Judge John Hodgman - In Chambers

Episode Date: October 1, 2014

Judge Hodgman & Bailiff Jesse clear the docket, read pedantic letters, and talk about starting a horror movie club.

Welcome to the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. Judge Hodgman, this is our very first episode conducted entirely in chambers. You know, we get total, total sidebar. We get so many submissions of questions that we can't bring to a full, full courtroom. So we decided to break those out into special episodes, and that's what we're doing today. We have an entire episode dedicated specifically to snap judgments and, of course, pedantry. Yeah, when we talk about clearing the docket in previous episodes,

the fact is the docket is thick. We're not clearing that docket every time. We're barely dusting it off. Now we're going to clear some dockets now. Oh, yeah. For real. Let's start with this one. Here's something from Jessica. Jessica's wrong. Next. I just want to bang it out. Bang it out! Alright, go ahead. Every October, I watch 31 scary movies in 31 days oh wow i i barely watched one movie in the

of any genre in the last 31 days the young people today young people i know right every have all this time to sit around and watch scary movies and just buy tickets for their favorite uh favorite live recordings of bullseye in cemeteries. Yeah, you got it. Right? We'll talk more about that later. But let's get back to Jessica, who is wrong, by the way. Every October, it stresses out my boyfriend, Brad.

He's never made the pledge to watch with me, but feels roped into participating because we live together. He asks you for two things. because we live together. He asks you for two things. One, an order allowing episodes of scary TV shows to count towards the total of 31 movies. And two, to disallow binge watching and order a limit to the number of movies watched in one day.

Yeah. Jeez Louise. I would like Brad to relax and let me enjoy my annual tradition. Judge Hodgman, please help us. I have a quick question for you, Judge Hodgman, before we get to this. Does it count as a tradition if it's not shared with anyone else? If it's at best a sort of mild violation of the social contract in which you're imposing it on someone else? of the social contract in which you're imposing it on someone else.

Yeah, it's personally a tradition in my household to watch the terrifying Takashi Miike film audition every day of October at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. It's just my tradition. And it also inures my children to horror. Yeah, I think there may be a reason why brad is stressed out beyond just your pace of watching movies you're you're terrifying this poor guy with your scary movies although i don't know what kind i mean the thing of the thing of it is i was gonna say i don't know what kind of horror movies you watch, whether you're watching like classic universal monster movies or the whole Japan horror movie boom of the early 2000s, which was so scary, which I wrote about for the New York Times Magazine in 2007.

The reality is if you're going to watch 31 movies, horror movies in a month, you're not picking and choosing that much. I think it would be hard to come up with 31 distinct movies to watch in a single month that are worth watching, never mind ones just from the horror genre. And I would encourage you, Jessica, not because Brad is a scaredy cat, but because it'll be exciting to you to watch some scary TV because there has been a lot of it. Specifically, the regular the TV movie, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, which scared me so much when I was a child and was recently remade by Guillermo del Toro or produced by him. I don't remember who directed it about little people who live in the walls who want to drag you into the into the fireplace.

You ever see that one, Jesse? No, sir. That was a movie that was so scary to me. I saw it on Creature Double Feature on Channel 56 in Brookline, Massachusetts. I think it was the second feature of the double feature. In the afternoon, they would show scary movies in the afternoon. In the broad daylight, I watched these two little monkey-like creatures as this woman was taking a shower emerge out of a little cabinet with a straight razor and turn off the lights on her.

And I ran out of my living room into broad daylight to scream at the top of my lungs. And it was a TV movie. It was made for TV in the 1970s when you could do intense stuff on television, I guess, because it was after 9 p.m. All the children were asleep. They're not like today, staying up till 5 o'clock in the morning doing Minecraft. And it was so, because it was a TV movie, it was so obscure that for years and years and years, I could not remember the title of it and had begun to believe that it was

just a bad dream. I could not remember the title of it and had begun to believe that it was just a bad dream. And then one evening, maybe just a year or two ago, I buckled down. Well, it was before the remake came out. So it must have been three or four years ago. And I buckled down with YouTube and I just entered in every possible search term I could for like small menacing straight razor shower scene, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And finally I found it. And I felt like, I felt like I was in a horror movie where, where, you know, I was trying to convince that everyone in the world, like, no, this is a real thing. This is a real vengeful ghost in my closet. And it was, it's a real movie called don't look,

no, don't be afraid of the dark. Now don't Look Now is also a terrifying film, which you should see as well. So add that to your list. And because I like obscure things, because they're oft overlooked, and because I like horror movies, but don't like them as well or as smartly as my friend Nick McCarthy, who was the one who introduced me to Evil Dead 1, 2, and Medieval Dead 3, I asked Nicholas McCarthy, who is my old friend from high school, who introduced me to all these movies when I was but a youth and has now gone on to fulfill his life dream of directing horror movies. So these are the ones.

I asked him for some suggestions, but before he gives any suggestions, I will suggest that you watch this October his movie The Pact, which came out in 2012, which is really scary and great and awesome. And he's got a new one out called At the Devil's Door, which is out this, just I think this second. And Nick said, let me see what he said, that he loves The Exorcist, The Entity, The Original, The Ring. But there's some recommendations he has for older horror movies and TV movies episodes that are lesser known, including Curse of the Demon, 1957, Peeping Tom, 1960, Burn, Witch Burn, 1962, The Haunting, 1963, Last House on Dead End Street, 1977, The Car, 1977, which is about a killer car. I remember that one.

Don't Go in the House, 1979 1979 which is basically the name of every horror movie i think he also recommends uh x files episodes tombs and home and night gallery episode the caterpillar and the tv movies dead of night the woman in black the original bbc version from the 1980s and shalkan you'll like this one shulkin the painter shulkin the painter is an absolutely according to nick absolutely upsetting bbc ghost story one creepy idea and it stayed with him for days shulkin the painter and i would add the movie that came out do you have any horror movies that you like jesse no i don't like horror movies i don't understand why people would – I think that my childhood lies somewhere in between secure enough to enjoy being scared and traumatic enough to find trauma comforting. And so I can't enjoy a horror film.

You gain no pleasure from them. can't enjoy a horror film. I did see, I did see, um, uh, the shining in high school literature class. Yeah. Didn't care for that. Oh, well maybe that's cause you saw that terrible Stanley Kubrick version of the shining that Stephen King hates so much. He hates it.

So did you see it when Stephen King corrected that mistake and made his own version of the shining as a mini series for ABC Stephen Webber and Rebecca De Mornay. Oh, my gosh. I should have seen the Stephen Webber version. I love Stephen Webber. Yeah. Oh, I love Stephen King so much. An absolute genius.

And it is the greatest thing in the world that he thought he could fix The Shining. I mean, he wrote it, obviously. But it's like the book doesn't go away just because Stanley Kubrick. Oh, well, never mind. I haven't seen that. But I mean, I have seen a lot of episodes of Wings. Now, if you want to see something truly terrifying. Well, you guys, you know, this is the Judge John Hodgman Scary Movie Club.

I haven't even gotten to, I think, 15 yet. So getting to 31 is hard. But I'm going to add Cheap Thrills, which is this movie that came out recently, which is a little gory, and it's not really a horror movie, but it's psychologically intense with David Koechner in it, which is great. Of course, the classic Bill Mooney episode of Twilight Zone, It's a Good Life, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, I mentioned. Audition, I mentioned. David Cronenberg's The Brood and The Strangers is one of the scariest movies I've ever seen. And in the spirit of Ayn Rand writing for Parade magazine, write in your own ideas,

listeners, and we'll share them with you and we'll all have a good scary movie club all October long. And Jesse? Yes? You don't have to worry about watching these horror movies. Because I'm going to strap you into a chair and tape open your eyelids and make you watch them. Let's move on. Here's something from Maddie. I'm 22 years old and live in Toronto.

I'd like to bring a case against my dad, Joseph. He's wrong. Okay, go on. I bet you he's a case against my dad, Joseph. He's wrong. Okay, go on. I bet you he's wrong, though. My dad has a very annoying habit. He will point to a stranger on the street and declare with a smirk that the person looks exactly like someone else. I told you he was wrong.

I told you. Whether it be a celebrity, a mutual friend, or a family member. Most of the time, the stranger will bear almost no resemblance to the person in question. Last week, he pointed out a fat, bald man, easily in his 70s, and said, Look, it's Jerry Seinfeld! It might have actually been Jerry Seinfeld, though 60 years old. Did you know that, Jesse? Yeah, I did know that. He looks fantastic. He does not look like an old, though 60 years old. Did you know that, Jesse? Yeah, I did know that.

He looks fantastic. He does not look like an old bald man in Toronto, that's for sure. You know why? You know why he looks so good? No, how come? I learned this from a poster on my dentist's wall. Obsessed with oral hygiene. Oh, no kidding, really?

Yeah, flosses before every show because he doesn't like the jokes coming out of a dirty mouth. He's that dedicated to not working blue? Yeah. Well, you know, we share 99.9% of our DNA human to human, but we only share

10% of our microbial community. Did you know that, Jason? I did not know that. The microbes that live in your gut and your mouth and your poop and your private areas are completely diverse. You know, you look exactly like Robert Krolwich right now. Yeah,

but I don't have any of his microbes. How can you say that? We only share 10% of our microbes, and they're what make you sick. So if you brush your teeth, guess what? You get to live a long time and look good like Jerry Seinfeld, and maybe you'll even have a hit TV show and be a multimillionaire. So Matty concludes, my dad knows, of course, that this bothers me, and he continues to do it. Yeah, of course. He's your dad.

Please issue. I mean, it could be worse. He could say moo all the time wait was it pig cow cow cow cow there was a dad there was a dad who said cow and then there was a dad who was named pig because he was named for the animal he liked to eat the most our listeners are beautiful people i agree my dad My dad knows, of course, this bothers me, and he continues to do it. Please issue an injunction that he cannot make these physical comparisons. Well, you know, Tom Sharpling has long set the precedent that pointing out any resemblance between one person and a supposedly famous person. It makes everyone look and feel bad.

There's a certain group of fans, I know this personally, who insists there's a certain subset, small subset of Judge John Hodgman slash John Hodgman Prime listeners. I don't know what that means. There's a certain subset of Judge John Hodgman listeners and John Hodgman readers who are convinced by their friends and family that they look just like me and will often come up and say this to me because they wear glasses and suits and thus ends the resemblance.

And I love, I love these people and I'm thrilled that they like me and I'm thrilled that they feel flattered by a resemblance that has been perceived through a glass darkly. But it makes whenever they say it, it's very awkward because it makes me

feel like I need to apologize to them. Because they say all my friends say I look just like you and then they have this pleading look in their eyes saying please can you tell me it's not so and so i absolve you all none of you look at all like me but you know all you know i i believe it was uh i believe it was uh uh who was it who said all comparisons are odious let's say william shakespeare that's that's a likelihood yeah i'm sure to be corrected. Yeah, everyone is themselves, whether they're in

Toronto or not. And as loath as I am to prohibit a weird dad from torturing his child, he should stop doing that. I mean, what are you supposed to do with it? I mean, even if it's accurate,

it can only break bad our rule on jordan jesse go after uh we've had people well you know anytime you're you're uh known by your voice you have to deal with people coming up to you and telling you that you look disappointing to them you're not like what you sound like at all in person telling you that you but anyway the our rule is you can't compare anyone to someone famous unless that famous person is famous for being attractive yeah but that's then you know like if anyone came up to me who's famous for being attractive jesse johnny depp jacqueline smith sure it's okay for you to say you look just like jacqueline smith to me someone said you look like johnny depp i'm

like uh-uh i'm not i'm not a moron i know i don't look like johnny depp someone someone said you you look you you look like a slightly younger but much fatter and less attractive Liam Neeson with a weird green arrow beard, then I'll be like, you're on the money, buddy. But why do you even say that? Why? Why are we even playing this game? I mean, I look a little bit like Boy George. But if somebody came up to me and said that, I might kick him in the shins.

So would Boy George. If you told Boy George that he looked like boy George. Yeah. He's a notorious shin kicker. So anyway, Maddie, your dad is wrong. And quickly to go back to Jessica for a second,

stop scaring Brad so much. Be respectful of your boyfriend's terror. And, uh, you can't, I, I absolutely find in Brad's favor. You can't,

I, I, I'm sorry. I forgot about this. Don't watch two or three movies in one night. If you're gonna do this, do it one movie or TV show, one feature film or two half hour TV shows per evening. That way there's a countdown. There's like a haunted advent aspect to it. It's not just like me strapping Jesse down and opening his eyes and drilling a hole in his head like Eli Roth's Hostel, by the way, which is not a terrible movie.

It's a great movie, actually. It's gross, but it's fun. Now, it may be that Jessica and Brad are simply on different pages. She likes the stuff he doesn't. In that case, then the typical precedent precedent applies you can't force someone to like something they don't so while she's watching 31 days of horror he can go in the other room and watch um just binge watch adventure time that's what i would do yeah adventure time is great very heartwarming jesse thorn yes i i have you to thank for introducing me to Pendleton Ward and Adventure Time. And now

Jack Pandarvis, my friend from Oxford, Mississippi is writing for that show. He's also the voice of Root Beer Guy. I got to tell you that show, that show is the, it took me a little while to get into it, but it is the most important television show i've seen in the past 500 years wow what did you see the question is what did you see 500 years ago was it was it a really great show about what happened 500 years ago the inquisition yeah it was a workplace comedy about the eradication of the native peoples of the americas yeah yeah exactly it was a workplace at five five hundred years is wrong but i'm just gonna say it's a workplace comedy about people working in a uh who are who have a job putting smallpox into blankets

so it's not that's not that's an anachronism. But you guys give me a break for once. She's Louise. She's Louise, guys. Oh, yeah. But, you know, the thing that I mean, I always enjoyed it. But the thing that made me understand that it is some of the most important television on the air today is the character of the Earl of Lemongrab, whom I said on Twitter and will say again now is the most compelling comedic antihero since basil faulty well i feel like you know my life as a 30 shoot 2014 right it is a 33 year old man uh was really shaped by peewee's playhouse i watch peewee's playhouse every week it was transcend television, and it shaped who I am in a very real way and very positive way.

And I think there's a whole generation of children right now being shaped in a real and positive way by what a remarkable and beautiful show Adventure Time is, in addition to just being funny and fun. But it's really special in a way that children's television rarely gets to be. And, you know, what that show, that show both reflects and promotes an incredibly positive and flexible idea of gender roles that is utterly alien to any kids programming that ever happened before the,

what the, what the girls do on that show and what the boys do on that show and how they accept one another makes it the, maybe some of the best young person's programming as far as I'm concerned since Mr. Rogers and you all know what high praise that is. Oh yeah. So there,

and Peewee's playhouse for that matter too. This is what, it's probably what made you a big Natasha Lyonne fan, right Jesse? Do you remember on Pee-wee's Christmas special where people keep sending him fruitcakes? So he gets these like almost naked beefcake guys who are basically only wearing

like cut-off short shorts and construction belts to build an addition to the Playhouse out of cheesecakes and fruitcakes. Yeah, Jesse, it goes back to that time when we decided that our all kids television should be made by super kitschy downtown performance artists. Here's something from Aria. My wife, Becca, and I recently watched the movie Wayne's World together and it rekindled a debate. We differ on the interpretation

of a single line of dialogue. Stacey, Wayne's crazy ex played by Lara Flynn Boyle, gives him a gun rack as an anniversary present. The dialogue goes as follows. I will be playing the part of Wayne.

He is a precocious, but in some ways emotionally stunted, suburban Chicago teenager played by a 40-year-old. And I'll be playing the role of Stacey, who is Lara Flynn Boyle, incarnate. A gun rack? A gun rack? I don't even own a gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack. What am I going to even own a gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack. What am I going to do with a gun rack? You don't like it? Fine. You know what, Wayne? If you're not careful, you're going to lose me. I lost you two months ago. We broke up.

Are you mental? Get the net. Very nicely done, Jesse. Thank you very much. It was not an impression. It was an interpretation. My wife contends that get the net is short for get the Internet. In other words, get with the times. What? I argue that calling the web the net wasn't common parlance when the movie came out in 1992. I think the line means you're crazy.

So get the butterfly net, the kind that orderlies are shown using to try to catch escaped mental patients in old politically incorrect cartoons. So who is right in this decade long dispute? Your wife is absolutely incorrect in every way. How this even continues to be a dispute is beyond me. I mean, I suppose only Mike Myers himself could settle this definitively. And I don't know Mike Myers and I don't know how to get to him. But I contacted an old college friend of mine who worked with him and and wrote on the Austin Powers films. Michael McCullough is a great writer and director.

And he pointed out, he said, I don't know for sure either, but I am absolutely certain that there is no way Mike Myers, not merely releasing the movie in 1992, but making it in 1991 and having written it earlier than that, would have used the term get the net as in the Internet, because it just wasn't being bandied about at that time. And indeed, knowing Mike Myers' love of old-timey cartoons, it almost absolutely meant get the butterfly net, as was the old cliche of the men in white coats. Now, look, as I say, only Mike Myers can settle this for sure. So if he is out there, or if someone knows how to reach him and can get me a verified answer on this very subject, I will make this ruling tentative, but pretty darn certain. Your wife is wrong.

You, sir, are correct. Somebody's got to know Mike Myers, right? No. somebody's got to know Mike Myers, right? No. If you're out there and you know Mike Myers, can you just let him know, just thank you from Jesse? That's it, just thank you.

He's one of the greatest geniuses, and for that reason, I am fairly confident in saying that even those people who work with and live with and love Mike Myers personally may not know him. That's a good point. But if he's out there, you know, John Oliver, the star of last week tonight with John Oliver on HBO. I do know John Oliver, the star of last week tonight with John Oliver on HBO. That comedic genius who's who's on one of the most prestigious television networks, making one of the greatest

shows on comedy time television. And a legitimate podcasting legend as co-host of The Bugle. Now, can you think of any reason why he might not want anyone to remember his featured role in the Mike Myers movie, The Love Guru? The only reason I can think of is the generally poor reception of that film. Yeah. Well, I just want everyone to know john oliver was in the love guru so john oliver if you're listening call your best friend mike myers and ask about whether he meant when he said to lara flynn boyle in 1991 get the net that he was saying why don't you sign up for aol, I think, coming into existence next year. Yeah, and when it does, it won't have internet access until like 1995. Right, the term internet.

1996. Right, exactly. Prodigy. Prodigy had email, right? Prodigy had email. CompuServe was definitely a big deal around that time. Electronic mail. If you had said get electronic mail or get a dial-up modem

or get... Dial into a BBS. Yeah. Play a text-based game. Oh, yeah. Why don't you play a game of Colossal Caves? Get with the times. Jesse, I just want you to know that I got the net in between our last

couple of sentences, and I used it to look up America got the net in between our last couple of sentences, and I used it to look up America Online, a.k.a. AOL, was founded as America Online in 1991. So I think it's highly unlikely, highly unlikely that Mike Myers, unless he's going to prank us, is going to call up and say it meant get the Internet. We got some letters in response to episode 173, which is called Gross Misconduct. Yes. This was the one where the lady in Brooklyn was upset

because her mom was clipping her fingernails in restaurants. Vomit sound. And so the mom defended herself by saying that her daughter was also gross because she would pick up gradu off the floor and eat it and so there was a question at the time whether gradu was just a word that had been made up in their family or whether there was some outside origin of this word. Yeah. And gradu, she meant like a little piece of waste food or a little piece of grease or grime.

The word is gross. The thing that it describes is gross. And the act of picking it up and putting it in your mouth literally made me nauseated there for a second. Yeah. And we actually got a lot of notes about this, especially from listeners in Louisiana. Here's something from Wade. He says, I was delighted to hear one of your guests use the word gradu, or as I've seen it spelled locally, gradu, G-R-A-D-O-U-X.

Gradu is, I believe, a Cajun word. I'm half Cajun and live in Louisiana. I should have been doing a Cajun accent this whole time. Well, it's too late now. I guarantee it. Here's something

from celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme. I've only heard the word used here in Louisiana. I use it myself with my kids. It's one of the few connections I have to the language my grandparents spoke fluently.

I think the closest translation is schmutz. It's something you wouldn't want to step in. It's what my daughters leave under their chairs after meals. I often use it in the place of the word sh, not in the sense of excrement, but in the sense of

well, schmutz. But there is no language Cajun. That is a dialect of French. Yeah, well, Creole. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're right. There are some other people who wrote in their theories of how the word might have formed. Mark wrote in to say that in French, the word...

Crade. Crade. Thank you, President Frenchman, is a familiar term for dirty. And there's also a less common word for muck, often of the fecal type that you might find in the gutter, that is la gadue. La gadue. So his suggestion is that gad and crad might become gradu. What I want to know is why people sent you letters describing the word gradu and people sent me packages full of little pieces of uneaten food, grease flecks, wadded up gum and other forms of gradu. That was gross, you guys. F minus.

Anyway, it's nice to get letters from people who are trying to help. As you may know, I, uh, I recently concluded my stint as a print journalist yet again, the New York times magazine has, uh,

as of, uh, September 28th ended. It's one page magazine feature, which included the judge, John Hodgman column net or column Nella, whatever the word is for a really short little tiny teeny column. And never Jesse,

have I received more letters, uh, full of outrage and invective than with regard to one of my most recent and final rulings Regarding a father Ivan And His dispute with his two daughters Over how many dog waste

Bags to bring along On the dog walk I'm not sure if you've seen This one Jesse so I'm asking you to Withhold judgment until you hear the whole thing Okay because you are you have Dogs yes and I presume You don't just let them poop all over the street you pick up Their waste of course I do withhold judgment until you hear the whole thing. Okay. Because you have dogs. Yes. And I presume you don't just let them poop all over the street. You pick up their waste.

Of course I do. In bags, right? Yeah, biodegradable bags, specifically. Sure. And Ivan said that 95% of the time, two bags were sufficient. And therefore, he usually brought two bags with him, but his daughters felt that he had an ethical responsibility to bring three bags with them.

Now, I sided at all times, even though that only would come into play 5% of the time. And I sided with Ivan because, first of all, I appreciated the precision of his dog waste statistics. The percentages were sound. I loved his statistics, which I hesitate to, but will call his poop log. I also feel that he who picks up the poop should make the poop policy. If his daughters want to walk the dog, they can choose how many bags to bring.

And that's what I wrote. Well, Jesse, this made a lot of people, more than ever before. And maybe even you, Jesse. Very, very, very mad at me they responded with all kinds of anger and veiled threats i got a lot of emails kathy wrote the answer to the dog poop question was uh and she used a harsher word for poopy she said that five percent of poop is guaranteed to be stepped in 50% of the time, which is an incredible statistic that I don't know where she got it from, but it's interesting.

She has her own shoe log. Pamela wrote, It's really rude to leave poop somewhere other than your own property, even 5% of the time. I kind of hope he steps in some. That was left by a person with not enough bags, meaning either me or Ivan. Mary wrote,

Dog poop. Was Judge Hoffman joking when he said one could leave the third dog poop of the day and carry only two bags? I couldn't tell. Ick. Some dog owners like litterers and smokers are like two-year-olds. Consider the world their garbage can. Sandra wrote, not bringing enough poop bags leaves a mess for children to step in.

A dog walker is obligated to pick up all the dog's messes. I make a nod over the poop and the same bag is ready for another, which I enjoyed as a little quick tip. Ann invoked geographical class warfare saying typical New Yorkers. The judge bought that stupid argument. You think he can not bother picking up the third pile just because he got the other two? Judge is held in contempt. Kim invoked Kant's categorical imperative. After walking my dogs today and staring at the third pile of poop, I thought about Ivan doing the same. First of all, I'm just glad my column resulted in someone staring at a pile of poop for a while in contemplation.

If you apply Kant's categorical imperative, or Kant's categorical imperative as you like, it is our duty to pick up all dog poop, regardless of whether it is the first or the third pile. And finally, Kathleen wrote in your published case, Ray, number of poop bags a good citizen carries more than needed. These are after all tiny, so present no weightlifting need. Look, you guys, I was not advocating leaving poop all over the place. I do not have a dog. I am not part of this problem. You are the ones who insist on keeping fuzzy, perpetual infants who poop all over the place

and walk them around cities, highly dense population centers. Consequently, you are the ones staring at poop and thinking about poop and coming up with poop solutions and poop shaming anyone around you who does not live up to your poop spectations. And I dare you to claim, poopy letter writers, that you have never, ever, ever once in your life, 5%, 4%, even 1% or 0.01% of the time left behind. You've never left behind one of your dog's leave behinds. I know that's not true. Let she who is without poop cast the first poop.

That said, you're all completely right. I was wrong. Ivan should bring extra bags in case of the 5% emergency. The bags don't weigh that much. It's not onerous. The problem was my commitment to freedom and reason and science and statistics clouded my judgment. And I just didn't like seeing dads bullied by their daughters into doing something when you know those daughters are not picking up any poop whatsoever. They're not walking that dog. Dad is. But that's my bias. And so I amend my order as I say farewell to the New York Times.

I'm not sure if we will do another print edition or some other edition of the Judge John Hodgman Enterprises. But I am glad to focus as always and first and foremost on this podcast and you, dear listeners, and you, Bailiff Jesse Thorne. I usually carry three bags, but once in a while, my two dogs will generate in the course of one walk, four poops. So by the logic of these angry people, you should be bringing around at least five bags. Well, according to Kant, anyway.

That's right. And by the way... The truth is, I Kant, my leg gets too sweaty. How dare you? How dare you? Well, I already said that shoe log thing.

At this point, anything is an improvement. Kant's categorical imperative is act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. And I do not like Kim's suggestion that it is our duty to pick up all dog poop. I don't have a dog. I only get animals that poop in a box and I store that box in my house. I consider two dogs

generating four poops in one walk. Not to get too mathematical. But I consider that to be one of nature's great miracles that honestly should be celebrated, if anything. Now that we have fully solidified our listenership among nine-year-olds.

Hello, children. Are you friends with Mike Myers? Tune in next time when most of our conversation will be about butts. And toots. conversation will be about butts and toots. If you have a case for Judge John Hodgman, bring it to us. Just go to MaximumFun.org slash JJ Ho and there is an easy and convenient form for you there that helps you have your day in court. You can send it in by email or using the form. There's a lot of ways to send it in and we take all comers. Every case is at least considered by Judge John Hodgman.

Yeah, those things go directly to me. Why do you think I got Pamela and Mary and Sandra and Ann and Kim's anger? Because it goes directly to me. And do you know what? I love your anger as well as I love your non-anger. I have a live program

that I am presenting in Los Angeles, California at the Masonic Lodge at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on October 15th. It will feature my public radio program, Bullseye, which will be constituted of an extensive interview with community creator Dan Harmon. Oh, wow. Musical performance from your friend and mine, Sarah Watkins. Oh, double wow. Who I was lucky enough to meet at the John Hodgman program here in Los Angeles. The live presentation I gave at the Largo at the Coronet.

Yes, she was there and it was fantastic. And stand-up comedy from the world's most enormous stand-up comedian, Steve Agee. Wowie, wow, wow. That guy is as big as a Sasquatch and thrice as nice. Yep, he's 8'12", and every inch of him is hilarious. Gigantopithecan comedian, Steve Agee,

plus Sarah Watkins, plus Dan Harmon, plus Jesse Thorne, all under the banner of Bullseye in a Masonic Lodge within a cemetery in Los Angeles. Jesse, where do I get tickets? Just go to MaximumFun.org and click on Bullseye Live in the right-hand sidebar under Live Shows. You'll find it on October 15th.

It's easy. It's fun. Look, everybody. I got a website, right? JohnHodgman.com. Sometimes you go there. It's updated a lot with a lot of interesting stuff. Sometimes you go there. There's a lot with a lot of interesting stuff sometimes you go there there's nothing going on why is this it's because it's me you guys it's just me i don't have an intern doing this i don't have some program generating interesting whatnot

for you guys at a regular interval so i can be part of your life all the time. Just me, Judge John Hodgman, a guy who sometimes sees a thing on the internet and wants to tell you about it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go to my website. You should go to my website because you know that it's me. I'm touching every one of these pixels personally. They got my grad do all over it. So knowing that every time you go to johnhodgman.com,

you get an authentic interaction with me john hodgman and urging you to do so and follow me on twitter and facebook and so forth let me say i just posted an incredible prank call that was sent to me by judge john hodgman listener priz tats that's his or her nickname that i got nothing else well it's better than if their nickname was toilet bowl wine or something like that that's true that's true off of judge john hodgman verdict number 176 the burden of goof you remember that one where jesse the husband was jumping out at his wife or the fiance not even husband there's no legal bond between them and he thought it was a good idea to hide in closets and jump out and

scare his fiance all the time. He was mistaken. And we were talking about pranks and I asked the listeners if they could remember, find for me something I could not find for myself on the internet. A prank call that was recorded on a cassette that contained a bunch of other jerky boys

prank calls and handed to me samis.style on an audio cassette in probably 1988 in Somerville, Massachusetts. And this prank call involved someone in a quasi, in fact, quasi-Cajun accent calling up an exterminator saying, yeah, I want to know what we're going to do about the bugs.

Because I could turn this into a street fight. And that's all I know. That's all I know. I've never been able to find it. And someone sent Pris- not Pres-nits. Pris-tats. Thought that he or she had chased it down

in the person of a prank caller named get this, Jesse. Nicknamed, I presume, Longmont Potion Castle, who's been doing underground recordings of prank calls, I gather, according to PrizTats,

since the late 1980s. And it is not right. It is not the one I was looking for. But I can't believe that I have not heard this guy's work before. It is not the one I was looking for, but I can't believe that I have not heard this guy's work before. It is amazing. And you can only find it on johnhodgman.com or, I guess, YouTube and the many other sites that have posted it. What else can you find there, Jesse?

Just go to Upcoming Appearances, and you'll see all the places I'm coming to in the coming months. In October alone, I will be in Philadelphia, Madison, Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Chicago, Illinois, two shows, and then Akron and then Pittsburgh. Jesse, in Madison and Milwaukee, will I be by myself? I'm guessing. I'm going to go with no. Answer is correct. No, I will be joined by Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Riff Tracks fame. And we're going to have a great time. Jesse.

Yes, sir. In Chicago, I'm doing two shows. Will they be the same shows? Now, that's a tough one, because a lot of times people will perform two of the same show. Well, that's that's that's the easiest way to do it. But I've never known you to take the easy way out. Not if it's going to produce a reliably consistent and good product, no. I mean, this sounds crazy to me, but two amazing hour-plus headlining performances?

Two different performances? Yeah, well, here's the thing, Jesse. defining performances to different performances yeah well here's the thing jesse last june the chicago just for laughs festival i finally cobbled together a whole bunch of material that i have since been performing uh in different places around the country and most recently at the public theater here in new york city at the under the radar festival under the rubric i stole your dad that's the name of the show. And an early version of it was first coalesced at the Chicago Just for Laughs festival last June. Since I'm returning to Chicago, I want to perform that show again because it's actually been refined and it's gotten better

and it's grown. And if you saw it before, you're going to see a much better version of it. But since I have already performed it there, I want to give Chicagoans, some of my favorite comedy fans in the world, even though they live in a fictional city, something different. And in fact, I've got a whole new hour of material that I've just started performing. And so I'm going to do both of the shows because it'll be more fun that way for me, more interesting, more fun, more challenging. And I hope that some of you will come to one or both of them. And guess what? For all of our listeners, no matter where you live, Max Fun Week is coming up. October 15th through 21st is going to be a celebration of all things Max Fun.

We're doing all kinds of fun things to celebrate it. We're doing crossover episodes of our shows and we're doing Q&As and we're doing introductions. We're going to make little videos of our studios so you can see what they look like. If you have any ideas for stuff that we should do, you should send them to us or post them on the forum or on the Reddit group.

If you have ideas for something you want to do, like a project or something, we will pay you in t-shirt. A t-shirt. Yeah, yeah. I detected the lack of plural. Yeah. We only have so many t-shirts, John. Yeah, no, I understand.

I mean, if you want to come by, we'll give you some seed bombs. We've got some seed bombs here. It's not an actual bomb. It just grows flowers. Yeah, that's good. But it's going to be October 15th through 21st. The big kickoff is the Live Bullseye show, and we're going to do all kinds of fun stuff all that week. Um, but it's going to be October 15th through 21st. The big kickoff is the live bullseye show. And we're going to do all kinds of fun stuff all that week. So, um, tune in and be on your social media and think of a fun thing to do. And, you know, our, our whole goal is to capture

the spirit that we get from the max fund drive every year. Um, but without asking you for any money, basically, you know, every year we have the Max Fund Drive and we like realize, you know, when we reach out to you, you reach back, you in the audience. And it means a lot to us and it means a lot to the shows. And it's exciting for us to hear from people and talk to people

and to have people talk to other people about the stuff that we do. And so we wanted to kind of codify that into a special calendar week. And, you know, we have a lot of good ideas for stuff to do, and we're really open to your cool ideas of stuff to do, and we're just super excited about it. So mark your calendars for October 15th through 21st. It's going to be a blast.

Consider it codified. This is the sound of a codifier. Judge John Hodgman codifies. Is that all? Yeah, our producer, Julia Smith, our editor, Mark McConville. Thanks to everybody who wrote in. Thanks to the folks who wrote in about French and Creole. Mark, Tony, Wade, Noah, Beatrice, and everybody on Facebook.

And yeah, I mean, the usual things apply. You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter. John is at Hodgman. I'm at Jesse Thorne. We'll see you in person around the country and next week on the podcast. And so for a new catchphrase, I will say, Bailiff Jesse,

get out of my chambers! Bailiffs!