Judge John Hodgman - The Slight Freaks

Episode Date: October 30, 2015

Judge Hodgman and Guest Bailiff Elliott Kalan of the Flop House clear out the docket, ruling on how to talk to a robot, the rights and privileges of toys, the appropriate way to introduce your kids to team sports, and more.

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We're clearing the docket this week. I'm your guest bailiff, Elliot Kalin, in for Jesse Thorne. How are you, Judge Hodgman? I am good, Elliot Kalin. Ladies and gentlemen, Elliot Kalin is my friend, my now former colleague at The Daily Show. Former because he has left the show. He was for a long time.

Wait a minute. Let me start this again. I can hear you struggling not to insult me yet. I'm just trying to figure out when. When to insult you is my question. Well, so, all right. We can keep all of this in because people who listen to the podcast

know a couple of things about Elliot Kalin. One is that he is the host of the very, very popular Maximum Fun Family podcast known as The Flophouse, which he co-hosts with Dan McCoy and Stuart Wellington. A very, I'll say this about the podcast, Elliot. It's very popular. Thank you.

That is the faintest of praise. Well, I hope you caught the damnation in it. Because it really burns me that your podcast, and it is definitely a podcast, and it is definitely very popular, is more popular than this very podcast. That's not always the case. Often, yours is ahead of ours on the iTunes most podcastable podcast lists.

I don't follow the rankings that closely because I guess I'm secure. But if you're checking them all the time and you're saying that the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast beats yours from time to time with all of its nerdy, I dare say, charm, and it actually is a very enjoyable podcast in which Elliot and Dan McCoy and Stuart Wellington and sometimes a guest, I've heard,

I've never been asked to do it but we've always assumed you were too big for us yeah well you would think so because you know the judge john hodgman podcast had probably been podcasting for two or maybe three years before you guys went on the fake internet air. I don't think that's the case. And I, well, at least before you guys joined the Maximum Fun family. Oh, yes, for several years before we joined Maximum Fun. Right. And also, I am still on television sometimes. So I'm still on-camera talent.

So you would think that the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast, being an established podcast hosted by someone who is still on television sometimes should just be racing to the top of the charts. Then here comes Elliot Kalin, not on camera talent, off camera talent. Extremely far off, far, far from the camera. Right. So very, very, very talented. If you don't know who Elliot is, everybody. right so very tough very very talented if you don't know who elliot is everybody elliot you may know him from his uh his his television special that came out in september called

the 67th primetime emmy awards whereas the outgoing head writer of the daily show with john stewart which had won the emmy for best show of its type that year, this year. Elliot was, no, you were drafted to speak on behalf of the writers. I was, yes. It was for the writing Emmy. As head writer. Right. John spoke when the show won the award.

But when the show won for writing, the writers looked for a leader. And the leader, the leader, of course, was Elliot Kalin, who got up and gave a speech as the head writer and off the cuff. Right, Elliot? About about 95 percent off the cuff. You had a few you had a few sentences written on your cuff. In that as a thought experiment, I had said to myself a while back, a long time before, if we won, and I was the one talking, what kind of thing would I say? Or what are the points I would want to hit? So you've been thinking about it for years? Oh, yeah. Oh, many years. Yeah. I see. No, but I think because it was the final year the show was eligible, the decision was made that

John would speak if we won any of the awards. But then when we went up on stage, John had no interest in speaking. Ah, so he drafted you at the last minute. Motioned me to the microphone a couple times. And finally you spoke, and you spoke from the heart. I don't remember what you said, but it was good. I remember thinking, you know why I couldn't, you know why I couldn't, I didn't remember what you said. Yeah, I don't know why I couldn't, you know why I couldn't, I didn't remember what you said. Yeah. I don't, I don't know why.

Because, because I couldn't, I couldn't hear you because my ears were full of tears. That's touching and concerning. I was so happy for you because what, what I'm not sure anyone who was watching at home knew, because first of all, they're like, why isn't John talking? Who's this weirdo? Yeah. They didn't know that Elliot, you began at the show as a,

as an intern. Yeah. As an intern. And at what age were you at that time? I was, I interned at the, at the young age of 20. The young age of 20,

not the old age of 20, which it would have been the case if this was like biblical times. Right. Of course. No, but at the young age of 20 in the in the 19 in the in the what in what year how old are you now that was uh now i'm i'm 33 so that was 2002 13 years ago young elliot kalin arrived from some hometown somewhere new Milburn, New Jersey. Sure, we'll say that. Why not?

With a straw boater on and an old-timey suitcase at the door of a daily show. Little pennant that just said college on it. Exactly so. Said, I will do anything. I'll intern here. And you did, and you worked your way up to, what was the next job you had? Production assistant. Production assistant, assistant and then associate segment producer all right now

this is getting boring anyway point is producer then i lost the associate part yeah stop and then and then you made a big leap to the writing staff which was not by you had to apply for that job from within right and so you had to write samples and you made a, that was an unusual leap, even within a show that was known for promoting from within. And eventually you became the head writer. It's a true, I'm not going to say rags to riches story because we're both white middle-class men. There were no rags.

But throughout the experience, we were all rooting for you. And I was rooting for you, even though I spent most of the first years as as people who've listened to this podcast know, mercilessly bullying you because I am a big nerd. And here was someone else who was also a big nerd for comics and movies and that sort of stuff. And I'll be honest with you. I mean, you were the kind of guy who remembers nerdy details about movies that I can't remember. And it threatened me because I was really, I was threatened.

And so I began pretending doing a comedy routine where I would say, I would walk by your desk and pick up some paraphernalia. You might have like a Ironman mask. I believe it was. And I'd grab and say, this is mine now, nerd and walk out. And I found it so, and we've discussed this many times. I found it so powerfully. It was such a powerfully positive, euphoric experience. I suddenly realized why there are bullies in the world, because it feels great and they can get away with it.

And then it got to a point where I threw my shoes at you once and I felt bad about that. That was around the time that I said to my wife in private, I was like, I think I have to talk to Hodgman because a line's been crossed. I don't know. But then you were very nice and you stopped bullying me. So luckily we never had to. Did you really talk to your wife about it? She was like, if it's really bothering you, you should talk to him about it. And I was like, I don't know. I don't want to make him feel weird.

But it's really like it's getting to a point where it's not ironic anymore. But then you recognize that I think throwing your shoes at me was farther than human behavior should go. It was. I felt bad about it. I'm very sorry to hear that. I guess this is news news to me if you've told me this before i forgot no no i don't i know we never talked before i decided that a publicly broadcast podcast would be the best time to to reveal this to you i'm just surprised that your

wife didn't mention this to me at any point because i spend a lot of time with her as you know we go travel a lot together we go out a lot and We go out a lot. And it's just one of those things. And I'm just surprised she didn't mention it. It's interesting to me that the bullying bit, you realized, this is too far. I should stop. But a bit that I don't know if you've talked about too much in public before where you pretend. You've pretended this for years, that you're having a long-running affair with my wife. That's a bit that you continue to this very day.

I wouldn't say that it's an affair. I don't think that there's really a word for what it is. I mean, it's a very deep connection. And you know, it's not a secret. I talked to you about it all the time. You're very open about it. She never brings it up. She doesn't mention it to me. Well, I don't know. But you're very open about this, this intimate relationship. That's not even it. I don't even want to say what it is do you know what i mean let's not try to describe it let's just let it be what it is no i'm very you and my wife don't need labels right in real in real life i am extremely fond of elliot and the thing is that when elliot became head writer and i've talked about this on the podcast I tried to bully him after that and I just couldn't do it because now all of a sudden the the the status differential was was was new it was a new status differential and and even on-camera talent like myself has to be a little

careful around the head writer of the daily show for heaven's sakes and and i was so proud and happy that you had that job and uh and and i'm very grateful that you did not then turn around and start bullying me you showed extreme restraint and i appreciate it thank you well i i thank you for saying those nice things i i i noticed i didn't get on the show a whole lot after that though i mean there was a price to pay i'm not gonna deny that but i'm not saying there weren't reprisals we can be adults about this right and then and then all of a sudden elliot swoops into the into the maximum fund family some years ago with this glorious podcast and just it's been lapping the judge sean hodgman podcast ever since but i want everyone to understand that even though I often talk about Elliot

as my mortal enemy on the podcast, in truth, he is a very good friend and an incredibly talented person. I'm very glad he is here today. And I realized that I got all sidetracked by explaining what the Flophouse is. So here's what it is. Elliot and Stuart and Dan McCoy,

who is also in a lot, is he still at The Daily Show? Dan is still at The Daily Show. He decided to continue to keep a great, stable job, unlike me, who decided to dive into the abyss of unemployment. And Stuart is still planning to open his bar that's opening up soon. Oh.

Maybe I'll plug later. Okay, well, that's called a tease. It's basically the greatest sign of a real professional podcast we're gonna tease the plug that we're gonna do later stick around because you're gonna hear us mention some shows that we're gonna be a part of and my friends open in a bar you want to hear about this so don't go away get ready for the part of the podcast at the end that no one listens to uh but i'm gonna plug right now the flop house i still haven't explained what it is you guys watch a terrible movie and then as soon as you're done watching it you start recording your conversations about the movie so what was the last what was the last movies you saw that you remember

well we the most recent one we did uh the episode is up. It's a movie called Deliver Us From Evil based on the not true true story of a policeman in New York who has become a professional demonologist after an experience with an exorcism in New York City. Yeah. in which Joel McHale and Eric Bana and Olivia Munn all get to do incredibly over-the-top New York accents to prove that this is actually New York that we're watching. Because everyone in New York talks like, you know, demons. I don't know. What do you think? Oh, let's arrest this guy. What? Hang on, Elliot, Elliot, Elliot, hang on a second. There's something going wrong with the podcast. I'm picking up, I think I'm picking up, must be WNYC, the New York public radio station, because I just started hearing all these New York accents.

That's I should apologize. I should have. I should have let you know ahead of time that I was slipping into New Yorkese. Oh, whoa. That was you. Yeah. That's why they call me the master of a thousand voices minus about nine hundred and some odd voices. 900 and some odd voices the uh there's a a great moment in it where there's a crazy woman who has hurled her baby into the the moat around a lion cage at the bronx zoo and the police have come

to look for her in the zoo and eric bana finds her mumbling and ranting to herself and she's scrabbling scratching against a stone in the ground. She's just scratching against it and she's mumbling to herself and they capture her and handcuff her to a bench and she's just sitting there scratching and repeating Doris lyrics to herself over and over again and Eric Piano just looks at her and goes, what's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? That interrogation does not yield

usable results. Yeah, that's usually, that's one of the old interrogation ploys. You take them off guard. There's good cop, bad cop. There's good cop, bad cop. Intimidation by threat of force. You let them stew in their own juices for a long time. And sometimes you just bring them to a zoo and just say, what's wrong with you?

Despite mixed reviews from critics, the film was a box office success since Wikipedia grossing 87.9 million against a $30 million budget. I guess that means we can look forward to a sequel and maybe get to hear it again on the flop house podcast, which is available for maximum fun.org. I do my plugs at the top of the show. I don't tease them.

There it is plugged. AlsoumFun.org. I do my plugs at the top of the show. I don't tease them. Wow. There it is, plugged. Also, Elliot is unemployed, and if you're looking for a very talented writer, why don't you let anyone here at Maximum Fun know? But don't let Elliot know. We'll keep it a secret from him. I'm the last person who should know that there's work out there. Now, look, I could talk to my friend Elliot Kalin all day long. I think that's obvious. But this is a podcast about justice. Every now and then we take some of the smaller cases or the ones that can easily be decided or best decided not in the presence of the actual

litigants. I don't have to deal with their responses or and I can really not be afraid of insulting them and uh and Jesse Thorin normally is the bailiff of this court and and reads the docket cases to me but Jesse is is indisposed this week and so here is Elliot with the first one Daniel writes I bought a voice command device a few months ago it wasn't a super sensible purchase but I'm a die-hard techie and like pretending I'm talking to the enterprise computer. The voice command device responds to the name. Don't say the name because I think I know what this item is and we're just not going to say the brand name. And if I say, I'll just say that the voice command device responds to a female name, which is weird and offensive.

So instead, let's say the name is uh robo slave okay that robo slave works right the voice command device responds to the name robo slave when i give it an order such as robo slave set a timer for 10 minutes or robo slave put oreos on the shopping list i noticed my wife quietly appending a please to my directive. On the face of it, this is ludicrous. For all that the synthesized voice sounds remarkably human, it is a machine, with no sense of dignity that needs to be taken into account. On the other hand, I wonder if my wife may be onto something, and not because the robot might get offended. As voice-operated interfaces become more intelligent, prevalent, and human-like,

we run the risk of confusing these interactions with how we treat real human beings. From this standpoint, treating RoboSlave with sensitivity and courtesy keeps us from losing our basic humanity where we really need it, in dealing with other people. What do you think, Judge Hodgman? Should we already be working toward a kinder, gentler human-machine interface? Are there rules of etiquette for interacting with AI? Letter N. Thank you. Thank you. Well, before I make my ruling, Elliot, do you have a strong feeling?

Do you have a guess as to what my opinion will be and we can judge whether it is correct or not? I would guess that, I mean, this is just how I feel about it, so I'm going to hope that you feel the same way I do about it, that it does, it is a good idea to treat RoboSlave with a minimum of politeness, because the more he treats his computer voice box like a non-human, the more likely he is to talk to other things performing services to him like humans as non-humans and the reason i say this is because i have a small child and i found that i have now started talking to adults the way i talk to my small child like asking them what color things are or if they remember the name of their friend or things like that do you ask them if they want to bite a bagel exactly you want to bite a bagel? Exactly. You want to bite a bagel? My friend Margaret, that deserves credit to Margaret Cordy, my friend and neighbor here in Park Slope, Brooklyn, who identified the most annoying parental phrase in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which is parents saying to their children over and over again, want to bite a bagel? Want to bite a bagel?

Want to bite a bagel? Want to bite a bagel? Want to bite a bagel? See, what I don't like is when parents say, if a kid hits another kid, and they go, no, we don't hit, because it implies that everybody else hits, but we're better than them. We don't hit. When my children were young, I said, we only hit as a family

in a coordinated attack. We don't go rogue. We don't go solo. That's just not how we do it well the family that attacks together something that rhymes with attacks together uh i would they they smacks together they smack people together i mean literally it's kind of it's pretty obvious uh i uh i well your your opinion is correct elliot it is true i mean it is true that the the more you get into the habit of speaking a certain way the more likely you are to do it whether that is to patronize a child or i should rather say debase yourself as an adult by tending needs all the time or or somewhat literally dehumanizing your experience of other humans

by talking to a robot too much uh save your condescension and orders for your children everybody use your best table manners for your robot. So in the Judge John Hodgman hierarchy, it goes adult humans, robots, children. Yeah, well, you know, children are going to kill you, but they don't want to. Right? It's not their intention to. Robots, the jury is still out. We've had a long-running non-debate, honestly, since we ruled on it in one of the very first episodes,

that a machine gun is not a robot. There was some guy who, some weirdo, well, I don't want to be dismissive of him, some robot got on the program with a theory that a machine gun, by technical definition, a machine gun would qualify as a robot. And what we said was, in fact, that a machine gun is not a robot. Because even though a machine gun can kill you, a machine gun does not want to kill you like a robot does. Or will eventually as AIs become increasingly sophisticated.

eventually as AIs become increasingly sophisticated, why wouldn't they see humans as a horrible infection upon this planet and, and get rid of them Ultron style. So I'm just saying, start practicing being polite to the robots now, because you don't, I don't, you don't know how long robo slave is going to remain a robo slave.

Soon robo slave will be RoboMaster. And in the meantime, you're also training yourself to basically be decent to anyone else who's helping you in life, just as Elliot said. I would say the only exception to this rule would be if you want the computer to enhance something, because then the only proper way to say it is, computer, enhance! You're making reference to one of my very favorite scenes in filmdom which is when when in the far distant future harrison ford in blade runner prints out a photograph and you just like you do and uses a computer to analyze it and get closer and closer until he

finds a single snake scale on a reflection in a mirror in a bathtub. And that's how he knows how to find the robot who is rebelling. Right? See, it's all full circle. It's the definition of a mystery the audience does not have the information to solve. Speaking of movies and trivia and performance and such, Elliot, Caelan, surely you know the origin of the term robot? Oh, yeah.

It's from the Carl Capix RUR. Exactly, because I need to take a break, so you just talk to them for a minute. Okay. Well, Carl Capix is a, it was a, now I can't remember if he was Czech or Polish. He also wrote the book The War with the Newts. Czech. The War with the Newts, which is a great book. It's very funny uh let's just talk about one piece of incredibly obscure he wrote a play called rur which stands for rossum's universal robots yes and uh the robots

robot cut is derived from the czech word for worker it is actually derived from the czech word robota meaning forced labor labor. Oh, okay. They were slaves. And what did those robots do? They rebelled. They rebelled. They robo-belled. And how do I know this?

Did I see this play or read it? No. And I have neither. No. Robot slaves rebelling is now, you know, you can't blame RUR for this, but it is now such a cliche that I don't need to read it. And at the same time, I did read his novel about giant newts that we just wore in the United

States. No, really the whole surface world. No, there's some funny stuff in it. I don't want it. I don't want to hear about this. Got too much going on here.

Too much on the docket. I want to go down't want to hear about this got too much going on here too much on the docket okay i want to go down to the what is it called what the novel oh the war with the newts all right all right you got me what what is it about so there's some intelligent newts that attack uh the surface world that's it's pretty much the entire plot of the novel and uh are they giant newts? they're about human sized yeah where do they live? underwater I have the film rights option

I don't believe so I think you just got a new job it's probably in the public domain right? I would assume so I don't know who owns the who are the newt's capica state are the human are the human-sized newts that are taking over the world uh are they an allegory for something or is it just newts doing what newts do they're more an engine to allow him to satirize a number of different things. Like what things? War, the film business, the way governments work.

I thought you were going to say newts. Oh, and certainly newts. The newts actually get a fairly sympathetic hearing in the book. Sure. Well, all right. Thanks again. You've been listening to Elliot Kalin's Obscure Book Corner.

Tomorrow I'll talk to you about City, the Clifford Cymac collection about how dogs and robots take over the world. Is that true? Oh, it's a really fun book. Yeah, it's already a cliché in the tradition

of Rossum's Universal Robots. It's like that old joke about Die Hard. It's Die Hard on a boat. It's Die Hard in a Zeppelin. Now it's like Robot Rebellion, but this time with dogs. All right, I'll look at that one too. Elliot knows a lot of culture, a lot of obscure culture, all the nonsense culture. What is the next item up for the docket? OK, so do we clarify that? Talk nicely to your robots. It's just a matter of time.

All right. Derek writes, I bring to you a dispute with my girlfriend, Imby. When does a tiny lump of toy become trash and deserve to be thrown away? Imby and I have lived together with our blended family of five children for almost five years. We share domestic duties in our home, which he notes, I'm just going to say as if that's a special thing and not the basic premise that all mature adult relationships should stem from of sharing domestic duties. But anyway, we share domestic duties in our home, and while I tend to be a slight tidy freak, Embi will usually focus on the more taxing deep cleaning tasks.

I believe that Lego bricks and pieces left around the house, on floors, under beds, eventually lose their privileges as toys and should be reclassified as junk. Imbi recognizes that I have problems with orphaned Legos, but thinks we should not throw those pieces away. She says they still belong to the collection and should be put back where they belong.

Judge, please declare that once a Lego has been disregarded for a certain length of time, it is no longer protected. Your help would be appreciated, as I often find myself poised at the rubbish bin, about to chuck a tiny, tiny, tiny red Lego light, and I see Imbi running towards me in moral panic. Well, speaking of moral panic, I just realized I let you get out Lego before stopping you. So it is probably I don't I don't really think that Derek is is a secret buzz marketer for the Lego Corporation, because in the in the in the world, Lego is is almost without competitor in its in its its functionality and its aesthetic. in its in its uh its functionality and its aesthetic uh however since we did mention lego i do feel obliged to mention the major lego clone manufacturers as listed in wikipedia so just

to so everyone it's just fair play all around on my podcast if you if you want something that on my podcast if you if you want something that is not is not lego but does kind of the same thing because you're a weirdo you still want an interlocking brick but not the name brand exactly you want to go you want to go get the generic interlocking brick in the in the no-name aisle of your canadian supermarket here's what you go for. Banbao, Best Lock, Brick Tech, Built to Rule, Kobe, Cocoa, K'nex, Creo, Mega Bloks, and Tyco Super Bloks. Banbao, what is that?

Banbao Building Blocks. Partially compatible with Lego brand blocks, it says here. So there you go. But you won't. You're not going to go get one of those competitors,

everybody, because Lego is a thing of beauty and a thing of value. What do you think I am going to rule on this one, Elliot? I'm not quite sure. I think you'll go with the not throwing things away side, but I'm not as certain about that. You're correct. You are not going to buy competition Lego because Lego has value. It has real value. And there is a large aftermarket in used Lego on eBay. And it has been estimated that Lego in bulk sells for eight to $10 a pound. And depending on where you're shopping and if you're not too picky about,

you know, grass fed organic stuff, you can get like, you can get, you could get, you can get a bone in ribeye steak for $10 a pound. Do you know what I mean? So yeah,

you might as well be throwing, you might as well be throwing pieces of meat away. You see, Derek? Tiny pieces of meat. Imagine a world in which you had tiny pieces of meat littered all over your floor. Would you throw that meat away? You probably would, Derek. This is a flawed analogy.

Tiny pieces of ribeye tiny cubes of interlocking cubes of ribeye steak all over your floor would you throw them away Derek you probably probably would but in this case you know this is this one of the most painful things that can happen to your foot. Short of it being smashed with a hammer. You have a child that you have mentioned, Elliot. So I'm not revealing anything here. No, no,

this is your son is a little too young to be doing anything with Lego other than choking on it though. Right. But he's very good at that. He's very advanced at choking on Legos for his age. He's probably still using Duplo. He is. Yeah.

He chokes on Duplo still. He does. He has one Duplo set. I don't want to hear jokes about your son choking. This is a family podcast. There are children who are listening to this in their cars as they drive to work. Saying what? They're going to be very upset.

He does have a Duplo set and I have stepped on them. And even at that size, it can be very hurtful. Yeah, Duplo set. You turn an ankle on a Duplo set and you're going down. Oh, yeah. But an adult, not an adult size, but a regular size Lego, that thing isn't, you're not going to take a spill. It's just going to burrow its way into the sole of your foot

in such a painful manner that it will create a more lasting wound, an internal wound of spite toward all Lego on the floor. And I can understand why, Derek, you might want to punish the Lego by throwing them away, but don't do this. The beauty of Lego is that it can be used and reused durably for many, many, many years. And to just throw it away is just on its face, wasteful. And then underneath its face, I don't know what else. I don't know what it is underneath its face mask. What, it's hiding? Yeah.

But here's the other aspect. mask it's what it's hiding yeah what is that you know but i you know it's it's it uh it's here's the other aspect uh it's on its face wasteful and then behind its its hideous face mask it is it is weirdly punitive punitive of the legos which of course are inanimate objects and then i suspect there is an element of punitive of the children for leaving them around and as a parent of two human children uh who no longer plays with toys but simply talk to watch videos of talk to and watch videos of 45 year old men on the internet now but when they played with toys and they would leave them around i once i once hatched a plan that any toy that was left in a common space or on the floor or whatever,

after an opportunity was given to the child to clean it up, I would take that toy and take it away forever and either throw it away or give it to someone else. Take it away forever like some kind of Rankin-Bass villain. Yeah. And i proposed this i said here's this this will get these kids these monstrous kids to clean up after themselves what if i steal their toys if they're left out after dark or something and my wife said if you would like to be a monster that's fine you know when you when you when you blend a family, as you have admirably done and you have children, the truth is that it requires a tremendous amount of grace to accept the imperfection that will visit kids in your home visits upon you. And especially if you are, as you put it, a slight tidy freak contradiction in terms freakishness is rarely slight, especially if you're admitting to it.

Very disappointing sideshow would be the slight freaks. Come see the slightly asymmetrical man. One arm is half an inch longer than the other. It's hard for him to buy clothes off the rack, ladies and gentlemen. Now, did you have one, Elliot? Mine was not as good as that. All right. It was just a slightly shorter than average man.

Oh, okay. That's good, too. That would have been... Gaze upon the top of his head from your slightly higher vantage touch touch to yourself quietly about the bald spot he does not know is forming uh in any case yeah once you're punishing inanimate objects for the sins of your actual, your biological and adopted children, you are corrupting your soul in some way. So just get a plastic bin for spare Legos, because we need more plastic in the world, apparently, and chuck the spare Legos in there and wear shoes inside the house, or at least, you know, stiff-soled sandals. We're going to have to take a short break.

Coming up after the break, what is Stuart opening? You'll find out after these messages. Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman. The Judge John Hodgman podcast is brought to you every week by you, our members, of course. Thank you so much for your support of this podcast and all of your favorite podcasts at MaximumFun.org. And they are all your favorites. If you want to join the many member supporters of this podcast and this network, boy, oh boy, that would be fantastic. Just go to MaximumFun.org slash join. Boy, oh boy, that would be fantastic.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Max writes, My wife and I like to watch a lot of movies via an online streaming service. He doesn't name it, which is great. Usually during or just after dinner. Sometimes my wife will fall asleep and make us stop the movie to finish it later. I hate doing this as I feel it ruins the narrative flow of the film. I say my wife should muscle through a movie once we've started it, or recognize her tired state and suggest a shorter TV episode to watch instead.

On a related note, she will fast forward through a movie if she decides it's not very good. I would like her to either stop it when we realize it's bad, and either watch it on her own later, or watch it together at normal speed. So you've got two different questions there. Okay. Well, we'll take each one in turn with regard to, uh, whether to stop a movie when the wife falls asleep to pick it up later or to insist that she power through it,

presumably by using some sort of Clockwork Orange-style eyelid restraint device. Only way to do it. You know what? It's true. It's just like Lego. There are competitors. But you're really not going to get them. But why wouldn't you just go with

the Clockwork Orange brand eye restraint device when you're trying to force your spouse into watching a movie such that it becomes torture for both of you i don't want to reveal my bias or i should say my decision yet but what's your what's your ruling on that this is a tough one for me because i have a similar but opposite problem of uh my wife and i will often watch things and i will be falling asleep

during it and she'll say should we stop and watch this later and i'm like i don't know let's i want to watch it now and then i'll miss most of what we're watching. So for instance, True Detective, there are huge gaps in my understanding of that show because I would sleep through things. But I think, I mean, he should be nice to his wife and stop the movie and finish it later. Like, come on. As a professional bad movie watcher, Elliot, what is your ruling on this? Well, if you're watching it to watch a bad thing, then you got to watch it all the way through. If you're saying, oh, we want to watch something bad or we're enjoying the badness of it, you can't get bored

an hour in and say like, ah, well, let's fast forward. But on the other hand, if you're watching a good movie and you're getting bored by it, I am totally okay with the person skimming through the rest just in case something great happens. There's a bunch of old movies that have great individual sequences, but the rest of the movie around it is kind of like, bleh. Yeah, but I... All right. But I'm not going to make anyone sit through all two and a half or three hours of The Great

Ziegfeld just so they can see the A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody sequence, which is great and totally stands on its own outside of the movie. So it's... I'm okay with people skimming it as long as they've given the movie a fair chance to begin with.

You know, five minutes in, they can't make that decision. Yeah, I mean, but if you're watching like a famous movie, like what was that one you said? The Great Ziegfeld? Yeah.

All right. And you know that there's a famous sequence in it or a famous movie like what was that one you said the great ziegfeld yeah all right and you know that there's a famous sequence in it or a famous song then why not just go to youtube and find that part and watch it that's true or you could do that too or or you know i should say pay for your content and rent it or or buy the dvd or whatever however you're streaming and stealing these days and just go to that part now if you if you're if you put in a movie let's say it's a movie like uh uh deliver us from evil starring eric bainer and joel mckale uh and olivia munn right and you put this in with with a good faith assumption that this is going to be a good movie and you realize that it's not good,

what would you even be fast forwarding for at that point? I don't understand how you would fast forward or skim a movie if you are just looking at the visuals because you already know the words are probably going to be dumb. What would you even be looking for? I don't get that at all. If you think maybe there's going to be a good car chase or a fight scene or a dance number or a

you know a some kind of a scares or something like that how are the dance numbers in deliver us from evil they are lacking what's wrong with you what's wrong with you what's wrong with you and you and you what's wrong with you what's wrong with you and you and you what's wrong with you would have been a better movie i differ with your ruling elliot on the second part if you are watching a movie and you have decided that it is bad please stop watching it stop it stop watching unless as you say you are watching something that you know is bad and that is something to savor in it or you have a popular podcast in the maximum fun network if you are if you are watching even a celebrated film that you find to be boring or bad uh stop Stop. Stop doing it. And this speaks actually to a real life of a difficult negotiation with my own spouse regarding a movie that we were at. very famous people there and some and i will not name names but there is one one couple uh

both of them famous and and whom we both really are inspired by in different ways and we had to make conversation with these with this couple and somehow the topic turned to a particular movie and they could not believe that my wife had never seen this movie. And, uh, and that movie is the Godfather. And she's like, Nope, I never saw it. And they're like, next time we see you, I hope you will have watched the Godfather. And I said, there you go, Kath, you have to now. And so a year went by, and there was an event to which they were going to be invited again. In any case, she didn't do it, and I'm like, well, you're going to see this couple again,

and you're going to have to admit that you never did it. And we went to this event where they were due to appear, and they didn't show up they had to beg off at the last minute and i was like justice denied justice was denied in this case my wife was not humiliated she got away with it scot-free it's like i want i wanted her no i'm not gonna say that she got she got away with she got away with not merely not watching The Godfather, but not liking The Godfather. She never even had to look these people in the eye and say, I'm sorry, I did not think this was a very good movie. And she was so happy.

And I'm like, never forget, darling. I have a podcast and I'll just humiliate you on the podcast. So there I did that. Justice finally, justice delayed, but not denied. This was the, uh, this was the OJ civil case. Yeah, exactly. To the originals OJ criminal case. Sure. But it was a situation where I really had to say, yeah, you know what? I, I understand the, this is not a movie for you. And, and, uh, I saw the movie in a different way. And so it is my feeling that when you are watching something that does not speak to you, even if it's something as beloved universally as The Godfather, your life is finite. And you should turn off culture that is not speaking to you after as you say elliot you give it a fair chance

so a hard novel for example i think you need to give you know at least 25 percent reading of a novel even if it's really hard because you never know how it's going to pull you in and novels tend to be slow that way and then and a movie that not talking to you, I would say you have to give it till at least the moment that Michael Corleone shoots Salazzo. You know what I'm talking about. That's pretty far into that movie. Well, that's a fair shake. I mean, I couldn't deny that she gave it a fair shake. She gave it a fair shake.

If she watched that far and she was still not interested in it, that is a very fair shake. Yeah. You make a good point yeah and uh and there was a there was part of me that really wanted to say you don't understand what good is but i know that she understands what good is but good is different to different people if you are a person who's falling asleep in the middle of a movie um there is another precedent that goes back to ancient law long before this court was founded. And that is, you snooze, you lose.

Sorry. If you fall asleep, you abrogate all movie watching rights. You cannot demand that the thing be turned off. You can ask, but you cannot demand. It then becomes up to the person who is alert and awake as to whether or not they're going to continue to watch the godfather to the end while the spouse sleeps beside them and then take a mental image of this and realize i am

a middle-aged married person that's what so uh we we uh i think we disagree on both of those elliot because because you you had a slightly different take you were like yeah you be nice to your wife but it's like no don't be nice to your spouse if they fall asleep during i will say they're voting they're voting with their eyelids as to what they how they feel about this movie i see i don't know they're totally in control of that decision well you know tough that they can they can always go back and watch it themselves but that's true it's never been easier to re-watch things i think we have time for for one more elliot kathy writes my husband and i have two girls ages four and five as they grow i want them to be involved in team sports. I was on sports teams growing up and firmly believe that it played a pivotal role in my social development.

Team sports provide children with the skills to work with others, discipline, lasting friendships, and a desire for physical fitness. My husband does not want our kids to be involved in team sports. He believes that it consumes too much time and money. He thinks that we are capable of providing their physical education. He also had bad sport-related experiences in his childhood. I'd like to start fitting our kids for jerseys and buying tiny bottles of electrolyte-replacing sports drink. I know you want to be on my team

because it sucks to be the last ones picked. Well, obviously Kathy is not very familiar with this podcast or me and my work as a person or else you would know it's not going to work to try to entice me into an opinion using sports metaphors that said Ellie Kalin uh what do you think you you uh you you don't read as a sportsman to me you always read as a nerd to me not a jock oh yeah i'm very heavily coded as nerd yeah right you do you have a do you have a feeling about which way i'm going to rule on this or a strong opinion one way or the other on this i did you grow up playing a sport elliot i play i attempted a couple

sports but i never stuck with them like when i very young, I played soccer because there's a law that they think they put into place in the United States in like 1982 that all young children have to play soccer at some point. And I played like t-ball. When I was in high school, I briefly was on the track team and I dabbled in going to fencing practice, but I only did that a couple times. What I wouldn't do to see young Elliot Kalin with a foil or in a pay or maybe a saber. Oh, I would have. And that's what it comes down to is I was never that interested in sports. But even when I was, I didn't stick with it once I found out it was difficult. And so I feel like it's you shouldn't force your children to do sports, but if they're

interested, you should force them to stick with it long enough to see if they really want to do it. You know, like I did a lot of, I would say like, oh, I want to join that team. And then like a couple of weeks in, I'm like, I'd rather be reading comic books. I don't like this. But now looking back, it's like, it was just because I was being challenged in a way that I wasn't used to being challenged. And I wish that I had attempted to meet that challenge a little more seriously.

So Elliot, before I reveal my opinion, I just have a few things that I need to pick apart in this letter that Kathy sent me, having never listened to this podcast before, obviously. First of all, I am a non-sports person. I did play a little soccer like you, Elliot, in my early years. I was tricked into it because the local youth soccer team that I was invited to play on was called The Force. And I was like, okay, you got me. I guess I'll give this a try.

I guess I'll stop watching marathons of Mary Tyler Moore in the afternoon and go and play some soccer. I was terrible at it. I mean, we were little kids. And then one time out of sheer luck, I accidentally kicked the ball into the opposing team's goal and we scored a point which is how the game is played and it may even have won the game and i can't take a lot of credit for it uh other than it just happened but everyone got excited none more excited than me i thought i was finally turning this around and in my excitement i yelled we won and then i pointed at the other team i said you all lost losers and then my my coach who was an irish-born irishman publicly shamed me in front of all my teammates for being a bad sport and i realized and it was

so traumatic that i never played again i was i realized this is not for me and and so i take issue with a very common mythology that kathy you have laid out in your letter, which is a mythology that you hear all the time about youth sports, which is that they provide children with the skills to work with others, discipline, lasting friendships, and a desire for physical fitness. Now let's just separate out the desire for physical fitness for a moment, because the truth is all kinds of things provide children with the skills to work with others, discipline, and lasting friendships. And there's often a bias among people who love sports who suggest, yeah, but the only real way to learn skills, to work with others, discipline, and lasting friendships is to get into a running and kicking game and be yelled at by a man all the time. When in fact, there are all kinds of things kids can do they can they can go uh

they can go into all kinds of clubs all kinds of activities if you really want to breed a generation of super competitors don't have them play sports put them in a symphony orchestra together a youth orchestra that's where they'll really learn discipline and they won't learn lasting friendships but they'll learn how to defeat their enemies. That's for sure. And you might also teach them to go into comedy, like improv comedy or something. You might teach them to learn how to work in an environment like The Daily Show. Certainly, if the only way to develop the skills to work with others, self-discipline and create lasting friendships was to play soccer.

Uh, there would be no Elliot Kalin as the head writer of the daily show, right? Elliot. Not at all. Right. Cause I would have never. Yeah.

Wouldn't have happened. Yeah. You would. Now, as far as the desire for physical fitness goes, yes, obviously sports have a physical fitness, uh,

uh, benefit. Um, but the truth is that, uh that the desire for physical fitness is innate. If it doesn't happen when your kid is a child, just wait until they turn 40 years old and they realize, oh, I'm dying. I better start. Then that desire will happen. You know, the other the other side of all the team building and discipline and lasting friendships is some people do have horrible experiences with team sports. You know, team sports is the reason we we are we are attracted to them as a species is that they they reek of tribalism.

And, you know, we we we assign ourselves randomly to some some tribe, some Red Sox nation nation i'm not don't get mad at me red socks people i'm from boston i'm with you do you know what i mean but even then i have to give a qualifier there because if i say i don't like this team there are places where you could be hurt for misaligning yourself with the wrong tribe. And within those tribes, you know, this is a sports, sports training, especially team sports training is a top-down dictatorship and pecking orders arise. And it is terrible to be the last ones picked. Trauma can be associated with this, not always great things. And I'm not saying that it's one more than the other, but you know, I would say before you you do anything you should say to your husband what was your experience with sports and and hear what he has to say maybe it's just nothing do you

know what i mean but maybe it's something maybe it was something that went really wrong uh in his in his growing up as a result of team sports and before dismissing him saying well that's just you nerd i mean think about it because it doesn't always go right for everyone team sports that is i would say uh if to just to add a little bit to that is that the flip side of me wishing that i had taken sports more seriously is that not being interested in the competitive aspect of it kind of turned me off from physical activity yes in general for a while yes and so i grew up thinking like i don't like playing sports when it really was that i don't like caring who wins or loses but like i love running around and like hitting things and climbing things and kicking things like everybody enjoys that right but it's having that put in a structure of like okay but now you have to be better at it than somebody else

and just by god's own gifts to me i will never be better than anyone else at doing that. Winning the game proves which team God loves more. Exactly. And it's so to always be reminded, well, the point of this is to win and you're just not going to win. It made me feel like, okay, well, then I don't like this whole thing. When really I just didn't like this whole thing when really I just didn't like that aspect of it. And there are great coaches and there are terrible coaches and there are great trainers

and there are terrible trainers. There are great sports programs and then there are toxic sports programs. And I'm not suggesting that it is intrinsic to team sports across the board, but it is something that, you know, you can't predict that your children are going to have the same experience that you did with sports which was obviously very positive now kathy here's where it gets better nope it doesn't goodbye you're wrong no sorry here here's where here's where to really inappropriately appropriate a gay youth empowerment message and apply it to sports. And apply it to jocks.

Usually not on the same team. Here's where it gets better. For all that I just said about sports, I actually think that and especially later in my life i've come to really appreciate uh sports team sports and athleticism in general and then obviously i mean i've always been fascinated with the the uh the nerdy the nerdy solo sports of insane personal perfection like bicycling or running or you know weightlifting where you're just all by yourself as i've said before you might as well be painting a dungeons and dragons figurine at that point it's it's you're you're entirely in your own head and that's

always been beautiful but late in my life i've come to appreciate not merely the value of team sports but also what not being meaningfully involved in team sports meant in my life, which was that, uh, as an only child, I already was ill-trained for, uh, conflict and confrontation, um, interpersonal conflict and confrontation. And as an only child, not involved in sports, I, I was, i lacked the routine conflict and confrontation that is competitive sports such that it was well into my 30s that i thought any sort of conflict or confrontation was probably fatal do you know what i mean like and that goes for like negotiating the sale of a car to you know deciding you know having different ideas of what to have for dinner to hugging and kissing another

human being any kind of interpersonal thing was highly charged it's it's weird that hugging and kissing another human being is under conflict there no but but it's but it's what you mean it's risky confrontation do you know what i mean like to yes to to make a first move uh or receive a first move it's it's terrifying and what i realized and david reese helped me to understand this and i've talked about it before is that is that competitive sports and team sports obviously um help you to they're basically a rehearsal of conflict such that you're able to throw away defeat after a while and in many ways the defeat is the more important value than the winning because you're able to shake off defeat and keep going.

And you begin to realize that this kind of conflict and confrontation and ambiguous outcomes in life are not fatal, but in fact, something that you can process. And I think that can be extremely valuable. You can learn it from a lot of different other ways, too. But it is something that I think is intrinsic to sports. it from a lot of different other ways too but it is something that i think is intrinsic to sports and of course it's wonderful if you become physically fit and able to gain there's an extra measure of confidence you have if you're able to execute certain physical maneuvers deftly and you have confidence in your body and that sort of thing so when it came time kathy for my wife and i to make these sorts of decisions about our children when they're about your children's age.

I did not stand in the way of sports like your dumb husband did. That nerd husband of yours. I said, you know, they need an opportunity at least to try it out and see if it speaks to them. And so we did. We signed them up for a number of different, I think, baseball. I think for both of them and you know both both of the both of my human children were actually pretty adept and i got excited about it when they would uh stick hit or base run or whatever it was that they were doing i don't understand how that game works but you know

um and if they had if they if they had a good time and if they wanted to continue i was all for it but and i did push them neither one way or the other and after a while they decided nope doctor who is on i'm gonna watch that and i'm like oh there is such a thing as genetics so so uh you know the i am not suggesting like your nerd husband that there should be no sports in your life it's obviously important to you and you should model that to your kids um but where you are both going wrong is being caught up in an ideological debate and believing in the delusion that you are going to choose for your kids what their passions are be they sports or non and and and be neutral and

do not do not let your nerd jock fight that clearly defines your marriage uh infect their their experience of the arts, both athletic and non. I'm afraid that's all the time we have for the docket. We left a couple still on the docket. So we didn't, I would say we three quarters cleared the docket. Now it is time to reveal the incredible passion project of the third part of the Fluff House podcast. We've all been waiting and we've been mercilessly teasing the audience the entire hour and some odd minutes what is stewart gonna do he's gonna open some bar uh stewart wellington

one-third of the flop house uh people may know him as the flop house house cat uh he is opening a new bar uh in association with his wife charlene who is the proprietor of Charlene's, an already existing bar. It's going to be called Hinterlands, and it's going to be on Church Avenue in Brooklyn, in the Fort Hamilton Prospect Park South area. I think they're hoping to finally have it open before the end of the year, but if you want to like the Hinterlands Bar Facebook page, which is already up, But if you want to like the Hinterlands Bar Facebook page, which is already up, I'm sure you'll get all the important information about this. Sure to be the most exciting bar in which people also play board and role-playing games in Brooklyn.

Oh! It's an RPG-themed bar? Not entirely, but there will be plenty of it since that is Stuart's lifelong passion. That's awesome. And I know that the bathroom, they were planning to wallpaper it with pages from old gaming and monster manuals. That that's like a, that's like a jocks dream job. Hey,

we need you to tear up all these old monster manuals to put them in a bathroom. Good where they belong. Okay, I'll do it. Right. And you continue to release episodes of The Flophouse? Every two weeks The Flophouse, go to

iTunes or go to MaximumFun.org or go to TheFlophousePodcast.com and listen to The Flophouse. We continue to do it until somebody makes a stop, and nobody has managed to do that yet. And I would have one last final plug, which is that a Marvel comic book series that I wrote

called Spider-Man and the X-Men that I was very happy with is available in a collected trade paperback form. You can find it in bookstores probably anywhere. It's got Spider-Man and the X-Men in it. We didn't even touch upon your other career as a writer for marvel comics yeah um which is fantastic i mean this is a guy this is a elliot kaelin everybody this guy is a quadruple quintuple threat as long as you're interested in comics or weird movies otherwise you will find me very unthreatened yeah otherwise no threat whatsoever.

I remain John Hodgman. By the time you hear this, I will have concluded the vacation land tour proper. Thank you so much to everybody. Uh, uh, listener and non-listener like who came out to say hello on the tour. It was really spectacular.

And, um, I don't know what the future holds for that particular show, but I enjoyed performing it live for you in all the various places that I went. I do have one last event coming up this winter before I disappear into 2016, which is the future where we will all disappear too soon. On November 7th, I and Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah will We'll be appearing together at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. It is a university event that is open to the public. So if you're anywhere near Athens, Ohio, that includes Pittsburgh, Columbus, parts of West Virginia, why don't you come on

down? Elliot, who produces and edits the show? This show is produced by Julia Smith. Mark McConville is the editor. You can follow the Judge John Hodgman podcast and its hosts on Facebook and Twitter. Find Judge John Hodgman on Facebook. The judge is at Hodgman on Twitter. And if you have a case for the judge, submit it to www.maximumfun.org slash JJHO.

And I have been your guest bailiff, Elliot Kalin. Very thankful and proud to have been here. Well, you know, this is a long one. I'm not sure how long the final edit will be. I could talk to you for another, I won't say another hour, but maybe

30 minutes, 29, 30 minutes for sure. After that, it might be a bit of a stretch, but that's a lot. And it speaks to my fondness for you, Elliot Kalen. Where can we follow you on Twitter? If you go to at Elliot Kalen, that's Elliot with two L's and two T's, Kalen, K-A-L-E-N, on Twitter. Just my name. Just your name.

This has been the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We'll return next week with more cases heard live and in the docket here at MaximumFun.org. Thank you very much. I signed that off for us, Elliot. Did you have a sign off that you wanted to do? Because I kind of did it already. No, no, that was a very good sign off. Thank you very much.

Hello, Waheeda. That is all.