Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - On Your Right Goose

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

In this episode Daniel confronts wild poultry and Soren airs his prior professional insecurities. And as always big thanks to our sponsors. Thanks Maev. meetmaev.com/QQ to get $40 off your first order. Thanks Raycon!.  For a limited time, go To buyraycon.com/qq for 15% off your entire Raycon order.

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? What do I be? What's it up with? What do we talk about? I'm sorry, baby, Daniel O'Brien When will I be remembered? Was it after we got a week's off? Oh, forget it

Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here writer for last week's Tonight, author of How to Fight Presidents, and goose attack survivor Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, what makes you brave? Well, I'd have to say it's my long fingernails,

Daniel. You got attacked by geese. So, that's frequently by the way, a joke that I do, where like, if somebody's like, oh, do you want to go to this person's wedding? I'll say'd rather be attacked by geese like i'd rather be attacked by geese is like the thing that's like a really a silly thing that's your benchmark for a terrible thing that could happen to a person yes exactly i think it's a very funny one that's like yeah oh that's silly uh you but i do know that they're territorial and crazy.

They are, yeah. And you got attacked by a goose? And there was no physical contact, thankfully, to get ahead of the story and spoil it. But it's springtime, and that's when a lot of mating for a lot of animals happen, and I assume that's true of geese as well. And I live right by a lake and then right by a beach.

And I'm in training for a half marathon in June. And this was long run day. So I took the long way around the lake to get to the beach. And I'm hugging the side of the lake. Across the street from the lake, there are two geese just hanging out like in someone's front lawn. Smoking cigarettes. Yeah. Just lazy, lazy geese just hanging out like in someone's front lawn and smoking cigarettes yeah just just lazy

lazy geese and then this one goose beelines for me like like flies at my at like chest height and flies towards me and and like continues flying hovering just like honking and lunging its face at me and hissing and hovering and i am backpedaling i didn't turn my back to him i i and i didn't stop running uh because i'm in training you see and i'm an idiot and i'm like well it's this is long run day and i'm kind of going for time a little bit so i'm getting my steps in still and running backwards and it's honking and honking and honking and i go what is your fucking deal and it continues honking and honking and honking and i go what is your deal and it continues honking and it gets closer and it's like snapping at me and then i say no and then and my hands are up in like punch mode because i'm seriously thinking like

i'm gonna i have to fight a goose i can't believe it what's that gonna feel like and then eventually it backs off and gives me space so i can continue on my run and then it honks after me very much like and you stay out yeah you better run yeah exactly absolutely i felt very taunted and i just like i don't know probably shaved 40 minutes off my time just from the adrenaline of that goose attack and also just being like having that axe to grind at the end where you're just mad. That madness drives you. Right.

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I didn't know how much damage a goose could do. I think I was more scared of like, I don't want to hit this goose. I'm not prepared to kill a goose, I don't think. I'm going to try to make myself big. And if it pecks at me, I'm going to swat at it. And if that doesn't do it, and we have to go to the next level, I don't know if i'm prepared to do what feels like the obvious thing grab the goose by its very long neck yeah it's i mean it's a neck that's made to be grabbed by a human and uh but thankfully it didn't come to that but when i got home uh i was a bunch of messages on your voicemail from a goose i got home jackson was dead um i just like googled in case this ever happens again how to win a fight against a goose and one of the first results was how to win a fight against a goose and then parentheses just kidding you won't win whoa yeah there's a lot of very pessimistic people out there that are like you can try to the to make yourself big and scare it away but if this thing wants to like peck at you and fly

at you which is going to do that and they've like they've scratched people they've broken bones before they're like big animals that can just like charge at you and uh i reading the steps of what to do and not to do i was very proud of my instincts because one of them was don't turn your back and i was like hell yeah and another one uh was try to make yourself look big and i was like hell yeah my arms are out and then another one was remain remain i didn't have sleeves on so that was settled i had that one wrapped up and the other one was uh remain calm i was like oh i don't think screaming what is your fucking deal well yeah well like still jogging at like 10 a.m to a goose on a tuesday i don't think that's remaining calm at all right you tried to yeah you up the level of energy between the two of you. That is a thing that I'm trying to figure out if my instincts are what make me aggressive and say, what's your fucking deal?

Like if that's like a tough guy instinct in me or if that's a comedy guy instinct in me, somewhere in the back of my brain is like, I hope someone sees this. Because that's a funny thing to shout at a goose who's attacking you. sees this because that's a funny thing to shout at a goose who's attacking you it's like when you hear somebody talking to their dog who doesn't think anyone else is around and they're like we're not fucking doing this again charles we talked about this yeah you yelling at a goose getting in a fight with a goose that's like escalating between the two of you is right because if there's like a neighbor outside who sees the goose and then sees me go like like there's a a couple watching us from across the street and the goose is honking and they're like should we get in there what is your deal no this is between them yeah this is these two know each other so is this a canada goose you know you know what i'm

talking about okay yeah yeah Those things are nasty. We used to have them on golf courses because I worked on golf courses throughout all, end of middle school and all of high school. And they're super territorial. And every noise they make is like so, it's like a fork on a porcelain plate. It's like they do a hiss and then they do like a really awful honk. Yeah. And when they attack you, it's like they do a hiss and then they do like a really awful honk yeah and when they attack you it's it's brutal it's scary they're they're big and hissing is not a fun noise and like they've got horrible tongues and little teeth and they're showing them to you and they're flapping the whole way like they like to stay low but flap at you yeah they're

flapping like right at chest level for me chest chest and neck level, because they're friends, the chest and the neck. And I've lived here for a while now. I see geese every single day that the geese are around, and I've never thought anything of it. And now it's like, it's an actual fear of mine. I was walking Jackson and talking to my friend Angela on the phone and telling her the goose story. And there was like a part of me as I'm passing geese, I was just like, I'm gonna finish the story in a minute.

I don't even just talk for a while. And I know right in the middle of the goose story, but like, just please talk and stay on the line. In case anything happens. Yeah, I mean, you also don't know which other geese now know this story. I know. You've made an enemy of the neighborhood. I know.

I think it's so funny that these geese were hanging out, and then one of them was like, oh, fuck that pussy. I'm going to get it. It just came after you. just sees me running every day and he's like he thinks he's so much better than us with his running his lululemon head to toe bopping along to his mix i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna this guy up there's's a really funny video that I saw recently on the internet where there's a guy who's, he's got like a plan in a public fountain and it's big. It's like one of those, I guess I wouldn't call it a lake or maybe like a man-made pond

or something like that. But like, it's like, it's aesthetic for a park and he's got this plan to like jump in. It's clear. Cause there's his buddies rolling. He's looking at the camera and he's got his bathing suit on. Like, this is not a place where people are supposed to be but there's a goose who has clocked the whole thing and the goose sees this guy and knows this guy's playing immediately somehow like the goose knows bathing suit means he's coming in it's like this goose

is just like easing up to him in the water and uh the guy's like getting nervous because he doesn't want to jump on this goose so he sprints to the other side of his little pond and jumps in over there. And the goose is like, no, fuck you. And flies a foot over the water over to where he is. And now this guy's helpless in the water. And now he's not like taller than the goose. The goose is above his head and the goose is just relentless with him. Like beating him with its wings and kicking him and like biting at his head as he's trying to get out of the water.

Birds are scary things. And I'm going to look past the fact that you said, I just watched this funny video on the internet and it's very close to what could have happened to me running away from, not never away from, running near a goose with an agenda. As a child, I got chased by goose but i i also got chased by turkeys which are like the same i mean in terms of how territorial they are size wise how they can throw their weight around and it was genuinely terrifying like i got chased into a car and it was like a kujo situation where i was in the car and this turkey was stalking me around the outside this is this reveals something

about me but that's scarier because turkeys are uglier that's gonna get me in some trouble but that's how I feel soon you say turkey I was like oh man those guys are they mean business they're no joke they don't care what happens to them they got those testicles hanging from their feet geezers are thinking about the future but turkeys no they got nothing to live for look at them very frustrating thing about this whole situation is i wish it didn't happen to coincide with the fact that i'm moving out of this neighborhood next week because i know the geese are gonna think that that's why their response they're watching me load boxes up into my car and i'll be like it was a 15 month lease

this was always the plan don't flatter yourself i'm going to a better town with no geese they're gonna honk at you on your way out i know i can honk back though when i'm driving because i'll be in car mode look i've been feeding my dog kibble for a very long time uh because i'm silly did you know that a dog eating kibble every single day is like a human consuming a diet of 100% processed foods whatever your species is fillers additives and synthetics are not optimal sources of nutrition enter Maeve raw food for dogs formulated by PhD veterinary nutritionist with real human grade ingredients you can name just by looking green beans yams plus it's bite-sized and ready for your dog to eat With real human-grade ingredients you can name just by looking. Green beans! Yams!

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I don't. So just trying to play out, and I'm curious what you would do in this, because I genuinely put my dukes up like yeah i'm gonna hit this thing and and like part of me considered throwing my phone at it because i really didn't want to punch it but i also i mean what if that was the goose's plan was to get my phone and then to like leak my nudes or whatever i don't know what what he's do it's like i'm not gonna throw my phone at it um but punching it what if i hit its beak and that like really up my hand because it's so sharp or something

like that or it bites me uh and like what if a punch does very little to a goose because it like like flies backwards and absorbs and anticipates the punch and then i was i i obviously you think about the neck and then i think like do i ring the neck or do i try to like swing this thing by its neck onto the ground or like fling it away from me i don't i don't know i really don't know the best answer for this yeah anything yeah I think what I would try and do, it seems like its deadliest weapon is the beak. And so I'm going to try and get it as high up on the neck. Once again, Soren, you're wrong.

It's the mind. Okay, well, it's right next to the beak. So I'm going to still, same principles still apply. I'm going to get it as close to the, like I would grab a snake, for instance. Like I want to get it close to the head where I'm like, no, this is like where you're the worst and this is the worst part of you and hold onto that.

And then try to like, get over the top of like Muay Thai, its wings down, you know, like try and get a pin on it. Yeah. Um, and then I think then that you're also pretty dangerous territory in terms of spectators, because it looks like you're trying to mount a goose certainly yeah you have to do a lot of explaining at that point once your goose is immobilized man he shouted what's your fucking deal with the goose then he mounted the goose i think that's the goose's deal i think the goose is has heard about it yeah the goose stopped fighting at that point um all this research took me on a a tangent and this

really only works if you have the right answer can you think of a famous story involving a famous person getting hit in the face with the gavio fabio on a roller coaster at bush gardens that's the one here's the thing soren here's what i learned this week fabio was riding a roller coaster the apollo because this was uh apparently a time in in everyone's life where fabio listeners if you don't know fabio was most famous as the cover model on horny romance novels aimed at women he was you'd buy it like you'd buy it a cvs yes he's uh six foot six long blonde haired beautiful muscular man he's also popped up in cameos and commercials he's in and i can't believe it's not butter super bowl commercial uh he's been in a lot of like the

scary movies but he's mainly uh a person who is so conventionally beautiful and statuesque that we're all okay with the fact that we call him just Fabio. Anyway, another thing that happened in the past was Busch Gardens, an amusement park, wanted to bring a lot of attention to its new ride called the Apollo. And they thought, I've got it. Let's get Fabio to ride the first ride when we open this ride. let's get Fabio to ride the first ride when we open this ride and let's get every fucking news team in wherever Bush Gardens is to get down here and film this thing and Fabio will say a few words about the Apollo and Fabio says a few words about the Apollo he rides this roller coaster we see him he's got blood all over his nose all over his his face. It looks like a broken, bloody nose. A lot of the cameras are rushed away.

And then Busch Gardens personnel comes out and they're like, it's fine. Everything's fine. There was an accident. There's a lot of geese up there. It's a goose story. Don't worry. The ride will continue. And the ride continued.

And we all laughed at the ridiculous story uh for years about beautiful tall man fabio getting hit in the face with a fucking goose on a roller coaster at bush gardens on a pretty overcast day in my research soren when it shocked you to know he was never hit by a goose what there was a camera i don't know where the camera was or if it was in someone's hands or what but there was a camera and the geese flew into the camera and a piece of the camera broke off and that's what hit fabio what i know hit in the face with a goose no a piece of camera, metal or plastic, sliced his face. Oh my God. Wait. Oh, so they had to...

There are some details that I'm not super clear on. I think Budweiser, who was either sponsoring the event or was responsible for the camera or both, was worried about getting sued. Yeah. And so they needed to make the story goose attack they used escape goose yeah absolutely and now i'm the guy paying for it because you see me on my runs and i don't know a goose who was born after 2003 or whatever might

be like is that fabio that guy's pretty fucking yoked. Is that the guy that we're talking about? Hey, Soren, did you hear that part? Yeah, I was thinking about, I'm still, sorry. Yes, you're absolutely right, Dan. They might've, the goose might've mistaken you for Fabio. Thank you. I was, well, I was thinking about a lot of things. One of them was that I was so shocked

that it was the camera that lacerated him. Because I was like, in my brain, it was Goosebeak that did that to him, like a direct hit. And that was always the story as far as I knew. Then the other thing that was in my head was immediately my other person I go to with goose attacks is Sully Sullenberger. And started remembering that his name was Chelsea and having a little chuckle on myself. Oh, that's fun.

That boy's name is Chelsea. One other quick detail about the Fabio story, because I went down a rabbit hole, pretty, pretty shallow rabbit hole, because there's only, when you start reading articles and watching videos from like late nins, it's just aesthetically unpleasing to consume information visually that way. He gave one interview, because in the beginning he was very like gracious and magnanimous and he was like, I'm not going to sue anyone. This is my job.

I take full responsibility. And then years go by, I guess the romance cover biz isn't really turning as much of a profit as it used to and his he's changed his tune and he gives an interview where he says it wasn't an accident and it will happen again maybe even to a child next time which that sounds like a pretty insane thing to say wow fabio hates the apollo well yeah okay that's fine uh i that's crazy i did not know that i didn't realize that that wasn't just a goose that got him but that's like it's one of those stories like that woman suing mcdonald's over hot coffee where like with the story we got from the media was never the one that was actually true

and it makes me start to like it makes me sympathize with conspiracy theorists yeah take take us through it because i think i i remember the version that we got and then the the reality yeah so the one that we got and every it was like on uh every monologuist for like all the late night shows were doing monologues about this woman a woman woman sued McDonald's because she spilled her coffee on herself and she sued McDonald's for making the coffee too hot. Right. That's a headline that sounds stupid and like the kind of thing that Jay Leno would dine out on for two years.

And everybody went nuts about it because then it also became indicative of this broader problem, which was that people were suing over nothing. That just like would sue because for their own negligence um seinfeld did an episode about it like kramer tried to sue mcdonald's for coffee being too hot like their representative of their stupid chaotic character was the avatar for this woman that we all laughed at the the yes she was the main character of Twitter before Twitter existed. And in those days, main character of Twitter lasted for 90 days. Yes. Now, the true story was that she had, they were serving their coffee just like a degree below boiling basically. And she had in her car, the top was not super secure on on mcdonald's cups then either and

it spilled out through the top and gave her like really nasty like i think she had to have skin grafts on her legs from this thing and i can't remember what else made her the heroine of the story but like it was just mcdonald's lawyers who were feeding these stories to the press that was like look at this isn't this bullshit yeah our coffee's too hot what's next our burgers are too good get out of my court um and so that was the story we all ever got that was the only story we ever got and then and then along the way somewhere along the way people were like well let's dig into it again. Like, oh shit, she was the good guy. Let's face it.

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I want to just like, before I even ask the question, I want to preface it with the WhoJackie story. Yes. We talked about it on the podcast. That was the, a story that Vulture ran, Joe Berkowitz wrote it about a, in the writer's room story that has transcended that particular room.

Like everybody who's ever been in a writer's room has heard the who Jackie story. It seems I had not, it had never, did never come into the old american dad room but um i asked some of the other writers there like a guy who'd been on king of the hill he'd been on conan he'd been a lot of places and he knew it and the story is this uh i'll just get to it really quickly so that i can get to the question and you you tell me if you like disagree at any point the uh he norm mcdonald who was working working on Roseanne at the time that this happened,

there was a guy who was hired who had, according to Norm MacDonald, had been on the show for two years, but that's a point of contention. This story takes place just to paint the scene 28 years ago. Yes. This guy had never spoken in the room before. He wasn't pitching. And then at one point point he just speaks up and he's like what about what if we did an episode where dan comes home and finds roseanne washing

her ass in the sink and everyone was like okay all right yeah all right so he's like but it's not roseanne it's her twin sister and everyone goes okay well we already what about jackie we already got jackie and the writer goes who jackie and it's important to note that the writer had been working on the show possibly for two years but even beyond that the show had been on the air for seven years and right the show is an institution an american institution at that point like you would have even had you not been aware of you were you're, I'm not a fan of the show. It's still part of your life because it is so ubiquitous at the time. So this writer doesn't know who Jackie is.

It's a very, very funny story that's been passed down a lot. And I think that that day day like it got passed around to everybody even the the parking attendants knew it yeah by the end of the day um and then this article goes through and kind of it it barely touches on the fact that this is also like couched in racism which is the joke doesn't work unless you say it as who jackie because that only adds to it the writer is african-. It's this guy, David Tyree. Not from the New York Giants. Not that David Tyree.

And then people keep doing iterations of it and pretending to be that guy as the story grows, and that requires people to do a very affected African-American accent, which is tough. Right, there's an embedded clip of norm telling the story and like he's a very good storyteller but he is clearly definitely doing black voice yeah and i i the story the article gets into it later that there's an example of someone telling the story and not doing the voice and it not getting a laugh and this person was not doing the voice because an african-american person walked up and so and it got no laughs and then the guy was like

no no do it with the voice it's only funny with the voice so it seems pretty clear that like it there's the immediate idea that it's funny that someone working on rosanne a very famous show doesn't know who jackie is uh but it's it does does seem like the story spreads so far and wide because of this underlining racism. Yes. Yeah. So this story, and there are a bunch of people on that same lot working. Seinfeld was working on that lot.

Fuck. Some other shows, other like famous shows at the time. And so like this story spread like wildfire and then has infiltrated pop culture as well. It's in an episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It's something that, who Jackie is a phrase that Tina Fey would use regularly on 30 Rock. It's been on Raising Hope. It's found its way into a lot of different shows. Yeah. i don't know if it's connected but the the curb your enthusiasm season where they reunite seinfeld the jb smooth character when he sees kramer and elaine on like a monitor while larry's making the show he says who are these motherfuckers

and that feels like it's got to be spiritually related to this story. Yes. And yeah, different. There's, yeah, there's certainly different relatives of the story that have made their way into pop culture. Somebody in a writer's room being like, what if it came into somebody and this woman's washing her ass? Like even that stuff is like a nod to it. Anyway, this is one of those stories that like, I think people live for it because he also writer's room seems like such a closed door space that when something makes its way

out, it's so exciting and enticing. Cause you're like, oh, it's just these comedians all day. Like, it must be so fun. My question to you, Dan, is are there legacy stories at your job that like predate you or that weren't even at your show and somehow still made it to your show of crazy things like this happening? of crazy things like this happening? There's, for my show specifically, something that predates me, that makes me laugh, every time I think of it is,

I think we've described this before, there's a process on our show and a lot of shows called gangs. That's where you have a script that has a couple of very specific joke setups with no punchlines. So all the writers get in a room and you go through all of the jokes without punch lines and and collectively you're responsible for writing in our case 14 to 20 to infinity punch lines for every setup until you can move on to the next uh set up without a punch line you go through however

many gangs uh you have in a day you're locked in a room you write your gang in a shared doc then you say it out loud uh for our show there's a lot of a lot of our jokes come after video clips of things there's a sad clip on the news and then joke to come right write a joke after this sad clip so a lot of us uh and again i'm saying us but it was them at the time before i got there they have headphones in and you listen to the same clips over and over again and uh you're half paying attention to each other and uh one of the writers had his headphones in and unmistakably the iconic opening horns of Star Wars can be heard through his headphones. And he's not smiling.

It's not a joke. He has just decided he's going to watch one of the Star Wars movies from the beginning at work. And he just thinks he's sly, continues watching Star Wars while everyone else is like slacking each other like, Can you fucking believe this it's so loud and it's just a fun thing to every once in a while just played that very iconic yeah that's the while the text scrolls yeah the look of somebody watching star wars is trying to also make it look like they're thinking really hard. It's very funny. Yeah. There's a guy at my show.

This predates me. There's a guy at my show who I'm not going to name him, but he had been on thin ice for a while with the studio and with the showrunner. And things weren't going great for him at the time. And he was kind of aware of that, but he was used to being kind of like a loose cannon. Like he was used to like shooting from the hip and he's a very, very funny guy who like a lot of the early Roger stuff, uh, that's just like him, like going at it in the room, just like saying that stuff verbatim as he's pitching it. And then it goes, all goes in the script.

So he's feeling a little gun shy. And I can't remember how it came up, but like, they're like trying to pitch on this joke. And he's like, what about, what about this? And he just starts like launching into this thing. And as he's doing it, he's realizing it's not playing. And like, it's not going right. And like, by the end,

he doesn't have like a good finish for it or anything and like no one's into it in the room and as he's talking he just slowly takes his water bottle and pours it over his head and he won the room back like everyone was like oh my god and they all just start laughing out like yeah that's great that's wonderful And they all just start laughing at like, yeah, that's great. That's wonderful. There's another guy at my job who I will say his name because this is so funny to me. There's a guy, Greg Cohen, who's been on a lot of shows. He's really, really funny.

This is the guy who knew the Who Jackie story. And he's like old guard writer. He's so fast and good. And it just feels like existed from a time that we didn't have to deal with right and he when you everyone's mom people get really excited about a pitch like they will get up and like sort of like move around and stuff as they're like saying it out loud and we're in a small room we're in like one of the writers offices uh that was the room that we broke out into and he got up i wasn't there for this but i've heard the story he got up to like do a pitch and as he's doing it

falls backward against a wall his pants fall down and then the picture behind him falls on his head falls off the wall so he's trying to like get his get his pants up at the same time as he's like putting this picture back on the wall and everyone was like how did he do that you you know how to do that's like a that's some like that's some oh what's that what's hughes not howard hughes what's the fuck oh what's his name that's not not important it's like charlie chaplin type of shit. Like it's so well choreographed chaos that everyone was just like, did he do that on purpose?

That was amazing. And people were like crying, laughing. Cause it was, it looked so intentional and it all happened at once. Was it Buster Keaton you were thinking of? Buster Keaton. Sorry.

I don't think my brain was going to continue if I didn't think of who that was. Yeah, you know, Howard Hughes in my mind. Buster Keaton. Howard Hughes was always making him crack up with his physical antics. But it made me realize that I also, I was like, well, I wonder if I have done anything in the room. Humiliating enough that it will be passed down from generation to generation. It is. I mean, these are inherently funny stories, I think, but it's also worth pointing out to any of our listeners that like writer's rooms are an insane place to be. It's not just that you're surrounded by comedians,

but you're, it's, you spend a lot of time in a room that is never at least in our case temperature wise very comfortable it's always either too hot or too cold and you spend so much time together trying to to to write out loud in front of people which is a thing that nobody wants to do and you're all just stuck there trying to solve a puzzle together and you've been doing it for a long time it just it's the the the punchiest room it's a sleepover at three o'clock in the morning uh and in a way that is sometimes terrible but often is just like it's it's just it's very ripe for complete madness and for something like someone falling and their pants coming off and a picture landing on them that's the most exciting thing nothing that good has ever happened before yeah

and like everyone there is like we just witnessed something like that was beautiful um yeah it is it's a it's tough because when you're in a writer's room there's a lot of silence yeah where everybody's thinking at once there's a lot of like writing while your other people are talking even like that if you're no good at that like it's this you're you're toast man and uh and like figuring out a joke while other people are talking and then there's a lot of just dying on the floor so there's a lot of like you pitching something and then there's a silence that means no it's not good we can't use that and the fact that you thought it was funny enough to say out loud is like really a big indictment i mean maybe not

to anybody else other than yourself but to you it feels like the biggest indictment of your sense of humor like well they fucking figured me out no i mean like we when we do when we did gangs in the room because we've been remote for the last couple years uh but when we did gangs in the room um because we're all trying to collectively write like 20 of these that the bosses will go and pick in another room uh we don't know if anything is is solved when we're there doing it we're just writing these jokes and then saying them out loud and because everyone is focused on writing their own jokes and and hitting our quota of jokes no one gives even like courtesy laughs you just deliver a joke and the first time i had to do it just like stand there and deliver a joke even though i'd seen other

people do it a million times in the room before and i get no laughs just like nods of agreement from writers who are like yes that is that does qualify as a joke that's our 14th in fact that's good that's that is very hard for someone who has done stand-up and done like live events and have has laughed with friends to deliver a funny thing to to complete silence is like oh i don't think I don't think humans were supposed to do this. I think one day we're going to find out this is why we're all crazy when we're 50. Yeah.

And even worse is that when you say a joke or you're going to pitch your area and you're like, here we go. And you pitch it and everyone does that thing where they're like, yeah, that's funny. And then somebody else pitches out to you and like they get a laugh it's like you want to kill yourself yeah yeah we're like it's an audible laugh because that's the other thing about being in a room is that you can't control if you laugh or not and if the joke is really funny you will laugh and if they laugh at someone else's i'm almost tempted to be like you know what i'm

taking my joke back now so So we're down to 13. Somebody else go. You guys think John's so fucking funny? It's such a, it's, it's such like you have to really thread the needle in the room of like, cause also the other people are doing jokes too. And if they're gonna pitch something that takes a lot

to like get out there and pitch something. You've gotta give it something. Yeah. Otherwise it's like, you, you feel like a complete asshole too. Yeah. Um, it's, it's, it's a, it's a very nerve wracking experience. People, when I talk to the people at my job, they're like asking about hiatuses and stuff like that. All the questions about all the things that make the job really great.

And then they're like, wow, it sounds like a really great job. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, there's like every single day I'm paralyzed by fear and stress when I'm in the room. But yeah, that's great. I had to learn very quickly to completely detach myself from the words that I make and make sure that the thing I'd been doing my whole life, where I try to weave in some of my heart and soul into the things I write, I had to sever that part of me because I could not last in this job if I believed in anything that I'd written. I've been doing it six years, but I still don't know if I'm any good at it. If the times that I

have been good at it, I wonder if those are just a fluke or even if maybe I was good and I lost it yesterday and I'll never get it back. So yeah, that's every day. There is a story that I think could withstand the test of time that is my own embarrassment. It's like my own chagrin that was, and I'll just give you like broad overview because that's how it will be told, I assume. I hit a pregnant lady in the face with a box of Milk Duds.

Oh my God. Your box of Milk Duds. Oh my God. Your office has Milk Duds? Occasionally, yeah. If you know where to look. Right above the pregnant woman's desk. This is such a humiliation. I was my first season and I think it was early. I think it must've been within like the first two months.

And I've talked briefly on this podcast before about how I did not feel like things were going very well when I first joined the show. I didn't know what the expectations were of me. I didn't know if I was supposed to be proving myself early on or just stay quiet and listen. I opted for the former and that was not the right choice. I came out guns blazing with like pitching a lot. Also like not just

pitching jokes when we're breaking stories, like pitching directions and stuff like that. And that's, that was, I should have known, I should have known better. And I just kept like digging myself in deeper. And I think that I was not a, a room favorite and that's fine. That's, but during this time, when I'm trying to scramble out of this hole that I'm digging for myself, I'm eating some Milk Duds. It's like the way that our room is set up is that there's couches around the room,

and it's big. There's rooms that we're in that are the size of a garage, basically, a two-car garage. And the couches line the outside, and then there's tables in the middle and there's these computers on each table just monitors so that everyone can see what we're working on.

And I came in with milk duds that I got out of the kitchen and there's a woman in our office who happened to be pregnant at the time and she was like, can I have some of those? And I was like, absolutely. I don't want to eat all of them. Take as many as you want. So she only took like two. And then I go and I sit down in my couch, which is, this is all important, by the way,

the geography of the room. It's like 15 feet away from her, maybe more, maybe 20. And I'm eating them and I can occasionally see her like eyeing them again. She's done with hers and she sees that I'm still, I've still got these. But that's such like a, it's either stop the room, like get up and go over and be like, can I have some more? Or like just these things that are not going to happen. Yeah.

But I'm like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if I just gave her the rest of these? And I was like, and I'm not going to get up either. I'll just toss them to her couch. So I throw these milk, this box of Milk Duds. Yeah. You know the structural integrity of a box of Milk Duds. Yeah.

It's a good box. Yes. And with some pretty sharp corners. That's right. Now, the centrifugal force of the Milk Duds in the box carried an extra rotation that I had intended for. Yeah. the box carried it an extra rotation that I, that I had intended for. It was supposed to land smoothly next to her. And she would look over at me and be like, thank you.

Like mouth. Thank you to me. Right. And I would be like, ah, one step closer to being okay. Having a job next year. Uh, that instead it carried it. I over, I, my throw was, was too enthusiastic and it just like rotated like a propeller in the air from an errant helicopter and just caught her in the head.

And like the look of like shock when she got hit, I was like, it was so mortifying. It was one of those moments where you're like, it's a dream. It's a dream. It's a dream. Yeah.

And of course, like you're a dream it's a dream it's a dream yeah and of course like you're a a fit man you look like a natural athlete and you you are good at most sports and physical things so yeah it must buster keaton style be like man that's what he wanted to do nobody looks like that fucks up that hard yeah it looks like i just wound up and whipped a box of candy at a pregnant woman to everybody else in the room and so the room stops and i am so mortified and like i think my face turned so red like i got up immediately with that was like hands reaching towards somebody with no actual intent of touching them just to be like oh my my God, oh my God, oh my God. And like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sad. Like, like being very close to her.

She was so magnanimous about it in a way that was like, she started laughing immediately. Great. I don't think that that was her initial instinct. I think that she was mad that she got hit with a box of milk. Cause that's, that's humanity. Um, but she was so kind about it and diffused it so quickly that i was like i owe you forever this is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me and i felt so so bad and then just sat there

quietly basically the rest of the day being like you couldn't have fucked up bigger than that that is you're right that story has transcended your writer's room it made it to our room i didn't know it was you um but the way we heard it the milk duds hit a camera and it was the camera that nailed her in the face um well okay so here's the deal we did have a sponsorship from a the way that i told is a bit of a fib because yeah the way that we had a sponsor from a camera company and we didn't want them to get sued right uh but yeah it was that's mortifying just like thinking about it makes me do they bring it up ever like now you're in this year in this show for a couple years and and and you're you're a big dog now do they ever do they initiate new writers with that story

no i for the most part forgotten i think because i also broke a woman's arm snowboarding initiate new writers with that story? No. For the most part, it's been forgotten. I think because I also broke a woman's arm snowboarding. Right. Sure. So it's a pattern. It's not as funny if it's a pattern. There was a woman on our staff who's from the South who does not ski or snowboard, and

we went on a snowboarding slash skiing trip, and she was like, would you be willing to just teach me? And I was like, would you be willing to just like teach me? And I was like, absolutely, I would love to do that. And like, we got to the mountain and within the first 45 seconds of her being on a snowboard fell and broke her wrist. Yeah, so I get that. If Greg Cohen was falling out of his chair

and dropping his pants every day, then it's like, all right, he's trying to get a reaction. That's what you're doing. You're repeating the same bit over and over again and it's just diminished returns yeah that that was also like a horror horror horror story for me where i was like i broke i broke her arm i broke her arm they were like we only kind of broke her arm because i had like i hadn't taught her how to fall yet or anything like i hadn't taught her like because it's very easy on a snowboard to break your arms and make your wrists if you fall wrong and like you and you how to fall yet or anything like I hadn't taught her like, cause it's very easy on a snowboard to break your arms and make your wrists.

If you fall wrong and like you, and you have to fall in a very specific way with like your fist out, like you're punching a goose. And yeah. And if you don't like, it's really bad. And she, I didn't tell her that she got on the snowboard and within like one,

I would like not even five feet. She fell. And, and I was, I was mortified by that. Yeah yeah it's and like accidents happen and if she knows it's her first time snowboarding you know there's certainly more precautions you could take uh but i do like that your co-workers are not going to completely let you off the hook and they're like well we're not going to say you didn't break her arm you definitely didn't snap

it over your knee or anything like that right you're not you're more guilty than the rest of us at the very least complicit um yeah so do you do you have any that you did i don't think i don't think it'll get passed around uh beyond our room but it comes up in our room a lot because this was another gang story and the way gangs work it's always just whatever writers are available, because we had 10 writers at the time, but sometimes two of them are on a story or three of them are on some other thing they're outlining or they're writing, whatever it is. So it's always just, it's very rare that we get all family, the whole team doing gangs together. It's just whomever's available. And we were in our writer's room, which this like yours a windowless room with couches and

then someone needed that room so we moved to a conference room uh which is your standard conference room and it so happens i i sat at the the far end head of the table with my back to the window facing the door and we were all gathered around that table a smaller group than we were before because people got called away and then at a certain point whatever remaining writers were also called away on some other assignment and there were still four gang jokes left to do so that's again like 14 to 20 punchlines to write per thing and it was just me in the office and everyone sort of realized at the same time as they're walking out so happy to be done with gangs that it's just me alone at this long table

doing one person gangs which has never happened before or since one person gangs and they clapped at that for a while because i looked so sad just like the framing of being alone at a computer in an empty room at a very long table was very sad and i think my co-worker owen took a picture of it and then photoshopped it so it looked like it's in one of those photo frames that say dreams do come true and that is just an image that, unprompted, someone will share in Slack every once in a while. Just the saddest, loneliest boy realizing his comedy writing job might not be all it's cracked up to be. Realizing it might have bitten him more than he could chew. It is funny how many of the problems that you face early on in your job are based on

just everyone assuming everyone who joins the job already knows how to do it. There's just such a huge lack of communication when you start a writing job and what the expectations are of you, what's normal, what's not normal. So you're just sort of trying to hit the ground running. You're doing whatever you can to keep your head above water to make metaphors. But like you, you, whatever people ask you to do, you just do it. And so occasionally you get stuck in these weird situations where you're writing 500 jokes by yourself. Yeah. I mean, like I got, uh, like one of my, my very first writing assignment there, maybe two days into the job to just write top of show a draft of top of show for

whatever our story was that week they just like assigned me and a few other writers to it it was i think truly my second day and it would be due the next morning and one of the the more senior writers this guy jeff uh who's always very helpful to me just She's like, just so you know, if you have any questions, you need any advice, the only thing I would say is, you know, on your first one, don't be late with it. Don't get it in after the deadline.

And I was like, I'm going to have to ask you to start a lot farther back. What do scripts look like at this fucking job? What do all the shorthand things mean here how do i make the font red like you guys do sometimes i i deadline i'm not gonna live through the night man how do jokes work yeah there was a there was a moment early on in my job when they i'd pitch something and they're like no like generally we try and make sure that stan and francine's love life is like it's always on point like that that's one thing

that we always kind of live by is they're they're never unhappy with the sexual relationship between them like that's always great and uh i was like oh is there like a pitch bible sorry like not like a show bible around here and they're like yes there is and they were so excited to go get this stupid dusty folder that had one page in it that said steve loves the mail okay thank you that's very helpful that's such a good bit oh that rules yeah there's one of the first episodes that I worked on was this one called Wild Women Do

that's about Francine and Jeff where Jeff takes Francine out for the night and starts to realize that like she's been Stan has this whole plan to keep her basically bland so that she doesn't get too overexcited and go back to her old ways, which is like she gets a little crazy. And this night she figures out that Jeff is doing this and trying to keep the night bland

and she overcorrects in the other direction and goes absolutely nuts. But part of it is that Jeff has this little card and all these things that she's allowed to have and the things that she's not allowed to have on this card. So it's very, very tiny. And we get an insert of the card while he's underneath this table, reading it. And the writer who had written the episode wasn't on the show the next season. And so I was ushering the, it was like my first episode to really usher through so that I could get an idea of the, how it goes from like an animatic to a color to

all these rewrites. And one of the notes was like, we need more jokes for this card. And what that means is bring it to a room and everyone will pitch on it and we'll get like 50 jokes for this because it's so many jokes have to go on this tiny card and we'll get them all that way. I didn't know that. So I just took it to my office and I'm just like writing. I'm just writing joke after joke after joke took it to my office and I'm just like writing, I'm just

writing joke after joke after joke for it to be on this index card. And so if you go look at the, uh, the actual episode, when you look at that insert, if you freeze frame it, there's like, I would say like 48 jokes on there. Not all of them are mine. There was at one point that part, like other, other joke, other made like he reads some of them out loud. was at one point that part like other joke other made like he reads some of them out loud and we used we got to use a lot of those but man i'd say like 25 of those jokes are just ones where i was in my office being like i think i think i'm supposed to stay here till nine i gotta finish this we had uh i didn't do it by myself but we had gangs one time where uh they usually will leave like a fun gang for the last one.

Like we're done with the sad clips of the news and people crying and stuff. And now we just need a bunch of funny names for mice because we're going to have a list of mice with names. And so just go through it. And it was like my first or second week there. And we had done like 20 names. And normally when we get like to a certain, to the number that we're shooting for, someone will say, all right, that's 18. Let's move on.

All right, that's 16. We can, we got, we got to keep pushing through. And in this one, we get to 20 and I finally spoke up and I was like, what, what happens now? There's like, oh, there's no more, there's no more jokes to do so just keep it we just sat there and kept doing mice jokes for like two hours i'm sure other people in the room were like just on twitter or online shopping but i'm just like julius cheeser mice dallas howard My fingers are falling off. I haven't seen the sun in hours.

Brat Ratner. That's great. Well, I think we can call it there, Dan. I think we can too for our show, which is called Quick Question, but you knew that already. We are recorded, edited, and produced by the irreplaceable Gabe Harder. Our theme song is by the incredible Merex. Their digital album is available at merex.bandcamp.com. You can find me, for now, on Twitter at dob underscore inc and Soren at Soren underscore ltd,

and the show at qq underscore Soren and Dan. Also email us, qq with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. I have a Substack where I share books. You can find it by searching sub stack Daniel O'Brien on your internet. You can also find us Patreon quick question Patreon slash quick question where we have in the past

answered questions from you the paying subscribers. We did do that once didn't we well we'll do more of that someday yeah for sure all right i've got a quick quick question for you all right i want to hear your thoughts i want to know what's on your mind i've got a quick quick question for you all right the answer's not important i'm just glad that we could talk tonight

So what's your favourite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? Was it awkward? Worded over? Oh, forget it, I'm sorry, movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here