Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Senior Gym Boyz
Episode Date: February 6, 2022The guys talk big gym changes, and Daniel gets some good news! And as always thanks to our sponsors. Thanks BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/qq. Shop with confidence — ...get Honey for FREE at JoinHoney.com/qq. Skillshare.com/qq and one-month free trialÂ
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R-A-K-Uor of the award-winning After Hours, and
senior writer for last
week tonight with John Oliver, Daniel O'Brien,
joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Buies.
Soren, say hello. No, fuck me.
You're a senior writer now. Let me hear all about
this. We were just
named senior, me and four of
my co-workers, Sina Valli, Joanna Rothkopf,
Owen Parsons, and Charlie Redd,
we were all named senior writer out of recognition of, I guess, time on our show and work that
we've done.
And yeah, it doesn't give me any powers, which is always my first question, is like, great,
what can I...
Right.
What's the... It doesn't need to be a
lot of power because it just what achievements have i unlocked something something to go to my
head there there's that like there's a kids in the hall sketch that i'm sure you have a better
memory for than i do about uh like a manager calling an assistant manager into an office
uh because he's let the very minuscule amount of power of being
assistant manager go to his head so dramatically. And I was like, yes, I feel that. What, what,
what, what power can I Lord over someone? I need to be able to Lord over Lord something over someone.
And I, and I don't, I don't have any, um, which is unfortunate, but, but, uh but very wise on their part.
Did you change the handle on your email sign-offs to Senior Writer?
No, but this is like, because I always sign my work emails with something silly,
like, love you or stay safe out there, guys.
Every email that I send opens with, can't believe it's already whatever month it is, is and ends with some version of I love you or stay safe out there, guys.
Yeah, that's perfect.
Good branding.
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And this is perhaps too vulnerable to admit, but like the day that we found out about these title these title bumps, we're all like it's it's comedy writers.
So like every celebration amongst ourselves is like like winking and cynical in some way because we're all too cool for school.
And even when we're talking to our our co-workers who are who are not senior writers are just are just staff writers, civilians, they might as well be.
are just staff writers, civilians, they might as well be.
Even that's like a celebration couched in layers and layers of very healthy irony and detachment.
But then like privately I'm texting one of my coworkers and I'm like,
did you, so are you going to change your Twitter bio?
Like when the season starts or are you not going to change it or like what and uh they were just
like i think i'm going to change it now it's like okay let's both do it now and we both simultaneously
changed our twitter bios because like it is a thing that i'm super proud of and i i you know
yeah called my parents because they're that's the best audience for an achievement like this.
Of course.
Your co-workers are going to give you shit,
and they should.
But your mom is going to say, what took them so long?
Yeah, absolutely.
That's been exciting.
It's been huge for moms and dads.
It's going to show up in the credits.
It's going to be on my
resume forever.
It's a thing that I genuinely didn't see coming.
That's so exciting.
And honestly, I mean, this is a little bit of your mom and me here, Dan.
But do they, you do think they realize how lucky they are to have you, right?
Like at this point, they know.
At this point, they must realize, oh, we got a really good one.
Oh, I have no idea. The senior writer thinks they should suggest that, but I want more. I like,
I want at some point for like John or, uh, the other one, Henry, Tim Henry.
Uh, I want them to sit down with you and be like, hey, we really, you're bringing it at your all.
And we really appreciate everything that you're doing for us and that you'd even stay at this show for this long.
Like something that would acknowledge that we need you.
Well, I don't think they'll say we need you because that's like terrible for contract negotiations that's
like you can't play your hand that poorly um but i think the version of that that uh they're
comfortable with and i'm comfortable with is just like the the mutual expectation that i'm going to
perform this job well i think is is uh it's's there. The highest compliment they can give is like, yeah, you can, you can do this, uh, at times
very difficult job and at times in stressful situations with short deadlines.
The fact that they trust me with it is, is the highest compliment they can give me.
I have, here's the thing that I'm finding 2022.
I don't know what it is about me.
I'm just fucking simping all over the place. I'm just such a work simp. I can't help it. I don't know what to do about it.
thing like you that's how you keep a job like it doesn't necessarily it doesn't mean you're a simp it just means like no you're a good employee that's fine it's okay to be a good employee it's
okay to like want to do your best for somebody i know but culture keeps coming up with with new
words to describe things that i do uh pejoratively uh it's not a great time to be someone like you
that's so exciting though dan senior writer that's got such a nice ring to it yeah it's
very very cool i'm i'm thrilled um should we get into this show i guess so i mean i'm
i spent my load there i mentioned up top and you laughed about it, that this was a fitness and friendship podcast.
Yeah.
I got excited about the fitness portion because I've got some fitness news for you coming up.
Oh, good.
But is there specifically something you want to talk about fitness related?
I do.
Yeah.
It's less of a question and more of a story of a thing that happened to me recently that
is all my own doing. I'm, I'm in a new town, uh, and
I, I signed up for retro fitness. I think we talked about before I was looking for a gym.
I signed up for one. Uh, it's, it's fine for like, if I need a place with a treadmill or I want to do
lots and lots of big weights, which I almost never do,
but it's,
I like to throw it in every once in a while.
I have the resource of a gym to go to that's two and a half miles away from
where I'm living.
So it's,
it's fine.
Perfect run.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't like being in gyms.
And this one especially is like,
it's,
it's,
it's a,
uh,
an affordable public gym,
uh,
where people who don't wear masks and spit on the floor. I don't know what else to say
It's not my favorite thing on the planet
so I tried to
Diversify my workouts also because I just get bored in gym. So like I do classes on
Men's health fitness app that I like a whole lot and I do like a bunch of other stuff that I just know from
other class that taking just from from other classes I've taken just from memory.
But I still wanted to like once a week do a few different things.
When I was living in New York, I would do kickboxing once a week and rock climbing at the indoor rock gym once a week just to like change things up.
So I was looking for something like that here.
I found a kickboxing gym and I called them and I was like,
hey, I wanna start taking some classes.
I don't wanna like just one-on-one box,
but like I'm assuming you have classes
that like some integration of kickboxing and cardio,
which is a lot of these kickboxing gyms do.
Or I can also just duck into a crowd
and I am not the focus of the attention.
And they were like, yeah, we have those. And they gave me the attention and they're like yeah we we have those
and they gave me the schedule and i was like and i was like great what can you tell me about these
these classes are and they were describing them and i said oh so it's sort of like uh a hit class
and when i say hit you high intensity interval training okay yeah um and uh that's i would
describe like orange theory is a type of hit class.
Anything where it's like there's generally a lot of cardio.
You're not using heavy weights.
There's just a lot of changing your workouts and using light weights.
And just like you're sweating and it's like near constant work for about an hour.
I like it a lot.
Can I just interject for a second here, Dan?
You asked a place that specializes in hitting
if they have any hit classes.
Yes.
Okay, go on.
But I would understand if I said hit class,
I'm going to a kickboxing gym to take a hit class.
It's reasonable, I think, for most people
to think I meant like a punching and kicking thing.
Yeah. But this gym, this professional gym they said no you won't be doing doing like hitting
or anything it's like a group fitness class and I was like okay so this this should have been a flag
that the professional didn't know what a hit class was but it wasn't uh and then I was was like, all right, so there's a class tomorrow morning. I'll go tomorrow morning. And then I show up there at 8 or 9 a.m., whatever it was. And there's two people in there and it's locked. And then the guy comes out and I was like, hey, can I take a class? He's like, there's no class today. Like, all right. The website said there was and the woman on the phone yesterday said there was, but I'll just go fuck myself.
the website said there was, and the woman on the phone yesterday said there was, but I'll just go fuck myself. And then the woman from the gym called me a few days later and she was like,
hey, you said you're going to take classes. Uh, did you do it? I was like, no, I,
I tried. And, and they said it was, they weren't doing classes on, on Friday. She's like, oh,
uh, who told you that? I was like, some guy. I don't know.
The man at the gym. So they weren't doing
classes. And then I called
the Monday after that,
because it was Martin Luther King Day, and I wanted to see if you
were doing any classes. And I assumed
you guys were closed, because I called twice and no one picked up.
She's like, no, we were open.
What? Okay, well...
What is this place? I've given you guys a couple
shots now. And she's like, no,
come take a class. I was like, alright.
My Thursday morning is open.
It says on your website you guys are doing a class.
And she was... No, I said, do you guys have
a class Thursday morning? And she said, no.
And then I said, your website says you have a class.
And she checked the website. She goes, oh, then
um...
Yep, we...
We have a class. I was like, okay, I don't, I'm not going to come if I'm the only one.
And she was like, you won't be.
And like, to this gym's credit, I wasn't.
There were three other people there.
this class is like if you had just started working out and you had just been going to classes at a gym for two months and then you showed up one day and the teacher wasn't there and and then so you
decided to teach the class that's really what it felt like the our instructor was very clearly
making things up as she went along and there were there were four
stations and like it's it's still an hour where you're still doing things uh so like i'm i i
worked up a sweat and if if you're doing some kind of active workout for an hour it's not it's not
time wasted so like we're there are four stations and there's a trx ropes bands whatever they're
called at each station.
And she was like, in this one, you do this.
And then this one is this, three is this, four is this.
And you guys, you each start at one because there was four of us and you're going to rotate
around and you're all going to do it.
And one of the women and the group was like, how, how long are the rounds?
She's like, I'm not going to tell you that.
Like, okay.
You don't know.
Well, that information is actually helpful to
me for pacing but i'll just like i'll time it on my watch and find out how there's i i i don't
understand the physical benefit of keeping us in the dark on how long rounds are so i'm gonna i'm
just gonna like time it myself so we're we're doing these workouts and one of the things that
makes me nervous is one of the reasons that I I specifically want to take classes with a person is is for
safety I can do anything I want in a gym and I could do as many classes on an app
as I have time for but I'm 36 years old and and form is is like more important
to me than anything right now because i don't want
to do anything that's going to do any real damage and like class time or one-on-one time is the only
time that someone is checking my form this person is just not and so we're doing this this stuff and
i'm like i i feel like i i feel like i might have to walk out of this class if something starts to
hurt because this might actually do more do more harm than good so that's one additional flag is that no one's checking form the only sometimes she will
say uh fix your feet if my if my feet were wrong and i was like oh man please say more she was like
fix your feet all right uh another strange thing that happened in the class is she sent when we did one
of our rotations and she sent a woman to like a fifth trx station and the woman was like aren't
i supposed to go to to number one and the trainer was like like stared for a long time it was like
no there's a fifth one there was always a one. I just didn't tell you all before
because you were standing at the other four stations,
but there's a fifth one.
There's been there the whole time.
And like, we're all pausing our workouts now
for this meltdown.
And she teaches us the fifth station.
They're like, all right, I guess there's five stations now.
And like, we'll all just take this to our greatest
that there was always five stations
and it's our fault for not knowing that.
So we complete this circuit, and there's a couple more either TRX or
medicine ball related
Workouts that we do again made up as you go as we go along where it's like station number one
You're doing medicine ball floor slams, or you slam it on the ground. Yeah, and catch it whatever
Number two,
you guys are doing floor slams with a jump.
Okay. Hang on a second.
Do you know anything other than a floor slam, Lady P?
Number three, side-to-side floor slams.
Okay.
And then number four, she was trying
to do this around-the-world
floor slam where you take the medicine ball.
By the way, at no point did she like say like relatively what weight you should be using.
Right.
I've done a lot of these classes before.
A crucial point.
Yeah.
If you're doing like a class with dumbbells,s they'll be like guys we want you on a
10 or an 8 and girl and ladies we want you on an 8 or a 5 like they give you these like
these rough guidelines so you at least can mentally know like the the the area it's it's
all going to be down to your own experience and fitness level of course but like okay i if someone
tells me we want the men to have 10 pound dumbbells
i know what that means it also gives you a good indication of like you do your first set with it
and you're like oh that was rough and you're not going to drop all the way down to like if you were
if you started at a 10 you're not going to drop down to a 5 you're like oh no she gave the range
of 8 to 10 i'll go down to 8 yeah like you know you know now how far you're supposed to drop if
things don't go well.
Right.
But this was just grab a medicine ball and then leave it at your station.
So I'm just like moving from like six to eight to 12 pound medicine balls, depending on what
someone fucking grabbed.
And station four, once again, she's like trying to do a different variation on the floor slam
where you slam it and then wrap it around your head and slam it on the other side.
And she kept confusing herself and like still ending up slamming it on the left side over and
over again. And then one of the other people, I think the same woman who asked like, wait,
are you sure after three, I shouldn't go to four? I should go to five. The same woman who asked her
that is like, no, no, no. Here's how you do it. This is, this is the way to, to, to switch it, switch your hands. So you,
so you get it the way that you want it. And the instructor was like clearly getting tense about
being undermined in this class. And the woman was like, I'm sorry. I'm, I'm, that must be
bothering you. I'm sorry. I won't say anything else. And the instructor was like, nope, she
messed it up. We're not doing that anymore now we're doing sit ups
and you throw the medicine ball in the air
like completely threw it out
blamed the woman and created a new workout
for us oh that's so awesome
and we
did all that it was
one of the weirder and
and kookier workouts I've ever
I've ever seen and like our instructor
two other things that I feel like I And like our instructor, two other things
that I feel like I should mention our instructor jeans in a hoodie, uh, was one thing. And the
other thing was, there was no warmup at all. I've never been to a workout class in my entire life
that didn't have like, all right, we're going to do jumping jacks or something to,
to,
before you get into whatever the set is,
there's like a minute or two of like some basic loosen up stuff,
but we just went right into the,
the TRX circuits.
Yeah.
There's no warmup.
No,
this is like,
I don't,
if not everybody warms up before a workout,
whatever that's,
that's,
that's up to you.
If you're going to,
that's,
there's no law against it, but it's like, it's one of the
things that I expect of a class.
Cause I don't always warm up.
I was like class, it's guaranteed.
I'm going to do some warming up and I'm going to do some cooling down because they know
what they're doing more than I do.
No, no warmup and no cool down.
And the only other final weird thing about this class is uh she the instructor really liked
me doing this medicine ball slam when we were doing the workout because it was like
to the music that's what she wanted me to hit you know we're listening to to fun workout music and
i'm slamming the ball to the beat and and she was like standing in front of me and cheering for me and, and like, you know, doing like good coach stuff at that point. And it did make it fun.
I was smiling. I was having a good time and like getting amped, slamming this medicine ball in one
of the three variations on medicine ball slam. And we high five after it. Good moment. And then at the end of class, she was like, hey, can I film you?
Oh, God.
And I said, sure.
No, Daniel.
Because it's, you don't understand how rare it is for me in a fitness setting for someone to be like, I want to capture this in a positive way.
That never happens for me.
This is not a woman who's sizzle reel you want to be a positive way. That never happens for me. Um, you, this is not a woman who's like,
who's sizzle reel you want to be a part of. And that's the other thing that I,
crucially, I should have said, what is this for? And I didn't. And so now I don't know what it was
for because I went to like the Instagram account of the gym. There's been no posts on it not even like not a video of me it's just a dead
account they've never posted anything so she just has this video now and it was it was a funny and
silly strange thing where like the whole workout is done and i'm i'm sweating because you're
definitely you're gonna sweat doing this stuff as i said and we get to all right we're all gonna
leave now and then she says can i film you and
she puts the same song on she like recreates the magic from the thing and like stands and cheers
for me again and has one of the other people film it and no there's no person involved in this yes
not even her film damn i'm slamming this stuff down while she like cheers me on recreating the
magic uh and then uh she turns to the to the person filming he's like did you get it he goes
now someone tried to call you while i was filming and so it stopped filming so we have to do it
again so not only is this whole thing like silly i'm also fucking exhausted from slamming this
medicine ball now by myself while people are like shuffling out of this class i'm like okay
all right i guess i'll dance again. Monkey again. Yeah.
Um, okay. This is deeply uncomfortable. I didn't really like, it was a fun,
silly story until, until everyone else left. And you're alone with two people who are like,
let us film you. Hey, do you consider yourself a happy person? What is getting in the way of that happiness? If you are not, if you thought to yourself, I don't know, or no, or I think so, then there must be something that's getting in your way.
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I think my favorite, the best part of it is the epilogue is, uh, no one from that gym
has ever called me again.
I'm sure they like the, the one woman who kept trying to get me to go to
the gym must've talked to this woman who held the class and be like, yeah, he's not coming back.
There's no way. I honestly, I think it's the same woman. I think the woman who you called and when
you were like, Hey, there's a, there should be a class on Thursday. She was like, Oh, and she just
started like pulling at her collar and it's, I got to leave the class now.
Um, it's deeply uncomfortable, but I, I have, I have some questions.
Sure.
First of all, best case scenario, that was for her own private use that this never sees the light of day. And for some like horny reason for her that she wanted it because like, that's like, that's great.
That's a loose end that's tied up and it's fine
but the muse i'm very curious about did she actually have like a mix that she was playing
for you guys that she had picked out or was it clear that like every once in a while you're
getting spotify ads in the middle we weren't getting ads um but i don't i've had better djs
i guess okay okay yeah yeah and so she's not like mouthing along to her.
She's not like, all right, we're going to pick it up here in 20 seconds.
We're going to pick it up.
Absolutely not.
No.
She didn't know what was coming on that mix.
That's amazing that you think she planned out a mix.
That's why I'm asking.
Before, like clearly it's the night before the class and she has time for one thing.
It's definitely not coming up with the moves.
It's so generous of you to assume
that she had a whole night in which to play on this.
I also want to know,
you have a gym that's playing hard to get with you
a little bit in a way that I've never experienced
with a place you want to pay to use.
But did you ever find out what happened that first day and who that guy was and like why the
gym was locked or like just some dude came out was like this isn't even a gym you can't be here
no i i my best guess is that um they they must not see a lot of people walking into their classes.
Like I,
I imagine the three other people who are in my class take that class somewhat
regularly.
And the gym almost never has to answer to the schedule that actually exists on
the website for people like me who just want to show up and start taking like
audit a class and see if I want to join that gym for any membership
tier. I, I think they probably have been open as a gym long enough that they know, even if the
website says we have a class on Friday, no one ever takes it. So it's safe to assume there's no
class. And I think the, the guys in the gym was like one of the trainers who works there working one-on-one with a person because normally Friday mornings are free. So both of our truths were,
were valid where I'm like, Hey, the website says there's a class here. And meanwhile,
his truth is I've been coming here every Friday morning for months and there's never been a class
here. Yeah. Get out of here. Is there a there a ring there no this is a kickboxing gym
right yeah well uh okay where's the kickboxing happening did you see any of it was there yeah
there's evidence of it there's a whole like extra room with a bunch of punching bags okay and there's
a like speed bags and stuff around all right and then did was the other gym equipment that you
could have used like if you wanted to go back there and be like, I'm just not even going to bother with the classes.
I will just work on my own.
Like not machines, but like plenty of benches and free weights.
God, I want to know so bad where all that footage is.
It's strange to me because like when I was taking, when I was doing HIIT classes at my kickboxing gym, kickboxing was a part of it.
Right.
You're still doing jump rope and running and push-ups and stuff and a bunch of other things to switch up what you're doing.
But also you're doing a couple of, I would say the centerpiece of it is the regular three-minute rounds where you're learning different punch and kick combinations on the bag. And then you break that up with the other cardio stuff. And this was just
TRX and medicine ball workout. That's so bizarre. I certainly, there are muscle groups that you're
going to be training. That's it. When you go to a kickboxing gym, you're like, well,
there are specific muscles that are more advantageous to have attuned to kickboxing.
specific muscles that are more advantageous to have attuned to kickboxing.
And like, that's really what you focus on.
And it doesn't sound like that's what you're doing at all.
It's just sort of like a general, like, let's, uh, let's just shed a few pounds today. Let's see what, what we got going.
Yeah. It really,
the vibe is very much like me walking into a gym for one of the first times
and be like, well, I can't do anything wrong.
As long as I'm moving
something heavy to work out.
I know that feeling.
Were you sore the next day?
No.
Yeah, I didn't think so.
Okay.
I was more sore my first scuba class.
I've been taking scuba classes, as you know.
Yeah.
I do want to hear about that as well.
That's big leg work.
And as much as I run a whole lot, it's really, it's different work to just like, just kick your legs the whole time.
Oh, I never even thought about that.
Yeah.
You've got big fins on your feet because you've got to jump in the water backwards.
Yeah.
Okay.
So it's a lot of work to be down there?
A little.
It's just, it's more work on my legs
and I guess my hips than I normally put on them.
Because they don't want you to bend your knees
and they don't want you to use your arms.
They want your arms like in front of you or behind you.
And you're just doing long strides with your legs. They want your arms like in front of you or behind you. And you're just doing long
strides with your legs. Yeah. And you're like, and like getting in and out, you're,
you know, you've got weight on you. You've got a tank and you've got little weights in your pockets.
Yeah. Oh, that's fascinating. I guess it's also a way that you'd be using your legs that you're
just not accustomed to at all. Yeah. And these muscle groups that are like, oh, are like oh we we have a job now like they like they're on a smoke break and
they just got to put down their cigarettes okay all right all right we got this yeah they also
i've i've i've gone my whole life being someone who can like not drown and and and that the the
big secret is like that's the beginning and beginning and ending of of my swimming abilities
and this after you do after you do like because it's all swimming abilities. And this, after you do, after you do
like, cause it's all in a, in a pool. And after you do your, like your lessons that you're learning
on what to do when you're scuba diving, you take all of your gear off and you do four laps of
swimming. And they're like, it doesn't matter. You know, you can, you can doggy paddle, you can,
whatever stroke you're comfortable with, take as much time as you want. You know, you can doggy paddle. You can whatever stroke you're comfortable with.
Take as much time as you want.
You're doing four laps swimming.
And Soren, buddy, that's easily the most swimming I've ever fucking done in my life.
Is on a Sunday morning at this gym being like, oh, and you're going to watch us do it?
Oh, no.
None of these are going to look good.
They're all going to look bad.
And I'm going to do one of them for a while
where I'm doing what I think people do
when they're like swimming with their arms over their heads
and like popping their head out every once in a while to breathe.
I'm going to do what I think that looks like.
You're going to watch me figure that out for the first time in my life.
Yeah. You doing that. No, that wasn out for the first time in my life. Yeah.
You doing that.
No, that wasn't it.
I've only ever seen it on TV.
And I'm like, I don't think Michael Phelps swallows as much water as I'm doing when I'm doing an impression of him.
Did I ever tell you the story of when I was in Minnesota and I almost drowned my son in me?
No!
Okay.
I consider myself a strong swimmer.
I do have a good stroke because I was on a swim team for a very long time as a child.
And I know what I'm doing.
I know that like, if I, when I have somebody on my back, I'm not going to do freestyle.
When I have him like hanging onto me, I'm going to do breaststroke.
So that both of our heads are above the water the entire time. And there's a little dock out in the middle of just about
every Lake there is in Minnesota. And it's just like this, nobody, it doesn't, I don't know who
it belongs to, but it's tethered to the ground out in the middle and you can go swim out to it.
And it just kind of floats around out there. And I was like, Oh, that one I'll swim my son out
there and we can hang out on it. I I'm not as strong a swimmer as I anticipated like, oh, that one, I'll swim my son out there and we can hang out on it.
I, I'm not as strong a swimmer as I anticipated, I guess, or this thing was just so far away, but like I I'm swimming for a while and it doesn't feel like it's getting any closer.
I'm getting a little tired and maybe my son can read my body language because he starts
to tighten his grip and sort of starts to rise up, like put his chest up higher on my head. So like now I'm sinking down a little bit more and I was like,
I should turn back. I should turn back. And I look back at the shore and I'm actually closer
now to just closer to the dock that I am to the shore. I'm like, it wouldn't make sense to turn
back. I have to go to the dock and like, it's really trying hard not to panic as like, I'm
just running out of gas and it's becoming clear to me,
like, I don't know what I would do. Uh, and so I, I've just like, I gotta make it. I have to make
it. I have no choice. And so I get out to it finally. And the ladder's on the other side of
it. So I couldn't like crawl around and I'm completely gas, like ready to throw up basically.
And I start crawling up the ladder and he's still holding onto my back but obviously he his body weight is a whole lot more in the air than it is in the water so his
arms can't hold my neck anymore and he just slips off of me into the water as i've crawled up onto
this dock and i'm like oh god and he cannot he doesn't know how to swim yet and so like he just
like but he just it's just just like immediately is like a dart down
into the water. And I just reached down all the way to my shoulder and like grab him by an arm
and pull him up and get him up. And I thought he would be freaking out, but he got up and he was
like, well, that wasn't supposed to happen. No, it really wasn't. I thought you were going to die.
I'm going to think about this moment for a very long time for the rest of my life where I almost killed my son.
But yeah, no, you're fine.
Yeah.
It was terrifying.
And it was a real humbling experience.
That little kid thing where they like acknowledge it's scary, but they don't think any harm would ever come to them anyway.
So they don't really know.
It's just like fun, scary.
Yes.
And he thinks no harm will come to him because dad is there.
Dad will take care of it.
And dad was in no condition to be taking care of anything.
And I couldn't like let that, I couldn't let him know that or he would have like panicked out there.
And I just sat on the dock for a while.
I was like, let's go back.
And I was like, just, you got to give me like 20 minutes.
I need this time.
And it was, I'm just, I remember just lying on that dock thinking, am I old?
Did I never know how to swim?
What is going on here? This is,
this is humiliating. I never thought that this day would come where I would not be able to swim
to something. Um, but anyway, I, I think about that moment a lot now because of what could have
gone wrong. I like it played over in my mind. I'm like, it feels like one of those things where I,
I have to know what I would do in that circumstance in case for whatever reason it arises again.
And so I'm like, okay, I turn over onto my back.
I grab him around the neck.
It's not going to be comfortable for him, but I can keep his head above water as I float on my back.
It's like going through the whole thing before I'm even allowed to fall asleep.
Yeah.
I'm in a tough spot now because I have engineered my life in a way where I would never have to reckon with those kinds of conversations until now. Like I was, I'm, I've been okay not being a good swimmer
for a lot of the same reasons that I'm okay not being good at like trigonometry and stuff.
Cause I'm just like, well, I don't think that's ever going to come up. Right. I'm not going to
put myself in a position where life or death depends on me knowing either trigonometry or
being able to swim for long periods of time, especially not making it look good.
Like, I just, I'm not an adventurous swimmer when I'm at the beach and at pools.
I'm just, like, hanging out in a pool.
I've never used a pool for, like, working out.
swimming in front of my four scuba instructors and just like taking up a lot of everyone's time.
I can't be like, look, I, uh, I don't need to know how to do this. I don't like swimming.
I'm, I'm not going to do it because they're like, well, you're at scuba class.
There's going to be some swimming involved.
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I'm glad that you brought up gyms, though, Dan,
because I, this past week, have walked down,
I've descended the marble staircase
to work out in the gutter with the fucking riffraff
and see what that's like for a while.
I think I'm gonna be
leaving equinox oh wait i thought um so this is so that story is about you thinking about leaving
equinox well i'm leaving i'm leaving equinox but i'm looking for a new gym and um and so i've now
gone to to three different gyms to see what it's like in, in my particular area, because it
doesn't make sense anymore. My old gym was near my job. It was very easy because I could drop my
kid off at school, go to work. I would just immediately go to the gym before work started
shower. And then I'd be ready for work. And that just doesn't make sense anymore. Now I have,
now it's just like, it's me driving half an hour to a gym and then driving home half an hour
for no reason other than that, that that's the gym I used to go to. And, uh, Dan, let me tell you, I I'm spoiled.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Gyms are bad. Oh yeah. Oh, okay. I thought you meant spoiled. Like
everyone's courting the bell of the ball. Like all these gyms are really
rolling out the carpet for you. I know I am not spoiled for choice.
There are a lot of gyms, but none of them are great gyms.
I went to one today that I was like, OK, this is a little small, but like, I think I can
make this work.
There weren't a ton of people there.
Everyone was wearing masks.
And I was like, this is great.
And then this guy walks in in flip flops, kicks him off near these cubbies doesn't put him in a cubby
or anything just kicks him off and is barefoot throughout the gym the rest of the time that i
see him oh no and i'm like oh i mean i'm not a huge fan of that but who does that what kind of
person wants that i nobody and i can't imagine i don't understand why the gym tolerated it i feel like that's a liability there's not wearing clothes like shoes i i worked with someone back when we had offices
who uh would take his shoes off at work and just be in his socks and like i wasn't gonna do that
but i i understood yeah you're gonna you're sitting at this chair all day take your shoes
off it's more comfortable put them on when you have to go to the bathroom. There are a lot of cases where I understand wanting to get down to a level of casual, super casual dress in public situations.
But I don't understand any benefit to being barefoot in a gym.
And I only see danger.
Yeah, it was bad, but he had like, it was really loose in it over here.
It was clear that like, this was a lifestyle choice for him because the feet were so calloused
and leathered.
You could see the souls of them cracking.
And, uh, then there were, there were a couple other people in the gym that were really surprising
to me.
There was a guy who he was wearing a N95 mask to his credit, but was just
hacking the entire time and doing some very dangerous workouts. He was doing like a,
these cleans where like, he just, his back was like a candy cane. And then he just lift up the
weight and grunt, grunt, grunt. And I was like, Oh, that you're going to die. And, uh, there was,
it was just this very strange, strange little gym,
considering there were only so there were so few people there. Then I went to another one that was
in part of a mall, which obviously should have been a red flag, but it was packed. It was very,
very cheap. It turns out. And it took me a while to realize that only about 20% of people wearing
mat were wearing masks and when i had
walked in no one ever asked me about my vaccination status so i went to the front desk i was like
do you guys care if i'm vaccinated or not and they're like nah it's all optional here yeah
and i was like is that is that legal i wear the police like are you allowed to do that right it's
all here and like um but do like the people like that, though? And so it was it became clear to me that if I want to go work out at this gym and actually work and be a member, I will get COVID at this gym.
It's just like a guarantee.
And so I thought, I don't know if this is the gym for me.
And as I'm thinking this, this woman comes up to me and she says.
You play hockey.
And I was like, what? And she's pretty. And she's like very
confident in her approach of me. And she's like, you play hockey. And I was like, no, I mean,
I've played it. Obviously I played it, you know, Grove and Colorado. And she was like, lady,
look at me. What am I going to do? Sit around with this all day. I'm going to waste this.
She goes, she goes, hmm, I could have sworn you have a hockey build.
And I was like, this woman is saying all the right things.
Hockey build.
I don't even know what that means, but it's athletic.
It sounds like, and I'll take it.
And then it becomes clear to me that she's offering a hockey class.
And it's not at the gym.
It's some other place
where they're like some of the third place where you can go and you can do ice skating there and
you can learn hockey. And I'm not even now I'm thinking, I'm not even a hundred percent sure it
was ice skating. It might've even just been like dry, like roller hockey, uh, which is even more
humiliating, but she was offering basically like,
she was offering a class to me.
And I was like, I'd never been so high and then fallen so low.
There was a moment there where I was like,
maybe this is the gym for me.
Get mistaken for a hockey player here.
You know, this is,
can I interrupt to bring up like a memory
that is rushing back to me right now?
Of course.
It's something that I haven't thought about in years and years and years.
Just because you were talking about a hockey player's build.
Yeah.
Because it truly awakened something inside of me.
So I'm in college and I have a friend that I go to college with that I went to high school with this, this woman, Samantha, who's great. Like one of the sweetest people in the
world. Uh, I was really glad that we got to know each other better in college. As I was working,
as I was in college, I was also a bartender at Ruby Tuesday attached to a hotel. And I made a
friend who was another bartender there. This guy, Ben, who also went to the school, but our paths
almost never crossed at the school. I knew Ben in the context of like, we worked together and I loved working
with Ben. When the two of us were behind the bar, I was thrilled. We got along. We liked a lot of
the same music. We liked a lot. We were telling each other jokes and he was like a very good
worker. And I was a good worker. It's like, great. Ben is awesome. One day I am with Samantha in one
of the, in one of the libraries at rutgers and we see ben
and i'm like ben oh my god these two worlds colliding ben come talk to me and samantha
meet samantha and he was asking samantha questions about herself and she was talking about how she
was uh just gonna go to figure skating uh club rehearsal workout where you go and you figure skate for an amount of time
yeah on purpose uh and he was like ah love figure skaters they just have such high tight asses
i was like oh no ben sucks i didn't know because we were in a professional context all this time
i can't have been around my friends it was just a strange memory to come rushing back to me that I had to like, look at Samantha and be like, this isn't. Look, I'm just as shocked as you are that Ben's talking about asses around you, about your ass right now. Ben is flirting with you and this is how he thinks is the way to do it.
right now it's ben is flirting with you and this is how he thinks is the way to do it he i mean even someone's saying that if has she not even been there had she been erased from the situation
right it's still like a what the fuck oh no what well okay i guess if he had done that at work i'd
have been like uh-huh uh look we're gonna need more lemons for the the dinner rush so you probably
should chop those and i'll be over here on the other side of the bar uh drying the same glass performatively for about 45 minutes but to say
that in front of an actual figure skater is just humiliating for everyone yeah but he doesn't know
enough to know that it's humiliating no that's right and she and poor samantha bless her heart
is probably thinking like well at some point i point I'm going to have to walk away.
No, she's thinking.
And I know what they're going to look at.
I know what at least Ben is going to look at.
I'm sure her first thought was, oh, no, Dan sucks.
Oh, no, look at the people he hangs out with.
He hardly ever talked about asses in high school.
He saw Ben and was like, oh, good. you should meet ben dan sucks maybe it's because i only knew him in a scholastic capacity
oh that sucks bad um i will i love talking about the gym and i think that we're going to do it a
lot more but i do have a quick question that is uh uh, so far afield from that. There's no segue possible. So let me ask you, Dan,
let's say someday that you're famous, right? You're like big time famous. Okay. I want to
know who the person is in your past with an outsized opinion on their influence in that
success. Like somebody in your past who was like,
at some point along the way, they were like,
I taught him everything he knows.
They're going to be the person sitting in a bar,
seeing you on television and being like,
senior editor rolls up on last week tonight
because for some reason they're watching it at the bar.
And this person's like, looks up from his dreams,
like that guy, I taught him everything he knows.
And it's just somebody who you were,
you kind of like politely tolerated for a while,
as long as you knew them.
And then you just moved on.
Yeah.
And it's got,
for me,
it's,
it's a tie between,
uh,
either,
uh,
Nadia,
this woman who taught me medicine balls,
taught me everything I know about medicine balls,
how to slam them,
how to jump.
And who else?
Um, sincerely, I probably think, like, an old drama teacher.
Just because, like, there's, like, a lot of people have emotional connections to drama teachers because, like, because high school and local theater is a cult.
It's a terrible, dangerous cult.
And all of my experiences were no exception with like plenty of drama teachers and directors in my rear view who I'm sure will cling to any former student who is succeeding in any field, even if I'm not doing anything with, with performing,
I sometimes think about old directors or teachers who will do exactly what
you're saying.
And like point at the Emmys or any other article or any other success at all.
And be like this,
I know,
I know this one and this one,
we were very close and like, I was sort one, and this one, we were very close.
And I was sort of a mentor to this person.
I have vivid daydreams that one of my teachers will be like,
yeah, he came to me for acting,
and I think I really kind of pushed him more towards writing.
Ultimately.
It's very funny that you say that, Dave, because I had the, my,
my answer that's locked and loaded is almost identical.
It was like a teacher. It was a,
it was a drama teacher that did cold auditions to like,
see what sort of talent he was working with,
with the new students as they came in and cold shit. And you could, yeah.
So you're, you're,
you're supposed to come in there
with a monologue that you had pre-prepared and uh do it and then at the end he could be like all
right so these are the ones i got to mold and he didn't talk like that but uh but i i came in with
something that i had written and i did it and at the end he was like or not even at the end
he stopped me and he's like what is this and i was
like i uh i wrote it he's like as a play and i was like no it's just a monologue and he was like
what are you acting for you should be writing and i was like deeply hurt in the moment
because i had just been like performing my heart out right and this person was like this isn't what
you should be doing have Have you considered a different
career? I've only seen it for 30 seconds, but let me stop you right there. This is not it, my son.
And, uh, and from like that point forward, it was just like locked in his head where like,
we'd be doing a show and he'd be like, he would bring that up. He'd be like, it was good. It was
a really good performance. I gotta say though, man are you writing still right you should be writing instead and i was like yeah i mean i guess so uh and i'm confident that like
if i ever like had any sort of motocross success and he found out about it he'd be like i sent him
on that path i'm the one who put him there and it pisses me off that he thinks he's done that for
me and said it was just this dude insulting me where I was like, I'm allowed to do two things, motherfucker.
Guess what?
I do like seven others, too.
It's okay.
It's okay to do a lot of stuff.
Yeah.
It's also like not an easy place to defend yourself where it's like, well, let me finish the monologue because the acting gets really good.
And jokes on you, the writing takes a turn and gets worse.
I didn't stick the landing but i cry
you're gonna hate the end it's trite it's so cloying it's it's offensive
anyway i had one also locked and loaded for you okay i might know do you okay
i wonder if it's fun for people for you to to guess, because no one's going to know who
these people are anyway.
If I'm right and I say his name, it won't matter to anyone.
But I'll just like, I will tell you if I'm right.
Okay.
So when we worked at Cracked, it had a parent company.
I'm fucking right.
And the parent company had like these heads, these, the big wigs at the top
who were like running things. And you know, there's a CEO, but there was also like these
guys who were just on his bus, like these guys who got in early with him and they were kind of
spearheading every single department and being like, okay, you're going to be doing this from
now on. You're going to be doing this. And they didn't ever know what to do with cracked. Cracked was such like a black sheep
there because it didn't, it didn't go with their general internet plans and they didn't understand
it. They didn't know what to do, but it was still like doing well. And they had a clear
whole audience and they were just for like, well, we'll just let it run, I guess. Except for this one guy who was like, he definitely credits himself with creating After Hours, which is a show that you and I used to do.
And Michael Swaim and Katie Willard.
This show that Jack and Dan created that it's a couple, it's four friends sitting in a diner and it's after work.
It's just these friends who can't turn off their brains and are just deconstructing pop
culture.
It's the thing that we were most known for at Cracked.
It was like this flagship video series, uh, probably more famous than our columns.
Like any, anything else we did, it will, after ours will be the thing that will be like our
legacy at Cracked.
And when I, when I traveled around Europe and got recognized all over that side of the planet,
it was people who were like, we are fans of your YouTube channel.
Yes.
Yeah.
You're a YouTube guy.
You're a YouTube.
They don't know Cracked even necessarily.
They just saw you on YouTube.
And I was like, look, I know that this is Amsterdam, but where I come from, that's deeply
insulting.
How dare you? YouTuber means something different in America
and it's horrible.
I saw you on YouTube. You should be a writer. Ouch. My heart. So this guy, which is also
very funny because you and him shared a nickname, which was Dragon. But he, to this day believes that he invented after hours, like that
he, it was his idea that he came to us, like it was fully formed in his brain and he just gifted
it to us. And then it became this huge, he planted the seed, he watered it and it became this huge
success. And it was like, I grew this, I grew this thing. And I don't think he ever realized
how much work went into it what we actually had to
do and that none of it was his idea no and and like i can i don't need to rehash it now but i
can like point to every step of the creation of this show because i was there for all of it and
i remember how it happened and like the false starts of it and yeah who was responsible like whether it's
stuff that like a lot of the back to the future stuff in the first episode that conversation was
born out of an editorial meeting with that jack was there jason was there i was there i think you
were there and then really like the what became the show was uh us in jack's aunt's pool house yes when jack wasn't even living here no he was jack lived
in new york and he came to visit and he lived in his pool house for a little bit we hang out and
like drank juice and ate pizza and talked about what we wanted this show to be for hours and came
up with it there really like sanded it down there. Uh, all of which is to say this,
this other lesser dragon wasn't around for any of it.
And I,
and I think his sole contribution was very casually at one point saying,
have you seen the movie diner?
You guys should do something like that.
My recollection of it was that he was like
i like seinfeld my favorite parts of seinfeld are like when they're just sitting there they're
sitting there at that restaurant yeah and we were like okay well let's we can let's do that let's
just do seinfeld yeah and and here's the really uh here's where being a soft little simp like me backfires.
Because when there's, when you're, when I'm 23 and there's this rich CFO or whatever his title at the company was, and he jokingly wants to take credit for the show, simp that I am is like, ha ha, yeah, you're the man, diner.
What a good idea
yeah well that was because you don't know what can get you fired when you're that age
so you're just like you give them anything that they want right he's gonna say those things and
at the time i can't be like ha ha well you know we'll let the the writers guild decide because
they actually have like they're they have lawyers that figure out who created these things and and
and like luckily you and i don't have to hash it out.
We just like bring the scripts to the lawyers and they will, they will assign an arbitrate
credit.
Right.
Fairly.
So I, I could foresee a time when you like, you're running your own show and he, and like
your name's out there showing up on deadline and stuff like that.
And he's, he's looking at it and he's being like, you know, I gave this guy his start and i just know like i know my heart that's happening that's uh 100 happening you're
also just bringing up memories of these there because there were so many uh adult rich VPs
and senior VPs
like him at that company
and I met
with all of them individually
I'm sure you did too but I would always have meetings
with them whenever Cracked was doing well
and they would be like how do you
do it? How do you guys do it?
And I was like well it's
it would be sexy for me to say it was magic and
and and like my raw talents but like the truth is we got a bunch of people working very hard
and we spend time on every piece that we write and uh and we pay our writers fairly uh and there's
no real substitute for that and they're like well never mind because they always want to know like
how do you do this at scale and you can't do it well and do it at scale no it's like creation business
we have core a core of like six editors who work 40 hours a week stressing about their job and
agonizing over a piece that doesn't even have their name on it right and that's how we make
really good content it's like hey the site's doing well how do you guys do that well we've got a lot of people who uh uh worry that if the site fails they'll die
so that's a good motivator i've i've i've found it to be a good motivator for people who are
willing to uh destroy their personal relationships in the pursuit of internet immortality to literally go blind.
Uh, yeah. So yeah. And we were at that age, like you didn't know it's your first business that you're really working at where there's like a clear hierarchy of positions and you don't know
what's acceptable behavior and what's not, or like what people are supposed to be like at the top.
And we had like a really weird, a rare, weird.
Silicone beach group of dudes at the top of this company who are all like
very bro-y and very eager to tell you the famous people that they're hanging
out with and stuff like that.
And it was at the time I was just like,
I guess this is just what it's like to be 36.
Not knowing that that's not life.
Yeah.
I wonder how many people realize that,
like, I don't know if it's still happening, but certainly for so long startup culture, Not knowing that that's not life. that was just around and maybe put in some money early on, or maybe it was just like
a board member or a figurehead who really just existed to like attract talent or give
the appearance of success.
And then if the company does well, the company goes public and those people have a lot
of shares in the company. They invest those shares, they get a lot of money, they cash out
and they just bounce and do it again. I didn't realize that was like, that was a career path
where it was just like, yeah, I, I'm at demand media now. And then once we go public, I will be
very rich. So I will leave because like, I don't actually do anything. Yeah. If we go public, I will be very rich. So I will leave because like,
I don't actually do anything. Yeah. If we go public, I don't, I don't like my job is to,
uh, make us a profitable, profitable enough company to go public. And then I go away
and do it again somewhere else. Yeah. It was very clear to me, or it wasn't at the time.
It's very clear to me now, like what the game was that you build this thing and you build
it so big and fast that no one can see that it's the trajectory can't last.
And then you get out from under it before it all comes down.
There's a card game that you can play.
I don't know if you ever played this.
It was a, you put a beer bottle on a table and you put one playing card on it.
And then you continually put playing cards on it. And each card has to be at two edges, at least have to not be,
have to be exposed. And so you, what you end up building is this umbrella of cards on a beer
bottle that all kind of rely on each other's weight. And eventually the whole thing comes
toppling down. And like, that's what these guys, like these guys bounce around building those
everywhere and they don't care. Like at the time we were editors at this, at these websites. And I worked for another, uh, another website for them, um, that I cared
about because it was about the outdoors. And I was like trying to tell them, I was like, we're not,
we're pumping out a lot of content, but this is, I don't stand by some of this stuff. Like
there's way too much to edit all of it. We're getting in tens of thousands of pieces a day and we're just putting them up on the website. And they're like, yes, please don't stop.
I was like, but it's that we're, we're devaluing the site. Like that doesn't anyone who's like
anyone who's in this field, if they even read one of these articles, they will never come back to
our site. And they're like, that's not our, that's not who we're getting. We're getting everybody
who's coming to this because they type something into Google and like, that's all they
wanted. They wanted somebody who was going to come once, not even realize what site they were on and
then leave. And that's all they cared about. And as long as they were capturing that traffic,
that's all that mattered. And it was not like sustainable by any means. And then of course,
the whole thing collapsed, but these guys all got out before that happened.
Yeah. It's crazy how many how so many
of these startups certainly in in in our age were just like uh sophisticated seeming scams
they they you know it's dressed up with like a bunch of buzzy tech terminology and and flashy
perks we're at this company where it's like it's margarita
thursdays and like our company fucking rocks we're on all these lists for the best companies
to work for but it's like it's a shell game for a couple of people at the top and that's it yeah
there was i mean that's not it's also where dreams come true a real low moment was where
one of our bosses uh announced uh all hands call today is like how many
articles we publish every day across all of the sites. Like that was a big deal, that metric.
And he was like today in one, I think it was like in one week we publish more words than there are
in crime and punishment. And I was like, that is a bad metric. It's not indicative of anything.
What are we doing?
All right.
Well, I might as well tell everybody how they can find us.
If you go to Twitter, twitter.com, you can find Daniel and me.
You can find me at Soren underscore LTD.
You can find Daniel at DOB underscore INC.
You can also find quick question at QQ underscore Soren and Dan.
You can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com.
You can also find,
I should actually put it out there.
So bacon is our CFO and you can go to make me bacon,
please.
That's his Twitter address,
PLS.
And you just wish him congratulations.
Yeah. Apropos of nothing. And just wish him congratulations.
Yeah.
Apropos of nothing, just wish him a congratulations.
I'm sure it will be well received.
You can also, you won't ever find Gabe Harder,
so I'm not going to give you any of his information,
but he's our producer and sound engineer and editor.
And you can find us on Patreon slash Quick Question if you were so inclined to give us money or write us a question.
And we will answer a lot of those questions behind our subscription wall. I don't totally know how it works. You pay a bunch of money and a bunch of money. You pay a small amount of money and then you get a small amount of content from us that no one else gets to hear. Okay. Bye.