What Else Is There to Do?

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 Maine's other man, Judge John Hodgman.

That's right, Jesse Thorne.

Hello.

I am here broadcasting to you live on.Wave file from the solar-powered studios of WERU Community Radio here in Orland, Maine, across the glass.

We have the whole J squad back together.

I see, of course, Jesse Thorne right there in the teleconference.

Our producer, Jennifer Marmor.

Hello, Jennifer in Los Angeles.

Hi.

And across the glass from me is the main man, Joel Mann.

Hey, Judge.

Hi, Joel.

A little market report.

If you're looking for frozen hash browns, they do have them at Burnt Cove Market in Stonington.

Hey, thanks for that.

Yep.

They're not easy to find.

Trust me.

They're in the corner.

As you turn the corner from the energy drink aisle into the frozen food aisle, They're right on the right, up at the top.

Cavendish Farms brand.

Apparently, Jesse, these are the official hash browns of Gillette Stadium.

Did you know that?

I had no idea.

Yeah.

If you're going to go see a sports in Gillette Stadium, like a Patriots game, and you're going to get some of those famous ballpark hash browns that they sell as they walk up and down the aisle, Cavendish Farms.

So these aren't the official, these aren't the official hash browns of the New England Patriots, for example.

No, No, just the stadiums.

These are all just the stadium eats these.

Yeah, just the stadium.

So, yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter what they're doing there.

Things are opening back up again.

Maybe you're going to go see a concert there.

Maybe you're going to go see Joe Bird and the Field Hippies play.

You want some of those sweet stadium hash browns?

Just know.

That's Cavendish Farms quality.

By the way, Jesse Thorne, you weren't here when we finally wrapped up the Rudy's Place saga on Judge John Hodgman.

And I mentioned that I got a letter from one of Rudy and Mary's neighbors, that letter being 1,500 words long.

Excellent.

Too long for a college application.

I'll tell you that much right now.

Exactly so.

Guess what?

The record was just broken.

Because, Joel, you'll be interested to hear.

We heard from a listener named Ray who wrote a letter saying that he does not like Joe Bird and the Field Tippies.

He prefers Joe Bird's earlier band/slash album, The United States of America.

and he told me so in 3,000 words.

I would have to agree.

Yeah.

That is his best album.

Okay, but see, that's all you needed to say.

Keep it Joel Mann style, everybody.

Just a few words.

Let me ask you this, though, John.

Yes, sir.

Could the United States of America fill Gillette Stadium?

No, I don't think so.

That's Joe Bird and the field hippies all the way.

Yeah, that's why Ray doesn't like them.

They're too commercial.

They fill up stadiums.

Jesse, I have a question for you before we begin.

Yeah.

This is kind of a deep question.

You ready for it?

Yeah, sure.

Why not?

What else is there to do?

What else is there to do?

Jennifer Marmor, what else is there to do?

Not sure.

Gosh, I don't know.

What else is there to do?

It's been on my mind because last night I took a little evening drive to enjoy the sunset here in Maine

and drove around with the windows down, beautiful evening,

ended up up at the end of a of a long peninsula and then at the end of a poured concrete dock

and as i contemplated the the abyss of the ocean and the setting sun i noticed a small hand-painted sign and only the only thing written there was what else is there to do

and i was like whoa

This is I did not come out here for an existential gut punch.

I came out here to look at the sunset, do you know?

Now, I happen to know that the sign

pertains to a certain controversy in town.

In town, some people want to end a long-standing tradition, which is on the night of July 3rd, which just happened.

The tradition is everyone takes all of the large form garbage in their lives, mattresses, refrigerators, small boats that they don't want to pay to have hauled away, and they dump them in a big pile in front of the general store for the town to then clean up.

That's the tradition.

And the town, finally, finally, after years, has said, please don't do this.

That's the tradition, John?

Yeah, this is the tradition.

Please don't put a big trash pile in the middle.

What does that go back to?

Middle Europe?

Is that a druidic thing originally?

A lot of people think that's from the Christian era, but it's actually pre-Christian.

Yeah, everybody dumps their big trash in front of town hall.

That's the summer tradition.

That's what the sequel to Mid-Somar is about.

Everybody dumps their big trash in front of town town hall and they wear little outfits.

Yeah, and they do they wear little traditional outfits and they do a little maypole dance around the trash pile.

Yeah, what kind of ribbons do they use in Maine for this trash dumping ritual and its attendant group dances?

They use chains of rubber bands that were formerly used to hold lobster claws tight, closed.

Got it.

But the tradition apparently goes back,

according to the furious debate on the social media website devoted to this, 100 years.

And people in town are very upset that

the town has finally gotten around to saying, yeah, no, this is not okay.

This has never been okay.

Your outlaw tradition is exactly that, an outlaw tradition we would like for you to stop.

And let me make it clear.

I am in favor of this tradition.

A, because I'm like, it doesn't really cause any harm.

And B, I don't want to be murdered.

So neighbors in town, I'm all for it.

But when the town said openly this year, we don't like this, there was a protest.

And instead of one trash pile overnight on July 3rd, several satellite trash piles piled up of mattresses and junk and so forth with various signs.

Can I ask a question, John?

Yeah.

But just a point of clarification.

Why did they dump these things in front of City Hall and not at the dump?

Oh, because you have to pay to pay to have that stuff disposed of at the dump.

It's not just a matter of like distance.

It's not just they're like,

I'll go six blocks, but I'm not going to go 12 blocks.

First of all, there's no such thing as a block here.

They're just miles.

Got it.

And those are miles as the road winds, not as the crow flies.

Sure.

I think distance is a part of it.

I think the payment for disposing of this stuff is a part of it, but mostly it's just fun.

People like to stay up all night and look at the trash pile and add stuff to it.

It's part of the fun.

And, you know, that's why people pay to live in a cosmopolitan place like Maine.

Well, sure, the rent's outrageous, but you get to look at that trash pile.

Well, I mean, you know, it's the friction is really between people who have been here for generations and people and interlopers like me.

who are not used to a mid-night trash pile.

But all around these satellite trash piles piled up with signs, hand-painted signs, and kind of cool-looking signs that said things like, nice try, select board.

And then one that said, this is a critical part of our culture.

And then this sign at the end of this dock that just said,

what else is there to do?

What I took to be an existential question was truly like a plea, like, we have nothing.

Give us this trash pile.

There is nothing.

What else is there to do?

This is trash pile erasure.

Yeah, it struck me very hard, even though I know what it was about.

To me, I was like, I don't know.

What else is there to do?

Obviously, keep doing the podcast.

You know, I've written my books and I've made my things and everything else.

What else is there to do?

And I'm here to tell you the answer, Jesse.

For me, I figured out what there is else for me to do in this life.

What's that?

Put hash browns on hamburgers.

Holy cow.

Yeah.

Wow.

I mean, I can't believe no one ever thought about it.

Probably someone has thought of this before, but in case you haven't, now I don't care what hash brown you use, whether it's something you make yourself, whether it's a frozen product, I don't care what stadium it's associated with.

And obviously, I don't care what kind of burger you're having, you know, whether it's an impossible burger or a beyond burger or a tradition, you know, a traditional burger or a plant, other plant-based burger, whatever you're doing.

Put a hash brown on it.

I've invented a new kind of sandwich that involves a hash brown, a burger patty of some kind, and then a third ingredient that I'm keeping secret because it's going to change my life and many lives.

But I'm giving away the hash brown for free.

This is going to be your whole new business thing.

Yeah, this is, I mean, it's going to be

when this thing, word of this thing gets out, it's going to be very big.

Joel.

Yes.

You ever go to Crosby's takeout in Bucksport?

Great crab roll.

Great crab.

You ever get a golden buck hamburger there?

Yes.

You know, it's on the golden buck?

I know.

There's the double cheeseburger.

You know,

The golden buck is a cheeseburger with what?

Bucksport high school.

Yeah, with the whole high school on top of it.

That's exactly.

What do you, Joel?

It's true, the Bucksport High School is called, their teens are called the Golden Bucks.

But the Golden Buck burger, Joel, cheeseburger, I had to call them to find out.

Cheeseburger with coleslaw and Thousand Island dressing on it.

Sounds good.

Sounds good.

That's great.

My thing is going to blow them out of the water, blow them out of the seas.

And it starts with a hash brown.

Okay, I'm giving you that for free.

Jesse Thorne, will you make a hash brown sandwich sometime this weekend?

Yeah, but I'm going to use the official hash browns of the cow palace in San Francisco.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

Here's a case from Steve who wrote to you aboard a train in Wellington, New Zealand.

He says, The woman sitting in front of me has been using eye drops throughout our short journey.

I'm feeling deeply uncomfortable seeing her hold her eye open to administer the medication.

I think this behavior is inappropriate as personal hygiene is by definition a personal thing.

I'm not the only person on the train sending sideways glances at the woman in question.

I'm not suggesting that she should be ashamed for using a medication.

I think using medication discreetly maintains her dignity as well as the dignity of those around her.

I also think that there's a need for your authority to be stamped on personal hygiene behaviors on public transport more generally.

I've seen people clipping their nails, applying makeup, and biting their nails on public transport.

I firmly believe that these should be done in a private place if they must be done.

My request to you is for a definitive judgment on which appropriate personal hygiene practices are and are not allowed on public transport.

So you're saying that Steve, by the way, hello, Wellington, New Zealand.

I presume you are the Steve that is referenced in the Flight of the Concord song Rhinoceros versus Hippopotamus, which I listened to recently and it's still good.

Yeah, they're very funny guys.

I miss them.

Is Steve suggesting when he says if they must be done, is he suggesting that people should never clip their nails?

Maybe that's preferable to ever clipping their nails, no matter where?

That's what it seems like.

I mean, maybe he's using a belt sander at home.

Well, look,

I'll tell you something.

First of all, Steve, this.

A long time ago,

I got horribly burned, not physically, emotionally.

I got burned.

I got roasted by

my colleague, a mentor, I dare say friend, Dave Eggers, the author.

We were talking about something to do with the project or show that we were working on together.

And I said, you know, I'm really...

I'm really not trying to be annoying about this.

And Dave just said, yeah, no, you're not trying.

You don't have to.

It comes to you naturally.

Oh.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I once tried that on someone else, someone very close to me, and

they did not like it.

And I almost got pushed out of a car as a result.

But you're right, Steve.

That's what you get for using it on a cabbie.

I was not.

Can you imagine

picking on cab driver?

That would be such a flight of the Concords era John Odgman thing to do.

Yeah, I was on that show.

I was in one episode.

And at that time, you could totally see

my character and myself saying to a professional driver, you know, you're not trying to be annoying.

It comes to you naturally.

Boy, oh, boy.

What a snob I was then.

I would never do that now.

I love the trash pile.

Trash pile for life, everybody.

I could see the doctor from Baby Mama saying that.

Yeah, exactly.

Oh, boy, oh, boy, my deep cuts.

I was deeply cut, though, in this moment by Dave Eggers.

I'm going to turn it around now on Steve.

Steve, you're right.

You're not suggesting this woman should be ashamed for using a medication.

You don't need to suggest it.

You're doing it now on my podcast.

Shame on you.

You know, I have someone in my life who has a lot of eye drops

due to a detached retina.

And after a year of putting these eye drops in

on a regular basis, it's finally over with.

and they are able to see again.

This was no picnic.

Putting in eye drops is not a picnic or a fun thing.

And I don't know whether, and you don't know whether, Steve, this woman on the train was putting in these eye drops on a regular basis or whether she just remembered at the last minute.

Oh my gosh, I have to put in these eye drops or else I can't see today.

Or the pressure differential in my eyeballs will change such that I might go blind.

I better do it right now.

Get over it, Steve.

These things happen.

That said, Jesse Thorne, what is your position on fingernail clipping on public transportation?

Now, there are people who feel that literally, and I mean, it may very well be that Steve from Flight of the Concords is one of these people who feel that literally any act of grooming is something that needs to be hidden away in a bathroom.

I'm not so sure I feel that way.

I don't think I would be bothered by someone brushing their hair

if they weren't getting in somebody else's business.

But

using medicine is using medicine.

Yeah, I agree.

And I mean, well, I do wonder why this woman was applying the eye drops throughout the trip, which is what Steve said.

But I don't know her personal medical information and I don't care to.

There's a little something called HIPAA,

which doesn't apply here.

I didn't even think about it until this moment, but not only is she putting in eye drops, she's putting in eye drops on a moving train.

If she's getting them in there, then she's got incredible coordination that should be applauded and not shamed.

Yeah, I've had to put in eye drops only a few times in my life.

And

I just think any successful eyedropping is to be applauded.

If you manage to get it in there without closing your eye before it drops in, then God bless you and the best of luck to you in all your future endeavors.

And I can appreciate that people might have a little bit of ick around eyeball issues, like

non-rational, almost phobic reaction to eyeballs.

I get it.

And I also, and I think I appreciate that if that's what's going on with you, Steve, but it's kind of part of being out in the world.

I will say in the issue of putting on makeup.

on a train, to me, that is completely inoffensive and really none of your business.

As long as someone, I mean, and again, something that requires incredible concentration and coordination, good job putting on makeup.

I think that those critiques, which come up again and again, tend to be fairly gendered in nature.

I will say that brushing hair is on the line for me, Jesse,

because my feeling is if you're leaving behind DNA,

then you're leaving work for others.

That makes sense.

That definitely pertains to fingernail clipping.

I just kind of feel like you're leaving your nails around for someone else to clean up or to use to clone you.

And I don't know what the cloning ethics laws are in New Zealand.

So you could probably get cloned pretty, pretty hard by Steve.

Yeah.

But generally speaking, let people do what they need to do on the train.

Everyone's got a limited amount of time.

I appreciate that it's weird to be out there in the world seeing people's faces and bodies again on public transport, but that should be celebrated and not

complained about.

Here's something from Katie.

Dear Judge Hodgman, I seek an injunction against my husband, Jimmy.

The tour de France is starting soon.

I love watching the tour and find the scenes of the Peloton winding its way through the French countryside to be wonderfully meditative.

The problem is that when my husband joins me, he delights in asking me a series of questions I am unable to answer, including but not limited to, who's winning?

What is the name of one participant?

Where in France are they?

I ask the judge, order my husband to refrain from such questions.

Leave me to enjoy the French countryside and occasional human drama of a sprint or accident in the Peloton in peace.

So, of course, the Tour de France is over as of this podcast coming out.

I don't know who won.

Sorry, sorry, Katie's husband, Jimmy.

You have to ask your wife.

I mean, I got to assume Lance Armstrong, right?

He's one of the top bicyclists.

It's either that or Pee-Wee Herman from that dream sequence in Pee-Wee Spic Adventure.

Oh, boy.

Or possibly the guy from Breaking Away.

Another great film.

That's a great double feature right there.

Cycling's greatest hits.

I was driving over here

thinking about

like, hey,

I want to get a jumpsuit.

Something came up in my mind.

Something I was listening to made me think about jumpsuits.

I've always wanted to be able to rock a jumpsuit.

And then literally as I was driving over here, I was like, if I wore a jumpsuit, I'd just look like Francis from Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure.

I just don't have that.

That's ridiculous, John.

Don't be silly.

You would look like Francis.

Francis' father, right?

Exactly.

And then I was like, who can I do a matching?

Francis and his dad jumpsuit combo for Halloween someday.

I don't like dressing up for Halloween, but I've got the body.

I've got the body for a Francis in a jumpsuit or his dad.

Dad is better.

You're right.

Good punch-up.

John, I bought a jumpsuit once on tour with the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Oh, really?

We were in Boston playing the Wilbur Theater, and I went down the road with my friend Zach X Wolf

to the legendary vintage store, Bobby from Boston, now closed, but their warehouse in Lynn opened by appointment and sometimes on their Instagram, and tried on a green, I think it's a mechanics, an Army mechanics jumpsuit as a joke.

Right.

And Zach was like, that looks amazing on you.

I think you should just buy it.

And I was like, yes, I think this looks amazing on me and I should just buy it.

So I did.

And so you did.

By the way, Zach is a wonderful person.

I think it's weird that the government makes him have that name, but I am glad that he's no longer a wolf.

Yeah, that's true.

So what about this question about the

Tour de France?

So look, here's the thing.

The Tour de France is over.

There was indeed an accident because people love to watch the Tour de France because not only do they like

bicycling, faire du bicycling, I believe that's the French term for it, but because it is beautiful in the countryside and it is meditative and it is wonderful to watch the same way watching

a golf tournament or even a baseball game can just be kind of a calm thing to do on an afternoon.

But

if you are not really watching the race, but instead are just there for the moment, then you might do something bad, which is to hold a big sign out, handwritten on the sign Ale Opiomi, and hold it out into the middle of the race course such that it strikes German cyclist Tony Martin, and then causing him to fall and causing the entire Peloton to fall over.

By the way, the Peloton is the name of the pack of cyclists all drifting off each other.

It's not like one exercise bike is out there.

It's a whole bunch of people.

Dozens of bikes fell down, multiple injuries.

One rider, Yasha Suterlin, had to drop out of the race because a fan stepped out

into the road with her sign saying, Ale opiomi, which is go, granddad and grandma, presumably for a television camera that she hoped her granddad and grandma would see.

How do I know all of this?

Well, Jimmy, I read the newspaper.

I went and I read the newspaper and I read all about the Tour de France.

So I learned things.

I bet you during the Tour de France, I probably could have used the newspaper to learn things like who's winning or what's the name of one participant or where in France are they?

You can find this out.

I know you can, Jimmy.

Now, here's what I'm going to say, though.

Katie specified that

she does not know the answer to these questions.

If I may re-quote, the problem problem is that when my husband joins me, he delights in asking me a series of questions I am unable to answer.

So Katie is not watching this for the sport of fair du bicycling.

But if Katie knew the answers, it's not wrong for Jimmy to ask, and it would be wrong for Katie to withhold the answer.

If your partner is expressing interest in something that you love and you can help them get into it, you should.

You shouldn't be like,

I'm watching this right now.

If you know who's winning, if you know the name of one participant, if you know where in France they are, say so.

But in Katie's case, she didn't because she's only watching it for the wonderful, the wonderful glide of humanity through the French countryside upon these bikes.

So, Jimmy, next time, learn a thing.

You'll enjoy it.

By the way,

the end of the newspaper article, it was the New York Times newspaper.

It's a pretty big newspaper.

Richard Pluger, the general manager of Tony Martin's team, which has the great name.

This is the German bicycling team called Jumbo Wisma, encouraged the fans, please, fans, stay off the roads.

Quote, and if you want to pay attention to your opi and omi, visit them.

Good advice.

If you've got an opi or omi in your life whom you love, who you haven't been in contact with lately, give them a ring.

Don't jump in front of a sports event at Gillette Stadium with a sign.

They're trying to sell ash browns over there.

I mean, this is a classic example

of another man on the hunt for fake cycling babes.

wow what a heel this husband is oh he's not trying to learn about cycling what he's trying to make his wife look bad for watching cycling wrong oh i didn't get that at all maybe i'm missing something yeah this is this is cycling gate all over again he's gatekeeping cycling is that what it is first of all i don't think he knows the answers to these so it's not even like he is saying i wish that you cared as much about cycling as I do.

I think he is just mad that she is watching a sport for different reasons than he would watch it for.

Look, I'll tell you what, that is something that I could have missed.

And so, Katie, Jimmy, if there's something to what Bailiff Jesse Thorne is saying here, I urge you to think on it and communicate about it.

We've heaped a lot of shame in this whole thing

on fans getting too close to the cyclists, on Jimmy for asking questions for two potentially different reasons, ignorance and or

bicycling gatekeeping.

But I'm going to just heap one more bit of shame, and I would say the largest amount of shame.

Just as Richard Pluguet pleads to the fans of the Tour de France to not step into the road, to remember that there's a bicycle race there, may I plead to the bicyclists

in Prospect Park in Brooklyn?

You're not in the Tour de France, guys.

You're not.

I see you on your tight Pelotons in your tight pants and your special helmets, biking so fast, so close to each other.

Hey, hey, you're scaring people.

I watch you speed by people and children are scared.

It's terrifying and dangerous.

You're in a public park, everybody.

Slow down.

You're going to stick a stick in their wheels, just like those Italians did in breaking away.

Spoiler alert for breaking away, retroactive.

We're going to take a 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 podcast.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is brought to you every week by you, our members, of course.

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Just go 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.

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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 here from Layla.

I bring this case against my partner, Adam.

He and I have garbage bins in our driveway.

We notice dog walkers regularly place their poop bags in our bins.

This bothers Adam, so he turns the bins around to face the bushes.

This makes it harder for everyone to use the bins, including us.

Now someone has taken to leaving their bags of dog poop on top of our trash bin.

It's happened three times this week.

Adam would like to put up a sign.

I think this would be unsightly.

I don't mind when the bags are placed inside the bin.

Please order Adam to make the bins accessible to all so we don't have to handle the poop on top of the bins.

P.S.

We both agree that if we see the person doing this, we will ask them to stop, but we have yet to catch them in the act.

Jesse, you know,

I get a lot of letters.

Some of them are thousands of words long.

Occasionally, one or two of them includes a dispute for us to hear on this podcast.

More often, they're about how

we grievously erred by suggesting it was okay for you, Jesse Thorne, to put dog poop in other people's bins.

Got roasted.

I'm glad we're bringing this up again.

I'm really pumped about this.

No.

Hey, everybody,

don't write to Jesse about poop disposal habits.

Jesse's got enough going on right now.

And

I'm only saying this to inoculate you from another wave of letters and comments.

It's not a big deal.

What I'll tell you is a big deal.

Is someone coming around putting poop in your bin?

You're turning your bins around in order to make it harder for them to put their poop poop in your bin.

And instead, they leave the poop on top of your bin.

That is a no-K move.

You know what no K is?

I just invented it, opposite of okay.

Yeah, that is a real, I mean, like this, this dispute is about this husband and wife and whether they, you know, what they do with the bins.

And so there's clearly one monster here, and it's the poop lever.

Yeah, poop lever.

Don't.

This is not acceptable.

Look, you can protest

the city ending

your ability to pile garbage in front of City Hall.

That's appropriate civil disobedience.

But leaving a poop bag on top of a trash can lid is really a shady move.

May I cut in?

Please.

Yeah.

I just,

I also didn't want to pile...

add to the pile of letters about the dog poop that Jesse and you have received, but

the letter writer sent in a photo of this and it was shocking, like too shocking to me not to include in this docket.

Yeah, thanks, Jennifer.

This photograph that we have in evidence here, and you can see on our Instagram, features

what looked to be a green bin, a recycling bin, and a trash can.

They're on a driveway, a publicly accessible driveway, and they're turned the opposite direction.

They're turned toward the driveway's wall.

Not only that, but the trash can is the smallest of the three and it's been tucked underneath the other two cans, so the lid cannot be lifted.

But most shocking of all is what appears to be

a 75-pound bag of dog leavings.

Just the most enormous poop bag I've ever seen in my life.

It is a clear message.

Yeah, this is like, this is someone, this is not someone who has picked up one poop.

I think this is a poop safer.

This is somebody who's been hoarding poops for one grand gesture.

Now, you know,

another thing I noted in the full letter that we edited down a little bit is that this is a rental property.

They've recently started renting this part of this house.

And it may be that they are new to this neighborhood, whereas the poop lever has been leaving the poop in this bin for 100 years,

going back to Druid times or whatever.

And therefore, they...

What else are you going to do?

Therefore, they feel it's part of the tapestry of the neighborhood.

This is where I leave my dog's poop.

And therefore, they're getting aggro now that these new people are coming to town saying, I'd rather you not leave your poop in my bins.

Hey, poop lever, you're wrong.

If it's obvious that they don't want you to leave the the poop in the bins, that's their choice.

Don't do it.

And certainly don't go aggro and leave the poop on top of the bins.

That is bad.

That sends a bad message to the neighborhood.

That sends a message to the neighborhood, which is, I hate everyone.

And this neighborhood, this community is built on seething fissures of hate.

Even if that's true, that's not what you want to advertise.

Don't do it.

But I'm going to say this.

It's an ambiguous message.

Turning those bins around, shoving them up against each other, making them harder to access.

That is an ambiguous message.

Jesse Thorne, I will stand by you until the end of time,

until we no longer know what else there is to do, because we've done it all.

And I will never, ever reverse my decision that it is fine for you, a responsible dog owner, to put your poop in a bin if you are doing it in a responsible way, a bin that you don't own.

If you are tying up that bag securely, so long as you're not trespassing on their property, so long as you're not creating an obvious greater mess for that person or a sanitation worker to clean up, if you can put in that bin responsibly, good.

It's fine.

I'll never turn on you, Jesse.

Send me the letters.

I will take the heat.

Let me be the Batman to your two-faced.

Let them chase me.

Do not send letters to Jesse.

Do not address letters to Jesse.

But I asked Jesse now, hypothetically, if you were if you had some dog poop bagged up and you went to a bin to responsibly dispose of it and that bin had a sign on it say, please don't put your poop in this bin, would you do it?

Of course not.

No, of course not.

People, when you made that decision, people sent me emails like that said,

I happen to keep my trash can in my child's crib.

Would you climb to the third floor of my home, punch out my window, throw my child across the room, and put your trash in the...

No, I'm just talking about trash cans that are literally already on the street.

Yeah, you wouldn't do that.

You don't live in Maine.

No.

Layla, you and Adam,

you cannot be sent.

First of all, this is not okay behavior on the part of the poop lever.

It is perfectly reasonable for Adam to not want poop in his bin.

in the bins that you both share.

It is perfectly reasonable, but you are sending an ambiguous message.

And it is time for an unambiguous message, which is simply a laminated sign on the bin saying,

hey, please don't put your poop in here.

Now, is it possible the poop lever will escalate at that point?

It depends.

Do you live in Maine?

Then yes.

Do you not live in Maine?

Question mark.

But

it is fair and it is important, I think, not to let this bully get away with it.

And

as you say in your PS, if you catch the person in the act, you will confront them.

Good.

Confront them politely, firmly, but definitely let this bully know this poop shall not pass.

Here's something from Lindsay in Stores, Connecticut.

She says, as we work towards a new and better normal, my husband Thayer and I are using up some restaurant gift cards we've been saving for our full vaccination status.

Thayer and I have different approaches to spending gift cards.

I like to order the way we normally do so that we only have to pay the tip out of pocket.

Fayer likes to order an additional item, like an appetizer or an alcoholic beverage or a more expensive entree, knowing that we have the gift card to offset the extra cost.

What is the better approach?

I can't follow any of this.

All I know is money is fungible.

Right?

Yeah, this isn't.

look we're not talking about brief video clips of basketball highlights here money is fungible

i mean it's

you're gonna pay you're gonna pay the bill and the bill is gonna be either covered by the gift card or covered partially by the gift card right yeah it's it's all the same it's all the same pile of

imaginary uh uh uh shells like i don't get it fayer apparently believes that gift cards can only be used to order extra stuff that you wouldn't otherwise have ordered.

I guess that people, uh,

you know, people have different ways of treating themselves.

And treating yourself is a psychological thing as much as it is perhaps a financial thing.

So if you've got a gift card, for you, it's more fun to treat yourself by paying less out of pocket in general.

For another person, it might be like, I really like to, I, I like to use that gift card to get something a little wacky that I normally wouldn't order at all.

I understand.

And I don't think that one is better than the other.

So I refuse to adjudicate this case.

The only reason that I am allowing it in the courtroom at all is two things.

One, I want to make sure people understand this loud and clear.

If you are using a gift card to reduce the total cost of your check, tip on the total cost of your check, plus tax.

Same deal if someone buys you a round of drinks or the restaurant or the bar puts a round of drinks,

buys you a round of drinks, tip on what the total would be, not what you actually pay.

In other words, if you spend $10

and you knock off five with a $5 gift card, you tip $2,

20% of $10.

Or $3, 30%.

This is the kind of math I'm capable of doing.

I can do this.

I can't do subtraction.

You don't tip a buck 50 on a $10 tip that you've reduced by five with a gift card.

Got it?

Good.

Second of all, shout out to Stores Connecticut, birthplace of Peter Tork, member of the monkeys.

Sure.

I've been watching a monkeys documentary on YouTube.

off and on for the past several days.

It's a long documentary.

There's a lot more to monkeys history than I realized.

And you know what?

God or whatever, darn it, I love those monkeys, Jesse.

How much do you love the monkeys?

Do you love the monkeys enough to have auditioned for the new monkeys?

No, because that there's someone who loves the monkeys more than me.

Who is it, Jesse?

It's the great Tom Sharpling.

Tom Sharpling's brand new memoir features the story of the time he shamefully auditioned for the new monkeys,

forgetting that he had no musical skill at all.

I was probably even at that point 20 years older than he had to be in order to get in those monkeys.

Yeah.

Tom Sharpling's new book, It Never Ends.

It's moving.

It's hilarious.

The great Tom Sharpling.

It never ends by Tom Sharpling.

Please go check it out.

But boy, you know, those monkeys,

I've said it before, and I'll say again,

they got a lot of poop left on their bins for being the quote-unquote prefab four because they were a fabricated pop group.

But you look at those monkeys, each one of those monkeys, they have charisma for days.

They have chemistry for decades.

Like those are TV stars who also happen to be good musicians.

Mickey Dolans has a voice that is like nothing else in pop.

They are funny.

They're TV stars.

They're best.

And also, by the way, just found out, Stores, Connecticut, home of Wendy O.

Williams, lead singer for the Plasmatics,

whose topless photo posted on the wall of Newberry Comics at its original location on Newberry Street in Boston scandalized me.

And I just learned that Amy Mann may have been working there that very day when I was a young person going to Newberry Comics.

So let's hear it for stores.

Let's hear it for tipping.

Let's hear it for the Plasmatics.

And hey, hey, we're the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Let's take a break.

When we come back, it's an update from our favorite cryptocurrency miners.

You got favorite cryptocurrency.

You got a whole like power ranking for your favorites, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No,

I'll show you my spreadsheet.

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.

Here's a case from Erin.

My girlfriend and I love books.

We even had our first date at a bookstore bar.

So I was shocked to learn what she did after recently borrowing a cookbook from the communal bookshelf in the lobby of her apartment building.

Instead of returning the book after borrowing it, she proceeded to sell the book on a popular social marketplace for selling new and second-hand items, netting a cool $8.

She says she shouldn't be guilt-tripped into feeling remorse for reselling a cookbook written by a model-turned celebrity with zero culinary training.

She thinks once an item is left on the communal bookshelf, the owner relinquishes all claims to what happens to the book.

I, however, would like to hold this scofflaw accountable by enjoining her from pilfering for commercial gain the communal property of her friendly neighbors.

So before I dig into this one, Jesse, I was feeling a real mood through the glass here at WERU from Joel Mann when I was talking about the monkeys.

You have something you want to say about the monkeys, Joel?

I met Mickey Dolans going into a rest area in Massachusetts once.

Wow, you didn't just make that up just now?

I honestly, I don't think I believe you.

I thought you were going to get mad at me about the monkeys.

No, I love the monkeys.

All right, good.

Everyone loves the monkeys.

Who am I i defending the monkeys against i guess critical critical reception of the time they're great great story joel mickey dollins was on bullseye once he was he was wonderful yeah such a nice man yeah

so now let's get into this jesse you lived in an apartment building

i i visited you and did um the show that became known as bullseye from your apartment in los angeles in koreatown correct that's true in koreatown yeah did you have an a communal bookshelf or a place where people left stuff that they no longer wanted?

No.

There was a woman who walked around in what can only be described as a cloud of Pomeranians, but there was no

communal bookshelf.

In our apartment building in Brooklyn, New York, we have a shelf that we refer to in our family.

It's in the lobby,

and we refer to it in our family as the stoop sale.

Because a stoop sale in Park Slope and other parts of Brooklyn, you know, there are brownstones that have stoops and of a spring afternoon, on a weekend, people put stuff out there and they will sell that stuff.

Well, it's equivalent of a yard sale or a garage sale.

Yeah, one time I bought a rack of really good records and then took them

straight to the post office and mailed them to myself in Los Angeles.

Media mail, baby.

Media mail is one of the best forms of mail.

Yeah.

Who knows if it'll get there or when.

But the stoop sale in our $4.

It's a good, it's a good, it's, you know what?

It's, it's, uh, it's shipping with the thrill of gambling.

Yeah, I love it.

Love media mail.

I'm not being sarcastic.

I really do love media mail.

The stoop sale in our lobby, though, is not things that are for sale.

It is, it is things that are for to give away.

It is effectively the town trash pile of our apartment building because it is not stuff that is hard to haul away at great distance.

By the way, while we were talking, I received some photos, historical photos of the trash pile from a friend of mine who lives here.

Apropos of nothing, I just got texted these photos, and they're from vastly different eras.

And in both of them, there are boats that are being thrown away.

Boats are being thrown away on the trash pile.

I'll post them and I'll remove all identifying features.

Can I tell you, John, that when I was a kid and my brother John was in preschool,

there was a preschool raffle that my stepmother entered and she won a boat.

That boat

was

in our garage, taking up,

it was up against the wall, but it still took up

all of the walking room in our garage,

all of the moving past the car room.

So I basically had to climb over the car for eight years.

Yeah.

That boat sat unused.

What are we going to do with a boat?

Hey, you want it in a raffle?

You keep it, right?

Yeah.

I have to actually I have to correct this.

The second photo, the one that's in color, it is,

it's not just a boat.

It is a outhouse

inside of a boat.

Someone's outhouse inside of a boat.

And when I say I will remove distinguishing features, I will also blur out the street signs that were stolen from the town and thrown on the pile.

That's the fun that they have.

This trash pile that we have, this stoop sale that we have, like like sometimes you get a raffle boat and you don't want it anymore.

For us, it's like we have kids' books, we have

old clothes that we don't need anymore,

we have books that friends sent to us or gave to us that we read and we don't need anymore or know we're never going to read.

And we put them on the stoop sale.

And it is not the same thing as the trash pile here in Maine, because these things are not hard to transport and you don't have to pay a duty or a tax to get rid of them.

We are forcing our neighbors to pay the emotional tax of getting these things out of our lives by believing that this is somehow more virtuous to litter up a shelf in the lobby with this junk that we don't want than throwing these things just into the trash where they belong.

Now, in Aaron's case, he refers to this bookshelf in the lobby as a communal bookshelf, like a lending library, like one of those little libraries.

And if that's true, if there is the expectation within the apartment building that books that are left there are left there to be borrowed and then returned, then absolutely Aaron's girlfriend is abusing the system by stealing a book and selling it and netting, to quote, netting a cool $8 in the process.

Netting.

What were the gross expenses?

Yeah.

What's the?

Let's see this.

Let's see this balance sheet.

What's the overhead?

Well, I guess

I guess the girlfriend may have paid $4 in media mail shipping costs.

Maybe that.

I don't know.

But I'm not sure that I believe you, Aaron.

No offense, but I don't know if

it's true.

Maybe your understanding of this bookshelf is not the rest of the apartment building's understanding of this bookshelf.

In which case, I think it deserves clarification.

If you have a...

an email list in the apartment or you can put up a note just saying, hey, what's the deal with books here?

Do you want to keep them

or are they just giveaway?

Is it a giveaway pile or is it a lending library pile?

My guess is it's a giveaway pile.

It's a trash pile, just like we all have in our lives and in our communities.

In which case, there is no problem with your girlfriend taking a book off the trash pile and selling it for eight bucks.

If, however, it is the understanding that this is a communal bookshelf, the books are meant to be saved, then she's doing it wrong.

And it's very easy to find out.

It's a classic situation of whether or not it's okay to get seltzer water from the soda fountain at a restaurant.

Go and ask.

That's all.

Just go and ask.

Go and ask and find out.

But I will say this.

Your girlfriend's a snob.

I don't care who writes this cookbook.

If it's a good cookbook, it's a good cookbook.

Don't use the fact that this person is a celebrity or a model or whatever to justify treating this book like garbage.

If someone's throwing it out, that's enough justification to treat it like garbage and resell it.

Don't be a snob.

I think I know the book you're talking about.

I think I understand all the problematics surrounding it, but I will say it's a good mac and cheese recipe.

Jesse?

Do you really think that these people write their own cookbooks?

Famous chefs barely write, like real chefs.

Real chefs.

Great chefs barely write their own cookbooks.

There's no way to write 200 recipes and test them at least more than once.

You know what I mean?

Like, I feel like even

if you are,

I don't know, David Chang or something like that, like you've developed a hundred recipes in your life, maybe.

But then after that, you have to hire people to help you write your cookbooks because somebody has to help you develop the recipes, even if they're your idea.

That's how cookbooks, that's how cookbook writing works.

Unless the person's job is to like develop recipes.

You know, our friend Jay Kenji Lopez-Alt, his whole life is dedicated to developing recipes, and he may be filling his books with recipes, all of which he wrote and developed.

I believe that exists in the world.

But the general case is that a book, even by a famous chef, might have more direction than a book written by a model turned whatever.

But there's don't be snooty about it.

Let me ask you a question, Jesse.

Do you think the essential James Beard cookbook is written by James Beard?

That's an interesting question.

The answer is no.

James Beard has not been alive for a long time.

I mean, my thinking on this, John, is that while it's possible through the use of a spiritualist medium that he could have written that cookbook,

but I believe him to be a dead man.

Fair enough.

Do you believe that Chris Santos from television's chopped is the sole author of Chris Santos' cookbook, Share.

No, I bet Chris Santos did a lot of work on it.

I don't mean to suggest that any of these people aren't involved in the making of their books.

It's just that when you make a lot of recipes, you got to have some help.

Jesse, a couple of follow-up questions, just your basic sense of yes or no.

Do you think Frankie Avalon wrote Frankie Avalon's Italian family cookbook?

Yes or no?

100% yes.

Do you think that Patty LaBelle wrote Desserts LaBelle on her own?

I bet Patty LaBelle has a rotating file of 20 dessert recipes that she loves, that she's messed around with, that are her special things.

And then she had some help to get the extra 15 or 20.

Let me tell you about that extra help.

All of these titles that I mentioned: Share by Chris Santos, Italian Family Cookbook by Frankie Avalon, Desserts LaBelle by Patty LaBelle, Essential James Beard Cookbook by The Estate of James Beard, as well as Simply Divine by Lisa Vanderpump, all written, co-written, or tested, recipe tested by Rick Rogers, one of my favorite clients of my first boss, Susan Ginsberg at Writer's House.

Rick Rogers is an amazing, this is his job, is that he channels the voice and culinary interests and recipes of famous people who are either chefs or home cooks or otherwise, but are otherwise unable to create a cookbook.

And he does it with them and for them.

And Rick is one of the nicest people in the world, and he's written a bunch of cookbooks on his own that are under his name, R-O-D-G-E-R-S, including Thanksgiving 101 and Christmas 101, the two absolute go-tos that we go to every holiday to just do basic recipes for Christmas, Thanksgiving, and other wintertime holidays.

It's fantastic.

Rick Rogers is great.

Go check him out.

Aaron, you think I'm going to let you, your girlfriend diss Rick Rogers?

Wrong.

Rick Rogers is the best.

Many, many other cooking professionals out there.

Thank you for bringing it up, Jesse.

Thank you for reminding me of Rick Rogers and Susan Ginsberg in Writer's House.

I love you all and I miss you.

I do think, by the way, that Adam Reed,

the

guy from America's Test Kitchen, I do think he wrote the book, Every Recipe in the Book, Thoroughly Modern Milkshakes, 100 Classic and Contemporary Recipes.

That book is Hot Fire.

about cold dairy.

Love that book.

Got a got a review copy of of that book in the mail.

Thought there's no way I'm doing a bullseye segment about milkshakes, but this sounds pretty good.

And you know what?

It's really good.

The answer is, the answer, by the way, is that you should

try making tea-based milkshakes.

That's real good.

I also forgot that Joel Mann wrote his own cookbook, A Gallon of Smoothies.

Right, Joel Mann?

My favorite cookbook is Google.

Google.com.

Do we have any letters this week, John?

Yeah, we do.

As you know, this is the reunion of the J Squad, Joel, Jennifer, Jesse, and John here in Maine.

We had a letter from the C team.

Our friends Caroline and Connor, plus their dogs, Cosmo and Chai,

they wrote us some time ago because they were expecting a human baby and they wanted to give this human baby a C name so they could continue their

C starting name tradition in their family and continue to be the C team.

They couldn't settle on a C starting name name that they liked, the letter C,

because Connor was a cryptocurrency enthusiast and hobbyist.

You may recall that we met him in London, Jesse, some years ago at the London Podcast Festival,

where he and Caroline had a dispute over his Ethereum mining rig.

He stopped mining Ethereum, which is a cryptocurrency, and instead started having a baby.

And so we suggested that

they name this baby Chithurium with a middle name of alien because of a very funny alien reference Caroline had included in her original letter.

And so she wrote more recently, hi, Caroline from the C team here again.

I wanted to share an update on our baby name dispute.

Little Chithurium alien was born six and a half weeks early on June 20th at 7.41 a.m.

Since Chithurium is preterm.

The baby will get to stay in their own little

NICU rig, mining all the colostromium, what is this word?

Colostromonium liquid gold.

He can.

I got the nod from Jennifer Marmor.

I said that correctly.

Sounded correct to me.

Yeah.

I mean, if you're going to

make one word sound like a space word, I don't know if there's an exact pronunciation in Webster's.

The baby is not actually named Chithirium, speaking of space words.

Caroline writes, we wound up calling him Chance because he's our lucky little guy.

Thanks to you, Jesse, Jennifer, and all all the other JJ Ho friends for keeping us entertained all these years.

I'm sure we'll be re-listening to some old episodes as we dispute birthday parties, Santa Claus, and aggressive miniature ponies as Chance grows up.

So congratulations to the now newly expanded C team.

I just noticed, by the way, Joel, at the Tradewinds Market.

Yeah.

You know they have a Bitcoin ATM up there now?

No, I did not.

Yeah, they do.

They do.

I don't know how much use it's getting.

It's very strange.

It's out in the exit doors where you return the carts.

But the Bitcoin ATM dispenses Ethereum now, I gather.

After I leave the radio station today, I'm going to drop by the trade winds and see how much some Ethereum costs.

And maybe I'll get some for Little Chance's future fund.

The docket now clear.

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

Our producer, Jennifer Marmer, our engineer in Maine is Joel Mann, the Program and Operations Manager at WERU Community Radio in Orland, Maine.

You can listen to WERU at weru.org and you can follow Joel on Instagram.

His handle is the main man, M-A-I-N-E-M-A-N-N.

You can 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 fun subreddit to discuss this episode.

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Send us your cases.

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Just go on one of those neighborhood-based social media apps and just ask if anybody's got any beef with anybody.

See what happens.

See what happens.

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