Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 104 -It Tasted Wet, In an Unpleasant Way

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

Oh boy this is a good one. Daniel tells a riveting story about his first softball game, and Soren shares his expert knowledge on children's books.  And as always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks to Hawthorne. Take your quiz and get 10% off your first purchase at hawthorne.co with code QQ . Thanks to BetterHelp.  Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/qq 

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

I'm Soren Bowie. I am a writer for American Dad, period. That's all. Oh, okay. Yep. How have you been? It's been's been we recorded one week since you looked at me yes um can i tell you that like i had an idea for this show in the very beginning where uh this is when we started conceiving of the show while i was still unemployed

so i had a lot of time to think about different things that i wanted to do with it and i wanted to do a version of it where uh i would include audio drops from songs in place of common phrases that we would say so like like anytime one of us said it's been i would replace it with bare naked ladies or anytime someone said it's been a while replace it with the lyric from the stained song it's been a while uh but uh to make the the podcast i think like completely unlistenable where it would be a mix of our voices and abrupt jarring snippets of songs we do say somebody thanks to better help for supporting quick question for 10 your first month, go to betterhelp.com slash QQ. Start living a better life today. Thanks to Hawthorne for supporting Quick Question.

Hawthorne is a premium grooming brand that tailors your personal care routine to your unique profile with skincare and hair care made just for you. Take Hawthorne's quiz today and get started on your personalized self-care routine at hawthorne.co and use promo code QQ to get 10% off your first purchase. Man, so there are a lot of things that we talked about when we were going to make this podcast and it was like the thing you had going on at the time. So you were pretty eager about it. I sort of am sad that we'll never get that podcast because you were considering putting a lot of work into this i was coming up with so many like games for us to play and recurring segments and stuff and then uh and then i got a job yeah honestly i do like where it's

landed i mean this is great for me this It's nice to talk to you. Yeah. And we do now save our conversations specifically for this podcast. So you're getting the genuine article, baby. Yeah. And because you were just traveling, we recorded a bunch of these together, not on our normal every other week schedule. So truly, it's been a while. It has been a while since we've caught up so so uh what's going on how are you i'm good we yeah i went went on a trip where i went to two different

weddings and uh traveled like all over the lakes of minnesota basically and i i mean i don't want to jinx it but i might be lake people now, Dan. Oh, yeah? That's exciting. Yeah, it's a different type of lake culture there, too. It feels a little more upper crust than lake culture of Lake Havasu or something like that. So I can get behind it more. The white trash element of it feels more devoid of that. Although I will say I went to a county fair in Minnesota and it was like a grim slice of Americana. There were, nobody had teeth.

Did you have fairs growing up in your strange mountain town? No, we had one called Mountain Fair, which was, it was not what you would consider like a LA County Fair or Minnesota Fair or anything like that. It wasn't a state fair by any means. Fair season was one of the most exciting times for me growing up because there's like, I don't know that we went to state fair in New Jersey ever,

but there was a chunk of time in the summer where there was like, where every local church was having a fair or like a festival festival of some kind and there was like the greek festival also and there was a county fair and it was just like it was fair season and we just got fucking pumped because it's summer and you're a kid and and i say kid like we were old enough that we are doing things as a group of kids together without our families yeah and it was just like a thrilling anything is possible chunk of summer for middle and early high school uh new jersey youths with no money we're just like fair season don't wait up mom i'm gonna go to this i'm gonna go to the holy family carnival

and uh ride one of these rusty janky ass gravitron machines where people routinely get whiplash and then maybe i don't know i'll stumble out of that and fall in love who knows right there was so much possibility in fair season yeah there is i'll even at this fair where it was clear that um it was not my people it was like a different group uh somebody on a different team there was still like this like unearthly horniness in the air of like all these kids running around they're like 14 or 15 just like hoping they meet somebody and like they're dressed up you can tell they've put on the clothes that are like this is what i went and got and uh i've been saving this for fair season and so some of them

bad choices because it's sweltering it's like super hot and they've chosen this long sleeve button-ups where they're like i look good. And they're just sort of sweating through it. But yeah, there's like these, just like this look at this feral look in their eyes where they're just like, who's going to fall in love with me? Yeah. Because you don't, there's no, like, you're not at an age where you go obviously to like bars and clubs and school dances was a thing that happened once a year so this was like the chunk of time in the summer where you were at a social gathering with uh people who you might not ordinarily see you know it's not like your group of friends that you go to friendlies with or go to the movies with it's just like this is this is all the

swinging single 14 year olds yeah it's like the first time you have that structureless hangout yeah people your age and it's just the liberation of it you're like i could be anybody here absolutely what if i'm a person who wears a chain i'm gonna let's let's debut the chain tonight that that hits close to home uh yeah there was i could see some of that happening there. And I also rode a lot of rides with my son. Oh, fun. Because he's at the exact age where he's old enough to ride most of the rides,

but he's not allowed to go on alone. Or height, I should say. Age has nothing to do with it. Age ain't nothing but a number. And he wanted to go in the tilt world he really likes the tilt world and i was like yeah fine i like the tilt world and i got on it for the first time and ruined my whole day like i felt hung over the rest of the day it just it just throws something out of you yeah um and i think i'm not ride person anymore. It made me really nauseous to be on it.

And I kept thinking like this ride should end soon, right? Is he just giving us extra time? Don't do that, sir. And then my son wanted to go on it again and again. And so I'd have to sort of like calibrate in between. I'd be like, just give me like an hour and then we'll go on it again. I cannot ride it again right now. Right. And especially like with something like that, where your body just doesn't want it. So you can't, you can't medicate against that. You can't be like, maybe if I just have some water. No, there's nothing that's going to solve this problem.

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Start living a happier life today. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash QQ. Join over 1 million people who have taken charge of their mental health. That's betterhelp.com slash QQ for 10% off your first month. Thanks, BetterHelp. And how have you been, Daniel? I didn't ask yet. I've been good. I have a podcast-related update.

You're getting a podcast? We've talked about this before on the show. I have since played my first company softball game oh i'm so excited to hear about this i was as as you know and and our listeners know uh i was very nervous about it and the day before a bunch of us went to batting cages and this is going to be a real test for me because i genuinely haven't swung a bat in such a long time i was so uh out of the game when it comes to to baseball or softball that like the morning that i had to go to batting cages first of all i didn't sleep well the night before because i was so nervous about it second of all i stood in front of my mirror with the bat that i

have for self-defense and was just like yeah how do i stand is this is this where do my elbows go is this do i look like someone who's done this before and just like posed for a while to confirm yeah this is what a normal american boy looks like swinging a baseball bat you put a little baseball card up in the corner of the yes yeah and you're like okay let's see what how's don mattingly do it yeah how's wade boggs yeah you and i uh apparently both stopped watching baseball in 1997 as soon as i pulled it i was like oh that's too old and then you did wade boggs i was like thank you thank you okay uh so yeah and so then we went to the batting cages and as soon as i was like making contact with the ball i was like okay I can do this part

that's that's that's fine I won't like totally embarrass myself if the ball comes to me uh I was still very nervous about fielding and we get there we were playing Rolling Stone was our opponent and we were up first and I was batting seventh wisely. You know how many people are on a baseball team. Yeah, yeah. And it was, I want to get ahead of this. I didn't hit a home run. There's two outs, and I'm up to bat. Bases are loaded.

And that's surprisingly very low pressure for me because I'm walking up to the plate thinking, well, there are three possibilities. Hit a home run, or I guess four possibilities. Hit a home run, which I'm not going to do. There's no version of reality where I hit a home run. Strike out, which I really don't want to do. No one has struck out yet.

And it's like softball, adult company softball games are not designed to strike people out so i really don't want to do that uh possibility number three i hit the ball and someone somewhere gets out because it's bases loaded there are lots of easy outs to make and it's two out so it's whatever the easiest out is uh and possibility four i guess is like hit the ball in a way that doesn't get someone out like maybe there are a bunch of errors uh and i did possibility six the quadruple play where they just grandfather the outs to the next inning sure uh it's such a devious play that you skipped possibility number five and what happened was uh i did i i got us out of the inning i but i hit the ball i hit the ball like they like to shortstop and they made an easy play to second ending the inning and that believe

it or not is like a is a victory for me because i didn't strike out and i made contact with the ball as far as anyone is concerned i look like someone who's played softball before and that was all i was going for then it's the bottom of the inning i sprint to right field before anyone could tell me otherwise and the ball never comes to me we get three outs and then a huge thunderstorm happens and rains out the game and that's it it's it's so as far as knows, you are a proficient softball player. Absolutely. You tricked him, Dan.

Yeah. Now you're grounder to the shortstop. Yeah. Did it have some mustard on it? Like, did he have to make a play or was it like a- I wasn't watching him. I was just sprinting to first. Yeah.

Showing everyone how fast you are. Yeah. Because that's really, that's the only thing that I thought could save me in this, is that I'm a good runner with good hustle, and I'm very fast. Yes. And that, I mean, honestly, you can make a name for yourself in the

company softball just by being fast, because no one is. Yeah. And if you can beat a ball to first base, suddenly they might have you batting first. Yeah. I also think I was... If you were there,

you'd be able to tell how badly I'd been overcompensating because we played in Central Park, which is two miles from my apartment, and I ran there. Okay. Like, just showed up already covered in sweat and, like, clearly having run as like so i'm definitely an athlete right we agree did people did people say did you run here

you know what you know what's worse than that and this is how like small and insecure i am is someone said did you jog here and i corrected them and said i ran here i'm i'm just so humiliated by myself what are they said yes what were your splits on the way to the game um that's okay so what was your glove situation uh borrowed one of the gloves from from somebody else on the team okay they bring like. They expect people to not have a lot of equipment or be very experienced, so they're just like extra gloves from siblings that people have. Oh, this is more ramshackle than I'm used to. Yeah. And just in like seeing everybody else play on the field,

where do you think you fit in? Are you actually probably right in the middle of talent- wise uh yeah yeah i figured okay that's a nice feeling too that's like the real success is you watch everybody else play and you like you watch somebody else throw a wild throw to first base or like drop something easy or let something go over their head you're like well i could have gotten that yeah Yeah. That's good. Yeah. You're waiting for your team to make errors so you can be like, yes. Yeah.

Not as bad as him. Everybody see that? Yeah. I'm looking forward to next year because the season is over now. The last game got rained out. Yes. It was a three-game season. I was only in town for one of them and it got rained out after one inning and uh and we were the only team who who scored a run that game so we won we live in very different ecosystems because our games get smoked out oh shit there was a whole

last year american dad and i will say american dad not we american dad won the championship uh i didn't play in a single game in that i think they stopped inviting me i and for could be a lot of reasons um but most likely it was talent and skills talent slash skill and a deficiency and so they they did well they were there they, they did well. They were there. Of course they did well. They're all these weird gifted athletes. And the season took forever because their games kept getting smoked out. They couldn't go play because of forest fires.

And that in that case, the season just keeps going and you just move the game. You postpone it to another time. Oh, the amount of time that people make for softball in their lives is baffling to me yeah we i it doesn't seem like our league the east coast league does that as much i think if like a game gets canceled it's like well fuck it i didn't really want to play anyway yeah who cares yeah uh let's get into the show where we ask each other questions and give

each other answers uh i have a quick question for you, Soren. Shoot. And I have very little to contribute to it, but I was wondering if there is a business or product or industry that you thought you could conquer once you became a father. Like there was a whole new world exposed to you that you hadn't needed to be a part of, a consumer in. And now that you were in it it you saw a spot for you the reason i bring this up my only contribution to it is my brother david uh as soon as he had kids and was listening to like the music that people make for children uh one thing immediately became clear a lot of it is bad and another thing that became clear is kids like to listen to the same songs

over and over and over again yeah and so his light bulb went off as like we make an album that's very simple that kids love but that adults will be able to tolerate over and over and over again you know it's not like a shrieking elmo song or anything like that like there's no reason that a song for kids about there's an album that his son likes a whole lot i think it's called 21 trucks and every single song on this album is just yeah this one's about police cars this one's about street sweepers yeah i'm familiar and it's like it's a great album it's like it's exactly what we're talking about as far as like this is an enjoyable like a thing that a parent can tolerate and the dump truck song is a straight banger yeah uh and there just seems to be like a a market for that for people who who know like

and which isn't to say that it's easy uh it's hard to write catchy songs it's hard to write songs that are gonna appeal to kids and adults both but he immediately was like let's get all of our all of us together my like the three brothers who we played in the band for years together and like let's just fucking bang out an album of songs for kids about you know fill in the blank i'm not going to give away his ideas now because we're still going to make this album one day but like an album that is good for kids but also catchy and like palatable for adults is something that he thinks there's a hole in this market yeah that three o'briens can fill well you see what a group like they might be giants has done which is they were not for kids and then they were like oh but

the transition would be so easy like the path was clear for them and there was nobody in the way and they were like oh let's just do like a bunch of songs about science yeah and it was hugely successful yeah and i think uh guster did the same thing guster is another great like folky pop rock band and they have been successful as like just being a band forever they didn't have side jobs or anything like that but they're also not like a household name i wouldn't say and then one day they were just like we could probably write a fucking album of songs that are like, brush your teeth, wash your hands. And then they did that. And it's great.

Yeah. I have thought about this actually, because how can you not think about it when you're trying to wet your beak after you have a baby and you're like, how do I make this work for me? Yeah. So there are a couple one is that my son will just sit there and watch garbage trucks just watch them drive and like watch them pick up trash and super excited to do that and it's not just him

it's every kid um they all when the garbage truck comes down our street the children run out to watch. And there's a channel on YouTube where it's just somebody who's around the country, I guess, has filmed garbage trucks collecting trash. And it's just boring. And it's not even like soothing because it's a lot of terrible screeching noises and like this like diesel-y thunder coming out of it. And he just will sit there and watch these trucks

pick up trash cans, throw stuff in the back, put the trash can back, move on to the next house. And this thing is 40 minutes long. And when he was really young, we would let him watch it. And we needed some time for packing or whatever we were doing. We'd let him watch it. And we were like, I can't tell if this is bad for him because objectively like there's nothing really

terrible that he's gleaning from this but also there's he's not gaining anything either yeah and also and because so much of it is concentrated on like youtube videos which weren't which obviously weren't available to us when we were kids, I can't connect that to I didn't know a garbage truck kid growing up. I don't know if that's a weird kid type. Yeah. In these uncharted waters with it, we're like,

well, I'm just going to let him do it. Once he got through the 40-minute video, a few times, because YouTube will also pick up where you left off. Once we got through it a few times, because you know youtube will also pick off where you left pick up where you left off and once we got through it a few times he was just like ah you could tell he was he'd already seen this one oh the one in the snow oh yeah okay yeah i remember this orange truck and i thought oh it would be so easy to just make more of these it would be the easiest thing in the world and you can you could even pay people to do it anywhere that they live, pay them a small amount of money, or just get your friends to do it. And like, just film these trucks that you just stitch it all

together, no music or anything over it. And your YouTube channel is a huge success. But the one that occurred to me first, and I think still is a very good idea is that when we were having a baby, you get a lot of the books like what to expect when you're expecting in the mayo clinic book of birth and there's a lot of really good factual information in there um for what you should be preparing for what your uh how big your baby is in comparison to fruit for whatever reason and uh each month it's like this uh advent calendar or each week it's like this yeah i guess week yeah advent calendar where you're seeing like oh now he has eyebrows oh how interesting oh how exciting oh there's fingernails growing and um then there's a section

in all these books for the dad and i guess the assumption is the dad isn't reading these that yeah the dad has is reading these that yeah the dad has is just coming up at the very end and he's like well where's my section and so there's like four or five for like sometimes nine pages dedicated to a dad and they're the most patronizing talk down to a group that makes me think oh first of all I'm worried about other dads out there if like this is where they're getting their information. But also, have a little respect for the dad.

The bar is not that low. It's a lot of stuff like, a baby's like a beer. The head should be the highest part. And that kind of shit. You're like, oh, no. And I just think I could write a book, a what to expect when you're expecting type of book, but for dads, that's really good

and full of good information and is compelling for not even a dad who is as invested as I am, but just interesting enough and giving them context for each thing and why it matters that they'd be like, oh, this is actually really neat. I think that'd be easy to do. I think you can write that in your sleep yeah i've always thought it would be easy to write children's books and then i tried to write one and uh you you can't i mean not that

you can't but like it's the kind of thing where like like having read a few children's books to my nieces and nephews i thought like these are simple this is like a paragraph's worth of text i should just pick an idea and like do it just like this this is a book about birthdays and then write a paragraph of cute bullshit about birthdays and then print money is how the step process went in my brain but it's it's it's sort of like uh like pitching to like if i if i had to i'm trying to think of what i can compare it to that's not also writing but that's my only frame of reference for anything like if i if if i had to write gossip girl it's a show that i don't know and don't really like and haven't lived with and because of that i don't know what's good about it or what people like about it so

anytime i would try to write a gossip girl spec script it would it would probably come off like i'm making fun of it because i'm just throwing stuff at the wall it's like it's shots in the dark where it's where yeah like i'll write something that comes off as stupid and and if anyone challenged me on it i'd be like yeah well i think your show is fucking stupid. So I wrote a stupid thing. You really need to be in the right headspace for this kind of stuff. It's much harder than just like writing a good children's book. Like as soon as I put pen to paper on my children's book, it seems like I'm mocking children's books.

You would do your research and you haven't because you're not a parent you've read like you you you've read like 15 children's books probably like the last year or whatever time it was that you've had these uh young nieces and nephews but if you were to do gossip girl you would watch the entire catalog of gossip girl and then you would latch onto these little kernels that you're like ah that's something i do like and that would just be like the seed for whatever you build. And so I think writing a kid's book, I will say I'm never going to do this because writing a kid's book is to me is like people who decide they're going to be realtors. There's just so many of them out there who are like, basically somebody in their subconscious is saying, I don't have any talent or means what's the thing I can still do

and make money and like they're landing on these things they're like oh kids books that's got to be easy i'm an adult i know way more than kids um but when you read kids books and you read a lot of them and you read both the good ones and the really really bad ones you realize like what makes a good one and what what why the bad ones are bad now that doesn't mean that the kids latch on to the good ones. Most of the time, they latch on to the bad ones, but that doesn't matter because that's not who you're writing the good ones for.

You're writing it for the Caldecott Award, and my experience is that those Caldecott Awards books, those are not the ones my son gravitates toward. Those are the ones I like reading that I think are more interesting, like Where the Wild Things Are and Make Way for Ducklings. And there's another one called Journey

that's very good that doesn't even have any words. It's all just illustrations, but the story is so clear in it. And those are not the ones he gravitates towards. He wants the ones where like... He wants Hatchet. Yeah, yeah. He wants the fucking apopetral story that is just like

chicoletta's statue gets stolen for a day and then they figure out where it is and i'm like i can't read this to you again though the only place where our two minds met was with curious george and that was fun to read to him um but uh it's it to him. But if you want to write a good children's story that will sell really well, write it for parents. Yeah. All right. I'll keep that in mind. Hawthorne is a premium grooming brand that tailors your personal care routine to your

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and smell good, plus candles. Take Hawthorne's quiz today and get started on your personalized self-care routine by going to hawthorne.co and using promo code QQ to get 10% off your first purchase. That's H-A-W-T-H-O-R-N-n-e dot c-o promo code qq for 10 off your first purchase the only other thing if you have any answers for uh markets you feel like you could conquer that aren't specifically related to kids because i i to expand the question out to that something that my buddy chris and i chris mcnullough he runs a very successful uh junk food review blog and instagram uh and snapchat account it's called junk banter it's wildly successful he's a very funny writer check it out um we were just talking about how uh like fatigue settling in in the middle of the work day and and you want an energy drink, if you're not drinking coffee

or trying to kick coffee or whatever, there are no, like, there are no non-embarrassing energy drinks out there, really. If you don't like Red Bull, Red Bull even is a stupid-sounding thing, but everything else on the market is, like, is monster or force or fierce or something like that. Get raped with Taurine.

Yeah, they have these like, like fucking flames on the cans. And it's, and it's so aggressive and, and borderline violent. And you feel at, in your mid thirties, you feel like a, a, a child pulling that out at the workplace at two o'clock in, in the afternoon where it's like, you're on your way to a meeting. It's like, Oh, hold on boss. I need to just have one more sip of dick out.

And then you drink this big flaming can of dick out just because you, you're low on B12 or whatever. And just, if there was some non coffee, adult oriented, uh, energy drink that had a little bit of class to it

we think there would be a market for that I agree with you and it would be like a sipping man's energy drink because there are 5 hour energies which are more discreet but still the idea is the pretense is that you're shooting it like you're treating it like alcohol you want something

that you can have on your desk and that you can take sips of and you basically you're treating it like alcohol. Yeah. You want something that you can have on your desk and that you can take sips of. And you basically you're self-medicating with like you're deciding what your your your dose is. Correct. I like that a lot. I think I would enjoy that. Although I don't. Caffeine is not really my bag. Yeah.

You're not a caffeine person. I get it. I get I get why that would be appealing. I mean, in the afternoons, I drink tea now because I don't know what else to do with myself. I like the idea of having something. And I, when I'm sitting there working, it's just like, what can I put in my face? And it's just, there's something about working where you're like, you want to be eating while you're doing it or just like chewing or something. I don't know if that's just habit that's built up in me over time,

but to have tea there, at least you're sipping something, and it's not doing any damage to me, but it's also still fulfilling this weird little, I got to use my mouth piece. Yeah. I do. I just drank water and LaCroix all day. LaCroix is one that I think everybody uses.

That gum and LaCroix feels like the writer's room staple where people are just trying to stay away from the snacks. So they just are pounding LaCroix all day. Yeah. I'm truly drinking a criminal amount of LaCroix. I don't know if we talked about this on mic or off mic. I mean, I know we talked about it. I just don't know if we ever talked about it on mic. I drink an absurd amount of LaCroix. I think this or off mic i know i mean i know we talked about it i just don't know if we ever talked about it on mic that like i drink an absurd amount of la croix i think this was off mic and a few months ago someone on twitter was talking about how he was like let's let's create a safe

space and i'll admit that we're all drinking too much la croix everyone there's there's no judgment here just drop down in replies to this, how much LaCroix you drink. I'll start five cans a day. And I thought, oh, fuck. Mine's way higher than that. Somebody else. This guy offered himself up as a sacrifice and like, I'm knocking five out by 1 p.m. Well, they really expanded their flavor profile. What is your LaCroix of choice? Oh, fantastic question.

I prefer berry. It's pretty subtle. Wow, so pedestrian. Yeah, I know. I also like razz cranberry, and hibiscus is probably my most exotic that I gravitate towards. But even that's a little too sweet. Sweet? Yeah. never describe a lacroix as sweet oh there's something like like uh hawaiian punchy about hibiscus yeah there's an element yes i will agree that there's like

you're getting a a weird flavor profile that suggests you should also be getting sugar and maybe that's that's what's triggering for you but or like making your insulin spike or whatever but uh man those other choices are basic bitch yeah absolutely i i i strayed out of my comfort zone and i got uh i think it's pastique once and i hated it this is gonna this this will invite questions it tasted wet in an unpleasant way you had a damp drink that was a problem yeah it wasn't it wasn't like hydrating it just tasted wet like watermelon okay no i'm no i'm even more in the weeds now i wanted to be on your team and now i understand it even less that's fine what are your la croix drinks well so this is a controversial one but key lime key lime tastes like hookah to me

yeah so everybody's got their like their hookah oh like it's a flavor, like a tobacco flavor? Yeah, tobacco mixed with some kind of something metallic. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I had somebody else who shamed me for it and said it tastes like Band-Aids, and everyone laughed and thought, and it was clear that they all thought, yes, that's a great way to describe it. And then I thought, I don't know what Band-Aids taste like,

but I like it. It's the only one that tastes even remotely like a a flavor to me um the other ones are maybe i'm just like destroyed my mouth over the years with all this fast food but the other ones just taste like bubble water with like barely barely a hint of anything else like i wouldn't even be able to i wouldn't even it's like a such a small whisper that i i would have to say come come again, to know like what they're trying to get across. Yeah.

But the key lime at least is like, no, look, this is lime. You're going to know it's lime. And it's kind of has that same, it's not quite a sweetness, but it almost, it feels like it should be sweet to it. And I like that element too, because I'm a big soda fan. sweet to it and i like that element too because i'm a big soda fan and uh just it's now occurring to me that we spend a lot of time on the croy yeah in this podcast sure have i feel like we're alienating a lot of our audience but i mean it plays such a big role in our lives it's it's like one of the only things that i have i i wake up in the morning and i have a bottle or two of

water and then i drink coffee for as long as gummy a lot of gummy bears in between all that things that I have. I wake up in the morning and I have a bottle or two of water and then I drink coffee. Come on, there's a lot of gummy bears in between all that. Sure, sure, sure. Then the day is, after water, the day is separated between socially acceptable time to drink coffee and then

the rest of the time, which is LaCroix and water. It's all I do. Yeah. It's... I do. Yeah. I drink it too. I don't even like seltzer water, and I drink LaCroix because I'm like, maybe this will be the day that I like it. Yeah. Well, Dan, I have a quick question for you.

Yeah, go ahead. Okay. I can't believe this is our show. No, I love it. Listen, the stuff as we're doing it where i check out for a second and i try to see the forest of the trees and i think oh shit this is gonna be alienating for everybody i can't believe we're talking about this for so long then when i like when i'm on twitter the people are like chiming in and like trying to be part of that discussion they're like no i totally

agree or i i can't believe that you believe that you're an idiot and uh please don't do that last one but uh there those are the ones that people get most impassioned by so maybe we're just tapping into something well dan i have a quick question for you um first of all the preface question you're familiar with like that wall art that says like live laugh love or like you stay at an air Airbnb and there'll be like joy written in cursive on the wall. Yeah. Or like,

uh, the wine rack says vino on it or like vino time and an exclamation point, uh, and family. And just like these like mindless affirmation type shit. Um, another market that I feel like we should be able to corner, by the way.

Just like get a nice font and write, in this house, love wins over a fucking flower or something. And then print money at Marshall's. Well, that's partially why I'm bringing it up. I feel like I can do these really well. I could make some really good wall art like this. But I saw some of that during my trip. And at first, that kind of stuff really enrages me because I'm like, this is so mindless. This means nothing. Like this is so empty.

And I get very upset about it. And then as I was like staying in this house, I started to have this epiphany where I was like, well, shit, what is the art in my house? Because the minute I buy something, I try and buy something with meaning. But when it becomes something that I see every single day of my life, then eventually it just becomes mindless good intention. Like in the same way, this is just like a shortcut to that same mindless good intention where I'm not, I have like a piece of art in my house that I loved when I got, and now I walk past it every day and I'm like blind to it. It's like seeing an ad on a website where I know where an ad is supposed to be.

I just don't look that way anymore. I don't stand in front of it and really enjoy it or anything. It's just this thing that's trying to create some good energy, but that I don't even think about and means nothing to me anymore. And I'm like, well, maybe all art is just this stuff. And this is just like the shortcut to it. This is how you get there without having to deal with like finding art that you like or finding out about or learning how to appreciate art. You're just like, no, it's all going to end up being the same shit anyway. Just put whatever you want on your wall as long as it's like the energy of it is like

an affirmation. as long as it's like the energy of it is it's like an affirmation now my question to you is is that is that crazy all right do you think that this art is like the art that you have in your house is like for for better or worse better than the the joy and live laugh love stuff no i mean i have a a number of thoughts on this. First of all, I don't, like, I have a very sparsely decorated apartment and part of it was like, I wanted a big piece of art to speak to me.

And this is not just my current place, but like every place I've ever been to, there has been a large chunk of my living room in every apartment where a giant piece of art should go and it has remained blank until i moved out and i imagine the large chunk of space in this current apartment will remain blank as well uh because i'm really dumb about art and i can't commit to a big piece like that and i don't uh and nothing has like spoken to me enough as far as like big art goes um but i guess so i guess i'm a i'm of split mind because there's two pieces of art that i do have

in my apartment and they're identical and the thing that i like about them is that they are specific they're by uh a s Santa Monica artist, first of all, and that matters to me because I love Santa Monica and spend so much time there. And to describe them, they both look like, they're like metal on wood pieces. I'll text you a picture of them and maybe we'll put them in the,

we'll have Bacon put this in the footnotes of this episode so people can see what I'm talking about. And it's like metal on wood, and it looks like two commas or quotation marks as conceived of by Tim Burton. They're kind of that Nightmare Before Christmas janky-ass curl thing. And the levels that I like about them,

Santa Monica, it's made by an artist and the money went directly to the artist uh they're cool looking i just think they're interesting looking things and the other parts and this is where it gets very corny and it's almost embarrassing if people are in my apartment and ask about them is that they kind of look like punctuation to me and that matters to me on two different levels one of them is writing i like some kind of subtle signifier of of writing because i'm a writer by trade i know i'm primarily known to our audience as a podcaster but i have a side gig where i write for television books and so anything that that like without being too loud of an announcement of uh an appreciation of writing uh i want it

represented here in my home and another part and this is even more alienating and uh and like corny is that they kind of look like if i want to get specific about what punctuation they look like is they look like commas and you know i a that's like i all of my sentences are run on sentences i've i i overuse commas like crazy and b comma is an important symbol in the particular church that i went to that i liked a whole lot the united church of christ we used commas in a lot of our literature and a lot of our like, like flyers and, and posters and banners, because the comma signifies that God is still talking. And, and so we still need to listen. It's not a period.

It's a comma. It's just like, just like literally the comma was a symbol around the church. And the comma tells us that God is still talking. So you say our literature. Yeah. The, you mean like the, the Bible the bible literature is not the right word uh just like the the iconography surrounding the specific church that i i started going to in in westwood california there was like commas everywhere it was like the practically a logo and it's not just this one church it's a lot of ucc churches throughout

the country that use commas that god is still talking but that's the presumption that god is talking in the first place the comma is is what you're putting in the words of god so that it's clear that like there is no finality to it that the word keeps continuing or yeah it's about it's uh it's about having a uh progressive church that isn't purely dogmatic and like the word keeps continuing or yeah it's about it's uh it's about having a uh progressive church that isn't purely dogmatic and like the word of god period this is very much like you have to keep listening for god he's not done or she's not done uh and you need to evolve and you need to never feel like all of the answers are written down and you have everything okay it's like keep your yourself open to the idea that you are still a student.

This is God's dialogue. So I was having a hard time understanding because I was trying to figure out where the commas, like who is speaking? And I was like, oh, the commas are where God lives. I see. Like the space you take in between turns and things like that. But I was like, no.

Oh, that's an interesting interpretation. That doesn't sound right. Yeah. So I'm getting it now. I'm getting a full picture of it. And I do like that. That's like right up my elitist dickhead alley that's something that i'm like oh oh yeah okay um well but yeah so that's cool that's that's the that's the the art that i have in my apartment the only other art that i have is a picture of my dog jackson photoshopped

onto andrew jackson's presidential portrait that my friend elise got me for christmas years ago those are the only two things in my apartment that could be considered art the rest of the stuff is like pictures that i've taken or that have been given to me and roundabout way of getting back to the source of this question i like my two art pieces because i like having a connection to them and having an explanation for them um but i also wish i had some of that marshall's home goods in this house love wins it's wine o'clock somewhere bullshit because anytime i've been to an airbnb or a relative's house where they have like these these these you know mass-produced pleasant looking things i've enjoyed it i have never walked into a house and i saw like live laugh love over

someone's toilet and been mad about it i was like that's that's good advice and you don't need to have a it's just it's just nice to look at i don't know you don't need to like not everything and this this is yes more for myself than anyone else not everything needs to have a big long stupid story to it i don't need to like i got this painting uh after i murdered a guy or whatever like you don't need a personal connection. It's just like, yeah, this looks nice. This is a nice thing. It was made by someone who understands home decor better than I do. And that's why I bought it.

Yes. A series of plates going down your wall that say like joy, love, hope, like that kind of thing is not for me, but I also, it's not like, it's not negative. I, I can't sort of enraged by it only because it's how it's like uselessness. But, uh, I guess if I'm really like being honest with myself, it's not, it's not, there's nothing, it's, it's benign. It's just like, it's, it's good intention. It's like mindless, good intention. And I think the thing of it is, is it's it's good intention it's like mindless good intention and i think the thing of it is is it's not supposed to be for you yeah that's you know like even though

it's in your house and you're gonna you're gonna be around it more than anyone else it's even if it's your favorite art piece in the world like you say about the art that you do like you eventually stop paying attention to it yeah but like for me who's visiting or anyone else who's visiting it's like oh cool art oh live laugh love oh it's wine o'clock somewhere oh don't talk to me until i've had my wine oh god there's a whole lot of wine iconography here's this person really likes their wine um uh here's how i think we yeah no no whining but wine yeah so i think that this is how we get corner this market daniel is oh yeah there are a lot of people who have done things where like they steer in the opposite direction where instead of a welcome mat it says fuck off or like there's like negative ones that are sort of jokey but i think you could still

get the same sentiment across but have it be much more direct and real and just and completely different than what's currently on your wall so like you could have ones that say sentiment across but have it be much more direct and real and just and completely different than what's currently on your wall so like you could have ones that say like just like in cursive on your wall just says blind optimism or like you can have one your wall this just says home is where the home is yeah and like you could do things like that that would be very fun for like someone to come in and see cuz that's stuff you're trained to not look at in the first place I guess guess, unless you're peeing.

Yeah. But, uh, when you actually, when you did catch it and you're like, all right, well, let's see what this shit says.

And then you catch something like that. And you're like, ah, to the point. I really appreciate that. Yeah. I would like to, to see a piece somewhere that was like dance.

Like no one's watching mostly some kind of qualifier that like grounds me a little bit qualifiers yeah yeah that would be great yeah no matter what just smile um i i guess that one that one has some problematic elements too uh but i think uh you know we'd hash it out obviously we'd get the business rolling so i'm gonna create a google doc we'll just come up with a few of these and then we'll get rich that sounds good i would love to be rich seems like it would make things easier you know yeah you know what uh speaking of rich this is i have nowhere to put this thought yeah uh and it's it's it's probably one of my worst thoughts but i've been thinking about it for Speaking of rich, I have nowhere to put this thought. Yeah.

And it's probably one of my worst thoughts, but I've been thinking about it for a while. If I had Jeff Bezos' money, I would also probably go to space. Yeah. Which is a lot sick. That's a lot for you to say. I know. Because you fucking you fucking hate i don't care for space it's none of my business and i and like bezos i wouldn't learn anything up there but like everyone's so mad when he went to space and there's certainly better things that he could

be doing with his money absolutely absolutely absolutely but i'm just trying to think, like, what would I do if I had truly in the top three amount of money in the world? I'm certain I would do some dumb shit. I like to think that I would hold on to some of my humanity and still, like, maximize the amount that I can give to charity and, like, and use my powers and my money for good to help the world. But I also know that if i didn't go to space i would do whatever my equivalent of going to spaces like whatever some james cameron deep sea bullshit where i would i would i would waste so much money like money that could could solve another country's problems i would use to go to the bottom of the ocean and just look at stuff or i would i worked like i don't know

throw a a a home concert or i would be like uh who's that dumb fuck that owns the knicks dolan jimmy dolan i don't know james dolan uh he's the owner of the knicks he's been running that team into the ground for a very long time uh and he's so rich that he uh has a band jd in the straight shot like this awful awful blues band and uh just like holds concerts at madison square garden and makes his band open up for bands that people want to see and like god help me if i'm the richest person on the planet i'm absolutely doing that i'm finding how much money it takes for me and my brothers to open for ben folds somewhere and and just like do it it's it's really embarrassing to to think about and admit but

like i i think about jeff bezos money and he's like putting on a cowboy hat and going to space and i'm like yeah man i fucking get it look at all your money what have you always wanted to do go to space like an idiot all right i can't say that i have any nobler aspirations i think that's not crazy i mean that is you say you want to hold on to your humanity i think that's part of your humanity it's like what opportunities are afforded to me that no one else has now that I have all this money? And like, what is it? I know that people say it's limitless, but there's got to be some limit.

Let me go find out what that is. Yeah. And I get that. That's a very human impulse. And I think you just have to, as long as you're like, here's what I think. I think if you're Yvon Chouinard, do you know who that is? No. Yvon Chouinard created Patagonia patagonia billionaire uh makes a lot of money the company does a lot of good so if you've got as long

as you've got this like track record of receipts of like you trying to do good in the world and trying to with your company and using your money for important causes i think you're allowed some of those things i think sometimes people be like oh he's making a surfboard made out of all gold. Perfect. Right, yeah. If people can say like, oh, you know, he did sort of revolutionize energy in the country. So I guess it's okay that he figured out a way

to surf down an active volcano. Like I didn't know anyone had that dream. It turns out he did and spent a lot of money building a suit and a surfboard for it and he brought four weirdos with him yeah uh that's that's the saddest part about the show is it bezos or is it bezos who cares okay well the that weird part about that story was that it's so clear this man doesn't have any friends yes because the people that he chose to go to space with are complete strangers and like family.

And so the people who are, feel obligated and what the fuck did they talk about on the way up? I've been, I've jumped out of a plane before and you're going up with your friends. So like, there's nothing better. It's you and your buddies and you've got like, you're just, your energy's up and you're going up with your friends so like there's nothing better it's you and your buddies and you've got like you're just your energy's up and you're all amped you're giddy yeah it's like what are these giddy strangers talking to each other about it's probably like jeff bezos bezos is like i don't know which dorks he brought on but i'm hoping it's like

a brother-in-law who like, as the rocket is going off, he's like, so do you have time to look over that proposal I sent you? I'm thinking, I kind of want to like make my own, my own shingle, you know, to have like sort of my own Amazon. Cause I got ideas, Jeff. Yeah. How could these people not be pitching him on the way up? Just like, this is my shot shot this is my one opportunity to talk to him i didn't anticipate the cowboy hat throwing me a little bit but i want to tell him about my business all right well before we go do you have your uh like not go to space but go underwater or what's the thing that i would do yeah what's your stupid

thing that like even no matter how many receipts you have no matter how much good you do people on the internet are still gonna be like i can't believe he spent his money on that yeah i would uh and i don't really even know how to go about doing it but get a bunch of lobbyists together and make a day it doesn't have to be like sorin buoy day or anything like it. It doesn't have to be a Martin Luther King Day. But it's like, I would make a holiday and it has to be recognized. I would force it on everyone. Like some sort of national holiday,

a day where kids get to miss school, some sort of fun party happens and that it's such a good idea that people are like, yeah, we're just going to keep doing this. Yeah, it becomes load-bearing. Too big to fail. Yeah, exactly.

The dream is that eventually it gets its own seasonal candy. There's some sort of candy associated with it. People start seeing it in the store again. They're like, oh shit, I didn't realize it was already Sore and Booey Day. Or whatever. That's such a good dream.

That's such a good answer. That's so much better than opening for Ben folds, which I could probably figure out a way to do now. I want to give everybody an opportunity to follow us, to come talk to us on Twitter and not at our houses. You can follow Daniel at DOB underscore Inc. You can follow me, Soren underscore LTD on Twitter.

That's really the only places you're gonna find me unfortunately i don't do instagram i don't do tiktok i don't have although god i hate to keep this show going i saw on tiktok dan that somebody started playing uh guess who asking only subjective questions and i thought hmm where'd you get that idea and it was doing great it was like doing gangbusters. People saying, I gotta try this. And I thought, oh man, that was ours. Anyway, you can follow me, Soren, at Soren underscore LTD.

You can follow our CFO, Bacon, at MakeMeBaconPlease, but please is spelled P-L-S. And you can follow Quick Question at QQ with, sorry, QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. And then at some point you might be able to see a picture of or like get like an idea of who he is. But we have a sound engineer, a producer, an editor, and his name is Gabe Harder.

And you can go do all that at Gabe Harder dot com someday in the future. OK, bye.