Beantown Podcast - Snowflakes, Tiny Homes, & Noxious Fumes (11292025 Beantown Podcast)

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

Quinn comes to you LIVE from the Chicago suburbs to discuss liberal snowflakes, Even Stevens, and port wine

Hey, what's going on? It's Quinn David Furness. Welcome to my show. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast for November 29th, 2025. What is small business Saturday? That's what they call it? I think so, right? Because it's Thanksgiving Day. And then Black Friday, which is just, the magic is gone, right? Every generation's got those things where it's like, you know, when I was a kid, we had XYZ and, you know, grandpa walked uphill. 12 miles get to school each day and you mom and dad had Y2K and now for us it's black Friday deals and I got to work in retail Kmart for two Black Fridays where I was up and at them I think one year it was just Black Friday that I worked the next year I think my senior year of high school I worked Thanksgiving and Black Friday because there was kind of that brief little portion by the way this is Quinn David Furnace in my program Quindiv Furness presents the Beantown Podcast. Happy Thanksgiving to all, happy Thanksgiving to those of you in Pekistan, whether you celebrate or not. Really not my place to impose my

beliefs upon you, although I guess that's really what American Thanksgiving is all about. But going back, capping this Black Friday thought, you know, obviously 10, 20 years ago, it was it was all the rage to pitch a tent outside of Best Buy or Circuit City or Pep Boys or whatever deals you were looking for and you've got to be first in line because there's only select stock and inventory available and now with the internet and advent of internet shopping which i i know it's 2025 this isn't like a super new phenomenon anymore but it's just the magic is gone and when i was yeah when i worked at kmart in high school we really reached i think like i want to say i don't want to say peak consumerism because I don't think there is a peak. I think we're just going to go up,

up in a way. But it was kind of its own little mini peak in some sort of chapter of the history of capitalism and consumerism where, and I don't think that this is really a thing anymore partially because I think we somewhat lost an appetite for it and then also just because of online shopping. But, you know, Black Friday from, you know, the end of the century into the 21st century was just hurtling towards this, you know, bigger, better, you know earlier opening times bigger savings more ferocious you know you'd see videos of excuse me people trying to check out at best buy or target or Walmart or wherever you were doing your your sales and it was just vicious as like the tim robinson sketch the dan flash is the

very competitive store at the shops at the creek where all the guys are like fighting over the shirts you know taking them off the rack trying to count the patterns and i know that's a joke but that's really what the footage of these stores would be like and then kind of the zenith if you will that's right zenith zenit h maybe the first time we've ever said zenith on the bean town podcast here as we get close to we got like five weeks left in season eight here which is crazy before the premiere of season nine which has not been renewed yet but hoping we'll have an announcement for that soon where you would literally open up at like 4 a.m. 5 a.m. on Thanksgiving. I definitely had my senior year of high school. I remember working Kmart. Not only, you know, Black Friday, I think we opened at 3 a.m. It was either 3 and then Thanksgiving was 4 or Black Friday was 4 and Thanksgiving was 5 in the morning. Either way, egregiously early for a 17-year-old, 16-year-old manning a checkout lane at that. the local Rockford Kmart on East State Street in Malford Ave.

But yeah, I remember getting there. You get there like half an hour early, you clock in, and then you have like a big old team meeting before the doors open, and everyone's centered around the customer service desk, like an NFL coach in the locker room 20 minutes before kickoff rallying the troops. And yeah, it was pretty chaotic. I don't think it ever got to the point of like, the viral videos you would see of people scrambling on top of each other over the

at the electronics department at like Walmart or Best Buy or something like that but they were long days uh i think it would you know worked from like four in the morning until noon or something and got to go home and have a nice quiet Thanksgiving meal but the hustle doesn't stop the grind doesn't stop started working in when i was when i was 12 detassal and corn and here we are 18 and a half years later still going at it waking up at 5 a.m. The last couple of days here coming back from our honeymoon to do a crap ton of essay editing and essay coaching and advising students over Zoom and all sorts of stuff. Trying to make up for all those bonbons we purchased.

We had a great honeymoon. I know we came to you live last week from the. Canary Islands. It was the, it was a canary sandwich. It was a Spain sandwich because we started in Portugal, went to the Canary Islands, which are Spanish, and then ended up in the island of Madeira, which is Portuguese, which is where Cristiano Rinaldo is from, and had a great time drank just about everything that, that someone could drum up. I don't know, I don't even, I didn't even keep a running list of all the things I drank. I think dry January is going to be extra needed.

This year, when it rolls around. Last year, it was needed because I had a wedding that I was getting ready for, you know, just months away. And this year, it's just because I just spent the last two weeks drinking port wine. My favorite, by the way, is Ta-A-W-N-Y, which I think is that the name of the female character. director, Louis, Shia LeBuff, friend, Lewis, Stevens, and even Stevens. I think it was tawny, I think her name was. Let's see. Actually, I have better research capabilities here

because I'm recording on my phone for the second straight week. I'm at my in-laws house. And so I don't have a Samsung Q2U series in my hand. By the way, listener discretion advice when you're listening to the Beantown podcast, number one, we'll occasionally some language to this podcast is objectively terrible. And I also just wanted to let you know that I I haven't had a first sip yet, but I'll take one very shortly, drinking an old Irving brewing Sentinel IPA, 6.2%. Erbie, that's for sure. It's always a pleasure for a couple of reasons.

One, getting a beer from the garage fridge. It just tastes better than the beers that sit in the fridge in the kitchen. I think that's an undisputable scientific fact. But the other thing I wanted to make. mention is it's a great feeling when this literally I was like rummaging around I do a lot of rummaging in my in-law's garage fridge I hope they don't mind but I'm rummaging around in there earlier assessing our food situation of which we have had just way too much of eating like 3,000 calories already today but it's okay because I shoveled some snow we're in a snow storm which is going to

dominate the conversation today I think it got a lot of snow topics but I did a snow run this morning seven miles which is it's always good cardio to run seven miles but when you do it in the snow you really got to pick your knees up and trudge trudge through it uh so i i feel i felt like after i finished two pieces of pizza and a full plate of spaghetti and one christmas ale that's when i was like okay i i deserve that i earned that with the calories i burned now after having had like five pieces of leftover turkey and some brownie bites and some flaming hot chitos and then right before we started recording here some cheese and crackers and then now drinking a 16 ounce IPA now it might be a little overkill but that's how these things go but the character uh let's see to

confirm her name uh where was she yeah tony dean t a w n y in case it's been two minutes and you have no idea what we're talking about yeah that was the name of shy le buff's female friend kind of a goth character on the disney channel show even stevens which if you want to take a if we want to do a mini trivia game you have to guess the years that even stevens was on the air go ahead and submit your guess make it quick because i'm going to read the answer very soon and three two one two thousand to two thousand and three sixty five episodes spanning three seasons got to tell you it really stupid show but as far as like kids shows go and they're it's you know we're not talking blue we're talking like you know tweenagers into the teenager range not that i have seen a

ton of Even Stevens episodes because never had Disney Channel, but through like visits to grandparents' houses and friends' houses and cobbling things together, I've seen, I don't know, probably a third 20, 15 to 20 of the Even Stevens episodes that aired. I always thought it was a pretty solid show. Maybe I can, maybe if I go back, excuse me, and watch some footage, I'll be like, eh, this is actually really trash, but I love that kid beans, right this the actor he was in that kicking and screaming soccer movie with will feral and josh hutcherson robert duval pass it to the italians great film i gotta tell you you know will feral kind of had his electric run of films in the early 2000s there elf and talladega

nights anchor man we could go on and on and on uh and i think there's a handful of films two that come to mind but in particular kicking and screaming and blaze of glory that you know they're probably a little bit lower on the rotten tomatoes meter and all in all they're they're just average films but the comedy is still very quality in those films that i i i personally feel especially i i think kicking and screaming is fantastic yet mike dittka just plays himself just kind of a random little thing there I don't know. I enjoyed that movie with that when that came out. I've seen it a handful of time since. But how did we get here? Tawny wine had that. It's, if you don't know port wine, it's like a dessert wine.

Very sweet. Extremely fortified. I don't know what you, what does fortifying wine mean? We don't know. We just put some extra blocks around it. I don't know. Let's research this quickly. What does, I'm not type in with one hand here. What does fortifying wine? mean i thought it would be earlier in my google auto fill results here but it uh was not to be what does fortified wine mean this is from the ai overview fortified wine is wine that's been strengthened by adding a distilled spirit well there you oh that's something interesting i thought it was maybe just going to be like they let it sit longer or didn't didn't you know added some extra cement blocks around it to really fortify it by adding a distilled spear typically brandy during or after fermentation which

increases its alcohol content and extends its shelf life there you go i didn't know that uh fortified wines include popular types like port sherry and madeira and there you go the three uh fortified wine examples that this a i overview listed of those three i had two of them port which we just talked about and medira the best thing about port and the the mention of of brandy there makes a lot of sense because tawny port wine essentially tasted like you pour someone a glass of red wine and then throw in like a splash, not a full shot, but a splash of like a whiskey or a cognac. And this all makes a whole lot of sense now. I'm glad my taste buds didn't let me down. But beyond that, I don't remember what exactly we covered last week in the

Canary Islands probably because I had, I was coming off of too much tawny. port wine perhaps, but poncha, P-O-N-C-H-A, is the local drink in Madeira, which is super dangerous. It's honey, some sort of fruit juice, and rum, I think, and is extremely strong, and they just give you it in small doses. Had some poncha. I had the aforementioned Madeira wine, just a tiny little sipper, but it was free. How about that? You don't get that in the U.S.

Right? Not only do they serve you wine on the planes when you're flying, but we go visit these botanical gardens, and you know it's like 20 bucks to get in or something like that. And you've got to take a cable car to get there. But at least if you bring your entrance ticket, they'll give you a tiny little sip or wine like you're taking communion or something. You don't get that at Disney World or Sea World or Sandusky Land. That's not what it's called, right?

It's Cedar Point, is that right? but it's in Sandusky, Ohio. I think that's how that went. Did Jerry Sandusky die? You can remember Jerry Sandusky in Penn State and Joe Paterno? Is he just in prison? I think he's in prison. Let's see.

Gerald Arthur Sandusky initials, gas, is an American convicted serial child molester retired football coach. Born in 1944, so he was 81. He was defensive coordinator at Penn State from 69 to 90. where he coached, and he was the defensive coordinator for the last 22 years there. 2011, following a two-year grand jury investigation, he was arrested in charge with 52 counts of sexual abuse of young boys over a 15-year period. I told you, listener discretion is advised through his, looks like his charity, he has charity nonprofit for at-risk youth that he created. Boy, what a terrible guy.

sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison in 2012. So I got to tell you, I'm not rooting for this by any means, but 30 years from 2012, well, he's only got 17 years to go. He could get out here at the age of 98 if he gets a favorable ruling there at the 30-year mark. And then if you get Jen Shahified, which I know we haven't talked a lot of Real Housewives, this season but you remember when jen shaw went to prison i mean we covered this two three years ago when it happened and certainly years before that when she was going through her trial well she's going through early release and she's getting out in quite literally a week and a half december 10th by the time

you listen to it this episode she might already be out jen shaw the uh the real housewife of salt lake City, one of the original cast members who got busted for fraud and, you know, elder fraud essentially, which is even worse, she's getting an early release. And her husband's still the defensive back coach for the University of Utah football program, I think. I hope he doesn't know Sandusky. All of that coming from Madeira Wine, how do you like that? But yeah, I was just, I was saying you, you buy, you buy.

an entrance fee to Epcot. You don't get to, you know, Korea and they give you a glass of kimchi or something. Kimchi's not alcoholic. Kimchi's like cabbage. What a sake? And that's not Korean. It's Japan, right? You don't get to the Japan portion of Epcot and they give you a free taste of sake.

At least it wasn't the case when I was there. I don't know if it was because I was 12 or what the deal was. I tell you, my dad wasn't having it either because he was in writhing stomach pain. Thank you, Bob Evans. We've covered that story at depth in one of our critically acclaimed by me Father's Day songs. Let's keep this moving here. Suffice to say, he had a lot of good things to drink on our honeymoon with my lovely wife and had a wonderful time. And coming back here and we're in now in a snowstorm, which brings me to our hot take of the week,

which is sponsored by our good friends at Home Part, Oregon. And if there's a snowstorm brewing outside, it's probably cold outside, which means you're going to want to make sure you get your home inspected, look for cracks in the foundation, make sure your windows are high quality. Although, man, those old shabby windows will run you a fortune this time of year when it's cold. So you would be in good conscience to call my dad, Steve, at Homepride, Oregon, 5414010, 036, or you can email Homeprideorgan at gmail.com. that's 541-4-0-0-316 or email homeprideorgan at gmail.com. Home pride organ inspection perfection. I mentioned this earlier when I was talking about my calorie count for the day, but my hot take of the week is that snow runs are amazing.

And when people found, my family members found out I was running this morning and people on Instagram when I posted a selfie of me running afterwards, it's calling me crazy, I'm just sitting here thinking, you know, snow runs are tough. and the conditions are not ideal and I will concede that there is definitely a higher risk for injury I didn't have any I ran seven miles this morning I didn't have any like close calls from like a slippage perspective but it's tough because there's a lot of snow on the ground and I took one step basically where it wasn't like I twisted my ankle it's just you know when you're like walking down the stairs or something and there's one more step and you didn't

think there was going to be one and you just kind of get a little bit more gravity going your way. That's kind of what I had with a step. I misjudged it or something, and it was just a little bit more space to be had before my foot struck the ground. Otherwise, it was all good. And my hot take is that snow runs are not so bad,

and I'll absolutely take them over rain runs, if it's pouring, if it's a very light mist. That's actually quite refreshing, assuming the temperature is like above 50 degrees. And I'll certainly take a snow run over like a super hot humid run you try to go out there and run a 10k in August at 5 p.m. after work, you are going to be a sweaty betty. I'll tell you that much. So the snow runs, it's, yeah, it's obviously if you got to trudge the whole time,

if no one's shoveled their sidewalks, then yeah, it's going to be tricky. And I did my fair share of trudging this morning. I started running like three hours after the snow had started. So we had like two inches on the ground, something like that. But not so bad. Now, if you look, it's four o'clock in the afternoon right now. It's been snowing for almost 12 hours. If I wanted to run now, yeah, it's going to be a little bit tougher.

So you've got to pick and choose your battles. But as far as the conditions, the snow coming in your face, it's not so bad. Coming in your face. Listener discretion is advised. You throw in your sunglasses, my trusty gooder, is that what it's called? Gooder, Runner, something like that? Some brand name that's missing a vowel at the end. I think it's Gooder.

I've had these running sunglasses for a long time. That would be a good Christmas gift. If any of the Bean Town, yeah, Gooder, G-O-O-D-R, if anyone out there is looking to send a Christmas present to yours truly, email us Beantown Podcast at yahoo.com with a gift receipt, okay? I love running, I love writing, I love running to. I love writing funny notes in the gift receipt. In fact, we ordered, we did a group order.

You know how you can do these group orders at your Jimmy Johns and your subways and stuff. We did a group order at Jersey Mikes yesterday. Thank you to my father-in-law for footing the bill. Very kind. And I got some sort of club rap. But, you know, they let you pick your name. So they'll write your name on the rapper. So everyone knows whose is whose.

And I just typed in my name as QQ. and have a QQ money, but it's just $2 sign. So it was QQ, dollar sign, a dollar sign. And wouldn't you know, we opened up the catering bag yesterday, and it just says rap. What a waste. What a waste of my creativity. The club wrap was pretty good, though.

Had some good mustard on it. There's something to be said for a little bit of spicy brown mustard that just pinches at your nose a little bit, like a little crab up there. I think I had something else with my running take that I wanted to cap the hot take off with, but I have admittedly forgotten. So this would be a good time to, oh, what I wanted to, this was written down. This was tangentially related, but I've mentioned, you know, we got like two inches this morning.

It's still going, so we're up to, you know, four, five, six inches by now. Who knows? But my question is, how are we actually really measuring snowstorms? fall is there some you know national weather service radar station they got a stick in the ground but how do they account for like how fast the snow is melting how fast it gets into that underground aquifer a q no is that right aquifer a c u i f er a q ua f er a q ua f er a q ui who knows this is the first time in a while i think have tried to spell something and been like completely lost. Admittedly, I Google that it was A-Q-U-I-F-E-R.

Kind of tricky. One of those words you think about it too long and you get screwed, like when I got knocked out of the spelling bee with the word satellite. Anytime you got words like that where there's like two consonants in the middle, in this case a T and L, it gets a little tricky. Like which one is supposed to be which? Or I always forget when the word occurs. OCC, O-C-U-Munura, Giants as well know.

O-C-C-U-R-A-D, right? It's 2-Rs, like in railroad tracks. Technically, there's three R's in railroad tracks. Very tricky. But, and we're going to talk in case you're curious if measuring snowfall is, if I got anything else on that topic before we move on for the love of God, I do have a trivia question that combines geography. and snowfall.

So I think you're going to enjoy it. We'll get to that in a few moments here as we hit the halfway mark and it's all downhill from here. It never really went uphill, but it's certainly going downhill. The best part of the podcast was the five seconds before you decided to hit play. That's what I always tell the fans, the followers, the beanheads, the friends of the podcast. Thank you for making us the 112th ranked comedy podcast in the Islamic Republic. of Pakistan. Maybe no one in Pakistan ever even listened in the

first place, and maybe people were just spoofing their IP addresses with VPNs to make us the 112 ranked show. They're juke in the stats. All right. Maple's Minute this week is sponsored by our good friends at the Samson Q2 series, just like Maple did

for the last two weeks. Samson getting another second in a row well-deserved week off when God's speaks he uses a samson and also by our good friends at cuts by cue bob and weave we all know the hairstyle we all love it but how many chicago based independent barbers can actually give it to you the way you deserve enter cuts by cue it's a little like enter sandman only different cuts by q has been independently owned and operated since 1995 and it's probably one of the better barbershop operations serving chicago cook county northwest indiana and the greater chicago land area from beehives to bangs

foghawks to flat tops and everything in between you can call cuts by q at 815-29877200 or email cuts by q at yahoo.com again that's cuts QUTZ by Q at yahoo dot com oh when you need to fresh do some snabby or new just call the experts at cuts by Q I got to tell you of all my email addresses of which I've got like I don't know I got my Gmail which is my primary my Yahoo, which I use just kind of randomly from time to time to sign up for things where I want to keep my Gmail like as pure as possible, if that makes sense. Yahoo's kind of the catch-off for other things. And then I have another Gmail that is just like the ultimate burner. I use it if like a hotel needs a verification or, you know, airport Wi-Fi or something,

where it's like I'm never going to have to go into this inbox. and then I have the Beantown podcast Yahoo email address which gets linked to my phone with some with like my Gmail and stuff and my work email and you know that I don't get a lot of action in the podcast inbox but it's there and you know it's my primary but the reason I mentioned this of all my emails that I have cuts by Q at yahoo.com that's out there that's real that exists I have no idea the last time I logged into that baby so if anyone emailed us trying to book an appointment or something. I sincerely apologize. I will plan to check it at some point before the end of the year. Not this year, but a year. That's my vision.

Maple's Minute. And, you know, it's good to have Maple back. She's not here right now. She's downstairs. But we, this is kind of a collaboration between me and Maple for Maple's Minute this week here. And we were fortunate enough to have our Thanksgiving meal catered. In fact, I probably owe an aunt or an uncle some money for that, cater from Chuck's. Excuse me, Southern B.BQ. Home of the Voodoo Lounge, which is the namesake of our family fantasy football league. But among the food, that was part of the catering package. Of course, you have to have turkey. But this wasn't any old turkey. This was a beautiful smoked turkey little mosquito. kind of skin to it and maple loves it I love it and I just got to tell you if you ever

someone out there who's like tight sick and tired of the same old bland butterball turkey and you just you know stick it in the oven at 350 for four hours and comes out and it's dry and you're just like what the hell are we doing here don't give up okay there's other ways to do it I know that the frying the turkey outside in the driveway and the big old pot or whatever that's become very popular these days Or you could, I don't know, I don't know, get a smoker. Now, if you don't have an actual smoker from like Weber Grill or something, you could probably, I don't know, just like be really careful in the kitchen, light some newspapers on fire, and seal everything off, okay? Call Steve at home part Oregon to figure out how to seal off your kitchen and get some good smoke in there.

Now, you'd want to cover the walls in plastic wrap probably because I feel. like the smoke could probably do some damage to the wallpaper or something. I don't know how any of this stuff works. But then you just stick a, it's like dropping a bug bomb, right? If you don't know how to do, if you don't know how to smoke a turkey and you don't have an actual smoker, but you still want to do it maybe for Christmas or Kwanza since that's coming up or Hanukkah. Call your local exterminator, right? Because they always, you know, they pitch the tents over the houses and it's just, it's super noxious fumes. Anyone have any clue how to spell noxious? Is it just like what it sounds like, N-O-X-I-O-U-S? It feels like it might be more

complicated than that. Maybe it's not. Noxious, there it is. I'm fairly certain that's the first time we've ever said. Noxious on the show in eight years and probably the first time for Zenith as well. I feel more confident in noxious than Zenith. you really, there's not really many other words in the English language that you can put after the word noxious other than fumes. What else would you put, noxious? You never even say noxious gases. No one says noxious gases. You just say noxious fumes. This, this beer is starting to really collide with the spaghetti and the turkey and the salami that I've consumed in last three hours. Maybe you need to go back out for another. I do need to go back for

round two of snow shoveling or just going in shifts here to try to keep the sidewalk clear for runners like myself. But to cap off Maple's minutes, it's smoked turkey, absolutely delicious. It's one of those things where you just take a little bite and get on your lips. What's that little mesquite? I keep saying skin. You don't, the skin of the turkey, turkey skin. I don't know. But it's so delicious. once it hits your lips. Another classic Will Ferrell movie in his pantheonic run. P-A-N-T-H-E-O-N-I-C, old school.

Good stuff. And this isn't a Will Ferrell movie, really, but I watch Wedding Crashers on the plane, and I had forgotten there's a number of scenes with bare breast exposure, and that's always awkward when you're on the plane, flying back from Lisbon to Chicago two days ago, three days ago, I guess it's been four days technically. Three days.

No one cares. But that's one of the most awkward things, right? We could have a whole power ranking. That's a good idea. Someone, let me type it in my web browser here. So I don't forget. Pockious. Power ranking, most awkward situations. And you guys email us, Beantau Podcast at yahoo.com.

And we will maybe get a listener. I will do like the horse names. We'll get a slot for the listeners here in our power rankings. Nudity on plane. Movie. Not just on the plane, but the plane movie. I think if you were nude on the plane, that would probably be more awkward than nudity on the plane movie,

but I haven't really seen that before. New toes. But that's not really awkward, right? It's more just like a, you really? You kidding me? nudity on the plane movie is tough because then you're like checking it's like you know because like I can see the row in front of me the person sitting up in front of me and one to the right and then one to the left like I can see their screens one person was watching Harry Potter actually

this was kind of cool so the plane takes off you're going from Lisbon to Chicago a nine hour flight the person one row in front of me and one seat to the right turns Turns on Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter 2. And quite literally, I think it was about a 45 to 50 second delay. The person ahead of me and to the left turns on Chamber of Secrets as well. And for a solid 30 to 40 minutes at the start of the film, I was watching both at the same time. And in case I was like, you know, didn't know what, you know, I missed something critical, a quit its point or a dastardly wizardly spell. Or I think these ones had the deleted scenes where Hermione goes full frontal,

which was awkward because there was nudity in the plane. That way you can say, okay, I missed it, but I can look over to the left here and see, okay, what did I miss the first time? And eventually one of the folks turned off their screen or switched to something else. I don't know. But I did end up watching most of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on the plane. Not my screen, but that was reserved for the nudity. from wedding crashers.

But yeah, great Will Ferrell scene towards the end there where he plays like the godfather of wedding crashing, Chaz, something like that. And one of the greatest, like, cameo scenes in cinema history, him and Owen Wilson. Ma, the meatloaf. And her husband died in a hang gliding accident. What an idiot. Hmm. Good stuff.

All right, what else we got here? We did Maple's Minute. We did our hot take. Oh, a couple of the things on snowflakes. And then, oh, I did want to mention our Airbnb. There's not that much to it. But, well, let's mention the Airbnb now. I had a, we, Rachel and I had a very bizarre experience where we booked this tiny home in Funchal, Madeira.

And I won't go into all the details like, what the home was like or anything like. It's whatever. It doesn't matter. But the interesting thing about it was this home had fantastically. views all like five stars the occasional four star because it was a little bit noisy because it was across the path from a restaurant and like whatever but like all extremely positive and we had such a and i really i i'm someone who tends to be very like objective generous and uh giving people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to like you know hospitality and tourism and you know it's

like I know that things like the hospitality and the tourism industries is all supposed to people like need the consumer and I'm supposed to have an amazing time. So I think I probably generally in life need to be like more, you know, get what I want type of stuff. I was going to say aggressive. That's not, I don't want to be aggressive, but just like standing up for myself. But usually with Airbnb's, it's like even if something isn't amazing, I'm like, okay, yeah, like five stars, whatever. Like I can write pros and cons, but I'll give you five stars. You're like Uber driver, like, I'm not going to bust your balls, man. but I think because this was our honeymoon

and because my wife wasn't having a great time and just it was one thing after the other like Leo Leonardo DiCaprio would say in the movie one thing after the other do you think they say one thing after the other in that movie don't know haven't seen it you gotta find a good stream online with some Korean subtitles filmed with an iPhone

at the back of a movie theater they're out there they have to be but it was something a bummer to have all these great reviews of this Airbnb, and then you get there. And from the moment we get there, it is just a problem. I got to say, here are the things in just very rapid fire succession that bugged us, emphasis on the bugs. First, you know, when we book it, the host is like overmessage. The host is like, you know, just so you know, there's like a Portuguese law where

when you book an Airbnb, like you have to pay this extra tax. And I didn't even, look into it that I didn't like Google it at a ton because it was 16 euros and I was like okay that's kind of a pain in the ass like whatever I'll make sure I have euros on me when we get there and I'll say this and I mean this is a good thing because I didn't have to spend 16 euros on whatever this was whether it was legal or some sort of tourism trap fraudulent bullshit I don't know but by the time I got there there was no mention of the 16 euros. In fact, they never ran into these people, these landlords, the property owners, face-to-face, which would have been awkward because we were having a bad time. The other thing,

and this wasn't like part of my review, this wasn't like a reason for the two-stars that they got eventually. That's right, it was a two-star review. But, you know, these property owners really were trying to push their airport transfer service on us that they provided, I think, in like their private car or something. But it was like 35 euros during the day, 50 at night to get from the airport to the capital, which is about, most of you're probably not familiar with the geography of Madeira, and that's fine. About a 15 to 20 minute drive. And if you're curious, we took a cab both ways, and I think it was like $12, one way, $15, $15, $15, something like that, the other way.

and so this guy's out here charging $35 for a day for a transfer during the day and it's like bro your prices are not competitive with what the ubers or the they're called bolts over there but what these cabs are charging so that's not that didn't factor into my review at all but it is something i noticed like you got to take some basic like microeconomic classes to get competitive over here i don't know i feel like you maybe i'm naive but i feel like you can make a lot more money being a little bit more competitive rather than having like your cap you're like three times your transfer being three times the regular price seems too much but here were the actual issues first things first usually when you book an Airbnb like two days before it the website the app will like reveal the check-in details and the Wi-Fi and all that stuff I knew it was going to be a little bit of a red flag when it's like 48 hours before 24 hours before the There's no details about check-in. And it just says, like, your host will greet you when you get there.

I'm like, okay, well, it's not a deal after, excuse me, after a full day of traveling, you don't want to, like, talk to someone new and meet them and pony up 16 euros. But whatever, it is what it is. I can't change it. I can't message them and be like, hey, can you change your entire Airbnb listing? So we get there. We get out of the cab from the airport. That was not $35.

and it's on a walking only street and it's kind of hard to find and it's just in like this sea of restaurants and people and there were a bunch of waiters trying to help us find it and stuff and they were very nice but you know you're kind of on edge too because you're in a foreign country a new place you don't know like it looks safe it looks like everyone's perfectly fine and friendly but you're still on edge because your total your total bull's eye on you with like your backpack and your luggage and all that stuff and it's like you're very susceptible you're very there's a word for that where you're like susceptible but it's a it's a it's a synonym it's a better word uh anyways so we finally figured out well we get there and there's no one

waiting for us and rachel's messaging the Airbnb hosts and like what hey we're here what's the deal and they they had asked us to like send them a message when our plane landed so they knew when to meet us over there it's like all right that makes sense we get there and there's there there's no one there and eventually we weren't standing outside or me for a super long time but it was at least two to three minutes where there's just nothing like there's no one there no one's messing us back and i know that doesn't sound like a long time but when you've had a full day of traveling and your nerves are a little shot you're like really tired just standing out there with like your suitcase and your luggage kind of being like a sitting duck for anyone

who wanted to try something it's it's not great so they finally message us back and they're like okay here's how you get in there's a little lockbox on the side of the door with the code and you had to open that up to get the key and it's like well the whole point was of like not revealing the check-in instructions beforehand was because you were going to meet us here in person so like why couldn't you just put the lockbox key in the Airbnb app so we could just check in like normal people that that really pissed me off more than probably it needed to but it's like and we never got an explanation it's not like okay yeah we were going to meet you but then something came up. It's just, okay, we're going to meet you. Tell us when you leave the airport. And then

us just sitting out there for three minutes. So that was irritating. We get inside of our tiny home. It's exactly like it looks in pictures. That's fine. But man, there are, there's a lot of mosquitoes inside. Ants crawling up the walls. Didn't see this right away. And I don't know, like, if it was already dead when he got there or what the, you know, if it was alive and then died when it got nailed by our ant spray, which we eventually got and tried to remedy the situation, but there was a huge cockroach by the door. That wasn't great. A lot of dead bugs in the bed, unclear if the sheets had actually been washed. So just not great. And the Wi-Fi went out after a day. Thankfully, Rachel had like the international plan, so she didn't need to rely on Wi-Fi,

but I'm just sitting there like an idiot. It was that one of those stupid asses, things, this is something I've been meaning to research more since I got back to good old American LTE4G. But it's so, this may be even more mad than if the Wi-Fi was just completely shot. I could use the Wi-Fi and the signal was perfectly strong and I could connect and all that stuff to go on Instagram, but nothing else in my phone. Like I couldn't go on a web browser. I couldn't play my Duolingo. So I'm out there trying to to keep my Duolingo streak alive, like at a cafe, sipping my cappuccino at 7am in the morning because they have Wi-Fi, but my Airbnb doesn't. So that was a pain in the ass. They

eventually came to fix it on the last day, but just a really rough experience, bad communication. Oh, the last thing, when I told them, we messaged them that our Wi-Fi was out. It was like, it was more than 24 hours before they responded to like, say oh yeah we'll come and fix it and i don't know man when you got a four-night reservation and you have an issue i don't think you need to be like a workaholic who's always by their phone like i am and have to respond in 30 seconds like i personally don't feel that way but i do think when you work in hospitality more than 24 hours notice even if it's not like oh we're going to fix it within 24 hours just acknowledging the issue that's that's not great

And so that's kind of the end of my gripe here, but that's the thing that is so surprising and disappointing, not necessarily just the issues that we experienced, but the fact that all these other reviews are so positive and glowing, and people were talking about, oh, like, we met the host, they were fantastic, they were amazing, and unfortunately, we just had the exact opposite experience. So when we got back stateside a couple of days ago, I fired off that two-star review. It was painful for me to do it. And in fact, I put in two stars and wrote my note, and then I was going to switch her to three stars. And I was like, you know what? I'm not vindictful or vindictive. I just, I think you had to send a message, right? There's some times in life where it might be a slight overreaction, but you get.

got to send a message, right? These people needed to know that their approach to our four-night stay and their communication and all that stuff. It's not up to par with what you'd expect for a, you know, tourism destination and a tiny house and all that stuff. So I don't know what the deal was. We had to have just caught them on an off week or something like that, but be aware. Okay. That's my, my warning, which hopefully you'll heed. A couple of quick hitters here, and then our trivia question, we're finishing with snow here. First, is it true that no single snowflake is exactly like my bigger question? Is that just like a math probability thing?

Or is there someone out there who did like a longitudinal study, collected a bunch of snowflakes, analyzed them? How are we even, I was going to say, like, how are we even getting these snowflakes under the microscope before they melt? I guess you bring out your equipment to like the tundra or something. You don't have to worry about it melting. But I don't know if I, I mean, I'm looking at like zillions and zillions of snowflakes fall right outside the window here. This is just what I can see. There's a whole world of snow out there. Is it true that there are no snowflakes that are exactly like one another?

I'm not sure if I'm buying it. How did snowflake come to, the word snowflake come to signify someone fragile? Right. Meg is always talking about liberal snowflakes. I mean, a snowflake is it just because it's like small and melts quickly? I don't know. Snowflakes are kind of badass. They're in like cool crystal formations.

That's pretty cool. So that's a question I have. A reminder that Hooville from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, that whole scene takes place on a snowflake, man. So they're actually really tiny. You know, Horton here is a who, but if those whews are like that tiny and they're living on a snowflake, I don't know how Horton could have heard them.

It doesn't make sense to me. And then Mount Crumpet, finally, from How the Grinch Still Christmas. Great, great mountain. It's where the Grinch lives. I just love the visual look and feel of it. For someone who loves mountains, I especially love Mount Crumpet, C-R-U-M-P-I-T. Our trivia question this week, name the top ten snowiest states. So here we go. This is from the World Population Review.

have a list of states here, 10 and all, ranked by average annual snowfall in inches per year measured from 1980 to 2010. So this date is 15 plus years old, but I'm going to trust it's still relatively reliable. And again, it's going to be in inches. And I can tell you like the most snow, the snowiest state annually is 89.3 inches. And the lowest, I guess I should have had you guess. That's okay. The 10th is 45.8, so that's the delta we're working with here if you want to get into these math terms. And I don't know if that's how you use delta, but it seems right, doesn't it? Maybe the width, I don't know. There's a number of terms I could throw out there, but I don't want to because I don't want to bore you with these math terms.

Okay? That's what I told my trigonometry teacher, Mr. Johnson. wrote it on my final exam he was like you know what's the i don't know what's pie divided by two times seven radians what's the you know sokatoa arc tan of that and i said i don't want to bore you with these math terms so let's just move past it and i still got an a because i'm a trigonometry expert so my question is the rank the or list of the ten snowiest u.s states by average annual snowfall if you want some time to really ponder and go through it and develop your list you're welcome to but i'm ready to get out of here get this uploaded and go watch the grinch or something

or horton here's a who i never saw it actually what i have to do we got we are getting the last vestiges of sunlight here and i need to go back and do another round of snow shoveling we'll make it work um here it is starting from ten going down to one. The 10th snowy estate is Wisconsin at 45.8 inches. Number nine is Wyoming. And actually Wyoming and the next one are tied. So I guess they're tied for eight. Massachusetts and Wyoming are 51. I don't know if, you know, I didn't do this exercise myself. I think before I looked at the answer. I feel that I could have guessed at least four or five of these. But Massachusetts would not have made my list. I can guarantee that. So number seven, New York, I also don't think would have made

my list. Six, six, five, four, three, two, one are all ones. I think I would have, I like to think I would have guessed. Michigan at six, Alaska at five, Colorado at four, New Hampshire at three, Maine at two, and your number one snowiest state, Vermont, by a wide margin, right? Vermont's 89.3 inches. Second place is Maine at 77. So it's Vermont by a landslide, which is pretty impressive because it's a, I think it's like a bottom five U.S. state as far as area it goes. I definitely would not have gotten Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, I like to think I could have gotten. But, you know, I probably would have said like Minnesota, which I think was 11th if I saw, if I saw my list correctly. But I think, you know, beyond like Massachusetts, New York, maybe even like a New Hampshire, I wouldn't have guessed.

But I probably would have gone for like a Montana or, I don't know, Idaho. Even like you think of like a, I don't know, like an Ohio with all that lake effect. I recognize you go south to Ohio. it's a very different climate, but I might have thrown Ohio a bone. And then you got your classics like Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas. Yeah, I should have played this myself. I'm tooting my own horn prematurely here, but I know I would have gotten in Alaska. So we have that at least.

That's what I had for you guys today. I appreciate you listening to my show, my Thanksgiving special for Queen David Furnish, presents the Beantown podcast season 8. We'll be back next week with a traditional look and feel in the Samsung Q2U series. We'll be back in action. For all of us at the Beantown podcast, I hope that you are staying safe. Staying sane, don't forget to shovel the walkway. I'll check in on you guys next time.

Bye-bye.