Pro Patink All the Way

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Who, me?

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

We're in chambers this week to clear the docket alongside me, the one, the only, the man, the myth, the legend, the hardest working man in pod business, Judge John Hodgman.

Whoa, wait, wait.

Who are you?

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

Oh.

The guy who came up with this idea 15 years ago.

Was it really just 15 and not 35?

I think it was 10.

We just had our 500th episode of Jordan Jesse Go, the show from which this show sprang.

That's right.

And you were on that show within the first 10 episodes.

So that was 10 years ago.

Yeah, it sprang from the thigh of that show.

Or the rib, depending on the translation.

Thigh or rib.

I usually prefer a thigh.

I'd like the Kung Pow chicken as well.

Yes, I remember, Jesse, that we started this show when we were in elementary school.

Do you remember those days?

Oh, yeah.

We sound exactly the same.

Actually, you know what?

This whole episode is

a clip show from when Jesse and I were 8 and 15, respectively.

And it will be narrated by Daniel Stern.

Let's start.

Here's something from Brandon about pronunciation.

My father believes it's okay to pronounce a word a certain way if that pronunciation is in the dictionary, even if it's a secondary pronunciation.

I believe it's the duty of every speaker to pronounce.

Jeez.

Am I even going to be able to make it through this?

You have to do it, Jesse.

You have to do it.

You have to read it.

I believe it's the duty of every speaker to pronounce all the words based on the dictionary's preferred pronunciations.

Well, that's because you've sworn an oath as a Kentucky colonel.

That's right.

Doing so helps preserve the shreds of eloquence and perfection the English language still has.

Do you say shreds or shrods?

I prefer shreds.

I ask that the judge order my dad to always use primary pronunciations and let the dictionary have the final say in all further disputes.

Well,

I've got great news, John.

Yes.

We have been provided with examples.

So Brandon sent in his dad's pronunciations.

How does this guy say these words?

Diabetes.

Diabetes as opposed to diabetes?

The classic Wilfred Brimley pronunciation.

Diabetes.

Yeah, exactly.

Chinese with an

instead of a z.

Okay.

Sam wedge.

Sam wedge?

That's in the dictionary?

Yeah.

And baggle.

No.

Baggle.

As opposed to bagle.

Wait a minute.

Is this baggle instead of bagel, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, bagel.

But here in Brooklyn, we say boggle.

In Los Angeles, we say boggle.

Oh, don't even, never, ever raise the heretic game by name on my podcast, please.

First of all, let's just settle this once and for all.

Boggle is a terrible game.

One, it produces intense anxiety in me because there's a timer.

Two,

the letters are all over the place.

I mean, they're literally shaken up in a box, which is fun.

But then you're supposed to make words out of them, but they're facing in all different directions.

It's too much chaos for me.

I know you're a rule follower.

My policy is boggle, not a great game, but a great plotline on King of the Hill.

What was the game...

First of all, my opinion on this is so automatically set that I'm just stretching it out now.

So set the case aside for a second.

Do you remember this game that you would play?

You would push down a tray, and in the tray, there were all of these geometrically shaped holes that you were supposed to fill with little yellow pieces.

You know, there was a triangle space, and a trapezoid space, and a star space, and a circle space.

And you had all these little pieces that you had to put in the right...

shaped hole and there was a timer and if the timer went off it would pop up and throw the pieces in your face and terrify you.

Do you remember that game?

Is this a game or a dream you had?

Definitely a game.

It was the family favorite game for giving me a nine-year-old a heart attack.

I am familiar with pop-o-matic trouble.

Was this a pop-o-matic game?

No, that's pop-o-matic is that's how you rolled the dice, right?

Yeah.

There was a little snow globe with dice in it, and you go

and the dice would go

like that.

Our producer Jennifer Marmer has informed me through my earphones that the game you're talking about, John, is called Perfection.

Oh,

no wonder.

No wonder it traumatized me so.

It was a cruel reenactment of the goal you could never achieve.

Well, you know, all I desired as what we would now call a tween,

of course, was two things.

One,

being perfect in all things, so that everyone on earth would love me, because as an only child, my greatest fear was that I would not have unanimous, universal approval and love.

Right.

And so perfection was important to me as a concept.

And two, peace and quiet.

My favorite thing to read was a Tintin comic book, and I hated when he went on adventures.

I especially loved it before he moved into that mansion with the drunken sailor.

I loved when he lived lived by himself with his little dog, and his apartment was very, very tidy.

And I love the scenes where he would just be sitting there reading a book.

That's what I wanted for my life.

Also, I wanted to never have to see, touch, speak to, or hug and kiss a woman, which Tintin accomplished.

I wanted the sexist life of a boy reporter who never actually had to write a thing.

And I also wanted to remove all references to racist colonialism.

We take take the good with the bad in Tintin.

Hergé, the author of Tintin, went on an emotional journey, and he came out the other side, less racist than he started, but still, there's some pretty problematic stuff in there.

So, the idea of a game where the object is perfection, and it's right there in the name, but it was going to throw chaos literally in my face every time I played it.

I still don't like it.

I mean, I think that we have very similar childhood experiences, very similar instincts.

As I'm not an only child, but I have two half-brothers who are much younger than I.

And so I had a large part of an only child's experience, as well as the experience of growing up in two homes with two loving parents who were emotionally erratic in different ways and hated each other.

Yes.

And so I can deeply relate to your need and desire for perfection and your dissatisfaction with anything imperfect.

I understand that innately.

Your reaction was to get straight A's and go to Yale.

Mine was different, which is how I ended up at UC Santa Cruz.

My system was to consider a grand plan for anything,

get frustrated that I obviously couldn't achieve perfection at it, and then abandon it in favor of, I guess,

looking at baseball cards.

The point is, we all deal with the trauma of that particular jump scare game called Perfection in Different Ways.

It sent us on different life paths, but we're still good friends.

True.

So anyway, back to this guy.

So here we have a classic Judge John Hodgman case.

We have a man who has a very specific, nerdy preference for how things should be done, and we have a weird dad.

who's doing it his own way anyway.

Now, I have a confession to make to you, Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

What's that?

I have never figured out what the pronunciation guides in dictionaries mean, like the upside-down E's and the.

You mean IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet?

That's what I mean.

Yeah, I never perfected that.

Whenever I look in a dictionary, I see a reminder that there is something that I failed to learn, and I feel embarrassed and ashamed.

But looking at our good friends, Merriam and Webster, and the IPA guide for pronouncing sandwich, I do not see anywhere sand wedge.

Although a wedge is an upstate New York word for a hoagie or a hero or a sub.

So I don't believe that this dad is actually using alternate pronunciations.

I think he's just doing some crazy pronunciations to annoy his son.

And this court will always stand behind that.

And by the way, I always say diabetes.

Is that wrong?

No, the son wants diabetes, the more common pronunciation, and the father uses the Wilfrid Brimley in a television commercial for seniors.

Diabetes.

Okay.

As the child of a man from Kansas City, Missouri, I believe in my heart of hearts that when my father is dead and gone and I recall him fondly, one of the main things I will think about is him saying washing machine.

Yes.

I love my father's weird pronunciations.

Dad talk is wonderful.

But I also order Brandon to record his dad saying these things and send them in for future reference.

Nick says, my wife and I enjoy running on the wide multi-use paths near our house.

I say we should run on the left side of the paths.

That way faster runners, cyclists and golf cart drivers coming from behind don't have to go around us.

We'll see any pedestrian or vehicle heading towards us in time to move to the right and let it proceed without swerving.

My wife says we should stay on the right side since everybody expects slower traffic to stay on the right.

She thinks running on the left will just confuse people.

We often run together, so at those times we can't both do it our way.

Please order one of us, preferably my wife, to run on the other's preferred side.

This is a multi-use path.

Here's my first question, Judge Hodgman.

Yeah.

This is a multi-use path that accommodates golf carts, but doesn't have sides big enough to accommodate two people running side by side?

Well, it's not that the ⁇ I don't get the sense that the reason they run separately or in different lanes is

that

there isn't room.

I think it's that Nick, once again, has come up with a system that he thinks is better than anyone else's system.

And so he's running in that left lane out of spite.

But he says when we run together, at those times, we can't both do it our way.

Oh, well, I don't care what he says.

And in fact, I don't even want to hear this anymore because it's pointless.

Because by now, I'm sure Nick has been golf carted to death because he's running on the wrong side.

Yeah, and how?

Yeah, there is a convention when you are running around a resfoir

or a multi-use path near your house or whatever it is on a running track that is shared use with different non-car vehicles.

You stay to the right

and you let people pass on the left if you are in the United States or another country where you drive on the right-hand side of the road.

You know, Jesse, we had a wonderful time in London, didn't we?

Yeah, but it's very difficult to look the correct direction when you're stepping off the curb.

Well, I know it.

I just look directly down so I can see whether it says to look left or look right, and then I get hit by a car because I'm not looking anywhere but down.

Yeah.

First of all, thank you once again, London Podcast Festival and everyone who came out from London, beyond London, and beyond even the United Kingdom.

It was great to see you all.

This is now in the distant past, but I still think of you fondly.

But I remember as many times I've gone to London and I get into a cab and I see that there's the steering wheels on that different side.

I'm like, you guys are still doing this?

It really is wonderful.

But you know, like, I just think of like car companies going like, oh my god, how can we get them to stop doing this?

In any case, Nick, you're wrong.

And I can't say it more forcefully.

You are endangering yourself and others by coming up with not just a system to apply in your own house or force your dad to talk in a certain way that you like, but a system that everyone has agreed to in order to provide safety for everyone sharing this path.

Share the path, not your dumb ideas, Nick.

We're going to take a quick break.

We'll have more stuff on the docket cleared up in just a minute.

It's the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

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Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

This week, we're clearing the docket.

Here's something from Juliana.

My husband believes it's a legitimate fashion choice.

Oh, geez.

Again, I'm struggling to even make it through the first sentence.

And I want to be clear, it's not because I was looking ahead in the sentence.

It's the only thing I'm considering in failing to read through the first sentence is the first phrase that I've said out loud.

It's not that I'm seeing what's coming next and being stopped by that.

I just know that nothing good can come after the phrase.

My husband believes it's a legitimate fashion choice to dot, dot, dot.

That ellipsis is never replaced by wear a suit in a business setting.

Yes, that is a phrase that arouses skepticism from the get-go.

Swim in quick dry short pants with an inside mesh liner.

My husband believes that it is a legitimate fashion choice to wear socks with shoes.

My husband believes it is a legitimate fashion choice to wear long underwear underneath his cargo shorts.

He claims this is the equivalent of wearing pants, as the same amount of skin is technically being covered.

Guys,

I strongly disagree with his contention and would like you to order him to dress like a normal human being.

I would also like additional consideration for pain and suffering as the long underwear is often garishly patterned, and my retinas need to be scrubbed out regularly after witnessing the events in question.

Juliana,

I hate to tell you this.

Your husband is absolutely dressing like a normal human being,

specifically a normal human male living in Seattle in 1991.

And maybe not even a real normal human male living in Seattle, maybe just a background artist in the movie Singles,

starring Bridget Fonda.

Bridget Fonda, wherever you are, I still love you.

I wish you are listening, and that you know this.

I'm a happily married man, but arrangements can be made, Bridget Fonda.

I think my wife would be okay with that.

I think my wife would be okay with me destroying my family.

to date Bridget Fonda, who I'm sure is married and has a family of her own.

We were both fans of single white female, so she understands.

Here's the thing:

the part of the letter that upset you the most, or initially, my husband believes it's a legitimate fashion choice too.

The one that got me was, he claims that this is the equivalent of

he claims, was where I was immediately off of this bus.

I didn't even wait for it to stop.

I was rolling into the ditch to escape.

It's one thing to do something wrong, like wear long underwear underneath your cargo shorts.

It's another thing

to gaslight your most beloved person in the world with a dumb theory of how it is technically the same as wearing pants, because it is the same coverage of leg meat or whatever.

Just say, if you want to wear something wrong, just say, I like it this way,

and then prepare for your wife to leave leave you for Bridget Fonda.

Don't come up with theories about it.

You don't want to be the person on Twitter who says, actually,

and by person I mean, dude.

Don't, don't do this anymore.

Husband of Juliana,

whom I shall refer to, since you are unnamed, I will refer to you, handmaid style, as of Juliana.

By the way, congratulations to you, of Juliana, for a trick that I didn't even realize you had pulled off.

The greatest trick the devil ever played was to wear long underwear to distract you from the fact that he was also wearing cargo shorts.

Like, you totally threw me with that, of Juliana.

Like, I forgot that you even were wearing the cargo shorts to begin with.

So that's a good trick.

You had your fun, but it's over now.

Wear long pants like a grown-up.

They can be comfortable.

There are all kinds of pants that are comfortable.

I hear denim jeans are a popular comfortable pant, but don't wear garish

long underwear underneath your cargo shorts, okay?

This isn't Burlington, Vermont.

I have to say, in my opinion, it's partly her fault.

Why?

Because

on their first date, he took her on a brewery tour and he was wearing a utility kilt.

It doesn't say that in here, but I think we can take it as red.

Good point.

And by the way, Juliana and of Juliana, look forward to seeing you on the Jonathan Colton Cruise.

By the way, everyone, let me just say this for a second.

Jonathan Colton Cruise is so much fun.

I am going on it this year.

I look forward to meeting all of the MaxFun listeners who come on the cruise.

I know a lot of you come on the cruise.

If you haven't decided to go on this cruise yet, make that decision.

Go online, type in Jonathan Colton Cruise, and book your room.

And there are a lot of utility kilts there, and there are just a lot, but everyone can wear what they want and they look fantastic.

And of Juliana, if you're on this cruise, you can go ahead and wear those cargo shorts with the long underwear underneath because

everything is fair game when you are beyond the law and far at sea.

Paige says, My dad has two dogs, Sophie Sophie and POTUS.

When he adopted Sophie, everyone in his house had different last names.

We gave Sophie the last name dogs because she was named after a character named Sophie Katz, so it was also a pun.

Wait a minute, how do you spell last name dogs?

With a Z.

Okay.

Then my dad got POTUS, and his wife and he took each other's names.

He insists POTUS should have their last name rather than dogs.

My stepmom, stepbrother, brother, Sophie, and I all agree that POTUS should be dogs.

This may be the most frivolous question that has ever been asked on Judge John Hodgman.

It's not frivolous.

It's not frivolous.

I just don't know.

I don't know where to begin.

Because, first of all, you know what it is?

It's confusing.

So let me just break this down for myself.

Paige's dad has two dogs, Sophie and POTUS.

So when he adopted Sophie, everyone in the house had different last names, fine.

So we gave Sophie the last name Dogs

because there's a play on Sophie Cats.

Got it.

Okay, Sophie Doggs.

Then dad got POTUS and his wife took each other's names and he, right, okay.

And he wants POTUS to have their last names, but Sophie Doggs will still be Sophie Doggs.

Is that right?

Do I have it right?

That's correct.

You know, I only understood this because I got a bulletin board in here with 25 pictures of dogs and about 3,000 feet of different colored yarn that I'm connecting those dogs to names with in a conspiracy theory style.

I,

first of all, don't believe that pets should have last names.

Having a pet is cute.

Having a pet that has a last name is cute C.

Cute C is just a little bit further down the cute continuum than you want to be in life.

If you disagree with me, I look forward to your strongly worded letters with your very adorable cat, dog, and iguana pictures explaining to me why

Mr.

Greenskin Thaddeus Noah Eats Flies the Ninth

is the perfect name for your boa constrictor.

I love to get those letters, but I find this whole whole thing to be so cutesy I'm almost going to throw it out of my court.

But I'm going to stay in this because I promise justice to everyone who comes to this courtroom.

Or even those who don't come to the courtroom but send in these letters.

The whole thing hinges on the fact of the first one, two, three, four,

five words.

My dad has two dogs.

Then that's the first paragraph.

Then Then the second paragraph, one, two, three, four, guess what?

Five more words.

Then my dad got POTUS.

As far as I can tell, Paige is revealing

the underlying fact that Paige's dad

adopted Sophie and adopted POTUS.

And if Paige's dad is taking care of these dogs and is going through the process of adopting them,

then it is his final call as to what this pet should be named.

And if he wants to go total cutesy,

that's his weird dad prerogative, of course.

We faced this in our own household when we adopted a cat.

And there are children in the household who believed very strongly that it should be their final word to name this cat.

And one.

This would be a lie, so I'm not going to say that our children nominated Fluffy Rainbow as the name.

name.

I think that that was a suggestion they made when they were much, much younger about a different cat.

But ultimately, and through much arguing and fighting,

for once in our family, my wife and I held the line and said, there is no way you are ever, ever, ever going to be

handling the feces of this cat.

You are never, no matter what you promise, you're never going to be changing that litter box.

You're not going to to be taking the cat to the veterinarian.

And this is a cat that my wife saw online and an adoption agency fell in love with and decided to adopt it and is the primary caretaker for the cat.

So she gets the final name of the cat.

I will not reveal the actual name of the cat out of consideration for the cat's privacy.

So I will simply say that the cat is named

Princess Perfect

Lynn-Manuel Miranda Hodgman Fletcher.

Dogs.

So anyway, Paige, you're out of luck.

You revealed in your letter whose dogs these are, and I am saying dog with a Z.

And your dad can call them whatever dumb names he wants.

You know, John, we have a sister show here on the MaxFun Network called Can I Pet Your Dog?

That's all about dogs.

With a Z or with an S?

Either and both.

And

for the first few years this show existed, while Allegra Ringo, one of the hosts of the show, had a dog.

The other host, Renee Colvert, didn't have a dog.

But Rene recently adopted a dog

who I met and fell in love with the other day here at the Max Fun offices, and he with me.

I'm not trying to brag.

It's just reality.

Sure.

And that dog's name is Tugboat.

Just Tugboat.

Just Tugboat.

Yeah.

It doesn't get any better than that.

Tugboat, the dog.

I'm going to give you one that has always been one of my favorite dog names of all time.

My friend Tony, who lives in Portland, Oregon, to this very day, but I knew him many years ago and had a great dog, who, of course, has passed away.

I do not remember if this dog was a boy or a girl, but it does not matter because the dog's name was Lunchbox.

Oh my goodness.

Oh my goodness.

I haven't felt so close to a man I didn't know since

years ago.

I interviewed one of the guys from the comedy and art group PFFR,

who created Wonder Shows and among many other things.

And at the time, he was a member of the band Mucca Ferguson, New York comedy rock band.

Sure.

And I learned that he had a dog named Mr.

Little Jeans.

And I just about cried with joy.

Couldn't have been happier.

Oh, Mr.

Little Jeans.

Anyway, we're talking about fun dog names.

We'll be back in just a second with some more letters and another list of pet names that would be cute on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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 listen.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

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

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

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

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

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

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

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

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

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

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

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

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

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

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We're clearing the docket.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne with me.

I'm Judge John Hodgman.

Sorry, I had to say it, Jesse.

Good for you.

Here's a letter from Scott.

My wife and her family view serrated cutlery, such as a steak knife, as a sort of nuclear option.

It's a tool.

It's funny, not funny in this day and age.

Sorry.

It's a tool to be utilized and offered to guests only when absolutely necessary.

Instead, the butter knife is a jack of all trades.

It's to be used for, but not limited to, the following dishes: roast beef, chicken breast, roast pork, and beef wellington.

I maintain that a butter knife should be limited to spreading butter, fruit spreads, and other semi-liquid substances.

A serrated table knife is not merely the appropriate choice when cutting meat, it's the only choice.

So, Bailiff Jesse, again, let me get up my bulletin board and my yarn to understand what's going on here.

Scott's wife and her family are using,

I don't think they mean butter knives.

I think they mean regular

table knives.

Not the little weird-shaped one that's for the butter dish.

Right, but a regular table-setting knife that is not a steak knife.

It is not serrated, but it's got a smooth edge.

And if it's an English style, it's just a straight up and then a little curve and you turn straight back.

And in an American style, there's a little bit more of a knife shape to it, but it's got a straight, unserrated or barely serrated edge.

And they're using that for roast beef and beef Wellington and roast pork and chicken breast?

Yeah.

Hmm.

No.

I

can see.

I don't know whether that is a regional or class

thing.

I think that

on a gut level, it feels very New England waspy

to be mashing about your chicken breast with a flat unserrated knife because a serrated knife might seem a little bit

rough and tumble and not for a proper table setting

but a serrated steak knife is the one of the most important tools in your drawer almost literally, right?

I guess it'sn't, yeah, it is.

It's literally a tool in your drawer.

So, yeah, if you're serving any kind of meat, you are at liberty to lay a serrated stabbing knife right there.

It's one of the greatest things in the world to receive one of those knives in a restaurant because you know something's coming that was killed for your pleasure.

Sorry, vegetarians.

That one was for Nick Offerman.

And I think it is a disservice to your guests to make them use an inadequate tool for a job such as cutting meat.

So, Scott, you're correct.

Your wife and her family are wrong, and you should

join me in seeking out Bridget Fonda

and leave your family behind.

In my house, we keep it old school.

What do you got?

Spoon only, baby.

Middle-ages style.

Everybody gets one wooden spoon, and that's it.

And you eat out of a trencher?

Yeah, exactly in our great room.

Did you watch the great actor Mark Rylance in the miniseries based on the novel by Hillary Bantel, Wolf Hall, about the reign of Henry VIII?

I didn't, but I heard great things.

It's great.

And Mark Rylance is fantastic.

And what's his name from Homeland is in Henry VIII, and he's fantastic.

Mandy Potinkin.

No.

No, Jesse Damian Lewis.

Is Mandy Potinken in it at all?

He plays the court jester.

He's the only one who can tell the truth to the king.

Got it.

And he sings it very beautifully, like,

he just sings coffee in a cardboard cup.

Yeah, he patinks the hell out of it.

But

in that show,

everyone sits around and they all eat the same.

It's incredible.

They all eat with their hands, right?

Because I'm presuming this is historically authentic.

And you'll see Mark Rylands and his family sitting around the table eating with their hands.

And they have a napkin draped over their left-hand shoulder.

And so they eat with their hands, and then they reach over and wipe their fingers off on this napkin.

And I was like, How did we lose that perfect arrangement?

That's fantastic.

And every now and then,

to the embarrassment of my family, I do this.

And they all look at me with complete horror.

And I said, Guess what, you guys?

I'm a weird dad, and I have a new system.

That's right.

I'm a Judge John Hodgman listener.

I'm not only the host of Judge John Hodgman, I'm also a listener.

But yeah, put down that serrated knife.

I hope your guests enjoy themselves.

And one last thing.

Damian Lewis, if you're within the sound of my voice, first of all, say hi to Bridget Fonda.

Second of all,

a couple of years ago, a black town car

was driving down 8th Avenue in Brooklyn when I was walking along.

And someone reached out and waved and said, Hey, John, and then turned the corner and went away.

And as they turned the corner, I swear to God, it was you, Damian Lewis.

Even though we had never met before, I swear to God,

it was Damian Lewis waving at me and saying, Hey, John, from the back of a black town car.

And I've never known for sure whether or not it was Damian Lewis.

And if it wasn't Damian Lewis, who it was.

So, Damian Damian Lewis, please send in a note to hodgman at maximumfund.org to confirm or deny that you know who I am because you're a great actor and I and I enjoy you very much.

And the Wolf Hall.

The same thing happened to me with Mandy Potinkin.

Really?

Yeah, except instead of a black car in Brooklyn,

it was a VHS tape of the Princess Bride in San Francisco.

And instead of saying, hey, John,

he said, my name is Inigo Montoya.

You killed my father.

Prepare to die.

That sounds like Mandy Patinkin.

Yeah.

Mandy Patinkin, if you're listening, get back in touch.

What if Mandy Patinkin was going around town, you know, like pulling some Bill Murray-style pranks?

Oh, I would love it.

Or the Patink was just going up behind people in bars or at young person parties and putting his hands over their eyes and going, My name is Inigo Montoya.

You killed my father.

Prepare to die.

I would support that.

I'll support anything patink.

I'm pro-Patink all the way.

I feel like I read an article about NFL Hall of Famer Jerry Rice, a very genial and well-liked man and a truly brilliant football player for the San Francisco 49ers, and his hobby on weekends when he's done golfing of crashing any wedding that's happening at the golf resort where he's golfing.

And

I wanted to find it charming, but instead found it it sad.

And a little predatory.

And a little predatory.

But I feel like if I had read the same thing about Mandy Potinkin, despite my love of the San Francisco 49ers and Jerry Rice as a football player and that he seems like a perfectly decent man, I would forgive it of Patink and I would celebrate it.

He could go up on stage, push the singer of the band away, sing coffee in a cardboard cup, and I would be like, great work, Mandy Potinkin.

I loved you on Chicago Hope.

Mandy Potinkin, if you are within the sound of my voice, you are always welcome at any of my public affairs.

You can crash anything that I'm doing, even my wedding to Bridget Fonda.

Come on by.

Say what you will about the classic rivalry between ER and Chicago Hope.

But Mandy Potinkin, I truly believe you are the rich man's Anthony Edwards.

I have nothing to add to that.

I have nothing to follow that up with.

Do we have anything else we can follow up with?

Yes.

So the first of our follow-up notes here is from Mary, and she wrote in about an episode for which I wasn't present, episode 325, Nap Judgment.

Right, Jesse, for your benefit, since Monty Belmonte filled in as summertime fun time guest bailiff that week.

This dispute involved a couple who couldn't agree on a vacation sleep schedule and wanted to wake up and go to sleep roughly around around the same time, so they have a schedule to prevent rogginess.

But her husband, Stephen, wanted more freedom to sleep in, sleep late, and just chill.

During the case, he came out.

They've been keeping track of all of the capitals of countries that they had napped in.

So, what does Mary have to say about this episode?

Okay, she says, you said that Brazil, like South Africa, had three capitals, but this isn't true.

Brazil has historically had three.

First is Salvador, which is about 70 kilometers north of where Portuguese sailors first landed in Brazil in the late 1500s.

The capital later moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1763.

This caused a lot of contention between Rio and Salvador, which still exists today in a sort of city rivalry that is most prevalent during Carnival.

Then, President Jusalino Kubichek built Brasilia and made it the capital in 1960.

He wanted to move Brazilians into the largely empty areas south of the Amazon basin.

I learned all this at the Brasilia Museo de Historia when I lived in Brazil a decade ago.

I was also told by several Brazilians this move was to calm the rivalry between Rio and Salvador, but that seems unlikely to really be true.

Thank you very much, Mary.

I admit that I made an error.

I thought Brazil actually had three capitals, that all their government was divided among those three cities, but you're right.

It's all Brasilia.

And if you look at pictures of Brasilia, it absolutely looks like it was a city made out of nothing in 1960.

It's full of mid-century

modern sort of brutalist/slash Jetsons architecture, and it looks like the set of a Plan of the Apes movie.

And I now want to go there.

Yeah, if you're looking for a place to congregate on a concrete plaza,

you could hardly do better.

Yeah.

But I'm interested.

I did not know that there was a rivalry between Salvador and Rio de Janeiro and that this plays out during carnival.

I presume

they work out that rivalry during carnival through nude hugging and kissing fights, right?

That's what happens at Carnival.

Yeah, I think so.

I've never been to Brazil.

I would love to go and correct all of my misapprehensions about that great country.

So thank you, Mary, for that.

Okay, we also have a follow-up letter from Gia about the docket episode that ran in July, episode 322, Muz Barketing and Morning Beverages.

We heard a dispute in that episode from an eight-year-old named Alice.

By the way, I always really appreciate the work that Jennifer puts in to specifically cite these cases.

I feel like it is those asterisks inside comic books that tell you see episode 222.

Yes, yeah.

As seen in Giant Size Defenders number five.

Yeah.

We heard a dispute in that episode from an eight-year-old named Alice.

She wrote in asking the court to rule on whether or not she can have a pet hamster.

John, you ruled that she could have a pet hamster, but we also advised that she get a rat instead.

What did Gia say?

Well, Gia says, if Alice's parents object to the idea of a rat as a pet, as my own mother did in my childhood, I suggest the next best option is a guinea pig.

While a little skittish, they're fairly low maintenance, larger and hardier than hamsters, and are still furry, cute, and cuddly.

They are also also decidedly less inclined to cannibalism or biting humans.

Although they may still pee or poop on you, it's generally not done out of spite.

I don't know if this is of interest to Alice's parents, but they're also animals that can be shown.

I was a member of 4-H as a kid, but my parents weren't too keen on me having a pig or a goat, so instead I had guinea pigs, and I showed them at the Santa Clara County Fair.

One of mine even won Best of Show one year.

It was an interesting experience.

Well, that is heartwarming.

As someone who spent many a summer attending various state and country fairs in New England, which is, by the way, a region of the United States, northeastern states of the United States are called New England, Jesse.

Sorry I wasn't familiar.

Seeing young kids showing off the animals that they've raised, from guinea pigs to goats to oxen to lobsters, which are very hard to show because they don't take to a leash very well, is one of the most adorable things that I've ever seen.

And I will say this also.

Recently, I returned to a place of infamy in my life, and I'm talking about Dave's Soda and Pet Food City

in the Whole Foods Plaza in Hadley, Massachusetts.

That's in western Massachusetts, the Pioneer Valley.

Dave's Soda and Pet Food City was where we purchased the dwarf hamster that we named Flurry to give to my son several Christmases ago, and Flurry immediately mutated and died.

It was very sad and a horrible experience.

And I was so angry at Dave's Soda and Pet Food City that I would not set foot in there.

Not out of boycott, but out of trauma to me, because they sold me a sick hamster.

They didn't mean to, I'm sure.

And the reason I'm naming them now is twofold.

One,

I went in there recently, and it's under new management or something.

Everything seems much shinier and happier.

And I saw something that I really changed my mind about things, and that was a very wonderful pair of guinea pigs.

And I'm like, that's what I should have gotten.

Look at those guys.

They're big, they're cuddly, as you point out, Gia.

They are rodents, but they have almost the demeanor of your more anxious rabbits.

And the look on their face is so adorably dumb.

And I was like, that's what we should have done.

That's on me,

Dave's Soda and Pet Food City.

And people should go there and buy guinea pigs for their children and enjoy them.

Now, the other reason that I am calling out Dave's Soda and Pet Food City by name is that it's called Dave's Soda and Pet Food City, and I will never get tired of saying that.

A metropolis of giant bags of kibble and cans of Diet Moxie.

It's the greatest mashup of retail that I've ever experienced.

And they have all the soda you need and all the pet supplies you need and some really healthy looking guinea pigs, including a pair that had a little sign, a heartbreaking sign saying, we would prefer to be sold together because they're friends.

So go adopt those friends over there, Dave's Soda and Pet Food City.

And if not there, go to a reputable guinea pig dealer.

And Alice, if it's not too late, get yourself a guinea pig.

If it is too late, see what happens when you put a guinea pig and a rat in a cage together.

Maybe that'll be fun.

I don't know what will happen.

Let me know.

Write in.

Hodgman at maximumfund.org.

That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman, the show produced by the brilliant, the talented, the charming, Jennifer Marmer.

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

We're on Instagram at judgejohnhodgman, where you can see evidence for the cases as well as behind-the-scenes snapshots.

Make sure to hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ Ho.

I love to see what people have to say about the show.

And check out the Maximum Fun subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com to chat about the episode.

You can submit your cases at maximumfun.org/slash jjho

or just email hodgman at maximumfun.org.

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

Goodbye.

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