NINETHOUGHTS

I apologize, but unless you listen to the shows at 5by5.tv, you will most likely not enjoy the following, but otherwise, you might get a kick out of these observations.

EVERY ‘BACK TO WORK’ EVER

• Merlin: Hello?
• Dan: HI, AUM MERLIN MANN! I LIVE IN SAN FRANCISCO AND I’M FANCY COOL ‘CAUSE I’M MERLIN MANN!
• Merlin: Hi! Can I aks you a question? Can I aks you another question? Hi! Dan Benjamin, why do I always refer to you by your full name Dan Benjamin? God, I’m so angry at something. Did you see that thing?
• Dan: Uh-no.
• Merlin: Hmh-hmh. Should we get started with the show?
• Dan: I thought we had started.
• Merlin: So I thought today we could talk about…
• Dan: You know, the best shows are the ones where you wing it.
• Merlin: Mmrmrmmmrmr! I’m so angry I could eat a tin full of hurt. … Josh. Good week?
• Dan: Big week.
• Merlin: I hate to sound douchey but how much do I really hate it if I still say the thing I’m gonna say anyway. Cut all this out. Should we start the show?

EVERY ‘HYPERCRITICAL’ EVER

• Dan: How was your week my friend?
• John: Good.
• Crickets: (chirp)
• Dan: What do you want to talk about today?
• John: We’ll get to that, but first I have some follow-up. It’s clear that people didn’t understand what I was saying last time, and I tried to preface it to make it clear in the show, but because we got email, let me re-iterate my re-iterations from last week.
• (20 minutes later)
• Dan: I hate to stop you when you’re on a roll, but we have a sponsor…
• (The rest of the show where the higher John’s voice gets, the better the actual content, and vice versa)

EVERY ‘TALK SHOW’ EVER

• John: Let me just say something as if we had been talking the whole time.
• Dan: You sound like you’re on WiFi. Are you on WiFi?
• John (so totally on WiFi): No. I think it’s just my connection out here. (Chomping noises)
• Dan: Ah, John, you know the listeners hate it when you eat on the show. So what do you think about this new thing outta Apple?
• John: I dunno.
• Dan: So you think that…
• John: Here’s the thing, right. To me, my thing is, why wouldn’t you do that? Right, because…

EVERY ‘BUILD AND ANALYZE’ EVER

• Marco: I’m gonna say something and then laugh, hehehe.
• Dan: Hmm, yeah.
• Marco: I’m gonna make a really good point, but then I’m gonna laugh after it, hehe.
• Dan: I see your point there…

EVERY ‘CRITICAL PATH’ EVER

• Horace: (Throat noises like he’s got the words right on the tip of his tongue, but they last way too long, followed by pure brilliance—interrupted only occasionally by Dan)
• Dan: You know, I never thought about it that way.  

EVERY ‘IHNATKO ALMANAC’ EVER

• Andy: …This is show, zero, zero, zero (that whole bit, followed repeatedly by Andy squeezing a metaphor into a simile, wrapped in an apt comparison while juggling words and letting them all, somehow, fall into a coherent thought).
• Dan: (laughter)

I could write lots more for each, but I gotta sleep…