Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Ep 35 - How to Properly Field Dress and Skin a Lean-to

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

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to use, and you get your cash back through PayPal or check. The idea is simple. Stores pay Rakuten for semi-mum shoppers, and Rakuten shares the money with you as cash back. Download the free Rakuten app and never miss a deal. Or go to rakuten.ca to start giving the most bang for your buck. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, an advice podcast where two friends vow to answer all of life's questions each week until one of them loses steam. I am speaking of Daniel O'Brien, writer for Last Week Tonight and author of the book How to Fight Presidents, joined as always by Soren Bui. Soren, what's up?

Hey, what's going on? I really like that you said that one of us might just give up on this at some point as opposed to something catastrophic might happen. No, and I don't even mean like one of us will give up on the podcast. I mean the podcast generally ends where like, I don't know if eagle-eared listeners can tell when I start texting towards the end of an episode or get distracted by a puzzle or something. But it happens. It happens right around the time that Soren reminds us that it's time to leave. There is a time I can remember back when we would have meetings together when we worked at the same job and you always had your laptop in front of you. It always looked like you were doing a lot of work until you would go,

fuck shit. And it meant that whatever Jumpman game you were playing you fell into a pit somewhere i was either playing city jumper or um a version of tetris called tetra laps oh yeah you got us all hooked on tetra laps tetra laps fucking rules uh and i've you know obviously had some time to myself recently, as we all have. And I've beaten Tetralapse a few times over now. Okay. And I can't decide if it's going to be important to me what my score is. Because Tetralapse, the way that it works is it's up to 20 levels, and then you stop.

You can get a better score. And in the past, I've just been just trying to finish it. And now it's like, it's like you run a marathon and it's like, do I want to be a person who has completed a marathon or do I want to like beat my time now? Do I want to get, do I want to be a guy with a PR? Yeah. And on the subject of marathons, I don't. But this Tetris thing, I might go for a PR on Tetris.

Okay. I completed the game Red Dead Redemption 2, which is, as the Soaricide Squad who listens to the show will know. And I still go back to it occasionally to play it i don't know why there's nothing like there's nothing new for me to find there it's just i enjoy the feeling of it oh i thought that was one of those like big world games where you could just sort of if you don't follow the mission you could just just do whatever you want is that is it not that it is a lot of that but there's like little side missions i've done done all of those too. I mean, my first playthrough, I do this.

When I play a video game, I do a broad sweep the entire way through so I make sure I don't miss anything. Now, there are little things I could do that are just for me, like carry the night folk who are these zombie-type people to a KKK meeting and just see what happens. But I don't have anything new. The game isn't providing any new storylines for me you know what i think i'm i'm i'm googling now to see because i don't know you have ps4 right is

that your only thing yeah okay i don't know if firewatch is available on ps oh it is you should try firewatch okay you're uh it's a it's a mystery it's it's kind of like mist but a little bit more accessible i think you're in wyoming in like the the your your job is to be like stationed out there to look for for fires i guess uh it's 1989 and you have one person that you're talking to on the end of like a walkie talkie and just this big strange mystery unfolds while you're just out by yourself and it's like a beautiful game to look at too oh yeah that's right that's what i live for yeah um do you want to say hi to our listeners oh yeah sure that's my job now i gotta be better at this what i need is just like i want to be like a ed

mcmahon and you just like throw to me yeah and i and i can just come up with it do you want to try that okay let's do it again hey soren do you want to say hi to our listeners yeah our listeners who prefer to be called the query i for the straight reply oh i i think i like that one do you no okay maybe one of those ones that just hits you later they're like you warm to it straight reply do you want to attack that at all i didn't i so yeah we there's no quick in there by any means it's just the query i that's fine and then straight reply like i was also going for the answer like you'd had a gold a gold nugget when you did questicular answer yeah so i was just like hunting in that same vein and it's just oh no no that that that does work better than i thought it did just Just based on, because I live on the internet as much as I do, when I hear straight reply, I know it's a play on straight guy, but my brain has already connected straight reply and guy at that time. And reply guy has such a very specific connotation in my head that I didn't know if you were calling us you and I reply guys

no I see what you're saying and I wouldn't say that our show is necessarily for reply guys so I see why that's confusing and those are the they wouldn't call themselves reply guys this one's muddy I'm gonna do a better one next time

do you want to try it again just like right now no do you want to try it again just like right now let's just no okay um do you want to i've been trying to find like the best way to articulate what a reply guy is these are two very different things but in a test version of this episode of this podcast rather um you had me explain to you what a fuckboy was and why it was a bad thing uh that episode has never been released nor will it but i liked the spirit of that because terms are constantly emerging on the internet and people with varying levels of familiarity uh are trying to get up to speed on what they mean and reply guy is one of those things that like intellectually i know what it means as soon as i hear it but i don't know i i want to master the art of like how do i explain

to my parents what a reply guy is how do i explain to a stranger what a reply guy is in a succinct clear way and your people are in the same scientific field as we are yeah right how do you make the layman's understand right uh I feel like a reply guy is somebody who jumps into the replies of anything on Twitter to explain what already has been explained in the original post. I don't know if it's always contentious. I think that it's just somebody who either doesn't get the joke or jumps in to re-explain what has clearly already been said. Here's the most interesting thing about this to me is that you are not linking this specifically to responses to women. No.

That's by design? Yes. I think that the reply guy should always be gendered like that it's a very specifically a guy who does this but i don't think it's always he doesn't always do it to women it's particularly annoying when he does it to women because i think women have dealt with a lot more of that in just their everyday life that when they see that man online too it's like here we fucking go again but uh you see it in your own mentions you've got reply guys right yeah but i mean i i think when it uh the reason that i it in my head has special distinction for women maybe this will

say more about me is like when i when someone is in my mentions, either misunderstanding a joke or explaining a joke that they didn't need to explain or just doing something broadly unhelpful, I think, oh, you're a fucking idiot. And it stops there. Like, I don't need a new word for that for me personally i i thought reply guy was a specific twitter born uh evolution of guys who like to correct or undermine women on the internet but uh dictionary.com from yeah dictionary.com the the slang diverse uh section of internet dictionary.com jesus a reply guy is a term for a man who frequently comments on tweets or other social media posts in an annoying, condescending,

forward, or otherwise unsolicited manner, especially posts by women. It can also refer to a person who frequently and zealously responds to posts from famous people on Twitter. Oh, that's a different definition than I know. Yeah. Alright.

Well, we did that. Is that the show? Are're done i think let's say 12 minutes that feels good to me okay yeah um now let's get into the show actually oh again uh bacon is again not with us our cfo uh bacon is still out celebrating his recent engagement um we're all very happy for him we miss him and one day he will be back to this podcast we presume uh but certainly like give him kudos and congrats on twitter you can find him at make me bacon please please spelled pls well let's get into the show where we ask each other questions and try to get answers um so a quick question shoot um can you think of a uh what is in your mind the biggest missed opportunity in a television show mine is a reality show but yours doesn't have to be it could be any show that's ever happened whether it's you think like you thought a plot was going one way and it swerved and went into this other place, or you thought,

man, this cast is so great. They've assembled such an amazing team. Why has everyone been squandered? Or any other reason in the world for a TV show that really blew an opportunity. Yeah. Well, it seems like Baltimore should have had more lines in the wire. Jesus.

This is the main character after all. Oh no, I have one. I have one that's recent. It's just like the one that's top of mind for me. Did you watch the show The Witcher? Mm-mm. Oh, okay, great. I watched one. There's an amazing video that Bacon will put in the footnotes of our website

from The Witcher where Henry Cavill? Cavill? Yeah, Henry Cavill, I think. Cavill? Where he breaks down this incredible fight scene from one of the episodes where he just mows down a bunch of people and then fights this woman i don't know any of the characters or their names but i've never seen a better advertisement for a show than this behind the scenes breakdown of a fight scene just just

henry cavill uh just very articulately talking about the work that went into the fight choreography and then also seeing the fight choreography and just like not, not knowing a single other thing. I want to watch this show just based on this behind the scenes thing. Yeah. Okay. Do you know the scene I'm talking about? At least I do.

Yeah. It's a scene where it's like, it's what basically sends him on his journey. It's a, it's a woman that kind of falls in love with a little bit and then she betrays him and gives him no choice but to kill her i'm not spoiling much because that's very early on in it no yeah and like she dies in the behind in the in the clip i see it so it's fine yeah oh okay good yeah so she's she she holds a little girl hostage and he ends up killing the he can can't stand that, so he kills her.

He's one of those characters who is morally righteous. He's very grumpy. He doesn't like people, but he serves this very specific purpose in that world of he's a hero. He runs around killing monsters, so they stop destroying cities and hovels and things. Okay. cities and hovels and things okay so the premise is dan that they're two the worlds of like elves and dwarves and magic have collided with the worlds of humans and uh the humans quickly uh overpowered all of these uh these uh wizards and dwarves and elves and the kind of the magic world but they still have these this terrible contention with

monsters in that world and like they don't know how to beat something that's stronger than them and in the so what they've done is they've created a witcher which is somebody that they raised from birth to to use the most of their brain the most of their muscles and then they've also got the equivalent of sorcery steroids. They've been genetically modified. Basically they call them mutants in it, but it's all through spells and things like that. And he's one of these witchers who's cursed to walk the land, freeing everybody else of monsters,

but he's going to be alone his whole life. Oh yeah. That's what I was going to ask. Is he not allowed to fall in love? That's not clear. I think he probably is. It's not good. He,

his, his big motto is don't get attached so if there is if that is a rule of his it's by his own design okay so it's pretty cool show it feels it has a feel very much like uh a wb show from the early 90s like beauty and the beast or something where they really want wB, so for most of our listeners, there used to be these two networks called WB, which was Warner Brothers, Channel 11 in New Jersey, and UPN, which was Channel 9 in New Jersey. And then at some point, they merged and became the CW. That's right.

And also when that happened. Yes. But just to tug on the WB thread a little bit longer, Michigan J. Frog was the spokes frog for the WB until WB famously killed him. They didn't just stop using him as their spokes frog. You can read the Wikipedia on this. They killed Michigan J. Frog. That's why he was no longer their mascot. He was like, he died.

I'm sorry, everyone. R.I.P. Michigan J. Frog. That's why he was no longer their mascot. He was like, he died. I'm sorry, everyone. RIP Michigan J. Frog, 1930 whatever to 1990 whatever. He's dead now. The frog is dead. Well, just a little fun fact for everybody. Did they say how they killed him? I don't think they listed his cause of death, which usually means drug overdose.

But they did make it clear he's dead and not coming back. That's interesting because the birth of Michiganigan j frog was a dead frog speak on that okay so in the old looney tunes cartoons i can't remember who it was maybe porky pig maybe some i think it was some more human character finds a dead frog uh and the frog only gets up and dances and sings for him and he's thinks he's gonna be a millionaire because he's got this frog that can dance and sing and every time it's not dead it's just a normal frog no it's dead okay well i don't know i don't i'm not here we'll hear from the reply guys but like i can remember the dog the the frog being in a box and like being limp and him like trying to like dance this dead frog around and everyone

thinks he's a lunatic no i i know those cartoons i just don't remember him being dead yeah but well maybe he wasn't dead in all of them i have pulled up the wikipedia page for michigan j frog um when the wb ceased broadcasting and signed off the air for the final time on september 17th 2006 a white silhouette of michigan appeared the end of the montage of stars that appeared on the network during its 11 year history. When the montage ended with thank you, Michigan silhouette is shown removing his top hat and bowing to thank the audience for 11 years,

bringing the WB to a close and later bringing the CW network for file the following day, September 18th, 2006. Okay. Let's see here. I'm going gonna go look at these old episodes of uh oh my internet in my garage apparently isn't very good oh actually on on july 22nd 2005 michigan's death was announced by wb chairman so this is before the the the network uh

closed its doors the frog is dead and buried, the WB chairman said. What a power move. For no reason. He just didn't like the frog? Yeah. The head of programming for the WB, David Giannullieri,

said that Michigan was a symbol that perpetuated the young teen feel of the network. That's not the image we now want to put out to our audience. End quote. So they fucking killed him. That's great.

Yeah, teens love Michigan J. Frog. Do you want to keep talking about The Witcher? Yeah, I do. This has gotten so off the rails so early. I want to tell you really quickly that you are right, that it is just a regular frog. It's a caveman who finds him caveman yeah in the very first episode it's a caveman who finds him oh that's fun um but it is just a regular frog and the reason that he he's limp and lets him the man dance him around apparently is just because he's a regular old

frog who yeah you know frogs don't have muscles uh okay so the witcher yeah you got you get basically the premise of it and it's his job to go around he's a he's a hero for hire goes to different towns they have a problem with a whatever their version of a grendel is and then he goes and destroys it now if you've ever like the game, which I'm somewhat familiar with, uh, he's also like a really good detective there. There's an element that they mentioned the very beginning, which is that, that a witcher can use the very most of their,

their brawn, but they can also use the very most of their brain. And there's not a lot of that in the actual show. There's the show kind of meanders on like another, some of the woman Yennefer and like her comeuppance and like who she becomes and how they kind of meet. And it, it, the story, it really requires you to watch every single episode to understand what's going on as opposed to just like a monster of the week type of production. But one of the problems is that now there's no real time for Witcher to

solve a lot of crimes because you do need him to be fighting something in every single episode. So there's a lot of just him just tearing shit up with his sword, but not a lot of him being a detective. I don't know if you used to watch also WB. Did you used to watch the Batman animated series? Oh, of course. There's a lot of good detective work in that. Batman is not just Batmanning guys the entire time. He's a really good detective. work in that batman is not just batmaning guys the entire time he's a really good detective and the show works even for kids you understand the logic and

you follow it and there's surprises and turns uh and the witcher does not try and do any of that and it would be really cool to see that i think if it's not just him sticking his sword and stuff if it's actually him being a detective too in this weird world it's like a you set up like an x-files scenario where you've also got a monster of the week do they rely upon you to uh utilize detective skills in the video game yes oh really that's cool yeah yeah so you're mad that they don't do any of that detective stuff because he's part Beowulf, part Batman, and they just stuck to the warrior aspects of him in the show. trying to hit on and like the story that they're trying to create is not super compelling. It's much more fun to just watch him come up against something new he

hasn't faced before. And now he's got to figure out what it is. Do you remember that Batman animated series episode where, um, Bruce Wayne gets amnesia and fucking forgets he's Batman. Like he goes undercover and he's got white hair and like old man makeup and then gets a concussion. And like the entire episode, he's just not Batman. And he's stuck on some, like old man makeup and then gets a concussion and like the entire

episode he's just not batman and he's stuck on some like i want to say prison plantation it's fucking great i can't believe they made first season they made that for for children just like here's this batman show where there are no jokes or or laughs and like he doesn't be batman for 30 minutes. Yeah, he gets enslaved. Yeah. That's a weird episode. Yeah, that's right.

The whole show is... I've been watching it with my son. He's a little young for it, but he gets excited about it because he knows he's young for it. Yeah. And we don't watch any Joker episodes because those really freak him out. But the rest of them we watch

and they're just so well-made and good. I would say like that intro sequence you know what i'm talking about yeah uh it's all it explains basically who batman is without any words or anything yeah you know exactly who he is you know that he doesn't use guns doesn't believe in him that he can kick guys asses without him he's got this great tool belt he's gonna stop any bad guy there is and tie him up cops can come get him that's batman i also remember their uh the title cards for every episode stand apart as like a piece of standalone art in a way that like i didn't appreciate when i was watching them obviously because it's like i don't care what the title of an episode is as a child but now i think like man someone just fucking painted this this beautiful like film noir piece for to represent this episode it's it's it's always very uh minimalist and

it's always got a an intriguing title that's not like spongebob's day at the beach or like batman goes hat shopping it's always like a clever title in some way that just like exists as this beautiful splash that I bet I could probably buy them and like hang them in my apartment. They are really cool. They really nail the gothic in every single one of those. But another show started doing that. Mandalorian has started doing that and their credits at the end. Have you noticed that? Oh, yeah.

Like the illustrations. I hope they're hand-drawn illustrations. It's gorgeous art and it's, it doesn't always match a hundred percent. I think maybe they're building it off of just the script, but it's just, they're absolutely incredible. Um, sorry. Well, my TV show is, is going to be, uh, is much trashier than, than your thing. Um, it's also a Netflix show. And before I dig into it, quick question.

What do you know about the Netflix reality show Love is Blind? Okay, I haven't watched it, but I know that it's similar to The Circle in that people aren't actually seeing one another until the very end so here's the here's what i was also surprised by love is blind when i finally watched it because it's it's it's billed as this show where uh men and women are separated and you go on dates in these pods where you can hear each other but not see each other and you're just talking and the stated experiment of the show is to find out if love actually is blind if people can make a connection without seeing how attractive a person is what anyone looks like and then you uh you, uh, I don't want to say when, but you pick someone and you get engaged to them before you

see them. Like that's what a successful couple is in this show. You don't like reach a point. It's not the voice where you hit a button and now I want to see the person. You just have to have to decide, am I in love with this person that I'm talking to enough that I want to get engaged right now? So the first time you see the person that you've been talking to that you matched with, they are already your fiance. I thought the thrust of the show was going to be people in pods talking to each other without seeing each other. And then it ends with them getting engaged. But really, like three episodes in in we're done with the pods and then we just follow the couples it's it's brilliant reality television it's very fascinating uh and

some of the most compelling stuff that i've seen in in years because i didn't expect there to be like a narrative i thought it was just going to be dating nonsense and then like the the trick would be the reveal at the end where it's like oh you look like that oh no credits but you go with them to like now we're all going to stay at a resort together all the couples who matched up are at a resort now we're going to go back to our hometowns now we're going to see what it's like when we meet uh like respective families and friends and now we're going to like plan weddings for these couples. It's amazing. It's a,

it's, it's a real ride. But the thing I want to talk about is the, there's an interesting premise of the heart of love is blind. That never really gets it's day in court, I guess, because the point is starting from a place where you can't see the other person and you're just using your words and your experiences and your personality,

your sense of humor, whatever, to, to win someone over and to see if like, as corny as it sounds, to see if love really is blind or whatever. And, uh, one of the problems is the thing that everyone we focus on is what I would describe as normatively hot. Like there are people who, after they get engaged, they go to a beautiful resort in New Mexico and there's pools and beaches. So just at a base level, so you understand you're dealing with people who are like, yes, I agree that it would make good television to see me shirtless or in a bathing suit making out on the beach. That's the kind of level of confidence that we're dealing with with these contestants that's how hot they are can you imagine that yeah it's in my pad right now yeah um but the the the really compelling thing is right in the beginning of the show we meet a guy named Wesley, who is a guy who says, oh, I should back

up a little bit. There's like fucking 30 people total who are on the show. And we end up focusing on six couples period. So there are a bunch of people that we don't follow up with because they don't match up or whatever. And we only follow the couples and they're all iconic and it's great. But right at the beginning of the show, you get this guy, Wesley, who says I'm short and women don't often date short guys so I like this show because we can make a connection before that comes up as in some cases an immediate deal breaker and I watched that and I thought

yes you are why this show exists I understand that that is a deal breaker for a lot of women this is going to be interesting I can't wait for the moment that we see this seemingly nice, normally attractive, shorter side guy meeting the love of his life

three episodes from now. We also meet another man, Taylor, who all the men hang out and all the women hang out and they never see each other, et cetera. But the men are like drinking and having a good time and Taylor reveals to the other men that he is a virgin and he's like not scared or shy about it he was like this is a choice that i've made i want to be respectful like there's a chance he's um an insane person uh because he's

like women women grow up they're looking for a prince charming so i just want to be a prince charming to the princess and i want to like do the right thing. And there's, there's, there's a chance that he's like genuine and sweet and amazing. Uh, and also a chance that he's like some, some kind of sociopath. I don't know. Um, but it's a 30 something year old guy who was like, I'm a virgin and I'm doing this show. And I want to see if that's going to matter in the context of this show. And so right off the bat, this is within, Soren, 10 minutes of the pilot of this show that we meet our fucking short King Wesley and adult version Taylor. And I was like,

this is going to be so cool to see what happens with these people. And Soren, we never see either of them again. Oh. What happened? They get kicked off or what no no one gets kicked off of the show the show just decides to focus on who they want to focus on and it's all of like the the tall hot people who end up being couples and it's and like you start off with a premise where it is a show that is exactly made for someone like Wesley. Where he's got a documented history where physical appearance has been a deal breaker in past relationships.

And he's never gotten to a certain point because it was a deal breaker. And this would be his chance to do that. And yeah, that's the promise of this show. That's the only reason to do this show is for people like wesley and taylor and then we don't follow them we just follow fucking hot people just like these tall guys named barnett and damien and and some other nonsense i can't remember and we just follow these couples as they go to resorts and they and we find out if they're gonna get married or not and the weird thing is like it's not so surprising that they didn't

follow every single person on the show um because some of them never coupled up but wesley our short king did get engaged he didn't end up getting married to this person but that doesn't matter he did get engaged and like went through all the same steps that everyone else on the show that we did follow go through. And I only know that he got engaged because I immediately after four episodes of the show, I was like, where the fuck is Wesley?

Where's my guy? Why aren't we, why did we lose the only person who had like a compelling reason to be on this show? And the producer was just like, yeah, I was decided not to follow him. So they didn't follow her either.

No. That's wild. Why would they do that though? I don't know. Is the rest of the show good? It's, um, I mean,

good is difficult. It's compelling. There there's, it's one of the things that simultaneously spoiled the show for me and also made it make a lot of sense for me is that the way they casted it was they went out, they reached out to the people who were on the show in the first season. They reached out through Instagram.

They just saw people who had large Instagram followings and were like posting a lot of pictures of themselves on Instagram. So like already you've got like, there's, there are people who want to be on a reality show essentially. Like they're influencer type people, even though they have other jobs. Most of them, they're like, definitely I'm an influencer type person. I want attention. I want're like definitely i'm an influencer type person i want attention i want to like i'm i'm building up my brand as a person i would like to make a career out of being me out of being barnett or whatever um so that's how the producers found them they

went out to people's different instagram feeds and private messaged them and were like would you like to be on a dating show and do you want to get married soon and people are just like yes i want to do that oh okay and so you've got by design you've got a bunch of people who have the benefit of having watched decades of reality television and knowing how to be a compelling reality television character um so I'm never really bored during the show because even if it's just people meeting each other's parents, I'm following a woman named Giannina Malady-Jabelli. Her middle name is Malady-Sorin. Of course, of course I want to see her get married.

Maybe what's happening here is, so I did watch The Circle Of course I want to see her get married. Maybe what's happening here is, so I did watch The Circle. I didn't know. Okay, so when you first tune into it, the first episode is nearly impossible to get through. It's so bad and such a clear aping of reality television that's already figured itself out. Like Netflix is just trying to establish its foothold in reality television with this show. And they're just trying to play on every single element you'd be familiar with, but it all feels very synthetic in this way.

Then it gets much better because the people who are in the show kind of take over telling the story of what's going on. And they are very interesting. Each one of them is a really unique, strange person. And they keep opening these doors on their lives just to crack and then shutting that door again. And so you're finding out strange things about these people the entire time. I wouldn't say strange. I should say heartening.

Like you're finding out really nice things about these people that makes them very human to you. And maybe that's what they're also doing here is that they know what a reality show should look like. And they're like, we need to do that first. We need to prove that we can make just a normal reality show before we start making a unique one. Yeah. They certainly did that. It certainly has all the ingredients of like, let's get hot people together and, and, uh, cut them off from the rest of the world and then give them unlimited alcohol and see what happens. And like, you know, that's, that's, that's worked for real world and Jersey shore for, for, for decades. So it's fine. Um, but it's just, it's still, I, I want to see the version of Love is Blind that is like more true to the experiment, I guess, even though that might make for less compelling television.

I'm just like, just at least give us one couple that tries to live up to the promise of this premise. Instead of just like, anytime the couples met each other for the first time, they're like, oh're hot yeah me too and all my friends are hot this will be great i don't know why i was worried there's i'll tell you without ruining too much about the circle uh there's the premise of it is that you could come in being whoever you want the only way you're talking to people is through text messaging uh so you don't actually ever see anybody else. You only see their profile pictures. I would be so good at that. Of course you would, Dan. You've built your whole life being great at that. They have profile pictures,

so they can put up pictures of whoever they want. A lot of them do catfish throughout it. There's one woman who comes clean in the middle of an episode. She's pretending to be somebody else. She, who's this like insanely hot woman. Uh, and she comes clean. She's to a group of girls and she pulls them aside in a chat. And she's like, I want to be honest with you. I want to tell you who I really am. This is who I am. And she puts up an actual picture of herself and they're all like, so brave. You look beautiful. you don't need to do this and then it

gets revealed to everybody else and they're all because all of a sudden that's her profile picture now and they're all all very very supportive they kick her out the end of the episode why um it has to do a lot with politics but i mean my heart also tells me that it was that they were just like oh i don't know i don't like her um i think one other reason for you to watch love is blind is uh the jobs that people have sorry just a second it may be the next episode that she gets kicked off but it's like within like a day or two um the jobs people have i i don't know if these are the jobs that they that they put forward or if the producers just like did enough fishing to find out what could i um defensively put in the chiron as their job because all of the jobs are bonkers there's like you meet a woman who's talking like yeah i'm just trying to find love i want to get married and you see on the

bottom of the screen it's like amber 27 years old parentheses ex-tank mechanic and then it goes to someone else who's like yeah you know i just i tried the apps and it's not working and then it's like diamond parentheses, professional basketball dancer. Like what's happening here? Yeah. That's when I said that you learn more about the characters in the circle. They do. You don't get their jobs at the beginning.

All you get is like this archetype. It's like this guy feels the role of basically a Jersey shore boy. This, this woman feel fills the role of like um, like the, I'm not here to make friends type of person. And as then you're like these people who you're just geared up to hate from the beginning, suddenly you'll find out that one of them works exclusively with autistic children. That's like her job and teaching them and getting them to come out of their shell. And you're just like, Oh shit, you're a real person. All right. All right.

And then you start to sort of feel for them a little bit more. But I'm always baffled by the ways that shows, like what shows think is important information for you to get up front and for you to consistently be bombarded with throughout the episode. When I watch the show alone, which I've recently been talking about uh in alone it's super important for they think it's super important for me to know how old everybody is every 30 seconds yeah there's a little chiron that appears it's like davis 32 it's like yeah i mean who cares that gives me no more information yeah love is blind spends uh an inordinate amount of time in the pilot explaining the premise of the show to you which is a very very simple premise. It has like Nick Lachey and his, and forgive me, his wife. I hate to identify her as that, but I don't know her name off the top of my head. They are the ostensibly

the host of the show and they come out and they tell the contestants very simply like, so you're going to be separated and you're going to take turns. It's going to be like speed dating. You go from pod to pod to meet people that you can't see, try to form a connection with, and then hopefully you get engaged and then you get married and you make that commitment that you will get married to a person or you will get engaged to a person at, by the end of the show. And I was like, got it. That was a, uh, a an informative 15 seconds and then they do it like three or four more times like i because i had friends who watched the show so i made a note to pause uh at like the six minute and 45 second mark they were still explaining the premise of this

very easy to grasp show and then you don't even see nick lachey and forgive me his wife again until the final episode where they're just like, Hey, remember us? We're technically hosting this. Uh, it's, it's, it's time for the weddings. I get to watch this. I think you should. You've swayed me. Um, there's also, I think, um, another missed opportunity with this show and i won't spoil this part for you is uh the character or person i guess of carlton is very interesting and it's

another storyline that gets dropped even though it has like one of the most naturally compelling and dramatic arcs we just like we end up ignoring it and instead focusing on uh you know all the all the weird hot couples yeah it's tough i don't want to spoil anything but i also want to make this a good podcast it's just very interesting you could just say it i don't i don't think it's just very interesting. You can just say it. I don't, I don't think it's fine. People can turn it off if they want to. Yeah. He's like, well, uh,

he, uh, there's some like very toxic elements to his behavior that are very troubling, but also we learn in the course of a few episodes that, uh, he is very likely bisexual and struggling with that and kept that from his partner

until after they'd already got engaged. And you watch that unfold and his handling of it is not great. Her handling of it is better, but also not perfect. And it's just like, this is an incredibly compelling subject that you don't really see handled uh on certainly on television almost anywhere this like this strange struggle and what it means for this couple uh and then we just sort of forget about them and move on

have you read up on if anybody else has the same complaint as you the ringer did a great piece about uh wesley and taylor the short guy and the virgin guy okay but it's i i'm trying to think of like where this started because usually when they it was a dead giveaway in early reality television when they really started going into somebody's backstory that person was going to be on the show for a while. We're learning more about them. This is important. And then the people who are going to be off early or that we're not going to follow, they just don't bother.

And then it started to maybe change. I don't know. I don't know if this is true. Off the top of my mind, I'd say that it started to change around the Olympics when those stories from reality television started to bleed into sports where you wanted to know

why you should give a shit about this woman skiing moguls. And so we're like, all right, well, let's find out about her whole backstory. Let's find out who she is. Yes. Now I can root for her. And then the minute she's out, we don't, we don't think about her ever again. And we're all kind of fine with that. And I think reality television just realized, oh, you're allowed to do that. You can just, you can give all this information about somebody and then never talk about them again and nobody cares yeah i don't know if that might be wrong but it feels right in my heart yeah um do you have any uh questions for me i do yeah you think we have time for it yeah i don't know it's a short one yeah um dan what's a what's some music or an artist that you respect, except that they're probably objectively all right, but that you can't possibly listen to because your parents played them into

the ground when you were a kid? Oh. I can go first here. Yeah, please do. So James Taylor, somebody who I know is inarguably a good musician. People love him. Even if you're not into folk music or whatever, trop rock, I don't know what he does. Whatever you're interested in, he still can cross those lines. He's a very good musician.

His songs are objectively great, I think, I assume, given his success. And yet I can't even listen to a single verse of one of his songs. If it's on at the grocery store, I will leave the grocery store because so much of my childhood was spent listening to that. And then also, well, this is revealing a lot, but I, I grew up in a cabin in the woods growing up. And whenever you go to sleep at night, it's like the whole world disappeared, the whole world shut off because it's completely dark up there. There's no light or anything. There's no sounds. And so when I would see my parents light go out, it really meant I was alone

in the world. And that was really scary when I was a kid, when I was like nine or 10. And so sometimes I would cry. And so I'd be crying in my bed, but my brother lived in the room below me and he could hear that. Uh, I was crying. And, uh, instead of, you know, coming to see if I was okay or anything, he would just turn on James Taylor and, and turn, turn it up. Cause that happened to be what was in his CD player forever. And this is a time, you a time when we're still kids. You were young enough that we're listening to whatever our parents listened to and he had that CD.

And so James Taylor has these very awful connotations of loneliness in my mind. And also when we go up to on hut trips, huts are there. This is also going to be hard to explain. There are huts all over Colorado that are, uh, anyone can go use. You, you can go out to a hut. As long as you tell the forest service, like I want to go out to the Margie hut you in the winter, you might snowshoe up there, cross country ski up there. And then it's fresh tracks all over. You can just ski wherever you want. You stay in the hot at night. Okay. Uh, like an a-frame, an a-frame, maybe the size of a garage, a two car garage. Some of them are much bigger than that, but most of them are pretty small

and they were created by, I want to say the, this might be wrong. The 10th mountain division, when they came back, might've started the hot system in Colorado, but there are huts all over up in the mountains. They're very difficult to get to. Usually there's no roads. So you either in the winter, you skin up, which means that you put skins on the bottoms of your skis. Or in the summer, you hike to them. And then in the summer, you do a lot of work at them. You stay in the outside, you chop wood, and you get it ready for the winter. And that's part of allowing you to stay in this hut.

Something we used to do a lot as a kid, when I was a kid, and I love doing it. But on the way up, we'd listen to James Taylor too. So on the way back down, I would have these sort of sad memories of like, well, that's over. Like we're not, you know, that, that let down at the end of a trip that you like. And so because it was so much a part of my childhood, I can't listen to it anymore. It's there's just too much in it and uh it's it's over for me yeah i mean here's just one small thing about that um imagine you soren were being told a story right now by someone who was very casually just like yeah and then when i was in uh uh my early 20s uh i invented chipmunks i just thought of a way that you could like take squirrels and make them smaller because they didn't have them before and

i was not like maybe make a completely new animal which i did using my third hand uh by the way i was listening to uh a lot of uh natalie imbruglia at the time uh when i was inventing chipmunks before anyone had ever invented them and that's why i want to talk about natalie imbruglia right now that's what you just did you told an insane story about covering your skis with skins which my mind ran with and then going to a hut and staining it for other people for the winter and then you're like and that's why i can't listen to james taylor you fucking lunatic as i started you buried the lead under miles of snow as i started to talk about james taylor and realizing in my mind why it's so i can't listen to it i was like there's no good way to get through these stories

so I'm just gonna fly I was crying alone in my room while my brother blasted James Taylor it's really really tough to to tell that story without any backstory oh man I don't know how I didn't know any other way to get through it to tell that story without any backstory. Oh, man.

I don't know how. I didn't know any other way to get through it. As soon as I realized, I was like, oh, I had these such fond memories of going up to the, getting sandwiches from Pepino's and then going up to the huts with my dad. And I was like, oh, fuck. He didn't know what any of that shit is. So you stayed in a hut?

Yeah, you stay in a hut. Are there beds in the hut or is it you bring your own sleeping bag and you sleep on the floor in the hut you could you could sleep just on it on the beds but here it's basically set up like um it's a long long bench in most of them and then there are some pads on the bench uh it's like um hostile circumstances right Like a lean-to? No, it's not a lean-to. It's a real structure. So when I say A-frame, it just means one of those houses that's just completely... It looks like it's only roof.

Okay. It makes an upside-down V, and it comes all the way down on both sides. And it's... Yeah, it's about the size of a two-car garage, but it's structurally sound. You don't need to explain what an A-frame is by saying it's an upside-down V. Well the size of a two-car garage but it's like you have to explain what an a-frame is by saying it's an upside down v well you said he'll lean to and i thought maybe

i wasn't being specific enough lead to is very savage very primitive um no this and it has um it has a stove in it and it's got a the- It's got a toilet? No, that's an outhouse. Got to go outside. I know what outhouse means. God damn it. Wow. I don't. Look, you understand.

I'm in the weeds as far as what you actually understand. I had to go through the whole huts and I didn't. It just felt so a priori to me growing up. I don't know what people know. And you, you stay in them just sort of as like a, like community service. Like it's like an, uh, an understood social contract that you, the whole community works to preserve the huts for future use. Yes, exactly. You go up there and you take care of it.

You're also going to maybe be cutting down some trees that are around it. There's just like, I don't know if they actually give you, they must give you jobs. I was a kid, so this portion of it I was never involved in. But they must tell you, this is what we need done up there. And then you go up and you do that. Fascinating. My answer is not like that. Okay.

You're going to tell me the Beatles. Yeah. Are you? And like, yeah, specifically hard days night. And it's not even like my parents drove anything into the ground. Like I,

I really love the musical taste that i inherited from my parents like they like very early on we listened to a lot of james taylor simon garfogel joni mitchell carly simon uh beatles uh that's uh elton john that's all my mom's side of things my dad's side of things was yes and moody blues and ario Speedwagon. And these are all bands that I still like today. And they weren't like forcing a lot of it on us or anything like that. And they weren't replaying albums into the ground or anything.

But we already liked the Beatles as kids because of our parents. And then we got a copy of the Hard days night beatles movie on vhs and i watched that into the ground i watched that over and over again i loved it so much like because i already liked the music and it seemed really cool to me that like they made a movie around an album which seemed which felt like a very new concept to me at the time because i was a child and uh just seeing musicians as characters was very fascinating to me and so i would just sit and watch it over and over again my brothers

and i would too uh my brothers would too and now that's just an album that i don't listen to at all i still listen to at all. I still listen to a lot of Beatles, but I can't remember the last time I listened to a single song from that album, just because as soon as it comes up randomly on iTunes or Spotify, I'm just like, Oh no.

Yeah, I get it. I've heard enough times that like, I, I, I'm not going to find anything new in this anymore. Right. You've,

yeah, you've exhausted it completely. Yeah. I have a few of those too. You were saying like bands that you're really, you still like today that your parents listen to. And a lot of those, there's some overlap with my parents, like Joni Mitchell. Like my parents were into like Gordon Lightfoot and, uh, uh,

Leo Kaki and, and bands like, and now I, I don't know if it was at some point where I just felt like I needed to distance myself from that. I can't listen to any of those anymore. I can't listen to Joan Baez certainly. Oh, or like Bonnie rate. Like that's all I'm sure it was good music at the time. It's really, it feels so part of my parents identity that i'm like no it's not for me oh so sometimes i'll put on simon and garfunkel now and like i they're not in like a regular they're not on any of my playlists that are my go-to listening playlists but i'll just decide like i want to listen to to their live at central park

concert or you know whatever older stuff in that and immediately i'll think why do i listen to anything else this is they did it they did they did the best music this is this is perfect and last time i was in north carolina visiting my parents uh slip sliding away came on the radio great song yeah and i talked to my mom about that. I was like, this was on every mix CD I made for myself in college. And she didn't have mix CDs, obviously, but she was like, yeah, me too. This is also an important song in my college life. And it was just like a nice bonding thing with my mom and I.

You have the same seminal song. That's so cool. Yeah. We also had somewhat related. We went for, in anticipation of my brother's marriage, we went not for like a bachelor party, but like all my brothers and my dad and I went out to just have a few beers.

And we were listening to Dream Theater, which is a modern band. It's a progressive rock, frog metal band that we were listening to dream theater which is a modern band it's a progressive rock frog metal band um that we were listening to and my brothers and i all like it like we've seen them in concert a bunch of times they're a great band you should check them out um my dad was into it too for the first time he was like what is this we're like it's dream theater we used to go to their concerts he was like this sounds like the music that happened when I was a kid. Cause it really, cause I like, they're heavily influenced by all the, the Prague rock bands that my dad liked growing up.

So that was another nice bonding experience because he's at a point I think where he doesn't expect anything new to resonate with him in the same way that he did when he was younger. So the fact that he's, he's now come across this music that like means a whole lot to my brothers and I, and also reminds him of his favorite bands is a cool little thing for him. That's great. Yeah. I'm curious what my son will think about the stuff that I listen to now. Because I play a lot of music in the house.

He dances to a lot of it. So I know he knows certain songs. That as he gets older, I wonder if he'll, if he'll also embrace that type of music and be like, Oh, my dad listens to good music. Or if he'll just be like, fuck this. Yeah. I need my own thing. Where's Columbia house. Send me. I'm sure your son will be asking where's Columbia house. Yeah. They'll have the same experience that I did when I was 11 years old. It's very funny to watch whenever I'm around my three-year-old nephew and he's got, there's Alexa in their house. So he can just say, Alexa, play this song that I like.

And sometimes it's just, God damn it. And sometimes it's just a, like, definitely a song for children about garbage trucks or police cars. I'm going to pause because Alexa is screaming in the background. Alexa, stop. Gabe, please leave this in. Sometimes it's garbage trucks or police cars. And sometimes just say, he'll say, hey alexa can you can you play

light him up up up up up and then she'll she knows that that means um the fallout boy song yeah light him up i'm on fire song and then he just dances to that that's great it's so fun when you find you finally get their proclivities, like the things that they're really interested in. My son also likes a song from them called Young Volcanoes. It's like one of his favorite songs. I'll see if Murphy likes it. Yeah. Do you have anything else while we wrap this up?

Sorry. It's not Panic! at the Disco. Fall Out Boy. I'm so sorry. Wait, did I say Fall Out Boy or did I say Panic! at the Disco? I can't remember. I barely listen to you most of the time. That's smart.

Let him up, up, up. That is Fall Out Boy, right? That's Fall Out Boy, yeah. Okay, good. I think I said Fall Out Boy. You did. Okay. Well, we're clearly out of steam.

I need to track down all the social accounts to close this out. Okay, go ahead. And that always takes me a minute. So while I'm doing that. Silence is fine. We can cut it out later. It's really easy. I did have something to say, and I know you did too.

The coronavirus continues to make a tremendous impact on the world, not just in terms of health, but also socially, economically, and culturally. A less pressing but still impactful side effect has been the suspension of various movie and television shoots, with some shows being delayed or outright canceled, and some movies like the latest James Bond being pushed indefinitely. My question for Soren is, what was it like losing your virginity? um well i was very in my head the whole time so i wasn't totally present i would say so when people talk about how you should wait until you're in love with somebody So when people talk about how you should wait until you're in love with somebody and make sure that you're emotionally ready, I would say to that, why bother? You know, because it's all about you the first time anyway. You're not really focused on the other person.

It's all up in your noggin. It's you watching the story of your own life because that's what everybody does. That's not selfish. That's you experiencing a new experience, but you've only been taught to experience

experiences through television. Everything is through the lens of somebody actually watching it and not actually you experiencing it. And your reactions to it better not be well-trod territory. Like you better not have some sort of emotional reaction that you would see on television because you've seen that a hundred times. So you have to do something brand new. That's why I cried. And then I found the accounts. Okay okay you can ask soren follow-up questions at soren underscore ltd or you can talk to me at dlb underscore inc or bacon once more at make me bacon please pls those are all on twitter you can email the show at qq with soren and daniel

at gmail.com uh tell us what you'd like to hear more about in that, in that email, I guess. The show is on Twitter at twitter.com slash QQ underscore Soren and Dan. We're also on Instagram. You can find and hire our amazing, amazing engineer producer, editor, Gabe at Gabe harder.com.

We also have a Patreon, but honestly, if you have some money, there's probably like a food bank or a neighbor that you can give it to so like ignore us for a little while um and i believe that's it those are all the plugs on the next episode we should really come up with the best places to put your money or to give money right now yeah it feels like a good idea and then them because we're people we're somebody you can trust you see absolutely yeah uh you have anything else no that's it okay okay bye