FH Mini 10 - Detectives! w/ John Hodgman and David Rees

[0:00] Hey, it's me, John Hodgman, host of The Flophouse.

John Hodgman

[0:07] It's another episode where we don't watch a movie and I come by for some reason.

[0:12] I'm here with our friends, Elliot Kalin.

[0:14] Hi, Elliot.

[0:15] Oh, hey, John.

[0:15] I'm glad you've taken the reins.

[0:18] Dan McCoy.

[0:19] Hi, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[0:20] Hey, could you come do this every time?

[0:21] Because I don't know what I'm doing.

John Hodgman

[0:24] And Stuart Wellington moving along.

[0:26] Oh, hey, how you doing?

[0:27] Great to be here.

[0:28] Oh, great to see you.

[0:30] Or not see you, but hear you.

[0:31] And our extra special guest, my colleague, friend, and dear collaborator in a project that we will be discussing later on in this episode, David Reese.

[0:42] Hi.

[0:43] Thanks for having me, John.

[0:44] That's my pleasure.

[0:46] Of course, The Flophouse comes to you every week from MaximumFun.org with a discussion about a movie that did not do well.

[0:53] Usually, yeah.

[0:54] We sometimes do these mini episodes where we talk about whatever we want.

[0:58] And that's all I know about them.

[1:00] You know, Dan, can you tell me what these mini episodes are about?

Dan McCoy

[1:03] Well, they're pretty free form.

[1:05] We just do whatever we like.

[1:07] Although, John, it sounded like you were going to, like, launch into a ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes or, you know, some other old time radio sponsor.

John Hodgman

[1:17] Right.

[1:19] Our sponsor this week is Striker.

[1:22] Are you tired of going out to the bodega to get cigarettes?

[1:26] Why not order them delivered to your home via the internet?

[1:29] Striker.

[1:30] S-T-R-I-K-R.

[1:32] It's the internet cigarette company.

[1:33] We believe so much in these cigarettes that we bought the factory in Germany to send them to you.

[1:39] Now, so...

[1:40] Oh, by the way, don't smoke cigarettes, everyone.

[1:43] Joe.

[1:43] Thanks, good.

[1:44] You covered it.

[1:44] Good save.

Dan McCoy

[1:45] John Hodgman and David Reese are here in large part because they have a new show coming out called Dicktown.

[1:51] And we'll get to that in a moment.

[1:52] But what I really want to talk about right now is...

[1:55] Now, David, you probably don't recall.

[1:58] I met you once before at the wedding of our mutual friend, Mr. Brock Mahan, also Elliot's very close friend.

[2:08] And what I recall about this is we had a pleasant interaction.

[2:12] And then, because it was a cash bar for some reason, I offered to buy you a drink.

Elliott Kalan

[2:17] Because Brock's not made of money, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[2:19] Excuse me.

Elliott Kalan

[2:20] If I could stand up for one of my oldest friends, he's not made of money.

Dan McCoy

[2:25] If there's anything one should have at a wedding.

S4

[2:26] Amazingly, Brock did not make a trillion dollars being a producer on Going Deep with David Reese.

[2:32] Yeah, no, we can all agree on this.

[2:33] A twice-canceled TV show that nobody watched.

[2:35] Incredibly, that did not give him open bar money.

Elliott Kalan

[2:39] I'll step up and say that I was waiting for a moment to mention Going Deep with David Reese, one of my favorite television shows of all time.

Dan McCoy

[2:46] Yeah, I mean, all I'll say is much poorer people than Brock have had open bars.

[2:51] But the point is, I was...

[2:53] Wow.

[2:53] Name them.

[2:54] I want the names of three of them.

[2:57] Jeff and Sally and Max.

Elliott Kalan

[3:02] But the point is...

[3:03] Wait, yes, okay.

[3:04] Technically, it was three people.

[3:05] It was the same wedding.

[3:06] It was a polyamorous wedding.

[3:08] Okay.

[3:08] But you're right.

[3:08] That's right.

[3:09] They did have an open bar.

[3:10] I mean, the point of the story...

[3:10] Just like they have an open marriage.

John Hodgman

[3:11] ...was merely that...

[3:13] That was the slogan at the time.

[3:14] Open bar, open marriage.

[3:15] You know what this is...

[3:16] It's an unspoken rule among thruple weddings.

[3:18] Open bar, of course, is required.

[3:20] Yeah.

[3:21] Yeah.

[3:21] You got to get the parents on board.

[3:23] Get the parents on board.

Stuart Wellington

[3:24] Loosen them up.

[3:25] That's the way to do it.

[3:27] You got a lot of parents to please, you know?

[3:29] Ruing the day, I agreed to five...

[3:30] An open bar is a real guaranteed parent pleaser, I think.

Dan McCoy

[3:33] Mm-hmm.

[3:34] Depends on the parent.

[3:35] The point to be pleaser...

[3:36] The point of the story, such as it was, which is not much, was that...

John Hodgman

[3:41] You're a trust fund dilettante who requires everyone to spend as freely as you do.

[3:45] There was not an open bar.

Dan McCoy

[3:47] There was not an open bar.

[3:48] And I offered to buy David a drink because I had enjoyed his show so much, Going Deep with

[3:55] David Rees.

[3:55] And he looked at me like I was a crazy person, which is, to be fair, a totally reasonable

[4:02] reaction to that.

[4:04] Common.

S4

[4:04] But that was our one meeting prior to this.

[4:08] That makes me...

[4:09] I'm sorry.

[4:10] Like, maybe I was being...

[4:11] Maybe I was distracted because I was DJing the reception and I was really nervous about

[4:15] it.

[4:15] I think that was probably part of it.

[4:16] You did it excellent.

[4:17] I guarantee you...

[4:18] Did I say anything to you?

Elliott Kalan

[4:19] Or did I just say?

[4:19] No.

[4:20] I guarantee you Dan asked you this while you were DJing and it really threw you off.

[4:22] That's my guarantee.

[4:23] No, no.

Dan McCoy

[4:24] We were in the bar section of the wedding.

[4:27] I am sure that you were doing a great job DJing.

[4:31] I'm sure you were distracted by it.

[4:32] And I'm also sure that I was deeply awkward because that is my default.

[4:39] So...

[4:39] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[4:39] I mean, knowing Dan, you probably started the conversation by complaining that he wasn't

[4:43] playing enough B-sides.

[4:46] Yeah.

Dan McCoy

[4:47] That was a...

[4:48] I was like going deep with David Reese.

[4:52] Going the obvious choices with David Reese.

S4

[4:55] I had been hired by Brock to DJ his wedding and at the time I was making a lot of mashups and Brock

[5:04] had asked if I would play some mashups for the people dancing.

[5:08] And I had made a couple using some songs that Brock and his wife Ramelle really liked.

[5:14] And I had made one that I thought was really terrific that worked really well, which was

[5:18] Dancing on My Own by Robin with Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper along with I Believe

[5:26] in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness.

[5:29] And I was playing it and someone came up to me and said, can you just play Girls Just Want

[5:36] to Have Fun by itself?

Dan McCoy

[5:39] I want to dispute that.

[5:40] I have nothing but warm memories of that wedding.

[5:44] I think you did a great job.

S4

[5:45] Oh, it was a great wedding, but I have fraught, fraught memories and I no longer speak to Brock

[5:53] or Ramelle and I'll resent them forever.

[5:56] Just kidding.

[5:57] I hope I miss those guys.

[5:59] So, Dave, do you have any more grievances you want to air?

Elliott Kalan

[6:01] I just like that Dan said he had nothing but warm memories and he started by complaining

[6:05] about having to pay for his own drinks.

[6:07] No, I mean, if I had not been interrupted.

[6:09] Warm memories, sir, unless it's warmed by the fires of your rage and resentment.

Dan McCoy

[6:13] If anything, this was an apology to Mr. Reese for putting him in an awkward position.

S4

[6:21] I was probably socially awkward, too, and was probably scowling just because that's how

[6:25] my face usually is.

[6:26] And I'm sorry if you've spent a couple years thinking I was a crappy DJ and an unpleasant

[6:30] person.

[6:31] You're not the only person who's thought that, though, so you don't have to.

Elliott Kalan

[6:33] I mean, if anyone has a grievance, it's me, since I actually had requested to be the

[6:38] DJ and they asked for mashups.

[6:40] And I played them what I called Monster Mash, which is a mashup of the Monster Mash and Suicide

[6:44] is Painless, the theme song for Mash.

[6:46] Sure, yeah.

[6:47] And they said tonally it didn't mix.

[6:49] And in retrospect, they were right.

[6:51] But I thought the title worked really well.

John Hodgman

[6:53] Tonally it didn't mix and also it sounded bad.

[6:56] Yes.

Elliott Kalan

[6:56] Oh, very much so.

[6:57] It was not danceable.

[6:59] Which is ironic since the Monster Mash is a song about a dance.

Dan McCoy

[7:02] Right.

Elliott Kalan

[7:03] Yeah.

[7:04] And I guess Suicide is Painless is about the dance called war.

Dan McCoy

[7:07] Okay.

[7:08] So the point is that we're here to talk about...

[7:09] Martial credit.

[7:10] We're here to talk about detectives today on the show.

Elliott Kalan

[7:15] John and David, would you please tell us about Dicktown, your upcoming program?

S4

[7:21] Sure.

[7:21] John, do you want to...

[7:23] Let's coordinate our media strategy.

[7:26] Who takes the lead on this?

[7:28] Here we go.

[7:28] This is a good test run.

John Hodgman

[7:30] All right.

[7:30] Completely synchronized media strategy.

S4

[7:33] I know what we do, John.

[7:35] Alternate words.

[7:37] Here we go.

[7:37] Dicktown is our new show that premieres on FXX's anthology of short form.

John Hodgman

[7:53] programming called Cake on July 9th and also available on Hulu the following day.

Dan McCoy

[8:16] Wow.

[8:16] That was great.

[8:17] That was really good.

[8:19] That was a real tightrope, but you did it.

[8:21] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[8:22] You should have written the episodes that way.

[8:24] That was really successful.

[8:25] I was impressed by the following up of Andwith also.

[8:29] Classic.

[8:30] I was buying time.

[8:32] Beautifully.

[8:33] Beautifully done.

[8:34] And so Dicktown, if I understand correctly, it's a town where instead of people, everyone's

[8:37] a penis?

S4

[8:39] No.

[8:40] We couldn't sell that version of it.

[8:43] They asked for something a little less esoteric.

[8:46] Here's the deal.

John Hodgman

[8:48] David Reese and I were invited.

[8:51] We were invited, everyone, to come up with an idea for a short form animated show for FXX's

[9:01] late night anthology show Cake.

[9:06] And we had an idea.

[9:08] We wanted to do an animated show about a detective show in which my character named John Hunchman

[9:18] is a former prodigal boy detective a la Encyclopedia Brown.

[9:24] But now he has grown up and he's in his 40s and he's sad and alone and he's still solving crimes for teenagers.

[9:32] And David Reese's character, David Purefoy, is my character's former high school bully and arch enemy,

[9:39] who also has failed to thrive and is hanging around this town.

[9:43] And he has now become my driver and sort of hired muscle and unlikely friend.

[9:49] And we go episode after episode solving various mysteries for teenagers in this town.

[9:58] Now, this is a show with a lot of heart, a lot of warmth.

[10:03] And we knew, therefore, that FXX and its parent company FX and its parent company F would not be into it.

[10:13] And therefore, I had the idea.

S4

[10:16] I'm sorry, David, to claim this inspiration.

[10:20] This is the longest word I've ever heard in my life.

John Hodgman

[10:23] Was this the one word description?

[10:25] Just kidding.

[10:27] Keep going.

[10:28] So, in any case, we had the idea to call it Dick Town.

[10:35] Dick as in detective.

[10:37] And also the fictional town in which the show is set is called Richardsville, North Carolina.

[10:42] And the locals call it Dick Town.

[10:44] And we thought that that would bring FX around to their sort of subversive, provocative point of view.

[10:55] And it worked.

[10:56] But now, like, I don't like saying swear words.

[11:00] I don't like saying dick all the time.

[11:02] But now we have a show called Dick Town.

[11:04] So, it's called Dick Town.

Elliott Kalan

[11:06] I think the ad campaign I saw for it where it says, she wants the D and then parentheses, ick town, has not helped with the kind of heartwarming feel that you're going for.

[11:17] You saw all those billboards that I put up?

[11:18] Yeah.

[11:19] I mean, you put them all up in my neighborhood, so it's really been hard to avoid them.

[11:23] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[11:23] And my son was like, what's that?

John Hodgman

[11:25] And I said, uh, don't look.

[11:26] There has been so much advertising throughout Hollywood, New York, Chicago, all across the country.

[11:34] I mean, people by this point are incredibly tired of hearing about Dick Town and their sponsored content on their Instagrams.

[11:42] And this is the last stop on the Dick Town tour, the D-Town tour.

Dan McCoy

[11:47] And the DTT.

[11:48] Right.

[11:49] I would like to say this is the sort of very hyper-specific, esoteric, not relevant to the zeitgeist of 2020 premise that is catnip to me.

[11:58] Like, I, it is exactly the same that I love.

[12:02] Now, are the detects...

John Hodgman

[12:03] Well, that's because we made it in, that's because we made it in 2018.

[12:06] Yeah.

[12:07] Right.

[12:07] And animation takes a long time.

S4

[12:09] The pilot is all about Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Unite the Right Rows.

Dan McCoy

[12:13] Oh, boy.

[12:14] Now, are the mysteries solved Encyclopedia Brown style in that they mostly depend on where penguins live?

[12:21] Like, which pole the penguins...

[12:23] Whether, whether mutants can have children.

[12:25] It's all like trivia-based solutions.

[12:26] Yeah.

[12:26] Right, exactly.

S4

[12:28] It's a mix.

[12:29] It's a mystery of the week.

[12:31] And John's character, John Hunchman, does know a lot of trivia.

[12:35] I think there's some bird-related trivia in the pilot.

[12:38] And actually, there's some bird-related clues in the season finale.

[12:44] So, he's a well-rounded, well-read guy.

[12:47] In one episode, he brags about his activity on goodreads.com.

[12:51] But there's no replacing shoe leather, you know, and just elbow grease.

[12:55] And so, there's a lot of research and interviewing suspects and driving around in my character's Fiero.

[13:01] And tracking down leads and corralling people.

[13:05] Sometimes bullying them into telling us what we want to know.

[13:08] It's a mix of investigative paradigms.

[13:14] That's even the tagline.

John Hodgman

[13:15] One of the things that I always loved about Encyclopedia Brown was the solutions.

[13:23] And you would go to the back of the book after you read the mystery to find the solution.

[13:28] The solution was always like, Encyclopedia Brown knew that the car hood would still be hot

[13:36] if the villain had driven as far as he had, and therefore the baby dancing on the car hood

[13:44] would have been burned horribly on his soul or whatever.

[13:48] Oh yeah, the case of the dancing baby hood.

[13:52] And they always end with, and so faced with the logic that their alibi made no sense,

[13:59] the criminal confessed immediately to the crime.

[14:01] Yeah.

[14:02] Which it should have always...

Stuart Wellington

[14:03] Bugs mean he was sentenced to life.

[14:05] Right.

[14:05] Bugs in prison.

John Hodgman

[14:06] And whenever I would read this to my son, I would always change it to, and faced with

[14:12] the illogic of his alibi, the criminal pushed the 14-year-old into the dirt and ran away

[14:19] and got away with that.

Elliott Kalan

[14:21] Well, that's like, in the beginning of all the books, they'd be like, you know, whatever

[14:25] is...

[14:26] I forgot Encyclopedia Brown's real first name, but that his dad was the chief of police...

[14:30] What?

[14:31] Leroy.

[14:32] Leroy?

[14:32] Bad, bad Leroy Brown.

[14:33] He was bad boy, bad, bad Leroy, because he would actually...

[14:36] Oh, because he was bad...

[14:37] That's right, because in the last book they revealed that he was solving these minor crimes

[14:40] to cover up the fact that he was the crime king of the Midwest.

[14:43] And he had this network of child thieves.

[14:46] But in the beginning, they'd always be like, police chief Brown wished that he could tell

[14:49] the world about his brilliant son.

[14:51] I was like, well, why can't he?

[14:52] Hold on a second.

Dan McCoy

[14:53] Well, I mean, I don't know.

[14:55] Because...

[14:56] Revealing that all of the law enforcement of the town had been subcontracted to his child.

Elliott Kalan

[15:04] I mean, better to just take credit for his son's work in a big eyes type scenario?

[15:09] I don't think so.

John Hodgman

[15:10] No.

[15:11] It's a...

[15:12] If Chief Brown...

[15:14] And by the way, Encyclopedia Brown's first name is Leroy.

[15:17] I just looked it up.

[15:18] If Chief Brown had revealed that his son had solved every crime in Idaville for the past

[15:25] impossible number of years, because it's all Encyclopedia Brown time...

[15:30] Yeah.

[15:32] Then immediately there would be a call to defund the police.

[15:36] Get rid of the police department, because they're not doing anything.

[15:39] It's all this one middle schooler.

Stuart Wellington

[15:42] Yeah.

[15:42] I mean, that's...

[15:43] When we say abolish the police, what we're just saying is,

[15:46] replace them with Encyclopedia Browns.

S4

[15:49] Let kids do it for free.

[15:51] Let kids do it for free.

[15:53] So to answer your question, Dan...

[15:54] Let the kids find the tampons and the milkshakes.

[15:59] That's about today's news.

[16:00] I didn't make that up.

[16:01] That's not a dick-to-block point.

[16:02] That's incredible.

[16:03] That's real life.

[16:03] I know.

Stuart Wellington

[16:05] Ripped from the headlines.

John Hodgman

[16:06] Maybe that'll be saved for season two, which comes out 2029.

S4

[16:12] The Hardy Boys also had a...

[16:15] Their dad was a detective, right?

John Hodgman

[16:18] Oh, yeah.

S4

[16:19] He was Ed Hardy, the clothing magnate.

[16:20] Oh, right.

[16:21] Oh, okay.

[16:21] He was detecting new fashions.

Dan McCoy

[16:23] Yeah.

[16:24] Now, my childhood child detectives of choice were the three investigators.

[16:30] And I've mentioned this to Stuart and Elliot before, who were not familiar with this.

[16:35] Are either of you three investigators men?

[16:38] Never heard of him, no.

Elliott Kalan

[16:39] But that's what you called yourself and your two brothers.

Dan McCoy

[16:43] It was an Alfred Hitchcock-branded series.

[16:46] It was one of these things where he put his name on.

[16:48] In the early episodes, he funded them, I guess, because they solved a crime for him.

[16:54] But mostly he was not involved.

[16:57] No, no.

[16:57] It was a book series.

[16:58] It was a Hardy Boys-esque series.

[17:02] Jupiter Jones was the smart one.

[17:04] And then they had, I don't know, the bookish one or the tough guy.

[17:08] Two others.

[17:09] Yeah.

[17:09] Jupiter Jones plus two was basically the three investigators.

Elliott Kalan

[17:12] Jupiter Jones and then John Marsh and then Bob Stevenson.

[17:17] So only Jupiter Jones had the really interesting name.

Dan McCoy

[17:19] Yeah.

[17:20] I think Bob Crenshaw might have been one.

[17:22] I don't know.

[17:22] It's not even important.

[17:23] I was just curious if there was this whole industry of boy detectives.

[17:27] Whether or not you made those books up or not.

[17:30] It was a fever dream.

Elliott Kalan

[17:32] It's like I had a dream where Alfred Hitchcock was bankrolling some middle school detectives.

[17:37] And one of them was named Jupiter.

John Hodgman

[17:39] Did I imagine this?

[17:40] Yes, Dan, you did.

[17:43] Hashtag Hitchcock is canceled party.

[17:47] I have a very vague memory of the three investigators.

[17:50] But I think that I kind of disdain them as an off-brand imitator.

[17:56] A licensed Hitchcock property, if you will.

[17:59] Right.

Stuart Wellington

[18:01] Okay, so that's where John lands on it.

[18:03] He is a hater.

[18:05] Investigator hater, yeah.

John Hodgman

[18:06] Don't care for them.

[18:08] Gator hater.

Elliott Kalan

[18:10] No, wait.

[18:11] So you hate investigators, not gators, not alligators, right?

[18:14] Because alligators are great.

[18:15] All of them.

[18:16] Really?

[18:16] Even alligators?

[18:18] How would you say that alligators are great?

[18:21] It's like the closest we're ever going to get to a dinosaur.

[18:23] Yeah, I'm with Elliot.

[18:24] I think that's true.

[18:25] I think they're cool.

[18:26] Birds, Elliot.

[18:27] Dan, don't be both pedantic and naive.

[18:31] One, you're being a pedant because, yes, birds are dinosaurs that have evolved to be tiny and can fly some of the time and morons.

[18:39] Alligators, however, they've got the thing that dinosaurs really have going for them, which is size and teeth.

[18:46] Sorry.

[18:46] No, no, that was the second thing I was going to say.

[18:48] Yeah.

[18:48] They've got those big teeth.

[18:50] You can wrestle them.

[18:51] You can't wrestle a bird.

[18:52] You look like a crazy person.

[18:53] Wrestle an alligator?

[18:54] Do that right in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

[18:56] People would love it.

Dan McCoy

[18:57] I would like to take issue with the implication that you just made that birds are dumber than dinosaurs.

[19:04] Do you believe this to be true, sir?

[19:07] Yeah, 100,000%.

John Hodgman

[19:09] 100,000%, sir.

Dan McCoy

[19:11] All right.

[19:12] I think you're influenced by the clever girls you saw in a little movie called Jurassic Park.

Elliott Kalan

[19:17] Was it or was it not a clever girl?

Dan McCoy

[19:20] It was a clever girl.

Elliott Kalan

[19:21] And have you ever seen a bird that, one, you would consider clever, and two, you would be so informal with as to call a girl?

[19:29] Elliot?

[19:29] You win.

[19:30] Yes, sir.

John Hodgman

[19:31] May I say, um, fuck you?

[19:36] I mean, you can say it.

[19:37] I'm not quite sure why it applies, but.

[19:41] I mean, I don't know what, I mean, I believe the standards on your show is that swearing is allowed, right?

[19:47] Yeah.

[19:48] Encouraged.

[19:49] All right, then how fucking dare you?

[19:51] Because the Corvid family of birds, we're talking about crows, we're talking about ravens, are incredibly intelligent.

[20:00] They've been proven time and again that they're capable of manipulating things into tools.

[20:10] They remember faces.

[20:13] They hold grudges.

[20:15] And they teach their grudges to their young.

[20:18] I consider myself a Corvid at heart.

[20:21] That's pretty smart.

[20:23] Tomorrow I'm going to train my young to hold a grudge against your face.

[20:27] Wow.

[20:27] Because those are smart birds.

Elliott Kalan

[20:30] That's very smart.

[20:31] It's not quite you having a novelty song about how you gotta love them because they're the baby, but that's pretty smart.

[20:36] Yeah, it's not dinosaur smart.

John Hodgman

[20:38] Those aren't dinosaurs, those are Muppets.

[20:41] I agree.

S4

[20:43] Pigeons can navigate by architecture.

[20:46] Go on.

[20:48] That's it.

[20:49] That's smart.

[20:51] That means they're smart.

[20:52] That's a rough microphone.

John Hodgman

[20:53] Yeah.

[20:53] And meanwhile, David Reese, we saw some alligators in Florida when we took a fan boat ride.

[20:58] Oh my gosh.

[20:59] What were they doing?

[21:01] Just lying around in the mud waiting for an opportunity to eat a thing.

[21:07] Yeah.

[21:08] That's what a genius does.

Elliott Kalan

[21:09] The genius is like, hey, why am I busting my ass working day in, day out when I just lay out here?

S4

[21:14] When the government will pay me just to stay home.

[21:17] I make more money with this COVID stimulus than I ever did at my job.

Elliott Kalan

[21:21] Exactly.

[21:21] Classic alligator thinking.

[21:23] Yeah.

[21:23] And you guys must hate alligators.

Stuart Wellington

[21:26] You were saying when you were taking that fan boat, you actually asked those alligators for directions,

[21:31] and they couldn't give them to you because they can't navigate by architecture, right?

S4

[21:34] Yeah, because the swamp was filled with skyscrapers and plazas.

[21:37] And you're like, there's too many buildings here, and we don't know where we are.

Elliott Kalan

[21:40] They're like, we're looking for an example of the Bauhaus style, and the alligators could not answer.

John Hodgman

[21:46] This is a brutalist building.

[21:47] Now, John and David-

[21:49] Quick tangent to shout out David Reese's podcast, Election Profit Makers,

[21:54] which is the number one podcast for all of your election-oriented results betting needs.

[22:04] Oh.

[22:05] It's a weekly podcast between David Starley Kine and David's friend from middle school in North Carolina, John Kimball,

[22:13] talking about the various investments they're making on the political markets on predicted.org.

[22:20] But there's a huge sideline to the podcast talking about the best skylines in the world.

[22:25] And let me tell you something right now.

[22:27] Those alligators don't know even a—

[22:29] They don't know what a skyline looks like.

[22:32] They can't even—you know what I mean?

[22:34] They assume it's just chili.

Elliott Kalan

[22:37] They're only familiar with the chili brand.

Dan McCoy

[22:40] Before we move on, I do want to ask one question regarding this—

[22:44] No, I have a question.

[22:46] I know you've got a pretty packed agenda, Dan.

[22:48] No, no.

[22:48] I have a question regarding this Fan Boat Tour.

[22:52] Now, on your tour, as happened on my tour—and I don't want to brag that I've got Fan Boat Tour money, but—

Elliott Kalan

[23:00] But apparently not wedding bar drink money.

Dan McCoy

[23:04] Yeah, that's right.

[23:05] That's the opposite, my friend.

[23:07] I was complaining about it, but I was offering—

[23:09] You know me, Dan McCoy.

John Hodgman

[23:11] Open bar Fan Boat Tour—

[23:12] Fuck.

[23:14] You know me, Dan McCoy.

Dan McCoy

[23:16] I am an open bar Fan Boat Tour.

[23:17] Open bar Fan Boat Tour.

[23:19] No, I just wanted to know whether, on your tour, as on my tour, the guide used giant marshmallows to get the alligators to come.

[23:31] No?

[23:32] Wait, what?

[23:32] With a marshmallow shooter?

[23:35] David's face was so disgusted by the idea.

[23:37] I was told that because it was, like, a bigger contrast against the water, the white marshmallow, that the alligators would come to the boat and have their marshmallow treat.

Elliott Kalan

[23:49] Yeah, yeah.

[23:49] He doesn't mean it that way, Stuart.

[23:51] The alligators were not orgasmic at the sight of these marshmallows.

Stuart Wellington

[23:55] I was going to say, I mean, that's why they're so lazy, right?

Dan McCoy

[23:59] I mean, it seemed to work—

John Hodgman

[24:01] Wait, would they actually eat the marshmallows, or would they just come closer to investigate it?

Dan McCoy

[24:05] No, they loved these marshmallows.

[24:06] Because these alligators had a sweet tooth, or several.

S4

[24:10] That makes me sad to think about animals eating processed food.

John Hodgman

[24:14] We did not have the marshmallow lure.

[24:17] We were offered plastic tubs of marshmallow fluff to throw at the alligators.

[24:26] And we did that, and we just bounced them off their heads, clunk, clunk, clunk, over and over again.

[24:31] And the alligators were like, what, what, what?

[24:33] Oh, sorry, what's the skyline?

[24:35] I don't even know.

[24:35] They were so stupid.

Stuart Wellington

[24:40] So, guys, I've never written a TV show.

[24:43] Yeah.

[24:43] But was there a point when you were thinking about making the main character a dinosaur?

[24:51] Hmm.

John Hodgman

[24:52] There is a movie that I'm thinking of.

[24:56] Is it Theodore Rex?

[24:57] And I don't know the name of it.

Elliott Kalan

[24:59] Say it again?

[25:00] Theodore Rex with Whoopi Goldberg, where she's partnered with a dinosaur cop.

[25:05] Is that real?

[25:06] Theodore Rex Detectives?

[25:07] That's a real movie.

[25:08] It's set in the future.

[25:09] Whoopi Goldberg's a future cop, and she's partnered with a clumsy dinosaur cop.

[25:12] And it's the movie that I believe the producers had to sue her to force her to appear in it.

[25:16] Because she...

Stuart Wellington

[25:17] It's weird, though, because dinosaurs are from the past, Elliot.

Elliott Kalan

[25:21] It is not animated.

[25:22] It is a live-action film.

[25:23] What kind of dinosaur is it?

[25:26] He's like a human-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex in your sneakers, I believe.

Dan McCoy

[25:30] I've been dialing up a photo so we can all...

[25:33] I don't know if that's visible.

[25:34] Oh, my gosh.

[25:36] There you go.

S4

[25:38] That really looks like one of those fake movies they make.

[25:40] Wow.

Dan McCoy

[25:41] Yeah.

[25:42] It looks like a poster in the background of a movie.

[25:45] Yeah, right.

[25:45] You can tell from that poster that that dinosaur has an attitude.

[25:49] You know?

[25:50] Oh, yeah.

[25:51] Of course.

[25:52] We are not as creative as the people who came up with Theodore Rex.

S4

[25:55] It's all humans in our world.

[25:58] Okay.

Stuart Wellington

[25:58] Cool.

[25:59] Okay.

[26:00] Sorry if I ruined your promotions here, guys.

[26:03] No, it's just...

S4

[26:05] Now we realize we have a fatal oversight in the heart of our show, but that's fine.

[26:09] We can figure that out.

Elliott Kalan

[26:11] I mean, usually, Stuart, when they're promoting something, they don't want the host to give

[26:15] a glimpse of something more beautiful that might have been.

[26:17] Right.

John Hodgman

[26:20] I really appreciate David Reese's incredibly professional.

[26:25] segue back to promoting our show.

[26:29] Can we go back to Theodore Rex for a second?

[26:32] That is a movie that I never watched, even though I worked in a video rental place when

[26:39] it came out.

[26:40] And I could have easily watched it five times for nothing.

[26:43] Has anyone ever seen it?

Elliott Kalan

[26:44] I have only ever seen clips of it.

[26:48] I've never seen it all the way through.

Dan McCoy

[26:50] Yeah.

[26:50] The VHS cover fascinated me for years, but I've never seen it.

[26:54] No.

Elliott Kalan

[26:55] I read the book Theodore Rex, but that's volume two of Edmund Mars' Theodore Roosevelt series.

[27:00] So that's not related to the film at all.

[27:03] All right.

[27:04] I just want to know...

S4

[27:04] It's one of those properties that gets optioned, and then 20 years later, they finally make something

[27:07] with it, and it's just like a game of telephone, and it just becomes something so completely

[27:11] different.

Elliott Kalan

[27:12] They're like, Eddie, good news.

[27:14] They're finally pulling the plug on Theodore Rex.

[27:16] Oh, the story of his presidency?

[27:18] Yeah, they made a few changes.

[27:19] Right.

[27:20] Yeah.

[27:21] It's now called John Carter.

[27:23] Right.

[27:25] There's a book series, or at least one book, about a world where there's a dinosaur that

[27:30] is a detective and wears a human suit, because dinosaurs are secretly still living among us,

[27:35] but they wear human suits to blend in, and I don't remember what it's called, and I have

[27:38] not read it.

[27:39] Is that for kids?

Stuart Wellington

[27:40] No, it is not for kids.

Elliott Kalan

[27:42] I think it's a grown-up series.

[27:42] Just like a three-piece suit?

[27:44] And like a human mask.

S4

[27:46] Oh.

[27:46] Is it self-published erotica, that kind of stuff that you see on Amazon?

[27:49] Is it like that?

Elliott Kalan

[27:51] I haven't read it, so I'm going to have to assume yes.

[27:53] Right.

[27:54] But no, no, it was a real book from a real publisher.

[27:57] The dinosaur erotica is hilarious, though.

Stuart Wellington

[28:00] Well, like, pounded in the butt by a velociraptor or whatever?

[28:03] That's the title, yeah.

[28:04] Yeah.

S4

[28:06] That was based on The Power Broker by Robert Caro, but it just went through a lot of changes

[28:10] over the years.

Elliott Kalan

[28:11] Bobby!

[28:12] Bobby cares!

[28:13] We got some good news!

[28:14] They're finally pulling the trigger on that Power Broker book.

[28:17] Oh, good, who's going to play Robert Caro?

[28:18] Ooh, he's not in it anymore.

[28:22] And when I say that dinosaur erotica is hilarious, I in no way mean to judge or belittle those

[28:27] who are aroused by dinosaur erotica.

[28:29] I'm merely to say that, to me, it is a humorous assemblage of parts.

Dan McCoy

[28:34] Look, I mean, Elliot, let's just say this.

[28:37] Even normal sex is hilarious.

[28:40] Normal sex is hilarious.

[28:41] Unless you're, like, the person involved in it and you're, like, super into it, like,

[28:46] it is objectively hilarious.

[28:48] And, like, I feel bad.

[28:51] I use the word normal sex as if there's such a thing as normal sex.

[28:54] There's not such a thing as normal sex.

[28:55] All sex, I meant to say, is hilarious from what is...

S4

[29:00] It's all a humorous assemblage of parts.

[29:03] Yeah.

[29:04] Elliot nailed it.

[29:04] That's the human body.

[29:05] There's a...

Elliott Kalan

[29:06] I forget what stand-up was it.

[29:08] Was it, like, Rita Rudner or someone who referred to...

[29:10] I think I've talked about this in the Flop House before and I've forgotten, but referred

[29:12] to a naked man as looking like a half-decorated Christmas tree.

[29:16] And I've always thought that was such a funny line.

[29:19] And, like, we'll think about it while I'm getting changed.

[29:21] And I'm like, yeah.

[29:22] That's kind of what it feels like.

[29:23] Right.

Dan McCoy

[29:24] There's a time during quarantine where I was like, I'm just going to embrace the fact

[29:28] that I'm 42 years old and I'm not going to worry about the fact that I'm walking nude

[29:33] through my home wearing woolen slippers.

[29:37] I mean, you should worry about that a little bit.

[29:41] No, I'm just like, you know what?

[29:42] I've got a pot belly.

[29:43] I'm naked but for footwear and I don't care.

[29:47] Is it cold where you are?

[29:48] Why are you wearing wool slippers?

[29:52] I'm glad you asked.

[29:54] I wear slippers because I do not like the feeling of, like, dirt being picked up on my feet

[30:00] and I have hardwood floors and no matter how clean you get your floors, you're just going

[30:05] to get, like, quite on your feet, so.

[30:07] Okay.

S4

[30:09] The detective in me just felt like something wasn't adding up with that story.

Dan McCoy

[30:13] You know, you gotta follow, you gotta unravel every clue.

John Hodgman

[30:18] Also, any detective would notice that the lint on Dan's feet matches only the

[30:24] one apartment in all of Brooklyn.

[30:26] Right.

[30:26] And then he would be picked for the suspect immediately because he was walking around with

[30:32] Dan McCoy floor lint on his feet.

Dan McCoy

[30:35] I mean, speaking of detectives, which was originally our idea for this mini.

[30:39] That was all you know.

John Hodgman

[30:40] Anonymous Rex is the name of the novel, Elliot.

[30:43] Anonymous Rex.

[30:44] Anonymous Rex.

[30:44] Okay, thank you.

[30:45] By Eric Garcia.

Dan McCoy

[30:47] That was always, to me, the most hilarious.

[30:49] Sorry, go on.

[30:50] I don't.

Elliott Kalan

[30:51] I was going to say, that novel is not, I don't think, related to Theodore Rex in any way,

[30:54] other than also positing a world where humans and dinosaurs coexist, but not in, like, a biblical

[30:58] way, just in, like, a film noir type way.

[31:03] Okay.

John Hodgman

[31:03] Right.

[31:04] It was followed by a prequel called Casual Rex in 2002.

[31:10] And then a sequel called Hot and Sweaty Rex, circling back around to dinosaur porn.

[31:17] Yeah.

[31:18] Let's talk about Rex, baby.

[31:19] And then, you know.

[31:24] Sorry, I just wanted to close that loop.

[31:26] Rump shaker.

[31:28] Yeah.

[31:28] And then, of course, the last book, Homorectual.

[31:32] All I want to do is solve mysteries in a human suit.

[31:35] I'm Anonymous Rex.

[31:37] That's a song, right?

[31:39] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[31:40] So, Dan, detectives.

Dan McCoy

[31:42] I am a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, as are millions and millions of people over the years.

[31:50] But, like, as a child, he made a huge impression on me.

[31:53] And I just loved the fact that-

[31:54] When Sherlock Holmes was a child, he made an impression on you?

[31:56] No, when I was a child, Ellie.

[31:58] When I was a child.

Elliott Kalan

[31:59] Oh, because I was going to say, you're going to love Encyclopedia Brown.

Dan McCoy

[32:02] All of my heroes were outdated figures when I was a child.

[32:05] I loved Sherlock Holmes.

[32:06] I loved Robin Hood.

[32:08] But, um, no, I-

[32:09] And Prime Minister Disraeli.

[32:12] Yep.

[32:14] Voltaire.

[32:15] No, I just, I loved that there would be these things where there would be dirt on someone's shoes.

[32:22] And Holmes would be like, oh, I wrote a monograph on the different types of dirt in London.

[32:28] I happen to be an expert.

[32:29] Like, anything that would come up, Holmes wrote a monograph on it.

[32:33] You know, like, oh, this is pipe ash.

[32:35] And I know exactly what type of pipe ash this is.

[32:38] And, like, I don't have a problem with it.

[32:41] Like, the beauty of the Holmes stories was always that the characters were so, like, indelibly written and lovable for all their, for all Holmes' arrogance.

[32:53] But it was, like, kind of an early, uh, uh, example of, like, oh, this character will have whatever superpower is necessary at the moment.

John Hodgman

[33:02] Yeah.

[33:02] And, you know, the, the appeal of Holmes, too, I think, is, uh, very powerful.

[33:09] Um, because he presents as a highly competent and successful sexless weird.

[33:16] And as I was a sexless weird growing up and arguably still.

[33:21] The, the, the detective, the detective who is able to, uh, uh, live outside of society, as I think most classic whodunit detectives do.

[33:33] And connect, connect the dots to explain how humans live and exist.

[33:40] And, and, and yet remain apart from them.

[33:42] That was very seductive to me.

[33:45] Like, I can, I can see how humans interact with each other, but I don't have to be a part of them.

[33:50] And I'll describe what kind of, what kind of dust is on their suit jacket or whatever.

Dan McCoy

[33:55] I think, I think that's an interesting point because, like, I do think that the most sort of lovable detectives are the ones that seem to exist the most apart from society.

[34:06] Like, for instance, there is a, there's a reason why it is a, like, funny trope that a bunch of detectives live off on houseboats somewhere.

[34:15] Because that's a weird way to live.

[34:17] Take it away, John.

[34:18] Yeah.

[34:18] Oh, you have a thing on this?

[34:20] Do you have a tight five on houseboats?

John Hodgman

[34:22] Just that my character in Dicktown, John, John Hunchman lives on a houseboat.

[34:28] Same deal.

[34:29] What's the name of the boat?

[34:32] Oh, that's, there's a big reveal.

S4

[34:34] Oh, spoiler in the penultimate episode, I think.

[34:36] Okay, then I won't, then don't tell me, don't tell me.

John Hodgman

[34:38] It is, it is unnamed, but then the name is revealed at the end.

S4

[34:41] Ah, okay.

[34:42] That's based on Travis McGee's books, right, John?

[34:45] Because you were a big Travis McGee fan?

John Hodgman

[34:47] Well, it was two things.

[34:49] Because you, David, really wanted to create a Simon and Simon type TV show, right?

[34:55] Didn't you want to do a Simon and Simon inspiration?

S4

[34:59] Something, yeah.

[35:00] Guys hanging out on the water, like living in that liminal space between the water and the land, I guess.

[35:06] Is that Simon and Simon or Hardcastle and McCormick?

[35:08] Miami Vice, he lives on a boat, on a houseboat.

[35:11] A lot of that stuff.

[35:12] A lot of that stuff.

[35:12] Yeah, yeah.

John Hodgman

[35:13] Right.

[35:14] And Travis McGee is a famous, essentially a detective created by Johnny McDonald in the late 60s through the early 80s, like 25 to 500 novels.

[35:26] And he always lives on a houseboat.

[35:27] And so he, as you say, Dan, he like, he lives apart from regular society.

[35:34] And in Dicktown, the character that I play, John Hunchman, gets a houseboat specifically because he wants to be that kind of detective.

[35:44] It's like, it's a sad, aspirational purchase for him.

[35:48] It's not that he actually lives on the limits of civilization.

[35:53] It's that he wants to pretend that he does.

Stuart Wellington

[35:55] No, that's terrific.

[35:57] And is that his way of becoming a grown-up detective?

[36:03] Whereas he was like a, like a kid detective when he was younger?

John Hodgman

[36:07] Yeah, yeah.

[36:07] He thought, he thought this was going to be buying a house, but was, was this the next step into becoming an adult?

[36:14] Yeah.

[36:15] Who would eventually have adult clients, but that never materialized for him.

[36:19] And he just kept working for teenagers and ended up being weirder and weirder and legitimately more and more outside of mainstream society.

[36:29] Yeah, I feel like the only one friend who is David, David Purifoy, played by David Rees.

Stuart Wellington

[36:34] The appeal of houseboats, I think, is kind of focused on teenagers.

[36:40] Like, I think the older you get, the more nervous you get about the idea of going to somebody's house that is also a boat.

S4

[36:48] In Zodiac, does Robert Downey Jr.'s character wind up on a houseboat?

[36:53] Yeah, he ends up on a houseboat just playing Pong all day.

[36:55] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[36:57] Speaking of good, who does?

[36:59] Oh, I haven't seen that movie in a long time.

[37:00] Oh, it's a great movie.

[37:01] Such a great movie.

[37:02] Such a terrific movie.

[37:04] Yeah, and there's a houseboat on it.

[37:06] And the books that I've been reading a lot of in quarantine, the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child.

[37:12] Jack Reacher doesn't live on a houseboat, but he's a drifter.

[37:15] He has no fixed address and he just travels around via bus around America.

[37:21] And his only possessions are a folding collapsible toothbrush and a very tiny billfold.

[37:30] He only started carrying photo ID after 9-11.

[37:33] So there was a time when he just carried cash and a folding toothbrush.

[37:38] And when he, his relationship to his wardrobe is very interesting.

[37:43] So Jack Reacher, have you guys ever read these books?

[37:46] I read one of them.

Stuart Wellington

[37:47] It's, I remember, the possession I remember the most is his hands that are the size of Christmas hams.

[37:55] Yeah, yeah.

S4

[37:56] He's 6'5".

[37:58] He's a former military police investigator.

[38:01] He was a victim of post-Cold War downsizing.

[38:04] And now he travels America stumbling into mysteries and solving them and beating the shit out of people.

[38:08] And also shooting them with the toughest guns.

[38:11] But his real...

Elliott Kalan

[38:11] No, he sounds like the villain of every other story.

S4

[38:14] Right.

[38:14] No, he's a good guy.

[38:15] But he is a, you know, he's in a houseboat of the mind.

[38:18] He has no fixed address.

[38:20] He has no...

[38:20] He has no real, like...

[38:23] He, you know, obviously he makes love to a lot of beautiful and independent women.

[38:27] But none of those relationships really last.

[38:29] But what I wanted to say about his clothes...

Elliott Kalan

[38:31] Because they're like, why don't you ever take me over to your place?

[38:34] And he's like, well, I live on a bus.

[38:36] Right.

[38:37] He has no real passion drifter.

[38:40] I thought you'd take me out to like a nice dinner.

[38:43] I don't have any other clothes.

[38:44] It's just this.

S4

[38:44] Let me tell you about his clothes.

[38:45] This is very interesting, Elliot.

[38:47] Listen to this.

[38:49] He does something...

[38:52] Okay.

[38:53] To put this in context, when I was in the 90s...

[38:56] When I was living in the 90s...

[38:58] I studied abroad in England.

[39:01] And one of my flatmates was a British guy who came from a little bit of money.

[39:06] And he said the best thing about going to Istanbul was the clothes were so cheap that you could buy a new t-shirt every day.

[39:12] And at the end of the day, just throw it in the garbage and buy a new one.

John Hodgman

[39:15] So Jack...

[39:16] That always stuck with me.

[39:17] You'll relate to this guy, Dan.

S4

[39:19] This is one of your...

[39:21] Right.

[39:23] So Jack Reacher does the same thing.

[39:25] He buys his clothes at hardware stores.

[39:27] He buys the most utilitarian cheap clothes that he can.

[39:30] And at the end of the night, if he's lucky enough to be sleeping in a bed,

[39:34] he takes off all his clothes and he puts them under the mattress to press them as he sleeps on them.

[39:39] Do you understand what I'm saying?

[39:40] Because he doesn't have an ironing board or a steamer.

[39:42] So he sleeps on his clothes and then the next morning, he wakes up and they're pressed.

[39:46] And then after a few days, he throws them in the garbage and buys a new set of clothes.

[39:49] Isn't that cool?

John Hodgman

[39:51] You mean he throws them in the garbage and then goes into a hardware store and says...

[39:56] That's what it is.

Dan McCoy

[39:59] I mean, the order probably, I assume, is a little different than as reported.

[40:04] But no, I read...

[40:06] The book I read, I liked quite a bit.

[40:08] I was like...

[40:09] I don't know whether you guys kind of went through this progression,

[40:12] but when I was a much younger person, I was like much snobbier.

[40:15] I started out younger.

[40:17] Okay.

[40:17] Good, good, good.

[40:19] Then it's snowball.

[40:19] I got older.

[40:20] Yeah, that's how it goes.

[40:21] Not for everybody.

John Hodgman

[40:22] Dan, you're saying you were snobbier than when you were critiquing David Reese's friend for having a cash bar?

Dan McCoy

[40:29] I was snobbier when I was younger.

[40:32] And then as I grew older, I embraced the fact that I was turning into a middle-aged man.

[40:37] And I'm like, yeah, I will read these airport thrillers and I will enjoy them.

[40:42] They're the best.

[40:42] And I think they're pretty good.

[40:44] Which one did you read?

[40:46] I think I read the first one.

[40:48] I think I was that kind of person.

[40:50] With his brother.

[40:51] Oh, maybe not.

[40:53] Here's the thing.

[40:54] I actually, this is, I went through this thing where I'm like, okay, which of these Lee Child, Jack Reacher books did I?

[41:01] And I like went down the list in Amazon.

[41:03] I'm like, none of this sounds familiar to me.

[41:07] Right.

[41:07] But like, that's kind of the beauty of them because like they all could be the one I read.

[41:11] Yeah, I think that's kind of deliberate.

S4

[41:13] It becomes a sludge and you can't separate out which event happened in which novel.

[41:18] Yeah.

[41:18] And it's more like each novel hits these beats, these stations of the cross.

[41:22] Reacher stumbles into a new location.

[41:25] A woman needs his help.

[41:26] He gets in over his head for a while and then he just goes buck wild and kills a bunch of bad guys.

John Hodgman

[41:30] And that's the detective template.

[41:33] I mean, my mom, who is no longer alive, loved reading detective fiction.

[41:39] And she read the Georges Simonon novels, all the Agatha Christie's, all the P.D. James, everything.

[41:47] And many a time when I was, you know, sort of in the prime of my brain development, 18, 19 years old, my mom would be reading a book and just say, oh, I've read this before.

[42:01] Totally.

[42:02] And I would laugh and laugh at her.

[42:05] My own mom.

[42:06] Like, how do you not know what books you've read?

[42:09] How can you not remember?

[42:11] And now I appreciate as someone who is now her age, like these books are not meant to necessarily exist as individual works of fiction.

[42:23] But to be windows into a world that you want to revisit from time to time and be and to connect with characters that you care about and are a consolation to you.

[42:36] It's narcotizing rather than stimulating.

[42:39] Yeah, exactly so.

[42:40] And, you know, many a time I would wander, you know, through the house and see her sleeping soundly with a book propped over her closed eyes because it totally calmed her down and let her sleep.

[42:51] So, yeah.

[42:52] I think these characters are not designed to be, I mean, Travis McGree, Travis McGree grew over the course of the various novels that he was in.

[43:02] But for the most part, it's just like you're hanging out with your friends and and the friends are consoling to you, especially because they are outsiders.

[43:11] And either that's that makes you feel comforted because you are also feel like an outsider or that makes you feel like if you're a middle aged dad, it's really cool to read about a guy who buys his clothes from the hardware store and puts it under his mattress and then throws it away because this this guy is enjoying a life of perfect freedom.

[43:30] And and you've you've taken on the responsibilities of adulthood and you don't want them.

Elliott Kalan

[43:34] I just always imagine. Oh, sorry. I just always imagine him rinsing out his underpants in the hotel sink at the end of the day.

S4

[43:41] Yeah, he does that, too. He I mean, yeah.

[43:44] He washes his intimates in the sink.

Elliott Kalan

[43:48] It's just like I feel like that is a fair price to pay for total freedom is like at the end of the day, you're still going to have to wash out your underpants in the sink and then hope they dry by tomorrow morning.

[43:58] Right. Yeah. Yeah.

[43:59] Because it's harder to like kick other people's butts when you're squishing around in wet underpants.

Dan McCoy

[44:04] You're dank. It is. It is interesting to me that this world of this world of murder, largely mostly murder, is so sort of comforting because like I mean, you know, there's the word for it.

[44:21] Cozy mysteries like Audrey is a big aficionado of cozy mysteries.

[44:25] I'm working from home writing still for The Daily Show, but I hear her in the other room like watching cozy mysteries.

[44:31] And I find that cozy because I grew up with my parents watching mystery on PBS.

[44:37] The coziest of mysteries.

[44:39] And so it's cozy that's all down the line.

Elliott Kalan

[44:42] I used to I used to watch the title sequence and then as soon as it's over, I would be like not interested and I would turn it off.

[44:48] But I love that title sequence so much.

[44:49] Yeah.

John Hodgman

[44:53] Well, let me if I'm if I.

[44:56] Hey, Dan.

[44:57] Yes.

[44:58] Elliot, excuse me for a moment.

[45:00] Sure, sure.

[45:01] Dan, could you could you define for your listeners who may not know the term what a cozy mystery is?

Dan McCoy

[45:08] I would think I tend to think that a cozy mystery is not so much.

[45:12] So there's the hard boiled American style, which is your Philip Marlowe's and stuff.

[45:17] And often also in an American tradition, the detective is part of the police force.

[45:23] A cozy mystery.

[45:24] It's more like there is this outsider character who is often eccentric.

[45:32] And these mysteries will take place and say a manor house where there is a limited pool of suspects or a small English countryside village or a train.

John Hodgman

[45:48] Like an Agatha Christie.

[45:50] Yes.

[45:51] Like not necessarily locked room mystery, but a but a closed environment mystery.

[45:57] And they're not.

[45:58] They're not gritty.

Dan McCoy

[46:00] Yes.

[46:01] They're not gritty.

[46:02] As much as anyone dying can be charming.

[46:05] These cozy mysteries are that.

Elliott Kalan

[46:07] I mean, that's murder.

[46:08] She wrote.

[46:09] I mean, that should be a horrifying show.

[46:10] Wherever this woman goes, she's confronted with murder.

[46:14] Followed by death.

[46:15] Preceded by death.

[46:16] Yeah.

[46:17] And no one puts two and two together that she's doing it.

[46:20] Yeah.

[46:21] That she's the one link between all these murders.

[46:22] But like her life should be unending nightmares.

Dan McCoy

[46:25] I mean, and she worked at that barbershop slash pie shop where everyone kept disappearing.

Stuart Wellington

[46:32] Yeah.

[46:32] And she has a history of making arrows.

[46:35] Mm-hmm.

[46:35] Yeah, she is a flutcher.

Elliott Kalan

[46:37] Yeah, yeah.

[46:38] And she did try, I mean, luckily for all of us, she was assassinated at that presidential convention.

[46:44] Before she could set up a communist agent as president of the United States with her brainwashed son slash lover.

John Hodgman

[46:49] But not before she was on the SS Karnak, which is the ship that Hercule Poirot boards in Murder on the Nile.

[47:01] The 1978 movie with Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot, which really sent Poirot into the stratosphere of American celebrity.

Elliott Kalan

[47:13] Oh, yeah.

[47:14] Poirot couldn't go anywhere after that without getting mobbed.

John Hodgman

[47:19] Judge John Hodgman ruled in my favor.

S4

[47:22] Judge John Hodgman ruled in my friend's favor.

[47:24] Judge John Hodgman ruled in my favor.

John Hodgman

[47:27] I'm Judge John Hodgman.

[47:29] You're hearing the voices of real litigants, real people who have submitted disputes to my internet court at the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

[47:36] I hear their cases.

[47:37] I ask them questions.

[47:39] They're good ones.

[47:40] And then I tell them who's right and who's wrong.

S4

[47:42] Thanks to Judge John Hodgman's ruling, my dad has been forced to retire one of the worst dad jokes of all time.

John Hodgman

[47:48] Instead of cutting his own hair with a flowbeat, my husband has his hair cut professionally.

[47:54] I have to join a community theater group.

[47:56] And my wife has stopped bringing home wild animals.

[47:59] It's the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

[48:01] Find it every Wednesday at MaximumFun.org or wherever you download podcasts.

[48:08] Thanks, Judge John Hodgman.

Stuart Wellington

[48:12] Listen, I'm a hotshot Hollywood movie producer.

[48:17] You have until I finish my glass of kombucha to pitch me your idea.

[48:21] Go.

John Hodgman

[48:21] All right.

[48:22] It's called Who Shot Ya?

[48:23] A movie podcast that isn't just a bunch of straight white dudes.

[48:26] I'm Ify Whiteyway, the new host of the show and a certified BBN.

Stuart Wellington

[48:30] BBN?

[48:31] Buff black nerd.

[48:32] I'm Alonzo Duraldi, an elderly gay and legit film critic who wrote a book on Christmas movies.

John Hodgman

[48:36] I'm Drea Clark, a loud white lady from Minnesota.

[48:40] Each week, we talk about a new movie in theaters and all the important issues going on in the film industry.

Stuart Wellington

[48:45] It's like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner meets Cruising.

John Hodgman

[48:47] And if it helps seal the deal, I can flex my muscles while we record each episode.

Stuart Wellington

[48:51] I'm sorry, this is a podcast?

John Hodgman

[48:53] I'm a movie producer.

[48:54] How did you get in here?

Stuart Wellington

[48:56] Ify, quick, start flexing.

[48:57] Bicep.

[48:58] That's chess.

John Hodgman

[49:00] Who Shot Ya?

[49:01] Dropping every Friday on MaximumFun.org or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Dan McCoy

[49:06] I want to ask you what you think of the Ustinov Poirot because that is the Poirot that I was introduced to first.

[49:14] And I know it's not the most accurate Poirot.

[49:16] Getting a big thumbs down from David.

[49:18] David Suchet, we can all agree, is the finest of the Poirots.

[49:21] But what is your feeling on Peter Ustinov?

John Hodgman

[49:24] Well, first of all, I heartily disagree with your theory that David Suchet is the best of the Poirots.

[49:32] Okay.

[49:32] Well, see the one from the TV show?

[49:34] Yes.

[49:35] Yeah.

[49:36] You watched that, right, David?

[49:37] Yeah, I like that guy.

[49:39] Yeah.

[49:40] Oh, he's great.

[49:41] Who's better?

[49:43] We'll get to that in a minute.

[49:44] Okay.

[49:45] A teaser.

Elliott Kalan

[49:46] Talk about a master of suspense.

John Hodgman

[49:48] I spent some time this afternoon revisiting the Ustinov Poirots.

[49:53] That's why it's not like I'm standing by all the time ready to cite a Poirot movie that Angela Lansbury was in.

[50:02] I happened to be watching parts of them this afternoon.

[50:07] And so Poirot hit the American cinema hard with Albert Finney as Poirot in 1974's Murder on the Orient Express with Sean Connery.

S4

[50:19] I was giving, yeah, that's what I was giving a thumbs down to.

[50:21] That movie is, ugh.

[50:23] It's a slog.

[50:25] Sidney Lumet directed.

[50:26] I just want to.

[50:27] Sidney Lumet directed.

[50:28] Yes, that's right.

[50:28] That movie really, watching that movie really makes you feel like a cigarette.

[50:33] It's just like so grimy and brown and everyone just looks sickly and shiny and there's a pallor over everything.

[50:43] It's like, it's incredible that it was, that it was released.

[50:47] That's exactly what I like about it though.

Elliott Kalan

[50:49] I love how disgusting Poirot is in it.

[50:52] He's such a strange, off-putting, like grimy, like gross man with all that wax in his mustache.

[50:57] I'm like, I love it.

[50:59] I love how sweaty everyone is in that movie.

[51:01] And they're rich.

[51:02] These are supposed to be rich, glamorous people and they're so like sweaty.

[51:06] Oh, it's great.

S4

[51:07] The princess in it is incredible.

[51:09] Wendy Hiller is amazing in it.

[51:11] I will say that.

John Hodgman

[51:12] Oh yeah, right.

[51:13] Wendy Hiller.

[51:14] Right.

[51:14] Of course.

S4

[51:15] I said I did it.

[51:17] It's really good.

John Hodgman

[51:20] But, you know, that movie was a huge commercial success.

[51:24] And so they decided like, we're going to make, like Poirot is going to be the new Bond.

[51:28] And for, in a, in a, in a brief period in the late seventies, they were like building a Poirot cinematic universe.

[51:36] And, and Finney would not come back and play Poirot.

[51:40] Well, a good decision as far as I'm concerned.

Elliott Kalan

[51:43] I guess, do you think that the series ended with Ross Poirot in 1992?

[51:47] Oh, shit.

Stuart Wellington

[51:49] Oh my God.

Dan McCoy

[51:51] Wowie Zowie.

[51:54] The elusive wowie Zowie.

John Hodgman

[51:59] Who's going to, who's going to solve the mystery of the person who put the spikes in the tire that derailed my old comment?

[52:05] Oh, no one is.

[52:07] Because Elliot confessed by saying that dumb thing.

[52:14] So you're saying, so they were building the Poirot, the PCU.

[52:17] Peter, Peter, Peter Ustinov came in with Murder on the Nile, which was also in 1978, I think.

[52:23] And that was also a big commercial success.

[52:25] But Peter Ustinov basically turned Poirot into a Muppet.

[52:29] And Murder on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun in 1982 were these like basically dumb, comedic, English character actor romps.

[52:41] Where they got like Maggie Smith and Diana Rigg and lots and lots of other well-known character actors to just like take a vacation together and film these incredibly dull, soundtrackless, like procedurals.

[53:02] Here's the thing, John.

[53:03] And they were very successful.

Dan McCoy

[53:04] I think you're right.

[53:06] I think you're right.

[53:07] I think they are very dull.

[53:09] The inexplicable thing is Child Dan loved these movies.

S4

[53:15] Me too, Dan.

[53:16] Me too.

[53:17] Yeah.

[53:17] Okay.

[53:18] But it's probably like how I used to love reading Doonesbury because it made you feel like a grownup.

[53:23] Yeah.

[53:24] Wow.

[53:25] Right.

[53:26] We would go visit family friends and then at night, you know, I would be in some older brother's room or something and there would be all these big Doonesbury anthologies about, I don't know, Watergate and the Ted Offensive or whatever.

[53:40] And I would, and it's like panel after panel of the White House for the voice balloons coming out of it.

[53:44] And I didn't understand any of the, didn't understand any of the references.

[53:47] And I would just read it and be like, oh, I'm such a little grownup here reading this Doonesbury.

Stuart Wellington

[53:53] Yeah.

[53:54] Usually when I would go into an older kid's room, I would immediately reach for the Doonesbury.

[54:00] Sexy stuff.

[54:01] Yeah.

[54:02] Instead of the stack of like heavy metals or something.

[54:04] Right.

John Hodgman

[54:05] But I, but I think you, you tune into something that is, is very true about sort of detective fiction and mystery fiction broadly defined.

[54:15] Because one of, one of the sort of accepted principles of the police procedural on television is that, you know, if you're watching a, I don't want to malign certain shows because I want to work on television again.

[54:29] But if you're watching a CBS police procedural, they try to keep the mystery pretty solvable so that the people who are watching them can feel smart.

[54:41] That's a, that's a, yeah, that's a charitable description.

[54:45] No, because I think it's the same thing.

[54:47] It's sort of like, you know, you, you engage with mystery fiction in order to connect with a character that maybe is able to do the stuff that you can't do.

[54:58] It's aspirational in that way.

[55:00] Like you, they, they can say the things that you can say.

[55:02] They, they're outside of society.

[55:03] They live in a houseboat.

[55:04] They're fucking around or whatever.

[55:06] And also because it makes you feel intelligent to follow the mystery and maybe solve it before the character does.

Dan McCoy

[55:16] You know?

[55:16] Well, I, I also wanted to say to that end, like, uh, the eccentric, the eccentricity of the best detectives.

[55:24] I mean, we are living through a time, for instance, that like the police are rightfully being deeply.

[55:30] Here we go.

John Hodgman

[55:31] No, no, no.

[55:31] Like the police.

[55:33] Relevance.

[55:33] I get it, Dan.

Dan McCoy

[55:34] No, no, no.

[55:35] Like the police are rightfully being deeply interrogated as an institution.

[55:39] And I don't want to get too deeply into that, but an oft referenced character on our show is Columbo.

[55:47] And the beauty of Columbo is that he feels so outside that system.

[55:52] He's like, he feels like a, like a warrior from the lower classes who has power and like comes in and fucks with these rich people who think that they're smarter than him.

John Hodgman

[56:05] Yeah.

[56:05] I mean, detective shows and detective fiction and detective movies are different from police shows because they are about one or two single outsiders who, who live away from these systems and are able to interrogate them and, and find a solution and justice for people who are wronged by those systems.

[56:30] You know, Lestrade, Lestrade in Sherlock Holmes is a buffoon.

[56:36] Like, uh, Sherlock Holmes, like one of the great, uh, one of the great innovations I thought of the Stephen Moffat.

[56:46] Um, what's the other guy's name?

[56:49] Uh, Mark Gattis.

[56:50] Mark Gattis.

[56:52] Sherlock, Sherlock series was to openly just have Sherlock himself identify as a high functioning sociopath.

[57:00] He's not a human being as we understand it.

[57:02] He is essentially a superhero who exists outside of human law in order to impose a better form of justice.

[57:10] And the police are not, not, not part of that justice.

[57:14] Yeah.

[57:15] That, that is detective fiction.

Stuart Wellington

[57:16] Just like Encyclopedia Brown's dad.

[57:18] He's kind of, he's kind of, he's kind of an idiot.

[57:19] He exists outside of human law.

Dan McCoy

[57:21] Like Macavity from the Cats.

Elliott Kalan

[57:23] Yeah.

[57:23] Well, no, Macavity doesn't exist outside of human law.

[57:26] He's broken every human law.

[57:27] Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.

[57:28] Uh, that it's Encyclopedia Brown.

[57:30] You have to imagine that his dad every now and then brings him in and roughs him up and

[57:33] is like, Hey, getting a little too close, Brown.

[57:35] Why don't I just start this investigation?

[57:38] Got a message from Bugs Meany right here.

Dan McCoy

[57:40] Oh, wow.

[57:41] Wow.

[57:41] So you are, you are positing a world where they're, uh, in Idaville, the corruption goes all the way to the top, which is, which is Encyclopedia Brown's dad.

[57:53] He's taking money from Bugs Meany and, and, uh, they are a father-son adversarial relationship.

[58:00] Wow.

Elliott Kalan

[58:00] Very much so.

[58:01] I mean, and also, I mean, that's just making, just making concrete the fact that every father-son relationship is at heart an adversarial relationship.

[58:09] Yeah.

[58:10] This is just applying it to, to legal institutions, you know.

[58:13] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[58:14] Encyclopedia Brown's dad is Saturn, whereas Encyclopedia Brown is Zeus.

Elliott Kalan

[58:18] Yeah, yeah.

[58:18] He's like, he's like, I should have swallowed you in your swaddling clothes, Leroy.

[58:25] If only your, if only your mother hadn't fed me a rock instead.

[58:28] Yeah.

John Hodgman

[58:32] Uh, I.

[58:32] You guys, you guys read some books of mythology.

Stuart Wellington

[58:37] Wow.

[58:38] That's basically, that's the best review of this podcast.

Dan McCoy

[58:41] You have cut them to the quick in the way that I wish I could.

Elliott Kalan

[58:46] Dan, I, I mean, it's, it's one of those, if that's one of those, that's one of those, Chris, that's one of those, uh, attacks though, where it's like, yeah, how else are we going to learn that stuff?

[58:54] Yeah, I know.

[58:55] First, first hand source?

[58:57] Was I going to go, go to Venice and talk to Zeus?

Dan McCoy

[58:59] Yeah, it's going to be a book.

[59:02] You're going to go to the boy next door and get a first edition.

Elliott Kalan

[59:06] Get a first edition of the Odyssey?

[59:07] Come on.

[59:08] Yeah.

[59:09] Uh, so Dan, uh, cozy mysteries.

[59:11] I just want to ask, do you think that the difference between a cozy mystery and a hard-boiled mystery is partly that a hard-boiled mystery is this kind of fantasy where the world is corruption

[59:22] and you get to identify with the one noble person in it.

[59:25] And cozy fantasy, cozy mystery is more the fantasy of, like, the world is pretty okay, but there's, like, some dark stuff underneath, and every time it bubbles up, a kindly lady kind of tamps it down and brings order back to chaos.

[59:39] Do you think that they're two sides of the same coin that way?

[59:42] No.

Dan McCoy

[59:42] I, I, no, I, I, yes.

[59:45] I believe that, it's funny, like, this is an idea that in no way originated with the, the television program Northern Exposure.

[59:56] But I first encountered it through the TV program.

[59:58] You cannot wait, cannot wait to find out where this, where this is going now.

[1:00:01] Like, the first, like, the first time I encountered someone saying what you said just now was through the show Northern Exposure.

[1:00:07] I remember very distinctly someone saying that the beauty of a mystery is this vision of the world where there is order, something has come along and disrupted the order,

[1:00:17] and then the detective comes along and restores order, and that is what a cozy mystery is.

[1:00:22] And a hard-willed mystery is more of, to some degree, a power fantasy where you are, like, the toughest person, but it is also occasionally cynical in a way that is broadly appealing where you're like, okay, well, the world is a cesspool, but I persevere.

S4

[1:00:45] Was Northern Exposure a mystery show?

Dan McCoy

[1:00:49] It was a show about, uh, a...

[1:00:52] I mean, to me, a young person...

S4

[1:00:53] I thought it was about a small town and, like, a guy moved there from the big city.

[1:00:57] I thought it was, like, a soap opera.

Elliott Kalan

[1:00:58] When I was a kid watching it, it was a mystery because I could never quite figure out what was going on in it or what it was about.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:04] I loved Northern Exposure as a kid.

[1:01:06] No, it was just, they were just talking about the charm of mysteries in a scene, and that...

[1:01:11] Oh, okay.

[1:01:12] That description always stuck with me ever since.

[1:01:15] And obviously, it does not originate there, but it was well put in that show.

S4

[1:01:22] Northern Exposure was giving you some critical analysis, literary criticism.

[1:01:27] Got it.

[1:01:27] Yeah.

[1:01:28] All right.

Dan McCoy

[1:01:29] It helped that my parents were, like, nuts for cozy mysteries, and so my dad just, like, took to it.

[1:01:36] He was like, yes, this is it.

[1:01:39] This is the best description I've heard.

[1:01:41] This is it.

John Hodgman

[1:01:42] Who were your parents' favorite detectives?

Dan McCoy

[1:01:48] They loved the Prime Suspect series.

[1:01:51] I think they loved Campion on Mystery.

[1:01:57] What's the very dour sort of...

[1:02:02] He's either Scottish or Northern English detective.

[1:02:05] Does anyone know who I might be thinking of?

[1:02:07] I think...

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:08] Is it a relatively recent show or it's an old show?

Dan McCoy

[1:02:12] I mean, it would have been when I was growing up, but new when I was growing up.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:16] There's a relatively new show where that's about a really dour, I think, Scottish detective, and my wife and I started watching it, and I was like, this is too bleak for me.

[1:02:26] It's like...

[1:02:27] Like, it was one of those shows where, at a certain point, you expected the hero to just be like, why am I even bothering solving this mystery?

[1:02:33] Ugh.

[1:02:33] And, like, walking away.

Dan McCoy

[1:02:35] I remember when I discovered that there was literally a mystery show from England called Rosemary and Thyme about gardeners who solved mysteries.

[1:02:46] And I'm like, that sounds like a parody.

[1:02:48] Pretty cozy.

[1:02:49] Yeah.

[1:02:50] That's wicked cozy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:02:51] Before we started recording the episode, the name of our mutual friend Sam Means came up.

[1:02:58] And this reminds me of, he and I, when we both worked at The Daily Show, we would occasionally go on Amazon and just look up different mystery series to laugh about them.

[1:03:06] And one of them was the one where the chef at the White House solves different mysteries.

[1:03:10] Sure.

[1:03:13] And there was...

[1:03:14] And, of course, this is not a mystery series.

[1:03:16] Our favorite one to look up, we would go back many times to look up the titles in the Babies and Billionaires romance novel series.

[1:03:21] Where every story is a different one that involves a baby and a billionaire in some way.

John Hodgman

[1:03:27] Very specific.

[1:03:30] Very specific psychological desires.

[1:03:32] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:03:34] But there's a lot of...

[1:03:35] Yeah, there's a lot of...

[1:03:36] It seems like anyone in the world, if they live in a novel, could end up solving a mystery someday.

S4

[1:03:41] Can I ask you guys a question about a mystery movie?

[1:03:45] Mystery Men?

[1:03:46] No.

[1:03:47] Different one.

[1:03:48] Oh.

[1:03:48] Because I can't remember if it's a detective movie, but I love this movie.

[1:03:52] I think it's so terrific.

[1:03:54] Gosford Park.

[1:03:56] There's a mystery in it.

[1:03:57] That's a mystery movie.

[1:03:58] Yeah, that's a mystery.

[1:03:58] But is there a detective in it?

John Hodgman

[1:04:01] There is, right?

S4

[1:04:03] A detective must come to the manor.

[1:04:05] It's not like they just decide to solve it on their own.

Dan McCoy

[1:04:08] But I don't...

[1:04:09] Does Kellen McDonald's character sort of turn out to be the kind of the protagonist?

[1:04:14] I don't even remember.

[1:04:15] I loved that.

[1:04:16] I don't remember.

[1:04:17] I remember liking it a lot.

S4

[1:04:18] That movie is so, so good.

[1:04:19] And I think what's interesting when you guys talk about the cozy versus the hard-boiled,

[1:04:24] that movie, because it has that kind of upstairs-downstairs element, right?

[1:04:27] There's all the rich people, and then there's all the house staff.

[1:04:33] And the mystery kind of turns on these unspoken relationships between those two populations.

[1:04:39] It really kind of hits that sweet spot of cozy mystery and then gritty, kind of realistic,

[1:04:47] very, not cynical, but very frank about the class distinctions that maybe is the subtext

[1:04:54] of something grittier like Columbo or something, right?

[1:04:57] Mm-hmm.

[1:04:58] Yeah.

[1:04:58] It's just...

[1:04:59] It's so good.

[1:05:00] I'm sure your listeners love movies and they've already seen it, but it's interesting to think

[1:05:05] about in the context of types of mysteries and types of detective whodunnits.

John Hodgman

[1:05:10] What's weird about the Flophouse podcast is that most of their listeners hate movies and

[1:05:14] have never watched one.

[1:05:16] Oh, wow.

[1:05:16] Oh, really?

[1:05:17] Interesting.

[1:05:18] Yeah.

[1:05:18] Kind of like the hosts.

S4

[1:05:20] What's the last movie you guys saw...

[1:05:22] What's the last movie you fellas saw in a movie theater before coronavirus?

John Hodgman

[1:05:26] Oh, good question.

Dan McCoy

[1:05:28] Oh, boy.

[1:05:29] Cats.

[1:05:29] I could tell you exactly, but I have to...

Stuart Wellington

[1:05:31] Oh, Birds of Prey.

[1:05:32] Oh, wait.

[1:05:32] No, I saw Cats a second time.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:34] Yeah, yeah.

[1:05:34] Yeah.

[1:05:35] I saw Cats so I could do it for the Flophouse because I don't get to the theater at all.

[1:05:39] Oh, no.

[1:05:39] You know what?

[1:05:40] Cats was...

[1:05:41] Actually, Cats was the last movie I saw, but the last movie I saw not for the Flophouse

[1:05:45] in the theater was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

[1:05:48] Got it.

[1:05:48] When they kind of re-released that menially.

S4

[1:05:51] Cats was my last movie in the theater, too.

Elliott Kalan

[1:05:55] It's one of those things where I should feel bad that that was the last movie I saw in

[1:05:58] theater, but it was exactly the right movie for me to see in the theater last because it

[1:06:01] was such a positive experience.

[1:06:03] Yeah, yeah.

John Hodgman

[1:06:04] I think we and all of culture agree that Cats is the last movie.

[1:06:10] Yeah.

[1:06:11] No need to make any more.

[1:06:12] Yeah.

[1:06:15] Stu Wellington.

[1:06:16] What's up?

[1:06:17] Yeah, what's up?

[1:06:18] Do you have a favorite detective or mystery movie or book or anything?

Stuart Wellington

[1:06:26] You know, my mom was always a big mystery fan, and I know you didn't ask me about my mom.

[1:06:34] You asked me.

[1:06:36] But my mom watches the, what is it, Midsummer Murders all the time, the show that has a zillion

[1:06:41] episodes.

[1:06:43] But no, you know, I don't, I was more of like a, I was always more of like a war adventure

[1:06:49] fiction guy.

[1:06:50] Oh, tough guy.

[1:06:51] Like a Bernard Cornwell type guy.

[1:06:52] Yeah, I'm a real tough guy.

[1:06:53] So that was more my, that was kind of more my vibe.

[1:06:57] Are you really aggro at nightclubs?

S4

[1:06:59] Are you aggro aggressive in nightclubs?

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:03] Exclusively.

[1:07:05] When you take me out of the nightclub, I'm a lamb.

[1:07:08] But you put me back in there, I'm a lion.

[1:07:10] Okay.

[1:07:10] And that lion is acting aggressively.

[1:07:13] Okay.

[1:07:13] You're gonna roar.

Dan McCoy

[1:07:14] I have to say about Stuart, I mean, I don't know whether this is because he's a bartender

[1:07:19] and it's a skill he's learned, or whether it's just who he is as a person.

[1:07:25] I've never seen someone so skillful at de-escalating any sort of aggression as Stuart.

Stuart Wellington

[1:07:32] It's weird.

[1:07:32] When I first started bartending, I came straight from running hobby stores where I dealt mainly

[1:07:38] with teenage boys who were not particularly good at dealing with social situations.

[1:07:45] So when I first started talking to drunk guys, I kind of treated them like they were nerdy

[1:07:48] teenage boys.

[1:07:49] And that did not go well.

[1:07:52] They would take offense?

[1:07:53] I was like, I'm gonna fuck with these guys a little bit.

[1:07:55] Right.

[1:07:56] Not a good idea.

[1:07:57] Because see, the problem is when you're, you know, a big, tall, handsome guy who always

[1:08:00] sounds sarcastic, that's the absolute first person a drunk person wants to punch.

[1:08:06] Yeah.

John Hodgman

[1:08:07] Yeah, I think, David Reese, you've met your match in Stuart Wellington, big, tall, handsome

[1:08:11] guy who always sounds sarcastic.

[1:08:13] The two of you, like, it's like an immovable object meets an unstoppable force.

[1:08:16] What do you bench?

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:17] What do you bench?

[1:08:21] Wait, what's a lot, but not so much to make David feel good?

[1:08:25] How fast can you do a Wednesday Times crossword?

S4

[1:08:27] How fast can you do a Wednesday New York Times crossword?

Stuart Wellington

[1:08:31] See, that's the thing.

[1:08:33] You know, I suffer for being, you know, tall and handsome.

[1:08:37] But at least I'm also very stupid.

[1:08:39] Perfect.

Dan McCoy

[1:08:39] What I love about Stuart is he's unabashed at calling himself handsome.

[1:08:43] But I will say...

John Hodgman

[1:08:44] I think I want to start writing, I want to start writing a series of detective novels starring

[1:08:51] a Stu Wellington.

[1:08:53] Uh-huh.

[1:08:54] First of all, Stu Wellington is a great detective name.

[1:08:56] Yeah, it's a pretty sick name.

[1:08:58] It's pretty good.

[1:08:58] Yeah.

[1:08:59] Yeah.

[1:08:59] Stuart Wellington Wellington.

[1:09:00] Like, tall and handsome, but stupid.

[1:09:04] But a de-escalator at heart.

[1:09:07] Uh-huh.

[1:09:07] And he...

[1:09:08] I'm going to ignore the bartender part.

[1:09:11] He is working at a hobby store and solving crimes out of the hobby store.

[1:09:18] Yeah.

[1:09:18] That's a cozy mystery for me.

S4

[1:09:20] Oh, totally.

[1:09:21] The hobby store thing would be great.

[1:09:22] You could have...

[1:09:23] Yeah.

[1:09:24] Like, models.

[1:09:26] There could be a model of a house or something.

[1:09:28] And that ties into the solution of the mystery.

[1:09:31] Or a remote-controlled car that you have to use.

[1:09:33] Right.

[1:09:33] Or glue.

[1:09:34] You know about all these epoxies and resins and stuff.

[1:09:38] Yeah.

[1:09:38] Little tiny brushes that they use to paint their D&D...

[1:09:41] I like this.

[1:09:41] You could do a whole mystery about pewter D&D figurines and how one of them went missing

[1:09:46] or something.

[1:09:46] You know what I mean?

[1:09:47] Uh-huh.

[1:09:48] Uh-huh.

[1:09:48] And Gary Gygax.

[1:09:50] Like, Gary Gygax, the monster manual, could be in it, too.

[1:09:53] Uh-huh.

[1:09:54] Yeah.

[1:09:55] Yeah, you could do that.

John Hodgman

[1:09:56] Stu, if I'm not mistaken, you wrote a monograph on the 19 different kinds of pewter orcs that

[1:10:02] are available right now.

[1:10:03] I did.

[1:10:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:04] I did.

[1:10:04] I don't like to bring it up on the podcast, because...

[1:10:07] So you're like Sherlock Holmes.

S4

[1:10:08] You will have written a monograph for everything that comes up in the hobby store homicides

[1:10:14] or whatever it's called.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:15] Yeah.

[1:10:15] And, yeah, every episode of hobby store homicides would end in a confession, a confession that

[1:10:24] I managed to get without any attempt to actually...

[1:10:27] Right.

[1:10:27] Without even knowing there was a mystery going on.

[1:10:29] And guess what?

S4

[1:10:30] The best thing is that your catchphrase is something like, solving crimes isn't my job.

[1:10:35] It's just a hobby.

[1:10:37] Oh, yeah.

[1:10:38] That's great.

[1:10:39] Running the hobby store is my job.

[1:10:42] You know what I mean?

[1:10:42] Like, you could really play in that space between avocation and vocation.

[1:10:47] Hobby versus duty, you know?

Elliott Kalan

[1:10:49] When hobbies are your work, life becomes a hobby.

[1:10:52] Yeah.

[1:10:52] Like, yeah.

[1:10:53] Sure.

[1:10:54] Yeah, yeah.

[1:10:54] And you could ride a hobby horse.

Stuart Wellington

[1:10:58] Yep.

[1:10:58] When solving mysteries is your hobby, you never work a day in your life.

[1:11:04] Pogsman, I think you should write one.

[1:11:05] That would be good.

[1:11:07] Yeah.

[1:11:08] You miss two Wellington mysteries.

[1:11:09] You miss 100% of the mysteries you don't solve.

[1:11:12] Wait.

[1:11:13] No, wait.

John Hodgman

[1:11:14] No, that's true, too.

[1:11:15] That's true.

[1:11:16] There's no I in mystery.

[1:11:17] I'm exactly right.

[1:11:18] Yeah, there's no I in mystery.

[1:11:19] A hobby mystery series or a hockey mystery series now?

Stuart Wellington

[1:11:26] Oh, man.

[1:11:27] I mean, if Kevin Smith's producing, I think it could be both, right?

[1:11:30] That's right.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:31] I mean, speaking of tall, handsome people, I do have to say, like, you are appearing to

[1:11:36] me in two boxes, Skype boxes above and below one another.

[1:11:42] You could be related, David and Stuart.

S4

[1:11:45] Oh, okay.

[1:11:46] Well, yeah, we both have coronavirus mustaches, I think.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:51] Jesus, Dan.

S4

[1:11:51] Why don't you offer to buy them both a drink?

[1:11:54] I mean...

Elliott Kalan

[1:11:55] Because Dan doesn't buy drinks.

Dan McCoy

[1:11:57] Open bar only.

[1:11:58] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:00] I mean...

[1:12:01] He doesn't care how close a friend he's seeing get married.

[1:12:05] Open bar or bust.

S4

[1:12:06] Can I ask you a quick question about de-escalating bar fights?

[1:12:10] Uh-huh.

[1:12:10] Because I have been in...

[1:12:14] Before I left...

[1:12:17] Before...

[1:12:17] I used to live in the Hudson Valley, and I tried to break up a couple bar fights when I was

[1:12:22] there.

[1:12:23] And then I got involved in a melee in Manhattan once to try to pull somebody off.

[1:12:29] What's the key?

[1:12:30] I mean, if they're already going at it, isn't it too late for verbal de-escalation?

[1:12:34] You just kind of have to physically get in there?

[1:12:36] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:37] Yeah.

[1:12:37] I mean, if they're already going at it, you really can't do anything about it.

[1:12:42] Right.

[1:12:42] I mean, for the vast majority of de-escalation...

Elliott Kalan

[1:12:44] You get your phone out and you start yelling, world star, world star.

[1:12:47] Right.

[1:12:48] That's what you do.

[1:12:48] Right.

[1:12:48] Yeah.

[1:12:49] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:12:50] I usually...

[1:12:51] If it's an actual problem person at the bar, I usually turn to my wife, who is much

[1:12:57] better at doing this, and she'll do things like, turn off the music and turn all the

[1:13:02] lights up and say she's not going to serve anybody until this asshole leaves.

[1:13:05] Oh, wow.

[1:13:05] You know, that sort of thing.

[1:13:07] Because she's a professional.

[1:13:09] Right.

[1:13:09] Psy-outs.

[1:13:09] You know, not just a handsome drifter like me.

[1:13:12] Right.

[1:13:12] Who just bumbles through life.

[1:13:14] Right.

[1:13:15] Presses his clothes under his mattress.

[1:13:16] And sleeps on a mattress on his clothes.

[1:13:17] Right.

[1:13:18] Yeah.

[1:13:19] Well, you got to keep them things crisp.

[1:13:22] The...

[1:13:23] I don't know.

[1:13:23] I feel like...

John Hodgman

[1:13:24] We have an iron.

[1:13:24] Char, it's like, we have an iron.

[1:13:26] You don't have to do this anymore.

[1:13:28] You live in a house.

[1:13:28] You have a home now.

[1:13:29] I'm your wife.

Stuart Wellington

[1:13:31] Right.

[1:13:31] Like, you have a dresser.

[1:13:33] You don't have to keep throwing your clothes in the garbage than walking naked to the hardware

[1:13:37] store.

[1:13:38] You do walk a line...

[1:13:39] Being in Brooklyn...

Dan McCoy

[1:13:41] What's that?

[1:13:41] I feel like a line, Stuart, though, where you're like, you're both relentlessly indulgent

[1:13:47] and subtly, like, you're doing like psyops on the person where you're like, shutting

[1:13:53] it down.

[1:13:54] Like, I'm not quite sure...

[1:13:56] Redirecting.

[1:13:57] Yeah.

[1:13:57] What's happening?

[1:13:58] Redirecting the energy.

[1:13:59] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:00] Yeah.

[1:14:00] I mean, that's all part of it.

[1:14:02] I mean, it's similar to like any kind of a bar conversation because you can't...

[1:14:06] Like, you don't want to get stuck there forever.

[1:14:07] Like, just because some guy really wants to explain why he shouldn't feel bad for loving

[1:14:12] Revenge of the Nerds.

[1:14:13] Like, hey, man, I got a job to do.

[1:14:16] How can I not have this heart to heart with this sad guy?

[1:14:20] And how does Dan take that?

[1:14:22] I thought we were having a really good conversation, Stu.

Dan McCoy

[1:14:26] I didn't realize that you felt that way about Revenge of the Nerds.

[1:14:29] Let me report that I have never been a fan of Prevenge of the Nerds.

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:33] Yeah, but you weren't a fan of it, Dan, because you thought the jocks were right to beat up

[1:14:37] the nerds.

[1:14:38] It wasn't...

[1:14:38] It was still wrong.

[1:14:40] Those nerds?

Elliott Kalan

[1:14:40] Yes!

Dan McCoy

[1:14:41] Turns out those nerds were the villains!

[1:14:44] Yeah.

Stuart Wellington

[1:14:46] Yeah.

[1:14:46] For me, it was always that I was mad that they cheated in all the games.

[1:14:52] Like, clearly the rules say that you can't...

[1:14:54] If you have to drink a beer and then ride a little tricycle, you can't take a pill that

[1:14:59] prevents you from getting drunk.

[1:15:00] That's not fair.

Elliott Kalan

[1:15:01] Dan, let's check the rulebook.

[1:15:03] There isn't one.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:04] Right.

[1:15:05] Because this is dumb.

[1:15:10] Rulebook says, this is dumb.

[1:15:11] Stop it.

[1:15:15] Guys, look, that wasn't a great note to end on, but on the other hand...

John Hodgman

[1:15:19] Well, let's not end on it.

[1:15:21] Dan...

[1:15:22] Okay.

[1:15:24] I set up a thing, a tease.

[1:15:28] Who is the greatest Hercule Poirot in film?

Dan McCoy

[1:15:31] Oh, shit.

[1:15:32] I do want to know that.

[1:15:33] Who is the greatest Hercule Poirot in your opinion, Mr. John Hodgman?

John Hodgman

[1:15:39] Speaking of tall, handsome drifters...

[1:15:42] Uh-huh.

[1:15:43] Kenneth Branagh.

[1:15:44] Fuck off.

[1:15:45] Greatest Hercule Poirot in cinema.

[1:15:46] Fuck off.

[1:15:47] Oh, wow.

[1:15:48] Off.

[1:15:48] I shall not fuck off.

[1:15:50] Wow.

[1:15:50] I shall fuck directly on.

Dan McCoy

[1:15:53] For years, I have had such respect for you to the degree that you've intimidated me.

[1:15:59] Dan is rending his garments.

[1:16:01] I have had such approval, and now I find that the emperor has no clothes.

John Hodgman

[1:16:07] Come on.

[1:16:08] Yeah, I don't have any clothes because I'm lying down on a mattress trying to press my underwear.

[1:16:16] I'm not going to sit here in front of you, Dan.

[1:16:22] Dilettante, trust fund, classist, open bar, snob.

[1:16:26] Wait, hold on.

Dan McCoy

[1:16:28] That is not my life, but okay.

[1:16:30] Sure.

[1:16:31] For the purposes of this podcast, let's pretend that's true.

John Hodgman

[1:16:34] No, I know that's not you.

[1:16:36] I'm not going to sit here and tell you that the 2017 Murder on the Orient Express, directed

[1:16:43] by and starring Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot, is a great film, but I will say I did not

[1:16:53] expect to enjoy it as much as I did.

[1:16:56] I was utterly flabbergasted when I saw that guy's mustache.

[1:17:03] I'm like, wow.

Dan McCoy

[1:17:05] No, he does look like a Kurt Russell character, much more than Hercule Poirot, as one might imagine.

John Hodgman

[1:17:11] Yeah, well, first of all, Hercule Poirot, as we know from Peter Ustinov and David Suchet,

[1:17:18] and even Albert Finney is supposed to be a short, stout, gourmand, vain shithead that everyone hates.

[1:17:28] And instead, we got the trailer for Murder on the Orient Express, which is a tall, skinny, honestly slenderman type Hercule Poirot,

[1:17:42] with a mustache that was growing into his ears, walking on top of the train to the tune of Believer by Imagine Dragons.

[1:17:53] And I'm like, well, this is not my dad, he's Hercule Poirot anymore.

[1:17:59] And as dumb as that seemed to me, I watched it, and there was one moment that utterly redeemed the movie for me,

[1:18:08] which is that as many Hercule Poirot books and movies as I've watched,

[1:18:16] I never understood him as a human being until Kenneth Branagh stepped in shit in the movie.

[1:18:25] What?

[1:18:27] In human shit?

[1:18:30] No, it was animal shit.

[1:18:31] Oh.

[1:18:32] Humans are animals.

[1:18:34] David's no longer interested.

Elliott Kalan

[1:18:39] That would be an interesting twist if he gets on the train and steps into human shit,

[1:18:43] and they're like, by the way, the toilets are all backed up, the system is not working.

[1:18:48] But we would really appreciate you solving the mystery.

John Hodgman

[1:18:50] And so that's something they just have to deal with all movie.

[1:18:53] And Branagh's interpretation as Hercule Poirot is a coprophage,

[1:18:57] someone who eats shit for pleasure.

[1:18:58] Right.

[1:18:59] Was really interesting to me.

Stuart Wellington

[1:19:01] No.

[1:19:01] I'm glad that he does it for pleasure and not for sustenance,

[1:19:04] because I don't think there's a lot of nutritional value there.

[1:19:06] No, that's true.

Dan McCoy

[1:19:06] I don't want to get to another human centipede conversation, Stuart.

[1:19:10] Why?

John Hodgman

[1:19:10] Because you're wrong all the time, Dan?

[1:19:12] Yeah.

[1:19:12] About the best position?

[1:19:13] It's a detective film of all time, Human Centipede.

[1:19:16] But in Murder on the Orange Express 2017, as its official title is,

[1:19:24] Kenneth Branagh as Poirot is walking to the scene of a crime early in the film,

[1:19:30] not related to the train, a non-train crime.

[1:19:35] He steps in shit, he seethes, steps back, and then steps in shit again with his other foot.

[1:19:44] And he says, I'm paraphrasing, it's not the humiliation, it's the imbalance that bothers me.

[1:19:52] And suddenly, I understood that Hercule Poirot is someone who is able to sense everything around him,

[1:20:01] such that it's an invasion to his personality.

[1:20:04] And all he's trying to do is to make rational a world that is irrational.

[1:20:11] And it's basically, he's got an OCD problem.

[1:20:15] And suddenly I understood Poirot in a way that I didn't ever understand Poirot before.

[1:20:20] Like, he can't help it. He doesn't want to be this way.

[1:20:22] He doesn't want to be this shitty, vain, mustachioed asshole.

[1:20:28] He has to be this way because that's the only way that he can deal with his anxieties.

[1:20:32] And I love that. So there.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:34] I mean, I cannot entirely go with you, but I do think that Branagh...

[1:20:40] All right, ending Skype now, goodbye.

[1:20:43] I will say that Branagh's performance as Hercule Poirot is probably the best thing in that movie.

John Hodgman

[1:20:49] I did enjoy that.

[1:20:50] Oh, yeah, the rest is...

[1:20:51] Well, no, wait a minute.

[1:20:51] What about...

[1:20:52] Michelle Pfeiffer's great in it.

Dan McCoy

[1:20:54] I mean, Michelle Pfeiffer's great in everything.

[1:20:56] She is...

[1:20:57] Oh.

John Hodgman

[1:20:58] But Dan, you and I, we can make peace over this.

[1:21:03] Branagh's Poirot is interesting to watch.

[1:21:06] Michelle Pfeiffer is wonderful.

[1:21:08] And everyone else is not good.

[1:21:11] Yes, agreed.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:13] Well, except for Dame Judi Dench.

[1:21:14] She's good.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:15] A virtual shaking of hands.

Elliott Kalan

[1:21:18] Now, I haven't seen the movie.

[1:21:19] Does Dame Judi Dench appear as a cat and sing a song explaining to the viewer what cats are?

[1:21:25] Yeah.

John Hodgman

[1:21:27] Yeah, she appears as a cat and she goes, my name is Miss Marple.

[1:21:30] I'll see you in the next movie.

Dan McCoy

[1:21:36] What great casting that would be.

Stuart Wellington

[1:21:38] So, wait.

[1:21:39] What's the...

[1:21:40] When's your show air, guys?

[1:21:42] What's the details on that thing?

S4

[1:21:43] July 9th on Cake on FXX.

[1:21:48] And then the next day on Hulu.

[1:21:51] Because FXX has a deal with Hulu.

[1:21:54] And the show is called Dick Town.

[1:21:56] It has profanity in it.

[1:21:59] It's...

[1:21:59] But it's...

[1:22:00] It's like a...

[1:22:02] It's not...

[1:22:03] There's dirty language and stuff, but I don't think of it as a...

[1:22:06] It's not hard-boiled.

[1:22:07] It's more like a cozy...

[1:22:09] It's cozy, grimy mysteries.

[1:22:12] Yeah.

[1:22:12] We have our new genre of grimy, cozy mysteries.

Stuart Wellington

[1:22:15] Nobody's pants catch on fire and then get put out by a baby urinating on them.

[1:22:19] Doesn't quite get that nuts.

[1:22:21] No.

Elliott Kalan

[1:22:22] Does that happen in Murder on the Orient Express, the new one?

[1:22:25] Yeah.

S4

[1:22:26] The poo-poo train.

[1:22:27] What if they call it that?

[1:22:31] Murder on the poo-poo train.

[1:22:33] On the poo-poo train.

[1:22:34] And then the trailer, they'd have that song.

[1:22:36] Come on, ride that train.

John Hodgman

[1:22:39] We've got also incredible friends who were guest voices on the show, including our friend

[1:22:47] Jean Grey, Zach Galifianakis, John Glazer, John Benjamin, Kristen Schaal, and others.

[1:22:54] Griffin Newman of Blank Check Podcast.

[1:22:56] Oh, yeah.

[1:22:57] Yeah.

[1:22:58] Lots of people came in and made it a lot of fun.

S4

[1:22:59] Paul F. Tompkins and Janie Haddad Tompkins.

John Hodgman

[1:23:01] Thank you.

[1:23:02] Yeah, absolutely.

[1:23:03] Oh, wow.

[1:23:05] And if there's a season two, there's a role in it for all three of you.

[1:23:09] So, listen to me.

[1:23:11] Yeah, okay.

[1:23:11] So, everybody tune the fuck in.

[1:23:14] Yeah.

[1:23:14] Oh, wow.

[1:23:14] You gotta get those numbers up.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:17] Listen to me, fans of the Flophouse.

[1:23:18] The immediate mailing of David.

[1:23:20] Yeah.

[1:23:21] Yeah, I got stars in my eyes.

John Hodgman

[1:23:26] If you want to see John Hunchman and David Purefoy, the main characters from Dicktown, dealing

[1:23:33] with their new arch nemesis, Stu Wellington.

[1:23:37] Oh, I don't even know.

[1:23:38] The hobby detective.

[1:23:41] You better watch this thing and send in letters.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:44] Like a cool detective name.

[1:23:48] I don't know.

[1:23:49] Like Pooart Smellington or something.

[1:23:51] Whoa.

[1:23:52] That's filthy.

Elliott Kalan

[1:23:54] I think, Stuart, I think you may be mixing up detectives and garbage pail kids.

Stuart Wellington

[1:23:59] And cool with gross.

[1:24:02] Oh, man.

S4

[1:24:03] I did it again.

[1:24:05] Can I ask one last mystery movie question of you guys?

[1:24:09] Have any of you guys ever seen a French mystery called Tell No One?

[1:24:15] Yeah.

[1:24:16] So great.

[1:24:17] Yeah, it's great.

[1:24:18] It's great.

[1:24:18] I would recommend that to your listeners.

[1:24:20] That's another movie that, like Gosford Park, I just love so much.

[1:24:24] I've probably seen that movie four times.

[1:24:28] Yeah, it's great.

[1:24:29] Yeah.

[1:24:29] Totally recommend.

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:30] I would recommend...

[1:24:32] Oh, I saw that movie.

[1:24:33] Yeah.

[1:24:34] Yeah.

[1:24:35] I had to look it up.

[1:24:35] I couldn't remember.

John Hodgman

[1:24:36] You had to look it up in your little book of movies that you saw?

Elliott Kalan

[1:24:38] No, no.

[1:24:39] I had to look up which movie it was because I couldn't...

[1:24:40] I was like, have I seen that one?

[1:24:42] I know of it.

[1:24:43] But yeah, yeah, I saw that one.

[1:24:43] That one was good.

John Hodgman

[1:24:45] If your listeners are interested in modern takes on a classic Agatha Christie style cozy mystery

[1:24:55] and also a modern take on a classic American hard-boiled film mystery,

[1:25:03] just go no further than your friend Ryan Johnson, check out Knives Out, and then check out Brick.

[1:25:10] Two great mysteries in those two traditions.

[1:25:12] Oh, yeah, Brick.

[1:25:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1:25:13] Yeah.

[1:25:14] Yeah.

[1:25:15] Yeah, they're great.

Stuart Wellington

[1:25:18] Okay.

[1:25:19] Mystery movies.

[1:25:20] Wonderful stuff.

John Hodgman

[1:25:21] Mystery movies.

[1:25:22] Hey, everyone loves mystery movies.

[1:25:23] Hey, I'm John Hodgman, host of this episode.

[1:25:25] Oh, okay, great.

[1:25:27] Host of this episode of Flophouse Minisode.

[1:25:31] And it's been my pleasure to talk to my friends here about mystery movies, detectives,

[1:25:37] outsiders, hobbyists, poo-poo trains, and many other topics.

[1:25:43] I want to give a shout out to the hosts of the show, Dan McCoy, Stuart Wellington, and Elliot Kalin.

[1:25:49] Hey, you guys.

[1:25:50] Thanks so much for being on the show that you host.

[1:25:52] Meanwhile, it's me.

[1:25:53] Thank you for having us.

[1:25:55] Oh, you're welcome, and thank you for having us.

[1:25:58] By us, I mean me and David Reese, co-stars and co-creators of the new show, Dicktown, on FXX's Cake.

[1:26:08] Sorry.

[1:26:10] Nailed it.

[1:26:10] On Cake.

[1:26:10] FXX's new half-hour late-night anthology show, Dicktown episode starts cycling into cake, whatever that means.

[1:26:20] July 9th at 10 p.m. and streaming the next day on FX on Hulu.

[1:26:27] Hey, you guys, thank you so much for having us on the show.

S4

[1:26:31] Thank you.

[1:26:32] I would also say thank you.

[1:26:34] That's cool.

[1:26:35] Thank you for having us.

[1:26:37] Bye.

John Hodgman

[1:26:45] MaximumFun.org

[1:26:47] Comedy and culture

S6

[1:26:48] Artist owned.

[1:26:50] Audience supported.

FH Mini 10 - Detectives! w/ John Hodgman and David Rees

Transcript

In this episode

Description