Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - The Very Talented Mr. Bowie

Episode Date: November 27, 2021

Which celebrity are the guys accidentally stealing their mannerisms from?? Listen and find out in another GAARRRREEEAT episode of Quick Question! And as always big thanks to our sponsors. Thanks Bombas. Go to bombas.com/QQ to get 20% off your first purchase.  Thanks Express VPN, get an extra 3 months Free on a one year package. Expressvpn.com/QQ . Thanks BetterHelp.  Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/qq . Thanks Raycon!.  For a limited time, go To buyraycon.com/qq for up to 20% off your entire Raycon order.

So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast author of How to Fight Presidents, staff writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and fucking guy Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host mr soren buoy soren say hello hey everybody i'm soren buoy i am a writer for american dad i was a writer on the d textbook and uh you know i'm a man of wood i uh about a lot of things i'm currently building a um like a little reading nook for my son.

He's got two closets in his room, and I took the doors off of one of the closets and put a little platform in there, and I ordered a custom-sized cushion from Etsy that will sit atop that with some pillows, and then on the back wall, I'm paneling it, kind of like wood paneling it, but I've done it in different color stains,

this kind of rough-hewn wood, the kind of wood you'd expect to pull off of um a like a shipping a palette like a wood palette so it's kind of rough human but i've sanded it down so he doesn't get any slivers or anything stained each one a little bit differently so it looks almost like a barn or something like that and then we'll do some uneven placement of it on the back wall. Not uneven in relationship to one another, but just like the boards won't all be the same sizes. And then there'll be some lights strung through the top. It's going to be very cool, I think, when it's done.

Why did you remove the door? So that it opens up the room a little bit. Now it looks like a real, it's supposed to be there like a nook. I took the sliding doors on the closet and just took those off completely. And now it just looks like this little pod that's carved out from the room. Okay. Out of the wall. Well, that sounds fun.

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What are you doing? Nothing. Oh, okay. I'm in between seasons right now i'm on i'm i'm on hiatus and i have nothing to do so like what do you what what should i do well hey forgive me for suggesting it but is brazilian dancing out of the question? I used to take a kickboxing class and that gym shut down and is now a dancing class.

So maybe I'll do that. Yeah, what happened to your last dancing class? Or dancing group? Stopped happening. Oh, that's a bummer. Yeah, sorry. It was one of those ambitious things at the beginning of

covid that didn't last yeah i got a lot of those on my plate uh well i'm sorry to hear that i think that you could use a hobby though i'm wondering see that my hobbies are all like built on being stationary like you can yeah to be living in one place right now, you couldn't be more in transience. Yeah. How's your moving going? It's going okay. I don't know where I'm going to live. I took an online quiz. I Googled where should I live,

and a quiz came up, and the quiz told me Miami, Florida. No no i don't think that's right for me what is that the answer that everybody gets what a terror was sponsored by my by miami uh what that's doesn't fit for you at all i don't think so i think think, uh, I, cause I, I like, um, beaches and warmth. So they said Miami. Oh, there are more places that offer that. Would you be willing to live in the cold? Um, or is it, you're just sick of it at this point. I would be willing to live in the cold if it was like switzerland you know what does that mean

i i would be cold if it was a a function of an exciting new place. I don't want to be like cold in New Jersey or cold in Maine. I would want to be cold in like the Alps. Yeah, you want a novel type of cold. Yeah. And I think that I don't, I've never been, but I assume that like Chamonix and those places, that's all a dry cold, sort of like the Rocky Mountains are, which is what I grew up with,

which I don't know if it even qualifies as cold it certainly gets low you get down to like the negative sometimes that's rare you spend most of the winter hovering around like uh 20 or 30 degrees and sometimes a little warmer than that but when you're in the sun it doesn't feel like that when you're in the sun it feels nice and warm where would you so this this will be very helpful to me um ignore your your wife and your kids where would you live if you could live anywhere right now where would you spend winter i'd probably do it in Utah. Utah? Yeah, maybe northern Nevada, but Utah probably, yeah. Because there's a lot of winter sports to be done in those places, and they don't feel as played out as Colorado.

Colorado, I feel like, has been just decimated by tourism to the point where I wouldn't be... It would be, it doesn't even feel like it has any original fingerprints to it. It's just these, it's all like the veil resorts have taken over everything and every place is exactly the same. And you're certainly, there's some of that in Utah,

like Park City, but there's also still some mountains left there that are like these last vestiges of what it used to be to be a ski mountain where you get there, there's just a parking lot at the bottom. You've got a ticket booth, a restaurant, and a chairlift. And that's kind of it at the bottom. And then you go up and like the mountain's still big and massive. You get this nice like champagne powder because it's a dry cold, but there's not a ton of people there. Champagne powder? Champagne powder, yeah.

What does that mean? Not familiar with that term? No. You will never have champagne powder in New York City. You have like sleet, like it's like a wet, heavy snow, and it will always fall that way. But when dry climates, it gets cold enough that the snow, as it falls, it falls like it won't stick together.

There's like something to it. You try and make a snowball out of it and it just falls apart in your hands. It's like sugar, like coarse sugar. And that's the very best stuff to be skiing or snowboarding on because you can't dig your skis into, you can't dig your tips into it. You won't ever feel weighted down by it. When you're falling in it you're not getting as wet throughout the day it's just it's champagne powder is considered like the finest form of

powder skiing that there is wow and you don't always get that it's every once in a while and that's where you would want to live i think so because then utah it offers me a lot throughout the year i mean there's i think you get a lot of the same-minded people that you would get in somewhere like Colorado. So I'd find that there's people who are interested in the environment and people who are interested in the outdoors. They would encourage me to climb more often, to try some new things like ice climbing, which I haven't done in years and years and years. And I like winter sports in general. I like the winter. It's something that I miss.

Wow. And I think it would be fun. I think, and then there's places apparently, I've never actually been to Northern Nevada, but apparently there's some spots that offer that kind of thing. Wow. Yeah. Oh, oh that's high desert too so it's like both those places are high desert but the deserts of utah i don't consider like the deserts of the rest of the country the the sonoran desert is a hellhole as far as i'm

concerned it's just like this gray and brown landscape as far as the eye can see, where all the creatures and the plants there are just barely scraping by. And I don't find it particularly striking, except that maybe at sunset for like five minutes a day. But in Utah, it's this red rock everywhere. It's like gorgeous red sandstone all over the place. He's huge bluffs, like plateaus coming out of just, they seem like the ground. It's a really dynamic landscape, and I find it very pleasant and fun. Wow.

Yeah, that's what I would do. I love that I'm still learning new things about you. So where do you think you would go? I have no fucking idea. I think I, opposite from you i i i want to follow the sun i want to go somewhere warm all the time i've had enough winters i don't like it i want i want to be warm all the time now this might be sort of a grass is greener situation i've lived in los angeles for so long that it's entirely possible i've forgotten what winter is actually like actually being in it like come february 11th what that feels like for it still to be dark no holidays in sight except for

valentine's day and just like you know you still got a few more months of this and it's every single day you wake up and it's hard to get out of bed. And you obviously have been living that for a while. Because when I went to college, I was like, I got to go somewhere warm. Can't be anywhere where there's snow. You went from Colorado to Los Angeles. Yeah. And I was in love at first. I thought this was the best place in the world there were

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but right before we recorded this i know that you did some meditation of some sort and i i want to know what's going on i'm i'm uh taking a uh, a transcendental meditation class. Whoa. It's- What does that mean? It's, I think you would not like it. Okay. There are parts of it that I don't like, and I think I dislike them for the same reasons

that you would dislike them, where there's no wrong way to do it, which is very unpleasant to me. There's no wrong way to meditate it which is very unpleasant to me there's no wrong way to meditate yeah no come on i know i need rules and i yeah that's i barked at my teacher and and i was like i i i hear sirens i hear the sounds of new york and they infect my thoughts when i'm meditating and my teacher is is like, yeah, it's fine. It's good. It's all right. If you lose your mantra, that's okay.

If you have invasive thoughts, that's okay. If you have, if you hear sirens, that's okay. I don't like that. I want stronger rules and structure. Yeah. The whole point of meditation is to like, someone is teaching you an arsenal of ways to build a stone fortress around you.

Yeah. Metaphorically, that then you exist in peace within. Have you ever meditated? Yeah. I mean, I've done it through when I've been forced to. Like if I'm taking an acting class and I'm like, and now we're going to do these vision quests and for every day we're going to do some meditation. Or once in soccer, they had us do meditation.

Really? But yeah, I've never tried it just on my own. Yeah. I don't think I ever did it right. I think everyone says that, but I don't know. I didn't get anything from it. I felt nothing from it. I didn't feel at peace afterwards.

I just felt like my eyes had been closed for a while and things were kind of blurry, but I didn't have the joy of having just woken up from a nap. Yeah. Are you getting anything from Transcendental Meditation? No, but I am trusting that I will get something later. Yeah, that it's a big investment. Yeah.

Why is it called... So I know the Transdentalists, Thoreau and Emerson and those guys. What does this have to do with transcendence? I don't know. I don't actually think that they're connected. I looked into this one because a lot of writers and comedians that I respect do it. There's nothing specific about it that appealed to me. It was more Jerry Seinfeld, John Mulaney, Oprah Winfrey.

It was more Jerry Seinfeld, John Mulaney, Oprah Winfrey. These are all people who utilize transcendental meditation. And I respect them and like them and wanted to give it a shot. So I started doing it. Well, I hope that it works out for you. Yeah. I'm doing the opposite of meditating lately. I have been in a big fight with a glass and window company. What do you, forgive me.

Yeah. What the fuck do you mean? What are you talking about? I find that I have in my later life found it very difficult to let go of things when I feel like I've been wronged or that an injustice has happened. Okay. And I just, because I feel right more often. I feel like, no, this is not how the world should work. Right. As you've gotten older, you've only gotten more right. Exactly. Okay. Yes.

I was dumb at one point and now I'm not. i've surely throughout the rest of my life i will look back on this moment and think ah i understood everything then i was smart um but i we're we're trying to get some work done i don't even want to like i don't want to out the company because i'm just hoping they can turn their attitude around but i'm trying to get some work done on our house we have sliding glass door. That's just, it's shredded from the last owners. There were, they had some dogs and the windows are scratched,

scratched, scratched, scratched up. So I'm trying to get new ones and the project, we had somebody come out and like, tell us about how this company was a family and, uh, and anything that we need, like even this guy,

the sales rep, like he would help us get it. And they, we even this guy, the sales rep, like he would help us get it. And we bought new windows, but it wasn't going to go in until October. Then for some, whatever reason, like they lost, they're supposed to deliver a frame and all this other stuff.

The frame never showed up and the frame's got to be huge because it's for a sliding glass door. It's gone. It's disappeared into the ether and there's just no accountability whatsoever from them. They're each one of them is very hard to get in touch with.

They're constantly shielding themselves by putting us in touch with somebody brand new and who every week you can't get mad at that person in these circumstances. This was just what businesses do. Like you can't get mad at that person because you're like, I look, I just I'm new to this. Like I'm just playing catch up. I'm going to try and help you any way that I can. I'm new to this. Like I'm just playing catch up. I'm going to try and help you any way that I can.

Um, and it, that's, that is endlessly frustrating in itself to me. Cause I want the person who's accountable, but then also like, there's no apology or anything like that. No one will ever admit wrongdoing.

And that what really drives me crazy. And so I'm trying to get like, I'm going through this company, just using all my free time to be like, no, the reason that nobody does is because they don't have the free time. But this week I'm carving out some time just for you. I want to know who it is. Like, I want to know how I get, how I get what we need.

And now like you push back our dates. We were supposed to happen in October. Now it's not happening until the end of December, like around just after Christmas, between Christmas and New Year's. And I was like, that's a terrible time for us not to have doors on our house. And because it means we can't go anywhere, obviously. And it means we also can't be at home because it's cold. And so I'm just like, I'm trying to just want somebody to be like, no, no, no, I get it. You know what? We messed up. We fucked up.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't know how this happened, but obviously this is our end. We were going to do everything we can to fix it. And we're going to get this figured out for you. Those hollow words are all I'm looking for. That doesn't promise me anything. That doesn't give me anything. That doesn't give me anything. But just like, fucking give me that.

Yeah. This is going to sound so corny and so pointless, but you should try meditating, man. I know. I know how it sounds. But like, give it a shot. 40 minutes a day. Now, is it structured enough that you actually have a class that you're going to or are you just doing this on your own

uh so a four-day class okay and is there some guidance during it there's somebody who's who's giving you a mantra to even say or you they just like pick your own yeah uh no they they gave me a mantra and i'm uh not allowed to tell you what it is is it december to remember it's a secret okay it's not toyota thon sales event no that's a fun thing to say that's close it's it's it is it's close to toyota thon okay but i think i know what it is yeah um all right well yeah we can get into our show just need to clear the air also i'm paving the way for them to fuck up again and for me to go on the podcast to be like sure fuck this company i have no other recourse i have no way

to hurt you other than to tell the the 47 people who listen to this podcast that you're bad. But they still have a chance. All right. Dan, I have a quick question for you. Go. I want to know who's in your celebrity minefield. Now, I'm going to explain what that means. Please.

Now, I'm going to explain what that means. Please. There are celebrities that you have the same mannerisms as, like the same cadences, the gestures, just like how you generally act. It might have been at one point intentional in your life where you admired this person and you started to adopt some of their things. But at this point, you have to actively try to steer away

from those characteristics from that person because it's just like you can see it when you're on video you can see it you notice it while you're talking yourself that you're you're just too much like this celebrity do you mind going first not at all no and the reason i make it celebrity is that that way it pinpoints it for everybody else. Like, they know exactly what you're talking about. I find, there are a couple. One that I have a really hard time with and that I think about a lot is Mark McGrath, who I just. Fucking, wait, hold on. Okay.

The singer? Yeah, when I'm mad. The writer and, like, I guess, e-host? Yeah, e-host. Okay. I think he was on Big Brother too for a little while. In general, I'm not very much like Mark McGrath, but when I get angry, and I've been angry a lot lately,

I get a little bro-y. I realized, especially my my car when i'm yelling at people from my car that i know it's only for me uh-huh it's like i i hope that this isn't my true form but i'm very broey and i'm not happy with myself when i do it but i don't know if you ever seen that video for mark do you feel comfortable um explaining what you mean by broey yeah um i call people uh oh god this feels i call people like pussy in my car like i'm not not out my window but like to myself yeah or like i will say things like do you have an accent when you when you? No, no. It's just me. Yeah, I'm Jamaican.

Is that strange? No, I don't know. I guess I assumed you would be Jersey. I say things like lick an asshole and things that you would hear like a come at me bro saying. Okay. Things that are way too aggressive and way too high. like things that you would hear like, like a come at me, bro. Say, okay. Things that are way too aggressive and like way too high. Like it's from zero to a hundred.

So there's a video that I'm specifically thinking of where Mark McGrath loses at this dude outside of a club. Um, he's outside. There's some paparazzi around him. I, this is, must've been the days of sugar Ray and some kid.

It's like 14 shouts, sugar, gay. And part ofrath goes from zero to 100 immediately and like gets in this kid's face and is saying some really confusing stuff like he's not good at he's he's so mad that he's enrattled that he's like he's not even good at being threatening he's saying stuff like i'll throttle your face and like uh um i'll beat the fuck out of you like things that don't make a ton of sense yeah and uh those are and it feels very close to home watching the whole thing unfold and he's it's so it does not a good look for him it's bad and he's really trying to like belittle this guy he's like you're never gonna make it in

this business but you know they're out in the street he's like you're nothing you know you're you're my fart and things like that that are just humiliating on his behalf and secondhand embarrassing for everybody else i feel that strikes very close to home for me when i'm angry and i do you think that's gonna happen to you? Do you think you might yell at some stranger who is a fart to you? I did. I told a

woman in a wheelchair on a train that I was made of money in a fight once. I was making like $45,000 a year and I told a woman on the train i was made of money woman in a wheelchair to try and win a fight sure um so yeah i feel that i feel that it could happen to me not in the same way i mean i'm not i'm not in a uh world famous band that's selling out arenas but I could see myself trying to hurt

somebody so badly in the street that I stumble I punch myself in the face with my own words so Mark McGrath is one that's tough for me but there's one other one that I feel a lot more

and it's so embarrassing but it it's Jennifer Aniston. Shit. Yeah. This is not where I thought this was going. I've got, I don't know if it's from watching friends a lot as a kid or what it is, but her delivery,

I catch myself doing every once in a while. Like when she's got a joke set up, the way that she leads into it, I catch myself doing every once in a while, like when she's got a joke set up, the way that she leads into it, I catch myself doing it a lot too. And when her week's sarcastic, she kind of like touches one finger on the back of her head and like closes her eyes as she's doing it.

And it's such a mannerism that I have. Wow. So, yeah, go ahead. Is it only from friends or no because she's you know have you followed like her career post friends i can think of along came polly i can think of uh the breakup and in both those movies she's she's jennifer aniston you know yeah so yeah it's happening it's just kind of like who she is it's this isn't going to happen with a daniel day lewis you know who knows what daniel day lewis is actually like but you know who

jennifer aniston across her movies because it's the same she's doing a lot of the same stuff yeah and i hate it about myself like i hate though the way that i might if i got like a joke in mind like my delivery after I do it, sometimes I'm like, oh, no, that wasn't it. Let's do a do-over. Like that's no good. Everybody just ignore the way

that that came out. Because it's too, it comes across as like, I'm smart. I'm smarter than everybody else. And she did a, I don't know, it's hard to like,

without pinpointing exact moments from friends that I could you'd be like oh yeah i know exactly what you're talking about um but like her like being um condescending to joey when joey's being dumb that's like my wheelhouse like condescending to somebody when they're being dumb and i do it in the exact same way and it's it's like a C plus effort it's no good wow but anyway I watched an episode of

not even a full episode it just like showed up in my feed one day and there was like a clip from the show about all these times where Matthew Perry was improvising and just watching the way that jennifer aniston acts i was like oh oh fuck we're the same that's so fascinating yeah i would never have connected two of you yeah uh it might also just be that i'm hyper sensitive to they like the they have

these are i guess i think about like the worst aspects of certain celebrities that i feel also in myself because there's other people that i've i've tried to replicate myself around not necessarily you know you know mr ripley way but sure um what is it i've never seen that movie what um happens it's like that that's a real question you've never seen talented mr ripley no does matt does matt damon kill that guy yes he kills jude law he kills him and and becomes him or no yeah he kind of takes over his life he He assumes his identity. So he's very good at imitating people. He works very hard at it. Do other people think he's the same guy or no? Yeah, some people do.

Well, no. I mean, people who know him don't. Like Matt Damon shows up to work as Mr. Ripley. And he's like, hey, it's me. No. But that's because nobody has seen this guy in a long time. He ran away to Italy with his love. And this guy went to school with Tom Ripley back in the day. The dad of the kid who ran away finds him and says, hey, will you go back and bring back my son? Talk some sense into him and bring him back. uh tom ripley falls instead falls in love with this guy and his significant other who's gwyneth paltrow in the movie and they are just like people at their prime jude law and and gwyneth paltrow

at like the the zenith of their beauty as humans like these this perfect couple living in a sun soaked town in italy and he falls in love with them and then falls in love with it so hard that he wants to be him and then ends up in a fit of passion, killing him, taking over his life and just like kind of other people figuring out what's going on. Okay. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that to any celebrity. I'm going to make that clear. Okay. But yeah, there have been celebrities throughout my life where i've been like they're just so unique and interesting that i'm like oh okay i'm putting that in the arsenal i'm like locking that away and then pulling it out every once in a while and trying it on and that's that's fine those people i will never be in danger of being too much like yeah but there are some people

who have just fallen into it accidentally and i see the same patterns between us this is just like a like holding two pictures up to a light and seeing that they're tracing one another and be like, oh, no. Oh, no. When you write, do you use celebrities as inspiration at all? Whoa, whoa. What do you mean by that? So, so the initial question was, are, do I have any celebrities that I'm, that I'm trying to avoid comparisons to? Yeah. And I don't, but like, obviously John Mulaney is my biggest inspiration in the world.

And I write him as a character in things. Ah. Okay. Do you do that yes yeah yeah i mean i have an idea in my head of who the person is and generally i have to borrow from my life in some way because i don't i'm not creative enough to just invent a person yeah okay interesting do you do you don't do that at work do you no i'm i'm only allowed to write for the one guy his name escapes me at the moment yeah um okay so you write for john malini i figured john malini would be in your mind field only because you guys do have a very similar delivery i do i like like like it's i don't think we have a similar. I think he has a delivery and I steal from him.

Your minefield is just this threat of IP theft. Yes. And I'm trying not to. I'm trying to be more aware of the fact that I'm ripping off John Mulaney all the time. Well, and then there's Bob Newhart. Yes, I'm also stealing Bob Newhart. You're right. Yeah, let's list all the people that I'm stealing from right now. Well, that's what was so discouraging to me, was that I spent a lot of my high school years thinking I could be a Chandler Bing.

Like he was fun and he was interesting. And like, I thought that he was, he was like the cleverest person on the show. Yeah. And I, everybody wants to be clever. So I thought, oh, I could take a lot of those mannerisms. And I thought I was, but it turns out no i was absorbing it from jennifer aniston instead look if you haven't heard of bombas by now then you've been living under a rock my friend bombas makes socks that are comfortable and look great with a wide

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So protect yourself with ExpressVPN. Visit expressvpn.com slash qq. That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-v-p-n dot com slash qq to get three extra months free. Go to expressvpn.com slash qq right now and learn more. Go to expressvpn.com slash QQ right now and learn more. It's a good, I don't know why anyone listens to this show, but it's a good writing tip, I think. If you, if let's say you want to write a sitcom,

you want to write a pilot, imagine one of the characters is chandler right in his voice you know right but you got to be able to cover those tracks too and write in jennifer anderson's voice right in john milaney's voice drip right you know yeah yes yeah know the know the mannerisms and the cadence of the person you're writing for yeah absolutely I did a secret thing when I wrote my pilot that I was going to shop around

I wanted a television job and I didn't realize working at Cracked how distant that actually was I thought we were much closer than we were I was like I'll just write a pilot and then that will get me a job staff somewhere um surely my illustrious career writing for the internet will be important to them

no um i i wrote a pilot and it has like an ensemble cast and when i was like deciding on what each of the characters would be i was like this is this is too hard. I'm just going to pick something. And those are going to be the character archetypes. Like that will be, that will inform who these characters are. And so I picked Winnie the Pooh. Oh. And,

and so there's very much like this pessimistic, slow talking dude who like nothing's ever good enough for like nothing's ever going to go right for him. There's an Eeyore in there. There's a simple but like fun-loving and very living in the present Winnie the Pooh type of character. There's a fraidy cat. There's a little piglet there. Like I've got the whole ensemble represented and it was so much easier to write when I just had that when i was like oh i know that these characters work well together like these flavors all work together i'll just steal it who was your win of the poo yeah so he's not the main character in it but he

is like he's he's just kind of a dummy who's along for the ride he's a guy who's it's i mean things are always kind of work out for him and he's not hurtful in any way he's not menacing he's not he doesn't take anything personally and just sort of finds the joy in very simple things i'm trying to think of another character. Yeah, well, because I know that I'm assuming this is the pilot that you sent me. I think I read it. Oh, yeah. I didn't know that it was your version of Wendy the Pooh. Only in the archetypes that are presented there. Wow.

In each one of the people. I bet if you went back and read it, you'd be like, okay, a rabbit yeah i'm gonna do it this is that alpha personality um and it was so helpful it was like it was the this it was like having a foundation already there and i was like oh i could build on this this is easy wow yeah so that's a a little secret i don't know if that's a secret i made it up and decided that it worked and so i keep doing it i'm realizing that it would have been it would have been a stronger game had i brought it in and said who do you think is in the other person's celebrity mind field because i think i could have nailed john mulaney but i bet there are some in there that would surprise me like if you really if i didn't put you on the spot here and you had time to think about it someone on one of the dating apps that i use said hey i'm sure you get this all the time

do people say you look like justin thoreau and i was like no but oh uh we're gonna have sex later yeah wow what a great one. Yeah. I've never in my life liked it when people tell me what it looked like. But wow. Justin Theroux. Yeah. He's a hunk.

A total hunk. He's shredded. If the running scenes from The Leftovers is to be believed, he got it just a monster hog uh-huh I don't know why he was wearing those sweatpants in that shot exactly what I'm talking about uh wow oh that would a nice thing for someone to have said maybe that was a pickup line I I think so. Because no one in the world would say that I look like him. Right? I'm trying to think. You guys kind of have a similar forehead.

Like the way that your hair comes down in the middle. What do you mean? Find a picture of him. Well, it's hard because yours is cut so short. But I think that your guys is like the shape of your face at the top is the same okay justin thoreau let me get make sure that i'm full of shit here yeah no very much so um yeah you've got that it's a yes the very first picture is wik. Looks, it does.

It does kind of look like you. No, it doesn't. Yes, it does. You guys have very similar eyebrows. You've got your hair does the same thing. And obviously he's got a wispy thinness to it. But in terms of like how it connects to the scalp is very similar. And then you both got that short beard.

That's like almost the exact same length as the hair on the sides of your head you got a justin thoreau face uh the nose is wrong yeah nose is all wrong do you think yours is probably better he's got kind of a pointy nose no i i i wait who who has a point to your nose justin thoreau yeah okay then you i don't know i have i have a crooked weird nose no well hold on it's not crooked yeah it is it is mine yeah when did that happen the whole time all right that can't be true i i would have noticed this i'm very good at noticing people's flaws uh yeah i'm looking at pictures now no you guys See, you have a much better nose than he does. He's got a very pointy nose.

Yours is kind of like rounded. Can I ask, what are you searching to get this information? Goodreads. So one of our cracked podcasts, you've got your good glasses. You know the ones I'm talking about. And your beard is in peak condition. And your hair is long enough that I can see a Justin Theroux in it. Wow.

Yeah. Now, Dan, have you noticed, how long has it been since, how long did you have to take off from running for your covid oh three days oh that's it oh then you wouldn't have noticed any difference so i uh in a previous podcast the one before this we talked about how dan had covid and there was a question i had forgotten to ask him which was if he felt his body changing at all during that time and i i know that you've been through like somewhat of a physical transformation recently because you've been running so regularly that you lost a ton of weight.

Congratulations on that because that's something you're interested in. Not because that's the way society is. You shouldn't feel forced to lose weight. You understand what I'm saying? All the prerequisites of things I should be saying. It's good for you and you specifically. I also had been losing some weight lately. And then I had to take a break for a while because of an injury. I suffered something in my shoulder. I don't know what it is, but running seems to aggravate it. So I took a few weeks off

and immediately noticed like a dramatic change in my body that was so demoralizing immediately noticed like a dramatic change in my body that was so demoralizing that i wanted to commiserate with you but three days yeah what what is the uh what do you mean i was wearing i had a pair of um car hearts that i usually do my woodworking in they're great pants for that because they've got reinforced knees and everything but they i had this pair for a very long time and in my elder age the waist has gotten a little tight uh where when i crouch down doesn't doesn't feel very good i feel it digging into my belly button and so uh i stopped wearing them i got a new pair thinking, I've moved up in size. It's just the way the world is from now on. And then as I was running a lot, my new pair started to fall down my hips a lot.

I thought, oh, I don't think I fit in these anymore. So I put on the old ones and they fit like a glove. And I felt very good about that. It was like I had regained something i had lost a long time ago and within like a week of not running they just don't fit yeah they just stop fitting all of a sudden it was like it was so immediate and and abrupt and i it was like well then i if i'm going to continue to work out it has to be regularly and forever yeah do you and here's here's I was reading an interview with Henry cave of cavil yeah cavil I think and he said at the he what what are his words um

he's in the best shape of his life every year he likes that he likes that he that every single year he is in the best shape of his life is that something that you want or would you rather like oh i i peaked in 2013 or whatever yeah i mean obviously i would like to get to i don't i don't i don't want that i think that sounds like a lot of work i think every single i think i kind of want that i think i do really yeah i my goal always, and it's subconscious mostly, but now that I have to articulate it, I'm realizing how true it is. I've had this idea of like a bar that I'm trying to get to where it's like a certain look, a certain weight,

a certain way that I feel. I've been there before. I know it's achievable. And once I get there, I know how easy it is to maintain from there. It's like, I'm just trying to get back to this place where I can coast and I know like what it takes to maintain. But getting back up to that is like, it's very frustrating and hard. And it's possible it doesn't exist anymore because my metabolism has changed.

And, you know, all the quiet terrors. Sure. You suffer from a thing like that but you're also at a point where you're in the best shape of your life right now so I would see why you'd want to keep going yeah but

I don't know sounds like a lot of work but I mean isn't your body breaking down at all your legs your knees no my knees hurt all the time and uh one thing oh i'm curious have you ever um met with a trainer yes once you have yeah at equinox they give you a free train when you join equinox you get like a free day with a trainer okay and i did you uh did you like that or were you just sort of going through the emotions no i hated it okay i hated

it but for the reasons that i think are probably why most people go to a trainer. He kicked my ass in ways where I was like, no, this shouldn't be happening. I'm working out regularly. I know what I'm doing. But like using muscles in ways that I had not done before that was shocking them, which is, I guess, good for them. And in ways that I didn't like being watched. I didn't like doing an exercise, not having it be perfect form and sort of like getting other body, recruiting other muscles to help. A good example of that is like a pull-up.

You think of just somebody doing a pull-up, they got like their arms go directly up and then back down. Their trunk stays completely flat and straight. But at a certain point you get fatigued and you start doing that bend and like throwing the bar up. and that's just gonna happen when you're fatigued and i didn't like that feeling of being so fatigued that i couldn't get the workout done right and doing that being you know suffering that in front of the eyes of another person it's just like okay

i promise usually i'm much stronger than this this never happens i'm so sorry right um i i didn't like it i did not like being with a trainer did you is it something you're interested in it is because because i i feel like when i go to the gym i'm i'm just like doing stuff. I'm just working out. I, you know, there's, there's doing like bench press is always better than not doing it. Doing pull-ups is always better than not doing pull-ups. But I don't know. I've, I've never like sat and talked with a person and said like, this is, these are my goals. What I want is to look like this or to do this and how can i accomplish that i've never asked i've never done that you need a you don't

need a trainer because a trainer i think would be somebody who they've got a vested interest in keeping you with them for a long period of time so they're gonna give you a bunch of workouts you can't do on your own i think generally they're gonna give you stuff that like you lifting your you grabbing onto their ankles while you're laying on the ground throwing your legs up and they're pushing them back down or somebody throwing you a medicine ball things like that there are very good for you but that also require you to have somebody else there doing it with you and I guess that's not true across the board, but I think it's probably pretty true that they like to keep their clients around. Yeah. And the way to do that is give them workouts that they can only do with you.

But what you need is like a kinesiology friend. That's kind of how I got into working out was I had friends who in college who were like that. And they told me they're like, okay, well, this is like, these are complimentary muscles. These are your pulling muscles. And these are what we're going to be working today. These are your pushing muscles. This is what we're going to be doing today. If you work out your biceps on the same day as your quadriceps, the quadriceps are the

biggest muscle in your body. So you're pumping a lot of testosterone in your body. And it's easier to do biceps on those days. Like weird things like that, where was like oh okay and then like how many sets how many reps in each set uh to do for like building muscle versus just maintaining versus like going for endurance yeah and that was all very very helpful because it was somebody who didn't who was just like i'll teach you this stuff but then you're on your own and that's like there needs to be there that's a niche that needs to be filled. You need a workout friend. You need a workout buddy in New York.

Yes. Uh, okay. Well that, I think that'll do it for our show today. Uh, you can follow me on Twitter at Soren underscore LTD. You can follow Daniel at DOB underscore Inc. Um, I don't know why you would, but you can check in on our CFO at make me bacon, please spelled PLS. Or you can follow quick question at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. If Gabe Harder, our sound engineer, producer and editor, if he has a Twitter, I do not know it exists. He's got an Instagram. I also don't know it it but surely at the end of this he could tell you if he wanted to you can also find us through our email at qq with soren and daniel at gmail.com and uh i don't know just for fun go check out our instagram it's qq with i know qq underscore

with underscore soren underscore and underscore daniel i have no idea what's there it could have been it could have been hijacked and it's just like selling herbal life at this point for all I know. Gabe, do you have any social media you want to plug? Here we go. Not particularly. Okay.

All right. Bye. Bye.