Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Where Did You Come From CEJ

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

The guys go on a trip down memory lane and Daniel tells a CLASSIC birthday story. And as always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks Raycon!.  For a limited time, go To buyraycon.com/qq for 15% off your entire Raycon order. 

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Et vous pouvez aussi commencer à gagner des remises en argent dans vos magasins préférés, comme Old Navy, Best Buy et Expedia, et même cumuler les ventes et les remises en argent. C'est facile à utiliser et vous obtenez vos remises par PayPal ou par chèque. L'idée est simple. Les magasins paient Racutene pour leur envoyer des gens magasinés. Et Racutene partage l'argent avec vous sous forme de remise. Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? 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 will I be your member?

What did I do? Where did all the guys 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. 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 for the first time ever on this podcast, year old daniel o'brien joined as always by my co-host mr soren bowie soren say hello hey everybody i'm soren bowie i'm 40 years old but famously 40. i've been there for a while a few months in fact i will be 41 in almost exactly half a year it's because it's hard to believe that i Yeah. Or that you're 37? That you are. I think there are listeners who maybe haven't listened to every episode and don't know about your birthday will hear me say 37 and will hear you say 40 and will be absolutely shocked

that this voice that they're hearing right now is not the older one. Maybe. Yeah, I guess that's possible. I was at a Christmas party recently and I met somebody brand new and I think you call it strangers. Is that other humans called them strangers? Oh, I'm, I'm new. This is my first time. called The Strangers. Hey, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm new.

This is my first time being. She said, at one point, I mentioned how old I was and she was like, are you kidding me? Your skin is fantastic. And I was like, just follow me around

and say that wherever we go. It feels really great to hear. I appreciate it. Thanks to Raycon for supporting Quick Question. For premium audio at the perfect price point, you've got to go with Raycon. Go to buyraycon.com slash QQ today to get 15% off your Raycon order.

Hold on. Before we get into me, because my birthday couldn't be further than how far it is from today. What did you do for your birthday? Because you are, you famously like to sort of like play it close to your chest. You like to do something that just you like. You go to a movie or you go to an insurrection. What did you do this year on January 6th? Thank you.

I spent my birthday in urgent care. I was originally supposed to go to a cabin trip that I take with my friends in the woods in Pennsylvania every year. You didn't go. And not on my birthday. No, I did not. I woke up. I was feeling kind of crummy the night before. Devotees will recall that we were recording the podcast and I was talking about being sick. I woke up with eventually 102.3, I think was the highest my fever got,

my temperature got. And we're just like very sick and coughing and didn't sleep well and everything was hurting and incorrect. And I was encouraged by friends to go to the doctor because I famously never go to doctors. And it seemed like this is a good opportunity as any to start

37 off on the right foot by like my first act action as a 37 year old is going to be doing a responsible thing that I haven't done before. So I went to urgent care and, uh, got like COVID and flu tests and just talked to the doctor to see what was going on. No COVID, no flu. I'm mostly better now. Just got a cough. still have no idea what exactly it was uh it's a very fun experience uh handing in your insurance card and your id to reception at urgent care on your birthday because you can see them look at it and their eyes go wide they go happy birthday and i'm like, it's going great. I'm doing all of my favorite things.

I'm here with my closest friends and someone's going to jam a bunch of things up my nose. Someone's going to ask me what I weigh. It's going to be great. I'm really excited for this birthday start. You're going to be doing a lot of just waiting. Yeah. Next to other sick people. Oh man, that sucks so bad.

I'm sorry, Dan. It's okay. I mean, I- That's got to be like the worst things that ever happened on a January 6th, right? Yeah, it's in the top three for sure. It's definitely up there for my least favorite January 6th.

Oh man. Okay, so I got some questions about this. When you got to the urgent care and they took your temperature there, were you still hot? Were you still up above 100? Yes. I was still hot. Thank God. Were you hoping that you would be? Yes. Okay, good. I know that feeling where you're like, if I'm going to go there, I want exhibit A, exhibit B of my sickness. I want to have them there. Yeah.

I want exhibit A, exhibit B of my sickness. Like I want to have them there. Yeah. Because I don't want to get to an urgent care and then be like, I don't know what happened. My fever came down. I mean, I promise I'm sick. Right.

Especially because all the major tests came back negative that I want them to be like, I want it on record. They were like, no, no, no, no, no. There was definitely something wrong with him. He's not just like a baby. That's, and that's my biggest, it's so silly that that's my fear in hospitals, but it's like, I want, or in urgent cares that I go there and the trip was warranted and everyone

sees that the trip was warranted. I can show them. Yeah. Do you, uh, yeah. Like, like ideally you walk into urgent care and someone who's been there before

you is like, no, no, no, no, no. You first, please.

I'm like, yes, we all agree. You're turning purple. Serious. Um, do you remember'm like, yes, we all agree. You're turning purple. Serious. Um, do you remember, uh, 37? Yeah. Yeah. Was that, did that feel any different to you than any of the other ones? No. Uh, well, 36 and 37 both felt really similar where I, when I turned 40, I didn't have any sort of like, Oh shit, I'm 40, because I had done all of that when I was about-

You were zonked out on mushrooms. It's true, I was. But I had already done a lot of that emotional reconciling when I was about 36 or 37. As soon as I got over the 35, where I was rounding up, I was like, oh, I'm basically 40 at this point. And so I was doing a lot of that right around then. I made that same switch at 37 and approaching 37. And I've never been someone who has been antsy about getting older. I've, in fact, consistently enjoyed getting older and settling into the life that i want in the life

that i'm living and it's it's it's always struck me as such a cliche people who are worried about getting older and 36 came around and that didn't really have any kind of impact on me and then just as i was getting closer to 37 i started like when i was hanging out with my cousins saying i'm almost 40. like that's immediately, that's a switch flipped that I, that I feel like 37, even though it's, it's technically closer to 36. It's not technically closer to 36. It's closer to 37. It's closer to 40. And, uh, I, I know intellectually that I have years before I'm 40 and those years can feel long and there's a lot I can do in them. And I also know that like 40 is fine. Also you're 40 and,

and, and living a wonderful life. I don't think anything's going to majorly change. I just, but there is something different in my brain now that is like, Oh, 37. That's one of those like adult,

adult numbers. I, there were, I guess now like the only difference is that when i'm at the gym or something and i see a gray-haired guy like an old dude working out i'm like yeah that's old guys like i think i'm just like immediately throwing myself in this camp where i think if two people if somebody saw both of us next to each other they'd be like no no no that yeah clearly you guys are separated by about two generations. Yeah. But immediately, like I'll see an old guy and I'm like, ah, hard to stay ripped as an old man, isn't it?

Rob, you don't want to start getting looks from younger people at the gym who are looking at you like, and you could tell they're thinking, man, when I'm that age, I hope I'm still doing this. Good for him. I mean, even trying at all. Yeah. good for him. I mean, even trying at all when you're that close to death. I, I've had a memory that I think, I think was maybe when I was like 37, maybe I was 38, but my son had gotten a top at school, like a little spinning top and we were playing with it and it would spin forever. Uh, so he was pumped about it and we were into it. We were playing with a lot. And at the time I had some tendonitisitis in my elbow, and I just couldn't shake it.

No matter what I was doing, I couldn't get rid of it. And I was starting to come to terms with the fact that maybe this is just something that I live with. And as this top is spinning, I'm watching it. And I watched those first few stumbles that it has a minute before it falls. There's just the first cascade of like and as I'm watching I'm like, yeah, that's me. That's that first

those first few moments where you know that the end is coming up. Yeah. You can keep hanging on as long as you want, Top, but we all know which way gravity goes. Yeah, we know how this ends. Tops never rally.

Yeah, it's getting a second wind. Oh, it's spinning even better now. And so I think about that now every time when I get back into working out or I start to like, I'll lose some weight or something or I'll, because I'm eating better and there's a part in, there's

a Sophocles play. you're gonna fucking hate this but just bear with me so a sophocles play ancient greek uh where he he's talking there's a guy from the trojan war he's standing on a beach and he's talking about how life is just this like tide that you're you eat and the tide of death ebbs away and then it starts to flood in again and you're like you do these little things that like keep the tide going back out again but eventually like this tide just takes you and i was like yeah everything i do like what am i i mean it feels good now and i'm just gonna presume that that this will be who i am for the rest of my life that i'm gonna be in shape and and and mobile. But I know in my heart that

I'm just buying time. Sure. Hey, it's a new year, everybody. And you know what that means? The gyms are going to be packed, maybe even with you. And while you're there, there's going to be some pretty bad music on, I guarantee it. So get your own earbuds. You got a chance right now to get some quality earbuds at a fair price with Raycon earbuds. I know that for me, it's crucial to have good music on while I'm working out, man, it can blow a whole set. If you're listening to something terrible or sad or mopey, and you're trying to like get through that last one. Oh, it's the worst. The fact is a good pair of wireless earbuds is indispensable, especially now. For premium audio at the perfect price point, you got to go with Raycon.

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Yeah, go ahead. Has something from your past, not necessarily, in fact, something specifically that you didn't like, ever surprise you with how amped it made you feel? Just like a broad nostalgia thing.

I'll explain my own self while you think about yours uh i was driving around in my car and i have the 90s on nine station on xm that's just all 90s music and uh a song came on and it was a song that was definitely around it was inescapable in my childhood growing up in the 90s and i did not like it at the time and i didn't i i would be mad if i ever heard it because it was more than a song it was a craze and it drove me nuts it made me so bonkers it wasn't even one of those things where it's like i pretended not to like a thing that was popular it It drove me nuts. I was not alone in this. It was one of those songs that is very, very easy to hate that swept the nation back when weird songs like this swept the nation.

It came on the radio and I cranked it the fuck. I huge a smile on my face I've ever seen. I turned it up real loud i pound my steering wheel i really listened to the song for the first time in a while for the musicianship of it and i start disassociating disassociating and thinking like i want to if i got a band together and we covered this song we would fucking light up the world anywhere i we played it right now soren the song well hold on hold on okay i want to try to guess oh is that i won't take long with this but i my first guess before you started saying that there was like something that went along with it was

steal my sunshine by land that feels like such a zeitgeist of a song that you would have hated at the time it's not that it's not that i did in fact uh really not like that song it was a terrible song it's a terrible song now if you watch the music video for now you're like it feels like oh it's so exciting because everything that was famous at one particular point in time is now has been completely erased and you're like, oh my god. It really was a different time then. My next guess is the Macarena. It is not the Macarena.

Okay, go ahead. The reason it's not the Macarena is maybe that came out just early enough that I, unironically because I was too young to have irony, enjoyed the Macarena. And was stoked to have a song with an assignment that I could do. And I was young enough where I'm like, I could do this, so I guess I'm a dancer.

To call it a song with an assignment, I love. Because that's the way I feel about the Cupid Shuffle. It's the way I feel about so many songs where I'm like, fucking I know how to do this one. Yeah. Everybody watch. All right, the song. I've been married a long time ago. Where did you come from?

Where did you go? Where did you come from? Cotton Eye Joe. Hell yeah. Cotton Eye Joe. I'm now pumped hearing it again. Just hearing that crunchy guitar or keyboard, whatever computer made that noise coming in.

And then before the kick drum even starts pounding out that beat, I'm just like, we're in for a fucking... I'm in for... There's like six violin solos in my future. This is fucking nuts. This is, I'm ready for it. I was pounding my steering wheel. I could imagine a crowd of people exactly my age who would go through the exact same thing that I went through if they heard this right now.

People who have not thought about this song on purpose for decades, they hear it and they'd be like, yeah, finally it is the right time for this man. Hearing those, those muted guitar strikes. Yeah. I was immediately like, yes. Okay. Yes. I forgotten how much I liked that song. Well, I didn't like it. No, I hated that song.

And like, I don't know. The reason I said Macarena was a good guess is there was a dance associated with this. At least there was in my neck of the woods. I don't know if your literal neck of the woods, if it ever made it to you. But like, this was popular in middle school dances. this is a song that would come on for me and there was like the kids who would come out come up and do like the stomp slap the side of your heel slap the side of your other heel spin in a circle like very country western line dance style the cotton joe dance that i don't know where everyone learned it but they did and it was always our cue to be like oh this all right i wish i wish there was a second

activity to do at this school dance so i guess i'll just stand in a corner until this six minute opus is done but now yeah i'll i'll i'll go out and i just learned dance yeah yeah I'll I'll have to learn this line dance I'm watching it right now but the song's not telling him what to do I don't like that I need the song to give me a little I need the cheat sheet in the song

uh that's just a lot of tapping yeah okay um yeah no this never made it to us we knew the song but I don't think

we knew that you were allowed to dance to it. Yeah. Although, and now because we've also talked about our ages, this came to me late. I mean, I was probably in high school. Oh yeah. When this song came out. Yeah. 1994? I was still in middle school, but I don't think this ever got played at dances or anything, but to be fair, the DJ of our dances only ever played under the bridge by red hot chili peppers that got, got some heavy rotation at every dance. And you guys all knew the dance to that one, right? Yes. Famously famous. Yeah. I mean, it was all, it was universal. Everyone knows how to dance to that song. Oh, this is a good one. I'm happy for you.

This happened not... A very similar thing happened with me, but it was a song that I did enjoy when it first came out and then lost track of, and then it just showed up again in the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer, which is that Portishead... Not Portishead. Yeah.

Spacehog song. Uh-huh. Do you know the one I'm talking about? I think I probably do, but Space Hog as a name is not calling out for me. Space Hog has a song called In the Meantime that starts out,

and I'm butchering this, but it's like, Oh yeah. And as soon as I heard it, I was like, yeah, I want that back in my life. I did that song again. I miss it.

So like I went, just put it on my Spotify. Now my Spotify is fucked. Cause now it thinks I want to listen to all these ones. It means I want to listen to songs from this era. Yeah. We're going to come back here for my Spotify wrapped 2023 and cod and i joe is gonna be at the top of the charts and i'm gonna have no explanation other than like yeah there was a there was just

like a month where i listened to it on repeat while i ran set a bunch of personal records it is a song that goes i mean that we have a lot of mixes that could fit on um so i have one in my life that especially around christmas this comes up a lot for me because i have children now but something from my childhood that sucked i mean objectively sucked in my childhood and that i experienced it again as an adult and was so charmed by it and remembering it was uh the chocolate and advent calendars like the advent calendars have not changed since you and i were children you know what they are right yeah i do i mean the chiefly the thing i i feel like i know about them

is they are uh by design the chocolate is for the children in the family it's for the children yeah okay um and it's pretty it's pretty easy to tell if you steal one. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're numbered for anyone who doesn't understand what an avid calendar is. There are these little cardboard sheets and you open up these little pockets for each day of December. And there's another chocolate in there associated with Christmas in some way. And then the last one is generally a little bit bigger that you get on Christmas Eve.

So it's, yeah, it's designed to get kids hyped for Christmas because otherwise they can't be bothered. If you don't leave a trail of chocolates to the tree loaded with presents, So yeah, it's designed to get kids hyped for Christmas because otherwise they can't be bothered. If you don't leave a trail of chocolates to the tree loaded with presents, they're not waking up in the morning. I feel like if anything, it's a speed bump. It's something along the way to be like, you have to throw them a bone because they're so charged up and amped for Christmas. How many sleeps until Christmas?

Just eat this. It's December 2nd. Eat this, please. Here's a little rocking horse. Eat that. So I got my kids advent calendars. Years past, I got my son a Lego advent calendar, which ruled because each day you're opening up like a new little Lego thing you can build and all of them go together in this one big

tableau where it's just like this ice skating rink. It was very cool. I can't do that for both my children now because Gilly will just get frustrated with it because she's too young. But she also wants what her brother has. So, I got them the chocolate ones. And we did a thing where each day we would guess what it was going to be. And we'd just take stabs like, oh, it's going to be a star. Or just guess it.

Like holly leaf with berries. And we'd be like, there's no way it's going to be that. And then it would be that. It was just a very exciting fun thing but i my son i don't know why what he was like do you want some of mine dad and i was like oh sure and so i take this bite and immediately it's like ratatouille i'm transported back to my own childhood it's this chalky piece of shit chocolate that you could, if you drop it,

you have to like, no one's allowed to walk in that area without shoes on. Cause it's like breaking glass. This is not chocolate in any stress of the word, but just tasting it. I was like, holy shit. This is,

I, everything came back. Like the feeling, the excitement of Christmas opening my own. I loved it. I loved being reminded of it. That's fascinating because I feel like I've had the opposite experience with candy from the past. Like, I'm not going to say that I don't eat candy. I will still get a Reese's or a Snickers impulsively

every once in a while when I'm checking out of the grocery store. But things like that, or specifically like a Cadbury egg, that's the thing that i'm never getting most of the time and then every once in a while every couple of years or so it'll be close to easter and i'll see one of those things and i'm like should we do it should we just get a cadbury egg and then i bite into it like oh my god why did i like this it's just it's there's so much not just texture but like like the like the, whatever the ingredients are, whatever that, that,

that avalanche of sugar that my body is just not prepared for anymore. I mean, Cadbury egg compared to an advent calendar chocolate, that was like a shotgun blast in the face. Like it's so much, it's so offensive. This is like, this was something my new and just like having that little touch of flavor again was like,

oh my God, I forgot all about this. This is not a chocolate that exists in my life in any other way, because why would it? It sucks. Right. And I tried it again. I was like, yes. Right. I don't think they sell full bars of it.

You can't just recreationally get a block of it. It's fucking disgusting it's somehow worse than a hershey's chocolate bar and those are terrible yeah um but uh then he also had at christmas a similar thing happened where he got candy canes i generally don't go in for candy canes but he got one of those ones that's like um it's got colorful stripes on it it's not just red and white sure it's one of the fruity candy canes. And those are a very specific taste as well. And not something that I'd had in my life in decades. And I tasted his candy cane and I was like, oh man, I'm back singing Silent Night in preschool.

I remember this. Those are very specific flavor. And it's not like you get that flavor in the form of starburst or anything else throughout the year that that is like peppermint you can get year-round just not in candy cane form but this other specific swirl of fruity candy cane cousin uh only exists for that specific time right and so and it and also it's it's generally kind of shitty so you don't you don't there's no reason you chase it down in your life. Yeah.

And then when it shows up again, it's just like, there's so few tastes, I guess, that I, that I have like, don't get ever, ever again. Yeah. And to suddenly run into one, you're, you're just, there's nothing more sensory, like nostalgically sense, sensory, sensorily nostalgic. We'll be right back. I'll get it settled. Let me write it down.

And so it just threw me right back in there. And I was like, yes, yes. All the feelings here. They are. I think if I ever knew I had like three days off from work and responsibilities, and for some reason couldn't also exercise and was not going to see any of my friends uh i would get a mcdonald's milkshake i would poison myself with that amount of dairy because that's the kind of thing that i feel like i bet that's exactly how i remember it

from when i was a kid and could get a milkshake from mcdonald's safely and it's been so long for a million reasons since i've had one of those and i know it holds up i absolutely know a strawberry shake from mcdonald's will of course not disappoint me they'll just they don't fuck around they everything is exactly right at mcdonald's uh a shamrock shake i feel like i could get into with that too a shamrock shake is not something i would ever chase down but it's like i know it exists i know it's going to be exactly the same. And I know the minute I taste it,

it's going to do something to my brain. Yeah. It's going to throw me somewhere and I'm not sure where. I wonder if I would just start crying. There's, have you seen, uh, the Matilda musical yet?

No, it's on Netflix and it's great. It's by Tim Minchin who, uh, yes, you will grow to love. Um, and the music's great. And it's great it's by tim minchin who uh yes you will grow to love and there's there's uh one of the the top songs from there uh is kids singing this when i grow up song and they just talk about all the things they're going to do and when they grow up and it's just like i'm going to eat sweets whenever i want i'm going to stay up late i'm going to do

all these things just like a child's idea of what you do when you grow up. And it's a very pretty song. And I was reading an interview with Tim Minchin, the composer of the song. And the interviewer was talking about how he weeps every time he hears that song and the people he saw it with in the theater, they wept too. And Tim said, shall I tell you why? Because I have a theory. And the theory is you hear that song and then you remember that we let ourselves down. All these things we wanted to do when we were kids, we let ourselves down. And I feel like if I take a sip of a strawberry milkshake from McDonald's, I will remember every promise I made for myself as an eight-year-old that I did not keep.

as an eight year old that I did not keep. Yeah, absolutely. I can remember as a child when I would go to the grocery store with my mom and I was allowed to just go to the bake section. It was a time when you didn't have to keep track of your kid in a grocery store. So I was allowed to just go hang out in front of the bakery glass and look at the cakes. You can still do that today, by the way. You can still just let them go. I've heard that. I don't think I'm allowed to just drop my child off there though and let it babysit my kid. But I would sit there and look at the cakes and then they always had cookies just like, Hey, you're good. Everybody was here. You're all good customers. Have a cookie. And I would take these cookies home or I would eat one of those cookies. And they had such a

specific grocery store flavor that if I was to ever go back and find one of those, I think it would take me right back to those cakes. But I would sit there in front of those cakes and I'd be like, you know, when I'm an adult, I could just buy a cake and eat it whenever I want. It doesn't have to be a celebration. And I don't do that. There's no reason for me to do that as an adult. But I remember wanting that so badly. I would try each one of these. One day, one cake a badly. I would try each one of these one day, one cake a week. I would eat each one of these. I would, I would, no one would tell me not to, and I would still exercise or whatever. I would, I would do it safely and reasonably. I would just, whenever I wanted to cake, I would have cake. And I'm sure there are times now where you want cake

and you don't have cake. I've had cake where we, a birthday party will happen. And then we have leftover cake. And then I look in the fridge and I realized I have leftover cake and I'm like, this is a really good thing to have. I'm glad that I have this leftover cake. I'm going to eat some. A former coworker of mine, when he turned 40, he went to the one market between our office and where he lived. We were neighbors at the time and we were, we both shared a non-existent commute to work. Basically he went to that one market and bought, uh, one of every different kind of slice of cake.

And they're like, they're like bakery section who was just like, I would like one of each of those, please. It's my birthday. I'm 40. And he just took them home by himself and just like ate a bit of each one of them and then told us about it at work the next day and we're all like kind of sad kind

of really awesome though kind of like very for an otherwise healthy person to be like this is he he is he's very healthy he's also like a specific enough person that it's very possible that he remembers eight-year-old version of himself saying when i'm 40 i'm gonna have as much cake as i want and him like always keeping a promise like he's that he's that specific of a person that it could be like well i don't want this cake but i did vow at eight years old i wrote it down in my superman journal and so now i have to make good i commit to it yeah i kind of like the idea that it's so freeing too to not have to decide what kind you want to just be like,

and I don't even, I don't think I'm going to like that charity looking one, but give me a slice of that because maybe that's something new. I'll, I'll learn about myself. Yeah. I love it. Ah,

the pain. Well, Dan, I have a quick question for you. Go. At your current age, where you are now, 37 years old, famous. Yeah. Somewhere, you are now, 37 years old.

Yeah, somewhere between 28 and 37, yeah. Do you feel like there's a band out there that's playing directly to your demographic, like playing directly to your lived experience? Not like they're playing to your taste. It's not Benfold 5. It's not like, oh, I like piano forward bands. Someone who's playing and the songs are about your lived experience. And I will go first so you have time to think about this.

I don't actually, I don't need any time to think. I have. I only heard the first piano from it and then it died. There we go. Okay. I know what this is. Yeah. This song I feel like really,

really captures sort of what it's like playing bass in this band. You know, it's funny is that when I first hear the... I know what the fuck it is. I know it's Lunch Money Criminals, but as soon as it starts coming up, there's a moment where I think it might be New York State of Mind by Billy Joel. That would be very revealing if anyone's answered this question.

Especially someone my age, their answer to this question is just like, yeah, just being like old and nostalgic and pounding on a piano in the past in New York. there's something incredibly depressing. I know it's a joke, but there's something incredibly depressing about choosing a song that you made when you were younger. Oh yeah. Somehow playing to your older generation to you 20 years later. When you,

when you first emailed me about doing this idea, I wasn't even thinking about doing this. It really just came up spur of the moment. And I realize now that, that like, that's no good. That's it. It's really, it's like a cry for help.

I had it all figured out, honestly, when I was 17. Yeah. This guy knew what life was all about. Should have stuck around in that band. So for me, there's a song that came on at target recently and which i'm like to do when i hear something and anywhere that i am that i like i'm immediately like siri what song is this because i want to put it in my arsenal i want it in my little dragon collection like the but and i hear the song i'm thinking it's good. And I'm like, man, I had a target.

Like this is usually like the most milquetoast music you can find. What are they doing? And so I, I look it up. It turns out that it's a song called champions of red wine by the new pornographers. Are you familiar with the new pornographers? I used to listen to them in college. Yeah.

Yeah. I did too. Are they still making new songs? No idea. I don't know how old the song is but as i was listening to it i was also reminded of all the songs that i love by the new pornographers and then i started like looking through the lyrics and everything i was like i think that they are writing exclusively to like married middle-aged people every one of these songs feels like it's for somebody who's in a relationship who's like

i don't know if they're always happy in it but in some of the songs i'm now thinking of but like they're it's for people who are in a relationship who are kind of like trying to like figure out their lives and uh are not where they may be expected to be and i'm like oh shit i think i think i should dive back into the new pornographers. And as I was thinking about that, I was like, you know who else does this? It's the Talking Heads. Right. They write music for you or they write music for married people? For me. Well, both. I feel like there's so much of the Talking heads music is for a 40 year old dude. Oh, if you go through the lyrics, like there's a lot of songs about, I mean,

naive melody feels very much about like loving somebody very specific and genuinely being in love with them. And it feels like over a long period of time. And this is not my beautiful wife. This is not my, there's that song. There's so many songs of like that feeling of, of I have everything, but what, what am I still wanting? I can't put my finger on it,

man. That's interesting. I don't, I, uh, I, I, I can contribute little to this because I don't really know new

pornographers that well. And I definitely don't know talking heads. That's a real blind spot of mine, that I just don't know them very well. And I'm also trying to, I think it's hard for me to come up with one or two perfect artists for my situation because I'm realizing I live a very specific life as a person who lives alone in a beach house in a quiet town, just like sort of going on my own little adventures all the time with my dog. That feels like perfect fodder for music. It's, I don't know. What is it going to?

I'm trying to think. I can't give you Jimmy Buffett. It's not quite on the nose. That doesn't work. they are very, it's like a character song or a story song, or it's a person like, this is a song about a person who feels like everyone went to the bar without them and they're stuck at home and they're angry, but they're not angry. Or a song about a person who was like feeling nervous at a party. So he locked himself in the bathroom and just like little ideas of things I've had in my life where i feel like

yeah if i was competent enough to write a song it wouldn't be a love song and it wouldn't be an angry song it would be a song about being annoyed about traffic or being uh angry about the way people don't know how to behave in grocery stores just like very specific everyday uh complaints and not a lot you know people are trying to try to to write hits so they're going to write universal things uh about love and fighting i guess or i don't know i don't know what people write songs about that write songs about but they're just not writing about like the things i think about in my day yeah why didn't that i nodded to that man in the grocery store and he didn't do anything back is that rude yeah where's that i think cake feels kind of close because cake writes songs uh and i bring up this band a lot because i love them so much but they

write like uh carbon dioxide a song about how there's too much carbon dioxide and he doesn't like it write songs about uh it's very clear he was just thinking about dimes the unit of currency and how they don't get enough credit so he wrote a song about it and uh a song about getting he's sick of phones he doesn't he doesn't doesn't want anyone to call him just like he hates the ringing of his ringing of his phone and it drives him crazy i'm like yeah yeah yeah this guy this this is john mccrea something he knows what it's like to to sit and think your thoughts too much man there's i i just don't know music well enough i i know exactly what you're talking about and there's got to be that like some of the songs, the Hamlet songs, like the overthinking it songs. And you're ruining your life by overthinking it. Not that I'm saying you're doing that, but like that fit for this uh i'm preemptively saying they've got

two songs that i've heard one is uh courtney and it's about the conspiracy theory that courtney love killed kurt cobain and uh the other is called ghost stories and it's uh the singer's very long-winded attempt to explain to someone how he knew that he loves her. And he just like lyrically and mentally in both songs goes off on weird tangents and loses his place and comes back and uses too many words to explain simple concepts. And I'm like, yeah, this is,

this is getting closer. This is, this guy sounds like a podcast listener. What I want is like a modern fisherman. And that just doesn't exist as a, like a genre of music anymore. It doesn't exist. We're getting,

we're getting rubbed out of this world. Soren. That's the truest thing you've ever said. The modern fisherman doesn't exist. We used to build things in this country. That's a great band name. The modern fisherman doesn't exist. I'm going to have to to think put some more thought into

this i also have in my my when i talk about my grand arsenal of music it's really only about 12 bands there's only like 12 people that i can do a rolodex through and then i'm like well i i don't know yeah i did i mean i i think you telegraphed that i think the music snobs listening at home uh probably tuned out when you said, I heard this great new band at Target. Yeah. When I say, I think champions of red wine is like a decade old song too.

Yeah. Target, which I'm sure famously has by design, the least challenging music. I absolutely vanilla, but as we've established, vanilla is my favorite flavor. So Target's really where I go to get all my mixes. absolutely vanilla but as we've established vanilla is my favorite flavor so target's

really where i go to get all my mixes this would be a wonderful origin story if i genuinely we couldn't think of a band and i was like well i guess then i guess it's up to me and then i just like that was just i ran out the room and started a band what's gonna happen when you listen to the decemberis and you decide oh yeah the decemberis speak to me uh great question you'll never know i can't yeah you can't possibly i can't ever let that out that's too much power for me yeah i i thinking back on it when i first discovered the decemberis i guess i was probably like 24 25 and at that time it felt like they were because i was also like i was so shitty about being in love. And at that time it felt like they were, because I was also like, I was so shitty about being in love with literature at that point in my life too.

Cause I was just out of college and it was all I, it was all I had. Like that was, those were my weapons. And, and, and those days are gone now. You would never just like casually drop stories of the Trojan war or

anything like that. Philosopher, drop stories of the trojan war or anything like that philosopher soldiers musing at beaches oh it's so i just hate myself this is your year this is awesome um but at the time i thought like that because there was a lot of literary stuff hidden in all their work and i And I was like, yep, yep. This is for me. This is exactly, they saw me going to my classes. They saw me graduate and they're like, this guy needs something special. We'll just make some music for him. authors or comedians, like growing up, certainly reading Chuck Klosterman, sex drugs and Cocoa Puffs first, which is just a guy musing about pop culture. I was like, yes, this is, you are writing this for me. This is how I like to think. This is how I like to talk. These are the things that I want to talk about. And then a few years later, when he wrote closer to a memoir, this book, killing yourself to live, which is just him thinking about death and musing about every past relationship. I'm like, yes, that's where I'm at too. I am also thinking about times I've screwed up with women. It's crazy.

Please fast forward to a couple of years so you could tell me what I'm supposed to feel later. Yeah. It did feel like Chuck Klosterman's book sort of aged along with us. Yeah. I definitely felt that as well, where I was like, yeah, I care a lot about 80s music right now, too, in Fargo Rock City. And surely it matters in some way, in some way that I can, like,

all of my extensive knowledge of 80s hair music matters in some way. Yeah. The pantheon of music. the greater pantheon of music. Yeah. I think I was thinking the other day also about in everything, everywhere, all at once.

Is that the name of it? Yeah. Did you watch it? I watched it. I know. That's so great. I got a screener. I had a screener and Colleen had some extra time.

So we watched it. That's a, that's a recent movie that you've seen a screener of.en had some extra time so we watched it that's a that's a recent movie that you've seen a screener of did you love it i know it was so good it's amazing good and uh i it for like a multiverse movie where you expect like maybe there'd be some bros who are like hey you want to go see like a fucking multiverse movie and then they're crying by the end everyone in the theater is crying by the end um i was weeping by the end. Everyone in the theater is crying by the end. Um, I was weeping by the end of it. And then I talked to people at work, people who don't have children. And I was like, they were, they had mentioned that they had been crying by the end. And I was like,

what, uh, so how does like that kind of affect on you, even though you don't have kids? Cause so much of the end is about, and this is without spoiling anything like not messing up your kids like not growing so distant from them that they're irish that you can't reach them again and doing damage to them just because of your own weird shit and uh they were like yeah but i've been children i've been a child of somebody everyone's a good child children of somebody and i was like i was getting different things from this movie like i think you're i think we have different main characters yeah i was i uh i uh also webbed seeing that movie and almost immediately called my mom after it because it just made me think about and love my mom so much and uh i i i know she's listening now shout out to my mom i love you mom uh i didn't because i

thought i don't think she's gonna like this movie i don't know i don't know if i should send her her and dad to theaters to see it uh but i did i think i eventually told her that like hey i saw this movie and and and uh i i wept and i and because there's like a it's prominently about uh a mother like a family really, but we're focused on this mother who loves her family and, and wants to do everything for her family. And it just, it's impossible to watch it and not think of sacrifices your parents made for you.

And it's also just like a kick-ass, really awesome movie. And I saw it that the one time in theaters and wept and then when i was flying to san francisco most recently i saw that it was available on the plane and we also know from uh research that you're gonna die yeah people are more susceptible to crying on planes because uh we we talked about this in the podcast before, something about atmospheric pressure or whatever. And so when I saw that was on there, I was like, oh man, I'm going to cry so fucking much on it. This is awesome. I'm really going to go through it on this plane.

This rules. And did you? Oh, yeah. Oh, that's great. Oh, your fellow passengers. That must have been, what a treat for somebody walking down the aisle to the bathroom and seeing this this man just sobbing and then being like what's what is he watching and turning around and seeing uh these people with hot dogs for fingers yeah oh he cares a lot about those people with hot dog fingers he's really emotional yeah none of the none of the meal options were

dairy-free i think it's just he didn't he didn't know he was supposed to order in advance and so he now he's he can't eat so sad uh yeah i watching it i i thought so little about i'll say like i thought so little about my parents what during watching it uh and i should have you're absolutely right but i was so i guess i i take it back I said it's hard not to think of the sacrifices your parents made. It's not hard at all. It's incredibly easy. I was so selfishly just thinking of me and my own children and wanting to go wake up my son because I was like, I got to be a better dad. Every single turn, just watching it, thinking like, you could be so much better. There's so many things you could be so much better like you could be so there's so many things you could be doing and you're he's at an age now where he's so he's seven so like he's negotiating some strange social dynamics and things like that and also catching on to the my patterns some of them are are not good ones like they're like the way that i will like

get on him for little things and like he's realizing now like that why do you care like why do you care about this little thing and i don't can't be like because i'm trying to make you good for the future i'm trying to like set you on this foundation right now and sometimes that involves you just picking up your socks before you go upstairs and uh and i i'm like i'm like, I, there's so, I could be so much better at all the time. I, and, uh, that's all I was thinking about. And man, strange to think that everybody's getting something different from that. Yeah. Uh, that's a crazy heady thing to worry about. So, and I want you to know, uh, I don't think you can be any better.

That's nice. Thank you. Thank you's that's what i was waiting to hear there's i really think this is it you're at the top pursuit as a as an adult uh with children to constantly try to be better for them and yeah and never feeling like you're you're all the way there man it's i couldn't remember who said it but they're like having children is just a new way for the world to hurt you and each jesus at every yeah at every single age your children remind you of like that there's a new uh layer of the onion to that so when they're young it's like you're so scared of them dying you're so scared of anything happening to them instead of physical thing happening to them and then as you get older you're like oh no i'm doing detriment i'm doing detriment to this child emotionally and you're like how do i fix that oh doing detriment. I'm doing detriment to this child emotionally. And you're like, how do I fix that? Oh, I have to fix me. Oh, that's not fun. Oh, that's bad.

You know, what's crazy is that, that, that quote, uh, having a child is another way for the, a new way for the world to hurt you. I do know who said that it's, it's, it was Ronan. He said it to you. He was too. He looked you right in the eye. I was there visiting. I was nuts. I know it's not true because he didn't speak until he was four, Daniel. But maybe he just said it with his eyes because he did a lot of that. This was a fun episode.

Yeah, I loved it. I guess we can stop talking now. Yeah, we'll stop talking. The show is Quick Question, but you knew that already we are recorded edited and produced by the irreplaceable gabe harder our theme song is by the incredible mirex their digital album is available at mirex.bandcamp.com you can find the show on twitter at qq underscore soren and dan or me at dlb underscore inc or soren at Soren underscore LTD. We sure talked a lot of shit about how Twitter was

falling apart and here we are still doing it. Email the show at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. We also have a Patreon. You can support us. It's patreon slash quick question. If you support us there, which you don't have to do, but if you do, you get a

bonus piece of content every so often. Alright, bye. Look out for that. 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 that go? Oh, forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here

I think you'll have a great time here