275. Mx. Sugartits

AlexHello. Hello. Test, test, test, test, test, test. I need to fix a lot of things, including

Merlinthe inbound recording volume of the other side because it's been really overdriven hello how are you i am swell how about yourself i am too i feel pretty pretty pretty pretty good um we can talk about it on the show if you want but um actually we should probably we have to acknowledge the noise because it's kind of funny can you hear that hmm it's like a gurgling yes oh no the bang bang machine is back and boy have I got follow up um okay I'm gonna stop recording and I'm gonna go

check and listen but I'll hang with you for a minute this is probably a good idea anyway because then we don't get caught up with the whole muting blah blah thing okay let me just go listen real quick Merlin raw Merlin raw that sounds fine remote is Alexandra no one's talking a lot so he can't hear anything so the existence of audio hijacked new version is officially known now right didn't they make an announcement i don't know there was a blog

Alexpost a few weeks ago last week i'm not sure yeah yeah yeah i feel like there was i need to um

Merlinhave you been using well did you get on the new one i am not using it now but i've been playing with it it's awesome oh good um how does it it feels pretty good it feels solid yes i i think

Alexso but what the fuck do i know i have a trickle of internet i i don't know what i'm doing but it's

Merlinfun i like it well it's i um this represents audio hijacked for obvious reasons represents a part of the workflow that you know needs to work and be consistent and i need to trust that once it's because i'm such a simple person like once it's set up nominally correctly i need to know that it's just going to work so so i don't get things like last week i also don't utilize all the features like i want to get better at like not the stuff for the merlin fancy version you animals

don't like but you know at least noise reduction like i need to normalize roderick's side when we record because it's really erratic i'm like overdriving um but man how about some of those

Alexadvanced module things pretty cool huh it should cost more i kept playing with it and i'm like oh we spend so much money on equipment that does this oh my god yeah yeah um and generally i think like

Merlina lot of people like the marcos of the world i prefer and dan for that matter if there's a hardware thing that can do the thing that i want and i can afford it that's almost always a better solution you know unless you're again unless you're dan and you have a separate mac mini setup just for recording which i'm not going to do at this point um but i was really struck by uh yeah no i agree with you it should cost a lot more and i'm just struck by how much care goes into that they talked about they said something on probably upgrade yeah the most recent upgrade

which was really good did i don't know if you heard it but they were talking about the whole like you know uh percentage thing and the the the did you listen to it no it's okay if you haven't um they but they were talking about and mike and jason were expressing a lot of frustration with the you know the the reading aloud some of the stuff related to the dutch dating app fee

Alexyou know the way they're charging what is it some what was the weird amount 27 i have no idea

Merlinyeah 27 like this weird number like oh yeah three percent processing fee blah blah and just the the hostility of that and deliberately making it the shittiest i mean they both seem to agree apple is deliberately making dragging their feet and making this as shitty of an experience as possible but But then the terms, like, you know, about the terms about how developers, they have these really tight restrictions about how you have to report back within 45 days and you can be audited by Apple and just all this shit where it's like it's so fucking hostile and gross and like the worst side of the Steve Jobs era, you know.

um but then they were saying like take but just in terms of the hostility toward developers like think about what you have to do to make rogue amoeba products work understanding as most people won't or shouldn't care that rogue amoeba is a very good team player everything that rogue amoeba is doing with their apps utilize properly utilizes the official correct apple way to do shit and it still feels like you're installing malware you have to reboot twice you have to go say are you

are you sure that you want to have your dick out for the rest of the month like all you have to like agree to all the terms and conditions and like that's the official proper way to run a mac ass one of the most mac ass mac apps you have to go through this all these rings of fire and it's Like, what the fuck?

AlexI mean, the obvious and easy answer to this, most people would say capitalism, but you would say fear and money, fear or money. And I think that's why.

MerlinWell, I think that is almost always involved in decision making. But to take it a step further, if there is a fear that Apple has, it's the fear of losing any amount of the absolute power they've accumulated.

AlexThey have the normies now.

MerlinNormies?

AlexYeah. I mean, before, you'd suck off Adobe to keep them on Mac OS, Mac OS X.

MerlinEven though Adobe built their entire business on Macs.

AlexMm-hmm.

MerlinPeople forget that, but Adobe was a Mac company.

AlexYeah. And there's a Syracusian Halo bungee joke here, but I haven't had enough caffeine yet. But I mean, once you have, I don't know anyone who has a PC who isn't really into their PC. It is the opposite of like 2001. It's very strange. I'd like the year, not the movie.

MerlinSo you're saying if somebody's using a PC today, they're maybe not to the level of like a Debian user, but there's somebody who likes the fiddling around and the control and all that stuff?

AlexYeah. With the exception of, I guess, business. No, no, no. They love the fiddling. They love the hardware and specifically use things. I don't want to say the way Apple people used to, but they are often more opinionated than the majority of people who use.

MerlinThey have more things they can decide about.

AlexYeah. Well, with Windows, the operating system, less and less.

MerlinI mean, now. Now. If you're primarily, if you came at the Apple ecosystem through an iPod and later iPhone and iOS, like you've grown up. Maybe not you in particular, but somebody not that much younger than you has grown up in a time when Apple is the iPhone company and you're accustomed to that gatekeeping. Whereas somebody from the PC world, right? Different point of view.

AlexI mean, now I think if you have an Android phone, it used to be that you were poor. And now it's almost that you're a nerd. Like Android.

MerlinYou're a rebel, really. I mean, in terms of – well, no, in terms of cultural context.

AlexA little bit, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very strange.

MerlinYeah. We should probably record the program. What was the other thing I was going to say about this? The terms. I'm sorry. I'm telling you, just knock me out for a month and let the doctors do their work. Whatever you want to do. If you want to fix my teeth, fix my teeth. Whatever it is that you want to do, do all the things while I'm asleep for a month. I'll basically be in a morgue, as we've discussed.

AlexPull off the toenails.

MerlinYep. Yep. Yep. Get your toe knife out so you can. I just watched that. The screenshot, I know you're not on Twitter, the screenshot from which I pulled that picture of Danny DeVito saying he's got to find something to, some garbage to stop the bleeding. I think that's the first Frank's Toe Knife episode. And it's, I think it's, what is it? It's Dennis and Mac Break Up, which I think I never saw. We watched it the other night and everybody in the family was like, I don't think I've ever seen this episode.

AlexYeah.

MerlinAnd it's really funny. It's very funny.

AlexI don't know if I'm not caught up on the podcast that's no longer a podcast. But the.

MerlinIt's still it's still fun. But I mean, we bring a camera and everything changes.

AlexYeah. It's not bad. It's just not the same.

MerlinNo, but it's it's also feeling a little more Spotify corporate to me. And and as I said, I think.

AlexYeah, what the fuck? I mean, it'd be very sad.

MerlinYeah. did you dupe me? Like, I thought this was like an independent project and now they seem a little bit like, I don't know, like they're playing with some idea of making money or something from it. And like, I, I don't know. I don't get it.

AlexThey might be, but they've mentioned a couple of times they are filming in the offices of mythic quest. So I don't know if I, I don't know. I do not understand the wheelings and dealings of Hollywood, but it makes me sad either way.

MerlinI like the existence of Megan, though.

AlexI hope she becomes their Alex.

MerlinShe has a nice smile.

AlexI love Megan.

MerlinI do, too. Hey, you know, I'm so sorry. I'm so snotsy. While we're here, may I recommend that we do a quick pre-flight? I don't want to crush the bunny, but you're not in the dock. Let's see. Cream and Sherman. I don't know. I was taking up shit earlier and thinking, and I was thinking, I wonder, I don't want to, I never want to crush the bunny. That's the last thing I want to do.

That's stupid. Oh, hi. There you are. I wonder if it would be useful as a phrase I'm going to use for the second time in two days, a paper prototype that we make planning to throw it away. I wonder if an interesting idea would be for each of us to bring in one thing we're kind of pumped or excited or mad about for what we might call a mini topic.

AlexYes.

MerlinOr, I mean, just to give a little more structure, because I feel like I've been very scattered on the show lately, and I don't want it to just fall apart. I don't know. It's just something to think about. I'm not married to that.

AlexI thought about it, and I have proposed to it. And, I mean, marriages sometimes fail in the end, but I hope this one doesn't. It sounds like a lovely paper prototype.

MerlinSo this is what it's like when you haven't had enough caffeine. Is that right?

Alexthis is do by friday a weekly challenge podcast with alex cox and merlin mann this week's challenge watch sherman's march

Merlini think this might be the show i think this might be the show i came out of a meet i can't

AlexIt came out hot from a meeting.

MerlinThis might be the show.

AlexAre you recording?

MerlinAre you recording?

AlexYes.

MerlinThis could be the show. Okay, so let's go through real quick. Let's do a quick clean out. Alex didn't want to check email. Is that still a thing?

AlexNo. Well, yeah. I did. I checked my email.

MerlinJabroni, we already did. Flags for Flying. I don't know what that is. Channing Tatum's Trauma, we've got to talk about. and my addition here might be that I've added a couple new items to the things that need a name list, which I'm so glad I started, Alex. Whenever I say this, I realize that I sound utterly mental, that everybody knows that writing things down exists. Everybody knows that lists exist. But like Mark Twain says, the difference between lightning and a lightning bug, having a set-aside list where you capture a particular type of thing utterly changes the

way you think about that thing. Nobody believes me until they do it. You know what I'm talking

Alexabout right uh i have lost the thread yes okay so let me go look at my run x's this could be the

Merlinshow all right so like i've started also occasionally in addition to putting it in the name i've started like my favorite files i want to float up to the top so this example is just a file called things that need a name run x and you know about the chicken problem you know about the photoshop problem oh this is when you like this one the thing where you say i'm from chicago or whatever. Okay. I'll come back to that one. But quotes to get right. Like everything changed. As soon as I started noticing, instead of having to rethink the thought, oh, I bet this quote is

not accurate or it's misattributed. Well, now I got a place to put that. Obviously things like Twitter bios, that should be a run X. Words I dislike. Oh, I've added some new ones to that.

AlexPay for's. This is almost pay for's like a no. Yeah. Well, you know, if you're going to,

MerlinIf you're going to pass this new legislation, you've got to figure out the pay-fors.

AlexPay-for. Is this like hog fat pigs? Is that horrible? Pay-for-it.net.

MerlinIs a pog an inflated milf? I've never known. Is that sus? This is definitely the show. I'm going to just read you my Papercuts inbox from words I dislike. Uncharted territory. No, you mean uncharted territory, and you sound dumb when you say that. Someone was rushed to the hospital. No, normally we really take our sweet fucking time getting into the hospital. Shut up. Two ticks of the reporting classes. I caught up with Alex Cox. This week I sat down with Alex Cox.

Stop saying that. Obviously double down. Double down, that's not what it means. It's a blackjack term. Endgame. Endgame has become like epicenter. You don't really mean epicenter. Epicenters are for earthquakes. and what you really mean is as i've said before when you say epicenter what you probably mean is a center or an origin or a start endgame it has a specific meaning in chess and and and it's useful as a metaphor for other things but endgame does not mean end do you know what i mean yes but

Alexi've never heard anyone say that except in terms of oh they say it all the time on cable news like Or like, yeah, I know. I've noticed that a lot of these words correlate, not saying it's causation, but they sure do seem to correlate with MSNBC a lot.

MerlinOh, hundo percent. And like Russia preparing Russia, Russia's preparation. They're 70 percent, 70 percent prepared to invade Ukraine. And now so this is reaching the end game. It's like, really? Is that really? Do you really do you know what that means? OK, here's one. I swear to God, I'm going to I'm going to pop a fucking kidney the next time I hear that somebody broke their silence. so like somebody's somebody's somebody's wife and son got driven off a cliff yesterday um in an unfortunate accident and now the father is breaking his silence is he breaking his silence

or is he just speaking about it now the the correlation for this for hipster bloggers is quietly they quietly announced and you're not that smart don't act like you figured oh they're quietly removing Joe Rogan's podcast. Joe Rogan. Rogan?

AlexWait, is there more Rogan updates?

MerlinWell, there's the N-word stuff, you know. I know you mainly look at RSS, so you may not be keeping up, but there's been some problems with Rogan and the N-word recently. And this is the most embarrassing, uncomfortable thing he's ever had to address publicly.

AlexI will say, though, if I was someone who used to have friends who worked at Spotify, when the Joe Rogan experience was being bought, I would know that they, or I would think at least that there would be some employees who would have to go through and transcribe those episodes and Mark eats potential problematic ones.

MerlinVis-a-vis have to write down the N-word a bunch of times.

AlexAnd flag which ones that possibly in the future need to be, quote, quietly removed,

MerlinYeah, but what about the pay-fors? Are we in Endgame? Be honest.

Now, what did you do? You did one last time that was real shitty. You said, oh, ask. You had ask.

AlexI'm going to make an ask. Make an ask. Make an ask. I'm going to make an ask right now. I'm going to make an ask all of this podcast.

MerlinGot to make a number two. Got to go make a two. Broke his silence. Broke her silence. Whatever. Broke their silence. I despise that because it's another one of those incredibly lazy. We're supposed to be nice to journalists because we respect them so much. But Jesus Christ, what a bunch of fucking hacks.

Speaker AWait, since when?

MerlinWell, I mean, there's all kinds of shit from political Twitter that I've picked up by osmosis. I'm probably using that wrong. over the years. And there's just all of the little paper cuts of the fucking journalist class where they're like, you know, looking over their tiny glasses and reminding us that there are valuable scribes. And you can tell because they use all this totally unnecessary jargon. Like, I get it. Like, there's something meaningful to saying head and deck. Whoa.

Speaker AThose are meaningful terms.

MerlinAnd like in the industry, those have a meaning. Like any industry or any, you know, any trade. You have terms that are meaningful inside of your group. But be careful that you don't fetishize jargon where it's like me talking about regular expressions. I know just enough to be dangerous. I know just enough to get it a little wrong at best. So when you say shit like broke his silence, I also really don't like... There's all the house style on

political Twitter. Breaking. Colon. and then some fact they just saw on cable news. You didn't break that. Did you break that story? Or exclusive? Or scoop? Scoop lit? Siren? Meh. Fuck off. And finally, goddammit, I understand that there is a house style at every outlet.

You know, I mean, in the same way that when I go to Title Case Converter, I always choose Chicago because I don't know why. I used to do MLA. Now I do Chicago. There's a house style, right? But like, do you really need to, do we need to write, setting aside the whole clickbait thing, do we really need to keep writing headlines like it's 1940 and we're trying to deal with a limited number of space on a piece of paper?

AlexExample.

MerlinOkay, well, let me, I have not prepared for this. I'm going to go to news.google.com and I'll probably, because my demos are always the worst. What I'm talking about is, let's see. So Cox, colon, lockdown parties not related to in-house policy experience, something like that clip style where you leave out articles and you leave out pronouns because you're because you're writing as though like imagine I imagine these people think they're like fucking Matt Drudge.

Like they're sitting there with their little hat with the card that says press in it. We go to press. Like, do we create so much ambiguity with that dumb, jargony style that ends up creating those sorts of headlines that, I mean, there's Twitter accounts about headlines that, like, are you sure that's what you meant to say?

Mainly because of something so obvious, leaving out, as I say, leaving out articles, a strange order of words. let's see can I find a good one here do you know what I'm talking about

AlexI mean the very first headline that I have at news.google.com New York girls pack mask mandates Florida surgeon general reveal vaccination status live COVID-19 updates and I know that's not strictly like a headline but there's just a lot of things packed into what I don't even know what this is

Merlinoh it's it's really funny there's a local as part of that trend now in which I would, and I don't understand if they must have their reasons.

Speaker ASo many colons, it's so many colons.

MerlinBut like New York Times and Washington Post, they have their stories now when you click sometimes on a headline or a link, you end up on this weird scrolling page of two paragraph chunks, like they're reporting on fucking 9-11 at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, 9-11. No, what are you doing? And like there's, the Chronicle does this so comically sometimes because they have to combine in that shovel blog, MacRumors sort of way. Like, hey, Roundup, Roundup of the Day's News.

AIDS kills millions. Also, hottest new spots for dim sum. And you're like, okay, thanks for the Roundup. Now I feel like I really digested a lot of important news. I will, as a project for myself, find some of these. But you know what I'm talking about. when you see a headline and it's just, it's written in this incredibly clipped style.

AlexOh, I do. I just wanted to hear a 1920s radio voice, but I could have just asked.

MerlinMaybe butlers. Let's see. For GM. Now see this one, it's got verbs and it's got, I like verbs and I like articles. What do I mean by articles? Like, do you really need to leave out the small words? Are you that pressed for space? that you don't want to provide more clarity in summarizing an entire article into a non-sentence. Because most of them are not really a sentence. CVS stock is tumbling. Lowered range for cash flow guidance. Unnerved investors.

Like, okay, I guess that's okay. Oh, God. Just stop beginning your sentences with so. So a coffin was put on sidewalk Monday in San Francisco. I'll read that again. So a coffin. No comma. so a coffin was put on a sidewalk Monday in San Francisco

Alexoh god there was an amazing I think it was oh gosh what's his name oh fuck Quinn listen so I'm going to have to what's the guy who did here's an idea channel hold on Mike fuck oh he's so nice hold on this is bad you're doing great When, uh, okay, Quinn, sorry.

MerlinWhy are you talking to Quinn, Alex? What are you doing?

AlexI want her to edit a card where I forgot. You want Quinn to help you? Do you want to get a lifeline? I want, oh. Mike would do it.

MerlinSomething I'm going to do is super cut of every time you do that. You're like a rabid Marge Simpson.

he did uh he did a celebration of new ideas who are we talking about he did

Alexmy cronetta did a just a twitter thread not that i would ever be on twitter but it was a thread of atlantic uh headlines uh in technology how do we get so quote cringe we booped the sun is that two different ones that's two different ones oh how do we get so cringe yes how do we get so cringe that is a story in the atlantic um and we pooped the sun we pooped

Merlinthe sun oh i didn't see that is it is the sun a good doggo is it is it is it a healthy pupper

AlexThe answer is by posting. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, this is Democrats move the filibuster Overton window. The economy is good, actually.

MerlinOh, my God. Oh, my God.

AlexThanks, Atlantic.

MerlinOh, God, that's so bad. Okay. One way in which I am a real normie guy is that like a lot of real normie guys. I'm not going to criticize the person. I despise the work, the output, the oeuvre of CNN's reporter Chris Silliza. I think his work is execrable and really sticks out as being. he reminds me of who is it? Is it Matt Walsh?

Who is it from Upright Citizens Brigade that's on Veep? I think it's Matt Walsh. Is that his name? No, who's the guy on Veep? Oh my god, that show is so good. Matt Walsh, yeah. Which I started, you know, I'll just sometimes dive in and just watch a season of Veep, like practically in a night. Still so fucking good. Season 5 is so good. But Like Matt Walsh, you know him from UCB?

You know, he had the titular line in Star Wars.

AlexYes.

MerlinAnd he gets a job. The show is so fucking funny, Alex. And, you know, he's got his wife, played by, what's her head? Piggy Hill, I think. And they've adopted the Chinese baby and everybody hates him and nobody wants to talk to him. And then he gets a job working for a blog where he has to publish 10 articles a day. And he's obviously like an exhausted, like money strapped 50 year old guy. And so he has to adapt to this 10 articles a day blog culture. And that's what it feels like sometimes when you see somebody cosplaying somebody clever.

And as I say in the document and in life.

AlexI think it feels like that because it's how it is.

MerlinOh, you're probably right. See, but like I do look at Google News and I developed this amazing ability to see a headline on Google News. And I get that. I get the feeling. And I look down and it says CNN. And I say, I'm not going to click it. I'm not going to click it. I'm not going to click it. Because there's no byline. But I am about, I mean, honestly, I'm being conservative. I am about 85% correct when I can identify that it's a Chris Silliza story. So I don't know if he picked the headline or he just works with somebody who knows how to make him sound really, really stupid and like he's writing for a blog in 2006.

But let's see. Again, this is just off the top. Looking at his headlines on the CNN page. This is the big loser in the redrawing of the country's congressional lines. Why the Donald Trump National Archives story is such a big deal. What Nikki Haley doesn't get about the January 6th fight. Can Liz Cheney's massive fundraising save her? Here's even more evidence that widespread election. But like he just it's just this like that style. It's so adolescent.

But I guess you've got to do it for a job. But you're a journo breaking scoop. Exclu flashing light.

AlexWhen you were writing about 47 folders, Did you have a general guide to just how you would structure, you know, not full on Chicago style or like you need to noun and verb this, but just rules you didn't want to break?

MerlinKind of. One thing that I'll always be a little bit embarrassed about, and I think this is the pre-Syracusa era when I learned this, but definitely Syracusa called me to, took me to task on this. For example, I used to write a lot about things, not about the Apple Mac operating system, but like things related to it. Like a big part of what I was writing about was, you know, this is the era before iPhones. It was basically you had Macs and iPods. That's what Apple made.

And I would, when I referred to their, I don't know how I developed this, but I never checked it. I would refer to the operating system as OS X no space.

AlexOh.

MerlinFor example. And I finally, one of the first times I ever had the bad impulse to go in and directly edit a PHP My Admin table with find and replace was to fix OS X to OS X. I didn't, but I have to be honest, and I've confessed this before.

I'm not trying to puff myself up. If anything, quite the opposite. and I'm saying I was a vanguard of asshole-ishness, that I got the BuzzFeed style before BuzzFeed was a thing. I knew that if you make people like lists, and nobody likes a list more than I do, and I knew that I could say maybe not quite the level of 149 surprising ways to turbocharge your blog, but I would often say the seven quicksilver tricks

you didn't know about, something like that. But I don't know. I guess I'm from a different time, and I don't want to cover myself with glory, but I understand the power of verbs. And that if you can find that when we're on, as Lincoln says, when our better angels prevail, we remember that it's all about verbs, and that the verbs should be in your writing. think about think about your writing differently in the sense of what if i spent a lot more time

putting the work of my writing onto verbs i mean and then like aha obviously fewer adverbs you know uh fewer adjectives but when you're doing not even formal writing but when you're doing any kind of writing one reason my tweets are funny is i understand verbs and i understand that a joke, the funniest part of the joke has to be the last two to five words. The funny part needs to be at the end. You need to structure it in such a way that then the verb does a lot of the work.

That's my main guiding principle and I don't always follow it, obviously, but if there's a way that you could rewrite a sentence to have the verb do more of the work without being cute, your writing will improve because it forces you to think more clearly and it forces you to not fall back on our worst habits of just getting something down. But I didn't have like, I don't think I had like an official like a style thing. You know, usually it's like ridiculous stuff. Like I tend to pick shorter titles, just unrelated but related.

I tend to pick a shorter rather than longer title for Roderick on the line because I just aesthetically don't like the way a long headline breaks, lies in line breaks in our particular theme. I don't like it when there's one word on the line below.

Just aesthetics, but no, no. I respect house styles, though. I get it. That's cool. And I've got the New York Times style guide book here. Cool is a word for it. It's pretty cool because what's neat about having the actual book is that it also provides, it's not just a rule, but I feel like if memory serves, it also provides you some pretty good context for why we do it that way. And, you know, on first, so like New York Times, like obviously New Yorker,

New Yorker has that funny tick with using a diuresis on any, almost any word that has two vowels in a row. But like, do we need to say coordinate? Like, no, but that's how style, that's how they do it. but you know like New York Times you've on first reference you there is a name it's Joseph R. Biden Jr. And then I think there's a kind of a weird rule about second time their name but then subsequently you name them by an honorific on their last name right so President Biden

Alexmx cox like whatever i i was gonna say there's going to be some fun editorial juggling that happens when i i feel like honorifics slowly are going away or being like

Merlingayed up or confused and i i i have to i have to tell you like i i i my feeling about pronouns i I hope I've shown my bona fides in like in the best faith, trying to call people what they want to be called, including pronoun usage that I don't understand. I mean, I don't, I mean, I love Jonathan, Jonathan, not Van Ness is a road, Jonathan Ness, the guy on Queer Eye, who I like some of my favorite moments on this very good season of Queer Eye in Texas.

It's a really good season. Are like where, you know, the classics where he has a moment with somebody and they're open to learning about what his deal is. And I'm, you know, I don't think he's going in there and getting like, you know, proud boys that need a makeover. He's generally talking to people like, you know, like that guy who lives in a container on the ranch, on the Kobe beef ranch. That guy, I love that episode. And Jonathan will say to the guy, or the guy's like really reluctant to even say like, you know, how am I, I don't even know what I'm supposed to say and I'm scared to ask.

And Jonathan goes, well, I identify as, I think if memory serves, Jonathan says I'm non-binary. And I use the pronouns he, was it he, she, and they?

AlexI think so. I don't remember. Yeah.

MerlinAnd I'm like, okay, look, I will call you whatever the fuck you want. But when you tell me that, I want to get it right. And this is a me problem, not a you problem. But I don't understand what I'm supposed to do with all of those pronouns. On the one hand, I'll call you whatever you want out of just respect for you as a human being. But in conversation, when I have to refer to you in a way that why we have pronouns, what am I supposed to do? And how does that serve the purpose of a pronoun to disambiguate which proper person you're talking about? That's the part that fucks me up.

with that said honorifics give me a fucking break there's too many goddamn doctors out there i'm telling you when you watch hoarders there's a lot of quote-unquote doctors on there and and there's also i'm just gonna say we'll cut this out cut this cut this cut this don't cut this but there's one episode where they they uh on queer eye where there's this wonderful woman it's just fucking amazing and she runs uh like a basically like a clinic um and they refer to her through the entire episode as, you know, Dr. Zimzam or whatever. This is Dr. Zimzam. Dr. Zimzam

runs this clinic. And I turned to my lady friend and I said, this is going to be, just so you know, this is covered by family DA. I'm going to say something to you that I would never say in public, but I'm going to say it to you. I said, first of all, I want to stipulate this woman seems very cool. I'm glad she's getting a makeover and this is awesome. And I really, I have so much, this woman works harder in a given day than I've worked in my entire life. But I have a feeling, I'm not going to look, but I have a feeling if I go and check, that person's going to have maybe a PhD, which is fine, except they have done absolutely nothing

here to do anything but give us the impression that that person is an MD. There's a person whom they call doctor that runs a medical facility and they always refer to the person as doctor.

AlexOkay, I'm losing my mind. Which episode?

MerlinI thought I saw it on the episodes. It's the one with the really cool African-American woman who's very worried about her hair. It's such a sweet episode. It's so good. Do you remember where she wears a wig all the time?

AlexYeah, she's not a doctor?

MerlinNo, they call her doctor the whole time. What?

AlexOh, yikes.

MerlinWell, okay. But then, and this is why we're such a nice compliment to each other. because like you, unfortunately, my wife is the kind of person that will go look something up.

And let's say she didn't say this. Let's say this is in my own words. No, it's worse than that. She has an EDD. She's got the Bill Cosby degree.

Speaker AOh my God.

MerlinShe's got the lowest conceivable thing that you can get outside of chiropractic that allows you to call yourself a doctor.

AlexOh.

Merlinnow okay fine i know work is hard believe me as bachelor man i totally understand the difficulty of writing an undergrad thesis about tv that allows me to demand people call me bachelor man i understand believe me and it's a bachelor of arts just to be clear i get that i just think that it's it's so it is so um insincere it's so like we say in the south butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. If you present somebody in a medical setting and call them doctor, and this is why my

wife's colleagues increasingly, I think I've said this here because this is a real bee in my bonnet, increasingly refer to themselves as so-and-so MD because they realize there's been doctor inflation too. MILF inflation and doctor inflation. They both have to stop. That's not a cougar,

Alexlet alone a MILF. Oh God, if you interpret this literally, it's just...

MerlinI mean, she seems like a nice lady, but I want her to feel good about her hair.

AlexI'm sorry. I've been watching too much Archer.

MerlinI would be fine with honorifics going away, except that I think one, and this is a chicken problem. Like me growing up, and I'm curious if you were taught this. growing up in Ohio, in the Midwest, like you, you say thank you, and you say please, and you say thank you, and you say you're welcome. You don't say no problem, or it's all good, man. You always say you're welcome, because when somebody thanks you for something,

first of all, you don't say thank you back. Don't say thank you back. Don't do that. Say you're welcome. And then you could add to that and say, oh, you're welcome, and thank you for having me on.

AlexIn fact, Merlin, no, no, no. You don't say you're welcome. You say you are welcome.

MerlinYou are welcome.

AlexThat is what at least the Catholic polls said to each other.

MerlinYou're still welcome. Or like, you know, sometimes I'll say, I think this really annoys her, but Madeline will say something like, I'm going to go out for a run and hit Whole Foods and I should be home around three or four. And I'll say, you're always welcome here.

Why do I say that? I don't know. It's really annoying. Okay, so first of all, let's get this clear. I was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, born 1967. I was born and you always say please. You always say thank you. You say you're welcome. And I mean, I do. I'm practically like a John Mulaney. May I please have a Diet Coke, please? You know, as opposed to like Mick Jagger expecting it to appear in his hand. Not funny. All right. So that's one. You always say please and thank you. You always say sir and ma'am.

you say comma sir or comma ma'am at the end of a sentence and you always call everybody um mr mrs miss or later miz um you always do that and now i know that that represents a lot of um i don't know the chitons of uh cultural hegemony title like on a scorpion we've built up all of these these layers and layers and layers of uh you know keloids and tortoise shells to like

protect our cultural hegemony but that was a nice thing in that you always knew what you were

Alexsupposed to do oh wait though what do you mean you always knew what you're supposed oh as in like

Merlinthere were clear outlines because everybody looked like a guy or looked like a girl right if the person looked like a guy you say sir and you call them mr so-and-so if it looks like a lady you say we call them miss or missus and you know what I mean? That was easy because we lived on the binary. That's what we did. And I don't regret the loss. I don't regret the new subtlety of trying to get better about that but I do also wish that people would say please and thank you

and call people by whatever honorific they like except doctor

Alexwhich is bullshit. Why do we need honorifics?

MerlinBecause it suggests familiarity So when you meet somebody.

AlexIsn't that just a glorified adjective? It's called an honorific. It has honor in the word.

MerlinBut when you're introduced to somebody, this is going to sound like a crazy question. I might as well be asking you if you put doilies around the feet of your furniture because you don't want them to be too sexy. This is a virtually Victorian point of view. But when you're introduced to somebody, let's say who's your elder. Let's say you're introduced to somebody that your parents, your family has known for years that you've never met or you haven't seen since you were a toddler. And you're introduced, say somebody says, oh, Alex, this is Joan Osborne, the singer.

No, whatever. You go like, oh, this is Joan Osborne. We used to be in Daughters of the American Revolution together. And this is Alex. You haven't seen Alex since Alex was a baby. what do you call joan osborne do you call do you call them joan okay this is a situation first first first first reference clarice do you do you call them when you're introduced do you say hey joan what up bitch well that's i would say hello mrs osborne it's so nice to meet you i i would say

Alexoh it's a it's such a pleasure to meet you and yes i would say indeed pleasure because that seems like a lovely interaction to have. Pleasure. Pleasure. Pleasure. I'd be like, but I would not be like, oh, hey, cool to meet you. Even though like, maybe if someone a few years younger, I would say.

MerlinWell, maybe it wasn't nice to meet them so they don't deserve an honorific. Okay. Joanie.

AlexAll right. All right. All right.

MerlinFucking cunt.

AlexHold on.

MerlinGo write a song, bitch.

AlexBut I'm also not going to. Oh, God. I also wouldn't be like, hey, Joan, my pronouns are they, them. What are yours?

Speaker AYou've totally changed the topic. You've totally changed the topic.

AlexNo, no, no. I am saying that you are doing...

Speaker AYou're saying you don't call anybody Mr. or Mrs. when you meet them? No, no, no. You just go... No, no, no. Say, what up, G?

AlexI read the room and if that person expects to be called Mr. Mrs. Just in the same way that a lot of that some people want to be referred to by I'm trying to get better. Like M ear. Like I literally like with neo pronouns. I am learning how to use them correctly to refer to a person. It's difficult, but I'll leave.

Speaker AFor a second, I thought you were talking about neo pets.

AlexExactly. Neo pronouns. Okay. Exactly. I'm learning. I and I make mean jokes. Yes, you are. And I'm terrible. Yes, thank you. Thank you.

MerlinThat was very bold and brave, I have to say.

AlexYes, you are welcome.

MerlinI am welcome because your community is a big tent,

Alexalthough we don't call it a tent.

MerlinWe call it MX tent. If you don't know, you have to err on the side of formality. And if somebody, then they always can say, you say, well, nice to meet you, Dr. Osborne, chiropodist or chiropractor. And they say, oh, call me Joan. But like I don't like the assumed familiarity. Like if I were introduced to you, for example, and say, hey, this is Alex Cox. What I wouldn't do is say, what up, Al? Because not only am I being familiar about a first name, I'm calling you a name it's not.

I've added extra familiarity, nonexistent familiarity to our relationship. And I hate when people do that with me. I don't need you to call me mister. I do what I do because it's the right thing to do. I hope you do the same thing. If you err on the side of formality historically, you can always then pull back to like, oh, no, I'm going to offer you in this power exchange. I'm offering you more intimacy. You don't have to call me Dr. Osborne. You could just call me Joan or Auntie Joan.

AlexRight. Antediluvian. And when, but when someone, if, if my mother of 60 years old now says, yes, this is Joan Osborne, I probably would be like, ah, yes, let's shut up.

MerlinNo, no, keep going. I'm just not typing titles. This is good. This is, this is, this is Joan Osborne.

AlexOh, I would just say, so nice to meet you. Because now, a friend of my mom, Gen X, they're 60. If I were to be like, hello, Mrs. Osborne, she'd be like, oh, please. I'm so, oh, you just made me sound so old. So I am just like, I return neutral. Dr. Osborne's my mother. I would just be like, hello, nice to meet you. Call me Sugar Tits.

MerlinNice to meet you, MX Sugar Tits. now available for playing on pc through bungee that was fishing for titles

Alexmx sugar tits

Speaker Awhat if god was one of us cream and sherman hey alex how you doing oh is this the show

AlexAre we talking about Sherman now?

MerlinWe can find a way in... Hi, um... Friends. I'm not going to call you parapals.

Speaker AThat's horrible. Why would you do that? Parapals.

AlexBecause someone was like, make up a name. That sounds ableist, Alex. It really does. It really does. It does. It does. And I regretted it as soon as I said it. And it has stuck.

MerlinYeah, you're literally crippling the language. I, um... I, um... hello everybody and welcome to view by friday it's a weekly challenge podcast hosted by alex cox and merlin mann uh this week's challenge cream and sherman um i was gonna say what about what about what were you talking about now i lost my thread

antediluvian. That's funny. That's funny, Bullseye. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we don't know where this show will have started. And I also, you know what, we don't need to address the noise because it's gone away for now. But just real quick, real quick, what I'm dealing with is some noise, what I have previously on Back to Work referred to as the bang-bang machine. Because as it turns out. The time that the road work people outside start their working on road is almost

precisely five minutes before I start any podcast. And they have so much heavy equipment out there. And I'll explain why in a second. They have so much heavy equipment out there. And one of them is this incredible, this amazing device. Like you've seen people use a, I don't know if this is a technical term, a jackhammer, right? The thing where you've got the butta, butta, butta thing and you hold it, it goes, butta, butta, butta. This is on like a Caterpillar full on, like a Bobcat or something, like, you know, but like, no, bigger than a Bobcat, like a big Caterpillar.

And it's got this thing. I'll get a photo for you.

AlexWait, wait, wait. You just explained in great detail what a jackhammer is. And now you're talking about a cat. What the fuck is a, is a Caterpillar?

MerlinCaterpillar is the, is the international leader in construction equipment. They make those yellow things that make buildings.

AlexI don't know. Oh, that's a caterpillar.

MerlinYou're telling me, Alex, you don't know what caterpillar means.

AlexI know it turns into a butterfly. No, I don't know what a, oh, this is what I would call a truck. That is my.

MerlinOkay, there's a truck outside. And the neat thing about, I'm not going to say caterpillar. I'm going to say a truck. The neat thing about a truck is you can get all kinds of different kit that you put on there. So, like, they've got a scoopy thing. They've got all these different ones. But, you know, you can get different attachments. And I got to get a photo of this thing for you because it's fucking amazing. So you remember when I explained jackhammers to you a minute ago?

AlexYeah, but-a, but-a, but-a.

MerlinBut-a, but-a, but-a. Now imagine a jackhammer except it's, like, so much bigger and attached to a truck. especially the part of the truck that has the uh the arm the truck arm to which you attach things like a scoopy thing and this thing pounds the shit out of the road in a way a jackhammer it's like john john henry all over again like this thing is just it's i just went out and watched it for like eight minutes today watch them do this it's incredible because what they're doing

is they're tearing up part of the road outside. Spoiler alert, they're in the midst of replacing the tracks for the streetcar line, where if you ever remember, I don't know if you've ever heard it, but sometimes you'll hear a streetcar going, but you probably never heard it. They're replacing those tracks. And I'm trying to figure out exactly what my involvement with this will be. Given the signs that are on the street, it will be at least two weeks of like really serious bang, bang machine.

But the process of doing this is going to take two years. So I don't. They've claimed so many parking spaces in our neighborhood. Basically the street perpendicular to ours. Like we can look out our front window and we see where they now store the construction equipment. And the place where they store the construction equipment is where everybody used to park. So the next two years should be really interesting. Fancy San Francisco. Oh, look, there's a hole. I better go take a shit in it. Look at my truck.

I'll get photos for you. I did a video yesterday. Send it down.

AlexOh, of the Bang Bang machine?

MerlinYeah, well, I mean, it's not very good. And I think I feel bad. No, I don't feel bad. I feel scared that I even did it because I imagine it looked like I was recording something to post to Nextdoor. I go out there. I'm wearing my sweatpants and I got my phone. I take a photo and I give him a little wave and a smile. Which is sincere. But I wonder if they read that as, uh-oh, here comes the troublemaker.

AlexWhoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What? I just blacked out. You had an interaction? Like, you smiled and waved. What did you do?

MerlinIs this another thing about me being a Gen X person? You don't smile and wave to people? Do you even say hello to dogs?

AlexNo, but I'm holding a phone and clearly filming them.

MerlinOh, no. I'm just going to stare at my screen and act like nine guys in hard hats aren't there.

AlexDon't notice me. I'm a blogger. I'm going to report on your work.

Speaker AProblematic.

MerlinFuck me.

Speaker AOh, God. All right.

MerlinHere's the bang bang machine. I'm saying this to you right now. That is shot from just outside of my office, my private office that you've been to. I hope that goes through. I don't know if it will. But I just sent you a video and you can see what the truck.

AlexOh, it's a robot banger.

MerlinBut you see what I mean? It's like a jackhammer but real big and attached to a truck.

AlexThat's what they are.

Speaker AAre you testing me, Satan? What are you doing? That's crazy.

AlexNo, I, okay.

MerlinThat's like somebody going to a construction site and instead of a hammer, you give them like a Harley Quinn mallet. They're very, very different things. These are very – this is heavy. Okay. I'm definitely having a neurological event and I'm broken up with you for 30 seconds.

AlexOkay. All right.

MerlinAnyway, that's just to say, hey, everybody, welcome to the show. You might hear some Bang Bang Machine. And I've decided I'm just going to embrace it. Oh, and then I went out after they ran the Bang Bang Machine. Then they brought in the Scoopy Machine. And holy fucking shit because they got to like collect all the pavement. So I think we're in the part where they're doing PG&E, Pacific Gas and Electric stuff. while they're at it, as long as they're tearing everything up. So I think what they're going to do is they're going to make a bunch of holes in the road that they then close up at the end of the day, like put the big metal thing over it. I hope it won't be this bangy all the time. But then they brought the scooping machine.

And bang, bang, bang, you break up all the pavement. Now what do you got? You got a bunch of big rocks. Now I can just guesstimate that each one of those rocks, woof, 100 pounds or more. And this scooping thing makes such light work of it. It's really inspiring to watch.

Alexhave you befriended any of these people are are they similar am i pregnant with any of these people have you befriended and by befriended i mean has have any of these workers acknowledged your existence or do they just well you waved at them i don't know did you expect anything in return

Merlinno they're like they're like people on twitter they're i mean no no in the sense that like i bet they're having a lot of fun with how disruptive this is that they get to come in and they have a mandate to act however they want and everyone has to accommodate them your photos are bullying me trauma oh poor channing did you send me the link you sent me the channing tatum link what was the other link about the um this is not abuse person didn't she have a new article you sent me i don't

No, I'm sorry. I'm speaking very poorly here. You know that person you like? Oh, Conflict is Not Abuse.

AlexOh, yes. That is a book.

MerlinLet's see. You sent me calling. That's it. Calling people out for gaslighting is just a lazy but effective way of shutting down dissent. I like that because it's a sentence. You sent me that. And that's from whom? Is that written by the Conflict is Not Abuse person?

AlexNo. Oh, human barricade. Human barricade. I don't know. I don't know. And I know he also wrote something because he was like being dry, like, oh, another straight white man. He's like, I am neither of those things. Oh, that's funny.

MerlinI like when that happens. It's like when you explain, you know, nuclear physics to a nuclear physicist who just happens to be a pretty lady. Yeah, I'm a pretty lady, but I also know a lot about women.

This is, no, I sent you this. We'll put this in notes from New York Times. If everything is trauma, is anything? And I said to you, wow, talk about something that's our shit. And because, you know, it's about trauma, it's about not trauma, and it's about West Elm Caleb.

I'll put this in there.

AlexWe don't talk about West Elm Caleb. God, I hope he's happy.

MerlinThe man had been effusive at first, sending compliments, engaging in witty back and forth, making a playlist that included that song by Mazzy Star. You know the one. And then suddenly he wasn't. New paragraph. As it turned out, the guy had sent the same playlist to multiple women. Boo. He allegedly sent at least one of them an unsolicited nude photo, a picture-dicture. As he woke up next to one woman, he was planning the night's date with another. Like so many online daters before him, Caleb was a creep. Next and final paragraph of our reading series. but in the language of TikTok and perhaps the language of our current moment,

he was more than that. He was pathological. Caleb better known at this point as Weston, Caleb, a 25 year old furniture designer in Brooklyn who is the subject of viral mania last month was, was accused of love bombing women by showering them with interest, gaslighting them by making them think he liked them and then abruptly ghosting them, leaving his victims to bond over their quote, shared trauma. Has there ever been some paragraphs that are more our shit right now?

AlexOh,

MerlinNot necessarily in a good way, but this is certainly relevant.

AlexI mean, whenever. And, you know, I realize now that I am also from a very different time at the ripe old age of 31. But Jesus fucking Christ.

MerlinI think you do real well. I think you do real well.

AlexBut.

MerlinReally. Seriously. Considering. The considering is, as they say on political Twitter, doing a lot of work there. scoop, exclude, flashy light

Alexscoop it I really hope Caleb's okay I hate that I think about him every single day he just wants to get his dick wet and design furniture oh man I have by this definition I am like a oh boy, I fucked someone to make Maddie jealous like not that long well, not long ago enough that we weren't married or like really dating, but then I never returned that person

Speaker AWait, hang on. Is this okay?

AlexIs this okay to talk about? Oh, yes. No, they knew this. We were not dating. No, we were not dating. We were not yet dating. We were in college. It was a consenting fun time with the other person. We're still friends, but they were my dorm mate.

MerlinThe queers are really unmoored.

AlexIt's really hard to look at. Well, and that's the thing. We have become, I miss sex negativity for me.

MerlinI do too. Oh my God, we need to get so much more negative. Oh my God, get back in the closet. Like not that cause it, but like, oh no, please fuck privately and never talk about it.

AlexAnd, but that's what I thought what dating apps were for. I thought that was for what the dirty pictures were for.

MerlinI'm so into, into your entire gender journey. And I'm so not into hearing about what you want to fuck. That's just me. That's Ohio. That's the casserole mindset, my friend.

so you feel anyway you were saying you fuck somebody to make matt jealous uh yes and i

Alexnever returned that that person's call until until like by call i mean dm oh so the person who got used really was that person that person was a cipher for you yes i uh loved bomb that Oh, God, it's just not. No, it's. But no, I'm just like all and all of my what most people would consider like friends who are members of woke mobs are like, oh, dude, I, I, if like, am I like a rapist compared to West Elm Caleb?

I've sent so many Adidas put boob pics on the Internet today for Adidas put boob pics. Yeah. He's like a headline. adidas put boob pics on the internet today is that for olympics paralympics it was to sell bras

Merlinum and oh god that sounds like instagram instagram loves selling bras i've heard they they just uh i

Alexi right before we started recording someone sent me a okay literally literally just sent me a text that was what i saw as a collage of boobs and i did not want a text from this person was actually a screenshot from aliens or something no no no no it was a link to a tweet from adidas and i am like this man who i used to have a professional relationship with who i've been trying to avoid

Merlinliterally sent me a picture of boobs and like okay just i'm sorry because like i i i so deeply don't want to know about this and i'm definitely not going to look it up um like nude boobs like examining for tumors boobs?

AlexFull on naked breasts. Yes, full on engorged aerial.

Speaker ASay titties.

AlexI can't do it.

Speaker ATitties. Titties. Look at them titties. I date those titties. All day I dream about sex.

AlexThe, oh man. Oh, did Chicago, see, now when I try to go on Twitter, it just breaks. Don't say, what's don't say gay? What?

MerlinDon't say gay. Is it trending or something?

AlexDid I age 50 years and a half hour? What is happening?

MerlinYou are so uniquely bad at not using the internet.

AlexI know. It's really a gift. I am unique. You are unique.

MerlinYou're a special snowflake.

AlexEveryone says so. Adidas bra. Oh, not a Adidas bra revolution. Did I? Was this a fake thing that someone sent me? Okay, no. This is important. I think you just got love bombed. This is I've been now ghosted by this tweet.

MerlinI was watching something. I'm sorry. Were you done? Do you have more boobs?

AlexI don't know. I'm glad that my I made Maddie jealous and I'm glad that I'm still friends with that person. Oh, yes. Justified the means. Really is what I'm thinking.

MerlinThe ends.

AlexI feel bad for everybody in the Caleb situation, especially all of the women who were like, no, we were just like, goofing and telling a story like because the way that

Merlinwasn't there sort of an en masse movement to say hey everybody pencil breaks like stop being mean to Caleb like this is one thing for us to have a fun text thread about this and quite another thing for this to turn into an internet mob thing wasn't that kind of what happened

Alexyeah but then the mob turned on the oh the mob turned on

Merlinthe mobbers

Alexit's like a Mobius mob it just I don't know

MerlinIt's working out great. It's all working out great.

AlexI don't know which side I'm supposed to be on. It's affecting so much change.

MerlinIt's really, what a great time. Oh, man. So nice.

AlexThat's why I don't talk about poor, poor West Elm Caleb. You do, though. You do that. No, no, no. Oh, here it is. Here it is. Wait, wait. Wait, is it? Yes, it is. It's a real motherfucker. It is.

MerlinOkay. Alex, reading series. Talk to me about Adidas boobs.

AlexAnd I'm just going to send you a link to a website on Twitter.com.

MerlinI feel like we talked about this so many times.

AlexJust, just.

Speaker AOkay.

AlexNow, I received this from a co- Oh, God, Alex, what the fuck? Right?

Speaker AOh, my God. I have to start a new thread now. This one's, oh, come on. Ew, I don't like this.

AlexRight? Right?

Speaker AWhy did you send me this? Alex just sent me a picture of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 by 1, 2, 3, 4, 25 pairs of boobs. And this is. This is horrible. Oh, God.

AlexRight before we started recording. Oh, God, I'm reporting you. I should be.

MerlinWhoever the most powerful person is in the thing in your life that's closest to HR, please transfer my call. I need to speak to your manager immediately. Look at all these teteys. Some of them are little and some of them are big. Some are dimes and some are silver dollars.

AlexMost of them are from women of an advanced age.

MerlinWe believe women's breasts in all shapes and sizes deserve support and comfort, which is why our new sports bra range contains 43 styles. Nice number. So everyone can find the right fit for them. And then there's boobs.

AlexIt's like someone, like an angry CEO went into a meeting and was like, listen, I want something. Shake it up, you guys. Shake it up. We need something needle moving. Put up the titties. Release the titties. We need something that people will write a think piece about and talk about on a podcast. And I need more takes. Make the takes hot.

Speaker AGive them give them fuel for takes.

AlexThat's what that. So I think that this is a successful ad campaign. Yes. Good for them. Good job. Very bold.

MerlinVery brave.

AlexGod.

MerlinGotta love a German company. Laugh love mom.

Speaker AHa ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!

AlexI said I was going to use good mic technique during Dubai Friday. Stop, stop.

MerlinDo not address Quinn. Do not address our listeners.

AlexOh, no. I wasn't addressing anybody. I was just talking. I'm addressing you. I'm addressing you. Merlin, I'm talking directly into you. I'm very angry right now.

MerlinI don't want to belabor this because we do have potentially two challenges to talk about.

AlexAdidas, Friesland, and Nipple. Oh, there's already things. Don't worry. Okay.

MerlinTo quote my brother-in-law, there's no way this will end well.

AlexNope.

MerlinYou sent me a thing the other day that is also our shit, and I don't want to belabor this, but it does give me a chance to read you some new entries from the list. You sent me, I didn't read it yet, you sent me a HuffPost, HuffPost piece. Channing Tatum says he's too, quote, traumatized, unquote, to watch any Marvel movies. You sent me that, and then you said, okay, yeah, we definitely need a new word.

Speaker ABut then it's funny, but then you find out why.

MerlinLike, was he joking? You find out it's because he didn't get to play Gambit?

AlexI don't know.

MerlinLike one of the five worst X-Men ever?

AlexThat's the thing. When they put it in, was he kidding? Was this a bit?

MerlinI bet he was kidding, because I like him. You know, what's funny is when you first sent this, you know, I do that thing sometimes. You remember when you sent me the Sunny podcast and I did, even though their faces are on the fucking art, like on my iPhone looking at it, I did not pick up that those are the three creators and main writers of the show. Holy shit. It's, you know, Mac and Charlie and Dennis. I didn't pick that up. Now, when you sent me this, for some reason, again, a little bit neurological, for some reason in my head, I thought this was, who's the Winklevosses and the Eats people?

Army Hammer? For some reason I thought this was Army Hammer.

Speaker AEven though I know it's Channing Tatum and I love Channing Tatum.

MerlinHe's a very fun and free guy. But I saw this. For some reason it was double funny to me at first because I thought it was about the guy who gets a boner when he thinks about eating ladies.

Half a Winklevoss. Better than none. You know, they say the definition of an optimist. Is the Winklevoss half full or half empty?

AlexOh, everything about Army Hummers.

MerlinThis is all things considered. Channing Tatum says he's too traumatized, and that's because he didn't. I bet it's a joke. I'm not going to read this, but I bet it's a joke.

AlexI bet he was kidding. Well, he was like, but that's the thing. It wasn't. I read the sentence around three times, and it's not opening, so I don't remember what it was. But he's like, yeah, man, I was traumatized.

MerlinTatum still hasn't recovered from the rejection. Once Gambit went away, I was so traumatized, Tatum said. I shut off my Marvel machine. I haven't been able to see any of the movies. I love that character. It was just too sad.

AlexWhat does Marvel machine mean? Is he talking about the Marvel industrial capitalist complex or Disney Plus?

MerlinI'm on the horns of a dilemma here because some day one strunken white shit is when you do attribution. Everybody says this. It's true. When you're doing attribution, unless you're trying to have a comic effect, when you're doing attribution, just say said. Like Alex Cox said, Merlin Mann said. But in this instance, I do kind of wish it would say either Channing Tatum laughed or I'm too traumatized to watch Marvel movies, Channing Tatum joked.

AlexI've never wanted an adverb more in my life.

MerlinOr something that's like, I can't even stay. I'm so traumatized. I can't watch Marvel movies. Channing Tatum said for some fucking reason. Like, that would be useful as attribution.

So that went on the list. You know, that's on the list now of things that need a name.

AlexThe thing is, when I read that, I was like, oh, fuck. Channing Tatum's trauma needs a name. I was like, wait, did something really bad happen to Shane Tatum? Because he seems like, I mean, as normal as one can be with like that kind of job. Like, I don't know. It was just really weird. And it makes, I don't know.

MerlinI know. It's funny. My favorite one I added, I added this just last night. Descript is just, God, Descript has become so important in my life. As previously stated here, this is an app. Long story short, it's an app that I use for doing Roderick on the Line. It's also an app that supports the creation of every podcast I work on because it allows me to take the audio recordings, drop it into this app. It turns it into a combined audio file. But most importantly, it turns it into a rough and ready transcript where you can edit the transcript and that edits the audio.

It's pretty amazing in lots of ways. The way that I use it, I mean, every week for every show, search for the word notes, right? Because that indicates anytime I ever said I'll find something for Shineros. Not that I'm perfect at this, but that's useful. Search for videos. Search for articles. Search for a link. Search for YouTube. Like anything that will help me. That way I don't have to write everything down. If I forget, I'll remember. Why does Merlin like Soto Voce mutter the word title? First of all, it's a bit and it's funny. Fuck off. But also that allows me to search for the word title and find anywhere where I might have said a good title.

And it's a bit and not a bit, but also a bit. Another one now.

AlexThat's why you're a productivity guru. Look at that.

MerlinOkay. And what I can do, though, is search for something like, I look for the string, ooh, I should add that to the document. And I can go and find things where I had a realization. Are you ready for a new one? Here's a new one. Thanks to NextyScript. Bok, bok.

I knew this needed to be added to the list. Because I was talking, because you'll be talking to somebody about a TV show. and we do that a lot I do that, you do that, I give you lots of homework

Speaker Afor things I think you would enjoy watching

Merlinand then sometimes you were watching Ozark like what are you up to and I'll say oh yeah yeah it seems really good, I've only watched a couple episodes and they're just incredulous like why did you stop watching Ozark guess what, I need a name for when I'm not watching a show and there's no reason for it don't you feel like that needs a name? It's along the lines of, I thought you liked OmniFocus.

It's one of those, like, as I used to enjoy saying, I think it's weird when people ask you why you're not doing something. And my response is, well, why am I not a potted fern?

Speaker ALike,

Merlinit's very, it's a very odd question to ask somebody why they, they're not doing something or why they quote unquote stopped doing something. Well, because of life. It's just, I mean, you can ask, it sounds silly to say that, but you can ask the most bizarre questions in that way. You've never dismembered a body while you were visiting Spain? No. No.

Speaker AWell, why?

MerlinWhy didn't you ever do that? What explanation could I ever provide? I've never been to Spain. I've never dismembered a body. And it's so weird to me that you would expect me to have an answer for why I haven't done something.

Speaker ADoesn't it ever strike you as odd?

AlexIt will. Two things, because there's always two answers for you. I think people are much more interested in why you do or do not consume media than they are with me. But I do not do. You do not do brown shoe in which I lived in like a TV show. Well, one, people seem way too interested in what sort of media you're consuming.

MerlinAnd no, I like that. I like that people care. It makes me happy.

AlexIt makes you happy.

MerlinI just don't have a way to explain why I haven't watched more of this given thing.

AlexYou just haven't gotten to it yet.

MerlinThere's somebody out there right now, I'll bet you, of our six to nine listeners. Nice. There's somebody out there who loves It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia more than me. And there's somebody whose favorite episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is Mac and Dennis Breakup. and they just heard me, a professed fan of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, say, I feel like I can't even remember whether I've never seen their favorite episode.

Why have you never seen my favorite episode? Because I would do exactly the same thing. Imagine somebody stepped up to you and goes, oh man, I'm a huge fan of God, Doctor Who. I just love it. Oh man, yeah, my favorite's probably 11th Hour. And they go, 11th Hour? and you go yeah you know the first matt smith episode oh matt smith right right the river song guy yeah i don't think i ever saw that one you'd be like what what how could you what what that because you in your own head that breaks your brain because of your paradigm for this thing

and i think that's what happens and then and then people just say like like what we're saying last night on slack were you on the slack last night

AlexI don't know.

MerlinI haven't checked back in, but a friend of ours was mentioning some feedback that they had gotten from a listener.

AlexOh, the too much and too little problem type of thing?

MerlinYes. And it was right before I went to bed, and I'd had a couple drinks because I'd finished doing Reconcilable Differences. And I'm going to, you know what? I'm not even going to pre-read this before I read it. I'm just going to read what I said as we got into a discussion about the familiarity of strangers and how people behave sometimes. And I said, this is a 1.35 a.m. Pacific. As a massive podcast fan myself, I can confirm.

We should probably preclude this, but I'm going to do this. As a massive podcast fan myself, I can confirm that it's a medium that attracts passionate people with disordered thinking who often reside in a vast and sometimes fantastical interior world. And those mixers can sometimes yield a pretty weird emotional cocktail that frankly verges on taxi driver territory. Which is just to say, I swear I try so hard to see this kind of feedback as a compliment or maybe even a gift. Because this person cares and they seem to want to like me.

But hard as I try, I usually just end up feeling like a long-distance priest who's fated to nod and smile supportively through whatever insane turmoil and outgassing the penitent needs to get off his chest in a given day.

Speaker AHmm. Oh, really? Huh? Oh, yeah. You don't like why I stopped watching his art? There's really no reason.

Alexyou're just examining an age-old empathy problem because you mean other people are hard to

Merlinunderstand yeah final final paragraph final sentence sometimes i console myself and this is a true thing sometimes i console myself with the fact that i have been passionately corrected when I spelled Wookiee wrong and when I spelled Wookiee right.

And that's a true fact. Oops, sir. Oh, God. Don't be a dick with strangers. Act like they're another person, you guys. Not just me. Especially not me. Who cares? I'm just a guy with a bang-bang truck outside. But other people, you know, God, have a little bit of... We talked about this on Rectives last night. Have a little empathy for the machine. in this case I mean the machine of everything have some empathy don't come in hot listen to what you said

ask yourself do I sound like a real weirdo right now or worse it's okay to be a weirdo if you're sweet about it but do I sound like a real creep and that's why I like things like calling somebody Mrs. So-and-so or Mr. So-and-so I know that's old timey I have empathy for the machine I hope and if I don't have empathy for the machine I'd sure like to know it but it's difficult to have empathy for the machine when the machine is people you've never talked to before saying kind of terrible things to you with a level of intimacy that can be a little disarming and not in a good way.

And there goes the bang, bang machine.

Alexhave empathy for the bang bang machine it's not its fault i would never be no i i don't think i've ever been upset when anyone has referred to me as Mr. Cox or Mrs. Both have Mr. Mrs. and

Mixcox have been used both verbally and digitally for me. And it's always for people. Sorry. Sorry.

MerlinBut for like with people where you had not expressed a preference or requested a specific one. Yeah. People just kind of guessing, trying to get it right in one. Right. And then I'm I

AlexI assume that they're just, yeah, they're doing, they're like, you know what? I am going to just not, well, sometimes it's like, I'm just going to wing it. And in which case, like, okay, fine. Like, I don't know. In two, I assume the best intentions. But it's difficult when you've always had to play defense because I've also been called Mr. and Mrs. Alex.

MerlinIt sucks to respond to somebody credulously when you haven't yet realized that they're not being credulous, that they're not speaking. You know what I mean? You make yourself vulnerable and like, you know, it's almost like somebody – it's like Colin Robinson. What was his joke? Not a hen way. But where he's trying to get – keeps trying to get somebody to say –

AlexUp dog. Oh, I could really say – Up dog.

MerlinUp dog. Right, right, right. And so you're like, oh, you got me to say what's up dog. That's funny. That's funny the way you betrayed my trust. That's funny. like but right isn't that kind of part of it it's like you have to you have to make an in the moment

Alexdecision to decide at what level you want to address this either i don't know i think we're struggling with the same thing and just coming at it in different ways like i people are weird but we're in is you've talked about people are getting weirder but i think Is it that people are getting weirder or we just are being exposed to more? It's the pictures that got small. No, no. God damn it.

MerlinI feel like I, what was I watching? I was watching something or listening to something about Marvel stuff. It might have, and it doesn't matter, probably a podcast, but talking about like rehashing a history that's worth hearing if you don't know the history, which is, wow, why did Marvel not make a Spider-Man movie? Like, why did Marvel not make an X-Men movie? And it's such, it is actually, it's a very, it ends up being kind of like a bummer. But at one point in the 90s, God, who was this?

God damn it. I'll see if I can find this podcast for notes.

AlexNotes. Are you going to get it for show notes?

MerlinNotes. Title. But somebody was basically saying, hey, look, you know, up until and into the 90s, Marvel made comic books and toys about comic books. That's the business that they were in. But, you know, and this guy, was it Julia on Downstream? Anyway, no. But anyhow, the point is like, now today, it's easy enough to look back and go, oh, well, obviously, Jesus Christ, like everything, it's all about IP, like the ability to like, create a franchise and do all this stuff. But in the 90s, when, you know, so Marvel had had a

really weird run and like there was this period like in the early 90s all those stories you hear about when comic books became like beanie babies and like you know uh uh issue one of uncanny x-men you know the magneto issue was like the biggest selling comic of all time you could get these you know the the what i call lenticular like the 3d covers death of superman in a black bag like you know but there was like beanie babies but then marvel started running into a slump because they've never been that financially successful. So what did they do? We make comic

books and we make toys about comic books or we license, you know. So what did they do? They said, hey, look, we've got all this great, great stuff sitting around that we're not doing anything with because we don't make movies. So why don't we license our stuff to other people? And you know, the big one to cut to the chase was that they licensed the right to make Spider-Man movies to Sony. But the Sony deal is pretty wild because first of all, do you know this fact in retrospect that marvel would get only got five percent well first of all they got

they got they got 10 million dollars per move i think it was 10 million per movie that would be made okay that's one part two marvel gets i think five percent of the gross which is wow that's doesn't seem like a lot but the other one was there's like a codicil that like there was this window where you've got to create a new if you want to keep this deal alive you can keep this deal alive as long as you want, as long as you put out a new Spider-Man movie, something like between every three and five years. So why do we have so many reboots and like Andrew Garfield movies and stuff?

Because they had to keep that deal alive. Why are there so many like, this is how Spider-Man origin stories? Well, people love that shit. They love hearing about power and responsibility. But it's so fascinating in retrospect. Why didn't Marvel make Spider-Man movies? Because they couldn't. but then after spider-man i want to say i think it was after the second henry garfield one and this got released in in the the the hack of sony's emails right they found out that basically marvel wanted to make a deal with them let's say let's invert this how about you let us make the

movies but we keep the revenue split the same but like we could we've gotten to where we can do a pretty good job with this i don't know i just think that's so fascinating the the up the upshot here why am I talking about this no reason apart from this is fascinating to me but like why was marvel's I could do three hours on the improbable how improbable the success of iron man was I mean any nerd probably could how in the fuck these kids today my kid will not does not has learned this

but did not know this you may not even remember do you remember how unhirable robert downey jr was in the early 2000s.

AlexOnly until I started listening to podcasts and reading articles about how crazy Iron Man was for that exact reason.

MerlinBut like his drug problems and problems with the law, he was uninsurable. He and it was considered laughable that he was ever going to have anything like a comeback, that he could make a kiss, kiss, bang, bang or, you know, or Zodiac or whatever. The idea of that, pretty crazy. Now, now let me understand this. So you've licensed off all your good characters. And all you have left is this detritus of characters most people just don't care about. So you're telling me you're going to hire the actor, Robert Downey Jr., to play Iron Man?

Fucking Iron Man? A guy who had to make a suit because he'd been kidnapped by the Viet Cong? Okay. Sure. And yet it is one of the great movies. But why Iron Man? Because that's what they had. Thor. why Thor? Well, Thor was something they hadn't licensed away. The whole point of this is, when I I think I realized that I loved the Thor movie there were several times that I realized it but a very funny moment is when he

and Jane and Mimia and Dr. Selvig and everybody sitting around, and remember he finishes his drink and then he throws the glass at the floor

Alexand it shatters. Let me say yes as if I've seen it.

MerlinWell, Thor is being Thor. Thor is like a disgraced god who's on earth and he has lost some of his mojo and but he's still very much the the that little boy from asgard and so he throws his glass and it shatters and he's like what are you doing stop that stop that like you're gonna blow our cover and he's like what what this is what you do i'm telling it's a compliment i'm letting you know that i've enjoyed the meal you know like at a greek wedding where you throw plates and like if thor is happy he breaks your shit that's how Thor compliments you as the proprietor of this diner. And I think that's the problem. The problem

is that there's a lot of people out there who don't realize people don't want their glasses broken as a way of saying thank you. And I think even when people are trying gamely to be respectful, well, some ways you try to be respectful. The way to be respectful to somebody in the South, to a stranger, is very different from the way you try to be respectful to somebody in New York. Like if I'm pushing you around in Manhattan, Manhattan, it's because like you're, you're part of the system and like, yeah, you, we've got to get along and get the fuck out of my way. Don't look at me. Like that's pretty normal stuff in New York.

Whereas the, like the passive aggressiveness, the passive aggressive kindness of Atlanta is pretty wild if you're not used to it. And so, you know, you end up saying stuff like you don't sweat much. You don't sweat much for a fat girl, like stuff that like will not land as a compliment, even though you think you meant it that way. And I think when we're trying to, at this fraught time, when we're not really sure what to say and do, maybe it starts with, I don't want to get canceled. But it also encompasses, I just don't want to be unintentionally, in my case, I don't want to be unintentionally hurtful with somebody.

So how do I balance my neediness to be respectful to somebody with the understanding that my version of respectful does not and should not comport with everybody else's idea? Maybe for worse, probably for better, when we talk about the chitons of cultural hegemony, one thing we have lost is that common ground of knowing what's acceptable in this situation. Right? And I think isn't that kind of what you're talking about?

AlexYeah. 20 minutes ago when you were talking about what people call you. Yeah, but it's like they're like, okay, which Chris Evans am I talking to? or to not even which Chris Evans, which Chris Evans Marvel character am I talking to? Like, oh, and I'm even just too afraid to ask.

MerlinWell, you're saying you might be talking to Johnny Storm. Maybe Johnny Storm's asking you about your MX?

AlexIs it Johnny Storm or is it? MX sugar tits. Are you talking to Johnny Storm? Like you're afraid, like you don't want to address someone as Johnny Storm if they're Captain America.

MerlinOh, I see what you're saying. No, no, no. You don't want a dead, you don't want a dead name Green Lantern if it's actually Deadpool.

AlexYou can't call someone.

MerlinDeadpool? Deadpool. Deadpool used to be Green Lantern, but we don't talk about that. We also don't talk about the character from that movie.

AlexOh, I forgot about that one too. Yeah.

MerlinYes. And this is the irony though, because as I've stipulated, Ryan Reynolds should be playing Hawkeye. There's no question about it. He should play almost all the superheroes.

AlexThat's, yeah, yeah.

MerlinCan you even imagine how great he would be as Hawkeye?

AlexI had a literal dream about it, probably induced by you talking about it Can't you just see him go, oh, coffee. Yes, with the dog. Fix this dog. He'd be so good.

Jeremy Renner was not meant to be.

Speaker ABring back the app, you cowards.

MerlinDigga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga challenge. and we had a main challenge and a backup challenge.

AlexI can't believe this is a two-hour show. Everybody, please, for the love of God, please go to patreon.com slash Dubai Friday and maybe give us $5.

MerlinOh, yeah, yeah, we want the money. I mean, I'm asking you, please, please give us some money.

AlexI really...

MerlinWe need to grow our revenue stream.

AlexLike I joke about losing my job, but I'm probably going to lose my job and not by anyone's fault.

MerlinAlex is probably going to lose their job and still lose the job, keep the tits. Help out them MX sugar tutters.

Speaker AGosh. Boo, boo. Air horn, air horn. Someone was asking me this the other day. Air horn.

AlexI am not going to get in trouble, but okay, it is public. I didn't say anything.

Speaker AWhat are you talking about?

AlexI didn't know if you were air horning me or trying to get me out of trouble. No, no, no.

MerlinI'm making that mock, mock, mock. That sound that they make that means like, you know, now we're partying. Are y'all ready for this?

Alexsee that that's another i didn't know which i didn't know which chris which chris evans you're talking to it was because i was like is that the stop horn or is it the because that is how you

Merlinmake that noise oh shit this is my stream deck is so fucked right now uh my i keep this are there have you done any more with the shortcut you got anything to share with me well it keeps it keeps

Alexgetting lost the stream that keeps losing it i don't know if this was on the show or just in text it might have just been in our super secret text channel where i was like oh i keep getting tempted by this because probably a year ago now my cat uh hey everybody welcome to my friday a stream deck is a little thing but it's another okay you feel free to do this bit but i just want the shortcut to work i want the shortcut to work okay okay okay stream deck is a thing that you plug into

Merlinyour computer your cat chewed on it yes q ed okay okay i'm yum yum yum i'm francis and i'm an idiot

Alexi like to eat electric oh yeah okay francis the first time my cat broke my stream deck and then i was like oh man merlin i want to get this big one and hey it has a replaceable usbc isn't that

Speaker Anice you don't have room for that one you don't have room for the one i've got but but you know

Alexwhat your desk is a super fun site i know but but but then merlin i was like you know what you're right? I'm just going to get the one I had before. And you know what this little motherfucking trash cat did? Chonk, chonk, chonk. Oh no. I'm going to try to get a replacement for this, but I'm just going to buy that huge ass stream.

Speaker AWait a minute, wait a minute. You bought a second one and the cat ate it? Yes!

AlexOh, fuck me. So Matthew, I just wanted another record. Maybe you should put some

Merlinof that don't chew on your fingernail stuff on the cord or something. Make it taste nasty.

AlexThat's actually a really fucking good idea. No, I had reversed I had the double-sided tape on it.

MerlinTo like reinforce the... Does the cat always bite it? I mean, it's none of my business, just if you can say, OpSec. Does the cat always chew on it in the same area of the cable?

AlexNo, that's the thing. It is... Does it think it's an adversary, Alex? Yes. He is... Maybe he thinks it's a mouse. He is... Yeah, yeah. It's like a... He's afraid of headphones unless we have worn them because it... Yes. The little cord on it. The little, you know, those old-timey headphones that have an audio jack.

MerlinThis is like my mom and snakes. Like, whatever we fear, we hallucinate.

AlexNo, it freaks him out, which is why I usually I won't let him see a new pair of headphones until I've worn them for a while. And then it smells like me and he won't attack it.

Speaker AThat's so funny. What a weird animal. You should get rid of that animal.

AlexOh God, I've tried. Oh, the door's been left open again. Oh no. Oh no. What's going to happen?

MerlinOh no. Don't go outside. We might have a save again. Go eat somebody else's equipment. The challenge this week was mine, and it's to watch a documentary that I first discovered in college toward the end of my college career. It was on PBS. Documentary called Sherman's March.

AlexThis was on PBS?

MerlinMm-hmm.

AlexOh, that's a lot of humping for PBS. I'm sorry. I interrupted you.

MerlinThere's no humping. What are you talking about? There's no humping. Did you watch the right movie?

Speaker AOh, yeah.

AlexThere's no. Oh, yeah. This is the. What am I?

MerlinThe sexiest thing in it is the yoga exercises where for some reason he turned off his tape recorder.

AlexUh-huh. Yeah. That definitely wasn't. All right. I'm sorry. I interrupted you. You watched it on PBS.

Speaker AWhat are you talking about?

MerlinOkay. Sherman's March is a. Okay. I'm not going to editorialize too much at this point. Let's just say that for its time it was considered a very unusual movie. It is a documentary, but it's also very – it's a personal movie. It's an essay movie in some ways. It's got a lot of levels. Sherman's March is about a guy named Ross McElwey who has decided he wants to do a documentary. He's from the South. He's from – oh, geez. South Carolina, I want to say.

AlexOh, I thought it was – I think. Oh, no.

MerlinAnyway, Ross McElwey is a filmmaker, and he's decided he's gotten a grant, and he wants to make a movie about Sherman's March to the Sea. you know late late in late in the civil war sherman like ruthlessly plowed through the south on his way to richmond and like it's it was a he was he's a pretty tough character and he wanted to retrace the steps and kind of look at the culture he's very much a southern guy from the south and that was the on main goal of sherman's march but as we'll discuss uh for a variety of

reasons it ends up becoming about things other than uh taking the steps through civil war history and um we found a copy of it uh we watched it and um i'll i'll i'm gonna throw to you here so then i'm gonna just i'm gonna mute so you don't hear me weeping softly i loved this movie so much when i was in college it landed on me so hard um the way this guy was how fucked up he was and didn't realize how fucked up he was. Because it's basically about this guy who is just,

yes, Burt Reynolds is a factor in his life. Yes, Civil War history is a... But it's really about him, his family, and all of these extremely interesting women that he encounters, and he gets a crush on almost all of them. And although he does, in some ways, do Sherman's March. Like you may, I'm going to guess Alex probably did not buy in, but by the end, it's like, oh, this is kind of interesting how this all comes together. His fear of his nightmares about nuclear war.

Like there is like some commonality to these things that he manages to pull together in the edit. Sherman's March, 1985. Alex, Sherman's March. Where do you begin?

AlexI don't think it comes together in the edit. This man has made a number of documentaries. Really? I didn't know that. Yeah. It does not come to... This feels like the most fake, verite bullshit. Now I remember why I didn't see it. I'd seen...

MerlinBecause a lot of the things that we've come to associate with bullshit documentaries, he totally does in this. It's just he did it first.

AlexHe didn't do it. No, no, he did not do it first. He's done it in every single one of his films. and it's like oh man maybe i'm having some nightmares okay well sorry real quick uh i

Merlinwant to hear about like more like a great gardens like whose documentary he he ripped himself off in uh you know like you're saying like maybe like the mazels is did this kind of thing earlier but like the i'm in the documentary part you feel like that was uh uh before this okay and he did the uh

AlexThe most interesting character in this movie, I think anyway, is his former teacher and friend Charlene, who he made an entire movie. I think that was his first movie, actually. The older woman who's trying to get her or get him to date the Mormon girl.

MerlinOh, wait, the matchmaker?

AlexYeah.

MerlinOh, God, she's a riot.

AlexShe's amazing.

MerlinShe's so goddamn funny.

AlexShe's amazing. all of the that this man who's traveling supposedly accidentally making a movie about his life oopsie doopsie look what i did oh you think it's contrived oh 100 but what's worse is um i i think he knows exactly how fucked up he is and i think he does not care and i and i'm worried about that yeah i i hate it so much because i can see myself in him and i'm like jesus fucking

Merlinchrist oh i can't i can't see myself in him at all yeah no no serial serial serial monogamist who's not actually that interested in the people he claims to love doesn't relate for me profiting

Alexoff of my my sorrow mental illness and like what no no and then but i mean it still felt even even watching and being like god i hate that i hate this and i hate that i do this and put myself and everything.

MerlinSo you just liked it on a lot of levels.

AlexYou just liked it as a piece of art. Many, many levels.

MerlinOkay, you just liked it. Okay, all right.

AlexI despised this movie.

MerlinOh my God, really? And it's long. It's also long.

AlexOh boy. The Burt Reynolds impersonator was funny. He was cute.

MerlinI think the women in this are just so, the roller, or like in The Mermaid, I don't know the names of all the people.

AlexShe's the first one.

MerlinThe first one, the really pretty girl who's going to be in the commercial and just the reaction shots from her friend. Like there's this, there's so many great reaction shots in this. Oh, the model, the model at the table. I liked her. I liked them all. But like, there's that one scene where the pretty actress woman is talking to her friend that she's staying with in Atlanta when she's going to try out for the commercial. And she's like, like, you know, I take you, like you wouldn't have, you wouldn't be like a, what was the phrase?

AlexShe said something. Oh, an exotic woman. Yeah, she wanted to be an exotic woman. But yeah, yeah.

MerlinOkay, right there. That's a pretty good example of Atlanta speak. Like she didn't call her friend old and ugly, except she kind of did. And then there was her holding her cigarette and just expressionless nodding along as the woman's talking. I love that shit. The lady with the glasses. The lady with the glasses on the treehouse. Like I love her.

Oh, my God. Just the women in this. The sister rowing the boat. Oh, my God. I love her so much. And she got the plastic surgery.

AlexI would be better at this if I was wearing underwear. Like, yeah, definitely. Well, and that's the thing. I'm like, does everything I have, not just like my bullshit in film school, but like has everything I've ever done seen, is it this manufactured and has it seen this manufactured? Because you know that he talked to dozens of women over the making of this film.

MerlinYeah, anytime you see a documentary, and when I say like, you know, save it in the edit, But like anything you see in a documentary is what they decided to have in the documentary. And this is also a problem with Michael Moore. Where like the first time when I saw – really roughly the same time when I first saw Roger and me. I was blown out of the water by Roger and me. I'd never seen anything like it. And then I saw other Michael Moore movies where, okay, the problem is like now it's almost like Shyamalan. Where like now I know your trick. And it's like, oh, you're really dishonest.

like you're very dishonest in the way that you put this together and you're playing fast and loose with a timeline where that really matters so like trying to make roger from gm look bad like was not difficult to do because the guy's kind of a piece of shit but also the way that he would it's almost like you know getting back to journalists those journalists who just like to yell those uh jim acostas who loved us just yell questions and then be interviewed later about how they yelled a question like that's that's almost the way this kind of documentary making works which is you've crafted this whole thing from whole cloth and like the

dishonest, each movie, the dishonesty is clearer to see.

AlexUh, yeah. And that's why I, I knew I wasn't going to like this coming into, um, I'm trying to like not shit all over it. Please. No,

MerlinI listen, please. I,

Alexthis is the show for you, for me.

MerlinWell, but like, I just, I would like, if I can, I mean, it's not my job but if i can put you at ease you don't need to have organized thoughts about this but if you feel free to speak freely that's why you're here uh well there's a lot to dislike i

Alexdon't know if there's i don't know if this movie not if this movie could be made but i don't think you can make a movie like this anymore but i also don't think you can make a tiktok like this

Merlinanymore like trying to act as it i mean like i i hate to be this particular 55 year old man but it was the early 80s it came out in 85 but i think he shot it like i like this is the latest time i rewatched was the first time that i went huh about one fact which is when he says when they showed the shots of him in like sweeping up in the loft like is that supposed to have happened before the stuff in the movie because i got a feeling he shot that after he made the movie

AlexYou can tell by the film grain.

MerlinIt looks it's much more arty and like composed in some ways. But like the shot of him, like I'm not trying to slag the guy, but when he walks up to the refrigerator and like stares in the refrigerator and then closes the door and walks away. Not so different from every queer eye where they quote unquote surprise somebody at work. And I turn to my kid and say, wow, it's really lucky that they had a camera inside before they got surprised. Why are we not talking about this? Why are we not talking about the cameras inside the building?

This well-composed shot of like a New York loft with drywall. You see him enter. You see him leave. You see him do something in between. You know, it's like a basic exercise from week two of film school.

AlexI don't know if you noticed this, but they kind of started not cutting quarters in Queer Eye, but like you can sort of tell like oh this was a covid uh closer to lockdown or not based on how oh give me an example um when it's uh when it's covid times or whatever or when it is um like you can probably it seems like april uh there they get rid of all of that like pomp and circumstance

of like yes bobby is picking out these various swashes and yeah karamo right it's much more

Merlinlike bobby bobby who is my favorite bobby sitting at like his mood board yeah his elevated architect mood board and like holding up swatches to the light and stuff like that because they can't do

Alexlocation and shooting is the implication right no no no no there is less of that because that requires that requires um multiple people to get multiple angles with multiple lighting in order to have that faux like um like yes this is authentic and whereas i well i think anyway the best episodes it is genuinely them just like sitting and talking to a camera and if it's just them uh well and by a camera i mean uh a camera and a person there because usually there's like

the you know the dp and then at least one producer probably two and but i don't know like this season they're like just a little bit more loose and i don't know i think it makes for better tv it's

Merlinjust fun whereas like this i just i i i i um i i can't stop making jokes about anthony because first of all he is so desperately handsome second they are finally giving a little bit of beef from anthony and i don't mean the kind he cooks unless it comes in a can but like you get some titty shots of anthony like walking the dog neon or whatever like there's so much more beef because he is categorically gorgeous, but he's also obviously useless. It's so funny. I know this

is a joke for like five seasons, but it's still funny. I wanted to talk to you. You've never climbed a tree. Well, this is something I think sometimes one way, it's such an important issue right now, a way to say I love you, it was with food. This is called a sandwich. Sandwich involves one, two or more pieces of bread and something in between. Olives come in cans and you use a can opener to open them.

Like when he goes to the barbecue person and is like going to show him how to make barbecue. It's like, are you fucking kidding me? That episode's good.

AlexOh, God. God, he's handsome. He's so handsome. He's handsome. I would have enjoyed it if he, you know what? If Anthony. Anthony. Anthony. Yes, that's what Polish people name. Okay.

Here's a question. When do you think F for Fake was made? The Orwell movie.

MerlinThe Orwell Wells.

AlexIt was Orwell.

MerlinEither 1947 or 1957, I'm guessing.

AlexWait, really? Or 1963.

MerlinI don't know. I have no idea. I watched it once a long time ago. That's a fun movie.

AlexThe only reason you say, well, I think after that movie was made, any sort of like self-referential trying to hide the documentary was dead.

MerlinOh, I'm sorry. I missed your point. I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The fact that like the whole point of that movie, well, not the whole point, but it's a very fun movie with a fun conceit, which is like if you're watching a movie, it's fake. End of story. Like this is like and I'm going to bring that to you through subterfuge and drawing you in and intimacy and misdirection and like all the ways that a good illusionist would do that. Right. Kind of.

AlexYeah. Yes. But not just like it wasn't just like effects are fake. It was like, oh, no, no, no. All of your feelings are fake, too, in this movie. Like, I don't think this guy.

MerlinI just mean that like there's this – I don't mean this to sound as cynical as it certainly does. But like I mean a generous way to put this is that every movie, any film, any video, it's all about decision making. What's in the frame? What's out of the frame, right? That's a nice way to put it. It's all about decision making. It's also – and that decision making means it's a lot about what you leave out and what you do leave in. you can choose to present in a certain way that bolsters a certain case,

whether that's a villain editor or a purple editor or whatever it is. Like, it's not cynical to say that like everything in a movie is made up unless, I mean, even like CC, like London, you know, security footage represents a choice. Like, where did you point the camera? How was it lit? You know, all that kind of stuff. That sounds dumb, but like we just, because if you don't notice the scenes or you don't notice the artifice or you like aren't haven't seen enough stuff to understand when you know you know just because you saw for example

the shot of the woman smoking and reacting to what the other woman was saying was perfect how do we know whether that was even shot on the same day that that woman was talking we don't because as the editor you have the choice of saying this will be more effective with this reaction than that reaction. And that sounds cynical. Like if you think of yourself as like, I'm a super fan of movies. It's all great. Journeys of the Mind. It's like, well, no, but like if you don't notice it, that means it's working. And if you do notice it, it means it's not.

That's what makes watching The Room or Fateful Findings, especially Fateful Findings, so interesting is like you don't even realize how much you know about film vocabulary until you see somebody who doesn't. and like you never, you don't even need to know what the 180 degree rule or sight line, you don't need to know what any of that means until you see it being done poorly. How come when this person's talking, they're looking over here and I can hear air conditioning. How come when this person's talking, they're looking in a different direction and there's no air conditioning. Well, that's like that person didn't go to film school or didn't pick up,

wasn't enough of a fan to learn how to work around those things. Whereas Tommy Wiseau, the master he made, he had made, did a very good job making a terrible movie. whereas Neil Breen does a terrible job making a bad movie

Alexdon't invoke the name

Merlinbe afraid

Alexdo you think hard agree no more books he wants that coffee so much

Merlineven after he passed out on his Sony he's still like trying to slurp up

Alexdo you think what's his name Ross Ross. Do you think Ross really set out to make a movie about the Sherman's March? Because he seems to maintain that story that, oh yeah, I was set out to make this movie and it became a different movie.

MerlinThat's a really good question. I'm trying not to be cynical.

AlexThat's where my cynicism comes. That feels inauthentic

Merlinto me. The whole pretense, the map at the beginning, all

Alexthat stuff that that's all like a bit it's it feel it feels like he was it feels like something joaquin phoenix would do except he'd probably do it better like i don't know and like uh

Merlinso so there's a there's a lot for you not to like about this on almost every i'm not being i'm not taking the mickey like but like the filmmaking in retrospect we look at and go wow that's that's pretty sloppy. I mean, you know, or that's pretty, like he's the worst kind of, I've told you this about acquaintances of mine, and I don't like to say this often, but I have acquaintances, I've had acquaintances in my life where I find the way that they behave difficult to understand, for example, right? And the way I would phrase it sometimes is either the way you're acting is a bit

or it's not a bit. The problem is, if the way that you're acting all the time is a bit and you know it, what the fuck are you doing? If it's not a bit and you don't know what you're doing, what the fuck is wrong with you? There's no good answer to the way you act. You can introduce some kind of like jokerified chaos theory to like, oh, you're a wild card, bitches. But like, why do you behave like this? Do you know like the way that you are? I say that here because like, when I watched this at the time, I very much thought,

I take no pride in saying this, Alex. I really felt like I got this guy because this is how I was before I learned distinctions between love and infatuation, before I learned that, and again, I know I'm not supposed to say this because it's codependent, before I learned that, like, I won't say that love is caring more about the other person. I think there's worse models. but love is like you love is like you want a kind of love that i would honor is the kind where you primarily want to help that person succeed and be happy in life which involves

stuff like learning what they really care about and not being dismissive about it it's just that in this is this a bit or is this not a bit why aren't you in love with me is this a bit or not a bit because neither way it's not a great look right isn't that kind of part of it oh yeah but

AlexBut at the same time, I despise it because I can still see myself in this guy.

MerlinI feel like 1,000% see myself in this.

AlexI don't like it on nearly every level. Well, I mean, some of the girls are hot. Programs are nice. Yeah.

MerlinRemember that? When Jane Krakowski is saying to Tina Fey, like, you never support what I do. And every time she goes to see it, I like the lights.

Speaker Asuch a good show

Merlinsuch a good show yeah what was I going to say I was going to talk about a Bunuel movie I'm going to mention two things here that I'll put in notes Land Without Bread and I think this you could argue that this might be the OG let's see Land Without Bread 1933 French language Spanish pseudo documentary directed by Louis Bunuel I want to repeat, 1933. So did you ever see this in your travels?

AlexOh, heck yeah.

MerlinOh, so you know this?

AlexYeah.

MerlinLike pushing the donkey off the mountain, you've seen this?

AlexYeah.

MerlinHoly shit. Okay, great.

AlexI didn't know. I thought you were doing this for the, yeah.

MerlinNo, no, no. I'm sorry. Well, no, because you never know. I mean, I wouldn't have seen this if it weren't for the film series at New College. The film focuses on the Las Jurdes region of Spain, the mountainous area around the town of La Alberca, and the intense poverty of its occupants. I just want to repeat.

1933. The intense, hilarious poverty of its occupants, who were so backwards and isolated that bread was unknown. A main source of income for them was taking in orphaned children for whom they received a government subsidy. So, but this is a, am I right? this is a made up documentary. It's a made up documentary about made up people with their made up problems. And it makes a point, but like 19 fucking 33,

they are, he already, I mean, obviously, I mean, there was already like a lot of film theory stuff out there. And like, he made a movie where they pushed the donkey off a mountain.

AlexWell, and the whole, like the quote point was to be like, yes, all, all movies are made up. See, we tricked you. but I'm can you I'm it I think it is a very good I don't know I find it entertaining but

Merlinwell it's definitely worth checking out historic like like the movie that it's often paired with Andalusian Dog it's you need to see these like if you like movies I mean same way I would say like oh god skip a ton of movies from the 80s and 90s that are funny and just go watch The General by Buster Keaton like there's these movies where you're like it's And these seem like they're from another time because they are. But there's – and especially if you can get a good print or, like, you know, watch on Criterion. I watched this Holocaust documentary on Criterion last night.

It was just gorgeous.

AlexHoarders and the Holocaust. My gosh.

MerlinYeah. And so it's – if you're like me and you grew up with – God, there's a series actually based in the Tampa Bay area that I think was syndicated nationally. I think it was called Masters of the Silent Screen. and you i got to see like all these really good silent movies um on saturday afternoons on pbs but like that's back when we all thought silent movies were people dressed as cops running fast on grainy damaged film but like if you see charlie chaplin in like a good print that's been

you know because we used to hand crank them and there's all kinds of reasons why they look dumb if you fixed all of that or like like buster keaton or like charlie chaplin any of that stuff like uh louise um what's her head uh any of those classics from back in the day they're just astonishing to watch and you're like oh this is this is where a lot of these people including some terrible racists basically developed a lot of the vocabulary for what we think of as as being a film but like it's like i say the thing to understand about the beatles is there was no beatles before the beatles the beatles were not copying the beatles they were the beatles

and in these instances like boon well was boon well like he and to some extent dali were doing some pretty crazy shit in the fucking 30s. I don't, you know, Dali, he took a lot of, he was Warhol before Warhol. He loved signing things and having his name on things, but he, there's a lot of stuff he didn't do.

It's true. Like, you know, when they built his museum in St. Pete that I've been to many times, you could like buy a sign, a tile that was supposedly signed by Dali. The biggest piece, when I visited there, last time I visited there, The largest piece, I think, at the time was the famous Toreador painting, which he totally didn't paint. He had people painted for him and he supervised it and said a little more red over there, more bull, like whatever. But, you know, of course he could. Like he, you can go and look at his paintings from the early 30s when he would be painting with a single horse hair.

And you can only really see it like in the flesh. Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is like, I don't know. there's lots of levels to enjoy stuff on, but in your case, you know enough to be dangerous.

AlexI knew enough to despise it on so many different levels. But I, the thing that like, if you're going back to the like silent film era, I mean, I'm thinking about, God, I was trying to find the title, but like the, the first quote gay movies, that were made like the majority have been destroyed well one of the first movies ever

Merlinshot was two men dancing well right wasn't one of edison's first things like two men dancing

Alexyeah people over like they were doing like a he he ha well so i mean like that's what they could i

Merlinmean i've got a lot of pictures of seltzer cans because every time i get a new camera and set it up the first thing i do is take a photo of whatever's next to me it doesn't make me a scholar of can.

AlexNo. But like there's...

MerlinThere's much to say. Notice the sweatiness of the outside of the can. It looks like aluminum because it is.

AlexNo, I just want seltzer. Oh, dear. You've got your hails coming. I'm very jealous.

MerlinI got it. I would be happy. Why don't we talk about it on the after show? I have a lot to say about the hails.

AlexOh, we should. We should

Merlinprobably get to that soon. any um i'm glad thank you for suffering me to watch this i'm sorry it was so long but um do you have anything else you want to say oh what was with the dog part what was i i'm not i'm

Alexnot doing a bit i'm like did some guy come in there uh there are actually a lot of cute dogs the one dog that's like attacking the a guy who has come in was that just like a one-off like

Merlinsomeone's broken into a house i totally don't remember this what part of the film was this Are you saying this is in Sherman's March?

AlexYes. Fuck, which woman was it? It's before?

MerlinI have to admit to you that I rewatched this in bits. And so like my, honestly, I haven't watched this in three or four years. And when I rewatched it this time, like I kind of watched it in like four sittings. So my chronology is a little screwed up.

AlexOkay. Well, you would remember like a dog literally foaming at the mouth, attacking. this guy that has come, but not attacking because he's on a leash? All right, I need to...

MerlinWhat about the African-American guy?

AlexOh, the piano player? Holy shit.

MerlinNo, like the guy who's like, you know, yeah, she passed. Like his face just squeezes my heart. I love that guy so much. I just want him to be happy. Him and Marina, that's all I really want. Well, I want other people. I want you to be happy. I want you and Matt to be happy. I want Ross McElweigh to be happy. Don't you?

AlexHe was making movies up until 2011. He did fine.

MerlinAnd for some reason, I shut off my tape recorder.

Show notes

Transcript

275. Mx. Sugartits

Show notes

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