Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - New Jersey’s Favorite Son!

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

The guys come up with a sick intro for Hot Take Theatre, and then spend a bunch of time talking about the lyrics of Lightning Crashes.  And as always a big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks Truebill.com/qq.  it could save you thousands a year. HEADSPACE.COM/QUICKQUESTION for a FREE one-month trial with access to Headspace’s full mediation library. Thanks Raycon!.  For a limited time, go To buyraycon.com/qq and use code HOLIDAY for up to 15% off your entire Raycon order.

So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, a podcast where two best friends and counter-actors ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast author of How to Fight Presidents, staff writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and guy who is surprisingly upbeat for someone who doesn't currently have a job or home address, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello.

Hello, everybody. I'm Soren Bui. I'm a writer for American Dad and a dad myself. How dad are you? I hear you shout out into the internet. Okay. I'm so dad. Oof.

Bad delivery so far? Yeah. I'm so dad that I spent more time staring at admiring... Let me start again. Okay. I'm so dad that I spent more time staring and admiring my staring at. I'm so dad that I spent more time staring at and admiring my Christmas lights when they were neatly bundled on December 26th than when they were up as decoration the rest of the month. That delivery was what made me so dead. My favorite part about that is how we're not cutting any of it.

And it's all staying in. No, keep it all. Yeah. That's perfect. You took it down December 26th? Yeah, immediately. Well, you know, that's not fair. Because we actually got back on the 26th.

The next day, I took it all down. Okay. Do you always do that? No. In fact, when I was a child, sometimes I can remember the tree being up in like February. But I don't know. There was something when I put up Halloween decorations this year, when I put up Christmas, as soon as the holiday was over, I was like, I need these out of here.

Yeah. I don't want to even be thinking about this because at that point, it just becomes this other thing you have to do that you're looking at constantly yeah i've only ever i've only ever decorated an apartment because i've lived in an apartment since for since 2006 and i i want that shit down immediately i if i i think there might have been a year where like i had some family over sometime in December before Christmas just for a social gathering. And then when I looked at the calendar and knew that no one was going to be in my apartment again, I was like, okay, great. I can take this fucking tree down now.

Yeah. Because it's not for me. No. And the spirit is, I don't, it feels like I'm compromising the spirit. I'm diluting it by keeping it up. I want to just have this very finite amount of time, this window every single year when this thing is something special. And after that, if it's still up, it feels terrible.

It feels gross. I want it gone. I want it out of there. I hear Christmas music at Ralph's when I'm walking around, which is a grocery store here in LA. And I feel like it should be illegal. I get upset that they're still playing it because you're only making it worse. Yeah.

Well, thanks to Raycon for supporting Quick Question. Raycons are our go-to for on-the-go audio. Get 15% off your Raycon order at buyraycon.com slash QQ. Thanks to Truebill for supporting our podcast. From forgotten free trials to automatic renewals, when big companies keep charging you, Truebill is your secret weapon to save money on subscriptions you don't need. Go right now, truebill.com slash QQ. It could save you thousands a year. Thanks to Headspace for supporting Quick Question. With nearly 60 million downloads, the Headspace app is the most science-backed mindfulness app in the world. A study shows

that just two weeks of Headspace can reduce your stress by 14%. However you're feeling, try Headspace at headspace.com slash quick question and get one month free of their entire mindfulness library. Welcome to our podcast where we mostly just complain about things. It turns out we didn't expect it to be that, but Dan pointed out last time that, yeah, we do complain an awful lot on here. And I'm going to try to make a concerted effort not to do that. And one of the ways I'm going to do that, Dan, is I want to play a game that you introduced last year which i really enjoyed called hot take theater so hot save that clip please jacob uh that was what we'll play every single time we do one of these

okay so uh this game was there was usually something that was introduced to pop culture, a position on a subject that you thought was unfairly dunked on by the internet. You know, everybody has their responses to Must Love Cats, or no, what the fuck was that thing called? Must Love Cats? Cat person? Yeah. Cats. Cat person. Yeah. Everyone has their response to Must Love Dogs, the Janine Garofalo and What's His Name movie, and Cameron Diaz was there too. Or maybe it was Uma Thurman. We all have our thoughts on it.

Well, these things are introduced to pop culture. Everybody has their thoughts. Everybody usually generally disagrees with these things. And you say, hey, hold on a second. I actually like what this person had to say. You chose Ridley Scott, I believe, in his defense of his movie where he was like, the new generation is the problem. The kids are the trouble. Yes. But Soren, you're clearly ramping up to something, but because of a quirk in my brain, I have to stop you. Do you want to know how off I was about the casting of Must Love Dogs? Okay. Is it Mark Ruffalo? It's John Cusack and Diane Lane. Holy shit. Wait, that doesn't even make any sense. I was thinking about the truth about cats and dogs. Right. Janine Ruffalo, Uma Thurman. And the love interest is not Mark Ruffalo. Peter Gallagher?

Oh, wow. Oh, no, I don't know. People just disappear from your brain. Um, wait, so Diane Keaton and John Cusack were love interests in a movie in must love dogs.

Apparently I'm, I'm sort of happy that exists. I'm pleased to hear that they would do that, that the Hollywood was like, no, we should have some stories where the woman is a little bit older and they fall in love. Okay. Well, on to Hot Take Theater.

There was an article that made the rounds not too long ago. Hold on one second. There was an article that made the rounds. It was on New York Times, and it was by a woman named Heather Havrileski. And this article, I think it was a snippet actually from her book, but the story is called How to Know If You Should Spend Your Life. No, this can't be the right one. Sorry, Daniel.

Marriage, Heather Havrileski, forever. One second. It's okay. I want to make sure I get this title exactly right. I want to make sure I get this title exactly right. I want to make sure that I won't make a joke of it. We'll just, we've already Here we go.

blown past it. Diane Lane is one year older than John Cusack. Oh, Jesus. That's how That can't possibly be my fault she's like she's a jack nicholas love interest and they're like you're thinking of diane keaton bro oh who who did you say diane lane oh diane lane oh no that makes perfect sense i all right well then i'll i'll take it back

to what I, all right, well then I'll, I'll take it back. To what? Uh, I, I don't even know how to go about it, but, uh, I'm wrong about Diane Keaton. I'm Diane Lane. I was thinking of Diane Keaton, thinking that John Cusack and Diane Keaton were love interests in the story. And Diane Lane and, and John Cusack feels very par for the course. And I'm not proud of Hollywood, it turns out. On to Hot Take Theater. An article came out at the end of December. And when I say the end of December, I mean Christmas Eve called Marriage Requires Amnesia. And the slug line of it is, do I hate my husband? Oh, sure. Yes.

And this is all from, oh, I think this is part of a snippet from her book, but Heather, uh, Haverleski, she wrote this article and it was about all these things about her husband that drive her. Have you heard, you ever read this first of all, Dan? No, I was excited, uh, for you to explain it to me because I only clicked on the, I saw the title and the log line and the publish date. And I was like, I think I need a guide for this. This is, do I hate my husband? Ma'am, it's Christmas Eve. What are you doing? Why does this article even exist? Let me, let me make sure I experienced this for the first time into a microphone.

Yes. Okay. That was smart. Now, basically what she does is she talks about she just talks shit about her husband she talks about uh how many weird noises he makes at night how his sneezes after every single one of his sneezes she's ever heard she mutters to herself jesus christ because they're somehow so loud and two-tonal like they're like deep and somehow high at the same time um she goes on to like describe the the horrors of growing old next to somebody else feeling like you're locked into them and that you can't go anywhere else but on on the surface i understand why that's yeah this is the reason that it's being attacked what was the broader internet reaction to this? The internet said, this woman stinks? Yeah, no, they're saying, leave your husband.

You do not love this man. You don't love this person. It's so clear. Like, why are you, this is not somebody, you wouldn't say these types of things about somebody you love. Love is different than this. What you're describing is being stuck in a bear trap with another human being. Like, just get out of there if you're so unhappy,

and stop trying to convince us that this is love." That was the general reaction. Now, I think that she had written this maybe, she talks a lot about, I think they do a trip to Australia and how she talks a lot about her quiet work, like the work that she does behind the scenes to keep the family running and like how she's keeping it all going. And her husband. Yes. And this guy is just sort of like stumbling through everything and he's just not what she wants him to be in a lot of these moments. lot of these moments and but it's all presented in this like this tone that like this lovable look you know like i oh so help me i love this man like kind of thing where it's like why do i love this guy so much and it has kind of the same vibe as that chris pratt post that

went out where he was saying how much he loved his wife. And he's like, sometimes you need headphones to make a marriage work, that kind of thing. And everyone was like, well, fuck, Chris, this is completely tone deaf. There's a lot of the same thing happening here where everyone was very upset with this woman for treating it this way.

I'm going to stand up in defense of this article though. All right. Because she talks a lot about how you basically need blinders. You need to see your significant other without so much clarity. The more clarity that you have of this other person, the more real they become and the more kind of visceral and, and it just not in like the literal sense of ugly, but in like the figurative sense of like another human being, you see the ugliness of them more frequently when you are married to somebody. And she's

talking a lot about that and then loving somebody despite those things. And first of all, I think that that's a completely valid approach to this. I think that talking about these things and using elements from your own life where somebody who you love and who you've been married to for several years drives you crazy in specific ways and using some hyperbole to describe how much these things drive you crazy. And then talking about that, no, it's okay. These are things that you have to sort of work past because you're living with another human being. And in order to do that and still love somebody, there's just sort of things that have to remain fuzzy for you. And like that you just sort of leave out of your peripheral vision and that's fine. Um, I don't, I don't, I don't hate that approach. The other

thing is that as she's describing a lot of this stuff in here, it's so clear that she's guilty of a lot of the same stuff. And people are like zeroing in on those things and like pointing out that like, well, you say he doesn't listen, but it's clear that you're not listening to him here, that kind of stuff. That's the point of the fucking article. Like it's not a reliable narrator, basically. And I think that a lot of culture has lost their ability to recognize an unreliable narrator. She's as much a part of the problem in what's going on in the relationship as he is. She's revealing her own flaws in the writing of it. And without explicitly saying, here's where I'm bad. She's just showing you how she's bad. And like how these two people, like, it's fine. They're clearly making it work. And this is how you do it. discourse with Twitter who's been like, but you're also bad. You're a bad listener. And it's like,

uh-huh. And where did you learn that? Who did you learn that from? Did you do some detective work or did you read a thing presented to you by an author with intention? So this writer, I think was catching a lot of heat and was like looking at it. She wasn't just ignoring it. She didn't go away for Christmas and new year and like come back to any of this she's the entire time she was like listening and thinking about this and uh i wish i appreciate i appreciate people thinking things through and then she did this sub stack where she responded to it two days ago and in it she's so articulate and good about describe so i didn't even know this existed until I started, I pinned this when I found it. Cause as soon as I saw the article, I was like, I fucking think this is great. I think it's really well-written. I think it's very funny.

I think that it's got a lot of depth to it and she's expressing some discontent and she's doing it in a way that's like very interesting. And with not just her husband, but like the idea of marriage. And that's fine to do when you're married. It's fine to like be like, what are we doing in this system? Anyway, she wrote a response and I think it's great. I just want to read you a piece of it. She said, the idea that I'm miserable and I'm promoting resignation and contempt is a hilarious side effect of how moralistic and reductive our culture is about marriage and writing and personality and opinion and everything else

under the sun. But motherfucker, you don't have to become the living embodiment of a live, laugh, love sign to stand up for joy. Defending your right to feel irritation and impatience and random bouts of misdirected lust is the same thing as defending your right to feel joy. We are big, complicated animals with hurricanes of emotion racing through our microbiomes. It's fine to feel all the fucking things. It's fine to step outside the weird little corrals of culture built for us and say, uh, this feels wrong to me.

I have mixed feelings. Maybe that means I'm a total dick, but I feel weird. And she does her really good. I mean, that's like the meanest she gets. Yeah. Or she like starts like starts like laying it down. But the way that she talks about what we want from a writer and like how things have changed and what we're like looking for in a writer felt so good and real in a way where I was like, it was hitting a lot of notes for me

that I was dealing with and not really being able to articulate. Like, it's okay to question. You don't want every writer to write the exact same safe way about the same safe things. Like, that's sort of a lot of what the complaint against cancel culture is, but it's a complaint that I think might be somewhat valid. It's like, I don't necessarily think people are being canceled from this. She just caught a lot of heat from it, but that's not what they're ultimately saying. It's not what you want from a writer. You want them to question what's going on at any given moment. And I think that that's fine. Um, but her response, this is wonderful. Hey, it's a new year, which means you've probably made some good new year's resolutions.

And if you're like 98% of everybody else, one of those new year's resolutions is, I think I'd like to work out a little bit more. Whether that means that you're just going to be out walking, or you're going to be doing some burpees in your apartment complex courtyard, or you're actually going to go to the gym. The Raycon earbuds could be the thing that helps you get there. Whatever way you challenge yourself this New Year, there's no better way to do it than with a pair of Raycon wireless earbuds in your ears. I use mine not only when I'm working out, I like to go to the gym with them because I hate the music that my gym plays, but I also like to go to the grocery store in them. I really enjoy walking up and down the aisles with my Raycons in, listening to podcasts,

listening to stand-up routines that my friends have done. And occasionally I'll turn around and see that someone has been talking to me and trying to call the conversation with me for the last 30 seconds. And I didn't even notice because these are so discreet that when someone is behind you, they can't see your earbuds. I think that's a positive or teaming up with Raycon. And if you go to buyraycon.com slash QQ, you can get 15% off of your Raycon earbuds. Raycon wireless earbuds are the best way to bring audio with you because no matter how much you shake things up, literally no matter how much you're moving around, you know that they won't fall out of your ears. They're everyday earbuds, but they look and feel and sound better than ever.

There's also awareness mode for when you need to listen to your surroundings so that you don't get hit by cars or whatever when you're running. With optimized gel tips for the perfect in-ear fit, these earbuds are so comfortable, they will not budge. You gotta trust me on this. Raycon offers eight hours of playtime and a 32-hour battery life,

and they're priced just right. You get quality audio at half the price of other premium audio brands. I love my Raycons. I love that I can just pop them out of their case. I love hearing that little sound of Raycon connected. And I know immediately, no matter what I'm connecting to, I haven't had a single problem with my Bluetooth. Try that, my other headphones. Right now, QQ listeners can get 15% off your Raycon order at

buyraycon.com slash QQ. That's buyraycon.com slash qq to save 15% on Raycons. There have been so many times where I've signed up for something, a magazine subscription, a Patreon, a game, something I thought was free, what have you, things I was sure I was only signing up for on a one-time basis, only to find out later that I was still getting charged, months and months after. Do you know why free trials renew without your consent? It's a business scam out to get you. They know it's hard to catch. That's part of it. Don't let greedy corporations pocket your money. Download Truebill to take control of your subscriptions. Truebill is the new app that helps you identify and stop paying

for subscriptions you don't need, want, or simply forgot about. On average, people save up to $720 a year with Truebill. That could be you! Truebill has over 2 million users and helps save them over $100 million. Truebill has saved me money. I love Truebill. They've saved me a ton of money. I use Truebill and you should too. Don't fall for subscription scams. Start canceling today at Truebill.com slash QQ. Go right now! Truebill.com slash QQ. It could save you thousands a year. Truebill.com slash QQ. Go right now. Truebill.com slash QQ. It could save you thousands a year. Truebill.com slash QQ. Yeah, and you want to represent like all human sides of things.

This is not marriage, but Tim Minchin, one of my favorite writer, musician, comedian, thinkers, has a song, White Wine in the Sun, where he's talking very lovingly about his kids and how he doesn't really care for Christmas, but he likes it. He doesn't like it as a holiday, but he likes it because his family is together and he loves his baby child. And it's like, this is great. He's content to just sit around with generations of his family and stare at his new daughter and pass her around the room. And he got another song i think called lullaby where he talks about uh the really strong urge many parents feel to smother their child when it won't stop screaming in the crib which is another like i'm sure of like a a common practice that he's like putting a funny spin on uh he's not actually gonna

murder his child or anything so far he hasn't um but again that's like not all not every song you write needs to be my baby is perfect and they make the holidays better and not every essay about marriage you write needs to be, we are two halves of the same coin. We complete each other's sentences and every day is bliss. Right. There's a strange expectation, especially from essays, that the author is coming at it from a moral high ground. They somehow figured it out and they're telling you, they're giving you an arsenal for your side of what to say to people who are bad. And that's not what a lot of literature should be or has been previously. And like, she'd got, there's another part of this that I think is

really good where she says, I'm not here to defend, or she says, I'm here to defend flinty personalities and bad days and marriages that aren't music videos. That's all. When she says music videos, she means that a lot of people who came at her were saying like, that's not how my relationship is. Mine is this. And she was like describing what was basically a music video of people in the Bahamas sitting on the beach together and holding hands forever. That's not the same thing as promoting resignation and contempt. The New York Times excerpt of my book. Oh, so it was an excerpt from her book. Isn't about how terrible my husband is. It's about how hard it is to be a conflicted mortal chain to another mortal.

If you can't tell that I'm the irascible nightmare in the picture, just keep reading. So I think that the fact that she took time to write something so articulate in response to it made me feel like, yes, okay, this is very, very helpful for me to help to understand why I was fine with this as well. In reading it, I felt it was just really good. It was like somebody's point of view that I really enjoyed. Nick Hornby is somebody who does a really great job of this. Have you ever read, I think it's called Married. I've read State of the Union, which is a series of scenes between two married people before they go to their marriage counselor. I think it's called... Is it not that?

I think it might be called Marriage. Hold on one second. I don't think it's called the Union. Why is Corduroy on here? What the fuck is going on oh how to be good um okay so like nick hornby has a book called how to be good and that's about a marriage and about like these two people that are sort of like figuring it out as they go and and how neither one of them is perfect and he does like a very good job of writing from the perspective of one of them where you're catching the bad details about the other, but your, your job is to understand from the subtext that the person you're hearing from also has problems the same way. Like you're listening to a friend who's telling you a story

where, you know, that friend is in the wrong, but like, they're telling you a story in which they're the victim of something else. And you just have to be like, okay, yeah, no, no, no, you're right. No, like, yeah, of course. Yeah, you're not totally wrong. And you have to sort of like give them that. But all the while, you know, just from the storytelling, oh, no, I see what actually happened here. And being a writer incapable of doing that, that's like that's the best kind of writing. Yeah.

That's the best kind of writing. Yeah. And we're really putting a limit on whether people are allowed to do that or not when we shit down the throat of people who try it. Right. Well, I'm glad this author, Heather Havrileski, seems to have risen above this crowd and come out the other side, like just being able to articulately say, no, you dumb motherfuckers. You read it wrong. It's, but it's really gratifying to see.

And, and I'm sure it was gratifying to write. Uh, and let's, let's, Hey, you can get her book forever land on the divine tedium of marriage. It's going to be available everywhere. Books are sold February 8th.

Yeah. So I went around and started reading her other stuff just to see if, make sure I was right. And that she would, this was not somebody who was clearly in a loveless marriage and he did get out. She writes about this type of topic a lot, which I'm not surprised. That's how you get up with a book about the topic, but she's got another story in the New York times called how to know if you should spend together or forever together.

She's got something from the cut called is marriage obsolete like a bunch of these and they're all similarly toned but i think so like she walks the razor's edge so well where it's like by the end you're like no this is important this these are two people who are clearly flawed they both have things that drive each other up the wall they make each other a little bit crazy in a way that's beyond sitcoms that's sort of like dark and not all the time forgivable. But the fact that they're continually doing it together and that there's some strength in that and what marriage means. Marriage is more than just like a ceremony where you talk a lot about when the two of you get sick or die. It it's a lot more than that. It's like,

it's more than just the ceremony. It's bigger than all of that in a way that's kind of hard to articulate, but I really responded to it and I liked it a lot. So basically what I'm saying is that for my hot take theater, I liked it. Good. Hey, love it. And it fulfills your New Year's resolution to bring things you like to the podcast. Yeah. Speaking of things everybody likes, New Jersey. Were there actual crickets just then?

actual crickets just then? I, this is, I got a quick question for you, but there's a couple of questions that, that, that get into it. First of all, do you know, without looking into it, a lot of famous people from New Jersey? Yeah, of course. I do too. And I'm, I was trying to figure out if that's because, A, I'm from here and I want to know everyone successful who comes out of this state so I can hold them up as another shining example of a great person from the Garden State or B, if they're just if people from New Jersey talk about being from New Jersey more than people from other states.

Because I also, on the flip of this, tried to think, who are the famous people I know from Colorado? And there aren't almost any. As far as I know, and this is what I'm trying to figure out if this is my Jersey blindness or not. There aren't like, there's Trey Parker and Matt Stone who did South Park, Colorado. And that's like the clearest example of this is a Colorado show from Colorado people. But there aren't, I don't know, songs that are about Colorado. I don't know, like, I'm sure there are musicians and artists from Colorado, but I don't know anyone that is like Bruce Springsteen for

Jersey or even Bon Jovi for Jersey. Yes. I think that, and this is not, I'm not trying to like disparage New Jersey here. I think that when you come from a place that everyone sort of agrees is tough or like, isn't the best part. Isn't it the most bucolic part of the country there's that becomes part of your branding. Like that becomes part of your personality. Like,

uh, look, this rough and tumble place produced me. And I think that certainly those two singers have, have adopted that. I think there's some actors have like Zach Braff, I think is somebody who has adopted that. And so they they like they're proud to say they're from new jersey because it's it's like a notch in the belt for having survived new jersey yeah and it's been

even if it's not the the roughest place in the world because it's not it it certainly gets shit on like it is i think well yeah and like it's it's uh it's the people who have succeeded in uh being cultural it's people who are musicians and actors and things like that and people i think nationally we consider new jersey like this cultureless uh wing of the united states yeah and so when you survive that and you and you and you are full of culture, then I think people are very proud of that. I think normal New Jerseyans are also very, we keep track of our successful people in a way that I don't know other states do. That, like someone will mention George R.R. Martin, and I'll be in company with some Jersey folks and some non-Jersey folks will be like, Jersey guy, Bayonne, New Jersey. Yeah. Lives in Santa Fe now, but he's one of ours.

You can see he's got some stealth references to the New York football giants in whatever his books are called. Yeah. But I think that goes both ways. I think it's both the people who have lived it, and then also I think New Jersey itself loves to claim their favorite sons and daughters. No, Colorado doesn't have that as good chance in snowboarding or in skiing, there's a good chance that at least some of those Olympians are from Colorado. And every single time we'd always get very excited about the ones that were from Vail or from, from Aspen. Oh, that makes total sense. Do you guys have like, um, like least favorite son or daughter from Colorado that you, you,

I don't, it's tough. Cause I don't want to shit on anyone, but I guess I do. This is, it's, it's top of mind for me because Jersey has a lot of rest areas. We just a ton of them and they're all named after important figures.

And I've been doing a lot of driving through the state lately. And one of our rest areas was renamed, uh, in honor of John Bon Jovi. And it's, that's such a bummer to me. I just think he's corny as shit. I haven't looked into him politically. I bet we don't agree. And it's such a bummer that he's one of the names on one of our rest stops.

It seems like a very caricature-ish thing for New Jersey to do. Yeah. But it's still like, like I would, I would defend him in the street in a fight if it came to it. Cause he's, he's one of Jersey's one of our guys, you know?

Yeah. But he's not your favorite son or daughter of New Jersey. No, that makes sense. There's always going to be those people who embarrass you, who come from your state. your state on a national stage. Like when Jersey Shore, the show came out and everyone wanted to shit all over it. And they were like, are those, is that you? Is this your type of person? I'm like,

no, of course not. Most of them are from Rhode Island or Maine, New York. These two are from New Jersey and they're cool. Don't fuck with them. Don't fuck with Sammy or Snooki. They're ours. Yeah. I remember you doing an article for Cracked as soon as it was released and it became very popular where you were like, let me get one thing straight. None of these people are from New Jersey. And you very pointedly went through each one that wasn't from New Jersey. And then you're like, well, except this one who went to my school. We were in homeroom together. She's awesome. She's Sammy. She's Sammy. She's good. She's the good one. Hey, ever feel like your mind doesn't have an off switch or that your tension

is constantly traveling through your body or do you feel tired no matter how much you sleep? That's just a few of the many ways that stress or anxiety or sleeplessness can hurt you and your body. This year, why not make small changes to your daily routine that have a big influence on your mental health and well-being? And you can do that by starting at Headspace. Headspace is scientifically proven to help you manage your feelings and your mental health. In fact, a recent study proved that in just two weeks, Headspace can reduce your stress by 14%.

Whether you want to relieve stress or anxiety, or you just want to sleep better or improve your focus, Headspace is your everyday dose of mindfulness for real life. After listening to Daniel on this podcast, he's gotten me interested in the idea of meditation. We record these separately, so please don't tell him that he has any sort of effect on what I would do with my life. But I'm curious, and I would like to start with Headspace. on what I would do with my life, but I'm curious and I would like to start with headspace. I've got struggles with sleeplessness, with the inability to shut my mind off at night. I've decided that in 2022, this is going to be the year that I try meditation,

but I'm not going in whole hog. I'm going to start with mini meditations through headspace. Mini meditations are a great way to get started with meditation, whether it's mini breathing or mini unwind. They're just ways to get you in the headspace that you need to be in to start to feel better. So sitting comfortably, just taking a big deep breath in through the nose, out through the mouth. As you breathe in, noticing how the body expands. As you breathe out, just watching the body soften as you gently close the eyes. And rather than the mind leading the breath, allow the breath

to lead the mind. Notice the sensation of the breath. Notice it where you feel it in breath. Notice it where you feel it in the body. If you need to, you can just gently place your hand on the stomach. And just following that rising and falling sensation. Nothing else to do. Allowing thoughts to come and go. And when you're ready, just gently opening the eyes again. So find some Headspace at headspace.com slash quick question and get one month free

of their entire meditation library. This is the best Headspace offer available. So go to headspace.com slash quick question today. headspace.com slash quick question. But yeah, so there was the defensiveness. I think there are some from Colorado that I certainly don't like, and I know that they're from Colorado. One very popular is from Colorado because all his shows were there. That's Dog the Bounty Hunter. Oh, man. Yeah. All that show was entirely shot in Colorado.

I don't know if you can pick up on, on the sound of what felt like a bullet being dodged for me because he's got some Jersey energy. This is, this is great for me to learn. Yeah. I love it. I don't have to pretend he's cool. There's, and he's like culturally a really good indicator of what Colorado is like. There's the people who we love to hype up and that we're very proud of.

And like a lot of the times those people come from little mountain towns. And then there are the people who come from rural Colorado, not rural Colorado, like the flatlands of Colorado, like past Denver or Boulder, where it's just like it's clear sailing to Kansas and Nebraska from there. Or also it's Southern Colorado. There's a lot of that too, where it's just this, like, it has a very Jersey feel. It just feels like, well, what the fuck are we producing here? Yeah. He's, I mean, you've seen the show, right? No, I've seen like clips of it.

Okay. Well, if you went and you looked at the cast of it, every single've seen the show, right? No, I've seen like clips of it. Okay. Well, if you went and you looked at the cast of it, every single one of the people, you'd be like, Jersey, Jersey, Jersey. And none of them are. They're all, this is like what the flatlands, this is what Longmont, Colorado is like. And there's a strange dynamic there in every single town too, where it's the people who originally were there, who were there for agrarian reasons, or they were miners and like that whole blue collar culture clashing with the flashy ski bums who showed up to like, they were there for indulgence in a bohemian lifestyle and everything. And then also, of course, the rich people that came too. bohemian lifestyle and everything. And then also, of course, the rich people that came too.

But it's like, it's always been a part of Colorado of like, you've got the ranchers and you've got the skiers and those two do not mix. Yeah. And you don't have like a big musician that is like the Colorado guy who sings about Colorado or a woman? Well, there was John Denver. Oh. And he sang a lot about, uh, he sang some about Colorado, but he also sang, you know, obviously about Montana and Wyoming too. Um, but yeah, he sang about the Rocky mountains a lot.

And we always had, because I assuming maybe because his name was Denver, he was like the patron son of Colorado. Sure. Where we love to hear, uh, as a kid, I remember like driving up to the huts and my dad playing, uh, Rocky mountain high, let's see who that the card, like get psyched up about going into the mountains. Um, so John Denver is, is like, I guess he's kind of corny now, but as a, when I was a child, he was like, he was the child, he was the guy.

He was the folk hero. But that's the only musician I could think of. We have some other actors and stuff. Unfortunately, Tim Allen is also from Colorado. That's not somebody I particularly like. TJ Miller is another person famously from Colorado. Oh, man. I guess he must have spent a lot of time in Chicago because he sounds

so much like an Illinois guy. Yeah. When he shouts, especially, I thought for sure he was a Midwest guy, but no, he's from Colorado. He's got a bunch of raps about being from Colorado. Those are the ones where I'm like, don't brag about it, please. Yeah. Those are the ones where I'm like, don't brag about it, please. Yeah. We have some that I feel like we had to let go. Like Paul Simon was technically born in Jersey, but he sings so much about New York.

He was like, all right, I guess. And he lived in New York for most of his life that I feel like we're not allowed to claim him anymore. Yeah. And there are some that I find out that they seem very New York to me. And then I find out they're not. Like I just, in the research of this episode, found out Richard Kind is from New Jersey. And I'm like, yeah, fuck yeah, of course he is. Hell yeah.

Yeah, there's one, as I started to look through this list of people from Colorado, I got very excited because Amy Adams is on here. And also John Carroll Lynch is on here, who I think is an excellent character. Absolutely, great find. I think is an excellent character actor. Absolutely. Great find. I was pretty pleased to see that. Something, I might be completely wrong about this, is James Taylor from New Jersey? He can't be. Let me search. That would be great if he was.

That'd be huge. Huge for us. Ah, Boston! Oh, he's a Boston guy. That's a weird one too. He's not a Boston guy. There's certain people that just transcend their state. They go somewhere else and they're like, oh no, he's a North Carolina guy.

Or he's clearly from down there in Virginia or whatever. There's no way he's from up north. And it's only because at some point they left and they were like, no, I will fully embrace this new place in which I live. Yeah. Or maybe he just started talking in that very non-Bostonian voice of his and they're like, hey, why don't you get the fuck out of here, boy? I'm realizing now that John Denver is not even from Colorado. He's from Roswell, New Mexico. But then was like, nah, Colorado's better. I think I'm going to be from Colorado. He's from Roswell, New Mexico. But then was like, nah, Colorado's better. Think I'm going to be from there. And everyone was like, yeah, that's fine.

You're doing good music. We like what you're doing. You can stay. I thought we had the birthplace of all three Jonas Brothers, but we only got one. What? What? You have one Jonas brother?

Yeah. We have Kevin Jonas. Oh, not even the best one. No, the worst one. Uh, that's so New Jersey of you.

Uh, so Dan, you know who Tom Sharpling is, right? Oh yeah. Podcast royalty. Yeah. So he's television. He writes what we do in the shadows

he's a wonderful writer yeah um he wrote he worked on a show called the best show and he it was a radio show that people could call into but he was primarily everybody on the show he would just do different voices and so he'd come up with some outlandish take, like he would call in to his own show as a guest and be like, I'm thinking of taking this kid who's got autism to a basketball game, but I'm worried because we're going to be sitting in the front row and I want to make sure no one else can catch autism from him. Like some completely crazy thing to say just to drive people nuts. And then he'd call in as somebody else and fight with them for a while. And this went on and on. And then real people would call in to also stake their, their gate,

their gate, their, their, their, their, their, their, their,

their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their,

their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their,

their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their,

their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their,

their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their,

their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their,

their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their,

their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their,

their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their,

their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their, their like the things you'd want somebody to say. And then he'd just sit there and fight with them as three different people and then try and also be the judge as Tom Sharpling on the show.

And it was so fucking funny. But the best part about the show was that each time he'd call in as somebody, he'd call in from a made up borough of New Jersey. And it always worked because there are so many boroughs of New Jersey that even people from New Jersey don't know all the boroughs from New Jersey. So he just like mixed shit up and it was wonderful. Yeah, that would certainly, that would work on me. But also I think there's a pride to New Jersey where like, as soon as you hear somebody's from New Jersey and you're like, oh, where from? And they're like, oh, Bridgeton. And you're like, oh yeah, yeah, Bridgeton.

You don't know where that is, but like, because you have pride in New Jersey. I don't know where it is, but if you name enough towns that don't even need to be near it, we will reach a quorum. Like, where are you from? I'm from Milfsneck. Milfsneck. I don't know. Milfsneck.

Woodstown. Morris. Oh yeah, sure. Morris. Okay. Morris. Yeah. Good.

All right. I know where Morris is. No idea where Yeah. Good. All right. I, I know where Morris is no idea where those other things are in relationship to it, but it doesn't matter because now we're, yeah, we've reached a quorum. Yeah. And it was such a, it was such a brilliant idea on his part. Cause you have to say like, this is Brian from, from Wolfson. And like, yeah, that's what radio shows always do. So people would immediately not question it.

And it worked flawlessly every single time. I think also because there's such little expectation of people from Jersey. So when somebody, I know, when somebody would, when he'd produce one of these outlandish claims, it made people more than willing to believe they're like, oh yeah, yeah. Well, this person just doesn't know any better they're from new jersey yeah it's like it was i think it's since graduated i think jersey has become um i think we've romanticized some in pop culture at this point it's not florida by any means no florida seems to take the bulk of of the the heat florida and a lot of those little southern states like Kentucky and Tennessee. Well, Tennessee is actually – Nashville is very romantic.

But Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, like those guys get shit on a lot now. Yeah. Those are the bad states. I don't hear anyone defending West Virginia. I've never met anyone in my life who has defended West Virginia. John Denver. Well, we haven't met yet. Get him on the podcast. Is he dead? Yeah, he's long dead. Sucks. Yeah, died in a plane crash. No, we didn't. Yeah. Was it that main one? The main one? It was like a private plane. Do you mean like TWA?

No, the one where like all those musicians died. Oh, oh, oh, no. That was way before his time. That was like Big Bopper and Chubby Checker. The Day the Music Died? Yeah, no. What year did anything happen? I don't know.

John Denver didn't die until 1997. And he died on like a little Cessna plane. Okay, yeah. Private plane. In California. Yeah. But yeah, he likes Private plane. In California. Yeah. But yeah, he likes West Virginia

an awful lot. Yeah. Idiot. But that's a fun game. I really enjoy thinking about the people from Colorado who I'm not proud of at all and realizing that

it was a surprise even for me because I would watch that show sometimes if I'd be in a hotel or something. And it's a nice indulgence but it wasn't until like i saw stuff that i knew where i was like that's shotgun willies in the background i feel like holy shit this is one of mine yeah yeah all right well dan i have a question for you oh cool it's a quick one all right this is fun but

this is one i completely stole from somebody on twitter there's a somebody i follow on twitter named ben blacker you can follow him at ben blacker and he asked if back to the future were made today marty would go to 1992 what game-changing song would he perform at the enchantment under the sea dance so in order for this to work it has to be something that is he perform at the enchantment under the sea dance so in order for this to work it has to be something that is not written at the exact same time that this dance would have happened but it would have been in the near future so like where uh marvin uh what's his name marvin barry marvin barry is playing and he calls his brother or his cousin chuck he's like what's his name? Marvin. Barry.

Marvin Barry is playing and he calls his brother or his cousin, Chuck. He's like, it's me, Marvin. There's that sound you were looking for. And then Mark, presumably then Chuck Berry writes Johnny be good.

Yeah. List to the song over the phone writes Johnny be good from hearing it once and memory. And three years later releases that song, Johnny B. Goode. That's the timeline. Yeah. So in the same way that presumably Chuck Berry stole Johnny B. Goode from Michael J. Fox in that movie, I am stealing this idea because I think it's so much fun to think about from Ben. And I want to present the question to you. And I will answer first so that you have some time to think about what pop culture was like in 1992.

It's so hard because you need to think of a song that came out in 1995 that was not just like number one hit song or the most popular song. Because Johnny B. Goode and Chuck Berry, canonical canonically like the birth of rock and roll there are certainly things that are going to people who will dispute that from from that's never thing that we're gonna like actually get down like the date the song the minute whatever but we've all decided that the argument is too thorny so we've all come together and just said chuck berry invented rock and roll with Johnny B. Good. So it's not just, you can't just time travel to 1992 and give someone the idea for Waterfalls by TLC, even though that was a popular song in 1995. It needs to be something on the

level of what was game changing to music in 1995. It's a very good question. Yeah. No one had heard guitar played that way before. And like he's, he's introducing it and, and everyone after that point, all rock and roll after that point was built on the way that Johnny, that Chuck Berry played guitar.

So what was so influential? I'm going to go ahead and say Always by Bon Jovi. New Jersey's favorite son. When was that released, Dan? 1995? Sure was. Oh boy. No.

All right. That's not my actual answer, but please do yours. I'll go first here. And maybe this is cheating because this album was released in 1992, but it was in November of 1992. So it was at the end of the year, which means that they had a little bit of time maybe to put this together after hearing it over the phone. Does that,

do you think that's fair before I begin? Yeah. Okay. This is rage against the machines, self-titled album, rage against the machine, which had killing in the name of on it. And I think killing in the name of would have been what he overheard on the

phone. Uh-huh because rage against the machine was the first to do a very specific type of genre which is like that rock and rap together that no one no one really landed on a way to do it before them and then it got copied a lot after them obviously like limp biscuit some other lincoln park and some other bands that were like oh we, we could do that. And he did the kind of like knockoffs of it. But Rage Against the Machine felt like it was a new type of music when it came out in such a way that I think it's big enough that that could have worked, that you could have had him doing Killing the Name. Also, it rocks enough to see him up there being like, they do what they told you.

You do what they told you. And seeing how some of those armed forces are the same that burn crosses, that would startle a dance. The undersea dance would all stop to listen to that. And it's crazy enough that he'd be like, well, maybe you're not ready for that yet. Yeah.

I think we're in kind of the same, we're thinking along the same wavelength of, I wasn't listening to you because I was Googling while you were talking. That's fine. You know the answer, rage against the machine, that's enough. Yeah, the answer is rage against the machine.

And you were saying that it made this thing look accessible, that a lot of people copied it after that. I don't think this was a thing. My answer is another one that was written in 1993 and came out in 1993, but didn't really take off until 95, 96. Okay. And it also has an accessibility angle to it and it's the macarena oh no yeah

oh fuck that's a good answer i don't i don't i don't know if i could defend it in court and i know one day i'm gonna have to but for the rules of this game, someone would have to be at the 1992 Under the Sea dance while Marty McFly was playing the Macarena, and someone would have to call on the phone to, hey, it's your cousin, Marvin. Marvin Del Rio or whatever. And then Los Del Rio would have to hear this song and be like, okay, yeah, there's definitely the world's simplest dance that will take the entire planet by storm.

I can hear it just in the way Michael J. Fox is singing this to a very unhappy school dance. A school dance. And it would be perfect for a dance too, because it's got like that electric slide feel where you have a dance that you're supposed to do along with it, where it would catch fire immediately at the dance hall. Oh, man. I hate that that's a good answer because I don't like what that says about culture and the direction we've headed. I have another one that is a more embarrassing answer. And I'm, I want to throw it past you because I want to see if this is just my own subjectivity that's clouding it. And this album was just influential for me or if it's more universal.

So I'm asking somebody who was identical to me, if it was also, I think that around 1994, there was an album release called Throwing Copper, which is by a band called Live. If he would have played I Alone or All Over You,

which are both... They're not the most popular song from that album, but they are big songs and a little faster and enough that I think that it could actually work in that scenario that I think that it could actually work in that scenario. I think that one of those songs might have been influential enough and live as a band was influential enough that it in some ways changed that like alternative rock. What do you think? Was live important to you at all? Do you have any seminal experience with live?

Oh, damn. Live blends together with a lot of bands from that time. Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. Like alt rockers who sound, who take themselves too seriously. Yes. Are they the ones, is that Freshman? No, or is that Verve Pipe? No, it's Verve Pipe.

They did, so the one that you would know is Lightning Crashes. Oh, that's them? Placenta. Yeah, fuck that. Yeah, the one about- Oh, that's them? Yeah. Placenta. Yeah, fuck that. Yeah. Yes, placenta, the most important line of that entire song. Horrifying.

Talking about a placenta falling to the floor in the middle of a song. That was- Yeah. That was new, clearly new territory. But that band, for whatever reason, I guess it was just seminal because it came at me when I was the right age. I loved live and I hated all that other shit. I hated like, what are the other bands that like soul coughing and stuff that are similar

to them? I was just like not having it, but for some reason live really spoke to me and I really, really liked them. And I was wondering, is it just me? Cause they were very popular. I think throw in copper was a big album. I think they were popular yeah and i i i bet i would know more live songs than than i realize they just uh they weren't for me and that song in particular the placenta song yeah my college acapella band did that song. Oh, no.

And there are, this is completely separate from the fact that we sing about placenta. There's, if you sing a song in college acapella, you either love it forever or you hate it forever. Those are truly, like, literally the only two paths. And I fucking hate that forever. And it represents a lot of what I, a lot of direction that I didn't want our all-male acapella group to take was like guys this is this is way too serious this is way too like rocky for us we shouldn't do it everyone knows that bands are better than us everyone knows that we should just be a band why why why aren't we doing this like clowns? I can't. Why are we saying placenta? Our moms are here. Were you doing beatbox too? Not in that one. Someone was. Okay. You were singing. All right.

Yeah. Someone was beatboxing. Oh, so you actually had like percussion to lightning crashes. That's surprising. I think there's just guitar for most of that song. Oh, then maybe we didn't. I assume because I am blanking, but we might not have. That's brutal, man. That's tough to listen to. This is didn't. I assume because I'm, I am blanking, but, uh, why not? That's brutal, man. That's tough to listen to. I, this is also one that I was embarrassed by because this is one of those

bands that I outgrew at some point in my life. And, um, I don't think anybody outgrew. Maybe they didn't and fell back into him with Chuck Berry. Cause Chuck Berry was somebody who I think has just been iconic forever. Yeah. Like he comes on the radio and everyone's like,

yeah, yeah. Chuck Berry. Nobody's like, Oh, this dribble or whatever. But live is one where like they had a shelf life and it ended. Yeah. I'm trying to, it's such a trip looking at like

the top 100 Billboard songs that came out in 1995. And there's not a lot on here where i feel like i could be talking to a kid or a grandkid and be like you don't know what it was like when this song came out even though like waterfalls and creep by tlc two and three on the charts they're both like indisputably great songs yes i i don't know if that was a moment in music where it felt like things are different now. Right, they didn't pioneer a new genre. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I think that those are, and it's so hard to like suss that out. Yeah. In the same way where there's like, and it wouldn't necessarily even be something that was popular when it first came out either. It would be something that like,

maybe they weren't ready for and then it became very popular later where that's like, this isn't the right time period, but Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones, iconic song representative of an entire generation, an entire era. Nobody liked it when it came out. Yeah. Yeah. We have nothing with that cultural foot. I mean, we have things like Run Around by Blues Traveler where I could sit down with a kid and be like, before that, nothing sounded like Blues Traveler on the radio. And after that, same.

Yeah. Hootie and the Blowfish, pioneers in the industry. But it turns out pioneers down a tunnel that went nowhere. Yeah. uh yeah it's a really fun question to think about that i i didn't dig into the the responses in the twitter thread when i first saw it because i was having way too much fun just thinking about it and and pouring too much time into it because a lot of people were just saying oh just who smells like teen spirit but never mind no you're doing it wrong that's right right also it's the wrong era. People were not

thinking about it, and that made me upset. So I'm glad that we took the time to do it. Alive is the wrong answer. You're absolutely right. Rage Against the Machine might be too soon. I think Rage might be right. I think that might be the actual right answer. Just picturing

Marty McFly doing Killing in the Name of would be so much fun. Yeah. Anyway, remake the movie. Yeah, please. Zemeckis. Is he still alive? No, he died in a plane crash. All right, let's end this show. All right. I'm going to track down the social accounts right now. You can find me on Twitter at D-O-B underscore I-N-C. I dramatically revealed that I was going to delete Twitter, and I didn't, and you've all been

really cool about it. I appreciate that. You can find Twitter at Sorin. You can find Twitter. You can find Sorin at Sorin underscore LTD. You can find our business guy at MakeMeBaconPLS. You can email the show, QQ with Sorin and Daniel at gmail.com.

Find the show on Twitter at twitter.com slash qq underscore Sorin and Dan. We also have a Patreon. If you want to throw a few bucks our way, you get some bonus pods only for the Patreon subscribers. And we have this guy, Gabe, who's our editor, engineer, producer. He used to have a website. Editor, engineer, producer. He used to have a website. He has, I think for the second time since we've been doing this show, his payment on the domain GabeHarder.com has lapsed due to lack of either funds or like an actual effort put into the page. Like usually I know he's good for the money. So I think the person who owns the dome, the company that owns the domain was like, look, you're not,

you clearly don't want this. So we're just taking it back. We won't ask any questions. We're just going to take it. It's fine. Get your deposit back. It doesn't matter. Yeah.

He's, he sat on it for too long. What would be very nice to find out is that somebody else who heard this bought it and is currently working on the website. That would be great. Although I, at some point we're going to take the hint that he doesn't want to be found through this show. Yeah, well. But that day is not today. That's not happening.

No. All right, bye. Bye.