Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 52 - Chayous Is a Ladder

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

In this episode the guys talk about words they're worried about pronouncing and give an update on their quarantine. Also Soren gets excited because he might see a bear soon! And as always, big thanks to Postmates.  Use code qq and get $100 of free delivery credit

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, a podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions about writing, comedy, life, and love, and which will end just as soon as we're both well-rounded people who have it all figured out, which means, sorry folks, you're stuck with at least me forever. I am one half of the show writer, comedian, and person who once upon a time wanted nothing more than to be the guy who operates the paint-shaking machine at Home Depot, Daniel O'Brien, and I am joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello. Hey, everybody. I'm Soren Bui. I'm a writer, father, husband, picker, grinner, lover. Some people call me Maurice. I guess that's it. Thanks to Postmates for supporting Quick quick question if you're like me you probably start thinking about what to eat for dinner while you're eating lunch i love food that's why i love using postmates for a limited time postmates is giving our listeners 100 of free delivery credit for your first seven days to start your free deliveries download the app and use code qQ for QA question.

Oh, wait, you wanted to shake the paint? That was like early on elementary school, maybe up through fourth or fifth grade, was the, seemed like the coolest job in the world. I remember going to Home Depot with my parents when they were picking up paint for some home project. And I don't know how common this still is because I haven't bought paint in a minute, but you pick out a color that you want and very often the colors need to mix in the paint can. So the Home Depot attendant puts the colors in the can, the home Depot attendant puts the colors in the can, bats it down with a hammer and then puts it in a machine that just shakes it so quickly and so powerfully and so violently to mix all the colors. And then you,

the employee takes the can from there and hands it to you and you buy it with, with money. And I was so starstruck by that process he was like first he gets that little peak right like yeah he takes it out and then he uses his little tool and he gets a little peak and he puts his pinky in there and then dabs it on the top yeah oh he gets to see it first like the and just the the action of the of the paint can shaking in the machine was so mesmerizing to me i was like i what, I, what do I got to do? What needs to,

to bend right in my life that I can one day be shaking paint cans professionally. Yeah. And like, I still kind of feel that way because it seems like it would be very fun and mesmerizing work. Um, I also remember this like a nice bow on my life that, uh, I wanted to do either that when I grew up or, um, we would watch a lot of America's funniest home videos growing up and I wanted Bob Saget's job.

Like those were the two things. And so one time we went on vacation to Florida when I was very small and, uh, my parents got a caricature artist to do caricatures of my brothers and I. My brothers and me, rather. And they asked me, like, all right, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I was like, the guy who shakes paint cans at Home Depot. And my parents were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. What's the other thing? I was like, Bob Saget.

And they're like, comedian. Bob Saget is like the host of America's Home Videos. We might like, let's straighten this out to just comedian. And so there's a caricature that still exists of me as a comedian. And it felt very fortuitous because now I've been doing comedy professionally for many years. Just because my parents, like a lot of parents, squashed my early dreams. Yeah. Like, you'll never be a paint shaker settle for something

else you'll have to be a doctor i'm so sorry we just don't have the money to send you to paint shake in school get your head out of the clouds you asshole be a comedian and something reasonable like that um i it's funny you should say that because i used to watch full house when i was a child and you know uncle Uncle Joey slayed me. And he was a stand up. And then he started like transitioning into puppetry. And it was right around the time when it hit me of like it was that's what I wanted. It was that woodchuck that was like constantly like looking around and going, what?

Yeah. And I was like, I think puppetry might be my calling. And I thought I wanted like I was like, I would practice it. And I thought, I think I could get good at this. Finding out that other comedians have done this throughout time that there have been other ones with a dummy on stage while they drink water. And I thought for a hot minute that that's what I wanted my career to be. A ventriloquist comedian? Yeah. I, this is, someone needs to, someone who's not me needs to do a deep dive into this because I also owned a ventriloquist dummy at some point in my life. Like it was, it was the Christmas gift that I wanted. I got so many fucking weird requests for, for gifts.

I issued so many weird requests for gifts. I issued so many weird requests for gifts growing up. I was like, hey, mom and dad, tell Santa this is the thing this year. I don't like, I have a list of a bunch of stuff, but if you can only do one, it's ventriloquist on me. That's the thing that I have decided. That's the path that I'm taking. And like, God bless my parents who were just like full bore. I guess our kid's going to be weird and maybe a virgin forever. But fine. His brother asked for a basketball. His other brother asked for a guitar.

They'll continue the family line. And they have. I'm really pleased that your parents got you over a troll quest, dummy. They did, yeah. They're very supportive of all of my stupid ideas. I'm very lucky. Oh. Yeah, I mean, it didn't last super long for me,

but I thought for a little bit, based on Joey, I was like, I could do that. Yeah. I would be great at that. And it was just like, maybe what it is is that feeling of just being unleashed where you're allowed to say and do

whatever you want as the dummy because you're the straight guy. You're the one who gets to act out against the dummy. Be like, no, no, you're gone too far, dummy.

And then the dummy gets to say whatever he wants. And I felt the same way about mascots when I was a kid where I was like, even the announcers are pretending

that those mascots are real dinosaurs and giant headed balls and things like that. And I don't know. Giant headed balls. I know you're talking about Mr. Met, but there's a better way to describe him. Yes. And I thought, oh, well, that's like the job. You get to be, you get to do whatever you want. You just fuck around all the time.

And your job is just so chaos. And as a kid, like you're trying not to step out of line because you don't totally know all the rules yet. And you do things that just seem fun. And then your parents are like, was that a good idea? And you're like, oh, no, no, I guess that was pretty dumb. But that's your job. And I think as the dummy too.

So maybe that was what it was for me. It's just like this, you feel so unshackled by societal norms. Is that an itch that you still feel? Because I think about that a lot with, because I'm obviously obsessed with John Mulaney, the writer, comedian, performer, where he does this show oh hello with nick kroll where his character is like unleashed mean and rude to people and john mulaney as like as his reputation suggests is a very kind person and his stand-up will back this up as he's just like a very brilliant comedian who goes through life trying not to offend anyone, but then gets to play this character in Oh, Hello,

where he is so mean and he's so good at it. And I feel like I can recognize something in like the glint of his eye where I'm like, oh, you love this. Yeah, this is a valve release for you. This is like like the this is the thing that you think but stop yourself from saying that's very fun do you do you feel like you have that still as someone who uh in a in a past life wanted to use a dummy to speak truth to power yeah i would think i would like to have a tony clifton that i could also be seems very appealing to me.

I wonder if the opposite of that is true. If like, like really horrible people are like, man, I wish I had a ventriloquist dummy that would be like nice hair or whatever. Oh, fuck. That's such a good bit, Dan. Somebody who does ventriloquist dummies, but like they're the awful person. And the dummy is just like trying to get the show back on the rails. and the dummy's just like trying to get the show back on the rails. Like a reverse Jeff Dunham where the comedian is being super racist and the public's like, hey, man, it's 2020.

What the fuck are you doing? Straighten up. Your voice is not even needed here. Get off the stage. I invited you as a guest to the show and you're ruining it. I like that. Maybe I'll get back. That was my second

second a wind? Yeah. My second career wind. Well, Dan, we should start the show, I think. Yeah, absolutely.

The show where we ask each other questions. Sometimes we check in before we actually get into the meat of the show and do like a quarantine check-in. I don't really have anything.

It's bad. How about you socks man yeah it's gonna keep sucking it's really it sucks pretty hard right now but it's only because it's gonna suck so bad in september when my son has to like we're figuring out schooling right now and it's just a oh yeah let's uh is this is that too serious a topic for for this show because you've been pretty outspoken about it on Twitter about not wanting schools to reopen. Yeah, I think it's a bad idea. Even if my son doesn't go to school, I don't like the idea of all these other kids going to school. Not only will some of them get very, very sick and maybe even have lasting consequences from that, but the teachers, too. All the school districts are underfunded already.

They don't have any sort of capacity to handle this sort of thing. And so they're like making do with the best they can. And they're asking a lot of the teachers without any additional pay. The teachers are ending up in situations where like they'll teach some kids on Tuesdays and Thursdays and other kids, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, but it's the same teacher. So the same teacher is exposed to just the same number of kids the whole way through. It's all just like this huge disaster. And they're expecting parents to step up and do these pods, which are, you get a bubble, basically. You have a certain number of kids in your neighborhood who you trust and you trust those families and you've all agreed to how much social interaction you're

going to have with the rest of the world. And then you had the kids over to your house one day, you have the kids over to another house another day, and they're learning there. And it's just a lot of work on top of two working parents too. And, uh, we're just trying to negotiate that right now. Yikes. Uh, I say this knowing that there's no way you can take me up on it, but let me know if there's anything I could do, man. Anything you need from me from here in Manhattan to ease this burden, I will do it. I swear, man, anything. That's very kind of you. Thank you so much for that hollow offer. It's like just hearing it is what I wanted.

Yeah. Oh, great. Dan, I got a quick question for you. Shoot. Now, I'm not as extremely online as I used to be. And there's a thing that happens now, I think probably within like the last seven years, that I just don't get. On Twitter, it happens a lot where someone will say, I'm feeling low. Send pictures of your dogs or like send pictures of your pets.

And as a, I don't have a pet, but you do. And I'm wondering if maybe you understand this a little bit more than I do. Uh, I have, it would mean nothing to me to see some blurry, poorly lit picture of somebody's 14 year old dog lying on the floor. Yeah. I have two main things to say about this. One, you said that this is something that you, you haven't been too online for the last, you said seven years.

So 2013, you were fully employed at Cracked for a couple more years. I don't know what time is, man. Just throwing out numbers. You know I'm bad at math. I always forget that in the middle of your tenure at Cracked, you just went full analog. I went dark. And you were like, guys,

yeah. It fell off the grid. I turned in all my columns on paper. I mailed them in. Snail mail. Someone was like, we're switching over to Slack now. And you're like, final straw. I'm out. That's it.

You can only find me via daguerreotype. See you in Alaska. But the other thing I have to say is that I can't offer you any guidance or information on this because I also don't understand. And as a dog owner, I have have never I don't send pictures of my dog to people unless it's someone who's like very close to me and it's like sure you can you can have this but I don't do it because I don't want to indulge in that kind of behavior because I I I also don't entirely understand it because if I'm feeling low first of all i wouldn't i don't tell the

internet about that um second of all if looking at pictures of cute animals is the thing that's going to cheer me up i don't know why asking twitter is easier or more efficient than googling cute animals like i googled ducks in watermelon the other day and i found it and it was great and i was like this is what i want to see right now i want to see a gif of a bunch of ducks paddling around in a in a in a halved watermelon good you think if i just asked twitter cheer me up with pet pics that they would have found that as quickly as I found it when I was looking for it? No. Of course not.

If I can be, if I can issue a calmer answer, I think what people do get, and I'm just speculating here, it's a mix of cute animals and also you see people who are supporting you. Yeah, I guess that must be what that's... Oh, by the way, I just looked up kittens in socks just to, like, try one, and it's fucking great. I bet it is. I bet it's better than if you'd sat at Twitter waiting for someone to scratch an itch that they couldn't identify. But, yeah, I think... I assume it has to be the connection.

It has almost nothing to do with the dogs. It's just you know you're gonna ask for something people want to give people are eager to give to share this part of their life like this is a thing i'm proud of i like this dog a lot i think i've done a good job raising this dog i'm a good dog owner here's a picture of him and he's happy look and then that you know you're going to get a response back from that too and then it just starts like a little dialogue so i wonder if it's just interacting with people is what you're going to get a response back from that too. And then it just starts like a little dialogue. So I wonder if it's just interacting with people is what you're going for.

And it's just like, here's the start. I think it goes a long way for the recipient who just like, in addition to wanting to see cute animals, which is a very human want to have, human want to have you want to feel like people hear you and will will support you and will go to bat for you in what is in retrospect like a like a very easy and simple thing that a person can do that makes sense which is nice and goes a long way i uh i guess i need to i i guess i should start doing it and sending pictures of my dogs to people. I don't know, man. I don't think you have to. I don't think you have to indulge in that. I think you could probably just check in with that person.

That's what they want. Right. I would much rather do that. Be like, hey, what's going on? You want to talk? We can get on the phone right now. We can get on FaceTime. That's totally, completely okay.

We can get on the phone right now. We can get on FaceTime. That's totally, completely okay. I just, I feel weird just like tweeting a picture of my dog at someone who is depressed right now. Is this good enough? It's not? Not a good dog? I'm sorry.

Right. I'm sorry. That's not helpful. I certainly don't want to make light of depression or anything like that. And I know that you don't either. I want to make light of this very strange twitter phenomenon it's strange and it's yeah i mean a lot of times i see it when like there's some event in somebody's life they're they something has gone wrong they've gotten fired or whatever and they're like i could really use some support right now send me uh or there's a lazier cousin of this which is no cheating send me the eighth photo in your uh phone to lighten my

day it's like what what are you gonna fucking get out of that what are you gonna get out of um a paint skew number that i need when i go to home depot right it's almost always going to be like oh this is a list of ingredients for a recipe. I was at the grocery store and I wanted to, I looked down at it. Here it is. The eighth picture in my camera roll was sun-dried tomatoes, basil, butter, garlic, rigatoni. Did it fix anything? Are you better? I see that one a lot too.

And I'm like, and so sometimes I'll just like look through my phone and be like, well, how would a third party perceive this? And I'm like, always I'm like, they'd sometimes I'll just like look through my phone and be like, well, how would a third party perceive this? And I'm like, always, I'm like, they'd be bored. It's boring. The things I'm taking pictures of are out of necessity. Oh, a Pella window that I liked when I went to a door and window store. But yeah, I've never understood it. I guess maybe if people, no, i don't want to see that either i was gonna say with babies if other people if i was like hey i want to see pictures of your babies not only would that be very creepy but if people actually sent them i would get

nothing out of that i'd feel hollow i'd be like i don't because in general i don't like other kids i like my kids i mean we're different that way i uh full-on babysat a child yesterday i was the same way dan uh when i was gonna have kids up until that point i was baby crazy like i loved all kids i loved every baby equally and like i liked spending time with them i liked making them smile i loved it and since i've had my own kids i've really pulled back and been like oh you know what other kids suck more oh i see what happened i was just desperate i didn't have a great baby so i i was settling for these mediocre mid-talent babies i had no. It was any port in a storm as far as babies go.

Until I had one of my own. Then I was like, oh, oh, fuck all these other kids. This one's great. No questions about me babysitting yesterday? Oh, sorry. That was, sorry, sorry. No, I mean, you don't have to. You full-on babysat a child yesterday? Not really. Okay, great. All right.

We have, uh, so the, the garden at my apartment is, is open, like this big shared outdoor space. Uh, and I go there to write sometimes because it's not my couch, which is a plus. And there was a woman and like a two and a half year old, I want to guess, little girl who were also there. And I was working on my computer outside because we have Wi-Fi there. And the woman went to the barbecue to prepare dinner. And little girl just started screaming,

not in like an alarmist sort of way, but in a look at me, I'm making noise. Can anyone see me sort of way so I would look and I would smile at her and they just walked up and she started talking to me and like language isn't great because she's two and a half and her like true handler was like very invested in whatever she was grilling at the time and I would look up sometimes and the little girl would be like standing on top of a picnic table and i was like oh no hey uh baby small baby no get down from

there she's like all right where should we go i was like oh now i'm in this now and we would just like go and look around at things and like she saw a plane and got very excited about that and i was like oh okay i know where this goes and i was like now look over there there's a boat and she's excited look over there there's a bird she's excited and then we just did that for like I don't know 40 minutes just me wandering around in this garden every once in a while checking on the kids grandma to be like you're you're cool that a stranger is just like pointing at boats with a kid. A 30-something-year-old man is taking an interest

in your child? Yeah. I'm only doing this because I don't want her to stand on tables and fall off. And then it ended. Then the grandma came over

and she was like, hey, put your shoes on. And the little girl turned to me and she was like, I can't do it without help. And I was like, you're going to fucking have to. I'm not touching a stranger's kid's feet.

I don't know what any of the rules are at this point. I'm the only one who cares. You're terrified of touching a child's feet. Yeah. Well, I think that's probably good. I think the line you've drawn on the sand is distant from pedophilia. Yes. I don't think you're in any danger.

Thank you. Yeah. I guess I do still like if a kid just like marches up to you and is like, hey, I'm talking to you now. I am very charmed by that. Like bending to the will of a stranger in that capacity is really fun. Yeah. Like bending to the will of a stranger in that capacity is really fun. Yeah.

It's also, it's very fun when, because I've been around enough kids at that age that like, you, you know, the things they're going to like, like as soon as she points to a plane and is, and is super excited about it. I was like, oh, okay. Then I'm going to blow your mind with some sailboats. Come, come this way. You're going to see sailboats and you're going to like that too. A little further. Now let's go this way a little further.

Let's go a little further away. Yeah. No, no. gonna see sailboats and you're gonna like that too and a little further now let's go this way a little further let's get a little further away yeah no no what you're describing is is is uh luring i believe oh you want to see some fishers fishermen they have lures i'm a fisherman you know all right uh i know what you mean though dan i and you're right it is it's so it seems so easy too. With adults, you're kind of negotiating. You know how I do this when I start talking to another adult that I've never met before. I just start asking questions until I've got something that I can know anything about. And then I've got them.

Then I can get them talking. Yeah. I want to know where you're from. I want to know what your job is i want to know these things and not because it's like are you useful to me i want to know how the fuck am i going to talk to you right and it's the same way that like when you i might have even learned this from you like a very very young baby like just a few months old where they get mesmerized by like different contrasting colors and how that can can excite them for a very

long time if I'm holding a baby that is a few months old and it's like okay I'm I know this this area I know you're really gonna like this window I know you're to go nuts for this window and I'm just like excited that I'd be like hey look at this like yeah and they can't hide it either. They are, they wear it all on their face. I should, I forgot to tell you this, Dan. You, when Ronan was first born, you gave him a little glow worm. Do you remember that?

Gilly loves it. Really? She's all about it. Oh, that's good. That's very exciting. I'm glad. I'm glad you kept it too that's nice she really likes faces well that was one of the things that ronan was like i'm i like this but i think

it's important that my sister has it when colleen was still pregnant and he was going to pass it on to her he kept it in her crib and everything and i want to cry on this podcast shit and he gave it to her and she you know for the first part of their lives, they, they don't know anything, but she's gotten old enough now that where the fact that it's a face that lights up and also plays like a pleasing sound, uh, melodious sound. She is just like, we put it on the changing table with her so that she doesn't wiggle around a lot. Cause she'll just sit there and watch it. As always, everybody,

thank you for supporting us at Quick Question. And another way you can support us other than just listening and telling your friends about us is to show some love to our sponsors.

And in this case, our sponsor is Postmates. Postmates? Daniel, I have a question for you. Go ahead. Is there a restaurant in your neighborhood where you've been like,

man, it would be great to go there, but I can't get in. The reservations are like booked out for like six months. By the way, this is like back in the day when we didn't have COVID. Is there a restaurant like that where you'd be like, there's no way I can think that far ahead? Yeah, Mama Fuco. Okay. So you want to go to Mama Fuco.

You maybe want to go to Milk Bar afterwards. And you can't do it. But with Postmates, you can. Postmates is offering services to thousands of businesses. And you can find that restaurant there through Postmates and get your Momofuku delivered right to you. That duck in those like whatever that flatbread is that they put it on and then the plum sauce on top. Oh, man, Dan, you could be in heaven tonight after we do this podcast. And it's important to support local businesses like

that right now because it's really tough on them during COVID. You know, you can't have the ordinary structure where you have people coming in and frequenting your business every single night. And so a lot of these businesses are struggling to stay alive. Some of my favorite restaurants in my neighborhood, they're shutting down because they just aren't getting enough business. And so it's important that you support your local businesses. And the best way to do that is with Postmates. And Postmates in particular right now is great. This is why I love them because right now I can get food delivered without even leaving the house or even opening my front door.

With COVID and everything in the world, I don't totally know everything about it. I don't know how it moves from person to person. It freaks me out to think about because I got a newborn and I got a young son. So I can just get deliveries direct to my door. They can ring the doorbell. They just take a picture of the food. Boom. I go out there. I pick it up. We never have to talk to another human being. And I have Momofuku. Well, my equivalent of that here where I live. They also have Postmates Pickup, which I've been using to order takeout from my favorite local restaurants. And Postmates doesn't just deliver your dinner or your meal. They actually make life easier by picking up everything I could possibly need at Walgreens.

They do drugstore deliveries, 7-Eleven, and they drop all that off outside my door. You just got to download Postmates on iOS or on 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. To start your free deliveries, download the app and then use code QQ that's code QQ for $100 100 a free delivery credit for your first seven days when you download the Postmates app anything you need anytime you need it post made it well that's very nice to hear I wonder if I have any questions for you I have another one for you if you want. You do? Okay, yeah. You want to do that instead? Yeah. Okay.

You're a reader. I'm a reader too, Daniel. And there are certain words that I come across in books. I know the meaning of them. I know how to read them. No problem. I don't even stutter once. But if I had to use them in conversation, I would be too embarrassed because I don't actually know how they're pronounced.

And I've lived my entire life not pronouncing them. And I wonder if you have any of those that you would like to figure out how they're pronounced right now. I have one. I have one that I know how to pronounce now, but I disagree with the pronunciation. And I have one that I definitely don't know how to pronounce. What do you want to hear about first? I want to hear the one that you don't know how to pronounce at all. Okay.

It's C-H-I-A-S-M-A. Hold on, let me type this in. C-H-I... What? A-S-M-A. Hold on, let me type this in. C-H-I... What? A-S-M-A. Chasm? It's part of the brain where optic nerves cross over each other. It's a thing that I only know about because...

D-O-B's devotees know that, uh, at some point, uh, brag alert, I started to lose vision in my right eye due to stress. And, uh, since then was studying up on this stress induced blindness disorder called central serous retinopathy. And that just took me down long rabbit holes about the optic nerves, I suppose, and eye things. Okay.

Well, fortunately, this one doesn't come up in conversation at all very much. No, it doesn't, but I... Chiasma. Chiasma? Yeah.

Oh, man. Chiasma? No, I think it's chiasma. I want chiasma to be right. Maybe it is chiasma? Oh, man. Chiasma? No, I think it's chiasma. I want chiasma to be right. Maybe it is chiasma. Let's just... It's chiasma. It's chiasma?

See, this is the same thing as the other word that I... Bungle? I want to... Yeah. And the origin of this one is, it's a good one. It's a word that I'd read a whole bunch of times. A whole bunch of times. I'd read several times in my life.

And then in high school, I was in like doing a theater competition where I was doing a scene from a play with a person. And this word came up in it. And I mispronounced it uh every single time on purpose because i believed i was right if it would have been very effective for the character and also like a funny joke if i was like consciously doing it to be wrong, but I was not. But it was a scene. It was like a couple was fighting and the woman of the couple was like, you're being patronizing.

And I said, I'm not being patronizing. And we never talked about it. That was just a thing that like, I thought it should be pronounced patronizing. And I'm going to do that forever. And in the context of the scene, it works, but I wasn't do that forever. And in the context of the scene, it works, but I... I wasn't meaning it to.

I really thought patronize was the right way to say that word. And I know that I'm wrong. But I still feel like my pronunciation is better. It's not patronizing? No, it's patronizing. What? Does it have to be? Like what?

I mean, it's 2020. Anything can be whatever, right? Strike that. Patronizing. Isn't it patronizing? I think it's patronizing is right. Patronizing is right? Fuck is right fuck you miss taylor fuck miss taylor man she's trying to lure you into her weird vocabulary that's not right okay well

weird lexicon no i'll go well if i'm right about that then uh uh i've never pronounced anything wrong in my entire life except uh chiasma congratulations chiasma yeah chiasma all right well i've got one that uh i used once and it became obvious in the middle of the conversation that somebody didn't know what i was saying and so i've never used it since and we didn't clear it up on the day uh this is a word the way that i pronounced it was macaber it's oh boy it's a m-a-c-a-b-r-e and i since now i think that it's either pronounced now macabre or just macabre and then you forgive the you can fuck off yeah i think you make the r shape with your mouth but you don't uh vocalize macabre macabre oh see that's it's too subtle for my poor lips um my my caver was such tiny lips the caver is certainly not right um but that's a word

that shows up a lot and you're reading old Gothic shit. And that was my jam for a little while. And then I didn't realize that I was pronouncing it wrong. And then after that, I was too embarrassed to ever try it again. So you think it's macabre? I think it's macabre. Macabre. Macabre.

I'm still not going to use it. I thought I might learn something here, and I'm still not comfortable with it. This has been such a switch because I thought for so long that it was patronizing because I'd been corrected in my youth. And now I'm looking at phonetic pronunciations of it online, and it's patronizing. It's patronizing. It's got to be patronizing.

Because that's how I say it too. And I mean, this fits with your Mario brand. Hell yeah. Give me those hard A's. There was somebody that I used to know that I won't name their name because this is pretty silly. Gautier.

Somebody that I used to know. It was Gautier. Gautier is how you pronounce it. I was saying goatee. Somebody that I used to know that in the middle of the conversation was telling me that it was chaos saying like it's fucking instead of chaos yes chaos and they were way too old to not know the word chaos and also grew up in the sega generation when you had chaos emeralds that you needed to collect and still didn't know it. And I was like, I was just blown away. And it was very hard for me not to rib them about it. Yeah. That's in other words, bully them about it.

Like side question about this is that I never know what to do if someone mispronounces a word in front of me. And then my response to them also includes that word. Do you find a way to skirt around that word? Do you pronounce it the way that they pronounced it? Or do you, without confrontation, pronounce it the way that you know to be correct? I think you do it both. You do it your way, and then you catch yourself, and then you pronounce it their both. You do it your way and then you catch yourself and you go,

or, and then you pronounce it their way. You say, whatever. I may, I might be pronouncing that wrong. And so you, you're the one who says, I, this is just how I pronounced it. Yeah. Knowing full well, this is how it's pronounced. It's a very useful tool that I often forget. If, if someone, if someone was like, oh yeah, there's a huge chasm between those two pieces of land.

It's egoless for me to respond, oh, is it chasm? I've been saying chasm my whole life. Let's look into this. Because then it's like, no one's dumb. We both at that point are 50-50 dumb. Yeah. And then we come to the truth together. But I never think to do that in the moment.

I just think like, well, how am I supposed to get out of this now? I don't want to seem like I'm smarter than them. But I'm also not going to debase myself by saying Chasm. So I guess I got to push them down into the chasm. You have no toys. I have no toys. That's right. I have no toys.

So my son has something similar to this. It's not completely the same, and it's Colleen's fault and my fault because we've always said it this way. But at some point, he's going to learn the weekend, which is Saturday and Sunday. He's only ever known it as the freaking weekend. So that's, I mean, that sounds like an impossible to avoid mistake. We, we've always called it that just to like get him excited. Cause we're like, cause he wants to know about what day it is. And we're like, and then this day and then this day. And cause on

those mornings he gets to just wake up, doesn't have to put on pajamas or clothes and he gets to go downstairs and watch tv and we're like and then after friday what is it and he'll say freaking weekend and it's so adorable that we've never stopped doing it and so that's all he's ever called it man that's got me freaked for for one day having kids for the amount of things that have just landed themselves in my own idiolect yeah that like when i'm talking to friends i'll be like what are you guys gonna do for uh shocktober or or if i'm not saying that rocktober because you're a huge rock fan right right and just like how casual i am about like changing words because they're fun and silly to me that one day i am about like changing words because they're fun

and silly to me that one day i'll be like oh my son you're going to school for the first day you're gonna be around children okay so here's the thing it's not shocktober it's not rocktober it's not shop till you drop tober it's october i know this is a lot of information to be throwing at you at once it's also you're not allowed to say something is unreasonable it's unreasonable these are i i should have prepped you better for life but i just didn't because it was a it's it felt like a good bit at the time and it's so fun to hear you say it so i just forced you to do it yeah freaking weekend is just like it's so charming to hear a three-year-old who can't pronounce r's say freaking weekend and like get excited about it like you're like and what comes after that and like he smiles real big he goes freaking weekend yes yes it is good luck in the rest of your life yeah

you're here for me not the other way around yeah have fun eventually telling your your therapist that your parents gas lit you or as we've been saying it ass lit you because it was funnier well so my we i got very into michael crichton uh when i was like nine or ten as i'm assuming you probably did too oh yeah and i read jurassic park before the movie came out because i was nine or ten before you and uh for the longest time my dad my brother and i called them velociraptors oh velocity no velocity velociraptors um not knowing how it could possibly be pronounced and so when i saw the movie i was oof, they are butchering that. They should have had one of us consult on this.

That's not how you say Velocity. And so trying to convince schoolmates and stuff like that, that no, it's Velocity. It's my dad. He knows. Yeah. And then being completely wrong. Right, and the kids are like,

are you sure it's not Velociraptor, like Velocity? It's like, no, no, no, listen to me. My dad said. Yeah. We read it in an RV on the way to Disney World once, and he said Velocity in every chapter. I think it's that. Speaking of kids, I've got a quick question for you.

Yeah, go ahead. This might be a little premature, but I'm just looking at the shape of our nation with quarantine and COVID and all that and thinking about the possibility of Halloween being canceled. Have you thought about that for your son? Is there like a thing to still make that special? Because he's at the age where he, I believe, knows what Halloween is.

Oh, yeah. No, he's way into Halloween. I have not even thought about Halloween. Okay. I mean, we're recording this in July. So it's fine if you didn't. It's just the kind of thing I've been very, even though it's not my problem at all, just been very focused thinking about the effects of all of this on children right now

and the experiences that I know as normal that they aren't getting and what are the creative ways to address them and still make this special? I like that you're thinking about it, Dan, because I have not been, and I need somebody accounting for my blindnesses. I have not thought about that at all. And it's not too early to be thinking about that

because last year by July, I had already ordered his costume from Latvia on Etsy. Was that Hedgehog? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's such a dope costume. He still wears it all the time.

And we've gotten a lot of mileage out of it. And maybe he'll just be a hedgehog again while we go around the house collecting candy. Right. And maybe we'll do some sort of Easter egg hunt type of thing, but with candy instead in the house. That might be fun for him. And other than that, I think maybe for the other kids, I could just leave some candy out and watch it so that when they come and take too much, I can go refill it.

I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do. It's pretty sad to think about. I had a really sad moment the other day and not too sad for this podcast, um, where we were looking at another preschool where we could potentially send him a couple of days a week and then homeschool him the other days, just so he has like some sort of social interaction with like four other kids. And going there, she was showing us the jungle gym. That's there. It's just a climbing structure. Going there, she was showing us the jungle gym that's there.

It's just a climbing structure. She was saying how she has an 18-month-old there who has a hard time. He's very, very nervous on the climbing structure. Maybe he was two. Yeah, I think he was two. He's very nervous on it. I realized that it was because when he was at the age where he would have started climbing on this kind of thing that's march that's when all this happened and so he's never been on a climbing structure his whole life and so like he hadn't gotten that experience yet and he's like what is

this brand new thing after he'd been walking around for and running around for a very long time and uh and i was like oh man there are so many of those things that we're just not accounting for with kids where the the leaps are so quick and in such fast succession that we don't know which ones we're missing right now yeah oh you were wrong that is too sad for this podcast what can we what's uh something else something else yeah i don't know what we're gonna do for halloween i think yeah i i mean the eternal optimist in me always thinks oh let's be this will be done by next week and has been thinking that since i left work in february and never went back into the office. Right.

But it's got to get at least a little bit better at some point, I would assume. Well, not that time of year, though. I guess it'll just get way, way worse because everyone will be getting other types of sicknesses at the same time. I don't know. I don't know what we'll do. We also have...

I am so sorry I brought this up. Should we talk about something else? There's good solutions to these types of things. Birthdays have gotten... I think kids have sort of figured out the birthday racket now. Do you know about that? Absolutely not. They do drive-by birthdays?

I will need some more information. Well, okay. So somebody comes with a gun and shoots everyone in your house no it's okay um it's a uh the friends of that kid a lot of times we'll do a drive-by birthday where the kid comes outside and there's just this parade of cars that come through and they've made like a cardboard sign or whatever and they shout out their window happy birthday at the child and still the kid still gets to feel very special like it's their day and here's something brand new that doesn't usually happen and they all their friends are involved in it and it feels very good in the

same way that a party does just clearly doesn't last as long nobody gets cake or anything but they people have been elaborating on that with like and here's a bag that's party favors and like you hand one of these out to each car and it's not the same but it's kind of scratching the same itch yeah yeah so everybody's sort of like making do and i think we've really been lucky in that with his birthdays we haven't ever really done a party we've always him somewhere. And this year we're taking him away into a cabin up in the woods. And it's just like something cool. He likes camping a lot. We can't really go camping in LA because you're so close to everybody else in a lot of those campsites. And there's no guarantee they'll be open. Yeah. But we'll take, we're taking him up to like a cabin in the middle of nowhere. And I asked the guy, like, can we set up a tent outside? And he

was like, I wouldn't, there's bears everywhere. And I was like, yes. Oh, this is going to be so great. And I ran and told him there's going to be bears there. Like, we just got to keep our eyes out for bears every night. This is going to be so much fun. And he's getting very pumped about that. So we're lucky in that regard. That's cool.

Are you bringing the little one too? Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah, she's coming. I mean, she won't. She doesn't know what a bear is yeah she won't get excited by that if that's what you're wondering now i'm just wondering like like in a pinch she knows how to like scare off a bear even if she doesn't know what a bear is yeah first thing she was like oh yeah soon as she was yeah like once she was clear that things were doing or registering with her like she was laughing at my joke like the me tickling her and stuff i was like oh okay here's the things you

need to know here's a pot and a pan you're gonna need to get strong enough to hold these things in your hands and clap them together and say hey bear hey bear um i like the humility of you correcting yourself because you're gonna say she's laughing at my jokes and then you stop yourself and said tickling. Like, you know that your jokes aren't landing with her yet. It's very clear that the games aren't registering. And I'm just like waiting for that. I forget, you know, you have another child and you have your things where you're like waiting for them to hit certain milestones. I really want him to get into the idea of organized sports and enjoy it where he wants to

practice it. So I want to like hit balls with him or just throw a ball or kick a soccer ball with him and have him understand like the fundamentals of there's goals on each side. We're working against each other. It's okay if you lose. Like kind of stuff is is really enticing to me and i forget that she doesn't even stay in the simplest of games we're like i'm a i pretend my hand is a machine claw that's like moving towards her very slowly it starts making the claw fit uh shape and then tickles her stomach she's like what the fuck is going on i'm like oh yeah you don't get that yet you're gonna love that someday it's a look just so you know it's i'm doing a really good robot claw sound it's like yeah like i i work in animation i know how to use sound to convey something effectively and like you like frankly you're you're being spoiled right now and you

want to just like you just want tickling fine the first one that she's gotten is i don't know if you ever see that video where somebody had an interviewer asked charles manson when he's in prison like who are you and he makes about 14 faces and then says yeah no one uh i do that i've seen this video i do that for her I make the faces and the little like, like the blow and everything. And she loves it. So that's either terrifying or a good sign that she's starting to get games.

Well. Well, that's been a lot of silence. Yeah. Well, I was just thinking if there's anything else we needed to address with this um i do want to tell you a story is that okay and i want you to tell me if i handled this appropriately in your opinion we're doing we're doing a reverse a switcheroo reverse oh boy yeah an old an old daniel soren switcheroo. Okay. Let me, let me get my Soren hat on. Okay. Broncos.

Toilet. Toilet. Broncos. Rad. Sun's going down. Toilet out. Okay. I was in my yard the other day and I have an alley, uh, that's behind my house. And I hear a scuffle out in the alley, some sort of a dust up. I guess it's not physical yet, but I can hear two people shouting at each other. And I recognize the sounds as one of my neighbors from across the alley. And the other one is another guy in the alley who I guess is walking his dog. And my neighbor in the alley is saying he's upset because this man has been letting his dog defecate in the alley, which is, you know, public space. And it's not it's not the worst thing, but it's also like, don't fucking do that. And so he's yelling at him and he's he said, I got video of you.

I've got video of you. And the other guy's like, he's like, hey, you better watch your mouth. And like, I can tell that like, he's getting closer to him and stuff. And I was like, Oh, I maybe need to go step in in this. Like I, this sounds like this is going to turn into a real altercation. So I put on my flip flops. I walk back out to, I have a door that leads out to the alley that goes through a wall. I put my hand on the doorknob and I hear my neighbor say, I don't need to show you the video. Look, I'm on next door.

Everybody on next door knows who you are and where you live. We talk about you all the time. And I took my hand off the doorknob and backed away from it and just sat there and listened to these two fight for a while. Cause now I didn't know whose team I was on anymore. Like just one sentence made me think, Oh, I don't want to help either of these people. Uh, and he kept saying, one guy kept saying, show me the video. And he's going, I don't need to show it to you. I got, I, I haven't,

I have 27 videos of you. I don't need to show them to you. And then like, uh, it got into one of those scenarios where their voices got higher. Cause one person apparently touched the other one on the chest and then the word assault came up and then the other one was saying, that's not assault. And then the other, then the arguing over semantics of assault and, um, and battery came up and then call the cops. No, you call the cops. I'd be happy to call the cops. Yeah. Call them, uh, No, you call the cops. I'd be happy to call the cops. Yeah, call them.

That game of chicken. And it was one of those most embarrassing fights I've ever heard that I just couldn't go out. And like, I could have probably gone out and cooled things down, which would have been the right thing to do because it went on for a very long time. And it sounded like it might get physical, but I didn't. And I, now I don't like either one of them. Is it weird? I mean, I have a lot to say. Is it weird that I know whose side I'm on based purely on your impressions?

Cause the guy who's like, I need to show you the video. It's on next door. I'm like, fuck that guy. And when you're talking about the other guy and the other guy's like i need to show you the video it's on next door i'm like fuck that guy and when you're talking about the other guy and the other guy's like that's not assault like all right this guy's making sense to me uh it was the other the assault stuff was the other way around really okay well then you need to get consistent voices when you're telling stories yeah you're right i need to pick like a um a more unagreeable voice for the other gentleman as well just to make it fair but uh they you were definitely conveying something with i don't need to show you the video yes like well that's what i

was that's the tone i was here you don't you don't like that guy yeah well that's what made me turn around i mean because it was i going into it i had somebody whose side i was on i was on the side of the guy who's my neighbor who i know and i was like my loyalty only goes as far as like who i know better right and so i was like oh i don't want to like i don't want to see him get beat up or anything i don't want to see a fight and the other guy it sounded like it was going to happen the other guy said you need to watch your you need to watch your fucking mouth yeah and uh and he's like back up back up i'm not gonna back up you back up i can't back up i'm gonna get to my wall and like that kind of stuff. And I was like, oh, let's go take care of this. And then the whole situation, maybe it was, it could have also been that it became evident to me that neither one of them was going to do anything. I'd like to pretend that that was the case, but I don't know. It could have escalated. And I just was like, I don't want to, I don't want to help either person here. I don't want to get involved in this.

I certainly, I lean towards, if you're mad at someone for having their dog poop in the alley, you're in the right there. Clean up after your dog. I've had a dog for eight years now. I know it sucks. I don't enjoy it. It's not fun. It's one of the worst parts of had a dog for eight years now. I know it sucks. I don't enjoy it. It's not, it's not fun. It's one of the worst parts of having a dog, but, uh, it's also a thing that you signed up for when you get a dog, you can get away with it sometimes like good, good for you, I guess, but you really shouldn't, you know, like I don't pick up Jackson's shit only when, um, like I've run out of bags in the

middle of a walk. Then it's like, ah, I'm just going to have to live with him pooping here on the sidewalk. And, and, and that's really it. But otherwise I clean it up and it's, it's not fun, but it's, you know, it's part of the social contract of having a dog. Um, the thing that complicates it a little bit and that you can lend clarity to is I've never been on Nextdoor. Um, I don't know if it's, if it's good or if it's very bad. Maybe you can start by explaining to our audience what Nextdoor is in case they don't know. Yeah, let me try and be objective in an explanation of Nextdoor. It's a place where everybody in a specific neighborhood can get together and talk online.

It's a forum. And people can raise issues. They can say, hey, I heard gunshots. Did anyone else hear that? Yes, I also heard that. I think it was fireworks. That kind of stuff. I'm already editorializing. Are you, are you anonymous on it? Like is a requirement?

No. Oh, you, you have to be. But it can be, it can, no, it can be Soren B. I guess you could put in any name you want. Oh, so it could be one of the other Sorens in your neighborhood. But I think generally people that there's like a, a tacit agreement that everybody, you would recognize the names on there because next door allows you to get so niche in your community. Next door is universal. It's everywhere, but you pick out not only just like your zip code, you pick out your block. And so people know everybody else who's on there. And if there was just like some weird name on there that no one recognized, like Alcat 17, they'd be like, well, okay, who are you? And they'd want some sort of verification that you actually lived there. Now, ideally what it'd be used for is finding lost dogs, people who had their house broken into warning everybody else or people asking for footage from

their rings whatever it is these are the best uses of next door this is almost exclusively what it's not used for right as an as a non-next-door user do you know can i tell you what their reputation of it is yeah go wealthier people in a neighborhood warning about other people that they find suspicious. That happens a lot. I will say that I also lived in a neighborhood that was multifamily housing, some low income family developments there. And they also had next door. all did no i believe that next door is and it was bad there too it's universal and everyone can use it everywhere but it um the reputation is again it doesn't necessarily need to be uh wealthy versus non-wealthy but it is

a tool to rally the neighborhood against someone else. Yes. That happens all the time. It's people peeking through their blinds and just snooping on their neighborhood and saying, here's what I saw the other day. There was a person out there that was looking at cars when they went by and I didn't recognize them. People were like, ooh, look out.

Hey, thanks for the tip. And then other people being like, what were they doing? Well, they walked past our car and they looked at it. Like, did they look in the windows? No, but they looked at our license plate and it looked like

they were trying to memorize it. And you're like, what the fuck is this person talking about like right what actually happened here right i try to imagine if um if next door existed when i was a kid in my lower middle class hazlitt new jersey town if like all of the people in my neighborhood had a forum where they were allowed to say whatever they wanted to everyone else it would have just been a nightmare yeah it would have been people saying like it's those four kids again yes they're walking down up and down the street with a basketball and i don't know what they're doing. I haven't seen them before. And like, there's, I'm not allowed to say it's like, oh, it's me and my three friends.

And we're walking down the street talking about girls and we have a basketball because we think it looks cool. And in the meantime, there's a bunch of paranoid people looking out their windows, working themselves and each other up into a fervor because you have nothing better to do on a weekday yes it's about 40 petty grievances and 40 wild speculation and then 20 for what it actually should be used for um and like the petty grievances are are usually passive aggressive and

never like addressing the person by name and but it's so clearly about one person in your neighborhood and then the wild speculations are just the weirdest ones because they it you're right it generally is like a race thing you'll have somebody in your neighborhood that they don't recognize and what that means is there was somebody of color in the neighborhood right and they didn they didn't like it. And it's just like, whoa, it's just a peek into these lives of other people. And then you only see their ugliest parts. Next door was a mistake. Has there, has, um, something good come of it for you ever? Yeah. Not impossible. Yeah. Yeah. So we had a, uh, had a uh my next door neighbor at my old house

got attacked by a dog that was out in the street and we we talked about it on next door and ended up finding the dog and the dog's owner from it um which was good then they, the kid had to have like some surgery to replace some tendons in his wrist and, uh, also the stitches and everything like that. So he was not in any position to be paying for that. And the owner of the dog should have been paying for that. And they did. Well, that's good. But that was pretty much the only circle oh you know sometimes they find pets

uh yeah in a good way and i'm trying to think of any other circumstances i mean i don't bring it up to be like to like be completely pro next door or anything like that i'm still anti next door but i i can recognize that like it was created for pet finding and problem solving it's so funny that's not what it's used for this time of year too right right you know from may to the end of july every single day somebody's on the libyan like was that where that gun that was gunshots did anyone else hear those gunshots it's like no those are fireworks man every single night that's all you're gonna hear a bunch of fireworks how how active is it is it like

are the is there action every single day and yes yes every single block every single day this is this is multiple this is fucking 24-hour news channels for for neighborhood gossip this is bad yeah not great it's a huge. I used to read it on the way I would take the train to work. I went and worked at cracked and I would just sit on the train and just absorb these posts. Cause I was, it's also very fun to watch in the same way a car crashes. It's like, Oh my God, you're just, it's just gross all around. And you're, you can't look away. it's just gross all around and you're, you can't look away. It's, it's tough because I, I feel like a thing like that would probably appeal to me just because I, I, I think we've talked about this before. I'm obsessed with the idea of having neighbors and particularly older neighbors,

like all of my neighbors, uh, my immediate neighbors in my apartment building are older and i love running into them in the halls and talking to them and when i lived in la in my last apartment i like ended up collecting all of the older random couples that lived in the building and we're just like make sure i had i spent time talking to them because i find so much joy in very boring everyday chit chat like sharing an elevator with someone and talking about the weather or talking about construction and they're talking about opening up a morton williams down the street but they've been talking about it forever construction in the city i live for this shit like the other day i i i ran into my my neighbors they're they're uh both in their in their 60s and i was talking to the the the wife and we were

wearing our masks and she was like so hot out i'm wearing these masks all the time it's so sweaty i'm getting i'm my my mouth i'm breaking out like a teenager. And the husband just goes, summer in New York. And I was like, I fucking live for this shit. I love it. I love this pointless conversation. It makes me feel so normal. So great. I want to do this for hours. COVID is just like destroying this one aspect of your life that you need so badly. This is separate from COVID. This is before any of this.

I love it. But I'm saying you're missing it now. You can't ride an elevator with somebody now. Oh, God, no. It's only these fleeting moments when we pass each other in the hallways. Oh, man. You need someone to talk about how there's a 7-eleven going in down the street i know oh my god what are they going to use that old space for i don't know i heard that they might do an rh uh warehouse yeah like i need i absolutely need

someone to tell me like you know there used to be a barbershop where they charged twelve dollars now everything seems like it's twenty dollars for just a simple man's haircut. I'm like, I know. You're telling me $12 in Manhattan? Goodness gracious, Phil. You know, before that was a Starbucks. It was a library. Well, not immediately.

Let's see. It was a library. And then, of course, it became a Ben Franklin Hardwoods hardware store. Keep going. I'm so close. Keep going. Oh. And then around the time Ben Franklin was bought up by Ace, they made it an Ace, but they kept the Ben Franklin sign. Just the, the employees wore Ace badges. Now after that, it became what's called a yellow front and yellow fronts. I don't even know what that store was. It's sort of like a Kmart. Sort of like a Kmart.

I don't even know if we have Kmarts anymore. I love this. Yeah, that's my nightmare. That kind of conversation. Talking to old people about nothing? Yes. Yeah. I feel the opposite way as you about it i don't know why

i don't know where it comes from i don't know what what i find so uh it's just very pleasant yeah i also like i'm i'm sure some of it is performative on my part i like the idea that uh an old person or an old couple will walk away and be like, such a nice young man. And like the next generation isn't horrible. Like I like being an ambassador of like, I'm going to say ma'am and be polite and listen to you talk about how much cleaner the beaches are now than they used to be. And what a good job we've done yeah

well i i mean i kind of guess in the same way that like i'll watch a turner classic movie and have no idea what it's about and watch the whole movie and hate it but love the experience of having just watched an old movie like it feels like it exists outside of time and it's really nice to take a little break like that and i think maybe you get the same thing from these kinds of conversations where it's just like not everything has to weigh how it has to weigh so much yeah some things are allowed to just be light right all i want to do is gather all of my old neighbors up and watch the music man and all of us like nod and agree like the streets are so clean and everyone says, yes, sir. And yes, ma'am.

Isn't it? Isn't that nice that they're that they're wearing suits in the daytime and being polite? And I'm like, yeah, it is very nice. I like that, too. With a capital C, it rhymes with P and that stands for pool. Well, Dan, we are about at time here. Yeah. This episode kind of got off the rails.

Yeah. Not like a chaotic way, but in like a who is this show for kind of got off the rails yeah no not like a chaotic way but in like a who is this show for kind of way yeah yeah i mean it wasn't pure uh chow's but that's right it's up there um well dan i i know you're probably aware of this but the you know what actually i forgot all the pageantry of this let me go find the social social accounts grumble grumble grumble and before i do that um daniel uh i wanted to give you a chance to speak about something i know that you're aware that there's still a lot of deforestation happening in south america especially in because of covid um there's not as many people who are out there protecting a lot of the land and they're burning slashing and burning a lot of the rainforest

who are out there protecting a lot of the land and they're burning slashing and burning a lot of the rainforest for cattle grazing and to create new land that would then create a profit as opposed to the life that lived there before um my question for you dan is what's the part of your body you like the most oh man this is such an easy question i love my calves so much i don't know if that's weird or not, but, um, I have not had a consistent, I'm not like the most consistent exerciser lifetime or anything like that. So like, I'm, I, uh, I don't generally always feel great about my entire body, but because I've run, because that's something specifically I've done forever. Even if I'm not great at it, I still make time to do it. I am, I am blessed with glorious, glorious calves.

And, uh, it's, it doesn't seem like something that is worth bragging about because no woman, like no, you're not going to go to a bar and impress the person that you're trying to impress with calves, generally. But I'm in New York in the summer, during quarantine, so I'm out in shorts all the time. And not a lot of guys look good in shorts. But this guy, with my fucking world-class dumper and these tight-ass calves, I look incredible in shorts all the time. I tan really well, and my calves are tight. And someone sees me, they know this guy can run. The top half, I don't know.

There seems to be some confusion about what's going on up there. But those calves, those are athletic calves. Not a real common or uniform aesthetic on the top. No. But the bottom, there seems to be some discord. I don't remember if we told this story on the podcast or not, but Dan and I went to go shoot a sketch

in Idlewild at one point. The day that we got there, they put us in costumes and Dan's calves could not be contained. The minute he put on the pants, his calves broke through the pants. Yeah. Which is a rare thing that happens.

His calves just, the seams couldn't which is a rare thing that happens his calves just the seams couldn't contain them i have really like if uh if i wanted to like really make a go at this calf thing and changed all of my dating profile pictures on the apps to just like different shots of my calves, I would match with a lot of people who were like, this guy is clearly an athlete. And then they'd be very surprised and in a lot of ways disappointed when they meet me in real life. But for a few fleeting moments,

they'd be like, this guy fucking, he like runs and hops and climbs. Right. Women are into guys who hop, right? Of course. Look, I am a hopper dan i know i know all right you on twitter you can follow daniel at dob underscore inc you can follow me soren at soren underscore ltd um well michael's on here but uh i should delete that because who is that just a guy used to be on this podcast

occasionally you'd hear him uh chuckle and then he would get his opinion every once in a while but he's oh yeah he's he's still really give us that he'd give us that jolt of energy we needed whenever things were dipping he's the wild card who would come in and give us that uh or you can follow a quick question at qq underscore soren and dan you can email us at qq with soren and daniel at gmail.com i do want to do the instagram because we haven't done it in a while so strap in qq underscore with underscore soren underscore and underscore daniel don't know why we didn't end with an underscore. It feels like that would have been the best joke, but well, what are you going to do? You can also find, follow,

hire our producer and sound engineer, Gabe at GabeHarder.com at some point in the future. I got all those, all you, you calf hawks out there, you know set your peepers on these

on these hawks have the skinniest little bullshit legs that's what I'm saying like the calf hawks are the people who are attracted to calves okay yeah I see so I'm asking them to use their heightened eyesight

to affix their gaze to these fucking pendulous. Yeah. These amazingly tight leg muscles that have been carved from marble. All right. Am I losing you? No, it's fine. I think you're right. I think you got good calves, Dan. Thank you. Yeah. I I losing you? No, I, it's fine. I think you're right. I think you got good calves,

Dan. Thank you. Yeah. I'll see you later.