Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 100 -100th Episode Mail Bag!

Episode Date: July 31, 2021

Wow! 100 episodes, who would have thought. Certainly not anybody involved in the production of this show.  And to honor the spirit of Quick Question's inception, we've done as little work as possible to celebrate, and farmed out all of the questions to our audience! What state does Soren wish he was a part of? Is Daniel addicted to Gummies? Listen and find out!  And as always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks to Mack Weldon. For 20% off your first order, visit mackweldon.com/QQ with promo code QQ . And Thanks to BetterHelp.  Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/qq 

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to use, and you get your cash back through PayPal or check. The idea is simple. Stores pay Rakuten for semi-mum shoppers, and Rakuten shares the money with you as cash back. Download the free Rakuten app and never miss a deal, or go to rakuten.ca to start giving the most bang for your buck. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Sorin and Daniel. So hello to the Quispy Quesadillas, DOBs, Devotees, and the Sworn Swords of Sorin. So hello to the Questly Quickers and the Q-Cuties. So hello to the Quickla Questlas and Quickfolies, the Booey Boosters, and the Faneuil O'Briens. So hello to you, yes you, I am one half ofoleys, the Booey Boosters, and the Faneuil O'Briens. So hello to you.

Yes, you. I am one half of this podcast, the bottom half to be specific, author of How to Fight President, senior editor for the D-textbook, writer and editor for You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News, now a New York Times bestseller, co-creator and writer for the Webby award-winning YouTube series After Hours, seen over 30 million times, Emmy award-winning staff writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, voted Broadway-bound by the 2004 Raritan High School graduating class, and co-winner of the 2005 Jersey Shore Battle of the Bands, Daniel Joseph Nicholas O'Brien, joined as always by my best friend and co-host, an asset in every writer's room, and a threat on the opposite side of the volleyball net, the talented Mr. Quipley himself, Soren Buis.

Soren, it's episode 100. Say hello. Hey, everybody. I'm sort of overwhelmed with how kind that was, you to bring out my volleyball skills like that. I've been thinking about it, how we used to play volleyball every single week for a couple of years on the beaches of Santa Monica.

And just what a terror it was if you were on not my team. Volleyball is one of those sports where I was like, I never really played it as a kid. And then I played it as an adult and I was like, I'm pretty good at this. If you just jump high in the sand suddenly you are you you're an advantage to everybody um yeah it's a volleyball is a sport that i uh for a long time thought i was decent at uh and then we started playing with co-workers uh in santa monica and the guy who organized it uh had me meet him early so he could like do drills with me after he watched me play for a while he was like you should just come to the

parking lot and we'll practice doing sets i'm like oh this sucks i'm 23 yeah uh that guy exuded beach volleyball i'm sure we should even say his name here but he was if you just picture like kind of like greased back hair, but not flat to his head, kind of like sticking up a little bit also back and then wrap around sunglasses and talking about how the economy is a zero sum game. Like he is the equivalent, he is the epitome of beach volleyball. Thanks to Mack Weldon for supporting Quick Question. Mack Weldon is a premium men's essentials brand that believes in smart design and high quality fabrics. For 20% off your first order,

visit mackweldon.com slash QQ and enter promo code QQ. Thanks to Better Health for supporting Quick Question. For 10% off your first month, go to betterhelp.com slash QQ. Start living a better life today. Well, that was an incredible intro there's no way i'm gonna even try to do one because that there's there's no sense in it um i but you did also make me

realize that fucking i did help write a book yeah my name's in a book it's it's the 100th episode and i wanted it to feel special and i also wanted to like well what does it sound like if i actually list uh my accomplishments and this is just such a clear brainwashing of uh iris catholicism where as i'm really just like listing things that i've actually done in my life i'm still still, my brain is resisting it. My brain is going, this seems boastful. Don't. Just stop it.

Downplay it. Say the Emmy doesn't count. Say Emmys that they don't count. I think I the the dubious accolades of broadway bound in high school and this 2005 battle of the bands uh just to like like subconsciously subconsciously i wanted to let everyone know that i wasn't taking this too seriously yeah i actually missed those but i think you brought them up on other episodes the broadway bound thing is something that was a real treat for me yeah definitely um and i don't want to

i mean i don't want to step on the toes of where the show is headed but i do want to take a moment to congratulate you again dan that your show has another emmy nomination yeah we've another emmy um. The show has seven nominations. Holy shit. So we're there for writing, and the show is there in the category of variety talk show. And our directors got nominated, our editors got nominated, and I'm sure there are a bunch of other technical awards that pad out the other seven nominations. But yeah, it's exciting congratulations your show is just a juggernaut at the emmys it's we're gonna it's

gonna be an interesting year because they combined uh two major things they combined our writing category with uh like sketch so we've we've never been up against saturday night live for writing but we are this year uh and uh we've also got uh a couple of new contenders who uh we've never competed against because they they're they're brand new shows like amber often show is in our category and black lady sketch shows is in our category as well and it's uh it's one of the it's it's always been like a kind of a a boring award category that no one pays attention to but this year it's exciting there's new life in it and and uh we're we're we're thrilled to have that gotta beat the best 2021 snl it's a very it's i think i've said this the at last year's emmys too where where i i don't put

a ton of uh eggs in this basket like it's yeah yeah yeah i know it's it doesn't it's not life changing uh i i hope the show wins to reward the the people who've worked on it. I don't personally in my soul need to win, but I also really don't want to lose because losing anything sucks. I think we're missing the fact that the most important thing here is that you're coming to Los Angeles again. You're getting a hotel room. I get to go there and eat a big thing that says congratulations in fondant correct and that's what i'm genuinely more than anything else when we we found out today uh as

of this taping that our uh category is going to be announced in the primetime enemies because sometimes it's primetime sometimes it's creative arts and it's creative arts we might not have been able to go but we do get to go and as as soon as I found that out, I was slacking. My coworkers were like, I get to fly first class. I'm so excited to fly first class and have one of those chairs that turns into a bed. I'm going to watch a movie. Honestly, I would kill for that.

Just to fly alone. I would fly here. I would fly to New York and then fly home immediately just to do that. Yeah. Well, I'm very happy for you. Can I tell you something about flying? Can I tell you something about flying?

Because I was recently in Los Angeles to see you. Yes. That was cool. And I flew home. And this is one of my more unhinged decisions. Because I watched a few episodes of Bob's Burger, a show that I love. And that was fine and then i watched the entirety of austin powers 2 the spy who shagged me i i i think i i did it as a bit because i didn't want to watch that movie no i don't think it's it's it's not good anymore

uh and there's nothing i could like i don't i i didn't come away from it with like a take or or or any valuable lessons about comedy writing i really just thought it would be so funny if so if i if someone was watching if a 35 year old man was watching austin powers 2 in its entirety on a plane in 2021 isn't that funny what if people are like walking by and and see me watching this movie and i'm like really watching it and invested isn't that funny and so i just watched this like 90 minute movie as a bit for no one and how was it it's bad yeah i know it's a lot of a lot of fat jokes in that one and it's it's it's truly just like i hope someone sees me watching this and i hope they think it's funny that i did that did

you and i hope it makes them makes them wonder what kind of person i am and what kind of life i live did you arrive at how you wanted to be presented in the scenario like are you laughing at the jokes in it and like like you're seeing it for the first time and also experiencing just these cultural touchstones for the very first time that everyone else is sick of because they've been worn into the ground? Or is it funnier to be sitting there watching Austin Powers and being really upset about it?

I was somewhere between laughing and upset about it. I wasn't like shaking my head in dismay the whole time, but I think I let a couple of audible oofs sneak out of my mouth during the film. I really wanted people to see me

as they're like making a bunch of fat jokes, and I'm like, ugh, yeah, oof, rough. I want people to see me and be like, you don't have to watch this movie. Yeah. I'm also tempted to in that scenario, just every once in a while go,

oh, that's gotta hurt. And like that kind of stuff. Now I'm two minds because I just don't know which is funnier. It feels like a lateral move either way. Well, that was a good choice on your behalf. I do have a lot of questions about the emmys we don't have to do it today um because you're gonna have to pick a date you're gonna have to decide if you're gonna wear the same suit uh what your peacocking is gonna be like what's your little

flair on your outfit's gonna be i'm excited to hear all of that um but oh yeah i guess i need to do all that stuff but we're not thinking about that right now because instead we are doing a mailbag episode hell yeah we uh in celebration of our 100th episode that feels like a thousand

we're gonna go straight to the audience and you're gonna give us our questions and we're gonna answer them and a lot of these questions I have not seen before. Yeah, I just opened this document and I'm looking at them right now and realizing it would have been helpful had I prepared for this.

Yeah. Okay. But you know, impossible. Well, my hands were tied. Mack Weldon is a premium men's essentials brand that believes in smart design and high quality fabrics. From work to working out, going to happy hour, or playing with your kids, Mack Weldon has men's essentials for whatever your day includes.

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Again, I love Mack Weldon. I wear them all the time. They're my underwear, and I wear them constantly. I also got some of their athleisure lounge pants, and they they're great i wear them when i'm lounging around my apartment they're perfect for everyday needs for 20 off your first order visit macweldon.com slash qq and enter promo code qq that's macweldon.com slash qq with the promo code qq for 20 off macweldon reinventing men's basics. Let's start with the first one here.

This is from Patty McPatpat. Patty McPatpat asks, what is Soren's favorite work created by Daniel and what is Daniel's favorite work created by Soren? I think that's a great question and I'm sorry that I'm not going to do it more justice, Patty McPatpat, but I need... Do you have one off the top of your dome there, Dan? I do, yeah, absolutely.

We at Cracked made a show years ago. I think it's called We Are Not Alone. It was part of the Cracked Studios experiment where we were making higher budget, more ambitious and weirder narrative sitcom type shows this one was about what would happen if we discovered they were aliens and just try to like play out that scenario on a very bureaucratic level focusing on the low level people who would be tasked with making first contact and all that. It's one of the series that came out of that experiment

that I'm more proud of. And I feel like it's a bummer that it was like one of the things we made towards the tail end of Crack Studios because that was when I feel like we had started to figure out how to run our own writer's room. And like, it made me want to just keep writing shows with this group of people forever. And then studios was shut down and we were all fired. But in that process, Soren created a character. I don't know if we ever gave him a name or if he was just

the general, because like we were all brainstorming episode ideas and thing and like directions for the show to go. and you created this guy just just on your own just in the script that you wrote invented this this whole character and he we didn't change a thing about the character that you created for the show uh and he was in every episode and just like an absolute delight to write for because you wrote him so fully realized and uh it it was writing for him was was it it felt like cheating more than than any other writing for any character that i'd done it was just like i know who this guy is this like i'm not i'm not writing he's just he's gonna walk into a room and start talking and all i'm doing

is like transcribing what what this character would say when faced with these decisions. And it was such a blast to write. And I wanted more of that show mostly just for that character. Because I enjoyed writing for him so much. And that's all a testament to you just like, here's this guy. You wrote him into the show. You wrote in with like a big monologue and i was like yep i know who this guy is and i want i want to hang out with him forever and he's just great that was the general that's like a clear archetype of a general who wants to shoot first

and ask questions later but then he's also trying to work on himself right yes he's trying to be better yeah okay good thanks daniel yeah he he zigged when you when you would expect him to zag and i think i think this was your joke uh uh the two main scientists are talking about aliens and then some vaguely defined military grunt walks into the room and says who's in charge here and then the general says i am and then like dismisses that grunt away like the idea that he he wanted to make a dramatic entrance so he just like has his subordinates feed him an interesting setup line so he can introduce himself properly just great just a fun stupid delightful joke that that tells you a lot about who this guy is thanks man um i i did think of one for you and it's one that i don't know we've ever actually

really talked about but um you wrote an entire show by yourself just like on a whim i did yeah you wrote an entire show about two superheroes and then you very kindly let me be in it with you. And I revisited one of these episodes the other day because it just showed up in my right rail. And it's so funny. Like, it was such a fun thing to do because it was just like two guys who work in headquarters. And it's them in headquarters before they go out on these these superhero runs basically and like trying to decide on their action plan and uh it's one of them's like overbearing and like a little bit uh gregarious and the other one is timid very nice for archetypes

and then uh it was so easy to just jump in and play this role and i really enjoy everything about these episodes nobody ever touched them you nobody ever did like another pass on them nobody this wasn't like you brought it in you're like i'd like to do this show and then we did like a joke room for it or anything like that you just went off and you wrote these episodes by yourself and brought them in and then i got to be in it and there it's it's still a very very funny show do you remember the name of it man i sure don't oh i should find it then because it would be a shame for people not to be able to go see it that's wild that i don't remember the name of i mean it's it's not super wild i'm sure when i was writing it it was called untitled superhero show and then we needed to come up with some title as it got

closer to to release and we just settled on whatever we settled on what is it action team action team that sucks shit so as i said it didn't go through a process like an ordinary episode. Dan just wrote it. I directed that too, which to do over again, I would not do. I don't have a clear understanding of what directing is supposed to be in the best of circumstances. But like a lot of people, I assumed I could do it. to be in the best of circumstances but like a lot of people i assumed i could do it and yes really when i say i wanted to direct it i think what i subconsciously meant was i want to cast it and i i uh i i don't want anyone to change it and i don't want our days to be long that that was the beginning and end of why i wanted to direct was you know most the time we direct things and and uh it takes all day so i'd like to change that

with this show it's almost impossible to find like there's no like way to combine all of them either they're not all in a row there's not an easy easy way on YouTube to find them. But the one that I found was why being a superhero is nothing like you think. Now, Daniel wasn't in charge of the title of this episode. I'll say that that process still existed where we just were trying anything to get people to click on stuff. Here's like a peek behind the curtain at Cracked

is we would write maybe five titles for something and then you can a b test those titles to see what gets clicked on more and the stuff that gets clicked on would just it would just hurt your feelings like it would just demoralize the ordinary an ordinary person and that's why articles that you read and uh videos that you watch and you look back and you're like why the fuck is it called this that's why it's called that because that's the one that people were like oh yeah I'll give this a shot yeah

let's move on to the next question this one is from big underscore tap with two p's what is your favorite of the states that you have not lived in I mean I could go one further here and say also what state i would i really like and admire that i also have never even been to okay yeah that's

interesting because we should we should answer both versions of it because like uh i haven't lived in colorado in the sense that like i haven't Colorado in the sense that like I haven't like like had property there I don't know I've been to Colorado a bunch of times on little trips and I it might be my favorite state in the country no Hawaii

and it's I was backpacking there with my brother years ago and we kept seeing other people on the trail who uh were also from new jersey or from philadelphia or somewhere else in the east coast and it's like an incredibly popular destination for people to retire to and that was the story we kept hearing over and over again we were talking to these older older guys on the trail and we're like, I've traveled all over the world. And this is the best place. This is where I wanted to end up.

So here I am now. And that's certainly a future I can see for myself. Well, yeah, it's like Colorado is like cheating. Yeah. Colorado is, and I'm not being subjective here, Colorado is the best state. Yeah. I guess other than hawaii

i think it it like truly might be in in very strange ways because i've rocky mountain national park denver and fort collins and carbondale are the places that i've been and i think you're gonna say we're the best they're the places in color I've been. They're all different from each other, but they're all still like uniquely great. And like Fort Collins is just a beautiful, clean, nice, well-organized town. And everyone who lives there seems like happier. And I'm going to say it, hotter. Yeah, man. Boulder is, it's crazy. The first time I went to Boulder and like really spent some time there

um i did a senior project there in high school and i was just like blown away by all the pretty women there as a 17 year old kid i was like well this is this is what it's been like the whole time and it's because people are generally more active there um and i don't know i assume that's it i think it's just like a sports oriented lifestyle an outdoor oriented lifestyle and that all that comes with a lot of trappings of like oh you eat a little healthier you're yeah your idea of the weekend is you spend it outdoors and it just changes like changes your skin it changes your body it's also there's a pride that a lot of people have of living there that doesn't end up being smug which i find very refreshing i like just coming from having the background that i have with new jersey

where there's so much uh like baggage that you carry being from new jersey because it's the punchline of so many jokes for so long. And there's so much pride in living here, but it's an immediate hackles up, claws out defensive pride where you feel like you're constantly defending this state and you need to prove why it's great. And you see that with New Yorkers. There's a toughness to being a New Yorker.

And I saw that with California, too too because California also gets a bad rap. People are like, no, it's actually really good. And I'll fight you if you disagree. And people from Colorado are just like, no, yeah, it's nice here and it's better. And that's why I live here. I went back recently, like a couple weeks ago, and I saw some old friends and some people that I hadn't seen in a long time. And I went to Redstone, which is where I got married they did a little 4th of July parade and so I also ran into some people that I hadn't even thought of in a long time and I gotta say

like it's like they're all in a time capsule like they all look the same they all look really good for their age in a way where I'm like oh I shouldn't have left I've been decaying on the outside but I could have been here in this bubble and and just preserved yeah uh do you have an answer for this question i'm gonna i'm gonna use your talking to think about um a state that i love but have not lived in or like i've never even been to yeah a state that i haven't ever lived in, but I have visited and that is very near and dear to my heart is Seattle. Well, Washington.

Seattle is really the only place I've been in Washington. But I'd only ever been there once. It was a work trip. And it was a work trip that I was loathing because I had to learn a bunch of, I had to learn how to basically how to put a bunch of trail guides on the computer. And there's no simple way to do that, it turns out. But I was not very excited about it. I was working for a site called trails.com at the time. And I went there and I was so blown away by, first of all, how beautiful it is there. You land and like, you're basically, you can look out onto a forest from the airport in seattle and then seattle and i assume this is true of the rest of the state

they've got like this real they really latched on to the idea that they're the last stop before the yukon like whenever that was pertinent it's it's still they're still like clinging to it and they're like look this is it this is like before you get out into the real wilds of Canada, this is your last stop. And so as a result, instead of gargoyles on the buildings, they have like walruses on a lot of them. They've got, there's like a real covetry of gold, like gold nuggets up there.

Like they're presented in a way that, I mean, there's not like people actually like holding gold nuggets saying my precious or anything, but like the idea of gold is still like treated as a very valuable 1870s type of thing. And I just really, everything about it feels so old world in a way that I had never experienced before.

They've also like sort of, and maybe this is problematic, but they've embraced like the totem pole and some elements of the native people that lived there as well that I also was not familiar with. So it was all brand new to me and it was all very exciting and fun. And I liked it a lot. Yeah.

I guess that'll be my answer too i've never been anywhere in like the pacific northwest and it it all seems very nice great answer my the the place that i would go or the place that i the state that i have an affinity for that i've never even been to is montana montana feels like the the grown-up league. Colorado is very accessible. There's mountains and stuff, but it's also, if you're not into that, there's other stuff for you there. Montana feels like the great frontier to me. Montana feels removed from everything. It feels completely rural in my mind, but also completely mountainous in a way that uh all the mountains are way bigger there than in colorado and i'm a little scared of montana but i also am very excited about the

prospect of it the idea john denver singing about the wide montana sky i i think oh oh i think the sky is even bigger there and uh it it's probably misplaced but i have this assumption that it's all cowboys up there that they're still uh wrestling cattle and getting strung up for it yeah that's an essential part to questions like this where it's like yeah i'd like to live in montana and also when i do that, I will be different. I will be the kind of person who doesn't sweat so much and like enjoys cowboy stuff. That's the first time I ever went to New Orleans. I was like, ah, I would like this place if I was part of it.

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irrationally angry that's crazy because i was just thinking about this last night oh good i i'd go first here ice cream sandwiches really piss me off um cookie ice cream sandwiches i've never had a cookie ice cream sandwich that wasn't structurally unstable in a way that made it impossible to eat. The idea of it is just, it seems like such a terrible vehicle to get it into my body. I would much prefer to just have a soft, hot cookie with some melting ice cream on top of it and use a utensil. Because the minute you introduce two cookies on either side of melting ice cream on top of it and use a utensil because the minute you introduce two cookies on either side of the ice cream, the cookies are kind of like brittle and, uh,

but also just hard enough that if you bite into it, either you're, you're, it's so cold and so hard that the cookie itself is hard and not enjoyable or the cookie soft and the ice cream as a result has melted in between. And then the minute you bite into it, it all just squeezes out the back. It's such a poor system. And I don't understand why we stick with it. That's a really good answer. It sounds like it's a real problem for you. I'm glad you were able to talk about it.

Yeah. I don't, I feel like I don't have an answer for this i have one that i that is sort of like i feel like i'm i'm uh thematically copying your answer uh meatball subs i love very much uh in in theory because i love meatballs and i just think sandwich is a good uh vehicle for food but similar to ice cream sandwiches, you're always getting meatballs just shooting out the ass of that thing. It's true. And I've been burned so many times. And I always end up capitulating and just cutting up the meatballs and eating them with a little slice of the wet bread.

Because it's a thoughtless design at least with a meatball sub you've got one corner of the bread connected generally they don't usually do like two separate ones and then slight put all the meatballs in the middle and just slap a top on it but i do see what you're saying you really have to get a whole meatball in your mouth each time to keep it from pushing back onto the next one and then just like ball bearings in there they just roll out the back it's there's there's a place i go to out here in your mouth each time to keep it from pushing back onto the next one and just like ball bearings in there they just roll out the back it's there's there's a place i go to out here every once in a while called the meatball shop i'll get i'll get lunch from them and they they offer a sandwich

that is a meatball sandwich but they've they've smashed the meatballs to make them more like patties and i i can't explain it but it's not the same the ratio is weird yeah the ratio of bread to meat is straight changes dramatically um you also don't get those huge pockets of cheese in between yeah because i've another um essential to the meatball sub is the melted mozzarella that falls in between all the meatballs i mean i don't know what the fuck i'm talking about i don't eat beef but um i think that's pretty you probably lose some of that uh speaking of food our next question from sam camfield is top five snacks

um i'm not i'm not much of a snacker but but I... I have a real problem. This is genuinely embarrassing to admit at 35 years old that I'm eating like a... a bag of gummy bears a day. What? And not even like an impulse buy bag where there's like 10 gummy bears in there like you'd get at halloween or something i'm getting like like too many gummy bears or gummy worms uh or

or if i'm i'm trying to be good there's like this australian strawberry flavored uh zero calorie licorice bites and I'll eat those but really I don't fuck me I don't remember the last day that went by that I didn't have some kind of gummy snack really yeah

I mean that would never be my first choice even like a candy store. I think I'd be like, no, I learned my lesson as a kid. You don't go for the aesthetic stuff. You go for like the tasty chocolate. Can I be vulnerable? When I was just in Los Angeles, I was staying in Santa Monica and I went to the Target to get some stuff.

And while I was there, I got an organic type of gummy bear that i'd never seen before uh because i wanted to try it and then i also got a normal bag of gummy bears because what if i didn't like that bag of gummy bears and then later that night i went to this the third street promenade in santa monica and there's a candy store there called it's sugar i think and i just i i god help me got a a third bag of assorted gummies that's a problem there was no snacks in my airbnb except three bags of gummy snacks what was the earliest in the morning that you ate one of those and i mean if you woke up not like going to bed late like earliest in the morning no so like sometimes because i'm i i drink water constantly so i'm i'm frequently peeing throughout the day and i'll often wake up in the middle of the night just to pee uh so probably like

like 2 50 a.m i'll get up to pee and then i'll have a refreshing gummy bear from the freezer and then i'll go and then i'll go to sleep there's a new development that you just like flew past which is that you're freezing your gummies they're so much better if you freeze them well it can't be true that can't be true why can't it be what so what how does the consistency change are they hot like are they hard candy then or yes but they don't stay hard for a very long time which is good so you get to suck on them a little bit like they're Jolly Ranchers. And then they warm up in your hot mouth.

And then you can eat them. How do they break off? Does a worm, do you have to break off a piece of the worm? No, they don't shatter or anything like that. Okay. That's, okay. So you're just waking up in the middle of the night and like sucking down a worm. Yeah.

A cold worm. Yeah. Before going back to bed. Uh-huh. Getting that in your belly. Yeah. And then I have all my weird sugar dreams. I don't even know what that means.

You know, you've never eaten candy late and then had a bunch of dreams? I eat candy late every single night. I don't know. I don't know if dreams are different. I had night terrors last night. Does that... Is that because of the candy? Is it because I ate a bunch of pistachio ice cream?

Maybe. Yeah. Okay. I wouldn't trade them for the world. They're part of me. Yeah. Well, I mean, I hadn't really thought about this, but I guess if I had to answer, I'd say all dressed ruffles,

turkey, jerky, dried mango, take five candy bars, and then roundels. What's that last thing you said? Here we go. Roundels. I was hoping you'd ask about those. At Trader Joe's, that's where a lot of my snacks come from because they just, they dominate the market in terms of snacks. Like, it's so, it's just a level above the stuff you see at the cashier line at like a pavilions or something it's like their turkey jerky is very good and i

loved beef jerky as a child and now that i don't eat beef i gotta i had to substitute uh their dried mango is also very good because they don't have any sugar to it it's just like these big leathery like big leathery pieces of mango steak. And then they have a snack called roundels, which is sort of like a Reese's just in terms of like the essence of a Reese's it's peanut butter inside of chocolate, but I would say a top shelf version. They come in a two trays and there's lines of them. And one is dark chocolate and one is,

um, is milk chocolate. And then there's a, just a drizzle is dark chocolate and one is um is milk chocolate and then there's a just a drizzle of whatever the opposite chocolate is on top and inside the peanut butter i feel like is better than reese's peanut butter it's not crumbly at all it's like but it's also not like whipped it's not you're not going to take a bite and like you just get like that mountain or that little peak um it's just like a really good not dry peanut butter inside and i i love these snacks um god we should get sponsored by roundels man i've never heard i also i'm not sure i would like them because i do think the specific kind of peanut butter that

reese's uses that that that sandy ass dry ass peanut butter i Reese's uses, that sandy-ass, dry-ass peanut butter, I think that's essential to the experience. And anyone who makes a chocolate peanut butter thing that allegedly is just like Reese's, they always miss the mark. Yeah, I agree with you. Most of them do. And there are, yeah, you're right. There are a lot of copycats out there. And Rondell's, I don't know which comes first which comes first roundels packaging makes it look very much like they came first these packages look like they came out of 1850 but um they're they're so good they're so delicious and i highly recommend you try them now have you had all dressed ruffles before no what does that mean it's a type of it's a potato chip it's just a ruffle potato chip but then the flavoring is called all dressed okay and i have no idea what that means but they're they're just great they have kind of like a vinegary taste of them but they're also it's like if you mixed a vinegar chip and a

barbecue chip without the smokiness of the barbecue okay very hard to describe a ketchup i guess oh yeah i guess i would describe it as like a ketchup flavoring um and it's a heavy vinegar on that ketchup and it's outstanding they're so good okay i i i can i can see a path that ends with me eating those chips for sure not rondell's though i don't think rondell's now a taste thing that you have that i will never understand first of all this gummy thing is brand new information for me and and I'm reeling. But in addition to that, something I have fully processed is your obsession with buffalo sauce on anything. Oh, hell yeah.

I hate buffalo sauce, and I generally like vinegary things. I feel like buffalo sauce sucks. Man, I love it. I love those buffalo blue chips. Those are standout delicious um i should buy those i should i should do something to not have gummy bears in my house at all times but i know i'm not going to because it's a victimless crime yeah i mean other than your dentist i guess yeah i stopped myself from having snacks in the house

because i have no impulse control and i'll just eat them like the other snack that i will sometimes buy is cool ranch doritos and i'll just like eat a bag in a in in a sitting and sometimes i'll dress it up to pretend i'm doing myself a favor it It's like, well, I better eat these now. Otherwise, I'll just eat them later. I love talking myself into snacks. Well, I actually have cool ranch Doritos in my cabinet, too, and I'm looking at my list now of dried mango and take five bars and roundels

and I'm like, I gotta get some food. It feels very scary to feel like I'm not, I don't want to be dramatic, but I'm not in control of this gummy bear situation. It doesn't sound like you are. I don't keep snacks in the house. I don't drink soda.

I don't use real sugar in my coffee. There are so many things that I can handle and stop myself from consuming if I think it's going to be bad for me. But I just, I can't imagine a future where I'm not regularly eating gummy bears or gummy worms. I even went to, I was at CVS not too long ago and they had like a mixed bag of gummies where it's like some of the bears some of the worms but also those like coca-cola bottles that nobody wants oh yeah i like those all in the same bag which is like an experience that no one ever wants no one wants to reach into one bag of candy and have this many different situations happening but i got it because it made sense to me you're the demographic just a mixed bag of indiscriminate gummy adjacent things

now this one's a little bit sour sure i don't care what we're the best gummies is harbo the king of the game yeah they're still the king uh and i like this is i i had not planned on talking about this and i'm i'm like truly embarrassed um but there's they sell just the the the gummy cherries and that's my favorite flavor is like the the red flavor of these cherries and it's a whole bag of cherries so so that's appealing but I don't get it for myself all the time because I think there's more honor in getting gummy bears with its mixed flavors and being rewarded with, with, with,

uh, like a bag that is disproportionately skewed towards the red. Yeah. Even though I can get a whole bag of red if I want, I don't let myself do that because I'm insane, Soren. I don't think it's good for me to have this podcast. I don't think I should be

confronted with my thoughts. I think it's probably important. But it is strange to me that, first of all, that you got three bags in a day. That's a red flag. But also that you are consuming, you're waking up like a fledgling in a nest and having a little worm snack at night. That's a little troubling. Are you brushing your teeth after each one of these? Gummies are like the worst thing for your teeth soren of course not all right we really have to move on i can't

one thing i will say for gummy bears is i appreciate that they have not they're not locked into the color equals this fruit uh game that everybody else is trying to push that they're just like no fuck you we'll make green watermelon we don't have to make that anything you want i appreciate that all right we can move on to the next question here thank god this one is from here we go this one is from apparently subliminal what was the first cultural trend like dabbing or the macarena that completely passed you by and made you realize you're no longer one of the kids alternatively what was the last trend with which you were totally on board not ending a sentence in a

preposition i like this guy woman i don't know actually apparently subliminal not specific not specific not gender specific uh i gotta think about this for a second yeah uh pokemon's an easy one to do that well yeah and talk about it crack too yeah that was that was a a huge one that um i think should have been right for me that i that i i just couldn't get on board with because it was so huge when i was growing up and i wasn't trying to be contrarian or anything like i i owned the pokemon game for game boy and i think we had i i i tried briefly to get into pokemon cards because i i i was supposed to and it was like like for my age. And it was a social thing that people were doing, but I, I, I just never liked it. I think I might've been just,

just too old where I was like, I think this is stupid. And I, and, and like more than thinking the content of the games show or cards was stupid. I, i remember not liking uh culturally how into it people were that's the thing i think was was more of a turnoff than the actual content which is like man a lot of these these these kids are super obsessed with pokemon uh to a degree that i i find unattractive so i don So I don't want to get caught up in that. And it just, it passed me by.

And now it's the present where Pokemon is still, like, a thriving cultural touchstone that I just, I can't really engage with. Even in, like, you talk about the crack days where people just wanted articles and videos about Pokemon, like uh give it some kind of present it through the same kind of critical lens that we'd present movies or wrestling or tv shows or or or books even but we just i just couldn't do it i was like no i don't i i have no takes on pokemon i don't even know what a good take would be like i i have no takes on Pokemon. I don't even know what a good take would be.

I have no frame of reference for how to present this in a fun way because it's just not my bag. Yeah. Yeah, I think there was a lot of that at Cracked. Basically, at Cracked, every once in a while, we would get these pitches for Pokemon articles. And generally, we have kind of like a dilettante understanding of just about everything.

We know just enough to know what's interesting about things. And that's a great place to be because then most of your audience is the same way. So you've got to have like these footholds in it for anyone to even understand the topic. But Pokemon was so in the weeds for all of us that occasionally we would just be like somebody. Jason would be like, somebody needs to buckle down and just learn about Pokemon. Somebody needs to just go do it. Go learn everything there is to know about Pokemon. And we'd be like, yeah needs to buckle down and just learn about Pokemon. Somebody needs to just go do it. Go learn everything there is to know about Pokemon. And we'd be like, yeah, yeah, totally.

Somebody, somebody should do that. And it was just one blind spot for all of us. We were like, we can't do articles about Pokemon because we don't know what the fuck we're talking about. And just like editorially irresponsible because people would pitch Pokemon articles and we'd all be like no i don't think this works you'd have to poke holes and be like i i surely there's something wrong no we've made this case before animal cruelty i get it we've done this like if i could find that detail in one of those pitches i'd be like okay it's done yeah but yeah it was unfair to the people who pitch pokemon stuff um though the one that i feel like i really missed the boat on and it's just too late to catch up is instagram i was pretty good with social media for a long time i have got i

was a early adopter of pretty much everything else and then instagram hit and I just was like, no, I don't like the idea of it. I don't understand it. I don't like the idea of like the things that I take pictures of are my children. And that's like Instagram started to really pop up right when my son was born. And, uh, that's all I was taking pictures of. The idea of taking a picture of myself was just unfathomable was taking pictures of the idea of taking a picture of myself was on just unfathomable taking pictures of my food taking pictures of places i am i didn't get any of it uh and so i was like maybe this will just die and then it didn't and it just got bigger and bigger and now the people that i work with they're not even on twitter they're all on instagram that's how they find out when they're each other's babies are born and stuff and i'm just i have missed the boat on all of that i

have an instagram account but there's no way i'm starting from scratch now that's embarrassing yeah so uh i'm it's just a thing that i hope dies man i fucking love instagram and it's very uh off-brand for me uh social networking speaking like twitter i I am rarely personal on Twitter. It's for jokes or self-promotion. And I'm just like acutely aware that the people who follow me are following me as a comedy person. And so I want to like reflect

all of that back at them. But Instagram is like sincerely norm shit for me like i i post pictures of the beach and my dog and food that i've made and and it's it's like the that's the point of it yeah there's no shame in it because that's the whole point yeah but also uh i gotta let you know man i posted a picture of the two of us because we saw each other recently yeah gangbuster numbers more engagement than almost anything else that i post well that feels good to me yeah thanks dan got it um there's a a trend the last turn that i feel like i was really

i like rode the wave of and even past the point where i should have were soaps this is a type of shoe are you familiar with soap shoes dan no okay soap shoes are shoes that have a grind plate built into the sole so you can impress all your friends by all of a sudden you're hanging out right at school because that's where you hang out and all of a sudden you get up and you go and you jump onto the top rail of a bike rack and you grind it with just your shoes and everyone goes whoa and uh at least that's the way that i imagined it happening and i had a pair of soap shoes that i got that then i wore into college long after it was okay to have grind plates on my shoes. It ended to the point where it would have been an embarrassment had I tried to grind anything in front of other people.

Okay. So you weren't trying to grind anything in college? No. Well, hang on. Not in front of people. Never with an audience. There were curbs that I would look at on my way to class and be like, oh, it's got just the right slope.

That's just the right angle. I feel like I could really grind that whole curb. I would come back when no one was around and I would try it. And I would grind it. And if people came up, I would sit there and be like, no, I'm just a kid sitting on a college campus. That's not weird. And when I would go off on my own to like fast food,

because there's a Jack in the Box down the street, I would grind everything I fucking could. because it's just strangers of LA at that point. Soap shoes. Um, I don't need that. They haven't had really much of a heyday. I have a feeling that that trend lasted,

I think generously two weeks and I was on board for over four years. Uh, did I ever tell you that I wore, uh, bowling shoes for a couple years i wanted bowling shoes so bad when i was in high school man i that was just like cool my thing i was like i'm gonna be a bowling shoes kid and i had some that i bought from sports already and some that i uh stole from bowling alleys yeah and we're just like wear them around and we'll just be bowling

shoe kid and and was like this is i think I think, uh, going to be my personality. There was a, there's a weird, uh, a weird sisterhood between bowling and ska where like the, the, the dress of bowling had a real resurgence during the ska movement where everybody was wearing bowling shirts and, uh, and bowling shoes were very cool. Everybody, everyone I remember was like, yeah, these, these rule. where everybody was wearing bowling shirts and uh and bowling shoes were very cool everybody i everyone i remember was like yeah these these rule the trouble is you can't wear them in any sort of environment that has snow yeah because there's they're not the point is that they don't have traction on the bottom the point is that they're just these hard leather soles that slide

you could hydroplane probably in those shoes on just water oh sure the wrong puddle and and you're going too fast you could slide across the whole thing. Now I want a pair. I'm going to grind the puddles. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like, you know, we're all just killing time until we die. That sounds like it'll be fun. Well, we have a few more questions. I think we can get to them on our next episode, Daniel, because I need to carve out a little bit of time here for what has become, I think, maybe our most popular weekly segment. Okay.

And just to get ahead of things, this is because the first one kind of went south. It was supposed to be a sports update. We were right in the middle of the nba finals uh the update only briefly talked about the finals and didn't really uh it seemed the update didn't know or have any interest in covering who was winning the series at that time uh and and now you assured me that this episode will be more focused on sports. I talked to Jeff. Okay, good.

And I asked him. I mean, I appreciated it. It's good information. But we really, I think just to make it more universal, let's just focus on current stuff. Correct. And this is a great time for it because the Olympics are literally happening right now. And as of recording, this is the NBA draft was yesterday. Russell Westbrook is a Laker. This is a huge time to talk about sports. And I've got so much to say,

and there's so much that I want to hear.'m i'm happy that this one is going to be more focused and uh relatable and and not what the last one was which was uh hyper local i would say and i just want to throw on the heap our audience is so excited to hear about this because they can't they tune into us for the sports like the rest of this has just been chatter for them and they're ready for their sports update. So take it away. Straight from the Los Angeles mayor's office, it's time for the QQ Weekly Sports Roundup.

Hello, I'm Jeff Millman, Chief Strategist for the Los Angeles Mayor's Office, and this is your weekly Quick Question Sports Roundup. Happy 28th birthday today to Dak Prescott of the Dallas Cowboys, and happy 13th birthday to the finest game of baseball ever organized by the Los Angeles County Young Democrats. While future U.S. Senator from California Alex Padilla was playing third base, the reason for this game's

renown was one ballplayer who reminded fans of the way the game was once played by the 1927 New York Yankees. That player was Soren Bui. With a true nose for the ball, he seemed to be fielding every position simultaneously, handling impossible one-hoppers, creating triple and even quadruple plays, and catching line drives that would break the hand of an ordinary man. On this day, Soren not only made all the young Democrats in attendance fall in love with baseball again, but just four months later, Barack Obama was elected the President of the United States. I know, because I was there, and I was on his team. This concludes your weekly sports roundup. Back to you, Soren and Daniel. Here's a short list of what I hated about that.

Outro song, Too Long. Oh yeah? Yeah. Number two, happy 28th birthday Dak Prescott yeah don't look up when his birthday is it was yesterday as I was recording it was yesterday of all the dubious tenuous connections to actual sports that you could have pulled from happy 28th birthday dac preska good lord and again a thing that frustrated me with the first piece uh the first sports update that the mayor's office did was a celebration of a non-anniversary i think it was the the the 14th anniversary of some dumb sports thing you did. And now this one, this baseball thing,

was the 13th anniversary. Yeah. And I don't want to belittle you as an athlete because I'm not shy about admitting that I'm bad at sports and you're great at sports, but it feels like some bottom of the barrel compliment hunting because one of the things he credited you as doing was I think just catching line drives he dressed it up by saying it might break the hand of of a normal person might but yeah uh if we're like

bragging about someone in baseball catching baseball seems like like a pretty standard thing that you're supposed to do in baseball i'm pretty sure he also said something about handling some really tough one hoppers too which is that's like one of the hardest parts of baseball sure and a quadruple play that sounds impressive how did you do a quadruple play that's complicated uncomplicated for me okay uh you know obviously the last out didn't count but the ump was nice enough to um grandfather that one into the next inning so they had to start with just two outs because i got a quadruple play are you fucking kidding me yes i don't know how to make it i don't even think a quadruple play is possible i gotta think about

it you'd have to have the bases loaded and then you'd have to have a force out at every single position. Or everybody goes on a force fly. No, it would have to be no outs. Bases loaded, no outs. Everybody's treating it like a force fly. So everyone on the base path is confused about the fact that there's no outs, but they think that there's two. And they're all going. is confused about the fact that there's no outs but there's if they think that there's two and they're all going and then you make the catch and then you hit each position before the runner can

tag up and i think you could get one two three yeah you could get four outs that way yeah and maybe i did that i don't remember it was 12 years ago and then and and the umpire rolled one of the outs in yeah to the next inning well it was so impressive that he thought everyone's clapping i should i should get in on this wave um and alex padilla was there you a real u.s senator was playing third base yeah uh and, it was such a good game that Obama got elected president. Yeah. That's another circle that I'm trying to square the connection between your performance and several months later, the election of, of Barack Obama, LA voted for him. It was inspired the entire, the entire County. I'm not just talking city.

Yeah. for him it was inspired the entire the entire county i'm not just talking city yeah and we get a little bit of of so so jeff is is is raising his profile as well i see i see that this segment about sports is about your accomplishments but also jeff managed to squeeze in i knew that barack obama was elected because i was there, part of his team. It was win-win. Yeah. I see why he's doing this now. So now, he's a star on the rise in this segment.

Yes. And like, look, you know, you can squeeze in brags wherever you can squeeze them in, but I don't think his being on the team is why he knew barack obama was elected president right like i also knew and i'm just some fucking guy i mean like he didn't get extra information that that he then shared with us no i mean i could i could ask him i think what he means in when he uh recorded this thing that i wrote uh that uh i think he means that he was there to witness the greatness and so he knows that this whole thing transpired that the 12th anniversary of this momentous event happened because he was there and he saw it firsthand now there are firsthand. Now, there's a lot of fallout from that. One of the things is that Obama was elected president.

I can see now the wording is a little clunky and that it sounds like that's what he witnessed, which he probably did as well. But I think what he's really talking about is, you know, this moment in sports history. Everybody wants to be there for a moment in sports history. Right. Everybody wants to be there for a moment in sports history. Right. And he thought that was a better thing to focus on this week instead of Simone Biles backing out of the Olympics for her mental health.

I think he did what I asked him to do. He talked about Dec Prescott a lot. Okay. And honestly, I'm happy with this one. I think he did a great job. Okay. This is a not bid question. Um, do you think he's, he's, he's ever mentioned you to Barack Obama?

Oh man. Do you think there's a chance that he did? My hands are sweaty. Uh, I mean, it's possible. I, I don't know if I've ever told you this story. I think I have where, uh, Eric Garcetti. So Eric Garcetti was a teacher of my wife's when we were in college.

And that was a long time ago. And then I happened to be at Cantor's Diner, which is an LA institution. And Eric Garcetti was there doing some glad handing for some reason. I think it was before his campaign. I can't remember. It was a few years ago.

I mean, when is he never not campaigning? He was the... he was already the mayor because it was a big deal that he was at canters and he started just kind of like running through the room and going through and saying hello to people and jeff is uh was his right hand man and so eric garcetti got to this table it was just me and this other comedy writer and jeff goes this this is Soren Bui. He's Colleen's husband. And said Colleen's husband, not Colleen Callahan. And Eric Garcetti goes, oh, my God, Colleen.

How is she? And I was like, fuck you, Eric Garcetti. In my mind, obviously. In reality, I was like, yeah, she's good. She's good. Yeah. She's pretty goddamn married, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I was like, Mayor, she's good. She's good. Yeah. She's pretty goddamn married, Mr. Mayor. Yeah, I was like, Mayor, stay away from my wife.

Well, I'm glad we got that segment again. The intro song is good. I like what you did with, I like, which, whatever musician you commissioned to make that intro song is good. I like what you did with... I like... Which... Whatever musician you commissioned to make that intro song. Uh-huh. Yeah. Great job. It sounded like they were having fun.

Yeah. That's a... My hope... That's Slash. Oh, neat. My hope is that if we do this segment again, it can be a little bit more focused on sports that I have seen or that our audience might have seen or at least be familiar with. Okay.

I'll talk to Jeff. Yes, please do. Okay. All right, bye. Bye.