Not Today, Satanbot

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket with legendarily spooky hockey ghost, Judge John Hodgman.

You refer to my Halloween costume, my last-minute Halloween costume.

You know, you did a great job.

Thank you.

You were dressed as an extinct hockey ghost.

Yes.

You have a passion, as longtime listeners know, you have a passion for

hockey teams that don't exist anymore.

The only sense of

to be clear, no passion for hockey as far as I know.

Not particularly, no.

Just like the idea of the San Francisco Sea Lions.

I did order, I have to say, I did order a hat this week for a new expansion existing hockey team that is about to start play.

It is not a dead hockey team.

It is a hockey team just being born.

A minor league team that a listener alerted me to in Savannah, Georgia called the Savannah Pirate Ghosts, because it's just the best name for a team.

Yeah,

it's doing a lot.

The only minor hockey team that I have any allegiance to is the Belfast Giants of Belfast, Northern Ireland,

both because my stepmother is from Belfast, but also because,

you know, this is a professional hockey team, but it's a relatively low-level professional hockey team.

There's not a ton of ice in Belfast

naturally occurring.

Right.

But

like one of the guys who's one of the people of the team, you know, there's minor league hockey, there's three people that work for the team.

And one of those people is Max Funster.

He said, anytime I'm in Belfast, I can go to a free minor league, Irish league hockey game.

It's probably the major leagues of Irish.

Well,

the problem with giant hockey is that the rink also has to be giant.

Otherwise, the giants have no room to maneuver.

That's a good point.

That's a good point.

And instead of Zambonis, they have 50 men with pork rinds skating over the surface of the ice to grease it.

That's how you

get ready for.

Why not?

That's how you get ready for giants.

So Paul Bunyan referenced, Jesse.

Well, you made a reference, an obscure cultural reference to my Halloween costume, which was my son and I, we decided our costumes this year would just be to get creepy contact lenses.

Uh-huh.

And because that's just creepy, and that's all you need to do.

You need to put in the the contact lenses.

Yeah.

And then I realized that I had this new hat from this dead team, the Ottawa Nationals.

And I had this Hartford Whalers jersey that I had never worn.

Someone sent it to me, and I had no need to walk around Park Slope wearing a Hartford Whalers jersey, looking like Kevin Smith's analyst or accountant.

It's called a sweater, John.

Right.

Keep going.

Sorry.

I should have known that.

And I had ghost makeup, pale ghost makeup.

And I had ruled that on or co-ruled with our friends Mark and Hal on the We Got This Podcast Hero Maximum Fun.

Podkist, I call it.

Well,

it's a chef's kiss of a podcast.

Right.

That the best Halloween costume is ghost because it's just, you can do any kind of ghost.

I was like, what if I am the ghost of extinct hockey?

Yeah.

So I spent about an hour on Halloween.

getting these contacts in because I don't wear contacts normally.

And I'll tell you something.

You know, I don't like to use our son's name on the podcast to respect his privacy.

So I'll refer to him as Hodgmanillo.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Our daughter is known as Hajmina, and this is Hodgmanillo, the younger child.

If it were not for Hodgmanillo,

just, you know, coaching me and encouraging me to put in these creepy contact lenses, I would have given up.

My son forced me to achievement.

And then I put on the makeup and I put on the sweater.

And I put on the hat, took a picture for Instagram, started blowing up the charts, got ready to hand out this candy.

We had two trick-or-treaters.

Yeah.

And they were little kids and they were genuinely scared of me.

I felt really bad.

Two trick-or-treaters.

Sunday night.

It's a school night.

They're not going to go out late at night.

Yeah.

Let's get into the docket.

Here's a case from Byron in Massachusetts.

I am a suburban dad who works from home.

Since I'm not digging ditches or regularly sweating during my job, I feel that I don't need to change my jeans very often.

Just once every three weeks.

Wow.

I am not a slob.

Okay, Byron.

I just don't like how jeans feel fresh out of the wash.

Plus, it's a nice way to mark off the weeks until spring.

Okay.

What does that mean?

Serves as a sort of harvest calendar.

I have six pairs of the same brand of jeans.

So if the jeans wearing season in New England is roughly 32 weeks.

And I can confirm it is.

That is the jeans wearing season.

I can buoy my spirits by thinking, I only have to wear this pair two more rounds before it's warm out again.

Anyway, my entire family hates my process.

My wife,

this is,

he learned this jeans technique from reading the artist's way.

Yeah.

My wife thinks it's not sanitary.

My kids think I'm weird.

Should I have said bird by bird instead?

Or the artist's way.

I think bird by bird is funnier.

Okay.

I swear, my jeans don't stink.

And if I do mess them up, like if I spill a plate of pasta on them, I don't wait three weeks to change my pants.

I wash them.

Please, judge, allow me to wear my jeans for three weeks.

Yeah, I can confirm, Jesse, that the jeans wearing season in New England is 32 weeks.

The exception is the months of January and February, which is shorts season.

That's when you wear shorts outside.

Sorry, you said the jeans, the jeans season is how long?

32 weeks.

Do you mean 10 and two-thirds rounds?

I'm sorry.

You're right.

I forgot.

I apologize that we're working on Byron time.

So, Jesse, how

I'm going to say something to you, and I'm going to submit myself to your judgment

since you are a menswear enthusiast and fashion icon and arbiter.

I

will wear a pair of pants.

I don't wear jeans, just never worked with my look.

But I'll wear a pair of pants probably

five or six days in a row.

One pair of pants.

And I'm guessing from your silence that that's not good.

What kind of pants are we talking about?

We're talking about a utilicule.

Chinos.

What?

We're talking about Chinos?

Yeah, like twill, cotton twill pants, Chinos.

I'm a Chinos guy, I guess is what it is.

Yeah.

And I get them on the sort of

more workwear side of

the spectrum, you know.

Yeah.

You wear your khakis with a cuff and a crease.

Yeah, yeah, like a selvage.

You can see the selvage.

You wear only a Ben Davis gorilla cut.

I don't know what you're talking about at this point.

But that's too much, right?

Five or six days.

Distinct pants.

Five or six days.

I got some pants from Raleigh Denim Company in Raleigh, North Carolina.

They're really, really nice.

But not the, I don't get their jeans.

I get their other pants.

I have to say, John, there is a whole subculture built around sick fades.

Sick fades is an aesthetic of indigo-dyed, particularly denim,

that fetishizes

the patterns of wear that blue jeans develop as they are worn.

Part of that process of getting the highest contrast fades, getting the most,

the most difference between the dark parts of your genes and the light parts of your genes so you can see the wear the most distinctly and vividly,

is to wash the genes relatively rarely

and to wash them very gently.

So, typically, your average Johns enthusiast

who loves sick fades will

buy a pair of jeans and they may wear them as much as six months at a time without washing them.

Okay.

I don't support that practice.

Yeah, I don't think that's what either Byron nor I have going on here.

No.

We're not looking for an aesthetic affect.

Right.

Hey, Jesse, I got a chat message from producer Jennifer Marmor asking a question about these sick faders.

Jennifer Marmer, what's your question?

My question was, are these the same folks that put their genes in the freezer to destinkify them?

Yeah, that's the same folks.

Sometimes

they will soak their genes, which you typically need to do when you have new genes,

especially if they're unsaniferized.

They will soak their genes sometimes by running into the ocean.

That's a popular thing.

And then wearing them until they dry.

or wearing them into the bathtub and then wearing them around the house until they're dry.

All of these things are a little bit,

they're a little bit of kind of goofy charming rituals rather than things that actually make a difference.

You know what I say about these people who run into the ocean?

These Californians, I presume, who run into the ocean to get their jeans all wet and then get into the bath and walk around their house?

I say they're a bunch of drips, what I say:

drip, drip, drip.

But they don't even wear shirts when they're dripping around their house.

So there are a few reasons to wash your pants.

One is because they have stains that you can see, and you don't want people to see stains on your pants or dirt that you can see.

That's a visual,

yeah.

Yeah.

One is stanctual.

It's because they have become stank.

Right.

That is through the, through the various actions of the body.

Yes.

That is through, you know, it could be cooking in them and the cooking odors get in them.

It could be that you're in a smoky club in 1920s Paris.

And there are many ways.

And whether you're cooking or whether you're at the club, you're also farting.

It's just happening all the time.

If you're me.

That's called tutual.

Farter of the year.

Farter of the year.

And then the third is wear.

Your clothing, you're balancing the relationship between

the wear that comes from washing your clothing and the wear that comes from not washing your clothing.

So washing your clothing, especially in a machine, wears it out.

The tumbling process, putting it in the dryer, the dryer sheets, if you use dryer sheets that lift the little hairs on the fabric, all of these things cause wear in your clothing.

But so does

the stuff that comes from your body into the clothes.

This is why those guys that wear jeans for a year at a time, they have blowouts of seams in the upper between the legs area.

Yeah.

You know, it's the combination of friction and soil.

Yeah.

If you fart real hard, you'll blow out the seat.

I've heard about it.

Sick fades.

Sick fades.

And

And so those are the three reasons.

And you kind of have to balance those things, right?

So a shirt gets stank

and often visually soiled right away, one time, when you wear it one time.

I don't wear shirts for four days in a row.

I change my shirt and my underwears and my socks every day.

I just wear the same.

Okay, go on.

Just thought you were accusing me.

Lightweight cotton pants,

I think often are getting stained.

They're often getting soiled by sweat because they're worn in warmer weather.

And they're lightweight, so they're going to wear faster.

For me, lightweight cotton pants are something that I wash pretty much every time I wear them.

Every time.

Because I'm getting them dirty.

You walked us all through this whole thing.

I knew that this was going to be bad for me.

All right.

But I think that

if they're not visibly soiled and if they're not smelly, lightweight cotton pants to wear them a few times is totally fine.

Also, no one ever sees me.

I don't go anywhere.

I'm not leaving this.

I'm not leaving this office.

Walk across the street.

For me, I probably wouldn't wear them more than twice, maybe, maybe, but

your choice.

All right.

With blue jeans, I mean, blue jeans were built to be left in a mine.

The reason that they find old blue jeans in mines, when these guys that are like blue jean prospectors that find 19th century blue jeans, the reason they look in mines is not just because mines preserve the jeans.

It's because miners would leave their jeans in the mine, put them on over their clothes when they got there, and then leave them when they left.

They would dump them.

Yeah.

They're designed to be worn without washing.

Now, does that mean that

they won't get stinky?

No.

Does that mean that they won't get stains on them?

No.

Does that mean that they won't wear?

No.

Although they're very tough

relative to other types of pants.

They're tough skins.

That was a brand of jeans

that they tried to make me wear when I was a child.

And I'm like, this is not tweety tweety enough for me.

Take these tough skins away.

So that's all a long way of saying that this is not an unreasonable number of times to wear jeans by any means.

It's totally reasonable number of times to wear jeans.

The only thing I would suggest is he might consider alternating between pairs of jeans because letting your jeans have more time off of your body will help reduce the amount of of stank.

Okay.

So you're saying that this is okay, what Byron is up to here.

Now,

I mean, I don't know if Byron will be able to handle switching out the genes from the different lunar cycles.

Do you know what I mean?

Because

if he wears one pair of genes in the fall for three days, then switches them out for a springtime, maybe all of a sudden it'll be night outside.

Do you know, the world won't know what's going on.

Suddenly, it'll start snowing in the middle of the middle of July.

Here's the thing, John.

I believe him when he says that they don't stink and he does wash them if they get stained.

I don't think that them wearing excessively is going to be an issue because they're blue jeans and he's washing them reasonably frequently for blue jeans.

His wife's objection is that it's not sanitary, which is true.

but pants are generally not sanitary.

We sit on things and sweat from our special parts all day long into pants.

That's just the nature of pants.

His kids think he's weird.

That's great.

That's the whole point of being a parent

is to do things that make your children uncomfortable because they're weird in ways that are gentle and friendly, like this.

So I believe, I believe him.

I believe that he would have said that if his pants were stinky, he would have either admitted that he thought his pants were stinky or his wife thought his pants were stinky.

Okay.

And so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.

All right.

I thank you for that expert testimony.

Taking all of that into consideration, Byron, I do not believe you.

Sorry, Jesse Thorne.

Byron, I think you stink.

I believe you wash your pants after you spill pasta on them now, after the obvious pasta incident that happened.

And people looked at you and said, go wash your pants, Byron.

But as someone who wears my pants too much, a different kind of pant, obviously, obviously,

four to five days in a row, I can feel, I can, I sense the stink on my pants.

And just because jeans won't get, are tougher and won't get as, as worn out, and indeed are often by sick faders worn out on purpose,

I think I would say after three weeks,

you are working from home, but

just because they can do something doesn't mean they should do something.

And I cannot believe

that after three weeks of wearing one single pair of jeans, that those jeans don't not only

smell bad, but probably look bad.

And I would say, honestly, knowing from experience, when I've worn a pair of pants too long, feel bad.

You feel bad.

You feel a little bad.

Like, just what am I doing?

I'd cut it down to two weeks.

Redo the rounds, two weeks.

What do you think about that, Jennifer Marmor?

I see you nodding.

I think that sounds reasonable.

Yeah, you're not living in a mine, Byron.

You're living at a home in Massachusetts.

Two weeks.

That's my sentence for you.

Mess up your whole system.

Here's something from Christopher in Dallas.

My wife insists on mixing her spaghetti and meat sauce together in one pot rather than serving the sauce on top of the pasta.

Please tell her the sauce should be served atop the spaghetti.

Please note, I do not seek a blanket prescription against combining pasta and sauce before serving.

But specifically, in the case of spaghetti and meat sauce, the sauce goes on top, not mixed in.

Guess what I'm having for dinner tonight, John?

Tacos.

No, it's spaghetti and meat sauce.

Well, it's actually probably going to be penne and meat sauce because my wife hates spaghetti.

Yeah, spaghetti is junk.

Little worms.

Don't care for it.

Don't care for it.

Spaghetti.

It's a really down-the-middle noodle.

I don't like it.

I don't care for it.

You want a radiatore or something?

No, no.

No.

I don't mind a long noodle.

That's the fancy duck of pasta.

Radiatore looks like little radiators.

Yeah.

And you get a lot of sauce in those nooks and crannies.

I'll give it that.

I'll give it that, radiatore.

Give you that.

But like everyone in the world over the

pandemic, I went pasta crazy.

Couldn't eat enough pasta.

And I was a part of the big bucatini run of 2020.

I got into that big, thick noodle.

Big, thick noodle with a starchy exterior with almost extruded through a machine that gives it some little micro-crevices to pick up sauce.

I like that.

Spaghetti is too slippery.

You know what I mean?

You don't know whether it's coming or going.

Slippery.

Don't care for it.

You're a little bunch of little worms.

A bunch of little worms trying to dodge that sauce.

Let me tell you something about it.

I don't know what's going on in Dallas, Christopher, but you're wrong.

I thought for a second,

is he wrong?

And all I had to do was go see what our friend Kenji Lopez-Alt has to say over at Sirius Eats.

Just

the right way to sauce pasta.

Updated March 7th, this year, 2021.

He's on top of it.

Yeah.

New developments.

You heat.

I feel.

You make your pasta

a little bit pre-al dente, like a little bit undercooked.

Shave off a minute or two from your favorite pasta cooking time for that particular pasta.

Meanwhile, you heat up your sauce in guess what?

A saucepan, a sausier.

And then when you're ready to serve, toss that pasta in the sauce with a little bit of pasta water and a little bit of butter or oil to create an emulsion and cover that pasta right up.

Everyone knows this.

I didn't know it.

You know,

I grew up the way you did, Dallas style, Christopher.

You know, and I grew up in an Italian-American, partly Italian-American home.

My paternal grandmother was a daughter of immigrants from Udine, Italy, which is northern Italy.

But you know, she grew up cooking a lot of traditional Italian-American spaghetti and red gravy type of stuff.

And yeah, we would plop that sauce on top.

I gotcha, but

it's wrong.

It's wrong.

It's just not how you're supposed to do it.

Specifically for meat sauce, right?

Marcella Hazan, whose New York Times cooking recipe for pasta bolognese, which is considered pretty much definitive, it's right there in the recipe.

You toss the tile

in the sauce.

You get a bit of a coating.

You go on the internet, you say, how do we do this with bolognese?

How is it traditionally served at the Chateau Marmont?

You toss the noodles in the sauce.

Of course you do.

The only place that doesn't recommend this is The Guardian, the London newspaper.

In their recent article that I found in their How to Eat section from January of this year, they're talking about spaghetti bolognese.

what is known as spag bowl in England.

So that's how they refer to it.

It's like a very very common thing.

And there's a lot of controversy about it because spag bowl is an English food.

You know, you would never serve spaghetti with bolognese sauce traditionally in Italy is the issue because it would be a thicker, a wider noodle, like Italiatelli or something like that.

And in The Guardian, they're like, well, in England, in spag bowl, you put the noodles down, then you put the bowl on top of it.

Not the bowl, but the bolognese sauce on top of it.

Which is like, okay, we'll give you that.

They also say that you can put bolognese sauce on French fries.

So I don't, I'm closing this tab, The Guardian.

You're wrong.

You and Christopher Dallas.

It says here that guacamole is made out of apples and ramps.

Yeah.

Is that what it says in The Guardian?

How to eat?

And a lorry.

It says apples, ramps, and a lorry.

That's how you make guacamole.

Yeah, make your ice cream with lard, put corn on your pizza.

Thank you very much.

This is English cuisine.

Or it used to be in the 1980s.

Anyway, everybody, go search the right way to sauce pasta by J.

Kenji Lopez Alt on Sirius Eats.

And I'm going to make this Marcela Hazan bolognese sauce because I haven't done it in years and it's spectacular.

I'm going to make it this weekend, I think.

And I'm going to toss that pasta with the sauce.

Sorry, Christopher, you're wrong.

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

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.

I'm Bailiff Jesse with me, Judge Hodgman.

Here's a case from Nick in Seattle.

Regarding your recent ruling on Friendsgiving, my friends and I have come up with two other Thanksgiving alternatives.

The first is a gathering of friends and family holiday the day after Thanksgiving, and it has three simple rules.

Bring your leftovers and pie.

Bring something to drink and wear pajamas or otherwise comfy clothes.

We call it Black Pie Day.

Oh, that's clever.

I like that.

Instead of Black Friday.

Instead of Black Friday, a consumer-invented semi-holiday.

A whole thing about Thanksgiving that I forgot last time I was mad about Thanksgiving and just adds to the fact that Thanksgiving is a dumb holiday that should be canceled.

Yeah, I disagree completely, but I'm going to read some more of Thanksgiving alternatives.

Second, a group of us will regularly celebrate Danksgiving sporadically throughout the year when we enjoy a roasted turkey and a homemade herbed butter that is currently legal in 19 states, Guam and Washington, D.C.

Interesting.

Now to the dispute.

At a recent meal, it was observed that I rarely consume a drink during a meal.

I argued then that the perfect meal should be able to stand alone and require no beverage.

Despite the fact that there were no counterexamples provided, no one at the table agreed with me.

All right, Nick in Seattle.

Hang on for a second.

Everybody, Jesse, I'm sorry.

If you love Thanksgiving, you love your family tradition, you love getting together with the people in your life who are meaningful to you, you love taking a day out of the year to reflect upon why it's lucky that you can be together, of course,

I heard you all.

I heard you all when you wrote me letters defending Thanksgiving as a concept.

So many of them were like,

it's a day to be thankful and to be aware of what's going well in your life.

I'm like, that should be every day.

It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be a day where I have to do a lot of work right after Halloween and right before Christmas and New Year's.

It doesn't have to be a day where I have to worry about whether I'm going to just drive in a traffic jam to get to eat a meal with extended.

No.

It's just, it's a pain in the neck.

It's historically complicated to say the least.

And yeah, I'm going to do it anyway.

Boy, oh, boy.

I do not feel any better about Thanksgiving now that we have made our Thanksgiving plans than I did last time.

If anything, I feel worse about it.

But of course, I'm going to do it.

See my family and make a turkey and everything else.

Be thankful every day.

But one thing that gives me comfort as this Thanksgiving comes up is that one listener recommended that I reflect upon

the

establishment of Thanksgiving as a federal holiday.

You know, it was, it was sort of celebrated catch-as-catch-can on the calendar.

Different states would set different times for different, you know, the Thanksgiving festivities and so forth, all until 1863, when Abraham Lincoln, influenced by Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor of a magazine who had been advocating for a national Thanksgiving Day for years and years, and all other presidents ignored her.

Abraham Lincoln said yes.

He had his Secretary of State, William Seward, draw up a proclamation in 1863

establishing a national day of Thanksgiving, a federal holiday.

And in the proclamation, it was stated that this was a time to reflect not merely upon the things we are thankful in this life for,

but also specifically to do penitence.

As the proclamation said,

to sit in humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience.

Now, if we were to reframe this holiday as one explicitly about humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, I might get into it a bit more.

But until then, you all enjoy your traditions and let me hate what I hate.

Now, Nick,

have a drink with your meal.

Have a glass of water, dude.

You say that there are no counterexamples provided for your theory that the best meal should be served without a beverage or could stand up without a beverage.

There are several counterexamples.

Look at every hall of human history.

Look at every depiction of a dinner table in all of history, in any painting or photograph, illustration.

Look at the Last Supper.

You think Jesus Christ was handing out his body without some of his blood?

No, let's do.

Take this.

This is my body.

Take this wine.

It is my blood.

It's a pairing.

It's a wine pairing.

From the beginning of the Christian tradition, there was a wine pairing involved.

Now, I don't drink wine, and sometimes the idea of pairing wine with food, what's it, how would you describe it, Jesse?

It's a little...

Maybe it can be a little fussy.

A little fussy.

Not for me, but I believe that it exists.

I believe that there are flavor notes in certain wines and foods that complement each other, that enhance each other.

And people have been drinking water at the table forever to cleanse their palate, especially sparkling water.

That actually scrubs your tongue to move on to the next course.

And of course, you need water there.

What if you choke on a thing?

You got to get a little piece of food down.

Something's stuck in your throat or your throat gets dry?

Everything in history is against you, Nick.

You don't have to drink water or whatever at the table, but you're wrong.

You're wrong.

Another one is wrong.

Let's take a quick break when we come back.

The answer to a mystery involving Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

It's our most tantalizing tease ever.

How could anyone change the channel?

There's no channel to change.

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 have a letter here.

Jesse, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I was wrong.

Apparently, you can change the channel.

I just received word.

Oh, no.

Everyone changed the channel during the break.

They're all watching Archie Bunker now.

So

weird.

Can I give you some important news?

Yeah, please.

My daughter wants a knob TV for Christmas.

Yeah, I know.

And a laser disc player that she can connect to it.

Sure.

Well, wait a minute.

You mean like a DVD player or like a big, those big flatters?

She wants to make a laser disc players?

She wants a laser disc player.

Wowee.

Yeah.

You got to turn those over, you know, in the middle of the movie.

I know.

Well, it depends on the quality that they put it on the laser disc.

Sometimes apparently you don't.

She was telling me about this.

This is the greatest.

Anyway, here's something from Olivia in Bellingham, Washington.

My boyfriend Jesse's go-to karaoke song is Surfin' Bird.

by The Ventures, which he performs in the style of death metal.

Oh, boy.

He thinks it's awesome.

Wow, the defeat in your voice just there, Jesse Thorne.

He recently sang this at a work event in front of his bosses and over 100 colleagues.

I was mortified.

I'm asking you to demand he never sing this awful song again and that he pick a new karaoke song.

I really love and admire his weirdness, confidence, and creativity, but this is too much.

Is it too much?

Jesse Jesse Thorne, karaoke, the empty orchestra.

You got a go-to song?

Do you ever do one?

No.

No.

I don't think I've ever sung at karaoke.

Really?

Yeah.

You've got a wonderful voice.

Thank you.

That's very nice of you.

I think

if I were called upon to sing karaoke, yeah, what would you pick?

I would pick Chantilly Lace by the Big Bopper.

Now.

Hello, baby.

Chantilly Lace, chantilly police,

two hands down.

Oh, it has more words than chantilly lace.

Oh, I didn't know.

Yeah, it's interesting.

I always thought it was wiggle in the walk and a giggle in the tongue.

Makes.

Yeah.

Whoa.

I don't know why I'm singing it like Elvis, but it doesn't matter.

You've got this.

I'm excited.

This is karaoke.

We're doing it now.

Jennifer Marmer, what's your karaoke song?

You got one?

I have a few.

I have a friend, a group of friends who, during regular non-pandemic times, we go to private room karaoke pretty often.

Yeah.

It's not very COVID compliant these days, I suppose.

No, but we all have our own little lists of our go-to's that we keep on our phones.

So,

so yeah, I mean, it depends on my mood.

Sometimes it's Flagpole Siddha.

Sometimes Sloop John B.

You and me.

Sometimes, I'm trying to remember.

Yeah, some cranberry songs.

It really depends.

It's all over the map.

Flagpole Siddha is my go-to by Harvey Danger.

I love that song and it's a great karaoke song.

And the only reason that I try it, I don't think I ever achieve it.

Because that's Sean Nelson, Harvey Danger himself, guy's got an incredible voice.

That guy can fly.

That voice can go so high.

Sean Nelson.

is a friend of mine and I love him so much.

You should go check out all of his work, including some of the later Harvey Danger albums, which no one ever listened to, which are brilliant.

Nice man.

He's a really nice guy.

I saw someone perform Flagpulsita at the old carriage inn in Park Slope when David Reese would sometimes go there to sing karaoke.

It was such an incredible vibe there.

This young woman killed it.

We had so many great nights at the old carriage inn.

And, you know, people had been part of that karaoke night for years, and they were so welcoming.

and they were such an interesting group of people.

The person who hosted the karaoke night transitioned, incredible thing to be a part of, and community to be a part of.

David would always sing These Things I've Done by the Killers, and he would kill it.

And a young woman sang Harvey Danger, and I was like, oh, I can do it.

I can do it.

I could never hit those high notes.

And I'm caught with twin sadnesses.

One problem.

is that the song that I really always want to sing at karaoke was never available at any karaoke bar ever.

And that was No Children by the Mountain Goats.

I have a feeling that's going to change now.

I have a feeling that when now that it's a smash hit,

you wanted to bring the joy of divorce to all of the people in the karaoke bar.

It's just one of the greatest songs in the world to sing with other people.

It's viral on TikTok is why.

It's viral on TikTok.

Congratulations, the Mountain Goats.

I can't wait to sing karaoke.

But the other sadness is that the old Karajin shut down, like a lot of places in Park Slope, A lot of locally owned places got priced out even before the pandemic because their landlords wanted more and more and more in money and they get a tax break if a place is empty.

So they just kicked them out and just reopened as a cafe, which is good luck to them, but we do not need more coffee in Park Slope.

Anyway, karaoke.

It's fun, Jesse.

We should do it sometime when it's safe to do it.

Yeah, I'll do that.

I mean, we're,

as I sit, I am a quarter mile from Koreatown, where over 70% of the businesses are karaoke lounges.

So I'm ready to go.

You would do so great as the big bopper, let me tell you.

But the issue of the day is Surfing Bird.

Olivia's boyfriend Jesse in Bellingham, Washington sings Surfing Bird.

You know the song.

Bird, Bird, Bird.

Bird is a word

by The Ventures, 1962, I think.

Yeah.

How would you characterize a death metal singer singing?

Well, I don't have to do it because Olivia sent us video of him doing it.

So we actually can hear it for ourselves and

judge Jesse live.

This does look like it's taking place in a conference room.

It's a conference room, and I don't think you ever hear the song.

The acoustics in

this multifunction room at this corporate retreat are not the greatest, but you'll get a flavor of what Jesse's up to here.

I've seen enough, John.

Yes, I've seen enough as well.

What do you see?

How do you describe what you see and what you hear?

I wouldn't say it's in the style of death metal.

No, because the style of death metal would be more like what, Jesse?

Can you do a verge?

I mean, it depends on the subgenre of death metal.

And we're going to get an angry letter from our friend John Darnell of the Mountain Goats no matter how I do this.

Both Stuart Wellington of the Flophouse and John Darnell of the Mountain Goats are going to write me letters about subgenres of metal.

Right.

But this is specifically Norwegian surfing death metal.

Yeah,

the classic is

a sort of

nightmarish growl.

That hurt my voice.

We're not doing it justice.

No.

It is a truly extraordinary sound.

It's like throat singing.

It's a hugely impressive human sound that not everyone can do, obviously.

Yeah.

Like this charge.

Jack and Jesse either.

This guy is doing kind of like a, you know, if it's anything, maybe it's punk rock, but he's a little too cute.

He's being a little too cute and he's not selling it.

One of the things that I see is he's jumping around.

If you're doing death metal or punk, you stand still.

Yeah, hold that microphone with both hands.

You hold that microphone with both hands and you stand still like an icon, like a, what you want to call it, a monolith of hard truth.

So I'm going to agree with you on this one, Jesse.

His performance is not on point.

But, and, and karaoke, you need to be a performer.

You can't just, you can't just

half-butt it.

You gotta, you gotta lead in.

I think that Jesse is, his performance is not on point.

His presentation is not on point, but I do hear the sound of people having fun.

There's one guy who just goes, what?

They are all having fun, except obviously for Jesse's girlfriend, Olivia, who's taking this video.

And aside from Olivia, all the other people in this room seem to be guys

and they seem to be having a good time.

So I asked Olivia who his work pals are.

Where does he work?

And it turns out Jesse works at an aeronautics firm.

They make electric airplanes.

And specifically, Olivia said,

I know he works with a robotic arm, which lays carbon fiber to create the airplanes.

Jesse.

I know he works with a robotic arm.

I've met it at the the Christmas party.

Besides that.

It reminds me.

You know, I met Jonathan Colton at college.

He lived in a suite two floors below me.

And his suite was full of truly incredibly intelligent engineers,

mathematicians, and all of them were really interesting oddballs.

And they all got together

and they had a project that that they were going to build a robot.

And I just remember walking upstairs to my room late at night on a Friday night or whatever, and the door to Jonathan's suite was open.

And Aaron and Andrew and I think one other guy were in there.

And Aaron was saying, all right, you guys, I want a working arm by Friday.

A working arm by Friday.

On my desk.

Anyone who works with a robotic arm is a friend of this podcast.

And anyone who loves a person who works with a robotic arm, like you, Olivia, is a friend of this podcast as well.

You are our friends.

And any robot who listens to this podcast, we look upon skeptically.

You have to demonstrate your loyalty to the human race.

Don't want to get overturned.

Exactly.

Exactly.

I don't need an AI revolution today.

No, thank you, Satan.

Satan bot.

But I'm going to say this.

Jesse did not do anything today, Satan bot.

Not today.

Jesse did not put his career in jeopardy at this corporate retreat at Lake Tahoe, which is where it happened.

His friends making electric airplanes loved this bit.

And

that's fine.

But you were right to be mortified, Olivia, because Jesse can do better.

Jesse, if you want to continue to do this, it's not a bad bit, but you have to commit to the bit.

Go listen to some death metal.

Go check out some sub-genres.

See if you can make your voice do the thing that

they are doing.

Plant your feet.

Become a nightmare god of

abysmal truth and sing surfing bird the way it was meant to be sung in the Norwegian surfing death metal style.

We did receive a letter, Jesse Thorne.

So the other week in episode 540 of the Judge John Hodgman podcast titled Spooky Day, Spooky Night,

one of our Halloween-themed ones,

we ruled that listener Rob could no longer wear his minion-themed pajama shorts outside his home because they're inappropriate and they're making Nick Weiger too excited.

Now, Jesse, I learned through Twitter a social media platform that serves us only good in this life.

including this fun thing I learned.

Rob, turns out, is the features editor at the Capitol Times newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin.

That's the big newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin, capital of Wisconsin.

So, Rob,

let me pitch a feature to you.

Put us in the newspaper.

Yeah.

Put us in the newspaper, Rob.

We'll come out there.

We'll do a show.

Do a show in Madison.

I'd love to.

Yeah.

I've done shows at great theaters there and then go to the tornado room after.

But Rob does not live in Madison.

He lives in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, wherein we discovered on Google Maps a mystery in the part of Knollwood Park that is in Fitchburg, across the border.

I looked it up.

There was one weird, mysterious review of the park on Google Maps pointing out that a mysterious electric fence had appeared across the pass and no one knew why.

Well, it turns out lots of people knew why.

Listeners Natasha and Megan wrote in to tell us that the fence was brought into Knollwood Park, Jesse, to contain the goats.

Oh, wonderful.

Another listener, a park ranger in the Madison-Fitchburg area, explained, quote, currently the city of Madison has a herd of goats to help manage the many invasive brush and forbs.

You know what a forb is, Jesse?

I couldn't tell you what a forb is, John.

I presume it's 1920s drug slang.

No, it's a plant.

It's a plant.

Forbs are plants that are not grass-like, but do not become woody.

It's like milkweed.

Sunflowers are forbs.

Anyway, I quote on, since these conservation parks are an attempt to restore a natural and more native habitat, the goats allow for large-scale clearing without the use of pesticides or fossil fuels.

Unfortunately, goats have a reputation of being escape artists and need reminding of where their place is, hence the fence.

Signed.

A goat's place is in the home.

Goat's place is inside the fence, not outside the fence.

Signed, Rage Your Name Redacted.

Didn't want us to use their name.

Megan sent photos of the goats, which we will post on the show page at maximumfund.org and on our Instagram account, which is at judgejohnhodgman.

But Jesse,

we also received a letter from John Allen regarding another mystery from episode 540: the Bridgewater Triangle area of Massachusetts.

But you will hear about that after the credits.

Very exciting.

Bridgewater Triangle comes back.

On the way to preschool, my four-year-old let me know something.

What's that?

She asked me, When you were a kid, did you ever go

underground?

And then, as I was about about to reply,

she said, children

used to be sent underground, but they're not now

because it's not safe.

Only grown-ups go underground.

They go there to get rocks, but it's dangerous because they could go to the center of the earth.

That's where the best genes are found.

The center of the earth.

Those are the genes you want to get.

What are they called?

Fade freaks?

Sick fades.

Sick faders.

Got to get those sick faders.

Well, you said sick.

You invented sick faders, but I support it.

Sick faders.

Fade freaks.

Drips.

That's all.

Just don't send children to the center of the earth.

Don't send children to the center of the earth.

We resolved this.

The hollow earth is no place for kids.

You got mole men down there.

Do watch the 1987 film Journey to the Center of the Earth starring Kathy Ireland and Emo Phillips.

I will.

Do not watch The Descent, the 2005-ish horror movie, which is one of the scariest things I've ever seen.

I've not been able to watch it since.

The docket is clear.

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

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Our editor is Valerie Moffat.

I'm checking the time.

I got to get to the center of the earth.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your judgejohnhodgman tweets, hashtag JJ Ho, and check out the Maximum Fund subreddit to discuss this episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org slash JJHO or email hodgman at maximumfund.org.

Yeah, please do it.

We need cases to have the show.

Please send in your disputes.

We love your cases.

No case too small.

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

Welcome to the bottom of the mysterious, impossible community swimming pool here in Bridgeton, Maine.

I am your ghost host, John Hodgman, imitating the voice of famed New York storyteller Edgar Oliver.

Look him up.

Speaking of ghost hosts, yes.

I know the other day I got it wrong when I said the ghost host at the haunted mansion in Disneyland was voiced by Thurl Ravenscroft.

I know, I know, I know I made a mistake.

It was Paul Freeze.

I'm sorry.

Please stop sending me letters, cursed spirits, leave me alone

Although

Thurl Ravenscroft does voice one of the grim grinning ghosts in the haunted mansion, and he was the voice of Tony the Tiger, so I did get that right.

Pedants

Meanwhile, some news from here in Bridgeton, Maine.

I read in the Portland Press Herald of Portland, Maine that the Shawnee Peak Ski Resort, which as you know, is located here in Bridgeton near my impossible swimming pool, and as you know, the Shawnee Peak Ski Resort was founded in nineteen 1938 and is therefore Maine's oldest ski area, was recently sold.

Just last month, Chet Homer,

Shawnee Peak's owner and a native New Englander, sold Shawnee Peak to out-of-staters.

Oh!

Specifically, Boyne Resorts, which, as you know, is headquartered in Boyne Falls, a village in Charlevoix County, Michigan.

Oh, did I not pronounce that correctly, Michiganders?

I'm sorry I didn't say Charlevoix or whatever I'm supposed to say.

You got so mad at me for saying Mackinac instead of Mackinac, it's spelled that way.

Get it together on your maps.

In any case, Boyne's Falls is located on the Boyne River near the shore of Lake Michigan, which brings us now to your special haunted Great Lakes Beach Report.

Did I scare you?

Did you think that I was going to cross the streams between this weird segment and that weird segment?

Did you think I was going to fold them into one completely self-indulgent monologue, creating a time-space rip of self-regard in which we would all perish?

No,

that was merely my little joke.

I am actually here in the secret post credit sequence to read you the promised letter from one John Allen,

a former resident of and pastor in the Bridgewater Triangle, that most haunted region of Massachusetts encompassing the towns of Taunton, Massachusetts, and Wampa, Massachusetts, and Bib Fortuna Borough, Massachusetts, that we learned about just weeks ago, here with

the text of his missive.

Dear Judge John Hodgman, at the bottom of an impossible community swimming pool in Bridgeton, Maine, my name is John Allen, and my ears perked up at your recent mention of the Bridgewater Triangle.

I served until recently as a member of the clergy at a church that fell within its boundaries.

About a year ago, I received a voicemail from the leader of a group called the

Bridgewater Triangle Paranormal Investigators.

It was from a man with a phenomenal Boston accent who had called to tell me that a Sasquatch was tormenting a family of ghosts in a small patch of forest across the street from our church.

He asked if I might be willing to appear as a guest on their YouTube channel while performing some sort of ritual to bring the paranormal kerfuffle to an end.

This was not something I felt able to do in good faith, and it had gone out of my my mind until your mention brought it back.

Although I have recently moved to serve a church in Maine, oh welcome, I believe I still have access to the audio of this voicemail well.

Dear listeners, you can only imagine I

hurried him to please please send me the voicemail from the Bridgewater Triangle Paranormal Investigators And here you are about to hear it.

They are a really lovely duo who sneak through the woods at night looking for the Bigfoots and the things that go bump in the swamp.

They have a YouTube channel which I encourage you to check out.

So far, I've watched a couple of them, and they haven't said anything racist yet.

But if you find something in there, just let me know and I'll revoke my recommendation.

Until then, hear this the sound of a call from the darkness within the Bridgewater Triangle.

Hi, this is

here.

I'm from the Bridgewater Triangle Paranormal Investigators.

The other night,

well, first of all, we run a YouTube page.

We investigate the paranormal.

The other night we were on Holland Street in Milton, which is a hotspot for paranormal activity for all kinds of paranormal investigators.

It was said that there's a family, apparitions of a family that wander the street.

However, we were doing an investigation down there and we got a lot of clear responses on Spirit Box, which we use for white noise.

And there's been a lot of

voices coming through that would say, help us, help us now, please help us.

We believe maybe that these apparitions, these spirits haven't really passed on yet.

So you have a side, maybe they're stuck in some kind of purgatory.

However, However,

the bigger thing is

we feel that there is something evil in the swamp that surrounds the street.

We have an EMF meter and last night there was a high temperature on my EMF meter.

Something huge and paranormal was making it giving it

giving the meter a high temperature reading

and we believe that

since it is swamp land, it's Bigfoot territory, that there is something evil in those woods and we think that this family, the spirits of this family, might be in danger from this.

So, we were wondering if that's something that you guys could check out.

If maybe you could bless the street, help these spirits move on to the other side, if that's something you're interested in doing with us,

if you prefer to be on-camera, off-camera doing this.

I don't know.

You can call me back.

My number is

thank you.

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