Butt Money with David Lindsay-Abaire

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket.

And with me is the ghost of the Cape Cod Coliseum, Judge John Hodgman.

Whoa,

thank you for summoning me.

Please use a regular voice, John.

Please.

We have too much podcast to do.

They said Savannah was a trap.

David Lindsay bear, you know who I'm I'm doing when I do that voice, right?

I'm not quite sure.

Okay, I'll give it a question.

It's a TV personality.

It's not.

No, no, no.

Mother always said,

Savannah was a trap.

Is that that guy from the moth?

No, the guy from the moth, Edgar Oliver, famous dance.

I'm saying Edgar Oliver, yes.

I know.

He used the voice many times on the podcast.

I should remember his name by now.

No, that's okay.

But I'm very glad that you're here and to hear your voice.

David Lindsay Aber is our guest today, Jesse Thornton.

you know david lindsay aber of course david lindsay aber is a pulitzer prize winning playwright no why are you saying no david because it's pronounced pulitzer

okay

classic pulitzer burn john all right that's fair david lindsay of bear is a pulitzer prize winning playwright screenwriter, lyricist.

What do you call someone who writes the book for famous musicals?

A bookist?

A bookwriter.

Bookwriter.

Or librettist.

That also works, although it works.

Or librettist.

And we've been talking to him.

I've already said his name five times.

David Lindsay Abert, you know him from his Broadway plays Rabbit Hole and the film Rabbit Hole and Good People and Fuddy Mears.

And now based on his play, Kimberly Akimbo, the new musical Kimberly Akimbo with music by Janine Tessori and book and lyrics by, let's see here, who wrote the book.

Oh, it's you, David Lindsay Abert.

That's me.

You will probably, listeners will probably also know him from my new york times magazine profile of him from 2005 and if you are sam potts you will remember him from high school at milton academy in milton massachusetts

david

sam potts hi yeah thank you yeah hello how are you i'm great i'm happy to be here thank you before before we began recording jesse thorne my my co-host and our bailiff and I learned two things that I didn't know.

And this is embarrassing for me because I wrote a professional profile of you.

And I missed somehow that you were a listener to Maximum Fun podcasts, specifically Jordan Jesse Go,

which is a terrific podcast that everyone should listen to.

Agreed.

And also that you decorate your house all up for Halloween in an elaborate style, rivaling our own house Halloween decoration specialist, Aiden,

the young man who co-from Pennsylvania or New Jersey.

Whoops, sorry, Aiden, one of those who co-runs the Wikipedia for the Spirit Halloween store.

What category would you suggest those two states are in together, John?

Those are the submarine sandwich states?

They're the pork roll states.

Got it.

Or Taylor Ham.

Anyway.

Or hoagie.

I have to say, David, before we go any further,

I had this message out of the blue because we haven't seen each other for a while and, you know, only through fault of life

and other intrusions.

But I got this invitation to go see this new musical called Kimberly Akimbo.

I was like, wait a minute, Kimberly Akimbo, that was the name of a play that David Lindsay Aber wrote.

I know that.

I wrote a profile of him.

I like him a lot.

Turns out, you and Janine got together to write a musical about it, and now it's on Broadway.

And I was invited to the opening night.

And I've never been to the opening night of a Broadway show before.

And if you were trying to butter me up, you didn't have to because

the work stood on its own.

It was an amazing, amazing Broadway show.

Thank you.

I really love this musical.

Please, everyone, if you are coming to New York this spring, buy your tickets now

and pay twice the price, whatever they're selling them for.

People like to get bargain tickets to Broadway, David Lindsay Abert.

Yeah.

This show's so good, you should pay double.

Thanks, John.

I know you're not one for plugs on this show so this is doubly meaningful thank you i wasn't sure you were even going to mention the show

i've been mentioning the show on the show i know you listen to jordan jesse go mostly but i've mentioned i've i've been mentioning it my recommendation john for folks who want to pay double is if they will not accept double at the box office pay full price but then sneak in at the intermission

So then technically you're paying double.

Then technically you're paying double.

There's also lots of merch that is for sale in the lobby.

If you're looking to dump extra cash.

There you go.

And it's a really heartwarming and funny and moving and hilarious and good show about

a teenager who has a condition whereby she appears quite old.

And she's going to, you know, going through teenager stuff

with a challenging family, and then she meets a nice nerd and things kick off from there.

That's it, fair and their songs, lots of singing, yeah.

There's lots of singing and lots of lots, and it is, it is a musical comedy, but it is also one that is very touching.

And it is called Kimberly Akimbo, and it is playing right inside from the merch area.

When you go by, what's the name of the venue?

It's called the Booth Theater on Broadway.

It's called the Booth Merch Booth, where you get your Kimberly Akimbo stuff.

And if you walk through the doors, you're going to discover it's not just a sweatshirt shop.

Nope.

There's a show.

They also got a show that goes along with all this stuff.

Just pass by that.

First, buy a shirt, then go in and take your seat.

Here's another thing that I learned when I was profiling you, David Lindsay of Bear,

is you like, you like board games.

You play board games.

Yes.

You had a whole, this is before it was really popular to play board games.

I'm talking about,

you know, like tabletop gaming has had a real resurgence among adults.

Wait, John, before it was popular to play board games?

When was Go invented, John?

No, I'm not saying that board games haven't been a part of the tapestry of our human lives across every culture.

I'm just saying that it wasn't until I was on the Jonathan Colton cruise in 2011 for the first time that I realized, oh, David Lindsay, a bear guy, he's got his finger on the pulse.

Tabletop gaming is really happening among adults these days.

And when David, when you showed me your closet full of of board games,

you know, I had my reporter's notebook there and I was basically writing down, we got a weirdo, but that's not true.

No.

I liked board games before they were ironic.

How about that?

Yes.

Yeah, that's right.

There was no irony.

We just enjoyed them.

David, what's the most complicated board game that you play regularly?

Hmm.

Complicated.

I don't know that I like too many of the complicated games.

Those are the ones that I

like.

Look, I didn't play it, but I remember having Catans explain to me.

And it just seemed impossible, all the trading in of things and the building up of things.

And that's my least favorite kind of game where my brain has to work too hard.

I mean, risk can be complicated and, you know, obviously involves a lot of thinking, but yeah, I don't dig those games too much.

What's your favorite board game to play?

You know, that's that's

look growing up.

I obviously love the classics.

I love Scrabble and Monopoly and Clue.

Risk has been mentioned.

Battleship.

One of my favorites, and I haven't seen it in a long time, and I only just thought of this because of your voice earlier, was the game Stay Alive.

Do you remember this game?

No, but I'm curious to hear this connection.

Well, it was sort of a grid where you would put all of your marbles on the grid, and there were little holes under them that your teammates would pull a lever.

And if your marbles disappeared,

then you wanted to be the last marble standing.

But what I remember was the Vincent Price did, Vincent Price did the commercial.

And the last line was, I'd be happy to teach you how to play, but there's no one left.

I'm the sole survivor.

Oh, yeah.

Do you remember that commercial?

That was, that was, yes, I do.

That is, that just came back to me.

Yeah.

I did spend some time watching some

YouTube videos of old commercials for classic board games.

And it was a real trip.

Anyway, that was one of my favorites.

And I know this is a controversial answer and will probably get me kicked off the podcast, but

I always did love Boggle.

Sorry.

I know you hate it.

I know.

I just don't care.

First of all, not a board game.

Fair enough.

It's not a board game.

It's in a cube.

It's a cube game.

Yeah, it sounds like it's more of a board game.

Well, it's the opposite, isn't it?

Because it's the panic aspect that I loved most because there are a few of those games that like, do you remember Perfection?

I was just trying to remember the name of that.

And I was like, what was that game that was so scary?

Was it Desperation?

Perfection.

And Superfection, which was you had to put two pieces together and then put them in the board.

But I actually did bring a prop.

Oh, no.

And you're madly trying to put the pieces in before they explode in your face.

It's terrifying.

Anyway, Boggle is like that.

Wait a minute, I thought the thing didn't pop.

No, no, I didn't.

No, you didn't set the timer.

No, I didn't put in the pieces.

It causes me too much anxiety.

Yeah, Perfection was a quote-unquote game in which you had various little shapes that you would fit into corresponding holes on a plastic tray that was depressed and attached to a string.

And before you started playing, you set a timer and you tried to put them in as quickly as possible because if the timer flipped or whenever the timer flipped, that tray would pop up and all the pieces would fly into your face and you'd scream.

Yeah.

And it was probably the worst feeling I had.

I mean, I'm very lucky if that's the worst feeling I had as a child.

But just thinking about it right now made me queasy.

Yeah.

You brought it out and showed it to me on camera on our little teleconference here.

You're welcome.

And it freaked me right out.

Perfection.

There you go.

Here's a case from age.

John, Jesse, the problem.

Look, everyone likes what they like, David Lindsay, about it.

Oh, here we go.

And I love you.

So if you like boggle, go for it.

To me, I don't understand how you can possibly say you're making words out of letters that are going in different directions.

What does the direction matter?

The letters are still there.

If this doesn't upset you on a visceral level the way it does me, then good for you.

I wish I had your brain.

No, I love it.

I'm not the fullness of it, the scrambling.

It was just

still just thinking about it.

Another timed game.

The fact that that other game was named Perfection, I realized I need to talk to a therapist about that.

Because I think that may have instilled for me my true obsession with and terror of perfection.

I feel like we're really getting deep into both our neurodivergences and neurodiversities and, John,

our relationship to our single child dumb.

Right.

Like, I truly, the only board game I can play would be against my mom and only if she lets me win.

Yeah.

Perfection is a game that you can only play against yourself.

Put that on some merch.

Can we sell it at the booth theater?

Done.

Can we have a Judge John Hodgman pop-up shop?

Yep.

Next to the Kimberly Kimbo stand?

Yep.

On it.

Perfection is a game you only play against yourself.

Well done.

Board games do speak to some deep atavistic visceral

impulses, and we're going to explore some of them now and I hope to spend some justice.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

Here's a case from AJ in Brooklyn.

A few years ago, my wife and I were playing the board game, The Game of Life.

When the game ended, she had more kids, but I had more money.

Each of us thought we had won.

We're still uncertain about who actually won and what's considered winning in the game of life.

Do you know?

Do you ever play the game of life, David Lindsay Aber?

Yes.

And I don't, I only have one photo of my brother on my desk.

And look at this.

What?

I don't know if you can see it.

I know this is silly for a podcast, but it is my brother holding up the game of life, which he got for Christmas that year.

And we've played it.

And this is his 40th birthday.

That's his 40th birthday party.

Yes, that's right.

No, he's probably 11 in that picture.

He really loved the game of life, and you played it.

Many times.

Mine was not a game of life household.

And I think it's because in the ads, I was familiarized enough with the game that I know that your token was a car and you accumulated family.

And in the ads, one of the things that they always said was, I had twins.

And I think my sibling aversion was so strong that I wanted nothing to do with that game.

You were worried you'd have to share resources.

I had never had to share a backseat of a car in my life, and

nor was I going to, even in this game.

So, David Lindsay a bear, this is a grim game that follows you from birth through career, major life choices.

You can end up becoming a movie star or inheriting a skunk farm.

And the end game is the grave.

I mean, they call it retirement.

But none of this sounds fun to me.

Why did you like this game?

Well, I didn't love it.

I said I played it a lot, but I found it deeply problematic.

And I was not so interested in picking up a bunch of kids.

And I would always, you know, take whatever route was not that rep.

So I, yeah, it wasn't one of my favorites.

I think, you know, when we, my brother got, we were very young.

So it seemed like this is, this is designed for grown-ups or something.

It was not something that I was interested in.

Could you choose like a dual-income, no-kid route on the game of life?

I think so.

I remember ending the game without children in my car most of the time.

It seemed like the whole thing was very organized around

reinforcing some pretty patriarchal

middle, what they would call middle-class values for sure you have kids you make money you i remember in one of the ads a kid kind of sighs and goes i wish i had bought insurance

this doesn't seem fun to me

yeah this does not necessarily reflect my values is there is there a pathway in the game of life where it's like you can choose you can choose to pursue a life in the theater?

It's not on there.

No.

It's not on there, right?

No.

I choose drinking problem and third divorce.

I don't remember that part.

I think that that would probably be a pretty, an addendum to the game of life would be pretty good.

Great.

The kid throws his fists up in the air.

I want a Pulitzer.

Well, who wins?

The person who has the most kids or the person who has the most money?

That's the question from AJ in Brooklyn.

What is your opinion, David Lindsay of Bear?

Or what is the facts?

I don't know what the facts are.

Well, if facts are.

If I do remember, I mean, I think it is adding up how much money you have at the end.

But I think if you have kids, then for every kid, you turn over what's called a lifetile, which is given a money value.

So I think it's a pretty straightforward answer that you add up the lifetiles with whatever stack of cash you have at the end.

Unless I'm misremembering the game, but that's what I remember.

So whoever has the most lifetiles at the end

wins?

Well,

a lifetile is given a value of money.

Like this, whatever it is, this lifetile is worth $10,000 and add it to your pile um yeah my kids are not worth ten thousand nor mine nor mine yeah there are a variety of lifetiles you can get uh which all translate directly to money at the end of the game got it got it uh if you if you have children that's worth money And of course, if you retire at millionaire estates, you have the chance to receive four additional lifetiles if you are the richest person to retire there.

And whoever has the most most lifetiles wins, right?

And then they and then they get shot out of the middle of the of the theater like in Logan's Run and they renew and they get another body or something.

You have your money.

All the lifetimes are worth money.

You add it all up.

And then I'm just looking at the wiki for the game of life.

After the part about adding up your money and the player with the most money wins the game, it says, playing by the rules.

Sometimes life doesn't work out the way you want it to.

And that's also true in the game of life.

Even if you do not get the salary you want or end up with a car full of kids, you must continue to play by the rules.

If you try to cheat your way to success in the game, just as in real life, you will find that you will probably fail before you reach the top.

Wow, it's dark.

Not only

inappropriately unfun for a game, but also a pack of lies.

Pack of lies.

People who play by the rules succeed all the time if your value is making enough money in millionaire estates.

Here, the only good thing about the game was the spinner.

Yeah,

the thing that I remember most vividly about the game of life is the tactile experience over there at Jody Scott's house.

I believe Jodi Scott was my friend that had the game of life, of the ridges on that white plastic spinner and the clickety clack as it turned like like

a carnival game wheel.

Yep.

David Lindsay Bear just held one up to the screen.

Yeah, this was it.

You came with props.

Well, I don't, you know, the carrot top of podcast.

There are a few games that I had as a kid that we actually have in the house, and this is one of them.

So, and this spinner is not nearly as satisfying as the one that I had, but I'll do it.

But it doesn't sound the same.

Yeah, it's not very good.

It's okay.

You ever play the game of sorry with the pop?

The pop-up?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Oh, right.

You ever played?

Trouble had the dice popping mechanism.

The pop-o-matic.

The pop-o-matic.

This is the end of my props.

Are you tired of manual popping?

I loved it.

That was the best thing about Trouble.

There were several pop-o-matic games.

There was also Headache, and there was Double Trouble.

Jesse's favorite game isn't headache.

Yeah, I still play Headache to this day.

Sorry, Jesse.

I think I might have given you one.

Apologies.

No,

those kinds of

game design innovations could move a lot of units.

I don't think anyone played Trouble because of the game design.

I certainly played Save the Whales because of the handsome pewter humpback that came with it.

It was a cooperative game.

The goal was to save the whales.

Nothing has ever been more 1988 than that.

It came with some sun-dried tomatoes and a kiwi fruit.

If you want to play Trouble without the pop-up, then it really pretty much is sorry.

That's the same game.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean,

the only reason that people bought Trouble was for the Pap-O-Matic.

Otherwise, it was a literal sorry knockoff of Sorry.

And they're both knockoffs of Parcheesi, I would say, right?

Oh, we'll save the Parcheesi talk for later.

We got a lot of the cheese coming.

But what are we saying to AJ here?

The rules of the game of life

they who dies with the most toys, aka the most money, wins.

Like that old crummy poster that you would see in a frat house.

That's the rules of the game of life.

And the other rule of the game of life is the game of life wants you to play by the rules because that's how they get the suckers.

The rules are for you, not for the game of life.

So

in my opinion, If your values, AJ's spouse, are to have love and family, then you won, but technically AJ won because AJ got the most money.

Here's something from Hayden in Long Beach.

My brother Shane and I have a dispute about scattergories.

In this game, you get prompts such as vegetables or places you go on vacation.

A 20-sided die provides a random letter.

Then you list things that start with that letter for each prompt.

So for vegetables, you might say kale if you rolled a K or beans if you rolled a B.

In this case, first of all, beans are legumes.

Yeah, I was just about to say we're going to get a lot of letters.

Man.

Don't get Jesse started on beans.

Big fat juicy beans.

That's my favorite part of waiting for Guffman.

In this case, the category was things babies use.

We rolled a G.

My brother Shane said gloves.

We argued about this until the whole room was uncomfortable.

Do babies use gloves?

David Lindsay Bear, do babies use gloves?

I mean, babies can use anything, but that, no, that seems silly.

It should be specific to babies, right?

Yeah, I'm not sure that babies.

Let's put a pin in that.

Do you play scategories?

No, they they don't even use gloves.

You'd put mittens on a baby.

You can't get those tiny little fingers into a glove.

That's a ridiculous answer.

Wait a minute.

Do you know about rich Uncle Pennybags, the mascot from Monopoly?

Go on.

What about a baby version of him for Monopoly Babies?

Yeah, what if there was Monopoly Baby Edition?

What then?

What if it was Rich Nephew Pennybags and he wore little gloves?

And a tiny top hat.

And a little tiny, but little evening gloves, white evening gloves, and he's like going around saying goo goo gaga capitalism yeah what if top hats started with g

then baby money bags would wear it and it would start with g and it would be a perfect example for this game what about that i can't think of a of a thing that babies use that starts with g that isn't gloves honestly can you david lindsay a bear i'm not good at this game categories myself no babies no i'd fail something babies use okay

good good i mean you say google gaga you're trying to figure out

figuring it out.

Garage door opener.

That's what they use.

Yeah.

Coloshes.

Garbureator?

A garbureator.

Coloshes.

Gnomes.

Giraffe, a toy giraffe,

a baby might use.

It was a tough one.

I would say, guess what, Aiden?

That was a tough one.

God's Providence.

God or whatever.

Sure.

Providence.

That would be if the baby wanted to survive babyhood in the Middle Ages or something.

Would use God's Providence.

Yeah, were you playing Middle Ages categories, Aiden, or present-day Scategories?

It is, of course, categories is one of the oldest games.

It's been played

since the Persian Empire.

No, it was invented in 1988.

And that's a tough one.

You're right.

You got a tough one there, Hayden.

Shane did the best Shane could, but Shane was wrong.

Babies don't use gloves.

And note to listener, Kit, you are right.

You also had a scategories dispute.

And Kit, guess what?

You win this one.

In the topic of fictional characters, starting with G again, your husband Nate was wrong to suggest George the Great Gangly Galloping Grape Gorilla

because he had just made that up on the spot and that doesn't count.

Nate was saying, well, it's a fictional character.

I just made him up.

It's got to be a preno.

No.

Boo, right?

Boo.

Out.

And he was trying to get those extra points by putting in all those extra Gs.

No.

The correct answer would be Glove Baby.

Glove Baby.

Exactly right.

I'm going to do one better.

I'd say the top fictional character starting with a G, God.

I look forward to your letters.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

We're going to take a quick break to hear from this week's partners and avoid lightning bolts.

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

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast, always brought to you by you, the members of maximumfun.org.

Thanks to everybody who's gone to maximumfun.org slash join.

And you can join them by going to maximumfun.org slash join.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by Made In.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week with Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay a bear.

Here's a case from Corey in Arlington, Virginia.

Growing up, I was never able to finish a game of Clue.

My cousins always insisted the characters could only enter and exit rooms through open doors.

I argued that any door printed on the board is usable.

I believe the visual distinction is only to provide variety on the board.

They argued the game designers would not have included both open and closed doors if they didn't intend for there to be a difference between the two.

Who is right?

David Lindsay Barry, you ever play the game of Clue?

Yeah, a lot.

Yeah.

Clue dough, they call it in the UK.

Do you know why?

I don't know why.

I don't know why.

Because they haven't got a clue.

I think probably they already had a clue.

They had to have had some other clue.

And through British copyright, they couldn't.

I don't know.

But if you know why, listeners, please write a letter to hodgman at maximumfund.org and explain why clue is known as clue do in other countries.

That's why Tim Curry had to move to America.

I never saw the movie Clue, not even one of its endings.

Very funny.

It's very funny.

Really?

Okay.

Madeline Crump especially is very cool.

It takes a long time to get started.

Yeah.

That's something you don't remember when you

only remember it from your childhood.

just sitting back in 1987 eating a kiwi,

is,

boy, does it not get funny for half an hour.

Okay.

So much exposition.

Include, what character did you like to play, David Lindsay of Bear?

Who would you grab?

Colonel Mustard every time.

Colonel Mustard, every time.

Yeah.

Did you have like the edition

where they had the photographs on the front?

The 1970s edition, they have actors posing as these characters.

And I remember Colonel Mustard did some sweet mutton chops.

It's what I love best, those mutton chops.

Yeah, that's exactly the addition that I had.

Yeah.

Who'd you like to play, Jesse Thorne?

Have you ever played Martha?

Miss Scarlett, all the way.

Miss Scarlett, all the way.

Ironic, our audience at home can't see this.

David Lindsay Bear right now wearing Scarlet.

I am wearing mustard.

Huh.

I am wearing blue, which would make me Miss Peacock.

Meanwhile, I'm a peacock?

Yeah, peacock.

And Valerie Moffat,

who is editing and producing this episode, did you ever play Clue?

I have played Clue

one time

in college, and I remember almost none of it.

Did you remember what character you played?

No, I think I would have gone for like a Colonel Mustard just for the sideburns.

But no,

I don't remember, unfortunately.

According to this, Mrs.

Peacock, and by this I mean the internet, the Wikipedia page.

Mrs.

Peacock has an immediate advantage of starting one space closer to the first room than any of the other players.

That's just a little clue hack out there for people.

But I would always play Professor Plum because

nerd.

Always.

Always.

You looked at the variety of characters and thought, which of these knows it all?

That's right.

Which of these people looks most likely to never be threatened with a hug or a kiss from anyone?

And to live his life in complete asexual seclusion.

Maybe in a house with a turret and some Edward Gorey

prince somewhere in Cape Cod or something like that.

That was my dream, Professor Plum.

In any case, what do you think about this question, David Lindsay Aber?

Well, I'm trying to remember.

I think we used all the doors.

I feel like the walls were clearly marked

and that there was an open space, whether the door was open or closed on the board, there was an open space to enter.

That's how I remember it at least.

Do you remember?

How many of the rooms can you name off the top of your head?

Oh, gosh.

Do you really want me to start listing them?

The hall, the ballroom, the conservatory, the library.

Yep.

The kitchen.

Yep.

The billiard room.

The dining room.

Yep.

The study.

Yep.

Aviary.

Nope.

But there was.

Aviary.

You're one away.

This is a music.

Oh, I am.

Is there a music room?

Wouldn't that be the conservatory?

Oh, yeah, that's make.

That's exactly right.

Have you said the ballroom?

Maybe you said it and I missed it.

Oh, yeah, then you got it.

Then you won.

I'm sure I missed a couple, but okay, thank you.

No, no, no.

You didn't miss it.

You didn't miss a single one.

The kitchen.

Did you say the kitchen?

I thought I did.

Yeah, I think you said them all.

Oh, here comes one.

The lounge.

I didn't say the lounge for sure.

Yeah.

Did I say library?

I might have missed the library, too.

No, no, you said the library.

You probably don't have enough travel points for the lounge.

I think you're right.

You're right.

Yeah,

the door to the lounge is closed to those of us who are no longer diamond medallion members.

Now I'm merely a platinum medallion member as of February 1st of this year.

I'll talk about that later.

But I am looking at

the 1970s era board that you and I would have used, David Lindsay Bear.

And

it's very, there are no, it's basically gaps in the walls walls with the word door.

And then when I look to the 1980s version, there are many doors

and they are all closed, but they are in the same places.

What Corey is describing here, that there are some doors that were open and some doors were closed.

I don't see that at all.

In the 70s, they were all open.

There were no doors at all pictured.

In the 80s, there are doors in all those spaces and they are closed, but there are no open ones.

You had to go through those doors.

I think this is a clear case of cousin malfeasance.

I think our big mistake here, seeing that Corey is from Arlington, Virginia, is not asking my aunt, Arlington, Virginia-based real estate agent, Debbie Miller, lifestyle transition specialist.

If you've got a lifestyle transition coming up in Northern Virginia, or a parent does,

Google Debbie Miller.

She'll help you out.

Here's the lifestyle I want, Jesse.

Maybe she can help me out with this.

I want a lifestyle where I have a house that has a library and a study and a lounge.

There are too many rooms in this place.

Too many rooms.

No wonder they got up to murder.

David Lindsay Bear, did you like the game of Clue?

Oh, yeah, I really liked it a lot.

Yeah.

What was your favorite murder weapon to fondle?

I found the candlestick quite satisfying.

Yeah.

Got to be a sperm whale, right?

I was.

No, I don't think they introduced that till later.

No, it was later, yeah.

I was always a lead pipe guy.

Okay.

I always liked or the the rope had a good a good feel had a nice ridge to it had a nice ridge to it yeah but the rope was the only one that was not metallic

plastic

oh right plasticky beige

top token and monopoly we're going to get to monopoly after the break but but uh top token you want to think it over or do you know it right off the top of your head i mean off the top of my head i think top hat of course top hat like a baby wears yeah yeah okay

well before we get to Monopoly, I think we got some scrapble.

Oh, by the way, Corey, your cousins were lying to you, as cousins always do.

Here's something from Anna in Chicago.

Sometimes when I play Scrabble with my mom, I hesitantly attempt to play a word and say something like, I think this is a word?

My mom then asks what I think it means.

I take a guess.

She shakes her head and says, no.

And I withdraw the word and play my pathetic backup word.

Later in the game, my mom will play the same word, smugly giving the correct definition.

Judge, this has led to some of the worst fights my mother and I have ever had.

I now refuse to play with her.

Please rule, the only requirement for playing a word in Scrabble is that the word appears in the Scrabble Player's Dictionary.

Dear Lindsay Bear, I saw you shaking your head as you listened to this plea from Anna in Chicago.

What's your reaction to this?

Well, I'm sure her mom is a delightful person, but this question infuriates me.

No,

no, it makes me very angry.

This question is horrible.

It is not a game of definitions.

There is a rule in Scrabble that if you want to challenge it, you challenge it, and then you go to the dictionary.

At no point do you have to give the definition of a word?

That's an entirely different game.

When I first got the Scrabble bug up there in Prince Edward Island with the parents of my friend Peter Rosenmeier, Jesper and Rosamund Rosenmeier, two of the greats.

Unfortunately, they're no longer living, but they taught me a lot of things.

This is my family.

Jesper was from Denmark originally, and they lived next door to us in Brookline, Massachusetts.

And David Lindsay of Bear, they celebrated Christmas.

And when they celebrated Christmas, you know how they lit their Christmas tree?

Go on.

Live candles.

Yeah, I was afraid you're going to say that.

Live candles.

They do it right in Europe.

They knew how to do it right.

Of course.

Of course.

It was totally bananas, and yet they did it.

It was one of the most beautiful things I ever saw.

And the candle holders that they would hang on the branches of the tree had counterbalances, so they were always upright.

I don't think you can buy those anymore.

They're like lawn darts.

We're not allowed to have nice things in this country.

Anyway, one of the nice things they had was Scrabble.

They played Scrabble, and they took no prisoners.

But

when they were teaching their kids to play Scrabble,

it was a rule that you could play a word.

If you weren't sure how to spell it or what it meant, you could look it up in the dictionary and play that word.

That way it was a learning tool.

You gained vocabulary.

But nowhere in the Scrabble rules does it say you have to know the definition of the word that you're playing.

How are you on your two-letter words, David Lindsay Bear?

Pretty good.

Pretty good.

Would you say you're okay?

Ooh.

Also, not acceptable two-letter word, I don't believe.

I approve.

Oh, okay.

On the joke, not in the word, but that's all right.

Yeah, that was a good joke, I have to admit.

Yeah,

but like, I remember that OE, OE.

We am okay at it.

Me and Jordan are okay at it.

OE, OE, OE is a two-letter word that I believe means a kind of a wind.

It describes a certain wind.

Okay.

And Al-A-L is a tree.

It's an East Indian tree.

An East Indian tree.

There we go.

I was going to say, I was going to say like a branch of a tree.

Well, maybe I'm wrong.

No, I bet you're right.

Owl definition.

This feels like a game right now.

I'm getting tense.

I hope I win.

Owl is a value.

You know what?

I'm almost certain that you're correct.

When I look it up on the internet, it says, yes, Al is a Scrabble word and is worth two points in Scrabble and three points in words with friends, which I do not recognize because, as I've said before, there is no words with friends.

There's only Scrabble with enemies.

And that Al is a valid Scrabble word.

And then it says nothing else because

the definition does not.

matter.

Does not matter.

And this mom that you have, Anna, out there in Chicago, this mom should know better.

Don't you agree, David Lindsay Aber?

Yeah, and I think she does know better.

I think she's just

wanting to win.

Yeah, she knows what she's doing.

But this is, I mean, you know, like, like this mom is out here teaching her daughter that she's supposed to know the definition of the word in order to play it.

That's not the, that's not the rule.

That's not even the,

unless it's the house rule, but Anna doesn't know.

If it were the house rule, it would be agreed upon, right?

It would be like,

this isn't the rules, but this is the way we play.

The way the Rosenmeyers would play it, you can look up a word in the dictionary if you aren't sure how to spell it because we want you to learn words because you're children.

If this were a mom saying to her

daughter, and I don't know Anna's age, but like her child saying,

you know,

we're only going to play it if we know the definitions of the words because that's how we're going to learn vocabulary.

That would be one thing.

But as far as I know, Anna is an adult, and her mom has been lying to her entire life about the rules of Scrabble.

You know, the worst part of that story, though, is that the mom then puts down the same word and gives the proper, that's just diabolical, and then says, oh, here's the real definition.

That's just horrible.

Well,

I agree that cruelty is definitely a part of Scrabble.

There's no question about that, but this is cruelty based on misdirection.

Yeah.

That's not, it's not fair, Anna's mom.

And look, you're punished.

Anna won't play Scrabble with you anymore.

Was it worth it?

I'm going to go so far as to, and this is, I've never done this on the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast.

Oh.

I'm going to tell all the Scrabble players in Chicago, stay away from Anna's mom.

Anna's mom, you are banned from all the Scrabble tables in Chicagoland.

You want to get a game going, a Scrabble?

You might have to go to Indiana.

You might have to go to Wisconsin.

She's going to have to become a riverboat Scrabbler.

Until she gets found out.

Scrabblers talk.

That's That's what they said in Pokerface.

Scrabblers talk.

Banned.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll have a case about Parcheesi.

And what about something called butt money?

Butt money.

B-U-T-T money.

So good.

When I turn in that lifetile, I got a win.

You automatically.

Yep.

Yeah.

Automatic win.

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.

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, it's March.

That is big news for us.

Yep, rabbit-rabbit, as they say.

March is here, and that means March Madness.

And we've got a real doozy of a bracket.

Is it a sports bracket, Jesse?

No, sir, it is not a sports bracket.

Why would anyone bother with a sports bracket during March Madness when they could focus on a much, much more important bracket?

Weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks ago, we have a listener named Jared from New York who wrote in,

asking this podcast to pronounce a certain song, Empire of the Clouds by Iron Maiden, the best song about Zeppelins, blimps, or airships.

Now, it's a great song, and that might be true.

But as I said back then, and I'm saying it again now, how can we know unless we vote on it?

So we've created a March Madness style bracket of 32 songs about blimps, airships, balloons, any lighter-than-air travel.

Some of them are a little bit of a stretch.

They're all submitted by you, the listeners, and now's your chance to vote on them starting right now.

So Marie Barty from our friends, the blank check podcast, put together this bracket.

You can find it on all our social media.

You'll find the links on our social media

at JudgeJohn Hodgman on Instagram, facebook.com slash judgejohnhodgman, maximumfund.reddit.com.

It's going to be a real bonanza.

All my money is on the Drexel Dragons,

but we'll see who comes out on top.

There's going to be four polls a day between March 1st and 4th, then two polls a day from March 5th through 11th, then our final poll on March 12th, and we'll find out what the greatest song of all time about lighter-than-air travel is.

We're going to get to announce it in the second week of Max Fund Drive.

It's going to be very exciting.

And I just want to thank everyone who already voted.

I did do an initial poll as to what we should call this blimp fight to end all blimp fights with a March Madness theme.

I want to thank everyone who voted.

Some of you suggested things such as Floatcella or Blimp Board Hot 100 or March Dirigible Derangement.

But as of this count, 69.7% of you agreed that this should be called March O the Humadness.

Only 17.58% of you thought it should be the much more clear March O the humanity-ness.

But we're calling it March O the Humadness.

So get on the socials, find those, whether it's the Facebook group, whether it's the Reddit group, whether it's our Twitter accounts, you'll find the place to vote.

Get out there and vote.

We'll get it done.

I'm kind of thinking up, up, and away is going to be fifth dimension.

Up, up, and away by the fifth dimension is indeed in this first round of voting, and it's up against the blimp by Captain Beefheart.

So

when you go to the polls, when you go to the polls, you can listen to all the songs because we have links to all the, to all the YouTube videos for the songs.

So you can decide for yourself.

So I know who I'm voting for in that one.

Do you go to the polls?

And thank you, Marie Barty, for pulling this together after after I was incapable of doing it?

After weeks and weeks and weeks, Marie was able to do it in 24 hours.

It's incredible.

I have mentioned several times in this episode, Kimberly Akimbo is one of the best Broadway musicals that I have seen in a long, long time, and I really love it.

And you should check it out.

If you get through to New York, check it out.

But this message is specifically for

Tony voters.

If you are someone who votes in the Tonies,

just

I'm look you know what to do.

Just vote Kimberly Akimbo straight up and down the ballot for in all categories.

Best everything.

I also want to reiterate that our friends Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who have been on this show, and so they're your friends too,

have created this wonderful show on Hulu called Up Here,

in which I play a small part.

And yet, nonetheless, some of the most fun I've had on camera ever.

Because this is the best cast assembled.

I'm going to say it, Jesse, since bored to death.

Wow.

The fun and the chemistry that these people have and the quality of their performances.

Holy guacamole.

May Whitman, Carlos Valdez, Kenny Finneran, so many more.

Broadway legend Brian Stokes Mitchell is showing up.

It was just such a delight and I think you're really going to enjoy it.

And I really, really do hope you check it out on Hulu March 24th.

All eight episodes will be released on March 24th.

And I hope you tell some friends about it.

Because it's a really special show, and I really had a great time making it.

And I hope you will enjoy it too.

Jesse Thorne, what do you got going on?

Some special guests on Jordan Jesse Go.

This past week, we had the great Sam Regal, one of the stars of Critical Role, one of the internet's most popular YouTube shows, slash podcasts, slash

adult animated series for Amazon Prime/slash, whatever else.

One of the internet's great guys as well, Sam Regal.

And this week, his competitors and bitter rivals in the field of podcast Dungeons and Dragons games, yeah, that's right.

They actively hate each other.

The McElroy brothers.

All three McElroy brothers are coming on Jordan Jesse Go together this week.

Wow.

And we haven't recorded this yet, but my presumption is they're just going to spend the entire time tearing down Sam Regal personally.

Don't tear down anybody.

Good luck to all bad people.

They're All friends.

They're all friends.

They're friends.

They're some of the nicest people in the world, the McElroy's and Sam Regal.

But as John Flansberg once said as he raised his glass in a cocktail bar where I was lucky to be sitting with him, John Darnell, and Jonathan Colton, yes, it was a summit of the Johns.

And a band came up that someone thought another person might not like very much.

And that person raised his glass and said, you know what I say?

Good luck to all bands.

And I say it every day.

In this case, good luck to all bands of adventurers.

Oh,

yes, indeed.

Anyway, really fun episodes of Jordan Jesse Go.

So I hope people will take the opportunity to listen to them.

And of course, right around the corner is the Max Fun Drive.

So look forward to that.

If you're not already a member of Maximum Fun, it will be a great time to join.

If you are already a member, you can think about

whether you've got the scratch to kick it up a notch.

It's going to be a lot of fun, special episodes, special stuff happening across the network starting in late March.

It's a special, special time of year.

And if you've just started listening to Judge John Hodgman, make sure you listen hard once the Max Fund Drive starts because it's a special, special time of year, and I'm really looking forward to it.

It's not just the Max Fund Rive, it's also the Max Fun Drive.

We have fun, and it's going to be a good time.

Let's get back to the docket.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

With me, me, Judge John Hodgman and David Lindsay a bear, Pulitzer Prize winner, of course, for Shrek the Musical, which he wrote.

Here's something from Lewis in Brooklyn.

I, Louis G., bring the case against my friend, Louis M.

I'm from Columbia, where Parcheesi is very popular.

I did not know this.

All my aunts play.

and they play for money, the equivalent of a quarter for every kill.

They recently sent me a Parchezi set.

I play at my local, Minnie's Bar in Sunset Park.

Minnie's Bar

in Sunset Park is where Lewis plays.

Parcheesi.

That's a Charlene and Stewart joint.

That's a Charlene and Stewart Wellington joint.

Stu, of course, is co-hosted the Flophouse podcast on maximum fund.

This is completely unsolicited, but I'll tell you something.

I've been to that bar.

Dave Lindsay-Bear, you ever been over to Minnie's Bar?

Nope.

In Sunset Park?

All right, let's go.

Yep, play some Parcheesi with Lewis.

Done.

Or will we?

Let's find out if he's a fair player.

I always start by clarifying the rules, including my family's house rules for roadblocks and rolling multiple doubles.

During an amazing Minnie's match, I pulled off a narrow victory.

just before Lewis M was about to bring his last piece home.

The next day, Lewis said my win was illegitimate.

He had checked the internet.

It told him that once I had fewer than six spaces to go, I should have switched to using one die instead of two.

I say, with a game as old as Parcheesi, online sources will differ.

Only the pregame negotiation of rules matters.

Who is the real champion?

Parcheesi is indeed

an ancient game.

Almost as old as Scattergories.

No, of course, I mean,

it dates back to

around,

at least as far as we know, around the first century BC

in Southeast Asia.

And now it's traveled the world.

Do you like Parcheesi, David Lindsay Bear?

Yeah, I do like it.

I haven't played it in a while, but I played it a lot when we were younger.

You ever play it for Money, Columbian State?

No, I've never heard that.

That makes I've never heard that before that seems really cool and by the kills

what's being referred to here I presume is when you roll the dice and you move

you move your piece and you land on a spot that where another player's piece is and it's not a safe spot and they get sent back to start that would be a kill and I guess you would get a quarter from them for making that kill.

And the roadblocks that Lewis G refers to here are, I guess, what I learned were called blockades, which is when you have two of your own pieces on a space,

no one can move past them.

Not even you.

And the goal is to get home.

But have you ever heard of this rule of using one die when you have less than six spaces to go and you have only one piece on the board?

No, I've never heard that.

I've never heard of that either.

What do you think about this case?

I don't agree with it because if you need a five to get in,

you can roll a five with two dice i i don't understand why you would have to

right because in parcheesi when you roll you roll two dice and they're six-sided dice

and you can use either the like let's say it's a five and a one

you can either move one of your pieces six spaces right or you can move one piece five spaces and another piece one space and then there are other variations not variations but that's the basics of the game mechanics so I had never heard of this rule before, but Parcheesi, I do believe, is a rule, a game that has been around for a long time.

And I'm sure that there are lots and lots of house rules, like there are for Monopoly.

What do you think about house rules?

Great.

So long as you say what they are at the beginning of the game, you can't make up house rules after it's over.

Right.

Like with Anna and her mom in Chicago, if Anna's mom had said, okay, house rule, I'm going to...

be cruel and treat you the wrong rules of Scrabble and pretend that I know better than you.

That would have been fair.

That would have been fair.

I don't think Anna's mom needs to say that anymore.

I think it's a given.

Right.

I think it's house rules for all parents to say to their kids, yeah, just house rules.

I'm going to inadvertently teach you some bad stuff

and mess up your head.

I'm sorry.

You know, but if you land on free parking enough, you might be able to pay for therapy eventually.

Do you put money under the under the free parking space in Monopoly?

Yeah, we do that.

How much do you put in there to start?

Well, we put 500 to start, and then whatever money is paid

on the cards, whether it's community chest or chance, then that also goes in the middle.

So it can pile up.

Yeah, no, you can get quite a windfall.

Quite a windfall.

You know, the rich uncle Pennybags will be swooning, fainting backwards, as he often does when he gets a tax refund in his favor or whatever.

In this case, we have quite a few Parcheesi disputes, and they all revolve around.

Yes.

In part because this game dates back to the first century BC.

So there's been a lot of time.

I see.

A lot of time to build up disputes.

Why do you laugh?

Do you think there aren't that many Parcheesi players out there?

I'm surprised to hear that there are so many.

I just think it's such an old, dusty game, which I enjoyed, but I didn't know that people were still playing it so much.

Even if you were to go to the printed rules of Parcheesi, circa 2001, which is the PDF I found.

from the Hasbro website or whatever.

I mean, there are a lot of rules to Parcheesi.

You know, you can move your entered pawns counterclockwise along the path, the number of spaces you roll on the dice.

You may move one or two pawns in your turn.

No more than two of your pawns can occupy one space.

You must move whenever possible.

You cannot move by the count of both.

If you cannot move by the count of both dice, you may move one pawn.

There's a whole lot of rules for how many, what happens if you roll doubles three times, the third consecutive time you roll doubles, you may not move forward, but what happens, Dave Lindsay Bear?

I don't know what happened.

Oh, wait, I do know.

Your pawn that is closest to home gets sent back to the home base.

Is that what you're doing?

Yeah, you got to start all over.

Your pawn goes all the way back.

And then there's this one: capture bonus.

After capturing or quote-unquote killing

an opposing pawn, move any one of your pawns an additional 20 spaces at the end of your turn.

If you capture during a doubles bonus move, complete your capture bonus before moving again.

If you can't move one pawn, the full 20 spaces,

you see it goes on.

It's very, it's very, you could see why.

and, and these rules that were printed in 2001 are much more complicated and confused than the original printed rules of Parcheesi that I found dating back to when it was created by, well, obviously, appropriated and then published for money by Parker brothers back in the whatever 19.

Because I think, I think there are a lot of house rules.

I think there are a lot of traditional different ways to play.

And there are a lot of exceptions, too.

So I can understand why there were so many disputes.

So I'm going to settle these all in a row real quick.

David Lindsay Bear, if you think I'm wrong on this because of your Parcheesi knowledge, you let me know.

Okay.

So first of all, Richard and Camden, Maine, you are wrong.

Your son Noah was perfectly within his rights to bypass his home path to capture your piece.

There is nothing in the rule book that said Noah had to go down his home path when he reached it.

He is absolutely fine to go ahead and capture your piece and continue to play and go around the board another time.

And there's also nothing in the rule book that says a golden retriever can't play Parcheesi.

You have to allow that dog to play.

Justine, you are wrong.

Per the printed Hasbro rules, you are not allowed to move a two pawn blockade together to form a new two pawn blockade, even if the dice roll that way.

You owe your sister Melissa decades' worth of rematches.

This was printed in the Hasbro rules, but not printed in the original Parker Brothers printed rules for Parcheesi, because someone had to say, can I move my pieces, forming a blockade, together?

And someone else had to say, no, you can't.

It's unsporting.

Justine, you're wrong.

Hollis, your letter is unclear.

I don't know what move or combination of moves you employed to prevent Kyle from winning until it was long past midnight and you had ruined New Year's Eve for everyone.

But Clearly, Parcheesi is a mean game, and as long as you followed its many mean rules, including whatever house rules you set up before the game what you did was as you wish me to deem awesome and finally lewis g in brooklyn your victory stands you remain the parchezi champion of mini's bar in sunset park lewis m you can't go looking for rules on the internet after the fact and try to steal that victory back plus i've never not in any of the printed rules or any variation have I been able to find anything about having to switch to one die when you're less than six paces away from home?

It's just not how it works, Lewis M.

See you at Minnie's.

You want to play some Parcheesi at Minnie's, David Lindsay Bear?

Yes.

Maybe we should get together with Lewis, too.

Great.

And Lewis M.

We'll

show Louis M what's what when it comes to Parcheesi.

You know who I'm not going to play with?

Who?

That mom.

No.

That mom, Anna's mom in Chicago.

Yeah.

Anna's mom, go play at Hinterlands.

Yeah.

Are you expanding the board game ban to parteesi as well as scrabble i'm not playing anything with that lady i don't like her wow

wow

all right that's a full ban she's a rude dudette with a bad two det she's got nothing going on when it comes to playing games with david lindsay a bear you know what what i don't want to count up her lifetimes at the end of the day no I don't think her lifetimes are going to be.

I'm sure she's a wonderful person.

This is terrible.

What's that?

I'm sure she's nice.

She just has this one little thing.

She did a non-nice thing.

Yeah, you know what?

That's not a lifetime in your favor, Anna's mom.

You should consider that.

That's all we're saying.

Here's something from Steve in Brooklyn.

This is about monopoly.

Okay.

Boom.

Years ago, our younger daughter, Josie, created a scheme in which she sneaks money under her butt and sits on a wad of secret cash.

This cash is called butt money.

Butt money.

In monopoly, the amount of money opponents have in front of them is an important part of deciding whether to purchase a property or build a house.

However, butt money is the monopoly version of a Swiss bank account.

It seems unfair for Josie to release $1,000 in butt money when we think we've bankrupted her.

Please order Josie to cease this practice.

David Lindsay Bear,

you enjoy puzzles, right?

Sure do.

I mean, arguably, boggle is not a game, but a puzzle.

Okay.

Right?

I mean, okay.

You're creating a little word jumble for yourself

that has no elegance to it whatsoever.

The boggle hate.

I knew I shouldn't have brought it up.

I knew it.

Well, people like what they like, and I love you, and you can enjoy whatever you like.

But that's more of a word, that's more of a word jumble than it is a game.

Here's a puzzle.

Riddle me this, David Lindsay of Bear.

Can you spot Steve's first and biggest mistake in the letter that he wrote?

Yeah, that he said it was about Monopoly.

It's not about Monopoly.

It's about some dynamic in the family that needs to be investigated.

Oh, I thought you were saying his first mistake was they were playing Monopoly, which is arguable.

Oh, I see.

That's a better answer.

That's not what I was saying, though.

That's not what I was saying.

No, okay.

What do you think?

His first mistake, in my opinion, and I like Monopoly.

I mean,

but can I ask you honestly, David Lindsay Bear, have you ever played a game of Monopoly that didn't cause anger?

No.

Right?

It's the whole point.

That's the point.

The whole point is to destroy other people.

and enrich yourself.

Yeah.

Bankrupt them.

The game was designed originally

to show the evil.

Let's take it.

Let's take the moral issue out of it.

To show the inevitable outcome of capitalism, which is that money amasses to one person

and everyone else suffers.

That there is no fair and equal distribution of the wealth on the board, that it is predatory and cruel.

And someone said, that's a fun game.

And they stole that idea from that that person and sold it as their own without batting a single eyelash of moral qualm.

There's no ethical board gaming under capitalism.

No, there is no ethical board gaming under capitalism.

But David Lindsay Abert and Jesse Thorne, I would argue that Steve's first mistake and biggest mistake was saying

that part of monopoly strategy is deciding whether or not to buy a property based on monies that other people have.

Because what I learned is playing Monopoly on my Macintosh SE, no, I think it was a Performa 145 or something like that.

It was one of the built-in games and you could play it at fast speed.

And my wife, who's a whole human being in her own right, and I would play Monopoly against each other late into the night in the 90s at the fastest speed possible.

So we played hundreds of iterations of Monopoly a night.

And what we learned very early on is you buy every property you land on.

Right, David Lindsay Bear?

Yes.

You never not buy a property.

Wait a minute.

No.

If you keep buying all of those properties, you're going to run out of money.

And so if you have just enough and you land on a property that you want, you think, oh,

I have to buy this.

But then you look around the table and like, well, this Joker doesn't have any money.

They're not going to buy it.

I'm safe.

I can go around the board another time and pick up another 200 bucks, maybe get a little money from chance, maybe land on free parking.

I'll be in a better position to not be bankrupted.

I'm going to get the next go-round.

So then you are looking at the other people's piles of money would be.

Please, no letters regarding free parking.

Fair enough.

Jeez, you know,

I wish it were, I mean, I wish I hadn't seen what I saw

those many late nights in the 90s playing iteration 900 at 2 a.m.

Because what I saw was very clear.

The statistics were almost as clear as the data points that have rolled in over the 10 years of this podcast regarding dudes who have systems versus wives who endure them.

The smallest, and this is what makes monopoly so insidious,

the smallest early advantage in terms of property acquisition

will always lead to an increasing advantage until it becomes exponential and you eventually just win.

And you can grind it out.

You'll have your ups and downs, but you grind it out.

It doesn't matter what the other person has in my experience.

Because, you know,

once I saw through the Matrix and I was in game 1000,

the odds were very clear.

It's just like, buy the property, do what you have to in order to buy every property you land on because that will give you an edge eventually.

But of course, this doesn't speak to butt money at all.

I'm just identifying what I saw when I went too deep into the, down the monopoly hole.

What do you think about butt money and what Josie is up to, David Lindsay and Beer?

You know, I'm very much against it, and yet I love the audacity of it.

Yeah.

Just hearing about it was a thrill for me.

Yeah, it's so brilliant.

Like, bam, I've got a thousand bucks and I'm going to build those hotels over there.

It's amazing.

And it is in keeping with the capitalistic nature of the game.

I mean, as Steve points out, developers are

hiding their funds all over the world.

There is a strategic advantage into having more money than people think you have.

I like the idea of playing any board game by prison rules.

If you can kester the money, you can play it later.

I think there should be a house rule that butt money is allowed.

If you can sneak that money under your butt, then you have evaded taxation in the eyes of the government, et cetera, et cetera.

And then you can deploy those funds later.

Now, what's the what my question to you, David Lindsay Aber, is: what's the punishment if Josie gets caught sneaking the butt money?

In other words,

her dad or another family member sees this happening, calls them out.

What's the punishment, if any?

I think the call-out is the punishment.

Hey, everybody, just so you know, Josie's sitting on 700 bucks over there.

I saw her put it under her butt.

Then, you know,

she's got secrets going on.

But, David Lindsay bear,

for me, and arguably maybe for you, because you suggested it, certainly the call-out would be a punishment enough.

Simply being shown to have done something wrong, to have not followed the rules.

I mean,

as a rule-following only child, that would be basically fatal to me.

That would be capital punishment, the call-out.

But I wasn't the one sneaking the bunny under the butt.

Josie doesn't care.

Josie, I don't think,

maybe Josie isn't capable of shame or humiliation.

Well, are we saying that she is, in fact, breaking the rules?

I don't think she is.

I'm trying to set up a new rule,

which is that butt money is allowed.

You can, but it's if you sneak the money under your butt, it's allowed.

But if you get caught, if someone sees you doing it, it's not just like I see you hiding that money.

There has to be a penalty.

Like you go to jail.

Who am I kidding?

That would never happen in capitalism.

That's not realistic at all.

You'd have to pay a fine of $1.

That's basically what would happen, right?

If you were an entrepreneur in real capitalism and you got caught hiding your money,

you would have to pay a fine of

a nominal fine that would not be meaningful to you.

But some congressperson could say, I made this happen.

Well, at the risk of dead horsing this, and maybe you want to cut all this out, but when I play Monopoly, I am methodically lay out all my ones and my tens and my twenties and all in a row for everyone to see.

I have family members who just have them in a wad of bills all piled together.

So I don't know how much money they have.

It's just this messy, ridiculous pile of paper.

So it is the equivalent of butt money because I don't know if that's $12 or if it's $2,000 most of the time.

And there's no rule that says, oh, you must lay it out the way that David has laid out everything in a methodical way.

Well,

there's no rule other than the law of nature.

When you are given things that you can match into a pattern, you have to do it or else your house is going to collapse.

That's how I feel about ordering that money.

Well,

like, I have these things.

They can't just be in separate piles.

They also be facing the same way.

Yes.

When I worked at the...

the ticket booth at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts, you think I was turning in the cash that I had received

with the president's heads going in different ways?

I know you weren't.

No, I had to make sure every one of them was facing the right way.

I touched every one of those bills multiple times,

just in case you worried that my saliva wasn't on a bill that you passed me.

It was there.

I see.

The capitalist meditation.

Touch bills.

Same way boggle is

an affront against nature.

The letters are going in different ways.

That's not how you spell words.

That's part of the challenge.

So what are we saying here?

David Lindsay Bear, what's your final ruling?

Butt money, okay?

Or

is it a wad pile that you cannot abide by?

I'm for it.

I like it.

I know it's the wrong answer, but I can't let go of the fact that I can.

Why do you think it's the wrong answer?

It's your judgment.

It seems like highly deceptive in a way that monopoly is, you know, problematic for lots and lots of reasons.

Deception seems like not the top of the list.

So that's what feels wrong.

But

do you and are you also arguing that having a big wad of cash that isn't nicely laid out, John Hodgman slash David Lindsay Bear style, is also deceptive or just not in my family.

That's just untidy.

It's just untidy.

It's just sheer laziness.

I know.

I can't.

I find that much more offensive than the but the butt money.

I would say that

it is an acceptable house rule, but there has to be a penalty if you get caught, if you get caught stealing.

And the penalty has to be appropriate to our capitalistic system.

So basically, it cannot hurt Josie in any way or cause meaningful harm whatsoever to her accrued butt fortune.

And also,

it's not even saying like if she gets caught putting it into the butt money pile, under the butt, and you get caught, she doesn't even have to give it back.

It stays there under the butt.

You just have to give $1 doll back to the bank or wherever, or one dollar to each player.

Keep an eye, keep an eye on Josie.

That's what you got to do.

We got to keep an eye.

We need regulation.

We need regulation.

That's true of most butts.

Taylor Lindsay Bear, I'm going to hand out lifetiles now.

See, Jesse Thorne, you got to plug your aunt's business.

And you have a wonderful podcasting network.

You have an incredibly

cozy-looking orange sweater.

I'm going to give you

a terrific wife and family and a great car, which has a Max Fun license plate on it.

Give you 200 lifetiles.

Thank you.

That's nice.

Valerie Moffat,

you've had an incredible run this month stepping in for Jennifer Marmor as she goes on maternity leave.

She's in her own car playing the game of life out there.

Not able to produce this podcast for the moment.

You're doing a great job.

You stepped in as interim producer.

Obviously, you're editing the podcast all the time.

You did a great job producing us on the road as we were out there in the world.

All the listeners have been enjoying the fruits of your hard labor.

I'm going to give you 250 lifetimes.

Oh, thanks, John.

You're in a great spot.

David Lindsay Bear, I don't know what to say.

You got a show on Broadway right now called Kimberly Akimbo.

Musical theater

comedy with heart.

It's terrific.

I mean, it was really great.

You co-created with Janine Tessori, one of the top Broadway talents.

She really is.

And it's in the Booth Theater in New York City,

which,

you know,

it's an incredible shop for Kimberly Akimbo merch that happens to have a theater inside of it.

In New York City, one of the biggest cities in the world.

And in terms of theater,

In terms of Broadway-style musical theater, I would argue

the top place in the world.

You've got a wonderful house with a turret that you decorate for Halloween, and you know a lot about board games, and you're a nice person.

You know what I'm giving?

A thousand lifetimes.

Wow.

Thanks, John.

You can turn that in for money when you die.

Fun game.

But you know what?

I didn't know.

You don't know.

What?

I have butt tiles.

Oh, no.

Oh, wow.

It's an extra thousand for me.

The docket is clear.

That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman.

Judge John Hodgman was created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman.

Our producer is Valerie Moffat.

We're on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

You can follow us there for evidence and other photographs from the show.

And check out the Maximum Fun subreddit to discuss this episode at maximumfun.reddit.com.

Now, Judge Hodgman, we have a very specific case need this week.

That's right, Jesse.

We need your disputes about the theater.

You know, I was born for the theater, as one of our favorite litigants once said.

Do you have a dispute regarding the theater?

Do you have a dispute, did you not get the role that you felt you deserved in your high school production of Pirates of Penzance?

Do you believe that one filmed version of Westside Story is superior to another filmed version of Westside Story?

Do you, like our producer Valerie, just have a lot of thoughts about when Documentary Now did that parody of that documentary about the recording of the original cast album of Company.

Are you Katie Finneran, my co-star

in the upcoming Hulu musical romantic comedy Up Here?

Are you Marissa Corbel, my co-star in the 1998 San Francisco School of the Arts production of Little Shop of Horrors?

Right.

So did you, Katie, or Marissa have a dispute with us or a beef with us back when we performed together?

I actually think Marissa might.

So maybe we.

Just Katie.

Sorry, Marissa.

Water under the bridge, I hope.

Whether it's musical theater,

dramatic theater, legit theater, off Broadway, Broadway, off, off, off, off Broadway, high school, elementary school, community, or any other kind of theater, whether it's a thing you like better than another thing or something that happened to you personally when you are treading those boards.

We need your theater disputes.

Send them in to maximumfund.org

JJHO.

That's maximumfund.org/slash JJHO.

Hold for applause.

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Submit them at maximumfund.org/slash jjho.

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