Costco Rope Drops

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I am Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week to clear the docket.

With me is my friend, Judge John Hodgman.

Hi, John.

Jesse Thorne, hello.

Today we have a very special docket.

It is all on the topic of shopping.

Now, you have a shop.

Put this on shop.com, right?

I do indeed.

And I go shopping regularly.

You go right, and you go regularly shopping for clothes, correct?

I go shopping for clothes.

I go shopping for small items.

I go to estate sales, flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores.

John, not to brag, but just recently, I went to a drugstore to go shopping for antibiotics.

Yes, that's right, folks.

I have

just a little bit of pneumonia right now.

So

if you hear a rattle, that's just the liquid in my chest.

You have just a little scooch, a little scooch of the pneumones?

Just a little bit still.

Still in there sloshing around a little tiny bit.

Gosh.

I'm feeling a lot better.

I was very ill for about four or five days.

Thought I had the flu.

Turns out I had some kind of respiratory infection, but go get your vaccines.

Go take care of yourself.

There's stuff going around.

You don't want to get that pneumonia.

It's awful.

And I'm glad you're feeling a little bit better, but it did give you a chance to go to the drugstore where I like to sometimes peruse and browse for toothpastes.

I took advantage of the opportunity, John, to buy some leftover Easter candy.

Oh, I'm doing great now.

Oh, I got some Whopper's eggs.

I love a Whopper's egg.

I haven't had a Whopper's Malted Milk Ball or a Malteser in a long time.

Both are very good.

Maybe I ought to go shopping.

When you go shopping, Jesse Thorne,

how does it make you feel?

Makes me feel like a king.

My favorite place to go shopping, John, it's going to be Costco all the way.

And you know me as a major Costco celebrity as featured in Costco Connection magazine.

Sure.

I've got my framed copy.

Yeah.

But when I was about 13 or 14, my father had a series of events in his life.

One was he got like a $25,000 inheritance from an aunt who died.

One was he got his post-traumatic stress disorder disability certified after decades of trying.

Yeah.

And it was military related.

So he started getting military, you know,

disabled vet benefits.

Right, right.

And the combination of those two things

rocketed us into the middle class.

Yeah.

And so what happened is my dad bought a two-year-old Honda Accord wagon that he then drove until it had 300,000 miles on it.

Yeah.

He got a

color television, which believe it or not, we did not at this point in the early 1990s have.

Sure.

He got cable, including that thing where you get CD quality music broadcast to you over the cable, which was very exciting to him.

Okay, sure, yeah.

And we joined Costco and started buying cereal in bulk.

So to me, Costco is an avatar for prosperity.

It is a feeling of abundance that I enjoy when I go.

I love going to the grocery store.

That's one of my top shopping experiences.

I don't even need.

to buy anything.

I just like going through the aisles, seeing what the labels look like these days, checking out the produce.

It gives me a good good feeling to go in there.

And you love a classic grocery store, the kind of grocery store that you might imagine a character in, to my mind, it would be like a character in Jaws would go in to this grocery store.

Yes.

Like the suburban imagination of Steven Spielberg in the mid to late 1970s, just big wide aisles.

Wide aisles and squared off shelves full of boxes of different kinds of macaroni and cans of beans, varieties of beans.

I really enjoy.

You're, of course, talking about my dream store, which is the Anderson Supermarket in Blue Jay, California, where I would make a pilgrimage stop on the way up to and on the way back from Max FunCon.

Every year I would go in there and just, because it was truly like 1981 style, squared off aisles and just full of everything.

And I just love that stuff.

John, I can't even begin to tell you the extent to which one day, when you come with me to my cabin in Sequoia Crest, California.

I'd love it.

You are going to freak out when you get to Springville and you go to the Town and Country Market with me.

Because that Town and Country Market, that's the last grocery store for an hour

as you drive into Jesse Can Afford the Cabin territory.

It's called

Town and Market.

What's it called?

Town and Country Market.

This is a huge grocery store untouched by the last 40-ish years, I would say, 40 to 45 years.

It basically contains,

like, if you just imagine like

the grandest Midwestern,

not this newfangled grocery store where there's, you know,

dramatic lighting and a Starbucks inside and all this kind of stuff, like

a newly renovated Ralphs has in Los Angeles.

Yeah.

I'm just talking about these flat lighting, wide aisles, a full Midwestern grocery store from 1982, plus an entire Latin American products market also in there.

If you need to buy some Florida water for your

voodoo or hoodoo rituals, great news.

They got that there.

I bought some.

Now I'm magic.

They got Florida water at the town and country.

Yeah, Florida water is like a cologne.

Oh, okay.

It's a cologne that comes in an amazing plastic bottle that I encourage everyone to look at either right now on the YouTube or at home by searching for Florida water on their phone.

It comes in this amazing plastic bottle.

It costs like three or four dollars.

And if you're a corandera or an orisha

or just a classic Portland witch,

this stuff apparently has magic power.

I just bought it because I thought I liked the bottle and cost four dollars.

Yeah, it's gorgeous.

I was told recently by a witch of my acquaintance that you can put it in your mop bucket and mop your house with it, and it turns your house magical somehow.

That's like awesome.

I mean,

it says here on the manufacturer's website that Florida water has been mystifying and delighting generations since 1808.

Sold in New York City pharmacies starting then.

And now the original Formula label, inspired by the enchanting properties of the famed fountain of youth, has remained unchanged for 200 years.

I never knew about it.

So glad to know.

I think you put your finger on it, though, when you pointed out that

the supermarket town and country has a real hold on me because it's not really the abundance that I enjoy because it's not, that's sort of like, we're getting into like materialism and capitalism and food waste issues.

That's not what I enjoy.

It's it's the feeling of moving between places, between town and country, and we're country and town and the feeling, particularly of provisioning for an adventure that makes grocery stores so exciting to me.

It's like, I'm going to go, what if I made, what if I live this way tonight and I make macaroni and cheese?

I don't know.

That's a delight for me.

I know.

I think that's especially true for you as a Brooklynite, where most of your grocery shopping is happening necessarily at very small,

narrow-aisled grocery stores that are, you know, standard issue in most of New York City.

Yeah.

Certainly there are parts of New York City that have sort of classic American supermarkets, but for the most part, New York has

a mad scramble through a overstuffed maze of off-brand gourmet items and spams.

Yes,

it's an odd scene that could be a little,

it's nice because

you can always walk to the corner and buy tonight's food, but there is something great.

I know, like when I go to my cabin, and I know that I'm not going to be able to shop for groceries for the next week.

Like I won't be able to go get an onion or anything.

I imagine a new life for myself.

That life almost always involves eating cool ranch Doritos,

which is something that I do not bring into my regular house because I would just eat them.

And they're very bad for you.

But at the cabin, no, everyone eats cool ranch Doritos at the cabin.

We bought some.

We got to eat them.

You feel like you're starting a new life.

That's exactly what it is.

And maybe my new life is going to involve 35 gallons of chili that I'm going to make.

I don't know.

I love it.

That's great.

Worst place to go shopping, obviously, is a car dealership.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Runner-up is the very fancy clothing store in Boston that my wife and daughter, both whole human beings in their own right, went to.

Very expensive women's clothes.

And they went in and they looked at a price tag and it was like.

Here is a kerchief for $5,000.

And they're like, oh, no, no.

Sorry, my mistake.

And as they left,

the young woman who was the you know manning the store goes, thanks for trying.

Like, I don't need this.

I don't need this.

I don't need to be reminded.

Jennifer Marmor, you're here, aren't you?

It's a donket after all.

Yeah.

Where's your favorite place to go shopping?

Where's your least favorite place to go shopping?

Jen loves the mall.

Jen loves the mall.

The mall, of course, the mall.

I love nothing more than to walk around, do what it's called in Yiddish schmying.

Just love to schmy.

Shmy.

You just walk around and you look at stuff.

And sometimes you buy things, but you don't have to buy things.

You just look at things and

just see what's out there.

And I love that.

I love it.

Some of my favorite stores are no longer at the mall.

I used to go to the Americana a lot to get some of the things that I would need, that I would prefer to buy.

Wait, is Americana a mall or a place in the mall?

It's, oh, sorry.

It is a mall.

it's an outdoor mall in los angeles in glendale what is that jennifer what is that at

brand the americana

the americana at brand i follow yeah sure

um

if you've heard of the grove it's like that but in glendale so made well i don't want to i don't want to buzz market made well is the store that i would occasionally buy things at and they're not there anymore and i'm like where do i buy things if i want to buy them in person i don't know.

But anyway, they probably still have those soup dumplings, though, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't like Costco.

It stresses me out.

Okay.

People like what they like.

I don't love

the fight of Costco.

So I go as infrequently as possible.

Like I'm a Costco executive member.

Again, not to brag, but I'm a Costco celebrity.

But I probably go quarterly.

But then when I go, I'll like get a receipt.

It's four feet long and it says, you know, $2,800 or something.

Like I buy every beverage we will consume for the next three months.

You know, I buy every trash bag we'll use for the next three months, every vitamin we'll consume for the next three months, a bunch of meat that I'm portioning and putting into a freezer.

Like everything will come from Costco.

And the secret to Costco is you just got to go right before they close.

You can't go on the weekend.

You can't go on the weekend.

Oh, no, no, no.

Go right before before they close.

Not first thing.

First thing is the second best, but first thing is first thing you're dealing with: a rush of my Costco is in Alhambra, California.

Yeah.

This is

a land of old ladies who have a different sense of personal space than mine

who will run me over with their carts.

Just culturally speaking, just a different perspective on how

walking through the world works.

And so I will try and avoid that first thing because those ladies love first thing.

But it is better than like, you know, you go in at two o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday is the worst nightmare in the world.

In the theme park community, going first thing is called rope drop.

Right.

You get there when they drop the rope.

Do you want to get into these docket cases, John?

Yeah, the rope has dropped on our shopping spree.

We've got a lot of dockets involving some disputes and dilemmas regarding going to the store.

So let's get into it.

Here's a case from Sean in Seattle, Washington.

The discount shelf at the grocery store is irresistible to me.

Chocolate tahini for 50% off.

Organic fig and black tea preserves, usually $11, but a steal at $5.50.

Count me in.

But my wife hates my discount groceries.

She says spending six bucks for three ounces of fancy pants jam is not a deal.

I think these are interesting tastes we'd otherwise never experience.

We are also combating food waste.

Please tell her I'm right.

Or at least tell her to stop throwing my cans of paleo chickpeas bread away.

Okay.

You know, I received a gift of some off-brand gourmet items like organic fig and black tea preserves.

You know, there's this stuff that's, you know, a lot of mail-order gourmet, gifty stuff that is coming from some brand you've never heard of.

Yeah.

And I've got, and a person that I care about a lot in my life knows that I love tuna salad.

And so I got some very, very fancy Italian canned tuna that came in a little net even.

Like the can itself was wrapped tightly in an artisanal net.

And that that thing has been,

well, it's not been on my shelf.

It's been in my refrigerator, and I'll tell you why in a moment.

John, is it wrapped in an artisanal net because it symbolizes a dolphin?

Yeah, it's entangled.

It actually comes entangled

in a plastic six-pack

series of plastic six-pack rings from a

can of, forget it.

You know where I was going.

I know what you're talking about.

99 ways to save the Earth circa 1992.

Primarily the problem with the Earth at the time was six-pack rings.

Yeah, six-pack rings.

No, it's just it's, you know, when I'm on my tuna, I don't want, first of all, a fancy pack.

I don't need my tuna can and a

fine mesh net.

I just want me, I'm a bumblebee white albacor and spring water guy, and that's it.

And these, particularly these gourmet things that are a little off-brand, or some of the like fancy jams or jellies you'll get in a set,

or in that matter, seeing on a dusty discount shelf, I do find them to be a little, like, just

suspicious to me.

I don't like any of them, John.

Yeah, but you know what I'm talking about.

That sort of like Ponty Wani gourmet.

My wonderful other comedy partner, Jordan Morris's wonderful partner, Melissa, was kind enough to bring me some special salt from her home state of Arizona.

It's citrus salt.

Oh, wow.

I bet it's great.

I have used none of it and can't imagine how I would use it.

And I'm very grateful for the thought of

my friend doing this very thoughtful thing on my behalf.

Yeah.

But also.

Basically anything that comes in a gift basket other than those fancy pears I have no interest in.

I'll eat the cheese if it's not complicated cheese, but I don't want the, I don't want the novelty cheese either.

You know, they, how these are always, it's like it's like a cheese with four different things mixed into it.

Just give me nice cheese, like a layer cake, like a Huntsman layer cake of Monterey Jack and wasabi pea, and yeah, like just

weird flavors.

I also don't want a Panettone.

I all like there's a long list of things that you buy at places like these gift foods.

Yeah.

I basically don't want any of them.

All right.

No gift foods for Jesse, except for those pears.

Yeah, or high-quality cheese, just regular high-quality cheese.

You're a former cheese monger, you know.

I do.

I monged and I continue to mong in my heart.

Jennifer Marmor, I'm going to ask you two questions.

You answer whichever one is meaningful to you.

Okay.

One, what's the best thing you ever got on the discount shelf at a grocery store?

Or two,

what's the best way to make tuna salad?

Oh boy.

Okay, tuna salad.

So, wow, I'm a fan of bumblebee.

I also like wild planet.

I like that tuna a lot.

Use some mayo.

Sometimes, yeah, just mayo.

Sorry, I was like, sometimes I've been trying to make an olive oil tuna because there's a place near me that has a great olive oil tuna sandwich, but I haven't figured out that.

So, just the basic mayo,

uh, celery,

spring onion, and some lemon juice.

I'll stick some lemon juice in there.

Look, I got, I, I don't, I, the only quarrel I have with that is celery because I don't like celery in there.

I love celery in there.

Hey, it adds a it adds a fresh crunch.

I don't always have the onion, but I, if I don't have the celery, I'm not even going to bother.

I used to be a, just straight up solid white albacore, bumblebee tuna and spring water guy with mayonnaise, salt, and pepper at the end.

And the one thing that was important important to me is that I like my tuna salad to be really cold.

So I keep my cans of tuna in the fridge.

Yeah.

So that if I ever go and make it, it's already cold.

Yeah.

But I have been adding a little bit of lemon juice is nice.

And I like a little minced onion or a spring onion.

That really adds something for me.

But celery, go to jail as far as I'm concerned.

Not you, Jennifer Marmork.

Thank you because I won't.

Yeah, don't go to jail.

What about Sean's case?

Oh, yeah.

we're not here to just talk about tuna.

Sean, Sean is buying some what I presume to be shelf-stable items.

I think that chocolate tahini probably is shelf-stable.

Certainly, that black tea preserves with organic fig are literally preserved.

And Sean's wife is not there for it.

It sounds like he likes a flavor adventure and she doesn't like a flavor adventure.

And he is lying to her and telling her that these are a deal when in fact, these types of products are not even really a deal at half price.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think she has a point.

Six bucks for three ounces of organic fig and black tea preserves.

That's not nothing.

That's not a steal.

That's a pay.

If you were stealing it, that would be a deal.

That would be a, that would be a steal deal.

Yeah, and a crime.

It would be a crime.

I'm not saying, I'm not encouraging crime.

I'm just saying.

My feeling about this, John, and tell me how you feel since you're the judge here.

My feeling is that it is reasonable for Sean to be making these purchases and going on his flavor adventures.

I don't think it is outrageous for him to enjoy flavor adventures.

Yes.

A nice way to spend your life,

if that's your thing.

If you're curious about something.

It does sound like he actually eats the stuff.

Right.

So that's great.

I want him to stop telling his wife that they're saving money by doing it.

And I also want his wife, if she doesn't like flavor adventures, to acknowledge that her husband has this hobby and he's doing it in a relatively low impact way.

I mean, he...

could be going to one of those super fancy grocery stores and paying full freight for novelty foods.

He could be ordering them on the internet.

True.

And paying shipping fees.

I don't think he's, you know,

or he could just be into like golf or whatever.

You know what I mean?

Yeah,

what if he's ordering pounds and pounds and pounds of Uncle Bud's deep-fried peanuts because his friend Jesse Thorne was eating them one time before a recording.

And now I'm paying a huge premium to get them sent to me.

Did he like them?

Yeah, they're really good.

Yeah, they're great, right?

They're so good.

We ate them and then we ordered more.

They're so good.

Speaking of novelty foods,

if anyone is interested in shipping me some unopened, please, gentleman's relish from the UK,

a fancy anchovy and butter relish that is very good on toast, I can't pay the premium to have that shipped to me.

Otherwise, I'm going to look for it on the discount shelf.

I agree with you, Jesse.

I think that there's no harm in this

unless Sean is going to that discount shelf and taking a bag and just waving his hand across the shelf, just cleaning it out, getting everything on the shelf.

That would be very, very wasteful indeed, no matter what he thinks.

He's not combating

food waste at that point.

He's just creating a horde of off-brand items that are gross.

What kind of fancy grocery store are you going to, Sean, where that's what's on the discount shelf?

Because the discount shelf at my grocery store is just discontinued Oboise.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break here from this week's partners.

We'll be back with more cases to clear from the docket on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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Welcome back to Judge John Hodgman.

We are clearing the docket.

Okay, here's something from Anthony.

My partner V loves to touch merchandise in stores and makes me uncomfortable, especially when they touch small, fragile items like glass or ceramic figurines.

I used to touch things in stores as a child, but my father made me stop.

To V's credit, they don't touch unpackaged food and they haven't broken anything.

V points out that touch is one of the most important ways humans explore their surroundings.

We're both neurodivergent, so I appreciate the need for sensory experiences when shopping.

But when V touches things in a store, I feel like I'm going to get in trouble.

How much merchandise touching is acceptable?

I have an interesting

point of evidence here.

I would love to hear it.

My father-in-law, Steve,

who

is

one of the best guys ever.

A mere 60 feet from where I sit right now, actually.

Yeah.

Steve, for a long time, was

one of the managers of a hardware store in Marin County, California called Jackson's Hardware, worker-owned hardware store.

Go buy something there.

I thought you were going to say that he loves to fondle all the bagels before he picks one, but okay, go on.

Yeah.

Steve is neurodivergent and one of steve's

uh

distinctive behaviors let's say one of the reflections of his neurodiversity is when one day he just mentioned to me that when he would walk down an aisle in jackson's he would touch all the products

and that was in a store that he managed he said look i'd probably do something to like uh make it not seem weird if a customer was walking by, like maybe straighten things out a little bit.

He's like, I'd touch them all.

Yeah.

And I don't think that is

a super uncommon or super unreasonable

behavior unless

V

is touching all this stuff in a way that

is conspicuously irresponsible.

You know, that resonates with a story that my first year college suite mate, Mike, told me about someone he knew growing up who clearly had not been diagnosed with something, but was dealing with something.

Yeah.

Because

he had to smell all of the all of the audiovisual equipment in the house all the time.

The TV.

That's great.

He had to smell the T, he would be smelling the TV or he'd be smelling the

hi-fi system.

And he had to do this and he had to, and he would say to himself, pure when he would smell it.

So, which sounds perhaps like an OCD diagnosis before before he had one yeah ocd is part it was part of my uh father-in-law's diagnosis my father-in-law is also autistic yeah um and he's managed them you know those often go together not always or maybe not even the majority of the time but they're often comorbid and um

he manages them in his experiences in the world with them in different ways.

But that was part of why he liked to touch stuff.

But also, sensory seeking is very common among neurodivergent people.

I mean, I know

my three kids who are all autistic,

they each have their own versions of wanting intense sensory input.

They're all three of them very different versions of it, but like

I'm not surprised to hear about somebody who really likes to smell stuff.

Like

our friend John Darneal of the Mountain Goats,

who may or may not himself be neurodivergent, but is certainly a distinctive mind, let's say.

Very true.

None like that.

I don't know anyone more passionate about sense than John.

That guy loves sense.

You're talking about like colognes or pennies?

Well, colognes is the like

expression of it.

Right.

But so, so passionate about it.

And like, that's not like, he's not passionate about it because it's like in his cultural milieu, you know what I mean?

Like, it's not like, oh, yeah, those DIY rock guys,

they're all into cologne.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, he's a real Drac Arnoir kind of guy.

Exactly.

That actually would be a great title for a Mountain Goats album, Drec Arnoir kind of guy.

Yeah.

But it's true.

And, you know,

the thing is that

now I'm grateful that lots of people who are growing up with both diagnosed or undiagnosed neural differences, there's a lot more understanding and there's a lot more care and

grace being offered to folks.

But it sounds as though Anthony grew up the way my friend Mike's high school pal grew up,

who one day, you know, Mike was going to go to the movies with him.

And he said, I can't, I'm grounded.

My parents caught me smelling the VCR.

You shouldn't punish people for these experiences, you know?

Like, and you look at the outcome, which is that Anthony is now dealing with anxiety when V is just moving through the world trying to feel those figurines and

gain pleasure and causing no harm and maybe even deciding which figurine is for me.

So that's really hard.

How do you think that this should be negotiated between Anthony and their partner V?

I think there is a question here that is difficult to ascertain from one side of the story.

And it sounds like these two have a wonderful

relationship.

Like,

this doesn't sound like a

real

pain point, a real intense pain point in their relationship.

But like, the question is, so I don't think anybody's being disingenuous here.

No, and they obviously they express a lot of understanding for one another, which is great.

Exactly.

But I think one of the questions is:

are they going to get in trouble?

There are certainly ways that one could touch things in a store that

would

get someone in trouble.

Yeah.

But I think for the most part,

that is not the case.

And from the context that Anthony has given, their partner is

not doing that kind of stuff.

And so while I don't think that V should be

making choices specifically to antagonize their partner, and that to the extent that they can accommodate their partner's discomfort, they probably ought to.

But I also think that, like, if I were to focus on one piece of this, I would focus on

Anthony, how can you get help and support dealing with your anxiety?

Yeah.

Rather than

V, how can you get help and support dealing with your interest in examining stuff with your hands?

Yeah.

Now, it could be that,

you know, Anthony is just being generous in their description and V is actually throwing things back and forth between their hands, you know,

juggling

crystal dragons or whatever.

Yeah,

the touching of crystal figurines means playing bocce ball with them in the middle of the store.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I agree.

And here's the, like, I think ultimately, Anthony, that I hope and trust that you are

seeing a therapist or have seen a therapist or are open to talking with someone about anxiety management.

It could be that V is perhaps overdoing it, which is a certain conversation to have.

But if they're operating within reason and they are not getting in trouble,

and I think it's a rare store where you would really get in trouble, but that fear, that feeling of getting in trouble is very, very powerful.

And very real, too.

And very real, you know, and here's the things.

Like, you know,

I've been swimming at the YMCA for the past, I would say, 18 months.

And it really is tests my comfort level to take my shirt off in any situation, even a private shower, never mind getting into a pool full of other people whom you then have to share a lane with.

John, we've been friends for almost 20 years and I ain't never seen them nips.

Yeah, I've never, I've never flashed my nips to Jesse Thorne.

And maybe I need to do that as part of my immersion therapy.

But meanwhile, I've been

immersing myself in this pool water.

And it's very therapeutic, both physically and emotionally, because like, oh, yeah, you can just, you can go through this uncomfortable transition and then you get into the flow and it's fine.

And even though you have to navigate some weird etiquette sometime, because when the pool is a little bit crowded, you'll have to split lanes or you have to go in circles in a lane and you have to kind of gesture to the folks and talk to them about it.

Like

even then where you feel like they're going to be like, you're wrong.

They're never that way.

And you just do it and you get through it.

And that's the kind of therapy.

And then the other day I got into the pool and I tried to indicate to the guy that I wanted to split lanes with him and he ignored me.

So I just started swimming.

And when I got to the end of the lane, I saw that our lane was now getting crowded, not only with the guy who was originally in there, but these two teenagers who I did not want to swim with.

Yeah, they were there looking for t-shirts they were there looking they were t-shirt bros they were like some real camel t-shirt kids it's like i don't want to swim with those bad kids they john they were looking for dale earnhart jr t-shirts so i bopped over a couple of lanes to the free swim lane where i like to swim and it looked like there was only one guy in that in that lane And so I start my swimming from the, from the wrong direction, to, to be clear.

I was, I was not the part where you enter from, but I was already in the pool and I'm swimming along.

And all of a sudden, there's a guy swimming right up at me, like he's, like he's a Jaws from the movie Jaws.

Like he's right up in my face.

And he jumps out of the water and he yells at me.

He says, You're supposed to let us know.

And I'm like, I know, I didn't see you.

I'm sorry.

And then the lifeguard blows the whistle at me.

It's like the worst, like the thing that I thought, this will never happen.

I'm never going to get in trouble.

And yet, I did get in trouble in the worst possible way, floating around in the water, basically being yelled at while I'm in the nude.

It was like a nightmare.

And I walked, I just got out of the pool and walked out of there.

Like it was not going to be a good swim for me.

I went up, I went up and I changed and I got on the elliptical and I watched a episode of Letter Kenny.

And the point is, I survived.

I survived getting in trouble.

There's, there's very little low-level trouble that you can't survive.

You just have to breathe through it and it'll be okay.

I don't know that you're ever going to get in trouble, Anthony, because V's touching these figurines.

But I think that

it is reasonable for you to say to V, this is making me anxious.

Do you mind scaling back a little bit?

But it is also reasonable for you to, as you probably are doing already, you know, seek some help in managing the anxiety.

You know,

it's better to manage anxiety than to distort your whole life to try to evade it because that just becomes a different kind of anxiety.

And the fact of the matter is, like, sometimes you got to touch the glass figurines because how else are you going to know that they're ripe?

You know?

Exactly.

Here is a case from Tatiana in Santa Barbara.

Lovely city to live in.

That's a Tatiana, not a Tatana, right?

I'm going to say it's a T-A-T-J-A-N-A.

So I'm going to go with Tatiana.

That says Tatiana to me.

It says Tatiana to you.

Okay, great.

Yeah, Tatiana.

Tatiana.

We're just going to go with that.

When we're checking out at the grocery store, it's important to my husband, Daniel, that all the frozen items be bagged together.

If the bagger doesn't do this, Daniel asks them to do it again, or he re-bags himself.

Bagging frozen items together makes sense.

Things stay cold, but we live less than five minutes from the store.

I don't think it's worth it for Daniel to make a big deal out of it.

Yeah.

There's steps being skipped here.

Oh, well, tell me what the steps are.

being there's stuff being skipped here.

What's being skipped?

What's the missing info?

As you may have heard, John, the closest grocery store to my cabin is an hour away.

Town?

It's more, yeah, it's halfway between the town and the country.

So there are situations in my life where it's particularly important for me to pay attention to keeping cold stuff cold.

Yeah.

My hopes of having ice cream at the cabin depend upon it.

Sure.

Here's the thing: number

one:

why

is Daniel asking about this after the groceries have been packed?

Right?

And B, why isn't Daniel using the technique that I use,

which is

putting the cold items on the conveyor belt together?

There's two steps you can take.

I take both of those steps.

I will put the cold stuff on the conveyor belt together and I will mention if there's a bagger, I often shop at grocery stores, they do not have a bagger.

Shout out to grocery stores that do.

Those are usually

those are usually the good kind of grocery stores with union workers that get paid a good wage.

So shout out to those grocery stores.

But

I will put the cold stuff together.

on the conveyor belt so it comes through the conveyor belt at the same time.

And I will mention to the bagger, hey, I'm just trying to keep the cold stuff together.

Help me out if you can.

There's two reasons.

One is it might be because it's a long drive.

There are situations where, you know, it's probably a 20-minute drive from my Costco,

for example.

Right.

But

the other reason

is that often I am coming home

hoping against hope that someone besides me will put the groceries away away because I hate putting groceries away.

And my wife, and if my mother or father-in-law is at the house, they don't mind.

They're glad to do it on my behalf.

They might not be available at that moment.

Right.

And so there are definitely times when I put the cold stuff away.

And my wife says, just leave the rest of the stuff.

I'll take care of it.

But she doesn't have the time to take care of it right then.

So having the cold stuff together is important because then I can just get the cold stuff put away right away.

So there's no issues with foodborne illness or whatever.

And then I can

F off to my office and my wife can handle the rest of it when there's a lull in her day-to-day responsibilities.

Let me see if I let me clarify something here, Jesse, with regard to your system.

So

you like to keep the cold stuff together.

That makes sense.

It keeps it cold.

Yeah.

And your system is to

group the cold stuff together first so that it is more likely to be bagged together.

And then you reinforce that ahead of time by saying, I'm doing this because I want the cold stuff to be all bagged together.

Do you mind keeping an eye out for that?

Thank you very much.

That's your system.

Exactly.

So how is that better

than saying nothing?

laying a trap by putting the cold stuff down willy-nilly amongst the warm stuff like it's a big Tetris game that someone else has to solve and then when the person does it incorrectly you either yell at them and tell them do it again or you go oh Thanos style fine I'll do it myself now that you mentioned I haven't thought it through but now that you mentioned it I guess those are probably about the same I mean you got to take responsibility people like what they like and believe me you think I go to the grocery store You've seen the way I load a dishwasher.

You think I'm not thinking very seriously about how to load up that.

Never mind to load up the conveyor belt, how I'm going to organize stuff in the cart to keep the cold stuff together and the pantry stuff together and the, and the, and the produce that doesn't need to be refrigerated together.

You think I'm not thinking about how I'm going to be unloading that, those groceries and in what order I'm going to be unloading them when I get home?

Because guess what?

There's no one in my house who's going to do it for me.

No one, not a one whole human being in their own right is going to unload those groceries for me.

Not even your cat?

No, my cat.

My cat, my cat won't even bat around a toy mouse.

You think that they're going to be putting away bags of dried beans?

The interest isn't there.

No,

my wife is holding me.

All right, we'll put the groceries away, but no one else in my house will.

So I am thinking ahead and in ways that perhaps

are not necessarily healthy for my brain, but it is my preference.

It is my preference and I have to take responsibility for it.

So if I've got, if I want a system to be followed, I've got to take advantage, you know, advocate for that system ahead of time in a nice way and say, hey, I've got this cooler bag.

Can we put the cold stuff in here?

Or just like, I'm going to bang it myself if you don't mind.

Cause that's also, I mean, I love putting stuff into bags.

So that's nice.

But yeah, there's no reason that Tatiana should be there cringing

while Daniel, the husband, is, you know, after the fact, scolding anybody.

a bagger of all people for not doing it right.

I'm sure that Daniel isn't actively scolding, but it's like, yeah, no one wants to be in trouble.

Set the person up for success.

Okay, here's something from Emil in Copenhagen.

Sometimes when we're grocery shopping, I leave the shopping cart behind while I hunt down something I'm looking for.

The shopping basket or cart in question is the kind that rolls on wheels and is pulled by a handle.

My partner, Misha, says this is an unacceptable nuisance to other shoppers.

Who's right?

John, you know the kind of cart that they're talking about?

It's like a grocery basket, the kind that you would hold in your hands in an American grocery store.

I see them occasionally in American grocery stores, but it's about that size, maybe a little taller, and then it has an extensible handle that comes out of it.

So you can roll it around on the ground instead of holding it by two handles up in the air.

You know how I feel about that?

Hate it.

Really?

Yeah, I see them in the CVS all the time.

it's too low

and i do associate it with uh cvs shopping and that means pulling a wheeled thing over carpeting a lot of the time which i hate yeah

and i don't like i don't like i don't like bending down to pick things up or put things away i don't like this kind of shopping cart at all you heard judge john hodgman dwayne reed sponsor judge john hodgman

Yeah, it's like an extra deep, like handheld basket, but it's got little tiny squeaky wheels on the bottom.

and then you kind of drag it behind you like a sled

i bet they're nice though in in denmark they take good care of them everything's nice in denmark uh and i'm and you know who else is nice in denmark emil and misha i bet they're very nice

but they are in a midst of a dispute jennifer When you go grocery shopping, do you hang on to the cart or do you ever leave it behind?

I don't care what kind of cart it is.

Yeah, sometimes I'll leave it behind.

I'll put it in a, I'll try to tuck it away out of the way as much as I can can and go down the aisle.

Cause,

you know,

shout out to Trader Joe's.

I shop there a lot and it's busy and the aisles are not very wide sometimes and depending on how they've laid out the store.

And trying to get through with that cart is annoying.

And I just want to walk down the aisle, grab the pasta, come back and throw it in the cart and be on my way.

Yeah.

You don't want to clog up the aisle with your, with your cart all the time.

People are trying to get at stuff.

The tuck is so essential.

Like I can't emphasize the tuck enough.

Oh, yeah.

This is something that I think comes naturally to people who are born and raised in cities

and understand the flow of pedestrian traffic.

Yeah.

I think, I think that there are people who are not from that environment who believe that anyone or anything can stop in any place.

Yeah.

So if you leave your, if you leave your cart behind and you didn't tuck it to the side, you're blocking traffic going both directions and you're not there to move it out of the way if someone gets stuck.

That is the worst thing anyone could ever do.

However, often by tucking and walking, you are actually improving the flow of traffic because you spotted a place to tuck that isn't going to slow things down in a wider aisle or similar.

So the tuck is absolutely essential to this.

Now,

I can't really speak to this technique at Trader Joe's, which doesn't have traditional aisles.

I mean, some of them certainly do.

I'm thinking in New York City, they're often built into the former infrastructure of old banks or whatever.

And so you're just kind of like guided through a sort of...

a sort of hedge maze of groceries.

It's like, it's like sort of like if you're doing your grocery shopping in the 45-minute long or 90-minute long queue to board Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland.

Like it's, you just are locked into a path.

Most of the Trader Joe's that I've been to in New York City, I think were built into like

mausoleum tunnels of some kind.

Yeah, there's there's that Trader Joe's that that's in the old in the Greenwood Cemetery now.

Wait, Trader Joe's Queen's Catacombs is That's the location.

But if you go into a grocery store that's got real aisles, then the tuck is always a good technique.

I would even suggest end capping it.

Yeah.

Leave your cart at the end of the aisle.

Now, end caps, meaning the ends of the aisle, sometimes they have stuff that's on sale there.

You don't want to leave it there forever.

People need to access that stuff too.

But in general, If the aisle is pretty crowded, end cap your cart, go in there, surgical strike, get your jar jar of olives or whatever, come on back and move it along.

You ever?

Do you know what my number one story is for tucking?

No.

It's going to be Costco, guys.

Costco?

Yeah.

Okay.

Got to tuck at Costco because otherwise these old ladies with different cultural expectations about space are just going to take you out.

Have you ever, this has never happened to me.

It is something I worry about.

You ever leave your cart behind and then go and retrieve it and realize you got the wrong cart.

Yes.

Yes.

You got something wrong.

I did that relatively recently.

Yeah.

And I shared a great laugh with a nice lady at the Trader Joe's.

There you go.

There you go.

She was very nice about it.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

We've got a case about what counts as shopping and then a case about the biggest shopping day of them all, Black Friday.

You know, we've been doing My Brother, My Brother, Me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on My Brother, My Brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

64.

So, how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Judge Hodgman, we are taking a quick break from Clearing the Docket.

I want to mention, you know, our friend Gene Gray.

I do.

I just heard Gene Gray on a wonderful radio show and podcast called Bullseye.

Indeed.

Now, I will say, interviewing Gene Gray is like hurting cats.

Gene has a lot of thoughts in a lot of different directions.

The good news is they're all great, insightful, and hilarious.

So it is a wild journey, my interview with Gene Gray, and it is a great time.

So I hope everybody will go check it out on Bullseye with Jesse Thorne.

Yeah, no, that was a wonderful conversation.

And obviously, Gene has a new book out, which we've talked about before, and which I encourage you to check out if you've not done so already.

Either check it out at the library or check it out at your local bookstore, browse it, and perhaps buy it.

It's called In My Remaining Years, and it's a smart, funny, wise memoir and advice book for what to do with your remaining years.

Me, I got a little super secret project going with our friend David Reese.

Can't tell you any more about it right now, but it sure is fun to work on.

While you're waiting for details, maybe go over there to Hulu and once again check out Dicktown, maybe for the very first time.

It's two seasons of a very funny PG-13 cartoon starring the voices of me, David Reese, your friend Gene Gray, as well as Amy Sederis, as well as Mike Mitchell from the Dough Boys.

I tried tried to get Weiger on there, but I was told by our producers this is not a Dough Boys

fan fiction.

This is an actual animated show, and indeed it is.

It's on Hulu.

It's called Dick Town.

And

it's fun.

And each episode is about 11 minutes long, and there are only 20 of them.

So you can knock it out of an evening if you've run out of white lotuses to watch.

I hope you would enjoy this a lot.

And I'll definitely give you news about what's coming up as soon as I have it to share.

And in the meantime, you might want to go over to hodgman.substack.com.

That's my newsletter called Secret Society.

Don't worry, there's a public spot in every Secret Society.

You just subscribe for free.

I give you all the news of what's going on with me, little weird off appearances or surprise pop-ups on things that I don't even know about until maybe a week before.

I recently announced that I was appearing with the Doughboys at the Wilbur Theater, and that happened the other week.

And it was great to see some secret societans there.

And then there's a secret part of secret society.

If you feel like subscribing at the paid level, you get to listen to me read Moby Dick to you in a main accent and share other more personal things with you.

So if that's something that's interesting to you, hodgman.substack.com is where you can find it.

You'll always get the very latest news about what I'm up to whenever I have it to share with you.

Let's get back to that docket.

Here's a case from I Write Good on Blue Sky.

By the way, follow Judge John Hodgman on Blue Sky, Judge John Hodgman.

I say shopping requires a purchase.

Otherwise, it's not shopping.

My partner disagrees.

They say browsing without buying anything is still shopping.

Who's right?

Browsing without buying.

Is it still shopping?

Somewhat of an existential question.

Before we dig into it,

Jesse and Jennifer, have I ever told you about the time Bill Nye tried to bully me into buying a cast iron waffle iron?

I mean, it's happened to all of us, but you did tell me.

Who amongst us?

I was at Martin and Melissa's wedding in California, and I went to a, I guess, an antique store, but an antique store that sells a bunch of cast iron pans, not just like wedgwood furniture, but like a fair amount of junk.

And I love to, you know, that's to me is one of my great, aside from grocery shopping, that is also one of my great pleasures to browse around a junk, a junky antique store.

I'll go live at the big chicken barn in Ellsworth, Maine, if they would let me set up a little cot.

I've asked many times.

They say no, because of liability issues.

And in this store, I like cast iron and I saw this very ingenious, clever cast iron waffle iron that flipped over so that, you know, you cook half the waffle on one side, you cook half the waffle on the other, and it came in a frame and it had to.

Look it up online.

You'll see what I'm talking about.

It was a Griswold, of course.

It caught my eye.

But I knew that I was only browsing.

I knew that I was only browsing.

I wasn't there to make a purchase.

I didn't need this waffle iron.

And I, the next, the next day after the wedding, we were having brunch.

And Bill Nye was a guest of the wedding.

And I told him and my other table companions about this.

Bill Nye said, you should go back and buy it.

And I'm like, well, no,

I don't think it was a very good deal and I don't really need it.

He's like, no, it spoke to you.

You should own it.

I'm like, Bill Nye, as they say at the YMCA pool, stay in your lane.

You want to tell me about science and climate change?

I'm all ears.

Yeah, Bill Nye, we know what your lane is.

Your lane is the Pasadena Swing Dancing Club.

There we go.

Yeah, you want to show me some Lindy Hop steps?

For sure.

I'm open to Bill Nye's advice, but when it comes to not only cast iron, a thing that I like and occasionally collect, and a thing that is very heavy that I do not want to put in my suitcase to travel across the, I don't need it.

Bill Nye would not let it go.

He kept trying to get me to buy it.

And I said,

I'm not going to be bullied, Bill Nye.

He also told me to give leave $20 for the housekeeper at the hotel.

And I'm like, there, I agree with you.

If you have the means, leave as much as you can for the housekeeper because boy, oh boy, are their jobs thankless.

And we've talked about it before.

But was I shopping even though I knew that I would not buy any cast iron pan, never mind a cast iron waffle iron.

Yes, you were.

Yeah, that counts as shopping, right?

Browsing counts as shopping.

I think so, because even if you don't have the intention to buy something, like there could have been something that you were browsing and then thought, oh, you know, I think I am going to buy this.

Like, right.

There is that, there's the possibility of buying that's always there when you're browsing.

Yeah.

You know what I'm thinking about right now?

You know, our former, the wonderful stand-up comic and our former Max Fun colleague, Jasper Red?

Of course.

Yeah.

Jasper used to have this line.

It wasn't even a punch line that I think about all the time in his act,

which is, you know, he had that real slow Tennessee draw.

Yeah.

And Jasper would just say, I was in the drugstore the other day browsing products.

Yeah.

I think about browsing products.

Oh, anytime I'm in a store, I'm browsing products.

Do I need this big bottle of magnesium?

It's two for one.

I mean, I think about that all the time when I'm dragging a basket across the carpeted halls of the CVS.

Here's something from Steve in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

My cousin Carla is Canadian, but she often attends Thanksgiving dinner with us here in the United States.

She says it's to visit us.

She's lying.

She comes for one reason: Black Friday.

I say that Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate togetherness, not to fight crowds in a mall.

Please order her to skip Black Friday going forward.

She should celebrate American Thanksgiving with us,

not our big box stores.

Do you think,

and be honest, do you think that Steve and Ann Arbor really has

a cousin in Canada named Carla?

Or he's just trying to seem cool?

Oh, yeah.

No, I know.

I know Carla.

I mean, I've never met Carla in person, but I know of Carla.

She's my summer camp friend's girlfriend.

Canada has its own Thanksgiving

celebration, and it is held on the second Monday in October because Canada, as we learn over and over again, doesn't get it 100% right, but has a better batting average than a lot of places.

They got this one right.

No reason in the God or whatever darn world

should Thanksgiving just be weeks, weeks

before

the major winter holidays of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's, all of that stuff.

Like spread it out.

Dumb.

It's dumb.

Also, everyone knows that I don't agree with Steve and Ann Arbor.

I do not find that Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate togetherness.

I feel like it's a time, what it really should be is a nice long weekend where no one does anything, just takes a break.

Don't like it.

But I'll tell you what, if it were the second week in October, I might get into it.

I might have the energy and the pace to have a big family meal.

Canadian Thanksgiving.

Maybe I'm going to celebrate that from now on.

You have a problem with that, Steve and Ann Arbor?

I'll tell you something, though.

Canada also has a Black Friday.

And you know when that is

Black Friday, the Friday after American Thanksgiving.

Until relatively recently, I would imagine, Canadians love to swarm across the border for big discount days like Black Friday.

And the Canadian retailers were so annoyed to be losing this business, they said, okay, well, we're going to do it too.

So they have it there.

So your whole argument falls apart,

Steve, from Ann Arbor, because Carla Carla could be doing Black Friday in Canada.

But indeed, she is, if she really exists, coming to spend that time in Michigan with you and your family and do something that she wants to do.

And who are you to judge?

Cousins shouldn't judge.

I judge my older cousin, Jason.

He was kind of a jerk.

But generally speaking, if you like your Canadian cousin, just let them do what they're going to do.

Anyway, you'll be lucky if you see her in the future because I think a lot of Canadians are saying they're not going to travel in the United States or shop there for a while.

And that's,

I know it'll be interesting to watch what happens up in Maine this summer because

it has a lot of Canadian tourism.

I mean, Old Orchard Beach is the Daytona beach for Canada.

It's like where all of the...

It's where all of the Quebecois bikers come and party all summer long.

That is their spot.

And will they show up?

I don't know.

Anyway, I think that's it, right?

Is the docket clear?

Docket is clear.

That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman, which was created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman, our social media manager, Dan Telfer, the podcast edited by A.J.

McKeon, Daniel Spear, our video producer, our show produced by Jennifer Marmor.

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And please do do that.

In fact, go there and share one of your favorite episodes with a friend.

Speaking of video content, our YouTube comment of the week belongs to Robin Nordstrom 7799.

Thank you, Robin.

You may recall that this episode entitled Shelf Incrimination was between Haley and her fiancé.

Haley wanted her fiancé to limit her library of books that they would share when they moved in together to zero books.

And apparently, Robin Nordstrom 7799,

when she heard the word zero books, just typed in a comment, Audible Gasp.

I love it.

Yeah, for sure.

I wonder if Robin Nordstrom is related to the very popular department store retailer, Nordstrom.

If you have a system for grocery shopping that is worthy of an audible gas, please tell us in the YouTube comments in this episode.

Or let me know if you've ever done Black Friday shopping.

And if so, what did you buy?

Or let me know if there's something you touched at a store when you were just browsing and then you didn't buy it.

And then you wish you did and you've never stopped thinking about it and it's gone now.

I can tell you that is exactly how I feel about that print of a outsider art painting of a UFO over the Deer Isle Bridge that I found in the the basement of the Hancock Kramer Antique Mall, and they were charging too much for it.

And I was like, no one will ever buy it.

But then someone did, and I lost it.

I wish I had it.

You can share this episode with anyone you want, friend, foe, family, any future listener who you think might enjoy it.

Going to YouTube is one of the best ways to do it.

A lot of people listen to podcasts now or watch podcasts now on Judge John Hodgman Pod, our channel on YouTube.

And it's very easy to share from there.

Just click on that little arrow, copy a link or just follow their prompts to share it to wherever or whoever you want.

It's so easy to do and it is so helpful to us.

Thank you for your comments on YouTube, on all the places you can leave them.

It really does help people discover the show and it's a lot of fun for us to read and engage with you.

So please keep it up.

Keep those comments, like, share, subscribes.

and so forthcoming.

They really do help.

Hey, we talked a lot about shopping today.

People love to find comfort in it.

But if retail therapy isn't your thing, maybe it's comfort food.

Are you a craft mac and cheese purist and your partner insists on putting peas in it?

Whoa.

Whoa.

Jennifer Marlon, you write this copy?

Who's putting peas in their craft mac and cheese?

People do it.

I've tried it before.

Okay.

I don't know about that.

Peas, cheese.

Give me a break.

If non-mac and cheese, what would you say is the definitive comfort food, the main one?

Did you discover that your boyfriend was lying about something big and none of your friends brought you a casserole?

You may be a real housewife of Orange County, but I want to hear about it.

Send your comfort food cases to us at maximumfund.org slash jjho.

And of course, we want to hear about all your disputes on any subject.

No case too big or too small.

So remember to submit those cases at maximumfund.org slash jjho.

We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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