You've Got Bail!

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, you've got bail.

Lily files suit against her husband, Thaddeus.

Thaddeus has had the same email address, apemanson at website.com, for 18 years.

He uses it for everything, including as his contact information for their children's schools.

Lily finds Thaddeus' email address embarrassing and offensive.

She'd like him to change it.

Thaddeus would like to keep using his email address.

Who's right, who's wrong?

Only one can decide.

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

The atmosphere is great, of course, but this time I struggled a bit with the sheer ludicrousness of the scenario, since this is simultaneously Hodgman's most straight-faced and most preposterous podcast.

The image of the Dark Lord's plasticky paw emerging from the mirror in the finale is daring but pathetic.

An attempt to reconcile Christian mythology with materialist science, even in a fictional context, must inevitably fail.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear the litigants in.

Lily and Thaddeus, please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God, or whatever.

I do.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that his own email address is hodgman696969 at website.com?

I do.

I do.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

Lily and Thaddeus, you may be seated for an immediate summary judgment in one of yours honors.

Can either of you guess the piece of culture that I almost quoted verbatim, I added in my name and podcast to make it a little bit deceptive.

Can you guess where it came from?

Lily, you seek justice before this court.

What's your guess?

I thought we were going to let Thad guess first.

You know what?

You're right.

It's fine.

We're going to do a pass to Thad.

Classic pass to Thad.

Roll for initiative.

And Lil, you got a few extra moments to consider.

Thad, you've been passed to.

Is it a passage from

L.E.

Snellgrove's book, The Swarm, on

beekeeping?

A passage from L.E.

Snellgrove's book, The Swarm, on beekeeping?

Very common guess on the podcast.

Is that something you made up, Thaddeus?

No, it's not.

It's a real thing.

All right, cool.

Are you a beekeeper?

I am not.

Okay, great.

Well, that was good.

We passed enough time there.

Lily, I tried to buy you some extra time with the beekeeper question.

What is your answer?

All right.

Well, it just sounds to me like someone writing an email complaining about Lord of the Rings.

Well, I'll put that in the guess book.

That's about as close as anyone could humanly guess.

Because while all guesses are wrong, it is essentially a person writing an email complaining about the Lord of the Rings.

Insofar is as it is a movie review written on a little-known movie-oriented social media website where people can trade lists of movies that they watched and review movies.

This is a review of John Carpenter's 1987 horror movie Prince of Darkness.

And it was reviewed on this site letterboxed.

I don't know if this is still an active social media network.

I chose this review because I thought it was funny, and because of the member of this social media website, goes by the name F Ape Man Son, F Ape Manson, which is the email address in question.

This is Thaddeus.

Your email address, the one that Lily takes issue with, without naming the domain, will you confirm that it is apeman son at xyzyz.com or org or edu?

Yes.

And do you pronounce it ape manson or ape manson?

Ape manson.

Ape manson.

I was trying to find you out there in the Googleverse, trying to see if I could track you down with just ape manson.

But this is not you, right?

Because this person is in the UK, and you are not.

Right.

So there is another Ape Manson out there.

So I'm not outing you by saying that your email address is Ape Manson.

We will not reveal the domain, obviously, because we want to protect your privacy.

All right, so Ape Manson, aka Thaddeus, aka Thad.

Do you go by Thadde or do you prefer Thaddeus?

Either or.

You've got one of the great first names, very distinctive,

and yet you chose

a different name.

John, I'd hate to disagree with you right at the top of the show, but Thaddeus is the poor man's Phineas.

Do you have a brother named Phineas?

I have a brother, Francis.

Wow.

Thaddeus is an unusual name.

Where did you grow up?

In Massachusetts, on the South Shore.

Oh, all right, cool.

And you go by Thad?

Yes.

All right.

And you still live in Massachusetts, both of you, Thad and Lily.

Correct.

Yep.

Fantastic.

Well, why does the email apemanson at blah, blah, blah.com bother you?

Well, so it started last month when I was filling out, you know, we have to do contact information cards for the school and for the room parents, and we now have two kids in elementary school.

So I was writing everything down twice this year.

I cringe every year writing down apemanson at website.com.

The word ape, I just think is silly.

He's not an ape, he's a human.

Manson, I think at the time it was actually a reference to Marilyn Manson, which I think needs to just stay behind in the 1990s.

Is that the origin of the email, Thad?

That's about right.

My brother made it for me, and that probably is an accurate thing that the end part is from Marilyn Manson, probably.

Thaddeus, do you stipulate that you are man, not beast?

This is true, yes.

Okay.

Just wanted to confirm.

The ape part is from my brother's nickname for for me because I had pretty hairy arms, so they would always call me the ape, and then it turned into the ape man.

And then after I got out of college and I needed a new email, he created that email for me, and I've had it ever since.

Do you like the email address, Ape Manson?

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, pretty whimsical, I feel.

I've had it for 18 years.

And as like Lily said, when she's signing up for all these things to deal with with school and sports, and I'm looking through at like the block of addresses that are there, it's usually, you know, the person's name, they're pretty blase,

and then there's mine there.

And I kind of wear it with like a badge of honor, I guess, you know, that it's not just that is

blah, blah, blah, you know, and there's Ape Manson.

Thank you for revealing your last name.

Oh.

We're getting even closer to finding the true identity of Ape Manson.

But it is very silly.

Is that what bothers you about it, Lily?

Yes, it's silly.

And I guess I'm just stuck on the word ape.

I just feel like it's not appropriate.

It's not that I want him to even just get rid of the email address.

I just want him to create a more bland one for use with school and sports like coaches and and things.

Lily, are you more bothered by the ape portion, which refers to a majestic group of animals?

Or the Manson portion, which refers to a musician who named himself after a serial killer?

Oh my God.

Well, I mean, they're both bad.

I just, I don't know.

I just feel like the days of comparing people to monkeys should be over.

I mean, we're both white, so I don't know if we want to bring a racial discussion into it, but I just, that makes me uncomfortable.

And also the reference of a serial killer and the goth singer.

All three.

I'm glad you brought up the issue because it did flag for me a little bit.

In this day and age, ape man could have a connotation that is offensive in a racial way.

And I don't think anyone intended it that way, but.

No, no, no, no, of course not.

Of course not.

I grew up in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which is the only Commonwealth in the area of the Northeast known as New England.

And I remember as a youth going to the Primal Plunge zine store in the Alston Mall in Alston, Massachusetts, to peruse the zines, the counterculture zines, because I was an extremely pretentious 17-year-old.

And there were a lot of zines that were dedicated to a kind of ironic appreciation of Charles Manson, which even then I found to be distasteful because he caused a lot of harm.

That is not Thaddeus.

Thaddeus, you are neither a racist nor a serial killer, are you, sir?

Not at all, no.

What do you do for a living?

I work for the government.

I'm a mailman.

It's funny.

The more specific you got, the more threatening it seemed.

I always deliver.

Yes, I'm a letter carrier.

You're a letter carrier.

Fantastic.

And Lily, what do you do all day long?

I work for an investment advisor.

I'm a back office person, so I do reporting and customer service.

And you have two sons.

Is that correct?

Did I hear that?

Right.

What are their ages?

They are 10 and 6.

And how long have you been married?

11 years this December.

So ApeManson at blahblah.com predates your marriage by, what, seven years, right?

It does.

In fact, when we were dating, he didn't have texting technology, so he would email me a lot.

Gave me pause even then, but

I like the guy.

You saw beyond it.

Yep.

When you had Ape Manson bestowed upon you, Thaddeus, who were you then?

What was your life like as a, I guess, 26-year-old?

I was just out of college about, you know, I'd been out of college for a couple few years,

and

I was just kind of bouncing around aimlessly pretty much.

You know, I was

skateboarding a lot and going to the movies and working part-time at the post office at the time.

And, you know, I had a little painting business.

So I was pretty carefree.

Do you still like that guy?

Are you still that guy?

Or have you settled down?

I'd say 85% that guy.

Right.

Man, will you be my mailman?

I have like, you know, I'm like a 16-year-old with the crushing weight of the earth on my shoulders.

You know, I'm still pretty much the same guy that I was back then, but I have grown-up responsibilities now, along with all of that.

Lily, do you agree that he's a 16-year-old at heart who's managing adult responsibilities?

Yes, I believe I referred to him with Jennifer and Hannah as a Peter Pan-style husband.

How does he manage his adult responsibilities?

He does pretty well.

Sometimes there's a little bit of remote managing because his hours are more conducive to him

getting the kids from school and all that.

So sometimes I feel like a dispatcher in the afternoon, like reminding him where he needs to be and

of the things that have to get accomplished in the afternoon before I get home.

But

he does it all willingly, even if he doesn't remember.

What are your concerns that people will have when they see apemanson at blah blah.com on,

say, a school contact sheet or something like that?

Aaron Powell, so I'm an administrator for our youth sports league, and you know, when someone has an odd email address, it doesn't necessarily make me judge that person or treat their child differently, but it gives you that moment of pause, like, oh, you never updated your email address since 1996 or whatever.

And I'm just imagining, you know, it's kind of like that death by a thousand paper cuts, like are people just pausing in a minute microjudgment when they're like reviewing

his email address.

Like it's, I mean, you're right, it's not a world-ending.

I mean, it's not like his, it's not like his name is Huba Stank 1998.

Judge Hodgman, have you ever had the experience, if I might sidebar very briefly,

where

you are going to email a person of renown, say a film or television personality

or something similar?

Have you had the experience that universally a famous person's email address is either their name at populardomain.com

or something completely incomprehensible that they picked on AOL in 1995?

Right.

Like, I think 20% of celebrities have kept their AOL email address from 1995.

Everyone else's is just their name at popularwebmailservice.com.

That was part of the aesthetic of adopting internet into your life in the 90s was coming up with a wicked cool handle.

What was your first email address, Jesse?

Mine was jjthorne at serious.com, but

that was because...

Like many people at the time, I shared my email address with my mother.

Yes.

Our ISP only gave us one email address.

Wow.

Did she or you learn information that the other didn't want them to know about?

I don't think that ever happened.

I think we were both very discreet.

Very good.

I was J.K.

Hodge

at AOL.com, which I think is right down the middle between sort of nickname-y, but still identifiably me.

I wonder if that still works.

Someone email J.K.

Hodge, jkhodge at aol.com and let me know by writing me at hodgman at maximumfund.org.

I think my first email email address of my own was mrt at serious.com.

Okay, there we go.

Which, you know, is embarrassing, but frankly, my last name is still Thorne, and I'm still a big fan of Mr.

T, so

it works.

You deserve the title of Mr.

You're a true Mr.

I am.

Lily, do you have any email addresses in your past that you're a little embarrassed by that you moved on from?

My first email address was lilykins at AOL.com, but I don't, that's not that bad.

No, it's not that bad, but it's a little cutesy.

It's what my grandpa called me.

Oh, that's lovely.

Mine was lightfunky2s at AOL.com.

I was a big LFO fan.

Riffing off of Lily, mine was Beloved Grandson.

That's what my grandfather called me.

Yeah.

It was cutesy, but there was a time, right, Lily, where you're like, time to put childish things away.

That's correct.

I actually, so I manage four email addresses now, and I do it fine all from my phone.

So I just fail to see why it would be so difficult for Thaddeus to just make another one.

That's crazy.

No one needs four emails.

You mean to say you manage four emails of your own

purposes?

For different purposes.

Lily is the first president with her own BlackBerry.

You have your professional, you have your personal, you have your secret family, and Lillikins at AOL.com, just keeping it around.

That's right.

Well, I have youth sports because I'm on the board.

And I have one in my married name, one in my maiden name, and

my work.

Why would it be difficult for you to create a second email address, Thad?

I just don't see the need to have more than one.

Is it hard for you to figure out how to do it on your Motorola Star Tack?

Well, that's exactly right.

I would not know how to create one.

And then I have one that works perfectly fine.

It's worked for eight.

I just had my 18-year anniversary with this thing about a month ago.

I got an email, and you know, I feel like it goes along with this culture that we're in of this dispose of everything you can get tossed away at the drop of a hat.

You know what I mean?

I had an old TV and it broke down.

I took it to the TV repairman and he fixed it and it works great.

Nowadays, somebody's TV breaks, they throw it away.

And, you know, this email has served me well for 18 years, and

I don't feel the need to have a second.

We're not talking about throwing away an email address like it's a TV.

We're talking about creating another email address that could be used in more professional circumstances.

Judge Hodgman, would you ask Henry David Thoreau to throw away Walden Pond or add a second pond that redirects to Walden Pond?

Interesting metaphor.

It's going to take me a little while to unpack.

Thaddeus is a man of principle.

He truly is.

Is there other examples of Thaddeus' use of technology that are distinctive, Lily?

He has annoying ringtones, and he doesn't silence his phone when he's using the Bluetooth speaker.

So I'll be like washing dishes, and then I'll hear like the Wilhelm scream over the speaker in my house or a Tarzan call.

What kind of phone do you use?

You can name the brand.

iPhone.

You're up to date.

Yeah.

You say it with a certain amount of withering contempt.

Well, yeah, I don't like green text messages, and a bunch of my friends have Androids.

You intro yourself as a Luddite on this podcast, and then you're railing over green text messages.

That's some pretty advanced tech snobbery.

I'm with you, though.

I hate those green text messages.

Come on, everybody.

Get with it.

Seriously.

Lily, you could set up a new email address for him, right?

I could do it.

I do a lot of things for him.

Like

put all the sports and school apps on his phone, you know, made him his own logins and make sure he gets all the scheduled stuff.

You know, so I do a lot of that.

I'm happy to walk him through the process if he needs help.

But maybe he'll be empowered and come up with tons of email addresses he likes.

Let's take a quick recess.

We'll be back in just a moment 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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Court is back in session.

Let's return to the courtroom for more justice.

When you say sports apps, do you mean like MLB.tv so you can watch streaming ball games?

Do you mean like sports training apps?

Or do your children's elementary school sports teams have apps?

Children's elementary school sports teams have apps so that coaches can communicate with everybody.

Schedule is always on the app.

One of our sons plays soccer in two different leagues, so there's two apps.

There's one for town and one for his club.

Judge Hodgman, I hope you'll forgive me, but when I was a kid and my sports teams had apps, that meant mozzarella sticks.

Yeah.

And let me tell you, it's ponderous.

Like she said, there's two for one.

I think I have three different ones on there.

And not only do you get alerts from the apps, then you get emails.

So you're getting hit, you know, twice with these things.

And, you know, she'll put things on there, like she had a banking app on there, and I never

used them.

But I have been using this soccer app, but it is like, you know, you get inundated, and it's like, really, guys?

Why use a banking app when you have a perfectly good cardboard box under your bed?

My go-to is always like, Lil, how much money is in the account?

Or what time is this and that?

And she, I'm his app.

She gets really aggravated with that stuff.

Yeah, reasonably so.

Would you like Thaddeus to be more technologically self-sufficient than he is, Lily?

Yes.

Lily, do you think this reflects technological ineptitude or do you think it reflects a lack of emotional and relationship skills?

I think it's mostly the technology angle.

You know, he's a mailman.

He doesn't need, you know, I'm on a computer all day, so it's easy for me to check things and he doesn't remember passwords, stuff like that.

But no as far as relationship goes he's got plenty of skills it's just the technology he is a younger gen xer like it's not like he's in the greatest generation he's like they didn't teach us that in the marines at guadalcanal

this poor guy he majored in photography the year he graduated the digital camera blew up he's on that cusp of analog slash digital in many areas you were robbed of your artwork yeah true

your medium was stolen from you.

I still press on with the film, though.

She was like, what are you doing with this film?

And, you know, once she saw the results, she got on board and was like, yeah, this is definitely better.

Thaddeus, do you have your own darkroom?

I do not.

Do you go use a darkroom or somewhere?

Like, do you rent one at the community college or something?

I just shoot 35mm right now.

You know, had the downsides.

When I was in college, I had access to the dark room and was shooting large format.

But now, you know, and I had a little snobbery towards the 35 millimeter when I was in school but I embrace it now and I love it you know that's what I started off on and you know it's full circle and I take pictures of the kids and this and that because that was like a big thing for me I'm like all these photos are on the phone like we need to have actual pictures and that we can hold and look at you know and you know sure

Two out of the 35 are good, but those two are awesome.

You know what I mean?

Right.

I wonder, given that you made the transition to 35 millimeter from what I can only presume was like giant silver nitrite plates and like a towel that goes over your head and a big plunger and a thing that goes poof and a puff of smoke comes out that all sits on a giant tripod made of wood.

I wonder if you can't manage maybe, possibly, to figure out how to use the banking app on your phone.

I've deleted it.

So when you're shooting 35 million, do you send the film away to be printed?

Yeah, I go to a lab.

But would you like to be doing more darkroom printing?

Yeah, I don't know.

I have different thoughts on that now.

You know, I don't want to really be bathing in all those chemicals.

What's it like being a letter carrier?

What time do you get up?

What's your workday like?

What do you love about it?

What do you hate about it?

What do you tolerate about it?

I get up at 5.30.

I make my boys' lunch and my lunch and breakfast.

And I report to the office for seven o'clock.

I get my mail ready and I usually hit the road about 10 o'clock and then I go deliver mail and listen to podcasts for three hours and I'm usually done

1.30 for the day.

I'm a rural carrier, not a city carrier, so we have a whole different set of rules that we go with.

What's the difference?

Our pay scale is an evaluation versus hourly.

So if I work for six hours, I'll still get paid for nine or, you know, I could work for 12 and get paid for nine, but I very rarely go over that evaluation.

And then I come home and get the kids off the bus and do homework and make dinner, all that good stuff.

It sounds like a great day-to-day life.

Do you find it fulfilling?

I do, you know, I've been doing the mail for

almost 25 years.

And I've got a great relationship with a bunch of my customers.

I answer my Santa Claus letters personally.

You open the Santa Claus letters yourself on the side of the road?

I take them home and then I write them out.

I've developed a font for Santa and then I sign the signature with Elmer's glue and glitter.

And you know, I sometimes do a wax seal for Santa Claus and I put a candy can on it.

They're personalized to the household because I'd, you know, been delivering the same route for so long.

I know, you know, what goes on.

And

when you control the mail, you control information.

You know, I know stuff about the people.

That was a Steinfeld quote.

Yeah, Steinfeld.

No, I know.

Is Newman a hero among letter characters?

For a Cliff Claven.

Oh, yeah, sure.

There you go.

What do you remember about the time when you were truly Ape Manson, when you were 26 years old?

Is that a time that was special to you?

You know, I was in the throes of my bachelorism.

I lived at home until I was 28.

I didn't really, you know, I wasn't really too motivated for anything else.

I didn't realize, you know, I'm like, oh,

maybe, maybe I should, you know, move out or whatever.

But, you know, back then, like, seriously, all I was doing was skateboarding all the time and

just hanging out with friends.

And that was it.

Sounds amazing.

And working on your glue stick and glitter skills.

That didn't come until a couple of years later.

Did you have an ambition beyond that?

And I'm not saying that you should have.

You know, I kind of just fell into the post office thing.

Well, I didn't fall into it.

You know, it's kind of like a family.

My Nana did it.

My dad, my aunt, my mother, cousin, sister, so, you know, big postal family.

I really want to meet your Nana, the letter carrier.

Oh, she's going to be 90 coming up.

Oh, my goodness.

She's still out there slinging mail?

No, she retired about 18 years ago.

18 years ago?

What?

Still pretty solid run.

About the time that you became a man since she retired?

Yes, yes.

What's math?

What's 90 minus 18?

72.

Wow.

Is it common among letter carriers that it be sort of a family tradition?

It's kind of like a nepotism thing, you know, one person gets in there and then they're like, oh, I'll get you in, you know?

And that's kind of pretty much what happened with my father because he was like, what am I going to do with this kid?

All he's doing is skateboarding and reading comic books and, you know, flying around doing this and that.

And so he, you know, he's like, I get your job at the post office.

And I'm like, what are you talking about?

So I did that for many years, just part-time.

And then I almost quit several times because I got various other jobs and I just held on to it for like pocket change.

And here we are.

I like the idea that in his 20s, Thaddeus was just reading comic books and skateboarding.

And sometimes the teacher would make him write sentences on the board.

And sometimes he would say, I'm Bart Simpson.

Who the hell are you?

Lily, how did you meet Thad?

And you just saw this freewheeling, skateboarding, letter-carrying dude.

And like, he's for me.

He'll definitely be a reliable husband and parent to two boys.

Thad and I had mutual friends.

We were both living in the city of New Bedford at the time.

We met at a friend of mine's birthday party.

This friend actually said, you should talk to Thad tonight.

Like, you know, she was kind of trying to get me to like flirt with him.

And I did.

I talked to him and he's fun.

And then we realized, you know, weeks later that we actually lived like around the corner from each other.

When you said, well, so what do you want to do?

He's like, I don't know.

I think I'll just want to be a letter carrier like my nana.

That's not always what a potential spouse wants to hear.

No.

Although that's a lot better than, in my case, explaining to my mother and father-in-law that I aspire to be a professional podcaster.

You know, I didn't think about it.

I just loved him, loved spending time with him.

We didn't really plan to have kids, and then we did, and he's so lovable.

I have a high charisma.

If you're just a skateboarder with a part-time letter-carrying job

and you're going to get a woman to marry you, you got to have high charisma.

And you do.

Not as high as my mother's beloved mail carrier, Ping.

My mom and Ping have a platonic romance that's been going for almost 20 years now.

I think they would move in with each other if they had the opportunity.

That is so sweet.

Fantastic.

Well, you do play a role in your customers' everyday lives, don't you, Thad?

Yes.

That's a deep relationship if you see your mail carrier every day and you talk to them.

What comic books were you reading when you were 28 years old and living at home?

My dream.

Oh,

back then, it was probably just Amazing Spider-Man and,

you know, the usuals, X-Men.

What did you think of the clone saga?

I think I was out by then.

Phew.

Good.

Yeah.

Then you're still on my list, Thad.

Good.

We We still own every comic book he ever read.

Oh, really?

Thad holds on to childish things?

Hmm, interesting.

Any other holdovers?

Skateboards.

Skateboards, yeah.

He's still got that slingshot he used to keep in his back pocket.

Do you feel, Lily, that Thad has trouble moving on from that period of his life?

I think he's just trying to bring it with him.

He's not, like, rejecting any of his new responsibilities other than, you know, my wish for him to change the email address, but he really has a hard time letting go of possessions from that era, like the comic books.

And we have several tubs full of skateboards that he just buys and never intends to skate on.

We have walls in our house that are covered with skateboards.

I didn't know that you stored skateboards in tubs.

They're art pieces.

She's embraced it.

Well.

Have I?

Yeah, you picked out 10 and we put them up in the living room, you know?

10 out of how many, Bed.

How many?

Dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens.

Do you have one of the Max Fun themed decks available at maxfunstore.com?

We're not aware of those, but.

Oh, good.

Well, thank goodness I just plugged them.

We'll send you 25 of them.

Thank you.

Only 25?

And round out another tub.

I'll be good.

Is there anything else that I need to know about, Lily, with regard to Thaddeus?

Are the skateboards an okay situation, or is this a problem?

This is funny to me that she's.

Excuse me, please.

Excuse me.

I will hear from you in a moment, Sir Ape Man Son.

Sorry, Judge.

Lily, are you okay with these decks and these boards and these trucks and these wheels?

You know, we have an in-law suite that is just full of comic books and skateboards.

And it would be really nice if we could have company come and visit instead of housing old items.

Anything else that Thad has a hoard of aside from skateboards and one old email name?

Skateboards and comic books.

And comic books.

And old email.

That's it.

Beyblades and Pogs.

Oh, several gaming systems, like an old Xbox, an old Super Nintendo, an old Wii.

You know, now that I'm thinking about the contents of that room.

This is all in the in-law suite?

Yeah.

Thaddeus, is this just a system to prevent your in-laws from visiting?

It's

an elaborate scheme.

That's my man cave.

Oh, why?

You were so close to winning that.

Yeah, you really win that.

And then you said man cave.

Well, it's not really a man cave at all.

That's, I mean, it's actually a hoard.

Yeah, walk it back.

Walk it back.

My board hoard.

It's your board hoard.

Actually, you did win me back a little bit with board hoard.

Yeah, that was good.

Lily, has there ever been any consequence that you've actually perceived of him using this slightly embarrassing email address?

It's just honestly how I feel about it.

It makes me cringe when I have to provide it to people.

So I have talked to a lot of people in, you know, in the community and they've all been like, yeah, I noticed it, but so what?

Or, you know, but to me, it's just, it's not an appropriate email.

So Thaddeus, if I were to rule in your favor, what would you have me rule?

I would have you rule that I can continue to use Ape Manton as my

email, as I have for the last 18 years, uninterrupted.

You keep acting as though this precedent of use of this email address is somehow legally compelling.

Like, I've been using it for 18 years.

That's got to count for something.

It was a gift from my brother, you know?

Oh, how dare you.

This goes back to the Magna Carta, Judge Hodgen.

This is English common law.

Okay, so leave everything exactly the way it is, as you have indeed tried to do since you were 26 years old.

Well, you know, I guess if, you know, push came to shove,

another email address.

I don't know if I can handle another email address.

It's a lot.

Are you afraid you won't know how to use it?

It could go the way of the banking app.

Lily, what email address would you want me to order him to use?

You know, one based on his first and last name.

I would help him look at it on his phone.

I just want him to have a more conventional, forward-facing email for interfacing with our community.

Lily, would you be comfortable with an email address that automatically forwarded to his Ape Manson address?

Yeah, we could do that.

That's a great idea, Jesse.

You can do that?

Oh.

Yeah.

You'll be so surprised at what you can do, Thaddeus, now that it is 2007.

The problem is.

There would be an issue with that, though.

He would be replying then from Ape Manson.

Depends on how you set it up.

I think that there's a way to set it up.

I'll take that into consideration.

On a popular webmail service that I use, it's possible to automatically reply with the address to which someone sent the email.

Also, I do not reply to emails.

What a surprise.

I just read them.

I think I've heard enough.

I'm going to go into my internet cafe slash oxygen bar,

circa 1997, to listen to Walking on the Sun and come up with my verdict.

I'll be back in a moment with my decision.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

How are you feeling about your chances, Lily?

I just have such a simple request.

I know there's just such a precedent for weird dad law.

Thaddeus, how are you feeling about your chances?

I was feeling

great about it, but

I think my chances are

a little slipped away towards the end there.

Are you concerned that we may harsher Mella?

You know, if that's the case, then so be it.

I'll accept any verdict handed out to me.

Thaddeus, to what extent is this entire conflict driven by your professional jealousy of electronic mail?

That's right.

Yeah.

It's gotten into

taking food off my kids' plates.

We'll see what Judge Hodgman has to say about all this when we come back in just a second.

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.

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

My breath is still taken away.

I confess that I was listening to you talk from my chambers.

Jesse Thorne

found the crux.

Snail mail versus email.

I can't believe I missed it.

Maybe it's time to put aside childish things and podcasts and move to whatever my next phase of life is and get a new identity for myself that reflects that I am not the judge I once was who didn't see the snail mail versus email.

That was incredible.

Well, our plan had been to wait a couple of years before we pushed you into the wilderness to die.

But

I mean, if you want to get that going now, we might as well.

I'm ready to ascend.

We do go through phases of life

where we move from one period in our lives to another period in our lives.

And I'm not sure that you're aware of that, Thaddeus, but it's true.

It's really true.

You will be made aware of it as you watch your children grow and see their phases, as you have already seen.

When I first started hearing this case, I was like, a classic man-child who doesn't want to give up the things that made him happy when he was a little kid of 28 years old,

living at home with his comics and his and his skateboards and his consoles.

And I was right.

You don't want to give those things up.

It's true.

You acknowledged it.

You hold on to your comics, you hold on to your board hoard, and you hold on to your job as a letter carrier, which is good, honest work that one should be able to support a family on, and at least provides you with, I presume, a lot of pension security.

Yes, no, maybe so.

Yeah, I'm good.

You got benefits, right?

Of course.

I'm not wrong that you are a man-child, living your life in many ways the same way as you did when you were a child, unwilling to give up the ape-man son that you were then.

And yet, you are not just a man-child.

Like so many of the man-child husbands that have come through this courtroom who pretend to be grown-ups with great careers but are secretly small and petty.

You

present yourself as a 44-year-old, 26-year-old with your board horde and your sega Geneses and stuff, but in fact, it seems like you've really matured into the role of a very responsible husband and father.

Would you disagree, Lily?

No, I would not disagree.

I hope and get the sense that you're happy in this life, that you don't feel that there's something missing, that you are engaged in your children's lives, in the lives of your family, in your love for your wife.

And that seems like a very happy place to be.

Yes or no, Thaddeus?

100%.

I'm very happy.

Right.

And I've looked at your evidence that you sent in two photos that are germane.

One is of your arms,

which you claim are extremely hairy, and therefore that is why you were called the ape man.

And you can see these photos at the Judge John Hodgman page on maximumfund.org and also on our Instagram at JudgeJohn Hodgman.

I think that listeners will agree with me.

Not particularly hairy arms.

Didn't really capture it.

That's where you're going for it.

That didn't capture it.

You should see it back.

Well, that's a different situation, I suppose.

But you know what?

They're high charisma arms.

I'll give you that.

And then you also send in a photo of your beautiful dog who is named Jane.

Jane?

Mm-hmm.

I have to make an announcement.

You know, I've been traveling this country.

I've been raising money.

I've been talking to voters all over this country.

I'm dropping out of the race for number one family.

You guys win.

You guys win.

Thank you.

Jane the dog, wonderful dog.

You gave us the picture of the dog just because it looks cute.

But but it also has a little sign back saying the vet only emails my mom, meaning you, Lily, because Ape Manson is too embarrassing.

We have a lot of data points

on this program of husbands in heterosexual married couples being weird, selfish monsters.

That's not Thaddeus, I'm glad to say.

Except for this email address.

I admire your ability, to the point of almost extreme envy, Thaddeus, to have integrated the life that you remember as a 20-year-old of work and play and balance.

You don't take work too seriously.

You take your life and your personal happiness seriously and woven it into a truly admirable family life and a sense of happiness in place.

That's really wonderful.

You can let go of these things, of some of the physical totems of the previous life.

You don't need a Wii.

You don't need all those consoles.

I bet you don't need as many skateboards as you have.

But that's not the point of this conversation.

The point of this conversation is this one email address, the thing that should be the easiest for you to let go.

You let go of your snobbery about 35 millimeter film cameras.

You matured and now use them.

You realize that you had to move forward in your life and that large format photography was now out of your reach.

You are capable of this forward motion, even if you are a lightite who loves your old TV, your old TV and won't throw it away or whatever.

You know that you can.

You've done it.

And in this case, I have to say, there is, in this day and age of Twitter handles and creeps on the internet, having something that starts with Ape Man, it verges on a little alt-righty to me.

It raised a little flag that there might be some kind of dank meme involved here.

Wow.

So there's that.

And then there's the other thing, which is that

Your wife, she's fairly wonderful.

She doesn't want you to get rid of all your boards and consoles or even this email address, but present something public-facing that is a little bit more mature than 2001 Thaddeus, that represents the 2019 Thaddeus that you are, a different person who has a fondness for the past, but is not tied to it nostalgically.

Even though I applaud you, Thad,

as a dude, as a husband, as a father, and as someone who seems to have actually found peace in his life.

Frankly, it's infuriating.

But you got to come up with a new email address just to take one step forward away from Huba Stank 1999 or whatever.

And you know what?

You can find a way to have that email address forward to Ape Manson and vice versa.

It'll be easy to find out how to do it.

You don't need to have Lily be your de facto IT person.

You can figure this out.

And if you want to figure it out, that's on you.

You have to figure it out.

But in the meantime, Thaddeus at aceofbase.com, is that a thing?

Is that a possibility?

Rod Hugenstein.

No, no more jokes.

No more joke emails.

Okay, you're right.

After 40, joke emails are down the tubes.

After 40, you don't have to wear these costumes anymore.

You're just Thad.

The cool dad.

Oh, there you go.

Thad the cool dad.

There, I just ruined your life.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules, that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Thad, how do you feel?

Feel all right about it.

You know, he's right.

He made a lot of good points, and

it shouldn't be that difficult for me to manage my way around a second email, even though I am a little intimidated by the thought of that.

I got a good partner over here that'll help me figure it out.

Lily, how do you feel about the cool dad that you married?

I love the cool dad.

Happy about the ruling.

Excited to see what new email he comes up with.

Well, thank you both for coming on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

It was great to talk to you.

Another Judge John Hodgman case in the books.

In just a moment, Swift Justice.

First, our thanks to Nathan Detweiler for naming this week's episode, You've Got Bail.

If you'd like to name a future episode, just like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook, we put out our calls for submissions there.

And honestly, it's worth it just to see other people's stupid pun ideas.

They're all really fun.

Follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

Hashtag your JudgeJohn Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ H.

O.

And check out the Max Fun subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com if you want to chat about this week's episode.

We're also on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to follow us there for evidence and other fun stuff.

And this week's episode was recorded by David Porter at Mix One Studios and Jared O'Connell at Earwolf.

This episode, edited by Jesus Ambrosio, produced by Hannah Smith and Jennifer Marmard.

Now, Swift Justice, where we answer small disputes with quick judgment.

Judge Hodgman, Christy wants to know, is it okay to wear jeans and a t-shirt while flying?

My mom says you need to wear nice clothes while traveling through airports.

I say, I'm not there to impress anybody.

Who's right?

Me or my mom?

Well, it was, I mean, a tradition in relatively early air travel to dress up for a flight.

My wife remembers that when she was a little kid and they were going to fly somewhere, she was forced to wear like church clothes.

That was not my experience growing up.

I don't remember what I wore as a kid on an airplane, but that's definitely part of a lot of families' experiences.

Jesse,

did you take a lot of flights when you were a kid?

Do you dress up now for an airplane flight?

Or what's your feeling about this as our sartorial consultant?

We get a lot of questions about this, specifically for men that put this on.

And there is a large portion of the menswear enthusiast community that will tell you, you know, if you dress nice, you're going to get upgraded to business glass and you're showing respect for all the other passengers and so on and so forth.

And I myself tend to, you know, at least wear something decent when I'm on the airplane, usually.

I would say that the place I draw the line, though, is far below nice clothes.

I think that it is incumbent upon you to wear clothes an adult would wear in public in another context.

And maybe I would also say, you know, cover your feet

because they're up in other people's business.

So I would say, like, I don't have a problem with jeans and a t-shirt, but I'm not nuts about people, especially adults, flying in like pajamas

and, you know,

a nightie in a robe, you know?

Like, that's really pushing it.

But that's mostly because it's just, you know, when you're in public, just act like a person who's in public with other people.

Yeah, I think that that's fair advice.

I would like to disabuse

your put this onies ideas that if you dress up nice, you're going to get upgraded.

Believe me,

the airline is not looking at you personally when they're like, who should we upgrade today?

He's very dapper.

That's not happening.

It's an algorithm, like everything else.

Your name gets picked based on the priority you have within their loyalty program or whatever.

Don't think that you can dress to impress at the airline.

I think that used to work back in the days when you could like show up early to ask for an exit row seat.

Oh, sure.

Those days are 15 or 20 years past now.

I think your put-thisanis are mostly looking for reasons to wear their special three-piece suits and their French cuffs.

That's true.

God bless them.

And you know what?

You need no excuse.

Go ahead, dress up.

You can dress up very nicely for an airplane, but I agree.

You never can overdress in almost any situation.

When you think about what air travel is, it is basically sitting in a bunch of other people's laps.

So it is reasonable to dress for comfort, but by the same token, you should also

wear clean clothes.

You should wear closed shoes.

Otherwise, try to contain your odors as best as possible because you are going to be in close quarters.

You're going to be with these people for a while, so you don't want to weird them out by wearing a terry cloth robe or anything.

No pajamas.

I think nice jeans and a nice t-shirt is absolutely fine.

I'm sorry that time has marched on Christy's mom, but Christy is right.

Jeans and t-shirt, comfortable shoes.

Don't draw attention to yourself.

Don't smell too bad.

You're going to be fine.

The best advice I can ever give with regard to airports, and I've been asked a lot recently because of my book Medallion Status, now available in hardcover, electronic, and audio edition, bit.ly slash medallion status, hashtag always be plugging, is Get to the airport early.

Get to the airport early so you don't have to worry about all that stuff.

Just Just surrender to the slow march of weird humanity and enjoy it.

Don't rush.

Okay, that's all I have to say about that.

Except bit.ly slash medallion status all capital letters, all one word.

JohnHodgman.com slash tour.

That's it for this week's episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho or email hodgman at maximumfund.org.

No cases too small.

And a reminder, we're headed to Toronto, Durham, North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Maine.

So, if you live in one of those cities and you want to get into the show for free and you've got a case, email it to us and let us know that you live in one of those cities in your email.

That's Toronto or Toronto,

Durham, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Maine.

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

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