Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Dude Day at Chili’s

Episode Date: July 31, 2022

Uncle Daniel!  And we break  our record for longest intro ever.  And as always big thanks to our sponsors. Get $15 off your first month’s subscription plus free shipping:  Nutrafol.com/men promo code qq. Get 25% off your first order of $40 or more at NextEvo.com with promo code qq. Shop with confidence — get Honey for FREE at JoinHoney.com/qq

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, 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 favourite? Who did you get? What do I be? What's it up with? What do we talk about? I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien When will I be remembered? Was it afterwards? Where did all that go to eat? 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 week tonight with john oliver author of how to fight presidents and guy who after 36 years still cannot properly time a haircut daniel o'brien joined as always by my co-host mr soren buoy soren say howdy howdy folks i'm soren buoy from the square state of colorado uh dan what do you mean you can't time a haircut you mean you you end up getting too long and you're like i should have done this weeks ago yeah i know roughly um like uh once a month is when i want to get a haircut and then i forget when it comes up to that time and then i try to schedule it with my barber and this has happened two months in a row where he was uh busy the entire week that I wanted to get it cut.

And so I had to schedule it the next week. And inevitably, there is a period of my time where for non-sun and non-fitness reasons, I'm just wearing a hat all day. If I'm on Zoom calls at work, and it's just like the hair is too long for me to do anything reasonable with it. So it just becomes hat time. Thanks to Nutrafol for supporting Quick Question. Nutrafol is physician formulated to be 100% drug-free. They use natural medical grade botanicals in consistently effective dosages.

Nutrafol can help you grow thicker, healthier hair, and you can support our show by going to Nutrafol.com and entering the promo code QQ to save $15 off your first month subscription. We want to thank NextEvo for supporting Quick Question, new great sponsor alert. NextEvo all natural products are backed by more scientific studies than any other CBD brand. Try NextEvo Naturals capsules, gummies, yum, mints, and topical creams, clinically proven to be better absorbed by your body. Get 25% off your first order of $40 or more at NextEvo.com with promo code QQ. Today's episode is sponsored by PayPal Honey.

That's right. It has a new name, ladies and gentlemen. It's PayPal Honey. These days, it feels like online shopping is the only shopping we really do. That's where Honey comes in. Honey is the free shopping tool that scours the internet for promo codes and applies the best one it finds to your cart. Get Honey for free at joinhoney.com slash QQ. There are capitalist underpinnings that I don't understand where like suddenly there's a shortage of stuff or all of a sudden this one business has a ton of customers and they don't get it.

Like that happens with home improvement right now where you just can't get somebody to come to your house but it feels to me that the same thing has happened with barbers lately where like i just can't get an appointment yeah um like everyone suddenly is all getting their hair cut at once and so i i did a new thing which is i now have two barbers oh so if one is full up the other one still i have somebody waiting in the wings who still knows what i want and like how to cut my hair i actually think my solution needs to be uh schedule it well in advance like when i get my next haircut i should schedule like hey, a month from today, let's just put another one on the books around the same time.

Yeah. But it's, I mean, you don't know what your day, how your day is going to shake out a month in advance. Do you? That's true. I don't. And you don't want to build, you don't have to like wake up one morning and be like, Oh, I got to build my day around this haircut.

You did a haircut should be your finished work early. And you're like, ah, I got a little bit of extra time. I should go get a quick number three on the sides. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's generally for me like, oh, it's, uh, it's starting to get a little bit long here. I'm like one or two days away from this looking bad. I better schedule it now.

And they're like, hey, we can't see you for nine days. Oh, oh no. What a completely unpredictable situation. There's a very funny thing that happened in uh we use a website called back then for all of our photos of our children um it's just storage it's a photo share uh sharing and also storage and if you look back you're like my children love to look back at pictures of themselves and like see the story of their own lives for obvious reasons. And it's real funny when they get to the pandemic pictures because I was cutting Ronan's hair for so long. And I even cut Gilly's at one point.

And the haircuts are so bad throughout the pandemic of my children that I'm like, oh, man, I really made you suffer through that. My son gave Collen a picture of himself for mother's day and i'm like oh i fucked this picture up for sure like this is a picture that will live on her on her desk forever and it's like every time i see it i'm like nah we should have done better we should have gotten a better haircut because this is not it's not doing it and i get kind of like a bowl cut for a little while unintentionally i just don't know how to cut hair and at the end i was like and now we have a straight across the front bowl cut basically i do think that's one of those things that will be very funny eventually but i i also acknowledge that we're not there yet like when we it's still

fresh the first family christmas together where we all took a picture and we were wearing masks at the time i was like this is going to be such a funny time capsule and i looked at it recently and i'm like nope very upsetting deeply traumatic i remember being very sad that day this sucks maybe maybe five more years i don't know there when my daughter was born i had her in the hospital my wife was asleep and I was just really coddling her because she was crying and I walked past the bathroom mirror of the little room that we're staying in and I see that I we had to wear masks the entire time this was April of 2020 so like the height of the terror where no one really knew what this thing was yet

and no one knew if we were allowed to go outside or what so I'm wearing a mask and holding my daughter and i walk past amir and i'm like oh i should capture this moment she will be very interested to hear about the pandemic and like what that was like like maybe she'll see this picture someday be like why were you wearing a mask and i'd be like ah let me tell you about this time and you know at this point in time i'm thinking no that will just be her life forever. The mask will not seem strange. The mask will be like, yeah, of course you weren't wearing a mask. You were in a hospital with a bunch of other people indoors.

Yeah. Do you remember at the start of the pandemic when I was wearing suits every day as a bit? Yes. I don't feel great about that. Whenever my phone is like, hey, here's just like a we made a slideshow of portraits and i see me wearing a suit i'm like oh man somebody somebody helped that guy whoa we were all brand new it was like being a teenager again you're like i gotta negotiate this world i gotta figure out how i fit in i definitely thought at the time like

wouldn't it be funny if i was wearing a suit during the pandemic walking my dogs i need to be outside every day to walk my dog so wouldn't it be funny the guy who puts on a suit and maybe even a little inspiring and i was like no man you should have just realized pretty early on this isn't about you get in some fucking sweats get real comfortable real quick i i run past a house every day that at the beginning of the pandemic they put out their christmas decorations with matt so like they had an inflatable bear but it's clearly like a santa type bear and they put a little mask on it just as like a hey we're all in this together kind of thing. Let's just here, look at something nice. Look at something cute.

The bear is still out. At this point, I'm like, you're going to have to pull the trigger and just take that thing down. I know it's going to be sad for you for a moment. There might be somebody driving by occasionally and be like, oh man, they took the bear down. It's too long. The bear is now sun-soaked. It's already in certain areas of it

that are getting really pale. Inflatable, you said? Yeah. This has got to be cosper-hootive too. What are you using to inflate that thing? It's electricity. Some kind of motor? Yeah.

I don't know. It's got a little fan attached to it. They have the lights out. They don't turn the lights on anymore, but they have the bear out and it was nice at first because you know it was it was the beginning of the season and it was like weird time for christmas decorations but everyone was like i get what you're doing and then christmas rolled around and they didn't have to do anything and it was like oh all right you made it and then

christmas rolled around again at this point it's the middle of summer again and i'm like you just just pull it i mean pull the plug take it off life support well soren is interesting that we were talking about uh kids back there uh quick question well let me just look in the rearview mirror oh yeah there it is there's us talking about kids okay go ahead yeah uh would you let me babysit your kids yeah of course oh really oh in a heartbeat yeah oh that's very nice to hear i uh did my my first adventure in what i would describe as babysitting like i've hung out solo with um my nephew but he's 10 and we've just had like dude days essentially at the beach or at chili's or whatever and i think i've i've sort of been around the older nieces and nephews when uh my oldest brother and sister-in-law

when they were off at like parent-teacher conferences where i'm mostly just like sitting around for a couple hours while fortnight is being played and coloring is happening and studying is happening yeah the parents have scheduled what the kids will be doing and you just show up to monitor your it's a study hall yeah um but a couple of weeks ago my uh other brother and sister-in-law were in a bind and they had a wedding to go to and they're like hey if you're free or interested uh will you watch the five and two-year-old and like give them dinner and put them to sleep yes it was that kind of thing that uh i said yes immediately to and hanging up the phone i was like they wouldn't ask me to do

that if they didn't think i could so even if i maybe don't think i can i i gotta just ignore that voice and listen to their trust uh and it was great. It went super well. It was very fun. It was really just, I think I'm, I was, it was easy because there's plenty of stuff to do and also it's very exciting

for them for me to be there. This is a new thing and they know it's a new thing and they're not like surprised by it. It's like, oh, you're going to have a fun night with uncle. And I brought a new game. I brought, they didn't have Don't Break with uncle and uh i brought uh a new game i brought they didn't

have don't break the ice so i brought that and that was a hit do they still make that game or do you have it from like the 90s oh they still make that game and i have a 90s version of uh don't wake daddy that that came with my beach house that is fully broken but they still like it anyway okay we played don't break the ice and they were like can uncle can you set this up again i was like buddy i will set this up 10 000 fucking times tonight where if this is gonna keep you occupied until it's bedtime then yeah there's no shortage of how many times i'm gonna set this game up now did the two-year-old ruin the game no not at not at all. Great.

Yeah. They're both, they're really good with each other. We played games and had a big dance party. They really like picking songs with the Amazon robot that lives in all of our houses, the smart speakers. That's a fun game for them to just request songs and then dance and do fun tricks. And before we know it, it's time to eat. Before we know it, it's time to wind down with Sesame Street, which still fucking rules so hard. And then it was story time for bedtime.

And this was, my brother prepped me for this. It was like the two-year-old, she is going to, you're going to read a couple of books to two of them. Then go off solo with the two-year-old. And then go back to the five-year-old, she is going to, you're going to read a couple of books to two of them, then go off solo with the two-year-old, and then go back to the five-year-old and read books to him. And the two-year-old is going to want to negotiate. And you just read however many you want. Read two books. Say you're going to do two books.

And I was prepared. Like, they do this every night. I know what I'm getting into. And I was like, all right, it's time for a story. And she pulls out five books. I said, let's do one book. She said, five books. I said, let's do two books.

And she said, how about four books? All right. Why don't we do three books? So, Soren, we did six books. Yeah, I know. I know how this goes. i don't know how that happened that was a that was a real real surprise to me i thought i thought i'd got us down to three and then here i was reading my sixth book let me ask you a question did you did you just like fire

straight from one into two or did you give a little preamble before even number two where you're like now this is the second to last book that we're going to be doing uh no i thought that the the i went straight from one to two but i i thought my strategy was sound because she when she laid out five books because she opened it opened it with five yeah she laid out five and i said one uh and then when i got to two i was like i picked one of the books i was like so we're gonna do two and i'm picking one of them so you just have to pick the other one because i wanted her to feel like oh my choices like it's not just the amount of choices it's like the the quality of choices i really need to make a decision soon. Uh, because uncle is, is clearly a shrewd negotiator and surely he won't be here for 40 minutes reading literally until the second I'm asleep.

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it's like it's just her being in control so if we're like we're gonna stop doing this and start doing something else she's like one minute and we're like okay one minute it is and then you get to the end of that one minute and guaranteed she's gonna go one minute and is. And then you get to the end of that one minute and guaranteed she's going to go one minute. And you got to be like, no, we gave you the minute. And then there's a little fight.

Like there's a little tussle where she's like, no, one minute. We're like, no, we gave you the minute. The minute's over. And occasionally we cave and we're like, all right, just one more minute. That's so, what an easy offer. A minute is so short. You know that. She doesn't know. Yeah. And sometimes it doesn't an easy offer a minute is so short you know that she doesn't know yeah and

sometimes it doesn't have to be a minute i mean sometimes like i get to 30 seconds i'm like i'm done with this yeah we're done with it we're done you had your minute um but uh she just they they like contest everything it's every single thing that you try to do they contest it and then so you just have to kind of like pick your battles along the way. Yeah. I have a question about the five-year-old. Okay. Did he do some substitute teacher type of shit?

Was he like, oh, before we go to bed, we always get chocolate chip pancakes. Are you going to make those? Not a single bit. I think he might have been really prepped by his parents to help me. He was on, like, super good big brother mode and, like, making sure she brushed her teeth, making sure if they were going to both get something, like, if they're both going to get a story or both going to get an episode of the shows they liked, she was going to be able to go first. He was very, very much like...

I don't want to use her name. I don't know if I've used her name before. But let's just say Skeletor. He's like, Skeletor, you get to go. Make sure Skeletor gets her snack. Make sure Skeletor gets this. I think he was just psyched to have a job going into this where it was like, yeah,

oh, Uncle and i are gonna help babysit tonight right we're gonna hang out yeah but we gotta we gotta babysit this kid yeah uh that's what a great peacekeeper what a good older brother yeah it was super great super fun uh i i don't think i could do it often because i would have fully read a thousand books if asked to. And also when I put everyone to bed, I like a lunatic, uh, did nothing. They were still hours before the parents would get there because they were at a wedding and they were like out having fun.

And I was like, all right, I, I know I've been here before and I've watched movies with them when the kids were asleep but i don't know i don't want to take any chances waking them up so i just sat in total silence and darkness downstairs uh doing like three weeks of archived crossword puzzles on my phone and and just like waiting in the dark for hours because i didn't want to run any risks of right you don't want noise happening and waking them up yeah i that's not crazy i think that's pretty normal i think there's a lot of parents who still do that where they're like it doesn't seem sustainable because like you

put the kids down and it's 8 30 it's like well i i have to eat dinner now well you can see how like parents get locked into like a weird trap they paint themselves into a corner where they will put the kids down and they're like and i don't they just went down i don't want to wake them up so i'm going to be very quiet and then the child gets used to no noise at all and so the minute that you're like try to break that mold you're like well i mean i could watch something now it's a different noise that they're not used to whereas if like right from the jump if you're like they go down there's gonna be sound there's gonna be sound and for the first two weeks this child might wake up a couple times but uh after that they'll just get used to to the fact that

there's ambient noise while they're sleeping and they will sleep through it but it's you can't like anticipate that in the moment yeah i did realize i like i put them both down and i went i got downstairs and i was like okay now i just have to wait uh two and a half hours for the parents to get home and then i can oh i need i've needed to go to the bathroom for quite a while i should do that actually that's a real thing that i have been putting off and i haven't been thinking about yeah i'm it is it's a terrifying moment to be in charge of somebody else's children yes um and i think obviously i have no context for it but a terrifying moment to be in charge of somebody else's children when you're not used to being in charge of children at all oh you're like yeah there are

things that i'm not even i'm sure there are things i'm not even considering that i'm supposed to be doing right now yeah um but i will say that the nice thing about being in charge of somebody else's children is that kids generally are a different child with brain with somebody new and not totally new i mean you're an uncle but the kids are not the same kids with their parents that they are for a teacher or something like that your kids are way better for other people than they are for you because they know that they can lean on you emotionally and that like they're going to test some limits and stuff because they want to and they need to but they won't do that with somebody new they'll kind of put all that on pause and be a different kid like there are kids

who the parents will say oh my child doesn't nap he just won't do it and then the kid goes to preschool and naps every single day and the parent is like mother fucker i do in addition to being it being like incredibly fun and uh a thing i'm legitimately very a service i'm very happy that i got to to provide for them to give them a night out uh i it also gave me a tremendous confidence boost where it just so happened that the day after I was babysitting, my neighbor called me and he was in a real bind and could I watch his dog for a couple of days and I was like, buddy, I can do fucking

anything. You got me just the right time. And it was very easy. I didn't have to like the dog didn't have to mingle with Jackson ever. I just went up to this guy's place and walked the dog a few times a day. And we had a grand old time. Uh, we went on very long walks and had a blast. And now the dog comes up to my porch and says hi to me every day. And, uh, it's buddy, I gotta tell you, it's, it's,

we're too far into this now for me to reveal that I don't know this dog's name and I just started calling it Daenerys immediately. My neighbor, I'm sure, told me in person once what her name was. I hope that this is a chocolate lab and you've just... No, I mean, it's like a five-year-old beagle.

It doesn't look anything like Daenerys. I just knew that it was a girl. In all of the text exchange that I had with this guy, her name was never used. And I just immediately was like, all right, Daenerys or Dany. And now at this point, I am too embarrassed. I have to stop myself from saying that every time I see her. Right. Because I'm sure that's not her name.

That would be the greatest coincidence of all time if it was and i i feel like if i started calling her daenerys it would shoot my chances if ever be granted any responsibility for her ever again that my neighbor would be like that's not her fuck i told you her name and i would be like oh i forgot and then he would be like it's on her collar what's the matter with you it's on her collar like all dogs you i'm yeah i didn't think to check and i thought it would be safer if i just uh brainwashed her with a new name really sorry if that's made your life difficult at all it's as far as like just shots in the dark i think that's a pretty intelligent choice

because you got a girl dog five years ago i think yeah and yeah chances are and then also you've picked a car you've picked a character from television who has like six names like if this dog could be named uh callie and you could still call it nares yeah like because lisi like lisa like any there's so many names that this dog can have and you could still call it Daenerys. Yeah, that's true. Because Lysi, like Lisa, there's so many names that this dog can have and you're still within bounds to call her Daenerys. Yeah. I feel like that's a good choice.

She eventually warmed up to it. It was startling for her at first. Yeah, she was never responding to it in the beginning. Thank God you stuck to your guns then Yeah, she was never, she was never responding to it in the beginning. Thank you. Thank God you stuck to your guns then and didn't just like pick a bunch of names and see what she responded to. I do. It will be humiliating. I don't, I don't think I could ever ask him to do the same for me and take care of Jackson because his dog is the easiest dog in the world.

And he's like, she stays in a crate. She likes the crate. Wake her up, take her for a walk, give her a snack, put easiest dog in the world and he's like she stays in a crate she likes the crate wake her up take her for a walk give her a snack put her back in the crate at the end of the night take her for a walk give her her dinner put her back in the crate and if you ever need anything for Jackson let me know I'm like no he likes a little bit of hot water mixed in with his dry food in the morning and I usually take him on six walks a day and even if I'm not walking with him I like to sit with him next to me on the couch. He likes to be on the porch.

I move his bed around so it's always in the sun on the porch. You know what? I'm just going to not go on trips. I'm just going to hang out with my dog. Yeah, it's having a pet now. I realized like I had a lot of indulgences that I curved with my children where I was like, I know that this is bad in the long run. I've got to set a precedent early on with our routine and everything.

So I'm not I'm not giving them that two hour bedtime window where I'm like, and now we do this. Now we brush our teeth and now we read another book and now we have some hot chocolate, like any of that stuff. Like you kind of want to do with your kid initially because it's fun for them. But I have all those indulgences with my cat. Like because I don't care. And so like the cat is now the cat doesn't eat unless you're petting it at the same time. So you got to be in the room with it, giving it some pets. And it's not going to eat while you're giving it the pets.

Like while it's getting the pets, it's putting its tail up and arching its back like make sure don't miss this spot hey oh you forgot it right here um but uh then you like take your hand away for a second it's like yeah now i'll get a few bites in my mouth okay go back to petting go back yeah yeah it's just like it's untenable but i don't care it's it's so easy to make pets happy, and it makes me feel very good. And I'll cook him rice and give him a thousand pets and let him just hang out with me as I move from couch to kitchen to porch and do my job all day. Because I don't know. There was a moment when we were getting this podcast ready where whatever reason, your microphone or your headphones weren't working. And you couldn't hear us, but we could hear you. And you said to your dog, Jackson, please get on the couch.

And you hear him go, roof. And you're like, and you said, thank you. And he went, roof. And I was like, they just, they're just talking to each other. I did. You're being generous in that description. I was losing my cool a little bit just they're just talking to each other i did you're being generous in that description i i i was losing my cool a little bit because it's uh it continues to be a hundred degrees and i was

dealing with uh sound issues with my microphone and my headphones and uh every time uh our sound engineer and editor super producer gabe hardest would call me it would it calls through my computer at the same time that it calls through my phone yes and so i'm getting that noise doubled and then one time when i was on the phone with gabe troubleshooting this someone else some spam number was calling me and jackson starts barking and i'm like not not you too i need i need i need Not you two. I need something to cooperate with me right now. So I raised my voice at him. And then I'm sure some part of me knew, oh, you're on the phone and into a microphone with people right now. So there's a chance someone can hear you. So be on your best behavior, Daniel.

It's interesting because it didn't come across that way. It came across like you raised your voice with him and then it sounded like you immediately were like, I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry, bud. Thank you. Thank you for doing that. I do that with my children in public where they're doing something that they should be doing. Or like my son is doing something that we talked about a million times. And like, I know he's better than that. so like i'll go hard at him i'll be like

ronan what are you doing like in a way that seems if you're not uh if you don't have the context of our every days like if you're just somebody passing by and you see this a child doing nothing and then a dad being like what are you doing put your shoes on you'd be like Jesus that dad is tough on that kid but and so like I catch myself in public or my backyard I'm like I don't want the neighbors hearing this it does sound like a terrible person I found my cheat that I found because this happened once before with Jackson being loud while I was doing a podcast with uh our, our friends, Michael Swayman, Abe Epperson. And he was barking at the delivery person. And, uh, I,

I do what I usually do when he barks, which is Jackson. Thank you for letting me know that he's here. Good job. That's what I want you to do. Thank you. That's enough. And Michael was like, that's a really good strategy. You're not like yelling at him and it doesn't make him sound like he's doing anything wrong. And I want to be clear, these are words Jackson doesn't understand.

I'm using the tone of yelling. You could say anything, but if you say it with the right voice and making a face, then he's gonna feel bad. He doesn't think I'm thanking him for shit. Thank you. Thank you. I got it.

Jackson's front legs fold and he turns, twists just his lower body down onto the ground to be like, I'm as low as I can be. I'm so sorry. Good job. You're protecting us. That's what I want you to do. Yeah.

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seconds. And by getting it, you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting this podcast. Get honey for free at joinhoney.com slash QQ. That's joinhoney.com slash QQ. Thanks to PayPal honey for sponsoring quick question. Thanks to PayPal Honey for sponsoring Quick Question. Well, I'm glad that you've gotten all this experience with, first of all, that you got to level up, like that you got to move from kids to a dog. Yes, thank you so much.

Yeah, because you don't want to start with dog. That's scary. No, absolutely not. Because they can get anything in their mouth. They can just pick stuff up off the street and just start chewing on it. The kids, you give them Legos, you give them whatever. They know what to do with their kids. They know, yeah.

But I'm surprised that you think I wouldn't let you babysit. You're an attentive person. Yeah. And that's really all you want from a babysitter. You want somebody who's like, oh, this is the job. I'm going to do my best job at it. Yeah. And that's it. I mean, even if you have somebody who's like oh this is the job i'm gonna do my best job at it yeah and that's it i mean even if you have somebody who's brand new to it all i think you still want somebody who as that's what i would always take over anything else is somebody who's

like well i will focus on this entirely yeah i guess it doesn't it doesn't bother you that that uh like i haven't changed it i hadn't changed a diaper and i and like like the idea of i i made a sandwich for the two-year-old and gave it to her and she looks at it and she goes that's too big like all right oh yes that's right your tiny mouth and your tiny body that's right i will cut i will make this smaller for you all right okay good though it's also probably because they have the the older brother is there and in those senses like i know that ronan knows gilly's routine he knows what she can and can't like if you gave her baby carrots you'd be like uh she won't eat that she can't she'll chew it for a little while and then she'll spit it all out and kind of a paste. That's excellent big brother stuff. But if he hears this podcast, he will know that he could completely manipulate me.

I'm ceding authority to him now if I ever watch your children. He would love that. And he would do a great job. He is such a rule follower just in his nature. Like he's, I mean, six months from now, he's ready to babysit. Honestly. Yeah. If, if I wouldn't have been, you know, if it wouldn't have been be an issue where the state would take away my child, my children, I would be like, yeah, Ronan, you're ready. You're ready to babysit. He loves the rules and he knows the system. And he's like, this is it. This is my opportunity to be in control. Excellent. be in control excellent oh well should we should we get into the show of ours come on that was the show i started mine with quick question oh i'm sorry i have a quick question for you the reason i'm being whiny about that is like i've brought nothing else so oh that's fine i have all right i have plenty for you um this is actually also related to children, but tangentially. Quick question, Dan.

Do you read a hard version of the newspaper? Not like it goes hard, like the paper version. I read the adult newspaper where they tell you the real shit. Yeah. That was forged in the school of hard knocks. Yeah. No, absolutely not. Okay.

We get a paper. We get a Los Angeles Times on Sunday, which means that we also get a comic section. And I don't know, when was the last time that you read Sunday comics? It's got to be like fucking middle school or something. Yeah. Long time ago. Yeah. Now, I've always thought of the comics in a newspaper as like the watering hole of the newspaper

because no matter what demographic you've got, everybody's going to have to go to the comics at some point. It's accessible for children but also for adults because sometimes they try and do topical things there. Sometimes it's very nuanced. Like there's satire in there about current events like doonesbury's always like that even the kids aren't necessarily getting that part um there's a lot of like stoicism and taoism and the peanuts like there's a lot of there's a

lot to be had from the comic section and also it's right next to horoscopes it's right next to the games like crossword sudoku so everybody at some some point is like at least cracking the comics and maybe like reading one while they're having cereal or whatever. I read them now because my children are interested in them. And I got to tell you, they suck so hard, like harder than you could imagine. Yeah. These are all syndicated comics. It's not just a Los Angeles thing. They're so unbelievably awful now.

And I don't think it's that I just grew out of them. I mean, Garfield has always been kind of like a very milquetoast, dumb comic. But Garfield's not in there anymore. There's a bunch of other comics that are, I would say, way worse than that. That feel like so lazy and half-assed and at the same time very desperate are they when you were mentioning like doonesbury and peanuts and whatnot are uh is that real are they still making those doonesbury is yes peanuts is not but peanuts gets recycled occasionally uh yeah is that guy fucking dead or what right charles schultz i think he's gone yeah all right but he i think that they're still i don't think i don't i can't tell i don't think they're doing new peanuts but i you know these

don't look like recycles either um uh or at least i'm not recognizing them as that, but there's like, so there's, um, the pearls before swine is one of them that like, uh, there's a few other ones. There's one that's like a, that's really trying hard to be the far side. It's usually a single panel. And then stuff like Marmaduke is still in there or Blondie is still in there.

And everything still looks like the 1950s in those comics and the jokes though are it's clear that like somebody has a cell phone in it or something like that so i guess people are still making those and boy man the comics are so rough it's like if you i'm trying to think of like even before you had a column and you were like really proud of what you would create in a week, like at school, if you had to do something regularly and you're like, well, what am I going to do this week?

And you just start, you just kind of like start phoning it in. You'd be like, well, in this one, I'm going to make a, I'm going to make a joke about negative space. So for three of my four panels will just be blank.

And then my last panel will be inside baseball joke about writing comics. Like you start trying that kind of stuff. And that's what the comics are now. It's so bad. That's excellent. Why do you... I guess a follow-up question is why do you... You read the newspaper every week?

No, I don't. But Colleen does. She's not on social media or anything. She's not getting it on the internet. So she's catching up on her news every single night. The kids are asleep. She's done with her work. She will go have a little cereal in the kitchen, and she will just read the paper.

Huh. That seems really pleasant yeah it feels like it's from a different time doesn't it yeah she actually reads it by the lantern that's filled with whale blubber that we keep good yeah yeah but it's it's a uh it's definitely the only part that I read is the comics. And while reading it, every single time I'm reading it, I groan at the end and Ronan goes, what? And I'm like, well, here. And then I'm trying to explain to him, like dissecting the bird to find the song.

Like, here's what this is and here's what they're trying to do and here's why it's not working. And he's like, okay, moving on. It's why it's not working and he's like okay moving on it seems like it would be a very interesting thing to study and I'm basing that entirely off of our friend Jamie Loftus' podcast about the Kathy comic strip comic strip, ACKcast

because I I know nothing about Sunday newspaper comics. Like, truly nothing. I remember Farside and laughing that. I'm aware of, like, the existence of Marmaduke, Garfield, Heathcliff, Blondie, Doonesbury, Dilbert. That's still there, by the way.

All the major hits. Oh, good. Good. All those major hits oh good good all those major hits but like I don't I don't really know I guess I'm the most familiar with with Charlie Brown there was always a very simple straightforward

set up and punch line within that show that was largely about Charlie Brown being a fucking loser who all of his friends torture and abuse. Yeah. But, like, in general, I don't know anything about these comics beyond broad strokes.

So, like, learning about the Kathy comic strip for really the first time, before this podcast, if you had to put a gun to my head and ask me about Kathy, which a lot of people, to be fair, have done. kathy which a lot of people to be fair have done uh i would mostly go from like oh i remember a 30 rock joke about kathy where it was described as kathy saying chocolate chocolate chocolate and that feels like a fair enough catch-all for that comic strip like i didn't know that that it was like year-long adventures where she had the same off again, on again, boyfriend. And then she eventually married and there was like workplace disputes and she had this abusive boss. Like I, it's fascinating to me because as a,

a complete outsider, I assume comics artists are just like, all right, what's a two panel thing that my stupid character can get into today? What can, you know, the Hager the Horrible, what dumb caveman thing or Viking thing, whatever, can he do in two panels this week? It hadn't occurred to me that they were like, and of course they are,

building long narratives two or three strips at a time across literal decades. I really assumed it was just going to be like one joke a week that i write uh what can the family circus get into now all right they uh they walk around in a park all right let me just draw that and then next week starting from scratch again they walk around in a zoo and i write four zoo jokes in each thing so mike davis has talked openly about how he created garfield and he said that it's it is similar to that where he's like after a while he got it was so locked in that he takes one week a month where and during that week he will just

fire off like 14 comics it'll just be like all right and then this and then john probably comes in he's let's see he's hung up on the vet, but Garfield's like, Garfield's not having it. And like, and he just like that, he just spends a week writing and then that's it. And then he's done. And he's just like, doesn't finish it. We almost tried to do that with After Hours once

when we got that show pretty locked in, where it was like, you know, if we just work really hard filming for a week, we don't have to do these for a fucking year. We could just bang these out if nobody sleeps for a monday to monday we could get a lot of these done um so i guess part of the problem is also that i'm reading calvin and hobbes with my son so i have a family friend aaron marsh who sent ronan um every single like there's like three

giant hardbound ball volumes. Each one of these weighs about 20 pounds of all of the work of Calvin and Hobbes, like from the start to the end and Ronan loves it. He don't understand a single joke in it, but he loves the idea of a, like a panel starts, you're presented with a concept,

then you get this turn, then there's like something else that happens. And finally there's a payoff. And sometimes I'll check in with him. I'll be like something else that happens and finally there's a payoff and sometimes i'll check in with him i'll be like did you understand what happened there and occasionally he does but a lot of times he has no idea but he just likes the he likes calvin he likes the idea of it that there's this six-year-old and every single one of them this isn't like a highlights or best of calvin and hobbs this is every single calvin and hobbs they ever made or bill watterson ever made. And so as I'm reading it,

they all hit. Like they're all, not all of them are as good as other ones, but like even the lowest one is so good. It's still like it's clearly, you put a lot of thought into it, and in the design of everything, like how Calvin's looking at his mom as he's filling up a water balloon, like that kind of stuff,

it's all very funny and good. There's clear choices every turn and then i turn around open up the los angeles times and i'm reading pearls before swine and they're gonna do it's just like this mouse with no shading and a pig talking to a pig about cancel culture and i'm like what the fuck is this what happened oh i'll have to check it out I guess I wouldn't but we were talking about with Kathy that's what

Bill Watterson did really well was that he would have these one offs or these like bottle I don't know what you call a bottle panel or like a bottle comic but then he also will have ones where like and now Calvin and his family in July he'd do one where he'd be like now Calvin and his family are going to this lake

for a camping trip and you're gonna get six panels of them just being there and so it doesn't matter if you come in in the middle of it because you're like oh okay I guess Calvin's camping but if you bother to go through all of them together you're like oh there's like a really cohesive story here yeah it's good

so good i guess i should i should show more respect for comics artists and not just assuming that you're doing act chocolate chocolate chocolate act well i have to wonder what for 14 years well yeah like far side that was clearly like a lot of thought went into all some of those like are still just thinking about them make me laugh so hard and it's one panel um but i i just have to wonder what happened like i i'm thinking about what it means to be an a comic artist now so you're drawing and you're writing at the same time so that's clearly two skill sets that have to go together for this and are they just paying peanuts and that's why you just have like these people who are like i'm not getting paid enough to care about this i don't know because that because because dilbert's dad seems like he's uh impossibly wealthy in a way that's very infuriating

he does it feels like yeah i wonder if that's because they branched out into commercialism like you can get like a a stress ball of dilbert and stuff like that but it it is like dilbert i will say unfortunately is one of the ones that like you can count on to at least understand structure like you understand no like it's doing it it's always going to do the same type of joke but the joke is always going to be like this the catch-22 of corporate america and like and you just it devolves and devolves and devolves into like how is this company still around and then you're like by the end you're like yeah that's a that's a fine comic i get it i get what he's doing and so it's that's a little frustrating because i uh dilvers dad is just such a prick. He's the worst, yeah. But when Ronan will ask me to read them, there's always certain – first of all, he has no interest in Doonesbury.

He's like, no. I've learned my lesson. I got burned by Doonesbury. But we'll get to other ones and he'll just be like, Leo or something like that. And he'll be like, let's read this one. And I'm like, I know this one always sucks this one always is a weird one where like nothing happens nothing happens it's like a parent sitting there watching tv a child walks by with a

stuffed rabbit and then there's nothing against patient parent watching tv and they hear a noise and then all of a sudden this rabbit is giant and the kid is wearing science goggles i guess and you're like what that's not a story what did i just witness um but i will say also that it got me really interested in sudoku again because i'm just sitting there looking at it constantly and fiddling with it and i got really fucking good at sudoku by myself dan really i don't think i was ever good at sudoku i don't think i don't think i was ever into it um i there are like little tricks that i realized along the way it's like i guess that the rewardingness the rewarding feeling you would get from learning something on your own where there are tricks that i've discovered along the

way where i'm like oh i'm at a point now where I will never get stuck again in one of these. I know exactly what to do and what matters. And there's like no one to share that with. I can't be like, don't go to Colleen and force an impossible one in her face and be like, look, it says impossible on the side, but it's done. Yeah. yeah i've been consumed with uh two major games that i play or like two genres of games that i play every day that take up my my mornings before the rest of the world wakes up one of them is like this entire slew of wordle and wordle adjacent games i was talking to a bunch of your friends about it uh your birthday weekend where there's like Wordle is a very popular guess this word in, in guess this five letter word in six guesses game. There's also hurdle guess the guess the

song, uh, one second at a time. Like if you can get it in one second, get it. If not skipped the second, second there's, uh, I think it's called framed where you have one frame of movie. There's another one called actoral, even though it should be actoral. And that's where you have one frame of movie there's another one called actoral even though it should be actoral and that's where you get like someone's imdb filmography but the letters in every movie are just x's so all you have is like oh my god spaced out x's the year the movie came out the genre it was and how well it like what its imdb score is and then your buddy joe chandler sent me moviedle which they condense a whole movie into one second and they screen the second very quickly so i go through all of these my my huge rolodex every single fucking day and it was taking up most of my

mental energy in the morning and then the new New York times where I do the crossword, I guess I play three games. I do the crossword every day and I've been doing, uh, spelling bee, which is like a jumble. You play spelling bee at all? No,

you just get a bunch of letters. Uh, and you have to see however many words you can make in a day based on those letters. And they have to be a real word and they have to include the center letter in every word that you use and they have to be minimum four letters.

That was a game that I'd been playing idly for so long just like picking it up every once in a while and they recently, like two or three weeks ago, added stats. They're now keeping track of how I'm doing.

Oh. And it's destroyed me because the, I don't think there's like a maximum number of words that they will like definitively say, but they will say like, this is the most you can get on this words is 198 points or 200 points or 67 points whatever it is that's there they've decided like it's this is where the best the best players get the highest amount of words and like the

rankings are nice amazing great let me see let me pull it up oh so it's beginner good start moving up good solid nice great amazing and if you get what they've determined uh the highest score is they call you genius so now my app keeps track of how many times i've been a genius and it's throttled my productivity absolutely destroyed me you see you've been a genius a few times yes that's what a tough life that is I've been a genius looking at last week, 11 of 18. Oh, my God, Daniel. Yeah. See, the other games you were describing about movies and IMDb pages and stuff, I was like, I feel like Daniel's Tyler Durden created this while he was sleeping.

This seems like a game that's exclusively designed for you. But this other one, I'm amazed that you're destroying like that. Everything's got at least three letters, I assume. At least four letters. At least four letters. Wow. Yeah. And you're... You know a lot of words, buddy. There's seven letters, and the center letter

has to be used in every word that you spell. Is there any consequence for just, like, guessing? Like, being like, what are these four letters together? There's no consequence. No, it'll just say that's not a word. It's not like you can guess infinite amount of times and stumble on words that you didn't

know were words. I've certainly done that where I'm like, maybe dower is a word. I'm only saying that because it's in front of me. I knew that dower was a word. But it's a d-o- I knew that dour was a word. But it's a... D-O-U-R is kind of a strange word

that you don't think about often. And I've certainly been in situations where I was like, let me just... This kind of sounds like a word, and I've been right. And there's no honor in that, but they don't keep track of honor. Keep track of genius.

So you don't also see how many attempts you've made in each one no thank god i mean some pieces are falling into place for me there's no one to pull me aside and and be like hey you you uh you found a round that was a that was a great one you got a lot of letters off that one and then you played it six more times. Did you just keep forgetting that you found it? Yes, I did. Or maybe I thought you forgot. I had a game that was similar to that on my phone,

which was basically a crossword type of thing. But it gave you a certain number of letters as they were associated with one another in a big crisscross fashion. And then you had to it gave you a certain number of letters as they were like associated with one another in a big crisscross fashion and then you had to just add it be you had a jumble of words at the bottom and from those like seven letters sorry not words seven letters at the bottom you're like oh i could make winter out of this and winter fits up there and then it would just auto populate once you made winter and like so it was that kind of thing where i was also then realized in playing the game that there was a clock at the top and it was the end of the game for me.

I couldn't play it anymore because I was obsessed with the time and getting this done in a certain amount of time. And so I didn't focus on the game at all. It was only me missing the clock over and over again. Man, I did that. This is certainly asshole behavior of me. I did that. This is certainly asshole behavior of me. But we talked about doing the crossword in the very early days of this podcast and how fast I like to be on the Monday puzzle and try to get that as fast as possible. And someone started DMing me on Twitter with no other context, just their Monday crossword puzzle score, their time. And I

would reply back with my faster time. And I did that every single Monday without fail. This was their entire relationship with me. It was like, how did I do this week? And I'm like, sorry, bitch. Meet you by a minute and a half. Wake up earlier. And then he eventually

just stopped doing it did you feel anything no i was like good either find a lesser opponent or better yet stop it this game is not for you yeah shout out to that person that was a perfectly sweet interaction to have with me uh all right well i think we can end the show here yeah the show is called quick question but you knew that already we are recorded edited and produced by the irreplaceable gabe harder i haven't it's been a while since we've checked on his website. Gabe, do you have a website yet? Actually, yeah.

I just finished a website. Gasp. Gasp. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's not my website. Son of a... But I built a really cool website. Actually, I built a website for my mom,

who's an author who just had her book published. Whoa. Excellent. what is this website? What's the website? So the website is KateAnger.com, spelled like anger. It's Kate, A-N-G-E-R.com. Nancy Turner loves it. All the links to pre-order it right now

or to get it, the Shinnery, a novel. Wow, by Kate. And she's going with Angier? Angier. Angier. Sure. Because Kate Anger is pretty cool. It's a pretty cool name.

Yeah. The Shinnery is inspired by an actual 19th century honor killing in Stonewall County, Texas. Wow. A story of coming age, betrayal, and revenge. The Shinnery is inspired by the author's family history. Holy snaky uh but yeah i'm working on my website too so i'll let you guys know wow me too but uh could you just mark this and and cut all this just i'm worried about time we try to keep the podcast super tight you know

everyone get your copy of the shinnery at kateanger.com. Kate. Anger. Anger. Well, that's pretty cool. Do we have to do all the other stuff? Can't we just end it? No, let's end it there.

Yeah. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. 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 favourite? Who did you get?

When will I be remembered? Was it afterwards? Where did all the good things go? Oh forget it, I'm sorry, 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 on it new