The Skeleton Brief

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, the Skeleton Brief.

Chris files suit against his fiancée Bonnie.

Bonnie loves to decorate the home for the fall season.

Chris thinks she starts decorating too early in the year.

Bonnie says she wants to enjoy her favorite time of year as much as possible.

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.

My mission in life is to make everybody as uneasy as possible.

I think we should all be as uneasy as possible because that's what the world is like.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear them in.

Chris Bonney, 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 he himself is a spooky skeleton?

I do.

I do.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

Thank you for revealing my darkest secret.

The actor that I hired to go on our live justice tour this November is not the real John Hodgman.

I'm actually a plastic, spooky skeleton with red, light-up eyes.

I need someone to change the little disc battery in the back of my head because my eyes aren't lighting up properly anymore.

I picture them as the kind of red light-up eyes that kind of go

when they turn on.

Well, you can picture them perfectly because you have seen me in my true form because we were old friends.

Oh, yeah, of course.

Since our days in the Skull and Bones Society.

No, I was not a member of Skull and Bones at Yale University, the four-year accredited institution in Southern Connecticut that I got my Bachelor of Arts degree from.

Bad news, John.

I was a member of Skull and Bones at UC Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California.

One of our franchises.

It wasn't so much a secret society as a group of kind of chill pals who would go out in the meadow and eat mushrooms.

It's kind of like the TEDx of Yale secret societies.

No, I was not in Skull and Bones, but I did gain entry into Book and Snake, a different secret society at Yale.

And you can read all about it.

Medallion Status, the new book by me, John Hodgman, available October 15th, bit.ly slash medallion status.

That's B-I-T.ly slash medallion status.

All one word, all capital letters, always be plugging.

I'm sorry about that, Chris and Bonnie.

You had to stand throughout that entire plug.

Please be seated.

Now, for an immediate summary judgment in one of yours favors, can either of you name the piece of culture that I referenced when I entered the courtroom?

This is a direct quote from a person.

And only the name of the person is necessary.

I don't think that you would be able to guess the other source, you know, the contextual source.

The person's name is fine.

Chris, you bring the case.

Why don't we start with you?

I had a couple topical references to use today that I had in my back pocket, and that quote was definitely not from either of those.

Yeah, they probably were better than mine.

What did you have in mind?

The one that I was going to use that was kind of the curveball that I would use, Halloween is Grinch Night.

So I'm just going to go with that, even though I'm certain it's not correct.

What is that from?

Halloween is Grinch Night is a lesser-known sequel to How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Oh, it's a television special and a prequel to How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

It won the 1978 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program and premiered October 29, 1977.

It was never a Dr.

Seuss book.

It was just a cartoon.

Interesting.

I've never heard about that.

That is an obscure cultural reference that is probably not correct, but I appreciate it anyway.

Thank you very much.

But I can't say that it's wrong yet because I haven't heard Bonnie's guess yet.

What is your guess, Bonnie?

I definitely don't have anything definitive, but I get kind of Carl Jung vibes from that quote.

That's my guess.

Hmm.

Philosophical.

What were you thinking?

You're the one who's got all this Halloween junk all over the house.

What would be your favorite thing to quote that would have something to do with your situation?

Oh.

Nightmare Before Christmas, right?

Probably not.

Jesse Thorne, we found the person who doesn't love a nightmare before Christmas.

I love it, but it's probably not my most beloved.

What's your most beloved?

I'd probably have to go with the ever-classic Hocus Pocus.

Hocus Pocus?

I do know what that is, but I forget.

Tell me.

Story of kind of your three cantankerous witches.

Oh, this is the Kathy Najami and Sarah Jessica Parker and Bette Midler movie.

Yes, exactly.

Otherwise known as Lady Millennial Space Jam.

I actually have never seen that movie.

But that's your favorite Halloween movie.

Yeah, I would say so.

I'm glad I didn't go to it for a quote.

Because you might have gotten it right.

But instead, you got it wrong.

All guesses are wrong.

I was quoting the author and illustrator, Edward Gorey.

Edward Gorey is one of my very favorite author and illustrators with a particularly morbid, I dare say, Halloween-y imagination.

Most famous probably for the gasly crumb teenies, which is his darkly humorous book of children's rhymes regarding children who pass away in various bad fates.

A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil, assaulted by bears, C is for Clara who wasted away.

D is for Desmond, thrown out of a sleigh.

I love it.

All with really dark illustrations.

He also did, obviously, the opening credits for Mystery on PBS, and the famous for his dark, carefully drawn, cross-hatched, tinyly detailed, spooky little scenes.

And I thought of him because this is a story about spooky decorations, among other things.

In the evidence that you submitted, which was voluminous and beautiful, and we'll talk more about it in a moment.

There's a little picture of ghosts telling ghost stories to another ghost that looked like an Edward Gorey illustration.

And I thought, if this is what Bonnie has in her house, then I'm 100% for it.

There is no problem here.

I don't know what Chris is complaining about.

But then I saw the rest of the evidence.

We'll talk more about that later.

So we'll hear the case.

Chris, talk about what's in your house, aside from this cute Edward Gorey-ish illustration of ghosts telling ghost stories to each other.

So as of now, near the end of September, there is a lot of Halloween everywhere.

And you can see that in the evidence.

There's pumpkins everywhere.

There's ghosts everywhere.

There's skeletons everywhere.

While I don't typically have a problem with the decorations themselves, as Jesse mentioned for the case, I have a problem with when they actually go up.

So already I'm taken by surprise, Chris, because when you sent in the photos of all the Halloween decorations in your house, I had presumed this was from last year, but you're telling me that this stuff is up now.

They are are up right now.

I could go home right now and take the same pictures.

That would be an interesting art project, but it would achieve nothing.

It would be cool if you went back and took the same pictures and there were ghosts in the background of all of them, or everything had been moved slightly while you were away.

So that's not going to happen because A, I believe in science, and B, it's not yet the haunting season, Bonnie.

It's September 24th.

As we record, this is the very first day of fall.

It was summer yesterday.

What are you doing putting up all these Halloween stuff so early?

Well, I guess I should preface this by saying I truly and thoroughly hate summer.

So part of the reason why some of the decorations go up as early as they do is because it's kind of a coping mechanism for me.

How early did these guys go up?

I decorate for Halloween on September 1st.

There are decorations that could be deemed autumn decorations, I guess, that go up before that, but it's not like the house explodes with seasonal decorations.

There's kind of just just a sprinkling of things that I don't consider to be Halloween that Chris does.

Okay, so aside from the Halloween decorations, there are sort of generic autumn decorations.

What are those, and when do those come into your life?

There are pumpkin-themed decorations going up in mid-July in this household.

Whoa, okay.

Bonnie, you don't dispute that, do you?

I don't dispute that there were two two and a half-inch pumpkins with our initials on them that are not even orange that went up in July.

So, when you said pumpkin-themed decorations, Chris, you meant pumpkins.

There is also a pumpkin candy bowl out year-round that I have allowed just because we were a little bit too lazy to put it away after Halloween.

We have no other candy bowl, so I contest that it is the only one that we can use in the meantime.

How old are you people?

We're 27.

I'm 27.

Okay, so look, you're a generation behind me.

Is this something that 27-year-olds are doing now?

Candy bowls like their grandmas?

Are you putting out Werther's originals in a crystal-cut bowl?

Is that a thing that 27-year-olds normally do?

There is always candy in the house.

I would say Chris eats it more than I do, but I like to have the little candy bowl on the table.

That is kind of a nostalgic grandmother thing for me.

I will admit that.

So in mid-July, basically, you're rocking two small gourds with your initials on them and last Halloween's candy bowl full of stale candy corn.

The bowl does get replenished.

You just leave out the pumpkin candy bowl all the time.

Yeah, it's like a small, I'd say it's like a six-inch bowl that has a lid that sits on the coffee table.

It's a never-ending flame.

It is a constant reminder that Halloween is coming.

Exactly.

Correct.

Bonnie, where do you live?

We live in Pennsylvania in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

So you experience seasons, right?

Yes, very much so.

Right.

You're coming from an actual summer going into an actual fall.

Correct.

Why do you hate summer so much and why do you like fall so much?

I don't do well in heat.

I have very pale complexion, so the sun is harmful to me.

As to why I love autumn and, by extension, Halloween so much, I just find it to be a supremely cozy time.

It's kind of that dark, warm, and quiet moment right before everything goes to sleep for winter.

And that's kind of when I feel most comfortable and most at home.

It's the time that makes you think of what it must be like that cozy moment just before you close your eyes and die.

Yeah, kind of.

For our listeners who aren't right now looking at Judge John Hodgman on Instagram and seeing this evidence, I think cozy is a very apt description.

These are not spooky Halloween decorating elements.

These are not

retro

Halloween decorating elements or edgy Halloween decorating elements.

Yeah, it's not scary.

If Mervyn's HomeGoods had a goth section,

this is where these adorable throw pillows would be sold.

Well, let's go to the evidence.

As always, all these images will be shared on the JudgeJohn Hodgman page at maximumfun.org, or you can go follow us on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman, all one word.

And here you will find an array of charming photographs from the home.

Is this your home right now, Bonnie, or one that you share with Chris?

We share.

Yeah, we moved in to this house back in December of last year.

Just in time for Memorial Day decorations to go up.

We have an array here of antique medicinal bottles, blue, green, and purple.

They're lovely bottles.

The captioned here is spooky art up year-round.

I don't think these bottles are particularly spooky.

I just think they're handsome.

I like them.

I I think the second picture is the spooky art.

Yeah, no, there's the spooky art.

This is the wonderful Edward Gorey-esque line illustration of a ghost telling a ghost story in a graveyard.

I think that's adorable.

I like that very much.

And then there's also a couple of shelves of taxidermed butterflies and crystals and a skull of some kind.

This is a kind of altar.

And I think I can see either I see your reflection in the mirror on this altar taking the photo, Bonnie, or it's a gigga ghost.

But this is a shrine of crystals and power elements and skulls and a little fondue pot.

Tell me about this shrine, Bonnie.

Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily call it an altar, but it's definitely kind of where I've housed my collection of natural history items.

It's got two palantirs on either end of it.

It's got two

orbs,

one on the left and one on the right.

If that's not an altar, I don't know what an altar is, but go on.

This is just your personal collection of things.

If it's not an altar, why is there a fondue pot in it?

I believe you're speaking about her cauldron.

Oh, there you go.

Fair enough.

All right.

Bonnie, we have talked over you enough, but I do think you got some splaining to do with regard to these two shelves in your home.

Tell me the significance of these two shelves and some of the items on there.

I like to collect rocks and minerals and crystals, mostly because it stems from my interest in geology, and I think they're very beautiful things, and it fascinates me that it is the Earth's creation that, you know, has been kind of manipulated in such a way that we can collect these things in our homes.

Let me be clear, Bonnie, to me, these two shelves, they're dope.

I like the way this looks.

You don't need to be on the defensive about this.

I'm with you.

Tell me about the skull, the animal skull.

Same type of thing.

I kind of like to collect things from nature, so I fully admit that I have skulls throughout the house on the wall.

However, Chris has claimed that he actually likes those, so I don't think those are a matter of contention, but I do absolutely agree that they could be construed as spooky.

But I would also argue that that's kind of my overall general aesthetic.

So that's why the lines kind of blur sometimes between what is a Halloween decoration and what is just a Bonnie decoration.

Well, it's interesting.

I'm not sure the lines are so very blurry because when we scroll down to some of the other decorations here, this is just a kind of Bonnie-style

central Pennsylvania Vompier memento shelf.

I like it.

And, you know, Chris, you like these skulls too.

Who's the man pictured in this photograph on the right-hand side of the shelf?

That is an older picture of my father.

Oh, I see.

You are putting a curse on him?

No, I actually have both my parents represented on that shelf.

There's a smaller picture of my mother, just as kind of, I don't know, an honor to them.

That's lovely.

And the cauldron?

So while it looks like a cauldron, it's actually not.

It's an old kerosene pot.

So you'll see there's like kind of a wand object coming out of it.

That has like a bulbous end to it on the inside that would collect this kerosene gel, and it would be used as a smudge pot to actually like light things.

Oh, okay.

But I have a lot of kind of odd industrial antiques like that because I think their history is really fascinating.

So that's also why the bottle collection is pictured.

It's one of the items that Chris tends to poke at me for pretty often.

Bonnie, would you characterize yourself as gothic in any way?

Not really.

I definitely have a dark aesthetic, but I wouldn't call it gothic.

Can we make cozy goth a thing?

Absolutely.

I would definitely qualify you as a cozy goth.

Cozy goth?

Jesse Thorne, I think you just created a whole new lifestyle.

Move over, Summer Goth.

Here comes cozy goth.

You should trademark that.

I shouldn't say you created a lifestyle because Bonnie's already living the lifestyle.

I think the three of you and me listening have identified a bold new aesthetic school of interior interior decorating.

I'm working right now on a deep fake of Glenn Danzig holding a cup of herbal tea with both hands and inhaling deeply.

So Chris, you're down with that cozy goth lifestyle.

You don't mind these shelves, right?

You kind of like it, right?

Yeah, it does look good.

Sometimes she can get a bit overboard on it.

Sometimes the shelves get pretty packed, but overall, I do like the aesthetic generally.

But then Bonnie says the lines blur between her cozy goth lifestyle and the Halloween decoration.

And I will say the lines are not blurred in the least.

It's a brightly drawn line because all of a sudden now we're looking at a shower curtain that just has black cats and pumpkins on it with a, with a pumpkin bath mat, which I hope to the great void that is not there year-round, Bonnie.

You don't have that pumpkin bath mat there year-round, do you?

No, no, I'm not a lunatic.

And then as I scroll through more, I mean, we're talking about

very, I dare say, not cozy goth.

I hope you'll accept this as just my observation, but it's very kitschy goth.

I mean, not even goth.

It's kitschy, Halloween-y, like Christmas store-level Halloween-style decorations.

So we have like ghost fairy lights.

There's a little statuette of a man with a jack-o'-lantern head.

Kind of cutesy goth that I think is a very different aesthetic from the cozy goth, the bonny goth that I see represented in your shrine.

The coffee area appears to have a sign that says, a cup a day keeps the ghosts away.

That's correct.

That feels like a different expression of your personality, Bonnie.

That you have a kind of, I don't know, an insouciant 55-year-old mom approach to decorating for Halloween.

Yeah, I would say that my Halloween style is definitely somewhere at the intersection of spooky and cute.

Any kind of haunting going on in our house is a friendly one.

Sure.

And speaking of cute, there is a cat here wearing a jack-o'-lantern vest that I got to show to my bailiff chester Thorne.

The cat's like, come on, a jack-o'-lantern vest.

What is the name of this cat who you put into this jack-o'-lantern vest?

His name is Appa.

How do you spell that?

A-P-P-A.

A-P-P-A.

That's a cool name.

Does it mean something that I don't know?

Appa represents 50% of our cats, so they're a duo, and their names are Appa and Momo, which are are characters from a hit cartoon series that Chris and I both enjoy called Avatar the Last Airbender.

Okay, there it is.

Everyone who was just yelling the last airbender into their internet radios can now be quiet.

I finally got to the bottom of it.

Let's take a quick recess.

We'll be back in just a moment on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

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The most pertinent evidence, though, is this A-B comparison between

your living room year-round versus your living room, how how it is now decorated for Halloween as of September the 1st.

You have a nice sectional sofa, a nice cozy rug, orange paint on the walls, which may or may not be Halloween-themed, but it's subtle.

That's how the house came.

Yeah, total coincidence.

Yeah, right.

So, as much as I'd like to put that on her, I cannot.

That's how the house came.

Yeah, that's just a happy accident where Bonnie walked in and said, I like these walls.

We're taking the place.

Basically.

There are two skulls hanging.

I don't know what animals these are skulls from, but they are non-human skulls, right, Bonnie?

Correct.

One is a cow and one is a goat.

And they are definitely from the Cozy Goth

collection because they're not intrusive.

No one's going to walk into this room and not automatically know that Bonnie, if not Chris, is living that Cozy Goth life.

It's tasteful, I think.

I like it.

Now, flip over to Halloween time.

Holy moly,

you have a lot of Halloween throw pillows.

That's true.

One, two,

three,

four,

at least four ghost or skeleton-y decorated throw pillows for your sectional sofa, plus one blankie that is full of ghosts and one blankie that is full of jack-o'-lanterns.

And it's all very cutesy.

And we go from this sort of like restrained, sort of tasteful, Edward Gorey-ish, uh slight spookiness to like oh uh jack skellington came in here and threw up

is this what you object to chris i think i think it's a little bit much so

not even early in the fall season before the fall season even hits it's a it's a bit much when bonnie brought out that first pumpkin this year how did it make you feel It made me feel like we were skipping over the entire summer, skipping the rest of the warm and going straight to the dead trees and the cold.

Do you enjoy summer, Chris?

I enjoy summer.

I'm also fair-skinned.

I obviously don't like being in the sun very long.

Join the ranks of the vast majority of Judge John Hodgman listeners.

I burn easily, but I do like the heat.

I like going to the beach.

We don't do it too often because we have trouble finding the time.

But

I would still say my favorite season is the winter.

You have trouble finding the time and the beach.

Where do you go to the beach in Pennsylvania?

Jersey Shore.

It's only a couple hours away from us.

Yeah.

Where do you go on the Jersey Shore, Chris?

Ventner.

I'm an Ocean City, New Jersey guy.

Okay, I can respect that.

Ocean City respects Ventner, too.

The nice thing for the Pale people is you sit under the boardwalk.

Of course.

It's the greatest.

While I do like summer, I would still say my favorite season is the winter because I do definitely prefer the cold to the warm.

The literal antithesis of summer.

Well, it's my favorite.

I still like the seasons.

I don't like skipping over them.

Do you feel anxious when Bonnie starts trying to wish time away to get to the only period of the year when she feels comfortable?

I would say a bit.

Yeah.

I've always liked the seasons, so just skipping over them, it just kind of stinks.

Another thing that goes along with that, I have a birthday that falls around a holiday, around Thanksgiving specifically, and people like to put Christmas decorations up way too early.

And I feel like when they start putting up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, I feel like everyone's trying to skip my birthday.

All right.

No one's trying to skip your birthday.

Thank you.

That's just a cultural pressure to get people to start spending money as quickly as possible because brick and mortar retail is dying.

It's not personal.

They're just

trying to get the pressure on.

Bonnie, people really do take issue with stores, for example, start putting up Christmas decorations or other holiday decorations at the beginning of November or Halloween decorations at the beginning of September.

They tend to feel this way as well because I'm older than you and I feel like time is already slipping through my fingers.

Personally, it makes me anxious to go into the Walgreens or the CVS or whatever and see the Halloween candy on August 15th.

It's like,

don't take my time away.

That's fair.

Do you think that Chris is feeling some of that or is that just me projecting onto him?

I understand his feelings about it, but the issue I take with it is that he doesn't speak up sooner in the decorating process.

So more often than not, he'll be with me if I'm at like a home goods store, for instance, and I'll ask him his opinion on something and I'll be lucky to get as much as a shrug.

So he literally helped me put these pumpkins onto a shelf and then took it upon himself to complain.

So I would never want to put something up that he genuinely disliked or felt uncomfortable with, but it's after it has started to bring me happiness that he's all of a sudden taken a sour turn.

He's the kind of guy who saves his feelings and opinions for expressing on podcasts only.

So it would seem.

I had no idea about this hurt about his birthday.

And you could really feel it in his voice.

Yeah, it seems like a sore subject.

I mean, you guys just moved in together.

Prior to this, Bonnie, were you rocking Halloween in the middle of July happily on your own?

And did you know that this would be an issue when you decided to cohabitate?

Did you have any conversations about how to compromise on this before you moved in together?

We did actually live together prior to moving into this house.

We've lived together for, I'd say, probably a little over two years.

Two and a half, yeah.

And I mean, in our previous house, it was similarly spooky.

He knew I was spooky getting into the relationship.

This is not something that comes as a surprise to anyone who knows me.

But I will admit that I probably had a bit more excitement and maybe over-eagerness in my decorating schedule this year since it is our first owned home.

So that might have lent to the timing to a degree.

It's a brand brand new house.

You're excited.

You want to put your cat in a pumpkin vest and get gourds all over the place as quickly as possible.

That's absolutely right.

So, Chris, one thing I think we need to get to the bottom of here before I can make my verdict is, is it the timing of the decorating that is the primary issue for you or the stuff itself once it comes out of the closet?

I like the decorations once they're up.

They do look nice, but I do think it's the timing.

And to combat her statement on why I am indifferent, I support her in her decorating desires.

Typically, it's only onesie-twosies, like, do you like this?

Can we put this up?

And we might put up one or two things at a time.

And then one day I'll sit down on the couch, look around, and I'm surrounded by all these different decorations for next season.

And I'm caught wondering, how did this happen?

It's a slow, spooky creep, is what you're saying.

Exactly.

It's a very spooky creep.

But you do have to be responsible for offering your opinions if you have them.

And now you know.

unless you speak up and say whether you really like something or not, you're soon going to be surrounded by kitschy pumpkins.

And they're going to kill you in your sleep.

Just a little lesson.

Of course.

If I were to rule in your favor, Chris, what would you have me rule?

I would say we shouldn't start decorating for Halloween until like October 1st and then.

You just heard an audible gasp.

That wasn't a spooky ghost.

That was the love of your life, gasping.

It sure was.

October 1st for Halloween.

So yeah, Halloween, October 1st, and then fall.

Oh, I don't know, probably like Labor Day.

When does this stuff get put away?

Does it get put away in a timely manner after October 31st or does it linger?

Is that an issue?

I've committed to November 1st for taking down all the Halloween, but I would argue that fall is reasonable to keep up in November.

What is fall?

Because all I'm seeing is this Halloween stuff in my evidence.

I'm not seeing more of the generic fall stuff that you're talking about.

Yeah, small pumpkins.

I have like a pumpkin wreath that goes out front, things like that.

Cornucopia costume for the cat.

Cornucopia costume for the cat.

Jesse Thorne, you need to invent that right away.

That would be great.

Catacopoeia.

That's right.

To subject an otherwise proud cat to have its little head come out of a horn of plenty.

That would be so cute.

So delightful.

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

I would think that if Chris has such strong opinions about the decor or the timing at which they are put up, that he should have to voice those opinions earlier on in the process rather than after they're already assembled.

Chris, do you not express your opinions because you think that they're not valued or it doesn't matter?

I wouldn't say that it's not valued.

I just feel like, like I said, as it's coming at me onesie twosie, I don't really care that much because I personally don't have a lot of decoration desires.

So I know before I lived with Bonnie, all my walls were bare.

I didn't have any decorations.

So I didn't have any desires to decorate.

So once I moved in with her, there's decorations everywhere all the time, which can be a bit of a whiplash when you're going from that bachelor life to cohabitating with someone else.

I would say I've pumpkin spiced up his life.

It truly is ironic that your home before moving in with a Halloween enthusiast was dramatically more spooky.

A bare-walled dorm room that Chris inhabited, maybe with one choices poster on the inside of a closet.

Accurate.

I had a fellow R.A.

in college who lived in a dorm room that was entirely without adornment.

Other than some textbooks, it was exclusively those things which had been issued to him by the University of California at Santa Cruz, a closet, a bed, and so forth.

And once I asked him, What are you doing in there?

And he just said, sit-ups.

He was a nice guy, though.

Was he keeping a daily count of his sit-ups and also his bathroom visits, just like Adam Sachs did in his dorm room college?

Sounds right, yes.

Shout out to my old friend Adam Sachs.

He won a very, very strict regimen in college.

But anyway, Bonnie, do you think Chris has a style?

Does he need some style?

I should say that being in a place with lack of decor, at least to the degree that his old apartment was in, gives me anxiety.

Like,

I feel like you're interning yourself somewhere if there's no expression of your personality around you whatsoever.

So I feel like there's always...

a happy medium and anything that he would be interested in decorating with, I would be on board for.

I think the only thing he has on display in our house is his drinkware collection, beer glasses.

Yeah, you can actually see those on the shelf above the coffee station in that

evidence photo.

They're from various bars that you've gone to.

Is that what it is?

Various breweries, various.

I think I've got some sports teams on there.

Lots of variants in there.

That wraps around about half of the kitchen.

Yeah, there's a lot more than you can see on that one shelf.

Oh, wow.

Well, the difference between a hoarder and a collector is a display shelf.

So,

well.

I'm going to have to give this one to you as a collection, Chris.

I would say that what is apparently Chris's Carnage from Spider-Man mug

is perhaps the spookiest thing in this whole house.

I'm glad you caught that one, though.

One question before I go.

Bonnie, you asked the me to rule that Chris give his input when he has input to give and not wait till the deed is done.

You made reference to the fact that he helped you put in these two small pumpkins.

I'm not sure how much help you needed to put a pumpkin on the windowsill, but apparently he helped.

I'm not tall.

This was a shelf above the television.

I'm a good bit taller than her.

Gotcha.

Okay.

I should have thought.

And without complaint.

But if in that moment that you were at the gourd store in the middle of July and you're like, let's get a couple.

And Chris said, you know what?

I'd rather wait.

I'm not ready for these yet.

Let's wait.

Here is my input.

Let's wait a little while before we start putting gourds in our home.

Would you indeed be able to accept that answer, you know, honestly?

I would be overjoyed if he expressed that level of an opinion at all when it came to day four.

Okay.

I could find something else to put up there, even if he didn't have a suggestion that wasn't so seasonally inappropriate as he seems to feel.

What would you put up instead of the gourds?

A crazy model of a black cat?

I don't know.

Perhaps more skulls.

Just probably another skull, a third skull for the skull wall.

There's always skulls.

I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision.

I am going to go into the storeroom here in my chambers where I store all of the many thousands of unsold, sexy Judge John Hodgman costumes that I tried to bring to market last Halloween.

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

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Bonnie, in your home, next to your keys, there's a figurine of, well, it's a pumpkin man with a bow tie, what looks like cuffed blue jeans and loafers.

Is this some kind of pumpkin Dave Shumka from Stop Podcasting Yourself?

I describe him as the dapper jack-o-lantern.

How are you feeling about your chances in the case, Bonnie?

I feel like there's probably a reasonable middle ground here that would probably satisfy us both.

I'm thinking that John will probably lean that way.

How are you feeling about the impending flood of memes on Twitter and Instagram with the hashtag CozyGoth?

I could not be more excited to finally be recognized.

Chris, how are you feeling?

I'm feeling better than I did at the beginning when you guys were talking about how much you loved her decorations.

I was nervous that you were going to let her keep up all her cozy goth decorations.

Well, those will stay up.

All of her kitschy Halloween decorations year-round.

I'm feeling a little bit better now.

It sounds like kind of what Bonnie was saying.

We may have worked towards a middle ground here that we'll both be satisfied with.

One that reflects her love of contemporary Halloween kitsch and your love of, I guess, craft beers or something.

Pretty much.

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.

Nope, 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 Long.

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 the courtroom and presents his verdict.

You know, a lot of times with these disputes over how to decorate and how to share a home, especially among couples who have just moved in together for the first time, the crux of the case tends to be the discomfort of having to say, I don't like a thing to another person.

and the natural friction that occurs as people try to meld two different

lives, styles, ways of doing things, and really start to see each other for the first time

in a way that they didn't have to when they lived separately.

I worry, and often these cruxes have to do with power and self-assertion, and this is not one of those situations.

I think that Chris and Bonnie are extremely well suited to live together.

For one, there are no surprises.

They have seen each other.

You can't not know who Bonnie is because she's showing it to you on her double-shelf shrine of skulls and crystals

because she's cozy goth for life and Chris loves her for that.

And there is no real concern about assertion of one's own personal style here because

in this case, Bonnie has one and Chris doesn't.

Chris's expression, at least in terms of decoration, is to collect pint glasses from various craft breweries.

And he has a big, big display of them.

And Bonnie has seen that, and they're displayed nicely in the home.

And she does not object to that, even though if I were living with you, Chris, I would object to it.

That's why we're not living together, Chris.

That's the one reason.

That's why you and Bonnie are living together.

And I think living together very successfully, obviously, for two years, and now you have this new home.

None of this is the anxiety, I think, of, you know, how how do I assert myself in this new environment?

How do I make sure that I maintain some autonomy in this home and feel like it's my own?

I don't feel any of that anxiety here.

You both like what you like and you accommodate each other in what seems to be a very healthy way.

So good job.

With the exception of, perhaps, Chris, you're over-accommodation.

Insofar as I think Bonnie is really asking you if you have an opinion about something that you say so, because it is very supportive.

Take it from me, once you've lived in this house for a long time, you're going to have all kinds of junk, and that basement's going to be full of all kinds of things.

And you're going to make changes and adjustments and decorative changes, and they're not always going to go smoothly.

And sometimes you are just going to have to roll over and just say, I don't like that, but I can tell you really do, so I'm just going to live with it, and that's fine.

That's an act of choice to surrender to another person's decorative impulse is healthy so long as it goes both ways and there is open conversation.

But this sort of passive-aggressive thing of like, I put a gourd on a shelf no problem honey i'm supporting you and then five weeks later going like what the hell it's august get that gourd off the shelf

that's actually not supportive or healthy for either of you you need to be able to say this gourd feels wrong and it's not easy knowing how you feel in the moment is not always an easy thing to do.

It would behoove you, Chris, I think, to take Bonnie's request seriously that you tune in to what it is you like and you don't like and respectfully say, I would rather not, it's not gourd time yet for me.

I don't want to wish my time on this earth away so that I can speed directly into spooky near death right near Halloween.

That said,

Bonnie, I'm going to leave my own opinions about your decorations out of this.

I'm going to say them.

I find a lot of the cutesy Halloween stuff not to my taste.

To balance that, I will say, Cozy Goth, love.

Love the skulls, love the crystals, love the kerosene pot, love the curse your father spooky picture.

Love that self-expression, love that you showed that to Chris, your partner, and everyone who comes in.

And I think it's tasteful too.

I think it looks pretty good.

I'm not putting a cow's skull in my house, but I can't say that that looks bad.

It's only when all those jack-o'-lantern throat pillows get in there that I start having a panic attack because I'm just like, I live in New York.

I wouldn't even know where to keep those things.

But even though that's not to my taste, set it aside, that's not the point.

I believe Chris when he says it's not the content of the decorations so much as it is the timing.

And I have to say

that I think Chris's request, the generic fall decorations start in September and Halloween waits till October is perfectly reasonable and exactly how it should be.

I'm sorry, Bonnie.

I'm calling it for Chris on this one.

Generic fall starts in September.

Halloween starts in October.

The Halloween candy bowl has to be out year-round.

Absolutely.

I think that's the greatest thing I've ever heard of.

You can restock that all the time.

Let that be the eternal flame that keeps your love of Halloween and autumn and death going all the time.

You got to find a way to enjoy the time that you actually have and not wish it away with gourds.

If I walked into a house that was full of gourds in the middle of August, I'd be like, I'm walking out.

No.

That's truly spooky.

And I will make one other order.

And Bonnie, you may do with this as you like.

You need to take a lot of pictures of Chris and have them put onto a lot of throw pillows.

And I'm sure there are services to do this.

And get a lot of...

A lot of models of Chris and a lot of like statuettes of Chris.

And when it's Chris's birthday, I just want you to criss out the whole place.

As many blankies and throw pillows with Chris's face on it as possible.

And that every birthday, he'll be like, wow, it's me all over the place.

And then you can decorate to your heart's desire and also show Chris that you care about him at least as much as you do about an arbitrary pagan holiday.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Bonnie, your hyper-long and hyper-adorable Halloween is over.

How do you feel?

I am okay accepting it based on the sole concession of the year-round Halloween candy bowl.

That way I have something to look forward to, even though I now have to truncate my active Halloween decorating period.

I guess my main concern with a year-round Halloween bowl is that even if you keep refilling it, eventually it'll just be totally full of unwanted almond joys.

That does happen.

Chris, how do you feel?

I'm feeling pretty good, too.

I get to keep the holidays where they belong, the seasons where they belong, and now I get an extra special birthday.

That remains to be seen.

Are the two of you ready for the onslaught of hashtag Cozy Goth?

Deep fakes of

Glendanzig enjoying a mug of hot cocoa and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, warming her Tootsies in front of the fire.

I personally cannot wait.

I'm going to start using that hashtag too, I think.

Thank you both for joining us on Judge John Hodgman.

Another Judge John Hodgman case locked into the books.

Before we dispense swift justice, our thanks to Susan Crum for naming this week's episode The Skeleton Brief.

If you'd like to name a future episode like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook, you can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

Hashtag your JudgeJohn Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ H O

and your deep fakes, hashtag cozy goth.

You can check out the maximum fun subreddit at maximumfund.redddit.com.

We're also on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman.

Make sure to follow us there for evidence and cozy goth inspiration pics.

This week's episode was recorded by Jennifer Tambolini at Forge Recording in Orland, Pennsylvania.

Our editor is Jesus Chui Ambrosio.

This episode produced by Hannah Smith and Jennifer Marmer, double team in this thing.

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

Christopher says, my friend calls streaming services TV.

I think without scheduling, it's not TV.

Should we all call streaming services TV now?

You know, there's a very fun and interesting chapter of my forthcoming book, Medallion Status by me, John Hodgman, that talks about the confusion and fracturing of the culture now that there is more television than could ever be watched in one's lifetime because of all the screens and pads and tablets and seatbacks that we have.

And that was just a plug for my book, Medallion Status, at least slash Medallion Status.

I'll always be plugging.

But at no point did I ever think to myself,

We really should come up with a different term for streaming content to differentiate it from TV because it lacks a schedule.

And I've never thought about that because I have a healthy brain.

Christopher, relax.

It's TV.

We live in a time when not only is there no television anymore as we used to understand it when we were kids, but at the same time, there is only television.

And it is all around us all the time.

And it is all

something that you see and is brought to your eyes by a service.

Television, TV.

Sorry, Christopher, you're wrong.

That's about it for this week's episode.

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

No cases too small.

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

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