Innjustice

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, in justice, Luke brings the case against his fiancée, Kway.

They are planning their destination wedding.

They have a limited number of on-site cabins available.

Luke would like to split the cabins 50-50.

Kway says they should be allocated proportionally so that the two of them have an equal percentage of guests in off-site hotels.

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.

Don't swim in lakes, because all lakes are disgusting.

At least the ocean has tides heaving its weeds and slimes and jellies out of your way every now and then.

But lakes are unmoving feeded pools full of fish poop and frog parts and the bottom of every lake is a Lovecraftian Lovecraftian hellscape.

And I don't want to hear from you people who live in the Great Lakes regions.

I'm sure you will protest that your gigantic stalewater ponds also have tides and are basically imitation oceans.

That makes it even weirder.

That's like a dog pretending to be a human.

And because it's a stupid dog, it just wears a rubber human suit.

And everyone says, why is that gross rubbery human crawling around on the floor over there?

Disgusting.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, swear them in.

Please rise and raise your right 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 travels with a hotel?

I do.

I do.

Very well, Judge Hodgman.

Luke and Quay, you may be seated.

For an immediate summary judgment in one of yours favors, can either of you name the piece of culture I referenced when I entered the courtroom.

Quay, you are brought here against your will, so why don't you guess first?

I actually have no idea, and so I'm just going to say that Lake House movie with Sandra Bullock.

Lake House movie with Sandra Bullock.

I'm putting in the guess book.

Luke, what is your guess?

That's not a bad guess.

Bad guess.

Because it has Lake right in it.

Yeah,

yes.

I also have no idea, so I'll.

Lake Placid, starring Bridget Fonda.

Is that the Alligator movie?

Which is the Alligator one?

That's a one.

Oh, yeah.

That's a good guess, too.

Do you want to put that in, or did you have another one?

Yeah, I'll do that.

I'll do Lake Placid.

I love it.

Lake Placid.

You can hear me writing it.

I don't have to write it.

All guesses are wrong.

It is not from a movie at all.

It is from a book called

Vacation Land by John Hodgman.

I'm sorry.

Look,

this was a hard one because you guys are getting married and you have a dispute over your destination wedding and how to allocate the cabins or whatnot.

And, you know, I'm going, what am I doing?

There's so many, like, hotels and lodgings, boring.

Weddings, they're great things, but they're all like, there's a whole great monologue from the opening wedding scene of the Godfather, but you'd get that in two seconds.

Then I was going to do something from

the People magazine feature on the destination wedding of Drew Scott of the Property Brothers, but there was nothing really quotable there.

And then I realized you guys are not just having a wedding, you're having a destination wedding.

And if I've read your case correctly, it's the destination is a lake.

And I remembered two things.

I have something to say about lakes.

I know it because I wrote it down in a book, and that book is going to be for sale soon-ish.

Vacation Land, the new book by John Hodgman, bit.ly/slash painful beaches.

All one word, small letters.

And of Buzz Marketing.

So the destination is a lake.

Luke and Kway, you are to be married.

Congratulations.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Tell me a little bit about the wedding that's coming up, Luke.

This is your case, so let's hear about it.

When are you getting married?

We're getting married on September 9th of this year.

September 9th.

I got it in the book.

See you there.

Yep, your invites on this way.

Uh-huh.

Sure.

And you live in New York, right?

We reach you at Argo Studios in Manhattan.

Yep.

Yep.

We live in Brooklyn.

Right.

And how long have you guys been dating?

For

five years.

Good.

But we were friends for many years before that.

How'd you meet?

We met a friend of mine from high school that went to college with Quay, and then Kway and I were living in the same neighborhood after college.

What neighborhood?

It was Carroll Gardens.

All right.

Checks out.

Back in 05.

But that's not how you met.

How'd you meet?

Just through that friend.

She was in town, and we hung out one night.

Yeah, where'd you hang out?

I don't even remember, a restaurant or something.

I guess more interesting than a meet, I guess.

We were in a band for

that.

I think it was at someone's apartment.

Yeah.

That's better.

All I was going to say was call it off.

What are you saying about a band, Luke?

Well,

that's before we dated, we were in a band together for five or six years.

Whoa!

Spent a lot of time together working.

What was the name of the band?

And traveling.

The band's name was Slow Dance.

It was

a pretty small band, but we toured around a little bit.

Was it a local band or a destination band?

Wedding band, actually.

No, no.

And the band was called Slow Dance?

Yeah.

Good band name.

What kind of music did you play?

It was kind of new wavy pop music.

What was your instrument?

I played keyboard and wrote lyrics and Kway sang and also played keyboard.

How many keyboards were in this band?

Five?

Just, I guess I had two, so three.

All right, cool.

Is your music available anywhere?

Well, the band broke up a while ago, but yeah, it's still floating out there in the ether.

But did it break up because you guys started hugging and kissing?

No,

actually.

We were the last ones standing.

Why did it break up?

You know,

personality clashes over a long period of time, you know.

Yeah, I'm sure it's something you want to get into on a public podcast.

So you have a destination wedding.

It is at a lake.

Luke.

What is this lake, and what does it mean to you?

This lake, my grandmother has a house on this lake, and then my great aunt and uncle, who have both passed, they had two houses on the lake.

And the brief history of it is that it was...

This property was bought up by two brothers 150 years ago, and so there's about eight or nine houses on the lake everyone is distantly related to each other because the houses get passed on from generation to generation uh so i grew up going to this place every summer

right um and i love it it's very special although i was like you and i could never swim in it because it terrified me as a child yeah um

but you've gotten over that

uh there's still the little voice in the back of the head but yeah i can get in the water yeah do yourself a favor don't go snorkeling don't see what's on the bottom it's gross oh no i would i would never

So, all right, everyone surrounding this lake, you have a compound around this lake.

Do you want to name the lake or do you not want to name the lake?

Um, I guess I'll name it.

Yeah, Hewitt Lake, Hewitt Lake, somewhere in the northeast, yeah, yeah, in the Adorax.

No one's gonna crash your wedding, don't worry about it.

Everyone, let's all meet at Hewitt Lake.

September 9th, I wrote it down.

We're gonna

get 35 jet skis and we are just going to buzz that wedding.

Dope.

So anyway,

Quay, who proposed to whom?

Luke proposed to me.

When he proposed to you and you said yes,

did you realize you were marrying into a weird multi-generational lake cult?

Because this sounds creepy up there.

I had been a few times, so yes.

What's it like up there?

It's very quiet.

It's very peaceful.

It's casual, comfortable, kind of like

not super bare bones, but not very fancy.

Is it magical?

Yeah.

Okay.

It's good.

You like this place.

I do.

The forest reminds me of like Miyazaki movies, like Princess Kananaki style.

Yeah.

That's good.

Miyazaki.

Jesse Thorne, famous maestro of Japanese animation.

Animation, but who happens to be Japanese?

You know that, of course, Jesse Thorne.

Yeah, I've seen Totoro.

Totoro.

What's your favorite Miyazak, Jesse?

Totoro.

That rocks it in the Totoro?

Yeah.

Totoro, and that's my favorite guy, Totoro from the movie Totoro.

I don't mean to be on the nose, but I like that Spirited Away the best.

I'll do a Kiki's delivery service.

I'll do a Ponyo.

I don't like that one.

You don't like it?

Ponyo, that's the submarine fishman one?

Yeah, yeah.

No, I don't like that one.

Why not?

I don't know.

It just rubs me the wrong way.

You know, I shouldn't like it either, because there's probably a lake in it somewhere.

Yeah, I like that Totoro, though.

Totoro, yeah.

I haven't seen Princess Mononoke, and so I don't even know what your wedding's going to look like.

But, Kway, this is a special place for you.

You're not being brought there against your will.

No.

It's not like you were saying, I'd love to get married on an island

or someplace far away from a lake.

And then Luke was like, oh, but Gammy Lake Monster, my grandmother, would come back to haunt me if we didn't.

You have to be one of us now.

All right.

Gam, gam, lake monster.

Gam, gam, lake monster.

So your dispute, though, is

how to divide the housing, because there are only a certain number of guests can.

stay right at the lake in the weird creepy compound of the associated homes and the rest of the guests are going to have to stay back at the uh courtyard by marriott at the interstate right is that what's going on quay

yeah it's most people staying at the lake and then a handful of people not oh

so how many people can stay at the lake uh by last count we had 92 beds 92 beds

yeah that's you know distributed amongst uh eight houses or whatever what do you have a barracks up there

yeah i think there are a lot of cots

okay

So you managed to, but that's the total number.

That's the highest density population you can fit.

And the overflow is going to be about how many people?

Luke.

It's 30 to 40 people overflow.

30 to 40.

You can't just cut it down, guys?

Yeah.

That's narrow.

I thought you were going to say 120 overflow because you have 220 people come to a giant wedding.

You only got a couple dozen people to get rid of.

Get out that red pencil.

Start crossing people out.

Chaff.

Find the chaff.

Separate from the wheat.

Later, cousins, husbands, and wives.

Yeah, no kidding.

No cousins, husbands.

No cuz hus.

Yeah.

Well, Jesse Thorne, when you said, can't you cut some people out?

I heard Quay go, oh, like

she's been thinking about that a lot.

Quay, can you cut some people out or what?

Well, I did something that's probably not advisable.

I

like prematurely cut people or preemptively cut people.

So I had, there are people that I definitely want to invite that I didn't even put on the list.

People that you wanted to invite that you didn't put on the list.

Yeah.

In order to keep the numbers down.

Yeah.

And then what happened was Luke's dumb family took all those spaces that you had preemptively cut and flooded them with cousins and husbands.

And

husbands, cousins.

Yes or no?

Is that what happened?

I mean, I don't know what happened.

The first part of that is true, and then I don't know what happened.

My wife and I are very much in love, and we have been for a long time.

But when we got married, I happened to know that you make two lists with a line down the middle, one of which is husband guests and one of which is wife guests.

And even the most cherished joint friends end up on one or the other of the lists.

There's no joint list.

Right.

How many people are on each of your lists?

Good question, Jesse.

By my last count, I had about 48, and that's pretty close to exact.

And then I think Quay is around 75.

Uh-huh.

That sounds right.

And that's including plus ones and everything.

So, Kway, you preemptively cut a lot of people, but you have the majority of the guests here.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Got it.

And this leads to the dispute, right?

Because Luke,

how do you want, you want the guests to be allocated in a 50-50 split between the cabins and the interstate?

Well, explain.

If you were to find in my favor, I don't need 50% of the bets.

Exactly, but I think I would be within my rights to take more than the 38% or whatever that number ends up being

for that reason.

Yeah.

I'm not going to be doing math here, but let me just make sure I understand.

You want to split up these sweet, sweet cabins 50-50.

There are 92 of them, so you would get 46.

That's more than the number of quote-unquote your guests that are coming.

So all your people would get in, and a bunch of Kway's people would be offshored to the Radisson.

Right.

Okay, Quay, how do you feel about that?

I

don't like that.

Right.

I, yeah, I don't.

I'm not so much into that.

For a couple of reasons.

Do you want, can I,

can I go into

please?

Yeah.

That's why we're here.

Yeah.

So I think

that

there are kind of like two reasons why I think we should split them up a little bit differently.

I don't know that I would need them to be split like the hotel rooms need to be split half and half, but what I do think is that it might make more sense to have

people who are less close to us be further away physically.

And

why?

Because, you know, it's our wedding and we want to, I guess, spend more time with the people that we care about the most.

But I do understand that maybe that's a weird, I don't know how we could kind of like explain that role to people.

I mean, I don't know that we would need to, but

then when you say,

what what you say is,

you 30 to 40 people mean less to us.

Here's a shuttle bus.

We don't want you near us during our wedding.

Please go away.

Thanks for coming.

It seems to me like the easiest thing to do would be like an all-ages club

where a black ex goes on the hand of the people that you like and then a red ex goes on the hand of the undesirables.

Yeah.

Quay, how did you end up with so many more guests to this wedding than your fiancé?

I

just have quite a bit more really close friends than he does.

Not like casual acquaintance friends, but like actual people that I,

you know, go on vacations with.

You're better liking than he?

I'm a little, I'm more outgoing than him.

He's more of an introvert.

So, So, yeah, more friends on my end.

But of the same caliber.

This isn't a matter of

you have, as in many situations, you having many aunts and uncles who have to come and him having only two aunts and uncles who have to come or something like that.

This isn't a family situation.

This is discretionary family friendship.

Yeah, she's just more popular.

Yeah.

Do you agree with that characterization, Luke?

Sure.

I could go along with that.

Yeah, I have fewer friends, and it takes me longer to get to know people and everything.

Do you agree that your fiancé's 25th and 28th best friends are the same amount of best friend as your 8th and 10th best friend?

I'll say that Kui relates to people in a way that I don't necessarily, and I don't necessarily understand it, but I love her very much and am very supportive what what does that mean

yeah what does that mean

you know that i have about 20 friends say coming to the wedding and those are all very close very special people to me and quay apparently has 50 people that are very close and very special to her and

i guess

she's popular dude you should feel lucky you're marrying a popular woman i know it to get a sense uh and so like, who are the people in Luke's world that you want to exile to the interstate so that you can get more of your people into the sweet, sweet cabins, Kway?

I don't know who listens to this podcast.

Well, you don't have to give me their names.

Okay.

Are you talking about friends of his that you don't like?

No.

Are you talking about extended family of his that

are just boring to you?

Smelly old people?

We won't say smelly old people.

Oh, okay.

No, no, you you will.

Yeah.

Okay.

I would say extended family and then friends of parents.

Friends of parents.

Yeah.

Within reason.

I mean, they're just obviously, you know, some are more important than others, but the less important

friends of parents maybe could be in a hotel.

But then also my...

That was kind of one way that I looked at it.

But the other way that I looked at it was

that just generally speaking, people who weren't going to be partying and drinking as much should probably be staying in the, off, off campus, so to speak.

Yeah, they ought to be off the, up on the shelf out of town.

Non-partiers, olds and friends of parents and stuff.

What kind of hotels are there at the interstate?

There are two,

at least two.

And then, of course, they're Airbnbs and, you know, that sort of thing in the neighborhood.

But yeah, there's a nicer hotel and then a very comfortable middle-of-the-road.

You can tell me, you know what?

Tell me the brands just so that I can get a real picture

of what people are looking at there.

Are we talking about a Hampton Inn?

Are we talking a Four Points by Sheraton?

It's not actually.

Are we talking a Spring Hill Suite?

Yeah, they're not actually chains, but there's one that's on the nicer

Marriott end, and then there's one that's more of a Nakano Lodge type place, you know.

But they're not chains?

Not chains.

At least not ones that we recognize.

One called Alpine Lodge, and the other with, I can't remember the name of the other.

I don't know about this.

This all sounds fake.

How are your guests going to get points?

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking, Jesse.

How are you going to convince friends of parents to go stay in a non-Springhill suites and they don't even get their Springhill points?

Are the hotels nice?

Luke or Kway?

They're nice enough.

There's actually a ski mountain very close by, so there are a few

decent hotels.

Mersorty.

Right.

Let's take a quick break.

We'll hear more about Luke and Quay's wedding in just a minute.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Luke and Kway can't agree on how they should split the lakeside cabins for their destination wedding.

You've heard about the nearby hotels, but what's so great about staying on the lake?

Let's go back to the courtroom.

and find out.

Now,

are there really people jockeying to sleep on cots in the hallways of these weird haunted cabins luke um well maybe i'm understelling it you know there are some cots uh but they're uh also very nice as well and and it's really picturesque and there are great views and it's definitely the preferable of the two options there there's one house that the groundskeeper warned us against yay

I'm glad there's one that is haunted.

What did the Groundskeeper warn you about?

No, it's just a little less nice and maybe, you know, there will be some cobwebs and some rickety cots and that kind of thing.

He said it's more of a summer camp thing.

Basement full of centipedes.

Yeah, more of the, yeah.

All right, let me ask some very specific questions here, and we'll get some very succinct answers if you don't mind.

Luke, how far away is your creepy compound from the main town hotels?

It's about a 20-minute drive.

I think it's 15 miles.

20-minute drive.

All right.

Kui, what kind of wedding are you going to have?

What kind of stuff are you going to do up that lake such that people are partying all night?

What's going on?

What do you got planned?

Ceremony,

a dinner.

Hopefully, all of that can be outdoors if the weather permits.

Yeah.

And then,

yeah, thank you.

You're welcome.

And then

some dancing.

And all of this will be, yeah, like outdoors.

Sand or DJ.

Well, that's another case for a future

episode.

You're not going to get Slow Dance back together?

No.

My weird dad might play some music live.

How does he play?

He plays a lot of different stuff, but he would probably...

He was threatening to bring his Hammond organ, actually.

Okay.

I mean, he lives in Montreal, so it would be down to

Forest, but I don't think he will.

So ordered.

He has to now.

No way your wedding is going to go off without your Montreal and dad bringing his Hammond Hammond organ down.

That's awesome.

Are you Canadian?

No.

Is your dad Booker T of Booker T in the MGs?

Nope.

What is your dad doing up in Montreal?

Is he on the run?

He's a sometimes professor at McGill

and he's a sound

designer, engineer, musician type.

I'm not exactly sure what he does.

We never know what dads do.

Luke, Luke,

you okay with your soon-to-be father-in-law coming down and

playing some organ tunes?

Take me out to the ballgame.

You know, we're figuring that out.

There will be a place.

There will be a place for it.

Yeah.

He's not cool with that.

Well, you got to get cool with your father-in-law playing the organ or whatever dobro or strum stick he brings down.

It's got to happen.

This is the sort of thing that makes weddings great.

Weird dads doing embarrassing stuff.

It'll be magic.

You'll cry, Luke.

Trust me.

Don't try to plan a wedding with good taste in mind.

You're having a party.

You're joining two weird families to each other.

You got to just open up and show yourselves to each other.

That's true.

What do you want to have there, a band or a DJ or what?

For simplicity's sake, I would do DJ.

Yeah, I think it's just easier and everyone hears the songs they love and then,

you know, it takes care of itself all right

so then quay everyone's gonna go skinny dipping after that yeah

yeah

that's what you want right you want all your young pals around

to rock out all night long yes

now

how what percentage of the 40 beds that luke wants would you say are

he is currently apportioned for older folks, friends of the family,

that sort of people?

Let's say 10.

Okay.

And these are friends of your.

Are your parents married?

Your parents still alive and married?

Or what's called?

They are not together, but they'll both be coming.

They're friends of your parents?

No, I've got my friends' parents coming.

I have a couple family friends.

I don't actually don't have that much family.

I mean, I have family coming, but not many family friends.

Don't you think those grown-ups will want to go back to a nice clean hotel room once the skinny dipping starts?

They're not going to want to listen to Quay

organizing a huge stripped-down

freak out in

the non-labeled intimacy tent or whatever she has planned.

They're going to want to go back to the Alpine Lodge and have a martini

and do it themselves.

Not wrong.

But it's a little complicated because anyone who's on my dad's side of the family who has grown up coming to these houses sort of has a right to that space, and I don't want to kick any of them out to a hotel.

And then on the other side, my mom's family that is coming, they're coming from the West Coast and I haven't seen them in years and to then exile them to the hotel feels...

But

may I say something?

Sure.

I would love to hear you object to Luke trying to make his family happy.

It's not like they don't get to be around during all the important

parts of this

ceremony and dinner and cocktail hour before the ceremony and all the stuff they would be around when for when things were happening and then they would just retire to a little bit further of a place they're not missing out

wait why can't your friends just suck it up and get a hotel room and drive 15 minutes well they could um but i guess my my you know and they may very well have to after this but yeah we'll find out they

a

it's i think it's like

silly to have the people who are going to be, you know, partying the most and drinking the most.

Because I think, you know, we would have a shuttle to bring

people

back after, you know, like maybe at some time earlier in the evening, but certainly not at two in the morning or something like that.

And my friends would definitely be out until then.

And so then I'm not entirely sure how they would get back to the hotel.

It would be dangerous for them to drive.

Luke, is this a region where

cabs can be called?

Not so much, but we are, we're going to find a solution to that problem because there's no cell phone service and the, you know, the roads are you could easily get lost there.

So we're going to have a shuttle service.

We're going to provide for all that.

But the shuttle service would be the son of the groundskeeper.

And I think it's not so cool to make him be shuttling people at two and three in the morning.

Because we're not going to do it two and three in the morning.

There'll be a set time that everyone has, you you know, then goes back to a hotel at the set time.

Right.

So, this is when the shuttle's coming.

Well, yeah, but that's Quay's problem, Luke, because if you pull the plug on the party, there are going to be people who want to keep partying.

They're not going to want to leave

the incredible Burning Man situation that Quay has got going there

because the son of the Groundskeeper's got to get home.

They don't want to get in the creepy car with the son of the Groundskeeper.

I don't like this horror novel.

Sure.

Question: Luke.

Yes.

Is there camping grounds around?

People could camp on, so I just don't.

I don't think either of us have a lot of friends that are the camping types, you know?

So I think that's even would be a bigger ask than to tell people to stay at hotels, really.

Okay.

Kway, is fairness important to Luke in any other parts of your relationship?

Does he see these things sort of more black and white than you do?

I would say that Luke has a lot of integrity

and he tends to be very fair himself, which is why this is kind of like

a thorn in my side.

Well, because you feel the fair outcome would be to let your friends stay, the younger people stay up at the lake.

I mean, if we're talking fair, I mean, that's kind of

less my concern than just the practicality of it, where it just, to me, makes more sense to have people closer and who are going to spend more time with us staying on the lake.

All of my aunts and uncles and cousins and stuff are going to be staying

in hotels.

By choice or you just have already decided to exile.

I've decided because they don't know any different.

Well, they may now.

How are you going to inform people of where they're staying?

That's another thing.

Because we have our hotel, our website that has like the accommodation section.

And Luke wants to include the existence of the beds on the lake on the wedding site, but then if we do that, then people will know that they're not chosen to be in them.

And I feel like that'll make people feel bad.

So I just I think we should

not include

what is what are you going to do?

You're going to assign birthing when they arrive?

Yeah, and I think we'll just notify the the lakeside people that you know they don't need to look for a hotel and and just only notify the

the ho people that need to stay in hotels that they need to book their hotels, which I've already started to do with my side.

Sounds like a pretty cool sort of semi-gaslighting system you're planning.

So you're saying...

Have you thought about putting up like giant scrims in front of the other houses around the lake that just have a picture of trees on them?

Yeah.

You camouflage them so people don't know.

Also, the people who are staying in the lake houses,

you have to to swear them to secrecy.

They can't talk about where they're staying.

You should give each of the lake house people a hat that says Marriott or Hyatt on it.

Yeah.

And instructions to say they got it at a hotel, if anyone asks.

Yeah.

What you do is you hand them some pamphlets for some zip lining courses and some canoe tours, and you're like, where'd you get that?

People say, where'd you get those things?

Like in the lobby of the hotel I'm staying in.

And then you'll have to take all of the lake house people on a special shuttle back to the hotel, and they all have to pretend to go into the hotel, but they just go through to another shuttle that brings them back.

No, no, no, no, John.

That is half of a plan.

You take them all to the hotels.

If they just get on a different shuttle that goes back, they'll be noticed.

You're going to have to dig basically an El Chapo-style tunnel

from the hotels back to the lake.

A Chapunnel?

Yeah, exactly.

So that they can go down into the tunnel and travel back without being detected.

Because your big concern is if the people are in the hotel and they've got a view of the road, they're going to detect them escaping.

So you're going to have to hide them on the way back.

Well, wait a minute.

If you're already digging a chipunnel,

why not expand that into a larger underground lair where you can put canned food and bunk beds?

And then what you do is you make all, then you don't have the hotels at all.

You put all the old people down into the hole.

Right.

Say, well, we'll be quiet.

We'll see you in the morning.

And then you covered up that hole and you cover it with dirt.

And then you dance on top of them and you forget about them because now it is your your turn.

Yeah.

It is now time for the young.

That sounds great.

It's a celebration of the vibrancy of new life.

Yeah, exactly.

It's a classic lake wedding, basically.

Yeah, sounds beautiful.

Quay, what do you think is going to happen when people who are in the hotels learn they could have stayed in the lake houses?

They're not going to be fooled.

I've been talking down the lake houses.

Some of them have been aware, but I've been talking about the centipedes.

Well, that's fair.

That's fair psyops.

But you can't keep the lake houses secret,

right?

No.

I don't think we'll keep them secret.

I just didn't want to have a node on the site that says, hey, maybe you'll stay in a lake house.

We'll let you know.

Luke, do you think that Kui's plan is going to work?

This particular plan?

No.

I think...

Kway is really considerate and she doesn't want anyone's feelings to be hurt or anyone to feel.

Because

this really sounds because what I'm hearing, and I respect you, Quay, for asserting your point of view.

What I'm hearing is: I don't want Luke's older family and family friends getting in the way of my party.

I want them all to be on a hotel by the interstate where they might hear the distant sound of us partying, but can't be anywhere near it.

And I'm going to achieve this by lying to people

or keeping information back, hoping that those olds won't get those sweet, sweet, sweet cots.

How is that being considerate?

Defend your wife, sir.

I think it's more sort of like a pain or aversion where in her mind, like to tell someone that they're not going to be staying at the lake is a painful thing to tell someone.

And that that's, and because of that, that that's a burden we should share equally.

And I think that's sort of her motivation behind it.

Yeah.

I have these questions.

Sure.

Have you sent out the invitations?

No.

No.

Have you built the website?

Yes.

Sort of.

It's in beta.

It's live.

Yeah.

Soft launch.

Okay.

Yeah.

Are you guys splitting the cost of the wedding equally, or is there one family that's paying a little bit more?

Me and my family are paying more.

Oh, everything just flipped.

Script got flipped.

Interesting.

I'm making a note in my interesting notebook.

All right.

So, obviously, Luke, if I rule in your favor, you want me to split the cabin accommodations 50-50 and the overflow all going to the hotels.

More or less, yeah.

I wouldn't take that half exactly, but I will, yeah.

You want to take all the beds for all the people that you've invited?

Close to it.

Yeah.

Kway,

what would you have me rule with the exception of specific family members on Luke's side?

I would say that I'm 10.

Now, I right now have to send 10, I think, 10-ish people to the hotels that are my friends and who will definitely be out with us, or maybe like 10 to 15.

And I'd love to just get those 10 people back on the lake.

So swap my 10 for his 10.

So he's got to boot 10 people.

The 10 extended or 10

extended family?

Well, I can't do that.

I can't boot the family.

So it would be booting friends.

Well, you know, it's just going to be a hard choice.

Have you made promises?

This is my final question.

Have you made cot promises to your friends and family, Luke?

No.

I'm not going on what their expectations probably are.

Have you actively said

y'all are going to get a cot?

I think I told a couple close friends.

All right.

But they're

kind of, they'll have room either way.

All right.

Good.

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

I'm going to drive 20 minutes down to the embassy suites and get some sausages off the steam table at the Continental Breakfast.

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

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman Hodgman exits the court.

So, Luke, how are you feeling about your chances in the case?

Right this moment, not great.

I feel like I didn't make my case exactly,

which is that I feel like my friends are.

If Kway wins the case, then my friends are essentially being punished for the fact that I don't have many of them.

That because Quay invited 30 extra people than I did, then I will have fewer of my guests on site.

Quay, you also seem to have the advantage that everyone likes you better.

Well, I think I'd maybe like people more than Luke likes people.

Oh!

Ha ha ha!

Late

crux,

Luke, you've brought this friendlessness upon yourself.

Yeah.

Well, we'll see what Judge John 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.

Well, first of all, I just want to say congratulations on getting married.

You know, this is a step forward in your ongoing growing up process, a process that never stops, as my friend Gene Gray reminded me last Sunday at church, Church of the Infinite You with Gene Gray, every other Sunday at the Bellhouse or Union Hall, check it out.

But, you know, growing up never stops.

You never become a grown-up.

You're always growing up.

And now that you are married,

you are choosing each of you.

You're choosing yourselves over all others.

including your own dumb families, to create something new that will be eventually, if you have children, that will eventually be rejected by your children as they make something new again.

Marriage is a great union, but it is also a great cutting off and a healthy one.

I don't mean that in a mean way.

It's not like you suddenly say to all of your friends and relatives, you're all dead to me.

But if there's someone in your life who isn't healthy for you, you should

feel free to do that.

But it is choosing

your couplehood and making something new of it in a newly grown-up way.

And one thing about marriage and one thing about being a grown-up is you can't tell other grown-ups where to sleep.

You just can't.

There's no way.

Like, I know you guys are working so hard.

Here's the thing.

We could go through this in a million different ways, and it's going to cause a lot of different friction because planning weddings are hard because you want things to be fair.

But the fact is, there are all kinds of different competing contingencies.

Who's paying more, you know, for the wedding?

The fact that this is Luke's ancestral, creepy haunted lake, and

the body of a dead child is going to come out of it at the end and murder one of you.

Like,

it's his family in these old cabins, and they have this connection, but your family is coming from wherever, and you have more friends, and he does.

Especially with regard to the money, you don't want to argue over that stuff, right?

The truth of the matter is you have to split it down the middle now.

For now and forever.

Fair or unfair, practical or unpractical.

It's down the middle for the rest of the time you guys are married, which I hope is forever, because I hope that within our lifetimes we conquer death and I can get past my greatest fear.

Look, Luke's friends are drags.

Of course they are.

They're not fun like your friends, Kway.

Of course they're not.

Luke's a sweet guy, but I can tell his friends are, you know, they're not going to party as hard as Quay's friends.

And he's popular.

And Luke's family and extended family, you can't kick them out of, necessarily kick them out of those cabins just because you want to put the cool kids in there.

They have a connection to those cabins.

But the true fair thing to do, and the great consolation of being married, is

you don't have to care about these people anymore.

It's just you guys.

And this will start the second

that your wedding party begins.

You're not going to be thinking about where all these people are going back to sleep.

You're going to be thinking about this great party that you're having as your dad plays the Hammond organ and you guys just, you know, smooch in front of everybody.

You don't want to think about their lodging then and you don't want to think about it now.

Grown-ups decide decide where they sleep.

And so what you do is this.

You

make your website and you are open to the world, transparent to all the world.

We got all these cots up in these houses and then we've booked these blocks of rooms.

We've reserved blocks of rooms at a group discount or whatever at these hotels.

And also, there's camping nearby if you want.

And if you've got a houseboat that you can chopper into the lake, go for it.

Fitz Coraldo, that thing in.

Yeah, right.

Exactly.

Let the other grown-ups fight it out.

First come, first serve.

That is the fair way to do it because this is not a community that you can micromanage.

It's not fair.

You can't lie.

You can't withhold information about the lake.

You can't dissemble.

Like, you can't put the people exactly where you want them to be because a wedding party is a party times a thousand.

It's just so much emotion, so much fun, so much parental melancholy, so much Hammond organ, so many variables.

You know, half of those kids that you want to party with all night long are going to poop out and fall over in the bushes or go back to the hotel or going to choose to go to the hotel.

And half of those dithering olds and Luke's dumb-dumb friends are going to turn out to be incredible karaoke singers.

Like, you just want to create the space and let others fill it with their needs and desires.

That's the fair thing to do for your family.

That's the fair thing to do for each other.

So,

in the spirit of Luke's petition, splitting at 50-50, I find in his favor.

In the practice of it, I'm ordering you both to take yourselves out of the micromanaging of the evening lodging

of all of your other grown-up guests.

Make all the choices available to them.

Allow them to book them first come, first serve on your website.

You're both smart young kids.

I know you can figure out how to do it.

And instead, put that energy into planning the greatest party that you're ever going to have, where you don't have to worry about where everyone's going to go at night.

And that may involve investing a little bit more in some kind of ongoing professional transportation to make sure that people can get back and forth between the hotels.

and the campsite at need.

And I would highly recommend, you would be surprised if you're open to it.

I would highly recommend allowing people to pitch camp if there's a nice place to do it.

Because one of the greatest weddings I ever went to was our friend Sarah and Matthew's wedding.

And that was similarly on a family property in the wilderness.

To get there and back again would require 15 minutes of driving to the nearest big town.

I would say about a third of the whole wedding party just camped out.

And they built an all-night, like, hoot and annie bar, outdoor, open-air, hoot and annie stomp record-playing area.

It was the greatest.

Steal that idea if you dare, and I will be at your wedding.

But whatever you do, I hope you have a good time.

And I'm sorry that Quay is more popular than you, Luke.

Good luck.

That'll be the same forever.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge Sean Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Are you surprised, Quay?

I felt pretty good midway through, so yeah.

How do you feel now?

I feel disappointed

and I feel

a wave of anxiety about figuring out how to do first come, first serve on a website.

Luke, how do you feel?

I feel pretty good.

I can accept the verdict.

I guess

my worry about first come, first serve is that then it's just going to be all filled with Aunt Sally's from Michigan.

And then

your favorite people are somehow late to RCP and then off-site.

But

that's probably a silly fear.

So I can get over that.

I got to jump back in here for you, Luke, because this is where you can assert yourself.

Once you put all the tickets up for sale, you got to give a little heads up to your people.

Get on this.

You know that Kway is going to be doing it.

She's already setting up a pre-sale code right now.

I'm giving you both a backdoor option to stock the cabins with the people you want, but also allowing the older people and the younger people a choice of what their ideal place to stay is.

And if they're out of luck, they're out of luck.

Yeah, no, that's good.

I like that.

Well, Kway, Luke, thank you for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Thank you.

And I wish you and your relatives all the best.

FitzCorraldoing in that organ and that houseboat.

Thanks.

Another big case in the books.

We've got Swift Justice coming up in just a second.

But first, we want to thank Travis Martilla or Mortilla for naming this week's episode Injustice.

If you'd like to name a future episode like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook, we regularly put out the call for submissions there.

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

Hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag JJ Ho.

We like to look at those.

Me and John and Jennifer all like to check it out and chime in what people are talking about about Judge John Hodgman, as you should.

Search Twitter for hashtag JJHO if you want to know what other folks are thinking about the show.

You can also check out the Maximum Fun subreddit at maximumfun.reddit.com to talk about this episode.

The show recorded by Paul Ruest at Argo Studios in New York City as well as Paul.

Thank you, Paul, as well as at Max Fun HQ here with our producer, Jennifer Marmer.

Thank you, Jennifer.

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

Michael G asks, my wife doesn't believe in paper towels, just fabric towels.

Help me out here.

Well, your wife is wrong because paper towels definitely exist.

I just bought some.

I don't know.

I think it'd be fairly quickly proven that they are a thing and that they're pretty convenient.

But if she is concerned about

ecological waste due to use of paper towels, I think that the fabric towels are fine, but she's got to keep them clean.

She's got to wash them or else you're all going to get salmonella or something.

And think about then the ecological waste of washing those towels over and over again.

Well, it's a dilemma.

But it's fine.

As long as she wants to use dish towels instead of paper towels, you just got to keep them clean.

You can't just reuse them over and over again.

At my house, we usually have both.

I like to use a cloth towel because it's more effective for cleaning, especially, and for wiping your hands on, and so on and so forth.

But then there's some paper towels around in case you have to clean up something poisonous or potentially poisonous, like, you know, some chicken drippings.

Yeah, or if you want to drain some bacon or whatever.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I couldn't live without them, and that's why I'm glad they actually are a thing in the world.

Here's a question from KDP.

Is it accurate to say that you're driving up to a place when you are not traveling in a northerly direction?

It has always been confusing to me

that in England, people say you are driving up to London no matter what direction you are approaching from.

This has been my observation, and if my observation is incorrect, I'm sure I will be hearing from people on the internet about it.

But that is something that I also occasionally hear about driving to other big cities in the United States, right?

Up to New York, no matter what direction you are approaching from, as though the biggest city in the area is somehow elevated above the rest of the landscape.

And that is only true about St.

Louis, the famous floating city.

But in this case, I think that it is wrong to say you are driving up to a place when you are not traveling in a northerly direction.

It is wrong and it is confusing.

And everyone should stop it.

You hear me, England?

What if you're driving to like up a mountain?

Can I still drive up to my cabin if I'm starting from north of my cabin?

I apologize.

Yes, altitude trumps direction.

Sweet.

I'm in.

Okay, good.

If you have a question for Judge John Hodgman, maximumfund.org slash JJHO.

That's maximumfund.org slash JJ Ho.

There's a form there.

You can submit your question.

You can also email us at hodgman at maximumfund.org.

No case is too small, and we are particularly seeking cases in London, England.

So, if you are in London, England, please be sure to note that you are in London, England, which is a large town or city in England.

Let us know.

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

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