Opening the Members Only Mailbag

Speaker 1 It's the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I am Bailiff Jesse Thorne.
With me is Judge John Hodgman. Jesse, my friend, the holiday season is in full swing.
I want to spread some holiday cheers.

Speaker 1 Should we open the members-only mailbag and share some of our most rollicking of letters? Indeed, we have some of our favorite letters from almost two years of the members-only mailbag.

Speaker 1 If you aren't a member, this is some of the stuff that you have been missing. You can join us anytime for $5 a month at maximumfund.org/slash join.

Speaker 1 When you're a member, you will get access to our entire huge monumental library of bonus content, as well as our every month members-only mailbag where we answer any question you might have or endure any complaint that you might wish to provide us.

Speaker 1 Up first, we'll be revisiting a dispute about a romantic series that a Max Fund member said made her feral.

Speaker 1 Spoiler alert: we have another another letter about spoilers. This one from Amy in Alexandria, Virginia, home of the Berkshire Music Hall.

Speaker 1 Please, quote, please allow me to spoil the ending of a fantasy novel. I went feral reading the Fourth Wing books last December.

Speaker 1 My husband Reed agreed to listen to the audiobooks and catch up with me, but he ran out of steam in the middle of book two, Iron Flame.

Speaker 1 No spoilers, but the end of Iron Flame is so juicy, I was unwell when I hit that last page, and I am dying to talk about it with Reed, but he won't listen for more than 15 minutes at a time.

Speaker 1 He says he enjoys it that way. Please order Reed to listen to the last five hours of Iron Flame within three days, or else I get to spoil the ending for him.
Okay, I now understand.

Speaker 1 I want to be clear. I now understand he won't listen to the audio book for more than 15 minutes at a time.
Not he won't listen to Amy for more than 15 15 minutes.

Speaker 1 I'm talking about the part of this book that he hasn't read.

Speaker 1 Sorry, that was, yes.

Speaker 1 I now understand that.

Speaker 1 Yes, that was, that, uh, that may have been more clear in the version of the letter before I edited it. But yes, for length, for length only.

Speaker 1 Yes, he won't listen to the audiobook for more than 15 minutes at a time. He says he enjoys it that way.
I got to give Amy some credit for these adjectives.

Speaker 1 I've never gone feral reading a book, but I get it.

Speaker 1 I went feral reading Middle March, and it's true. I was unwell when I hit the

Speaker 1 final sentence, which is one of the best sentences in English fiction, as far as I'm concerned. I was unwell, and it was juicy, and I'd love to talk about it with you, but I don't want to spoil it.

Speaker 1 But can we compel Reed to read the rest of the book in five hours within three days

Speaker 1 so that they can talk about it? What do you say, Thorne and company? I say Reed is meeting his obligation. He didn't say he was going to listen to it all within three days.

Speaker 1 He said he was going to listen to it all. He's doing it 15 minutes at a time.

Speaker 1 That's his way. Yeah.
That's how I listen to various Bill Bryson books on my audiobook app. Yeah, that's how you do your various triple B's.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 There is an inconsistency in this letter, though, because at first Amy is saying he started listening to the audiobook of Iron Flame, but then lost Steam during the middle.

Speaker 1 But that's contradictory to him continuing to listen for 15 minutes at a time. Like either he stopped reading or he's still reading just too slowly for his feral wife, who is clearly unwell.

Speaker 1 Do you know what Fourth Wing is all about, you two?

Speaker 1 No, he only made it through the third wing.

Speaker 1 Fourth Wing is the first book in what is currently a two-book series, although I'm sure there will be more because

Speaker 1 the two have done extremely well.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it is a fantasy book series written by Rebecca Yaros

Speaker 1 about

Speaker 1 people in a fantasy world.

Speaker 1 A young woman is drafted to become a dragon rider

Speaker 1 and rides some dragons and gets into some scuffles and gets into a lot of, apparently a lot of

Speaker 1 it's a lot of crushy romance too. And that sounded very derogatory, but I don't mean it that way.
I think it gets it gets sexy among the humans, not necessarily the dragons, but maybe the dragons do.

Speaker 1 People are feral for this series of books, and they fall apparently into this genre that I've begun hearing about, which is called dark academia.

Speaker 1 You familiar with the dark academia aesthetic movement?

Speaker 1 No, I've never heard of it.

Speaker 2 Now that you say it, I can kind of like, I get it.

Speaker 2 I'm like, I didn't realize there was a name for that, but of course.

Speaker 1 Academia is my hero, and I've never heard of it, as in the anime My Hero Academia, about which I know nothing else besides its odd name.

Speaker 1 It's sort of the fetishization of,

Speaker 1 I'll have to swear to say it, but Yale shit.

Speaker 1 Like Hogwartsy obsession with sort of like prep schooly, Ivy League-y, collegiate gothic libraries and

Speaker 1 secret societies at Yale and all that stuff. It's a setting for a lot of stories now.
And it sort of retroactively sort of absorbs older books like The Picture of Dorian Gray and Morris by E.M.

Speaker 1 Forster and

Speaker 1 The Secret History is a more contemporary book by Donna Tart. But then, you know, they're now like,

Speaker 1 have you heard of this book, The Ninth House by Leah Bardugo? Oh, no. Okay.
So I was in Maine visiting some friends and their teenage daughter was reading this book.

Speaker 1 And my friend said about the book she daughter was reading, you would like this.

Speaker 1 This is a book. It's a fantasy book set at yale in which all of the secret societies of yale they're actually full of wizards and witches they all do magic

Speaker 1 and like skull and bones which is a secret society at yale is really into predicting the future particularly the future of the financial markets this is not a spoiler it's in the first chapter which they do by reading the entrails of humans

Speaker 1 And then other, like, I don't know what Book and Snake is up to, but it's probably like they do a lot of magic regarding books and Snakes and so forth.

Speaker 1 And Wolf's Head, which is a secret society at Yale, is full of what you call werewolves, I think.

Speaker 1 And they're all in competition with each other, and it's all a secret that they're doing this.

Speaker 1 And then there's a fictional ninth secret society, a ninth house that the main character is in, which is their job is to basically be the police force for all the, so the secret societies don't destroy the world.

Speaker 1 And I was like, huh. And how do you think I felt about that, you guys, when I heard about this book?

Speaker 2 I think you went feral.

Speaker 1 I was so feral. I was totally feral and unwell.
I was so angry

Speaker 1 that I was,

Speaker 1 all I've been thinking about is fucking dark academia, Yale obsession since I'm 18 years old, secret societies in particular. I mean, you know, read the book.
And I didn't think to write this.

Speaker 1 And it's a great idea that I didn't have. And I'm not trying to take credit away from Lee Bardugo's really good writer.
And I started to read it.

Speaker 1 I started to read it, and so it's the paragon of dark academia.

Speaker 1 You can hear me banging my desk right now, members only, but I couldn't read it because I was just too mad at myself for not being smart enough to have that idea.

Speaker 1 Yeah, anyway, is this tell me if you think this is too close to her idea? It's set at Yale, but it's about a 50-year-old dad who just keeps coming back because he wants to be in college still.

Speaker 1 And there's magic. Where do the entrails come in?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I haven't figured that out, but it's like the hero, it's not a plucky young heroine.
It's a, it's a, it's a decrepit, elderly, weird dad who's just, who won't let go.

Speaker 1 I have a series of fantasy novels about predictions of the financial markets based on the entrails of the UC Santa Cruz Men's Ultimate Club, UCSC Slug Ultimate, and also their lady and non-binary rivals, UCSC Soul Ultimate.

Speaker 1 Why do you want to read their entrails? To find out what I should invest in. Oh, okay.
I got you. Yeah.
How else?

Speaker 2 Anyway, how else are you going to find that out?

Speaker 1 Anyway,

Speaker 1 I just realized now that the novel that I wrote, and this is a real typical weird dad blind spot.

Speaker 1 Like, would people read a novel in which I, a weird dad, can't let go of college and

Speaker 1 just go and hangs around the library all the time and pretends to be there?

Speaker 1 And I realized I'm not the hero of that story. I'm the villain.
I'm the one that the plucky protagonists have to chase out of there and say, you don't belong here anymore.

Speaker 1 I'm a vengeful ghost at my own college.

Speaker 1 Now that I can acknowledge I'm the villain, oh, we're dads. You got to remember, you're not the hero anymore.

Speaker 1 You're the villain of the story. You're the backup character at best.

Speaker 2 Well, that gets into like a different type of story, though, where you're an anti-hero.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but the plot isn't me sneaking into Yale. The plot is the people

Speaker 1 who are appropriately there at Yale and enjoying it have to exorcise me and get me out.

Speaker 1 Could still be told from my point of view. Anyway, dark academia.
Maybe I'll take a stab at it. I've not read Fourth Wing.
Lots and lots of people have. I did read

Speaker 1 a plot synopsis for Iron Flame. And you can go on Wikipedia and read the plot synopsis.
And I guarantee you that you will not be spoiled because it will be incomprehensible to you.

Speaker 1 Can I give a spoiler for Fourth Wing that I got just by Googling Fourth Wing Reddit and only looking at the Google results, not actually clicking through to anything. Please.

Speaker 1 It's not an assassin school, but young adults murder each other in plain sight and no one interferes as if it's business as usual. The fourth wing, fantasy romance, dragons, enemies to lovers.

Speaker 1 She fell first, but he fell harder. Is that the log line? No, that's a different first sentence of a Reddit post.
I got to tell you, fourth wing seems to be very highly divisive on Reddit.

Speaker 1 In fact, the first result is my review of Fourth Wing and why I think it's so divisive. All right.
I just read the last sentence of the synopsis on Wikipedia of Iron Flame, and you know what?

Speaker 1 It's pretty juicy. I hated Fourth Wing, and I feel like I'm losing my mind.

Speaker 1 I'm going to be honest, like,

Speaker 1 I think the crux here is this, from my perspective as a husband. I'm the husband of a wife.
You know what I mean? And a whole human being in your own.

Speaker 1 My wife is not interested in fantasy romance novels. I think she read, she tried to read that one that

Speaker 1 everybody liked that it was that horny TV show on stars for a long time.

Speaker 1 Or maybe it was on one of the other. Outlander? Yeah, Outlander.
She tried to read an Outlander and she wasn't really into it. But

Speaker 1 because everybody that listened to her podcast, One Bed Mother, used to tell her to read Outlander.

Speaker 1 She's not into that kind of thing, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 if she were and she told me to read it or listen to the audiobook, I would. You know why? Because I want to make out with my wife.
I want to kiss with my wife.

Speaker 1 And if she tells me to read a horny book, I'm just going to be like, thank you, dear, and read it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Being horny with one's spouse is one of the best things of marriage.

Speaker 1 It is truly, it is truly the balm of marriage, hugging and kissing a person that you care about. And you know what? She's kind enough to watch what makes me horny, which is old episodes of news radio.

Speaker 1 Every now and then I think about the fact that I had lunch with Dave Foley once and it just blows my mind. The greatest.

Speaker 1 I drove him around one time for San Francisco Sketch Fest all morning to various morning radio shows.

Speaker 1 You know, got up at five o'clock in the morning, went and picked up Dave Foley, drove him around, talked about Patrick Warburton. Yeah.
What a lovely man. What a dream that was.
Such a sweet dude.

Speaker 1 All right. But let's get back to Reed.
Yeah. Reed?

Speaker 1 You are ironically named, first of all, because you have a reading problem.

Speaker 1 Well, no, I'm not, I'm going to take that back. Reed does not have a reading problem.

Speaker 1 I believe Reed when Reed says that he likes the pace of 15 minutes of the book at a time. Now, he might like that pace because he truly enjoys taking in the story that way.

Speaker 1 He might like that pace because he really finds the book very boring and

Speaker 1 is having a hard time getting through it and is just doing this as a slog for his wife. But

Speaker 1 all he can manage to

Speaker 1 choke down is 15 minutes of it a day. Either way, you deserve to enjoy a book the way you like to.
But if you're not enjoying this book read,

Speaker 1 I order you to listen to the rest of it in three days and just get it over with.

Speaker 1 If you're not enjoying it, I order you to be honest with Amy and just say this wasn't for me. But

Speaker 1 give her the closure that she needs to discuss the juicy ending because she's unwell. I mean,

Speaker 1 you want your wife, you want your spouse, you want your partner to be well, not unwell.

Speaker 1 And maybe you'll find the ending very juicy. I have to say, I read the first paragraph of the plot summary and I was simply confused.
But when I read

Speaker 1 that last sentence, I was like, okay, I can see how this is cool. Now I have something to look forward to.

Speaker 1 There's something out there for you there, Reed. You should finish this book up.
Make your wife happy. And then if you don't like doing this with her, don't agree to read a book with her.

Speaker 1 Same deal. Like you pick, if you've, if you've agreed to

Speaker 1 read something or watch something together, you gotta, you gotta put in your time. You gotta keep, you gotta follow a schedule.
That's what I say.

Speaker 1 The bond includes feeling each other's feelings, hearing each other's thoughts, and learning to fly together via the use of a saddle, no less.

Speaker 1 You're saying that they're not riding these dragons bareback. They actually have a saddle? Yeah.
But

Speaker 1 Reed and his wife are married, so they can ride dragons however they'd like. That's true.
That's right. This has gotten to be a very horny episode.
Yeah. Well, you know, we're doing what we can.

Speaker 1 Would you say dragons are horny or just scaly?

Speaker 1 None of them have horns. That's a great question, John.

Speaker 1 Look,

Speaker 1 our MaxFun podcast, Reading Glasses, did a show during the Max Fun drive that I found very educational when I found out that the... The new, the hot new horniness is fairy men.

Speaker 1 Fairy men are what everyone is horny for. They've been waiting waiting for their ultimate love, like the love to which they were fated for hundreds of years

Speaker 1 because fairies live so long. And then they fall in love with a human woman.

Speaker 1 And then they ride a saddle together. And then

Speaker 1 do they apply early to Yale and get in? Yeah, exactly. Lee Bardugo owns Yale Dark Academia Fiction Now, and she deserves to own it.
Did I ever tell you about the time I applied early to Yale?

Speaker 1 Did I ever tell you about the time the Yale alumnus came to visit me at my house

Speaker 1 for an alumni interview? And

Speaker 1 we walked to the St. Francis,

Speaker 1 the St. Francis Soda Fountain in San Francisco's Mission District, which is in the lower Mission District.

Speaker 1 I've never seen a man so visibly uncomfortable walking down the public street.

Speaker 1 The whole time I'm like,

Speaker 1 I'm not going to get into this university. Oh, wow.
Oh.

Speaker 1 Anyway, on that note, I think they recently reopened the St. Francis Soda Fountain.
I sort of fancied it up. Well, now you can get into Yale.
But you'd be the ghost at that point. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 You and I, as ghosts in Yale? That would be fun.

Speaker 1 That would be a lot of fun. That would be a funny thing.
I don't know. Maybe I can.
I'm looking for some new project. Maybe this is it.
Yeah. Yale ghosts.
Yale ghosts. Ghosts of ghosts of Yale.

Speaker 1 Guess what? My ghost goes to Brown. Oh.

Speaker 2 Mine goes to UC Berkeley because when my ghost was alive, they sent it

Speaker 2 or they sent her two rejection letters instead of one.

Speaker 1 Oh, God.

Speaker 1 My ghost is still on the waiting list for UC Berkeley. I don't know Manuel.
Let's move on.

Speaker 1 Here's one from Aaron in Philadelphia. I just saw my...
Could I shave the mountain? That's a Tom Waits song. Aaron in Philadelphia? No, no, I was just singing a song.
Sorry, go on.

Speaker 1 Do your thing. I just saw my husband open up a box of salad greens, grab a handful, and stuff them in his mouth.

Speaker 1 He doesn't like salads, so he believes this is the best way for him to reap the benefits of eating greens. Yeah.
I think this is slightly unhinged.

Speaker 1 Should he be allowed to continue to eat lettuce by the handful? What do you think, Jennifer Marmer? Lettuce by the handful.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I have eaten lettuce by the handful before.

Speaker 2 Probably not the greens that Aaron's husband is thinking that he's going to reap benefits from. Like sometimes I just want something crunchy and cold.

Speaker 2 I'll just grab a handful of romaine and it really hits the spot.

Speaker 1 And are you pulling it out of a box?

Speaker 2 Out of a bag because I'm lazy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, out of a bag. No, but I mean, you know, look, Jesse, what about you? Hand lettuce for you? I would never eat.
I presume when I'm hearing I'm open up a box of salad greens.

Speaker 1 I'm hearing that this is like a spring mix. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Spring mix is garbage.

Speaker 1 i'm putting myself on the record spring mix sucks i you got to go high or low spring mix is terrible it's in between it's too floppy it doesn't taste good right can't get it on your fork yeah either give me slides around either give me like full-on iceberg lettuce or maybe a crunchy romaine or Give me a specialized green, which I'm perfectly glad to eat.

Speaker 1 Specifically, I love arugula and I've eaten it by the handful many times. Boom!

Speaker 2 Get that peppery handful.

Speaker 1 I would even say baby kale if you really want to be, if you want a little vitamin boost,

Speaker 1 grab some washed baby kale or better yet, wash your own lettuce. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Look, I enjoy a boxed lettuce from time to time. And here's the thing.
What's the name of this person again? Aaron. Aaron.
And this is their husband who's got an issue with eating hand greens. Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. Look, if you're doing boxed greens and you want to eat by the hand, first of all, you need a hearty, a hearty green.
Sure.

Speaker 1 Particularly if you're doing it for nutritional purposes. So I would say a baby kale.
I would say

Speaker 1 arugula is very good. I'd stay away from that spring mix.
Romaine is a classic crunchy green.

Speaker 1 But you got to have your own bag or box. Like you can't be reaching into a shared bag or box.
And it is absolutely fine, Aaron, if your spouse has their own private.

Speaker 1 green stash in the fridge. And then I would also say that you can,

Speaker 1 I've been washing my greens lately. Let me tell you, you want to know? I learned this from our friends Kenji Lopez-Alton and Deb Perelman, the Smitten Kitchen on their

Speaker 1 podcast, The Recipe, which is no matter how fresh you think your boxed or non-boxed lettuce is, no matter how clean you think it is, do soak it in cold water for 10 to 20 minutes before,

Speaker 1 even if it's clean, even if it's washed. the texture difference is dramatic.
If you give that lettuce some time to soak it up, you give it a bath. It's crisper, it's fresher tasting.

Speaker 1 And then here's the other thing. This is a Julia Child trick that my wife is holding me in Norm Wright passed on to me.

Speaker 1 We don't have a salad spinner because it takes up a lot of real estate in our New York apartment.

Speaker 1 And they don't really work really well.

Speaker 1 What works really well? Put your lettuces. You know this one, right, Jesse?

Speaker 1 Are you talking about like a David and Goliath lettuce situation? That's right. Well, go ahead and say it.
You wrap it in a tea towel. Right.

Speaker 1 And then you swing it around your head and throw water on all the walls of your kitchen. Yeah, that's right.
If you can step outside, here's what I do. I go into the shower.
Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 And I whip that thing around in the shower. And I'll often use a pillowcase.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh. Yeah, you think that that's a great hack, but it's really hard to get the like.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like, it's you need like a toddler pillowcase.

Speaker 1 Well, it's also like once you have, so you put your wet lettuces into the pillowcase or wrap it up in a tea towel, whip it around, and you're, you become, you become the salad spinner. Yes.

Speaker 1 I think it gets it drier and fresher and it's good. But if you're doing it in a pillowcase, you're going to have little remnants of lettuce in the little corners of the pillowcase.

Speaker 2 It's called a midnight snack.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Yeah, right.
You have to reach in there while you, yeah, I don't know. You have to,

Speaker 1 I, I, I pull it inside out. That's a, that's a little bit of a hassle.
Tea towel is great. Also a flower sack, like a flower, you know, that flour.
What's that?

Speaker 1 It's not a sack made of flour. Like a burlap.
No, it's like that sackcloth

Speaker 1 material.

Speaker 2 It's also like they make tea towels out of it, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I bought some blanks to embroider and they're sitting unembroidered in my pantry.

Speaker 1 I've been doing a chopped up big, big chunks of escarol and redicio and arugula with a garlicky dressing. And it's lovely.
It's been very, very good. And it holds up.
That's a salad that holds up.

Speaker 1 John, I had a vision of you in that one Petey Pablo video just going, North Carolina, come on and raise up. Take your,

Speaker 1 what do you call it?

Speaker 1 Take your pillowcase. Spin it round your head.
Spin it like a helicopter. That's us.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 I know that the listeners to

Speaker 1 Petey Pop song. I have no idea.
He's talking about Petey Pob.

Speaker 1 The North Carolina sportsy song, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was just thinking of that John whips his greens back and forth.

Speaker 1 I do.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And my garlic dressing brings all the boys to the yard, too.

Speaker 1 Wow, Jesse, after this salad greens episode came out, a TikTok trend started called Dinosaur Time. Have you heard of this?

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is like, this is the thing where people eat salad with their hands.

Speaker 1 Like a dinosaur would if a dinosaur had hands and salad. I don't even know that it, well, a T-Rex would never eat a salad to begin with, but yes.

Speaker 1 And they also play the Jurassic Park theme song in the background, which is delightful. I think that probably the person who invented this was called S-A-H-M Things Up on TikTok.

Speaker 1 I think they're probably a Judge John Hodgman membo mailbag listener. Seems safe, right? We're influencers.
That would mean we're influencers. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 Given that we're influencers, I'm going to head down to the mailroom in case we got any packages of anything from PR companies. Oh, yeah, good idea.

Speaker 1 We'll be back in in just a second on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Speaker 3 You're listening to Judge John Hodgman. I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.
Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast, always brought to you by you, the members of maximumfun.org.

Speaker 3 Thanks to everybody who's gone to maximumfund.org slash join. And you can join them by going to maximumfund.org slash join.

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Speaker 1 It's the Judge John Hodgman Podcast. I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.
We've opened the members-only mailbag here on our program. Do we only hear disputes in the members-only mailbag, John?

Speaker 1 No, Jesse, I said it a little earlier, and I'm going to reiterate it now. The Judge John Hodgman podcast is not about me giving advice.
I dispense justice.

Speaker 1 But for the members-only mailbag, yeah, we'll offer advice. We'll answer nearly any kind of question.

Speaker 1 Now that we're influencers, obviously, if you want us to unbox some products,

Speaker 1 I'll unbox some products as long as it's not like. a cardboard box full of dead butterflies or something weird you want to send.
You know what I mean? Like be cool.

Speaker 1 At least put that in a nice, like a

Speaker 1 glass box or something. Yeah, exactly.
But no, we'll, we'll answer any kind of question, such as Kelsey's question about camp. Let's hear this one now.

Speaker 1 Kelsey writes, I grew up in Girl Scouts and I went to Girl Scout camp and I loved every minute of it. Were any of you in boy or Girl Scouts?

Speaker 1 Or did you go to camp? Let's answer the scouting question question first.

Speaker 1 Jennifer, Jesse, any scouting in your past? Obviously, a controversial organization, but certainly it was pretty common when we were growing up.

Speaker 1 My father was a very accomplished scout. Oh, okay.
He was something, some sort of super eagle scout.

Speaker 1 He, in fact, had, my dad had almost no

Speaker 1 notable possessions

Speaker 1 in his life

Speaker 1 other than maybe books.

Speaker 1 But he did have his scout sash. Oh, wow.
Yeah, from his adolescence. And my dad had an absurd volume of badges on it.
Cool. But I never scouted.

Speaker 2 I was a brownie, and then I did juniors, but then I didn't stick with it.

Speaker 1 So brownies are the cub scouts of Girl Scouts, right? They're the little kid version.

Speaker 2 There's daisies before brownies.

Speaker 2 So I was.

Speaker 1 Hierarchies within hierarchies.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I wasn't the lowest, like the youngest, youngest, but then the next one up.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 And so we would go daisy, brownie, junior, then girl. I guess so.

Speaker 2 I never found out.

Speaker 1 You never found out.

Speaker 2 I was, I wasn't into it. My mom said, are you, do you want to keep doing this?

Speaker 1 And I went, no.

Speaker 2 But I had fun in brownies.

Speaker 1 What did you get up? What did you get up to in the brownies? What were your, what were the activities? We sold cookies, of course.

Speaker 2 I remember knitting at my troop leader's house. We learned to knit.
That didn't stick with me, though.

Speaker 1 I relearned as an adult.

Speaker 2 We did community service. We did like a toy drive for

Speaker 2 families in need during the holiday season.

Speaker 2 And I remember we went to somebody's house to like deliver presents and sing Christmas songs to them.

Speaker 1 It would be very funny if you did a toy drive for affluent families in the summertime.

Speaker 2 Can you imagine?

Speaker 1 I messed around with the Cub Scouts for about five minutes merely out of sick curiosity.

Speaker 1 I feel like everyone was doing it, so I gave it a little try. I don't remember what the badges were, but I got the lowest badge and then I bailed out at that point.

Speaker 1 I mean, I went camping with my Cub Scout group one time. It was miserable enough that I knew I was never going to go again.

Speaker 1 We all agree that scouting,

Speaker 1 at least on the boys' side, tends to be, I can't comment on the girls' side, but we've all, you know, those of us who have bobcatted before,

Speaker 1 not a lot of fun, but camp can be a lot of fun. People love camp.
Did any of you go to camp camp? Yes. All right, here we go, Jennifer Marmora.
Jennifer's Jewish. Yeah, right.
Gotcha.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I went to a Jewish summer camp in Southern California, Alanim, for those of you in the know, if you know, you know.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 yeah, I went starting when I was, I think, eight years old. And I went every summer

Speaker 1 through my

Speaker 2 going into my second year of college, I want to say, you know, I was camper and then counselor in training and then counselor and then art room staff,

Speaker 2 took a break, did some other things. And then I came back as

Speaker 2 after I graduated college as like a division head and like head programmer, basically. And I did that for like two years.
And it was really fun. I loved it.
It was like a little taste of independence.

Speaker 2 And that really was interesting to me. And I had amazing friends and

Speaker 2 did,

Speaker 2 I mean, we went to a Jewish summer camp. So it was like lots of singing, lots of dancing, lots of.

Speaker 1 What are some of the songs you remember?

Speaker 2 I don't want to sing them.

Speaker 1 That's embarrassing. Too bad.
I don't care. No, I'm not doing it.
Honor Christian Soldier. Fair enough.
Sure, sure, sure.

Speaker 1 Let us proclaim the mystery of Jewish summer camp.

Speaker 1 Our mutual friend, Elliot Kalin's wife,

Speaker 1 went to a camp called Camp Tawonga in Northern California, which

Speaker 1 I had a friend from high school who was so obsessed with Camp Tawonga. He would constantly talk about it when we were in high school.
And we'd be like, dude, you're in high school now.

Speaker 1 Like, you're supposed to make out with girls at the high school. Right.

Speaker 1 But anyway. But everybody made out at camp.
Good dude. I know.
Except for me, I didn't.

Speaker 2 I was a leaf bloomer.

Speaker 1 But he also went to Camp Tawonga.

Speaker 1 Everybody was always talking about Camp Tawonga. And I found out that Danielle Kalin went to Camp Tawonga.
And I was like, oh,

Speaker 1 this guy knew Brady Gill went to Camp Tawonga. He couldn't shut up about it.
She's like, oh, yeah, I know that guy.

Speaker 1 And then now she packs up their children and sends them off to Camp Tawanga, even though it's in an entirely different region of the United States.

Speaker 1 The things I remember from camp, I went to Episcopalian camp. And it was nice because at my church, they would tell my parents, like, Jesse should go to Episcopalian camp.

Speaker 1 And they would say, ha ha ha,

Speaker 1 not going to happen. And then they'd be like, well, because you're poor, we'll pay for it.
And they were like, later, chump.

Speaker 1 They shipped you right off. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it was very nice. But the classic camp activities that I remember were canoes, which I did not want to get involved in,

Speaker 1 archery, which everyone wanted to get involved in. So it was really hard to get a spot in archery class.
And Sloppy Joe's, which I still have a great fondness for.

Speaker 1 My camp memories, I went to two separate two-week sessions at Burgess Overnight Camp, which is YMCA camp on Cape Cod.

Speaker 1 I did it two summers in a row. Why I went back, I will never know, because my memories were primarily listening to kids cry themselves to sleep.
Oh, no. And bug juice.
Uh-huh. And ticks.

Speaker 1 My first introduction to ticks, and probably my first introduction to Lyme disease.

Speaker 1 We had a big camp. There was an infestation in New England at that time.
of a Lemantria dispar,

Speaker 1 which was,

Speaker 1 it went by a different name, but now we call it the spongy moth, an invasive moth. And the caterpillars would do real damage to trees.

Speaker 1 So at the end, we had like sort of like Camp Olympics at the end, where people would try to, you know, swim as many laps or collect as many leeches on their body from the lake.

Speaker 1 This is probably one of the reasons that I hate lakes from the start.

Speaker 1 And I proposed that we put together a team to smash spongy moth caterpillars

Speaker 1 and collect a bounty for as many as we could kill.

Speaker 1 And that was what camp was to me, just like running around in the muck and the woods, covering up your kids, the bottom soul of your kids with the guts of spongy moth caterpillars. It was so gross.

Speaker 1 I decided I didn't like camp because I actually love shower curtains and other forms of privacy. Oh, wow.
There was definitely shower curtains in my camp.

Speaker 1 No, we didn't have shower curtains.

Speaker 2 Oh, my.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 all of the counselors were these young people who just were playing mind games with us all the time they would tell us that hatchet harry lived in the woods

Speaker 1 and several of them claimed to have seen the loch nest monster because they were from scotland and then we just believed it all yeah we had camp legends like that like alfonso was the ghost at uh our camp was a alfonso huh former kitchen staff uh employee or you know, camp person who.

Speaker 1 He was mad the kids didn't like his ravioli?

Speaker 1 No, he was mad because because somebody spilled hot soup on him and terrorized the kids because of that i can understand that yeah someone's if someone spilled hot soup on me you know what i do terrorize children yeah our daughter went to camp in maine and loved it so you know she she had a different

Speaker 1 she went to the same camp that ben stiller went to not at the same time

Speaker 1 In fact, they told her that Ben Stiller was a ghost who still lived at the camp. Oh, my God.
Well, someone had spilled soup on him. Well, yeah.
That's right.

Speaker 1 He was, he was, he was forever. Actually, I made a mistake.
Ben Stiller was not the ghost. The terrifying ghost of Hidden Valley Camp was the ghost of Andy Dick.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. Yeah.
Scary.

Speaker 2 That is terrifying.

Speaker 1 All right. Now let's go to a break.
We'll be back in just a second on the membo mailbag.

Speaker 1 Say, here's a member of the J squad, Janine in Portland, Oregon. I'm glad to know Janine has not died of dysentery.
Has a question, not for me, but for you, Jesse.

Speaker 1 She says, I'm an ex-librarian who loves collection management and clothes. Jesse, as a menswear expert with a large wardrobe, do you have a method for managing your wardrobe? That's a good question.

Speaker 1 I never thought to ask how many garments you would ballpark estimate you got

Speaker 1 and where do you keep them all?

Speaker 1 I, so like, there was no question that when we

Speaker 1 in my old house, there was like a

Speaker 1 semi-finished basement type room, like a rec room kind of thing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was not the greatest of rooms. Never is.

Speaker 1 But what we ended up doing was

Speaker 1 we just had some closet people build one of those particle board closets across one of the whole walls of the room.

Speaker 1 Made the room, whatever, three feet smaller, two and a half feet smaller, but we needed somewhere to put my clothes.

Speaker 1 In our current home, when we moved, it was like, there's no question that we have to move somewhere with some heavy closet space. So

Speaker 1 in the bedroom that I share with my wife, in lieu of a reflecting pool,

Speaker 1 there's a walk-in closet that's as small as a walk-in closet could be, if that makes sense. Like you can walk into it, but maybe there's two feet of depth of walking in.

Speaker 1 You're not going to be filming get ready with me TikToks in there. No, not in not in the slightest.
Not enough room. Not enough room.
So I keep my clothes primarily in that space with

Speaker 1 a rack of...

Speaker 1 And I, and when I moved in, it was pretty much empty, but Linda Holmes convinced me to go to the container store and have the container store install their.

Speaker 1 Well, my handyman installed it, but I bought it at the container store, a closet system.

Speaker 1 A system.

Speaker 1 You're a dad. You're a dad with a system.
Yeah, Linda Holmes told me, just go get the system.

Speaker 1 It's too expensive, but it's better than trying to figure it out yourself. And you can change it.
And they will always have it at the container store or in Sweden or

Speaker 1 wherever it is that they make it. So I bought the closet system, handyman installed it.
So it's

Speaker 1 on the left-hand side as you enter, two rows of shirts, top and bottom. Tops and right.
Directly in front of you, slide-out shoe racks.

Speaker 1 To the right, casual coats, sport coats, and a set of bins in which I keep sweaters and stuff.

Speaker 1 Then in my living room,

Speaker 1 in my bedroom, bedroom is the room I'm looking to name. Right.
I have a chest of drawers. In my living, I mean my den.
I mean my rec. I mean my bedroom.

Speaker 1 In my chest of drawers, I keep t-shirts, socks and underwear, pants, blue jeans. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I have those kind of like multi-tiered pant hangers in my closet for pants that keep a crease.

Speaker 1 Everything else is rolled. Things that don't keep a crease are rolled.
Right.

Speaker 1 And then underneath my bed, I have a bin with like a

Speaker 1 winter coat that I don't wear that much,

Speaker 1 but I love. And a bin with like formal socks.
I also have necktie racks in the closet. Right.
Didn't mention that. And

Speaker 1 a thing of scarves, like an Ikea hanger that hangs from a coat rack, you know what I mean? With holes in it, slots in it. For shoes, I think.

Speaker 1 In this case, I keep scarves in it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then I also

Speaker 1 have seasonal clothes in the shed that I rotate in and out upon the changing of the season. So, like four or five months a year in LA, you can wear warm clothes

Speaker 1 somewhat. And then eight months of the year, you kind of got to wear shorts or equivalent, you know.
You ought to charge admission to that walk-in closet, you know.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of people would like to walk into that closet. They're not allowed in there.
That's daddy's special place. That's daddy's special place.

Speaker 1 Let me ask you this: Yeah.

Speaker 1 A bad thing happened, Jesse. And that is my

Speaker 1 prized shaggy dog black sweater

Speaker 1 from J Press that I got for myself as a Christmas present several years ago from the J Press in New Haven

Speaker 1 has a moth hole in it. And that's on me because I knew that if I put it up on that shelf, That's where the moths go.
And we had some moth mitigation, but but it didn't work.

Speaker 1 I also knew not to hang it up on a hanger because that's bad for sweaters, right, Jesse? Yeah, very bad for sweaters.

Speaker 1 Now, my wife, who's a whole human being in her own right, is also a very handy person with needles. And I'm talking about knitcraft.
I'm not talking about

Speaker 1 finding a vein for an IV for me.

Speaker 1 I hope that that has not happened yet in our marriage, and I hope it never will.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 she's going to affirm

Speaker 1 a repair.

Speaker 1 But but my question to jesse thorne is what are we going to do about the moths how do i prevent this from happening in the future do you deal with moth mitigation or is that not a los angeles thing john in a few days i'm going to be tenting my home

Speaker 1 because of moths no no wow you read it here first folks i will also say that they did not tent my home for termites before i bought it a few years ago and so we don't know when it it was last tented for termites.

Speaker 1 So it's probably would be a good idea for us to tent it for termites. You're supposed to do that every 10 or 15 years anyway.
Whoa, for real?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that said, I'm doing it for the moths. It's not, there's, there's, there's like a little bit of evidence of maybe some termites, but not enough for.

Speaker 1 it to be like, oh, we got to get rid of the termites.

Speaker 1 Moth mitigation is really difficult. You can keep moths down.
You can keep them suppressed

Speaker 1 through other means, but

Speaker 1 actually getting rid of them is nearly impossible if they're endemic in your home.

Speaker 2 Are they moths like in your closet chomping on your clothes, or is it like pantry moths?

Speaker 1 No, it's clothes moths.

Speaker 1 We did have some pantry moths when we first moved in, but we got rid of those. Those are relatively easy to get rid of.

Speaker 1 Look, the number one thing that I hate about clothes moths is that they eat your clothes you know what the number two thing i hate about them is what too hard to say that those two words together clothes moths so there there are things that you can do so i've i actually got really intimately familiar with what you do with clothes moths because of this situation so obviously you can

Speaker 1 have pest control people put a sort of like contact poison on your floor.

Speaker 1 This is safe for people and pets, but poisonous for bugs.

Speaker 1 They sort of spray that on surfaces

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 that will kill the flappers. You're talking about the winged moths, the insects that we call moths,

Speaker 1 not the happy-go-lucky, transgressive young women of the 1920s who were... cutting their hair off and wearing those slinky dresses and challenging,

Speaker 1 redefining femininity for the in the in the urban environment for the 20th century, putting on rouge on their knees,

Speaker 1 yeah, womp on their knees, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp, womp. That's a moth's favorite song.
The pest control will also have you, um,

Speaker 1 will also put that in the like corners of your home. Uh, dark moths like dark places where they're undisturbed.
They like to eat dust and natural fibers, especially wool.

Speaker 1 And they're attracted to the oil on those fibers. You know, wool has lanolin,

Speaker 1 wool fat, but it also could have the oils from your body if it's clothing, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I make my own wool fat.
Yeah, definitely. And

Speaker 1 they like to hide in places where it's dark and where they won't be disturbed and where they can munch away.

Speaker 1 Now, when you talk about the munchers, I always understood that the munchers were the worms or the larvae.

Speaker 1 So I, that's why I'm so the flap and the flappers are the flappers, but they're not the munchers, right? Yeah. So there's male and female moths.
It's the larvae that eat your clothes.

Speaker 1 There's male and female moths, and I can't, I think the males flap around and the females crawl around mostly.

Speaker 1 They can fly, and both of them are bad at flying. Like, right.
Clothing moths are very bad at flying. Cedar is not demonstrated to be effective.
That's a myth. I knew it.

Speaker 1 That's me snapping my fingers in discontent.

Speaker 1 The things that you can do to kill them are

Speaker 1 you can essentially kill them with heat, same as you could with bed bugs. So if you put something in the dryer for more than about 20 minutes on more than medium, that will kill it.

Speaker 1 But obviously you can kill them.

Speaker 1 If you have some moth eggs or some little teeny moth larvae that you don't know about,

Speaker 1 washing and drying will kill them and dry cleaning will kill them. But ultimately, like I just have a lot of wool rugs in my house.

Speaker 1 And even I got all my rugs cleaned and I took all my clothes to the dry cleaner, which was like a thousand dollar project. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Very expensive project. And, you know, getting my rugs cleaned wasn't cheap either.

Speaker 1 And ultimately, while I did get clean rugs and clean clothes out of that process,

Speaker 1 it did not completely get rid of the moths. Mothballs also work, but they're super poisonous.

Speaker 1 They smell

Speaker 1 disgusting.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they smell disgusting. So it makes sense to store your clothes with mothballs, but it doesn't make sense to keep your clothes with mothballs in your home.

Speaker 1 So when you say store your clothes with mothballs, like out of the winter season,

Speaker 1 take your wool-fat-rich sweaters and other tempting

Speaker 1 treats for the munchers and the flappers and put them away somewhere with mothballs. Do you put them in, like, uh,

Speaker 1 you know, like they're those people who put them in the, like the, the plastic bags and they suck the air out of them and they put them underneath their bed or whatever?

Speaker 1 Is that something that works or no? Yeah, mothballs can damage those bags. Okay.

Speaker 1 Um, so they say hard plastic is better than solder plastic, but you know, honestly, I've put them in those bags and I haven't had a problem.

Speaker 1 You don't want them touching it directly, but I haven't had a problem. Okay.

Speaker 1 But, uh, but yeah, it's like this big complicated thing there are also ways to uh detect and suppress them there are moth traps with pheromones that work very well um but they only attract the flappers um right

Speaker 1 and so ultimately like serious pest control people say like that is a good way to monitor whether they are in your house

Speaker 1 but it is not a way to kill everything because it can't kill the larvae right if you're catching a lot of flappers with a pheromone trap, that's just an indication that you have

Speaker 1 a problem. Right.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you also can use

Speaker 1 this kind of wasp, microscopic wasp that's called trictogramma, I think it's called, if I remember correctly.

Speaker 1 That's what they use to control these sorts of moths in like an agricultural situation outdoors. And you can buy them live on the internet.
They are microscopic and don't do anything to people.

Speaker 1 You can't see them or anything. You can see where their eggs were in the little card that they give you.
They give you like a little tiny card that has the eggs glued to it.

Speaker 1 And the eggs are like the size of a grain of sand, but you can't see those. But the actual insect that they release, you can't see.
And

Speaker 1 those do eat the larvae, but they have to get to them. And,

Speaker 1 you know, in a big old house like mine, creaky old, dusty

Speaker 1 wool rug house,

Speaker 1 it just,

Speaker 1 all these things that I did that weren't tenting my house did suppress them. Like, I haven't had clothes ruined since I did all this stuff,

Speaker 1 but they only suppressed them. They didn't, they haven't

Speaker 1 taken care of them. And I didn't want to spend the rest of my life,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 having to defend against them actively. And instead, I prefer to

Speaker 1 kill everything in my house. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then, uh, and then just be more careful about what comes into my house and making sure that it gets cleaned if it's secondhand before it comes in.

Speaker 1 Now, I presume that when you tent your house, y'all are going to have to leave. And that means going through your walk-in closet to your own personal narnia for

Speaker 1 a little while before you can come back into the house, right? Is that what's happening? I'm going to drive to my cabin.

Speaker 1 The other really intense thing about this is:

Speaker 1 so, this is, we're recording this in the lead up to Thanksgiving. We're going to do this over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Right. And

Speaker 1 one of the things we have to do is remove all the food from my house. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You can, for the fumigation, you know.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 we're just going to have to spend a day just dragging everything from our refrigerator, freezer, and closets into the shed where I sit right now, my office shed,

Speaker 1 including the freezer. We're going to carry the freezer over here.

Speaker 1 I think we'll just get rid of what's in the fridge pretty much.

Speaker 1 You're going to carry the whole... What do you have, a chest freezer? It's been a long time.
I have a chest freezer out there. I have a chest freezer.
I'm going to bring the whole freezer over. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that the stuff will remain frozen, right? Yeah, exactly. So I don't just have to throw away everything that's in my.
Right. Okay.
I got you. Right.
I got food in there, you know.

Speaker 1 You got food in your freezer. I buy some meat at Costco sometimes.
Yeah, boy. So, and then the other thing is you can't.
Cover boy over here. Costco connection cover boy.
You have to

Speaker 1 leave your windows open or something while they do it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so you have to remove your valuables from your house while they do it because,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 obviously someone going into your house is risking their life because of the poisonous gas.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 But you can't lock the doors. So all the jewelry has to come get put in our cars and go with us to our cabin over the weekend.

Speaker 1 Wild Thanksgiving. I just picture your whole family sitting around in the cabin on Thanksgiving, feasting on

Speaker 1 whatever food you have hauled up there and just draped in jewels. All

Speaker 1 five of you.

Speaker 1 Just draped in jewelry.

Speaker 1 In my closet, I also have I have like a, you know what an engineer's tool chest looks like? Like it has a lid that comes out and then a front flap that goes out and then down underneath it.

Speaker 1 Like it flaps out and then under, and then there's little drawers. Yeah.
I have one of those that has my jewelry in it as well. Okay.
Wow. Well, you heard it here for first, everybody.

Speaker 1 Jesse Thorne's Fumigetting's house in a couple of days. That means the Jesse Thorne wardrobe closet will be closed.
The Museum of Pocket Squares will be closed for a period of time.

Speaker 1 Do not try to get in.

Speaker 1 Jesse, I have been secretly selling tickets to your closet while we've been talking.

Speaker 1 I keep my pocket squares in clear plastic shoe bins.

Speaker 1 Good. That'll help people figure them out when they go into your house to steal them.

Speaker 1 Jesse,

Speaker 1 as of this recording now, it has been almost exactly a year since you tented your house for moths. How to go? Any of those little flappers make their way back into your clothes?

Speaker 1 I think I got rid of them. I'm like 95%.
I've seen a moth,

Speaker 1 but I think it was just a standard moth. Standard moths.
The way you can tell is a standard moth wants to go towards the light bulb and clothes moths don't care about light bulbs. I did not know that.

Speaker 1 That's a great hack. We're influencers.
Great hack. Thank you.
Let's take a quick break. When we come back, more letters from the members-only only mail wait a minute the mailbag has moth holes oh no

Speaker 3 ready go knock knock who's there we got this with mark and how

Speaker 4 you knew this one

Speaker 4 we can't put that out as an ad we just did new episodes every week on maximumfun.org or wherever you get your podcast. Now it's hewn in rock.
Hewn in rock?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 3 How do you something in rock?

Speaker 4 With a chisel.

Speaker 3 There's only one hew in rock and it's Huey Lewis.

Speaker 4 And the news is we got this with Mark and Hallows available every week on maximumfun.org.

Speaker 3 I walked right into that.

Speaker 6 Need a gift for a Max Fun fan in your life? Or maybe you need some ideas to fill up a wish list of your own. Heck, maybe you just want to pick up something for yourself as a little treat?

Speaker 6 Well, the Max Fun Holiday Gift Guide is here for all of your gift-giving and gift-wanting needs at maximumfun.org/slash gift guide.

Speaker 6 Of course, there's show merch like clothing, hats, bookmarks, stickers, even a candle.

Speaker 6 But there's also a bunch of other cool stuff made by your favorite hosts, like comic books, graphic novels, music, art, and jewelry.

Speaker 6 Go check out the gift guide and make sure you order soon so things get there in time for the holidays. Maximumfun.org/slash gift guide.

Speaker 1 Judge John Hodgman, our shop is full of holiday gift ideas at MaxFunstore.com. Have you heard about all this great holiday merchandise? First of all, we got our new caps.

Speaker 1 The right hat and the wrong hat. Exactly.
Every episode on this program, we say only one can decide. Who's right, who's wrong?

Speaker 1 Only I can decide. But guess what? You could make my decision a lot easier if you put hats on your family's head that say right or wrong.

Speaker 1 We also have our brand new candle, which comes with a pure justice smell, and our comfy clothes for all you cozy goths out there, matching sweats and a cozy hoodie, all at maxfunstore.com, along with our other great Judge John Hodgman merchandise and

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Speaker 1 Maybe someone in your life doesn't want any more things. I understand it.
Maybe they prefer experiences. Well, guess what? We've got an experience.

Speaker 1 Why don't you get them tickets to our live show coming up in January at San Francisco Sketch Fest? It's always fun when we go back for San Francisco Sketch Fest.

Speaker 1 Indeed, that's one of my most treasured weekends of the year. No joke.
Maximumfund.org slash events is where you can find the dates and get those tickets. That link will also be with the other links.

Speaker 1 in this episode description january 18th at marines memorial theater and if you live in the san francisco bay area we need your cases so go to maximumfund.org slash JJHO.

Speaker 1 Make sure to tell us that you're in the Bay Area. We need cases to put on the stage at San Francisco Sketch Fest.

Speaker 1 And if you're looking for a digital gift for someone, you can gift a membership to Maximum Fun. That's the gift of the Membo Mailbag, John.
That's right.

Speaker 1 All you got to do is go to maximumfund.org slash join. Five bucks a month.
We'll do it. $5 a month at maximumfund.org slash join.
And

Speaker 1 you can be laughing along to the membo mailbag, or your special person can't be. It's like a whole separate monthly podcast that you get along with all of the other bonus content.

Speaker 1 And indeed, the pleasure and I hope honor of knowing that you are supporting not just the Judge Shon Hodgin podcast, but the entire Maximum Fund network.

Speaker 1 A listener-supported network that is

Speaker 1 owned by its employees is a good thing. Jesse, you've got some stuff available to put this on shop as well, right? Indeed.
If you want to buy a one-of-a-kind special treasure, go to putthisonshop.com.

Speaker 1 Use the code Justice, and we will give you 10% off all of the vintage and antique items in the Put This On Shop, plus everything else, like

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Speaker 1 All those links are available in the show notes of the show page, as well as on our YouTube page, Judge Sean Hodgman pod. You can get your holiday shopping done right now.

Speaker 1 But shall we get back to the mailbag? Indeed.

Speaker 1 It's the Judge John Hodgman podcast. With me is Judge John Hodgman.
Jesse, you know what I love about the members-only mailbag? Tell me. I have learned about so many niche subreddits.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Somehow, dogs on roofs, maggot fishing. These are the subreddits that have changed my life.
R slash keychains.

Speaker 1 And somehow you manage to find a new subreddit related to our letters pretty much once an episode. We're about to share a letter about changing the toilet paper roll.

Speaker 1 Listener, believe me when I say you will never guess the niche subreddit. that Jesse presents us with at the end of this conversation.
I remember this. You're thinking of something and you're wrong.

Speaker 1 You should listen to it. Let's go.

Speaker 1 We got a letter here. This is a follow-up to our last month's membo mail bag.
Those of you who didn't hear it,

Speaker 1 a person named David in Seattle

Speaker 1 wrote to complain that his wife doesn't replace the toilet paper on the roll

Speaker 1 when presumably she finishes using it or when it is done for whatever reason.

Speaker 1 Doesn't replace the toilet paper on the roll. Just leaves a bare cardboard tube rattling around on there.

Speaker 1 And he didn't tell us her name, either to protect her identity for this crime, or maybe he forgot her name. I don't know.

Speaker 1 But we were curious as to why this person didn't replace the toilet paper on and also what her name was. And guess what? We found out.
Her name is Dora. And boy, did Dora deliver.

Speaker 1 Dora wrote this letter.

Speaker 1 The reason I don't replace the toilet paper on the roll is simple. I hate it.
I hate doing it, which is actually a pretty good reason. That's what I speculated was the reason.
It's annoying.

Speaker 1 Dora goes on to write: the springy things suck

Speaker 1 and it always falls apart. Again, we talked about this.
I find the sound that the springy, we're talking about the spring-loaded,

Speaker 1 what would you call it, an axle?

Speaker 1 What's the thing?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Toilet.

Speaker 1 I'm going to go with axle. I like axle.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Does the axle spin?

Speaker 1 Well, you think the toilet paper roll thingy doesn't?

Speaker 2 You're right.

Speaker 1 The spindle? I mean, the spindle, I think, is probably.

Speaker 1 I think that's about right.

Speaker 1 If I toilet paper spindle.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's called a spindle. Boom.

Speaker 1 It's called a spindle. And it's spring-loaded inside so that you can angle it in between the two armatures that hold it.

Speaker 1 And it is very annoying to me, Dora, I agree with you. But I hadn't thought about

Speaker 1 the sound it makes when it hits the floor.

Speaker 1 But I should have, because it always hits the floor. It always falls out.
And then you have to scuttle around like a bathroom crab trying to find it.

Speaker 1 I think Jennifer Murmer knows what I'm talking about. Bathroom crab is so funny.
Yeah, you scuttle around like a bathroom crab trying to get it.

Speaker 1 And then you have to, and then you put the toilet paper on it. And then it goes squeaky squeak as you put it in between the armatures.

Speaker 1 And then you realize you put it on the wrong way because the toilet paper has to come over the top. Oh, yeah.
Right? Over the top. Okay.

Speaker 1 Jesse's being very silent. I hope you agree with us on this one, Jesse.

Speaker 1 I'm thinking about Bathroom Crab just made me think about Bathroom Monkey. Do you remember Bathroom Monkey? No, I don't.

Speaker 1 It was a Saturday Night Live sketch from one of the lesser years of Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s when things were a little up in the air and messy. A little dicey.

Speaker 1 A little dicey on 30 rock then. But a truly special one.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I don't know if Jack Handy wrote it. It has a Jack Handy vibe.
It was, Janine Garofilo was the performer. It was a

Speaker 1 television commercial parody.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's from

Speaker 1 Monkey That Cleans Your Bathroom

Speaker 1 for up to eight whole months.

Speaker 1 And then she says, I don't know where monkeys come from. I don't know how they reproduce.
I don't know how they eat. But I do know one thing.
They were born to clean bathrooms.

Speaker 1 And when it's cleaning power is all used up, simply pick up another in any of three decorative colors.

Speaker 1 When it's cleaning power is all used up.

Speaker 1 Sometimes those Saturday Night Live bits, they just hit the right way.

Speaker 1 Yeah. They just hit right.

Speaker 1 You're talking about the topical parodies with politician impressions, right? That's always the best part of Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 1 We all agree. That's always the best part of Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 1 They call me Cold Open Boy because I love those cold opens. Yeah, they're never.
It's someone imitating a politician.

Speaker 1 Yeah, here's a thing that happened this week slightly differently.

Speaker 1 Oh, but those timeless weird ones are always fun to me. The best.
The best. A lot of geniuses working on that television show.

Speaker 1 And by the way, one incredible genius who's writing for Saturday Night Live right now, Carl Tart. Carl Tart.

Speaker 1 If you folks don't know who Carl Tart is, go find out. That's all.

Speaker 1 Go watch the video.

Speaker 1 Man, one time I complained on Jordan Jesse Go about how long it had been since anyone had called me Youngblood,

Speaker 1 which is basically like

Speaker 1 only

Speaker 1 when I was a young man, but also

Speaker 1 when I lived in a neighborhood where there were a lot of guys that were likely to call me Youngblood. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 somebody sent me a video that Carl Tart made that was like when you're on the basketball court and

Speaker 1 an old man is calling you Youngblood. And it was so funny.
That's all. I just saying, go Google Carl Tart Youngblood.

Speaker 1 Watch that on your Instagram reels or whatever, because it is C-A-R-L space, T-A-R-T.

Speaker 1 I was grateful you introduced me to Carl Tart just the other day. I'd never met him before, and we ran into him at the airport in San Francisco.
Yeah, that was really fun.

Speaker 1 I'm going to text him this afternoon. Anyway, if you ask me, this whole thing about the toilet paper roll is nuts.

Speaker 1 What do you mean? That's what they've decided. That's what they've decided.
I don't think we should tell them to get divorced.

Speaker 1 And Reddit? I'm going to presume. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to presume that David is sincere in answering this question and he's not just trying to preserve his marriage because it isn't worth getting into a fight with your spouse over, for sure.

Speaker 2 Sorry, I don't think that John finished reading the letter because there's some more information here that I feel like our listeners need to know.

Speaker 1 Right. So let's get back into it.
Sorry about that. So this is...
To remind, this is a letter from Dora, David's wife.

Speaker 1 Dora does not replace the toilet paper on the roll after she or anyone finishes using it. And this annoys David.
And the reason that Dora doesn't do it is because replacing it annoys her.

Speaker 1 But she counters. David doesn't even mind replacing the roll.
I know this because I asked him. He likes doing it.
He's the person for the job. And I am generally the tidier one in our relationship.

Speaker 1 Let me have this. Finally, while David does replace the roll, he puts the empty tubes, the cardboard tubes, on the shelf in the bathroom instead of throwing them out.

Speaker 1 And they accumulate there till I carry them all down to recycling. At the end of the day, isn't this tomato tomato?

Speaker 1 Now, this is where I get into it. I don't think this is.

Speaker 1 Is this tomato tomato? Tomato tomato is a song about minor differences of pronunciation. It's the same thing, just pronounced a little bit differently.

Speaker 1 But what Dora is saying here is that, doesn't David's laziness by refusing to throw out the cardboard paper tubes

Speaker 1 even out my laziness? And I think that it's laziness ultimately

Speaker 1 in not replacing the toilet paper roll.

Speaker 1 That's not tomato, tomato meat to me. Sorry, Dora.
So let's call the whole thing off in that regard.

Speaker 1 But Jennifer Marmor, you wanted me to read the rest of this letter.

Speaker 1 What do you think? Is this a big revelation to you?

Speaker 2 Well, I think the fact that she asked David and he says he doesn't mind doing it, you know, it's like he really just wanted to write in to call her out, put her on blast.

Speaker 1 If Dora is a reliable narrator.

Speaker 1 That's the thing here. Like, if he didn't mind doing it, why'd he write in? He told her he didn't mind doing it because what are you going to say? Yes, I mind that.

Speaker 1 Maybe.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 He should if he does.

Speaker 1 Is that why Shane always calls me in tears? Oh, maybe.

Speaker 1 David, if you have said to Dora that you don't mind replacing the toilet paper roll

Speaker 1 and you meant it, then you shouldn't be writing us. If you said it to her and you don't mean it, and you're writing us to get us to intervene, I'm not going to intervene.

Speaker 1 You have to communicate more clearly. But, Dora, in the meantime, but by the way, David, you should be like, it's not tomato, tomato, but it definitely takes two to tongo.

Speaker 1 And you should be throwing away those toilet paper, empty toilet paper rolls. And Dora, I'm sorry to call you both lazy, but I mean,

Speaker 1 it's low-scale laziness, but it's like sometimes you got to do the stuff you don't feel like doing.

Speaker 1 And replacing that toilet paper roll is

Speaker 1 that's you got to do it. You just got to do it.
You got to be mindful of the work you leave behind for others.

Speaker 2 Or they can just keep their system because it's like, for whatever reason, David hates. taking the tubes down to the recycling or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 So it's like, all right, he'll replace the roll and she'll pick up the other end of that task. There are tasks in my home that I hate to do.

Speaker 2 And Shane, my husband, for those who don't know, I'm married to somebody named Shane. He'll do the things that I hate and there's things that he hates doing and I end up doing them.

Speaker 2 And there are times where I'm like, okay, I really can't, you know, change the sheets today. Can you handle the kids' room? You know, and he'll do it.
If I ask him to, you know, he'll, he'll do it.

Speaker 2 But like, generally, there are things that like we've taken on as like, this is my domain. This is your domain.

Speaker 1 Right. But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 If I'm with you, Jennifer, in the sense that if you guys want to work out a compromise, David and Dora of Seattle, and like, well, I'm not going to, I'm not going to refill the toilet paper roll, but I will bring the empty rolls down to the garbage or whatever because you don't feel like doing that.

Speaker 1 Oh, look, whatever it takes for you guys to stay married. I'm not Reddit.
I want you to stay married. But honestly, you've got to replace the toilet paper roll.

Speaker 1 It's like cleaning the lint screen on the dryer.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 now there's, I don't want to get into that whole fight again. I do think that it is ultimately the responsibility of the person using the dryer to double check and make sure the lint screen is clean.

Speaker 1 It is wise to clean it after you use it, but you can't do it all the time. But if you don't have a clean lint screen, you're going to get a fire eventually.

Speaker 1 But with this, if you use the last bit of toilet paper and you don't replace the roll because you don't feel like like it. I don't care if you've got an arrangement with David.

Speaker 1 You're setting David or anyone else next up in the bathroom up for a real crisis. That is no good.
And a real bathroom crab scuttle. Yeah, you don't, yeah.

Speaker 1 Look, you want to be married to, you don't, you know, you want to, you want to be a, you want to be a marriage of two wonderful whole human beings in their own right, not a couple of bathroom crabs.

Speaker 1 Hey, by the way,

Speaker 1 Dora sent in a photo of their cats.

Speaker 1 Millie, who is a black cat, and Julius, of course, orange, orange, Julius, cat. Perfect.
Love it.

Speaker 1 Dora says this photo will, I guess we'll share this photo somewhere, right? Yeah. Remember, only members.

Speaker 2 The members only page, the Boco page.

Speaker 1 Remember his own, the Boco page. You get to go see it over there.
We can share it on our regular page and taunt people. That's true.
That's true. Let's share it.
Let's share and taunt.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's a lovely photo. Actually, it's a very beautiful photo of it.
And you see Millie the Black Cat in mid-descent from a pretty cool looking piece of orange furniture.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 orange Julius getting ready to pounce, I guess, on Millie. It's a real action shot.
I like it. Handsome cats.

Speaker 1 Dora says this photo accurately shows the state of affairs between Julius and Millie. The angles are deceiving.
So let me clarify. Julius is normal size.

Speaker 1 Millie is a four-pound tiny cat, I guess, because Millie is closer. I don't know how this is deceiving.
Here's what I notice here.

Speaker 1 This is a very tidy home.

Speaker 1 Dora, you said you're tidier than David. So I'm giving you full credit.
You know,

Speaker 1 I have lived with two cats before.

Speaker 1 And as the host of Get Your Pets, an occasional afternoon talk show,

Speaker 1 where I live stream with people's cats and dogs and other pets, I have seen into many homes that have had two to 24 cats in them.

Speaker 1 Even a one cat home like mine, the whole hall bathway is now given over to various pooping and peeing stations that my dumb-dumb cat favors, depending on what day of the week it is.

Speaker 1 To see a home with two beautiful cats in it that have not, that has not been ruined. by boxes, you know, like discarded, chewy shipping boxes or whatever.

Speaker 1 And frankly, that beautiful piece of orange furniture does not seem to have a scratch on it. Yeah, it's impressive.
Good job. Good job.
I feel like I'm looking at a catalog.

Speaker 1 Can I just share something that I found on Reddit? Yeah, please do. This is from the subreddit r/slash terrain building.
Here we go.

Speaker 1 This, by the way, a 178,000-member subreddit r/slash-terrain building.

Speaker 1 The question is:

Speaker 1 most unique thing you've made from paper, towel, or toilet toilet paper rolls?

Speaker 1 Then the body is

Speaker 1 using them as the main structure or whatever. What's the most interesting thing you've made?

Speaker 1 Someone made a really handsome Ewok village. That was really nice.

Speaker 1 That was the top one. Wow.
Yub, yub.

Speaker 1 Genuinely very impressive. But there were a few other answers that I really enjoyed.

Speaker 1 One just said, I build a triceratops for my kids.

Speaker 1 Someone explained very carefully

Speaker 1 how they made some stalagmites.

Speaker 1 They said,

Speaker 1 I use them as the base structure, then mixed white glue, water, and used toilet paper to shape the stalagmite around the roll.

Speaker 1 Someone replied to them, used toilet paper?

Speaker 1 And then they said, yes.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 Someone said, with a couple ping-pong pong balls, you can make a proper horizontal chemical tank, which suggests to me that there's people out there making improper horizontal chemical tanks.

Speaker 2 Don't even get me started.

Speaker 1 I don't know how you make a tank for anything out of cardboard. Yeah.
Someone, well, if you're a terrain builder, you can. Oh, I see what you're saying.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Lloyd Ryan76 said, Did a purple worm I'm quite proud of.

Speaker 1 Wait a minute.

Speaker 1 I love purple worms worms and I love all these people, Jesse. But how many of them are maximum fund members? I don't know, but I have one last one to read, John.
All right. All right.
All out.

Speaker 1 This is from Grand Mage Bob.

Speaker 1 Only for you, Grand Mage Bob. I save a ton of these roles to use for school and for the kids at my work.
I'm a shirty person. What can I say? But to be honest,

Speaker 1 I've never made anything from them for myself, really.

Speaker 1 But I can do is best I can do is I used a slice of a roll for a small part of a fantasy-themed marble maze. Just one circular room.
I should make an armor from them for the kids to wear.

Speaker 1 I'm speechless.

Speaker 1 Okay, Jennifer, Jesse, Joel, Suzzy, everybody who's listening, we have two different cases about how a family should pick movies for movie night. I got two different letters about this.
Amber

Speaker 1 in Bellevue, Washington, that's near Seattle.

Speaker 1 We're doing a show there, says that their family's rule is that each member gets to pick their favorite movie when they're all sitting down to watch movies.

Speaker 1 She says, we grown-ups like to inflict upon our children classic films from our own childhoods.

Speaker 1 The kids, who are eight and 10 years old, always try to make us watch a movie that they've never seen before. The adults argue that a movie you've never seen before can't be one of your favorites.

Speaker 1 The kids say they want to pick a movie without others being able to say no. All right.
And before we get into the chat, Whitney writes with a similar thing. Whitney's writing from Santa Cruz.

Speaker 1 Jesse, you ever hear of that town? Santa Cruz de California? Santa Cruz de California.

Speaker 1 My husband and I used to love introducing our 11-year-old son to movies we were raised with, such as E.T., Nine to Five, Little Miss Sunshine, and Clifford.

Speaker 1 Put a pin in that. Come back to that in a minute.
But suddenly our son insists on watching movies we've already seen as a family. My husband and I don't want to re-watch movies.

Speaker 1 Please order our son to accept our choices.

Speaker 1 By the way, she's in Santa Cruz. Whitney wants you to know, Jesse, that she's the groundskeeper at Porter.
Does that mean anything to you? Yeah, I was a student at Porter College.

Speaker 1 What was your college, Jennifer?

Speaker 2 I was a student at Cowell, but I graduated with Porter because all my friends were Porter and I wanted to have fun at graduation a little bit.

Speaker 1 Whitney graduated from Cowell in 04.

Speaker 1 You left Whitney behind to join Porter.

Speaker 2 Well, I graduated in 06.

Speaker 1 Talk about before

Speaker 1 sunrise, before sunset. Richard Linklater should be making movies out of this generational intertwining.
This is a novel in this thing.

Speaker 1 So wait a minute. So she went to college with both of you, it would seem like at least some overlap, right? Yeah.
I think that's true.

Speaker 1 Whitney was at Cowell.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 frankly, this is all more interesting than this question. Whitney was at Cowell

Speaker 1 and then graduated instead of going into a career being a cool teen for a Japanese ESL exam.

Speaker 1 Hey, you guys want to go to the library and check out some books? Yeah. Instead of doing that, she decided to go on a career path that would lead her back to Santa Cruz.
Maybe she never left.

Speaker 1 She's the groundskeeper at Porter.

Speaker 1 And meanwhile, her husband Ian is the maintenance guy at Kresge. Is that saying that correctly? Yeah.
Yeah, Kresge's the hippie college. Kresge.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It is. What does it mean if you're the hippie college at Santa Cruz? I mean, it means the formula is powerful.
Yeah. Wow.
Like, that's like, that's like double stuff Oreo of hippiness, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Pretty much. Is there a stuffy jock college at Santa Cruz?

Speaker 1 College 8. College 8 is the jocks?

Speaker 2 Although they have a name now for it, but I would say College 8.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Would they wear like blazers and turtlenecks and like walk around with pipes and look down at everybody? Like those those snobs in the Animal House?

Speaker 2 No, it was mostly rainbow sandals and board shorts.

Speaker 1 Those are the jocks? It's Santa Cruz.

Speaker 1 Got it. Okay, I understand now.

Speaker 1 John, that's where the football team lived, John.

Speaker 1 UC Santa Cruz. Here's my order to you, Whitney.
First of all, I want you.

Speaker 1 to collaborate with Ian maintenance guy. I hope that's his official job title at Kresge.
I want you to collaborate on a romance novel about two people falling in love on the campus of Santa Cruz.

Speaker 1 Because I think that's going to be a hot story. And you can

Speaker 1 then turn that into a film franchise, an episode four, a new romance. Kresge meets Porter or whatever.

Speaker 1 But meanwhile, what are these families to do? Is Family Movie Night meant to be for watching new movies or re-watching old favorites? Jesse, you've got some children.

Speaker 1 Are there movies that they just want to watch over and over and over again? I mean,

Speaker 1 yes. In my daughter's case, she always wants to watch like a Sharknado movie.
There are a lot of Sharknados.

Speaker 1 Like, should I watch them from the beginning or should I watch like Sharknado episode four, a New Hope First? No, you shouldn't watch them. At all.
No, basically.

Speaker 1 I have seen a Sharknado, actually. I saw Sharknado one.

Speaker 1 Sometimes somebody is in there and you're like, you know what? They bring a lot to the table in this terrible movie. And which one, which Sharknado is that?

Speaker 1 No, I'm not talking about one of the sharknados. I'm talking about one of the people in the sharknados because they got a thousand people in every Sharknado, you know? Right, right, right, right.

Speaker 1 And then sometimes, somebody, you're like, yeah, this person's great. They're doing a great job.
This movie sucks.

Speaker 1 Joel, you ever watch a Sharknado? Never even heard of it. You watched

Speaker 1 that main scary horror movie,

Speaker 1 A Plague of Scallops?

Speaker 1 Yes, that's what I'm watching right now. Scallop Blizzard, I think it's called.
When Suzzy was little, we watched a lot of chick flicks. Chick flicks? Like what? Mean girls? Mean girls? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Was that like something that was re-watched a lot? No.

Speaker 1 No. No.
For our family, we all watched a lot of sound of music and a lot of Wizard of Oz.

Speaker 1 And in fact, our daughter, who is now a graduate of college and is home briefly before starting her independent life

Speaker 1 in an unnamed American city in three weeks uh the other night i was falling asleep or no i was woken up at 2 a.m by the sound of my favorite things no excuse me how do you solve a problem like maria

Speaker 1 my daughter had been out at a bar with friends and came home she's like i just want to watch this movie again middle of the night

Speaker 1 and all i wanted to do was get up and watch with her but i had to exercise restraint because it's her life now that's her movie now When my kids were very small, they loved the Toy Story movies so much that at one point, one one of them somehow got set to Spanish and

Speaker 1 they would just watch it in Spanish. They didn't care.
That's a plot point of Toy Story two or three.

Speaker 1 Yes, but no, but what I'm saying is the full film was in Spanish. I don't remember if the part where Buzz Lightyear speaks in Spanish

Speaker 1 was transposed into English. Maybe Japanese.

Speaker 1 I couldn't quite remember, but one of them would demand Floy Story.

Speaker 1 Floy Story, Floy Story.

Speaker 1 What do you think? Should we should, when you're watching movies as a family, should you

Speaker 1 try to watch as many new movies as possible, forcing your taste on your child as Whitney and Ian are trying to do?

Speaker 1 Or do you, or do you accept that your children want to re-watch movies over and over and over again? I'm not opposed to my children re-watching movies, but I can't do it. You can't re-watch a movie?

Speaker 1 No, it takes a lot for me to just watch.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm cool with watching like a, like, a good kids' movie, like, uh,

Speaker 1 not like Totoro or something like that. That's like a legendary classic, but like Mitchell's versus the Machines was a very good, very good.
Everyone says that I haven't seen that movie.

Speaker 1 Kids animated film. A lot of fun.
A lot of fun, that movie. But I watched it, and I'm not going to watch it more times.
Like, it's for children.

Speaker 1 Like, it's for families, and it's full of stuff that I enjoyed. Right.
But, like, I don't even want to re-watch an adult movie that was made for me that I enjoyed. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 That's how I feel about it. I know what movie I want to see again.
Hundreds of Beavers. So that is going to be my next pick for Family Movie Nine.
I'm glad that came up.

Speaker 1 Oh, Hundreds of Beavers. Yeah.
Joel, have you heard of this movie, Hundreds of Beavers? Nope.

Speaker 1 I don't want to say anything more other than watch the trailer and you'll understand. Okay.
It's about a guy, a guy in the wilderness of Wisconsin having problems with beavers. Literal beavers.
Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 About hundreds, about a hundred of them. Sounds very good.
Multiple hundreds. Sounds very enticing.
Sounds very good.

Speaker 1 I feel like kids get something deep out of rewatching movies that they connect with.

Speaker 1 And so I would say that even though it is often boring for adults to re-watch movies, particularly movies that are not that great, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 But certain kids' movies, you don't want to watch them again. Kids want to watch them again and again and again and again.

Speaker 1 Like, I think adults just observe that as being annoying or immature, but I think something's happening. I think kids are really working through stuff and learning,

Speaker 1 getting a deep knowledge of characters that they clearly connect with when they do that. So, and in particular, Whitney, if your 11-year-old son is saying, yeah, I'd like to watch E.T.
again.

Speaker 1 Because your taste is very good. E.T., 9-5, Little Miss Sunshine, Clifford, those are all good movies.
I don't understand how you grew up with both E.T. and Little Miss Sunshine.

Speaker 1 Maybe you're a time traveler, but, you know, like whatever, they're very different eras of film, but whatever your son is connecting to in those things where he wants to see them again, I don't think that you should try to prohibit him.

Speaker 1 Indeed, you know, maybe you should try to figure out what it is that he's really responding to.

Speaker 1 That said,

Speaker 1 you know, and same deal, I should say, with the Amber. in Bellevue, where the situation is reversed, where the parents want to watch familiar classics and the kids want to watch new stuff.

Speaker 1 I guess, and this is the sad part because they don't want people to be able to say no to the movies that they pick.

Speaker 1 They're crying for help here, Amber, because

Speaker 1 they're feeling that they can't recommend a movie because every time they do, apparently you're saying, I've seen it already or I don't want to.

Speaker 1 So they're trying to come up with new stuff so you don't have an excuse to say no to it. So essentially what you need to do as parents is say yes a little bit more.

Speaker 1 Yes, a little bit more to your kids' choices, whether they want to watch something new and you get exposed to something new or whether they want to watch something old that you've seen before.

Speaker 1 Like the point of exposing kids to culture, whatever it is, is to help them develop their taste and help them develop and explore what they respond to in storytelling. And

Speaker 1 you need to offer a little grace and not try to

Speaker 1 not try to be the video DJ all the time.

Speaker 1 There's There's give and take, but you got to give a little grace to these kids. Yeah, I feel like

Speaker 2 Amber's whole thing is that

Speaker 2 their family has to pick a movie that's their favorite. But the thing that Amber is forgetting maybe is that she and her

Speaker 2 partner, you know, they have a whole lifetime. I don't know how old they are, but I would guess 30s, 40s, you know, they have all of these years of being able to define what their favorites are.

Speaker 2 Their kids are eight and 10. They're still trying to figure out what their taste is.
Yeah, exactly. They don't have as broad of a

Speaker 2 library in their mind to go back to.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's right. They have an advantage.

Speaker 1 They've got years of favorites to draw upon. The kids don't.

Speaker 1 Frankly, I wish that there was someone in my life who would just say, don't even think about it. Just turn on this movie.

Speaker 1 Because I'm completely paralyzed by choice every time.

Speaker 1 And all I end up doing is just, you know, either letting our daughter march me me through the death march of another five episodes of Love Island UK, which, by the way, I love very much and enjoy quite a bit, or I'm just watching Stathlets Flats again or Hundreds of Beavers.

Speaker 1 Hundreds of Beavers is one of the first new movies I've seen in a long time, other than Furiosa, which, by the way, if you haven't seen Furiosa, what's wrong with you? Go and see it. It's the best.

Speaker 1 You see Furiosa yet, Joel? No. Jesse? My family wouldn't go with me.
Oh, no.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. I would go to see Furiosa with you.
Why can't you go by yourself? Too busy. My life doesn't accommodate it yet.
I have to either have a child with me or I don't get to go.

Speaker 1 I have a child who's the my oldest child is, you know, she's glad to watch the Rority Party Massacre. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So it's not a matter of inappropriateness. Right.

Speaker 1 It's a matter of it being too noisy.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 This one is quieter than Fury Road, but it is still pretty noisy. I would say that Fury Road is my favorite regular movie of the last decade.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And by the way, this is the thing that I didn't like when I learned it, but it's true. That movie's nine years old.
So

Speaker 1 get ready to anoint a new movie of the decade because Fury Road is in the rear view mirror. You think they had rear view mirrors in those war cars?

Speaker 1 No. That's a good question.
Too big. 10 and 2, 10 and 2, War Boys.

Speaker 1 You think

Speaker 1 they had airbags?

Speaker 1 Yeah, probably so. Yeah.
Safety for me. I mean, I'll tell you this.
They didn't have drum brakes, anti-lock all the way.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 By the way, you see Fury Road or Furiosa, Joel? No. No? I just stare at TikTok all day.
Joel, Suzzy, Fury Road, Furiosa? Guess what? You guys, you two are having a movie night while you're here.

Speaker 1 Meme girls. No,

Speaker 1 Fury Road, then Furiosa. And then Hundreds of Beavers.
Got it? Writing it down? Trebian, let's move on. I remember walking out of Fury Road.
I went to see it with my wife in the movie theater.

Speaker 1 Going out after it was done, not in the middle. No, no, no, after it was done.
Walking out of the movie and standing there and turning to my wife and saying, was that the best movie I've ever seen?

Speaker 1 Pretty much.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Pretty much.
From the director of Babe Pig in the City. That's right.
I mean, George Rains. George Miller is an incredible filmmaker.
Shares a lot of DNA with Babe Pig in the City, I would say.

Speaker 1 If you watch Babe Pig in the City and then watch Mad Max, you'll notice. All right, there's a double feature for you, Joel and Suzzy, while you're here visiting.

Speaker 1 Babe Pig in the City, double feature Fury Road. Mad Max, Fury Road.
Okay. Then Furiosa, Mad Max saga.

Speaker 1 That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman. If you want to hear more from the members only mailbag every single month, it's easy.

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Follow and subscribe to see our episodes and our

Speaker 1 content. We're having a lot of fun over there on the YouTube channel, Judge John Hodgman Pod.
At the end of the episode, Chat Your Payhole, Jesse and I talked a bit about how much we love dish towels.

Speaker 1 We love dish towels and we're not the only ones. Our commenter of the week, Kelly Thorngate, says, I feel so seen.
Kelly, we see you, and we are so glad you are seeing us too on YouTube.

Speaker 1 If you're seeing us on YouTube right now, get in those comments and tell us what movies your family is going to watch over the holiday weekend. I mean, it's a big weekend.

Speaker 1 Are you going to watch a movie? Judge Hodgman, my daughter has announced that once Thanksgiving is complete,

Speaker 1 Home for the Holidays is a good Thanksgiving movie in addition to Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, the one everybody always cites. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But once Thanksgiving's over

Speaker 1 until Christmas, through Christmas Day, we will only be watching Christmas entertainment. Only Christmas entertainment.
I basically am growing a little tiny Alonso Giralde in my house.

Speaker 1 She refuses to watch anything.

Speaker 1 So I'm just,

Speaker 1 if you got a suggestion for a good Christmas episode of a television show out there, hit me up on social media or hit up Judge John Hodgman on social media because I will take all the suggestions I can get.

Speaker 1 I think there's only like one or two Christmas episodes of cheers,

Speaker 1 and then I'm flying blind. Maybe that obscure, you know, Star Wars holiday special or other obscure holiday special of a TV show is only available on YouTube.
Make sure to share it with us.

Speaker 1 And while you're sharing things, why don't you share us on YouTube? Just press that little arrow button and you can share our YouTube episodes and shorts with whomever you like in your life.

Speaker 1 Make sure to click that like and subscribe and everything else. It really does help people find the show.
Judge John Hodgman was created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman.

Speaker 1 Another welcome to our new social media specialist, Megan Rosati. The podcast is edited by A.J.
McKeon. Our video editor is Daniel Spear.
Our producer is Jennifer Marmer.

Speaker 1 Speaking of the holiday holiday season, John, we need holiday recipes for our annual holiday party. If your family eats something

Speaker 1 weird or let's say all-American,

Speaker 1 hit us up at hodgman at maximumfund.org or submit your disputes at maximumfund.org slash jjho. Yep, we've uh we've had tomato soup salad.
We've obviously had eggnog and orange soda.

Speaker 1 We've also had eggnog and sprite. There was a year when we enjoyed some hot mulled Dr.

Speaker 1 Pepper, I remember Jesse, as well as all banners of unusual, idiosyncratic, charming, and sometimes repulsive holiday

Speaker 1 appetizers and sides and main courses that have been a part of your family's tradition.

Speaker 1 Go raid grandma's or granddad's or Aunt Judy's recipe cards this Thanksgiving and find some nice, weird old stuff for us to make and eat on camera and microphone.

Speaker 1 Send it all over to maximumfund.org/slash JJ H O.

Speaker 1 And of course, we're eager to hear about all your disputes on any subject. No cases too small.
Submit those cases at maximumfund.org slash JJHO.

Speaker 1 We will talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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