Judge John Hodgman - An Alchemic Clark Bar of Delight

Episode Date: June 24, 2015

Judge Hodgman tells us what's wrong and what's right! Is ice cream actually "candy"? Should you go to your mom's 60th birthday party? Is it ok to leave used snot rags lying around?

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. This week we're clearing the docker. The druck. The dark bar. The Peter Drucker. Legendary management consultant Peter Drucker. This week we're at the rucker playing street basketball.

Tough mutter. Tough mutter there Jesse Clark bar, Clark bar, Clark bar What to do to die today A tin in a two, a patoo Hi Judge Hodgman Hello Are we rolling with that intro? I think it's good Yeah, I say we keep it, no doubt about it You know, when you can take lead and turn it into gold like we just did Do you know with that intro? I think it's good. Yeah, I say we keep it. No doubt about it.

You know, when you can take lead and turn it into gold like we just did. Do you know what that is? Why would you then throw that gold away? That's alchemy. It's an alchemical Clark bar of delight. I knew it was some form of metalligurgy, but I didn't know exactly what. Okay. Here is our first case this week. I have a question first.

Yeah. Was Metalligergy a character in The Dark Crystal? Yes. I think that's David Bowie's character in Labyrinth. Was Metalligergy a robotic version of Gergy? I think Metalligergy... Is Metalligergy the name of those square guys with the roller treads from Return to Oz?

Ugh. The ones that I still have nightmares about as an adult. That movie is pure nightmare fuel. If people out there have never seen it, good. Yeah, it's not that great of a movie, and it is really creepy. It's a really dark oz film that was made in the 80s uh in which dorothy goes back with a talking chicken and a robot and a and a

and a jack pumpkin head who is a totally bogus scarecrow ripoff like it was a third oz book he wrote he's already ripping himself off. It was terrifying. With, um... Feruza Balk? Feruza Balk. Of The Island of Dr. Moreau. Also. Jesse, it's so nice to be with you here in Chambers. You may not have noticed yet that I've left the window open in Chambers.

And in Chambers here in Park Slope, out in the little garden behind my building, I hear birds chirping. There's a breeze coming in and I hear a guy playing scales on the piano. It's like my own little rear window back here. I'm watching Miss Torso do her exercises and maybe Lars thorwald is killing his wife but uh here i am uh talking to my very favorite grace kelly substitute bailiff jesse thorn i've got great news judge hodgman i am living like elliot gould in that la hills apartment that he has to take an elevator up to and all of my neighbors are naked ladies doing yoga is which one was that was that uh the long the long the long good night the long goodbye i mean yeah sam spade yeah like you play

sam spade as elliot gould in the 70s yeah and boy is that a great movie robert altman one of the best well one of the certainly the robert altman movie that i've enjoyed the most you know what i want to do is i want to i want to play paul. Tompkins will be mad at me because he's been doing a Thin Man pastiche for the Thrilling Adventure Hour for the past 10 years, but I want to play the Thin Man in the 1980s. And that's all I got so far. The Thin Man as Higgins from Magnum P.I. I'm going to do like a late 70s Jeeves and Wooster.

What do you think about that? I think mid-90s. Mid-90s Jeeves and Wooster. What about like a late 90s Jeeves and Wooster, like a set in the world of Master P? I think you lost not only our last listener, but even me with that one. I mean, not lost. I mean, you'll never lose

me. I just got confused by the references there. I mean, have you ever seen the episode of Cribs that's about Master P and then he shows that he has gold toilets and ceilings and Lil Romeo, who is now Romeo because he's no longer Lil'.

There's no Lil'. But Lil' Romeo has his own house and his own tiny cars. I did not because if that were the late 90s, that would have been the time that I had moved to New York City, had zero dollars, and stole cable out of the wall and by just plugging the cable into the back of my toshiba tv that i got on 60 discount at macy's in new haven the greatest deal in my life and i plugged it in there and all i could get were broadcast channels and uh and the food network so i was i was deep into my emerald at that point. I was no longer watching the music television or the Cribs.

Well, I recommend that episode of Cribs. And the only other one that's really canonical, in my opinion, well, two others that are canonical. One is the one where Snoop Doggy Dogg plays basketball with, I want to say, Belbiv DeVoe and Boyz II Men. For some reason, just all these R&B singers come over to his house to play basketball. Yeah. That's what happens.

He lives in Malibu or something. Yeah. And there's one where... They have a motor coach that goes up there that brings all the R&B singers up. And there's one where, I want to say Redman. Is it Redman? Who lives in like a really terrible, yes. Redman lives in this terrible apartment in Staten Island.

And he still claims to this day that it's 100% real. But he just lives in the dumpiest apartment, just full of like picked up off the street furniture and video games. Yeah, his apartment was an homage to my apartment on 22nd Street in New York, back when people without money could live on 22nd Street. Here's a case from Peter. My girlfriend and I disagree about what kinds of things should and should not be considered candy. I believe candy can be defined as food that has no merit beyond its flavor. Specifically, I call ice cream candy as it's not considered a source of sustenance, as it has little to no nutritional value. She maintains ice cream isn't candy, as it's not

traditionally referred to as such. She's trying to cut down on candy and she says this should not include ice cream who's right who's wrong well it's another case of a dude who wants to replace social convention with a weird set of rules ah that's called the american revolution and and basically every dude formed government on earth which is to say every government on earth to date recording this day june 17th 2015 so he believes candy can be defined as a food that has no merit beyond its flavor that's wrong candy is a thing words have meaning specifically candy candy derives uh from the french which is to say crystallized sugar uh and originally from the arabic sugar or sugar and candy which means candied so again uh there's a very specific meaning to the word candy that we actually observe in everyday life, right?

Candy tends to be something made of sugar that is crystallized like a rock candy or a hard candy or a Jolly Rancher is a candy. What do you think? Is chewing gum candy, Jesse? No. No, it's not. I don't think that it is candy judge hodgman no i don't think it is even if it has flavor crystals in it if maybe your maybe your your your uh mouth your breath freshening lozenge has crystals in it that doesn't make it candy candy is something primarily primarily made of sugar to be enjoyed in a hard form. And so ice cream is not candy simply on virtue of common sense. Ice cream is as much fat as it is sugar.

That's the only reason I like it. Yeah, that's what makes it taste good. Yeah, I don't care about candy at all. And the people who care about candy are children and dopes. Sorry. Adults who are going around eating candy? I mean, if you're a grown man and you're munching on a bag of rocks on the subway, weird. Grow up and enjoy the many, many more flavors there are to life than just sugar

and including ice cream a different thing all that fat is an incredible uh solvent for all kinds of flavor compounds so even though ice cream is definitely sugary and definitely fattening it has so much more going on in it uh depending on how it is flavored and how it is made and how much air is in it. And it's fantastic. So you're wrong, Peter. But so is your girlfriend. Because you cannot use a pedantic definition of candy to say, well, I guess I can eat all the ice cream I want. If you are an adult, you should be eating any of these kinds of high sugar foods in extremely small amounts in your life because your metabolism is different from when you were a baby. Babies are designed to crawl around on the ground and eat a bunch of sweet berries and

get as much calories into them as they can by just eating Clark bars over and over again. Because that's what babies and little kids need. They can absorb that many calories. They can do it. But you can't. It's not healthy for you. That level of sugar for you is terrible. Terrible to your health in many, many, many ways.

So I'm not saying that your girlfriend is out there slamming quarts of Chunky Monkey all day long. But if she is, tell her it doesn't matter that it's not candy. Eat it. I don't know what I don't hear. Have a martini, have a grownup indulgence. I'm going to take a quick sip of candy here. What?

By candy. I mean, uh, mandarina flavored. How are you dose? Right? Wait, it's not crystallized. I'm in the clear chug, chug, chug. What? By candy, I mean mandarina-flavored haritos. Right. Wait, it's not crystallized. I'm in the clear.

Chug, chug, chug. I know that I'm going to get a lot of letters about the definition of candy from all of the food pet ants out there. They're the pet ants, and then they're the extra, they're like the Sea Org of pet ants, the high-level pet ants, which are the food pet ants, the people like Dan Pashman which are the food pet ants, the people like Dan Pashman over at the Sporkful, who's still trying to run the garbage line that a hot dog is a sandwich and saying that I'm wrong on that.

Forget it. Forget it, Dan Pashman. It's Hodgman Town. I'm telling you what's right and what's wrong. But a lot of people are going to write in and say, oh, what about a candy bar? Yeah, it's a bar. It's a bar it's a bar it's not candy you wouldn't look at it you wouldn't look at a you wouldn't look at a clark bar which is now my favorite candy bar to talk about and say look at that piece of candy you would say no that's a candy bar that is a bar shaped confection that we have appended candy to uh through use, but is not a piece of candy in the same way that a comic book might be depressing.

Like you, you call you call Mouse by Art Spiegelman a comic, even though the story of the Holocaust is not hilarious. So that's where words begin to, where words' meanings begin to change and fluctuate. But no way you're going to tell me that candy is anything that has no merit beyond its flavor. You might as well be talking about all food. Yeah, what about salt? Yeah, salt. Good point.

Is salt candy, Peter? Thank you, Jesse. What about cinnamon? Yeah, salt. Good point. Is salt candy, Peter? What about cinnamon? Yeah, good point. Is cinnamon candy, Peter? What about clove? You know what? I think you could say all the spices. Vanilla.

Sure. Delicious ice cream, but terrible candy. Moving on. I got a nice note. but terrible candy. Moving on. I got a nice note speaking of food luminaries from Kenji Lopez-Alt after I gave a shout-out to his writings on the topic of cast iron.

Turns out he's a Judge John Hodgman fan. Food lume. Yeah, there you go. Short for food luminary. I got a letter about the cast iron and uh discussion from our last docket so what what we discussed was you you can use soap a little bit of soap and cast iron it's not gonna it's not gonna kill it but someone wrote in and said that i made the error of saying that cast iron was highly conductive and i knew when it came

out of my mouth that i was wrong and and I apologize for that. The best and most expensive restaurant pans are made of cast aluminum that are clad in stainless steel. That's where they get the all-clad from. Dropping a lot of name brands, but I don't have time to name them. Or in some cases, something with copper at its core, which is ultra-conductive. Copper, of course, was the fanciest of fancy pots and pans that you could ever have. But of course, it's highly reactive as well. And there are certain foods you can't cook in it or it'll ruin both the pan and the food. So that's why you might have a copper core and a stainless steel surface or aluminum,

which is cheaper than copper and a stainless steel surface. But cast iron is not particularly conductive. And that's why you need to heat up the pan for a long time before you can cook in it, because you've got to get as much heat into the pan as possible and get it all spread around in the pan. And the gentleman who wrote in, and I apologize to you, I cannot find your email in front of me at the moment. I will look it up and mention you in future. But the gentleman who wrote in suggested something that I think is very smart and useful to do when you want to preheat a cast iron pan.

Put it in the oven. Put it in a 350 or 400 degree oven for a period of time, and that heats everything all around it, and then you pull it out of there very carefully with a mitt or a cloth or whatever, and then you're ready to go. Here's something from Shoshana. This disputes between me and my adult daughter, Emma. I'll have my 60th birthday in September.

You might wonder why I'm already thinking... Oh, excuse me, September 2016. Right. You might wonder why I'm already thinking about this. The answer is I am just a tad birthday obsessed. I'm contemplating a number of options, like a 60s theme party minus the hallucinogens. I contemplated a 50s theme party for the 50th birthday, but realized that

Jell-O molds and chop suey are both decidedly gross. Anyway, Emma knows only too well how important birthdays are to me, and I want her to commit to coming home to Brookline for my birthday. Brookline, Massachusetts? One assumes so. I mean, it seems like she wouldn't go through the trouble of dropping that with a clang, were it not Brookline, Massachusetts. With a cast iron clang. She says she cannot commit to this in light of her current life circumstances. I do recognize that Emma's in flux. She just graduated from a master's program in international affairs.

She doesn't currently have a job. She's being evicted from her Brooklyn apartment in favor of the owner's son. She has no idea where in the world she will be come September of next year. I still believe she should mark this event in her calendar with indelible ink. She says this is asking too much given what's going on with her. She says this is asking too much, given what's going on with her. Well, I appreciate that Emma is at a crossroads in her life, and I certainly feel bad that she's been evicted from her apartment in favor of the owner's son. That's terrible.

When we graduate from college, or in this case, graduate school, it is a terrifying time. And we don't know exactly where we're going to be. And I also sympathize with Emma in that when you are a young person, say in your mid-20s, as I presume she is, or even in your mid-40s, having your mom or in my case my dad write you a email saying hi i wanted to make a plan for 48 months from now would this be a good time for us to show up at your apartment 48 months from now it's a little bit like i am just trying to figure out what's happening in the next 45 minutes no dad and i get a little bit juvenile about it. So I am here to help Emma because I know exactly where Emma is going to be in September of 2016. At her mom's 60th birthday party. Are you joking, Emma? You can't say to your mom,

yeah, I'll come and celebrate your birthday with you. This is a big one. You understand what 60 means, right? Maybe 30 more. If you're lucky, of course you're going to go to your mother's birthday party. And if you're not sure if you'll be able to make it, because you might get a job in Singapore or Long Island or wherever it might be that you can't get to Brookline. By the way, you can get to Brookline from Long Island. Island or wherever it might be that you can't get to Brookline. By the way, you can get to Brookline from Long Island. You still tell her, I will be there and I'll be so excited to be there. And then put it in your calendar and not worry about it for more than a year. And when the time gets closer and you are within 200 miles, you will go to that party. And if you're not within 200

miles or you're still standing there in the middle of Brooklyn with all of your belongings 18 months later, still not knowing what you're going to do with your life, then that's the one time you can say, I'm not going to go to your birthday party, Mom, because I haven't been able to get off of this ratty sofa with

this old torchier lamp next to me on the corner of 9th Avenue and 7th Street. Ugh. Emma. this old torchere lamp next to me on the corner of ninth avenue and seventh street emma emma get over yourself as a parent i am incensed by your insensitivity and as as a child of parents yeah me too you guys i'm a child i'm a children of men and women uh i i i have i have made enough dumb mistakes and insensitive remarks as you have in my own life to feel profound shame about it so i'm helping you even while i'm yelling at you which is probably a great t-shirt i'm helping you even while I'm yelling at you. Judge John Hodgman. Did you have anything to add to that, Jesse? Am I wrong? No, you're dead right, Judge Hodgman. I mean, all I can say is this. It would be nice of Shoshana to tell her daughter Emma that should financial circumstances be what stands between her and

coming to the party, that Shoshana will lend the necessary assistance. I think it is 100% reasonable, even if the daughter ends up overseas for Shoshana to expect her to come to the birthday party. But I think it would be nice as, you know, understanding the sometimes the precarious financial situation of young people to say, listen, if you if you live in Spokane and you need to buy a $500 plane ticket to come to my birthday party, I will help you pay for it if you don't have the $500. I think but i will say this if if emma is is overseas uh in a in a demanding job that requires her attention and in september i i would say that's an okay thing to say just send the most glorious present you can think of that would be an

okay excuse not to go but other than that there's very little excuse i can think of. That would be an okay excuse not to go. But other than that, there's very little excuse I can think of that would be meaningful. And let me say to you, Emma, I'm not saying this party is going to be fun. And I can already tell that your mom, Shoshana, is really into her own birthday parties and when she goes for this 60s themed birthday party i'm even i'm cringing a little bit but but i'm going to go i am going to go i'm going to do the right thing and say shoshana i get me the date i will be there in brookline at your birthday party, unless I'm on tour, which is probable. That's why that's how I cover. That's how you cover your butt, Emma. Just lie. Say,

sure, I'll go. And then when the time comes, goes, I'm really sorry, I can't make it. I can say that because I'm not a blood relation, though. Look, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with more cases in just a minute. You're listening to Judge John Hodgman. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast always brought to you by you, the members of MaximumFun.org. Thanks to everybody who's gone to MaximumFun.org slash join. And you can join them by going to MaximumFun.org slash join. The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by our pals over at Made In.

Jesse, you've heard of Tom Colicchio, the famous chef, right? Yeah, from the restaurant Kraft. And did you know that most of the dishes at that very same restaurant are made with made-in pots and pans? Really? What's an example? The braised short ribs, they're made-in, made-in. The Rohan duck, made-in, made-in. Riders of Rohan, duck!

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And you get to hear the sound. Here's a special limited time deal for our listeners right now. Get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription, but only for our listeners at babbel.com slash Hodgman. Get up to 60% off at babbel.com slash Hodgman spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash Hodgman. Rules and restrictions apply. PEL.com slash Hodgman. Rules and restrictions apply. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney.

I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls.

If you need a laugh and you're on the go, try S-T-O-P-P-O-D-C-A-S-T-I-H. Hmm. Are you trying to put the name of the podcast there? Yeah, I'm trying to spell it, but it's tricky. Let me give it a try. Okay. If you need a laugh and you're on the go,

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A podcast from MaximumFun.org If you need a laugh and you're on the go. Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We are clearing the docket. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. With me, the judge himself, Judge John Hodgman. Here is our next case.

It's from Kristen. My husband and I have a 14-month-old daughter named Caitlin. He insists on calling her baby, like her name is Baby instead of Caitlin. It's not just that he sometimes calls her Baby and sometimes calls her other pet names like Sweetie or Pumpkin. He always calls her Baby. I think he should call her by her name. I would like an order for him to start using her name at least on a regular basis. That's a regular basis. Uh,

it's a difficult one. He just calls the child baby. Yeah. Like, uh, like come here, baby. Yeah.

Or too much something or other too much light makes the baby go blind. Is that the, uh, hot water burn baby? Yeah. Like that? Interesting. Like in that Maury Sendak book, Higgledy Piggledy Pop,

or There Must Be More to Life. There's a character named Baby. But that character's name is Baby. In this case, the baby has a name, Caitlin. I'm sure this 14-month-old baby named Baby Caitlin is gloriously cute and wonderful. And I will be candid with you, Kristen. Caitlin has never been a favorite of my names, primarily, I'm intrinsically wrong with it, but primarily because of the wrong with it by primarily because of the bizarrely wide variety of spellings that is applied to it it's the kind of name that makes me feel like people either don't know how to spell correctly

or are maybe throwing a little too much creative imagination into their baby naming because i feel people should be a lot more interesting than their names. And the people with the most interesting names tend to be the boring people. That said, though I have just told you, my devoted and beloved listener, that I don't like your baby's name, that's none of my business.

You can call your baby whatever you want, and I bet Caitlin will prove me wrong, even if she spelled it K-A-I-T-L-I-Y-N-N-E, star, which is another valid spelling of Caitlin. I don't know what it is about this particular name. It's always bugged me, and I apologize to all my Caitlinic listeners. I look forward to you writing me letters saying I'm a monster and I look forward to reading the incredibly wide variety of ways you spell your

name. John, your behavior right now is really giving our listenership a Caitlynic, which is to say flushing the Caitlyn's from our listenership. I want you all to come back because I love this baby and I love this baby that is named Caitlin. And I look forward to meeting Caitlin if Kristen and her husband ever come to one of my shows. Stay tuned for my tour information. And I will call her Caitlin because that is her name. Your husband is doing something that i consider to be weird by if if what you are saying is true consistently referring to the child by a single nickname as though it is an alternative name which baby certainly is there are people named baby uh that is a that is suggesting that he is a problem maybe a almost

hodgemanic problem with the name caitlin and you and he need to have a heart to heart about whether or not he is on board with this baby name and with the strong suggestion from me that he get on board with it because presumably it was a mutual decision. It is weird to change baby's names after 14 months, so it's certainly not unprecedented. And call and choosing an alternate name for the child that is just his suggests that there is going to be great friction in this marriage going forward. So I say nip in bud. And I love you, Caitlin. All of you. Here's something from Derek. I love my wife of 12 years very much, but I cannot stand that she

leaves used tissues lying around on countertops. She also leaves them in her pants pockets, which then results in shredded tissues all over the washed laundry. There are also used cotton swabs occasionally left on the bathroom counter. We have two small children, six and three, and they're prone to illness because that's what living with kids is like. She's not one bad mother, pun intended. Ah, buzz marketing for the great Maximum Fun podcast called One Bad Mother. But tissues lying around the house are at worst a health risk and at best just gross. Also, I'm a bit of a pragmatist and I prefer that we maximize surface areas. Usable surface areas, presumably. I would like the judge to order my wife to take an extra 15 seconds out of her busy day

to properly dispose of used personal care materials. Thank you. It's hard for me to put into words my feeling of gross. There are a number of levels of gross going on here. Obviously leaving used tissues, used cotton swabs, and other personal care items on countertops instead of just throwing them away is disgusting but also a it takes effort i think to leave trash and litter all over the place and pretend that that's okay and normal.

And the effort that is being expended by your wife of 12 years, whom you love very much, in order to convince you that garbage all around the house is normal, must be considerable because you, Derek, writing in, are so traumatized that you have to come up with some quasi-hygienic health excuse. Such as, we have two small children and I feel that it's unhygienic to have snot rags all over the house. Yeah, you don't need to even make that excuse. make that excuse. You are so wrapped up in your wife's snotty worldview that you feel like you need to convince other humans like, well, don't you think we ought to take the snot off the counter? Yeah, it doesn't matter whether you have kids in the house. It's gross. It's gross.

Anything that you wipe against your body and anything you stick into one of your bodily holes should not be left anywhere but the trash can. And I absolutely order this wife to A, clean up the place. Oh, and the fact that he has to say, also, I'm a bit of a pragmatist and I enjoy a clean countertop. Pragmatism has nothing to do with it. It's just, you don't want to have garbage on the counters. That's fine. Own your truth, Derek. You don't want to have garbage all over the place.

And so, I order Derek's wife to please clean up after herself. And then, second, please consider why you are not doing it already is this just the way you were raised you trying to make some point to Derek you trying to resist his control of you in the marriage why Why is this happening? Because as much as you're working hard to convince yourself and even managing to convince Derek that it's sort of normal, it's not garbage goes in the garbage. That really is distressing. It's weird,

right? I mean, you look, let me say this. This is by way of backing you up. Judge Hodgman, you're a clean person by disposition. Sure, I keep clean. I'm not.

I'm a messy person. Mm-hmm. But I don't leave my snot out. Ugh. Okay, here's something from April. Back in October 2013, you ruled on a case between my boyfriend and I, wherein we argued whether we should build a cabin or buy a yurt. I just wanted to share what we've learned since then. If anybody wants to go back and listen, it was episode 132, Criminal Intent.

You had some very sound advice about the possible issues around building our own home. about the possible issues around building our own home. Now, let me just break in here, just to go over what my ruling was and just familiarize people with it. It was a young couple. She wanted to build their own house. He wanted to live in a yurt, which is a kind of tent. And they were both profoundly wrong in both cases

because they were both very young and had never lived in a tent before, or at least not year-round, and had never built a house before. And building a house requires a lot of very special expertise that they should certainly learn and aspire to, but my advice to them was that they buy a modest, professionally built home. Or, since that wasn't an option that they were presenting towards me, between the two of them, building their own house or living in a yurt, because it's the closest thing to a modular home, at the very least they would have basic shelter.

But they didn't live in a yurt, did they, Jesse? What did they do? My boyfriend and I currently live in a house that was built by somebody who did not have the best knowledge about home construction. The house looks great from the outside slash inside, but it is apparent the guy who built it had no idea what he was doing. Water leaks from shower rooms through walls. I think the mere presence of shower rooms, whatever that is, is evidence that this person was unfamiliar with house conventions. His architecture was somewhat untraditional. The toilet is in the kitchen so as not to intrude upon the shower room. Right. Toilet is in the kitchen so as not to intrude upon the shower room.

Right. Broken wires splay from random holes. The hot cold feature on some faucets are reversed and much more. Also, he carpeted the bathroom. Who does that? I had thought that growing up with my construction savvy dad and being part of a home repair program for a year gave me enough knowledge to guide me towards building my own home after more study. But I've since done some small DIY construction projects that went wrong, even when I followed instructions.

I can't imagine if I messed up my house. After everything, I think we're more than likely going to buy a professionally built home when the time comes in about two years. Perhaps later we can invest in having a tiny house professionally built for us, but I don't think we'll be going down either the yurt or DIY home route. Thank you for your ruling, and thank you for having us on your podcast. You know, this one really hurts because I think that they did not follow my order, which was to go live in a yurt. because I think that they did not follow my order,

which was to go live in a yurt. But they did take my advice, which was to buy a modestly built, professionally built home. And my advice turned out to be terrible. Well, only insofar as that they chose a third-party built home that was poorly built, right? And so I feel bad that they ended up following my advice and having an experience that seems really not just unpleasant,

but, but very wet and dangerous because you got the broken wires hanging out of holes in the shower room and so on. No amount of carpeting in the bathroom can soak up enough water that a wire isn't going to catch fire. To be sure, they must have seen these wires and bathroom carpets when they bought the house. So maybe their judgment is just terrible. But just because I advised you to buy a third-party built home did not mean that I should suggest that you give up on your dream of building your

own home. And I think that the difficulty that you've had in doing your DIY projects, well, I think it's great that it opened your eyes to just how catastrophic it would have been to apply that to a whole home building project that you're not ready for. That doesn't mean you'll never be ready for it. In the immortal words of Jake the Dog from Adventure Time, the most important television show on television and streaming media, created by friend of the show Pendleton Ward and sometimes written by friend of the show Jack Pandarvis, Jake the Dog said, and I'm paraphrasing, there's nothing wrong with sucking at something. Sucking is just the first part of being great at something.

Maybe someone can get me the actual quote, but you get the idea. That's what a magical dog says. And who are you to defy the will of a magical dog? Defy the will of a magical dog. And so I think that I never wanted to beat out of them the desire to build something of their own, but rather to warn them that building something poorly would make them unhappy. And unfortunately, what they did was they bought something they didn't build but was built poorly and are thus unhappy so we our life is is built upon mistake upon mistake upon mistake until we finally learn something and i think what you've learned is you'll never be able to sell this house

because it's garbage so you have to you now you have to move into a yurt to save enough money to buy a proper house and to keep learning and keep building. Please don't stop doing it yourself. It's what we will all have to do after the apocalypse. That's all we've got on this week's Judge John Hodgman. John, you're on tour, right? Well, I am on tour insofar as I'm going to leave Brooklyn, New York and go directly to Brooklyn, Maine and then not come back for two months. But around that time of great convalescence, I can tell you that I will be in North Adams, Massachusetts for the Solid Sound Festival. That is the big arts and music festival that Wilco, the band, curates and performs at every other year in the fantastic

museum called Mass MoCA, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, which is one of the most amazing museums for large-scale installation art in the world. And I will be performing in the Hunter Center, which is one of its many great and beautiful spaces, all Saturday afternoon, great and beautiful spaces, all Saturday afternoon, June 27th, presenting my large-scale comedy installation, which is sequential acts of comedy by the great folks of Super Ego, Matt Corley, Mark McConville,

Jeremy Carter, Paul F. Tompkins, Jessica Williams from The Daily Show, Tig Notaro, and live stand-up sets from me and Paul F. Tompkins to boot. And that's all at solidsoundfestival.com this very weekend, June 27th, with performances by Wilco the Band on the night of the 26th and the 27th. So come on out and say hello. We had the Super Ego. We're at Max FunCon this year.

Oh, yeah. I think probably most of our listeners already know they should be listening to super egos podcast if you get a chance to go see their live show it is every bit as delightful as the podcast both of them are on the bleeding edge of brilliant comedy in America right now they're just so great so so so funny it's ricky ticky tovey ricky diculously good you got it and then I'll be then I'll be in Maine and other parts of New England for two months but don't despair Judge John Hodgman

will still be a part of your life I will be doing broadcasting from New England with summer bailiff Monty Belmonte and I hope Jesse will get a chance to talk over the summer as well I hope not are you taking a vacation, Jesse? I would like to take it.

I aspire to take a vacation. Let's put it that way. That's all I got, really, is just those aspirations. I got dreams. I got big dreams. You want to take a vacation like that. Those two kids want to build a house.

Not this year, maybe someday. Yeah, exactly. If you have a case for Judge John Hodgman, it is easy and fun to submit one. Go to MaximumFun.org slash JJHO. MaximumFun.org slash JJHO. Big or small, Judge John Hodgman reviews them all and decides many of them. reviews them all, and decides many of them. Like us on Facebook, and you can name a future Judge John Hodgman case and get updates from Judge John Hodgman and the gang, as we're known.

Kuhl retired, and we took over. And our producer is Julia Smith. Our editor is Mark McConville. Maximumfund.org, of course, is supported by your donations. If you're not already a donor, go to maximumfund. MaximumFun.org, of course, is supported by your donations. If you're not already a donor, go to MaximumFun.org slash donate. We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Yay!

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