A Rollicking Docket

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast. I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.
We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket. And with me, as always, is

Maine's favorite not son, Judge John Hodgman.

Oh.

Hello, Jesse Thorne. Oh, Bailiff, my bailiff.
Hello, Jennifer Marmor. I can see you in the Zoom.

I cannot see guest engineer Joel Mann here at WERU FM 89.9 in Orland, Maine in the Zoom, but I can see him through the glass because that is where I am.

He's waving at me and no one else because no one else can see him. But he does exist.

First of all, time is meaningless to the people who are listening to this. When you hear this, it may be New Year's Eve.
Happy New Year. I hope the next one is better.

Of course, it may be the next day or the next day. And meanwhile, it doesn't matter to you that I was 20 minutes late to the radio station today.
I thought for sure

this was happening half an hour than when it was actually supposed to start.

And I thought I was so ahead of the game because I was literally out in the parking lot taking a nap in my car when I got the text saying, Where are you?

I thought I was going to be here so early. Yeah.

I thought I was going to be here so early because

I came out early to make a special stop over at Acadia.

See, that's the alarm saying, wake up. Wake up.
Go into the studio. Stop.

I made a special trip out to Ellsworth today so that I could go to Acadia Provisions and the one place outside of

New Jersey and

Pennsylvania and Delaware that sells Taylor pork roll.

And I got some Taylor pork roll there and a fresca.

It was a good one. I saw on your Instagram, you took a picture of the label of this Taylor pork roll.

Now, the famous controversy around pork roll is whether it's called Taylor ham or Taylor pork roll. Tell me how they solve this problem in the great state of Maine.
Well, I mean,

Maine is famous for not alienating anybody. It's called the friendliest state,

and they don't pick fights or take sides. Sure.
They're as gentle as their famously gentle climate. That's exactly right.
It is Taylor's ham slash pork roll.

And I don't blame them for being ambivalent about it. I'm just glad they got it.
Now, did they take the pork roll out of the the burlap sack? Yes, I don't know why they did that.

I missed that sack, but I got my hands on that pork roll and I'm fine with it. Plus, they had a fresca.

So I apologize. This has been a couple of fun recording sessions here in Maine as

the nights get longer and longer.

The world gets colder and stranger.

We think we feel a dawn on some horizon, and maybe by the time 2021 rolls around, that dawn might be a little brighter.

But in the meantime, we're all just kindling a light here to the light of Zoom to see each other from across the country and across the glass.

And I dare say, Jesse, these past couple of dockets episodes have been a little, I would say, rollicking. Do you know what I mean? A little more rollicking than usual.

Yeah. A little more devil may care.
A little more, hey, let me invite the listeners to send me letters. And then I get them.

A little more back and forth. Joel, have you noticed that? A little more rollicking? God, yes.
See what I mean? Rollicking.

It's really a challenge for Joel.

I know.

Getting some motion sickness.

You okay over there, Joel?

Yeah, right.

I did it.

Joel has a second career recording what they call efforts for video games, by the way.

Have you ever had to do any voice acting, Jesse, where you had to pretend to be punched? No, but I would love to. If anybody out there is looking for a punchy,

I'm available. Josh Lindgren is the name of my agent.

Drop him a line. I had to do some efforting of various kinds for the

hit podcast sitcom Bubble.

Oh, yeah.

I was sitting there making you do those efforts. I know, but you weren't punching me.
Just people know.

The professional voice actors have to imagine being boofed in the stomach, and then you go boof like that.

That's a good one.

I did invite, we have had a lot of listener interaction, and it's been a delight.

I did invite

people to write in. I got lots and lots of letters this week from around the world

telling us that athlete's foot and oral thrush are not the same fungal infection.

Oral thrush, it turns out, is a yeast infection. Athlete's foot

is a different infection. It's either trichophyton, epidermophyton, or microsporum.
Thanks to John Madden for writing in and clarifying that on behalf of Tough Actin Tenactin.

We heard from a number of people, and I just want to shout out, in particular, Dr. Kathleen Wilde, because that's one of the great names, next to Thaddeus Diamond, Dr.
Wilde, Dr.

Wilde, general practitioner in New South Wales, Australia. Thank you, Dr.
Wilde, for letting us know, quote, you can't get oral thrush by licking athlete's foot. So

I don't know what your bubble is like for your New Year's Eve party, but if you want to lick some athlete's foot, you're safe from Oral Thrush.

Yeah.

We also received, and this is a tease, Jesse, because we're going to play this at the end. We also received a message from Chase.

I had put out a call to action when we were talking about clicky keyboards back in our episode called A Gallon of Scallops. Excuse me, A Gallon of Scallops.
Sorry, Joel.

Which I think initiated the new rollicking docket tradition.

Where we got really rollicking on that one, and we kept just kept it rollicking ever since. In any case, I put out a call.

We were talking about clicky keyboards and how much fun they were, and I put out a call saying, if there are any

musical producers out there who could make a rave track out of a clicky keyboard, please send it in. And Chase did it, and it's great, but we're going to play it at the end of the episode.

No fast-forwarding, though, because we have justice to dispense. Jesse Thorne, is that true? That's true.
You know what?

If you're out there, you're getting ready for the end of the show, get your Vicks Vapo rub ready. You're going to want to eat it.
Hodgeman's mom style

for this rave. It's an unusual rave.
Okay, here's something from Michael. He says, I'm seeking a judgment against my partner, Brenda, due to the way she characterizes my distaste for fruit.

As a kid, I had a mild intolerance to fruit sugars, so I stopped eating fruit for several years. Now, as an adult, I do not have a taste for the vast majority of fruits.

Brenda describes this as a quote, fruit hatred, unquote, and calls me a fruit hater.

I request an injunction to stop her from describing my weird eating idiosyncrasy as hatred.

Hatred. Strong word.

Jesse,

you enjoy a fruit from time to time. Yeah, I mean, I aspire to be a television greengrocer.

Local news greengrocer is my career of choice.

I haven't climbed that mountain yet, but that's my dream. I very, very vaguely remember the local news greengrocer segments on the local Boston stations, but I don't remember what they really were.

Was it literally a person saying how much Apple costs today?

It was a man in

like a sort of green version of a pharmacist's coat. Right, right.
And he's standing on a television set built to,

in an abstract way, represent

the fresh products, the produce section of your local grocery store. Right.
A simulation. Sort of like in the same way the CBS Sunday morning set represents

a sunrise. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.

And the anchor would walk over to him

and

it was a hymn in the Bay Area.

And he would talk about what fruit was in season. What was the tastiest fruit right now? Right.
And maybe

give a a recipe or just take a big bite of an apple. Just take a big bite of an apple.
Yeah. No, a recipe is a whole other job on local television news.

I seem to have, well, so first of all, it was a little different in New England because the greengrocer reporter, who I remember as being a he,

didn't stand on a set that simulated a grocery aisle full of vegetables. He actually stood on a set of a fake moon landing.
Weird. I don't know why they did that on channel.

He just had it left over from Kubrick

had been shooting in New England. No, actually, my memory was that they would do it live from Haymarket, which was the big open-air green grocer fruit and vegetable stand area.

And they would actually report, I'm like, yeah, a cabbage is seven cents a ton today. Come and get it.
Similar deal, but that could be a mistaken memory.

Much like I thought my mom eating Vicks Vapo rub for colds was a mistaken memory, but turns out to be absolutely true.

I don't like fruit. Don't care for it.

Joel, you like fruit? Blueberries. Yeah, right.
On the nose, Joel.

But Jesse, you know what's in season right now? The Satsuma? The Satsuma. Guess what they had at the supermarket just yesterday? Maine came through again.

Satsuma season. Now, I don't think that's growing right now in Maine.
No, no, it was shipped. It's probably brought up from Louisiana or out from California.

Yeah, no, this is shipped from out of state, and

it's a little kind of orange, a little kind of mandarin orange, called a Satsuma, which Jesse's a big fan of. I wish I could give this one to you, Jesse.
I brought one for you, Joel.

You ever have one before? No, never seen it before. Here we go.
Ow!

Did not.

I liked we were doing two different bits there, Joel. One was me throwing it at the glass and it bumping off, which happened, and then you pretending at the same time to actually have been hit by it.

Yeah, both were solid bits, though. I know.
When bits collide. I've never, I don't think I've ever had a Satsuma for as long as we've talked about them, Jesse.
So I'm going to

annoy a certain segment of the mesophonic listenership at home and just give this a try to see if this changes my own fruit hatred, not hatred.

we'll talk about that the advantages of a satsuma are it has it's easy to peel yep it's seedless and it's full of flavor really consistently full of flavor if you find one that looks shiny that's bad news because one of the things about satsumas is they're relatively difficult to ship um because they're relatively uh

sensitive to you know bumping around right so if you find you'll you'll often find them, and because they're so easy to peel, you'll often find them on the stem.

You'll find them with leaves and stems attached, as yours was, John. I know.
I'm holding my satsuma by the stem like a gentleman.

Yeah, when you're looking for satsumas in your local grocery store, look for ones with deep color and thicker, baggier skin. It's odd to think, but sometimes the

most ugly looking satsumas are the most delicious.

Let me tell you something, Jesse Thorne. I've never had one before for all the years we've talked about it.

And I don't like it.

Yeah.

To quote Tom Sharpling, I love it.

Curveball. This is good.
Joel,

after you disinfect the satsuma that I threw at the window and it fell on the floor, you should eat it. It's good.
Five-second rule.

Not during a pandemic, sir. No seconds.

John, you're not a fan of fruit generally. You're a fruit disliker.
Well, the thing of it is,

I will like any piece of fruit if it is in perfect condition, perfect ripeness. That's delicious.
But the thing is,

and fruit people know this is true, that happens about once every seven years. And the rest of the time, the fruit is all garbage.

And I don't have a fructose intolerance like Michael says he did.

But it's something about the acidity,

I just don't, maybe it's acidity, I don't know what it is, but the tartness is too much for me. Too much tart.
You know what I mean?

So I'm not going to waste my time eating a sub-par piece of fruit, and there's no way for me to know if a piece of fruit is going to be perfect or not, because fruit is always tricking you.

It looks good, it's in season, but then it turns out to be mealy, mealy apple or whatever. But now I know exactly what kind of fruit I like.

it's a satsuma it's got baggy skin it's on the stem and it's and it's not shiny because this is really really really good

i'm dripping fruit on my computer i've had a conversion experience michael

i've become a fruit liker of this one fruit

but otherwise i'm i'm i'm against brenda

michael

suffered from fructose intolerance,

Jesse.

I don't know if he still has it, but I went over to that Mayo clinic,

my favorite resource for medical advice, because it shares the name with my favorite condiment.

Right. And fructose intolerance is a real problem, and it can cause bloating, abdominal pain, and

get ready, 13-year-olds, diarrhea.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Michael went through some,

I mean, he went through some poop, literally, dealing with his fructose intolerance.

And I don't blame him for being

wary around fruit.

You know,

I don't agree with him. It's not an idiosyncrasy.
People like what they like, Michael.

You should own this. This fruit did you bad.

This fruit did you wrong.

And you approach it with a certain level of

cageiness that is appropriate.

Do you disagree, Jesse? No, I agree. I think hater is

inappropriately strong language, even if it's used in a gentle and loving manner, as I'm sure it is, as this is his life partner.

But I think he should be able to define the terms by which his relationship with fruit is described.

Thank you, Jesse. I agree.
Understandably fruit-wary.

The

Mayo Clinic also says that people who are fructose intolerant should avoid obviously high-fructose corn syrup, honey, agave syrup, invert sugar, maple-flavored syrup, molasses, palm, or coconut sugar, and sorghum.

So stay away from, otherwise, sorghum is a superfood.

Michael's not a fruit hater. You want to see a fruit hater? Go talk to Elliot Kalin.
That guy hates fruit.

Let's take a quick break. More items on the docket coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman. The Judge John Hodgman podcast is brought to you every week by you, our members, of course.

Thank you so much for your support of this podcast and all of your favorite podcasts at maximumfund.org, and they are all your favorites.

If you want to join the many member supporters of this podcast and this network, boy, oh boy, that would be fantastic. Just go to maximumfund.org slash join.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by Made In.

Well, you know that the pros love to use Made In because it's pro quality cookware, tableware, glassware, everythingware.

We're talking about Tom Calicchio, Brooke Williamson, the pros, but many, many other people who are not professional chefs, but avid home cooks, like maybe Jesse Thorne and maybe me, Judge John Hodgman, love made-in too.

Judge Hodgman, I was at a store the other day. I saw some made-in stuff.
I gave it a hug. Yeah.

You were at a store and you saw some made-in stuff

and you gave it a hug. Look, I'm glad you're hugging made-in carbon steel pans or entree bowls or carbon steel griddles or their beautiful nonstick.
line of pans or their stock pots or their knives.

Be careful hugging the knives because they're really sharp. They're pro quality.
But the fun thing about Made In is you don't have to go to a store to get it.

In fact, they're so reasonably priced in part because they're available to you online right now at madeincookware.com. And not only that,

they're made from professionals and a company that has evolved from a 100-year-old kitchen supply business. And craftspeople have been working in this for multiple generations.

I'm telling you, the stuff is really good. I cook with it every day.
And

I can't wait for a glass to break or a platter to shatter so I can go over to Made In and replace it right there. For full details, visit MadeInCookware.com.
That's M-A-D-E-I-N Cookware.com.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by Aura Frames. Now, John, as we sit here and discuss this right now.

Right.

My mother, Judith,

has just entered my house.

She is an absolute. Oh, let me say hi to her.
No,

she's in the house. It's like 80 feet away.
But the good news is she's always connected with my family, not just when she's in my house, because of the aura frame that I gave her.

Even my 80-year-old mother,

who is

no great shakes with technology. Right.

is able to operate that aura frame. She just plugged it in, connected it to the Wi-Fi.
It was full of pictures of family members that she loves.

All I have to do, if we take a cute new picture of, let's say, my dog Jr.,

I'm mostly taking pictures. Sorry of my children.

All you do is hit that send button, that same send button on your phone that you would use to text message it to somebody, and you can just shoot it straight into an aura frame.

Honestly, I'm thinking about getting an aura frame right now just dedicated to pictures of your dogs. Yeah, I think that's a good call.

Mabel's in there looking all little, little and cute. You know how much you love sending photos to your friends and family, of things that you see, people that you know, things that you do.

I mean, you love it. It's a gift that you give every day, probably.

But I mean, no one loves to look at their phone to see those photos.

What they really enjoy, I really enjoy because I have an Aura frame, is seeing all those memories pop up on a beautiful high-resolution screen and knowing that my family can see the photos that I share with them exactly the same way.

You don't need to download anything. You don't need to download your photos to a SIM card and then drive all the way to Brookline to see my dad to put your photos on his Aura frame.

All you need to do is select your photos, send them to the app, and they're on their way. You can get an Aura frame for a loved one today.

You don't even need to take it out of the box before you load it up with photos that they're going to love. There's a code you scan, you do it without basically no human hands involved.

By the time they open it, it's preloaded with all the photos that you've chosen for them. It's delightful.

I was just saying to my wife as a whole human being in her own right, why have we not given your dad an aura frame? Guess what we're going to do? Sorry, I don't mean to spoil the secret, Brad.

You're getting an aura.

This is good news for you and for Brad.

For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carver mat frames, named number one by Wirecutter, by using promo code Hodgman at checkout.

That's A-U-R-A frames.com. Promo code Hodgman.
Now, this deal is exclusive to listeners, and frames do sell out fast. So order yours now to get it in time for the holidays.

And support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast, brought to you by Haas Apple Farm at the Pasadena High School Farmers Market, the only apple farm with delicious apples, pears, and fresh eggs.

Best in the market. What size would you like? That's what Mr.
Haas says to me every time. I've not asked for eggs.
He just says, our eggs best in the market. What size would you like?

And how can we have a discussion of fruit without mentioning our good friend and native Mainer, John, the fresh banana man?

Have not been in touch with him for a little while, but Joel, if you think this is before I ever recorded here, I was driving south on the main turnpike, I-95, the Kennebunk Southbound Service Plaza.

There was a young man selling bananas

like a green grocer. He was like a Mr.
Greengrocer. And

he was just saying, bananas here, fresh bananas.

And his question was, when he ordered bananas, like, any particular banana or just too off the top?

That's fun. He was building a Judge John Hodgman courtroom in Minecraft last I heard.

He's a wonderful fellow, and I hope hope all is well with him and his family. Check in.

Okay, what else do we got? Anyway, we've got something here from Josie, who writes from Boston. My husband Tyler and I enjoy speaking in fake accents.

No one else enjoys us speaking in fake accents. That's correct.

Tyler and I have always enjoyed this activity so much that we each had to divorce our previous accent-opposing spouses in order to marry each other. Wow.
I suspect it's universal.

Wherever there is someone wholeheartedly enjoying their affected accent, there's someone else fleeing the room. My question is less about annoyance, which I accept, than about ethics.

I would never do a fake Asian accent, obviously, but I would totally do a fake British accent. And why is that? One friend proposes the rule that we may parody the colonizer, but not the colonized.

But within the vast array of British accents I do, there are plenty like Brummy or Cockney that have complicated class and cultural associations.

Even the New Bedford and Boston accents that we imitate as locals could still be considered classist. Where should we draw the line?

John, I should admit, just for context here,

that I'm dressed in a full Pearly King outfit right now. I don't even know what that means.

There are Cockneys who cover suits in Mother of Pearl buttons and raise money for charity. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I always wondered

what that was all about.

What are they called? It's about raising money for charity, pearly kings and queens. Pearly kings and queens in the cockney tradition.
Well, you look very, very sharp.

You look like a character from one of the animated segments of Mary Poppins. Good job.

Thank you.

Can you do a Cockney accent?

Right, Governor. Why not? There you go.

Always fun. Step in time, step in time, step in time.

That's about as good as you need to get in order to be a Mary Poppins.

I can only do one accent.

I cannot do a Boston accent, even though I grew up in the area, and that's a region of New England.

It's the largest city in New England, which is a region of the United States, southeast of Maritime Canada.

Is that in the Midwest? No, no,

it's here in the northeast of the United States. Maine is part of New England as well.

In fact, Maine and Massachusetts used to be

the same state until Massachusetts said we don't want it anymore. And then

that was 1820. So this is the last day of Maine's bicentennial.

I can do all of that. I'll take it on faith.
Hang on. Joel's jumping in.
Joel's jumping in. He wants to do a Maine accent.
Let's hear it.

All right. That was incredibly disturbing.
For a moment, I thought maybe Joel was having anaphylactic shock due to

the satsuma that I lobbed at him.

What was that?

That's how Maynard say, yeah.

Oh, no. Oh, I got you.
Okay. He's a little slow.

That was fair cunning. That was fair cunning joke.
Yeah, Joel. That was our fault.

It sounded like you were in respiratory distress, which is not something you want to hear this time of decade.

Never mind, year.

That's what you say. Aya.

I can't do a Maine.

I can't do a Maine.

I can't do it. I'm not going to do it.
Can't do a Boston accent. I can't do a Philadelphia accent.

It's me writing from Portland, Maine.

I can do one accent, though.

I can do one accent, though, and only one word from it. And that is the accent that Matt Gorley does, pretending to be a person from New Zealand,

as a made-up guest on the Andy Daly podcast project, specifically

the perhaps masterpiece of comedy, which is

Wolfman Hot Dog.

And he just, the only word he can say is Naiu.

That's him saying no. Naiu.

Nai.

That's it. So what accents can Josie do? Josie apparently can do a vast array of British accents.
Now, here's the thing.

I happen to know that she dabbles

in Jamaican patois. She revealed in her letter some more information,

which is that she said, of course,

to take on a Jamaican patois is irresistible, but I would never do it outside my home, which I'm like, is, yeah, you'd best not. And by the way, resist.

Leave that to Jamaicans and Buster Rhymes. Exactly so.

She also revealed that most of her conversations between her and her daughter are done through singing, which is, it's an amazing household. It's rollicking over there.
It's rollicking.

I have a personal connection to this because I was asked to

read the audiobook. of a short novel by Warren Ellis called Normal

by my friend,

my longtime friend and former editor, Sean MacDonald, who is the editor of this book. Warren Ellis is a great writer of novels and comics and other projects.
He's great.

I was so flattered to be asked, so of course I said yes, right?

And of course, I read the book maybe two days before the recording session

because I'm a lazy procrastinator.

And it was a terrific book that was set in a secret asylum where people who study international affairs, who had peered too deeply into the abyss and had mental breakdowns, were all being kept prisoner, basically.

And all these people came from all these different places around the world, many of them

very specific regions of England,

Russia,

Africa, Jamaica, and no one had told me this, and suddenly on the fly, I'm trying to do accents.

It was like a nightmare. I think the only worse nightmare would be Warren Ellis hearing me do ruin his work this way.

I could have used a edge up in Cockney slang.

Because of course, Josie is absolutely correct.

There are deep problematics when you appropriate a means of speech because certain accents are very specifically racially coded, very specifically class-coded. It's a delicate thing.

And

I recall when I was a kid in Brookline, Massachusetts, doing a skit in elementary school where

I was imitating Dave Maynard, who is a local television personality, who had like a local variety show and had a Boston accent. And I was doing his Boston accent.

And I talked about people coming in from Hyde Park. and I really laid it on thick.
And my mom took me aside afterward and just said, Don't ever do that.

That's probably why I don't, I was traumatized like a Michael eaten fruit. I had abdominal pain.
I had diarrhea of shame.

I had a diarrhea of shame because my mom was like, that is not our accent. That is an accent of working class

Irish American people specifically.

And they are in the audience and they're hearing you and they think you're making fun of them.

And I was, and she's like, don't do it.

And my mom, who had grown up in a working-class German-Irish-American enclave in Northeast Philadelphia, where all of her family had a very deep and beautiful Philadelphia accent, one of the strangest accents in the world,

but had then been the first in her family to go to college and became, went to graduate school and became a registered nurse, et cetera. Like, she knew about class mobility.

And

she

wasn't saying that accent is low rather she was saying you have to be respectful of it. You have to be respectful.

And so obviously as I say Josie, first of all, you know,

my advice to you is don't accept a job narrating an audiobook

unless you're the right person for the job. Maybe that should be something.

I usually, that's when I started thinking about, am I the right person for this job rather than just taking any job that someone was fool enough to offer me?

Absolutely resist doing a Jamaican patois in

your home. I know from your letter, Josie, that you're a white person.
So I would say just stay away from all non-Caucasian accents in general. They are resistible.
In your home, privately, or no.

And the rest of it, I would say, keep it in your home. Not because it is intrinsically offensive, but yes, it's absolutely annoying it's absolutely annoying

i'm sorry

i've talked about this with jordan morris my co-host on jordan jesse go with whom i went to college and with whom i worked at our college radio station kzi in santa cruz

but we we had a colleague named dj haddai

uh who was a californian a white californian uh who was very deep in reggae culture

spent a lot of time in Jamaica and had a sound system that competed in international sound system competitions.

And he explained to us one day that

in international sound system competitions in which reggae DJs and toasters and so forth get together and compete over who has the best

dub plates,

the shows involve everyone speaking patois. Patois is the common common language of people from, you know, many of the competitors are from Jamaica, but many are from all over the world.

You know, there's Japanese guys and Malaysian guys and so forth.

And they all speak patois together

on stage.

And

I

was really awed by this. And he truly had an extraordinary commitment to the culture around reggae and especially dub reggae.

But it still was a little odd in the context of a community radio station in Santa Cruz.

Do you mean that he that he that he was petoising? He did it on the air, yeah.

Oh, for sure. I think a lot of our listeners believed him to be Jamaican.
Like everything,

there's a lot of blurring at the edges, you know, and you know, we say petois rather than accent because

Jamaican is really a fairly distinct

dialect. It's not just a slant to your vowels, it's a whole language system.

Much like spoken black American English has

its own language system.

But obviously,

unless you're deeply into the dub reggae scene and have earned your chops, Josie, maybe you are. Maybe you've got a sound system that competes in international competition.

I would say... Yeah, show me your beanie man dub plates, Josie.
Yeah, I would say that your instinct is correct.

You should avoid accents that do not comport with your basic cultural background. And for the most part, just

keep it at home. Look, you divorced spouses to have this hobby together.
I'm not going to tell you to stop it. Like, that was a real big move.

But you're absolutely correct that there is a class of

that

anyone who is not into this gets annoyed by it. And I remember

my wife went to an all-women's college in Pennsylvania where there was a club of undergraduate women who met at the cafeteria every day to have lunch and speak to each other in fake Irish brogue.

Good for them.

Good for them.

Good for them.

Not good for the people around them.

John, my stepmother is Irish and she's mad at like Michael Flatley. I can't even imagine how she would feel about the fake Irish Accent Club.

She's mad at any American who touches a tin whistle. Yeah, but you have to remember.
You have to remember that they're only 19 years old. They're very we.

Very, very,

very, very young to do a thing like that, you know. Oh, excuse me, to do a thing like that, Jesse.
You have to be, it's okay if you're young, but if you're older, don't do it in the cafeteria.

I can't believe you never got cast on peaky blinders. Okay.

Here's something from Carl. My wife and I enjoy watching movies on Saturday nights with homemade popcorn.

The first batch I make, my popcorn bowl, never pops up as much as the second batch, her popcorn bowl. To even things out, I take some of her popped kernels for my bowl.

I say that since I'm the one making it, I'm allowed to impose a popper's tax. She says I'm stealing.

Sounds like something that sends you to the poorhouse in Dickensian London. That's right.
She says I'm stealing her popcorn and that I'm a jerk. Tell her to pay up or pop her her on.
All right, look,

this hasn't even aired yet and I see the, I'm getting letters about my Irish accent.

Yeah, that was a violation on purpose. That was me blurring the edges.

This is my step-grandmother calling my house. Hello.
Hello. It's your grandmother.
It's barely not available. It's barely available.
Hello, Jesse. It's nice to speak with you.
It's barely available.

Yeah, that's his grandma. My mom's

last name at birth was Callahan. Does that give me the right to do that terrible thing? No, I've never been to Ireland.
I was just as bad as those kids. That's the point I'm making.

I'm not a teenager. I'm not a teenager trying on a new life.

I was just doing a comedy bit. Okay.

I look forward to your listening. It's your grandmother, McNulty.
Hello, Jesse. It's lovely to hear your voice.
I'm here in Belfast.

I was going to go to Ireland, but then that trip got canceled due to everything.

I hope to come and visit soon. I'm 84 years old.
I'm on a ladder painting my ceiling.

What we have to do, Jesse, is to is to do a show in Dublin and in Belfast and see which audience murders us first for what we just did today. Okay.

Here we go.

Carl's making popcorn. He's taking...

He makes two bowls of popcorn. The second one pops more, so he takes some back.

And Carl's wife says he's being a popcorn thief. So I asked Carl, I didn't understand what's going on there, and I asked Carl for some specifics about his popping method, and I got a lot of them.

I'm still not sure I understand. So here's what Carl's doing, Jesse.
Let me know if you've ever heard of anything like this before.

He says, quote, I use a glass popper in the microwave and a blend of butter and olive oil.

I first heat the oil in the microwave, then melt in the butter, then stir in the kernels, then microwave for six minutes.

Then I make her popcorn, but I don't have to eat the oil and the butter melts easily because he's using the same bowl and it's already hot.

Again, stir in the kernels, the microwave them for another six minutes, and the glass popper comes out now, not only hot, but with walls, the heat of a nuclear reactor.

And it always has more popped kernels. And he suspects that the difference is due to either increased temperature of the glass popper or the microwave has warmed up.

Jesse, how do you make popcorn? I got a system, John. Let me hear it.

This is a a system that I borrowed from our friends at Cooks Illustrated, America's Test Kitchen. It works so extraordinarily well that I have abandoned all other methods of popcorn popping.

Let's hear it. You get your pan, you put your fat into it, you want a high smoke point oil like canola.

You put three kernels of popcorn inside.

You put it on medium-high heat.

More on the medium side than on the high side. You You don't want to burn anything.

When those popcorn kernels pop, you pour the rest of your popcorn into the vessel and take it off the heat. You shake to cover them in fat and leave it off the heat for 30 seconds.

Then you return them to the heat and you pop them until the pops are, you know, two or three seconds apart.

Respect to Cooks Illustrated, America's Test Kitchen, and listener Afton, who works there. That is the most Cooks Illustrated thing I've ever heard in my life.

How to make. It's so easy.
It's so simple, though. How to make.
No, it's more complicated.

Joel, what do you think about that? One word, Jiffy Pop. Okay.

When they sponsor us.

Two words, but thank you.

When they sponsor us, we'll put to, yeah, we'll get to. Jiffy Pop is fun, too.

Look, I trust that it works. Everything there is tested.
Orville Redenbacher. Go on, Judge John Hodgman.

That guy can't.

The original Orville Redenbacher must have passed. No, I think they have Michael Ian Black or something playing in commercials now.
They just give comedians the suspenders and let them go at it.

Why does Michael Ian Black get that? Look, I'm right here, Orville Redenbacher. I know.

I could wear a bow tie. I'm not as lanky as the original OR.

He was lanky. You're too busy working on peaky blinders.
Yeah.

So I'm going to say this. I've got a method too, and it's called Whirly Pop.

The Whirly Pop is a device. I see Jennifer Marmor nodding.
Whirly pop is a device.

It's a pot, and then it has a crank on the top that turns a little spindle and a couple of little wings in the bottom that keeps that popcorn moving around in the oil.

And it's never been more, never been more delicious than, and I hate having that thing I hate

having a thing that is only for one thing I hate taking off the lid and dragging out the the the spindle and the the little wings and they're it's very hard to store

but it's worth it because for me that popcorn is the best and I am willing to accept that Carl like Jesse, like me, you deserve your own method of making popcorn, but I do not understand what you're doing at all.

Like, I've never, I had to look up glass microwave popcorn poppers, and they make them,

but why are you making two batches, right? I mean, here are my questions.

Why not make one big batch, put it in two bowls, rather than wait to deliver your wife's separate bowl to her and then grab kernels from her to even it out?

That's just passive aggression.

There are two possible solutions to to this. One is make one big batch and separate it.

Two is make one batch, one bowl's worth, separate that, eat it, and then maybe decide you're done.

The only reason that I can think for having two bowls meanwhile, because look, do whatever you have to to get through the night. But maybe his wife seasons her popcorn differently.

What do you like to have on popcorn, Jesse?

You know, traditionally, I was just a salt and butter man.

But more recently, I went to a popular

members-only retail establishment known for selling goods in bulk. Yeah.
And I bought about a 75-pound jar of ranch powder.

Wow.

And I've really enjoyed... both making my own ranch dressing using that ranch powder and homemade mayonnaise.
Yeah.

Talk about your high-low contrast. Yeah.

A few chives from my front yard, homemade mayonnaise and ranch powder from Costco.

And

you got

yard chives?

I've got a few yard chives. I bought them at the Pasadena High School farmer's market.
It's going to be fun to live in California. $3.
That's what yard chives cost.

Anyway, I interrupted you.

So I'll put the ranch powder on the occasional slow cooker beef roast, and I'll put the ranch powder on some popcorn. It's really good.

But my children will only eat certain brands of microwave popcorn. So what happens is I make a full family-sized serving of popcorn, then end up eating it all myself until I'm sick.

Yeah, you can eat too much popcorn. It's true.
Look, Carl, I don't mean to totally shame. your method of making popcorn.

I don't understand why you wouldn't melt butter and drizzle on top, but instead pre-butter the kernels. I don't know if this, maybe this is the greatest thing.
I think I'll have to try it.

I think I'll have to try it. But as far as

evening out the kernels, do that in the kitchen,

not in front of your wife to annoy her.

And meanwhile, everyone can go get a whirly pop. It's 30 bucks.
at Williams Sonoma. I'm not saying that you should go to Williams Sonoma, particularly.

You'll probably get it cheaper elsewhere, but that's where I happen to find it today. And I also noticed that Williams Sonoma sells Questlove's brand of popcorn seasoning.

Did you know Questlove is out here selling popcorn seasoning now, Jesse?

If you told me in 1999

at Maritime Hall in San Francisco, as I was hanging, skulking around the artist's entrance, trying to get the autographs of the various members of the roots,

that one day Questlove Love would have his own popcorn seasoning, I would have been stunned.

Now, if you told me that one day Leonard Hubb Hubbard, the bassist at the time for The Roots, would one day have his own brand of those licorice sticks that people chew on in the side of their mouth, that I would have believed at health food stores around the nation.

Ah,

I say this with incredible respect because Amir Quest Love Thompson is truly a person for all seasons.

He knows a lot of things about a lot of things very deeply.

Love him. I love

all of his recipes in his book. And I'm sure this popcorn seasoning is good.
But yeah, I also, you know what I love and respect? Hustle.

Questlove's like, yeah, I'm making a brand of popcorn seasonings. Nothing will stop me.
You got lemon pepper, truffle parm roseberry, and Saturday morning cereal seasoning.

I don't know what that is, maybe cinnamon. I got love for those seasonings.
I'm going to buy those seasonings just to say thank you to Quest Love for

my post-adolescent days on OKPlayer.com. And he's an incredibly nice guy.
Some of my best buddies are OK Players. Yeah.

When you see him going live on Instagram to DJ stuff, go get a history lesson in music. Go get an incredible, just beautiful vibe of watching him and listening to his taste.
Ugh.

And, you know, make yourself a bowl of popcorn with his popcorn seasoning. You get that one for free, Quest Love.
Please call Maximum Fun.

We will work out something for you to sponsor the podcast. Quest Love, go on, Judge Sean Hodgman.
Let's take a quick break when we come back. Our clicky keyboard song.

Hello. Hello, I'm calling on behalf of the Beef and Dairy Network podcast.
Oh, 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 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 theatre, not a Parisian bordello. Simply go to maximum fun.org.

I'm reaching for my Samsung Galaxy 4 as we speak. Mother! Mother, not that hat!

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We're clearing the docket this week.
We've got a dispute here from Danny.

I work from home at a constantly busy job, and I typically only have brief periods when I can grab a snack before I have to be on a Zoom call.

As such, a great go-to lunch for me is opening a chunky soup can, grabbing a spoon, and eating the soup from the can cold.

My wife is disgusted by this and usually complains that I look like an animal and should use a bowl.

I argue that not only am I saving us both time on dishes, it's also inefficient and downright silly to dump soup from one perfectly good soup holding contraption into another soup holding contraption, especially since I'm not heating the soup either way.

Please rule that my wife has to allow me to eat soup from cans without shaming me.

I imagine, I'm imagining Danny, by the way, wearing like a pork pie hat where the top of the hat is mostly cut off and it's sproinged up like the top of a can when you're cutting the glit of a can off.

Also, he's in a 1930s hobo camp.

I'll say this is my image.

First of all, you don't look like an animal, Tanny, because

an animal can't open up a can of soup at all. If a dog or a cat could operate a can opener, this would be a different world we lived in.
You know what I mean? Yeah, we'd be in trouble.

We'd be in trubs. The market for dry dog food would, you know, no pun intended, dry up real fast.
Exactly.

They could unload that stuff. You'd be paving driveways in Maine with kibble.

Yeah. If I came home and Lola, the dumb-dumb cat was walking around on two legs eating chunky soup out of a can she opened

with her paw with no thumbs, I'd be like, you know what? I misjudged this cat. Not dumb.
Pretty smart. Pretty amazing.
I'm going to go on television.

You look like Rorschach.

Rorschach from the Watchmen, who would show up at Daniel Dreiberg's house, the former night owl, his former partner in crime busting,

with his mask halfway pulled up, eating a can of beans from the can with a spoon.

Rorschach, that's what you look like. And you know what Rorschach is?

A deluded sociopath.

A dysfunctional, antisocial creep.

Obviously, the most compelling character in Watchmen and

essentially the hero of Watchmen, even though, as Damon Lindelof and his team of writers so ably extrapolated, his extreme right-wing vigilanteist way of thinking would have directly led to the white supremacist militia and the TV show Watchmen, where they all wear his masks.

And I bet they all sit down alone and pull up their masks and eat a can of beans.

Because that's what antisocial weirdos do. Does it mean it's not delicious? No.

It's delicious.

Sometimes I see a can of beans on a shelf and I'm like, I want to eat that can of beans out of the can so bad.

And sometimes I don't just think it, I do it.

And one time I,

one time I even did it. It's so good.
It's so good. I understand you, Danny.
I'm not a chunky soup person myself.

Give me Progresso any day.

Mainly because the name of it is chunky. It sounds disgusting.
Like it's already disgusting enough, and you're eating it cold out of the can, it's gross.

But I feel you. One time on my Instagram show, Get Your Pets, I was talking about Rorschach eating beans out of a can, and then I just did it as a gag.

for the people watching Get Your Pets. And I did it with a hat pulled down over my eyes so I looked like Rorschach.

And I just let it roll. And people thought, like, oh, this is a comedy bit.
He's really dragging this out because it's so disgusting and ridiculous looking.

And the truth was, inside, I was like, this is the greatest meal I've ever had in my life. I get it.

It's a perversion.

This is the thing. This is the thing, Danny, that I think about you.

All of this is very specific. A can of chunky soup, you say, as though that's normal.
No, that's specific to you. You resist the idea of putting it into a bowl because that would be downright silly.

You're eating beans out of a can, you downright silly man.

You refer to a bowl and a can both as a contraption, not contraptions.

There has no hinge or device to it, just a container.

The truth is, it's so, and you point out, like, why would I put it in a bowl? I would never heat it up anyway. You're supposed to heat up the soup.

You are doing something very, very specific and very, very weird. And you're you're trying to trick us into thinking that it's actually kind of normal.
No,

it's your thing. I get it.
I've felt that transgression eating beans out of a can.

It gives you a sick pleasure, which you should enjoy.

You should enjoy it by yourself.

Frankly, I think that part of the sick pleasure is getting shamed by your wife.

I don't know what's keeping your love life alive during the pandemic, but it might have something to do with you eating a can of chunky soup cold in front of your wife and her shaming you for it.

That might be part of your love language. Think about that.

But unless there is clear and affirmative consent in this role play,

your wife's nausea takes precedence over your preference.

Do it alone in a closet. I'll be there with you.
I'll be there with you. Can of beans.

Do you think he's doing it on the Zoom calls? I kind of think he's doing it on the Zoom calls. I think he wants everyone to see.
I mean, I understand too.

I wanted everyone to see me eat a can of beans out of a can.

He's probably doing that. Shoal, you ever eat a can of beans out of the can cold? Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, of course.

Around the campfire. Around the campfire.
Yeah, right.

They taste better.

What about in your house?

No.

What kind of beans?

Pinto. Hmm.

Stuart's shelled beans?

No.

Wrong. Incorrect.
The best beans.

Jesse, you know what else they have in Maine? Stewart's Shelled Beans. A New England brand of canned beans that I never see anywhere else.
I'm going to have some tonight.

Finally, Judge Hodgman, we heard from Chase,

who has created an electronic dance music track, as requested by you in our Gallon of Scallops episode, out of the sounds of.

a clicky keyboard. Thank you, Chase.
Let's hear it.

Yeah, but listen, keyboard nerds who have an overlap with music skills, if you can make a rave song composed entirely out of clicky keyboard sounds and send it, that would make me very happy.

I hear my board

microphone

So satisfied with your hand, you're not

I hope all our listeners cranked that. And I hope they have subs in the trunk.
Totally. I'm going to listen to that tonight as I make my dinner of Taylor pork roll, Stewart's shell beans, one satsuma.

And we'll be dancing around in the kitchen.

That's incredible, Chase. If you want to listen to the whole track, and I've listened to the whole track, and it goes places.
It's not just that.

It goes to new territories and new dimensions of sound. You can go check out, of course, our show page at maximumfund.org.

And, of course, we'll post at least a segment of it on Instagram if Chase says that's okay. At JudgeJohnHodgman is our Instagram.

And you should check out Chase's SoundCloud at soundcloud.com/slash Chase Watkins. Chase Watkins.
All one word, all small letters. The docket's clear.

That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman. Our producer is Jennifer Marmer, our engineer in Maine, Joel Mann, program and operations manager at WERU Community Radio in Orland, Maine.

Run it back, DJ. You can listen to WERU and WERU.org, and you can follow Joel on Instagram at the Maine Man, M-A-I-N-E-M-A-N-N.
It's a double pun. Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman. We're also both individually on Instagram, John.
John is at your John Hodgman on Instagram. That's correct, John.
At John Hodgman. I'm at put.this.on.

Make sure to hashtag your JudgeJohn Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ H. O, and check out the Maximum Fun subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com to chat about this episode.

You can submit your cases at maximumfund.org slash jjho or email hodgman at maximumfun.org. We'll talk to you next time on the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast.
This is not a post-credits surprise sequence.

I am not going to sing the Star Blazers theme this time. This episode is already too rollicking.

Next rollicking episode, stay tuned to the very end and I will sing it.

MaximumFun.org. Comedy and culture.
Artist-owned. Audience supported.