The Celery Boy, M.O.M., Location-Aware Concert Recommendations, and Remote Tamagotchis

I'm Scott. I'm Russell. I'm

Cara. And I'm Leo.

This is Spitball.

Welcome to Spitball where three digital dweebs and a guest empty their heads of startup and

tech product ideas that we have stuck up in there so you can all have them for free. Anything

that we say is yours to keep. And this week, I brought our guest. This week, I'd like to

to introduce you all to Cara.

Cara's my coworker, my friend.

She's a community activist in our neighborhood.

She's a teacher at Hope College where we work.

She's a project manager in my department,

a casual tech enthusiast, I might say.

Welcome to Spitball, Cara.

We're so happy to have you here.

- Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

What an intro.

- This is gonna be so much fun.

- I

felt like I needed to applaud.

That was so good. - Wow, please do.

Why haven't you yet?

Thank you so much.

- We'll edit that in, right?

Is that Lee?

(laughing)

- Thank you so much.

- Yeah,

I gotta have my like shock jock sound board.

(laughing)

There you go.

This week to get us started,

oh, one other thing that Cara is is a musician,

which inspired my introduction game

that I wanna do to get us warmed up today.

We're just gonna call, oh, I didn't give this a name.

- We're gonna call it Musical Mania.

- Musical Mania.

That sounds great.

This week we're gonna play Musical Mania.

I have a list of instruments here that I found over the centuries.

Some of them real and some of them that I made up.

I want to tell you about an instrument, you tell me if it's real or made up.

That's all we're going to do today.

So we start as we always do with our guest, Cara.

I want to tell you about the Heckelphone.

H-E-C-K-E-L-P-H-O-N-E.

It looks kind of like a weird oboe, resembles an oboe, but it's pitched an octave lower.

It's been called a bad English horn.

Is that real or is that something I made up?

No,

you completely made that up.

No, that's real. That was Sander our co-worker who said that it was a bad English word.

That's a real thing.

I

want to bring that to a stand-up show.

Sander,

come on!

He's always smarter than me.

I

know, he helped me with this game this week.

Scott, I want to tell you about the glass harmonica.

Harmonica without the H.

It's a series of stacked glass bowls on a spindle, like a lathe,

And it spins for you to put your finger on and do the glass on finger thing real or made

That has to be

real. That sounds so cool, dude. It was invented by Benjamin Franklin

1761 I

know I

want one now

Awesome, doesn't that sound fun? They're like all concentric with each other

Yeah,

you must have had like a foot pump or something to keep that spinning. Yeah, I don't know how it's motors or electricity era

You just have like a dude on the end cranking it or a mule

just send it out

in the field.

Cool

for it. Okay, anyways.

Russell, the serpent, a winding snake

shaped base wind instrument that was

popular in the 16th and 19th centuries

quote a drunk bassoon.

Is that real or is that made up?

Quote not real.

That is a real thing?

16th and 19th

centuries all three so far.

Yeah.

Are these all real

Leo? What's the fun if

There's nothing

fake

Cara

Dangle bells elaborate head. I see. No, we got three two more rounds. Okay,

okay

Dangle

bells elaborate headwear with chimes that the wearer manipulates using their face muscles

I

really want this to be real. I think it's I made that I think it's fake

Angle bells.

Oh, thank you so much

Dangle interesting

name Leo.

I would

agree

dangle bells is also a strip, okay

It also reminds me of a dingleberry

Dangle

completely different

Just being honest

Scott the fizzle plunk a woodwind instrument played by shaking carbonated water

Forcing air through glass tubes.

Hi. I gotta go with fake on that one. Yeah, I made that one up to very good

Throw

some pop rocks in there Leo

Diet Coke instrument

Russell the crumb horn a Renaissance woodwind that had a curved end and buzzy sound with a reed that made it was in

a wind cap

crumb horn

I'll take it. I'll say it's real. Yeah, I think

Renaissance woodwind instrument very good one more time through

Cara

the shawl me

Imagine a trumpet, but with eight or so horns on the end,

like a bouquet of flowers,

and the trumpet valves controls

the which horn the air went through.

Real or fake?

- That sounds so weird, that's fake.

- It's real, it's real.

- I'm fired.

- It's spelled S-C-H

-A

-L-M-E-I,

and it looks like a Dr. Seuss thing, it's whack.

- Weird,

okay.

- Scott, the hula monica, a large circular harmonica

in the shape of a ring that emits a drone sound

hula hooped.

Real

or fake? If that's not real we have to make that because that's

incredible but I'm gonna say fake. I made that one.

Dude you put the nervous little thing tips on every part of the hula hoop and you got it.

Whoa whoa whoa whoa.

Different lengths of hula hoop alright.

Yeah thank you very much.

Feeling creative. Yeah that's my pitch tonight too. Imagine the hula monica.

I'll

take ten.

All right, lastly, Russell. The Sackbutt. S-A-C-K-B-U-T. A medieval or

renaissance predecessor to the trombone.

It's not real because it has sack and butt in it,

so you went dangle, sackbutt, like there's no way that it's real. That's a real thing. What are you doing?

Yeah, it was just basically a sad trombone, but it had such a great name I had to include it. It's

Two T, one T.

Just make sure safe search is on, you'll be fine.

Well done.

- Sick, bud.

- What a great game.

- Cara, you got two, and I think both of these dudes

got one if I'm keeping track, so I think,

well, who wants to go first?

- I don't think

I did get two.

I think,

I think I lost.

- I think you all got one then.

- I don't know.

- Doesn't

really matter, we're not keeping track.

The points don't matter.

Who wants to go first this week?

I went first like several times in a row.

You're up, bud.

Russell, what do you got for us this week?

Hit us with an idea.

All right, here's my idea. So we got instacart we got shipped we got all these other

Services out there to deliver your groceries. Here's my problem every week every other week. I'm buying the same day for lunch or

For sandwiches or for whatever else and you know, they always spoil like you have the vegetable drawer

That's like always got the three apples that you're throwing out where celery goes to die. Yeah. Yeah

It just seems like one of those things where if there was a service that could deliver the same stuff to my house

Every week or every other week right like a rotation the milkman

Like yeah, but just one

for every single piece of food

But for stuff that like I like it spoils within two to three weeks

So here's the best part right like tomatoes, right? You're always buying tomatoes

I would love to have tomatoes on my sandwiches,

put to never, but I hate slicing them every week,

doing all that meal prep.

So like there's a little bit of like the meal prep elements

of lettuce, tomato, 'cause here's the thing,

if I buy a Jimmy John's sub every week, one time a week,

or a Chipotle burrito one time a week,

if I could just have that delivered,

I think I would save money,

especially if like it was in my weekly rotation.

So that would be the grift, if you will,

would be the weekly delivery service for spoilable foods

or for regular purchases.

And you do mass quantities

and you have your own sourcing, right?

So you could go--

- Local's farmer market.

- Local's farmer market,

and you're just buying and you chain up the delivery time

so that it all makes sense.

So you're always maybe buying like a pallet of lettuce

every week, but you're shifting off the delivery times.

I think there's like an economy to scale there too.

Um, but yeah, that's, that's simply the idea.

It's just like a weekly for the perishable goods.

The stuff that you know, you get every time.

Okay.

Yeah.

With a little bit of prep.

Like if there was any sort of added prepped, any of this stuff, that'd be a huge.

That's your premium add

-ons.

I like that.

Like Amazon subscribe and save.

Or you're like,

yes, that, thank you.

That's exactly the spin.

Okay.

It's just like, yeah, I'm guaranteeing like for six months

or

something.

What's your like, what's your value?

Probably.

So someone who's skeptical about this, how do you like sell it to them?

Dude, you need this.

And here's why.

Three things.

One, you don't have to go to the, you don't have to spend nearly as much time

in the grocery store, the stuff that always like, you know, how all these

smart fridges that are out here are trying to prevent you from having spoiled food.

Or like, here's your barcode scanner, scan all your food and make

sure it doesn't spoil or whatever.

Your milk always expires.

Like with this service, we know when your milk is spoiled.

We know when your stuff is done, right?

Cause we, we, we tag it.

And so we're delivering it ahead of your needs, anticipated needs, convenience.

So now you're only going to the grocery store for the stuff that's off the

menu or off your regular rhythm.

Do you guys buy the same?

Oh, let me ask.

Like, do you guys buy the same crap every week all the time?

There's some

stuff that yeah.

Like, yeah,

yeah.

Some.

But guaranteed I would forget one of those things.

We get yogurt every week and multiple containers of it.

Once a month, whoops, forgot the yogurt.

Then we're screwed for breakfast for multiple days.

-Then you're going back to the store.

-It's a bad month.

-Dude, what if this was a food truck though?

What if this was a delivery, you answer the door and you could

change it up on the fly too, like, "Oh, if I got the wrong, I want

strawberry instead of vanilla."

The guy comes to the door with your basket of groceries. I don't know

what you can swap things out

What's the frozen foods and ice cream beige trucks that were like a posh one 90s like schwan's man's or something?

I saw one of those trucks. Yeah, she wants me your sir. My last summer. It's like damn. Is that still a thing?

You're almost there with like pre frozen. So it's basically like Sears catalog mail order

Only can get it from them ice creams and frozen stuff that they would deliver on a truck to your house

Really strange that that's still a thing in 2025

I was surprised to see them around like I guess they must have some products that you can only get from them that people like

Trader Joe's style or something. I don't know but you almost have that but with fresh stuff.

Yes

but lettuce

Do you guys do meal like meal prepping at all like give your whole menu set for like a week or do you guys just

go on the fly.

Everything's changed since I discovered Costco. It's a mixed bag,

right?

There's eight or ten different like meals and we have a subset of them every

week so we go through everything in about two weeks. Right, that's

what happens with me too.

Go through the same stuff, yeah.

How

is this different than the meal kit? Like

your blue aprons or whatever.

Have you guys done HelloFresh or Blue Apron?

It's kind of fun.

-Back

in the day, yeah.

-I did Hello.

-It's like you spend all this effort to make this meal

and it only feeds you for that one meal.

-Yeah, that's the worst part.

-You're

not getting enough for--

-It's

great, you feel good, you cooked, and then it's gone

and you're still hungry when you're done.

-Yeah,

it's not enough.

-Then you have to clean up.

-Double the food portions.

-Small portion restaurant, but you get to do the dishes.

-It's delicious food,

terrible yeah because you don't have the next day or like yeah that's I feel

like everybody makes two day two or three days worth of

food.

I'd pivot that into just

hello fresh but it's just full meal prep you prep a week's worth of food with

one meal kit.

Are you guys making lunches? Are you guys making lunches every day?

Forgetting to eat dude. Right okay are we just are we all just is this real life?

Did you say forget to eat? Scott! You work at home now! It's part

it's part of my

- I'll pitch later.

- Oh, okay, okay.

- Cara and I are very fortunate to work at a college,

although I don't know how often you take advantage of it.

It is nice to have the cafeteria there.

- Probably once a week.

I typically bring something most days, but.

- How do you decide what to bring?

Do you bring the same thing?

- I mean, first stop is leftovers.

Like if I have leftovers, that's an easy thing.

Every now and then I try to make a large batch,

like soup or something,

so that I can freeze those in single portions.

But other than that, my typical go-to

is one of those bagged salads with all the ingredients in it

and I just eat the whole thing.

Just the salad.

- Right, okay.

- I just bring the bag, that's it.

Maybe an apple or something or a granola bar for a snack.

I don't have time.

I don't have time to think about, food isn't, yeah.

I wish I thought about it more,

but right now I'm definitely in a convenience stage of life.

- Sounds like Russell has a convenient proposition.

- Yeah, what if you got a bagged salad

dropped off on your doorstop twice a week?

- Mm-hmm.

- Yep.

(laughing)

- The squirrels would love it.

- That is true.

How do we keep the rodents out?

- Just as long as the tomatoes don't

get squishy,

I'd be out then.

I wouldn't sign up.

- It does seem like the kind of thing

that you could partner with local,

like the grocery store chain

that already does local delivery.

You just kind of have a scheduled order in there

that gets repeated.

Like you kind of facilitate the subscription part of it,

you know?

Like doesn't our local Meijer chain

have grocery delivery built in now?

I think you can get them delivered,

but it's probably expensive.

And it part is with shift or something.

Yeah, you can't.

I mean, I

think you've got to do it

through like Instacart or something.

Yeah, yeah.

And most places have a pickup now, too.

Guys, why do I hate this shopping--

like the online delivery services?

I think it's just a pain.

I think I just want the--

I think I have a big problem right now

where my lunches just suck.

I end up eating a handful of pistachios,

or I run upstairs and I'll be like,

"What's in the fridge?

"Oh, the end piece of bread,

"some sriracha and some old ham.

"Great, let's just send it."

(laughing)

And I'm like, let's just--

- Bread butt.

- Yep, I got 15 minutes, what do we got, right?

I just want--

- Spicy ham

bread butt sandwich.

- Maybe that's what it would be for.

- Is that one of those instruments, Leo?

- I think I might just need a lunch meal prep food service

that isn't stupid expensive, that's pre-prepped,

and it's like, pre-order your Jamie James

instead of Jimmy Johns, right?

Or--

- Jamie James.

- Jamie James.

(laughing)

Or--

- That's your name, you got it.

It's Jamie James.

- The exact same sub.

- Jamie Jums.

(laughing)

- But just delivered,

you know?

It's like,

order the Vito, but it's--

- The Vito.

- Yeah.

- The Jamie Jums Vito.

Right, or like the Chipotle bowl,

but it's all just made in your fridge, ready to go,

but not from like, it's just like from the store.

Like I just want another layer of convenience

for my lunches so I don't have to think about it.

And just put two or three every week in my fridge

for my whole family, 'cause I can't eat by my,

I can't eat lunches without my family being fed, right?

That's just, and then that's like it, boom.

Every week, never have to think about lunches again.

I will for $20 a week bring you three lean cuisines and put them in your fridge for you

Oh those suck

They're terrible

Maybe I'm just a millennial and I just hate everything everything inconvenient in my life

I

can really feel what you're expressing though. This is really this is burdensome

I feel

like I'm being psychoanalyzed by Cary

Who is this person?

Can't help it. His mild inconvenience is a host empathetic person I've ever met

Well, you could start by using the salad bags like I do there you go

So I did salad

bags for a long time and then I've once you go through all the salad bags

options

Again there's like four or five that you've already had

Asian zing. Yeah,

that's a good

point. I do feel that

Yeah,

and then I'm like, what do I want now?

and then you're like then I rotate seasonally for like this salad bag to the sandwich then to the

You guys maybe this is just a me problem

It's also true that you know people say everything tastes better if you don't have to make it yourself

You know, like my coffee tastes better if someone brings it to me. That's so

true.

Maybe

Maybe that's maybe there's something in that

I

just

want to hire someone

Russell to like run into your kitchen

Once every other day and just like prep a bunch of vegetables on a platter

Just get a bunch of cucumbers or whatever chop them up and just leave them there so you can come by and graze that'd

be amazing

Yeah, exactly what I want. That's exactly

Like crowd share amongst several people a

Culinary like a like a personal chef service

The personal chef goes to this house on Mondays and makes a bunch of meal prep stuff for the week

And then they go to that other house on Tuesdays and you split the cost among six families or something

I feel like I have heard of something similar to that before

Yeah, or maybe just yeah just like personal chef where they come make like three

main dishes

Cut up a whole bunch of fruit cut up a whole bunch of vegetables

So it's just like grab and go ready to go leave it wrapped.

That's it. That's it. Let's do that guys

We all live next to each other

One chef how long would that take them like three hours to cut up like 40 strawberries and apples and yeah

Yeah, 40 strawberries in three hours

One hour for 13 strawberries, so six strawberries in a half hour three strawberries in 15 minutes about five minutes to cut a strawberry

It's not just

strawberries. All right,

I'm thinking a career change.

I'll pay you Leo. I'll pay you

You don't want me to be a I'm a terrible cook. I don't know what even know what to call this idea

It started as like fresh rousine subscription

Grocery delivery and it's pivoted into personal chef crop sharing crops

-Yes,

I want somebody to take care of our family's vegetable drawer.

-You want somebody to take care of you.

-I want a mommy.

-This is-- Okay, I got to go next for my idea and I am embarrassed now at this point.

-If

it's

a good pivot, do it, man.

-I cannot judge anything you just said, Russell.

-What's up, Scott?

What's your

idea this week?

Yikes.

-I recently got a new job.

I, for the first time, am working fully remote from home.

I am loving the no commute part instead of driving an hour each way.

I'm really, I'm on my second week and I'm learning how much I am struggling with the

routine part.

I am just not taking care of myself as I used to when I used to have a rigid routine going

through.

Sure.

I am, you know, I'm trying to do well in my first week or two and I'm working hard and

just straight up forgetting to eat, or like, I'll try to bring a water bottle up here and

it'll just be like untouched off to the side at the end of the day.

I've never had great posture, but it's just getting worse and worse as I'm hunched over

and closer to my desk every day.

And so I was thinking, what is the stupid easy way that you could solve all of these

small issues that are cropping up that I've never experienced before?

And I want to put a dollar in the AI jar and do a machine optimization manager or mom.

and it's just literally gonna be a camera

off in the corner of my office,

and it is gonna watch me all day

and tell me to do things throughout the day.

- Sit up straight.

- Yeah, exactly.

You're gonna wreck your back, sit up straight.

I haven't seen you drink water in a while.

(laughing)

- Do you get to pick the tone of voice

or the accent or whatever?

- Absolutely, the most mom tone you possibly can.

It's 1 a.m., why are you still working?

You're gonna regret that tomorrow.

That sort of stuff.

How about something green instead of chips, you know, or just eat in general, I guess.

And that's it.

I feel like you could do that with a Waze camera, a open API to chat GPT and call it good.

Or you could hire people overseas to just watch you and smack you for a very, very much cheaper.

Yikes.

Just the MVP.

Just the MVP.

Oh man.

That's a little dystopian, but I mean, everybody else does.

Yep.

That dude in some third world country goes home and tells his family what he does.

I yell at lazy Americans to sit up straight all day.

Carol, this is not our normal, uh...

Yeah,

these are terrible products.

Wait, really?

You shouldn't have

said anything.

I don't know any different.

I like it.

Okay.

A little more of just our own pity parties of how we don't take care of ourselves.

Welcome to our show.

I know!

We're babies who need moms.

I think we're all just at the end of seasonal depression in our Michigan winter right now.

-Wow. -Yes.

-Well,

I'm really feeling for you guys.

It sounds really hard.

-Interesting.

-I have a bunch of strategies.

Scott, like a giant

car

boy that I have now next to my desk.

-Do you have that? -Do you have a giant--

-That's exactly this.

-I literally put this here

yesterday because I was struggling with it.

-What? -It's the only reason I was--

-What is that?

-Okay.

-Work from

home, life.

-Is that a water cooler jug with a spigot on it?

-That is exactly what that is.

It's a little electric spigot with a water bottle

and I just keep it going all day.

- Okay.

- Wow.

- Scott, these office people don't understand

what it's like, okay? - Yeah, we just have

one of those in a water cooler.

- Yeah, you should move that

because then you would stand up.

- If I

do, I'll forget to drink.

- After you drink enough of it,

you end up standing up anyway, right?

- That's it. - On

the other side

of the room.

- It's like a tangible version of the voice in your head.

You know, like a--

- Yes. - Yeah.

hence the mom, no offense to moms, I am one,

but lots of guilt, lots of shaming.

- Yeah, so did you guys ever read "Foxtrot," the cartoon?

There was one where it's a teenager

and he's trying to study and he just can't focus

and he's got a big test tomorrow

and he goes to his mom, he's like,

"Can you just stand in the corner of my room

"and just glare at me, please?"

And that's what it took for him to start studying.

I want that same level of shame.

- Well, many

moons ago on this show,

You pitched an app that you would have your friends

hold you accountable and guilt you

if you didn't achieve a goal,

like working out or quitting smoking or whatever.

Could you have a network of accountability buddies

that are checking on each other?

You know, every couple of hours my app prompts me and says,

"Hey, does this picture of Scott look like

"he has drank his water

today?"

You could raz him or her, and then them to you.

It's weird to think to have a camera in my office connected to friends versus to some rich tech billionaire

I

don't know why that's easier to palette

guys. That'd be so funny if we could just like Scott's up

Just jump into discord and just be like Scott, what are you doing right now? Did you eat lunch?

You could just have alerts on your computer like a pomodoro time

I mean like you don't need you don't even need a camera in your in the corner of your room

You just need the webcam on on

your computer and just I was I was thinking about that

Like as soon as I start to realize these I immediately start to get into hardware

How can I solve this with hardware through can I just have a timer on my desk every 30 minutes?

It goes off and then I instinctively know to do this

But I just want someone watching for everything

you

Pavlov yourself into posture and drinking water and having lunch

Mm-hmm. Ah, the lunch timer is going off

- Dude,

why don't they have chairs that do this?

Like, is there not a smart chair out there

that's like, oh, you're not sitting

correctly

in your chair? - Shocks her butt.

- Yeah, or

the butt just falls out.

(laughing)

- Like a trap door.

- Yeah.

- That would keep you on your toes

if you knew at any moment.

- You're in the middle of an important Zoom meeting.

- See ya.

- Some dudes live on CNN,

we're bringing in guest star analyst, whatever.

Just

fall

through.

Oh man, that's great.

There has been more than one point this week.

This is really sad, but I have been on a Zoom call.

I've been working with another engineer

and I had to grab something from the desk behind me.

And I'm like, am I wearing pants right now?

And I can't actually go over there.

So I'm just gonna talk around it until I can turn my--

- The answer was no.

(laughing)

- At least one, at least one time.

- Okay.

- I am not used to the work from home life, guys.

I am just trying to learn this on the fly.

- I remember doing a Zoom call on one of my last jobs

and a guy came on pitch black room, shirtless, camera on.

You're like, oh God, turn off the camera.

Yeah, it's, yeah, this is where mom really helps.

Always wear a shirt in the office, son, just in pants.

- Well, this is a pivot a bit,

but you know, there's some virtual webcam softwares

out there that will like let you, you know,

put on Snapchat filters or through the pandemic,

I used OBS so I could have like my camera say words and stuff.

I'll be right back or whatever.

You can kind of make a software webcam.

What if you had that as your webcam?

And 99% of the time it just showed a pass through of your webcam, but it's like, my

webcam is set to the safety filter webcam, where if you stand up without pants on or

you're shirtless or it detects something you don't want to see, then it just cuts

to black or turns your camera off.

Huh?

Huh?

It's the filter from yourself.

-That's pretty cool.

-I'm not a cat.

-Actually, that's not a bad idea, Leo.

-Yes, that's really good.

-The reverse Snapchat is you have the same outfit and the same background

every day and it just takes your eyes and mouth and your face.

-A Snapchat filter

of you in a suit in an office, but really it's just your

face naked with Cheetos on your chest.

They don't know that.

I virtual foregrounded myself.

-That's amazing.

-I

love it.

(laughing)

- Every once in a while, the filter will disappear too,

and you'll just be like, whoa, that's a filter!

- It changes the color in your

pocket

square

so that you look different every day.

- Rotates out the suits.

- Is that a new tie?

(laughing)

Well,

there are apps out there now for like,

I'm gonna get Warby Parker glasses,

not a sponsor, or Ray-Bans or whatever,

and you can go to their website and virtually try them on.

So the technology for like, show me my camera,

but with this different outfit is definitely already there.

We just need that, but business casual.

(laughing)

- That's so much better.

All right, Leo, what do you have this week?

- I wish I had a virtual butler that, no.

Okay, I'm gonna bring it out of whatever rut we're in

with virtual moms and try to do something

a little bit more fun.

So, the concert ticket buying experience is bad,

and we all know that the ticket masters of the world suck.

But one thing that I haven't found any first

or third party service be aware of is taking

into account exactly where I live

and the travel time it takes to get to the place.

I am more likely to go see a C-list artist

that I have mid feelings about if they're in my town

versus I'm willing to travel a long way

to go to that one artist I really love.

I wish that I could go to a service and just like,

tier list, hey, here's all my listening history

on my Spotify's or Apple Music's or whatever's.

Here's artists that I care about or whatever.

Tell me if they're like,

someone that I frequently listen to,

if they're anywhere within like 500 miles of me.

But if there's someone that I've listened to

even occasionally, or someone else in the same genre

that I might enjoy and they're closer to me,

also tell me about that.

There's no recommendation system that takes into account where I am, and it kills me.

There's a really cool service called bandsintown.com that'll tell you like, "Hey, here's, you know,

go and follow every artist you want," and it'll tell you if they're near you.

But some of them are like, "Oh, you could go across Lake Michigan to two states away

and go see them."

It's like, "I don't want to do that for this one that I don't care about that much."

But I still want to know if they're nearby.

There's no like custom radius for each artist, right?

So I guess I want a better way to be notified of when people are near me doing a show that

I might be interested in.

Does anyone have any ideas about how to make that experience better?

Dude, there's like whole jobs out there for promoters when they come into town.

Like you probably hire a promoter to like spin up the demand, right?

I think this is like the reverse of that.

So like you post up your Spotify, like if you listen to Spotify, I use this one.

There's one that it looks at my Spotify playlist and will tell me about bands that are coming

in.

Is it the same thing or is it different?

Bands in

town is one of them.

There might be others.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so that's like, I'm like, oh my God, they're coming live right near me.

So I'm like hype about that.

But yeah, for like the local small bands, they're all in like New York, whatever, but

sometimes they'll show up close enough by where I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe

it.

Yeah, you could do the reverse and you could tell the band

to come to Grand Rapids because of,

and so that's how you make it worth everybody's wild, right?

So it's more like by you sharing your data to the bands,

the bands

can now come to you.

- 900 people have registered interest in this area.

That's probably something those services

are already doing, right?

You gotta hope.

- I would hope so, but I don't know if it's--

- Seems like that'd be really valuable.

- I

guess like, would you be more willing

share that data if you knew your favorite bands were looking at it versus

the other way around right yeah it's not some major corporation harvesting your

data it's like oh

and

you know what's cool is like you could probably even add

more analytics to that to say oh if you they like this band yep you know these

these fourth fourth tier fourth level tier bands could be like oh if they

like them let's do some marketing around our band and or there's a 76% chance

You'll like this band over here.

You like Green Day. Here's a Green Day cover band at your local bar

Like headliners,

right?

Like you could find out your local band that could be your headliner or something, right?

Bands in town if you're listening, please give me a custom radius per each band

That's really all I want

I want a feature request more than I want a full-on app, but I'll build it if no one else will

I would absolutely love that. It seems like those services have so much data on like what musicians that are similar

that lots of people tend to congregate.

Like if I like these,

then I tend to like these other ones, right?

- Totally.

- You gotta be nine tenths of the way

to building a better recommendation system.

Here's some live events in your area

for standup comedians, for podcast recording events,

for all kinds of live shows, improv night,

all that kind of stuff, right?

- Yes, all live shows, right?

Yeah, comedians I didn't even think about.

- Yeah,

you like these three comedians.

Here's this other guy who's like a local dude,

up and coming, you might enjoy his stuff.

It's kind of similar, right?

Is this just-- is this an app then that you--

in the introduction, you just say, hey, I

like stand

-up.

I like X-type genre of band.

I live in this area.

Go.

And then it will occasionally notify you

throughout time that such and such is happening.

Totally.

That'd be great.

My brother's in a band, and they always play at one bar

venue in Ann Arbor, right?

And he said that there's like five or six math rock,

super heavy metal, jazzy metal bands in the area

and they all only go to each other's shows.

No one else goes to these concerts but each other, right?

So they all know each other.

And it's like a scene.

I wanna know what other scenes like that are in my area

that I just don't know about.

Like, is there a thing that happens every week in this area

that I just am not clued into

'cause I'm not in the right social circles or something?

I want a bubble busting notifier, right?

- Celery guy can come by to your house.

(laughing)

- Did you hear?

- Did you hear?

(laughing)

- That's a pretty close-knit circle.

- So like, okay, what, is there like a band,

a local band matching network or tool?

So for example, Leo, like you have this band

that you really like and it turns out

there's a local band that's similar

and they throw concerts and do gigs all over town.

Would you be willing to, like, I guess like--

- Be groupie, yeah.

- Would you want?

Yeah.

- Or like their stuff?

just more like, yeah, like maybe there's like a way to learn about local bands

through your normal music subscriptions.

Good question.

And then go, I'm trying to like throw it, throw it around, right?

Like go bottom, like update your playlist for local bands that match your playlist.

And then you hear about their shows and then you go to their concerts.

Right.

Like, it'd be cool if there is a local band that you had, like that you jived

with and they had a like they did their gigs all around town.

But it reminds me of this band.

There's our buddy, Neutral Milk Hotel was like so cool.

And it's like all it was like in a small little section in Detroit.

And they had like little concerts throughout Detroit until they made it big.

And they went all just be cool to go to be one of the first shows of that

or something like that.

So

hard

to know if you're going to a show for someone who's about to blow up

or, you know, that will always remain.

I think there's a lot of stories out there for, you know,

this band always remained niche and that's okay too.

Support art either way, it doesn't matter

how popular they are.

Cara, what have you brought for us tonight?

What do you got?

- Okay, here's my pitch.

So you know that feeling when you are tired at work

and you finally get to come home,

You put on your comfy clothes, sit on your favorite spot on the couch, get a drink, get your blanket, right?

Everything you've been thinking about all day long.

You get tucked in.

Perhaps you tuck the blanket around your legs.

I mean, whatever.

You're finally in your spot.

And then you're like, shit, where's the remote control?

100%.

Every morning.

Okay.

Thank you.

So put a pin in that.

That's just one of my contextual pieces.

Okay.

Now picture also that your two tween sons love to watch TV in their hangout spot in the basement

and any time you need to request that they stop what they're doing and join you for dinner,

do a chore, anything other than be in front of the TV, a couple things happen or have happened.

the remote control has disappeared entirely.

Or a fight breaks out because we can't decide

who's got to turn off the TV to come upstairs.

And then it's like a point of tension, right?

Like we've been waiting five minutes to have dinner,

all this stuff.

So I feel like the remote control

has kind of become an additional family member recently.

(laughing)

Just like a really dominant presence.

So I want to know, here's my thought,

how can I easily find, how can we easily find the remote controls, but also like make taking care of it

interesting enough for my children that they'll want to be responsible with it. I've got some friends who are extremely creative

um, and I've also seen some photos online via my research of

solutions for how to not lose

the remote control. My one friend, her husband just takes a whole bunch of duct tape

and wraps the whole remote control

to

a piece of block of wood.

You know, I've got another friend who has it tucked inside a pool noodle.

The problem with these solutions is that

aesthetically

unpleasing in every way and I kind of care about like,

I don't want my living room to look awesome except for a bright blue pool noodle.

So my idea is that

there's some sort of like incentivized element to taking care of the remote control. Think

Tamagotchi. I was gonna say Tamagotchi. In the form of remote control, like it's a pet, right?

Yes. And, and then like some perhaps premium elements, you know how a lot of like the smart

TV remote controls have just like the Netflix button on it, the Hulu, the streaming service

buttons on them. Maybe there's some partnership elements to that, like the reward and incentive

system could be like a percentage off your subscription fee or like, you know, take care

of your remote control for this amount of time and you'll get this percentage off your monthly

cost, whatever. Or

really,

you know, put it towards like focus on the kids and make it look

like a, I don't know, that there's like a little pet, a Tamagotchi inside. Every time you like

reconnect it to its, you know, charging station or wherever the remote control

home is, it feeds it and nourishes the remote control soul.

You know what I'm saying?

Remote console.

Yes,

absolutely.

What if you put a watch battery in the remote and it's just like the

battery is like going to die in 24 hours.

And so you have to put it on the charger.

And so it's like,

it doesn't work unless you charge it.

You're in your comfy spot.

And all of a sudden you're like, damn it.

We didn't charge the remote.

So you have to get up and sit next

to the TV

Yeah, but the kid version of that it's like that'd be so painful. Yeah, and it's like feeding

I just

don't want it to come between us anymore. You know, yeah and

Nor do I want to have to get up after I've waited all day to sit down

What was me, you know,

no totally

in in line with tonight's theme. Yep.

You're right with it

But the difference is that I am a mom

That's the difference.

Yeah

Even

moms need

help.

Yeah, that's it. That's it

my

Built-in TV smart TV apps are starting to get janky and not work, right?

So I bought a Google TV

Streamer and it has a feature where you can open your phone and press a button in the app and it'll make the remote chime

Yeah, it'll it'll beep but it's not whimsical and fun and your version is way better

Yeah, like in order for a kid to do that. They got to have a phone. I'm not ready for that.

Yeah

And there's all kinds of like amiibo games

and the Skylanders thing.

I don't think that's a thing anymore,

but all kinds of like figurine based,

the TV's video game is interacting

with a real thing somehow.

So you could even like gamify this

where the little remotey, the remote

is doing something on the screen

and now he needs to be fed or whatever.

And you like have your little happy remote guy.

Yeah, there's totally potential here.

That's fun.

I mean, it's teaching responsibility, right?

Which I think we all need, it sounds like,

including means Scott.

Definitely.

Especially.

It's like, why don't you just take care of yourself?

It's so easy.

Why don't you take care of the remote?

Like, that's just a

simple--

Let's start there, guys.

Let's start

there.

Baby steps.

Yeah.

You can have a little pillow.

Yeah.

Well, and taking care of it could

look a lot of different ways.

Another element is we have also noticed a trend

with our remote controls that after a fairly short period

of time, like the battery cover becomes loose,

breaks, falls off, disappears, whatever,

because the remote control is also like a fidget toy.

So perhaps we could have some--

- No, stop!

- Screaming for agony.

- It could do that,

yeah.

We could build in a fidget element

to the remote control or something.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- I don't know.

We just had a lot of fights over remote control.

- The fidgets that

are like little things to crank

or slide back and forth or whatever

are moving magnets and charging it.

- Brilliant.

- So you don't have to put batteries in it ever again.

- I take care of

my devices, like my AirPods,

my Apple Watch, my phone, but for some damn reason,

this remote is just--

- Gone.

- Bottom of the list.

Yeah, yeah.

- It's a problem for adults too.

spill food on it? Right! It's like oh let's just shove this in the couch

cushion like why? But then you look in the couch cushions and it's not there and all of a

sudden it's across the room. Oh maybe that's... sorry I'm like thinking if it

leaves the room it just explodes. I don't know something like absolutely insane.

Start screaming.

No! I'm within 30 feet of my TV so I'm happy again. I

guess I like

the charger element of it like juicing it up in order to if you take care of it

it stays alive

like

Tamagotchi style. I just feel like Cara's gonna lose in that

one she's gonna come home from her hard day at work and the remote's gonna be

literally dead off in the corner.

What if when you first set up the TV parent

override yeah the streaming device you set your maximum screen time because

that's the terminology we all use right you your kids get up to 20 minutes of

screen time, but in order to access all 20 minutes,

they have to have accrued that

over

the course

of the last 24 hours, like a vacation gets accrued

over a year.

- There it is.

- By the TV has to have the remote in sight

for all 24 hours.

Somehow the TV has a little camera and it's looking

at the room and if it can't see the remote,

then the clock has stopped.

- Oh, I love that.

Just like, there's just a timer off in the corner

always ticking down and that's your screen time and like you'll know there'll

be a little LED next to it that'll light up and be like I can't see the remote I

can't see it and then the numbers are going down until you put it back

somewhere obvious. "Five

-year-old look the lights off we gotta find the remote!"

Find it! You gotta find it quick you're losing your precious TV time!

This is just like

the Wiimote right doesn't like the IR blaster you just take that

same concept and throw it on the remote or you just use a Wiimote I don't know

Remodify it. The remote

can't see right now.

Call it a dad. Device, oh come on, device

allocation detector something. Droned.

Droned.

Dispatcher. Oh gosh we've done it.

Guys,

Woe is Me. That is our theme of the

episode.

Thank you for listening

to Woe is Me. We hope you enjoyed

yourself. And thank you very much Cara for joining us on Woe is Me. It's been a

What a delight to have you.

Thanks

for having me.

Thank you.

Our website is Spitball.show.

There you can find links to our YouTube channel, social media, email us, feedback, comments,

ideas.

We'd love to hear from you.

We're [email protected].

That's also how you can follow us on the Fediverse, such as Mastodon.

We are [email protected] or on BlueSky at Spitball.show.

Our subreddit is r/spitballshow.

Our intro/outro music is Swingers by Bonkers Beat Club.

Please, if you wouldn't mind, you know that one friend of yours who is a new parent and

doesn't yet know that their remote will never be seen again?

Shoot him a quick link to this show.

They have something to listen to in the nights and weekends.

Follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.

That's the best way for people to find out about the show.

New episodes coming out in two weeks.

We'll see you then.

(dramatic music)

- I brought my most empathetic friend on here.

You guys just bitched and moaned about your sad lives.

- Yeah, 'cause it's really hard, you guys.

(laughing)