerlinWait, I got it backwards. It started out as a noun became... Wait, which way did it go?

AlexIt was adjective to noun. I didn't want to well... Yeah.

MerlinDon't you talk about queer culture now more than you talk about yourself being aqueer? I think we both

Alexjust got it backwards, I think. You're right.

MerlinIt went noun to adjective.

AlexNo, I'm just thinking about how a lot of people are also like, almost are reclaiming the queers.

MerlinAll I know is if you're around my daughter, don't use the word dykey if you're not a lesbian is all I know. Woof.

AlexOh my god. I had a friend who was chased off the internet because he said dyke and it was in the name of a podcast he was promoting and the co-host of the podcast was there on the show and like... It would have been so much less offensive

Merlinif he came up with a name that he thought

Alexwas nicer for that let me assume that's better yeah yeah um and here we have the homosexuals and it's like god like uh and the reason i say adjective uh to noun is because more and more people are also like oh the queers and i i it's who who cares this and someone i don't think they were trying to be mean about it on twitter like oh can i sing it and the lyrics of the song like that's not the same this is not the no no no no no no it's not the same it's not the same thing

but we're gonna look back and just be like why did we do this infighting well can i can i can

Merlini get to your good line which is i think you said something like don't be a queer cop yeah don't just stop it's weird it's it's you don't need to you don't need to be the police for well and again context context context i i think implicitly what you're saying and tell me if i'm wrong is if you consider yourself more than an ally, if you consider yourself a queer person, like maybe it's not your job to police the way that other people in your community talk. Is that the point? Am I missing it?

AlexNo, absolutely. And I just-

MerlinIt's not a good look and you're not helping.

AlexAnd you are gatekeeping, honestly, because if you don't associate with those words, like I have been, I do kind of now say the hard F because it's funnier to me than to say fag and also that that word does still hurt a lot of people it stings a little huh yeah yeah yeah and it it stinks because that's the one that was shouted at me the most uh somewhat weirdly um and well it's because it's got a great mouthfeel honest honestly yeah a good slur has to have

good mouthfeels yeah honest to god it's true which is very upsetting when you think about it

Merlinimagine somebody a tight shot of somebody saying it in slow motion like yelling it out of a pickup truck. It's super slow motion. And you can see that the first thing you know is, oh God, they're about to say something that starts with an F. And they've got that angry look going, and you're like, oh no, there's almost no word that's going to come out that's going to be good. Food is delicious.

AlexI think of that scene in the Christmas A Christmas story. Oh yeah, fudge. But I didn't say fudge.

MerlinAnd the mother over the phone.

AlexOh, goodness.

MerlinAnd what was the point? What was I talking about The Simpsons? And it was about the second quote, the money quote, as you say, because we were talking about, oh, not being actually that helpful. So, you know, after Ned, after the Flanders, the Flanders' house has been destroyed. The leftorium has been looted, you know. And what's that Homer said? It's also the gesture where Homer's just like, okay, well, let us know if you need anything. He's just walking away. that's about how helpful people are being a lot of the time yeah thank you for the infographic uh helped a lot stay safe thumbs up be careful oh detroit detroit watch out a cyclone is

coming your way stay safe yeah yeah and the kaiju attack is coming up on miami beach stay safe

AlexThis comes to my other thing that I wanted to talk about, which is the cliche that actions speak louder than words. But the internet is all words now, and it bums me the heck out. Because, I mean, just to get into my own personal hang-up, I didn't use the word trans for myself, because I never thought, like, no, that means transition.

Transubstantiation. Right, right, right. Like that word, so many things.

MerlinYou're going to turn into bread. They bread. They bread.

AlexNo, no, no. I will take they bread and make it they Jesus.

MerlinOh, they Jesus. Of course. I'm sorry. Now, what about the fishes? There's loaves and fishes. And that's not the Sermon on the Mount or the Beatitudes. Is that a different one?

AlexWell, that's normative because you're forgetting the seahorses.

MerlinOh, consider the seahorses.

AlexOkay. oh gosh words change and mean different things and i think language is beautiful and we're just i don't know like we we could take a language is beautiful it's we who are ugly i know that it's a bit but oh man no it's no bit no bit i i i don't know last night i kind of just not lost my mind but oh alex i'm telling you man when you when you spend just a tiny bit less

Merlintime on Twitter, this all comes into such sharp relief where it's almost like a sketch from a cartoon or a bit from a cartoon where you open one door and you hear Bach coming out and people are reading books and you go to the next room and people are making out and you open the next door and as you touch the knob, the door goes flying off and it's just

Speaker Aand then you hear a couple people going

Merlinwhere are you when yeah everyone has closed door duct tape door closed door nail door

Alexi'm gonna go back to the bach room or the makeout room i swear to god it feels kind of like the third uh month of uh the freshman year of college and everybody's talking about philosophy 101 like

Merlinright before Thanksgiving, right before Thanksgiving break.

AlexAnd well, but also everyone's mad at each other and like, no, that's not what Mark's mad. Have you ever read the Communist Manifesto?

MerlinAnd people, they're just starting to like stop shaving their legs in pits and the guys are going barefoot and like everybody's getting a little bit wild and they're not quite as smart as they think. But, uh, there's everybody's so mad. Nobody does the dishes.

AlexYeah. And you, you try to go to another room to be like, Hey, is this a medical? Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. so i i basically nuked the whole thing oh not a great oh see that's a word makes me sad oh uh yeah i just uh i was like fuck this and i got rid of twitter did i uh is there anything i think i'm oh i should fuck this and i got rid of twitter what that mean i know i just

deleted all my tweets and uh oh you did the likes or it's still processing so you know oh oh good for you so you did the thing oh i did the thing i'm like i just know oh it's so nice to know it's there it's such a consolation it's i i don't know i mean like i mean it's like it's so like again i

Merlinhate to seem like i'm unkind toward the uh the platform that made me exactly that's the thing but like it would be like it would again there's just so much about it it would be like somebody like say there was let's just say like a garbage can outside of mcdonald's in kansas and they found and and and uh 40 years later they found a condom in there that you had dropped in there and then they wanted to have that be something that we talk about for a couple days and you go well it's a garbage can dude that's what you put in garbage cans is stuff that's

garbage well how'd you thought about the people who weren't mcdonald's what were you doing in kansas how interesting well where were you when delaware was being crossed did you even did you even ask did you even ask the is it a garbage can at birth i'm just asking the question

Alexthere needs to be a word that isn't digital gentrification but it's kind of like not being forced out of your own neighborhood because there's no economic stuff and well oh wait i take it back isn't uh what is it twitter blue is launching where you're launching where you can tip people for their tweets which okay uh good for you go ahead it is not for me and i don't

know if it's gonna be good for the people who it's for does that make sense like well i imagine

Merlinit'll have a lot of the, not only financial success, but also the cultural knock-on effects of, say, something like Substack, where you go like, wow, what did we do before? Can you imagine a time when these people would have to think about what they were writing before they put it on the internet for money?

AlexYeah.

MerlinIt was so weird back then.

AlexYeah. Oh, censorship.

MerlinRemember when they used to have people they work with who would say, do better?

AlexYeah. Remember those editors who've made almost all writing for all of time good?

MerlinListen, could we please not use that word here? Let's not use the E word.

AlexThis is just maybe a little less passive voice. Just a little bit, maybe.

MerlinAnd here's the problem. I used to think that this was something, even in the era of Max, the weekly joke about how Max was looking at Twitter less. Even back then, I thought of it primarily as a self-control and consuming problem that, you know, oh, I have no willpower. So if there's chips in the house, I eat all the chips.

Oh, also remember, okay, so back to that book. Remember, so reversing somatic loop and also willpower. And I used to think, well, just be a grown-up and don't go look at Twitter in particular. And I think that that's not a terrible way to start if you want to have a little more agency over that stuff in your life. But increasingly today now, I don't know, it might be a chicken and egg problem. But like I got to tell you, man, when I look at stuff or I just – again, I'm also trying to spend less time with cable news. But when I hear about like all the opposition to different things from Republicans in Congress and the wackadoo stuff about somebody asks Marjorie Taylor Greene why she's not wearing a mask and she screams that it's a HIPAA violation and stuff like that.

AlexTrust the science.

MerlinSo when I say Twitter, you should abstract that to other media outlets, too. But like it's I can understand why somebody would give me stick for saying, for example, there's a lot of performative stuff going on. You know, I don't want to just limit that to virtue signaling.

AlexI'm the poster child of that, though. And it's not until 12 hours later and I'm looking at my own tweets. I'm like, oh, Lord. and I found myself looking at my own tweets more. How weird and sad is that?

MerlinLike, what? I'm just trying to say like the, but I would say from our POV as a person who wants to seek wholesomeness and centeredness and integrity, like you go, oh, geez, wow, this is really not good for me. This is causing a kind of fracture in the way that I perceive the world that I certainly hope is not real. But even if it is real, it's like, this is not going to be my real. The people on Twitter, this is their real. And like, I don't want to be part of that. But I enjoyed that for a long time because I'm a pretty good smart ass.

And I knew how to do that thing. Right. But OK, I no longer think it's just a consumption problem. I no longer think it's merely a willpower problem. I think the problem now is at this point, it's like we stopped having football games. And now all we have is stick fights over who has a nicer jersey.

AlexAnd it's happening in the parking lot. It's not like football. The teams have stopped playing.

MerlinAnd it's not just the fans and it's not just the players. It's the owners and the everybody's. And so when somebody like these idiot people are doing these bizarre performances, like the people are performing for the audience of one. Well, maybe. But like nowadays, it's more like you're just doing your on brand bit as the kind of professional wrestler that you are.

And it's, I don't know. See, now I'm going to sound sincere, which is cringe. but like I think that's not that's not healthy and wholesome for us I don't think it's good for just people in general and when you go in there and then you start trying to put people on blast and retweeting their dumb thing you are really just kind of amplifying it and even when you make a subtweet joke about it you're still amplifying it all you're doing is what you think is a slightly more smart performance but it's not really that smart and it's not a very fun performance you're not going to look back at that

in five years and be proud of yourself

AlexSomething that I look back on and still think about, not a, not a ton, but it was at a time that, you know, turfiness in, you know, in London was like super on the rise and folks were just being big old fuckwads and like, I don't know, this doesn't make sense. I remember I said a very mean thing and quote tweeted someone who made me very upset because they said something that was basically not transphobic but almost trans ignorant.

Like we also need a better word for that.

MerlinOh, this is my new thing. My new thing is stop saying phobic if you mean something else.

AlexYeah.

MerlinI really seriously, I mean, and I went around with Syracuse in a kind of pseudo jokey way about this. It's not homophobia. We've got to stop saying that. People say, well, you know what I mean. Yeah, I know what you mean, but it's not that they're scared of them. It's that they don't like them. Or if you think people, if you hate, if you think that person hates gay people, we should say that. We should stop saying homophobic because that's more like, oh, you know, I'm some rube that's never met a black. And it's like, no, no, no. It's not even, it goes beyond stupidity. It goes to ignorance. It's like it's one thing to be stupid and it's another thing to be ignorant.

You know, at least stupid, you have your reasons. But if you're ignorant, you should know better.

AlexExactly. I mean, in why I keep saying the same words.

MerlinOK, you know what? That challenge. I'm writing it down. Challenge. We got to find a better suffix than phobic.

AlexYeah. I literally told my best friend in high school, gay guys are cool, but I don't know. Lesbians kind of weird me out. And like I that was internalized homophobia. just like internalized masonry and like i think you just discovered what freud would call the

Merlinnarcissism of molecular differences

Alexyou can't do anything you can't tell me anything that will make me hate myself more than i I already do.

MerlinYou haven't even seen what's going on down in the root cellar. Woo.

AlexNo, no, no. Woo. You got to dig deep into that. Oh, boy.

MerlinWell, it's funny you should say that, Alex, because, you know, that's never happened with men. You've never seen that with men who go out when they can't get laid, start a fight and cry.

AlexNo.

MerlinAnd then end up kissing their friend because they're just so grateful for their masculinity.

AlexMm-hmm. Yeah. Never. That'd be a fun Halloween costume.

MerlinJust be a closet. Just go around in a closet. Like, with a football jersey on. That'd be fun.

AlexI'm pretty sure I've done that, actually. Did I do that?

MerlinTrick or treat.

AlexOh.

MerlinYou were talking about, oh, this is really going to drag us down, Twitter and things. Oh, so anyway, Ned Flanders.

AlexYeah, Ned.

MerlinBoy, that's a good one.

AlexThat's a good one. I often feel like Ned in that episode where I see people trying to help, but then I assume good faith. And then I am like, please take me in a straight jacket, kicking and screaming.

MerlinOh, kicking and screaming, please.

AlexPlease, please just take me from this. and yeah but it's

MerlinI mean if we I feel like any game of improv should be consensual so if we're all going to go into some kind of a little scene together and play together in the space we should all even if we don't agree on what the next thing is going to be because that's not how it works we should all agree that this is a fictive place with certain boundaries I think both of those are kind of important as Michael Scott learned you're not supposed to bring no no so Michael Scott always acts like he's a cop It's the guy in the earliest show who brought, who brought nunchucks to the improv class.

Like, you know what I'm saying? Like there's rules.

AlexOh yeah.

MerlinAnd so, and so in this particular improv, like the thing is though, I never agreed to be in your improv the way that you're doing it. And like, there's this character that you always want to do. And you insist on never admitting that that's a character. Whereas you demand that I reveal myself as the actual performer and person and address and social security number that I am or have. And that's not fair play. That's not, I don't know if that analogy is making any sense. But I think it's one thing if we all act like it.

So like, do you remember when you're a little kid on Halloween and you're like, let's say there's a cowboy and a clown and a princess and all the classic, you know, 70s.

AlexPower Ranger. Oh, wait, before.

MerlinBut like you would say, oh, hello, Batman. How are you? And you say, oh, thank you, Aquaman. I am very well. And like you could play in the space. But none of the kids in that room really thought that they were Aquaman or Batman. They were having fun and they were playing in the space. Right? I just feel like there's a lot of costumed performance going on. And some of it is very, very elaborate. And it's just weird to have somebody who only wants to talk to you as Aquaman. And you got to go, are you just, you're just doing Aquaman, right? And you're like, oh, hate crime.

You don't understand, like, you're fish-a-phobic. Like, you don't understand what it's like to have my live fish experience. And you're like, no, dude, you're just pretending to be Aquaman. You've even stopped putting on the costume. Oh, gosh. You just type all day. Fish don't type. Title.

AlexI'm both.

MerlinI don't know if that makes any sense.

AlexIt does.

MerlinI had diarrhea a lot earlier, so I don't know if it's making any sense.

AlexOh, it is. And it's also making a lot of improv people angry right now, which I'm fine with. No, but.

MerlinWhat did I do?

AlexOh, no. Well, those are people who are in costume.

MerlinYou know, they do their skits, right? Is that what they do? You do a skit.

AlexThe little skits. The little skits with the Tesla man.

MerlinYou do a skit and then you go out and you ask people for a pizza topping. And you pull a gun. Here we are in Spain. So that covers velocity. What did you want to pitch today?

AlexOh.

MerlinOkay, we could do pitch or we could do masks. Pitch, masks, vax, gates, first purchase. I'm going to let you pick wild card.

AlexWe've just been talking for how many? Oh, I haven't counted.

Merlin29 minutes, 17 seconds.

AlexYep, yep. Longer for me. But I really don't like the person that the internet is not making me. The person that I'm letting the internet make me.

MerlinRemember in cartoons when somebody's trying to run away, like a Wile E. Coyote or let's say, you know, somebody jumps through a wall and then it's like exactly the shape of their character running in fear and panic. Yeah. That's the hole the Internet has made for you.

AlexYep. Yep.

MerlinIt is technically you will fit through that hole, but you need to have a certain posture and velocity in order to in order to achieve escape velocity from this room. You're only allowed to leave if you fit through this Wile E. Coyote hole.

AlexYeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you don't exit the right way, then you probably haven't hurt somebody. You've angered.

MerlinWell, then the TNT is going to blow up on you.

AlexAnd then the rock comes down after. Oh, man.

MerlinYou don't like the person that is causing you to feel you need to be? You don't like my improv analogy, and it's not good, but I do feel like—

AlexI do like your improv analogy. I didn't want to interrupt you.

MerlinIf I'm going to be in this room, I'm going to need an oxygen supply, a pizza topping, and a character. You've got to play along in the right way. And it's just stuff that I used to find very amusing, both as a consumer and a creator. I find so caustic now. Especially not just any one tweet, not just any one thing, not any one day, but just the whole, not to use the word velocity again. Velocity and agency. That's going to be our spinoff podcast.

AlexI love the word agency. I don't know.

MerlinIt's a great word. And I love velocity. so I'm with you. Sorry, go ahead. Internet.

AlexOh, yeah, I feel gross pitching something, money involved on something that I already...

MerlinOh, I see. Should we do it in the after show?

AlexMake money on. Well, that's the thing is some people don't... What defeats the purpose? Well, I don't know.

MerlinWe need money. I've stopped being skittish about this.

AlexOkay, fine. I'll stop being skittish.

MerlinI need money. I need money because this is my job and if you like it, it's nice to do that. When people do things I like, I do pay for it.

AlexOkay.

MerlinUnless it's a movie.

AlexYeah, you're right. I shouldn't be ashamed of this because I really want to. And actually, you quoted, or I don't know, you interpreted something that Kevin Kelly once said, which is don't work on something that has a name.

MerlinOh, right. Work on something, whatever you're working on, try to work on things that don't have a name yet.

AlexMm-hmm. And if you are not – don't be the best. Be the only one, which I don't know if I fully buy that, but okay. So I'm just starting this dumb little project called Factory Settings that I've done a bunch of interviews for with people who are in AR and VR. And it was really –

MerlinOh, you're talking about something you're doing.

AlexYes, something I'm doing.

MerlinOh, well, I thought you were – okay, so I'm sorry. I thought you were about to say, here's a new weird way we should make money with this show. And I'm only going to tell you about it once we're on the air. If this is your thing, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch.

AlexThat makes me feel. No, you know, that doesn't make me feel gross because I've been working really, really hard. And yeah, I the more I talk to folks in VR and AR, mixed reality, all of the things that excited me the exact same way. that not I mean it started with uh the my first iMac um G3 digital video edition like the thing that consumed me every single day with excitement that's how it is again like I can't

stop looking at the new games and apps and all of this stuff that is definitely not ready for the real world yet but you know it's an early adopter and oh someone called me a futurist the other day and I wanted to die. And I'm like, wait, is that what I am? I don't know. I don't like that word and don't want to say that.

MerlinYou're going to have to have a different beard.

AlexYeah, I know.

MerlinYou need to get a much more, you need much more interesting facial hair if you're going to be a futurist. Oh, and maybe some funny glasses.

AlexI need a lot of pockets and an even bigger segue, I think.

MerlinOr a vest. You need a vest or what they call a waistcoat.

AlexMm-hmm.

MerlinMaybe I'm thinking you should be an Alice in Wonderland.

AlexYeah. what's it called tell people again what it's called oh it's called factory settings and it's on patreon i know it's another patreon can i ask you to not do that voice please okay all right uh hey i'm doing this project called uh oh let's try okay sorry baby steps uh baby baby baby steps

and oh by the way i'm gonna send you a baby just so you know oh oh hooray i'm gonna send you my nephew's uh baby oh yes please do well technically it's his wife's baby but the thing that i realized is along with being consistently excited every single day there was that little disappointment every single time when someone just not parrots but says the same thing about the future of tech that is just repeated over and over and over again.

Just like, oh yeah, we're going to be in the same room. We're going to be able to be in meetings and look at charts and this is going to change the world.

MerlinAnd just, I feel like, I'm so sorry. I feel like you passed by this somewhat quickly.

AlexI know. This is about VR, virtual reality. No, it's not. It's about basically.

MerlinI'm trying to figure out what the thing, I thought the thing was VR, but I feel like you should tell people what it is that you're excited about.

AlexI am excited again about, oh, mostly ultra wideband, but that's a whole different set of cards than VR. Or is it? Or is it VR and AR?

MerlinI did 20 minutes on Back to Work yesterday.

AlexWait, really?

MerlinYep.

AlexOh! Well, I'm excited. I'm a future U-Dub. Oh. Oh, God. Is that what we're calling it? U-Dub? Yep, yep. Now it is.

MerlinI think that's already a college in Seattle.

Alexbut oh oh i don't want to steal their valor it's more exciting than people realize because you know what alex ambient computing i that's yeah yeah i don't know if you're doing a bit but yeah genuinely i am just why do you simply only do bits i because you're very funny and i uh you're very funny i mean i won't disagree with that so you have a show about computers and excitement it's not a show it is not a show it's not it's not a show because the world what do you want I want people to support.

I want people to give me money to try to. If you like anything I've done in the past and you just want to throw money at me, which always feels fucking weird, especially when there is pretty much nothing behind it. There will be like a little thing out tomorrow. It's mostly a podcast. But I've also been getting back into making games because that's what I did. I made documentary choose your own adventures kind of sort of. and uh right now i i have a job that i like but it is completely different because hey events

aren't a thing anymore and it's like okay what does this have to do with vr and ar it's like well we're learning how to be around each other in a very different way and we're learning especially like with the discourse how to use tech in a different way or at least we're talking about trying to who knows if we will and probably most importantly i'll play the identity politics card there are so few people who look like me and sound like me let alone black and brown people

and it's so frustrating because seeing what different people have done with mobile space and how with ambient computing if you consider even uh you know the uh what do they call it Alexa skills, which I know are, again, it's hard to find those things and it's hard to find interesting people. And my one of my favorite things in the world is also to ask people questions. And I really like doing that in a real time sort of way. So I am saying I don't know the

name for what this is i want to figure out what comes next and how to do it in an exciting way that isn't gross and doesn't make people sad i want wholesomeness again i do feel like there's

Merlina precedent for what you're talking about and in a minute i'll give you uh i don't know if it's your first endorsement but i'm going to give you an endorsement in a minute uh me endorsing you um But I think there is very much a precedent for this. If you think about, I can think of stuff like that wonderful TV show with Oliver Sacks, where we first learned about a lot of his, you know, man who mistook his wife for a hat stuff. And, you know, that's where that bit comes from on, you look nice today. Remember, Adam is fascinated by the cuttlefish. Like, if you ever saw those things or him talking to those, all those kids that have that thing where they're incredibly, like, sweet and nice and empathetic.

those little kids that have that condition and oh my god but like there's okay so there's precedence in people like um like i mean what is his show about well his show or whatever is about um oh god what's his name i just based his name oliver sacks it's about oliver sacks being enthusiastic in front of you okay similar things you've seen similar things with people like i'm gonna say stephen fry stephen fry it's just fun to watch stephen fry be curious about something and just really there's and I feel like the UK really does kind of have they've got a lot of

things like this but that could be I don't know I like seeing people be enthusiastic about something that I know I can be enthusiastic about too and discovery figuring that out together so here's the endorsement I will happily support this because I love seeing you be excited and enthusiastic and I think it's much less important to people who enjoy your work to know what it is you're doing than to know that you are doing it. And that's not a blank check in any sense, but I do think it is a way of saying like, hey, you know, if you could throw Alex five bucks to help them

have more agency, have their own life and be excited in front of you, I think that's something very much worth supporting and I'll be your first or 10th supporter. People like seeing people be

Alexhappy and enthusiastic. I agree. And something that I'm learning more and more, and we've talked about on the show is it's really hard for me right now to be happy with my body because my boobs are just so big and they are just a constant both physical and mental drain so it's like what are you you're not traveling right now so what is this what are you even doing you have an oculus like why do you need money i have slowed down so much on everything i'm doing and i just really

want to get top surgery it's expensive thank you so much to everybody who supported another show i do with my spouse two-headed girl which became it is a podcast but became kind of a community of folks just you know talking over patreon and he wouldn't have been able to transition if it wasn't for folks and folks who support this show and i can't tell you how thankful i am for that and do not feel bad if you can't support that like i was i mean i stole slash listened to free things

pretty much up until i got a full-time job and you know you are not going to make me sad um but i there are a lot of there are a number of people who were like why don't you just raise money for this i'm like because that's not something i want to do because i benefit so much from learning from other people and sharing my own vulnerable ability ability my own vulnerabilities

with other people that i think it's worth it and if it's not then that's okay there's that unsubscribe button you're anonymous if you uh unsubscribe like you can say why you did uh which is something i always like reading through i know i know i know i'm sorry you never have to do it you never have to do it i've never taken any of the reasons to heart uh but if if you want to hear me talk about this stuff more especially how these different realities are shaping the lives of

People who have not just, you know, not just queer folks who have body dysphoria, but people who have body dysmorphia. And if you don't know what that is, I didn't know what that is.

MerlinI thought they were the same thing.

AlexNope. Not even kind of.

MerlinWhat's the Michael Jackson one? That's dysmorph, right?

AlexIt's speculated.

MerlinWhere he thought his nose was still too big?

AlexYes. Yes. And there's this thing on TikTok now where it's like you use the reverse filter, which is just, you know, inverting the camera. And I'm like, why are people freaking out about this in a good way, freaking out about this? And I realized they don't need to like edit themselves on camera for hours and hours. So they're used to seeing themselves like that. But folks who just have disabilities or they have limitations to their bodies for whatever reason, injury and tech has done so much for my.

life and my well-being and I don't want to be the old man who yells at clouds because I'm not it's hard to even reach the cloud there's so much of a barrier to entry into new things and like early adopter and I'm not talking about crypto or NFTs or stuff like that even remotely it just so happens that i think right now spatial ambient mixed computing whatever you want to call it

and uh crypto and nft stuff are kind of intertwined just because those folks are wealthy and they're able to explore those spaces at the same time so alex where would you where people go if they'd like to support this this is called the call to action this is where you would go to future or

MerlinAlex, please just give a URL.

AlexFactory settings, but with a 5 instead of an S.com, please. And thank you. The end!

MerlinYou should really be in sales.

AlexOh, right? I should write an ad copy. Definitely. I should definitely, definitely do that.

MerlinDid you see the picture of the baby?

AlexGosh, my messages are... Oh, baby! Oh, that's a... Isn't that a good baby? It was a good baby with good hair, too.

MerlinLook at that face. It looks exactly like my nephew. Now, look at this. Oh, little curls. Do you know I'm sending you another photo? I sent you a black and white photo. Did you receive it?

AlexYes. Ooh.

MerlinWho is that?

AlexLooking, looking. Is that grandfather a baby? I don't know. Wait, wait, wait.

MerlinOliver Sacks.

AlexOh, I was going to say Elliot Stabler, actually.

MerlinElliot Stabler, the football player.

AlexOh, no, no, no. Oh, no, you're talking about Law and Order. Christopher Maloney, a little bit.

MerlinYeah, bring out them taters. That's Oliver Sykes.

AlexOh. Hmm. Handsome.

MerlinYou don't think he's a snack?

AlexHandsome man. No, I agree.

MerlinThis is him in like the 50s or 60s.

AlexVery, very handsome man. You know, I would never want to be on that motorcycle. I would want to pose with that motorcycle and with that leather jacketed man.

MerlinI'd let him admire my cuttlefish.

AlexWhat an unenthusiastic ding. That deserved a big, big ding.

MerlinI just don't know what's happening here.

AlexBig ding energy.

MerlinI've had dreams that made more sense than this episode.

AlexOh, gosh. You know what? Listen, until I started pitching my stuff, we were, I think, on the same velocity. Where are you at right now?

MerlinI just want people to be happy.

AlexIt's hard to make people happy, and sometimes you have to give up.

MerlinYou can make money and you can make pie, but you can't make people happy. I was trying to sound down to earth and it didn't really make any sense.

AlexWell, you keep saying on shows like I'm not very radical. And then I'm like and then you say something incredibly radical.

MerlinSo what the fuck are you talking about?

AlexYou just said you're trying to sound down to earth. And I think you did. And sometimes you have what I think.

MerlinI'm folksy.

AlexI'm very folksy. You are folksy.

MerlinYou know what I am is basic.

AlexBut no, no, you are not. You say that a lot, just like you say that you are not radical a lot. And radical. I don't say that a lot. Where are you? What's happening?

MerlinMaybe it's because I am. You clearly get a different internet. You know what this could be? This could be a prestige type situation.

AlexNo, no. I have not watched The Illusionist.

MerlinMaybe I'm the one with the mustache.

Speaker ANo, no, no. No, no, no.

AlexI am watching Christian Bale right now. And no, no, you're not Christian Bale. you are Hugh Jackman in the prestige right now. You have a huge Jackman man.

MerlinAnd yeah,

Alexmaybe it's just because I've been binging your other show, wreck diffs, which people can find it. Relay FM or relay. Okay.

MerlinCome on. Can we just, okay.

AlexAll right, fine. Give Merlin money too. The, you just keep saying this isn't a typically radical idea. And then you say something, radical, like how society really could benefit

MerlinYou just used the word radical more than I've

Alexused it in my entire life. Okay, I agree on that, but don't interrupt me, jazz girl-in right now! And then you say something like wow, the wow, the world really should learn from this pandemic, which I agree, and I think we should also prepare for the next one.

MerlinOh, I see, you're being secretly organized, you're going to

Alexthe next bit oh oh yeah uh see see well just pulling back see you are you are you're from you're Hugh Jackman you just keep pulling pulling back the curtain no no no no you gotta be Christian Bale and the spoilers uh I'll tell you well tell you one thing if if I'm gonna tie up

MerlinScarlett Johansson the last thing I'm gonna do is put her in a bucket of water and that's just

Alexgoing to be her problem when you used to be merlin man don't wouldn't you say that not denouncing necessarily but emphasizing that productivity porn and the way that people were getting their work done wasn't very healthy or wholesome or good for society at large i would say that was a pretty radical thing because that made me make i mean kind of it's weird how like a few voices

Merlinfrom that era in which i would include myself like how that gets so like weirdly like distorted and twisted up now and like i don't know it's just it's all been productized in this way that feels kind of yucky in what way oh like i saw a thing yesterday like i'm still enough of a

Alexyou're a big deal merlin's a big deal everybody he won't say it he's a big and so anyway i was

Merlinfollowing a thing i saw somewhere uh to this link about like you know if meetings aren't working for you just cancel them and i was like well i arrived on the page and like i i looked at it and i was like first of all like there's just something about it like i think it had it had some really cute like hand-drawn art stuff like the people with tiny heads oh the big bodies oh no this is gonna be a little corporate i think and then it had slightly rounded fonts and i was like oh no and I only had to scroll just a little bit before I'm like I don't even need to click this is part of

this is a quote unquote blog for some product that removes calendar entries or something and I was like and like it had that patina or not patina that veneer of being useful that it was mouthing the right words you know but like just because you can like lip sync to Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't make you Freddie Mercury and so but yeah I do think some of those ideas were I don't know, interesting for the time. It's just that I'm not sure what this has to do with my radicalness.

AlexBut I would say revolutionary in terms of knowledge work, which yeah. Okay.

MerlinBut like, you know, getting a little bit older and like hopefully learning just a tiny bit. Again, as a friend of the show, Kevin Kelly says, you're only as young as the last time

Alexyou changed your mind. He's a big interview I want to get. If anybody knows Kevin Kelly, DM me. I know Kevin Kelly. Whatever. Go on. Sorry for sorry sorry he's the nicest he i he seems the nicest he drove me home from adam savage's house oh never meet your heroes your heroes you'll find oh adam savage you know your heroes oh will smith they're just as fucked up as you are i know that's the thing oh everybody relax what's the

Merlinpoint of this the point i don't know why you're we're talking about this except to say i do one way I think things have changed is like, I still don't have any more insight or even like up to date information on the way the teams work, just because I'm, all I know is what I read in the newspapers. But, but, but one thing that is different is I, I do feel like, you know, it was such a breakthrough for me when I first heard that the Stephen Covey thing of like, you know,

is your ladder against the right wall? Well, I still continue to believe that is one of the most fascinating questions that you can ask yourself. Like getting a nicer ladder will not improve the wall that it is up against. And like no matter how fast, there's a million ways to look at that analogy.

AlexPlus you need a ladder and what kind?

MerlinLike you could be really efficient at climbing the ladder, but that does not make you effective at dealing with the wrong wall. That's happening at a much deeper level in the stack. And then so like now I guess I'm starting to feel more – I don't want to belabor that analogy because it's too good to screw up. But –

AlexIt's Stephen Covey's. You take it. No, you take it. It's already better.

MerlinNo, but no, what I'm trying to say is that like I do think – I do see more and more how people are constrained. Maybe the more interesting thing I've said more recently is if you don't understand why somebody is doing what they're doing, assume that it's either money, fear, or both.

AlexAnd you don't think that's a radical thing to say?

MerlinYou're missing my point. What I'm trying to say is if you take those 2004 to 2000 whatever, nine or 10 ideas, so the only thing, the incredibly zesty pepper that I'm adding to that now is, well, guess what? It's even worse than I thought. because if you take into account the roles of things like money and fear or lack of money and abundance of fear a lot of things make a lot more sense and and i do actually want to get to this book that i i i super like and super don't like the anxiety book yes i do want to talk about it

like it's a little gimmicky but it's got some really big ideas that are fascinating to me that very much relate to this including stuff like start with the somatic instead of the mental like realize that willpower is bullshit there is no such thing as willpower stuff like that stuff where like I've been beaten up on myself because I don't have grit.

AlexWhich is why I deleted Twitter.

MerlinWell, but also like, you know, grit means parents with money. That's what grit means.

AlexYeah.

MerlinYou know?

AlexWe made grind into a good verb. What the fuck is wrong with us?

MerlinI guess, I don't know, as I have gotten older and have become more vulnerable in many ways, it would be insane for me not to be more sympathetic to how people are the way they are, even if they're the way they are in a way that I can't understand. It's not important that people be the way I expect them to be. to be the way that I want, what's important is that they hopefully find a way to thrive with however they are, whether I like them or like how they are or not. So whereas it used to be easy for me to trot into some place, you know, get a check for $6,000 and say, stop looking at your email.

Well, that's actually not super helpful to people with not enough money and way too much fear. And so those kinds of, these kinds of ideas and the idea of the ladders in the walls has come to be even more meaningful or even more like rejuvenated in interest for me when you add a ton more empathy to the way that you think about other people, which is really, that's kind of my, that's my roadmap in the short term. And this is how we keep coming back, at least for me, for my POV, how we keep coming back to that TKB nicer challenge.

So thank you for saying that. It's only radical insofar as like, I am ultimately much more interested. If you want to put it in the way, as Max used to say, if you want to put it in a materialist way, I have very little interest in saying things that please the people who might want to hire me and way more interested in trying to say something that might be useful to a person who's not that person, who's suffering because of that person. And in some cases, it could be I'm saying that to that person because maybe they should go find a better wall rather than a faster ladder.

AlexI have... Oh, that's so good.

MerlinAnd you know what? Can I be honest with you, Alex?

AlexThat's brilliant.

MerlinIt just seemed for a real long time like it wasn't going anywhere, but that was really good. what was it find a better wall you need to feed a better wall better wall not a faster ladder

Alexand yeah and i i am i'm gonna pitch my thing again i'm not a you're killing the show get your take out your key chain take it out okay i'm not naive enough to think i am going to be a merlin man who changes people changes people or things or ideas but i want to learn from the people who are and why is this dumb thing i'm doing called factory settings because when we do that it's bad that don't use the factory settings bad bad bad that's not like that wall that is the everything

merlin just said like you don't have to if you can find a different wall you can go into system preferences there are options and i have nothing else because what merlin said is so good and i

Merlinthink that is um i i at this point i don't i'm not even sure what show i'm on anymore so i doubt

Alexthis am i shut your dirty mouth and let daddy talk okay all right when we when we started one

Merlinof our uh four or seven false attempts to start the show because i had diarrhea uh earlier uh one of the things that i mentioned was that it's frustrating to me that i've never i still haven't figured out and if you have figured this out good for you but like it's frustrating to me that uh you know like for example skype will ring and i have to hit a button to have it turn on whereas I have not figured out how to make that happen in Zoom. So in Zoom, if I have the Zoom app open and somebody calls me, it just starts. And I have not, let me put it this way. Here's things that I believe.

This I believe. I believe that there's probably a way to change that. I believe that there's probably a way to change that that is in settings. And I believe there's probably a way to change that that is probably in settings that if I set aside 10 minutes, I would be able to figure out what it is and see an improvement in my life. Now, let me make this germane. When do I realize, at what point in my day, at what point in my life, do I realize, remember, or recall that the Zoom starts automatically without me having to click anything?

I'll save you the trouble of doing the maths. It is when I am hurrying to try and start recording a podcast. When that podcast ends, do I remember to take 10 minutes to find that setting? I will spoil this end for you. I have not. This is life. This is life. This is life. I have diarrhea and then it's recording and I didn't want to change it, but the default setting wants it to be that way. And so I have not found the tiny amount of time that it takes to do that. And if you think that

I'm the only person in the world that is like this, I think you're probably wrong. I think there's a lot of people that do have the default settings because it has not been made advantageous for them to realize there's a better way to do this. And often it is as simple as clicking a button. Sometimes it may require opening terminal, but there are things in life, and then sometimes maybe it's not even about a computer had you thought of that. Because the default settings, the settings at birth, as I like to call it, are not always the way that we would choose to conduct our lives.

AlexPlease capture settings at birth. As Lady Gaga said, Lady Gaga. Baby, I was born this way.

MerlinI don't understand why she and the guy from The Wire. I don't understand why they're in those. Our restaurant is cleaning commercials.

AlexI don't see commercials. I don't see commercials.

I don't see color.

AlexIn fact, oh, God. So I have no idea what you're talking about, but I, well, I apologize. Do you know how to find it?

MerlinIspot.tv. Do you know about Ispot?

AlexYes.

MerlinOh, it doesn't like my ad blocking.

AlexWell, yeah, it's that's this is one of those things that I usually typically go hugely, usually typically. Not only did I add verb, I did, too. I when I feel like I'm doing something shady, I usually do it on my iPad because I'm like, all right, walled garden, hopefully, maybe.

MerlinHave you ever heard of the International Well Building Institute?

AlexNo.

MerlinSo you have not seen the commercial with Lady Gaga, Robert De Niro, Jennifer Lopez, and Michael B. Jordan, amongst others. Oh, sorry, Wolfgang Puck, all talking about how cool it is. Venus Williams telling how cool it is that you can know that this building is really clean because it has the well seal of approval. Lady Gaga is in a commercial about whether the building is clean.

AlexOh, gross. Oh, this is way. I thought this was going to be a weird charity thing. No, the last time I saw a commercial was very recently. uh well it used to be that i had desensitized myself to commercials again when survivor was a thing and i would watch it live but since then i'm just uh nope nope no live tv just because it's not my thing and but i did watch snl live because i have a just a smooth smooth brain and i wanted to see if elon musk was gonna do something fucking crazy and he sort of i i don't know

honestly the most exciting and interesting part of all that for me was watching the commercials because what the fuck this shit's gotten weird yeah it's pretty bad you know what's good though

Merlinthe uh the the the the recent one with my beloved key and peel guy you know it was good it was the lady who does the song driver's license i liked her a lot so now i've also now also if you want to talk about this if we're going to brag about how much we don't understand about the modern world I'd never heard the song Driver's License. I'd heard of it. And I heard it when this lady from the Disney shows sang it on Saturday Night Live. And I thought she was great. I thought she was terrific. She's got a real sort of... Who's the girl in The Greatest Showman in Spider-Man? That kind of vibe, that energetic Disney vibe?

AlexYeah. Oh, I don't know. Zendaya? I don't know. I have no idea.

MerlinZendaya.

AlexWait, so you're talking about someone different than Miley Cyrus right now?

MerlinI'm saying the same way when you first saw Zendaya, you're like, oh, she's having fun. she's like she's a kicky kid and the girl sings the driver's license song i thought it was a really good song and then she said she sang another song it had like print spelling and something i'm i was built built well for you maybe i'm thinking too much about the international well building institute i did send you the look for the seal uh commercial so you can enjoy that lady gaga robert de niro the very moist the very moist guy who runs this business he's so moist he's a big wet boy

Michael B. Jordan what's he doing in this?

AlexMaking money off of I still don't really understand what this does

MerlinHow does Lady Gaga decide to be in a fucking commercial for like fake COVID

Alexcleaning? Right? Is she doing okay?

MerlinIs it Scientology? Did she lose a bet?

AlexOh did she join an improv class? Is she on a cruise? No butt What's happening?

Merlinokay so i bought some oxo squeeze bottles i put things involving mayonnaise in there and it's fine

Alexwhat did you do oh all right let's go let's close this bracket as i was at a restaurant for first time in forever uh oh first time in forever for the first time in forever do you want to build a podcast i still love both of them i love fucking frozen i love the movie okay uh we finish each other's podcasts anyway i went to this podcast go podcast go i can't hold it back anymore

Oh, for my spouse's birthday, we went to an indoor open-air restaurant for his birthday.

MerlinYou sound like an impression of a human being performed by a sea lion.

AlexI don't have the factory. All right. So I had chicken tenders and fries and I forget what Maddie had.

MerlinDid you get a maze puzzle with that?

AlexIt, it, okay. It was on the adult menu. Did you get a placemat with the 50 states?

MerlinAll right.

AlexListen, this, this is a, this is a. Sippy cup? Did you get a sippy cup? This is a restaurant called Claim Jumpers, which I will include in show.

MerlinMy niece's drug dealing boyfriend used to run a Claim Jumpers. They're famous for their pies.

AlexOh, I don't.

MerlinI think they're pie famous.

AlexI mean, maybe. Oh, probably because they have those like 15 minute desserts.

MerlinAnd aren't they famous for their large portions? Isn't that one of their things?

AlexOh, it was large. It was large indeed.

MerlinAren't they comically large portions?

AlexI have not had the appetite for anything. I peanut buttered on this so hard. Claim jumpers is a punchline in our house. It's disgusting.

MerlinFor my niece's ill-advised ex-boyfriends. Oh, he's a claim jumper. It's disgusting.

Speaker AAnyway.

AlexYeah, so I had about a... I truly don't think I've eaten this much in, definitely, at least during the pandemic.

MerlinAt least hadn't been served that much.

AlexOh, my God. Is this family style?

MerlinThis is my first time dining with you.

AlexAnd I had mozzarella sticks and Maddie has IBS. So he just talked about diarrhea. Sorry, Maddie. No, I know.

MerlinWell, that's the problem with IBS is you never know which way the wind's going to blow, as Bob Dylan would say.

AlexRight, right. I didn't realize it was an up or a down.

MerlinSometimes it's hot like a Scirocco.

AlexYes, yes.

MerlinSometimes it's hot and dry like a Scirocco. Other than that, it's cold and shrill like a woman.

AlexBut I did mix together some pretzel goldfish and some regular goldfish and had a little bit of those as a snack. And it was delicious. But anyway, I did not enjoy eating that much food. Wow.

MerlinDefault settings.

Thank you.

Show notes

Transcript

241. Auncle

Show notes

Transcript

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