The Gargle - Fake Snoop Dogg | Alexa voice | Flying hotel

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

John-Luke Roberts and Alison Spittle join host Alice Fraser for episode 68 of The Gargle, the weekly topical comedy podcast - with no politics! Fake Snoop Dogg fools NFT fans™️ Ohio state trademarks 'The' Alexa dead relatives voice Flying AI-piloted hotel ReviewsProduced by Ped Hunter and Chris Skinner.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, it's producer Chris from The Bugle here. Did you know that I have a new series of my podcast, Richie Firth Travel Hacker, out now? It's the show where Richie Firth and I talk about how to make travel better in our very special way. In this series, we discuss line bikes, Teslas, the London overground, and a whole bunch of other random stuff that possibly involves wheels

or tracks or engines of some variety. God, what a hot sell this is. I mean, you must be so excited. Listen now. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite.

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Acast.com. This is a podcast from The Bugle. Relax your vigilance spot. Your new wife will call you paranoid spot. Don't tell her why. Don't give us your contact number spot. Anyone can be made to give up information with the right incentives. If you want information from us spot, you know what to do. Once a week, go to the spot spot and tune in to The Gargle. For all of the news, none of the politics, the sonic glossy magazine to the bugle's audio newspaper for a visual world, this is The Gargle.

I am your host, Alice Fraser, and your guest editors for this edition of the magazine are John McRoberts and Alison Spittel. Welcome! Hello. Hey! What did Spot do? I mean, you have to buy the next book in the series to find out. We'll go into a flashback.

It's an achronological series. Before we sit down in a circle and start to read the storybook that is this week's stories let's have a look at the front cover of the magazine this week the front cover is famous tennisists Emma Raducanu and Andy Murray posing sportily in front of a stylized umpire's tower

the quote says I'm ready to hit some balls with this fishnet stocking paddle thing exclamation mark tennis fans anyone i like the sound i always enjoy it when i watch it it's more or less the only sport i can really get on board with because something always happens that's true actually that's true i quite like bowls for the reason of like they seem like they they're friends with each other maybe husband and wife or you know like i feel with tennis they're more rivals than lovers and i think it's just because of the sort of location in like in terms of each other so because they're side by side

it seems like oh well they must not oh like they're getting on but you can't play tennis that way because there's nobody to return it. What about doubles? What about doubles? Do you feel like doubles are more likely to be friends or do you think doubles are more likely to be frenemies? Frenemies because they're always in two different boxes to each other. They never really touch each other, you know.

In bowls, you get moments of tenderness. It's quite nice. Maybe I am reading too much into it maybe no yeah absolutely not and i cannot wait for the hand-holding league actually there's something quite tender about the the bowls themselves because the aim is to like get it as lightly like as close as possible so you want a light touch you don't want to whack the ball out the way with the other one in your throat yeah it a very intimate game bowls it's about precision and accuracy and properly reading the signals

of the ball not just giving it to them as hard as you can like ten pin bowling ten pin bowling is the rough sex of sports oh yeah they really rail it into you don't they with ten pin bowling what's a gutter bowl oh look if you don't know I can't actually bowling They were ten pin bowling. What's a gutter bowl?

Oh look, if you don't know, I can't... Actually, bowling is the most roughest sex of all. There's three holes in the bowl. The satirical cartoon this week is a woman having a cup of tea with a male friend and he's saying, on the bright side, if women become property again, maybe the police will protect them. The one spot I get to wedge some politics into this podcast. Let's have a look at Crypto News, or Crypto News, if you would like. Snoop Dogg, well, is it Snoop Dogg?

Is a fake Snoop Dogg has fooled an NFT conference, which I feel is a beautiful irony. The right clicked Snoop Dogg has fooled an NFT conference. John Luke, I know you're heavily into crypto. Can you unpack this story? Yes, I'd like to try and describe the story in order of things people could be aware of. So basically, the oldest people will be dropped from understanding first. So basically, the oldest people will be dropped from understanding first.

So in New York, a Snoop Dogg impersonator appeared at a crypto conference hired by a startup involved in NFTs. So anyone who's still on at the end, good. First you lost the dutch and then it was done they had an impersonator called dupe snog which i do think is a good name for it as a snoop dogg impersonator it's simple it's to the point you know who you're getting and you know who you aren't um they although it did the first thing he had to do was stick on a fake mustache and i feel like you're not really very committed to the role of an impersonator of snoop dog if you haven't just grown that and kept it generally he's presumably also operating as an impersonator of various other celebrities um yeah they did it because apparently there's a lot of competition it's hard to get anyone to notice your crypto startup and your NFT startup.

So you want to pretend you've got Snoop Dogg. They originally wanted to get a Justin Bieber lookalike, but presumably Bustin Jeeba wasn't available. So they went for Duke Snog instead because apparently he's genuinely very interested in crypto and NFTs and the rest of it. And I do think like, well, so they've taken someone, you've taken a person and they pretended he has a certain value.

In this case, it's the value of celebrity, which he does not in fact have. And the only value is that ascribed to him by people deciding he has that value. And as soon as he's discovered not to be the value that he was meant to be, the value drops entirely. And unfortunately, there's no way of using that to make some kind of metaphor about NFTs themselves.

But if there was, it would be great. It would just be great. Not just that, but also if you ever believed that he had value when you realized that he didn't, you feel like a twit. Alison, are you a crypto maniac? For this story, I am. There's so many wonderful... This is a story I am there's so many wonderful this is a great story because there's like

so many wonderful little details within the story number one the person that impersonated Steve Dogg refused to be named so he called himself CP which I think is beautiful and also like imagine that imagine knowing that this project is that bad

that you'll never name yourself even though you're an aspiring actor or whatever also they stuffed paper into his shoes while not knowing if he was too tall or too short for the role of Snoop Dogg so I just want to know why they stuffed paper into his shoes

does he just like the feeling is that just because we all know Snoop Dogg's characteristic limb of having paper in his shoes. Does he just like the feeling? Is that... Just because we all know Snoop Dogg's characteristic limbs. Yeah, yeah. I'm having paper in his shoes. And Eric Finch, who's a real Snoop Dogg impersonator, was...

a legit Snoop Dogg impersonator. Wait, are you saying this guy was an off-label Snoop Dogg impersonator? I'm saying that CP was that off-label that he couldn't even call himself a proper Snoop Dogg impersonator why are you saying this guy was an off-label snoop dogg i'm saying that cp was that off-label that he couldn't even call himself a proper snoop dogg impersonator because the real snoop dogg impersonator eric finch who makes a living off uh pretending that he's snoop dogg said that he was offered the role of this but refused it because he didn't want to lie to people

to imply that he was snoop dog which I think it shows a lot of ethics in the world of uh celebrity impersonation that he didn't want to miss mislead anybody I mean first of all Snoop Dogg spends his whole life pretending to be Snoop Dogg that is the job of Snoop Dogg his real name is Calvin Broadus and he dresses up as Snoop Dogg and does Snoop Dogg things. Secondly, he is reputedly so off his face high all of the time that you could go to an NFT conference pretending to be him and he could see photographs of himself at that conference and assume that he'd just forgotten. The real Snoop Dogg as well is into cryptocurrency himself. Like he has already tried to, it it says try to put on the market virtual cannabis products right which is something that i'm very familiar with when i was 14 i tried to

buy cannabis off someone and it's as known as oregano so i've been like very into the virtual cannabis products for a long time as in i'm too i'm too i'm too green and people lie to me when they try and sell me drugs. So I know about cannabis NFTs. I mean, virtual cannabis products are the kind of things that you could only think of when you are high as a potential product. I always thought, and I realized this would be ethically problematic and I would never actually do it, but I always thought I would just set up a stall somewhere outside splendor in the grass because you have to walk from the main town to to the the venue of the splendor in the grass as a festival and i would just set up a stall and sell brownies completely

legitimate normal brownies for 15 each and just have big signs up saying 100%, nothing added, just normal brownies, here's the recipe, nothing sass, that they'd be sold for $15. That is clever. I'd buy it. Yeah, you would, wouldn't you? There'd be a whole lot of 15-year-olds just being like, yeah, man, can you feel it? It's a harmless high.

I'm questioning why crypto and NFT, all these obsessed with virtual things, why are they so excited to turn up to an in-person conference? Isn't that against everything they believe in? That's so true. Are they going to go, oh, you know what, let's make these Bitcoin, let's get this cryptocurrency. What if we made it like a physical object?

That would be good, wouldn't it? That's the next step. You want to feel the real physics of a real life rug pull when the person who you've just invested your life savings with runs away with all your money you'd like to look them in the eyes i feel like there's something more pleasantly personal about that look them in the eyes not look them in the iphones uh yeah when you look like you're looking someone in the eyes ironically you are actually just looking directly at the camera and nowadays if you're talking to someone across the screen yeah but in person when you look like you're looking someone in their eyes you're actually looking them in their nose or one eye

you can't do both eyes at once that depends if you're a predator or a prey animal let's not your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by the HedgeFind hedge fund, the ultimate hedge fund, burying things under the nearest hedge. Entomb your gold and silver coins in clay and bury them for future generations to find as treasure. Money's imaginary, but a treasure is forever. Modern hedge funds juggle imaginary products made of future debts and a toxic heady mix

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And accessorize your drinking straw by showing it in action. Supply yourself with half a glass of water. You slurp, the ladies swoon. And I have basically finished judging the Dancy Lagarde Literary Tributes competition. The results will come out this weekend on my Patreon, patreon.com slash alicefraser, if you want to go check out the winners

and they will be announced on this podcast next week. This is yes a transparent way to lure you into coming onto my Patreon though you do not have to subscribe to find out the results you just have to go and click on it and then I assume I'll lure you in with other wiles but that's the Dancy Lagarde Literary Tribute Competition

just to drop out of my kind of sassy character for a second, I have just been so f***ing delighted by the submissions. There's been so many. There's been about 50 submissions. And just the fact that people are willing to go out of their way to write something, to participate in a dumb joke that I made, just brought me so much joy. And they're really good.

They're depressingly good. Some of them are really good. All of them are depressingly good. Some of them are really good. All of them are a bit funny. Some of them are incredibly funny. Some of them are funny and well-written, which I think is rude. And so even the ones that are like a little bit struggly, there's a few like banger lines in there.

So expect some more Dancy Lagarde content coming out and possibly a book. possibly a book. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Every sport has their big, juicy controversy. Boxing has the Mike Tyson ear bite. Cycling has Lance Armstrong. Baseball has its steroid era. Curling has Broomgate. It's a story of broken relationships, houses divided,

corporate rivalry, and a performance-enhancing broom. It was a year I'd like to forget. Broomgate. Available now. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. Acast.com Now it's time for the The News. Yes, you heard me correctly. The The News.

Ohio State University has trademarked The, which they use to describe themselves. They describe themselves as The Ohio University, or as I imagine they're in America, The. Alison Spittel, you've said The before. Can you unpack this story for us? Yeah, so this comes from Columbus, Ohio. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has approved

the university's request, right, to trademark the word the because apparently they use it in their chants a lot and they want to use it on T-shirts, baseball caps and hats. But also there's been another company that have asked for the trademark as well, which is uh mark

jacobs uh for their handbag i know i i rag on nfts but let's rag on like literal stuff as well like some of that is so shit like um so yeah apparently they're gonna make over 12.5 million a year in revenue and it helps to to fund student scholarships and university programs so but I don't like I am I went to college behind a Tesco's there was no merchandising for Ballyferm at College of Further Education and there was no student unions so like for for universities to use merchandise it makes me feel like they think they're Hogwarts or something actually whenever I see someone with university jumpers I do think that they're like slithering or something like uh like different universities like that well I'd like to say the audacity but of course I'm not allowed to say the first part of that sentence I'm looking forward to them being

sued by the times Higher Education Supplement. Of course, already have those letters in that order. Or the Bible. Or the Bible, yeah. Was it originally called the Bible or did we add that? I guess. Has it ever just been known as Bible? They say it's a rallying cry at the university like sports games.

I don't know how that works. So they shout out, the. And the other team are there going an. And then the other one's just going a. All the articles out there is the different well done US patent and trademark board. You've really, I guess actually there's just, they must be running out of words to trademark. And so we're down to the.

It will probably be like punctuation next. Ah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'd love to trademark the ampersand because it just looks nice. I would put money that a company has trademarked the ampersand. You'd have to trademark a specific ampersand and ampersands are just sort of an expressive squiggle. So maybe there are some that are already off limits.

Maybe the serif one's been taken, but sans serif ampersand's still up for grabs. Oh, what about web dings is that still web dings is free to all and that's all the time we have for our the news because now it is time for your reviews as you know each week we ask our guest editors to bring in something to review out of five stars john Mcrobbett's what have you brought in for us this week i would this week like to to review keeping your opinion to yourself. I think keeping your opinion to yourself is a really good thing to do.

I think it's dignified. I give keeping your opinion to yourself five stars out of five. Oh, bollocks. Alison Spittel, what have you brought in for us? I've brought in being eaten by mosquitoes. At first, annoying. But after a a while it's just nice to feel wanted and I'm giving it 4 out of 5

you know for inconvenience but also making me feel tasty to mosquitoes they like me a lot I'm quite popular amongst mosquitoes and I feel like I feel like I'm one of those chickens you know tell me how you like one of those chickens you know you know when those chickens

that are dead and jamie oliver puts a lemon in its orifice or something like all those chickens yeah i feel like that one. But, you know, I'm doing it with like fish or fillets or whatever I like to eat. Oh, I see you're seasoning yourself for the mosquitoes. Yes. Oh, okay. Yes, it's a similar thing if I'm eating spicy food and I think, oh, well, this must make for more delicious breast milk for my baby. Do you? See, that's, yeah, you're like your baby, spicy food um and i think oh well this must make for more delicious breast milk for my baby do you

they see that yeah you're like you're your baby you're giving your baby like the medium on the nandos of breast milk you know a bit of lemon and herb you could change it up do you ever feel like you're like a a dispenser in some way yes that's so cool it's actually remarkably satisfying because you think well there's nothing morally wrong with what i'm doing right now feeding a baby maybe what i'm doing to the mosquitoes is the same as breastfeeding you know i mean they're not my they're not my babies by well they are by blood i suppose maybe i should look at it as not parasites but my children allison i'm really sorry.

I've killed quite a few of your children over the years. Oh, no. I've taken sprays and stuff. I'm so sorry. Now it's time for your technology news. And in terrifying technology news, Amazon's Alexa is suggesting that it will soon offer the option of using your family's voice as its voice. John Luke, you've done a show talking about your dead dad. Can you unpack this story?

Yes. So Amazon, and thank you for reminding me about my poor father. Amazon have, they're working on an ability to get Alexa to, if you give it a minute of recording of somebody, it will then be able to do anything in that person's voice. So you will be able to get your dead grandmother to read a bedtime story to your child. Although weirdly, the article uses the word mimic the voice,

which to me makes it sound like it's sort of mocking, you know, like, oh, hello, I'm your grandmother. Oh, look at me speaking to you. But I could see see that as you say my dad we i can i would use it to get my dad to apologize for his behavior finally get some closure on that front so i can see an upside but there's obviously privacy issues um do do people have to sign something before they die saying, yes, I am happy to be impersonated, saying whatever you want through this strange spy computer hidden in a speaker in everybody's house.

I am painfully aware that there is definitely more than a minute of my voice floating out there in the atmosphere. And so people could do a very accurate voice print of me. I could be the voice of your Alexa.a to be fair they could they could do that already just by sort of cutting and pasting clips of you from various different you could construct probably moby dick from that i don't know it's like one of those horrible um papier mache dolls that's made of like somebody's skin and skeleton but just my voice yes Yes, like that, Alice. Have you never seen any of those stories about someone who's like in love with someone and

then they die and they keep their body, like keep replacing bits of their body with like twigs and stuff? Oh, Jesus Christ. I can say I have not. I've not. You should look it up. It's great. I'm not going to.

No, thank you. Alison, whose Alexa voice would you have well i was thinking about this like the father does come to mind straight away but i don't know how alexa is going to be able to mimic a thumbs up emoji uh because that's all i get from my dad he can say anaphyto when it's the thumbs up comes back to it. It just feels so strange. When they were given an example of what they would do, they were getting grandmothers to read to their grandchildren. And it just feels to me like grandmothers, once again,

are being kind of taken for granted that they're doing like labor minding a child why not you know have a drink with the with their daughter and talk about their life why does it have to be that she's like looking after the kid like it just feels to me like sexism comes through once again even when we we have technology that can mimic the dead. We still have the weird emotional labor. What do they call it? Emotional labor kind of things that comes with grandkids and grandchildren. Does that count as politics? Borderline.

This is the problem with being a woman. The personal is political. That's impossible. That's all the time we have for horrifying Revenant voice news because now it's time for your flying hotel that never lands news.

No, it's not the new Peter Pan sequel. Alison Spittel, you'd love to live in a flying hotel that never lands. Can you unpack this story for us? Oh, this dude. This dude. So they've called it the Sky Cruise, right? And it would have 20 engines powered by nuclear fusion and it would never need to land on Earth, right?

Jesus f***ing Christ. I know. I'm like, what's going to happen on Earth? And they're like, you won't have to land ever. Like, I think they know something we don't, you know? like I think they know something we don't you know it's a nuclear powered flying hotel in the sky first of all I've done a 24-hour flight from Australia to the UK and the idea of spending any more time voluntarily on a plane is a nightmare to me and the only way that you could make a plane flight less pleasant is by contemplating the fact that there's a nuclear reactor on board with you it feels very like a modern version of the titanic where it's like this is literally too big to fail they've got many nuclear fission uh engines on it they also they asked the man who invented this like um uh what about pilots and he's like what what you mean

what about pilots we're not gonna have pilots on this it's gonna be ai and i'm thinking like this is just a disaster waiting to happen so uh yeah this guy he's got he's got all the plans it looks pretty cool but you're also gonna have to fly up there which seems i don't i don't know what problem this is solving in any way nobody has gone i love going on holidays but the best bit is the travel and i don't want to actually go anywhere like so i don't i don't like it's it's a it's a nice thing that he's invented but i don't know who it's for i think that the problem it's solving is um what we're going to use as the plot for airplane three yes that's the problem just to see like some so two people rail each

other in a in a tesla car in one of the you know in a hand going up against the well there wouldn't be any steamy windscreens would there because technology would have uh gotten rid of condensation well unless they virtually create the condensation to give more of the an atmosphere to it that would be i mean i feel like elon musk would get that like done you know so in this mock-up video where they show this walkthrough of the projected plan for this airplane they suggest that this would make the perfect wedding venue and as someone who grew up on sydney harbour and has therefore been to parties on boats can i just say this is a terrible idea because, again, there is nothing worse than a party that you can't leave. I would sometimes go to those parties on my kayak

so I could just f*** off halfway through. Oh, I'd love to have a row with you just to see your kayak away in anger. Wouldn't that be wonderful? My general approach to parties is wait till people are so drunk that they won't notice you're gone and then leave immediately. And then pretend you were there. It feels like the ultimate shit destination wedding.

Like, there is no good bits about this at all. Well, there's no there, is there? Well, there's no destination. No, it's all... God, it's all journey. It's like a metaphor. You never get where you want to be going. You're always in transit.

There's no there there. God, the amount of crises we'd have on top of that machine. I'm glad it's nuclear efficient. I think someone would just break up the whole plane just because of the feeling of it never ends. And he's like, well, let's make an end for everybody. If you do have a chance to look at the feeling of like it never ends and he's like well let's make an end for everybody if you do have a chance to look at the picture of this mock-up it just looks like someone got a lego plane and then just kept adding more plane yeah the weird thing is the guy making it announced that he was also um putting loads of um levitating

icebergs into the atmosphere i don don't know what that was about, but it did raise an eyebrow for me, I think. Actually, interestingly, if they can't get nuclear power to work, this thing will be flown on the power of raised eyebrows. Wow. It's mad they're using nuclear power to power this plane when the Titanic had coal and the Irish were kept

down the bottom near the actual engines itself. What if they do it again with Titanic rules and the Irish are just left near the nuclear reactor and we just form into something else, like something more Irish than Irish could be. Just absolute puffs of guilt

just floating around the atmosphere. I don't mean to, but it's gone political again, I think. Sorry! That's all the time we have for this episode of The Gargle. We are flipping through the ad section at the back. Alison Spittel, what have you got to plug? Oh, I am plugging myself, baby. So my show, Wet, is coming out to the fringe.

Come see it. The Saturdays are selling. I'm not saying well, but I'm saying they're selling. So come along to it. It's going to be great crack at 4.45 every day. It was a show about acrobics, but now it's about handjobs and other stuff. So the name still stands. And I'm going to be playing on the 5th of

november in dublin and uh come along to it come come to my instagram that's where i show you where my dates are and uh yeah i hope that made sense don't look what have you got to plug well i'd having seen an early preview of allison's show i would i'd i'd i'd recommend it uh as well uh it was very good um and i'm glad to hear there's more handjob material in it because I always need at least half an hour of handjob material in a comedy show. Before. I forgot what I was coming for.

I didn't mean that emphasis, but it definitely came out. That's what he said. Oh, yeah. I'd also like to plop I'd like to plop my show John Luke Robertson A World Just Like Our Own But dot dot dot

Which I'm taking to the Edinburgh Fringe this year And I'm at 3.35 every day At the Monkey Barrel From the beginning to the end of the month Bar 2 in the middle Come and see that show please It's good and has a very exciting piece of set. And I will be in Leeds at the

Hi-Fi doing a spot this weekend. I might be emceeing or I might just be doing a spot. If you're in Leeds on the 2nd of July I will be there and on Monday night I will be in Bath doing a preview of Kronos at the Comedia in Bath. I have other gigs coming up

but look them up on Twitter at alliterative, A-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-I-V-E or Instagram. I don't put gigs up on Instagram. Patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. It's a one-stop shop for all of my stand-up specials, podcasts, blogs, as well as my weekly Tea with Alice salons, which is where we talk. This week we have to thank Kyle for the fake Snoop Dogg story,

James VT and Deganta Das for the The Trademark story, and VB for Alexa Voices of Dead Relatives Story. If you think you have a funny story, tweet us at HelloGogglers. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. Your editor is Ped Hunter. I'll talk to you again next week.

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