Tippecanoe and Zelda Too

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 Brooklyn's greatest dad, Judge John Hodgman.

You just made Jonathan Colton very sad.

Yeah, take that, JC.

No, no, Jonathan Colton and I.

We have been co-chairmen of the best dads board

of Southern Slope, Brooklyn for, oh, it's got to be 11 years running now.

We just keep getting re-elected, re-elected.

To be fair, no one wants the job.

It's a lot of paperwork.

Meetings every week.

Jonathan keeps the minutes.

I'm the treasurer.

Ever since Lil Fame from MOP's dad resigned.

That's right.

Due to ill health.

That's right.

Jesse Thorne, hello.

I can see you there out there in Los Angeles, California.

Here I am in Brooklyn, New York, and I'm taking a drink from a mug that I got from another podcast that we will not name.

Great.

Sounds good.

I apologize in advance to the amesophones.

Guess what I'm drinking from that slurp?

Can you guess?

I mean,

if my...

Nostalgic memory is correct.

I'm pretty sure you just drank some Folger's crystals that you didn't know were Folger's crystals.

When you said nostalgic memory, I thought you were going to say ovaltine.

Did you ever have ovaltine growing up?

Rich chocolate flavor, my friend.

I was, my mother's house was an ovaltine household.

I drank a lot of ovaltine.

I think that there was a non-chocolate ovaltine, too.

There's a, there's like, I think the original ovaltine is like a malt-type flavor.

I'm going to get some of that.

That's not what I'm drinking.

Both guesses are wrong.

What were you drinking?

So you know that I enjoy making concoctions.

Sure.

Afternoon, warm, non-alcoholic concoctions that I can enjoy.

Sure.

You were big into broth.

Big into broth.

Related.

Yeah.

BIB, big into broth.

That's how they knew me around town.

I enjoyed and still enjoy kitchen basics brand chicken stock,

warmed up with a little sriracha sauce.

Some black pepper.

Sounds nice.

But this time I'm having some peppermint tea.

My voice was feeling a little raspy.

And I thought, am I going to gargle with some salt water?

That's something you do.

Sure.

This is the other day.

I'm fine, by the way.

This is a new thing, though, for me.

So I'm like, how can I make this?

I'm going to gargle with salt water.

What if I make some peppermint tea and put salt in it?

And guess what, Jesse?

I did it, and it's great.

Wow.

Because

I love peppermint and I love salt.

What an amazing.

Like, you invented

an old vaudeville trick.

Like you

created

in the 21st century

a thing from 1897.

Yeah, peppermint tea.

Salted peppermint tea.

Oh, I see you have gout.

Well,

take this powder and put it up your nose and enjoy some salted peppermint tea.

Yeah, this is something that

had you not just told me that you had brainstormed it, I would have assumed you would have found the recipe in the papers of Kate Smith.

No, no.

And, you know, I thought, enjoying it, because it's just a pinch of Maldon salt.

That's the kind I like.

Maldon.

It's actually pronounced Malden because it's from the English town of Malden.

I always thought it was Maldon.

I thought it was French salt.

You know the salt that I'm talking about.

The one that comes in big chunky pyramids.

Yeah, absolutely.

Delicious.

But then I thought maybe I could, maybe I could advance this even further and

talk about vaudeville tricks.

I thought I might deploy a trick the great Ted Leo

of the Art of Process podcast and the rocks band, the Pharmacists

taught me backstage or side stage, really at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, Massachusetts, before a book event of mine some time before

in history.

He got some hot water, some lemon, and then a couple of shots of Tabasco sauce in it.

His claim was

that because of the capsaicin,

is that what you say?

You know, because of the hot and the hot sauce, that that's a natural anti-inflammatory and it helps the, I don't know.

I've done it a lot when I'm doing voiceover.

I'll put some hot sauce into some hot water with some lemon.

So I thought, what if I boost this thing with this, my new, my new concoction with some hot sauce?

And I'm sorry to say,

Dr.

Ted, you are a pharmacist of rock, but

not a pharmacist of this new drink.

The alchemy did not work in this case.

I shouldn't have put the hot sauce in it.

Just keep it simple.

This is what we have to remember.

Kiss.

It's not just a band.

It's an initialism.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Government team.

It's not just an act of intimacy.

Oh, is that what it is?

Oh, right.

I forgot about that definition.

Kissing.

Interesting.

Well, John, not to brag, but I just ordered some French Haribos from eBay.

They're orangina Haribos.

No.

Yeah.

Somebody on Twitter told me that whenever they go to France, they bring home orangina Haribos.

I got so excited.

And then two days later, someone said, guess what I just found on eBay?

Orangina Haribos.

$6.99 a bag, but I ordered two.

These are Haribos are gummies, right?

Yeah, the gummy candies.

Yeah.

And are they in the shape of bears?

Are they the original gummy bears?

No, they're in the shape of oranginas.

Little orangina bottles?

Yeah.

The classic, you know.

Yeah, the bulbous.

Yeah, bulbous is exactly the adjective.

And if I recall correctly, orangina is the,

it was very popular in New England, a region in the northeast of the United States, in the 80s, orangina.

And

they advertised that they had actual pulp in it.

It is a a pulpy drink.

It's a great drink.

It's still something you would order in a cafe in Portugal,

I think.

Pulp is not usually

something you want to advertise.

Mm, pulpy.

Hi, I'm John Hodgman from Orangina.

Are your soft drinks not pulpy enough?

Guess what?

You're about to get pulped.

Are you concerned your beverage is insufficiently murky?

I still remember the very distinct sensory feeling of holding that bulbous orangina bottle because if I remember, the bottle itself was kind of dimpled like an orange.

Yeah, exactly.

It's a very vivid...

This was a time before, clearly Canadian.

Let's get into...

Wait a minute.

No.

I'm going to bring the substance.

You brought up Orangina Aribo.

Yeah.

Have you been following this feud that Dan McCoy of the Flop House is having with the universe?

Ray.

You mean his lifetime?

Regarding specifically buttered popcorn-flavored jelly beans

and his belief that they are good?

No, Dan.

Dan, you're wrong.

That's the first ruling I'm going to make on Judge John Hodgman.

I've been playing a nice at the Flop House for a couple of years now, making podcasts with Elliot, hanging out with Stu at his bar, apologizing to Dan for saying that he looks like Walter the Muppet, which he does.

But now?

Walter's probably one of the handsomest Muppets.

Yeah, but if you're going to be compared to any Muppet, you don't want to be some Muppet come lately like Walter.

You want to be OG like Buns and Nunny do like me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam the Eagle like you.

Thank you.

You've got some Sam the Eagle vibes.

I mean, not in your politics.

Oh, I forgot you had no politics.

You're an employee of NPR.

Anyway, first justice, Flopass, the feud's back on until Dan

apologizes.

People like what they like, but stop saying that buttered popcorn jelly beans are good.

Just say, I like them.

They also ruin the other jelly beans.

That's my only beef.

Like, I like licorice jelly beans.

I don't mind eating a black jelly bean.

But the problem is when it's in the classic jelly bean mix, just a traditional jelly bean mix, if you get a licorice with a red one or a purple one one or whatever, it ruins the red one and the purple one because it doesn't go with the other fruity flavors.

Oh, boy.

So you have to eat your jelly beans one at a time from if there's, or just to carefully avoid the black ones.

If I get an orange one and a red one, they go together fine.

Right.

You can't, right.

You know,

pandemic-related isolation hits all of us different ways.

Yeah.

I like thinking about these things.

And Dan McCoy is suffering from jelly bean madness.

Jelly bean madness and Walter the Muppet resemblance syndrome.

Here's something from Katie.

My husband Spencer and I have two small dogs.

I would like to take them on kayaking adventures with us, with life jackets, of course.

Spencer thinks it's unsafe to bring the dogs with us.

I think he's being unreasonable, and I would like you to order him to at least try to take them out with us once.

If it goes well, I think they should be included on most kayaking trips in the future.

I thought I was going to have nothing to say up top.

I thought I was going to have nothing.

I didn't even get to mention that when we were talking about all those rummy games last time.

Turns out Mummy Rummy is a real thing.

Someone sent in a picture.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's like a game that you would buy at the gift shop of an archaeology museum.

Yeah.

Thank you for letting me get that up.

Winner, best game, 1995 Sao Paulo game off.

Yeah, you saw it too.

Thank you, Dan, listener, Dan at Dan's Graziano, for sending in Mummy Rummy and blowing my mind.

All right, let's get to kayaking dogs.

Jesse Thorne,

you are a companion to two wonderful dogs, Sissy and Coco.

That's true.

Are you a kayakist?

No, but I've been known to ride in a dinghy.

Okay.

Take a little dinghy ride at Poppy Lake in the Sequoia National Monument.

Yeah, that's right.

Don't you have a rowboat or something up there?

Yeah, I mean, it's not my rowboat, but there is a robot.

Unfortunately,

I have a cabin in Sequoia National Monument in a census-designated place that has basically completely burned to the ground.

But my cabin is still there, I learned recently.

So thank goodness for that.

The lake burned down to the extent that a lake can burn down, taking with it, I think, probably the community rowboat.

But there is a rowboat that just sort of sits on the shore that someone brought up there.

Right.

And there's a couple of different broken paddles, and you push off into the lake and go around the outside of it and look at minnows.

I don't want to get all nautical with you.

Yeah.

Oars.

Yeah, well.

I mean, I'm not sure they're even oars.

They may very well be paddles.

I don't know what the difference is, but it's a really eclectic group of implements.

Well, I'm very sorry to hear that.

And our best wishes go out to everyone who's been affected by these wildfires in the West.

And I hope that, you know, everything can be rebuilt and that the lake is okay and your community is okay first and foremost.

And that when the time comes, you can get a new rowboat with some actual God or whatever damned oars

and oar locks.

Anyway, there's 100% no ore locks on that boat.

Well, then maybe you you got battles.

Yeah.

My question is: has Sissy and Coco ever been out on the rowboat?

Yes or no?

Absolutely.

1,000% yes.

And they hate it.

What do they do?

What do they do?

I put them in, so

I was at a garage sale in South Pasadena, the nautical capital of Southern California.

That's right.

And there was someone selling some safety lifeboat jackets.

What are those called?

PF personal PFDs.

Personal flotation devices.

Yeah, personal flotation devices for dogs.

Right.

And I bought.

FDs, FDs.

They were the right size, and there were two of them, and it was $5.

And I'm like, great, now I'm going to put my dog in a boat.

And

what I like best about them, to be honest, is not bringing the dog in the boat because what happens is the dog nervously paces around inside the boat, thus making you nervous because the...

boat's too small for someone to be moving around like that, even if it's a 20-pound dog.

Right.

What I like best about them is that when I put them on my pets, they have a handle on the back

that allows me to pick my dogs up like a suitcase.

You don't even need to put them in the water.

You can just have fun.

I just walk around holding my dogs like two suitcases from a, you know, like a character who's lost in an airport in a 70s movie.

That's fantastic.

It's a joy.

And I dare say,

appropriate

because

you're safe, your dogs have PFDs, FDs, personal flotation devices for dogs,

and you are on very calm water.

Indeed.

And

you're in a rowboat.

Did I already say that?

You're in a rowboat.

Now,

are you familiar with

the phrase Tippee Canoe and Tyler 2?

Sure.

It was originally a campaign song of the Whig Party's log cabin campaign in the 1840 United States presidential election regarding William Henry Harrison, the hero of Tippy Canoe, and his VP

nominee, John Tyler.

Tippy Canoe and Tyler II.

Tippy Canoe is not a reference to the fact that canoes are tippy.

It's actually a place in Indiana.

But I'll tell you what, canoes are tippy, and you know what's tippier?

Kayaks.

Yeah.

They're designed to

ride a kayak, you have to prove that if you tip over upside down, you can tip back back right side up.

Yeah.

Because upside down, your face is underwater.

Yeah.

Face is one of the top things people use to breathe.

Yeah.

And when your face is underwater, your dog is deeper underwater or floating near you in terror.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, look,

I have done some kayaking, and it is very, very, very nerve-wracking.

Once you're out on the water, it's fine.

And look, I'm not the most gracious of swans.

Getting myself into a kayak is

a risk of full immersion every time.

And one time,

my wife and I went kayaking in a bay, and we were having a grand old time.

And we said, let's go out to that island that we can see.

And as soon as we were out of the bay, we were in rollicking waves.

And by rollicking usually has a positive connotation.

I just should have said horrifying waves that I knew were going to swamp us and kill us.

And if I had a dog with me of almost any size,

surely my life would be low quality to zero by now.

I was wearing a personal flotation device, of course, but it's cold.

It's cold in the waters of Maine.

It's no good.

So I approached this question from Katie and Spencer, this dispute, I should say, with real, real trepidation, because

dogs are your friends,

and yet balance in a kayak is a very, very delicate arrangement.

So, of course, I went to the internet to find what I thought I would find, which is please don't go kayaking with your dogs.

And all I saw were, yeah, here's how you go kayaking with your dog.

Lots of people do it all the time.

Yeah, I mean, the answer is you just, if you're worried about balance, you just mount the dog in a gyroscope.

Yeah, that's right.

They do.

They have dogs.

I mean, basically, it's like if there is any activity that you can do with a dog that you can imagine adding a dog to, there is a company that will try to make that happen so they can sell that stuff to you.

So not only will this happen, Spencer, Katie will do this at some point,

but it's happening all over

this hemisphere, at least, the part of the internet that I've found.

And

you can go to,

there are lots of, of course, videos on YouTube about how to kayak with your dog.

The one I hit

was from this person.

He's a man from Massachusetts, the Commonwealth of New England, named the Comeback Kid.

And his dog's name is Loki.

And if you'd like to spend some time watching a man

and his huge German shepherd sit on the floor of his bathroom with his back,

with his back to the bathtub, the place that he chose to shoot this video,

as he tells you all the steps they took took and all the good deals they got on personal flotation devices and then watch him and Loki kayaking around.

It's a wonderful, charming video.

He's got a great Boston accent or Massachusetts accent.

I'm not sure exactly where he's from.

And him talking to Loki as they paddle around

is almost ASMR-like and it's calming quality.

I checked out a lot of this guy's other videos.

It's a lot of like, how do you repair a thing in your car, which sounds handy?

I did not find any

invitation to join a white supremacy movement, which is always a plus when you're coming across a new YouTube channel.

I don't know anything else about this guy.

He seems like a nice fellow.

You can check that out if you want.

But one piece of advice the comeback kid gave that I think is really important if and when you do this, KD,

is that you heed me and he.

You don't want to be in water you you don't understand you want to be in calm water both the comeback kid and I agree on this

you want to train your dog slowly

to get used to the kayak only in a place where you are close to shore and you are not going to be in any danger should

your dog or you go in the drink it would be good if that drink

were warm, not ice cold like the waters of Maine, where it's going to be wildly unpleasant but you know a a warmer place so the drink might be sort of like ovaltine

like cold ovaltine temperature

uh and if your dogs are smaller i think that that's probably best right because

if loki fell out of the comeback kids kayak

there's no way loki's getting back this dog weighs 125 pounds or something.

But if you've got cocoa and sissy-sized dogs you can pick up like a handbag at the airport, then you can just pluck them out of the water and put them right back in your kayak.

So take it easy, take it slow, find calm water that you know.

I want to find something that'll rhyme with no again, but I can't, so just follow those rules.

And get those PFTs, FDs.

Susan says, my best friend and I have been arguing about the meaning of the Bob Marley song, No Woman, No Cry, since high school.

Does it mean, as I say, if you don't have a woman, you won't cry, or as she says, please, woman, don't cry.

Well, Jesse, what's your take?

Well, as a graduate of UC Santa Cruz,

the Bob Marley's legend of universities.

Yes.

I heard this song in a four-year period over 7 billion times.

Yes.

To me, it seems self-evident that it is the latter.

Please, woman, don't cry.

Now, if I were going to do research on this, I would probably call DJ Haddai from KZSC-FM in Santa Cruz, a really nice white guy with dreadlocks who would compete in sound system competitions while toasting in patois,

which is apparently totally a thing.

Even like Japanese dudes in sound system competitions toast in patois.

Ear me now,

and the whole nine yards.

Very sweet man, DJ Haddai.

So I would double check with him, given his expertise in the subject of Jamaican patois.

But

I'm going to say that my impression was always that it was, please, woman, don't cry.

What I liked about what you said was if I were to do some research, right?

Yeah.

If I were to do some research, You had in mind, right, a very specific,

a person with a very specific skill and knowledge base that you could reach out to.

So

perhaps Susan, who wrote in, felt,

oh, well, I don't know DJ Haddai.

I better ask John Hodgman.

And what's John Hodgman going to do?

What's John Hodgman going to do?

I'm just going to type it into the internet.

And I found out the answer in two seconds, Susan.

How dare you?

Don't make me your Google.

Now, look, I was all set to find out

that Susan,

that Susan was right.

Because I had always heard it as, if you have no relationships, you never cry.

I think that that's because I raised myself as an only child sexless loner.

And also, I never listened to the rest of the lyrics to give it any context whatsoever because it was just like, okay,

I know what songless is playing in the coffee connection.

I'm just going to tune out now.

But

I did use that internet.

I went to Wikipedia.

By the way, donate some money to Wikipedia.

I know we got our money going everywhere these days.

And we're supporting a lot of funds and a lot of movements and a lot of pushes to make normal a new and better normal.

But Wikipedia is a big part of our lives and they need some cash.

Give them five bucks if you can.

And according to Wikipedia, Susan, you are wrong.

Your best friend is correct, as is Jesse Thorne.

I quote, the lyric is sometimes misunderstood by those outside of Jamaica.

All right, got it, message message received, to mean, if there is no woman, there is no reason to cry.

But the lyric is rendered, no woman, na cry in Jamaican patois.

The nu is pronounced with a short schwa,

a mumbled vowel, and represents a clitic or weakened form of no.

And the connotation being,

it is, the singer is saying to his partner, please don't cry.

No woman, nu cry.

This is at least according to Kwame Senu Neville Dawes' book, Bob Marley Lyrical Genius,

which is cited in Wikipedia.

And until DJ Haddai tells me otherwise,

I'm going to go with the consensus of Jesse's interpretation, what Wikipedia tells me based on an actual book, and remind you, Susan, as well.

If you can write to me, you can write to Google.

That sounds mean.

Susan, I'm sorry, I'm sounding mean because you made me do some Googling for you.

The fact is, I love Googling.

I wouldn't do this show if I didn't love Googling.

And you know what, Susan?

I take it back.

You're still wrong, but anytime you need me to Google something, send it in.

I'll do what I can.

Let's take a quick break.

More items on the docket coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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

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

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

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

Let me ask you a question.

Did you know that most of the dishes served at Tom Cliccio's craft restaurant are made in, made-in pots and pans?

It's true.

The brace short ribs, made in, made in.

The Rohan Duck Riders of Rohan, made in, made in.

That heritage pork chop that you love so much, you got it.

It was made in, made in.

But made-in isn't just for professional chefs.

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And even some of your favorite celebratory dishes can be amplified with made-in cookware.

It's the stuff that professional chefs use, but because it is sold directly to you, it's a lot more affordable than some of the other high-end brands.

We're both big fans of the carbon steel.

I have a little carbon steel skillet that my mother-in-law loves to use because cast iron is too heavy for her, but she wants that non-stick.

And I know that she can...

you know, she can heat that thing up hot if she wants to use it hot.

She can use it to braise if she wants to use it to braise.

It's an immensely useful piece of kitchen toolery.

And it will last a long time.

And whether it's griddles or pots and pans or knives or glassware or tableware, I mean, you know, Jesse, I'm sad to be leaving Maine soon, but I am very, very happy to be getting back to my beloved made-in entree bowls.

All of it is incredibly solid, beautiful, functional, and as you point out, a lot more affordable because they sell it directly to you.

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For full details, visit madeincookware.com.

That's M-A-D-E-I-N Cookware.com.

Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge Sean Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket with a case here from Michael.

My wife, Stacey, is currently playing Zelda, a link to the past, which is one of my favorite old video games.

Since she's playing it on Nintendo Switch, it has a feature where you can stop time and rewind.

So when she dies or takes damage, she can simply rewind and try again.

This cheapens a game that means a lot to me.

She also never gets better because she doesn't have to learn enemy patterns or attacks since she can just revive any time.

She doesn't see this as cheating and claims it doesn't matter.

I seek an order for her to play the game as it was meant to be played.

This cheapens a game that means a lot to me.

We'll return to that phrase in a moment.

Jesse Thorne, have you ever played a Zelda game?

I have only played, I never had a Nintendo as a kid.

I did have a Sega Genesis, which does what Nintendo don't.

Oh.

But

yeah, was that a sound of blast processing envy coming from you, John?

Yeah, I was just, look, they took it, they turned it into a street fight, that's for sure.

Yeah.

I have recently, my friend Jordan Morris, my co-host on Jordan Jesse Go, was kind enough at the beginning of the quarantine to drop off at my house a Nintendo Wii U,

which was a sort of intermediary console.

that was a semi-failure.

But he thought my kids would like it.

It turns out mostly I play it, and it's because it came with the game Zelda Breath of the Wild, which is an extraordinarily awesome video game.

And I've been playing it slowly over the last six months,

just sort of mostly wandering around, but occasionally, you know, achieving goals.

And it's fantastic.

It's so fun and cool.

It's so great.

I have never played a Zelda game in my life.

But, well, I take it back.

I've played one Zelda-related game, and that game is to log on to a Twitter account

belonging to one Ariel.

Now, I've never known how to pronounce her last name.

It's D-U-M-A-S.

So, in French, it would be Dumas.

But in Americanization, it would be Dumas.

I don't know.

Ariel Dumas.

A-R-I-E-L-D-U-M-A-S.

She is a writer for the late show with Stephen Colbert, or at least was recently.

That's how I knew her vaguely.

But the Zelda-related game that I would play is to wait for her, which she does from time to time, to say on her Twitter account out of nowhere, Zelda is the boy, and watch gaming guys freak out

and try to explain to her that Zelda is not the boy.

That Link is the boy and Zelda is the princess.

And then she would just,

you know, like straightfacedly go like, well, no,

the person on the cover of the box is the hero of the game.

So that's Zelda.

Zelda is the boy.

And they were, no, Zelda is the princess.

Link is, how can you not know this?

And she'd be just like, well, it's this extremely popular series of games that's been around for a long time.

So it's obvious that Zelda is the boy.

And it's pure.

trolling.

I mean, it's like, we're not supposed to troll.

I get it.

But this thing delights me to no end.

Anytime, you should just go follow her.

She's a great Twitterer anyway.

But this thing that she does just makes me so happy.

Zelda is the boy.

Anyway.

When you said you had only ever played one Zelda game, I thought it was a build-up to you having rented the Zelda game that was only available on Philip CD Interactive.

Yeah.

That you could get at Blockbuster.

Oh, yeah.

I see Jennifer Marmor laughing along to that one.

She knows what you're talking about.

And Jennifer is really big into full-motion video games.

FMV.

Jennifer Marmor,

can you speak to us for a moment?

Yeah.

Are you a Zeldist?

I'm not, but the only Zelda game that I ever played was that one for Philip CDI.

Oh, okay.

I'm just trying to find someone within the sound of my voice for whom Zelda means a lot.

Because I get it.

I get that Michael is connected to this game.

But the idea that

Stacey playing the game however she chooses to play it is cheapening the game,

I can't accept that.

You place the value, you know, you have your relationship with this game and it is meaningful to you.

Stacy is playing her own game.

You're not playing against each other, so it's not cheating.

You can't cheat unless you're playing against each other.

She's playing within the rules,

obviously the newer rules, because this is a legacy version of Zelda.

It's literally a link to the past.

I don't even put a link in the title.

I just noticed that.

Funny.

But as is true controversially in Animal Crossing,

whatever the newest one is,

you can rewind and go back in time.

They're letting you do it.

It's not a hack.

It's not a cheat.

It's the way she's choosing to play the game the way she wants to play it.

And she's not...

Throwing it up in your face, as far as I can tell.

She's not beating you on a leaderboard somewhere.

Her experience of of

a thing does not cheapen your experience of a thing.

And that's true no matter what culture is.

If you love a TV show so much and another person hates it, you don't have to get on the internet to correct them.

If you hate

Ryan Johnson's The Last Jedi,

that does not mean

it's not the best Star War.

Which is an argument could be made.

It's the best Star War.

It's a great Star War, for sure.

It's an amazing movie.

It's probably the best.

Whether it is the most, obviously, the first couple Star Wars invented Star Wars.

That was a pretty big accomplishment.

But in terms of just which one would I want to watch right now?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's the best.

A lot of the more, you know, it's a term that has now become cliché, but toxic or just sort of like dispiriting and frustrating and time-wasting and hurtful

parts of the culture that exist

online today, in particular, is people getting angry at people for not liking things the way they think it should be liked

or people liking things for the wrong reasons or people liking the wrong things

and it's a real waste of time

and it's not just a waste of the receiver's time it's the waste of the complainer's time respectfully Michael

You should be living your life enjoying the things and enjoying Stacey rather than trying to police her understanding or appreciation of the game.

And one of the reasons that I give Ariel

Dumas,

I'm very sorry that I don't know how to pronounce your last name, but you're a friend on the internet.

You know what I mean?

One of the reasons I give her trolling a past is that because

she's trolling the trolls.

She's trolling primarily, and

generalized primarily the guys who get up in other people's feeds complaining they don't like the video game the right way.

That's the art of it.

Still trolling.

Still trolling.

I get it.

So, anyway, Michael, I'm not saying that you're a troll.

I'm not saying you're wasting your life.

I'm just saying, as Tony Faulkner once said to me

in a Columbia University dorm in 1991, take it down a thousand.

Take it down a thousand.

It's fine.

Let Stacey enjoy the game the way she wants to.

It does not cheapen the game that means a lot to you.

Its value is between you and Zelda, who is the boy.

Karen says, I have a harmless habit of leaving empty water glasses around the house.

We're not talking very many glasses, usually just three on my desk, my nightstand, and the kitchen counter.

But I work from home and did pre-pandemic as well.

And my husband is a firefighter who's home several days a week.

It never escapes his notice, and he gets after me about this near daily.

If he sees me with a glass, he adopts a joking but not really tone and demands to to know how many I have out, after which he generally grumbles off to retrieve and wash them.

He's making work for himself and annoyance for us both, so please issue an injunction against disturbing my glasses.

Making work for himself, Karen.

That does not compute.

You're leaving the glasses out.

Hang on.

Jesse Thorne,

how do you feel about half-empty glasses around the house?

I leave glasses out.

You leave glasses out?

I do.

I didn't notice the last time I visited you.

Granted, that was some time ago.

I absolutely am a person who leaves glasses out.

I often have a glass at my place at the table.

I often have a glass on my desk.

And I almost always have a glass on my bedside table.

So it's a very similar habit to Karen.

All empty?

Generally empty.

And, you know, the truth is that I drink so many glasses of water during the day

that

I probably,

in my mind,

I refill the glass that's close to me with water.

It doesn't get gross and dirty because it's just water.

And then, you know, at the end of the day, maybe.

It's dusty, dusty water water.

Dusty droplets.

Yes.

Dusty droplets.

I guess.

Maybe your house is really dusty.

Mine isn't.

That's actually not true.

My house is pretty dusty.

We'll table this for a second because I want us to be friends.

So just hang on for a sec.

One thing that occurred was during the past six extraordinary, unbearable months, or however long it's been, 10 years or whatever.

You know, we live in an apartment building, and our neighbors

left at some point for a long period of time.

They went away to a family place to be out of the city.

And we're close friends with them.

And this was during

the beginnings of remote learning and teaching.

And my wife is a teacher, a remote teacher, and our kids were doing remote learning.

And

we would use their apartment with their permission to do school, basically, just to get people out.

out from on top of each other.

Because as you know, Jesse, we all live in one big room, basically.

Yeah.

And, you know, we weren't spending a lot of time in there.

And after three or four months, they were coming back.

And my wife decided to go over there and clean up, right?

Because we had been using it.

And she came back and she said, you know,

I cleaned up, but then I went in there to like dust and vacuum.

There's no dust.

No dust.

Because no one's living there.

And you know what dust is?

Skin.

Mostly skin.

It was creepy to learn.

Anyway, you got dusty, skin, dusty water glasses hanging around all over the place.

Fine, Jesse.

That's the way you do it.

Does anyone in the household hate it?

Does Teresa hate it?

If she does, she's always been kind enough not to mention.

Teresa is not a firefighter, right?

Not to my understanding.

Right.

So unlike Karen's husband, Teresa wouldn't know that an empty water glass is the most likely way a house fire is going to start in a home.

Did you know that?

I didn't, I did not know that.

But again, my wife is not, my partner is not a firefighter, so I don't know how I would have spontaneous skin, dust, water droplet combustion.

It happens.

That's what Karen's husband knows better than she does.

No, it's not true.

Obviously, it's not true.

It's just that, Karen, you and your husband have different standards of tidiness.

There's cleanliness and then there's tidiness.

And,

you know,

cleanliness is obviously like

scrubbing toilets and

showers and stuff.

Tidiness is what you leave around.

And people have a different tolerance level, as we've discussed in the podcast before, for levels of clutter.

It's essentially visual pollution.

In my case, that's how I feel about it.

Which side of this issue are you on, John?

I can't stand it.

Can't stand it.

You're on the side of people who somehow can have one of those refrigerators with a see-through door.

I have a refrigerator with a see-through door and I'm sorry.

I know.

And you somehow are able to manage the inside of your refrigerator so well that it's not embarrassing to have a refrigerator with a...

Well, you can't hide anything in there, so you don't let stuff...

like just...

There's only so long you can marinate the stump of a burrito, Jesse, before it becomes garbage.

If you see it in there, you're like, oh, I got to get to that thing.

I got to eat it.

Look, I'm not saying my system is correct.

I'm just saying it works for me.

But when you join a household, right, it's unlikely that you're going to have the same standards of tidiness, the same standards of like, you know, like

leaving glasses around.

Karen never sees it.

But her husband always sees it.

And makes a point of letting her know, I don't like this.

I'm going to clean it up for you.

And that does not mean that Karen is right and her husband is wrong.

It just means they have different tolerance levels for tidiness in different ways.

For example, say you're the host of a fairly popular judge podcast

and

your

wife

turns a chair into a closet and it is full of clothes all the time.

Now, part of my job is to not see that, is to train my brain to not see it anymore,

to adapt to that different standard of tidiness, right?

Should I have to live that way?

One might argue no.

No, one should always live as a 12-year-old adult man in a dusty old house wherein he has what amounts to a bachelor apartment.

You're talking about me now.

One should carry a briefcase to high school.

I kept it tidy up there.

I kept it tidy up there in my suite of rooms.

Everything was in its place.

No empty water glasses.

But

that's the only consolation of living alone and dying alone, is that you get to set the standard of tidiness.

You have to find a middle ground.

And the truth is, Karen, I don't think that it is

great that your firefighter husband, who's out there saving lives and stopping fires, is great for him.

Thank you.

I don't think it's great that he's making this big theatrical show

of cleaning up these glasses and trying to guilt you into it.

He should be more forthright and send a message.

I can't stand this.

Stop it.

Or like, just one, please.

And you should hear him and decide whether you can adjust your behavior rather than this detente where you just keep leaving those glasses out and you know he doesn't like it and you think he's making work for himself when you're making the work that he feels compelled to do.

And if he's not willing to just have that conversation of feeling with you,

then he should just do the work.

Do what, say,

certain hosts of certain semi-popular Judge John Hodgman podcast shows do, which is every morning go through the house and collect all the discarded cups and glasses and put them in the dishwasher.

I'm the only one who does it, and that's my burden to bear, and I'm fine with that.

I find in favor of Karen until and unless her husband, whom she didn't even bother to name, he's such a non-entity to her.

When the firefighter, hubby firefighter, can speak openly and say,

here is what I can tolerate.

Here's what I can't tolerate.

When I see the glasses, it makes me feel like the house is going to go on fire.

Can we just not do this anymore?

And if he says that to you, then you should adjust your behavior.

until he's ready to be open with you.

I find in your favor.

Let's take a quick break when we come back.

Disputes about mask sharing and sports.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on My Brother, My Brother, and Me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

I'm Caroline Roper.

And on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week.

Here's something from Cosima.

I would like to bring a complaint against my husband, Mark.

We have a set of three matching masks, of which two are his.

The third, which is mine, has my name written on it to prevent mix-ups.

The problem is my husband constantly uses my mask.

Okay, stop.

I think.

Stop.

Yeah.

All right, read some more.

I know what I'm going to do.

Okay.

Yeah.

The problem is my husband constantly uses my mask.

I think this is gross.

I don't want to use a mask that he's mouth-breathed and potentially coughed or sneezed into.

His argument is that we have traded plenty of bodily fluids, ew, so he doesn't see what the big deal is.

To be clear, it's not that I'm nervous about getting sick through sharing a mask.

It's that I don't want to smell his fabric-preserved breath, and I shouldn't have to, considering that he has his own mask.

Cosima, you don't need to make any more argument.

I let that go on so we could get out that incredible phrase, fabric-preserved breath.

That was well-turned phrase.

But you were right from the beginning.

The mask has your name on it.

Cosima's, like, this is another thing.

It's like people have different standards of what they perceive to be hygienic it's just it's just different and also there is a reality of what is hygienic don't use someone else's mask dude i don't care that you swap spit that has nothing to do with it it's just a comfort level and the thing is like when you when you make

when you cohabitate and you make an arrangement that is to everyone's comfort right such as we'll have matching masks but i'm going to put my name on mine because i want to use mine exclusively.

That agreement is baked into the fact that her name is on the mask.

You can't just violate that agreement.

You've made the agreement.

Stick to it.

And don't try to come up with specious arguments that make Cosima feel like she's got to turn to some internet judge and overexplain her position because you're out there gaslighting her that it doesn't matter.

It matters to her, period.

Finally, Colleen says, what counts as a sport?

My brother Jimmy holds the asinine position, no ball, no sport.

Meaning in order to be considered a sport rather than just a game, it needs to be played with a ball.

When I point out that this would exclude hockey, which is played with a puck, he says, a puck is a type of ball.

Oh boy.

Your honor, I'm seeking an injunction against my brother to make him drop the ludicrous notion that a hockey puck is a type of ball.

I'm also seeking this court's ruling on what distinguishes a game from a sport, or specifically whether a ball is required for sportdom.

Please settle this so he and I can go back to discussing comic books in peace.

Jeez.

Jesse Thorne, is a puck a ball?

No.

All right.

It's a puck.

It's a puck.

It's a puck.

Yeah.

Is hockey a sport?

Yes.

It's a ball-less sport.

Yeah, it's a puck sport.

Right.

So if a hockey puck is not a ball, let me ask Brother Jimmy this: Is Formula One race car driving a game or a sport?

Jesse?

Is that a game or a sport?

Wow.

I mean, I guess it's a sport.

Right.

I don't like either choice.

It doesn't have a ball.

No.

I mean, it would be pretty incredible if you just threw a beach ball out into the, you know, make that part of the race.

Throw a bunch of beach balls out while they're all racing around.

They have to avoid them.

I mean, is golf a sport or a game?

That is a ball.

It has a ball.

It involves some athleticism.

Right.

Is golf more or less athletic than baseball?

Significantly less.

What about modern pentathlon?

It's practiced by Donna Vichalis.

Is that a game or a sport?

Me and our friend from the Olympics?

Yeah.

From the Olympic Games?

Yeah, that's right.

We have a friend from the Olympics.

Her name's Donna.

She's a modern pentathlete.

She's been in the Olympics two times.

How many times have you been in the Olympics, Bub?

Yeah, zero.

Is modern pentathlon a sport or a game?

To remind people, modern pentathlon is five skills.

Horseback riding, swimming,

target shooting, running,

and fencing.

Yeah, you got it.

And it's not just horseback riding, it's horseback riding over obstacles.

That's right.

Like a steeplechase type thing.

Is that a game or a sport, Jesse?

No, ball.

Is that a game?

I mean, it's definitely sport.

It's an Olympic sport, part of the Olympic games.

It falls under the category of sport.

Is it a sport?

That's a little weirder.

I can see this is really.

This is more personal with you than I had thought.

I don't,

but the real problem here is I don't know the answer.

I think the answer is

that

you

shouldn't worry about it too much.

Well, yeah, you shouldn't worry about any of this too much.

The whole planet's dying.

What about Cornhole?

Cornhole?

It's on ESPN.

Jennifer Marma, you know what cornhole is, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, bean bags.

You toss bean bags onto a plank, try to get them in the hole.

Bean bags are full of corn.

Therefore, it's called cornhole.

Right.

I understand why this is an issue, right?

This has something to do with hot dog and sandwichedness.

And by the way, Alton Brown, I love you, but you're wrong.

It has some kind of weird thing to do with toxic masculinity as well.

I can't quite put my finger on what it is about it that has to do with toxic masculinity.

Here's what it is.

Like,

all of the ball sports, which, by the way, it's not a coincidence that all these sports have balls, there is a preoccupation with the kind of masculine bonding that goes with the team sport

that causes some people who like those sports to feel unease with regard to the various sports of solitary personal perfection.

There is a lonely, introverted oddballness oddballness to, say, rock climbing or free diving or

pentathlon, those solo sports that turns jocks off on some level.

Now, I'm not sure exactly what sport Jimmy is trying to wedgie and stick into the nerdy loctor of gamedom.

But the fact is, he's wrong.

And to prove my point, I got a book that Allison Silverman loaned me.

Allison Silverman was the original co-executive producer of the Colbert Report, an incredibly funny comedy writer and talent.

And I'm not sure where she is now, but she's a friend of this court.

Portlandia, a long time ago.

Portlandia.

She was

one of the original writers of Portlandia.

Rules of the game, the complete illustrated encyclopedia of all the sports of the world.

Game, sports, game, sports.

They go together.

If it's in this book, it's a sport.

So let's look it up.

Golf, golf, gymnastics, combat.

Let me look in the index of sports.

Golf, page 102.

It's in.

What was the other one?

Formula One Racing?

Yeah,

car racing.

Circuit racing, sedan and sports car.

Page 294.

In.

Circuit racing.

Pentathlon, modern pentathlon?

Oh, of course, modern pentathlon.

Yeah, page 30, in.

That's in 30.

What about?

Darts?

Yep, sport.

What about cornhole?

No cornhole.

No cornhole.

No cornhole.

No cornhole.

Not a sport.

Wow.

Canadian five-pin bowling?

Yes.

Canadian football?

Yes.

Canoe polo?

Yes.

Canoe sailing?

Yes.

Canoe slalom?

Yes.

Carambillu, yes.

This is all the seas.

Canoe polo?

Canoe polo, page 214.

What about corf ball?

Korf ball, is that a sport?

Of course it is.

Page 132.

Corf ball is played by two teams, each with six men and six women.

Corf ball.

Look, I understand why

it's tricky.

The rules of the game, I believe, is out of print.

It's a great, it's diagrams.

It's one of the great, great fun books to look through when you're looking for the rules of darchery, which is darts plus archery.

And all the bigs.

You know, I get all the big league sports, the major league sports.

But here's the thing.

Major League Baseball, the National Football League, Dorf on Golf.

Dorf on Korfball.

Yeah.

I'm willing to allocate sports to the world of physical exertion.

Or in the case of baseball and NASCAR, at least you're outside.

Games.

Games are a broader category of any contest against opponents with agreed-upon rules.

So some games are not sports, obviously, Scrabble.

And some games are abominations, boggle.

But all sports are, to a degree, games.

Even the ones that you do alone, because it's got two opponents, you and your mind.

I'm going to put cornhole in there.

I think it's a sport.

I think it's a sport.

More of a game.

I get it that there's a continuum.

There are more gamey sports than there are more sporty sports.

But there need not be a distinction.

And a hockey puck is not a ball.

The docket's clear.

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

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your judgejohodgman tweets, hashtag jjho.

And check out the max fun subreddit, maximumfund.reddit.com to chat about this week's episode.

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

Trampolining, sport.

Hang on.

Field hockey, yes.

Swimming, rowing, offshore yacht racing.

powerboat racing, shinty, that's a sport.

Skittles, a sport, snooker, sport.

Take us out, Jesse.

Gaelic football, sport.

Grass track racing, sport.

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

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