Judge John Hodgman - Family Feuds

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

It’s time to clear the docket! This week, we're tackling FAMILY FEUDS. Is it okay to run in Crocs? Should you serve your sister old, old honey? Is "tweets" an acceptable Scrabble word? Plus: baby names, Chex mix and frosty facial hair!

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. We're in chambers this week to clear the docket. And with me is the winter king of Brooklyn, New York City, Judge John Hodgman. Jesse Thorne, if I have your consent, I'm going to lean over and give you a kiss on your cheek. Well, thank you. Is that okay? Yeah, of course. Here we go. Do you know why I kissed you on your cheek? Why is thank you. Is that okay? Yeah, of course. Here we go. Do you know why I kissed you on your cheek? Why is that? Because it's our Family Feud episode. Most of our listeners are probably too young to remember the original host of Family Feud,

or even that there existed a game show, or what a game daytime game show even is. I think there's still a Family Feud. I think, what's his name? Steve Harvey hosted, but originally it was Richard Dawson. It's hilarious. Steve Harvey is really, I have mixed feelings about Steve Harvey in some areas, but I will say he does a great job hosting the Family Feud. I have actually seen him host the Family Feud a couple of times on television. And I was like, how can that guy make not giving a feces about his job so funny? Yeah. So checked out. He is enacting, I'm not paying attention.

Why am I here? And it is gorgeous. It's so beautiful. It's exactly what the family feud deserves. But of course, the original host, Richard Dawson, was famous for kissing all the ladies on the cheek without asking. That's what he would do. It was gross. But this isn't gross. This is fun. This is the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast. I'm happy to kiss my friend Jesse Thorne virtually on the cheek with consent because I love him. And it's nice to see you because it's 2023. Happy New Year.

I didn't kiss anyone on New Year's. But here we are. It's a new year. We're back after the winter holidays, a time that many people spent in very, very heavy and intense contact with their families. I hope it all went okay. But a while back, we did ask for disputes involving families, not just partners, not spouses, but cousins, in-laws, uncles, aunts, aunts. And we have a bunch of them today. We do not have any avuncular disputes. We still need some avuncular disputes down the road, please. But we did have one, I'm glad to say, maturtural dispute, maturtural dispute. Shout out again to listener Margaret McG

for letting us know that maturtural is the adjectival form of aunt. But that dispute was so one-sided that I could in good conscience just blast this poor niece who was so in the wrong. But her aunt Barbara wrote me, and I just need to say to Barbara, thank you for your detailed letter. I agree with you, it was not cool for your niece to bring a table talk pecan pie to Thanksgiving. with you it was not cool for your niece to bring a table talk pecan pie to Thanksgiving. It's not the best pie you can bring. If you offer to bring dessert to Thanksgiving, there's no problem with a store-bought pie. But if you live in Manhattan and you have a job, you can upgrade

a little bit from a table talk pie. They're award-winning pies, Jesse, I'll tell you that. I looked it up. Table Talk Pies, they won some blue ribbons at the American Pie Competition, which is a competition that I presume Table Talk runs for itself. It won in the category of best pie competing against a watermelon. Exactly right. And the pecan pie did win best pie in competing against a watermelon, but they only make it in the eight inch variety. And this was a Thanksgiving dinner for 10. So in many ways, Barbara's niece, you blew it. But Barbara, it was Thanksgiving and she didn't know how to bake, as you acknowledged.

Your daughter, who normally bakes the pies, wasn't able to do it. I have to imagine your niece did her best. So I'm not going to put her on total blast here. And you should let this grudge go. Although we do have some great familial grudges coming up that have not been let go, so why don't we get into them? I'll say this. Yeah. If you don't know how to bake and you're in charge of bringing the pie for dessert, just bring a watermelon.

Everyone loves a watermelon. Watermelon will feed 10. Okay. Here's a classic family feud. Sibling-in-law feud. Yes. A case from Kyle in Melbourne, Australia. When my brother-in-law, Ian, runs on the treadmill in his basement, he wears Crocs.

Wow. The original style, in brown. I find this to be outrageous. He claims it doesn't matter and it's not uncomfortable. I request the judge order him to wear proper running shoes when running on his treadmill. And Kyle wanted to clarify, this is not some weird Australian thing. Ian lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. So we are forced to presume it's a weird Halifax, Nova Scotia. So we are forced to presume it's a weird Halifax, Nova Scotia thing.

I don't want to put this on Halifax, Nova Scotia, one of the top cities of the Maritime Provinces. And oh, by the way, I'm sorry that I called Newfoundland and Labrador a Maritime Province. Apparently that's technically not true. Thank you, letter writer. I love Halifax.

I cannot wait to get back there. We have to perform there one of these days, Jesse Thorne. Halifax, Nova Scotia. Put it on the docket. Let's get out to the East Coast of Canada. Say hi to Kate Beaton. Lovely, brilliant cartoon genius, Kate Beaton. She lives out there in Nova Scotia. She's from Nova Scotia. Shout out to her incredible book, Ducks. It's pretty intense, but one of the best comic books I have read in a long time. Kate Beaton, one of the tops. Come on, Judge John Hodgman.

All right. I'm not going to put Barbara's niece on blast, and I'm certainly not going to put Halifax, Nova Scotia on blast, the provincial capital of Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia, as I call it. I'm putting Ian on blast. This is not just outrageous. This is depressing. I'm putting Ian on blast. This is not just outrageous.

This is depressing. Running on a treadmill in brown crocs in the basement. There's no way to live your life, son. To paraphrase Animal House. Just eating expired pork cracklins from the expired groceries store. That's as depressing as Christian Bale playing the drums in the big short. Just sad men in basement doing weird solitary things. It's also unfashionable, especially since they're really good running shoes that you can get that look cool the whole point of running shoes is to look cool i know that i've already put out a shout

out to my favorite brand hoka one one those are the most comfortable shoes i've ever owned in my life and i got some beautiful colored ways going but also i think it's deadly i think if you're running in crocs you're going to slip and fall and hurt yourself very badly eventually it's's going to happen. It's going to happen. I mean, at least you're not running on a treadmill in a basement in Australia in Crocs, because that would be confusing because treadmills go down the other way in Australia. I think it's dangerous to Ian's feet, frankly. He's going to end up with plantar fasciitis or something. He needs to go to a running store and get real running shoes. Yes. I think they're dangerous to Ian's feet.

I think they're dangerous to Ian's forehead when one of them flies off and he slaps himself in the forehead on the console of that treadmill. And I think they're dangerous to whoever's standing behind him. I mean, that's hypothetically, if he has someone in his life, I really wonder if he does because he runs on a treadmill in the basement in brown Crocs. I hope you have someone in your life, Ian. Not just, well, you have to, obviously, because, well, I don't know. This could be, you have to be married in order to have a brother.

This could be his wife's brother. This could be Kyle's wife's unmarried brother. I think you have to be married to run on a treadmill in the basement. Yeah, that's probably true. That's probably true. You have to be married and probably are a dad. Look, you have people in your life who are counting on you not to hit yourself in the head and also to look better and also to take care of your feet. If you go into the YMCA in Park Slope, where I go sometimes. I don't see the former mayor over there anymore.

He doesn't come around. He learned his lesson. But if you go over there, what you will see are signs saying no Crocs on the treadmills. That's for sure. That's real. I'm not making that up. You can't wear Crocs on the treadmills at the YMCA. If it's good enough for the village people, it's good enough for you. I don't care. Put on shoes. Think about all the things you are allowed to do at the YMCA. Yeah, you can have a good meal. You can do whatever you feel, except wear Crocs. I only recommend one lonely dad exercise activity. And that is what John Malkovich does in the 2008 Coen Brothers film Burn After Reading, which is you have to be on a boat watching a TV VCR doing step aerobics and saying,

I'm better than ever. You f***ers, I'm coming. Play the audio. Valerie, play the audio from the scene. I'm bigger. Now let's add the ups right here. I'm bigger. Down, down, down. I'm bigger. play the audio valerie play the audio from the scene probably cinema's greatest moment batten rosebud or whatever i never saw that film Probably cinema's greatest moment, Batten-Rosebud or whatever. I never saw that film. It's not their best work. It's one of their lesser films, but that is unparalleled. A lot of people talk about it holds the room together or this is not NOM, this is bowling, there are rules or whatever it is.

But the real money thing that happened in a Coen Brothers movie is John Malkovich doing step aerobics and saying, you f***ers, I'm coming. I never saw that movie because I auditioned for it and I didn't get the part. It was a dream come true. I auditioned for Joel and Ethan Coen. I was in the room with them. A very small role at the beginning of the movie, playing a federal agent. Didn't get it. Didn't see it.

It was a long time ago. And I was on the set of the Apple ads telling federal agent didn't get it didn't see it it was a long time ago and i was on the set of the apple ads telling justin long about this and how i never saw the movie because i was just too hurt i mean no hard no hard feelings just like i couldn't couldn't see sad sad wish you could who doesn't want to be in a coen brothers movie right then jeff the boom operator who was sitting up on his ladder holding out the boom mic said you know i worked on that movie i said really he said yeah i know who got that part i said really who he said lonnie anderson from wkrp in cincinnati and you probably are all too young to know who that is but it's obviously i'm i'm not a lonnie anderson type so i was really

relieved like i was like well if they wanted Lonnie Anderson, obviously they weren't going to go with me. Now I don't feel so bad. You're a brunette bombshell. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a Bailey quarters. So I said to Jeff, is that true?

And he said, no, you should feel bad. Jeff was also the person who told me that the very big, important piece of wisdom that I have repeated on the podcast. Many times. The only person who enjoys whistling is the person who told me the very big, important piece of wisdom that I have repeated on the podcast many times. The only person who enjoys whistling is the person who is whistling, which I can imagine is true. If you're a boom operator, you've listened to a lot of people whistle and you don't want to do it. You don't want to hear it anymore. I'll say this for Lonnie

Anderson. I saw her at a screening of a documentary about Burt Reynolds, her late ex-husband, the love of her life. And she spoke in front of a crowd of 400 people sitting in a movie screening cemetery here in Los Angeles. In fact, the very cemetery where you and I will be performing, although we will be performing in its beautiful Masonic Lodge, Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Hollywood Forever. And other than having watched a few reruns of WKRP as a child on UHF or whatever, I didn't have any strong feelings about Lonnie Anderson at all. No. But she was delightful, like legitimately a joy to watch talk about Burt Reynolds and their life together and their love.

And she just seemed like a radiant human being. Yeah. Anyway, I guess my point is I can see why she got the part. Here's something from Ryan in Milford, Pennsylvania. My brother Dustin and sister-in-law Emily have a last name that rhymes with Walton. They're expecting their second child. I want them to name the baby Dalton Alton Walton. Emily is disgusted. I think the fun rhyme will make my future nephew cooler. It will also help Emily and Dustin with parenting as the name will build character. Please order Emily to consider my suggestion seriously. I also think the judge could order a fair price on the naming rights of my nephew, perhaps a contribution to his college savings. Like the crypto.com arena? That's a great name for a child.

Arena? Yeah, crypto.com arena. That's nice. It has a ring to it. Crypto.com Arena Walton. Ethereum Dogecoin Walton. I wonder how our friend, our listener, well, I guess he had given up mining for Dogecoin. The American couple that we saw in London back in 2016 or 2017. He was mining for Ethereum in their flat, heating up the place with as many servers. I hope they're doing okay. hope they got out of the business there are probably a lot of kids named crypto not only for the crypto boom probably a lot of people of the anarcho-capitalist community who go down to an anarcho-polko every year the big anarcho-capitalist convention there's a great documentary about i don't remember what it is but i just

remember that one of the anarcho-capitalists has a son named axiom that's got to be a great place for for unusual kid names oh i hope that no one has named their child crypto after superman's dog because you can name a dog after a human like Carl Allen, but you shouldn't name a dog, you shouldn't name a child after a dog like Fido or Spot. Should you name your child Dalton Alton Walton though? First of all, I'm going to say this about you, Ryan. You're not acting in good faith here. Your two arguments are,

A, it will make Dalton Alton Walton cooler, but B, it will build character, presumably because you know that Dalton Alton Walton will be teased. Look, obviously cool kids have been teased throughout the history of high schools. The cooler you are, sometimes the more you stand out and the more people want to take you down with some teasing or some bullying. That's what makes you cool. I get that. But you're not sincerely offering a boy named Sue scenario here. We're just going to toughen up your nephew, Dalton Alton Walton, or make them more cool.

You just want to make a funny joke at the expense of your nephew and your brother and your sister-in-law. None of your business. None of your business what they name. Look, presumably your last name also rhymes with Walton, Ryan. Why don't you change your name to Dalton Alton Walton? Then you could be really cool. And I'll start to show you how cool you are by teasing you. That's a banana's name, Dalton Alton Walton. I tease you. There you go. Now do you feel cool, Ryan? cool, Ryan? The only real way to make a kid both cooler and tougher would be to put neon face paint on their face every morning like the ultimate warrior. That'd be pretty cool. Make them cooler and tougher. Cooler and tougher, C-A-T. It would increase their folk and their distrusity. Yeah. And look, if your name is crypto or whatever and you get teased, you're cool too. No one should be teasing anybody. And no one should be giving anybody names specifically to invite teasing. Teasing. One thing that is not cool, teasing. Stop it. Stop teasing everybody.

It's okay to tease anarcho-capitalists. Yeah, that's all right. But not their children. It's not their fault that their parents are trying to undermine the government and world economy. It's a good documentary. It's one of the things. David Reese told me to watch it. I watched it. It was good.

Sad, too. A bad thing happens. We're going to take a quick break to hear from this week's partners. We'll be back with more cases to clear from the docket on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman Podcast. Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman. The Judge John Hodgman Podcast is brought to you every week by you, our members, of course. Thank you so much for your support of this podcast and all of your favorite podcasts at MaximumFun.org. And they are all your favorites.

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Hodgman. Get up to 60% off at babbel.com slash Hodgman spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash Hododgman rules and restrictions apply welcome back to the judge john hodgman podcast we're talking family feuds this week we have a case from kim last week my husband before we get to kim jesse yeah i just spent a lot of time plugging this documentary that i don't even remember the name of about anarcho-capitalism then when i think about it when i reflect on it kind of made me feel bad so let me just plug something just to even out the karma let me plug something that made me feel really good that our daughter made me watch that i enjoyed and i'm sure you've seen it we may have even discussed it dairy girls that's a That's a great show. Oh, Derry Girls.

I had only imagined that you watched with interest because of your familial connection to Northern Ireland. Yeah, my stepmother and her entire family are Northern Irish. Spectacular show, I thought. Do you agree or do you disagree? I think anyone who is on the fence about Derry Girls should just search for the screen cap of the list of things, the chalkboard with the list of things Catholics like and the list of things Protestants like. I just rewatched that episode last night.

It really, really made me happy and is a very wonderfully constructed show. Really wonderfully acted, really light, but also meaningful and funny. grandmother or my stepmother's mother, step-grandmother calling and me answering the phone and just hearing on a sort of distant, crackly, even in the mid to late 90s, Northern Ireland had distant, crackly, long distance lines. And a sort of distant, crackly voice in, oh, hello there. That's your grandmother. It's barely dead there. Hello. Hello there, Jesse. It's nice to hear from you. It's your grandmother. It's barely dead there. Sure, it's nice to hear from you. We've got to put Belfast, Derry, and Dublin on the list of places to go. Oh, love it. Okay, here's a case from Kim. Last week, my husband and I visited my sister Jamie and her husband. We had a lovely time. However, during brunch, Jamie pulled out the sorriest looking bottle of honey I've ever seen.

It's dark and crystallized and looks like it comes from the depths of hell. Jamie estimated this honey is between five and nine years old. I demanded they replace it. She and her husband both say honey doesn't go bad. I don't have words after that, so I hope you do. Okay, and we received a photo of this honey. This is a large bottle of honey from a popular warehouse store. Yeah, a big plastic bottle of honey. This is a large bottle of honey from a popular warehouse store. Yeah. A big plastic bottle of honey. It is available for your viewing displeasure on the show page at MaximumFun.org, as well as our Instagram, at JudgeJohnHodgman on Instagram. I will admit I have a similar bottle of honey in my cabinet.

Although, I will say, I think it's been a few iterations of the front sticker design. Yeah, this is the old school. This is the old school sticker because it's a decade old. And sure enough, it's sort of settled into three layers, like a trifle or a Neapolitan ice cream. At the top, well, I said at the the bottom there's sort of like an amber colored honey and at the top there's this like deep brown plug that looks like an obstruction and in the middle it's just like this clear crystal layer of um sort of mucousy colored crystals that looks gross to me what would you do if you had this honey in your house? It also looks full, by the way. Like, why haven't they been using this honey all this time?

Honey doesn't go bad, so it doesn't bother me. Honey doesn't go bad. It's true. No, I'd eat that pharaoh honey. You know how the pharaohs had honey and they're in the tombs of the mummies? Oh, yeah? I'd eat that honey in a second. You'd eat that honey? You'd spread it on bread? Doesn't go bad? Absolutely. Doesn't go bad? Absolutely.

Doesn't go bad. Honey doesn't go bad. It does crystallize, but if you heat it slowly, you can un-crystallize it. Yeah, it's true. I did not know this. This would have been a great case to get the expert witnessry from a person that we hoped would be a friend of the court, Erica Thompson. No. I'm talking about the B lady from TikTok that we tried to get on, but she chose not to go on this podcast and said she chose to go, her first podcast she chose to go on was ****.

So she's not on my list anymore. A lot of fun in the comments she had on her Instagram post about that. You know what, Valerie? Bleep out that name. We'll just say that she went on the podcast of a cast member of NewsRadio, and then our audience can decide whether it was Candy Alexander's podcast.

But I will shout out instead to some honey-making couple, Jillian and Kim in Asheville, North Carolina, who had a very good article on their Asheville Bee Charmer website about how it's true. Honey doesn't go bad. It is naturally acidic, which inhibits the growth of bacteria. And it is also antimicrobial because bees put an enzyme into honey when they're making it that eventually matures into hydrogen peroxide. into honey when they're making it that eventually matures into hydrogen peroxide so it it will not go bad the only way it will go bad is if it gets wet if moisture gets in there and then it can ferment and go sour but otherwise if it's stored properly it will last for evs um please don't give

young infants honey it's not recommended for young infants because some raw honeys have a little bit, a little hint of botulism in them. You know what? I'm going to amend that, John. Yeah. Don't give extremely young children honey because it might contain botulism unless you're concerned about forehead lines. That's true.

You can rub it on their foreheads. Yeah. That's not a problem. That's called baby Botox. Everyone should avoid, apparently, according to Healthline.com, everyone should avoid mad honey. Mad honey is honey that's made from certain rhododendrons or azaleas. And the plants have toxins in them that get into the honey and it makes you dizzy and nauseated. I've been seeking that out. I got the whole thing wrong.

That's how you want to spend a Saturday night. Yeah. I've been seeking that out. I got the whole thing wrong. That's how you want to spend a Saturday night. Stay away from the mad honey. But otherwise, five to nine-year-old honey, as crystallized as it might be, as Jesse Thorne points out, it's still okay to eat. That said, just because something's okay to eat doesn't mean you should eat it. Now, I am very, very averse to food waste. Now, I am very, very averse to food waste, but even I will throw out like an end of feta cheese that's kind of gone crumbly and it was stored in an old plastic tub that used to have walnut pieces in it. And it just looks so gross in the fridge and no one's going to ever eat it.

I'll throw that away. And then inevitably, my wife, who's a whole human being in her own right, will say 30 minutes later, what happened to that piece of feta that I was saving? But if something is just like, sometimes you look, I don't know, you got to clear out the fridge every now and then. You got to restock from time to time. I'm not saying throw away this whole bottle of honey, Jamie.

It's your honey, you do what you want. But I would say that maybe get some, one bottle of new honey for your guests. One bottle of attractive honey in a glass jar that doesn't look like toxic waste for when your sister and brother-in-law come over. Why not? You have the space and it doesn't go bad. Then you can have home honey and guest honey. Here's a 28-year-old grudge between Emily and her parents. In 1994, my parents challenged my Scrabble word, tweets. I somehow lost because there was no dictionary in the house.

I'd like that decision revised. Not only is tweets a word now, it was also a word in 1994. tweets a word now, it was also a word in 1994. The word existed prior to the invention of Twitter, as it's the answer to the question, what does a bird do? Well, I mean no disrespect to our friends Emily Brewster and et al. at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, but I am currently now a subscriber to the Oxford English dictionary. I paid for that subscription because for the New York Times column net that I write based on this podcast, the Judge John Hodgman column in the ethicist every week in the New York Times magazine, also online, if you're not boycotting the New York Times. I had to look up the etymology of the word fart. Not to brag.

Yeah. We're in show business. Specifically to determine whether or not, this was a dispute between a husband and his spouse, whether or not fart is an onomatopoeia. And the answer is, of course it is. It derives from, well, basically it derives from old middle German or something far. And the OED determined that it was probably imitative, which means to say it is a word that describes a sound by imitating the sound. And I got some letters from some listeners and readers of the column

who said, you know, you don't have to subscribe or pay money. If you're already a member of a public library, they probably will offer you access to the OED, which is terrific. I didn't realize that. And you should become a member of your public library, not only for that reason, but also because it's fun to go to the library. So do that. But in the meantime, I still have this subscription and I was able to look up the word tweet. And first of all, obviously, tweet is a word that far predates tweet in the contemporary sense of sending a tweet on Twitter. Birds have tweeted for a long time. Tweet, tweet, tweet. That's why we have Tweety Bird. And in fact, the first documented use of tweet in the bird sense.

That's a category in every OED entry. Human sense, bird sense. Right. The first documented use of the word tweet relating to birds going tweet in writing, according to the OED, goes back to 1851. G. Meredith in their work poems or poems, as my father-in-law would say, quote, the little bird tweets to its mate a tiny loving note. Then the next one is 1891, and I don't understand this quote at all.

It's from S. Mostyn from Curatica, page 63. Oh, tweet tweets a diaconal pullet. How splendid. All right, I don't know what that means. Point is, bird's been tweeting for a long time. And second of all, more interestingly to me, the first use of the word tweet in the sense of sending a tweet goes back to 2006, 27 December. This we have obviously clear.

Remember Twitter? Yeah, sure. Yeah. John, I remember Ode odio the podcasting service that that oh right oh my goodness yeah twitter used to be fun back in 2006 27 december twitter user cyber wanderlust tweeted got the new phone so you can tweet me again you sick bastards first use of the word tweet as a transitive verb in the technological sense.

Cyber Wanderlust still has an account, 38 followers, and they have it locked. I think this person probably had a good time on Twitter and then realized it was just poisoning us all with light and misinformation. In any case, that was only a couple of months after Twitter was started. It was started in March 2006. So there you go. It all goes back. The point is, though, in 1994, tweet was definitely a word. So yes, obviously, I revised that ruling.

I overturn it. You should rescore that game, Emily and her parents, and shame on you. Shame on you, not just for challenging tweet as a word, but not playing Scrabble correctly. Because when you play Scrabble, you have to have a dictionary on hand. You have to stipulate to a dictionary that you're going to use for that game. It could be the OED, it could be Merriam-Webster, it could be the Scrabble official word list whatever it is but if you can't chat if you don't have a dictionary you can't challenge it means you have to accept every word and that's no fun at all so emily i say to you i hope that you're i hope that your parents are still alive and healthy and i hope that you have a good relationship with them

mostly so that you can call them on the phone. And when they pick up, you can say, I saw, I taught a wrong person. I did. I did see a wrong person. Two of them. They're my parents. That's a mashup of Tweety Bird and Woody Woodpick. John Hodgman, the man of a thousand voices. Tweeting. Do you know what the real answer to the question, what does a bird do, is? No. A bird uses a single posterior opening for its digestive, urinary, and reproductive tracts,

including expelling feces and laying eggs. Talking about a cloaca. It's the only bird topic worth mentioning. I thought it was going to be that old joke. Hey, Jesse, what's a bird do? What does a bird do? About four pounds. That's a riff on the joke. What does a hen weigh?

What's a hen weigh? About four pounds. Let's take a quick break before we go further down this path. I can't wait for the letters I'm going to get about what a hen actually weighs. What do we have coming up after the break? Well, we have a dispute about Chex Mix. Yes. We also have one about the words beard juice.

Beard juice. We'll be back in just a second on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. 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. 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, call S-T-O-P-P-P-A-D-I. It'll never fit. No, it will. Let me try. P-P-P-A-D-I It'll never fit. No, it will. Let me try. If you need a laugh and you're on the go,

try S-T-O-P-P-P-D-C-O-O We are so close. Stop podcasting yourself. A podcast from MaximumFun.org If you need a laugh and you're on the go. It's the Judge John Hodgman podcast and we are headed out on the road on tour. So

if you live in the Western United States, make your plans now. We are going to several cities and townships in the Western part of these states, starting on January 28th in Port Townsend, Washington, then Sunday the 29th in Seattle, Tuesday the 31st of January at Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon, following up on Thursday, Denver, Colorado, 2-2. Groundhog's Day, we're going to be doing one million shows over and over and over again, the exact same show. And finally, we will be able to resolve some unresolved issues in our lives and get to move through time again and move all the way to San Francisco

on Saturday, the 4th of February. Join us at the Sidney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco for our live performance. And what I dare say, triumphant return to the triumphant return of the San Francisco Sketch Fest. It's going to be a lot of fun, a lot of big shows. And then we're going to go to Los Angeles, by the way, also. We're going to be performing right after that in a Masonic Lodge in a cemetery.

Yeah, Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever is such a cool place. And again, as an Angeleno, I can't let this go by without mentioning plenty of free parking. Plenty of free parking. Tickets are on sale now and they're going fast. Port Townsend sold out immediately. Oh, it's sold out already. Okay. Oh, yeah.

Port Townsend sold out like this. I don't, I guess. I don't know. It's going to be a heck of a show. Bit.ly slash JJHoWest. It's going to be a heck of a show. bit.ly slash JJHoWest. That's B-I-T dot L-Y slash J-J-H-O West for West Coast. And also, please remember to send your disputes for these cities at MaximumFun.org slash J-J-H-O.

No cases too big or too small. If you want to have a dispute considered for live adjudication at one of these shows, MaximumFun.org slash JJHO, make sure that you put the name of the city that you are submitting the dispute for. We're also going to be doing a Reddit talk on Judge Hodgman's favorite subreddit. Everyone knows that my favorite subreddit is r slash marbles. I thought it was magnet fishing. I'm off magnet fishing. I'm on marbles, battle wagons, and dogs on roofs.

Those are all great. I'm enjoying vintage menus. Oh, yeah. And vintage ads. I just subscribed to vintage menus. It's a great compliment to ask a food historian, which is a genuinely fascinating subreddit. And of course, the MaxFun subreddit, MaximumFun.reddit.com or r slash Maximum Fun. Right. But one of my favorites to the point of distraction in the past has always been, am I the a-hole? We'll call it that. Yeah. Am I the a-hole?

am i the a-hole we'll say we'll call it that yeah am i the a-hole uh where people write in saying i did this and does that make me a jerk or what and people comment and vote whether or not they are a jerk or not it is my favorite collection of short stories featuring wildly unreliable narrators since Yelp. I love it. And one of the founding moderators of AITA, as it's called, heard that we enjoyed the show and reached out to us and invited us to do a live talk. It's sort of like a live podcast on the AITA stream. So if you're a member of Am I the A-Hole or want to be one, we're going to be doing this live talk on the 18th of January at 4 p.m. Pacific and 7 p.m. Eastern over on the AITA subreddit. And they're going to give us some examples from their subreddit of people who are trying to figure out if they did the right or the wrong thing. And Jesse and I are going to get to judge it.

And it's going to be a lot of fun. So join us, if you will. You can listen along and it'll be a lot of fun. Go over to the AITA subreddit and we'll be talking a lot about the tour as well. That's January 18th at 4 Pacific, 7 Eastern at AITA.reddit.com. And also bit.ly slash JJHoWest. Come on, go get your tickets. They're going.

They're going away. Let's get back to the docket. Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We're adjudicating family feuds and finding out the bird sense of words. Here's a dispute from Maggie. For decades, my family has made Chex Mix around the holidays. Some family members feel it's acceptable to pince or grasp one's favorite bits of the mix out of the bowl and eat only those. Others feel this is unfair. It's intended

to be a mix with a certain distribution of constituent bits. One is honor-bound to take a scoop and eat whatever one gets. Please save us from this year's dispute and tell us once and for all who's right. Well, let me settle this dispute first. I like Chex Mix a lot. I like it when people in my house make it from scratch based on any number of family recipes that have been passed down and improvised over the years. And then I like it, the commercial version too, that I'll get at a gas station from time to time. I will say this though, in case you

were wondering, if you get the extra bold flavor Chex Mix, it will taste very Worcestershire-y and good, but your breath will stink really badly. And you don't want to be breathing that on people in a car. Got it, everyone who rides in my car? That stuff stinks. I also will settle this. There are three main streams of Chex available. Wheat, rice, and corn. Best checks? What's your guess, Jesse? I mean, my guess is going to be corn checks, but I don't know. Not for me, friend. Rice checks.

Blandest of the checks. That is one of my true indulgent pleasures. Bland, bland rice checks and ice cold milk. Yum, yum, is what I say to you. Here's the thing. I'm just giving some Chex talk because the answer is obvious. We settled this in Atlanta, live show, 2019, when we ruled you cannot cherry pick the trail mix.

You can't take the M&Ms out of the trail mix, nor can you take the cherries out. You can't, literally can't cherry pick the trail mix. You got to eat it all. It's a mix. Just as you said, Chex mix. You can't just be taking the good stuff out. And we know what you want to take out. I've talked about it in my book, Vacationland. I'll talk about it now. What you want are those little rye crisps. They're not Chex at all. They're those little sort of thumbprint sized pumpernickely dark rye bread crisps that have been salted with all the sea and the ocean and baked in the center of the sun. You eat one of those things and all the moisture in your

body leaves immediately, gets absorbed. They're so delicious. And yes, that's what everyone wants to eat. Tell you what they don't want to eat is those little pretzel knobs and then you get the checks is what you're fine but here's the thing gardettos if you didn't know this makes a rival checks style mix uh called gardettos uh old fashioned italian snack mix they used to be called snack ends they don't have checks in them anymore they used to they used to but then checks bought the company got rid of the checks um but it is a it is a very similar sort of mix and some people like it but the main thing is gardettos puts out an oops all rye crisps edition wow yeah you can go to the gas station and get a gardettos it's called special request because so many people said i just want the rye crisps and just get those on their own

give those to your family at the holiday because you know that's what they're going for here's something i didn't know about checks mix you know who were the who were the spokes characters for checks mix in the early 1990s i don't charlie brown and the gang oh wow yeah they did a whole series of pretty charming animated cartoons for Chex Mix with the tagline, the top snack for kids with Suburban on Wii. It's true, though. The thing about Charlie Brown is true. I like Chex Mix.

You got to eat it all. You can't. If you just want the one thing, you get a special request from Gardellos. If you have another thing you want to request, write to Gardellos. Excuse me, Gardellos. Maybe they'll help you out. But in the meantime, if you're making Chex Mix at home, don't cherry pick. I recently learned through the medium of a social media poll that there are many people,

in fact, a majority of my followers on social media, who prefer Snoopy to Charlie Brown. Whoa. Which seemed utterly bananas to me. Mm-hmm. And then I learned that one of them is our producer, Jennifer Marmer. Mm. Oh. You told me that at the time.

What poll? I didn't take this poll. You didn't take the poll, but I brought up the poll to you, and you said that you prefer Snoopy. That's what you told me. Jennifer, please approach the microphone. That sounds like something I'd say. Are you suggesting that you were trolling me or? No, I don't know. I don't remember this

conversation at all. But now that I think about it, I think I do prefer Snoopy. He's a goof. Likes to wear sunglasses. He's not a goof. He's a doof. He is a doof. But he has a funny laugh. He's not a goof. He's a doof. He is a doof. But he has a funny laugh. He doesn't do anything. Charlie Brown is the representation of what's important in life, which is to be sad. Snoopy is the opposite. Snoopy is happy and satisfied with his life, unless he's waiting for suppertime. Yeah. Who does that represent? He represents Charles M. Schultz in his retirement. All the later strips featuring Snoopy are just Snoopy thinking about and playing tennis and then trying to write a novel. He was like a middle-aged retiree.

You know, ice skating in his own rink. And thinking about World War I too, another middle-aged dad thing to do. He was very happy. another middle-aged dad thing to do he's very happy i i have enough on we i don't need a child to remind me how sad i am most of the time can't you just like linus then i love linus yeah love linus snoopy and the peanuts gang are parallel comic strips but they're in different cinematic universes basically you are getting a two-for- different cinematic universes. Basically you are getting a two for one with that comic strip. You are getting the, the adventures of a, of a goofy dog and his imagination who basically parasitically lives off Charlie Brown, but otherwise doesn't care for him. And then you have Charlie Brown and his friends going through existential crises,

separate comic strips within the same thing. It's a perfectly valid thing to like Snoopy. Most kids love Snoopy. Most adults like Charlie Brown. Good old Charlie Brown. How I hate him. Sometimes Charlie Brown is really mean to Snoopy. And it feels. Snoopy is contemptuous of Charlie Brown.

It feels aggressive how mean Charlie Brown can be to Snoopy sometimes. Although Snoopy is a jerk. Snoopy does misbehave a lot. Snoopy has no regard for anyone else in the Peanuts universe. Snoopy might not even like Woodstock. Snoopy loves Woodstock. I'd like to see one time where Snoopy says, I love you to Woodstock. There are times when they see each other and they both go, hey!

They're so happy to see each other. These are in the specials, the TV specials. You're talking about the cartoons, the animated specials for the most part. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But a lot of those have material that's basically lifted from the comic strips. Yeah, many of them are written by Charles Schultz. There is one where Snoopy is the ultimate jerk, where he's supposed to go to dog training at the Daisy Hill puppy farm. My son was just watching this the other day.

And he goes to stop by Peppermint Patty's on his way to the puppy farm and then just stays there and imagines he's a World War I soldier on leave in France. Yeah, sure. And just hangs out by her pool all day and snaps for service. And she gets real mad. It's the ultimate jerk move. Hey, everybody. Look, you all did such a great job sending in your Zeppelin and dirigible songs. And I have the bracket ready to go.

I just, there's this program, this is this computer program that is making me a little frustrated because I can't quite get it to do what I want it to do, but we're going to get that poll going real soon. I promise you before March, certainly, because that'll be our, that could be our March madness bracket. I haven't forgotten about it. It's just been a busy winter, but I hope that you will continue to, uh, to favor us with your fans and listener submitted suggestions for things. If you would like to submit a panel from the Peanuts cartoon strip of proof positive that Charlie Brown is too mean to Snoopy, I'd love to see those too. I have to be one. Well, I guess it could be a whole strip, but ideally one panel. You can go find them online, I'm sure, or take a picture of it.

They're all collected. You can figure it out. I would enjoy those. You know, the director of the Charles Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa, California, is a Max Fun listener. No kidding. And supporter. Lovely man.

He's certainly welcome to enter the contest. And I guess it's a contest now. Yeah, he doesn't get any special advantage for being a curator. There's no curator's bonus. No, no. But I mean, he probably has access to archives. It doesn't have to be published. Whoever gives me the single panel of Charlie Brown being the meanest or Snoopy being the most loving towards Charlie Brown or Woodstock, you're going to get a Judge John

Hodgman t-shirt in your size or the size of your choice. From maxfundstore.com? Maxfundstore.com is where you go to get all that merch. Here's something from Nicholas in Somerville, Massachusetts. When the weather's below freezing, my beard gets covered in a thick layer of frozen breath. It can take up to 10 minutes to melt once I get back inside. During the melting period, I like to make a snack. the melting period, I like to make a snack.

But my family insists the dripping moisture is unbearably gross. They forbid me from doing anything in the kitchen until it is melted. I explain, it's just lung water. I didn't think it was going to get worse than beard juice.

Now we got lung water. As a man who recently recovered from pneumonia, John. That's me. You know from lung water. It's not fun. They breathe the lung water anytime they share a room with me. But my family stands firm in their anti-beard juice policy. Can you please tell them to let me have my food in peace? Well, look, shout out to Somerville, Massachusetts

and Tufts University and WMFO FM 91.5 on their frequency modulation dial live from a top majestic Curtis Hall on the Medford Somerville line where I used to broadcast my radio show radio Consuelo when I had a radio show as a senior in high school at a college because they didn't know any better than to give me a show um I love Somerville I love Massachusetts I I I think a lot of this though is, I mean, unless things are very, very different, just a couple hundred miles North of me right now, this whole issue is kind of moot because it's January as we record this. And as we release this and it's 62 degrees in Brooklyn, New York, I don't know if it's ever going to be freezing again,

dude. I don't know if it's ever going to be cold enough to freeze your beard again, even in Somerville. Maine, I don't think, has been below freezing for a couple of days. So maybe you won't have to worry about this in the future. But in the meantime, let's say we get a cold snap and your beard freezes up and you go inside. I don't know, Jesse Thorne. We both own beards.

Don't you feel that a person with a beard has a certain responsibility to minimize how much they're grossing out the people around them? I think that's fair, yeah. Because it's pretty gross. It does sound gross. And I think, I don't know, I mean, we've discussed on this, I'm a native coastal Californian, so I've never experienced weather. But my understanding is that this is what mudrooms are for. Yeah, that you sit down and wait for your beard to melt. I think he should invest in, you know those kind of hand dryers in the bathroom where you dip your hands into it and then pull it

out? Yeah. He should mount one of those at about five feet, Dip the beard in, pull it out. If he's got a ZZ Top style or old school Jesse Thorne long beard, he could do that. And you know what's great? That way the beard juice collects in a reservoir for later sale. Oh yeah, exactly. You could put that into an apothecary bottle and probably ship it to Brooklyn and sell it. Sell it in a little storefront, a little pop-up shop in Dumbo. But yeah, no, I think that you have an obligate, like beards are, beards are, I think intrinsically a little bit gross. They can be majestic and beautiful to look at and someone can find one attractive even if they are not you. But I will say that I,

I know that the people in my life who come close to my beard are making a sacrifice every time they come close to my beard. It is a weird texture and it's kind of gross. And I know as someone who kissed Zach Galifianakis in the second season of Bored to Death, maybe the third, that it's a scratchy endeavor. I had a mustache at the time. And as Zach said, it felt like we were pushing two brooms together. Give me a sec. Anyway, yeah, so given that the beard,

I think, is sort of baseline, probably your family is already making a concession just letting you walk around with this thing on your face. To have frozen breath dripping out of it, I don't care if you're making the most personal of snacks. Even if it's not something, a snack that you're sharing, I don't care if you're making the most personal of snacks, the personal pan pizza.

Don't be dripping lung juice onto it. Just dry it off. You can towel dry it off. Jesse, you know what I learned recently? This may mean nothing to you. You know, nostalgia is a toxic impulse, but I've been talking a lot about Lonnie Anderson and some other old, old school stuff. Richard Dawson. I'll just mention one more thing. Maybe this will ping with you or maybe it won't,

but it was a big, important part of my middle school life. Stouffer's French bread pizzas. You ever have one of those? No. Val, Jennifer, Stouffer's French bread pizzas? I'm sure I've had a Stouffer's French bread pizza at some point or another. I've had French bread pizzas generally. Sure, generally. But the Stouffer's, boy, oh boy. I don't know. What I learned, the good news for you is that they still make it.

Still comes in pepperoni and deluxe. Oh, good. There's still time. Yeah, you still have a chance. In screenwriting, they call this a ticking clock. Yeah, and this is your inciting incident. Everyone go out. Well, I don't know.

I don't need to advertise Stouffer's. Hold on, hold on, Val. First, save a cat. Yeah. Then go get the pizza. For all I know, Stouffer's pizzas are only good enough to wear on your feet when you're running on a treadmill in Nova Scotia. But I have a fond memory of it. So if anyone wants to try one and let me know, maybe I'll do this.

They still make them. But here's the other thing I discovered that they're still making. This was one of my mom's favorite things. I don't know if frozen food was not a big part of my growing up. But we had these Stouffer's French bread pizzas. And we also had Stouffer's creamed chip beef, which have you ever had creamed chip beef, Jesse?

I've never even had chipped beef. Oh, well, the cream chip beef is the same thing as chip beef, except it's in a cream sauce. Oh, okay. What is chipped beef? It's basically like, uh, it's air dried beef. Uh, this is how it's described on the stuffers website. Tender strips of dried beef topped with a seasoned creamy sauce. And you traditionally serve it on toast. And this was a thing that my mom would always say with perverse delight

was described in the armed forces as on a shingle cream chip beef on toast. And she would, she would make not one, but two packets. I have to imagine it had to have been 70,000 galleries of cream sauce and beef and just eat it out of a bowl. And I, and I love my mom and I love her memory and I've had cream chip beef and it's, it's kind of disgustingly good, but I didn't know they still make it and they do. And I only found out because I was thinking about personal pizzas and Stouffer French bread pizzas. And I was on the website. They have this page for cream chip beef.

And at the bottom of the page, it says why it's delicious. And it offers two, two reasons for why it's delicious. Why cream chip beef is delicious. Why does this product defy God's will? The first reason they offer for why it's delicious is it's freshly made and simply frozen. Okay. It's frozen. That's why it's delicious.

Hold on. It's simply frozen. None of these Baroque freezing processes that our competitors use. Right. No, simply frozen, just like grandma used to freeze. And then the other reason that they give for why it's delicious, for why creamed chip beef is delicious specifically, is cooking trays made with 30% recyclable plastic. Oh. And let's just leave it there. That's all I got. That's why it's delicious. The trays are somewhat recycled. Get a little bit of that

post-consumer flavor. Anyway, there are things in life that are arguably grosser than beard juice. Maybe cream chip beef is one of them, but whatever it is that's dripping out of your beard, don't let it get in your snack, everybody. Beards require a certain amount of self-discipline. Maybe a hand towel at the door? Yeah, get yourself a beard towel and just go dry it out or just or go into the bathroom and, you know, you don't you don't need a wall mounted hand dryer. You can just get a hair dryer and blow it on your beard. That said, you should get. You should. Oh, yeah, you should. Of course you should.

For later sale. Well, it will increase the value of your home. You're going to see that on Zillow Gone Wild for sure. The beard drying room. Our docket's clear. That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman. Our producer is Jennifer Marmer. Our editor is Valerie Moffat. Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman. We're on Instagram at Judge John Hodgman. Make sure to hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJHO, and check out the Maximum Fun subreddit at maximumfun.reddit.com to discuss this episode. Do you know what that is, John, the Maximum Fun subreddit? Well, it's a place to discuss Maximum Fun shows and things that come up on Maximum Fun shows.

It's a part of the internet that's still pretty fun. It is fun. It's fun over there. It's nice. Positive vibes there. Pause vibes over at Maximum Fun. Maximumfun.reddit.com. Maximumfun.reddit.com.

Hey, we heard about some longstanding grudges today. Let's hear some more. Did someone cross you in kindergarten? Are you still mad at that one kid who beat you in the audition for the high school production of Pirates of Penzance just because he already had a peg leg? Did someone ever steal your joke or tell a story about your house without acknowledging you in their award-winning one-person show? Did the mother of your friend who you were house-sitting for kick you out of the apartment

because she wanted to visit New York and you had to leave? And she said, I know it's wrong, but I'm doing it anyway. If you have an old grudge that you want settled or just want to complain about, let us know at MaximumFun.org slash JJHO. Because when we do our open court segment in our live shows, fortune favors the accuser in this particular category. If you air an old grudge, the other person doesn't have to answer for it. And I'll almost certainly rule in your favor. So make sure you let us know about

your old grudges at MaximumFun.org slash JJHO. Plus what else, Jesse? Well, we're eager to hear about any dispute on any subject, whether or not your dispute is with a person who does solo performance. Could be with a sketch comedy team. It could be with a double hander. To be fair, most of my beefs are with Anna Deavere Smith. Legendary rivalry. Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal stuff. It was 11 p.m. in Los Angeles in 1992.

This is solo performance humor. Valerie gets it. Valerie gets everything. Jen's working on something else. Anyway, no matter what your case is, submit it at MaximumFun.org slash JJHO. That's MaximumFun.org slash JJHO. And a reminder, it's not too late to get in your cases for our tour. Port Townsend, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and Denver, Colorado. If you have a case that you'd like us to consider for live adjudication, make sure that we know about it, MaximumFund.org slash JJHO. Excited about those mile-high disputes. We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.