Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 71 - The Great Condom Heist of 2001
Episode Date: January 8, 2021In this episodes the guys explain why they perceive themselves as strictly sexual objects, and Soren talks about robbing a student clinic as a young man. And as always a big thanks to our sponsors. ...First to Skillshare. Go to Skillshare.com/qq and get a free trial of Premium Membership. And thanks to Tushy. Go to hellotushy.com/qq get  10% off and FREE SHIPPING.
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Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and TV writers discuss everything under the sun and occasionally, very rarely, ask each other questions.
I am one half of this podcast, writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, author of the book How to Fight Presidents, and a guy who once asked a girl out on a date and when she said yes, never followed up because I assumed she was just being polite, Daniel O'Brien.
And I am joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bowie. Soren, make like those old Super Bowl commercials for I want to say beer and say what's up. What's up everyone bud, bud,
wise. Hey everybody I'm Soren Bui, writer for American Dad, father, co-host of this show and
currently in the middle of the desert. I'm talking to you out of a little tiny
washer and dryer room i'd say five feet by eight feet and uh i have nowhere else i can go and it's
cold where where uh what desert i'm in the sonoran desert yeah i'm staying we i came down here to
visit my family um i don't know if i told you on the last podcast, my dad got COVID.
Oh, no, you didn't.
Womp, womp, womp.
Finally, a family member of mine got COVID.
That is the sound that's appropriate for the situation.
Well, it's okay because he's doing fine with it.
I think it was hard for a little bit.
It was never a serious situation where he was losing oxygen levels or anything,
but he lost a sense of taste. Couldn't, uh, it just like had that heavy fatigue that comes
with it, had a little bit of a sore throat and a mild fever. And it's nowhere near as devastating
as is for some people, but, uh, you know, certainly wasn't fun for him, but now he's better.
And like, there's no one better to. The only person you can really be around
at this time of year
is somebody who's just recovered from COVID
and is no longer infectious.
Right.
So that's good.
Well, I'm so glad that he got better.
That's wonderful.
Congratulations to him and to you and...
Thank you.
America.
Yeah, America.
Other than that, is the desert nice no i mean i don't like it that's that's well documented it's not my favorite place to be
um it just everything looks a little it's like a hellscape like all the the plants the animals
all look hungry and thirsty all the time and that everything
just looks like it wants to hurt you here the only time it's like a the only time you can really
enjoy the desert i think is you get half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening
where it's it's like being around a wild animal and that moment when that wild animal's asleep
you can kind of appreciate it because it's no longer dangerous to you you're just kind of like oh oh it's sort of beautiful
the way the light is hitting it sort of striking and nice looking but the minute it wakes up it's
horrifying and then at night you know it's freezing to death here so it's uh there are very few moments
of the day where i'm actually like yeah the desert's not so bad where are you normally for christmas this is i'm here um the
last few years colleen's family is here and my family has come also uh my parents have started
wintering down here when colleen and i were dating so the first time that her parents met my parents parents they had dinner together and we weren't there right and that was that's
a I can imagine that dinner would have been uncomfortable had I been there it's
even more uncomfortable that I wasn't there yeah there was no one officiating
have to have the have the your parents and your in-laws have have they like
developed inside jokes that have nothing to do with you or Colleen at this point
like do they
have a nice like rapport no i don't think they're that close of friends they do i mean when my mom's
not down here and just my dad is my dad will sometimes just go over there and be like so what
what are you guys having for dinner and they're like oh why don't you stay um but i don't think
that they like i don't i don't think they just go and hang out together ordinarily. Okay.
Yeah, they're not that close,
but they're closer than I think a lot of in-laws are.
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quick question hello tushy is a sleek bidet attachment that clips onto your toilet and
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hellotushy.com slash qq to get 10 off bidets and free shipping daniel who was the girl how old were
you when this girl uh oh this was um uh too old for this this was freshman year of college and like the entire run of this friendship relationship in quotes uh was like the
i was a theater major when i first started college at in rowan university and um the all the theater
major students met for like icebreakers with all of the the older theater major people uh to like meet you
and talk about what you can expect in the program and this was like the first thing i did at college
like classes hadn't even started yet it was just like introductory thing and there were no teachers
it was just all students and i saw this really pretty girl and i just introduced myself to her
and i said hey i'm daniel uh And she said her name. And we talked
for a little bit. And I was like, all right, well, it was nice to meet you. And we're in the
department together. She was a dancer and I was doing the acting thing. And I was like, I guess
I'll see you around. And we had classes and would talk every once in a while. And then at some point,
like we became friendly enough that we were like socially hanging out as friends. And then at one point I asked her out on a date.
I was like, would you go out with me?
And she said, yes.
I was like, okay, great.
And then like genuinely left that conversation thinking that was nice of her because she
was like, like top tier beautiful.
like top tier beautiful and i really i wasn't then i'm still not like stopping traffic with my looks or anything like that and i didn't even i hadn't come into myself uh at that point in my
life to even like think of myself as someone who would be yeah uh taken seriously romantically
by anyone let alone someone that i thought was was was a top tier gorgeous person
um so me asking her out on a date to me reads as like funny you know not like not not that the
joke's on her but like in my head i was thinking the idea of this is so ridiculous someone like me
asking someone like her out surely she will find the humor in this and she said yes
which was like a nice thing like that's her playing her part in this thing yeah um so i never
followed up and eventually transferred to a different school not because of this um and then
like stayed in touch with her and uh like a year or so later went back to the school to to visit
and see friends and ran into her and talked to her. And she didn't bring up me asking her out on a date, but she did say, she did remember,
she was like, you know, I always think about you because you were the only person who came
up and said anything to me at our first theater meeting.
Yeah.
Like I was just there.
I didn't have any friends.
I didn't know anyone and no one was talking to me.
And you walked right up to me and you introduced yourself and you said hi.
And we talked for a little bit.
And I think about it all the time.
I was like, oh, shit.
Fuck.
I think that that's a fairly common experience, especially that age. Because you're coming out of high school where um and i was since i was in a similar
situation where i was a late bloomer i i wasn't very taken very seriously by girls uh in high
school where they were like i had a lot of girls tell me when you i i call soren when he's 20 or
like something like that like they're just like joking around like oh dear like you are not ripe yet and i get a lot of that but um for uh when i'm 40 and on my
second marriage they would i got a lot of like i was so sexually honest um disarming to women
that they were just like no he's just like this cute this cute thing that we could have around
it's like a pet almost and it feels like the kid asking out his babysitter.
Yes.
It's like, aw.
And I was, when you're that age, you're not spoiled for choice.
So it's kind of like any port in a storm.
You're like, I'm getting attention.
I get hugs.
This is great.
And I just assumed, well, this is my lot in life.
Like, this is just who I will be.
And then I went to college,
and the first girl that showed interest in me,
I had no idea what was going on.
And I think back on it, and I'm like,
oh, fuck, I blew that so hard.
She was a, this was a physics major
who looked to me like Gwyneth Paltrow.
Like, she seemed so far.
Man, that's so off-brand for you, Soren.
so far man that's so off-brand off-brand for you soren if i was a serial killer you would know my serial type that's true
um she she was so pretty and uh you know like you see a lot of people out in the world you're
like yeah i could imagine that person was cooked up in a human body that makes sense yeah like there are some people who are just like no
there's no way that came out of another human this is like a perfect person um yeah this is
simone from that movie simone yeah yes that one that everyone saw and so uh she like we would
it was the same sort of situation where I was not, I was not nervous
around her or anything because it was, there was never even a chance that we would be together.
And so I was very cordial with her.
Like we'd joke and stuff.
She lived in the same dorm as me.
And one day after my last class, I came to her room and she's like, hey, lie on my bed.
And I was like, okay.
And I laid on her bed and I still remember this, her like lying down next to me and being
like, so what kind of girl do you think you're interested in?
And I was like, oh, she wants to help me.
Okay.
So, and I just like started talking and I can vividly remember her touching the buttons on the shirt that I was wearing.
Like, like playing with them, like undoing some of them and just sort of like fidgeting with them as i'm like describing to her the type of person i sure hope she'll hook me up with
and i look i like sometimes i think about that just lying in bed at night and i just go oh god
oh no as we're talking another memory of this uh freshman year of college woman is coming to my brain where, and I'm so pissed at no point was i thinking this is like a like a planned thing where she and her friend
who she's much closer with had discussed this and was like don't come i just wanted to be the two of
us um we just sat there and watched that thing you do and i was like well that was great i'm
gonna go now and i walked outside and uh uh for reasons that I don't understand, one of my tires was flat.
And so I changed it because it was a thing I knew how to do.
And she watched me change this tire.
And she was like, I've never known a guy who knows how to change a tire.
And instead of picking up any kind of cue from that i was like yeah i i uh i ruined
my tires a lot i'm a bad driver good night well we were kids you know and the thing is we probably
weren't ready and that's like because you think of yourself as you are now being in that circumstance
and like how could i be so stupid how did i not take advantage of that circumstance and now looking back on it it feels so silly but at the time
probably part of us knew right and they're just like i'm not ready for this yet right we're saying
that uh women didn't see us as like a romantic sexual option but realistically we didn't see ourselves that way. Right. Yes. Very, very astute.
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Well, mine sort of fits in with this actually a little bit, Daniel, at least my answer does to a quick question that I have for you. Do
you want to start the show? Yeah, let's start the show. Okay. A quick question. Shoot. What was a,
a workaround you had when you were younger to avoid paying for something? Like, was there
something, an elaborate plan you had in which you could get something for free
that looking back on it now, you're like,
I, it would have been so easy for me to just buy this thing.
I can give you mine first if you want.
Okay, yeah, I have three answers.
All of them kind of fit, but you go first.
Okay, well, one of them is that I, in college,
figured out that in the nurse's office, they had just this huge wall of condoms, basically.
And I figured out before I was having sex in college.
All of them used, right? Just as like trophies?
Yeah, right. Just like to prove that kids in the college fuck.
That was a big selling point when students would come through from seniors or juniorsiors when they're looking at schools they get to be like now we'll bring
you to the nurse's office as you can see lots of sex happening here there's room for you on the
wall yeah a little corner down here just for you uh and so they would have just they had all tons
and tons of condoms and i was not having sex yet. But now that I knew this
information and I knew how valuable condoms were to people and how embarrassing it was to go buy
condoms or whether you had enough money for them, I was like, ah, I will be the condom provider.
And so I figured out a secret way into the nurse's office, which is like a big health clinic.
And there was a side door that they knew that they didn't lock,
but there was a screen that they would lock. And it was very easy to just flip the latch because
it didn't shut all the way. And I could get in that way. And then if as long as you just looked
like you knew where you were going in the health office, no one questioned you. And I would slip
into that back room and very quickly take as many as I could and run away. Looking back on it,
I'm very confident that they
knew i was doing that there's like he wants condoms yeah they're here for the students
what's the big deal but at the time i was like oh you suckers i'm getting all of that oh yeah
spermicide no some people don't like that because they're allergic i'm gonna get this one this uh
and so i hope there was someone in that office who was trying to like put this conspiracy
together where it's like he takes 50 condoms home a week but like i talked to someone who
tried to seduce him and he just sat there getting his buttons played with i don't understand
i think i was like using the condoms for something i was like gently like pushing her hand away being
like this is very distracting.
I'm trying to tell you about this.
This is a homely woman I would like to sleep with.
But yeah, so I was like this go-to.
We had a quad, which was basically a living room
surrounded by a bunch of bedrooms.
And we all lived in this quad together.
And people could come to me if they needed condoms.
And boy, did I feel like a big shot. You weren't selling them? No, I did. I was just,
I was like the Robin hood of rubber. I don't like that. Let's try something else. The, the, uh,
philanthropic philanthropic man jumping without a parachute.
Man, jumping without a parachute.
What are they called?
A prophylactic philanthropist?
No, I'll do it.
I'll find it.
It's interesting that, it's not interesting to me that, it's not surprising to me that you came up with that as a scheme. It is surprising that people enjoyed that or partook of that.
That there was a whisper unit among the quad that was like, you need condoms, here's your guy.
Right.
And they were like, oh, good.
That's a better system for me than going to a store with a stranger i like to make face-to-face eye contact with someone that i will
uh with a peer that i will interact with in the future that this is the preferred method of getting
condoms it's i saw like you say that and then i think about how much of like popularity is is hinged on whether
or not you're having sex and i'm thinking some of the people that came and got comments from me
probably also weren't having sex but they were just like hey buddy do you do you have any and
i'm like yeah here you go and they're like yeah he thinks i have sex now this This is good. This is really good. That's pretty wild. I don't have anything
like that. Well, the reason that I asked you if you were selling them is because
this is kind of tangential to your question about elaborate ways of not paying for things. I, in, uh, middle and, uh, elementary school was very big on trying to hatch
schemes to make money because we didn't, we weren't a family that like gave out allowance or anything
like that. And I wasn't legally allowed to work, but I always really wanted money because money,
uh, is power, which I, which I knew at, uh, 10 years old or whatever so i was always coming up
with like what's a business venture that i could have like one of them was i would just like draw
pictures of cartoon characters like here's eric hartman here's bart simpson and i would show them
to friends and they're like oh yeah it's pretty good like yeah buy it from me buy this art come on do it and like people
were really into pogs and instead of myself getting into pogs i was like i can make my own
pogs out of uh cardboard that i've found in the garbage and i was like try to make my own pogs
and sell them to other kids and just it's so sad none of my ventures took off but like that's where my mind was at at a very young age failed failed business
opportunities we had this this woods uh down the street from us and we would always my brothers
and i would just like wander around in the woods because that's what you did when you when you have
no money and clout and there's like people were always throwing out everything there. Like you would just find like old tires and we found a bathtub once.
I just trash and trash.
Any condoms out there I could, I could get my hands on?
Uh, yeah, I saved them actually.
Um, and I found a, uh, an old, like cracked bowling ball once.
And I was like, this is going to be my fucking ticket.
I'm going to, all I need are some things that can that that are
vaguely pin like and then i'm gonna polish this ball and then uh i'm gonna have a bowling alley
in the woods that's cheaper than the competition and i i just never this isn't a bowling ball this
is a gold neck i never found uh anything that was like pin adjacent in the woods because my entire plan
again because i have no money that's the problem to begin with my entire plan was like i'll just
wait in the woods until someone throws out 10 perfect bowling pins and it uh never happened
um i i did have a business venture that was based on skirting, paying for anything, but that was more, it was way too late for this.
It was, as soon as we graduated from college, my roommate then, who was also a Dan, and now it's just something called Daniel.
He and I lived in a apartment that had a like a separate den it was very it was surprisingly
big but maybe that's because it was in burbank which is not a lot of clamor for for housing in
burbank i don't think a lot of people want to live there but uh we had all this extra room and
we decided we wouldn't buy furniture we just find furniture on the side of the road
which we did very successfully bringing in pieces that we liked and then finding something wrong with them and throwing them back on the street.
Until finally we had like our set, our furniture set.
And then we realized we still had all this extra space.
And we're like, you know, we could probably just find furniture on the street, bring it home, take pictures of it, and then sell it on Craigslist.
And we did that for a while.
And like we were moving some pieces,
but it became clear pretty early on that the inventory,
like the stock was way too high for the amount that we were actually selling.
So for a while we had like six couches piled on top of each other.
And we decided this isn't going to work.
But at the time we thought we were geniuses.
We were like oh
fuck we like we found this coffee table that had it's kind of some stained glass on the
sides and these little cabinets we sold it for a hundred dollars and we're like this is it
this is this is how we do it and uh it it worked a little bit but not it wasn't very successful
yeah um to answer your original question about elaborate ways to get out of paying for things,
this was, again, freshman year of college.
At the end of my freshman year, we got a bill, my roommate and I,
for damages done both to our dorm room and to the surrounding areas.
I can't stress enough what monsters we were freshman year.
Because I was not a partier or anything like that,
but I, my roommate, and the people in our wing of the dorm
were engaged in every single stupid college freshman cliche you could imagine apart from like
drinking drugs and having sex with people it was all just like what happens if we give children
freedom for the first time and they're told that they that that they don't have to listen to any
adults we would we bought a small um like a child swimming pool and filled it up in the bathroom,
just to like sit in it for a while and see what that would be like
because no one was allowed to tell us not to.
And then that broke and caused flooding down to the floor below us.
We would like string sheets and ropes together and try to climb up and down, uh, through our windows
of the dorm. And we, uh, would have like fire extinguisher races where you sit on a chair and
you blast a fire extinguisher and use that to propel you. It's all very stupid. It's, it's like,
all of it is very much, they gave that kid money or they gave that chimp a gun like it's it's all like
dangerous things that uh that happen when you when you uh remove shackles from someone who was not
ready for their own responsibility yeah it's heart of darkness yeah and the the short version of that
is there was a lot of damage done to our room and everything else and so we got a bill that was like this is what you owe for damages it was like an itemized list
of things that we were either responsible or partially responsible for and i told my roommate
i'm gonna i'm gonna take care of this and so i wrote a four- letter, um, either debunking, uh, things that I didn't think
we should be responsible for.
Uh, or if I couldn't justify, uh, my lack of accountability, then I would write something
funny.
I wrote like a, like a four page, uh, cracked article about this bill that I just really tore into it
and just tried to make it as absolutely funny as possible and also like sort of roasting the
school. Like if there's a thing where it's like, what was this amount of money for this broken
window? I'd be like, well, I did technically break that window. I'm not gonna pretend I didn't.
I'd be like, well I did technically break that window I'm not gonna pretend I didn't
we're all men here
but here are some things about the school
that were unpleasant
so I think it should be time served
at that point, like I feel like you owe me
some money because we live downwind
of a
chocolate factory, which sounds whimsical
but what it actually means is the smell
of rotten milk is like
constantly wafting into your home so it smelled like shit all the time here. So like you can imagine
why I, a person with no means and no clout, broke a window. It's my only way to express myself
under these torturous conditions. And just like a a dumb very long letter that took a lot
of effort and the school responded back uh they uh new bill zero dollars funny letter ah so it was a
a big win the bill was 120 yeah that's not a lot of money. You should be paid more than that for writing what is essentially jokes for somebody.
That sounds about right.
It was a great, it was like a continued, it's very surprising to me that it took me as long as it did to figure out that writing was what I was supposed to
do or what I, I wanted to do or found the most joy in because like it, writing was always
my go-to for everything.
It's like, oh, these people want me to, to pay them money.
I'm going to, I'm going to write my way out of this.
Or like, I was never a great verbal communicator
with girls that I liked in high school,
but I was like, I'm gonna, let me just like write this down
and I will woo her with words.
And that was always a thing that I turned to,
but until like maybe junior year of college,
if anyone asked me what I wanted to do,
it was like, oh'm actor i'm actor
boy i'm gonna i'm gonna be a theater kid forever and i'll explain why in this beautiful essay
don't you don't you find me me charming right now as i sweat in front of you
how could the world not like me look the camera loves me dear casting director
i'm gonna blow this audition but here
are some of my qualifications um we we had a friend who i think was very similar to you back
in in college and high school where he was like he he was a good kid but he had just like a profound
lack of respect for authority and he would anytime that he'd get a street sweeping ticket because
that's very common in cities where
there's like you have to park on a certain side of the street on various days because a street
sweeper is coming and if you don't do it you get a ticket and it again it's like 60 it's
when you're young that feels like a lot yeah um i shouldn't say that i should like i think that
it probably feels like a lot to a lot of a lot of don't mean to be flippant about it, but $60 sucked.
And so he had figured out a system where there was some overgrowth over one of the signs,
some tree covering one of the signs.
And so he would write to the DMV and say, the sign is obscured.
I couldn't read it.
I don't deserve this ticket.
And they rescinded his ticket.
And so we were like, oh shit,
you just have to cover up the signs.
And so our big strategy was
whenever we get a Street Sweeper ticket,
we had a friend, Ed, who is a sponsored skater.
And we would take some of his skate stickers
and just slap them on the sign right over the day.
And then we would say, it's not our fault.
Like somebody clearly tagged the sign.
And it worked for like, I don't know, like half a year.
And then after that, they no longer would do it for us.
Because I think they got wise to the fact that we were skirting the system.
I tried again freshman year.
I didn't want to pay to park there.
So I got a copy of a visitor's pass and would Photoshop it and print it out on, on
my own computer and like change the dates and hang it on my car.
Uh, and I got a ticket with a note written on it that was like, this is fake.
Like, well, well, all right.
You caught me.
The better man won here.
I wish they would, if they had elaborated it would have said this is fake and i know that because ours are uh printed on like a fancy stock and this is
clearly a piece of white printer paper yeah i would have been very bold if you think going
to their office be like well then show me show me the card stock that you're using
and please tell me your provider um i said i had three the only other thing it's not like it's not very elaborate and
it wasn't a young thing but it's something that i've found later in life that i'm i'm sure just
comes with um my uh privilege and and whiteness.
But I've, as I've gotten older,
I've started to just tell people no when they want to charge me for things.
Not like at the grocery store or anything like that,
but I recently renegotiated my contract
for my apartment that I'm i'm renting now
that's right yeah it's time for you to talk about that yeah yeah we talked about it off the podcast
um they're like hey it's time for you to to sign another year lease for this place here's
here's the rent and i was like i don't want to pay that they're like i'm sorry do you want to
move like no i don't want to move i like it here? I'm like, no, I don't want to move. I like it here. It's close to work.
But I don't want to pay that much anymore.
Because I don't want to.
And they were like, well, it's pretty irregular, but okay. And they knocked the price down
a little bit. And I was like, yeah, that looks pretty good.
Knock it down more. Knock it down more.
Knock it down this much.
And I pitched something insane, like cut my rent in half.
And they're like, well, we're not going to do that.
But we'll take this much off and we'll throw in this nice perk.
And we'll make it so your rent in January is only $900.
And I was like, hmm, okay.
is only $900.
And I was like,
okay.
Which is like, it's like a
superpower that I didn't know
a person could have. Because
I've lived my entire life with someone being like,
you owe me this much money! And I'm like,
yeah, I probably do.
I don't want to go to jail. Here, take it.
If I said no,
what if that number went up which almost never
happens and especially in the case of like rent if i had said i wanted to pay less they wouldn't
be like oh yeah tough guy well now your rent is doubled no they don't they don't do that like the
the worst case scenario would be like no your rent stays the same and i say okay i've been paying it for two years i can just i can keep doing that uh like there's it's such a low risk high reward situation that i that was just not
available to me like i couldn't even intellectualize it until i think i'd i'd
fortunately reached a certain level of income where the world just looks different, uh, which
like sucks for the world generally, like it's a bad system. Um, but it's, it's been a very
freeing and exciting for me as, as someone who grew up lower middle class that I could just,
that the secret is just saying, no, I don't want to pay that much. What else do you have?
And then like people, uh, acquiescing tocing to that right you realize that with a corporation you're pretty powerless with
with bigger businesses but you do have some of these availabilities to within that system like
talking to a customer service agent they're also a person and it's like who can be more annoying
that the other person caves first like you talk to spectrum on the phone or something like that.
And like, you can be like, I don't want to pay that.
And then it turns into a real conversation where like, you can keep them on the phone
for 45 minutes until they're like, this is not worth it to me to keep talking to this
person.
Yes.
Take your, take you.
You said you wanted what?
$3 off a month.
That sounds great.
And then you get it and it's free.
Yeah.
All it cost you was your time and your dignity.
I've done that.
It's been such a huge jump for me for cable specifically of like when I first moved to Los Angeles and had no, like I showed up to my apartment with like truly nothing but whatever furniture I had from college.
And no,
like I didn't have internet or cable yet. And I was just waiting for Time Warner to,
to show up and do that. And they kept blowing me off and I would call them.
And I felt like almost like the only thing I had was like, I'm going to start crying. Cause I was on the phone with them and I was like, please, you have to understand I moved 3,000 miles away from my friends and family. The internet is like the only way that I
can have mass contact with all the people that I know and love and I don't have any friends out
here. So like it would be great if I could come home and watch TV and feel like a person. But as
it is, I'm like sitting on the floor watching DVDs of movies I've already seen.
So can you please just make an exception and come here?
And they're like, no.
Like, okay.
And I just like sat in my dark, lonely apartment
until Time Warner decided it was time to give me cable.
Fast forward to now where it's like every once a year,
I could just call Fios and be like,
hey, I want to pay less now. you guys said that you're going to increase the cost of uh my cable and internet i don't want to do that so
i'm going to pay less now and they're like okay and also we're going to throw in showtime for
you i'm like yeah good of course like i deserve yeah i guess it's just like you spend less on
things growing up because you
finally realize that you have some agency in those situations yeah
i hope this is um it's i'm sure it comes off as very like
entitled and braggy but i'm but hopefully people uh who don't know they have this superpower
know that they have it now that like yeah take a shot and and say to someone no i don't know they have the superpower know that they have it now. That like, yeah, take a shot and say to someone,
no, I don't want to pay that much and see how it goes.
Because sometimes it works.
Sometimes it certainly does not.
So there's a gym that I try to join.
It's a kind of an upper echelon gym,
but it happens to be right next to my office.
And so they're charging a lot of money for amenities
that I was not going to be using at all.
And they're rigid about their prices. And but I came into the situation did my my, like the trial, and then afterwards camp with like, all these arguments in my head of what I was
going to say to them. And I thought to myself, okay, I'm going to talk about how this gym is like
a Ferrari compared to my old gym, which was basically just this commuter vehicle.
But here's the thing.
I only commute.
Like I'm only going to be using your gym for the free weights.
I'm not using any of the machines.
I'm not taking any classes.
I'm a very low impact user.
I'm like trying to break down for them
that I wasn't even going to be costing them anything.
You won't even know I'm here.
Right.
None of that worked. And I was blown away by the fact that I didn't have my power all of a sudden. Folks, it's a new year. Put the old one in the books and start over fresh and clean
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Hey, I got a quick question for you.
Yeah, shoot.
Are there any recurring problems in your life that you know you can easily fix, but you won't due to, you know, pick something, pride, stubbornness, whatever?
Yeah.
I have one.
Go ahead.
It's very shameful.
And I'm sure my reasons for not fixing this problem boil down to some back of my mind toxic masculinity
bullshit there are shelves in my kitchen cabinets that I can't reach because
they're too high so I don't use them and I definitely I need I need this the
space I do need them my other shelves crowded. And if I get one more coffee mug,
it's curtains for that shelf.
And I would love to use all of the space
that I have here in this apartment,
but I can't reach them.
And I know the solution is like,
buy a fucking step stool.
You know, I don't need a ladder or anything like that.
They're not that high and i'm not that small but like a small thing would would solve this problem for me and
give me access to uh a brand new world of storage but i'm not doing it and i i think it's because
somewhere in the back of my mind is like well no if you if if you got a stepping stool then then you would be short
yeah as long as you don't have one everyone will think you're tall i guess like there's something
there's some part of me that doesn't want to admit that i need this assistance because of my my uh
i want to say average height but i i think the architect of this building would disagree with me i think maybe
you need some solution that nourishes your ego like a rope ladder or like something
some climbing holds that you have to let you to negotiate just to get up there
uh some are a pull-up bar right in front of it. Something that can make you feel like, yeah, only I could get to these.
It's so humiliating that a very smart architect
was like, this is the size people should be.
And I'm like jumping up in the air
to toss a bowl onto the top shelf
that I'll never be able to use again.
Telling the architect,
yep, this is how tall we are.
Good job. Nailed it, buddy.
This is us.
Normal-sized man. No one in this building but us normals right i think we're almost the same height aren't we you're not a short guy i don't i don't think i'm
a short guy either but but uh but again again i i at some point put a bowl on one of these top shelves, and I know in my heart that the next time I need a mixing bowl of that size, it's more likely that I will go out and buy a new mixing bowl than it is that I will get a stepstool and admit that I need help.
This may make you feel better, Daniel.
Have a seat on the compliment couch
for a second in the corner.
When we would shoot after hours early on
with Justin Feier,
who was our first director of those,
and he was very particular
about getting everything exactly right,
he would make me sit on cushions
so that my torso was as long as yours
so that I didn't look so much shorter next
to you because it turns out I'm all legs, baby. That's right. Uh, as for some reason that makes
up a huge percentage of my body. So I might be better suited for some athletic endeavor that I
don't know yet, like running or long jump. And you may be better for swimming or something.
Cause you have an abnormally long torso I'm going to go with and not a normal one.
That's right.
But it was so bizarre that next to each other,
we were standing, we both look about the same height,
sitting next to each other, somehow you tower over me.
Can you reach all the stuff in your home?
No, but stuff I don't think is meant to be reached there's i've got shelves that are fairly high in a closet
but the stuff that i put up there is stuff i don't i need maybe once or twice a year
i keep uh like i don't know if you've got do you have fine china no okay sorry i don't know i'm not
that was the wrong tone i should have been like no well the only reason we do is because
colleen's family her aunts and stuff gift us things they're like hey this would be really
good silverware for you guys we're like, never using this because what do we need good silverware for?
Or teacups that have a really nice gold ring around the inside.
And it's like, I don't...
First of all, it's such a small teacup.
This isn't going to do me any good.
But we can't throw it away.
So now we just keep it up on the high shelves.
Hey, don't discount a little teacup soren
they can do a lot
that's a throwback everybody to a nickname which i tried to get the stick for daniel and it worked
for about a week to my my absolute glory i i mostly forgot about it but uh our dear friend
katie willard was doing a YouTube live stream
as she's putting together her, she sends out these Katie's kits, these care packages to
people who want them that have like joke books and art of hers and just like various doodads
that she's put together for people.
And she was doing a live stream while she stapled one of her joke books together.
And I joined it just in the comments to say hello.
And she goes
oh my big teacup so that that felt great i was a big step up the teacup grew up yeah um i've got
i've got one for you dan that at first blush it'll sound like it's from laziness oh wait no i want to
go back to um oh sorry go ahead find china for a second um because that made me very curious if that's a thing people still do.
Like people our age, I guess.
Like growing up, we had this China cabinet in our house, this big hut that had this very fancy,
the dishes and glasses and cups with saucers that we never used, like every once in a while we would host thanksgiving
or christmas and then the fancy stuff would come out and the table would get longer and
relatives would come uh and it seemed like a thing that was on a lot of people's wedding
gift registries in the past in movies everyone needed China that was a thing
new couples when they got married in their 20s like yeah we need to have have
have these new fancy dishes and whatnot for for the future I don't know if
that's a thing that people are still doing it makes no sense for me in my
situation and I'm aware of that it would be weird if I if I had one of my friends
over and I was like you know what let, let me dust off the good plate for the fucking Shake Shack that we're getting.
But I'm curious if that's still an ongoing concern for people that young married couples get fancy china.
Well, I don't know i think that it's it does seem very much like a generational thing to me
that it was previous generations was that was a sign of the american dream it was like ah and you
have this separate dishware for when you entertain i don't feel that way at all i think it's just a
waste of space in my house now i could be storing my snow pants up there but uh it i also think you don't need extra dishware in in los angeles what
you need is snow pants i i think it's uh well i think it's maybe a waste of space we also don't
entertain a ton either maybe as you get older and your kids grow up a little bit, instead of going to your parents' house for holidays and stuff, people come to you.
In which case, maybe, I don't know.
Maybe when you, we don't throw big parties.
I can't remember what that's like because it was, you know, over a year ago.
And even when we threw big parties, there's no way I'm bringing out something nice.
Yeah.
That shit's going to get broken.
bringing out something nice yeah that shit's gonna get broken i imagine my attitude on this will change the second that i have um a number of people over for dinner for like an adult dinner
not just like my buddies or something like that like let's say i'm in a relationship but um
but uh for branding purposes i'm always publicly single. But let's say I'm in a relationship and my partner's parents come over for dinner
and I'm realizing, it's like,
oh, I have three plates that are this color
and then one plate that I got from Ikea
that's a completely different color
and like mixed matched glassware or silverware.
Like as soon as it becomes a point of embarrassment,
then I imagine things will change for me.
But that'll never happen because I'm single forever just like you guys right it does it just seems like such a waste i mean all you got to do then is just get
some dishes that match and those are your dishes yeah the idea of having completely
separate dishes that you use once every 300 days is so
foolish to me i don't know maybe i'm not a true adult yet in that respect but um i have another
i have one to answer your question daniel if you want to hear that yeah just as a sidebar are we
alienating everyone in the world by telling stories like we started out pretty humble and
then we got to here's how i conned my landlord to lowering my rent in the middle of a
pandemic.
And I think it's fine.
One day we'll need fancy dishes.
Are we still good?
Are we still likable?
Yeah,
I think we're okay.
They're going to take us off that the verge best podcast of the year list.
Um,
I,
so that,
that woman favorited my tweet, Monica wrote that article so yeah she must be a fan of
us that was nice shout out to monica chan of the verge who included us on a list of best podcasts
of the year it was very nice of her it's cool where's that gonna go daniel we what's that gonna
come off of when we just sidebarred about how we seem like we're no keep it all in okay the stuff about us
concerned that we're big shots yeah that we think we might be big shots
well surely that won't be humiliating when i don't have a job next year
um okay well i've got one that uh you know, at first glance, it will seem like laziness, but it truly is just about ego. I'm fucking terrible with passwords. I know I should get a password safe. I've had a password safe in the past, and I've just abandoned it.
Oh, yeah, you were such a zealot about password safe.
a zealot about password safe and here's the thing anytime you anybody start something new and they feel like they can be morally righteous about it they
get very loud that's detoxes that's like joining CrossFit paleo man I'll tell you
paleo my skin's better that's all they want to talk about because it's all
they're thinking about because they're brand new to it and it's working
gardening look at those assholes who think they're thinking about because they're brand new to it and it's working gardening look at those assholes who think they're gardening just because they got some tomatoes to grow um i i yeah i i
certainly touted the the benefits of a password safe to you i'm sure and did it with my nose in
the air and my eyes shut uh but it's uh it's something i'm so bad at because the minute you have to create a password on a site,
which is like five times a week,
you don't want to then open up another window,
go into your open,
put in your password for your password safe,
create a whole new section for this new thing,
find the URL, write down what it is,
write down what your username is,
and then save it.
Like it's so much easier to just be like,
I have this sort of general one I use and I'm just going to use this for this site because fuck it.
The problem is, is that I still am the mindset of like, well, I should have a different password
for everything.
I'll just try this brand new thing that I've never used before and surely I'll remember
it.
And I can't ever.
And so it's something in my brain where I think to myself, no, you're a smart guy.
Like, you can remember things.
You've got a great memory.
You can do this.
And I just don't.
Like, I don't have it in me.
Even like an hour later, if I have to go back to that site, I'm like, okay.
Okay, let's see.
I found myself.
Something about my son, I think.
How old was he when I made this password?
My nickname's for him then.
I'll find that if I don't remember a password, and I'll ask, like, give me whatever hint I set up, or, like, you know, the security question.
I'm so pissed at past Daniel, because it's always, like, some kind of cutesy riddle that tickled me at the time.
like some kind of cutesy riddle that tickled me at the time what was like it's like that place you used to go to when you were 19 years old but the M's
are threes and you'll feel like gold like what the fuck what did you do what
is this just all a guess word with a zero, you asshole.
I'm not trying to cross some bridge.
Just give me something normal.
Yeah, I just don't, I can't trust myself.
And I know that in the long term,
if you just use a password save,
you're actually saving time. Even though it feels like you got that extra 45 seconds,
whatever it takes to create a password and put it in there.
And later on
when you don't remember the password it takes you seven minutes or like whatever to it's like just
a small investment just to keep yourself from having that headache later on and i still won't
do it this is reminding me um that i have a bill due i don't normally use credit cards for anything, but I rented a car, gotta be in November,
and they make you put a credit card down instead of your ATM card.
So I did that, and it charged the credit card that I hadn't used in years up until that
point, and apparently I'd set up paperless billing with this credit card company.
So they emailed me, and said, hey, your thing is is do pay it online by clicking this link and I clicked it I
didn't remember my username or password so I was like I don't I don't know these
things and the website was like well you need to call chase services and I was
like well I guess you guys don't want my money bad enough didn't feel like doing that. But I probably should.
Maybe this will just go away.
Wait, so hold on a second. In your everyday life, are you not using a credit card?
I'm using like my ATM debit credit card.
What?
What?
That's it? You're not using a credit card?
You know you're not building any credit at all that way.
My credit score is already great.
I mean, it was until this car thing.
But you're not building any.
Should I be like, what's the...
Oh, shit.
What you should be doing.
I was being such a big shot before
but now i'm gonna ask a question go ahead i'm so bummed what's the what's the most a credit score
can be uh 800 i think okay yeah so it's not like i can like once once you're up there
what do you why would you keep building it up? Right? Am I insane?
No.
Well, now I'm revealing my own blindnesses.
I don't know why your credit is so high.
I'm trying to think, because you're not born with like high credit.
You're not born with credit.
So I'm trying to think of where your credit came from.
I guess just bills and stuff.
Yeah.
When I moved to Los Angeles, multiple things happened. I got a car and there's a loan there and I put a bunch of stuff on, I spread out like A, the cost of driving across the country, B, security deposit
on my first apartment, C, a bunch of furniture, D, eventually like multiple expenses
and Christmas gifts across two years.
I spread that around a bunch of credit cards
because I had no money.
And then over time, paid off three credit cards,
paid off student loans and paid off the car, which.
Okay, it's coming from student loans in your car, I assume. Okay.
And then also, I don't...
I mean, it depends on your landlord, but it can come from rent as well.
But that's...
Okay.
I didn't know any of these things.
I just checked my credit score one time and it was very good.
It's like, all right, I did it.
I would suggest though that you start...
Once you figure out this Chase fiasco uh figure out how to start using your credit card
to pay for things and then every month just paying your credit card bill like you know what it comes
from is that is is um i'm i have like a pavlovian response to getting bills so i i i've i've felt
much better in my life when i've reduced the amount of bills that I get to like, to, I mean, at this point um because there was this is like such
a holdover from not having a lot of money for for years when i was on my own in los angeles and like
insanely being afraid to check the mail because i know if i if i open the mailbox this is the
same reason that i don't go to doctors right if i open the mail if i don't open the mailbox
then i'll never know if there's a bill in there but if I open it then there might be a bill and and then
you're on the clock right that's very scary to me and so to this day I even
though I I have more money now than I had when I was 22 years old I'm still I
still kind of put off going to the mailbox even though there's not gonna be
a bill in there it's still like a thing that's in my head and also the reason that i don't use credit
cards is is like my my my body tells me that that that bills are bad and scary and make the
difference between whether or not you can have a nice meal that night okay i mean it's not that
dramatic right but you could i mean you could set up an automatic bill pay for your credit card
too i don't know the password though that's the point you know you i mean obviously the your
rewards are gonna suck because it's from the actual bank and banks rarely oh no you could do
a chase and do i think chase is like a is amazon okay yes yeah that's right and so if you got an amazon card uh
of course you're gonna be supporting jeff bezos who i know you famously hate i do well it's just
he's there's some real problems with amazon being a monopoly and uh oh i i uh i like professionally
hate him um our last week tonight we did uh a whole show about how it's it's a bad
and scary dystopian company um yes i don't know i i use it like every fucking day though they're
so convenient yeah i do too have you seen the boys it's great i just watchedf on Amazon last night. My son loved it.
It was such a treat to watch him laugh at Elf.
So you get like a credit card like that.
Man, we can't decide if we want to alienate our listeners or not.
That's the sign of a good podcast.
You just alienate them and then you just keep winning them back.
Well, I guess we'll know for sure if we did that or not but when the
next ratings cycle comes through and we know that oh fuck we lost all of our viewers i know listeners
um so uh if you get like an amazon card you're using you're spending it on amazon uh you get a
bunch of points you spend anywhere like grocery stores gas you get a bunch of points on your rent whatever you're gonna stores, gas, you get a bunch of points on your rent,
whatever you're gonna spend it on.
And then you just set up an automatic bill pay from Chase.
If you also have a checking account through Chase
that just takes money from that checking account,
puts it right into your credit card
every single time a bill cycle comes.
And you never have to look at a piece of paper.
You never have to open any mail.
But again, like why?
I guess points is a thing.
That's something that I remember from one time my brother came to visit me when I was in Los Angeles.
And he used points to pay for the plane ticket.
Yes.
Which was a foreign concept to me.
I've never had points for anything in my entire life.
So are there, at this point point for me are there perks beyond points
yeah i mean it's good for your fico score and it's good for your credit i don't know what's
going on with your credit court are those two separate things fico and credit yeah yeah but
they're they're they're related but they are separate tell me right now what fico means i
don't know okay good credit score i'm now i'm looking it up are ficos different than credit
scores yeah they're a little bit different um but i i don't know i think maybe it's just because it
was drilled into me so young and i got so scared of like you have to use a credit card you have to
you have to you have to build credit see that that's very interesting I felt like the the opposite was instilled in me I
don't know if it was from my parents or from like pop culture but credit cards
seemed like seemed like prisons to me because in unless you have the money to
pay them off immediately like the system that you're talking about then they're a
very dangerous thing because that's how you you end up spending
uh six thousand dollars to spend three thousand dollars as was my case when with my my first
credit card like that's what oh you got burned credit cards are very scary to me because it's
uh and maybe that's just a different socioeconomic areas where we grew up in but it was like
credit cards is like that's how you trick poor people into spending more money on things.
Yes. It is a system designed to take money from you. That's true. But there are ways to work
within that system that it doesn't happen. Where like, you might have a credit card that has a
huge interest rate, but if you're not ever having to pay that interest rate then it doesn't matter yeah i think this this comes down to like um the expectations that the hazlitt new jersey public
school system had on our students where it was like you're poor lesson one avoid credit cards
all right if you do that if you do that you might be able to leave the town. Colleen, my wife grew up in the town of Tucson.
And around Tucson, there are some old towns that have all gone under because for whatever reason, they're mining towns.
And the mine went dry or started to poison the water or whatever it was.
And there's a town nearby called Mammoth. And just outside of Mammoth is a college called Eastern Arizona University.
I can't remember what it is, but that's where her, at the terrible high school that she went to,
that's where they were like, I think you should really look at applying here.
And tried to keep her trapped.
I don't know why because i think
they weren't even thinking big enough of like oh yeah there's stuff out of state you could go to
or even the u of a is here and i think they were like you could either go to u of a or you could go
to eastern arizona like these are your options yeah and we drove past it not too long ago and
it's fucking so sad there it's just there's nothing there but swarrows. And then these people who are like refused to leave
because this is where they set up roots
and there's nothing left in the town.
It has nothing to offer them.
They don't have jobs there.
And it's just slowly decomposing around them.
Yikes.
Swarrows?
Sorry.
Yeah.
So there's swarrow forests all over the sonoran desert which are those
giant cactuses that look like people i couldn't tell if that was um like a like a uh a natural
thing or it was like is that what arizona thinks sabaros is it's just yeah it's a it's geographical
like the same way you would have uh carl's jr here and on the east coast it's just yeah it's a it's geographical like the same way you would have uh carl's jr here
and on the east coast it's fucking whatever it is there yeah it sparrows is swarrow's here
um did they back to credit cards are and college yeah um
again i remember like freshman year of college there was a bunch of like
on those same days where you can you you see a bunch of people set up with their their their
tables and their shingles with their various like yep here's the tennis club here's the the super
cool all-male acapella group yeah and there was also people who were just like get a credit card
right now and you get a and you get a t-shirt a free t-shirt that says college on it isn't that
cool and it was like universally understood to be like a predatory thing it was like they're
taking advantage of 18 year olds who are starting college and don't have any money they're gonna
sign you up for a credit card right now and it's going to make you think you have lots of money and it's it's a it's a scam
don't do it yeah that's it's predatory because of the type of people you're advertising to
they're you people advertising to people who are impulsive and young like a lot of times they would
have those tents set up on spring breaks wherever you can can, Cancun and stuff like that. So you're already getting to people who are like, all they're thinking about is the moment. And those are
the exact type of people banks want to have credit cards. Right. It's your old Navy credit card where
it's like, you want to save 15% today. And all you have to do is give us a $300 for a $40 t-shirt
over the next two years. And so, yeah, the system is inherently predatory.
But as long as you know how to use the system
and you aren't somebody who's like overspending
or spending outside of your nut,
then you need a credit card.
You have to participate in the system
if you ever want to get a boat, for instance, Daniel, to live on.
And to be a man at the sea
where you fish my parents said i'm not allowed i like the idea of you going to your mom and dad
and being excited about i'm gonna be a fisherman and then they say no daniel it's too dangerous
yeah absolutely not oh nuts well i think we're coming to the end right then i'd have to go to like the boat salesman and be
like i asked they said no he's like oh no i'm like yeah i know you can keep the down payment
but my mom says uh you have to give me some of it back and And if not, she's going to call you. Oh, man.
She's not going to call my mom, is she?
She might.
Oh, man, this is bad.
This is bad.
All right, I'll give you some of it back.
And the next few days, you can have my Doritos at lunch.
Well, Daniel, I have to go find all the information for the end of our podcast
okay because it's about that time i can't remember where i put it because when i travel obviously
i i put everything i pull everything out of my suitcase put it in the new location but
paperwork i just don't have a spot for and i keep them in a briefcase and i just don't know where
yeah i'm gonna go find it anyway in. In this, so you pack everything.
Uh-huh.
And you also have a briefcase separately.
The briefcase is inside the suitcase.
I had to get an extra suitcase to get the briefcase in there.
I put everything else away, but the briefcase itself is missing.
Okay.
That makes complete sense to me.
In this scenario.
Let's say it's a small briefcase.
Okay, yeah.
Build the world. Okay. I wanted to ask you a question before i go find this stuff daniel if you lost
your job today who in your life would you turn to in a panic to try and get another tv writing job
i feel like you want me to say you. It's hard not to.
It's really hard not to.
Because the...
I got this job because a buddy recommended me for it.
And I don't know if he's got that kind of pull anymore.
We also... I never... I didn't get an agent because uh i didn't need one when i signed this
deal and then uh my guild the writers guild of america uh we went on strike out of solidarity
against all of the agencies like everyone dropped their agencies so we we just don't um i couldn't even reach out to a former agent and be like guess who's on the market um
it's so flattering of you that you think if i lost this job right now i imagine i could get
another tv writing job i feel like if i lost this job right now, I'd be like, fuck, does the onion need an editor in chief?
Is there?
I'm like, I'm going, I'm going to, I'm going to write fucking ad copy for David Dobrik and the vlog squad on YouTube.
Let's see if I can get a gig.
Yeah.
Writing goddamn prank videos for 22 year old millionaires.
Does Pluto make their own content?
Can I do something for Pluto?
So KFC and Lifetime tuned up for something?
Can I get in on that?
What is that, 20 grand for a screenplay?
Sure.
Yeah, I do have a friend in pornography.
I wonder if I'd be allowed to write screenplays for porn.
I feel like I might be really good at that,
but that again it would anyone know
uh but short answer yeah you yes would you have to move back to la
yeah okay i mean after the pandemic sure would you um
do you think you can get me hired there i'm not looking or anything like that i want to know
how uh my how well you're doing at that job now.
No.
No one's going to listen to my perspective.
I am not that big a deal.
I might be able to get in the ear of somebody important.
But if I was just like, hey, I got a guy.
He's good.
Just trust me.
They'd be like, all right, well, fuck you hey, I got a guy. He's good. Just trust me. They'd be like, all right. Well, fuck you.
We all got a guy.
Also, especially if you were like,
I've got a guy. His credentials are roughly
the same as mine. All of our pop culture references
are pretty much identical.
We basically be the same person here.
Yeah. Is that useful to you?
Right.
On Twitter, you can follow Daniel
at DOB underscore Inc. If he allows you to you can follow me soren
anytime you want i'm i'm open to it soren underscore ltd doesn't matter who you are
people far and wide can follow me uh you can also follow quick question at qq underscore soren and
dan we have a cfo uh bacon who no longer appears on these podcasts for reasons we can't go into, but know that he is alive.
Make Me Bacon Please is his handle.
P-L-S in the please.
You can follow, find, and hire our producer and sound engineer and editor, Gabe, at GabeHarder.com.
I'm just going to look at it real quick.
I think he might have lost his ownership of it.
That's fantastic.
Yeah, it's not my website anymore.
You don't own it anymore?
No, I don't know whose it is.
Okay, well, this is not to be old Daniel, but a scheme is brewing.
I'm going to buy this and flip it this is gonna be my ticket
this is it my whole thing is like i've kind of decided that like the world has changed and like
these days it's all about social media who needs a website you know what's your social media shit
then i'm still working on them all right that's everybody. Thank you for listening. Goodbye.