Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 97 - Daniel the Enigma, Soren the Liar

Episode Date: July 9, 2021

In this episode Dan talks about his recent adventure as a mysterious man in a small east coast town. It's like a Stephen King Novel!   And as always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks to Skillshare.com/qq and one-month free trial of  Premium Membership. And Thanks to  Raycon!.  Go To buyraycon.com/qq for 15% off your entire Raycon order.

So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast, author of How to Fight Presidents, staff writer for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and endless seeker of The Most Comfortable Bed, Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host, America's last warrior poet, Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello. Hello, everybody.

I'm Soren Bui. I write for American Dad. I'm a father. I'm a husband. I'll say it. I'm an ex-adventurer at this point i would say retired adventurer uh it's sad to admit i i used to qualify myself as like no i'm pretty adventurous like i'll go and do fun stuff find lost cities that kind of thing i think that period of my life's over and um i'm willing to say it i uh that's heartbreaking and i've been thinking about your

old job recently at was it just trails.com or was there or like a family of outdoorsy websites that you wrote yeah they're kind of like a family of them yeah i was just thinking about like as i'm getting older and living more life and trying to codify more and more what what i want like what brings me pleasure and joy and happiness and i think about what uh what a fun run like the reverse of of your career would have been where you did a whole bunch of comedy stuff early and made like an unimpeachable comedy resume and then it's like all right now now my job is full-time traveler and like reporter on travel things yeah it seems like it would have been a pretty good deal i guess it's not completely out of the question it's like a lot of the risks that i used to take though i'm realizing now it's not gonna it's not conceivable with children

um yeah i i remember my dad going through like basically the same thing where he used to be on mountain rescue which really just meant like body recoup like they would go up into the mountains and like go find people who had been in plane crashes or been had gotten themselves stuck somewhere and generally those people don't survive much for very long so it's yeah just going up there and grabbing bodies and it's not a super safe job because you can get stuck up there too. Like my dad's bivouacked on the side of a mountain before and had to sleep in the snow and stuff like that. And then he stopped and I was like, why did you stop? And he was like, I can't do it with kids. At this point, it's reckless for me to be doing that with children because now you have people who need you.

to be doing that with children because now you have people who need you. And then you start to realize how valuable your life was to you before, like, well, it shouldn't, I shouldn't say valuable how, how, how nice it was before, uh, when your value, when your body didn't have any value to you, when you were just like, I will throw this thing at anything and how, and you were allowed to do that. And it was exciting. Thanks to Skillshare for supporting Quick Question. Skillshare empowers you to accomplish real growth. Do something today you couldn't do yesterday with classes designed for real life. Skillshare is an online learning community

with so much to explore, real projects to create, and the support of fellow creatives. Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com slash QQ and get a one month free trial of premium membership. Thanks to Raycon for supporting Quick Question. Get crisp, powerful beats at half the price at Skillshare.com slash QQ and get a one month free trial of premium membership. Thanks to Raycon for supporting Quick Question. Get crisp, powerful beats at half the price of other premium audio brands. Raycon's offering you 15% off your entire order. And here's what you've got to do to get it. Go to buyraycon.com slash QQ. It makes me think of, this is a person with the opposite trajectory. It's this guy, guy kevin corgan who was a writer i know

him he was a couple years older than me at rowan where i went for my first year and i didn't i never met him personally but like i i was a fan of his writing in rowan's uh comedy magazine or alt magazine which i think was called venue i'm not sure and then years later it so happened that he ended up a college humor when he ended up at College Humor when I ended up at Cracked. And we started a relationship based purely on that. I was like, hey, New Jersey guys, Rowan University, comedy websites.

We are friends now. This is networking. And he did great stuff at College Humor for years and then was one of the many victims of like the great digital purge of comedy professionals in the early mid 2000s i guess and then he like moved to a mountain place and just starts just started a job writing and reviewing like different trails and different hiking and camping equipment and i as a younger

and stupider person at the time i thought man there's no way that's gonna approach the thrill of comedy writing and he has never looked back and he's really enjoying it and now and like i i get so incredibly jealous of people who seem to just be like full-time youtubers who like review camping stoves he's like yeah we spent the day with three different stoves camping in the appalachian trail and like we rolled this one down a mountain to see if it held up and it did that's my job i was only sort of briefly aware of him uh uh certainly my peripherals when we were working at crack you know because i always look straight ahead i've never like look inside to side see who my colleagues are um or and he was i barely knew him but i know him a lot better now because he's well for a while he was just writing for uh for um climbing magazine and then he became the editor i think um he's a digital editor so he's

here he's the editor for the online version of climbing magazine and climbing magazine is like a very prestigious magazine something that we would read uh a lot in high school because that's where you see what all the cool guys are doing you see like what roots they're setting and like what are sending and what what uh the new stuff is and now he writes for it and it's like i'm like jealous like oh i didn't realize that was a career that was an opportunity i could do that yeah uh well good for him yeah good for anyone who's living their dream i don't know i don't i don't want to to end on too down of a note there because i'm also very happy doing what i'm doing yeah i guess i am too we'll get into why i'm so bummed out it's it's uh not a really good reason but i okay i am mad right now oh let's talk about

that first though all right well as you know i on this podcast i talked a big game about my upcoming episode uh-huh american dad scotty pippen of american dad scotty pippen's gonna be in it and i love anyone listening to this show for the first time inexplicably who doesn't know who either of us are and doesn't know what american dad is and thinks you're writing on a show called american dad colon scotty pippen it should be called that that's how much he's in this episode he's playing himself he's so funny in it and he's he i don't want to give away too much but like he's like uh he's trying to sell his books and he's a political thriller writer now. And he writes a lot about summer.

It's kind of like a Tom Clancy now. And yeah, I'm very much against type. Yes. And it's a very funny episode, I think. And Fox or TBS, they said we want to wait on it. And the reason that they want to wait is, I mean, like a very good one. But I'm still upset because now I look like a fool for advertising it so much. I was on Twitter.

I was on all the social media telling people, hey, I'm very excited about this episode. Scottie Pippen's in it. This is a huge dream of mine. Every kid I knew who had a best friend who was a little bit better than them got to play as Michael Jordan and you played as Scottie Pippen. So please understand where I'm coming from. And then the episode didn't air. And I think a lot of people were like, well, not a lot of people, 12 people or so were like, well, what the fuck? I thought you said this was coming out.

It's sad and funny that in all of your tweets about this, you also tagged Scottie Pippen. So even though, even if he's like completely aware of how business works and how like network programming works and how nothing is ever guaranteed with these schedules, it still really looks like you fucked up somehow. Like this kid Soren who was talking all this shit and tagging scotty pippen in it it looks like one of those kids in your school who's just a big liar and they had like one big one that they're hanging it all on and you're everybody's just sort of waiting for this thing to come around they're

like no my dad knows sylvester stallone he's coming to visit us he's coming for christmas just wait and then all the kids are just like waiting for christmas to roll around and sylvester had come like i fucking knew it yeah and the kid is like no it's still happening uh-huh uh yeah all right sure can't wait to meet him next christmas can't wait to meet sly uh yeah so anyway this episode's coming out but it's a tvd situation i yeah you won't actually be able to see it it's in canada i was gonna ask sincerely if you have every confidence that the episode will air or uh did you i don't know i'm putting it on you you didn't like write yourself into it and then get me too there's nothing that's gonna get this episode

definitely right i mean i can't say for sure what the future holds but that's not the plan right now and the episodes cost a lot of money for them to make, so I can't imagine they would just hold this forever. And as far as what people have told me, what showrunners have told me, they're like, no, it's a great episode. I shouldn't have put the no in front of that. They did not say, no, no, no, no, Soren, it's a great episode.

I'd come to them like, tell me I'm good. They just accepted it was good i'm very excited about it because i uh like for years and i don't know what this says about our crop of comedy writers but scotty pippen has been a uh a funny comedy specific to pull for years like Like, it's just like, it's irresistible to bring up Scottie Pippen to me. He's, he's always a very funny reference. And like,

I've seen him referenced on 30 rock too. And other like comedy shows, other comedians will bring up Scottie Pippen, not in a way that they're mocking him or anything. It's just for whatever reason, he, there, there are some people who just like feel like inherently good comedy

polls of pop culture specific to to bring out and he is one of them and it's like yeah it's great that you you got to do like the scotty pippen episode that's huge he's having a moment right now because just had this great uh profile come out he's got a book coming out he's on a lot of podcasts lately and it seemed like times were were were great for like the definitive scotty pippin comedy entry into the scotty pippin discourse that has been happening without his control and uh and i'm bummed that we don't get to see it immediately and also like because you said it's good and you've never said anything he's good that's true i i usually have all of your other episodes like in your voice have just been uh i think

the nicest thing you've ever said about them is that they're finished which is how i feel about every script i've ever turned in it's like well i i can't do it anymore it's done now they won't let me work past this certain date so i guess it's gonna be on tv uh yeah no i've never been secure in anything i've written until it's done and people have had say that they like it and then i'm like yeah maybe it is good yeah i'll let them talk me into it uh yeah no that's how i think that's probably how all writers feel yeah hey everybody every human was born to create that's a pretty big statement right well think about it you're if you think i'm not the creative type i don't know Hey, everybody. Every human was born to create. That's a pretty big statement, right? Well,

think about it. If you think, I'm not the creative type, I don't know. You are creative. There's different aspects of your life where you are just exploring that creativity. And Skillshare gives you an opportunity to do that with brand new fields that you've never considered before. Whether you last picked up a paintbrush yesterday or in grade school, or you want to explore your creativity with cooking, or you want to explore your creativity with cooking or you want to explore your creativity with gardening hey gardening we could be buddies Skillshare is an online learning community that offers membership with meaning with so much to explore real projects to create and the support of

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That's it. To learn something brand new. To learn 20 new things. $10 a month is nothing. Explore your creativity at Skillshare.com and get a one-month free trial of premium membership. That's one month of a premium membership at Skillshare.com slash QQ. Well, should we get into the show uh i don't have a question for you but i have i can talk for a while i know you like that i love that uh is this a sweet hold on is

this gonna be a story where uh i'm gonna i'm gonna put my head in my hands and be like dan you can't do that or is this um possibly i i i'm hesitating telling this story because it uh it forces me to join or like to add to discourse for a community that i don't feel qualified to represent uh it's a spiritual tonal cousin to a story i told years ago where a man in a bar saw me wearing a pride hat, assumed I was gay and I didn't want to deprive him of that notion, which thrust me into a kind of tourism in the gay community where I got to reap all the benefits of looking like a member of this community that, that is like,

is proud and defiant while also knowing at the end of the day i could take my hat off yeah and i also wasn't a good faith member of this community i was just trying to signal that i support the community yeah it's it was a troubling you were area for me to walk into you were thrown into the costume and then you didn't immediately toss it off you went maybe i'll walk around in this for a little bit and see what it's like um and this is this is this is a involves a similar degree of of confusion um but less i'm i'm uh less actively courting it at this point let's get into it i was uh as you and some of our listeners know was recently retired to a very quiet one mile long quirky little new jersey beach town that i love to to hide it out and

hide out in every once in a while and so i was just there living my life i got a free bedroom because there aren't a lot of like good one bedroom places here and it's it's i always like the idea of like hey i have this beach town if anyone wants to come and visit like my parents stayed for a day my brother and sister-in-law stayed for a couple of days and i just like having the option to like open my doors to people but for the most part it's it's one person and a dog in a three bedroom house holy shit I didn't realize how big it was. Yeah. It was great.

Way too much room for me. And it's again, a very small town and everyone's pretty nosy there and mostly knows what everyone's doing. But I mostly keep to myself because that's my resting state. I like being part of a community I liked sitting on the porch or the balcony every day saying hi to the neighbors and and chatting and like saying hi to other dog walkers I liked going for my runs every night and waving at other

runners doing the thing that you do and I enjoyed being like perfectly pleasant to anyone I met that's it's a it's a town where like everyone wants to talk to jackson he's a cute dog and like this is this isn't new york where people all have headphones in and keep their heads down like it's a very chatty fun town uh and i thought i was doing a reasonable job being a part of this community saying my hellos and whatnot and then one night a woman who lived a couple doors down from me fully sprinted after me and like tapped me on the shoulder and called out to me while I was on my porch. And I had my, it's like 9.30 at night, I had my earbuds in. And I was like, ah!

I'm like thoroughly spooked by this woman. And she was like, I live down the street. What's your deal? And I was like, start over. She was like, no live down the street. What's your deal? And I was like, start over. No one knows who you are. And we don't know what you're doing. Oh, we. Yeah.

Oh, they're talking about you. And yeah. And me and some of the other neighbors have been trying to figure it out. We call you quiet guy. And we all want to know what quiet guy's up to. And why you picked this town and it wasn't like it was her tone was not aggressive as hard as that is to imagine her tone was more like i'm i'm a i'm a type a person who gets to the bottom of things i'm sick of

sitting around on porches trying to figure out what your deal is so i'm going to ask you point blank at night on your porch what your deal is and i was like oh well uh just as a as a starting point you could tell the people who are wondering what quiet guy's deal is that maybe he's just a quiet guy who doesn't want to be disturbed uh but beyond that i don't really have a deal i'm not that interesting i really like this town a lot because it's quiet. And I like the beach. Like, I promise you, it's nothing more simple than I like privacy and the beach

and this town affords that. And there's like a lot of quirk and a lot of charm. It's all Victorian houses. So it's like a beautiful place to walk around in and exist in. And like, you have to trust me when I say I'm not any deeper than that it's good weather and cool looking houses and she was like no i think there's something else

those guys across the street they were convinced that you're gay but i don't think that's what's going on what and that was the thing yeah that's a lot of that that paints this town in a little bit of a more negative light than i'd like because i don't think insofar as no broad stereotypes are perfect at summing up any community any group of people anywhere i think none of my behavior fit into what you would consider existing pop culture stereotypes like there there are there are things there are awful behavior patterns invented to sum up a group of people and uh not that again those aren't perfect those aren't representative but i didn't fit into any of those things it's very to to use like dated pop culture pulls any like 90s gay best

friend in a movie or tv show fits fits pretty much the same mold yeah and there's an archetype i don't there's a clear gay archetype in pop yeah and i don't think any of my behavior fit into any of that which was a very strange thing it's it's like no one would think who's this guy he has a dog he goes fishing in the morning and he runs at night you know like gay people it's just like not a pop culture stereotype that i've seen before and i was trying to figure it out and i think and this is what makes the town look uh more small-minded than i'd realized when i first started going there is i think they just decided there was an otherness to me because I was a person who lived alone in a three-bedroom house and I wasn't partying

and I didn't have a family and I was polite and sat on my porch reading from my book or my computer every morning and I hung out with my dog and And I went for my runs. And cooked good food. And that was it. And they were like. They just thought. That doesn't fit. Our understanding. Of what this. What this town is for.

There's an otherness to this person. What else do we know is other? Oh gay. Alright. And that's sort of where the. The speculation stopped. Was like. This thing is different.

This thing is also different. Let's remove nuance. And just assume that they're the same thing is also different let's remove nuance and just assume that they're the same thing yeah uh it's not great but i think it's it's possible that they're they're not the it's not that that much of an a to b connection for them i think that it could be that they're they see a guy who is quietly content with being single like that he's not actively pursuing anyone in this town so like there's no desperation about you and they're like what and so like they're trying to figure out how you could be content and be alone yeah and uh that's like a

it's an you know in the even the 80s 70s or 80s there's like a confirmed bachelors and people would just be like well that's a confirmed bachelor just means they're gay yeah and it just means when you're quietly content and it's somebody who doesn't want to answer a lot of questions about that kind of thing or be out because um that has a lot of ramifications in most places especially small towns and so that that's i could see where that thought process might have come from i mean i want to defend these people but no i get it also completely separate from the the gay speculation which is just one side of this whole thing i was really of split minds about how much i liked having an air of mystery about myself

because you know me, and I think our listeners will confirm this even if they've never met me. That's not a look I can pull off, really. I've never been able to like... I've never in my life been intriguing at a party. No one has ever wondered what my deal is. So the fact that like the neighborhood had

gotten together and was like he went fishing for a second time this week i saw him at the farmer's market twice it's like great i've i've i've never been known to leave puzzle pieces so the fact that people are trying to figure me out that was at one time thrilling but then at another time also which is much more on brand very invasive to a degree that i didn't like well because you didn't plan it no had you orchestrated the puzzle pieces you'd have been pumped about this circumstance but right because you you're just going about your life you're like no no no stay please stay away i am this is the bruce wayne side of me you don't you're right um the only like epilogue is that uh this the the woman who spooked me at my at my porch uh we went out the night after that not in a romantic way

but it was like the the this town has a cute little festival almost every weekend in the summer and a bunch of weekends in the winter and this weekend was no exception where i was like yeah they're having community night there's gonna have like games for kids and food trucks and other like like fair community bullshit and she was like i don't think you should go to that alone i think we should go to that together and so we did and then we walked on the boardwalk for like two and a half hours and she just like told me history stuff about the town is she nice is she cool she's very nice yeah and she was uh still trying to get down to the bottom of the mystery of why i specifically like this place and the thing that we kept coming back to was her sincere belief

that i was interesting and my like dedicated position that i'm not yeah which is a thing i still i think is still very true of me god i mean i know exactly how that conversation happened too you you without realizing it you made other people's relationships stronger because i'm sure these people sitting at home with code not with covid sitting at home during covid this whole time finally they get a chance to go back out and see each other like somebody was over at somebody else's house they're drinking they're having a good time and they're like hey have you guys no noticed this guy that's in town like doesn't talk to anyone yes quiet guy yes i know oh god quiet guy and then they were like then they all got kind of riled up and they were excited.

At some point, you know someone floated the idea of serial killer. Somebody was like, new guy in town, doesn't really interact with most people. He's here finding his serial type. That's what he's doing. He's perfecting his craft. And then they got a good laugh out of that. Keeps to himself and gets on a fishing boat. It's way more Dexter than standard homosexual behavior.

Absolutely. And then at one point, she probably had, in the middle of like her final glass of wine, she was like, I'm going to ask him. And they're like, don't, don't, don't, don't. And she's like, no, no, no. I'm going to ask him. I'm just, one of these days, the next time I see him,

I'm going to find out what his deal is and uh and then you know that's why she at the worst opportunity when she saw you it was the only opportunity she saw so she was like well this is it i'm gonna go ask him right now and then i'm gonna bring this back to the group she did say at one point she said i was originally just gonna go knocking on your door one day. But then I saw you walking down the street. So that's when I figured I would just chase after you. I'm like, man, knocking on my door would have been so much fucking worse. That would have really, really sent me into a panic attack because I was not expecting anyone. And like Jackson would be barking.

It would be full nightmare for me. I'm glad you just sprinted after me at night. God. Yeah. And I'm sure that's how it was. Yeah. He was like i'm gonna ask him i'm gonna go over there right now i'm gonna knock on his door ask him like please kathy it's

two in the morning don't go over there please and somebody else is like do it and she's like no and she like is on her way out the door and at this point it's pageantry like she's putting on shoes or flip-flops and they're like don't don't and she doesn't do it but in her mind she's still thinking i'm gonna cost that guy find out what his deal is and uh i'm and then like bringing that information back to the group must have been the biggest social currency she'd ever had yeah um i wonder what if it was like news and Like, so get this quiet guy's name is Daniel. Oh shit. Yeah.

Never would have, that was not on my list. I'm really curious what she chose to be fascinating enough to, she did worthy for the group. Like what little tidbits she brought back to them. Here are the things that you need to know about him. And they were like, oh my God, because I'm sure that there are some that you accidentally spilled and uh yeah i don't or she misunderstood i just i'm so jealous that i

don't i also think like by virtue of this this will sound like more of a flex than it certainly feels but by virtue of like googling me after you meet me that will make the story more uh confusing i don't want to i don't want to say interesting but like i insist that i'm a quiet mild-mannered person and then if you look me up online there's no it's inescapable that i have 80 000 people who follow me on twitter and some 12 000 that follow me on instagram and like a Wikipedia page that was put together by someone else. There's,

there's no denying that that's going to, you know, you'll have to go back to the, to the detective board with all the red twine and like start from scratch. I think a lot of things lock into place with that information because the other people who are very reclusive are writers and they're like he's in the lcd you wrote a book and they'll be like ah okay this is it it's somebody who's gone to a quiet town quiet bucolic town bucolic i don't know yeah and tight town uh uh quiet

buckles quiet buckles quite quite quick chris buckles town shout out to Chris Buckles quiet little town to write his next American novel and that feels like it could lock into place for them what I'm curious about is that how that will influence the way that they interact with you like if they're like another

drinking party I'm assuming they're all drinking and one was like what if we're characters in his next book and then playing into that like they don't know that you're a fiction writer they don't know that you're you're not writing a novel about this town and they're just deciding if i'm interesting enough i will make the cut if you guys had just done a little bit more digging than you would have learned that's completely unlikely and what's more likely is I'm gonna fucking embarrass the hell out of you on my stupid podcast that's what you should have been worried about this guy you never met it's gonna

call you Kathy and do an impression of you uh not to make assumptions either about your heterosexuality Dan but is she she like your age is she cute she is not my age i think she's very attractive but she's not my age okay um there was one other well there are a couple other like to just to continue the let me track this down um the woman i rented the place from she also lived next door to that place so i talked to her every day and she was sweet and a doll. And she emailed me when we were figuring out security deposit stuff to return that. And said, the door is always open here if you want to come back. And it was a pleasure having you stay at my beach house.

So many of my neighbors have mentioned to me how great and interesting you are. And another encounter that I had with a different woman down the street, she had like, her whole family was staying at this beach house and she stopped me when I was walking in the daytime, which is better. And she was asking me lots of questions about myself in very much like uh in a a new jersey mother sort of way where she was just like trying to get as many details on me as as she could

because she had her younger daughter on the porch and her younger daughter was single and i know this because for a while her mom was mouthing the word single over and over again and like it was clear that it was just for me and the rest of the people on the porch weren't supposed to know uh but I'm not in the business of keeping other people's secrets so I said ma'am I'm so sorry I I can't read lips I know you're trying to tell me something private but I cannot read lips uh which is true I didn't know what she was saying oh I thought and then uh that was no a pretty good bit and then she said you can't read lips like she mouthed you can't read lips and I think with

context I put that together so I said out loud no I can't and then she said liar well I see that it looks like I can read lips now but I promise you I can't you're saying your daughter is single

that's very kind I have to go now and the only other time I ran I'm starting to see now why I had a reputation for being interesting because I ran into this woman again at night and she saw me I had Jackson off the leash and I will occasionally

when I first got him I I briefly entertained the idea of training Jackson in a mix of Spanish, Italian, English, and complete gibberish. Because it was important to me that we have a connection that no one else can match because no one else will ever be able to communicate as effectively as he and I.

It's an insane thing to do and part of that is sometimes i call him pokey which is his nickname and he was getting away so i said oh yeah pokey aki which is yo pokey come here and uh this woman saw just that snippet and she said you speak spanish too and then she started, she jumped into fluent Spanish. Whoa. And I had to be like, ma'am, I'm so sorry. I don't. It's just like those four words and a couple others.

I know that it seemed like I had trained my dog in Spanish. And I know it seemed like I read lips earlier when I said I couldn't. But you got to believe me. I'm just weird and stupid. You're a spy to them at this point. And I don't know how big Hazlitt was, but you got to understand when you live in a small town, like, you know everyone's, you've dated everybody,

you know, like, what the pool is like, and then somebody new enters, and everybody is abuzz because they're like, oh, fresh meat, meat like there's somebody new here and that's why this woman was so like desperate to spawn off her daughter to you she was just somebody brand new yeah and uh how exciting that is and they're just like they want they want the answers to be weird and mysterious but they want them to be you know good answers they want the like like they don't want the, oh, yeah, he moved here

because he wasn't allowed to be around children anymore after what happened up in New York. Well, I feel badly for them, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, it's tough because like the the town apart from that interrogation that like paints an inescapable uh picture of what kind of people we're dealing with the town for for being such a small town and being uh a classically religious town is incredibly progressive there's a lot of gay people there it's it's for all intents and purposes from everything that i've seen seems like a

very tolerant place and very pleasant place uh that's why this was such a shock to me that they laid it on gay yeah you know gay people there are gay people here uh here's the other possibility is that it's somebody in that group when they were all drinking that was it is gay and they're the ones who floated the idea first they're like i think he's just gay and he's still in the closet oh that's possible i don't know well i'm sure he's listening now so uh no man i'm sorry nobody's gonna find this podcast we'll know if they find it because suddenly we'll have 15 listeners instead of 12. I have sprinted into enjoying the outdoors this summer, fishing, kayaking, running, and

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Well, I have a quick question for you, Dan. Go for it. But I'm going to tell you a little story first, and then I'm going to ask it of you. I went home to Colorado, speaking of small towns. I went home to my hometown of, well, when I grew up there, it was 8,000 people. Now it's probably closer to 15 or 20.

But I went back home for a week, hung out at my parents' cabin where I grew up, and had to go through a bunch of old stuff and throw it away because my parents were just sick of holding it.

At a certain point, growing up to be 18 or 19 before you go away to college you accrue a lot of bullshit that is very sentimental and important to you and then you leave and forget about it completely and then i get to come back and it's very novel to go through it all but a lot of it's just junk but i did find some of my old notebooks and opened them read read like the, basically read dates and then decided if it was ever worth reading. And so my question to you is, I know that this is oftentimes a moving target

depending on how old you are, but right now in your life, if you look back at your old writing, what's like, how far back will you actually go before you're like, no the anything beyond this point will just be embarrassing and dumb uh yeah there's so just at first glance there is not a thing in college that i can ever read again and i know that because i guess my first so there's two parts of it my first cracked articles i started writing

when i was in college and they're just bad because they're bad and i've learned more about comedy since then but everything else that is not for crack that i wrote in college is completely off limits to my eyes because it was what i i because i'd always been writing to entertain myself and my friends through school for as long as I can remember. But college is when I decided maybe I'll try to be a writer. And immediately a switch flipped in my brain, like I think it does for a lot of young writers, where it's like, okay, now that I've decided to be a writer, I guess I should write about like divorce and drug addiction and dying. Because those are serious topics. And that's what writers write about I'm going to ignore my 15 years of experience making my friends laugh with funny essays in class I'm gonna that's that's not serious stuff that's garbage and now I'm going to write exclusively about uh trauma

that I've never experienced so there's other people's trauma yes a whole lot of stuff in college that i've written that was meant to be serious and at that time serious truly just meant like this person's an alcoholic or this person's cheating on this person or this person is caught up in a gang and uh i can't look at that again because I, because what could it be, Soren? What could I be saying about heartbreak at 19 years old? Right. What could I be saying about a marriage falling apart? How could you read it and not be like tearing apart

whatever couch you're sitting in with your other hand? Like the fingers of your hand just be like cringing. I know if I read it, then I won't be able to write anymore. It's so deeply humiliating. So I opened a notebook and the first line I read was, I think it said, it's a fascinating thing when a young man comes home from college, if you can call it home. And I was like, oh no.

And shut it immediately. I shut it. And I was like, I just can't. And I threw it away and i was like oh no and shut it immediately i shut it and i was like i can't i just can't and i threw it away because i was like i there's nothing i will gain from this i will only be worse for having read this and i know at the time i was writing it thinking uh well worst case scenario this is i should be writing down the things that i feel the strongest because those things matter and trying to get to the bottom of them and trying to figure them out. Best case scenario, I'm sure, was someone, when I'm a famous writer, someone will come back and find these after I've drank myself to death or whatever a writer does. Walked into the sea with rocks in my pockets.

And someone will come back and find this stuff and find solace in it and like try to piece together who I was. And so you're writing now for an audience, same way as you were like before it was, you're just writing sketches in Spanish class or whatever to try and make everyone laugh. And then at a certain point, you're like, what if I was a real writer?

What if I'm Camus? And like, and you just start like writing in this, you start using kind of like purple language and you get very excited about the prospect of being a writer and what that means and how serious you should sound and how earnest you are. And that stuff is just rough.

It's rough to go back and visit. Yeah. I want to be on the record here that if i ever uh die tragically at a period of time that someone would deem too young uh a way to honor me is to not publish my unpublished works that's that is i i'm i forbid it i'm saying now don't do it even like a vanity project don't do it. Even like a vanity project, don't do it. Never has a dream vanished so quickly for me than when Kurt Cobain's notebook came out,

when people published that Kurt Cobain's writing, just his scrawls and stuff. And I don't know who would have even done it. If it's Courtney Love is involved somehow, or like one of his old notebooks became published material and they didn't edit it down or anything like that and as a kid i was like yes yes at some point someone will do this with my things and then and then within like five years i was like please don't ever do that the point of of like the things that

i've put out into the world i put them out on purpose the things that i did not don't read those like that that's i have not worked on it at all that's just crap they're for no one to look at i can't throw them out because that's how my brain is shaped and i'm not going to look at them but like don't i i understand that it would make sense for me to throw them out but i'm not going to do that did you throw out your notebook after reading one sentence from it or that one i did because i'd forgotten it existed so within i had like a period of about three minutes where i wasn't sentimental about it anymore because i'd forgotten it existed it embarrassed me from sentence one and i didn't feel any sort of sentimentality about it and so i immediately tossed it yeah i know somewhere in my house i have letters that i wrote to my future well i wrote to

my future adopted son or daughter because i didn't want to like put a curse on myself or like sure assume that i at some point i automatically i will have a kids um and so i know that i've written letters to them and i hope to find them before they do so that i can destroy them because i'm confident that there's nothing good in there that's so that's got to be difficult because if you take yourself out of the equation you have to know that it would be unenjoyable find for one of your kids yeah like even if it's clownish and you're embarrassed by it it's it's still they must really want to read that yeah but too bad it's not their call i just know this shit's not polished like it you when you write a joke or when we used to do stand-up and

like you're writing a joke you have the kernel of the joke at first but you it's only funny because you know that it has the potential to be funny but what you write down the first time is not funny at all and if that becomes the thing that then you're like that's presented i mean you can never do that joke again yeah it will never work because you now it's out in the world and it's half baked and you fucked up um and i hate to think that there's that stuff in there that someone would ever read that they're like oh he never did anything with this yeah i'm so mortified about a play that i was working on for so many years in college that was about uh a relationship that i never lived through but still was like i want to talk about like serious heartbreak the way that i think last

five years talks about serious heartbreak uh and i'm gonna do it i'm not gonna just write a story and i'm not even gonna just write a play i'm gonna write a play within a play where the writer is a character which you know first of all daniel fuck you and one of the people that the writer had the relationship with is playing herself in the play version of the play. And so the whole thing takes place as a conversation between the guy writing about the play and the people who are in the play. And I want to time travel and be like, hey, buddy, just write like a play first. Just like before you try to invent a new genre about a subject you don't know anything about, maybe write like a short story about growing up in New Jersey. Just try that. Just

prove that you can do that. Get a foundation first and then you can start breaking the rules. Yeah. I know that the first short story I ever wrote in high school, there was a creative writing class that I didn't get to take. Like for whatever reason, there's these electives and like I wanted that class, but it was full up. And so I went to the teacher privately and I was like,

if I wrote something, would you be willing to read it? And he was like, yeah, absolutely. Because a kid showing interest in anything is like good for a teacher. And I wrote a short story about being an old person in a senior living facility.

Just sort of like all these people staring at the doors, waiting for someone to appear at the screen who they knew. And thinking, I've nailed it. I've nailed the condition of being 80 years old. They're so lucky to have me. And then it took him a very long time to read it. And I think what happened was he read it and went, oh, God damn it. I don't know how I'm going to talk to this kid about this and just put it off, put it off, put it off. But I know that that's not even like I can't even tell this kid that it's just bad.

I have to also explain to him how passion is not a substitute for talent. This is like a life lesson. This isn't just about grading a paper. This sucks. I got to turn some lights out. There was a really nice moment when I was going through all this stuff and found some old three and a half inch floppies. I know they had a bunch of old writing on them.

And I was like, well, there's no way for me to even access these. So in the bin they go. There's some, the only things that I ever like of old writing because like to college is one thing where i don't want to read any of like the serious chapter of my life i also have a difficult time reading old cracked articles not just because the site is dog shit but because it's it's i just you you think probably hold on you should pause to say that the when you say dog shit you mean the the layout of it. Impossible to navigate. Yes.

It's an impossible to navigate website. I can't find anything. If you look at my archives, I think the first thing that is credited to my name is an Agents of Cracked live blog. It's just what a devastating representation of a decade of my life anyway uh i can't read any of that crap anymore um because i probably wrongly assume that i've gotten better every year because i i know that that's impossible but there are some i i see a lot of try hard elements in some of the earlier stuff i see a lot of like the targets i chose are just not targets i would choose and the language i use is not language i would use so like there's a general um i feel like i've outgrown stylistically and content wise some of these articles but one of the things i'm learning is like the age that

becomes embarrassing me that changes every year it's around 26 right now And it was 24 a few years ago. There was some like 30-year-old Daniel who was like, 24, that's embarrassing. But these next two years, these are solid. And now at 35, I'm like, nah, you're missing the mark there too, buddy. Yeah. Thank God I got it now. Thank God I finally reached the age where I do understand and I'm very smart and I know all the things. The only things that I ever appreciate are things with no context whatsoever.

Like when I go through a notebook that has a very dumb concept in one sentence or like, hey, just FYI, Milfneck is a good name for a town in new jersey like yeah that is okay yeah i'll use milf neck new jersey one time that's gonna end up somewhere there's i i can go through so when i used to do camping trips i used to keep a journal just when i did the camping trip to kind of like log what i did that day so that i will remember um oh yeah we went to that lake oh yeah we did this we found those waterfalls uh and that stuff i can go back and read easily because there's no um there's no ego in it like there's no there's no part of me that's trying to be a writer in those and there is some stuff like old journals and things that i can go through and find stuff that is me trying to work through something, but work through it earnestly. Like I can go through stuff from 2006

and see how scared I was to be, not know what I was going to be doing in the future, not know if like what I was doing was right. And some of that's really interesting. It's like a nice peek back. But if I could go back and just tell myself, like stop trying to write and just say something, just say it as easily as you possibly can so that I can come back and explore this yeah because that's valuable but yeah man the minute I start trying to

be charming or like clever in it it's just so bad I mean sometimes I like that the charm and cleverness because even though this this falls outside of the window of of good writing I've ever had uh my book how to fight presidents available anywhere books are sold um they're like at a core level the idea of celebrating presidents broadly and celebrating the reckless masculinity of them specifically uh as a concept has not aged well and i don't love that but every once in a while i'll look at a chapter of that book and go through it because i've never since handed into the uh publisher it's not like something that i do reading it over and over again is not a pleasant

experience for me but i look at a chapter every once in a while and a thing i've noticed about me writing in 2012 versus me writing the last few years is like i wasn't the most efficient writer or the or the the cleanest writer but like you can tell i'm having fun doing that there's like in a way that i would probably edit out today i'm still looking at him like you're just having a little blast you you uh it would have been great if you picked you picked one joke instead of four alts that you included all of them but like you're you you enjoyed this this process yeah a little jealous of your past self look at how much you like this you just sat there for 45 minutes and came up with different jokes for the same line for no reason you just you just

you you tickled yourself for how many euphemisms for big dick you could have look at what are you being cute fuck you that's the nicest thing my mom has ever said about my writing by the way is you seem like you're having a lot of fun when you're doing it her her harsher criticisms have been things like, well, you know I'm not your biggest fan. Yeah. It should not be looked at as a positive thing where the way that I self-review my early writing is the same way my parents reviewed my early basketball playing. You're having so much fun. You're trying really hard. It looks like you're making friends.

That's what's important. god that's great well i think we can wrap it up here dan yeah this was a pretty good episode sucks we have to keep recording yeah but i mean you're sort of showing everyone how the sausage is made at this point that we don't just do one and then we are spent for the week and then we do another one next week. No, I know our audience thinks like we only record this when we're absolutely inspired. When we have just too much to say. Then like we fire up the microphones. Middle of the night doesn't matter.

Wake each other up because like a story needs to be told. But yeah, sorry. Sometimes we do these like two two in an afternoon so we don't have to talk to each other for another two weeks on twitter you can follow daniel at dob underscore inc you can follow me soren at soren underscore ltd you can follow our we call him now he's a uh cfo still you think we call Bacon CFO? Sure. You can follow the other guy who's responsible for this podcast at MakeMeBaconPlease. Really, honestly,

if you have any questions about the show, that's where they should go. Because we likely won't answer them. Quick question, you can follow that on Twitter at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. That's also a pretty good place to ask your questions. You can email us at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. That's also a pretty good place to ask your questions. You can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com.

Absolutely the worst place to ask a question. I don't know that anyone has ever checked that email account. But it's nice to know it's there. You can also find and follow and hire our producer and sound engineer and editor at Gabe Harder at Gabe Harder dot com. We have a Patreon that's just patreon slash quick question there's no dot com in there patreon oh i guess it would be patreon.com so that's a good question people are smart people know how to find things quick it said quick quick quick kevin was my auto fill quickly kevin oh so advertising somebody else's show a little bit here everyone check out quickly kevin

it's the kevin can fuck himself after the show recap show and it's it's really great it's uh again it's quickly kevin so it's just like two and a half minutes long and and the the reviews are staggeringly accurate this is it is patreon.com slash quick question. But I mean, honestly, don't do it. Don't do it. The only person you're paying is Bacon to make this show happen. And at a certain point,

he'll say we don't have enough money to do it anymore. And I mean, who's really at loss there? We just move on with our lives, right? Yeah. Okay, bye.