Right to a Fair Earring

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm summertime, fun-time guest bailiff Monty Belmonte from 939 the River WRSI in Northampton, Massachusetts.

This week, right to a fair earring, Ben files suit against his friend and writing partner, Graham.

The two of them agreed that if they were not hired on a writing staff by the end of 2020, they would get matching ear piercings.

The studs jumped through a few hoops and ear, lobe and behold, they did end up getting hired. But their start date was at the very beginning of 2021.

Graham is trying to gauge whether being offered the jobs in 2020 pokes a hole in their pact and frees their ears from perforation.

But Ben is continuing to dangle their diamond promise before Graham and believes they need to pull the trigger on the piercing gun. Who's right?

Who's left? Left is not right, and right is not wrong. But when it comes to Graham and Ben's ear holes, only one can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

This isn't the reference. This is just me saying hi to Monty.
And also, how dare you?

Hi. Welcome back to Summer.
I love it. Ott Monty Summer begins.
All right, here's the quote.

Steve plays in many bands, such as the Night and Day Jazz Trio, a Funk Band, and other local big bands and combos.

He also has performed for bands that have accompanied major stars, such as The Four Tops, The Temptations, David Bowie, Roy Orbison, Johnny Mathis, The Supremes, Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons, Manhattan Transfer, Joan Rivers, Bob Newhart, Chubby Checker, and John Hodgman.

Summertime, fun time, pun time, bailiff, guest bailiff, Monty Belmonte, please swear the litigant's in.

Ben and Graham, please raise your right hands. Now bite down on this strap.
I'm going to light this needle on fire.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, Vermeer, or whatever? I do. I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that Hodgman is a huge fan of Pierce Brosnan, President Franklin Pierce, and the the 1960s Dutch band Golden Earring. I do.
I do.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed. Okay.

I'm going to give you, so help me, Vermeer, or whatever. That was really, really good.
Thank you.

And Monty, you have thoroughly shamed me because I, for the life of me, today could not come up with a genuinely on-topic earring-themed cultural reference. And you just,

you just smashed it.

Vermeer, golden earring Franklin Pierce what was the other one Pierce Brosnan Pierce Brosnan I could have even done Hawkeye Pierce MASH none of not didn't even think of it didn't even think of it I thought going from golden earring and their big hit radar love to radar from mash to the reboot of mash with john hodgman as radar but that seemed a little bit too much of a stretch so i struck that one Maybe I should get some tips from these new professional writers.

No, it's good. It's good, Monty.
You take it from here. I'm leaving.
Joel, unlock me. Let me out of the radio station.

I am, of course, broadcasting this summertime, after all, the very beginning of summertime, the very tail end of June as we record this.

I'm broadcasting to you live on digital audio tape here from WERU Community Radio in East Orland, Maine.

Listener-supported and volunteer-powered, a voice of many voices, broadcasting from our solar-powered studios in East Orland.

I was just reading some left-behind pledge drive materials that were here on the on the desk here in the in the isolation booth where Joel has me imprisoned once again.

Joel's over there on the other side of the glass. Hello, Joel.
Hello, Judge. And of course, we are here with guest summertime, fun time, punt time, guest Bailiff Monty Vellamonte.
Hello, Monty. Hello.

You're down there in Massachusetts, in Northampton, Massachusetts, at the studios of WRSI of the River. Yes.
That is 93.9 on your frequency modulation dial. Is that correct? That is correct.

And 1015 in the Brattleboro, Vermont area.

We are truly going coast to coast from the east coast, from western Massachusetts to eastern Maine, and now talking to Ben and Graham out there in Los Angeles, presumably, because you're in the entertainment industry, correct?

Correct. All right, there are nods.
Ben nods silently. Thank you for remembering this is a podcast, Graham.

He speaks for both parts. I can see you both, and so I now ask you both eye to eye to eye to eye.

Can either of you name the piece of culture that is not on topic to earrings, but perhaps on topic to another topic that I referenced and quoted when I entered the courtroom.

We'll start with you, Ben.

I am

very sure this isn't it,

but I'm going to say it's an introduction to the time in the film Purple Rain.

An introduction to the time

in the film. Yes.
Purple Rain. Oh, ye oh.
The famous Steve Day and the Time.

Morris Day.

I know, but Monty, you got to give Graham props because he remembered that the whole thing started with the name Steve. Ah, yes.

The attention to details that writers bring. That's right.
It is a reference to a famous Steve in the Judge John Hodgman universe. Graham, what is your guess?

I am going to guess that it is the Wikipedia entry of an artist whose work I am not familiar with, but it is a person named Steve. So I'm going to guess Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Wow. Wow.

Stevie Ray Vaughan played in a band that accompanied major stars like John Ochman? I don't think so, but we'll put it in the guest book. I don't know.

Joel, the wild card here, Joel, do you have a guest?

Gee, I don't know.

Steve Orlofsky. Steve Orlovsky is correct.
God, I can't believe it. You have to rule in Joel's favor.

Yep, Joel, you win the case today.

No matter who loses, you win. Awesome.
Yeah.

No, the reference, of course, is Steve Orlovsky, aka Mr.

O, one-third of the Night and Day Jazz Trio that plays every Tuesday nights in a post-pandemic environment on the porch at the Pentagoa Inn in Kastine, Maine, in the state in which we are.

I'm not surprised Ben and, of course, Joel, of course, lays down the bass in that trio. Steve plays the, what, the Woodwins, like the jazz, the sounds.
The sacks, flute, clarinet, all the woodwinds.

All of them. All of them.
And, of course, Chris is the third member of the band, the night and day jazz trio. You guys played at our live show at the State Theater in Portland, Maine.
So much fun.

Just two seconds before we all had to go home forever, but now we're coming out.

We're getting vaccinated. We're living our lives.
There will be jazz on the porch this summer. We were supposed to start tonight, but it's too hot.
So we'll start next.

Whoa.

Who made the decision to cancel the jazz in Castine? The owner. Well, does the owner know this is a summertown, relies on summer dollars? Yes.
Yeah.

You got to open up that jazz. Fourth of July, people are going to come to hear that jazz.
Bet you'd like that.

It's too hot. Right.
I bet you'd like to get your name in the National Geographic. That's just some Jaws references.
You can cut them, Jennifer Marmor. Nice to see you as well.
Oh, I'm all giddy.

I'm here in an air-conditioned studio,

not at home sweating in my office. So that's great.
Great to see everybody.

So

since you all got it wrong, except for Joel, we're going to hear this case. Ben, do you you come to this court to seek justice? I do.
State the nature of your complaint.

Graham and I are a writing team who have been pursuing television writing for about a decade. How old are you now? 34.
34? Okay. You have one more year.
One more year.

And

last year in 2020, we had gotten close to being staffed, and we said this is going to be the year that it happens in January, not knowing what would befall us.

But

we made a pact that if we got staff writing jobs on a TV show, we would get matching earrings together.

We thought we were getting staffed in June. It didn't happen, but there was an outside chance we would get staffed by the end of the year, so we held off on our earrings.

And we ended up getting staff writer jobs on the show Blackish on ABC, which we feel very fortunate to work on. Congratulations.
Thank you.

And

our start date happened to be January 4th. And I maintain that because we did not get staff jobs in 2020, we still have to uphold our pact to each other to get our ears pierced.

Graham says that because we got our contracts at the end of 2020, that counts as good enough, and we don't have to get ear piercings. So you, Ben, are pro-pierce.
And Graham,

you are situationally anti-piercing. Correct.
In other words, by the letter of your FACO agreement, you do not have to get your ears pierced and therefore you are not going to.

Is that correct, Graham? That is what I maintain, yes, Your Honor. That is what you maintain.
And are you both 34? I'm 35. Whoa.

You just made it into television.

Right, right at the last second. Because if you hadn't gotten staffed, I would have just told you to your face right now, quit, go home.
No, good job. Congratulations.
Is this the first

staff writing position that you guys have had as a duo? It is. Wowee.
And you've been doing this. So what have you been doing for 10 years, if not writing television?

We had both been assistants for various writers before. I'd been

a writer's assistant and a script coordinator, which is I had been working on Blackish for...

about four and a half seasons before we were staffed as the script coordinator, which is a position.

So I work in the writer's room, or when I was the script coordinator, it was basically like the editor and the publisher of all of the scripts.

And I acted as the liaison between the writer's office and then the rest of production.

Because

when you're in a writer's room, and this is going back to a time when there were rooms that writers got and sat in,

it's not a writer's Zoom, it's a writer's room.

The writers can't write anything. They have to just sit there and eat snacks and fart ideas.

And then someone like you,

Graham, sort of writes them down and

makes them make sense, correct? Correct.

That's what you get to do now. Now there's someone who's going to be you in the real room or virtual room or whatever it is.

And you just get to laze about and eat snacks and go, is there something in the idea that it's a car?

Is there something in the idea that

it's an alligator? Which is funnier, an alligator or a caiman?

And I'll give you a hint, alligator, because people don't know what a caiman is. It's an island.
Cayman.

Well, yeah, but it's also an alligator-like creature, Monty.

You know what show you should pitch? Alligator-ish.

It's got a caiman.

I'm going to have that one for free. Because

this is the last season of Black-ish, I believe, right? The eighth of the final season? Yeah, so they took pity on you and said, all right, we'll bump Graham up.

And Graham's like, hey, I've got a deadbeat friend with a mustache. Can I bring him in as well? I've been working with him for 10 years.
And they said, absolutely not.

And Graham said, okay, I'm going to walk. And they said, that's fine.
And then Graham said, okay, you call my bluff, but really Ben's a great guy.

And they said, okay, we don't even care. This is the last season.
We're not even, whatever is going to happen.

We're just going to be, we're just going to be pitching episodes about various prehistoric reptiles anyway. So sure.
Is that about it? Do I have about, that's about how you get into television, right?

Eerily accurate. But sincerely,

like Ben, you were not working on the production Blackish. You were doing other stuff.
Right. I had been an assistant for some writers that worked at Blackish, so I knew some of the people there.

But then after that assistant job ended, I was doing freelance advertising, copywriting.

I, you know, I think some of our listeners might be curious

how one gets going in.

the business and how one can work for 10 years before even getting hired as a writer. And, you know, where did you, where did it really begin for the two of you, and how did you guys meet?

We met in college, in film school, where I remained a film student. Ben was only a film student for a few short months before changing his major, but that's where we met.

We became friends. And then after college, we were also roommates and working together.

And we decided, oh, this, you know, we get along, we might as well try writing. And so we started writing scripts.

And I mean, there's not a

spec scripts.

Yes, spec scripts. We, you know, also tried our hand at

one-act plays and short films and things of that nature, trying to attract notice.

But then, you know,

we sort of fell into, I just ended up working at ABC.

You know, everyone in Hollywood gets a job through somebody that they know or a recommendation.

And so eventually enough of our friends had jobs in the industry that I was able to get in as a writer's PA, which is, you know, the person who gets coffee and lunch for all the writers.

And then I sort of worked my way up at ABC over a period of too many years. So wait a minute.
You went to film school?

At Chapman University. Say it again, where? At Chapman University, Go Panthers.
I've never heard of that university, but I guess that's a sports team.

I don't care if the Panthers go. The Panthers can go or stay, in my mind.

It's also their marching band. So Stay, Panthers, stay.
Good boy.

It's a reference to a title card from a production company. Jennifer Marmor gets it.
Monty Bill Matz gets it.

Ubu.

TV. This is

inside TV. This is inside Panthers TV baseball talk.

That's what this episode is.

Right. So the secret.
So the secret is you move to Los Angeles, you meet a bunch of people, and then a friend gets you a low-level job. And

that's why it's all white guys, pretty much still.

We're working on it, I guess, as entertainment, as culture, right? We're working on it. Kenya Barris is working on it.
Oh, yeah. For sure.
For sure. Yeah.

Okay, cool. So, well, congratulations.

Jennifer Marmor, please edit out the fact that they tried to write some one-act plays

because I'm afraid their parents are going to listen to this.

And it's been hard enough. It's been hard enough.
10 years post-graduation, they get a job. as writers.
I don't want to hear. My parents flew out from Nebraska to watch one of our one-act plays.
So

that is logic.

All right. A couple more questions before we get to your

frankly dumb dispute.

Okay. So what was the one-act play that your parents flew from Nebraska to see then? It was about

two comedy writers who were kidnapped by the Russian government and forced to write fake news. It's pretty good.
That is pretty good.

What was it called?

fake news it was called for your misinformation how about news ish try that it's another one you get for free tell kenya barris i'm i'm ready and ready to go i don't know anybody but i'll come and buy coffee for everybody what about compromat and the good star matt would be the guy that got kidnapped that's the adaption for cbs the adaptation

is this what it's like in a writer's room where i just spew all sorts of stuff and then somebody tells me good or bad and then i just eat my snacks and go away no what happens is is there something in compromat, and then just no one says anything, and you know, you know, you are no longer alive.

That's what happens. Honestly, like, this is what I don't understand about one act plays.
Go ahead and write two acts. Who cares? It's your play.

If I were your parents flying in from Nebraska, like, that's a long trip. That's probably, I don't even know if there's a direct flight from Omaha to Los Angeles.

All right, now, Graham, I want to ask you this because we talked about spec scripts.

For people who don't know, a spec script is where you basically write an an imaginary episode of an existing TV show within the genre that you want, either the TV show you want to write for

or within the genre that you want to write for.

And this is something that television writers have to do.

What was the spec script?

What show did you write a spec script for?

We wrote a couple. I think we did a Bob's Burgers, but our favorite one was an episode of Archer.

Oh, Archer, product of Floyd County Productions in Atlanta. Same as, I would dare say, its sibling show, Dick Town.
Available sort of at

bit.ly slash Dicktown, D-I-C-K-T-O-W-N.

And what was what happened in your... So you just wrote a fake Archer.
Correct. And what was your spec script for Archer? That one was about

the

team, and this was many years ago, but the team gets hired to find

or to steal an artifact from German archaeologists, which

sends Archer into just a tailspin where he is so happy that he gets to live out his Indiana Jones fantasy.

And so,

yeah, feels a little Venture Brothers to me. Sorry, guys.
Oh, we love Venture Brothers. We enjoyed the work.
We enjoyed the work. Keep in touch.
Okay.

So there you were at the end of your 33rd and 34th respective years, knowing that your dream was quickly sunsetting

into despair. If we don't get staffed by the end of 2020, says Ben,

then we will get earrings. I don't understand why earrings are a punishment, Ben.

Do I understand the formulation? Well, we kind of talked about it, and neither of us would get a tattoo. And so earring was the closest permanent body thing we could do.

We wanted to have it have some stakes. You wanted, oh, I see.
So you wanted to motivate yourself to get into a room. Yes.
Right.

I want to offer you a note. It's a little confusing, right, when your main characters are doing something when something doesn't happen.
Do you see what I mean?

It's a little easier for the audience to understand when your main characters do something if something does happen. Like we are going to celebrate with a full back tattoo of Kenya Barris.

as opposed to punish ourselves if something does not happen. Absence of action is hard to build a story around.
Or so I have learned working with David Reese on a secret project right now.

That was a little note for myself.

Graham, why is getting an earring a punishment? Is it a punishment to you particularly?

Yeah, neither of us particularly want earrings.

In my mind, the reason for the pact was...

to create a sort of proxy problem to distract from the existential angst of another year of our lives has gone by where we have not advanced further in our goals.

And so it's easier to think, oh man, I don't want to get an earring than it is to think, oh man, I'm a year closer to death with nothing to show for it.

We may be, have you ever heard of the movie Frequency? I don't think so. No, Monty, you know the movie Frequency? Not I.

Jennifer Marmor, really? Am I that old? Maybe that's what's happening here. It's a 1990s movie.
You know that one, Joel? Frequency? I've heard of it, didn't see it. Okay.
Sure, Joel.

I'm not adding anything to know that you've heard of it. I've never seen it either, but Dennis Guade, isn't it? It's about a guy.
It's about a grown man who is a ham radio enthusiast and

the signal bounces off of time or something in the stratosphere and he ends up talking to his dad as a young man. I think I recall that premise.
Yeah. Yeah.
Maybe it's ripe for a reboot.

You guys should get on that. That one's for free.
I'm pitching it to you now because I feel like, what year am I talking to you guys in? 1950? Not get earrings. Who cares?

Look, I know your parents are from Omaha, but I would think even the lawyers in Omaha have full face tattoos at this point if they're under 40.

Where are you from, Graham? I'm from Orange County, California. Orange County, California.
Yeah, I guess, I don't know. It's pretty conservative down there, right? Yeah.

You two don't have any tattoos? No. No, we're.
We're, yeah, no tattoos, no piercings. I mean, I have long hair now, but that's about as wild as I have gotten.

These are the two white guys with facial hair who don't have tattoos?

Is there a religious reason behind it?

No, I just don't have faith in myself that if I get a tattoo of anything, that it will be something that I still like having in 10 or 20 years. Well, guess what? You're absolutely correct.
Good job.

Just saying statistically, it's anomalous.

that we have two completely non-body modified people in their mid-30s who listened to Judge John Hodgman. Truly, truly blank canvases for me to potentially mess with.

Because the end of this episode, I will decide that either Ben is correct and the deal was still in place and you must get earrings, something that 11-year-olds routinely do.

Or two-year-olds.

That's true, but the two-year-olds aren't usually going to the mall by themselves. Right.
I hope.

Or I'm going to stand by Graham and

keep his body pure.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman. I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.
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What's your background, by the way, Graham? That's not a real room behind you, is it? No,

it's a fictional Zoom background. I'm currently in my very poorly appointed garage.
Oh, okay.

Looks like you're in the studios of WERU here in Orland, Maine, with all your CDs behind you. Racks and racks and racks of CDs.
All right, never mind.

I was really jealous that a new writer on an ABC television show would have such an immensely huge library in a gorgeous apartment like that. I should have known.
Yeah, hang on. Hang on.

For the Judge John Hodgman account on Instagram, I want to take a picture of his actual background or his fake background.

Now turn it off so we can get the actual one.

One second. Yeah, I'll show you the life of the mind.

It's a good thing I didn't do a Barton Fink quote to come in on this. I was going to, obviously, you catch the reference.
There we go. Oh, my, oh, my word.
Oh, the humanity of Peloton.

Wow. Oh, no.

That's a $200 elliptical machine. Okay.

I know, but it's got like barbells stacked on top of it. And then I feel like there's a body bag in there.
Go back to the other thing. This is distressing.
Yeah.

I feel like I already won because you made Graham reveal his shameful garage.

Well, you're in a real space, and I see that you've got

the complete world knowledge trilogy by me, John Hodgman, on the shelf directly behind you. I do.
Pandering will help you in this case. But Ben, Quesh,

that's short for question.

Quesh, Ben.

We're talking about, what kind of earrings are we talking about here? That's still up for debate. We had

said maybe hoops or studs. When we started talking about it more, Graham said he might want a little like enamel dinosaur.
Uh-huh.

I suggested we get powerful magnet earrings so that when we get close to each other, our ears stick together. But that's probably a bad idea.

You can get powerful magnet earrings and you don't even have to pierce your ears. Just put one of those super magnets on either side of the lobe.

That's a lobe. And you can bulk people's credit cards with your.

I love that. I feel more creative talking to you two than I've felt in the past 18 months.
Where do I pluck this stuff from? We got a workshop. We got to do some more blue sky thinking, you guys.

But you were not talking about any like, Jennifer Marmor, what do you call the earrings?

Where, you know, you just enlarge the hole more more and more and more, and you put, like, discs and things in there, dinner plates and so forth.

Do they have a name?

Monty knows. Gauges.
Gauges? Yeah. You're not talking about that, are you, Ben? No, I would very much not want to do that.
All right.

So you got, oh, boy, oh, boy. Got the paperwork in 2020.

And then, but you got the start of the job in 2021.

Is that the crux of this debate?

Yes. What's enforceable here? How did you turn this fun dare into like SAG paperwork?

Why I didn't qualify for my SAG health insurance because

I got the paperwork at the end of the year, but then I signed my start work papers at the beginning of the year. And now I have to go on Cobra with my mom and dad.

SAG paperwork, incidentally, is how you remove the gauges after you've had them in your ears for 20 years.

Get off my phone. Get off.
How dare you?

So, Graham, what is your contention that this, that what's the loophole, so to speak? See, I can do it too. I can do it too, Monty.
I made a joke.

What's the loophole?

What's the loby loophole? Well, my contention is that the spirit of the pact

was completed. The existential angst had been erased before the end of December.
Right. We were not carrying it into the new year with us at all.
Right. You succeeded.
You didn't fail.

And would you contend, Graham, that you succeeded in part because you were afraid of going and getting a tiny little ear piercing? I don't think that one caused the other. No.

Correlation, but no causation. Yes.
Okay. And Ben, why do you want to do it now? Why do you care? You got the job.
Or let me put it this way. Graham got you the job.
I'm not arguing that.

Graham got me the job. That's a fact.
Yeah. Look, collaborative duos.
Collaboration of any kind, there's push and pull. There's contention.
This is a power play.

Like you're trying to stab him in the ear to sort of

gain some juice back because he got you this job?

No, I think it's in my mind. We are writing partners.
It's a like a long-term relationship that we have had and will continue to have.

And that remains to be seen. I agree with the fact that you're right.

Who knows what will happen? All right, go on. Graham is married.
I am not. This is maybe the closest thing in my life to a spouse,

someone who I share money and dreams with.

And I want to know that he will follow through on things that he has agreed to. It's very important to me.
Why are you the one with

the nice office with the actual shelves? You sound like someone sitting alone in a garage.

This is a terrible apartment that I've been in for 10 years. And the shelves are only here because I make furniture and I build the shelves.
Oh, well. Nice.
I like that. You had plan B ready to go.

You were going to Harrison Ford it and become a carpenter if it didn't come together. Yeah.

Until until Graham came and saved you. So you have no human connections except for Graham, and you envy him the fact that he has a functional relationship that is not yours.

So you want to control his life.

I have lots of great friendships, just none that are financially tied to me except for Graham. May I ask you, how was your pandemic experience? Was it very lonely? Yes, it was.

I have two roommates, so I at least got to see them.

You were not completely alone. No.
I'm isolated. Okay.

But the records show that Ben nodded very sadly there before he remembered he was on a podcast. I get it.

So, Ben, do you want to get an earring personally? Like, you're into this? No, it's not something I would ever do on my own.

It's not something I particularly have been seeking out because if I wanted an earring, I'd just get an earring.

I kind of just want Graham to have to get an earring, and I'm willing to get an earring to make that happen. And I want him to uphold his side of this agreement.

Graham, why did you agree to this pact?

I think because

mostly because of the sort of the existential reason that I mentioned earlier, it's a lot easier to, if the thing you were dreading is like, ah, I don't want to have to get an earring versus, ah, I don't want to get coffee for the next 30 years and never be able to retire.

So it was, it was simply, I mean, to me, it was a, I guess also we were feeling a little bit cocky you know we were pretty optimistic that there was there were two shows that we were we had good chances at getting hired on and so we thought oh well surely it's going to be one or the other of them but whenever we have felt optimistic in the past things have just never worked out and so this was a way of sort of tempering the optimism if that makes sense I love how the two, the two bad outcomes were getting an earring and also

getting coffee for the rest of your life and not being able to retire, like getting coffee for other people for the rest of your life and not being able to retire.

One of those is scarier to me than the others.

Like one of them is pretty motivating on its own.

Have you ever made pacts like this before, you two?

We have one pact that is still ongoing, yet to be determined.

If we ever sell our own TV show,

when we begin to have to do press for those, we have made a pact that we are going to have

very elaborate 70-style perms.

Okay. I don't remember how that originated, but it is something that is, you know, potentially in the cards.
We'll see.

Ben is already looking pretty, you know, like Magnum P.I.'s younger brother with his little mustache. I'm trying.
What I really want to do is. It's not even a little mustache.
It's a nice,

it's a nice Tom Selicky mustache on the face of a, of a, like,

a Tom Selleck's withered twin.

You're a handsome person, Ben. I'm going to say right now, and the mustache suits you.
I'm just trying to paint a picture for those who can't see you as they listen that

you're not a Tom Selicky kind of like weathered 70s hunk. You're just a nice-looking young man.
Thank you. I was going for more of a John Oates mustache, though.
Definitely. See that.
Yeah.

Hey, Monty Belmonte, you're a professional disc jockey, right? I suppose, yes. All right.
This is what I would like you to do.

Introduce the song, You Make My Dreams Come True, and name the artist that performs that song. Do you want to do it like

I would do it or like a more stereotypical DJ? What's my motivation? I'll do it. You know what? Try it the way you like.
All right, everybody. Here is...

You make my dreams come true by the dynamic duo of Graham and Ben, otherwise known as Hall and Oats.

Okay, Jennifer Marmer, mute him. Okay.
See, I don't do that on the regular radio, but it's fun to do it once in a while. Mute, Monty.
That's not it. You're in radio jail now, Monty.

You know why? Why? Ben or Graham, you know why?

Graham is raising his hands. I believe, I think we both know why.

It is because the

artistic duo is professionally known as Daryl Hall and John Oates and not Hall and Oates.

Which I recently learned from the Judge John Hodgman podcast. But only because I recently learned it from the internet.
Oh, I should have quizzed Joel on that. Joel, did you know that? No.

Daryl Hall and John Oates. They get mad if you say Hollow Notes.

It's every one of their record albums, Monty. You're out of jail now, by the way.
Thank you. Because you poor friends.
Every one of their record albums is credited to Daryl Hall and John Oates.

Hollow Notes is never written down anywhere. Wow.
Did you know that? I'm today years old when I learned that. Next thing you're going to tell me, it's not the talking heads or the pixies.

No, it's the the.

You take the the from both of those bands and it becomes the the also joe

today reduced what's that it's not joe bird and the field hippies did you know that no it's technically it's merillion merillion did you know that no i don't believe you yeah okay now you're in radio jail all these djs what are we all day and night jazz trio

Monty, what do you think we're going to, what do you think I got to do with Ben and Graham here?

Well, I am one of those people that has had many body modifications. So to me, this is such a non-issue that like I had six earrings and now wear none of them.

And it's like nothing ever happened in my life. So it seems very inconsequential to me.
So I think this really comes down to what they want to do.

Have your, have your, have your holes filled in, your earring, your pierce holes? I can put one in my left ear, which is the one I wore the most up until the most recently.

Still, I could put one in there, but you barely notice if I, you know, if I don't have one in. But it makes it fun on Halloween if I want to dress up like a pirate or something or Mr.
Clean. Sure.

You have a very good, you have a very clean look, a very Mr. Clean look.
Joel, you have any pierced ears or tattoos? No. Okay.

Jennifer Marmor, this is a personal question. Yeah.
I have two holes in my left ear and one hole in my right ear. And when I was in college, I had an eyebrow piercing.
Really? Mm-hmm.

And when did you take that out and what happened? Did your eyebrow fall off? It did. It's real scary.

No, I took it out pretty soon after I graduated. I remember thinking, like, I'm done with this.
I'm done with college. I'm done with this eyebrow ring.
Right. And

it closed up. You can kind of still see.

Like, if you look hard enough, you can see where it was. And if I get my eyebrows waxed or something, occasionally the esthetician will say, you know, oh, did you have a piercing? But meaningless now.

My left ear was pierced when I was in college, home for the summer, hanging out with my friends and future wife and whole person in her own right.

And someone just stuck a needle through the top part of my ear. You know what I mean? And I put a thing, I put a stud in there for a while and I was like, this is dumb.
And I took it out.

And now there's just a lump there that I can feel. But for the most part,

I bet you people didn't know I was incredibly cool.

I had an earring in the 90s.

I had a soul patch for a period of time. And I also got a small tattoo on my right shoulder in Portsmouth, New Hampshire before it was legal in Massachusetts.

I was 19 years old, and it was a tattoo representing a figure from a Jorge Luis Borges story. Yeah.
And guess what, Graham? It looks really dumb now.

It looked okay. It was okay for about 20 years.
And then after that,

no, I guess, yeah, since this last year, I'm like, oh, that's dumb. So, Ben, if I were to rule in your favor, what would you have me rule? That Graham get his ear pierced?

Anything more specific than that? Yeah, Yeah, that both of us, both of us get our ear pierced.

If you would like to decide what kind of earrings we get or where we get them, if it's a needle or if it's at Claire's at the Burbank Mall,

I would take any specificity you wanted to add to that. Well, I mean,

why don't you pitch me? This is your pitch.

Tell me the perfect day. Tell me what happens on the day you guys get your ears pierced.

I think we go out for a nice big lunch together at the mall food court. Which mall? And

probably the Burbank Mall because it's closer to Graham and he doesn't come down to the west side where I live anymore. Okay.
All right. You're meeting him more than halfway.
Yeah.

I'll even pick him up.

Why would he leave that apartment? It's so gorgeous.

You're going to pick him up from his garage. I'd pick him up from his garage.

If his wife and two-year-old daughter wanted to come, I'd let them come watch their daddy get a hold in him. Oh, that'd be exciting for them.

And we'd go to the Burbank Mall.

They've got a Mongolian grill down in the food court, which I really like, where you can choose all of your things you want in your bowl, and they'll cook it up on that big circular grill.

And then we'd take the escalator up, walk by the Spencer's gifts, and go to Claire's. And they have the little piercing gun.

And I think I'd go first to show him that, you know, he doesn't need to be scared. And then Graham would get his.
Does it have to be one at a time?

I don't know the Claire's piercing setup at the Burbank Mall as well as I used to.

Does Does it have to be one at a time, or can you sit next to each other with two different piercing technicians and you guys can link pinkies and pinky promise as it's happening?

That mall's looking pretty depressed, so I think that Claire's probably can't support more than one employee at a time, but I could be wrong about that. It's just singular Claire now.

Yeah, the other Claire quit.

Got me, Monty.

All right, who goes first?

In your first time, I'll go first. scenario.

You go first. You show Graham it doesn't hurt that pet.
Right. Right.
And you all gather around Graham. And as he gets the piercing, does he, does what is he?

He looks into your eyes and says, you were right all along. That would be ideal.
This is glorious. It's full of,

my God, it's full of stars. Is that what he says? I mean, if you could say you were right all along,

this is glorious. My God, it is full of stars.
That would just make my day. All right.
I'm adding that to the ruling. Okay.

I'm not saying that that's the ruling. I'm saying I'm just.

Graham, do you want to punch that up at all?

Is there a version of that where you don't say, my God, it's full of stars, but say something that you actually have been meaning to say to Ben for the past 10 years?

Well, I think it could go exactly like that, except at the very end, we cut to Michael Palin staring into the camera like at the end of Brazil and it's revealed that it was all in Ben's head and it never happened.

Well,

you're talking my love language now if you're making a reference to the last scene in Brazil. I like it.
But if you were to say something to Ben that really

reflects your relationship dynamic, what would it be? Not just a cultural reference, because that's lazy writing, and that's what I do. Let's say you're a real writer.

I guess in this scenario where you have ruled in his favor, I guess I would say.

You know, so I have already made my peace with what's happening. So I would say that.
I don't know how you feel about it. I've ordered you.

Like, think about how you would feel about it and look at Ben. Like, would you say, happy now, effer?

I guess I would say, thank you for making sure that even though I'm now a family man, because of you, I still have to do dumb things sometimes.

Oh, is that something you feel that you're going to stop doing dumb things unless Ben tricks you into it on a podcast, Graham? I definitely do fewer dumb things. That's, you know, that's certain.

Would you say that Ben is a reminder of your youth or someone who is dragging you into the past as you seek to go forward in your life?

You know,

if I am a boat that is cruising through the ocean, you know, he is not an anchor holding me back. He's just a little,

you know, like a fun little fishing bag that dangles at the back and catches crabs and reminds me of all the fun crabs that we have caught in the past. I wanted to be a jet ski.

I want to be a jet ski zooming around you. pointing you where to go.
Your friend just called you a fun little fishing bag. Wow.

And that's not how you fit. What crabs are you fishing for with fun bags?

Is that a thing that you did?

I know, Jennifer Marmor. We're going to get to the verdict, but just the whole world is opened up to me now.

I guess I've just revealed I have no idea how boats or fishing works. Have you fished for crabs before? No.
Well, no. I don't think I have.

Yeah, we went to San Francisco on Steve's dad's boat with all the crab pots in the bay. But we weren't fishing for them.

He was just like lifting up crabs and going, see, here's a a bunch of crabs that I have caught before you arrived. No, we pulled up the crab pots.

Yeah, what you don't do is you don't trawl a bag behind your boats.

You put traps on the bottom, right, Joel? That's how you get. How do you get crabs, Joel?

Go down to the little fish shack.

Right. On the water.
Right. Captain's catch.
Okay. That's where you get your crabs.
Got them by the gallon. No.
Okay.

In any case, all right. Fun little fishing bag.
How about this? I'm just going to say,

I was going to say that Ben is like a fun little happy porpoise or dolphin who's kind of like leaping from the sea alongside you as you cruise into the sunset of your life and impending death in fatherhood.

But I like

jet ski better. I like Ben on the jet ski,

zooming around,

yelling at Graham. Come get on the back of my jet ski.
Leave your wife and child behind. You're not dead yet, Graham.
Come on,

throw me the line. I'll pull you in by

the chain that's attached to your ear that I made you get. Okay, I think I've figured out everything I need to in order to make my decision.

I'm going to go down into my

lobster shack, and I will be back in a moment with my verdict. I resisted the inclination to say how I caught crabs, but I'll continue.
Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

ben and graham this is an interesting conundrum for somebody like me who has had six earrings but i want to know from both of you are you afraid of it hurting when you get an earring is this why this was something that you uh put out there that the fear of the pain of the piercing ben i i am not afraid of the pain um in the words of patrick swayzey in roadhouse pain don't hurt uh but graham is also one of the most pain averse people people I've ever met.

Which I know everyone

is pain-averse, but he goes to extreme lengths to avoid any kind of pain.

Uh, I would like to rebut that if I may, Monty.

I know, I know we've adjourned, but I'm just a bailiff.

Uh, no one except Masochis likes pain. I don't think I'm any more pain-averse than other people.

Like, I don't complain when I have to go to the dentist, uh, when I get shots of the doctor, I always get a sticker that says I was a brave boy. Um, you know, the other week I got

a hurty style massage, like those ones that hurt. And I was able to cry so silently that the masseuse did not even offer me a Kleenex.

Congratulations to you. That's a big move, big boy.
Get another sticker for that one. Well, we'll see what the judge has to say about all this when he comes back in just a moment.

Hello. Hello, I'm calling on behalf of the Beef and Dairy Network podcast.
No, no, I'm sorry. No sales calls.
Goodbye.

It's a multi-award-winning podcast featuring guests such as Ted Danson, Nick Offerman, Josie Long.

I don't know what a Josie Long is, and anyway, I'm about to take my mother into town to see Phantom of the Opera at last. You are wasting my time, and even worse, my mother's time.

She only has so much time left. She's 98 years old.
She's only expected to live for another 20 or 30 years. Mother, get your shoes on.
Yes, the orthopaedic ones.

I don't want to have to carry you home again, do I? Right, well, if you were looking for a podcast. Mother, you're not wearing that, are you? It's very revealing, Mother.

This is a musical musical theater, not a Parisian bordello. Simply go to maximumfun.org.
I'm reaching for my Samsung Galaxy 4 as we speak. Mother! Mother, not that hat!

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom and presents his verdict.

A Hurdy-style massage.

I just had a Hurdy-style massage in the lobster shack. They just threw a bunch of lobsters on me, took the rubber bands off and let them go.

My circulation is incredible now. Let me tell you, it's been a pleasure talking to both of you about this incredibly low stakes dumb dispute.

It's not totally low stakes, though. The stakes are personal.
As I began to understand

as we were workshopping that jet ski or porpoise decision in the boat metaphor and the crab bagging metaphor of Graham's life as a father and husband, as a grown-up.

Graham's a year older, even though he sits alone and talks into a can in a garage for a living.

He is married and has a child and made some big grown-up steps that Ben's

mustache cannot compensate for.

There's no way.

When everyone looks at these two on the Judge John Hodgman Instagram page and on the show page, you'll see they both have facial hair, but only one of them looks like a little boy.

Brave boy, a little brave boy, just like Graham going to get a shot

for sure.

And now I get it. I get it a little bit more because, Ben, as you pointed out, a writing partnership is

ideally a long-term relationship. It is both...

a very personal, creative, and emotional relationship that is more than a friendship because, like marriage, it is also a financial relationship and a business relationship.

And, you know,

there is a push and pull

that goes on in that relationship.

And when someone gets an opportunity that the other person doesn't, whether that's professional or personal, or someone develops an opportunity or an idea that goes places that the other person doesn't, you know, there's friction.

Graham has moved forward in his life in a positive way. And I trust, Ben, Ben, that you are very, very happy for him.

But Graham himself senses like, oh,

I need Ben to remind me of what it's like

to

be a happy little jet ski or crab bag or whatever it is he is.

And I think just as in a romantic relationship, there is merit in symbolic actions, such as getting married.

There is merit in friend and collaborator symbolic actions as well, such as getting earrings. I mean, this is the thing, Graham.
It's not a big deal.

It's not a big deal.

No one will know if you get your ears pierced and you wear that earring for a month, no one will notice. You take it out, no one will notice, the hole will fill up, it'll be done, it's over.

I don't think that you're particularly pain averse, but I do think that this is not a big deal. That said,

Ben, it's Graham's body. You know, I can't, there's no way I'm going to rule that somebody get an ear piercing against his will.

No way.

Not in a million years. It's his body.

You know,

I kind of want to order him to get a full-face tattoo of me on his chest, but this is his body. It's his body.
And plus, you know,

this is an internet court of fake law. The letter of the fake law is clear.
You started the job in 2021. Is it a loophole? Yes.

Is Graham weaseling out of this? Of course he is.

But legally,

he is outside of the bounds of the contract that he formed with you.

And since he doesn't want to do it, he's not going to do it. So I can't, obviously, Graham,

enjoy your full unpierced lobes until you are ready. Ben, I'm sorry to let you down.
However, I fully endorse your plans to both get 70-style perms if and I dare say when you sell your own show.

I find it alarming how many of my references you laughed at. You're young.
You shouldn't get the things that I'm talking about. The 70s is my time to make fun of.
You have the 90s to make fun of.

But since you're in 70s mode, for whatever reason, it's retro meta-comedy for you. I'm going to say, obviously, Ben, you're a Mike Brady perm, for sure.
And

Graham, Mr. Roper.
Not a perm, but I want to see you in a Mr. Roper.
This is the sound of a gabble.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all. Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Ben, your dreams did not come true. Judge John Hodgman can't go for that.
Other Daryl Hall and John Oates references in regards to the ruling. Graham, you do not have to get an earring.

Ben, do you still want an earring? No, it was never about wanting an earring. It was about wanting Graham to have an earring and uphold his bargain.

It was just about mutilating his body so you know you have control over him so he doesn't leave you behind.

Yeah, I don't recognize his bodily autonomy.

Exactly. Is there another kind of ring that may sort of bridge this divide here that you could get?

Engagement ring of like a writer's room engagement ring of sorts, a brotherhood of duo writers, something along those lines?

I already bought us both matching Adidas' track suits when we got our staff writing jobs. So maybe he'll wear one of those with me to work.
Graham, how do you feel about the judge's decision?

I'm ecstatic. The only thing better than winning is beating Ben.

Can I say something?

Is there something in Ben buying you guys matching Adidas' track suits and Graham not getting it and wearing both of them? on the first day?

Is there something there? I don't know. Is there something? I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know.
Never mind. Ben Graham, go get me a cup of coffee.

Ben Graham, thank you for joining us today on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Thank you.
Thank you so much. It was great.
Good luck, guys, and congratulations. Thank you.

Another case in the books. Before we dispense some swift justice, we want to thank Reed Hopkins for naming this week's episode right to a fair earring.

If you'd like to name a future episode, follow Judge John Hodgman on Facebook. We regularly put out a call for submissions.
Follow us on Twitter. I'm at Monte Belmonte.

And Judge Hodgman is at Hodgman. Hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets.
Hashtag JJ Ho. And check out the maximum fun subreddit to discuss this episode.
We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to follow us there for evidence and other fun stuff. Our engineer in Maine is the incomparable Joel Mann.
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 with an E, Man with two N's. Our producer is the wonderful Jennifer Marmer.

Now let's get to Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with a quick judgment. Kelly asks, which is the more widely known REM song?

Everybody hurts, or it's the end of the world as we know it. Sorry, Monty, I was just too busy looking at Joel's Instagram account.
I haven't checked him for a while, Joel. I apologize.

There's just a photo of a snowblower. I love it.

And then

a photo of a snowblower and then a photo of you sitting by a fire staring into a flower.

A dollphia. A dahlia.
A dahlia. Yeah.
Yeah. Salvador dahlia.
Salvador dahlia, your named flower. Okay, everyone check this out.
Now, Joel, I'll throw it to you.

Which song is, which is the more, which is the better known REM song? more widely known more widely known okay

is it and and don't say it out loud yet is it everybody hurts or it's the end of the world as we know it do you understand the question joel i do okay monty you you're also a dj so you you know this yes uh i'm gonna count to three

and when i say three just say say your answer okay when i say three one two three waiting for the world to end everybody hurts

Waiting for the world to end if you know it. What did you say, Monty?

I said everybody hurts. No, the answer is it's the end of the world as we know it.
Right. That's the end.

That's about it for this week's episode. Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash jjhoe or email hodgman at maximumfun.org.
No case too small.

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

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