Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Better Than Strangers

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Strong podcasters Soren Bowie and Daniel O'Brien, through sheer tyranny of will, decide which skill they will be demonstratively better at than a group of strangers on an elevator.What would your skill be? You can sound off in the comments on YouTube (where we're back on video!!!) at www.youtube.com/@QQPodcast or on instagram at www.instagram.com/QQSorenandDanielAnd speaking of elevators, here's a pitch: joining the Quick Question patreon page guarantees Daniel will never challenge you to a push up contest AND you get a extra episode of the podcast every other Friday. Sign up at www.patreon.com/quickquestionTo explore coverage, visit ASPCApetinsurance.com/QUESTION. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance.

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it out there? Where did all that go? Did weep?

Oh forget it Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents, and excited boy of summer, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello.

Hey, everybody. I'm Soren Bui. I'm a writer for American Dad. I can always tell when you're going to wing it, when you're going to wing the one that's going to be. That's not an insult, by the way. You're so good at it that I have to even acknowledge that I can tell when you're going to do it because you do a really great job and even when you're like on the like when you trust

yourself to to like catch yourself you do uh so in some ways this is a big compliment but also as your friend i know when you're doing it sure i can see i can see the feet paddling under the water thanks to aspca pet Insurance for supporting Quick Question. To explore coverage, visit ASPCAPetInsurance.com slash question. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Limited.

The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. It's like 80 degrees today and i'm i'm so stoked and it's my it's my day off as of this we record on mondays and that's my day off and i demanded we record as early as possible which is like nine in the morning your time and i don't it's just because my dumb child brain is like it's nice outside and what if it's never nice again i need to go and soak up as much of it as possible yeah man carpe diem good for you i'm gonna carpe so much diem uh that's exciting uh do you are you familiar with like how fruit sorry i you have a thing go ahead no i don't oh i was gonna talk about the show scrubs no okay i don't want to talk about that well you may not want to talk about this uh

you're familiar with like the the turnover of stone fruits each year like when it's like seasonal for different fruits no i understand that fruits and vegetables, yes, come in seasons. Okay. But I think the turnover of stone fruits, the specificity of that threw me a little bit. Oh, so we're coming up on, I consider stone fruits to be the very best fruits, like peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, even I would include mango in that. I don't know if it actually is included, but I could throw a mango seed like a stone.

And so- Why would you think I wouldn't want to talk about this i don't know you've got weird dietary restrictions and i'm not sure if you like if you're into fruits or not i get so pumped this time of year specifically because we are like we are just on the cusp of the very best fruit season of the year. That's really exciting for you, man. No, I don't care. I don't eat a lot of fruits. I eat blueberries. I'll mix blueberries and things, and I'm a big strawberry guy. The fruit that I associate with the upcoming season is definitely

watermelon we always have a lot of watermelon in in the home when it gets warmer out and i make uh nice little summer salads of watermelon cucumber and dairy-free feta with some a little bit of pepper oh okay nice um well watermelon is like 98 water you really could just be making your own watermelon at home frankly out of water yeah okay just some water and then some uh some fibrous melon fruit yeah uh well let's stop talking about that soren i get it now i understand why people get married i'm it's starting to become clear to me because i was at uh my dentist last week so already you know i'm having a fucking blast because i love the dentist and i told uh the whole like first 10 minutes of my twice a year checkup and cleaning is just talking.

We just catch up. The dental assistant and I just chat. So I told her that we are engaged, and she was very excited for us. She congratulated me. And then she was like, when is your wedding? And I told her when it is. She was like, a week before the wedding, come back here, and your cleaning is on me. She's like, a week before the wedding, come back here and your cleaning is on me.

And this is what I'm fucking talking about, Soren. If you're planning a wedding, if you're paying for your own wedding specifically, groceries should be free. You shouldn't have to pay for anything else in the real world while you're focused on this thing. And the dentist is the only one in America who understands just how much stress we're under doing this she's like that's free teeth cleaning come on come on in she's gonna she's gonna do it is does is that include the dentist as well where the dentist comes in and pokes at it with an with one piece of metal and goes good good good and then leaves yeah yeah oh my god i think the whole thing i imagine she's actually probably keeping the dentist out of the financials of this. Okay.

But like she, she walked me into up to the receptionist when we were making my next appointment and she was like, and what is the, what code do we use when it's, when it's like a gift and the receptionist was like, ah, I got it. And she typed it in. And that means I get a free that's how their system knows not to charge me oh my god i have never not been i've never gotten a free thing from a medical professional in my entire i don't think anyone has i don't think that's what the system is based on your timing couldn't be more perfect either. Because that's six months, baby. Like, that's like, you should be getting a checkup anyway.

My only worry is that the hygienist, because she's so sweet, she's going to get in there in my mouth and be like, it's his wedding, let's do something fun. And then she'll do like some weird change in my mouth to spice things up. Like some times, like a barber might do. Yeah. I put some caps on. i hope that you don't some gels what did anyone when you were planning your wedding did anyone

were there any unexpected perks along the way like that yes yeah um we so we drove out to colorado for my wedding and we came out like two weeks early because we just wanted to be there and like we were planning a wedding where we weren't so like doing a destination wedding is tough and we needed to meet everybody like the wedding coordinator make sure like the event space was what we wanted it to be all this stuff so we gave ourselves a big cushion and on our way out there uh we drove the whole way we did it in one day and in that night we got in at like two and i'm driving from this is my hometown glow in between glow springs and carbondale as i'm driving i get lit up these this cop is behind me and pulls us over and we have a ton

of shit in the back we're not like we're also pretty young so we don't have like realist suitcases it's just like stuff's in garbage bags and shit and we're also bringing stuff for the wedding umbrellas and things like that for the wedding and uh he pulls us over he's like you're going pretty fast and i was like yeah i just got off the interstate so like i'm used to going like you know i go like 90 don't don't quote me on that but i go pretty fast on the internet i mean on the interstate and he's like he's like all right well uh what's going on your car and we're like he's like where are you coming from and i was like oh well we're about to get married like we're getting married

here are you still at this point driving like a 92 Corolla or something absurd? It was a 96. Dan, give me some credit. A 96 Toyota Camry LE. That means limited edition. Limited edition. Yeah. Yeah.

So he, I mean, I don't want to like, I don't want to assume what he was thinking, but he did touch the windowsill. Like, what is this, leather? Like, he had that kind of look on his face. But I'm sure he knew Ellie. He's a cop. So we got pulled over, and we told the cop what was going on. He was like, hmm, okay. Can I have your license and registration?

Gave it all to him. He went back to his car, and then he came back up, and he was like, congratulations, guys, and just? Gave it all to him. He went back to his car and then he came back up and he was like, congratulations guys and just gave me my stuff back and left. And I was like, yes! I'm telling from now on,

anytime I get pulled over anywhere, I'm like, we just got into town. We're getting married tomorrow. Please, can you help us? Although that window is certainly closing for me now that i have like gray hair yeah it's showing up in a car i mean like oh officer you don't understand we're young and we're getting married it just doesn't have the same ring

to it i do feel like you should get to walk around with some kind of safety vest or a sign that lets everyone know that you are in the middle of planning a wedding just so if there are any other little discount codes that get typed in at cash registers they'd be like oh yeah give this one though the wedding bonus and I know people will take advantage of it you just pitched the idea that you were gonna do that but just let me have it right you should absolutely have it and also i think maybe like the inroads that you built with your dentist or your hygienist have this is like the payoff for

that so you did the work you did the leg work for this i i wonder if this happens with pregnant women uh because it feels like it does on par type celebration, and that's a very easy one to spot. I wonder if people are just like, just give her groceries for free. Yeah. I bet they don't. Yeah, I don't think so. I think I've long lamented, I can't remember if I've talked about it on this podcast or a different one,

in my lifetime, podcaster a different one uh the in my lifetime the amount of special reserved parking spaces in parking lots has grown astronomically out of control and and it includes like here's a spot growing up it was just handicapped spots period and now there's handicap there is uh expectant mothers is one of them some parking lots have like family parking spots that are closer to your destination some of them have like if you're just going there's like the 15 minute one this is if you're going to pick up an already placed order uh i've seen military parking i've seen employee of the month parking it's the kind of thing that i as uh an unfortunately able-bodied white man they're never going to have a spot for me i'm never going to get the special treatment spot but maybe if they add one more for expectant

weddings you could have that glory i could finally get to michael's quicker um well speaking of you being a an able-bodied uh gentleman daniel i have a i have a quick question for you do you mind if we start the show let's do it okay we should okay um i'm gonna give you a hypothetical scenario you're trapped in an elevator with five strangers you don't know any of these people okay so you can't know what strangers means yeah and the only way out of this elevator is that you have to demonstrate a skill that you are objectively better at than all five of these other people before you can leave they all have to do the same thing by the way but like you need to find something that you just in general are better at than the average

human being and you think you could beat five people at it. And this isn't going to be... Go ahead. You're not going to trick me. If, for example, because these are strangers to me, but you're God in this situation, so you would know them. You're not going to trick me if I say the thing that I'm objectively the best at is riding a bike, and then you're like, guess what? One of them was Lance Armstrong.

One of the strangers was lance armstrong you're not gonna you're not here but neither of those things is gonna happen because it has to be something that you can demonstrate in this elevator right i figured that i just needed a an example of a thing and a person who's better at it than me yes so you need yeah you need to build no i won't i won't trick you these are just like people plucked i closed my eyes as god and just plucked them out of society and threw them in this elevator with you so i if you have one obviously i have pull the chair three okay oh great oh man you were loaded

yeah i have a couple because i don't when i when i say i'm objectively better i don't know that that's true with a pot of strangers uh so i would say plank or push-ups yeah and my my confidence in being better than everyone else in the elevator at those two skills is my real skill is stubbornness is that if i need to if i've already called my shot that i'm proving that i can do a plank i can hold a plank longer than anyone in this elevator i'm i'm just gonna do it through sheer tyranny of will or push-ups i'm just gonna i i will say push-ups and then they'll take the blindfold off and i'll see there are maybe people who are clearly stronger than i am or people who are

carrying less weight than i am making their push-ups easier and i will still like look in the face of this uh indisputable proof and just be like nope i'm gonna do the most push-ups in this elevator because uh i'm gonna do it until i die and i don't know if the rest of you are willing to do that because that is how strong my stubborn gene is stronger than your chest and triceps right what what let's say at that point if i lose i'm dead so who cares how now no one's getting off the elevator how many push-ups do you think you could do in a row like if you really had to huh a hundred a hundred you could do a hundred in a row man that's a lot are you stopping yes i will stop and and like probably if this still counts i will retreat to down facing dog uh which is a

yoga pose where no knees on the ground though i get it yeah no knees on the ground no my my feet and hands are constantly touching the ground i'm just shifting backwards into down dog to uh redistribute some of the weight for a little while yeah my yeah mine is also strength-based um but it's like my the type of strength that like my body is uniquely suited for i'm gonna stem i'm stemming in that elevator for do you know what stemming is i am holding one side with my hands education my facts i'm holding one with my hands on one side my feet on the other on a wall and i'm up in the air i'm up in there i've been doing that my whole life i didn't know that was called a thing yeah that's called stemming you can do it in climbing and stuff you do it but

usually it's your legs it's like you you have one leg planted on one if you're in a crack or something like that you have one leg planted on one wall lower you're in a crack or something like that, you have one leg planted on one wall, other leg on the other. But yeah, I would stem. And I think I could kick everyone's ass in that elevator at stemming just because of- I think that's fair. How I'm built. I think that's crazy that I've been doing stemming

my whole life just in like door frames and like narrow hallways. It was just a thing that my brothers and I all, as soon as you see that thing looks climbable, I'm going to climb it. That was just like our way about things. And when I first moved to LA and was making videos with Michael Swayman, Abe Everson, I would do that. swayman abe everson i would do that and then they would work it into scripts of the things that we were shooting because this was before they had known you very well i think because they grew up so tightly in like theater and uh film world the both of them that just me with my limited skill doing acts of physicality they see me like stemming up a wall

and they're like holy shit he's doing parkour and they were just so impressed ah yes with this basic function of gravity before i worked in cracked i did ehow videos and i would do like how-to videos and i was like oh i know this great spot where i can teach somebody to stem like up a building, basically. So I would do a video of it. I set up the video camera and I found this place where it was like a slot that was maybe like five feet wide, maybe six feet. And like got in there and just started climbing it and was set up far enough away that I could see how far I could go and start climbing it and just kept going. And then I was like, oh, I didn't have a plan for the end of this.

I don't know, like, once I get to the top, I'm not totally confident that I could just climb onto the roof from a stem position because you have to put so much pressure on both your feet and your hands to, like, let go with one to, like, grab onto a roof or something. So I was like, shit. And then I got to the top and I was like like i've never tried stemming down before like walking down a wall because why would i just jump from wherever i am and i'm like two stories in the air and there's a camera on me and the thought certainly crossed my mind i was like i'm about to film my own death like someone's gonna find me and then they're gonna find the camera

like i think this was intentional detectives trying to piece it together and so i i stemmed down so slowly and like terrified the whole way and the thing your body does when it's scared in a situation like that is like hey you know what you need is a lot of palm sweat you need to you need to get slippery buddy because that's the only way to solve the situation i'm like no no no i think i'm right no god we're not sliding out of this one guys and so i like slowly went down this wall and then at the end i was like that was horrifying and then i watched the video and i was like no i'm gonna use all of it i'm using all this the whole thing is great going down looks so intentional this is great this came out great i look so dry up there i think my my my other solution my other suggestion if i did if there

was no blindfold in the scenario even though you never said there was one in the beginning but i see everyone else in the elevator and if i could tell like okay there are some world-class athletes here i'm not gonna outank or push up any of them. My next bet would have been, I can name all of the presidents, not in order, faster than anyone else in the elevator. Just because that's, I don't name them particularly quickly. I'm sure there are people who have like developed systems where they have like a rhyme or a song where they can like really like get them out in i don't know 20 seconds or whatever it is

i don't have that i just know them all and i think that's the kind of thing if you're if god has plucked five random people and dropped them in an elevator i it's still a gamble but it's a relatively smart gamble that i'm not gonna be plucked with people who can at the ready recite all of the presidents that's just the thing that you can do it out of order is is insane like that's psychotic because that's the way people remember it is in order i think i just start in order and then when i lose order then my move becomes the doubles i get up to uh jackson or so uh and then i start going okay bush bush roosevelt roosevelt johnson johnson harrison harrison and then i i i jump around a little bit from there but i that's wild that's like if somebody was like hey give me all the

letters in the alphabet but do it out of order i'd be like i can't i can't yeah there's no way i would get them all drop the elevator um so out of order presidents i think would work yeah there's certainly a chance that i would be in that elevator with some 13 year old whiz kid who was like yeah i have to memorize the presidents for for class and they and they just knocked me out of the park but in general i think it's you'd be you wouldn't get a hundred percent uh batting average if you stopped people on the street and asked the average joe to name all of the presidents in history period no no so i feel like i've got a pretty a pretty good lead on people because uh between the two books about presidents that i wrote how to fight presidents and your presidential fantasy dream team uh between that and just uh like a lifetime of researching

presidents i am steeped in presidential stuff so it was also a thing before i run with music i would just like say the names of presidents while i was running as a thing to like clear my mind and distract your mantra. Your mantra was us presidents. It's a long mantra can only get through like two mantras in the meditation system. I love my dog. I talk about him a lot. He just turned 12 last month. He's getting just like his papa. He's getting some white hairs where they used to be lush and youthful and brown and powerful and strong, but he's still got the heart and the brain of a puppy, and I love him so much. I spend every day thinking about him. Your pet, like mine, is one of a kind, and so is their journey. While every playful moment is a

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It's simple. Use their app to submit a claim, and you'll receive reimbursement for eligible vet bills directly into your bank account. To explore coverage, visit ASPCAPpetinsurance.com slash question. That's ASPCApetinsurance.com slash question. Again, that's ASPCApetinsurance.com slash question. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance i have one for you that i thought immediately when i came up with this question i was like this should be daniel's do you know

what it is so um i wish i could guess it what do you think I'm better at than everybody? This is also something that's not verifiable. Love making. Sore. Yeah. You're going to fuck everyone in the elevator. Out fuck this elevator. Listen up, everyone.

This one's going to be a little different than the last one. Sit-ups was cool, but I need everyone to take off their clothes. Oh, I wish we'd done sit-ups first everybody's very sweaty um uh i i have so let me just say quickly i have one for you i think that the president's one is is good but i also think that that's an easy one if you still like everything else in the world still exists you have your phone that gets a lot tougher because the people are just going to be like oh i get service in this elevator here are all the presidents there's something that you like an intangible skill something that can't be quantified by the internet that you have i can be helped by the internet but you can't be you can't do it on the internet you can and i don't think anyone else does it as fast as you is it naming characters and naming actors in movies pretty much there's a game associated

with that oh movie game kevin bacon game six degrees of kevin bacon oh you could have make absolutely wreck everyone at six degrees of kevin uh of kevin bacon and you have i've seen you do it in the past where it's like it's not even a fun game for you like people be like let's play this and i can see it on your face you're like okay and then we start and like you have it immediately and you answer with movie quicksilver like movies people have not seen you're like laurence fishburne was in quicksilver and we would that's my that's my impression of you we would play not six degrees of kevin bacon but we would play just the generic movie game where a person names a movie or an actor uh let's say a movie and then the next person has to say an actor that was in that movie and then the next person has to say another movie that actor was in and you just

build that chain and it goes on and on and on no repeating movies or actors or uh sequels and that was a game that i have played so much uh especially was i when i was younger and was like genuinely not fun to play with i was told by by other people because it's like the way i'm sure some chess masters are complete assholes i was an asshole with that game where I would play and it would go as long as I wanted. And then I knew a couple of moves where I could get people completely out of their comfort zone.

And it was really just like when I was like my car's almost here. Alright, Mars attacks. Here we go. And then I just knew what people, you can predict what someone's going to say based on the movie and and then, like, get them to a place where you know they will be lost forever,

which is shitty. It's not fun. That's why no one likes playing chess. I bring up Mars... I bring up Mars Attacks just because my fiancé and I watched that recently, as you do, as adults. Well, Lucas Haas, Jack Nicholson. Yeah. That's all I can do so far.

She doesn't watch a ton of movies, and she just doesn't have the memory for actors, because why would you? It's just not important information to her. Useless. We're watching that movie and she's like who is that person i'm like oh why that's annette benning oh that there that's young jack black you can barely recognize him and it's like pointing out and there's a million people in this movie so it's easy and at one point uh jack black and lucas haas's father is on screen. And she goes, now who's that guy? I go, why that's Joe Don Baker,

which is a name that no one is supposed to know. And I'm looking to her like, be proud of me for knowing this. And A, she's not proud of most of the things that I do. B, this is not on paper an impressive thing to anyone and c because she's just not concerned with memorizing actors and and and names and stuff knowing joe don baker is the same as knowing annette benning and pierce brosnan in her mind like there's like it's all the same yeah bucket of like weird stuff that Daniel knows and he's like but you don't understand

for me to know who Joe Don Baker was that there's so much of my life needed to be different to get here that's me when I would do when my daughter was younger which is like two and I would do magic for her it was such a waste because like everything is magic to her so i was like i would do a really great magic trick like great sleight of hand and she'd be like yeah man i don't know yeah everything's pretty crazy right now that's not anymore the day we got uh engaged we went to this nice martini bar first uh her parents and the two of us and this is like a very cool fancy martini bar and they have a uh like a guy he's dressed in a full suit and he is a hundred years old he looks like like a like some strange

vegas staple just a guy who was like not necessarily a manager not a waiter but like will walk around a club or a restaurant and like ask you how you're doing and he has good recommendations just like the kind of uh position in restaurants that doesn't really exist anymore of just like this weird concierge person who just like like, walks around and is fancy. And they, the, her parents knew him as someone who, like, would run trivia every once in a while. He wasn't doing it this day. He was just, like, walking around checking on tables. And they, like, signaled him over. And they were like, you're not doing trivia. Where's the trivia? He's like, oh, we're not doing it right now. And like, but this guy, this guy, Daniel, he, he knows things. He knows movie trivia. So just, so just like,

like get him. And I'm so nervous because this guy is again, like a million years old. And I, my bone of fetus have just been put on the table as far as like, this is a guy who knows everything, knows all movie trivia. And the guy's like, all right, I'm going to give you one. I'm just going to start. I'm going to give you three or four things that describe an actor. And you got to guess who the actor is. And I don't remember exactly what the descriptors were. One of them was about not being, not having like a conventionally handsome face for a movie star uh it was an actor who was very active in the 70s and uh launched some kind of uh soft franchise like there was a a number of sequels and that was it and i'm and already i'm thinking like

70s is not my wheelhouse for movies it's a great decade of films that i just mostly skipped and there's there's pressure and i was looking at me and i go it's not charles brosnan and the guy goes got it in one it is and i was like how i haven't seen any of his movies it's just one of those things that's just like yeah because my brain has is is the specific version of broken that it is that i just absorb information and i can trace a line from knowing that answer to a joke on the critic that i saw in 1998 or something absurd like that my brain filed away this guy is from death wish charles broson not a good face and my brain was like here here was when we needed that information

it was here on the day you're going to propose to your future wife you needed this first uh you needed to get one answer correct before you ask the bigger question later. Your weird slumdog millionaire life. I know. It was just so bonkers. And like, the same with a low-level magic trick or memorizing the name Joe Don Baker. I get the answer right. And she's like,

yeah, of course he was going to get it right. And I was like, there was never a guarantee. So you're, I'm sure you're already getting a lot of this because you've been in a relationship for a while, You have no idea. There was never a guarantee. I'm sure you're already getting a lot of this because you've been in a relationship for a while. But when you're married, this kind of thing where you live in different worlds, essentially. Your careers are completely different trajectories. And so you have closed doors on a lot of things in your life that you've just decided are obsolete or unnecessary for you to know and so has she and so you're gonna have like some really really outstanding puns or like really good jokes that are like fraser type jokes but

specifically about pop culture between 1990 and 2010 and like they're gonna be awesome and like you're gonna get to it you're gonna get to the punch line and she's just gonna be like so what did you want for dinner like it's everything things will just die on the floor like things that could have been on television will just die on the floor and you gotta be like i want to explain this to you but i know you don't dissect the bird to find the song. So I'm just not going to, we're just going to move on. I have more than a few times I had said something and she had accepted like the facts in the sentence and moved on with that information. And I will just quietly out of my breath go, that was such a good joke. Just like mourning the silent death.

Because I know that you have a lot of these. I know from we would have editorial meetings at Cracked, and you would do a joke like that, and then you would do this face like waiting for everybody. You would be like, you do it, and then you go, please, please. Like, did you all catch that? Did you see how cute I am? do you see what i just did there and that was that was rough because the the peak crack.com office conference room that

if anyone was going to appreciate my specific mental illness it's that room that's where i'm gonna find my my people and if if something didn't land if my my name dropping of pino paladino and leaning in no one picked up on it if it didn't land there then it's not going to land anywhere it's just not designed for people god there was we were like it was a star wars day it was a fucking star wars day and we were talking about maybe we're naming stuff uh and we were trying to name uh star wars stuff after songs and you stop for a minute and like wasn't even that minutes even way too long like you stop for like two seconds then you're like uh wookie for love in alderaan places and we were like oh my god yeah

because everyone else would have stopped at wookie for love they would have been like there it is i got it not everyone else is this broken anyway so yeah you're gonna be you're gonna do find this elevator game i thought thought, so I originally, when I conceived of this, my saw trap that I was like, surely there's something mental that I could do. And I was like, looking at stuff for a long time. And then I was like, ah, you know what? I'm just going to do some physical, some active physical strength. I think that the mental acuity, I don't, I don't really shine in any particular area i'm gonna leave that one alone

the only like the only thing i could have foreseen actually doing it was when my wife and i first started dating i would when she was like going to sleep i would do this thing where we're just trying to prove that you're better than you actually are like you're trying to be you on your very best day uh i would do this thing where there'd be like a big long word like like quixotic and i would come up with with a story of like how to remember that that word so i would do like i would have like a whole story that would go through and then by the end you can understick you the character in the in the story like him let's say his name is dick like quicksand dick like there's a reason why he becomes that like you get to the name of that word as like

if he's like he saw us really really fast or whatever it is like that's the only thing that he's really good at like that he's single-minded about it like then by the end you've got the word and you've got also like a way to remember it and so i would write these in the moment and like you know some of them are obviously aren't home runs but when i would do it i was like fuck yeah that was that's so good and then uh later on in life she got what had to take her gre's and in the gre's there's a whole section on vocab and she was like will you do these for a lot of these words and i was like no no no no like we're together now like i i don't have to anything to prove anymore that was super hard that thing that i was doing that was pretty amazing that it ever worked out i was i was

impressed with myself a couple of times yeah I don't want to do that anymore. I think that, and then with my child. The days of doling out minor miracles are behind me. And then when Ronan was born and he got old enough that he could hear stories and was still interested in hearing stories from me, I would make up a story at night. And when I would make up the story, I'd try to make sure that it had like a clear conflict and an arc to it and then also that there was some sort of moral at the end of it that would be applicable to somebody his age and when that were also worked out i was like man i just like the muse just spoke to me like that was amazing and i just don't think uh i don't know like if if i can make that happen in the elevator i think i could really i could get out but you know they're not all winners obviously sometimes like you get

in the middle of a story just like you would with like breaking a real story and you'd be like oh no fuck let me go back let me go back to the first act um there's this is going to be better maybe i would so when my rock and roll band uh first lunch money criminals first do we have a clip and then we'll put a clip in there when we first started playing uh years ago like we booked a gig before we were ready to book a gig where it was specifically like we were booked for an hour and we didn't as a collective know that many songs we didn't know an hour's worth of songs uh which is a tall order for most bands certainly tough close to impossible for a band that has never played a gig before uh and we we

ended up scrapping together a few things just like covers here and there uh we encored because they demanded an encore we encored because they demanded an encore we encored with a song that we had never played together before that we all just kind of knew and really fucked our way through it uh and there were a few we ate up some delicious time with my brother tommy the piano player just playing a couple of solo piano tunes and one of the things that we worked on that we eventually scrapped but we did it in rehearsal a lot was just like let's learn some very simple music that we all know and uh as like a as a bass simple verse tune chorus tune etc and have daniel improvise lyrics and they would like improvise

harmonies around me like we we had a couple of tricks to work out where the chorus was going to go and what other voices could come in on the chorus but it was just we were sitting around the four of us at the time in the band and because the conceit of it would be get someone in the audience ask them what their name is what their job is or what they want their job to be in the future and one or two other details about them and the way we practiced this was my brothers or frank the other guy in the band would just say like britney wants to be a veterinarian third detail go and then i would just improvise lyrics to songs that would rhyme and be funny and uh it was another like low-level miracle at the time where they were like a complete song would be done and they were like all right yeah okay great so we got that

let's try another one let's try jennifer doctor hates mondays and just like invent another song another like strange uh magic trick that i might try to pull off in the elevator yeah i mean you guys were i didn't realize that lunch money criminals was also an improv group we weren't we again we scrapped that before actually ever having to do it i think because i the concern was like what if i what if someone's in the audience has a really stupid name or what if i choke on the day uh but i guess all possibilities yeah um yeah it would be actually fun to start one of these things in the elevator be like okay i'm gonna write a song what's your name okay great all right i'm gonna

write a song about him and then like in the middle it'd be like uh no somebody else go this i'm gonna pass for now i changed mine i'm changing mine what do you what do you like what do you what do you like to do you like to golf Is there any chance you like to swim? Because there are just a lot more rhymes for swim than golf. You don't swim at all. Okay. Do you like the jungle gym? I'm just trying to steer you somewhere comfortable for me.

did you can i ask a quick question quick question did you uh i don't need to tell everyone how the sausage gets made on this podcast but we don't spend too much time thinking about it usually episode ideas get generated based on something that happens in our lives did something happen to you in an elevator recently to make you think of this or were you generally just like thinking about the podcast in your downtime i thought about the podcast i actually came up with a bunch of uh would you rathers as well for you that really we can do at some point yeah and. And like, no, okay. I'll,

I'll let me, let me delete them from my phone. Please do. Just kidding. I don't write my phone. I have a notebook. Um, yeah,

I, I, I just was thinking about the podcast. It was, I was actually at the gym and I was like, what is the thing that I can do better than anyone else at this gym? Did you ask me that at some point? No,

I don't, but, but I mean this, I could work with anyone else at this gym. Did you ask me that at some point? No, I don't. But, but I mean, this I could work with. Soaring at the gym. There he is. It's him. Let's go. That falls apart. I'm done. Well, yeah, I didn't need to swim as much as I thought I did. Turns out, yeah. Yeah, I was at the gym and I was like, what is, like, is there something

I could do here that I know that I could do better than anybody else and determined pretty quick no yeah but i was like oh that's an interesting question for your everyday life like what is the thing that you can you're pretty confident you do the better than like 90 of the population and i think everybody's probably got a thing yeah i don't i don't often think about what am I better at than everybody. But there are times like when I'm at self-checkout line and I'm watching everybody else in front of me and how they behave. And I see the line behind me and everyone is mad because self-checkout is such a horrible burden that no one asked for that we're now stuck with forever i guess uh but as i sit there online instead of being mad at how slow and befuddled everyone is i'm just sitting there thinking man the people behind me are gonna fucking love me

the the employees who are who are monitoring they're gonna be like this guy's the best look he knows where all the barcodes are he's moving so fast his card's already out i and of course no one's gonna be paying that close attention to me but that's a situation there are situations like that where i just think i'm gonna do this thing better than everybody in here right now i feel that way a lot i feel in fact the day that i realized at self-checkout that you could put your card in before it asked for card and get like skip a bunch of those steps because you ordinarily it's like yeah go to pay you push the pay button now you move over to the machine the machine asks like what kind of card you want to use like all that

stuff you you can skip all that just like as you're like doing your groceries if you also put your card in and then take it back out like it just waits and then as soon as you're done doing stuff it's just like and now here's your receipt and i shaved like i shaved like five seconds off my pr yeah anyway it's very important to me as well um i was thinking about daniel the your song creation thing i think that that's true of most musicians that they can do something like that. Or maybe not all, but really good musicians. No, I mean, I talk about making up lyrics that rhyme as if that's an actual miracle.

Well, it looks like magic to me. My brother's ability to just write a tune out of nothing or give him any song that exists in the world and say now can you make like a sweet slowed down romantic version of this song on piano or now could you make like sort of a yeah it's a it's a trend in movie trailers where we're doing slowed down creepy versions of pop tunes can you do that and he can just do that and uh in a way that i've certainly taken for granted in my life just because it's like it's his magic trick that he can just do that i uh ignore how impressive it is because it's just like yeah yeah yeah that's he

does that i fed the machine a prompt and it gave me back the thing i wanted that yeah otherwise that's a bad machine creating a a unique cover on the fly also just seems like magic to me like that he can do that and be like and now like a creepy version of of this song um but like did you i don't like i know that the only reason i know musicians can do that is because like the story of how mess around got written by ray charles do you know the story of that huh oh well if ray is to be believed and i i obviously take that as greatest historical accuracy fiction um he didn't they they're just gonna like they'll play another song and he's like all right and he just made up mess around on

the spot and like got them to do the harmonies and stuff and like just started coming up with the lyrics and wrote this one of the catchiest greatest like dance songs just on the spot just did it i mean it's not that complicated of a song probably not but it sounds so good i always feel that that in the the johnny cash biopic, the Joaquin Phoenix movie, Walk the Line, when they're in the studio and they're playing a bunch of gospel tunes and the engineer is like, gospel doesn't sell and you're not good, you gotta give me something else. And Johnny Cash is like, I've been working on this tune, one of my own songs. And he does that Hear the Train Com of my own songs and he does that that that hear the train coming blue song that he does and like the rest of the musicians have never heard this they've

never practiced it before and he's just like just follow along it's an f or whatever whatever key it's in and they play including like the guitarist does a guitar solo in the middle of the song when they need to fill time and it's treated as this like grand magical like oh my god this is lightning in a bottle but i'm watching it at home being like pretty shit guitar solo i know he's making it up on the spot but it's pretty bad i've heard better made up guitar solos that's i mean tim robinson knows that that i know how the average person feels about this because like the skeletons the skeleton bones are their money too like all like yeah that whole sketch is based on on how i would react to that situation right it's tough when you

know like when we're in the future so we know johnny cash was big and we know that i guess nothing was sounding like he was sounding where he's talking about shooting people down and cocaine with like this a backing of a bastardized version of gospel music we know because of history that it was scary and new and unique uh but because we're watching it in the present and he does these like i hear the train are coming it's coming down the line and the record producer is like wait a minute what did you just fucking say that is so good oh my god let's can we get it again do you remember it and and as like a person in the future who has heard like really scary things just like this is like a this is this is like nursery rhyme shit right yeah i mean i was i was impressed in

in rocket man too when because i don't know how to write any sort of music on an actual instrument that in rocket man he like walks into a room after just waking up in his bathrobe and his songwriter is like here this is this is a poem i wrote called your song and he's like okay and he sits down the piano and writes the most beautiful melodious tune to your song and everyone in the room stops and freezes and i'm like i'm so far from that in my everyday life there's no way i could even conceive of what a song would sound like until i hear notes being played like he just did it yeah anyway that's my very favorite movie of all time it drives me a little bonkers when you hear uh like in a one of the beatles documentaries

where it's like oh yeah originally, originally the tune for Hey Jude was like this. And then we scrapped that tune and found this other tune. There's never anyone in any of these biopics that are just like, well, like keep the other tune also. It doesn't need to be the music for Hey Jude, but like, I don't know why the musicians, like songwriters don't seem to be as panicked as i am as as my kind of writing like anytime i write i work on a pilot or an idea that that that doesn't quite work nothing gets scrapped entirely

i wrote a pilot and the my friends who read it were like this is great but you don't need this character denise i was, that's great. Then I'm going to take Denise and I'm going to put her in her own story because the ideas might go away at some point. Why are songwriters not as panicked as I am? They're like, well, let's just keep everything because this doesn't work now,

but if it's tomorrow and I suddenly can't write tunes anymore, I'll be glad that I saved this garbage tune from before. I don't get it either. I don't think all writers are like that either. Because like SNL, you hear stories about them. They're like, a story doesn't make it that week. I mean a story.

A sketch doesn't make it that week. And they're just like, okay, kill it forever. Like if you tried to bring that up again, everyone would be like, what are you doing? We wrote that two weeks ago. Like, I don't understand why everyone's not like scrapping for parts all the time because that's all i do when i write it's like yeah i will write and then if there's like a piece that's not needed i'm like well great i have i will i don't know where it goes yet but i will macgyver that in somewhere else i have in

my head this like just an ace hardware store full of shit that didn't work. But at some point it might. Yeah, I can't throw anything out. It's got to keep hanging on to everything. And eventually, I'm sure my bosses will, a few years from now, catch on to the fact that like, hey, every joke you pitch has been a joke that we rejected six years ago. Every single one of these jokes we've seen a version of them and i'm like yeah you caught me i'm out i didn't think you were paying

that close attention some of these jokes are like rejected ideas for cracked articles i'm sure you saw that too one of the song about a girl named becky who's a veterinarian it does yeah it does come back and bite me when i'm like doing jokes for american dad and we're just like in the joke room and i pitch something that's even in like the same wheelhouse as a thing i already pitched like people like why are you so obsessed with this i'm like oh no no it's just this one joke that i'm still trying to get out there that i think is good and i don't know where it fits yet. Yeah. I'm grateful that I have bosses that let me re-pitch jokes from

years ago. Because our joke pitching is I don't want to say it's purely a volume game because it's still quality that they're going to pick but you do want to sort of overwhelm them with joke options and that's the kind of

environment that is good for me because you're like well i wrote this joke about mrs metz ass three years ago and you weren't ready for it then but maybe maybe maybe maybe now in this piece about cyber bullying yeah just before my time everyone's gonna love it now i yeah i went through so i i still use facebook as you know it's basically where i watch television i get to flip through channels and when i go on facebook uh it always gives me those like memories like do you remember on this day eight years ago or whatever and what we used to do with facebook is we would just put up statuses like you just put up like a status message and i got i'm getting served up a lot of those lately and holy hell dan they suck so hard their humor humor was just different i want to assume and

that i wasn't just this bad but like there's some real confidence behind these things that i'm saying and i'm like no i think i get this whole joke and this joke sucks like it's just not good they were they were just awful like god awful and then it made me think like i know that i have all these old journals and things like that sitting around and those journals were always written this sounds so egotistical they're like written to be seen basically like i wasn't i was kind of working shit out but i was working it out publicly essentially like i was like writing something and thinking at the same time like when someone finds this or like when i read this again when i'm older i'm gonna be really charmed by like how i was kind of just like figuring stuff out

back then like is that i always i already had a vision for what the journal was going to be. And now like, I can't even peek at that old shit because it's so horribly embarrassing. It's a strange, uh, I know I said I hoard all of my ideas forever because I might reuse them, but it's a, it's a strange relationship that I have with all of my notebooks. Cause I've written,

just filled so many notebooks with drafts of articles and like short stories and just just random snippets of ideas all of my writing lives in these notebooks and they have traveled with me through all of my many moves i am gonna keep them forever i wouldn't dare throw them out uh with i also wouldn't ever dare look at them because they're not good and there's no way they're they're useful to me and here's the crucial part that is confusing even to me this guy when i die i want them destroyed i'm not keeping them around for someone to be to for like future generations to figure out what i was like and to see my process evolve which is the only reason to keep stuff like that around is so it can be read afterwards and and be clues to the mystery that is me but i don't want that

either i don't want to use them i don't want anyone to use them i cannot throw them out these things are are difficult to reconcile with each other that's exactly how i feel about them as well i i don't want another and when i was writing them i thought i did i thought i wanted somebody else to find it i was like ah oh yeah kurt cobain's notebook what a treasure that was when we found it right people are gonna see this and realize oh my god can you believe this is the early draft of the the book he wrote that we all love and is good right no one is gonna that's not gonna bear any fruit no one's gonna do that and it's also i'm i'm it's not even like it's there's nothing earnest about what's in that fucking notebook like i i'm writing and that's like the only beneficial thing that i'm doing everything else is so performative in it that it's humiliating i think people would also find in mine like just way too many pointless doodles that also exists

in all of mine and if someone was trying to figure out if i disappeared from this earth and they were looking for clues in my notebooks like does this mean anything there's one page that's like a drawing of r2d2 and some old man in a coat what do we think this means and that's when i would like to pop in from wherever i am and be like well i wanted to see if i could draw r2d2 from memory and that guy next to him is uh the astronomy professor that i was looking at in class. He's probably dead now. That's a dead end. Don't look into that. I was just looking

around the room and drawing what I saw. Yeah. For a while I was drawing a Dragon Ball Z character and had never watched Dragon Ball Z, but I just saw this guy and I thought he looked kind of cool. Yeah, their hair is fun to draw off and there's a lot of

sharp lines in Dragon Ball Z that's very satisfying at the time I didn't even know what it was from I was like drawing it and people were like

oh that's Goku or whoever and I was like it's who? no I drew this I drew this no this is just a bunch of triangles

get out of here well that about wraps it up right? that'll do it yeah I'm listening to oh god it's so long quick question with Soren and Daniel Let's get out of here. Well, that about wraps it up, right? That'll do it. Yeah. I'm listening to it. Oh, God, it's so long. Quick question with Soren and Daniel.

But you already knew that. You can find us both on Blue Sky. I don't know if, Daniel, are you back on X yet? I pop in once a month just to reactivate my account to make sure it doesn't get deleted forever. And then I quickly deactivate it when I spend like truly three minutes on x and it immediately bums me out and makes my mood worse then i remember that i don't need it and don't like it yeah great okay well you can't find us there you can find us on blue sky you can also either email the show at qq with soren and daniel at gmail.com we have an instagram are you like fully out of x too i'm out of x yeah

i went back once just to go find a private message and saw that somebody else had private messaged me but other than that i haven't like been on it are you doing what i'm doing where you will just occasionally reactivate it to make sure it doesn't you don't lose your followers forever no um not intentionally. I mean, I went back to get private messages, but I think, I didn't even know that was a possibility. I think I'd be fine with that. In fact, I think that might be best if I'm not allowed to use it anymore.

Instagram is QQ, Soren and Daniel. We have a Patreon, which is Patreon slash Quick Question, where we do bonus episodes along with bonus video that you get to see of us just look at our look at our best we have a youtube which you can also watch video of us there youtube.com slash at qq podcast all these podcasts have a video accompaniment if you would like to watch that and lastly our theme song is by oh no two things last our theme song is by merex you can find their their music on Spotify or iTunes. You can also go to merex.bandcamp.com for full albums. And our producer, our sound engineer, our editor,

who always deserves a mention because he runs this entire show, and he's great, Gabe Harder. Don't try to find him in the world. Bye. Bye. Bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right? I want to hear your thoughts on what's on your mind. Bye. Bye. When will I be remembered? Was it out there? Where did all the guidelines are? Oh forget it!

I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here