Litter Crime

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week clearing the docket

with

the king of Park Slope,

Judge John Hodgman.

There's probably quite a few people with a greater claim to that.

Probably Mads Mickelson or something lives in Park Slope.

Oh,

wait, you're talking about Hannibal?

Yeah.

You talking about Cassilius?

You talking about the the red bloody teardrop from Casino Royale?

Yeah, talking about Mads Mickelson.

Does he live in Park Slope?

I'm just, I presume that he lives in Park Slope.

It depends, I guess, whether he has kids or not.

Yeah, no, I was going to say there are no kings or queens of Park Slope.

It is,

I don't know what

rule by children is called.

Do you know what I mean?

I believe it's ruled by giant strollers.

Those are the true kings and queens of Park Slope or those strollers where you're like, is this two strollers taped together?

But it only has one seat.

This isn't like one of those strollers for twins.

Double-decker strollers are very common.

I think maybe it's a land.

It's a Landrover stroller.

A lord of the flyocracy?

I don't know.

Lord of the Flyarchy?

I'll tell you, anytime I'm in Park Slope, Judge Hodgman, I feel like a king.

You know why?

Because you're wearing a crown.

Yeah, well,

they give it to you at the airport.

It would be rude not to wear it.

It's because somebody will say, like, aren't you Jesse Thorne from NPR?

Yeah, it's true.

And nobody in my neighborhood has ever said that.

It's a bad thing.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, I know.

But this is my country.

This is where I go to see Brooke Gladstone on the street.

Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Just on my street.

On my street.

A block away?

She lives.

I've never seen Mad Smickelson.

And it's been years since I've seen Steve Bussemi.

Can I tell you something, though, that I like about my neighborhood a lot?

What's that?

Well, you know, I sit here in my office in Brooklyn and I face the windows looking out over the backyard of this building.

And I see all these other...

It's a real rear window type situation.

It's a real New York scene.

Like I'm Jimmy Stewart in a cast, peeping on my neighbors with

a long lens camera.

And sometimes I hear snippets of music people are playing.

It's very lovely.

Sometimes people get out on the fire escapes and they read a book.

It's very, you know,

it's what you picture.

It's a cinematic picture of New York City to a degree.

And I'm a little depressed because earlier today, someone of my neighbors was playing a sousaphone.

And I've heard this person.

That's from what, the butter battle book?

No, someone was playing.

Look, can I tell the difference between a sousophone and a regular tuba by ear?

Probably not.

But this sounded this, this, this bottom felt deep.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And I think it was

just to the orchestra is what we're doing here.

Yeah.

And I've heard this person before, because one time, I swear they were playing the bass line from the theme song to Treme, and I was so excited.

The TV show Treme, starring Rob Brown of Blind Spot.

It was so like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

I was like,

I was really hoping like they would be playing it by the time we started recording today.

So we would have a new character in the Judge John Hodgemaniverse.

Like, you know, Susie, the soussophone, instead of Leafy, the leaf blower.

But then they stopped.

But it reminded me how much I miss our friend Chanel Critchlow of Pitch Black Brass Band, who played with us at the Bellhouse a couple of times ago because she is an incredible sousophonist and tuba player, and she also plays something called a flugabone.

I have to say, John, the highlight of all these years that I've been doing Judge John Hodge, and we've been doing this show 12 years or something like that.

I'm always glad to see my friend John.

I'm always glad at funny things that happen on the show, but truly the highlight of the entire run of this program for me was that time when I saw the pitch black brass band huddled backstage around a phone playing a YouTube video, but I couldn't tell what it was.

And then in the next song break on our live show in Brooklyn,

they came out on stage and spontaneously played the theme from Nightcourt.

They had learned it between shows.

They had learned it.

They did a song.

They did a song.

It was within the same show, John.

It wasn't even between shows.

Oh, really?

It was they did a song at the top of the show,

15% in.

Right.

And then we went back on stage.

and while we were on stage, they were backstage learning the theme from Night Court because we had mentioned the theme from Night Court.

Then they came out and performed the theme from Night Court, which goes hard.

The theme from Nightcart Court is great in and of itself.

Right.

Get a really heavy brass band playing it, it blew the house down.

Yeah, you know, it was spectacular.

You don't even know, until you've had someone play a sousaphone right in front of you at your stomach, you've not lived.

You've not lived.

It's truly spectacular.

I think that was the same set of shows where

they played Minnie the Moocher and our friend, guest bailiff, Jean Gray, sang Minnie the Moocher.

I had never heard Jean sing and she is a wonderful singer.

Not that I should be surprised.

Her mother was a brilliantly gifted jazz singer who was discovered by Duke Ellington

and recorded with Duke Ellington, but she is a wonderful singer, which I had no idea idea of.

She came out and, again, blew the house down.

Anyway,

luckily, Jesse, we have Zoom now, so we don't need to do live performance anymore

in the United States, the world for the rest of time.

No, it'll come back.

It'll come back, everybody.

We're going to get back there.

And until then, if you want to check out some really good tuba, sousaphone, and flugel bone content and find out what a flugel bone is, Pitchback Brass Band is, they've dispersed.

They're all doing solo projects.

But go check out Chanel at TubaFresh on Instagram.

Check out her reels.

It's incredible.

We're going to get back on the road, John.

This is my promise to the Judge John Hodgman audience.

Right.

Because this is my one remaining life's goal.

We will return to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Uh-huh.

Before they detonate the Rogers Center, aka the Sky Dome, because I want to stay in the hotel in the Sky Dome.

That's right.

That's my only goal in life.

I just want to be in the hotel in the sky dome, and I need one of the rooms where you can see the field in the sky dome when the lights are on.

I think that you should be there as long as they will guarantee your safety.

I would like you to be there as they demolish it.

I want you up there in the hotel room, in the penthouse, wearing your crown as the sky dome collapses beneath you.

And I want you to just surf the demolition all the way down to home plate in your in your crown.

You know what?

They don't even have to guarantee my safety, John.

They don't even have to guarantee my safety.

If there is a giant wave of pieces of the sky dome, you know,

a tsunami of memories of Joe Carter's legendary home run or the time Jose Canseco hit a ball into the upper deck.

Right.

I will surf upon that wave like I was Bodie from point break, and I will, that is how I will go out.

Just like Bodhi, he wouldn't let the FBI catch him.

He just went and caught the biggest spoiler alert for Point Break.

He just went out and caught the biggest break he could find and died out there on the water.

Pointed at it.

That's why it's called that.

I pointed that break.

He let the ocean take him, and I will let the skydome take me.

I never saw that.

Okay.

I never saw that.

Let's get into the justice.

Let's get into the justice.

Here is a case from Hannah.

Recently, one of our two cats committed a litter crime and left

a litter crime.

Are litter crimes real crimes?

That's

like mind crimes.

Okay.

Recently, one of our two cats committed a litter crime and left an unburied stink in the bedroom litter box.

My husband suggested we play rock, paper, scissors to determine who had to bury the offending mess.

I agreed, and he stated, whoever gets best two out of three wins.

After two draws and a win, win, I declared victory.

My husband chafed at this and said that draws don't count.

After a brief argument, he agreed that I was right and he should have been more specific when setting terms.

Later, when we relayed this story to friends, they took his side, stating that best two out of three implies that one person must win at least twice before victory is declared.

Was I right to declare myself the winner after one win and two draws?

Thank you, Judge.

Loved the show, and I loved Dicktown.

Dicktown.

Television program, co-created by Judge John Hodgman.

And David Reese, bit.ly slash Dicktown.

Thank you, Hannah, for mentioning the show

and attempting to bribe this judge with flattery and praise and plugs.

I appreciate that.

But I must resist your bribe.

and look at the show.

Yeah, because you didn't mention IFC's The Grid, the show that I hosted in 2009.

That's right.

You got to bribe both the bailiff and the judge.

And also, I got to be clear-eyed and firm when it comes to litter crime.

Litter crime?

One of the great phrases.

And one of the great mysteries.

How often is your cat not burying its offending stink?

It's pretty common behavior for cats.

There are a lot of mysteries here in this one.

We need a real litter criminologist to dig into what's, so to speak, to dig into what's happening in this litter box

and how

this cat's humans are reacting to it.

I mean, Hannah, my solution would be if our cat, Lolo, the dumb-dumb cat,

you know, had an offending mess in the litter box that was, you know, smellable,

do what I do.

Ignore it for several weeks until it stops stops smelling.

An alternative would be to just cover it up.

Just go and scoop the litter box real quick.

But somehow, this turned into

a rock, paper, scissors game.

And

I have to say, Jesse, you play rock, paper, scissors?

No, but I play a little bit of Rochambeau.

What's Rochambeau?

Rock, paper, scissors.

Same thing.

Is it really?

Yeah, but you say Rochambeau instead of rock, paper, scissors.

And are the hand

still a rock and paper and scissors?

Yeah,

it's a regional thing, I think.

I have never heard this before.

And you know, I love regionalisms.

Thank you, Jesse.

You're welcome.

I'll put it in my book of regionalisms.

That's what it's called east of the Mississippi.

West of the Mississippi, it's called Best Foods.

Carls Jr.

Yeah.

In any case,

when you play Rochambeau

or any sort of tournament,

and it's a best two out of three,

what does that mean to you?

You have to win two.

You have to win two.

You have to win two.

This is obvious, right?

Absolutely.

What is happening here, Hannah?

Hannah's weaseling.

Hannah is weaseling, and clearly, Hannah is an effective

self-advocate,

and that this has gone on for a long time.

Because after she clearly did not win the two out of three and declared victory on two draws and one win,

and her husband chafed, that's a fair chafe.

That's obviously a fair chafe.

Everyone knows you got to win two out of three.

That's why it's called two out of three.

But then a brief argument ensued, and then he agreed that you were right, Hannah?

What is going on in your relationship that you are able to force him into agreement to something that is obviously untrue?

He should have been more specific when setting terms.

Boy, oh boy.

The psychological power you have over this guy.

It's very, very,

very intense and deserves some interrogation on your part.

No wonder your friends agreed with your husband.

Best two out of three implies that one person must win at least twice before victory is declared.

So what I would say is talk to your vet to make sure there's no problem with your cat not burying its poops.

Or talk to Sarah, our friend who is the

cat groomer and cat behavior expert up there in Toronto, Canada, at Cleopatra Cat Services.

Cleopatra.

Sorry, Cleopatra.

Cleopatra.ca.

Just to make sure everything's going okay there.

And then I would talk to your husband, and you guys should have a conversation about why it was so easy for you to trick him into believing that you were right about something that you were very wrong about.

This is of concern to me.

Here's something from Julie.

I did not know I was from Appalachia until my now spouse told me I was.

I thought I was from the East Coast, which you'll probably find laughable when you find out that I'm from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, 10 miles from the West Virginia border.

My spouse, Will, is a graduate of the Judges Alma Mater.

We should explain for people who don't know that Judge Hodgman went to DeVry Technical Institute and knows the East Coast.

One of Will's favorite activities is to comment when my hick ways are showing.

Long ago, I thought I had rid myself of all my southwestern Pennsylvania isms, like saying, my clothes need washed.

But there is one which may remain.

Please issue a judgment on whether it's correct to say, I never ate a tomato until I was 19 years old.

Will is convinced this is a hold-out Appalachism.

He says, if you've never eaten a tomato, you have never eaten a tomato, and that fact cannot be changed by eating a tomato later.

Whoa.

Is it better to say, I had not eaten a tomato until I was 19 years old?

Two questions here, John.

Yeah.

One is, is it correct?

One is, is it better?

I think it comes down to correctness, right?

Is it correct?

Is it more correct to say I had not eaten a tomato until I was 19 years old?

Is Julie incorrect to say I never ate a tomato till I was 19 years old?

Now, you said that I went to DeVry Technical College because you're making a little joke

at my stuffy Ivy League expense.

Because, of course, I went to Yale University, a four-year accredited college in Southern Connecticut.

And I guess that Will did too.

And I have to say,

I never disliked a fellow Yale grad until today.

Okay, look, I know Julie a little bit.

We've exchanged emails from time to time about a lot of different things.

I know she is a wonderful person.

I trust that her husband is as well.

I know that they will take this in good spirit.

Hick

is a classist slur.

Please don't use that term.

And please don't internalize it, Julie.

There is zero wrong with your having grown up in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.

And there is zero reason for you to feel

scrutinized

by your Yaley husband for the things that you grew up saying.

I'm a fan of regionalisms.

You know what I mean?

I mean, that's what we call them here in New England, the region of New England that is the southeastern part of Canada.

Saying my clothes need washed is cool.

That's really good.

That's great.

That's really fun.

I'm really into that.

I might could start saying that now.

Yeah.

I never said it before today.

You know, I understand what Will is getting at.

And perhaps grammatically,

he has a point, but it took me on multiple readings of the two different phrases to discern what the difference was between I never ate a tomato until I was 19

and I had not eaten a tomato until I was 19.

There is, I guess, a grammatical difference, but I never ate a tomato until I was 19 sounds extremely natural.

It's obviously colloquial.

It's perfectly understandable.

And there's no reason to split this hair.

If you're both, you know, just kind of like word and grammar and usage nerds, I guess it could be fun to debate.

But I do take issue when grammar is used

as a cudgel or to point out

a lack of education education or to make someone else feel

self-conscious about the way they express themselves because

it's gross, Will.

Sorry.

And the thing that happens when you're so busy correcting someone else's grammar is you're missing what they are saying,

which is that they never ate a tomato till they were 19 years old.

That's an incredible story.

That's a story.

There's a lot going on in there.

They're like, well, wow.

Why not?

Why didn't you,

what was going on in your life?

You didn't eat tomatoes till you're 19.

Was it a cultural thing?

Is it a regional thing?

What were you growing up like?

What was it like when you first ate a tomato?

What was it like when you, what did it taste like when you finally ate it?

Why didn't you call it a tomato, by the way?

So, you know, listen to what people are saying when they're saying their things.

And don't get so hung up on trying to scrub someone's appalachisms.

out of them because regionalism in language is one of the things that makes language fun and expressive.

You know, sometimes I say on this show, proly instead of probably

or probably.

And I had someone write in, and thank you, listener, for listening.

But they're like, I noticed you doing this.

And I suspect that it's probably,

it's, sorry.

And I suspect that it's probably you resisting the fanciness of your Yale education.

It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

This is me imitating my wife who grew up saying proly

because she grew up in Atlanta.

I don't know why she says proly.

I just like the way it sounds.

I mean, you have to be careful when

you adopt different regionalisms too, because you don't want to be inappropriately, culturally appropriative, right?

But what you really want to do when people are talking is not listening to how they're saying it, but listening to what they are saying.

And I say you should go ahead and say, I never ate a tomato until I was 19.

I think you should say, I never ate a tomato till I was 19 years old.

Et, ET.

Don't let Will push you out of that one because et ET, that's a playable Scrabble word.

You go get them.

Go get them, Julie.

Do you think we have Judge John Hodgman listeners who have never eaten a tomato?

Of course.

I mean, we have at least a few listeners who live in Europe before tomatoes were introduced from the New World.

But leaving those people aside,

pre-Cortez people, do you think we have listeners who have never eaten a tomato?

Yes.

I know for a fact, because I am now routinely getting emails from eight-year-olds and 11 and a half-year-olds, that statistically speaking, there are probably some,

as advanced and sophisticated as they are, to write me beseeching letters on email, on email of all things.

They're not coming at me via TikTok.

They're like 35-year-olds.

I'll send an email to Judge John Hodgman.

And they're 8, 11 years old.

We'll hear from them later.

But statistically speaking, I bet even though they're very, very sophisticated in terms of their correspondence, even old fogie-ish,

probably a bunch of them haven't eaten a bunch of foods because, you know, what about an adult?

Do you think there are adults who listen to our show who have never eaten a tomato?

Of course.

Of course.

If you've never eaten a tomato, email Hodgman at maximumfun.org.

Whoa, how dare you?

How old you are.

How dare you.

Why you've never eaten a tomato.

You're basically opening opening the floodgates.

And look, you can tell us if you've, there's two categories here.

One is I've never eaten a tomato product.

So that includes pizza sauce, pasta sauce, and ketchup, I think, are going to be your top categories where they're coming up for people.

And then secondarily, I've never eaten a piece of tomato, a whole piece of tomato in some context, like a green salad.

Yeah.

Let's be, look, if you're going to open this door, I do want to be perfectly clear.

We are asking about, have you ever at

a slice of tomato, either on its own or on a sandwich?

I don't want to be hearing about, as Jesse was saying,

barbecue sauce or ketchup or whatever.

You know what I mean.

That's the point.

You know what I mean.

And

I would open these floodgates even further.

Make it any food.

If there's a common food that you have not, that you did not eat until later in your life that is surprising to people, tell me about it.

I'd like to know your story with it.

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

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

How am I already getting emails on this?

We haven't even posted this yet.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast, always brought to you by you, the members of maximumfun.org.

Thanks to everybody everybody who's gone to maximumfun.org/slash join.

And you can join them by going to maximumfun.org/slash join.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week.

We have a case here from Teresa.

My partner will frequently flash his headlights at cars who are changing lanes ahead of him.

Then he becomes angry when they cut him off.

He believes he is communicating to other drivers, don't go, I'm driving here.

That's like 1978 New York movie.

Hey, I'm driving here.

Don't go, I'm driving here.

He also flashes his headlights at people who are waiting to pull out of driveways or roads, and this causes great confusion.

But I was raised by a trucker who taught me the etiquette of flashing headlights means you go or you're clear to change lanes.

We have discussed this with many people, and nearly everyone agrees with me.

The one glaring exception is our friend who is originally from Argentina.

I am from the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which maybe is in Argentina.

I don't know where that is.

Right.

And my partner is from Colorado.

Is it possible that there are regional differences within the U.S.

as well?

Jesse,

do you know one of the funnest things I ever found out from Wikipedia was?

I don't know.

Because I've looked up the etiquette of flashing headlights before.

Because it is fairly mysterious.

Because it's hard to know what the person means.

And I learned from Wikipedia that certain car manufacturers, in their manuals for the cars,

refer to this as using the optical horn.

My optical horn is just a beam of light that emanates from the center of my forehead.

I know.

The sad thing about it is when you come to Park Slope, your crown covers it up.

But here,

it is mysterious because it is not fully agreed upon what flashing headlights indicates.

And I was very interested in this letter because I was in Argentina when I was 20 years old.

You can read about how I scammed money from the Yale Spanish department to go to Buenos Aires to walk around and have deep thoughts, feel guilty about it for the rest of my life in my book Medallion Status.

And one thing I noticed there was that taxi cabs would flash their high beams to tell you to get out of their way.

And that's because the streets were very narrow and they would come barreling down them.

And I don't think that they had stop signs.

So they were flashing those lights to create a visual cue that someone is coming.

Be careful.

And I get, and I gathered from this Wikipedia page that this is true also in other countries like the Philippines and Bangladesh.

But on the East Coast, it definitely means you go ahead.

Unless you're flashing your lights behind someone in the left lane, in the passing lane, and you're a jerk.

And you're telling them, you're going too slow.

I want to go faster.

Get out of my way.

But those are the two possible meanings.

In the East Coast, at least as far as I know.

Now, I know that you're a West Coast driver.

We have, we're glad to say, in the Judge John Hodge Manaverse,

an automobile expert, our friend, the comedian, and car expert, Rhea Butcher, we've had on the show to talk about car talk before.

And they are both a Los Angelino and an Ohioan.

So I asked them for their thoughts on this dispute, and here's what they said.

Hey, John and Jesse Rhea Butcher here.

Thank you so much for considering me for this ruling.

I am honored to bring this ruling to Judge John Hodgman.

For me, flashing high beams primarily serves to let a driver know their lights aren't on at night.

That is what I was taught.

That is my first meaning of flashing high beams.

My secondary meanings, meaning the ones I've learned after and continue to use, are to go ahead at an intersection and then also to let oncoming drivers on a freeway situation know that highway patrol or police are up ahead with radar guns in their direction, and you should slow down.

This is the most stealthy definition, and as such, the most rewarding.

This is the one I like to use the most, and as always, ACAP.

But in regards to the complaint, I think this man honestly just has to realize that his use of his high beams where he currently lives is actually causing more damage and confusion than good.

I have no idea if it's regional, but will say that I think most uses of high beams, horns, all these little intricacies, which I thoroughly enjoy, tend to be incredibly regional.

But he now doesn't live in the region that he used to live.

And honestly, it doesn't really matter to me.

He is using his high beams in situations where a horn honk is much more appropriate, i.e.

someone backing out, something like that.

We have blinkers to signal turns and breaks to signal stops, but there are no signals to single, I'm going, because the going itself is the signal.

So, my ruling is: this man's use of the high beams is causing confusion on the roadway, and he must adjust to his new surroundings and his use of high beams.

If he must use anything, it needs to be the horn, and that should be used as sparingly as possible.

Nobody likes a horn.

Yeah, nobody likes a horn.

You horn, right, Jesse?

My experience, John, comports with Rhea's As an Angelino originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, a lifelong Californian.

Right.

I would say

the place where this comes up the most is when someone's lights aren't on at dusk or at night,

which

happens a lot in Los Angeles.

I don't know why it happens so much more in Los Angeles than it did when I was driving in Northern California, but it is astonishing.

I know, even though

almost all cars have automatic headlights at this point, I don't know how it's possible that so many people have their lights off at dusk and at night.

I know why.

They forget to turn them on because they're listening to podcasts.

There you go.

But I would say, besides that,

the situations in my life where this has come up most frequently are: there's a jerk tailgating me who's mad that I'm going 10 miles over the speed limit and not faster.

Right.

And occasionally, someone who is

trying to get my attention to indicate something unusual.

So I don't think I would expect that if someone flashed their lights at me, I would immediately pull out in front of them

from my driveway, for example.

But if they flashed their lights at me, I saw that, and then they gave me a little wave or slowed to a stop or something like that, I would know they were gathering my attention

to suggest that I could do something.

It's an attention getter.

And the problem is no one knows what you're trying to draw attention to.

There are so many different little customs that might vary from region to region, place to place.

And as with all of driving, if you don't know, stop moving.

Like, if you don't know what's happening, slow down.

And, you know, Teresa, I would say, I don't want to say that your partner is just a jerk.

He's a dangerous jerk.

Because his presumption is,

I am letting the world know I am keeping going no matter what, and my intentions are more important than theirs.

And they should know better because they see my lights, and therefore I'm going to put myself and others into danger all the time, since my presumption is, I go, not you.

Teresa's partner, I hope you take this in the same spirit with which I destroyed Will the Yaley earlier.

I know you probably don't mean to be a jerk, but when you are putting putting other people at danger because you are using and interpreting an ambiguous signal differently than most people are, but mostly just thinking you have priority to move over others, you need to rethink your driving.

When you don't know what's happening, whether lights are flashing at you or not, slow down.

And if you want to be a jerk about it, like say you're in that left lane and Jesse's driving too slow and you want to let him know you want to pass him because you're a jerk who's more important than him, don't flash.

I don't even care that I have a license plate frame that says super dad.

I know.

Like you want super dad to get out of your way.

Okay, sometimes you got to be a jerk in life.

Just like my friend Jess Moss's mom told me when she kicked us out of the

apartment that we were house sitting in because she wanted to use it.

I know it's wrong, but I'm doing it anyway.

Sometimes if you have to be a jerk,

don't be an ambiguous jerk by flashing your lights.

Own it, honk your horn.

That is

vehicular jerkism at its finest, horn honking.

Honk your horn if you need to yell at someone.

That's what it's there for.

If you need to yell at someone or warn someone that you're there, flashing your lights is not only ambiguous in terms of all its regionalism, a lot of people just won't see it.

So if you're a jerk,

own it.

If you're a horn honker, honk it.

Release your horn like the mighty goose.

Rhea Butcher, by the way, is one of the great comics and podcasters and people of all over the place.

Rhea rules.

They have a new album out called Pull Yourself Up by Your Bootleg that's available now on a special thing.

And you can follow Rhea at Rhea Butcher on Twitter.

That's at sign R H E A B U T C H E R.

Thank you, Ria.

Yeah, they're one of the coolest and the funniest.

Here's something from Shiloh.

I'd like to bring a case against my mother-in-law, Julie.

She claims making nachos cannot be considered cooking because of the low level of skill and effort involved in preparing the dish.

Yet she will attest that a dish like ceviche can be considered cooking because it requires more skill to put together.

My husband, Steve, and I think both are cooking since they both require combining different ingredients together to form one dish.

Despite our argument, she refuses to accept making nachos as cooking.

If you find in my favor, I would ask you to demand she acknowledge that preparing nachos is cooking.

Jesse, you can make nachos.

Sure.

What's your nacho game?

I like a pretty simple nacho.

Tell me.

I'm talking about refried beans,

chips, cheese, and then, you know, sometimes I will top it with a little something extra.

We're talking about maybe some green onions,

aka scallions.

We're talking about maybe a little

salsa fresco or whatever kind of salsa is around the house.

Human blue.

Usually a salsa verde is what I would keep around the house.

Green on the blue.

And then maybe some avocado or some guacamole if that's around.

That's like super, super nachos, nachos supreme.

Nachos Supreme have meat, John.

Oh, excuse me.

I apologize.

Yeah.

I am not from the Bay Area, a region of the western United States.

Super nachos have meat, John, and burritos do not have lettuce in them.

Let me ask you a question.

When you're doing your basic nachos, refries, chips, cheese, right?

What's your situation?

I mean, genuinely, I'm not asking you to prove a point.

Like, I want to know, how do you do it?

I cook them in my

countertop oven.

Right.

And, you know, I set it to a medium baking temperature, 350 or something like that, and wait for the cheese to melt, at which time, if I've layered the beans correctly, the beans are warmed through.

That's the thing, and

make sure the chips brown a little.

You got to let, like, you put down a layer of chips and a layer of beans, then what?

Yeah.

Layer of chips?

I'm,

no, I'm mostly just working on spreading out the beans.

Because the beans will glop if you're not spreading them out.

I see Jennifer Marmor's nodding.

Yeah, she hates glops.

Yeah, she's very anti-glop.

But you said something very interesting.

You say you cook them in your countertop oven.

That's true.

Is not just cooking?

I mean, I think applying heat and transforming the food are two elements of cooking.

I think ceviche

involves a substitute for heat, which is the transformation that the acid produces in the fish.

Jesse, are you talking about denaturations of proteins?

Yeah.

Yes.

Sure.

Sure, J.

Kenji Lopez-Alt.

Love you, Kenji, but I can read a thing too.

Yeah.

Yeah, Ceviche, there is a chemical change to the proteins in the fish.

When you add all that lime juice and lemon juice,

it is chemically cooking.

It is doing the same things to the proteins, denaturation, you can look it up, that is what heat is doing to a protein in

protein food when you're cooking it, when you're heating it, when you're hotting it, as I like to say.

What else is cooking?

What else isn't cooking?

I think it's a stretch to say that making a smoothie or making a green salad are cooking.

It's assembling, right?

Yeah, that's more of an assembling.

I think the transformation element is key, and I think the heat is central to it.

But if somebody, that said, if somebody said to me they were cooking and they made a salad, I wouldn't be mad about it.

Yeah, I don't know what's going on with your mother-in-law, Shiloh, that she needs to make this very, very small bore distinction.

What's going on here, Jesse?

I think that Shiloh's mother-in-law is proud of her cooking

and judgmental of Shiloh's.

It could be.

I mean, here's the thing.

So

I have to say, that even though this is a hair split and kind of an annoying one,

I have to say that I kind of side with Julie, the mother-in-law.

Really?

Yeah, I kind of do.

You don't think nachos are cooking?

Well, is hotting up something cooking?

Yes.

You're melting cheese.

Is that enough of a transformation?

You're melting the cheese.

You're browning the chips.

True.

You're heating the beans.

I know.

If you heat the beans, I guess it's cooking.

I mean, I get the distinction that she's making, and I appreciate better now that you've articulated it this way, Jesse, that it may be that she's proud of her cooking and nachos seems like easy trash food.

But I will say this.

Maybe the problem is that Steve and Shiloh, when they make nachos, they're making trash nachos.

Because nachos,

whether you call them cooking or not, they're an art form.

They're easy to get wrong.

They're difficult to get right.

There's a balance.

I mean, you know, you've got to be spreading the beans or else you get the glob.

You've got to be layering the chips and the cheese in a careful way so that you get all of the stuff or as much of the flavor.

combination as you can in one chip rather than just 17 dry chips and one that has a whole bunch of of cheese on it, right?

There is art to it.

And I would say that whether or not you technically call it cooking or not, and Jesse, by the way,

thank you, my bailiff, you have swayed me, it's cooking.

I find in favor of Steve and Shiloh.

But whether you call it cooking or not, there is an artistry to it.

And I think...

you know, as equal an artistry as there is to making ceviche, which I have never done, but I'm going to give it a try.

I want to give a shout out to my favorite nachos, John.

Please.

I grew up eating relatively complicated super nachos at El Toro taqueria on Valencia Street in San Francisco.

But my current favorite nachos are garbage nachos.

I live in a neighborhood adjacent to a neighborhood in Los Angeles called Lincoln Heights.

And there in Lincoln Heights, there is a place called Carnitas Michoacán.

Right.

And at Carnitas Michoacán, they make nachos with tortilla chips.

Yeah.

Pickled sliced jalapenos.

Uh-huh.

So far, I'm describing ballpark nachos.

Okay.

Your choice of meat.

Right.

Carnezada, al pastor, whatever.

And cheese sauce.

That cheese sauce is.

And it is so good.

The cheese sauce really is good.

It is so good.

That really, yeah.

Because, I mean, I see.

I want to be clear.

This isn't some Tex-Mex queso,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

This is cheese sauce.

Yeah.

Right.

Let me also be clear that when I say that, you know, there is garbage nachos in the world,

I'm not saying that you need fancy ingredients to make good nachos.

I'm not that much of a Yaley snob.

What I'm saying is that there's a skill level to combining the ingredients, whatever they are, such that they are satisfying and good versus junk.

And I would agree with you, Jesse, that the nachos that you get, if we ever go back to the movie theater, like movie theater nachos,

which are, you know,

they're just a paper tray full of chips from a bag, doused in cheese whiz.

They have their place,

but that's not cooking.

I would not call that cooking.

John, what about Dan Chose?

Those are the nachos that my college friend Dan Grayson used to make in in his dorm room, which were just chips with cheese on top of them microwaved.

Cooking.

What about?

The cheese is transformed.

The cheese is transformed.

I'm not sure.

If you just heat it and there's no transformation, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure what's happening there.

Yeah, if there's no transformation.

But if there's browning or transformation, I think

to me.

Let's take a break.

When we come back, we hear again from Rooney, the eight-year-old with an email address, plus 11-and-a-half-year-old Zola in a new segment we call Juvenile Court.

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Find it at maximumfun.org.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We promised juvenile court, John.

Yeah, Jesse, and I'll explain juvenile court in a second.

But just one quick warning to anybody who's about to go out there and make ceviche.

Or, you know,

do yourself a favor.

Don't squeeze limes in the sunshine.

Don't squeeze, don't get lime juice on your hands in the bright glaring sun because a chemical transformation will occur and you will get a perhaps terrible inflamed sunburn,

just like Jonathan Colton did.

Denaturation, my friends.

Wow.

Insider info.

Now,

yes, earlier we were talking about Rooney who wrote in last week on their own email address, eight years old,

to bring a case against their dad who didn't want them to make their own avocado toast.

And I was a little unnerved by an eight-year-old with an email address because eight-year-olds shouldn't be writing to 50-year-old podcast hosts.

Live and play in the sun.

That said, I do know that we have a lot of listeners

who are young, and I'm really glad that they listen on their own or with their families.

They're kids who have disputes.

Kids are humans with agency who deserve to have disputes in the world and see them settled.

I can't open the doors of our court to eight-year-old live litigants.

That's just not where we're going to go.

That is a different kind of show.

But if you're a kid who's got a dispute.

Specifically, that's our sister show, Dr.

Game Show.

They would open any door to any eight-year-old and be thrilled.

Absolutely.

That's a great show.

Absolutely.

But if you're a kid and you've got a dispute, you deserve to be heard.

So

go get your email or your quill and your parchment.

You can write me a letter.

Pull your parchment out of your briefcase, Judge John Hodgman, listening eight-year-olds.

Pull your parchment out of your briefcase, Judge John Hodgman, who was an eight-year-old.

If you can take a moment away from watching Taxi.

Yes.

Go ahead, and from time to time, we will deliver you justice.

So

what's the first one we got on the docket?

Here's a case from Zola, who is 11 and a half.

I, Zola, child of Fred and Ashley, am an animal lover and would like to add a new creature to my collection.

Currently, I have two guinea pigs, two rats, and a tank full of fish.

We also have two family dogs.

I have done my research and feel that a Madagascar hissing cockroach is the best option for my next critter friend.

My parents disagree.

I need help convincing them this is an easy to care for, harmless creature with a short lifespan and a good option for me.

Thank you, Zola.

Jesse.

Yeah.

You have two dogs.

Yeah, and of course, Finney as well.

Don't forget Finney the fish.

I did forget Finney the fish.

Yeah, Finney's a bit of an afterthought, I'm going to be honest.

I feel like I never knew about Finney the Fish.

Finney's a beauty.

Swims around in that little tank of his, shows off those fins.

Oh, is that why he's named Finney?

No, he's named after Albert Finney.

My son is just a really big Albert Finney fan, loves Cassavetti's movies.

Let the record show, as great an editor as Jennifer Marmor is,

there was no editing in Jesse Thorne's response.

He went right to Albert Finney.

There was no, hang on, let me think of a good joke for this.

There was no even a pause.

It's one of the greatest, fastest

replies of all time.

Thank you, Jesse, for being so funny and great.

All right.

Madagascar hissing cockroach.

This is something

that I would imagine could give some parents some pause because

you got a couple of words in there that are red flags for most people who live in the United States, especially in cities.

Cockroach and hissing.

Yeah.

I think most people have nothing but positive associations with Madagascar.

Sure, there's absolutely charming animated films.

Right.

Unique flora and fauna of a beautiful island nation.

Yeah.

And well known for their hissing cockroaches.

You know, like it's it at least it at least it's not trying to hide anything, the Madagascar hissing cockroach, right?

It's right there in the nest.

It's doing its thing.

It's not like it's going to surprise you with the hissing.

Me?

I'm just a Madagascar cockroach.

Of course, adopt me.

I'm the best.

I'm one of those Madagascar silent cockroaches.

Yeah.

Whoa, curveball.

Right, exactly.

You know, at least it's not going to take you by surprise when the hissing starts.

That's good.

It's good to know.

But I can understand why there's some pause.

I happen to know someone who has not one, not two,

but a couple dozen

of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, as you may know, as you well know, Jesse, because you've been a guest on my very occasional Instagram live show, Get Your Pets, where I interview people's cats and dogs and other pets.

I have a guest, a frequent guest who comes on from time to time named Danny.

She lives in Pittsburgh, what she calls Hell with the Lid Off.

She has a job, which is incredible, which is she and a crew of other volunteers go out and clean up illegal dumping sites where people have just dumped trash illegally.

And then she gathers interesting stuff that she finds from like just weird, interesting antiques and junky things and signs and stuff that she finds in these illegal dumping sites.

And then she posts them on Twitter.

And you can buy them, and the money goes to good social causes there in Pittsburgh.

I'll give you the link for that in a little bit.

But Danny does all of that, plus,

has a turtle named Haydn, a rabbit named Ampersand,

and all of these hissing cockroaches.

And I asked Danny whether this, you know, it's like a hissing cockroach.

Is this a good pet for an 11 and a half year old based on your experience?

And here's what Danny wrote back.

Zola sounds like an awesome person with a great menagerie.

I'll remind you, two guinea pigs, two rats, tank full of fish.

Already sort of a William Randolph Hearst situation.

Yeah, it's a zoo in there.

Danny goes on to say, I can confirm that Madagascar hissing cockroaches are excellent low-maintenance pets.

They're gentle, easy to care for, will not be a permanent part of your menagerie if you get just one.

If you get more than one, you will have cockroaches in your life forever and ever.

So, fair warning.

I feed my roaches fish flakes, compost scraps, and a product called Fluker's Orange Cube Complete Cricket Diet.

Okay, now we have to get one of these things.

Yeah, exactly.

Now we have a...

I think we have a...

Because otherwise, this Fluker's Orange Cube that I've already ordered is going to go to waste.

I ordered the moment I heard the phrase Fluker's Orange Cube.

You ordered one?

You paid money for it?

My phone was out the second you got to Kerr's and it was hitting checkout by the time you got to cube.

I'm sorry that you spent the money on it because I'm going to make sure that there are sponsors going forward.

And we might get a free, we might get some free Flukers Orange Cube, complete cricket diets in the mail.

Only a fool pays for their flukers.

No,

I think a smart person pays for the flukers because it's obviously the best complete cricket diet there is.

The most complete and the best complete.

And it comes in the trademark Flukers Orange Cube.

See, I'm already practicing.

Get Kira on this immediately.

New sponsor for the podcast.

But I just want to point out that Danny concludes by saying, if Zola's parents are creeped out by hissing cockroaches, maybe they should consider getting a giant African millipede instead.

Thank you, Danny, so much.

Please check out

Danny's Trash for Treasures community at Danny Kramer14.

That's at D-A-N-I-K-R-A-M-E-R 14.

Jesse, you will love the stuff that Danny finds in the the garbage in Pittsburgh.

Only the fact that I had two children in the car and one of them was going to be late for school kept me from pulling over to the side of the road and pulling a piece of furniture out of one of those illegal dumping sites just this very morning, John.

And all the proceeds from Trash Treasures for Community, of course, go to a whole bunch of really good

social programs in Pittsburgh.

Help Lidoff.

I love the suggestion of getting a giant African millipede because that is a great negotiation tactic, Zola.

You should take that right away.

Zola, if your parents are like, I don't know that I can have a hissing cockroach in my life, say, it's fine.

Judge John Hodgman ordered me to get a giant millipede instead.

Yeah.

All of a sudden, you got yourself a free cockroach.

You know what my therapist convinced me the other day?

My process in therapy over the past decade or so has primarily been my therapist convincing me that certain parts of my childhood that I thought were fun independents were actually maybe a little neglectful.

And something that had not come up in therapy in the entire, in the many years that I had been therapized was the fact that for quite a long time, I lived in the basement of my father and stepmother's house when I was with them.

My parents had split custody.

And there was a crevice under the back door of the basement.

And my door to my bedroom would get left open because it was the only way to get from the basement door to the upstairs was to go through my room.

So people would just go through my room whenever they needed to do that and leave the door open.

And at night, I started noticing there were like weird whitish, translucent marks on my carpet.

And it took me about six months or a year to figure out that every night, slugs would slug their way through my room, then slug on out like nothing happened.

And you know how I figured that out, John?

No.

Yeah, that's how I figured it out.

It was dark in there, and that's how I figured it out.

Yeah.

Well,

I'm sorry I stepped on your gerbil.

It's a callback, folks.

John, didn't you say we also had a letter from Rooney?

We do have a letter from from Rooney.

I had asked Rooney to write in to say, because I didn't know how Rooney wanted to prepare.

I had made a joke that Rooney wanted to fill the little hollow in the avocado left by the pit with human blood, and I made a joke that Rooney was a Dracula, so I wanted to verify how does Rooney want to make their avocado.

And Rooney writes, I want to peel the skin off the avocados and make slices, but dad thinks he should cut it into small pieces with a spoon and scoop it out.

Dad doesn't like knives, but my mom gave me my knife license.

Rooney, you got your knife license.

Here's the thing: if you can get your own email address

and mom is giving you a knife license,

I think you should go ahead and cut that avocado into slices.

But

I want to see a copy of that knife license, Rooney.

Rooney and Rooney's parents,

I need to see a paper knife license signed by mom.

And a real knife license, not one of the ones that you get at Legoland.

Yeah, not a knife license you get in a basement in Times Square in 1981.

Work up a real good knife license.

I want to see it laminated.

Please send it into hodgman at maximumfund.org so we can post it online.

Is Rooney really peeling avocados

with a knife?

Because I support that.

I think that's amazing.

Look, I mean, it's not the way I would.

For me,

I would scoop out the whole half of the avocado with a spoon before slicing it.

And you know what?

I'd probably do is throw it into my avocado, my special avocado/slash spam slicer that I got at the last San Francisco Sketch Fest when we were staying in Japantown.

It's this great oversized, like, you know, those

hard-boiled egg slicers?

They're like little harps where you can go bling them.

It's a bigger one, and it's just for avocados and spam if you're going to make these options.

You got this at the Japanese hardware store?

Yeah, you know that place.

You know what I'm talking about.

Oh, I love that Japanese hardware.

I've loved that Japanese hardware store since I was a child.

Jesse,

we're going to go to a sketch fest.

We're going to go stand in front of Sousa phones on a live stage.

We're going to go to hardware stores.

There's no end to what what we're going to be able to do as a people once we are through this.

And we're going to get through it and make a new and better normal.

But until then, Rooney's got their knife license.

Go forth and do what you want to, Davocados.

The docket is clear.

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

Our producer, the ever-capable Jennifer Marmer.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your JudgeJohn Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJHO, and check out the Maximum Fund subreddit to discuss this episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash JJHO or email Hodgman at maximumfund.org.

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

Duh, please don't sue me, Marvel, for using that.

This is the secret post-credit sequence, an idea that I came up with.

And weirdly, Marvel also came up with the idea of dropping in extra content after the credits.

Just like Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz invented the calculus at the same time.

It was just a coincidence.

Simultaneous discovery, they call it.

So don't sue me, Marvel.

Just here dropping some more content, giving people a little extra stuff.

Hey, everybody, welcome to the post-credit sequence.

Some of you may know, not many, I would guess, that I do a Judge John Hodgman column in the New York Times magazine every week

for the past five years.

And I do not think people who listen to the podcast know that this column exists.

And I know that people who read the New York Times magazine in print do not know that podcasts exist at all.

So there's not a lot of overlap.

But I wanted to share something with you.

By the time you hear this, it will have just come out or will be about to come out.

I don't know when they have it scheduled for a little short column in which, on spoiler alert, perhaps, I rule against a woman named Chrissa

who

had texted her friend Ken that she could not join Ken for dinner.

But Ken went to the restaurant anyway because he claimed that Chrissa's text was unclear, and it was.

But when I let her know that I was ruling in the magazine, she was upset because she wouldn't get to share a piece of audio-visual evidence with you, which

her video apology to Ken after the fact.

And while my ruling stands, Crissa, this evidence is so compelling.

I have to share it with you, the listeners, because this evidence is not Crissa speaking.

It's, well, let's just say it comes from a little website called Cameo.

Hey, Ken, it's James Cosmo here, Lord Commander Mormont of the Night Watch.

Your good friend Krissa got in touch with me and asked me to send a message to you now she tells me that

she had to cancel a meeting with you and you didn't get her text and went to the restaurant that is awful that is I've done that it's it's the most embarrassing thing Anyway, Chrissa wants to send you absolutely abject apologies.

And so she should.

That's the thing with texts.

You don't know if people are going to get them, you know.

Should have phoned.

Anyway,

she has taken the time and the expense to send this message.

So she is obviously very contrite.

So please forgive her.

And you guys go out and have dinner together.

Anyway.

That's my message from the Lord Commander.

You take care, Ken.

All the very best, and God bless you.

Bye-bye.

So there you have it.

Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, Jorah Morimont,

has forgiven Krissa.

And who am I to speak against

the brothers of the Night's Watch?

So

even though I have found against you, Chrissa, in none other than the magazine of the paper of record, the New York Times magazine, where Judge John Hodgman appears every week, but I will also absolve you.

But why should I absolve you

when instead I could get Nas from Love Island to do it?

Here's Nas.

Hello to all the Judge John Hodgman listeners.

It's Nasmajid here from Love Island.

I hope everyone is doing well.

Now, I just wanted to give a special shout out to one listener in particular who goes by the name of Crissa.

Even though Judge John Hodgman ruled against you, getting James Cosmo off of Game of Thrones to apologize to Kent on cameo was amazing.

I'm a massive fan of Game of Thrones and I've seen the cameo.

I've seen the apology on your behalf and it is absolutely brilliant.

I love it.

Apologizing is an essential life skill and by the looks of it, Krisa, you're absolutely killing it.

However, despite me saying all this, I've reviewed the case and I'm very much so team Krisa.

Sorry to go against you on this one, Judge.

But I feel like, Ken, why, if you felt like there's any form of vagueness, any lack of clarity, why would you turn up to that restaurant without double checking or triple checking before leaving?

Hopefully you can use this as a learning curve going forward.

Krista, I feel like on another day in another courtroom, you might have gotten away with it.

But I digress.

Lastly, I just wanted to to give a massive shout out to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

All the listeners, gear yourself up, strap yourself in for Max Fun Drive in May.

But yeah, thank you so much, guys.

Everyone, take care and enjoy the rest of the podcast.

Well, thank you, Nas, my hero of Cameo, for coming through again.

You've sent some wonderful messages to my family.

Now to the whole Judge John Hodgman listenership.

Thank you for undermining my ruling, I guess.

Wow.

That was all right.

I guess you got your own judge show now.

You're going to have your own judge show on Cameo.

It's probably going to go very, very far.

Nas, I wish you the best.

I wish you only well, Nas.

And as I said to you over the text feature of Cameo, anytime you want to be on Judge John Hodgman as a guest bailiff or friend of the court or anything, the door is always open.

And I look forward to your replying to my text, Nas.

All right, end of post-credits sequence.

I oh, why did I make myself do this extra homework every week?

Bye-bye.

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