Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 75 - The Mystery of the Moving Bed

Episode Date: February 5, 2021

In this episode the guys talk about almost giving notes on a script, and exactly how much water you should be drinking every day (who knows?). And as always big thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to Skillshare, Skillshare.com/qq and get a free trial of Premium Membership. Also thanks to Hello Tushy.  Get10% off + free shipping HelloTushy.com/qq

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers... Oh man, goddammit. My notes just say, joke to come. Alright, I'm gonna start over. I'm not gonna have anything for this. No, this is good, leave that in! No, keep it?

Okay. Alright. I am one half of this podcast, author of books, baiter of hooks, server of looks, and sipper of rooks, Daniel O'Brien. And I am joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. And Soren, I am imploring that you keep the rhymes going. I'm Soren Bui. I'm a writer.

I'm a father. I'm a brother. I'm a bitch. I'm a lover. I'm all the things, really. And I'm a kid who cried in elementary school after I became so enraged with another boy that I called him a dead battery and then felt terrible

for weeks okay so right off the top I have several things that I need to say one it's very clear that I put a lot of time into part of the intro to this show and forgot about the other part as you got into the rest of it it's very clear that I put a lot of time into part of the intro to this show. Holy shit.

Forgot about the other part. Wait, but you went, I mean, as you got into the rest of it, it was clear that, yeah, you like jump back. You're the train came back on the tracks miraculously,

which never happens. There are two couch gags in the intro to every episode. And I, uh, got really excited about the second one and made future Daniel's problem. The first one. And we never got to do the second part of made Future Daniels Problem the first one. And we never got around to it. Can you do the second part of that again?

Absolutely. Author of books, baiter of hooks, server of looks, and sipper of rooks, Daniel O'Brien, joined by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, I'm imploring that you keep the rhymes garden. Server of looks. Yeah. That's excellent. Yeah.

That's wonderful. And for some of our non-East Coast folks, Rooks is a coffee chain from New Jersey. Oh, I figured it was a chess thing. Sipper of Rooks? I also figured sipping was a chess. I don't play chess. Oh, okay.

Yeah, that's fair. I watch Queen's Gambit, and they're like, they're like, just look at us sip that Rook. Yeah, I see it. Horse to 610. I'm like, fuck yeah, 610.

That's where I would have gone. Fuck yeah, I think she's winning. I guess it's a letter. B10. I don't even know what it goes up to 10. Thanks to Hello Tushy

for supporting Quick Question. Now the brand new Hello Tushy 3.0 modern bidet attachment is here to level the playing field. It's stylish, eco-friendly, easy to install, and affordable for the rump you love to hump. This Valentine's Day, give the gift of HelloTushy. Go to hellotushy.com slash QQ to get 10% off plus free shipping. Thanks to Skillshare for supporting quick question skillshare is an online

learning community with so much to explore real projects to create and the support of fellow creatives skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth explore your creativity at skillshare.com slash qq and get a free trial of premium membership uh but now that we've gone through all that you you called a kid a dead battery yeah what did call the boy a dead so um that is a that can be a vicious insult i think like a very clever biting insult did you because you're like you're calling someone a dud yeah yes it was um we were playing did you know did you know you were doing that when you when you were that age uh yeah well so i was we were playing a game called speedball that i thought i think maybe my pe teacher invented but it was like it was we play with a soccer ball

and you can get the ball in your hands and run with it but you have to basically kick it up to yourself or have someone else kick it to you and if somebody touches you you got to drop it and then you got to juggle it with your feet and uh we were playing speedball and he was on my team and he was just like he was actively like not trying very actively not trying in a way that was really pissing me off and uh and eventually i was like just like gary you fucking did well i didn't say fucking but i was like gary you're dead battery and i could see that he also like his shoulders slumped. And immediately I was like, I should not have said that.

That was so cruel of me and stuck with me for the rest of the day to the point where like after PE, I really sat there for a while by myself and cried a little bit. And then for the rest of the week, I was like, he's probably's probably got i mean maybe he just doesn't like sports yeah i mean in fairness it sounds like gary did not belong in your town a because it's like everyone in your town is fit and good at sports and b you famously everyone that you grew up with is like named things like oh it's soren and phoenix and amethyst gary gary littell gary come over here and gary's like i'm'm going to do fine in college, but it's going to take a while. I'm just going to, I already know I'm going to be sad for a long time. Yeah. And I screamed at him that he was a dead battery.

Oh, it also got last. That was a problem. Oh, man. You're unstoppable at that point. I think it was such a weird insult too. This. Okay. unstoppable at that point i think it was such a weird insult to this okay so this makes me curious because um this is something that came up recently uh a few of my co-workers and i were on zoom

talking to this um there's like a a program for young women in the lower east side of new york young women like high school aged uh people people who are putting together a God's honest sketch comedy show. They're doing monologues and man on the street bits. It's very cool and they got a bunch of us late night writers to come and talk to them and answer their questions

and I mean, we're useless at that point. It's like, you're 15 and you're putting a sketch show together? You don't need our help. Please hire us one day you are the future but the teacher asked us as we were going around they were like so were you were you class clown growing up and i was like no i was funny in my like my my small coterie of soft boys like a little pod of people we we all made each other laugh but like our class clown was like the hot bully that we all just like feared and respected it was always someone who was like look at that dork and everyone clapped because they'd hit puberty first and and we're

like we're like handsome was that where did your strange little uh mountain log cabin school where you learned how to how to climb trees did you have a class clown yeah and was your class clown like genuinely this is a funny person or was yours also hot bully and was it you no it was hot bully okay i remember him on the bus on a field trip to mesa verde do you know what mesa verde is remember him on the bus on a field trip to mesa verde do you know what mesa verde is ah yes it's mountain green it is like the biggest anasazi ruins in the whole u.s but there's like okay uh our school would go there every year and it was a big deal when we went they do um roll call on the bus to make sure they got all the kids and uh i'm trying to remember how it actually went but like they got to him his name

was john martinez and when they got to him he said his name was johnny holmes like they asked you to call it your name i guess and uh and it got a huge huge laugh and at the time i was like who the fuck is johnny holmes and like everybody else told me who it was and i was like oh okay uh he exists in a different world than i do yeah it was a real rude awakening for me as a person who loved comedy and thought i was a funny person and then you get into middle school and some tall handsome person says something so fucking corny and stupid and all the girls are like you're so funny orin like ah oh i don't know what this means yet but i'm gary liddell it's gonna be it's gonna be a long time before my shit plays all right yeah it was that's endlessly infuriating i imagine

That's endlessly infuriating, I imagine. Because I definitely, I got audiences that wanted to laugh. That probably wasn't super fair. Let's get into the show, I think. Yeah, do it. Do you have any questions for me? Yeah, I got a question for you. I'm going to give you some context for this one before I even ask it. Cool. I'm going to look at Twitter while you do that. All right. Our mutual friend, Robert Brockway,

great writer, he wants to do an adaptation of one of his books into a show. And he wrote a pilot that's great. He wrote this great one hour pilot. And he asked me if I would look at it. And I was like, yeah, absolutely absolutely and then i just sat on it i didn't read it didn't do anything for a very long time like wow just like waited and then it became you know it grows in its it's in your mind as like it becomes somehow this insurmountable mountain after a little while and just last night i was like no i'm not gonna do my own shit tonight like i owe him this. I'm going to do it, and I sat down for hours, read it once, gave some notes,

read it again, gave some more notes, really did a thorough job, more thorough than I probably would have done the first time around, and then sent it to him. Afterwards, it was such a relief that I had done it, and it wasn't that hard. It just required some time. It made me think, I have quite a few things in my life that I'm just not doing, like things that I want to do.

I know they need to be done, but I'm just not doing them. And each day that I don't do them, I get further and further away from doing them. And I'm wondering, what's a thing that's looming on your to-do list that you will probably never, ever get to? like looming on your to-do list that you will probably never ever get to well for starters uh just a real quick one just off the off the dome um uh beta test this pilot by robert brockway that's sitting in my fucking inbox i know it's gonna be good i love robert I am so happy that he thought to send this to me. I have been putting it off. And you know what?

God help me. Tonight's not looking good. Yeah, I was, I, my first goal was like, as soon as I get this, I'm going to read it. So I have it in my mind. I'm not going to give any notes. Then I'm going to read it again. And then I will give notes. And then that first read never happened. And then I was like, well, I don't know what to do now. I'm lost. I give any notes. Then I'm going to read it again. And then I will give notes. And then that first read never happened.

And then I was like, well, I don't know what to do now. I'm lost. I haven't read it once. I didn't get it that when I first got, when I first got the script, didn't read it. I can't possibly read it now. That would be crazy. Enough time is going to pass that I'll be, I'll be like, Hey, Robert, um, we used to work together.

Uh, you sent me a pilot at some point. It has since aired on television. Really great job. I want you to know I read it. No notes. Good work. There's on a podcast that we famously love, Reply All, they've created the idea of Internet Forgiveness Day or Email Forgiveness Day, which is sort of like this, where there's like an email that's been piling up for you that you just have not dealt with. And you know that if you dealt with it now, it would seem strange without you giving some sort of preface as to how long it actually took you to get to it. So there should

just be a day where on that day, you're allowed to just respond to these emails and pretend no time has passed. And that you're giving out the response that you need to give without the preamble. And it's fine. Nobody ever was just like, that give without the preamble. And it's fine. Nobody ever was just like, that's just the way it is. This one came in. They're not allowed to get mad at you. They're not allowed to bring up the fact

that it's eight months after they sent you the initial email. And it's hard with something like that too, because I'm giving him radio silence. This is like, I know what it's like to write a pilot. I know that you get very subjective about it. It's hard to look at it objectively to know if it's any good or not. And you give it to people in this very vulnerable state.

And when you get radio silence back, you're just like, oh, shit. There's a thousand things that could be wrong with it. Right. And I was doing that to him. I was just like letting him twist in the wind. And then I was like, I can't. I got to. I have to do this i have to give him something yeah i wonder if uh now he'll probably hear this podcast because he's a good

friend so i can't i can't reach out to him and be like yeah i talked to soren about it and we're both pretty much on the same page so the one thing one cop out that i did was i didn't really give him many joke punches or like a lot of story punch ideas all i did was uh because i mean first of all the story's good it's like he you know it's good because it's an adaptation from one of his books and uh instead i gave him like a lot of just structural notes which is a very easy thing to do when you're looking through somebody else's script. And like things that I wish someone had told me before I wrote mine. Yeah, there's like a copy and paste set of things of like,

okay, here's what a, like content aside, here's what a screenplay is supposed to look like. Right. That kind of stuff. Yeah. Formatting stuff that I can take up like half a page with just that and that's progress. Right.

So that's an easy way to get into your notes. And then you'll start to notice other things along the way. But when you're just staring at a blank page for somebody else's work, it's very, sometimes I think it's harder than writing your own thing. Because, I don't know. You've got somebody who's at their most vulnerable. And you want to help them. But stuff you say could hurt it.

Yeah. That's hard. You also you forget like. You say people are at their most vulnerable, but that's really projecting, because like when I I have a pilot group with some of the other writers out here that every two weeks we submit whatever we have to each other on pilots that we're working on and get on zoom and like talk about each other's things give feedback all that kind of stuff like a like a good old-fashioned creative writing class except no one's doing bullshit poetry uh and when i submit anything especially because it's like we're doing this every two weeks so we're just I'm just trying to get pages out. I go there like I'm very fine if someone says this didn't really work.

Dump it. And then I'll just dump it. And that's fine. I don't I don't really like I genuinely don't care about that. And I think most people feel the same way with a lot of these things. Not that you would ever say dump it. But when it comes my time to give feedback to somebody else and they're just like, look, I just want to know if it's good. Should I keep doing this?

Then I'm like, oh, honey, yes. Yes, of course. I want to see what happens to the characters and to you. Every single thing that I write is a new child I have birthed. And I'm like, be gentle with this thing give me any sort of criticism honestly i can take any criticism you want but seriously don't hurt it don't hurt it and don't tell oh tell me it's good and and that it it doesn't need any work sometimes with with writing i like i specifically need to be told something I already know. Like I'll submit a script that's,

here's a comedy pilot. It's 42 pages. And someone will say, you can lose these 12 pages. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I knew that. But I just didn't want to. I needed you to read them first

and then tell me to get rid of them. Well, but that's valid. That's a valid criticism to seek because you might get somebody who's like, are you kidding? That part's great. Like it's a long one to seek because you might get somebody who's like are you kidding that's that part's great like it's a long so so far i haven't history would disagree with you on that soren yeah um we do a lot of in on our show you know you write a script and then you bring it in and in the writer's room when you're doing the rewrite

before a table read you you you have no choice but to be very open to any sort of cuts that are suggested suggested because you don't understand your own thing you know like that point you're so in it that you're like am i holding on to these things for the wrong reason do i think this is funny for the wrong reasons and so you're you go in there with the completely open mind so when people are when you know our showrunners like i don't i think we could lose probably these three lines you're're like, yeah, I think that's a great idea until somebody else in the room says, I don't know. I think they're funny. And then it's like this life raft has been thrown to you and you're like, yes, I, I love that part. I like that. I wrote it.

You're really, it really goes from like, yeah. Hey boss, it's your show. You, you, you call the shots, whatever. I'm just here to serve you. And one other person's like i don't know i like it then i'm like should we take a vote should we pull the room yeah anybody else maybe we get some let's get some fresh eyes in here let's see if anybody like now that we know that there are two sides yeah would you say that this is something somebody would say if they were the voice of their generation maybe and maybe that's the problem is a generation gap maybe that's what it is um i'm trying to think if they're like i want to move it away because they're it's not just brockway's pilot that i need to read and give notes on there are a couple other pilots that

i need to read and give notes on but other things that i i've been pushing off forever i mean i've talked about it before it's just like doctor stuff it's just just, it's seeing a gastroenterologist. And like, I broke my wrist years ago and then like moved while I, like the day after surgery moved across the country. So like, I didn't have any like follow-up treatments with any doctor. I had my brother who's an occupational therapist advising me for a while and then now it's been months and I'll still come to him

and be like, hey every once in a while my thumb hurts. Do you think it's related to this broken wrist and like the metal that's now in my arm? And he's like, I think you should go to a doctor. And I'm like, ah! They'll just pump me up with drugs right what if the doctor is like why haven't you seen a doctor since someone did surgery on you which is like

right i don't want the doctor to get mad at me and and so so she won't if i just never have to go to her you ever be one of those people where you're like you're like you're real casual about the doctor being a woman and you want people to know how casual you were about it as you were saying that i was thinking about how to do a joke about the riddle and just gave up because i was like maybe that's too sexist to just like call it out maybe dan's doctor really is a woman and this hypothetical doctor i know he doesn't have now just being an asshole like whenever someone is like yeah god's gonna do whatever she wants and i just have to sit there and be like you want me to you want me to you want some reaction out of me this is fishing i'm gonna do something i know what fishing is i'm a fishing man i'm a man

um yeah i have i have a very similar one where I get headaches, really bad headaches, like migraine headaches. Now at the point where they're coming like twice a week, I'd say that I take Advil on average three to about three days a week to avoid these things that are monumentally bad. And I've been getting them for a while and they've been increasing in strength and frequency and yikes you should go to a doctor and I just I'm not gonna go I'm like well it's great that there's COVID because now I have a reason that I don't go to the doctor um and it also means that I have to figure out who my doctor actually is which is also humiliating because I don't know I don't remember.

And I'm sure that this is something I should go get looked at. I did once at a checkup tell them that I get these headaches when they were less severe. And the doctor was like, all right, well, you're self-treating it somehow, right? And I was like, yeah, ibuprofen. And he's like, and that's working? And I said, yeah. And he said, all right, well, some people get migraines. And there was no follow-up.

There's no like, well, we could do an MRI or we could maybe figure out this is a brain cancer, which I'm sure you're scared is what it is. That sounds like maybe a bad doctor. Yeah, possibly. But anyway, after that, I was like, yeah, yeah, maybe everybody gets these. Maybe that's just what it is. No.

And when I was younger i would get them sometimes and i would be able to sleep them off but it's gotten to the point in my life where sleep doesn't it just exacerbates it i'll wake up from sleep like i'm hung over like it's just the most painful thing in my head and i want to like this is gonna sound weird but i want to squeeze my head like i don't know how that helps because it also feels like my brain is swelling but i want to like squeeze my skull and that makes it feel a little bit better. Okay. Uh, are you, how much water are you drinking? That's so here's the other thing I was, I thought it was just a hydration thing. And so I started just pumping fluids and it doesn't, it doesn't work. The only things that I

found that do work are there like triggers for it. It doesn't always happen because of these triggers, but like some of the triggers are if I eat sweets first thing in the morning i eat like a piece of chocolate first thing in the morning i would get one but that's i'm i mean like i i'm very concerned about your headaches but that's just that's real cute to me and uh if i uh if i stare at a screen that has light coming in from another angle it's like reflecting off the screen a little bit like i'll get them pretty easily that way too um but uh other than that i don't know what causes them i don't know why i get it and i don't know why they're so bad i i i think you should get that checked out uh but i'm gonna follow that up with um

the example of my life that i'm living uh which should tell you everything that you know i'm i also should go to doctors and i'm not um because for i think i mentioned on this on this show a couple weeks ago of uh what did i shit what did i do to make my life better oh i got a stepping stool from my kitchen so i can reach high shelves that's part of a broader push towards like uh being a happier person and like controlling the parts of my lifestyle that i can uh and part of that is also a health thing like i'm drinking the recommended amount of, which is an insane 15 cups a day, which fucking sucks ass. That's too much water. But I'm drinking it and I'm on a sleep schedule for the first time since I was a child.

And I'm eating three meals a day because I used to skip breakfast and just have coffee. And I was doing all these things. thinking like, well, if I just go to a doctor to complain about my stomach or my wrist or exhaustion, whatever thing I have, then the doctor will probably ask me questions about my lifestyle. And I don't want the doctor to have like, oh, you're drinking too much coffee or you're skipping breakfast. So I'm like, let me just get my body correct let me diet let me exercise let me get a normal healthy amount of sleep every day so i can go to the doctor and present like this is i've reset to factory settings yeah so now diagnose me i turned it off and turned it back on i already did the easy shit i unplugged it but since i've done that now i've

i've i feel fucking great. I feel better than I have in years. So I'm not going to go to the doctor. Oh, shit. It's working. Yeah. I mean, I still have my stomach and wrist things, but... This may be like a... My energy level is wonderful.

Too personal of a question, so you don't have to answer if you don't want. How many times a day are you peeing now that you're drinking a lot? Oh, my God. So like that's the biggest change that change that i i i don't know what what to do i don't know how many times i pee but it's enough that i feel like it's running my life in a way that makes me very upset where especially it's it's covid and you don't trust a lot of public bathrooms but it's like i want to leave my home and go to Target. Anywhere I go, I have to know that there's a bathroom somewhere. I can't be too far away from a bathroom for too long,

and it's driving me nuts. I don't know how anyone does it. There's not a pill. I'm supposed to be peeing the amount that I'm peeing because I'm drinking 15 cups of water a day. I want our listeners to really think about that. You might think you're you're you're doing a normal amount of hydrating the recommendation is 15 cups a day for men 11

cups for women drink that in a day and and like even if you if you're exercising a lot maybe you're you're sweating a lot of that out so you don't feel it but like i'm still either running or working out once a day every day and drinking this amount of water and i'm getting up in the middle of the night to fucking pee there's no way around it the greatest love story ever told is the one between your butt and hello tushy there's nothing more romantic than true love's kiss aka a hello tushy spray to your butthole the future of toileting has arrived. Okay, it's technically been around for centuries, but hideously expensive, costing thousands. Now, the brand new Hello Tushy 3.0

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to get 10% off, plus free shipping. This is a special offer for you. Go to hellotushy.com slash qq for 10% off. hellotushy.com slash qq. Say hello, Tushy, and goodbye, girlfriend. When I was staying really hydrated to make sure that that wasn't the thing, I found that

I was not sleeping because I'd have to get up every two hours to go pee for 45 seconds. Like, just unload. And it was like all my, I don't, it felt like I was bursting my cells at the seams and, uh, it felt unwieldy. I was like, I can't drink so much before I go to bed. This is insane. I need to be able to, I can't be waking up so frequently to do this. Who can live like that? It's crazy. I will say that the 15 cups, I think also includes your food. If there's like, you have to assume that there's some water in the foods that you're eating fruits and things like that so i don't know you have to be drinking a straight 15 cups who told you that where did you read that i think i read it on cracked honestly

if that's true i'm gonna fucking lose it it's i drink so much water and like as you're saying, as it gets close to nighttime, if it's eight o'clock and I realize I've only had eight cups of water that day, I'm just like, no, I can't cram the rest of this in now. That's going to be my whole night. It's 3.7 liters of water. God, that's really a lot. And you're working out and everything so you're losing a ton and i do like maybe i should i should probably google more things

because certainly there are some days where it's the morning and i'll drink four cups of water in the morning and i feel like well i also drank coffee and isn't coffee mostly water? Can I just round that up? I think that counts. To five or six cups at this point. And it's, you're not doing like glasses. You mean actual cups, right? You mean?

I'm doing eight ounces for a cup. Yeah. Okay, great. I think, yeah, it's just a lot. And I also noticed that maybe this is something that happens with you where there'll just be a day all of a sudden where I'll wake up in the morning and I will that morning pee like eight times. And I'm like, well, what the, what just happened? It's like, my cells are just turning over. They're like, well, we got, we've been holding this water for a while. We're going to let it go and like take

in whatever comes next. And then they, I just, all of a sudden my body unloads all this liquid from nowhere. Yeah. I also, that does happen to me. And I also feel like I'm more acutely aware of how much I'm peeing when I'm working from home versus like I'm in an office and I'm getting up to get something from the kitchen. And while I'm up, I'm going to go use the restroom. Now, if I'm not in like the, the room in this house that I'm designated as my office, if I'm just sitting, i'm usually sitting on the couch laptop plugged in and on my lap and jackson curled up next to me with a blanket over the two of us because it's cold and every time i have to go to the bathroom that's a big to do unplug the laptop put that down move the blanket jackson's gonna wake up

and freak out then i have to go go to the bathroom and come back and reset everything. And there are some times where like my body's like, hey, it's time to pee. And it was like, no, man, figure something else out. We just did this. And I've been more than accommodating. And I feel like at some point my body needs to come up with another solution. Just meet me halfway. I did the thing you're never supposed to do i asked

the internet and uh they're saying when considering total water intake all forms of common beverages like water tea soda coffee help keep us well hydrated also the moisture content and the foods we consume contribute significantly to our daily total water intake okay when you said you asked the internet i thought you're gonna be like I thought you were going to be like, I thought you were going to just Google, how do I stop peeing? Which I did do. I'm sure you got the answers you needed.

It's very much aimed at like, like older people who have lost control or I think like the top five or 10 results were like, yeah, sometimes women, after you have a baby, you pee a lot. I'm like, no, it's not that. I don't think it's not that i don't think um so yeah i think maybe you don't need the full 15 what i don't know what the eight by eight rule they keep talking about that on here eight glasses by eight yeah we have to research this more thoroughly

i'm i'm on a site called one medical and I have no idea if this is peer-reviewed. Well, I... So I have one, my headache one, but then I also, like, I have this... In the same way where you have, like, this script group, I think that's a great thing that you can hold each other accountable with. Yes.

I have this idea for a film that I have been wanting to make for a very long time. And like, I just am never, ever, ever going to start it. I realized like it's, I'm never going to start writing it. I'm never actually going to flesh it out. I'm never going to do it. And I was thinking, Daniel, before you said you had your own fuck off group was that we should hold each other accountable for whatever our thing is. And like, I'd say a month from now, when we do that podcast other accountable for whatever our thing is and like

i'd say a month from now when we do that podcast we see we check in and we're like all right did you read his shit did you get your did you go to the doctor that kind of thing okay so uh no on the doctor but um i think we could set some kind of writing goal for the two of us to see if we actually do something okay is that good podcasting i mean we could just do it for our friendship oh oh yeah we're friends outside of this yeah oh that works out well i mean we hide it well because i because this has taken the place of like doing phone calls and hanging out that's true which like i'm so grateful that we do this but there's

so much stuff I want to tell you that I can't say on this podcast. Which must shock our listeners who heard us talk about diarrhea for like 12 minutes. Yeah. Alright well let's hold each other accountable then. Why don't we check in

a month from now and there seems to be some sort of tangible goal okay we'll discuss it offline i guess yeah oh yeah uh so okay no what what in the meantime i'm gonna go to the doctor i'm gonna tell you about it oh yeah tell me what the doctor says about your head and also like feel the doctor out about my wrist i'm gonna like let's say this person had surgery and then didn't talk to anyone for 16 months and their wrist hurts again i won't even remember the wrist surgery part i'll be like say someone got hit by a car on their bicycle i don't even remember if that's actually what happened or there may be a different ancillary story where he was hit by a taxi and the biking

was just an accident but uh say say my friend hurt his wrist and broke it and now his thumb hurts yeah i've really with all my medical issues i've really um painted you into a corner so no one would believe you that you're actually asking for a friend like if you went to a doctor and was like um let's say that my friend poops weird and has, it's my friend. My friend often gets stomach problems and he doesn't know what it is. He thinks it might be eggs. And the doctor's like, okay, your friend. My friend's poop is white.

Is that a problem? Yeah. I don't know if I can do it on your behalf. I could try. Yeah. All right. Now, we don't know if I can do it on your behalf. I, I could try. Yeah. All right. Now we don't know what's going to happen in 2021, 2020. I think we can all agree. Not the best year of our lives. I've always called it a dumpster fire, Soren. Oh, that's such a good, did you make that up? Yes. So you can spend 2021 at least creating something instead of just feeling down.

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Yeah, go ahead. Are there any mysteries in your house? Or it doesn't need to be your house. It could be your car. Just something in your life that you refuse to investigate. Not because you're scared. And not because I don't want it to be too existential or anything like that. I'll give you a to investigate. Not because you're scared and not because, like, I don't want it to be too existential or anything like that.

Like, I'll give you a concrete example. I've moved into this house temporarily in New Jersey and I've given myself a little tour of it. I've figured out a lot of stuff. There's a light switch that

I can manipulate, but I don't know what it controls, and I'm not interested in finding out. It's a thing that I only noticed when I was giving my brothers a tour of the place, and I was like, and this is the living room, and I flipped on the switch, and they're like, what's that one

connected to? I was like, oh, I don't know. It's none of my business. I can't immediately see what it controls like a light didn't go on but uh juice is going somewhere and hopefully there's not a large neon sign outside of this building that i apparently control right but if there is none of my concern yeah i have a ton of those oh good um one is I think it would be great if one of them is like, where does Ronan go when he sleeps? He's always there in the morning.

I have, first of all, I have lots of light switches in my house that do that. But I think that's pretty common. I think that, you know, they'd stall like one of the switches works, but the other one next to it, it doesn't do anything. I don't think I just don't think it's hooked up to anything and that's my assumption but i got into my attic for the first time in this house and it's just a octopus of wires up there there are so many cables and wires running all across the attic down every single wall way more than for any of the things that i actually have in my house and i'm afraid to pull them up because I don't know what they do.

I don't know what they're all connected to, but just, and I mean like 60 or 70 wires. Oh shit. Yeah. Like a bundles that just run all around the house that look very much like they would be, if you were going to do closed circuit television on every single room of your house for like big brother or something, this is what I would assume it looks like. Yeah. This is,

this is the production arm and I don't know what any of them go to. And so I've just decided I don't care. Yeah. I don't see them every day. I don't think there are cameras or anything in my house there. Maybe they're old wires that go somewhere that you, something that used to be connected and they don't even, but it doesn't bother me.'m just gonna leave it it's really only embarrassing when someone else asks about it like when i was showing people around again this this

house where i'm staying now it's like oh yeah the guest room i use it for the off for my office um i haven't slept in here i guess i don't know how to regulate the temperature in here and uh there's a fan slash ceiling light you could turn that on but you can't you have to regulate the temperature in here and uh there's a fan slash ceiling light you could turn that on but you can't you have to have them both on i don't know how to turn off the light but keep the fan going and the person i was talking to was like well that there's there has to be a way no one would design it because what if you want to stay cool when you're asleep there must be a button or something and i'm like hey you know good luck finding it i haven't i have not investigated this this is not a mystery that that gets my brain tingling or anything like that you're

probably right now that you're saying it out loud yeah i bet there is a way to turn that light off yeah what you're describing are mysteries in the place where you live that are so boring that they can't hold your attention i have another one that's right between my kitchen and my dining room. I think that the floor is swelling. I noticed it because I dropped one of Gilly's, these like this rubber ball that lights up on it and it rolled down one side and I put it back up there and it rolled down the other. And then I got down low and I could see that it was like crowned and that the

baseboard where it touches the wall is also slanted a little bit. And I can't tell if it's something that's always been there or it's growing. And so I got just like, Oh, this could be like a really big deal, but I don't want to think about it. So I'm just not gonna. I like that. I like the mysteries that my dog leaves me, especially in this new house, because we were so used to the old apartment. And sometimes I will come home now.

And he has, I think three times at this point, moved his bed to a different spot in the house. And he'll never do that when I'm looking. It's a thing that he's he's he's either thinks he's getting away with something or he's embarrassed of it but he does come in and the bed is just somewhere else and he's like hey man i have a life outside of you too we're both we're just a couple of swinging bachelors just doing our things like i respect your privacy whatever weird shit you get into with that bed when i'm not around, I'm here for it. Your dog has secrets.

That's amazing. I thought only cats did that kind of shit. I desperately want to come home one day and see him pushing it back into the place where it's supposed to go and be like, oh shit. You weren't supposed to see this part. Just like his head thrown up in the air. Like, oh, okay, here we go.

This is going to be a conversation now. All right. You got me. Or to come home and for him to be like, listen, buddy, the bed thing, that's the least weird part of what I do when you're gone. I also realized recently, dropped something behind the dryer and the dryer's in like this tight little closet it's it's gonna be a real endeavor to get that kind of stuff out i'm

thinking of ordering like a little claw thing on amazon but anyway i peeked back there just to see how deep it was and realized there's just tons of things back there articles of clothing and small things that i can't even identify because they're covered in lint and uh i know that they're not all from us i know that they're from the whoever lived here before us and while that might seem like a titillating mystery i can't be bothered i'm just like i don't know what that shit is it's not hurting me right now i'm just gonna let it play you move the machine back and they're just like this ancient ornate key. And he's like, the previous owners were into keys. I don't know.

There's a lot going on. Oh, come on. What does this go to? You know how many days this is going to? Oh, I just want to think about it. It's giving me a headache. Yeah. I think houses are full of those those especially when you buy a house you because you're all you ever do is worry about it like it rains it's not fun to just have a rainstorm and sleep

to a nice rainstorm outside and be like ah i'm tucked away in my bed all you're doing is sitting there going i think i hear a leak right i swear to god something's leaking in this house or like i can feel the foundation is getting wet and the concrete is unstable. Like the weirdest things, things that can't possibly happen. And it's just this new way for the world to hurt you

by owning a house. And so there's such an overwhelming number of things that may be nothing and may be something that you kind of pick and choose. And you get across these certain mysteries

and you're just like, well, I'm just going to sit in the mystery for now. I'm sure this is not a big deal. It is. I don't even own this home, obviously. And I mentioned in the last podcast how much I'm enjoying cosplaying as a suburban childless dad. I love that.

But I still, once I got here was like touring around the house and and reading the like instructions about it uh there's a thing that was like oh yeah if it uh if it snows we left a shovel around back by storage and i was like oh yeah snow is my problem again right it it it used to be my problem when i when it was a chore when i lived in jersey growing up but then i it's it's been like i don't know the city's responsibility since then like the mayor pays someone to handle that and now if it snows it's like oh i have to like factor that into my day rut row wait well who are you cleaning it for it's just you right it's just me well i mean there's i would clear the sidewalk in front of my home for people who want to walk on this like that's

what you do right that's what we did growing up i have no idea i lived in a log cabin daniel that's right so when it snowed growing up you would uh obviously use shovels and get the snow out of your driveway so your parents could drive in and out. And you would like get your own walkway from your house to the street. But also everyone sort of did the sidewalk in front of their own houses. And if you weren't, you're a prick, you know, because people have to walk to school. The mailman or mail carrier needs to get through. And people are walking their dogs.

So everyone is sort of expected to get the snow out of their own sidewalk. That makes perfect sense and not a thing that ever would have registered with me. I never would have even thought of that. You would have picked up on it if you woke up one day and saw every sidewalk had been done except yours. You would have been like, okay if you woke up one day and saw every sidewalk had been done except yours. You would have been like, okay, I can spot the asshole here. Oh, so wait, it hasn't dumped on you guys yet though, right? No, no, not at all.

Wow. I can't, oh man, going outside and having to shovel? Yeah, and I'm also like moving garbage and recycling cans to the curb on the correct days for the first time after years. Just like, oh yeah, I shoved my bag in a hole in the wall and then it goes to hell. I don't know. I've been dropping it down a chute for 12 years now. And now I'm back to the life of lugging cans out there. And, you know, I'm not going to pretend I don't love it.

I secretly love it very much. If I can time it so I'm bringing a can to the curb at the same time as someone else and we're just like i garbage am i right never goes away i i spend a lot of time with my son because of covid he's in our house all the time and uh i i need breaks every once in a while and so the idea of like i know it's tuesday night and the cans have not gone out. I'm like, oh my gosh, I have something I have to do. I get to go do it. I get to go outside and look at the moon for a little bit. Like, oh, this is wonderful.

And yeah, I really enjoy the process. The pageantry of dragging every single can out putting it there it's my own time yeah uh i think that that's pretty much our time daniel great this was so much fun as always goodbye everybody no no no hold on i want to make sure people know where to find us i i live for my twitter do you know that and uh i want people to be able to find me on it so unfortunately i don't remember my own twitter address. So I got to go find it. But before I do that, I just want to say to you, I don't know if you know how it is in California, but the vaccine rollout in LA County has been just like an unmitigated disaster.

They didn't have a statewide website or anything like that. You're relying on these little janky ones. No one knew when it was their turn, not even seniors or anything. And my question for you, Daniel, is who of our mutual friends owes you money and how much do they owe you? Oh. so okay here's what i'm gonna i'm gonna propose to you uh-huh um that we are each allowed one question veto a year um but now i'm thinking do i do i blow it now in january we could say after today we each get a veto okay you can you can today you can say i just

this is this is your one for last year yeah okay this is my one for last year, yeah, because I don't, there's... I have plenty of people that I wouldn't mind saying their name and how much money they owe me, but you painted me into a corner by saying mutual friend. And because we've engineered our lives in such a way that we are publicly friends with a lot of the same people who are also public figures, there's just no way I'm saying this. There's absolutely no way. Do you think that's looming over them the same way? Where they're like, it's become so insurmountable.

It's only a small fraction of money, but I haven't paid them back for so long that if they forgot, it's actually easier on both of us than if I just pay them back now. Yes. Because I'm not hurting for that $250 and I don't even think about that $250. We got the money amount! You can follow me on Twitter at Soren underscore LTD.

You can follow Daniel at DOB underscore Inc. You can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. You can also find and hire our producer and sound engineer and editor, Gabe Harder at Gabe at gmail.com. You can also find and hire our producer and sound engineer and editor, Gabe Harder at gabeharder.com. He got his website back.

Everything is copacetic. You don't have to pay me back, sweetie. We're fine. Sweetie is gender neutral. Oh my God, Daniel! Oh, you cannot help but narrow it down. Oh, I should just let you hang yourself here. I should have let you talk and talk

till I knew who it was. All right, bye. Bye.