290. Stand in My Sauce

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, eat hand salad. Merlin's finishing a tweet. So we are delayed by Merlin finishing a tweet. I have delayed us by breaking my foot

in two places Merlin has put on a delay put on a delay? does that even make sense? put on a delay oh I guess you could put like the sound on a delay that makes sense that's what the Oscars do in case you know someone slaps

Speaker Ait's due by Friday

Alexhey hey Hey, sorry, I was finishing a tweet. I missed your call.

MerlinIt's good to hear from you. How are you?

AlexI have been better, Merlin, man. May I tell you a tale? Then it'll almost be linear.

Speaker ASure. I mean, how would you? I mean, as your friend, how would you like me to respond?

MerlinWhat do you and your caregivers think would be the healthiest response?

Speaker AI mean, my gut is sure.

AlexOkay, all right.

Speaker ADid I just agree to any extraordinary terms? Oh, almost linear. Okay, makes note.

AlexAs I mentioned, I planned to be a Dob-Dob this week, the Worldwide Developer Conference for the beloved Apple Inc. but before that I had to stop in Utah to go to my brother's wedding

Speaker Aand people criticize me for interrupting

Merlinwhich is entirely fair but there's a really dark part and you wonder why I do that how's Merlin so selfish that he always interrupts couldn't the show be slower and less interesting if you just let people talk yeah in this one I am sorry I just want to let you know I'm sorely tempted to just let you talk

Speaker Aand then we'll see who the smart guy is Alex were you planning to go to Dob Dob

AlexI was planning to go to Dob Dob but the week before Dob Dob I was lucky enough to see my brother get married well married for the second time because I got married during COVID

Merlinyou're seeing it for the second time or he's getting married sorry I interrupted you

AlexI know what you meant. The first time I saw it on Instagram. The second time. Well, and then after my brother.

Speaker AMarry me once. Marry me once. Shame on me. Marry me twice. Shame on you. Sorry. Why aren't you Dob Dob?

AlexI had such. Listen, listen. I had such a beautiful time at this wedding that I even texted you. I will be furious if you do not come to my second wedding, which is probably going to happen in 2024 because we technically eloped. But no, this story is supposed to be linear. It's your fault. It's your fault. Anyway, as I am leaving this beautiful wedding.

MerlinJust so clear, the previous text I got from you was two days before that with absolutely no context at all on Sunday at 1230 p.m. in the time zone of our Lord Pacific. Merlin if you don't come to my second wedding we will be broken up for at least a week the second one still to Matt but still and I don't think I responded

Alexno maybe this is just going to be my new response

Merlinit's my new response you ready? sure

Alexno I honestly I expected like an oh you

Speaker Ado you come with the wedding?

AlexOkay, so about an hour, almost exactly an hour, after I sent you that text, I am leaving a beautiful wedding and walking in not quite heels.

MerlinDid they throw a birdseed? Birdseed or rice? Birdseed?

AlexNo, no.

MerlinWe don't throw rice, right? That's stupid.

AlexNo, I don't know. I have no idea.

MerlinIs that considered transphobic when you throw rice? What? Oh, no, it's obviously it's racist. Well, against birds. Against birds.

AlexI'm so not racist. I did not understand that joke. I don't see species. Oh, boy. Well, and walking to a car, and I know we don't use cars anymore, but it's Utah. There's a lot of hills. And I just tripped on these very girly sandals I was wearing because I insisted, no, no, no. I will wear a dress to this wedding because I don't want to be like, we didn't want to be the trans couple.

So I was like, you know, it's just, it's just easier. I will wear a dress, but the mistake, which was fine. But the mistake I made was wearing girly shoes because as I'm leaving the wedding, I trip and fall and I broke my foot in two places. Um, and,

MerlinI have to say, I don't. Well, I remember when, like, maybe it was in health class. No, no, I guess it would be in bio in, like, whatever, 10th grade. But learning about how many bones there are in the hand and how many bones there are in the feet, it really freaked me out. I mean, it's not like I hadn't thought about it. I understand that in order to be a hand, right, to have the aspect, I don't want to be ableist. But in order to have the useful performance capabilities of a hand, you have to think about it for half a second. There's got to be so many bones. there's so much fucking shit in your hands and feet that can break and you never think about it

until you think about it and you got bones i mean aren't there like a redonkulous number of bones in your hands and feet and then there's all the little sinews and muscles and nerves and all the things there's so much shit you can do to fuck up your hands and your feet that will have a huge impact on your life think about waymond the three cuts he could do the fourth cut oh how is that That is maybe one of the most difficult scenes in the movie. Because your hands are special. Eyes, feet, and hands. But I'm telling you, as a man of my age, the smallest,

I can't even tell what's wrong with a part of my ankle or foot, except that I know I'm fucked. And you managed to just on your own, with your own body, break it. I really don't want the super details of it, but was it pretty, did it hurt a lot?

AlexNo, that's the problem.

MerlinOh, really? Was one of them a toe? Because a toe break easy.

AlexYes.

MerlinSo you got a toe break. And what was the, if you can say upset.

AlexNo toe, Jerry. No toe. No toe. Just, and I was like, oh, I got a bump. I'm like, oh, it's fine. And I did text you and your family. I'm like, ha ha, look at my Apple watch has told me I've fallen again. That's funny.

MerlinI didn't get that. You didn't send it to me.

AlexOh, it didn't? Okay. And I was like, oh, cute. I had a fall alert and then I'm like, huh

MerlinI saw it on the internet the next day

Alexand then I apologize, I don't deserve your loyalty I can afford it, I don't deserve it oh gosh who knows anymore

Merlinwas I in your dinette area

Alexat the time? you looked down the hall and I was

Merlinsitting there waving, hi Alex

Alexthis is supposed to be Lydia

Speaker Ait's your story

Alexoh boy

Speaker Adear story I'm just trying to paddle through it in a canoe

Merlinwhat

Speaker Awhat why is the water spaghetti sauce

Alexlet me stand

Speaker Ain my sauce

AlexI take it back I didn't fall I did not fall a 50 something man came up and pushed me and then ran away that is what happened

Merlinoh my god I can't believe it happened again.

AlexIt happened again. Were you standing in a fucking doorway? I was.

Speaker AWas it preceded by someone saying, excuse me, could I please get by you? And then you didn't move before he didn't actually push you.

AlexFor some reason, he was carrying a suitcase. I don't know, but I was in a doorway.

MerlinHe seems like the kind of person who could really afford to behave badly in public.

AlexYeah.

MerlinThat seems like a thing he probably does a lot.

Speaker AAnd everybody who knows him would say he's definitely the guy who does shit like that all the time because he knows he can afford to do it in public.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinAndy Garcia was very rude to me at a Lakers game. Yes, I remember that. Okay, so.

AlexOh, so after my fall, I'm like, huh, that's funny. And I just got up and walked to the car. and my spouse Matthew, of course, is freaking out because my foot looks a little weird, but it's not swollen or bruised. So I'm like, yeah, it's probably fine. We go back to our hotel.

MerlinIs there any chance you think you might have been in a little bit of shock? Probably not.

AlexAfterward, well, what had happened was, or at least according to the orthopedic surgeon, was like you probably were on a mix of like, acute shock which is like you don't even really notice it and adrenaline because i was at a beautiful wedding and i was really happy so i was literally too happy to notice apparently the pain in my uh foot and we go back to the hotel and about an hour later i'm like huh maybe uh you

know what man give me like a foot brace or something oh my gosh really you yeah so you

Merlinreturned to civilian life it wasn't like you you got treatment there right away oh my goodness okay no no oh so you really were like most more okay with it than you should have been probably i don't know i don't mean in terms of your your decision making but in terms of the effect the well i mean if you're in enough well first of all if you can't if you're not conscious you should probably go to a hospital or similar yes um but but if you're like if you hurt a lot well sure like even i would want to go to a hospital and i don't go to doctors but if you If you don't feel hurt and maybe if you're a little – again, I always think of Marco on COVID.

But I always feel very self-conscious. I don't like being the center of attention for that particular reason. I'm like, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Don't worry about me. Right. Which is one reason I've stopped eating marijuana brownies because I don't want to wake up with yet another woman screaming in my face at 3 a.m. Your eyebrows bleeding.

Never eat marijuana brownies a third time ever, ever. No.

AlexOh.

MerlinYou know what I'm saying now? Like, so you had, there wasn't enough pain that made you want to do that. Were you being encouraged? I'm sorry. You said Matt was, quote, freaking out. And did Matt want you to go to an ER or an ED, as they say?

AlexInitially. But again, no bruising or swelling whatsoever. So he's like, oh, okay, that's fine. Let's just get you a brace. And I'm like, huh, it's kind of starting to hurt. Should I, like, get a cane? And he's like, yeah, sure. Why not?

MerlinThis is basically an analogy for every American's life. It's like, you know, if you think about it, it's like, you know, you're hurt.

Speaker AYou know, I'm just going to go find some way to prop this up since I refuse to get actual help. And if I could get actual help, I wouldn't be able to afford it. I'll just drive my Uber like this till I die. Oh, well, apart from that, how'd you enjoy the wedding?

Alexas my lovely spouse is picking up some supplies i decided to google like my insurance decided to treat my break with wagers no no no i no no no i was like you know what i should wear your bandages ma'am i i was like all right i should you know what does my insurance and cover emergency visits in other states?

Speaker AI wish I could give you mine. The answer is no.

MerlinI wish I could give you my insurance and my spouse. They're the ones who are really in love with each other. They're both lovely.

AlexYeah, patreon.com slash Dubai Friday. Dubai Friday. I have insurance. It does not cover out-of-state emergency rooms.

Speaker AOh.

AlexBut then I come...

Speaker ACouldn't you hold up your finger like a fake mustache and say, hey, I'm totally Mormon?

AlexHello.

Speaker AHello. Hello, I would like to give my testimony about a revelation. The Heavenly Father broke my foot.

AlexI don't celebrate Christmas, do you?

Speaker AI'm Andrew Garfield. Okay, okay.

AlexOh, but Matthew comes back with, honestly, a boss-ass looking cane. And I was like, ooh, I want to try this. Do you know how lucky you are with Matthew?

MerlinDo you really have any idea?

AlexOh, my God, no.

MerlinDo you not have any idea what Matthew does behind the scenes? I know me making a reference to Hong Kong Fu is not going to make a lot of sense, but he was a dog who did Kung Fu, and he had a cat that actually did all the work for him, and he never realized it. He thought he was a superhero. He was played by Scatman Crothers. And he said, Hong Kong, look, a Kung Fu. And I don't mean to be racist, but that's how Scatman Crothers talked. But it would turn out behind the scenes, his cat was always the one that was putting the net under the window and stuff, and he never realized it.

AlexOh, well, that's the thing. is I am trying to realize. What I'm asking is,

Speaker Adoes Matt do that for me too? Or could he? Hey, oh, we can become a throuple. Oh my God. No, no, no, no, no.

MerlinI haven't ejaculated since 1988. Don't worry. But here's what I'm saying. No, I mean, I haven't even tried.

AlexWow, it must have been pretty difficult to make a kid. How many, only lesbians are supposed to use a turkey baster. That's really a feller.

MerlinWell, it depends how hungry you are.

AlexI'm also, well, so I was like, I'm going to try this very cute looking cane.

Speaker ADon't eat the turkey paste. Don't eat the paste. Oh, no. That's no good, boss. That's my base.

MerlinThat is a sitcom I would only watch one episode of If they have little mix ups Like little IVF mix ups every week

Speaker AHas anybody seen my Baste? Hey man I'm making a mixtape That was Devin And he's dead now How will I refill my baster?

It's done man Sorry about that you should really label these things with sharpie we throw out all the semen every Friday alright

Alexand turns turns out I go and you use the cane and I googled how to do it so I would not break something else but unfortunately it put a tiny tiny bit of pressure on my foot completely collapsed I could not like I have never experienced that much pain in my life.

MerlinBut isn't that, that's like, it's a feeling that like as an adult is so, it's such a familiar feeling. Actually, there's a joke about this on the tick where the, I love the tick, tick gets thrown through a window and it's falling down a building and talking about that peculiar feeling of falling. And it's like, you know, that feeling of like, oh no, not dissimilar from like the tunnel vision of passing out what you say you haven't had. But similar thing where you're like, oh, no, something has Jenga'd out from underneath me. And now I will be going all the way down.

And I've had enough time to realize it.

AlexYes. This is the first time I've had the tunnel vision. Oh, really?

MerlinOh, doesn't it suck?

AlexIt was not pleasant.

MerlinAnd it's a lot closer to being the vision of a tunnel than you might guess. There's so much shit when we have analogies about that. But it is really suddenly like somebody has opened. Oh, shit. What do you call it? Not a telescope. Like what's the thing the pirates like a wormhole?

AlexWell, for me, it felt like a wormhole.

MerlinBut like but like somebody opened a very long telescope or a hallway just doesn't reverse dolly zoom.

AlexAnd it was fucked up because I was also because I was in a hotel hallway. So it was like like some shining shit.

MerlinOh, you had some Inception shit going on.

AlexOh, man. Oh, man. Joseph Gordon Levitt and Elliot Page showed up and they were like, hello. Come play with us, Alex, forever and ever.

MerlinDo not go in room 237 because I left my baster there.

AlexThat is a very disgusting joke, but I don't know if people will. Oh, God. Oh, man, I don't want to body shame that.

MerlinDid my kid send me the photo of the guy who bought the dog suit? Have you seen the dog suit?

AlexNo, your kid is too cool for me, as is correct.

MerlinNo, I think you guys are each becoming more scared and antisocial about the other. I'm going to write down dog suit.

AlexAs everybody in the Mann family gets cooler, I'm just like, nope, nope.

MerlinOkay, so anyway, you've gone to room 237. Tunnel vision. Oh, yeah, tunnels.

AlexRight, right, right.

MerlinDid you actually, you lost consciousness when you went down?

AlexNo, I did not. It was, and then I was like, Matt, emergency room. Yep. And so, yep, about two hours later at a very nice emergency room, I saw an x-ray of my foot that was very upsetting.

MerlinYeah, I don't want to see that.

AlexYeah, yeah, no, that was something that I'm like, not even I will put that on the internet. Ow! But then the flighted, sorry, I still have to be on the good painkillers that I'm terrified of because of the series Dope Sick. Oh, sure. But they do sure help.

Well, okay, fine. We're going to go in a bit of a not linear place. I've only, again, the weird high pain tolerance thing is very much like a double-sided sword. Yeah, that's the metaphor. But this is the first time that I feel like I've actually needed them. So it's not, I don't even get to feel high. I get to just sound like a dummy. Well, more so than usual. No, I know what you mean. But yeah, not a fan of opiates. But at the hospital. It's funny.

MerlinI've heard people talk about this. I don't know. I mean, people always say like, oh, you know, like a character in a movie who's a druggie person will be like, oh, I'm like more into uppers than downers or I'm more into like, you know, downers and uppers or whatever. And like I definitely am a person who's not into downers or whatever. What are the whole – when I say downers, I don't mean a specific – hello, may I please have a downer? I mean any of the things like I'll just – in the whole class of – I'm probably making a false binary here. But when you think about people who take things, there's the stuff that makes you a little bit hopped up and energetic and there's the stuff that kind of smooths you out.

And I think of the second group as being your opiates, opioids, you know, things back in the day like Valium or what's the one in Wolf of Wall Street? Everybody used to take Quaaludes.

Speaker AQuaaludes. Yeah. Right?

MerlinLike all of those. Boy, this is so easy for me to describe personally. why would you want to take Adderall or ephedrine or whatever? And I can tell you, if I take those and I don't take too much, too little I can live with, and it's not too much, it makes me feel a lot more like myself.

If I take the opposite of that, if I take the dope sick things, it makes me feel a way lot less like myself. And yeah, whether you like me a lot is real, not you. If the person listening doesn't like me, it's not so much my concern. It matters to me, though. I don't want to – I don't like spending any amount of time feeling over much like not myself. You know what I'm saying? Which is why I've been so like, Alex, are you sure you want to make all these jokes about taking acid? Because if you're – let's just say – let me just put a punctuation mark on last week's episode.

If you're not really sure what you're in for with drugs, then, boy, it's really useful to know what you're in for. if one, not Alex, but if one does not know what they're in for and just goes and fucks around and finds out you may be in some cases I'm not trying to be scary, I'm not trying to fud people I'm not trying to even say no to drugs but unless you are prepared for 12 hours of being extremely not yourself like in a European independent film torture sort of way it's supremely not fun

and there's some pretty dark rooms you didn't even know existed until your drug experience goes bad. Again, I'm not trying to make this an episode of Dragnet. I'm just saying it's not like having an extra glass of wine and then going to sleep later. No, no, no. It's real bad. So that's why, but I mean, like, I think that's, couldn't that be, I mean, like, you know, I'm always pulling this out whenever I feel like my advice or my, as I say, my testimony is, I often wonder, is it because I feel like I haven't really made a point and so I go emotional

and like, you know, like I do sometimes to try and like figure out how to end something. And I talk a lot, you'll hear me say from time to time about how I like, here's the thing I feel positively about because it helps me be more of who I want to be. And like, not who I am, like really who I want to be. And when I'm doing this a lot and why, when a man gets angry, you know, really encourage him to interrogate whether it's because he's not who he wants to be right now. It's a really big thing with guys. You really got to ask yourself, are you really, you know, like the wonderful actress in The

Gilded Age? I don't hate you. I hate my life. And I really do think, first of all, I want to stipulate that for most men, I won't say anger is the default emotion, but anger is the default result or the default resultant emotion. Well, I mean, I think, again, not to be all binary here, but I think people who are not men, whatever they are, tend to have much more, tend to have, I'll just say at least, more complex toolboxes of reactions to things.

Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, right? Like Elaine Bennis says.

Speaker AYes.

MerlinLike, we just make fun of them until they get an eating disorder. I'm not saying non-men are necessarily better, although they certainly are. But men, when men get, well, whether all the seven dwarfs of bad emotion, right? Whether that it's like you feel, let's talk about the stuff, right? Let's talk about the stuff of my fellow hosts. Like you could be, you feel, you could be, you feel left out. You feel looked over. You feel not appreciated. You feel humiliated. You feel sad. You feel alone. Isn't it amazing that in men, all of these very different, but admittedly associated

seven dwarfs of bad emotion. that almost all of the way I feel, the B of this, ends in the C of now I'm so fucking angry. Isn't it wild that that is such? And I'm not saying there aren't non-men who haven't or don't do that. I'm just saying that for men, we have not been broadly discouraged from making that the way that we end up because we have our reasons. Well, goddammit, man, why are you so fucking mad? Because I'm the father of a daughter.

Oh, you know, why are you so fucking mad? Because I really believe in human rights. Or are you sure you just don't feel alone or sad or overlooked or mad that somebody didn't star your tweet?

AlexWell, that's the issue with the binary is I do think it is oversimplified when we think that men just default to anger. But like it is the easiest and the default for women is fear. Like those are just –

MerlinOh, shit, dog. That's so true. But do you honestly think that men – there's a difference in the amount that gendered men, gendered women end up at – oh, you know what though? Because then you get the Rebecca Solnit part and that's absolutely true. It's just that men are not only allowed but are encouraged to express and operationalize their anger. Whereas as the great Rebecca Solnit's book tells us, with women, it's not really quite that simple. No, no, no. You could be disappointed and that can make you mad. But I've never better notice you even if you if you get mad at me in a dream, you better apologize.

That kind of shit, right?

AlexOK, this is we're going to go back in time, actually, now to this nonlinear story. Whoa. Thursday. What happened? OK, Thursday. Why'd you cut me off? What? This because you hear the machine is very relevant to. No, no, no. what you're like i can't actually but i uh this was my first flight since 2019 and on thursday when i left for utah and as a lot of people have been experiencing our flight was canceled for

no reason other than i guess not enough staff showed up and it's really interesting to watch like the stages of grief when people know that a flight has been canceled if kubla ross had traveled more it would have been a real different book it was it was like i now i've entered stage

Speaker Athree begging i'm so close i just need one connecting flight and i'll be home can i could

Alexyou have a daughter well uh so after the flight is canceled the uh there's the loud groan of everybody in line it was literally like right as we are about to board and this poor i i don't know like a flight like gate attendant or whatever they're called she's like uh please don't yell at me i'm just the messenger the fact that she had to say that broke my heart into a million pieces And I understand.

MerlinAnd talk about a chicken problem. It's not going to save her, unfortunately. That's it's it. Think about all the jobs like TSA. I always say TSA would be the worst job for me. Not for any reason. Apart from it is my existential nightmare of no matter how many times you say the thing that is your job over and over. Every couple minutes, at least there's going to be somebody who didn't hear it. Wasn't trying to be a jerk. But it's the worst customer service job in the world where it's literally impossible that everybody will remember that they got to take their water out and throw it away.

And how do you stay who you want to be in that job? How are you not yelling at people for no reason all the time?

AlexAnd that's the thing is I also understand because as all of these airport employees are like, all right, I'm going to take half of you over here. we're gonna figure it out we're gonna reschedule you half of you you know go over here and of course they say there's no flights available for that day and oh man watching there were a lot of college kids going like flying to their um college orientations and that oh that was really hard to

watch like the these like teenagers being like as really polite and just like crying and and but and Well, a lot of young women crying and young men yelling. And I was like, wow, that is – I wasn't making any judgment. But we are really trained to socialize that way because I assume at least they were having the same emotion but with a similar reaction.

Or sorry, but with the opposite.

MerlinAnd when you get desperate, you find – I don't know. I can't say it's just when you get desperate. Like if you're an effective person who knows how to get things accomplished, I wish I were. But like I feel like I don't do extraordinary shit like that most of the time, I don't think. But it is at the point when you feel like you've run out of tools you're good at that you do either like a default thing or some crazy shit. So it could be, oh, my God, I'm going to cry. Well, why is that woman crying at the desk? Because it might help.

She didn't go up there to cry. But maybe there's some part of her lizard. Well, okay, could be, but I'm just saying, no, no, no, no, I'm just more like.

AlexThere's another part of the story where I was a baddie. Well, maybe a goodie. I don't know. But you're right. Yeah.

MerlinWell, but that's the second kind. The first kind is my lizard brain has me doing this. And maybe I'll bet there are dimes to donuts. And forgive me, I hate to be witness for the prosecution here. But, you know, there's a lot of fucking guys whose default reaction and non-default and every kind of reaction is to fucking go nuts. act like there's an implication of violence and get really angry. And let's just be clear here. When we say anger, like when we're talking about demonstrable anger, let's, you know, strap a couple other ideas to that.

Anger also really implies the threat of violence. Even if not violence, anger represents the threat of chaos or being out of control. And so very few people want more chaos and out of control in their day.

AlexUnless they're the one causing it. But I don't think.

MerlinThe crying woman is causing the chaos?

AlexNo, no, no. I don't think the people who are, you know, having that vague, threatening aura don't usually know that they're doing it. And that is.

MerlinOf course. No, no, they absolutely don't. That's their lizard brain. Yeah.

AlexAnd which is.

MerlinAnd everything their entire life. I mean, you know, again, if you're raised as a man before the last generation or so, at least, this isn't like one of the very first episodes of Rectives. Like being bullied in school was considered to be part of the education.

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinLike if you weren't such a and I'm going to use a nicer word than they did. If you didn't behave like such a queer, you would not be getting your ass kicked all the time.

AlexYep, yep.

MerlinYou need the whole purpose of this gym class is to make you embarrassed about your body and to understand how the ape order works. that is why all these gym class is just the most like you know kind of on the nose example but there's ample examples of like of the vice principal you know basically letting this thing slide because they like the bully more than you or at least let's put it they respect the bully more than you like they have to deal with the bully you think that let me put it this way that vice principal you think they want to talk

to the bully's parents about this again because they're what they're probably that bully's dad is probably really nice

AlexYeah, they'll probably really want to get on that Zoom call to talk about it.

MerlinIt's bullying all the way down. But that's what they needed us to internalize. I mean, the bullying is a feature, not a bug.

AlexYes, and the whole stereotype and cliche of locker room talk goes both. A women's locker room.

MerlinYou mean like the undermining stuff and like, oh, I think I could see her having her period. Oh, my God. Did you hear that you could see her having your period? Like that kind of like way of like humiliating and isolating another girl.

AlexWell, yes. But like I'm also talking about like men like, oh, Trump grabbing a pussy. That's just locker room talk. Boys will be boys. And oh, yeah, girls will be girls. God, the locker room of just it's I've never been in like a carry situation where someone's throwing tampons but wow i'm looking back at like middle school alex plug it up plug it up

Merlinso that's what i thought well are you talking more about like more explicit sex talk or just more when you say i'm trying to follow what you mean by uh a gab assigned girl at birth locker

Alexroom talk what is the distinction uh cruelty cruelty the similarities the cruelty is you

Merlinthe cruelty and the sort of almost like the violence with men i think part of the thing of locker room talk i'm sorry i don't know why i'm being such a woke philosopher today but you know you listen to what trump said to that little man on the bus that was captured on tape and it's it's a part about sex it's probably about you know fake sexual boasting but it's also about the whole point of what the man says is when you're a star, they let you do anything, which is his way of saying, I can make women do what I want because they know who I am.

I can basically, I can sex on anybody, whether they're into it or not. They let you do it, which is another way of saying I'm allowed to, I'm allowed to control someone with violence because there's nothing they can do about it. If you just if you keep running that through your prospector, you know, screens until you get down to the dust, what you're going to end up with. I'm allowed to be violent with women and no one can stop.

AlexIt is the bravado of like literally like in a locker room of like, yes, I am the one who has control. But in a women's locker room, it is there's a similar thing where it's like, OK, I am this girl who is going to act like I like my body and I have control over how I feel about my body. And I'm going to be like, OK, yes, I've got.

Does this like make sense? Like, yeah, I am going to have the bravado of like, I know that I am a hot girl when really you don't.

MerlinWell, and can I run that through my prospector screens for a minute?

AlexYes, please, please.

MerlinI realized fairly early on that, you know, I don't know. I think that saying things to people and listening to people, and I think all of these bullshit things that we talk about are way overrated. People say so much more to each other about what they do than about what they have a speech about. You know, I've really, and I want to dissuade all the people in my life from trying to have meaningful speeches with their kids. Because I think especially after a certain age, but my God, thankfully after a certain age, thank God your kid is no longer subject to somebody acting like an authority.

They can force the child to listen to what they did and then promise to do it.

Speaker AYeah.

MerlinYou know what? Consider that a valuable thing. if your kid has the stones or the lady stones or the person stones to say fuck you to that vice principal there's ways in which i super respect that a lot more than well here let me go check you for crabs yeah like the ability seriously i mean no because because why because authority is always exercised in the most reasonable and uh safe possible way like but anyhow you can't tell a kid this, Alex, I couldn't

hear this. I imagine you couldn't hear this.

Speaker AOh, hell no. I don't even bother.

MerlinBut here's what I'm going to tell you. What I've wanted to say to my kid, I've probably said this, but not really. But seriously, you guys, stop doing the meaningful look into their eyes, talk with kids. It freaks them out, and it doesn't help. Stop. Why don't you listen to them more than you tell them what to do? Just shut the fuck up. Okay, but here's the thing. Look, if I were going to do that, and I was going to hold the tiny little ravioli-sized hands, of a child, I would say to them, look, I know, I'm going to tell you something that's like next to me saying you've always been able to fly. This is going to be the, maybe the most unbelievable thing

I've ever said to you. Those kids, those fucking assholes at your school and in the world are probably a lot more scared about life than you are. Like you're scared of the bully, but the bully is scared of fucking everything. And I don't say that to excuse what they're doing. all I can say is look for evidence that that might be the case. Look for evidence that the girl who seems most confident in her body, the person, wouldn't you have to be supremely confident in yourself, in your body?

Wouldn't you have to be like the uber feminist in order to like make fun of everybody else's body? Wouldn't you have to love your body a lot? Huh. I mean, it seems like that, but could I give you a reframe on that? Could it be that maybe, A, they're not all that comfortable about their body. Oh, great insight, Dad. But could it also be that, hmm, maybe they do or don't like their body. Maybe it doesn't matter if they like their body, but they know you hate yours.

And that's what matters. So, and this is the whole thing of the whole, like, both sides-ism of, like, on the one hand, like, oh, you know, everybody's got a political axe to grind. Or on the other hand, oh, you know, these people are right and these people are wrong. Well, what if you're dealing with a fucking troll terrorist and you're going to try and good faith them into being nice to you? What if somebody is only there dealing with you because they like fucking with you? What if their whole deal, for whatever reason, is just fucking with you?

And the more you let yourself be fucked with or respond in a way that encourages them to build larger and larger posses of troll terrorists, isn't that what we're really talking about, dude? Yeah. Whatever your cab is or whatever your AB is, you will at some point between – pick up a cab wherever you want. Yes. But somewhere between fourth and ninth grade, you will find yourself, even if it's not really who you are, let alone who you want to be, at some point, at least once between fourth and ninth grade, you're going to wish so much that you could be loved by the person.

by the bully. You're going to, you're going to not, it doesn't have to be your bully, but you're going to want to be with, you know, uh, uh, with, uh, shit, what are they called? Regina and, uh, and their group, the Mean Girls. Yes, yes, yes.

AlexWhat are they called? The Mean, the, oh, fuck. Um.

MerlinPlastics.

AlexThank you. Yes.

MerlinYou're going to really, the plastics, because you are so scared of them, or like, fuck, go back to the same movie for years earlier. Go back to Heather's.

AlexYeah.

MerlinLike, you know, even Martha Dump Truck would want to be loved by the Heathers. Yep. I'm going to call you that from now on. That's your name now. Your new name is Martha Dump Truck.

Speaker AMartha Dump Truck. Are there such a thing as a lesbian pole dancer? I shouldn't ask.

MerlinLadies and gentlemen, please welcome Martha Dump Truck.

Speaker AAnd somebody

Merlincomes out and plays some very sensible folk

Speaker Amusic. Martha just stomps in one place and adjusts her keys.

AlexSee, I picture her taking a single key off and like, ah, another key?

Speaker AOh, a key stripper.

MerlinBut like instead of popping balloons,

Speaker Athey take keys off their room. She's down to 11.

AlexOh, she's taking that Patagonia off.

Speaker ATake off that 11th key. Oh, God. I bet your underwear is big.

Alexas i am in plastics martha dump truck i i am a martha dump truck now in this uh airport situation where a flight has been canceled you're so good at getting back to the story

Merlinare you taking new medication? What's going on? You've never done this ever before. You've come back to the story three times as if you remember where you started. I'm trying so hard. Did you write it down? You wrote it down, didn't you?

AlexOh, no. Every time I... Jokes, forcing jokes out of the room, every time I've tried to prepare for this show, it's been a disaster. And on other shows, I do actually prepare.

MerlinI think we always prepare for the wrong parts. Yes. Oh, fuck, that's good. You know what I mean? It's like studying for the wrong test.

Alexyes yep it's i mean like your whole thing of like what's in the shows in the show is a lot deeper i i think about it a lot more deeply i i don't know i think about it a lot

Merlinin a hopefully good way i mean there are times where like i don't know it's sort of like i've never had like an improv class see you at improv rehearsal that guy seems like a real dick you Want me to kill him for you? No, but anyway. But this improv thing of like, you know, like the whole thing of not even the S and ha ha. But the more of the like, like, you'll be so much better off if you don't try to prepare, if you don't have a bit in mind. Because first of all, you'll never be able to do the bit.

But you're thinking about trying to do the bit is going to make it more difficult for you to be tuned into what's actually happening. And if you can eliminate any distraction that takes you out of what's actually happening now rather than your plan, right, it's going to fuck this up. And I think that's – so like for example, I actually did – I had a joke ready in my mind. Not a joke ready in my mind but as in like sometimes I – you know how people like ruminate about the future and what will happen? I do that with relations – not relationships but like interactions with people.

And sometimes if even I'm just like idly sitting around, I'll say something funny in the rumination that I would definitely never have a chance to say. But so, yes, you could say that I have a joke prepared. I don't think of it that way because I don't really have a joke prepared. I had I made myself laugh about the future title. Oh, and so I had gone into the polling station 20 minutes after a thought having occurred to me. and I'm going to tell you a true thing.

It was nice. I went in there. There's some high school students working there. My next door neighbor was there voting and I'm like, hey, name a person and they're like, hey, name of Merlin and I was there for one reason. I forgot to send in my ballot. My lady friend bugged me three times a week about it and I still forgot and I was like, oh, fuck. But there's only one thing I like super duper cared about. Everybody, shut up. But I wanted to vote a certain way on a ballot measure. And, spoiler alert, it lost egregiously.

But I did vote. So I walked in. I said, hi, Lisa. Name a person. I walked over. I drew the line on the ballot. I said, no on H. And then I walked. It took me 11 seconds. And this is a four sheets, eight pages ballot. So here's me. Not even digital? Hey, Lisa. Or no, well, you do the thing you do the, you know, scantron and then it goes into this box.

AlexOh yeah. No, sorry. I didn't even know that was still a thing in some places. Anyway.

MerlinYeah. Well, it's comes in a little, well, it comes in a folder. Woof. I've worked in an office in years. 42 more comes and I can go. Yep. The, um, yep. So anyway, that was a dumb joke, but I, zip, I filled in the thing. I stuck in the folder. I walk over the thing. I go to the machine. They say, okay, are you done already?

Speaker AAnd I was like, they said, and this was the bit.

MerlinWell, I had to stick the thing in. I put it into the thing, very bad UX. And it goes, blank, blank ballot. Are you sure you want to continue? Choose a language. I said, yes, I do want to continue English. Put in the second sheet.

Speaker ABlank ballot. Do you wish to continue?

MerlinPlease pick a language. Still English, buddy. Blank ballot. Do you wish to continue? you could you do you want to pick pick a language english please put in the fourth one you voted please pick a language english thank you and they said wow that was the the poll worker who's who's helping me with this says wow that's really fast you're done and i said yeah i said i heard we get penalized for guessing it actually did happen is that is the 20 minutes before that i was thinking about that and then i

did have an opportunity to say it. Now, if that were an improv scene, now that person, I think they played it off legit. I don't think they think I prepared that because I'm pretty good as a amateur humorist. But when you prepare for a podcast and you're not an outlining podcast, I mean, it's one thing like I've done this with You Look Nice today. I eventually, did I ever tell you this? I created a flagged drafts document of there's my checklist for all the things I have to do before a podcast. But the other thing was things that are almost always funny on You Look nice today. We're like, if I'm not sure what's going on, and it's more partly a way of saying

like, I like to cook and I like salty food, but I don't want that to be the only thing that I use. I like tarragon in scrambled eggs, but I sure as shit don't want tarragon in everything and you don't need that much. One must understand one's spice rack if one is going to put spice into foods and it must flow. Also the herbs. And that's what I look, I go look at the recipe box and I say, for some reason, every time we talk about lobsters, it's funny.

I don't know why, is it the word lobsters? Is it the idea of, you know, Oliver Sacks' notion of pain and lobsters or whatever? What's funny about Oliver Sacks? Always funny. Think about, or like, or just like the way,

Speaker Abringing back the word ladies I had not used the word ladies since the 70s or 80s

Merlinbecause I had learned not to use that word it's not why was it funny to me the first time on this show we were talking about sunglasses or underwear or something and one time Scott Simpson said something like you know and sunglasses for ladies and the way he said it was so fucking funny to me And it became a thing we started saying on the show, not by design. But I'll go and I'll look at that because that's my spice shelf. But when you prepare for like, I mean, would you write jokes for a date?

AlexI know people who have done that. It's Kara, right? No, no, no.

MerlinNo, you can say it.

AlexIt's not.

MerlinWhat kind of jokes does she write?

AlexNo, no.

MerlinIt's like when Dan says, I have a friend who, yeah, I know you do.

Speaker Aum sorry sorry i i think i might need to go to an osteopath okay okay anyway people are terrible

Merlinno but i and you want to be loved by the plastics and you became a plastic at the airport is what

Alexi'm getting no no i wanted the the customer service people were actually the plastics and And I was like, I told Matt, listen, you are going to see me look very, very sad. But I promise everything is fine.

Speaker AOh, shit. You're Waymond. I was like, you're Waymond. No, no, no.

MerlinYou put you popped up the umbrella and you said, don't talk to me about this because I won't know what you're talking about. I'm going to walk over there, take off my glasses, eat a chapstick and do shit you've never seen. And please, please don't be freaked out about it.

Speaker AI just see you hulking out and tearing off your button up shirt.

AlexI was literally like, well, this is another thing I realized. It's not until you don't have your job until you realize, wow, I'm really fucking good at this. Because I have been able to get people to and from when you were when you were Martha, when I well, but not the Martha character, not Martha Dump truck. Yeah, my me and Martha character, or now my Cuck Marty character, which is just like, oh, my God, please. I have no control, which is honestly like me.

MerlinCuck Marty is an animal. Oh, my God. This is your symbol.

AlexYes.

MerlinWhich I know is not real, but whatever. But so on the one hand, Martha, no last name. Martha, Martha, last name withheld. Martha, last name withheld is the character you would pull out where you were the officious office manager was kind of like how you came off. Right. When you're dealing with vendors, I'm sorry. Tell people about Martha. Martha is an amazing character, and people who have not listened to this show for years and years may not have heard of Martha.

AlexWhen I worked at Cards Against Humanity, we did a lot of events at various conventions. And to get things like traveling to gaming conventions, what you're imagining is probably correct. And when you need to get like 20 performers to a place from various states to.

MerlinWhen you've got to get through, when you've got to honestly get through people, that's a terrible way to put it. But you know what I mean? When you have to get the attention of somebody who has dozens or hundreds of people almost exactly like you doing the same thing at the same time. What is what is your one might say trick? What is the trick for you making yourself distinguished as a person that somebody else wants or needs to help? Isn't that fair? Like, it is kind of about stepping on someone else's head, let's be honest.

But how do you make yourself more – whatever you think it needs to be, and this is the fucking Martha Ninja skill. Like, do I need to be Marty and, like, cry and make this person – was it Marty with an I? Could it be?

AlexOh, it could be. It is now, yes.

MerlinMarti. But like, oh, it's short for Martina. My mother's Venezuelan and she's dead. It'd be so nice if I could bring her ashes back to Yankee Stadium one more time. But like, you know, in the moment, it's the opposite of the like angry mook in some ways where like, all I have is this number one wood. I don't have any other clubs in this bag. So all I can do is hit you with the back. Right. But you know, like, do I need, how do I do? Because again, and Roderick and I have talked about this so much in John, like that experience John had with, I guess, United that one time,

where it's like there's nobody here to help you, and you can forget that at that desk with the plastics, who are being, in this case, bullied, wherever you are in the airport, you're at somebody else's tender mercies. People are going to have to want to help you.

AlexIt is not your party.

MerlinIt's not your party, and you don't get to pick the music, right? Siri, don't you agree? I've said for years now that's one reason I hate travel, is I feel like I've given up almost all control.

AlexOh, yeah. Marty lets go and lets God in an airport. But what a lot of people don't get is it's not just not your party, but the customer service people, it's not their party either. Their boss is holding the party.

MerlinNo, it's like somebody said on Twitter today.

AlexThey're not picking the music.

MerlinAbout the failure of proposition or about basically actually the recall of the DA, which is the only thing I voted about yesterday. And somebody on political Twitter put this very well, which is like the San Francisco Police Department. Hey, great job, guys. You spent months telling people like Merlin Mann, what do you want me to do about it? They basically have refused to do their job ever since this this fella got elected because they felt unsupported by him. They would not they would not allow resources to be applied to like huge busts by the D.A.

Like there's an amazing story about the cops just refusing. The DA had to go out. Cops are doing something?

AlexWhat?

MerlinWhat do you want me to do? He went out. I think with maybe either his office's money or his own money, he rented a U-Haul to be able to get evidence of like all this, like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of stolen shit because the police wouldn't help. The police wouldn't help.

Okay. So like the man who's been living in a car with five cameras in his car pointed at my house for one year with tags that expired two years ago.

AlexOh, God.

Merlinwhen we called the cops to come out and said well finally he just threatened to kill my wife and me and after we noticed him almost killing a motorcycle driver oh my god oh my god and you know what the cop said the cop said what do you want me to do about it oh my god your job well guess what guess what that just happened to be part of an organized political effort to get the da recalled that's so right i mean i'm not surprised this person on twitter god i'm sorry I didn't mean to get full of beans. The person on Twitter, let me find this and credit this because it's going directly to what you're saying, or at least what I'm saying.

I mean, the point of this, what we're talking about here is, hey, look, there are people in some ways that have figured out that the best way to do their job is to not do their job. That the most effective thing they can do, you know, think about if you're understaffed and you're not in first class, good luck. you might you might have an open wound but somebody else would like to have another johnny walker race and so that's going to get dealt with right because because as we get if you squeeze that think about squeezing a toothpaste tube and there's however you decide to grip the tube

there's only one movement that makes sense which is toward the little hole at the end so when you've got a full toothpaste tube and you squeeze it a little bit it takes no effort to get any of it out halfway through you're still good when you get down to the last quarter of an inch of toothpaste well guess what guess where there's no toothpaste in the back of the plane because whatever resources there are is going to be spent trying to push that little bit through the hole through that little toothpaste urethra which is a fantastic band i saw in 1993 i think they were on sub pop

um and that's what's happening now the cops are doing okay congratulations to london breathe the mayor of San Francisco. This is Alex Salmon, S-A-M-M-O-N on Twitter, underscore Salmon. Congratulations to Linda Breed, who now bears full responsibility for the impossible task of cleaning up a manufactured crisis that she cynically played into and helped create. Because the idea was, this was a DA that was elected on something we all believe, which was our carceral society has got to pump the fucking brakes.

We've got to stop arresting poor people for everything, putting them in jail forever, we've got to stop this and so he did some changes that i'm not going to get into but whether i love all of them or not but he made a bunch of changes that and but you know what the crime rate didn't change much everything was still pretty much the same but you know what else happened at the same time it gets complicated asian people started getting beat up and harassed to where a lot of asian people who tend to be pretty cute to themselves and conservative in a lot of ways

generally at least in my neighborhood suddenly were even more like no i'm not gonna i'm never going to an ATM again. Like a woman on Market Street was beaten nearly to death randomly by a guy who just ran up. Recently? What the fuck? Oh yeah no no this is happening all happened in my neighborhood. Like lady 80 something year old woman getting groceries out of her car somebody just stop a car stops somebody comes out and they beat her almost to death. Jesus Christ. Now is that the DA's fault? It's not. A lot of that is bad timing from and no no I'm not trying to minimize

this but like national as a national not even political issue but as a natural natural cultural

Speaker Aissue this is a huge fucking deal how do you think bts gets invited to the white house like it's

Merlinbetter be a pretty fucking big deal but but all that comes along and then alex sammons says and congratulations as well to the sfpd the san francisco police department who effectively blackmailed the city into this result by refusing to do their jobs because it made the da look worse and worse and worse. And the police just stood there. And do you know what they said to the city of San Francisco? What do you want me to do? In my case, the guy actually pointed to his little fucking Axon camera. He pointed to his body cam and said, look, I have, I'm wearing this. A lot

has changed about my job in the last few years. Do you want a citizen's arrest? The man who's been living in a car with five cameras pointed at your house for the last over one year with plates that expired two years ago i asked him if he needed help and he said no oh my god and just to be clear he hits cars all the time like with his car or or like yeah did i mention that his tags expired two years ago but also you know those like like reflective aluminum foil looking things you put

on your windshield on hot days to keep the sun out he's put those um on all four sides of his car all of his windows are covered and he has by my count at least five security cameras in his car that are all pointed as it happens at our house god and he's lived there for years and almost no one almost ever you can hear music coming out you almost never see him it's a really nice hybrid it's not it's not like a 1962 comet it's like a recent hybrid so it's like this like

Alexhe this is like a we don't got a 30 000 car yeah like so it's a person of means not oh no he's

Speaker ASomething's going on.

AlexBut like he's able to.

MerlinEven I who tend not to be too paranoid and weird, honestly, in real life about this stuff. I'm like, why the fuck is this guy always out there? And why is it? Okay. So did I mention the things he puts on his windows?

AlexRight.

MerlinSo imagine, you know, like the funny sunglasses. Imagine that. Let me put it this way. I can only speculate. If I lived in a hybrid. On a street in San Francisco and I didn't want to be seen, I would do a pretty good job putting those up. so that even light didn't get in, right? Let alone people being able to see me. So you get what I'm talking about, right?

AlexYeah, yeah.

MerlinSide windows, back window, front window. Did I mention that he drives the car with those still up?

AlexOh, what? Oh, God, that's genuinely really scary.

MerlinSo every time we hear a combination of honking and squeaking brakes, literally in front of our house, we can count on looking out and seeing him changing to a different parking space or adjusting while driving with a full, he's got, it's like, it's basically Luke and the lightsaber on the Millennium Falcon. And he pulls out. He's using his, admittedly, he's using his mini security cameras to help him see outside.

But that one day that we finally, and all, and this is the, I think I told you about this. We all went to the police station and two other neighbors were there at the same time. No, I didn't know about this. Oh yeah, yeah. Because we'd all been like, and every single one of us to a person was like, oh yeah, we don't want this guy to get in trouble.

Speaker AYeah, yeah.

MerlinHe's been here for a year and we've never said a word about it. But like today's the day he finally threatened our lives. And so maybe we figure we should talk to somebody. That was at 1 p.m. Cop came at 7 p.m. and said, what do you want me to do?

I never told this full story because it's weird.

AlexAnd there's nuance and it's hard.

MerlinIt is hard. And like I said to my wife, please don't do something that makes you unpopular on Instagram. Like the guy's got cameras pointed at us. And like, you can make things look a whole lot of ways. And we just kept saying over, and he kept saying, what do you want me to do about this? I said, well, I wasn't even saying, here's what I want you to do about this. I didn't say put him in the clink. Drop that guy in the slammer. Lower him into the oubliette. I did not say that at all. I said, well, it just strikes me that the whole reason this thing started today that caused him to get the rear appearance out of his car was that he literally almost killed a motorcycle.

And I said, any one of us on the street can tell you five times we've seen that. And he said, well, don't speak for other people. Do you want to press charges?

Speaker AGood Lord.

MerlinI said, no, I don't want to press charges. I said, but we do live here. And it's not a busy street. But he said, so what do you want me to do? And I said, I'm just concerned because he doesn't take down those. The reason that he keeps almost hitting people with his car is that he's driving with his, again, two years expired plates in his really nice hybrid. and he almost hits people pretty often. He said, so do you want to do a citizen's arrest? I said, I don't. He said, well, look, the policing's changed a lot.

There's not a lot I can do here. I went over there. I asked him if he needed help. I offered services to him. He said he didn't need it. I said, risking here that I might get thrown in jail. I said, well, did you notice that his tabs expired two years ago? He said, the car's fine. And I said, okay, well, the reason I'm telling you this is that it is a concern that has existed for a long time, which is that this man is driving very unsafely. Notice I did not say it's weird that he lives in front of our house. Why always our house? And notice I did not say that.

I said the thing that's a true thing that I think he could do something about, which is, you know, and I'm worried that he's going to hurt somebody with the way that he's driving. And I said I probably, selfishly enough, would have continued not to mention it until today when he did threaten my wife and me and a lot of our neighbors.

AlexThat happened today?

MerlinNo, no, no. Oh, my God. A month ago.

AlexJesus Christ.

MerlinOh, no, he's still there. He's still there. Jesus. And so I, I mean, like, do I love cops, Alex? Do I turn to cops every time? Oh, yes, you. You big cop lover. I present my white guy card to go, please go take care of this for me.

There's that. And then it ended. Here's the way it ended. And he's just, he was so nice. nice. And he goes, yeah, well, you know, if he's doing something and you think he's breaking the law, call 911 next time. Oh, my God. And I said, I don't know. I don't have a way to say whether he's it's not. I didn't say this, but what I'm thinking is it's not my job to decide if a law has been broken. It is both of our jobs to continue being curious about ways that we can avoid future

problems by manifestly helping today. Like, I'm not even here to go like, oh, that guy should go to a shelter. I wouldn't go to a shelter. That's where you go to get stabbed. Like, he's living in his car in front of our house. Like, I don't have an opinion about that that requires action. All the ways that I feel about that are not touching on what this cop's job is, in my opinion, or at least my understanding. What does touch on that is at least this very general idea of what we call public safety. And so, like, I mean, I don't want to be histrionic about this, but, I mean, one of the inevitable things we can count on after a school shooting, you know, apart from changing the topic to something besides the death of children, is the way that we then we all want to look at the we want a Monday morning quarterback.

What could have been done differently? Right. Hasn't that happened since Columbine? Yes. At least is the like, oh, could we have known? And so, but then, but even when we learn that the school district in Uvalde, we learn the school district had been paying for a thing that like scans social media for problems. They paid for that. One of the communities, one of the thousands and thousands of communities that pays a robot to look at social media and tell them if somebody's going to die. And apparently, at least according to what I've heard on What Next, it doesn't work.

but we always get back to that whole what could we have done differently you know what could we have done differently when that family on a let's even say this happens all the time on our street because it's real steep family goes by on like an e-bike like a baby or like a kid going to school dad's riding the e-bike but wouldn't it suck if they got backed into just hard enough that the kid got brain damaged and the dad lost an eye like wouldn't that be a bummer i'm not even saying they're dead i'm saying it's maybe worse

than dead which is they slowly got run into by a man with shades oh god because i could i could certainly imagine that happening given that every time you hear a horn and screeching you can look outside and see the guy slightly pulled out of that space i don't mean to make this about columbine but wouldn't if that if that were to happen wouldn't you have wished if you were in that person's family wouldn't you have wished that cop would at least take a report yeah i mean and and And when you go into an airport, they do not get a bonus for helping you.

They are going to pick the person who actually could make trouble for them or the person that they most want to help. And when I see a dude go in there and start yelling at Regina or whomever, I think, oh, you poor bastard. You really, unless you really are, I'm talking like a million miler. I'm not talking about like ass fuck silver or whatever your importance man status is. I'm talking like you better be literally a million miler. Here's the thing though, dude, if you really were a million miler, you wouldn't be standing

at that gate.

AlexYep. Right?

MerlinYep. No, no. You'd probably be driven around in like a little personal golf cart. Like there'd be an Asian man carrying you like a fireman. Like if you actually were, if you, if you were Tom Hanks, there's so many reasons you would not be here yelling at a middle-aged woman right now. And has this ever worked for you? Because that person would really much rather help almost anybody else than you. And you may very well. You've seen it happen. It's like a fucking lottery. If it's not a canceled flight because they really want to not cancel flights,

if it's really not a canceled flight and it's more like who's going to make it onto this next plane, they're totally deciding. I don't think that's random at all. They are deciding based on factors that may be out of their hands, but almost all the time. is totally in their hands.

AlexWell, this is the like weird...

MerlinThey can upgrade you to first class if they feel like it.

AlexThat, well, okay. And that is what happened to me because like I told Matt, just sit, hang out. Everything is going to be fine. And I go in line and again, I'm watching people go through their stages of grief and pretty much everybody trying to reschedule their flight is at anchor. And whenever you need to have any sort of customer service, I feel like you just need to go through those stages as quickly as possible to get to acceptance.

Because I finally get to this.

MerlinBut you also need to stay focused on a reasonable result. So I think to really oversimplify a thing in life, whether you're doing this through GTD or sports or whatever, it does help to have a goal in mind. and when people say shit like failure is not an option or always aim for the top well yeah that's fine but like do you have a sensible thing that could be achieved that doesn't rely on really good luck right i mean i think that's not dumb at all to go like well you know then for example like an easy way i do that is instead of saying i will do this this many i will do this every day instead i

will say i will do this x times in the next week or i will do this x times in the next month which gives me plenty of room for failure, right? I love that I can fail and still not have blown my goal. If I make my success to not do something every day for the rest of my life, right? That's not a sensible goal. So a sensible goal when you go up there is, I need to figure out, and you suddenly need your Terminator heads up display to compute the most insane fucking calculus in the world, which is, do I think this plane will actually

ever leave. Is there a chance I would have better luck at this point? Like, for example, when I always go straight to the counter with my carry on at the beginning, have you ever been on a flight where they didn't say, we got to gate check some of your shit? It always happens. Why don't you just go there? Go walk right up to them and say, hey, I wonder if you think you might need to gate check. I'd be happy to do that. And if that would be useful to you and the golf, thank you. They put the tag on it. Guess what? Now you don't have to carry your bag into that fucking area. And now you can really relax about boarding because you've really solved two problems.

Do you know what I mean?

Speaker AYou follow?

MerlinNow, I could be alpha guy and go, oh, I'm going to make sure I get all my six bags in here because I fucking, I'm mad at everybody. But like if you, so the result there is I'm solving a problem before it's become a problem. If your best strategy is what if I tried to get rebooked now? Because all I could think about the whole time you were talking about, what if like gets canceled? you know that flight got canceled probably because a lot of other flights got canceled too that that end of the toothpaste tube there's going to be less and less pace that will get to pass through that hole to reuse my analogy why don't i try to start bargaining ahead of time and it's

almost a prisoner's dilemma instead of me trying to get the best possible outcome exactly the way i conceived it a month ago why don't i figure out the best strategy for survival and if i you know I'm saying? And so you need to combine all of those things in a little bit. Like there's been times when I've been in line waiting to get information when I've started pointlessly calling the airline to see if I can get rescheduled. Because at that moment when they make that announcement, you're going to be up against over 100 people doing the same thing. Why would you

put yourself in that situation? You know what I mean? So did you have a strategy going into it?

Alexyes and the strategy was no no martha no uh alpha girl boss it was like i am going to show that i have accepted this and that i am at their mercy did you actually lay on the lay on the floor like a wounded animal i just exposed my belly yep yep i'm like you're the alpha you will i respect you when i get to the desk of course these all of the people working at this customer service desk

don't know what has happened, doesn't even know what flight everybody is on, because in theory, this would be the customer service desk for everybody. It just so happens that there are 100 people trying to rebook for this exact flight, which, you know, nobody in line knows that. And so there's immediately you get there and there's confusion and anger. And I, there are three people like at the customer service desk. And as I was at the front,

I was basically tried to look as crestfallen and sad and disappointed, but not not angered. Like with the like.

MerlinAnd at this point, are you you're literally walking with a cane?

AlexNo, no, no. This is remember, we have left the linear story. This is last Thursday when we are just going, getting, leaving Chicago.

MerlinOh, sorry. I could have really used in their inner title there. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Cut all that out. Sorry. Cut all that.

Alexum and i i'm just like i uh i'm just like oh what's what's your final destination let's see there are no flights today i'm so sorry like my final destination is a life without pain can you help me with that regina and i'm like regina no i totally understand you're doing your job thank you so so much and uh she just said oh oh thank you oh bless your heart yeah

and and then suddenly uh you know there are a bunch of the the other folks who are we're all at the counter together but they are like with other agents are almost one guy i would say basically screaming like beyond yelling like actual screaming which i am like okay

Merlinbut as though that person is deliberately trying not to help them and if if they could yell more it would persuade them to help more like what where's he going with that i well i think it is

Alexjust that anger response of like if i'm not angry i must be the weak one and i nothing will get done

Merlinnailed it that fucking nails it totally you got it and the and i ended up just you know

Alexhonestly it was it was like the like you said that not an actual threat of violence but it's like yes i i'm angry so who who knows i this is what i need what are you going to do to get it uh except literally screaming um and oh god i just felt so bad and for these flight. I'm just going to call them customer service people because I don't know

Merlinwhat they're actually called. Well, have you ever been in an airport? I was about to say understaffed airport, but is there any other kind? Have you ever been in... I've been in an airport where, I mean, it was like hot fuzz where at first Simon Pegg doesn't figure out that the guy at the desk is twins. There's a person over in this part of the terminal who checked me in and took my bag, right? That person, an hour, because I'm me, Syracuse and I, right? We're a matched pair.

Because I'm there three hours early, two hours early, whatever. I go, I eat lunch, I have a drink, I get a magazine and some jawbreakers or whatever. And the person at the desk, at the gate, is the same person who checked me in. I've had that numerous times, especially at smaller airports. That is basically SOP at Rhode Island. What I'm getting at is you might be dealing with a person in three different aspects of their job, all very heavily related to what we could call customer service.

But they're fucking dealing. It's like some kind of endless existential meat grinder this person has to go through.

AlexIt was truly – I mean maybe it's because this is the first time I've flown in a very long time. But again, I'm very good at airports because I hate them so much and I want some illusion of control. And but the way that these people were treating these customer service people who are, of course, being trained because it is post spring break season, which is when like, you know, the new people are hired and everybody, you know, was laid off. And now they've hired them at a much lower wage.

MerlinOh, because because there's a low there's a low you're between you're in a low. I'm guessing, but tell me, you're in a business lull or traffic slight lull from between spring bake, but then before, I mean, I imagine summers are Christmas. And the same way you collect Christmas in retail, I imagine summer is a time where there's going to be a lot of people who have been there less than a year, and you train them in that in Oregon. I never knew that. That's fascinating.

Alexyeah and the but but i had the regina like i had the alpha in in this which was awesome because she oh i'm so sorry hold on one sec what the fuck is ticket no problem hey siri stop i don't know how that that well what oh boy oh well patreon.com slash dubai friday we're gonna to have i'm gonna have some words about siri um but i am with the woman who clearly does have the

power to do something and i told matt don't try to book another flight don't go into the app that is it's not that they are lying it is just that truly you cannot book a flight through the app because what they need to do it's like tetris in order to get people back onto the flights or

Merlinit's even like war games where two, two people have to turn the key. There's a, there's a whole sequence when all that time you ever been standing there and you're like, in my case, I'm like, Oh my God, I really am so bad at travel. And I'm, I'm thinking, Oh God, I, and I don't like, I really, I, I don't like situations where I'm totally out of control and not, I mean, not because like, it's just, you know what it is, but it's that combined with the necessary amount of unknowability. Unfortunately, I don't know how much you know about my personality and my various afflictions but like being stuck in an uncomfortable public situation where i have no agency and no

absolute there's uncertainty inside of uncertainty makes me a little bit uncomfortable and you know of course i'm as we say you know running away from trauma and running toward resolution i really i really want that but the thing have you ever wondered while you're standing there doesn't it seem like you're like are you typing a fucking short story like what what are you you know i'm talking about you're standing there and they're like oh let me just change your seat and they type i don't know if they're if they're uh playing um zork or something but like they're typing so

it really does feel like they're writing an essay or an opinion piece for the new york times and and you're like um do you know what i'm talking about do i mean have you ever had this you're like what are you typing and i have to guess that person because of how the system is is is basically if you like, ticking all sorts of boxes that say, I'm going to speculate, could involve stuff like, okay, this is a thing that would involve a change in fee, but I need a separate fee. I need to

override that. I need to make sure that I have not liberated this person's seat to be available for another person. You know what I mean? I bet there's all kinds of, if you like, inventory and inventory issues.

AlexIt is. It's like configuring. I've seen a couple of these UIs actually and it's like configuring a custom Apple or a Mac Studio or something. There are a bunch of like radio buttons.

MerlinI bet it's like spinning up an instance on a not very good. Like if you wanted to go do your own, do a Linux setup somewhere, it seems like they type about as much as it would take Marco to build a server from scratch.

Okay, I got the Postgres set up and then I need to change the root password. So what happened? It sounds like you're embarrassed that you got something good.

AlexOh, well, I was just like, it's okay. No, no, no, take your time, take your time. And with just like the saddest voice. And I'm like, no, I really understand. It's okay.

MerlinI know. And I always want to be loved. So I'm like, oh my God, this must be a really hard day. And I am honestly talking to them as a person when I do that. I don't mean that in a callow way. I'm sure they've seen it all.

You don't get awards. You see these awards? You don't get these without seeing some bullshit.

Speaker ASorry, Jamie Lee Curtis.

AlexWell, that was – honestly, I approached this situation pretending to be much more crestfallen and sad than I actually was because I was like, all right, whatever. We've got to leave tomorrow on Friday.

Speaker AUm, but I was just like really, really sad.

AlexAnd I'm like, no, no, I understand. And I was actually really sad at that point because I'm watching these ladies get screamed at. And then the lady is like, you know what? Regina. Do you have Regina is like, honey, do you have about do you have about 15 minutes? Oh, of course. I totally understand. And after about a half hour, suddenly I did have both Matthew and I were able to get on a flight that day next to one another in first class.

MerlinAnd that is I got to tell you, man, that is rare because so many fewer people are buying first class, buying first class, whether it's at a cut rate. If you bought a first-class ticket, you're the king of the airport in a lot of ways. Because you probably do that pretty often. Well, you're definitely like a high roller. But I think just in the cascade, God, I would love to see. I couldn't understand the computer logic of this. But I would love to understand, like on a whiteboard, show me the business logic of this flow.

Where from all the way to like you are a wounded corporal who bought a first-class seat. you're a pregnant wounded first soldier who bought a first class whatever right something that combines every element of like it would be difficult to it would really be a problem if you treat this person like shit oh and they're getting married they're there with their with their oh with their disabled spouse okay so

and they bought two first class tickets like they are probably gonna get treated better than a teenager who's obviously drunk and bought the ticket on, you know,

AlexLike Hip Monk or

MerlinYeah, like, yeah, Disco Pants or DiscountMommies.com or whatever. You know? And like, yeah, we've all, I mean, I've seen plenty of, especially Wendover and CGP Grey, but Wendover does these, the reason I got into Wendover Productions was his stuff about travel, especially airlines. His stuff about airlines, And so you got to, he's really good. He does have a habit, a little bit like the lock picking lawyer. He has a way of talking that you will either love or hate. But all the things about, like here's six people and here's what each one of them paid for this flight.

They all left the same city at the same time. They will all arrive in this other city at the same time. That's the irony. Every single person on that plane, unless they fall out the toilet, will arrive, leave and arrive at the same time as everyone else. but what they experience in between could be different, but even in coach, it's unbelievable what different people pay for the, all essentially the same ticket. But like you, I just, I would love to see that cascade, but they are ultimately in a position.

I'm sorry. I'm prattling on, but I think that shit is just fascinating. So you go up there, you're talking to Regina. Regina says, do you get, have a few minutes you're playing along, playing in the space. And you, That is miraculous because there are so many people that will almost always get that seat before you. All the way down to people who are like, where's my upgrade?

Speaker AI haven't seen my three-letter name.

MerlinI haven't seen, was it? Oh, Cara Fagan. Cara Fagan, right? I'm not going to say the word, but F-A-G has not been called yet. And you're like, oh my God. I can't tell you how many times I've been standing there at that fucking gate for the last leg of an interminable fucking experience. And I sit there and I look up at that board about upgrades and stuff. And I'm like, I will hang on to a wing. Just please let me not have to be here another 14 hours.

Please, please, please.

Speaker AAnd other people are like, well, I was told that. I told you this. I'm sorry. Did I tell you real quick?

MerlinDid I tell you the story about the last, last, last leg of the very bad, no good, terrible vacation?

AlexWhen you shoved, no, no, no, no.

MerlinWhen I shoved that poor woman. Yeah. But there was a lady in front of me in the getting reseated because they booked me for a second flight because I was a danger. The pilots, the staff was not comfortable having me there. And so I did have to wait all day and I did buy $600 headphones while I was there to console myself. And I ate a steak, if I'm being honest. But then when I was, but like the reason I would have to be there longer is the actually fairly nice person who had to deal with me, the person who was the intermediary between the batshit insane person who thought that i was an

assaulter like but they were also there was the guy was really as nice as kind as he could be to me given that i was apparently a felon but he really tried to get me booked for another flight but like and i was standing there and there's a woman in front of me and i had to this is from my POV. I had to stand there while she went back and forth with the person at the desk. Okay. So this woman in front of me had already gotten rebooked from a different flight than mine, but had gotten,

she was ahead of me to get rebooked. Right. All good. And they had cut her a ticket and she goes up there and is like, um, I was, I was told that I would be able to get a window seat. And she said, I'm sorry, what? I was told us to be able to get a window seat. And one's like, well, we've already rebooked your flight, and now we have a lot of other people that we need to get onto this flight. Like, you talk about feeling sympathy for my Regina. And the woman that says, no, well, you know, I'm sorry.

I've got to put it this way. You can either take the flight that you've been booked on with the seat that you've been booked on, or we could try again later. And she goes, yeah, but I want to be rebooked with the window seat. And she wasn't being a jerk, but she also was a little bit emotionally unavailable, as we say, clinically and responding and fun. And the poor woman. And but then there would be long silences where she's just thinking about it. And she started to get like a little bit weepy. Like maybe there's an issue here that I don't know about, which is fine. But but but she would not just say fucking it's more important for me to have this particular like I like like Goodfellas.

I got to have my lucky hat. If you need that seat, could you please tell my Regina so we can keep this moving? But no. And this was 10 minutes of this back and forth. And three different women at this desk, and they were women, all had to say, ma'am, I don't know what to tell you. We have so many people we still need to book on this. You have a seat, and that is booked. And what I will do for you is if you don't want that seat, tell me now, and I will give it to someone else.

and then I will do my best to book you on another flight. You know, it's like, but she doesn't have a fucking magic wand, but you need three magic wands to please most of these people. Like, what do you think I'm dealing with all day? It's like, yeah. And this went on and on and on. And then finally, after many, many minutes, and again, every minute that she's up there silently weeping about how she didn't get like, about her. Understand, right? Does the clock stop on when that plane is leaving?

AlexAll of those connections have just, you know, they're on pause.

MerlinI was so far down the list, but I don't even know how close I got to getting on that flight. But I do know that at the point when there were still three of us standing there looking doleful but dignified next to their away bag, there were three of us left that didn't make the flight. There were no more seats.

Speaker AOh, my God.

MerlinAnd they didn't tell us we were not getting booked on that flight. They didn't tell us. Okay, so I love my Kirby Regina, but there was never a time when they got on the mic and said, I'm sorry, this plane is totally booked.

AlexOh, so you're standing there basically expecting to be bored.

MerlinAnd like, who's going to be, because of course at this point now, it is Prisoner's Dilemma or some other, it might be Stanford Prison Experiment. Which one of us will be the one, Which one of us will be the token asshole who walks up and says, so?

AlexWhat's happened here? I demand.

MerlinYou go up there. Is this just so I know? Is this Marty?

AlexOh, yeah. I was full on Marty.

MerlinThis is your new patented character, Marty, who everybody wants to help. You're like a little wet baby that nobody wants to hold.

Speaker AI want a window seat.

MerlinAre you fucking kidding me? I almost got arrested in the state of Michigan, and I want to go home. I really, really, really want to go home. Not only will I sit literally in the lavatory, I won't even accept tips for mints and combs. I will sit in there, and I will attend. I will be the restroom attendant for your flight. I will be a footstool. I will give hand stuff to the co-pilot.

Not even the real pilot. I will give, and I will touch the balls. I'll even lick the guy's ear. And it is a guy. Right?

Speaker AI'll even bring him moist towelettes after and carry them away. Do you have any remaining service items that you came on? Right? Full and complete stop.

AlexThe wanting to, again. Full and complete stop.

Speaker AI gave a copilot a full and complete stop.

AlexOh, yeah. Bravo. You're not like that poor man who had to masturbate four times because he couldn't finish.

Speaker ADo you want me to have you removed from this flight right now?

MerlinDo I want you to have me removed from this flight? Do you want me to have you removed from this flight right now? Yes, I do. You know what? I do. I think I do.

AlexYes, I want to keep pushing this lady.

MerlinYou want to go calmly or would you rather be dragged kicking and screaming? Oh, kicking and screaming, please.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinAll right. So Marty's up there. Marty's just up there. Marty's looking very fragile.

AlexWell, it slowly became a thing where I'm like, oh, God. these like actually this regina who is she has started now to just straight up ignore other passengers who are trying to ask her questions and i she she truly was like regina she started treating these people like shit which i kind of understand because they were not very nice people and i think we only wear pink on wednesdays oh but but uh yeah we were able to it was it was i

I mean, it still was a 12-hour wait in the airport because they don't have – they can't be like Linguania Airport planes, Spirit Airlines.

MerlinYeah, yeah. And you know what? How about this? Don't stray too far from your gate because especially if it's – you know, the way this works, hub and spoke, right? The less significant your flight is in that world or the more that it's an auto – not autopilot. The more that it is a flight that a bunch of people always have to take, like that could be, you know, but that last leg type flight where you've gone from like a fucking Charlotte airport or whatever. But that last leg that could be like, fuck, oh my God, you never want to be stuck in New Jersey. But if you're at that terrible Newark, which is seriously like a Dante level fuck show.

If you're at that, the one where they're the only way to move between terminals is on a literal bus.

Speaker AA bus.

MerlinA bus kind of drives you mostly from place to place through a large extended parking lot. Like the San Francisco Zoo, there is no area at the Newark Airport that feels like the front of everything. No matter where you are at the Newark Airport, it feels like you're looking at the back of something. It's that bad.

AlexI think the one time I've been there, that might have been what made me great at airports because I was like, hashtag never again, never forget. Everything is worse than this.

MerlinIt's like, do I want to say Hunger Games? But it is very, like, you're going to learn a lot about who you really are at the Newark airport. It is a lot like being in a dream and not a great dream. It is like at least a minor stress dream, if not a total, like, meltdown.

AlexOh, it feels, I mean, I don't, this is, I'll make a problematic comparison.

Speaker AMerlin, why don't you like to travel? It's so fun you meet new people. Uh-huh, uh-huh. You know what I'd like to do?

MerlinI'd like to spend, I don't know, $5,000 on introducing chaos into my life for two weeks. Don't you mean a vacation? Sorry, I mean a vacation.

AlexAlways on vacation. Patreon.com slash Dubai Friday.

MerlinAll right. I don't know if we're going to get to hand salad because I already gave it. I already tossed a hand salad for the co-pilot. But you got, so Regina's ignoring everybody else. Martha Dump Truck's back there with her dick in her hand. And you and your spouse are going to be placed into fucking first. What airline was it?

AlexIt was American.

MerlinAmerican. They're still around. That's good for them.

AlexOh, no. They're one of the big boys.

MerlinWell, so who's based in Chicago? United? No. I think you. No, shit. Like, based in? Who's based in Chicago? I don't know. I feel like I fought United, but I'm not sure. It might be American.

AlexPossibly.

MerlinThat is one good part about like if you live in Atlanta and you like to fly Delta for some reason, Delta Airlines and life is a fucking nightmare. That would be my sixth John Mulaney reference by my account. If you live in Atlanta and need to get home and you're on Delta, you're going to have way better luck than with a lot of other airlines. because if you need to get back to Atlanta from almost anywhere, you're going to have way better luck than like, say JetBlue, which I think is based in Las Vegas. Like, because there's always so many planes. I don't even know.

I don't even know who's based in Chicago. But like, so how did that figure into this?

AlexOh, because in their like absolutely wild Tetris system, it's like, oh, yes, we can swap like swap passengers between United and American because they have this weird sweetheart deal where if, like, it's one of those things where if you, like, check all of those boxes.

Speaker AOh, and it's part of Star Alliance.

AlexAnd, yep, and you can finally, like, it's the certain part where it's like, yeah, they're really good at squeezing out that last bit of toothpaste because of all, like, I got through all of the little funnels.

Speaker AWell done. Good. I thought you were going to be all fucked up today, but you've never had so much mental acuity here.

AlexI honestly, I think it's because I've never. Which was meant to be a compliment somehow. Yep, yep. That sure was. I mean, I did it there, but I was.

Speaker AYou're so much for a fat girl.

AlexYeah. oh and anyway look and i was like oh cool first class yay um but this regina honestly saved my ass because sweet sweet i was well but she was able to also upgrade us for our flight home, which I initially was not going to take.

Speaker AAre you fucking kidding me? What is happening?

AlexWell, I got the Queen Bee, and she was, I don't know, I was, you know, I was going to go to San Jose.

MerlinAt this airport, I'm the apex predator.

AlexYeah, well, I mean, she must have had some power because to be able to completely, like, flat out ignore other customers.

MerlinThat's what I'm saying in the musical, the song about about about regina's apex predator you you you got helped by the top of a food chain

Alexyes i did not know but i was so fucking lucky because um you know i had was not able to go to san jose was i yeah i was finding the plan was to go to san jose i did not have any fancy i'm not fancy enough to be you know invited to the press dob dob stuff but yeah yeah i was gonna have like see friends and have some meetings and do podcasts um but but the doctor was like come out to the coast have some laughs they said yeah yeah they're like no no no you need to get home as soon as

possible because you may may or may not need surgery uh tbd but uh luck so luckily though that flight back to chicago was able to be in first class with um my my stupid big boot cast hot hot patreon.com slash Dubai Friday oh boy

Merlinsee her ruined feet look at them oh man when you're there for the removal and it's all ganky inside it's going to be just like the toes on Survivor welcome to the toes of Survivor which almost everybody hates and some people love probably a little too much when they stand on when they stand on that like 4x4

Speaker Aoh I hate the crucifixion thing

Merlinand then all the bowling pins

Speaker Afall on your head.

MerlinAww. Could have been over there eating a turkey sandwich working on your puzzle.

AlexI'm really glad that people do that show and, but I have no idea why they would want to be. I truly,

MerlinI have no idea why.

AlexThat is an impressive type of person and I don't understand that.

MerlinIt's like, it's like when I first learned about David Blaine, I had a fives about this one time about David Blaine and all his fucking stunts. You know, he gets frozen into a block of ice or, you know, only eats chicken wings for five years. Like, it's just weird, weird things. I didn't think there would be that many people like Alex Solo or David Blaine in the world. But anybody who wants to be on a reality show is from a different species as far as I'm concerned. For every reason you can think of. Everybody is going to talk about what your neck looks like. You're going to be sunburned.

Like you're going to get an edit that you have no control over. And you're almost definitely not going to win a million dollars. Sounds good. I'm in. I brought a business suit.

AlexOh, God. Well, I mean, speaking again of business class, even when you are in first or business class, but you require a wheelchair because you can't have your crutches because you will hurt someone, because they're just those people who are pushing women all the time.

Speaker AThey push those poor women.

AlexWow. Airports. It's I, I, I always like to think that I am conscientious of like disabled people in airports.

Speaker AAnd until you get mowed down by one of those beep beep cars.

MerlinThe Seinfeld bit about that is at this point probably a little problematic, but it was so fucking funny. Watch out special people coming through.

Alexlike who do i have to blow to get a ride god well people people were looking at me because like this is like it looks like a temporary cast because it is for like only two it looks like one of those

Merlinthings that like you can walk is it one you can take off or is it it's like i saw it in that creepy photo you put up but it's it's one of those but it's it's close it's an air cast is that what it's called oh i don't know but it's one of those but it's one of those casts it's not like the plaster cast of my youth. But it's also not like the thing my wife had as a brace that you can take off, right? You can't just take that off and take a shower, right?

AlexRight, right. You still need the whole I've had to buy a lot of equipment because it needs to stay off.

MerlinOh, are you going all palazzo pants for June?

AlexI don't know what that reference is. What? You don't know what a

Merlinpalazzo pant is? No. Save it for the after show. Okay. A big blousey long pant. Like, think about something you'd see Joan Crawford in in the 50s. Or Barbara Stanwyck. Not Barbara Stanwyck on Westerns. Think about it like double indemnity pants.

AlexHuh. Interesting. Hmm. I will consider that.

Speaker AI'm just saying, maybe yoga pants are not going to be your jam for June. Oh, God. Why are these so tight?

AlexGod, putting on, yeah, I've never been in so much pain putting on a sock that one day, but wow-ee.

MerlinWell, later you're 55.

Alexand just injuring myself in my sleep i look forward to it it hurts it hurts to take medicine for pain

Merlinit's getting easier i kind of wish there was like you know on a good website there'll be the button like think about the way um when you're setting up in in apple health right and you go to a section you have a new thing you're like oh do you want this thing to be able to read what do you want to be able to read and what do you want it to be able to write and there's that wonderful just

you know select all and the select all either unselect or select everything i've moved to a point in life where i need the unselect i need like basically unselect all and take off the ones that are no longer i have everything i have i have everything are you on any medications well

AlexI am on all.

Speaker AWell, actually, can we reverse that, please?

AlexCan I tell you which ones I'm not on?

Speaker ADo you have a different form that is both longer electronic and has click buttons? I'll just command click between all of these.

AlexQuick aside, in the emergency room, I had to fill out the form via an iPad. It happened. Alex, did it happen?

MerlinWith notes.

AlexWith what?

MerlinOh, because I've been for years, I've been saying never try to avoid doing anything in life that your loved one might have to fill out on a form about.

AlexSee, yes, that's the thing is I was I don't even have a good story. I just tripped. But yeah, I know.

MerlinAnd you're obviously you're leaving out that you were obviously drunk.

AlexThe well, no, no, no. That's the that's the thing is better than me. I didn't want to say I didn't want to say every time.

MerlinAnd I wasn't even drunk. because nothing makes you sound more drunk than saying I wasn't drunk

Alexand that was sort of the thing of like ah you had fun at the wedding

MerlinI didn't push that poor woman

Alexyes I had fun my one mimosa really just

Merlinwas it gravel or was it flat

Alexnope it was a flat it was a parking lot

Merlinyou blame the shoes the lady sandals

Alexyeah I flew too close to femininity yet again with your wax food

Speaker Ano wonder I can't fly

Alexi'm trying to use shoes jesus christ okay so so okay oh well i'm and so um i'm i'm a little bit down because i have to come back to chicago uh to sit on my couch with my usb microphone that i am uh you know that's sad for alex i but in the airport uh chicago airport as we've landed uh which was yesterday the uh if you think that it's difficult to prepare for a flight as a as a normal

person think about realizing we say neurotypical yeah my wow uh airports and disability way worse than i remember like and also it kind of looked like i was like a cosplaying as disability you

Merlinmean like like hostile hostile in design to people with disabilities uh navigating physically is a challenge for folks with different disabilities well yes but that's that's like

Alexthe obvious part of like the thing it's very difficult to get uh into like wheelchair there are very few wheelchair accessible places all that blah blah blah but there is like zero infrastructure for or at least in my experience of two two flights needing to be in a wheelchair like no infrastructure like and there's oh i mean like one that comes straight to mind is the narrow

Merlinaisle way like they have they have a special wheelchair special wheelchair but they're you know you know how the way like special needs wheelchair but you you know how you know how there's the they think about the little cart they wheel through there please keep your feet in because we're going by with our beep beep cart like to give you ginger ale or whatever there's

Alexa similar i did not reserve the beep beep cart so i didn't get the beep beep no no i mean i no no

Merlinknow i mean but i mean like in the same way that they the cart that they have sorry to state the stupid obvious in this extremely long episode but like the cart that they put they go up and down the aisle way with right for for giving you drinks right well that's special for lots of reasons to come to mind is is that it's very narrow so that it can pass through there and it can be locked into that cabinet it's ditto i think wheelchair has got to be the right word for it you ever seen somebody bring somebody onto a plane on a wheelchair, it's really, really,

it's adorably narrow. Because the airlines are putting more seats and everything's and I imagine there's federal things about a commercial flight needing to have an aisle of at least this with wet and red lights that do blah, blah, blah. But nevertheless, I don't think planes accommodate, I doubt that the most basic accommodations of planes for disabled people has changed extremely much, but I would be happy to hear more.

Speaker ALike, getting into

Merlinthe seat how do you get into the seat if you have extreme mobility issues you there there are i've found now there are many you get one of the road they i guess they have to put you yep there

Alexwell and uh be like you can call most people have to you know call in advance to reserve a wheelchair and like what they call like wheelchair services but when it has happened the day before my mom

Merlinalways does it my mom my mom does it like buying free like buying parking alongside your ricky montgomery ticket like she always gets she always gets a wheelchair well but and that and that's what

Alexi didn't realize is apparently people quote abused the system or at least according to the guy

Merlinthousand percent really wow well and this used to be the joke the joke well the joke used to be um whenever you take this is when i was even when i was a kid this was a bit whenever you take a flight, order the kosher meal. Why? Well, because there's very, very few people who are legitimately kosher, but because you're basically getting something generally way better than the much more mass produced shit on a shingle that's served in coach. And the story was in even in the 70s was

always order the kosher meal and you get a better meal. Right. And now today, what is it? Oh, yeah, that's always been the way i mean listeners uh chime in and comments um but the uh but no the other one is um fucking uh i mean similar to how you can like okay let's take the one that's probably a little controversial that i happen to have a strong feeling about telling your server that you have a food allergy right go on well like what i mean don't do that when you're in a restaurant and you say you say to somebody let's say for example like alex do you like pickles

I got a feeling you probably don't.

Speaker ASure.

MerlinWell, no, what's the food? What's the food? No, like what's the food you just don't like across the board, like on its own in something else? Give me give me a food off the dome.

AlexIt is honest to God pickles. Pickles and fish. Two things. Can't wouldn't pay me.

MerlinWhat if you tell your server that you have an acetic acid allergy? What is acetic acid? Do you remember from fifth grade? That is vinegar. Sleeping on sleeping, sleeping all night in vinegar because I am pickle. You say you say.

Still the funniest line ever uttered on this show. But what if you said to your server, I have a pickle allergy? Does this have pickles on it? I go, well, yeah, yeah. It normally has pickles on it, but I can ask them to leave that off. You know, like an adult. Like an adult. But you go, I have a very grave allergy to pickles. And this EpiPen that I'm mysteriously tapping as though I actually have an EpiPen is in case anybody ever gives me a surprise pickle title. Okay? Ma'am, ma'am.

AlexLike it's an imaginary gun. It's like, I got this pen right here.

MerlinOr like Amy Poehler looking for her wallet, you know, waiting for Tina Fey to say, oh. I have so many EpiPens. I have like a Chewbacca bandolier of EpiPens because pickles are fucking everywhere. No, it's like seriously. Do you understand that I will literally die if there's a pickle on my burger? I see, I see. Oh, so what you're telling me is that's not merely a weirdly strong preference, but you will actually die. Okay, well, in that case, I'll really, really tell them not to put pickles on there. And guess what? There are people, like my dear friends, the Grubers, have a child with the kind of dairy allergy that could really make you rethink your skepticism about allergies.

Do you know the story? When Jonas got tested.

AlexI remember that.

MerlinThey had to go to a hospital to do that. We poke you, poke your arm with a lot of stuff thing. and I think from very early on even these very very small amounts the story at least from Amy Jane who may have embellished this a little bit was thank god we were at a hospital because the first time they put any amount of dairy into him for his test he went into anaphylaxis and if we had not been at a hospital with a good ED he would have died it's real so when you go in a restaurant and say pickles kill me

guess what, do you think you're the first god damn person to ever go into a place and say, I have a deathly allergy to X, you're not. And restaurants know that. And I think, I think I can't prove this. This feels like pearl clutching or slippery slope fallacy, but like, I bet that ends up harming a lot of people who actually do have like say a peanut allergy. Well, yeah. Yeah. Avoid Thai food. But how many times have you picked up a package and it says that the contents of this do not contain nuts,

but it was processed in a facility that does do things with nuts. There are people like Jonas in the world. I've been skeptical, honestly. How was there so many allergies today and there were so few allergies before? Whatever the etiology behind that is, as somebody with a chronic illness that has a strange etiology, as the father of an IBD, I can say, it's not IBS. It's a different thing. As the father of a daughter, of a father of an IBD, I can tell you, like, just because they don't have an etiology that people like or understand doesn't mean it's not real.

And when you go into a restaurant and say pickles kill you, I have a feeling that hurts a lot of people who do have food allergies.

AlexYeah. Like if the contempt that I saw for the the various customer service people who have to be because, you know, Matt could and wanted to, you know, just rolled me around. But he can't do that because of like I.

MerlinCOVID supply chain.

AlexNo, no. See, God, he said I was coherent. Now it's gone. liability. They need to buckle you in and stuff.

MerlinOh, like the way when you leave a hospital, they have to roll you out whether you feel like it or not.

Speaker ARight, yeah.

MerlinAnd the way they finally solved this, I'm sorry, I'm just going to say quickly, the way they finally did solve this was they were losing so much money on kosher meals that that's why they use calipers to test whether you're a Jew. Jesus!

God damn it!

Speaker ABut continue, finish your story.

AlexNo, just... No, not just. I'm interrupting you.

MerlinWhy don't you just...

AlexOh, my God. Why don't you just...

MerlinDid you see that picture of Katherine Hepburn I sent you?

AlexWhy don't I just smile more? No.

MerlinOh, never mind. Oh, don't get spoiled. Don't get spoiled on the dog.

AlexOh, okay.

MerlinOkay, that's palazzo pants, right? Look at Katherine Hepburn.

AlexOh, this is like a, I see. Oh, this is like a am from work and moms type.

MerlinWell, yeah, except the 30s. Yeah. And like box office poison. That's what she was. They called me Howard. They called me box office poison.

AlexI like her voice in that.

MerlinWait, who am I sounding more like now? I might be a John Mulaney impression. I dance and I prance. was there even a victorian girl mom or was it just me in an xxxl shirt just eating triscuits with my mom you know because that's where we are in our relationship so did you ever see a ghost and she said yes

Speaker Ai have not been this obsessed with a comedian since fucking steve martin you're not supposed

Alexto think he's funny you're not supposed to think he's funny anymore oh because of de chapelle

Merlinoh yeah i forgot i forgot that too yeah because what what part of john mulaney's personality and every aspect of his bit makes you think he's the kind of person that would say no dave chapelle you can't walk out on stage with me oh my god like i go straight to like think about his fucking i think he's like that i think i think he is an incredibly nervous man who used to do a lot of cocaine and he's not in the habit of telling powerful people no yeah but one of hey hey hey

AlexDave, Dave. The most powerful people in Hollywood.

Speaker ADave, I know you're kind of in the shitter right now because you're whatever, blah, blah, trans people. I demand that you get on stage with me and drag down my entire growing career with some bullshit.

MerlinPlease. I'm begging. I'm literally on my knees begging you, Dave.

AlexOh, God.

MerlinHe takes a cup of cigarette. He goes, all right, man, I'll do it.

AlexGod, I genuinely, I know it's problematic, but as soon as I saw that, I felt, I'm like, I feel bad for everybody. involved with this the people who did not know like we're not we're not supposed to have we're

Merlinnot supposed to have sympathy for anybody except for the people that we like to fantasize exist in

Alexour mind yeah it like oh my god i can't imagine and like the some of the stuff also apparently everybody was at that like every trans person in the world was at that show i mean i think i think

Merlini'm not saying it wasn't a it was a dumb decision i i would wish he had done something differently

AlexI don't think it was a decision that man made.

MerlinI think I'm ready to pump the brakes a little bit on second, third, fourth, and fifth order canceling. Let's stick to the folks that we really want to rehabilitate. It's not polio.

Being in the same room as Dave Chappelle is not going to make him a terrible person. I'm sorry for the discomfort that caused to anybody. I'll bet if he could, John Mulaney, I bet John Mulaney would love to get up there and say,

Alexyou know what that was a dumb decision yeah it would have oh god like i i i can i can imagine like it really does it it's fucking sucks like when you especially in chicago a lot of people

Merlinjust blame it on somebody else yeah well yeah other people on their podcast network go ahead okay so okay so so first class and for the connecting flight um if you can so you're is flying out of what slc right you're leaving wait no sorry sorry sorry wait am i getting this right

Alexslc yeah slc salt lake city um and but so arriving in o'hare the the amount of like weird contempt for needing a wheelchair and like oh like an eye roll and a sigh kind of thing yeah and i was like holy shit what must it be like for people with quote quote invisible disabilities i'm like i

Merlincan't even imagine well and i'll go i'll go the even easier route which is i finally at my wife's extreme um encouragement for years i finally watched crip camp and it's one of the i the one of the highest compliments that i can pay for a movie apart from i really really loved it and i think everybody should see it is to say it's both it is pretty much exactly what i expected and yet i had not expected it to be so good that's one of the highest compliments i can pay is it was I mean, sometimes you see a movie and you're like, wow, that was not what I expected.

And other times you're like, that was exactly what I expected. And it was way more of what I expected done better than I could have expected. Crip Camp will fucking change your game. And I'm sorry to be such a normie 55 year old man, but fuck off. It's fucking amazing. It's an amazing movie for so many reasons. I mean, but like you can you imagine what it's like to be like one of those people? the like you know according to the folks in the movie at that time anyway the bottom of the totem

pole was what cerebral palsy right or not ms but cerebral palsy but the folks who like needed like a translator for most people to be able to understand them and they sounded simple because of this disability but they were they're people they're fucking people and like imagine where like you wouldn't even be able to like speak for yourself imagine you had an aphasia my nightmare Getting my eyes poked out and getting an aphasia. Oh, and the other one is the Don Knotts disease.

What's that? Oh, macular degeneration. Do you know about that?

AlexNo.

MerlinOh, that's what Don Knotts had. Alex, you ready? You ready for me to change the rest of your life in a bad way? Macular degeneration, you go blind from the center. Out.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinThink about that for a minute.

AlexOh, my God. Oh, my God.

MerlinOkay, you have a thing. You're starting to go blind. Guess what? It's right in the middle. So there's a dot in the middle like a target. did I mention also it doesn't get better so just imagine blindness starting in the middle and slowly moving out until you're fully unable to see so eye stuff right but imagine having that kind of profundity but you're saying like I guess part of it is also we're talking about a world where there's a lot of people who could use a little help whether that's again right accessibility helps everybody like my mom needs that help because she's old

and because she has physical problems and like I don't want to have fun at her expense Like there were times I thought where she could have walked just fine for many years, but she wants a ride. This is the woman who rides between stores in a strip mall. But she's in a state now where she absolutely needs assistance of some kind or other. But it just people need help with so many different kinds of things. I mean, if even if you were trying and were like really like if that if you what if you suddenly realized that the whole there's a whole group of people that happen to be disabled.

that are like right in your wheelhouse for customer growth, right? Like they always say about baked in things. We're like, okay, we know douchebags with money are always going to travel. But like, where's your growth? How will your company grow in the next five years? Something that, you know, a lot of people don't think about. It's like, it isn't just like, why don't you serve me as your customer? No, dude, you were my customer. You were my customer 10 years ago. You're not my customer now. Like, if you want to be able to hot rod your own Mac at every possible level, you haven't been our customer for years. What are you complaining about?

I mean, the customers we want, in many cases, haven't been born yet. But you start discovering there are aspects, there are addressable markets that are being underserviced that you could, sorry, I sound like a douche, but those are real things. Addressable market that could be serviced where you could become, ready? You could get a first mover advantage. You could be the first one that treat people with disabilities like they're fucking Cleopatra. We don't care what you got. You could have the Don Knotts thing. You could just be, you could have mobility issues. You could be developmentally disabled.

Like, whatever it is, don't worry. Like, we'll fucking figure it out. We are like a flying crip camp. And you are welcome here and can be yourself. And you can even have heavy petting with people who are not going to bug you about it. Crip camp. Fucking rules.

AlexIt's such a good, it's also one of those documentaries that is incredibly educational and entertaining.

MerlinWell, and you approve of it, which tells me it can't be all bad. if you're gonna do the documentary where it turns out the person who makes the documentary becomes part of the story let it be crip camp because that guy yes and when you see that guy in 1971 he he rules so fucking hard or like like my wife there's a reading group uh at her job and she read the book by is it new her name's human was it name human no but you know the woman who became an activist, the woman with the glasses.

Oh, no. They're like, oh, in Crip Camp, there's the woman who's just about the main character.

AlexOh, sorry. Yes, yes.

MerlinYeah, and Madeline read her biography and said it was terrific.

AlexDoes she have a book club at work?

MerlinYeah, yeah.

AlexThat's cute. I love it.

MerlinThey mostly read, it started out, I think, as the anti-racist book club, but they read a lot of stuff where white people could grow a little bit by getting exposure to something. And so they read books like that. No, but like good books. That's cool. Not like, yeah, it is really cool. It's really cool.

AlexNot like, all right, let's go do Daniel Steele.

MerlinHer name is, I think it's Heumann spelled, I want to say Heumann, but because I'm Germanic, but H-E-U-M-A-N is her name. I'll find a, I'll get her for show notes. But, and then one of her, like, I want to say like, maybe not a niece, but maybe like, I don't know the different kinds of cousin, but like somebody who is related, a younger relative of her who happens to also work at UC. was in the group and they didn't know it and she didn't talk about it until the last episode

of the book club. But she talked about being related to her and knowing her. Anyway, that's all. Flying Crip Camp. Would you capture that? That would be great for us. We should do that. All we have to do is get into the air and knock. We should talk to your problematic boyfriend. He could probably spin that up in no time. Why don't you just make a Crip Camp that flies? Why don't you just do that? Why haven't you just created a flying crib camp?

AlexWell, because then he'd be a pedophile. And he only likes going underground.

MerlinYeah. Oh, you're saying he doesn't like to go downtown. He goes underground. He'll send a sub to get some boys. Or maybe he'll buy subs for the boys. Maybe you get Subway. And then you get in my van. Get in my electric van. The windows won't break. Don't worry. You can't get out of here. It's locked from the inside. And I'm going to keep you away from all the pedos.

AlexTo the moon.

MerlinTo the moon, Alice. I hear you. Are we done? Are we anywhere near done? When will we be done?

AlexWe've got to be done. Oh, basically.

MerlinI don't know. Hand salad. Oh, fuck.

AlexI did not eat salad with my hands because I also don't. My hands are bruised. Okay.

MerlinStart thinking about something funny. I did eat hand salad because I always eat hand salad. And here's the things that I learned.

AlexWait, Merlin, can you quickly explain what is hand salad?

MerlinTake a challenge. The challenge this week is to eat hand salad. And the thing is, I've discovered that historically, especially when I'm cleaning up or especially when I'm a child, I like to eat leftovers with my hands, regardless of whether that's appropriate. And I'm not going to apologize for that.

I'm sorry. But I do. I'm sorry. I'm not going to apologize. I like hand salad. And the reason this occurred to me was that I was dealing with leftovers a few weeks ago. And I just think about how much I enjoy eating salad with my hands and I'd like to do it more. And here's what I've learned. What I've learned is I still like doing it a lot. Now, I think if I were going to go deeper on this challenge and I didn't have time to do this, is that I would like to create a from scratch salad concept that is for eating with your hands.

So imagine if it's something like, this word's so great, crudite, right? So you go to a party and there's cut up celery and carrots and you can dip it in dip. Imagine that you said, well, what if that was a whole salad? What if, and not just fucking like, like, like shitty bridge club crudités. I'm talking, you bring in some toilet olives, you bring all the things that you enjoy, but things that you can eat with your hands. Do you remember that episode, the greatest episode ever of community? Yes.

AlexYes. You know you're creating six different timelines, Jeff. Something funny.

MerlinAnd so, no, no. But I'm talking about cut up all the fixings. I'm talking about you got – but, like, here's the thing. Think about this. You ever have a wedge salad? You get a wedge of iceberg covered with blue cheese dressing? Fucking balls up. That shit is good. What if instead I just give you a quarter of a lettuce? Okay. Okay. All right. You ever get, like, Korean soup where you put it in that wet sauce and you heat it up and you make, like, soup on the fly? Same idea here. You know, what's it called? What's it called? Like, Korean barbecue, right?

Like where they give you a bunch of stuff and then you make your own meal like a cuck. Same thing here. You're going to get a big plate, all the fixings, and it's all going to be hand forward salad ingredients. So a quarter of a wedge of lettuce that you can eat like a hand fruit.

AlexOh, like a bread bowl, but a...

MerlinYou know what? If you want that, as long as you don't have any allergies to lettuce, we could scoop that out and put all your salad fixings in there. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to have a healthy option, which is going to be, you come out to San Francisco, or as I call it, Frisco, I'm going to give you a salad bowl. Well, what's that? A salad bowl is where we take a bunch of iceberg lettuce and we fill it with delicious clam chowder. And you come out here and then you wear the bread as a hat.

Anyway, and the idea would be, it's like a personal crudité meets, sorry, Korean barbecue. I don't see soup colors.

AlexI could make a joke about how we just limped to the end.

MerlinAnd with that, they finished recording the greatest episode of... If you don't like this episode, you can fuck right off. Because this is what it's all about. The hokey pokey, bitch. Look it up.

Thank you.

Show notes

Transcript

290. Stand in My Sauce

Show notes

Transcript

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