Tambourine With the Evidence

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, Tambourine with the evidence.

Ann brings the case against her husband, Mike.

Mike spends a lot of time on the road for work.

He likes to bring home a musical instrument from each trip as a souvenir, but Ann thinks he doesn't need to bring an instrument home from every country.

Who's right?

Who's wrong?

Only one man can decide.

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

Instrument whose name means three strings.

That's it.

Swear I'm in, Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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 recently abandoned the ukulele in favor of the Persian stringed instrument known as the Ood?

Sure.

As a fan of the ood, yes, I do.

Very well.

Judge Hodgman.

Ann and Mike, you may be seated.

Good Scrabble word, by the way, there.

Jancy Thorne.

Ood.

You see everything through Scrabble-colored glasses.

I do.

It's just za and za in both lenses.

But meanwhile, Ann and Mike, you guys are here.

You're very kind enough to be on this podcast, so I suppose I should talk to you.

I kept it brief this time, the cultural reference, in part because it is the most appropriate cultural reference, and in part because I'm exhausted.

I also have traveled recently from, in this case, Europe.

I haven't been to Europe in decades.

I went to Venice and I went to Paris.

It's like three o'clock in the morning for me right now, so I'm tired.

I couldn't do a long one.

So I'm going to repeat this one for you.

Instrument whose name means three strings.

An immediate summary judgment, one of your favorites, if you can guess what I am referring to.

Mike, you go first.

I would say a balalaika is the only three-stringed instrument that I know.

It's a Russian instrument.

Balalaika?

It's got a person.

Yeah.

All right.

I thought it was going to be a person.

That's some real Bala Fleck stuff there.

You play the Balalaika?

Bala Fleck?

I don't know.

Oh, Oh, Bela Fleck, one of my favorite artists.

I know that he banjos it up, but does he play the Bala Laika?

I've not seen him play a Bala Laika.

All right, man.

Maybe I'm just confusing Bela with Byla.

Look, I'm a little jet lag crazy.

So I'm putting it in the guest book.

And

yes.

I'm going to give you a little hint.

Okay.

Mike is wrong.

Okay.

What Mike did was, and that's understandable.

He's a world traveler.

He gets a little jet laggy.

He's not listening carefully.

What he did was, I gave you the clue, instrument whose name means three strings, but that's a quote from something, from a piece of popular culture.

That's what I do.

Obscure, it may be, but it's culture.

I'm not quoting a Bilalaika.

It may be that that is a three-stringed instrument, but he wasn't listening.

So now it's up to you.

What piece of culture was I referencing when I entered the courtroom?

Anne?

I would guess that that is

answer on an episode of Jeopardy.

Answer

on an episode of Jeopardy.

Yes.

What is wrong?

Sorry.

I know that's not my place.

I just got excited to say it.

That was a good guess.

And because that made it a third, that means the answer in the form of a question is, what is all answers are wrong?

Thank you, Bailiff Jesse.

That was a clue from the New York Times Sunday Crossword puzzle from yesterday,

which on this day of recording was April 8th, that I was trying to do as I came back from Europe and I did not complete the puzzle and I'm very mad about it.

I did get this clue correct once I put it in context, once I got a couple letters.

And that answer was Citar.

Citar was the answer we were looking for there, Mike.

Not Bala Laika or Baila Fleck.

Did you know that the original crossword writer for New York magazine was Stephen Sondheim?

No, is that true?

Yeah, that was just the 50th anniversary of New York Magazine, and they had a little retrospective in there.

And that was mentioned for the first year that New York existed.

Yeah.

Stephen Sondheim made the crossword puzzles.

Oh, that's why that first New York magazine crossword puzzle, the answer to every clue, was assassins.

Sondheim joke.

That's why those crossword puzzles had such complex internal rhyme schemes.

That's right, exactly so.

Can I just tap my foot to it, maybe?

I appreciate this is important, but I also kind of like to hum.

All right.

We've touched on travel.

We've touched on musical theater.

We've touched on musical instruments.

We've touched on puzzles.

Throw puzzles out the window because that has nothing to do with this case, but all other three.

of those things that we touched on do have to do with this case because Anne and Mike, you're having a dispute because Mike travels around the world and he brings home a musical instrument every time and as far as you're concerned and it's too many musical instruments in your home is that correct that is correct all right tell me a little bit about what's going on and you're married to mike i am married to mike um he is a performer uh with a well-known montreal based circus and he

travels around with work.

I sometimes am with him, sometimes I'm not.

And every country he goes to, he has decided that he wants his souvenir to be a musical instrument.

And I

say that we have enough musical instruments and that perhaps maybe we could think about some other things for souvenirs rather than a new musical instrument in our home.

I want to get into Mike's career in a sec.

How many musical instruments have you got going so far?

We have 21 major instruments and a

plethora of minor instruments like harmonicas, kazoos,

egg shakers, hand drums, little things like that.

Hand-sized instruments.

Hand-sized instruments.

But of non-hand-sized instruments, we have about 21.

And what do you call a major instrument?

Like a grand piano?

Is he bringing back?

No, he is not.

No.

We have five ukuleles,

eight guitars,

a charongo,

a banjo, keyboard, a roll-up keyboard, a violin, a hand pan.

It's like a big lap-based steel drum,

a melodica, an accordion.

Yeah.

Okay.

And in the plethora of minor instruments, how many are we talking about?

Mike?

At least a dozen, maybe more.

Wait a minute.

And you're bringing this case against your husband, Mike.

You didn't even count your plethora?

Well, the plethora.

You didn't marshal your evidence and count your pleth.

Well, I I am looking at a list right now.

I did not count my pleth.

That's enough out of you, Anne.

I'm putting a mark against you on that one.

One mark against Ann.

Can we just kind of characterize the overall volume of instruments?

I mean, rather than getting involved in numbers, I might say it's like one

touring supply for Mickey Hart's planet drum.

It's not enough for that.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like more than a one-man band.

It's a lot.

Well, a one-man band would be a bass drum that you strap on your back with a thousand cymbals on top of it or whatever.

Right.

I'm going to be frank.

I, speaking of putting marks against people, I've already put a mark against him for not having a one-man band set up.

Yeah, do you have a one-man band set up there, Mike, or have you taped all of these instruments together already?

I have wanted one of those for many, many years.

I would go so far as to say all my life.

Really?

What's stopping you from getting one?

Are they very expensive?

Honestly, this is no joke, the knee cymbals.

I don't think I can bash cymbals with my knees together.

Like the bass drum is fine.

The hi-hat on top of the bass drum is fine.

Pulling strings to make the drums go and the instruments, that's fine.

But the knee cymbals always kind of weird me out.

Wait a minute.

Mike.

Dick Van Dyke can do it.

You can do it.

Yeah.

He's great, though.

He's better than I am.

Mike, you're telling me that you've had a dream your whole life to have a one-man band rig, and the reason you haven't gone out and gotten one is you don't think you can hack the knee symbols?

It's the part that feels like...

Mike, I'm talking.

You think if you go down, where do you guys live?

We live in North Carolina right now.

Where in North Carolina?

We live on the Outer Banks.

Outer banks.

So you think that you're going to go walking up and down the beach, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and you have a bass drum and a thousand cymbals on top of it and kazoos, you know, rigged up to your mouth via armatures and junk, and you're walking around with that, and people from the beach are going to look up at you and go, oh, it's a one-man band.

Oh, no, you know what?

He doesn't have the knee symbols, doesn't count.

Judge, I'll say this.

It's about control and intentionality because with knee symbols, when you're just walking, you're going to unintentionally play.

Whereas everything else, there is some sort of intentionality to it.

So I don't want to make unintentional knee symbols.

All the more reason not to have the knee symbols.

Well, right.

And so if I can have the one-man band without the knee symbols, I think I'd be okay.

Judge Hodgman, you know how our friend Lynn Manuel Miranda is starring in an upcoming, I believe it's a sequel, not a remake or reboot

to the classic children's film Mary Poppins.

Mary Poppins Returns.

It's called.

Brought out by Disney.

Disney, I'm available to perform as MODOC in any Marvel Cinematic Universe movies you have coming out.

I don't mind buzz marketing that.

Go ahead, your question.

Having not seen the film or heard all that much about the specifics of it or completely lacking any insight or knowledge into it, do you think we can go ahead and confirm that Lin Manuel Miranda definitely wears a one-man band outfit and sings a song?

I'm willing to confirm that 100%.

Great.

And I bet you he uses his own.

Oh, that would be great.

He uses his His own setup.

Because, Mike, you're bringing back all these hand pans and lap pans and whatever.

I can't believe that you haven't followed your dream and just gotten one of these things.

I should.

I did consult with a clown friend of mine recently on recreating his Winterman band.

What?

Does the clown friend run a high-class consulting business?

No, I was the one consulting.

I was helping him.

Wait a minute.

I want to point out Anne can't count a plethora, and Mike is a clown friend.

I don't see this going in Anne's direction anytime soon.

We have a lot of clown friends.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

I'm putting this together now.

You told me, Ann, that Mike works in a Montreal-based circus.

You're very considerate not to buzz market the name of this Montreal-based circus.

Yes.

But

may I guess it is not one of the many Montreal-based knockoffs of Cirque du Soleil, but is in fact Cirque du Soleil?

You may guess that, and all guesses are right.

And Mike, what do you do at the circus?

You clean up after the elephants?

What do you do?

There are no elephants in Cirque du Soleil.

No animals of any kind.

I know.

I was making a joke.

But I'm a clown with Cirque de Soleil.

Oh, my God.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge Sean Hodgman rules, that's all.

Yes.

This has worked out perfectly.

I have a very clear, I mean, producer Jennifer Marmor knows that I have a very clear stipulation in my contract that if a clown ever shows up in my courtroom and I'm tired, I can call the whole thing off and go to bed.

Yes.

You're a clown.

Sound the victory horn.

Yes, sir.

Fantastic.

How long have you been doing this for?

With Cirque, I've been on about two years.

Don't ask questions, answer questions.

How long have you been a clown?

You think I want to read your CV?

How long have you been a professional clown, sir?

Professional clown, 13 to 14 years.

13 to 14.

How old are you?

I am 44.

Someone out there is doing math and figuring out how old you were when you got started.

Yes.

Well, I was a performer before I became a clown.

Okay.

What were you doing before you were a clown?

I was a juggler and musician before that.

And fire.

And fire performer.

A very, very fine distinction.

You're an occasional unicyclist.

Yes.

We have a unicycle.

Yes.

I can't let you go.

You see, the thing is that before I was a clown, I was a physical comedian who sometimes wore face paint and rode a unicycle and got out of a little car.

But I wasn't a clown then because I didn't have the knee symbols.

Right.

Small distinction.

That is true.

We did do a lot of clown shenanigans in college before I was officially a clown.

Let's take a quick break to hear about one of the other awesome shows here at Maximum Fun.

We'll be back in just a second on Judge John Hodgman.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Court is back in session.

You're listening to Tambourine with the evidence.

We've heard about Mike's clowning career.

Now let's get back into the courtroom where he'll explain how he began collecting musical instruments.

You travel all over the world.

You're bringing back musical instruments.

How did this hobby get started?

What was the first one you brought back where you're like, this is going to be my thing?

You know, in addition to being a world-traveling clown,

I kind of need a gimmick.

Yeah.

It's going to be bringing back a musical instrument and torturing my wife with it every time.

Where did you get this idea, Ridge?

Well, it was originally in South America.

The dressing room that I'm in is, we also share it with the band.

And so the band will occasionally get very excited about an instrument they find in one of the local music shops.

And so in South America, in Santiago, Chile, it was a charango, which is an Andean musical instrument, loosely based off a lute.

It's almost like a double-stringed ukulele with five courses of strings instead of four.

So it's got a beautiful sort of 12-string guitar type sound.

It's also, it was originally made with the shell of an armadillo because the craftsmen in South America could not recreate the rounded wood shapes of the body of the instrument of the loop.

I thought it was just because they were incredibly cruel.

That too.

Like, oh, there's a highly unusual and completely benign creature who's got one of the most incredible natural features that evolution has provided.

What am I going to do?

Kill it?

Scoop out its meat and use its back to make a guitar?

Meme.

Yes.

They don't do that.

They're not very fast, and there's plenty of them.

So a lot of the musicians bought them.

And so I, of course, also got interested.

I'm also interested in any musical instrument I come across, even though I'm not great at playing them.

I enjoy trying to play them.

So I got one, and it was wonderful because it is very similar to the ukulele,

but different enough, and it had different enough sound.

And so then I thought, you know, this is a perfect example of a time and place, which is something I'm very big on, which is, you know, seeing this instrument either hanging up on my wall or, you know, in my studio will immediately take me back to this wonderful experience I had in South America, you know, learning a new instrument and, you know, and then sharing the story.

I got it.

If someone is interested.

Be quiet, clown.

Yes.

I got the point.

And then just went on from there.

Yes.

I'm sorry I called you clown, but I have a right.

It is your job.

Oh, I take it as a compliment.

But you bring up a point, which is this long-settled law in this fake internet court

that the difference between a hoard

and a collection is a method of display.

You have this dead armadillo yuke hanging up in what, your studio?

I'm going to ask Anne now: what is the method by which these instruments are stored, preserved, displayed, or are they just piled up in a corner?

Tell me, Anne.

So these instruments are

piled up in corners, in houses

throughout the country.

They're not just in our house.

We have instruments stored at our house in North Carolina, at my parents' house in Michigan, at Mike's parents' house in Georgia, at his brother's house, and at his sister's house.

So the instruments are everywhere.

Do your relatives know that Mike is hiding instruments in their homes?

Like do they're they're aware that he's leaving secret stashes of string to the house.

I think my parents are going to be surprised.

I don't think my folks know that there is a guitar in their basement bedroom.

So I think his parents and his siblings are pretty aware.

At our house, before we sold the house and Mike went on tour, we did have a television room and we had a lot of the instruments hanging on the walls.

And that was pretty cool.

And then we had the space for it in our house in Georgia and that that was awesome.

Our house in North Carolina is a much different situation.

It's a beach house.

It's not got a lot of space.

It certainly doesn't have necessarily the wall space.

And it's used a lot by friends and family, not just us.

And to be fair, in this house, I'm not as interested in having the walls covered with musical instruments as I was like in the TV room in Georgia.

Right, because you hate music and you hate dead armadillo bodies.

No.

And to be, and I have to be really honest and fair: of those 21 instruments, two of the guitars and the violin that we didn't mention, those are mine.

So I own two guitars and a violin.

Oh, you're also a musician, so you don't hate music.

No, I don't hate music.

And when Mike says he's not very good at playing the instruments, that's a lie.

He's a really pretty talented musician.

Okay.

I was going to ask you if he were telling the truth or lying.

So thank you for offering that truth.

And I would ask you to offer no more false modesty in my courtroom, Mike, okay?

Because I'm trying to make a decision here.

Understood, Judge.

But Anne Anne brings up an important point, which is, you know, I called you clown.

Now I'm going to go even harder on you.

Mike, you're a carney.

You're a traveling chauffeur.

I've already heard about houses in Georgia and North Carolina.

And do I read this correctly that you've spent or are spending some time in China?

Is that correct?

Yes, that's where the tour is currently.

So I'm just on break from that tour.

You're on break from the tour.

So you're back in, I'm reaching you in North Carolina now.

When do you head back to to China?

At the end of the week.

And are you both going?

And do you go with?

No, I'll stay behind because

I have some work to do here.

So I spend about half of the year on tour.

You've got some dobros that you have to dust, some left-behind kazoos?

Seriously,

every time he comes home from tour, then I got to figure out a place to put all this stuff that he brings home.

And how long will Mike be away in China for?

For another

about

two and a half months, and then I'll be back again on a break and then

back in Asia.

How long does the break last?

Anywhere from two to three weeks.

Oh, okay.

So I spend about half the year on tour with him.

And what are you doing the other half of the year?

So I'm a recreation therapist, and I have a small consulting business.

Mostly what I do now is summer camp staff training.

So I have a number of summer camps that I take care of, and I go and I train their staff, and then I consult throughout the summer.

So my business is mostly summer-based.

A recreation therapist?

Yes, sir.

You teach people how to play and have fun?

Yes,

mostly.

Well, you've got a fascinating job, too.

How did you guys meet each other?

We met at a summer camp in Connecticut where Mike was being a camp clown.

Oh, nice.

Is it a good camp?

Do you want to name it?

Sure, I'd be happy to.

Go ahead, Mike.

Oh, it's called the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp.

Hole in the Wall Gang Camp.

That's the Paul Newman place.

Yes, it is.

Absolutely.

That's where we met.

It's a really good place.

You know, I've had some lovely couples on, and you are probably the third loveliest of them all.

Oh.

Wow, top three.

I don't even know what the rankings are, but that's fantastic.

You guys, what a life.

You meet at this great camp, and explain what the camp is all about to people who might not know it.

Sure.

Hole in the Wall Gang Camp was founded by Paul Newman, and it is for kids with chronic medical conditions.

The reason I got involved with it is because I used to work for a hemophilia foundation, and so my background is working with kids with bleeding disorders.

I used to run the oldest camp for kids with hemophilia in the country is in Michigan.

It's called Camp Bold Eagle, this amazing camp.

Through them, I learned about hole-in-the-wall, and hole in the wall handles not just hemophilia, but also sickle cell and metabolic disorders and cancer and all sorts of, just to provide a really awesome experience for kids whose lives aren't always the most physically healthy.

So it's a perfect place for me as a recreation therapist and they have this great agreement with what at the time was the Big Apple Circus and the Big Apple Circus and Hole in the Wall had this great thing where they would bring out resident clowns and these clowns would have would come out to camp and just wreak havoc, sort of bring that extra special

oomph, that camp magic into every day.

So, you know, I was a camp director and camp administrator and that was sort of you know taking all the business of camp and then here comes Mike as his clown name so i didn't actually know his name was mike for quite a while so his clown name at camp is smarty pants and here comes smarty pants just like making people happy and and doing just kooky awesome fun things with whoever was his clown partner and you know he's he was he's pretty cute really irresistible honestly well thank you guys for doing such good work and having such a good time while doing it and thank you also

legacy of paul newman an amazing you know,

for a guy who was, let's face it, a professional pool hustler.

Turns out he's a pretty good guy.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's a really amazing camp.

Very special place.

He's an amazing man.

Your descriptions of all of this are really making it hard for me to

have basically a fundamental conviction of my life, which is people with circus skills are not to be trusted.

I would hold on to that a little bit there, Jesse.

Yeah,

I don't know how this happened, actually, Jesse, but I actually had another window open on my browser here, and I'm just watching my bank account get drained as we talk.

I don't know how Mike got my information.

I just needed a voice identification.

Yeah, that's right.

This is my password.

All right.

So you see this guy, Smarty Pants, at the camp.

You fall in love with him.

You're like, I cannot wait to get married to him and find out what way he's going to eventually drive me insane with his weird.

I thought you were about to say, I can't wait to get married to him and find out what his non-clown name is.

It's true that clowns can only reveal their real names on the wedding night.

Isn't that right, Mike?

That is correct.

Yeah.

I'm surprised you know that.

Mike is just your podcast name.

Your true name is only known to Anne and your previous three wives because carney folks can't be trusted.

There's power in a name.

Harry Dresden said that.

Yeah.

Oh, you're a big nerd.

I'm a big nerd.

That's a reference to a fantasy novel series of some kind.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's one of the ways we bonded.

Probably some podcast listeners got a big thrill out of that.

So you're welcome, podcast.

Probably, I'm sure.

You sent in some evidence, and these are photos of you

amidst your collection.

Yes, and those are just the instruments we have in North Carolina.

These are just, this is a partial sampling of the Smarty Pants collection.

Yes.

And the first photo you have, and these will all be available, of course, at the show page at maximumfund.org and on our Instagram, which is instagram.com/slash judgejohnhodgman, is Mike surrounded by guitars on a sofa,

wearing shorts and no shoes, naturally, carney,

playing the guitar, also playing a melodica, and balancing a small guitar on your head.

Yeah.

Guess joke.

Yeah.

How many things can you balance in your head at one time?

Oh, I can only balance one thing unless they are stacked on top of each other.

Gotcha.

And then I haven't really tested those limits.

So if you put a dead armadillo on top of this mini guitar, could you balance both of those at the same time?

Yes, dead ones are much easier than alive ones.

Okay.

And then we have another picture of you with all of the musical instrument cases here in your Outer Banks home.

And people who look,

I love all of the old-fashioned

plywood siding on your

home here.

It's rough-hewn cypress.

It really does seem like a beach rental kind of, like a summer rental kind of

style of home.

That's exactly what it is.

Because you can't live in a permanent home because you're show folk.

Right.

And then you have a picture of the hand pan, which is this, what you call it.

Where is the hand pan from?

You mentioned it as like a lap-based thing, Mabob.

Yeah, it's like a steel drum that you put in your lap.

And Mike, you got that in Australia.

Got it in Australia, but it's made in Switzerland.

Oh, perfect.

To remember your trip to Thailand.

None of these photos really provide much evidence other than intensifying the adorableness of you guys.

So I do encourage everyone to go check them out.

There's a photo of you playing the guitar, Mike, with Luigi, the dog, on your shoulder.

Here's Anne playing her violin at a wedding.

And here are you guys on your wedding day, right?

Yes.

With Mike playing the ukulele and two puppies, Luigi and Puppy, and Mike balancing.

Mike, did you say your vows with

this stool balanced on your chin?

I would have if you would have let me.

Uh-huh.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

Circus folk.

I would say 90% of our wedding photos are of Mike doing circus-related things and 10% of me looking pretty.

I feel like you've probably gotten to the point in your life where you realize that no matter what life event there is a photo album of, 90% of them will be Mike doing circus things.

Yes.

Yes.

You now understand.

Here's the Great Wall of China.

Here's Mike balancing a stick on his face at the Great Wall of China.

Yes.

All right.

And what would you like me to rule if I were to rule in your favor?

You've got some 21 major instruments, an unspecified plethora of minor instruments.

No more instruments?

I would say one in, one out.

You know, if he wants to bring in more instruments, that's fine, as long as there are some that we can move out.

I have no problem.

I mean, I think it's really cool.

I mean, part of me is like, yeah, this is really cool.

These are some neat instruments, but I'd really...

I just want in, one out.

I mean, when we were in Australia, almost every day he threatened to buy a didgeridoo.

And I just

don't want.

And then when we got to China, then he started in on this thing called the Halusi.

And I just want to know that if he does go and get one of these things, that means he has to give up one that we already have at somebody's home in the United States.

My understanding from my days at UC Santa Cruz is that when you buy a unicycle, you're issued a didgeridoo.

Yeah.

I wish The clown guild arrives

and throws one into the hands of the clown of the couple.

And then the spouse of that person goes, oh, no.

She should have seen this coming.

Mike, you heard it from Anne.

One in, one out.

Every time you bring home a new instrument, she gets to smash one of your old ones in your beclowned face, in your grease-painted face.

It would make me a sad clown.

Well, you've had a good run, a 14-year run is being one of the happiest and most adorable clowns that I've had the pleasure to witness.

And there's also a video of you, you have your promo reel, which we'll be posting on the show page as well.

I've watched it.

You're an adorable clown.

Well, clown.

Thank you.

But you're a clown.

Are you going to have kids?

Yay or nay.

Probably nay, right?

No kids.

Nay.

Exactly.

Nay on kids.

And there's a reason because you're moving around all the time, right, Mike?

I mean,

isn't there something else that you could collect that might be a different and maybe a more portable or smaller little souvenir of the places that you've gone to?

I mean, is it fair to keep shoving guitars and armadillo ukuleles into the walls of your in-laws' houses and stuff?

That is fair.

I do have my other favorite thing is I have a beautiful small black case filled with SIM cards from every country that I've been to.

And so that's also a beautiful, you know, way of remembering every country that I've been to in a very small, compact,

so tiny that I lost it in China.

Luckily, I found it again.

So that is another thing that I've done.

And we do buy some art, and we buy,

I bought a seltzer bottle, as any good clown should.

Actually, that was gifted to me in South America.

A seltzer bottle?

A little on the red nose there, Mike, if you know what I mean.

It is.

And the seltzer bottle is red yeah it was a gift it was a gift i didn't buy that if i were to rule in your favor mike what would you have me rule

same same old same old no change no i i mean i'm i'm all for temperance i i don't want no you're not you've got 21 guitars dude

he is not for temperance ask him how many umbrellas we own not for temperance umbrellas are a beautiful thing And I give most of those away as gifts.

We could have had a whole podcast just about the umbrellas.

After I came home from China, I said to Mike, I think I chose the wrong thing for the podcast.

We need to talk about umbrellas.

How many umbrellas do you have, Ann?

We probably have 15 umbrellas.

Oh, no, no, it's not that many.

Yeah, no, we do.

We probably have 15 umbrellas.

I've heard everything I need to.

I'm going to go into my tent that serves as my...

chambers as I pass through this hick town and try to take all their money.

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

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Ann, how do you feel about your chances in the case?

Well, I feel pretty much as I thought I might.

Mike is

just unfailingly charming, and everyone who meets him loves him and just wants to let him have and be however he wants.

And he's really cute, too.

I mean,

it's really, I get it.

You don't even see his face.

And so I don't,

I don't have much faith that I have any chance of winning at all, to be honest.

Is it possible that you're projecting your sincere love for your husband onto others who I think, by and large, hate clowns?

He's just so adorable.

Mike, how do you feel about your chances?

I felt a lot better until the umbrella turn at the very end.

Yeah, I felt like, you know, Judge was a big fan of clowns and circus, and all of a sudden, 15 umbrellas, that is wildly inaccurate.

It's so many more than we have.

No, we very

15 umbrellas.

I follow the philosophy of singing in the rain, you know, where you give away your umbrella if someone needs an umbrella.

I've got six or seven umbrellas, and that's like having 50 or 60 umbrellas if I lived in a place where it ever rains.

You do the conversion on that one.

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

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listened, and you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom 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.

There is a theater

in

Richmond, Virginia called the National.

It's a beautiful old theater, and it was a vaudeville theater originally.

I went there to go see our friend John Darnell in the Mountain Coats play some years ago and to visit my friend Jay Evans.

And in the upstairs backstage area,

there is a room that was rediscovered during the renovation of the theater.

It had been lost, basically.

They had walled over the door.

And when they were renovating the theater, they opened it, and inside this room, No one knew what it was until they opened the door and they shined flashlights on it.

And then they saw the most terrifying illustrations of clowns you've ever seen.

Horrifying illustrations of harlequins dancing on the walls with strings between them and various animals suspended by other strings from those strings, as though these little horses and duckies and little lions were being hanged from these ropes between these harlequins.

You know what this room was?

It was a nursery.

This is where the show folk would put their children to bed

when they came through town to do the show.

And then they would do the show, and then they would take them back to the hotel, and then they would go to the next place, which I presume also had a horrifying nursery to put your child in.

It's terrible.

It's terrible.

I think of all of the children

that fell asleep to these horrifying clowns.

And if you look up the National in Richmond, Virginia, hidden nursery, you can see the photos.

It is scary.

I was like, yeah, if you're on the road all the time,

certain things become complicated, having children being chief among them, because it is hard for children to travel and fall asleep to terrifying clowns.

Another thing that's hard to have if you're traveling around all the time as a circus member,

21 instruments plus a plethora of other ones.

Under normal circumstances,

if you guys were set up and were stationed in one place in your life, if you guys had careers that did not involve travel, you know, then I might say, ooh, you know,

if you've got a big enough basement or whatever,

I guess you can collect musical instruments.

But even then, Mike, I got to tell you, 21.

21 guitars and variations on the ukulele,

that's a problematic number, setting aside the pleth of kazoos and finger cymbals and castanets and whatever else you got.

21 string instruments.

I appreciate that you can make use of two string instruments at a time.

You can play one and balance another one, but that's it for you.

They only get a little bit of use each time.

Even if you weren't traveling the world frequently and moving house and having to store weird stashes of instruments in your friends and family's houses, that would be a lot.

That would be a lot to have.

One of the things about musical instrument collections that I learned in researching for this case is that they're a little controversial because especially with wooden string instruments, If you don't play them, they don't get better.

They go bad.

And it's controversial that the Met, the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York City, where I live,

that they don't allow their instruments to be played more than once or twice a year, if that.

Because a lot of musicians and a lot of musical instrument curators say the instruments need to be played or else their quality declines because the reverberation of the sound affects the instrument.

If you weren't moving around, even then, I would say you got to get out and play these things.

And as much as I appreciate the beauty of the things you're bringing home,

the fact of the matter is,

I mean, you're already well beyond what you can store in your own semi-permanent beach lean-to in the outer banks where you're living now.

And you can't even take care of all the instruments that you already have.

I don't want to say no to you, Mike.

I don't want to to say no to a clown.

I don't want to make a clown cry.

And the other thing is,

they're all the same kind of instrument.

They're all these guitars and stuff.

Like, I was hoping to hear about at least one theremin.

The Turango sounded good.

Even a didgeridoo would be better.

Halusi, I don't even know what that is, but that's not what you got.

I was waiting to hear if you had like,

oh, an octobass.

You don't have an octobass, right?

You know what an octobass is, Jesse?

No.

It's a 10-foot-tall bass, like, you know, like a double bass,

except 10 of them.

Sounds like a perfect instrument for a clown to play.

It requires foot pedals to play.

You don't have a pheromon.

You don't have a glass harmonica.

You don't have a pyrophone, which is an organ that shoots fire.

You don't have a hyperbass flute.

Then you're talking about a collection.

Currently, you're talking about more guitars than you need.

You know, normally I try to get these verdicts going such that

I fake you out.

I think I'm going to go one way, but then I'm going to go another way.

But I can't.

The truth is, I think you're adorable.

I think the hobby is adorable.

But I think that this is not a collection.

I think it's a horde.

I think you have more musical instruments than you could ever play.

They're getting worse as they sit in the walls and attics of your family members.

And I think you need to focus on another more portable hobby.

And it can't be that SIM card hobby because that's weird and depressing.

It truly does seem like you're stealing identities there.

Like, I don't know what that's all about.

Yeah.

So here's what I'm going to say.

I'm going to rule in Anne's favor, and specifically, I'm going to order

no more guitar-type instruments

or anything of that size.

And in fact,

I want you to take those guitars and other similar style instruments and get rid of 10 of them

and donate them.

Donate them to the hole in the wall gang camp or something.

Oh, he's crying.

And then I want you to focus

on that plethora.

The little things,

I'm all for that.

Castanets, kazoos, flutes, anything that's about, you know, anything that can fit in your carry-on luggage, go for it.

But those guitars and stuff, and please don't get rid of that turango.

I don't want that armadillo to have died for nothing.

You need to keep your hobby.

portable to suit your life.

You also need to make sure that the things that you're collecting are being used and put to good use.

And I'm not saying you even necessarily have to give away or sell those guitars and give the money to the whole gang camp.

Maybe you write to them and say, will you take care of these for me while I travel the world bringing joy to everyone

and put them to good use.

Probably they have some musical education there at that camp, do they?

And they do.

Yeah.

See?

Yeah.

Problem solved.

Once you get rid of 10, I think you're going to feel great.

And you're going to want to get rid of another five.

And then you'll only have six, which is a great number of things to have.

Plus, you can continue to collect the plethora.

Until then,

I salute both of you for bringing more joy to the world.

That is a direct quote from Peter H.

Gilmore, High Magus of the Church of Satan, what he said to me when I sent him my book, and I send that good, joyous message to you as well.

This is the sound of a gattle.

Judge John Hodgman rules, that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Mike, how do you feel about the verdict?

You know, at first it stung, especially the get-rid of 10.

But, you know, if we can get them

into the hands of, you know, good people who can use them for good things, that's great.

And the silver lining here is a big silver lining is the you know, work on the plethora.

Like,

I'm thinking Hallucies and hurdy-gurdies all day long now.

Yeah.

That sound was tremendous, Anne.

Now we know what it sounds like when a human heart deflates.

So true.

And how are you feeling about fewer instruments, more hurdy-gurdies?

Well, you did hear my human heart deflate.

Yeah, no, I'd be thrilled to get some of these instruments, and the judge is totally right about them being played, and I even take that to heart, too, that the violin is mine, and it needs more love and more playing.

And so I feel a little inspired myself to make sure it gets out and gets played more frequently.

The plethora is, you know,

maybe we'll just have to come back and talk to you about the plethora in a couple years.

Well, and Mike, thanks for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Another Judge John Hodgman case in the books.

In just a minute, we'll dispense some swift justice.

But first, thanks to Rick Fravel Fravelle for naming this week's episode Tambourine with the Evidence.

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

You can also follow us on Twitter.

I'm at Jesse Thorne.

Hodgman is at Hodgman.

Hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets.

Hashtag JJ HO, and you can join us on the Maximum Fun subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com to chat about the cases.

This week's episode recorded by Victor Bowen at WHRO Public Media in Norfolk, Virginia.

Our producer here in Los Angeles and engineer is the great Jennifer Marmer.

Hooray.

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

Mary asks,

should my 40-year-old husband shave his beard?

It is super scraggly.

I'm not sure why she names him unless she's trying to differentiate him from her other husbands.

But I would say, no.

I mean, no.

It would be the height of hypocrisy for me, whose scraggly beard you can hear through the microphone as I speak, to order a man to shave his beard, sight unseen.

You did not send in a photo.

And frankly, you know,

let him go through whatever he's going through.

Unless he gets a job on television where

they make him shave it off, he'll come around eventually.

He'll figure it out.

But let me just say this real quick.

It has nothing to do with the Swift Justice.

Jesse, do you have your browser in front of you?

I do, yes.

Okay.

I want you to look up on Wikipedia if you can, pink fairy armadillo.

This is the smallest species of armadillo.

I was just thinking about armadillos because of this case.

Will you let me know when you're there?

Oh!

How little is it?

I don't know, it's little.

Everyone has to look up this armadillo because A,

Jesse's reaction to it is exactly correct.

It is the smallest species of armadillo.

And B, what a cute little diller.

Yeah, that.

I want you to look at that armadillo and think to yourself, if you thought I was unfair to Mike during this case.

It's three and a half to four and a half inches long.

Oh, my goodness.

If you think I've been unfair to Mike in this case,

just remember.

It's a quarter pounder.

That clown wants to turn this little beautiful armadillo into a ukulele.

So.

I rest my case.

That's it for this week's episode.

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

No case is too small.

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

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