Stop Podcasting Yourself - Episode 776 - John Hodgman

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

Comedian John Hodgman returns to talk Dragon’s Lair, the devil, and New England bowling.

Hi, he's Dave Shumka and he's Graham Clark and together we host Stop Podcasting Yourself. Woo! Hello everybody and welcome to episode number 776 of Stop Podcasting Yourself. My name is Graham Clark and with me as always is a man who is always a vision in a cardigan, Mr. Dave Shumka. I'm wearing a cardigan today. I'm also wearing a corduroy shirt, which I thought would retain the heat a little better, but I am chilly. I am goose pimply. Yeah, you can't sneak up on no one because this little corduroy will betray you. Here comes Cordy Card again.

That voice you hear is our guest today. Very, very funny comedian writer he is the judge on judge john hodgman who that show is going to be on tour on the 35th in january it's going to be 27th 31st in Portland 19th of Altember 31st Portland February 2nd New Bromstown

Oh boy On the upper deck of the New Bromstown disco ball 11 59 a.m judge john hodgman live on tour 31st of january 2023 in portland oregon february 2nd denver colorado february 4th san francisco no but what no no he's right this vlog is uh january 31st portland oregon february 2nd denver colorado at the Gothic Theater. Mmm. Perfect. Saturday, February the 4th, live on stage and streaming around the world from San Francisco Sketch Fest.

Nice. Live Judge John Hodgman. It's our first professional live streaming show. And what about your Los Angeles show? Sold out, bud. Damn right. Sorry. You say this is your first professional live streaming show have you done a lot of amateur live streaming shows well you know like in the in

the depths of lockdown people would get up on zoom and do shows yes or you know do live you know like in fact i think that we did a a kind of zoom san francisco sketch fest judge john hodgman show with aisha tyler back in in 2021 but this is we are at the sydney goldstein theater in san francisco which is a beautiful theater and i urge everyone who wants to and can attend in person to do so. But if you don't live in San Francisco, or even if you do and you don't feel like going to the show, we're doing it. It's being filmed professionally, streaming live, and you get to watch it within 48 hours. So, you know, it's fun. So even if you're busy for the live stream, if you can't make it.

I can't. I'm busy for that hour. Yeah, if you can't. If you've got a podcast of your own scheduled for that hour. I've got an emergency appendectomy planned. I can just feel it coming now. I don't want to address it yet. The doctors think I'm crazy.

Yeah, the doctors hate this guy. Yeah. Normally, I set aside Saturday nights nights for surgery no matter what because that's statistically when it happens yeah you know you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna have some kind of emergency appendectomy or a splenectomy yeah you're gonna see the people that the doctors that only work weekends which are kind of not as reliable as the weekday doctors they're just feeling yeah yeah right yeah um you're gonna have a little bit of an adventure it's happened like four times i was supposed to host saturday night live and i just felt a little tingling in the old spleen and it's gotta i gotta go and then

nick nolte covers for me and and rather than let them down at the last minute because then they get mad right yeah and then they pretend they never even heard of you because they're so mad now i follow your your uh your uh model your what do you call that model your model yeah and i just block off saturday night for surgery yeah sadly saturday surge it's look at my eye cal you'll see it there blocked off but for san francisco sketch fest we're making we're making a exception okay i'll be there at sydney the sydney goldstein theater live in person and all around the world via streaming sf sketchfest.com this could be the night when i actually do pop an appendix or whatever happens yeah you want that on a live stream though that's you want very exciting you know some kind of uh the power of live streaming is that you get to

see in real time john real time john hodgman's appendix being pulled out of his appendix cocoon that's what that is right yes am i cloaca sure you cloaca absolutely uh should we get to know us yes get to know us um so john hello uh nowadays you're uh you, you put on shows on Saturday nights. Tell me, what did young John Hodgman, how did he spend his Saturday night? Yes, this is great. I want to know. Well, as you may know, I'm an only child. Okay. I was loathsomely precocious.

I definitely was rocking some corduroy and cardigan crossover okay this is teenager you or yeah well like 13 14 year old judge okay show up to school with a briefcase and an overcoat basically doing everything to convince the world what i knew in my heart to be true i'm not a sexual being i am going to skip over skip over the awkwardness of sexual awakening and immediately leap into midlife gentleman bachelorhood which i believed was my destiny ladies i don't want you to trouble you you don't have to reject me i'm just uh it's already it's pretty rejected yeah yeah i've got all don't worry ladies my saturdays are blocked off for surgery now the briefcase i feel like i also had a phase where i wanted to carry a briefcase

but was very uh scared of having it knocked out of my hand and uh being beaten with it yeah yeah yeah how did you fare with the briefcase uh i i mean i became very adept at using it in battles oh yes or titsu and whatnot yeah my briefcase would break down into nunchucks so cool but uh but but again those were only practice battles in my in my dojo because i had a lot of room at home we lived in a large house and it was just my mom and dad and me oh and our cat pokey so that's like that's why they say rooms i had a dojo but no one ever bothered me no one but people did not bully me i had long hair too and it was not

particularly stylish okay or styled and um and i was just too weird people couldn't get a handle on me um and so they didn't know where to grab me and toss me around right and if they tried to and if they tried to get a handle on my briefcase that would just pop out the way a lizard sheds its uh its tail when grabbed was this a hard briefcase it was um a structured leather briefcase it was not an attache case did it have a uh combination it did yes do you do you remember the combination no that's interesting i don't okay i don't know what i would have chosen 666 would have been a little bit too provocative for sure time yeah because as a child as a real child as a legitimate youth i was i was a very good and well-behaved child

not religious but definitely concerned about being possessed by satan what did you take any steps to stop that from happening? No, there was the point you couldn't. There was nothing you could do. If Satan wanted to get you, Satan would get you. That's what we learned from the exorcist. And I had not seen the exorcist, but my parents had a paperback copy hanging around.

They had some pictures from the movie in the middle. You remember how they used to do that? Yes. The best. Boy, that scared the living feces out of me. Because I was, you know, as an only child, I had no siblings to wrestle with physically or emotionally. Right. And I was not a sports, I had no interest in sports. So I really had no rehearsal for conflict of any kind.

So I believe that all conflict and really any emotionally intense interaction, such as hugging or kissing, was probably fatal. So for me, it was really important to follow the rules and not have any conflicts. But then when I learned the devil could just come and inhabit your body and start your bed is shaking it really freaked me out but you also should live the life you want to because any day you could get possessed so you know what i mean embrace embrace all life and conflict well now i understand that great thanks to therapy and alcohol, I understand these things. But at the time I was terrified that the good, good little Johnny,

uh, little Johnny good, weird might get taken over. And all of a sudden I'd be telling people that their parents perform fellatio in hell, which is, that's my adaptation of a line from the exorcist yes and of course i had a um a bunk bed because i was an only child all only children have bunk beds so your parents were hoping for a second kid but it just never came along oh i don't know i think john was just hoping for a bunk bed

yeah no it's just cool it's cool to have a bunk bed. True. And as an only child, I can have whatever I want, thank you very much. And, you know, we needed bunk beds, us only children, in order to literalize the absence in our lives. It was always around. Yes. Top or bottom bunk? The top bunk, obviously, because, you know, I was.

King of the castle. I was tops. Did you make the bottom bunk and like a reading nook or was it just where you threw stuff yeah there was a bolster down there and um you know i'd go down there and read uh whatever chronicles of narnia yeah oh yeah two minute mysteries by donald jay sobel yeah you know what are two minutes i might go down to that bottom bunk and you know choose my own adventure if you know what are two minutes i might go down to that bottom bunk and you know choose my own adventure but the top bunk was for sleeping that was you know that was my that was my my inner sanctum or my top sanctum anyway and um but the problem was that you know it was a flimsily made bunk bed it was wooden and so you know the the joints would get a little creaky as you

crawled up and down the ladder all the time it would get a little wobbly and this became a problem because i knew that the first phase of getting your soul taken by the devil getting possessed as the bed starts to shake i knew that at least from oh i probably had read the mad magazine uh parody of yeah yes you remember what that was called by the way this the the smexorcist well i'll just look it up this is my favorite what was it that's my favorite the smexorcist there's a wikipedia page called list of film spoofs in mad. It's on my homepage. My favorite is a basic instinct. It was basically,

it stinks. Classic. Uh, you're not going to like it. Uh, it's the, or assist. Oh,

that's of course what it has to be. Yeah. I was thinking of mad magazine. I knew that there was a, the, or assist. Perfect. I mean,

could they have come up with something better? Maybe. But they had to, I mean, it was the rule. They were already using Ech all the time. Yeah. And they had other, you know, the lighter side of to get out there. And, you know, how many. Dave Berg's the lighter side of.

That's right. Name above the title. It was Dave Berg. We did. Graham and I did a bonus episode where we went through these and i i've looked it up and there are there are 13 parodies film parodies involving ah right fantastic voyage short yeah in cold black i could have done better than that i can't believe they did a parody of in cold blood the movie the black and white it had to have been i can't you couldn't have been the true crime book well no that is the true crime book but they made a movie of it but but how do

you do a mad magazine uh well it has to have happened it's it's on your it's on your internet but it had to be the movie it couldn't have have just been the book. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Starblech, the motion picture, of course. Okay. Yeah. Starblech. Starblech 2, The Wreck of Korn. Starblech 3, The Search for Plot. Starblech 4, The Voyage Bombs.

The Witches of Eastwick was The Wretches of Echfleck. That's pretty good. The Witches of Eastwick was the Wretches of Eckfleck. That's pretty good. Starbleck 5, The Farcical Frontier and Starbleck 6, The Uninspired Continuation. Starbleck, The Worst

Contact. Worst Contact. That's good. Starbleck Imperfection, The Eckfiles fight this feature. Oh, Eckf ek files right and that that was it that was it that's i think that that's the tops well i knew from the exorcist and other sources now having not seen the film the first stage of the devil possessing you is your bed was going to shake yeah so i would be

terrified all night waiting for that bed to start shaking and then one night it did and i started it was like you could i could feel it shaking and what i realized now as an adult was that was because my heart was beating so hard but i freaked out and i ran in and i ran into my mom and dad's room and my my dad was asleep my mom was up reading a book and smoking a cigarette in bed which is terrific yeah not advised uh don't read kids anyway i said i'm concerned that i'm being possessed by the devil my bed is shaking and she said uh you don't need to be concerned about that. There is no devil. Oh.

And I said, oh, how do you know? She said, well, you may not know this, but I'm an atheist. So I know there's no devil because there's no God. Now you can go back to bed. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Yeah. Anyway, cigarette, John?

That's right. Benson and Hatches. Were both of your parents smokers? Or was it just your mom? No. No. My dad was never a smoker. My mom was.

And passed away from it. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. It was some time ago but obviously yeah don't smoke kids yeah i uh i was in a relationship where i was a smoker and the woman i smoked for a while too yeah what was your brand i didn't mean to interrupt your story no no no this is i'm i'm excited to hear this um blexin and bludget oh really no no no no i smoked um marble

marble uh i can't i can't do the mad magazine thing i just don't have the the the mind for it i'm afraid no don martin me no al jaffee um i i spoke marlboro mediums because i was you know as i

as always i just like to keep it right down the middle no extremes uh and then i settled on par after those felt a little heavy i settled on parliaments with the recessed filter oh okay parliaments i feel like that's a feels like it's a classier cigarette than a marlboro but maybe it's just the name parliament you know i i smoked for about six seven years and i enjoyed it yeah me too loved it and i wish that i had never smoked parliaments because they're so good no they're stupid they're stupid like yeah like just smoke you're doing something terrible to your body yes one of the worst i think because you like the drug that is in there and it looks cool it does you might as well look cool

well you might as well not smoke the parliaments what is what's wrong with parliaments as a i i only smoked virginia slim so i don't know you've come a long way baby did you did you ever smoke no no good for you virginia slims i don't know if they still make them but they were like actually very skinny yeah i've seen them yeah i i guess i smoked popeye cigarettes oh yeah i i don't know parliament just it was like what you know they were just lighter do you know what i mean like it's it's like the all the people who smoke um american spirits it's like oh it has a it has an ingenious person on the on the label that means it's good for you yeah like that's i remember people saying it's terrible you might as well do the worst thing that feels the best and looks the coolest

right you're gonna do it anyways yeah rather than like pretend that it's somehow better because it's lighter or that it's got no additives or whatever it is it's just it's it's it's poison just go ahead and poison yourself. I do like that somebody doesn't smoke because of the additives. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. For a while, every now and then I would smoke a Newport. Okay.

I had a little bit of a mentholated phase, which was really terrific for my my asthma um yeah smoking was good for my asthma as well yeah uh uh yeah so anyway um it was fun while it lasted but i knew it couldn't last and then it it ended and actually was i was very lucky that was fairly no big deal were you gonna tell a wonderful story well i want to know if you were a like a disposable lighter guy a zippo guy were you matches guy yeah sparkler this was all when i was in college so i was a good boy uh i would never uh you know satan didn't get me until senior year of high school oh no okay yeah because i never i never did i've not really done very many drugs at all but i had never done a drug i've never done a drink oh wow never done a smoke until the end of my senior year

of high school and then by the time i went to college i was like oh i'm ready to do all those things now right yeah and so and so i was i much more, you know, my head spun around on my body. Yeah. I vomited a bunch of pea soup. Incense and peppermint started playing. Yeah. I think you saw a different version of The Exorcist. And I started drinking grain alcohol and buying Marlboro mediums and getting into some trouble.

Yeah, I was the same same except in high school i uh never drank never did drugs never did homework never read a book you were a nihilist nothing mattered yeah i believed in uh you know that the time the time after school is a sacred time for TV watching. Yeah. Yeah. What would you watch when you got home from school? Okay. Well, it depends on the day of the week.

That's what I'm talking about. But like, I mean, generally the same days of the week in Canada. No, we have a, there, there,

we have a shortened week. We have a 40 week. That's why I screwed up your intro there because I'm not used to it. I understand. So on Favre Day, we, no, I think I would just be bad like sitcoms. Yeah. I would come home and watch, you know, Full House or Saved by the Bell. Or sometimes Much Music would show, they would have, every day they would have a half hour you know, full house or saved by the bell, or sometimes, uh,

much music would show, uh, they would have every day they would have a half hour where they devoted to a specific artist called the spotlight. And if you like that artist, you'd watch half an hour of their music videos. Right. It's like,

uh, you know, a Katie Lang. Uh, constant cravings on everybody. Yeah. Hey, there hey there's a there's a half hour spotlight about katie lang on much music guess what country am i in and then uh or on fridays uh you you know if you're hurt if you hurried you could catch power stick hockey week this was uh it's a recap of what happened that week in hockey.

There was also a show that was like the top 10 video games or it was just people chatting about video games. Oh, Video and Arcade Top 10. Yes, that's correct. This was a cacophonous TV show hosted by Nicholas Pickless on YTV. We watched it, Graham and I, recently. Are are you now the two of you are playing a prank on it would be arcade top 10 with by nicholas piccolis

on on on the meow meow channel which is something that we had british columbia only we would be uh it was nintendo only so i was out i was the sega boy but yeah it would have kids in studio graham and i watched it recently and there's just this annoying music playing the whole half hour yeah and it's a lot of feel like the hosts were yelling i don't feel like yeah they were yelling over the music someone would and literally uh one of the hosts would tell you about a video game they would tell you the instructions for how to play this video game yeah okay uh the goal is to collect the most hearts now to do a backspin press down and then double b this was for the home console player yes yeah yeah because i'm um i'm slightly older than you are so i feel

like when i was when i when i was the equivalent age the big the big thing was still our you know arcade games in arcades right by the time super mario brothers came out on the super nes or whatever i was already in college i'd put childish things aside yeah picked up some cigarettes and we're on your way alcohol i'm smoking cigarettes and kicking canadian nerds in the head i finally got to use my briefcase nunchucks on nerds brought them all the way to new haven connecticut yale yale university where are the nerds at um when i was a kid it's funny the because the place i would go to to play video games because i didn't have a sega until i was 12 maybe uh and the place you

would go in vancouver to play video games is the university you would go to the student union building kids would get on the bus and head down to the university and uh spend time in the basement just pumping quarters into lethal enforcers lethal enforcer i don't think i've even heard of that were they selling off-brand video games it's a canadian thing i was always um i was a tempest person enjoyed temp I enjoyed Tempest. Oh, yeah. We had Geddy Lee Simulator here. I would go to 1001 Plays in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Play a little Dragon's Lair. Oh, Dragon's Lair.

I remember that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I liked the little Dragon. Then when the Dragon's Lair machine hit, people didn't know what to think. Their worlds were turned upside down. it was a really cool looking game was it a good game no okay no it was a it was a choose your own adventure animated film yeah but your choice was up down sword or something like that and then you and then the like so it was a you know it was early laser disc technology right so and and it was animated by don bluth who was that guy who quit disney and tried to be new disney but only got to secretive nim and whatever oh sorry golly yeah don't don't don't come for me um

uh a mouse tail or whatever yeah what about did he do anastasia yeah anastasia i played that video game it sucks uh wait a minute i gotta look this up here what was this this mouse named fievel an american american title at one point he goes west yeah yeah he's anyway don't come at me bluth fans it was fine and it was his animated adventure you played and you followed you watched a knight try to rescue a uh an attractive princess not one of these ugly princesses no i'm just i was just suddenly having a physical reminder i mean yeah i had i had tried to hold off sexual awakening for so long but i gotta i just realized that the princess and the dragon's lair may have been it that may have been the moment my body said sorry kid you gotta you gotta do this

and i wasn't even playing people would just people would just watch someone else play because you run out of quarters because it was very expensive and not fun to play and each each scenario like you would be walking down all the way and you would have to choose right left or forward and each one of the two of those would kill you immediately and one of them you'd get through yes and um and and then you know so you would hit the move the joystick forward if that was your choice and then the laser dick the laser dick i get that sometimes these are the new video games kids are playing that's the that's the removable tattoo i got when i was in college and became cool across my back you were doing a lot of shirtless stuff in college yeah sure and

then they made enormous temporary tattoos you know when i turned 19 and took my shirt off for the first time the world opened up to me prior to that i had never once taken off my t-shirt uh but which is pretty much true but in any case um you know the laser disc would pause and it would be very anxious as it went to black and searched to the the proper chapter on the disc and about 35 minutes later you'd have to make another decision right it looked it looked very good the i feel like that took four quarters when i was a kid is that possible instead of the the regulation one or two it was we for us it was a loony per game that's right i forgot some reason yeah that would have been hard for you to get you'd have to import some uh yeah well you know cambridge massachusetts

very cosmopolitan home of a major university true true true and then we had the game the beer tapper which was uh rethemed to cheers because we were in Boston. Oh, no, not true. That was my sexual awakening was the guy. Yeah. Tapper. I don't know if you've ever listened to a great podcast by a very funny person named Ken Reed podcast called TV guidance counselor. That's good.

You all should get together because what he'll do is he'll have guests on and he's got this massive collection of vintage tv guides which may mean nothing to you but you know did you have tv guide or equivalent we did yeah sometimes they would redo the cover so it was a canadian thing instead of american was it called much tv the magazine yeah yeah much tv presents tv and you would pick out one from whatever year was meaningful to you okay from his collection and then you would sit down and go through a week and talk about what was on the air that week and what you would watch oh man this is a great concept i love that tv guidance counselor it's called last week on the show I went into a bit of a fugue state and rattled off every TV channel from channel 2 to 35 that I remembered from like age 10.

Call letters or whatever, you knew it all. I know that your listeners will have already heard it. They heard it already. You'll do that for me off the air. Yeah, sure. But if I said to you, Dave channel seven,

what was channel seven? French CBC. CBC. CBC. En français. En français. Ici, Radio Canada.

Um, what about, uh, what's on channel 12? KVOS TV 12, Bellingham, Washington. Wow.

Yeah, burned into his memory. Because, you know, the way that you would read your call sign and your identifier, because TV stations had announcers at that time. Yeah. They would have the voice of that TV channel. And they were often an on-air personality who might

host a local talk show for channel 56 in boston wlvi it was dale dorman and he was the voice of channel 56 and he also he was you would never see him but he would introduce all of the cartoons in the afternoon. Oh, okay. And I was an LV, I was a 56 kid primarily because they had the Warner Brothers cartoons on. Right. You know, the Looney Tunes. The Looney Tunes. Whereas the big competitor and arguably the better station, I'm now able to admit, was Channel 38 WSBK. What did they have well see they they were famous

for their three stooges marathon okay which i as a as a pretentious asshole as a child i was like hey uh mr hodgman your child's an asshole that's that's what my guidance counselor would say to my mom but i turned my nose up at the three stooges but i would be very happy to watch channel 50 so the the sophisticated comedy of the looney tunes for me and benny hill of course was on channel 56 but dale dorman introduced the cartoons and he had kind of a wacky voice. WSBK had the mellifluous voice of Dana Hersey. Dana Hersey. And Channel 38, Dana Hersey, tonight on the Movie Loft.

Friday the 13th, part two. Oh, that was your night time. Movie Loft was the evening. Well, I think the Movie Loft was on every night at 8 p.m. Channel 38, the Movie Loft. Dana Hersey would be seen. Very handsome man. evening well i think the movie loft was on every night at 8 p.m channel 38 the movie loft dana hersey would be seen very handsome man almost always wearing a corduroy jacket you would have loved him babe corduroy jacket and like a black turtleneck and he would stand on this set that looked like the coolest loft apartment in the world. Nice. And you know,

he had, you know that he had like a Casablanca poster on the wall and probably some film reels. Yeah. Yeah. Around like an old brownie camera somewhere sitting on a shelf. Exactly. And that's the way I want it.

That's like, I just wanted to live in that movie loft, watch movies all the time. And Dana Hersey would get up there and go tonight on the movie loft, Francis Ford Coppola presents the second part of an American legacy, the Godfather part two. And he'd do these long introductions, really delving into the history of the filmmaking.

No one gave a flying feces, but him, but it was just, you know, I i sometimes when i'm i can't sleep because i'm afraid the devil's gonna take me over i still think about it i'll dial up some dana hersey on on youtube and just when he when he does introduce friday the 13th part two it's it's sort of he's so mad that this is the movie they're showing because this was sweeps

week and they were like okay we got to do something spooky yeah he'd written all this copy for literally so mad about yeah he's like i thought we were doing jewel a gym but apparently it's friday the 13th part all right uh tonight on the movie loft and they would not edit the movies oh so no all swearing all uh violence all and sometimes they would play the movies without commercial interruption if it were an important film like the deer hunter right so that so he was really cool i really really want to and and you know i'm sure that maybe a canadian television producer might be listening and might want to commission a series for cbc en francais or something yeah but i've been i've been wanting to pitch this show for a

long time called i love bowling okay because the other big local show was not it was on channel 25 which was like the third rate one that's where you would go and watch i mean honestly if you could tune it in you were lucky because you could watch star blazers in the afternoon what's star blazers what are star blazers yeah what's that graham it's these guys who wore blazers and they had stars all over them they were pretty i mean they were stars yeah they were big stars yeah star blazers was a dubbed English Japanese science fiction cartoon about a group of

Star Blazers a group of like a space army can I make it any clearer to you it's about a group of Star Blazers would it help if I sang you the theme song alright let me make sure I have the lyrics here lyrics would it help if i sang you the theme song yep all right let me make sure i have the lyrics here lyrics because sometimes i forget the lyrics but you know the melody for sure we're off to outer

space we're leaving mother earth to save the human race our star blazers and there's a really funky horn section then searching for a distant star heading off to iskandar leaving all we love behind who knows what dangers we'll find we must be strong and brave our home we have to save if we don't in just one year mother earth will disappear fighting with the gamelans we won't stop until we won then we'll return and when we arrive the earth will survive with our star blazers it's a really hot song you can look it up that's really good right that shit was amazing yeah and you know in japan it is revered and it is known as space space battleship yamato um dave since you're you have uh children and they watch uh you know cartoon shows do the cartoon shows of now have big intros like that like they used to have uh like a big theme song

and everything to get into the show or what does it just start i know that one of the one of the more popular ones that's out right now is a very short theme song which is like the show is called bluey fuck you your kid's gonna watch it yeah no bluey is they just mention all the bluey is i just know that bluey rules uh but they mention all just they just mention all i don't know what a bluey is i just know that bluey rules uh but they mention all just they just mention the four main characters in bluey um and they have a little dance that they do that's but it's uh yeah they're they're not long ones like that i did that the star blazers theme song did it play did it have the whole one minute long theme song for every episode? Yeah.

This was a space epic. It was a saga. Because, like, in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, there's an extended, like, three minute intro where, you know, before he gets the cab, he's on an airplane. Someone spills their drink on him. But that only ever played in the pilot episode yeah no this was i mean and then the for the second season was a whole different story it was like serialized oh they had a whole different song the same same music but a whole different lyrical composition for the second series oh wow same same characters same same characters but um uh they added in the space

marines it was look the point is star blazers was on channel 25 the second season there was they got bogged down in red tape space galaxy's motto is one of the most famous early japanese anime it's very very big and and they took it and they took all the sexy parts and the part where the doctor was drunk all the time but it was still really good and that was worth tuning into and that's all on youtube as well boy oh boy nostalgia is a toxic impulse but it's making me feel really good right now yeah yeah but the other thing that that station had was candlepins for cash candlepins or cash candlep or cash candle pins for cash oh for cash okay yeah and candle pin bowling is a style of bowling in new england which shumka you clearly

are nodding along to i knew i've heard the term yeah we have weird bowling in canada how many pins how many pins are we talking about it's 10 pins okay and but you get you get to bowl three times in a turn okay and the ball is small like a like a bocce ball that's what we do in canada we have small uh small balls but small balls but five pin bowling oh really yeah very popular for because the the bigger ones with the holes nobody can figure out what their finger size is we have small hands in canada yeah that's true you know they mean small hands small balls yeah roll the ball you get three you get three rolls and the other thing about candle pin this may be true in your five pin canadian small ball bowling

is that when the knock the pins down unlike in 10 pin where they clear the pins that have fallen they leave the pins down and you can use them strategically it's called deadwood okay and you can use them strategically to like you know carry them off the sides and hit other pins and knock them down ah that's cool it's much harder than to to score well than in 10 pin bowling right and with candle pins for cash you it was a game show where you're you were playing for a dollar a pin oh usually the your cash prize would be along the lines of seven dollars seven dollars people are literally going on television to win seven dollars is that just they would do one frame

no you might only get seven pins down at all in the whole in a whole oh no you would only get one you would get one turn and then oh okay and then this creep named bob gamir would interview you with a long microphone oh nice yeah what happened to the long microphone i feel like it really needs to come back i want to see i want to see like a spoof of a 70s show with a gag, like a, you know, a airplane style, the naked gun style gag where the microphone is extra long.

Maybe like, maybe we can work it into our show. I love bowling. Cause Bob come here was this total creep who would just, he would, he would mercilessly flirt with the women bowlers. And when they didn't go for them, he would just be mean to them in the interview.

Start asking them all the hot questions. Turn on them in a minute, turn on them in a dime. So how much do you make a year? Basically one guy came on and he's like, okay. And what do you, what do you do for fun?

Mostly I, I bowl Bob. Where do you bowl? I bowl at bowl Rama in Medford. Okay. What what do you do for fun uh mostly i bowl bob where do you bowl i bowl at bowlrama in medford okay what else do you do for fun uh uh uh and the people who are on the show this is before people even wanted to be on television oh you know what i mean like we grew up in a time where it's like the goal is to be on television and we're going to act like we're on television all the time and it's more natural for to be us it's more natural for us to be on television than not on television yeah but this was in a time where like people were really awkward they were just there because they loved the bowling and they would just kind of blank out and people didn't know how to act and bob

come here would just eat them alive speaking of tv like accidentally ending up on tv do you remember film uh commercials that featured people in the lobby saying how much they liked the film i thought when i was a kid i thought that happened at every movie when you went to a movie i expect i'll be interviewed after this where's the guy i want to give my opinion i want to tell him i liked willow bob come here would turn to a guy and say what's your other hobby and the guy would go uh well i hiked mount washington last year bob camere was like oh yeah what was your time i was just hiking it it's like i did it in an hour and ten i could have any of these women on this show he was arrested for sexual misconduct they all were weren't they yeah yeah

so i really want to do a show where the dana hersey of that channel is forced to take over the bowling show and uh hates it it's funny how all the creeps from old time tv turned out to be creeps in real life yeah that's true that's true they were hiding in plain sight and uh the um in quebec i saw at the bolo rama we went to uh yeah there was a map of canada and showed what the different pins looked like and in quebec it were these long uh like straight up and down i bet there were candle pins candle pins is that candle pins well yeah i mean the candle pins in they may be the same but they they look like candles i mean they're very basically straight straight they don't have that that that curve yeah the curve that was an awakening moment for

me seeing the curve and the canadian bowling styles canadians have their own style of bowling called five pin bowling gameplay is faster the pins which are similar to duck pins are set in a v okay interesting yeah it's fun it's fun i'd love to get a map of canadian bowling style you know what it's still open next time i go i'll just steal it off the wall yeah actually that's a good tattoo idea yeah across my back i gotta cover up laser dick on my back so can you do a map of canadian bowling styles instead can you like no okay we got another canadian bowling guy our most popular tattoo um speaking of people who couldn't didn't know how to like uh talk on tv i just remember on video

and arcade top 10 sorry nicholas pickless they would have kids on playing these games and the winner would maybe win the game i don't know uh and then they would like introduce all the contestants and there was like a shorthand for the the contestants like they would say where they were from maybe what school they went to where they could be found it was like too much information and then they would ask these like nervous kids they're gonna be at seven o'clock tonight yeah when mom and dad are gonna be out of the house they would ask these nervous kids is there anyone you want to say hello to out there and the answer would across the board it was all would always be family and friends the way that like um the way that like wheel of fortune contestants would always be like

rst lne what does that stand for oh those were just when you were in the finals of uh wheel of fortune um those were like you could pick four consonants in one vowel and people would always take R, S, T, L, N, E and so much I thought it stood for something like it was initialism like T, C, B or T, G, I, F so much so that they now just they give you those

automatically oh yeah did you have a homework hotline in America or was that another Canadian? No, I don't know what that is. It was a show you could call in and ask for help with your homework. And there was two hosts. Well, I never needed any help with my homework.

That's true. Or maybe one. You went to somewhere in New Haven. It's unclear where you went. Yeah, I went to Yale University. It's a four-year accredited institution in southern connecticut nice yeah but apparently there was a show just you know just like you know that's where i was a good boy until i got into college and then the nunchucks came out

but there was apparently a show in new york i think was wpix and it was a video game show where you could play the video game all over the phone so you it was like a galaga style video game and you were yelling into the phone left left right right left right fire fire fire fire left right left right apparently it was impossible to win the kids were obsessed with it that's all video games are now they're all kids calling in from different places and that's true i suppose everything old is new again yeah and people like they watch youtube videos that are an hour long of somebody else playing which is uh that's that's the world now you know it was an easier i uh i started a uh a twitch channel oh yeah uh yeah i was gonna

say this year but now it's last year in 2022 what's going on on twitch uh i would play um sim city 2013 oh okay and people could watch me play as i built my cities and i would speak in a very a very calm style about what i was doing so that it was essentially it was my homage to bob ross and the joy of painting right but instead of painting happy little trees i was like and now we're going to turn this uh street in from upgraded from a medium density street to a high density street. And add some bus stops here along the way. And we're going to zone,

zone this as residential and zone commercial across the street. And here, is there a way they can make just to handle the plumbing? I don't want to have to do the plumbing. I hate having to do pipes. Have you ever played some city 13? Not maybe not that one, but the most recent one I played,

you had to do all the, like you had to hook up the plumbing for the whole city. I think you're talking about City Skylines. I'm thinking of city sidewalks, busy sidewalks, dressed in holiday style. Holiday style. Sure. And the air, it's... I know it's Santa's big scene. People get mad at me that I didn't play city skylines because that's the new like

when sim city stopped sim city for 2013 was notoriously buggy and and you know it was a classic game but people got fed up with it and then sim city stopped making sim city so someone else made what they call the better version, which is Cities Skylines, which I don't care for. So there's no SimCity anymore? It's ended in... I don't think they've made an official SimCity since 2013. Shit. Okay.

But it was a very meditative way I would start the week on Monday. I haven't done it for a while. Yeah, because I had SimCity 2000. I think I had the original SimCity that was just 2D. And then I had SimCity 2000. I think I had the original SimCity that was just 2D. And then I had SimCity 2000. And was that all about preparing for the Y2K? Yeah, it was.

Yeah. I mean, to update your software. A lot of panicking. Bunker building. I don't mind laying the plumbing, but it's building these bunkers. Yeah. Stockpiling. stockpiling food and weapons stockpiling food and weapons oh man i could i could really get into a game of stockpiling sim canning i mean i had no patience whatsoever for for the uh the Dead. I watched that for a while, then I realized that, you know, first of all, it's kind of that pretend prestigious TV.

Right. Like, it caught the mood and the cadence of prestige television shows. Yeah. And then you realize you were tricked. It's just soap opera garbage. Which, if you like that, you enjoy it on those terms, terrific. But then I just realized, like, well, you know, why are we so obsessed with zombies? This is just...

And the answer for me was, it's just permission structure for shooting your neighbors. Yeah, that's true. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's all this kind of sick, typically masculine fantasy of society collapsing, all of your responsibilities going away and you get to have a crossbow. Finally. Yeah. I love that.

I don't have to clean the car anymore. There's obviously, I'm not even calling in sick. However, if they, so I kind of got bored of that part cause I don't like the apocalyptic struggle part. Right.

But every now and then they would show like a closet full of canned goods and i was just i was like if they just did one a spin-off instead of like fear the walking dead it was like feed the walking dead prep prep the walking dead for the walk the walking dead pantry edition like if it was just people stockpiling pantries and and stocking cans of that would be evaporated milk neatly i would be so into that so here i've uh i've stored all the cans by color so all the purple labels are over here i really it just really speaks to my my need for i guess food security i don't know what but i do love a i do love a neat pile of cans stack of cans well i i think it all maybe dates back to when you uh you went into your parents

bedroom that night and you said mom i'm afraid of the devil and she said don't worry about the devil worry about zombies yeah we're about zombies they've yeah well i mean yes being being told from an at an early age that there is absolutely no purpose in life there is no there is no storyline there is no narrative there isn't even the devil isn't even interested in you fuck you you're alone in the cosmos i'm gonna i'm gonna smoke these benson and edges 100 still i die and you'll learn this lesson again in about 20 years yes and and over and over again yes that's right. Always in the zombie movies, they follow the same trajectory where

the zombies are the thing that's scary and then it's like, no, your fellow humans. Those are the ones that are the scariest. That's John being a zombie. I just became a zombie. I got so bored by that storyline that I became a zombie. Not you telling it, but but yes it's like no

the real monsters i went to go see megan this weekend oh how was how was megan that megan doing she says hi oh good tell her i say hi that hits all the beats of but this that's robot can't be bad it's just a robot it doesn't feel anything yeah yeah yeah and then no yeah it does and then it's bad and then oh it's not gonna protect you anymore it's really incredible how many people in movies have never seen movies before like it's important that most movie characters have never certainly in any horror movie they've never seen a horror movie yeah they couldn't how could they like if you had a horror movie where people well i guess that's what screen was i suppose but like did you see barbarian yes yeah i liked that movie a lot me too because it really

set up one movie storyline and then woof does it change all of a sudden it's great yeah i don't want to i don't want to spoil anything but that was definitely one where it's like come on yeah i feel like even the trailers don't go into that where in the trailers they were like this is the type of movie it's gonna be and then woof do they switch it was good i really liked it yeah i genuinely didn't know that it was one of the first movies i've seen in a while where I was like, I have no idea where this is going now. Yes. Like this is,

you know what I mean? Yeah. It was great, but it was still premised on the idea of like, maybe I should just wander into the creepiest basement in the world. Yes, that's true. Yeah.

No, I watched a, I watched a movie that was, it took place in a cabin somewhere and there's a scene where the guy opens the door into the basement just goes nope and closes it and locks it i don't i just uh you will hear on the recording that i just had a um a slight coughing fit i muted it in our conversation but i apologize in advance uh i have asthma and i grew up with the smoke um and then i smoked myself what what kind of are you still on the puffers and the asthma i also have asthma so

oh do you i do um for a long time i was using advair but yeah i was gonna say advair discus do 50 50 that's right yeah and uh and then Ventolin, just a straight up Ventolin. But you've moved along from there. No, I moved to one because I was sick with COVID and they gave me a new one that I'd never had before. Shaped like a triangle. I want triangle inhaler. Yeah, it was good. And it has a countdown on it.

What the fuck is wrong with the American healthcare system? Why is Canada getting triangle inhaler that's true we do pay for that i live in new york city the most cosmopolitan city perhaps in the world inhaler capital of the northeast and i uh i still just puff those virginia slim such a slender puff. Was Virginia Slims You've Come a Long Way, Baby? Is that? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I've got the right. Yeah, because it was for the modern liberated woman. Yeah. Yeah. Who's come a long way, baby. She used to have to smoke stogies, and now she's.

Oh, you mentioned Wheel of Fortune, and it made me realize something I learned today. In the world of prices, the price is right. You're familiar with the price is right, right? Yeah. He still has a long microphone. Drew Carey. He sports a long microphone. Yeah.

Good for him. Yeah. But apparently it is very controversial. If you are in the contestant's row, you've been called to come on down. Right. And you're shown a dishwasher or a karaoke machine or whatever. A range. Yeah, you're shown a range.

And this was something that came up and submitted to me in Judge John Hodgman. And by the time this comes out on fake air, podcast style. Yeah. this air by the time this comes out on fake air podcast style yeah my my judgment may have been published in the new york times magazine where i do a little judge john hodgman column oh yeah the person wrote in saying my mom and i love to watch or my mother-in-law and i love to watch prices right together but she is morally opposed to someone bidding one dollar more than the person next oh yeah that's a that's a big tactic and i thought to myself that's dumb it's the way the game plays yeah you're trying to get closest without going over yeah that's the best way to if you're particularly if you're the last person in

contestants row and you think that everyone is underbid then add a dollar to the top one that's the safest play yeah and but when i looked it up online i realized that this is a there's it's very contentious in the price is right watching community that is considered to be a real that's a move yeah but i didn't come here to make friends no you came there to win a boat that you don't want yeah but i have immediately have to pay taxes on. You're not allowed to leave the studio until you pay the taxes for the year up front. And I also have to pay for moorage, you know, marina fees. All right.

Just tell me it's a hole in the water you throw money into. Am I right? Yeah. Yeah. They say, how do you make a million dollars? Start with two million and then buy a boat that's a good boat joke hey i just feel like we're back at the country club i feel like we're back at the yacht club yeah exactly and it's uh it's buffet tuesday so we're

gonna stick around for dinner and uh to just look out over the ocean or lake you know depending on where you live can i tell you something that'll get everyone to hate me more here it comes okay oh he's got a boat i bought a boat this last year did you really yeah i bought a boat not just the rowboat of of yesteryear not the rowboat of your Not the rowboat of your. Not a canoe. The new boat of mine. The motorized boat?

It's a motorized boat. It is 21 feet long. Okay. I don't know. You're like about four meter boat. Four meter boat. Yeah. Four meter boat. That would be a question in a homework hotline.

I've got to. Closer to six. Six meter boat. And it's called Beans. uh closer to six six meter boat and it's and it's called beans beans is it beans beans the boat i love it do you go out often or is this i've not i've not been in it i've never been in it uh where is it in maine it's in maine which is yeah that's um the that's the unrecognized maritime province of canada that's right yeah labrador uh st john's labrador maine yeah but we but you know we do have a rowboat and we row around the harbor robot of your and we were rowing around the harbor and we saw this boat called

beans and i said i like that boat and so i took a picture of it and i sent and i sent the picture to a friend of mine who knows about these boats and he's like yep that's a boat all right oh we've all been tempted by beans yeah i said what kind of boat is what kind of boat is this maybe i could fantasize about buying one one day yeah is it like the type of boat you go i'm trying to picture it is the type you go fishing in or is it no water and water skiers go behind you no you can't it doesn't go fast okay you get a maybe oh how far could you go from main the azores you could go to the azores and back three times no it's just a it's just it doesn't have a i mean it has no roof okay just a motorized a motorized roofless boat a motorized roofless little

little cruising craft how many people are we talking what they call a cocktail craft oh i think it's i think you can bring safely aboard i think you can bring eight people oh so it's big enough for eight people holy cow okay and it's got a built-in it's got a built-in cocktail table really this is it's sending all the wrong messages to the drunk boating community and it's and he's and the guy wrote back to me and he said oh yeah that boat that boat is called a martini the boat's called a martini yeah what are you supposed to do you know what are you supposed to do instead of an olive you put beans on your little uh well yes and beans was not my i mean that's what it's that's what it's called and then later that later i was i was in the same harbor.

I was introduced to a friend of a friend. And she said, my grandmother's house is across the harbor over there. And that's where beans, I saw beans. And I said, you know anything about this boat called Beans? That's my aunt's boat. Oh, shit. And I said, look, I don't mean to be forward, but I want to fucking buy that boat. And they said, it's not for sale.

And then you said, everyone has a price. And were they just happy to have an offer on the boat? Or were they like, wishy-washy? No, no, no. I said, I don't want to be forward, but I just really enjoy that boat a lot. I think that's a really nice boat. Yeah. And then we completely forgot all about it until November when someone something got in this email saying you want to buy this boat and then we felt like we had to the boat was saying to us

and bob barker showed up and made you pay the taxes on it that's right you neutered your pet why am i even you can edit this whole story out this is a fucking boring story it's terrible um it's terrible but we you know it's like we we don't i mean i've seen it floating so i feel good about that yeah okay so it's not uh it's not one half in the wall like uh pointing up towards the sky boat yeah yeah i bought a sunken galleon but you know i think i can redo it much? Just needs a coat of paint. How much for the sunken galleon? Yeah.

So you're going to go, this summer coming up, you're going to go be a boatman. I hope so. I hope so. I hope that I'll be able to get up there. I mean, we got to, the Beans is still in their garage. Okay. We got to move it out of their garage. And I opened to the water. But I've never piloted a boat before. I Okay. You got to move it out of their garage. And I opened to the water. And.

But I've never, I've never piloted a boat before. I don't know how to do it. Also putting the boat in the water is a whole ordeal. You have to know how to do that. Oh yeah. Well, John's got a trailer. I did learn how to back a boat into the water. It's very, very, it's not, it's terrifying.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm sure there's, I think there's probably tons of videos of people backing up too far and they lose their car. I've been in that position where I felt like that was going to happen. And the wheels just spin on the beach.

Yeah. Anyway, gentlemen, I mean, it's very, very hard. These things that happen in Maine. We're dealing with our boats, you know. Yeah. I get it. I get it. These are boat problems satan did take me over do you know what i mean i mean listen to myself yeah i'm the i'm the i'm the fucking act

i'm the most evil fucker alive just like i'm generation x but i'm more okay boomer than ever i'm just like well yeah there's a fun story that's relatable i bought a boat but a lot of generation x bought boats uh ironically and uh so that's yeah that's right i bought a boat in quotation marks it's hilarious hilarious i bought it because of the name i bought a boat as a joke i actually bought it but it's a joke yeah yeah like i'm not gonna it's a meta boat it's a meta yeah as this comes i have an ironic account of the bank that i can just use to buy things like this oh yeah i feel like funko pops have zeroed in on that's the

generation that really wants funko Pops is Generation X. It's called Beans. It's bad luck to change the name of the boat, but I'm changing it to the SS Al Jaffe. Because it folds in? It folds in. Why did I tell you guys that? This is like, I just think we're having a conversation with friends. Yeah, I know. We get a lot of people let their guards down and uh it revealed that i am actually a monster monster that owns a boat though

a boat man yeah yeah that's what makes me a monster i thought it was the uh the exorcist and whatnot the thing you're possessed by um and i don't even want to tell you what i paid for it wow you probably should i have a feeling you will now seven hundred thousand dollars seven hundred thousand and one dollars now you own it that's not how it works you just bid one dollar more and then you own the thing yeah and then you get it yeah well that's how we got our first boat we accidentally got it in an auction our rowboat of yore we went to an auction we went to an auction in the high school gym and they were and they were auctioning off this rowboat

that was supposedly built by a local boat maker that everyone was excited about okay and um they talked it up everyone had come to see this boat get sold because this local boat maker jim steel was well known either personally or by reputation right and the kind of rowboat it is is called a peapod because it's um pointy in both directions ah okay it was very pretty and we were just showing up to watch this boat be sold too we didn't want to buy it because they were well they were you know they the the minimum bid was thirty five hundred dollars jesus that's my whole year's worth of boat budget and we're like no we'll just buy this broken toaster in this can't this folgers can of nickels thanks because that was the only other the only other stuff they were selling was this

garbage can of no one was buying anything finally the auction for the boat comes along and the guy gives the whole history of the boat look jimmy steel built 110 peapods in his life uh you know he died five years ago This was the 107th that he built. And it's a real, it's, you know, made traditionally. It's wooden boat, Peapod. It's a real piece of Maine history. So who will give me $3,500 for it? Yeah.

Who will give me $3,500 for this piece of Maine history? Who will give me $3,500? Who will give me $3,500? Oh, we all just came to watch. Anybody $3,500, no one was going to bid. So I'm like. main history who'll give me 3500 who'll give me 3500 oh we all just came to watch anybody 3500 no one was gonna bid so i'm like sold to the sole bidder here at the uh yeah so i bid i bid uh i didn't bid anything i just looked at my wife because i knew she was into it and i said go ahead because once we got going do you know what i mean go at least you know you had a little bit of

a a little skin in the game right you know you put in a bid someone would outbid you that's so she goes 30 3500 dollars and this is not zero money for us i just like this is not what we intended to spend that day i don't like i know that everyone listened to fucking thirst and how the third person in the past half an hour or whatever. But it was not an intention to go home with a boat. We intended to go home and keep our money. Right. This story is, okay, how do I get out of this?

Everyone's going to think I'm an asshole for buying a boat. I know. I'll tell my other boat buying story. Yeah. Tell you about how we got two boats. $3,500. So he goes, okay, we have $3,500. Who'll give me $3,600? Who'll give me $3,600?

Who'll give me $3,600? Who'll give me $3,600? Nobody. The auctioneer is very upset now. Yeah. And he looks at one of the guys and he goes, Dan, why don't you bid on this boat? And this guy Dan's like i already got one he goes come on come on man you could use another boat right right he goes okay 3600 at

that moment my wife amelia goes 3700 because now she's in it she wants it so bad oh shit no one did send like at that point it was like a stephen king story the outsiders had been tricked into into buying the cursed boat right everyone took two full steps backward refuse to speak again until the gavel came down and then all of a sudden everyone came up and they gave you a little captain's hat and I said, you know, like, Oh, you got a gym, a Jimmy steel peapod for $3,700.

Good for you. Good. What a bargain. Good for you. We felt like we had been set up. We were, we, everyone in town was like strangers were coming up to us going,

is that that Jimmy steel peapod? You got it for 3,700. It was really creep. It was really creepy. We felt like it was part of a ritual for sure yeah now we can have a fruitful harvest because yeah exactly like they were they're gonna drag us out of our beds right before the the the the blue hill fair bring us to the fairground smash the boat up set it on fire burn us alive here's a thing all part of the ritual in the zombie world you just go out to the ocean if you have a boat you just go way out there

live off of fish and seals and whatever yeah well let me let me tell you a thing which is is obvious and probably you know about it and it's definitely true is like during 2020 mega yacht sales went through the roof oh yeah yeah and you know the for a while so if you i live in new york but we we spent a lot of time in maine and probably i will live and die i will end up dying there eventually in your boat i hope not that's what my wife tells me we've just taken out this insurance policy yeah death by beans oh yeah and everywhere everywhere you would go in maine you would see these massive like floating cities and it would like particularly over in like bar harbor yeah you know like oh that's that billionaire's new yacht or that's that billionaire's new yacht but they've just they were like consciously thinking billionaires

bought boats in 2020 and i can't remember who it was who just decided i'm just gonna go wasn't jeff bezos was someone like him just maybe david geffen i think was david geffen just lived on his boat in 2020. He's so vain. It's gross. Gross stuff. Those are my people. Yeah. Boat owners. You're pulling up alongside them in your boat. Hey, it's a Jim Steele. I could not buy a boat called Martini.

You know, it's your brand. It's named after my hobby. Do you guys want to move on to some overheards? Let's do it. Yeah. Sure. They can be anywhere. At your office.

In your car. And they are wrong. My mom says that the Grey House didn't exist. But she's wrong. He just doesn't wrong. Someone in your life is wrong about something. Something small. Something weird.

Something vitally important. Only one person has the courage to tell them just how wrong they are. You know what you did was wrong, but your daughter is a liar who eats garbage. They call me Judge John Hodgman. Listen to me on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. If someone in your life is doing you wrong,

don't just take it, take it to court. Submit your case at MaximumFun.org slash JJHO. Hi, I'm Ketchup. And I'm Socks. And I'm Ball Bearings. And I'm Pigeons. And I'm Water Towers. And I'm Cardboard.

Surprise! We're actually humans. Humans making a podcast about those kinds of topics. Because those are real episode topics on the podcast Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. That's a podcast where we take ordinary seeming things like ketchup and socks and cardboard and bring you the little known history and science and stories that make those things secretly incredibly fascinating. Secretly incredibly fascinating!

The title of the podcast. Hear the back catalog anytime and hear new amazing episodes every Monday at MaximumFun.org. Overheard! Overheard's a segment where if you're lucky enough to go out there and hear a real juicy nugget of something, don't hold it inside. You can give it to here on the podcast. We can enjoy it. I said give it to here.

Don't hold your nuggets inside. If you want to send one in, you can send it in to spy at maximumfun.org. And we always like to start with the guest. John, do you have an overheard i it is so it was said to me that's okay but by a stranger i'll allow it yeah that is yeah that's fine it's good i have i first i haven't overheard but it's it's from a long time ago and i just i just found it because i was trying to remember things i'd overheard well yeah we want it several several autumns ago i went with my wife who's a whole human being in our own right to the sheep and wool festival in rye new york and did she bid on a freaking sweater

yeah we bought a herd of sheep we bought a herd of sheep in a raft of wool and we and a zoo and we bought a zoo yeah that movie is about us but i i i i made a note of something i overheard the the main thing that happens at sheep and wool festival is people show off their textiles is this also in maine no this is in upstate new york okay they show off they show off their textiles is this also in maine no this is in upstate new york okay they show off they show off their sheep but it's mostly like a knitter's hang so people who knit so they show off textiles they buy and sell yarns of all kinds and so forth but there's a lot of panic about if there's going to be enough food because the they're never enough food vendors right people

get freaked out and one thing i overheard waiting in line was a girl saying to her grandmother, yes, Grammy, I gave you French fries that were on the ground. They were ground fries. But something that happened more recently, I just loved her sass and her grandma that way. Ground fries. This is more of your food security fantasy. Yeah, exactly.

But my son and I were in Savannah, Georgia a few months ago visiting a college that he might go to, should he choose to go to college. And we were in this hotel, and the hotel had a pool. So we were going to go to college and um uh we were in this hotel and the hotel had a pool so we were like gonna go to the pool and we went to the pool and we realized that the pool had been taken over by a pack of savannah hipsters like real real old school hipsters like you don't see anymore even in williamsburg right like sweaty sweaty skinny guys with beards wearing bright pink sleeveless t-shirts and ironic flip-flops and stuff i love it yeah and they were having a battle of the bands at this pool of this hotel and was the conference room booked? Why the hell did they go to the pool? It was just this cool thing that they were doing.

At this point, I had to imagine that they were maybe so hipster that they were ironic hipsters. Do you know what I mean? It was like hip and nostalgic. There were kids who were dressing as hipsters from the 2000s. Yeah. As meta hipsters or something. It really gave off a very confused vibe. And I, being a decrepit old person,

definitely wanted to hang around these youthful people. And one of them even said, oh, hey, I know you. I really enjoy your comedy. And I said to my son who's 17 i'm like oh we should hang out with my new young friends and my son was like no we're getting out of here right away no way you're gonna be allowed to do this to yourself and especially not to me so he didn't get to go and i'm like bye bye and we did something else, a few hours after that, as the evening was going on, we come back to the hotel.

And we're getting into the elevator. And a couple of these guys from this band come in. And they're unloading their equipment, including a drum kit. And there's a tall, skinny hipster. And there's a small, sort of portlier hipster who's got the drum kit. Okay. And the drum kit has a cowbell on it and every part every cell in my body as a weird dad wants to make a more cowbell gym yes yeah of some kind yeah you're holding you're just you're sweating it's taking every fiber of my

self-control if you measure self-control and fibers i don't know maybe there's different they do at the wool show down here yeah down here right it's right to resist saying anything so as to not embarrass my son or mortify myself like and so i just zip it and i say nothing finally we get down the elevator opens i said nothing right smaller hipster with the cowbell looks me in the eye and says more cowbell right and then walks out of the i want to add that i was holding it back not just because it would be embarrassing because it would not only be meaningless to my son who definitely didn't know what more cowbell was but i presumed that these hipsters didn't know what more cowbell would mean at this point i mean that's ancient history yeah yeah it's true it's uh he knew little little hipster he knew fuck he knew me he saw me hard he just

looked at me and said more cowbell and i said nothing more cowbell pops can i interest you in some more cowbell and my son said what was he talking about what did he mean i said son come on upstairs we're gonna watch a youtube video and you know what that sketch holds up it's really funny it's it's uh uh i mean it was absurd at the time to be in like 2000 to have a sketch about blue oyster cult yeah so arguably arguably i overhe. It was said to me. That still counts. I was not part of the conversation. That still counts.

I'll allow it. Dave, do you have an overheard? Mine is an overseen. This was just something that falls in the random category. This is something I saw that was a little random. Okay. As I mentioned, I went to go see Megan. Yeah.

I'm sorry. Did you see Megan or did you say Mech-kin? I went to go see Megan. Yeah. I'm sorry. Did you see Megan or did you say Megan? I went to see Megan. Megan. I didn't go for that purpose. My daughter had a birthday party at the movie theater that she was attending. Uh, her friend's, uh, birthday. They, they were going to see Puss in Boots.

I hear that's terrific. Genuinely terrific movie. movie is what I hear. I had already seen, I saw, I have already seen it. It was her second time seeing it. I didn't want to see it again. So I was like, while you're doing that, I'm going to go see Megan. Megan? Megan.

Megan! And, but while I'm waiting in the lobby a kid who's not part of the birthday party comes in and he's got face paint on and i had to do a double take because his face paint was not an animal or anything it was the logo for the chocolate bar kit kat wow said kit on one side cat on the other cheek and uh i immediately i thought did he tell the the artist i want a cat i want like cat face paint and they were like oh yeah kit kat i can do that i can do it all i can do crunchy bar do you think that kid sold the naming rights to his face like what was it palace casino or something all those people casino uh right the guy got it done on his face or if you i feel like people maybe have like a go daddy tattoo somewhere yeah that's

a that's that's a few people's dark secret, I suppose. That rules, Dave. What candy bar would you have face painted on your face? Not even tattooed, like laser dick. I'm talking about a temporary face paint. Yeah. I mean, if you do it, let's just say it's a game show and you're going to win a boat. Okay. So you got to get this face paint done in order to qualify for the boat.

Because I wouldn't want to pick necessarily my favorite chocolate bar. Right. People say I eat too many chocolate bars. You want to go meta with it? No, but I want to pick the best design. I wouldn't want to pick my want to go meta with it no but like i i i want to pick the best design i wouldn't want to pick like my favorite flavor necessarily yeah what's your favorite flavor then my favorite chocolate bar is like i think it's canadian it's called wonder bar and it's uh chocolate with peanut butter and caramel inside right pretty good wonder bar with a u i'm just getting home of the yappy hour asbury park

that's wonder bar w u so it's really triple u oh excuse me wonder bar candy bar canadian oh there we go wunderbar oh i gotcha oh Oh, yeah, sorry, I mean Wunderbar. From Cadbury, Canada. Yeah, that's, um, yeah, it looks very good. It's labs. Graham, do you have any input? I would either get a Mars bar that went across my eyes so it looked like a bandana, or

the old Three Musketeers one that had the Three Musketeers on the packaging. That's hot. I like that a lot. Yeah. It's, you get the metallic color. Anyways, it's just, I would love to do this now that I know this is an option to get your face painted that way.

You'd look like goddamn Ziggy Stardust with that metallic color. The Three Musketeers. I want to get the Z nut zag nut bar on my forehead you ever have a zag nut bar it's very old bar yeah i feel like it was in beetle juice like oh sure it wasn't beetle juice that's right it's and it's um a zag nut bar is i don't like sweets i don't have a sweet tooth i have have an alcohol molar. But I do enjoy a savory candy bar from time to time, like Zagnut. Because it doesn't have any chocolate in it, I don't believe. It's peanut butter and toasted coconut. And it's goddamn delicious.

I like just the yellow and black checker of the Abba Zabba. Abba Zabba's Abba Zabba school. Ooh, there we go. We're going old school right now. Maybe go on. I don't know how it would look on, on my,

you know, I'm, I'm sort of a fall. Well, guess what? You both, you both got boats. Yes.

Great. You haven't overheard. I have a, a, a tableau, a scene that I witnessed, which was uh as any comedian will know sometimes it's fantastic to meet people after the show and sometimes you get cornered by a stranger who wants you i do now just have to interrupt myself i'm googling abba zaba and the

second thing that google suggests is abba zabba racist so i'm anything here all right we'll we'll we'll go down that well later yeah maybe another time um so my overseen i was working with the very hilarious comedian steve patterson and after the show i don't know how these people got into the backstage area, but they came in and they were talking about something to him. And then at one point, the guy pointed to his friend and said, he's an awesome beatboxer. Give us a beat. And he started beatboxing. And this is nothing that doesn't relate to anything that was done on stage. Beatboxing.

And then the guy said, throw me a beat and started freestyle rapping so it's it's probably the worst scenario uh yeah yeah and you were what did you feel did you feel the need to applaud i felt uh gratification that i was across the room and didn't have to partake in this just pretend i'm engrossed in my phone yeah exactly um yeah so uh you know what performers everywhere be careful because that could happen to you hey john uh oh yeah can you do me a favor yeah give me a beat zag nut everybody do the zag nut well he's a podcast judge and he's here to say he rules every day

yeah pretty good i own a boat two boats two boats yeah that's your rap name like two chains you're two boats two boats um should i uh do we have enough time to read oh let's yeah let's see if we can do them okay let's do them i don't even know what it is it's just uh people who've sent in there i'm busy up here trying to figure out whether or not abizab is racist i can see some old uh packaging that indicates oh i see yes okay yeah um we also have overheard sent in to us from people all over the map. If you want to send one in to us, you can send it in to SPY at MaximumFun.org. And this first one comes from Angela in Toronto.

I was waiting for my order at Starbucks, and there were two young women ahead of me. When the order for one was ready, her friend noticed that it was in a reusable cup and said, Oh, my God, you're so sustainable. To the nice. I wish my friends were more sustainable. Yeah. Or at least my friendships. All my friendships are single use.

Yeah, no. Totally disposable. This next one comes from Ericaica h from winnipeg manitoba is that superstore in there have you yeah it's i love it i love winnipeg i enjoyed myself a lot an appropriate amount was it cold or was it hot it was was cold. Yeah. Cold is among the coldest places I've ever been. Colder than Mars some days. Yeah. And then,

and then after I did, I was interviewed on stage by a very nice person, had a few drinks with some acquaintances. And then I went back to the hotel and the, the only thing on television, the eight, the movie loft that night was showing wise blood by Flannery o'connor starring uh who's the guy who plays chucky and uh chucky i don't know brad doriff tonight's movie on winnipeg movie law 1979's

wise blood a flannery o'connor short story brought to life in the creepiest way possible all right but anyway i thought you were gonna say i was uh i had a few drinks and then one thing led to another i bought another boat bought another boat this next one comes from erica h in winnipeg i was at super store and an older man was trying to get the attention of the teen who was working stocking produce when the teen looked over at him the older man said excuse me which of the apples would be the most juiciest wow what is the most juicy apple gala i don't know i only the i only i'm ambrosia only i don't i don't i don't like a i mean a juice i don't equate

apples with juiciness i I like crisp and refreshing apples. Yeah. I like loud. I want the loudest apple. Yeah, exactly. To let bears know that you're there, right?

Make a noise. Delicious is the most disgusting followed by golden delicious. I like a honey crisp, honey crisp, a Fuji. I, and I should say, I misread. I said most juiciest it

was just juiciest i don't want anybody to think this guy didn't uh didn't know how to talk right yeah no gotcha um he he speaks english well he just doesn't know shit about apple that's right yeah yeah maybe he's making apple juice uh this last one comes from john from austin texas um uh his friend used to uh work in a neighborhood bar and uh we popped in for a drink and it happened to be open mic night no one showed up though so the host played guitar and sang through eric clapton's unplugged song by song with the tablature book open in front of him wow yeah terrific night oh wait wait wait let me okay i gotta remember how this one goes yeah oh man i just uh can you imagine like seeing a poster for that. Just come and see Unplugged live.

Except I would do it plugged. Yeah. Unplugged, plugged. This guy is performing Tears in Heaven on a Stratocaster. In addition to overheards that are written in, we also accept your phone calls. If you want to call us, our phone number is 1-844-779-7631. That's one.

Ugh. Spy pod one, like these people have. Hey, Dave Graham and magnanimous guest. My wife and I were recently in Park City, Utah, just doing tourism and having just eaten lunch. We were sitting on a park bench, and as we were sitting there, people watching, a family of five, were coming up the sidewalk, and they were just out of earshot, but we could kind of hear their talking, and it started to become contentious, and the oldest son, whom we're guessing was about, I don't know, 12 years old.

Just when they came into range, we heard him say, Yes, but what if they don't have gelato? Anyway, off I go. Thanks. We've got emergency gelato in the car. Don't worry about it. I also like that he said i was in park city utah just doing tourism yeah pretty accurate yeah i'm just gonna go do tourism yeah and uh just sounds suspicious if the border guards are like and what's the purpose of your trip uh to do Tourism. Our son had been babysitting for a local youth younger than him. A little kid and maybe six or seven years old.

And he said to this little kid, what did you do last night? The best way to start a conversation is always, what did you do today? Or what did you do last night? Because everyone got a story to tell. They don't realize it, but they do. Yeah. You can start and get things going. And the little kid said, I went out to dinner with my mama and we pretended to be grownups.

And our son said, what does that mean? And he goes, I went to a fancy dinner and i did smoking i don't believe that he actually did smoking but he pretended yeah sure you can't smoke in a restaurant a kid can't smoke in a restaurant for heaven's sake here's your next phone call hi dave and graham and probable guest i'm going to guess um And probable guest, I'm going to guest someone Canadian. This is Ray in Springfield, Oregon. And I'm calling in an overheard of the Children's Day of the Darned Earth variety.

My anniversary to my husband, my wedding anniversary to my husband is tomorrow. And it will be 14 years. And my daughter, who is six is six asked what is an anniversary and i said well you get when we got married we got married 14 years ago and she said i'm 14 years old so i thought that you would appreciate appreciate that uh Love the show. That is how it works. You're your parents marriage age. Even if you're six. That's right.

Imagine thinking you're six and then all of a sudden it being revealed to you that you're actually 14. Boy, I would do some smoking if I did that. Absolutely. Here's your final phone call. Hi, Dave and Graham and Pinchable guest.

This is Nate from Brooklyn, but calling from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. We're at an overheard section. I think I overheard someone overhearing something. I was in a Target and I saw this couple rounding the bend of one of the aisles. And what I heard them say is, I think we should go down that way because I think I heard someone doing a Bane impression. Anyway, off I go.

Was the person trying to get away from the Bane impression or to the Bane impression? I don't know. Oh, honey, honey, I think there's a Bane impression in Isle of Falls. Go with me. I think it's how some people, you know, like a snake will rattle just to kind of let you know that it's, it's threatened by you.

Don't tread on me. Let the Banes begin. It was fun. Everybody doing Bane impressions. It was fun for a while. I think it's fun forever. Yeah, I think you're right.

But that's, I mean, you know, that's why, that's why I need to die. I'm at the end of my... I am an adult. I had my time. I made my ironic jokes in the 90s and the 2000s. Yeah, that's it. Major mark.

My wife and I replicated. We have two adult children who no longer need us. It's time for us to take our one boat to go to the second boat. Just take our martinis and go out and just disappear into the ocean doing our Bane impressions. Goodbye, everybody.

It's time to make room. It's time for me to make room for the youth. Well, that brings us to the end of this here podcast. John, thank you so much for being our guest um why would someone buy a second boat if he's in an airplane batman does he ever say batman and i don't think so yeah he says hey batman hey knock it off um judge john hodgman i'm sorry judge john hodgman live on tour portland oregon the 31st of january in the second of february that's the month next we go to denver colorado we're at revolution hall

by the way in oregon which is a great venue that i haven't played yet before so i hope that you'll come fill it up uh then the gothic theater in denver colorado then the sydney goldstein theater in san francisco on saturday the 4th please don't forget that that show will be streaming all around the world for live and streaming tickets go to sf sketchfest.com and finally well we're sold out in los angeles so you missed your chance nothing you can do but you never know you never know you never You never know. Hop on seat, geek. Get yourself some. Yeah.

There's definitely going to be scalpers there in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery hiding behind a few tombstones. Thank you to everybody out there for listening. If you've learned anything from this podcast, go and buy a boat and come on back next week for another episode of Stop Podcasting Yourself. MaximumFun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.