Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 107 - Mrs. Sommelier and Other Soft R‘s

Episode Date: September 18, 2021

In this episode Daniel reveals the hidden secret of shrimps! And as always, big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks to skillshare. Go to Skillshare.com/qq and one-month free trial of  Premium Membership.  Thanks to Raycon. Right now, you  can  get 15% off their Raycon order at BUY RAYCON dot com slash qq. That’s BUY RAYCON dot com slash qq to save 15 percent on Raycons.  And thanks to Mack Weldon. For 20% off your first order, visit mackweldon.com/QQ with promo code 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 buoy soren say hello hello everybody i am soren buoy i am a co-host of this podcast i'm a co-producer of america dad and i used to work at a website called Cracked, and that's probably where you know me from. Yeah.

And hopefully they do know you, and hopefully also they know this podcast. I got very self-conscious for the first time introducing this show because I was playing for an audience that I assumed listened to every episode, and so I sped through the intro, and then I thought if someone was just trying to give this a shot it would make them very tense

because all that information is firing at them like a shotgun yeah like the first thing you heard is is my nasally weird voice uh sprinting through uh as many words as possible but i feel like it's at this point, we have to do it that way. At this point, it's not fair to the people who do listen to the show, who have to hear that every single time. Like, yeah, I know. I know who you are.

Yeah, they're hungry for the real protein of the show. They're like, yeah, skip this filler. Let's get into the real focused content that I crave. Get to the questions already. Thanks to Skillshare for supporting Quick Question. Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth. Do something today you couldn't do yesterday with classes designed for real life.

Skillshare is an online learning community with so much to explore, real projects to create, and the support of fellow creatives. Explore your creativity at skillshare.com slash QQ and get a one-month free trial of premium membership. Thanks to Raycon for supporting Quick Question. Get crisp, powerful beats at half the price of other premium audio brands. Raycon's offering you 15% off your entire order, and here's what you've got to do to get it. Go to buyraycon.com slash QQ. That's it. 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. Now, you and I have a, I don't even know if I'd call him a mutual friend. We have a mutual acquaintance named Pat Castles. Oh, yeah. No, we're pals.

Pat Castles worked at College Humor for a very long time. I think he's maybe on Samantha Bee now. He is, yes. And this is a circumstance in which this was somebody who I met maybe six or seven times. And every single time, he had no idea that we'd ever met before so it was that over and over again it was him introducing himself to me over and over again oh hey i'm i'm pat castles and i'd have to be like yeah hi i'm so i'm soren buoy nice to meet you like going through titles over and over again and it was like it it's a certain point i thought he was just fucking with

me because it got to be like six times that this happened. And we would meet at the same events too. So like we'd see each other just for laughs. And I'd be like, we were literally standing here last time we met. The circumstances could not be more similar. And that's, I can't remember if I've asked you this or not. Are you, will you tell someone, yes, we've met before? Or do you?

Never. Do you play the game? Okay. I play the game because I've been horrified when people are like, yes, we've met before or do you never do you play the game okay i play the game because i've been horrified when people are like yes we've met and i've gotten to the point where i'll just say oh i'm so sorry and that's it and then i hope we all just move on but you know i internalize that internalize that somebody has been like yeah we've met a few times um and it's really embarrassing it's like more embarrassing than getting a name wrong i think i've graduated to a strange middle ground where uh i i'll say something like yeah i

think we might have actually met before i don't know because like even though i do know the real answer uh i do that i say that i pitched this impossible version of reality where where we're both right and we're both okay no one should feel bad one of us is wrong we're not going to figure out who today so let's just continue that's actually a really good idea if you don't you remember them but you don't remember the circumstance yeah and there's a really easy out to that which is no we didn't and then fine we all just move on and no no matter what, you can start from scratch. Like, yeah, I think it's possible we've met, but just in case, I'm Daniel. There's an actor, I won't say who it is, but when I recorded with them on American Dad,

I was introduced to him and I said, hello. And he went, wonderful to hear you. And I was like and immediately our my showrunner was like oh do you guys know each other and he's like no I say that to everyone just in case I've met them so we were over zoom and he just heard my my voice and he was like wonderful to hear you and I when he's in person he says it's wonderful to see you which could suggest either we just met or it could suggest it's great seeing you again it's like implying that that's very smart yeah that's really cool i would steal that if i if i thought i would ever

meet another person again i had a moment at the park yesterday where i was like my eyes i took another child from my son's class to the park with him. On purpose? Okay, with him. Yep. And they were playing, and then I realized at a certain point, my kids are the only ones not wearing masks at this park. And so I very quickly made them put their masks on, and I thought, oh, we've regressed. We're back to where we don't even wear masks at parks. And then I had this horrible thought of, this is just going to be it. This

is it forever. This is never going to end and I'm never going to have a normal life again. Yeah, I think that's fair and wise. Well, we'll have a new normal life. We'll reinvent normal and kids will be born into this new normal. And I think we should just, I don't think we should ever tell kids that we didn't used to have masks. Let's keep them in the dark on that forever. I think my daughter, my daughter is like,

in the same way that I think kids get obsessed with cell phones when they're early on because they see so many people using them and they see you, your face buried in them. My daughter is very, very interested in masks. Like she wants to wear one when we go outside and i'm like oh bless your heart like you just want to be one of the big guys that's great and like so the reason i say don't tell the kids anything keep them in the dark forever is like

uh for for work we're often researching like old archival footage of things and we're making points about whatever we're talking about and we did one thing about housing discrimination so we were going through all this old footage of like the suburb boom in the 30s when all these houses were created and you're seeing these advertisements for houses where it's like if I just $200 down and $28 a month for three years you can own a house and I'm like don't fucking tell me that i'd rather not know anyone had that yeah you can have the american dream for for the same price as an ipad no actually no it's cheaper cheaper than an ipad

i'd rather just continue living my life thinking we're all poor and we've always been poor. Yeah, that's a shame. We should get into the show. I have a quick question for you. Yes! Okay, I would like to hear your quick question. Shoot! Great.

Can you think of any long-standing questions where a simple answer was presented to you way late in the game? And I can give you an example. I actually have a couple of these, but I'll just start with this quick one. I have been, for as long as I can remember, very annoyed whenever I order a dish with shrimp in a restaurant and the tails are still on the shrimp. It was always very irritating to me. And I thought, why are the chefs making this my problem? I now have to peel the tail off the shrimp and put it off to the side and it takes up real estate on my plate. Just, you can do it whenever you're prepping the shrimp and cooking it. Weave that into the process instead of giving me this extra work to do. And I just like sat

being mad about a flawed system for so long in my life. And then recently, I was checking out the comments on a New York Times recipe for a shrimp dish, and someone commented that exact question. And somebody else responded, oh, it's easier to pick up when using one's hands, which is common for enjoying shrimp. If one squeezes the tail section, all of the meat usually released from the very end. And then like a little thing on the bottom that says 80 people found this response helpful because I'm sure a lot of people like me had this problem for so long, never thought to investigate why this might happen, saw this, and it immediately made such intuitive

sense because I was someone who would cut the meat of the shrimp off, discard the tail, and then like eat the shrimp with a fork. I didn't realize that you were supposed to grab the tail, eat from the tail with your hands and then squeeze some tail meat into your mouth. I'm leaving meat on the table here. Yeah. Very literally, I'm leaving meat on the table. And it was just so satisfying for me to think this was a glitch in the world.

And then someone was like, no, no, no, no, no. You're just stupid. This is the way it's supposed to be. Here's a very simple reason. You know, but that's still, there's two things. One, you could do that as a chef. At the last second when you're putting the shrimp in there, you've got the gloves on already. You just squeeze all the tails out so people can enjoy them as they please.

There's no reason that work has to be outsourced. But also, this is a very surreal moment for me, because I think I saw somebody complaining about this online, and somebody else gave a completely different answer that I thought was, oh, that makes perfect sense to me. And so I'm having a, it feels like maybe it was a dream. What was it? What was the other explanation that you heard? The other, and I remember it being a chef. Like somebody wrote on Twitter, somebody asked this question and somebody else responded and said that it was because when you take the shrimp, when you take the tails off before you cook the shrimp, the shrimp actually shrinks as it cooks. Like it maintains its form and everything a lot better if you leave some of the shell

on. And then also that there's a ton of flavor that stays in the tail the tail end of it which is like the part you don't eat um a bunch of flavor in there and then that absorbs into whatever the dish is that you're eating while you cook i love that too all these answers are hit answers so i don't and it makes me feel better about the world and my place yeah there are actually rules for it yeah you're right and you know i will never order a dish that's got muscles in it for that exact reason yeah that i don't understand totally what exactly how much of that i'm supposed to peel off in the same way when

as a child i didn't understand like with buffalo wings like all right how much be real with me how much of this thing am i supposed to eat i i'm gonna eat the stuff that tastes like meat oh but you're eating more you're eating some of that cartilage stuff on the top oh i guess i eat that too right you turn to someone else it's like oh wow he just left bone uh-oh yeah i've not been doing that and uh i get nervous about a because i'm never gonna eat the shells with just myself i'm not gonna go practice so i'm with somebody at all times so it's like it's show night and uh i don't understand like you scrape you if you just pry out the muscle it's not like it just comes out cleanly no you leave little bits in there and i'm not sure if i'm supposed to then be like all right

now i gotta go carve out the harder stuff right now i use a different tool hey where are my sartre heads out there or sart as some of you might know him he said the chief motivation behind all artistic creation was the desire to feel necessary in relationship to the world. Well, that's what we do. We are born to create. Whether you last picked up a paintbrush yesterday or in grade school, you can explore your creativity and be inspired through Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community that offers membership with meaning. With so much to explore, real projects to create, and the support of fellow creativesives Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth listen

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month i started taking a new class it It's called Indoor Gardening. Grow houseplants, veggies, and herbs with Ecta Chaudhry. I'm pretty sure that's how you pronounce her last name. I'm sorry, Ecta, if I'm getting that wrong. But as you know, I have a green thumb. I like to garden. Well, it turns out, I'm going to admit this to you now, I am bad with houseplants. I don't know how to keep them alive. Either I'm giving them too much sun or now. I am bad with houseplants. I don't know how to keep them alive. Either I'm giving them too much sun or they're not getting enough or I drown them somehow. And my house is not filled with water, but somehow I still drown plants. I need the help.

And this video series is helping me become a better nurse to my own plants. Some that I thought were long gone, I've brought back from the dead, basically. I'm very proud to announce announce that several my houseplants are now thriving thanks to me and thanks to these videos explore your creativity at Skillshare calm and get one month free trial of premium membership that's one month of premium membership at Skillshare comm slash QQ yeah I do have one of these I actually have two I think I might have talked about one on the show before so I'll leave that one to the end but have you ever been in the store picture this you've been in the store and you're like you know what I've

been a good boy this week I get a treat I'm gonna go to the ice cream section and I'm famously lactose intolerant at this point it's basically a bit that I keep forgetting your lactose intolerant only one that I'm not trying to control. Okay. Well, it's something I do. And I think there are options for you, although I have no idea what those taste like. So never mind. They're not good.

Stick with your gummy bears. Yeah. My version of treat was gummy bears and everyone's really upset about it. So I've been much better. That's not true. You're just saying that no i swear to god i've i've have you really i've never seen a bigger response to anything we've said on this show from you from strangers on the internet and from members of my family just people reaching out to be like i don't like that you do this i don't think it's good there are some people who responded to

both of us saying that they're like yeah i do that all the time and then they bring up some other crazy ass shit that they do or like something in association with it and so i would frequently write to you saying is this the fucking company you keep yeah someone said you're in good company dan i do this too i do it all the time and they showed a picture of a freezer with that was like six rows deep of gummy bears i was like oh man no this is supposed to feel like an impulse thing we are not on the same team um okay well i will go to the freezer section and uh picture me then dancing through the freezer section to let's say uh toto okay because that's what's playing and uh as i'm going i'm looking at the ice creams. And as you know, vanilla is a favorite of mine. And I see they're not just vanilla, but French vanilla as well.

And I think, what the fuck's the difference? And I've had vanilla ice cream before. And I've had French vanilla ice cream before. And I cannot, I wouldn't ever be able to tell you the difference between the two. I don't get it. One's just a little, I'm looking at them. One's a little more yellow and that's it. Yeah.

And I didn't ever understand what the difference was it made no sense to me and finally i was just like well i have the internet now i could just look this thing up and so i looked it up and it had there's a very reasonable explanation for it french vanilla just means that there's egg in it oh yeah that's just ice cream with some egg. And I don't, it makes, it doesn't change the consistency to me at all. It doesn't change the taste at all to me.

But for some reason, they're just like, oh, in France, we do it with an egg. Yeah. It must be because they looked at vanilla and said, this is not enough. Oh, you deserve it, dude. You deserve that cackle. Thanks, pal.

Well, imagine if I had just been silent. How mad would you have been? I was prepped for a really sweaty explanation for that joke. And I'm glad that I didn't have to do it. But there's another one that occurred to me recently. And I also, because I'm also at that age where I'm just like, if I don't get something, I'm like, oh, well, I'm going to look it up. Oh, see, I'm at the, we're close enough in age, but I'm just, I've gone a different road where if I don't understand something, that's it for that thing and me. I'm just like, well, I guess they just designed trigonometry wrong.

Oh, well. I'm just like, well, I guess they just designed trigonometry wrong. Oh, well. That's how I treated it for a very long time because the world was so amazing and new in all capacities that I was like, if I didn't understand something, I was like, whatever, I'm moving on to another thing. But now it's gotten boring and small. So I want to understand all the minutia. Sure. Well, so my son's teacher recently went from a miss to a missus and i frequently write her emails because i'll leave it there no i frequently i frequently like write her emails

because he has to be tested for these sight words every friday and like i'll tell her when i think he's ready for the sight words test and so each time i I say, hello, Mrs. I'm not going to put her name on here, but Mrs. Blank. And every time I write it, I think, what the, why is there an R in Mrs.? Like, why do we do Ms. M-S? That makes perfect sense to me. But then Mrs., well, let's just make that M-S-S. Like that's, that makes total logical sense to me but mrs is like that's headfirst crazy what are we doing sure and so i looked it up and it's uh has to do with uh mistress that's i was gonna guess yeah because it's it's the the analog to mister yeah and mistress means basically one who does something she has like a job within the house, and that just means she's the wife. And yeah, so it was Mr. and Mistress.

And then at some point, we were just like, nah, let's shorten it. And then let's just confuse everybody from the very first time they get into school, and they have to write their teacher's names. And they're like, oh, no, the R is silent. And the kids will be like, oh, OK okay so there's other words where the r is silent no not a single one every single other word you will pronounce the r there's so much going on in the world whether it's stuff you're excited about like the return of broadway for me or stuff you'd rather not think about like the consequences of that return you can't always control the vibes

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That's good for you for learning that. I think I knew that already. Oh, okay. Yeah, there are some, the concern is always that you're just an idiot. Yeah. So you can't just... These are not things you could just like throw on Twitter and be like, did you guys know?

Because people would be like, yeah, man, everybody knew. Everybody in the world knew. How did they let you out of high school thinking that? I have another one for this and then we can probably move on. This is adjacent to the shrimp thing because I was looking up recipes online and there was a, there's like a hacky observation that's been passed around forever about recipes, both online and in cookbooks, where people are talking about the long preambles that before you get into the actual recipes, the thing that nobody actually wants when you're

like, you just want to learn how to make Brussels sprouts and you click on a link and it's like, in 1978, my father used to take us to this small remote town in Italy. And it's like, fuck, how far do I have to scroll? Like, nobody wants this. It's relatable, but at this point, hacky observation.

And there's two problems with it. One, I know we all like to have fun making fun of this phenomenon but most websites right now when you click on a recipe there's a button right at the top that says skip to recipe. It's very intuitive. Click the button. It's fine. This problem has basically solved itself so we can all stop doing our bits about it. Two, the reason people do these preambles and I just learned about it and makes so much to me, is that you can't really copyright a recipe. Because a recipe is just a list of ingredients and anyone can put them together. So if you want to, like, build any kind of brand loyalty, and if you want to stand out,

if you want to set yourself apart from a bland list of ingredients and steps, this is the only place, the preamble is the only place where you can like charm and bring something new to the table. Because even if you invent a recipe from scratch, if you're giving, if you're writing a cookbook, you're not going to say, and then ingredient number three is a secret. You have to put all all the ingredients so the second you publish a recipe anyone in the world can steal it and put it up on a blog somewhere so if you want any kind of future publishing cookbooks this is the thing that you bring to the table you bring your like your flair your personal anecdotes your little stories that's why like people will sell cookbooks that are that have like a comedy meant to them because it's like

i don't own the ingredients or the instructions for grilled cheese but i can entertain you for a paragraph before we get into that stuff and as soon as i learned that i was like yep makes total sense i will stop complaining about this yeah it's just now occurring to me too that there are so many websites out there that all their uh their content websites but they're completely automated so all they're doing is scraping other sites to steal content yeah and such an easy way to steal and get like have something that people are actually going to click on and use which is like what they're hoping for uh if you all you put up there was the if they could just go to any website and steal 10 000 uh recipes without having the the threat of that company coming after you saying

you got to take all this down this is our content yeah so it's basically like putting a fingerprint on each recipe yeah and that's why you see like a lot of instagram chefs uh will post their stories of their food and it's like not just a recipe and a good looking picture of food. It's like a very meticulously designed, like twee atmosphere. You know, it's got like, this is a cool table that it's on. And there's like a lot of basically set design done in this thing that makes it very pleasing

to watch someone put this food together. And that's like, yeah, man, I'm like, there's, I can't sell eggs onions and cheese i have to i have to give you some other reason to keep coming back here and and for a lot of instagram chefs it's just like the the enjoyable experience of of watching a very pleasant looking room and kitchen set that makes perfect sense to me um i am i'm way more in in lot inclined to use a recipe that somebody has just randomly posted online and just the recipe itself without even saying whether it's good or not then actually like going and hunting for something having to sit

through the preamble and then like finding the recipe at the bottom because also like there's a lot of like trick stuff in between like the recipe is sometimes in like a box that looks sort of like it might be an ad. And so my brain will just skip over it. But like recently there was somebody on Twitter who posted a recipe for meatloaf. And gave like the smallest preamble. This is somebody named Gotha Zaraffle. Is it Zaraffle? I don't know.

But he says, when I was little little my mom's meatloaf was my favorite food but only her meatloaf i didn't like anyone else's but she told me she would teach me how to make it when i was older and when i was 19 she finally taught me but she told me never to tell anyone else and i was like uh and i was like that's weird but okay anyway she was super fucking homophobic and abusive to me when I told her I was gay. So here's the recipe. I was like, I'm going to make it. I'll make that.

Sounds great. Ah, well, that's all good stuff. Yeah. Well, I have a quick question for you, Dan.

Tight. Fucking ask it, buddy. Oh, okay, cool. What's an activity? Jumping. You know... Okay, let me get through the question. I'll say question mark at the end.

That's how you know I'm done. What's an activity that everyone else loves? Everyone else seems to love. Like they would spend a Sunday doing it and be excited to do it, and you just don't get. It just has never appealed to you and in fact seems not fun at all.

I can go first here. Sure. The prospect of wine tasting is like hell to me. Yeah. I do not get it. I don't understand what the appeal is. I don't want to go out into the hot sun all day. I want to go see a vineyard because I've seen a vineyard before.

Frankly, they all look the same. If a vineyard surprised me, maybe I would change my tune. But I don't want to go see a hot vineyard before and uh frankly they all look the same i would if if a vineyard surprised me maybe i would change my tune but uh i don't want to go see a hot vineyard i don't want to go stand there and drink a drink that i don't fucking like i don't want to and pretend that i understand it there's a lot of that uh a lot of the notes and things like that that i don't understand in wine uh i think a lot of it's pretend i think people swirling their glass and seeing how the sugar runs down the sides and things is all very silly and that i'd have to go and do that in front of somebody i can't even go to a whole foods or pre-pandemic i couldn't go

to whole foods and just take the samples without saying something about my like giving them some hope that i might buy this food like i it's an incredibly awkward moment where i'm like yeah this is really a nice what did you say this was cheddar it's a cheddar cheese okay that's really nice and then i look at it for a little while and pretend like i'm gonna come back i mean with wine i'm not gonna sit in front of somebody and be like okay yeah that one tastes like wine that one too yeah that one's wine that's the wine for sure that one is definitely one and you're just taking little sips of it i it makes no sense to me it sounds like a lot of standing and a lot of just uh awkward situations and i hate it yeah i was seduced by the charm of it when i when i used to live in california that was certainly something that like if i had visitors

in town it's uh it's seems like a great way to spend a day. Cause it's, it's novel. I mean, we have vineyards in New Jersey, but we didn't go to them often. It's novel to go like on in, in Temecula, you know, you're up high and on a vineyard and it's, it's pleasant and it's quiet and you're drinking wine, which like carries an air of sophistication to it and uh if i feel like it's one of those things if you really knew your stuff you think everyone's lying i think some people know what they're talking about and if i was one of those people i might enjoy it more um but looking back i really talked myself into it being a thing that i liked without actually liking it because because yes i don't like a small sip of a thing i don't like

answering questions about it and i don't like uh like this the the strange clock of it all where it's like all right i had this one i didn't like it but now i have to wait for everyone else in my party to finish theirs so we can move on to the next step and learn about this new wine and the other thing about it is is i don't like wine very much so anytime i drank it it was always just like i wish this was any of the other things that i like yeah i you brought up an element that i really dislike about it and i forgot to mention which is that there's the fucking pop quizzes throughout the entire thing too where they're like so what do you taste and you have to be like sea bark is that a yeah is that a thing there was i got fucking hosed by this this this sommelier or whatever whatever they are

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And if you wear tight pants, not easy. You got to go find a bathroom first of all. And then people are wondering what you're doing in the stall because they're not hearing any other normal stall sounds coming out of there. It's just a big mess. For 20% off your first order, visit macweldon.com slash qq and enter promo code qq. That's macweldon.com slash qq with promo code qq for 20% off. Mac Weldon, reinventing men's basics. sent off. Mack Weldon, reinventing men's basics. One thing I learned, my brother and sister-in-law used to live in North Carolina for a little while, and they went to a bunch of vineyards and like really got into it and learned a bunch of stuff. And one thing I learned from them that I thought was really fascinating is when they talk about what's in like a variety of wine, and they say like, oh, this one has notes of blueberry, notes of cherry.

I, for most of my life, assumed that meant when they are building the wine, they are throwing literal blueberries and cherries and whatever else into the bucket that they're then stomping on. Like they would with beer. Yeah.

But because this is a thing that's grown from the ground, a lot of the, there's less control over the taste of any given year of wine than, uh, winemakers have. I don't know if that sentence worked. Uh, they're, they're subject to a lot of like environmental things. And sometimes a thing has a hint of blueberries in it because there was a blueberry farm down the road and there was a lot of rain that year and the rain like pushed blueberry flavoring through the soil into the grapes and that's how you get well is

that for real holy shit yeah there's a lot of like like unpredictable magical stuff that goes into why wine wine tastes like it does okay that means but like that's like a clear one-to-one uh relationship i i've always thought it was yeah you had no control over how these grapes grow or like what's gonna happen but you just like at the end you taste it and you're like weird chocolate and that was just you didn't ever fucking know why it was just the the sediment somehow combined into this weird conglomeration that tasted a little bit like chocolate yeah it's because there was a chocolate farm down the road and it rained. And it rained a lot that year. Well, okay, great.

But I still, first of all, if you've ever been to a vineyard, if you're listening, you know that they depend on exposure. Like you can't have a bunch of trees around a vineyard because it fucks it up. They need the grapes, need lots of sun. So already, you know, you're going to a place that has no cover whatsoever like you're going to be out there and you're going to be out there in the sun all day and the idea is to like i don't mind drinking anything that i things that i don't like but i'm going to drink it fast and i'm because i've got an intention in mind this is like a vehicle to get me from a to B. I want to be not,

I'm not drunk. And then I want to be drunk. Right. So like I'll, I'll drink wine if I have to, if that's like my last resort, but to like sit there and, and pretend like something,

well, I shouldn't say pretend. I'm sure that a lot of people that aren't pretending like that, something else is going on and that we're all sort of like we're all tasting something that's tasting really unique and fun is such a pretense and like there's so much pageantry to it that i think is just nonsense and i want nothing to do with it and the fact that i now have to do it in the sun it just pisses me off the most you pinpointed another thing that i don't like about it, which is that like, if you go to a vineyard, you do a wine tasting, and then you can drink like wine, then you get a full glass of wine, however many you want, and just like, have your day.

The vineyard doesn't mandate that. But that's like protocol. If you're going to a vineyard with a bunch of friends, let's do a tasting of three to six wines, and then go on from there. if you're going to a vineyard with a bunch of friends, let's do a tasting of three to six wines and then go on from there. That's very frustrating to me when I know like that, I know the wine that I want. I just want to drink that. And I want to drink a normal amount of it, but I have to pass this stupid quiz first.

I have to go through these strange steps, these unskippable cut scenes in a video game that I just have to sit through until I can get to the part that I like. Yeah like yeah i mean like beer flights are a very similar thing but they've taken they've really solved the problem they give you the beer flight and they leave you the fuck alone like it's yours to drink alone it's so fine maybe you want to taste like different sips of different things i kind of get that but to have somebody hovering over you to be like, so what do you taste? What's the, what do you like? Is it's just, yeah, it's unpleasant.

My answer to this one is museums. And I feel dumb saying that. And I know I am dumb and that's fine. I don't enjoy museums and like, I, I, I like aquariums and that seems adjacent to me and I've certainly tried to go to museums both like history and art museums and I every time I've been to museums and like the Geffen is a great example the Geffen is in California it's a it's a famous museum it's on this great compound that looks over Los Angeles it's like a beautiful place to spend a day. And then there are a bunch of buildings with fucking art in them. And I, I, it's, I feel so out of place there because the same way that you think anyone who enjoys wine is lying and bullshitting you. That's what I think whenever I see anyone looking at a painting for any amount of time,

because I think, what do you, you saw it. Keep walking. Because that's how my dumb brain works, is that every time I go to a museum, I feel a pressure to stand in front of a thing for the right amount of time, and I have no idea what that is. And every time I've gone to museums with friends, they seem to be really enjoying themselves

and getting something from the art. And I'm just like, I, I saw everything in this room. So I guess I'll wait. I'm, I'm just looking at stuff. You're consuming stuff and that takes longer. So I'll wait. I'll just like, I'll pick a painting that's not near anyone else and I'll like look at that while I think my thoughts for a while. And, uh, I can't wait till we're done with this part of the museum

so we can continue on with the next part of our day yeah i want to like it it has it seems smart it seems sophisticated i like people who like it uh but i just i i and i'm not against learning obviously uh but i just have never enjoyed any time i've ever been in a museum it has a lot of the same trappings as a wine tasting you're on your feet the whole time you're expected to stand uh in certain areas for long periods of time and then it also whether it's true or not it does feel like you're constantly being tested yeah i feel like there's people around you there's inherently a wrong way to do this, it seems like. And I don't need that kind of pressure. And this is just a strange aside to this,

is that there's this immersive Van Gogh experience in New York where they've converted this big warehouse into a thing. I think it was inspired by Emily in Pally on Netflix, a show I never watched. But you called it the right name. That was so generous of you. Oh, thank you. So you go in there and there's like a bunch of different rooms with like different things

set up, different mirrors, different like physical, visually interesting things from room to room. And on the walls and ceilings and floors of the whole place is like this running video of evolving Van Gogh paintings, where just like now I'm in Starry Night. Now I'm in the Flowers one. Now I'm in the one with his with his ear. And it's like, it's genuinely very cool. I was just like, hypnotized by. My friend, Mary and I just, we sat through the whole thing is like a 40 minute long presentation. And we just sat through it twice. We went in different rooms and like, now we're going to, we're going to sit on top of these

stairs and look at it. Okay. Now we're going to go over here. We're going to sit and see what it looks like to, to view everything from this perspective. And I was like, this is neat. This is interesting. This is an experience just like they said. Uh, and I'm happy this is neat this is interesting this is an experience just like they said uh and I'm happy I did it and since I went there I've seen two articles online this week talking about what a uh bougie bullshit awful experience this is how it's a terrible trend for art and how it's not the way art's supposed to be consumed and why would anyone do this and uh it's museums are shutting down but these things are are sprouting up and that's bad for art writ large i'm like well what the fuck then i'm sorry i tried to to play art with you guys and you don't

like the things that i like and i'm sorry uh yeah um i've so I've gone to a lot of art museums first of all natural history museums I disagree with you on only because I'm I'm into it yeah like I love I love seeing a bone being like could just imagine the temporal immensity of this bone as the bone is millions of years old and getting very excited about that and being like, I want to touch it. I just want to touch it. But you can't. No, you can't touch it. But seeing dinosaurs, seeing

animals that were alive during the Ice Age, I'm way into all that stuff. But an art museum, I'm with you for the most part. I don't have the tools necessary. Like the way that you read a story or you read like a short story now or a novel, you've got this whole arsenal of like tools to dissect this thing and really understand it and see how it works. And you could get excited about that because you learn those things in school.

And I've never taken an art history class in my life. and I've never taken an art history class in my life and that means that when I go to a museum I go to the Louvre I'm like okay Christ painting cool another Christ painting excellent okay there's Christ that's definitely Christ oh yes this is the Christ period I don't have the ability to like really think look at it in any other terms than superficially. I can be like, I know those colors. I know that they're using a lot of bright colors down in that corner and not over there because that's how you draw the eye. That's the limit. Like, that's all I know. That's, I can, and so it doesn't mean a ton to me, but if I can go to the ancient Greek section, then I'd be like, okay, now I'm at home., I actually, I can deal with this because I learned a lot about like Elgin Marbles

and freezes and things like that, where I can say, okay, I know exactly what's going on in the scene. I know what they're depicting. I know why this was important. And, oh, look at the, like the grimace on their face. Well, that's interesting. I wonder why they would have put a grimace on his face

as opposed to a smile. He's winning. And like that kind of thing where I can finally ask the right questions and i don't have that for anything else in an art museum i do i want to be clear how open i am to appreciating art like i i know i won't be able to do it on the intellectual level of someone who went to an art history school but i want the experience that cameron from ferris bueller had where like you can i'm i want to look at a painting and feel something and like not necessarily need to understand it but just like connect with it I'm

I'm I'm very open to that uh I just haven't had that and like the other things that you could do when you're in a museum is like read about it which is you know not as interesting often as like a an emotional connection or like not to throw your your statue stuff under the bus but a very common thing when people are looking at big statues like the common refrain about uh michelangelo's david is like man he looked at a piece of marble and he saw that and then he made it like i understand why people say that uh and not to to make a a one-to-one comparison of these things but i'm like yeah probably because he studied and he paid attention and he's smart and he's gifted i looked at a blank piece of paper and made after hours motherfucker like if we're good at something

you know how to look at one thing and turn it into something else that's what skill is yeah yeah i'm not gonna applaud him for doing the thing he set out to do well pop culture has led you to believe that anyone can can just sit there at a painting and like and get the painting that there would somehow be like an answer key that's upside down on it and it would have like all the answers of what the art is and if you just look at it long enough you'd figure it out it's like a crossword basically like but we just don't have that like i don't or it's also led you to believe that only people like fraser get it and that's also not true it's just like you need the very basic

understanding of how to approach this thing yeah before you can appreciate it at all and i don't i just don't fucking have yeah maybe that's at least with paintings good i don't know maybe that's at least that's good i don't know shouldn't should art be exclusive i don't know no but i've been to like modern art museums too and like somebody will do i can appreciate that something looks like something looks like something it's not i'll explain that because that's hard to understand but i went to a museum and there was a big it looked like a big um balloon animal a gigantic balloon animal but it was actually made out of metal so it looked like it was full of air and it looked uh bigger than it should be but when you actually got close enough you realized that it was chrome and that it it was

shiny and that you could touch it and it was uh completely hard and i was like ah so that's a talent you the fact the same way like a statue they can make a statue look like it's got this the woman wearing like a thin shawl or or something you can make clothing look wispy on somebody uh out of marble like i'm like yes okay there's something cool like that's you shouldn't be able to do that but outside of that that, I just, I can't get on board. I don't understand it. Well, there's one more that I have that I want to bring up. Another question or an answer for this one?

No, another answer for this one. Okay, cool. I have tried. I've done this twice now in my life, two different locations. So like, I think I've got a pretty good base for this. I hate massages. I absolutely hate the experience. And it has very little to do with the fact that I don't know this person. And they're touching me intimately on my back. They're touching me intimately on my back. It has to do with the fact that I just don't like the feeling of it. Even when my wife would give me a massage, I don't like the feeling of my muscles sliding around on bone and I get nothing out of it.

There's no, there's nothing. Even if I'm in pain, like if I have worn a backpack on a trip or something like that and come back, I oh i can feel the knots on my back somebody then touching those knots and like pushing them around on me is oh i hate even the idea of it i do like that i i famously used to hate massages but i think uh a few things changed since then uh one is like i've stripped the idea of it being an intimate thing completely out of it. It's now purely a medicinal thing for me. Like I, I only go when there's, when I have knots in my shoulder from carrying a backpack, from backpacking or from after a big race. Yeah. I want you to pound something out of my shoulder or pound something out of my glutes or my legs. And I guess one and two are sort of the same thing. Like two is, is it's not, this is not designed to be relaxing for me. This is, this is, I like to go in there and say, this is fix my

shoulder. I know that the thing is you pay for an hour for a full body massage. I don't care about any of that. Get my shoulder. And like anything that you feel like is connected to my shoulder, because you're going to, my, my back and shoulder are very bad. And if you're a massage masseuse worth your salt, you're going to know immediately, Oh, he keeps a lot of problems right here. So like spend an hour, just pounding the shit out of that. Uh, and, and we can all lie afterwards and say, you did my hands too, or whatever. I, I've, so my wife is the opposite she loves massages just like that she and she likes it to be like she she wants it to be punishment basically because she's getting to an end result which is ah my back feels better because she's got a very she's got some real real problems in

her back and so like i will fuck her up basically like i'd like putting an elbow in her back and like pushing down as hard as i can and really like squeeze pushing my thumbs into her back in a way where i'm like there's no way this is nice and her shirt going and i'm like do you want me to stop and she's like no no it feels good and i'm like there's that can't be true but you've just associated whatever the end result is with this feeling good because this is clearly painful and i've never had that end result i've never been in a situation where somebody gave me a massage and at the end i was like oh my god yeah oh i can i can finally turn my head to the left this is

incredible i don't i don't i guess i just have been very fortunate this is my privilege baby showing that i uh don't have back problems yeah there's someone i follow on on twitter nicole thurman she's an actress and writer and she's uh very funny she tweeted yesterday uh the question what's your fantasy and then her answer someone standing on one side of my back that always hurts like putting their entire weight on me or like taking my trapezius muscle fully out of my body and untangling it or whatever till it's fresh, then putting it back in my body. That I relate to that very much. Just like, yeah, that's, I want, I, I, I can't go to a massage parlor and say, here is $110 stand on my back in one spot for 60 minutes. And then that's it. But that's what I want. And like, and that's as i will get as close to that as i could possibly get

anytime i get a massage yeah i i just don't understand it um my my brother says that he gets massages where he only really likes it when they like really climb up onto his back where like their knees are in his back and like they're just like basically like dropping elbow dropping into his back and i'm like i i just don't that sounds so unpleasant to me and my son is the same way and maybe it's something a childhood thing i just never grew out of but like if i try to give him a back massage at all he flips out he flips out because it's like the most it's such a weird feeling it's like a naturally weird feeling to feel your muscle being moved around on a bone when When people give me those rollers to roll out your muscles, I can't do that either.

It's just so, it feels so wrong. It feels like I'm flattening something inside my body that shouldn't be flattened. Huh. Have you ever tried one of those Theragun things? No. They're pretty good, but they're expensive. Yeah, there's one at my gym. I bet they'd let me try it.

But, yeah. Oh, I mean Equinox. The perks of Equinox. The perks of the Knox. Well, okay. I should also update you that people are using the battle ropes correctly. Oh, good. Did you teach them?

Yeah. No, there was a real turnaround when the... I'm laughing not that we don't have any listeners, but that that would be our demographic. That really tickles me. No, the trainers started using it, and the trainers started showing people, and then I think other people saw the trainers, and they were like, ooh, okay. That makes sense. Let's all pretend that we're starting from scratch right now and that I've always known how to do this.

There's one other update I wanted to give you, Dan, that I forgot to give you on the last one, and it seems like an important life update. I am a pet owner now. Suck it up. Yeah. Yeah. I have a cat holy shit yeah i have a kitten that we got for my son uh for his birthday and he's been so good as a pet owner i'm really impressed with him

um he feeds it every morning he enjoys scooping the litter box now you might be thinking how did you land on cat soren sure he wanted a turtle really badly and we were like this is this is a circumstance in which we didn't want to pet at all but like he wanted a turtle and we were like yeah turtle seems easy let's do turtle so we were we were not immediately telling him no you're not getting a turtle for your birthday we're kind of like okay well we'll see we'll see and that's a dangerous path to go down unless you've already done your research because a turtle first of all turtles live for like 30 years and if you want a tortoise it's it lives it outlives you and your children it's like it lives to be like 110 so don't get a tortoise and then the turtles themselves are he it lives to be like 110. So don't get a tortoise. And then the turtles themselves are, he's going to be in college and everything.

He'll, he'll have his own children by the time this turtle does. And I don't want to pet for that long. I know that the minute he acknowledges that like, he can't just take this thing out and really play with it and be affectionate with it, that he's going to lose interest in it. And the other thing is that I didn't realize the turtle. Well, two things, the turtle well two things the turtle after you play with it you got to go wash your hands really well immediately afterwards so that you don't get salmonella which is like completely new information to me you have a

poison pet that you can't play with without washing your hands growing up because there was turtles in the woods near our house that we would like come home with and be like look mom i named this one and and she would explain put it back wash your hands and the other thing is that to take a guess dan uh i don't know if you know cubic uh feet uh or cubic inches like what what size that it like how big uh like four cubic inches would be as opposed to 40? I feel like you should know I don't. I want you to take a guess at how big of a terrarium they say you need to be humane to a turtle. Like that isn't torture to a turtle. Can I say like... And this is like little painted turtle, like a small one. Not like the ones you had at your old place.

They're like small. Can I say like two feet long and then like a foot yeah back yeah yeah that's like a 20 gallon tank they say you need a 50 gallon tank to not be a complete asshole to this animal they're like the pet police wouldn't come by and be like oh no yeah i was gonna wonder like but is there an asshole option yeah there absolutely is an asshole option the 20 gallon tank is definitely an asshole option and that's what i would have assumed like the same thing you would put lizards in you're like okay this looks big enough no you need a massive thing for a turtle and half of it has to be filled with water i

shouldn't say half but like a section of it has to have ground and a section of it has to have water so you're constantly changing that water that's a big pain and cleaning it and everything and There's it's tougher to do filtration than it would be if you had just an aquarium Um, because it's not completely filled with water You've got like other stuff getting in there because you got the sand or whatever the island is you've created for this turtle And we were just like, it's completely impossible. It's not practical at all that we would have a turtle for him.

And we started talking about pets already. And so we started just running through pets in our mind. We're like, what can we tolerate? And we're like, okay, I guess a hamster, a gerbil. And then we were like, you know, cats are actually pretty easy to take care of. They're not difficult. They're fun to play with. They're nice to pet.

They sleep most of the day and they usually come potty trained. And so we were like, okay, let's, let's see if we can convince him. And so one day I was like, uh, Ronan, we're going to go to a shelter and we're going to see some animals and you can make a decision. And like, so we went to a shelter, we sat in a little room and we're like, can we and you can make a decision and like so we went to a shelter we sat in a little room we're like can we see we'd like to have this cat brought to us and they bring it out and you play with it for a little while and immediately he was like yeah I want a cat I'm like okay well let's look at some cats he's like no I want this cat awesome okay and so what we expect I expected to be just like a day where I would turn him to mammals

ended up being a day that we would turn him to mammals, uh, ended up being a day that we actually got the cat and she's a young kitten. She's completely black. She's very cute. Last of her litter. And she's, that's not an easy impulse. She's a great cat.

Not at all. Cause then you got to get all the stuff, all the accoutrement to come with the cat. Um, there's all kinds of stuff you need. And already i'm like she's she's such a part of the family that i worry about her i love this i'll see something new in her eye and i'm like okay there's goop in her eye i gotta figure this out it's like i'm on

the internet at night just researching cat goop in their eye and like all the things it could be and she lost a little bit of hair she's got some sort of alopecia and she, I think is probably an allergy. So she's got some alopecia on one ear and I'm like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. Like sometimes cats lose, lose their hair when they got cancer. Do you think this is cancer? So, um, I have an appointment lined up for her on Sunday where I'm taking her in to get all these things looked at so they can assure me that everything's okay. But, uh, yeah, she's been a great cat. She's very affectionate to even to strangers. Like when people come to our house, um, she seems to love us. She's very tolerant of my daughter for a kitten. Uh, and I would say even for an adult cat, like my daughter will be like, Oh, cool tail. And just like, try to grab it. And

the cat just, and the cat will be lying in her room. And then my daughter is not careful about where she's walking. And, uh, we'll just occasionally accidentally kick the cat or like almost step on it. And she's, she just is like, yeah, that's fine. And my daughter gives foreheads to show affection. That's just like a thing that, uh, happened early on is very adorable and fun. Cause, because um she learned it from her brother because we forced him to give her a forehead when she wanted to be acknowledged and now she does it at and so she's giving the cat foreheads constantly which is very funny to watch because the cat's so small that she has to like get way down low when she's standing up to

try and like put her forehead on this cat and uh it's been great. It's been great having a cat. And so have you not even tweeted about this? No, I've not talked to anybody. What is the cat's name? Is it, are we allowed to say, or is this like a protective thing? Yeah, no, no, no. That's fine. So the cat came with the name Davina, which is, I assume fancy for divine.

I was going to say that's, that's the say that's the girl, Danny DeVito. DeVita. And I was like, so when I was getting the information about the chip and everything, I was like, so I can just change the name on the chip, right? And they were like, yeah, absolutely. That's sort of expected that when you bring the animal home, you change the name. So we're bringing her home and I'm like, so what do you want to name her? And he's like, her name is Davina.

I'm like, yeah, but you could name this cat anything. She'd be a shadow. She'd be a ninja if that's not problematic yet. And my son was like, no, her name is Davina. I was like, all right. Okay, I'm going to level with you. That name sucks. Can we change it to something else?

And he's like, no, I like Davina. So the cat's name is Davina. And I call her Vina. That's acceptable. And she's been awesome. Other than occasionally, you know, I guess cats get very active around sunrise and and sunset and she will try to climb our screens during those twilight hours oh fucking i said it it sounds better than normal okay those twilight hours uh she'll climb the screens or do something weird she'll make some weird decisions about like i think i want to live in this plant now

like just like yeah i'm very curious for you to discover all the things that will be brand new concerns for you. Not just like even health things, but stuff like climbing screens, stuff like I brought Jackson home and one day he just like chewed through a cable for a lamp. And I was like, oh, I used to be able to put cables wherever I wanted.

All right, this is new now. Yeah. Yeah. We've discovered a few of those problems already. Like anytime we open a cabinet or anything, this cat will run and jump into the cabinet. You're like, no, no, no. You cannot be in there. So we have to be very careful with that.

She's also very eager to go outside. And I didn't, I grew up with outdoor cats. The only thing my dad ever said to any of the cats we owned as a child was, sure kitty, you can go outside. And would just grab the cat and put it outside. And so I'm not allowed to put a cat outside. I checked in with other pet owners in Los Angeles. And I was like, that's bullshit, right?

They're just like being overly cautious. And people are like, no, don't let your cat outside there are a lot of strays and they pick up diseases uh or infections from those other cats there's flea issues there's all kinds of dangers in los angeles that i didn't account for for a cat so she's an indoor cat i'm very excited for you this next chapter and i'm i'm thrilled that it's getting along with the kids. Yeah, it's great. It's been, because Kat's going to have some weird neuroses, and this one seems pretty cool.

I think we lucked out. Well, great. This was a pretty good episode. What do you think? Okay, great. Yeah, I think we can end it. You can find me on Twitter at dob underscore inc, or Soren at Soren underscore LTD. You can find our business boss at MakeMeBaconPLS.

That's MakeMeBaconPlease on Twitter. You can email the show at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. Or find us on Twitter at twitter.com slash QQ underscore Soren and Dan. We also have a Patreon that you can do whatever you want on Patreon. Shout out to our guest editor, Maya. If she wants, we will put her information in the show notes so you can find and hire her for all of your editing, engineering, podcast recording, producing needs. And I think that's probably about it.

Oh, I wanted to do something. You're not allowed to answer now, producing needs. And I think that's probably about it. Oh, I wanted to do something. You're not allowed to answer now, Soren. It's a preview for our next episode. I'm just going to give you a bit of it now. I texted a picture of my leg to an ex. Do you think that's weird? You have a couple weeks to think about it, and then we'll circle back in our next episode

no all right bye