Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 105 - An Ode to Conan O‘Brien
Episode Date: September 3, 2021In this episode the guys talk more Simpsons, lavish Conan with compliments, and discuss their home state's official and unofficial sandwiches. And as always big thanks to our sponsors. Thanks to S...killshare. Skillshare.com/qq and one-month free trial of Premium Membership. And thanks to Honey. Shop with confidence — get Honey for FREE at JoinHoney.com/qq
Transcript
Discussion (0)
So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel,
the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions
and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast author of How to Fight Presidents,
staff writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, creator and host of Obsessive Pop Culture
Disorder on YouTube, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren,
say hello. Hello, everybody. I'm Soren Bui. I'm a writer for American Dad.
I also start with a cadence that comes out pretty high and fast, and then eventually
it kind of slows down, and the sentences trickle out, and towards the end, the words don't
matter as much, and I end with what eventually feels like a period.
Hell yeah.
I love that period.
You know what?
hell yeah i love that period you know what uh i hardly ever listen to this podcast but when i do i can hear myself uh coming towards the end of a sentence and realizing that i've forgotten how
i've started a sentence or where it's supposed to go because i speak in so many tangents and
run-ons and parentheticals and i could just hear it's like man you don't even know where this where
this began what you're describing is exactly why I won't get high anymore.
Like why I won't smoke weed.
Because if I do and I start talking to somebody,
I'm like in the middle of me talking, I'm like,
uh-oh, what started this?
Did I just bring this up out of nowhere?
Where am I going?
I can sometimes, I hear it in like, it's bad.
I hear it in meetings at work sometimes where i can just i realize that the
only thing i've heard for what feels like two minutes is just the sound of my voice and there
have been no periods and i don't know how it started or where it's supposed to go there's
just been a lot of sound and i always and i'll wrap things up with like and anyway that's just
my opinion so i don't know like others can disagree yeah you need that qualifier i think it's time for me to stop talking and i think we all agree but that's just my opinion. So I don't know, like others can disagree. Yeah, you need that qualifier in there. I think it's time for me to stop talking.
And I think we all agree.
But that's just me anyway.
I think Ben had something to say.
Ben, please.
Anything but silence after that.
Man, I've had so many of those in the room where I have an idea.
I think it's a funny idea.
And then as I'm describing it and looking at the faces of other people, I'm like, they're not buying this.
You need to get out of this as quickly as possible. And so I will bail on explaining the rest of the
idea and just like, let the sentence trickle out and hope that the story or the people just like
carry on with the conversation without me. And sometimes they wouldn't. I mean, there were times
early on where like, I try to explain something, realize that nobody's on board, like understands
what I'm saying. And so I've tried to just like, well, let's move on without actually saying, well, let's move on.
And two things would happen. One, either people would just sit there and I was like,
okay, this is rough. This is, no one has been silent this long ever in the history of time.
And then the other thing that would happen is somebody would ask me to like, they'd be like,
I don't know, sure. I'm saying, I understand what you're saying. is somebody would ask me to like they'd be like i don't know sure i'm saying i understand what you're saying and like ask me to explain it more
and i'm like i shouldn't have taken the ball in the first place i don't i i can't do any i can't
dribble this thing i don't know what i'm doing so i'm passing it to any of you um it was brutal
it's always one of the other cheap ways that i bail myself out of things
uh if i don't end with anyway that's how i feel others can disagree is i will like some dim part
of my brain half remember something someone else said so if like i'm definitely losing the thread
it's like yeah so i i feel like we could probably tighten up this language but but uh
like broadly,
I agree with what Soren said earlier.
I was like, aha.
I have forced myself onto a team in this room.
Yeah.
It's like this, we are a faction now.
Throwing somebody under the bus with compliments.
Yeah.
I think what you did was good.
So can we just reiterate what you said?
Yeah.
Oh man, I have no idea what I said
because I was in the same boat as you. I didn't know what I was saying. Yeah. you did was good so we just reiterate what you said yeah oh man i have no idea what i said because
i was in the same boat as you i didn't know what i was saying um yeah there's a there's a famous
story at american dead where one of the creators mike barker uh was in the room and somebody else
was pitching something or like maybe it was their story that they were breaking and like he came in
with like this like kind of like joke about the pitch itself like it wasn't it wasn't helpful it wasn't like useful to
the story but it was still like this thing that he thought would get a laugh in the room and it
wasn't getting the laugh that he wanted like from the start it was clear like the energy wasn't right
for whatever he was doing and so he just stopped took his whole bottle of water and poured it over his entire head.
And we saved it.
It brought the room back.
Thanks to Skillshare for supporting Quick Question.
Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth.
Do something today you couldn't do yesterday with classes designed for real life.
Skillshare is an online learning community with so much
to explore, real projects to create,
and the support of fellow creatives. Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com slash QQ and get a one-month free
trial of premium membership. Let's thank Honey for sponsoring this episode of Quick Question.
Say it. Say thank you. Thank you. These days, it feels like online shopping is the only shopping
we really do. That's where Honey comes in. It's the free browser extension that scours the internet for promo codes
and automatically applies the best one available at checkout.
Go to joinhoney.com slash QQ.
Speaking of American Dad,
did you, this was going around Twitter the other day,
someone, a fantastic drummer,
put, he filmed himself playing drums under one of steve smith's uh slow
jam songs have you seen this no it's so good you should watch it and and uh and maybe like show the
rest of the staff because it's really cool is it is it the guy who does um drums to songs that don't need drums no it's a different guy uh i know who you're talking about
the guy who who like who will do the drums for jeff goldblum speak yes because he has like a
very specific rhythmic stuttered way of speaking and the guy will like score it with drums yeah
this is not that guy this is a guy who like puts beats under things and he's really all right i'll
check that out uh yeah and we'll have bacon
put it in the footnotes so our audience can listen to it too um i mentioned uh obsessive
pop culture disorder at the beginning of this not not to plug that show because i don't make any
money from it but uh as a pinned reminder that we used to work for a pop culture and comedy website
that wrote about things that
were happening in the world and i've been thinking about that lately because i have never been
happier that we are not covering that beat anymore and it's because of the ted lasso
discourse that is happening on the internet currently well and if you're unfamiliar with
with every bit of what i just said let like let me know ted lasso you know what that is it's a tv
show apple apple plus has a tv show about a guy who takes over a uk football team and he's like
a kill him with kindness type of guy yes it's a show that uh if you're one of our subscribers on Patreon that you heard in a bonus exclusive paywalled episode that I have never I had never watched that show because I have like a strange indefensible relationship to things getting recommended to me by multiple people over and over again. I reach a tipping point where suggestions start to feel like I'm being harassed.
And then out of principle, I don't engage with something.
And that's how I was with for Ted Lasso for a very long time.
It was recommended and I just avoided it.
And then last week and three things happened.
My work went on hiatus and it was pouring there was like a
horrible storm a hurricane or tropical storm honoree all weekend on the east coast and the
third thing was i was dog sitting at my brother and sister-in-law's house and they have apple tv
so because of all those things coming together, free time, nowhere to go,
and Apple TV, I watched all Ted Lasso that was available to me in one sitting. And it's great.
It's a good show. My friends were right. It's not harassment. They thought, hey, you'd like
this show. And they were correct because they know me and I appreciate that.
People trying to care about you is like the biggest affront to you.
trying to care about you is like the the biggest affront to you i know i feel like it's it's therapy is gonna sort that all out because but then you gotta like then you gotta deal
with the therapist what's her fucking deal why is she trying to help you yeah
but anyway i watched the show and i enjoyed the show and it's it's like a good it's a good sitcom
and the things that i was worried about going into it were that
it was going to be to
feel good and be like toothless
and just like
completely devoid of conflict and it's not
that it's definitely a warm show that rewards
kindness but it's also very it's a funny
sharp show and I watched it just like
this is good I'm glad I watched this show
I'm gonna keep watching it
the Twitter discourse on this show
is unlike anything I've ever seen
in all of my years of staring at the internet,
including the 10 years that we spent
being aware of what's going on online.
So I'm partially aware of this discourse.
My only point of access for it is this just honestly unhinged
tweet where somebody asked who or thought they wanted to know who ted lasso would have voted for
in 2016 and it was like this unnecessary need to decide what side of the aisle ted lasso falls on
this fictional character falls on.
Yeah, this Midwestern American.
If he was dropped into our world,
where there's a Trump,
where there's a Hillary Clinton.
Yeah, it's,
that is just like the tip of the iceberg of this discourse
because it's,
there's,
I'm not exactly sure why it's happening i think part of it is that uh season one wasn't released all at once but a lot of people
ended up binging it all at once so you had this complete 10 episode series that people came to
sometime in the pandemic and they got this completed picture like no one was talking about ted lasso
week to week it was a thing that slowly over time it seemed like everyone had watched and now that
there's a built-in audience for season two people are consuming it on a week-by-week basis and
there are just like more takes and there are more thoughts and there's uh right at the gate there
are people who are saying season two is not as good
as season one and there and you know that's a that's a defensible take you can feel that way
about anything uh there are people who on the positive side of ted lasso are more like
rabidly passionate and precious about that show than any show that i've ever seen in a way that
it's it's sort of like there's no this will get me in hot water probably but do you know how it was
remember how it was like very difficult to feel like you could engage with someone who was
a hardcore bernie sanders supporter yeah online yeah mean, there's other shows like, like Rick and Morty is yes.
Yeah.
Trying to engage with a Rick and Morty fan is,
is rough.
Yeah.
That's,
that's safer territory where they love a thing so much that they're
completely blind to,
uh,
anything that could be wrong with it.
There's a lot of that for Ted Lasso,
but it's just the,
because the fan base is,
is so different,
it felt even stranger.
Rick and Morty's fan base is
sort of the...
I'm painting with a broad brush. The loudest
ones are these
exact
angry, cynical
young males that you expect it to
be who are defending it online.
That's not the same fan
base for ted lasso but there is that same level of passion for it it's just people who uh are so
precious about it they refuse to engage with the idea of there being criticism and uh there are of
course like extremes on all sides of this issue and they're all so loud at each other where it's
like hey i don't think the season is as all so loud at each other we're just like hey i
don't think the season is as good as the first season other people who are like it's perfect
get out of here like well well that can't that can't be right and then there have been a lot of
takes going around like there was one at on gawker and there was one somewhere else that was like flat out tad lasso is not funny
it's a bad show you're stupid for liking it okay so yeah yeah that's and i recognize that type of
pendulum swing yes we're really getting into like uh extreme takes on all sides of it and then one
of the ones that that really caught fire on twitter this past week as we record is someone said
addressed to like not to one person but also everyone it's like i think the i'm paraphrasing
i think the reason that you don't like tad lasso is because they perform oral sex on women in that
show and they put the woman's sexual needs first and that's what makes you feel threatened and just to like like credit
where credit's due men go down on women in that show like i don't know like it does happen uh
yeah and like in season one juno temple's character keely like instructs someone's like
hey go down right now and he does and then in season two another character goes down on a woman
and like it's the first thing that happens and uh there's reference to another male character
not necessarily going down on someone but who's just like a very generous and thoughtful lover and so there's
there's certainly three beats to this point but it's it's it's not something that i like
pinned to this show really as what i like about it certainly not a thing that i would think is
the reason that other people don't like it and uh even if i thought that
i would never say it out loud and as you can imagine uh that started a fire and a lot of
people were going back and forth engaging with that argument and uh since since then there have
now been a number of articles on like every website that i go to
because there aren't really many websites to like consume content on anymore but everyone that i that
i go to has to in some way address engage with this discourse even if they're just saying like
here's why i think people are talking about ted lasso right now like go to the ringer.com one of
the only sites that exists anymore and it's how did Ted Lasso become such a lightning rod? And that's like, even if you're not saying
it's good or you're not saying it's bad, you still need to say something because it's the
thing that people are talking about on the internet right now. Yeah, you have to address
why it's important to the culture, like why it's mattering to everybody.
Yeah. And that's why I'm so glad that we're not in the business anymore.
Yeah.
I don't have to try to come up with a take on this show
that's just like, it's a sitcom by Bill Lawrence.
It's a sitcom by the guy who made Scrubs.
And I'm just like, enjoy the show.
Or don't.
Yeah.
Oh, that's, it's such a relief.
It's like waking up from a dream where you have to, you're in like a, oh, should I go to a Spanish test?
And I, yeah, I got to go to, I can't even find the room.
And then you wake up from it and you're like, oh no, you know what?
I never have to do that again in my entire life.
Yeah.
Everybody was born to create.
Whether you last picked up a paintbrush yesterday or in grade school, you can explore your creativity and be inspired. Skillshare is an online learning community that offers membership with
meaning. With so much to explore, real projects to create, and the support of fellow creatives,
Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth. Skillshare is an online learning community. There
are a bunch of classes for our listeners, classes on music, creative writing, and web development,
really whatever you're looking for. Whether you're a dabbler or pro or hobbyist or a master, you're creative. Discover what you can make with classes for every
skill level. Experience real improvement with hands-on projects and classes designed for real
life. Skillshare also is incredibly affordable, especially when compared to pricey in-person
classes and workshops. An annual subscription is less than 10 bucks a month. Come on!
I took a class. I've taken a bunch of classes from
Skillshare now throughout the years. The most recent one is called Finding Fulfillment,
Using Pivots to Power Your Creative Career with Emma Gannon. It helped me re-examine
past sparks of joy to structure and build a roadmap for future goals. This is a real thing
I did for a side project I'm working on. This class got me in touch with the things that made
me excited about writing years ago
when I was just starting out
and applied those lessons
to my work going forward.
Explore your creativity
at Skillshare.com slash QQ
and get one month free trial
of premium membership.
That's one month
of a premium membership
at Skillshare.com slash QQ.
But that's enough about
Apple TV and eating pussy i want to talk soren um
i have a question for you go ahead it's kind of quick but uh i want to make sure don't
no googling right now no searching or anything i just want i just want your your your sweet sexy
brain on this.
There's a video I watched with over 3 million views about sandwiches.
It's the best sandwich in every state.
And maybe don't think about it.
It's called best sandwich, but you don't necessarily need to think about it as best sandwich.
Think about it as like a representative sandwich.
I was very curious about it because I want to see like what's the three places that I've lived.
New Jersey, New York, California.
What does this person consider our sandwiches to be?
And they're pretty much what you expect.
New York is bagel, cream cheese, salmon, and variations of that.
New Jersey, pork roll and cheese, pork roll, egg and cheese, Taylor ham, that kind of thing.
There's like a New Jersey staple.
California, I went into it assuming, if there's one ingredient you assumed would be in california sandwich what would avocado absolutely
it's not wait what yeah it's there there the california sandwich is an in-and-out burger
well hold on okay now first of all southern california is the only place that loves in and out it's like negating all it's it's erasure of the entire north coast sure uh but also
burgers count like i guess bagels count i guess burgers count so now burgers count so so like a
polish sausage hot dog and can be chicago if it wants to be correct yeah yeah okay now i'm
understanding the rules a little bit better but but I don't like them as much.
But go ahead. Right, even though this video should know
that if you go
anywhere else in the country
just about, if there's something on the menu called
a California blank, it has avocado.
It's the thing that makes it California.
According to 49 states.
So now I'm
curious, and I'm going to pull up
the audio to play it for you after you answer.
What do you think?
You're Colorado's favorite son.
What is the Colorado sandwich?
What do you think?
New Jersey, pork roll, egg, and cheese, Taylor ham.
New York, bagel with cream cheese.
California.
The Denver omelet.
Let's see.
I think that it's going to have some...
So the agrarian life in Colorado is strong.
So there's a lot of cows there.
There's a lot of cattle and beef raised there.
So I would imagine that it's going to be something like a steak sandwich um just like
a shaved steak sandwich i'm trying to think of like what other elements are specific just to
colorado though um they do so there's a lot of navajo culture there as well and so they do fry
bread pretty pretty regularly so it might be like some sort of like a steak fry bread sandwich with honey.
Steak fry bread sandwich with honey. Final answer.
Yes.
Okay. Soren, I'm going to play this now.
A fool's gold loaf is more than 8,000 calories. It consists of a hollowed out loaf of bread
filled with peanut butter, grape jelly, and a pound of bacon. It was created by the Colorado Mine Company in Denver
and is rumored to have been an Elvis Presley favorite.
Legend has it that the king himself flew two hours to Denver
just to satisfy his craving for the sandwich.
Okay.
We'll include the video in the footnotes too so you can see it
because not only does it sound horrible, it's one of the weirdest looking sandwiches.
Logistically, I don't understand how you get the bread out of the middle.
It's not a foot long.
It's like a yard of bread.
Awesome.
bread awesome that they someone with a blue rubber glove scoops out the bread in the middle and then fills it with peanut butter fills it with jelly and puts bacon on it and that's the
whole thing why so that's the whole thing that's not a hard sandwich to reproduce wherever you
live elvis right like that's that part of the story feels like bullshit um i think right why would you fly to get peanut butter jelly and bacon right and all and also they don't have that in nashville you
idiot peanut butter banana was his jam like yeah that was his that was his big thing so i think
they just somebody heard that it was peanut butter and they're like we need to put this on the map
let's say somebody famous liked it and they're like got it uh let's go with
rutherby hayes like no i can't no that's not good what about elvis yeah that's it um
yeah who's dead who can't defend themselves okay elvis love this
and so that's first of all that's bullshit all that it came and like that they tried to connect it to mining also monstrous bullshit that's like unconscionable uh and also like peanut butter
is not a staple by any means any more than it is anywhere else in colorado there's so many more
things that colorado is known for it's like colorado's known they have a pizza and it's
like this very specific type of bread on the pizza. And that's where my fry bread element came from. It's like, there's Navajo influence in
the pizza because the pizza's got this really, really thick, crazy, big, airy crust. And the
idea is at the end, you take that crust and you dip it in honey and you eat it. So it's like,
you're eating towards your dessert. And, uh, I, I thought, okay, that's definitely Colorado.
There's a place called Bojo's Pizza that's famous there
in a tiny little town called Idaho Springs.
And it's since branched out everywhere
and everyone's decided this is what Colorado pizza is.
There's the elements of what you actually have is your export
or what everyone comes to Colorado for.
And the beef is very, very good in Colorado.
I can't believe that
none of that shit was accounted for it's like they never talked to somebody who's actually been in
colorado i'm so happy that this is how it turned out because like it would have been the most
surprising thing in the world to me if you were like oh color oh yeah yeah peanut butter jelly
bacon on on like a mile of bread but like scoop out the bread and throw it out i guess throw out like the meat of
the bread we don't need that part colorado wasteful state yeah what i did as a child is i would just i
get my sandwich out of my lunchbox and i would just eat the crust off yeah and whatever's in
the middle i'd throw it away oh that's that made me happy that's infuriating well i didn't jump
around to every i didn't watch
every sandwich i yeah i'm really glad i did i just decided to check out colorado because i thought i
didn't know what i thought it was going to be i think i probably thought something beef yes related
uh and certainly not in a million years but i've thought this oh boy and okay i'm glad you prefaced
this with telling me what california's was because
once i understood that this whole premise was bullshit i could have even even more mad than
this and i i don't want to be in that state not not in front of you not on here sure um okay so
new jersey do you agree with new jersey's um i mean yes and no it's yeah it's not my it's not like a go-to sandwich for me or anything like
that but i but uh what i do like about it is that it it respects a certain new jerseyness to it you
know i wouldn't i pork roll leg and cheese is just like woven into the fabric of new jersey as far as i'm concerned
and like pork roll is the is the kind of meat some people call it pork roll some people call
it taylor ham we've talked about this on the show before taylor ham is the brand name because it was
invented by a guy in trenton whose last name was taylor and some people order taylor ham egg and
cheese or taylor ham and cheese whatever and so we'll order pork roll, egg, and cheese, or Taylor ham and cheese, whatever. And some people order pork, roll, egg, and cheese,
and it's like one of those New Jersey,
what side of the line are you on divides
that I just find very tedious.
But pork, roll, egg, and cheese is like,
not only is it a staple in our diners and our beach towns,
it's a loud enough signifier of New Jersey
that there are shirts with pork roll leg and cheese
written on it in like tourist shops and everything so i i understand that it's part of our uh fabric
okay that makes sense then i mean i'm curious what they say for pennsylvania if they're gonna
be if this is like as unhinged as i think it is and they're not i mean it's got to be a cheese
you would think so but i'm just i guarantee it's gonna be something like a soft pretzel from wawa's or like yeah some shit like that they do zig every once
in a while again i haven't watched all of them but like because connecticut comes right after
colorado alphabetically in this video and alphabetically elsewhere i i i catch that one
and they're like burger because uh fun fact the first burger was said to have been invented in Connecticut.
I'm like, well, first of all, probably not.
And second of all, I'm sure there's some small town in Connecticut that is very excited about that fact.
But the rest of the Connecticut probably has another sandwich that they prefer to be known for.
Yeah, God, I know.
Unless I'm wrong, connecticut sound off in
the comments i guess i should try bacon with peanut butter and jelly is it jelly peanut butter
peanut butter and jelly and bacon on a hollowed out uh football field of breath yeah just a
runway of it i yeah i can't imagine that's any good. What a waste. Look, we all shop online. As much as
Amazon might be problematic, it's also this great watering hole where you can get just about
anything you want or need in your life. And if you don't go to Amazon, you might have your own
specific sites that you like to go to. Well, you might be sitting with something in your shopping
cart and thinking, yes, but is this the best price? How do I know for sure? Well, you might be sitting with something in your shopping cart and thinking, yes, but is this the best price?
How do I know for sure?
Well, Honey is a free shopping tool that scours the Internet for promo codes and applies the best one it finds to your cart.
Honey supports over 30,000 stores online, so you're guaranteed to have it represented somewhere on Honey.
And they range from sites that have tech and gaming and products to popular fashion brands
and even food delivery. So now imagine you're shopping on one of your favorite sites.
Ticka, ticka, ticka, ticka, ticka, ticka, ticka. Ah, there's that chandelier you want.
Wait, wait a few seconds as Honey searches for coupons it can find for that site.
And if it finds them, it'll automatically apply that promo code to your order and save you a
bunch of cash.
I was recently looking for a new mattress. I want to find a little five inch mattress for my
daughter. I'm putting a mattress on the floor underneath my son's bunk bed and I want it on
the floor so that she doesn't roll off of it because she's very young. But I also want to
transition her as soon as possible out of a crib. And I thought, I need to get a five inch mattress.
I started looking around for one, found a few that I liked, I need to get a five inch mattress. I started looking around
for one, found a few that I liked, found one in particular where I was like, this is the one,
clicked on it, and then used Honey. And Honey saved me $11.95, ladies and gentlemen. If you
don't already have Honey, you could be missing out on free savings. It's literally free and
installs in a few seconds. And by getting it, you'll be doing yourself a solid
and supporting this podcast.
We'd never recommend something that we don't use.
Get Honey for free at joinhoney.com slash QQ.
That's joinhoney.com slash QQ.
Do you have any questions for me to get into the show?
Oh yeah, let's start the show.
Absolutely.
All right, Dan, a quick question.
Go.
It's actually gonna be a two-part
question i want to know who's the person like you i guess in this case i'll have to be celebrity
uh who's the celebrity that people so that you know everyone has context what's his celebrity
that people think you most look like and then who is the celebrity that you think that you most look
like like if you're gonna really objectively think about it and be like no this is the person this is like you used to get mistaken for this fucker sweet james
that was on billboards billboards in california all over california you can look up sweet james
online he's a lawyer i think he's like he does one of those um lawyers that that is just like
looking for anybody who's had an accident in like the last five years and there's no there's no resemblance
it's like there's nothing there there are a couple of sweet james billboards just as a tangent where
they don't even really acknowledge the fact that he's a lawyer yeah it's just like a smiling guy
in a suit that's like call sweet james yeah i'm like fucking why or like go to sweet james.com or whatever his website is.
And I was like curious.
So I went to,
it was like,
Oh,
it's a goddamn lawyer.
Damn it.
Yeah.
I was tricked.
I thought there was going to be like viral marketing for a new Batman or
something.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean,
to look at him,
this is not Bruce Wayne and no,
it's not Dan O'Brien either.
Um,
I,
I,
I'm so surprised.
Like that's all tweets with people like tagging you and stuff.
And people that we knew were like, look at this billboard.
I said, look at this billboard.
And they're showing you a picture of it.
And Sweet James, he wears glasses.
And his hair color is the same as yours.
And maybe he's wearing a vest in some of them.
And that was confusing for people.
But he just doesn't look like you.
And so I want to know who is the person that you most get mistaken.
I guess not mistaken for it. But people are like, people like oh yeah there's an uncanny resemblance there and
then also who you think you look like i used to it's been a while because both of our looks have
changed but growing up i got and like well into college people said i looked like shy labuff
which i never personally saw um but it happened enough that i assumed there was
something to it obviously now he's got like a a big giant crazy person beard and he's also got
like he's gotten super yoked uh in his his later years but something about him on even stevens as
having this big curly hair afro thing and me having an Afro for most of high school.
And then separate from that, just like,
I guess two curly haired white guys,
a lot of people mistook us for each other.
It was a fun running joke for me to play
when someone would say,
you look like that guy from Transformers.
And I would say, yes, Optimus Prime.
And that was a fun little bit
that I did for a while because, you know. It's a good joke. We're all done. Yeah, thank you.
I was worried it wasn't a good joke because you were silent. No, I think it's great.
But that hasn't happened in a while, I think, because again, his look is different and I've gotten older and and my look is different and I the
second part of that is the person who I think I look like every once in a while
I'll see I'll come across a picture of myself and I think I'm aging into John
Hodgman John Hodgman especially when I look up John Hodgman. Especially when I have
like if you only are familiar
with him from like the Apple commercials
or Daily Show
you haven't maybe seen John Hodgman
recently where he's done like
a prominent mustache and
facial hair situation.
I've had some version
of a beard or a mustache and
facial hair
loose assemblage of facial hair for the last like eight or nine years of my life.
And I'll see pictures of like me with my hair combed to the side a little bit and glasses and a mustache.
Like the mustache is the loudest part of my facial hair.
And I'm generally not smiling in pictures and i'll look at a picture of
of my face and then i'll get a picture of him on instagram and like oh yeah this is sort of
i i can see my future i see where this is going and that's fine so i'm looking at pictures right
now and uh i see what you're saying let me just sit you down on the confluent
couch for a second here daniel he's gotten more handsome as he's aged he like looking back at who
he was in the apple commercials he's just such a schlub and then i think just fame has been good
like fame has treated him well the same way it does with everybody where like somebody has come
along in his life and said no this is your look and he said okay you're right this is like what
this is what plays to my strengths and he's gotten very very handsome but i i think you're right
your facial hair the way that you guys grow it it grows in like the same patterns and i think
that's probably why people people confuse me with sweet james people confuse me online with uh the
it happens very often that people will tag me on twitter and say is this you
and it's never anyone that looks like me but it is white person with my head shape glasses
short hair and whatever my facial hair is doing because i think and i'm not trying to take myself
off the compliment couch or anything like that.
I think I have like a kind of a nothing face.
There are very few things that on its own distinguish my face.
I have like kind of small eyes.
I have a weird crooked nose.
And so like just wearing glasses and having facial hair is like just giving myself some horizontal lines
so i have like something so people could describe me to the cops if they need to
and i think because i have such a nothing lego man face anytime someone sees someone else with
a lego man face but glasses and a beard they're like oh my god twins yes yeah that's that's part
of the reason i'm asking this question is that i i first of all
i get so infuriated when people tell any you should never tell anyone who they look like
like it's it's never gonna end well and they're gonna be very polite about it in kind but they're
they're gonna fixate on it and it's not gonna feel good to them um i i used to get the same
thing where like anybody who had blonde hair and a jaw, people were like, oh, my God, he's your twin.
I'm like, no, I mean, we look nothing alike.
And I get that on Twitter all the time.
People would like send me pictures from commercials that they saw and stuff like, you know, McDonald's commercial.
I'm like, no, that's not.
That's so clearly not me.
It's just that's Chris Hemsworth.
It's just a blonde guy.
I wish.
Oh, boy, to be mistaken for
chris hemsworth that's time when you're you're allowed to do it if the person doesn't actually
look like them and it's just somebody who's gorgeous you're allowed to do that yeah 100
but the one i used to get a lot and i can't argue with it barry pepper who is in saving private
ryan um battlefield earth he's been uh i'm trying oh he was in the green mile name a third movie yeah
jesus christ he's been in a lot of movies but he's he's a he's a somewhat weird looking guy
but we do share a lot of characteristics but when people would be like barry pepper i would be like
i just i don't want that to be true oh do, you didn't think you looked like Barry Pepper?
No, I think he's got more pronounced angles to his face.
Here's a more pointed question that I should have asked.
Do you not think Barry Pepper is handsome?
No, I don't think Barry Pepper is handsome.
Oh, buddy.
No.
And so when people were like, you look like him, I was like, no, no, you don't mean that.
Here's who I do think I look like.
I think he is handsome.
I think when they're saying that they're, they're, they're being complimentary.
And like, even if you don't think he's handsome, he's, he's famous for in a, in a job that,
that rewards and, uh, basically requires handsomeness.
Yeah.
But he's not sort of i mean he's
i mean paul girimati works the same job barry pepper is not the leading man except in battlefield
earth everyone agrees that was a strange choice um but the person who i do think I look like, and certainly now later in my life, is John Slattery.
Oh.
Does that ring true for you at all?
No.
Oh, great.
Let me look at him, though.
Okay, this is great.
Oh, you think you look like him?
I do think.
Or do you want to look like him?
Yeah, I think I look like him.
I think we've got like-
And do you want to?
Yeah, I think he's handsome.
Okay, yeah, good. Yeah, I think that I've grayed a little in my older age
and that he's got a lot of the same angles to his face that I do.
He's got kind of like a pinched nose at the end.
And his hands, oh, his hands are just like my hands.
We're basically hand twins.
Is this, be honest with me.
Yeah.
Are you being serious? Yeah, he's being serious yeah he's got long he's got long
you look at his hands and you're and you think and you're like those are it's like looking in
a hand mirror yes yeah his build like there's a look at it i'm looking at a couple pictures
of him right now he's holding because he's always holding a cigarette in mad men and so i'd see like these long delicate ladylike fingers and i'm like ah ah thank you
thanks for um giving me somebody in pop culture that i can see a reflection of myself in that is
i'm really hung up on you looking at his hands and like i don't even go try to find some pictures of his
hair i don't know but i mean like i can i can do that and if i stare at his hands and your hands
i'm sure i could draw a connecting point but like i don't even know what my hands look like i never
i don't think about them enough i know your hands i know well i spent a lot of time looking at those
bad boys.
I don't know what you call those.
They feed her dogs, but can we, what are hands then?
Just cats?
Cats.
I spend a lot of time looking at those cats.
Their 10 little tails.
There's a picture of John Slattery on the cover of Boston Common
where he's wearing a baseball glove, and he's got one finger out one finger out yeah it's a long skinny one in it and it's a little bit wider
than your your fingers oh no that hurts yeah okay so i've seen him like wearing a pinky ring a lot
in that show and it's like oh that's not a hand that should have a pinky ring on it
and maybe that was my connection i was like i'm the type of person who shouldn't be wearing a pinky ring um anyway i think he's a handsome guy i think that we have some some similar angles
um but has anyone ever no uh no no one's ever not a single person yeah so i thought i'd test
it out here but the reason that i bring this up is that as i've gotten older the caliber of person that i'm mistaken for has just fallen
off a cliff like it's true barry pepper and i have aged at the same rate and he we've we sort of
distanced ourselves in terms of the way that we look um a little bit more but uh
the just the types of people i'm getting mistaken for are, it's very troubling.
So for instance, I was in Minnesota recently and we were out on this beach and I was playing with my children and my step, or my, not my step, my in-laws happened to be there and
they were walking along the beach at a distance, I guess.
And later they saw us playing.
And then later that afternoon, they said, looks like you got pretty sunburned out there.
And I was like, what? And they're like, we saw you out on the beach and you were looking really
sunburned and i was like i didn't know i'm great about sunscreen uh and i like showed them my back
and like oh it must have been somebody else and then i started thinking back and like there was
a guy at the beach that day who i noticed was also very sunburned and was just like this very heavy
clumsy dude and i was like oh no they like that's my body type now that's who i am like that's who
i'm being mistaken for that's so troubling to me and uh sometimes like my son will say that guy
looks like you and it's never great.
It's never somebody who I want to look like.
And then other times I've been gone to pick up my child at daycare
and I can hear them shout through the window,
Desmond, your dad is here.
Now I saw Desmond's dad.
And boy, that is just such a low blow.
Oof.
I think I've just, I've graduated into a new body type
and I actually graduated feels too nice of a word.
I've fallen into a new body type
that I just, I guess I got to live with now.
And I look in a mirror and I don't see,
but I guess other people do.
And that's so eyeopening.
Yeah, it is. I do feel like mirror and I don't see but I guess other people do and that's so eye-opening yeah it is I do feel like and I with complete respect to John Hodgman I've loved everything he's done and I
agree with you I do think he's a handsome man I don't think it's insulting to say that he is
older than me and has been forever yeah and it's it's a real blow to go from you look like this disney star
disney star or you look like this uh leading man in franchise action movies and then like there
was nothing in between it was you look like the star of transformers and now you look like the
guy from the apple commercials like just did long no man of course not of course you don't you look like the
guy who if you didn't know used to be a literary agent you would assume used to be a literary
agent that's how you look you had no like aging into it it was like you just woke up one day
a literary agent i will say i don't think that you and john hodgman well your faces may be
somewhat similar his is a little bit more rounded
because his body's a little bit more rounded.
You have a more muscular build than John Hodgman does.
Oh, thanks, man.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's such delicate territory,
but I bring this up only because of the types of,
the caliber of person I'm currently mistaken for out in the streets and
how rough that is everyone in i feel like almost everyone in my family or my friend circle
especially before they knew you when they just watched you on videos because they knew me
uh they thought you were a dead ringer for aaron paul yeah i get i would get that one a lot too
i think that he and i also have gone in different directions.
I think he's gotten more handsome over time.
And I think he looks way,
like if I'm being honest, he looks way better.
He looks like a great looking guy.
He's a great looking guy, yeah.
But he does, like when we would get,
watching Breaking Bad, I would see it
because we get red in the same way.
We have a similar vein in
our forehead when we're upset the things I didn't like about myself I would see
an Aaron Paul and that was comforting too yeah all right I got a quick
question for you yeah go ahead I think yeah I want to know what moment or moments radicalized you in comedy.
And this is, there's like a hack version of this question that I'm ignoring.
The hack version is, when did you realize you were funny or something like that?
And that's, everyone asks that, everyone hates answering that question.
This one is specifically like a moment
externally some other comedy that you saw that really spoke to you and the i bring this up
because a writer that i follow cullen crawford who writes on twitter as hello cullen uh he's
very funny he's one of the the only twitter followers of mine that like still just he just tweets jokes he's just comedy all
the time he also writes on modok shout out to that show oh hell yeah yeah um he tweeted there's a gif
from or a clip from the simpsons the the sherry bobbins episode of the simpsons where she is like
the mary poppins stand-in obviously and at the end of the episode she's floating away on her magical umbrella and lisa asks if we'll ever see her again and homer is reassuring her like i have a feeling
we will i have a feeling we'll see mary poppins again too their backs are turned to her as she's
floating away on her magical umbrella and as they're saying this very reassuring thing she gets
swept into the engine of a passing plane and torn to shreds no one sees it it happens in the
background it's it explodes the engine yes like the engine catches on fire there's zero chance of
survival uh and cullen shared this and said when i was a kid this joke changed my life like a dancer
seeing mj moonwalk for the first time or something and that got me thinking about that moment because
i've had several of those that
were different from just like i like making people laugh and uh spoke to something deeper and more
interesting and like life affirming or changing as far as comedy goes yeah and i was wondering
if you had moments or moments like that yeah of course um i figured i i why don't we alternate
why don't because i've got like probably two
I have three
alright well you go first then
the first one
is also from the Simpsons
it's in one of the season
premieres meet the B-sharps
it's called Homer's Barbershop Quartet
and it's
probably my favorite episode of the Simpsons of all time
because it's just like loaded with jokes but there's something that stuck out to me in the beginning of this episode
they're at a flea market they're just like that's the the premise in the beginning is they're going
through stuff at this flea market sale and uh principal skinner sees a helmet like a like a prison helmet and he recalls it from his
his days being a prisoner somewhere and puts it on to make sure it still fits and it still has
his prison number on it and he says oh it's got my old number and it still fits my number 24601
and it's like the meat of the joke for the, the widest possible version of this audience is Seymour used to be a
prisoner.
That's interesting.
He puts on his,
his helmet with glee.
That's kind of funny and stupid.
And he's happy that it still fits.
That's kind of funny and stupid.
All of those levels hit for me,
but also the specificity of the number two,
four,
six Oh one,
because that is the prison number of Jean Valjean in Les Mis.
And this specific intersection for me as a seventh grader or sixth grader,
whenever this came out, was huge.
Because the joke doesn't hinge on you on everyone knowing that
number it's for a smaller group of people yeah uh that makes the joke a little bit sweeter and
as someone who like loved the simpsons and also loved musical theater there's not a lot of things
that cater to that very specific right interest there interest. There are a few things where I feel like I'm on the inside of anything.
And that moment really resonated with me because I felt like I knew something that other people didn't know.
And there's probably some like elitism and gatekeeperism to that.
But certainly the way it registered at the time was like okay comedy comedy can be
specific comedy can be can like target someone and connect with someone in a way that is is
more meaningful than slipping on a banana peel even though slipping on a banana peel is
undeniably hilarious this is a thing that was like oh you can you can comedy is allowed to be something that is just funny to you or just funny to a smaller group
of people uh with the idea of it spreading and becoming something funny to a large group of
people i guess yeah i i disagree with you about the gatekeeping aspect of it i think that the
reason it feels so precious is because it's like the writers wrote a joke that's just for you like that they handed you this gift through the screen they're
like hey you like you i get you and right it's very it's a way to communicate something more
than a joke it's a way to communicate like hey i saw it too yes yeah you know if you want to get
like very twee and precious about it it's a way of letting someone know you're not alone.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
That there are other people that share all of your interests.
Like not just you have like, cause when you're a kid, you have your friends and you start
to sort of figure out that like your friends serve very specific, they satisfy different
quadrants of your life.
And no, there's not going to really going to be one that's like crosses every single
bound with you. Like there's somebody who really gonna be one that's like crosses every single bound with
you like you're there's somebody who's very like into sports with you and then there's somebody
else who's oh you know what we do this thing called the brain bowl and like we're the math
guys and like this is my buddy for that um but then you when you go away to get out like your
small town you start to realize oh there are people that are like that like we're just a tracing of each other this is
great yeah um but yeah i i totally that that feeling when it you get that out of a show
where like somebody on the show is is is you or like that it's clear that the writers are
traveling the same circles as you yeah you're just like oh this is this is so nice they're saying hi to me um we have a mutual friend
ben joseph uh and i'm it's just i'm recalling that he so he got a chance to write for the
simpsons and when he did he put up a got a chance like he won a contest they they they have one
freelance episode a season and he got it because he fucking rules at writing. I don't know why I'm yelling at you like that.
I just like Ben a whole lot.
Yeah, he's a great writer.
And I think he's been influential in getting both of us our jobs.
He's a great guy.
And he wrote for The Simpsons for a single episode,
but he was talking about when The Simpsons,
basically this moment that he had
where he fell in love with The Simpsons.
And it's when, I can't remember the episode,
but it's Bart and Homer are stuck out in the woods and they're trying to
survive.
And they're trying,
they're going to eat a rabbit.
And like the way that they're going to catch this rabbit is with the snare.
So they've bent over a tree and put a rope on the ground for the,
like a cartoon snare.
Yeah.
The rabbit triggers the snare and flings the rabbit up in the tree,
but doesn't stop.
Like the rabbit just gets flung into the distance. Like the rabbit gets catap and flings the rabbit up in the tree, but doesn't stop. Like the rabbit just gets flung into the distance.
Like the rabbit gets catapulted over the horizon miles and miles.
Yeah.
That's like a really great moment to remember.
And I thought about like,
do I have anything like that?
Do I have a Simpsons moment like that?
And I was like,
no,
I wasn't allowed to watch the Simpsons.
And so I,
but it made me realize that the one for me was a show that i also wasn't allowed to
watch but i would sneak away to watch which was kids in the hall and i knew it was gonna be kids
in the hall there's a kids in the hall sketch called sausages which you're probably are you
know that one yeah uh i'd like to revisit it because it was one that kids in the hall was
uh hit and miss for me.
And that was one where I remember thinking like, I'm not sure I know what the joke is.
It seemed like it's a lot of a guy saying sausages over and over again.
Yeah.
So the premise of the sketch, first of all, it's shot like a short film.
It's very dark.
There's a clear color palette to it.
It's raining all the time in it and it's
about a man who's taking care of his aging father we assume and the aging father is like on the
verge of death and he just brings he works in a sausage factory and he steals sausages and brings
them home to his dad but he's also in love with this woman who also works in the factory and
instead of bringing his dad home the sausages he gives the box to her it's like it's it has all these elements of like just like a normal story it's got an arc and
a beginning middle end and the foley in it is is not just the dave like the actual foley work
in it is incredible like it's beautiful there's a searchlight that's constantly going past
the house and it makes its own noise and like you always hear the dribbling of the rain.
It's really gorgeous. And there aren't a lot of jokes in it. There are some,
but there aren't a lot. And, uh, it's very dark as well. Like visceral and dark,
like the old man's drooling a lot. You see the sausage sizzling a lot and he's like pouring
this gross syrup all over it and then sucking on the sausages like it's just experimentation basically it's like sketch
experimentation sketch and i didn't know that you were allowed to do that you know there was snl
which everything felt finished as much as it did back then like it felt finished and polished and
like oh here's the game of the sketch.
Here's where it has to go.
Here's the finale to it.
Like here's the topper.
And suddenly there were these guys doing a sketch that wasn't any of that.
It was just like, we're going to make something weird
and maybe people will like it.
And so I didn't realize you were allowed to be dark in a sketch,
that you're allowed to add some other elements
other than, look look let's find the
game let's find the game here's the game let's play it yeah and i was like oh i was so excited
by that as a kid where i was like you you could do whatever you want and if people don't think
it's funny if they still think it's like compelling that's enough too so i guess my answer is that
uh the the jokes that radicalized me were the ones that weren't jokes.
It was like the anti-comedy. It was the ones where I was like, it doesn't have to be set a punchline.
You could just, you're allowed to do whatever you want. And that was so freeing and exciting.
Yeah. My anti-comedy response to that is, or not response like to negate yours but to yes and it is
um i couldn't pick a single conan o'brien thing but yeah so much like he is he and the simpsons
are what taught me comedy essentially he's like watching late night uh when he was hosting it and i i there's a straight
line to trace from uh frankenstein waste a minute of your time to 90 of the work that i've made
like like i i never stopped laughing at the idea of this is funny because of how much time was spent
on it yeah and i i try to infuse that into most of what I do.
Yeah, and somebody does it so earnestly because there was always this tongue-in-cheek element
to sketch comedy,
or it was just like comedies when we were a kid
that were like,
yeah, look how funny we're being.
And there's a real delivery to it and everything
that when somebody does it completely earnest,
where it just looks completely earnest,
it's way, way better.
It's way funnier.
Somebody put a ton of...
This is like somebody's darling.
Somebody put a bunch of time into this thing.
And there's the commitment.
So one Conan thing that I can point to specifically is there's a famous field piece they did where there was a group of reenactors in i think upstate new york it must have been where
they gather every once in a while and they dress up in period appropriate costumes and play like
period appropriate old-timey for lack of a better phrase baseball i don't know exactly like what
era this was but like you can the costumes are silly and the rules are different and they're
using different gloves and baseballs and bats.
Think of like big curly mustaches
and it's like a hobby that these people
do. They play baseball together every
a couple of times a year
and they use a different
vernacular and
women folk come dressed as
period appropriate women folk
in like
I don't know like maid costumes like not like cleaning
maids but like farm maids yeah you want to it's like outfits where you'd expect their name to be
goody yeah yes thank you uh and so conan goes there like essentially at the start of this thing
is going to be look at this parade of freaks we're going to make fun of these people doing this thing
um but then he sees like this one woman who's very committed to being Goody
Proctor or whatever she's going to be.
And one of the writers on the show described this moment.
Cause like from once we meet this woman,
Conan then dresses himself up in period appropriate stuff and is like a
ridiculous,
very committed character for the rest of this,
this strange field piece. And one of the writers described it as like, yeah, very committed character for the rest of this strange field piece.
And one of the writers described it as like,
yeah, we were all having fun.
We were looking at things.
And then Conan met this woman
and then his objective became clear.
I'm going to win me this baseball game.
I'm going to win me this girl.
And he is so pot committed to this idea
for the rest of the thing.
And I love it so much.
I don't know if there are even any jokes in it past this point but like just the idea that he is going to take very
seriously this very silly thing it's like yeah that's that's that's going to be comedy for me
for the rest of my life is something very take something very stupid very seriously yeah it's
it's a really good one. It's Conan.
You're right.
Conan was like,
or I guess he was a little later for me.
Like at that point,
I was already very into comedy,
but because I'm older than you,
but Conan is somebody who like
every single time would surprise me.
I was always amazed by like
what you were allowed to do.
Hugh and Mr. T went apple picking upstate
and to like go see the leaves
change.
It's so wonderful. It's like a beautiful
sketch where
Mr. T talks like Mr. T.
At some point, he starts
yelling at Conan and Conan climbs
a tree and won't come down.
He gets up on an apple tree and is
mad that he keeps yelling at him.
It's just like playing
with the reality of the situation
is so funny in the moment
I have another later in life
radicalization moment that will be
less fun because no one can like look it up
and enjoy it
but there was a writer
named Jay pinkerton who uh was one of the
as the version of cracked that we know he is one of the founders there was a period of time
where he was the managing editor alongside jack o'brien's editor-in-chief right before my time like we our time overlapped by maybe literally
two weeks before he he left cracked to go on to uh valve he wrote the video game portal 2
and worked on half-life and has just like been successfully writing comedy for video games and
comics at the peak of his talents uh And he's completely disappeared from the internet,
which,
which seems very healthy and fun.
And I don't want anyone to like dig into him or anything,
because I don't know if he's,
if he's chosen to retreat from public life for,
for whatever his reasons are like leave him alone or anything.
But I still think of it as a minor tragedy that his website jaypinkerton.com is gone because
that had such a profound impact on me it's hard to
so to paint a picture early 2000s internet comedy uh was very angry very male very ranty uh people like maddox who made the best page in the universe
uh and like he's uh a great writer who just was like in this very specific character was, it was this, this ranty over the top,
uh,
misogynistic politically incorrect character.
There was a lot of like edgelord bullshit.
That was the only voice that was happening in internet comedy at the time.
Really.
And that,
that was like,
you know,
who did you have to turn to for internet comedy in the early two thousands
other than the onion it's Maddox and people trying to do what Maddox was doing and someone like Tucker Max,
who was just doing first-person essays about being drunk and hooking up with girls.
There were people like that.
There were people who were just like entire websites dedicated to mocking obese people
and mocking disabled people.
Like that was what the state of internet comedy
was for a very long time and young daniel who is exposed to all this stuff like certainly
was interested in what maddox was doing because i was like oh yeah maybe i can write
angry rants since that's what comedy is i can i can like pick a thing to be mad at and and use
like very hyperbolic over the top language.
I want to write comedy.
So maybe this is the way to go.
And then I found this son of a gun, Jay Pinkerton, who was doing something different.
He was like the one person on the internet who was being funny in prose in a way that
was a lightning bolt moment for me.
And like,
not even just,
he,
he certainly stood out on the internet as a voice that was not misogynistic
and not like over the top.
I'm playing a character who is angry all the time.
He was just a very funny writer writing,
very funny fiction stories and sometimes nonfiction stories.
And it was not only funny for the internet at the time. It was also like, I wasn't,
he was probably my, my first indication that prose could be funny in a way that has,
has really stuck with me because the books that you're exposed to in school,
they're funny in like a, even the funniest ones are funny in like a
often more cerebral or clever way and a lot of them you can't even appreciate when you're reading
them like catch 22 was the funniest book i read in high school and it's still a very funny book but
you know the standards for what a funny book are are just very different and that never laugh out
loud no book you're reading in school.
And like, even Shakespeare is someone that I've come to understand is like hilarious
and very clever.
But at the time you're, you know,
you're a 15 year old kid reading Shakespeare
and the best you can say,
it's like, it's not gut busting
in the language of its time to a high school student.
And very often, it's just a teacher who is explaining to you,
you know that line right there?
He's talking about dicks.
It's a dick joke.
Shakespeare made a dick joke.
And then even at 15, I'm like, oh, okay.
All right.
It's not as funny as when my buddy makes a dick joke,
but I understand that Shakespeare is doing it.
So I didn't have it in my head
that books could be funny, really,
in the way that The Simpsons was funny,
where I'm just laughing at it.
And then I read Jay Pinkerton,
who's got the funniest prose of anyone I've ever read
in my entire life.
And I've since then, like, John Schwarzwelder does that,
Jack Handy's novel uh the sense of
honolulu does that but it's still christopher moore does it but it's still like he was the
first one i saw that it seemed like was allowed to to treat books as or treat prose as like first
and foremost this sentence is going to be funny and then the next sentence is going to be funnier
and then the next sentence is going to be funnier and that's why i'm writing this and like that kind of a the idea of of essays being
funny and like the purpose of an essay being uh hoping to accomplish the same thing that a stand-up
comedy routine does that was novel to me and that was very exciting to me as someone who never
envisioned a path for myself involving stand-up but like suddenly funny prose was like oh my god
this is a thing that i can do this is the path that i'm hoping to take that was uh nothing short
of life-changing and all this is to say it's a bummer that uh it's all gone now it's it's all
gone yeah that is a bummer i did read some jayerton. I really enjoyed him as well. I had that sort of similar moment with Neil Pollack when I read his Anthology of American
Literature, which is just a collection of his stories and realizing, oh, shit, you're allowed
to do this. Okay, I get it. And there's a line passed there because when I started writing
for Cracked, I was definitely doing an impression
of Jay Pinkerton because everyone starts out doing an impression
of someone else and someone in the
comments was calling me out on it
and I'm like I'm not going to defend myself on that I'm just going to
let this person say I'm doing
a Jay Pinkerton rip off and then Jay
because he's also
separate from being a comedy genius is a very kind man
emailed me and he was like don't listen to this
person you're doing what you're doing and I like it and it's great and they're saying separate from being a comedy genius, is a very kind man, emailed me and he was like, don't listen to this person.
You're doing what you're doing.
And I like it and it's great.
And they're saying you're ripping me off.
I don't think that's true.
And anyway, I'm only ripping off Neil Pollack.
So it's whatever.
Oh, did he say that?
Yes.
Oh man, that's great.
Cool.
Well, there's one other one
that I want to talk about, Dan,
that I'll just do it quickly,
that made me realize that
you don't have to rush through a sketch
too that it can be like a slow burn and
sometimes that's way way better does the name
Brock Toon mean anything to you
no okay there was a sketch
on Saturday Night Live in like 1993
or something like that
Tom Hanks was hosting
and is one of the later sketches like the
B-sides
and it was a sketch
where it was a
Mr. Belvedere fan club sketch
have you ever seen this?
I bet my memory will be
jogged if you say a few more words
this is in the
age of like Adam Sandler
Mike Myers, Phil Hartman they're all in it. Tim Meadows. And it's a fan club for Mr. Belvedere. And it's clear that these people are just unhinged. They're on the verge of maybe trying to kill Mr. Belvedere.
trying to kill Mr. Belvedere.
And Tom Hanks is the one who's doing the minutes and everything and running the meeting.
And he's just barely holding them back
because there's a little bit of it in him as well.
And it starts off and it's just like,
you have no idea where this is going.
And you're starting in such a weird context anyway
that there's this fan club for Mr. Belvedere.
But then it gets so much weirder.
And they're trying to
decide, if we ever see each other
out in public, how can we talk about Mr. Belvedere
without actually saying his name?
They spend a lot of
real estate on figuring out what to call
him. And then finally, Kevin Yellen's
like, how about Brock Toon?
And everyone's like, yeah, that's nice.
That's certainly a sketch that's right up my alley
as far as hitting the sweet spot of comedy things that I love
where we're, A, it's a waste of time,
B, taking for granted an agreed-upon absurd assumption.
Yes, yeah, of course.
And I guess I don't really want to ruin it for you now but it's like
it builds to a point where they're like where phil hartman like the best part of the sketch
for me is phil hartman talking about they're saying things that are acceptable and aren't
acceptable and they're like i i should want to shake mr belvedere's hand. I shouldn't want to cut the flesh, to wear the flesh,
to let his flesh open doors to new worlds for me.
Like that kind of stuff.
And it's,
and the deliveries that are all really funny.
And like,
people are all like coming with these like very built characters and it's so
fucking funny.
And it takes forever to get there.
And like the,
but the payoff is worth it.
And I'm like,
it's like the, let it waiting for the beat to drop basically
and I didn't understand that you could do that either
like when I first time I saw that I was like
oh my god
the payoff is worth it
like if you know you have a good payoff
then take as long as you want
and it just only adds to the laughter
well that's some good fun that we've had today do you have anything else
to say or should we wrap up this show no we should wrap it up we did a nice long one for people today
it sucks i mean it's the only reason it sucks is that like this doesn't
there the minutes don't roll over we're not gonna get enough extra minutes that like we don't roll over. We're not going to get enough extra minutes that we don't have to do an episode one week.
Yeah.
Oh, that would be so nice
if we could just cut at an hour,
no matter what,
and whatever was left over,
we threw it all together in another episode.
That's worth trying.
Yeah.
I'm going to track down.
I don't need to track it down.
I have it right in front of me.
You can find me on Twitter at DOB underscore INC
or Soren at Soren underscore LTD or our business daddy at make me bacon pls you can email the show at qq
with soren and daniel at gmail you can find hire our engineer producer editor gabe at gabe harder
dot com we also have a patreon if you go to the patreon and you donate money, I think we only have one tier at this point. It's just like the $5
tier. If you
feel like doing that, you get
once a month a bonus
episode where we answer questions from
you exclusively.
The patrons who support
us. But if you don't,
that's fine. You'll still get the
weekly free episodes.
I'm also, if you go on my Twitter I'll be putting links from time to time about
running a race
and raising money to fight cancer
so if you have a couple bucks
to
throw at cancer
you can donate there
didn't realize cancer was sponsoring our podcast
yeah you know what i'm
actually gonna do is as soon as this episode comes out i will actually go on twitter and put up the
sketches and conan sets that we're talking about oh cool yeah i'm not gonna do that i will all right
bye