Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 42 - Daniel Jones Appreciation Episode

Episode Date: May 29, 2020

In this episode Soren considers retiring his quarantine bit but ultimately decides not to, and the guys talk about imagined celebrity encounters. 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. The writing, comedy, and friendship advice podcast promises to touch on at least one of those things every week or none of them. I am one of your hosts, writer, author, and person who briefly changed his name in college because he was bored. Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Soren. Soren, introduce yourself. Hi, my name is Soren Bui. I am a writer for the show American Dad, and I spent the years about nine years old to 11 years old being mistaken for my mother on the phone.

Daniel, what was your new name? I had two. I was Charlie and- What? It was a thing that I- Yeah, I was so bored in college that, and, and here's like a hallmark of all college experience as far as I know, is that the very first day of class, when you're like going around the room they're like hey everyone say your name and also like if there's a name that you prefer to go by if you have a nickname or whatever present it now and i saw that as a great opportunity to try out some different names and so the explanation was always the same it was like my name is daniel o'brien but there are a lot

of daniels in my family so everyone calls me jack or everyone calls me charlie because that's my middle name because you don't need to prove either of those things and so there were just like a number of classes throughout my college career that i put charlie o'brien or daniel or jack o'brien on my papers because i was because i was like i want to just like, try it out. I want to try out being a Jack. And then like, bizarrely, my senior year of college started working for a man named Jack O'Brien.

I was like, well, I can't do this anymore. Are there people in the world who still know you as one of those names? Yes. That's fucking crazy, Dan. That's a weird, such a weird thing to have done in college is it is that super weird college is certainly in a place where you can reinvent yourself but deciding you're gonna you know what i'm gonna scratch that because i now know i can now think of exactly three people in my college who all decided at one point we're gonna go start

going by our middle names now and then that's it that was it to this day that's all they go by yeah um and my so i have a nephew uh his name is gus and he was in a skateboard camp and my brother went to go watch him at the skateboard camp one day and uh they're like oh which one's yours and he's like uh gus the guy was like there's no gus here and he's like well that boy over there he's like gary and uh gus had been going by gary at skateboard camp and has now that's bled over into his schooling we're on his papers and stuff he writes gary yeah i think so i didn't like i didn't start with wanting a different name or anything like that it was just i like part of it is boredom and a huge part of it is as soon as a professor would say like is there a name you prefer to go by that's like okay well i can do something different that is still within the rules because I still love rules.

And this gives me an opportunity to like kind of be naughty without actually doing anything wrong. And that really appeals to me. Breaking the rules without breaking the rules is exactly the type of rebel you are. Yeah. the rules without breaking the rules is exactly the type of rebel you are yeah yeah i did have one um in between semester math class where uh i was taking a class with someone who knew me as jack and there was also someone in that class that i knew from high school my friend samantha and i

was so happy on the first day of class to see Samantha and I was like, oh great, this will be fun. And then this woman who knew me as Jack walked in and I was like, Sam, shut the fuck up. I'm Jack. I can't explain. Just like live with it. It's fine. These little sitcom scenarios for yourself throughout your entire life.

You must have been so smart, I think because to be that bored in college you have to be really brilliant. Like classes can't mean anything to you. I don't think that bears any fruit because I'm like, I'm pretty dumb. Maybe not. Maybe you're like book smart and I just have never had to see that side of you. Folks, we love doing this show. And if you want to keep doing it, there are a couple of ways that you can support us one of them is telling your friends to download the show and another one is to show some love to our amazing sponsors and this week i'm talking about postmates

thanks to postmates for supporting quick question if you're like me you probably start thinking about what to eat for dinner when you're eating lunch i I love food. That's why I love using Postmates. And for a limited time, Postmates is giving our listeners $100 of free credit for your first seven days. To start your free deliveries, download the app and use code QQ. But let's get into the show. Before we get into it, we want to talk about our listeners, and we want to thank them for joining us. And our listeners have a specific nickname that they love. And this week, Sorin is going to say what that nickname is. Sorin, go.

No, wait. Is this real? I was supposed to come up with one? No, I'm streaming without you. Thank you. They're the Gleam the Cubes. Wow. With.

Do you want to? Oh, no. With Christian Slater. Okay. Christian Slater, I think, is actually closer. That's a little warmer. That is, yeah. But say the whole thing now. Okay. Christian Slater, I think, is actually closer. That's a little warmer. That is, yeah. But say the whole thing now.

Okay. The Glean the Qoobs with Christian Slater. You know what I think is the worst thing that's ever been done on this podcast? It's Qoobs, I think. It does sound really gross. It's real bad. But that's our listeners, and that's what they prefer to be called. And we're going to get into this show where we ask each other questions

and give each other dubious answers. But before that, we are obviously in quarantine, so we're doing our very brief five-minute quarantine check. And Soren, how is quarantine going for you right now? Why the fuck would you ask me that? It's the same. It's always the same. I don't do anything different ever. You're still doing this bit.

You're still pretending that the quarantine is over. Actually, we have been cheating in ways that I think people would probably be pretty mad about. I think that even our neighbors will have probably noticed at this point. pretty mad about. I think that even our neighbors will have probably noticed at this point. We had some guests come over in our front yard. I sanitized some chairs and put them out for them. And I put out some like unopened beers in a little cooler. And then we set up two chairs 10 feet away. And that was a really cool system. And I was like, hey, we could do this forever. And it's only got that was the very best we ever were at now at this point, I've had somebody else in my house. They just came over and we just hung out for a while. Um, I went, I have a neighbor on one side of us and my son and

I went over to their house and jumped on their trampoline. We're, we're part of the problem at this point. Maybe. I mean, you're still washing your hands are you wearing a mask my son did not wear a mask he takes his off so he's got a homemade one because you can't get a little one that says and you can't buy elastic anywhere in the world right now so he's got one of those shoelace ones and it just doesn't stay on him so he didn't wear it i i know that my neighbors have been quarantined quarantining pretty well i know that they've been doing a good job and we've been doing a good job and it no one actually said anything it just sort of just sort of started to happen like we're just like well we're all we're playing out in the street next to each other and then we're like

all right well do you want to jump our trampoline yeah i think that would be nice and uh some of the articles i've been reading about how tougher it is to catch it outdoors uh made me feel a little bit better yeah i think what you're doing is okay we're definitely not i mean we're not doing the same thing we were doing in march we were so much more careful even a month ago i'm i'm not either. And I think like it's hitting in a different way now because when this first started for us in New York in March, it was, it never felt easy. But comparatively now it's certainly easier because it's March weather and like we had a lot of rain. We had a lot of clouds and it was chilly. March weather. And like, we had a lot of rain, we had a lot of clouds and it was chilly. And now that we're really moving into summer season, it's like, Oh, now I want to be outside. Now,

now I want to like sit in the park and I want to grill outdoors and be around people. And it's, it's certainly much harder now than it was in March, at least on the East coast. I don't know what the weather was like. We went actually, so one of the parks open national parks opened up, uh, state parks too. We went to a state park and we're, it was immediately too much for us. Like people, everybody has their own sense of what's, what's a good amount of space to give other people what, how much they should be wearing on their own faces. And I hate that that system isn't like hard and fast because there are so many people who are making some really rudimentary mistakes out there. And we made the mistake of maybe even just going out there with an infant,

but we were like, what the fuck? Like people just not even trying. Yeah. There's certainly a lot of that uh there's been great camaraderie in my apartment building for getting in an elevator and like because we have we don't want more than four people in an elevator at any given time and if you see someone ahead of you has like press the button waiting for an elevator then you wait for them to go. And then you press the button yourself. Yeah. Very nice. And sometimes someone will get on the elevator and ask if, or like I'll be on the elevator and someone will say, Hey, can I, can I also get on here and join you? And I can say yes, if they're wearing a mask and we get in the elevator together

and it's totally fine, We keep an appropriate distance. I want that to carry over to the future. I would love a future where anytime I get in an elevator, someone says, Hey, can I get on too? And I'd be like, Nope, just me today. I'm sorry. I need some time. I kind of like that too.

I mean, waiting for an elevator, I've never waited for an elevator, except maybe at Bacon's old apartment where I've of like that too I mean waiting for an elevator I've never waited for an elevator except maybe at Bacon's old apartment where I've been like this is an eternity this is insane so if I could I would be willing to do that in my daily life where if somebody's there before me I'm like you have right of way

you get to decide do I get on the elevator with you or is this yours yeah it's very nice and again I like being able to say no, you can't. Have you done that? You told people you can't? Nope. Okay. No, but I like the idea. Yeah, I didn't see you doing that. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, this podcast is brought to you by Postmates. I was no question that Postmates has been the

unsung hero in my house of the quarantine. I don't even know if it's right to call it a quarantine, this lockdown that I've been a part of, because without them, I think we would starve to death. My family, I am in charge of getting groceries and I just fail woefully at that job. It's like providing the nutrients my family needs to keep going and I am bad at it. And so Postmates has stepped up and taken over that job for me. And it's been wonderful. They've come through every single time that it comes to be lunch, comes to be dinner. My wife is like, what are we having? I have to be like, Oh, Oh, right. Postmates, what are we having?

Yeah. And Postmates to save the day. I think about Postmates more than a person should. Like I'm making my lunch and I try to make like a sensible salad and get all of my vegetables. But as I'm doing it, I'm thinking, oh, this is a nice prelude to the future when I don't have to do any work. And I could just have my food, whatever I want, delivered to me. Whether it's burgers, whether it to me, whether it's burgers, whether it's pizza, whether it's sushi, whether it's a bottle of wine, Postmates is going to bring it right to me for dinner. And now they've got a no contact delivery system.

So now when I order from local restaurants, everything gets left right outside my door and I don't ever have to interact with anybody. It's just me and my phone the way I like it. That's fantastic. And you can get it on iOS or Android and you can find your favorite restaurants and get anything you want delivered within the hour. And not just restaurants. They've also got convenience stores like 7-Eleven, drug stores like Walgreens. They can have it all dropped off for you right outside your door. Whoa. Just download Postmates on iOS or Android, find your favorites and get anything you want delivered within the hour. For a limited time, Postmates is giving

our listeners $100 of free delivery credit for your first seven days. Whoa. Yeah. To start your free deliveries, download the app and use code QQ. Whoa. Code QQ. You got to let them know where you came from because that's how you support us. That's code QQ for $100 of free delivery credit for your first seven days when you download the Postmates app. Whoa. Anything you need, anytime you need it, Postmate it. Let's get into the show, unless you have any more quarantine questions.

No, but I do have something that I want to say to you. Okay. I want to say happy birthday, Daniel Jones, unless you have any more quarantine questions. No, but I do have something that I want to say to you. Okay. I want to say happy birthday, Daniel Jones, to you. Okay. Daniel Jones is the new quarterback of the New York Giants. That's right. Is it his birthday today? It's his birthday as we record this.

Oh, that's fantastic. I was hoping to maybe catch you in a situation where you don't even know who Daniel Jones is. Because you sort of gave up on football. I did. I've been dorkily protesting football because now it's very easy because football doesn't exist anymore.

But there were too many problems with CTE. And all the resources it uses up that could be going to other communities. The water and grain that you need to feed each player. Sure. The way you're talking about it sounds like you're giving up meat. No, it's like CTE, the brain damage that is plaguing a lot of retired football players.

And it's brain damage that we can't the only reason that football isn't completely outlawed right now or like very seriously structurally changed is because we can't do testing on the damage of football until people who suffer from CTE are already dead. Am I right about that, Soren? Yeah. So there's that. There's also all of the racial issues that have been plaguing that industry for so long. And there's disproportionate enforcement

unfortunate uh enforcement of marijuana laws versus spousal abuse laws there are a lot of like i'm throwing a lot at the world of like reasons that the nfl is a bad predatory industry so for those reasons i haven't been watching it for a couple of years now and that's the but i still you're making the right decision i mean i actually didn't want i i i go into For those reasons, I haven't been watching it for a couple of years now. And that's the... But I still... You're making the right decision. I mean, I actually didn't... I go into each season thinking I'm not going to either and that I'm not going to follow any of football. And then I...

For all the same reasons. I mean, it's not like you're just throwing out a bunch of crazy things. Each one of those is completely valid. And the fact that there are so many seems like an avalanche of really terrible stuff that's happening in the nfl and then inevitably i care because of fantasy football but i will say that i didn't watch a single game last year and that wasn't even by design i just didn't i mean it could you could you could say it's by design yeah i didn't watch

a single game last year out of protest. Yeah. I like that I'm not watching it, but I'm still... I'm definitely aware of what's going on with the NFL. Just the fact that you say Daniel Jones, and I know who that is, it's clear that I can't completely disconnect from football as an industry right well the other reason I brought it up Dan is because I want to talk about how old is he now by the way I'm sure

he's 25 or something like that that fucking sucks I hate that frustrating I just gonna hurt my feelings if he's even younger than that hold on I have to look it up but uh the other reason I bring it up is because I have a quick question for you who's your favorite twitter follow right now dan you know my favorite twitter follow right now it's eli manning who joined twitter in the pandemic just because he was bored and because his brother was playing golf on television and he just needed something to do with his hands i guess it's the his his joining has been so confusing to me because it's like a hot sauce forced him to join these there's part of some um at brand campaign with is it louisiana hot sauce what is it thanks frank's hot sauce yeah that

frank's hot sauce was like uh somebody in a campaign room was like what if we got a celebrity to join twitter who's not on twitter who can we get uh who like really who really likes hot sauce does it matter no and then they went and got eli manning yeah and he, he's got his, his profile picture, which is him in a suit smiling like a, like, like a genuine earnest dummy and it's so perfect. And he's doing like milk toast dad football jokes and I fucking love it so much. His profile is once a giant, always a giant, only a giant, football emoji, hot pepper emoji, fire emoji, golf emoji.

The hot pepper is there because Frank's Red Hot Sauce paid him to be there. And also, once giant, always giant, only a giant. You were drafted by San Diego, motherfucker. And then you whined until you got traded to the giants you're such a dork you're such a weird dork and i love you so much the one that really stood out to me was that at 11 59 one one day which i guess was morning for him he tweeted tweet tweet birdie time like yeah he's the first one who's ever discovered twitter and he's like oh how do i play with this little this little bird

um it's such a treat by the way i should let you know my feelings have officially been hurt daniel jones is 23 years old 23 yeah think about what you were doing at 23 23 i had uh i was a a year into living in los angeles i was eating ramen noodles almost exclusively because i had no money i was in marina del rey you were my only friend I had no clear future plans other than just staying uncracked until

I got fired which I did and I was certainly not in good enough shape that i could be a quarterback for an nfl team even the fucking giants where were you at 23 at 23 i was living in burbank i was eating most of my meals at a del taco that was just down the block from me because i could walk there and it was cheaper than going to the grocery store. And my job was testing, uh, DVDs in Hungarian and Czech and Japanese and, uh, Cantonese and Mandarin before they came out. And when I say those two separately, Cantonese and Mandarin, it's because the sub, the subtitles would come up differently. and I had to keep track of the subtitles. Now, I wasn't like spelling stuff out,

but I had to be able to see that like everything was accounted for. And so probably at that time, I would have been watching Tokyo Drift for maybe the 15th time. And this motherfucker's a quarterback i know there was a there was a dvd that i tested back then that was uh this tribute to james taylor and a bunch of people came out and did a bunch of james taylor songs for him in the audience and the boss came out and he had a harmonica on and a guitar this cool ass steel guitar and he played this song called The Millworker. And it's about being in a dead end job.

And the chorus of it is, it's just me and my machine for the rest of the morning, the rest of the afternoon, and the rest of my life. And I just started crying while I was watching this in this little booth in the this stupid cubicle place I had to go to just crying because I also didn't I didn't have anything going I didn't have anything outside of this and everyone else around me seemed to be like they were building skill sets and I was not and I was just quietly weeping no yeah it it ain't easy it ain't hard it ain't it ain't easy. It ain't hard. It ain't nothing. But a boring fucking job. It's an awful boring job. There's some strange lyrics in that song, actually.

It's from the perspective of a woman whose husband dies of too much whiskey. But she has these memories of swinging on her grandfather's arm and him telling these stories about being a pirate on a lake. That's the first I've heard of that. He's got, there are very few lake pirates. You don't get a lot of those. It seems like James Taylor would have spent a little more time explaining what that was. Let's get into the show. Unless you want to talk about Eli Manning's Twitter or Daniel Jones or

the passage of time no I I think we exhausted those I have a quick question for you yeah shoot is there a celebrity doesn't need to be like an actor or anything but like a famous established person that you really like that you admire that you feel wouldn't like you if you met them i have one if that's helpful for me to go first yeah i'd like you to go first i i love amy poehler so much i think she's so smart i think she's so funny i think she's so talented i think she's so good at everything that she's ever done and i think if we ever met each other at a cocktail party she would cut me down in seconds and it would devastate me for a very long time you think

she'd insult you or she'd just be like i don't care about this guy i think she would dismiss me yeah and i think she would be she would be right too because she's she's so smart and she's done so much and i think she's uh like one of the aspects of her brand that i've found is is how attuned she is to to bullshit and she's a very much a no bullshit person and i'm like mostly bullshit so i would come at her with with with bits and like trying to make her laugh i know that that's what i would do because that's my default move with people that i that i like them and and am intimidated by is like i'm gonna like waka waka here are some jokes for you i mean polar and i feel like she is she's seen so much and she's done so much that she would take one look at me and be like this

guy cannot offer me anything comedically or friendship wise and she wouldn't even say something mean but she would say something dismissive that would uh make me retire from comedy and writing for like five years yeah if you did a joke she didn't laugh but she was like smiling she was like that's good that's good that would be oh my god heartbreaking yeah ah that's a good one um i i do have one in mind and it is actually football related marshawn lynch okay i feel like he's you think if you went to marshawn lynch and you asked to be a football player he'd say no i think that if i even tried to hang out with marshawn lynch he would he would want nothing to do with me. He's done a lot of stuff. He's been on Conan. He does

that Clueless Gamer sometimes. He's done a lot of different interviews. And he's been on Bear Grylls' show. He's so funny. The last season of Westworld. Yes. That's right. And he's so off-the-cuff funny

all the time. He's got his own vernacular. That's like different from anyone else in the entire world, but you get everything single thing that he's saying, like you understand the intention, you understand what it means. And he's so fucking funny all the time. And he's not, there's like, he's not trying to be do bits. He's not trying to be big. He's just naturally quick and funny. And he's also

incredibly talented at football. And he's somebody that I would be like, Oh, he's so cool. Like I'd want to, I'd want to be friends with him. I would try also with the only weapon I have in my, uh, artillery, which is I'm going to, I'm going to get him to laugh. Like that's if I can make his body do something he didn't intend for it to do like chuckle, then that means I win somehow. And, uh, and I just see those crashing and burning because I learned a new thing about myself when I started a new job that I wasn't nearly as charming as I had remembered myself being. Uh, I, I stepped into those rooms, guns blazing, and was met with just stalwart resistance. And I'd replay the day in my mind and be like,

oh, no, it was me. I'm the problem. I'm not good at this anymore. I mean, I don't think that's right. I don't think you're the problem. You'll be fine. You're a charming, great guy. I'm I don't think you're the problem. You're – you'll be fine. You're a charming, great guy. I'm a tryhard.

That's the problem. So that was – I was going to save this for another episode, but we can segue into that because that – I was going to ask you a casually devastating insult that anyone has thrown at you because for me it was he tries too hard yes which is like the like the the if you had said if if i had heard someone was like he's not funny talking about me i'd be like oh well that person is wrong yeah or if someone was like he's not good at basketball i'd be like well i'm not fucking trying to be good at basketball but i've heard a few times in my life he tries too hard and that has destroyed me because a tries too hard at what tries too hard at being nice tries too hard at at dazzling you tries too hard at creating magic in the world tries too hard at making jokes and goof mops and the other part that is devastating is like i can't i can't fix that like that's not i think that's under my control i'm still gonna do it forever because i need people to like me so bad it's so

important to me and it sucks but it's not going away the the ones i've gotten are uh um show off which is really that like that cuts me to my core um because yeah that's the fucking point like that's why i learned to do anything was for other people uh and then were we all just supposed to sit around being boring what What, what is it? What are you getting out of this world? Like I was doing this for you, motherfucker. Like that's why I learned backflips. Um, and then, yeah, the other one is that people have said that, uh, I, um, like I'm

pushing too hard. I push. Yeah. And that's really, that's hard. That's hard to hear. Because it means that you are desperate. Like they can sense your desperation and you thought you were covering it so, so well. You thought, ah, but behind these jokes, yes, I'm a shell of a human and I need their loving, but they don't know that because I'm putting on the show in the front. And they're like, no, I'm putting on the show in the front

and they're like, no, we see right through the, we see right through the curtains. We know what's going on back there. I didn't think we shared this. Yeah. Cause you make it, you make it look effortless. I, well, no, I, I, I certainly, I know all my crutches and I would never reveal them to you. Cause then you'll know them, but I can,. But I can see the chinks in my own armor, obviously, like everybody can. And when I catch myself doing it, it's just, no one has ever been meaner to me than me in those moments.

Man. Who called you a tryhard? Anybody recently? Nobody recently, but i make too much money for anyone to say anything like that to me at this point uh but i i still remember all the people in college high school and in my 20s who have who have said that i tried too hard and like even knowing that when they say that it means very little to them and we're just like oh he just, oh, he tries too hard.

And then they'll never think about me again. And they can go on the rest of their lives. And now I have this thing that I can stew on for the rest of my life. It would be really fun to then watch you for the rest of the semester trying to convince them that you tried just the right amount. Like trying to get them to say that. The too hard was the hard part to hear. Hey, Daniel, I was wrong. You just the right amount like trying to get them to say that trying to get the too hard was the hard part to hear hey daniel i was wrong you tried the right amount that's good you fucking nailed it uh i remember in high school a bunch of people were going around a table and they're coming up with two words to describe everybody and it was usually like an adverb

and then something else like uh um uh callously hilarious things like that and then they got to me and somebody somebody looked at me this woman laurel looked at me she pointed a finger at me and she goes predictably spontaneous and everyone goes everyone else rolls their eyes and goes yeah oh no oh ouch that's so spontaneous that it's become boring my uh high school theater called me consistently inconsistent what the fuck does that mean i don't know but it fucking burns so okay this might this might hurt soren uh give me two adjectives for me. Three, two, one. No, no, no. Obviously, I need more time than that.

Five, four, three, two, one. See, what is... What's the point of trying to do a spontaneous thing if you're going to make a meal out of it? Well, because I want to get it right. I to look you deserve something here dan i'm not just going to throw something out there that's like off the mark and be like that was it that's all you get i want to be true i want you to be i want your gut to speak um how do i see so much worse than if you said anything at all well i'm cheers i'm trying to put together is how to see, I so much worse than if you'd said anything at all. Well, I'm cheers. I'm trying to put together is how to do like a Peter Parker type of thing. And I can't just say Peter Parker, but you're the, the, the nerd that every nerd aspires to be. You are the type that's presented in movies as everybody relates to that guy. He's cool.

He's funny. He's smart. He's good at what he does. But for some reason, everyone in the movie is just calling him a nerd. And that's how I feel like you live your life. That seems to, for whatever fucking reason, that's your pigeonhole. But you don't have any of those qualities. You're a charismatic, good-looking dude. I mean, thank you that's not what i wanted from this i wanted like the the gun answer yeah but i i don't i don't know i don't have it in me

right now we're in quarantine dan it's like everybody needs to be uplifted right now. Fair. Why did you have one? Did you have one just like sizzling one set up for me? No, I didn't. I was going to wait for you to do like a counter countdown for me. And now I'm just going to be like kind, funny. Those are my two adjectives. Because that was the assignment was two adjectives. I'm going to think about it and maybe I can come back with one and like,

I'll really get in touch with my inner bully and see if there's one that I can know. Yeah. The, the, the, the best part about saying, give me an answer three, two, one is the person saying, let me think about it and I'll come back to you. That's what everyone wants from that. Yeah. What I'm going to do is try too hard on this one. Yeah. Love it. And bring it back in the meantime do you have any uh quick questions for me yeah i got a quick question for you um daniel yeah is there a

is there a movie that you know is bad you know is objectively bad but that there's a there's one section of it or there's something about the movie that gets you. And it's like a movie that makes you cry and you're embarrassed that it, this movie has made you cry, has made you feel anything. I can go first. Please. Okay.

There's a movie called. Fuck. What was the name of it? I was going to say sweet home Alabama, but that's absolutely not it. You volunteered to go first. the name has suddenly escaped me it's a movie called um where the heart is that's it do you know this movie no okay this is a movie that came out in the 90s some point maybe even 1990 um it's got natalie portman in it it's got um

hold on let me just let me i'm not just gonna drive me crazy if i don't know when it came out i'm glad you don't know what this movie is because i want i i want our audience to know that we in the limited preparation that we do for this show and to be clear it's it's it's very minimal this falls under that umbrella soren should have this information already okay this movie has got it's got natalie portman in it it's got ashley judd um it's got joan cusack it's got some people like it's there's some people in this movie you'd be like, oh, why haven't I seen this? Stockard Channing's in it. Oh.

And. Jason Patrick? It's not that cancer movie, right? No. So the premise of this movie is that Natalie Portman is running away with her boyfriend from a small Southern town and he leaves her at a Walmart.

She goes inside to pee and he drives away and then she starts living at that walmart uh until she has her baby there and then she becomes famous in that small town and ashley judd is like a nurse there uh it's very strange and hey yeah soren real quick this movie sounds bad it's it's fucking terrible it's the here's the here's some of the names natalie portman's name in the movie novely nation oh no yeah uh stalker channing's name is sister husband i don't remember why i i'm sure that there's that's explained somewhere in there but uh it's it's bad and then there's a love interest in this once she gets in the small town and and uh she finds a guy who's who's into her his name is forney for and every time they say his name it definitely sounds like they're

saying horny uh but that's all aside okay so this movie is it's not a good movie but there is a moment when i can't remember why ashley judd has some sort of breakdown maybe she loses her her husband too or something like that but uh she starts crying and she asks natalie portman because natalie portman has obviously just suffered some pretty substantial devastation she had her husband leave her she was homeless she's barefoot and pregnant in a walmart living there and ash Judd says, what are you going to tell her when she grows up? By the way, her daughter, she named her daughter Americus. That's Americus nation. All right, Dan, I'm not going to, I'm not going to beat this. Okay. So she, uh, she asked her, what are you going to tell Americus with a straight face?

And Natalie Portman says, I'll tell them that we've all got meanness in us, but I'll tell them that we have some good in us too. And the only thing worth living for is the good. That's why we got to make sure we pass it on. And it's such like, it's very, it's sort of like a cloying moment. It's a, that is very broad strokes, well-trod territory. But the way that she says it, it nails me every time. And this is even before I was a dad, which it affects me even more now because of like the idea of like generationally, what do you pass on to your kids? You give them the goodness.

And that's what you introduce them to first so that they had the foundation of goodness so whatever gets built on top of that even if it's bad you could fucking wipe that away and just start with the good again and uh yeah i watched this movie when i was young i watched this when i was like a kid on hbo when i was probably scrolling around looking for softcore porn and it just struck me and it stayed with me and i went upstairs and wrote it down in my room and stuff like that because it was it meant so much to me and it gets me every time i'm so sorry to interrupt your quick question with a quick question but did you have a journal yes what that was me dropping my phone.

Yeah, I did. I had a journal that started as a camping journal. I thought that was the judge ruling on something. It's like he had a journal, guilty. I had a journal that started just because I wanted to remember everything that I did on camping trips. And so I would start it there. And then I just brought it into the rest of my life and it slowly became you know that outlet that a lot of young writers have where they're like oh i have something interesting to write down and they'll write it down and if you don't have anything interesting down write down you just write about your day and i'm sure that exists

somewhere in my house now did you have one i did yeah And I'm, I'm trying to figure out if it was a writer thing, or if it was a blogs and Twitter didn't exist when we were kids kind of thing, but we still needed some outlet to put our thoughts. I think I go back and forth on whether that was better than what I do now, which is just think something through halfway and then tweet it. As opposed to you'd write it in a journal, you'd mull over it for a little while. You can go back and flip through a journal

and see yourself reattacking the same idea a couple different times and like really trying to get a handle on it or rewriting the same phrases. And I don't, fuck, I don't do that anymore. But anyway, Dan, that's the one that really gets me. It's about what do you tell your kids when they're at the heart of an atrocity? What do you tell them about human nature?

And I was like, oh, that's such a good way of putting it. Say the name of the movie one more time. Where the Heart Is. Where the Heart Is. Where the Heart Is. All right, I'll check it out. Oh, Natalie Portman almost gets carried away by a tornado. Oh my God. Yeah.

She's holding onto some floorboards and her legs are in the air being pulled away by the tornado looking for sister husband. It's amazing. No one in the 90s was paying attention to movies and what was allowed it's wow because they're only making like 12 a year too it's like everybody saw every movie you're just throwing everything at the wall uh ashley judd's name in it lex lexi coop there are doves in this church whatever that's That's right. There's a lot of that in Face Off.

Yeah. Natalie. Now, Ashley Judd feels very trapped in this movie. Her last name is Coop. Because she's cooped in. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Forney Hole. It's a good porn name.

Forney Hole. I'm trying to think. So movies that make me emotional that shouldn't make me emotional. Well, yeah. You're just like mad that they did it to you. Like they don't deserve to see you feel. So I've got two that I want to float at you. Yeah.

One of them is About Time, a movie that i think you and i both love i love that movie i i'm so into that movie i've watched it so many times it's one of those movies that the first time i watched it i immediately watched it again like in like two in a row in one sitting which is like i need to see this movie again because it starts as a romantic comedy with like a weird sci-fi bent and then somewhere three-fourths of the way into the movie, it becomes about fathers and sons, which always hits me right in the heart

because I love my dad so much. and so just movies about a good dad and a son doing his best to honor his legacy will like always get me emotionally and the reason that i put this in the category of movies that should not make me so emotional is because uh literally every woman i've talked to about this movie has fucking hated it no and they're right because the women in the women in this movie are are are non-characters they're they're just duped by the men every step of the way. Is that true? Yeah, like Rachel McAdams, she's so charming and she's so lovable, but she also doesn't matter because Denal Gleeson has every opportunity to trick her into loving him for literally eternity.

Yeah, so I guess the question is, is that really trick tricking then or is that putting in the work um so there's there is a scene i'm joking obviously um there's a uh there's a scene and i don't think i'm spoiling the whole movie for people with this i think it in anything this would entice you to see it uh when dan's talking about fathers and sons there's a scene where domino gleason is playing uh ping pong with his dad who's bill nye and they're having like a great time and they're talking and they're like they're being very emotionally open with each other and everything and then domino gleason realizes that this is his his dad is already dead in the future and this is him coming back to visit him.

And it's like, oh, it's really tough. There are very specific rules to the time travel in this movie that are hard to completely parse, but you do grasp at the end that like even though time travel is real donald gleason and bill nighy this is their last time seeing each other period this is their time saying goodbye right and uh it's it's very difficult to watch so that's one. Another one that is lighter and less having to do with fathers and sons is, let me see if I know it off the top of my head. Season two, episode two of Community. Yeah, I think that's it. It's the one where Jeffrey Winger, what's his real name? Joel McHale, when he like hangs out with some of his old lawyer buddies for a at the end of the day decides to do something good.

So it's inexcusable that this particular plot line works for me, but it's the one that ends with Jeff Winger joining his study group for a pop and lock dance competition. And there's just something about it because the whole episode has set up with him being like i don't want to hang out with you anymore i want to hang out with my cool lawyer buddies and if you know dan harman and you know story circle you know that you already know that the episode is going to end with him being like just kidding i'm going to dance with my buddies and not the lawyer friends and And even when that happens,

it's still fucking gives me goosebumps when, when he does it, when he's like popping and locking and he says, and now we're going to do the puppet. And then he does like the puppet dance. That's a good one. Yeah. It's just,

there's, it's. It reminds me of um this is a show that you and i both like a lot malcolm in the middle and and that one i wouldn't say that this has no business making me feel because it is actually a really good job and they they do such an excellent job of building up the story arcs so that they do pay off and there's one episode where um the family uh what's the mom's name in that show lois lois yeah the family all fights a bunch of clowns on her behalf like for her honor yeah uh defending her honor the family fights a bunch of clowns and she's so touched by it as her family is you know punching clowns in the face yeah and getting kicked by giant shoes and stuff

and it's it's it's so touching the most important thing about malcolm in the middle is that the family fights constantly but if anyone else fucking dares to attack anyone in that family they're gonna they're gonna unite as one fist and destroy you and i think in that in the lois's birthday episode i think there was a clown who was like lighten up lady or said something demeaning to her in some way that that that the rest of them were just like you can't fucking talk to our mom that way we're gonna beat up a whole army of clowns because you're not like, we were allowed to yell at each other, but you are not because you're not part of the family. It's a dynamic that was really popular in movies for a long time with like

siblings. And until you realize that a lot of it was just like verbal abuse among those siblings. And then like, and then defending that person that like that toxic relationship, like, no, this is like,

I've cultivated this thing yeah i hurt this person you cannot be introduced to it well that's all i got dan uh yeah how long have we been doing this podcast at this point good long time 46 minutes yeah uh i think we can probably wrap things up I'm so sorry I usually have more to say at this point but I actually need to track down

the social accounts so sorry bear with me while I'm doing that shit hold on I'm doing that. Shit, hold on. I'm getting a text. Okay.

Yeah. So Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent on earth with 54 countries. Soren, name 10 of them while I'm tracking down the social accounts. Okay. Well, I mean, obviously you've got South Africa. 10 countries out of 54.

10 countries out of all 54. Okay. Yeah. I mean, like, obviously you've got South Africa. There's Zimbabwe, Zambia, of course. I want to say egypt is in africa i don't honestly remember egypt i'm gonna say madagascar great flick ethiopia is there uh and uh um oh oh angolia take it to taking it to the other coast, was what I did there. Fucking. Hold on. I don't even, I've lost count too. I got you.

You were at seven. Okay. Chad. That's eight. Still tracking down these accounts, but go on. I'm trying, man. Okay, is the Ivory Coast a country you don't know you don't know I bet it's not oh Libya yep I don't think I said that one already, did I?

No, you didn't. That's not it. You got one more. Okay. Is the Congo the Democratic Republic? Yes. Is that what it is? The Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Yeah, that's great. That took... Michael Crichton came through for me again. No time at all. You can find Soren on Twitter at Soren underscore LTD or me at DLB underscore INC. I'm not going to include bacon because why would we at this point?

You can email the show at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. Oh, I actually kind of want to, I want you guys to email us because we were toying around with the idea of having guests on the show. So it's not, not just the two of us. And I guess I want you guys to email us because we were toying around with the idea of having guests on the show. So it's not just the two of us. And I guess I want you guys to

email us to say if you think that would be a good idea. Because we're sort of torn at this point. You can follow the show at twitter.com slash qq underscore Soren and Dan or Instagram. You could find our producer, recorder, editor, engineer,

best friend, Gabe at GabeHarder.com. I'm going to go pull it up right now. What am I going to find? Oh, it auto-filled for me. Oh, you don't need to pull it up. It's there. Oh, it's not there. It's still get ready. Something really cool is coming soon. God damn it, Gabe. I love the way that he builds anticipation with an ellipses in there as well. He's not just like, get ready, comma, something really cool is coming. He's got get ready, dot, dot, dot, ellipses. This is a movie trailer. When I finally get that

birthday present to you, Gabe will have his website. It is Gabe's trailer. When I finally get that birthday present to you, Gabe will have his website. It is Gabe's website. I should have told you that. Yeah. Oh, your gift is Gabe's website? Yes. You have a third party making Gabe's website?

For you. Okay. All right. Yeah. Happy birthday. Yeah. I'm very excited. All right.

Bye. Bye. Bye. I'm very excited. All right, bye.