Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 15 - Quick Question with Soren and Daniel

Episode Date: September 10, 2019

So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, a show with two friends, both white comedy writers who've played bass guitar on the side, spent their summers on the Jersey Shore, and have moms that taught sex education, but whom otherwise have nothing in common, in a time when America couldn't be more divided. These two people, with completely different backgrounds backgrounds get together once a week to find some middle ground of their unique perspectives to answer all of life's small questions in balanced and nuanced ways.

I am one half of this crazy divide, Daniel O'Brien, and with me as always is Soren Bui. Soren, hello. Hello, I am Soren. I liked how you started this podcast, Daniel. Yeah, I think that's going to be an ongoing thing. Okay, I appreciate it. Also, great lead-in. Yeah?

Yeah, I thought that one was wonderful. Very succinct, articulate. Don't get used to it. It's going to change next week. We got that one in the can. Why don't we just reuse it every time? change next week we got that one in the can why don't we just reuse it every time no i don't think that's i don't think that's really our style i think uh i think you you attach yourself to a person who uh in the beginning is in love with couch gags and then grows to resent them but feels bound by the rules of them. So that's what you're stuck with. People should know that when Dan used to do stand-up back in the day, he would never do the same set twice,

insisted that he would not, never would do the same jokes twice, except if there would be some long-running joke that he wanted to include in every single one of his sets. I think one of them was, and they were just bits for you. I mean, they are not funny to anybody else. It was like, I was walking down the street was an important thing for you to have in every single one of your sets for a while. Is that right?

That's correct. I would, uh, every single set that I did involve the phrase I was walking down the street at some point. And every comedy set that I'd ever done involved the words, cheese it together. And sometimes I would be talking about like the actual product cheese. It's together and sometimes are you talking

about like the actual product cheese it's and sometimes I would say you're scared is it it's the cops yeah like like the way that people in the 40s would would yell when they needed to run from the fuzz and sometimes I would be like I love cheese it's one of my favorite things and it's the kind of joke that I love to do because it's only for someone who has been obsessively paying attention to everything i've ever done in my entire life which is uh me an audience of fun fact no one uh do you know do you know the the phrase artificial hurdles no tell it to me well a lot of times with cognitive dissonance is that you'll create

artificial hurdles for yourself so that you never actually have to deal with the thing that you're supposed to be dealing with. And a lot of times, so like if somebody is taking a test, sometimes they will stay up late the night before, not necessarily studying, but just late enough that when they get up in the morning and they're very, very tired during the test, they can blame it on being tired. I mean, unless the answer to this is very heavy, what do you think is the thing that I'm not dealing with? Well, I don't know. You've created these strange artificial hurdles for yourself, but I haven't gotten to the bottom of it yet. Well, that's what this podcast is all about, and we'll get to that later in this episode but before

that we would like to thank our listeners once again the show is quick question with soren and daniel and we'd like to start off by thanking our listeners who prefer to be called the zeitgang as long as there are no follow-up thoughts on that. We also like to thank our listeners, the Zeitgang, for everything they do for us. They're tweeting and they're supporting on Patreon. Constantly hashtagging Zeitgang. Hashtag Zeitgang. Absolutely.

Thanks to those AKAs, Zeitgang. But we also like to call out one review every week to read on air and as usual I can't believe I added another couch gag as usual

I've printed out all the reviews and randomly assigned each one a number and now I'm going to take a book and flip to a page

and whatever page number it lands on that's the review I'm going to read so I've got my book okay I don't understand why you're not using your giant ball that holds a bunch of little balls that all have numbers on them for when you do your bingo nights

no I mean that's certainly going to be a future bit but for now it's this book thing that I've already settled on and I'm flipping flipping noise flipping noise flipping noise I have landed on page 22 which is oh shit it's a five-star review. Get out of town. From user Taco Lewis, who writes, oh, I got to clear my lips for this one.

Quell your qualms and quash your quibbles. Quake at the quirky quick question filled with queries, quizzes, quips between the quotable and qualified comedians Soren and Dan plus Bacon. Wow. I wonder how long that took. Love it, Taco Lewis. First of all, I wonder how long he sat on the word before.

Just like looking at it. Quips between the quotable. Just sitting there and like, fuck. Quips between the quotable, just sitting there being like, is there, is there like a, like an old timey version of like Twixt, but with a Q.

Yeah. Well, I like that one a lot. Great work. It also brings us to, uh, this is later in the episode than normal to get to, to bacon, a voice you will occasionally hear on this podcast, our CFO and good friend

who I think giggled in the background on that. Bacon, are you there? Are you with us? Are you back? No, I thought that was a very good review and I also thought that the between thing really bothered me on the first run just for him. I felt, I feel his pain

in what you guys picked up on. Dan, sometimes these reviews make me feel a little bad about myself because they clearly worked harder on the review than I do on the show. Oh, absolutely. And I started to think,

well, maybe I owe them something. Maybe a little bit more. I mean, I wouldn't tug on that thread too much. All right. I'll leave it alone. Good, because then we'll start working hard on this show, and that sounds exhausting. It's a slippery slope. Yeah, I feel like it's enough that I have four fucking couch gags in this show.

Four fucking couch gags in this show. We're going to talk about a lot of things today, but the main thrust of this show, again, is two friends asking each other quick questions. And I'm just going to go ahead and start. Soren, quick question. Yeah, go ahead. Under what circumstances would you stop a stranger on the street and say something to them. Apart from, of course, a man crying, whom you would talk to, and a woman crying, whom you would ignore, as all of D.O.B.'s devotees and the sworn swords of Sorin already know.

I think I might call them the Sorbonis. No, because mine took a lot more work than yours did. So you would say something to someone on the street. And I want to separate this from like someone is bleeding on the street. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. The circumstances are this person has just dropped their wallet on the ground.

Or they've left something behind that looks valuable to them. Or I think I might like. So I've done this before and I hate that I do this, but it's something I do some occasionally. If I saw like Derrick Rose in the promenade, I might be like, all I'm going to do is go up and say, hey, you're Derrick Rose. I'm a huge fan. Thank you for what you do. And then, and then I walk away. Okay.

Would you say that also in like your, your single days as well? Um, yeah, I see. I don't think I would approach a woman in the street. I don't think that's not really, uh, my time. It's like, it's a, I'm basically forcing her into an interaction as opposed to if I like, if I start taking up a hobby like pottery and I was like, oh, and now other people I'll meet at this, at this new event. And we'll actually, it's, that's a situation in which people should be talking to one another or book club, but on the street, it's not, it's not my place.

Right. Pottery, sure. Certainly pottery. You got to talk to everybody. A lot of horndogs at pottery, Dan. That's why they go. I mean, this is not why I bring this up, but pottery, I feel, in my opinion,

is adjacent to glassblowing. And I believe that's the background for the song, Jesse's Girl, that Rick Springfield was doing a glassblowing class with some other people in Pasadena and then saw a couple and then really fell in love with this guy whose name is not named Jesse, his girl. That's insane. Wait, he said that in interviews that he was in a glassblowing class? Yeah, in Pasadena. It's really important to me that I now see some Rick Springfield

blown glass. Anyway, that's not why I bring this up. I bring this up because again, GOB's devotees will recall that in the last episode I mentioned that I was going on vacation and I did. I went to Jamaica and then Montreal for several days.

Jamaica for four days, Montreal for one day. And while I was in Jamaica, it was an all-inclusive resort. And then we're spending time on the beach. We're going around. In this short amount of time, three different strangers stopped me to tell me that I needed to calm down and relax. Whoa. It's important to state that I wasn't saying anything. I guess I need more context because I need to know what you were doing.

The very first case, I was head down, power walking back to my room at the resort. As you do on vacation. Right. Or as I like to call it, normal walking. And an employee at the resort stopped me to say, hey, I'm going to give you a speeding ticket if you keep walking like that. Oh, so this motherfucker had seen you before doing it as well. This is like not the first time. This is the time he's decided to actually speak up.

This is like not the first time. This is the time he's decided to actually speak up. I suppose I resented it because I had things to do, and I vacation differently than other people vacation. Even though it's Jamaica, which is a very relaxed culture, I am there for just a few days, and I'm trying to pack in as many excursions as I possibly can. And also, not for nothing, I am relaxed. It's just my face.

It's just my face and my tempo that I seem like I'm having... It's just the way I clench my fists and stare at the ground. Doesn't matter that my mouth is bleeding. Ignore that. I've got somewhere to be. It doesn't matter that my glasses fall off my face. And they're now behind me and I'm not making any attempt to go pick them up. A second case, there was just a man on the beach who was trying to sell us everything.

Have you been to Jamaica? Never. No. It's a beautiful country that is entirely tourism and hospitality based now because America has just horribly devastated it. But as a result of that, a lot of people are just like always trying to sell you anything. And it's not even necessarily nefarious. It's just like these are people who are trying to start their own businesses because all the tourism industry has been outsourced to companies in Canada. So like the locals are doing the work, but the money is going somewhere else and they're just trying to get money wherever they can. So you're constantly being bombarded by people who are like, hey, do you want some weed right now?

And we're like, no, thank you. I'm good. And it's like, okay, what about cocaine? No, no, no, thank you. Okay, what about like a coconut water or like a table next to your beach chair? He's just like a guy on the beach offering all of these things

and channeling the most assertive bones in my body. I was like, hey, don't worry about us, we're good. And then he said, he like dropped all pretenses of being a salesman and was like hey it's jamaica buddy you gotta relax you got told to relax by a cocaine salesman yes that's correct and then the third time was not necessarily explicitly told to relax uh but uh my travel partner and I, we booked a boat trip to a small island to go snorkeling

and then grilled some lobster on the small island. It was great. But when we first got on the boat, the captain said, where are you guys from? Russia? And I won't speak to the specifics of my friend's background. I could say that wherever she goes, it's unlikely that she would get pegged as Russian.

And I have never been pegged as anything, but white, broadly speaking. But this man guessed Russian. And my travel partner said, do we seem Russian? And he said, I don't know. I look at that guy and he's not smiling. So I thought, oh shit, is he Russian?

There's a lot to unpack there. I know. I don't know who should be more insulted. Well, I think the Russians probably. I don't know, man. And I, you, I'm trying to think if I've ever seen you just with your resting face and thought, oh, that guy's stressed out. And I guess, yeah, pretty much every day. It's tough because I generally, at my most comfortable, I don't think my face looks very happy yeah i think that's safe i i was certainly relaxed in jamaica and and like especially on that boat

because i love boats so much and it was a small private boat with just me my travel partner the captain and the chef who was going to cook us our lobster. And I'm just sitting there thinking, I'm so relaxed. I'm so happy. I'm on the water, this clear, beautiful water. And we're going to snorkel and see some fish. And then we're going to sit on a private island and have fresh lobster grilled. And this guy's like, you look like a sad Russian from the past. And that's me at my most

relaxed i don't know what to do with that information um uh brace yourself dan i'm going to give you a compliment that may make you feel better uh okay i'm braced okay well you're white knuckling the handles of your chair yeah um I think that most people in circumstances where they don't know anybody else there, they inevitably put on like a laugh and a smile to try. It's not even like a conscious thing. It's just something that's been beat into us through society. It's like you laugh and you smile at strangers because everybody should be having a good time. And it's very fake and it doesn't feel't feel very authentic i do it when i'm nervous when i'm i've noticed

like when we go and we would do shows um we do like after hours panels and things like that my instinct was to giggle and laugh as i was talking because you show you're not a threat you show that you're trying to have fun that you're part of the gang. But it actually comes across really weird and kind of forced when a lot of people do it. And I think that you're a confident enough person that you don't do that. I think that you know what funny is. You know when you're being funny. And you don't feel like you have to prove that to other people. Like, no, that was just a joke by adding on a little laughter and giggle at the end.

You're just very confident in your in the way that you are. And you don't feel that need to like laugh and show people, hey, it's OK. Everything's OK. Everything's fine. I mean, that's very kind of you to say I kind of disagree. I mean, that's very kind of you to say. I kind of disagree. I just, I genuinely just think that my, like me at my most relaxed is quiet and my face lands wherever it lands, which gravity has dictated is good time often, but I would say that's probably when I'm having the best time is when I just look like, don't talk to me, leave me alone. It's just like, that's me sitting there and being in my head and enjoying whatever is happening around me. But that's still kind of you to say. That's still kind of you to say. And also, I bring this up because stopping strangers in general got really in my head on this trip because my travel partner, I won't completely spill all of her history, but she is a mixed race person and spending a full weekend with her the amount of people who stop her and say

what are you oh boys very surprising to me i knew it happened a lot i i assumed it happened a lot but like i i never spent like 72 hours with with her, because she is a woman, the amount of people who will talk to her right out in the world was, was surprising. No matter how many times I've had female friends who've been like, I've been catcalled and I, and like the amount of guys that bother me on the street when I'm walking around is, is, is devastating. No matter how many times you hear that, it's still like crazy to actually see it like be a be a uh a partner to it and and just watch it happen right and uh it gave me a lot of thoughts on it as a person who has never catcalled or stopped in the streets

and uh one of the things was like first of all don't ever ask anyone what what they are that just seems like a strange and weird thing to do that she gets a whole like an alarming amount one of the things was like, first of all, don't ever ask anyone what, what they are. That just seems like a strange and weird thing to do that she gets a whole, like an alarming amount. And the other, I started thinking about, um, so there's like the conventional assumption of aggressive catcalls where it's, you're objectifying a woman. There's your construction worker being like, Hey baby, you're an object. Come over here and give me a gander of that butt or whatever. That's the far end, terrible end of the spectrum, the extreme. And there's also like the more...

Sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say, your old coworker, Josh Gondelman, has a really great bit about that where he says that when men catcall a woman, it's always, hey, nice boob. And does that butt go all the way in? Those are his examples. And I just love it.

the shallower end of that spectrum where it's things that don't seem as aggressive where it's like, you should smile more or a guy stopping woman on the street to be like, Oh my God, you look beautiful. And the, the common male response when women are unhappy with that is, Hey, it's a compliment.

And that's, that's a flaw I find in the male logic of catcalling. And to be clear, it's the one flaw. Like, in general, all male logic is great. But the one flaw that I found is them saying like, hey, it's a compliment. Don't even worry about it. From my perspective, I, as a person who walks down streets in the city, I don't even want to be complimented. Like, I don't want anyone to talk to me at all.

Maybe it's different in, I mean, it's surely different in suburbs. If I'm walking my dog in the suburb and someone wants to talk to me, I will always want to talk. But if you're in a city, which is where I am now, I don't want anyone to talk to me for any reason like you can say the nicest thing in the world and it's still just like yeah i'm shut the fuck up i'm listening to a podcast about robocalls leave me alone yeah i don't want to talk to anyone dan there was an article that made the rounds on like twitter that uh the title of the article was uh how Get a Girl's Attention When She Has Headphones On.

And it was like a list of like hand signals. This was recently? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like last week or so. That is an affront. It was like hand signals and like mouthing words and then like pantomiming

take off your headphones. And then the net result was like if she didn't take off her headphones, like you didn't do a good enough job of communicating that. It made me think of how much you would hate to have someone hit on you in that way. That's what I'm trying to think about. All those men who make those arguments that are like, no, I'm just trying to get your attention so I can give you a compliment. And then maybe we can have a conversation and maybe we can go on a date after that.

And maybe we can fall in love. The core of that is like, yeah, but, but you as a man, if you're sitting there listening to your headphones, would you want someone to like wave their hands in front of your face and get your attention and like mime for you to pull your headphones off so they could talk to you i don't know i mean that person's already a hole for me i'm unique in that i i've you've i'm sure you've had that happen before not because they're they're they want something sexual from you but like there are people in your life who are like not one single time sorry you'll be on a train or something like, Hey, Hey, Hey glasses. Hey. And like people trying to get your attention. And immediately I'm like, no, like you don't belong in my life. What, what is it?

And they're immediately in a hole for me. There's no way that you work your, your way out of that. If you're a dude trying to hook up with a girl that, and if you're, I just don't understand where their positive reinforcement is coming from. I can't imagine that ever is working. They're on the train like, hey, hey, she's smile. And then she smiles. And he's like, that's pretty good. I guess we're going to sleep together now.

And then it happens. It's. It's just mind boggling. It's just one of those things that like I. I mean, this is the wrong audience because. The three of us won't stop a woman in headphones on the subway and tell her to smile or tell her she's pretty or ask anything. But still, it's just a thing that pushes me further from understanding the rest of the world around me because it's just an impulse that I don't have. because it's just an impulse that I don't have because like I

frequently am at bars writing either in a notebook or on a computer and there will be people usually guys because guys are the worst who will try to get attention and be like hey hey sorry I I have to ask what are you doing what are you writing

and my immediate impulse is to be like do you have to? do you actually have to or could you just like live your fucking life that's what wants to be like, do you have to, do you actually have to, or could you just like live your fucking life? That's what wants to be out. I think, I think that's how women feel tenfold, man. Uh, but I always, I give a lot of leniency to other countries. So like when they, when I find out that people are stopping your friend and saying, Hey, what are you? I'm like, it just hasn't gotten here yet. Like 2019 hasn't arrived here yet. And I just let it go. I'm not sure if you're right about that.

That's an interesting take. Because I think, like with all things. You know they have internet in Jamaica, sorry. Yeah, I know, I know. But it's much slower there, like you should be, Daniel. Yeah, I know. I know. But it's much slower there, like you should be, Daniel. I think that like with all things, white men from America get to go first. And it's the same with being woke. You have to figure out across a broad spectrum how to be a good person to everyone. And so far, white men are failing at it. But we're first up to bat because we were the worst offenders. And so we've now, you and I at least, have had years of understanding what it means to be culturally sensitive and not a misogynist and how much of your misogyny is just ingrained in you at all.

And I don't think a lot of other people have had to deal with that yet. Yeah. I do think that's a fair point. Uh, I don't think any questions have been answered, but do you, do you, do you have any questions?

Yeah, I got a question for you. Okay. Is there a specific length to that question? It's a short question, but, uh, God fucking damn it.

Wait, did I do that? That wasn't a bit. That was a genuine swing and a miss. That was really me just eating shit. That was me going up for a dunk and hitting myself in the face with my own

testicle and knocking myself out. Dan, quick question. Go ahead. Do you know what's going on with the Antonio Brown saga right now? So this is great because you know that I'm not super following football because of CTE and racism and the Giants suck. But I saw on Twitter today that it made a headline that Antonio Brown unfollowed the Raiders on Twitter and I was like

oh knowing no context that's exciting yes that's the most recent thing that's happened I think there's been a lot that's been leading up to that that I want to go through and I think honestly it's going to make you happy that you gave up on football and why you think the NFL is terrible

I hope that i can convince you of that because right now he is he is the antagonist of nfl fans the league uh owners pretty much everybody in general and i feel like i'm the only person in the world who's like no antonio brown is right so i'm gonna just give you like a rundown of what's happened so far with him yeah because i i can't participate in any of this i can't be like i agree with you without any context because because the nfl is a minefield so he he had a there was a big falling out between him and the steelers at the end of last season uh he's one i guess i should go straight even further back than that because antonio brown is

probably the best receiver in the national football league right now um it's i guess deandre hopkins maybe is like right up there with him but he's going to be a hall of famer he's he's an outstanding player like he's head and shoulders above other people and it's he's just built different than other humans and saying to make a head and shoulders reference to a Steelers player. And it's Antonio Brown. Truly absurd. That's a joke for no one, by the way. So Antonio Brown had a falling out with the Steelers.

He didn't like the way that they were coaching. He didn't like his position on the team. They weren't throwing to him. He's like, thought Big Ben was losing it. Ben Roethlisberger, by the way, quarterback for the Steelers, potentially might have raped two women.

That's good context to have for what I'm going to talk about later. I mean, that's a generous reading of that, Soren, but go ahead. Antonio Brown, he had that falling out. He wanted to be traded,

insisted that he go to another team. And so he was traded to the, what will be the Las Vegas Raiders, but are currently the Oakland Raiders. And he's traded for like a song. It was like a third and a fifth draft pick or something like that. And everyone was like, that's crazy. The Steelers gave him up for that.

That's the best receiver in the league. So since then, he has burned his feet in a cryogenic chamber. He was trying to rehab his feet in some ice, burned off the bottom of his feet in a cryogenic chamber. Like he's, he was trying to rehab his feet in some ice, uh, burned off the bottom of his feet. We got severe frostbite in the bottoms of his feet. And like you, these blisters are the most disgusting things you've ever seen. Like skin just flapping off of his feet.

Like he's got leprosy. Uh, he had a hole in a thing where he wasn't showing up to camp or anything because the league wouldn't let him use the helmet he wanted to wear. He had like this one helmet for those 10 or 12 years old. And the league was like, no, that's, that doesn't pass concussion protocol. You need a new helmet. And he was like, no, this is my helmet. And it was a big fight between him and the NFL. And finally that was settled. Then he missed a few practices. This might've been during the helmet saga, but when he missed practices, he's got fined by the team. And so he posted about how he was being fined by

the team on Twitter, uh, saying, look, they're really trying me like they're trying this, this team. Uh, and when he was confronted about posting it on Twitter and also missing the practices and not paying the fines. He threatened Mike Malak, who's the GM of the team. He said he was going to punch him and then punted a ball and said, fine me for that. So at this point, it looks like Antonio Brown will be suspended for the first game of the season and maybe more. Nobody knows.

No one knows if he's going to be on the team anymore. Nobody knows what's going to happen because if he doesn't play his first game, they're not contractually obligated to give him all his money either. He's got like a $30 million contract and if he misses that first game, there's like a clause in there that's like if he doesn't play the very first game and we cut him, then we don't pay him any of that. This seems on service level oh also hard knocks is a show that follows one team through the preseason on hbo and they've been following the raiders and

ab is just kind of a lunatic on it like he talks a lot he found one of the through lines of the of hard knocks is that he found a mix of two gatorades that he really liked and kept trying to force it on everyone else on the team. Really insistent that everybody else drink it. It's just two Gatorades together. Immediately I have two quick questions that I know are wrong. One, how was Antonio Brown's punt? Was he good? How was the punch that he made? You said that he was going to punch that he made so you said that he was gonna he was gonna punch the owner

of the team and then he punted a football oh how good was his punt oh that's a great question i don't actually know how good his punt was okay uh second quick question uh do you know what the two gatorades were i think one was one was melon and i think the other one might have been berry uh i'll have to go back and watch the episode. That's pedestrian, but go on. Yeah. It's some,

it wasn't even like the, the primary colors of Gatorade. It was like, he had already gone to the fringes and then was like, how much more fringe could we go? And he made a punch out of it. Um, but anyway,

he, he comes across the, the whole thread of, of hard knocks is that he looks like a lunatic. And that's basically the going consensus among everyone right now is that this man has just lost his mind. And I think they're wrong. And I want to talk about it, not only because I'm following football, but because I think it relates to our life, like a bigger concept of what society is like for these guys and for people who are at the top of their game, uh,

in general and whatever field you happen to be in. I think that Antonio Brown is somebody who he has been good for a very, very long time. He's been good for like, I think he's been maybe the top receiver for the past five years. That sounds about right. And when you're at the top like that, like,

you know what works for you. Like, you know who your trainer, what trainers are going to be the best for you, what type of training is going to be best for you. And so the fact that he's missing these early practices don't really matter. One of the things about Hard Knocks is you see how hard he actually is training and how good he is.

And he's excellent. And when he gets on the field, John Gruden, who's the coach of the Raiders, is like, oh, man, you know the playbook. He knows all his routes. They've got like nothing bad to say about his actual play. He knows what he's doing to get his body in shape. And so the fact that he's missing practices is like, it's, I try, I think it's like the equivalent of when you and I were at cracked and the bigger company that own cracked would

say, it's important that all of you are here every single day and doing your work. You're not allowed to work from home. It's just, we don't, there's no real good reason for it. It just looks better if the team is here. And what it meant was that when you were sitting in an open air office, you're not actually getting any of your real writing done. You can't work in that environment. Like you lived where you lived at home and where you would do your ordinary work. Like you have to get into a mindset to be in that right position and do it. Right. And when we would go into the office,

you're just like, you're just, you're sitting there to just to be ahead in the office and then waiting to go home and doing your work at night instead. And it was such a weird request that was not about like getting, it wasn't about like bringing the team together. And I don't think that's what this case is either. Cause he's,

he hasn't faltered at all. He's not faltering on the field at all. His chemistry with your car is what they're concerned about. Like that's not happening either. He's got it. The problem is that it's like a control thing. Like the team wants that kind of control. They want the team unity, the sense that everyone in this team, there's nobody bigger than the team and everybody does this together. And I just don't think that's right for some players. Like if you're the very, very best, those other people aren't like you. Not only that, they're you actually going and doing this is keeping you from the real work you could be doing.

And he knows what his real work is. Like he's been at the top of his game for so long. He knows exactly what it takes to get his body in shape. And so they're like forcing this weird thing on him and he didn't want to do it. I think Allen Iverson is a really good example too. And Allen Iverson a long time ago was like, and we're talking about practice. Like he missed a couple of practices and like the team was mad at him. And he's like, it's just practice. Like I know how to play this game.

I know what I need to do to get ready for a game. Let me do that. And I promise if you start to fail in that regard, like you're not doing well on the field, then you've got to reevaluate. But if you're getting your shit done, then I don't understand what the big deal is. But here's how I want to connect this to bigger things, is that somebody like Antonio Brown, what he's doing right now is not super uncommon, but it is something that we only really attack when it's people of color in the sports industry.

There are a lot of other people who have had big complaints or big problems with the organization that they're part of, or they're having hissy fits about things that they don't like within their particular job set, and they complain about it, and then everyone's like, oh, yeah, that doesn't seem fair. That doesn't seem fair. Like John Elway. John Elway started with the Broncos after he was drafted by the Colts and then said, no, I'm not playing for them. And everyone in the NFL was like, oh, okay, how about the Broncos?

And he was like, yeah, okay, I'll play for them. The fact that he's leaving a team where Ben Roethlisberger probably raped two women back in the early 2000s. And everyone was like, ah, but he's such a good quarterback. Man, what a skill set he's got.

He's a smart guy, that man. And there's a lot Aaron Rodgers just this last offseason who's the Green Bay Packers quarterback he had some he said some really bad things about his new coach because the coach had said I'm not going to let him call audibles and Aaron Rodgers was like well you better find a new quarterback then and he wasn't getting his way so he was like no that's not how we do things. That's not how I do it. And everyone was on Aaron Rodgers side. But I think people are just sort of like waiting for people of color to mess up. They're just like they want it almost.

It's weird. Like people wanted to hate Cam Newton. Like they're just looking for a reason to really hate Cam Newton for a very long time. They were looking for Terrell Owens ended up being a little crazy. But like I think that media and culture sort of made him crazy. He was a good player and, and he knew what it took to be that good player. And everyone's like,

no, you got to do it our way. You're part of the system. We own you. Like we, you're, you're under our control. You're on our team.

You play by our rules, which, you know, it's a company. I guess they understand that a little bit, but it's, it's, it's a, it's a company, but I mean, rules, which, you know, it's a company. I guess I understand that a little bit, but it's... It's a company, but I mean, I... Several thoughts on this.

To begin with, and I feel fairly out of my depth here as a white man talking to another white man while their white buddy listens, it's... while their white buddy listens. Of course, things are more difficult for people of color. 1,000%, you could see that across every industry, and certainly as you're bringing up with NFL and sports. But separate from that, I think I agree with you because I'm generally player positive, player first, as opposed to team first, team positive, and certainly league first, league positive. on NFL these days as much as I am NBA,

which is my favorite sport now and the most exciting and dramatic sport that is happening in America. But just because I'm a huge Kevin Durant fan and have followed him when he left OKC to Golden State Warriors, and everyone was like, there's no loyalty. OKC made him. He could have created a dynasty there and it was so great

for oklahoma city and now he's he's just chasing rings with his company and there were there was so many narratives about that and now it's happening again with him leaving okc to come to new york and all these people who were like oh God, you were part of this dynasty with the Warriors and now you're doing this new thing and we hate that too. I'm just like, any player who can exert any kind of control over their career should do it because there's absolutely no loyalty coming down from the top. This is still a league where the Clippers sent Blake Griffin to fucking Detroit. The Clippers sent Blake Griffin to fucking Detroit. And so if Antonio Brown is trying to like stand out and advocate for himself as a player who was like, look, I'm the guy.

I'm the best receiver. I should be in charge of my career. I shouldn't be at the mercy of any other person. I I'm in support of that personally. Yeah. Go ahead. It's crazy. It's crazy to me too. Like these guys, the very, very best ones are basically savants.

And in the case of Antonio Brown, he's like literally over a many year period, the best person, what he does. I don't even think he's the most physically gifted either. So a lot of that is like mental route running, all these crazy things, force of will. And there's just some other dude and a bunch of other dudes who never did the thing that he was, uh, that he's so good at telling him what to do and thinking, Hey, I should, you need to be in here and listening to me because I know how to do this thing that, that you have already succeeded at, uh, in an insane way.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's what training camp is. And that's what always, he's been missing so far training camp, but he got, that's where you're like teaching the fundamentals of football.

And it's like you, Dan, a writer having to take a three month course where you're like, just learning cursive. You're like, what the fuck is the point of this? Like I look, I did this a long time ago.

I know how to do this. I know what's best for me. And because he is so much better than everybody else. And like, we just have to pretend like he's not built different. Like he's a different type of human being and he's so good. Like let him be good. It's always some like shit can wide receiver coach too.

Like you don't recognize him. He hasn't done really anything. And he's telling the guy who's the best at what he does for the longest time and the most competitive thing in the world that he needs to be there listening to him. The more I started thinking about this, I started thinking about other positions and like how we treat the people in other positions. And it was for a long time, any sort of defensive player who was any good, if they were white, they were a good guy.

And if they were black, man, they were a bad guy. There's like Clay Matthews. He was a good guy. J.J. Watt. These guys, their whole job is to hit people to death, basically. They hit people so hard. But we constantly see them as like, oh, no, those are good guys.

Those are really corn-fed boys. But then if you look at any of the linebackers or linemen who are black who are really good at the game, they are the villains of the league. There's Dominick Nsou, there's Trill... Wait, what's Suggs' first name? Trill Suggs.

Yeah. Up until probably Von Miller, they were just bad guys. People liked rooting for bad guys a little bit because they were knocking the heads off like bad guys like they were and people like rooting for bad guys a little bit because they were knocking the heads off of people but they're like the image of them was important culturally

and it's crazy that we did that for so long and nobody called attention to it I'm sure people did call attention to it nobody in my little tiny circle called attention to it right perhaps no one in the world did. Anyway, I'm on his side.

I think I try to equate it to things and jobs that I've had. And I'm like, yeah, if somebody came into my job and they're like, oh, by the way, we're working on these new ergonomic keyboards and you have to use it. I'd be like, no. Yeah. No, it's going to waste a bunch of my of my time like let me just use my old keyboard and they're like i i do think it's it's tough because uh i i mostly agree with you i would say like 80 agree with you but um working with you a lot of what we did at Cracked, when we're not shooting a sketch that was already written, or a series that was already written, your responsibility was managing

stuff on your own schedule or producing a weekly column on your own schedule, which is like both solo efforts. And I think in that case, it's fine to make your own schedule and just be like, Hey, I'm, I'm a professional and I'm good. I'm talented. I'm going to handle my shit and make sure I never miss a deadline. But being on a sports team feels a little bit different to me. Does it not to you? The aspect of it that feels different

is that you have to create that sense of chemistry and camaraderie with the rest of your team. But you do see some of that. We have the luxury of hard knocks where like he's me, he might be a crazy person, but when you're watching him with everybody else on the team, he's so humble and great and kind to every single person on the team. He knows everybody's names. He's like, he's talking to guys who are on the bubble that probably won't make the team like they're like they're veterans like there's no hierarchy for him he's he's really he knows the sport backwards and forwards it's clear yeah and they're just like no like we have to exert some control over this guy we cannot let him be so flashy wow well i think that concludes sports corner

sorry about that I don't think our audience has and this is a criticism of them I don't think they've defined themselves yet as far as what they want from us so maybe it's sports I'm really banking

on it not being sports but I wanted to talk about this So maybe it's sports. I'm really banking on it not being sports. But I wanted to talk about this because it seemed like there was nobody else taking this position. Again, I'm out of football. If he doesn't play, is there a chance he goes somewhere else? Yeah, I think so. In two weeks? I don't really know either. I think, yeah, there is.

Although a lot of teams have already made all their moves. They don't really have the cap space for somebody who's that big. He would either have to take a pay cut. Julio Jones is not signed yet either. Yeah, but that seems like a deal that's going to be done by Sunday. Okay, that's just him. That's strategy? Yeah.

But yeah, there's like... Melvin Gordon's trying to get signed somewhere else too, or at least traded. But somebody like Antonio Brown, he gets paid so much and no other team, all their teams have basically rounded out their team. They know who they've got. There are some teams that have kind of weak receivers at the point at this

point, but paying whatever his salary would be really, really tough. So he'd have to take a pay cut to go play at the Patriots or whatever, or he would, uh, and like be pretty much guaranteed to go into the, or he would be pretty much guaranteed to go into the playoffs, or he's just going to

end up having to play for Oakland. How many years do you think he has left, by the way? He's 30 right now. I bet he's got another three before he even starts slowing down. Man. Well, we're probably wrapping up here. Bacon, was uh barth barthelona

oh it's great dan i was uh i we went to a bunch of rooftop bars um and i oh you gotta you gotta when you're in europe or whatever i this is genuine have you guys the architecture the gaudy architecture is cuckoo if you see it in real life. It is the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. Just bacon having tapas on the top of my building being like, this is cuckoo. That is exactly what happens.

Hey, como se dice cuckoo? I had a great time though, Dan. That's good. I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. Well, we are at the end of our show, Dan. Oh, yeah. I am going to quickly look up our outros and figure out all the Twitter handles and everything like that.

As quick as you can. I wanted to just quickly give you a chance to talk about something that you said to me recently about sports. You said steroids saved sports. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, I would absolutely love to talk about that. So a thing that happens with, um, writing my field, uh, is you spend so much time working on it and I just feel like all I'm doing is training. And if you do it well enough, you learn from the best writers,

the best authors, the best comedians, the best thinkers, the best minds. And you have access at your fingertips of all of the best writing that's ever happened. And that makes me a best writer. It's just like the things that are around me that I can consume make me the best writer. And I think similarly, the best doctors, you know, they're not just like,

you're not born a naturally good doctor. You go to school, you train, you surround yourself with greatness. And with sports, you train and you surround yourself with other people who are great at sports. And then if you find another thing, whether it's, in my case, a book, and in doctors' cases, a book, or in athletes' cases,

you know, a needle or whatever from a doctor who studied from books, so it's the same thing, then you're not really doing anything wrong. You're using the world. You're using the environment to dedicate yourself to being better at this one skill. And if that's a crime, lock me up. Not me, obviously, specifically, but other people. Lock them up. But also don't because according

to the train of thought that I'm making right now, I'm fine with the idea of drugs and baseball. I truly am. I'm on a separate... So the point of these bits is that Soren and I ruin each other's lives. But in actuality, I think as long as the odd...

I would say change the culture before you change the drugs. Man, it sucks that I believe this. But right now we have a culture where we want our football players to be like giant, impossibly huge, impossibly fast monsters that run into each other every day. And we want our baseball players to hit more home runs than they ever have before in the history of time. Despite the fact that bodies aren't naturally getting better, we still want that because we have this insatiable need for bigness and greatness and improvement. And if we tamp down the culture, that's good. We should do that. But if we're not, then yeah, let them use drugs. Let them take steroids because they're fulfilling a need. I don't know. I'll say, Dan, that train that you were

constructing as it was speeding across the tracks has pulled smoothly into the station. That was great. Thanks. I come from a long line of train people. Oh, shit. I forgot that. On Twitter, you can follow Daniel at DOB underscore Inc. You can follow me at Soren, S-O-R-E-N underscore L-T-D.

You can follow Michael Sroar at MakeMeBacon, please. That's bacon spelled P-L-S. Or you can follow QuickQuestion at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. Have you posted anything on that, Bacon? The Twitter? Yeah. Yeah, post on the Twitter all the time. Oh, man, it's hot out there.

Like, it's on fire. Check it out multiple times a day. Bacon, what was the last post that you did that wasn't a plug for the show? I've liked a lot of posts and retweet a lot of posts. You have to remind me that we should tweet every time we've got an episode out, which is, which is great mentorship.

So when you said I post all the time, that was a bit of an overstatement. Yes. Yeah. I'm engaging a lot though. People know that I, I engage. He's out there.

He's circulating. Uh, okay. You can, you can email us at qq with soren and daniel at gmail.com not the name of the show but i mean pretty close

you can follow us on instagram at qq underscore with underscore soren underscore and underscore daniel you know what we should just stop talking about instagram we don't even post a single thing on there alright well then we'll talk about it once we put a single thing on there once we find're going to get there. All right. Well, then we'll talk about it once we put a single thing on there. Once we find it again, we'll put something on there. Or you can follow, find, or hire

our producer and sound engineer and editor, Vincent, at SiliconBeachPodcast.com. We also have a Patreon. That's Patreon backslash quick question. Give us some money. Dan and I like to poo-poo the idea of you giving us money but then I realized how in the whole bacon was funding this podcast and now I think you should give us money no no no give us money unless like

even though a hurricane is literally devastating the Bahamas and a large part of the Carolinas and Florida. Definitely give us your disposable income. Dan's only saying that because he's got skin in the game. He's been down in the islands.

Bacon, who just came back from Barcelona, can get out of the hole he's apparently in. Financial hurricane. See you guys later. Bye. Yeah, let's go. Bye. Bye.

Bye.