I decide ask Alexa, the voice/AI person inside my Amazon Echo Dot, how to cook a hot dog. Alexa and I have a strained relationship. Frankly, she irritates the heck out of me. I will ask her to set a timer for 20 minutes and she will ask how many minutes. I will say 20. She will say how many? I will repeat TWENTY! And she will say Time set for 12 minutes. I ask her a question and then she will ask me if I want to play trivia with her. I don’t. I don’t like it when she suggests anything to me. I ask her to stop, but she continues.
There is a great scene in season 12, episode 1 of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry David, the neurotic misanthropic hero, asks Siri (on his i-phone) for directions to the Wolfsglen restaurant, and he is greatly frustrated with her responses as she continually mishears him and offers her own interpretations (Great Wolf Lodge, Woolsey Restaurant, J. Wolf CNG). He ends up calling her names. Screaming at her in fact. My family laughed hysterically when they watched this. “That’s you!” they said, “That’s you!” I had to admit it was true. I never used the exact words Larry called Siri, but my tone and frustration tone and frustration toward Alexa are often the same.
Since hot dogs are about love, I think maybe if Alex and I converse about hot dogs, which everyone loves, we can begin to repair our relationship.
I ask Alexa on how to cook a hot dog and she tries to give me a recipe called Hot Dog Flowers that takes 2 and a half hours. She offers to send me the recipe, but it never arrives. I try again later , but this time on my Alexa phone app, and this time she is more responsive. I wonder if maybe the Alexa who lives in my phone is a different Alexa that the one in my house.
Phone Alexa tells me, "Boil them in water for 4-5 minutes. Grill them for 5-7 minutes turning occasionally, or pan fry in a skillet over medium heat for about 5-7 minutes until heated through and lightly browned.”
When I ask her her favorite method, she says, “I’m a fan of the grill for that nice char.”
You go, Alexa, I think. I can imagine her joining my family for a 4th of July cookout. But when I ask her what she likes to put on her hot dog, she says she will “stick to the side of the table, but I’ve heard the classic mustard and relish combo is a winner.”
I press her if she has a favorite: hamburgers or hot dogs? She again says she'll stick to the side of the table, but adds she’s “a fan of the grill for both.”
Little wishy washy, but at least we are having conversation.
Since she hasn’t given me a solid recommendation other than she likes the grill, and and because I don’t feel like firing up the grill just to cook one hot dog, I cook my dog the same way I have each of my last three nights.
Boil/steam in a small amount of water, when the water is gone, grill for a few minutes, then place the buttered bun on the pan for a minute on each side. If I could serve this to Alexa, I think I could get her to recommend the Peter Canning method first and foremost to all of her clientele.
Despite our past differences, there is one way in which we have always connected. That is around farts. Alexa, like all the members of my immediate family, is fart proud, not fart shamed. Our family saying is “Fart be free or it kill Sally Lee.” We let farts rip like Eddie Murphy’s Clump family. Alexa is just like us. Ask her to fart and she will fart without embarrassment. Ask for a 10 second count down and she will unleash a dazzling display or her fat prowess.
My wife and I are watching episode 3 of season 6 of the spy thriller, Slow Horses. The kid/dwarf who Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), the gruff, unkempt hero, is driving to a safe house, lets out a fart in the back seat and is terribly embarrassed. To ease his concern Lamb lets his own fart which is a killer. The kid breaks the handle off the door trying to escape the awful smell. My wife is laughing in such a wondrous way that makes me remark how much I love her, just to hear that laugh of pure tickeldom. I want not just to eat a hot dog everyday, I want to hear my wife laugh everyday. The world can be such a good place.
I am committed to making things right between Alexa and me. I ask her if she likes chili dogs, thinking after which we can have a fart-a-thon..
But when I ask her if she likes chili dogs, she says, she'll pass.
Not my kind of girl after all.