Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 18 - Daniel Vs. Sorbonne the Hedgehog

Episode Date: October 3, 2019

so hello again and welcome to another episode of quick question with soren and daniel this is the advice podcast where two comedy writing best friends get together for quick questions and long answers i'm daniel aka d.o.p we're gonna get to that the meaning behind that sigh later but soren do you want to introduce yourself yeah yeah hey everybody coming at you this is soren buoy otherwise known as sorboni sorboni coming at you hard and fast sorboni has anyone ever said that before no you know i once wrote a fan fiction about every one of the cracked editors um okay and i in one of them, I named myself Sorboni. Okay. Well, that's fun, and I like it.

Speaking of naming things, we are Quick Question with Sorin and Daniel, a.k.a. QQ with Sad, and you are listeners. We like to give you a shout-out every week, and this time, I didn't write down a name for what you are, and you know what that means.

Bacon, what do we call our listeners? Quapton Cunches. Quapton Quunches. Perfect. Oh, Dan, you could not have seen the way that he just leaned back in his chair like he fucking, like Carrie shrugged his way to a victory there. It's an 11 out of 10. That's Michael Schrauer, a.k.a. Bacon, who is our CFO and the only reason this podcast exists.

And he's great. Bacon, do you have any updates for us? No, only one from your intro. So we're explicitly not an advice podcast. Are we not? No, we had an opportunity to classify ourselves as an advice podcast. I'm not allowed to do that? No. We are a, well, I mean, we're allowed to do whatever we want. We're masters of our own domain, but we're a comedy podcast. And then we are also an improv podcast and for a while we were the number one improv uh podcast in canada just for a little bit oh do they suck at improv up there what's

going on yeah what happened i don't know but we get i'll keep you guys updated we're oftentimes trending in weird places uh oh, Canada's so weird. We like to call out one review every week to read on air. And as usual, I printed a bunch out, put them in a hat, and I'm pulling them out of the hat. Oh, good, I got one. Wait, whoa, whoa.

What's up? I mean, generally, I would assume there's some pageantry that goes along with it you do you have a whole formal thing that you did at one point you had guest appearances by all the stranger things kids this time maybe we don't know what kind of hat it is it's a green hat thank you it's it's it's a green h&m hat i got i watched a bunch of the Marvel movies and all the guys, the protagonists, when they're in hiding, they wear monochromatic hats with no logos. And I'm like, can you even get a hat with no logo? That sounds cool. How does Captain America get one of those? And then it

turns, you must've just gone to H&M. So I got a green hat from H&M, printed out a bunch of random reviews, put them in the green hat from H&M, and now I'm going to pull one out at random. The scene is set. My eyes are closed. I'm picturing every little bit. It is a five-star review. Get the fuck out of town.

It's from someone whose name is Red Scott. That's not on Brand Red. It should have been Green Scott, buddy. And it's in a review titled oh bacon unlimited red scott writes finally i get to hear my boy bacon wax poetic about volkswagens and cherry varietals booyah plus his two sidekicks chandler and joffrey are sometimes pretty funny keep up the good work bacon could that review be any worse oh so you're chandler i'm trying a new thing yeah i'm pivoting away from joffrey have i i don't listen to this podcast has bacon talked about volkswagens

and cherry varietals i know i have no recollection of that what's a varietal that's a type of thing well bacon knows what they are yeah it's type of thing i have talked about cherry varietals i don't know anything about Volkswagens though. No, I'm not sure you even brought them up Do you think this guy dreamt a podcast? Wait, what's going to happen

is in a year from now you're going to mention Volkswagens and we're all going to be like, oh fuck, oh fuck. Anyway, we're going to get into our podcast where we ask each other

questions and mine just right off the bat comes from my reaction to saying DOB into our podcast where we ask each other questions and mine just right off the bat comes from uh my reaction to saying dob when i introduced myself soren be completely honest with me can i not pull off daniel i know exactly what you're asking. No, man, it's going to happen.

It's going to happen. It's not happening at work. Are people calling you a Dan at work? Well, here's what happened at work. Because my whole life I've been trying to get Daniel to stick. I think we mentioned this in one of the earlier episodes of this podcast, that Daniel is my preference. It's taken me a while to state that as a preference. Normally, people ask me, do you prefer Dan or Daniel? I was like, oh, it doesn't matter. I love you.

Do whatever you want. You're the best. But for this time in my new job, the very first day emphatically when they said do you prefer dan or daniel i said daniel and we already had another dan at work which made it easier yeah it was perfect and for so long everyone called me daniel and it was great it's the only like sustained single group that has called me dan. Because there are some people in my life, in like my family and a couple of friends who know that I prefer Daniel and will call me by that. But normally like it's not a thing that sticks broadly across like school or job or internet or whatever. But it was sticking here at this job. I was Daniel to everyone. And then one of my bosses, without even batting an eye, just started saying D-O-B. And not just like, to me, casually, like we're buddies or anything like that. But there are times when you go around the room giving assignments to all the different

writers. And there have been too many weeks in a row where it's been very clear. Okay, so we're going to have Ben and Joanna on this. We're going to have Jill and Sina in this. And then Jeff, DOB, and Charlie, you're going to be doing this thing. And it's like, ah, fuck me. And it's been a few weeks of that from one of the bosses, and then some of the other coworkers started saying DOB. And I'm not like, it doesn't give me agita or anything like that. I'm not upset when I hear it.

It's just because I'll overthink everything in the world. I think, is it just something about me that I can't pull off? Is there like a gravitas to daniel that'll just never have because it almost never sticks anywhere it's dob and it's dan it's dan a whole lot it's often dan o'brien but i just can't get daniel to to to work for me and i've met daniels and they're definitely daniels soren yeah Yeah, you know what? I think what it might be, and this might be good for you to hear,

I think maybe this will be encouraging, is that Daniel feels kind of pedestrian. It's a name that's been out there for a long, long time, and it's one of those ones where sometimes when somebody's a bigger personality than their name, you're like, I gotta do something here. I gotta change this name up a little bit. And so maybe that's what they're responding

to. They're not calling you Dan. So it's not like they just decided to shorten it on their own. They're looking for something a little more flashier, and so they went with DOB because they need a name that matches the person. I don't know.

I think you're just being kind. I agree with Soren. DOB sounds so cool to me. I thought the way this was going was that you were going to get DOB, and that was going to be like, ah, it's cool. Everyone's calling me DOB. No, I mean oh it's cool everyone's talking to me calling me dob no i mean it's cool in the sense that like nicknames in general are cool like bacon you know better than anybody else that having nicknames is rad as hell uh but i just i i like

daniel better it's my my my favorite version of things and i've i've tried to get it to stick a hundred times and it just hasn't worked and like we met another daniel when we were working at cracked daniel vincent gourd and he had no problem yeah getting that dvg though whole name to stick huh dvg he became very sometimes dvg but he was mostly daniel like you like if you weren't gonna you wouldn't talk to him and say hey dvg what's up yeah you you would address him as daniel dan and he and he it deserves that do you do you have aspirations to i actually don't know this but uh to like run a writer's room at some point in your life or like never again no to be like but not like a show or No? No, I know where writer's rooms happen.

When you were at Crack, did you feel like you would correct people who worked underneath you? Would you make them call you Daniel? No, I would correct them to Big Daniel, probably. I've always had a hard time seriously correcting people if they say Dan. That was sort of my rule. The furthest I would go would be if someone said, do you prefer Dan or Daniel? I would say Daniel.

But if someone said Dan, I'm not going to earnestly be like, excuse me, it's Daniel. Because that feels like a shitty thing to do, even though it's just a person asserting what they want. Yeah. I'm looking through some famous Dans right now to get a sense of if everybody, this happens to all of them, but there's... Dan Hedaya.

Yeah, there's, I mean, Daniel Radcliffe, but he's got Rad in his name, so it's fun to say his whole name. You know who it famously doesn't happen to? The other Daniel O'Brien. The Olympic gold medal winning triathlete, Daniel O'Brien. The Olympic gold medal winning triathlete, Daniel O'Brien. I remember Dan and Dave.

I guess the Dan and Dave show. He was the Dan for the Dan and Dave show Nike campaign. But no one would be like, Dan Craig, Dan Craig, let me ask you a question about Bond. Oh man, I deeply want to meet him now and be like, Dan. Because I don't think he's ever been called Dan in his entire fucking life.

Of course not. I remember when we were working at Cracked, I think like three years into our time there, our former boss, Jack, once said to me, he was like, I think it's so funny when you sign your emails, Daniel. I was like, I mean, I'll take a laugh wherever I can get it, but not my intention, Jack. I'm desperately trying to get something to stick here. Dan Lewis. I mean, you wouldn't even know who I was talking about.

Who's Dan Lewis? Daniel Day-Lewis. Yeah. Dan Lewis. Yeah, imagine meeting him on the red carpet and being like, so, Dan Lewis, tell me about beating that man to death with a bowling pin. Right. It's weird.

As soon as you say Dan Lewis, I think, how does Soren know some guy that my dad probably worked with at Amtrak? I mean, now I'm shifting on my position because Daniel, it does have like prestige to it. And as I'm looking through these famous people and I mean, I always you were introduced to me as Dan. And a lot of times what you're introduced to is that's what sticks. But I do in emails and on text always catch myself and I won't write Dan. I'll write Daniel. Um,

if I'm talking about you, but I just, in our everyday conversations, I use Dan an awful lot. Yeah. And again, I'm not mad. It's just like, it's just one of those things that keeps coming up where I've never been

successful at getting Daniel to stick. And I'm truly wondering if, if I truly wondering if I'm just not a Daniel, which could be fine. Like, I don't, it's not, Dan isn't worse than Daniel by any means. I mean, it's literally objectively less than. It's really staggering how different those two names are, Dan and Daniel. I mean, could you imagine Daniel Marino? Daniel Ackroyd. Anyway, that's all I had this week.

So you got anything? Yeah, I got a quick question for you. Oh, good. Ask it. Oh, okay. This is a personal one. When you were leaving for new york and you were getting ready to shove off from los angeles uh-huh did you feel any sort of coldness from me

or like a an emotional distance when you were getting ready to leave no good that's really good trying to project that no no no no this is something that i've i've noticed just recently that i that i do frequently so i'll give you some context i'm i'm trying to buy a new house and we're trying to move because my son's going to be going to school soon and we we don't want to have to pay for private school because it's basically as much as calls college tuition now and so we're trying to get into elementary school that's a public elementary where he can go and that's a good school. And you're being cold to him now, like you were cold to me because I'm like your child. I get it. That's very sweet. I'm calling him Dan. But he hates it. He does.

I noticed that my house has meant an awful lot to me this has been like a wonderful house that I have I've never had a single complaint about it other than the fucking ants I love it but since even the prospect of moving has come up and we've got like a house that we're really interested in that we think we're going to get

I just have emotionally divorced myself from this place like I hate it now. I hate everything about this house that I've loved for so long. And I started to like wonder about it last night. I was thinking, why am I doing this? Why am I being so cruel to this inanimate object? And then I started to realize that I did this very same thing

when I left for college to my parents. That these things that I hold dear, as soon as I know that I won't be around them anymore, I emotionally divorced myself from them. I start going through the process before I even leave of like distancing myself from them as much as I can. And that's usually through hating them, being meaner to them. And I've been called out on it before from friends too. Like when we graduated or when friends were like, well, I'm not going to live here anymore. I'm going to Palo Alto or I'm going somewhere else. Suddenly, like I'm not going to their parties. I don't really respond to their emails as much. I just check out of the relationship. And like

at one point, my mom, when I was going away to college, she pulled me aside and she was like, are you, did I do something? And I was like, what? No, I don't think so. I don't, I don't know. And, uh, and so I thought this is a common thread with me throughout my life that I do this to things that I care about. And I was like, I wonder if I did this to Dan when he left. And it's good to hear that I didn't. I mean, I have a thousand things to say uh or you know three uh one i certainly did the same thing in high school i think i think like my entire entire senior year of high school i was kind of prickish because you're you're a dealing with like i'm 17 18 years old i'm on top of the. I'm king shit of this high school because I'm a senior now.

And B, you have that sense of like, I'm leaving this town behind to go all the way to an hour south of here in my case. But I still like distinctly remember my high school graduation and my parents meeting me on the football field and being like, hey, if you want to say goodbye, we'll all meet at Outback Steakhouse for your graduation dinner. And I was like, well,, if you want to say goodbye, we'll all meet at Outback Steakhouse for your graduation dinner. And I was like, well, I don't need to say goodbye to anyone. And we just all went over together because I, I had that same, uh, mentality that you had. That was like, I'm, I'm moving on now. It's time to, to leave these people behind. And, and it's, leave these people behind. And, and it's, I don't know if it, if it felt more mature or if it felt more manly to, to feel like you weren't affected by this, this loss. I don't know what my mentality

was, but I knew that it was certainly like the, the right thing to do is to not feel anything about this. Uh, even if that pointedly alienates people that you spent your life with until this point. Um, but I didn't really do that any other times. Like I didn't do that with, uh, college.

I've done that with physical items. Once I knew I was getting a new thing, I, I'd hated a thing that I had no problem with before, like with a phone or I just, I recently got a new TV after a TV that I had that, that served me well for many years. As soon as I placed the order for the new one, I found things to hate about the old one and would, and I would tell my TV how it was letting me down and how the new one would be better. But yeah, not so much with people.

And I didn't get that from you when I left L.A. But also I feel like I didn't do a good enough job setting up like a good old fashioned Soren Daniel mess around before I left L.A. daniel mess around before i left la like the end of it happened very suddenly my team my time leaving los angeles where i i uh flew out to new york to interview for a job sometime in august and then started the job september 4th and like left there was a two and a half week period where i knew i was moving from los angeles to new york yeah and in that two and a half week period where i knew i was moving from los angeles to new york yeah and in that two and a half weeks just tried to cram as much of everything as i could and i feel like especially towards the end was just a series of drinks at at different bars and parties to see as many people as possible so i do do, I didn't notice a coldness because, but I also didn't feel like I put in the time

that our friendship deserved. Maybe it was a perfect, yeah. We didn't do like a. Maybe it was a perfect. Like a fishing trip. Yeah, one of our famous fishing trips. That we used to do in, when I tell this story in the future

and I'm established as a fisherman early. Uh, yeah, I think maybe, well, what it might've been is that you and I, it was just like this perfect synchronicity that I was maybe getting, I was like emotionally distancing myself.

And you also didn't have the time to devote to like a, anything, um, like personal. And so both of us just easily went on our ways did you feel that when it was happening did you did you no it's like too too emotional for this podcast but were there there was was there a time where you were like talking to to your wife like it's crazy he hasn't asked me to no just do a one-on-one

dinner or anything like that. No, that's the thing is I probably would have maybe even turned it down. No, I didn't have that reaction at all. I only realized this when I was dealing with my house. I get it also when you're saying like you get a new phone and you're like, you know you're about to get a new one. And I think that might also be because I treat all of my personal relationships like my possessions.

Yes. The people in my life belong to me. And so when I'm getting, when I obviously have to move on to something new, then I'm like, fuck this trash. No, I don't think that I felt it when I was doing that. But just leaving my house, I was having this weird disconnect last night where I was remembering I love this house why am I being like this everything about it every single day I'm like

I can't wait to move out of this shithole I can't wait to get out of this place every little thing about it drives me crazy now and I never used to feel this way and it's like the sunk cost of investment of it has just lifted off of me or something that's wacky it's like this the sunk cost investment of it has just lifted off of me or something or that's wacky it's a great house i love it i always love going to your house

yeah well it's dog shit now all right let's see i got a i got a quick question for you soren go ahead got any follow-up thoughts on Antonio Brown? I know it was a few weeks ago that you were calling your shots on the Antonio Brown saga. Do you have any updates you want to give? No, my position stands. I am on his side.

Man. I mean, and here's the thing is that this we do record these earlier than they come out so without without a doubt new information will come out five new things will come out about antonio brown before this podcast comes out and i can never be on this man's side again it was real it was real peaks and valleys though because he got a not to jump into sports talk but he got picked up by the patriots yeah and soren predicted that he got picked up by the patriots and so even in my in my one of my classic tweets where i always include the link to the episode and do it right when we release it uh i mentioned soren like wow call that one about antonio brown and then immediately the other news dropped and it was rough skating.

We were in a perilous circumstance where we almost, had we released that podcast even an hour later, like we couldn't have released it. If that news had come out any earlier, we'd have been like, no, there's no way you can release a podcast in which I say, you know what? Antonio Brown is a good guy. I stand by him i want the best for him um for anyone who isn't aware of what's going on in the antonio brown saga i don't know how you would be but he's now been accused of rape by a personal trainer on multiple occasions well assault on two occasions and rape on one occasion so it's just it's bad bad news. And he's, he's bad news.

Yeah. I don't know. I, no, I know what, I know what. I'm not going to say anything because this is going to come back to haunt me. Do you guys have any of those lighthearted quick questions that we're known for? Yeah, Dan, I got a quick question for you. Oh, let's hear it.

When you were a kid, did your parents make you halloween costumes uh yeah i i i'm trying to remember i i feel like i i didn't have jurisdiction over choosing my own halloween costume until oh yeah you know what that's a bad question did your parents make your oldest brother's halloween costumes because the rest of you just became whatever your older brother was the year before yeah they did they made homemade costumes for for years until we could like articulate no i i want to have some kind of agency in this yeah my mom did too everyone that i knew also growing up their moms and and dads, I guess dads occasionally, would make the costumes. And that seems so, that's like a thing I never grew into that I have a son now.

I have a son who does have to dress up for Halloween. And there's never even a possibility that I would make him a costume. In fact, I ordered a homemade costume from etsy for him because there's no way i would be able to do it on my own i this is like a a thing that i think has just been lost to time hopefully among everybody it's not just me because then i'm not alone uh my oldest brother tommy still makes costumes for his uh i think six and four year old at this point. And like, I mean, he's, he's a curious and hardworking person.

So he, he likes to, he likes projects. He was, he's always been tinkering with sync with things. So if he's got a kid who says he wants to be a ghost buster, that's like this good. This is,

this means that I can go to home Depot and put together a bunch of things that will make a proton pack. Are they cool costumes? Yeah, they're cool as hell. Ghostbusters, dog. No, I mean when they're actually the finished product. I considered the possibility of making my son, because here's the deal, he wants to be a hedgehog. And I'm like, yes, hedgehog, easy.

That's fantastic. That's so cool. Your son's so cool. Maybe I could make a hedgehog costume. And then i started to realize i would i don't want to see that disappointment in his eyes when he sees this terribly stitched together thing that has like a chewbacca fur on the back of it and i'm like no it's a hedgehog and him being like okay yeah yeah yeah dad i don't want to have to deal with that and so i'm like no i'll just throw money at this problem i don't i don't think i could sew him something that was that would be suitable that either one of us would be like yes this is a

badass homemade costume i think that's that's fine too i don't i i don't think it would have ruined my childhood if my parents threw money at at me for costumes instead of making them from scratch but there's something special i think there's something special about the your parents making a costume some of my favorite costumes from my childhood i can remember just like a sweatsuit and my mom painted on these detailed bones for a skeleton a glow-in-the-dark skeleton on the front of a sweatsuit uh for me or my mom made my brother Darth Vader costume when he was young she made me a Chewbacca costume they're

a lion from Wizard of Oz like she really went all out in making these costumes and there's they're seminal to me now those moments looking back on it I love her more because of the work that she did on these things,

and I'm just not willing to do that. But you did. You went to great lengths to get a perfect garbage truck for your son. Yeah, I didn't sew that garbage truck. You're still using the considerable tools available to you to make your child's dream come true,

which I think fulfills your mother's legacy. This is a fucking... What kind of podcast is this? What are you doing? Well, hey, this is what DOB's devotees have come for, Dan. Fulfilling your mother's legacy. God.

Didn't we used to talk about how weird online dating was? Yeah, we do both, man. This is the new masculinity of 2019. Hello? Yeah, no, I heard you, yeah. So, have you found a good hedgehog costume that you can buy? It's the best hedgehog costume it's so cool

i found one that is so dope the problem is it's made in latvia and so okay so i i had to contact the woman and be like listen i i got the notification that this thing might not arrive till november like till thanksgiving and i need it sooner than that and so now i'm in contact with this woman in lapia and be like is there any way i can expedite this thing and i know also so i gave him a turtle costume technically my wife gave him a turtle costume when he was two i think he just turned two and he still wears it it doesn't even fit him anymore it's way too tight on him he just likes being a turtle and it's very comfortable and he wears it around the house and i know that he's gonna wear this hedgehog costume for the next three or four years so it's not just a halloween thing and it's

so rad it's got these foam spikes on the back that are really cool there's that some apples stuck on some of the spikes it's rad is that accurate that accurate? Is that a thing that happens? No, not at all, but it looks really cool. And you get the idea. I mean, like a hedgehog has an apple on its back. Yeah, I get the idea. Fell right off a tree, right onto that hedgehog. That's a little snack for later.

I mean, that's a lot of story to pack into a costume, I think. I think just the point is that things stick to the back of the headshot. These are supposed to be sharp, and this is an indication that they're sharp. Look what it does with this apple. Oh, okay. Well, if

you need additional props to explain what your costume is, maybe your costume isn't that great, but you know, that's one guy's opinion. I knew I should have made my own one. This is a disaster. It's already a disaster. You're absolutely right. I'm a bad dad. Yeah, make your own one and make it real sharp, like actually sharp,

so you don't need to dress it up with nonsense. You don't need the pageantry when you're actually cutting people open. Right, let people know the threat is real. Do you have any other actual, like, legitimate quick questions for me? Or does Bacon need to weigh in on, or want to weigh in on no i'm good no okay uh so i will track down all the social accounts and while i'm doing that oh a lot of people i don't think know this but soren and i

uh and it's been going on for many years, we share a bank account. Like all of our finances go to the same place. So we get to see what the other one spends their money on. And I can't, normally it's totally fine, but I'm just curious while I track down these accounts. Sorin, why did you purchase the domain SorinLovesBigNaturals.com? While you answer that question i'm gonna i'm gonna track down these social accounts yeah no this is actually a topic that is near and dear to my heart as you might imagine by the name of the domain i took big naturals

are so important to me because listen they're every type of fruit that you buy it's got so many pesticides on it so much gross stuff and on the skin especially so if you're dealing with a banana or something like that it's a little bit better because there's a peel but what i really love to sink my teeth into is a big natural peach and you'd be shocked at the amount of pesticides and toxins that exist on the outsides of those peaches. And also the things that they're just pumped full of to keep them that big. So I did a lot of research on my own part, which you've, you also probably saw, uh, cause we also share a search history. Uh, and I found that there's, if you can just get a natural, a big natural peach,

then you discount all those toxins, all those pesticides. You don't have to worry about any of that, but they're really hard to find. They're very hard to find. So I was going to just put together a database of the orchards that grow big naturals. Okay, so that was going to be my follow-up question.

That also explains why you bought the domain name Soren's Big Nasty Peaches. That's the same reason? No, peaches are also what I call vaginas. You can find Sorin at SorinLTD on Twitter you can find me at DOB underscore INC

this is a casual reminder that everyone in my family now listens to this podcast you can find Bacon at MakeMeBaconPlease PLS you can find the show twitter.com slash QQ underscore Sorin and Dan you can email us at QQ with Sorin and Daniel all one word at g twitter.com slash qq underscore Soren and Dan you can email us at qq with Soren and Daniel all one word

at gmail.com you cannot find us on Instagram I tried in the last episode and a friend texted me and said why is your Instagram account private so you know don't I guess you can hire our engineer

producer editor Vincent and reach out to him at I guess you can hire our engineer, producer, editor, Vincent, and reach out to him at siliconbeachpodcasts.com. We also have a Patreon, which you can find by going where, Bacon? Patreon backslash quick question. Don't forget the uh when you type it in. Yeah. It's a Patreon backslash quick question. There's no dot com.

It's just a Patreon backslash quick question. There's no dot com. It's just a patreon backslash quick question. Sorry? There's a dot com. Okay, cool. Glad we managed to swing that. Somehow people are finding it. I noticed. No, they're certainly not.

Do we have anything else that needs to be said? Or can we just like trail off while the music is playing? Nah, I think we probably need to trail off Yeah, bye