Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 56 - Your Mothers Pajamas!
Episode Date: September 11, 2020In this episode the guys ask each other some pretty quick questions, and also Soren tries to do the intro and Daniel verbally accosts him. Also big thanks to our two sponsors. First thanks to RAYCO...N! Get 15% off your order at buyraycon.com/QQ . Also big thanks to MyBookie. Visit MyBookie Online today, and use the promo code qq when creating your account to double your first deposit.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Dan.
The show where two boys on opposite ends of the coast, and I'm going to say spectrum,
have the courage to come together and be friends.
We're brave, really, honestly, on this show.
You'll notice things are a little different this time if you're a famous listener of this
show.
Dan usually does these intros, and today I'll be doing it. I am one of
your hosts. I'm Soren, a wood whisperer, worm bin curator, red meat refuser, who no longer keeps in
touch with his high school friends because they all went on to be professional athletes. And I'm
worried that dropping a line will seem like maybe I want something. So if you're listening, Max,
I'd love to get back in touch with you. You have to pull the trigger, though. And the other half of this podcast, of course, is Daniel O'Brien.
Say hello, Dan.
Hello, I am Daniel.
I am a musician, beatboxer, and I just have to say profoundly disappointed in how you handled the introduction of this podcast.
Really?
Yeah.
Okay, can we go beat by beat on what went wrong there?
Really?
Yeah.
Okay.
Can we go beat by beat on what went wrong there?
I'd have to, I'd have to listen to it again.
Do you remember what you said?
Yeah.
I said it was a, well, I mean, it started like you. And then I said that there was a show where I started with a hello.
You said, so you said two best friends who were on two boys,
two boys who were on both sides, both.
I saw an opposite ends of the coast and also both sides of the spectrum.
Yeah.
What do you think you meant when you said that?
Like a year, you're like a different type of person
than i am like you're you're kind of introverted and like uh you think about how you interact with
the world because it drives you crazy to get anything wrong and me i'm on the other end i'm
bold and brash and like i'm out there i'm just taking risks okay so in your mind the spectrum is if the spectrum is one to ten one is where i am which is
introverted and thoughtful and ten is where you are which is bold and brash yeah okay is that
do you not like that spectrum that's you think when you say the spectrum, you mean that.
And do you think that that is accessible to most people?
Well, I assume most people think about the spectrum in terms of color.
Like there's a color spectrum.
But, you know, there's not a lot separating us in terms of color
there's that's true here's what i've learned you're not allowed to introduce the show anymore
even when i'm tired even when i'm, even when I'm in the middle of a very demanding work week,
I can't just kick it off to Soren. Well, hold on a second. All right.
It was, I would, I should let time decide, obviously, because it's possible that the
audience will be like, yes, what a breath of fresh air that was. He was awesome.
Yes. What a breath of fresh air that was. He, he was awesome.
Do you think that might happen?
I mean, anything's possible, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to,
I don't want to Kevin Garnett this entire podcast, but anything's possible.
Here's the other thing, Daniel,
you told me five minutes before the podcast,
why don't you do the intro this time?
That's fair. And then you threw me under the bus.
That's fair.
That's on me.
Opposite ends of the coast.
That was obviously not right.
I'll give you that.
Yeah.
Opposite ends of the country, I should have said.
I think, you know what I,
what this intro shows and what I love about your brain so much is your embracing of improv, that it's all yes end.
So you knew that we were on opposite sides of the country and you started with there.
You, forgive me, started with that.
And then you just continue. It, forgive me, started with that. And then you just continued.
It was like opposite ends of the country.
Yes, and opposite ends of the spectrum.
You didn't know.
You're jumping before you know that you have a place to land.
I'm a 10, Dan, on the spectrum.
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Well, usually this part of the show, we do a COVID update.
Daniel, is there anything going on in your life that's new?
Not really.
It's been more of the same.
I keep reconnecting with people from uh the the the past i don't know if this
has happened to you but like there there are people that i i've known for years but i have
completely lost track of that now are reaching out via like instagram DMs or Gmail or whatever, where like, it's clearly people are
scraping the bottom of the barrel of their contacts. And they're just like, ah, let's see
who else, who else? Oh, Daniel, we did a play in 1999. What's up? How are you doing? I find myself reconnecting with people that I haven't talked to in like truly years just because we're like no one knows what to do anymore.
And like I've we've all exhausted our close personal relationships and our family relationships at this point.
There's like who else is in my phone? What else? Well what it's like oh someone saved in my phone as
brianna tinder sure i'll see how she's doing in all this
this is exactly why i can't get in touch with max
he would just see that coming a mile away. He'd be like, what does he need?
How about you?
Do you have any COVID updates?
Yeah, my fucking garden is dying.
You were so proud of your garden.
I don't know what I'm doing.
It's so clear now that I don't know what I'm doing.
It's like I got to that next level and it's where I need to know more stuff and I don't.
So they, then they're dying in interesting and unique ways. Like the tomatillo plant is just
changing color. And the, I have a jalapeno plant and the jalapenos just stopped growing and they
started to kind of wither and wilt for some reason. Um, I don't know why my cucumber leaves have all started to turn gray uh it can't just be
seasonal i started my garden on the other side of the solstice at about this time so they would
have been getting just as much sun then as they are now uh something's eating all my tomatoes
something's eating all my lettuce i i can't stop it it's brutal out here um
so okay uh do because i know that you got some seedlings from a neighbor right yeah the tomatillo
came from a neighbor it's correct it's from a guy from work. Oh, a guy from work. Okay.
So none of your neighbors are also growing anything right now?
Well, no, I guess no.
I haven't checked in on them.
I don't know if they have anything going.
Mine is – here's the other thing.
My tomato plants got tall enough that they started to fall over.
Even with a tomato cage, the tops of them have started to topple over so i
lost some tomatoes that way i if i cut it then it starts to get an infection i what i don't know
what i'm doing yeah it's tubular so it's got oh it's really awesome no it's tubular so it's got
like if you cut it it's a little hollow on the inside and if it gets any sort of water in there
then it's just our sitting water even with dew dew from the air, then you'll start to get an
infection. And so there's all kinds of stuff that I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. And the
minute that anything goes wrong, I can't stop it. So I'm just watching this train wreck happen in
slow motion as my garden dies around me. Do you have any success stories? I know that you, you struggled with strawberry for a while.
Is, is, has, has that? Oh God. Nope. Okay. Strawberries are ancient memory. The best thing I have going right now is that I planted some edible flowers and they're all starting to
grow. Okay. And, uh, how much maintenance does that require? Like, do you, is it right?
Are you responsible for their success or is it, or is,
or is that more a nature's thing?
All I did was put some seeds in the ground and then water.
This is what I'm getting, but I bought some miracle grow and I'm hoping that it's cause I I've been putting worm compost down there and I'm wondering if
maybe that
something in there is killing them so i'm just going to go with the the chemicals that are
proven by western medicine and put those on there and see if it cures everything
it's a real bummer i don't know what i'm doing it's so it's so humbling to watch your garden die
this is it. It's rare
to hear you admit that you don't know what you're doing with the
thing.
This is like...
Alright, the podcast did not start
great, Dan. Is that what you want to hear?
It's like a very sweet
human moment
for you and our friendship.
It's like I never know what the fuck I'm doing
and I'm pretty open about it all the time. Yeah, this is, it's not going well.
Are you, uh, what are you going to do about it? It's going to take a lot of YouTube videos.
Basically, I'm going to have to sit through, look at, I mean, I started doing some research today
and some people are suggesting things like put a little soap in your water before you water these plants because it'll just her animals from
eating the leaves. But I don't know, that sounds like I'm going to kill some more animals, more
plants. Yeah. If I just put dish soap in the water, um, I can buy some screens to try and
protect the, the lettuce from these pests or try and kill whatever it is,
but I don't, it's not really on the table.
I don't want to do that.
I just have to build this screen stuff.
And then after that, like my other ones
that are just dying from something internal,
like they've got these weird bleeding ears
or whatever the signs are that they're not going to make it.
I don't know.
I have to do a bunch of research
and then try and save them. And then it becomes fall and they all die anyway right and i
think and this is like a uh a pretty strong difference between you and me you're not open
to just being like well fuck gardens then no no yeah like for me me, if I tried this for a while and I was bad at it,
then I would be like, well, I guess I don't have a garden.
Goodbye.
Like you want to get better at it.
You don't want to just like sweep under the rug a thing that you're bad at,
as I've done.
No, I have to master this. they're all counting on me right of course
uh i don't know i i would i have looked at the tomatillo plant and thought
what if i just fucking pulled it out right because like like if if i were you i would
be staring at all of these failing plants and be like, nobody asked me to do this.
I don't need to do it.
I could just shut this down right now.
I can't.
No, I can't do that.
I have to try and save it.
I have to try and right this ship.
Well, all right, Mazel.
I don't know.
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Well, anyway, we should get into our show.
Yeah.
It's only, what, 15 minutes in and we're getting to it?
That's pretty good actually
yeah most of the time we don't move this quick dan i have a quick question for you
what is the creepiest room of your house growing up or if not your house like your friend's houses
is there like some room where you're like it just fills you with anxiety we had um i don't even know if this is technically a room but so
my house growing up in hazlitt new jersey downstairs where we had the tv room and the
sump pump there was a small door that went under the stairs that uh functionally we never used for anything it wasn't storage it was just some like
haunted fucking spot that uh i don't even know if we had like proper flooring or if the ground
was just dirt i i don't i don't know it was like this this this small chunk of space under the stairs with no light and no anything. And, um, I
am certain it was haunted. And I also made it worse because, uh, I had a babysitter for like
kindergarten and maybe a year before that who would make me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
I didn't like the way she made them.
I would take them from her and be like, thank you.
And I would go downstairs and then I would throw them in this spot under the stairs.
under the stairs.
And like,
it seems like years later,
I must be wrong about that,
but it felt like years later,
my parents investigated and they were like,
there's 10,000 sandwiches
in this hidden spot
beneath our staircase.
Who did this?
It was like,
it was me.
I didn't like the way
Stella made sandwiches,
so I threw them.
There's just like
a weird,
gross cemetery
for sandwiches
and just like,
you had this hell portal
under your stairs
where you could just
toss things you didn't want.
Yeah, I was like,
this is not for me.
And then like,
best case scenario,
12 months of rotting sandwiches.
Oh God.
I would be so pissed if I was your parents.
Yeah.
Um, yeah.
Under the stairs feels like a pretty common, a common one.
I had some family friends growing up and they had an under the stairs place where there were two
uh two sisters in the family who were older than i was and occasionally they would lock me in there
as a goof yeah like it's like it's like i don't know what yours was but this there's it's a tiny
door it's it's a very small door under the stairs the door is small yeah and it's like who is that
for if not ghosts and goblins?
Right.
That is not for a human, clearly.
Something else that has a prehensile,
no, not prehensile,
a thumb that can open a doorknob
and that's for them.
Yeah.
No, I'm with you.
It is, it's very creepy
in an area like that.
And like, I think a lot of people,
basements a lot of times,
I think people are like,
no, no, no,
that's a, it's a haunted space.
For me, there was an area in friends' houses, sitting rooms.
Sitting rooms that are living rooms without a television in them or like separate from where they would watch television that was just intended for to entertain guests or whatever.
I don't know why they had sitting rooms.
Those are so fucking creepy to me it feels
like a murder room uh first of all i don't think i'm allowed inside of those even to this day
yeah they always have like a white carpet in them and the seats don't look quite like you should be
sitting on them and then on top of that i don't understand the point of could you imagine going
into one of those terrifying rooms and just sitting there and reading a book, like pretending to relax in a sitting room?
It's absurd.
Ah, this is where the men drink brandy and smoke cigars and talk about the day's events.
Like, nah, nah, that doesn't happen.
Let's just text about it.
It is a dead room.
That is not where the life of the house is.
And it feels just like this weird tumor of the house where no one actually ever goes.
And it's only designed for this one specific function that I've never even seen it used in that function.
So it was always – a sitting room was always horrifying to me.
But in our house, we had a finished basement.
By the time I was like six, we had it finished.
And there was radon gas down there. And I didn't know what that was as a kid, but my dad was like,
don't spend too much time in the basement. There's radon. And I was like, we didn't have,
we had, we had radon Chong in the basement, but that's a completely different thing.
Radon is a naturally occurring gas that I think is just underground.
I don't know how it works.
But we got greedy.
We dug too deep.
We hit radon gas.
And there was just radon gas in the basement.
And it wasn't a lot, but it meant that you shouldn't ever spend the night down there.
You shouldn't spend a bunch of hours down there.
It's poisonous, I guess.
But as a kid, I didn't understand any of that.
I just heard my dad say, don't spend too much time in the basement.
There's this thing you don't understand down there. And that was a horrifying thing to me as a child to the point where, and I think a lot of people get this. When I was, I would go down
there, I'd spend time. If I started to get creeped out, I was like, it's time to go upstairs. I have
to turn these lights out, but I have to run faster than I've ever run in my entire life or I will be caught
by radon. And so it was like one hand on the switches, the other hand on the doorframe,
like ready to just sprint my life out, turn those lights out and just fly and just try and get out
of there as quickly as possible because something is after me down there.
Would you describe every room of your house currently? The house that you have now?
Do you really want me to do that?
I do. Yeah.
All 20?
So I have a living room, our bedroom. There's like a little laundry room area that isn't really separated by a door that we've also started using as a nursery for our youngest. There is a guest bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and then an office-ish area.
Okay. So you don't have any one spot in the house that you don't know what to do with no no we've that that
space where we now have a nursery will be it when she's older and when she moves into ronan's room
with him we will that will be this just space that we're like okay um a reading nook maybe yeah
all right well i thought that question would be more fruitful
uh i still haven't been in my crawl space yet daniel okay that's good but i let's talk on that
thread i'll tell you that while most people find crawl space is very very terrifying I find them very soothing. I like the whole process of putting on a big suit
that allows me to get all the way down in there,
a headlamp.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Are you familiar with crawl spaces?
I thought so.
I don't know how far back I should start.
I thought so, but...
The floor is dirt generally in them.
They're musty they're uh they
have cobwebs so you you put on like a painter's suit basically something that covers you from
head to toe something with a hood something with booties on it okay so you can get on your belly
and like crawl through there otherwise you're coming out and you're just filthy so i put the
suit on get down in the crawl space and the
ground's always very cool down there it's nice and quiet i will i can go into a crawl space at night
i fought ants at night in my old crawl space and i loved it i loved the process of like getting
down in there in the middle of the night i i honestly don't know what to say
i i honestly don't know what to say
so when you were a kid and you would have to go out into the snow and you knew that you had on your full snowsuit and like you were just you were impenetrable to that snow it could not
fuck with you right how good that felt when you were a kid, you were like shielded from it. Yes. Okay.
It's that feeling.
All right.
As an adult.
Yeah.
But yeah, the world down there can't touch me because I'm wearing my suit.
When you say you're, you're fighting ants in the middle of the night, what is it?
Oh, sorry.
So in the, in the summers in LA, you'll know this.
The ants will come into wherever you live because they need water desperately.
You can find them around cups all like circled the rim, like some sort of ritualistic sacrifices.
They're all drinking from it.
They get into your house no matter what.
Finding the trail of ants then will lead you to their nest.
And at my old house, I had a nest underneath the house.
And the only way to get to it was to go into the crawl space. And I, every time that I'd find a trail of ants in the house, I would get a little
excited because I was like, okay, I get to get in the crawl space and go do this cathartic thing,
go clean out this badness, this toxin in my house. And so I will get down there with a shovel and
some bleach and just start digging in the dirt where their nest is watching all of them come up and then pouring some bleach on it and then just like spending
some time in the piece of the crawl space okay that um how how tight is that the crawl space
that one you wouldn't have been able to raise your your head all the way up if you were on your belly. Okay. That's nightmare territory for me. I don't consider myself a person who's claustrophobic,
but I do frequently have nightmares about crawling into a space where I can't turn around
within that space. And that's like a deal breaker for me.
And, and that's like a, a, a deal breaker for me.
Yeah. Okay. I know. I get that.
And there are some points in this where, you know, there's nails sticking out of the ceiling. You can get caught on and there's,
it was an old house.
So there's a lot of weird stuff down there that you, you could get trapped in.
Yeah. I mean, that's like, I'm fine with nails. Fuck me up.
Scratch my back. I don't care. Yeah. I mean, that's like, I'm fine with nails. Fuck me up, scratch my back.
I don't care,
but I,
I,
I need the freedom to be able to like turn around in a space.
I,
I feel that moment of panic when I'm trying to like,
trying to figure out what I like about it.
I,
there's,
there is that moment of panic where like,
I can't turn around for a moment or I'm stuck somewhere.
And I, I'm like at any point, I can't just get up if i wanted to i'd have to it can take me another 10 minutes to get all the way back to the entrance and yeah and out and there's part of me that feels
like but i'm okay like the fact that i'm okay with that makes me feel stronger okay in a weird way
where like i feel more invincible and then i feel better about myself and in turn it makes me feel stronger in a weird way where like I feel more invincible and then I feel better
about myself. And in turn, it makes me like the space more. All right. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe
that's not healthy. I don't know. Whether you're working out from home or working on your fitness,
you want to be listening to what you're listening to, not what your family, your coworkers,
that other guy on the train is listening to.
I've got a new place where I've decided I'm going to be listening to music, down in my crawl space,
ladies and gentlemen. I think that if I can get down there, away from my family, have a nice,
cool, relaxing afternoon down in the cold dirt and just listen to my favorite Spin Doctors album,
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Do you have any questions for me?
I do, yeah.
So, like, this is a variation on something we've talked about before,
but quick question.
We've talked about movies that you've loved as a kid or that you had loved as a kid that um you're kind of embarrassed by now like i talked
about garden state certainly um yeah i i wonder if you had anything like that for music songs or
albums that really resonated with you in high school that now as an adult you're like i can't
believe that yes that mattered to me yes oh that was a quick
yes okay great yeah um i was i was obsessed with a song by spin doctors
there was a song called Two Princes.
The first time I heard it was in the movie,
So I Married an Ex-Murderer.
This is not a bit.
No.
I love it.
Okay.
And I was so enamored with this song
that my brother had the soundtrack
to So I Married an Ex-Murderer.
Didn't want me in his room
because I was four years younger than him.
But I would sneak in when he wasn't there and play Two Princes on his CD player. And then
I had a school dance coming up. And at the school dances, this is in middle school,
the school dances, you were allowed to bring your own CD if there was like a song you wanted to play.
And I was like, you know, other kids are bringing slow songs because nobody dances to anything other
than slow songs. But in my mind, I was like, my school needs to hear this. It's
important. And so I stole my brother where I borrowed my brother's CD, brought it, wrote down
the track number on the front on some masking tape, gave it to John Chukowitz, famously the DJ
of our middle school dances now in high school and remember we used to
make names like that john chuckowitz
and he didn't play it the whole the whole night and at the end i went up to be like what the fuck
can i have my cd back and he was like i don't know what you're talking about
and so i never got it back and i felt awful and never told my brother, but he clearly was like,
where's, where's my, so I married an ax murderer soundtrack.
And I was like, I don't know, man. I don't know.
Are you sure you didn't leave it at school?
He's like, why would I fade to school? Yeah. so uh i i loved them so much that then they had
another album called pocket full of kryptonite and the first song on it was jimmy olsen blues
and i bought that album listened to it over and over again and loved loved the spin doctors
and i've since tried to go back and like try and recapture that love at least find
like some nostalgia for it it's gone this it's so bad the spin doctors are terrible what about
two princes resonated with you in 1990 past
so i didn't know all the lyrics then and And if you listen to the lyrics now, they're pretty dumb.
Yeah.
But I don't even know who the protagonist of that song is.
Nobody does.
Nobody does.
Also, you marry him.
Your father will disown you.
Don't disown you.
You marry me.
No.
Yeah.
You marry me.
Your father will condone you.
You marry him.
Your father will condone you.
You marry me.
Your father will disown you.
He'll eat his hat now. Yes yes like lines like that are what make
that sound great but like the prince who is not the speaker i guess uh doesn't seem too bad like
i have not i've i've been given no reason to assume that the second Prince is a piece of
shit. It sounds like he is, if anything, a wealthier version.
Yeah. I think,
I think it might be like a Jolene situation where he's acknowledging the other
guys better, but he's like, come on, please just stay with me.
Pick me, pick me, please.
Which I think was maybe a common thread of the 90s for male protagonists.
But I loved that song. And I think there were certain songs along the way where there was a girl that I liked and there was just a song where I was like, yeah, this person gets it.
This is what love is.
And I think that i was i had
that song attached to a certain girl and in my mind i was like the this song is her that i will
listen to the song and i will think of her by the way her name tina chuck, the younger sister of John Chukowitz. Oh, gosh.
Oh, it all comes together and is still ultimately meaningless.
What about you?
I have what I feel like is a much more like right down the middle of the road answer is Sc screaming and fell screaming infidelities by dashboard confessional okay the dashboard confessional was popular it's it was incredibly popular but it was
also uh like he was always singing about things that I hadn't experienced and couldn't really understand.
Like Screaming Infidelities was a song about being cheated on and being heartbroken about it and not quite being able to move on.
And I was listening to it at like 16 years old being like, yeah, this is the same as what I'm going through.
Yeah, of course.
Because I have a crush on a girl who doesn't like me.
There's just you like,
it's funny when you're young how you latch onto the yearning of a song
without really understanding what the song is.
And you're just like, I also yearn.
Right.
He's like right he's like he's he's talking about
like clutching the sheets that they used to share together and i'm sitting there at 16 years old
being like yeah no that's true i i i also would like to make out with someone. Our feelings are the same. And so it was just sort of like a broad idea of
love or did you, do you always have somebody in mind that you were like, this is the girl?
No, the thing is, um, I think for the majority of high school, I was so enamored by the idea of being heartbroken that I didn't have a person in mind, really.
Like I would every once in a while dip into like, oh, I've decided I'm in love with this girl
right now. But for the most part, I, it like, this is, again, we're dipping into a therapy session. I was really into the idea of being a heartbroken romantic.
So songs like this were like really resonated for me where it was like I just – at 16, 15, 17 years old, I wanted to be a person who had been like through the ringer and totally heartbroken and
destroyed. And even if I had none of the raw material to justify that, I was just super
enamored by the idea. So in high school, there was a band that I got very into punk when I was
in high school, as I assume you did with Dashboard Confessional. It was the same kind of punk I was into,
which is a very accessible punk.
Where you're like, oh, Blink-182.
Okay, that's way more my speed than Suicide Machines.
Yeah.
And there was a band called Mill and Colin.
Have you ever heard of them?
Mill and Colin? Spell it.
M-I-L-L-E-N-C-O-L-I-N.
No, I've never heard of it okay this was a band from sweden
they sang in english they were a punk band i would put them in like the same category as lag
wagon or the newfound glory was too political uh newfound glory was too political newfound
glory isn't that what they're maybe i'm thinking
of a different thing were you thinking of black flag no newfound glory is so not political
really okay we have to have what we'll have because i i want you to continue your story
but to begin with yeah umboard Confessional is not punk.
So we have to have a whole separate podcast where we talk about music, but go on.
It's pop punk.
Isn't it pop punk?
I would say Dashboard is emo.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So emo, yeah.
You're probably right.
That's a whole nother genre that I never really got into.
But let me go back to Mill and
Colin real quick. Mill and Colin was a band that was from Sweden. They sang in English.
As a result, some of their lyrics were a little tough to understand. And I loved this band. And
I think I might like it for the same reason that I like Two Princes. Two Princes was a band where
I also, or it was a song where I also had a hard time understanding all the lyrics. And so I could
kind of just put whatever meaning I wanted into it. And just the strain in the voice
was the emotion that I was after. Like whatever the sound of it was, was the emotion I was chasing.
And then I could just put my own lyrics to it. Mill and Colin had a album called Life on a Plate
that I really, really loved. It's got like pop, punky beat to it. And then there
was a one follow-up called for monkeys and for monkeys, I would listen to all the time. Cause
it was like, right when I was leaving high school, going to college and it felt like every song was
about leaving your friends and how like, you're going to try, but it's just like, this is the end.
This is the end of something. And I loved that about it.
I listened to it all the time.
I went back and listened to it at the gym the other day. And I was like,
that is not what any of these lyrics are about.
There's nothing in here about any of that.
And so it was just these albums where I didn't understand what they were,
what the lyrics were. It might've been Sigur would've been, uh, Sigur Rós,
like Sigur Rós sings in nonsense.
And that's what I wanted all throughout high school was a band that was just
like,
could fill the space that then I could drop my emotions into.
Yeah.
It's,
it's so wild looking at the lyrics for,
uh,
that dashboard song right now,
as I'm doing.
And I'm so embarrassed.
Like, lyrics.
As for now, I'm going to hear the saddest songs
and sit alone and wonder how you're making out.
As for me, I wish I was anywhere with anyone making out.
That's so fucking stupid.
Just the idea of singing about making out is stupid.
And secondarily, the idea of singing about sitting around listening to sad songs is so fucking dumb.
And at 16 years old, I was listening to this song and being like yep
this is the peak of emotional intelligence i'm listening to a song about listening to sad songs
yeah i'm deep thank god i have a leader to guide me through this darkness
i i'm looking as i'm looking at the lyrics to this song from Mel and Colin.
It's called Lights Out.
No, I don't want you to do that.
I want you to listen.
I want you to look up the lyrics for Two Princes.
Okay.
Don't change the rules.
All right.
Let me go look up Two Princes.
I could probably just sing it for you.
I think that I know it that well.
I do.
And full disclosure, I love that song. do like and i full disclosure i love that song
it's a great song i love that album
though so i married an ex-murderer soundtrack yeah
it had a toad the westbrook song on it too unfortunately no i mean the actual spin doctors album okay all right the one with uh 4 30
okay yeah oh yeah am i late no just early yeah yeah and was a your mama's a pajama on that one
okay yeah so this is a you know how it goes There's a two princes kneel before you. That's
what I said. Now, princes, princes who adore you just go ahead. Now one has diamonds in his pockets.
That's some bread now. I don't know what that means. This one said he wants to buy you rockets
ain't in his head now. Right. So that's, that's my, my first problem with Spin Doctors Two Princes is at that point, the narrator is describing two princes.
Somewhere in the song, it shifts perspective and the narrator becomes, I believe, one of the princes.
Yeah.
I don't know that that's unprecedented, though.
Like in songs, there's always like that
a song will be frequently be about she like or this woman and then the chorus will be like you
and so you're singing about somebody in the third person and all of a sudden you're singing to
somebody and he's i think he's just flipping the script and being like here's this third person
but no it's me this time. Okay.
Head of the game.
Okay, this one got a princely racket.
Mm-hmm.
A princely racket.
That's what I said now.
Got some big seat upon, I don't know.
Oh, seal upon his jacket.
Yeah.
Okay.
Ain't in his head now.
Oh, we're back.
We're back to ain't in his head now.
You marry him. Your father will condone you. How about that now? You marry me. Your father will disown you. Okay. So then we've now switched from omniscient second person narrator to
a participant in the narrative, right? We've gone from there are two princes, and I'm going to describe them both, to now I am one of the princes.
And by the rules of narrative logic, you should favor me over the other one.
Even though we've been given no reason to assume that the other prince is bad.
No, in fact, he's the only one that has actual princely ties.
Correct. Because he goes on to say, marry him or marry me. I'm the one who loves you, No, in fact, he's the only one that has actual princely ties. Correct.
Because he goes on to say,
marry him or marry me.
I'm the one who loves you, baby.
Can't you see?
I ain't got no future or family tree,
but I know what a prince and lover ought to be.
So he's just calling himself a prince.
Yeah.
Even though he's got no qualifications
in that department.
Anyway, I love this goddamn song. I was nobody was a nobody and tina chuckowitz she just needed
she like wilt hardiff what what did he have to offer what is uh what's up yeah he was cool
yeah half his head was shaved sure but what's uh uh tina chuck on us what's she up to now
i don't know i've checked in on her in a while.
I imagine she's got a family somewhere in Colorado.
But I don't know what she's up to.
We did date briefly.
Okay.
So what's the fucking problem?
At the time, Dan. At the time we were not dating.
And at the time I had a crush and you know,
but I'm a 10 on the spectrum. So I followed through.
Do you have any other questions for me? I might have one for you.
No. Okay.
Do you have any other questions for me? I might have one for you.
No.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Is there anything like a mundane thing in your life that you believe that you refuse to investigate?
Yeah.
Do you know what a fear cage is?
No.
Okay. All right. I believe. I don't believe in ghosts. I'll say that
right off the bat. I believe in fear cages. And a fear cage is an electromagnetic field,
usually within your house somewhere that's caused by the way that the wires are,
or that over your house, there are power lines and there's some sort of foci around your house there are power lines and that's all there's some sort of foci around your
house like there's focal points where all the electromagnetic energy is hitting and it causes
you to have paranoia to feel like there's somebody there with you uh in the room i think i would
attribute it to a lot of like ghost sightings is this other thing that's also a lot of people
consider some hooky booky bullshit but i will and oh we have a co-worker who introduced
me to this because he said he had one in his house and i was immediately like yes that makes perfect
sense i will not look into this any further uh randall randall had uh some weird things happening
at his apartment and then came to me one day and he's like uh wasn't ghost is a fear cage and i was
like you have to give me more information than that.
And he explained that in his kitchen, there was an electromagnetic field that was creating
havoc in his body and making him see things that weren't there, hallucinations and paranoia
and a sense that he was not alone in being watched.
This is the best answer I could have ever hoped for.
What I was thinking of when I asked you this question was personally, my freezer
makes ice cubes and I think they melt faster than a normal ice cube melts.
And I believe that in my bones, but I would never like,
I'm not going to litigate it.
I'm not going to create an experiment,
but that's what I meant when I submitted this question.
It was like, do you have anything like ice cubes?
But no no fear cages
yeah man terrifying stuff
gosh should have let you go first man i could have come up with something like ice cubes.
You ever have to do like a presentation at school and the first person gets up and starts and you just realize how badly you missed the mark.
You're like, Oh fuck. Oh fuck. It was like, Oh shit.
We had to read the whole book. Oh no.
No one else just wrote their own poem. This is problem uh that's how i feel a little right now
you've never heard of a fear cage no okay well very popular in the paranormal community
i also i uh this is helpful because i'm going to um
covid update i'm going to travel outside of New York.
Next week, I'm going to go to Georgia,
a safe part of Georgia,
but it's very near Savannah
where apparently there are many ghosts.
Ooh.
Let me see.
I want to pull up this thing
that I read about Savannah right now.
It's USA Today named Savannah one of America's 10 most haunted cities.
If you scare easily, there's a creepy crawl haunted pub tour that they recommend
because liquid courage always beats ghosts.
Oh, okay. No, that's not true no no it doesn't that's not it's not like a fire water type of thing okay speak on that how like
you you you seem pretty confident that liquid courage doesn't beat ghosts yeah getting drunk
is getting inebriated to the point where your brain isn't at its most lucid is not going
to help you in a situation where you have to fight a ghost. Okay. I want to get, I want to, to,
to drop the veil all the way down. Do you believe in ghosts? No, I don't believe in ghosts. Okay.
I love ghosts. Okay. I love the idea of the supernatural. And so things that are adjacent,
I desperately want to be true. I'd like the idea of ghosts and and so things that are adjacent i desperately want to be true
i'd like the idea of ghosts and for those to be real uh but i just i just can't can't get on board
i've never never had any experience in my life even close to a haunting and and so i'm like yeah
yeah what about not not a haunting, but, um, something supernatural.
Yeah. I mean like something spiritual around like the passing of someone in your life,
like something that like we, we had, uh, uh, this is like, we're, we're dipping into a serious part
of the podcast now where, um, family members, when my my my grandfather passed away felt a chill the moment he passed and
uh you know not this exactly but a light flickering or a door closing at the moment
of someone passing something like that have you nothing nothing like that with you or your family no never the the closest thing i can just could say is that there was in my hometown there was a
this has nothing to do with my family but there was a glowing grave up on this hillside
at any what we talked about this in the podcast before apparently not
there was a glowing grave on the hillside in my hometown where it was called
White Hill. There was an old, old graveyard above this potato farm that had like a rickety gate on
it and everything. Some graves up there from like the late 1800s even. And when you drive up that
old road out of town, you can look up on the hillside and you see what is clearly a light
up there in the cemetery. And when you get up there and you look around, you can't find it.
But every single night, whether there's a power outage in town, whether it's cloudy,
the moon's out, the moon's not out, there's something up there that looks like somebody
is shining a light directly. It's not like a direct light. It's not like a high beams coming
at you, but you just like, there's something glowing up there. Right.
And you get there and you can't find it.
Here's one of the most interesting things about this podcast to me is that one
day someone will play the entire library of the 52 plus episodes that we've
done and your voice will not be heard it's just me
talking to nothing and someone will be like you who did you think you were talking to this whole
time and i it turns out i was just talking to the ghost of like some 18th century mineral man,
someone who's like,
I've made my money in Dan Burright or some other fucking nonsense.
You have some big twisty mustache and,
and you harness minerals from the ground with your hands.
And that's how you made your fortune.
And the earth speaks to me. She tells me where they are right and i've been speaking to your ghost this entire time on a podcast people
were like i thought you were doing this as a bit i thought i thought you knew there was no one on
the other end of this phone call and like long silences it's very hard to follow yeah because you're i i have to say
soren your timeline of life doesn't make sense everything that i learned about your biography
incongruous with the other things that i've learned about it
that's not a glowing grave is not crazy right that's like the least crazy of all the things
wait say one more time that's the least crazy of all the things i've told you
no which which thing your your your phone cut out oh because you're a ghost glowing grave
no the the glowing grave is up there that's like when when i decide when uh when we finally beat this stupid
virus and life returns to not normal but a new version of normal and we have a live show that
we do somewhere in colorado maybe the red rocks or some other shit like that we'll go to that
glowing tombstone and i'm to find out that it says,
here lies Soren Bowie died in,
in 1897.
Fucking.
I'm finding,
I'm like,
I'm looking it up right now.
There's an article about it called the ghost lights of silver cliff in a
Colorado cemetery. And I mean,
I'm just,
I'm making sure that I'm not crazy that other people are aware of this.
Cause when I was growing up, it was like, everybody knew about this.
Look, no one's worried. No one is worried that you're crazy.
The concern is that you're dead and I'm crazy. And that I'm
going to find out when I like
eventually go to
Carbondale to
go to their library to
look up microfiche for their
fucking obituaries
that I'm going to find out that you were
one of the two princes who was killed
by the other prince.
Have I tied enough things together?
That's really well done.
It's pretty satisfying, right?
So to answer your question,
no, nothing supernatural has ever happened other than this time that i saw a ghost
that i don't believe in
uh this one's pretty off the rails isn't it yeah but it's a fun one listen i think uh it's about
time that i go find our oh wait no we need to do a thing first though right we're gonna uh we're gonna have
guests right should we talk about that oh yeah we should mention that um so coming up on this
podcast we're gonna try something a little bit new for a month we're gonna have a couple of new
guests dan's gonna bring on some people and i'm gonna bring on some people we're gonna introduce
each other to our new friends and uh dan's gonna learn about my buddies and I'm going to learn about Dan's and I'm very excited about it.
Yeah, it turns out that
Soren and I have nothing to learn
from each other anymore.
The glowing gray was the last of it.
That's it.
But yeah, we're very excited.
We're going to have on guests like
Alex Goldman from Reply and dan kennedy from
the moth and danny fernandez from nerdificent and from just broadly the internet she's a disney
princess she was in wreck-it-ralph 2 and uh one of the funniest and smartest writers and performers
i've ever been lucky enough to know.
It's going to be exciting. We're excited to try it and see how it goes.
Now I'm going to go find our social accounts, Daniel. Okay.
And before I do that,
I just wanted to ask you another quick question that you can answer while I'm looking. Sure. I don't imagine it'll take long.
What's something a woman has tried during sex that was just too much for you? I know that you want me to have something wacky and fun, but I'm
like the, the most milquetoast person sexually that you could ever, uh, conceive of that.
No, that's kind of what I was hoping for. Yep. I was with a woman and we were having a healthy sexual relationship with each other.
And she leaned in close and whispered to me and she said, pull my hair.
And I leaned in even closer and I said, nope.
closer and i said nope because i that that is just like that's uh that's sort of where my my vibe ends like i'm not an aggressive person and even if it's what you want it's like
nah i just don't i don't i'm i'm like i'm not a guy who can pull hair. So I'm just like, I'm going to quietly say no
and then do like, let's resume boring sex, please.
That's my main kink.
My main kink is boring sex.
Can we do that forever, please?
Okay, you can follow Daniel on Twitter at dw-ink.
You can follow me, Soren, at Soren underscore ltd.
Our old buddy Bacon.
Make me bacon, please.
Yeah, you can follow him on Twitter at makemebaconplease.
Or you can follow Quick Question at qq underscore Soren and Dan.
You can email us at qq with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com.
And you can find, follow, hire our producer, sound engineer,
and editor, Gabe, at gabeharder.com and you can find follow hire our producer sound engineer and editor gabe at
gabeharder.com when the site's up gabe do you have a twitter that we should be putting on here too
uh yeah i'm actually working on my twitter oh great you're cultivating it what is it
working on your twitter yeah that'll be up around the same time my website
all right so keep your eyes peeled for that everybody it's good i definitely remember Yeah, that'll be up around the same time my website's up.
All right, so keep your eyes peeled for that, everybody.
It's good.
I definitely remember back in 2008, 2009, even into 2010,
workshopping my Twitter before I went public with it.
Making sure you hit that sweet spot before you put it out there for the world.
That's smart smart game
alright I'm done
goodbye
yeah