Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - A League Of His Own

Episode Date: September 19, 2023

Soren is a coach now and has some thoughts about little leagu. Daniel has an idea for a short story about Pennies, Bennies, and lantern flies, plus some thoughts about New Yorkers at the Jersey Shore. Follow the show on socials: https://www.linktr.ee/QQPodcast

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, I wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? What do I be? What's it out there? What do we know? I'm sorry, baby, Daniel O'Brien When will I be remembered? Was it out there? Worded all the time Oh, forget it Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien

Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where our two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast, senior striker for last week tonight, author of How to Fight Presidents, and slayer of Lanflies daniel o'brien joined

as always by my co-host mr soren bowie soren say hello yeah i mean calling me soren that's fine because you and i are familiar we're but in general like in public i just coach coach would be it's just easier coach yeah um i forget are you coaching your son's teams of anything? Yes, I am. I'm coaching fall ball. Oh, that's fun. Yeah. That's baseball, right? It's baseball. Yeah.

I mean, I understand your confusion, but there's a lot of ball sports and fall is generally soccer is king in fall. I just feel like I don't equate baseball with fall. And I don't know if you guys separate it out as like, you have quarterly baseball seasons and you were the coach of fall ball and then there will be a spring ball. There will be a summer ball. Yeah. Listen, I want to talk a lot about baseball today.

But if you've got something else you want to get to first, I totally understand. Well, I do, but I got a little bit sidetracked because of the, you said you want to be called coach. And I'm coming to this record after one of my gym uh the gym classes that that i do and uh one of the things that took me no time to adjust to is calling the instructors coach because they all like on the website and on the on the calendar stuff they're all like this is coach kurt this is coach amy and anytime i could say thank you coach or coach or coach, I need assistance over here. For some reason that really tickles something in my brain, because I guess it's because I've never been part of any sports team or league in any meaningful way. There was like little league that I hated doing so much and it didn't leave an impact on me. But after that, I've just been like

theater writing and working and running, which is a solo affair. So being able to call someone coach, like activate something in me that I never got to activate. I never got to be like part of a team team. And I've just, I don't know that anyone else calls them coach, but I do. And I'm never going to stop. And I saw one of my coaches in public at the store and I called her coach there. And it just feels like, yeah, I'm in the army. I'm part of a thing where we have hierarchies and respect for people who are above us. And I really like that. Yeah. I'll say, say Dan that calling people coach, I get that feeling.

I know having people call you coach, exhilarating. Unbelievable. Like 10 times better than that. It feels so good when like these kids or a parent will show up and be like, hey coach. I'll be like, you're goddamn right. That's right. It feels wonderful. Yes.

I'm coaching my son's little league team. There is, because we live in the land of no snow, you can play pretty much play baseball whenever you want or any sport, frankly. So whatever kids are into, you just can keep them in it. And my son has not shown an interest in any other sport other than baseball. And so like fall ball was a big deal. He really wanted to play. They were short on coaches. I think cause the same reason that you don't think of like, I guess MLB, like you've got October, which is big playoff season.

But in general, when you were a kid, you never played baseball in the fall. No. So this is for like the diehards and they needed a coach. I gladly stepped into the role just to hear it ring in my ears. So this is for like the diehards and they needed a coach. I gladly stepped into the role just to hear it ring in my ears. And it's, it's so much fun. And these kids are good. Like my team is good.

I love it. In fact, the other day when we were driving home, I was like, Ro, did you have fun? He's like, yeah. I'm like, listen, that was just an introduction. I want to get to the heart of the matter. Don't call me dad out there. You got to call me coach. He was like, oh, okay.

And I was like, it's just not fair to the other kids. I don't want them thinking there's anything special treatment. Just call me coach. It's going to be easier. And in my head, I'm thinking, coach feels so much better than dad. What went into your, right? Because like people are dads, you you like you earn coach yeah

hardest job in the world some say what went into your uh drafting process didn't get to i didn't get to draft well i i you know what i did get a little say so i there are some other parents that we played with last year ronan's got these two friends who are twins. Like they're really good buddies. And they are also happen to be very good at baseball. And their parents are very involved. And if I was going to do this alone for the first time, I was like, I need those parents. So when I wrote- That's really fortunate for him to get introduced to the concept of twins at an early age.

That would really freak him out for the first time at like 16. What the fuck? I'm telling you. Why are you twice? And so it's great because they will help out a lot. I emailed Culver City Little League and I was like, hey, listen, I want these people on my team. They're going to be very helpful to me.

And the guy was just like, yeah, that's fine. And I was like, oh, wait a second. I have a feeling this whole thing is rigged. I feel like any coach at any point could just be like, I'm going to need this kid and this kid and this kid and this kid. And they'd be like, yeah, yeah. It, whatever is you're, you're a volunteer. You're doing this of your own free will.

Don't change a thing. Yeah. Um, but, uh, uh, man, my team is so good. It's like really blowing my mind. I, the first day I just had them doing some drills and like making sure they knew positions and stuff. And they were way past that to the point where the second practice that I had with them, I was like, we're turning double plays. We're going to work on double plays. And these kids are eight and they rule. They're so good. And like the outfield backs up the infield, they know where they're supposed to be. It's like, and they listen to me,

to me, Dan, to coach the way that they listen to me. Like I'm an authority figure. I am. I am so high on my power. And like the chances of me abusing this at any given moment are like through the roof. Me being like,

listen, a ball gets through your legs, you're benched, like anything like that, like completely unfair things to do to these kids. I'm in danger of that happening at any moment. Yeah. I can't wait to smash cut to three weeks from now with you trading your son for accidentally calling you dad in the middle of a game. Trading him. And also, cause I've just had my eye on this Jesse kid who's like, he could really slug like he's hitting into the grass wow uh yeah i uh i'm really loving it i'm loving it a lot and

i'm loving i think about it all the time like i'm having trouble sleeping because i think about like well what would be good drills for these kids like what would they get the most out of and like also how i can play them wow because there's all kinds of like egalitarian rules that I got to abide by. Like you can't put a kid in the outfield for more than two innings in a row. The reason being no one hits the outfield. Where was that when little Daniel

was discovering he hated baseball? Where the fuck was that kind of socialist approach to sports when i was passing out from heat stroke in right field for the impossibly 16th straight inning uh yeah i mean i remember as a kid at ronan's age them being like first base is your position that's who you are. Like you're built like a first baseman. That's what you will play. Or you're built like second baseman. And, uh, and they just put you there and you were there the whole game and you were there for the whole season. I was in right field for my entire career, save one season where I got to be a

catcher. And I was so happy that I got to see what was going on in the game but everything but for every other coach like on site or maybe they have scouting reports but it was just it was really an impossible hole to crawl my way out of once you get once you're born in right field that's it well self-fulfilling prophecy right because you know you're never going to get any plays you're never going to get better right um You're never going to get better. Right. I don't want to stuff kids in the field. That's not like my interest, but I do want kids

to be able to play. I want to be able to play a position for an entire game so that they actually know, because if you just play them, like you're a catcher this inning. Now you're a shortstop. Now you're right field.

There's a good chance that at every single one of those positions, they will never see a ball. And so like they don't ever good chance that at every single one of those positions they will never see a ball and so like they don't ever know what that position is supposed to do and so like i want to put them at positions for a whole game so they like know all the things that could possibly happen and i'm not allowed to do that yeah very frustrated by that um feeling very confined might start my own league. Yeah. Oh, commissioner.

Oh, that would feel really nice. I would like to disrupt your league and come in there and do an approach. It's not a lot of people use it. It's called total fall ball where the players switch positions mid-inning. It really upsets the offense. They don't know what's going on. And we're just like in constant rotation

no one knows where they should hit to or run to and this way every player knows how to play every position perfectly it's it's a pretty great system there's there's another element to this that you probably never dealt with and maybe it did i want a quick question daniel yeah go ahead when you played ball what what was the pitching situation? Do you remember? First T-ball, then someone's dad pitched, then kids were pitchers into middle school. Like fourth grade on or fifth grade on, I think it was just kids were pitching. Well, there's a new level between coach pitch and kids pitching. Did you know that?

I'm so sorry. I was disrespectful. And I said, someone's dad pitched. I corrected you. It's fine. I know. It's just like when people don't call you doctor and you're like, right, actually, I got a lot of subtle ways that I can remind you I'm a doctor. There's a new element. It's called machine pitch. And I didn't know what this meant. I knew that they fall ball was coming and that fall ball was exclusively machine pitch, but I was like,

so we play at the batting cages. How does this work? And this is why we're striking. And that's not the case. They have like this machine and a machine is generous. It's basically a catapult that a coach controls and you fire

balls at these children. The idea is that it's supposed to be way more accurate than a kid throwing, but it is not. It's crazy inaccurate and depending on like the slightest movement that you make or adjustment in either direction, like you'll hit a kid. Yeah. The ball goes pretty fast. It goes much faster than coach pitch.

And what it is, you like you, you cock it, you set a ball in it. Then you push down on this lever with your foot and then you pull back on another lever. And it just goes like, it's a trebuchet basically. It like does like the same noise and everything. And it just swings the ball. And so to get it set, you have to like hone it in at the beginning. And so there's a lot of like hitting the front of it with a rubber mallet to get stakes into the ground.

And then the back pivots. So if it slides- You know what's crazy, Soren? It's crazy how all industries are the same. because we've been saying for years to our bosses that machines are never going to replace us when it comes to pitching. Oh, God. I didn't even think about that. The coaches had another job and now they've taken away a coach job. What's next for the coaches? I can really, I'm barely going to listen to you because I'm really, there's a lot of joke worlds to explore in this space of machines replacing people for pitches. And there's like something, something, something, strike versus strike out. You can keep talking.

I'm just going to be playing in this world for a little while and I'll pipe in if I think of something else. I'm actually really frustrated now that I didn't think of that as a bit from the jump that I was angry at the pitching machines because they were taking my job. Right. Fuck. I can't do it now. It's too late. After I've been praising these machines every day,

try to get the kids to like them. And they're terrifying. I do batting practice at my, my practices and I hit Ronan the other day. Just the, where in this like cage that we had, the ground was slightly sloped. The back of this machine just slipped down a little bit and it's like a few centimeters and the whole front switches direction, like by about two feet. So like I shot a pitch at him he did the right thing

he backed out of the box but he didn't turn his back to it because like you can get you can hit your spine that way he just put his shoulder down and it hit him in the shoulder and then he did that thing that heartbreaking thing where he was in pain and trying not to cry yeah and i was like are you okay and he was saying yeah while tears were welling in his eyes. And I was like, we're stopping. I'm dad now. I'm bad. I don't want to be coach.

I don't want to be coach. Are you all right? But man, and then Dan, we had a game yesterday. The kids fucking turned a double play. These little kids turned a double play. They learned the thing you taught them. I know!

The things that I'm telling them, they're remembering. Their minds are sponges. Oh, it's such a treat. I can't tell you how rewarding it is. It's so good. And not in like a, I'm turning these people into better people.

Yeah. They're not getting any of that from me. Really thrilled about that double play. Is Ronan okay? How's his shoulder? He's fine. Okay, good. It just hurt.

It just hurt him. Um, I mean, they're not fast enough that it's like going to do real damage, but they, uh, it did, it did not feel good. I could tell. And like, he was also a little startled and gun shy after that. Like he stood pretty far back in the box after that. Like teaching these kids how to hit,, how to get their elbow up, where to put the bat, things I could be wrong about.

Maybe baseball's changed in the 40 years since I played. No, it sounds basically the same. Robots hitting kids. Switching positions willy-nilly. Yeah, nobody gets stuck in right field. Switching positions willy-nilly. Yeah, nobody gets stuck in right field. By the way, when I play my kids, I get to put 12 in the field.

So ordinarily, you think about this. Ordinarily, baseball, as you would see it on, if you went and watched your New York Mets play. Sure. They give me nine guys out there. Nine total. And I'm allowed to play 12 at a time so any guesses where i want to put my right center left a center yeah so i'm gonna have five outfielders and then i put in a position called short right which is basically a short

stop but between second and first base and i cheat my second baseman back towards the bag a little bit and uh nothing gets past these kids now there's it's just a wall of children out there yeah of course it's i mean that sounds great for you but i do understand why baseball went with nine uh yeah it's pretty clear why they did the problem is that i don't want to bench anybody not because like i don't think that's good for them or like their morale but because it gets very complicated when i'm building the, the order, like the roster and the lineup for each game. Cause I want to get these kids equal time at all these different positions. And, uh, boy, having a kid on the bench really throws some shit into whack here.

If you show up to a game with 12 players and your opposing team is like two of ours are sick, we've only got 10. Are you obligated to sit two in the field? No, I get to play them no matter what good yeah it's been it's been great i mean i guess in some ways putting a kid at like short right and being like now you need to learn this position is silly because that's not a position and they'll never have to learn it but then again pitchers the same way like there's a pitcher out there and the pitcher just stands next to the machine with me while i'm while i'm pitching and occasionally balls come to him and occasionally

they go ricocheting off this machine when a kid hits it straight back and he's got to go chase it down that's not generally what a pitcher would be doing no yeah but uh man i can't tell you how much i love it i think about drills all the time I think about what I want to do in games for them and I get really really upset when the kids at the end of the game are like what was the score because I'm like no I mean obviously I know but that's not why we're doing it we won we definitely won we also had to come with a name we were the Culver City rookies. I didn't like that.

It was really tough to shout the kids. I do a thing where I don't let them tag. I ensure I make them. We're only going to get our outs through force outs. Cause I don't want them like freezing up as soon as they get the ball and like not knowing what to do with it. So at the beginning of each play, I say to my team, where are the force outs?

And they've got to be like, Oh, uh, like look around and be like, oh, okay. They're second and first. And I got sick of saying, hey, Culver City rookies. So I brought in a bunch of minor league team names.

I don't know if you've checked in with the minor leagues lately, Dan. Incredible names. Some really bizarre ones. There's no oversight in minor leagues. These guys are calling themselves the nuts and stuff like that. It's barely civil. But I brought in a bunch of names that I thought the kids would like, like the flying tigers and the mud cats and stuff. And they

were like, no, no, no. And I'm going down this list and starting to sweat. And then I get to this one and I'm like, oh, the yard goats. And they're like, yes, we want to be the yard goats. Kids will never change. I was like, oh, oh, great. Okay, we got one. And so my team is the yard goats. Excellent. Does that mean anything?

I know goats are free lawnmowers. Theyowers they are it's like yard go to specific things somewhere i think it's just the idea from maybe even cartoons of a goat on a string chewing on a tin can in a yard okay it's a slang term for a terminal tractor oh a terminal tractor like a tractor that's on its last legs? It's used to tow trailers around a water house or yard. Sorry, I had to kill a mosquito. Okay. All right.

Well, then I guess I'm not as agrarian as I thought. That's such a fun thing for the kids to be accidentally super into. Well, so where we play, it's on its hillside in Culver City. And above that hillside is just native grasses and stuff. And in the summer, it becomes a problem because that can all burn when it gets dry. And so there's this service throughout Los Angeles where you bring up, this guy brings like 50 goats to an area and the goats just devastate the landscape. They eat everything. And that ensures that that will never burn. And so the very first practice that we had in like the first couple of times that we've been there, there's goats up on this hillside. And that might've been what, why the

kids were like, yes, I saw a goat the other day. I am into goats. But that does help. Also... No, it's not just because that was the last thing I've seen. It's not because it was my most recent memory. I've always been into goats. Also, I like the idea of what goat means in sports generally. Like the guy who... LeBron's the goat or whoever you believe to be the goat.

Yeah. For our listeners, greatest of all time. Yes. It's an acronym. And so I like thinking about it that way. I'm not going to give that to the kids because I don't want to get, they don't need that. But I know, I know we've got an undefeated season so far. Okay. Do you know that if I'm thinking of the same one, I used to spend a lot of private writing time at the culver city little league fields did you yeah bill botts yeah you used to spend a bunch of time there yeah um i right when i i moved to la i uh met like a uh producer of sorts that it's a person who just has his hand in a lot of things has produced a few movies now i think he is in either politics or the mafia this is quite obviously a new jersey

connection uh but he knew i was in la and he knew i was a writer and i'm talking 22 or 23 years old at the time so he asks if i want to write a screenplay for him. And he has like a couple of C-list people who are attached because he's, he's for everything else. He's good at the part of a producer's job that involves knowing a lot of people and having a lot of favors owed to you. And he was like, I can't give you any money up front for this, but I can give you a contract.

If the movie gets made, you will get paid this amount of money. He had the idea for the story which and the title of the screenplay which which was really easy for me as someone who didn't know anything about writing screenplays and uh i even at the time was like this is probably never going to get made and i will probably never make this money and this is uh if it does get made i'm probably signing a bad contract right now but i would like a deadline and an excuse to write a screenplay so i'm gonna do that i'm gonna take this opportunity to learn

how to write screenplays and uh was like young and curious and stupid enough that part of my research was like i'm gonna watch a bunch of kids baseball movies. It was a kids baseball movie. I forget if I told you that part, but it was a kids baseball movie set in California. And I watched a whole bunch of movies. And also because no one knows how writing works, I would just go to a little league field. The Culver city was the nearest one to me when I first moved out to LA and I was like sit there and think about baseball and think about Little League and just like be around the environment never when anyone was playing because I didn't want to be a weird guy who just showed up with a notebook like like a Little League scout I would just go there on off days and sit and

immerse myself in baseball and like smell it and then go home and write. So you would ostensibly go to a baseball diamond, sit in the grass for a few hours and then go home. So in a lot of ways, it mirrored your childhood experience. I picked up right where I left off. Yeah, 100%. If one of my coaches was driving by and saw me sitting in right field, plucking grass out of the ground, he'd be like, oh, I taught him that. Yeah. Taught him that in 1993. Watching a butterfly.

Good. Well, was it nice to be out there to like feel it again? Yeah, certainly. And it's, it's, the memory only comes up now because you you mentioned Culver City Fields and uh it makes me think like oh I I wish I was I I didn't lose that part of being a writer because now everything is so like research and and uh and process driven and outline driven that I never think anymore to like go to a physical

place and see what it feels and smells like and see what it does to my brain and my and my body and my nuts and whatnot god damn yeah that's like it's true you don't you don't go to like do it um I did that I wrote a I wrote a book that was never published famously and in it it's like takes place in the desert takes place in like during a heat wave and a drought and there's it just is getting hotter and hotter and hotter and like there's no release and then eventually it does rain in the book but I did never write that scene I was living in Los Angeles at the time it was like I think it was July I was like writing it in July and August and September. And I wouldn't write that scene until I could feel it rain again. And then

if you don't live in Los Angeles, this year is an aberration, but in general, you do not get rain from June until October. Like it will not rain. It would be crazy if it rained. Um, and so I was just like waiting for it. And then finally it rained and I just like went outside to like experience that and see what it was like. And I was like, yes, now I may sit and write. It'd be very funny if the book gets longer just because it's not raining yet. And you just have to add another chapter. But I'm still writing. It's still so fucking hot. The drought's still going. I really don't know how much longer we can take this. But yeah, coaching, and I'm loving it, Dan.

Gotta say I'm loving it. That's great, coach. Yeah. Now you may speak. Thank you. I mentioned, it's great that you had to pause and kill a mosquito in the middle of this record, because I want to talk about lanternflies, which I've mentioned spotted lanternflies before. They're a summer and fall menace on the East Coast.

You can exterminate them because they don't have hives per se. They just sort of fly around in short bursts at a time and hitch rides on people, cars, animals, whatever. Their whole thing is to just latch on and travel some distance so they can eat and destroy our trees and lay their massive egg sacs to make more of these in the future. No one has any idea what to do about them. They're an invasive species and they don't bite or sting or hurt people. They're eating our trees and impacting our ecosystem in ways that I don't care to understand. And they're very annoying to all of us. And for this reason, the government has encouraged us to kill them on sight without hesitation or mercy, which is a thing I do all the time. And I love it. There was a ton of them on the beach where I was the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. And everyone was dealing with them because they're just a nonstop nuisance.

And at this point, we're so used to it that we're pretty zen about them. If they get to my chair blanket, I can flick them away, smack them, kill them with a flip flop, continue reading my book, whatever. There's not like, and you see a million people on the beach all doing the same thing. People are stomping or shooing them away and then enjoying the beach as much as they can and while we were there we watched a person uh near us set up a beach station he got there early and he set up two folding chairs that were like the fanciest beach chairs i've ever seen they weren't like the utilitarian beach chairs with straps and bags on the back uh designed more for ease than anything else they

were like wooden with cool cloth like like beach chairs at an italian villa assuming that's a kind of thing he set those up he set up a big canopy and the chairs were like perfectly centered it looked very peaceful and he left it was very clear like this is a special day for him to set up this thing and then he returned hours later with his party and his shit was covered in lantern flies and he and his party couldn't believe it and every time they went to the water and came back they would find more bugs to flick away and uh i i could not get enough of these people because everyone was annoyed by bugs but these two bros were at were were very like personally outraged and one of them kept muttering something along the lines of and there's not even a lifeguard to talk to and they kept like they

would put their arms out and look around at everyone else like both confirming that it's not just their problem and also like is anyone going to come up and do something they're looking for someone like not i think they they kept saying lifeguard but the energy was very much like where they wanted huh where the police yeah the police or like a manager to complain to they wanted someone in authority to know that this was happening to them, and it was unacceptable. And they just very loudly can't even believe this.

Ah, this has never happened. Not to me. And eventually one of them came over to us, and they were like, you two, what's your secret? Why aren't they bothering you? And I'm like, well, they are, but what are you going to do? I keep killing them whenever they come near. When we leave, we'll search all of our stuff to make sure they don't come with us into the home.

But otherwise, it's bugs and we're outside. And the guy was like, I've never seen anything like this before. And he said, my favorite entitled Hall of Fame rich douche thing. He said, I've got friends here from new york and like so many things my my first instinct would be like new york city have you told the bugs but the other like minor and less important things are like like first of all you can see new york from this particular beach it is not far it's not difficult to make the trip uh something i know

because i was there with my girlfriend who is also from new york it's it's a completely doable trip it's not very impressive and second of all and this is this is very much a tangent to for a jersey shore rat like me. I'm here from New York is for, you might know this because you spent time on the Jersey Shore, but our listeners might not. Saying I'm here from New York is one of the worst things you can say on the Jersey Shore. Like, we know. We picked that up from your everything. We hate people from New York on our beaches.

We have a term for it. Bennies are people from Bergen, Essex, Newark, and New York who flock to our central and southern Jersey Shore beaches in nice weather times. And they bring, you know, usually their socks on the beach or their loud music or just their population. They're crowding our beaches that we love and live in. And these are just like bennies, out-of-towners who come in and upset our peaceful balance

like some kind of... I wish I had a metaphor for an invasive species that ruins beaches but i don't have it at the moment but we know you're from new york and we actually hate it uh but that kind of thing like this that's all tangent done none of that mattered because he wasn't trying to talk about the journey to new york it was for him and his friend to get here it was just like a status thing we're're from New York. Yeah. How could this happen to us?

We're from Mitch and Murray, you know? How could this happen to us? I know. And I shouldn't laugh because I've famously been tortured and obsessive about bugs in the past when I had ant problems in LA. But it's, in this case, it's very funny just what an equalizer it was. We're here on the beach sitting in CVS beach chairs

that you can wear, like a backpack. They're made of candy wrappers and Legos or whatever. And the bros have their Gucci chairs or whatever. And we're all the same, helpless to these bugs. And they didn't realize it. They still thought that if they grumbled loud enough and told everyone that it was unacceptable

and they could never get away with it in the financial district of Manhattan. Somebody would clap and there'd be attendants there to come shoot them away. Yeah. Someone would come around and apologize and be like, yes, sir, you're right. This was unacceptable.

We're going to make it right. Because that's just what these guys are used to. And the story doesn't really go anywhere. It just tickled me. And I wanted to share it with you on our show. God, man. People using public spaces and getting mad that the public space isn't the way that they want it.

It's so fun. So while you were talking, I was also researching these lantern flies i because i was like why haven't i seen these i don't remember them in new york i don't remember them when i would go to the jersey shore it's because they didn't show up till 2014 oh yeah they're very new what state they started in what state they started in um virginia pennsylvania pennsylvania fucking penn. Ruining another thing. Mm-hmm.

What do you mean? Why do I hate Pennsylvania? Yeah. What other things have they ruined? The Poconos. What? I really thought you would have had something. No, I don't care about Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania's fine. But yeah, it started in Pennsylvania. I just assume everyone from New York also hated Pennsylvania. A lot of South Jersey people don't like Pennsylvania because, I don't know if this is still true anymore, Pennsylvanians were historically bad drivers because certainly when I was growing up, you didn't have a written part of your driver's test, which was either true or the rumor that we all accepted to be true, because it just seemed to make sense with the objective reality that every time we saw a bad driver, we would look at their license plate and it was from pennsylvania yeah i had that little keystone on it yeah um well can i make a suggestion

and i think you should pass this around the neighborhood sure the people from pennsylvania you call them pennies we called them pensies oh that's better because i think that's that's Because I think that's closer to a derogatory slang word. Yeah. So there's some extra venom that just comes out like a bonus. Yeah. Well, they are saying that they thought that the populations have been down with these lanternflies. Have they? Well, not all scientists agree.

So this is like the real, this is the rub. Their favorite tree is called the tree of heaven. And unfortunately, that's also an invasive species. So the fact that like they're killing that tree, at first everyone was like, oh, great. No problem. Yeah. when the when that's done the later flies will just die and that hasn't been the case but they think that the reason that their populations are down is because people have stopped reporting because they're so fucking sick of them they're just tired of doing it yeah now they're just killing them and also because wherever they're you're right like they're migratory where like wherever they ravage they move on to a new location yeah and they find somewhere else and now they're all over the east coast this is a really dark article about it where it says in the middle of it. In New York, red splats from eager lantern-flied stompers are a frequent sight on the sidewalks. Yeah.

I mean, killing them feels good and it's what we're supposed to do, but they don't look great when they're dead either because of the flat red splots on all of the sidewalks or on all the beaches or on my patio but i yeah what's the mess look like are they like are they are they getting like is like a red smear like a moth would leave like a dust or is it no it's not a smear or a dust it's because like their body is red so you step on them and if their gray wings move over, you just see this like red splotch. I was last year. I try not to get tricked into getting angry at articles that are written specifically to drive clicks and make me angry. But man, they got me last year.

There was like a New York Times me last year there was like a new york times article came out that was like meet the brooklynites who are not killing lanternflies and it's like oh i want to do more than meet these sons of bitches it's just these people who are like yeah i don't want to kill the lanternflies because i don't want to kill any bugs and they didn't ask to be here and like who am i to kill the bugs i'm like you are a citizen of this country and your government has asked you to kill the bugs. That's who you are. Because they came to this country after you and that has always been the rule.

Anybody who comes afterwards is no good. I know. It's really tough to talk about how much I enjoy killing these lanternflies. I know. Yeah, it's, I get, because because we've got zebra mussels here, which are invasive. And there's like, we live in LA. So stuff was introduced on purpose that's invasive.

And so it's tough. It's a real tough situation. And so when you talk about ecology and how to protect the climate and protect the habitat. You talk about killing different things around here and talk about invasive species like it's a bad word. And then you think you're like, oh, but also like we're probably the worst thing, right? We're the first thing for Southern California.

We are the invasive species, but we're not going to address that. Well, I love this guy. I want to to i'm sorry you didn't get a picture of him no i think i'm gonna turn him into a short story because i just became so obsessed with this guy with his long slick back hair yeah and i want like to follow him home to new york to have him writing like, dear Senator. Was he wearing, this is important. Was he wearing sunglasses? No.

Whoa. Like a very nice bathing suit. Like everything that he had set up and everything around his, his spot was, was nice. It was designed to be looked at and appreciated. I don't know how comfortable the chairs were, but they looked really nice. So bathing suit, I'm imagining like a 1920s onesie. Nope. Nope. Oh, that's wrong. Hmm. Okay. Scratch that. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then he, were his friends, did they also seem like they were his energy or his, like his style? They were his energy. And I say that it was two bros um but there was also very briefly uh one woman who was there and they'd set up this like uh protective egg for the woman's baby and as soon as she got to the uh beach blanket site

and saw all those lanternflies all over her baby egg. She goes, no. And she leaves. And we never see her again. She, who knows? I kind of like her. She was just like, this isn't going to work for me i'm done um this guy who got got to this site at 8 30 in the morning to set it up and bring everyone back for it's like look i did my best

no yeah that's great he gets in a helicopter and and it goes off back to the hamptons or whatever oh fuck i wonder if these are in the Hamptons. Lantern flies? Yeah. Ooh, that's a great question. I assume they must be. And I assume that it's the same situation. Like, oh, Jesus. I'm almost jealous.

This is a new Olympic village for me where I want to just be there in August when these things are laying their eggs, which I famously just found out. And I want to see all of those people with like lanternflies on their porches being like where's the fire department yeah fix this dear new york governor kathy hochul you will never believe what happened at my, at here at East Egg. All right. Well, that can be our show.

Oh, okay. Sure. Yeah. I'm going to do the outros. Okay, great. I'm going to try to drink coconut water not too loudly into Mike. Okay, great. Coconut water?

45 calories per serving. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Okay, all right. You can follow me and Daniel on Twitter for the time being. Daniel's at DOB underscore Inc. I'm Soren at Soren underscore LTD. You can follow us on Blue Sky. Daniel's not posted a single thing, but he's Daniel O'Brien over underscore inc. I'm Soren at Soren underscore ltd. You can follow us on Blue Sky.

Daniel's not posted a single thing, but he's Daniel O'Brien over there. And I'm Soren.bui. We have an email, which is qq with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. I think it's like warm coconut water. We have a sound engineer editor in... Electrolux. Well, you just gave harder,

but today it's Jacob Weinstein. Tell me I got that right jacob the last name you heard me stutter though right and like really think about it uh and you can follow us on our patreon at patreon slash quick question if you want to throw a couple bucks our way that's fine by me um we are not working and haven't been working for the last 140 days our our theme song is by Merex. You can find their music pretty much anywhere you find music. But if you want to find their full albums,

they're at merex.bandcamp.com. And we have a YouTube. That means that you can go watch Daniel and I again. If that was your thing back in the day when we were on After Hours and our various obsessive pop cultures, you can watch us once again at youtube.com backslash at QQ podcast and that's it Daniel how did the coconut water go that's good I've

been I've been drinking them for very quietly there you're doing great oh yeah I finished this one there's some some important literature on the side of the thing some point I'll talk to you about coconut water I think it's I think it's as disgusting as beets in that. I think they both taste just like dirt. Ooh. Once this, once this podcast is over,

I am going to make a salad that is heavy on beets. Oh Jesus. Coconut water and beets in the same day. You're just a mud man. Yeah. Hell yeah. All right. Bye.

All right. Bye. Hell yeah. All right, bye. All right, bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. I want to hear your thoughts. I want to know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we could talk tonight. So what's your favorite?

Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it up with? Where did all the fun go? Oh, forget it. I'm sorry, baby. Daniel O'Brien. Who did you get? When will I be remembered? Was it awkward? Worded over? Why do we know? Oh forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers

If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here.