Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Daniel's Gift is HERE | Quick Question Ep. 248
Episode Date: August 27, 2024NOT A DRILL. 6 years later, Soren's gift to Daniel is here. Get an extra episode twice a month for a lot less than Soren spent at www.patreon.com/quickquestion Thanks to Rocket Money for sponsoring th...is episode. RocketMoney.com/qq. it could save you hundreds a year. Find Soren & Daniel on Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.social Find the show on IG: https://www.instagram.com/qqsorenanddaniel/
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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 can talk tonight
So what's your favorite? Who did you get? Who do I be? Do you remember? Words without a word at all Who are you going to ignore?
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 So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Sarn and Daniel here.
The podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give
each other answers.
Hi I'm one half of that podcast senior writer for last week's tonight with John Oliver,
author of How to Fight Pres fight presidents don't you know and as always it's our
Accent episode of the podcast where we do have an accent the entire episode and I'm
Appropriately enough Daniel Hope Ryan say on top of the morning and my co-host Saurian who's been working on his accent as well
He's gonna go right now Saurian say hello
Hello, Daniel. It's such a pleasure to be here. I love to do podcasts with you. I want to know...
Next time we do something like this. I'd love if you give me some heads up. Is that the word? Heads up.
That we'll be doing this so that I can prepare so I don't just have to come in and do it blind, you understand?
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to rocketmoney.com slash qq. My favorite choice of yours for the the Russian character that you're doing is you're still trying to find English idioms. You're still like how you say. Yeah,
he does. He does and still and he's not quite got it. Yeah. You can decide how much he knows and it makes your life easier.
It's better if I just don't try to do an accent if I just try to do a different person. And so I was that that's who that guy was. He just didn't he didn't have it all set yet.
That makes that makes a lot of sense. That reminds me of...
By the way, hold on. Sorry. Just one really quickly. Great northern Irish accent there, Daniel.
Oh, was it?
Yeah, I loved it. Oh, well, I'm also notoriously just one really quickly. Great Northern Irish accent there, Daniel. Oh, was it?
Yeah, I loved it.
Oh, good, thank you.
Well, I'm also notoriously bad at telling accents,
but like I thought, I wasn't hearing any chinks in that armor.
Oh, great, that's really good to hear.
I was excited for whatever you were going to do.
I think I guessed it would have been Australian.
Russian is really smart.
It also reminded me of when our old jobcrack.com
would occasionally do a live show of live sketch comedy,
which I think we did three times
in 10 years of working together.
There was a sketch that involved Michael
at the gates of heaven playing a dead Russian hitman
and I believe this was, if not his script, then this was his part. Yeah, this was his.
And you meet this Russian character who's just talking about like, the point of the sketch was
a bunch of people got into heaven for seemingly like on paper,
really terrible crimes.
But the one person who was denied entry to heaven
was someone who accidentally had their testicles smash
to bits because like that was Michael found somewhere
in the Bible that you're not allowed
to have that happen to you.
And that was the one thing that St. Peter guarding the gates took seriously. So you meet Michael's Russian mafia character who was just
talking about, really, you let me into heaven, but I killed many people, only women and children,
niet men. And they're still like letting him into heaven. And the kicker for his character was that
Yeah, and they're still like letting him into heaven. And the kicker for his character was that
he also doesn't speak a word of Russian,
only broken English.
And it's such like a hat on a hat detail.
It's such an unnecessary thing for the character.
It's not the game of the sketch at all,
but it's such a funny bit that lodged in my brain forever
that this guy that you thought was just doing like
his best with English as a second
language. No, it's his own. It's his only language and he sucks at it. It's like the
guy is so such a like reprehensible person that he has even chosen to to make his way
of communication everyone else's problem everywhere he goes. It's just such a funny little detail.
Because it requires so much work. It requires so much work to have developed an
accent learning the language. Like to barely learn the language, but also to learn it with
an accent is very, very, it's a really funny decision. Yeah.
Yeah. I considered, so I briefly played Dungeons and Dragons with Michael and Michael had created a whole campaign
There's a way to briefly play Dungeons and Dragons. That was always my problem with the endeavor
No, that's in fact this I felt really badly because he created in his brain this whole campaign
Like he had something built and he had characters he had
Bosses he had bad guys all figured out And it was for, it basically was the early or like mid 1800s.
And it was a, it was Western.
It was like a cool Western idea.
And he had it mapped.
Like he had the whole thing, the whole arcs,
like everything figured out.
And he's like, I just need people to play it.
And I was like, I would love to do this.
And so I did it with I think Jen and Brendan
and some other people. And the I did it with I think Jen and Brendan and some other people and
the character that he gave me was the the analog was he was like a early like Mexico.
So it's like Texas and and New Mexico and Arizona and everything. That's all that was
all included in it. And and so we came into the room and we're all playing,
like we all start to play
and we all start talking about our characters
as our characters, like introducing ourselves to each other
when we meet in the tavern or whatever.
And I go right into a Mexican accent
and everyone goes, whoa.
And I was like, you encouraged us to do this.
Like the entire way you baited me into this.
You were like, this is your character.
Please be in your character.
Like please come as your character.
And I was like, what options did you give me?
And not that you're like going around your life looking for opportunities that society
denies you to use an accent that
you have no business using.
It's not that you're like, itching to try it out, but in a house with your friends.
Safe space.
If that's not a safe space, then what is?
I would also say that if whatever you're picturing right now-
Where can you try out the voices in your head?
It was more toned down than whatever you're picturing.
I was not doing a like three amigos like that.
Yeah, you don't need to do it.
You don't.
You absolutely don't need to do it here.
I was doing like a really like toned down version.
And still everyone was like, no, no, I can't.
I can't listen to that.
I can't.
It's not listen to that. It's not gonna work. When I was in high school theater, just because there's a finite amount of musical theater boys
who are willing to do things and play parts, and also one year a in a chorus
line, a 20 something homosexual Puerto Rican, Paul San Marco. And there was a lot of talk,
like once I'd gotten the part where it's like, are you gonna, are you gonna like do a like a bunch of tanning?
And are you gonna do like a little voice? And even then, even in like 2002, this must have been, it was like,
uh, nope, I'm not gonna do any of that. Like, okay, uh, that's fine. Are we gonna change the lines? Nope. It's just me talking about how silly it is to be a first generation Puerto Rican
in New York learning musical theater. And they're like, okay, we're always going to go with it.
This is going to be the illusion of theater. That's an amazing foresight because we, you know,
I don't know, a lot of high schools end up doing Fiddler on the Roof and that one's,
that's full of landmines. That's like a lot of opportunities to do like a real, lean into the Yiddish voice. And in
fact, this script occasionally demands it. And we did that in my mud pit of a school.
And that was, I'm so glad the internet didn't exist and that we just didn't know any better then.
Right, because I feel like a lot of kids, depending on where you grew up, where it's
like, all right, now you're playing like, you're playing an adult rabbi.
Can you do that?
And you're like, well, my touchstones are the Simpsons and Looney Tunes.
But yeah, I think I got it.
I think I'll just do Krusty's dad.
That's fair that's fair. Right.
It was before we pat 16 year old Daniel on the back too hard. There's,
there's plenty of, of evidence to suggest that was just like
an acknowledgement of the limits of my acting ability and less about like, uh,
prescience about social norms evolving. That might've just been me being like, I don't know. I, I need like region specific Puerto Rican accent and anything I do that I think is that
it's going to be offensive. It's going to be wrong. It's going to be not, it won't sell as anything.
as anything. That's the worst part.
Like, can I sell this?
And also like, like, again, don't pat 16 year old Daniel in the back because at the same
time I think, look, I'm not going to do an offensive Puerto Rican stereotype.
You have to understand I'm 100% focused on offending the homosexual community.
You forgot the other half of this character that for some reason I, at 16 years old, was
like, yeah, I can handle this with delicate hands for sure.
I can play this seriously.
I got this.
Get ready for some aplomb because this is going to be good.
Oh man.
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Hey Daniel, do you wanna do our podcast?
Yeah, let's do our podcast.
Okay, I have a quick question for you.
Go.
Did you get something in the mail from me? I did get something in the mail from you. Go. Did you get something in the mail from me? I did get something in the mail from
you. I'm not in a position right this second to hold it up. Okay. Should we just talk about
it? Yeah, let's talk about it. And then you can grab it if you can find the 10 minutes
you need to shuffle out of that seat. Yeah. Thank you. Long time listeners. I am buckled into my chair here for podcasting because you see how distracted my hands get
when I don't have anything to fiddle with while we're recording.
Our listeners who also watch on YouTube know how idle and distracted I get.
If I wasn't chained to this chair, then there's no telling where I'd be right now.
I'd be chasing fruit flies around or dangling out the window.
So I just need to be like stuck here for the duration of the recording.
I love that you would chase fruit flies.
That's your aesthetic, like a butterfly.
Like, you're like, oh, gorgeous.
You better look at that.
For my collection.
So long time listeners of the podcast, the DOB devotees and the connoisseurs all know
for a very long time, since the beginning of this podcast, I've been teasing out
a present for Daniel. And at this point, everybody has sort of given up on that as being a real thing. Everyone's like, okay, this was, there's never been an actual gift. This was, it came about, the first time it got mentioned was right after I had bought
it and I wasn't even going to tell Daniel, but he asked, what's the most expensive thing
you've ever bought?
And I was like, well, let me tell you, I just bought something for you.
Actually, it's pretty big deal. It's pretty expensive. And then it's just has become this
long, long thing where I occasionally check in and I'm like, Hey, here's the status of
this. I've talked to the guy. He wants to start over that kind of shit. Yeah. I can
give you the full rundown of it now because ladies and gentlemen, the present
has arrived at Daniel's house.
It's here.
It's been so fun because there have been people in my own life and people in the comments
and people who've written in for this show.
Everyone has been curious about this and it's the only thing I think in the run of this podcast that has inspired honest to god
fan theories about people speculating. I think people who think, it's been a bit from the
beginning, people who think the endless trail of breadcrumbs that you've dropped
is itself the present that like following the clues
is the thing that's gonna bring me the most joy.
And like my relatives have asked me about it.
And they're like, is this, I think it's this.
I think it might be this kind of board game.
I think it might be a puzzle, but da da da da da.
And the boring truth the entire time has been like, no, it's just not here yet. Like it's, it's at this point has been
six years, but even every year throughout this process, it was just like, there's not,
there's no deeper meaning behind it. There's not, it's not meta. There's not like a gift
within a gift. It's just, it's, it's simply not here. And I'd, I'd encouraged
people like, just stop thinking about it. I have, I have made peace with the fact that
I'm never going to get it and that's okay. And it's the, it would have gone down as the,
the only unfinished loop in this podcast.
Everything else we talked about is tied up and resolved.
We've answered every question.
Yeah, we can basically die after this.
This would be the one loose thread.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And it's been a, yeah, same here.
Like people, my brother, other people come up, come to me
and they're like, did you actually get Dan anything?
And all of them come with that question.
They're not like, what is it?
They're like, it's nothing, right? You didn't
get him anything. And I'm like, no, I did. And it's been one of the worst experiences
of my life trying to get it to him, trying to, trying to get this person to finish it.
And then also like fights that I had with the creator of it, who I would come to occasionally and I would say,
Hey man, um, I'm getting the sense that this is not a project that you want to
take on because it doesn't be up to like two and a half years of hearing nothing.
Right.
I'd be like, I'm getting the sense that this is not the project you want to go on.
I'm fine.
If this is something that's like weighing on you and you need to bail on, then I
totally understand.
And I would get these, these emails back that were like,
what?
So you don't want it now?
And like, really aggressive, like mad at me
for even suggesting that and being like,
I've got a lot, like emails that explain like,
I've got a lot going on in my life.
I don't need this as well.
And like you coming down
hounding me. And I was like, okay, I'm just giving you the out because it seems like if
I was in the same situation and I was taking this long, I would want the out. Like there's
something about this that doesn't appeal to you or like you've lost interest in it, but
I, if you want this this you can have it and the
creator was like obviously not no I'm working on it all the time and I'm like I just don't know
that I believe that because I see you producing other things and like other other people are
getting things or you are creating things for yourself and I see those posted. And so it feels, and obviously
I will admit that I have no, I don't have a lot of experience in this particular field.
So I don't always know what it takes and what it, I'm not seeing the same issues or anything like
that. So perhaps this was a six year project. Did he he now I'm, I'm curious because I did, I feel like when we show what the thing is, people
will be able to guess the artist anyway, but I don't, I, I, who knows? Um, I,
I am very curious. I know that I, I guessed who the artist was based on you telling me about the fights you'd had with the artist.
Yeah.
Because I followed the artist online and had like reading certain things on their website about commissions.
That this artist is very much the way that Kevin Durant doesn't think anyone should be allowed to say anything to basketball players at any time other than good job.
This artist was very much in that world of like, yeah, I'm going to make great things.
If you would all just leave me alone and expect nothing from me at all the time, then I'll
do it.
And if you hire me to do a commission, I'll do it.
You are not allowed to ask me about it while I'm working on it. Or I'll just spin into
a rage. But so I guess to the artist was based on some context clues, but I'm very curious.
Probably the answer is no, based on the way he operates. But did he give you any kind of
rough timeline when you first tried to get this,
because you did have like a normal,
like my 2017 birthday.
Just like a normal birthday was like,
oh, this will be good.
So I imagine you had some kind of timeline in mind
at the time.
And I don't know that you would have, you certainly wouldn't have committed to six years,
but did you have anything in mind or that you had spoken to him about as far as timeline
expectations?
We didn't specifically talk about it, but in his breakdown of commissions, we're giving
a lot of details without actually telling everybody what it is. I'm sure that they're furious about this, but
in the commissions, it says, here's the timeline you can expect. Don't talk to me before this
amount of time has passed. Generally, it takes around this amount of time and it was a wide
range. It would have put me at about, I think this was about, I started it about nine months before your birthday with the
expectation that maybe I'll just give it to him.
If it's not ready for this one, I'll give it to him at his next one.
And then, I was like, I'll just be holding onto this thing for a long period of time
because I thought for sure it'll be nine months, 10 months, and maybe even a year
it could take, but I didn't anticipate six years.
And yeah, and so it took a very long time.
It's finally done.
I am very excited about it.
I'm happy that you have it.
I'm happy to have it out of everyone's minds.
Yeah. So without further ado, let's talk about what this is. What did you receive, Daniel?
I received a large box in the mail and I was so excited and like very large, like bigger than the
thing needs to be obviously because there's a lot
of like packing stuff around it. But I saw the return address. I saw that it was the artist and
I knew immediately this was the gift. I opened and there's so much packing inflatable things in there
to preserve this. I've never, it is a piece of custom start to finish art, like a heavy canvas that is like done by a real artist. And I'd
never had anything like that shipped to me. No one has ever sent anything to me that needed
to get here safely.
Well, you lived here at the time that I started this project, by the way, I didn't anticipate
that there'd be shipping across the entire country. So it was shipped, I opened it and it is the my entire process of opening it.
Because you can see through some of the clear wrapping around it, it's not opaque,
not transparent, translucent. There's translucent so you can see a little bit of what's going on
and I can see there's uniforms that are
like undeniably Star Trek uniforms and I know that this is going to be it's I I knew that you
wouldn't just get me a painting of Star Trek characters oh I'm you love Star Trek though
you love space in general unraveling the thing I'm thinking this is going to be
I just see a bunch of Star Trek shapes. This is going to possibly be
maybe the cast of After Hours as Star Trek characters. I don't think it's gonna be that.
Maybe it's going to be the cast of a different show that I do like as Star Trek characters.
And as I'm unraveling it, I'm seeing more and more clearly that like, this is definitely that's. Let's see if you can do the names. Come on. That's the lady one.
Yep. That's right. That's the lady one from Star Trek Next Generation. And it's Dr. Crusher.
That should tell you that I'm not a huge Star Trek fan and I'm a much bigger Star Wars fan.
So now that I'm unraveling this and realizing, oh, this is Star Trek characters.
Is the joke going to be, is this sometimes in the best way, Soren can be too clever.
So is the joke that he spent a lot of money commissioning a Star Trek painting, even though I like Star
Wars more.
Is the joke going to be-
Like more?
You don't even like- you hate Star Trek.
I don't like Star Trek.
Yeah, that's it.
I don't know why we're dancing around it.
I haven't watched the show.
I don't like it.
Is the joke going to be that on the giver of the gift is that like the meta joke that's
here that I'm going to have this lifetime to appreciate Sorin's wrongness.
And as I'm thinking that might be the joke of this gift, I'm like prepping myself like,
all right, man, you got to really fucking pretend that you get
it and you like it because, because it's six years and it seems like a lot of money.
So you like whatever the joke is, you got to, got to really sell it as like, this is
the best joke.
And then it becomes clear when it's like fully naked and uncovered. Not just the cast of Star Trek,
the next generation is the cast of Star Trek, next generation or the characters
rather, uh, a la a sports celebration,
dumping a giant jug of Gatorade on Captain John Luke Picard,
who is the happiest he's ever been getting doused with it.
And he's surrounded by his crew who aren't super into doing it.
They're not like having a great time.
And I see the Gatorade and it immediately clicks for me that this is a very good gift.
And I don't need to pretend anything.
And I'm so, and like the added bonus of the gift that like, that is not what I thought
it was.
And that I don't have to pretend it's like, oh, what a relief.
And also, ha ha ha, this is very funny and I'm very happy.
It's, I'm, I'm certain we've talked about it on the podcast before and long-term listeners
know, but something that brought Sorin and me so much endless joy
is when we were filming after hours
and it's three o'clock in the morning
and we're just so punch drunk and silly
the way you are when it's three o'clock in the morning
and you've been giving monologues about pop culture all day,
you're waiting for the crew to move cameras around
or you're waiting for sound or you're waiting for something,
you're so tired and we would...
It's also deeply stressful.
Like where you're...
You don't...
It's monologues that you memorized maybe two hours before that because that's when the
script was finished.
And so you're like, you're a little nervous the entire time because you're going to fuck
it up for everybody and everybody feels tired and wants to go home.
And there's a very good chance
that when the cameras are on you,
we're gonna have to do a few takes
because you're not gonna nail it.
And for whatever reason,
we cheered ourselves up and cracked ourselves up
doing an impression, like a bad impression of Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard asking
for Gatorade.
That was-
Loving Gatorade.
I have no idea how it started or why it started, but it just became like a reliable thing.
We're both half dead and it was like, Rika, Rika, bring me some Gatorade, please.
My electrolytes
are so down. I could just, I just need a little bit. The color doesn't matter. I just need a
little bit of thirst, Quentcher. And now that I'm saying it, the color does matter. Yellow,
just not red. Riker, where are we on the Gatorade, Riker? Riker, Riker, please.
Yeah.
My Gatorade. Itiker? Riker, please. My Gatorade.
Yeah, it was just- That was it.
It was so purely anachronistic that it really tickled the sweet spot for us. It became to
the point where there were whole scenarios where he was about to fight the Borg and stuff, and he's
suggesting Gatorade as the solution. And it was just that he was so enamored with Gatorade from the 90s,
that it became like his whole... He tried to shoehorn it into everything he was doing.
And so no matter what the conversation was aboard the USS Enterprise,
he was going to figure out a way to shoehorn some Gatorade into it.
And without thinking too deeply into the mechanics of the scenarios that we were creating
It was clear that even though there's a holodeck deck that can produce everything and it's the future and no one wants for anything
It was still somehow a hassle for the crew to get him Gatorade
It was still like very clear in these long meandering bits that we did, it was clear that for whatever
reason Riker didn't want to go through the trouble of fetching the Gatorade for him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's atomizers in every room aboard the USS Enterprise where they could just manifest
Gatorade if they want to.
And it's still like they can't quite dial it in.
Nobody can figure out how to get Gatorade for the rest of the, for Card when he needs
it.
And like, it's a real, he's starting to get a little mad.
Like in a lot of all the scenarios, he started to get a little upset that like no one was
producing this Gatorade and bringing it to him.
I have it now.
Okay.
Is that the Star Trek theme? I don't know. Okay. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba pumped he is. They seem to want control of our entire ship. I promised them they
could have it in return for some lemon lime Gatorade and I don't want it watered
down. I don't want it. I will be able to tell. Data, data, Mr. Data. This is Powerade.
Yeah, I can tell the difference. You of all people should know.
This is a shit. Yeah, so everyone's not psyched to be doing it. It's clearly something he made everyone do after a mission.
Maybe where Gatorade worked.
He's the only one who's into it and everyone else is just going through the formalities.
It's tremendous to have this immortal monument to the single thing that probably brought
me the most joy in 10 years of doing Afterhours
was this weird, completely out of our minds delusional bit that we shared.
And so as everyone knows, the artist's name is Brandon Bird.
And when I came to him with this, my original idea was I just was like, Hey, will you do a commission of Picard sitting in the captain's chair?
And he just has an AC Cole Gatorade there with him.
And Brandon Burr was like, you know, it would be better.
And he suggested this whole thing to me and like just got it immediately and suggested this whole thing, this whole what you see there.
And I was like, yeah, dude, that's, yeah, that's way better.
That's why you do this. And he got the faces right. He's really, he nailed it. He nailed the
emotion of it. He nailed what it should be. And he did a really great job.
I'm going to say that now because I spent so much time early on in this podcast complaining about
how it went, the process, But he did a wonderful job.
I'm happy with the gift.
I'm happy that you finally got it.
It's fantastic.
And he also sent along a whole bunch of like original stickers.
There's alternate universe Fra style trading card for the store Sears with like a brief history of
Sears on the back as an action item. It's very good. He's done a whole series of Sears stores
around the country, painted them. And then he's just, he's very good at, he's just got like a really good eye for what celebrity
or character would be very funny in any particular circumstance.
So he's got like a piece of art called No One Wants to Play Sega with Harrison Ford.
And it's two kids and I think they're on a bean bag and they're playing Nintendo and
Harrison Ford is standing 10 feet away for Lournly holding
a whole Sega and no one wants to play it.
I gave my brother a painting long ago, like 20 years ago, and it's called Lazy Sunday,
I think.
And it's Christopher Walken in his basement building a very advanced robot and sort of
like kept getting caught by the camera and being like, oh, hey, just another one of these days where I'm working on my hobby, where I'm building a kill robot.
Yeah, to the untrained ear, it might sound like standard internet mashup stuff, but it's
something about his choices make it clear what, or it doesn't make it clear, but it's
just like, there's a line between an actual gifted magical artist who's good
at coming up with these things and a random person on the internet who just like what if
married with children but sonic the hedgehog he he for some reason his stuff is different and
better and and correct in a way that we can't really define but there there's like a series of
we can't really define, but there's like a series of actual Marvel comics called What If, there's now a TV show of it as well, and it's always like, what if the Avengers were
zombies? These are the real ones. Or what if Captain America never took the super soldier
serum and someone else did? He did the comic, the cover for a fake comic that was what if Frasier Crane joined the Fantastic Four and it's like a
1960s Marvel style illustration, like perfectly matched illustration style of the Fantastic Four with also Frasier and not Kelsey Graver
but Frasier and
he's saying watch out evil, I'm listening and it. And it's just, I can't explain why that's better
than Sonic the Hedgehog in Married with Children,
but it is and he's just the master of this specific thing.
Right, it's such a unique skill.
It's like knowing, he does a lot of law and order stuff
and just being obsessed enough with Law and Order that
you could very like do a really good drawing of any- no, not drawing. You could do a really good
art of anyone from Law and Order is a very strange way to- already the joke is funny.
Already like taking the time to lovingly care and draw Stabler is like a very funny thing. But then
he'd do like, he'd have the whole law and order team all coming towards you
in that sort of superhero montage and Batman in the middle.
And it's like, yeah, yeah, I did want this.
Well, shout out to Brandon and shout out to you Soren.
This is a fantastic gift and you've continued to get me
much better gifts than I've ever gotten you for any of your birthdays.
And I like that I've never delivered...
I like that you've never made me feel pressured to deliver a birthday gift as similarly special as you've given me over the years.
It's, it's, I know that it's, the act of giving is very nourishing to you.
And so that is sort of what I give to you.
Yes.
Thank you.
That's exactly what I want.
You got me exactly what I wanted.
Great.
But yeah, it's hard to, it's hard to explain how much joy it brought Dan and I to just think about Captain
Kirk, I'm sorry, Picard obsessed with Gatorade.
And it was a real joy and it was like, it was a thing that we just never let go of.
Like every time it would start to get to be that time of night and we just slip into Picard asking for another Gatorade and no one around knew what was going
on. Katie and Michael were like, they're like, okay, yeah, I get the joke. It's not funny.
It's not, there's nothing about it. But it was just, it was so good in our minds.
They were using their normal high functioning comedy minds to be like, well, what is, why
is it funny? What are they doing? It can't be just a silly voice saying Gatorade. There's
no way it's just that. All right, well, we have to roll now, so I'm sure we'll figure
it out later. Oh, we can't roll. Why is that? And then we see Soren and I, and we're just
like shaking with laughter, thinking about, right? Yeah, just saying the word Gatorade. Fun word to put in his mouth. And I then, I've obviously
now been on American Dad for six years and I've gotten the opportunity to record with
Patrick Stewart a few times because he is Avery Bullock
in our show. He plays the head of the CIA, which is itself its own joke because no one's asking him
to do an American accent. So there's an English guy who runs the CIA and every single time that
I'm recording with him, I'm thinking about it. He's drawn to, I believe, look like Patrick Stewart.
Yeah, he looks like- We did a Patrick Stewart. Yeah, they did a model of Patrick Stewart to be Avery Bullock.
And he, it's every time that I'm recording with him, I'm just thinking about if I could
like, how do I tell him about this?
How can I get him involved in the bit?
And there's just no way there's not a way to do it because the magic has to be in the
moment of like that insanity.
And I'm just like every single time like we get. And I'm, I say just like every single time,
like we get off and I'm like,
I just wanted him to say Gatorade.
Right. It sucks that like there's,
there's every chance that like,
just the way the world and the internet works,
that some niece or granddaughter of Patrick Stewart
is somehow a big fan of After Hours and then finds
their way to this podcast. And one day we'll have him like, grandpa for TikTok, just say Gatorade.
And he'll say it and they'll send it to us. And both of us will be like, nah, I don't want that.
Well, it's also because like-
That's not how we'd say it.
Well, it's also because like- That's not how we'd say it.
It's also got to be like, I need him in his uniform. I need him on the deck. I need him.
I need a very serious situation. I need like a warning, things going off. I need a lot of chaos. I need the fucking sparks that I don't even think happened in the next generation series.
I think that was OG series, but I still need it for all of this to be perfect.
I need him to be in bit, middle of like a
battle of wits with Q and to just, to be like, I know the answer to your riddle. It's gate rate.
What walks on? Four legs in the morning, three at night and two in the afternoon. Gatorade. It's like, what?
It's like, icy, icy mountain Gatorade.
It was such a treat.
Okay, well good.
I'm glad that you got it.
I'm glad you got it right on your birthday too.
That's really, really special.
That's really, really special, the timing.
It was surprising to me that it came straight to me from the artist. He doesn't send it to you for approval or anything.
Like you didn't get to hold it and feel the weight of the thing because it's really impressive.
Okay. No, I haven't, I have not been in like tactile with it, but he, along the way, there was
that point where he wanted to start over and stuff. Like he gave me pictures and stuff. When I would
pressure him, when I would go and be like, Hey, how's this going? He would occasionally like send me photos and stuff and be like,
this is what I'm working on. I'm like, this is great. This is wonderful.
And he's like, I'm not happy with the way the card's body is looking or whatever. And he wanted to
like change the frame size. He's like, I don't know if I could just give this to you or I could
make it the way I want to make it. And I was like, I would prefer that it be the way you want it.
I wanted you to like it.
And so he would go back and then at the end, when he finished, he sent it to me.
So I got to see pictures of it, but I never got to actually hold the thing
or like see the colors in person.
But I was fine with that.
It wasn't for me.
I was fine with that. It wasn't for me.
I, you know what, what incredibly shitty thought I had in the shower just before recording was that we announced that the gift came, but then only explained it and showed it on a Patreon exclusive episode. Just to give us like a short, like truly one month trial period bump of
subscriptions, just for people to be like, all right, OK, it's five dollars. Fine. They say it's like, yeah.
OK, it's paying. OK, great.
No, I don't care about the backstory.
All right. Cancel subscription now.
It's like it's too late, baby.
We already got that five dollars.
I wonder how many people listen to this podcast. And we teased it a ton on this podcast, like
just today. How many people are getting to a minute 28 and we still haven't, we talked
about the painting, but we have not talked about even what it is yet. And everyone's
just like, fucking, pull forward, scan forward.
Some of that is by design because I do want, I want people listening to the episode and
to reach the part where you say, should we just tell them what it is?
And I say, yes.
And then they hit the skip ahead 30 seconds button and there's this weird digression where
I'm going, which one is it?
Transparent?
Translucent?
It's not opaque.
I want them to get, I want people swerving their cars into trees
They're just so fed up with the strange tangents that are a hallmark of this show that they chose to listen to
That they it's on you honestly
I should we I should I've described it to people who don't watch this
Don't watch this. I guess we kind of did. If you wanted to understand it,
yeah. It's Commander Riker, it's Worf, it's Diana Troy, and it's Geordi.
Geordi LaForge. Yeah.
That's how you might know.
And Data.
And Data. And they are basically the winning football team, only they are not excited. They
all look like this is just another job that they have to do. And Picard
is in the front and Picard is getting gushed with Gatorade. Just the whole thing of Gatorade thrown
on him. And he's so, so fucking pleased. He's the... Yeah. It's really great stuff.
And that's probably going to do it for our accent episode, right? That's the accent episode. Thanks for listening to it.
Yeah.
That's what the title is too.
As promised.
Yeah.
Surely that will be the most important thing about this episode.
The show is quick question, but you all knew that already.
You can find the show on Twitter and Patreon and you're going to email the show at qqwithsorenanddaniel at gmail.com.
We are recorded, edited, and produced by Jacob Weinstein today and Gabe Harder the days when it's not Jacob. They are a team and we love them both. Our theme song is by the fantastic Merex that you
can find their music on Bandcamp or Spotify. The show, if you couldn't pick up from context clues of the things that we talked about today, it's available on YouTube. You can see our faces and see the painting
that we've described twice in this episode. You can see what it looks like and get some
sense of the heft of it. When I briefly drop it on the bench and you can hear a kind of a boom sound. And the Patreon is
where we release bonus episodes twice a month for paid subscribers. We're very grateful
for them. You can also get it on Apple podcasts and there's a different theme song for the
Patreon episodes and that is really good.
I'm flying dead stick here.
Did I get everything that I hit at all?
Yeah.
You can find Soren and I both on Blue Sky.
I did some jokes recently that Soren retweeted and I got a huge boost from it.
Yeah.
Good, I'm so glad I've done that for you.
Getting the ripple effects of the buoy boost from a week ago.
That's it. Bye. Quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight
So what's your favourite?
Who did you get?
Who did I meet?
I don't remember
What's your name?
What's your name?
Who are you?
Oh forget it
I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien
Two best friends and comedy writers
If there's an answer answer they're gonna find it
I think you'll have a great time here
I think you'll have a great time here