Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 39 - Two Different Types of Sibling Dynamics

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

In this episode the guys get in to family dynamics and provide an update on Dan's birthday present. Spoiler alert, its not that informative! And as always, big thanks to Postmates.  Use code qq and get $100 of free delivery credit.  

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, a podcast about advice, writing, friendship, and comedy. I am one of your hosts, author, last week's Tonight Writer, and person who in the first grade raised his hand to tell the teacher I don't have any friends, Daniel O'Brien. I am joined as always by my co-host. Go ahead and introduce yourself. I'm Soren Bui, writer, author. I'm not of books. Do I still get to call myself an author if it's just like stuff on the internet? Yeah.

Okay. Writer, author, father, son. And I found a lost city once. Ooh, you want to speak on that? I guess not. Okay. Thanks to Postmates for supporting quick question when you need red wine at 4 p.m sushi at 9 p.m a breakfast burrito at 8 a.m and ivy profan at 10 a.m post made it for a limited time postmates is giving you 100 a free delivery credit for your first seven days download the postmates app and use code QQ. Once more, download the Postmates app

and use QQ as the promo code and you'll get $100 of free delivery credit for your first seven days. I do think we should say that you were a writer for the show American Dad, which just had, I want to say, 17th season? Yeah. Is that right? Just premiered? So it gets weird because American Dad moved from fox to tbs and there's like some weird season breaks so the way that we keep track of seasons is different than the way that the rest of the world does internally we're on season 15 but externally i think yeah this is like okay yeah 17 that we're i just got off the phone with my buddy in Qatar, and they say 17. Yeah, it's 17.

17's going on right now. In fact, my episode will probably air right around July, right around my birthday. Oh, that's fun. Do you want to say your birthday on the podcast? No, but speaking of birthdays, Dan, your shit's still not ready. That's so funny so many people have asked me what your gift to me is because it's it's it's fucking checkoff's present that you dangled in the beginning of this podcast run this birthday present that walk me through it. Was that originally my birthday present for 2018?

2018. And so I went back and looked at our exchanges that I have with this third party. And I was like, man, when did this fucking start? Because I sent an email recently that was like, listen, I need you to be candid with me. If this isn't going to be a project that you're interested in or you don't want to finish, you just got to tell me.

And he was like, no, are you kidding? I think this is going to be great. So he's still making it. But I looked back and it was, yeah, before your birthday in, no, it would have had to be, it would have had to be 2019. Okay. But it's been two birthdays now yeah that we've missed and it's wild yeah that's gone on this long but i think you're in fact now i'm worried there's nothing could possibly live up to the hype no because it's been so long it's tough it's it's

i want everyone to know a couple of things one this isn't a bit i have no idea what this present is it's truly soren wanted to get me something and it's taking a while and uh that's all true and the other thing that i want people to know is that the person that he commissioned to make this is jeffrey epstein so if it's if it's slower than anyone wanted it to come out i mean like you get it right you understand why it's taking a minute. Yeah, I guess so. We're going to get into this show where we ask each other questions

and check in with each other and give each other advice. But before that, we wanted to thank our listeners who prefer the nickname ObridroxySoroquin. Oh! Man, I'm so embarrassed.

Like, if anyone looked at my computer to see, A, that is spelled out phonetically on a Word document in front of me. B, it's size 16 font like i'm i can't miss it and i practiced it so many times and i i like hit 15 seconds backwards i'm still pretty shaky on it say it again no oh oh oh bride roxy sorok. And so the original is hydroxy, Soroquin, right? Or I mean, hydroxy, chloroquine, hydroxy, chloroquine. Yes.

Which, which, uh, uh, for the record, um, don't take unless you have lupus. Or, or COVID. So anyway, no, it's good. It's good drug. Um, God damn. That's pretty good thanks that yeah i'm glad that you it means a lot the work that went into it is clear thank you and i'm trying to to get out of the quick and question portmanteau names and sort of spread my wings a little bit to see what else I can do. Yeah, that well had no more water in it, I think. But hydroxychloroquine is a good segue into the first part of the show.

I'm going to put some amount of time on the clock, and we're going to just briefly talk about how we're doing in the quarantine. Soren, I'm going to go first. I'm about three weeks away from setting up a Christmas tree and decorating it as a bit for help. How are you? I cut my own hair the other morning and bought a jumping castle. Oh, yeah. Oh So I wanted to talk about this you tweeted about

drunkenly buying a bouncy castle Yes, speak on that. Okay. So at my work we have a standing friday obligation where we get together and we play a game that's called secret hitler and we play it all together on zoom and as we do we drink and i got very drunk and uh found on wayfair a bouncing castle that i was like yes this will keep my kid busy for the rest of quarantine. Because I had a moment in my childhood where I wanted a trampoline very badly. My parents weren't going to get me one. They said it was too dangerous. I was in the negotiation

phase of like, I don't want anything from my next seven birthdays and four Christmases if you get me this trampoline. And got a great surprise from my dad where there's just like a box in our driveway for a while. He was like, Hey, those are tools. Don't touch that. And I was like, okay. Cause I was just a kid. And then one day we went out there to flip it over and there was a picture of a trampoline on it and it was so exciting. And we set it up and I lived on it. I slept out there. I jumped on it all day. It was my parents solution to ADHD. Right. You ended up minoring in trampoline in college. I want out there. I jumped on it all day. It was my parents' solution to ADHD. Right.

You ended up minoring in trampoline in college, I want to say. I did trampolining in college. And everything. All my friends, we invented games out there. We learned every time that we would. We all had to be on a snowboard team or a ski team or a cross-country team where when we were in high school and so i was on the snowboard team had to be duct tape had to be you had to do one of those sports and you had to be on a you had to do it competitively and i we would duct tape the edges of our snowboards and then learn to go inverted

on the trampoline like get used to the sense of doing a backflip or trying to do a misty flip. It was such a big part of my childhood, and I was like, I want to make that happen for my son, but I don't want to put a trampoline in my yard because I still want to use the yard. I got him a bouncing castle that's got multiple parts to it. There's a slide.

There's a basketball hoop. There's another section that's for a ball pit. I don't have any balls for it, so now it's just like a little fort area for him, and it's way overkill. Give me some dimensions. Okay. I think it's probably about 16 by 12.

Wow. Yeah. It's big. And this was a full drunken impulse buy? Like you dress it up with wanting your child to have the kind of childhood that you had, but you buried the lead when you said that you were drunk when you got it. I was drunk when I got it, yeah. Does he enjoy it. Yeah. Um, does he enjoy it?

No, I don't know what to do. So he's, he's developed a lot of good habits since he's been on quarantine, but he's also developed a lot of bad habits and those are no fault of his at all. They're ours completely. Oh,

and this leads me into, um, not necessarily a quick question, but a question that I had strictly related to quarantine. What have you learned about your son that you wouldn't have learned without quarantine? How quick he is to pick up on the tools we use against him and utilize those as well. And I, I,

it's terrifying to me because I can trick him a lot. If, if he's doing, cause he could be, you know, these four years old. So some of the things that he wants are absurd and he can't have them. And then it gets,

becomes a fight or whatever. And I have to lie to him sometimes just to end the situation where I'll be like, we'll be, we'll be eating dinner and he'll be eating some rice that he's eaten lots of times before. And there's onions in it. And now he's decided he doesn't like onions. And so I'll be like, those aren't onions. Those are like, those are little pieces of it's clear cheese or like something like it's flavoring. It's flavoring. I did that with garlic once where I was like, those are little pieces of it's, it's clear cheese or like something like it's flavoring. It's flavoring. I did that with garlic once where I was like, no, that's just extra flavoring. It's like pepper, but it's just different. It's big salt. And, uh, you know,

sometimes that I'm over a lot of times that used to just work. You'd be like, Oh, it's big salt. Right. I remember growing up and like my parents making a meal and they're like, we're having, uh, making a meal and they're like we're having uh we're jersey italian so it would uh uh broccoli gavadil is what we'd say it's uh long story short that's how we would pronounce cavatelli if you're italian in new jersey is broccoli gavadil and i would look at it and be like do i like this and my parents be like oh you love it it's your favorite like all right i'll take your word for it and i would just eat it because they said And my parents would be like, oh, you love it. It's your favorite. I'm like, all right. I'll take your word for it. And I would just eat it because they said it's my favorite. And it worked so well. It really did. It was very

effective. He would be, he doesn't want to go down for a nap. And I'll be like, you know, it's time for you to go down for a nap. Or it's time for you to have quiet time. He's like, I don't want to. And I'm like, you were just telling me how tired you were. I'm effectively gaslighting my son. I'm like convincing him he's done things that he didn't actually do or that he likes things he doesn't like and it but it works until now

now he's like catching on and he understands what's going on and uh he has started to try and use it against us too and he's good at it so like he'll say but dad you said this and i'm like fuck did i I don't know. And that's really troubling, but he's also crazy good at math. Oh no, that's scary. I know. And he's not my child. He can't possibly be. I started just sort of like testing the waters a little bit. We get, we get up starburst or Skittles and I'll put some equations down so that he can see what it looks like. He knows how to say two plus five equals or 18 takeaway, 13 equals. And then he would count it out with the

Skittles. But, uh, just recently he just started doing it without the Skittles. And I was like, But just recently he just started doing it without the Skittles. And I was like, oh, I don't think I can do it. Just give me a second. I'll solve it. Let me think about it. See if you're right. But yeah, he's got like a real understanding of it in a way that I don't.

His brain works differently. That's similarly, not similarly uh just another question about quarantine um do you is there something that you've learned about your wife that you wouldn't have learned without quarantine do you think and you don't need to answer that question if it will get you in trouble i have i think it's a thing that a lot of people are learning right now they're hearing their significant other in their work zone. They're kind of like, you know, you're somewhat of a different person when you're working. And she is very, she's like on the ball. She's authoritative when she's on calls.

And she'll, if people are meandering, she'll cut them off and be like, all right, well, what are you trying to say? And she doesn't take any shit she's really great she is a great manager in a way that i didn't know until now i mean that's a very good answer that'll score you some points if she listens to the podcast which i hope she doesn't uh she does occasionally she drops in just to tell me something hope she doesn't. She does occasionally. She drops in just to tell me something.

Yeah. She'll be like, that's not true. That thing you said wasn't true. So have you learned anything about your dog? I have. Nothing like too interesting, obviously, because he's a dog but like i felt like the beginning of the quarantine he was like putting up airs like hanging out with me a lot and just like cuddling and being a good dog and now once he realized that oh this is a forever thing we're just both stuck in this apartment forever uh he dropped all pretenses of trying to be a normal dog and has steered very clearly into how weird he is as a dog.

He will jump off the couch where we most spend our time and just like lick the floor of my kitchen. There's nothing spilled on there. It's not like there's anything going on. It's just like this is what he does in his free time it's just lick the floor and sometimes he'll go on the couch and lick the couch and i look at him like jackson what the fuck are you doing there's nothing on there there's no like nutrients and he looks at me like i don't know i'm just i'm a dog i have limited options i can bark and you hate that and i can pee and i'm not gonna do that in the house and i can lick so i'm just gonna like

lick shit that's my thing that's all i've got available to me let me do it so i've had dogs in my life and i can remember them just sitting on the floor licking the rug and being like stop it yeah and they're like okay okay yeah and then they go right back to it and they're like stop fucking stop it what are you doing just like licking the area underneath the refrigerator and like what are you getting out of that and he's like yeah i'll stop until you look away. Yeah. My son has, he's developed some habits that are entirely our fault, which is, you know, we're both working. So there's times where we need to get rid of him a little bit. And so we let him have his way a lot when I need to jump on a call. And so does Colleen at the same time. It's like, well, we have no other choices here. He's, we have to cave to his demands.

And obviously that's not a great thing to do as a parent and things like the jumping castle. I got this thing for him and I was like trying to set it up. I was trying to get him to want it before I gave it to him so that he didn't just get it out of nowhere. Uh, and I was trying to plant the seed in his brain and incept him and it was kind working. And then he got it and he was so pumped about it and so excited. And I was very happy for that. And then we left it out overnight one night. It got some leaves on it and some kind of twigs and just debris inside of it.

And he won't jump on it. And I'm like, just brush it out. Look, just brush it with your hand like this. Brush it. Brush it like this. And he's not on board anymore. And now I have to can i have to spend the time convincing him that he likes it again which it's exhausting gaslighting somebody

like that oh yeah of course but that's i see why parents and kids get in fights on vacations all the time yeah because the parent never feels like the kid's enjoying it enough and then the kid feels all that stress of having to enjoy it and you just watch these people in disney world yelling at each other what is the main thing that he does in his day okay uh he plays garbage truck that could be that he's got a garbage truck that he's playing around with on the floor or he's just doing it himself he's going he's carrying debris from one room to another and he makes this noise as he goes so it's a lot of just listening to that noise forever and then he wants to play animals where what that means is that he pretends to be an animal and then

i'm ronin finding the animal so he's either a dolphin he's very into hedgehogs so discovering a hedgehog a snake a blue lizard he wants to be like a little tiny animal that ronin is discovering and that's a weird thing that he does regularly where he has to be represented in the game even though he's not playing himself. Without him there to witness it, none of it matters. And so there has to be someone in the game playing as Ronan or it doesn't exist. It's so fascinating.

I remember I was hanging out and watching my nephew and niece, Colin and Charlotte, and we were just like playing pretend with them and the thrust of the game was we were cats who had to go to school and then in school the lesson was pretend to be different cats who are going to space it's so many different levels removed from just being who we are and it's like okay so like am i allowed to in this level of inception in this dream level am i allowed to talk or am i just meowing i'm like no no no you just meow it's class you just meow i'm like okay meow meow meow oh now we're pretending to be astronaut cats. Okay, now I can talk. Okay, that's very good. Yeah, there's a lot of that.

You and I experienced a lot of this when we went to, when we used to volunteer. We worked with kids for a while. We just hang out with them and realize their games are crazy. Have we set that up at all? No, that we have. Soren and I used to volunteer with kids once a week just like hanging out and and it it it sounds altruistic when you say we would volunteer with kids that sounds like a very cool thing really we played basketball and played games and ran around one night yeah

we weren't teaching any moral lessons at least none that I hope they hung on to. We were like, in fact, I distinctly remember times where some of the kids were like, we all want to go on the, we want to see how many kids we can fit on this swing. And I'd be like, yeah, that sounds cool. I'm sure an adult would stop us if it was wrong. And I just watched. There was a, there was a little girl who I threw so high in the air that she peed right and basically we just go there and see what kind of yeah like throw these kids around as much as we could making sure that no one thinks we're heroes here well so what i'm saying is i nothing has changed when my son plays games the game is always going to devolve into some way where i'm allowed to throw him

or like do some cool stuff with like manipulating his body turning him upside down and stuff because that's what's fun for me it's like when we play little minute games where I have to hunch on the ground and be a matchbox car that goes in and out of a car wash it's not any fun but when I get to stand up and toss him onto the couch after he does two flips I'm pumped about that that's a game I like all of a sudden yeah so that's why part of the reason i got the jumping castle too is i knew that i could dive into it and that i could throw him around on it yeah well that's cool that's very great yeah i think if there's anything anyone other than my dog that i've learned anything from it would be i mentioned her a couple weeks ago uh my friend jamie fitness goat who i take yoga classes from now this is a person that i've known for we might as well say my entire life she grew up down the street from me and we've

we've stayed close uh it's very fascinating to watch someone do their job the same way that you say you hear colleen on the phone being a manager now that i'm watching jamie lead her yoga classes she has an entirely different voice as a yoga teacher than she does as like a normal human being when we were playing fucking code names or cards against humanity or or whatever she's like i hear her and it's like, oh, you sound like a yoga instructor. You don't sound like a person that I used to get drunk and eat pizza with. And it's like, it's very fascinating, this glimpse that you get into lives that you'd otherwise not be privy to.

It's amazing to hear somebody who has like a work voice. Yeah. It's not something I'm used to at all. It's like all of a sudden you realize you're living with Elizabeth Holmes and you're like, where did that come from? And they have like, there's a vernacular to it too. And they're so practiced at it that it's startling. Yeah. Because I don't think I have a work voice. I don't think you do either. I think I've been like one speed my entire life. And it's this. It's this one that you're hearing right now. Yeah, I would say that's true.

But we also, to be fair, have never had a real job. No, absolutely not. It's always been sort of this theoretical sitting in a room and thinking about fun stuff. And never will have a real job. This theoretical sitting in a room and thinking about fun stuff. And never will have a real job. Folks, we really love doing this show for you. And if you like it, there are a couple of ways that you can help us to make sure that we keep doing it.

One of them is to share this show with your friends and make sure that they download it and they listen to it also. And another way is to show some love to our sponsors. We are talking about Postmates. We're thrilled to have them as a sponsor. Postmates is great when you need red wine at 4 p.m., sushi at 9 p.m., a breakfast burrito at 8 a.m., and ibuprofen at 10 a.m. Postmate it. I want somebody to walk me through this scenario where, like, what was the narrative where you started drinking at 4 and had the red wine, and then you were like sushi? Like, this all checks. This scans to me me you drink red wine at 4 p.m by by nine you're like i mean i just i've never at 9 p.m i have never in my life and like you know it will really hit the spot sushi not once in my entire life have i felt that yeah you know it'd fill me up and then a

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I want someone to get on a bike and ride over to my apartment and hand me some eel and like a tiny plastic ramekin of soy sauce. And I'm like, what am I? What am I? What do I do with this now? We truly live like kings. But anyway, you can get all that from postmates if you're like me which i have to assume most of you are you probably start thinking about what to eat for dinner while you're eating lunch i love food and i do that every day that's why i love using postmates and

i like them even more right now because i can get food delivered without leaving my apartment or even opening the door given what's going on in the world uh i don't know if you heard about this even more right now because I can get food delivered without leaving my apartment or even opening the door. Given what's going on in the world, I don't know if you heard about this, but it's bad. They created non-contact deliveries. That's non-contact deliveries. So now when I order from local restaurants, everything gets delivered right outside of my door. They also have Postmates pickup, which I have been using to order takeout from my favorite local restaurants. Listen up. Hey, hey, listen up. You guys need to be supporting your neighborhood spots right now, okay? I've only been ordering local because it's a great way to support my community. And Postmates doesn't just deliver burgers and sushi.

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Quick question, actually. Okay, let's get it. This is a question about growing up again. The majority of my questions are going to be that because i'm discovering these new things with my family and thinking about them again uh when you're growing up were there clear teams within your family and i don't mean like they didn't like each other and like different sides but it was just clear that like when the jokes would happen like you're teasing somebody, there's always like one, there's always like one faction

teasing the other faction and rarely do you team with it, tease within your own ranks. Do you know what I'm saying? Not really. I'll give you examples. Okay, so in my family, my brother and I,

for a long time, I felt like we're on a team and it was, we, you know, we had bosses basically, which were our parents and it was, we, you know, we had bosses basically, which were our parents. And it was always like, we were on the same team. We were always kind of like in the know with each other. And then we dealt with our parents, but they were never like, it was never as fun. It was, they weren't on the same team as us. And then gradually as we got

older, it became clear that my dad, my brother and I were on a team. And it may just be that we were all boys. But when we would gang up on somebody to joke and tease, it was always my mom. It would never have happened that my mom and my dad would get together to joke about my brother. That seems inconceivable. It was always the three of us or my brother and my dad doing it with me when I was young.

the three of us or my brother and my dad doing it with me when I was young. But it was, there's always like, there's clear lines within the family of whoever, but I don't even want to say closer to, it's just the person that you side with all the time. I'm not sure we had that. I think because it was, it was so important to my father that we were all a team you know it was it was very much O'Brien's stand together no matter what and I'm happy that that was instilled in me I guess if I wanted to try to surgically pare things down I pair of things down, I always lean more towards

not lean more towards. Here's a great way to think about it. Do you do text chains with your whole family? Yeah. Who's the butt of the joke in those text chains? Is it switch around? No, it's dad. There you go.

But I think it's he also leans into it. he right no of course there's somebody who's good at taking it yeah i think if there's a good sport uh just like examining this for the first time i feel like maybe i'm the most fragile person in my family because it seemed like i was part of everyone's team. Like I was very close with my mom. We were, we were, uh, shopping buddies. Like when she went to the, to the grocery store, I always wanted to go with her and, and, and help her out. And, uh, I was also, whenever the boys in the family were divided into teams, I was always on my dad's team i think i'm just like

being the youngest i'm i'm always partnered with the the parents so i never felt too weak about anything like we used to play uh every sunday we had o'brien football we played flag football uh me and my dad versus my two older brothers and uh my dad and i just fucking dominated but in retrospect i think that's just because i was the youngest and everyone was being nice to me like as soon as we we we played for years and then one day we built a trophy like the o'brien cup. And as soon as that came into play, my dad and I lost once there was something to gain to play for. That's great.

That's I I'm trying to think back of my, we would play in my driveway. It was a gravel driveway that was on a huge slant. Cause you know, it's in the woods. And so we would play football but just the three of us and my you would rotate out like there would be one defender and then two people on offense as soon as that team either stalled out on drives or they scored then you

cycle in as one of the offensive players and the next person cycles into defense and then you're only keeping score for yourself at that point um so we didn't i i i'm sort of jealous of families that had enough for teams i mean it was just two on two yeah that's that's still pretty good and it i wonder if it made your brothers closer probably i don't know if i i I don't want to pit anyone against anyone I ended up being very close to my brother David just because we're like 22 months apart in age how far are you and Eric four years four years okay yeah yeah I think just David and I being like you're gonna be in middle school together at the same time and you're to be in middle school together at the same time and you're going to be in high school together at the same time will invariably make us closer yeah but

yeah i'm just curious because i'm about to have a daughter i've never had that dynamic before where there's two two boys and two girls in a family i'm really really looking forward to it and i'm very curious how these family dynamics will shake out if you're it the reason i thought of this is that there's a very good podcast called heavyweight by gimlet media and uh there's an episode with rob codry that's just wonderful it's so good two things what is the theme the what is the point of the theme of heavyweight is yeah jonathan gold Goldstein is an excellent writer, but he solves problems for people that the internet wouldn't be able to solve

or that they can't go to anyone else to solve. Some good examples are like there was a girl who was, she had cancer when she was in a sorority. She was like the figurehead of the sorority. And then as soon as she recovered from cancer, they kicked her out and they never told her why. And so he and this woman go through and they try and figure out why she was kicked out of the sorority. And so he's basically a detective.

And but he's he's very good at it and he's completely tactless. And it's part of his stick is that he's he's very uncomfortable. And it's he just powers through these questions with people. That's in a wonderful way. But he and Rob Caudry, I guess, are good friends. through these questions with people that's in a wonderful way but he and rob codry i guess are good friends and rob codry his daughter broke her her arm and he said it's crazy that she broke her arm in girl scouts because when i was a little boy i broke my arm in boy scouts and his whole family he's got a bunch of brothers and sisters were like no you didn't you never broke your arm

even his mom and dad and on these chains they're just like that there's no way you broke your arm. His sister, she would have remembered it because she's like the keeper of memories in the family and everyone has their role. And it got me so excited about the fact that I was like, yes, of course, everyone in the family has their role. They'll know what they do. misremembered this entire thing because he's actually responsible for breaking his brother's arm at one point and it's it's very very good and it's so funny and it made me think yes siblings are important every child needs to have siblings yeah i mean i don't want to say every child needs to have siblings because i don't want every child needs to have siblings if you didn't you're weird one not one one like incredibly minor thing yeah codry rob codry is that not right cordry oh really yeah rob cordry nate. Yeah, I called him, sorry, Caudry. You're right. That's okay.

No, I took all the wind out of your sails, and I'm so sorry about that. No, it's okay. I need to be corrected on these things. I made a deal with my brain that was like, if he says it one more time, you should step in, and then you did, so I had to. I'm so sorry.

You're right to do so. I don't mind being corrected. And in fact, I can feel... One of the things we used to make fun of my mom the most about was how she would get the names of everything wrong. And now I feel myself aging into that every single day. Yeah, I don't even think you need to age into it. I think you're there for a few parts of it.

Like, for example, I'm going to put a gun to your head, and Soren, just like without thinking about it, what is the name of a popular vampire series with Bella and Edward Cullen? Toilet? It sounds like toilet when you say it. It has always sounded like toilet. I know what you think you're trying to say toilet twilight twilight twilight yeah twi twilight okay it just sounds

twilight i know i i got another one of these and it's a street name in los angeles that's it's called la cienega or whatever it's really called that I can't possibly say. Right. Twilight. How'd I do? Uh, worse.

Okay. I don't hear the difference. I know you don't. It's, it's so strange to me. I got great balance. Yeah, sure.

I mean, I'm just saying that you saying, you can't be... You don't roll for crit across the board. You're going to be deficient in some areas. Yeah, sure. And yours is a terminal inability to say the word twilight. That's just a lot of words I can't say. But I'm not going to dare share them with everybody.

You've exposed two of them, and I don't have to give up the other ones um i guess i have a do you want to talk about siblings more or should i do my question for you no give me a question okay quick question this is uh much less personal um it's about your big movie pet peeves and i want to start with the caveat that you cannot talk about uh how people brush their teeth in movies because you've talked about it before and i know it's big for you uh and i'll give you time to think well i i talk about mine because it's one that i've been thinking about a lot because it's it's quarantine time so i've been re-watching uh stuff that i'm already familiar with and one of those things is game of thrones and it leads me to my movie pet peeve which is when characters are incredibly good actors and i will explain what i mean by that game of thrones there is a scene where in season the second to last season where

the the whites are brought to king's landing and we in the capital for the first time see these monsters and you're on great joy who the only thing we know about him is he is a violent horny brute he sees this monster and he is scared by it and he says fuck this i'm leaving i'm gonna leave king's landing i'm gonna go back to the iron islands because these monsters can't cross the ocean they can't swim so i'm gonna hide out until everything is done with and that's it and cersei's like you can't and he's like i'm fucking gonna this is stupid and he leaves that we learn later is uh subterfuge he's actually going to take the iron fleet to go to get the second company uh the golden company rather to

win the fucking war or whatever. So it was a lie. He's not actually scared by the monster. He's not going home. He's doing this other scheme. And I get why that is supposed to work on me as an audience member dramatically. But when did the character, Euron, learn how to become such a good actor to fool everyone else into thinking his scheme was real yeah you could see it also in HBO's Watchmen and spoilers if anyone has not

seen Watchmen yet but there's Don Johnson who is the chief of police and uh another character who's a political person and they both spend so much of the show being sweet progressive thoughtful people who we learn later are like secretly violently aggressively racist and it's still strange so much credulity for me of like how did how did don johnson who for the purposes of this show we must believe was born and raised racist how did he become such a good actor in the reality of the show to convince people that he wasn't racist. Anytime there's a character who has like a twist in a show, you have to assume that the character learned to convince other people that he was living a wildly different life and had a completely different set of ideological mores.

I know what you mean. of ideological mores. I know what you mean. Although I will say you presented this as a thing that happens in movies. And then you gave me two TV shows. Fuck. But, but the, I think you're absolutely right.

There's like, there are rules within a movie or within a show where people are allowed to hide the ball a little bit with like what they're thinking, but there's universal rules as far as we're kind of omnipotent in which we can tell when people are lying. People don't – they're not supposed to lie well in a movie. You know what I mean? You're supposed to have some sort of – it's like in a Columbo episode. You get to see a little bit.

You get these little red flags along the way. When somebody's too good at it, then nothing matters. You can't trust anything anybody says in the movie. Whenever it feels like the director might as well have told the actor you believe this without giving them the rest

of the script, like pre-Double Cross, where it's like, yeah, in this scene you're on gray joy you are scared and you do want to run away because that's how he plays it and then later we learned that he was faking it and it's like i understand that for dramatic purposes but at the same time it's like when did when did you're on a fucking pirate maniac learn to effectively fool a thousand people right yeah that's a really that's a good point I don't have one that's that universal but there is one that's always driven me crazy and specific to zombie movies ooh it's that

when people are living in a zombie apocalypse, that no one is wearing gloves. Because if you do have to fight a zombie, there's a lot of people that are punching zombies in the face and everything. And if you've ever punched another person, immediately your knuckles split open. Like immediately you start bleeding from your hands and everything. Or God forbid you hit a tooth. Because people get all kinds of weird bacterial infections just from fistfights. No one ever talks about that.

Just because they're hitting somebody in the mouth and then all that bacteria is going directly into their bloodstream. So you'd be constantly having people infected just from punching a zombie. Or people are getting in fistfights with other humans all the time in that world too. And you don't want to have a bunch of open cuts

in an apocalyptic world. It's so easy. And finding a pair of gloves would be the easiest thing in an apocalyptic scenario and no one wears them. Why would that be the easiest thing? The population is much lower. It's not a finite resource like food where you constantly need to up it. You constantly need more and more and more. A pair of leather gloves would last you two years in that sort of world. And anywhere that you're going and you're finding your pickaxe or whatever you're choosing to kill a zombie with,

I guarantee there's going to be gloves there too. Okay. I have a different zombie movie pet peeve that with the exception of Shaun of the Dead, there's almost no humor in the apocalypse of zombie movies. And it might not even be just zombie movies. It might be like all apocalyptic wasteland movies. wasteland movies like i've been watching even though i don't fucking like it i've been watching the walking dead religiously for the entire run of it and one of the things that has always taken me out of it is that there's like until we got to negan like nine seasons into it no one has been funny no one had a sense of humor i and i i get like the basic principle behind it that is like oh it's the end of the world and and we're all very sad and and and glum

but you know i i do bits now even when things are sad i do bits in a quarantine i do bits when when right when loved ones pass away people do bits all the time that like they're like i can't imagine a thing happening that would like remove the idea of levity yeah from conversation. And so like the least realistic thing about The Walking Dead, a show where zombies are real and walk around doing things, the least realistic thing is that no one is doing bits. Right. It feels, I think, I get it. It seems like an urgency burglar.

Like it's taking away the urgency from the scene if there's somebody who's not treating it with the highest stakes possible. But a movie like Zombieland does it fairly successfully. It's totally, you can do it. And you're absolutely right. A thing I've learned about this quarantine, and again, it's not apocalyptic, but it is unprecedented. And the best part about it is the bits. Yeah. Like the saving grace of it.

What keeps you sane in it is that there are people out there doing so many funny things. Yeah. I mentioned briefly up top that I might set up a Christmas tree as a bit for help. That's like, I'm only half joking about that. I do think it would be funny if I did a Zoom with my family and, and over my shoulder was like just the corner of a fully dressed Christmas tree. I went on a run for the first time the other day for a very long time. And someone had some,

like a big inflatable bear that said season's greetings still out. And I was like, man, I wonder if they put that out for the quarantine. If they're just like the world needs some wonder if they put that out for the quarantine. If they're just like, the world needs some cheer. And they put it back out. It's just such a sad thing. I think you really ought to do that bit, Dan. That's a really good bit.

Yeah, I might. It's also just like exhausting. Yeah, it's a lot of work. And it's one of those bits, like it's a bit that would play well with you and a lot of other of our comedy friends but it's also one that like if i had it in the background of a family zoom i know that i would get follow-up texts that were like hey are you okay is everything actually fine i was like no it is just it's a bit. Yeah, well, who is the bit for? I don't know. No one. It's unclear.

I thought it was for you, but I don't know. I'm not doing it for me. It was exhausting to put that up. Sweated all over my suit. Yeah. That one drives me crazy. And then there are just the little ones that the internet has turned me onto and now I can't look away. Like that coffee cups are never full. Yes.

Ever, ever full. And pizza boxes are never full. Yeah. The way that the physics of it, as they turn those things in their hands, they're just like, oh, okay, I see. There's nothing in there it's enough so that i i generally wonder why uh like either put water in the coffee cup so we can tell that there's some kind of weight there and someone's drinking something or remove coffee cups in general because like you're not pulling it off you're not fooling any of us so like just stop doing it it's fine yeah i would rather no coffee cups than zach raff on scrubs pretending to drink

from one that's a timely reference right it's 2009 right i don't think you referenced a single movie in this discussion about movies alright where are we? I think we're out of time are we done yet? okay well bye this was a lot of fun

no you know what I gotta let people know where they can find us but it's my turn to do that I'm so sorry Dan I have a I left it in another room. I have a little laminated card that I follow now, and I just got to go

grab it real quick. Where did you get it laminated? In the quarantine. You can send away. Okay. You mail it, and then they mail it back. Uh-huh. To whom? Lamentations and laminations.

Okay. They do. You can get your regrets laminated there too. Okay. Yeah. I bet you use that service a lot. For this? Yeah.

This one's going there. Surely. They're making bank tonight. All right. You're about to get it. All right. So, Dan, we've been sheltering a place for months now, and it seems like it's fairly effective against the virus. But there are people out there who are claiming that we don't have a metric for all the lives that are lost due to the downturn in the economy. I don't know if you remember it, but there's a famous scene in The Big Short where Brad Pitt, who's playing Ben Rickert.

Yeah, that's right. Hey, Soren. Soren, you're doing great. He's playing Bane Rickert. He says, for every 1% of unemployment going up, 40,000 people die. And right now, the unemployment rate is already above 15%. And that's well above the rate at the height of the Great Recession. So my question for you, Dan, is what are your go-to search terms for porn? Oh, so there's a lot of ways that this could be embarrassing for me. And I promise you

that it's still going to be embarrassing for me. Like you wanted this to be embarrassing for me to like, so here are the two main avenues. It could be embarrassing because like I send something that is, uh, like a very niche fetish that someone shouldn't say out loud. That's one possible answer. Or I could say something that's embarrassing because it's so milquetoast. Like if I, if I'd Googled, like just if I went to porn hub or whatever and was like, uh, like just if i went to porn hub or whatever and was like uh nice person missionary that would be equally embarrassing to something niche and terrible um i have a third option that is also embarrassing and it's very real i don't even need to go to my computer to find out what it is because i know what it is and uh i it's it's definitely embarrassing and

i'm going to ask you to tell me if it's the most embarrassing option it is the specific name of a porn star it is i'm not going to name her here because i don't need anyone to like to to flood her life because she didn't ask for for for any of this, but like the, it's, it's, it's the answer of someone who has, uh, been in quarantine for two months and has spent enough time with Pornhub

that it's like, I know what I want. And as this person, I want to see what I want to see what she is up to, which is like, you got to tell me, is that like, it might be the saddest option i think i don't know that it is i mean the whole if you any any poor video you go to online the

very first comment is who is right so i think that that's pretty universal i think the only thing sadder than like finding a specific actress is like, I really like this producer. Like, who directed this? I want to see more of their work. Right. I mean, over time, you start to discover that there are certain content creators out there where you're like, oh, no, I don't generally care for their stuff. There's a lot of spitting and violence or like, it just feels a little rougher. Right. Cause I think, I think, and, uh, uh, God help me on a podcast that my entire family listens to, but I think one of the strangest trends in internet pornography, uh, that has happened in my lifetime has been the, the rise of, um, pseudo incest pornography. I don't understand it because like, like for many years of my life,

you just go on the internet. It was like, Oh good pornography. Hooray. The thing I wanted. And now everything you search for, there's like the, the added aspect of familial taboo to it that like is not part of it for me you're just like

on there and suddenly he's like busty cop fuck son he's like no i don't i just i don't need that yeah it could just be two people the fact it is really strange that it's infiltrated as it has It is really strange that it's infiltrated as it has. Like step siblings is like the... I don't get it. Anyway, I don't think that's crazy, Dan, that you have somebody in particular that you like. In fact, I think that's probably the best of all the answers. I do think it speaks to how boring I am as a person.

I was like, this one, she makes me feel safe and comfortable. I like this. Sit down on the compliment couch for a second, because i think it's loyalty okay i think that's what you're demonstrating here it's not just you're it's not just any old any old lady would do there's a lady that has your heart yeah but just like to take one ass cheek off the loyalty couch i would say to speak to my history uh as a total mark it's also like if this porn star was like hey you seem nice venmo me nine thousand dollars i'd do it yeah that is your it's good you didn't say her name i was gonna say she'd be really flattered but i could just see this ending really poorly for you. All right.

On Twitter, you can follow Daniel at DOB underscore Inc. You can follow Soren, that's me, at Soren underscore LTD. Or you can follow MakeMeBaconPlease. They spell that P-L-S for please. Or you can follow QuickQuestion at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can email us at Qq with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. We have an Instagram handle, but it's not even worth spending the next 15 minutes saying it.

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Alright. Bye. Okay, bye.