Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 53 - How to Flirt with your Dentist

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

In this episode the guys barely even ask any planned questions and its STILL really fun to listen to. Also Soren talks about his garden, and Dan falls in love on a boat!  And as always big thanks to RAYCON!  Get 15% off your order at buyraycon.com/QQ

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 listeners, love. And we try to get answers on all of those things, and we mostly don't on any of them I am one half of your show comedian writer author historian late in life flower enthusiast Daniel O'Brien joined as always by my co-host mr. Soren, say hello. Hey, everybody. I'm Soren Bui. I am a writer. I'm a husband, a father, a tiny dancer in your head. Wow. Yeah. And I would say the owner of a big fat heart that doesn't quit. Wow. Yeah. You feel good about all that? I'm going to keep it. Wow. Yeah. You feel good about all that? I'm going to keep it. I mean, so as good as I've ever felt about anything else I do. Thanks to Raycon wireless earbuds for supporting quick question. Raycon earbuds start at about half the price of any other premium wireless earbuds on the market.

Get 15% off your order at buyraycon.com slash QQ. All right. Well, this is the show where we ask each other questions and give each other answers. But before we get into the meat of the show, we've been checking in with each other on specifically quarantine updates. Soren, do you have any quarantine updates for me? Soren's garden update. Yeah, I've got some garden stuff I can talk to you about.

Okay. I just planted again today. I'm going to try out some watermelon and I've also got some kale that I bought and I had my first tomato. I ate it. That's exciting. It was good. It was really, it felt great to have grown something that I could eat. I have a genuine question about watermelon. How long does it take to grow a watermelon from like sperm to worm, I guess, like the full spectrum? Yeah, I don't know know i imagine probably about 40 days but i have no idea 40 days yeah once you start to see it no i mean like once you actually

start like a flat what will happen is a flower will form then the flower will start to turn into the fruit presuming that it got fertilized and then from that point i think it's probably about i don't know i don't they grow fast i maybe maybe like 30 days after that i assumed a watermelon took minimum 18 months no because then you'd never have them grow in places like minnesota or or play anywhere where it freezes at all well that's exciting i'm growing eggplants too they're oh yeah do you do and like the plants not huge like eggplants no i hate it i hate it the majority of things i'm growing i hate daniel i don't like tomatillos i don't i don't like cucumber i don't like eggplant

and i'm growing all of them okay uh why um those were because the science agrees the consensus is still vegetables good yeah yeah because those were the ones so a friend of mine from work gave me a couple of young seedlings for the cucumber and the eggplant and actually the tomatillo as well. He was like, do you want any of these? And we did an exchange where I gave him some worm tea, which I've discussed on previous podcasts. And I was like, yeah, just, I mean, I've got these garden boxes and I'm not doing anything with them. Just give them to me and I'll grow them. And I'm pretty pleased with the fact that I'm growing them. I like looking at them. I hate them. me and i'll grow them and i'm pretty pleased with the fact that i'm growing them i like looking at them i hate them i don't like tasting them um i try i'm trying to

grow things i do like like strawberry i can't grow it strawberry supposed to be the easiest thing in the world to grow i don't know if you remember playing sim farm when you were young but uh strawberries like that's your starter fruit and i can't i can't the seeds will gain no purchase in my garden fascinating why i don't know i mean if i knew i'd be growing it i i grew one by accident underneath my jalapeno plant um where i planted them they're not growing but i think maybe like some seed got accidentally scattered over by the jalapeno and now there's like a tiny one over there but maybe i planted them too deep maybe i'm watering them too much i don't know giving them too much love could be it uh i don't know that sounds like a likely problem for you but i'm also building

shit again daniel oh really oh that's oh yeah okaypenter update. All right. Finally. Yeah. I rebuilt the base of my bed. It was getting very creaky and bad. And so I did some restructuring work. And that fits. How long have you had it? I don't know. 2008. Okay.

Yeah. So long time. So do you want to do that math i know you struggle with 10 and then 11 12 12 years yeah you got there okay good now i'm gonna put my phone down then i almost pulled out the calculator surreptitiously but i guess i don't need to do that and uh yeah then i my we have these garden boxes obviously where I'm, um, obviously bring life into the world. Uh, but my son has taken over one to just be like this dirt box he plays in and I want him to have his own dirt box so that I can have that garden back.

And, uh, I built him a new garden box that looks just like the other ones. So aesthetically it's the same, but it's hit. Then I'm, I've got all the wood right behind me for a brand new bench that I'm going to put out in the front. But that's a big project. Yeah. How long do you think it's going to take? It'll take me a week, maybe, maybe a little more. Okay. Yeah.

You know what? So I went to a woodworking shop, a store, and realized, oh, these tools would certainly make the job easier for me than I'm currently doing. There's like wood planers and their table saws, you put the wood down and then you pull the saw through it. So you're getting a straight cut no matter what. The saw is just on a track and you pull the saw through it, you get your straight cut. Or a chop saw even, which is one of the ones where it comes down almost like a paper cutter. I don't have either of those. I just have a table saw and I'm just sort of by eye guiding a giant 16 foot piece of wood through it and the table saw.

So the table it's on is about two and a half feet. So obviously there's less taking off on either. And at any point, as soon as it gets further enough through the table saw it just splits and falls in both directions it's not precise uh i have to make up a lot of different things to deal with that along the way but i don't know do you do you buy wood assuming some of it might be like burner wood that you just like that that falls up falls apart while you're cutting it i i assume i will make mistakes but i don't buy a ton of extra wood i will sometimes i'll buy an extra board but usually you can sort of like fix your mistakes a little you can fudge

it or just if you're all of a sudden you've made one cut and it's completely wrong you're like well this bench is just going to be shorter and then you cut all the other ones that short as well um but the really really tough part for me is i to get the wood home i don't have a truck so if i go buy lumber i gotta know that i can get it into my car or i'd like rent a trunk for a truck from anna walt or home depot or whatever and so i have to like rent a trunk for a truck from Anna Walter, Home Depot or whatever. And so I have to do the math. I have to make sure that I don't need like that board to be eight feet for any particular reason. Like I need to know that if I cut it in a 10 foot board in the middle,

I can use both those five foot pieces. And I'm not just like scrapping one because I needed a six foot on one side. So like doing that math and figuring out like out of a piece of wood how am i going to use every maximize every single piece is just you would love to watch it i'm a nightmare i'm just like yeah trying to do math on a piece of paper is there anything you can you can do with like the excess pieces, like just the edges that you're cutting off? Just like... Yes. You know, four inch by four inch chunks of wood.

Yeah. Are you asking do I treat the wood like an Indian treats the buffalo, like a Native American treats the buffalo? Absolutely. That is what I'm asking. Yes. uh yeah i i try and use all of it and sometimes i'll have scrap wood then i save and when i fuck up a later project i can go okay well let's see if i have anything close and i'll go find a piece of wood in my scrap wood that's like oh okay this will work i had to do that a few times on this garden box um i save all of it even this the the wooden slats from my bed previously i still have all those because i'm like oh i could build a trellis out of these ah good lord i know it's exhausting it's exhausting to be this good at stuff you know i don't have anything daniel uh i don't have anything anywhere near that interesting i the most exciting thing for me is i i left left New York. I took a road trip to

Portland, Maine because they're doing a little bit better with the quarantine than we are here in New York. And I wanted to experience that for a little bit. That's way more exciting than building a dirt box. Um, how long was the drive? Uh, you rented a car for this and now actually there's a a car like that's in my family that no one is using my parents who live in north carolina store this car in new jersey at my brother's house and they want it there so they can use it whenever they're visiting family up here and i just recently decided, this is mine now and I'm taking it. So I took it and I drove to Portland. And there's a lot of great things to say about Portland that we can talk about

and about Maine that we can talk about. But I also truly loved driving in a car, which I haven't done in like a year and a half. That's right. And I was so happy singing and screaming in a car. And I didn't realize how much I write by talking to myself in a car and how therapeutic it is to like scream and sing.

That's basically where I was getting with asking like what kind of car you were in and stuff like that. I wanted you to paint a scene so that I could see whether there was a CD player there, what you were listening to, and then also if you mastered any accents along the way. I didn't master any accents. The car was equipped with XM radio.

And so I got re-equipped with two things. One of them was I listened to, if you're familiar is a Joke. There's a bunch of comedy stations to listen to. Jim Gaffigan has his own station now. And I listened to a bunch of comedy and realized, oh, man, this is like super male and super kind of gross. I was going to ask, yeah, when you listen to Raw Dog, do you feel like you're the target demographic of that radio station? It sucks. You flip around and it's like Neil Brennan talking about tracking down women and assaulting them. And then it was like, oh, this is bad. Let me skip around to Gabriel Iglesias.

And he's doing the same thing. I'm like, oh, no. You've got Nick DePaulo talking about how if you live in America, you should be speaking American. I'm like, Oh shit. Let me check the date on this. Oh, 2019. I've been listening to comedy nonstop for two and a half hours and I've heard one woman. This sucks. This is real bad. The other thing i listened to was um

uh the the broadway station the musical station which is uh i want to say xm 72 and there yeah soren correct me if i'm wrong yeah well i'm gonna write that down so i can listen to it that's perfect thank you i think uh i liked it because i wanted to sing along in my car and listen to a bunch of broadway songs and i couldn't like put i didn't bring enough of my own cds to play or anything like that so i was just listening to a random selection of broadway but uh a funny and kind of sad thing that I learned about it is that because it's Broadway XM, no one is really listening to it, especially like the interstitials between the songs.

Like no one cares who's hosting or what they're doing. So the hosts are allowed to get away with being A, incredibly vulnerable and earnest and B, not entirely interesting. And that's what I found in my long drives listening to the Broadway XM station, where there's this woman who's hosting Christine, who seems wonderful, but there are two things that stick out in my head. One of them, she was, uh, she just finished the song,

uh, Turkey Lurkey, which is an old Broadway hit. And she was like, Turkey Lurkey, that reminds me of Thanksgiving. And I was just wondering if, um,

we're going to have a normal Thanksgiving this year. I just don't think that we are. I think that we'll still be trapped. We'll still be isolated. We'll still be alone. Anyway, this next song is from Oklahoma. And she played a few more songs, then came back again in an interstitial

and was like, that was a great song. I just wanted to like, I just wanted to like pop in and say, I visited a friend of mine recently and my friend brought their three month old baby and I touched the baby's foot and just feeling the baby's sweet innocent foot in my fingers it felt so good and i realized i hadn't touched another human since march 15th and i know that everyone's going through a hard time in quarantine but it's extra hard for people who are living alone in quarantine and not touching other people and anyway this next song is from last five years and

i'm like yo does anyone got fucking eyes on christine yeah christine is drawing herself a bath putting the toast delicately on the edge what's going on someone check on this one christine putting a little bit of toast in the toaster just in case don't make it look like an accident maybe maybe she wants some toast in the toaster just in case. Don't make it look like an accident, maybe. Maybe she wants some toast in the bath. It's like the tax report says she had toast at 6 p.m. Oh, that's bad. Oh, somebody should have checked on this woman. Well, that's true of all of them, I think.

I mean, obviously, I haven't been listening to it as much during quarantine because I have nowhere to drive. But I remember being, before this all happened, I would listen to like the 90s on nine or whatever they have like a station for the every single decade and they're way past the hits i mean they are so deep in it that you won't recognize a single song on these stations there's like this b-side toad the wet sprocket that they'll play 46 times. And it's always somebody who's like, they've let somebody in the booth who's like, you're in charge for the next four hours. And they're like, great, I get to play all my stuff.

And every single time we come back to them, they're enthusiastic about their music in a way that is just not interesting in the least. They're pumped about it. They want to talk, but I've never heard people who are just more like wooden posts that are allowed to have a speaking role um right it's like we have 20 24 hours to fill you have four hours of that 24 hours to talk about music that happened in the 50s fucking go

yeah yeah it's not like jonesy's jukebox where it's like he's slow talker, but he tells really interesting stories about sex pistols and stuff. This is, these people, they are just fans of music their whole life. They got so deep in the weeds that they assume everybody else likes these deep, deep cuts. And I don't, I don't like them. I don't know what we're listening to i don't care when you come back and you tell me a story about how rod stewart once saw peter gabriel on the road and they waved like who the fuck cares but anyway i i i listen to raw dog

sometimes as well and you know they do have some to their credit they've got like some good people on there there are some comedians on there that I genuinely like now and that I found through them. But boy, there's also just some real trash on there. And then all the ads are for the worst dudes in the world. It's clear I'm not the guy for that. Hey everybody, I don't know what your home life is like, but where I live, I've got a child. And occasionally, even though you're not supposed to, I let my child watch a lot of TV during quarantine. And what that means is that I want to do my own thing during that time. That means working out. That means reading. I use my Raycon earbuds. Whether you're working from home or working on your fitness,

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at buyraycon.com slash QQ. That's buyraycon.com slash QQ for 15% off Raycon wireless earbuds. Buyraycon.com slash QQ. But other than listening to serious on the drive portland was very nice i guess i had i i had a um i ate a whole lot of lobster which was nice uh and i i this is not romantic but i met a woman soren no no sound from you whatsoever when i say Well, you've prefaced it with not romantic. And then I thought that happens every day that you meet women who- No, but like I'm in love with her. Okay. Also not very exciting?

I'm just- Okay, so here's what happened. Everything's kind of clicking into place. So I- Yeah, please. I took a boat trip it was uh initially supposed to be a sunset cruise but the sun was not out this particular day so the captain just said like what do you guys want to do otherwise we can see a bunch of lighthouses or we can do, we can like tour the Casco Bay or we could do whatever.

And we were like lighthouses. It was me and three couples and one 58 year old woman to paint the picture of this cruise. And we just went to go see a bunch of lighthouses. And I talked to this, this, this gal, this lady who was like a helper on this boat. And I was like, Hey, I'm Daniel. I'm new here. I, I, uh, I want to know what I'm supposed to do in Maine. Cause I've, I've never been here before. And she said, well, I just moved here 30 days ago.

I just moved in on a whim. So I don't really know too much about the area. And I was like, oh, but you already have a job here on this boat. So that's nice. You're a helper on this boat. So you've managed to find employment quickly, which is neat. And she's like, well, this is my second job. I actually work at the hospital. I'm a sonographer working in the cardiac department. I'm a sonographer working in the cardiac department. So I'm doing sonograms of people with heart conditions and helping them out. And then I took this cruise early in my time here in Maine and fell in love with it so much that I asked the owners for a job and then they hired me. So this is my second job i work in the hospital most days of the week and then on weekends i moonlight

on this boat because i love being on boats and being on the ocean so much what do you do and i was like i used to work writing in television but then i quit and i moved to maine what the fuck this sounds. A fellow seafarer, Daniel. You, what are the chances? I said I write for television and then we didn't talk anymore. Oh. She wasn't impressed, but the skipper

wasn't impressed by that. She was not. I was like, I read for a political comedy show called Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and she's like, what's it on? And I said, HBO. I was like, I read for a political comedy show called Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. And she's like, what's it on? And I said, HBO. And she said, is it on anything else? Yeah, bitch, YouTube.

Yeah, I was like, sometimes they put it on YouTube on Mondays. I don't know. That's amazing i love that you got that you got big time to buy a skipper okay um was this woman pretty dan she was yeah okay you're in love yeah no it's fine um and so did you did she like say i'll take you around maine or was she just like i don't fucking know i just moved here find your own way no it's it was very much i don't fucking know find your own way like not not that rude or anything but i was like what should i do while i'm here and she's like oh my god you have to get gelato and i'm like oh i'm lactose intolerant and you're like ah this is this is exactly your type

a woman out at sea who's uh unapproachable, emotionally cold to you, and who doesn't give a shit about your job. Yeah, out loud, not interested. Yeah, I'm surprised you're even back and doing the show with me, honestly. You didn't just buy a cabin up there and you were like, I'm going to win her. Yeah, I was like, I can't do the show anymore. I got i got this other thing oh is it work no it's not work it's uh it's like i'm gonna get a job on this boat i'm pretty sure i mean it's but it's obviously that's not the end goal it sounds like you're just giving jobs away on this boat. Also, I like this tour a lot that like you guys get on the boat and the guy's like, all right, well, what the fuck do you guys want to do? Oh, I didn't realize we were making the decisions here.

I guess, I guess. We did this tour and I talked to this woman who I assumed was going to be our guide. And I was like, what's that thing over there? And she was like, I don't know. Great. Do you want to get married or what? What's the thing? What are your plans?

Read kids. This woman, I mean, I don't want to, I want to like give you an out here, Dan. This woman might very well be in witness protection. That's fair. That's totally fair. Because you don't move to Portland in the middle of your life without a plan. And just let go there.

Unless you do. Unless you do. Unless you go there to see about a girl. unless you do, unless you go there to see about a girl. The only other very exciting thing that happened to me on this trip was that I went to Orchard Beach in Maine, which is a very nice beach. And then I popped over for lobster roll at a very nice little shack called, I think, The Mist. And there was a person doing cover songs on his acoustic guitar. And he was very good. I don't know his name.

And he played, among other things, a cover of Jimmy Eat World's The Middle. And at the end of it, so if you know that song it ends i mean the chorus is it takes some time little girl you're in the middle of the line everything everything will be all right everything everything will be all right and when he sang that at the end of the song a woman at the table adjacent to mine said very earnestly, so true. And I had to leave because it was so funny to me that a woman listening to a cover of a song from 2001 that just says, everything will be all right. And then genuinely responding, so true. I was like, nah, I can't. I can't go. I can't be here. I have to leave. So it sounds like, as far as quarantine precautions, is everybody here wearing masks? Or are you guys just, it's just so not even an issue there that

life is back to normal? A lot of people are wearing masks. Maine has had so few cases, they've been very safe the entire stretch of this. So the state is more open than certainly New York and New Jersey at this point. They're also, every time you go to, they're not doing indoor seating. They're still doing outdoor seating everywhere. And anytime you go anywhere, they're taking your name and number so they can do contract tracing which is very cool inspiring they don't they don't do that here but they did that in la no well you know what i have no idea because i guess because i don't do anything um i go to like i go to get the dentist

i don't go to bars or anything like that or into libraries or anywhere i don't have to go so i guess i certainly don't they don't have to go so i guess i said they don't take your number at anna walt they do not take my number at anna walt um well that's cool that's good that they're doing that and i they let a new yorker in yeah and that's not great you didn't have to sign new papers or anything to get into maine no it's it's a good faith understanding that you're covet free okay and i've been to portland before did it rain the entire time you were there it didn't rain at all it rained when i left on the drive home okay and you went out did you go out on any lakes no i uh what is is like casco

bay a lake i don't know it's a bay it's just a bay yeah it's sort of like a lake it's like a no half a lake uh okay so one other question was it just bitterly cold there even though for the time of year like every single day you're like, wow, it's actually pretty cold. No, it was super hot. The only thing that was cold was the, uh, the, the, the ocean. I, I, I grew up obviously in New Jersey and like East coast summer ocean, it like warms up. But Maine, it just stays cold. And I went in there the one time I went to the ocean and I was like, oh, it's cold, but I'll get used to it. And I just never fucking did.

It just like stayed cold the whole time. Like this is not pleasant. Yeah, they've got those and they have those like rocky beaches up there. It's not like you're just chilling on the sand. You're playing out in the water and you're kind of delicately walking over pebbles and stuff. I remember that from being there. But I also, I'm surprised we had very different Portland experiences because I went there for a wedding. When were you there? there in like uh probably this time of year maybe september and i got there stayed in a cabin and the cabin had a little wood burning stove we're like oh how quaint maybe there'll be a night we make a fire and then it can it just rained the entire time we're there and was so so cold the entire time that it was just me like shoving wood into this fire every two hours so you're lucky i guess you had a nice main experience i did yeah and it was and it was also like again because i've been quarantining since march it was

like everything about it was nice i like to be in a car and screaming. I like to be in an ocean. I like to be sitting in a place where I can hear live music in around other people. And I like to be eating a bunch of food that I don't personally cook. So all of that was a very welcome, uh, change for me. So that novelty that you probably felt from being out on the road by yourself yes that's that's like a dragon i've been chasing for the last four years oh where you have when once you have kids you don't do that anymore where you're just you in the car and there was one time where we went to tucson for christmas flew there i mean drove out there thought we'd drive in the middle of the night and ronan would just sleep

through the night and it was it was bad it was a bad trip he uh woke up every like 30 minutes couldn't sleep the whole way and was just crying and so the way back calling was like i gotta get a flight back and i was like that's fine you two fly and i will drive and the drive was just like it was like this exhale of relaxation i got to travel by myself for eight hours just out on the road and i fucking loved it it was like i haven't felt like that since i got my license for the first time it really is i i don't it's very freeing i also i didn't realize until this last trip how much uh independent writing i do while driving yeah tell me about that like like i uh i i just talk to myself a whole lot while i'm driving and work a lot of shit out, especially listening to the Broadway station because I've been trying to write a musical for like eight years now. So I'm listening to a lot of Broadway shows for inspiration and then just like pausing it or muting the station and talking out what I want characters to say.

want characters to say, that's a thing that I do not do in my apartment or on a run or walking around the street with my dog. That's apparently only a thing that happens when I'm driving a car. And I did so much of that in the cumulative 12 hours that I was driving to and fro remain. And, you know, then obviously transcribed it onto paper, but still was like, oh, this is a thing I haven't done in a while. Do you not do that? No, that's super common. That's what it's like with practiced work um people get it a lot in the shower but driving is like a really big one where you're that part of your brain that needs to turn off like have some sort of thing occupying it is has its occupation like it's taken care of and then the rest of your brain just allows shit to fall into place um so like yeah like your best ideas

come to you while you're doing something else that's just mundane enough that like you can kind of check out while you're doing it. And I don't, I've wondered that about people who live in cities where you don't drive. Like that's a huge part of, of the creative process is having that time to, I guess maybe you guys get it from walking around. So we don't do that here no yeah it's tough because you say it like happened it's very common with with uh driving or showering and i don't do either i can't i'm sure that those like just so i can't write there's no writing that happens because i don't do the things that produce writing. Yeah. Well, you got to come back to LA,

man. I know. Maybe last week tonight, we'll decide now that you could work remotely. Cause this is working out so well. You come back here. We obviously we canceled the podcast. Cause we don't need it anymore.

If you do think this is like, this is a bigger question, but if American Dad said tomorrow, we're not going, we're not going to need any writer in the office until 2022. What do you do? What's your move?

I can't move. That would be my first instinct. It's like, great. We're going to Ventura. Like we're going to like some small beach town and we're going to live there. Um, but once you own a house, you would stay in California. I don't think I have a choice. I have a, I own a house here. My son is in school here.

And I, so we moved to a school district specifically because it's like a good public school. And if we took him out of that, he loses his slot, even though we live in the neighborhood. So the guarantee that I'm coming back in 2022 means, oh, we don't have, we just have to stay. We can't just run away. I mean, it's not running away, just going somewhere else. Quickly. Far from home.

Sprinting there. Yeah, I would love to go to like Colorado. I'd love to live in Denver for a little bit. But that's just not in the cards. What are you going to do? Well, if John Oliver said, crikey, you guys don't need to come in. No, it's Australian.

Immediately correct. Hey, mates. Hey, mates. If John Oliver was like, oi, bruv, Oi, bruv! Oi, bruv! Oi, Detroit! If he said that you could

move away till 2022, are you going back to Maine? Where are you going? No, I would do the most sensible thing I could do, which is end my lease here in Manhattan and couch surf or live with my parents for a year and save up to buy a house somewhere,

which is a very boring answer, but it's, but it's like, it's, uh, not to look at the pandemic as an opportunity, but if I was in a position where I could make a Manhattan salary but not have to live in Manhattan, I would take it and use that money more sensibly than paying for Manhattan rents. That makes a lot of sense to me. I also don't know that you have a lot of options other than that

because you can't leave the country. There's like three other countries you could go to and I don't think you're interested of sense to me. I also don't know that you have a lot of options other than that because you can't leave the country. There's like three other countries you could go to and I don't think you're interested in going to Turkey. No. You can't just like cruise around the US and see all the little diners and what every city has to offer because you're not allowed out.

And the idea of like going from city to city makes me very anxious right now. I don't know you have a lot of options. I think you just pick a city and you go there. Right. No, I could stay here or I can move in with someone that is close to me and save money.

Yeah. And staying here doesn't seem too great because I, I love Manhattan for a tremendous amount of things, but not when it's shut down. Yeah. Now, when you can't go to Broadway or restaurants or music,

it, it, uh, just a fucking hot, shitty sweat box right now. And I've been, there's a, this, this is a dumb and dorky thing to talk about on this podcast that we can just sort of breeze by, but I mentor a bunch of writers and one of them, she's a young playwright living in Colorado,

who was like, I want to move forward in this business. I'm writing a bunch of plays that just get produced in Colorado and New Mexico from friends. And I want to move forward in this business. I'm writing a bunch of plays that just get produced in Colorado and New Mexico from friends. And I want to like advance further in my career. What advice do you have? And I was like, I don't know. I'm writing in New York for a long time so that I can eventually move to Colorado and write plays that my friends produce. What are you talking about? Your life sounds great. Yeah. and write plays that my friends produce. What are you talking about? Your life sounds great. Yeah, but then you'd have to go to that.

If you actually, theoretically, yes, but you went to those little community theaters and you saw what was happening, you'd be like, oh, no, I can't stay here. I can't be a part of this. The drama of small town theater. Oh, that sounds like it's coming from a place of experience yeah absolutely we did uh the aspen music tent is where we do plays every summer and you could be part of this theater camp and not even a stage or a theater but a tent

it's also fucking queen uh and the astro music tent is technically a big theater well you know what no it's not i won't say that i'll pull that back it's uh it is a tent but it's a pretty big tent and like big bands come through there i don't know if you're familiar with baila fleck and the flag tones or the nitty-gritty dirt band. I'm not. Lyle Lovett and his big... Okay. Julie Roberts' ex-husband. That's the one. Yeah, they all came through there.

So anyway, we used to do plays there. And we would... You work all summer on the chimney suite. No, not the chimney suite. The little suite. Isn't that what it's called? Fucking, I don't even know a single plays name. On a play.

Who are you asking? Chimney sweep is a job in the past. Yeah. I think there's a play called the little sweep. And then you work on that all summer and then you get to perform it. And it's always community theater. So it's like, it's not just you and your classmates, like a school play. You're there with 40 year old men too, who are like, this is what they've chosen. This is a clear choice for them. That they're like taking time out of work to be part of this theater. I don't have any friends that like poker or bowling.

So I do this. And then these, you know, you'll see music teachers from other schools who are like, this is my real passion. And they're willing to cut loose a little bit more than they would at school. And it feels very inappropriate. And then, you know,

some of the people are obviously hooking up, forming relationships. And your child's here, you're only hooking up with like six people. Well, everybody else. When you say you, me,

me, me, me. Yeah. Right. Okay. But yeah, that local like theater scene is it's brutal.

It's like, there's even as a kid, I knew that it was depressing. Can I ask you, because this leads into a quick question, which we've not done in this entire episode. But Soren, quick question. Go. What was the weirdest context in which you'd seen

a middle or high school teacher growing up? Because you're talking about like doing theater with a bunch of these people. Yeah, that's a pretty bad one. That one like being at like a general cast party, not like a cool, we're going to somebody's house afterwards, but just like a general cast party watching not like a cool, we're going to somebody's house afterwards, but just like a general cast party, watching a music teacher get drunk. She wasn't mine. She was like a basalt music teacher, but seeing that was weird. And then I would say that I had a math teacher when I was in sixth grade and then maybe math, fucking math, maybe like eight, 12 years later. I mean, it's gotta be either seventh or eighth. Okay. No eight twelve years later it's got to be either seventh or eighth

okay no twelve years later saw her at a grocery store while i was buying condoms oh yeah like they're on the belt she's the person in front of me and it doesn't click yet that that's mrs astro and then we see each other and she remembers me. I'm sorry. Her name was Mrs. Astro? Zastro. Zastro? I guess that's better. Yeah. Running into Mrs. Zastro while buying condoms.

That was tough. I don't know. I guess I'd have to think about it. I was always sort of hurt when I would encounter teachers again from long ago and they were like i don't i don't have a shred of memory of who you are and i'm like that can't be true i was a presence i took up space uh what about you i was one of the sorens uh this is less an encounter of a teacher in the wild and more of an encounter of reality like we had um a hot teacher you know you know how you have hot teachers i do uh i don't want to say

her name because i don't want to i don't want to out her but it was also like a very hot name. It's insane how perfectly the fates aligned for this. And she got in a terrible car accident, like my junior year of high school, that put her in a hospital for a very long time. And they had to shave her head. And she eventually came back to school with a like obviously a dramatically cut hair situation and uh it was like an incredibly humanizing thing because it was like hot teacher everyone knows hot teacher

that's fun we like the hot teacher and it was, hot teacher got in a car accident. It was like, oh no, hot teacher. How's hot teacher? And it was, it was a very like mature moment for us where it was like, before this moment, all I wanted to do was see this teacher naked. And now all I want to do is make sure she's okay. Right. You realize when she comes back, I want to treat her with respect. That's a, that's like a great coming of age story. Where's that novel about like the kid? It looks like it might happen with this teacher. Like this kid is like, he's on the verge of what he thinks might be

a relationship with this teacher he couldn't be more wrong obviously and then the teacher's in some sort of accident okay maybe also for all the people who are like super hot teacher super hot teacher oh no she got an accident and then she comes back and she has short hair and like a scar on her head a lot of students were still like oh yeah she's the hot teacher still she's like great yeah no lesson learned we had a spanish teacher who had really beautiful long hair and she was gorgeous that she cut it all off and she was so much hotter like in this way where it was like the she like near nearly shaved head and oh my god every the this way where it was like nearly shaved head.

And oh my God, all these kids, it was just like spring awakening for all these young boys. And I guess some girls as well, where they were like, that's the sexiest person I've ever seen in my life. Yeah. So no lesson learned there. Dan, I do have a quick question for you. Oh, you do? This one shouldn't take too long yeah what do you what do you do with your tongue at the dentist

uh like he you got your mouth open and they're rooting around doing some work what are you doing with your tongue during that time are you conscious of it i'm super conscious of it? I'm super conscious of it. I thought you would be. I'm very worried that you know what the right thing to do is. Because if I'm being totally honest, most of what I do with my tongue at the dentist is apologize. Because the dentist, like everyone else in my fucking life, tells me to relax. Your tongue just doing a meek little wave. No, my tongue is doing fucking squats and lifts. And they're like, hey, just like I need your tongue to not do anything. And I'm like, I know, but it's not.

I'm not in control of what happens with this guy. Because I went to the dentist recently and thought about it. I was like, I bet Dan is fucked with this. Like this is a real issue for him. Why? What do you do? Also, do we have, for listeners, Soren and I famously had the same dentist for like four years. Do you still work with Dr.

Feroze Badri? No, I go to, you have a new dentist. Yes. Oh yeah. That one was just a traitor from work. Yeah.

She liked it a lot. Um, but I was at the dentist and I was like thinking about it. Cause, uh, I really, I think about it. Nothing else when I'm sitting in that chair, then is my tongue in the way. So like I, it's just hugging the other wall, wherever they're working. I'm doing as much as I can to turn it into a wallflower in my mouth where like, you wouldn't even know it was there where at some point i would make me the happiest is that the dentist was like oh oh my goodness you do have a tongue wow like surprise i envy your control i have a fucking wild beast on the seas this thing goes everywhere and and answers to no one well that's my worry thick and violent if i am don't think about it for a second it's you know it's good game over and i don't want

to send any weird signals with my tongue either i don't want it like i don't want it slapping around in there like hey like a tentacle just like hey look at me and so i have to focus on it the entire time and make sure i know okay if it's on that side i'm going to touch it to these molars over here and just always trying to get out of the way they never say anything which is a little hurtful but uh i do my best to like keep it out of the way you want them, this is a holdover from being a child going to the dentist. You want them to tell you what a good boy you are and how good of a job you've done. Is that correct? Is that so hard to ask? I want that every time. They frequently say, these are good teeth, which feels great. But I want them to notice that in the room, I'm performing some real mouth etiquette for them.

Man. No, I'll let my dentist know, hey, this tongue is going to do what it's going to do. It freaks out. I'm not in charge of it. Don't take it personally he gets nervous i like there's i think there's probably like six or seven scenarios in your life where you have to preface your body will do weird things i like that the dentist is one of them because you used to have to do it we wear spirit gum any or we do like any sort of uh filming you'd tell the makeup person this is going to be an issue you should know now if you put spirit gum on me i will sweat through it and that seems impossible but i promise you i

will yeah and anytime i i go to like a a club to go dancing i let the owner know it's like listen i'm not fully in charge of what my body does. I do what I think is good dancing, and it always clears a lot of space. But I understand that it's violent and unpredictable. And if you need to get rid of me, I get that. Then you tell the dental hygienist, listen, before we get started, I got a loose animal in my mouth and it's going to try and get out. Listen, this tongue has an agenda that I don't fully understand. And if I'm being completely honest, my hands do too. So like whatever happens, put me to sleep.

Like the quickest way you can knock me out just do it because because because none of this is under my jurisdiction that's the arrangement that i've made out with my entire body uh yeah i thought you might this might be an issue for you that's good um so my daughter who's very very young has i keep i think maybe how young is she by the way she's about to be four months goodness she's got her tongue i'm not sure it fits in her mouth honestly because it's always out and just like it's flexing all the time. You know, you can make your tongue flat or you can make it really skinny and fat. I mean, I can't make my tongue any, any, I can't make it do anything, but, but I understand intellectually what you're talking about.

She's, she's just got like this weird Gene Simmons gene in her where like she's, it's just like, it's always out of her mouth and it's always doing stuff it's like she's showing off somehow and i now i'm somewhat concerned that maybe it just doesn't even fit in her mouth because i don't think i've ever seen it in there but it's not like she just looks like a dumb dog with like hanging out like dangling there she's always she's busy it's like it's doing stuff and that's sort of how i picture yours when you're at the dentist is just like it's just flitting around a butterfly in a shed it's very much doing its own thing and when the dentist is like can you can you just uh tamp that down a little bit i'll be like no don't fucking talk about it it'll hear you and then it's going to get fucking crazy. Yes, that's perfect.

That's exactly what I wanted, Daniel. Good. Oh, Sorin. I have to, we're going to wrap up the show and I have to find the social media accounts for us and the show itself. And that's going to take me a minute. Oh, it's fine. We just can cut this part out. We can do that. I might need going to take me a minute. So. Oh, it's fine. We just can cut this out. We can do that.

I might need you to, no, sorry. Sorry. I can't hear you. I might need you to stall for a minute and I have a prompt to help you stall. One of the things that I did when I was in Portland, Maine on vacation is I read a book from Anthony DeMello, 31 different meditations on happiness. And one of the things that he talked about was how one's attachments, both to physical things and to actually people like a mother, a father, a spouse, a sibling, like a mother, a father, a spouse, a sibling, a child, hold you back from true happiness. And if you get rid of those attachments, you'll actually be happy. And he posed this question that I wanted to pose to you.

If you could have either company in prison or walk the earth in freedom all alone which would you choose and why um well you see dan in the in the life of a gardener um you deal with irrigation a lot and uh with that irrigation there's a there's a pressure system in the irrigation so like if you're running pipes to your garden boxes there's a pressure system and the more garden boxes you have the less pressure there is to get to all of them and so if you have too many garden boxes obviously then you're spread too thin and nothing will grow so uh instead of just cutting down on your boxes um instead what you need to do is just like regulate which gets your attention when so you got to like turn off your attention for one thing for a little while and just give entirely to something else and i think

what what what de millo would say is then you're depriving yourself of that attention but like go on continue to lose your freedom yeah uh i would say that there's that that's not a true freedom then right because like what are you you're, what are you, you're lonely. What are you doing? You're walking the earth. You're you're who are you sharing that with? If there's no one to witness it and to witness you do it, then did it even really matter at all? I'm not sharing anything. I'm owning everything. This is a hard line to walk down. Cause I can, because I can't insult my own family. And then I also don't really want to insult you by shitting on the other side.

Well, the good news is you don't have to do either because I found all the social accounts. You can follow Soren at Soren underscore LTD or me at DOB underscore INC. Soren underscore LTD or me at DOB underscore INC. You can email the show. Good God. At QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com or find the show on Twitter at twitter.com slash QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can support us on Patreon. If you want,

you can support our producer, editor, engineer, spiritual leader, great friend, Gabe at GabeHarder.com. Anytime you want, he will record your podcast day or night. It doesn't matter. Gabe, is that true? Is it true what I said? Gabe said yes. Big thumbs up from gabe um yeah i do you

think that we could get into that email account i wonder what's in there uh legitimately have no idea my brother wanted to connect me with another podcast and he legit asked me he was like hey should he just email you at your gmail or should he send it to like the the quick question account and i was like i don't fucking know that that password i can't get into that i don't think a single human knows that password um but honestly send all your stuff. I'd love to read it when we unearth that in like 2025. I'd love to see all the stuff that's in there.

A little time capsule. All right, that's it. Thank God.