Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 44 - Quarantine Kids

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

In this episode the guys talk about how they would have dealt with the quarantine as kids, and also encourage young students to not worry about their grades! As always big thanks to Skillshare, get 2 free months of unlimited access to thousands of classes at Skillshare.com/qq Also please check out Daniel's favorite new instructor Penny Lane!   https://www.skillshare.com/profile/Penny-L/787012165 

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the only comedy, writing, and friendship podcast hosted by two television asterisk writers. I think. I have not checked. I am one half of this podcast's staff writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and person who in a freshman year production of West Side Story was voted by his female castmates to be most adorable, which is the kindest but still most hurtful way you can declare a guy the least fuckable. And I am joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello.

Hi, I'm Soren Bui. I am a writer for American Dad. My title is executive story editor. Thank you very much. And I was once on a raft of bus in my hometown, and a man there said, hey, a pretty girl like you shouldn't be wearing a hat. You almost look like a boy. Okay, okay, okay. So one thing, executive story editor, is that new? Did I miss that?

No, I just used it staff writer. And I was like, wow, he's been at that job for a while. I'll still be a staff writer. You, but you're executive story editor? Yeah, so the the way that's exciting congratulations thank you and now the other thing the so is this so you're you're traveling and a stranger yelled at you this was when i was a kid i was back when i was uh probably about the same age as you were getting labeled most adorable, I was also a late bloomer sitting on what we call, it was called a raft of bus.

It was like the roaring fork public transit system. And there's just the river that ran from Aspen all the way down through Glenwood Springs, this like Aspen Valley. And I was traveling on it once and this man was staring at me and I used to wear a Minnesota twins hat all the time. I was a big Kirby Puckett fan. Like most girls. And this guy kept looking at me and I was like, this is weird. This is weird. And then he decided to speak up and he said, I think he was just trying to decide.

He was like, is that a boy or a girl? I've made up my mind. I got to speak on this. And he said, Hey, pretty girl. Like you shouldn't be wearing a hat. You almost look like a boy. Huh? That's I wish I could reach that man now who is surely dead. So I could just let him know you don't need to speak up. If your conflicting thoughts are, is this a boy or is this a girl? I know I need to say something, right? Well, it's like, what angle do I want to

take? I would like to time travels with that guy and be like, Hey man, sit this one out, ride the, ride the pine for a while. You'd think so. And then I like thought back to it and I was like, that's the same era as Pat was really successful on Saturday night live

where people were like, fuck, I don't know what gender that thing is. I gotta know. Right. Like it really mattered to them to find out what gender pat was right like if he said uh excuse me sir i am a boy he'd be like oh okay i can sleep tonight then i can go home and like i like i can put this mystery to bed yeah he would have felt a lot better and

you know what you're right he probably is dead because he didn't look like the healthiest of gentlemen he was yeah he was a little heavyset and he was uh had one of those gin blossoms and he was riding the public transit as like a 40 year old so i think that's a pretty clear dui story i'm sorry gin blossoms a gin blossom yeah that's your when your nose is really red and it's kind of swollen from uh oh from drinking yes oh yeah okay got Got it. I see where you're confused. Also the popular era for the gin blossoms. Yeah, absolutely. And he had one of them just on his lap.

Right. Right. He was just sitting with one of the gin blossoms and he saw your youth and your ambiguity and he was like, hey, jealousy. Because he wanted that, you know? Yeah, of course. Hey, jealousy. Because he wanted that, you know? Yeah, of course. So this is our podcast where we are incredibly inessential, especially in these times during quarantine and during these important protests that we will not touch on

because our voices seem not important at this moment. But we're still going to do our silly bullshit, if that is helpful to anyone. And by anyone, i mean our listeners who prefer to be called quizzo and quinicky close friends of danny zuko bryant and syrendra bodie uh i enjoyed that one with relish did you yeah okay that's a line from it, from Old Greece, where she says, Kinnicky says, hey, bite the weenie, Riz. And she says, with relish.

And it's a really clever line in the middle of Greece. Can I ask you, since you're our resident Greece expert, was there a better way to insert your name into this? Do it again. Quizzo and Quinicky, close friends of Danny Zuko Bryant and Sorendra Boody. No, I mean, John Travolta doesn't really lend itself to it, does it? I have to like go through the cast names and be like, well, what were what were the names of the characters maybe that would help stalker channing olivia newton john john travolta uh jeff conway dd con there's not a lot of i mean that's that's more

than someone should know without googling that's true in fact you should be now crowned the resident expert oh no and i mean honestly if i was going down that same road as you, I saw that none of them worked for my name. I would've been like, well, that road leads nowhere. I won't use that one. Okay. But you forged on. I did.

I really tried to make Sandra Dee into Sorendra Boo Dee. It worked. I'm not positive it did. into Sorendra booty. It worked. I'm not positive it did. Thanks to Skillshare for supporting Quick Question. Break up the routine of a day spent indoors. Explore workshops, classes, and more in topics like photography. Get two free months of premium membership

at Skillshare.com slash QQ. Let's get into the show where we ask each other questions and we try to get some answers. And I have a couple for you this week, if you don't mind. Yeah, absolutely. One of them, so we're skipping our coronavirus quarantine check-in. Because it's over. Because it doesn't matter.

Because my main quick question for you, Soren, hey, quick question. Shoot. Because my main quick question for you, Soren. Hey, quick question. Shoot. What do you think you would be doing if this quarantine pandemic coronavirus thing happened when you were in high school? Yeah, okay.

And I think we can talk about this in one of two ways whichever you prefer like you're in high school now in 2020 or this happens when you were in high school whatever year that was i think it maybe doesn't matter um but my answer isn't going to paint me in a very good light um i would have been breaking quarantine constantly I would have been off with my friends or trying to like, I would have had a very romantic idea. If I had a girlfriend, then I would have probably had a very romantic idea of like how we were breaking it to be together. And where I was like writing the story of my life as I was doing it and

being like, this will be a good chapter. But yeah, I think that I, I see kids at the park who are like 14, 15 and I see them together and I'm so mad at them. And then I think, you know, I would have been doing the exact same thing. I wouldn't have cared. Yeah. My selfishness would have outweighed any sort of fear that I would have been hurting families or the elderly. I would have, I would have treated it like, look, maybe I'll catch this thing. Maybe I won't. And it's not worth me losing this time with the people that I like. Yeah. Now, do you think that has more to do with your character or more to do with the fact that

when you were in high school, you were secluded in the woods in a high school of like 13 people. Yeah. Probably the latter. It was like, I, in high school, I felt this desperate need to, that I was going to miss out on anything. And like that, that life was very,

very short. And that if people were having experiences without me, that was deeply depressing to me. Like I, I needed to be there for the things. And if I missed them, it was like, well,

then the game over, like I missed it. We might as well just end it right now. And I think that that maybe that's also like the brain chemistry of a kid in high school, that there's the, how your, your relationship to your peers is so much more valuable than anything else in your life at that point, which is why young boys do like crazy shit and very dangerous stuff because even their own life means less than the approval of their peers. And then you kind of, I think your brain slowly grows out of that as you get older. I can't, you can't blame those kids for that.

That's just like the priorities are different in that brain chemistry. And I think that that would have been super important to me to be with people. We've been having, I was there, we've been having bonfires, uh, out in the woods or on people's properties out on like farms so that we

could be together and police couldn't break it up. Okay. Well, I think we had different experiences. I've been, I've been thinking about this for a while because I, I also, I, I, this has come up on the podcast a few times the amount of people I see not wearing masks in New York City right now. And there are a lot of youths in the park. And some of them seem like they're like, loudly violating the rules. Yeah, where like they they want to be counter and i don't want to i'm i'm trying to figure out if i'm mad at them or not or if like if that's who i would be if this

hit me when i was in high school and uh like not to to really dial into what a square i am but i i i think i would follow all the rules and i think like my closest test case for me my case study rather was 9-11 which did hit when i was in high school and for a lot of like naive young people that was the first exposure to the idea that history could still happen because you like if it like an end of an innocence for a generation of kids kind of thing it's a very sheltered position to have but i i can remember walking around in 2000 period and thinking like well everything that's happened is going to happen we're not going to have anything new and if we have something new we're going to be able to take care of it and then 9-11 happened and it was like oh oh we're we're going to need to print new history books now. I thought we were done.

I thought that was it. And our reaction to 9-11 growing up in New Jersey was like a swell of community that probably erred on the side of like maybe too much patriotism, but like, but like still we didn't think of it in like a jingoistic patriotism sort of way. We just thought of it like a community,

like, Oh, we're, we're, we're all together now. And like, it, it was the most American I'd felt at that point in my life.

Cause I was just like, I'd felt New Jersey and for 15 years. And suddenly was just like, I'd felt New Jersey for 15 years. And suddenly it was like, oh, no, I'm part of this bigger, this much larger thing. And we all take this very seriously. And we're all very, we're upset about it together. And we're angry about it together. And I didn't, there were certainly people in my high school who were either in the spirit of being counterculture or were, were very informed people were,

were saying like, let's never would have happened if America didn't something, something Daniel didn't pay attention enough in history class to know why other countries would be mad at us. Um, but I was certainly on the side of like, no, let's, let's all band together and like rise up and be a community and a, and a force here, which makes me think I would do whatever my government told me to do in the coronavirus.

I get that. I, so like the idea it's so uh it's very easy to get swept up in the idea that everyone's on the same team when something big happens especially when you're young because you've never seen it before all you see is a lot of divisiveness and then all of a sudden there's like some cause that every single person can rally behind and it feels very good to be on the big team at that age so yeah i get that i get right because at like fucking 15 years old in 2000 when it's like i like nintendo 64 fuck you i like playstation and it's like i kind of like both of them but i understand that i need to pick a side and then there's like a much larger problem that casts a large shadow over the smaller problems that you'd understood as divisions it's like oh okay now i get it now i

understand like actual team tribal mentality yes it's interesting to me that that experience changed you the way that it did i always sort of wanted something like that when i was young and i would don't want to say like catastrophic like 911. I don't always want a 9-11 is what I'm saying. I wanted something that I thought, ah, this changed me or this changed the way that I see the world. And none of it really did. Even like I was in high school when Columbine happened and everybody was talking about it. People were crying because it wasn't so far from where we were. And it didn't change it. In my mind, I didn't feel older. I didn't feel any different. It still felt removed from me. It still felt like the sun was still

shining. It was still a good afternoon and like i wanted to go do the things that i would do anyway and i in my mind i'm selfishly thinking well is this going to stop us from playing ultimate frisbee like we usually do at six o'clock every day like that kind of thing yeah um and like i don't i don't want to overplay what happened to me like if if you ask my family they won't say like on september 10th he was one day and then on september 12th he was you know watching the news and he was suddenly like tapped in and lost all sense of humor or anything like that it's i was still a fucking piece of shit kid but uh again the best way i can describe it is like history is still happening which which was certainly what what 9-11 was i guess you were in were you in college for 9-11 yeah i remember yeah

we i had a roommate we had lived in the quad and i had a roommate sam bergen who came and knocked on our door and said we're under attack every every city's being bombed god almighty we went what what and then we came out and watched the tv we saw what was happening and a lot of us didn't the same way as you like we didn't understand well why would anyone attack us yeah like we didn't get it and and then you kind of learn those things along the way because you have to learn them quick. Yeah, I certainly, they made an announcement in, I think it was my second period class chemistry, forgive me, AP chemistry. And the principal came on the loudspeaker

and was like, at this time, this day, a plane crashed into this tower. And we were like, oh shit. And then the message continued. and then she's like and then another plane crashed into the other tower and we all looked at each other like man well that's some bad luck because no one had any idea what was going on right we had like the idea of terrorist attack didn't like factor into anyone's thought process it was just like what the fuck is going on with planes today am i right all right All right, back to chemistry. Right.

I mean, I do remember that feeling of you see a plane crash into a building. You're like, oof, what went wrong there? And you're kind of thinking about it. And then when you see the other one hit, that's the first time it really registers that this is intentional. And it changes. Your whole prospect is like, oh, oh oh oh oh okay right this is really bad right and especially as a kid is being like oh well i thought uh if that kind of thing was going to happen someone would have stopped it i thought we had a thing in place that would make sure this never happened to us and i say us meaning like the version of modern America in 2001.

I thought we had safeguards for this kind of thing. And the fact that we don't, and there was so much confusion around, was like, oh, okay. Things can still go wrong, which is, again, like the privilege of being a naive suburban white kid. Well, yeah, that's what I remember being in history class in high school and thinking the same thing as you is like history was something that already happened. And like now we all get to learn about it.

And the generations ahead of us will just keep using these textbooks forever. And you think like you'd hear about wars and you'd be like, oh, people had it really wrong then. Thank God we're so much better now. And like all that's over. There'll never be another world war or anything like that. You don't realize that history is continuing. And we're all just as shitty as we always were.

And there was also that same kind of, it feels so shitty to say, that same kind of temptation that you touched on earlier, where there was like, man, it'd be cool if we had another Lincoln or something. Like, it'd be cool if we had another lincoln or something like it'd be cool if we had another like thing that would make it into the history books but i don't think anything else is going to happen i don't think anything is going anything interesting is going to happen for the rest of my life and then suddenly something interesting does happen and you wish it didn't right and uh and that's that's my my opening salvo into this comedy advice podcast that we do jesus i'm so sorry oh well i have a question for you that's also about when you were

younger but in this is college age i got a quick question okay is it about 9-11 because or oh no it's college age so is it oh god is it about hurricane katrina um this one is sandy okay oh that's after that's that's after oh god good i'm glad you got the rest of it oh i thought it got buried um no this is different this is uh this is a little more light-hearted i wanted to ask you if there was something that you in college, you thought, I have to prepare, I have to do this because the rest of the world cares so much about this outside of college. And then you found out the world didn't care at all and would never ask about it again. And I know that realize that's mealy mouth. So let me give you an example. I was trying to get honors in English, in English and comparative literature. I thought honors was like you graduate with honors and that's a huge, that's a huge way to distinguish yourself when you put it on a resume, when anybody in the world outside of school sees that they're going to be like, oh, oh my goodness, this boy graduated with honors. We'll bring him right in. Bring him in.

You assume honors exists in the system because it will matter at some point. Yeah. And it's hard writing an honors thesis. I mean, a liberal, I don't know what honors is like for every single area of field of study, but for literature, you're writing an honors thesis and it's big. It's a monumental task. It's going to take you most of the year to do. It's on top of your regular work. And at the end, you have to defend it. You, you present it and you have to defend it against people who will, uh, teachers who will try and poke holes in it. It's like an arduous process. Yeah. And I was doing it. I was going through it. I was writing it.

And at a certain point I gave up on it and I felt like such a failure. And I thought this is going to be such a blemish for me the rest of my life. And it has not fucking mattered. The world does not give a shit about honors. Like there's no job out there that's hiring somebody who did their honors thesis on Alcibiades in ancient Greece in the real world. Who's like, oh, oh, tell me more about your honors project. It will never help you at all. I mean, it'll help you at all I mean it'll help you

I mean like this is the bullshit response to that that it'll help you in that like the the things you have learned in the pursuit of that thesis have informed who you are today I assume right

yeah no no yeah that's true but no I recognize that as bullshit I felt that way I assume, right? Yeah. No? No, yeah, that's true. But no, I recognize that as bullshit. I felt that way about two things. One of them was GPA, which became so important to me in college. Yeah. Just as like a gratification renewing machine.

When I, my first semester, I left with a 4.0, or my first year left with a 4.0 GPA and was like, oh, this feels good. Now I need this forever. And then maintained that until my senior year when I had a professor who just wanted to teach me a lesson by not giving me an A in his class. And it was the one class I didn't get an A in. And I was very upset and it kept me from getting a 4.0.

And I like met with him privately to argue with him. Cause I was one of those pieces of shit. And I was like, I need this thing. And he was like, you don't. And in fact, you'll learn a lesson if you don't get it.

And like, he's wrong, but also right. Like he's wrong in that. I didn't learn a lesson from him, but he's wrong in that i didn't learn a lesson from him but he's right in that no one gave a fucking shit about my what my gpa was my my first job out of college at cracked they didn't even check to make sure that i had a college diploma let alone what my gpa was and then since then whether i was freelancing or consulting or now at last week tonight,

no one has asked for my transcripts or what my GPA was or what my SAT scores were. None of those things matter. And like a thing that I was so like driven to fight for, because like, A, I thought I deserved this grade and and b i thought this was going to be the difference maker man if you just if i if i can leave this school with a 4.0 then like all the doors are going to be open and they're and and i can't i can't conceive of a single door that would be open to me now that is not open to me if i did have a 4.0 GPA right now. I think it only matters. Or if you had like a 2.0 GPA right now. Right.

I think it only matters if you're going to continue with school. If you're like, now I'm going to get my master's, like then maybe I could see it mattering. But in the greater scheme of things, like outside of scholastics in the world, you're like, it's, I feel so foolish for having spent so much time worrying about my grades and I didn't even totally do it for me either. I was doing it thinking the world will care at some point. And I was thinking, well, my parents would be really disappointed if I got a C or like something like that. And then you realize afterwards, like, wow, I was doing that for my parents. They wouldn't have cared. Like, um, but it's, yeah, that was one that really yeah i hit home for me really recently where i was like oh yeah fucking honors nobody gives a shit about that um and i you people

are going to say you know well you have to get the self-satisfaction of having completed it you learn the that you the tools in your arsenal you build by having to defend your honors thesis are all really valuable man i got i got all those other places it's i didn't need it yeah it's overlap i remember this isn't like too recently but a couple years ago someone talking about the different uh like latin phrases that they associate with different levels of honors in graduation of college. Yeah. Where someone was like, oh yeah, magna cum laude, that's the highest. And I was like, no, it's summa cum laude.

Yeah. And in my head, I'm thinking, because that's what I got. And they're like, no, I'm pretty sure it's magna. And then the conversation continued. And I'm just like sitting there quietly stewing like, oh, none of it mattered. They don't even remember which one is higher. Why did I do any of this? Did you, were you Phi Beta Kappa?

No. Okay. I wasn't either. My wife was. And at the time it seemed like this is it, man. This is the golden ticket to like a career. It just became like this huge hassle where you have to meet with the other five beta kappas every once in a while i'm like you don't know any of them you don't like them is she still

is uh does her work continue with with five beta kappa no okay she doesn't she's out now i think yeah well it's blood in blood out so i think she got chain whipped and then she was done she got chain whipped and then she was done. The only other thing I'm thinking of from college that I thought was going to be important was it's just only because it was revolutionary to me at the time was studying English

and comparative literature and getting into close reading which is a literary pursuit that I think anyone should check out. It's, it's, it just studying books and poetry in a way that is not just like, uh, it's not just evaluating on a critical level. You're looking at, at form and content and how they inform each other. And it's, it was, uh, eyeopening and fascinating to me, uh, as, as much as it was like the first time you read, you read in middle school or high

school animal farm. And it's the first time you realize, Oh, it's not just about animals, right? It's about a whole thing. That's how I felt studying close reading where it's like, Oh, Right. It's about a whole thing. That's how I felt studying close reading where it's like, oh, the poem, it's not just that it rhymes. It's also that like the way that it rhymes also tells like an additional part of the story. You can use every part of the animal to tell the same story and sometimes contradict the story if you want to. It was very exciting to me to have like my eyes open. It's like, again like again animal farm it's like learning about metaphor for the first time learning about close reading was like okay this is this is a new way of thinking about everything in the world and i thought i'm gonna leave college and i'm gonna i'm gonna apply

close reading to fucking restaurant menus i'm gonna apply it to to to reality shows i'm gonna i'm gonna throw it everywhere and everyone's to think this is a superpower that I have. And it just wasn't. It kind of is like a monkey paw curse for you, honestly. It did have to end up using it, but now you can't turn it off. No. We got very lucky with Cracked in that this one thing that we were very good at out of college, we got to continue doing and no one else did. Right. I spent a bunch of college learning how to talk about Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas.

And then I immediately turned around and I was like, what if I applied that to Saved by the Bell? Right. If I did that same thing. Yeah, exactly. Where I had a teacher who was like, it was eye-opening for me that he we were reading i can't remember what it was maybe it was like the odyssey or whatever but he was like look there's gonna be a lot of things in here that you can look at and you can say you can just disregard it

because you think oh it was people a long time ago they didn't know any better but like the way that they treat women in that book for instance or the way that uh what's important to him is like making sure that he kills all of his wife's suitors. Stuff that seems very savage and archaic to us now. And he's like, you're going to want to do that. Don't do that. If there is something weird in there, in the story, think about why it's there and how

it serves the story in a timeless way. And I was like, fuck, yeah. And so then that informed exactly how I treated all shows that way. Anything that was weird or there was like some element of a movie that was like, oh, that's a strange moment. I would sit there and just think about it. I was like, well, why does that?

Why is it there? How does it make it better? Like, yeah. And in a lot of ways that was great for cracked and completely dangerous and bad for you in the rest of your life. Oh, yeah. So it's, it's, here's a, like a perfect mind shattering example for me is that so much of close reading in college was looking at things that seem strange and asking yourself, well, what if it's on purpose? What if this thing that feels incongruous is on purpose? And then applying that to so many things. And then I had like an opportunity of a lifetime

on the old Cracked podcast with, at the time, Jack and Michael Swain. We guested with two great Simpsons writers after a Simpsons After Hours episode that we did. And I had like, at that point, 15 years of Simpsons fan theories that were all based on the presumption that there were no accidents and everything was on purpose and we just had this golden opportunity

to go to to uh Mike Rice and and Jeff Martin and be like so in this one episode at the the flea market in homer's barbershop quartet uh skinner grabs a helmet with the prisoner code 24601 and uh several seasons later we learned that he lived a dual identity and 24601 is the number of jeanjean in Les Mis, who also lived a dual identity. So did you plant this five years before the Principal in the Pauper episode where we found out about Skinner's backstory? And they were just like, no. We just thought it was funny to say 24601. Like this guy likes musicals.

Jeff Martin really loves musical theater. So he dropped that number in there and then we forgot about it later and like that was the entire episode was michael and i like firing off these these close reading fan theories and they're just like no i mean that's interesting but no you can just see the two of you in comic book nerds t-shirt like this yes one arm absolutely your arm coming out of one side michael's out of the other yeah this is a two-headed monster the shirt is too tight for us so it's like over our bellies you know uh yeah it's it it's so useless sometimes and you like you catch yourself doing it in on train stops and things like that where they're like you'll see a misspelling and you're like why would they why would they have done that

and then you start like getting so there's um a story about a guy who tried to create a universal language and i'm gonna butcher this i wish i i should have really it would be great if i could have researched this beforehand but uh to brush up on it but there's a guy who tried to create a universal language that would be for everyone. And one of the things that he wanted to have happen is that every note also represented a letter of this alphabet that he had. I think it was only like 12 letters long. And then every color represented a different letter. So you could not only communicate, you could not only do sentences in words, you could do them with a song, like the lyrics would be written into the notes of the song. You could do it with a painting, you could have basically a story within the painting just by

color. And he taught it to a few people. He had some students that learned it and they quickly kind of went crazy because they kept trying to apply it to the world. Everywhere they looked, there was clearly this information coming at them that they couldn't help but try to decipher. And none of it was intentional. And like that just drives you nuts for the rest of your life. When did you know when this when this happened no okay that's fine i mean you you this is as our audience knows a thoroughly prepared podcast so you have no excuse for not having this information at the ready yeah i but like he he did he did he raise people in isolation no no these were grad students i think think, that he just taught it to.

And then they continued to, like they all got fluent in it. And eventually it just drove them nuts. That's so fascinating. Because I know you also told me that story about the scientist or literary professor who experimented on his own child with certain colors yeah so he that sounds it sounds way worse than it is but it is pretty fucked up what he did he uh didn't teach his daughter the that name for the color blue yeah um he taught her all the other color names but just left out blue and so when she got to a certain age she didn't have that and because she didn't have that in her vocabulary the color

didn't exist to her like when you'd ask her what color the sky was she would say white and so without having the the word as the connecting piece between the thought and the thing then you don't have the thing in the thought can't ever meet right um but that's why yeah that's i'm taking the the the wrong takeaway from this which is i wonder if you raised an entire like colony of babies on this 12 word 12 color 12 tone Universal communicative style what what that would do because I feel like 12 tones sure they're they're set but there are more than 12 colors there are different shades and there were certainly more than 12 words. Yeah. The way that it broke down in the language, I'm pretty sure,

was the words just became really long because you had such a small alphabet. You have to distinguish each word. Some words were like 15 to like 20 letters long, and those were common words. But I don't know. It sounds, it makes me think of exactly what you did. You learned these lessons in college. You're like, ah, these are tools I'll use the rest of my life.

And then every time you tried to use them, they just made you crazier. Yes. Folks, we love doing this show. And if you want us to keep doing it, there are a couple of ways you can support us. One is you can get your friends to download and subscribe and another is you can show some love to our amazing sponsors and this week we are talking about skillshare skillshare is an online

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like productivity, freelance, and entrepreneurship. A creative challenge or productivity class may help in setting small goals and feeling fulfillment and sense of accomplishment. Soren, I've been having fun with a Skillshare class that I started taking. It's filmmaking from home turned found footage into compelling video by a creator named Penny Lane. She is my instructor. She is a filmmaker. And I've sort of exhausted making puzzles and teaching myself close hand magic here in my apartment. And so now I've been having a whole lot of fun using a creative outlet that is very new to me, which is editing footage and trying to tell stories with edited footage. And this class has been great for that. It's been telling me all

about like the safe ways to find found footage and then how to turn it into a compelling video, and I really like it a whole lot. That's just one thing that I'm doing, but there are a number of Skillshare classes that you can all take. I suggest doing this one because it's something that's great that you could do from your home, which is perfect for quarantine. I want to see those so badly.

Oh, they're going to be great. We'll put them, Bacon's going to put them in the footnotes and it's going to be awesome. Whatever you want to do, you can explore your creativity and get two free months of premium membership at Skillshare.com slash QQ. That's two whole months of unlimited access to thousands of classes for free. Get started and join today by heading to Skillshare.com slash QQ. That's two free months of unlimited access to thousands of classes at Skillshare.com slash QQ.

So I got a quick question for you. Okay. It's going to sound weird. I need you to help me come up with a phrase to describe a specific type of problem. I'd been previously calling it, well, you know it for a while as a Michael Swain problem. I've been, with people who aren't you, I've been calling it a dad problem, but that sounds unfair because it's not specific to my dad or you as a dad or all dads. It's a problem, generally a tech problem that you either can't explain or replicate to a tech support person. And like, I've been pretty tech savvy

most of my life. I know a lot of the terminology. But I recently had my first blank problem, because I don't want to call it anymore were with my tv and i i was too embarrassed to call the cable company because the only thing i'd be able to say was my cable is different now can you help me because normally i know like i can i can i can call them and feels like like oh yeah the the router is out I tried resetting it uh I think you need to do something on your end and they would ping it on their end and then they would try something else on their end and like I could like it was a conversation that could flow easily but this is the time that I have I have a a Vizio TV with Smartcast

and I also have Vios and I like split between SmartCast and my Fios provider for like the different multiple things that I subscribe to. HBO Max, for example, and Hulu and whatnot and all those things. One day in my input, when I press my input button on the remote, the thing that used to connect to my Fios box wasn't there anymore. And I didn't know what to say to anyone. It was like your HDMI 1 wasn't there? Yes. Like normally there's a series of letters instead of HDMI 1. And then one day there wasn't.

And I checked the plugs and they were all plugged in and I unplugged things and replugged things and reset things. And luckily, like, I mean, the end of this story is that I just like a true Irish Catholic sat with things being wrong. And then one day they got better. And I,

I, so yeah. Oh Jesus. That's a terrible lesson. But like, I know I wanted to call Fios and be like, listen, here's my problem.

But I didn't know like, like technology has gone beyond me at that point. And as I get older, I know that's going to be more and more of a problem. So I wanted to figure out if you could help me, like what the best, how do we categorize that kind of problem?

Yeah. So it's also like, it's tech that is beyond you. Tech that's beyond you, but also like you don't even know necessarily which tech is the problem. Yes. You're embarrassed to ask because if you ask

the wrong people they're like that's not even what the fuck that's you're talking about your tv inputs why are you calling your motor company right i didn't want to call uh fucking time order cable and be like my internet's working but I can't find HBO anymore. You should explain also why that's called, just within our circle, a Michael Swain problem. Because he, Michael Swain, as we all know, is a gifted genius. But for as long as I've known him, he has had computer problems that can neither be replicated nor explained and like this was this is dating back to when we worked in uh a new media tech startup internet company in 2008 yes where we're just surrounded by people who know how to solve computer problems and people who have grown up on computers and he was just like my macbook is doing this now right so it

was always something so weird like he would every time he sent an email it would eat a microsoft word document off his computer or like stuff that doesn't exist for anyone else in the world. And at first you're like, wow, that computer's fucked up. And then you start to realize it's just him. There's this orbit around him of chaos that like technological chaos that somehow he has just been burdened with. And you don't know, you can't solve it for him. There's not going to be anybody out there who can. And he sort of resigned to it. He doesn't care. We're like, Michael, why didn't you go to this meeting today?

I sent you an invite. And he's like, oh yeah, sometimes invites go to Spain. Like, what the, how? No, they don't. They can't. And then I look at his computer and sure enough, they do. And I'm like, well, all right. I don't know what to say. at that tech company we worked at they used to say that

in those circumstances the problem they could isolate the problem to between the chair and the keyboard which i was like oh that's clever of you nerds um because usually they're talking about me right um but i don't yeah and then you were always like where did you come up with that did you did you come up with that when you were uh sitting home during prom you fucking losers i remember you said that uh like two or three times a week i'd say it all the time but i didn't even have a prom um yeah we need a name for this yeah um like dad problem immediately came to me because i think one of the the early non michael swain times this came to my attention was from my dad who is great

and an incredible person um but would just text me be be like, hey, Hotmail is different now. And I'd be like, well, I haven't used Hotmail in 15 years, so I don't know what it used to be. And I don't know how to get it to where you want it to go again, so I don't know how to help you with this problem. But I recognize that dad problem is like you're a dad and my brother David is a dad. that dad problem is like you're a dad and my brother david is a dad and uh it's not like a universally dad experience to screw up in tech case in point me at this moment but it does seem like it hits dads pretty hard i guess there's just add dads of a certain generation um i we can put it to like, we can have our audience come up with, uh, they can tweet at, uh,

our producer, make me bacon, please. And give him some suggestions for us to name this thing, because I do think we can have a recurring segment of quote unquote, dad problems that we have. In the meantime, do you have any dad problems that you can think of personally yeah i had one um you talking about your tv reminded me that when i had my son i was trying to figure out a way that i could watch my television with cordless headphones i just wanted like some bluetooth headphones that i could plug in and everywhere i went i just trying to explain that to people. And they're like, no, you can't do that. And I was like, no, that can't be right.

Surely I can. The TV is nice and the headphones are nice and I have money. How is this a problem? And I quickly learned that the type of television that I had didn't have an output on it. There's no like jack. And because there was no jack, it made it very, very difficult to solve this problem. And then it became a situation where I couldn't even describe what I needed anymore. Because what I needed to do ultimately was there wasn't an audio out for the TV that was like an, I can't remember what they're called.

It's like if you open it up, there's like a little red light that comes out, optical out or something like that. And I needed to hook that up into an adapter for RCA cables. Those cables then went to a uh bluetooth output yeah and then that output i had to to pair with my headphones and then i had to manipulate this like weird stuff within the television to make sure in like the when i the firmware like make sure that this would actually work and it was it was like a month-long project project where i was on the phone with lg and i was like just tell me there's somebody has to have done this with your television in the past and they were like no can't be done yeah that's the kind of thing that like first i would say hey i just i i want uh like bluetooth wireless headphones for my tv and if they started giving me that list of instructions i'd be like no, no, no, no, no, no.

It should be easier than that. I don't know why. I don't know how, but it should be easier. So like, give me the easier version, please. Give me the version where I don't need to get three different objects. Right. And they were like, well, you could do it with a Roku.

And I'm like, I don't have a Roku. Well, you could do it with a PS. If you just take your PlayStation 4 controller and you just plug your headphones in that. I was like, no, no, no, no. I don't have a Roku. You could do it with a PS, if you just take your PlayStation 4 controller and you just plug your headphones in that and I was like, no, no, no. I don't have any of those things. I know that a TV has Bluetooth capability. I can go to

a little place and it says Bluetooth and I'm like, yeah, but that's not really for this. Right. I just want you to listen to me. I have a nice TV, an Apple TV, a 3.85 GPA, so I should be able to listen to whatever I want, wherever I want forever. I finished three quarters of my honors thesis. You will help me.

Yeah, that's it's there's like a, I don't know what to call it, but it's like a technological. Like wasteland for it, but it follows you. It's like a cloud, like a technological chaos cloud. Yeah, I don't love it. I don't love, I mean, like it could be summed up as I'm getting older, but it's, I'm lulled into a false sense of security

because for two years I've had this TV and this cable set up and it has worked. And that made me think that I was tech savvy. And then suddenly one thing goes wrong and I checked the plugs and I was like, oh, no. Right. I'm out. I'm out of moves. I love those moments where you just don't even know where to turn. Cause I will sheepishly call the first company. I'm like,

well, let's see, let's start with the television and see, or like, let's start with the cables themselves. Well, Oh, here's a,

here's a name. All right. And then I will get on the phone. I'm like, okay, so here's the deal. It's especially tough. Cause like Verizon Fios makes it,

uh, like incredibly difficult to get to a human being, which is the death knell for people like me who are at this stage in life. You can't call anyone. You have to go to the website and they're like, describe your problem based on this dropdown menu. And I'm like, no, man, because one of the options in the dropdown menu isn't things are different. And that's the only thing I have for you. That technological helplessness. So I had a moment recently that wasn't technologically based, but it was this absolute helplessness and it was about something very very serious um i got a check from the irs this like big

big check from the irs for no reason because i owed money this year and i was like what is this and i can't just have it sitting around so i cash it and then i start trying to call the irs to figure out what's going on why can't you have it sitting around, so I cash it. And then I start trying to call the IRS to figure out what's going on. Why can't you have it sitting around? I don't feel weird about having big sums of money on just one piece of paper in my house. Did you think your son was going to rob you? I'll lose it. It's more me. I'm the problem.

And so I cashed it. And then I was like, what is this? So I kept trying to get in touch with the IRS. And because of COVID and everything, they are famously impossible to get in touch with. Yes. Anyone who you could talk to on a phone is all sent home and they don't work the banks anymore. You can't even leave a message. They give you this intermediary that you can go through.

And so I sent them a message in there. They have a form you can fill out on their website with a certain number of characters and try to say it as best as I could in a short amount of time. And then maybe like three months later, got a call from them. And it was very sketchy because the call was coming from, you know, like when a spammer is trying to get ahold of you that they're like, this number is from New York. Yeah. Potential scam, scam likely. Yeah. Navajo, New York. Yeah. Got that. And, uh, the guy was like, I could hear his TV on in the background and stuff. And I was like, this is, this is bogus. And so I hung up and then a woman called me back and she do all this information about me. And she was we look we we know that you submitted this here's exactly what you wrote and so she was trying to help me she had never

heard of this either and she's like you're gonna have to contact the irs and i was like i don't know how and could you patch me through and ultimately like she looked into it and i'm eternally grateful to her because she has the language like the arsenal of words is there for her whereas like this glossary doesn't exist for me so i'm just fumbling trying to explain it to her like a like a horse trying to stamp it out in the dirt right and uh she came back to me and she was like oh okay here's what happened it's apparently it's going to happen with a few other people for some reason they have filed your um the amount that you owed and you sent it you sent in the money for they applied it to 2018 then they saw later that 2018 had already been paid for

so they sent your money back plus the interest for how long they'd kept the check and uh i was like oh okay great and they're like but that means that you haven't paid for your taxes this year. And so there might be a penalty. And I was like, oh, okay, okay, got it. And kind of figured it out that way. And because I had brought it to their attention, they're like, we've now seen that other people are suffering from this as well. And so they had solved it through all this process. And because I had flagged it, like other people got it solved as well.

And when I say solved, whatever money the irs sent them they stole back i'm very curious because like over the last uh like four years now not the last probably like certainly not last year but the last four years or so have gotten random checks from Los Angeles. And they've never been big checks. But they've made me nervous because I think anything could be a scam because I'm stupid. And so I've always called whatever number I could call. And I was like, hey, you guys sent me $12.16 in February. And I'm afraid to sign it because I'm dumb. And they're like, oh, yeah, no, the thing is,

in 2016, we screwed up your taxes. And we're just catching up to that now. So here's an extra $12 for you that we forgot about. And that has happened three or four times, specifically from Los Angeles. Wow. That's crazy that they're being that honest about it.

Yeah. Well, that makes me feel actually a little better about my taxes. I would just assume that if they ever saw that sort of thing, they'd just be like,

well, he doesn't know any better. Yeah. We've tracked the things that he's spending money on. This is not a guy that knows any better. Right. Give it a month. If he calls, we'll he's spending money on. This is not a guy that knows me better. Right. Give it a month.

If he calls, we'll give it back to him. If not, fucking whatever. That's how Comcast would treat it. Money's not real. Well, yeah. It ended up being a very scary thing where I thought, and then I was looking up scams on how people do that, and there is a scam associated with it,

but it wasn do that. And then there is a scam associated with it, but, uh, it wasn't that. Yeah. Um, do you have any more questions for me or are we, we're pretty close to wrapping up, I think.

Let's see. Well, oh yeah, we're, we're right on it. Yeah. Um, I'm going to track down all the social accounts and normally this is a time where we use this space to challenge the other

person to, uh, either embarrass or fail to exonerate themselves in some way. Um, but because everything is so sad and terrible right now, uh, that I figured I would just use this space to surprise Soren and say, Hey,

Soren, what's something sweet you'd like to say about your wife? That's nice of you, Dan. Um, shouldn't take you this long to think about it at all. I want to find like the best thing to say about her. Um,

so she is, uh, a mother again to like an infant. And I had forgotten how great she is as a mom to a really small baby. She's so good with her. And like when they're this young, they're just kind of like in a larval state. They don't give you anything back. And it doesn't matter.

There's just like this profound amount of love coming out of her that this baby just absorbs and and offers nothing in return other than like explosive diarrhea and uh she's so good with her and so patient with uh our son at the same time that there are times where i'm watching them and i'm thinking if i died in a car crash she she'd be fine. Oh, damn. That's so sweet. I mean, like super sad at the end, but very sweet. Excellently, excellently done. You can find Soren on Twitter and tell him what a good husband and dad he is at Soren

underscore LTD. You could find me at DLB underscore INC. You could find the founder of this podcast at Make me bacon please spelled pls and you can tweet at him uh whatever it is i told you to tweet at him earlier you can find the show on twitter at qq underscore soren and dan uh you can email us at qq with soren and daniel at gmail.com we're still uh soliciting audience advice. If we should have guests on the show or not, and what kind of guests you'd like us to have and what you'd like us to talk

about, you can hire our producer, engineer, editor, guru, Gabe at Gabe harder.com. I'm, I'm reluctant to check.

What am I going to find? If I go to Gabe harder.com right now, Gabe, you're going to find nothing. You're going to check. What am I going to find if I go to GabeHarder.com right now, Gabe? You're going to find nothing. You're going to not find a website. It's not there. It's never going to be there probably. If there was nothing there, that would be new. It got taken down. I built this whole website and then it just stopped working for some reason. But I did the whole thing. It was really great. It was beautiful. I had contact information. It's just the whole thing's gone now and it's hard to find the motivation to start it all over i understand that that's that's very fine uh you can also support the show on patreon as we've mentioned you can also support the show by

telling your friends to download and subscribe or by supporting any of our magnificent sponsors. But I believe that's it. Soren, do you have, do you have, no, go ahead. Gabe makes me feel like that turtle in the NeverEnding Story. Do you remember that giant tortoise that had the cold and kept sneezing on Atreyu? We don't even care whether or not we care. Yeah, that one. And it says like, Atreyu's trying to warn that the nothing's coming and the turtle's just like

good at least the nothing would be something that's how I feel about Gabe's website you've made a real turn on Gabe this week yeah fuck you Gabe alright bye Yeah, fuck you, Gabe. All right. Bye. Bye.