Fancy Ducks vs Fancy Geese

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

And with me is the kangaroo of the kangaroo court himself, Judge John Hodgman.

Oh, you'll have to forgive me if you hear a steady drip, drip, drip.

Every gutter is dripping here in Park Slop, Brooklyn.

We got soaked.

Oh,

that's fun.

Park Slop.

Oh, yeah, I know.

I just came up with that today.

I'm sure I'm not the first.

Another bombo Genesis hit us.

Jesse, I just have something I need to say.

I got a letter from Suzanne Dropkin this week, and you may recognize the last name, but not the first.

Over the years, I've told the story of my childhood friend

Joe Dropkin.

Jesse, back when I was eight, the movie Alien came out.

Did you ever see the movie Alien, Jesse?

Amazing movie.

Great movie.

It's a great movie.

Is it suitable for an eight-year-old, would you say?

Not at all.

Not in the slightest.

Now, R-rated movie.

Very scary.

Very scary movie.

And I did not see it when it came out.

But somehow around that time, for some reason, my entire extended family intuited that I liked the movie Alien, even though I could not see it legally.

My dad gave me the alien comic book adaptation of the movie by Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson.

It's absolutely brilliant.

It was published by Heavy Metal Magazine.

It's a great comic book adaptation of a movie that is beautiful and terrifying and wildly inappropriate for kids.

And I, and as a, as an eight or nine-year-old, I read this.

I'm like, I shouldn't be reading this.

And then the following Christmas, I received an alien action figure for Christmas.

Did you know there was an alien action figure?

I've talked about it before on the podcast, but I might have to bring some people up to date on this.

Jesse, do you know about this thing?

Is it an action figure of the alien from the movie Alien?

Yeah.

Yeah.

20th Century Fox thought, hey, you know what?

Star Wars was a big merchandising hit.

And we gave those licensing rights to George Lucas for the merch.

And that's how he made all of his money.

So let's not make the same mistake twice.

If Alien, this R-rated movie about an alien impregnating a man with its spawn that bursts out of its chest, which then stalks a woman through the corridors of a space-borne oil derrick, hits big with the kids.

We better have some action figures ready, you know, for kids.

And they, not surprising, they only made one action figure before they shut down this enterprise.

And this was the alien, an 18-inch high alien figurine with a full phallic head and protruding mandibles and all its H.R.

Giger-designed mechanosexual grotesquery.

They made this for children.

And this is what I received for Christmas that year.

And even as I opened it in Philadelphia visiting my mom's family, as we did every year.

I was horrified and baffled because I knew this thing shouldn't exist.

Yeah, it's distressing.

It's weird and distressing to look at.

And even at the age, I was like, I felt sad for my mom's sisters who bought it for me going to the store, looking at this thing, being like, ugh, well, JK would probably like this.

That's what they call me, JK.

Because even though they were and are five very close sisters from a working-class Catholic neighborhood in Philadelphia, and I was this godless, strange, only child raised by their oldest sister in an affluent suburb of Boston, trained only to read Edward Gorey and watch Monty Python and bring a briefcase to school.

You know, I was a prime weirdo.

They loved me and they loved my mom, the only one of them to leave Philadelphia.

And they loved me and they went to the store and they found this disturbing, incomprehensible oddity that looked like a mockery of humanity.

And they thought

JK would probably like this.

This seems up to Zally.

Yeah.

But they were wrong.

I didn't like it, to paraphrase it.

It didn't have enough slime on it.

You wrote that.

I loved it.

I loved it.

I loved that alien figurine.

I mean, I was a smart kid.

I was already attuned to the metanarrative.

I loved the fact that it should not exist.

It was a weird cultural artifact.

And then a couple of years later, Joseph Joe Dropkin, my friend from Heath Elementary School in Brookline, came over.

to my house to play ColecoVision or whatever.

And he accidentally sat down on my alien figurine and broke it, broke its leg out of its leg socket.

And I never forgave him.

I wrote about it in my books.

I've talked about it on this podcast frequently, starting all the way back in episode 11.

It was a plot device in my never-made pilot script, Only Child, where I say Joe Dropkin broke my alien figurine, and I will never forgive him.

You can listen to that as a table read over in Dead Pilot Society here at Maximum Fun, episode two, I think, of Dead Pilot Society.

Great podcast.

It was a joke that I would say over and over again.

Joe Dropkin sat on my alien and I will never forgive him.

And it was a joke because of course I forgave him eventually.

When things break and you can't put them back together again, it hurts.

I kept that broken alien for a long time with its busted butt and it hurt.

But I could never get rid of it until sometime I did.

And it was a joke.

And yet, I was never entirely sure if Joe Dropkin had ever heard the joke.

And if he had or whether he understood that it was a joke.

I never found out.

And then Suzanne wrote me just the other week to say that Joe had heard the joke, and he got the joke, and he loved hearing me talk about his, quote, big booty

smashing that alien.

I guess I said that back in episode 11, his big booty smashed that alien.

And it was ironic because the alien itself was broken in the booty.

The leg snapped out of the mechanosexual alien butt cheeks.

And Joe had even, said Suzanne, Joe had even tried at one point to find a replacement for me just to pay the joke off and pay me back.

But

Joe

had pancreatic cancer for the past four years, and he died last year in July, which I didn't know.

So I regret not keeping up with Joe Dropkin other than trading nice words with him on Facebook.

But then apparently somehow missing the fact that he had passed away, I knew he had cancer.

He was very obviously a wonderful guy and husband and a caring and devoted member of his synagogue and an amazing weird dad with a great big booty.

I'm so grateful that he got the joke, but I really, really regret that I never, to the best of my memory, I never reached out to him just to say, remember, this is a joke.

I love you.

I love you, Joe.

I forgive you.

I always did.

There's something beyond this life.

I want you to know that someone heard our story at one point.

many years later and got me a replacement vintage 1979 Kenner alien figurine.

And guess what?

That one broke too in my hands as I lifted it up.

They were junk.

I know that you know, Joe, humans are better than things.

So thank you, Suzanne, for reaching out to me.

Jesse, I dedicate this episode to the memory of Joe Dropkin and his big booty.

And I promise,

Joe Dropkin and all the children of the world, there's a lot of big booty content in this episode.

So I hope you all enjoy it.

Thank you.

You know, Joe had another claim to fame.

What's that?

The song Honky Donk Badonka Donk was written about him.

I forgot that that's true.

I forgot that that's absolutely true.

Honky Donk Badonka Donk, written about Joe Dropkin's big booty.

You knew him, I didn't.

I hope that's the kind of thing he would have enjoyed.

Yeah, Bill Paxton couldn't smash an alien.

You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah.

It was game over, man, for Bill Paxton, but Joe Dropkin's big booty, boom.

Just sit on it.

That's what they should have done the whole time.

Sit on that alien.

It was a really golden age for sitting on it.

Sit on it, Potsy.

Why didn't you ever think of that, Sigourney Weaver, my hero?

Did you try sitting on it and breaking its butt?

It had a well-defined butt.

Look it up online.

You can just see it was really well sculpted, this toy.

Really well sculpted.

And you probably never saw the alien butt in the movie, but you could definitely see the alien butt on the figurine.

Is an alien's butt alien leg?

Let's get into the docket.

Here's a case from Lisa in Escondido, Escondido, California.

Hello, Your Honor.

This dispute is between me and my dad.

We'll occasionally stay up late and video chat.

My dad lives in Texas, and he will go to bed around 2 a.m.

his time.

I stay up here in California until 1 a.m.

my time.

My dad is convinced he's going to bed earlier than me because he's asleep before I am.

I say I'm going to bed earlier as my clock reads an earlier time when my head hits that pillow.

What do you think?

I don't honestly know what damages I'm searching for, except to be proven right.

That's all we ever want.

Jesse, this one reads like a logic puzzle, like a logic math puzzle that you would get in seventh grade math, right?

Yeah, you go into class, sit down, they'd give you that little

nugget to work on and get your brain warmed up.

Yeah, a train is moving east at 200 miles per hour.

Obviously not in the United States because we don't have infrastructure to support that.

Which passenger is lying?

The answer is

the doctor was a woman.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The bullet was made of ice.

The bullet was made of ice.

And the leg of lamb was the murder object.

The murder object, the weapon.

All right, let's figure it out.

If Lisa and her father speak till 2 a.m.

Texas time, that's central mountain, no, central time, not mountain time.

And they both go to bed at 1 a.m.

California time.

That is, say, Pacific time.

Which one arrives at the train station of Slumberland first?

So,

Lisa, you know how to use websites.

Took me a long time to figure this one out, even with websites.

But Lisa, you know that 1 a.m.

in California is 3 a.m.

Central.

Therefore, if your dad goes to bed at 2 a.m.

Central, he has been asleep for an hour by the time your head hits that pillow.

Check my math, Jesse.

Am I right there?

Am I right, or am I wrong, or am I right?

That's absolutely correct.

And I just want you to know that

we took a standardized version of those little logic questions at the beginning of my seventh grade math class, and I got the best overall score for the year in the state.

Really?

That's true.

Oh, did you get a little, did you get a little medal or something?

Or a little

combination?

I didn't get nothing.

It was only even told to me in the context of what a disappointment I was.

You know, the gift-giving season is coming.

What was the standardized logic puzzle?

Yeah.

Test for the whole state?

You got the whole state of California.

State of California top logician, top junior logician?

Number one in the state for the course of the year.

I've got an idea for a gift for the holiday season.

Remind me, Jennifer Marmor.

It's a trophy that says, why don't you do your homework?

It's not going to be a trophy.

It's not going to be a trophy.

It's not going to be a trophy.

It's not even going to be anything I just talked about.

I'm just going to buy everything there is and put this on shop, all the items.

Great.

And then I'm going to ship them to you in a crate.

Oh, thank goodness.

It's a nice gift, right?

That would be perfect inventory for my shop.

Exactly.

All right.

So, yeah.

Your dad in the universe is going to sleep before you are.

Therefore, he is going to sleep earlier.

That said, Lisa, even though you're both staying up late to talk to each other in video chat, which, by the way, is adorable.

Midnight chats between dads and adult children, that's a delight.

A couple of night owls, cutie pie night owls out there.

But your father is technically staying up later in the context of his day or night specifically, right?

I mean, it's like

if you both have to get up at 6 a.m.

in the morning relative time, he is staying up later.

It's his sleep cycle that's being messed up.

He is staying up later than you are on these adorable midnight chats.

And I can only conclude that this is because he loves you a little bit more than you love him.

That's probably true.

Yeah, seems right.

Right.

He's messing up his sleep cycle.

So you can do with that what you want, but I got to come down on the side of his time zones here.

He's going to bed an hour before you are.

It doesn't care what it doesn't matter what your clock says.

Am I wrong on this, Jesse?

I mean, you live in a world of absolute truth.

That's right.

I believe in the inherent subjectivity of truth.

So I guess it's just a philosophical difference that we'll never be able to bridge.

Yeah.

Are you telling me to do my own research?

Got it.

I know where you're coming from.

I'm ready, willing, and able to play road games for the Brooklyn Nets just because I can't step foot into the Barclay Center.

All right.

I stand for absolute empirical truth.

And the truth is, dad's gone to bed earlier, Lisa.

And I don't know what you're trying to win from this argument, but please enjoy having fun conversations with your dad.

Tell him we say hi.

Here's something from Dustin in Phoenix, Arizona.

My wife and I were preparing a meal and were looking for some snacking cheese to assist in this.

Quotation marks around snacking cheese.

This is something they say in their house, snacking cheese.

Okay.

My wife fetched some some and requested a knife with which to cube it fetch me some snacking cheese won't you dear spouse

well wait i want to say this sentence my wife fetched some snacking cheese and requested a knife with which to cube period that's a great sentence love it might i have a blade that i could cube

i wish to cube i presented her with the chef's knife which was already in use for the meal and had been wiped down after its last job.

She was outraged that such a huge, quote, butcher knife, unquote, would be used for the task of cutting a bit of semi-soft cheese, mozzarella.

Outraged, Jesse.

I objected, as a pedant, that this was not a butcher's knife, but was in fact a chef's knife.

which is multifunctional.

My wife, to my horror, selected a serrated steak knife for this job.

Her objection to the chef's knife was to its size.

My objection to the steak knife is in the serration, and also that another utensil would have to be cleaned.

Please help us identify who is at fault.

Is it my pedantry or her fear of my Japanese-style chef's knife?

Uh,

you know, first of all, Dustin in Phoenix, Arizona.

bordering zero of the Great Lakes, so there is no Great Lakes Beach Report this episode.

Sorry, everyone in the world.

You know, my recommendation to spouses

who live together and presumably sleep in the same room is that

the ideal sleeping situation is if they have the means to get the largest bed they can.

And if they really have the means, they should get separate sleeping villas connected by a reflecting pool.

In your case, I have a specific recommendation for your household in this kitchen full of knives and outrage, which is that I hope your kitchen is equipped with not one but two fainting couches.

And a full complement of smelling salts.

And a full complement of Himalayan pink smelling salts.

I really appreciate the outrage that you are feeling about this.

I just want to say something first about

cubes.

Jesse Thorne, do you know that the cube as a form basically does not exist in nature?

It is very hard for nature to naturally form a cube.

Or I shouldn't say that it's difficult, but nature doesn't usually do it.

Every now and then, you'll get

a piece of rock or sand that is almost cubic.

But for the most part, a cube is a human, whether it's cheese or any form.

It is created by humans.

It's a non-natural form.

Did you know that?

Yeah, that's why we have dominion over the beasts.

Oh, are you so sure?

That's a tease for later.

Oh, wow.

Meanwhile, back to this.

All right, there's a lot to unpack here.

First of all, there's a big brag at the end.

All of a sudden, after all of this verbiage, Dustin drops in that he's got a Japanese-style chef's knife.

I'm not sure what he's meaning by that.

Does that mean it's a Santuco knife, which is a traditional Japanese chef's knife that has kind of a rounded front and kind of a wider blade?

It looks a little bit different from a a standard Western chef's knife.

Could be called maybe more a butchery in style.

I don't know.

Or does this mean he's got a fancy, a fancy pantsy, regular chef's knife manufactured in Japan, a lot of which you see with what they call Damascus steel, that folded steel, ripply element that looks so pretty and you can charge so much more money for it.

I don't know, but it's a brag one way or the other, and I don't love to reward pedantry and I don't love to reward bragging.

Second of all, mozzarella as snacking cheese.

Jesse, what's your favorite snacking cheese, would you say?

I like aged gouda.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How old do you like it?

Five years, seven years?

I believe

that the particular gouda I purchase from a local trader here in Southern California named Joe.

Joe.

is a 3,000-day gouda, which would make it a roughly five and a half, six-year-old Gouda.

They measure it by days?

Well, you know, that's precision is important

in any trading relationship.

And naturally, goudas are not formed in cubes.

That has to be done by human intervention if you're going to get a tray full of cubed goudas.

But you can do it.

You can cube a gouda.

This gouda is too dry.

You would, you would have

to sort of flake the gouda, yeah.

Right, right.

But a lot of semi-you can, there are a lot of younger goudas that you can cube.

You can cube a goud.

You can cube a a gouda.

Absolutely.

Like a younger, like a smoked gouda, maybe.

That's a nice snacking cheese.

Yeah.

Or like,

hey, the pride of 1988, Havarti, dil Havarti.

That's a cheese you can cube pretty easily.

Have that in 1988.

Enjoy it with

some sun-dried tomatoes

and a kiwi-flavored beverage.

A little pesto on top on a little baguette from Au Bon Pen.

Boom.

Sure.

Time travel to Harvard Square, 1988.

Let's go to the tasty tasty and then check out Out of Town News.

All that is gone now.

Gone forever.

Go buy some comic books of Newberry comics.

The point is, I've seen mozzarella in a lot of forms.

Shreds.

I've seen fresh mozzarella.

You know, that's not a cube.

It's not natural.

It's a ball of mozzarella in

a milky brine.

or whatever.

I'm not sure what mozzarella you're cubing here.

You know what I mean?

Are there bricks of mozzarella you can get?

Like a brick of a low-moisture party.

Like a low-moisture part of the pizza.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You want whole milk if you're making pizza.

Yeah.

My favorite snacking cheese traditionally that was cubable was a torque, which is a Basque sheep's milk cheese.

I really loved it.

I used to call it the monarch of cheeses.

Sure.

That's why it's known as such to this day, the world over.

If you find a Torque, and it's not that difficult to find, but if you find it still with the label on it, it'll say a Torque, the Monarch of Cheeses, in quotation marks, John Hodgman.

Maine humorist.

Maine humorist, former cheesemonger, 1991.

Co-host, shooting the breeze.

That's right.

But

while it still wears that crown, I have tired of it.

I have tired of monarchy.

I prefer.

I've gone into weird dad territory.

And you know what I'm looking for now?

I'm looking for junk cheese that has hot peppers in it.

I like that now.

A cube of a habaniero Monterey Jack cheese.

I'll enjoy that.

Anything dumb and spicy, just like any old dad.

I don't get the mozzarella that you guys are cubing, but let's just say for the sake of argument, Jesse Thorne, if you are cubing a brick of semi-soft cheese,

would you use a chef's knife or would you use a serrated steak knife, by which I mean not a bread knife, not a big thing, but just, you know, like a regular-sized table knife that has serrations in it so you can cut steak or meat with it?

I would use a chef's knife.

Use a chef's knife, of course.

Yeah.

Because the serrations are going to shred the cube.

It's going to make an unclean cube.

And you can't get the blade down

to...

the cutting surface comfortably.

Right.

To cut all the way through the cheese block.

Yeah, because the blade's too short.

You're going to be, you're going to have to do

an angled motion, whereas with a chef's knife, the length of the blade allows you essentially to guillotine it down.

Yeah.

And the position of the handle as well.

When you're making a cube of cheese, what you're trying to do is mock nature.

Do something nature can't do.

Make a perfect cube.

You don't want to ruin it with the serration.

And not only is there nothing wrong with using that chef's knife, so long as it is clean, it's better.

It's better for the job.

And Dustin, your argument about dirtying another knife is stupid because you're going to have to clean that chef's knife again after you cube your cheese.

Everything's going to have to get clean.

But using the right tool for the right job, I have to go with Dustin in this case.

I do not understand.

I do not understand or comprehend Justin's spouse's outrage, but I hope she recovers from her fit of pique soon.

Let's 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.

I also have a Japanese chef's knife.

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.

Let me ask you a question.

Did you know that most of the dishes served at Tom Clicchio's craft restaurant are made in, made in pots and pans?

It's true.

The braised short ribs, made in, made in.

The Rohan Duck Riders of Rohan, made in, made in.

That heritage pork chop that you love so much, you got it.

it was made in made in but made in isn't just for professional chefs it's for home cooks too and even some of your favorite celebratory dishes can be amplified with made in cookware it's the stuff that professional chefs use but because it is sold directly to you it's a lot more affordable uh than some of the other high-end brands We're both big fans of the carbon steel.

I have a little carbon steel skillet that my mother-in-law loves to use because cast iron is too heavy for her, but she wants that non-stick.

And I know that she can, you know, she can heat that thing up hot if she wants to use it hot.

She can use it to braise if she wants to use it to braise.

It's an immensely useful piece of kitchen toolery.

And it will last a long time.

And whether it's griddles or pots and pans or knives or glassware or tableware.

I mean, you know, Jesse, I'm sad to be leaving Maine soon, but I am very, very happy to be getting back to my beloved made-in entree bowls.

All of it is incredibly solid, beautiful, functional, and as you point out, a lot more affordable because they sell it directly to you.

If you want to take your cooking to the next level, remember what so many great dishes on menus all around the world have in common.

They're made in, made in.

For full details, visit madeincookware.com.

That's m-a-d-e-i-n cookware.com.

Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast, the only Japanese chef's knife podcast that's won a Webby Award for Best Comedy Podcast this week.

Co-hosted by a junior state logician champ.

And the co-host of the famous cheese podcast, Shooting the Breeze.

Shooting the Breeze.

Here's a case for a Biannual podcast about cheese.

What's this case coming from?

It's from Sonoma, California.

Oh, okay.

Home of Traintown.

Dear Judge John Hodgman, which are fancier, ducks or geese?

I say ducks.

My wife says geese.

It's one of the greatest letters I've ever received.

Absolutely rules.

First of all, it's direct and to the point.

This is the entire letter.

Second of all, it is absolutely ridiculous and frivolous, and yet it is necessary to answer.

You immediately need to know which is fancier, ducks or geese.

Jesse, do you have a thought on this one?

Which is fancier, ducks or geese?

This is a tough one for me to say.

Yeah.

Because

both are beautiful and malevolent creatures.

Sure.

And each category contains many subcategories.

There are some truly extraordinary ducks out there, John.

There definitely are.

But have you ever seen the Sebastopol goose?

Sebastopol?

It's up by Sonoma.

Yeah, it's also a kind of goose.

Where do you want it, Jesse?

In your text or in the chat.

Throw it in the chat, baby.

All right.

I'm going to throw it in the chat.

I've got to open the chat.

I want it over there at Train Town in Sonoma.

Check out this goose.

Just threw it in the chat there for you.

Wowie, Zowie.

This thing's a beauty.

It's a beaut of a goose, isn't it?

This thing looks like when Bjork dressed up as a swan for the Oscars.

This goose is as beautiful as Icelandic pop legend Bjork.

Jennifer Marmer, you're raising your arms in triumph.

Yeah.

Did you also see the Bjork resemblance?

Yeah, that was the first thing I thought of when I saw that beautiful goose.

Also, I wanted to shout out to Christian Duanius, fellow producer at Maximum Fun.

He went as Bjork wearing that outfit for Halloween this year, and it was spectacular.

From now on, that's no longer a Bjork costume.

That's a sexy Sebastopol goose costume.

Big time.

Well, I have this photo up as soon as I get permission from poultryhub.org

to post this photo of a Sebastopol goose.

You can see it for yourself over there at the showpage at maximumfund.org, as well as our Instagram account at judgejohnhodgman on Instagram.

But this is a white, this is like, it's almost like a mythological creature because it's got the neck of a head of your standard white goose.

But from the neck down, it looks like it's wearing a beautiful coat of fluffy feathers.

This is the fluffiest goose I've ever seen.

Extraordinary.

I really have to be, I really am grateful.

to the letter writer Greg for giving me the opportunity to Google fancy geese because I never would have had heard of the Sebastopol goose, which is a very fancy goose indeed.

But when you Google fancy ducks, oh God, or whatever, what a journey into fanciness you will enjoy.

There is at least one super fancy goose.

But when you look at the harlequin duck, or the king eider, or the long-tailed duck, or the hooded merganser, or the pink-eared duck, or the smew duck, or the spectacled eider, or the surf scoater.

Jesse, take a look at the surf scoater.

I'm putting this guy in the chat.

These are all real ducks.

This is a photo of a surf scoater,

according to the caption, surf scoater eating a clam.

Sometimes it's called a skunk-headed cooth, or old skunkhead.

It's eating a clam.

Shell and all, I would think.

Does it have a nose pass through?

It's found in the coastal waters of the North American Pacific and Atlantic during the summer.

This little eye.

This is all from a website called treehugger.com.

Specifically, treehugger.com/slash unbelievable wild duck species.

And I haven't even gotten to the white-faced whistling duck, the braichulteal, the beautiful wood duck.

I mean, the wood duck is

one of the only animals that has...

I love clams.

The wood duck is one of the only animals that has all of the colors of the rainbow in its plumage.

It's a beautiful-looking duck.

The ruddy duck and the northern shoveler.

Can't talk.

I'm eating clams.

But the monarch of cheeses, of fancy ducks, of course, Jesse Thorne,

can only be the Mandarin duck.

I'm putting this one in the chat now for you to.

I mean, you're not even going to enjoy this one.

You're just going to marvel at its beauty.

Oh, it's extraordinary.

It's extraordinary.

I'm wondering such a popular brand of backpack.

The mandarin duck is an extraordinarily fancy duck, fancier even than the wood duck.

And this particular Mandarin duck, Jesse,

you may know was a social media star of 2018 and 2019 when this Mandarin duck of unknown origin showed up in the pond in Central Park.

And people went bananas for taking pictures of this duck because it is so, so fancy.

And the New York magazine dubbed it hot duck,

but Gothamist gave it a better name, which is Mandarin Patinkin.

They named it after Mandy Patinkin.

Yep.

It's a great name.

People got so excited about this duck that they would crowd, crowd, like there are photos on the Wikipedia page of people like almost murdering each other to get closer to this duck to take its picture.

It caused ecological problems in the wetlands surrounding the pond.

And

not everyone loved this duck.

Indeed, the head of the ornithology department of the American Museum of Natural History, who I will not name because this person sounds like a jerk,

said that Mandarin Patinkin is what they call a, quote, plastic duck because it did not appear here in nature.

It clearly was a pet duck that got free

and was sold in a pet shop and then got free somehow.

And the owner would not claim it because apparently it is illegal to keep a duck as a pet in New York City laws.

Who likes them?

Nobody.

And so this director of ornithology of the Museum of Natural History, who I shall not name because I also said that this duck had ornithological interest colon zero.

I disagree.

Wow.

I disagree.

Respectfully.

This is a fancy duck.

But Mandarin Patinkin did not need this kind of treatment, up with which it would not put.

And in 2019, it left the pond.

We do not know where Mandarin Patinkin is now.

I hope that they are doing okay, but they leave behind only a memory, a legacy of fanciness.

Ducks are more fancy, Greg.

Fancier than geese.

Sorry, Sebastopol geese.

You're out of here.

Here's something from Bailey in Coralville, Iowa.

My cousin Sarah and I disagree as to whether a dolphin has a butt.

Uh-huh.

She thinks the butt is by the tail.

I maintain that in order to be a butt, it has to relate to an anus.

Please order Sarah to acknowledge that a dolphin does not have a butt.

Well, this is an interesting philosophical question, Jesse,

because how can there be butt if there is no leg?

That's a really good point.

How can there be butt if there is no flap?

How can there be butt if there is no cheek?

Can there be butt?

Well, I am here to tell you that googling, quote, dolphin anus, unquote,

was not the trip into horror that I expected it to be.

I am happy to tell you that all of the top hits were perfectly reasonable scientific charts and observations of how a dolphin poops.

And indeed, a dolphin has an anus.

It is concealed within a slit on the bottom of its body at the base of its tail, sort of where the tail kind of meets the body, if you can picture it.

It is not, as I, now I'm not really sure what cousin Sarah means by

the dolphin's butt is by the tail.

By this definition, yes, the dolphin's butt is definitely by the tail because it is near the base of the tail.

But I think, and I can only imagine

that the point of dispute here is that Sarah says that the butt indicates the end of the dolphin, that is the end of the tail, that is the fin.

And that is not true.

The butt is not the end of the dolphin.

No more than butt, the human butt that we all have,

is the end of us.

That is kind of the middle side of us.

So I am going to go ahead and settle this in favor of Bailey in Coralville, Iowa.

She is correct.

The butt pertains primarily to anus.

not the end of the creature.

But there are many, many great butts in nature.

Jesse Thorne, did you know that?

Many great butts in nature.

It's part of nature's majesty.

It's part of nature's majesty.

Do you know that the manatee eats a lot of underwater vegetation that makes it very gassy?

I knew about the vegetation.

I didn't know about the gas.

Yeah, yeah.

And

they have a butt, too, and they fart to propel themselves.

It sounds like my uncle wasn't really the world's largest source of natural gas.

No, no.

His novelty hat lied.

Not farter of the year,

which is a t-shirt that was pointed out on the boardwalk of Ocean City, New Jersey.

Our daughter pointed out and said, we should get that for dad.

She said that to my wife and whole human being life partner.

And my wife and whole human being life partner said, yeah, that's funny.

And I'm like, what are you not telling me?

Too many snacking cheeses.

You know what's interesting about the poops of a wombat?

The anus and the poop of a wombat?

Is it cubic in shape?

A wombat poops cubes, and no one knows why.

It is one of the only naturally formed cubes in nature, the wombat poop.

Look it up.

It's uncanny.

No one understands why, and they're very interested in how a wombat rectum forms a cube of poop to expel through a round anus.

How does it happen?

Engineers would like to know, because forming cubes is hard, not easy.

And apparently, so is the wombat poop.

It's one of the driest poops on earth.

Wombat poops are very hard.

That's why they can maintain their cubic shape because they are getting all the moisture out of that poop before they get rid of it.

It's like they're living on dune.

Sorry, I don't know a lot about dune.

I'm more of a Zune guy.

Of course.

Which do you want to hear about first?

There are two more.

It's your choice.

You know what, Jennifer Marmor, it's your choice.

Would you like to hear about the anus of the parrotfish or the anus of Australia's Merry River turtle?

Give me that turtle.

All right.

Turtle.

Merry River Turtle, endangered turtle in Australia.

Many think that it is, many think that the duck-billed platypus is the strangest creature to come out of Australia.

And those people are correct.

But second strangest for sure

is the Merry River Turtle, which is a turtle that not only has...

long arms and legs that like really stick out of its shell and float around, but it's got a long tail sticking out of its shell as well.

And on that long tail, there's a cloaca, aka a herpetological anus.

And that cloaca breathes air.

It's got gills in its butt.

It can stay underwater.

I regret asking for this.

Yeah, well,

you're going to hear it one way or the other.

It's extraordinary.

Nature's majesty.

But let me tell you about.

Let me tell you about the parrotfish.

Parrotfish of the Pacific, they feed on coral reefs, live coral reefs, coral polyps.

They eat them.

They got teeth.

They grind them down.

Their body grinds them down.

And they poop out a little something we call sand.

That's right.

85% of the soft sand peaches on Hawaii.

That's parrotfish poop, everybody.

The humphead parrotfish can produce 200 pounds of sand per year.

You would not have sandy beaches were it not for the remarkable anus of the parrotfish.

Truly,

truly the anus is a wonderful thing across all of these species.

Thank you for asking me about how a dolphin poops and where its butt is.

Its butt is its anus slit.

And this is the end of Big Booty content on Judge John Hodgman.

You're welcome, Judge Ropkin.

I hope you enjoyed it.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll get an update from some past litigants, John, about a spooky shed, boy.

Or as my youngest child, Frankie, would call it, a pookie shed.

A pookie shed.

My kid would call it a spooky shed.

My children would call it a spooky shed because they're adults now and I don't get to talk about how cute they are and they want to buy me farter of the year shirts.

That's pretty cute.

It is cute.

Enjoy your babies.

Let's go to the break.

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.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast, the podcast about cute ways our children say things.

Coming up after the credits, Jesse will sing a song written by his 10-year-old that is dedicated to knob TVs, vintage televisions where you change the channels by turning knobs.

Cannot wait.

After the credits, you say?

I'll be going to the next story.

It's going to be after the credits.

I'm going to perform an original song by Grace Thorne, my 10-year-old, who has been walking around the house singing this song about Nob TVs, her current greatest passion.

And why not?

Turning that dial to get those UHF, turning it into Channel 25 to watch Star Blazers.

That was a great feeling.

You know, in my house, my father's house

had maybe a 10-inch black and white television.

This is well, well into the 1980s.

Right.

We're talking about 1989 or something.

Oh, yeah.

Avarti Cheese was already out of style.

Exactly.

People had moved on to clearly Canadian.

And

we really did

have a television where the knob was broken and you changed the channel with a wrench.

Classic.

Classic TV hack.

Exactly.

Here's a case from Gabriella in St.

Louis, Missouri.

I have a one and a half year old cat named Pippin.

Since I adopted him in June of 2021, I have derived an infinite amount of joy from watching him sleep at my feet while I work at my desk.

Recently, he's discovered my warm and cozy closet and has begun sleeping in there, out of my view.

I've started closing the closet door to encourage Pippin to hang out by my desk instead of in the closet.

My identical twin sister Liana, who lives in Norwalk, Connecticut, says that I'm denying Pippin of his God or whatever, given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of coziness.

Liana requests an injunction from the court so that I no longer prioritize my own joy over Pippin's.

I promise to send a billion cute Pippin photos for the Judge John Hodgman social media feeds to complement this dispute.

Jesse, I noticed that you said Missouri, which is one of the ways people pronounce Missouri.

Yeah, we're going to get mail.

Look,

my dad was from Missouri, and he said Missouri, so he's dead now.

I want his ghost to like me.

Exactly.

I noticed also when you mentioned Gabriella's twin sister, Liana, she lives in Norwalk, Connecticut, and then there's two words that you didn't say.

Yeah, well, this is, I think, a typo or nonsense words.

In the parentheses here, after it says, who lives in Norwalk, Connecticut?

And then there's a parenthetical that I didn't read because

it's just a typo or nonsense words.

It says

Nguengland.

Yeah, I don't know.

Maybe, maybe Gabriella just sort of dropped something on her keyboard or something.

I don't know.

It was probably one of those migraines that makes you seem like you're saying crazy words or whatever.

I guess so.

I hope.

Maybe Pippin walked across the keyboard.

Pippin might have jumped up and walked across the keyboard.

It's warm there.

Keyboard's always warm.

Do you know that when I did get your pets in honor of the maximum fun block party the other week, we visited it with the cat of um, uh, or the two cats, actually, Archie and Panda, the cats of Audrey and Dan McCoy.

Uh, Dan being, of course, one of the three hosts of the Flop House.

That's nice.

And Audrey showed me their cat Panda sprawled out

in front of the keyboard on her desk.

And she said, Oh, yeah, this is Panda enjoying his retractable cat shelf.

What others might call a keyboard tray?

Yes, exactly.

It took me a long time.

I was like, oh, that's a great idea.

I would love to have a retractable cat shelf on my desk and have a cat climb up there.

But it was just the keyboard tray.

And then do you know what happened, Jesse?

What's that?

They had a kitty condo.

Do you know what that is?

That's like a piece of cat furniture with places for the cat to hide.

Yeah, it's like a little mini tree house made of wall-to-wall carpeting for the cat with a little hutch.

And I said to, you know, I've always had a fantasy of being a cat and going into one of those things where you put your phone into it and have it face out so I can feel like I'm inside the hutch.

And then you and Dan just have a normal conversation like I'm a cat spying on you.

And they did it.

And it was one of the most profound experiences I've ever had in my life.

Sitting inside that hutch.

feeling small, listening to them talk about, have you seen our cat John lately?

I don't know where he is.

Check the hutch.

It was like an an out-of-body experience.

I couldn't speak for a little while.

It was so intense.

Telling you, we're going to be able to do things with virtual reality.

They're going to build empathy

across the species, across the world.

It's going to be incredible.

But anyway, when you left your reverie, there were just a few feathers at the corner of your mouth.

No.

No, no, no, no.

I'm an indoor cat.

I'm a cat.

A friend called you and said, Did I just see you in Central Park?

No, I'm an indoor cat.

I am frankly declawed.

But back to this letter.

I take some issue with the hyperbole that Gabriella is offering here.

An infinite amount of joy.

A billion pictures.

First of all, we don't want a billion pictures of your cat.

I'm sure Pippin is delightful.

A billion is too many.

We get a lot of pictures of pets, and I love them.

I love them all.

But first of all, A, you didn't give us even one, Gabriella, so I don't even know what we're talking about here.

And B,

I'm not going to show Jesse Thorne a picture of a pet just because it's cute.

All pets are cute.

The pet has to be doing a cute thing.

Yeah, that's, I mean, ultimately, that's a distinction that so many pet owners miss.

If you're going to share a picture of your pet with your favorite podcast host, that's great.

But let's have that pet do something cute.

Or be a scruffy dog.

Either way, it's a win.

Or.

Let it be a Merry River turtle, like the one I just dropped in the chat, Jennifer and Jesse.

Yeah, from your description, that definitely sounds like something that I want to look at.

Well, why don't you take a look and see what you think?

No, that's okay.

No, please.

No, that's fine.

You can.

I'm here.

It is

in the chat.

Right there in the chat.

It's sort of your show, so I guess I have to.

Well, we co-founded it.

Wait.

I thought it was going to be the tailbutt.

It's got a little hat on.

One thing I forgot to mention about the Merry River Turtle is that for some reason, algae grows on top of its head, so it looks like it's wearing a Joker wig.

Like a Chia Pet, like a turtle Chia Pet.

Like a turtle Chia Pet.

But it also has a little, it's got a little pig nose, and then it's got a little grin on its face, like, algae on my head.

Ain't I a stinker?

It's also got little fingers protruding from its chin.

Those are little fingies that it has to

sort through the mud as it's looking for food.

The Merry River

extraordinary turtle.

That is something.

All right.

Well,

back to this case of cats and closets.

Here's what I think.

Jesse, do you have an opinion on this?

Is it okay to lock your cat out of a room or a closet where you know it wants to go and hang out because you want it to hang out with you?

The love of my life is my dog, Coco.

You know that.

Yeah.

She's now 14 years old.

Oh, my goodness.

I love her with all of my heart.

She's getting getting deaf.

She's a little blind.

She moves a lot slower than she used to.

She doesn't care to move all that much at all.

And she's less interested in goofing around with me.

Yeah.

A lot of times she likes to go into the depths of my closet and curl up and nap for hours on end.

And when she's not doing that, she's mostly peeing on my carpets.

And I do miss her when she goes in there.

Yeah.

But I also think it is her right to live her life on her terms outside of the fact that I lock her up inside my house

and only give her one kind of food that comes in pellet form.

Outside of those strictures.

We mix in a special wet food for her.

She's an autonomous being.

She's getting older.

But I think that doesn't mean that I couldn't create a situation more amenable to her spending time with me, such as a cozy little spot under my desk.

What if I did that?

What if I put a little heating pad into a dog bed?

Oh, I thought you were going to say you were going to rub Gainsburgers on your ankles.

What if I rubbed Gainsburgers on my ankles?

I don't even know what that means.

That's a kind of dog food.

Gainsburgers.

Gainsburgers dog food.

The only dog food I recognize is Dick Van Patten.

Dick Van Patten's hobo chili for dogs is a real thing that existed.

Well, here's what I, yeah.

I mean, in the case of

a senior creature, you want them to enjoy their lives however they see fit.

And

I absolutely feel like, yeah, Coco should go cuddle in that closet.

There was an aged cat that lived with our friend Christine Connor when we were in high school, named Winnie,

who slept in the ashes of last night's fire.

That was how she sought warmth.

Curl up in the ashes of the previous night's fire in the fireplace.

That's incredible, too.

But Pippin, I'll point out, is a year and a half old, but but a youth, an adolescent, if you will,

a playful creature.

And I think that it's, you know, Pippin, Pippin will find places that Pippin likes to be, and you should respect where Pippin likes to be.

But I think that it's okay to close the closet

because, not so much that because you have the right to force Pippin to cuddle with you.

Pippin won't do that.

Pippin will do whatever Pippin wants to do.

But I think it's okay to close that closet because, A, it's none of Liana's business.

And B, if Pippin sleeps in the closet, it's only a matter of time before he vomits in that closet.

And then

is Liana going to climb into your closet and clean that cat vom off your shoes?

I don't think so.

That's going to be your job.

I would investigate if you've got the space, a kitty condo.

Gabriella, get a kitty condo.

And then Pippin will have a little hutch to go into that is more in your view, for example.

And then you will have a place to put me when I call you on Get Your Pets on Instagram because I want to get back in the hutch.

Some people want to go back to the womb.

I want to go back to the hutch.

But in the meantime, Pim is going to sleep wherever Pim wants to sleep.

Take the affection from a cat when you can get it, but you can't force it ever.

But I do think it's okay to close the closet because that's going to be full of cat piss and vomit any second.

Judge Hodgman, the spooky season is over, but we have an update here from a former litigant named Sheila.

You might remember her from episode 487, Brush with the Law.

Yes.

She wanted to paint her parents' shed with a very spooky theme.

Spooky kind of Jack Skellington Adams family theme.

A very ambitious, spooky paint scheme.

That's right, I remember.

Her sister Elise preferred something more adaptable to the rest of the year.

Right.

And if I remember correctly, I ordered Sheila to paint the shed shed a more neutral gray, something that could be interpreted as spooky, but wasn't going to be outwardly Halloween-y all year long.

So paint it gray, and then offset with detailing with my favorite Dutch black glossy paint from Fine Paints of Europe.

And then I did allow for one spooky element, a red door.

And Sheila wrote and sent us photos of the end result.

She said it took them a while to get started, but quote, once we got set up for the first coat, our dog Maverick immediately stepped in paint.

We have photos of his handiwork, as well as our mom Holly cleaning his paw.

You can tell from his face that he knows what he did.

This is a pretty cute picture of a dog feeling shame.

Would you agree, Jesse?

Gonna take a look at this picture.

Yeah, Maverick.

He really did leave a perfect paw print.

Hey, you named him Maverick, not compliant.

Oh, look at Maverick's little face.

It looks sad.

He says, I got paint on my Tootsie.

He's got a painty paw, but.

Maverick is a beauty.

Maverick, you can send me pictures of Maverick doing normal stuff.

Maverick is delightful.

And Sheila writes, we're all happy with the final look.

And if you scroll down, you can see the final look.

And it is, frankly, I'm going to say that that's a spookier shed.

than if it had been decorated, quote unquote, spooky.

I think they did a wonderful job

of creating a spooky shed that's year-round appropriate.

It's a light gray base with black trim and a red door.

And it looks like there's a garden gnome by the red door.

And I can't zoom in, but it looks like it might be a zombie garden gnome, which would be a great touch.

I think that this is a perfect balance of pookie and not pookie.

Well, Sheila writes, we're all happy with the final look, and it encouraged us to spruce up the backyard beyond the paint job.

So So a great experience overall.

And looking at this backyard and these two wonderful sisters in the zombie gnome and the spooky shed and the backyard, I, in my approximation of a Zelda Rubinstein from Poltergeist Voice, will say, I pronounce this yard spruced.

Zelda Rubinstein was from Poltergeist Jesse.

Got it.

The docket is clear, and that's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Our editor, Valerie Moffat.

You can 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.

And check out the maximum fun subreddit to discuss this episode.

You can find that at maximumfun.redddit.com.

Submit your cases at maximumfun.org slash jjho

or email hodgman at maximumfun.org.

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

Now, John, I promised that at the end of this week's program, I would share the latest original song by one of my children.

This one is called Knob TVs.

It's by my 10-year-old child, Grace.

And this song is inspired by my daughter's passion for outdated technology.

She's insisting at this time that a knob television is the only thing she wants for Christmas, despite the fact that she understands that knob televisions do not even show over-the-air television in 2021 when all of our television broadcasts are digital.

I think this is something that you must and should honor, and I cannot wait to hear the song.

This is you performing the song that is written by Grace, correct?

Yeah, I think this is this nom TV that she's imagining is just going to be on display in her room with the gray static on the screen like the front window of artists television access on Valencia Street in my childhood.

I think it's a fantastic nightlight and a wonderful curio.

So

everyone in the world, here is the world debut of the song, which is called Nob TVs, as composed by Grace and performed by Jesse Thorne.

We love

our Nob TVs,

we treasure all Nob TVs,

we worship

Nob

T Vs,

we bow down

before nob

TVs.

Wow.

That had a feeling of collegiate glee club to it.

And a lot of

matter feel.

I think as performed, it has a more reverential feeling, sort of like a hymnal

sort of feel.

But I think, you know, in the right glee club context, certainly where you went to college, where I think all glee clubs meet up in like a mausoleum or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

Then, yeah, sure.

Mausoleum, you.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

All right.

Make sure I get a copy of that, Jennifer Marmor.

I'm going to see if I can get the Wiffinboost to do an arrangement.

Yeah.

We love our Nob TVs.

We treasure all Nob TVs.

We worship Nob TVs.

We

bow down

before

love

TVs

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