Slunch Buggy No Punch Backs

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week, and we are going to clear the docket.

With me, as always,

the hardest-working man in show business, Judge Brother Number One, Judge John Hodgman.

Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

We're glad you're here.

And Jesse, I'm glad you're here.

I'm glad you're here, John.

Do you want to clear the docket?

Let's get rid of that docket because it's, you know what it is right now?

Unclear.

Well, we've got something from Andy.

All right.

Dear Judge Hodgman, what's the appropriate phrase to use upon seeing a Volkswagen Beetle prior to giving someone a gentle fist-based tap?

Punch in the shoulder.

Punch in the shoulder.

I believe the correct phrase is slug bug.

My wife thinks punch buggy is correct and has taught our sons to think the same.

I like slug bug, not just because it's what I grew up up with, but also because one, it's more directly derived from the common nickname for the vehicle, the bug, and two, the phrase has an internal rhyme and a punchier rhythm.

I have no desire to stop my wife and kids from using their preferred phrase.

I only ask that you rule that they acknowledge slug bug is the better version and that I be allowed to use slug bug without ridicule.

Slug bug?

I had never heard that before.

Jesse, you're familiar with this hit your friend game, right?

Yeah, I previously had known it only as Punch Buggy.

I've only ever heard of it as Punch Buggy.

And yet I looked it up.

Sorry, what?

I'm laughing because it occurred to me that his elaborate circumlocution of the word punch in his description of what you do,

he described it as a gentle fist-based tap.

Yes.

Was intentional.

Let me say this.

First of all, to the merits of this case, the gentleman, Andy, only wants to call it the way he grew up calling it.

And I gather that Slugbug is a regional variation of the age-old, or at least if that age is as old as Beatles have been around, a game of seeing this particular kind of car, calling it out, usually by color, and you say punch buggy red or punch buggy green, depending on the color of the car, right?

And you punch your friend in the shoulder.

This is a real game, and it is called slug bug, according to Wikipedia.

It's also called Punch Bug or Punch Car or Physical Assault Buggy or Startle Your Dad while he's driving so you both almost die, bug, which is how I play it with my son.

My son goes to a school on the other side of Brooklyn, and when I can, I give him a ride there in our family car.

And whenever he sees one of these buggies, he goes, punch buggy red, punch, and I almost drive off the road.

And I can't do that in New York traffic.

Come on, son.

If you're listening, thanks, by the way.

Thanks for taking an interest.

But please stop punching me while I drive.

Yeah, if any of my kids are listening, I just want them to know I love them.

Yeah.

And my instinct was always that I didn't get this game.

I didn't understand it.

It violated two rules.

One, it was hurtful, and the other, it was arbitrary.

Two rules I could not tolerate as a child.

But I didn't really appreciate how awful it is until I read this Wikipedia page on the game of Slunchbuggy, Slunchbubby,

which pointed out that in 2009,

the Volkswagen Automobile Company commissioned an ad from the advertising agency Deutsch

that used this in the ad.

And it was not just buggies.

It was not just Beatles.

The whole ad was people seeing a Volkswagen.

And then they would turn to the other one and go,

they renamed it because it was all the things.

It was Punch Dub, as in VW.

Sure.

And it's all these people just turning to each other going, punch-dub, white, and then punching their friends and their coworkers

and their family members in the arm, not always softly.

And it's clear that the other person doesn't like it.

This is in the ad.

And as you see this over and over and over again, it's really terrible.

It upset me.

Especially one moment.

This is a televised ad from 2009.

One of the greatest years I was still making Apple ads.

This was the low point of 2009.

A child in this punch dub ad

sees a Jeddah or something, and he goes punch-dub white, and he turns to his grandpa and like punches his grandpa like

in a private area.

Like, I think they try to play it as the upper thigh, but the implication is clear.

It was a national ad campaign.

So.

About private punching grandpas.

Yeah.

So I think we've moved on as a culture since 2009.

Obviously, that ad campaign is not in the works anymore, though I drive a VW, a Passat station wagon, discontinued.

Don't hate me, but I got one.

It's pretty good.

But VW, you know, is now the pariah of the auto industry for misleading people about its diesel mileage or whatever it was that they did.

If I was VW, I'd be thinking about bringing back that ad where Tony Hale is in a car in a parking garage and he's listening to Domo Origato Mr.

Roboto.

Yeah.

Doing a dance.

Yeah.

And you're like, hey, that's Tony Hale from Arrested Development because you can see the future when you saw it.

Right.

In 1998 or whatever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And also, VW, I'm not mad at you.

I drive one of your cars.

You want to do an ad campaign with the guy who used to be in the Apple ads?

I'm your man.

Well, there are only two of us.

I hope you pick me.

Sorry, Justin.

I hope you pick me.

But if you pick Justin, that's fine too.

Bad news.

They picked Patrick Warburton.

He made an appearance once.

Oh, that's right.

So many people passed through those Apple ads, and some you never even saw.

Big actors who never, they killed the ad.

Jenna Fisher from The Office.

Maybe I'm not allowed to say that, but she was in one.

I don't think it ever aired.

Patrick Warburton was a delight.

Seth Morris from UCB was a delight.

Oh, guy's as good as it gets.

Zach Galifanakis was in one.

Galifenak attack?

Yeah.

Paul F.

Tompkins.

They played dueling Santa Clauses.

The world will never know what I saw.

I'm like Rector Hauer at the end of Blade Runner.

I've seen attack ships off the arm of Orion or whatever, and it all is going to go away like tears in the rain.

Unless I write it all down.

In any case, Andy,

I find in your favor

you can call it slug bug.

That is fine.

The law, of course, is no punchbacks.

But also, the law is no punching.

Stop punching each other, everybody.

It's no fun.

It's no fun for the punchy.

We had a rule in my family.

My daughter was very young, like a toddler.

We had a cat that is no longer alive named Francis.

It was my wife's cat before we were married.

She adopted this cat.

There's a secret of hers that I'm going to tell.

The cat was named Francis because it was a black cat and she was a fan of the Pixies.

So she named it Black Francis.

This is not something we've ever revealed to our acquaintance,

Charles Thompson, aka Black Francis, who used to see her from time to time in Western Massachusetts with his lovely wife and family, Violet Clark, and kids.

Well, I've got bad news for you, John.

This is going to be quite a disappointment to my vacation home acquaintance, St.

Francis of Assisi.

I have a vacation home in Assisi.

Yeah.

And somewhere out there, Annie Clark, also known as St.

Vincent, is thinking to herself, listening to this podcast, going, why don't I know these guys?

I guarantee you that Annie Clark is not thinking that.

In any case, we have this adorable, dumb, huge cat, Francis.

He was a dumb-dumb.

I love dumb cats.

And our daughter was trying to pull its tail.

And I'm like, don't pull the cat's tail.

And she said, no, it's fun.

And I came up with this great parenting line that I've used ever since.

It was not fun for everybody.

It's not fun at all.

Wow.

Well, it blew her mind.

And I was relieved that she stopped torturing the cat, both for the cat's sake and because I was concerned that she was going to grow up to become a sociopath, but she's not.

Very kind young woman.

Well, when your child tortures small animals, kind of a red flag, but it's all fine.

It's all good.

Also, my daughter at that time could not pronounce Francis' name.

She called him Fatty, which was accurate.

And when she was exploring that whole region of Francis that had the tail on it for the pulling, She was curious about Francis' bum.

And my wife said, no, that's Francis' bum.

Leave it alone.

And to this day, we still repeat what my daughter said when we're talking about verboten things.

That's Fatty's bum.

Leave it.

Fatty's bum.

Leave it.

So anyway, Andy, if it's not fun for everybody, it's no fun at all.

And I'm telling you, as a subject of this game, it's very distracting to get punched by someone you love, even in a light fist-based tap kind of way when you're trying to drive.

So don't do it.

But you're right.

You're right anyway.

Slugbug is is fine.

How do you feel about the game where you make an okay symbol below your waist and then if you get somebody to look at it, you get to punch them?

Do you know that one?

You know how I feel about that one?

Fatty's bum.

Leave it.

Keiko says, my boyfriend complains that his neighbors don't take their clothes out of the washers and dryers in a timely manner.

I think it's totally okay to take their clothes out and put them in the basket, especially if you're in a hurry.

But he thinks we shouldn't touch other people's clothes, like their underwear.

What do you say, John?

Well, Jesse, I have some experience in this as I have lived in several apartment buildings with shared laundry rooms, as well as dormitory-type situations.

I presume you have as well, Jesse, in your life?

I have too, although I've never really had this problem such that it got in the way of my life.

I think I probably lived in shared accommodations, certainly at UC Santa Cruz, with people who simply didn't wash.

Oh, okay.

I was going to say, boy, the people of Santa Cruz are fast washers.

No, no, they're non-washers.

Yeah, the volume is lower, so there's less of a bottleneck.

I don't know what it is about New England where I grew up.

That's a region of the United States, in the northeast United States, Jesse.

Maybe it's just our laid-back way of life.

People in New England are famous for just sort of taking their time.

What's your hurry?

Sure.

Sit out on the porch and have some sweet tea and let your underwear molder in the dryer or the washer.

You don't have to get down there for a couple of days.

But people would do it all the time in all of the shared

laundry rooms that I experienced in New England and in New York.

And I'm telling you what I did, and I thought was fine.

If you're down there and someone has left their stuff in the wash, and especially in the dryer, and you do your cycle and you're ready to put it in the dryer and they haven't come at all, just get in there, grab it, put it on top.

Take out their stuff, put it on top.

You don't want to pour through it or anything.

You want to kind of avert your eyes.

You don't want to try it on or anything like that.

And I always felt that that was reasonable.

I felt like that's apt punishment for not being on top of your stuff.

You got to be on top of your stuff when you're using a shared facility.

It would get awkward from time to time, very rarely, when they come down into the laundry room and you're elbow deep in their boxer briefs or whatever.

They catch you in the act.

That's your punishment for getting up in their stuff.

The system evens out,

is what I'm saying.

It's a self-managing system, like a fractal.

Yeah, exactly.

This is a self-managing shame system.

If you're so late that you come down and you see someone has put your stuff on top of the dryer or whatever, and you're like, well, that's what I pay.

They touched my stuff that touched the most intimate parts of me.

Do you disagree?

What do you think, Jesse?

No, that makes sense to me.

Although, you know, when I have lived in apartment buildings and in dorm buildings, which I did for many years,

and even here in the Max Fund offices offices in Los Angeles, which are in a live work building, so there are plenty of folks doing plenty of laundry in the laundry room.

Generally, there's a policy.

So

before I went rogue, I might chat with the apartment building manager and say, hey, you know, I've noticed that sometimes people leave stuff down there.

Could we put up a sign or something?

Oh.

The equivalent of asking the fast food store whether you can get free soda water or not.

Yeah, I guess so.

Figure out what their policy is.

Just so people are forewarned and therefore forearmed.

I think that someone should invent

laundry tongs.

Like big tongs.

So you can get that stuff out of there without having to touch it.

Let's patent that together, Jesse.

I would imagine that Keiko's boyfriend maybe is a little more sensitive to this because

he is not unreasonably more likely to be seen as a creepo

for handling the undergarments of others.

Yeah.

Even in a very reasonable situation like this.

And I think a nice sign would make it clear to everybody whose responsibility it is to keep the washers and dryers.

clear and what the consequences, the very, very mild consequences are if you don't.

Well, I'm going to say that in the case of how I'm going to adjudicate this, I'm going to rule in Keiko's favor.

It's okay, but I think with the caveat that my wise bailiff has suggested that Keiko's boyfriend, and indeed Keiko herself, if they live in the same building or even if she has a different building, you know, get on that email list with your fellow tenants, ask if there's a policy and create one.

Maybe put up a sign.

Communication is always a good answer.

Usually communicating is better than touching people's underwear.

Let's take a quick break.

We've got more stuff on the docket coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We are clearing the docket in chambers and we have something from Roxy.

Hang on, before we get to Roxy, I just want to establish what we've settled so far.

Yeah.

Some pretty important legal precedents have been set in part one of the podcast.

One, don't punch people.

Two, don't touch their underwear.

Three, if it's not fun for everybody, it's no fun at all.

Have we ever talked about, I think, the only time I ever got punched?

No.

I was in front of St.

Mary's Hospital on

Valencia Street in San Francisco,

a block from my father's apartment.

And I was wearing this 49ers jacket that I'd gotten at the Burlington Coat Factory, not to brag, just reality.

My dad took me me there, said I could pick anything I wanted.

And I picked this 49ers sort of Letterman-style jacket.

I was walking down the street.

I was maybe 13.

I saw an older, slightly cooler kid wearing the same jacket, walking the opposite direction.

I said, hey, cool jacket.

And he punched me.

And then he laughed at me and kept walking.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, Jesse.

It's okay.

I mean, he didn't get me that good.

It was very shocking, no.

Oh, yeah.

I got punched on the subway in New York City once.

Wow, really?

Yeah, it was right after I moved here.

It was a very crowded train.

It was a number six train.

On the Upper East Side, it's not well served by the subways.

But at the time, it was very, very small, old trains.

People were all bunched up together.

And I kind of was moving my way into the middle of the car.

And I kind of accidentally brushed by someone's back.

And the guy turned around.

He said, don't touch my back.

I'm like, I'm sorry.

And he said, I said, don't touch my back.

i'm like okay and then he took his hand down from where he was holding on to the strap or the bar and just elbowed me in the face all of a sudden it was not crowded in that car at all

like people found new dimensions to escape to to get away from

and the seat opened up immediately and he sat down but it was crowded enough that i really couldn't go anywhere

And I was just hanging on.

And I, you know, we were there together for a long time in silence.

And a couple of stops later, he looked up and he was in tears.

He was a young guy.

And he was like, I'm really sorry.

I'm just having a really terrible time.

I'm like, I understand.

Holy cow.

That story really came around, John.

Well, I think of it a lot when I think about, you know, there are pros and cons to living in a big city.

Like, one of them is.

You might get an elbow in the face,

but also you're pushed into small spaces together in a highly dense, diverse population.

You have to live together

rather than someone, you know, getting in a road rage and driving away and never seeing the other person.

That was sort of the sense of like, you have to live together.

You have to find a way to get along.

You're going to have to be on this train for a little while longer.

The train now being a metaphor for all of New York or whatever.

Of course, I sued the guy into oblivion.

Oh, one other thing we settled in part one of this podcast, speaking of not to brags, we did establish that I know Black Francis a little bit.

Hi, you guys.

Hope you're listening.

I guess I learned from my experience

not to wear white as a guest at a wedding.

Oh, you mean if you wore a bridal dress to a wedding?

Yeah.

Then you say cool dress, then the bride might punch you.

Yeah,

pretty much.

I'm really grasping at straws here.

I haven't done any like moth workshops.

Maybe Dan Kennedy could help me out with finding a moral to my story.

You know, I I think that it's a variation on the Tom Sharpling principle.

One of the many principles of the best show hosted by Tom Sharpling.

Check it out at thebestshow.net, which is like, don't tell people that they look like

someone from the movies or television or anyone else.

Do you know what I mean?

Because it's very rarely flattering.

It often makes someone feel terrible.

We have a Jordan Jesse Goh rule about that.

What is it?

Never tell someone that they look like someone famous unless that person is famous for being attractive.

Oh, yeah.

I think we've discussed this before.

That's a great thing.

And to be clear, like, you're not allowed to say it if you find that famous person attractive.

They have to be famous for being attractive.

Right.

Like, you look like Brad Pitt.

Exactly.

I'm sure there are listeners who would be kind enough to say, I think, Jesse or John, that you are attractive.

Yeah.

But neither of us is famous for being attractive.

So don't tell anyone on the street that they look like one of us.

That's the rule.

Okay.

Wait, no, no, I'm sorry.

You opened the door.

Yeah.

And I will allow this digression as the judge.

I'm going to save this for my new book, but I'm going to say it here later.

You're going to read about it then.

When I shaved my beard and my disgusting soul patch and only had a mustache so as to star in the television show Blind Spot, hit television show and NBC.

Starred in two episodes.

Hmm.

I kind kind of thought the star of that was Annis Esmerg.

Go ahead.

He wasn't even on the show yet.

He was a recurring character that they did not kill and instead made a series regular.

He kind of came in and seized the day, I guess.

But anyway, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah.

I guess he was so good, they were like, we have to have him on and let's not kill him.

That was not how they felt about my character.

Spoilers.

Another spoiler?

With just my mustache.

If my hair falls a certain way, I look like Hitler.

I know this.

I've known it my whole life.

What I didn't need was the guy who parks my car to tell me that.

I mentioned that I have a car at New York City and we park it in a garage.

There's an attendant there.

And one time I was getting out of it, having worked that morning on Blind Spot, and he goes, you know who you look like?

Hitler.

And I was like, yeah, I, okay.

Like, why are you...

You're supposed to pretend to like me at least.

Like, it's part of our professional relationship that you don't say that I look like history's most notorious villain, mass murderer, evil person.

How do you think that's going to affect my tipping?

Of course, I tipped him double, right?

That's the only thing he can do.

But then he kind of laughed and he goes, no, man, you really look like Hitler.

And he is acting as though he was saying to me, I look like Brad Pitt.

There's no life lesson in that one.

And so if you're wearing a 49ers jacket, you know, people when they dress, you know, this, as a sartorial engineer, they want to feel that that's their look.

If you call out to the guy walking down the street, hey, I've got the same jacket on, you're going to get punched.

Especially if there's a beetle around.

All right, that's my time at the moth, everybody.

See you next time.

Here's something from Roxy.

My girlfriend insists on both drawing and animating using a mouse.

I wish for the judge to instead order her to use a tablet rather than forcing her through the absurdly masochistic act that is drawing with a mouse.

It's drawing on a computer.

Yeah, one presumes so.

It'd be horrible if you were just

using a mouse as a writing implement.

I guess you would dip it in an inkwell.

Yeah, would you dip its little snout or would you dip its little tail?

I don't know.

I guess if you starched the tail, you could use that.

Yeah, we're circling back around to an abusing small animal's motif that I'm finding disturbing now.

So let's presume for the sake of argument that Roxy's girlfriend is using a computer mouse to animate and draw on a computer.

Now, I sympathize.

I spent a lot of time drawing with a mouse in Mac paint on my original 1984-era Macintosh 128K.

You weren't even born yet, Jesse, when I was drawing with a mouse on my Macintosh computer.

I happened to have once owned an Apple II Plus, so.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

It was used.

It was a few years old when we got it.

That's super old school.

Did you play Decathlon on

I did.

Yeah.

That was a good time.

Did you ever have a black and white Macintosh computer?

And if so, did you ever play Dark Castle on it?

Nah, those are for rich kids.

Oh.

Well, I had one, and I used that Mac Paint to do some drawings.

And I can't remember whether it was me or Mitchell Verder who did a really sweet,

very difficult illustration of Cyclops from the X-Men?

With Cyclops looking directly like you, as the viewer, were directly in the lines of Cyclops' I-beams.

And by the way, everyone who sent me letters before, I get it now.

They're beams, not lasers.

They're force beams, not burn beams.

I think it was Mitchell.

Mitchell Verder definitely wrote psych underneath, C-Y-K-E.

But I think we collaborated on the illustration.

Mitch, if you're out there and you're listening, get in touch with me.

It's hodgan at maximumfund.org.

It would be great to hear from you.

I haven't seen you in a long, long time.

But as mind-blowing as it was to be able to manipulate pixels on a screen in 1984, it was primitive, and Cyclops probably looked terrible.

And I can't understand why now that these highly sensitive tablets, which allow you to essentially draw with a writing implement, or a drawing implement, why you wouldn't do this, Roxy's girlfriend.

I don't get it.

But you know what, Roxy's girlfriend?

I bet you have a reason.

It's a choice that you're making, right?

Unless you don't have access to a tablet, in which case, Roxy, get your girlfriend tablet.

But my guess is that it's Roxy's girlfriend's art to do it this way.

And Roxy, let her do her thing.

You know what I did on one of those all-in-one Macintosh computers?

I visited my uncle, my stepmother's brother, John, in Belfast in Northern Ireland.

Yeah.

And I played on his Macintosh computer the game Crystal Quest.

Yo,

hi, hoo-hoo-hoo, yes.

Where you move your mouse around and you collect crystals.

Yep.

And I beat all of his high scores.

Oh, boy.

There wasn't that much to do at his house for a kid, you know, because he was a grown-up and he didn't have kids.

And then we went to Donegal, which is in the northern part of the Republic of Ireland on a little

like,

you know, seaside vacation, cold seaside vacation, you'd elect it.

Sounds like my thing.

Then came back to Belfast and stayed

a week later at my uncle's house again.

And I noticed that he had cleared all the high scores.

Oh, my goodness.

My 40-year-old uncle.

Wow.

He's a good guy, though.

In fact, I'm not even going to say he's a good guy, though.

He's a good guy because of that.

That's like one of the many great things about him.

Look, I don't like to truck in a lot of national stereotypes, but we all know the Irish are very Crystal Quest proud.

Well, did he have Dark Castle or what?

That's what I'm saying.

Dark Castle?

No, I don't think he had Dark Castle.

I don't think I've ever played Dark Castle.

You know, that's the game.

I know that there are...

a bunch of middle-aged dads listening to this right now who are pumping their fists in memory of Dark Castle.

That was an amazing game.

You play a little guy and you're trying to defeat the Black Knight who's at the boss level of all these different sort of puzzle screens where you got to jump around and you got to carefully aim your arm to throw a rock at a rat.

And when the rat dies, it goes,

and when you make a successful jump, you go, yeah.

And they have emulators online, but you can't save it.

You can't, someone's got to hook me up with this dark castle.

Someone out there has this, and I need it as soon as possible.

Rula says, I'm bringing the case against my husband Peter for throwing away sordid recycling.

We pay for a recycling service and have a separate recycling bin in our kitchen, but Peter believes that the recycling company doesn't recycle most of what they collect.

If we're not going to be on the same page about recycling, then I don't think we should be paying a monthly premium to recycle.

I'd like to lessen my carbon footprint and recycle, but Peter thinks it's all a scam.

Help bring justice to our household.

Hmm.

Well, I have a question that I would like to pose directly to Rula.

Rula, does Peter have any evidence that supports his non-recycling conspiracy theory?

I'll take your silence as evidence that you're not actually in the room with me, but also that he doesn't have any.

Now, if I'm wrong, Peter, please write in and tell me, hodgman at maximumfund.org.

Especially write in if you got a copy of Dark Castle that you can send me.

But if I'm wrong, Peter, write me and tell me.

I would love to hear about your adventure, your overnight stakeout at the dump, where you saw and observed and maybe video recorded the dump workers laughing and laughing at all the rubes like Rula who actually separate their recycling all while they're just tossing all those glass jars and plastic bottles into a pit of poison fire.

Ha ha ha.

But if you didn't do that, if you don't know for sure, haven't seen with your own eyes,

that this sordid recycling is just getting tossed in with the other trash, then I say to you, Peter, what I yell to every dude on a bicycle without a helmet in Brooklyn who run the red lights when I'm driving my son to school.

Guys, stop it.

The rules also apply to you.

You are not smarter than the rules, dudes.

We make rules for everyone's benefit.

Obviously, it's not precisely the same because this is an opt-in program to recycling.

It's not as though, but if you think you're smarter than the world based on zero evidence, then the system breaks down.

And if you're a dude without a helmet who thinks that the rules of the road don't apply to you, then what's going to happen is my son's going to go punch Buggy Silver, punch me in the arm, and then I'm accidentally going to drive into you.

Not talking to you, Peter, anymore.

Sorry.

Got a little distracted there.

Peter, I sentence you

not only

to honor the separated recycling, but also go spend a night at the dump.

You have to go spend a whole night at a waste treatment facility, and you're not even allowed to have fun when you're doing it.

You're not even allowed to act in an episode of Amazon's forthcoming season two of The Tick, which is what I did the last time I spent a night at the dump.

Did I tell you that, Jesse?

No.

You told me that you were in season two of The Tick.

I'm very excited about it.

It's a great great show, but I didn't know that you spent that night at the dump.

Spoiler.

Well, it's not a spoiler because I won't reveal what happened, but I got to enjoy not one, not two, but three overnight shoots at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where they have magnificent, huge, futuristic silver eggs called digesters, where all of New York City's poop goes.

Three whole nights I had to stay awake.

It was actually pretty magical.

So, thanks.

Season two of the tick coming out sometime next year.

Isn't the deal with recycling basically

that the reason it is third on the list of reduce, reuse, recycle is because it is the least efficient of those three things.

It's the one that helps the earth the least.

It's less efficient than you wish it would be.

You imagine if you throw a can into the recycling bin, it comes out as a clean new can immediately with no cost.

Right.

But that is not an argument for throwing that can in the garbage instead.

Look,

if you have to throw a can in the garbage every now and then because there's no other way to dispose of it, it happens.

I get it, Peter.

But Peter is peddling a conspiracy theory that all of the recycling just gets thrown in the garbage later on down the line.

And if that's true,

Then, okay, go for it, Peter.

But prove to me that that's true.

I don't think that he's done his legwork.

I think he's been listening to too much talk radio.

I will say this, John.

You, generally speaking, can't recycle pizza boxes.

Do you know why?

Because of the grease.

That's right.

They're food soiled, John.

I had to talk with the dump person about that, and it was very edifying.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, we'll hear about coffee cups and, ooh, pebble ice, my favorite.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket this week.

Here's something from Lucy.

Why does every cafe have wide-mouthed, shallow, dinky-handled cups with saucers?

Liquid becomes lukewarm the minute it's poured into these things.

Unless you chug its contents, you've got a $5 cup of garbage.

Why?

It doesn't say to say garbage like that, as sort of like an interpretation from me.

No, I think you're really embodying Lucy's rage here.

Give me more.

Why is this?

Do some people like these cups?

Are cafes just trying to move patrons along and discourage loitering?

Are they all just sheep getting these crappy cups because everyone else has them?

Can I bring my own mug?

My husband John doesn't think I can.

Can you shed light on this?

And if you agree with me, can you shame these cafes?

All right, Jesse, that was great.

Let's do it one more time.

I think we have rage covered now.

Let's try maybe natural.

Good audition.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you.

Okay, I mean, I could do another.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, do you have my headshot?

Do you have my headshot?

No, we have it.

Do you have my number?

We have it.

Just.

Is there anything else I can?

Oh, you know what you can do?

Do you want to read something else?

I have a contemporary and a classical.

Just

stand up and say your name for the camera and humiliate yourself by saying your height and weight.

It's an audition thing that happens.

I don't think they've ever asked me my weight, I don't think.

So, oh, Lucy, so mad.

But I don't blame.

I think Lucy's problem

is that she's going to coffee houses

in 1997.

I do not know what she's talking about, but I do remember those big mugs and saucers from 1997.

She could be.

Was there a character named Lucy on Friends?

Yeah.

It felt very Central Perk to me what she was describing.

And I was just thinking about this recently because we had in our neighborhood here in Brooklyn

a couple of

late 90s coffee house holdovers.

It was actually a tea place called the Tea Lounge.

And they were trying to be for tea what Central Perk had been for coffee.

And it had this total friends vibe with these overstuffed velvet couches and these like gratty Persian rugs and like mismatched coffee tables and this whole sort of like

90s corduroy bohemian vibe.

And they had those mugs, those big oversized mugs that are very wide and like saucers that you don't want.

But those, I don't see those anymore.

So maybe I think, Lucy, you need to find another coffee house because I've been all across this great land and most coffee houses.

I've gone to coffee shops, coffee houses, cafes, whatever you want to call them.

They'll have mugs if you want to be

ecologically minded and not take a paper cup.

But they're usually just regular old mugs, straight sides,

deep, thick walled, keeps your coffee hot.

But to answer your question, if every coffee shop in your weird pocket dimension that is stuck in friends' time

only serves coffee in those wide bowl type mugs or coffee cups.

You are absolutely right to bring in your own mug.

I think that's perfectly reasonable.

You're doing the planet right by selecting the mug option and bringing your own mug.

That's called reusing.

Or you could just hold one of those big wide mugs with both hands and be in like a yogurt commercial.

Nescafe Moments.

Yeah.

Next time we do a promo for the show, the Judge Jan Hodgman Show, which is this one, Whether we do an audio, maybe we can even do a video of it.

It's like you and me on a balcony, early morning, balcony of a cabin in the woods, just drinking big international coffees and just saying to each other, it's good to see you, Jesse.

This is our time.

Could we maybe get out on like a dock in a lake?

Yeah.

Where it's real beautiful and green and there's like a mist and we're each inside a bathtub next to each other when we reach over and hold hands.

We're in separate bathtubs on the beach?

Yeah, and we're both kind of silver fox types.

Yeah, let's do it.

I can't wait.

Okay, we have a letter here from a listener named Nora.

She says, I've been listening to the archives of the podcast and got to an old episode where Jesse said that he likes pebble ice.

I wanted to make sure that he knew that fast food restaurants mostly let you buy a bunch of that ice.

The sandwich shop Witch Witch advertises it, and a lot of Sonics will let you buy a big bag and take it home.

Did you know this, Jesse?

I didn't know that.

It seems weird to me.

I don't know if I'm fully prepared.

I think...

The idea of buying a weird machine that only makes Pebble ice, of which there is now one available to home consumers.

And Pebble ice, for listeners who haven't listened for that long, is that kind of round, lightweight, crunchy ice that you want to chew on.

Mm-hmm.

So-called because it's like little pebbles.

Yeah.

It's for people who want to chew pebbles, but they can't because it's bad for your teeth and society frowns upon it.

This is an ice version of pebbles that is okay for you to chew.

Yeah.

And, you know, I live,

like you, I live in an expensive urban center.

So I can't afford to have the kind of house that has like a pantry attached to the kitchen uh where there's like uh a washer and dryer or whatever or like a mud room or whatever i don't have any of these extra rooms you know yeah so i don't have a place to put it my kitchen's too small to have a whole ice machine but i would do that if i had one of those my concern here is that once i go and pay money to the sonic once i go to the sonic and i say tj jagadowski sent me

uh legendary improv actor star of the sonic commercials

i know who you're talking about, that guy.

Yeah.

Shout out, by the way, to his improv partner, Dave, who's on a great show called Lodge 49 that I really like.

I've heard good things about that show.

I should check it out, eh?

Your man, Bruce Campbell, is so choice in it.

Oh, it has some gorgeous Bruce Campbell work in it.

I didn't know that Bruce was in that.

I'm embarrassed.

Yeah.

So anyway.

To buy enough of this ice to justify my trip to Sonic,

I would have to have

one of those rooms so that I could have a special freezer where I keep extra frozen things, which is also something that I aspire to, but is impossible for me being a resident of a city where,

you know, houses cost a million dollars.

So you don't have room in your existing freezer for a bag of pebble ice from Sonic?

Absolutely not.

No.

At the moment, my freezer is full of cassoulet.

Oh.

Because I made some cassoulet in the slow cooker, and

you make four servings worth so you can eat it over the next couple of months so you don't have to make another lot of cassoulet.

That is a wonderful autumnal dish.

Anytime I make a stew

or

any juicy food.

Gross.

I'll allow it.

I'll freeze a couple of Tumblewears worth so that I have it for a weeknight dinner in a month, you know?

Well,

as I say, Cassoulet Cassolay is one of my favorite autumnal treats, but I would say throw that into the lake,

let your children go hungry, and get yourself some pebble ice from Sonic.

Treat yourself.

I got some homemade ice cream in my freezer right now.

Oh, what flavors?

It's sort of like a chai.

Like I started with some black tea and added some cardamom.

Very good.

That's the only flavor that's in there right now.

I really only eat one bowl of ice cream at a time.

Well, holiday time is nigh upon us, and now I've got some very good ideas for a gift for my bailiff, Jesse Thorne.

A pocket dimension within his own freezer.

A new house with a room that I can put a stand-alone freezer in?

What if I just ignored everything you said and sent you a huge stand-alone freezer?

Man, I would like to have one.

My wife keeps talking about, should we have one of those?

And I'm like, wait, wait, put it where?

We have three children sleeping in one bedroom.

Well, you know, you could put it in the corner of their bedroom, I suppose.

Maybe, depending on the form factor, we might be able to fit it under our bed.

You know what it could be, Jesse?

Oh my God, I've just, this is incredible.

You get like a dorm fridge-sized freezer,

fill it up with pebble ice, use that as your bedside table.

Come on.

Oh, yeah.

Bad news, my fire safe is already my bedside table.

Got my important documents in there.

Fair enough.

All right.

If you have to choose in life between a fire safe and a standalone freezer, two great dad options.

Classic dichotomy, fire and ice.

That's right.

George R.

R.

Martin would be proud.

I think probably the fire safe is the more responsible way to go.

Well, we'll find a way to get you pebble ice sometime.

In the meantime, I've never heard of Witch Witch.

That's apparently a sandwich shop that started in Dallas.

Good for you guys for carrying that Pebble ice.

Would you be our sponsor?

Also, TJ Jagadowski, if you're listening, will you be our sponsor?

Also, Tupperware, you got a shout out there.

Would you be our sponsor?

I think I use Glad Snapware.

So Glad Snapware.

Hit me up.

Yeah.

Okay.

The docket is clear and we've run out of corporations.

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

Our producer is the great Jennifer Marmer.

You can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

We are on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

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Are you at Hodgman there or at John Hodgman?

It is John Hodgman.

At John Hodgman is my personal Instagram.

Please do follow along if you feel like it.

But do make a point of following the JudgeJohn Hodgman Instagram.

That is a lot of fun.

We get a lot of fun photos of cute animals and adorable litigants.

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And check out the Maximum Fun subreddit to discuss this episode.

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

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

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