If I Were You - 534: Chase Bieber

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

In this episode we discuss being rejected, acceptance, and tricking yourself into joy. Download the IMPACT by Interactive Brokers app today and use code IFIWEREYOU to get $30 of stock credit! Note: The podcast ad for the IMPACT app is unscripted and being recorded live. It may contain some slight differences. Please visit https://impact.interactivebrokers.com/ for full details of products and services. Interactive Brokers, LLC member FINRA/SIPC. The projections or other information generated by IMPACT app regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature, do not reflect actual investment results and are not guarantees of future results. Please note that results may vary with use of the tool over time. The paid ad host experiences and testimonials within the Podcast may not be representative of the experiences of other customers and are not to be considered guarantees of future performance or success. The opinions provided within the ad belong to the host alone.   Advertise on If I Were You via Gumball.fm.See omny.fm/listener for privacy information.

This is a headgum original. Wow, I wanted that song to go on forever. There's still three more minutes. Really? Crank it. Crank it. Move the table. Fucking dance. I want to break dance. I want to take Molly in a minute. That was a Bieber parody, actually. There's a Bieber song called Stay. Yeah, I think I know that one. I like Bieber now. Yeah, he really had a great transformation. He was sort of a twerpy kid and then he got turned into this very thoughtful, talented adult. Well, I like One Less Lonely Girl. Interesting. So that's when he was six. Oh, okay. Oh yeah, he's great. Actually, he's always been really talented. I watched the documentary on him. Even like as a five-year-old, he's like drumming pretty well. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And now I'm worried that he's like either more jacked than me or hotter than me or like happier.

He was always all three of those things. Jacked hotter and happier. Yeah, because when he was 13, you were like 23 or something? Yeah. And you were very, very slender as a 23-year-old. No. Your shoulders were the same size as your waist. Right. Do you remember that? Yeah, I was a pencil man. Exactly. I was a stick figure. Yes, exactly. But then when he got jacked, it was already too late for me to catch up. Right. There was a time when you like beefed up a little bit, but not as light years ahead of you in terms of weight, hotness. Is that a song that you're making up or is it a Bieber song? It's a Bieber song. It's called Lonely. Yeah. And I was just saying that he has a great voice, but it's nothing that I can't do. You proved immediately when you started singing that it was something you couldn't do. You shouldn't have sung one of his songs that he's better at singing than you are. Okay. Don't compare yourself to him. It's night and day. There's no comparison. It's still different hours of the fucking clock. It's not like night and day are more similar than like night and pickle.

You're unattractive. Okay. You're underweight. You're not hot. You can't sing. And you're actually pretty unhappy because of all of those things. So, I feel like trying to play catch up with Justin Bieber is you're destined to fail there. Look at your face right now. Does this look like a guy who's happy? No. Why don't we make a change? Let's not chase Bieber. Let's be your own guy. Actually, Chase Bieber would be a pretty cool name for me to have here. Hey, Chase. Chase Bieber. People would have to think I'm related. Related. Yeah. And maybe that is better because then you'll stop comparing yourself to him and you'll just be your own Chase Bieber who does his own thing. My name is Chase Bieber because I chase Bieber. Actually, we're recording this again in studio live. That's right. Not really live. You guys can watch it so you can also see my face when Jake says look at your face. That's right.

If you guys want, you can watch this on YouTube. What is the YouTube for this thing? I think it's our show's YouTube channel. If I were you? Show YouTube? If you search, like, if I were you, we'll call this episode Chase Bieber. Nice. And then so people will be able to search. If I were you, Chase Bieber, then you can find the channel, other videos we've done. Sometimes we're over Zoom, other times we're in a frickin' room together. Yeah. This is better. Would you say this is better? This is a lot better, yeah. Yeah. No delay. You don't have to worry about Zoom lag, setting up your own microphones, just sit here and talk. Sad and lonely recording on Zoom in your house for sure. That was a theme song written by Pete Bradford and he has a story about the three of us. Let's see if you remember this because I don't.

I have nothing to plug, but I do have a funny short story involving the three of us. In another lifetime, you guys were interviewing me over Zoom to be an audio engineer at Head Gum. At the end of the interview, you asked me how I thought the podcast compared to other podcasts that I listened to. I thought you were talking about audio quality instead of how much I liked the show. So I said, honestly, it's not as bad as the Joe Rogan podcast or anything, but it definitely has room to improve. I received very astonished and confused faces from the both of you and then he has a laughing emoji because he's over it. This has been and will always be my favorite casted pot. Interesting. I feel like that question was about our audio and maybe the astonished look was because we didn't know Joe Rogan had a podcast back then.

No, this was like during, if we were interviewing him over Zoom, this would have been during the pandemic. But we also conducted audio engineer interviews like back when we started Head Gum. And they were like, I think we also did them virtually. Oh, really? We've done virtual interviews for a long time. Maybe just as using the term Zoom. Right. And it was like a Google Hangout. Because we haven't conducted a audio engineer interview, you and I, for a long time.

Does this ring a bell at all? No. No. I mean, I remember, if this is the search where we ended up hiring either Chris or Carly, then yes, I remember like, I remember a bunch of people like interviewing them. Like literally from like 2016. Yeah, but I don't remember. There was definitely not anybody that like lost the job with a single answer like this guy remembers. Right.

This is this guy's dead eyes moment. He remembers it very vividly and sort of, I can't quite remember, but I guess this did happen. I mean, he has quotes. He quoted himself and us. Right. Well, but those are quotes from memory, so it's not necessarily like inherently biased. Yeah. Astonished look.

I don't recall. Well, Pete, we did like the stay parody, the Justin Bieber parody. Yeah. So in a way, we're working together after all. Right. Send us your resume, man. And I can't believe Joe Rogan, the guy from fucking Suddenly Susan has a podcast. Joe Rogan was on Suddenly Susan?

He, News Radio. Huh. Maybe Suddenly Susan too. Do you guys know? News Radio. News Radio. We've got producers live now. No, we don't Google shit.

We just ask other people to do it. It was a workplace situation comedy to be sure. And I think, yeah, I think it was News Radio. Interesting. I have more to do with what we're doing now. Yeah. Okay. We should get him on.

What's he up to? He's one of the most influential podcasters in the world. How do you like to be on Chase Bieber's show? How'd you like to talk to Chase Bieber about how you went from sitcoms? We would be able to get a lot more guests if we said, hey, will you be a guest on Chase Bieber's podcast? My new name. All right. This is if I were you.

The only advice pod on the web. I'll be Justin, excuse me. I'll be Justin Hurwitz. Okay. Isn't that the guy who wrote La La Land? Yeah, maybe. But it doesn't matter. That's why you chose it.

It'll be Justin Rice. It doesn't matter because the email says, will you be on Chase Bieber's podcast along with his buddy Justin? And then you'll kind of assume and actually me and you were kind of like brothers at this point. His brother Justin, Chase Bieber's podcast with his brother Justin and they don't know the, my name is Justin Rice. So what's the goal to get a guest in here and they'll be sorely disappointed?

Um, I hadn't thought of it like that far ahead. But yeah, if Rogan shows up here, we're suddenly talked to him. He's like, who are you guys? And I'm like, oh, I'm Chase Bieber. I'm Justin Rice. Okay. Now I'm sort of in a sour mood and we're talking about. Why is he in a sour mood?

Because he thought he was talking to Bieber. Yeah. Well, that's on him. Not us. Yeah. We still conduct the interview. We'll still have a nice time. And then the downloads go up.

Yeah. Yeah. Now you can introduce the show. If I were you, uh, only advice podcast on the web hosted by us. I'm Chase. I'm Justin. Uh, we are reading real emails from real folks. Um, if you got your own questions, send them on down too.

It's the same email as always. If I were you show at gmail.com. Got some fucking crazy ones actually. Let's go. One lady in Canada. Nice. Is wondering what the statute of limitations is on rejection. And you get rejected earlier on your life.

Can you go for it again? Or is that rejection a lifetime sentence? I'm going to say it depends on the rejection just off the cuff without hearing any of the context. Okay. Here's the context. We'll call this lady, uh, Lindsay Vaughn, who I think is like a skier. I'm hoping from Canada.

Totally. The winter before the pandemic, I was into a friend of mine. We were flirting a bit. Then I kissed him at a party. However, after a few weeks, uh, he soundly rejected me saying he's not looking to date anyone and he doesn't want to go forward forward with the flirtation. That's fine. No problem.

I moved on. I don't want to go forward with the flirtation. Enough is enough. I don't even want to have a clever conversation with you right now. That's right. Don't even touch my shoulder while you laugh at a joke of mine. Then the pandemic starts. He goes back to his hometown for months.

We don't talk. I finished school. He comes back, becomes an integral part of my friend group. And now wouldn't you know we're flirting again? I've gotten much closer, basically cuddling while watching movies, spending a lot of time together, et cetera. So here's the question. He hasn't made a move and I feel like when I do it again, it will be rejected just like

last time. What's the statute of limitations unrejected? Should I go for it again? Even though it feels like a similar setup to our last situation? Or am I off the hook? And I should just wait for him to quit being a god damned coward. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Well, okay.

Okay. So this, I don't think this was like as soundly or this is like the most normal type of rejection that you can come back from that this person's not ready for a relationship or not ready. And then they've taken, I mean, if it was pre-pandemic, it's like two years. A lot has possibly changed. The only issue I see is that I'm not ready for a relationship is a great sounding rejection for somebody that just doesn't want to hook up with you. Yeah.

But then why would he cuddle again two years later? Guys do dumb shit like that all the time. Interesting. Yeah. Even 22 year olds. Yeah. So I'm not saying the door is closed, but I wouldn't necessarily, I guess I'm saying I wouldn't have necessarily trusted his initial reason for not wanting to pursue the flirtation.

Does that make sense? Right. But don't you feel like a little bit pre-pandemic is a reset? Like, yeah, the world is different now. Everybody's different now. A lot of more people are sick or dead. Actually, yeah, the population of the world has gone, it's lower. So it's not like I'm the last man on earth, but it's definitely closer than it was.

For sure. Yeah. Wow. That's a good question. Is population growing so fast and rapidly that it's outweighed the amount of people who have died from the pandemic, or are there less people on earth now than there were two years ago? I'm going to go ahead and say that the population is growing faster than the pandemic is killing.

Just because, I'm going to guess randomly, but I also did study anthropology at Yale, so I feel like I kind of have like a good sense of humanity, culture. So how fast is population growing? One every freaking millisecond. How about that? Bing, bing, bing, bing. A thousand babies just born just now, but then someone dies every other second. No, a thousand people die every other second, so then you have to wait and know.

I'm trying to remember. I defended my thesis and I'm trying to remember. Your thesis was about basic algebra. How many people are born and die every millisecond? A thousand milliseconds every second. You don't know. I don't know anything. All I'm saying is the population is definitely more now than pre-pandemic.

Yeah, I would guess so too, which means I think we're due for another big boy. All this shit. I want that station 11. I feel like I hear Kasey typing to see if we're right and I'm curious to check in and find out. Yeah, I guess you can search how many people are born every year. Kasey, did you? She's checking. You're just erasing a woman's heart.

Sorry, I didn't know where the fucking sound was coming from. 140 million babies born every year. 140 million babies born every year. Oh yeah, that's way more than how many have died. How many does that break out to every second? 140. I'm sorry, Anya, but I respect your work. So you have to do 140 million divided by 365.

Divided by 24. 526,800 minutes. Oh yeah, that's how many. What is that number? I don't know what the actual number is. It's 500,525,600 minutes. That's how many in a year, right? In a year, yeah.

So that's minutes in a year. But I don't actually know if that's 100% the lyrics to that song. Right. 525,600 minutes. Actually, this is more important. Can we look up the lyrics? Actually, who wrote Rent? Actually.

Jonathan Larson. I actually watched Tick-Tick Boom recently and I know this now. So that movie is about the guy who wrote Rent? Yes, it's like his one-man show or his show that he wrote about himself before Rent called Tick-Tick Boom. Why is that a film to be made? It was just another show of his. And so they wanted to make a movie about the guy who made Rent and the show that he made

before Rent. Well, he made that play about his own life. I see. And that was like, it was a show. So they turned that show into a movie. Got it. And that guy is relevant because he eventually wrote Rent. Yeah.

So the movie is not about him writing Tick-Tick Boom. The movie is the movie adaptation of the play Tick-Tick Boom. Right. The movie is the movie adaptation of the play Tick-Tick Boom, but Tick-Tick Boom is kind of a self-biography and autobiography about him writing Tick-Tick Boom. I see. So he's writing songs that he's singing, but they're happening on a stage. But the play is about him writing the songs.

And how is Garfield in it? Great. Incredible. That's amazing. Kind of like in Rent, how there's that song, One Song Glory, where he's like writing the song about writing a song. I see. It's kind of meta that way.

Yeah. He's like, I'm trying to write the best song ever. Glory. How many babies are born every second? 4.5. 4.5 babies born every second. Not bad. I wasn't that far off.

What did I say? A thousand? You said a thousand. You're off by several orders of magnitude. It's been a minute since I studied anthropology at Yale, and I don't know if I mentioned that I didn't actually graduate from there, and I defended my thesis, much to my dishonor and discredit on the day. Much to your chagrin, right?

Yeah. Moving all the way back to Lindsey Vonn, go for it again. What if you do like the half go for it, so you guys are cuddling on the couch and you just lean in to talk to his like mouth even closer, then it's like, you can't reject me. I didn't even try to kiss you. I'm just an inch away from your nose. Yeah.

I mean, I think the door is obviously open because a lot has changed. Definitely it wasn't as like, it wasn't a rejection based on you or your character. It's what he was going through. So it can happen. I wonder though, like you do have to, she has to decide if she wants to put herself out there or not. And I feel like it's trending towards he's going to make a move if you just keep on the steady course and then you could theoretically, you know, not have to put yourself out there.

Meet him halfway. Yeah. Both literally and metaphorically. That said, like all the signals are there and if you lean in to kiss him, any rejects you. I don't think that's like a bad reflection of her. That's just he's sort of being a bad person because he's cuddling. Yeah.

But you know, some people like to cuddle. I don't know. I just think it's all, this is all fine and you might hook up and you might get another polite rejection because I think even he would know that if you tried to kiss him, he was flirting and cuddling with you. So it's not like. That's on him. Order.

I think we've said this before that cuddling is almost more like intimate than kissing. Yeah. Because with cuddling, the surface area that you're touching is almost your entire body. For sure. Kissing is just lips. Yeah. Lip, well, and tongue. Yeah.

If necessary. A little teeth if you do it right. That's really cool. Yeah. Chase Bieber style kissing involves. Just old teeth and tongue, no lips. Could you possibly do an old teeth kiss without any lip or tongue? Yeah.

Like tooth on tooth because it's, you can't really get an angle. I guess I can, if I put the top of my top teeth against your bottom teeth, we can like clink almost in class. It wouldn't be intimate because it'd have to be pretty precise. But yeah, I think we could, I think we could, I think we could probably do something in a way that was just a tooth. A tooth to tooth without anything else touching. Yeah, with nothing else touching.

I feel like your teeth would have to come out of your mouth like because it's like, it's located within the garage of my head. We did it spider-man style speaking of Andrew Garfield. Where your head is back. Upside down. And your, your top teeth are kind of bared and I just go down and I bite them. Yeah. I could do that.

And this is a video podcast now. So we could. Almost like. Maybe in the second act. Yeah. Yeah. Let's take a break. Think some sponsors come back and sort of figure out the physics of how we could spider-man

tooth kiss within the confines of the studio because I'd have to, yeah, almost dangle. These lights are bolted up. Yeah. So I wonder if we could. Yeah. Almost like a swing set style. I was going to say. Yeah.

If I could go full ease. XLR cables. I can be fully upside down. Yeah. I'm falling and hanging myself. You guys don't do anything. Stay back. Stay back.

I close your eyes and say good night, sweet Prince, and then bite your top teeth. As I finally pass out, you slap me, Will Smith style. Let's take a break. We'll be back soon enough. Thank you to Helix Sleep for sponsoring this episode of our show. Hell yes. Thank you for making the sleep test, the sleep exam, and letting me ace it and become the doctor of the mattress.

Yes, sir. Yeah. So Helix makes a really great mattress line and you take a little sleep quiz to see what mattress is right for you. Yeah, right. Jake's been bragging about completing this two minute, honestly, like Buzzfeed light quiz. I don't know how you sleep for the better part of a decade.

Excuse me. I don't brag about completing it. I brag about acing it, because you got the mattress and it was great, or... Yeah, I got the perfect mattress. Thank God. Thank God I took that test. That's right. And if you want the perfect mattress, you can go to helixsleep.com slash if I were you

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Just go to Stamps.com. You click the microphone at the top of the page and enter code if I were you. And that gets you a free four week trial, free postage and a digital scale. That sounds pretty good. Thank you Stamps.com for sponsoring this show. And we're back. Jake, do you have any? Oh, it's a little too big to find me.

Mom, I'm coming. Gross. Actually, yes. Mom, I'm coming. Mom, I'm humming. Interesting. My advice is to hum, folks. Hum.

That's right. For example. Hum. Whatever. You know? Okay. It doesn't have to be anything. And why is that good to do?

Well, I'll tell you. I was learning about the vagus nerve. You know that? It's like a big nerve that runs from your skull to your spine, basically. Yours is exposed. Yeah. It's like a stegosaurus. I think that's not the nerve, though.

You have some sort of goiter. I think I might have even talked about this on the show before, but like a friend of mine had like a video where she kind of like showed all these different ways to like stimulate the vagus nerve because it like touches all your internal organs and having it stimulated like increases your heart rate, increases like your, makes you feel better, makes your mood better. Okay. And humming is one of the things that activates it.

It's almost like a natural high that you're trying to create. So instead of like taking a drug that makes you like dump serotonin, you can hum and that tricks your body into making endorphins that make you feel better. Right. You know, like you pretend to laugh or you smile and you kind of think you're happy. Just humming, I think it's like a little, it's soothing. It's nice. So I've been humming as I walk.

And are you humming to the tune of a song or are you just vibrating your skull and that's good enough? Just, you know, I'm humming to like random, random tune. I don't think, I don't think I am humming anything in particular. No. Interesting. Yeah. And then have you found it to be helpful?

Yeah. It's definitely not hurt. It's not harmful. Yeah. It's not harmful. It's fine. It's good. I think it's decent.

Let me try it because I find myself in kind of a sour mood whenever I have to talk to you a little bit. So here we go. Ready? Mm-hmm. I'm actually, I might, I might just hum a little bit too because now I'm in sort of a bad headspace because of what you just said to me. Okay.

So I'll probably, you know, doesn't have to be even a song. What you said was kind of hurtful. Ready? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Rawr!

That was, yeah. I can't wait to be king. That's good. It is helpful because I'm also singing a happy song, so it's fun to hear that. Right? All right. Let me try to sing, I'll hum a bad song and see if it makes me sad. Right.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. This is putting everyone else in a bad mood. Yeah, that's still helpful because it sort of vibrates and it's like, it's sort of like shaking up any like loose cobwebs. That's your Vegas nerf, buddy. Interesting. Yeah. Like, pronounced like Las Vegas?

Uh, pronounced like Las Vegas, but it's V-A-G-A-S. Vegas, I see, V-A-G-U-S. Oh, it's not, I thought it was V-A-G-A. Anyway, yeah. Yeah, V-A-G-U-S is a not modular of the brain-gut axis. Yes. Wow. So actually, it's kind of interesting, there's a nerve that runs from your brain to your

ass. Really? So if you make your ass vibrate, that'll increase your mood. Actually, can I permission to fart hello by Adele to see, just to compare it to when I was humming it? Can you tell that that's what I was humming the sad song? No, I didn't, but I'm glad that, yeah. Yeah.

Hello from the other far, yeah, and it works because it feels good to fart. Yeah. Sweet. That's actually, it's a Venus. It's like anus, but vagus combined, that's the nerve that sort of gets stimulated when you fart to a specific cell. This is why people will never actually take our advice. And probably shouldn't.

Wait, who taught you about the vagus nerve? Who's the one who gave you that information? My friend Kat. Interesting. She sort of gave you that little tidbit of advice. So you're just regurgitating what she said, or are you bringing anything new to the table? Yeah, I'm spreading the gospel. I'm bringing something new to the table.

Not everybody that listens to the show would know her. So right. Right. No, I get that. It's just that like when I bring in unsolicited advice, it's shit that no one's ever even thought of before. Water picks? I think I really came up with that.

Those were meant to water really thin plants before I was like, oh, this is a good idea. Interesting. Yeah. Do you got the brushes? The what? The brushes. Are they giving you the wires? What do you mean the wires?

Really thin little wire brushes that go between the teeth? You mean floss? No. No, I do not. I think I know. I would know. Yeah, no. It looks like a little fucking mesh brush.

It's like a little pipe cleaner attached to a really thin little plastic. In addition to the water picker as an extension. I went to a periodontist recently. A gum surgeon. Yeah. And she was like, floss twice a day. Twice a day. And, you know, it wouldn't hurt to like floss during like after lunch.

So basically floss all the time. Yeah. Right after you. And then water pick. Yes. Also water pick. And then, of course, brush. And then she gave me these little fucking pipe cleaners.

Now there's a fourth. And she's like, yeah, just, you know, put these in between your teeth and your gum and scrub. It's like, this is, it's too much. It's a full time job. We shouldn't have teeth. We shouldn't have them. There's nothing else on her body that requires this level of maintenance, right?

It used to be just floss. And now it's like, now it's like, do you floss? Yes, I floss. All right. Well, do you water pick? Yes. I also do that. But then did you add the fucking pipe cleaner?

Yeah. Did you pipe cleaner? Did you floss three times today? Yeah. My God. Like, sorry. I have to do other shit. I also have tax.

I want, yeah. My cholesterol is high. Like you don't give a shit about anything but gum so you can say for me to do all this shit. Yeah. But I have, I'm like a fully functioning. I have a job. Yes.

I have a job. I have a job. I have a job. That's how it works. Right. Because I also have to take care of my house plants. Yeah. That's how to keep your fucking dog alive so I can't floss.

Imagine if we had like that. Forget about it. Yeah. It's never going to happen. Then you have to remember that they have to floss. Yeah. I don't get like, I have a friend that would like four kids, right? So what?

Every meal you then have to feed four other people. Yeah. So it's like, I'll have a banana like, hey, they're all four? You guys floss? Exactly. I have a bowl of cereal. Oh shit. I forgot.

I have to fucking make eggs for nine people right now. Right. Did you give them lunch? Lunch? It's gonna be fucking two and a half, too? They want that, too? I'll have to make sandwiches for all of you guys. And then it's what, dinner time again.

Yeah, forget it. Selena, no, I didn't fucking use a pipe cleaner because I've been in the kitchen literally nonstop every day for the last five years, keeping these four things alive. As I talk, my teeth are falling out, yeah. I should say this is not me, yeah. I don't have it.

You don't have, you have a dog. Yes, you just have a dog, you guys have a dog. And you do have gingivitis. So what I'm doing is sort of neglecting everything. I'm just doing the bare minimum. You don't have gingivitis as well. Yes, yes, plaque. Yes, cirrhosis of the gum.

Okay, but since we have all of our shit together, why don't we try to dispense more wisdom and answer people's questions? This one is a self-considered, tough one, says James Jones. James Jones writes. I'm a 23-year-old and fresh out of college. Well, in college, I never had a problem taking the dimes to the pound town.

I think I'm a good-looking guy, but now I really struggle to get past the first date. For instance, this one time I met with a bombshell at a bar and everything went great and we made out while I picked her up. We went back to her place and I eventually left because I wanted to take things a little slow, but then the next day, she doesn't want to hang out with me.

This isn't even the first time either. Please help. I want to dive in the poon, but with a good girl. That's really interesting. That's fascinating, actually. Dive in the poon, but with a good girl. That's, yeah, that's tough. I think that's a world-class predicament, for sure.

I mean, who? That's probably the hardest issue anyone's faced this year because he's used to taking dimes to pound town. As we read that question, 100 babies were born into this beautiful world. That's amazing and this guy is also in this world. Okay. Maybe it's easier to meet people and ladies in college.

Do you dive into poon town? It's helpful to take dimes to pound town in college. Maybe it's a little bit easier. Did you ever find that? In college, it's easier than in the real world. I actually had a much harder time in college than I did out of college, but I think I did the reverse. I don't know.

Whatever happened to me happened in reverse. Right. Nobody liked me in college, and people liked me after I left. Why did nobody like you in college? I was a nasty little shithead. Yeah. Jesus.

That's right. I'm sorry to hear that. I had a negative attitude. I was mean. I was rude. I was a social dissident. And I was dissident. And I was distanced.

So overall, you just weren't a nice guy to be around. Bad hygiene, bad health, bad attitude. And you did it to find yourself leaving colleges because you weren't necessarily Yeah, never stuck around very long. Accidentally either. I was, yeah, I was not welcome back at one college. Then the other two I dropped out

just because I didn't feel like it. And then the fourth one, that was a mutual decision. I didn't want to go back. I wasn't allowed to go back. It seems like those are all four of the same thing. The other two I left on my own volition. They would have had me. So you're saying your grades were good enough

in the middle two. In the middle two, the grades were, the grades were not. Those schools were cheap enough that I could have just kept on going. The first one I lost the scholarship. And I wasn't allowed, like. You had a scholarship? Yeah, to the first college.

Oh, I didn't know that. Was it a full ride or how did that work? I think it was not a, I think maybe a half ride. Wow. It was a tennis scholarship, by the way. So you should be a lot better at tennis. Yeah, no, I was not good even when I got the scholarship. But how did they know that you were good enough

to give you a scholarship? Did you like submit your results or something? I believe I played when I, on a visit. I like met the tennis, yeah, I met the tennis coach. And you were, so you were pretty good. I was not good at tennis. How could you be bad and convince a tennis coach to be like, let's give this guy a half ride?

I peaked, I was a very good tennis player when I was 12. I like won the club tournaments at my pool club or whatever. And then I, then I slowly deteriorated. So I'm as good as a good 12 year old now, but I can serve harder. But like when I was 18, I had like, I had lost a little bit of your speed. No, it was really just, it was about stroke confidence.

Like I kind of, I moved to like a chip shot, like a slicing forehand instead of a topspin forehand. Cause you're afraid that your control was too errant. Yeah, I wanted to improve my consistency. But what ended up happening is that I like slowly got worse and just became a little poker. I would just poke the ball over. So if I didn't win the point on my serve

or if I couldn't win it at the net, I would basically lose it in the back court, trying to slice the ball back to somebody who could just kind of put it away. And did you see King Richard? I did, yes. And did any of that sort of remind you of your upbringing? Did anybody push you and drive you

and force you to play in this sport? No, I think, see, that's the problem. I don't have that winter mentality. I have like the choke mentality. I see, you were the people that serenade this week. If I'm up, I'm like, oh wow, that's someone's gonna come back. And if I, even when I can come back,

I'm like, I'm gonna come back and make it close, but ultimately lose. And who was your, if not your father, did your parents play tennis? Who was the one who drove you to these highs? My mom and dad both played tennis. Oh really? Yeah.

Still. Yeah, my dad plays squash sometimes. I don't think he plays tennis anymore. My mom plays tennis. Did you ever beat them or play them heads up? Yeah, I've played, I've played my parents in tennis as recently as like maybe six or seven years ago. And how were they?

I beat them then. So they were, they're fine. They're good. And you were at 12? No, this, when I was like 20. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But did you play them at 12? Oh, when I was, no, I never played.

My dad could always beat me when we were younger, when we were 12. He had a four hand slice. Really? Yeah. Damn. You played tennis, right? You play now.

I feel like we should play tennis because I now is the time where I've been playing for like a year every week now. I wonder if I've caught up to you. A 12 year old who stopped. How consistent are you? You're hitting it over with Topspin. Yeah, I mean, not all the time.

I'm like you try to just be a wall because I'm not playing very good competition. I'm playing my other buddy Amir who's not very good at tennis either. So we're sort of roughly comparable. What's your service like? Not great. If I'm really going for that first serve,

10% of the time is it going in. So then sometimes I take it off my first serves because I don't even want a double fault. But if it's like just playing around then I could be a little more loosey-goosey. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like to play.

We should try to like set something up where we can video that as well. Yeah, I think I need one. I need to play no video to make sure that I'm at least comparable to you. Decent. Yeah, then we can play. Yeah, so one offline, one online.

Yeah. And this person who's taking times to calm down anymore. Oh, right. I think there's probably like an element of an attitude change that like, it almost feels like you're in between them right now. You were like party guy in college and now you're trying to like have a more consistent,

meaningful thing where you're saying that you took someone home but left because you wanted to take it slow, which is good. But I think even if, as long as you're framing it in this email like this to us, that's okay. But like project onto the world that you care less about going to Poon Town. Yeah, especially because he says he wants to dive

in the Poon with a good girl. I don't know if good girls necessarily want to be with somebody that say stuff like dive in the Poon. So it's sort of like a self-fulfilling bad prophecy. Yeah. So change yourself, be better, and then you can find yourself a better person once you actually aren't the person that you currently are.

Right, and you could also stop looking, like maybe it's like in college you met people at parties and people were drunk and they hooked up and whatever. And that was good for that time, but now you're looking for something that's different, but you're still kind of going to the same places, like going to dive bars, going, staying out late, making out with people and it's like, that's not necessary.

Like you're meeting people there that probably don't have that same like, I'm looking for a good guy mentality. That's right. So maybe hit the dating apps or try to meet somebody in a different context. And you know, taking it slow isn't necessarily the worst thing. I mean, this person, he's the one who said

he wanted to take it a little slow. So maybe that's a good step in the right direction. Yeah. Okay, let's take another break. Think some more sponsors come back and answer more questions. Maybe about tennis, maybe about other stuff. Let's go. Thank you to Aura Frames for sponsoring this Head Gum podcast.

You know, Aura Frames is sponsoring not just this episode, but the entire Head Gum network, Jake. Wow. That's correct. 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. 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 like 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. 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 like 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. So take some photos and add a personal video message that will display as soon as your dad or anybody connects to the frame. Yeah. It's a great gift.

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Thank you, Aura. And now back to the HEDGUM 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

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But still from a 22-year-old in Canada. Good. Yeah. That's the thing with our audience is that we get older and they stay the same age and are from Canada. Right, always from Canada. So this 22-year-old who we'll call Wayne Gretzky or perhaps his brother Brent Gretzky, right?

I'm from Calgary, Alberta. We went to Calgary, right? That's right, yeah, made a show there. We did Edmonton, Calgary. Vancouver. Vancouver. Yeah. Wasn't there another one? Winnipeg.

Oh yeah, so maybe we just did Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg. I think we did Vancouver after. Really, we did four? Four, yeah. So maybe we did Winnipeg, not Edmonton. I think we did Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver. That's possible. And I'm seeking your advice in regards to dealing

with some tumbleweeds. That's right. Cool. We're off dating, we've moved on to Canadian agriculture problems. Cool. One day my house lines up with a wind tunnel that causes these giant tumbleweeds

to accumulate in the front gate that leads into my backyard. It also accumulates in front of my neighbor's backyard gate, but he never deals with it. I've taken a look at other houses on the block and I'm the only one dealing with this issue. One day I eventually got rid of about a dozen of them by crushing them and shoving them into my compost bin. Unfortunately, the tumbleweeds are stuck in the container

and won't come out when it's empty by the city. So now I need to come up with a different method of disposal and I'm not sure what to do. I've thought about throwing them over my fence, making my other neighbors deal with it, but I really don't want to be that guy. I've also considered just moving all of them to the front of my neighbor's gate.

That would be too obvious and he would know what I'm doing. The accumulates so fast, it's been about a month since I disposed and there's 15 more of them now. They're all about two to three feet in diameter. God. It's literally too much plant matter to even throw in a trash can. Let me know if you have any ideas.

Maybe I should just burn them. Thank you. There's gotta be a better person to contact about this. I think I know what to do with these Canadian tumbleweeds. Okay, go for it. There's this liquid formula that will soften the weed and almost turn it into this wood paste. A sludge.

Yeah. It's this proprietary blend that I'm sort of working on. You're working on it? It's a tree melting formula between acid and oil that's located not really on the periodic table of elements because it doesn't exist yet. And what it does, I'll rub it on a tree and it'll soften like this.

Do you know about it or did you make it? It's an idea I have. It'll soften the tree. So it's not even a prototype. No. There's nothing in beta. You just have an idea about a paste that will melt a tree. Not melt.

Soften it. The difference. You ever touch a tree and it's got a spongy bark? This will do that. To the tumbleweeds? To what? Also, please shout out my podcast Savory Avery on Spotify.

Good name. Yeah, so I've never even, I thought this was like just a cartoon thing, tumbleweed, like when something is boring, a tumbleweed flies by. I mean, I've seen them before. It's interesting that they're accumulating. I wonder if that's like a winter thing

because there's like dry twigs everywhere. It feels like when there's more leaves on the trees and stuff, you might see them less. So maybe it'll hopefully be a seasonal thing. Yeah, imagine this 15 of these spherical thicket balls, just sort of two to three feet in diameter bunching up by your gate because you're in a fucking Calgary, Alberta.

It sounds like you have to put them all into a tarp, put them in a truck and then bring them to like an agricultural center. But I feel like you could talk to your city's waste management. And I don't mind the burning them thing, especially if it's winter. Yeah, burning seems fine.

In the snow, right? Yeah. And when you burn them, it's like nature's way of saying, go away. Yeah, there are places that, I don't know what the deal is with like burning your like lawn waste, but like sometimes it's fine and sometimes it's bad.

Like it's bad here because everything can catch on fire, but maybe Canada, it's different. Did you ever go through a fucking pyro phase? Yeah, burning naturally for sure. Lighting off fireworks. Yeah, lighting an M80, running away. That's really cool. Yeah, fire for sure.

What's the biggest thing you ever burned? Nothing, nothing. Your mom once told me that you tried to burn the school. This is insane. No, I did not say that. She's a caller right now. She said you put gasoline on a- This is some kind of fake gotcha journalism.

Yeah, she said you had a very big pyro phase. She said you had a fucking Zippo for your bar mitzvah. You wanted a Zippo lighter and to learn tricks. And then you got one of those knives that you could flip open like that. A knife? Yeah, like a fucking Bowie knife, or what are they called?

I don't know, a butterfly knife? Yeah, you had one of the fucking butterfly knife, a nunchuck and a Zippo lighter. So what phase is this? You just wanted to open shit in a cool way. It was a ninja turtle. I was a teenage, not really mutant, but still ninja turtle.

There was nothing mutant about me. Just a teenage turtle, not ninja either, but I was a tween and I was a turtle. I ate newts for a year as a 13 year old turtle and I didn't know how to use the fucking knife and I didn't know how to use the Zippo lighter. Yeah. Have you ever dealt with an issue like this?

Like, you got a backyard in New York. Autumn means a lot of leaves back east. What are you doing with all your leaves? There's two weekends in October and November where they do a leaf pickup. And then they just, you put them in a bag and then they pick up all the leaves. So I blow them, rake them, put them all into bags,

bring them out to the front yard on the weekend and they come and collect them. So I don't know what your collection, I mean, there must be some kind of leaf collection there, but then that's only dealing with the problem in the autumn and if it continues through the winter. What if he does like a cowboy situation where he gets a horse and a lasso, right?

If you get saloon doors on your house, then all the tumbleweed start to make sense. Hi-ya! So you lasso and then you just say, yeah, not hi-ya, you're thinking of the turtles though. Yee! Whew! And it's like almost like a rodeo,

but instead of, I used to do like a steer catching when I grew up with my old man. Yeah, we used to go from like Wyoming all the way down to Texas over the summer and we used to just fucking rope steer, yeah. Steer, really? We were used to like, we did like describe how you tie a knot in the lasso.

Well, you would like go like, no, that's how you throw it, how you tie the knot. Well, it depends on if you're using a slipknot or if your dad is just fucking going like, hey, I'm beating the shit out of you in your backyard, pretending that it's like a cowboy fantasy camp. And then you, you sort of hogtied you like a steer. Your dad hunted you like a steer from Wyoming to Colorado.

Yeah, to Texas, yeah, exactly. Okay, cool. We spent a pretty harrowing winter in Oklahoma once, with your dad hunting you. I don't quite remember what happened because I repressed the memory. Yeah, I would too. Yeah, because it was fucked up what he did to me.

Certainly. But I imagine that there was some lessons, valuable lessons that this guy can do. And if not using the lasso, the steering, the, right, and if not that, then you have the tree paste. Yes, the tree paste, which is ever proprietary. Which my dad and I actually went door to door in the south. You and your dad went into business together

after he hunted you. Because I proved my worth. And then we ended up hawking snake oil for an entire summer in the course of between that and the knives that we used to sell door to door. This was 1948, right? Yep, this was 1812 actually. All right, cool.

So yeah, my suggestion, burn them. If it's winter. Burn them all. Burn the entire fucking town. And would it kill you to move from Calgary to a less woodsy place? When I first moved into my house and I wanted to understand how trash pickup and disposal and all that stuff worked,

I just went to like, you know, New York City had a website where I told you literally everything that you needed to do. So I bet Calgary has one of those too. Yeah, and you're not the only person dealing with tumbleweeds. I'm a solution. I'm not good at knowing stuff like this before it affects me.

So like, this has never affected me. I don't know how to deal with it. Recently, I had a broken dishwasher. So now I know how to work with the dishwasher. And you know how to fix your dryer, right? You just had a coin in it? Yeah, I had a coin in the garbage disposal. My dryer was broken because there was lint

that hardened on the escape valve on my roof. So all these things that I know now that I didn't know five years ago, maybe this will turn you into a whole new expert. How long do you think before you forget everything you learned about your dishwasher? Every like five years, it kind of resets. Yeah, all right, cool.

Like, did you know that dishwashers have filters? Yeah, I replaced my filter. And then when I replaced my filter, I accidentally put the wrong filter and it flooded the whole thing. Now I know what kind of filter my dishwasher needs. And did you know that when a dishwasher floods, it no longer allows any water to enter the dishwasher.

So when I took the filter out and drained the flood by hand, it still wouldn't turn on until I drumroll, please reset it. Do you know how to reset your dishwasher? No, you don't. We actually have to download the manual. Did you not know that the filter needed to be the right size for your dishwasher?

Did you just get like a random filter? I got two filters, one like this inner one, one this outer one, and I guess my dishwasher. When you were buying those filters, did you search by your dishwasher model? I searched by my dishwasher type, Bosch, but I didn't search the specific model. There you go.

Okay, so I don't know everything you do about resetting the dishwasher, but I would know if I needed to replace something. Wow, wow. Go by my model number. Yeah. And the model number is actually not too easy to find. It's on a sticker in the dishwasher.

That's correct. Sometimes when you purchase it, you'll have the model number in your receipt. I didn't purchase the dishwasher. I see. It came with the place. Cool. There you go.

This is a funny story for when we have Ben on the podcast, but his dad is a sort of a handyman and has been coaching me out of certain sticky situations. So we should have Ben Schwartz and his father, yeah. Cause I guess he's seen it all. So he's helping me get in there. You need someone who's seen it all before. Yeah.

Cause you know, when you've had a place for 40 years, you've dealt with all these issues before. My old man, he would just give me a fucking 1,900 number and a slap on the back. Lasso around the legs. You could say you could figure it out. That squeal for me. Okay.

Thanks for writing these emails in. Thanks for submitting your theme songs, the email address for all of it is ifirishowatgmail.com. We're shooting this episode, the next episode, live in our studio. So you can watch, I don't know why I keep saying live. It's not live, but we are shooting it as a video. You can watch it on YouTube.

Definitely live for us. Yeah. So you can listen to it, of course, wherever you get your podcasts as usual, but if you want to watch us, see us as a television program, you can watch it on YouTube as well. Yeah. And click around all those other headcum shows. Subscribe to them. Yeah. We're starting to make more and more podcasts

in this here studio. That's right. Soon we'll have one in New York. We can do even more. Oh yeah. And you can watch us make more videos on our Patreon. Patreon.com slash J.A. Job.

Hundreds of videos on there right now. My God. Thousands of patrons, join the party. Check us out. That's right. We'll be back next week. As always, let's hear that Justin Bieber parody one more time as we head out of here.

See y'all soon. Bye. I found my ex on only fans. It's not good. She's wearing my grandma's bracelet. While guys touch their wood, she said she lost it. I don't know what to do. That was a headcum original.