Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Sorenoriums Great Vomitorium

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

The guys are back after a week off, and they really let the fireworks fly.  And as always big thanks to our sponsors. Thanks RocketMoney.com/qq.  it could save you hundreds a year.

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 favourite? Who did you get? What do I be? What's it up to? Where did all that go?? 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 two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast, senior writer for Last Week Tonight, author of How to Fight Presidents, and recent defeater of Super Mario Brothers U Deluxe, Daniel O'Brien.

Joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello. Hey, everybody. I'm Soren Bui. I'm a writer for American Dad. our intro that two best friends and congregators who ask each other questions and give each other answers is so like it's so on the nose for what we actually do which is i will ask you a question and then immediately give you the answer that's true it's a whole lot of and like we've we've stretched our definition of what question is to the point of complete disuse now. I have a question for you. I went to San Francisco recently. Here's what happened. Yeah. Dan, have you ever been in the grocery store and had somebody in a wig and weird glasses and a crypto hat trying to ask you if you'd go to a house with them? You didn't even give me a chance to answer that one. It would have been no, but I would have appreciated the opportunity.

Thanks to Rocket Money for supporting our podcast. Rocket Money will quickly and easily identify your subscriptions for you so you can stop paying for the ones you don't want. Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage your expenses the easy way by going to rocketmoney.com slash QQ. How have you been? Good. I mentioned this. I feel like I have a lot to say to you this episode.

We missed each other for a little while. We'll talk about that. Yeah. I mentioned this Super Mario thing right up top. My five-year-old nephew, Murphy, got a Switch for Christmas, and so I was over there Playing this Mario, and if you don't know Super Mario deluxe It's basically like it's the switch version of the Mario you know and love side-scroller you have Seven or eight different worlds with different Koopas, and then you fight Bowser you ask you the princess There's new suits to collect and wear It's a typical Mario game the kind i've played

a million times before and i was over at my brother and sister-in-law's house playing this game with uh murphy because you could do a two-player option of it and i know that he's he's he's like quietly relying on me to beat these levels so we can advance and i just couldn't i was just fucking eating it in this game and there was even times where like he wanted to to go back to this plant level and i was like murphy no don't don't go there i was like i'm sorry i'm like no don't apologize you didn't do anything wrong it's just i can't i can't beat that guy and i felt so useless and defeated especially because i've played again i've i've logged millions of hours of mario games and they're not hard and they are made

for children and so i went home and i uh bought my own copy of the game and played it pretty pretty obsessively pretty non-stop and i i beat it like an hour before this podcast record oh my god damn congratulations yeah and uh and if anyone who i work with is is listening to this podcast and knows roughly what time recording starts don't reverse engineer the math to see what i was doing during the work day today just let's all just be gentlemen. That's, you know, finishing a video game is, for somebody who just dabbles in video games, finishing a video game is such a huge completion.

Yes. Like the feeling of finality to it is, I think, better than even finishing a book. I'm good at finishing books. I cannot beat a video game because I'm so bad at video games in a way where it's clear that i just don't have the literacy for it we watched we played warhammer or something like that for a ad once it cracked and we got in this room we're all gonna play this game

and i was like yeah everybody'll suck at it because nobody knows this but there's just some like intuitive language to games and like movement and stuff that Michael, that Abe, those guys just know. I think it's the same way with you in and sports. If you learn a new sport and invent a new sport, your body is immediately like, ah, yes,

I know how to do this. I know that the mechanics are familiar to me. I know how to not just do this, but do it. Well, there are people who do that with video games where they've just, they've logged enough hours that you could drop them with any game. And they're like, oh, yes, this engine is somewhat familiar to me. Yes.

Here I go. Watch me excel at this. And including in that is also just sort of knowing like what button is what, which sounds like a very old person thing to say. But the first time I played God of War on playstation 2 first of all i played it when i was it was probably like 2019 and michael let me borrow a playstation 2 and i was playing god of war and there's a lot of stuff in that game where it's like please you got to press triangle in the next 0.6 seconds yeah and uh i'm like well hold on let's let's find out where triangle is right the game there we go i expect you to know some of these more complicated things

like which buttons are which and and that's wrong of the game to assume that even this mario one where they're like hey you just froze that guy uh press y and r together like y and r where these have all been me this whole time look at that there are buttons on the top of this huh yeah i know that feeling i did get back into video games a little bit recently where you know as i've talked about on the podcast before and all the connoisseurs out there will know i play red dead redemption every once in a while and i jump back into that game thinking in my head just one day on a run you know what i'd like to do is just go collect every type of squirrel from every geographical

area in that game. So I just did that. I spent a day just with a bow and arrow out in the wilderness just looking for different types of squirrels and hunting them down and killing them. There's something, I like that. I like a game with a promise of more little side things to do. Like there's

something really special about having beaten this mario and then when i'm done they're like hey by the way have you uh collected all the giant coins in every level and i'm like no i didn't you dirty dog but i'm gonna now that's my next mission and when you said you finished it i think you so you're saying you got to the end of the general campaign right bowser is dead. Okay. I killed him. Yeah, I was going to... I don't know if...

Some people consider finishing it as you get all the star coins. You get everything that you can possibly do in the game is done. Now you can only repeat. No, I'm going to get the star coins. And I'm sure there are other... I'm assuming it's like every other Mario game, basically, where there are alternate ways to end levels that will unlock other areas that I haven't seen yet. And I'm excited to really explore every inch of this game without the pressure of having to beat it to...

For a child. For my nephew. I still love you. So it's a two-dimensional one, huh? It's one where you're running left to right the whole game yeah yeah that's great i love those there was one of those for the we that was like this i can't remember it might just been called super mario brothers but it was uh it was encouraged collaborative play and if you played with somebody else like there was no better

indication of whether that relationship was going to last than trying to play that game with somebody else because as the screen would continue to go with the first person the other person just got dragged up no matter what and if you happen to be on a platform or something like that well fuck you you're about to go off that platform because you're being dragged along by this other person and so there's like some real communication that has to happen and a real allowance for the difference in skill. And on either side of that, if you're not willing to do it, man, it becomes a fight pretty quick. I was really shocked and nervous about this thing inside of me because I didn't...

At no point did I lose my patience with or yell at my five-year-old nephew, but there were times when i died as a direct result of his actions and i felt a thing in me that would be like like if this was any other person in the world and i'd be like you just killed me thanks a fucking lot i'm dead now i was carrying us to the end and you just that's you just fucking killed me i could still feel like my body turned to look at him and then my brain was was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is, you're not going to be invited back to Thanksgiving. You see what happened there, right? That was you, that was your fault. And I'm the one who's got to carry us. I know that, that feeling. I get that feeling in sports sometimes, I guess,

when you're playing a sport with somebody and they're like, even if it's something simple where they're not taking it seriously, or there are, they're just not thinking it through. Like even bowling, when you go bowling with somebody and somebody is like, it's, they're a frame away from it being there. All right. Not a frame. They're a turn away from it being their turn. And they're like, I think I'm going to go get some mozzarella sticks.

Does anybody else want anything? And you have to be like, just, I want you to just think this through. Cause I'm after you. I'm depending on you. You're going to go, you're going to be gone for seven to 12 minutes and I'm just going to be sitting here and we're all going to be waiting for you. And everyone else is like, yeah, but like we're all drinking everything. I'm like, no, no, we're, we're here to bowl. That was not just drinking. We're all trying to get our highest score ever because that's what we do every single time we play a game. Um,

does your son play any, uh, team sports through school or otherwise? Great question. No. Um, he's gonna, he,

he hasn't even played legitimate soccer. He's not had a true scrimmage before in regular soccer. He is played. He's had like soccer practice where they do drills and a lot of running and stuff. But, uh, that was a little overwhelming for him and I didn't want to push it. So we bowed out of soccer for a while. Now in March, he's going to play baseball. And, um, I'm really like, I'm trying to thread the needle here and do it exactly right, which is I want to give him

confidence. So when he goes there, he feels like he understands and the, the muscle memory of the game and everything and understands the rules. But I also don't want to overwhelm him or get him to the point where he's like, he either quits with me or he gets there and realizes that he's in over his head and wants to quit immediately. So what I've been doing is playing wall ball with him, with his mitt. Do you, did you ever play wall ball? Uh, I think so. You throw the, I don't remember using a mitt, you threw the ball against the wall. And, uh, if you touched it, but didn't catch it, then you had to run up and touch the wall before someone else throws the ball at the wall. Because if they hit the wall with the ball before you tag the wall, then you're out.

Yeah. Or you lose a life. And if you lose three lives, do you remember what happens if you lose three lives? You die in real life, right? Yes, yes. You get cancer yeah you stand against the wall and everybody else gets to throw the ball at you oh i don't think we were ever that that hardcore as hard as they can and and so at recess there was like some real pageantry

to it where as soon as somebody got three we went nuts and like we're like calling over people from the swings and stuff to be like you gotta see this he's gonna get destroyed and so a don would go put his hands on the wall and we would all just like as hard as we possibly could like we were trying to kill him it was the lottery like we wanted him gone um but so i play this with my son once teaching him. I think this is a really simple game. It'll be a game that he can play with his friends and stuff. And as I'm teaching it to him, he's getting really into it and he likes the idea of it, but he likes the idea of all of the rules, including that one. So he's like, he, he was not, you know, he's young. So he's not great

at catching the ball off the balance and stuff. But if I'm really hitting the, if I'm really trying to play and I'll hit the wall before him, he'll be like, that's three. And he'll just go stand up against the wall. And, uh, we're at a park with like other, other people who could see what I'm about to do to my child. And so there's a child who's like, it looks like he's getting arrested against the wall and his dad is 15 feet behind him just winding up to throw a tennis ball at a child. Right. Doing a move that even from a distance only looks like one thing. There's no like, no, that can't be right. No one's giving you the benefit of the doubt there.

No. That you're doing like a William Tell thing. No one's giving you the benefit of the doubt there. No. That you're doing like a William Tell thing. But he does. Most of the time I was just like, I would either throw it very hard kind of near him so he could hear it hit the wall and be like, oh, that was close. Or I would delicately hit him.

Yeah. Until he was like, did you not throw that your hardest? I was like, well, no. And he's like, throw it your hardest. And I was like, okay. I love you and uh i threw it a little harder at him and he was like it hit me it was like oh like and then did that laughing thing we're like that boys i i'm gonna gender this i don't know that it's necessarily just boys but

like where you're young and you get hit and it hurts a little bit but you're okay and like that's really fun yeah and so he loves the idea of this game. And so I was like, this is how I'm going to teach him baseball. Um, I I'm putting like batting practice. That's just going to have to sit on the sidelines. But as far as it being a defender, I I'm getting him to play wall ball with his gloves so that he's getting used to like handling grounders. He's getting used to one hops and he's just getting used to the functionality of closing a mitt around a ball, which is not a thing I realized you had to learn.

Cause I, you know, you've done it so intuitively your whole life and like where to place your other hand on the mitt and stuff. Um, and so he's just learning that and he's getting good at like anticipating where the ball's going to be and getting it shut. And I'm like, okay, all right, you're going to be okay in March. You will be fine. Yeah. Have you seen, I guess he's kind of young for this world that I'm thinking of right now, but, but have you seen this video that's, that's made the rounds about these like fourth and fifth grade basketball kids, uh, going nuts with their celebrations yes it's it's so it was such a joy for me to watch it's for anyone who doesn't know that they're like these like kids kids for i'm i'm really saying fourth and fifth grade and they're playing it's not streetball they're in

uniform they're in a school either in a rec league or their school leagues and they'll hit a shot and they'll they'll dance or they'll do like you know they're acting like the celebrations they've seen their favorite nba players do there's like aggressive they're pounding their chests they're telling other players you're too small they're saying go they're doing all the things like they're really imitating and not even just most aggressive nba stars it's like playoff nba it's like yeah playoff fourth quarter of the game nba stuff so like they're making a shot and going wild like yeah they're doing they're doing putting up with their hands yeah they're doing steph curry i just put up to sleep that kind of thing they're miming going to sleep what's what steph does at the end

of the fourth quarter when he knows he's got the the victory locked up um it's been it's made the rounds for the last couple of days excuse me and uh like everything else on the internet everyone has turned it into uh an opportunity for discourse that has bummed me out because i i i always get a little bit uh nervous and sad and unsure if a thing I like is actually bad for the culture or the planet because there are a lot of people not everyone, KD Kevin Durant came out and was like this is great

I like this, good for those kids goodbye but Austin Rivers is like you should not do this you need to have respect for the game you need to learn how to play this game first. These kids are not learning the fundamentals that they're going to need to go into the NBA.

And like CounterPoint, they're not going to go into the NBA. So let them have fun now, please. But like, I don't know. I don't know if like, I haven't seen a whole game like this. So if there's, if one kid is getting picked on the whole time or if the team is doing really well and they're doing all this kind of like showboating and celebrating i guess that's bad i don't know this is what i've been thinking about all day and i wanted to know if if your son

what the what the vibe was like at his team sports but then i've decided forget all that noise because you reminded me of wall ball and how it ends with torture. And it made me think of every sport I played as a kid and how they all also ended with torture. These kids are fine. Don't pretend for a second that this is going to do any kind of lasting damage on these kids when I think of the shit that we did growing up. Yeah. So so my son to answer your first question he definitely is has clocked the idea of celebration during sport and knows immediately that's the fun part so he does the stuff when we play in the backyard and we play a game sometimes

we'll like we'll we'll hit a little ball or something like that and if he can get it onto the roof he'll be he goes oh yeah and starts And if he can get it onto the roof, he'll be, he goes, Oh yeah. And starts like, like his hands get like just the ring fingers go in the other, the other fingers all go really wide. And he just runs around the yard, raising the roof, like throwing his hands up,

like trying to get the crowd into it. And it's very adorable. It's really fun to watch. He's got a good sense of that. We, we used to volunteer. There were some kids that also understood that aspect of the game. We would play football with them.

And there was one kid, I guess we can use people's names. His name was Daniel. And he was super into the celebration. And he was into gloating. And when he lost, nothing was worse. He was so embittered and would cry and stuff. Because he hadn't learned to regulate his emotions around sport but when he was doing well man he wanted to just talk shit so bad and when he would do that and he'd get too over celebratory i would just go push him down

onto the ground that's right just to remind him no no no not yet you can start celebrating when you're the best there is but for now we're all bigger and stronger than you. You just happen to get a great pass. Even if I was on his team, I would go push him down to the ground. we're not uh these these kids are nothing to us we are not we were not brought in there and and explicitly told you are role models for these children we were just like a couple of not i don't know just like happy-go-lucky 20-somethings who were like look the good thing i did was coming here i'm already morally superior to anyone who's not here right now so whatever i do is this is just like house money it's all icing after that and we would play i mean we would play hard with them by the end of that thing we were always sweaty and like we had been like holding them up in the air and flying

them around or i threw that one girl so high that she peed her pants. That's right. And she knew immediately, like I was too high up and I peed and I, excuse me now. We would, there was a tire swing and we would just hawk them on this tire swing and they would go nuts for it. I mean, it was this huge cathartic moment, I think, each week for these kids. And it was fun for us too, because we played basketball with them and stuff. But at no point during it was anyone ever just like, hey, maybe tone it down. Yeah. I think here's something that might be helpful or terrifying to our our listeners is as you can understand we are

bigger and more powerful than all of these kids uh there's also a person who was uh quote unquote in charge of this event the guy who actually worked for this facility where we were volunteering we were also stronger than him so like there was no one on any side of this equation that could talk to either of us or stop us if they wanted to just this frail older man who's dedicated his life to helping children i'm sure was just like watching us from inside and was while being like okay maybe that's enough kids on the tires maybe i hear it creaking maybe maybe we could just there's also coloring books if anyone wants to join ed me ed for coloring uh i miss that place i'd actually really like

to run into those kids again because they're all i'm sure now now in college or... No, I don't want... Could they be older? Don't do that math. Really? Fuck. I don't know. But just to see... Just be like, hey, do you remember when we used to do this? I wonder if they'd even remember. Hey, do you remember some stranger showing up once a week and knocking you to the ground

after you celebrated? Destroying you? Destroying you on the football field or basketball, we would trounce them at basketball. I love playing basketball against them. It's a new year. It's a new year. We've all got goals.

I've got a bunch of goals. My biggest one is I'm going to, for the first time, manage my money better. Like an adult, I'm going to have a budget. I'm going to stick to it and I'm going to save money. I'm also not going to do it alone. so i'm using rocket money to help me out and you should too

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the reason being was that we were supposed to record last week and i couldn't because i was so incapacitated with sickness that i couldn't even get out of a bed yeah um that's my whole family yeah is the wrong response listeners i i already knew this that's that's not that's not my real response i almost couldn't even this is how bad it was i almost couldn't message i considered just being like well if i don't show up they won't do it but i i was like the the thought of even sitting up to get to a laptop or something and and write out hey i'm not gonna be able to do this podcast even that was like that sounds like it's a million miles away i don't know that i can do that um what happened was my daughter we got a notification from her preschool she had thrown up after her nap.

So I went there and they're like, I think she just did it from coughing. She woke up coughing and then she threw up once. I was like, okay. So I took her home. That wasn't the case. She then threw up several more times that night. And then by dinnertime and bedtime, she was fine. She was playing again.

She was hungry. And I was like, whoa, a weird little sickness. We thought maybe it was a yogurt we had given her. there was like a mild case of food poisoning we're like whatever it's over the the next night colleen and i got sicker like top one of like top five sicknesses in terms of how bad it was it wasgregious. And we've got these stomach bugs that were so, so bad that I couldn't have more than like a tablespoon of water before I would have to go throw up. And so all night we were just taking turns. I would say like every 20 minutes going and throwing up nothing, just retching over a

toilet and then coming back to bed. And you know, that where you start to get that panic state where you're like, I'm so thirsty. My body needs fluids really, really badly. And I have no way to get them inside of me. This is insane. And so I'm more thirsty than I've been in my life. And I'm taking these like little sips of water to the point where I even at one point went downstairs, got some ice water, put it a big gulp of it in my mouth and just held it there. And I was like, oh, this is so nice. And then spit it out.

And taking just like tablespoons of water, like every 10 minutes or something like that. And still that's not doing it. Still that's enough that it's like, nah, it's too much in your stomach. You got to go throw up. So a whole night of that. And the next day was the podcast. and i was rough the whole next day for ronan also woke up that day and he was like i also feel sick we're like well now do you believe your child in this circumstance or is it just everybody's doing it and so right they doing it too does he because he you know he doesn't want

to go to school and so we're like all right well you know get dressed and't want to go to school. And so we're like, all right, well, you know, get dressed and stuff. So he starts getting dressed and then just throws up all over his carpet in his room. We're like, oh, okay. Got it. Well, son, we didn't believe you. I think that much is clear now. Thank you for demonstrating. You're with proof. Understand mom and dad always need proof. I know you're sick right now, but this must feel really good. You must feel very vindicated. always need proof i know you're sick right now but this must feel really good you must feel very vindicated and so we kept him home gilly home and she was better by this point but we are we're just laid out we can't do anything and that whole day was bad that whole next night was really rough the next the day after that felt like the worst hangover, you know, it was like really bad headache, really bad aches, still not a great stomach. And it took a little

while like to get over this thing. And I've never had our whole family laid out by something at the same time. It's rough. Like if my son, at one point he got, went to the bathroom to try to throw up, the toilet seat was down. and that was just like enough of a second that he threw up on top of the toilet instead of in it so it's kind of all over the bathroom and all over in the cracks of the toilet and everything and i go in there and i'm like i can't physically clean this up right now i have to just like triage the damage a little bit make sure he's okay and then just throw some paper towels on it and walk away and then just gonna have to agree to live with it and deal with that later that is rough and now the night that we got really sick was colleen and i made one of those box meals and

it was soul fish is it called soleil or soul fish man uh soul okay so we or soul fish, man? Soul. Okay. So we had soul fish, which when you fry it up, it can be a pretty potent fish. And that smell lingers. And so whatever you eat right before you throw up, your body's natural reaction is to be like, it was that thing. That thing did it. And then we smelled that. Our house was haunted by fish for a week after that.

Every time you'd leave the house, even for five minutes, you'd come back in. You'd get that smell of fish. And just the wave of nausea would return. It was so bad. I just wanted to burn the house down and move. I can't believe you'd even go through with the fish at that point. No, that's the thing. We had eaten the fish and then the throwing up started after that. So, yeah, it was awful.

Now, fast forward to now, when I'm sick again. I got to tell you what a gift that was on my end. I'm glad that your family got through that and everything. It sounds like a really terrible time, but, um, so last week I had to record, we normally record on Thursdays.

I was a guest on, uh, Cody Johnson and Katie Stoll's show, even more news, uh, that Thursday night. So we were going to record on Friday in the middle of the day. I was also on deadline.

And I also had a house guest with me that weekend from Thursday to Monday. And so getting that email from you, I was like, I can't record today. My entire family is throwing up. It's really bad. I was just like, I got to be sensitive. And this is a business that we run. So I have to pretend like i'm offering options but i was like here's what i think we do we don't do the podcast or we hope he gets better tomorrow and then we record on saturday or i will find a buddy to record as like a guest and just quick question with daniel and someone else which i i knew was like a not real option i knew most like we were gonna cancel this podcast i was so excited especially because like

after as i was uh telling my house guest this she was like who is this other person you would record with and i was like oh it would be you but like no don't worry about it it's not we're not gonna do that you're the only person I could ask to do that. Yeah. I, I knew, I knew going in, like, I was like, I'm going to cancel this. I was like, I bet Dan is pumped right now because I've had, I've been on the other end of that where your job suddenly takes over and you're like, I can't record. We're doing something else at work right now. And I'm on deadline.

And I, it's the amount of freedom that I feel. It's like a new lease on life. All of a sudden, like there was a certain amount of my life that was dedicated to just being in a garage and now I can use it to do whatever I want. Yeah. It was also like for my, my friend to watch me spend a day writing. It was a really good,

uh, presentation of what it's like to be a, a procrastinating writer on deadline. It was like, I have to finish this fucking script by six. And I also have to record this podcast in the middle of the day. It takes a chunk right out of the middle of my day. So I,

I can't find a groove before it or after it. Right. And then the podcast is canceled. I'm going to go to the gym. Yeah. Well, we, when I'm on out on script or an outline i will uh i'm i'm very serious about not being bothered during that time i'm like i'll go work in the garage because i'm like i just can't it's so hard to dive back into it after i've already been pulled out of it and i'll go do something and if colle, she's so good about it,

but like if there's like an emergency or something, she, or she just can't handle it anymore. Like she will come and get me and she'll be like, she's very polite about it, but she's come in definitely before. I've been like, I'm so,

so sorry. I just need, are you watching RoboCop? Yeah, I'm fucking working it's all part of it i can't explain why i don't even know why i just trust me this is part of it is the episode a parody of robocop no why would you ask that um my my wife my wife is so supportive and she's so good about when I'm writing.

She understands that the process is different from hers, that there are just different things happening. For her job, when she writes, she can do it anywhere. We could be sitting at the dinner table and I think she could crank something out. And that's baffling to me. I don't understand it at all, but she can do it. But she's also very supportive of the fact that she does not understand mine, but that she needs to respect it. But there are times

where like last night I was, uh, our friend, Michael Swain and Abe Epperson, they wrote a great, um, screenplay for a new movie and they asked people to read it. And I was reading it. I was giving notes and I'm like trying to clarify and build my notes for them. And I'm sitting on the couch, still a little sick because I got sick again. We'll get into that. But I'm like a little feverish. I'm trying to do this. And Colleen is trying to like get the energy out of the cat because the cat won't sit still all night long unless we like, we've drained it of energy before we go to bed and so she's bouncing a bouncy ball around the living room where i'm working so i'm getting

hit with a bouncy ball every once in a while this cat's like jumping around me and stuff and i'm just i like look at her i'm like you you don't even know you don't know how much how hard this is you're trying to be so. You're doing something that's good for the entire family right now, but it's driving me nuts. It's gotta go. That does feel like an over-the-top. Even if you

didn't need private writing and thinking time. I know you're working. I don't want to bother you. I'm just going to set up a small house circus just for me and the cat. Just in the same room that you're working. I don't want to bother you. I'm just going to set up a small house circus just for me and the cat, just in the same room that you are in right now. I'm not going to talk to you. I'm not going to sing to you.

We're just going to be singing with the cat, the ball bouncing song here in the tiny house circus. The sound of a ball bouncing too, it could drive somebody mad. i feel like because it's the same doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom doom yeah i feel like if that was happening around me i'd be like that ball needs to either not bounce or bounce exactly on the same beat for the rest of the day uninterrupted steady flow of sound it's so and there's such like a an interesting pattern to it because like she gets the cat's attention and the way she does it it's god i

guess i'm not really thinking about this until now how ordinarily dan when you would expect somebody to get the attention of a cat what noise would you say they would make are you still there can you hear me oh there there we go there we go well that was weird that i couldn't hear yes okay good that is a cat noise that's the universal hey you fucking cat look over here noise not to my wife colleen has and it works which is the craziest thing she goes yeah she she makes the perfect sound of an eagle

no she goes she goes Vena and she she like clocks at it yeah she does that yeah no stop doing it and yeah yeah that's how I feel and the cat is like oh what's that and it works the same way it means that this entire time that

we've been doing it's that was just a noise we landed on because it worked once and we were like why change it turns out there are a ton of noises that make a cat go what's this now you want my attention sure what do you want that's interesting i don't i wonder if that's like a regional arizona thing i don't think she had cats growing up either i'm gonna ask her tonight i'm gonna figure out where this this what would you even call that clocking yeah okay i'm gonna ask her tonight where that comes from i gotta do do in a way that's not that doesn't sound judgmental doesn't you certainly don't want her to to pick up on the fact that you've been thinking about this for like 48 hours no no you're right it has to be

when she does it i have to be like hey that's an interesting noise what is that i can't i can't just like confront her while she's trying to make dinner. Hey, that fucking noise you make, what is that? I mean, wake up, wake up, listen to me. You do this thing. Daniel thinks it's regional. Is that true? Yeah.

Is it snacks on you type of thing? Well, so I said that I also am dealing with sickness again. I got fucking sick again a different sick different than the stomach thing you have a different thing a different thing i one night suddenly had a really bad sore throat went to bed and had that terrible uh all night the same dream that you repeat over and over again because you can't get comfortable or sleep and it becomes you trying to get comfortable becomes you trying to change the thing in the dream. Yeah. And had that felt terrible. And then yesterday store sore throat got worse, got a fever, just got something new, something brand new, right on the heels of another

thing. And that's kind of felt like how our whole winter has gone is that everybody in my family has gotten one thing. We get better for about two days and then something new and surprising shows up. Yeah. I went to get my haircut yesterday and get my eye examined this morning. And it was truly like, I've been sick since November. We have a nice window where I'm not sick. I need, let me, let me just do all the things that are very close to another person's face that I need to do right now. Cause I don't know if I'm going to have another chance again of not being sick. I need, let me, let me just do all the things that are very close to another person's face that I need to do right now. Cause I don't know if I'm going to have another chance again

of not being sick. Cause it just seemed like the rolling thing that never stopped. It's comforting actually, for me to hear that you're dealing with it as well. I assumed it was my children that they were the problem, but this hard one, this last one's tough to blame on them because they're not sick right now i brought something home clearly i went out into the the viruses and rolled around in the alley um but i i actually i think i probably got it from the gym that's the only place where i'm not careful yeah and you're you're the thing about a gym is that you are walking around you touch everything yeah you touch everything and you touch it in the exact same place that

everybody else touches it so much so that our hand oils have started to like melt through the iron if you look at like a a barbell a 45 pound barbell the places where they go that high the places where everybody grips it yeah is that bright silver where the rest of it is kind of rusted or it turns kind of like it starts to oxidize or whatever. Somehow that area is like bright silver and the traction where you're supposed to grip for your hands, that's like melted away. I don't know how we do this as humans. There are soft hands eventually over time just start to like melt away metal. But everybody's touching everything in the exact same spot. And then I'm also touching my face constantly because I'm sweating. So I'm like brushing sweat out of my eyes and I'm realizing

this is the, I don't know. I don't know. This is untenable. How do I, how do I deal with viruses at the gym from now on? I also realized that like, I know that, uh, I'll usually have a towel with me and I'll wipe down a bench when I'm done with it. Or like they'll have a spray bottle and you can wipe down a bench, you know, the nice courtesy thing to do, wipe down a machine. But it also, I'm very aware that when I'm taking, uh, orange theory, which is, is a group class activity, you're switching from treadmills to rowers to floor exercises. And the coach who is leading the session, they're always very diligent when you switch stations. Here is a wipe.

Wipe down everything on this machine that you've touched. And we all do it. And it makes me realize, oh, man, I definitely don't see people doing this in gyms, myself included. No way. We're very, very precise about doing it in class because there's usually a coach saying, if you need a a wipe reach your hand out and wipe down everything you touch and now i'm thinking like yeah i'll wipe down like my bench when i get ass sweat on it but i don't think i've seen a single person wipe down dumbbells before or after they've used them right it's it's as counterintuitive as it seems that ass sweat is like the least of anybody's trouble at the gym.

It's uncomfortable to see it and be like, ah, I got to sit in that. Or if you're really sweaty and you're sitting on a bench or something like that, and then you get up and your head has left a little smattering of sweat, that's just uncomfortable. But that's not doing anything to anybody. It's the stuff where every time you grab a weight, you've got everybody's germs all over that weight. Yeah. Anyone who has wiped their nose at the gym and then just gone back to touching anything.

And that's everybody. Yeah. It's so gross. Yeah, it's not pig pen. I'm not going to paint some, like there are really filthy people at the gym. You're just not thinking about it too much. You're just sweaty and you're touching everywhere.

I'm rubbing my face with my shirt. Ah, the gym. It is such a gross place. It's really bad. I don't know what yours is like right now, but mine, because it's January, it's cartoonishly packed with people because everyone, good for you you start the

new year you want you to be a person who goes to the gym regularly it's a good resolution yada yada yada where the the i want it to go back i want it to to revert to what we all know it's going to end up being again which is a manageable population of people. Because right now there's not been a day of the week or a time of the day that the gym hasn't been more packed than it's ever been in the years past. I think there's just something about January 2, and maybe it is that it's over capacity. The gym smells like breath. Yeah. And maybe it's that they have to seal everything up because it's so much colder. I don't know what it is, but like I go into the gym and I'm just like

overwhelmed with what feels like a room that's been slept in by six people. Yeah. Or I'm like, oh my God. The whole room has achieved some kind of like perfect mouth temperature. And the people that are brand new, I mean, yes, good for you. I'm very happy for you that you're there. That sounded, that didn't sound authentic. I am genuinely. Um, but they also don't know the etiquette yet of a gym. They're like, they're getting in there for the first time and they, they read something in men's health. That's like, Hey, try these four exercises for your shoulders. And they're like, all right, doing all those at once. And so they go and collect

exercises for your shoulders and they're like all right doing all those at once and so they go and collect four sets of of free weights right which is like a stop doing that and they'll go and like take them to a corner somewhere and then sometimes don't even know to go put them back but yeah they'll just like go collect a bunch of weights and go bring them so squirrel them away somewhere and so you're walking around just like where where the fuck are the thirties? They've been gone for 45 minutes. Yeah. Oh, they're with the,

they're with that guy and the fifteens and the twenty fives and, and the twenties and everything else. Yeah. A lot of options. Yeah. I, my personal opinion is that if you're the most, the biggest number of pieces of equipment you're allowed to use at once is two.

And I would, I would say that a set of dumbbells counts as one piece of equipment. You get two, you can have two. And then also the other thing is if you're going to do more than that, if you've got some other huge ass workout going on and you need more, if somebody comes up and they're like, Hey, I just saw you finished with that set, with those 25s. Can I do a quick set right here before you get back to them? You cannot be an asshole about that.

No. You got to be like, yeah. Oh, also, if you just need them, take them because I'm the one breaking the rules here. Yeah. There are people in my gym who, so the way my gym is set up, there's treadmill machines and an upstairs area with different machines.

There's like plenty of the big weight machines scattered throughout the floor. And then there's a section in the back where I spend most of my time, which is dumbbells and benches. And that's just where I like to be. And since January, people have been absconding with the benches. I don't know where they take them, but I'll just go and there's like, there's supposed to be six benches. And then there's just this huge open space where someone has carried the bench somewhere else. And I don't know where it could be.

Fucked off with a bench. One other thing were you doing in the gym where the piece missing was the bench i don't understand they're gonna be over by the cables people are taking over the cables yeah but that's that pisses me off even more because first of all each side of the cables you should be able to fit two people in there yeah you shouldn't ever be the guy who's got both cables at once and then i think what they do is they set up a bench down below it and add an incline and then they do flies with it oh but uh that's just use free weights at that point like why do you why do you got to do the the cables you're using up so much more space and there's it's just not

available right now no i've even had like i've had uh workouts that have called for being the guy with the cable in each hand and then i look at the gym and the amount of people in there's go well no we're just not doing that one today we're skipping that one today right this would be there's too much heat on it we're going to come up with an alternative or or we'll just we'll let that muscle fail today. Yeah. Yeah. Gyms are, my gym is completely gross right now, but I will say that my benches are all bolted to the ground at my gym.

That's good. I feel like I'm like, I will be annoyed if someone takes the dumbbells and brings them to another part of the gym. Yeah. But I also also like you know who knows maybe just you really needed space you didn't want to be in this area that's fine the the benches don't look like they want to be taken anywhere else they look like this is their home and and they should stay that way because i'm not going to track one down if one's missing

i will just like the like the way i usually adjusted a gym is like okay well i guess i'm not doing the thing i wanted to do right because someone took the bench upstairs i mean i will go if it's weights i'll go hunt it down because i want to be yeah first of all i want to see who honestly the face of the person who's using it somewhere else that's and if they're using it somewhere else and they're just using that weight i'm like yeah good for you you're doing the thing and they'll take it back when they're done but if it's somebody who's got for whatever reason a bunch of other shit around them and like they're like sitting there on their phone sitting on a weight i'm like yeah you gotta

let me use this wave man hey i mean i don't say it like that to them i go to them when i say hey how many more sets do you have with that do you mind if i work in right here and the majority of the time they're like oh oh uh yeah okay but like they're kind of put out by it i would love it if that other way was how you talk to people in the gym if you're like hey you gotta let me use that weight man you're like oh man what's the history with you in this way i need it back i feel like shit without it um but and then the other thing that drives me crazy is groups of people that will like a lot of times there's like two exercise machines for everything which is cool that's great the gym would provide you with two fly machines or

whatever but what you'll see is groups of guys will go and they'll take up both of them and so like yeah two buddies working out they're both going to be doing it simultaneously like no you work on the same machine because you're breaking at the same time like you just alternate just one of you goes one of you breaks one of you goes one of you breaks and i hate seeing that i also hate when people have all kinds of crazy new workouts they want to do that require like the 45 plates and they take them somewhere and they just leave a stack of 45 plates somewhere because they're like why would i carry all these back somebody else was paid to do that uh this this phenomenon might be unique to my gym but uh youths and i want to say youths i mean high school maybe

even college uh have taken to hanging out together in the locker room area oh no and i like that like different pairs of youth sitting down looking at videos on a phone together and laughing and talking and sometimes like facetiming another friend and they're just like sitting in this small area being there and I don't want things to be like this but I'm also in my head thinking like I'm gonna I have to take my clothes off now and I don't I don't want anyone to be in here and you you're just like, you're just here with nothing to do, which is at least if it's like another person like me who also has to take their clothes off,

we will keep to ourselves. But you guys just like bored looking for something interesting. And soon a nude man is going to be here. And I don't want to be on the table for interesting things for you to laugh at with your youth. They have not even clocked you. They have no idea that you're even there. But yes, that baffles me as well, that kids will come and they completely find hanging out in such a dank, awful place and be like, yeah, this is great.

This is where I want to be. like yeah this is great this is where i want to be um because i think my concern soren is i've realized that anytime i see a teenager with a cell phone i'm very aware that i might be on a youtube prank show with prank very loosely defined and show very loosely defined just just kids have been raised on the internet and they've gone completely fucking chaotic and there's i'm gonna get caught up in the the the hit new meme where they slap a stranger in the face in the locker room where his pants are off and then if i get mad they'll say no no no look that's a camera it's a show goodbye do we agree to be on it we sign this waiver oh damn i i mean you're absolutely right to be scared of teenagers with phones yeah you're almost gonna do with that phone you're almost on that one guy's grocery store sex house show maybe i am on it we don't know i might be on that guy's show um but we'll never know

i don't think that prank probably went the way he wanted it to, but I did yell at a kid in the cat litter section. Um, I don't know, man. I, I think, uh, I think you're probably safe with those kids. First of all, I remember being a child and not, I know when I say child, I mean like a teenager, and not understanding that places were gross because my room at home was a wet towel. Like I was a gross human being at that age. So nothing was grossing me out.

So hanging out in a locker room that feels like a tent at the end of a 10-day camping trip. And I also understand if like they're waiting for a ride home or something, they might just think like, oh good, we don't have to fucking work out for a while. We just hang and talk about bullshit like buddies do. Yeah.

I found that the kids that go to my gym, and there's a couple, depending on which gym I go to, it's either the LMU crowd, which means that there's a bunch of college students, or it's a high school crowd at the other one. And when I, if I happen to go at the wrong time, which is like four in the afternoon, all those kids are there and they all have backpacks and none of them, none of them want to be away from their backpack. So like whatever they're working out on, like all six of them are

bringing their backpacks over to that piece of equipment and just get scattered around, you know, like there's now a big radius around the piece of equipment that everyone's kind of like trying to dodge. But they carry their backpacks throughout the gym and it's baffling to me. I won't even carry my phone in the gym. I carry my phone in the gym. Can't do it. Can't do it. I'm afraid it's going to get smashed. I got to listen to either music, a workout, or a podcast.

Oh, you got to listen to your mighty, man. Yeah. No. Your mighty, period. Man. got to listen to either music a workout or a podcast oh you gotta listen to your mighty man yeah no you're mighty period man that's that's in the that's in the kitchen drawer yeah the kitchen drawer with soy sauce packets and scissors and instructions for things i don't have things you'll never use again in your entire life yeah i've been using my mighty i like that a lot but i if there there have been times where i've wanted to listen to music while i'm at the gym i don't have the mighty and so i hook my my raycon earbuds up to the uh my phone but then i will find a secret place for my phone in the gym where no one's gonna reach it and i will i will sequence it away like i'll put it somewhere secret and then i just it reaches me wherever i go in it somewhere secret and then I just, it reaches

me wherever I go in the gym. Then I'm not looking at it too. And in fact, I enjoy that, that part of the gym going process. If I'm going to climb up some windows to get to this top shelf area where I can put a phone, I'm excited about that. I do a lot of workouts on my phone, uh, through the all out app. I know you gave shit to men's health a little while ago. I love men's health and the app is through men's health. And there's enough of these workouts that I've done enough times that I practically have them memorized. So I should just like write down what they are and do them that way. But one of them always makes me laugh. It's the trainer is very intense as he's going through the exercises. And there's one

specific exercise that he's doing. And he's in between he's like in the resting period. And he likes to talk about the purpose of the workout and his methods for teaching everything like that. But he's just not like the best. He doesn't always seem aware that, like, hey like hey man you are leading a workout video right now he really talks to you like he's just talking to a buddy at the gym and then this one exercise he was he's saying now what's the purpose of going backwards on your left leg we go backwards on the left leg oh my heart rate's wigging out right now hold on and he just sits down and it's like really weird

and a little scary and when he when he starts talking again he's completely dropped whatever he was going to say before and doesn't bring up his heart rate either it was just something something's coming left leg oh my heart rate's wigging out right now okay so about 10 more seconds then we go back into it and the reason that we're doing it 30 seconds on 45 seconds off was like what the fuck just happened to your heart there man why like first of all that's really weird you should talk about how you noticed your heart rate was wigging out and then what you did to fix it second of all reshoot this video if you're not going to talk about it.

Put a cut in there. I'm fine with jump cuts. We're not trying to win an Oscar with this. What else? What else? I mentioned my eye exam. This is just another complaint about the forward march of time. And then we can wrap up the show. I hadn't gotten my eyes checked in years

and I wanted new glasses and also to see if my prescription needed update. And it did. Again, I hadn't been there in like four years, I don't think. And then the doctor at the end was asking me if there's anything else that I've noticed about my eyes, any other new things, new problems. And I go, yes. When I drive at night, sometimes headlights that i see make me feel like i'm going crazy whoa and they're just so bright it seems insane and he goes oh yeah i don't know what they're doing they're way too bright now that's true for everybody it's a real problem well wait and then we're just like i i guess i guess we we just agree that headlights are too bright and uh there's nothing anyone will do about them.

Have you noticed headlights being too bright, Soren? So, you know, I'm a fixer of the world's problems. I feel like I – so I flash everybody because I constantly think people have their brights on. And then they flash me back and like, nah, man, look, it gets way brighter than this. And I'm like, okay, my mistake. Sorry. They're just driving around with these super bright headlights on all the time. And the doctor was like, yeah, we've got like 18 and 20 year olds coming in complaining

about headlights at night. That never happens. They're too young for that to affect their eyes. And I was like, yes, should we call the government? What should we do? I think part of it is that the old headlamps, they had a direction to them. They were built in a, what's it called? What's that oval shape that has a focal point, an ellipse? Yeah. They're built into an ellipse, just like a flashlight. So it like beams in one direction and they kind of tilt that down on old cars. And then the brighter ones would, would, was a combination of down and up. So you're getting a lot more of everything,

but the led lights scatter a lot more easily. So the led lights are just kind of like shining in every direction. So it feels like every car is coming directly at your forehead it seems like a change that has been made in my lifetime that uh is completely unregulated and out of control and i feel like if i get if i ever get another car which i will have to at some point i will i i think we're all just like shifting in this direction that headlights will just be bright now and i will also be be a monster. Yeah, I think that's it. And you just, or I'm seeing when I was looking at cars online, uh, they have new smart mirrors now that will dim when headlights from behind hit them. And like, yeah, I guess, but now I have to pay extra for the service for the thing that we should just make headlights not as bright

i would love i would love that that i would love to have that i would also really like to have my windshield do that but i realize i see the dangers of that all right that's our podcast everybody it's quick question with soren and daniel you know that you can follow daniel on at DOB underscore Inc. You can follow me, Soren, Soren underscore LTD. We're not going anywhere. We're just staying on Twitter. Yeah, I like it now.

We never got that push that we needed. I was really kind of like hoping for it. I was hoping that there would be something so egregious that I'd be like, ah, I don't have to do this anymore. But it never really came. And now I'm like, I'm still having fun here. You can follow Quick Question there at qq

underscore Soren and Dan. You can email us at qq with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. Big thanks to our sound engineer on this episode, Jacob Weinstein. And you can follow us on Patreon or buy Patreon. Buy it. Give us money on Patreon and you'll get exclusive content from us. Some little after hours stuff where we talk about, I don't know, stuff we don't talk about on the regular podcast.

It's at Patreon slash quick question. Our music, our theme song is by Merex and you can find their music anywhere you find your music, say Spotify. But you can also just find their music specifically at me, Rex dot bandcamp.com. Okay. Bye. I wanna hear your thoughts, I 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 favourite? Who did you get? When do I be remembered?

What's it out there? Where did all the boys 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