Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 69 - The One Where We Don't Talk Actually About the Tree

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

In this episode the guys talk about whom from their life they would like to go back in interview, and Gabe's contact information somehow gets even more vague!  As always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks to Postmates.  Use code QQ and get $5 off your first five orders. And thanks also to Hawthorne. Take Hawthorne’s quiz today and get started on your personalized self-care routine by going to Hawthorne dot C-O with promo code QQ to get 10% off your first purchase.

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and TV writers solve all of the world's problems in however long this show is. I am one half of this podcast, a writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, author of the book How to Fight Presidents, and a guy who once lost a high school backyard boxing match to a stationary wheelbarrow, Daniel O'Brien. And I am joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, make like Lionel Richie or Adele and say, hello. Hello, everybody.

I'm Soren Bui. I am a tea drinker. I'm a non-smoker, a Christmas decorator. What else? Oh, I've had sex in a tree and strangers have named their babies after me do you know what uh can you guess let's let's test our friendship telepathy okay um what i want to talk about based on those things that you've described yourself as having sex in a tree nope um being a christmas decorator man no tea drinker yep that's the one

okay yeah oh boy i could talk for ages about tea i did not know you were a tea drinking bitch does that became one yeah it doesn't upset your stomach at all love it no it doesn't upset it at all what kind of what kind of tea are we talking about here oh i fuck with it all man i do uh on an average day i'm gonna do like a black tea, just like an English breakfast. And what I do is I put a little bit of honey in it and a little bit of half and half. And it's so good. And then occasionally at night, I'll also drink some chamomile. And we're really in the throes of tea season right now.

And it's made me so happy. I get a peach passion from celestial seasonings not a lot of people know this but with celestial seasonings you know the difference between the caffeinated and the not caffeinated because the caffeinated teas are all upright the art on the box is upright and the non-caffeinated are all horizontal and laying down isn't that cute i guess it's very cute uh you don't fuck with uh you do coffee though i do i i do coffee i've been trying to to wean myself off on coffee as i've been trying to like wean myself off on almost everything in the world um but uh tea has always the specific caffeine that is in tea messes with my stomach in a way

that um coffee doesn't how interesting yeah uh because coffee feels like such a so much more of an abrasive substance in my opinion but maybe that's just because i'm not a coffee drinker you're not yeah and i've also been drinking coffee since i was 13 years old so it's just like part of my blood at this point your body's used to it um yeah i so growing up i thought earl grey was the only tea that existed because that's what my dad drank. And I was like, fuck this. I hate tea. Stupid. And then I didn't realize that there are all these other great teas out there.

And I'm not the type of person who's like making my own tea or like I have a artisanal tea bags or those little strainers or anything like that. I will just go to the store, get boxes, but man, I will drink the shit out of some tea. Man, growing up, I thought Lipton was the only kind of some tea man growing up i thought lipton was the only kind of tea that existed it's not even a kind of tea that's just a brand and i was like oh yeah that's the the tea flavored tea i don't even know what you'd call it yeah it's it's not it's a black tea but it's just like the most basic black tea it's like a gas station coffee it'd be the equivalent i guess and is that like every morning you have it? No, I don't even drink it in the mornings.

I do like a little afternoon tea. It's to, so I don't eat up my house. Like it's a real great way for me to, it's an, what do you call it? Appetite suppressor. And otherwise in the middle of the afternoon, my instinct is to just go and eat and eat, eat. And if I don't want to do that,

I'll make a big cup of tea. And now it's gotten to the point where i look forward to the tea huh well that is very interesting to me and uh also proves that we we failed a fairly crucial friendship test because you did not know which thing was most interesting to me i wasn't even No, you weren't. I guess we could talk about the sex in a tree thing, if you want. Not really. Okay. Thanks to Postmates for supporting Quick Question.

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self-care routine by going to hawthorne.co with promo code QQ to get 10% off your first purchase. Just want to be clear. It's hawthorne.co. Is there anything about what I said that you want to talk about or have you already forgotten? I've already forgotten. Let me think if I can remember what you, well, see, I guess so. So you're, you're so good at it, Dan. Let me just have you sit on the couch for a second. Your introductions are so good and they're so on brand. They're so perfect that all I can do is then think about mine and be like, all right, what you got to get yours, right? Yours has to be good because God, there's just two of you here. I think, I don't know if mine are good but they're certainly dense

they're they're very rich but i think what uh a problem that we found ourselves in is when i go first then you go then there's no time to talk about whatever and i do want to do that we've glossed over a lot of ones now that i listen to the old episodes where i'm like oh shit i'd like to know more about that what was yours this time Tell me again. The one that you laughed at was a guy who once lost a high school backyard boxing match to a stationary wheelbarrow. First of all, you have to qualify that it was stationary. It wasn't just like a wheelbarrow that had learned to box. No.

Yeah. I wasn't even like, this was someone's parents were out of town one afternoon so a bunch of people decided we're gonna have a boxing match in dennis's backyard and like a card was built with people who in our high school minds made sense it was like this big kid versus this big kid and then like the welterweights and then the and the lightweights whatever the different things are and i was i had not intended to fight i was just going there after um theater practice so i was like still in like pirates of penzance face makeup just to watch this fight and and cheer on my buddy and um we didn't have

uh ropes or turnbuckles or anything like that or a ring it was obviously a backyard and then two of the fighters got too close to me so i got spooked and i started to back up and then i tripped over a wheelbarrow and that like ended the ended the proper fight that was actually going on because it was so ridiculous. And then when the results of the fight were published the next day, mine was included. Daniel V. Wheelbarrow in a total knockout. Whoever wrote that is great. It's very funny. I really appreciate it.

I think it actually helps your story that you weren't wearing boxing gloves when you got beat. No, I was an audience member wearing eye makeup. I do remember how worlds could collide like that when you were young and you had several interests and all your friends represented one of those interests. Yeah. Because like you would get done with theater and you still have have mascara on your forehead to be old age lines. And now we're going to go drinking out of the woods. Yeah, I was like, no, I can't go home right now. I can't go to Friendly's with the rest of the cast because I got to watch my buddy Scott fight my buddy Steve in the woods.

Well, that's not so bad, Dan. All you did was trip over a wheelbarrow that's okay it's just it's still uh i mean like my it's still a bad record to have yeah for all my my boxing experience uh-huh because you're all in one right i am i'm all in one to this wheelbarrow who i mean for all i know is undefeated my certainly a boxing um my brother and i when we were young would fight a lot and just bicker and you know punch each other and stuff and my dad was sick of it and at one point he was like i'm getting your boxing gloves and ordered them from a magazine which is how you used to do it and these adult boxing gloves arrived at our house when i was four or five. And when I would put them on, they came all the way up to my elbow.

And I couldn't really get, I couldn't hold, sustain like a fist in the air for very long because they were so heavy. And my brother and I were intended to box in those when we would fight. And I think it was him trying to dissuade us from fighting because- Right. It's the smoke the whole pack of cigarettes in one sitting approach to fighting. So we went down to the basement to fight and my brother punched me in the face so hard that the next memory I have is him over me saying, don't tell mom. Please don't tell mom. Please don't tell mom.

He said that in his telling of it was that he hit me in the face i fell to my knees got this glazed look on my face and then he really realized he had a good opening right there and he shot his shot and and punched me as hard as he could in the face while i was on my knees and then fell over backwards so it's possible when i was a child my brother knocked me out. Was your dad, so your dad wasn't reffing this? He was just like, take these gloves. Goodbye. Yes. That's missing a crucial part of that parenting technique. Occasionally he would come down there too. And he, the way that he'd do it is he'd wear one

boxing glove, put the other hand behind his back, and then he'd be on his knees and he would just fuck us up. Like not in a way where we way where we were we'd have welts or anything like that but like you're getting punched with a boxing glove when you're a kid you're like oh man that hurts that doesn't feel very good my dad didn't didn't box us when we were kids like he was a boxer we had a punching bag in the attic that he worked all the time but he would wrestle us and it was very fun like if you were playing basketball against my dad he would let you win i think a few of the times but if we were wrestling three boys on my dad we're all gonna like wrestle we're gonna like get into a

skirmish in the living room or whatever he would fucking destroy us not Not like a violent way, but just like make it clear that we, all three of us with all of our strength couldn't handle him. He's like pinning two of us with one hand and putting his hand on the head of another with his other hand. And just like making it clear that he was the definitive alpha in this house. Looking back, it's incredibly funny. at the time it was like we're never gonna beat this guy what do we gotta do we need to have we we need more kids i guess

i remember doing that with my dad my brother and i trying to fight him in the basement and at one point my brother, we're just kids. But I do get the same joy out of doing it to my son. I just physically overwhelming him because kids are also very charmed by that at a young age. I guess they probably get over that. But while he's still charmed by it, like it's a very fun game for both of us that I'm so much stronger than he is yeah certainly when i worked at a summer camp as a 17 and 18 year old playing basketball with second graders on like a severely reduced court height uh basketball rim height rather and them doing their best to take a shot and me just fucking spiking it out of the air was great for me and also fun for them because it's a big dramatic

moment we you and i uh used to volunteer together at a place that where we worked with children and a lot of it was us just playing with the kids and our games were very physical with the kids like it was a lot of like throwing them in the air and like um letting them climb on our shoulders and stuff like that and occasionally there would be a kid who was too big for his britches. We'd be playing organized sport where a child would be like in football, he would catch a pass barely.

He's afraid of the ball. He caught it, but he's like scores a touchdown and then starts gloating at the other team. Who was like kids who are maybe like two years younger than him and two feet smaller than him. And so it became a thing that I enjoyed doing where I would just go over to him and push him down. And just remind him, you're not that great. You might be great one day, but for now, you're very small.

And you have no money. Look at this. That's one hand. I haven't exerted myself when I pushed you to the ground. I'm texting you while i'm doing this thank you to postmates for sponsoring this podcast i'll tell you dan i'm getting postmates tonight what are you getting sorn a brand new restaurant that i've never tried before and i'm getting a salad there is that exciting or is that is that boring it's real boring it's very boring yeah but i don't want, but what I don't want is to get something that I really go for it

and I don't get like a lamb vindaloo at a brand new place and be like, oh, Jesus, this is not great. So I'm going to start with something basic, something I know everybody can make. I'm getting a salad, okay? And that's coming to me via Postmates. With Postmates, you can get food delivered without leaving your house or even opening the front door with the current state of the world postmates created a no contact delivery system so now when i mix the dressing in

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use code qq that's code qq for five dollars off your first five orders when you download the post mates app or sign up online anything you you need, anytime you need it, Postmate it. Let's get into the show where we ask each other questions and give each other answers. Do you have any? Yeah, I'd like to go first here. I've got a question for you. Okay. When you were young, what was the town hangout? Like probably middle or high school age, but the place where all the big kids hung out like at first it was a little scary that area because that's where the big kids would hang out and it was probably somewhere where they just like they didn't want to go home but they needed somewhere

to all be right uh i want to start by saying that there was a probably a better, cooler place that, um, better and cooler people hung out. But for me, which is like middle tier popularity, uh, we hung out in the seven 11 parking lot because no one ever kicked you out of there. You can go into the seven,

seven 11. You wouldn't have to spend too much money and you can get a soda and some scratchy lottery tickets and uh and a hot dogs but if you buy four there's a price break that's a uh hot tip for everyone uh four 7-eleven hot dogs is a good bang for your buck and then we would just sit in that parking lot and talk and sometimes you would like watch other cars drive around in circles in the parking lot of the 7-eleven and i was like that was what we did for entertainment we'll just sit there and like wait to see who else showed up at the 7-eleven to to briefly join you in your strange parking lot party so i have a theory that no one was drinking by the way

and no one was doing drugs it was just like a place to be where you wouldn't get kicked out i have a theory that there are a lot of people listening going holy shit that was my exact life experience really because i think in every town it's a 7-eleven or like a convenience store where the kids do this where it's just like yeah the only thing it's it's exciting because everybody's there but nobody really knows what you're doing or like what the plan is but it's nice because usually there's a well when we were growing up there's a pay phone right next to it that like if you had to call home be like oh mom we're we're doing this instead or uh whatever it is there's food inside uh so that if one kid has $5, all of you can eat

and you're just so excited to see everybody else. And for a while, when I was young, it was like such a scary, scary place because the big kids were all there. And I think that they hung out in the seven 11 at my town because it was also next to the only traffic light in the town. And the traffic light lets you know when curfew was. And if you were under 16, you weren't allowed to be outside at night. And that traffic light- How did the traffic light do that? Both directions just blink amber forever for the rest of the night until the morning. Is amber yellow in Colorado?

We only have three in the rest of the country amber is the middle color amber is yellow um they i don't know why i called it amber uh yeah it just blinks yellow and uh throughout the night because there's not enough traffic that you need reds and greens and uh so then they all knew when they needed to go off into the fields or go wherever they were going to go after that, because you weren't allowed to be out. And kids loved famously loved breaking curfew. But up until that point, after school, whenever, like all the kids just went there. And then once everybody could drive, it became a very big deal that you would meet up there in your cars and then people would drive around town.

And they just go up and down the main strip of town, which is like a quarter of a mile or a tenth of a mile. And if you saw somebody going the other direction from you that you knew, you'd look in your rearview mirror. And if they tap their brake lights, that meant that you're supposed to go meet at the 7-Eleven. Oh, when did you learn that? Did your brother hand that down to you're supposed to go meet at the 7-Eleven. Oh, when did you learn that? Did your brother hand that down to you? No, I'm trying to think. I guess when I hung out with a couple of older kids when I was maybe in eighth grade

and I was in their car and they taught it to me. Yeah. I feel like it's a thing that at the time felt like a very cool underground thing it was like oh yeah we're gonna hang out in this this parking lot where you can go into 7-eleven and buy like a uh a black and mild and smoke it if you wanted to and no one could stop you but at the same time it was also like the black the the 7-eleven that was in the same shopping center as the coals and the super cuts and the nobody beats the whiz so very cool yeah we're not in the middle of the woods or anything we're not like off the beaten

path we were off a highway yeah it was i i think it's true of everywhere i don't think it's it matters whether you're in a city or a small town. It's like there's that convenience store vibe where you get out front. You're not totally supposed to be there. Occasionally, the guy will come out and be like, hey, that's too much. That's too much. But mostly, it's just like a bunch of kids kind of shouting at each other. And it's so exciting to be there. Yeah.

And I think part of it was that like, because if it wasn't 7-Eleven for us, it was Dunkin' Donuts, just getting coffee and sitting in there and then sitting outside of Dunkin' Donuts. And in both of those cases, these are undeniable 24-hour establishments, which seemed important to us. You can't hang out at Nobody Beats the Wiz because they close at 9, and then a few years later forever but you can hang out at 7-eleven all night if you want to and they can't kick you out we we used to go to my friend cameron's house who lived just on the outskirts of town we would say we're

gonna sleep in his tree house and then we would go out into town just to break curfew like just sorry is that the treehouse where you had sex? No, I didn't have sex in a treehouse. I had sex in a tree. Okay. So moving on. We would go into town just for the, I mean, not with a plan, not because we had to be somewhere. It was just like the idea of breaking the law was so enticing to us that we were like, and now we will go into town when we're not supposed to.

And then just dodging cars, assuming everybody's a cop. Yeah. And going to see if it will, who like, is there anybody at seven 11? Is there anybody who dare go to seven 11 this late at night? It was just this golden,

this golden place that we were all this Mecca. We were all headed to. And did you feel like that was, uh, like the hot spot for the upper echelons of your town and your school like i definitely don't feel like 7-eleven was i i i know for an almost fact that there was a cooler place that other people were hanging out. Because the cool kids were mysteriously absent. Right, because I was the coolest kid at 7-Eleven.

And I know that's not right. Historically, that's impossible. I'm trying to think. I bet there was. I bet there was somewhere else. Oh, you know what? There was. It was called, what what they call it three poles i think is what it was called and what it was is you uh as you drive

through town there's a big hill and it's got these like red rocks and then three telephone poles at the top and you could get up there and the kids would hang out because you could see the police coming down the road and if you needed to scatter into the woods. But I was never invited to three pulls. I never went to a single party there. I think those kids were more interested in things you couldn't do in front of 7-Eleven. Right. It's crazy that you're not that much older than me, but you're also somehow from days and confused.

Like that, that idea of just like, we're partying in the deep woods at this tower. Well, that's what we would do for the most. If when in high school, when we would go to parties, it was about going onto people's private land where like,

there were a lot of ranches and some of the kids in the school their parents own those ranches and so you'd go out into the fields and have a bonfire because that's not property that you know the police can't come out there right um and then the other thing we would do is go up to the ski mountain in glenwood springs sunlight mountain uh way up in the mountains where there weren't any uh there weren't any other houses or anything so nobody hears you partying up there but the way that the police that they found got wind of it they just wait at the bottom of the road for anyone who tried to drive out of there yeah it's crazy how there are so many different worlds in small towns like i i had my 7-eleven time and i had my normal like parties that I thought were fun but I didn't I

didn't drink at all in high school I didn't drink till I turned 21 and I went to a high school party where there was drinking it was like a new year's eve party and the like it was I think the the the only like popular party that I'd been invited to in high school and the parents there were like, if you're going to drink, you're not like, give me your keys right now. If not, if you're not going to drink, then you can hold on to your keys. But like, we're also okay with everyone drinking here. Yeah. Period. And that was so far from my world it was like oh the mom is okay with it

she's watching my friends drink this is insane to me and i was like no i like this is this is a nice party thank you for having me uh my last birthday party was um we went to see uh x2 x-men united at the theater together and then we went home and did improv games i like that your first party where there was drinking you hugged close to the parents yes just like tried to ingratiate yourself to them yeah i was like no you don't need to take these keys from me ma'am in fact you can take the night off i'm gonna chaperone these kids i got it from here uh yeah i do remember how startling that was the first time that there was a parent that was like yeah you guys are gonna drink here that's fine that's cool we'll be down in the den we're gonna

be watching a movie yeah like no i don't actually know and like i'm obviously not a parent and you're not a parent you are a parent but not in a way that you have to think about these things now but i don't know what's what's better or more responsible if it's if it's the insistence that like you should never drink underage or it's like you were the acknowledgement that you're going to drink and if so you should do it with parental supervision like those are two schools of thought and i don't know which one i i like the one that i was raised under which is don't drink until you're allowed to drink yeah but you know i i know plenty of people who didn't do that and are not in jail now so i don't know yeah it really sets some strange um what is the word not barriers but

like sets ground the ground rules are are much soaring. Just a second. What is the word I'm searching for? This is strange. Fuck it. Forget it. Is it boundaries? Yes. That's the word.

Yep. It sets some strange boundaries for the kids who live under that roof where they're like, all right, we know this is illegal, but, and your friends are going to do it anyway but we'd rather you do it in our house uh i guess kids will be more open with them about telling them about their own like other experiences with sex and things like that but still it's like a it seems like such a slippery slope my dad had to deal with me which was that if i i wasn't allowed to do that stuff if he found out about it he'd be very upset but if I was ever in a circumstance where I was at a

party or I'd felt like I was uncomfortable or I needed to get home, no matter what, I could just call him no questions asked and he would come get me. Yeah. That feels like a good middle ground to me. Yeah. I like that too. And, and like, we never had that talk, but I imagine that my parents would, would also do that same thing. But I think they, they kind of knew early on that I was too square to be in a position where I drank so much that I needed a ride home. They were more likely to find me coming home at 830 and being like crying. Be like, the girl I like took out some vodka in the woods, so I left her there. Your stage makeup running down your face. The only picture I've seen of you from high school, you're carrying a clarinet in it,

and you're wearing a pretty big kind of a ropey sweater, a braided sweater, I think. And so every time I picture you as a child that's that's the image i have like it's you're in the woods carrying a clarinet for some reason that's that's fair i can't substitute that with any other picture that would be better in any way we're gonna find out at some point like we'll have caitlin large on this podcast or something and we're gonna find out she's gonna be like no no dan was dan fucked dan was crazy and this whole thing is gonna shatter around you yeah it'll destroy my reputation um

which i uh deeply rely on because i need um nerdy versions who identify with me to to buy my books and so like if i can't if i don't have that if they suddenly found out that i was like nine to five pounding it down with new york sixes i would be fucking ruined financially i need those nerds to think that a win for me is a win for them. So that's why Caitlin will never be on this podcast. That's why no one from my past will ever be on this podcast. That's no one can know how real life cool I am. That's fair, dude.

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involved uh do you want a deodorant that is going to stop sweat do you want a deodorant that is going to make you smell better do you want a deodorant that is environmentally conscious and i love the fact that those three questions are included in this quiz because check, check, check. Those are all important. I'm very sweaty and I love the rainforest. And I enjoyed the quiz. It was easy. It was quick. And my results ended up with a bunch of recommendations for deodorants, soaps, conditioner, body wash, deodorants, soaps, conditioner, body wash, cologne, and shampoo. And I bought them all because I love them all so much. I trusted the results of this quiz and I really enjoy them. My favorite is I got a dual cologne. One is for work and one is for play. And I have obviously been working at home, but that has not stopped me from waking up,

taking my shower, walking my dog, drinking my coffee, putting on my work cologne, putting in a nine to five. And then as soon as the clock strikes 501, you better believe I'm putting that play cologne on. So do what I did. Take Hawthorne's quiz today and get started on your personalized self-care routine by going to hawthorne.co with promo code qq to get 10 off your first purchase that's h-a-w-t-h-o-r-n-e dot c-o promo code qq uh okay uh can i ask a question yeah go quick question is there anyone from your past uh ideally middle school or high school whom you haven't talked to in many years that you would like to interview or be interviewed by live on stage i I have a few, as always, if you need time to think. Yeah, please go first.

Yeah. An obvious one is like a bully, because I've had several bullies growing up, but the one that stands out is one I never had a conversation with ever in my life. But every day, every single day, at the same time, he pushed me. He was a fifth grader when i was a fourth grader and i would be walking west to my next class and he'd be walking east to his next class and every single day when our paths crossed he pushed me into a wall i never fought back i never tried to avoid it it became so commonplace that my friends knew it was coming so we would stop in

mid-conversation we'd be i'd be like i i i kind of have a crush on this girl desi but i think she's got a crush on oh hold on i have a thing and then i'd get pushed into a wall and then we'd be like anyway i think she's totally out of my league what do you guys think it's to be clear not like a thing that haunts me it was never painful like it didn't hurt getting pushed into the wall. And it just became so funny to me. Like comedically, I admired his dedication because even way back then, somewhere deep inside, I knew I had a fondness for long bits with no payoff. genuinely wants to know, Hey, why'd you do that?

You were older, but shorter than me. Was that part of it? Did you need to feel powerful? And was there something about me that implied I would never under any circumstances, either fight back or report you to the principal. If so, how did you become so intuitive?

What was the thing about me that communicated that? And of course I'd close with, uh, and so are you like happy now yeah whatever he was lacking in your life is it finally fulfilled did i do it did you did you pushing me for 52 weeks a year did that was that good did Did that work? Man, that sucks. I don't like that guy. No, but I would interview him.

I would also interview any of my Little League baseball coaches because I was so bad at it. And I genuinely want to know what they ever thought when they drafted me because i know that like little league sports in new jersey and i assume everywhere they're not like no one is building dynasties you the coaches get together and they're like i'm a coach and my son is playing so i have my son obviously and then the rest of it they've like clearly ranked kids yeah somewhere behind the scenes and uh i was always on a team in baseball and basketball where there was like a clear talented person who might have a future in this

sport like they they they pick a lebron james and James and also a Daniel O'Brien and they put them on the same team. And I, I genuinely wonder, I want to like sit with one of my little league baseball coaches and be like, how, how upset were you when I was on your team? Or like,

were you, did you gamble on the wrong good baseball player? Did you think there was any hope for me? Right. Did you see some raw talent that you wanted to chisel away at? Because I was right field every year of baseball except one. And right field is where you stick the famously the worst literally players are, are,

are there. Uh, and the one year that I wasn't there, we actually have footage of it. I was, I was catcher for one year of my entire baseball life. I was catcher and I never caught a single ball, which I don't know if this is too inside sports for our listeners,

but is in a lot of ways, the titular obligation of the position. And in addition to not catching a single ball, there's one clip of me, uh, as catcher and the inning ends and the rest of the team leaves. And my parents are filming me and they're like, all right.

And that's the end of the inning. Oh, oh, he's not moving. Oh, honey, go honey, honey, honey. The inning's over, honey. And I'm just sitting there and I'm like, not frozen with fear. I'm just stuck in my thoughts, which were probably just like thinking about bugs like, oh, do do bugs know that they're bugs and can never be bigger than bugs and be humans? And does that make them sad or like, do they not care because they're happy that they don't have to go to school these are my

thoughts and then eventually some adult taps me on the shoulder and it's like it's time to go to the dugout daniel and i just like cheerily walked away these are all things to express just how bad and disinterested i was in baseball and i want to sit down with one of my coaches and be like did you think i was the thing that was going to tank our season right yeah i mean i suffered from that i think i told you on this podcast that when i was in eighth grade i was forced to play on the seventh grade team because i wasn't good enough to be on the grade team and they they had to play me in the eighth grade team for the least amount of time possible. So I would be allowed to play for 10 seconds a game, even if we were way up.

But I would love to hear what your coaches have to say about that. Because surely they were like, they went through it. They're like, who did I get? Now who do I have to have? Right. Really? I want to be in the fly in the fly in the wall in the meeting when all the coaches are drafting their teams and them and like the names getting reduced and reduced and reduced and knowing that there's like four names left and I'm inevitably one of those names. They had a rating system. I'm sure of it too, which means you had a label next to you. And I'm so curious to know what it was.

Yeah. Like, which is a thing that I kind of intuitively knew early on when, after I was a catcher for one year, the fact that like, no matter what happened between seasons, I'm in fourth grade and I'm playing little league and like, Daniel right field. I'm like, grade and I'm playing little league and like Daniel right field.

I'm like, okay, that's written down somewhere. Yeah, they know they're not even considering putting me at second base. I have a humiliating memory of, from childhood of, and then I'll answer your question,

but in baseball, they didn't divide up the teams to make them more even. There was an A team, a B team and a C team in the summers. And the A team was you just take all the good kids and you put them on that team. You take the kids who understand the basics of the game and put them on the B team. And then the C team was the catchers who don't leave after the inning's over. Do they play against each other? No.

To what end Does this happen? So then they, when you play the other teams in the Valley, which is like you go play in Basalt or in Rifle, these other towns, they also have A, B, and C teams. And so you're making it competitive for the kids of the same talent level as you. But you all knew. I mean, you knew immediately which team you were on because they were called A, B, and you. And, but you all knew, I mean, you knew immediately which team you were on because they were called a, B and C. And I was on the B team, a coach, uh, we had a shortstop, John Nielsen, who was a, just like a physical specimen, even as a child was so good at sports.

And after our first game, the coach pulled him aside and said, I'm thinking of moving you up to the A team. And I had had an okay game. So I went up to the coach and I said, would you consider moving me up to the A team too? And he said, I'll think about it. Like trying not to laugh. Coach Enewald. Yep. Anyway, I'll answer your question uh there is one person that comes to mind in middle school uh i won't say his full name his name is ben but um ben came to school

one day and said he had been in a car accident and was on what looked like i want to call them like scoliosis crutches or like what are the crutches that you use that are like a more permanent fixture where the brace is on the forearm? Like Walt Jr. from Breaking Bad? Yeah. Yeah.

And he had some of those that were too tall for him and he had a boot. He had like a, I guess like an air cast or something that was also too big for his foot. It was for an adult and had a harrowing story about how his car had gone off of a cliff and his family had almost died and he had broken his leg. And like kids were just all around him, like absorbed with it. And like hobbled through the hallways every single day to class. This went on for a while.

And suspicion started to grow that the whole thing was completely made up. Because somebody had seen his mom's, his mom, his mom's. Someone had seen his mom in the grocery store and she was fine. But all of us were like, I think he's fucking lying after a little while. And then after a while, uh, sure enough, the cast came on. I'm the, yeah, he stopped wearing the cast, but he kept using the crutches and would like limp and then got rid of those and then just started limping around for a while. And then it gradually, the limp just sort of went away.

And he committed to it so hard that if he was lying, I want to know so badly because he stuck to it. And if it wasn't, what the fuck? What doctor gave him that bullshit? Yeah. So you want to interview him to catch him? Well, I want to interview him and just like see what he was like, what the thought, was a lie and i'm just like hoping it was what led to that like what made him and like because if it if this is this is high school right uh middle school middle school so if it's a lie it's a lie for attention yes which generally means it's a lie for like, I want sympathy from the preferred sex that I want to be interested in me.

And I'm always fascinated by those kinds of lies of like, do you think you're this, this damage would be so profound and character defining that someone would in turn fall in love with you and like nurse you back to health which i know is is is a a thing that you are particularly interested in yes i that first day just at recess the crowd as we just like followed him around and he was very stoic about it but also like i don't really want to talk about it and that just oh he's so much lying he's lying we just were so much more interested then too and like just absorbed with this kid and then it just things started to not add up for us

after a while and now i want to know first of all i would ask him were you lying then i would ask him did your parents know you were doing this and like was this their gear like where did this stuff come right how did you how did you leave the house with that yeah every single morning how did you you can't hide that in your backpack did they know what you were doing that would be so great then i would interview his parents yeah so what was the divorce like at that time? Yeah. Why were you guys so preoccupied that you missed this? What made him do this? What kind of cry for help was this? But God, I want to know so badly.

That's a very good answer. Do you have any others? Yeah. I mean, I would ask, there are people that I didn't leave things on very good terms with. I had a girlfriend when I was in high school that- Brag. This is going to sound, this is not great. But when you're young, you're in relationships, I think, sometimes to just practice at being in a relationship. And you're not necessarily feeling the love and everything that you would see in movies where high schoolers are feeling things so deeply. You're not really feeling much at all, but you're like, I should know how to do this kind of thing. I should know how to be in a relationship. And so

you're just going through the motions and doing things from movies and seeing if they work and that kind of stuff. Like you're not good at it. You're, you're, you're practicing. They don't make movies about people who don't know how to be in relationships. Right. And I had a girlfriend who I think was feeling a lot of those things. And I wasn't. And I just let it carry on for a long time to the point where she was like noticing things were not quite right.

And I was still pretending that things were fine up and through us breaking up. And then I spoke at my graduation and she sat very, very close to the podium and just cried out loud. In your stupid fucking tent where you went to school you're allowed to pick where you sit it's not alphabetical so she was she was a junior when i was a senior and she's sitting at your graduation well she's she's come to this graduation so there's there's the crowd let me try so it's outside it's out in the grass there's uh some bleachers where all the kids sit who are graduating and that's 20 kids tops then there's a tent that everybody else can come and sit in and when that tent capacity fills up people start filling up just sitting on the grass in front and the podium is out in front of the

the bleachers okay so okay so the closest she could be as someone who is not graduating is on the grass in front of the podium. Yes. That's absurd. That's a bad system. Write to your high school and tell them it's wrong. Unless your high school, I don't know, collapsed into some fucking cave somewhere or was eroded as it should be that's everything you're talking about makes no sense it should be the speaker and then the people who are graduating and then beyond that the people who are witnessing them it's not how we roll man i'm sorry i'm getting

hung up on these strange details but i i've known you for fucking 12 years and there are so many details of your life that you've hid from me because you don't know how weird they are i'll send you a picture of my graduation in it i'm sorry i derailed you i mean i'm not sorry because i think it's important that our our listeners know that your life is not normal uh but but please go on so she sat next to the podium and cried at me. And at the time, I was like, you're young and you're selfish. And you're like, why would she do that to me? But now I'm older in my life and I would love to sit down with her and be like, hey, your life probably turned out great.

I imagine. I'm really, really sorry for how terrible I was to you are you okay I I'm sorry I'm still hung up on this yeah your life is so absurd I don't know I think there's a lot of people probably had a similar experience to that. It doesn't. The fact that there are so many movies that feature graduation sequences. That all seem kind of similar. Yeah. is vaguely similar except there's room for potentially strangers to sit on the grass in front of the podium and cry at the speaker means to me that you haven't lived a normal life do you feel like that's an unfair thing that i've said i don't know i don't have any context for it

because i i think maybe people who go to small schools, this is not so uncommon. I mean, we didn't have a buffer where random people can like just sit closer than anyone else. I mean, the tent is really where you're supposed to be sitting, but there is

overflow and it all spills out the front. I don't know that it's that strange also like we didn't have prom we didn't know you didn't have prom that makes sense if you don't have enough students you don't have prom that makes sense to me what doesn't make sense is like graduates sit here yeah close family of graduates sit here a little bit farther to take pictures oh oh i see what you're where you're coming okay no let me try and explain the okay so the way that it works is we're not sitting looking uh up at the stage

up at like the podium and stuff when we're graduating the graduates are on these bleachers facing the audience behind the podium the same way that like at a normal at a normal graduation you would have all the teachers lined up the faculty lined up back there this is uh bleachers two rows or whatever and all the kids are sitting up there and everyone is back in these tents facing them watching this graduation happen the podium's a little bit closer to the tents here's a quick question for you um because you you you grew up in a pit in colorado uh but then you went to a normal place like california when you when you started at occidental in california um when was the first time that you realized in your life that your upbringing was different? Immediately in college.

Immediately. Okay. It wasn't before then. It wasn't from like watching movies. You didn't watch like, again, American Pie or even fucking Scream or anything like that and and and realized oh this is this movie is attempting to do a a depiction of a a typical college experience and it is very foreign from my own you didn't you didn't think that you didn't like watch a single movie or tv show about high school or or anything like that that made you feel like these are different or

an alien uh well there's like saved by the bell and stuff like that where there's clearly hallways with lockers and like fast times at ridgemont high i I guess I knew that it was different, but I didn't realize how different that I was the same. It was different in the same way where like you watch a movie at the end of a date, people kiss on the doorstep. That's just a movie thing. That's not something you have to do in real life. That's just like a thing that always happens in the movies.

And so this was just how, how movies were presenting the idea of high school and i was like yeah okay great i get it i understand it but that's not my experience and then didn't think that that made me too different from anybody else i thought that was like i can still see the other side of of the cultural lake like i know i'm not that far from it and then it wasn't until i went to actual college and met other people that i realized oh i had a very different experience than everybody else and that how did that how do you have so many amazing friends how did that make it how did

that not make it hard to make friends when you went to college? And to me, it seems like you'd be starting from way back. So my graduating class was, I think, 20 kids. Of those 20, three of us went to Occidental. So it was nice that I had two other people who had come from the same experience as me. And then also, I mean, I'd been in a city before I'd been like, I knew, I guess I didn't mean I didn't really have friends there, but that it, it actually helped. If anything, there was like, I can remember one time as a freshman having somebody had skis in their dorm. And, uh, I was was like let me ski down the stairs and everyone was like what

you can do that and i was like yeah anyway like all you do is you just stand on them and just you you lock in your shoes as long as the bindings are tight enough you can squeeze your shoes in there and you can just ski down the stairs and uh that became like a point of like people were like yeah i want to know that guy. He's interesting. And so all these life experiences that I'd had suddenly made me more popular. And so it was very easy to make friends in those circumstances. Okay. But growing up, it was the opposite.

I mean, growing up, I was not the kid that was good at any of that stuff. There was kids that, you know, as I told you, like they're now, they've had entire careers where they were sponsored or they competed in the X Games. And that was sort of the expectation of, I think a lot of kids from that Valley growing up. And I, I was not one of those. So I was just thinking like, I'm just not like them. I'm not like the other kids. That's okay. Like I'll figure out my thing. I think maybe it's drama. Maybe it's writing, maybe it's something else. And, uh, and then going away to it it it's going away to college nobody had any of those experiences that i had and so i could i suddenly i was the best at them yeah and it's like oh all right great i want to i feel like i should amend some things that i want to be clear that i'm

i'm not angry. I'm just, I'm very surprised that, about how when I met you, you seemed like the most like normal and balanced and confident person that I've ever met. And everything I learned about your past, I can't do the math. I think that's it. How you ended up to where you are.

I think I was not very confident. And I think I was sort of lonely and living out in the woods. And then just as soon as I got to a place where I felt more like, uh, I found people who were like me as opposed to just like, well, you make friends with who's around you. I,

as soon as I found people that were interested in the same things as me and we're on the center of the same just physical level as i was like way down low much lower than everybody that i grew up with it was so such a relief that that gave me a lot of confidence i mean these kids they were so good at everything from the jump to like, we would start on a sport like kayaking. And all of a sudden you'd have a kid who is so good that they're like, all right, we want you to compete in these rodeos or these down river races. Rodeos are like where you just like doing tricks in a hole in a river. What's that? It's just like a rapid in the river. And they're like so good that they're competing against adults from their

first year trying it. Or they became such good skiers that they were getting sponsorships while we were still in high school. I mean, I, I feel like you bought a slack line and then you were good at slack line. That took me a very long time. I just didn't, i'd hide it i'd hide the practice we're uh we're running late on this episode do you have any other questions no no no we should uh

we should i gotta actually go get the um all the information about our Twitter and everything like that. But in the meantime, Dan, I just want to give you a chance. I know this time of year, you do like to do a lot of volunteering. You're a very philanthropic person, and I respect that a lot. You sometimes will go to soup kitchens, you've told me. And you said that the reason you particularly like soup kitchens is because you like to feed the homeless people and because they can't be trusted with money. Do you want to elaborate on that? Yeah. Well, two things. One, we call them unhoused people now. So homeless is actually

derogative and you should feel ashamed for that. And two, yeah, I feel like if I give them money, they're just going gonna spend it on smack okay so why don't i give it to them instead in the form of snack jesus daniel i mean you can't even be mad about that kind of stuff because it's good i mean it's all right on twitter you can follow daniel at dob underscore inc assuming he allows you to you can follow me i i say everybody can i'm egalitarian uh you can follow me at soren underscore ltd you can follow quick question at qq underscore soren and Dan or tweet at them.

Our CFO will be monitoring that account and he will answer you most likely. We have an email QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. And you can find, follow, hire our producer, sound engineer, editor. Gabe Harder, if you Google him and try and find a phone number, not his website, that won't be helpful. But just look around. You might see him on the internet somewhere. Oh, yeah. Find his phone number.

I might have it. I'll bring it up in the next episode. I'll track that down and I'll drop that in. All right. Bye. Bye.