Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 19 - The Three Emmy-gos

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. We've been told that we need to say something up top informing listeners that this is a new episode, so this is me telling you it is. Quick Question is an advice podcast by two best friends, one a father, homeowner, comedian, and writer for TV's American Dad, and the other an Emmy award winning writer for tv's american dad and the other an emmy award-winning writer for last week's night with john oliver on aspo who other than that doesn't really seem to have his life together too much each week we get into questions small and medium and this week will be no different i am one half of that podcast my name is dan Daniel O'Brien. Hello. And I'm joined as always by Soren Bui.

Soren, do you want to introduce yourself? Hello, this is Soren Bui, creator of American Dad and Last Week Tonight. Wow. Yeah. It's a, you know, I don't brag about it generally, but I realized we were bragging there, so I thought I'd bring it up. I heard someone giggling while you talked. Who's that?

Who's that squeaky little mouse? Oh, Jesus. There's someone else in this room. Hey, guys. I haven't created anything that's on television so that's it for me. You didn't even introduce yourself. Oh, yeah.

Sorry. It's classic Bacon didn't introduce himself. How are you? Sorry, stop smiling. How do you find new ways to do this wrong? Just like you think there's only one direction you can go that's away from right. But no, it turns out there's a lot of different directions that are wrong. I follow my instincts and they're a rainbow of wrong apparently a broken compass is useful as long as it points the wrong

direction bacon anyway as always we are soren and daniel quick question and as even more always you our listeners are as you prefer to be called quick queries howlin commandos what i was worried about oh wait okay all right all right nick furies yeah okay howling yeah yeah that's right howling commandos yeah okay can i float one to you no the query community the queery community what is that what is that it's the queer community oh man no this one started early off the rails right away

yeah and like by the way this is we know this is unsustainable right like I'll either run out of names or get bored and I started this podcast very bored. Are we human or are we answer?

Ooh, I like that. It's a shame that you came up with it, because that means it's never going to happen. Why wouldn't you say quancer? Answer. Are we answer? It's better than quancer. Do I not understand this bit?

I guess not. At any rate, we like to call out one review every week to read on air. And as usual, I printed out a bunch of random reviews, strapped those reviews to some mice that I found. And I fed those mice a responsible amount of cocaine and had the mice race. And I'm going to watch the race and I will read the review of whatever mouse comes in first. Can I get a sense of what the course looks like? Is it a maze or is it just like a like a football field type of it's a straight line but there are no borders so they're kind of going all over the

place okay uh okay we got one wow um you know that happened faster than i thought it would for mice and cocaine well mice are notoriously fast uh It's a five-star review. Get the fuck out of town. From user B underscore R underscore A underscore K, Brack. I feel like that name was created in response to our Instagram. Yes. I mean, who could say? Because no one's ever been to our Instagram. But Brack writes, hilarious podcast with sexy voice Soren, magic bacon bacon, and Dan.

These guys are a trip to listen to as long as you can get through whatever baloney Dan is coughing up at the time. Awesome rants, great advice, Dan should make more OPCD. Wow, this is like scathing for you. Yeah. wow this is like scathing for you yeah it's almost like the very last portion of it was almost a compliment but i think he might just mean he's better at that right i mean so to begin with sexy voice. Sorry, no disrespect. You're a very sexy man, but I don't know sexy voice for you.

Hmm. Okay, maybe I'll work on it. Do your sexiest voice right now. Hey, Dan. Coming at you live from Los Angeles here. Things are pretty nice over here. It's nice and warm, temperate. It's a nice fall day. How's that?

Okay, that's pretty good. Oh, thanks. That's not me. And then we've got Magic Bacon, which I don't know what that's a play on, to be honest. Magic. Magic Johnson, because Bacon's a lakers fan and last time

someone said i was uh like a very into cherry varietals yeah which that was a reference to nothing i do like that they're creating your mythos stand what's happening that the audience has decided on who you are before you have that's a great one uh you know other than the dance stuff obviously that's a big bummer for you but i mean yeah it's fine and uh to to brack uh i will not make more opcd get over it get a fucking life you dork anyway uh this is a show where we ask each other questions that was like a tenth of our fan base. Well. Okay, sorry. Can I ask you

you just waited for me to ask you about the Emmys. No, ask me any question that you want to ask. Dan, quick question. Mm-hmm. Did you win, like, a streamie recently? Something like that?

Streamies. Oh, God, Soren, you sound so ignorant. The streamies happen in Vegas, and they don't happen until, like, the spring. Oh, gosh. That's egg on my face obviously yeah uh let's see you won i think what's considered the most prestigious award any television show can possibly win sure you don't think so wait hold do you think there's one that's more prestigious i don't think

i don't think there's one that's more but i but it's it seems very silly to like it doesn't feel prestigious it's the tv award that exists you know okay they don't i there's nothing else out there i guess not no well then that's i mean then it is it's both the most prestigious and least it's the alpha and omega that's i and for a second there i thought maybe you were belittling your accomplishment like no it's just an award but that can't be true you haven't done that once since i've talked to you since you've won it is kind of it's it's uh it's a very it's it's like a silly thing. It's not silly. Like, I'm very excited to have won it, and it was a cool thing to do. But it didn't change anything the day before and the day after the Emmys were the same days. I still felt like we're in a category against Saturday Night Live and Colbert and Documentary Now and Sam Bee and Daily Show

and Corden and I know a lot of people who are in all of those shows and I respect all of them and they're all very funny so it's it's very strange to walk away from that category with an award when I feel like oh it's i'm the the this is gonna sound cheesy and dorky but like the the more meaningful reward was being in the same category as these people honestly like brian stack is the head writer for colbert and he's someone whom i've looked up to for all of my comedy writing life and we were in the same category and that's wacky okay yeah but you won I want to hear about the details of the win can I just hear like first of all just lay out for me what your tux is like my uh my tux is like a very simple tux from fucking Nordstrom.

And I went there. A very simple Maserati. Sorry? A very simple Maserati. Yes. Fuck you. I went there. I was like, I want a tux,

and I don't want to call too much attention to myself. And we got a tux, and I got a... This was a nice, humbling moment where the guy who was fitting me for my tux and i got a uh uh this was a nice humbling moment where the the the guy who was fitting me for my tux i was like i'm not sure i want a bow tie and he was like yeah for your face i wouldn't want a bow tie what an asshole you need a long tie because your your face is so he uh very kindly described it as cherubic which oh which means round yeah and like a yeah like a an illegal way yes um and so did your tuck shirt have frills on it or was it just a straight shirt? It was a straight shirt and I did the one where you don't have buttons showing. Yeah.

Nice. Okay. And then what was the, do you have a signature to it? What made it yours? Nothing. What I wanted to do was I wanted to find, if I was going to stunt anywhere, it was going to be in the shoes. I wanted matte shoes with a dash of white to them.

I wanted white on the soles, but I couldn't find exactly what I wanted. So I just got plain black shoes. Since I couldn't find anything that I wanted for the shoes, I just decided that if I'm going to throw any flair in there, it's going to be in the socks. So I just had bright rainbow shocking socks. Oh, that's nice nice and that's it that's the only thing that i had that was not like gun to your head classic black and white tux i like the idea of white soles on your shoes that's like a classic move that means you're

untouchable you float wherever you go your feet don't touch the ground i couldn't find them anywhere those shows those shoes don't exist okay well okay i'm really curious so they they call your they call last week tonight and you get to stand up you get to kiss your date who correct me if i'm wrong you brought your mom right yeah i hugged my mom and i walked out there it was uh i i i had mentally prepared to lose because that's how i go through life is assuming that i'm going to lose everything and uh on the off chance that we'd win like my the phrase that i had prepared to hear if we'd won was and the emmy goes to last week tonight with john John Oliver those were the words

that I was fixated on you're waiting for that L yes and Lin-Manuel Miranda who was the presenter who gave us this award said and the Emmy goes to the team behind last week's night with John Oliver so as

soon as I heard the team I was like that's not what I was expecting. We lost. That's it. And then when he got to the rest of the sentence was very surprising to me. And how many people are there? Is it just filled? The stadium is a stadium. Is the place just filled with like 500 people? 5,000 people.

Wow. And so you just get up and you can turn around and you can see all those people clapping for you? We do, yeah. And we can hear because we know that because the writers are nominated. We're in the orchestra. We're close to the front. But we know that the rest of our staff is also here. And they're up in the front but we know that the rest of our staff is also here and they're

up in the balconies because life is unfair and we can i know where where they are and i i can like hear the sound coming from them like i know the the loudest claps are coming from my co-workers who are up in the balcony and i i just want to share it with them okay so you get up you kiss you i mean you hug your mom you stand up and you turn around you flip off those losers up in the nosebleeds yep yep that's right and then you get to and then you just get to walk up the steps onto a big reflective stage yeah we walk up on this stage and there and there's 5 000 people there and i don't think i've ever been in front of 5 000 people in my life and uh more than that because you're it's live it's televised you millions of people are watching you in that moment yeah i guess are you trying to

make me retroactively more nervous no i'm i'm expressing my excitement for you. But no, it was very cool. And Sina, who is my office mate and one of the best writers I've ever met, he gave our speech. And he thanked the rest of the staff and our office dog, Bruce. And I barely remember any of that because I'm just like sitting there on the stage trying to be like, be present, be present right now. Hey, you're not present. Do it, do it harder. And, uh, before you know it, you're ushered off stage to go back. They like take you out of the building to go to another building where you actually get the physical Emmy and you have to sign it out. And then you, you wait for a while to go through a

series of press rooms where they take your picture and they ask John questions while you stand in the background. And I remember thinking about how hungry I was because this is like, here's the thing. It's nice to wear tuxedos and here's here's the thing it's nice to wear tuxedos and be around famous people and it's nice to be in a nice theater and to win awards but like you're there from 2 30 in the afternoon until 8 and they don't feed you here's the thing about the enbies they don't fucking feed you you're just sitting there being sweaty and hungry feed you you're just sitting there being sweaty and hungry this whole time and then we moved to this other backstage room while we're we're getting emmys and and waiting to go back into the into the theater and there's apparently like a separate party in the backstage room where there's

like a uh a cart full of tater tots that we are not allowed to have. I don't know who the tater tots are for, but we're just standing there desperately hungry while ushers wheel tater tots around for someone who is not us. You can do anything you want now. This just should be your free pass through any building you want, is that gold statue in your hand, to do anything you like. Yeah, but I couldn't, but the tater tots were on the other side of a rope oh well then your hands

are tied obviously yeah um and so how much of the show are you missing at this point we missed a bunch we missed probably 40 minutes of the show so the show just thins out as it goes on. Okay. This is so exciting. Yeah. It's also a thing that I was surprised by with the Emmys is that when the commercials happen, there's nothing for us to do. Like, it's not like an entertainer doesn't come out. Yeah, keep the crowd warm. To, like, excite the crowd during the commercials

and there's not even anything on the screen that will distract or entertain us. We just sit there. It's just a commercial and we all just sit there and wait for the commercial to come back and when we're a minute and a half back from the end of the commercial a loudspeaker voice comes out

and is like, take your seats. Everyone go back to your seats. Hey, sit down. Do it. We're about to come back. And when we come back, we want everyone clapping. Oh, shit. So you actually,

this is like being in the crowd for a taping, a live taping. Yeah, yeah. It's not fun. You have a job to do. You have to be loud and enthusiastic. Yeah. Oh, that's awful.

I also felt bad for every- I'm so sorry this experience happened every presenter every performer because like this is not a good crowd this is not a crowd that is excited to laugh and and have fun everyone's nervous everyone is waiting for their category and you've got anthony anderson and ken jong who are trying to make jokes in front of the worst audience i've ever seen yeah that's pretty standard fare for award shows i think yeah it's like the worst it's a it's a nightmare job for a comedian but uh god i gotta remember now that if i ever win any type of award where i'm allowed to give a speech I gotta thank an animal of some sort. Thanking a dog is such a good move because it immediately puts everyone on your side. Yeah. And no one does it. No, it was really great and like Sina

is again one of the best people in the world and he knew that we have 25 seconds to give a speech and he knew that no one gives a shit about who wins the writer award for late night variety talk show so he just wants to take up as little time as possible and uh i think he did an amazing job with the amount of time that he had as far as like honoring the people who are in our category honoring the people who are in our category, honoring the people who are on our staff, and then ending it with a joke on our dog, which was great. That's awesome.

And then afterwards, do you get to go to some really fun after parties or are they as awkward as I anticipate them being? They're super awkward. The Governor's Ball is the party for, I think it's anyone who was nominated, but also any rich muckety-muck who can buy their way into this party. Okay. So it was a fun party with a lot of famous people around there, but it was also crowded and overwhelming and strange. And then we also had the HBO party, which is all the HBObo folks and the last week tonight staff party which was the most fun because that was like oh good this is these are co-workers these are people that

i've worked with all year i like to party with them and dance with them that's nice that's great but there's a nice thing about so i don't know if you when was the last time you've been to like disneyland or disney world well i just got back from legoland okay so you mean specifically okay yeah okay uh disneyland i went last year okay so i found we go for our anniversary every year it's a big thing for us we really love disney is that true i don't think that's true no it's a terrible lie i yeah i those people really creep me out who are adults and very into disney but so i remember my uh my friend elise went uh i went with her to disney the one in florida which is in florida world yes yeah went to to disney world with her and my friend susan uh years ago they They ran like the Disney Princess half marathon,

and then they got tiaras. And a thing about Disney is if you walk around with a tiara, the staff has to say, hello, princess. They have to call you princess. Good morning, princess, good afternoon, princess, et cetera, et cetera. And I remember at the time thinking, this is stupid. As I'm walking around with my friends who have their tiaras and people are calling them princesses i think this is a very silly dumb thing but as i walked around these parties the governor's ball and these other parties holding an emmy everyone who sees me holding an emmy says congratulations, oh, I get it now. This feels very nice. I really just wanted to walk around with an Emmy for the rest of my life because strangers come up to you and they say congratulations.

And it feels very good. It feels like being called princess, I imagine. So the award show is in Los Angeles and the Emmy is about two feet tall and unwieldy how did you get it back did you carry it through the airport with you i had to put it in uh they they give us a box to put it in to uh to carry with you i checked my carry-on bag so i could have the emmy with me at all times on the flight home because i was afraid to check the Emmy. Because it's like a big-ass box. It's a big thing.

And when I went through... Two things about leaving. When I left the hotel, I had the Emmy in a big box, and George R.R. Martin saw it and came up to me and was like, I know what's in there. Congratulations. And I was like I know what's in there congratulations and I was like thanks George whoa it was wild and the other thing is that

when I got through TSA the TSA agents were like can we can we take it out and hold it and I get like I don't know yes of course I feel like it's I personally wouldn't ask to hold anyone else's Emmy

because I feel like I want to earn it. But once I got one, I just feel like, yeah, I want anyone in the world to hold it. Anyone. Take a picture with it. I don't care. Just do it. It feels cool.

No, I know. I totally get that impulse impulse i want to hold and touch an emmy yeah just see what the magic of it is yeah um find out if it fills the hole doesn't you're still the same person yeah oh that's so great and was your mom proud she was very proud yeah did she cry uh yeah that's great i mean there there's some some some like deeply personal emotional stuff that we won't get into but she was very happy yeah there's i think it's very common for people to say everything that a human does is for sex like the things you learn when you're young you learn how to play guitar because you want to be with girls you learn how to be cool you want to do sports like the end goal

is always sex and i disagree with that on one front which is that a lot of what i do is i want to make my parents proud and so when you actually see those moments where they're really really proud of you you it's like yes i could die in this moment yeah it, I was very excited that I got to do this for my mom. She got to fly out first class. It was the first time she flew first class in her whole life. And stay at a nice hotel and get nice champagne and go to a big fancy thing. She got her hair and makeup all done. And we got to see a bunch of famous people.

I was like, oh my God, it's Tony Shalhoub. And she said, he's tiny and old, but still. I like that your mom is like putting down anyone else who she thinks might be a threat to you. Are you kidding me? He sucks. Did you see him in big night not his best performance uh that's so cool and so you must in the hotel you're just seeing celebrities left and right

right we are yeah so we're staying in a uh a fancy hotel in beverly hills with um like most of the other hbo people so we're just like in the hotel with game of thrones and uh i didn't see any barry people but i saw some succession people which was huge for me because i love that show and and again game of thrones just like did you see cousin greg just like sorry did you see cousin greg i saw cousin greg he's so tall yes oh i'm so happy you got to see cousin greg but i Craig. I didn't talk to anyone. Should I have talked to anyone? No, I don't think so.

I think you did the right thing. I'm still... So one of the things that people have... Very nice people on the internet have said about me being on stage at the Emmys. They were like, oh, there's Daniel. He looks so awkward. No, come on. i still i i still kind of felt that way i still felt like even on this stage and holding a trophy which is like well

i can't talk to famous people oh that's okay well daniel we do this occasionally on the show but please step over here into soren's compliment corner for a moment i've seen the footage sit down the chair is very comfortable it's a little lower than mine compliment corner for a moment i've seen the footage sit down the chair is very comfortable it's a little lower than mine it's just a thing i do the i saw the footage of you going on stage and i you look like you belong there like it wasn't like when you see some a friend of yours in a movie or something like that and you're like oh that's it's weird i can't disconnect from the person you look like you that's you're like yeah that's the type of guy who should be winning that award like i liked seeing you up there and just being in your element and so for people to be like

he's no he looks so awkward he doesn't belong up there that's them projecting on you that's them being like no he's me trust me he's me that's exactly. He's me. That's exactly it. That's kind of you. You can step up. You can leave the corner if you want. Yeah, thank you. Oh, God. It was so hot in that corner. We're going back eventually. So sweaty. I do this once a show now, it turns out. Yeah.

Do you have any more questions about the Emmys or just bacon? Can we move on from Emmys? Did you guys do something when you got back just have one did you guys do like uh something when you got back to the office did you do like a like a pizza party and um kind of decompress from it no we went straight back to work honestly yeah because we had a we uh like i got back midnight tuesday and then went right back to work Wednesday morning. Cause we had a show the following Sunday, but Bruce is a changed dog.

Just different person. Bruce is strutting around in a muscle t-shirt. Like check me out. Uh, that's great, Dan. I'm really happy for you. Thank you.

It was fun. It was weird. Yeah. But of course it's going to be weird. It doesn't matter. The, this is like a, a thing that no one can take from you. It was fun. It was weird. Yeah, but of course it's going to be weird. It doesn't matter. This is like a thing that no one can take from you. And as much as people like to say, like, awards don't matter,

or it's not about the accolades, it's about the work. No, like this is a big deal, and you deserve it. Thank you. I don't care for this. Hey, Soren, quick question. Yeah, go ahead. Is there something that you thought of in your youth as like an aspirational goal, like the peak of success, something that you really wanted to get that once you got it you realized was uh not that great why don't you answer first i'll answer so growing up uh i was

super into the idea of one of those like roomba robot vacuums that was in my mind for decades was like, that's how you know you made it. If you got, if you got a robot vacuum that you can leave your house in the morning and be like, robot, take care of my mess while I'm away. And then it would do it. And because we didn't have one growing up, we had like a standard vacuum with a big fuck off bag attached to it and it was plugged into the wall and you would vacuum one part of the room and then you'd have to unplug it and move it to another part of the room and plug it in there and you just like do that dance around the house just unplugging and plugging this big unwieldy vacuum everywhere and i was aware of the idea of these cordless robot vacuums and i just thought if i get one of those that means that i really made it and i finally got one last year i got not a room but because that's still very expensive but like a

knockoff version of a room but i got that and was so excited about it that i was like i'll never have to move a vacuum around with my hand again i've got this thing that's gonna do it and it sucks it's bad it's not good i don't have a roomba wait why why is it bad it's bad it's so there's uh i don't know how to describe things in houses but like at the bottom of a doorway where there's like an elevated like ridge thing yeah there's the door jam and door jam yeah yeah the molding around the bottom it yeah the molding of the bottom he can't really handle that elegantly and uh he also can't handle anything that is like i have a a lamp that has a rounded base and he can't handle that and whenever he comes up against anything that is unusual to him uh he just fucking shits out whatever he absorbed previously so i i can set

him up to clean while i'm gone and then i get home and there's just a bunch of dust and and garbage in all of my door frames and at the base of my lamp dan i, I also got a room. I went through the exact same thing you went through three weeks ago, the full roller coaster. And, uh, I, I think it's because I don't have a pet and never had a pet, but I definitely like immediately, um, and I can't remember the word, but when you like place human emotions into an object, um, I like started thinking about the Roomba as a pet and i would come home and he would be like upside down and like spinning one wheel and it'd be like roomba no come on and then like i also get him to the vca yeah he ate one of my uh you can't leave anything on the

floor they're useless inventions he ate one of my uh like uh earbud cords and it got like into his organs and i had to take the entire roomba apart it's not a good invention no it sucks i saw i noticed both of you gendered your room was male yeah i'm curious if it's more or less sexist to think of it as a woman. Because generally, when things are not personified, my instinct is to make it male. And that's a problem. But in this particular case, I feel like maybe making it a female is way worse.

Maybe. I was mostly, I was very surprised and unhappy about how angry I allowed myself to get when the knockoff Roomba did something wrong. Because I treated it, I know it's not a a human but i treated it very subhumanally like i would yell at it and scream at it and be and and in a way that like triggered a thing in my brain that was like oh man if if if i was in the past i would have been one of those people who owned slaves and was bad with their slaves like as as soon as i'm presented with a thing that society has decided is subhuman i really go for it and i was unhappy to learn that truth about myself that must have been so relieving for jackson to see you'd be like no this thing's at the bottom of the food pole. Right at the bottom of the food pole.

God, sometimes I hate myself. Anyway, do you have an answer for that? I do, yeah. Yeah, okay, go ahead. There is one. When I was young, I thought that we would go get ice cream sometimes. And the idea of getting a waffle cone seemed like something only millionaires did. I, I don't think I ate a waffle cone until I was probably a teenager and had my own money

from a job. Like it was so exorbitant to me that we would go there. Maybe it was instilled by my parents, but waffle cones were the height of success for me. If you were really wealthy, you could have a waffle cone. What about Belgian waffle ice cream sandwiches? Oh my God, forget about it. I wouldn't even know where to get one of those. Only the elite get into those places uh yeah like hassles in wildwood new jersey sure really i know i would

i have never had one of those oh really that was that was peak luxury for us because we would we would go to our vacations growing up were to wildwood new jersey which is uh two hours south of where i lived in New Jersey. Great to get away from it all. On vacations. Sorry? Great to get away from it all. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Just leave it all behind and go two hours down the parkway to Wildwood, New Jersey. It was a beach town, and there was this place, Hassel's, that they made fresh Belgian waffles, and you would put ice cream in the middle of it and have a Belgian waffle ice cream sandwich. And we only got them once a year. And it felt like the height of luxury because it was like, oh, this is like an annual thing that we have to. My dad springs for this. Yeah. You go to school, you got to earn this.

You have to earn it by going to school all year yeah then you get your your one that was like for me the waffle cone was the next door it's like you get into the vip room and then you realize that there's a even a bigger vip room just going for ice cream was a big deal you do that on very special occasions and we go to somewhere if you go to a ben and jerry's that place smells delicious because they're cooking waffle cones the whole time and you walk in and knowing that like, yes, we're here to get this, but we're men of the earth. Like we're salt people.

Salt of the earth people? Right. Not my day. But you know you're getting a sugar cone or you're getting a plain cone because that's just what you do. The waffle cones are like the next level. That's for the executives. That's just what you do.

The waffle cones are like the next level. That's for the executives. It's like tater tots. That's exactly right. Yeah, waffle cones for me. And also I would put in that category cake. I would go to the grocery store with my mom when I was a kid, and I hated the grocery store,

but I was allowed to go over to the bakery section and just put my face on the glass and imagine what it would be like to taste any of those cakes and cake might as well have been a million dollars to me when I was young. Uh, I didn't understand. And it was something you only got on your birthday. I didn't realize that it's fucking $12 for a cake. Right. And I thought as an adult, I'm going to, I'm going to buy cake. I'm going to have cake on my own. It won't even be a special occasion. I'll make it just for me. And I still haven't done that. I have no urge to do that in my adult life. I did that in, in college just because I was, I I've always liked cooking and trying to get better at cooking. I've never been good at baking.

And then in college, I was like one day, which is like, I'm going to try to, to bake, even if it's as simple as like baking a cake from a series of instructions, I'm going to do that. And I baked a cake alone in my apartment, like my junior year of college and frosted it and everything like a full cake that I just made. And I was proud of myself. I was like, hey, I made a fucking cake. I took a picture of it and I sent it to my older brother. And I was like, look, I made a cake. He was like, do you want to come over?

Is everything alright? Look, I made a red flag. Yeah. How was it? Was it tasty? It was good. It was a competently made cake. That's like a trope in movies. The woman who

works in the bakery makes a cake for just herself because she's so lonely and and as an audience we go oh man this is really going through something yeah uh dan quick question uh-huh now that you're just writing and you're not doing this whole other arm of what you used to do at cracked which was performing do you do anything to keep up your acting chops or do you have any way like it just even if it's not intentional that you just have to you pitch in the room and have to do delivery and things like that uh i don't have to pitch in the room and do delivery but uh sometimes we do like the our writers room when we're just doing gangs which is uh the name that refers to when we have a series of setups and we have an entire day to do punch lines to a variety of setups so it's often 14 to 20 punchlines to nine to 12 setups.

We will often sell them in the room. We're not selling them to anyone. It's not like we're going to win anything or a joke will get picked based on how well it's sold. But you want to give it its best chance. Sorry? You want to give it its best chance, right? sold but you want to give it the best chance i'm sorry you want to give it its best chance right uh not really because there's the the people who pick the the jokes aren't in the room when we write them oh so when we read them out loud it's i'm mostly just trying to make my co-workers laugh

really okay and even then you're only doing it in one particular voice, right? Yeah. Is there any other outlet in your life for acting? I'll do voices and impressions in my mirror in the bathroom.

I do a lot of voices and impressions when I'm walking my dog if there's no one around. Like I still like like there's like a performing itch inside of me, not one that I want to scratch by actually performing in front of people. But I still like to do voices and and do weird bits out loud and I usually do that walking alone with my dog in the park and you break down impressions in the mirror

yeah how long do you spend doing that not a lot just like like 10 minutes in the morning wow no that's a super long time man that's not even the real answer wait so when you were in la did you use that kind of shit in your car

yeah okay so i see you're that's the thing that i miss most about having a car is that is uh there's not like a a self-contained orb where i can try out accents and impressions and voices yeah you you work on your karaoke song in your car you yeah i know i'm look i get it yeah uh but uh wow you're doing 10 minutes of impressions every morning like a a regiment. Yeah. I was just doing it this morning because I saw there's Beetlejuice is on Broadway right now. And I saw it recently and I'm floored by Alex Brightman, the guy who's playing Beetlejuice, because he's done such amazing things with his voice and his his vocal cords that he just decided that like the voice of beetlejuice is uh i'll do a bastardized version of it was like this is beetlejuice and this is how he sounds and he does it in a way that like is healthy to his vocal

cords like i couldn't do that for 10 minutes and he could do it eight shows a week and he bobs and weaves between that voice that i'm betelgeuse and also standard broadway singing voice like he just because the character demands that he does a bunch of course different things and i'm i'm so enamored by that skill right now that i just spent this morning, uh, with earbuds in. So no one, my neighbors couldn't even hear like the backing track of what I was doing, but I was just like wandering around my apartment singing Beetlejuice songs to try to do what he is doing. But if you were just like walking around in the hallway, you wouldn't hear something that sounded good. You just hear one person going every once in a while.

Yeah, yeah. That's say my name. I guess it shouldn't surprise me because that was always a thing that was you're quietly very good at. Correct. We would make jokes about it after hours that I'm quietly very good at singing all alone by myself. You're quietly very good at singing all alone by myself you're quietly very good at impressions you do you'd use them as like they're throwaways but you're very good at them and you even do them you would do them of co-workers and stuff like that and it would be like oh you'd hear it and and it would sound like it was very off the cuff but i'd be like man that's

polished that's a really good impression so i guess that makes sense that you that's like a thing you would do in front of the mirror that's way more than impression so i guess that makes sense that you that's like a thing you would do in front of the mirror that's way more than i thought you were doing really yeah so i but don't you do the same thing no do i have that wrong about you no no i don't do the only so when i started it at american dad i knew that i would have to be pitching in the room basically the same situation where you have a joke room that's separate, but then you're going to come into the big room, wherever the story room. And if you've got all these punchlines in a row, you're going to be reading them to the big room and whichever ones get the biggest laughs that the writer will generally pick that and put that in

the episode. And so you're selling it as the individual characters, you're kind of giving it the flavor of Steve or Roger or Francine. And so trying to, I spent a lot of time trying to get just enough that it didn't feel like there was a lot of effort to it, but that it was clear who the character was and it was selling it the best that I possibly could. Oh, so do you,

so do you like do a Roger when you're doing it, when you're trying to sell a Roger joke? Yes. And yeah. And what does that sound like, Zoran? Al Capone, I guess. I don't know, Steve. That doesn't seem like a good idea.

I don't know. That's very good. You're just giving it a little bit of the the element of it so that uh you don't want it to be like too you don't want to be like dead on but you also want to give it enough that people like yeah yeah i get it i get the gist um i can hear why don't you why don't you want to be dead on because then it's weird i think it was such a delicate balance when i first started that job i didn't want to come in and be like doing it like a dead-on klaus because then people like what the fuck why is he why like then it looks very polished it looks very worked on and that is

not the ethos of this job it's not like that's not what you should be spending your time on. And so that there I get a little bit of it, but I would say the majority of of my performance sing performance. Fuck you, Soren. This is the worst. The majority of my performances are now for my child when I read books to him at night. Like that's where I really keep it alive, where I can be. I'll try out different voices for different characters, especially when it's a book that I've read over and over again. I'll be like, yes, okay, here's an opportunity to try something new. And, uh, you know, the narrator has a pretty standard voice, but then each individual character,

I will just try something new with it. And occasionally my son will go, no, stop. And I know that that one's not working. that one doesn't play and i'll move on to something else and then when colleen reads it to him she he really wants her to do those voices too and especially if there's one that we've landed on like oh that's yeah the the mayor in this one is morgan freeman and she'll shoot no it's like, uh, you know, it's fine, Dan, don't cringe. It's fine. It's just my son. He doesn't know. And, uh, he'll want her to do it and she, she can't do it. And then he gets mad at her. And then I feel like there's something that only his dad can provide. Yeah, that's important. It's important to, on let a child know that to set the child against his two parents.

That's important. One parent. Yeah. Yeah. Just her. Specifically. Yeah. Right.

I'm glad you agree. Yeah. Do you still practice? I feel like I remember you used to practice accents in you agree. Yeah. Do you still practice? I feel like I remember you used to practice accents in the car. Yeah, I used to. No. So the only ones I do now, occasionally I'll try an accent in a book. Like there's one we have called Bear Snores On. And the way that they talk in it feels very British. So I'll try out a bunch of different British accents for all the different characters in that one. Like one of them's very posh and very from London.

And one of them is from Northern England. And I'll try out a bunch of based on like kind of the animal I'll assign it to like the gruffness of Manchester. I'll be like, Oh yeah, that's the badger for sure. Okay. And so I've tried that. I tried doing some russian and stuff like that for him and that those were a lot of the ones where he was like no stop where it was clear that it was hurting the story um all right well i'm gonna read some outros dan okay yeah that sounds good but i gotta got to find them first.

Before I, while I try and find those outros, I just had something I just want to ask you. You had told me at one point that the best solution to global warming was thinning the population. Do you want to expand on that? Yeah, I would love to. So here's the thing. And thinning has two different definitions.

A lot of people, when I said we need to thin the herd to solve climate change, a lot of people were like, you want to get rid of people? You want to like eliminate huge swaths of people? No, of course not. I just want to make them thinner. I want the population to stay the same. them thinner i want the population to stay the same i want us to maintain this rate of growth but i just want everyone to be a little weight conscious so we can cut a slim profile because i think the world is going to end when the world is going to end and we might as well look good

when we go out. I did not anticipate that this would go to fat shaming. I love that you doubled down. That is apparently how I feel. Starting now. All right. On Twitter, you can follow Daniel at DOB underscore Inc. You can follow me, Soren, at Soren underscore LTD. Or Michael Sroar at MakeMeBaconPlease.

You know how it's spelled. I'm not going to tell you again. You can follow QuickQuestion on Twitter at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. Or you can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. Riveting emails, I'm sure. And at some point, we're going to read them. We're going to read right through whatever people have sent. What about Instagram?

I get a notification every time. And how many do you say we get a week? I don't know. I don't pay attention to them. Ballpark. I don't know, six maybe. Whoa, shit, that's a lot. That's a ton.

Yeah, I mean, I can't wait to read them all one day. I'm going to buckle down. If you're not paying attention to them, what the fuck? Who do you think is going to check? We got one that was from Security Alert, but I don't know what that, that doesn't seem serious. Oh, so it's going to be spam maybe. Okay. You can follow, find, or hire our producer, sound engineer, and editor, Vincent, at siliconebeachpodcast.com.

We also have a Patreon, which is patreon.com backslash quick question. Patreon.com backslash quick question. That's kind of it. Thank you. Did you have anything else? No. Thanks, guys. Bye, Dan. thank you did you have anything else no thanks guys bye Dan