If I Were You - 312: Bad Voice

Episode Date: January 29, 2018

In this episode we discuss European First Dates, tennis, and oral hygiene! See omny.fm/listener for privacy information.

This is a headgum podcast. Very cool. That was from Victor Edso. It sort of seemed almost like a TV theme song. Yeah, I think he used a xylophone throughout most of it. And as a professional xylophonist myself, I kind of appreciate the little timbers and the thrusters that he uses. He must have used a pretty, an oaky little node buster.

So you're a professional? Yeah. What is the node buster? The node buster is the little, to you it would be like a little wooden sphere on a stick. So you can't even come up with the name of... The node buster? Yeah, no, I didn't come up with it. John Q. Xylophon did.

You think xylophone invented the xylophone? It is funny that xylophone that you learn to play like two instruments in school. It's the recorder and the xylophone. Well, there's a saxophone. But you don't learn that. That's like, you know, that's not a given. What makes a saxophone a sax and a xylophone a xylo? Like, a phone is just noise, sound, whatever.

But then there's saxophone, xylophone. What else is there? Any other phones? Trombone. It's a trombone, of course. Trombone. Yeah, which is a tromb-based phone. Well, that guy says, hello there.

Greetings from cold, cold. And then the country he's from. Where do you think? Ooh. Scandinavia. Is that a country? It is not. Norway.

No. Not Norway, but close. Finland. Ooh, very close. Sweden. Yeah. Cold, cold Sweden. He wrote us an original theme song.

Hope we like Big Fan Victor. Thank you, Victor, for listening to us. Thanks, Vic. It can't be that cold in Sweden. What's the current weather in Stockholm? What is it? Like 40 degrees Fahrenheit? Big freaking whoop.

What is it? It's four. D. Cold. It's actually chilly sounding. I would probably put on an overcoat. At the very least. At the very least.

Not yet. Not yet. All right. This is If I Were You, the only advice podcast on the web hosted by us. I'm Amir. I'm Jake. Starting 2018 off right. Off rice.

Nice. Thanks, man. Off white. All right. Let's get to these questions because they're not going to answer themselves. That's true. I sent you one. I can't find it myself.

Oh, here we go. Okay. I'm a guy with a crap voice. Interesting. All right. Like not singing voice. Yeah. So what should we call this guy?

What about the most famous Swedish person you know? Bjorn Borg? Of course. Is he Swedish? I don't know. Bjorn Borg, right. Simply. I got to look.

She's probably not. Is Stefan Edberg from Sweden? Bjorn Borg is Swedish. Oh, all right. Nice. Oh, isn't that other? Warinka? Is he Swedish?

No, he's Swiss. Oh, that's right. Stefan Edberg is also Swedish. All right. Let's not ruin. Let's not give away all the names. Bjorn Borg writes, simply, I cannot stand my voice. I think it's irritating and not manly at all.

I hate it even though, even through a recording. And I know that the recording is what my voice actually sounds like. I feel like with my voice, I can't get anyone to respect me or heck, blow me for that matter. Or worse yet, blow me. I seriously can't think my voice is, I seriously think my voice is lowering me from a decent six to a four and is ruining my chances of hooking up. Do you guys know someone with an annoying voice? It could also be your self-esteem.

I think Jake's voice is fucking awesome. I'd love to sound like him. Is there a way that you can mask my voice or make it sound cooler? Is there a surgery for this kind of shit? Should I just stop talking and learn sign language or become a mute? Please help. P.S., love Bjorn Borg. P.S., please come to Australia again soon and don't skip Adelaide.

Radilide. Radilide. So he's an Adelaidean Australian actually with a weird voice. There's so much Swedish shit happening in this podcast so far that I genuinely thought this guy was from Sweden because the song dude is from Sweden. He's from the Sweden of Australia. I feel like the good thing, well, it's tough because your accent doesn't do anything for you in Australia. No, yeah.

But you came here. I think that would, yeah, that's my advice is to leave Australia because then you have an interesting voice. Yeah, your voice, like no matter the octave, you'll have the accent if you're not an Australian anymore. Yeah, and Australian's like a cool type of accent to have. I feel like, tell me if I'm wrong, but the way Australian accents make your voice intonate, like it almost makes for a higher pitch talking or maybe that's just like that I use a higher pitch voice when I do an Australian accent. Oh, like all Australians.

Put another shrimp on the babby. Yeah, like I'm talking like this here. Like an old shrimp hand is yet. Oh, yeah, you call that a knife. This is a knife. You little fucker. Yeah. Look at me dancing on an alligator.

And that's where this guy sounds like. Me, I'm zero feet, 11 inches short. And I got a crap old voice. I can't even get blown. And I got a bad attitude. Yeah. Got the randoline. I'll ride a shock for you.

Oh, I'm falling down. A thimble. How'd you like to receive me? Fuck a kangaroo. You ever seen one this big before? I didn't fit in a pouch, yeah. I'm a pygmy, aren't I? Down here.

Oh, you stepped on me. Um, yeah. I'm sure your voice is fine. Yeah. A lot of people don't like the way their voice sounds when they record it. That was a thing, remember? Was that like just a, was that just like during your childhood? Or is that just a late 90s phenomenon where everyone's like,

well, my voice sounds weird when I listen to that. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it was ever very common for people to hear their own voice. And now since, or is it just because we make videos and podcasts, we have to listen to our own voice all the time. We listen to it probably more than anybody, but I mean like, you know, showing up in Instagram stories or Snapchat. Yeah, easier to record your voice.

Yeah. But I remember back in the day when like you record your voice and play it back like on a tape or a cassette, you're like, whoa. I don't sound like that. Yeah. Sometimes you do, I feel like I know what I sound like, and sometimes a recording did distort my voice a little bit. Yeah, like it gives you a lisp.

Well, I think I also have a minor lisp. Really? Lisp. No, I remember when I first, when we first started posting videos on College Humor, people said I had a gay voice. That? And that cut me with a sword.

They thought I had a gay voice, which really hurt. Don't eat me, mister. I'm on your salami sandwich. What accent is that? Australian. Obviously from Adelaide. Don't put the vegetable on me.

Ah, I'm dancing on a toothbrush. Eating an olive the size of my head. My car? His roller skate, man. Look at me lifting up this match like it's a big old torch. I'm one inch short. Is there a surgery for this kind of shit? You think there would be,

because there's like facial reconstruction, there's plastic surgery. There could be like a voice box surgery, but I don't know. Voice changing surgery. Let's see if that's a thing. I also, I think he could get by just by changing his voice without the surgery.

You could just fucking drop your voice. Just do a silly voice. Oh, you think so? Have you ever done a silly voice with your friends or a significant other, and then before you know it, you're talking to that voice all the time? No, but I know you have.

I've always liked this one, yes. Now I'm stuck in it. And I'm one and a half centimeters tall. This puddle is an Olympic-sized pool to me. This is the trailer for downsizing, I assume. You saw the movie, right? I loved it. Did his voice change when they went,

like when he was a small person talking to a tall? No, he was still Damon. He was still the Dame. That was his one note. He's like, I'll do this movie, but you're not making my voice sound bad. Yeah, no, I have to have Matt Damon's voice. Everyone else sounds weird, but Damon sounds good.

I think that you could just drop your voice in octave if you're worried about it being high-pitched. And I guess he didn't even say that, but that's just what I got. What? Like, so this would be my new voice and I would just talk like this? Yeah, well, that's tougher because you have to...

Yeah, you could talk like this. And this would be me always. And you don't have to change it this like that much. You could just like drop it, just an octave. Just like down low. People won't even notice. Down over here. Remember the video where I speak in a new voice?

Yeah, a new voice. Yeah, and then you steal the voice from me. That's right. It's kind of like this. Yeah, you're just like that. Yeah, now this is my voice now. This is my voice. I'm on a yahoo answer and someone says

you can take testosterone medication that can help lower your voice. Oh, interesting. I guess I'll fucking do it. Well, you know, there's some research. No. There's other side effects to that. No, there aren't.

You just get taller and more of a boss. No, Jesus Christ, don't... Get a little hairy and fine. Oh, wow. Larry Page, Google CEO, reveals surgery to fix his horse voice. Oh, he had like a horse voice? I guess so.

Like he would just be like, No, like so, a horse would be like the scratchiness of the voice. It's not like him signing like a horse. I was thinking of Goof, dude. So he'd be like, the way PageRank works is Give me a carrot. A baby carrot's big enough for me.

It's half the size of my body. And a moat. All right. There's your options. Fake it, move, or take testosterone pills after consulting a doctor. Cool. Let's see what else he sent me.

Ooh, this is from a lady, a Swedish lady, Swedish... Martina Navicholova. No, she's not Swedish. No, I doubt it. Swedish? She's Czech. Female.

Czech if she's Czech. Nice. Czech if she is. There's a... I'm looking at Swedish female tennis players and there's one named Johanna Larson. Cool. You'd be not surprised to know

that she's attractive. That's awesome. All right. Johanna writes, I'm a 20-year-old female student at Michigan State University. Go Spartans! So yeah, I'm a student at a very expensive school

and your girl has plenty of debt under her belt. Hey. I'm totally self-sufficient for my parents, so I pay my own bills, rent, and whatever else. I recently made my preferred age range on Tinder a little wider, meaning I let men in their 40s look at my profile. I don't really find older dudes attractive,

so I don't swipe right on like any of them. However, however, however, this guy went to my Instagram and messaged me at the source. Oh. He's 37, well-established and pretty charming. He's originally from Michigan, but has been living in Europe for work.

He saw me on Tinder because he was at home for the holidays. We talk pretty often and he's even sent little gifts to my house, LOL, sorry mom, and he's been talking about possibly flying to Europe so we can hang.

Is this the sugar daddy I want slash need? Is it a terrible idea to meet a strange older man in a foreign country? I've stalked all of his social media and he seems to be normal and safe, but can I just be blinded by my imagination? Thanks for your help. I love listening to your podcast

while I'm working at my boring job. Oh. Love, Johanna. Thank you. So this girl swiped this guy left and then he messaged her on Instagram. Yeah. That's a bold move

and it seems like it worked. It didn't love itself, yeah. It didn't love itself. That's a lot. Especially because he's a 37-year-old. It shows a lot of tech savvyness for the 37-year-old. 37 is almost my age in a weird way.

I'm like 37, dude's old, but he's just... Well, you're 35 and would you message, would you slide into a 22-year-old's DMs on Instagram? I'd feel pretty creepy about it, but 20 also because this girl's not even old enough to go to a bar. She's 20? Yeah, I thought you were a minus and two for him.

Oh, no, I just didn't hear you correctly. Yeah, so 20-year-old. I think, yeah, I'll classify that as full creepy. Because it's the divided by two plus seven. So his men should be 25 and a half. Yeah. And now he's all about flying her to Europe. Seems dangerous.

The question is, would you take a free trip to Europe if the exchange is potentially creepy as hell? The crazy part is that this would be their first date. So she'd be like getting on a flight, getting off at customs, checking in bags, and then arriving to this guy's house. And if he's bad, it's like, oh shit, I'm jet lagging here for a week.

Yeah, and you took a red-eye. The first thing you have to do is take a nap at this guy's house. And then maybe I'll wake up and we'll get a sandwich, but my internal clock's really fucked up. So you're eating lunch at 2 AM. And you haven't had a good bowel movement since you left. Yeah, you're constipated and tired. You're greasy and wet.

And then he expects to have sex with you because you spent $1,200 on a flight. I flew you out on Lufthansa. I'm sure it wasn't business class, but I sprung for economy, comfort, and an aisle seat. You had an aisle, didn't you? That means you only get a hand job, sir. Do you think he expects sex?

Do you think it's creepy enough to just avoid entirely? I think the answer to both of those is yes. I don't think he's correct in expecting the sex, but I do believe that that's his expectation. Sexpectation. Yeah, I believe he has sexpectations. And I believe he came across your information in a quasi-legal way.

Yeah, I'd advise not to do it. And I think you can get to Europe on your own somehow, in some other way. But if you like the guy, then by all means continue talking to him and maybe just go on a normal date next time he's home. Yeah, maybe you wait. That's the move. So you say, I can't do the Europe thing

because you know you might be a murderer, which is fine. At least not on the first date. And maybe, yeah, maybe you someday go to Europe and you can see him. Yeah, he's probably in more of a rush than you are because he's 37. He's knocking on death's door. Yeah, he needs to make a mate right away.

You're 20, you're a junior in college, you got no rush. I also think that this guy's not necessarily like, if you're viewing this as like, oh, this is my way to get money, he can be my sugar daddy. I feel like he might not, like, he's more of a sex hound than a sugar daddy. Yeah, what do you mean? He's trying to fly you to Europe so he can get laid.

He's not going to like continue, he's not going to like start paying for your tuition. Yeah, if anything, you can be like, why don't you just send me the cash and I'll buy my own ticket because I'm an independent woman. Yeah, you're good to control his world in that regard. Yeah, and he'll be like, why does that make you an independent woman

if I'm sending you the cash? And then you could be like, if you clearly don't want to see me then this isn't meant to be. And he'll be like, okay, okay, okay, just wait. I'm Venmoing you $2,700. And then Venmo request him for three Gs. Yeah, and he's like, you're worth it. That extra money is going to go a long way

because you have to take an Uber to the airport. That's right. Yeah, and you're flying through like, there's no Michigan to Europe directs, I'm sorry. Yeah, we're rerouting through JFK. Absolutely, and what, I'm just going to stand there. Or a hair actually, probably, likely, right? Yeah, because you want to go to the largest, closest hub.

Yeah. So that's your advice is to just simply say no, thank you. Yeah, no European first date, especially if you didn't even match it true. It wasn't even a true match. Yeah, at one point you deemed this guy too unattractive. Yeah. So like, how can you go from that to seeing him in Europe?

And he might be both. All right, next question. We need a guy's name again. Oh, what was that other sweet? Stefan Edberg. Nice. Another male Swedish tennis player. We really should play tennis.

We talk about tennis players a lot on this podcast. It's time for us to just straight up rally. We should just, yeah, we should have like a, just a quick little volley or something. You played tennis in college, which is a very unknown fact about you. That's correct. That means you're at least pretty good.

Not anymore. You think you're just bad right now? I'm definitely bad right now. Like you think you can serve in volley? I can still serve because serving was always my best. Do you know how fast you can serve? No, I never, I don't think I ever clocked it. Unless like I did, maybe when I was like,

when I was like 12 or something, I think I could serve 75 miles per hour or something. That might be like, I don't know if that's way off. You're not sure about the age or the miles per hour. Well, I remember doing it when we were doing, I did like a tennis camp when I was like around 12 or 13. Yeah. And did you hit the cones?

Like you try to hit the corners? Yeah, we used to, like we would do, not cones, we would like make little ball pyramids and try to hit those. And you were good? Yeah. When I was 13, I was very good. And then I like, I guess I probably peaked at 13

and like was a slow, slow, steady decline. You know, like probably getting better. Is that like a weird way to put it? Like I continued to get better, but like... Relative to the best in your age, you were getting worse. Yeah, exactly. Like if I, 13 was like, 0 to 13 was like, holy shit, Jake could be a good tennis player.

And then like from then on, it was like, he's really plateaued. He hasn't improved while this guy's playing in major tournaments. You should be progressing faster than this. Did you ever like play in local tournaments? Yeah, when I was, up until I was like 16, I guess, we had like intermural pool clubs. Like High Lane would play Rich Top or High Lane would play the Long Club.

And that's about as rich as it sounds when you're talking about Connecticut Tennis tournaments, Rich Club, High Lane, stuff like that. Yeah, but it is interesting because like even among those clubs, like the one I went to, High Lane was probably, was like a pretty middling country club. There was no golf course, but we would play like New Haven Country Club,

which had a golf course. And then we would play the Long Club, which had like squash courts and like, you know, the rich... And then Rich Top was like even less expensive to join than High Lane. So they'd be like, oh, how's that country club? No golf course, right? Not much of a country club, is it?

We would like, we would get bussed into like the really fancy ones. Oh, shit. There's got a golf course. Going straight to their snack bar. Two-handed backhand? I have one-handed backhand now, but I had a two-handed backhand backhand. At the time?

I adopted the Nadal Open Stance forehand. It's really nice. Yeah, it was good. How, what was your signature move? Inside out forehand, serve and volley. Did you approach the net? It was close to the net. Yeah, the inside out forehand.

That's where you run around the backhand. Yeah, and then hit it. And then, and serve and volley. But now, as I've gotten worse, my forehand is deteriorated. Now I tend to run around my forehand. Like the last time I played tennis, which was, I don't know, five years ago. You were running around your backhand. Down the line?

Down the line winners? Winners. No, I wasn't a big winner. Winners guy. I was, no, I would chip. I was a big lob. They called me the big lob. Favorite surface?

Oh, you got to go fucking heart true. Oh, heart true, ace rebound. Green on blue, blue on green. Green on green, blue on blue. Yeah, we had the heart true. Ever play on grass, Hurwitz? Ever play on grass? Or you didn't make it out to Wimbledon very much?

I never played on grass. Not quite grass, right? You liked sliding around though, didn't you? You little piece of shit. You and your high lane imps. You know I went to Ridgefield. I'm a log club man. Myself.

All right, let's actually take a break and answer this question afterwards. I spent four and a half minutes grilling you on tennis for seemingly no reason. That's my own solution to the advice this week. Pick up a racket. I think the Wilson 95 pro staff is the way to go. Prokenics.

And I'll string it myself, thank you. I have a head grip tape. I have a shock absorber that looks like a little rubber W. It's actually pretty neat. Oh, and the design on the strings, it looks like Snoopy from afar. How's that?

All right, we'll be back with more questions after this. Bye. Thank you to Aura Frames for sponsoring this headgum podcast. You know, Aura Frames is sponsoring not just this episode, but the entire headgum network, Jake. Wow. That's correct. I mean, this might be the Goat Father's Day gift.

I think it actually is. Yeah. Yeah, not just Father's Day, but if for any not so tech-savvy family member that you need a gift for soon, these digital photo frames might be the best of all time. Yeah. For me personally, these things are perfect.

I'll tell you why. As you know, I am expecting my first child. We got one for Jill's parents. Oh, wow. We got one for Jill's grandma. Holy smokes. We got one for my parents. So there are three of these bad boys in our family right now,

but they're great, really easy way to stay in touch with your family. You can upload as many photos as you want directly into my parents' kitchen. It's really nice. Oh, that's cool. So you take a photo of anything, perhaps a baby, and then it goes to their digital photo frame. This is actually how we told Jill's grandma she was pregnant. We got her the Aura frame.

We plugged it in. Jill's grandma was pregnant. Really nice asshole. This was actually a really sweet moment for me and my wife, and you're trying to make a joke of it. I was just being goofy a little bit like, this is how I told my grandma she was pregnant. Yeah, kind of like she misheard it or something like that.

Or the way you said it was kind of like, could go either way. By the way, Jill's grandma is pregnant. Oh my God. Jill's grandma is 90 and pregnant. It's pretty cool. And you told me with a digital photo frame. Holy smokes. And we let her know with an Aura.

Yeah. Thank you. The Aura announcement. So you can instantly frame photos from any device anywhere and invite the whole family in on the fun through the Aura app. Add me to your Aura app. I'd love to upload just a picture of me at a pool or something. That could be funny.

Yeah, like your banana or your dog alongside pictures of my daughter. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You deserve that. You can even preload photos and add a personal video message and display as soon as your dad or anybody connects to the frame. Yeah. It's a great gift. A really, really iconic gift.

And right now you can save on the perfect Father's Day gift and visit Aura Frames. That's A U R A Frames dot com. And our listeners can use code head gum to get up to $30 off plus free shipping on the best selling frames. There it is. Oh wow. This is timely.

The deal ends on June 18th. So don't wait. Terms and conditions apply. That's Aura Frames A U R A Frames. Dot com. Okay. Go get your parents something. All right.

And use the code head gum for $30 off plus free shipping. Right on. Thank you, Aura. And now back to the head gum podcast you were listening to. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Thank you, BetterHelp. If you're finding yourself in a difficult, anxious, stressful situation talking to a professional licensed therapist

is the best way to navigate yourself out of that difficult place. And it's not necessarily easy to find a therapist, especially one in your area, but BetterHelp makes that all easy because it's online therapy designed to be convenient, flexible, and suitable to your schedule. You just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist. And you can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge.

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That's betterhelp.com. If I were you, check them out. Thanks, BetterHelp. Hoi, hoi. We have returned. Ho-ho. Just huge, huge, overwhelmingly positive feedback for our new segment. Oh, it's a left-footed device.

Bob, I'm coming. Gross. I'm coming. Pretty cool, huh? That's awesome. Our first unsolicited advice. Stinger submission. I love it.

I forget who wrote it. Let me see. Hold on. Hold. Oh, here we go. Lars. Thanks, Lars. He's probably Swedish himself.

Very much so. First week, I talked about cryptocurrency. That market has tanked. I really hope nobody took me up on that. Unsolicited advice that I took and I'm fucking... How much am I down right now? I mean, you are bleeding out. You are absolutely in the red.

Good lord. Transit, sixth sense. Well, I will say a lot of these are a long-term hold. A year ago, Litecoin was worth $4, and now it's worth close to $200. So don't worry about the day-to-day. Then you talked about your unsolicited advice was to read the Game of Thrones books. Correct. So now some back to me if we're alternating.

Of course. And I'm going to go Oral Hygiene and Oral Hygiene. Everyone brushes. Some people floss, but only the best of the best. The goats in their field use the water pick. That is correct, sir. Water pick was suggested to me from my dental hygienist a year ago. The basic gist of it is it's this toothbrush tube that holds water at the base of it.

And instead of brushing, it shoots a very hard thin stream of water in between your teeth. It's a power wash for your gums. Exactly, because the theory is that floss can get deep and move stuff around, but doesn't necessarily flush the water away. And brushing is great for the gums that you can see, but it doesn't get really deep down between the crevices. The water pick, which doesn't replace floss, mind you, this is in addition to, not only gets deep down, but also flushes gunk out.

I gave you one six months ago or so for your birthday. And positive reviews? It changed my life. How's that? You were a little hesitant because you didn't want to add something to your routine. Yeah, I really did not. I didn't want to disrupt the nighttime routine, but now I've actually, if you embrace it, if you learn to love it,

like now I floss, I brush, then I water pick, and the water pick is easily the best part of the three. Because it gets deep. The water pick is almost the reward for doing the first two things. It's the dessert. Dude, it is so good. It feels amazing. I also really, I stress traveling light all the time.

And on every trip I've been on since you gave me the water pick, I pack a fat ass water pick. Wow. I don't like to travel without it. I don't like to spend a night not using it. Wow, good work. Do you go cold water or hot water? Hot water.

Yeah, you get to choose. Cold water feels so good. Cold water hurts sometimes. And I also made several trips to the dentist, and they are very, very pleased with my new gums. That's right. You quickly become your dentist's favorite client, because they'll be like, do you floss?

I'm like, yes. I'm like, do you water pick though? And I say yes. And they're like, wow, good job. I'm 32 for the first time in my life. The last trip I went to the dentist, they told me that my gums looked really good. There you go.

Every single trip to the dentist is an admonishment. It's like getting called into the principal's office after you did well. You're like, well, I'm pretty awesome. So let's high five and I can get on my way. It's really true. I should figure out exactly which water pick I have and maybe throw up a... If we could figure out this Amazon affiliate thing, that would be key. That would be clutch.

I'll put it on our website either way. But it looks like a little stiff hose that you hold up to your mouth. I would put mine on there too, which is more expensive, but mine is very pretty. Ooh, all right. So two different options at ifirushow.com. I know it's not a cool hip thing to get into like cash or fantasy novels. But I think it's a simple thing that'll make you feel a lot better in the long run

and make you look like it. It brings me much joy. It looks like a boss. And it just feels cleaner. You go to bed with cleaner teeth. Yeah, you do. And it's not cool to have shitty gums. Were you like a kid who was like,

had to lie to your parents about brushing their teeth? Yeah, I did. Like, did you brush your teeth? Yeah, whatever. It doesn't matter. Yeah, I was always a morning brusher as a kid. And at nighttime, I just liked to go to sleep. Leave me alone.

You're not going to let me watch TV. I'm going to bed. I want to pass out. I don't want to like get ready for bed. Yeah, I did not like it. And now I love getting ready for bed. Because it's like the beginning of your sweet night when you can enter your fucking mordor or whatever it's called.

That's when I escape into Westeros. Yes. And I like to do it with my teeth fresh, with my lotion on my face, body covered in Vaseline, from head to toe, eye mask, ear mask, nose plug, completely sensory deprived, levitating in this lukewarm gel. So it's not even water. That's right.

And I have a little snorkel on so I can breathe through the night. All right, that's it. Water pick, water flosser. You recorded your first episodes of the Dungeons & Dragons podcast, right? I did. I played my first few games of D&D. D&D. I am smitten.

Absolutely, I'm taken. Did you think you'd like it as much as you do? I hoped that I would like it about half as much as I am. About half as much as I liked it. Do you feel like you've discovered a new hobby? Yes, I've unlocked something deep within me. Deep within me. As we were leaving, all I wanted to do was play more.

I didn't care if we recorded it or not. I've also heard about people taking weekend trips to a cabin. And just playing D&D. Which played D&D for two straight days. And even that was like, jeez, it's price. Not enough. Yeah, now I see. You could go a week.

Just playing straight. And it's really just fantasy improv storytelling, right? There's no game, is there? Are you winning and losing? I mean, you are, in a sense, you can lose. You can be killed by the stuff in the game. Can you win the game? Murph is the Dungeon Master.

He knows the whole entire world. He doesn't know what the story is necessarily, because he doesn't know what our characters are going to choose. Basically, you can do anything you want. You're just talking in general platitudes right now. You're telling me that I can do whatever I want. You can do anything you want, man. The world's your oyster.

But that's what it is in D&D. You can't say, oh, my character runs up and grabs a squirrel. Because you don't know that there's a squirrel. Only Murph knows these things. And he plans ahead of time? Yeah. For example, on our campaign, we came across this tiny little pond. And we don't know what's in it.

But he knows. He knows. So we were like, oh, Emily suggested her character was going to stick her staff in to see how deep it was. So when there's something like that that happens, this is turning into my own solicitive advice. Just listen to the podcast. You guys know how D&D works. It's not out yet. Oh, yeah.

All right. Just wait until it comes out. It's going to be great. Do you have a launch date? I think the end of January. Oh, wait. That is right now. Yeah.

In the next two or three weeks. All right. Stay tuned for that. Yeah. Does it have a name? It's called, actually, I don't know with 100% certainty what the name is. So we're not going to leaky it. So let's not deal with that yet.

What would make you sad? Are your character dying or Murph dying in real life? Because you can always get into Dungeon Master. No, Murph is, I would be more sad if Murph died and not because I like him a lot, but because he's a really, he's a very, very good Dungeon Master. The amount of information that he has to have in his head is kind of insane. Wow. When I, really quick story, our characters walked into a bar and Murph, like, there were

three fishermen and four barbarians and one guy sitting at the bar and one person behind the bar and like he has a folder where all of those people have names and bios and he does a voice for all of them. Oh, wow. So we improvised scenes as like, you know, Caldwell's character goes over and starts talking to the barbarians and my character is talking to the dude at the bar and he like is just swinging back and forth. Is there a competition like an international Dungeons and Dragons thing?

It's like, is there a Dungeon Master of the Year award? Like, how do people know who's good at it versus not? I wonder. I don't just go completely unnoticed, right? Yeah. I mean, I think that like even in our small comedy community of like the subset of people there who like play D&D and who talk about it, because I think they go and like, they have like several campaigns with like different groups of people.

Yeah. So I think like there, we have friends who are like, oh, this person's a really good DM this, because it takes way more work. Like I just walked in, I know my character. He's very simple. Like hosting a podcast versus just being a guest on it. Yeah, exactly. So he's a good host.

Yeah, he is. He knows his shit. I think you, I think you can do it. Really? No, I would not want to do it. I think you should stage a coup. I would not. If you and Emily team up, I can take over Bahumia.

That's how it's called. That's what our world is called. Bahumia. Bahumia. Bahoo. Yeah. Yeah. And people speak English there?

No, not everybody, but everyone in our campaign speaks English. And I speak, I know the Dwarven language and Emily and Murph's character both know Elvish. Of course. Fuck you, man. I know Elvish too. Elvish Presley. Yeah.

A blue, red shoes. Hey, we ain't nothing but a how-do. Cryin' all the time. Oh, yeah. Got a small Australian dude doing Elvis impression. Holy shit. Making fun of me. Where do you get off?

All right. Now we can finally answer the question we've all been waiting for, which is Stefan Edberg's dilemma, because he's a 22-year-old from Canada who recently got engaged to my girlfriend of five years. We met in university, fell hard for each other, and the rest is history. Congrats. Exciting, right? Well, there's one problem.

We can't decide on how to proceed with our last name when we get married. My now-fiance really wants to keep her last name, since she would be the end of her family's name if she changed it. FYI, her name only existed for a few generations, and her family is very proud of their name. Now, we talked about this a long time ago, and I think I'm okay with changing my last name to her. But when I brought this idea up to my parents, they freaked out at me, saying they would be offended and extremely upset if I changed my last name.

Now, I don't know how to proceed. I certainly don't want my parents to disown me for changing my name, and I don't want my fiance's name to die out either. What would you two do? Jake, I know you are getting married soon. Would you ever consider changing your name to your fiance's? Thanks, love. Stefan.

Now, this question did stick out to me because I'm talking to Jill about this right now. Oh, you're talking about last names already? Well, I mean, not actively, but we've been talking about it since we got engaged, like pretty passively. It's funny. I consider myself very feminist and equal, but then it's like, I would never change my last name to hers. That's insane to me.

Why would I change my last name? She would either change it or nothing at all. It's like this strange arcane rule where the expectation is like, all right, well, when your daughter is married to me, then my last name becomes hers. Yeah, everything else is very progressive except for the name. Everything sounds perfect there. For she becomes my family now, leaving yours. But at the same time, the whole children thing, what name do they have?

Does mommy have a different name than daddy? Does that have any psychological ramifications? Yeah. I mean, to me, it basically makes sense that there would be a family name. I also, I guess, like the idea of like, oh, there goes the Smiths. Yeah. Or it goes whatever. And you know, checking into a hotel without lots of little babies and we all have like

our family name. This is Jake Hurwitz and Minnie Hurwitz. But then I also, like, when if Jill is like, I don't want your last name, I want to keep mine. Really? Yeah. I would never change my last name either. Why would I want to change my name?

That's who I am. Right. Yeah. So it does seem like the two options are none of us do anything or she takes mine. But that is why I think that there's the idea of the dual change. A dual change, meet in the middle, find a brand new name and Jill and I are going to be the pigfuckers. That's uniquely amazing.

Hey. Mr. and Mrs. Pigfuckers. It's not spelled the way you think. It's P-H-U-C-K-E-R. Yeah. I don't know anybody that's ever done that though. Do you know anybody who's changed their last name together? No.

But to me, it feels like that is the most logical step. That's the fair way. Seemingly. That is the only fair way. Or I think it's either meet in the middle or the hyphen. The dreaded hyphen. I can never hyphen. I would take Jill's last name before I hyphened.

Interesting. Which is, I know, insane. But I just don't, it doesn't seem like it's, you don't want to, your last name can be different, but I don't feel like it should be twice as long. It's a long name. It's a long name. What would you do? I would say different last names because I don't want to change my name either.

Yeah. But then what do you do with the kids? Like their, her last name or your last name? It's funny because you're like, well, I wouldn't change my name. Obviously the kids would still have my name, so that's not an issue. You pushed them out of your body for me to name them. You do the work and then they'll be called what I am. And your last name will be different from everyone in the family.

When you really start examining this stuff, it's all batshit crazy. But then there is like just the sheer convenience of everything being one, called one thing. Yeah. In Iceland, isn't it like your name, your last name is just your dad's name, daughter, mom's name, son or something? That was like a version of it. Yeah. There were like last names were, yeah, Leaf Ericsson, Ericsson.

The hope is that your last name is cool and then you're marrying someone with a bad last name, so they want to change it anyway. Yeah. Like if my last name was Dingleberry and I could change it to Pigfucker, I'd be like, that's awesome. If I was like Spade and I was marrying like a Corky, they'd be like, okay, I'll be Courtney Corky. No, I'll be Courtney Spade.

Yeah. And that's what happens when Courtney Cox Arquette married David Spade. She already married David Arquette. So how do you think her would stack up against Jill's last name? They're the same. They're interchangeable. Equally fine. Yeah.

So you can't win her on that. No. But I mean, nor do I like want to really. Didn't you say once there was a fucking rock, paper, scissors match at a wedding to determine the last name? I think it was a friend of mine that told me about that. I don't think it was somebody that wrote into the podcast that were like, part of the wedding was like up there on the altar, they rock, paper, scissors for the last name.

Holy shit. And I believe I heard both the last names and they were very, very similar. Which is kind of interesting. It was like Thompson and Thomas or something like that. Yeah. So it didn't really matter at the time. But for this guy, I think that you, I don't know. It feels like her not taking your last name is 100% fine.

And your parents, if you don't want to upset your parents, then you guys just keep your last names. Yeah. It's like your opinion doesn't really fully matter. You're like, do I disappoint my wife or disappoint my parents? Either way, I'm fine, whatever. Right. Do I make one person sad or two people sad?

Your wife wouldn't be disappointed if you didn't take her last name. But if both parents were dead, I feel like he would just change his name. Oh, you could wait for that too. And then do the change on their deathbed. Yeah, you don't have to get married. You don't have to change your name when you get married. You could revisit it further down the road when you start to have kids. It feels like it doesn't, that's like more when it starts to matter.

I'm just looking at this guy's last name. And I know we shouldn't say just to preserve his anonymity, but it's stink cock. Really? Yeah. Stink cock. So if your girlfriend has even like a slightly better name, like even if it was cock or stink. Violet. Really?

Yeah. It's kind of girly. Keep the cock. So you don't know what you're going to do either. No, I don't. We should have Jill on the pod and then we can negotiate live on the day. That's a good idea. Do you have to decide before the wedding or that's not part of it?

I mean, I think we're not, I don't know. We really should discuss it. Me and you. The thing is that I don't have a strong opinion. Like I'm definitely do whatever you want to do. You'd be down to change to meet in the middle? Yeah, I'd be down to meet in the middle and pick a brand new name. Oh, completely new.

Or like a family name somewhere. How interesting. Like basically settle on one. But then would you change, like if people ask you what your name would you be like Jake Green? That's cool. Yeah. But nobody asked me what. Yeah, I would.

I would be like, I'm Jake Green. Would you choose, would you choose a name that you, whose domain name you can get? Because you sort of lost jakeherwits.com and now it's like, oh, you want to bribe me? You want to fucking blackmail me? Yeah. Jokes on you. My name is Jake Stinkock now. And that is available.

To choose one that I can get the Gmail of. Yeah. What are you going to do with your email address? That's a big one too. That is a big one. And this is the crazy thing that like when we started thinking about how hard it is, that's how women have had to deal with for, you know, for a very, very long time. Yeah.

I wonder if email and Twitter and Facebook and all that makes it even less likely that somebody wants to change their last name because that's like an extra layer of annoyance. I didn't search like Instagram and Twitter, but I searched on Gmail like what you do. Yeah. And can you change it or is just forward? Yeah, it's just forward. It's not easy. They don't make it like, oh, this is convenient.

Here we go. No, you like have to. What's a cool last name for Jake? Something with a J probably. Jake. Jeremy. Johnson. Jake Johnson.

Oh, that's the actor. Yeah. I always liked the name Jake Ryan because the guy from 16 Handles. Jake Ryan? 16 Candles, not Handles. That's a different movie. He's the manager at a yoga place I used to go to and he was the fucking man. Hey, Jake Ryan.

It's like Matt Ryan, the quarterback. Oh, yeah. So you want like an all-American name for a last name? Jake Jack. Jake Jack. Jake Jackson. That's really cool. That's actually really cool.

I don't think that fits me either. I think I have to have a vaguely Jewish name. What about Fox? Jake Fox is awesome. Yeah. Dude, if you're listening still, your last name could also be Fox. Yeah. Your parents couldn't be pissed about that.

Yeah. It's like, sorry, but my last name is Fox now. This is different because she's keeping her last name no matter what. Yeah. So you either have hers or your own. There is no meeting in the middle. What if you change yours, but she doesn't change hers? So you're like, all right, let's do Fox.

All right, I'm going to go today. I'll go there too. I just wanted to change his last name to Fox. It has nothing to do with his wedding. And then you can do the Hurwitz middle name even though you already have two middle names. Yeah. Fuck it. Well, there's plenty of Hurwitzes.

There's no like risk of Hurwitz dying out. Dying out. But there's only one Hurwitz name. I only want Hurwitz boy. That's not you. But that's just on my side. I've got cousins and cousins with Hurwitz names. Okay.

So you don't have to worry about that. Yeah. My grandparents had like five kids or four kids or something. Smart. All right. That's it. Thanks for playing along. Thanks for listening.

This was good. The opening theme song was written by the Swede. What was his name? Song Sweden. Oh, talk about the South by Show. Oh yeah. We had a South by Show. Come to our show North Door in Austin.

I believe it is March 10th. It's headgum.com slash live for tickets. We've always sold out that show. So get your tickets soon. And we also always party. So come fucking ready. Come party with us. And then tickets are still available for our Canadian shows,

which is all the information is it. If I were you show.com. Victor was the guy who wrote the opening theme song. And this closing one was written by, oh no, I didn't write down the name. Of course. Why would I? It didn't make sense on the day.

All right. Keep talking about something else. Okay. So in Bahumia, my character, hard one, sure foot. Found it. It was written by Yuval, another Israeli just like me. So thanks, Yuval. Thanks, Victor.

Thanks to God Lars for writing the unsolicited device. Thanks to you guys for listening. Email address for everything going forward. If I were you show at gmail.com. Send it all there. We'll be back next week. Ciao. That was a hate gun podcast.