Beantown Podcast - 01272018_Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown Podcast

Episode Date: January 13, 2018

Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown Podcast -- Listen weekly as Quinn & guests ramble about movies, sports, Russian restaurants, doing your taxes, pledge drive telethons, and losing your mom as a subscriber to the show

Good morning. This is Quinn of Quinn, David Ferns presents the bean town podcast. Common to you live from 817 St. Paul Street.? Saturday morning, January 27th, 2018. What's good? Been doing a lot more texting. This past week, then I usually do, you know, starting to get a little social. Days are getting longer. Coming out of the apartment a little bit more, seeing fewer movies by myself and actually doing things with other humans.

It's a novel concept. I went to the National Aquarium last night, which was wild. Half price Friday nights nights which is great because normally it's 40 bucks and I don't know about you but 40 bucks for an aquarium that's kind of a little bit bougie I'm gonna be having to make at least seven figures before I start paying $40 for an aquarium visit, but $20, I can handle that. I might not eat any food the rest of this weekend,

but I sure as hell saw some awesome fishes, Bay is complaint, no killer whales. It's just one of those things you kind of expect when you're at the national aquarium, no killer whales, though, did see this one, oh man, kind of expect when you're at the national aquarium, no killer whales though. Did see this one. Oh man, that came in, what it's called, I don't know if I'm seeing it right,

but I swear to God, this thing is like, if a crocodile and Godzilla had like a love child, it would be this thing. It was like, I'm looking at the Google image right now, it looks a lot like a crocodile alligator sort of thing, but man this thing was it was nuts. That was the only, only like major reptile going on. There was one exhibit that was supposed to have snakes, but I don't know. I was there at like

9 p.m. and I think the snake's head all going to sleep. So, oh man, we're here. January come into a close. I have four or five more days until Feb 1 hits and then I can drink again, which I haven't been like super deprived. I mean, there have definitely been some moments where I missed it but for those of you who've been keeping up you know I'm in a dry month last drink I had was an entire bottle of champagne on New Year's Eve and yeah having had a drink since then so we're doing well we're four weeks in a couple days to go here. Got to decide what my first drink's gonna be. I don't know, I got my brother, gave me a flask for Christmas, which was awesome.

But I haven't had the chance to imbibe in it yet because who's gonna put, you know, like seven up in a flask, you know, it's not quite as effective. So, looking forward to using that. Got a lot of stuff to talk about today. First and foremost, got to get this out of the way. Poet and I didn't know it. Vikings vs Eagles. Only six days ago, got to be honest, feels like a year. I've been fortunate

that I haven't really been super down about it if you don't know the Vikings and the Eagles played in the NFC championship games past Sunday night. And it was one of the more, I don't know, just straight up dominating performances I've ever seen. Eagles won 38 to 7. Vikings scored a touchdown on the first drive of the game. And somehow did not manage to score another point. 38 to 7, Viking score to touch it on the first drive of the game and somehow Did not manage to score another point

The rest of the game, which is pretty pathetic. It was an ugly game. I Turned it off after the third quarter Yeah, it was It was pretty frustrating The silver lining I would rather lose like that than in like 2009 and it's the championship game against the Saints action or Gary Anderson action or even the Blair Walsh Field goal versus the Saints so got that out of the way

Tuesday night I had Russian food at a Russian restaurant for the first time in my life. Never been to a Russian restaurant before. I had a friend from grad school who was in town. That was fun. And I think the kind of default thing here on the podcast would be to just tell a bunch of lame Russian jokes. I don't want to do that.

I don't want to just resort tell a bunch of lame Russian jokes. I don't want to do that. I don't want to just resort to a bunch of scary types. If I just told those jokes, I would just be stalling the whole time. So I did while I was at the restaurant, there are some people at the bar talking. And I try to avoid spoilers for major movies, TV shows, that sort of thing. I did, unfortunately, have my favorite, like, competition game show spoiled for me.

You know, I've been pulling for Ivan this entire season on Dancing with the Zars, but I heard that he had a terrible performance, and he got kicked off. So they lopped his head right off, just like in the old days, Hashtag Ostelevista, counselor, am I right? But, you know, it came time to turn the food. I, what the hell do I know about Russian food? I know you got the potatoes and lot keys.

Is that a Russian thing? I don't know. It sounds like it might be. Couldn't decide, honestly, if I wanted something sweet, something savory. Is your classic stuck between a rock band and off in a hard place type of situation. So eventually, I, with the help of my friend,

made up my mind, got them on Machenka, M-A-C-H-A-N-K-A. It is kind of like there was chicken and kielbasa, served with like these crepes, and it was all kind of in this, not really a sauce, but the consistency is tough to explain. I think there are some mashed potatoes as part of it. I don't really know what it was. It was pretty good.

Honestly, in regards to my expectations, it kind of missed the marks a little bit, but it was fine. Dry month for me, I ended up having just some tea to go with my machonka, but, got it, Talia, those Moscow mules looked pretty appetizing over at the bar, so next time. Go back there next weekend and get an alcoholic beverage. We were getting ready to leave, tried to pay the check, but, I tell you what, at this restaurant, the checks pay you.

It was nuts. Anyways, it was really nice to be able to catch up that old friend from a graduate school, a hashtag, Putin, the commune back in communism, all right. So that was the Russian restaurant. That was a good time. I don't know what it was called. Haka Bakka or something like that. Oscar nominations came out on Tuesday.

Those of you know, following the podcast, I am a big Oscars fan. This is going to be my third straight year where I watch all the best picture nominations in years past so this is something that's interesting so the last two years first few years I started doing this It was a situation where the the oscar knobs would come out and you have basically a month a little over a month to Scramble to watch all the best picture knobs. And in years past, I think, you know, nine or ten nominees per year for best picture, I think in general, I'd probably like seen two or three from the list.

And then I would, you know, in the next 35 days, or whatever, have to go like seek out and movie theaters go see a bunch of them. This year is completely different. And I hadn't even thought about this honestly until I said this 30 seconds ago on the podcast. I am pulling up the list of best picture nominations right now. I might have seen every single one before the nominations came out So let's let's run through and we got darkest hour Gary oldman is once in church I saw that once about two weeks ago. It was it was fine little slow pace, but it was okay By the way, this is not gonna be my Oscar

Predictions show I will I will do something like that later. I will review a movie and it's the last movie here on the list. But we got Darkest Hour, we got Done Kirk, of course, came out this summer. Get out, I also saw, very good, Lady Bird has seen twice. Phantom Thread, I saw last Friday night, eight days ago, for the first time, that was, I had some problems with the storyline, but overall it was great. The post, which I saw on MLK Day,

Shaper Water, which I have seen twice now, and then three billboards, which is a movie I want to see a second time, but I've already seen once. And then, the last one, call me by your name, which I have seen twice. So I didn't even realize this until I went through this list just right now for the first time. But yeah, I've seen online of the best picture nominees before the awards even came out. So call me by your name is what I would love to talk about just

briefly. It's a movie that has gotten a lot of hype. You're probably sick of hearing about it. It's one of those movies though that absolutely deserves every accolade that it's been nominated for that is going to win. For me, it's, so last year I was really being on Manchester by the sea. It's kind of my version of that this year calling by your name. Ladybird kind of fits that profile as well, but it's a movie that I don't know. The two big things that it's got going for it are best picture and best actor for Timothy Shalamet. I think it's going to lose both of them because I think it's going to lose best picture to three billboards and I think it's going to lose best actor to

Gary Oldman. But man, the acting in this movie, a master class, Timothy Solomon, and Army Hammer are spectacular together. Kind of an odd couple, but man, it works. And then the other big one, Michael Stullberg, who I've talked about a little bit on the podcast in the past, he just kind of pops about of nowhere this year, and he's in three of the biggest, or the best movies of the year, he's in the post, he's in three of the biggest, or the best movies of the year. He's in the post, he's in the shape of water,

and of course he's in calling by your name, which is his best performance among the three. But two huge scenes that literally happened in the last 10 minutes of this movie. Michael Stulberg gives a monologue about kind of emotions and identity and being yourself in a sense and learning to be comfortable with that. That is just, I don't know, in terms of movie moments that come to the forefront of my mind, that takes the cake. It was just, it's one of the greatest,

greatest things I've ever heard on screen. It's fantastic. And then the final shot of the film, if you've seen it, of course you know what I'm talking about. It's spectacular as well. So, not gonna do any spoilers because I know that there are plenty of people who aren't a movie-going theme like myself where it's going to red box it when it comes out or Netflix

or whatever. Totally worth it. I've seen it twice. I would consider going a third time. I might go again this this week. Really fantastic. Acting amazing. Score. Really fantastic, acting, amazing, score, also fantastic. It's just beautiful everything. So, calling by your name, go check it out, I love it. What else do we want

to talk about here? Oh, the story of the flower chair. That is something that I briefly mentioned last week on the podcast, but I figure I'll tell it now. And I was telling the story to a friend earlier this week who asked about it after listening to the podcast. And I realized I actually don't know the origin out of it. I just kind of know the part of its history that's been handed down to me.

So growing up had this like armchair, still have it, in fact yours truly is sitting in it right now. But it's got a floral pattern and consequently always been referred to as the flower chair growing up. My sophomore year of college, my family moved to the state of Oregon from Northern Illinois where I was raised. So they're getting rid of a bunch of crap. I call the flower chair crap. That's blasphemous. Flower chair is basically an idol. But they're saying, Hey, we're moving. We're not taking this with you or with us. Do you want it? I said,

yeah, you know, I'm 19, 20 years old. I don't have any furniture. I have like a can of Hormel chili beans and like a water bottle to my name basically. So, you start adding to the collection. I don't remember exactly what the situation was, but the way it happened was that I was going to be moving into a new apartment, but I didn't have the lease yet. So I had to stash this flower chair to friends apartment in Lincoln Park,

where I went to school. So after I get my lease, I'm in a new apartment in a neighborhood about two or three miles north of school. And I got to find a way to get this flower chair up to the apartment. And of course, you know, I'm 19, 20 years old in downtown Chicago, none of my friends have cars. It's not a thing.

So how are we gonna transport this thing? I'm not rich enough to, you know, shell out for a U-Haul. So, in epic fashion, along with my former roommate, Benjamin Savage, take the flower chair on the CTA Red Line. I will try to find a way to link the picture as evidence as proof in the comments here. But yeah, there's a picture of me sitting in the flower chair on the red line, middle of the day on a Saturday, I think. Got it on, got it off, and walked it the rest of the way to the apartment. I

should get off the train like half a mile. So that's the flower chair, made it to my, my software department and then moved it back to Lincoln Park when I was in RA and then moved it up to Rogers Park where I lived in grad school. Didn't get a ton of use there, but I tell you what since moving to being town, this thing's my go to. I've got let's see one, two, three, four, five chairs in the apartment. I would say I spend more than 99% of my time sitting in this chair and less than one person at the time combined in the other five chairs. It's just it's glorious.

It's got everything you could ever want in a chair. It's beautiful. So you ever make it out to bean town? Be sure to stop by 817 St. Paul Street and it's kind of like sitting on Santa's lap, you know, except it's better and you get it year-round. It's not just a month of December thing. That's the story of the flower chair.

It's one of my prized possessions along with the Tiger Blanket, which I will be happy to discuss in a later podcast. What else is going on? I founded this PTSD stress research study on Craigslist. So I spent, you know, I'd say about 50% of my internet browsing time is spent on Craigslist. You know, it's how I find my gigs. It's how I find my research studies. Let's say you're just looking for a date on Saturday night.

Hello, Craigslist, the way to go. So I'm doing a market research study where they make you download this app and I swear to God, you do the same test every day. You answer some questions about how you're feeling emotionally. And then you play this game, which is really lame. It's like a fricking optometry test, where you, they like flash the words on the screen and then you gotta like press your thumb on,

there's like two buttons at the bottom on either side of your screen and you gotta like press one of them, whichever one it tells you. And you do this thing for like five minutes and five minutes doesn't sound like a long time but each like little thing takes place over the course of like two seconds. So you're just going rapid fire. It's it's pretty mentally exhausting. I don't know if it's how it's affecting my my stress or whatever semblance of PTSD I have but I gotta tell you, I gotta do it every day. I'm supposed to do it at noon each day, which means the second I finish my

podcast here, I gotta do it. But making some money off of it, I will treat myself. I gotta do it for two weeks, so I'm two days in and I'm already feeling a little, I'm kinda over it, so. But gotta get that money, you know, gotta get paid. Getting paid, getting laid, do the curls, get the girls. That is what my old friend Matthew Kirby, Raffer Christian High School, class of 2011, used to say. Boy, what else is going on? I didn't give my listener discretion as advice take.

I don't think I have sworn yet in this podcast, but I'll be listening back to it in about 20 minutes. And I will realize that I've already slipped in a couple adult terms. So let's do it now. Let's in our discussion is advice. We'll be using some adult language. And on top of that, the podcast is just objectively terrible.

So there's your warning, shit damn bitch. Let's just get the words out there. Ain't the the open. Yeah, that's what I wanted to mention here. Yeah, boy, we got through that stuff pretty quickly. I was going to spend more time on the Oscars, but I have multiple podcasts to discuss this. Oh, here's something I wanted to say.

Emojis in texting. You go on your iPhone, you're texting, you go to the emojis, you can scroll to the right for like, I don't know, a solid hour, and you just keep getting more and more emojis. I tell you what, when I was growing up using a Nokia phone, we didn't have emojis. Here's what we had. We had colons. We had semi-colons. We had parentheses for the happy faces and the frowny faces, we had dashes if you're doing the side frown type of deal.

And then we had the letter O, if you're like, oh my god, it's scary. Wow. Now you go on the emoji list these days and you can find a facial expression for like feeling bloated, honestly, and there's a good three or four of those. There's like symbols for everything, there are flags, there's guns, I don't know. I don't know what kind of message we're sending to our kids these days, but EasyMoji's got out of control. Oh, oh, this is the other thing. I have a friend

Who has an iPhone 10 and I don't know if this is specific to like the iPhone 10 or if it's just a software update and any phone like after the 6 or 7 or something can do this but There's a thing where They they can send you like an emoji, but it's a little bit larger, but they like, you speak into it, records your voice, and then it shows the emoji, like speaking your words and it's your voice. So it's not your face, it's the emoji's face.

That thing creeps the fuck out at me, man. Like, you sent me an alien one. I felt like I was in close encounters of the third kind. And there's like this poop one, which by the way, the poop emoji is just total shit. It looks like frickin' like brown ice cream. None of my poop looks like that. Maybe that's a personal problem, but yeah,

like not completely on board with those things. I don't know why we need them. I don't know what the appeal is. In a similar vein, all the God damn Snapchat filters. I have friends on Snapchat and I haven't seen their real face since like the Bush administration. Like hot damn. Let's cut it the fuck out with these filters and you know I just the dog years you This happened to me literally last night. You're on Tinder and, or no, no, no, this wasn't a dating thing. This was like an Instagram story. And it's like all dog years.

There were five pictures in a row, just like different facial poses, but they were all, they all had like the dog year filter. And here's the last thing I'm going to say about this. If I am on a dating app, and I'm trying to get a good look at you, and I'm not talking about like being shallow in terms of body shape, but facial attractiveness I think is a big thing for most of us. How am I supposed to know what your face looks like when you got a digitally inserted nose and ears and it changes the color and the lighting and stuff.

I don't know what anybody looks like anymore. You can go on the internet and everything's a filter. Everything's got dog ears. I have a friend on Snapchat who like only uses the like the floral wreath thing going around your head and like changes your, makes your your cheeks nice and rosy. I'm just like This was this was a cool like fun thing to do for me for like two minutes. The first time it came out on Snapchat and like Instagram filters and stuff, but damn, like, I don't know.

Maybe I'm just a 50 year old man, but heesh, it's a hard-knock life. We need more natural beauty. That's why I don't shower or shave or take bath or anything like that. You know, I want people to like me for who I am in my natural muskiness, if you will. Cool. Let's do some advice here. If you have any advice, questions, dating, sexuality, legal issues, maybe you're just looking for some new recipes for dinner this week. You can of course send them to Beentown Podcast at Yahoo.com, that's Beentown B-E-A-N-T-O-W-N podcast at Yahoo.com.

Maybe you just have some comments about the show. Maybe you're concerned about how much it sucks or how this podcast is legitimately a terrible waste of your time. Here's something else I wanna say about that. So I've been pushing the podcast just to friends, family, coworkers. And you start to see the benefits of it. I mean, I think my podcast are to like 35 likes on YouTube now.

So I don't know. It was like number four trending, I think, in the category of shitty podcasts from Central Baltimore. So yeah, we're doing pretty well, but no one I get too big for my bridges here. But here's the thing. We're doing pretty well, but no one I get too big for my bridges here. But here's a thing. The podcast is not meant for you to sit in front of your computer

screen and just look at it for half an hour and make that be a half an hour part of your day. I get comments, concerns from people who are like, oh yeah, that would be cool, but I just don't have half an hour to carve out. I'm like, are you kidding me? What about when you're cooking dinner, give it a listen. What about when you're going to bed, give it a listen.

I mean, I know my voice is pretty damn soothing, pretty damn relaxing. Wait till I get my hands on a copy of Fifty Shades Darker, we're gonna do some spoken word. And that's gonna be nuts, but something to look forward to on a future podcast. Listen to it while you're commuting to work, or commuting home from work. I'm not asking, and this is not me, this is podcasts in general, you know, make it part of your day, make it part of your routine to listen to things. You don't have to sit there in front of your screen and look at it.

Just make it part of your day, other things you can be doing simultaneously. So anyways, the rant is over. Advice, hey QCD, someone picked up on that. That was a Facebook nickname that popped up this past weekend. What are your tips for dealing with having a really lonely birthday? Oh geez. I recently took a new job far away from my social network. With my birthday approaching this weekend, I have no plans, no friends, and no idea what to do.

Birthdays are one of my favorite things, and the thought of having lame one is really tough. Thanks. Well, you came to the right person, because I don't know if I have ever had a birthday in my life that is like just knock it out of the park, home run, really memorable. And that's not a knock on family or friends, well, some friends. It's just like, I don't know, there

never been a huge thing for me. So I know what you're talking about. My last few birthdays, let's see, one year I worked, a 12-hour shift at work, it came home, my roommates had gone to dinner without me, that was fun. Another one I did a food tour of Chicago, so we hit up some little Caesars, Stan's Donuts, White Castle, of course, had to go to the Olive Garden. That was all self-planned. That was actually a pretty good one.

Let's see, the last year I worked all day and then went home. I was cat sitting for a friend and then I actually, I did go and get a drink with my friend. That was okay, but I know all about the loneliness aspect, the not feeling like you have friends aspect living in a new place. So my advice, I don't know. I guess try to take a step back, realize you're not so special. You know, there's at least like two billion Asians in China that have the same birthday as you. So, you know, I guarantee not every single one of them is going to the the the nightclub, the dueling piano bar, um, having free shots. You know, they're probably at home, uh, playing super smash bros or something like that. Or I don't know, eating rice and going to bed. So I don't think that's culturally insensitive to say because

I love rice and no one is a bigger fan of rice than me. Not to mention Rice University, go Crimson Tide. So anyways, that's my advice for you. Maybe go on a college visit at Rice. I don't know. It's a trip. It can be a fun, young, sexy, young 20s type thing to do. College visits by yourself. It's the new trend.

Go check it out. You'll think me later. That's the new trend. Go check it out. You'll think me later. That's the podcast for today. This has been Quinn David Furnace, presenting the bean town podcast. If you like what you hear, if you hate what you hear, let me know. Send me some advice, questions, bean town podcast, yahu.com. I will check in Anya for a Super Bowl edition of the Bean Town Podcast next weekend and I'll talk about some more Oscars. Maybe have some more Russian puns. And anyways, that's it. Hope you have a good one. Check in on you later.