The Magic of Leap Year

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week, clearing the docket with the clearest man in America, Judge John Hodgman.

Not just the clearest, also the docketist.

This might come out on or very near to February 29th, the magic day of leap year.

What do you do on leap year, Jesse, to celebrate an extra day of February?

What don't I do?

do?

Is it really a magic day, John?

It's a magic day because the hero of Pirates of Penzance

was born on Leap Year.

What was his name?

Kevin Klein.

No, not Kevin Klein.

He was the pirate king.

That was my role.

I'm talking about Frederick, the young hero played by Rex Smith in that movie.

And that guy was born on February 29th, and that's why he thought that he had come of age and could leave his pirate indentures

and get married and no longer be a pirate.

But then it turned out he was born on leapier, so technically he was only five instead of 21.

And that's how the pirates kept him.

And I sang a song called Paradox.

And it was the subject of one of the most embarrassing moments of my life.

Because when I met friend of maximum fun,

Lynn-Manuel Miranda one time,

I mentioned to him that I had played The Pirate King and Pirates of Penzance

in Brookline High School.

I didn't play Pirate King in the regular production in the school.

I played it when we went down to Florida to sing at an off-brand Epcot stage.

And I took over the role of Pirate King because Ben Crawford had college tours that weekend.

So we only sang a few songs from it.

And I was good at it.

I was like, for I am the Pirate King.

And I sang that bit.

And then I forgot all about it.

And then later that night,

in the closed-down dining room of the Courtyard Marriott in Times Square, where the McElroy brothers and Lin-Manuel Miranda, those four fine friends, and I, were hanging out late.

As I was leaving, Lin-Manuel Miranda started singing, a parrot, dox, a parrot, doctor,

as though I'm supposed to sing with him.

I had no idea what he was singing.

And he said, I played the Pirate King too.

I thought we were together in this.

And I was so embarrassed.

I couldn't sing along with Lin-Manuel Miranda.

And I had to explain to him.

I don't even think I could explain to him, I was like, you don't understand.

I wasn't the pirate king in the regular one.

I was the pirate king in the touring company.

I didn't sing that song.

As you can tell, it haunts me to this day.

And that's what I think of when I think of Leap Year.

Honestly, I'm like, I'm breaking out into a cold sweat right now.

It was so embarrassing.

He's a really judgmental guy, Lynn.

When I realized that I didn't know the words to the paradox song, you know what he did?

What did he do?

He spat in both of my eyes.

Batouille, batouille.

That's what you get when you cross LMM.

No, he was fine with everything.

He's a happy, happy guy.

He's a happy man.

How are you, Jesse?

I'm a happy man.

I hope you are a happy man enough today.

I'm pretty happy because I took my kids to soccer practice yesterday, which is a bit of a nightmare because my youngest kid is three.

He just turned three.

And this class is for three and up, but really this coach doesn't have any interest in.

keeping a three-year-old engaged, so I have to keep him engaged.

Uh-huh, of course.

So it's just a lot of hard work, and it was cold outside and whatever, you know?

But then my three-year-old picked up the soccer ball and looked up at the moon, which was just rising over the horizon.

And he said, I'm throwing it at the moon.

And then he threw the ball at the moon.

That reminds me of one time a young friend of my younger son, when they were both about five, asked me to push him in the swing.

And it's always awkward when it's not your child.

Do you know what I mean?

Sure.

The mom was around, but, you know, wasn't there.

I couldn't like hand it off to the mom.

She was on a call somewhere.

So I'm like, I'll push you on the swing, but,

you know, let's take it easy.

And he goes, no, I want you to push me higher.

I'm like, that's a little dangerous.

I don't want to push you very high.

He goes, I want you to push me high so I can see the face of God.

You know what kids say?

Some darned up stuff.

Okay, here's something from Nora about the correspondent sign-off hugs and kisses written with X's and O's.

She asks, which is the hug?

Which is the kiss?

I insist the hug is the O because you're wrapping your arms around someone in a circle.

The kiss is the X because a kissy sound can sound sort of like an X sound.

My husband says the X is the hug because when you hug someone, you cross your arms behind their back.

And your lips make a circle when you kiss.

The internet is split.

Our eight-year-old sides with my husband.

Our sons don't care.

Please settle this, dear judge.

I'm sorry, Nora, that your husband is incapable of Googling a thing, but I am very capable of Googling a thing, and thus I shall do it for thou.

First of all, Jesse.

Yeah, that's me.

If you had to guess without Googling, common sense guess,

would the O's be hugs or kisses?

Hugs.

And would the X's be kisses or hugs?

Kisses!

Well,

here is what I found out when I did a simple Google search.

I looked it up on the Urban Dictionary and, oh my God, I cannot read that on the air.

Never mind.

Forget you, Urban Dictionary.

You're terrible.

This is terrible stuff that teenagers come up with to make old people feel sad.

Here's a tip for parents and kids.

Don't look up things in the urban dictionary.

Don't even look up the word things because a bunch of bad kids have gone on there and said dirty things for every phrase you can think of.

It's something dirty.

But there's nothing dirty about hugs and kisses.

They're sweet.

And what I discovered doing a simple Google search that your husband could have done

was that, first of all, A, yes, obviously the circles are hugs and the X's are kisses.

And the X's come directly from medieval tradition of signing letters with an X

or putting an X on a letter as a symbol of Christian faith.

And you would literally kiss that X in order to show that what you had written was true and from the heart.

Also known as SWACK, S-W-A-K, sealed with a kiss, which was how Doughboys, not the podcasters, but the World War I soldiers would sign their letters to their sweethearts back home, sealed with a kiss.

One of the earliest notations of kisses comes from an 1894 letter from one person to his mother, according to the OED, that's the Oxford English Dictionary.

The first preferred citation is from an 1894 letter by a historic figure to his mother.

Please excuse bad writing, as I am in awful hurry.

Many kisses.

XXXWSC, WSC, of stores standing for William S.

Churchill, a man known for giving a lot of kisses.

Billy Church.

That's right.

You know what his middle name was?

Just ask, like Harry Harry S.

Truman.

So many kisses.

Williams, so many kisses, Churchill.

And then the O's came later.

No one really knows how O's became associated with hugs.

But the first citation, according to this Washington Post article I found, dates to 1960.

A letter from Mikey and Cheryl to Santa.

Dear Santa, how are you?

I am fine.

Classic opening gambit of any letter.

And then a list of things that Mikey and Cheryl wanted.

Please, love and kisses.

XO, XO, XO, Davey.

Mikey, and Cheryl.

Sorry, I left out Davey there before.

They're a little Davey erasure.

I apologize.

But yeah, that's the story's Nora's husband.

Obviously, X's are kisses and O's are hugs.

Stop coming up with a new system, especially when it's so easy to find out and interesting to find out the history of this stuff.

I made up a little way to remember a little mnemonic.

Just imagine...

a fully diagrammed football play, and you can remember that offensive players like to hug and defensive players like to smooch.

I don't get it.

X is an O's, John.

X is an O's.

Oh, tic-tac-toe.

Jesse, you don't buy brandy a lot because I would imagine it's probably a migraine trigger.

Yeah, well, I just don't drink.

Oh, right.

It's funny how I just presumed, oh, he doesn't drink because it's a migraine trigger.

It never occurred to me that it just might be your personal preference, but that's fine.

People like what they like.

I don't even like brandy that much, but I do know sometimes you get a brandy and it has the initials on it, XO.

Do you know what the XO stands for?

No.

Extra old.

Really?

Yeah.

That's awesome.

And I think that because XO is associated with sort of fine, luxury brandy, that kind of got back-channeled into a Hong Kong chili sauce.

called XO sauce, which is a very pungent.

And I think that this is purely off the dome here.

And so I'm not going to Google it.

I'll leave that to you, listeners at home who wish to send me letters about how wrong I am about this, including our dear listeners in Hong Kong.

I hope you are doing okay.

But Exosauce is a very pungent, I think, sort of Sechuan peppery sauce that just borrowed the Exo off of the brandy to give it a little bit of a fancy kick.

If you got brandy that is labeled VSOP, do you know what that stands for?

VSOP?

No.

Very special old pale.

But do you know what I call you, Jesse?

Very special old pal.

Oh,

thank you, John.

Yeah, you're VSOP in my book any day.

Here's something from Grayson.

When my friend purchases movie tickets for us, he'll deliberately tell me the incorrect start time for the movie.

The incorrect time is usually 15 to 30 minutes early, but it has been as much as 45 minutes early.

I'm not the kind of person to arrive late to movies.

I like to see movies at the Alamo Draft House, for example, a theater that won't even let you enter if you arrive late.

I ask you order my friend to give me the correct start time for all movies we see together.

Additionally, in damages, I would like to receive one movie ticket to make up for the hour of personal time off I wasted in order to arrive, quote, on time, unquote, for Avengers Endgame.

Ah, a little buzz market for the Alamo Draft House, which I don't mind.

I'm glad they exist in this world.

I'm glad for the Alamo Draft House, and I'm glad for the Nighthawk Theater here in Park Slope, which opened recently and is also a delightful place to go.

And do you know why it's so delightful?

Aside from the cleanliness and the decency of the food and the niceness of the servers and the care they take in the curation of their films and the comfort of the chairs, Jesse.

Why is that?

You get to pre-reserve your seats.

Remember all the cold sweats I had from my Lin Manuel Miranda story?

Yeah.

I feel much much better.

I like to go to the Highland Theater in Los Angeles, California.

It's

three screens.

It costs six bucks.

And no matter what movie you're seeing, there's going to be three eight-year-olds in there.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, going to the movies is the greatest.

And whether you're going to three screen, six bucks, three eight-year-olds, or you're going to pay some premium to go to sit in a fancy chair and have waiters walk back and forth in front of you while they bring everyone else tater tots or whatever, please go to the movies.

I'm so excited that there's a movie theater in my neighborhood now.

I love the Alamo, which is a little ways away.

I'm going to give you a life hack about that Alamo in a second.

And I love the Nighthawk.

And you probably have in your neighborhood as well.

Lots of major cities now, they have places where you can reserve seats ahead of time, which is like, even if I don't have tickets to the movies, I'm worried that I'm not going to get a seat.

Like, even if I don't have plans to see a movie, I'm like, will I get a seat in that movie theater?

Now I know.

And the most important thing about it is you don't have to arrive early because you know that seat is reserved for you.

So I don't know what Grayson's friend's problem is other than he has John Hodgman disease, which is perpetual worry that someone's going to be late and they're going to cancel the movie and everyone's going to yell at us.

When you go to the Highland, that's not a reserved seating type of situation, right?

Absolutely not.

John, it's so chill.

It's not a first-run house, yeah.

It is a first-run house,

which is one of the great things about it.

It's rare to have a $6 first-run house.

You know, I'm not going to see Star Wars on opening day or whatever.

No.

But I have never had the slightest concern about not getting a seat.

It is no problem.

The key is to focus on movie theaters that are just barely getting by.

There are theaters where the vibe is just naturally chill and the communities they service are naturally chill and it doesn't matter.

Or there are theaters like the Nighthawk and the Alamo that cater to people like Grayson's friends who suffer from the John Hodgman disease, who absolutely have to be on time and have their very special seat picked out for them and are willing to play, are willing to pay a premium to do so.

But either way, Grayson's friend, you don't have to live this way and you definitely don't have to police your friend.

Grayson's friend, you can relax in the knowledge that your friend will show up and that seat will be there for them if you are going to a reserved seating place.

And indeed, if that friend shows up so late that they are not allowed admittance, then you get to not only enjoy a movie, but ride the crest of an incredible swell of self-congratulation, which I bet you would enjoy.

But here's the thing I've got to say to Grayson.

Do you also not have the ability to Google a thing?

Or even bing a thing?

Duck, duck, go that thing, baby.

Is that like the proton mail of search engines?

Like, if you use it, you're a good person, but if you use the other ones, you're bad and you're being tracked or whatever.

Yeah.

Duck, duck, go.

Duck, duck, go it, Grayson.

You're in charge of the information that gets to you.

You You don't have to rely on your friend.

Look up the time when the movie starts.

It's hard to not know what time a movie starts these days.

You have to make an effort to not know what time your movie starts.

Then Grayson's friend can say, The movie starts at 7:15 in the morning, and then you look it up on DuckDuckGo, and you're like, No, it doesn't.

It starts at 7:15 p.m.

He wants me to get there 12 hours early.

I'm going to show up when it's the time to show up.

You don't have to be pushed around by Grayson.

While you were talking, I had a great business idea.

I would like to hear it.

Airport lounges for movie theaters.

So that the kind of people who show up really early for airplanes and thus need to take advantage of airport lounges can also show up really early for movie theaters.

Well, that's what you can do at the Nighthawk or the Alamo.

They have like a bar restaurant there where you can just hang out.

Alamo's in a lot of cities now, right?

There's an Alamo draft house in downtown Los Angeles.

I'm much more likely to go to the Arclight Cinema in Pasadena, California if I want to spend $20 to see a movie.

Yeah, right.

No, I understand.

Everyone loves a life hack.

This is at least true about the Alamo Draft House in downtown Brooklyn, which is the one that I go to.

The front row seats,

not only are they never taken,

but also they are not too close to the screen at all.

In fact, they're the perfect distance from the screen.

And also,

It's much easier for the servers to get at you without being disruptive as they bring you your truffle butter popcorn and your fries or whatever.

And also, they are recliners.

Those front rows are full recliners.

It's the best way to see a movie.

That's all.

I'm buzz marketing.

I'm sorry.

Have anything to buzz market about Avengers Endgame?

Robbed of best picture by far.

Should have been nominated five times.

Loved it.

Good job, Avengers Endgame.

You know, here's what I'll buzz market.

Our friend Chuck Bryant has the Movie Crush podcast, where he talks to people about their favorite movies.

Go listen to the epic trilogy of podcasts of me and Chuck Bryant talking about Avengers,

Avengers Infinity War, and then Avengers Endgame.

You can hear all of my thoughts.

I'm not a snob like Martin Scorsese.

I like things.

I get what Martin Scorsese is saying.

But these things are more than just thrill rides.

They are a weirdly unique work of art that young John Hodgman bobbing about in the ocean with Tim McGonagall talking, dreamcasting the X-Men movie circa 1982, could never have thought it would ever be possible that they would actually make a 20-year story arc across 3,500 different movies.

It was just,

are you going to give that statuette to Joker?

Come on.

Come on, culture.

Anyway, that's what I had to say about that, Jesse.

I watch Avengers.

I wasn't nuts about it.

No, it's not for everybody.

I like that Spider-Man.

Spider-Man, cartoon Spider-Man was starring Spider-Ham with John Mulaney.

Oh, you're talking about Spider-Man Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse.

Loved it.

I believe it won an Oscar Award, which is pretty big.

Yeah.

And deservedly so.

What award.

For John Mulaney's best film pig.

Oh, I'm going to watch it again.

Did I ever tell you about when I took our son to see Joker?

He really wanted to see Joker,

and

I didn't.

But what are you going to do?

So we went to go see it.

And it was at the Alamo, in fact.

And they showed the trailer for the two movies that Joker quite openly rips off, King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, right before Joker.

And I don't know what he made of King of Comedy, but after he saw the trailer for Taxi Driver, my son, who was 14, leans over to me in the theater and goes, why have you never showed me that movie?

I'm like, yeah.

I have good reasons for not showing you Taxi Driver before the age of 14.

But yeah,

that's the real thing.

Martin Scorsese knows what he's doing.

This whole movie you're about to see is just a pretend of that.

And then they asked me to be quiet in the theater.

Movies.

Got to love them.

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.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge Stron Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week.

Michael says, When leaving the grocery store with two or fewer bags, my fiancé either leaves the cart near the exit or she walks it back to the entrance.

She thinks this saves the staff time from having to walk to the parking lot in order to retrieve the cart.

I believe that as a shopper, you're expected to walk with the cart back to your car, then place the cart into the cart return vestibules provided by the store.

Returning the cart anywhere else causes unnecessary work for the staff and crowding near the entrance and exit.

I'm seeking an order from Judge John Hodgman to forbid my fiancée from guilt-tripping me when I push a 12-pack of LaCroix back to my car in a shopping cart and insist only that she guilt-trip me for my addiction to LaCroix.

I like LaCroix.

But doesn't it make you thirstier?

Haven't we figured that out?

Isn't there a chemical in there that makes you even thirstier?

It could be.

I got one of those bubble machines, but I'm perfectly glad to drink Safeway Select Seltzer.

I love seltzer so much.

We mentioned that I don't drink on the show.

One of the reasons is because my dad took me to a lot of AA meetings when I was a little kid.

Sure.

And one of the results of my dad being in recovery when I was a child was he always drank club soda.

He drank club soda all the time.

He always had a giant two-liter bottle of store-brand club soda in the refrigerator, even in the times when, you know, food was not, I was never hungry, but when food was not plentiful in our house.

And I love it.

I love it.

I love it.

I love it forever.

I also love my dad used to have, you know how the kind of fancy apple juice that comes in a glass jar instead of a plastic jar?

Oh, yeah, sure.

I'll say the name Martinelli's.

Not the apple-shaped jar, just a regular glass jar.

Oh, okay, sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He used to have one of those jars that had long lost its top, and it was always full of water, and it was always in the fridge.

And now I can never drink tepid water.

No, you need to have cold water.

I want that cold fridge water, just like it came out of that reused apple juice bottle.

that didn't have a lid.

For years, for years, this bottle with no no lid just soaking up all the flavors of the refrigerator i get that for some people seltzer club soda sparkling water whatever you want to call it

is as my children used to call it too spicy yeah

i get it and i know that people like what they like but when i have occasion to go out to dinner and the wait staff says still are sparkling water and the person with me says still i'm like Didn't you just hear that they offered sparkling?

That's adventure water.

Yeah, it's the best.

It's like it's a party in your mouth.

And carbonation is a more effective palate cleanser between courses.

So you can eat your food and then you can drink some seltzer water and it resets your mouth for the next piece of food you're going to put in there.

Too much talking about putting food in mouths.

That's gross.

But seltzer, not gross.

What about shopping carts, John?

I don't often order them at restaurants.

I'm not sure what the point is.

A basket's plenty.

Well, a basket is plenty for sure here in New York.

We don't have a lot of shopping carts in New York.

But, you know, when I'm up in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts or in the state of Maine, they have big old supermarkets, big old, whatchamacallit, or if I'm driving up to Max FunCon and I stop at the Jensens in Blue Jay, California, my favorite supermarket of all time.

That is a traditional, straight-aisle, old-fashioned supermarket, and they have shopping carts and a parking lot.

You know, it really depends on where I am in the lot.

I'll either either put it in the, what did Michael call it?

Receptacle?

Vestibule.

Cart return vestibule.

Good vocabulary for a guy who's got a bad system.

No, his system is good.

What am I talking about?

And it's fine to return them to the vestibules.

That's what they're for.

But his contempt for his fiancé walking the cart back is inexplicable to me.

His comment here, she thinks this saves the staff time.

Yeah, it does save the staff time.

It means fewer carts to bring back to the store.

I don't get what his problem is.

Can you be a devil's advocate like a Keanu Reeves son?

I can.

I can.

Okay, please.

I think this is the situation.

He's describing her not always returning it to the cart return area or the cart dispensing area at the front of the supermarket.

Oh.

But rather just returning it to the general area by the doors.

Oh, no, that's no good.

Often there's one side of the supermarket that is the entrance side, and that will have all the carts, and there's one side that's the exit side, and if she's leaving it in between the two of them or leaving it over by the exit door, I can kind of understand where he's coming from.

I would also suggest that

it's not a significant savings of time for the person who is wrangling the carts because, you know, this is the 21st century.

They've got one of those cool cart-pushing snowmobiles

with the special hook rope that ties a thousand carts together and you push them all en masse.

Are you talking about a cart Zamboni?

Yeah, exactly.

49 carts moves the same as 50 carts, generally speaking.

But I am with you broadly that I have no contempt for this woman returning the cart if she's actually returning it to the...

place where the carts are dispensed.

Yeah.

If she's going to do the job that the other person would have done and finish the job, that's the thing, Michael's fiancé, finish the job.

Don't get it part of the way there.

Don't do half the job or even four-fifths of the job.

And leave it out by the doors.

Bring it in and put it with the rest of the carts.

That's what I say.

Yeah, the real contempt is for people who leave their carts rolling around the parking lot, tenting people's cars and taking up parking spaces.

Yeah, willy-nilly, as it were.

Willy-nilly.

My hat goes off to the young man who collects the carts, and I see him every summer up there at the Trade Winds in Blue Hill, Maine, who's collecting those carts and just rocking it, just grabbing those carts out of that return vestibule and rocking it up there.

And you know what?

He's only got one arm, and he's incredible.

Keep it up, that kid.

Just to borrow a phrase from a podcast I like.

Wait, am I supposed to also be plugging my favorite grocery store, the Town and Country Market in Porterville, California?

It's a dream, and it has its own gas station.

Well, that's the classic combo that you don't see often enough, though.

This is a market.

It is gargantuan.

All straight aisles.

Every food you could possibly imagine.

It has every international food alongside every food from the Brady Bunch.

Yeah.

Yes.

It has not been updated since 1970, if that.

I can picture it.

And there it is right in the heart of California's Central Valley, the breadbasket of the United States.

So it's got lots of great fruits and vegetables.

I can picture it because it sounds like the identical twin of Jensen's, my favorite grocery store, which is in, as I say, in Blue Jay, California, on the way up to the Manx FunCon on Lake Arrowhead up there in the San Bernardino Mountains.

And it too is like, it looks exactly like a grocery store that I might have gone gone to in 1981 as a kid.

The aisles are straight and they are packed with food.

And as you pointed out, it is all of the Brady Bunch food, all the old brands and all the new brands.

And they're so perfectly, like, it really speaks to my particular mania of a place for everything and everything in this place.

And if you want to get a sense of what Jensen's is all about, go back into my Instagram feed, John Hodgman, my personal feed, not Judge John Hodgman, the show feed, which you should also subscribe to, but John Hodgman, the personal feed of me, John Hodgman.

Any June, going back 10 years,

you will find dozens of pictures as I stop there to go up to, before going up to Max FunCon, you will find dozens of pictures of cans of beans from me, taking pictures of just stuff in the supermarket that I love.

And one time I got stopped by a woman in there because I was just taking all these pictures in the Jensen's of these weird off-brand cans of lard and stuff, just amazing product packaging I'd never seen and I love.

And she said, what are you doing?

And I said, I'm just taking a picture of a grocery store that I love, ma'am.

Why?

And she said, my husband owns this store.

And I said, thank you for your service.

She said, I wish you wouldn't take pictures here.

We're going to be updating the look of the store soon.

It's very dated.

I figuratively got on my knees and begged her not to change a thing about the store.

And so far they haven't.

Jensen's.

What's the name of your place?

Town and Country?

Town and Country, Porterville, California.

Here's something from Meg.

She asks, when is the appropriate time to throw out a birthday cake?

I threw out my spouse's birthday cake two days after his birthday and got in hot water.

I made a second birthday cake and he waited until mold grew on the cake to throw it away.

Please tell him he's wrong.

Did she throw the birthday cake into hot water?

Did she just fill up the sink with hot water and toss it in there?

Fun.

I'm kind of the wrong person to ask because I don't care for cake.

Like, I feel like the time to throw away birthday cake is before it gets to the table.

Yeah, replace it with a birthday pie.

Birthday pie.

John, I can't eat chocolate because that is a migraine trigger.

And because my dad

is a recovering chocoholic.

I can't eat chocolate because it's a migraine trigger.

And so

cake is just an absolute wasteland to me.

I don't know if people know this, but red velvet cake is just chocolate cake that's colored red.

I did not know that.

Yeah.

And so I'm really left with like yellow cake and, you know, white cake.

The most beautiful, elegantly made cake in the world to me is a six

out of 10.

Oh.

You know what I mean?

I got to be honest.

The next category of cake is like box cake, grocery store cake.

That's a five.

I mean, I'm not, the cake isn't horrible.

It's what it is, what it is.

And people love it.

Why would you love it?

That's the thing.

If I could eat a chocolate cake with chocolate icing on it, you know, that tastes like something.

Chocolate icing to me is much more palatable than vanilla icing, which I'm just like, why am I not eating ice cream right now?

Right.

And, you know, you put ice cream on it, that helps.

But I'm married to a beautiful cake hoarder.

Yeah, people love cake.

There are people who love it.

My My wife will take home cake from any birthday party where cake is being offered.

You know how there's always way too much cake and then at the end of the birthday party, like, who wants to take home some cake?

My wife will take it home.

My wife will keep our children's birthday cakes for weeks on end.

But you know what?

She eats them.

She just knocks them back a little bit at a time.

She just puts in her work and gets it taken care of.

It's the only leftover she eats, as far as I know.

Well, Teresa Thorne knows how to live.

She does.

She's a wonderful woman.

She knows what she likes.

She likes what she likes, and she takes care of it.

Unlike Meg's spouse,

who is a cake hoarder but doesn't eat it, just lets it mold.

A refrigerator is a desiccant.

So unless your cake is sealed,

it is going to dry out pretty quickly.

And that is the quality of a bad cake.

Jesse, let's do a thought experiment.

What kind of pie would you like for your birthday?

I'd like a cherry pie.

Do we have ice cream?

Of course.

We are a la mode.

Okay, then yes, I'd like a cherry pie.

Otherwise, I was thinking about maybe like a cream pie of some kind, like a banana cream pie or something.

But if there is ice cream, I'm going to go with

a cherry pie.

A banana cream pie.

Banana cream pies are really good.

When you can't eat chocolate, you really start to appreciate banana and caramel.

Let's say for the sake of argument, for the pleasure of my mind image,

that I have gotten you a banana cream pie.

I have sent you a banana cream pie.

Which is the most popular internet banana cream pie company?

Is it Casper or Lisa?

I'm trying to remember what show I've seen the pies on, but I think it's Acme Corporation.

Sure.

Look, it's simple.

You sign up, you just give them your email address, you sign up for a banana cream pie subscription.

With order code JudgeJohn, you get 15% off of your first 25 banana cream pies.

25 banana cream pies sent to your door in our eco-friendly packaging once a month, every month.

You cannot ever cancel your subscription.

It's just that simple.

Okay, so I send you a banana cream pie for your birthday.

And you have yourself a big old slice or two on your birthday.

And then two days later,

Teresa Thorne goes, this isn't cake.

This is disgusting pie and throws it away.

Two days after your birthday.

Birthday plus two.

Are you mad?

Sad?

Neutral?

Fine?

Secretly pleased?

What?

I would be pretty sad.

That said,

desiccation is not a concern with a cream pie.

No, you could wrap up a cake properly.

I guess I'm saying the birthday person.

really gets to say when that cake gets tossed.

Who has ever wrapped up a cake properly?

There's certain kinds of ways to do it.

People just put it in the refrigerator in that big pink paper box.

That doesn't seal, John.

Yeah, but I mean, I would say that somewhere between two days and mold is the appropriate time for keeping a birthday cake.

And that, generally speaking, the birthday person gets to decide between two days and mold.

Yeah, it seems like more than like five days, you're no longer storing a cake.

You're starting to store a husk.

Yeah, that's pretty true about anything.

I mean, with the exception of some obvious preserves.

Five days of fresh food, it's probably like time to eat it or forget it.

One more thing about pies that makes them better than

cakes that I thought about when you pointed out that Teresa is a cake hoarder.

Where can you hoard that cake?

Where do you hoard it, Jesse?

Refridge?

Yeah.

Is there a special kind of cupboard for the hoarding of cakes?

No.

Is there something known as a pie safe?

Yes.

A pie safe, if you don't know,

is a cupboard,

a very traditional old-timey kitchen cupboard that has pressed tin, that has holes punctured in it, often in a decorative way.

And that's where you put your fresh-baked pies in to cool

without

people or critters getting into them.

And it's called a pie safe.

One of the great names for a piece of furniture ever.

Another thing that I learned using the internet.

You guys get to know this internet.

If you have a question about how, whether the X's or kisses or O's or hugs or whatever, look it up.

It's fun to learn things.

Pie Safe.

Banana cream pies for Jesse's birthday.

And for my birthday,

how about you just get me a classic mold cake, which is to say, a wheel of stilton cheese?

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll hear a case about cozy attire and a listener letter with a condiment-based cake recipe.

Oh, right.

Back to cake.

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

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 Lawrence.

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.

This week, we're clearing the docket and we have something from Ben.

My wife and I each own a lippy silk bag.

What?

I'm looking looking at a picture of this item.

It appears to be a wearable sleeping bag with arms and legs and a hood.

Ugh.

Okay, yep.

And so here's an endorable picture of them, Ben and his wife.

I'll put this on the show page at maximumfund.org and on our Instagram as well.

Judge Sean Hodgman on Instagram.

Go on.

Sometimes in the fall, we like to build a fire in our backyard fire pit and invite friends over to hang out.

When it's chilly, our silk bags are perfect fire attire.

However, my wife refuses to wear her silk bag if people are coming over.

She thinks it's rude to wear something so obviously cozy when we're not providing equal coziness for our guests.

This seems unnecessarily conscientious to me.

People who are coming over know how to look up what temperature it's going to be and plan their dress accordingly.

Why shouldn't we wear our silk bags if we have them?

Am I a monster thinking this way?

Well, you do literally look like a monster in this silk bag.

Yeah, you look like a stand-up Muppet, dude.

You look like a sweet-ems almost, a pink sweet'ems.

You're one rubber mask away from being a Japanese kaiju.

First of all, along with Banana Cream Pie, which is the internet's most famous online banana cream pie company, our presenting sponsor, apparently, are these

silk bags, these grown-up footy pajamas.

They're high quality and they make you look like

a kaiju.

I think the situation here is,

Ben,

your wife

is pretending

that it is inconsiderate to wear your amazing, cool, cozy silk bags

and that it will somehow make her guests feel bad that they don't get to have their own cozy, cool silk bags, which are basically the REI version of snuggies.

But in fact, maybe your wife is a little embarrassed by your grown-up pajamas.

Right, Jesse?

That's my instinct here.

I mean, the two of you sitting out by the fire together in your matching, hilarious, wearable sleeping bags, that's adorable.

But maybe when friends are over, she doesn't want, she doesn't want to be seen in this obviously almost silly looking

fashion of pure surrender to comfort.

Maybe she wants to wear some nicer outdoorsy clothes when guests are around.

I think that, well,

my overall top position on this

is that it's inappropriate to wear these in public.

And that's why I would be embarrassed.

I think I sympathize with the wife's position.

It does feel like you are inviting someone to your home

to participate in a homey activity that's about

coziness.

This is how we do it, but we are not inviting you to participate in it the way that we do it.

I agree.

It may not merely be that she's sparing his feelings and not letting him know that they kind of look like doofuses in these things.

That it might actually be good host/slash hostessing to not flaunt your giant 1981-style like child snowsuit made in adult sizes.

But if that were the case, why wouldn't you just get a few for guests?

You know what I mean?

Like, just go over to selkbagusa.com, enter in the code word judgejohn, and right there for 20 to 40% off in their sales section, you have a wide variety of different colors of giant full-body down-stuffed diapers for your guests that you can wrap your friends up in in front of the fire.

Get some guest silk bags if you're going to take over my podcast and make me advertise for them for no money.

And that, I guess, would be the test, right?

If Ben says to his wife,

why don't we invest in six more of these

or maybe even just four more of these for our friends?

And then her face will tell the tale as to whether or not this is simply a matter of wanting to be a gracious host or a matter of let's keep our private thing private.

I'm with you.

They do look cozy.

If it's a group activity, it seems fun to me.

We're all going to embarrass ourselves together.

Yeah.

Was it the snuggie, which was the big

popular on the internet, the wearable blankie?

Yeah.

That was called a snuggie.

In case you haven't checked out the picture of Ben and his wife yet, they look like outdoorsy snuggies.

It's fun.

They're pretty cute in this picture.

Look, this this couple is adorable.

And I want them to enjoy, I want them to enjoy themselves however they want.

But yeah, go ahead and say to your wife, Ben, let's get four more of these.

Her eyes will tell the tale.

They will either shine in delight or widen in horror.

That will be the sound of your gabble.

We received a letter from a listener named Sam in response to the episode Tried Green Tomatoes.

Not the Sam from the dispute, by the way.

Listeners of that episode will remember the obscure cultural reference was a recipe for tomato soup cake.

Tomato soup cake.

Yeah.

Sam has a related cake recipe to share.

This is what he says.

It says, hailing from the province of Nova Scotia, it's in Canada, I have a piece of obscure culinary Canadiana for your pleasure.

Allow me to present to you the great Canadian ketchup cake.

Whoa.

It is widely advertised on Heinz ketchup bottles.

My curiosity got the best of me, and I prepared it for myself and my loved ones.

Admittedly, there was a peculiar ketchup taste.

Really?

Yeah.

Was there?

But overall, it was moist and cake-like

with a kind of generic cake flavor.

I have provided a link to the recipe for your perusal.

We will share that link at our website, maximumfund.org.

I'm looking at it right now, and I will say that this is no tomato soup cake because tomato soup cake,

which the recipe I read into the record was from MFK Fisher and is an American cake dating back to the 2030s or 40s or so.

That's a savory cake.

That is much more in the realm of like a fruit cake or a gingerbread.

a dense savory cake.

And I know that because our colleague at Maximum Fun, KT, made it and brought it to the Maximum Fun holiday party.

And I very gamely enjoyed a slice of it.

It was an odd flavor, to be sure, but it was not sweet.

Whereas this picture of great Canadian Heinz ketchup cake

with buttercream frosting is clearly passing itself off as capital C

classic cake.

It looks like red velvet cake.

But instead, it's red ketchup cake.

And this does not look like it would be for me.

And the recipe is provided by Heinz.

Look, Heinz, when it comes to ketchup, you're the only brand in town.

Sorry, Hunts.

No good.

Heinz is the best.

But the

quote on the website says, ketchup in a cake?

Question mark?

Created to celebrate Heinz's 100th anniversary in Canada.

This show-stopping cake tastes as good as it looks.

Show-stopping.

I think that means that that as soon as someone baked this for the first time, the great British bake-off had to cancel itself.

I think it might mean that now that we've talked about it for five minutes, we have to stop this show.

That's right.

Oh, are we come to the end?

Yeah, the docket's clear.

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

Hang on a second, though.

It's not the end because I've got something for you.

Yeah, what's that?

When you had left our pirate fold, we tried to raise our spirits faint, according to our custom old with quip and quibble quaint, but all in vain the quips we heard.

We lay and sobbed upon the rocks, until to somebody occurred a startling paradox.

A paradox?

A paradox, a most ingenious paradox.

With quips and quibbles, turned and flocks, but none to be this paradox.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

See, Lynn, I learned it.

I learned it for you.

I like that I couldn't identify whether Gilbert and Sullivan had written that, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, or whether that's just how you gloat naturally.

That's how I gloat naturally.

We knew your taste for curious quips for cranks and contradictions queer.

And with the laughter on our lips, we wish you there to hear.

We said if we could tell it, him, how Frederick would the joke enjoy.

And so we've risked both life and limb to tell it to our boy.

A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox.

With quicks of cool, drunk, the fuck don't you?

Finally, full circle.

I love Pirates of Penzance.

Love it.

This week's episode was edited by Jesus Ambrosio.

Our producer is Jennifer Marmer, the very model of a a modern major general.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to hashtag your judgejohnhodgman tweets, hashtag jjho, and check out the maximum fund subreddit to discuss this episode.

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

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

I am a little boy of five.

I want to see the face of God.

For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I've no desire to be disloyal, some person in authority, I don't know who, very likely the astronomer royal, has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days, as a rule are plenty,

one year in every four, his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.

Through some singular coincidence, I shouldn't be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy.

You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap year on the twenty-ninth of February.

And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover that though you've lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you're only five and a little bit over.

MaximumFun.org, comedy and culture.

Artist owned, audience supported.