Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 14 - Quick Question with Soren and Daniel

Episode Date: September 4, 2019

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Sorin and Daniel, the show where two best friends separated by 3,000 miles of nonsense get together once a week to ask life's least important questions. I've realized in doing this show that we never answer any of them. It's just an open-ended show where we just shit out and into the void about like, hey, this bothers me. Thoughts? And then we give up on it after a little while. Yeah. So I am Daniel O'Brien. I'm one half of this show. I am an author. I'm a writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

I'm a dog dad. I bought a new lamp recently that's pretty chill. And I am joined as always by my co-host Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, what's up? Hey, I'm Soren Bui. I'm a writer for a show called American Dad. I am a dog dad, but of a human boy. I feel like, I don't know if people get weird about that. Like when you call them your baby or when you're like, I'm his dad. But I don't know, I keep doing it. You know, I had this, this wacky thing happened to me recently in my apartment building there. There, uh, there's a gym in my apartment and we have, uh, classes every once in a while I could take like workout classes and I was doing a hit class. That's a high intensity

interval training. And I've been doing it for a few weeks now, and there's a woman there who's a perfectly pleasant woman. She is from Georgia, not the state, but the, I'm going to say country before I Google it. Okay, yes, it's a country. It's a country? Great. So English is like her third language, so she can be forgiven for anything. And she was trying to express that I was a gentle person and could be trusted.

And what she wanted to say was, you're a dog's dad. But because, again, English third language, what she said was, while pointing at me, you're a dad dog. And she said it in a way that sounded like, you're a dead dog. And I didn't know what to respond. Like, I just sort of shrugged and was like, I don't know, maybe in another life. Sure. Why not?

We've never met before. She's just someone who is like seeing me around with a dog and thought this person is gentle. He can contribute to this particular exercise. and thought, this person's gentle, he can contribute to this particular exercise. I know I can trust him because he's a father of a dog, and all of that got whittled down to, you're a dead dog. You're a dead dog. Yeah.

I mean, if this is heaven, then yeah, I totally agree with you. The fuller context of that, which is like humbling and sweet and humiliating is uh in this particular gym class they used to do this exercise where for abs you would sit in a circle with and in a essentially like a modified version of boat pose where you're on your butt and your feet are up and your your your whole core is like flexed in this strange seated position soren is there a better way to explain that like boat pose i'm having oh oh uh i see where you're you're you mean your legs are up in the air and your head is up in the air but just your butt is touching the ground yeah so like everything's flexing your butt is the only thing on the ground and you take a medicine ball and you pass it to the person next to you. You're sitting in a circle with a bunch of people and you're tossing medicine balls, these like 10 to 12 pound weighted heavy balls

you're tossing to each other. And they used to do this game where you toss it to each other a while back in this class before my time. And then they discontinued it because men in the class got too competitive and they were throwing it too hard and making like a vicious sport of it. And one guy in the class got too competitive and they were throwing it too hard and making like a like a like a vicious sport of it.

And one guy in the class got hurt because it was thrown like fully chest pass thrown at him and it hit him in the back and he was in pain. So they discontinued doing this game and then they decided they were going to do it again in this this last week in this class that I took. And they decided it would be okay because there were five women in the class and two men. And they took one of the men out of the game. They were just like, you're not going to do it. We want to do this game, but you're not going to do it because men ruin everything. Dan, you're fine. This will go smoothly if we do it with just women and Daniel.

And like, no one ever said that explicitly. There's like men ruin everything, but just us. Now the game is good. And like, to their credit. Yeah,

it was fine. No one got hurt. Cause it was just us girls, you know? Dan, you're going to have to figure out a way to fuck up that game. I can't. I'm too gentle. You got to make it hard on them. And so then they recognize you as a masculine figure and then you're allowed to marry all of them. No, like I'm generally fine not a uh a male on anyone's radar men are uh pretty shitty right now i don't know if you've read the news lately

it's not a good time for men so i'm i've noticed actually in my in my as i've gotten longer in the tooth that i am that people register me less as a man too that where it used to be a case where i could kind of tell if i was being checked out by a woman and those days are just gone like i know immediately if a woman accidentally looks in my direction and we make eye contact, her first instinct is just look down, he'll go away, look down,

he'll go. And I think, Oh, well, okay. I mean, it was fun while it lasted. Like,

are you, do you think you're like just a dad now? Yeah. Or are you an old man now? Yeah. I think I'm just an older man. Like there's, what's the point of that? Like who wants to be friends with an old man now yeah i think i'm just an older man like there's what's the point of that like who wants to be friends with an older man i'm kind of looking forward to that i guess uh once again this show is quick question

and we like to start off by thanking our listeners who prefer to be called quickers like the candy bar oof hate it quickers oh yeah like snickers yeah oh god it feels like there's something else you could add to that to make it more obvious like how all right well fucking yes end it then all right you're you're not you when you're uhungry. Grab a Quickers. Wow. Did I do it? I think that might have been. No, that fucking sucked ass. See, I don't know. I'm very subjective about it because it came out of my mouth. But yeah, you're saying it's no good. No, it's bad.

So we like to read reviews from our wonderful Quickers even when they're quungry. And normally I have these planned out, but I truly don't. I'm just going to look at the first review that I have on iTunes. This is genuinely...

Oh, it's good. It's five stars. And it's by user Braddy Nix. Oh my God. I know, it's crazy. And I'm going to read this now for the first time. I hope it's okay. An excellent addition to anyone's normal rotation of podcasts.

I actually catch myself smiling and sometimes a hearty chuckle. There's not a lot of heavy hitting topics, but lots of self-deprecating awkwardness, which I'm guessing is by design. Sure. None of this is surprising, though, since the guys have been marinating in this bit, parentheses, genuine friendship, question mark, who knows, for a while now. And the flow of subjects and buoyancy of conversation is great. Only thing kind of weird how D.O.B. insists he's not a skillfully laid thirst trap.

I'm not going to keep reading that. It's very nice. But I'm not going to. You know what? Let's let this guy shine on you, Dan. D.O.B. insists he's not a skillfully laid thirst trap. I don't like this. He comes off as the best kind of guy with just the right amount of social anxiety. How is cum spelled?

Huh? I said how is cum spelled? No, it's proper. Accept your status as a well-known, relatable man of interest and keep it moving, bro. Soren's great, though. Man, don't ever change.

Okay. I am going to screen these going forward. Wow. I'm really glad I made you continue. That was great for me. I don't believe that I'm a thirst trap personally. A skillfully laid one Dan. Yes. I love the connotations of that.

As a fisherman traps are only considered skillfully laid if they've successfully caught anything. And so I would strongly argue that mine is not skillfully laid. That was a good, that was like a mom review. That was a review where I was like, you know, you're saying really nice things to me and I'm kind of getting angry. What do you mean? Like the questions, whether the friendship's genuine. Right. Yeah. That was very surprising that we've been marinating in this bit of genuine friendship.

Like we're the we're the fucking twins from the prestige where we've just been living this life yeah for the stage i guess i'd be proud of myself if i was that good if i was just it's all one big bit yeah i hate daniel but there's so much money in this friendship you gotta do it you should see the patreons rolling in oh yeah by the way we have a patreon if you feel like giving your money to there you can uh but only do it after you've donated to like cystic fibrosis and planned parenthood and uh a politician of your choice

soren any other charities you want to throw out that are more important yeah occasionally you'll see people show up on facebook who are like looking for school supplies they're a teacher and they don't have enough for their language therapy class or whatever and you gotta you gotta buy them sticky notes on amazon like do that first all of those are more important than putting money into our page this will be a nice surprise for bacon when he listens to the episode because he's going to realize that we mentioned the patreon so early yeah i mean if he ever comes back he's been gone realize that we mentioned the Patreon so early. Yeah, I mean, if he ever comes back, he's been gone. Because you remember a couple of years ago, I don't know if our listeners know this or not, and Bacon would be so embarrassed if I talked about this,

but a bunch of kids got stuck in a mine in Chile years ago. And it was a scary time, but the kids all got out. They got rescued, and it was nice. Bacon, our CFO and business guy, he's been really, I would say, envious of the attention they got. God bless him, got himself stuck in a damn mine in Chile. He's been there for, what is it now, two weeks, two and a half weeks? Yeah, wait. I think that we're conflating two stories. I think the kids didn't get stuck in a mine.

The kids got stuck in a cave, but there were some miners who also got stuck and I'm not sure if the kids were Chilean or not. I know the miners were. Yeah. I mean, I'm only getting this from bacon. Okay.

This is the story he told me. I was like, I'm going to be like those Chilean minor miners and I'm going to get my own damn self stuck and I'm going to get my own damn self stuck. And I'm going to get all that fucking sweet attention. And Elon Musk is going to be mad at me or something. And everyone's going to be talking about me faking. I'm going to get myself stuck in a mine for those kids.

And Elon Musk is going to call me a pedophile. Yes, yeah, that's his goal, correct. Because he just wants the attention. He craves the attention. So that's, that's his goal. Correct. Because he just wants the attention. He craves the attention. Uh, so that's what he's been doing. Uh, but truly it's like not landed on the radar of literally anyone important. Like no one's talking about it. So he might just be stuck in that mind for a while. I don't know. I feel like there's something else he could be doing. I mean, he knows SEO pretty well. You get to the top of those Google results for his, his work, but I don't know. I mean, no one's willing to write this up.

No. Well, anyway, uh, God bless or send him to hell. I don't care. Uh, hey, so I got a quick question for you. Go shoot. Uh, let me see if this is actually a question. Do, oh, uh, do I have a face that screams hassle me or talk to me? You're not going to like this answer, but yeah, I think you do. I feel like I get hassled and stopped a lot. And like, I get a lot of unsolicited opinions from strangers. I think this is, yeah. Sorry to interrupt, but like you're. No, no, no, but you clearly have a lot to unsolicited opinions from strangers. Yeah, I think this is, yeah. Sorry to interrupt, but like you're-

No, no, no, but you clearly have a lot to say on this. The same reason that they're willing to let you play the medicine ball game at the gym is that you are a disarming person, I would say. Where like someone sees you and they're like, okay, I'm not gonna end up with somebody crazy if I go up and talk to them. And this is like a cold conversation.

I know immediately I'm not gonna regret it. it right i can talk to this harmless egg exactly uh the reason i bring this up and i want to to point it specifically to you is that i feel like i get uh and i want to caveat this with um it is rude and improper to compare having a dog to having a child. I understand that they are very different things, but it is also a natural impulse of anyone who has a dog to compare it to having a child. So I want to ask you as a father of a child, if you feel like you get a lot more unsolicited opinions now that you are out with a child than in the past. Because I get them a lot as a person who's out with a dog. What do they say to you? Well, great question, Soren.

Every morning I get up around 6.30 or 7 and I walk my dog. Sometimes we go down to the waterfront. Sometimes we just go down the street. Very often, we go around my block, and there's a coffee shop, and I chain him up on the outside of the coffee shop, and I go into the coffee shop, which is about 10 feet away from where he's chained, with giant windows, so I can watch him the whole time. And I get a nice coffee, so I can enjoy it in the morning, and I keep my eyes on him most of the time. And I've done this many days, most of the days this summer, in fact, I've done this exact move. And I come out and I unchain him and we continue walking.

A few days ago, I do the exact thing that I'm describing. And there was a woman who came up to my dog while I'm waiting on my iced coffee. And she is looking through the window trying to find eye contact for who owns this dog. And it's me. I raised my hand because she's pointing at the dog and I was like, isn't it me, mine. And she starts trying to talk to me through the glass. And I say, just as fruitlessly, uh, I can't read lips. I don't understand what you're saying. And then I walk outside and I talked to her and she was like, is this your dog? I said, yes. I don't understand what you're saying. And then I walk outside and I talk to her and she's like, is this your dog?

I said, yes. She's like, don't ever chain your dog up out here. And I was like, why? I'm just in there. I can see him. We're 10 feet away. And I'm looking at him the whole time. She's like, just don't ever do it.

I was like, well, there's a sign that says no dogs allowed. So I can't bring him in there. It's a grocery store with a coffee shop inside. I can't bring him in there. There's a sign. with a coffee shop inside. I can't bring him in there. There's a sign. And she said, I bring my dogs in there all the time. And I think, well, you're crazy. So the rules are different for you.

I believe that you do that, but I can't do it. And I just say, no, he's fine out there. I'm looking at him the whole time. And I do this every day. I do this every single day. And it's it's again seven o'clock in the morning it's not like a sketchy scary time yeah to be out in the world and she was like just don't don't don't chain them they'll let you bring them in there if you want and like this is a this is a you know there are cruel people out there and i was like i don't i don't believe that's true.

And she said, I've been here for four years, and I've seen a lot of dogs snatched up. Did she use that word? Yeah. And a part of me wanted to say, no, you didn't. Because no, you didn't. Because you know, you didn't see a lot of dogs snatched up from this area. There's no way that's true.

And also separately, like I don't want to flex too hard, but insofar as neighborhoods in a highly populated city can be safe. I'm in a highly, I'm in a, I'm in a safe area of New York city. This is, this is not an area where like

crazy people are going to show up at 7 o'clock in the morning and well there's one a dog out of off his or her leash yeah not a lot of dog crime happening there no not a lot of dog crime but she was insistent

that she had seen several dogs snatched up out of here and I finally finally just said, thank you for your concern. Excuse me. And I left with him. A few days later, I was walking Jackson and went to a dry cleaning place just in this same exact neighborhood. Chained him up. Got my dry cleaning. Came out.

And she was there again. And she had the same conversation with me and didn't remember having it. It was like from the beginning, she's like, is this your dog? You can't chain them up. And I was like, no, I know it's me. I'm going to do it though. I was just getting dry cleaning and you're not allowed to bring dogs into a laundromat, but I still had eyes on him the whole time and was being safe and responsible.

She was like, it doesn't matter. You could take him. Trust me. You could take dogs in anywhere. You can just take them in. And so now I don't chain him up anymore because I fully believe that she's going to steal or poison my dog. If she sees him again, I think she is the threat to dogs. She's the one in the world. And that's why she's being so non-specific about the real danger of having a dog no you don't understand what i'll do to this dog right man i just love

that you two how you two started your days like if that was a movie and we could check in on both you you woke up you very peacefully took your dog to the waterfront you showed the dog your other love to see and like explained how you had room in your heart for both. And then went to a coffee shop, and this woman just woke up at 7 a.m. and was like, who the fuck can I fight today? What's the most important cause in the world right now? It's people chaining up their dogs on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Yeah, I'm not totally sure even now of what her concern was. Was it that your dog is chained?

That your dog's alone? She thinks someone's going to steal my dog. And there was a moment the first time at the coffee shop where she was like, look at him, he's so scared because of the cars. And first of all, don't ever fucking tell me what my dog is feeling. Second of all, it was like a perfect comedy smash cut to look at him. He's scared. You see him wagging his tail like the happiest dog in the world.

Third of all, if he is upset by anything, it's because some crazy woman is screaming at his father and making things very tense. That is the only thing he's nervous about. And she should know that Jackson's M.O. is as soon as somebody pays attention to him, he bows his head and turns sideways like he's trying to turn over onto his back. Right. I'm not a threat. Like his father. It's fine.

I'm not a threat. I would be a great addition to your medicine ball game. I would be awesome at this. But I bring this up because I feel like I get a lot of unsolicited talking to now that I have a dog or since I've had a dog. Yeah. And I wonder if that's similar for having a child. If you're out with him at a park and someone tries to like Monday morning quarterback your child. Yeah.

I mean, it never happens at the park. The park is there's a lot of really negligent parents at the park. And I'm I'm definitely not the worst. So what happens is generally at the park, people just go there, they sit on the park bench and look at their phones while their kid plays alone. And if you're playing with your child, then those kids are like, well, that game looks fun. And so they want to come play your game.

And then you're responsible for some other people's children. It's always somewhere else. But I do get this a lot. I was in a, my son sucked his thumb for a long time and I was in a Wendy's children it's always somewhere else but i do get this a lot like i was in a my son sucked his thumb for a long time and i was in a wendy's and how long he still does it at night but he used to do it all the time it was just like this soothing mechanism he had and so i feel like my brother sucked his thumb until he was like 12 years old yeah yeah this my child will be that he's he's we're working on it like at night now we're we sit there with him at night and i'll lay on the ground next to his crib or beddish crib and be like okay you have 10 minutes in which

you cannot suck your thumb and my hope is that if i keep extending this time he'll eventually just fall asleep but it's like he's an addict i mean he's like whining and writhing around as soon as he starts to get tired because he just wants to pop that fucker in his mouth and he can't and uh anyway i was in a wendy's back when he sucked it all the time and this the security guard at the wendy's uh came up to me and said you know it's gonna mess his teeth up and i said what he goes the thumb it's gonna mess his teeth right up and i was like okay all right i mean well he's he's a baby it's fine and the guy was like no no no trust me my whole family they all all thumb suckers mess their teeth up tons of orthodontia like he's telling me about all the braces and stuff that his family had to get

because of it and wow well and then like it becomes obvious that he's staying there in that talking to me until i insist to my child that he's not allowed to suck his thumb because I was just really brushing him off like no it's yeah maybe I mean we'll deal with it later I'm sure I'm sure yeah I'm sure it's a big problem he's like not good for the thumb either um but we're we're just sitting there waiting and then he's standing there and he then he again after these pauses will go it's not good and I realized that he wants me to take my son's thumb out of his mouth or tell him you can't do that. And so I was like, OK. And so I obliged this man and asked my son to take his thumb out of his mouth.

And he does. And then the man walked away. I was like sitting there in line thinking, fuck that guy. Crucial blind spot of this man to be like, stop sucking your thumb and not, hey, you shouldn't get your kid hooked on Wendy's early. Yeah. Yeah, there were clearly a lot of vices happening that day. And then it also happens at, it happened at the beach pretty frequently because I was reckless with him. I would spin him around by the arms

at the beach and I would throw him in the air a lot. And the person came up to me when I was spinning him around and said, you will dislocate your child's arms. And I said, no, I think he's okay. And they said, and this person to their credit said, no, you don't understand. I just picked my daughter up by her arm once there, the cartilage in their shoulders is weaker and you will pop it out and i was like oh is she right i don't know if that's true i fucking throw my nephew around all the time i don't know uh he's made a goddamn nerf yeah i know kids that's the whole point of having a child is to be able to toss them it as far as you can um they make such fun noises when you launch them um and he really likes being spun and so what basically what i've done is i'm slightly worried that she might be right and so

now i just spin him by his ankles he seems to enjoy that just as much but uh i was really mad when i this has happened a couple times where i will hawk him up in the air and catch him and that's a favorite pastime of both of ours and people will come up to me and they're like you're making me very nervous or like you're please don't do that he could really yeah how how high are you throwing him 20 feet no uh I you know a comfortable a comfortable height that when he's up in the air he doesn't have enough room to wiggle around and get in a new position and I wouldn't be able to catch him. Right. It's like two feet in the air.

Just to throw something out to our listeners that will be very confusing to them. I've seen you throw children in the air. Yes, that's right. You're pretty safe about it. Yeah, that's right. And we used to go play with those kids. Yeah. And that's all we'll say about it.

Yeah, no further explanation is needed. Yeah, so I've had practice throwing them in the air. And also, I think that a lot of times when it's with your kid, the kinds of advice that people have is based on their own, the thing that they encountered when they were young or with their own children that they think is universal and they think it's across all kids and they're like so if somebody doesn't have a lot of a lot of practice throwing something in the air and catching it especially a living thing then they're gonna be like no no one can do that but that's what i don't get about why you would ever stop a stranger because like i last December, fell off my bike and broke my wrist. And it sucked. And I was very unhappy about it.

And it was the result of a driver making a bad decision that spooked me. I see bikers all the time. I'm not going to stop them and be like, hey, you shouldn't bike because you might break your wrist because it happened to me once. That's insane to me.

Yeah, I think it's because what switch flips in a person's brain that was like now i need to tell other people about this thing that happened to me and warn them about it and be insistent on it it's the same with getting older i think i think you there's i know old people who if they're in the car with you and you're going even five miles an hour over the speed limit, their reaction time has slowed to such a degree that they can't conceive of a way in which you could brake in time if something happened or that you're aware enough of what's going on around you. And they just get very anxious. They're like, no, no, no, you have to slow down. I think it's just you only have your own limited perception and not even like the benefit of hindsight where you used to be able to do something like this or maybe the idea that somebody else is capable, more capable than you. I guess that's what it is.

It's like you can't conceive of anyone being more capable than you in the world. Right. Like that you could keep your eyes on your dog from inside that shop and that you wouldn't be distracted this is a woman who is very easily distracted right this is like what the the backstory that i don't know is that this is a woman who was like look i was put on this planet to be tricked and i assume everyone's the same as me you know i've been scammed by my mailman of all people yeah i think that's i think that's gotta be what it is and i guess we're all a little guilty of it but i just open your mind to the possibility that other people can do things you can't yeah uh i have another uh quick question because we were talking about kids and and and games that you play with your kids yeah go ahead so soren quick question um how do you liven games up with your son because

i was hanging out with my nephew uh two days ago and we had this new game he's he's two and i was holding him and i was like okay murphy i'm gonna put you down now i'm i'm done uncle's done holding you so i'm gonna put you down on the ground oh no and then i snatched him up but i'll put him on the ground and then i was like okay i'm gonna give you to grandma now uh here we go giving you to grandma oh no pull him away and i did that with like every member of the family and then uh my brother's dog i was like okay we're gonna give you to walter the dog here we go you We're going to hand you to Walter right now. Oh no!

I snatch him away. And he liked that so much and it was a hit of a game and he hadn't done it before. It's, you know, a subtle variation on picking up a child and throwing it in the air.

But he really took to it. And then after, I don't know, 90 seconds, I was pretty bored with the game. I didn't want to do it anymore. But he could do it for the rest of the fucking time, for all of time. How do you freshen up games? Yeah.

No, I know exactly what you're saying. Because I get bored so much sooner than he does. I know exactly what you're saying. It's not like I want to spend time with him and I want to play with him. But like the game is boring now we we've exhausted all of the limits of its potential yes in fact he doesn't see that there's certain things that i'll completely avoid so that because i just know that we're gonna it's gonna become a repetition thing we're gonna keep doing it there's a video that was making the rounds for a while that was a dad who a helium balloon had gotten stuck on a ceiling and the string was

hanging down to about, I don't know, like 10 feet in the air, seven feet in the air. I can't remember, but this dad threw his daughter up so she could grab the string and then bring it back down. And everyone was like, this is such a cool, what a good dad. Like, this looks like so much fun. And in my mind, I was like, no, you don't do that because then she's just going to let that go again. And then that becomes the game is like, you're going to have to do that 20 more times after that. Right. And then when that balloon dies, you're going to have to go out and get a helium balloon. You got to go get an additional helium.

She'll keep asking to do that game. Additional helium. She'll keep asking to do that game. Yeah, that it's it's that happens all the time where you come with something fun for your child. And then they're like they say, do it again. Do it again. Do it again. And it's them just practicing the work of it. It's it's like they like the way that it went.

They like the joke of it. And it's them kind of understanding the joke of it and figuring it out what that, what that is. And then also just the feeling of doing something enjoyable, but like getting the sense, how to say this? Like it is practiced work.

It's like getting the feel of it over and over again. So they know how to do it. And, and so I know that he's doing it for good reasons that's not just in his brain being like that was fun make me laugh again monkey dad like he this is important this is his him learning and so sometimes i can justify it that way and i can get in i could squeeze in like another 17 of whatever it is but other than that, I will, I'll just try and change the game in slight ways to make it more fun for me. Like if, if, if it's something where he, he needs me to like spin him around, let's say it's that, that it's just like him standing on the ground.

He wants me to like roll him into a flip in the, with my arms and then put him back down. I'd be like, now let's try it where dad is sitting down on the couch right and like now there's there's an unfortunate lack of games to do with children that involve adult men sitting and not moving too much yeah you don't realize y'all also that how much of your time you spend crouched with your kid and that's such an uncomfortable position to be in when they want to play trucks or something you're like i mean either i'm walking around on my knees which doesn't feel great or i'm crouched way down like i'm squatting in the woods trying to take a shit and like there's just no good position to be playing with a child right so here's another thing

i do a lot is uh i die in the game and you, you know, death's not permanent as far as he's concerned. And so in the game... Yeah, you gotta teach that lesson early. Yeah, I just die. And then that means I have to lay there for a little while and be dead. And so that's another big fun game for him,

which is like, is he really dead? Coming and like lifting an arm and letting it drop. But it just means I get to lay there for 20 to 40 seconds okay while he dances around me my my nephew doesn't quite have that yet i was with him at the beach and uh we went in the water for a while and then i went and i was gonna like lay on my belly and try to get a quick nap in and he says uncle he calls me uncle uncle wake up to get a quick nap in and he says uncle he calls me uncle uncle wake up uncle and then he comes and uh dive bombs my back just like jumps headfirst into my spine to make sure that like if you're

dead you gotta be really dead because otherwise i i need you to to carry me around for a while yeah i i think it's just finding the games that you know that they're going to love where it's such limited work on your part. Because that's my, I have the same instinct as you, is like, I want to play the games where I know it's going to be fun for him. I know it's going to be cool,

but it's going to be an awful lot of work on my part, like swinging him around and throwing him over my back and things like that. And I can only do it for so long. But I have this other game called steamroller that he's way into and it's so limited on my part where i just lay on the ground and i roll back and forth and he has to jump over me and every once in a while i'll catch him and and he gets i catch him by the leg and then like slowly roll over his entire body like fucking who framed roger rabbit right i think the person who invents a children's game that also somehow incorporates like paying bills or prepping for dinner is

gonna be a millionaire yeah he also has another thing that he likes to do which is give people haircuts with just these pretend scissors and that that's maybe my favorite game that we play because all I do is I sit there and he walks around me very patiently and just like, just starts cutting and pretending to cut. And then he does the clippers and he does the brush and it feels kind of nice too. And it's just having your child touch your head a little bit for a while. And so you're technically playing with them, but you have, your involvement is so limited that it's wonderful. And you end up with a great haircut.

Yeah. At the end of the day, you get something awesome out of the deal. You look good. Yeah. Do you have any questions for me? Yeah, Dan.

I guess I should do it the right way. Quick question, Dan. Do you have any tricks in your life, little life hacks that would only work for you because of your, the way that you grew up and who you are as a human? Like this is a way that you've tricked yourself into getting something done, but it can't possibly work for somebody else. I don't know that it can't possibly work for somebody else, but I have tricks that I do with running. Or not tricks, but a trick. Because I used to run all the time, and then I stopped for a while. For no reasons, only excuses.

I can give you a thousand excuses for why I didn't run, but no actual reasons. And now I've just gotten back into it again and I'm trying to do like 20 or 30 minutes a day for running in the morning before work. And one of the ways I will trick myself because, uh, DOBs devotees will recall that I have no self-control. So I, uh, I need tricks. I will set my watch and I'll say, we're going to, we're going to run 24 minutes today. That's all we're going to do is run for 24 minutes and I'll have my watch going and I'll run 12 minutes out and then know that I'm coming 12 minutes

back in. And then somewhere in the middle of the run back where I've already done 12 minutes so now I'm at you know minute 20 or something like that that's when a small voice in my head will be like you know 24 is not that far from 25 right yeah and so I'll run the extra 25 and I'm like, 25 doesn't really feel good as a number to end on. You should really end on 30. You should really end on 30 minutes.

And I will. Inevitably, I do. But I'll always like, when I start the run, because the start of the run is the worst part possible of any run. Nobody ever likes to start running.

That's when I'm like, okay, we're only doing 24 minutes. And then middle of the run is like, let's do 25. Let's do 30. And there's a person out there who can just start a run and say, we're going to run 30 minutes and do it. That's not me. I have to trick myself. I have to, cause 30 minutes sounds like a long time to run, but six minutes after you've already run 24 doesn't sound that long at all. Yeah. I need that. I think that's pretty common with running my wife who she used to be a big runner and she, she all, she has, I mean, exclusively tricks for how she

did it all the time. I should have actually probably phrased this as how do you gaslight yourself to be a better person? Cause that's kind of what it is. It's like you're, the conversation that you're having with yourself while you're running is basically the baby. It's cold outside where it's like, I'm going to convince you to do this. No, I shouldn't. I shouldn't. I shouldn't. No, I'm going to convince you to do this. Um, I do the same thing. Uh, and it's, if I run on a treadmill, then I will do, it's really nice to see both the time and the mileage because then you can play them off of each other. You're always close to something. You're close to either a round number on the mileage. And then you're like, ah, you know what? It's a 12 minutes. No,

I should go all the way to 15. And then as soon as you get to 15, you're like, you know, if I just ran for like another, say another five minutes, I would get to two miles even. That would be much better. And, and so you just keep tricking yourself to go further and further i yeah i do that one a lot i i also noticed another one at the gym just recently which is if you count down instead of up or if i count down instead of up when i'm doing sets it's actually easier for me to do the set because psychologically it feels like going downhill or doing less than stacking upward and like moving upward feels like more or ascending feels tougher than descending okay so so we're doing like pull-ups or whatever you're like you you go 10 9 8 7 6 versus 1 2 3 4 exactly yeah yeah

yeah and it's and it works and then i started to think about it that every time that I've ever heard a trainer working with somebody, the trainer's always like, five, four, three, two, and one. Okay, you're done. And I'm like, oh, motherfucker, they're doing it too. I wonder if that's why they do it that way. I don't know. I like it personally. I'll do the same thing with pull-ups, bench press, whatever the fuck

weight things you can do where I'll go backwards. Cause I like counting down, but when I do a class with a trainer, I don't like when they announce how much time is left. Like that's the thing that I want out of my head. Yeah. I'm doing these hit classes and the trainer will be like 10 seconds or 15 seconds or whatever it is. And it was like, don't, don't fucking tell me that. Just like,

I'm waiting for the bell to signify the end of this thing. So don't, because like in my head, I've already decided like we are going to be done soon. Right. And if he says 20 seconds left, it's demoralizing. Yeah.

Yeah. Then it's like, well, fuck, I thought I was five seconds away. Yes. I agree with you completely that that that kind of thing drives me crazy. If I'm on a treadmill or something and I look at the clock and I'm like, I expected it another two minutes to have passed and I look at it and it's been 45 seconds. Then I'm like, I should just stop now. I need to stop. Right. I feel I've done the amount of work that, uh, this feels like five minutes of work. So even though the clock doesn't agree with me, I think my body is telling me the truth. I have a, another one that I do that's a time-based and I think you could only do this

if you're really bad at math. In my my old car it was a clock that you set as opposed to it was just a computer in the car that is connected to the internet and knows immediately what time it is all the time sure um and i would set the clock 12 minutes fast because 12 was a number that was very hard to add or subtract for me. 12 was a bit... So it meant that, first of all, it meant that I felt like I had a cushion no matter where I was going,

where I was like, if I have to be somewhere at noon, I know that I don't have to actually be there until 12.12 on this clock. But if it got past 12.12, who knew how far past? No one could say for sure

because you'd have to do such complicated addition. So if it said at 1217, it still felt like I was pretty close to being on time. What was that? Well, that can't be more than three minutes away, right? You, you, you did this to make sure you were never late somewhere. I thought was the original reason I had done it was that I was never late. And then after that, it just became this thing that I kept on there because it felt like time was more amalgamous than that I was in control. That when I would get places, even if I was late to the thing, it still felt like, no, who's to say how late I actually am? Nobody really knows what time it is.

Right. It's a great mystery to all of us. It's just trying to, I could never do the math in my head and so all i knew is like if i got somewhere at at what looked like on the clock was 12 17 i could be like all right well you know two to seven is not that far so i didn't actually have to think about the numbers themselves it was just like this gray idea of distance from one number to another and then it always felt like i was fine so really it was like me for selfish reasons that i was doing it but uh it worked it worked for so long and i never felt bad about anything that's good uh i have any other tricks for myself. I think just as a thought experiment,

I will frequently assume the most famous or fancy person I've ever met will spontaneously come to visit me, and that's very helpful with making my apartment clean all the time. Oh, that's a great idea. Yeah, which it will never happen. And like this is, I don't know Gwyneth Paltrow, but like a thing will kick in my brain. I'll be like, you know, what if Gwyneth Paltrow stops by like the show,

the show that I work on? And she's like, oh, you know, it would be great is if I had somewhere to, to, to shower before the taping of the show. And so that's why my shower is always fucking clean because like, I would raise my hand and be like, Oh, Gwyneth, I live just down the street from the show. You can shower at my apartment and my apartment is ready for you to do that now. So I just like, I'm constantly doing these mind games of like, Oh, Tom Hiddleston needs somewhere to snack. Oh good. Tom, come in. My refrigerator is clean and there are lots of snacks and there are places for you to sit.

And it's very pleasant. That's such a good idea. I feel like that's a legitimate life hack that you could just, people should use. I mean like that's a legitimate life hack that people should use. I mean, obviously, there's less chance that that would happen even for them. And it's very slim that it would happen for you. But that's a great idea. Man, I'm going to try that. I'm going to try that with my car. I'm going to assume that I have to give a ride to a famous person.

Yeah. And that will help me keep it clean. Yeah, I wish I did that because I never had a clean car and I haven't had a car for a year and a half, but, uh, I do distinctly remember doing a film shoot with some YouTube star that required being in my car with me and she sat down in the passenger seat. And before we started filming, she just turned to me and said, so what's your dog's name? Because there was clearly so much dog hair in the car that had gone unaddressed.

Yeah. Yeah. I also, there's another one that I do occasionally, is I will think to myself, in any given day, if I have to run and jump over a fence, can I do it in the outfit I'm wearing? And all my clothes. I don't know.

I don't know why that's still like a concern of mine. I think maybe at some point in my life when I was young, I was wearing an outfit and I was like, this is just not conducive to athletic activity. But like what happens if the answer is no? What do you do? I change. I don't feel comfortable. I don't feel comfortable in clothes. When I'm wearing flip flops, I have to know for sure exactly what's going to be happening

that day because there might be the chance that I have to run and I cannot do that in flip flops. And so they make me a little anxious. Kick them off and run barefoot. No, I got very sensitive feet. Fix that. I don't know, man. All right.

The bottoms of them, it's just the street is so hot, especially in the summer. It's so rough. The grass is even just rough here in la it's weird don't get it um anyway that there are little things in my life that like i'll just that the consideration is completely infeasible but like that's what will govern how i get my through my day and like what i do um my wife told me a lot of the times when she would run in during country, she would get, you know, there'd be a group of them and they would, as they're running, they would decide, you know, we've gone six miles. We shouldn't do this, but I mean, we just go an extra mile and then we have to do less tomorrow.

And they would tell themselves that every single day, having never done, they would never do less or fewer miles. Right. It was just a way to get them to go the extra mile every single time. And I was like, well, that sounds a little like hell. Eventually, you know that you're doing that to yourself. No, but it's still helpful. I mean, except from running, I think it's always good if you're a person like me who knows the importance of working out but hates doing it and finds no joy in doing it whatsoever it's a very helpful hack to start out by saying you're

going to do less than you're actually going to do yeah all right the most important thing is you go out there and you and you go to the gym for fucking 20 minutes. That's it. 20 minutes is an achievable goal, right? Okay, so you do that. And then once you're 20 minutes in, you're sort of into it already. And it's like, well, it would be dumb not to go for five more. Right. I guess it's crazy that we didn't talk about writing with this. But I do that with writing all the time.

Where it's like, all I'm going to do is write an introduction. Or all I'm going to do, I'm going to do one scene. Like, well, that's easy. That's surmountable. And you once you're in it you're like well come on you're you're in the groove you might as well keep writing i mean i do that a hundred percent there's uh a great hack that uh one of my co-worker dan gerwich who's been with last week's night from the beginning and was a college humor for a number of years before that and is a screenwriter. He's got his movie that just got announced coming out soon. He had this hack that was,

okay, you have a setup. You have this video clip and all you need to do is write several punchlines off of this video clip, off of some sad news about how some fucking horrible mom in pakistan got beaten up by the police now write a joke about it right uh he sets a phone alarm it was like so write as many jokes as you possibly can in 15 minutes and go. And I started doing that and it really works. You set, you set an alarm, you know, that it's going to go off in 15 minutes. And you know,

that in that time, like you're going to ignore everything else. You're going to ignore Twitter. You're going to ignore your, your texts or whatever else comes in. just sit there and do as many jokes as you possibly can about this this this uh poor baker from pakistan who got beat up by the cops and then when the alarm goes off at that point you ignore it and you're like no i'm in the groove so i want to like keep writing jokes because i'm i'm in this at this point that's a great idea that's it also means that the quality doesn't have to be great early on. Cause it's about speed. It's about getting it done.

And the qualities shouldn't be at the beginning anyway. It's like, that's what you build into that. And the assumption, and I don't know why I still do this in my life. I start with a blank page and I'm like, well, this better be good.

What's the most perfect sentence I can write. Yeah. And you're like, you expect that the foundation is going to be flawless it's like no man you you build a shitty house and then you take care of it over time and you kind of like you fix different sections as you go yeah uh anyway that's all i got i think have we uh have we talked enough to justify an episode of this show? Yeah. In fact, I think this is a little long. Oh, really?

Okay, great. Let's see. I want to close this out by tracking down the social accounts. But in the meantime, Soren, you said that you were happy that they did an all-female reboot of Ghostbusters. Like, you liked the idea of it, but you weren't happy about the execution. So, do you... Are you comfortable speaking about how you would fix an all-female reboot of Ghostbusters right now? Am I comfortable? Yes. I mean, this is...

God, I don't know why I didn't bring this up earlier on any of these episodes, because this has been a real thorn in my side for a while. Listen, I think it's a great idea to do reboots of movies. I think that we're in a time when you can show so much more in a film than you could before. You're not beholden to the laws of physics or anything now because you have CGI available to you. And what I'm saying is that I say if you want to do them with women, that's fine, but make them CGI women. Why are we giving these roles to real women when you can have them do so much more when they're CGI?

Right. And do you, sorry to jump in, I hate to do this, but do the voices of the women characters need to be women? Well, so here's what I'm thinking. I think that there are a lot of really great male actors out there who they're just not working right now. Where's Brendan Fraser? Nobody knows. And you can get Brendan Fraser and the things also that you can do with a voice now in 2019 are incredible.

Billy Crudup as a female Ghostbuster. That sounds incredible. Where is he? Where's Billy Crudup as a female Ghostbuster, that sounds incredible. Where is he? Where's Billy Crudup been? And so, yeah, you get those guys in there. You could make, I mean, you could make Brendan Fraser sound exactly like Kristen Wiig. I swear to God you could do it. And so then Kristen Wiig doesn't even have to do, she doesn't have to lift a finger.

She just gets to stay home, which is where she belongs, Dan. a finger she just gets to stay home which is where she belongs dan you can find me at dob soren s-o-r-e-n underscore ltd you can find our uh i mean if anyone can find our lost producer, Bacon, somewhere in Chile or wherever the fuck else I said before, let us know. He's on Twitter at MakeMeBaconPlease. You can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at Gmail. You can find us on Twitter at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can find us on Instagram at QQ underscore with underscore Soren underscore and underscore Daniel. You can find our editor, engineer, producer Vincent at SiliconBeachPodcast.com. We also have a Patreon that you

can probably find with just like a limited amount of Googling. We recorded this episode in the middle of the day, and you'd think I'd have more energy for it, but I'm committed to half-assing this podcast. I think that's our charm. Yeah. I'm also like, I'm fucking,

in five hours I'm getting on a plane and going to Jamaica on vacation. I'm not thinking about this podcast at all i'm very excited for when you come back and you're you're island people yeah oh man thank you you've given up so i'll be so much lower energy on the next podcast all right i look forward to it bye