Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - At Some Point, I Wanna Lookin in Your Fridge Man

Episode Date: December 3, 2021

Pantry talk from the QQ boyz! Also Daniel gets Soren to almost start meditating, and for the first time we remember to do episode notes... the Short Story Daniel references is "Jon" by George Saunders.  As always big thanks to our sponsors. Thanks Hawthorne. Take your quiz and get 10% off your first purchase at hawthorne.co with code QQ.  Thanks Canva Pro. Get a FREE 45-day extended trial by going to canva.me/QQ45. Thanks Raycon!.  For a limited time, go To buyraycon.com/qq and use code HOLIDAY for up to 15% off your entire Raycon order. Thanks  Hello Tushy.  10% off + free shipping HelloTushy.com/qq  

So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast, author of How to Fight Presidents, staff writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, dead ringer for Justin Theroux, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello. Hey, everybody.

I'm Soren Bui. I'm a writer for American Dad, a builder of simple furniture, and proselytizer of fast food, I would say. Ooh, proselytizer. Yeah, I really like it. There's also no real good way to succinctly say that it's how I denote everywhere that I go in Los Angeles. Like, if somebody tells me where they live, I need to know. I can only figure it out by knowing what fast food is close to them. I'm like, they'll tell me

two cross streets and I'll be like, okay, hold on. Oh, uh, okay. Two blocks from the Chick-fil-A. I got it. Yeah. I think you did that when I told you, when I moved to, uh, West LA and I told you where I was, you immediately were like, thank you chicken. Like, I mean, yeah, I guess, you know, the area better than I do,. I mean, I don't. I know one place there. Yeah, and it's not even like, some of the fast food that I don't even go to. Like people will be like,

I live over on Saturn in Lassinaga. And I'm like, oh, okay. Oh, you're near the Wienerschnitzel. They're like, I am? And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, well, how is it? And I'm like, oh, I don't know. I don't go to those.

I don't like them. You say it like it's a bad part of town, but you don't know. It's just go to those. I don't like them. You say it like it's a bad part of town, but you don't know. It's just a restaurant you haven't been to. Thanks to Hello Tushy for supporting Quick Question. Make the restroom your best room with the complete Tushy system, including the Tushy bidet attachment, ottoman, toilet brush, and Tushy stand and tissues. Get 10% off plus free shipping at hellotushy.com slash QQ.

Thanks to Raycon for supporting Quick Question. Raycons start at half the price of other premium audio brands, but they sound just as good. Go to buyraycon.com slash QQ and use code HOLIDAY today to get 15% off your entire Raycon order. Thanks to Canva Pro for supporting Quick Question. Canva Pro is a design platform that empowers you to create and share stunning content in just a few clicks. Get a free 45-day extended trial by going to canva.me slash qq45. Thanks to Hawthorne for supporting Quick Question. Hawthorne is a premium grooming brand that tailors your personal care routine to your unique profile with skincare

and hair care made just for you. Take hawthorne's quiz today and get started on your personalized self-care routine at hawthorne.co and use promo code qq to get 10 off your first purchase um we should get into the show i guess i have a couple of updates uh since we last spoke uh i know i was more on the fence about transcendental meditation last time i talked to you i'm pretty into it okay uh do you want to talk about your breakthrough no i mean not a breakthrough i think uh i like it for i could talk about like two very superficial surface level reasons why I like it. One is that I'm doing it like they, they want you to do it twice a day,

20 minutes each time, 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes again in the evening. And, uh, of course the first week I did it, I, I, I wasn't getting anything from it.

And I also felt like, even though I didn't have anything to do or anywhere to be, I still felt like, where am I possibly going to get 40 minutes from? I don't have an extra 40 minutes every day. I'm going to have to invent that. Or like something is going to have to suffer. Even if that something was just like the time that I spend in the morning sitting on my computer doing nothing. It was like, but it's important to me that I do that. So the first week, it feels like a real chore and a real struggle, like adding anything

new to your regular routine. But then like anything else, if you actually do it, you start to observe results. And I'm like, honestly doing it every day, twice a day, the amount of time that I'm supposed to. And I like it. It's a good way to start my day and a good way amount of time that i'm supposed to and i like it it's it's a a good way to start my day and a good way to like calm down before dinner in between my run and dinner and uh i'm getting the things that i feel like i'm supposed to be getting i because one of

the things that i wanted from it was increased uh focus and creativity i'm a little bit horrified. The amount of, not breakthroughs, but like clarity right now that I get when I'm meditating is very focused on, of all things in my life, this podcast. And I'm furious about that. I want to go back to my teacher and be like, flip a different switch. I want to write a fucking novel. And all I've got is different intros for this podcast. Well, that's exciting for me. I mean, good news is on my front.

Yeah. I think I've also, I've talked a pretty big game. I don't think the audience or you will observe any real change in the podcast. I just think about it a lot now. Well, what it'll mean is that you probably have a couple of intros all like logged and ready to go yeah not today okay i think like like this this is gonna make me sound like a not present sociopath i'm thinking of like responses i could say to you if you say certain things to me that's gonna be that's gonna be those are gonna come in like smoking hot yeah i'm prepping a lot

of spontaneous off the top of my head responses that's uh i don't think that's super weird that's something i do accidentally while running all the time i have dialogues in my head that are they're not even mine necessarily it's just like some people are talking in my brain sometimes it's me talking to other even mine necessarily it's just like some people are talking like in my brain sometimes it's me talking to other people but generally it's just people talking and like oh a really good joke will come up and i'll be like whoa it would be great to get there never happened yeah i really hope i'm standing on the street with a stranger and we both watch someone fall off a bike because i got something i got something for it and then i'll like spend the rest of the run trying to figure

out well how could i how could i put it in a tweet maybe i can you maybe i can use it there uh the other reason i i i think it's not that i think it's going well because of this um but it definitely ties into why i'm definitely doing it and giving it a fair honest shake um i don't know if i mentioned that you uh pay for these classes oh no that was not on the table i didn't realize that was okay and i think are you comfortable saying how much each class is uh no okay but i i can tell you a uh a weird thing about it. Two weird things about it. It's based on your income. It's based on your household income before taxes. Wow. Okay.

It's an honor system then. Yes. Yeah. That's the second part. There's four tiers of what you pay. And they include on the website. It's an honor system. So if you want to say that you make less and pay us less, you can do that.

And no one will know. Okay. I'm trying to decide if I cheat that system. I didn't. Especially because, like, if someone tells me something is on the honor system, that doesn't, to me, mean, oh, good, an opportunity to cheat. You know? That is like, yeah, then I'm going to do it because I am part of the honor system. I get that.

I get why you would do that. I would much sooner cheat something that someone was like, and it's impossible to cheat this. I'm like, all right, let's see. I used to be a lot like that, but that was because it was in my mind I had a constant camera on me at all times that was where I was the hero of whatever story someone was watching and you know since i've had children that's obviously changed and so now i'm just a side character who the camera doesn't follow all the time and i'm like well fuck it oh what do i lose what do i gain right what are the options here uh and i i do think that i mean this is like probably a tale as old as time sales trick that

once you once you pay for something you're much more likely to tell other people that it works because otherwise i'm an idiot yeah that's true there's some cost and fallacy yeah uh and so you're liking it at least you're paying for it and so so you like it. I like it. Yeah. I don't know that I would, because you can Google meditation techniques and you could probably, even if you dug deep enough, find exactly what goes into transcendental meditation, because it's not like in reinventing the wheel or anything like that. But I had those tools at my disposal my entire life. And I wasn't really dedicatedly doing any meditation until money changed hands. Right. There was, yeah, you had some skin in the game.

You know what? Even though the way that you're selling me on it is I paid for it and now I like it. I'm like, oh, that sounds like something I would enjoy. I'm like getting more invested now. Um, and so also you said that you've had just more clarity from it because that's a huge problem for me. I, somebody tweeted today about how they said, Hey, ADHD people, which I don't, that's not a group I affiliate myself with, but I read on. They said, when you're working on something and somebody else interrupts your train of thought, do you feel attacked?

And all these people were jumping in and being like, yeah, absolutely. Oh, I'm terrible. I lash back out. It's like, my response is completely not in line with what's just happened. And I was like, oh like oh fuck i do that and i wonder if it's just everybody where if i'm actually giving my focus to something like that attention is valuable yeah and if somebody else is like blah blah blah blah blah what about this other thing what about did you know i saw a duck today like that kind of thing i'm mad i get mad

and in a way where like i can't control how mad i am like i outwardly you're gonna see that i'm a little visibly upset buddy does that happen i think you'd like tm uh all right well let me read up on my emerson again let me go back to uh leaves of grass by walt whitman let me get really in touch with my transcendental past. Yes. I will be a transparent eyeball. And then I will try your transcendental meditation. Yeah. Do they talk anything about, they don't talk about transparent eyeballs there, do they?

No, they talk towards the end of the course, they get into the more hooky boogie aspects of this that like somewhere in the back of my mind it seems great like this idea of like actual transcendence where if uh you achieve this next level of deep meditation you can access this level of like cosmic stillness and coolness in your waking life when you're not meditating and you just like

walk around and and they say like colors are brighter and and smells are different like everything is heightened in a in a fantastic way that all sounds neat and also uh i think impossible and also not what i'm going for with this like i'm to again creativity focus uh to be less angry is another like aspect of this to be less stressed is another aspect of it the i hate ever talking about writing in a way that is divorced from like the mechanical method parts of it but tm is is i want to connect to the part of writing that is not that. I want to connect to the tiny fragment part of writing that is the magic part that we can't control. And it's good for that. Okay. That's great to hear because everybody's looking for that.

Yeah. Every single writer in the world is looking for that. Occasionally you just feel almost like it's writing through you. like the world has just like you're this filter that consolidates all these really important thoughts and you're like wow i can do that and you feel very excited and it doesn't feel like you even necessarily uh yeah when it comes to like i'm listening to uh the character and and like like scenes in uh the novella that i'm working on and the the the pilot that i'm working on scenes are very much motivated by like i like this character and this character i want to get them together and see what happens and that's a part that like for all my robotic method approach to writing that i that i i preach and live by that's a part

that i can't back up with any kind of facts or any method. I mean, like the method is just preparing yourself to be open to those moments and to listen to them when they come to you. But, you know, the end of the day answer is, no, this is magic. I put two people that don't exist into a room together to see what happens. And now I'm watching what happens. You're in good company there, my friend, david milch did a whole series on what it means to be a writer and writing and he talks about a very similar thing uh he did it like decades ago but it's still it's wonderful and salient but he talks about uh how he doesn't know he doesn't have an arc built out like he's not breaking

a whole series before he starts um or whatever he happens to be writing he's not breaking the whole thing so he's like i gotta get to this ending he's like i don't write that way what i want is if you create dynamic enough characters and like wealth well thought out characters then i just put them together and it's exciting for me even to see what happens yeah there's uh george saunders probably the best living short story writer one of my favorite writers of all time is talking about um he was grading a student's paper on kafka's metamorphosis and he came across this line from the student upon perusing this story i felt myself at a at a distinct tilt and saunders as as a professor was like hmm that, that sucks. What a bad line. And then just decided to start writing

as that's not that student in terms of like, I know who this person is, but just like, what is it like to write a sentence like that? To think a sentence like that. And he just started writing as a person who would describe metamorphosis that way

and then spun it out into this whole sci-fi short story. One of his best short stories i think it's called uh josh and hannah or something like that it's it's it's two names in one of his collections it's great we'll put it in the footnotes of this episode bacon will drop a link in the footnotes um but it's it it all started from him like i see one line and now i'm going to start writing in this voice and then like expand the voice and see where the voice goes and see what this person does and oh it turns out this person lives it turns out this person is a teenager oh it turns out they live

in this weird futuristic facility oh it turns out it's a bunch of teenagers and they're all uh drugged into complacency and it's all stuff that just starts with him like listening to where a character wants to go where a voice wants to go

and uh and i like it and that's what i'm trying to do i think um especially working for last week tonight which is which is a great job that i love so much it's very much one voice. And it's also like we're in a structure of how an episode goes, how John sounds, how things are supposed to move. And it's very easy to fall into that kind of structured way of writing, which is incredibly helpful for this job. But as I'm in hiatus between seasons, I want to make sure that i'm also um tapping into the the non-structured part of my brain the the the part that that doesn't go on autopilot interesting interesting okay all right well tm is great i recommend it for everybody even if you're not a writer uh and if you don't

want to like take the course and pay for it do some meditation every day like you go somewhere at all no i know that that's that's a possibility that they they they talk about in class and it's and it sounds like it's you know you you repeat your mantra to yourself over and over again and sometimes you lose your mantra and when you recognize that you lose it you come back to it and uh it's easy it's supposed to be easy the whole point of it is it's not you're you're not supposed to force it or make it feel like work it should always feel easy to just return to your simple mantra uh and you know that you you answer like quiz questions after you meditate and And one of them is always like, now, did you ever get to a place where your mantra was gone, but also you had no other

thoughts coming and you were just still and distant? Like, no, I'm either repeating the mantra or I'm thinking about what I'm doing later. Yeah. Okay. now that you've started meditating and you are also a runner uh do you feel like there's any overlap there like in the venn diagram are you getting some of the same benefits from running that you would yeah okay yeah like because because running itself i think is is very meditative even if it's not like formal meditation it's very meditative and also i i think i'm noticing you notice similar gains when you start running and when you start meditating and i imagine when you start like anything new any new thing that that feels like it's not working at first uh in in the sun also rises one of

hemingway's fucking characters asks another character uh how he went bankrupt and uh two ways he says gradually and then suddenly and that's how i feel about running that's how i feel about writing that's how i now feel about meditation and that like this is gonna feel slow for a while and then you start to notice differences and gains and then it snowballs hopefully yes yeah because it because it becomes practiced work. It's not practiced when you first start it. Like I think with the gains that I would get from it, and this is not a knock against it. I'm not trying to belittle it by saying this.

It's going to be the same as me taking a shower, brushing my teeth, driving. It's like these are the places where I'm going to have my best ideas because my brain is doing practiced work at that point. So it's not in charge of my body. My muscles know how to do these motions and this stuff. And so my brain has this free time to itself to just sort of wander a little bit. Yeah. And I don't get that before I go to sleep because my head hits the pillow and I fall asleep. Right.

So I think that I would get the same thing. But you have to make it practiced work, which is, God, it's just another thing I got to build up. Yeah. Well, we're coming up in the holiday season and you might be thinking, what am I going to get the people who have it all? My family, they get to be related to me. How can they possibly want more? Well, I'll let you know that Hello Tushy is building a quiet little empire over there in their corner of the world. They're moved on from just bidet attachments. Now they've got all kinds of products that you can choose from. So if you're buying a lot for family members this year, Hello Tushy bidets are a great gift for your ego-conscious cousin, your neat freak sister,

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Now is the time to knock out that gift list and avoid the last minute shipping scramble, especially because right now my listeners will get 15% off statewide with code HOLIDAY at buyraycon.com slash qq. That's buyraycon.com slash qq. But I will say that when I run, I used to get this from cross-country skiing too, you get into a pattern or a motion that like affects your breathing and your breath starts coming out in a very specific way each time. It's not always the same, but it's like a, sometimes it's like a, or like whatever it

is, like whatever you're, you're doing on your run. And then that starts to become words out of nowhere. And like, it kind of becomes a chant. Like my brother talks about going up to this hut i told i told you about the hut system in colorado right yes okay so he's he's skiing out he's skinning up to a hut which means that he's got these skins on the bottoms of his skis so that he can get up there and you're going uphill basically on your skis and it's just cross-country skiing and the mantra that came came to him was big-ass chicken, long-ass weight.

And big-ass chicken, long-ass weight has, to this day, been like his thing. Like when he's just trying to hop through something, he's like, big-ass chicken, long-ass weight. Big-ass chicken, long-ass weight. And I was like, oh, interesting. And then I started to notice that these things just become words in my head as well as I'm running. Where I'm like, oh, I've just been saying the same thing over and over and over again. I'm not thinking about it. I'm thinking about other stuff.

But this word has just kept going in my brain. Interesting. I think you'd like meditation. All right. I think you'd like it. But I also think like you don't need to take a class. I don't get like a referral fee. You don't need to take a class or or pay any money

or study anything to you can immediately recognize that you would get some benefit from sitting quietly yes 40 minutes a day yes i understand objectively i get that that's true um all right well you want to get into our show yeah okay can i ask you a quick question daniel absolutely okay picture a box of donuts it's just arrived at your do you guys get donuts at work sometimes or did you used to before the end of times uh we used to every once in a while yeah okay so what would happen for us is that whoever's script it was on a day of like a table read that person would bring in some donuts. And you just, you're literally sweetening the deal.

And you open up that box of donuts and there's all kinds of like good stuff in there. And there's also some maple donuts. Now, do you eat those maple donuts? Are you a fan? No. Yeah, because there's dog shit. The fact that maple donuts exist is silly. And that they're always included in a box of donuts is even crazier.

That you wouldn't just disclude them. It's weird that we're still, like we as a society, are still selling like burner donuts that we know no one actually wants. It's the melon to fruit salad maple donuts are to the box of donuts. It's like, well, it's just there to take up more room are to the box of donuts it's like well it's just there to take up more room and make the box look more full captain crunch you can make them all oops all berries you have that power you can just do it right and they're not saving money at the donut shop by using maple like these aren't like these donuts are cheaper for them to make so the maple donuts suck they're always the last thing in the box. And I was thinking about that the other day

because somebody brought me a box of donuts. And I want to know from you, what's the maple donut equivalent in your pantry? Like what is the thing in your pantry that sits there every time that you're hungry and you go to look at, or it could be in your fridge, that you go to look at what's there. You can't throw this thing out because you know, at some point you'll get

desperate enough and you'll eat it. Yeah. What is that thing for you? I have two for this category. One of them is, uh, because we know I love to cook. Uh, and I, I famously hate leftovers because that takes out a lot of the fun of my nighttime routine. I like to run and shop for what I'm going to make and then make dinner and sing while I make dinner and clean up and do the whole thing. If I have leftovers from the night before and all I do is reheat it, then I'm bummed. And I would much sooner... I will cook a new meal every single night of the week as a preference. But it's difficult to cook like exactly the amount of food

that I want to eat every night. So there's always by design leftovers. And so I stick them in the freezer and now I just have a freezer full of frozen leftovers that I never want to eat. Even right now, I know that there's like four different pastas in there and there's some turkey meatballs and a lasagna and i'm i i'm getting close to the end of december then i'm just like i might have to just throw them out like my

hand might be forced by time because i'm moving out of here oh that's gonna be freeing that's gonna be great i will never have to eat these because I just, I will never want to. I will never want to reheat something that's already made if the option of making something new is on the table. But let's assume I am out of groceries and I'm not allowed to go to a store. Yeah, that's my maple donut. That or I have like an industrial sized unkillable thing of uh couscous so i can make couscous whenever i want wait okay is it is it israeli couscous or is it the little stuff

the little stuff oh and it's like the perfect thing that's like yes this is easy i can add whatever spices i want to it uh and it it really feels like camping food or prison food where it's like, yes, this will get the job done, but I would sooner starve. Right. It's such a chore. That's the food that you have available to you when like a real pandemic happens where there's nothing else available and you're not allowed to leave the house. And you're like, well, I'm not going to die. I have this stuff.

Yeah, that's a good one i so for me i've got uh i've got two in my pantry that i look at like all the time i mean i i and i just hate them i love that they're in there but i can't throw them away one is these savory plantain chips that haven't been opened we had a couple we had like two bags of them for some reason it was maybe a deal i can't remember but we opened up the first bag and i was like i don't like these uh they're not for me i like banana chips i think that those have like a good crunch to them i think they're sweet but we've got these kind of salty savory plantain chips that are just a little bit more chippier. They're like thinner and crustier

and they chew real weird. Like they start to get kind of chewy as you chew them. I don't like that. I just hate everything about them. But I also know that I love to snack. And at some point, I will, my standards will fall so far that I'll be like, no, I think I want those and I'll go eat them. The other one that I have is this whole Indian curry kit. And I don't even remember its, its origin story. Honestly, I can't remember how it ended up in my pantry. All I know is that I've always had it.

And it's got like, it's got all this stuff to really start a curry from scratch. It's got coconut milk in it in a can. It's got big bay leaves, all kinds of great colored spices that I don't know what they are. And you don't have to measure anything. It's all there for you. Yes, everything is specifically packed so that I just pour it into a bowl and I assume make a curry.

I'm not ever going to do it. I'm never going to like sit down and be like, okay. Because I know that it's never going to be as good as if I just go get Indian. I know it's also going to be a lot of work. And at some point I'm going to run into a problem and I'm going to have to like check the internet. I'm going to have to see, okay, well, hold on a second. Do I need some yogurt for this?

How much yogurt am i supposed to have how much is this gonna is this spice gonna ruin it for me because it's gonna be way too spicy and i don't want to have to deal with all that and i don't want to i like i'm there are other foods i'm great at being an architect of this is like a brand new building to me and i'm not i'm not willing to do it yeah i feel that i also have a lot of um aspirational foods because i i have a really hard time getting myself to eat vegetables so when i'm shopping i'll trick myself and and get like like a hash brown that is that is made of a bunch of vegetables yes um and as i'm buying it i'm like this is the thing that's gonna turn us around and a part of my brain is like yeah you can buy whatever you want buddy but i'm in charge when we're cooking

yeah i've for a long time it was these flaxseed vegetable chips that i had in there i was like each one is a different flavor like one is just carrot one sweet potato one's beets or whatever and then you get it home and i'm like hold on a second i don't like any of those things why did i think i would like them in chip form and then what's flaxseed anyway there's just these seeds in my chips yeah i just like like my sister-in-law convinced me to get flaxseed she was like it's great you could put it on put it on peanut butter on a piece of toast and it's very good for you i'm like cool yeah i'll buy this and then let it sit in my cabinet for three and a half years because i'm never going to want a single piece of bread, some peanut butter, and then some bird food.

Yeah, and that's very much what it feels like eating. Like when you put it in your mouth, you're like, okay, yeah. No, I get it why there are health food nuts out there. This is what they consume each day yeah at some point they've just tricked themselves either into thinking they liked it or that like this is their penance food has become their penance where they know that they're better people because instead of torturing themselves by whipping themselves down the street they're eating dog shit every single day and reminding themselves, no, this is your penance. See, now I wonder, because when I talk to my friends who don't like running, I assume

they're wrong or not wrong. I just assume they haven't done it enough yet because they're like, no, of course you don't like running. If you only run a mile and you only run every once in a while, it's always going to feel like a chore. You need to put a lot of time into always going to feel like a chore you need to put a lot of time into it and then it becomes a thing that is uh an essential part of your day and like i love it genuinely i think oh and i wonder if because when on on the other side of

that coin when people talk about eating healthy and with their stupid seeds and their horseshit bland garbage, like you're just, you don't actually feel that way. You can't feel that way. You can't honestly convince me that anything with seed in the name is better than a Big Mac. You can't. Well, to be fair, Big Mac's got seeds on it. Yeah, but it's not in the name. It's in the song uh i think that is probably closer to writing it's the that process of writing starting from the beginning is terrible it's that i can't remember who said it but to uh uh writing is terrible but to have written is divine or whatever the fuck it is uh it's

it's like once you've actually done it or you're near the end of it, you're like, Oh yeah. Like the accomplishment of it is feels really great. It's like its own high. So I think that when you eat that food, you, you said no to something that you could have eaten,

would have tasted very good. And at the end you would have felt terrible about you eat this thing. That's not as good. But by the end you're like, Oh shit, i'm the same full yeah and i now i've but it was something that was actually good for me and so you're just like waiting for that moment oh i don't know just sounds like today i'm gonna eat taco bell yeah i'm i'm in such a a blessed place right now because I'm flying early tomorrow morning.

I'm going to LA. Hey, man, you want to hang out? Yeah, sure. I was hoping for a quicker yes on that. Did you also hear me then try to think of other things I might have going on? Yeah, you don't even know what dates I'm going to be there. Well, I just, we, I might be sick. Okay.

I'm just kidding. I'm glad to hang out with you. I'm in a rare place right now where I have an early flight tomorrow morning. I have already had breakfast and lunch today and have done the dishes for those things. I'm, it would be crazy for me to cook tonight because i don't just have yeah more dishes to do so i think i have to order something or go to a restaurant oh boy and and you know what the problem is it's not a problem is that you said the words taco bell so now it's gonna be taco i'm excited for you.

Not only that, but you, first of all, you're going to eat something great tonight. The world is your oyster and you can eat anything except oysters because they suck. But you then, during your travels, you also, your hands are tied. You have no choice but to eat fast food while you're traveling because that's what's available to you. And what a gift that is from the universe like when i'm getting on a plane oh i'm so excited to go to that airport and just peruse their terrible fast food options yeah especially because i almost never like make a burger for myself it's a it's a weird thing to make as a single person, publicly single for branding purposes, alone in your apartment. It's weird to just make a burger because you can't buy ingredients for a single burger.

And now we just have a bunch of patties and buns that would go bad. So I almost never have burger stuff in my apartment. But if I'm at an airport restaurant, oh boy. Oh, I'm getting a burger and fries. You're absolutely right. I didn't even think about that though. Like the dietary differences between us must be so vast. Yeah.

Because just the idea of buying ground beef alone. I mean, I'm not buying ground beef, obviously. I'm buying ground turkey because I don't eat beef. But the same rules apply. Like I know that that entire ground beef is going to be a meal for my family and there probably won't be leftovers so whatever we're going to make with that tacos or a burger or we'll throw it in like a pasta or whatever it is i know i'm using all of it ground beef is just like a whole another world to you i assume yeah absolutely i have to i If I'm ever getting ground beef or ground bison or ground turkey, it's because I'm going to a barbecue and I'm making burgers for multiple people.

Or if it's just something for the home, then I'm probably making slow cooker chili or some kind of soup where I'm just going to have leftovers for a long time. Stupid, stupid leftovers. I don't like them either. But fortunately, my wife hates to throw out food. And so she will eat a lot of leftovers. And that means that each day at lunch, like I'll go into the kitchen. I'll be like, what's your plan for lunch? And she'll be like, oh, well, we still have a lot of the Thanksgiving leftovers.

So I'm probably going to have those. I'm like, okay, cool. And then we'll wait there for a second. She's like, do you want to go out and get your lunch? those i'm like okay cool yeah and then we'll wait there for a second she's like do you want to go out and get your lunch and i'm like yes i do yes please yes man i'm the same way and i'm such a baby about it where i i look in the fridge and i just see a bunch of leftovers i'm like yeah but i already ate that right i know i know what it's like i know what happens we did that there's no surprise oh what's it's like. I know what happens. We did that. There's no surprise. It's going to be a worse version of what I did before.

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If there was a better way to turn foods into other foods, I'll keep talking to explain what I mean. I came home from Thanksgiving with a bunch of leftover Turkey and then I turned that into Turkey Tetrazzini. That's a brand new adventure. There just aren't, there aren't a lot of meals that you can make that like, and then the next day I turn this pasta into tacos. Like I can't do that with everything. That's yeah. There's, you're pretty limited with some foods. But I mean, at some point I just want to like look in your fridge. I want, Oh,

here's what we'll do. When you come out here, you can look in my fridge and you can look in my pantry after we get freshly stocked up and see if there's, I just want you to like point out anything where you're like, Oh no, I can't eat that. Obviously because it only comes in batches that are way too big for a

human. Yeah. Okay. I'll do that. All right. I mean, I was hoping we would hang out in like a, like a different way, but no, then you will also need to leave. Just come over, do we'll do that all right i mean i was hoping we would hang out in like a like a different way but no then you will also need to leave uh just come over do we'll do that little

experiment and then it would be great if you could just okay do you want me to bring uh my podcast equipment so i can i can narrate while i'm going through your pantry this is not for the podcast this is just something you want me to do no i think it should be for the podcast okay i'm thinking you should bring your podcast equipment we'll just do a podcast here all right together i was making jokes earlier but now i'm thinking that's a really good idea i have a very accommodating garage that's true man this doesn't matter it doesn't even need to go in the podcast but i'm very excited uh now i can go in the podcast all of life is content the way that this podcast works for soren and i soren

has a garage where he has like a dedicated podcast spot so he just goes and sits down and does the podcast i have been operating out of my apartment this whole time so whenever i'm done recording the podcast i pack up all my stuff and put it in the closet and like the microphone and the little, little fucking box that I plugged the microphone into, they all go away. It's, uh, it's not heavy. It's not a huge process, but I sure do hate it. And I drag my feet on it every time. But in January, I move out of this apartment and I'm in a temporary house somewhere else. And that house has a guest room and I'm going to set up a podcast studio in it. It's going to be a podcast studio and also where my bass guitar will live.

Like a little like, just like music and sound area that is just for me. And I guess theoretically sometimes guests. And I'm so pumped about it. I'm so thrilled that for at least a month, I'm going to have a spot where this equipment just lives and it's already set up. Yeah, it is. It's a quality of life changer. And the space where my mic and everything is set up is not nice.

It is where we throw everything that we don't want to deal with in the house. There's a lot of paint thinner around me, some gas cans and screen, just rolled up screen in case we ever need to replace our screen like oh and then there's a lot of spiders around me but uh it really is just this one spot where i can go away from the house sit down and it's all ready for me to go yeah i can't wait until things flip and like once this podcast really takes off and makes us lots of money then it becomes the centerpiece of the house yeah then it's right like where some people have a grand piano you do a tour you're like and this is where i record the podcast i sit right here and what i should do is make my family leave the house i should try and get a voice acting career like going i should really like work on like, do you know anyone in the industry?

I first of all need to take some classes, I think, and like figure out what voice acting actually is. That would be a good start. Then I could maybe try and get some jobs. And if they had that, then I would need a reason for like a soundproof room in my house. And then, oh, the icing on the cake would just be, I also have that all set up for my podcast as well. I have so much respect for voice actors they're really good they're really really good and and i i hate talking shit on another property but it's marvel they have so much money so it doesn't matter and none of them are going to listen to this but that marvel what

if series i don't know have you watched any of that probably no i'm not it's animated and it's and it's just you can tell from the title it's it's uh based on the the what if comics where they take something familiar like what if this character was iron man instead of tony stark what if this happened what if all the avengers were zombies and you do like episodes about each of those things and because it's marvel and they've got more money than God, they got really anyone they've ever worked, almost anyone they've ever worked with to do voices. All these A-list stars come back to do these voices because it's very easy. And one of the things that is loud and clear about that show is you can be a great, fantastic

A-list actor, movie star. You might not be a good voice actor. You could really tell someone who is just not built for this very specific skill set. I don't know. Harrison Ford is a good example. Harrison Ford is somebody who's so subtle and so much of his acting is in his face

that you take care of his face And it's just him saying dialogue. Like, could you imagine him trying to do something, an affected voice? It'd be a nightmare. Right. And like, and it's just your voice. All you have to convey this is your voice. And there are some really good actors who just can't do it. And it's really on display in that show.

Yeah. We, I did one, my very first episode that i wrote for american dad kathy najimy was in it or kathy najimy i don't actually know how to pronounce her last name it's najimy or najimy but she you recognize her as she was in sister act but she also does a lot of voice acting she was peggy hill peggy hill so she's an excellent voice actress and so she came in and had this character like she it wasn't like the first time she was just seeing these lines which there are a lot of people who walk in like all right so what are we doing and like you and this is the first time they're seeing it she came in

she's like so what are we thinking for her and she's like i was thinking either this and she did this like beautifully built out character or this and she's like she did this other one that was just a little bit older. And I was like, oh, well now I don't know. Because those are both great. Like now it's my decision because she's given me so many good things. And to hear

Scott Grimes, he plays Steve on our show. Insanely talented voice actor. Because he plays a lot of other just one-off characters on our show and you wouldn't know it um because he's so good and his delivery every single time is just like pin pitch perfect it's so wonderful to watch somebody like that work and it's you realize how far you are away from ever actually doing something like that

yeah because i'm coming at it from like, I do funny voices in my car sometimes. Yeah. It's also a terrifying thing. We do at table reads, you'll get cast as a role sometimes because either somebody's not there or it's just not cast yet. It's a table read.

And so the writers will play different roles and it's so scary because if it's something big, it's like a pivotal and it's got a lot of jokes in it you're like i should build a character but what a what a vulnerable place that is to be so just like try to build out a character be like well i'm gonna go in with this big fleshed out person and if that's bad i i will be sunk yeah I think this is a true Hollywood story of me really fucking eating it I was brand new to Los Angeles and I had a ridiculous manager at the time who was just getting me into different rooms because I was young and

stupid and when you're a manager it costs you nothing to sign clients and one of them might work out so I was nothing special and I meant nothing to sign clients and one of them might work out so uh i was nothing special and i meant nothing to this guy but he's just like sticking me in rooms and i was in uh a punch-up room for this is gonna date us so much the first fred movie now fred i remember that fred figlehorn it was a a youtube character it was it was like early youtube this this this kid named lucas invented this character fred and the hallmarks of fred were was that his voice was uh put through like a sped up alvin and the chipmunks type filter and he crossed his eyes a lot and he screamed a lot and it's a a a youtube show that was like deeply, at best, alienating, at worst, offensive to everyone of a certain age.

We just couldn't stand this shrieking chipmunk freak child and didn't understand what anyone liked about it. But if you're younger than that, you absolutely loved it like i can't overstate what a sensation fred figelhorn as a character was to young generations in 2006 2008 2010 whatever whatever era we want to call that so obviously there was a a big movie with fred figelhorn uh with some like real comedy people behind it and then there was a punch-up room that I was invited to where we went through the script line by line to like pitch jokes and make things better. And I'm surrounded by really great comedy writers from shows you've all heard of.

And I just fucking ate it in this room because one of the things you have to do is like if you want people in the room to like your joke you got to make them like it you gotta you've got to like sell it so people are it's it was extra hard for me because i was younger and also like i can't just slide my jokes on a piece of paper across the table which is what i'm comfortable doing i have to like okay i got something for this and then stand up and like do a joke as fred and i'm not gonna do any of that shit and people in the room who do that

obviously it's gonna get a laugh and it's gonna play and they get they get jokes and and and people like them and then they get future work and i'm just like sitting there quietly like i i had a um i had an idea for for a thing that that this guy could say on page 30. I think he could say this kind of thing. And everyone's just going to match my energy and be like, that's an interesting point. Anyone else? And then someone's going to like fucking stand up and flip the table over

and be like, hey, it's Fred. And people like that because like, yeah, that's what Fred sounds like. Right. Yeah. It's a very interesting dance to do that i have lost sight of uh now that i've been at the show for a while but we we pitch we pitch in rooms as characters basically like you're doing but you're doing a you know a 20 version of the character so it's not exactly roger but it's just like it's got a roger it's just like it's got a Roger flavor to it or it's got a Francine

flavor to it and that's really really tough to do yeah like when you first start you're not going to be doing that you're gonna be pitching in your own voice and it does hurt and uh hearing and but there's also this other element to it that's like a I'm only half trying to and that's really important if you go full bore as a character it also hurts your joke but if you do like a half version of it but you just get across the sentiment and the timing and everything that's where that's the sweet spot and it's fucking tough yeah we talked a lot about writing stuff in this episode yeah we didn't anticipate that but i like it i always like talking about writing i do too i i i feel weird talking about the non mechanical parts of writing the magic parts of it because i always worry that

i don't want that to like to scare anyone off from trying to write. I really like to beat the drum that this is a craft that can be learned like woodworking, and it can be practiced like running. Because as soon as you say anything that resembles magic, then it could be interpreted as like, you either have it or you don't. Right. And I don't want to scare anyone away. You also don't want the muse to hear you and run off no absolutely mention of her name no which is also a possibility

i think um is that enough time for an episode yeah that's plenty okay great well we're gonna wrap things up here i have the social accounts so I'm just going to read them. Oh, but on the social accounts, I just had some, uh, house cleaning that I wanted to broach. It's come to my attention that people are, uh, emailing,

tweeting at and DMing Soren, asking him to get messages to me and also asking him to ask me to unblock them and we have a lot of fun on this show about Sorin being the more accessible one and me being like the the curmudgeonly grouch but like we're not inviting you to participate in that dynamic leave Sorin alone this bit exists in the abstract please don't bother him about, if I've blocked you on Twitter and you want me to unblock you,

I can tell you unequivocally, unequivocally, getting in Soren's ear is not the way to do that because there's no way to do that. If I've blocked you, don't take it personally. I probably thought it was funny and i'm never gonna unblock you and you just like you just don't you're not missing anything you just don't get to follow me on twitter it's just a thing you don't get to have and it's worth nothing so you shouldn't feel bad but also you you don't get to have it every once in a while i

will just collect five of these DMs that I get, or whatever the most recent group is, and I will screenshot them and just send them in a big dump over to Dan and write, I hate this to him. Yeah, they don't. I certainly don't take any action. Yeah, it's flattering. It's flattering how much people want to be in touch with you.

Boy, do they want to get to know you yeah uh well assuming i haven't blocked you uh you can follow me at dob underscore inc you can follow soren at soren underscore ltd you can follow our boss at make me bacon please pls email the show at qq with soren and daniel at gmail.com find the show on Twitter at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can find, hire, praise our engineer, editor, producer Gabe at GabeHarder.com. We also have a Patreon, which you could find if you search quick question Patreon on Google. You could find it if you want to throw some money our way. Every once in a while, I think once a month we do uh episodes just for

patrons exclusively where we answer your questions and that is at the moment the only fun thing we offer to patrons maybe one day that'll change i can't say because i've never discussed this with anyone else in the podcast so i'm listening hard because there's new information here we should cut this off before i start offering custom songs or t-shirts to our patrons all right bye bye