Judge John Hodgman - Mr. Clicky Keys

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

This week, we're clearing the docket! Judge Hodgman and Bailiff Jesse discuss eating leftovers for lunch, picking up baby items with one's toes, cast iron pan hoards, and eating at morally questionable restaurants.LINKS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:The ad from 1984 that convinced a young Judge Hodgman to get a MacJudge Hodgman's appearance on Justin Long's podcast LIFE IS SHORTMarcella Hazan's bolognesebit.ly/CALLGEORGIA: Join Judge Hodgman via Zoom on November 22, making calls to Georgia voters for Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock!David Letterman on Bullseye With Jesse Thorn!montesmarch.com: Benefiting The Food Bank of Western MassachusettsThe Trevor Project: The Trevor Project is the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning (LGBTQ) young people under 25.

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket. And with me, as always, is the once and future personal computer, Judge John Hodgman. The truth can be told. Yeah. It's true. It's true.

I see you as the human personification of the IBM PC XT that I had at home. I'll tell you something. A long time ago in a little town called Brookline, Massachusetts, a young John Kellogg Hodgman in 1984 had a decision to make. 1984 had a decision to make. Literally, Mac or PC. At that point, it was not Mac, right? In early 1980, well, no, I guess it's probably 1983 because the decision was an Apple II or an IBM. And I'm trying to remember, John Lynn had an Apple II, but John Wolfe had an IBM clone.

And it was very hard for me to decide because both had different games. Apple II had track and field, where to run, you had to hit the space bar all the time. I'm still really good at that. And then John Wolfe had a game. It may have been Castle Wolfenstein, The Ridge. But in any case, the reason that I was leaning towards an IBM PC at the time was the keys were clickier. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Those clicky keys, they have the really good key action. Click, click, click, click, click, click, click. They bounce right back up. Not to brag, but... You got clicky keys? Yeah, I got clicky keys on me.

You got a clicky key? A special clicky keys? Yeah, I got clicky keys, homie. You got a clicky key? A special clicky key keyboard? Yeah, but don't email me clicky key enthusiasts because now it's like a thing where you build your own clicky keys and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not that deep. I just found it at a thrift store. Yeah, but do email him clicky key misophonia sufferers.

But do email him clicky key misophonia sufferers. Anyway, I was about to press the clicky key on the side of IBM PC. But then a young John Hodgman, then in 1984, spending a weekend with my mom's old nursing school comrade, Eleanor Clifford, out there in Worcester, Massachusetts. I'm watching television. The sports game is on. I don't care.

An ad comes on television directly by Ridley Scott. The famous 1984 Apple computer ad introducing the Macintosh. And I said, that's for me. And so my fate was born. I told my father, please get me a Macintosh computer. And he said, of course, son,

you are my master. That's not exactly how it worked. I had an Apple two, John. I had an Apple two plus. Yeah. Not to brag one step up. My mom, when I asked for a computer,

my mom had a computer nerd friend. Yeah. And they went to a computer show to buy it used because my mom couldn't afford to buy it new. And this was a few years. This was after the launch of the Macintosh that I had an Apple II. But that was the last Apple computer that I used regularly. was the last apple computer that i used regularly uh i later attended a middle school that um where all the other kids had apples and it forever cemented in my head the unfair idea that max are for rich kids sorry i'm like uh i'm like a android in westworld what you just said means nothing to me i'm sorry i couldn't even it was like garbled clicky keys or something.

I don't even, was that even language? They're great computers, wonderful computers. So for our non-middle-aged audience, Jesse was making reference to a series of ads that I was very lucky to be a part of for Apple Computer between 2006 and January 2010. That was our last shooting day. Oh, I remember it. In which I played the personification of the PC, Mr. Clicky Keys, and Justin Long played the personification of the Mac computer.

You know, when they hired me for this ad, I'm like, I have to be the Mac. I have this whole story about Clicky Keys and seeing the ad. They're like, no, we actually want a young, good-looking person to do it. Oh, I guess that makes sense. Time in my life, greatest job, one of the greatest jobs i ever had aside from podcasting with you jesse thorn and all of you listeners and uh and and i was just talking with justin on his podcast life is short we had a really lovely conversation talking about that time in our life and just and i kept saying justin kept making jokes and i'm like i'm not going to make a joke about those ads because i

want to i want to do them again for a decade i have been waiting every day for the call and then two sundays ago it happened they called me up they said shave your fat face john we need you you're going in. So delightful and weird and surreal. I mean, it's very, very, you know, I wish Justin had been there. I wish Phil Morrison had been there, but they just needed a little PC cameo for their most recent Apple keynote. And so there, here I am now talking to you on Zoom with, I'm desperately trying to grow

this beard back. And desperately trying to dispense justice. All right. Let's clicky-key our way to a good segue. Here's something from Sam. He says, my wife and I were recently at home trying to figure out what to eat for lunch. For dinner the previous night, I made Marcella Hazan's bolognese, which takes quite a bit of time, effort, and care. I assumed we would have the leftovers for dinner and could just make eggs or something for lunch.

My wife thought we should have the bolognese and found my reluctance bewildering. For me, lunch is a utilitarian meal, whereas dinner is to be savored and enjoyed. To eat the bolognese for lunch instead of dinner would have been basically wasting it. My wife's argument was that we were hungry, there was good food in the house, and we should eat it no matter the meal. Who's right? I just, first of all, I have to comment on Sam's contempt for eggs. Just have eggs or something for lunch. I eat scrambled eggs anytime. Jesse, it's coming up on lunchtime there in Los Angeles for you. Do you have an idea of what you're going

to have for lunch? Yeah, I'm going to eat my leftovers from last night. It's not an uncommon thing to do. Last night I went to my favorite restaurant, La Abeja on Figueroa Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. Yeah. Picked up my favorite meal from that restaurant, brought it home, ate half of it, and saved the rest for lunch the next day. I mean, to my mind, there are two ways of looking at this, right? whether I understand the distinction that Sam is offering between dinner being, uh, it's typically a more social meal, at least in the United States. Um, it's, uh, typically a bigger production than lunch, at least in the United States. Um, but I wonder if there can't be an argument made for leftovers being the easy lift, you know, rather than being the special fans. Being the utility play, as it were. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, I hear you, Sam, that lunch is utilitarian and there's a nobility in that. I think that's true. I mean, lunch is not merely a caloric refuel in the middle of the day, but an emotional refuel,

an emotionally stabilizing break between your morning work and your afternoon works. And I would argue that you're right, Sam, that while dinner is enjoyed in the company of others, and you can get away with that at lunch, too. Like the best lunches I've ever had have been alone, staring into the middle distance, just vegging out. Lonely sandwiches. Lonely sandwiches. The best.

the best. But I will say, and I think you're right on this, Jesse, that the kind of lingering sort of late social dinner that you savor with a glass of wine, Italian style, hospitaliano kind of thing, Sam. When you're here, your family, that whole story. Yeah, that whole story. Guess what, Sam? You're wrong and the Olive Garden is wrong. Because when you go to the Olive Garden, I know that that's not your idea, Sam, of an Italian-style late lingering dinner. But if you were to go to Italy and have an Italian-style late lingering dinner, pasta would be this tiny part of it. It wouldn't just be a bunch of bolognese on a on a in a bowl it's named for the bowl did you know that it's called bowl style yeah it's italian for bowl style in the style of the bowl no you just have the antipasti and the contorno and the

second look i don't know the italian just little plates of snacks and meat spread out over the night and one of them is pasta a little bit because if you're a grownup like me, you can't shove that amount of pasta down your body anymore. You know what's utilitarian, Jesse? I'm waiting for- What's that, John? Thank you. Pasta is utilitarian.

How hot is it? Pasta is how hot it is. Pasta is a workhorse, Sam. Now, look, before I was the PC, before my life was changed by Jon Stewart kidnapping me and putting me on television and then putting me in front of Apple computer and changing everything,

I would write about food and non-wine alcohol for Men's Journal magazine. That's probably the nation's most prominent and prestigious magazine about men journaling. Yeah, it's the basis of the film Ratatouille. That's right. Since I can't eat pasta, I get to read a lot about it today for you, Sam. And here's what I confirmed in my own memory. Pasta, it's paste. It's literally, that's what it means, paste. Paste of water and flour and egg. And in the 17th century in Naples, when aristocrats were selling off wheat but hoarding meat, macaroni was not a fancy dinner. Macaroni was a survival tool and commonly known as a beggar's food.

See the painting Macaroni Eaters by Domenica Gargiulo, a 17th century native of Naples, showing people literally eating pasta off the street, like picking it up off the floor. What about the sauce? Well, bolognese sauce, of course, is not a sauce.

And it's not named for the bowl. It's named for bologna. It's a ragu, like the French ragu. It's a stew or more specifically a braise. You look at the Marcel Hazan variation on the classic bolognese ragu from the New York Times cooking website, which I did, and you'll see what's happening here. Simple ingredients, simple. Sfrito of onion, celery, and carrot, and then meat, minced beef and pork, traditionally braised in milk, white wine, crushed tomatoes, and then simmered for hours. As you point out, for hours, a lot of care and time. hours, a lot of care and time. But you're simmering it for hours, not to be fancy, but because you are getting those flavors and textures to slowly meld and braise. And then you serve it over pasta, specifically tagliatelle. Now, Bologna is not Naples, right? That's where the macaroni eaters

live, Naples. Bologna is about 298 miles north of Naples as the crow flies or 576 kilometers driving. You do the math because I guess Google Maps won't. And Naples, of course, has its own ragu, the Neapolitan ragu, which is no cream, red wine, ad basil, lots of tomatoes. That's like the classic tomato sauce, the ancestor of the Italian-American Sunday gravy and meat, obviously, but not minced. Big chunks of chuck roast and pork and other big chunks of thrifty meat cuts. Because why do we braise? We braise, we cook low and slow in liquid to break down collagen into gelatin. That's braising. So we take cheaper cuts of meat and we make them tender, right? It's economical. Or in the case of bologna, where the meat is already minced, I would imagine that it's just to make a little bit of comparatively expensive meat

go much further to enhance that super cheap utilitarian paste called pasta. This is what a braise is. It's like chili. It's like New England pot roast. It is the ancient Italian way to stretch a lira. Slow does not mean fancy, Sam. Ask anyone at a barbecue pit. Bolognese is a humble, utilitarian food mothered by necessity

into something absolutely transcendent and amazing. I agree with you. And I think after all that work work there's an extra amount of pleasure in knowing that tomorrow i don't have to do it again i can just get up take the leftovers eat it up in 10 minutes and eat it just incredibly debauched almost and it's pleasure and it's going to taste better the next day because braises always do just like burrito stumps, right, Jesse? Yep. Marinated stump. Got a marinated stump. So I think last night's bolognese sauce is a perfect lunch for a cold afternoon, especially when your nerves are fried by global uncertainty and your waistline's already been blown by quarantine.

Go for it. And then you can have those eggs for dinner because breakfast for dinner is the best dinner, and that's the recipe for a perfect day. But guess what, Jesse? What? Thank you. How hot is it?

This is a hot, this is going to be a hot take. You ready for it? How hot is it? It's hot as three hours of simmered bolognese. I'm finding it in Sam's favor. Even though he's, even though he's wrong. And his wife's idea is perfectly fine and reasonable the reason that i find in his favor is because unless i'm misreading his letter

he is the one who made this thing i made marcella hazan's bolognese and just like the driver of the car gets to pick the music, the person who makes the bolognese doles it out. If you want to save that thing for dinner, that's fair. That's his labor in there. But next time, Sam's wife, you want a quick bolognese for lunch the next day, you make it yourself. It's fun. It's good. I'm going to make it this weekend. Let's take a break. More items on the docket coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast always brought to you by you, the members of MaximumFun.org. Thanks to everybody who's gone of MaximumFun.org. Thanks to everybody who's gone to MaximumFun.org slash join. And you can join them by going to MaximumFun.org slash join. The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by our pals over at Made In. Jesse, you've heard of Tom Colicchio, the famous chef, right? Yeah, from the restaurant Kraft. And did you know that most of the dishes at that very same restaurant are made with Made In pots and pans? Really? What's an example? The braised short ribs,

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We're clearing the docket this week. I've got something here from Kevin. My wife and I welcomed our first child, Thomas, into the world in March, right at the start of the pandemic. He is a bundle of joy. When I'm holding Thomas and he drops his pacifier, I will often pick it up with my toes and put it back in his mouth. My wife thinks this is gross. I'm generally clean and hygienic, but understand where she's coming from. I argue that because of the pandemic, Thomas is not getting a normal level of exposure to other children and their microbiomes, which would normally aid development of a healthy immune system. Come on, dude. He needs exposure to outside micro stuff where he can get it even if it's my feet. We would appreciate your medically unprofessional opinion on this matter. All right.

We're recording this in November. Time still has meaning, right? So March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October. No, this is an eight month old baby. I got you. Jesse, I have a question. You have a bunch of children. Yeah. Were pacifiers part of their growing up? A little bit, but not much. No. Not a huge amount. Did they ever have different names for their pacifiers? Like Patsy or Nub Nub.

Or Yub Yub, the classic Ewok cry of victory over the emperor. Yub Yub. Yub Yub. Yub yub. Sorry, I started singing the Night Court theme. You know what? There's an overlap and there's a mashup to be made. There were actually, just as there are lyrics to the Odd Couple theme song, there were lyrics to the Night Court theme song and they were all in Ewok language.

Ewokies, sure. There is a mashup to be made between the Night Court theme song and the original Ewok victory song before they changed the music for the re-release. And any listener who wants to put that together and spend their time that way will be thanked by me, but not paid.

I know. Our son called his pacifier a fafa, because that was his word for flower, and it looked like flower. Cool. Pretty adorable. That's great. I'm just making sure that if he is listening to this podcast, that he'll never listen again.

Can I say something cute that my kid did last night? Yes. My son Frankie, who's three, finished a beverage and asked for another one, but it was shortly before bed. So my wife, Teresa, didn't want to give him another drink to keep his sheets clean and so forth. And so she said, not right now, sweetie. And he said, what? A body needs two dinks. It's science.

It's science. It's science. It's science. A body needs two dinks. Do you know what, Jesse? What? I have two butts. And I'll tell you about them in a second.

Okay. But first to this case. So first thing I wanted to ask, I'm neither a bacteriologist nor am I a pediatrician. Obviously, I looked up the five-second rule. The rule about if something falls on the floor and it's less than five seconds, you can go ahead and eat it. So, safe to put in your mouth. And it's a myth. The five-second rule is a myth. Bacteria can totally get onto that fa-fa within five seconds. No question. No question. And yes, according to Dr. Aaron Carroll's 2016 piece in the New York Times, he's a bacteriologist.

It's actually also true that the kitchen floor is much cleaner, bacterial colony wise, than many other places, including the kitchen counter and especially the refrigerator handle. Don't drop your faffa on the refrigerator handle. That was a famous ragtime tune. So basically speaking, I thinkomas the baby will live by this practice but i have two butts you want to hear the first butt let's talk about your big butt let's talk about my two butts thomas the baby's too young to get this joke thomas the baby when you when your father plays this for baby when you when your father plays this for you when you're about five hearing us talk about our two dinks and two butts you're

gonna have a great time but butt number one is this my first butt is that while googling the five second rule i accidentally found out about a different five second rule which i had never heard of jesse thorne have you ever heard of the self-help book called the five second rule which i never heard of jesse thorne have you ever heard of the self-help book called the five second rule no okay first of all it's a cuckoo name for a self-help book because it's obviously a reference to eating food off the floor so if you were if you were like my self-help book is called the five second rule everyone would think you mean i should only be eating food off the floor after five seconds no this is by mel robbins it's a real book and the five second rule, everyone would think you mean I should only be eating food off the floor after five seconds. No, this is by Mel Robbins.

It's a real book. And the five second rule, this is a quote. The five second rule is simple. If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within five seconds or your brain will kill it. The moment you feel a desire to act on a goal or a commitment, use the rule, move within five seconds.

If you do not take action on your instinct to change, you will stay stagnant. Now, listen, I know Thomas the baby is listening. I know there are some young people listening. I'm sure my son has turned this off now because I embarrassed him about his fafa. This is a family-friendly podcast and I don't often swear on it. But for this guy, Mel Robbins, I have some choice words, which is this, fornicate you, dude, five seconds. I got to work on an impulse in five seconds or I'm lost forever. Look around you, buddy. I know you probably didn't write this during a global pandemic, but if there's one thing the global pandemic made us realize is, whoa, take it down a thousand. Well, we can slow it down a bit. There's nothing good that's come out of this pandemic except for a moment that we've all had to reflect on our values and what we want the world to be in the new and better normal.

And one of the values that I really value is, yeah, you can take seven seconds to act on an idea physically. You can even take eight seconds or in eight days. I just saw Jennifer Marmon's dog in the background. That was very cute. Always nice to see George. Yeah, George is definitely A, eating off the floor within five seconds and B, acting on a five-second impulse for the most part, I would imagine. But we don't have to be this way.

All right. Now, butt number two. My butt number two is that while it is probably safe to suck on that floor fa-fa that has been picked up by your dad's toes thomas the baby probably that's safe it's definitely gross right jesse that's gross i love it you love him picking up the fafa with his toes yeah it makes me think of like my my weird hippie friends from college that had circus skills well that's what this is about isn't it and live in yurts it makes me think of not your weird hippie friends from college but the weird hippie friends with the devil sticks in the middle of the quad in my college and the hacky sackers and the society

for creative anachronismers picking up with his toes that bummedmed me out. Show-offs, a bunch of show-offs. That's what I called them, quietly to myself. I guess because I can't do the devil sticks. All right, I tried it once. It did not work, and I cannot. I am no good in the hack. No good.

I guess what bothers, the grossness of picking it up with his toes is less gross, is gross to me, but less gross than this spinning up this whole argument about Thomas the baby needs exposure to microbiomes. Because that's absolutely true about children that they need to eat some dirt, right, to develop their immune systems. But I don't know at eight months if that's when they need to be doing it. I'm not a pediatrician. I could be wrong here. I encourage you to write me a letter. I will read the first 25 words of it. But more to the point, that's just, you're just rationalizing that after

the fact because you want to show off your circus skills, Kevin. Yeah, that's true. This is obviously a post-hoc rationalization, not a carefully considered system. He fell. He didn't feel like taking a hand off the baby and he knew that he had monkey feet. So he went down there, picked it up, and then he came up with a scheme retroactively. Yeah. You know, and by the way, that's not helping his biome. He's getting plenty of dead skin cells from you, Kevin. Thomas the baby is all up in your dead skin cells all the time. Doesn't need your toe jam just to feel healthy.

You're right. Absolutely, Jesse, is an ad hoc rationalization. Parenting involves some seriously gross stuff. And if your partner says that's gross to me, you don't need to add to the grossness. There's going to be a lot of two dinks and two butt contacts for years in your house with this baby just don't gross them out but you know look if a faffal falls and no one's there to see it except for thomas the baby and kevin and it gets picked up by some toes who's to know none the w the wiser. Just don't do stuff that grosses your partner out.

I've actually done a little research into health with babies and children. Yeah. And I found that there's really only one immutable rule. There's a lot of disagreement on a lot of different things. The one immutable rule is that a body needs two dinks. It's just science. It's science. Here's something from Lizzie. My boyfriend, Trev, has five cast iron pans. Five dinks. We have only one kitchen cupboard and nowhere to put them. Please order him to get rid of at least two of them. Early next year, we'll be moving on to a sailboat with even less kitchen space than we currently have in our studio cottage.

But even if that weren't the case, I would suggest that five cast irons is more than what we need. We're making cookies tonight, so all the cast irons that usually live inside the oven are out on top of the stove. The hot tray of fresh cookies is currently balanced on the left front burner in a fairly upsetting manner. In the spirit of keeping this concise and specific, I won't get into all the other kitchen appliances we don't have space for. So I wanted these folks for a live case because I really you know i love cast iron pans as you do

you jesse thorn and i wanted to hear all of trev's arguments for why each cast iron pan is essential because i'm willing to hear them and and i'd probably be inclined to believe those arguments but trev declined to participate well i'm still going to judge them and luckily i got some more information out of lizzie she sent me a photo do you have this photo of the cast iron pans and the cookie sheet precariously balanced yeah i'm taking a look here precariously balanced yeah i'm taking a look here wait okay so i want to be clear when she said that he had five cast iron pans right my immediate assumption was like for example i have three cast iron pans and a griddle. So I have four in total. Yeah.

I have, and that's not counting enameled cast iron because I have a Dutch oven. Right. But I have a big one, a little one, a grill pan, you know, with raised ridges on it, and a griddle. Right. Right. I think that's pretty reasonable. They put the griddle to make pancakes or whatever. It fits very comfortably in the cabinet because it's flat.

So immediately when she said he has five cast iron pans, I said to myself, well, geez, I mean, maybe he's got a giant one, a meaty one, and a little one. And then he's got a this and he's got a that and he's got a he's got a giant one a meaty one and a little one and then he's got a this and he's got a that and he's got a blah blah blah blah i'm thinking of different cast iron pans he might have that have different uses uh he appears to have four of the same plus a cookie sheet i think the cookie sheet is not in dispute here that's for cookie sheet. I think the cookie sheet is not in dispute here. That's for cookie sheeting. That's just a cookie sheet. That's just an illustration. Wait, five. Yeah. One, two, three, four, five. All five of these cast iron pans are identical by looks. It looks like one of them is... So I see three that look like lodge cast iron pans

in the contemporary style, which has a little handle on the opposite side of the big handle for lifting if you're not strong enough to lift it just by the one handle right conveniently and then there's two that maybe don't have that handle so they might be a different brand or a different you know uh slightly different style they all look like they're if not exactly the same size almost exactly the same size they are so what in what situation is this man he's got a four burner stove this is not a big you know viking range like in a condo that just got built yeah that's being sold to some you know yuppie that doesn't cook. Yeah. This is just a little apartment stove. Honestly, we can see in this picture

that the four identical 12-inch or whatever the standard size is pans would not even fit on this four-burner stove simultaneously. No. Even if you wanted them to. No, and they live in the oven. You know, that's because that's their storage solution and you know here's a thing you know so i saw this photo too and i realized two

things first of all i understand why trev did not want to defend himself live because this is indefensible and and two i still needed more information because there's one lodge pan that's upside down on top of the other so i i wrote to lizzie and this is breaking news breaking chews as they say on the doughboys i wrote to lizzie and i said i need more information what are all the manufacturers of these pans because if because i wanted to know if maybe he's a collector kind of you know like does he have some vintage uh griswolds or, or Wagners that he's really into that are like old ones or whatever. And what are their sizes? Like, I just need to know what I'm seeing here.

And she explained, first of all, that the cast iron pan that's turned over on top of the other, that's actually a Dutch oven with a cast iron pan lid, which I've never seen in the history of lodge cast iron. In other words, yeah, I mean, it's a cool idea, but the, but underneath that there's an actual Dutch, it's not just a pan, it's a Dutch oven. It's a deep pan. So in other words, that item is all that he needs. Basically.

Yeah. And then the other thing she said, the other thing she said was they were all lodge and lodge is a wonderful historic cast iron pan manufacturer. I've got two Lodge pans myself. I do not need any more, you know, but there's not a collector's element to this at all. She also said they're all 12 inches except for the one on the far side,

which is a nine inch one. And then she said something else. I forgot we have a sixth, which is a little tiny one for a single egg. That actually, I like the sixth. I like the sixth one. I like the little tiny one for a single egg. That makes me feel better about Trev's pan collection.

That one does seem more convenient to wield in an act of home defense. Yeah. Well, sometimes you need to make a little single egg, especially if you're living on a sailboat, which you're moving on to. Trev, Jesse Thorne is correct. Your Dutch oven,

this thing that you have, which is apparently a Lodge Dutch oven that uses another inverted Lodge cast iron pan as a lid. If this is an actual product, I think it's cool and you should keep it. If this is just your life hack because you notice that the pan actually works as a lid on the Dutch oven, now you're thinking like a guy who's got to live on a sailboat where space is very limited. And honestly, you should probably be trying to minimize the amount of heavy cast iron in your life as much as possible because you're on a boat yeah let's talk buoyancy here yeah but if these are if this is not a collection but simply a horde of identical

lodge cast iron pans i'm saying you get rid of the nine inch you get rid of those two 12 inches you keep the cast iron dutch oven the 12 inch pan that goes on top of that one and then keep that egg one just as a souvenir as a tip of the hat for me from one cast iron person as another and and an apology for raking you across the coals here i mean is this guy's a cook? What are the times that he's cooking? Like, John. Yeah. You're a serious home cook. You know, you're the cook of your family.

Right. You know, you do a lot of cooking at home. What is the most number of pans you have going at the same time? Two. For me, yeah, two. For me, it's two. Like, I definitely am capable of having two things going at once. I'll have, you know,

the green beans cooking while I'm cooking a protein in a pan. But that's certainly the limit. There's no way that I've got three pans of food going at the same time. Maybe I've got a soup on a back burner or something while I've got a protein and green beans cooking in pans.

But that soup might be in your Dutch oven. That's not going to be in a pan. Exactly. Exactly. You're not making a pan soup. Or in this stew pot that's also in the picture. Right. Yeah, I would say in a large kitchen, three cast iron pans would probably be ideal.

I do have a third. It needs a refinishing. And I wouldn't get rid of it because even though our kitchen is a little bit challenged for space, because there does come a time specifically like around the holidays where it's like, oh, I got to roast all these Brussels sprouts or whatever. And cast iron pans are really good as roasting pans as casserole pans as chicken roasting pans they take up a lot of the work that a sheet pan like a cookie sheet pan might do while also taking up three times the space but i i would i would say that if you if you have if you have a a kitchen that can support three cast iron pans, go for it. This kitchen cannot. And that sailboat cannot as well.

I also was curious as to whether all these pans were in use. And I asked Lizzie to describe two things. One, how does Trev cook? And what does he use the pans for? And two, when and why are they moving onto the sailboat? And I asked her to explain these things to me in a couple of sentences and here's what she wrote this just this just came through the wire live while recording we use the two 12 inch pans for the majority of our everyday cooking boom right there there you go that's it both stovetop in the oven

exactly trev uses the dutch oven and frequently to bake bread once we fried chicken in the deep pan yep fair trev also uses the nine inch to cookquently to bake bread. Once we fried chicken in the deep pan. Yep. Fair. Trev also uses the nine inch to cook things in a small pizza oven because the 12 inch won't fit in there. Guess what? You don't have a pizza oven on your sailboat. Or you can choose.

No doubt about that. You can choose to either have a sailboat with no pizza oven or a sailboat that's on fire. You can pick. We've never used the very tiny one. We will be moving on to the boat permanently in May of 2021. It's been the dream we've been working toward for the last five years to buy a boat, live on it, and sail it around the world while working remotely. The plan is to head down the California coast next summer and into the Sea of Cortez next fall. From there, we don't have a solid plan, but we'll most likely be heading

west across the Pacific in some capacity. We anticipate the trip will take about three years, but haven't put any hard time limit on it. This is where my therapist retired. To go on a sailboat? Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you've got your life priorities in order. I'm not fixed yet. Well, I mean, it's not something you can do with children. And it's definitely something you can only do with two cast iron pans. You cannot, you got to be, you got to stick and move, as Paula Poundstone used to say, you got to travel light. I want to mention that Lizzie was kind enough to send a picture of her looking super cool on the sailboat in sunglasses alongside a super cool dog who's also wearing sunglasses. It's an incredible dog.

What a great dog. I would like to mention that your plan to go around the world on a sailboat is, you know, it's, it's gonna, it's not in, it's not in everybody's reach to do that, obviously. But if you have a big, inspiring, get away from it all change of life that you're contemplating and you're young and you have few ties and you can try to do it, try to reach out and grab it. I think that trip sounds amazing. Especially if your dog already has the sunglasses. Exactly right. I think that Lizzie's description of that trip sounds really amazing. What it did not sound like was one or two sentences.

That was a lot of sentences, Lizzie. Please, everybody, keep your emails short. But bon voyage, and Tre trev even though you wouldn't be on this podcast i wish you the very maybe it's a superstition to wish a sailor good luck uh don't don't don't drop your pans in the ocean and john if i learned anything from watching the public television show the voyage of the mimi yeah, if you get stranded on a desert, on a deserted Island with the rest of the crew of your whale watching ship. Yeah. Uh, you have to put a tarpaulin up on a stick and then collect the condensation down that comes down the tarpaulin-hmm. If I learned anything from season seven

of Below Deck Mediterranean is Captain Sandy really didn't give Chef Kiko a chance. Yeah. So let's take a break now that we've learned our lessons. When we come back, we'll talk about anti-LGBTQ restaurant chains. 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-R. Hmm. Were 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.

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. Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We're clearing the docket. Here's a question about morality and Chick-fil-A from Ken. For many years, I avoided even trying a certain Southern fast food chain's legendary fried chicken sandwich

because of that chain's anti-LGBTQ stance and politics. Finally, I decided it was okay to try Chick-fil-A as long as I donate at least double the cost of the meal to the Trevor Project every time I eat said evil chicken. And as predicted, I loved this evil chicken. Is it okay to eat at Chick-fil-A, provided that I donate to a worthy cause that seeks to undo their societal damage? First of all, if you don't know, Chick-fil-A is a chain of fried chicken sandwich shops. Their owners have a set of values that devalue human beings who are LGBTQ or otherwise.

They publicly came out against same gender marriage and they contributed a lot of money to a bunch of different questionable religious charities that people in the LGBTQ community rightfully thought dehumanized them. LGBTQ community rightfully thought dehumanized them. And so Chick-fil-A became kind of a cultural touchstone. Now, almost a decade ago, I didn't realize it was quite so long ago that this really flared up in the culture where there was a boycott of Chick-fil-A and then a counter boycott, or I should say a defense of Chick-fil-A by Mike Huckabee, I think then the governor of Arkansas, encouraging people to eat there to stand up for quote unquote family values, whatever. You mean legendary comedian Mike Huckabee? Legendary Twitter comedian Mike Huckabee. So that's what's going on with Chick-fil-A if you didn't know it. Now, Jesse, can you speak to the Trevor Project? Yeah, the Trevor Project is one of the most notable LGBTQ charities in the United States.

And my understanding is that one of its main emphases is to help prevent suicide among young LGBTQ people. Yeah, that's correct. So that's a very valuable thing. And I'm going to go ahead and make a donation to it today because I had Chick-fil-A. I've never had Chick-fil-A in my mouth, but I had its name in my mouth for a while and I don't like the taste of it. Have you ever had a Chick-fil-A thing? I did. I had it once before this situation arose. People love it. And I thought it was okay.

Yeah, I mean, I don't... I don't get it. I don't get it. For me, I have to say that I have no emotional or... no emotional attachment to and no cravings for any fast food chain foods it just wasn't a big part of my childhood right it's not a big part of my adult life like i like eating in and out but it's not like if in and out disappeared off the face of the earth it would really mess up my life it's something i eat every other month maybe. And basically everywhere else I eat never. So yeah, it's just not a big thing for me to like long for a Chick-fil-A sandwich. Like I live in a city where there are

42 better fried chicken sandwiches that I could get at any time. Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of, there's a lot of fried chicken sandwiches you can eat. I'm going to go hit up the Oinkster tonight. There you go. I mean, the thing with Ken, though, and this is kind of part of the mythology of Chick-fil-A is that, you know, Ken had never had a Chick-fil-A before in their life. a Chick-fil-A before in their life. And then Ken decided to try it, sort of bought a carbon offset by donating to the Trevor Project and said it was incredible and is now thinking about having another one. To me, I don't get how it could be that good. I've never had a Chick-fil-A.

I haven't. It was fine. I mean, like it's better than most stuff that you would get at an airport. Right. Well, you know, back before I knew about this controversy there, mostly it wasn't available to me being a child of New England, a region in the northeast of the United States and the southeast of Canada. But then, you know, once it once it was a controversy, I was traveling more through the south and I would stroll. I would never eat there. I would stroll righteously right past the Chick-fil-A as I would then go to board an airplane and burn a lot of fossil fuels. Like I get it's pretty, it's hard to avoid moral implication

when living in a capitalist society. I still use Instagram, for example, and Judge John Hodgman has a really fun, active, supportive Facebook group, even though Facebook and Facebook owned, you know, Instagram is owned by Facebook and that company has done a lot of things to kind of undermine civilization recently. But, you know,

it's hard to extricate yourself morally, but I kind of feel like in this case, it's pretty clear, Ken. You know, first of all, donating to the Trevor Project is a good unto itself. You can do that without eating a Chick-fil-A. And frankly, I feel like unlike travel and social media and that sort of thing, there's a difference between generally a company generally being bad for humanity, kind of in the aggregate, or where it's sort of a kind of evil trade-off versus a company that holds beliefs that some people do not deserve full humanity in the first place. So that's why I'm not going to go eat another Chick-fil-A.

I don't blame you, Ken, for trying this out and offsetting it with a donation to the Trevor Project. You explored that taboo and now you know what it is. But I do not think continuing to donate to the Trevor Project is ultimately going to offset

the clear moral choice here, which is to just go find another chicken sandwich. There are a lot of them. That's it. Docket's clear. Our producer, Jennifer Marmer. You can follow us on Twitter

at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman. We're on Instagram at Judge John Hodgman. The leaf blower is by my neighbors. Make sure to hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJHO, and check out the Maximum Fund subreddit. That's at MaximumFund.reddit.com to discuss this episode. You can submit your cases at MaximumFund.org slash.org or email Hodgman at MaximumFun.org. And we'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

The leaf blower is a character on the show now. Hey, friend. Leafy. MaximumFun.org. Comedy and culture. Leafy.