Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 37 - Karaoke Courage

Episode Date: April 24, 2020

This episode the guys discuss their go to karaoke songs, and parts of pop culture they're absolutely sure they're responsible for.  And as always, thanks to Skillshare.  Get 2 months of Premium Membership at Skillshare.com/QQ.

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast that answers the question, what if after hours, but less and worse? I am Daniel O'Brien, a writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, joined as always by Soren Bui, a writer for American Dad with Soren Bui. Soren, say hello. American Dad with Soren Bui, that famous show that you're all familiar with on TBS. It's back on the air right now, actually. We had our premiere last night oh really

did you guys uh do like a zoom party for it or anything yeah it's terrible yeah we did a zoom party we everybody got together and watched it it was the sound i just there's something about like when you try and show a video through zoom that you lose some of the sound and so like i don't know what causes it but you're losing dialogue along the way and then everyone got together at the end and of course no one's talking because you don't want to be the only person in that entire room of 60 people talking and it's just a lot of people staring at each other but i did really enjoy getting a glimpse into the rooms of the people i work with ah what did you... So I have thoughts on that, but you go first.

What are your takeaways? I want an open... I mean, if somebody's up against a wall, I'm almost mad at them. They're not showing me what their place is like. There are some people working out of garages, which I felt were kindred spirits of mine. But there were some people who were in rooms

that I couldn't describe because they're so full of stuff that I'm not sure what it functions as. And I have so many questions. They're like helmets and things like that in rooms. I found myself because there are so many shows that are filming via Zoom right now. And people who are doing uh tremendously altruistic live stream events over zoom or over instagram live to raise money for something uh and i like that everyone's doing this but i get i get so mad when it's clear there's been no thought given to either the background or the placement of the laptop like when someone is clearly looking down on a laptop from some like it doesn't it's not even about like a flattering position versus an unflattering position it's like you know that

you're going you're you're you're on camera right now and and like i don't know do something unless you're you're you're running around chasing a bunch of kids, which is very understandable. You don't have time to set up like a set or anything like that. You can do something. You can put a little effort into it. Put your computer on a stack of books. So it's like at eye level with you.

Right. No, I totally agree with you. I even do Zooms for my son's preschool. And when I get him set up it there's a lot that goes into where exactly i put the computer because i don't know like i there's like weird economic things that i don't want to think about where if your computer if your computer is showing a section of your house that's like other parents would look at and be like, Oh, that's opulent. Or like, or that's shitty.

And so I'm very careful about where I do that. And also how I frame my son in it so that he's, you know, ready to do it. And there's, there's always one family. And I know when they get on that their kid is, all I'm going to see is eyes, eyes and forehead. Yeah. And I'm like, just tilt it, just tilt it down. You set this up and then walked out of the room and you know, let me see your child. Thanks to Skillshare for supporting

quick question. Take the next step in your creative journey with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people on topics, including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more. Get two this on the last episode or I'm going to mention it on the next episode. But I've been taking a Zoom workout class, uh, through my apartment building. And, uh, some people have their, their cameras turned off, which is fine. You don't want to like let a bunch of people watch you silently work out and some have them turned on and that's fine too. Uh, I found there's one person who she has her camera turned on, who she has her camera turned on,

doesn't do the workout, and just leans very close to the camera and watches the entire time. Smile planted on her face, unmoving. I want like the most generous read I can give of this situation because that's what I want to do so it keeps my brain okay, is that she works for the building and she's monitoring the situation to make sure that she works for the building and she's

monitoring the situation to make sure that everything is on the up and up uh because every single other possibility is uh uncomfortable just just a strange woman watching a bunch of strangers work out that's wild take a picture I want to see your face I will it'll be in the footnotes on the webpage speaking of footnotes on the webpage Bacon is again not here he's been practicing self-quarantining

like all of us have been he is still engaged still doing very well and wishes you all the best. Definitely keep shouting at him on Twitter at MakeMeBaconPlease, P-L-S, and tell him that you miss him.

I was very close to doing a quick question with Bacon and Daniel earlier this week because Soren forgot that we were going were gonna record i felt so bad uh i yeah i completely forgot we were gonna record and i didn't respond it wasn't like i forgot and then they were like hey where are you and then i responded like oh shit i forgot they they waited for me they asked where i was and then I would say maybe an hour and 45 minutes later, I said, oh shit, I forgot. Yeah. Bacon and Gabe, our engineer and producer and editor, and I sat on the phone for a while, just like genuinely talking for like 45 minutes. And then like,

hey, at some point, should we call S.W.O.R.D.? I felt so bad about that um i'm really sorry no no no it was fine and we're doing that's not my that's not my mo i'm not that guy and like bacon doesn't yes no you're not that guy it's so much more it seems so much more likely that i would forget than you would forget and uh you know it was an an Easter miracle that things went the other way. We're going to get into this show where two buddies ask each other questions, but before that, Soren wanted to address our listeners for the last time. Yeah, our listeners who prefer to be called the fast and the curious. Love it.

I also realize that when I say for the last time, it probably sounds like you're quitting the podcast, which is not true. It just means that your four-week run of coming up with the name of our listeners is over now. And thank you for doing that. That was a lot of fun. It's been very helpful for me. Yeah.

And Fast and the Curious is good. I appreciate it. So I was really worried because it was good enough when I came up with it that I was like, Dan's done that one. I'm certain of it. Nope, absolutely not. I think I leaned so hard into portmanteaus of either quick or question that things like changing the title of something to curious, which isn't necessarily in the title of our show, but speaks to the nature of it. That didn't cross my radar exactly.

But I like that i i tried to draw a lot of water from the well of the word inquisitive and could not find anything there it was so hard did you uh what was the closest that you you got to i think it was uh I think it was a podcast that's inquisitive. And then briefly I had another word, I had another word that sounded somewhat like it, but it meant it was not, it was not useful. It was like that we were contentious with each other. It wasn't true. And I was like, this is not, this one's going at the bottom of the list.

Inquisitive was so like quiz you can get, can get away with but there's no there aren't a lot of other words that sound like inquisitive no uh well we should we're gonna get into the show where we ask each other questions but first we're gonna just do our recurring segment i guess now where we just do a quarantine check-in. Soren, how is quarantine going for you? Socks. How about you? Uh, not great. I, I today had a thought that, uh, I'm so glad I didn't act on, but there's a chance it's going to happen in the future. I was, uh, singing along in my apartment. I've been listening to a whole lot more music in my apartment because I'm, I'm here more often. I'm usually more out and about. So I've just been like going through music and like dipping into some songs from my past and some new artists that I'm just becoming newly obsessed with and just like, well, I've got time to let me dig into all of

Lake Street Dive's musicography and just like listen to all of it and be consumed by that uh and then once i did that i started listening to stuff that i listened to a bunch in college and there's this one band called moxie fruvis which is a very strange band that is like sometimes purely an acapella band and sometimes a band with instruments and their songs are wacky and sometimes serious and it and it's like it's like it's like perfectly my shit in terms of an overlap of piano harmonies janky ass voices and lyrics you don't hear everywhere else which is i think the the venn diagram of my music taste that i've mentioned on this podcast. Yeah, solely at the heart of it is Ben Folds 5. Yes, of course. And listening to Moxie Fruvis today,

I was singing along to the bass part in one of their purely acapella songs and was just like an ass hair away from tweeting. If anybody else out there knows the other parts of Gulf War by Moxie Fruvis an ass hair away from tweeting. If everybody, if anybody else out there knows the other parts of Gulf War by Moxie Fruvis and would like to get on a zoom chat right now and sing them together, I would be down.

I had to stop myself from doing that because that's an insane thing to do and would only invite madness. But in the moment, the idea of like singing with a group of people was very appealing to me, even though I'm not in a band right now. I'm not in an acapella group and I don't go to shows enough where like I'm singing in a crowd of people that this is a reasonable itch that I would need scratched. It's I've just reached that point of quarantine where it's like I I want to I I want to sing with people I want to do it right now that's really interesting I wonder if I mean I never

have that impulse but it's also because I I've had it beaten out of me I know I'm not a good singer and my my mom when I would sing when I was a child would turn off the radio but uh i i think maybe i get like or i get it when i drive around i do a lot of singing to myself that's what i was gonna ask i was gonna ask if you like if you do you get to like take drives during the quarantine and either practice funny voices and accents because i know that you like to practice accents in the car or sing in the car, or are you like purely staying home all the time? I stay home a lot more than I used to. When I do drive, it's not, I'm not in the same mood as I used to be. Whereas like, oh, you'd be fun. It's like, let's try South African today. Uh, and so so i i don't sing nearly as much as i used to but i still do it occasionally

and i but i don't feel like i missed it either i don't know how you possibly do it you don't have anywhere you can just go sing i don't know and like i can sing in my shower a little bit and uh you know when i i go for runs i listen to music a lot and I will lip sync to what I'm listening to and imagine myself singing. But yeah, no, otherwise nothing. That's, that's, that's, I sing when I cook. I don't know why I say I don't sing a lot. Specifically when I cook, I'll throw on shoot show tunes and, and just like completely shamelessly sing them while I'm cooking. Well, that's good. That's a good place to do it. And I don't think that makes me the most annoying neighbor on my floor for the coronavirus because so many of my neighbors

have taken this as an opportunity to leave their trash in the hallways. to leave their trash in the hallways. Oh. We have a garbage chute about 45 feet from my apartment, and my room is the furthest away from it, so it's closer for everyone else, but a bunch of my neighbors still... I don't know why someone in the comments can explain to me why it's the safe thing to do

to put your garbage bags in the hallway. They don't want to go touch the trash thing to do to put your garbage bags in the hallway they don't want to go touch the trash thing oh but here's the thing like no one is going to do it for them we don't have people who are going to come and throw out their garbage it's just they will temporarily leave their garbage in the hallways and then do it later so in the meantime i just have to walk past a bunch of garbage oh ruins everybody's day i know and like most days are already ruined yeah you don't need to add on to it by just like like forcing me to walk past garbage every day let me ask you this about your singing dan Dan. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's better. I feel better about it. I don't want to do this negativity.

Do you ever just pull up a song and you're like, maybe this is going to be my karaoke song? And so you just practice it over and over and over again, thinking when the day comes, I'll pretend like, I'm just like, oh, they have this song. Oh, I know that one. And you're just going to do it and you're going to nail it. Yes.

So my my karaoke stuff is in. I'm still very like like. Nervous and embarrassed about most karaoke, because when I don't have that thing in me where. I'm really okay being accidentally bad in front of people, I guess. Because if you're picking a karaoke song and you're singing it in front of people, the subtext of that is like, oh, he thinks he sounds good on this. Let's see. And I know most people don't actually think that. I know most people are like, we're at karaoke and none of us are trained singers and just like we're all friends let's be

fine but this is the way my brain works is that i i i i feel tremendous pressure to if i'm going to present something to make it seem like i really mean it and i'm and like i and i want to impress you so the way that that manifests in karaoke is i often do songs where it's ironic or funny because i'm a coward so i'll do uh bust a move or uh i like big butts you know something where it's like it's like oh even if he's, something where it's like, it's like, Oh, even if he's bad at it, it's like funny that he's trying it. You know, it's still entertaining. A lot of fast lyrics to it. Yeah. But it's still like, it's not wildly impressive. And it's, it's like, I can still wink and be like,

I don't really think I sound good on this because it's, it's silly that I'm even doing it to begin with uh because again i'm like i'm a coward and i want to i want to have that that ripcord that i can pull in karaoke with my friends where i was like see i wasn't too serious about it i don't actually think i'm good like that the entertaining part was how bad i am ha ha ha bye but the irony parachute right but but deep down i've been working on uh let's get it on very seriously for for years as a karaoke cover which i think is born from the reveal in the high fidelity movies when jack black sings it uh and like we all know that Jack Black can sing now, but at the time, unless if you weren't a devoted Tenacious D fan, you just saw like a chubby, weird metal head and you had no reason to assume that he could sing well.

So it was a great reveal in the movie when suddenly he busts out a near perfect, let's get it on. Uh, and so I've been like trying to perfect that for a very long time it's it's just at the top of my range and it's also like it's a very long song with a lot of dead space so you need to be comfortable with that dead space and i'm not there yet but you know that's the hope one day it's just like hanging out with co-workers and you're like ah i guess i'll throw on this song because people like it and just and and just fucking nailing it yeah that's a that's a really really good one to surprise people with i think that's a good choice which i don't think i would

i will like even vocally if i can nail it i still don't think it's a good fit for me because like there's an inherent sexiness to it that i can't pull off like sorry right now gun to your head picture me having sex it's not cool right it's funny yeah but you guys are having a good time it's just funny yeah yeah it's funny uh i i think uh but that's part of the charm of it. Right. Is that you doing that song, you, you still have that irony out where it's like, I like that guy doing it. Yeah. Um, like you making the faces and stuff like that is going to come across as funny. If I see it, it's very different. If I did that song, it, it looks like a bro doing, let's get it on thinking about set and like you don't you immediately hate that guy right because you would use the time i mean not you specifically but like a you type would use the time in between verses and choruses in this dead space you would be like being sexual you know like air air thrusting humps and like maybe even invite a woman from the crowd on stage that you can like try to seduce like that's a good move for a person and i would be like

earnestly counting the beats between verse and chorus in that time there's just there's no winning for me to do a song like it doesn't sound like there's winning for either of us i don't think either of us should do that song ever all right good because i there's no way i could pull that off i'm not a great singer so i would do a lot of the same stuff as you i would choose a i chose funky called medina for a long time because it's tone loc and i knew it as a child so well that i can do it backwards and forwards but uh two christmases ago i pulled it out at a karaoke party at work and realized how awful the lyrics are, how like poorly they've dated. And so I can't do that song anymore. And then I started looking for another

one and I can do, I can just do run around Sue by Dion and the Belmonts, which is a great song and a very fun one to do on stage, but I can't always nail it. So it's risky. There's another one that this year I knew we were going to be doing karaoke at my office. I know that people are good there. I knew that I had like a really great song picked out that would be very, very good. And I practiced it a lot quietly by myself and the day came and I chickened out. Yeah. And I never did. out yeah i never see like much more than uh having a song that i could do really well i would trade for the confidence to do a song kind of okay and not have it ruin my night like i think we we i i won't uh name him but it's brett we both used to work with Brett and had a company Christmas party with karaoke. And he sang so many songs and he doesn't have the best voice in the world,

but he's like clearly comfortable in his own skin and having a good time and just getting up there. And he's like, I'm going to sing the Mariah Carey. All I want for Christmas is you song. And he just does that. And like, no one's mad mad at him and i can intellectualize that in the moment that like no one's mad at him no one's gonna be like let's stay away from that guy for the rest of the night but i still i can't be that guy no i can't i can't just pop up and be like look i want to do this this this fucking dave matthews band song or or i want to do another song that I think I sound kind of okay on, like this hose your song or whatever. I can't do that.

And I'm surprised that you can't because you're a confident fella. Yeah, I know where my limitations are though. And singing is one of them. I'm not a good singer. I really have to practice at a song and it has to be within a like a talky range for me to get it right we would like to again thank Skillshare one of our sponsors Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people explore new skills deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity. There are so many ways Skillshare's membership with meaning is valuable in this moment. Strong community is essential in times of hardship.

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They offer creative classes designed for real life and all the circumstances that come with it. It's always the right time to stay inspired and express yourself and connect with a community of millions. And Soren recently started taking another Skillshare class. Soren, would you like to talk about it? Yeah, absolutely. So I started taking a simple productivity one just because I started to feel like I couldn't write during this time. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I was blaming it on the fact that my family was home, that my son was interrupting, that I had to be in a particular headspace before I could even begin.

And if I got interrupted from that, I had to start again from scratch. And from scratch usually meant watching some YouTube videos until I was sick of it and I would write. And just taking a simple productivity class, I was learning that like, no, a lot of these leniencies that I'm giving myself aren't actually true. Like there's a way to get yourself into the right headspace for what you need to do every single day. And it was super valuable. I really liked it. Yeah. It's been very useful to me as well. I mean, like I am used to having an office to go to and, and having tasks and just being home all the time as we all are. Uh, and there's so much uncertainty about what you're supposed to be doing at any

given moment is very helpful to have these classes that help break up that uncertainty and monotony. Uh, they give us all this sudden burst of creativity and, uh and community that have been very helpful. And you can explore your creativity and get two free months of premium membership at Skillshare.com slash QQ. That's two whole months of unlimited access to thousands of classes for free. Get started and join today by heading to Skillshare.com slash QQ. I'm going to say it again just because we have, I think, the easiest promo code in all of podcasting. Skillshare.com slash QQ to get two free months of premium membership today.

Should we get into the show? Oh, the show. Yeah. I got a quick question for you, Dan. Oh, hit me. I got a quick question for you, Dan. Oh, hit me. Is there something in culture that you just swear you're responsible for?

You know it's probably not true, but you feel pretty confident that you were either the first one to come up with it or someone came up with it because of you. I can go first here if you want. No, I'm locked and loaded i i feel like and i can say this not actually believing it to be true but i do feel like i feel some responsibility for uh the widespread appreciation of teddy roosevelt as a badass icon on the internet specifically um there I uh will never claim to be the first person who noticed that Theodore Roosevelt is cool he's got like a an unimpeachable pedigree and uh a lot of accomplishments and is broadly badass in any way that you would measure that uh i started writing about presidents in 2007 2008 on the internet in a specifically comedic way and specifically focusing on uh traditional and now problematically defined badass aspects yeah and

uh this was at a particular time where where that flavor of badassetry was prevalent on the internet so i certainly didn't invent that genre of things but i i'll look at an article I wrote in 2007 about bad-ass presidents and the glorification of these hyper-masculine aspects of certain presidents. And I've, and I'll follow like a, a spread from that moment to a continuation of that idea, uh, that I, a continuation of that idea uh that i i can in good conscience claim credit for because i didn't invent either the part of teddy roosevelt that makes him badass or interesting or the idea of glorifying these aspects of a person for comedic effects.

All that said, in like my quietest moments, I do feel some amount of ownership over it, if not outright responsibility. Yeah, well, you're contextualizing a history to give it a funny flavor or a funny hue. Yeah. I mean, the reason that I wrote my first book, How to Fight Presidents, and the reason that it, I think, sold at the time was

there weren't a whole lot of other people that I knew of that were focused on the coolest, most superficially badass aspects of presidents. Yes. I think you're absolutely right. It's also like the most viewed article that you have. It changed the way people talk about Teddy Roosevelt online, I think. There's the same way that like Robert Brockway rewrote an article

for our site in which he touted the honey badger. And then like the honey badger blew up in a lot of other quadrants online. And I think it originated, that seed was there because of Brockway. Right. And the context that he gave for an animal that just doesn't give a fuck was then pull, everybody else like latched onto that. Like, yes, of course. And then he, i think he sort of burst that movement a little bit oh i i mean i think you want to be you want to be careful about

that i don't know if you know if you know no no no it was his but i don't know if you if you know where the where the movement has ended up no uh i'm not googling right now. So I'm going to fact check myself in a little bit. But Honey Badgers certainly spread from an article that he edited and became like a big viral sensation. And there were T-shirts made. But I think fast forward a few years, Honey Badgers has become the nickname for the group of women who are adjacent to the men's rights activist movement. Oh, damn it. These are like pro MRA women call themselves the Honey Badgers. Let me actually see if I know what I'm talking about now. Well, there's a there's still a Honey Badger who's a safety in the NFL. That's i feel like that's okay this was because i uh do you remember a couple years ago we were at the calgary's version of comic-con their comic expo and uh there was a group of people who were banned for uh i don't want to give them the credit of saying that they were protesting they just showed up to a bunch of panels,

usually led by women, to ruin the panels. To derail them. Yeah, I remember. This was MRA and the Honey Badgers. Yeah, I'm looking at an article now from ABC. Meet the Honey Badgers, women who say women are oppressing men. Okay, well. All right, so it got-

So you want to say that that's Brockway's legacy? That is his legacy. Front to back, flawless legacy. No, I think you're probably right about Teddy Roosevelt. And just like the way that we think about presidents, your conceit was that you'd have to be absolutely insane to want to be president. to want to be president and then you follow the insanity of each of these men who were president and like pull out the details that are the most that are the funnest to think about like a little things you just can't even get your head around that they believed in mole people and stuff like that or that they died of like eating too many cherries and drinking milk like that stuff is it all works really well under the banner of like this is a crazy person yeah in a way that i i don't totally stand behind today just because i was talking to a co-worker earlier this morning who hadn't realized that i had written

any books uh which is uh great news for me as as a self-promoter um and i had to to qualify it with like oh i don't totally stand behind everything that I did in this book because it was so focused on what we now understand as a toxic idea of masculinity. It was just like badassery and not giving a shit. And like, I just have to qualify so much with like, yeah, there's like the Andrew Jackson chapter where I talk about how good he was at beating up assassins with a cane and how he had a parrot pet that he trained to say curse words. And I did not mention the genocides because that did not fit the spirit of the book that I was doing, of bad assadry and uh quiet on problematic areas and dismissive of uh politicians that i personally didn't agree with yeah it's not the most balanced book in the world that i i don't mean to distance myself from but you had but you it's like you're working in a time when like, in a time, like it was like the 1950s. Way back in 2014.

You're working in a time when you trusted your audience to handle that sort of information well. Like that they would be responsible with that sort of information. But there's like a weird thing that's happened culturally where the people that we labeled as badass because they were lunatics, that became behavior that people tried to emulate. Yeah. And assuming that that was all sincere. And no one was sincere about that stuff. And so now you have to be way more careful in a way that you are putting something out in the world. That's true. But you have to be careful that the audience that you're building isn't taking you at your word. Right. the safe confines of a silly comedy book with well-drawn cartoons to illustrate and escalate

how wacky all of this was i don't want anyone to think that it was a roadmap for like oh yeah this is what a man is and this is what a man should do right i'm on bear with you you want to know what i created i do yeah the electric toothbrush okay yeah this is so much better than anything i could have guessed why do you think that you created the electric toothbrush because i fucking made one uh so you remember back when you were a young kid in class maybe you did like some sort of program where you would try and get you'd create um that your teacher would give you foam and straws and things they like you got to make a car and this car has to whoever car can go the fastest with a sail on it and whoever's car can go the fastest or the farthest they win yeah it was just teachers

telling you or they were gonna be like hey're going to get a bunch of coffee straws and organize them any way that you want, and we're going to hang eggs off of it. Yeah, egg drop. The egg drop, yeah. So I remember getting one of those little motors that's just like a simple motor. It's just you touch two sides to a battery,

and the front spins, and you can put maybe an eraser on it, and suddenly you have like a little fan. Um, but I got one of those motors from, uh, you know, one of the, it was, I think we were creating actual cars. I think we were creating little cars that had sales on them. And I remember thinking, you know what you could do? You could put bristles on the front of this and it would just circle and you could do

that on your teeth. They were not popular at the time i was i want to say i was like nine or ten not popular or didn't exist well so i just went this isn't fair though that was they're from like the 1950s but they're certainly not popular that i wasn't aware of them and my finger was on the pulse of culture when i was nine right so uh out in the woods where you got mail once every three months we had three channels of television that came in only when it wasn't snowing so i was watching a lot of commercials obviously and you lived in a place where like the idea of a new toothbrush was actual news i i got i went i remember going to ben franklin which was our drugstore and finding a toothbrush that looked like i had a head that was circular enough that

i could take it home ruin one of my dad's saws trying to cut it off. And then not quite understanding how to get it on. And my brother helping me and we put, I think it was my brother. It might've been, so we have family friends too. It might've been one of them, but we put rubber cement in the back and it did cycle. I mean, it was quite a mouthful. I'll tell you now, it was hard to get in your mouth. But you could do your front teeth with it as long as you just exposed them. And I thought, this is brilliant. And it's just a prototype.

It's allowed to be clunky. It's a prototype. Yeah. I was like, I could make a million dollars with this. And within a year, I started seeing them other places. And I just know, I know in my heart that someone came to Carbondale, town of 8,000 people at the time, and saw this invention of mine. And they were like, by Jove, I've got it. And then they went off and sold it to Oral-B for millions of dollars.

And now they're sitting pretty. And where am I? I'm in a garage, listening to traffic and some sort of work being done outside. It's crazy that even when people come to Carbondale, they're also in the past. They say things like, by Jove, it's just as soon as you cross county lines. That's how we talked back then when I was nine.

I swear to God, that's mine. There's nothing like creatively on on the internet or in writing that you feel like is uniquely yours i'm trying to think not really um i've i've sort of convinced the world that that the tamarin monkey is called the brockway monkey oh that's right that's a good one um that i've encouraged people to change all online encyclopedias because it has like a little mustache and uh i thought that was that was really fitting and now like national geographic calls it on their their twitter channel they call it uh a brockway monkey and wikipedia has it for a while um but culturally like pop culturally i

don't know that there really is other than some of the stuff we've done through after hours which is a communal effort like that's like the pixar theory and um that type of stuff that theories that ghostbusters is just a libertarian wet dream i i do think and there's there's no way to prove this and it would be absurd to say that you're the first handsome person to ever do comedy but just because the internet comedy landscape in the early like the 2008 through 2015 world where it was so so much the dominion of scrawny beardy beardy uh plaid wearing folk indoor cats and then you emerged as a comedic voice who was also, um,

rudely handsome, I think, and rudely, rudely fit. I think that, that is a thing that you can take some ownership on. Like there was, there was always like attractive comedy icons, certainly since, since, since forever. But there was, we had settled on an idea of what an internet comedy writer looked like and what their past was and what their future would be and you broke that mold uh in a way that i think others have taken advantage of that's very nice like like very without the necessary darkness very analogous to Anthony Jeselnik, because when he came out doing comedy,

it was just like, no, I'm not one of these guys who's going to come out on stage with like a half beard and complain about my, my dick and how hard it is to date. I'm popular and powerful and cool and confident. And I'm going to own that on stage. I think that was a thing that you owned very much in your writing.

Thank you. That's very nice of you to say. I probably cribbed something from Anthony Jessup. I probably stole some of that from people like him. That's very kind of you. I hope that's true. As you're saying it, I was thinking there is something that I know that I'm at least partially responsible for, and that's the now more popular

or the rising popularity of naming a child Soren, just from being in the world, just from having that name that I didn't even get to choose and existing in a public space, like on a public forum where I was in front of a lot of different people and that name was exposed to a lot of different people. I noticed now there's a huge uptick in naming your child Soren. Right. Just enough people who've been like, Hey, that's an option. Right. Just like, that's something to hang your hat on. All right. I got a quick question for you. Yeah, shoot.

And I'll go first on this one because I don't know. I'm not going to do a good job explaining it. Are there simple lessons you find yourself relearning over and over again? And I'm going to start with a household one for me. That is like very simple and practical. My vanity, my medicine cabinet in my bathroom is above my toilet. There's mirrors that you push on to, and it opens and then you can get your, your whatever out of there. You can get your, your razors and your, and your, your deodorant, whatever you keep in there. And it's directly above my toilet. And I keep going into

that medicine cabinet, grabbing something, knocking something out while I'm grabbing it. And then it falls into my open toilet and I could put the lid on my toilet, but I've lived here for, for, for too long now now and i haven't made that adjustment and it's one of those things like the last time that i grabbed a bottle of tums and accidentally knocked my nail clippers into the toilet i said out loud alone in my apartment what if i never learn what if i just never what if the lesson never takes root in my brain that was like, hey, Daniel, if you want something in the medicine cabinet, close the toilet so you don't drop anything in the toilet. I don't think that's going to happen. I think I'm going to keep doing this

forever. I'm laughing because I've run into the exact same thing in the past. But I get the benefit of actually having a toilet closed only because I did it out of spite. When I was first aware of the fact that you were supposed to put your toilet seat down after you peed because that's the polite thing to do, I was a young kid and rebelled against that thinking cops don't own me. I can do what I want. Right. And so my idea was, listen,

if they really want the toilet, if anybody wants to sit down, I'm going to put both of them down. Then it looks way more attractive. You got a lid on there and everything. And then it became habit for me that whenever, after I go to the bathroom, I just put both of them down and sit.

And then on our old house, we had one of those vanities right above the toilet and i would drop shit on there all the time all the time it would have gone right in the toilet but you're smart and you're lucky i'm not smart i think i'm just vengeful i don't know what i was trying to prove also i don't think anybody was like shit he got us. Yeah. Everyone was like, yes, thank you. Thank you for putting the toilet seat down.

I remember the toilet. Well, we'll get back to this. But I remember the toilet seat thing being confusing to me where I knew there was something you needed to do. And I remember being in either middle school or high school with a mixed group of friends going to the bathroom. I mean, like, oh, I have to lift the toilet seat up when I pee so I don't pee on the toilet seat. Good. I did that. And then left the bathroom thinking I did the right thing.

And then a female friend went into that bathroom and was like, Dan, put the toilet seat down. And I was like, well, now I don't know. I put it up and down. And I was like, well, now I don't know. I put it up and down. That feels like I'm shouldering all of this burden at this point. Like, yeah, I'm not going to clean the lint trap when I come up to the dryer and after I use it. Surely I'm doing someone else's job. No, I'm with you. And I was a kid and there was, I didn't understand sexism or anything yet.

And I was just like, no, fuck you. Like I had, I'm not doing all the work. Yeah. Except then I ended up doing even more, which I guess is a lesson. Yeah. It ended up saving you. It ended up, I mean, like you, you,

you surely buy fewer nail clippers than i do that's true so you just throw that stuff away uh depending on the state of the toilet oh that's true okay i get it i might just see what happens if i flushed it at that point. Um, but I, the other day I walked into my son's bathroom and he was supposed to be in his bed. He's supposed to be sleeping. And I walk in and he's over in the bathroom and I'm like, what is he doing? And I see him in there like using the sink and everything and then going and drying his hands. I'm like, did he just wash his hands after going to the bathroom? And what had happened is he had a toy that he was playing with while he was peeing, dropped it in the toilet, reached in, grabbed it, and then went over to the sink and run it under the water for a

little bit. And then did a heavy dry with the towel on it. And I was like, oh, okay. No, you can't do that. I mean, that seems like a pretty advanced understanding. Yeah. I couldn't be mad at him. Hygiene, yeah. He knew that he was supposed to clean it off, and I was like, did you reach in the toilet and get that? And he said, no, it was floating. And I was like, okay.

Smart. Good dodge. Yeah. Touche. All right. We do need to clean it a little bit better than that. This thing has a lot of porousness to it. We have to get this clean. And then now we have to wash this towel as well. But I'm trying to think if there's anything that I, I mean, I, the one that immediately comes to mind is when I am in the kitchen, I'm really bad at cutting things. Anything. It's chopping. I don't do it right. I don't do that fingernail thing where you just crimp your fingernails

like you have arthritis on top of the object that you're cutting so that if you accidentally drop the knife down, it's just going to slide off your nails. Right. Or you put the blade on your knuckle and you never let the blade rise too high. Yes.

I don't do any of that. If I cut a bagel, I'm't do any of that. I also, if I cut a bagel, I'm cutting right into my hand every single time. I cut apples, holding it in my hand, cutting wedges out of the apple. And I do all the things you're not supposed to cut towards me.

I do all the things you're never supposed to do. That's exactly the kind of shit I'm talking about where it's like, this isn't, you haven't gotten any new information. You shouldn't have been doing this. And then you get punished for it. And again, you have that shrug moment where it's like, it just might not be in the cards that I learned this. I might never get better.

And we all have to accept it. And every single time I do get punished for it by fate, my first thought is, I have to accept it and every single time i i do get punished for it by fate my first thought is i have to go to the hospital i have to go it's like i run it underwater to see how bad it is but in my mind i've cut off my hand finally and i'm like yeah you this was coming man this was definitely coming and then i look at it and it's always it looks like a paper cut but i i cut myself constantly in the kitchen and then it translates into, uh, when I do like woodwork, I'm so bad about safety and it's, it's like, it's super dangerous there. Um, yeah, you'll actually cut your hand off there. Right. I, I am, I try not

to be, but I can get towards the end of like my cuts. If I'm making a lot of cuts on wood, it's always towards the end. I start to get lazy and I start to make really bad decisions around a table saw where like, I'll see if I cut off just like an inch off of something at the end. And there's just a little nub that's bouncing around next to the blade. My first instinct is just be like, I'll just grab that and get it out of there. And I have to actually stop myself. I'm like, no, you cannot do that.

You have to wait till it out of there. And I have to actually stop myself. I'm like, no, you cannot do that. You have to wait till it stops. Right. It's tough because it's the exact kind of thing where if I was in your shoes, I would also try to cut corners and go like the fast way. Then I would slice off my finger and have to go to a doctor and be like,

there was no way around it. No one could have seen this coming. Yeah. I guarantee that one of these days in the kitchen certainly i will do enough damage to my hand that i'll need to go get an artery sewn up or whatever and i and they'll be like what were you doing and i'll have to be like i was in a knife fight yeah because i can't ever want to go to i can't go to a doctor me like, yeah, I was slicing mushrooms on my belly. I'm sorry. It was just more comfortable.

Thought I had control. Didn't. My son uses, he's grilling the Legos now. He can play with the tiny ones and he can build with the tiny ones and that's a huge achievement to unlock. And when he's doing it, I noticed that when he's got the two flat ones together or little tiny ones. And that's a huge achievement to unlock. And when he's doing it, I noticed that

when he's got the two flat ones together or little tiny ones, he'll bite them off like the little two prongers. He'll bite at them to get them off. And I'm like, don't do that. You're going to choke on those. How did you learn how to do that? And then I realized that when he, now that he doesn't do it and he brings it to me and he's like, here, I can't get these two unstuck. I'm like, oh, I got it. Just bite into it. Okay, that's fair. Can I ask you, oh, this is tangential, but when you're doing Legos, what is your process? What is the first thing that you do when you're building a new Lego thing?

Open it up. I don't even open up the bags yet because I want to make sure I'm using the right bag first. And then I go to the instructions. I figure out which bag they want me to use first. And I don't even open the other bags until, until I know that we're on that step. Okay. So a writer that we both used to work with, very talented, Kathy Benjamin, she posted a picture recently of a Lego thing that she and her husband were doing. And how she resented the chaotic way that he approaches Legos, where he just puts everything in a pile and pulls from there. And she said, this is the only way to approach Legos. and pulls from there and she said this is the only way to to approach legos and she had every piece had been individually taken out and like joined together so like four piece long reds were all in a pile of four piece long reds it was very organized like like here she separated them by

kind yes she separated by by kind yes correct uh and that was her natural approach to legos and that is fully the opposite of my approach to legos yeah i want everything in a in a bucket and i want to search for everything one by one absolutely wait so does she have it them in just like those like you put dimes in a pile you put quarters in a pile like they're all in a pile together it's very aesthetically pleasing to look at i understand the appeal of it uh it's just not how i approach either legos or puzzles yeah i i think that might be crazy because my i'm not a crazy person but my way wave seems so much better from a gut perspective. I do know what you mean. If I'm doing something freeform as a kid or with my son, I want to just pull from the bucket.

I want to build as I go and be like, what's the piece I need next? Oh, I need one of these angle ones. All right, I'm going to go find that. Right. And the search is part of it. Yeah. But yeah, with him, just because when we're building building with him i don't want to lose the pieces so i won't even unbag anything and when i open a bag i have one very small hole in the bag so that that bag then gets kicked around it's not

legos aren't flying all over the house but we built a um a ship i think it's a Star Lord ship from the Avengers. The Avengers from Guardians of the Galaxy. It was ambitious. It was a big project and it's very cool. Within three days, it broke. Yeah. That's what it's supposed to do.

Yeah. I was really proud of him. Are you building it to last to last no but he likes playing with it he was in tears when it broke oh i've played with a thing made of legos oh build it destroy it oh i used to that's i mean that was my favorite thing to play with when i was young i have adventures with were Legos. Man, but it's so satisfying to destroy. Yeah. So the way I would do it is whatever the polished stuff was, for me, it was Blacktron and Emtron

and Black... Oof, this is sounding racist. Do your absolute best. Emtron, I think, and Blacktron or something like that which if that's wrong i'm gonna feel just awful that i'm calling those because those are the bad guys uh blacktron are the bad guys yeah so if i'm wrong this is mtron mtron in black it just says what did the m stand for what do you think i don't know these were like space ones and i loved them i thought they were so cool they had like rovers and stuff like that blacktron phew

okay this is 1990s or 1993 but they're really polished shuttles and things. And those were always the good guys, regardless of whose ship it actually was. And then to the bad guys, I would just make their ship out of whatever bullshit I had left over. So like the old castle that we'd gotten in 86 that we hadn't built since we were kids. And then when I'm playing with them and you want to destroy the bad guy's ship,

you really get to go for it. Yeah. Huh. I never imagined Legos as a thing that you play with. I think you just build it and look at it and then destroy it. Well, I think you can trace it back probably to the fact that I had a spectacular imagination. Sure.

I don't know what you were working with at the time, but very, very bright kid, I guess you could say. Yeah, I mean, I was all about creation. Oh. And destruction. It's all you wanted. Yeah. Create and destroy. Build worlds, you know?

Yeah. You're more like a watchmaker god. I don't know if that makes me a matt like imaginative or anything just to to build destroy and then rebuild worlds i don't know i'm not gonna say that makes me like a god i was more of a micromanager i wanted to make sure they were doing all the right things once they were built uh let's see do we have anything else to talk about? We've been talking for 52 minutes now.

I think we can be done. I got to find these. Let's just say bye then. No, wait, wait, we can't. You see, Dan, I do this thing at the end of the show where I have to go find all of our social information so that people can find us in places when they've burned through all these podcasts in a single day. Oh, no, I thought they could just find it in the footnotes. No, no, no. So no one can actually access the website, least of all Bacon.

Got it. So I need to go find that. But in the meantime, I wanted to actually ask you about something that you told me. You had said, I mean, I know it was a popular theory recently that police need to regain the public's trust and that it's very difficult for people to trust police because of everything that's been going on. But you said that something that I hadn't heard before, which is this, the public that needs to regain the trust of the law enforcement. Can you explain that? yeah i'd love to i'd love to so much uh so here's the thing the government has mandated proper social distancing practices okay so that means six feet apart wear masks wear gloves if you have them cover your coughs and your sneezes, don't kiss on the mouth as much as we all used to and we all like to do,

and don't spit into each other's mouths, certainly. And what this has done by the government mandating these things as not good things to do, as that makes you persona non grata. That means, think about this, the police suddenly have so many more criminals. It used to just be the ones who were doing obvious crimes, but now suddenly two people sitting next to each other on a bench,'re doing crimes so the cops are understandably overwhelmed by anyone who is doing anything close to each other without masks and with their hands on their their their eyes mouth and nose and even ears so like just understand that when you walk outside even if you're holding hands with your sweetie, even if you're going to a grocery store to buy toilet paper for your butthole,

a cop sees you and correctly sees you as a potential criminal. So understand that when you walk outside of your building that you are a criminal. And so if a cop wants to shoot you a little bit, that you shouldn't be rude to him or him if he's going to try to do that. Well dodged. Okay. You can follow us on Twitter.

You can follow Daniel at DOB underscore Inc. You can follow me, Soren, at Soren underscore LTD. That's S-O-R-E-N. You can follow Michael at MakeB underscore Inc. You can follow me, Soren, at Soren underscore LTD. That's S-O-R-E-N. You can follow Michael at MakeMeBacon, please. That's MakeMeBacon and then P-L-S. Or you can follow Quick Question at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. I guarantee no one will read it. Oh, no, you know what?

He has been checking up on that one. When people respond to that or tweet at it, he has been responding. You can email us at qqwithsornanddaniel at gmail.com. The show is called Soren and Dan, so it's curious that we have an email address that's qqwithsornanddaniel. It's life.

Yeah. And you can also follow, find, or hire our producer and sound engineer and editor Gabe at Gabe harder.com. I'm assuming at some point you'll be able to do that. Gabe, you've had some time alone at home. Have you had time to build your website? Well, no, but I, uh, I did determine that I believe what the people can do is go to that website, uh, find the URL, uh, guess which hosting company I'm using and try to

look up the records of who owns that domain and perhaps from there they could get an outdated mailing address and try to contact me that way. Great, so you can contact Gabe's parents by finding out he's using GoDaddy. It's like a fun treasure hunt.

Okay, that's it. Alright, so Orange, do you think we uh a lot of podcasts do a thing where they like ride out on a song should we do that do you have a song yeah like we what we just sing it no like you pick a song and then and and gabe will add it in post yeah that sounds illegal that sounds illegal sounds like we're gonna owe like we're going to owe somebody money. Oh, we shouldn't do that. Let's make it I am the walrus. Okay, yeah.

They're not litigious. No. I mean, like, half of them are fucking dead. So their power has diminished considerably. The rings have been buried and lost time. All right, bye.