Live Dangerously, Look Terribly

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne, and joining me from Brooklyn, New York City, where they paint murals of Biggie, is Judge John Hodgman.

All over Park Slope.

Yeah, you know, we got we got murals of Jonathan Leetham up in here in Park Slope.

Murals of

murals of strollers outside bodegas, outside pho restaurants.

Sorry.

So, Jesse, look, I am back in Brooklyn.

Maine is sadly in the rearview mirror and it is farther than the objects appear.

It is gone in my past for now.

Thank you, Joel Mann.

Thank you, Monty Belmonte, for anchoring that all-New England episode last week.

I'm back in Brooklyn.

And Jesse, I got to tell you, I'm mad.

Really?

I'm not mad about the geographical change, Jesse.

That's okay.

These are the emotional lurches of life that make life interesting.

I'm mad because I got back to Brooklyn and I got an email and it made me, made me mad.

Wow.

Got an email from

listener Kate.

Now, we've heard from Kate before, Jesse, because remember when,

remember when we decided to turn this podcast into an all-condiments podcast?

Because we decided we wanted to be really popular and millionaires?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we were struggling for a name, you know, and Kate came through with a pretty good name back in August.

Kate came through with the name Condigents.

Condigents.

It's pretty good.

It's pretty solid.

For a Doughboys knockoff podcast.

Yeah.

I'm still pretty sure we should do it, but we'll put a pin in that.

Kate went from being my top fave

to my fanta-level problematic fave.

Wow.

Because then Kate followed up with an email on September 10th saying, hello from Vermont.

Okay, so far.

Settle a bet.

Did David Reese write that Beaches of Michigan segment?

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

This is in reference, of course, to a couple of weeks ago when I had to eat some crow.

I had to munch on some crow

because I had been on the podcast talking about how Michigan, how, how Lake Michigan has no decent beaches.

I don't care whether in your Wisconsin, Indiana, or Michigan, Lake Michigan has no decent beaches.

And people were mad at me about it.

And I did some research.

It turns out they have some incredible beaches, particularly in the Indiana dunes.

Did a whole segment about it.

I was so happy about it.

And then Kate wrote, Did David Reese write that?

Now, Kate, I don't want to make you feel bad, but you genuinely made me feel bad.

It's not.

I was on the streets of Brooklyn getting ready to start my day, and I checked my email.

I'm like, what?

I poured my ever-loving heart into that thing.

Did David Reese?

Look, I love David Reese.

You know that, Jesse.

Yeah, we all love David Reese.

A wonderful man.

Wonderful man.

Now more than ever a good time to revisit David Reese's groundbreaking and still blisteringly funny and frankly prescient series of comics about the war in Afghanistan called Get Your War On.

Go back and find them.

There are books of them.

Of course, David Reese is my very dear friend and my colleague.

We're working on a secret project together.

I can nothing against David Reese.

I'd be proud if David Reese had written a thing, but wouldn't someone write, there's nothing, there's nothing Reeseian about that.

My Great Lakes Beach Report was all hodgman, Kate.

It's all hodgman.

You know what I wrote?

I wrote back to Kate and I said, how dare you?

That's what I wrote back.

Kate wrote back and just wrote, shrugs.

What can I say?

Wow.

Yeah.

Ice cold.

Ice cold up there in Vermont, Kate.

Ben and Jerry's.

We're talking about this.

Exactly.

The deep freeze.

Oh, boy.

You know how Ben and Jerry's has those frozen core varieties of ice cream?

Yeah.

Where you have delicious ice cream, but inside is a rock-hard, solid frozen core of some flavor you don't want?

That's your heart, Kate.

Yeah.

It's your heart.

But it's okay.

Just be careful.

Just be careful when you're emailing a podcaster.

Don't question the validity of their, don't say that I'm plagiarizing David Reese for getting a coast writer.

I'd throw myself into this.

Anyway, it's no big deal, Kate.

I love you.

I love you all.

I love you, Jesse.

I love you, Jennifer.

It's great to be back on this part of my coast.

Great to see you there in Los Angeles.

Let's dispend some justice.

It was a good segment.

Reese wrote it, right?

No.

Not even as a joke.

Not even as a joke.

Here's the David Reese is an an incredible writer,

but he doesn't know anything.

I'll tell you what.

I'm going to text him right now.

I have his number.

Just hang on.

You opened this door, Bailiff.

You're going to walk through it.

David Reese, texting him.

What can

you tell me about the beaches?

You can hear I'm typing

of Lake Michigan.

We'll see what he writes back.

Michigan.

Question mark.

Send.

All right.

Now I'm putting that on silent mode.

See what happens.

Let's hear some justice.

Here's a case from Kevin in Los Angeles.

My partner and I have a dispute regarding how and more specifically where I trim my beard stubble.

I'll sometimes go to the shared roof of our apartment building to shave off my short stubble with an electric razor.

I only go when the roof is vacant and I go to an area where my fellow tenants do not lounge and I let my stubble fall onto some gravel.

I do this to prevent making a small mess of our bathroom, but my partner is exasperated by the thought of potentially having my tiny stubbly hairs blowing around where people may end up lounging.

Your guidance, wisdom, and firm grasp on the scales of justice are needed in helping us with our hygienic differences.

I let my stubble fall onto some gravel.

Thanks, William.

Carlos Williams.

That's exactly what I was going to say.

Such a great line.

Such a great line, Kevin.

But is it the correct thing to do?

Jesse,

you've got yourself a beautiful mustache and beard.

Thank you.

You keep them in trim.

Yeah, I do.

And this is timely for me because I woke up this morning and I'm like,

I got to trim my mustache because it's starting to crawl into my mouth and I hate that feeling.

But I didn't get around to it today.

So now I have to figure out: am I going to do it in the my bathroom

or am I going to climb to the top of a building like

a daredevil or something?

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like a Batman.

Yeah.

Where do you do your, where do you trim and what's your, what's your process?

Well,

since I stopped going to the barber shop with the dawn of our current era,

I purchased a high-quality plug-in hair trimmer.

Oh, so you'd go, you'd have a person do it for you.

Yeah, sure.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

But these days, I have a high-quality trimmer.

I go into the backyard, plug it into the plug where the sprinklers are.

That's where the water comes out, Jesse.

That's no good.

No wonder that doesn't work.

Luckily, you're not electrified.

It's powered by a water wheel.

I plug plug into the plugs where the sprinklers plug in and i do one half across the top number four on the beard um and then once in a while i do use a trimmer in the house to get my neckline right um and i'll use a little scissor once in a while on my mustache which i do over the sink in my bathroom right right and then but i i wouldn't like Doing much more than that over the sink, it would be a bit of a hassle because you really got to to whoosh around and wet a paper towel or whatever to get the little hairs off.

Look,

I appreciate where Kevin is coming from because as you well know, and I know too, that if you're trimming your facial hair or any hair over the sink in your bathroom,

it makes a kind of a hard mess to clean up.

Yeah.

You know, beard stubble is kind of the glitter.

of personal

personal grooming.

Yeah, that's true.

You know what I I mean?

Rudy would not like it.

Rudy would come into my bathroom and see that beard stubble and it would stab him in the eye because it's hard to get rid of.

Yeah.

You know, Jordan Jesse Go is sometimes sponsored by a company that makes personal groomers.

You can go ahead and say it.

You can go ahead and say it.

Get that extra money.

Thanks, Banscaped.

Use the code JJGo.

Yeah.

And the best quality of those groomers, I mean, they're perfectly good quality in general, but their best characteristic is that they're waterproof.

So you can do your personal grooming in the shower where everything just goes straight down the drain.

You don't get itchy or make a mess or anything.

Yeah.

How about that?

I would totally try one of those now that I, because, you know, I've heard those ads on yours and other podcasts.

And

I find them gross.

Yeah, they can be a bit much.

I just find, it's like, I don't want to hear about this, guys.

Yeah.

But that's a really high quality add-on.

That's a value up that their groomers, that their clippers are waterproof.

I would want to use that.

Because back when I used to shave, I would shave in the shower.

I mean, a lot.

Like with a, you know, with a with a Gillette or whatever.

But if you're if you're trimming over, it's very hard to get it out.

And here's the thing.

I, when, when you say you do, what is it, half above, half across the top?

One half on the top, number four on the beard.

You mean you're setting your trimmer guide to one half

to zip off your top hairs.

Exactly.

And then number four,

so I've, A, never had my beard professionally trimmed.

This may explain a lot about why my facial hair looks the way it does.

I've never had it professionally trimmed and I always freehand it.

I don't put a guide on at all, just freehand.

I like to live dangerously and I like to look terribly, apparently, because it's not working out.

So

when I have the opportunity to go outside to do my trimming, which I've done in the past, it's a real load off my mind because

I'm not leaving a mess for myself or anyone else to clean up.

Now, Kevin, I will give you a hint.

This is a life hack that I came up with.

If you put some paper towels into your sink basin

before you're trimming,

before you're trimming is the English way to say that,

then you will collect most of your stubble in those paper towels.

And then you just wet them and you just wipe everything on out, and you've got yourself a beard stubble dumpling that you can just throw away.

But that's.

By the way, have you had the beard stubble dumplings at Momofuku?

Incredible.

I can't.

I can't.

I can't.

Every time I order them, they're like, we just sold the last one.

Just sold the last one to Foodie McFutie, whoever the most foodie person is today.

I don't even know anymore.

Yeah.

But there's no need to do that because that's wasteful.

That's wasteful of paper when you can just go up to the top of your building, plug in,

and I would suggest, Kevin, and it seems like you're doing this.

If you don't have a battery-powered clipper, plug it into a plug, not the place where the water, the sprinkler gets hooked up to, because that's the water fountain or whatever.

That's the water line.

You do that, you know what's going to happen?

You're going to get electrocuted.

You're going to get turned into a superhero called Water Razor.

Don't want that.

You want to be yourself, Kevin.

You definitely want to clip discreetly.

I think you're doing the right thing by going up there.

And if there's someone else up there on the roof already, lounging on a Chez Long or whatever, don't do it.

Don't do it then.

Ideally, I don't know what your roof looks like, but find like something to hide you.

Like if you have an HVAC unit on top, hide behind the compressor.

Yeah.

Just go discreetly out of the way, maybe behind the little hut where the door to the roof comes out.

Inside a potted bush.

Inside a potted bush.

maybe set up a separate little outdoor shower stall up there for yourself i don't know but kevin's partner i'm sorry that's nothing kevin's doing nothing wrong if anything he's saving you if anything he's saving you both some mess that one or both of you are gonna have to clean up and here's the deal rooftop lounge in a city you take your chances you never know when a pigeon's gonna fly into your face You never know when you're gonna like a flyer for some band playing that floated up out of the alleyway.

You never know when Blackstreet is gonna be singing the hook to a Jay-Z Jay-Z song.

Yeah, you never know.

You know, there's lots of stuff up there, you know, like never mind stubble.

What about all that leftover Spider-Man webs that he's leaving around town all the time?

Yeah.

Fly right into your eye like that.

That guy's a menace.

Yeah.

I'd pay good money for pictures of that guy.

I know.

It's very lucrative.

If you could get, if you could have a job just taking pictures of Spider-Man selfies somehow,

you could probably sell them to the newspaper.

Probably.

And also, probably your stubble's being used by birds for their nests.

Yeah.

Good job, Kevin.

You're fine.

Sorry, Kevin's partner.

You're the opposite of fine.

You're fine, too, but you know, wrong.

Here's something from Paul in Capriole, Ontario.

My lovely wife, Samantha, often leaves strands and clumps of her hair on the shower walls.

Is this what we're going to do all day today?

Hair disputes?

I guess.

You know what I call it when I shave my head out in the backyard?

Feeding the birds.

Feeding the birds.

They love it for their nests.

Yeah.

My lovely wife, Samantha, often leaves strands and clumps of her hair on the shower walls, sometimes for days at a time.

It tends to dry out, expand off the wall, then get caught on me while I shower.

This grosses me out.

Please, judge, place an injunction on my wife to have her clean her hair off the wall after she showers.

Thank you for your time.

Jesse, this is gross.

Yeah.

This is a gross dispute.

Very gross.

But the solution to this gross dispute is obvious.

But before I make my ruling, can I just clarify something, Jesse?

Of course.

Where do Paul and Samantha live?

That's Capriole, Ontario.

Capriole, Ontario?

Yeah.

Really?

On the Vermilion River?

I think that's right, yeah.

Oh, that's very interesting.

They're in Ontario.

Jesse, did you know that the source of the Vermilion River is an unnamed lake?

Literally an unnamed lake.

That's interesting.

Yeah, did you know?

I didn't know that.

And you know, I bet David Reese doesn't know that either.

The source of the river is an unnamed lake.

David Reese, did he write back?

Oh, this is what David Reese writes back.

Nothing.

My dad knows those beaches from his childhood, though.

Phil Reese.

Phil wrote the segment.

Yeah, Phil Reese got a big birthday coming up, but I don't think he's got time to write in segments.

Thank you, David.

I don't know.

That's for sure.

I don't think that even Phil Reese, though, would know that the Vermilion, the source of the Vermilion River is...

literally an unnamed lake in a region of Ontario that is literally called unorganized Sudbury.

And

I don't even think that Phil Reese knows that the Vermilion River flows 200 kilometers, it's about 120 miles in length, first southeast, largely following the Canadian National Railway Transcontinental Line, until it reaches Capriole, Ontario, at which point it turns west and then twists and turns its way through Vermilion Lake, McFadden Falls, the Duncan Chute, the Whitefish Lake Six Ojibwe First Nations Reserve, and then turns west and then southwest again via Rat Lake until it reaches the town of Espanola, Ontario, where it flows into the Spanish River and finally out to Lake Huron.

Hey, Kate, you think David Reese wrote that?

No.

It's mostly Wikipedia so far, but the rest is all me.

John Hodgman, author of your second in history, Judge John Hodgman Great Lake Speech Report.

Because as you probably know, Kate, Lake Huron was named for the Wyandotte Nation who lived there until they were killed by European disease and eventually dispersed by forced resettlement, first to Kansas and eventually to Oklahoma with a smaller reserve in Quebec City.

The French called them Hurons.

They were called the Wyandots, the Wyndots.

It is the second largest freshwater great lake and the third largest on Earth, if you don't count the Caspian Sea, which I assuredly do not.

Who would?

And if you combine Lake Huron with Lake Michigan, and why wouldn't you?

They are only separated by the five-mile strait of Mackinac and and are, hydrologically speaking, one lake system.

Lake Huron-Hyphen, Michigan, or Lake Michigan-Hyphen-Huron, is the largest lake on Earth, Kate.

Now, Kate, Jesse, Jennifer, you ask.

Lake Huron.

Does this lake have beaches?

No, I didn't ask that, but go ahead.

Look, I don't know the answer.

Why don't you ask the soft sands at Sauble Beach?

in the town of South Bruce Peninsula.

That was my backup plan.

South Bruce Peninsula in the county of Bruce.

Sauble Beach was once the site of the Canadian National Beach Volleyball Championships and home to not one, but two former National Hockey League players, Lane and Curtis McDermott, brothers.

Both of the McDermotts.

Why don't you ask Wasaga Beach?

It only happens to be the longest freshwater beach in the world.

Bite at Caspian Sea.

Wasaga Beach is not only the former home of Jason Arnott, another former NHL hockey player.

Holy cow.

Yeah, famed for his Stanley Cup winning goal

in the year 2000.

He played for the New Jersey Devils and they won against a different team.

Good job.

Congratulations.

This is a Jason Arnott Day in Wasaga Beach, but also

Wasaga Beach was once the home of Adam Copeland and Jason Reno or Renault.

I'm not sure how you pronounce it, because I know them better, as you do, by their WWE ring names, Edge and Christian wrestlers, Canadian wrestlers.

Hey, Kate, why don't you go ask Grand Bend Beach if that's a beach?

Grand Bend Beach, aka Florida North, site of the MTV Canada reality show Grand Benders.

Did you know that one, Jesse?

Was their answer to Jersey Shore?

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I knew that some of these beaches had been featured on much music, but I wasn't aware of that MTV Canada show.

MTV Canada.

Grand Benders featured,

it was a reality show that followed the wild misadventures of Mickey Rabaport and his son Justin, the owners of Grand Bend's rowdy Cocos nightclub.

The show ran from 2012 until 2015 when both Mickey and Justin were arrested for allegedly assaulting Sean Evans, a Cocos DJ, who also happened to be a season 11 bachelorette contestant.

What a crossover here.

It's going down in Grand Beach.

Yeah.

They were arrested for allegedly assaulting Sean Evans by throwing a brick at Sean Evans' head and not missing.

I don't know what the state of that case is.

That's incredible.

Ask these beaches if there are beaches in Lake Huron.

And if those sands could talk, they would say, obviously, we have beaches in our name.

But, Jesse,

Jennifer, the allure of Lake Huron is not just on shore, it is also under the water.

For across the lake in Michigan, it's an international lake.

There is a siren who lures sailors to their doom.

Jesse, there is.

It's literally called Shipwreck Alley.

There are so many shipwrecks in Lake Huron that they created the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in 2000 to protect the lake shorebed.

Because Lake Huron has been killing ships since the 17th century, including Le Griffon,

the very first European fixed-mass ship to even attempt to navigate the lake.

The first one, Lake Huron, killed it.

Le Griffon's final resting place is unknown, but Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary has mapped and preserved the location of some 116 historically significant sunken ships from the 19th to the early 20th century.

And unlike oceans, which ruin shipwrecks with rust and shipwreck-eating worms, true,

the clear fresh waters of Lake Huron, after they get done killing these ships, perfectly preserve them.

And you can view some of them via glass-bottom boat and even snorkel through the LM Mason, which sunk in 1861.

But others that fell victim to the so-called shipwreck alley remain hidden except to the most experienced divers.

People come from all over the world, including Australia.

to float around in ships like the Shamrock and the Harvey Bissell and the Knight Templar and a ship called the Dump Scow and a wooden dredge.

I mean, if you're in the Antipodes and you hear about the Dump Scow, you book yourself the first flight you can to

yeah, you call up Qantas Airlines and say,

get me to Lake Huron.

There's also also among the 116 in just this area alone, Shipwreck Alley,

a wooden dredge called Heart Failure.

I don't know.

Weirdly,

truly weirdly to my mind, there is only a single Google Maps review of the Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuary.

Lysiko Apakidze

gave it one star and a one-word review.

And I don't know if I'm pronouncing this correctly in Swedish.

It is spelled S-A-M-S-T

with

a umlaut above the A.

Sampst,

which according to Google

translates to worst.

That's it.

One review, one star, one word, worst.

But I'm not sure I take Lysico's word for it because Lysico has only written two other reviews of places on Google.

One was for the Paris airport Le Bruger, which is not the one I know.

And he wrote Fin Fligplatz, which means nice airport.

Okay.

And then the other was for something called the Eiffel Tower.

One star.

Val Bras.

Well, good.

I don't know if I'm translating this correctly, but I think Lysico is wrong.

I think the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary sounds amazing.

So forget Paris and get yourself out there to the largest lake on earth, Lake Michigan-Uron or Lake Huron-Ichigan.

Take your pick.

It's one great lake.

That's your Judge John Hodgman Great Lake Speech Report, humbly submitted to you by John Hodgman, Kate me.

So anyway, about that hair in the shower.

Oh, yeah, it's gross.

Stop doing that.

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

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

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.

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But made in isn't just for professional chefs.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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, and we have a case from Julia in Greensboro, South Carolina.

Greensboro, South Carolina.

My fiancé and I have a long-running argument that requires your judgment.

We both love celebrating Friendsgiving, but neither of us can agree on when or what Friendsgiving actually is.

I believe that Friendsgiving is a meal held before or on Thanksgiving with friends where everyone brings a dish of Thanksgiving food to share.

It's typically for people who don't live near their families or for friends to celebrate together before the holiday.

My fiancé says that an actual Friendsgiving is always held after

Thanksgiving and consists of Thanksgiving leftovers shared with friends.

He claims this makes more sense because you can serve leftovers and not have to cook a whole separate meal.

We ask you to issue an order as to when Friendsgiving should be celebrated.

Have you ever done this, Jennifer or Jesse?

Friendsgiving?

I celebrated Thanksgiving with a group of friends when I lived in New York and I wasn't coming home for Thanksgiving, but I think we just called it Thanksgiving.

We didn't give it this Friendsgiving name.

We were just like, we're going to have Thanksgiving at Doug's house.

Let's go.

And wasn't Doug's Giving the best Doug's giving you you's ever had?

Yeah.

Hands down.

We brought a turkey on the train from

Bedstead all the way to Astoria, baby.

Yeah.

That's the plot of that movie, The Warriors.

Pretty much.

The taking of turkey one, two, three.

The turkey of taking one, two, G.

It's the G-train, folks.

Yeah.

Thanks, Jennifer.

Did David Reese write that?

Yes.

Yeah, another David Reese ghost-written jammer.

Do what about you?

John Kimball wrote it, actually.

It was about the skyline.

Whoa, it's an Election Profit Makers deep cut reference.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Yeah.

You know, one of the great things about Election Profit Makers,

you know, and this is like one of the great things about friends.

Friends can give you joy just thinking about them.

When I learned that John Kimball, co-host of Election Profit Makers with David Reese, was really into skylines, sincerely and deeply into skylines, Like he thinks about them and keeps a spreadsheet of the best skylines and has criteria for why a skyline is good and less good.

And you got to ask him about it.

Go listen to Election Profit Makers.

But at some point, he

received a letter from, I think, an English language school in Singapore.

They were listeners to the podcast, and the kids were asked to vote on best skylines.

And you know what came in?

Number two, best skyline in the world in this class in Singapore?

Hartford, Connecticut.

Wow.

And it was a big haha laugh on EPM

until the next time, and here in my heart, until the next time I drove by Hartford, Connecticut, as I often do, where I-91 connects with I-84 as I'm going north to Maine, for example, or south from Maine.

And let me tell you something I never thought about before.

That is one majestic skyline.

Looks great.

You look at it from I-84, it's amazing.

It looks like a real city and not just the haunted insurance capital that has no humans in it.

Anyway, here's what I think.

First of all, Julia's fiancé is wrong.

You don't disagree with me on that, do you, Jesse Thorne?

You're absolutely correct.

Friendsgiving is Thanksgiving when you get together with your friends instead of your family.

Correct.

It is not an after-party.

It's not Friends Boxing Day.

No.

It's Friendsgiving.

Yeah.

It's not something you do later.

I don't know where you picked that up, fiancé, but you're wrong.

But here's the other thing I got to say to Julia is that like,

I love the idea of friends getting together

when, you know, like Jennifer, you are in New York and away from family and they get together and they, and they sit down and they have this special meal together and they.

offer gratitude to each other for their friendship and what they enjoy and it's blah blah blah blah blah i love that right but that's not the spirit of friends giving Exactly.

Friendsgiving, in my mind, the spirit of friendsgiving, and Jennifer, you're going to have to hit the button on this one.

The true spirit of friendsgiving, Julia, is fing Thanksgiving.

Because that's why it has a different name.

If you are doing Thanksgiving with your friends instead of your family, and Jennifer, I'm not maligning you in this.

You didn't know my feelings about this, maybe.

No, I don't believe I did.

Right.

It's fine.

Look, call it what you want, but Thanksgiving is a dumb, offensive holiday that should be stopped.

It is a celebration of a

completely fictitious history of the United States, except for the genocide part.

It's a true whitewash of almost everything it claims to celebrate, except for the horrible stuff.

It's a celebration, essentially, of genocide and cultural erasure.

It's gross.

You know, just thematically.

Sorry, everybody.

And before you go out there, yes, I dressed as a quote-unquote pilgrim and chased a live turkey around on a photo shoot in 2008 for Bomb Appetite magazine, no less.

I'm your problematic fave.

I'm sorry that I did what I did.

I wouldn't do it today.

I was stupid.

I apologize for it.

It was a mistake.

It's going to be a great episode of Fantai.

We'll just talk about that GIF.

You can find it online now or GIF.

I look at it and I regret it.

I'm like, that's wrong.

Thanksgiving is wrong.

Thanksgiving is a wrong holiday.

And that's setting aside the fact that logistically it's just stupid.

It's on a Thursday and you have to drive to your family on a Thursday.

And then what, you get a couple of days off after that?

And then it's only a couple of weeks before whatever big winter holiday you celebrate or don't celebrate.

I mean, it's just too much.

Between October, between Halloween, and your big rush of your winter holidays and New Year's Eve in the Western tradition, you need a break.

And what you don't need is to drive through traffic to eat bland food with family members who might be racist.

It's bad.

It's a bad holiday.

Are we going to host my mother-in-law?

Of course.

Yeah.

You know what I mean.

But I'm trying to say that Friendsgiving is a movement.

It's not merely an alternative Thanksgiving or one you do because it's more convenient.

You should celebrate Friendsgiving if you're going to celebrate it at all, instead of Thanksgiving, period.

Tell your relations, I'm not doing it.

I'm not even going to eat turkey.

I'm going to get together with my friends and eat what I want and be grateful for things I should be grateful for.

Not this dumb, fake, awful American mythology and these yams.

No offense, yams.

Eat whatever you want.

Let you like what you like.

I can't stand the sweet potatoes or the yams.

I'm sorry, it's not in me.

Ooh,

got a little hot there.

Yeah,

Jennifer, did I offend you by calling your friendsgiving fake?

Because you called it Thanksgiving?

No, I think that we all gathered, you know, to celebrate each other and be thankful for our friendships.

And

that's why Douglas was a little bit more than that.

Never for one moment were we like,

you know,

doing the pilgrim thing and all that stuff no i wasn't suggesting you were wearing jennifer you were wearing a pilgrim suit well that was the fashion in 2007 it was 2007 you couldn't get away from that in new york like vice do's and don'ts was all just different ways of wearing pilgrim suits right but no i um judge i i completely agree with what you're saying it's a big time for pilgrim suits and electro clash

i didn't mean to single you out exactly i just meant to say i didn't feel singled out.

Yeah, that friendsgiving as an idea,

it's a kind of gross word.

I don't like to say it, friendsgiving.

But as an idea, as a cancellation of Thanksgiving, that is at its greatest value.

That is the spirit of friendsgiving.

I think we all should celebrate it.

And once again, I really, really am sorry that I wore that pilgrim outfit and chased that turkey.

It wasn't great for either of us.

It was mean to the turkey.

It was insensitive of me.

And I apologize.

I like Thanksgiving.

I'm sorry, Jesse.

Me and Jenkins.

Look, I like being with my family.

Yeah, if you like being with your family, great.

If you love traveling with your family, great.

Redefine the holiday however you see it.

I mean, yeah, that's more or less what we do.

But

I like Jen's family too.

Yeah, we're great.

My family's problematic, so it's nice to spend some time with Jen's mom.

Obviously, I'm not invited to Jen's.

You're always welcome.

I think.

You really blew it.

You're always welcome.

My dad, I think, would be happier to have you there than all of us.

You know, people say that Jen's mom is just a mother,

but she's also my commercial real estate agent.

They do always say that.

One of the great sayings.

Okay, here's something from Marcella in Mount Kisco, New York.

Dear Judge Hodgman, my husband and I go on long drives sometimes, and I regularly take naps while listening to podcasts.

Specifically, listening to you and Jesse be kind and funny makes me feel safe and I often fall asleep.

When the show ends, my husband puts on shows he likes, often the Flop House.

Invariably, this wakes me up.

I request an injunction that while I'm napping during drives, my husband only chooses podcasts that help keep me asleep.

We even have a playlist in our podcast player app called Marcella Car Rides, which are podcasts we both enjoy listening to.

Well, I'm grateful, Marcella, that we could be your narcoleptic fave.

Yeah.

The tryptophanic podcast that puts you right to sleep.

I've heard this a few times, Jesse, that people like to listen to this podcast.

And they put a little sleep timer and they put a little, they put their little headsets on and they fall asleep to us.

And that's, that's a real, I consider that a real compliment.

And I'm glad, I'm glad you can enjoy that.

And you're,

and I and I'm glad that you put a sleep timer on so that we're not invading your dreams

because Marcella you probably don't know this because you fall asleep about two-thirds through every episode of Judge John Odgman but I usually do a post-credit sequence

which is just wild subliminal advertising yeah wild backward mask demon worship

weird soundscapes, stuff that will really mess up your dreams.

So

make sure you sleep time it off because you could awaken

an agent of Hodgman.

You don't want that.

I also understand why the Flophouse wakes her up, right, Jesse?

Yeah, I mean, you don't have to tell me.

I'm friends with Elliot in real life.

I mean, look, I'm friends with all three of them in real life.

Me and Elliot's kids play on the same Little League team, you know?

I didn't know that.

That's adorable.

Yeah, they're really cute.

Oh, wow.

That's adorable.

Yeah.

And Elliot's adorable, too.

So if you don't know,

please do know The Flop House is a podcast on the Maximum Fun Network.

It's a little bit more popular than this one.

I've learned to live with it.

Three friends watch a terrible movie and then talk about it.

It's just that simple.

They've been doing it for more than 10 years.

It's Elliot Kalen.

and Dan McCoy, my friends from when I worked at The Daily Show, both incredibly funny writers, and Stuart Wellington, their friend, and mine, a very, very funny, smart, and handsome fellow.

And he and his wife, Charlene, own and operate a few bars here in Brooklyn, including Minnie's and Hinterland's Bar.

Both are terrific bars.

If bars are part of your life, please check them out.

And often you'll see Stu working there.

Tending bar, they call it.

And they're so funny and they're so smart.

And the movies they talk about are so bad that it's a delight.

But it's not a soothing podcast.

It is a riffing podcast.

It is a everybody's jumping onto to jokes podcast.

I could see why it wakes you up kind of podcast.

And for me, Jesse, I know that we have a rule about how to listen to podcasts, but I do listen to the flop house three times every week.

Do you know why?

Why is that?

I listen to it one time through to enjoy stew.

Then I listen to it again at one and a half speed so that Dan sounds like he's talking at a normal pace.

Right.

And then I listen to it again at half speed so that Elliot sounds like he's talking at a normal pace after having a few drinks.

I just got to get them all.

In fact, as our terrifying soundscape for the end of this episode, at the post-credit sequence, Jennifer Marmor, will you grab the latest episode of The Flop House as of this writing?

It is Elliot, Stu, and Dan, along with the incredible writer Jamal Bowie,

talking about Andy the Talking Hedgehog.

A Terra Reed.

and Dean Kane vehicle.

A recent Tara Reed and Dean Kane vehicle that was like beyond straight to video.

Like, who knows?

It truly looks like they made the poster out of stock photographs.

It looks like, you know, like when you buy a hammock on an e-commerce website that's drop shipping directly from China, and there's just a picture of an attractive mom, like with her, with her fist next to her head, resting her head slightly sideways.

And then there's a clearly slightly out-of-scale hammock next to her in front of her fireplace.

Right.

That's what the poster looks like.

Yes.

I want to make a movie about this lady in her hammock.

Oh, Jesse, I've just got an incredible idea.

I'm going to buy some IP.

I'm going to buy, I'm going to buy, I'm going to option a very, very major piece of intellectual property to adapt it to a major film franchise.

Are you ready for the Vermont Country Store catalog movie?

Yes.

Do you think we can get Kevin Sorbo?

I think we could probably get Kevin Sorbo.

It's all about a guy trying to find the last existing bottle of gee, your hair smells terrific, brand shampoo.

Anyway.

These pajamas are flattered.

Anyway, yes, please grab a selection of that podcast and play it at half speed after the credits.

Just so we can hear Elliot Kalen at half speed.

It's a real delight.

It's a real delight.

Yeah.

And put some psychedelic music, music, some stock psychedelic music under it as well.

That way, the next time Marcella falls asleep to the podcast, she'll have terrible dreams.

In the meantime, Marcella, I got to tell you,

long settled precedent, Judge John Hodgman, the person driving gets to pick what's on the stereo system.

And what I would say is, and I appreciate, you know,

your husband.

could be very considerate and only listen to soporific podcasts like ours.

But if it's a long drive and he needs needs to engage with his friends, the floppies, I'm going to allow it.

I'm just going to suggest that he adjust the balance and fade in the car so that it is right, the sound is located right at him and offer you, I hope, some rest and maybe put in some headphones.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we've got a completely new and entirely original segment that no one has ever heard of called Car Talk.

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 Long.

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.

We're clearing the docket and we have a case here from Miles.

Your Honor, I drive a big, obnoxious four-wheel drive vehicle.

It's a 2012 Nissan X-Terra Pro 4X,

which is based on a pickup truck platform and shares almost all of its mechanical parts with a pickup truck.

It has serious off-road capabilities that I put to the test often.

It has a body-on-frame platform, for low, locking differentials, descent control, skid plates, and a winch, to name just a few of its features.

Whoa, Go Greased Lightning.

My buddy John insists on calling it an SUV, but this vehicle's core and essence is that of a truck.

So is a truck strictly a pickup truck as Americans tend to describe them?

Or does the essence and function of a vehicle override the meaningless propaganda developed in marketing departments to sell more vehicles?

Please see attached for three photos, including one with our friend Drew's X-Tera on top of a mountain in Northern California.

And we'll show these photos, of course, on the Judge John Hodgman show page at maximumfund.org, as well as on our Instagram page, page, instagram.com/slash judgejohnhodgman.

And these look like,

I mean,

there are two photos, including the one that's on top of a mountain, that look like photos that you get when you go to the extera.com website to buy one of these vehicles.

I almost called it a truck, but I haven't ruled yet.

That's suspense.

That's tease.

And then there's also a photo of an Xtera with its hood open.

And I guess this is Miles' Extera because

I think this is his Extera, and he seems to have plugged in his tire to his engine.

I'm not really sure what's happened.

You know about cars, Jesse, don't you?

Car talk?

Why is it a yellow curly extension cord running from his tire to his engine?

Yeah, he's plugged his tire into his engine.

Oh, okay.

That's how he makes the tires go?

Well, otherwise the tire would run out of batteries.

Good point.

You know,

I've heard enough to rule on this, but before I could, I then got an email from Miles' friend who's named John, who was very upset that I had not ruled yet, because John is on the opposite side and he feels it was very important for me to hear his testimony.

And here's what he had to say, Jesse.

John wrote, It has come to my attention that my friend Miles had submitted a request for a ruling that his Nissan Xterra is a truck.

From my understanding, the chassis used on Miles' SUV is the body-on-frame type.

And yes, most trucks use this body-on frame.

But would the 1972 Ford Aconaline van be considered a truck because it utilizes a body on frame?

No, that's a van.

Dress it up with a winch?

Still a van.

Maybe take a new generation E-Series van with a four-wheel drive, a winch, decent control, and lift package.

Go Grease Lightning so you can hit the Arizona desert.

Is this a truck?

No, this is an adventure van.

Or, I venture to say, and this is Judge John Hodgman speaking, the Judge John Hodgman Torbus for 2022.

Awesome.

I agree as SUV is built on the the bones of a truck, but it was created, as marketed, and sold as an SUV.

You can bring up all the truck similarities you want, but at some point you have to ask Miles, is this just some sort of ego trip?

All right, we've heard from both sides, Jesse Thorne.

Now, Jesse,

I had to go to Wikipedia to learn what a body-on-frame

chassis means.

And what I learned was that a body-on-frame chassis is the oldest way to make a car

where the wheels in the drivetrain are attached to a rigid old iron, hard

but chassis frame.

And the body, the thing you sit in, is

placed on top of it.

That's how they used to make my beloved Lincolntown cars and Crown Vicks with the very, very famous Ford.

quote-unquote Panther chassis, a beloved frame-on-body

construction that limousine drivers and taxi drivers and people who own fleets of those cars loved because those cars would never die.

And passengers loved them too, because one of the benefits of a body-on-frame chassis is you don't feel the road so much as a unibody,

which is the way most cars are made.

Since the 1930s, most passenger cars are made, certainly, not trucks, but passenger cars are made of a unibody type in which

the body and the frame are made together as one piece because it is more economical to make them that way and they're lighter and you get get better gas mileage out of them.

Car talk.

I only mention all this stuff because Ford, as you may know, Jesse,

is based in Michigan and there's a lake named for Michigan.

Have you ever heard of that?

It's time for an up.

No, I'm not going to do it.

Thank God.

I was just talking about cars so that we could understand some of the terminology

that is being used here.

I mean, you're describing, I mean, you just described my favorite truck, the Ford Crown Victoria.

That's not a truck.

Oh, I see what you're doing, Bailiff Jesse.

It's absolutely true that the Nissan Exterra,

which was manufactured by Nissan Motors from 1999 to 2015.

uses a body-on-frame construction that is most common and almost exclusively used nowadays by trucks and some of the larger SUVs that are in the market, particularly Toyotas.

But

this is not, to my mind, a truck, Jesse.

Would you call a Nextera a truck?

No, it's absurd.

I mean, the category

SUV, sport utility vehicle,

was created specifically to describe this type of vehicle.

It's not a car and it's not a truck.

So they came up with a name for it based on the very activities that are being described in this letter.

Yeah, yeah.

And the ones that they still manufacture as trucks, they do to avoid certain emission standards because they're very, very popular in this class.

And lots and lots and lots of people, Miles, who would buy a Nissan Xterra would never, ever, ever buy a truck.

So Miles, yes, I mean, what you have is a sport utility vehicle.

And now, you know, sport utility vehicle, the terminology is mutating as well because it's coming to describe SUV-style vehicles that are built with unibodies for the same reasons you build any car with a unibody.

It's more efficient in terms of its fuel mileage.

It's cheaper to make.

The number of SUVs that have what your beloved Extera have, which is these truck bones of this body on frame design and all the other descent control and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Those are becoming the exception and no longer the rule.

But it is still a sport utility vehicle in the same way that a hot dog is not a sandwich.

If you sent someone out to get you a pickup truck and you gave them a Nissan Exterra, they would hate you.

A truck,

a Nissan Exterra is a, it's fun for sports.

And apparently there's some utility because you can charge your tires right from the engine.

But by almost any definition, I mean, a pickup truck has to have a cab and a bed.

It's got to have an open bed.

Even if you cover up that open bed with a bed cover, and I'm not talking about a duvet, but one of those caps that you can put on the back of a pickup truck.

It's still, that's still a truck.

It's got to have a dedicated cargo, cargo-only area.

Cargo, cargo, cargo, cargo.

It's used for moving stuff around

that are not human.

or dogs.

And you have a nice picture of your dog that you sent in your Xtera.

We'll put that up on the website too.

It's got to have cargo space.

That's not what the Extera is all about.

Even if you have a truck that you don't use as a truck, like those people who drive around in those fancy pants Cadillac trucks that have an open bed in the back, but they never ever put anything in there except like their Gucci handbags.

Whew, boy, I'm a real anti-snob person now.

Those are trucks, right?

Because it's a truck.

You know what a truck is.

So stop it.

Sorry, Miles.

You're wrong.

John, you're right.

Have fun driving to the tops of mountains.

Be careful out there.

Take it from me, guy who's owned two Chevrolet El Caminas.

Is that a truck?

That's an interesting question.

That's an interesting question because that has an open bed in the back.

Yeah.

What about a Subaru Brat?

God, I'd love to have a Subaru Brat.

Or a Subaru Ba.

I ain't boy, a Subaru Brat.

And let me ask you this.

Yeah, okay.

The other day, parked on my block was a

Cherry

AMC Eagle.

Is that an SUV or a car?

We'll never know.

We'll never know.

Hey, we have to admit gray areas in this life and respect the gray areas.

Does your Nissan drive through a twilight between truckness and carness?

Of course, that's what an SUV is.

Enjoy driving through Twilight.

Enjoy driving to the tops of buttes and canyons.

That's what it's there for.

I'm glad you're using it.

Hey, you know who's always wanted an X-Terra?

Who's that?

Ryan McDonough.

My friend Ryan McDonough, a.k.a Quervo man, whom I profiled on This American Life back in 2000, 2001.

He was the guy who was the brand ambassador for Quervo, who used to pour shots into, I'm presuming, graduate students' mouths at college bars.

Yeah.

And who was himself a recovered alcoholic?

Uh-huh.

One of the sweetest, funniest guys in the world.

And they, and they gave him a Captain Morgan's, because it was the same brand.

They gave him a Captain Morgan's pickup truck to drive around when he would go from bar to bar.

And he's like, this is crazy.

I should have a tequila-colored Extera.

I always think about that.

The guy knows how to make things.

And you know what he made?

A feature film.

Ryan went out and wrote and produced a short,

a semi-autobiographical feature film about growing up in Rossendale, Massachusetts, called Last Night in Rossie.

Then went out and made it into a feature starring Jeremy Sisto from television and stuff.

And it's out now available on all your streams and platforms.

It's a great movie.

Ryan's a wonderful guy.

He's truly just an incredible.

Go back and listen to Another Day in Margaritaville, the piece that I wrote about Ryan on This American Life from 2001 or two.

Actually, it was 2002.

I remember now.

And then go check out what Ryan is up to now, some almost 20 years later.

Truly lovely guy.

And a former Princeton Tiger Tone, to boot.

I subscribe to a subreddit called Battle Cars.

And it's people who turn their cars into semi-fantastical off-road vehicles.

Typically, they actually use them for off-roading,

but they

sort of have a Mad Max homemade quality to them.

And they off-road right to Burning Man, right?

Yeah.

No, no, not at all.

No,

not in the slightest.

These people are not going to Burning Man.

These people are going to the gathering of the Juggalos.

Okay.

And

the other day somebody posted their like lifted, knobby tire,

skid plate,

fog lamps, Toyota Avalon.

And I loved it.

I loved seeing it.

The ultimate.

for when your grandma is ready to take on the world.

Right.

That's incredible.

The docket is clear.

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

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Our editor, Valerie Moffat.

Oh, I also want to mention that if you noticed any difference in the sound quality on this week's show, it's because we had a little bit of recording trouble.

So we had to use a little bit of backup tape, but probably you didn't notice.

If you did notice, congratulations, you've got great ears.

And I just wanted to mention it because I didn't want you to think that you were hearing things.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your judgejohnhodgman tweets, hashtag jjho, and check out the maximum fund subreddit to discuss this episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash jjho or email hodgman at maximumfun.org.

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

I'm just mad I refuse to watch it because it's clearly a ripoff of my pitch, Pep Boy Island,

where

the ladies have to decide who's a who's worth keeping and who's a Pep Boy.

And it's relatively obvious because the Pep Boy is a huge heads and they only want to talk about auto parts.

and the pep boy just mechanics

yeah this

like

but sometimes that can be romantic which one of you is the pep boy

i think it's me ma'am

are you like his

and your no i'm the surviving car talk

brother

close.

Aww.

Oh man.

But now I imagined a sad scene where one of them goes to the doctor and the doctor's like,

I'd like you to sit down.

I called you down because the touch results came back.

You were a pep boy.

And he's like,

I am.

And he's got a huge head.

He's in black and white and he's dressed like it's the 50s or whatever.

Yeah.

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