Fast Juice and Air Cured Beef

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

And with me, as always, is the legend himself, Judge John Hodgman.

Oh, you put a lot of heat on that intro.

Well, you know, I like to come in hot.

I love it.

And because I'm excited too, because this is one of our very special kinds of dockets that we get to do from time to time.

Juvenile court.

We get to hear the complaints of children and we don't have children on the regular show we did once a father took his own daughter to court because he wanted to order her to talk to her hero eugene mermon

and that was very touching and wonderful and i was like it'll never happen again

i got kids in my life It's because Mermin turned against children.

No, Mermon.

He was pro before.

Now he's anti-

No, he's very pro-child.

He's extremely.

He's the nicest guy's wonderful father.

One of the nicest guys, one of the great parents of the world.

And, you know, when you're a parent, I don't, look, kids, I'm glad you're listening.

But I got my own kids to talk to.

Well, my kids aren't kids anymore, but you know what I mean.

I got too many kids in my house.

Although, on the plus side,

my five-year-old just discovered a fast potion.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what?

This is incredible.

It makes you fast.

But let me just, for liability reasons, I want to mention this.

You don't drink the fast potion.

Right.

You pour it on your feet.

Oh, wow.

It quickens your feet.

Yeah.

And

Frankie is carrying this potion around in a Max Fun water bottle with the Max Fun rocket logo.

Right.

It's from a Max Fun drive some years ago, I think.

And

will not accept that it's a Max Fun logo.

Insists with absolute conviction, it's a NASA bottle.

So, I don't know.

Who am I to say?

It's just a bottle of NASA fast juice.

Yeah, I'm just the guy that hired my friend Stefan to design the logo and worked with him extensively on it over a period of several weeks.

What would I know?

Jennifer Marmer, your child.

Yeah.

Do you do anything cute lately?

Always.

Always, right?

Cute stuff.

I've seen that kid.

Cute stuff.

I'm sure there's something, but now I can't.

Oh, well, okay.

So

when we were in New York for our live show at Lincoln Center,

you know, this was like the longest time I was going to be away from him.

And he has been having a lot of separation anxiety, a lot of only once mama for certain things.

So I was very worried about how that was going to go.

He's really into Snoopy, and so a lot of people in our lives have gotten us various Snoopy dolls and figures and whatnot.

It's great when your kid has a thing.

Yeah.

You know?

And it's a thing that i also like yeah it's great it just makes it easier for everybody yeah so i brought this little snoopy and charlie brown figurines with me you know so i could take pictures you know around new york and all i saw some of those yeah yeah um and just send them to my husband shane so he could see you know show it to ezra and say look look at mom and snoopy are doing

And I stayed with my sister and her fiancé at their apartment in Jersey City one night and took a picture.

They each held Snoopy and Charlie Brown, took a picture of them,

sent it over so he could see Aunt Amanda and Uncle Brent have the Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

And then we FaceTimed and they both got into frame and Ezra goes, Uncle Brent, you took my Snoopy.

That's what I'm talking about.

That's why I'm clapping while talking because

there is children have a distinct sense of justice and injustice

and they deserve to be heard but we clear them on the docket because I can't be talking to I can't be talking to kids.

Let's get into it.

Here's a case from Emma who is nine years old.

Dear Judge Hodgman.

What's up, Emma?

When I was at Solid Sound Festival with my dad It's weird that a dad would go to Solid Sound.

I know, huh?

That's the Wilco Festival.

Yeah.

Right.

I saw you in a crowd.

I said, excuse me, but I'm a big fan.

You then said, I'm sorry your dad put you up to this.

Then my dad said, oh, she's the big fan.

I think you suck.

I felt very embarrassed.

I remember this.

I remember this.

Is there more?

I would like you to order my dad to say sorry to me and also to you.

And in the future, when he knows that I think something is cool, he can't say that it sucks.

For damages, I would like him to buy me some Judge John Hodgman merch.

I remember this moment very clearly.

This encounter was when I was outside enjoying the music of the band Sylvan Esso,

and Emma and her dad came up, and Emma said, I'm a big fan.

And I just looked at her dad.

I was like, look at you, you creep.

You're trying to...

use your daughter to get some FaceTime with Judge John Hodgman.

This nine-year-old doesn't listen to Judge John Hodgman.

This nine-year-old doesn't understand Judge John Hodgman.

And he begged to correct me.

She is, in fact, a fan, and he thinks I suck.

And then later they came by and he explained, I don't really think you suck.

It was just something I thought would be funny to say.

And guess what?

You creep.

It wasn't funny.

It embarrassed your daughter and it hurt my feelings.

I get it.

We all panic sometimes when we're in the presence of strangers, especially strangers that you might have feelings about.

I'm grateful for both of you for saying something.

It was really nice.

But yeah, you know, I am, as a dad, I am still a dad.

You want to hear a cute thing that my son did, my 16-year-old son did?

What's that?

He texted me back.

Oh.

Yeah.

No, he's a good texter.

He told me, don't watch Severance without him.

I'm here in New York right now, and he's up in Maine.

He said, don't watch Severance without me.

I'm not going to watch Severance without you.

But as I am now alone without any child around me or any family whatsoever, because I'm alone working on this TV show, I realized, like, oh, oh my gosh, I don't have to be constantly wary of embarrassing my children right now.

There's nothing I could say or do that they would be aware of that would be embarrassing to them.

It's a real liberation because it's a dad's job, particularly as a dad gets older and weirder, to be monitoring the embarrassment situation.

Because, you know,

not only can parents be embarrassing, but

you have to remember that even your dumbest jokes and your most meaningless asides are heard by your children and internalized by them.

So bear that in mind, Emma's dad.

But I love you both.

You did a good job.

And you have to buy Emma some Judge John Hodgman merch.

Here's something from Catherine in Watertown, Massachusetts, age 17.

Since I was a young child, I've loved chasing pigeons around Boston.

Liam is one of my best friends, and he lives in Central Square.

How old is Liam?

Liam is 15.

Okay.

Right outside of his building is a very popular pigeon hangout.

Okay.

I will occasionally try and chase them as an attempt to catch one to bring it home and be my pigeon friend.

Liam is opposed to chasing the pigeons, claiming, quote, the pigeons are government spies, unquote.

Whoa.

He says that they, quote, charge unquote on the telephone wires upon which they sit.

I believe he's wrong and would like you to rule in favor of me with an order that he is not allowed to stop me from chasing pigeons.

All right.

Are these fictional characters?

Yeah, this is like a Hal Ashby movie.

Catherine and Watertown, are you and Liam characters in a young adult novel?

Quirky teens in a young adult novel from the 70s or 80s?

Absolutely.

We had that vibe going at Lincoln Center at our Lincoln Center show.

Remember, you remember in open court, we had those siblings with the, what was their names?

Greebs, Greebs-Marling?

It was like Colcutt and Victoria Grebes-Smarling or something.

Adult siblings who look like they're teenagers and they live together and they solve mysteries or whatever.

They had a real from the mixed-up files of Mrs.

Basil Frankweiler vibe.

I was about to say this was an E.L.

Koenigsberg situation.

Anyway, I need to get, what's the correct title of that book?

From the mixed up files.

Miss Basil E.

Frankweiler.

Mrs.

Basil E.

Frankweiler.

And then that couple, Sam and Annie, was not a young adult book, but a lot of young adults read it anyway.

They had a real flowers in the attic vibe.

They're a boyfriend and girlfriend who were raised in their parents' attic together, something like that.

And

that's what this feels like to me.

This is so charming, it almost makes me want to puke.

One of them's chasing pigeons and the other one's wearing like a trench coat going, I think they're spies.

Yeah.

When I worked in the mayor's office in San Francisco when I was this age, I worked in the office that was responsible for responding to mail that was just sent to like mayor's office, San Francisco.

Right.

And phone calls.

And I was in charge of responding to a very detailed letter demanding that the mayor's office pay for an extensive system that had been blueprinted of pigeon netting to keep spies in the form of pigeons away from a San Franciscan's home.

well ultimately we we declined the funding request

i want to hear more about liam's theory

liam i encourage you to write in and let me know the the full scope of your pigeons are government spies theory but i have to say

that if you believe this in good faith then you should be thanking catherine for chasing the spies away why would you not want to chase them away?

I don't understand that at all.

So I'm tempted to rule in Catherine's favor, except, look, pigeons are dumb.

Pigeons are not very emotionally mature animals.

They're not clean a lot of the time.

I mean, they can be a nuisance.

They poop everywhere.

And I'll tell you what, you never want to look too closely at a pigeon's foot because I would say three out of five times it's wildly deformed for some reason.

Just a lot of pigeons have weird foot.

You know what I mean?

Foot atypical.

Don't stare in the face of a squirrel and don't look at a pigeon's foot.

Pigeons are famous for their nasty little tootsies.

They're nasty little tootsies.

But they are still living creatures.

And I would venture to say that

being chased, and by chased, I kind of feel like what Catherine is doing is like running into a crowd of pigeons so they all go

away like that.

In Boston, which is in Massachusetts, which is in in New England, which you know very much about, we have a lot of plazas, a lot of plazas where pigeons congregate.

And

kids want to run through those crowds of pigeons and make them all go.

I would say that's stressful for the pigeons.

I would say, well, I cause them undue stress.

Their lives are short, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short already.

And also,

if you have a crowd of pigeons,

this may be an argument for Liam.

If you have a crowd of pigeons, you know where they are.

If you scatter them, then you don't know who they're going to poop on in fear.

You don't know what the chain reaction is going to be.

It's better to

know thine enemy, your robot pigeon spies, know where they are and have eyes on them, lest they have eyes and disgusting feet and poops on you.

So I find in Liam's favor there.

Even though I don't understand his rationale.

Did you read our friend Susan Orlean's book on animals, her most recent book?

I have not read that one, but I should, shouldn't I?

It's waiting for you.

It's an absolute delight.

I mean, all of Susan's work is pretty extraordinary, but it's...

She's an amazing person, an amazing writer.

It's a collection of her pieces, largely for The New Yorker, though not exclusively about animals.

She wrote an amazing piece about pigeons in that book.

And

I would add to your ruling that if Catherine wants to have a pigeon friend, she should have a pigeon friend.

Yeah, you can get a pigeon.

Yeah, she shouldn't catch that pigeon in the wild.

Those are wild animals that have their own lives going on.

She should go to a pigeon breeder and get some pigeons and practice homing.

It's a hobby that is loved by old men on roofs and movies, and I guess real life, too.

Yeah, and Ghost Dog from the movie Ghost Dog.

Right, Ghost Dog, Forrest Whitaker.

Yeah.

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

We'll be back with 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 maximumfund.org/slash join.

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

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week.

We have here a case from Allegra.

My brother and I are avid knuckle crackers.

My father mimics throwing up whenever he hears a knuckle crack and he asks us to stop.

But any knuckle cracker knows once you decide to crack your knuckles, you can't stop until every knuckle has been cracked.

It's important to note that my father, Dan, is the same Dan who originally prompted the very first Little Weirdsies discussion on Judge John Hodgman when he refused to get my mother a fresh glass of water.

How can one deny another's wish for fresh water, but demand so much from his knuckle-cracking children?

I urge the court to ask Dan to allow us to crack our knuckles to our little heart's desire.

I honestly, Allegra, i you could be a grown-up person as far as i know lots of adults i don't know allegra's age so i apologize if i have misfiled you in juvenile court lots of adults live with their parents these days and that's terrific

but this is such an obvious anti-dad case

child v dad that i had to throw it in this one can't stop till you get all the pops.

That's Allegra's point of view.

Do you remember speaking of little weirdsies?

Of course, that term was coined by Linda Holmes

for the first time, at least on our podcast back in 2017, when we heard this case between Dan and his wife.

And Dan didn't, Dan, the case was, if I believe, Dan didn't want to be bothered to get his wife a fresh glass of water for her bedside if it had been sitting there all day or overnight because he felt there's no difference between water that's been sitting on the bedside versus fresh water from the tap.

And that he he cried hypocrisy because she would drink very old water if it was in the car in a bottle with the lid on or a screw cap on.

She would have no problem drinking old water then.

But why, so why should she demand fresh water from him?

And he had some truly husbandy backup for his point of view involving some cockamaney Liam style theory of the rate of gas exchange spoiling the water or something like that.

My dad had had something similar.

He always claimed he was the world's largest source of natural gas.

Like that t-shirt on the boardwalk in Ocean City, New Jersey, world's greatest farter.

And our daughter said to my wife, who's a whole human being in her own right, we should get that for dad.

And they both had a quiet, private laugh.

And I was like, oh, no.

I have a whole rep that I'm unaware of.

World's greatest farter.

I've talked about it before.

That's all right.

You know what?

They're not wrong.

I'm certainly not the worst farter.

I'm really good at it.

Anyway.

Your competition level.

Yeah, that's right.

That's right.

You haven't been to the world championships yet.

Right.

And I'm amateur.

I'm an amateur.

I'm committed to the form for the love of the game.

I'm not doing it for money.

I'm not like that le pet o main.

That's the famous 19th century French fart artist.

Real person.

I think 19th century.

Look it up.

Le Petomen.

He would sing songs with his farts on stage for money.

That's not my bag.

Anyway, I shot Dan right down on his gas exchange argument because obviously Dan's wife and Allegra's mother wanted to keep a lid on her water because she didn't want dust or night moths falling into it is what I said.

So there's already one strike against Dan.

Now, with regard to knuckle cracking, I also remember Linda Holmes the last time she was on talking about how she dated a guy who cracked every joint in his body every morning.

And

I did not mimic vomiting.

I just came close to vomiting, hearing about that.

It's gross.

Knuckle cracking is enjoyable only to the knuckle cracker.

Everyone else gets grossed out.

It's just like whistling.

Whistling is only enjoyable if you're the one doing the whistling.

Otherwise, it's annoying people or

it's breaking their hearts.

You know what I'm talking about, Jennifer Marmor?

Snoopy come home.

Yeah.

There's a lot of whistling in that one.

There is, yeah.

That one, that, hey, everybody, put Snoopy Go Home and the Red Balloon in the vault of treasured artistic achievements that should not be used to traumatize children because we all just feel awful watching those things.

My kid loves it.

Really?

He requests it.

It's so awful.

I wish that the soundtrack was available somewhere not on YouTube because he demands to hear

the Snoopy come home theme all the time.

And he'll sing, No Dogs Allowed to himself in the car.

I don't want it.

I don't want it.

I know exactly what...

No.

And isn't this, isn't it, isn't there a professional whistler on that soundtrack?

Isn't there a lot of like...

There is a whistle song.

I can't whistle.

Well, there's a part where, while Snoopy and Woodstock are like on the road to go visit Snoopy's former owner, Lila,

where they're like camping out and having a little dance party with a whistle that's like,

it's really cute.

I remember the main theme is being whistled by a professional whistler, but I could be wrong about that.

I have something important to tell you guys.

What's up?

Our hour is up.

As some listeners may know, I attended School of the Arts in San Francisco, a public high school with an arts theme.

And I was in the theater department, and

our physical theater teacher was a professional Commedia dell'arte performer and clown named Jeff Raz, still working in the Bay Area, still teaching physical theater.

And

Jeff told us a story once that he was performing on like a variety show as I think as a member of the Pickle Family Circus, very famous

circus.

And

he hurt his back very badly while performing, which is, you know, you do so much work to stay safe when you're doing that kind of stuff, but

it can still happen that you get hurt when you're doing Pratt Falls and so forth.

And he kind of

limped off stage, and there was one bench off stage.

And also performing on this show was a professional whistler whose top credit was performing as Woodstock in a number of Snoopy specials.

Oh,

I think there might be some overlap here.

And this guy was sitting on the bench, this one backstage bench, and Jeff said,

I'm sorry, but I need to lie down on the bench.

I hurt myself on stage.

And the guy shook his head no and said, I'm resting.

It's a professional whistler.

His job is as a, his work was as a professional whistler.

Yeah, last I recall, you do your whistling with your mouth.

Unless you're le petea man, you don't need to rest your butt on the bench.

Nope.

Whoa.

Yeah,

right?

Professional annoyer.

That's what I'm saying.

Whistling is annoying to other people.

Shout out to Jeff Rass.

Good guy, good teacher.

Sorry, I was such a disappointment.

Farting is annoying to other people for obvious reasons.

And knuckle cracking, while not malodorous,

you know, it's an expression of body manipulation

that is kind of crunchy and goopy and intimate and not something everyone loves to hear.

Indeed, I don't know.

I don't love to hear people cracking their knuckles.

You love it, Jennifer Barmer?

No, it's not great.

Neutral?

No, I don't enjoy it.

Anti, anti.

Anti, anti.

Jesse, anti, neutral, or love it?

Neutral.

New.

Neuts.

Neutral.

Well, Allegra, maybe you should go live with Jesse Thorne.

He needs some more children.

He needs some more responsibilities.

There's no more room at the end.

I believe that if you, if, and you know, I'm no fan of Dan, Allegra.

I ruled hard against him over that night water.

But I believe if your family member,

be it your dad, your child, your sib, or whatever, has said to you, you, I don't like the sound of that.

It's like farting.

Go take care of it in private.

You're the only one who enjoys it.

Go do it by yourself.

I have an addendum.

Yeah.

Definitely grosser than knuckle cracking.

What's that?

Making fake vomit sounds.

I think Dan should not be allowed to make fake vomit sounds.

Oh, I see what you're saying.

If he needs to do it, he should go do it in the bathroom or out on the back porch.

I would say that Dan should

act like a grown-up and expresses and uses words and expresses his displeasure with those words rather than doing this weird dad thing of going like,

barf.

Just say,

please don't do that when you're around me.

Go pop your pop somewhere else.

Here's something from Lily in Bloomington, Illinois.

She's 16 years old.

My dad, Jared, often calls me multiple times when I'm in the middle of something else.

When I don't immediately respond, he uses the Find My Phone app to make my phone play this awful, annoying, pinging noise, even if I'm actively trying to call him back.

He's mad that I always have my phone on silent mode, but my phone will flash when I get a notification or if someone's calling me.

Plus, if I'm doing something on my computer, it'll ring there.

I really don't want to have to subject everyone to the sound of my phone going off when someone calls me or to hearing that clicky typing noise.

Please issue an injunction against him using this method to insist on my attention.

John, before we get to the ruling, I just want to apologize for the clicky typing noise of my very loud keyboard that's often heard on Judge John Hodgman.

I love it.

I thought you were just cracking your knuckles.

I thought that's what was going on there.

No, I bought one of these mechanical keyboards.

Oh, man, it's so great.

But you know what, keyboard nerds, don't at me.

I'm done.

I've settled.

I picked my keyboard.

I picked the colors of the keys.

I'm done.

I don't need to hear from you.

Lily is not a child.

I mean,

this is teen court, right?

A lot of these 17-year-olds, 16-year-old, these are people who are easing into

legal adulthood.

And I would say, arguably, even Emma, who's nine years old, is probably more emotionally mature than her dad.

But it's definitely,

we're in a transition point from childhood to adulthood.

And it is challenging for parents to know how much

independence to afford the creatures that they are charged with keeping alive.

and are very, very nervous about coming to harm.

And until very recently, if you have a kid who's 16,

that was truly a child that you had to watch out for.

And of course, there's all kinds of emotional underpinnings as to what is involved in letting your child go out into the world alone, not just in terms of physical safety, but also, I think, probably what Lily's dad, Jared, is going through, which is why doesn't she want to talk to me whenever I call her up on the phone?

I used to be her hero, and now I'm just a guy annoying her with a pinging her on Find Me.

Look,

before I rule on Jared, I'm going to give some advice to Lily here in the form of a

form of a little story about my own parenting experience.

When our daughter was growing up, she's now a grown person.

When she was young, when she first had her cell phone, I guess she got a cell phone

in

whatever, sixth grade, seventh grade.

And of course,

of course, we were using technology to make sure that she was still on this earth and her phone was still working.

Of course,

we kept track.

Of course, we did.

Even after she said, it is no longer appropriate for you to be tracking me.

I would like you to stop doing that.

We would say.

Well, no, we trust you, but we need to have this ability to find you if we we have to.

Never mind the fact that my parents never had any ability to find me.

Talking about Ocean City, New Jersey.

Damon Graff and I went to go visit Ocean City, New Jersey to see my grandparents down there when we were 17 years old.

I had just turned 17, in fact, because it was July.

I was 16 and a month.

And we took an overnight Amtrak train from Boston to Philadelphia.

And then at dawn had to walk through Center City to the Greyhound Terminal to take a bus to Ocean City, New Jersey.

And that overnight Amtrak train, that stop

where they sit in Penn Station for about 40 minutes as people get on and off.

And

1988, New York City, we're talking about.

We saw some stuff both in Philadelphia and on the way, and they had no way to reach us.

We could have fallen into a pit or been kidnapped or whatever.

And all that my parents were counting on was that when we got to Philadelphia, we would call on a payphone.

And they had no way of knowing where we were.

We could have gone someplace if we were mischievous.

If we were mischievous kids, we could have gone to Montreal and gotten beers.

We had passports.

I don't want to brag.

I don't want to brag, but we had passports.

Anyway, it all worked out fine.

And I know it was 1988 because I was trying to remember for a long time.

And I remembered that the water park had just opened on the boardwalk.

Anyway, let me give you a hint for you, Lily.

Now I'm an adult.

And our daughter is 16 years old.

And we go overseas.

We go to a little place called Paris, France.

And in the, in the year leading up to this visit to Paris, France, the capital of France, it's a very big, famous city.

Sure.

I had noticed that I could no longer track our daughter using phone technology.

And I would say to her, like, have you changed something on your phone?

And she was like, no.

Like, why can't we track you anymore?

She said, well, I don't want you to.

I'm like, I know, but something must have changed.

Are you sure you didn't accidentally?

Like, I tried to give her an out, too.

Like, are you sure you didn't accidentally hit something?

Or did your friend do anything to your phone?

No, no, no, no.

I was like, well, I don't know.

I guess I better just trust her then.

Some kind of, look, you know how I love Apple computer products until the day I die, but sometimes you can't figure a thing out.

Sometimes it's a glitch.

We get to Paris, France.

We're staying on a houseboat in the Seine River.

It was a good trip.

And my daughter, understandably, wants to go walk around Paris by herself.

And I said, I don't know.

She said, why?

I walk around New York City by myself all the time.

I'm like, yeah, but you're with friends.

And,

you know,

look at it from my point of view.

If something happens to you in New York City and I don't know where you are because I'm not.

tracking you anymore because of this glitch on the phone.

I know what to do in New York City.

I know who who to call, whether it's authorities or parents or friends.

But if you go missing in a foreign city, I got nothing.

I don't know what to do.

I can't just let you walk around on your own.

She said, No,

fine.

She went back to her berth on the houseboat.

Five minutes later, she comes out.

She goes, You know what?

I think this tracking system works again.

It just started working for some reason.

And

I was like, you, you have deceived me for a year.

You turned off that tracking.

You found a way to do it.

You lied to my face.

This is all internal monologue.

You lied to my face every time I asked you.

And now you're lying to me again,

saying that it just suddenly works again so that you can get out into Paris.

And you know what?

I applaud you.

I applaud all of it.

Because she was right.

It was past time for, it was inappropriate for us to be tracking her through her life.

And that is a hard thing for an adult to realize.

And sometimes,

as my old boss at the downtown cafe in the combat zone in Boston said, sometimes you have to throw your parents out of the house because they won't do it for you.

They won't throw you out of the house.

Sometimes, and sometimes you have to throw them out of the house.

She threw me out of the house and then, but, but she understood what I was saying

and, you know, activated the tracking.

And of course, everything was fine.

Everything was fine.

It was not a Liam Neeson in taken situation, I'm glad to say.

That's what I was afraid was going to have to happen.

You know what I mean?

But I was going to have to deploy some very special skills.

You have to bulk up like Bob Odenkirk.

That's right.

Anyway, the point is, Jared, dad of Lily, don't ping your daughter.

I get that you want to talk to her.

I get that you want her to be available to you every second or whatever,

but that's just not where this is going.

She's got her own life.

She has a right to have her phone on silent mode.

She has a right to return your call.

Calling more than once is for actual emergencies.

Right.

And there is a boy that cried wolf element here because

this dad is calling more than once in non-emergency situations.

The daughter has learned because this dad is calling more than once in non-emergency situations just to check in and know where Lily is, Lily has learned not to answer the phone.

And what happens when there's an actual emergency?

And the dad calls twice in a row.

Right.

And especially don't deploy

the find my phone emergency alert system or whatever it is, where you make the phone make a terrible noise, that is a misuse of that system.

That's for you to find your own phone.

That's not designed.

I mean,

I guess it's a weird dad life hack that you have figured out a way to use that to annoy your daughter.

But it will not redound in your favor.

You're doing that.

Because what if there's an emergency and she doesn't answer the phone because she knows that you'll just keep calling?

And then you do the thing and she's still, like, you know, no,

no, I think I can help here.

Then we need some help, Jared.

Grab your phone, hold it up to your earphones, to the speaker that you're listening to this show on, whatever it is.

Hey, Siri, play Tina Marie Square Biz.

Here's Square Biz by Tina Marie on Apple Music.

Getting down right now.

Yeah.

Nothing makes me want to get down more

than ASCAP violations.

Who's to say we are not the happy geniuses of unlicensed music?

Let's take a quick break, shall we?

When we come back, a dispute about how to walk.

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, we're taking a quick break from Clearing the Docket.

What's going on with you?

Well, Jesse, you know, I'm working on this TV show up here, which will be on Hulu sometime in the future.

We're having a lot of fun.

It is a musical romantic comedy co-created by friends of the court, Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson Lopez.

I hope you'll keep an ear and an eye out for it.

Two of my favorite.

That's probably my favorite celebrity power couple right now.

They're so

wonderful.

They're delight.

What a joy.

Del Joy.

And speaking of delights and joy, couples who are delights and joy, there's me and David Reese.

Our show, Dick Town, is still also available on Hulu.

Will we get to make more episodes?

Your watching wouldn't hurt.

Or telling a friend, bit.ly slash Dick Town.

You know how to find it.

But I'm also, I mentioned the other day that I've been listening to the podcast, You Must Remember This, by a friend of the court, Karina Longworth.

It's a wonderful podcast about the history of Hollywood and really really cool, interesting stories about

how films were made and why they were made the way they were made.

She's doing a whole series about sex in cinema, particularly

the sexually charged films of the late 70s and the 80s and the 90s.

And since I'm here at home in New York and I can just watch whatever I want, I watched a couple of the movies that she was talking about.

American Gigola, which I'd never seen, and it was really good.

Have you ever seen that that one, Jesse Thorne?

I've never seen American Gigolo.

I would say go ahead and see it.

It's really, I mean, I don't know why I never did.

Well, because I was too young to see it when it came out.

It's not one, I think that I could watch that with either of my children.

It's very mature.

Let's just put it that way.

American Gigolo deals with some very mature themes and some nudity.

And, you know,

it is what it is.

And then I also watched, because she covered it in the show, Fast Times at Ridgemount High.

And that was one where I felt actively bad that I was not watching it with my children.

Because that is a really, really good movie.

Intrinsically.

And you know, what Karina points out is that it was made in the wake of the completely unexpected

success of the loathsome movie Porkies.

And suddenly everyone wanted to make a teen quote-unquote sex comedy.

But what Amy Heckerling made was instead a very,

very funny and very human story about teenagers thinking about sex.

And it's wonderful.

And there's some moments that you might feel a little

weird about watching with your, with your 16-year-old or your 15-year-old kid.

But trust me.

Kids should see this movie.

It'll make you feel better.

I've been hearing from a lot of Judge Judge John Hodgman listeners who have been checking out my show, Jordan Jesse Goh.

I'm very grateful to all of them.

Jordan Jesse Goh is a very silly comedy show that I do with my friend Jordan Morris, who's a comedy writer here in Los Angeles and is also

a student at UC Santa Cruz with me.

I was his RA many years ago.

And Jordan and I have been now working together for 20 years.

Two decades.

And it is a, there's a lot of profanity and vulgarity, but it's very sweet-tempered.

And I think you will like it.

It is not really about anything except for friendship.

It's called Jordan Jesse Go.

Go give it a listen.

Give it a listen.

Jordan's a lot more talented than I am, but, you know, I have a certain gravitas.

You have different portfolios of skills and talents.

That's all.

Yeah, we're different.

We're two different guys.

Everybody's different.

I have straight hair.

He has curly hair.

Yeah.

Jordan Jesse Go.

Go listen to it.

Let's get back to the doc.

docket

welcome back to the judge john hodgman podcast we're clearing the docket it's juvenile court and we have a case here from cece wait i i'm sorry cece justice delayed will be justice fulfilled but i was just remembering this dad joke that i was gonna make on stage at lincoln center and i forgot to make it and it's been haunting me ever since and I don't want to forget to make it again.

What's that?

Well, people who come to that show or any of our live shows know that our final segment of the show is called Open Court.

And that's when, as you explained to them at Lincoln Center, which was an outdoor Lincoln Center, it's like, this is an opportunity for you to air your beefs in the open air and resolve your disputes.

So find who you have beef with.

And at the end of the show, you raise your hand, you come forward, and you'll air your beef.

And I was going to say, I don't know, I just forgot to say it.

I I was like, yeah, it's the segment that I like to call the Bill Tong segment because it's about the art of air-cured beef.

Wow.

Was that a long enough walk to get there?

Pretty long walk.

Within a moment, it would have been incredible.

The art of air-cured beef.

Bill Tong.

Bill Tong.

B-I-L-T-O-N-G.

If you don't get the joke, look it up.

You're going to love it.

Here's a case from Cece.

My mom says it looks more normal to walk with your weight on the outside of your feet.

I think it's more normal to walk with your weight on the inside of your feet.

I support this claim with the fact that basically everyone I know walks on the inside, including myself, my little brother, and my dad.

Please tell my mom walking on the inside of your feet is better.

I myself, Jesse, am a supinator.

Wow.

This is big.

Are we going to divide our audience between supinators and pronators?

America is polarized enough.

We don't have to air this beef, Bill-Tong style.

America rushes to walking shoe stores.

When I went on a college tour, I may have told this story already.

When I went on a college tour with our son, we both did, my wife, who's a whole human being,

and I and our son, we went to a little place called Santa Cruz.

I'm familiar.

To visit the University of California at Santa Cruz.

I thought you were going to say to visit the Unicycles, but go ahead.

We did not see any unicycles, but we saw a lot of completely unafraid deer on the campus.

We saw a lot of unafraid animals who have been conditioned by the kind treatment of the students of UC Santa Cruz

to just hang out.

Just kicking it.

Just kicking it.

We saw deer just kicking it.

I see a lot of deer in my life.

I've seen them in all the states of New England, the region in the northeast of the United States.

But I've never seen deer that just are like dogs.

Just like walk up to you.

Not like those, in Japan, they have those little deer that walk up to you.

And then obviously we saw a whole bunch of banana slugs.

And we saw, what was the other animal that we saw?

Oh, yeah, the big turkey.

A big turkey that

looked like a cartoon of a turkey.

Why would you say that about the University Chancellor?

That guy can eat it.

Prank the dean is what I say.

Oh, and Coi.

Koi in Porter College.

Your residential college, Jesse.

Did you know the story of this, Coy?

When Jennifer and I were students at UC Santa Cruz, UC Santa Cruz is a school with essentially no Greek life, as they call it.

There are some like ethnic interest.

fraternities and sororities um and if you uh you know like there's there's like an african-american engineers fraternity, that kind of thing.

But no like party house type fraternities.

And one was created

my senior year, Jen's junior year, I think.

No, it was my first year.

Really?

Yeah.

And I.

Are you three years younger than me, Jen?

Sorry.

Okay.

Too bad.

So sorry.

Nice.

I know a person who was tangentially involved in what the story that you're, or I knew, not anymore.

So a fraternity was created for the benefit of an MTV reality show called Greek Life.

And as a fraternity prank,

these

frat boys who had.

Wait a minute.

It was created for MTV.

What?

Yes.

They founded a fraternity so that there could be a fraternity at UC Santa Cruz for the television show Greek Life.

And the television show Greek Life followed only this fraternity or a number of different fraternities?

It followed one fraternity, like the NFL show Hard Knocks.

Well, obviously.

There was another season that followed a sorority at UC Davis that a friend of mine was in.

Brackler.

Oh.

Wow.

I'm outflanked here.

So MTV was like,

we need to find a fraternity in the United States.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Just say it's not turning up.

A made-up fraternity.

All right.

So anyway, it is a prank, as a fraternity prank, classic.

So as a fraternity prank, they came to Porter College, my residential college,

and they kidnapped koi fish out of the koi pond.

Oh, no.

As it turns out, not only

was this

animal cruelty,

but these koi fish were decades old.

Right.

Koi live an extraordinarily long life if they're kept healthy.

And

because of their size and provenance,

were worth thousands of dollars each.

And so this theft, when it was prosecuted, which it was prosecuted, led to several of these dudes going to jail.

Good.

Yeah.

How did the Koi fare?

I think one of the Koi passed away and they took the Khoi out of the pond

in a dangerous way for the Khoi And one of them was

hurt.

Well, I can tell you those koi are thriving now.

They're like big golden fat footballs, also fearless because they get fed.

Humans come and feed them.

And they see a human.

Those koi, I mean, they're fish, right?

They're supposed to be in the water.

I swear to you, these koi were so eager to get fed that they basically climbed out of the pond.

and sat down and said, what do you got?

Like, I saw this whole half a fish coming out.

And I'll tell you, you don't want to look in the face of a squirrel and you don't want to look at the foot of a pigeon and you don't want to look down the gullet of a koi because that mouth was big, open, ready for a snack.

And that was just an abyss that I became.

It was a great trip.

But the point on the point of the trip, and you know,

let's see what happens.

Maybe we'll go to go there again sometime.

But the point is.

Then we went down the hill.

We wandered into a shoe store.

We were just killing some time before we were going to go to the airport to fly down to Los Angeles to look at some other things.

And in this shoe store, I went into the back and there were all these sneakers.

And I thought to myself, maybe I deserve a new pair of sneakers.

These are some cool sneaks.

Maybe I deserve...

These are kind of, my sneakers are kind of beat up.

Yeah, you're a hype beast.

Yeah, I'm like, these are some cool ones.

You cop the latest kicks.

Yeah.

And I go to a rack of sneakers, and I like them.

They look cool.

And the salesperson comes up.

They were much younger than me.

I don't know their pronouns.

They had a stick and poke tattoo.

Very attractive, young person.

And I say to the young person, are these good sneakers?

And they say, my dad and all his friends swear by them.

And it was like Blaine Capach's line about local jokes make local work.

I just felt stabbed through the elderly heart.

And you know, I had to buy them.

I had to complete the humiliation circuit.

They were so nice about it.

Like, they did not mean to hurt me.

They did not mean to humiliate me, but I had to commit to the bit.

And I bought them, and they're called hokas.

And the ones that I bought, they said, these on this shelf.

Because they're all, it turns out they're all corrective.

Like these are, these on this shelf are for regular feet.

These are for super nators.

These are for pro nators.

See how I'm bringing it back around?

And these are for supinators slash pronators.

I'm like, just give me the, give me the one.

I'm a supinator.

Give me the supinator one.

And they're terrific.

They said, no supinator for you.

Oh,

oh,

wow.

Wow.

What makes that such a wonderful dad joke, too, is that

it's not true.

They said, yes, supinator for you.

Yeah.

And it's also a reference to something that the child is unfamiliar with.

No, children are.

It's been memory hold.

Children watch friends.

Children watch friends.

I won't talk about that because we only have a few more minutes left in the podcast.

The point is, I'm a super nator.

That means I walk on the outside of my feet.

I bear by weight on the outside of my feet.

Pro nators tilt the other way on the inside.

If you don't know which you are, look at the soles of your sneakers.

You'll see where the most wear is, then you'll know.

Cece,

age unknown.

You may be a supinator.

You may be a pronator.

You may be a middle-of-the-solar.

I don't know.

None of it is normal.

There is no normal way of walking.

There is no better way of walking.

And Cece's mom, let me just say something.

I don't even know what you're talking about.

That there's

more normal to walk on the inside of your feet than the outside of your feet.

I don't know what's bothering you

about the way that Cece walks, but this is kind of a reverse ruling for Dan and Allegra, who were the, Allegra is the knuckle cracker.

Dan was the vomit mimicker.

Like, it's really important to actually

be wary of policing your children's bodies and showing them that you are scrutinizing minutiae of how they live and physically in the world.

Obviously, this is really important

for what should be self-evident reasons about comments about weight or appearance.

Smell is on the borderline, right?

I think it's fair to help a young person who is not aware of how they smell to at least know that they smell a certain way and that there are steps they can do to not smell that way if they want, like bathing.

Farting and knuckle cracking, you can step in because you're another person in this world who does not deserve to be farted at or cracked near.

But in terms of something like how a person walks,

it's none of your business.

And it's frankly dangerous

to your child's health and happiness to make them feel like they are being watched and scrutinized and doing something that is totally normal in every way that you could possibly do it wrong.

So

stop it, Cece's mom.

Cece, I think you walk great, but don't, parents, please, don't.

I think you're completely right.

It's so important to teach kids that they have autonomy over their own bodies for 100,000 reasons.

100,000 reasons.

Cece, if you want to get some hokas?

No.

They're not just for dads.

No.

They're not just for dads.

If you're looking for dad shoes, I recommend recommend Mephisto Rainbows.

I have two pairs of Mephisto Rainbows.

Mephisto Rainbows.

Yeah, but these are cool dad shoes.

I think these Hokas, Hoka 1-1s, I got.

Yeah.

Got to get some new ones.

I'm supinating them out.

Hoka 1-1s, it can be very cool.

They're that so ugly.

They're cool.

Aesthetic.

That's what I'm, that's what I'm looking for.

When I was on the boardwalk in Ocean City, Jesse Thorne, you were right.

Kids these days, socks and sandals.

Of course they are.

I was like, only dads.

You're like,

why don't you use your eyes, eyes, Judge John Hodgman?

That's what you said to me.

Use your eyes when you're in the world.

And I did.

I'm very lucky to be able to see.

I use my eyes.

Kids these days are wearing sandals with socks, and it's terrific.

Mephisto Rainbows.

The docket is clear.

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

Our producer, Jennifer Marmer, apparently three years younger than me.

Our editor is Valerie Moffat.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your judgejohodgman tweets.

Hashtag jjho.

You can check out the maximum fun subreddit if you want to chat about this episode.

That's at maximumfun.reddit.com.

We have a very exciting request for cases this week, John.

Yes, we do.

Look, we want all of your cases.

We want all of your disputes.

We want all of your beef so we can we can cure it and put it into bags and and sell it as Bill Tong.

But this week,

I am personally requesting cases about cases.

Do you have a dispute about the correct way to pack a suitcase or where to put the suitcase on the airplane?

Cases about being asked to carry someone else's purse.

Sometimes that happens.

Remember when your mom might ask you to carry her purse in the mall?

If you're my age, you do.

Cases about haunted music boxes.

Music boxes are cases.

Cases about who was responsible for leaving my sunglasses case on the roof of the car and then I drove away.

That was my responsibility.

Honestly, I'll take any case about things being, any kind of case or anything falling off a car.

Bookcase?

Bookcases, of course.

Briefcase?

Yes.

DVD case?

Yes.

Case Western University?

I'd love to know why it's called that.

Nico case?

I hope no one has a dispute with Nico Case, but yeah, okay.

Any kind of box, envelope, enclosure, or compartment.

Refrigerator drawers, Jesse?

Fair game.

I think so.

Pockets?

Pockets?

Pockets are kind of a case.

That's right.

For sure.

Main case something.

Hot dogs?

No.

Hot dog is not a case, but a sausage casing is a case.

Wow.

If you have a hot dog with natural casing,

has that snap to its bite.

Chicago style.

I'll take that case.

Any case, of course, we will accept.

Go to maximumfund.org/slash JJHO.

Remember, no case is too small.

If you're not sure about it, just send it in.

You know, we'll decide.

We're always grateful for your cases.

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

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