Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Quick Series of Paragraphs

Episode Date: April 15, 2022

We're back! Soren talks move tropes, and Daniel explores real estate with hilllllaaarious consequences! And as always, thanks to our sponsors! Thanks Hawthorne. Take your quiz and get 10% off your first purchase at hawthorne.co with code QQ. Thanks, BetterHelp.  Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/qq

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? What do I be? What's it up with? 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 Last week's night with John Oliver, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, American dad, Soren Borey, Soren say, sometimes my son on his bike will be riding so fast. And then I see that front tire start to like wiggle a little. And I'm like, oh, he's fucked.

He's fucked. He's going too fast. And then he just eats shit. It's, you know what the thing is? I don't have great diction and I'm not doing myself there are some like comedy writer is difficult for me to say and it's in every intro sometimes twice yeah so like i will say hello now though yeah no we you like. Yeah, no, we're...

I mean, we got it. That's the thing when you're dealing with a professional, is that we got it in one. One take, Daniel. One take. That's what it would say on your license plate if you knew what a car was. Hawthorne is a premium grooming brand

that tailors your personal care routine to your unique profile, with skincare and hair care made just for you. Take Hawthorne's quiz today and get started on your personalized self-care routine at hawthorne.co. And use promo code QQ to get 10% off your first purchase. This episode of Quick Question is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. For 10% off your first month, go to betterhelp.com slash QQ. Start living a better life today.

Hello, I'm Soren Bui. I am a complicated man. A man who flushes at the thought of calling himself a man or even a guy because those are loaded words frequently used to excuse or even lionize aggression and emotional unavailability. And those are two things that i am trying hard to untether from my own life from my own heart what else uh i with wood this uh this new thing you're doing yeah uh it's funny right

uh it's funny right have they both started with complicated man so far yes okay is that that's by design yeah i think it's yeah i i well i and this one like touches on it but uh just calling myself a man i think is very funny but also calling myself a complicated man anybody calling themselves a complicated man is so full of shit and in such like an aggrandizing way that i really enjoy doing it uh it's once you were launching into this one i thought is this i should i guess i should just let him tucker himself out he's clearly got a plan but am i gonna have to do this every week now i guess we'll find you might have to wait through them yeah maybe they'll get longer i haven't decided yet i also i think it'll probably be there's just a uh a note for future us it'll probably make for better podcast fodder if i am uh listening i know i kind of enjoy the silence that follows it because there is nothing to say

after somebody does. So it's not, you're, you're not leaving breadcrumbs for me to, to pick up and deal with. Cause I'm, I'm, you know,

you're, you're, you hit a certain tone and I'm like, let's see what's going on Instagram. Let's see. Yeah. Let's see what my other computer has to say. You are the best case scenario is that there's a long pause and then you go,

so I'm going back to that that dance class online or whatever else you're doing like just not even acknowledging it i think yeah is the most fun um yeah there's no expectation from you on these yeah um like i really come around on my cat oh good yeah so for a while i don't know if i told you there was a uh my cat's kind of an outdoor indoor outdoor cat and there was one night where i couldn't find her and i was kind of like looking around for her and my biggest concern was oh this is gonna look really bad if we haven't even had this cat a year and it dies my concern was not like oh no i remember of my family. Yeah. It was,

uh, this is, I, I don't know how to explain this to people. I don't know. This is going to be rough. Um, but I found her and I will say that since then she's really grown on me.

She is, it is more like having a roommate than a pet because I don't, you don't have to do a lot with a cat there. I would say like the easiest pet you could possibly have. I feed her twice a day. I make sure she's got dry food whenever she wants it. And then whenever she wants to go outside, I let her outside. When she wants to come inside, I let her inside.

And other than that, I don't dictate her schedule. She gets to do what she wants to do. And she clearly has her own things that she wants to get done. And that's fine. We get along really well. When she comes inside, she'll come and check me out. And I'm like, hey, give her some pets for a while. And she's like, listen, I'm going to go lay down up on the couch upstairs.

I'm like, yeah, that sounds great. I have found that I have never really had any desire to have cats. And I get that they're not like a cuddly thing. And they're not a fun thing often. But they're still very novel to me. So when I was at my friend's house the other day, uh, and she has two cats and I'm just watching them do things. And at one point it was just like stretching, doing one of those cat stretches where its

back goes super high. It's very different than, than dog stretches. And I saw it. I'm just like, ah, just like a real like like very human physical laughs coming out of me and she's like what what's going on I'm like what's what's it doing my god cat stuff I'm just not used to seeing it it's just like being a cat over there now that's cool our cat also Colleen got sick for a little while uh like really sick where she was

in bed for a whole day and and the cat just went up there and just stayed with her the whole day in a way where i was like oh fuck that cat knows and she was just like oh you're hurting i'll be here for you whatever you need i'll be right here and i was like this is a good cat what's your cat's name again isis davina davina davina boy is that a terrible name to call late at night when i need her to come back in the streets are silent and then i have to go out there and be like okay oh fuck it davina davina hawthorne is a premium grooming brand that tailors your personal care routine to your unique profile. Hawthorne uses data from hundreds of thousands of customers to recommend perfect

products for your body chemistry, your skin type, your hair type, and your lifestyle. Everybody's different. Like, uh, I don't want to say snowflake. I think that term's gotten, it's, it's become like a, an epithet. I think maybe like a fingerprint. We're all like fingerprints. We're all big, greasy fingerprints that you find on like a glass window. We're all just a little bit different. Everybody's got different chemistry. Everybody's got different skin type.

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It was easy. They asked me some questions. I gave them my answers. They said, you're this body type. They said, what kind of, what are you looking for in a deodorant? And I said, I never thought about that before. I just sort of picked one. It was great. And by the end, they said, these are the best products suited for you and what you want in the world. There's ones that you can get that are better for the environment. There are ones you can get that are better for your body. You can get all natural deodorant. You can get anything you want. And at the end, they send you an essentials bundle with all the products tailored to your body type and lifestyle. Right now, if you went into my bathroom, you would say, wow, this guy's got a lot of products, but I like them all. I like every single thing that Hawthorne

has sent me. Hawthorne has not sent me anything. And I thought, eh, I can live without this. I like everything that they've sent. I've got shampoo. I've got conditioner. I've got eye cream from them. I've got lotions. I've got both a hand lotion and a face lotion, which you learn as an adult are two different things. Fascinating. So make sure you're ready for anything or anyone that comes your way by taking Hawthorne's quiz today. Go to hawthorne.co and use promo code QQ to get 10% off your first purchase. That's H-A-W-T-H-O-R-N-E.co. Promo code QQ. Hawthorne.co. Promo code QQ. Should we get into the show? Yeah, I think we should do it. Okay, I got a quick question for you.

It's more like, I don't know, six paragraphs of content or whatever. That's all we've ever done. Somebody sent me a tweet that said that we are sort of quasi in the New York Times because quick question was one of the answers in the New York Times, a crossword puzzle. And I was like,

what was the question? The thing they never actually get around to doing on the show. We just, we, the premise is a question, but it never really is about the question. No. Um,

so this question, a little backstory, uh, last year I was looking for, uh, uh, uh, a winter rental in this area where I'm living now.

And I contacted a realtor. Her name was Effie. And she helped me out. She doesn't normally do short-term rentals, but she made an exception for me. Which is very fair and helpful. And I did let her know that whenever I do look for a house, she would be the person that I want to work with. look for a house she would be the person that I want to work with and ended up at a different time meeting a second realtor named Melissa last year because I had I was in two different rentals and even Melissa I told her I was like hey

I'm not looking to buy a house but I am in a committed realtor relationship with Effie if I ever do buy a house and I I still don't even know if I'm ready to buy one. But when I was settling into this town this year, I saw a condo on Zillow right in the heart of town. And I was very casually like, let me look into it. I'm in town. We make an appointment to wander over and look at this place and like explore I don't know hey if I want to buy anything I actually don't know if I want to buy a condo but I got shit else to do let me go and

check out a place so I made an appointment and then three days later I got a call that the appointments canceled canceled because there was an offer put in on the house on the condo already and A backup offer from someone else if that first offer fell through Wow and they're no longer doing showing to this place and then The person who gave me this information was a different realtor who was like and by the way This is how the market is right now. So You really shouldn't be Just like showing up kind of curious if you want

to buy something you need to be you should be prepared to make an offer like pretty much right away so you should talk talk about that talk over your finances or whatever and then she showed me another listing for a place that was not a condo and not a house not somewhere I wanted to live and not the kind of house I wanted. But I was so panicked from this first condo thing. I was like, well, fuck, it's such a buyer's market. Should we just get it? Should I just take this house?

It was, and now things have, I didn't take that house, but things have snowballed from that conversation so fast and i want to know if that was at all similar to your experience because like this is now this third realtor i was talking to she was the one who was who was like you need to be serious if you want to buy something uh and just in the middle of talking with her um like a day after that conversation Effie reached out to me the initial realtor I spoke to a year ago and she was like

hey I heard you were looking at houses in my area what's going on? I was like Jesus Christ I didn't know you all talked to each other and I wasn't even being, I'm just kidding I don't even know how serious I am about this I don't want to come, I don't want to like make you am about this I don't want to come I don't want to like make you guys fight

and one of the realtors backed off and was like okay Effie is your girl I get it I was like yeah I guess I guess Effie's my girl but like I now have total loyalty to this realtor and now Effie is I told her I'm like hey I've got like

I'm in this rental property now for a year is I told her I'm like hey I've got like I'm in this this rental property now for a year so I'm definitely not looking for anything immediately if I'm looking for anything at all and she's like that's great I'm gonna just keep sending you listings every week now anyway and ask you how you ask you how you think about them and also you should know you could talk to me to find out like what kind of house you want and where you want to be but you should also talk to i guess a lender to find out what you can afford uh i can hook you up with that person and you should also talk to this third kind of person and i could hook you up with that person. So now I've had multiple meetings with people whose jobs I'm not even completely sure of.

Just like a stranger calls me on the phone and was like, hey, Effie gave me your contact information. Tell me how much money you have right now. And I'm just like, okay, I guess this is normal. And she is, I guess, figuring out what I can afford around here. It's all happening very fast, Sorin. Well, okay. Your experience is not abnormal. Okay.

That's the way it generally goes. And if, especially, you live in a city or like a place that's desirable, yeah, the houses go so, so fast. And it is really terrifying. But she's absolutely right that you need to get a lender's approval first. You just need to get somebody who will be like, Hey, we will give you a mortgage. Here's like a rate that we'll lock right now. And you don't have to even necessarily go with them. You're just getting the approval at that point. And if you have the approval, that's how you, that's then you're allowed to go out and shop for a house. Cause then the minute you see a house,

you have to be like, Oh, this is fine. I'll put an offer in. And you put the offer in. And then if it comes to the point where they're like, all right, well, they're willing to accept your offer. That's when you're like, okay, now do I really want this house? Because it does move so, so quickly. You have to be aggressive. And I'm looking at things. I'm like, well, you know, it's farther away from the beach that I want to be. It's not exactly in the sun. There are no windows. It's $650,000 more than I want to pay. But should we do it? Should we just be aggressive? Should we get it? gigantic sprawling city. Every time that we're whoever's selling the house, they were, they're working with a real estate agent. And then anyone who's buying is really coming with a real estate agent. So as soon as you show interest, they're like, all right, well, who's your agent? And we'd be like, oh, it's, it's a Richard Shulman. And they'll be like, oh yeah, Richard. Oh, he's great.

They all know each other. Like they all know each other. And so in a town like that, of course, or that an area like that, of course, they're all going to talk. And they may probably even go to dinner and stuff like that because they're all in the same business. It's like fun to talk shop. Maybe they've got podcasts. But that's all very, very common. And then the other thing that's crazy about it, like my brother's trying to do this because he's moving right now. He's moving to the Midwest and they're doing it remotely.

They're trying to buy a house remotely. So they have a real estate agent that basically just puts them on FaceTime and walks them through the house, which is so inconvenient and tough. But you just get a sense of the layout. At least you can see the pictures online. You get a sense of the layout. And then afterwards, she'll be like, I don't want to say it while we were in there, but you can't live there. You never get rid of that smoke smell. And they go, thank you.

That's a great tip. We would never have known that. But, you know, he's putting offers in on places. And then when, if their offer is accepted or they're even like in contention, and you know, you're in contention because they'll come back and they'll say, we have a couple of other offers. And that's pretty much all they'll say. And they're like, what it means is, do you want to raise, do you want to like up your

offer? And so then you've got to do that and you don't know what the other offer is at all. You're just guessing. And you're like, all right, well, I, I don't, I guess I could go, I could go up to like this high, but I'm not going to say I'm going to go that high. I'll say what happens if I put like 10 or 20,000 more on this. And then sometimes you get it. Sometimes they're like, they'll come back to you again.

And I think I don't know totally what the ethics of it are. If they're like, if there are other people interested and even if the other offers are lower than yours, if they're still like, Hey, we got other offers just to see if you'll go higher. You're really in the dark on a lot of it. But, um, once you, that happens and like you get and you get to that situation, you've done it on five or six houses at a time where you're like, okay, which house was this? And then you've got to go figure out if this is somewhere you want to spend the next seven years of your life and invest the most

money you've ever invested in anything. If you want to go into debt for this place. And that's all before you ever do the inspection or anything like like that you're just trying to remember even the layout and you're like okay now i have to actually consider if i could see myself living here like what what what were the situation okay so let's see the only garage access i see is through the master bedroom closet that's interesting okay maybe i could make that work and like it's been so long since we toured it it had okay, maybe I could make that work. And like, it's been so long since we toured it. It had floors, right?

It can really, and you can start to like really talk yourself into a place where afterwards, when you don't get it, you're like, oh, you know what? Thank God. Thank God I didn't get that place. That would have been terrible. I don't think I could have lived like that.

But you could just in the same way where everybody's moving so fast that you're like, oh, I should just get, I should get whatever there is. I'll take this. And. Um, I, I remember that feeling well, and you're going to, you're, you're whoever your, uh, real estate agent is, you're going to be like, I want to live here. Here's my price range. Here's the kind of place I'm looking for. And they'll be like, great. I've got to play 60 miles from there. That's $650,000 more than you're willing to spend.

And they'll give you those instead. Cause they're're just very the very first thing that she sent me was not in this town and like again i don't know shit from fuck uh and i'm i don't even know if i'm in a position to do it but if i've said anything like price agnostic i was like i love this town i am in love with this town. I want to get something in this town. That is my number one priority if I'm going through my list of things. And immediately she's like, well, this isn't in the town, but it's in a worse town and it's a steal. No. Yeah, that's going to happen the entire time. Get me desperate first.

Like we might show me a year of property in this town that I can't get and then like work my way into how about Texas or whatever. I'm very lucky in that Colleen, this is basically one of her superpowers. She's so good. And also she puts a lot of work into it. I don't want to belittle how she got this skill, but she's very good at determining great neighborhoods that are going to pop at any minute. And then knowing like the type of house for that neighborhood, that's going to be the best you can get. And she's so, so good at it in a way where like, I was, I just toddled along behind her like a child where I was like, Oh, we're going to a showing today. Okay, great. And she knows it so well in a way that where we were getting those,

a lot of those things from our real estate agent where he'd be like, I don't want to, I also don't want to besmirch him. He's great. He's outstanding. But he'd be like, what about in the Valley? Don't you want to live in the Valley? And we'd be like, no, I don't want to live there. Well, there's a couple of houses there. Why don't you just go look at them? And she'd be like, no, this is the area. And she would find these listings. She'd be like, I know that this house is going to have an open house coming up soon because it just got listed. We're going to that. And it wouldn't even be something that he found. It was just like, she would do it. And she knew where she wanted to be. And she was so good at it. And you kind

of have to be that. You got to know, once you get familiar with the area on Redfin or Zillow, you can tell when a house, like a new house pops up and you can like jump on it quickly. You can go make sure you get to see it early, uh, ask your real estate agent about it. And sometimes even before they do like the general showing, they'll just get to give you a private showing. And that's probably how you got undercut these other time where some of you like, even before you got to see it, they're like, Oh, we've already got a buyer in mind and a backup.

Yeah. Um, but it's like a big part of it too is knowing how much you could spend and how much you can put down. Like that's a huge piece of making sure that you actually get one of the places. I don't know how interesting this is for our listeners, but it's still, it's interesting to me.

And you know, the podcast could always do to have more listeners. So we might convert me this time. We might, we might spin this into another subscriber. Who knows? Because I do, I, one of the things that I go back and forth on, in addition to all of this, like the, the biggest, broadest thing in the world is like, do I even want to buy a house?

And I mostly think I do, but I also don't know why i think that i mean like because equity stuff it's a a big like broad strokes it is a really good investment with the exception of 2008 it is generally a good investment uh it's you you almost always they appreciate and uh you're gonna put a lot of money into it, but you will, by the time you want to like leave it, you will also make some money. It's more, it's, it's not as beneficial cost beneficial for you to rent as it is for you to just have a mortgage because whatever you put down on the house, you will make back later, uh, when you sell it. And so the problem is, is like convincing everywhere that you go, you're going to be

in contention with people who are going to flip and like, all they want to do is buy the house so that they can turn in profit immediately, as opposed to seven or 10 years down the road, 15 years down the road when you would do it. And so they're going to offer, like, they've got a ton of money just waiting to put into houses. So when they see a place, they'll be like, we can offer this much cash. And like that, we'll, whatever, like they'll say say this is how much we're gonna well we'd pay for the house we will give 60 to 100 down and like that's you know uh who's no one who's selling

the house is going to turn that down because they'll get through escrow really quickly yeah um and so to compete with a normal person because you're saying it's it's people with a lot of money it's like hedge funds and stuff. It's like- Yeah. And all you have to do is have that cash in your bank. You don't even have to actually do it that way. Basically, if you had, I mean, I don't think you want to spend all your money.

The way that Colleen and I cheated the system early on when we first bought a house was that we asked our parents to put in fairly large sums of money into our accounts briefly so that we could show that we had a bunch of money that we could go 50% down on a house. And so we would say, we want to buy this house and we're going to go, we want to offer 50% down. And then if you get the house, you're not beholden to that number at all. You can be like, when you're going through escrow, you can be like, actually, I'm going to do 25. So the minute that like we had a place, we just gave that money back to our parents. But what if, what if you were selling the house to me and I said, I want to go with these people who are going to give me 50% right now.

Yeah. And then you didn't. Yeah. Wouldn't I be mad at you? I think you would. Yeah. I think that's probably pretty accurate. And wouldn't I be right to be mad at you? Yes. But as long as the house gets through, the only reason you would want them to actually do it is because it's a guarantee that they have the money for the house and it's not going to fall out of escrow and you have to start all over. That looks really bad for the seller. looks really bad for the seller. When a house falls out of escrow, they don't have to tell you why it fell out of escrow. And usually when houses fall out of escrow, it's because there's like, somebody did an inspection and there was something fundamentally wrong

in the inspection and the buyer backed out. So it always looks like that if a house falls out of escrow. So like they just wanna get through it. And so even if you're like, well, we're gonna do 20% down, but like it's still going really well, they'll be like, okay, whatever just want to get through it. And so even if you're like, well, we're going to do 20% down, but like, it's still going really well.

They'll be like, okay, whatever. Just buy the house. Okay. And they still get, Jesus, they still get all their money. How did that, what guarantees that they get their money? The bank? The bank. Yeah.

Whoever they're getting their, the lending from, they're going to get it all at once, no matter what. Okay. It just shows that you're most likely your loan won't fall through with the bank. getting their the lending from they're going to get it all at once no matter what okay um it just shows that you're most likely your loan won't fall through with the bank if you're offering to put a bunch of extra money down they're not like getting that money over time it's all just going to the bank and then the bank technically owns your house and you're you're just paying it off yeah in a weird way that's not totally true i mean mean, it is your house, but you're paying the bank to live in your house.

Sure. But it's, man, Dan, I don't envy you in this situation because it's so, you feel completely helpless when you've been renting apartments since 2007. It really seems like anything new is such a huge hassle and adjustment. Yes. And like all that stuff about equity and like this is a good investment for you to flip and then have more money later. I just feel like, no, just I'll rent apartments forever. And then when I die, I'll be debt free and no one will be mad at me. It's going to be fine. I don't totally unrelated did you ever buy did you ever get a

credit card dan no actually speaking of credit cards this is this is a brief quick question aside yeah um do you remember when we uh first started with kids, you and I, and no one did a background check or even like a last name check on us or anything? Yes. Yes. We were like, this is an irresponsible amount of trust. Clearly an overlooked situation. Yeah.

Yeah. So when I started working at this food pantry, on day one, they were like, okay, good, you're here, you're gonna pick up food. And they just gave me a credit card that I now just have. Whoa. It stays in my wallet. I use it to get food for the food pantry every week. But it's really, I think that is.

They didn't do anything. I think it's bumped to the top of my line of irresponsible things that volunteer organizations have done. Jesus, yeah. That's wild. I thought about that, and I thought maybe it was just a times thing. Like maybe organizations have done. Jesus. Yeah. That's wild. I, I thought about that and I thought maybe it was just a times thing. Like maybe times have changed, but because when I tried to volunteer at my son's school,

they're like, okay, you just got to, uh, submit this information to the state department. Like what? Wow. Why?

They, you have to like get clearance essentially to work with children so that they, as a record of you, um, in case anything weird happens. And we didn't ever went through anything like that. especially for for what i'm doing where i'm not interacting with with kids or anything like that where it doesn't seem like a scheme that anyone would do you know like because i didn't know i was going to get a credit card to pick up the food i thought i was gonna be moving boxes and stuff

right so they must just assume like if i'm if they get an email from someone a cold email from someone who's like hey i'm new to town and i want to volunteer they that immediately they just assume yeah this guy's not gonna not gonna steal a credit card that's exactly the type of person that would steal a credit card they handed a credit card to me and i'm like oh no i don't trust those things i'll just i'll i'll i'll use my own they must maybe they saw something in you the minute they saw you they're like yeah he's fine oh this is gonna this surely i'll keep you up at night as well oh soren's back again asking you what's keeping you from achieving success in your own life? What's keeping you from being happy?

Every single time I come on here and I ask and you say, oh, stop asking me that question. Just leave me alone. Let me be unhappy by myself. No, I want to see you happier. I want to make sure that you're living your best life. Stress shows up in all kinds of ways. And in a world that's telling you to do more, sleep less, and grind all the time, here is a reminder to take care of yourself. Do less sometimes. Maybe try some therapy.

People don't always realize the physical symptoms like headaches and teeth grinding and digestive issues and sweating more can all be indicators of stress. And let's not forget about the doom scrolling that we all do. That's taken over most of my life. When I get my report at the end of the week where it says, this is how much time you spend online, I'd be just on my phone alone. It's, I'd say humiliating. And it costs me sleep. It means that when I'm looking at my screen before I go to bed, it's harder for me to fall asleep at night better help is customized online therapy that offers video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist so you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to better help is more affordable than in-person therapy too if you feel stressed out

daily if little things stress you out like bills and life and family. If your stress is affecting your appetite, you might be a great candidate for BetterHelp. Stress is a huge problem in our current culture. We try to do too much and BetterHelp wants to help you. It's in the name. Give BetterHelp a try and see if online therapy can help lower your stress. Our listeners get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash qq that's b-e-t-t-e-r-h-e-l-p dot com slash qq for 10 off your first month well daniel i have a quick question for you yeah go ahead i want to know what's a trope or like a cinematic device something from movies that you wish you could retire from the landscape of cinema forever. I'll give you some examples. Like, okay, good. Like, um, someone saying I just threw up in

my mouth a little happens across films. There's, um, someone hearing bad news and then throwing up, which also never happens in real life, but like happens a lot in movies, women only throwing up when they're pregnant. There's lots of examples out there. Not all of them are throwing up when they're pregnant there's lots of examples out there not all of them are throwing up um but uh what's something that you would retire from from like the landscape of cinema because it's just so played out i can also go first here yeah go first um this is a i don't understand why this happens but everyone's so they're they're weird fucking excited bewilderment about champagne doing what champagne does like and people open a bottle of champagne in a movie because there's a celebration and the cork pops and it fizzes out a little and everyone goes oh everyone's sort of amazed by that that champagne can do that

or the minute that they drink they'll pour it in a glass. Someone will drink a little. Generally, it's a woman. And then she touches her nose. And why, Dan? Why does she touch her nose? Bubbles? Yeah, the bubbles tickle her nose, she says.

She's never had a carbonated drink in her whole fucking life. And so champagne is this weird novelty in movies i also blame movies that we use it for celebrations because just like for the record champagne is a is a shit drink yeah that's not like it's it's used strangely in movies uh as if the writers and actors are uh are in like a big situation where they were little kids transformed into adult bodies. Because even if I'm at an event that is like an actual celebration, unless it's the wedding toast where everyone has a glass of champagne by design,

if it's anything else, if I was at a dinner party and my friends were like, great news, should we celebrate champagne? I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's fine. Vodka soda for me, please. I want to enjoy myself at the celebration. So I don't want to drink champagne because I hate it. I will do a thing where somebody orders like champagne for the table. Should we get a champagne?

I'm like, oh, OK. And I would just turn my champagne glass over so that they know not to fill it because it is just wasted on me. I don't want champagne. I think it's gross. I think it's gross. I think it's a bad drink. And there's other things I'd much rather be drinking. But in films and stuff, it's always used as a celebratory drink. And it's even without a cheers.

It's just like, oh, we should celebrate. And the situation is always the same. Somebody starts to cork it. They pop it. The cork flies and a little bit comes out and everyone's like, oh, did you know it was going to do that? I didn't know it was going to do that. It's the general sentiment of it. That's not generally the dialogue. But yeah, then they pour it and like one person drinks a little and they does like a teehee and I'm like, oh, it's so

bubbly or the bubbles tickle my nose where it's no, that, that doesn't happen. Everyone in the world has had a Coca-Cola in their entire, in their lives before they've had champagne. It should not be a surprise. Anyway, that's mine. That's my grape on, on films. That's a good one. I thought you had another one that you wanted to do, but I, there is one more. There is more um it's when somebody's talking on the phone generally they're in the middle of an argument and then they hang up a phone rings immediately and they're like i told you i don't want to fucking sell or like whatever

it is and they're like oh no it's not actually the person you thought you were going to talk to it's the president or it's somebody else really important and somebody you should not be yelling at and you just yelled at them they do it with doors too we it's somebody else really important and somebody you should not be yelling at. And you just yelled at them. They do it with doors too. We're like, somebody keeps coming in and like, I don't want to talk to you. I don't want to talk to you.

And then they leave. And then there's a knock and they're like, I told you, I don't want any fucking tea. And then no, it's, it's King James. King James has come in.

It is. I latched onto that one as well. Cause it, it felt like that phone trope is something that uh i guess we really liked in the 90s when caller id didn't exist and it was like a great device for writers and then even though everything about the world has changed since then it's like no but i i i i want to do that so let's pretend that in this movie, people answer their cell phones without looking at who is calling,

which is start to finish insane. The way that they move around it too is very fun where they're like, well, they would, an ordinary person, a normal human being would look at their phone. Well, what can we do and make them so they can't see their phone? We'll have them driving.

They'll be driving along and the phone will ring and they'll just, they'll just push the on button. Push the on button and start screaming. Yeah. Even though like, A, I always look at who is calling before I pick up the phone. Uh, because, because otherwise you might get spam phone calls

or talk to someone you don't want to talk to. There's never a situation where I'm so confident at who's calling that I pick up the phone without looking. B, I can't not look at who's calling when I pick up the phone, I guess unless you're driving the car. And C, even if I did just hang up on someone and I saw they were calling me back, I wouldn't pick up and start yelling.

I would just ignore the call. That's an even easier thing to do. Way easier. Just not fight with somebody. And it says a lot more when you don't fight with somebody. Yeah. I want those gone. I had one that was not a, not like a plot trope or anything like that.

I saw a movie recently. I have a couple of things to say about this movie. The Lost City. You know it? Yeah, I know it, but I haven't seen it. It's, I really wanted to see it because I,

I'm always excited for movies that aren't based on existing IP and like, yeah, this is like an, like an adult-ish adventure romance thing. Let's make more of those. More different kinds of movies, please. So I want to support it.

My first thing that made me mad is just looking at tickets online before I got them and seeing a runtime of an hour and 54 minutes for this straightforward action romance comedy. I've said before on this podcast that movies are too long. Everyone has said it.

It's not a new idea. It's not my idea, but I really feel it. And this time I did a thing that I haven't done with a movie before so far in my life that I might stick with, where I just decided I'm going to be late to this one. And I was late for the first like 10 minutes or so. And it's, I think going into it, I was like, this is a simple and straightforward enough movie that I don't really need to see the beginning of it. It's disrespectful to everyone involved, but they're disrespectful of my time for making

this a two hour movie. And like, this is the deal that we're going to make. This is, it's the same. Whenever I would have band practice with Cody John johnston and abe epperson and brendan carter back in la and cody would reserve the recording studio for five fucking hours i'd be like that's great i'm gonna miss some of it because that's just that's that's the push and pull that we have to deal with here that's too much time and i've got other stuff going on i want to be part of this but not this much so. So I'm sorry, as far as I'm

concerned, Lost City, you are a 90 minute movie. And did you, could you follow the plot? Yes. It's just like coming into it on HBO, right? There's not a single movie in the world that I can't get context for just from watching, but coming into it halfway through and being like, oh no, I get it. I see what's going on. on but the trope in this movie and it's less like a plot trope and more of a i guess technical trope that i'm seeing more and more of is uh the amount of jokes and uh quips that happen adr uh for people who don't know listening at home adr i don't even know what it stands for it's additional recording but why would they put the d in there i who don't know listening at home ADR I don't even know what it stands for it's additional recording but why would they put the D in there

I don't know additional dialogue recording you've seen it in a million movies especially comedies and a way to spot it is your main characters will say something 90% of the time funny

and their mouths are not on screen their mouths are not moving it's like a wide shot of sandra bullock and channing tatum walking through the jungle and they're just doing like quips back and forth usually like some of the funnier lines in the movie will happen in these things and it happens because the whole movie gets made and then they realize hey we need more jokes in this movie we gotta just like write a whole bunch of jokes to try out and you can't we're not gonna like CGI people's mouths so it's these jokes that just happen all people are walking away or a scene is transitioning. And I don't like it. I think I understand that it's very difficult to make a movie.

And sometimes a movie gets made because you could say, we've got Sandra Bullock and we've got Channing Tatum. So that means we have a green light to get access to this money. And if we wait, we don't have access to the money. Or if we wait, we don't have access to one of these stars. And then everything falls apart. You got to do whatever you got to do to green light a money. Green light a movie.

And get that money. But. Have a funny script first. And don't rely on like this. This second wave. All right. The movie's shot. Now let's see if we can make it.

The funniest thing in the world. By bringing in a bunch of ringers. To write jokes., the movie's shot. Now let's see if we can make it the funniest thing in the world by bringing in a bunch of ringers to write jokes under the very specific circumstances that they, that they can be sort of dropped anywhere and said after the movie's shot in like a post recording session. I don't like it for what it says for movies. I want like a movie to be written with jokes in it first. And I want people to be able to sign on to be in a movie and say, yes, this is funny. And that's why I'm doing it. And it's also just like an annoying thing to see. I think there's like 25 scenes in the movie where Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum are doing jokes to each other with their backs to the audience.

This didn't even occur to me, by the way, that this is actually happening. By the way, it's automated dialogue replacement, which I never would have gotten. Never would have gotten. But the fact that, I mean, they're filming with this in mind. They're doing like a master of, we're going to be like, all right, we're going to be super wide. We're going to be very, very wide, and we're just going to be watching them traipse through the jungle. And they're doing that, master of, we're going to be like, all right, we're going to be super wide. We're going to be very, very wide.

And we're just going to be watching them traipse through the jungle. And they're doing that. And they're like, they're not just doing that as like a establishing shot. They're like, and we're going to hold on this for the next half, maybe 30 seconds, maybe a minute. Because at some point they are going to feel that. And it didn't even occur to me that that's actually part of it. That like, they're not, that wasn't just part of the dialogue and they're like,

all right, well, how are we going to shoot this? All right, well, let's just shoot it wide. Let's see what happens. I,

I did. It's going to bother me now because you mentioned it, that that happens so regularly. It's also a lot of, uh, you can tell where like when people are improvving a scene that they will do a lot of jokes with somebody's back to the camera where it's somebody's dirty in the shot, which just means that you're focused on somebody else, two people having a conversation. You're focused on one person's face, but in the shot, you catch the shoulder and the jawbone and some hair of the person who they're talking to for a frame of reference when you're watching a movie.

And a lot of times you can watch that person's talking but you don't see their actual jaw moving at all and they're doing the same there but i always just assumed that it was no that dialogue was all there or like they were improvving it right there in the moment and this is just how they decided to do it nope ah that's frustrating so you really think that they like a whole nother team of writers came on afterwards and like all right let's beat these jokes i don't know if it's a whole other team of writers but it it definitely feels like uh like a separate yeah endeavor yeah i think there's some story I remember of

that Patton Oswalt talks about how he was just brought in to essentially improv ADR for some animated movie where they're like hey we made this whole movie and it's not funny enough so your character could just like

come in and say some wild funny things that we can drop anywhere that sounds great um have you ever done adr before um not in the sense not in the way that we are talking about it right now where you're inventing new dialogue but when we were filming agents of crack the series that we did for crack.com many many years ago there are a couple of things that we it was like i think i think it's at the end of the first season a scene filmed at the beach in santa monica where we're outside and the the audio is so terrible because of the wind and the ocean that everything you see us doing is me and michael doing it later just watching our own mouths move and doing it in post like we went to abe's house and listened to

the raw of us over and over again and then just tried to match our mouths as best as we could yeah that's traditional adr i it's i've done it for um some movies I used to be in the movies. Did you know that, Dan? Yeah, you're an actor. And when you go into like a sound studio and you have headphones and everything, and then they show you on a big screen and they're like, all right, we're going to play you. And it's like beep, beep, beep. And then you watch the scene a couple of times and you try and match it. And a lot of times they're like, all right, you're actually out of breath for this part. So if you could get out of breath, like, OK.

And so you're just like jumping around in the room for a little while. And then you go and you do it again. Awesome. So that it feels authentic to the scene. Or they're like, actually, like you're in this part. You're really you're kind of like more. You've got like a little fear in your voice and you have to be like okay how does that translate oh you want higher i will do higher and then like just like trying to figure out what they want and sometimes they don't even want you to match what you did before if you try

and copy it exactly they're like no no no no we needed we need a little different that that doesn't feel authentic oh yeah do what you did on the day but like better acting now right act a little your face acting is doing great but but be a better the voice have a better actor say the lines um it's really it's really tough to do i found it very challenging absolutely trying to match your own lips because you also you and i talk fairly fast and we don't you're right we don't enunciate and so try to see try to match up what you're saying with your own face you're like no that guy that guy's drunk yeah how am i supposed to match him saying come comedy writer comedy writer comedy writer comedy writer um i saw i watched a movie recently called home team are you familiar with this movie

no this is the story of sean payton when he had to leave the saints for a season because of bounty gate okay uh the saints real quick background the saints got in a lot of trouble because they're giving their players bounties to injure players from the other teams. And because Sean Payton was the head coach, whether or not he was responsible for it, he's the one who takes the fall for it. So he was suspended from the league for a season. Was football tired of all the old, terrible practices associated with the sport? We've still got people innovating the game.

Yeah, people finding new and unique ways to make it terrible and unlikable. So Kevin James plays Sean Payton. And I don't know how this movie got made, because it carries Sean Payton in such a favorable light. The jokes are absolutely abysmal. And the cast isn't terrible, but it's, it is just ball washing. It's like Sean Payton ball washing. It looks like he wrote the script. Wow. And this was a movie where you're talking about, you don't mind coming into a movie late.

This was a very long movie and a movie where I was like halfway through. I was like, you know what? I don't need to watch this whole thing. And then I just did kind of like us. I moved my cursor up a little bit. I'd watch about 10 minutes, move my cursor up a little bit i'd watch about 10 minutes move my cursor up a little bit watch some more and then i watched the end i'm like yeah i get it got it

when did this movie come out recently this is town yeah this is it wow it came out this year kevin james has an interesting career yeah i don't totally get it I think he's a very funny guy but he's done some real dog shit Yeah I think he's a very funny guy He did a A stand up special It was the first thing I knew about him That Sweat the Small Stuff

That I thought was great Just like an incredible hour of stand up And then he was like always the best part of Whenever he showed up on raymond and then king of queens i was like yeah he's a funny guy he's definitely a funny guy i don't like that style of of show at the time but like i i recognized him as a funny person uh and now he's pivoted to to movie star and sometimes he's he's serious actor man and i and i uh i don't understand it yeah i don't i don't totally get it either um he does do yeah this is it's supposed to be a lot of comedy in this movie

because what he does is he basically goes and he coaches a kid's his son's football team in this league when he's this year when he's suspended this is a happy madison production so like it feels like there should there's some credibility behind it but yeah man it you know what i got the same feeling from that movie where john ham's wife wrote a film where she and adam scott were like other people's children or something like that yeah other people's something other people's kids that said other people's kids it felt just like that where it's like you surround you surround them with this a great group of people they're kind of playing weird roles that don't really fit their type and then you've got one person in it where you're like what what is going on here what bizarre world is this where this movie got made

and uh this one just had that same energy i I don't understand it at all. You should absolutely watch it. Yeah, I'll check it out. Friends with Kids. Friends with Kids. Got it. I wonder if people are going to be mad at you. Because I... That movie that Jon Hamm's wife wrote or whatever.

Didn't she write it? I think she wrote and directed it, but... She's in it. And she's in it. I think she wrote and directed it, but I think she was doing other stuff before she was Jon Hamm's girlfriend, though. Yeah, I'll take it. That's fine. You're probably right. This should be a learning moment for me. Everybody, preemptively say you're absolutely right. I should not have referred to her as Jon Hamm's wife. Great. Especially because she never was.

Because she was his girlfriend. And you're all stickler for details. Yep, that's me. Well, the show is Quick Question. Our theme song is by the incredible Me-Rex. Their digital album is available at me-rex.bandcamp.com Find the show on Twitter at twitter.com slash qq underscore Soren and Dan

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And it's great, great fun. Okay, bye. Bye. 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 your dad's name? Where did all that go? 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