Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Quick Quixmas Questions

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

The guys discuss the bonkers new Netflix movie "Family Switch" and wonder how the evolution from long form family videos to modern smartphone bite-size clips has changed the way we remember things.Follow the show on socials: https://www.linktr.ee/QQPodcastSoren Bowie: https://twitter.com/Soren_LtdDaniel O'Brien: https://twitter.com/DOB_INC

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it out there? Where did all that go? Did we talk? Oh, forget it

Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where our two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast's senior writer for last week tonight, John Oliver, author

of How to Fight Presidents, and Grinch, Daniel O'Brien. Join us always by the call, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, about Humbug, et cetera. Yeah. No, that's Ebenezer Scrooge, my friend. Yeah, I know. You're the one with the heart that's the size of a peanut. I'm Soren Bui with a normal human boy-sized heart.

And wait, you're feeling Grinchy, Dan? You're my Christmas rock. There are a lot of... We'll get to that. There are a lot of things to give the Grinch shit for, but I feel like organ shaming him is new. Like, really, you are the reason that the grinch is uh in a bad mood all the time because he goes down to the who's and you're another blonde perfect who who's talking about his

shitty heart and how small it is small heart small heart. Peanut heart. Yeah. I'm trying to think if there's any other qualities that I can like. I bet your hands and feet are cold all the time because you can't circulate blood with that tiny little butterfly heart. That's why he needs all that fur. He needs to stay warm. He doesn't have a lot of redeeming physical qualities, the Grinch. He's got pretty straight teeth. I'll give him that. Yeah.

Does he? Yeah. lot of redeeming physical qualities the grinch he's got pretty straight teeth i'll give him that yeah does he yeah i uh re-watched the grinch for christmas as i always do and then i put on the jim carrey one that is a really unpleasant movie to watch i think it probably would be i've never actually seen it i think it i want to say it came out when i was still working in the movie theater so i would see bits and pieces of it a lot and knew enough at that age to be like, this isn't for me. I don't think they made this movie for me. But now I'm watching, it really feels like, like, there's no way Ron Howard and Jim Carrey made a Grinch movie. It feels impossible to me. Well, I have seen Cat in the Hat, which is the same thing, but with Mike Myers. And it's just so clear to me that Seussian stories were never meant to be live action. It's really unsettling. Yeah. There's just like a timing and a tone thing with Ron Howard's Grinch that I...

with Ron Howard's Grinch that I... You ever rewatch an old comedy and it's very clear that it is paced for people to laugh in a theater? Yeah. And when you don't have that laughter, there's just like so much emptiness and dead space. That feeling covers the entire movie. And I mean, I can't imagine. he's so reliant on his facial expressions and like being big physically but um like i mean specifically with his face i can see him doing

some like big physicality even in that soup but his face is like his bread and butter and you yeah basically give him a wall of plastic on his face. Yeah. Well, Daniel, I wanted to tell you, it's almost Christmas. It is. It's so much closer to Christmas than

it was when we recorded our other episode about Christmas. I know. And it will be the next episode that we do about Christmas. We'll be even closer. That's crazy. I do have, I mean, we could just get right into the show if you want. I do. I have an update.

Oh. Oh, no. It's also vaguely Christmassy, but Soren and devotees of the show will recall. Do you remember I told a story on this show about a thing that happened to Shay and I when we were in LA? Yes. I will very quickly explain it to the listeners if they didn't remember or didn't listen to that episode. We went hiking in Griffith Park one Sunday morning to the griffith park observatory the griffith j griffith observatory and uh were accosted by some woman with madness in her eyes who stopped us as we were walking down

the the hike to say you're you and you're you she pointed to the two of us and she said but you would never switch right uh and i assumed that this was, she then launched into a thing about how scientists are doing, I guess, genital mutilations and switching on children for experiments. And that we should read about Nazis. And then she left us to go about her day. I told you that story. You thought when she said you two would never switch, you assumed this was a Freaky Friday body switch thing. I was assuming it was a, this woman has mainlined Fox News and fringe conspiracy theories and was trying to get into some kind of, there are only two genders rant, which we were not participating in. That is the thing that happened.

That is the thing that happened. Soren, I have nothing to do with this information, except we're watching a million Christmas movies right now. And we recently put on the brand new Netflix Christmas movie with Ed Helms and Jennifer Garner. And it's a family switch. The four of them, husband, wife, and the two children, and the baby and the dog they all switch bodies and this happens when the family takes a trip to the griffith j griffith observatory and they run

into a crazy woman who casts a spell on them and makes them switch their bodies oh my god what do i don't what do i think, right? What does it mean? Could this have been marketing? Early viral marketing? Well, it worked. That's so crazy. It's so specific and bonkers. And I watched that movie thinking about that story and just like, is this, could this be anything?

What is, I just need to say i need to to to dump this information somewhere so i'll do it on our hit podcast and it also made me wonder if like i don't was she supposed to be my muse was i supposed to write this movie it wouldn't but instead she found some other fucking hack i um oh man you might just burn a bridge i don't i'm not even gonna look up who wrote that oh no uh i meant i meant hack as a term of endearment for writers hack is like a very common because they can hack it yeah um i thought so obviously i'm i i listened to you and then i also tried to anticipate where your story's going to go. And I was so pumped for you to say, we turn on this movie and she was in it. She was in the back, like she's like an actress.

And of course she would be. She would be like somebody in Hollywood. She's living here and she's trying to like make it. And I was so excited for the possibility that you then found this woman in a movie. But this is also very exciting so they go to the griffith observatory and i and i i would i want to assume a witch are we not not going no it's uh she's played by rita moreno and uh she just shows up several times throughout the film and it's assumed that she has some kind of magic powers because, I don't know.

She doesn't like literally cast a spell on them or hit them with lightning or anything like that. She just happens to be present at the time of their curse. And it's also like later in the movie, they need an Uber driver and suddenly lo and behold, there she is the Uber driver. And they're so, they're so focused on unswitching themselves that no one ever really stops down to be like,

we should find out what this woman's deal is. They just don't. They can't be bothered. Every time she shows up, it's like, it's me. Surprise. I'm your Uber driver. They're like, yeah, whatever. Shut up.

Leave us alone. I have another question for you. Do the genders switch in it? The dad becomes the son. the mom becomes the daughter, the baby becomes the dog. Yeah. So how come that's the case? I mean, the only reasons I can think of in my head,

so these Freaky Friday type movies where it's always generational, like that's a big piece of it. But on top of that, it's also, it's always along the same sex lines. So a dad becomes a son, a son becomes a dad. And they never have tried to do a dad becomes his daughter or like mom becomes her son type of thing. And I was pretty excited that that might be also part of it. No.

Why do you think they don't do that i don't know i'm sure they're they're i'm sure a version of this does exist somewhere i feel like it it leads into a a conversation about uh genitals that i think probably no one wants the audience thinking about okay in a family comedy yeah um yeah i guess you're probably right because that's the first thing anybody thinks of right is like yeah you're in a new body what what am i working with what's going on down there yeah absolutely there's this this movie by the way i i uh i i don't really recommend it it's fun there's like some fun stuff in it but it's they they did everything that you're supposed to do with a family switch movie because obviously uh if you're doing a freaky friday and it's just a uh

a two-person affair then you could really take your time with it and be like oh i can't be in mom's body because mom has this big presentation at work and i have this big thing at school so now she's gonna have to do my thing and i'm gonna have to do her thing that's obviously like the the sensible thing you do when with the premise of body switch movie right you wouldn't just like we've switched bodies and there are no stakes and nothing matters it's just going to be we'll just stay inside all weekend and and live with this reality until it's over so you have to put stakes in there and because this is a family swap they switch bodies and jennifer garner is like but i

have this big presentation at my architectural firm I need to do. And the little girl is like, I have to play soccer at this giant stadium and a scout for the national team is going to be there. And the son is, is, uh, I need to talk to a girl and also face down my bullies.

And the dad is like, I have a, I'm part of a dad rock band and we have some kind of performance and Howie Mandel is going to be there. And it's really unclear if he's Howie Mandel or playing a person. Okay.

But the band performs and Howie Mandel gets to say, you're going to Hollywood. So I think he's an America's Got Talent performs and howie mandel gets to say you're going to hollywood so i think he's an america's got talent version of howie mandel or close enough and none of it really you can't even think about that because it just so happens that the band that ed helms is the guitarist and lead singer for is weezer they got weezer to be in this movie there's so much coming at you in this movie that you don't have time i understand why they couldn't be fucked to talk to rita moreno who has magic powers because like yeah i'm distracted too i can't i can't focus on what any

one thing because they're just they've crammed so much into this movie now and none of it is none of it is real it feels like a movie movie that would have come out in the 90s before we had the internet to check things. Because like Ed Helms' band, Weezer featuring Ed Helms playing Santa Claus is Coming to Town at a high school concert somehow. No one would come to that looking for talent for america's got talent or whatever there's there's no howie mandel himself wouldn't go scout yeah this middle-aged band on a weekday high school talent show doesn't make any sense and jennifer garner having to pitch she's she's an architect and she like has all the plans for this building that she would, I guess, build for this other firm. And the way it works in the movie is the firm

comes to her office and like, all right, wow me. I'm going to sit down and I'm going to learn how to, about this building. Every question you could have is probably answered by the blueprints or the cost of the thing but for some reason she has to give this presentation twice because the first one fails with hijinks and then she leaves in the middle of the presentation to go be with her family to go to the to ed helms's rock band concert and the guy who she was pitching shows up at the concert. I was like, I just wanted to say that your team really knocked it out of the park,

so I will be buying this building or whatever. And then her boss is also at the concert, and he goes, and great news, Jennifer, we're going to name you partner now. All while Ed Helms is getting his life-changing news from Howie Mandel about his band Weezer featuring Ed Helms and then meanwhile the so I told you that the little girl who at this point was a very good soccer player except she was being controlled by Jennifer Garner and in this crucial game she had an opportunity to score a goal and then saw that the goalie for the other team had hurt her knee. And so Jennifer Garner, as the little girl, goes to help the opposing teammate instead of score a goal.

And so her team loses. And the scout tracks her down later. And it was like, look, you're a really great soccer player. That's exactly what, yes, 100%. It's like, I know you could play soccer, but that showed me out there that you're a real leader or you have heart. And that want to know if these are in there. Is there a scene where the newly minted mom and dad, which are actually the kids, but in the mom and dad's bodies, that they put the kids to bed and drink, like go to a bar or something like that for the first time? No. That's not there.

In fact, the parents as the children, they sneak off to go to a party. Oh, no. They go to like a high school party and they have a lot of fun and it's very flirty and very weird and oh no wait the siblings are flirting with each other at the party yeah but they're like they're mentally the parents but they're but they're physically the siblings and they have like a very cute romantic date at a party that's not fun no you're supposed to do ed helms and jennifer garter looking like they're drunk for the first time right and like having like really having fun at like a bar where they're like meeting other

adults no she drinks wine and spits it out because she doesn't like it okay here's my other question do they do they do some business with the baby and the dog where you don't actually frequently you can't tell if they actually switch bodies like that they think they switch bodies but then like that there's really no difference like the dog is still eating a dead raccoon and you're like yeah that's what a baby would also do the the baby is very dog like the entire movie and uh they they wisely don't have the baby do too much i think it's because really early on the the baby with the dog brain um no okay the dog body with the baby brain yes runs away no and almost gets hit by a car and it's like oh yeah i really don't want to see that that's that's that like for a movie as goofy

as this is knowing that they're not gonna kill the baby dog within two minutes of switching bodies just even like the hint of it was like no i'm not on board yeah whatever you do i need that baby to be safe no question for the rest of the movie and they took my note because once they they saved the baby from almost getting hit by a car the baby dog then they're like all right we're gonna have this very strict uh german neighbor of ours who's good at training dogs he is going to babysit the dog and the baby for the rest of the film they are not involved in the hijinks we check in with them every once in a while so you can see the dog walking upright and using a potty no those aren't the good things you could do with the dog

no there are a lot more fun things you could do with the dog no there are a lot more fun things you could do with the dog with a baby brain i'm and they didn't they didn't do them i think because they they saw i could how nobody wants to see the baby or the dog in an unsafe condition but you hang a lantern on like that the condition where like you it can be a baby's day out type of situation if you wanted it to be, or you do a, where like the, the dog, the baby is fussing over the dog,

which is being very reckless. Or if you don't, if you don't have like the budget for that, just have a dog being a dog and like really play with that. Really play with like, right. Yeah. It's not so different.

I think we can just keep it this way. Um, okay. Well, that's a bummer. Um i didn't i didn't anticipate that we would talk about this movie so much but i i'm glad that we did because i actually had a lot of questions we almost ended up watching candy cane lane last night which is that's that's the eddie murphy one eddie murphy that's right but uh we were it was like we were kind of like vacillating

on what to watch we wanted a christmas movie and colleen made a really good point which was why is there no hallmark type movie for children? Like, I know that it's not with the romance and everything, but just something that's like corny and like, it's very lighthearted. And like, it's maybe these people, this family goes to a town where they're like, it's like picture perfect. Yeah. Christmas town and they find the meaning of Christmas there again. That doesn't exist. It's always got a romance angle to it. What about just watch just watch the santa claus there's no romance in that is that the same kind of thing they find the meaning christmas again through that sort of you know have you ever seen the santa claus with tim allen no i've never seen the santa claus's oh yeah check out the first one okay it's fun all right

i'll watch that with them we watch the other thing about about family, there's, so the boy is nervous and awkward and there's some really strange dynamics at play with the girl that the boy has a crush on. Because when Ed Helms is in the school, oh, I forgot the important thing that the kid had was his interview to get into Yale. Okay. So that's, that's his stakes in the movie. But Ed Helms, as the boy is watching through the window while his, his father son does the Yale interview. And then the girl that, that the boy has a crush on comes and talks to adult Ed Helms, who has the boy's brain and has a conversation with him that no child would ever have with an adult. But she's just talking about your son is your son. Why?

It is just so great. He's so sweet and he's so funny and he's just real. Do you think he would want to hang out with me? And at Helms, who is Wyatt is like, I think he would. Do you think he'd go to this party? I absolutely think he would go to that party with you. I think he would have an amazing time at that party with you. And, uh, you think that's the weirdest, uh, like romantic vibes like oh I know it's Wyatt's brain but it's weird the visuals of

15 year old girl talking to 48 year old Ed Helms and like yeah he's clearly he's down for it then it's also weird when she's talking to like Wyatt body with Ed Helms because he is trying to be like

adult Ed Helms brain is like he is trying to be like adult at Helms brain is like I know how to be a charming 15 year old. I'm gonna charm the hell out of this girl and she is into him romantically, but he very wisely does not make out with her makes out

with his sons. Yeah, cool, right. But it's all it's all of it is so weird and strange and like the the the girl ends up finding adult helms ed helms again later and is like i really think i blew my shot with wyatt at the party and he's like no no no go for it again keep going for it like what is it what is she gonna think if this does work out they they unswitch bodies and What is she going to think if this does work out? They, they unswitch bodies and I, uh, I guess best case scenario, she starts dating the boy. She will still have this really strange memory of this conversation with what she thought was adult head helms that never really happened. And their whole dynamic will be different after that. The solution is next year on Christmas, you release another movie in which we find out that she was also in a body switch scenario with her own mom. And as a little girl, the mom knows that the other boys that this girl is interested in

are no good. She's already picked out this one boy at school who's going to Yale. And she comes up to that boy's dad as a woman in her daughter's body would do. And is like, how do I meet your son? How do I get to know him? And then from that point on, we just keep making these with different people in the world. And we find out how many of them all switch bodies at once. Yeah.

And are just like, just trying to skate by. It's, we truly don't need to keep talking about this by. It's, I, we truly don't need to keep talking about this movie. It's just all I've been thinking about. And it doesn't seem like a movie that a whole lot of people are going to see. I have no water cooler. That's why this is so helpful.

Honestly. The other, the other thing about that movie is like, they're not, their lives aren't so terrible that they really need to learn a lesson by swapping bodies honestly i mean i a soccer star and a partner at her firm now and and a kid who's like on a rocket ship to yale they're yeah they're pretty good they're fine what's their house like is it two-story yeah is it? It's really nice. What the fuck?

Why are we still doing this? Why are we still making these movies where like about families that don't exist anymore? Yeah. These rich, rich families. And like, what are their, what do they have on the line? I was, I was holding out hope that they would do, they would make like one slightly more progressive move to to to liven up this formula i was hoping that jennifer garner as her daughter cece would find

out that cece was gay like that was the thing that i thought because she has such uh they're like early scenes where cece is talking to her best female friend in this and i was like this would be they're like early scenes where cc is talking to her best female friend in this and i was like this would be that would be a new thing to do that these body switching things haven't done that like the mother learns this thing that her daughter had been hiding from her because she was nervous about coming out or whatever and that would have been a cool thing to to see depicted on screen they didn't do that no one they're not even close to anything that could be considered risque at all oh okay not even risque risque is not the right word no just anything that could potentially alienate uh anyone in the country from watching this movie which i think is is really trying to be like a big broad family christmas comedy thing okay

well i i'm glad that i don't have to see it i didn't watch candy cane lane either because we watched the trailer for it and we were like no what is this it's insanity it's like a very i haven't seen the trailer the the premise of the movie is that he wants to be that have the best house on the block on Christmas, that there's a big competition between neighbors to have the most ornate displays for Christmas. He signs a deal with presumably the devil or an elf. It's not really clear who just is into this. But the deal is that he does this and at the end of it, somehow he's trapped as a little figurine in a bigger display. He's trapped as a little figurine in a bigger display.

So he also has to now fight this elf or find the elf and get the contract back or something like that. But it seems to leave the rails almost immediately. It becomes this movie about, it's very small. It's just about a cul-de-sac. And then very quickly, there's just like magic fanaticism and and crazy things happening all over the place yeah wasn't for us we ended up watching rudolph when i was watching rudolph uh i had a real revelation that i'd never so i've seen that movie probably i don't know 20 times you probably have two in your life lifetime the humans the both santa and i should even say the elves like the humanoid figures um and yukon jack yukon cornelius you know yukon cornelius their hands are filthy all of them

and i don't know why i don't know like what part of the process yeah it can't be intentional. It was just like a side effect that they had to live with, I assume. But like Santa's sitting there. He has to, at one point, Santa's kind of a dick in it. Santa has to sit there and watch the elves perform early, like their dress rehearsal for their big performance for him. He has to like sit there for it. And he doesn't like it.

He's not happy with it. But as he's sort of like shaking his head and stuff, his hands are fucking awful. He didn't wash his hands at all. They're so dirty. And then I was like, I started watching everybody. And I was like, even the dentist kid, like everybody's got the dirtiest hands in that.

I don't understand. I'll have to look for that next time. Yeah, please. That's such a strange, that's, you really have to work to put that detail in because you you're in charge of what everything looks like i know whatever everything looks so other than like i guess it's kind of like ramshackle the way they put the deers together the felt is very strange looking but the humans are all pristine i mean they look really good at, but for whatever reason, just like these grubby hands. And I don't, I don't know what it is.

Um, Daniel, let's get into our show. Is that all right? Sure. Okay. I, I have a Christmas question for you. Ooh. What, what role did a camera play in your Christmas? Wait, wait, soren.

Um, not to note this to death but um i'm gonna need your help on this quick uh quick quiz quiz quiz must question a quizmas question yeah quick quick quick i have a quick quicksmith question for you um what what role did it did a video camera play in your Christmases and for how many of them? I don't know. I can't speak to how many of them I we would remember. Filming Christmas morning. That was fun to have the camera set up somewhere.

The camera played a very important surprise role in one particular Christmas because it was just like set up to capture everything. And we were still, I was still certainly young enough that Santa was a real God who came and delivered presents to us. But video footage confirms my mom sneaking out of frame at one point and then returning with a guitar for my brother David that they forgot to leave under the tree.

And she's like, and there's so many presents when you're a kid, you don't notice. Yeah. Like a guitar suddenly popping up isn't out of the realm of possibility. No, it's a magic day. Right day right assume you didn't see it before um but you know later my brother and i slowing down that tape like like the zap ruder film being like that's that's clearly mom putting the guitar at the tree what do we make of this what do we do with this information in hands yeah oh man that's so what there's evidence in yours that's great um yeah your family it was a fun thing to have with this information. Zoom in. Enhance. Yeah. Oh, man. That's so... There's evidence in yours.

That's great. Yeah. Your family... It was a fun thing to have... I haven't thought about this in a very long time, but we would just like re-watch home movies,

which is a thing that I don't know that... Maybe it's because I don't have a family, but we... There's nothing like that that I do now, but we would just randomly it's like I want to

watch Christmas 95 yeah or I want to watch our summer vacation in 1997 that was that was good let's watch video of us really excitedly opening up presents for the first time and and throughout the rest of the year like how often would that camera get used um not often we would do christmas and we would do the summer family vacation and then at a certain point in high school i think i don't know if i started in middle school or high school then the camera was basically just my thing i was i was taking the camera into my room at night and making a little movies with clay and action figures and stuff clay versions of clay golems of the kids in your class it's correct yes okay um we'll put a pin in that so yeah so when the camera wasn't set up who was who was in charge of the camera on those christmas mornings i think my dad your dad's doing it all filming yeah and then at a

certain point does one of your brothers take over no they're not allowed to touch it no okay hey the reason I'm asking is that no they were allowed to touch it I mean before I was I became a an auteur with clay figures in my room the three of us would make movies we would my brother tommy the oldest one would would like loosely direct dumb little action movies for the three of us to do in our backyard okay like choreograph little fights and stuff yeah that make that tracks okay yes um and you don't remember when your family got the camera how old you were no so like what's the you do can you think in your mind of like the earliest footage of you that you've ever seen no no uh not off the top of my

head no okay is this where are you there's the reason i'm asking what's going on okay so i realized just recently what an outsized portion of my memories is taken up by Christmas. And for a long time, I just assumed it was because Christmas is like that magic day. So it's very memorable. It's like seminal every single year. But I don't think that's actually true. I think that it's the, I have so much footage from just that, those portions of my life. Because in the same way, I think a lot of families

did this. They got a camera. They, Christmas was going to be a day that you were going to get a lot of footage on because you want to see your kids open presents and stuff like that. And so the rest of the year, we didn't use the camera that much. I think maybe there were some trips we did like a, we do like a dude ranch or something. We'd it but in general the majority of the footage that we have from my and my brother's childhood is christmases and so the the camera was a big part of christmas and like my dad made it a big he really wanted to go down early he had the camera so he could watch us all come down the stairs he would hold the camera every single christmas until eventually my brother commandeered it and And then like the footage really changes. There's a new director, clearly, where it's a lot of like him being silly.

Cause he's feeling crazy still. Cause he's young. He's maybe like 12 or something like that. It's still Christmas still feels good, but now he's also in charge of a camera. So you're just like flying around the place and he's going, like that kind of stuff and and i we would do the same thing and always like the night before christmas which some people i guess call christmas eve we would uh sit down and we would watch old christmases like tell the story

of the buoys over again basically wow and we would watch our old footage and laugh about it and see us as kids and stuff. So those memories are not maybe true memories. They're memories that I built based on me watching the footage of me over and over and over again. Right. That's more familiar to me when I think about videos of our summer vacations in Wildwood, me when i think about uh videos of our summer vacations in wildwood because i think i watched those a whole lot more than i watched christmas videos like the like the memories of my vacation stand out to me probably because uh the movies stand out to me i don't actually have memories i

have you have the like you're talking about the experience of watching you know the jokes that my dad makes when he is filming things, his little narration that he does. Yeah. Watching them. Yeah. You're watching. A memory is so much clearer when it's from a movie. Right.

It's just who we are. But yeah, we got it when I was three. And so the earliest footage that I've ever seen of myself, like that I know what I'm like, what I was like is three years old. And I don't know why. I assumed like that was important to other people to know like what, because I have no idea what I was like when I was a baby or I was two years old. No. Until I went to my, this is a small tangent. I went to my uncle's house once.

He had footage from when we came out to just like a road trip to his house and I was two and seeing, after having watched only footage of me when I was three and up to see myself at two, I was riveted. I was so interested. It was like a traveling back in time. I'm curious, were you aware of the camera and were you like performing for it in any way? Or were you really just letting it capture authenticity? Great question. Up until about seven years old, I don't acknowledge it. And my brother does.

My brother is doing bits. And then we both continue to do bits from that point forward and it that's really it's like it's so clear how much worse it makes the video and there's no authenticity anymore it's just like kids like trying to like ham for the camera yeah I was very hammy I was entirely aware that I was being filmed and whether I was like not even just like strictly doing bits or like mugging for the camera or anything i was definitely like conscious of how cute i wanted to be and make myself seem even cuter in a really like annoying degree to a way that like this isn't this isn't you this isn't this isn't what we were trying to capture. I love that you were, you knew what cute was and you're like, and I'm the young one, so I'm the cute one.

So that's the role I will play in this play, in this Christmas pageant. I was trying to be cool. So I was doing a lot of like, as soon as like gum showed up, like baseball cards were a big deal. So as soon as I knew I was getting tops, I would open that up and I put gum in my mouth because i thought that was cool and so i'd be chewing gum and my dad would like ask me the stuff that i got and i was like very cool about it very cool about all my presents and my brother was which is i'm sure the reaction that your parents were hoping for too is like look how aloof and chill he is yes and i that you know that's learned because i my brother from as soon as he became more self-aware we would first of all we get stockings in our rooms and then we come out with

our stockings to our parents bedroom once we're like it's the sun has risen and we show them what we got in our stocking so like that's always the first part of these videos is that me like what did santa bring you and i'm going through everything and like pumped showing off my dried fruit or fucking whatever and then my brother was just lying on my parents bed and he just throw stuff out of his stocking and not say anything about any of it just so that it could lay there on the bed and someone could see it could like gaze upon it but he was not going to help any more than that so he was so his his his character was already jaded by Christmas.

And that was like what he really liked playing until he got a hold of the camera and then things really shifted. But anyway, the camera played such a central role to our Christmases that it also like it played like a really central role to my memory of just being a kid. All of those memories are like from Christmases. And I'm realizing that with my own children, we don't take big, long meandering videos anymore. That just doesn't exist. The way where you'd be, like there's no room for those dad jokes

or something spontaneous to happen in the videos we take anymore. Because I'm gonna get footage of my son opening that one gift that we got him, and then, or the gift that Nini got him or that grandma got him so that they have that then for just to see once and then nothing else. But it's really just these small little clips of like 15 to 45 seconds and that's it. And so he's not going to have those in the same way or my daughter won either, where you really get a good sense of who you were at that age, you know? Cause like that's, that's, it's like those, that negative spaces where you start to like

really feel who a kid was. My brother was born on the 20th of December. So his birthday was right near Christmas. And when dad first got the camera, we had it for his first birthday, not first, his eighth birthday. And I was three years old and it's so, I don't know. My dad had like some really good foresight in that. First of all, I'm like coming in, you can see me every once in a while coming in, just like grabbing a present casually and walking away.

And then my mom marching it back over to the pile and putting it down. Cause I don't understand why I'm not getting presents on his birthday. And it's so close to Christmas. It was very confusing. And then there's like some footage where like, then you can hear her in the background scolding me and then me crying for a very long time that I'm not getting presents. And then there's footage of my brother and his friends all hitting a pinata and my dad pans over and it's me looking at these presents with just like this look of absolute, just so covetous and mad and like, and angry. And he zooms in on my face just to capture the pathos of this three-year-old. Cause I think he thought it was very funny. Um, and, but I treasure that now I treasure seeing

that. Cause I was like, yes, that's what it's like to be three. And it's very helpful when I'm dealing with my own daughter who's now three. Um I'm just, I'm wondering if maybe I'm robbing my children or something by not letting them have that footage to live with and understand kind of who they were. I mean, even the jokes, the bits is very indicative of who you were at that age. And it's like, yeah, it was deeply annoying. That's very helpful to see now. Yeah. Right.

I think I would, would like to revisit some old family videos, not to learn about me as, as you kind of want to do. I, I, I now want to see these videos with the, the context of my parents as adult human beings. Yeah. Like there's one of our Wildwood trips. There's a lot of footage, obviously, of like everyone. Here's the whole family. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

There's the beach. And there's something that my family will quote every once in a while. And it's just my dad was just idly filming at night on the porch by himself he's filming the moon it was a really good looking moon and just him by himself he goes me you and the moon the moon you and me the moon and me wear a necktie so i'll know you and just like cracking himself up with this wear a necktie so i know you joke to the moon and like we laugh about it because it's dad being silly but now i'm like i want to i i want to live in that moment a little bit longer too and like

and like think about him being out there by himself filming the moon just like cracking himself up being really at peace and just enjoying his his vacation time with his family and like i want to i want to see what like what jokes my parents my aunts and uncles are doing with each other the stuff that i wouldn't understand at the time but now i would i would have more context for i don't know all that sounds really interesting yeah probably not gonna do it then that's i mean that's even there's even less of that for my children we don't film that shit at all anymore because the camera's not just running so like stuff between colleen and i does not exist anywhere we have all this footage of our children from just like these little 15 second videos or pictures of them from them growing up none of it is just the two

of us so they would never get any of that and i know exactly what you mean my dad would come down early on christmas morning he'd make a fire in the fireplace like make sure the house was ready and he would start filming and he would be like well it's christmas morning here 1986 it's a sunny day today we did have a storm not long ago and like he's filming sopras which is the mountain right outside of our window and like he's he's just like going through the house and like he's proud of the house still because like they he and my mom built the house in 1982 it's this log cabin in the middle of the woods and he's just like still kind of like showing some stuff off we got these great native american rugs that we put up you can see on the walls here like he's just like it's very it's so funny

when because in our lifetimes cameras became like a consumer product we didn't they weren't always a thing that everyone just had all the time and i think there was a very common dad impulse when you're filming to be like uh hello i am tom o'brien it is March 2nd, 1991. This is the floor. This is our dog. She is 11 years old. Her name is Bridget.

Yeah. All right. And the things that your parents, because they're discovering cameras at the same time. You're absolutely right. And there are things that like they catch on camera and then they regret. Like my mom and dad, there was the fiasco of 1984 or whatever no it couldn't be that early it would have been like 85 where my dad wore a bathrobe on christmas and my mom had the camera for a little bit and she got a video of him in his bathrobe and he didn't like how pale and skinny his legs looked. And from that point forward,

my dad on Christmas was fully dressed every single Christmas. Got up and got fully dressed in khakis, a sweater and everything. That impulse of like, oh, there's a camera. So this will obviously be in the Library of Congress at some point because that is what filmed things do. They end up somewhere important.

This is forever. So get my tie on straight. It just made them more self-aware, I think. And there are moments between my mom and my dad where she gets new earrings or something like that. And you like, she's showing them off for the camera. And then like the camera moves for a second while she's giving him a hug or whatever. And like, yeah, that stuff. It is really interesting. It is really interesting as an adult to see it and also because they're younger than i am now and to watch your parents sprightly and young it's very interesting i had

uh that's funny this comes up because i was just my uh a friend of my brother's has like an annual party where they raise money for Movember. They do it every year. And the host and my brother and another friend of theirs, they play – they were like the band. They do a live band karaoke thing where you could just like pick one of the songs that they've learned and they play. And they're fun. None of them are musicians as their first job, but they can all play and they play a bunch of songs that everyone knows and loves. And it's, and it's a fun old time. I went to, to this, to cheer on my brother and to, and to hang out with my family and stuff. And I had so many, uh, his, his son

couldn't be bothered to care. Murphy was, was playing football and video games in the other room, but the three-year-old daughter was so pumped to see live music and I'm filming her and taking a million pictures of her knowing that this is like, I'm happy to see this because she's, she's, she's lighting up and I know her parents will be happy and my parents will be happy but i'm also like this she is she will be so pissed 15 years from now i'm like look at this at this video i got of you watching your dad play drums she's like he was doing what show me that i don't care what i looked like while he was being a rock star. Let me see that. Yeah. It's just hard to predict what they're going to want to see.

My brother and I were deep narcissists, so it was really nice to see videos of ourselves. But yeah, I totally get where you're coming from. It was, now I'm thinking about it, there are some really special moments between my parents. Also, I think back to the dude ranch, and a lot of the footage happened around the pool and it's my my dad's interaction with his family is so interesting um yeah his parents and his brothers and sisters it's really fascinating to see man i part of me wants to say we don't take home movies as much anymore, but I, at the risk of sounding like the oldest and most obvious person in the world, we have, everyone's on their phones taking a million pictures. We have so much more documentation of things than we ever have before. I feel like though, it's, you don't, it's the downtime on a holiday, whether that's vacation or Christmas. You never get that anymore, unfortunately.

And it's just gone. I'm going to try and take more of it this year. I'm going to just try to keep it rolling and just see what happens. Right. This was a fortuitous timing to talk about this because the time of this recording is December 4th. That's the date. And that is the date several years ago that everyone at Cracked got laid off.

So I keep that date in my head always. And for a while, I was trying to every year on December 4th, I would go somewhere cool. I would take a little trip or just do something that was like a slight flex on. Look, look where I am now. I'm in a better place than I was at this very low point. look look where i am now i'm in a better place than i was at this very low point so there's uh and my my phone is aware that this day has special significance because they uh put one of those you know how your phone like collects your pictures and videos and makes you yeah a custom video every once in a while uh this was a very funny one because they're because i just opened my phone

like on this day december 4th do you want to see what you were doing a couple years ago i was like yes i do and it was uh it must have been 2018 i had moved to the east coast for last week tonight but i was back in la for that december because i i booked myself a nice room in a hotel in Catalina Island, California, which is a place that I liked. And I booked that place like, this will be good for my annual flex is to be on an island with a nice little cocktail or something, just enjoying my life and being at peace. It coincided the time that i uh fell off my bike riding to church like right before this trip and i wasn't gonna let that stop me from from going to catalina island so now the long story short version of this is my phone has this like

beautifully scored montage video for me for december 4th of like look at the ocean look at this nice cocktail look at this beautiful hotel look at the fireplace in the room intercut with a million pictures i took of my hand as it was getting like black and swollen because i kept taking pictures to send to my brother like this is like do i go to a hospital right now what's it looks worse just like this beautiful peaceful music and like look there's the beach and then here is a very nervous looking me taking a picture of my hand in the mirror that's wonderful i'm glad that exists. That's great. Yeah. And there's probably a lesson in there about the hubris of flexing. Are you doing anything special today? No. So, for really annoying, not interesting for the podcast purposes,

we normally have Sundays and Mondays as our weekends and uh today monday was december 4th it was like i'm gonna keep this open i'm gonna do something i don't know what i'm gonna do but i'm gonna do some kind of thing and then our work schedule got moved around just for this week only our work our week is monday to friday like a normal person so i didn't really go anywhere or do anything I mean I which is fine it's a silly like at this point it's so many years after the layoffs and like I don't need to go to a place and take a picture to acknowledge that you're no longer consumed by revenge yeah i don't i i'm not i'm not posting a picture of a beach on instagram in the hopes that the current owners of cracked see it and you're like

we shouldn't let him go he looks so happy now uh i'm glad i like that you do that though that's good that's a good idea that was uh not man that was a wild time yeah it was a really wild time and uh i remember listening to our friend and frequent podcast guest jason pargin was talking to on someone else's podcast uh and he got the the date wrong i think he he said December 12th or something like that. And I reached out to him and was like, Jason, it's December 4th. He goes, are you sure? Yeah, man. I was there.

I will always know what day we got fired. I will always and forever know that. Jason, what day did you get fired? Oh, you didn't? Oh, then I think I would probably remember it a lot better than you. All right. That's our podcast. Yeah. what did we talk about today uh we talked about

the the yeah other family member that no one ever counts in the room who's just a camera that rolls and rolls and rolls and then we also talked about your movie that family switch yeah we talked about family switch that's right all right you can follow Daniel on Twitter. I'm sorry. You can follow Daniel on X at DOB underscore Inc. You can follow Quick Question at QQ underscore Soren and Daniel. No, sorry. QQ underscore Soren and Dan. Then you can also follow me on Blue Sky.

I'm just Soren Bui over there. It's basically me and five other people, so I'm very easy to spot. You can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. We have a Patreon. Let's see what Soren is doing over on Blue Sky. Patreon slash quick question. You actually liked something recently that I did over there, which made me think you're snooping around, which is I started a thread of the craziest ads that I now see on Facebook because I'm the only person there too.

Oh, yeah. I'm the only person left on Facebook with all of your moms and dads. Yeah. You're on Facebook and doing Twitter jokes on Blue Sky. You're a real moving target. There are two Americas. You're living in your own country over there. I just like to keep my finger on the pulse

before it dies. Yeah, I'm not on any of the good things. We have a sound engineer, producer, editor in Gabe Harder. You can look for him at uh yeah i'm not on any of the good things um you could we have a sound engineer producer editor in gabe harter you can look for him at gabeharter.com but don't don't get your hopes up lastly we have a theme song by me rex and you can find their music at me rex.bankcamp.com or anywhere you listen to music and you oh also if you wanted to see daniel and i if you're curious what do these guys look like when they're just talking to each other we did a couple of live

podcasts actually shouldn't even say a couple. We did like a whole handful. Dare say a handful. You definitely shouldn't say, you shouldn't say live either. Oh, sorry. Yeah. We did some that were on video. Daniel and I did a handful of videoed podcasts and you can find those at, if you just go to YouTube slash at QQ podcast. at, if you just go to YouTube, slash at QQ Podcast. That's it. When you started saying, if you want to see the two of us, my

heart fully stopped. My little peanut heart stopped because I thought, did we book a live event somewhere that I've completely forgotten about? Because I don't know what date it is, but I cannot do it. I'm going to be sick that day.

I, uh, no. I'd actually love to do a live thing, but I cannot do it. I'm going to be sick that day. I, I, uh, no, I, I'd actually love to do a live, a live thing, but I don't think you're going to. So I stopped, I stopped looking into what anyone ever says about either of us. Uh, it used to be something very important to me when I was at cracked where I would like read comments and things like that with, I don't go on YouTube. I don't, I don't see the Apple reviews of this podcast because I've because I've given up on that because I'm terrified of what it all says. The fact that now when I get recognized from days of yore, people don't say, oh my God, you're Soren. They say, you know who you kind of look like?

And that means, oh, things have changed. And that's all what the comments are about. The comments are about how terrible my hair is, how old we look, how much more tired we are, how we've aged like wartime presidents. Yeah, I would like to, I mean, I never engage with any of them,

but for all the people who are commenting that we've gotten older, sir, you must know time works the exact same way for you you are also old that's what you're you're not seeing me being old i look great you are old you are feeling old is the i am a mirror for you yeah yeah yeah anyway uh yeah you can go find us there go find us on youtube go see us go see us laugh at each other's jokes we are smiling a lot throughout this podcast um which you don't maybe you don't hear when you're just listening to it all right bye I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight

So what's your favourite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it out there? Where did all that go? Do we know? Oh forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien

Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here