Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - I’m Wet, Help Me

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

Soren’s wondering how often his food gets spit in, but not before Daniel’s flooded basement prompts a conversation about the wet business of home ownership, how plumbing is basically just legos, and the debt we owe to suspiciously well-equipped fathers.Follow the guys on Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.social/https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialThanks to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode. RocketMoney.com/qq.  Reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money.

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 can talk tonight So what's your favorite? How did you get it? How do I be remembered? Words without words a word at all Who are you going to be? I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here.

So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast, senior writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents and it's-a-me, plumber Daniel O'Brien. Joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bowie. Soren, say hello. Hey, everybody, I'm Soren Bowie.

I'm a writer for American Dead, currently in the throes of writing an episode. So if I'm weird on this podcast, there's your reason. I don't, I'm not interacting with anybody. I'm living in that world of like, I wouldn't say the world of American Dead. I would say the world of just like, where you're writing and you've,

and this world is just like this huge fucking cumbersome bother that you don't wanna deal with. Now, I got all that out of the way. Daniel. But Zorin, real quick, and it's not a competition and I can't even go into too much detail. Again, it's not a competition. I am currently writing two episodes of Last Week Tonight.

Oh, fuck me! That are both due within 48 hours of this minute! Oh, dogshit. That sucks, dude. That's real bad. But you know what? That, I mean, in some ways, in some ways when you have a deadline that's that close, you can see, I mean, we talked a little bit about being in the bathtub on the ocean.

That's a real daunting task when you're like, there's no land in sight. You can see the other side. I mean, you know where the deadline is. And in some ways that's comforting because now also you get to just write something and then look at it once and then be like, good enough, I gotta move on, which is like so freeing.

Deadlines are the greatest thing to ever happen to me as a writer because that, 100% to your point, it means that it's gonna be done and there's no way around it. Like it has to be done, so it's gonna be done. And then at a certain point, I won't be doing it anymore. And isn't that nice? And that's sometimes when I'm like really in the weeds

on a piece and it's a real struggle and I have other writers, I'm like, hey guys, you know what the good news is? 24 hours from now, we won't be writing this anymore. Right. And like, of course that doesn't account for like the thing we hand in might be dog shit or it might get us fired

but the important thing is I'm not feeling this way anymore. I'll be feeling a new way. That new way might be it and that will be so freeing to feel that panic instead. I mean I agree with you but I also think that it's not like building a house where like you have a deadline you're like well here's the corners we're gonna have to cut. I have no idea what the corners are. They're all figurative. So like, I'm working and I'm just like, well, I'm not gonna work on this section anymore.

That section might've already been fine. I might've gone in and fucking ruined it. I might've gone in there and just spent so much time on it and toasted it. Right. And the other part of it is, I say we have a deadline and that means the script is going to be done. I'm only saying that and trusting it because that's how I've done it before. I have as

much control over that as I do of the sun rising tomorrow. I assume it's going to. It would be crazy if it didn't, but one day it won't. It's such a funny feeling to have. In our show, the way it works is like, you're gonna get an episode each season. And if you're real lucky, you might get two, but you're always gonna get an episode. And when it comes time where they're like, all of a sudden, you don't see

when that's coming down the pike. Like you don't know. And then all of a sudden one day they're like, let's work on an episode for you. The first thought in my head is always, ooh, what if we can't do it? What if I can't do it this time? Like what if we just don't come up with an episode? What if I can't write it?

What if I can't write it in time? Like the things that have never happened because you always, right, you're a writer. So you get through it it you do it and It works out but every single time I mean if they happen at at crack too where i'd be like There'd be gonna be you've got to oh you got to call him this week. We're gonna shoot this day So you're losing a couple days, but uh, you got a call him coming up and you'd be like

I think maybe i'm done. Yeah. I think I don't know how to do this and I shouldn't do it anymore. And we had a tiny bit of flexibility. It cracks sometimes where you could just say like, hey, I'm pulling the emergency switch, slot something else in here, but you can't really do that with your TV job.

Like when I get- Not for a live television show. No. When I get an assignment, I can't be like, hey boss, I'm gonna do my best, but like, heads up, you should prep something else just in case. You should prep a different live episode of the topical show that we do,

because I might not get it together this week. It was comforting to me when we were at Cracked, before I even started writing my column, and you had a column you once turned one in and I read it the next day and I was like It's good. And you're like it didn't come together. It fell apart. Like I didn't I didn't have it and I was like Just great news because that means that you're like your failure is

anyone else's B. You know, like, it's like, this is still like a good grade you're getting on this. And I was like, that's comforting. It's good to know that like, even with you, I hope that I work in the same respect. Like that I, if I'm working on something, I know that even if what I turn in,

I'm gonna be the harshest critic of it and somebody else might be like, that's my favorite one. And I'd be like, okay, well, I don't fucking know anything. Great. Yeah. When I was a freshman in high school, I was in a marine biology class. No, just a regular biology class.

I wish it was marine biology. And an older kid who was in the same class with me because he was struggling a bit. And I think there are two things about me that one is pretty clear and one is maybe less clear. One is that I'm a pretty studious person. I know a lot and I read a lot. But the other thing that is maybe less clear is people assume I am much smarter and more studious than I actually am because the glasses and like the timber of my voice, just so much about me is like first day of school someone's like

look at fucking screech over there. They just assume it. You're a Josh Molina type. 100%. And the older kid who was trying to fuck off offered me money to do a science project for him for this class. We both had to do it. And he was gonna, gave me $20. And I was not, I was 14 years old.

So I was like, yes, this, I will will I don't have any other source of income right now and the world is so big so I will take this $20 and I made a I made his project for him and He got a C on it And I thought he was gonna be so mad and he was so happy and I think that like set me up for the rest of my life with very strange expectations of what the value of my own work was. Like you like this dog shit? Oh boy I thought I was gonna get my ass kicked.

All right. Yeah I took a creative writing class in college because I thought I wanted to be a writer and and We turn in things and I'd be like This is my masterpiece. This is the thing and then other people in class be like Well, I don't really get it or like they're like, I don't what's going on here Like why is this here? And I was like mad because your early criticisms you don't understand and you're like you can't hear them

And then I just would there was one day where we had to turn something in and I was like the night before I was like just threw together this short story and I was like this is hack and then turn it in and everyone was like this like this is way better like this is like this is what you should be doing and I was like what is that teaching me what am I learning from this am I learning that you're not learning anything actionable folks you probably know I recently bought a house so we are saving money because we spent it all on the house and one of the ways that we've saved money is through

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Do it. Okay, now I just want to quickly shift gears, Daniel. You have two pretty solid fears that I know about. One is ants, the other one is something going wrong with your toilet yes and you've had to play plumber or the last I had to play plumber thankfully unrelated to the toilet there was another plumbing line so the house of my homeowner we bought a house recently it's very exciting the house was built in 1908 so it has a lot

of 1908 problems a lot of it was remodeled and flipped, so it looks very nice and we're very happy with it. But some of the stuff has just been here forever. And one of those things was a line running from, we had washer and dryer hookups in the basement. There was no washer and dryer when we got here. We have no idea how long it had been since anyone had tried to put a washer and dryer in. We put them in, it was our first like big purchase after the big purchase of the house and

immediately water started shooting up from a pipe. We didn't see it immediately because the guys came and installed the washer and dryer and they were like, good news, it works. And then they left. And then we put some clothes in there to wash. And I was even down there for a little while thinking, let me just watch this to make sure it works because these pipes are untested. And I stayed there for maybe 10 minutes and looked at everything and everything was dry

and seemed to be in working order and then I left and then about 25 minutes later my wife was like the basement is flooded and covered with water and the you're right a thing about houses that you you warned me about that you're 100% right about is they find a million ways to break your heart and this is one of those things where we, it's a new house and we just had the basement redone. And this was our first thing in the basement, the first action in the basement.

And now it's covered in water. But the good things about home ownership is when you buy a home, you're so broke you buy a home, you're so broke that you can't pay for people to fix all the things that go wrong and you get to learn. For me, the plumbing was so mystifying to me and it has since been demystified in a way that's very exciting because when I first walk down there and there's water on the floor I don't know Shit about fuck. I don't understand a single thing. I don't know where the water

Is coming from I don't know where it's supposed to be going and it just seems like the most complicated thing in the world To me and i'm like is the water like very basic dumb guy things i'm like is the Is perhaps the washer broken? Is the washer generating the water? Is that a thing that a washing machine does? Like this is truly how little I know about anything. That all I know is like there's water. I don't know where it came from or how to stop it. We had the people who installed it

sent a different crew a few days later and they tested the washer and saw water shooting up from a pipe. And they were like, hey, good news. There's nothing wrong with the washer. We didn't fuck up. All right, see ya. And then they left because they concluded

that it was a plumbing issue. And so my dad and I spent two days working on the plumbing this this line in the basement and just troubleshooting different things like there's a Trap in the line a trap is sort of like a u-shaped part of the pipe of this key trap PVC pipe Yeah, and we're like, let's Let's put a little bit of draino down there. I know I have since learned that plumbers don't like that, but we put some draino to see if we can clear up

a blockage there, if blockage was the thing that was wrong. And the washer would still overflow. And in this, like, just the first day of working on this, I learned a few things to immediately demystify this process. We're like, okay, the water is being brought in from my home, from my pipes. The washer itself doesn't generate the water. We send water to it and then it washes the clothes and then it expels water and the water goes through a corrugated pipe from the washer into one of my pipes, one of my PVC pipes and eventually to the sewer. And when the water is

being dumped into the PVC pipe and that is what's backing up on me, that means there's a clog in the pipe somewhere. And I'm like, okay, I'm starting to understand the basic mechanics of the directions that water goes. And because we were about to have house guests and we needed to do some wash, I, using my brain, was like, I bet if I can just, we know the problem is in my pipes somewhere, but I could just take this tube going from the washer and hold it over a bucket and drain the water

into a bucket, this will accomplish the task of the washing machine. It's not 100% of the washing machine's jobs that I'd like handled eventually, but for the short-term purposes of getting the clothes washed, I understand the mechanics enough we can send the thing water, it'll wash the clothes, and when it sends the water away, that water needs to go somewhere. It doesn't care where it goes, so I could put it in a bucket. And so that's what I did. And it's about 10.30.

It might care. Doesn't matter to the clothes washing. Not at all. It's 10.30 p.m. and I had the clarity of thought to text my wife and say, honey, I'm in a pretty, I'm at a pretty low point right this second, but I think it might be a funny picture. And so she came downstairs and now there's a picture of me sitting on a step stool

next to the washer, holding the tube up and over a bucket. The bucket is on top of the washing machine and I'm just draining water. I can't leave the tube bucket the bucket is on top of the washing machine and i'm just draining water I can't leave the buck the tube in the bucket because if the water If the tube gets in the water, then it'll start because of physics trying to suck the water back into the tube siphon So I have to hold it and uh, the other part that makes this picture Uh dark but funny in retrospect is this coincides with the period of time where our heat was broken and it's the winter in New Jersey in my basement. So I'm in like my winter clothes sitting on a step

stool holding a tube over a bucket and I write it's a very funny picture and I'm happy to have it as a time capsule and dumping the water out like carrying the water up from the basement to dump it out in the street. Part of my brain was like, if I have to do this forever, I guess I could do this forever. Because we didn't know exactly what was wrong with the pipe. And we, if it turned out it was a problem that was going to be like a massive, like we need to dig through the ground to fix pipes or something like that, then I didn't know that we were gonna be able

to do it immediately. And so I was just like, I guess I could just do this, not forever, but like a couple years. Eventually I would come up with a solve for the me holding the hose part. I would create some kind of system out of connects for that, but maybe I could do this for a couple of years. Thankfully I didn't have to do that.

We only had to do a couple of loads of laundry with me as essentially part of the washing machine. I was just another cog in this machine. What was the issue? There was a clock. It was just like way farther down. And because we had someone working on our heat the next day, I was like, hey, I don't

want to steal your time, but while you're here, can I just run what's going on with this? And he was like, yeah, you could figure this out. And he correctly identified me as a scared new homeowner where he was just like, this seems really overwhelming because you haven't done it before. But plumbing isn't complicated. This PVC pipe, this exposed PVC pipe, this is Legos.

You cut it open, you look for a clog, and you get a new piece of PVC, and you put it in there and you seal it, and that's it. There are clean outs, you look in the clean outs. Oh, you're gonna have clean outs in, you don't have to install your own, that's great. So clean outs for anyone listening, if you imagine like a pipe going horizontally,

a clean out runs perpendicular to that, it's like a little short nub that comes up from the, it's a vertical pipe that runs up from the horizontal and you can Unscrew the cap of it with a wrench and you could look down It's just a little door clean out. It's a little door in your pipe. You can see if the water is moving It's also a place to unclog from like you have on your sewer line to at home You'll see him jutting out of the ground, but it's just like a place for you to like Open up your pipe and get a good handle on what the fuck is wrong

absolutely so I'm I'm learning from that guy about how plumbing is just Legos and it's just pieces that you can like like truly even I can can cut open and replace with with Brackets and sealants and then my dad was there and my my dad was helping me. He's got he has a Endo camera that goes into your plumbing pipes and you could see what's in there and One of the reasons this took two days is because we were like we couldn't find this clog anywhere We would start from where the water was emptying into my basement

We went down through there and like we can't really see anything. This line is clear and we can see like 15 feet from the washer at a clean out. We could see that like water was getting to the clean out. So like, all right, it's at least clear there. And then a few feet after the clean out, the PVC connects with cast iron, the very old pipes that have been here forever.

And we also knew that eventually this washer dryer line connects with our main sewer line. And because of some of the due diligence that we'd done at the beginning of this house buying process, we knew that our main sewer line was clear. So something was happening between the start of this cast iron pipe and our outdoor line.

I love that you're a plumber Columbo. I know. We've identified that the problem is somewhere here and we're running the camera. When we had guys who were working on the heat, they were like, do you want us to blast some nitrogen through the clean out to see if like if there's a clog and we could force it out with the strength of this gas blast? And we're like, of course, and that didn't work. And so that's in a PVC pipe. That's terrifying. But yeah, go on. And eventually, my dad and I decided like, all right, we can't, we can't get past something that's going on

in this cast iron pipe. So we cut through this rubber sleeve that had married the PVC pipe with the cast iron pipe. And once we had separated those two things, you could see immediately like two inches of solid wall of blockage where these pipes met and now I'm scraping them out with You know a screwdriver and spoons basically like this is this is what I mean about plumbing being demystified is is that there's not like a Strange maze of pipes that only a plumber can talk to it's like oh

There's like I see what the problem is there's a full fucking there's like I see what the problem is there's a full fucking battery in the pipe and I will remove the battery with my hand because the battery is like catching a bunch of gunk and stuff. Was there a battery in there? Yes, there was a AA battery in there and it had been catching stuff for so long and then I took once I'd mostly gotten like the the two inches blockage, the solid wall out of there, I took my dad's camera, and to be clear to people listening, it's like a colonoscopy camera,

it's like a spy movie camera where there's like a light. It's a little snake with a camera at the end. Yeah, there's like a flexible wire that you can like, that is designed to be fed into long tubes. And I was just feeding the camera to see if there was any other like walls down the line or if we were clear and I'm seeing like you know those the quote unquote flushable wipes that are not flushable and that everyone says please don't flush these down the toilet it's a lie that we shouldn't be allowed to call them flushable I see them

in there I see some other gunk and I'm like using the camera to knock them off their perch. And my dad also has this like plumbing claw, a long snake-like claw where you could feed it in, and then you could press a switch. It looks like Doc Ock's hands. Exactly, exactly right. And I was using the camera to see some of the blockages and these flushable wipes. And then my dad said, why don't you try the camera to see some of the blockages and these flushable wipes.

And then my dad said, why don't you try the camera and the claw at the same time? So now I've sent the camera in there and the claw after it. And I'm using the claw to grab these wipes and pull them out and washing the whole thing on the screen. And then here it is in real life.

And I've pulled the wipe out of the real life pipe and my dad and I are fucking screaming. We're losing our minds. Like my heart is pounding as I'm like, my internal monologue is going, I think I got it. I think I used the tools to grab the flushable wipe and to pull it out. I don't want to say anything. My heart is beating faster and harder than it did at my wedding and I'm just pulling this thing out and we're both so excited when I pull this out. I felt like I was doing goddamn surgery. It was the coolest thing that I've ever done in my life and then we eventually married the pipes again

and force a sleeve onto it and tighten it. And now the washing machine works. And not only can we like wash clothes now, I have learned more about plumbing in 48 hours than I ever have in my life. I still can't like, I don't know that I could install a toilet tomorrow or troubleshoot another huge problem,

but the gap from, oh no, there's water on my floor and it could be coming from anywhere, I'm lost, to knowing where the water was coming from, knowing why it was coming from there, and knowing how to troubleshoot and fix it was so wide, and now there is no gap at all and I feel incredible. Yeah. I have a question about your washing machine.

There's, you don't have, you obviously don't have like a laundry sink near it. No, no. But you also don't, the hose that you were holding onto for the bucket, was that a corrugated plastic that was part of the washing machine? Corrugated plastic part of the washing machine that was feeding into a PVC that was backing

up, yes. Okay, so there should be two basically hoses coming out of a washing machine. One is the one that goes through to your drain line doing all the job it's supposed to do. The second one is specifically for this problem. Like if there's a backup, you have another corrugated one that runs into, sometimes people put it into a laundry sink. Sometimes people put it into, they have another like access pipe

that just like runs to their sewer as well. You would see this on your dishwasher, that little nub that sits on your sink, that like you never use that has a little hole in it. That's the same principle. It sometimes spits up a little bit in it. That's the same principle. It sometimes spits up a little bit. Yes, it's the same principle. So you should have that for your washing machine.

And these guys that installed your washing machine, they should have known that. They should have known there's like an emergency release. And if they weren't like, they were like, ah, this one doesn't need it. That's on them. Yeah. And that's certainly, it was through Home Depot

and I've reached out to them a bunch of times to express my dissatisfaction because if you're coming from a dumb guy point of view was like, you were hired to install a washing machine and a dryer that worked and allowed us to wash clothes. And that didn't happen until several days later and the work of two uneducated Irish Catholic morons

So for those reasons, I would like some money, please I like hearing that you were you're using like a spoon to get this stuff out because every plumbing job I've ever done has always been rudimentary bullshit to get the stuff out like I've Used I have long skewers for kebabs. I use those all the time when I'm like clearing lines and then also when I In our old house I Don't know if a Yeti lived there or what but it was like there was a lot of hair in the lines that was not ours and at one point the shower clogged up I finally like got down in there and

Was able to pull the clog close enough that I could see it and I was like, that's a lot of hair what would be a good way to get that and Gwen got a fork Excellent drawer spaghetti spun it like spaghetti yeah, just like got purchase on it and just kept twisting like I wanted a big old mouthful and birthed this thing that was like a combination of my wife and me and whoever had lived there before us. This like, it's the worst shit you've ever seen

in your life. It's whoever was just racing cats every night. Yeah. And yeah, you don't have the tools. To this day, I have a line that runs from our HVAC system, it's called a condensate hose, that runs directly into one of our sinks below it in our bathroom and then out.

And at one point, my wife's sink was like stinking and we couldn't figure out why. And then I got in there and I realized that this line to a HVAC system, so like to a heater and a air conditioning unit, something that no one is part of, that no one touches, as I'm like digging it out with one of these skewers, I'm pulling out massive amounts of hair.

It is, and I'm like, this is a dark water situation. This is like someone drowned in my HVAC somehow. And I'm like, and I'm freaking out a little because I don't like that there's hair in this thing where human hair shouldn't be. Right, any minute now you're gonna pull out an old Hello Kitty watch that has slid off the hand over time.

Yeah, and I was like, I don't like this. And then I finally came up with just a hypothetical of my own mind for what might have happened where I was like, then that's it. That's exactly what it was. Because I can't deal with this if it's something else. But I assumed that at some point the sink had clogged, the drain, the P trap had clogged,

and it pushed everything back up, and it pushed stuff back up through that hose. And that's what was happening. And I was like, okay. You can live with that. That's it. I don't need to know anymore. What I ended up, so before this is all happened,

I created a clean out in the PVC pipe, exactly what you're talking about, from the attic, from the HVAC. And I was like, I'm a genius. I am a fucking genius. Look at my hands. These look like big strong hands. And you know what?

They are. These hands could stop the nothing. And yeah, I know that feeling. I will also say, I have been in exactly your position where the gulf of what you know and what you're dealing with is so broad that it seems completely overwhelming. My wife one night had heard a sound that sounded like water dripping. And she was like, what is that? It was sound like a shower almost. And I went down and I opened the door to our basement.

We used to have a basement and just steam started coming up from the basement. And I was like, oh God. And I went down in and the entire roof looked like it was, it was like raining down there. The ceiling down there, not roof, the ceiling down there was raining this scalding hot water. And I was like, what?

I can't even go in there because it's this scalding hot water. And so I'm going and trying to find the shutoff for the entire house, for the water for the whole house. And I didn't even at the time know what that was. And finally they get the water off Go back down there and I'm like what? How how is the whole house leaking at once and it turned out that it was a you have these braided? braided metal pipes that come out of a water heater and

one of them there's a lot of pressure in that line I guess because one of them had burst on the one of the braids and She was just firing water up into the sky. It was hitting all parts of the roof, I mean the ceiling, and then the ceiling was dripping down in every conceivable place. That's a very easy problem to fix because a braided hose costs like $6. But at the time, it was like, we have to move. Right. That's how this problem, you know, flooding, saying the basement was flooded was our first reaction

and it's in retrospect, dramatic. A pipe didn't burst somewhere above that like had us standing in two feet of water or anything like that. We just obviously didn't know that when we're trying to diagnose the problem. And to do as best I can to paint a visual for the listeners, the corrugated tube goes from the washing machine into a vertical PVC pipe.

It needs to go straight down into this thing. It just sits in there. Yeah. Because there was clog down the line, water went back and shot upwards from the PVC pipe. That's how all the water got on the floor. When you don't see it in action, it's very confusing to just come downstairs and there's water on the floor and it's like,

ah, there must be a, wait, hang on, there's water on top of the machines. Hang on, there's water on the walls, there's water on the ceilings. There is, for our intents and purposes, water everywhere and no clear source, everything is just wet. It's the most terrifying thing that we could conceive of in that moment.

Well, cause you, yeah, it's so haunting cause you're like, how? Cause you look up and there's things that are like, there's gas lines and there's pipes and you don't know what any of them are. You're just like, which one of these things has rained on our basement floor? Right. pipes and you don't know what any of them are, you're just like, which one of these things has rained on our basement floor? And it's of course the simplest thing. It's like, no, water went in

tube and tube was blocked so water shot back up. But if you've never done a lick of plumbing in your life, it might as well be magic. It makes me actually fills my heart with joy here. You say, I could live with this. like I could do this for the rest of my life. I felt the same way when, well, again, our old house. These are all things that I've looked at for immediately when I moved into a new house. They had built a new garage. It's a detached garage, but the house was old,

just like yours, and they, again, the old one was a piece of shit or something, so they rebuilt an entirely new garage. When they did that, they built it at basically a low point in the backyard. So water, anytime it rained, would come up underneath the garage door and flood the garage.

And I was, when it first happened, we were like, uh-oh, that's not great. We can't put anything on the floor of the garage. It is a concrete floor. Maybe that will be okay. And so it was a lot of me just taking a big push broom and essentially raking milk, you know, just like pushing water.

And it got to the point where it was clear that when it was gonna be heavy rains, we needed to pump, like we needed to pump out the garage every single time. And so I was creating these systems where I had a pump and it was on a, oh, at first we had a pump that was not, it was like a manual thing. It was, you connected it to a hose,

and exactly what you're talking about with siphoning, it was connected to a hose, it had a little flange on the bottom, or like a little suction on the bottom, that you put it in the water, you turn the water on on the hose, which is counterintuitive, as the water runs on the bottom, that you put it in the water, you turn the water on on the hose, which is counterintuitive, as the water runs through the hose,

it goes over this suction point to the rest of the hose and pulls up whatever was on the ground, that water. And then you have to have a trash can there or something to put the water into. And so I was waking up at like three in the morning, seeing that it was raining, getting clothes on and going out to the garage at three in the morning to put water in was raining, getting clothes on and going out to the garage at three in the morning to put water in a trash can,

to turn on our hose and then run water into a trash can. And I was like, okay, okay. So only when it rains, it's gonna be like 20 days a year. I could do this for 20 days. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right, I wanna be clear when I was talking about draining water into a bucket. It's these like several gallon Rubbermaid Tupperware bins, these very large things. And if you fill a lot of those even halfway with water, it's probably, I can lift it, but as far as like comfortably carrying it upstairs and through the house and not spilling any to dump it outside, it's too big of a risk.

And so I am filling a bin with water using my hand as the shower head. And then when I've filled the bin, then I use a small trash can to dump some water from that bin into another bin so I can make multiple trips up the stairs with these bins of water. And I'm still like, you know, eventually it'll be

springtime and I won't mind walking outside. It'll be pleasant. It'll be nice and I won't have to put on my boots every time I do laundry. What must imagine Sisyphus happy? a few more points to this plumbing story. One of which after I'd done the camera and clothing and felt like plumbing surgical god, and it was all I thought about for days, Shay and I are watching this show called The Pit on Max. It's about, it's like, it's my favorite show in the world right now. It's because I never saw ER.

This is a show set in an emergency room starring Noah Wiley from ER as a doctor in an emergency room. The doctor from ER. I didn't watch the original ER, so now I'm watching this and I'm like, do you know what? An emergency room is a good setting for a show and Noah Wiley is very good at playing a doctor.

I'm the first person to have this thought. So I'm riveted by the show and we were watching last week's episode, a show about doctors doing complicated surgery and not even surgery, but just like various maneuvers to save lives. And as soon as it was done, I turned to Shay and I said, I want to get back in those pipes. I want to see what else I can find.

I want to get back in those pipes. I want to see what else I can find. I want to do more stuff. Well, it's such a, in the relationship to writing, I mean, to bring this full circle, it's so much more tangible. The work when it's done is clear. The what needs to be done is so clear. And that's something that's very enjoyable

and like satisfies an itch you don't often get to scratch with writing. That's why I got into woodworking too, is it was like, yeah, oh, things fit together. It's you know how things and like you're gonna run into problems along the way. But the solutions, as you're making it, it's clear immediately if it works or not. Yes, like, what is this heaven? How come everybody isn't a carpenter?

This is wonderful. Also, when you're done woodworking, you can sit on the thing you made. Use it. Yeah. You can use it. And then you don't have to watch one of your bosses change the chair you made into, in your opinion,

a worse chair. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. At the your opinion, a worse chair. At the very least a lateral chair. Sure, more people are gonna enjoy that chair. Yeah. Yeah, I feel the same way about like home stuff. We've had a lot of, even at this house, we've had a lot of things that just come up where I'm like, well, fuck, dude dude I don't know uh now I gotta watch 16

hours of YouTube videos and try and identify what I'm actually dealing with and when you solve it at the end you're like like when I we fixed our washer recently our washer had a motor that that busted and ran out so it wasn't draining water out of the washer and I was doing the same thing as you I was like a coffee mug in the washer take scoopinging water out, putting it in a bucket. And then I looked at a couple of videos and like Maytag and these different companies, like here's how you would do it. You take the front panel off of the washing machine. Then you gotta dig through all these other parts

and then you gotta get to the bottom where the motor is. And then this one guy on YouTube was like, fuck that. Just lift your washer up, tip it back, make sure that you don't crush yourself because they weigh a lot. But that's the reason they won't tell you to do it this way is because it's dangerous. But if you just lift the washer up,

you can access it from the bottom and you can solve this problem in 15 minutes. And I did it with Ronan. And I'm nervous because I'm like, I could die. There's a reason they don't want you doing this. I did it and at the end I was like I am I'm the god of this house I am the king I got I made life again the washing machines alive It's so awesome and here was the one other thing that surprised me because you you YouTube Can be a resource.

I have found diminishing returns on the searchability of YouTube, not necessarily like the people who put videos on there. I think just because in our era of, to borrow a phrase from Ed Zitron, tech rot, where all of the tech conglomerates, all of big tech are making things worse on purpose to keep you on their shitty products longer.

Searchability on Google has just gone down the toilet. So I'm very reliant on my dad because sometimes with like house issues, most of the time with house issues, I don't even, even if Google worked, I don't know what terms to use to search for, but I can talk to my dad in plain English And and describe what's going wrong which in this case was I'm wet Yeah, and

Anytime I had told anyone else in my life the story just as I had told you start to finish They had all done the same thing. You were the only person who bucked this trend, which is when I get to the part where I say my dad has one of those plumbing cameras that you can sneak in drains. Every single person in my life was like, why does your dad have that? Because my dad worked for Amtrak, which is famously not a pipe. it's a train. He was not a plumber by trade. He is, at this point, several years retired guy who has a plumbing camera.

And even my father-in-law, who's incredibly handy, was like, why does your dad have a plumbing camera? And I was like, sir, he had two. He had one for me and that's the kind of shit you just can't get on YouTube you can't get that kind of bespoke treatment of Papa O'Brien coming by with a couple of different options for pipe camera oh look at that snake yeah that's exactly what we're looking at here. Yeah, like this kind of thing is like,

so for anyone who's not watching, this is essentially the camera without the camera on the front. It is like a long snake that has a spring on the end to clear pipes. And like just along the way, if I could have bought one of those cameras, I would absolutely have one.

Yeah. Like I, every single one of these tools, by the end of my life. I will have one of those cameras I'm gonna have one of those cameras by the end of this record. I love it so much and the you bring up the snake which is Very similar to the claw you run this hard flexible wire through your pipes And this is what I mean about plumbing being demystified and it's just Legos. The magic of this long pipe is that it's got some wiring at the end that makes

it sort of like a whisk, like a kitchen whisk, and once you get it in your pipes you hope blindly that it reaches a clog that you're trying to find. And then you crank a wheel on the other side that just fucking swirls it around. There's no magic to it. It's just like, it's 100% the solution that I would have come up with given enough time. It's a very caveman solution of like, well there's something wrong with the hole. Maybe if I put a stick down the hole and move the stick around for a while,

the hole will be working again. And that's plumbing. I did it. There's a thing you can do called a hydro jet with sewer lines, where if you've got a clog, and it's a big clog, and I love that this was somebody's idea of a solution was they were like all right well what if we just fed a hose down there and we fired water at supersonic speed at the clog I wonder what would happen like I've seen

power washers work I feel like if I just put a power washer down there yeah I could really destroy some shit and so that's what it is like this hydro jet is just this thing that they put down there and Yeah. I could really destroy some shit. And so that's what it is. It's like this hydrogen is just this thing that they put down there. And they just fire water through your pipes. To the point where if you have clay pipes, it could do damage to your pipes. I love that that was somebody's idea.

They're like, well, I mean, water clean stuff pretty good. And I accidentally skinned my hand with a power washer once. I feel like it would be pretty easy to take out toilet paper or a battery if it needed to. I just have a really quick thing that I want to ask you about. Good. Really quick thing that I want to ask you about. That's the name of the show. It's the titular moment of the show, everybody. Really quick thing I want to ask you about, that's the name of the show, it's the titular moment of the show, everybody.

Really quick thing I wanna ask you about with Soren and Daniel, would you say when you go out to eat or you get fast food or anything, what is your concern level that someone will spit in your food? My concern level is incredibly low and that's naivety on my part perhaps for a couple

of reasons part of it was just working in restaurants well first working in the concession stand at a movie theater which handles a lot of food and just never seeing anyone spit in anything there. But if that's too exposed for you, working in restaurants for six or seven years, never seeing it. I know you can go on Reddit, there are plenty of people who will say like, oh yeah, I've seen people spitting food.

I have never observed it, and it's not like there haven't been bad customers or anything like that, or like very demanding patrons. We've, it just, I think at the end of the day, everyone in the back of the house and all of the waiters running your food, we are all still like human beings. We all still think the idea of getting spit in our own food is bad.

And I don't know. I just it's like I can't picture any of the kitchen workers that I've worked with like this'll fix them. You know, hot two on that thing. As I've always said my famous catchphrase for years. I don't know, it just seems like if I saw someone do that that I was working with, I'd be like, what the fuck? No, that burger's gotta go to a person. And they'd be like, yeah, you're right, I'm going through a divorce, I'm very sad right now, that's why I spit in the burger.

I will tender my resignation. I just think about all the times I've seen on videos of like a customer like somebody Domino's stepping on a pizza or like take punching a burger and like smashing it like not just spitting but just like they're gonna fuck with your food in some way. And so basically anytime the communication breaks down between me and a server or like a waiter or a drive-through or whatever, communication is not where it should be.

My immediate thought, the thing that's keeping me completely civil is that I'm like, please don't fuck with the food. I've never been nicer than I am in situations where it's clear that we are not on the same page and it's clear that this is not my fault and I had an example of this last night where I don't know if you're familiar Dan but McDonald's does a thing where they're like we've got a meal especially for Kenny Chesney or whatever. So they have a meal out right now for Angel Reese. Angel Reese's meal is a quarter pounder with cheese, with bacon and barbecue sauce on it. Big onions, not like their little fuck off onions

that McDonald's usually does, like big strippy onions. And maybe some other stuff, I don't know. I don't eat beef either. But I was like, I am so drawn to these surprise meals that fast food will do where they're like, oh, we're gonna do the special. And I'm like, oh, I guess I better try that. I think I need to try that.

I'm like, one time won't hurt me, it's fine. I'm gonna go get this thing. I wanna see what it's like. I'm hungry, it's like, the circumstances are ideal. I have been working out, it's fine. I'm gonna go get this thing. I want to see what it's like. I'm hungry. It's like the circumstances are ideal I have been working out. It's fine Circumstances are ideal. I'm hungry and I want it If we could just sad if we could just get to this these these two specific criteria Then all the planets will align I don't eat beef and I don't eat pork and I don't think for very specific reasons

I don't eat beef and I don't eat pork. And I don't eat them for very specific reasons. I don't eat beef because some beef is made in Central and South America. Deforestation happens to get that beef. That's all McDonald's. Like that, I'm getting 15 different cows if I'm lucky in that one burger. And most of it is like a result of slash and burn deforestation.

And still I was like, but one, I'm allowed one. So I go there and I'm in line and I see that it's a double quarter pounder. And I was like, that might make me sick. I don't think I can have that much beef. And I'm like looking around the menu and I'm not seeing a single version of it. And I'm like, I'll just ask.

So at the window I'm like, hey, you're double bacon quarter pounder barbecue burger. Do you do that as a single patty? And the answer I got was maybe 45 seconds long. It was a guy who was so high that he was like, he was like, it comes in one sandwich. It's one sandwich. It's these meat.

There's two pieces of, there's two pieces of meat. We usually do it and there's cheese in there. There's two pieces of meat and cheese. And I was like listening to this and I'm like being very patient. And then I was like, okay, I see what you're saying. Do you make it as just a double quarter pounder or can you do it as a single quarter pounder?

And he was like, do you want to put the patties together? And I was like, no, I would like just a single quarter pounder, just by itself, just a single quarter pounder on that sandwich. Do you do that? And he was like, yeah, yeah, we can do that. And I was like, cool.

And he was like, okay, so nothing on it, just the patty? And I'm like, hold on, no, no, no, no. I want the thing I just described that you have on your menu. It's always so tough because you have to be diplomatic. You can't start from a position of saying like, now first of all, I know you can do this.

I need to phrase this, do you do this? Because these are different things. Right, and I also can't be like, I can't play the logic game of, why on earth do you think that I would ask for a double bacon, like a bacon cheeseburger quarter pounder with barbecue sauce and then say, give me that, but without any of that.

Just a single patty. So I can't be like, who would ask for that? I just want to support Angel Reese. So I was like, no, not that again. And now I'm like getting to the point where I can hear it in my own voice that I'm starting to get a little impatient. I'm like, no, no, not that.

Here's what I want. And like, as I'm hearing that, I'm like, fuck. If I was in the service industry and this person, even if I'm hearing that, I'm like, fuck, if I was in the service industry, and this person, even if it wasn't, I'm not understanding what this person wants, and they are starting to get testy with me, like now the food is compromised in my mind. So I'm like, and I don't know what kind of day

this person is at, so I was like, I'm sorry I can't do this this and sped out of the line. Oh no. Because it was clear I was not ever gonna get what I wanted and it was clear like there was just this disconnect and what I did get would not only be not what I wanted but it would be something I would not enjoy at all because I would be worried the entire time

that somebody was like, well, you're getting that, I'm gonna wipe this on my dick for a little bit and then give it to you. I'm sure when this episode airs, we will have comments from people saying, I have spit in 10,000 hamburgers or I have seen workers do the most disgusting things. All of your worst fears are completely true.

It just hasn't been my experience and maybe I've been lucky enough to work with the kindest people in food service in New Jersey in the past. Seems unlikely to me, but it's certainly possible. But when I was at Ruby Tuesday, the worst customers that we would get who would be demanding and want to send things back and you knew they weren't going to give you a tip and you hated them with everything inside of you. Your 100% of your focus was, God, what do I have to do to make sure this person doesn't send this back again? Totally.

What do I need to do to make this person not pissed off so they just leave and they go away and they're not my problem anymore. That's somebody eating in your restaurant. I feel like it's a different game for a drive-through. But I agree with you totally. I've worked at a pizza place and it was like, if you want this person gone out of your life as quickly as possible and if you antagonize them

and they find out that you're toast, man, like now you're connected to this person because you have done something to aggrieve them. And I agree with you completely, but like you walk out, you step out of, or you drive through a fast food line, at the end, the two of you stop existing to one another. Like now I am no longer like,

it would be really crazy for me to then park and go back in and be like, did you fucking spit? Those people are crazy those people get filmed. Yeah, so like that doesn't have you don't do that So anyway, I was in this line it was clear like this wasn't gonna happen this guy was just not understanding the difference between a double and a single and I was like I I'm not gonna be able to make you understand and I'm gonna get angry and I don't like who I am in the circumstances

So I'm leaving. So if anyone tastes the angel Reese bacon barbecue quarter pounder Just I don't know. Tell me what the the cross section looks like. Tell me if it was good What did you so? What did you do for yourself after you denied yourself the Angel Reese burger that you'd worked so hard to earn? Right. What fast food lane did you pull into after that? Nothing. I went home. Oh buddy. Well how so I wasn't feeling very good about myself. I wasn't feeling good about the fact that I started to get impatient.

And I was like, you don't deserve it. It wasn't for you tonight. Like you, this was not, that you were supposed to not have this. But the problem with that is that now I will sit with a desire for fast food for a while until I have fast food again. Like once you actually,

you present the opportunity that you might have had at every single meal, my body is like, we should go get that thing. We should get that thing. I let my orders be wrong for breakfast food a lot because I don't order often and my order seems inexplicable and too indulgent. But I only bring this up

because it happened a couple of days ago and it feels if not now then then when yeah the morning after the Super Bowl I have volunteer work every Monday morning it's early uh it's the Super Bowl so I'm a little bit not hung over necessarily but I'm not feeling my best so I'm like yeah I'm gonna get a sandwich on my way to volunteer work and I went to Dunkin Donuts and I went in because I didn't trust the drive-through on this particular thing because it usually requires explanation or like I would like a bagel sandwich with just bacon and sausage no egg no cheese yeah just some meat in between I just want some meat.

If it's like a nicer breakfast restaurant type place, then I will also want potatoes on that sandwich, just a meat and potato sandwich. Yeah. It's confusing for a lot of people because to walk in and order a breakfast sandwich with no egg, no cheese sounds absurd, and I don't have time to slow down and be like,

you don't understand, I'm allergic to dairy and egg. Yes, people can be allergic to dairy and egg. Yes, people can be allergic to egg. It's crazy. But I still want to participate in all of the other fun breakfast games. So please just give me my double meat sandwich. So I say sausage, bacon, no egg, no cheese. And the guy comes back with bacon, egg and cheese with no cheese. And I open it in front of him and I say, no, I'm sorry, this isn't right. There was supposed to be no egg, no cheese.

And he goes, I thought you said no cheese. It's like, I did say no cheese, but I said no egg, no cheese. He said, hmm, man, I really thought you said no egg, no cheese. And I'm very close to getting angry. What I wanna say is it doesn't matter what you thought. Like what I really want to say is like,

well, first of all, you're wrong. I wouldn't say that. I would never say that. Because I can't have those things. I live as me. I work so hard to not eat poison. Do you understand? And I also want to say it doesn't matter what you think.

Even if you're right, it doesn't matter what you think even if you're right It doesn't matter because here I am standing in front of you the customer with money. Oh man, I said I say no I'm so sorry no egg. No cheese just the meats He's like, okay, and he disappears again and he comes back to give a sandwich That is 100% the same sandwich where they've just like tossed the egg disk away. And there's no sausage. It's just a few pieces of bacon. Whatever bacon didn't get caught up in the egg dump. And I look at it and I just go, that's fine.

And I leave. This is because the second time. You can't send it back twice. No, no, no. From bagel sandwich. You can't send that back twice, no. No, no. From bagel sandwich, you can't send that back twice. You're going to get filmed. Also, I feel like even though I'm right, and I'm cosmically right, and historians will

remember that I'm right, if I go back twice, then he will surely never know that he's wrong. If he comes back with like, all right, I thought it was crazy that you wanted bacon, egg, and cheese with no egg, no cheese, but here it is, here's your bacon sandwich. And I say, no, this is wrong too. My thing's even weirder. Then he'll be like, all right,

I'm gonna let myself off the hook for this one. This guy's clearly fucking nuts. He just likes watching me walk around. Yeah, I think that that's, you've made the right decision. I went to a restaurant the other night with my family, got a dish, started eating it, realized that the chicken was raw inside of it. And I was like, oh, it's gonna be tough to eat around this.

And my wife was like, send that back. And I was like, no. No, you don't understand. If I send it back, they'll touch it. At that point, I've made an enemy of myself. I've drawn a target on my own back if I send it back. And she's like, it's raw. And I was like, maybe you're making a good point.

Like I could die. So I showed the guy, I was like, I'm so sorry. This is just a little pink inside. He's like, oh Jesus. He took it. And I was like, oh, okay. Thank you for wearing the pants in the family, Collin. Thank you for being the one who takes care of things because I would not have done that.

I would have just gotten my salmonella had been on my way. I was out to brunch with Shay a year or two ago and I had run an, I had an eight mile run that morning and I was starving and we were waiting for my food for the longest time and like her food came and she was eating it and then we had like other plans and I'm just like getting really hungry and worked up when she just keeps saying like, is it, please is it coming?

And it was like specifically in order of like, a Calzone with no cheese. One of the crazy fucking things that I order because I just want to participate, even though the majority of people on earth are lactose intolerant, I was still doing my strange dance and then finally they come out with a thing

and I bite into it and pull a long string of something and I was like guys We said no cheese. We insisted no cheese. I can't eat this and They were like no it well good news. It's not cheese and I was like What is it? I was like, that's that's just how it comes. That's What that's how we do the dough. And I was like, it's either cheese or it's uncooked dough. I don't like my options here.

It can't be either of these things. Dan, I'm having a great idea. It's not gonna solve any of these problems, but I do wanna keep talking about this. And I think, what if we took it, what if we took this to the Patreon? Cause I've got a shitload more I keep talking about this. And I think, what if we took it, what if we took this to the Patreon? Cause I've got a shitload more I wanna say about food. Let's do it, let's take it to the Patreon.

Take it to the Patreon. So ladies and gentlemen, if you're not members of our Patreon, you can join, you can come listen to us talk about, complain more about the service industry. Now that you're done hearing us complain about the service industry. Now that you're done hearing us complain about having to do the jobs. I was complaining about writing television in the service industry. Just how put out Soren is from having to write his one script a year.

Come join us for more complaints. Um, if, if you liked our theme song, that's by me, Rex, you can find their music anywhere you stream music or their full albums at me, Rex.bandcamp.com. Our sound engineer editor, producers, Gabe Harder, Gabe Harder is wonderful. He does great work. That's right. And I'm stalling because I was thinking about whatever comes next. This is usually where I do the Patreon thing. If you also, you can also get our special episodes, our little bonus episodes. We do them every other week and you can find those on, if you subscribe through Apple Podcasts as well. If you want to watch this podcast, you can find those on, if you subscribe through Apple Podcasts as well.

If you wanna watch this podcast, you can see Daniel and I on YouTube. There are also little clips of this that show up on our Instagram account, our Twitter account, or Axe account. We do, they're fun. They really gave us very good at isolating the funniest parts and putting out little clips of that.

So find us wherever you can. If you have questions for us, we have an email address. I would not be able to tell you what that is anymore. I've completely forgotten about our email. But you can find us on Blue Sky. If you have questions for Daniel, or you want to tell me how good that Angel Reese burger is, go to Blue Sky and find us and you can do it there.

Thank you very much. Bye. Bye. Bye! Where would I be if I'm ever But words without words Oh forget it Sore and booby, 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.