Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 70 - The Second Annual Holiday Mailbag!

Episode Date: December 25, 2020

Join for us the second annual holiday mailbag episodes! In this episode we answer and berate our treasured loyal listeners. And big thanks to our sponsor 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 dish, riff, and diss all of life's problems. I am one half of this podcast, a guy who, because it's the end of the year as we record this, is even more checked out than usual, Daniel O'Brien. And I am joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, make like a pop culture reference or whatever and introduce yourself humorously. Hey everybody, I'm Soren Bui. Out here dissing those

moments of life that that need dissing did you what are we dissing dan um it looks like i said dish riff and diss all of life's problems yeah i'm dissing life's problems yeah so we just like someone comes to us and they're and they're like uh uh my cousin wants to borrow money from me and i don't know how to talk to him and we and we roast the shit out of him oh like you have a cousin you sound poor you know that kind of thing i something feels kind of good to even the concept of dissing my problems if there's something that seems big and hairy and unmanageable that i just fucking lay into it make it feel bad about itself. Okay.

I'm not doing that. It's not what we do on this podcast by any means. See, I'm, I thought you were teeing yourself up to, to do like, or that's like, you know, like I would, I would like to just my problems and I'm like, uh-huh. I and the audience are listening. And then I would do it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I had no plans for that okay that's great now well as you know this is the the show where where Soren and I ask each other questions and

give each other answers but this is a very special Christmas episode or a very special holidays episode or a very not special filler episode depending depending on how you view things, where we're actually going to take questions from you, our listeners, whom we love very much at a distance. Before that, we haven't checked in on quarantine life lately. Soren, do you have any updates? I laid into it last time when my dad had COVID during quarantine, but either last time or next time, depending on the order in which we release these. That's true. I have a family member who got COVID, but he's just fine now.

Great. How's yours? Your COVID. How's your COVID going? I've tried to get into baking because I've always been very bad at baking. And it's just like one of the things that I put on my list instead of because I've been building a list of things to get mediocre at instead of just like really getting great at Italian or really getting great at playing bass it's like

what if I was like kind of shitty at two dozen things and baking is on that list and i am i am just fucking failing at it i don't know everyone i talk to about baking is like it's just follow the instructions and and that's probably true but i i disagree that's so the difference between baking and cooking, cooking is like a very sexy thing because it's like, you have to have this sort of emotional intelligence for the food where you're like, ah, I, it does. The recipe doesn't call for this white wine, but I'm going to add it because I know that this will enhance the flavor palette or the flavor, the flavor layers.

That's fine. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's a, you, you can kind of improv your way through it. Baking. You cannot improv your way through baking is likeaking, you cannot improv your way through. Baking is like you do it right or you fuck it all up. I think it's because I've been cooking since I was like 13.

I've been teaching myself to cook and learning from my mom how to cook. And just like cooking, cooking, cooking for so long. Doing it that way, very improvisationally. That's given me this strange confidence with baking where I was trying to make these blueberry crumbles the other day and I'm following the instructions and they're like now put one egg into this flour sugar mix and I'm stirring it in and I'm looking at it and even though I've never made this recipe once in my life and I know nothing about baking, I still find myself going out loud. That doesn't look

right. I'm going to put another egg in there. I don't know where that comes from. I was wrong, by the way. So I'm a bad cook, proficient baker. And you know why? You like following orders. Love it. I love having rules for me yeah somebody else setting the rules for what i'm eminent not allowed to do i tried making apple turnovers and it was such a fucking disaster my apartment smelled great yeah but but like and it's the kind of thing where you can still eat them because it's the combination of ingredients is still correct but there's these weird golden brown failure nuggets that i was like i can't well you started pretty high bringing these to christmas eve yeah i did yeah i started really high you

could have just i mean like cookies are a nice base like that's a way you can really get into cooking but i mean into baking but you went for like the Maserati of baked goods yeah well I think there's I've always been attracted to challenge and attracted to like things that are maybe a little bit old-school and maybe a little bit off the beaten path. Like Maseratis. Like being a, like, like bringing a date, a rose on the first date is like, oh, that's kind of, that's not done anymore. What an interesting thing. And showing up to a party with an Apple turnovers that I made myself is like,

oh, this guy is from a different generation. That's sort of the vibe I try to go for. Bring it over on some fine china then, Dan. That's the way to do it. Huh? Bring it over on some fine china. Oh yeah, you bring dessert over on the fine china? Oh boy.

To somebody else's house? That shows some real courage. Yeah, and then you're like, yeah, just wash it, get it back to me, whenever. The next time we see each other. Thanks so much to Hawthorne for supporting Quick Question. Hawthorne is a premium tailored personal care brand that's making it easy for guys to feel and smell their best. 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. Let's get into the show in this episode because it's going to be either our Christmas or our New Year's episode. And we like to, it's our second year in a row of doing this where we just go to questions that you, our audience members, ask us. So we're going to jump right into it. This is from Jax, who goes by at big underscore tap t-a-p-p uh what books are you guys reading have you read during quarantine also plus one for spicy sweet chili doritos what oh yes this is somebody else who likes uh sweet spicy uh spicy sweet chili doritos oh is that a thing we talked about on the show yeah the purple bag of doritos that are no longer in stores anywhere the ones that taste like soy sauce on a chip right oh yeah jacks you're

great um i'm reading two books right now um which i know bothers some people but uh people get pissed off knowing you read two books i think yeah well i i imagine that people uh are like no like pick a book and and read it and finish it and then start a new one what a crazy thing to have an opinion about have two things in your brain at once um maybe people aren't mad about that i just assume because i think it's strange that i do this but it's um people just see you in the airport reading one book and they see another one in your bag and like no no fuck you fuck you i'm calling 9-1-1 pick one where are the police i i need to have like two books going at once because uh i love reading but if i finish book, it's difficult for me to start another one.

So it's nice that I already have one going. And at the moment, I'm reading Claire McNair's Answers in the Form of Questions. It's a Jeopardy book that, like, rest in peace, Alex Trebek. Bizarrely, coincidentally, that book came out the week he passed, like maybe three or four days after. And I'd already had it pre-ordered on Amazon from back in August when I heard it was announced. And it's great. I really like it. I love Jeopardy so much. Claire McNair is a fantastic writer who's written for The Ringer for a number of years. And the other book I'm reading is Rachel Bloom, friend of ours, her series of essays, I Want

to Be Where the Normal People Are. And it's incredible. She has always been one of my favorite thinkers and comedians that I've ever come across. And it's very frustrating that she's such a great actress and singer and songwriter and showrunner. And she's such a great actress and singer and songwriter and showrunner. And she's also a fantastic essayist. It's like, you know, pick one. She has one of those people who's good at everything.

Yeah. I can barely speak Italian, lady. She's so charming and good at all these things. She's a good person, too. She's like a good conversationalist, too. In a way where you're like, whoa. Yeah. This person can talk circles around me yeah yeah we had a uh just like a casual lunch with her once

where she's out of nowhere came up with this it's it's still one of my fucking favorite bits of all time which is uh an app that tells you who was in cool runningnings. That's all it does. It's not IMDB. It's not Wikipedia. It's specifically an app of who was in Cool Runnings. And she invented it off the top of her head. It was just like something that came up in casual conversation. And then she went on this extended riff of what that app would be and do and what the commercials for it would sound like.

And she's just, just ah and it's one of those things that we're not going to make that app we're not even going to make a sketch of it no one's ever she's not going to make a sketch of it it's not going to be written into a thing anywhere it's just like one of those free magic comedy gifts that is just like here this is just for us right now this is just like some fun that we're having right now in this moment it was so perfect and polished yeah it was really great and the idea of a cool runnings app that only tells you who's in cool runnings it's just genius um are you done with your books daniel yeah okay uh so i barely rarely read for pleasure anymore with children i read books to them and my son is

at an age where he reads, well, he doesn't. I read chapter books to him and he can follow. You know, there's a great achievement unlock where you get a kid to an age where they no longer have to see the pictures that go along with the story. They can just sit there and listen and then they picture it. And it's like, it's not a thing I thought about until recently when my son could finally do it. When I was like, oh God, that's such a big step forward. Like he's telling the story in his own brain. Oh, that's nice.

So we read recently The Mouse and the Motorcycle, which do you remember that book at all when you were a young kid? No. Okay. It's about a mouse. The little boy lives in a hotel. The little boy has a motorcycle and the mouse can magically ride this toy motorcycle like doesn't need gasoline or anything just can ride it around and he at one point has to save the little boy and it brought back a lot of memories from reading it when i was a child and it's great it's a really good little chapter book i also started

and you'll hate this daniel harry potter oh yeah Look, people enjoy what they enjoy. I think I personally, I don't feel great about supporting J.K. Rowling. Yeah. That's me. Yeah. That's why from the beginning, I've not read or watched any of the Harry Potter things. You could just tell. I had a sense.

This is an adult woman who says the way this world works is a hat decides what class everyone is in no this is i don't i don't like this it is really funny to read the the sorting hat stuff and like hear about the different houses and how clearly it is that there's like there look there are good people and bad people in this world that's just the way it is and we're just sort of going to sort of accept that the bad people also get to go to school with the good people right even though this is what you are the people and bad people in this world that's just the way it is and we're just sort of going to sort of accept that the bad people also get to go to school with the good people right even though this is what you are the hat and by extension the author has decided um so yeah my son was like i was when i was just talking to him i was like well what house would

you want to be in he was like gryffindor i want to be in gryffindor like fucking duh like that all the other ones what there's either the nerds there's the fucking pushovers and then there's the Gryffindor. I want to be in Gryffindor. Like, fucking duh. There's either the nerds, there's the fucking pushovers, and then there's the evil kids. Like, why would I want any of those? I want to be with the good guys. Anyway. I thought they were all nerds.

There's one called Ravenclaw. I hate that I'm the expert on Harry Potter on this podcast. That's the nerd one? that's the nerd one that's the nerd one yeah and push over his hufflepuff yeah okay is there anyone how far into it are you well we read the first book we're into the second one now is there anything um redeeming about hufflepuff yet has someone emerged where it's like, ah, his skills at sucking shit really, really paid off. It's helped slay that dragon or whatever.

Well, that's the thing is it's not like the book's not written all that well, because there's clearly a character in the first story who should be in Hufflepuff. But they're like, well, it's going to be inconvenient because they got to encounter him a lot and they wouldn't be in the same house. So we're just going to make him a Gryffindor. There's a character named Neville Longbottom who's like very clearly a hufflepuff but they're just like oh fuck it we'll make up a gryffindor for this hermione granger should be a ravenclaw she's not they're just like well it's so hard to make the book make sense so we're just going to give them all these archetypes within the gryffindor community as well um but uh it feels like there are other solutions anyway eventually there is a book called, um, the goblet of fire where there's a, like

the, the kid who's the best in the school, who's supposed to win at this whole goblet of fire thing is a Hufflepuff. Okay. But so far there hasn't been an opportunity where, where, uh, Gryffindor was like, we are limited with our experience. We need, it's time we turn to like the school, the baking school or whatever, Hufflepuff. Yeah, no, they haven't turned to the pushovers for help yet.

I don't know that they ever will. Have you read your son or daughter, Avocado Baby? No. That's a book that I'd never heard of in my life. And then back in May, I was at my brother and sister-in-law's house and I was helping put my nephew to sleep and he wanted to read a book

and he picked this book, Avocado Baby, which seems like it's from 200 years ago, but it can't be. But that's like what the illustrative style looks like. And it's very short. And it's about this family that has a baby. And the family is very weak. And they have this baby. And they look at it and it's like, oh, shit, our baby's weak too. This is terrible. We will never advance in this in this world and then the mother starts feeding the baby avocados and the baby gets so strong and we see the baby like lifting furniture and then like i think by the end the baby just like fucking beats the shit out of some bullies and then the book just ends with this terrifyingly strong baby in his family. And I'm like reading it to my nephew and looking at my brother in real time as I'm turning the pages.

I'm mouthing, what the fuck? I'm looking at it right now. This is great. Hawthorne is a premium tailored personal care brand that's making it easy for guys to feel and smell their best. Hawthorne is a fun and convenient way to get super high quality products tailored specifically for men. They give you free shipping on your order and if you decide you're not satisfied with your product, they'll even give you free shipping on the return and give you new suggestions based on your feedback. Hawthorne has a quiz that you can take so they can figure out what makes the most sense

for you. I took their quiz and they recommended a bunch of products for me and I took a bunch of them. I got this big tan brick of soap that I love. I got this hand soap that I really enjoy. It makes my hands smell like I've been chopping wood. I've got two colognes. I've mentioned this before. There's a cologne for work and a cologne for play. And listeners, you know I wake up every morning, I put on a suit, I spray that cologne right in my face, and then I put in a solid nine-hour workday. When that's done, I scrub my face down with that big honkin' brick of soap, and then I immediately spray the play cologne, because that's right, it's playtime. The tie gets loose, and the juice gets juiced. So you can live like me and do

those things that I just said. Take Hawthorne's quiz today and get started on your personalized self-care routine by going to hawthorne.co with promo code QQ and you'll get 10% off your first purchase. That's H-A-W-T-H-O-R-N-E dot C-O promo code QQ. Let's get on to the next question. Faithy asks, if your writing question mark industry didn't exist or wasn't an option for you for some reason what do you think you do for a living would love to hear your answers it's I should I'm not the type of person who should have anybody who's like oh I like the stuff that you do I like I can I ask you some questions about your your work because

I'm constantly insulted by the simplest questions. This one says, if your parentheses writing question work industry didn't exist, like, are you guys, do you consider yourselves writers? Yeah, Faithy, I do. Let's, uh, cause I don't have another word for it. Let's just say that you're a writer. You're not. It's not Faithy's fault either. It's something else.

Like, I'm sure this is a completely perfectly nice person who is like asking a very genuine question and immediately I take offense. This is the kind of question it's a, I don't, I'll figure out what my answer is, but it's something that, that always comes up in, it's not to say that that uh faith is is uh boring or common or low but it's a very uh frequent question for actors and actresses uh it's it's in like every interview i've seen for a hundred years where it's like chris pine if you weren't an actor what would you do uh because it's like it's it's a reasonable question to ask if you want to talk about something that's not movies or whatever yep um i love the question because uh so many actors will say usually one of two things one

of them is like uh ah i'd probably just be working the land it's like chopping wood on a farm with all these animals just like wake up early just like do some honest work and the other version of that is something like i'd like to think i'd be a therapist like it's it's either a job that doesn't really exist like like the vague idea of being person who tills the land yeah professionally and and and like lives comfortably doing that uh and not on subsidies or this thing that requires a tremendous amount of discipline and time and money and education and study there's there's there's rarely a middle ground like almost no actor has been like oof i't know. I would fucking tread water for a while. Yeah.

And hope I got hit by a police car and could sue the state. Because that's my only skill set other than being an actor. Yeah. Well, let's see, Faithy. I'm always struck whenever, like I played golf recently. And I'm always struck at what a spectacular athlete i am whenever i play something i'm always like oh yeah i'm great at all these sports there's there's nary a sport that i don't excel at so i'm thinking that i would know what's wild is that i and the

audience can't tell if this is a bit or not that's that's that's what your brand is uh i would i would open myself up to the draft for nfl and for mlb and i'd see which one was hotter like where i location wise what sort of uh city i could go to and then from there i would determine whether i played baseball or football or maybe both okay i mean i think sports would only work for me uh like i look at uh luca donsik and uh like he's the new he's gonna be the next face of the nba and he's like a slow doughy white guy and i'm like okay yeah if it works for him maybe maybe i'm good too who knows secretly the future of the sport yeah i think that if if my industry didn't exist it would be some other other form of it it would be like i'd be a copywriter for

instructions for building furniture or something like yeah just a copywriter i guess yeah it's it's weird because when i started my first job at Cracked, like when I was growing up and into college and like starting to think about what I'm going to do with my life, our industry didn't actually exist. Like the industry of online writer, editor, sketch performer wasn't a possibility. Like it wasn't on my dream list of jobs because it it hadn't been invented yet um but then i then i got it and i got it while i was still a senior in college and just like immediately started working um if i didn't have that uh i know that i didn't have a plan at the time like writing was in in my brain at that point as something that I wanted to do. But I, until Cracked took a chance on me, I didn't, I had no plan to seriously pursue

writing because it didn't seem like a sensible thing to do. Um, I think my, when I was a junior in college, my honest to God plan was probably, um, continue in, in school, like graduate and then go to grad school in something because, uh, student debt was constantly looming over my shoulder. And I just knew like, as soon as I graduate, they're going to want me to pay them for four years of not preparing me to have a job. And I don't want to do that. So I can just, like my plan was truly

to just kick the can down the road and study something else and hope that in my further studies, I would develop a passion for something yeah uh lucrative wow that's a gamble or i would just like keep staying in academia forever yeah you're good at school you want to go back to school yeah i was like okay i'm i'm i'm 21 years old now uh i think i got the hang of this let me like now let's really do it let's really do school i feel like i could i could live i could make enough money in a

small winter town to be a snowboard instructor okay that would be fun although i'm not realizing last time i went snowboarding i tried to teach somebody who had never snowboarded before and she immediately broke her arm so maybe i'm i need to work at it a little first yeah well it wasn't your dream at the time i think whatever whatever i ended i would end up doing after college would be solely in the pursuit of paying off debt and yeah and being able to breathe because that was like my primary concern for much of my early life like i i hear about people who are like oh i would just i would take a gap year and travel and figure stuff out i was like no i would find it i would move in with my parents and um and like do data entry somewhere and once i was free of debt then i, okay, now what do I want to do?

Now that I have paid off all my debt, who am I? If there was a celebrity who gave that answer in a press junket interview, that like, do something sensible where they can make enough money to pay off debt, I would be furious. Really? Are you furious with me? No, because you're my friend. And i think you're absolutely and i want to look out for you and i want you to do something sensible but like if chris pine was like i think i'd i've got some debt so i'd find something where i could just keep my head down push a pencil for a little while and get through it i'd be like well fuck you that's not a good answer you know all kinds of time to think about this i'm sure everybody asks you that question i think people say therapist yeah i think people ask that question

because it's a good in to like what is your hidden talent or what is your secret interest like they want someone to say oh if i wasn't an actor 100 i would build rocking chairs or i would be a famous chef or something like that and i uh i could lie yeah i could say i was like oh yeah if i if uh online internet comedy didn't exist then i i i would be in a rock band sure trouble is i'm not good at anything else i'm barely good at this i know i'm not either i didn't say i know i know as in like i know you're barely good at this i know as in i'm agreeing with you um all right i think that's answered uh our next question is from z doctor since i followed you guys from cracked your personality and dynamic is so different from on screen there to here is your podcast personality, your real one, or just another character.

I sometimes walk away from these podcasts at the end thinking I revealed too much about myself. Oh yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, I, I don't like how personal I get on this podcast sometimes. So this is as real as it gets. Okay. And everything else is scripted by the way that we do. So it's easy to build a character around it this is much truer to who i am i think i'm half and half on this like part of it is um even though i'm i'm talking to you i'm talking into a microphone

and i know it's being recorded and i know people are going to listen to it so there's some element of character there i'm still like doing something that like this isn't how i am with my family or close friends or anything like that like you're like i i'm also i'm like a very boundaries conscious person. So I'm never going to get, I'm never going to reveal too much or get too personal on this podcast. The parts that do, that do feel the most real to me and the largest betrayal of the character from After Hours, the character from the, the columns that I wrote, whenever I get, uh, mean. Like, I think when I'm, when I'm at my nastiest and, uh, like a little bit of bully comes out of me, that's like, oh, that's a, that's a, that's a real part of me that, uh, out of me that's like oh that's a that's a that's a real part of me that uh i worked very hard to to hide from the public i think there's the i we've mentioned this before on the show but uh

i think about oh hello on on broadway with nick kroll and john mulaney where their close friends people who knew them said that this is this is who they they really are nick kroll in his heart is like a chaotic little baby and john mulaney a very nice person on stage in his heart is like this is where he gets to be mean yeah and there's a part of me that that like the mean part of me that hasn't been nourished with your entertainment no and i and i i feel it come out sometimes on this podcast i'm like i think uh i'm not sure people will like that but if you don't like it ignore what i said that's part of the character that i'm doing now podcast daniel is is mean daniel the author is is exactly who you want him to be buy my books

uh so yeah i i think i don't think you come across as mean on this podcast daniel that's good i think you're very nice guy and uh i occasionally think that maybe I bully you on this podcast. Really? And I feel bad about that. I don't actually think so. I think one of the things that has come out of this podcast that I'm pretty happy about is the softer and kinder and more supportive side of you that wasn't allowed to shine in After Hours or your columns because you were very much steering into the skid of this character that made sense for you. And I think with this podcast, everyone gets to hear like, oh, man, he's like a super sweet and kind and good friend. I want him to be an asshole and he's not. sweet and and kind and good friend i want him to be an asshole and he's not and that's very frustrating um which is what our listeners would say would be saying which you know i agree with

you but uh i i like that they get to see this version of you that i've come to know um and on the opposite side of that coin is they also get to see this like nasty cranky version of me that you've come to know uh okay all right um this is a long twitter name scott why am i in this wicker basket paladin who is at scott paladin on twitter, if you were allowed to pick any song for your personal intro music for parties, work gatherings. We didn't read these questions in advance. For parties, work gatherings, and the like,

what would it be? So I get to, basically the same way a baseball player, when they step up to bat, they get their own music. What would your... This is your careless whisper moment. Yeah.

Your theme music b i i mean i i want to have a good answer um and i don't i'll just i'll just talk about a couple things while we both think um i my friend matt and i hosted our high school talent show. And he's like a big, tough-looking fellow. And has like a real dark, heavy metal energy. And he set up a vertically positioned coffin in the center of the stage that he hid in or placed himself in. And then had a bunch of fog machines going. There was a lot of fog going through.

And played the wrestler Kane his theme music from, at the time, WWF Raw. It's like this big, scary, dramatic, monstrous music and it comes out and there's like, Kane comes out and there's a big explosion and at the explosion time Matt kicked open the door of the coffin and like walked out with his arms outstretched and brought his arms

down and the lights changed. And then I walked out from the side of the stage like a zombie or like outstretched for like a hug outstretched like in victory like out in the air oh up up fist in the air oh up and out yeah i was picturing directly at a 90 degree angle to his body like uh somebody under a spell or like no just looking to be picked up no he's he he very much took the stage like i'm scary i'm in charge i am owning this moment and then uh i walked on stage from stage left in like a horizontal striped shirt smiling and waving at the crowd which was like a very like which was

was by design he's like i'm gonna have this cool big dick entrance. And then you walk out smiling and waving, happy to be here. And that's going to be the dynamic for our job as hosts of this thing. Which is the closest I've ever come to having theme music. And now that I've stalled enough, Soren, have you thought of an answer? Yeah, I did. Okay, great. Goodbye, horses. Is that... What is that? i don't know that song it would be it would be nice if it just like

started started playing have you ever seen the movie silence of the lambs yeah um and the buffalo bill the buffalo bill song so it's a song that has clearly been adopted by pop culture and it has this it serves like this one very specific purpose in our pop culture outside of that it's actually a really great song and because it has all this other crazy context to it uh that seems so inappropriate for an average person walking into a work gathering or whatever uh i think i would really enjoy how funny that would be and then i genuinely like the song too and i think that you could win people over with it i think people would like laugh and then they'd be like fuck you know this is a banger i think um i would probably pick biz marquequis' You Got What I Need.

Oh, yeah. Because everyone loves the chorus of that song. They will sing along. It's a very fun sing-along chorus. The verses are just utter trash. He is not a good rapper. His story goes nowhere. It's one of my favorite songs in the world because in the second verse, he talks about, it's okay to have friends because I have friends. And that's i just said it's like biz marquee and elton john and bernie toppin in your song those are the only two people who are like who change their mind mid-stride and try to get you

to forget about what they just said it's a a fun move and a garbage song that I want people to... It's my entrance music, so we'd never get to the chorus. Right. It would just be... Just for you. Have you ever met a girl? We... And, like, people would be so mad.

It was like, oh, I got to hear Biz Marquis talk rap until Daniel gets to his desk. And I fucking... This is the worst part of my day but then I know that song is going to come up in your life again you'll be at a karaoke bar and someone will do it and I won't be there and you'll think about me and you'll smile my I've had the opportunity to come out to a song before because I've been married and generally what happens in a marriage is that you do all the business of putting the rings on the fingers.

And then later everyone walks over to the reception and then they introduce the new couple and they get to come out to a song. Do you remember this, Daniel? I remember it from weddings generally, but I don't remember the song you guys came out to. We came out to exhibits X. generally but I don't remember the song you guys came out to we came out to exhibits X it's such a heavy big song yeah it's completely inappropriate for the context her choice yeah of

course and it also starts with today's the first day of the rest of my life which felt very apropos and it's a really it's just like it's such an inappropriate song for almost any circumstance and that's why we chose it and i think that that would also be a very fun one uh yeah all right great question um this one is from kimmy ask who goes by scribbleth on uh twitter i guess these are all like at names, so I'm assuming Twitter. LA question. For Soren, what do you love most about living in LA?

For Daniel, what do you miss most other than Soren about living in LA? See, I like this person. Yeah. So answer their question. Oh, okay.

I think I needed to be in a city. If I was to live in a small town again, I think I'd go a little crazy. I grew up in a very, very small area. I didn't have neighbors growing up. I lived in the woods. And if I had to go back now to a place where I didn't feel like I was culturally plugged in, I would have a very, very tough time acclimating to that. So the fact that it feels like LA is the first place that things happen a lot of times, like within the entertainment industry. It's harder now with COVID, but like music,

like there's a lot of acts, like if there's a new act that's up and coming, they're going to come to LA first. That's one of the big places that they will hit. So it feels like a cultural hub. And even if I'm not always partaking in that culture, I'm still there. And just being in proximity to it, you catch a lot of it. And it feels very nice.

Yeah. Culturally, you won't miss anything. There's never like this new indie film opening in Milwaukee and Little Rock. Right. Yeah. So we've got Lemley theaters all over, scattered throughout Los Angeles that are anything that's not going to be a blockbuster hit. Like it comes to these Lemley theaters. So you're throughout Los Angeles that are anything that's not going to be a blockbuster hit. Like it comes to these Lemley theaters.

So you're going to get to see anything you want to see again, not during COVID. Um, but then I also love that you're the proximity to the outdoors. I mean, you get the same thing from a city like Denver. Um, but New York, it's very tough. I assume to get, if you want, it's like, you're like, let's go camping. What's the fastest you could actually get to a camping site from New York. It's going tough, I assume, to get. If you want to, you're like, let's go camping. What's the fastest you could actually get to a camping site from New York? It's going to take you hours, right? Yeah.

Yeah, in LA, it's actually a lot easier than that. LA, you could get to a place that doesn't feel like LA in about 45 minutes. You can get up into a completely different habitat. By the way, the habitat of LA is called Chaparral, and it's dog shit. It's just like spiny plants all over the place. They all look dead and dry. But getting out of that, you just drive up north on the two for 45 minutes and you're up in pine trees. It's beautiful. You feel like you're in a real forest. There's ferns even. It's very easy to get out of that. And so getting out of the city when you feel like you need to is also very easy.

getting out of the city when you feel like you need to is also very easy. That's probably what I miss most about it, apart from the very obvious things of friends and the weather. I really miss, like, I'm going to just get in a car and either go to the beach or go to a mountain or go to the woods somewhere or go to a desert somewhere. It all felt very quick and very easy. And New York, I mean, I still have a car here and it's not like it's a city forever. Like New Jersey's close, Pennsylvania's close.

Upstate New York is very lovely, but it's still... the simple act of like leaving Manhattan is a stressful endeavor in a way that leaving Los Angeles proper was not. Like you can get in a car and the traffic is fine and you go somewhere, versus New York it's like I'm still in this fucking city where every driver is insane. And I hate that. Yeah. I also think about LA that I miss that I am surprised by is, is how comparatively quiet it is. Yeah. To New York.

Because one of my issues when I was living in LA was that I was starting to feel like it's, it's, it's too loud here. Like I didn't like, even, even in my Westwood area, which is like not a city or anything like that, it still felt like I'm too close to the road. I want to be farther away from things. And now I miss that a lot because it's never quiet in New York. Right.

That's the thing I didn't think I needed in my life until recently. Maybe it's because I've gotten old, but I don't feel like I need to feel the pulse of the streets. Yeah. And it's like LA is sprawled. So they don't build up, they build out. And it's kind of a big problem in terms of transportation and pollution and everything. That's why LA is so gross. The sky is so gross above it.

But you have to drive everywhere because it's so spread out. But because it's so spread out, there's actually room in a lot of the places in the sky so gross above it but ever you have to drive everywhere because it's so spread out but because it's so spread out there's actually room a lot in a lot of the places in the city i live currently on a cul-de-sac that very much feels like just a small town um and it's because it's technically suburbs of los angeles and uh i didn't as i think as a kid i would have that would have driven me crazy but as an adult i love it i love having a place where I can go out in the middle of the street and teach my son to ride a bicycle and not have to worry about cars. All right. Good question.

Next one comes from at tally underscore burger. Quick question. If you could have a burger made in your honor, what would be on it? So like people would go to the restaurant and they'd order a Soarin'? Yeah. Yes. This is my my dream by the way i want to be so well recognized at a restaurant because i patronize it so much that they named something after me there that's like when i found out that chuck klosterman had a witty chuck that you could go to a bar and order i was like i want that i want that for my life

do you know what a wnie Chuck is? Yeah. It's brandy and ginger ale. Oh. Yeah. He says that it genuinely makes him funnier. It unlocks these, for some reason, that combination unlocks certain things in his brain and makes him a better conversationalist. It makes him more fun to be around,

which is probably why he suffered from alcoholism when he was younger. My answer isn't a burger. Okay. Perfect. Right off the bat. I'll try to think of a burger while I'm talking about this. There was a diner that I think is now closed called Town & Country that was in Hazlitt,

New Jersey that I used to go to all the time with my friends. It was sort of like an unfunny, unscripted, unglamorous version of After Hours where we would just sit around this diner and talk about pop culture and eat and drink coffee way too late. And I would get, it's, I can feel my stomach hurting thinking about it now it's uh fried buffalo chicken and bacon and blue cheese and ranch inside of a wrap like a burrito of of of just bacon and chicken and two different poisonous white creamies and i would eat that and also dip it into ranch and this feels like cultural appropriation somehow i don't know how yet of what culture

i don't know it's all this is buffalo chicken inside a burrito with a bunch of other sauces yeah okay and bacon and the first few times i I'd ordered it, because they did like plenty of wraps there, I had to specify like, by the way, no lettuce and tomato. I know that's standard with your sandwich wraps, but I don't want anything resembling a vegetable near this decision that I've made. And I would get that multiple times a week because I was 19 and I could do that sort of thing. And eventually, like, got it so much that I could come in there and say the usual. And they would bring that specific thing to me because it wasn't on the menu, which is like a thing that I wanted. And I would like that to be the daniel somewhere not town and country because i think it's dead now but somewhere i want that to exist

even though i would never have it again in my life because i think like in my mid-20s i was back in jersey for the holidays probably and went to that diner with a friend and i was like for old time's sake i'm gonna get this thing and i ate it and like three bites in and was like it's just sodium what have i done um okay uh i would get so the first thing i can think of is there's a restaurant called the counter which i assume is national where you do make your own burgers and i always get the same thing there so fuck it that might as well be my thing um i would get a turkey burger because i don't eat beef and it would have on it a pepper jack cheese jalapenos and then a big ring of pineapple on it oh yeah so you get there's a lot going on there

yeah so the the pineapple the pineapple is to offset the jalapenos and pepper jack which are can be like a pretty spicy combination and then then i'm struggling to decide whether i just want regular raw onions on it or i want want crispy onions because now it needs a little bit of a it needs another texture to it because we got a lot of mushy things. I find this to be a genuinely difficult question because I don't know like I've been raised on the burgers on which I've been raised you know like on which I've been raised, you know, like restaurants offer a burger with bacon and blue cheese. And I really liked that decision that they made. And, but I can't, I can't ask someone to call that the Daniel because that's in multiple restaurants at this

point. Like I, I, we are very fortunate to exist in a world where a lot of our burger needs have been already met so i i never had to rely on my imagination like i never ordered a burger and thought what other possibilities are there it also has it in our well-documented shared history uh you haven't made the best of choices when you you have the opportunity like the sky's the limit for foods we used to go get salads together at a salad bar where you could choose anything and you would somehow walk out of there with melted Jolly Ranchers on top

or some shit like that chocolate chips don't belong in a salad Daniel yeah I know I get really overwhelmed and I don't think that they put I don't think any salad bar puts... I think the order is wrong. They know that in the beginning, they want a bunch of their greens and stuff,

and that makes sense. That's the only good decision they've ever made. But when you're on a line with people, and you're just moving from spot to spot, and you don't know what's ahead, you're going to moving from spot to spot and you don't know what's ahead you're gonna you're gonna commit to something early i'm gonna put a bunch of spring greens in there and then i come to the like fucking diced mango station so i get mangoes and then a few stops later there's

artichokes i'm like shit that was on the table well i can't have artichokes and mangoes but then like here i am spooning it in there anyway yeah just hoping maybe that somehow this concoction works once you shake it yeah no it's that's a that's a fair assessment I think that you it's really tough for you to stick with the theme because there are so many things that you enjoy that you're like well maybe I'll just be able to pick these things separately yeah and you just can't do that in a salad it all falls to one piece you come back to work with a salad. It all falls to one piece. You come back to work with a salad and I come back.

I was like, I got an egg and some licorice. I don't know, man. Does anyone want half of this egg? And you would be like, you would look at my salad so longingly because mine clearly had a narrative to it. It was like, this is the genre of salad that I got. Well, this salad bar was chaos because at the end of it they were just like loose meats so there was a very real chance that you would like finish your salad put dressing on it and then be like oh i guess i need like a circle of salami on top too because

also the because the architect of this salad bar has decided that it's reasonable for this to be here there was the baffling uh addition of pudding at the end too which meant that you i don't know if they were assuming that you just ate your salad while standing in line at the end you were like ah dessert perfect or if he was really like and then you've also left obviously a foot of space between your salad and what will be your dessert and so over here you'll have your pudding but yeah i'm gonna go to a restaurant uh on i think it was wednesdays or fridays i can't remember um salads uh are priced by weight and if you correctly guessed your weight in anticipation of the weighing uh you would get your thing for free and i was always wrong and it always brought

into like stark focus when i put the thing on the scale and they're like, yours is $16. I'm like, yeah, man, I don't know. Most of it's chickpeas and a bottle of Snapple. I really got lost in there. Just charge me. It's fine. It's five handfuls of sunflower seeds and some bacon bits. I didn't know what else to do.

Yeah. I don't think what else to do. Yeah. I don't think you should be trusted with having your own burger. I think that maybe I can. Me specifically? Yes. I feel like maybe I should be in charge of designing yours. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make one for you right now, and you tell me what you think of it.

Okay. Okay? I'm already designing my own burger, and I like it. But go on. I figured it out. Go on. Okay okay this is the uh the buffalo brian because i know some things that you do enjoy uh one of them being buffalo sauce and that's going on there but here's the other thing your meat it's gonna be bison meat daniel okay you get a nice rich lean bison meat that's your base of your burger chopped up in there with the bison meat are onions and it basically is like a meatball

like a bison meatball like it's like the same texture where you put in like some bread crumbs some egg and some onions and you get those spices inside the burger itself then you're getting a let's see what kind of cheese do i know you like i'm lactose intolerant you're not getting a cheese you're getting buffalo sauce on top and you don't like lettuce and tomato you don't want those things messing up your burger yeah uh fuck i just made a very very basic burger for you okay i i i don't even know what you what you would want on top now there's nothing i can think of that you enjoy I think so when I make burgers myself I'll use ground turkey meat and I mix it with a little bit of fish sauce for the umami and then I'll throw in some garlic and goat cheese that's a cheese that I can have and a little bit of time and grill that up and

I just put some sprouts on top of it I might put like a how does umami burger prepare their tomatoes is that like a stewed tomato pickled tomato it's a dried oven-dried tomato oven-d dried tomato i would put one of those on there and and the the sprouts and uh a garlic aioli what i'm telling you man well hold on you you don't like lettuce on your on your burger but you're gonna have sprouts on there yeah i like the texture sprouts are just like a hairy lettuce. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I want. Getting stuck in your teeth.

Yeah. They wilt immediately on anything hot. I like it. This is why you can't make your own decisions. I'm not going to let you do it. I can't let you do it. You're going to end up unhappy, and it's going to ruin the rest of our meetings for the day.

I'm sticking with my Buffalo burger for you. And I don't mind putting an oven dried tomato on there. I think that's a good idea. Okay. And with that, I think we're out of audience questions. Is there anything we should say to like wrap up the year? Year in podcasting.

That's a tall order. What do you think? Should we keep doing this show next year? What do you think? Oh. I just sort of assumed it was over. But yeah, I think we could probably continue. All right.

Well, I'm going to track down our social accounts uh and while i'm doing that um we've talked about go-to karaoke songs and often soren will pick uh like a rap song because that's like um it seems cool but in reality it's cowardly and low stakes um so i would like you to sing a popular song right now um with no music backing you up. And it can't be a rap song. You have to like earnestly sing a song right now. Well, the warmth of your love is like the warmth of the sun. And this will be our year. took a long time to come. Don't let go of my hand now the darkness has gone. This will be our year, took a long time to come. And I won't forget the way you held me up when I was down.

And I won't forget the way you said, Darling, I love you, you gave me strength to go on. Now we're there and we've only just begun. This will be our year. Took a long time to come. This will be our year. Took a long time to come. I genuinely, very good.

Thank you for doing that. I genuinely tried to to jump in a few times but it was like you were anticipating when i was going to jump in and like really seized on the next note because that would have been a good bit you knew you weren't done to do that on stage where the other person's like ready to move on and you don't know i have uh what uh fucking song is that it's where the other person's like ready to move on. And you don't know. What fucking song is that? It's from the Zombies. They did like a, what's your name?

Who's your daddy? Is he rich like me? Remember that song? Yeah. Time of the season. They have another song that is very not famous at all called This Will Be Our Year, I think. And it's a great song for this year. called This Will Be Our Year, I think.

And it's a great song for this year. You know the one interesting zombie story that I know? Do you already know it? No. Oh. So this is way back in 1960, the past. And the zombies had gotten popular, but because the internet didn't exist,

no one really knew what they looked like. And so this guy, uh, created a band in America because the zombies are from England. This guy created a band in America and it was like, you're the zombies now learn the zombie songs and then like go tour around the country being the zombies. And so this band did, they learned a bunch of zombie songs and then also like came up with their own songs and we're just like play around being the zombies they would go and do radio commercials or like radio interviews and they would sell out clubs and bars and stuff and this producer promoter I can't remember whoever set up the the first fake zombies was like shit I'm gonna set up so we have Detroit zombies and I'm gonna set up like a southern zombies like a Dallas zombies or something like that it's like a gallagher gallagher two story

yes there are now three zombies bands the first the original only zombies at that point had broken up um but there are two zombies touring across the country and uh every once in a while someone would show up to a zombies in quotes concert and be like, Hey, um, you're not the zombies because the zombies doesn't have a keyboard player. And they're like, ah, no, we,

he's new. We got him. Or they would show up at a show and be like, Hey, what happened to your, to the, your, the lead singer of the zombies.

And they'd be like, he's in prison. I'm the lead singer now. And they, they got away with the scam for a while until like the actual zombies returned and showed up and started calling into radio stations being like hey i didn't realize that you guys were um selling tickets to zombies shows i'm the zombies stop doing that and radio interviewers were like how do i know

i was like i don't know man it's the past how can i prove anything and eventually the guy who put these two fake bands together was found out and like flit he just fucking screwed off because uh he'd been he'd been caught and one of the zombies the southern zombies believe, completely dissolved and the original fake zombies, they were like, well we can't be the zombies anymore, but we got really good playing together over the last however long this has been and I like you guys and we only played like two zombies songs a show and then the rest of it was our songs that we'd originally written. So let's just keep trying to be a band now.

And that band? ZZ Top. Oh! What a fucking Paul Harvey moment. That was great. Yeah. You can find Soren on Twitter at Soren underscore LTD. You can email the show at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com.

You can find our show on Twitter at twitter.com slash QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can find me on Twitter. I've been feeling generous lately and letting people follow me, even though I'm going to delete my account in like two months. You can find me at DOB underscore INC. Our producer, engineer, editor, Gabe Harder, has decided to be impossible to reach. I don't even have his email. He's just a voice that pops into this podcast every once in a while,

while we're talking. Um, if you can find him, hire him because he's very good. Also, if you can find him, um, describe to me what he looks like.

I'm, I'm very curious. That's right. You never even seen him. No, he's handsome. He's a good looking guy. Fuck him.

Yeah. I think that's about it for me. Yeah, I'm just checking my notes. Fuck him. Happy New Year. Alright, bye.