Slunch Buggy No Punch Backs

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

Speaker 3 I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

Speaker 4 We're in chambers this week, and we are going to clear the docket.

Speaker 7 With me, as always,

Speaker 8 the hardest-working man in show business, Judge Brother Number One, Judge John Hodgman.

Speaker 10 Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast. We're glad you're here.

Speaker 10 And Jesse, I'm glad you're here.

Speaker 11 I'm glad you're here, John.

Speaker 12 Do you want to clear the docket?

Speaker 10 Let's get rid of that docket because it's, you know what it is right now? Unclear.

Speaker 14 Well, we've got something from Andy.

Speaker 10 All right.

Speaker 4 Dear Judge Hodgman, what's the appropriate phrase to use upon seeing a Volkswagen Beetle prior to giving someone a gentle fist-based tap?

Speaker 16 Punch in the shoulder.

Speaker 10 Punch in the shoulder.

Speaker 9 I believe the correct phrase is slug bug.

Speaker 16 My wife thinks punch buggy is correct and has taught our sons to think the same.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 4 I have no desire to stop my wife and kids from using their preferred phrase.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 10 Slug bug? I had never heard that before. Jesse, you're familiar with this hit your friend game, right?

Speaker 23 Yeah, I previously had known it only as Punch Buggy.

Speaker 10 I've only ever heard of it as Punch Buggy. And yet I looked it up.

Speaker 10 Sorry, what?

Speaker 8 I'm laughing because it occurred to me that his elaborate circumlocution of the word punch in his description of what you do,

Speaker 4 he described it as a gentle fist-based tap.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 20 Was intentional.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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?

Speaker 10 And you punch your friend in the shoulder.

Speaker 10 This is a real game, and it is called slug bug, according to Wikipedia.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 If you're listening, thanks, by the way. Thanks for taking an interest.
But please stop punching me while I drive.

Speaker 26 Yeah, if any of my kids are listening, I just want them to know I love them.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 But I didn't really appreciate how awful it is until I read this Wikipedia page on the game of Slunchbuggy, Slunchbubby,

Speaker 10 which pointed out that in 2009,

Speaker 10 the Volkswagen Automobile Company commissioned an ad from the advertising agency Deutsch

Speaker 10 that used this in the ad. And it was not just buggies.
It was not just Beatles.

Speaker 10 The whole ad was people seeing a Volkswagen.

Speaker 10 And then they would turn to the other one and go,

Speaker 10 they renamed it because it was all the things. It was Punch Dub, as in VW.

Speaker 10 Sure.

Speaker 10 And it's all these people just turning to each other going, punch-dub, white, and then punching their friends and their coworkers

Speaker 10 and their family members in the arm, not always softly.

Speaker 10 And it's clear that the other person doesn't like it. This is in the ad.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 One of the greatest years I was still making Apple ads.

Speaker 10 This was the low point of 2009. A child in this punch dub ad

Speaker 10 sees a Jeddah or something, and he goes punch-dub white, and he turns to his grandpa and like punches his grandpa like

Speaker 10 in a private area.

Speaker 10 Like, I think they try to play it as the upper thigh, but the implication is clear. It was a national ad campaign.

Speaker 10 So.

Speaker 15 About private punching grandpas.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 5 Roboto.

Speaker 26 Yeah. Doing a dance.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 16 And you're like, hey, that's Tony Hale from Arrested Development because you can see the future when you saw it.

Speaker 25 Right.

Speaker 19 In 1998 or whatever.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 I hope you pick me.

Speaker 10 Sorry, Justin. I hope you pick me.
But if you pick Justin, that's fine too.

Speaker 13 Bad news. They picked Patrick Warburton.

Speaker 20 He made an appearance once.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Oh, guy's as good as it gets. Zach Galifanakis was in one.

Speaker 26 Galifenak attack? Yeah.

Speaker 10 Paul F. Tompkins.

Speaker 10 They played dueling Santa Clauses. The world will never know what I saw.
I'm like Rector Hauer at the end of Blade Runner.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Unless I write it all down. In any case, Andy,

Speaker 10 I find in your favor

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 The cat was named Francis because it was a black cat and she was a fan of the Pixies.

Speaker 10 So she named it Black Francis.

Speaker 10 This is not something we've ever revealed to our acquaintance,

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 5 Well, I've got bad news for you, John.

Speaker 26 This is going to be quite a disappointment to my vacation home acquaintance, St.

Speaker 18 Francis of Assisi.

Speaker 4 I have a vacation home in Assisi.

Speaker 10 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?

Speaker 10 I guarantee you that Annie Clark is not thinking that.

Speaker 10 In any case, we have this adorable, dumb, huge cat, Francis. He was a dumb-dumb.

Speaker 10 I love dumb cats. And our daughter was trying to pull its tail.

Speaker 10 And I'm like, don't pull the cat's tail.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Wow. Well, it blew her mind.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 5 Very kind young woman.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 She called him Fatty, which was accurate.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Fatty's bum. Leave it.

Speaker 10 So anyway, Andy, if it's not fun for everybody, it's no fun at all.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 But you're right. You're right anyway.
Slugbug is is fine.

Speaker 4 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?

Speaker 12 Do you know that one?

Speaker 10 You know how I feel about that one? Fatty's bum. Leave it.

Speaker 4 Keiko says, my boyfriend complains that his neighbors don't take their clothes out of the washers and dryers in a timely manner.

Speaker 30 I think it's totally okay to take their clothes out and put them in the basket, especially if you're in a hurry.

Speaker 18 But he thinks we shouldn't touch other people's clothes, like their underwear.

Speaker 4 What do you say, John?

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 I presume you have as well, Jesse, in your life?

Speaker 9 I have too, although I've never really had this problem such that it got in the way of my life.

Speaker 4 I think I probably lived in shared accommodations, certainly at UC Santa Cruz, with people who simply didn't wash.

Speaker 10 Oh, okay. I was going to say, boy, the people of Santa Cruz are fast washers.
No, no, they're non-washers.

Speaker 5 Yeah, the volume is lower, so there's less of a bottleneck.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 That's your punishment for getting up in their stuff. The system evens out,

Speaker 10 is what I'm saying.

Speaker 26 It's a self-managing system, like a fractal.

Speaker 10 Yeah, exactly. This is a self-managing shame system.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 They touched my stuff that touched the most intimate parts of me.

Speaker 10 Do you disagree? What do you think, Jesse?

Speaker 8 No, that makes sense to me.

Speaker 21 Although, you know, when I have lived in apartment buildings and in dorm buildings, which I did for many years,

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 16 Generally, there's a policy.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 4 Could we put up a sign or something?

Speaker 10 Oh. The equivalent of asking the fast food store whether you can get free soda water or not.

Speaker 15 Yeah, I guess so.

Speaker 10 Figure out what their policy is.

Speaker 4 Just so people are forewarned and therefore forearmed.

Speaker 10 I think that someone should invent

Speaker 10 laundry tongs.

Speaker 10 Like big tongs.

Speaker 10 So you can get that stuff out of there without having to touch it. Let's patent that together, Jesse.

Speaker 9 I would imagine that Keiko's boyfriend maybe is a little more sensitive to this because

Speaker 9 he is not unreasonably more likely to be seen as a creepo

Speaker 9 for handling the undergarments of others.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 9 Even in a very reasonable situation like this.

Speaker 18 And I think a nice sign would make it clear to everybody whose responsibility it is to keep the washers and dryers.

Speaker 29 clear and what the consequences, the very, very mild consequences are if you don't.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Maybe put up a sign. Communication is always a good answer.
Usually communicating is better than touching people's underwear.

Speaker 4 Let's take a quick break.

Speaker 12 We've got more stuff on the docket coming up in just a minute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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Speaker 1 Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Speaker 2 We are clearing the docket in chambers and we have something from Roxy.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Two, don't touch their underwear. Three, if it's not fun for everybody, it's no fun at all.

Speaker 4 Have we ever talked about, I think, the only time I ever got punched?

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 17 I was in front of St. Mary's Hospital on

Speaker 4 Valencia Street in San Francisco,

Speaker 21 a block from my father's apartment.

Speaker 4 And I was wearing this 49ers jacket that I'd gotten at the Burlington Coat Factory, not to brag, just reality.

Speaker 4 My dad took me me there, said I could pick anything I wanted.

Speaker 30 And I picked this 49ers sort of Letterman-style jacket. I was walking down the street.

Speaker 4 I was maybe 13. I saw an older, slightly cooler kid wearing the same jacket, walking the opposite direction.

Speaker 13 I said, hey, cool jacket.

Speaker 24 And he punched me.

Speaker 19 And then he laughed at me and kept walking.

Speaker 10 Oh, no.

Speaker 10 Yeah. I'm sorry, Jesse.

Speaker 19 It's okay. I mean, he didn't get me that good.

Speaker 24 It was very shocking, no.

Speaker 10 Oh, yeah. I got punched on the subway in New York City once.

Speaker 24 Wow, really?

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 And I kind of accidentally brushed by someone's back.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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

Speaker 10 like people found new dimensions to escape to to get away from

Speaker 10 and the seat opened up immediately and he sat down but it was crowded enough that i really couldn't go anywhere

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 And he was like, I'm really sorry. I'm just having a really terrible time.
I'm like, I understand.

Speaker 28 Holy cow.

Speaker 3 That story really came around, John.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 You might get an elbow in the face,

Speaker 10 but also you're pushed into small spaces together in a highly dense, diverse population. You have to live together

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Of course, I sued the guy into oblivion.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 2 I guess I learned from my experience

Speaker 9 not to wear white as a guest at a wedding.

Speaker 10 Oh, you mean if you wore a bridal dress to a wedding?

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Then you say cool dress, then the bride might punch you.

Speaker 25 Yeah,

Speaker 25 pretty much.

Speaker 8 I'm really grasping at straws here.

Speaker 4 I haven't done any like moth workshops.

Speaker 24 Maybe Dan Kennedy could help me out with finding a moral to my story.

Speaker 10 You know, I I think that it's a variation on the Tom Sharpling principle.

Speaker 10 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

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 9 We have a Jordan Jesse Goh rule about that.

Speaker 7 What is it?

Speaker 16 Never tell someone that they look like someone famous unless that person is famous for being attractive.

Speaker 37 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 10 I think we've discussed this before. That's a great thing.

Speaker 4 And to be clear, like, you're not allowed to say it if you find that famous person attractive.

Speaker 9 They have to be famous for being attractive.

Speaker 10 Right. Like, you look like Brad Pitt.

Speaker 9 Exactly.

Speaker 8 I'm sure there are listeners who would be kind enough to say, I think, Jesse or John, that you are attractive.

Speaker 33 Yeah.

Speaker 3 But neither of us is famous for being attractive.

Speaker 18 So don't tell anyone on the street that they look like one of us.

Speaker 24 That's the rule.

Speaker 10 Okay. Wait, no, no, I'm sorry.
You opened the door.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And I will allow this digression as the judge.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Starred in two episodes.

Speaker 25 Hmm.

Speaker 4 I kind kind of thought the star of that was Annis Esmerg.

Speaker 11 Go ahead.

Speaker 10 He wasn't even on the show yet. He was a recurring character that they did not kill and instead made a series regular.

Speaker 22 He kind of came in and seized the day, I guess.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 What I didn't need was the guy who parks my car to tell me that.

Speaker 10 I mentioned that I have a car at New York City and we park it in a garage. There's an attendant there.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 And I was like, yeah, I, okay. Like, why are you...
You're supposed to pretend to like me at least.

Speaker 10 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?

Speaker 10 Of course, I tipped him double, right? That's the only thing he can do.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 All right, that's my time at the moth, everybody. See you next time.

Speaker 8 Here's something from Roxy. My girlfriend insists on both drawing and animating using a mouse.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 10 It's drawing on a computer.

Speaker 1 Yeah, one presumes so.

Speaker 36 It'd be horrible if you were just

Speaker 33 using a mouse as a writing implement.

Speaker 19 I guess you would dip it in an inkwell.

Speaker 10 Yeah, would you dip its little snout or would you dip its little tail?

Speaker 17 I don't know. I guess if you starched the tail, you could use that.

Speaker 10 Yeah, we're circling back around to an abusing small animal's motif that I'm finding disturbing now.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 I spent a lot of time drawing with a mouse in Mac paint on my original 1984-era Macintosh 128K.

Speaker 10 You weren't even born yet, Jesse, when I was drawing with a mouse on my Macintosh computer.

Speaker 26 I happened to have once owned an Apple II Plus, so.

Speaker 28 Oh, really?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It was used.

Speaker 5 It was a few years old when we got it.

Speaker 10 That's super old school. Did you play Decathlon on

Speaker 25 I did. Yeah.

Speaker 10 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?

Speaker 32 Nah, those are for rich kids.

Speaker 25 Oh.

Speaker 10 Well, I had one, and I used that Mac Paint to do some drawings.

Speaker 10 And I can't remember whether it was me or Mitchell Verder who did a really sweet,

Speaker 10 very difficult illustration of Cyclops from the X-Men?

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 They're force beams, not burn beams.

Speaker 10 I think it was Mitchell. Mitchell Verder definitely wrote psych underneath, C-Y-K-E.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 I haven't seen you in a long, long time.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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?

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 12 You know what I did on one of those all-in-one Macintosh computers?

Speaker 18 I visited my uncle, my stepmother's brother, John, in Belfast in Northern Ireland.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And I played on his Macintosh computer the game Crystal Quest.

Speaker 10 Yo,

Speaker 10 hi, hoo-hoo-hoo, yes.

Speaker 30 Where you move your mouse around and you collect crystals. Yep.

Speaker 17 And I beat all of his high scores.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 4 And then we went to Donegal, which is in the northern part of the Republic of Ireland on a little

Speaker 5 like,

Speaker 18 you know, seaside vacation, cold seaside vacation, you'd elect it.

Speaker 10 Sounds like my thing.

Speaker 16 Then came back to Belfast and stayed

Speaker 7 a week later at my uncle's house again.

Speaker 29 And I noticed that he had cleared all the high scores.

Speaker 10 Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 25 My 40-year-old uncle.

Speaker 25 Wow.

Speaker 19 He's a good guy, though.

Speaker 4 In fact, I'm not even going to say he's a good guy, though. He's a good guy because of that.

Speaker 19 That's like one of the many great things about him.

Speaker 10 Look, I don't like to truck in a lot of national stereotypes, but we all know the Irish are very Crystal Quest proud.

Speaker 10 Well, did he have Dark Castle or what? That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 19 Dark Castle? No, I don't think he had Dark Castle. I don't think I've ever played Dark Castle.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 And when the rat dies, it goes,

Speaker 10 and when you make a successful jump, you go, yeah.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 4 Rula says, I'm bringing the case against my husband Peter for throwing away sordid recycling.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 23 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.

Speaker 7 I'd like to lessen my carbon footprint and recycle, but Peter thinks it's all a scam.

Speaker 30 Help bring justice to our household.

Speaker 25 Hmm.

Speaker 10 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?

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Now, if I'm wrong, Peter, please write in and tell me, hodgman at maximumfund.org.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 25 Ha ha ha.

Speaker 10 But if you didn't do that, if you don't know for sure, haven't seen with your own eyes,

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Guys, stop it. The rules also apply to you.

Speaker 10 You are not smarter than the rules, dudes. We make rules for everyone's benefit.

Speaker 10 Obviously, it's not precisely the same because this is an opt-in program to recycling.

Speaker 10 It's not as though, but if you think you're smarter than the world based on zero evidence, then the system breaks down.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Not talking to you, Peter, anymore. Sorry.
Got a little distracted there.

Speaker 10 Peter, I sentence you

Speaker 10 not only

Speaker 10 to honor the separated recycling, but also go spend a night at the dump.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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?

Speaker 24 No.

Speaker 4 You told me that you were in season two of The Tick.

Speaker 3 I'm very excited about it.

Speaker 19 It's a great great show, but I didn't know that you spent that night at the dump.

Speaker 10 Spoiler.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 8 Isn't the deal with recycling basically

Speaker 3 that the reason it is third on the list of reduce, reuse, recycle is because it is the least efficient of those three things.

Speaker 4 It's the one that helps the earth the least.

Speaker 16 It's less efficient than you wish it would be.

Speaker 4 You imagine if you throw a can into the recycling bin, it comes out as a clean new can immediately with no cost.

Speaker 24 Right.

Speaker 23 But that is not an argument for throwing that can in the garbage instead.

Speaker 10 Look,

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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,

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 8 I will say this, John.

Speaker 29 You, generally speaking, can't recycle pizza boxes.

Speaker 10 Do you know why?

Speaker 26 Because of the grease. That's right.

Speaker 15 They're food soiled, John.

Speaker 10 I had to talk with the dump person about that, and it was very edifying.

Speaker 33 Let's take a quick break.

Speaker 11 When we come back, we'll hear about coffee cups and, ooh, pebble ice, my favorite.

Speaker 38 I'm Emily Fleming.

Speaker 39 I'm Jordan Morris. And I'm Matt Lieb.

Speaker 38 We are real comedy writers.

Speaker 39 Real friends.

Speaker 10 And real cheapskates.

Speaker 39 On every episode of our podcast, Free with Ads, we ask, why pay for expensive streaming services when you can get free movies from apps with weird names?

Speaker 38 Each week, we review the freest movies the internet has to offer. Classics like Pride and Prejudice.

Speaker 17 Cult classics like Point Break.

Speaker 39 And holy sh, what did I just watch? Classics like Teen Witch.

Speaker 38 Tune in every week as we take a deep dive into the internet's bargain bin.

Speaker 10 Every Tuesday on maximumfund.org or your favorite pod plays.

Speaker 39 The Flophouse is a podcast where we watch a bad movie and then we talk about it.

Speaker 40 Robert Shaw in Jaws, and they're trying to figure out how to get rid of the ghoulies. He scratches his fails and goes, I'll get you a ghoulie.

Speaker 39 He's just standing above the toilet with a heartbreak.

Speaker 39 No, I'm just looking forward to you going through the other ways in which Wild Wild West is historically inaccurate.

Speaker 36 Do you know how much movies cost nowadays when you add in your popped corn and your bagel bites and your cheese critters.

Speaker 40 You can't go wrong with Henry Camel Mustache.

Speaker 32 Here at Henry Camill Mustache is the only supplier.

Speaker 25 The Flop House.

Speaker 31 New episodes every Saturday. Find it at maximumfun.org.

Speaker 4 Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Speaker 2 We're clearing the docket this week.

Speaker 16 Here's something from Lucy.

Speaker 9 Why does every cafe have wide-mouthed, shallow, dinky-handled cups with saucers?

Speaker 6 Liquid becomes lukewarm the minute it's poured into these things. Unless you chug its contents, you've got a $5 cup of garbage.

Speaker 31 Why?

Speaker 27 It doesn't say to say garbage like that, as sort of like an interpretation from me.

Speaker 10 No, I think you're really embodying Lucy's rage here. Give me more.

Speaker 31 Why is this?

Speaker 9 Do some people like these cups?

Speaker 41 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?

Speaker 6 Can I bring my own mug?

Speaker 4 My husband John doesn't think I can. Can you shed light on this?

Speaker 22 And if you agree with me, can you shame these cafes?

Speaker 10 All right, Jesse, that was great. Let's do it one more time.

Speaker 10 I think we have rage covered now. Let's try maybe natural.

Speaker 10 Good audition. Thank you for coming.
Thank you.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 Do you have my number? We have it. Just.

Speaker 19 Is there anything else I can?

Speaker 10 Oh, you know what you can do?

Speaker 13 Do you want to read something else?

Speaker 30 I have a contemporary and a classical.

Speaker 10 Just

Speaker 10 stand up and say your name for the camera and humiliate yourself by saying your height and weight.

Speaker 10 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

Speaker 10 is that she's going to coffee houses

Speaker 10 in 1997.

Speaker 10 I do not know what she's talking about, but I do remember those big mugs and saucers from 1997.

Speaker 1 She could be.

Speaker 14 Was there a character named Lucy on Friends?

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 10 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

Speaker 10 a couple of

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 I've gone to coffee shops, coffee houses, cafes, whatever you want to call them.

Speaker 10 They'll have mugs if you want to be

Speaker 10 ecologically minded and not take a paper cup.

Speaker 10 But they're usually just regular old mugs, straight sides,

Speaker 10 deep, thick walled, keeps your coffee hot.

Speaker 10 But to answer your question, if every coffee shop in your weird pocket dimension that is stuck in friends' time

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 You're doing the planet right by selecting the mug option and bringing your own mug. That's called reusing.

Speaker 26 Or you could just hold one of those big wide mugs with both hands and be in like a yogurt commercial.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 6 Could we maybe get out on like a dock in a lake?

Speaker 27 Yeah.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 10 We're in separate bathtubs on the beach?

Speaker 18 Yeah, and we're both kind of silver fox types.

Speaker 29 Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 25 I can't wait.

Speaker 23 Okay, we have a letter here from a listener named Nora.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 17 I wanted to make sure that he knew that fast food restaurants mostly let you buy a bunch of that ice.

Speaker 17 The sandwich shop Witch Witch advertises it, and a lot of Sonics will let you buy a big bag and take it home.

Speaker 10 Did you know this, Jesse?

Speaker 14 I didn't know that.

Speaker 6 It seems weird to me.

Speaker 14 I don't know if I'm fully prepared. I think...

Speaker 9 The idea of buying a weird machine that only makes Pebble ice, of which there is now one available to home consumers.

Speaker 9 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.

Speaker 25 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 17 So-called because it's like little pebbles.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 9 And, you know, I live,

Speaker 4 like you, I live in an expensive urban center.

Speaker 19 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

Speaker 17 uh legendary improv actor star of the sonic commercials

Speaker 10 i know who you're talking about, that guy.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 27 Shout out, by the way, to his improv partner, Dave, who's on a great show called Lodge 49 that I really like.

Speaker 10 I've heard good things about that show. I should check it out, eh?

Speaker 3 Your man, Bruce Campbell, is so choice in it. Oh, it has some gorgeous Bruce Campbell work in it.

Speaker 10 I didn't know that Bruce was in that. I'm embarrassed.

Speaker 37 Yeah.

Speaker 9 So anyway.

Speaker 8 To buy enough of this ice to justify my trip to Sonic,

Speaker 1 I would have to have

Speaker 8 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,

Speaker 32 you know, houses cost a million dollars.

Speaker 10 So you don't have room in your existing freezer for a bag of pebble ice from Sonic?

Speaker 37 Absolutely not. No.

Speaker 4 At the moment, my freezer is full of cassoulet.

Speaker 25 Oh.

Speaker 4 Because I made some cassoulet in the slow cooker, and

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 10 That is a wonderful autumnal dish.

Speaker 8 Anytime I make a stew

Speaker 10 or

Speaker 41 any juicy food.

Speaker 10 Gross.

Speaker 10 I'll allow it.

Speaker 9 I'll freeze a couple of Tumblewears worth so that I have it for a weeknight dinner in a month, you know?

Speaker 10 Well,

Speaker 10 as I say, Cassoulet Cassolay is one of my favorite autumnal treats, but I would say throw that into the lake,

Speaker 10 let your children go hungry, and get yourself some pebble ice from Sonic. Treat yourself.

Speaker 4 I got some homemade ice cream in my freezer right now.

Speaker 10 Oh, what flavors?

Speaker 8 It's sort of like a chai.

Speaker 4 Like I started with some black tea and added some cardamom.

Speaker 3 Very good.

Speaker 4 That's the only flavor that's in there right now.

Speaker 27 I really only eat one bowl of ice cream at a time.

Speaker 10 Well, holiday time is nigh upon us, and now I've got some very good ideas for a gift for my bailiff, Jesse Thorne.

Speaker 10 A pocket dimension within his own freezer.

Speaker 13 A new house with a room that I can put a stand-alone freezer in?

Speaker 10 What if I just ignored everything you said and sent you a huge stand-alone freezer?

Speaker 11 Man, I would like to have one.

Speaker 2 My wife keeps talking about, should we have one of those?

Speaker 24 And I'm like, wait, wait, put it where?

Speaker 13 We have three children sleeping in one bedroom.

Speaker 10 Well, you know, you could put it in the corner of their bedroom, I suppose.

Speaker 12 Maybe, depending on the form factor, we might be able to fit it under our bed.

Speaker 10 You know what it could be, Jesse? Oh my God, I've just, this is incredible. You get like a dorm fridge-sized freezer,

Speaker 10 fill it up with pebble ice, use that as your bedside table. Come on.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 24 Bad news, my fire safe is already my bedside table.

Speaker 8 Got my important documents in there.

Speaker 10 Fair enough. All right.
If you have to choose in life between a fire safe and a standalone freezer, two great dad options.

Speaker 13 Classic dichotomy, fire and ice.

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 In the meantime, I've never heard of Witch Witch. That's apparently a sandwich shop that started in Dallas.

Speaker 10 Good for you guys for carrying that Pebble ice. Would you be our sponsor?

Speaker 3 Also, TJ Jagadowski, if you're listening, will you be our sponsor?

Speaker 10 Also, Tupperware, you got a shout out there. Would you be our sponsor?

Speaker 4 I think I use Glad Snapware.

Speaker 28 So Glad Snapware.

Speaker 9 Hit me up. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 9 The docket is clear and we've run out of corporations.

Speaker 2 That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman.

Speaker 4 Our producer is the great Jennifer Marmer.

Speaker 18 You can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne and at Hodgman.

Speaker 11 We are on Instagram at JudgeJohnHodgman.

Speaker 22 John, you're personally on Instagram as well.

Speaker 20 Are you at Hodgman there or at John Hodgman?

Speaker 10 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.

Speaker 10 We get a lot of fun photos of cute animals and adorable litigants.

Speaker 30 I'm put.this.on.

Speaker 1 Make sure to hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ H.

Speaker 9 O.

Speaker 4 And check out the Maximum Fun subreddit to discuss this episode.

Speaker 8 That's at maximumfun.reddit.com.

Speaker 1 Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash jjho or email them to us at hodgman at maximumfund.org.

Speaker 2 We'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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