Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - The TacoZilla

Episode Date: August 7, 2022

Soren gets bamboozled by corporate America! And as always big thanks to our sponsors. Go to Shopify.com/qq for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features.

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 with? What do we talk about? I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien When will I be remembered? Was it out there? Where did all that go? Did we not? 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 with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents. And guy who is at this moment kind of rattled, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, take over.

Hey, everybody. I'm Soren Bui. I'm sure Daniel wants me to ask about why he's rattled, but I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to tell you about me, the inventor of burrito glue. Thank you, Burrito Glue, for sponsoring this podcast. We've all felt that anxiety of loading up your innards of a burrito and trying to calibrate for size and elasticity of your tortilla, but no matter how good your fold or your tuck or your roll is, the sad truth is not every burrito keeps its guts. Everything from moisture factor to the hardening of the tortilla as it cools, et cetera, I bet, They can all ruin your meal.

Loosing all that loose meat you worked so hard to carefully pack. Well, no more. With my patented odorless tasteless formula, TBD, you apply a thin layer from this easy-to-use needle nozzle, and the tortilla activates the edible stickiness, securing the butt of your burrito for hours and even days, probably. Don't live in fear. Burrito glue. Get yourself a slather. Only at Ace Hardware. Thanks to Shopify for supporting Quick Question. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell

anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like myself the resources once reserved for big business. For a free 14-day trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features, go to shopify.com slash QQ. So this question doesn't need to be insulting, but it might be. Did you write that down? I mean, I had like a couple of sentences that I wanted to get to. Like some, there was the connective tissue wasn't there. Okay.

Is that all right? I guess. Yeah. If it wasn't written down at all, then it's, it's very impressive. If you wrote it down, because like. Because like you were struggling, I think. I was struggling? A little bit, yeah. Well, I mean, I said at one point I got butt wrong. I stumbled over that.

That was an actual written down sentence. Yeah. And I think you threw in, I can only assume would be the female version of burrito. You threw in a burrito at one point. Yeah. Well, I didn't, I want to be inclusive.

Sure. Did you know that I invent things sometimes Dan in my brain? No, I did. I don't think I knew that. Yeah. Well, I famously,

I invented the electric toothbrush and then the idea was, that's right. That's right. But I invite, I invent other things all the time in my head and I haven't made any of them yet burrito glue forgive me uh is there a functional difference between burrito glue and uh say cheese for example like a well melted cheese in a burrito that secures all of the the flaps folds. Yeah. I mean, cheese doesn't really do that. No, the back of your burrito, the cheese is, it's like, it's first of all, cheese is more of like a oil.

It's the opposite of a glue. It's slick. And this is like a, this is a glue so that when you fold up, you know, regardless of how good you are at folding a burrito, there's always like the back, you put it down even, and it just like unravels. It opens right up. You can't pin it. And I tried, I did for the first thing I invented was a pin, but that was a big, just in like the R and D portion of it, there was a lot of problems with people eating the pin. So what I've done instead is created a burrito glue that allows you to glue up the back of your burrito and ensure that that burrito is not going to open up yeah in the back hey i want to tell you something i love it i think it's a great

idea thank you i have another one that's coming out pretty soon that's a coming out pretty soon yeah i had i did have one other question about Burrito Glue. You said you invented it. And then immediately after you said you invented it, you said, thanks to our sponsor. Yeah. Burrito Glue. Okay. All right. So I'm trying to get the word out.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I'm also, in addition to the creator, I'm also the advertiser. I've done some PR so far, but I've found it sort of difficult to get the word out without a lot of money. And a lot of money obviously went into the making of burrito glue. So what I'm doing is like a more of a grassroots operation.

And I know a guy who has a podcast called quick question and I just had him do it for free. Sure. Okay. So what's your other invention? Ice cream sandwich netting. This is my stuff about the structural integrity of food. Yeah.

So walk me through it. Okay. It's like a scaffolding for your ice cream sandwich. It's just a – I found the biggest problem with an ice cream sandwich is that as you bite into it, there's too much structural integrity to the cookie and not enough to the ice cream. And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the ice cream is making the cookie colder and harder. And then as soon as you bite down, also the ice cream is getting warmer. And so as soon as you bite down, it's all squishing out, squishing out the sides.

And I don't like that. And so this is essentially a, I don't want to say metal, but it's going to have a similar texture scaffolding. It's like a screen, a chicken wire, if you will, that goes around the outside of your ice cream sandwich that just sort of keeps it all in one spot. One thing I've always wondered about ice cream, and I'm not of this world, so I know I'm talking out of my ass here. I don't know why we've ever tried to improve upon the bowl. Cones are bad. Sandwiches are bad. Waffle sandwiches are bad.

It's all bad. Just stick with the bowl. The bowl is fine. It's a perfect way to dispense ice cream and topics. For the most part, I agree with you, but I do appreciate the endeavor that somebody went out on a limb and was like, I don't like having the bowl to deal with after I'm done.

Like say I'm walking around a state fair and I want to eat my ice cream. I'm walking on the boardwalk. Garbages abound in both of those scenarios. Yeah, this one's all full up with hot dogs and stuff though. I see, okay. The funnel cake, it's untenable. There's just paper plates everywhere from funnel cake.

Sure. And so I've got, I don't want that bowl at the end. And I'm kind of like looking for a trash while I'm on this date. And I've got the spoon that I'm also responsible for. And I had to kind of keep it pinned inside the cup with one finger, but also like the lip of the, the, the cup is also a little sticky. What I want is, and bear with me, a cone, right? A cone that I can very panically try to eat this ice cream

as quickly as possible before it dissolves the cone and like freak out for about 10 minutes, try and like wolf down this entire thing of coarse custard before it actually devastates my hand. I understand, uh, not wanting to be responsible for a bowl and spoon, but, but you know what I love about bowl and spoon is when I'm done, I don't have to wash my hands. And I do, if I'm doing an ice cream sandwich or a cone or any other non bowl situation. Well, I'm with you as far as ice cream sandwich is concerned.

I think that it was ludicrous concept. We shouldn't have tried it. The joy of having a cookie with ice cream is that the cookie is warm. It sits under the ice cream. It's a little surprise that you get to. And, uh, it's that combination of hot and warm or like a brownie Sunday or something like that. You always, you want that warm with the cold and to to freeze a cookie over the ice cream is uh would there are we have stories about people flying too close to the sun

and what an issue that is don't do it yeah i mean we have the main one the main well there's one yeah there's one to be sure amelia erhart the challenger yeah yeah uh how's it going dan it's okay it's it's um i mentioned being rattled uh 20 minutes before we started recording i was walking in a neighboring town there's a town that's 0.6 miles away from where I live. And sometimes I go there to work from a coffee shop. And I was walking back from there to make this recording. And a guy started talking to me on the walk. And he said,

what do you do in a postmodern society? And I took my headphones out. What's your frequency, Kenneth? Yeah. And I said, what? And he said, in a postmodern society, what do you do in postmodernity? What do you do? What do you do with your life? And I said, I don't think I understand the question. And he said, I don't either. It's a crazy question. That's why I bring it up. What are we supposed to do? And in somewhat of a panic move, I pointed at the sun because that's generally how I respond to most things like this. It's just like, the sun is out and I have air in my lungs, so I don't know what I could complain about. But I didn't say those

things. I just pointed at the sun. And he says, exactly. You point at the sun. In post-modernity, when you get questions that aren't real questions, you just point at the sun. We've been pointing at the sun our entire lives. And I said, I guess so. And then he got into his car. And he said, at least I have my Subaru. My parents got it for me, but they're kind of assholes. But at least I got it and it runs. And I said, okay. And then I left and then he left. I have a couple of questions about this. Yeah. Go ahead. What were his shoes like? I didn't look at his shoes, but I bring up, I bring up the fact that he got into his car because I, I know this, the, the framework of this story makes it seem like maybe he was, an unwell homeless person yeah who was just like

shouting at anyone who will listen but he was when i saw him like dressed in a shirt with buttons that tucked into his pants that had a belt i didn't look at his shoes and we walked down the street to his car a subaru so i was like this isn't like a random crazy person who was just like accosting strangers. He had somewhere to be and a way to get there. The other hurdle I'm trying to negotiate in the story is that his parents got him a Subaru. How old is this guy? 20s, late 20s. Not a kid. Not a kid for sure.

And not an old man. Cha-ching. I love that sound. It makes me smile. That's the sound of another an old man. Cha-ching. I love that sound. It makes me smile. That's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Cha-ching. Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run, and grow your business.

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go to shopify.com slash qq, all lowercase. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving you the resources once reserved for big business, customized for you with a great-looking online story that brings your idea to life and tools to manage and drive sales. Making your idea real opens endless possibilities. Believe me, this podcast started as a dream in Soren's eye, a simple dream that he cried out and I snuffed it out. I was like, we're never, get your head out of the clouds, Soren Bui. You get your head out of the clouds. You got a nice looking head, but you spend it all the time in the clouds. Get it out of there. Bring it down to earth. And now look at us. We are successful entrepreneurs

with a podcast and our heads wherever we want them to be. I love how Shopify makes it easy for anyone to successfully run their own business like Soren and I. Shopify powers millions of entrepreneurs from first sale to full scale. Plus with 24-7 support, you're never alone. More than a store, Shopify grows with you. This is a possibility powered by Shopify. Go to shopify.com slash QQ, all lowercase, for a free 14-day trial and get full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. Start selling on Shopify today.

Go to shopify.com slash qq right now get your head out of the clouds and get them on Shopify and he did he catch up to you like did he jog up to you no I was just walking we were walking at uh the same clip on the same sidewalk. So when he got into his car and drove off, did he just drive into the side of a building and the car blew up? No. How bizarre.

I'm really curious about his shoes. I need that detail because the reason I need it is that that's how I can always tell what I'm dealing with. Okay. In a person. If they are wearing, I could tell somebody's a crazy person or not by their shoes. All right. If they're wearing shoes that are completely beyond, they should not be wearing them anymore. They're like scuffed up and they're the bottom, it looks like the tread is fall like flapping and right it's just like a leather bag that's wrapped around with a

rope yeah it's and it's not it's not always an indication of somebody who's um houseless it's sometimes it's just like the crazy people also don't take care of their shoes it's just like it's never a priority yeah but you can also tell if like somebody like that is dressed normally but then they also have on like a pair of alice alligator skin boots or whatever you're like oh this is the other side of crazy yeah i have somebody else that i'm dealing with but like it's a really good indicator for crazy always is the shoes and uh i just i need to know if this guy's just like walking around in adidas i'm gonna be like well fuck i don't know what this is anymore yeah i guess i'll keep an eye out for shoes next time i i thought he was certainly if he had like like noticeably bad shoes it would be a surprise based on how well kept he was

otherwise yeah post-modern society yeah um i think i I think I hate this guy. I think I do too, because that's a bad question, right? No, it's a bad first impression. It's not just about a stranger accosting another stranger. That's a stingy question. There's nothing generous about that question, because we don't have the same definitions of post-modernity, I don't think.

I don't even know what that is. I don't know if I have one. Yeah, right. Okay. So when he just says like, what do we do? What do you do in post-modernity times? He pointed at the sun. Yeah.

Look at the sun. Look how nice it is. What are you talking about? And he was like, please point at the sun. Please point at the sun. Yeah. Look at the sun. Look how nice it is. What are you talking about? And he was like, please point at the sun. Please point at the sun. I know. Exactly. I got an answer for that.

Yeah. And if I wasn't going to this recording and maybe I had more time, I would like to have stopped down a little bit for that and been like, have we been pointing at the sun for eternity? Like, look, buddy, I got a minute. Let's sit and really unpack this. little bit for that and been like have we been pointing at the sun for eternity like like look buddy i got a minute let's sit and really really unpack this what are you talking about uh oh man was he bearded no no it's just nothing he's adding up here yeah for me i'm really trying to picture this guy and it's just not going great in my brain.

So let's see. This is his icebreaker, but there's also a moment that we just sort of glossed over, which is that he said it and then had to wait for you to take out headphones to say it again, which like there's a lot of opportunities to back out, to be like, this isn't, I don't know why I said that. Or like, let me, let me walk that back. Hey, I think you look like a fun guy. And we're the only two people in this town who are under the age of 65. Do you want to be buddies? Right.

Which I think are all valid things. Yeah. But he, he wasn't into that. He was just like, I'm going to ask him again. I'm going to wait till he gets his headphones down and ask him again. I think like bizarrely, the strangest part of it for me was at least I've got my Subaru where I was like, fuck me. Is this an ad?

What's happening? He didn't say car. He said, at least I've got my Subaru. I think what you just experienced is what women probably experience 14 times a day. Which is like, some dude is just like, what's my angle here? Post-modernity. And like,

and then he's just, it goes up and just like, try it, gives it a shot, takes a swing on something weird. That's going to make her stop for a second. Like what, what?

And like, that's all he said. That's what he's banking on. And so I think that's sort of like confusing trap is something that you probably was and also he's like by the way did i mention i have a car yeah um i think there's this car a woman would run into regularly yeah i don't know i don't it's it's tough when he says uh my parents bought it for me but they're assholes i'm like i don't uh i've don't, it's, it's tough when he says, uh, my parents bought it for me, but they were assholes. I'm like,

I don't, uh, I've only, I've, I've heard very little about your parents. They don't seem like the villains in this story to me so far. Yeah. I'm not really,

I'm not, I don't think I can trust your judgment on who, who isn't an asshole in the world guy. That's crazy. Yeah. So that's been my day yeah that's a wild day do you want me do you want me to tell you what i did today yeah please so my son's birthday is coming up and uh well actually i can start this with a quick oh yeah uh labor day right i pretty yes right around there yeah yes so let me let me give you a quick question here. When you were a kid, how did you celebrate your birthdays?

Let's say like ages six to nine. How did you celebrate birthdays? It's tough. We were on so much fucking Coke back then that I genuinely don't remember. I want to say, well, my eighth birthday, we can't talk about because we have a blood oath that was forged in the ashes of that Chuck E. Cheese. But the other ones, I think pizza and cake probably is what I'll say on there.

There's an activity. There's usually something else involved. Piñata was huge. Like getting a piñata for a birthday was like, everyone strap in. We're going to play musical chairs uh, pinata was huge. Like getting a pinata for a birthday. It was like everyone, everyone's strapping. We're going to play musical chairs and we're all going to like play pin the tail of donkey. And we're mostly biding our time until we get to the pinata.

The pinata was the centerpiece for everything. Yeah. Hugely reckless. Yeah. Entertainment for children, lots of candy and it's violent. And there was, uh,

this is a change that happened in my lifetime. We went from pinatas where you hit it with a bat and the candy pulls out to I remember a pinata when I was a kid where it was like a giant circle with several strings coming down at the bottom

and every kid grabs a string and you just pull it. There's no honor in it. There's no violence in string and you just pull it oh there's there's no there's no honor in it there's no violence in it it's it's you you all pull it everybody wins everyone gets candy and uh uh right i don't care for it that seems yeah i i mean the thrill is gone but that seems like a far safer option the the idea of a pinata is his head first crazy in my opinion because you you have like here's a here's a circle there's going

to be a kid in there with a steel bat and he's going to be blindfolded and no one is allowed to circle but what a steel bat steel yeah steel bat or okay let's be generous not aluminum not wooden the wood end of a mop okay but. But, I don't know. I don't even know what bats are made of. You're probably right. It's aluminum. But somebody has a,

it's like a force of destruction. Yeah. He's going to be blindfolded in that circle. And listen, none of you other kids are allowed in the circle, but there is going to be candy

in that circle. Yeah. Don't go in it, but there is going to be candy there. Right. And when the candy hits, you should also go in. Like there's so many,

the rules are so confusing. It's nuts. We're going to blindfold and arm a kid and we're also not going to be candy there. Right. And, and when the candy hits, you should also go in like there's so many, the rules are so confusing. It's not, we're going to blindfold and arm a kid. And we're also not going to tell him when the thing is done. He's going to have to just like guess based on screams, if he should stop swinging or not. We're also going to spin him around. So he's disoriented.

It doesn't know where he's going with the bat. And he said, it's his job to swing it as hard as he can. And people are going to try and trick him. Like if he swings in one area and misses anything, it's probably because they moved the pinata. They're just moved it up in the tree. So swinging that spot again,

um, it's, it's tough, but I, I'm not doing it. Did we get a pinata for your 30th birthday? We did. Yeah.

Yeah. It was great. Awesome. Um, it was so much fun. So this is not a story of a pinata, but this is, I, my birthdays when I was young were you would go to miniature golf or you would go bowling and you go to pizza hut. And that was like every kid's birthday for a decade. yeah it was like that was the deal and birthdays are i understandably different now pizza huts don't really exist in that capacity anymore but uh i've noticed that in la like the birthday scene and maybe it's just here and maybe it's everywhere it's like you get a bouncy house no matter what

wherever you go if you like have it in a park you rent out a portion of the park and then you get a bouncy castle and a birthday that doesn't have a bouncy castle. All the kids are like, where's the bouncy cat? What the fuck? Does I don't think I ever had a bouncy castle. No birthday. I didn't know that. I don't think they existed until like 10 years ago. So we didn't have bouncy castles, but like a bouncy castle is just a staple of birthdays

now. So I'm planning my son's birthday. I ran out of park. I know the space. I went and scouted it. I'm planning my son's birthday. I ran out of park. I know the space. I even went and scouted it. I went and looked at this area where I was like, ah, this will be where we set up the cake and everything. This will be where there's plenty of spots here, space here for a bouncy castle. I've already got my company in mind because bouncy castle companies are, ooh, it's a lawless world over there.

um because bouncy castle companies are oh it's a lawless world over there yeah there's a lot of reviews where they're like it's one guy and he's got a bunch of them stored somewhere and he just goes and gets one brings it in the truck and sets it up and the reviews are like hey never came uh week it was on the fourth of july it was supposed to be a big deal we had this bouncy castle it was coming he said he was stuck in traffic. We waited another three hours. And then he said, couldn't make it after all. I'm sick. And so like, there's just, it gets, it gets really bad, really fast. You got to find the legitimate businesses. I found one that I was like, yes, they even had my son's theme is a Star Wars party, which I think he does it just to hurt me. That's got to be tough for you. Yeah. And he wants to do Star Wars. there's a star wars bouncy castle that

rules i found this one that's like just a little bit bigger than the parks generally allow they want 15 by 15 feet and there's one that's 19 by 21 and i'm like nobody's gonna come measure this thing rules it's got a slide in it it's got inside there are these um big rounded pads that stick up that the kids can bounce around in between it's got all kinds of it's got everything you could want and i was like this is the one i'm getting so i called them and they're like okay where is the party are you i suppose i gave the date like we're available where's the party and i was like it's here in this park in culver city and they're like oh culver city no we don't do culver city and i was like okay why not uh and

they're like uh they said that it was because culver city has changed their rules so that any vendor has to have an an insurance obviously most vendors will have insurance that come to like a public space like that but the vendors have to have insurance that gives them a three million dollar per occurrence uh whatever it's called not deductible but the other have to have insurance that gives them a $3 million per occurrence, whatever it's called, not deductible, but the other thing. They will get $3 million per occurrence if there's something that happens. And that's completely exorbitant and out of the question for any vendor. So at first I found out it was just bouncy houses and I was like, well, fuck, I won't do a bouncy house. I'll do like, we'll have these people come that come that teacher, someone comes dressed as Obi-Wan teaches your kids how to use the force and

they make lightsabers and like that kind of cool stuff. Yeah. No, same thing. You, they, they can't, you have to have them.

They'd be insured for over $3 million and $6 million per year. Do you think Culver city is either trying to, um, price people out of this to keep it exclusive or if they just want no vendors whatsoever. It sounds like they want no vendors whatsoever. I think that their end game is we don't want events in our area. Yes.

I think that this is actually like shots fired on bouncy castles particularly and then everything else just fell in with it. Because you can't just say bouncy castles because it seems there's all kinds of other really dangerous stuff you could be doing that they're also not allowed. So the bouncy castles are like a problem in parks, I guess, in that they take up space.

They're loud because they always have a generator. The kids go crazy around them. Like they go nuts. And it maybe just feels like a big liability to parks or it feels like an eyesore. I don't know what it is, but they're like, the government of Culver City is like, no more. We're not allowing it. You'd have to have... It's like setting a bail at $10 million, basically. It's like, no, it's just designed to keep people from paying it. So as I was looking into it, I was calling these different vendors and I'm like,

is there a single vendor who can do this? And they're like, no. And I was looking into it, I was like calling these different vendors and like, is there a single vendor who can do this? And they're like, no. And I was like, okay, well, what if I got my own insurance for the day? What if I got just insurance for one day?

How much would that cost? And they were like, uh, about $26,000. Good God. All right. Well, that's a little more than I was looking to spend.

Yeah. You have to wonder like, how much is your son's love worth? And it's not 26,000. That's don't feel bad about that. It's okay. If the answer is no, not 26,000. So really the only answer. And so I even called other people cause I'd been to other birthdays this year where they had bouncy castles and I was like, Hey, what's the deal? How did Evan hook that up? And his parents were like, Oh, they they just changed the rule we're trying to have a birthday for our younger son and he can't get it so like it was around I guess they changed it in

January but they didn't really inform any of the parks until about May and then when May when the everyone for who works for Parks and Rec found out they're like okay this is the new rule and since May or June or whatever there has not been a bouncy castle in all of Culver City. And so now I'm like frantically trying to figure out what to do because I've already rented this park out. And I'm like, I think I just have to maybe eat that money and then get a park in Los Angeles or Mar Vista or somewhere else that's not outside of city limits and just go there. But I can't, I just don't understand why. and just go there. But I can't, I just don't understand why I'm trying to like get in their headspace of like,

what a crazy rule to instate and ensure that like, no one has fun at your parks anymore. Right. I guess that's don't want birthdays. I don't know. I don't want to rub salt or anything like that, but my town, my beach town here in New Jersey,

now that we're like deep, deep, deep into summer every weekend is a different bullshit festival to celebrate nothing like like it's legitimately every single saturday is one or two different festivals and this past saturday um was uh i'm not going to say what the festival was because I don't want to give away where I live but the short version of it is there were I'm trying to remember exactly I think four different bouncy castles oh in like our town square oh my god there was like slides there was like like like a one where you like climb and do like obstacle stuff like American Ninja

Warrior bouncy castle and there was one that was just for like play golf in a bouncy environment and then like a couple of your standard bouncy castles it was great it was a free-for-all that's you know what you're reminding me that this is going to be really interesting come halloween when all the pumpkin patches set up because that's the bread and butter of a pumpkin patch it's not the pumpkins no it's like the soup plantation you don't go to the soup plantation for the soup no absolutely not get some pizza and some pasta but uh yeah they you go to uh mr bones or dr bones i think he's a doctor now uh i think i think he finally finished his medical degree no he's a skeleton oh okay i see uh dr bones pumpkin patch and uh they yeah the bread and butter that place is like you got all these cool giants inflatable slides and i can't imagine they could do that anymore i wonder what's going to

happen this year i think it all dies so the long story short is that as i was talking to different vendors about this because they're all complaining about it too because some of them are based in culver city and they're like we can't even work in our own city. And what they were saying was that they think it's... Sorry, hang on a second. Let me get this right. What the fuck was I about to say?

Hold on. I started typing in this search, and I was like, wait a second. What am I looking for? Hang on. No, it's gone. Maybe I'll think of it later. There's something very dark and funny to me about cities gentrifying themselves so much that no one can live there anymore.

You're not even kicking out a community or a group of people. It's just like Culver City, they want to be so nice that no one can afford to live there or have any fun there. It's just going to be a snow globe of a place that just exists and looks nice that you can drive past and that's it. Don't take your shoes off when you're in culver city don't don't touch the trees don't touch anything just look at it and then be on your way yeah what it come to our city come to our city don't don't fucking stop yeah go go

don't get out of your cars you'll ruin it yeah um anyway it's i don't know if this will break his heart or not i don't even know what we're gonna do i think we'll just move to a different park and we'll still do a a giant bouncy castle and and then all the kids won't get there and say where's the bouncy castle i think that's got to be the most humiliating thing for him is if they all get there and like what's where's the thing that we all get yeah i feel like I would remember that as a kid if every birthday party had a bouncy castle and then I went to the one that didn't. That would stick in my brain

forever. It's the six-year-old version of a dry wedding. Yeah, 100%. You get there and you're like, are you fucking kidding me? Do you know how long I spent in the toy aisle of Target for you to come here? Did you have any,

neither we're talking about it. Did you have any, um, it was mostly golfing and bowling for your birthdays. Did you do anything that, uh, in retrospect, maybe it was kind of weird.

We had, um, there was, I don't know if this was, uh, uh, national trend or a New Jersey trend, but one year for birthday parties, we got was mine where it was like we're gonna we're gonna rent out this pottery place next to the hobby shop and we're all going to paint ceramics and that's going to

be our birthday party i think actually ronan would love the shit out of that like one of them i made a i painted a uh like a ceramic bank that i could put my the money that i didn't have could go in there and i painted a dog and like, it was super fun. And I'm looking back on it and I'm like, Hey, why did I do that? Why did we want to do that? Where did that come from? Why were we all super briefly laser focused on painting ceramics for a year? There are, so at a lot of birthdays that I attend now, there is the option to they

have like little bird houses wooden bird houses and a lot of paint or they've got um just like little things uh not snowmen but something like a like a little alien or something like that that you can also paint like it's a big deal that at these parties there's also like a craft section where yeah oh the kids that want to just sit down and make something like they can paint something and i think that and my son loves that when as soon as my son gets to a party he won't play with any kids if those are there because he wants to do six bird houses yeah and i feel like he would love a pottery painting option for his birthday the only reason he's doing a bouncy castle because he thinks that's the way it's supposed to go i'm gonna ask him i'll see if that's something he wants yeah get some some some star wars pottery

so we used to on birthdays it was also a big deal everybody had trampolines also yeah in my hometown and so it was a big deal for everybody to you it was a sleepover birthday and you would all sleep on the trampoline together that was going to be like the night yeah so we do like the pizza we do whatever we did and then afterwards we'd all just play on the trampoline until we were too tired to play anymore and then we'd fall asleep and it's cold in colorado so even in the summers at night it's getting down to the low 50s sometimes in the 40. And some kids don't have great sleeping bags. They have like the square one that has like, it doesn't have a hood on it or anything. It's just square with some fleece in it or whatever. And those kids really suffered, but you'd show up with like a giant synthetic

thermal bag and you'd all play on the trampoline for a very long time, sometimes with water guns even. And then at the end, you'd all just pass out and go to sleep and wake up all play on the trampoline for a very long time, sometimes with water guns even. And then at the end, you'd all just pass out and go to sleep and wake up at six in the morning because you'd frost on your sleeping bag. Yeah. There's something really wonderful about like, hey, we're going to play on this thing. And then when you're tired,

you sleep on the thing that you play with. And in the morning, you eat the thing that you slept on. It feels very old school. Yeah. And then I also had a friend who lived up that valley. You know where I got married, that little tiny valley. So he lived up that way and there's a natural hot springs up there. And so every single birthday, the plan was we would go to his house, we'd watch a movie. And then we would all at in the middle, like nine o'clock at night, we'd walk up to the hot springs and set it up. And what that means is that it's hot springs coming out of the river.

So it's partially in the river and partially not. And you have to basically build a rock wall to get the temperature exactly right. Otherwise just blasting, boiling hot water up into one spot. And then there's ice cold river water. Cause it's just like snow melt coming down from the rivers and you have to really like get it right. And so we do this manual labor for two and a half hours in the middle of the night,

setting up the perfect little hot tub in the middle of the river so that we could all just sit there for a little bit and then go home. Wow. Yeah. That's, that's a way more involved than any of my birthday parties. Well, I mean,

looking back on it, I'm like, why, why do we spend so much time on it? I don't think I ever remember spending that much time on anything. Yeah. And we were lifting heavy river stones and trying to find the right ones. Yeah.

But so the last few days, my son hasn't been in camp. I've been like more focused on him getting his birthday all scheduled and, and put away. Yeah. But so the last few days, my son hasn't been in camp. I've been like more focused on him getting his birthday all scheduled and put away. Yeah. Locked up. And in the meantime, I've also just had him because I'm not working the last couple of days and trying to figure out what to do with him. And I built him a rubber band gun. Did you ever build those when you were young?

Not build. I mean, we would shoot rubber bands with our fingers. There's a thing you could do where you can like wrap it around your hand enough times where your index finger is extended forward and your thumb is extended vertically. And if you position the rubber band just right, if you lower your thumb, it releases the rubber band forward and shoots it out as one would shoot a bullet so we would do that but um you know there was there was no nothing there was no building component to that okay i i had remembered somehow my childhood this same friend

who lived up in uh uh up in the middle of nowhere with the hot springs he yeah he had these rubber band guns that i think he must have made with his dad they're like more like rubber band rifles you had to tie two rubber bands together to get them long enough to stretch the extent of this big thing and i remember it just being like a wooden dowel and then there was something on the end and then there was a um clothespin and you just you'd have a notch in the front of it on the dowel you'd stretch the rubber band all the way back to the clothespin and then once it was in the clothespin and you just you'd have a notch in the front of it on the dowel you'd stretch the rubber band all the way back to the clothespin and then once it was in the clothespin all you did is push on the clothespin it would shoot wherever you wanted it to go and i loved it

we would like it was devastating i mean this thing would leave welts because you've got two rubber bands stretched together and i was like that's what i want for him i want him to do some damage and so i started looking up. I was like, surely people have designs for these online. And there's, it's crazy. If you look online to try and find rubber band gun DIYs, there's a huge chasm between the absolute dog shit, which is like somebody has taken some Popsicle sticks and scotch tape them together.

I've been like, look at this gun to people who have made something. It's just impossible to make. You do not have the tools for it. Even as a woodworker, as a gentle woodworker, as I consider myself, I do not have the tools for this. It's like you really, it's got, you got to like cut it out of plywood or you've got to got two pieces of wood. Then you're going to end up gluing them together and you're going to put a trigger in the middle of it and stuff.

Yeah, man, just Googling this quickly and looking at images, there are some of these guns, first of all, I'm not seeing a child's hand at all. This is an adult man's hand holding this thing that looks exactly like a real gun, but it's huge rubber bands. And I'm like, man, you're scratching a different itch this is this is this is you you want to cosplay as having a glock and shooting it at things and i don't understand why you want to do that but yeah there's people are making semi-automatic ones yeah where you have like you wrap put multiple rubber bands on it and you just and i was like I was like, I can't make any of this stuff. So I'm sure I'm like, what looking through this with him thinking I will find the one here and

it won't matter. And then as soon as he starts seeing these, he's like that one, that one, that one. I'm like, no, no, I shouldn't have done this in front of you. We're not doing any of these daddy. Can't do those. Daddy's not on Etsy selling these. I I'm this is out of our reach and so i just built it based on memory and dan the thing i built rules it's so cool we i i put more consideration into the feel and handle of this gun that i did of like an outdoor patio bench that i made right I've got, so it's got a, a square, uh, like a square dowel at the top of it. Um,

that's about a foot and a half. And I put a groove in the front with a miter saw. I mean, not a miter saw with a, um, God damn it. Come on, get the right saw or I'm going to lose the audience.

Okay. For the tremble drill. So I put a groove that you like and then because a dowel is so thin i didn't want to just have like his fingers in the way of the rubber band or him getting hit so i put a bottom on it the same way you would have like a on a shotgun that that pump action that thing that you're holding on to that's what i've got on essentially the bottom of this gun it's another rounded dowel that's about the same size that i just cut in half and now sits like is um first glued on then screwed onto the bottom and then in the back i was like i don't know how to build a handle i i would have to i could get a square piece of wood or like a rectangle piece of wood cut it down and then just

sand the shit out of it to make a handle make it rounded instead what we did is i took him to home depot we looked around and i got to the section where there were just some horsehair brushes and i was like a brush handle yes of course just cut off a brush handle and just and screwed it onto the back got the cut at an angle so that there's like there's nothing in the back it angles up like the back of a gun and then put on the paper clip and not paper clip the clothespin and this thing fucking shoots like it you could you could shoot a fly from 20 yards away with this thing how is so accurate how easy is it to load terribly hard terribly difficult i'm glad you asked as soon as it was done we were both like yes like even my son was like yeah this thing is

cool and then i went to load it and i was like oh he's never gonna be able to do this so we now have gone out and bought new rubber bands longer rubber bands that are a little bit easier and a little more amenable. And he can finally load it, but it really takes some work. Like he's got to put it on the ground. It's like loading a musket. It takes about as long as that. Where you're like, you're pinning it with your feet at the bottom. You're trying to get your face out of the way, but you're like stretching it all the way down.

Like gravity's got to do some work. Leverage has to do some work. It's, it's really difficult to load, but he's very excited about it and wants to show it to their kids in the block. And in some ways I'm very, I'm happy that it is hard to load because I know that as soon as he shows

it to their kids in the block, they're going to be like, let me see it. Let me shoot you with it. Yeah, of course. That's what kids do. And they're going to struggle to load it too.

And I'm going to be like, oh, okay. There's plenty of time here for me to step in and be like, don't please don't shoot anyone in the face with this. But it does damage. It's really great. It's a wonderful gun.

It's exactly what I wanted to make. And my wife hates it. So it's, I did the right thing. You know, what's interesting and a little bit humbling, the, the stuff that you're describing that you're doing for your soon to be six year old son. Seven. Seven.

My own time. It's shockingly similar to stuff that my brothers and I did when we were between 15 and 20 years old. Like we, we, we didn't build, um, rubber band guns, but we went to home Depot and, uh, made ourselves lightsabers. It was very similar to you making like star Wars stuff for your,

for your son, except we, we, uh, should have been out like meeting girls and having parties and doing things, but we bought, there were,

there were two components to our lightsabers one was like we got metal and odds and ends to build like what the hilt would look like like a non-functioning obviously lightsaber hilt and we we designed them ourselves and they had like heft to them and then we also built long wooden dowels that we would uh the base we would paint to look like the hilt. And then we would wrap the rest of it with tape to be the color of the blade. And we would spar with our wooden lightsaber dowels for nothing. It was for absolutely nothing. At one point we talked about like,

maybe we'll make a little Star Wars movie in the backyard, but we didn't. We mostly just like fought with wooden swords and like, not even like fight club style fighting where we're just brawling. We would choreograph minute long sequences and practice them and rehearse them for no one, for nothing. and rehearse them for no one for nothing yeah yeah i we would do similar things we it was the trampoline karate for us whereas like we came up with like this is like a good fight sequence on a trampoline like this is a this is solid and we've got it dialed in and if anyone was to ever attack us on a trampoline they would be in some serious trouble. Yeah. They'd be in a world of hurt.

Have there been a lot of fights in movies on trampolines? None. I don't think I've seen any. Yeah. That would be a really fun sequence. Yeah. This was our equilibrium, but instead of guns, it was trampoline. No, not equilibrium.

What is it? Guncada? Is that from equilibrium? Yeah, I guess it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my son and the other kids on the street are very excited about weapons weapons they're at like an age where weapons are very cool to them and

they started designing their own weapons uh maybe last year where everyone's gonna go outside and they'd all taken newspapers or whatever and just duct tape the newspapers into a club like rolled it up enough that you could then put four pounds of duct tape on it and it was heavy enough that it felt like a club. And we were, we were all kind of charmed by it. The parents, we were like, okay, they're, they're making these things. They're not using it on each other. They're hitting palm trees and stuff.

They're, they can't do much damage. This is fine. And then they just, you could just see the arms race happen. You can watch them suddenly be like, what if I put a rock in the middle of it? And they're like, this is way heavier now. And then other ones ones that were like they get a piece of wood and they'd realize that if they just scratched it on the sidewalk enough on the edge they could get that wood pretty sharp just like splintering sharp wooden axes that suddenly they had and we're like oh okay maybe we should have encouraged this

but then i did i built my son rubber band gun and so here we are the arms race continues they're gonna all want one too i just know it you're gonna have to build a lot of rubber band guns i think is where yeah this story inevitably goes i know and then they're all gonna need glasses or eye patches. I don't know which. That's cool. I somewhat famously wore an eye patch in school and it's fine. It doesn't sound fine if it was somewhat famous. All right.

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