Beantown Podcast - War of the Worlds, Adult Toy Factories, & Platelet Levels (08082025 Beantown Podcast)

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

Quinn comes to you LIVE to read fan mail, discuss casual dining franchises, and put his foot down regarding Oktoberfest rules

Hey, what's going on? It's Quinn David Furness. Welcome to my show. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast for Friday, August 8th, 2025. What's happening? What's going on? How are you? My name is Quinn Furness and I am the creator host and, I don't know, script supervisor of this program. Not only do it. you approve, you know, the notes, the show notes every week going into every recording, but I also administer and manage my dog, Maples, prescription medications, of which she has tracidone, she has gabapentin, she has fluoxetine, she's previously had another one, what is it called, Clomacom? No, something else. Something else short-acting. I can't remember what it is,

but we're off of that one now. We were only on it for a little bit. But that's what we do here on the Beantown podcast. We're like the Hippocratic Oath, right? We're here to serve, whether rain or shine or hail, whatever the Hippocratic Oath says. We're here to serve. You are here to take care of you, the audience, with quality content. And that's what we're going to be getting into today here on the Beantown podcast.

Unlike most shows, we are going to be all over the place. and have a lot of different topics to cover today. So you're just going to have to bear with us. Listen to discretion, advise when you're listening to this program. Number one, we'll occasionally use some language. Number two, this podcast is objectively terrible. And I also, of course, want to give a big shout out to our friends in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

Thank you, Hyderabad. Thank you, Karachi. Thank you, Kuala Lumpur, for making us the 112th ranked comedy podcast in the great Islamic Republic of Pekistan and no word yet on if we're going to maybe expand into the other stands. If I wanted to say, you know, Beintown podcast, whether we get five lessons a week or a hundred, who knows, the analytics, they're messy. That's the thing with analytics and numbers. They never tell the whole story. But if I wanted to expand into a Tajikistan or a Kyrgyzstan, or Turkmenistan.

I don't even know the first thing I would do. I think I would just start sending emails with links to the Beantown podcast and say, hey, you like this? Do you want to listen to it? Now, of course, I need to translate it to Urdu or Kurd. Is that a language? K-U-R-D.

Cheese-Kurds could be a good podcast name if you were, I don't know, broadcasting out of Dushan Bay or wherever the Kurds live. I think there's Turkish Kurds and probably I would assume Uzbekia curds and, of course, cheese curds as well. But that's more of a food thing and less of a people group. It is 5.15 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. I've got a big ol' big gulp in front of me filled with Diet Coke. Took a little pilgrimage, made a pilgrimage. That's the thing. You make pilgrimages. You don't really take them.

You could take a pilgrimage, but today I made a pilgrimage. Grimmage out to the 7-Eleven, which is a little over a half mile away. So in this heat, it's 95 and sunny is what I'm getting from my computer's radar right now. It is brutal out there today. If you are in the Midwest, you are probably experiencing this as well, just thick, muggy, not a ton of breeze and 95 and sunny. We got 10 miles per hour. That's better than nothing. and our humidity is 55%, which actually compared to many other times throughout the summer is not all that bad, but it's just, it's thick. And it's one of those things where you go out at night to take the dog out to pee right

before bed and it's just like, it doesn't really feel much cooler. So thank you to our Medea, you-shaped air conditioner. You thought I was doing a Tyler Perry thing. no, Medea is the name of an air-conditioning brand, M-I-D-E-A. And it does a pretty good job. I think we got the, I can't remember if we got the $8,000 or the $12,000 BTUs. It actually was purchased for us kind of proactively. Shout out to my father-in-law for doing it.

But when it was purchased, we didn't even, we hadn't even started shopping or considering air-conditioning units yet. Next thing, you know, boom, we got one. Which, we reimbursed him for it, right? Financial Freedom, unlike Dave Ramsey. over here. But I don't, the reason I bring that up is I don't remember which one we have, $8,000, $12,000, who knows. But it does a pretty good job. We should realistically have two for the size of apartment we have, but we get by, we make it work. We shut the office door and

turn that into a little terrarium, T-E-R-R-A-R-I-U-M, I think. Terrarium is not one of those words you frequently see. So you kind of just have to sound it out. But yes, there is a little bit of a Bushwicks whiskey, Irish whiskey, I think it is, in my Big Gulp Diet Coke. I drank the first half, just pure Diet Coke, and then I said, you know what, we're going live. We got to spice this up a little bit. I got the handle. Is that? Handle, I feel like, is really big. I don't know my different liquor bottle sizes. No one ever really taught me. It's just, there's one size bottle of Bushwicks behind the clerk's desk at Houston Food and Liquors down here in Irving Park. And I actually did a little pilgrimage myself, I guess, last Saturday. I was already,

a little toast to just finish the Cubs game. And I'd, you know, been on a long walk with the dog. He went to the brewery, came back home, had a couple more drinks. And then the Cubs blew it right at the end. It was a brutal loss to Baltimore, I think it was. And kind of the start of this skid that they're on. And was feeling so despondent, D-E-S-P-O-N-D-E-N-T, that I was like, you know what, I got to make a little walk here down to the liquor store and get a six-pack of IPAs and some Bushwicks. I think it's Bushwicks, right?

Someone can look this up. Research Department. We got Maple over here. She doesn't have thumbs. left Maple at home. I was gone for 15 minutes and she survived. So we're going to just try to build off of that. But drank my sorrows and it didn't help the Cubs improve. They continued to be middling. They're actually not even that terrible. It's just the Brewers have, I think the stat I heard was since June something. They're 30 and, they're like 31 and 9 or something in their

last 40 games, which is just a, it's a blistering pace. I love in sports when teams are on a blistering pace. It just feels intense. It feels hot, right? We've got a lot to get to today here on the Bean Town podcast. Let's go ahead and jump right in with Maples Minute. That's right, Maples over here, observing mom, Windex, the coffee table. She's so lovingly. cleans up the apartment. But Maple got some blood work done this past week in advance of some surgery that she's going to be having in two weeks here for her dental needs, her teeth. And what I got a call from the vet tech this morning. And her name is Scout, by the way. It's a great, great name. It's a real, you know, us mockingbird heads. We'll appreciate that

first name. But Maple's in good shape with her blood work and surgery is going to you know, we're still on. But her platelet levels are a little bit high. So this is just a general PSA to all you dogs and I guess humans out there. You got to watch out when your platelet levels

get too high. It could be a sign of, I don't know, probably deep vein thrombosis or cirrhosis of the liver even perhaps. These are things you're going to want to watch out for. So, you know, in biology class, they teach you the parts of blood, you got, there's hemoglobin, and then eukaryates, I think,

are white blood cells, lymphomes or red blood cells, or I might have that backwards, and then you've got your platelets, and those are the things that help clot your blood. So you don't just bleed and bleed and bleed when you get a cut. And that's what happens when you're anemic, right? You don't have enough platelets in your blood, I think. You might not want to take your biology advice from me. The last biology class I took was biology. I think it was 101 and 102.

It was the lab and the lecture of introductory life science, college level. So just like the most basic biology class you could take. Really, probably the exact same curriculum they teach you in AP biology, which I never took. but you know you go one section at a time first you'll learn about the kingdoms and the phylums and the orders the class genus species the families all that fun stuff and then you learn about the parts of the cell right and the difference between the animal cells and the plant cells and one of them's got a cell wall the other doesn't probably plant cells and the mitochondria and the ribosomes and the gogly bodies of course

and then you get into you know you do like different different units on different kingdoms, and you're like, when are we getting to the mammals? Those are cool. You spend a lot of time talking about your eukaryites and your prokaryites, and then you get into the whole thing about fungi and my cadas, something like that, myosis. Then you, oh, don't get me started on mitosis and meiosis. Tune in this week on the Beantown podcast, Quinn walks you through introductory college biology curriculum fascinating stuff but to put it to bow on maples minute you do have to watch out for high platelet levels again i don't really remember what scout the vet tech said about the risk of having too many platelets but i feel like at the end of the day

this is my medical opinion i'd rather have too many platelets than not enough platelets How do you think they got that name? Because when I think a, you know, platelets, the only thing that comes to mind is a plate, which is like, I guess you got kitchen plates that you'd eat off if you'd get tectonic plates. You got, I don't know, what other types of plates are there? Kind of, it's one of those words after you say at the seventh time.

You're like, is that still a word plates? But now we're adding plate to lits. You know what, let's do our first Google search of the day. Let's learn very, ever so briefly, I don't even need to dive into the actual biology of this because I think I pretty much explained it excellently, but I would like to learn this is from Google Gemini. The word platelet comes from the English word

plate with the diminutive suffix let. Okay, well, we're really getting into the weeds here. This combination signifies a small flat plate light structure which accurately describes the shape and size of these blood cells. So it's not as interesting as I was hoping it would be. It came about in like the 1870s or something like that, and it's literally just like they look like little plates. So we'll call them platelets. I think what would be fun, you know, in a lot of kitchens around the world, you have large plates and you have smaller plates. So why don't we

call those regular plate and platelets? I think we could introduce this sort of medical terminology into the kitchen space, which would be really nice. That's Maples Minute this week. Our hot take of the week is August 8th and I have seen in a couple of the bars slash breweries I've been to already. I've seen this either on tap or on the menu ready to go and here's here's maybe a little it's sometimes our hot takes aren't that hot. It's just Quinn has an opinion he wants to share. This might be a little bit of a hot take especially it's one of those things you say out loud because of how passionate I am about this topic and you're like I don't know if I fully believe that but you know what you got to lean in to your hot takes

with your full body force. My hot take of the week is that you shouldn't, in any capacity, whether consuming or serving at a bar, it doesn't matter. You shouldn't have October Fest, the beer, any style, until September 1. September 1st is when all of a sudden summer is over. You know, if you want to use Labor Day,

which this year is September 1st, that's fine too. But September 1st, as soon as that calendar flips, boom, bring on the October fest, which is probably my favorite general, I don't know, October Fest is that a style of beer in the same way that like a porter is or an IPA. I think it's like a subset of what, like an ale or something like that. That sounds right. I don't really know what the difference is between like an ale and a logger,

but I'm not a beerhead. I was going to say it's probably my favorite. I don't think it, you know, I think you give me like a really amazing porter at the end of the day. I'll still take that. But there's something, when you're in those fall months, a crisp Octoberfest, or what I like to do during, you know, fall Vikings games, put my University of Delaware, Blue Hens Stein glass, Stein in the freezer, get that baby ice cold, and then pour in 24 ounces of Octoberfest beer.

That is good stuff, man. And it's just fun. I like to go to as many October fest as possible. I usually try to always make sure I hit. Lincoln Square October Fest, which is early. It's like the second or third weekend of September. And then over here closer to me, our local breweries, Dufftail and Beguile do a lot of festivals in their shared parking lot space. And they put it on more like third weekend of October or something like that. So I always try to hit those. And it's always overpriced. But yada, yada, yada. It's for a good cause.

But again, my hot take, no October Fest beers until September 1 at the earliest However, I know October Fest, like genuine at October Fest over in Munich that's very much a September thing, I'm perfectly comfortable with extending October Fest consumption all the way through Thanksgiving weekend. Okay? So we're talking end of November. That gives you a solid three months. If you want to be, you know, legitimate and true and authentic, you can stick to September if you want. But it's just such a good fall beer, you know.

It's not, you know, once you get into December, okay, now you're pushing it. And maybe let's focus more on the winter ails or loggers or, I don't know, something with cranberries in it. But hard to go wrong. My opinion, you get three months, three solid months for October Fest. It's the perfect crisp fall beer. So that's my hot take of the week. We got some other random thoughts that we want to get to here. But first I want to say thank you to our sponsors.

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homepride organ.com although he lost the domain it should just send him an email homebriot organ at gmail.com again 5414040410316 or email home pride organ at gmail.com again home pride organ inspection perfection and I should say this another you know I don't know if home pride organ has a blog I don't think so but if they did one it would probably be a subset of the Beantown blog. We could probably acquire it and do web hosting capabilities. But I was on the Reddit first-time home buyer subreddit, which I like to peruse. It's largely just like people humble bragging about like, oh, I'm 26 years old and I just bought a $700,000 house in La J-O-L-L-A at, you know, 30 percent down or something. Or the flip side of that, I see this all the

time. This goes completely against the, like, spirit of home buying. There's a point to this, I promise, but telling you what I've seen on Reddit. This other one goes way against the spirit of home buying, and I feel like I see it a lot. People are putting like 3% down on the houses or 5% down. And I don't know exactly how PMI too much information, no private mortgage insurance works, but I'm pretty sure you're supposed to hit. Is it 20% is the magic number? That's And just generally about like buying a house for down payments, that's always what I believed is, you know, 20% is what you want to strive for at minimum. And so you see all these people putting down 3%, 5%, just to get their foot in the door literally and figuratively on these homes. And I don't know. I don't have the math in front of me. I don't know exactly having ever gone through it myself. I don't know how much PMI actually costs. But I feel like to be that much much. short on a down payment, to have that small of a down payment, to have to suffer through the PMI on top of your taxes, on top of your mortgage, on top of your insurance or your

escrow, as we would call it all bundled together. E-S-C-R-O-W. It sounds like a Batman villain from Batman Begins. Jonathan Crane, right? The escrow. He's a realtor who also poisons the water supply. No, what was Dr. Jonathan Crane? He's just like a regular old doctor, right? Maybe some sort of mad scientist portrayed by Oscar winner, Killian Murphy. But yeah, I don't know how all these people are doing it. The point I was trying to make two minutes ago, as I was reading just through a random post about buying a home, I don't know what it was about, but some of the comments had good advice about home inspections. So here's a little nugget of wisdom that I bet if Steve had a blog he would want to share with you. Make sure when you are getting ready to put in an

offer on a house and you're going through the home inspection process, you pick your own home inspector. One, obviously, don't buy without a home inspection. We've been sharing this with you for four or five years at this point. Two, don't let the sellers pick their own home inspector. You got to do this for yourself. Read the reviews, get someone you trust. And apparently clay pipes deteriorating clay pipes are a big deal so you're going to want to have them check those out for you okay i thought pipes are usually made of like metal i don't know i never been in the home depot and seen clay pipes before but it's a thing apparently so watch out for that i also want to give a shout to the samson q2 u series if you're listening to this program today you're

thinking gosh darn it he sounds awfully crisp and clear that's because we're using and have been using for all, what, 390-some episodes of the Beantown podcast, eight years running. The Samson Q2U series, it delivers crisp, clear audio quality from Genesis to Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the entire Pentateuch, and beyond. Samson, when God speaks, he uses as Samson. And I can officially say that I am really dipping my paws

into the dog grooming space over here at the Cuts by Q studios. Today, we did a little behind-the-ear trim. of maple first we did a brush and then we did a trim with the electric clippers that's because maple has actually been suffering the last two nights she's she's gone down to the floor to scratch behind her ear with her back paws and and both times she's gotten caught and then it's just kind of like in this weird ball and starting to panic and so we've had to go get her untangled because the hair behind her ears gets a little bit matted and frumpy so to this morning i said enough's enough let's

go down there and trim this. So now she's got a really cool cut. My dog has her own cuts by cue. That's right. 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 is probably one of the better barbershop operations serving Chicago, Cook County, Northwest Indiana, and the greater Chicago area. land, we would call it. From beehives to bangs, four hawks, the flat tops and everything in between, called Cuts by Q at, yeah, Cuts by Q at, 800, or email Cuts by Q at Yahoo.com. Again, that's cuts, Q UTZ, by Q at Yahoo.com. Oh, and you need a fresh do, and you're a dog or a cat to, just call the experts at cuts by Q. That's right, Maple, we're doing pet grooming. Nothing like getting a belly rub while you listen to the cuts by cue jingle and i did that for myself first gave myself a belly rub and then a little bit from maple too but who we all like belly rubs right what's not to like

i never sat there in life and said you know what i really would not like a belly rub even if i just ate an entire deep dish pizza which i don't think i have the uh the stomach for anymore uh literally and figuratively but man back in the day like college aid Up to, I don't know, three or four years ago, I felt like I had the tenacity and the drive, really, more than anything else to just be like, okay, I've had three or four drinks. I haven't eaten all day, which used to be more common when I was much more, I was only like religiously hardcore in my one meal a day, intermittent fasting schedule for, you know, the majority of a year in 2020. But that's still kind of lingered here and there. It's not quite as prevalent these days because I have been on a huge toast fix for a whole year now. But back in the day when I would probably come into dinner with like only two or three hundred calories under my belt, I was just like, let's go crazy. And the trick with those deep dish pizzas is you just go nuts for the first 15 minutes and you don't even think about it.

Next thing you know, there's only a quarter left. Then you're feeling full and you're not feeling proud of yourself, but you're like, well, I might as well finish it now. you come back an hour later and polish it off. Good stuff, man. A lot. Shout out to, what, the, it's not Lou Melanis, but Giordano's up in Rogers Park on Sheridan and Pratt, something like that, right around there. Hit that up a number of times,

the multiple different times I lived in Rogers Park. And then the ultimate shoutout goes to, of course, a Rogers Park institution, free advertisement. advertising for J.B. Alberto's over on Morse and what? I was going to say Farrow, but that's not right. Farwell's parallel. Morse just east of the red line stop. You'll see it right there. It's also in a building next to this old theater that has been a number of things over the years, and I don't know if it's anything right now. Let's do a quick little Google map search. This is right on Morse. east of the train stop. There's like a theater, west of J.B. Alberto's, what is it called?

Moist currency exchange. That's what it is now. No, this is the Rhapsody Theater. For a brief time, there was some sort of brewery in there. I don't know if it was original or if it was just like a like a bar. But yeah, that thing didn't last. So it looks like it's got some reviews from four or five months ago. So it seems like it has. has bounced back. But for a long time, you know, a couple of years I lived there, it was just kind of dead and not a lot going on. It doesn't help that there was some random shootings that would happen here and there on Morse Ave, Morse Street, I don't know, whatever it is. It's not a boulevard. We can rule that one out. Let's get to some other

random things here. First up, Rach, I just want to give a shout out to one of my favorite bands of all time. Death Cab for QD. Rachel and I went to their show Tuesday night at the Chicago Theater sold out both Tuesday and Wednesday night. They're doing a limited tour for the 20th anniversary of their probably most commercially successful album plans. And we actually saw this is their second straight kind of 20th anniversary tour that they'd done two years ago in 2023. We saw them do a 20th anniversary show for both the Postal Service, Ben Gabbard's other project, and their album, Transatlanticism, which is probably their most, I think Plans is probably commercially their most successful, and Transatlanticism is probably regarded as their best

all-around album. I think, like most people, I probably prefer Transatlanticism a little bit more, but Plans is a banger, too. It's got a ton of great tracks. Anyways, it was a whole lot of fun to see that told you know this to rachel there's a lot of songs on plans that they rarely play live slash will never play live again probably so it was cool to be able to see that experience but i just want to give a tip of the cap to those guys i think this is probably like the fifth sixth seventh time maybe i've seen death cab live and i think they are at uh they're really at the peak of their powers right now i think uh just musically they're very insinked with one another and I mean it's nothing new they're all all really strong instrumentalists

and boy real real shout out to the the rhythm section there nick harmer on bass and jason mgger on drums those guys completely steady unwavering and just really really under the radar underrated kind of guys but it was kind of fun they played uh you know after plans they played some other other tunes including title track was the name of a song from one of their first albums and it was fun because when we saw them on August

5th, Ben stated the singer stated that it was the what was it, the 27th anniversary, something like that of their first ever show in Chicago in the late 90s when they played at Shubas Tavern, that's right, Shubas

S-C-H-U-B-A-S. and he was like yeah we definitely played this song back then so we're happy to bring it back and that was pretty cool uh you know they've been they've been around since the late 90s so coming up on 30 years here which is tough to believe we're all getting a little bit long in the tooth a little bit gray my hair is still doing well but my my beard i'm i'm getting some grays here and there not it's not it's not prevalent yet but it's uh they're starting to creep in long in the tooth is an interesting phrase because I feel like our teeth don't really grow or maybe as your gums recede that makes your teeth look longer that's what my my real sticking point is I got to worry about gum recession everyone else is worried about just regular economic recession I'm over here on top of that got to worry about gum recession as well I try to brush them as well as I can but it's just no one sits there with a toothbrush in their hand and is like you know what let me make sure I get these gums too because it's going to feel great that's the thing about brushing your teeth regularly it's the end of the day maybe you had some toffee

or a taffy rather saltwater taffy from trembley shout out to my friend abby witsack who goes to get me some taffy fresh pulled from tremblez every year and you got you know you got stuff in your teeth coatings fill film whatever it's like I really need to brush this I'm going to feel so much better but I don't know if I speak for anyone else uh When I force myself to give my gums an extensive brush, I'm never sitting there like, oh, man, I needed that. It's always just like, yeah, this kind of hurts, and it's not really fun or interesting, and probably going to bleed a little. So, yeah, I don't know, man. It is what it is. Two quick things. Let's do our segment's book shout-out of the week and music shout-out of the week. I guess we already did music a little bit, but we'll do another one. First book, I just want to give a shout out to the OG himself, Elmore Leonard. That's right, Elmore, E L-M-O-R-E. He's an author who is pretty prolific, and I've been reading some more of his stuff recently. If you know the show, Justified with Timothy Oliphon, that's based off of one of Elmore's short stories, Fire in the Hole, which is in a collection of short stories that I have. I'm looking at it right now on the coffee table.

And I actually saved Fire in the Hole for last. It's the last one in the collection I have not read yet. But he's, I guess he died like a decade ago. But he wrote that story that justified is based off of one of my favorite TV shows. And if you're curious, he wrote 310 to Yuma as well. He wrote Rum Punch, which is what the Quentin Tarantino film, Jackie Brown, is based off of. and he just uh if you want someone who's like a great kind of uh mystery writer kind of a classic like good versus evil but humorous as well sometimes his stories have little twists at the end

that you weren't expecting good dialogue well written just uh i think he's kind of a under the radar guy kind of like uh the drummer and bass is from death cab and i think that he deserves more recognition. So Elmore Leonard, go check out some of his stuff. You can't go wrong with any of these short stories, but if you're looking for a novel, I really enjoyed rum punch. And I've been meaning to watch Jackie Brown. I think it's, I think it's, well, I was going to say it's the only Quentin Tarantino movie I haven't seen, but I haven't seen either of the Kill Bill's either. It's just never really happened. I don't really know what they're about other than like, what's her face, the blonde lady, um, is, has like a katana and presumably at some point kills Bill.

That's pretty much why I know about kill Bill. I don't really know anything else that happens. I don't know why she's trying to kill Bill, but she does twice, apparently. Vol 1 and Vol 2. Our music shout out of the week, uh, my, my boss actually was at an Earth 1 in fire concert. And I spent some, I was just reading up on Earth 1 in Fire, uh, just because it's, you know, like, hey, everyone knows Earth went in fire and their big hits and stuff, but like, I don't really know anything about them as a band. And it got, I, that got me down to the rabbit hole of Philip Bailey. And that reminded me of a fantastic, live version of Easy Lover, Phil Collins from his 1990 live tour in Berlin, I think it is. And Philip Bailey is not even in this, on this tour or anything

like that. But there's a great, if you just, you know, Google Easy Lover Live. It's, excuse me, Phil Collins and two other black guys, Fred White and someone else, I can't remember. I think one of the other guys might have been Earth, One, and Fire too, but, you know, the guitarist is Darrell, what's his name, Stermer from Genesis, and it's just, they got good moves, the energy is high, people are going nuts. It's the only rendition of Easy Lover that I'll listen to, frankly. And it's one I've listened to a million times in the past, but probably not for a year plus until I was, I stumbled upon Philip Bailey. So if you're looking for just five minutes of just banging rock, go check it out. But you got to watch it too, because they've got,

especially during the guitar solo, they got some good moves. That's all I'm going to say about that. Phil Collins. I would say rest in peace. They'd be disrespectful. He's not dead yet, but he is kind of on his last legs. We have to briefly mention, we got a couple other things here than our trivia question. I don't really have much to say about this. other than, you just got to address it. The War of the World's film that came out, I only heard about this, I think about the start of this past week, like five days ago.

And if you aren't familiar, you didn't know this existed. And I wouldn't blame you because it's just come out, I think, recently. It was an Amazon Studios production starring Ice Cube. And it's not, if you're thinking, oh, this is going to be like a shot-for-shot remake of this. Tom Cruise Spielberg film for 20 years ago, like they did with Psycho and Vince Vaughn and Anthony Perkins, I haven't seen any of it, but my understanding is it's not that at all. Whereas the Steven Spielberg movie was like a really good solid take on the, was it originally

H.G. Wells. Did he write War of the Worlds? Is it even a, it's not even like a book. It's just like a radio production, right? I don't know exactly the source material. But this essentially what I understand is you're like watching a webcam the whole time of Ice Cube and his kids are involved, not his real kids, but in the film his kids are involved. And there's like nanorobots that are eating our data. And I just, man, I don't know. It's got a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. From what I've read, people are saying it's one of those movies that is, it's not one of those movies that is so bad it's good like you know people kind of say that about well a lot of a lot of films but like the room by tommy waso but this goes beyond that and it's so bad that

it's unwatchable though if you haven't followed any of this just maybe maybe there's a trailer or something i don't know but if you're thinking maybe i'll just stick to the tom Cruz and what's this uh what's the face the guy from shawshank redemption tim robins and the lady who played squeaky from in once upon a time in hollywood speaking of tarentino what's her name dakota fanning and anyone else who is in the original original the stephen spilberg version of war of the worlds from 2005 or whatever that was maybe just don't tarnish your your love of the material and don't let Ice Cube ruin your day.

But I did just want to briefly mention it to bring awareness in case you were... Oh, I mentioned Amazon before. Apparently it's just absolutely dripping with Amazon product placement like to an ungodly amount. So I don't know. I'm guessing that whomever decided

to make this and green light it and was part of this production tried to make it as bad as possible just so that you could get me to talk about it because if you made, not me specifically, but people that talk about it, because if you made like an average War of the World's adaptation that got a 40% of Rotten Tomatoes and was only to streaming or however they did it, I'm probably not sitting here talking about it. So you know what, Amazon, you know what, Jeff Bezos, Ice Cube, Mission accomplished. But I'm not going to give it any more airtime. Let's move past it. A couple of months ago, we mentioned LinkedIn Lunatics. And what I did was go to Reddit and try to find some good posts. And it wasn't quite as good live as I wanted to be. But what I have discovered, and I'll mention what LinkedIn Lunatics is in a second, but what I've discovered is their Twitter profile, their Twitter account specifically for LinkedIn Lunatics. That is a goal. mind. That does a really good job of cultivating the top ones. So if you don't know, I mean,

LinkedIn Lunatics is, it's pretty self-explanatory, the title. LinkedIn is obviously such a self, what's the word, like self-pleasureing kind of space. It's just, it's a terrible social media platform, in my opinion, for a number of reasons. But it's all, it's everyone's just like, oh my gosh, I accomplished this. I achieved this. Well, you're going to see what I mean in a second year. But if you are on Twitter, I encourage you to follow LinkedIn Lunatics because I I've been reading some more of their stuff recently. It's been coming up in my algorithm. And I came across one yesterday that I really wanted to spread the word on or just read it aloud. So this was from, let's see, I guess just, oh, it was this morning at 609 a.m. I thought, I'm almost

certain it was yesterday, but who knows. This is a post from Stacey Champagne. Great last name, Champagne, spelled like the beverage, not the city in Illinois. She's the founder and CEO of Hacker in Heels. And this post was from 19 oras ago, or I guess I should say, D.S.C. Nuiti. Okay. This is what she says. It's a, you know, a little bit of a, it's not that long. It'll take us 60 seconds. Here's what Stacy's post says. I had multiple clear-cut career accomplishments in 2024. My husband, zero. No certifications. And I should mention, this is Quinn for a second. It's all, part of this is all about the formatting. You've got to have a lot of good paragraph breaks to really bring your point home. So just the audio of this is not quite as awful, I think, as the

seeing the whole thing put together, but it's still going to be awful. Okay, back to the post. No certifications, no college courses completed, no documentary features, no awards. How do you do that? I asked from across the dining table. How were you able to go through a whole year without doing any of these sort of things and be okay? He didn't have a response. There's so much to unpack and learn from an exchange like this. Specifically, what's standing in the way of my ability to be content without conventional markers of accomplishment? My gut says that this is a question that many people, namely high-performing women, grapple with too. I don't have an answer, but I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Could you go a year without a single news certification, interview, award, promotion, and be okay with yourself for it? Would you think of a colleague, direct report, manager, friend, or spouse differently for not doing so? Hashtag women in cybersecurity, hashtag cybersecurity, hashtag cybersecurity, hashtag certification, hashtag career development. And the top comment is from Shawna Clinton, it says, slams cutlery down. How the fuck have you not been in any documentaries this year, you useless fuck? Oh my goodness. That's LinkedIn Lunatics, our check-in of the week. And then speaking of useless fucks, I just want to say I absolutely love more than probably anything on the Beantown podcast.

When we get listener engagement, fan mail, all that stuff. So whether it's emails, whether you send me something. in writing. There's, or if it's like one of those letters where you cut out the letters from magazines and stuff, Silence of the Lamb style. I don't even think that's from Silence of the Lambs. It just seems appropriate, doesn't it? You know, it's a great, you can stay engaged with us.

You can mail stuff to me, DM me off to the side, I'll get you my address. Of course, you can email us. Beantown Podcasts at yahoo.com, but I mentioned useless fuck because I got a great letter today from Tony Sibble in Jacksonville, Florida, S-A-B-B-B-L-E. It's not handwritten, it's typed, but that's okay. There's a QR code, which I'm afraid to scan. Here's what the letter says. It's hello, and then an emoji of a rose.

We've got exciting, and there's a space between the apostrophe and the V and Weave. So, unclear, Bob and Weave. We've got exciting news just for you. We are a big adult toy factory, creating high-quality items just for you. Big Adult Toy Factory. can be a Willy Wonka porn sequel. I'm sure something like that exists. To make our products even better, we need your help. Join our elite testing team. Test our latest products before they hit the market and enjoy these perks. Number one, complete a short survey and earn up to $100.

Two, this is, I like this one, review new products for free with total privacy. So you get to, you don't have to pay to review these products. That's absolutely fantastic. We want to hear from you. let us know your favorite. Contact us at Zach at Tester4 to snag it. Textorfor.com to snag it. Or you'll get, there's an apostory between, or space between the apostrophe and the all, and you'll get replied within three business days. And then there's eight images that are numbered. And I think there's some maybe suction involved here. I think that, these are toys that I'm showing images of. The first one, I think there's some sort of suction going on here. Number five is definitely suction. Six is definitely something you stick

to simulate your prostate. The same with three. Definitely eight, two. Looks like a speeding bullet. Four and seven are things you wrap around your hoo-ha. And the number two, I don't know what this is. I guess it's like a, what do you call them like for, we're going to get NSFW for a brief second. I apologize. A pocket pussy, I think. You stick your thing in here. But it's got like a tornado coming out of it. It looks like, you know, a scented aroma glade plug-in or something. So that's kind of unclear. I don't know. And then below that, if the invitation brings any inconvenience to you, please accept our sincere apologies. Email to unsubscribe and we will remove you from the list. It says email to unsubscribe as if that's like an email address,

you can email. I kind of, I feel like I'm going to open, I should open up an incognito browser, scan the QR code, see what happens. I mean, I mean, it's got scam written all over it, but sometimes with these things, you can, like, randomly get free products. And I don't have any experience with this market, per se, but I'll try anything once, right? What did Clay Davis say? I'll take any motherfucker's money if he'd given it away. Isaiah Whitlock, Jr. We've got our trivia question of the day here to wrap.

I don't remember how this came to be, but I was just kind of randomly reading about Applebee's. Oh, I got an Instagram ad And something related to Applebee's 2 for 25 menu And I sent it to a friend ever so randomly Because she was having a bad day And I just wanted to say the most random useless thought I could And try to cheer her up And I don't know if it worked or not

But regardless, I got thinking about casual dining restaurant Restaurants, chains in particular So here is the trivia question that I have for you today very out of the blue, very random, but here it is. It's a ranking question. There's seven answers here. I want you to put the following fast, casual dining, whatever, restaurants in order from oldest to newest in terms of when their first franchise came to be, or when the first restaurant was established.

So again, I'm going to give you a list of seven. very well-known chains you give me their the order fastest finger style except fast finger fast finger could be one of these toys here from this Tony Sibble in Jacksonville I digress seven restaurants restaurant chains and you put them in order from oldest to newest in terms of when they were founded so here are the seven TGI Fridays Applebee's Chili's Chilies Outback, Olive Garden, Texas Roadhouse, and Red Lobster, as they would call it out in Maine. So again, put them in order from oldest to youngest. Your seven were TGI Fridays, Applebee's, Chili's, Outback, Olive Garden, Texas Roadhouse, and red lobster.

And I think we could probably expand this out to 10, maybe in an upcoming episode, and Power Rank these. I will say I do not have a ton of experience with these types of restaurants in terms of dining at them. Because it's the type of thing where it's like we would go every once in a while. You know, we'd go to like one or two of these a year, I feel like as kids growing up. And then just you get into college and I went to a college in a big city where like, you know, it's not like you go to college out in the suburbs or in a rural area where you got these by the highways just like you got a bunch of local institutions. I've always just kind of lived close to like downtown cities and there's not a lot of like Applebee's or Outback Steakhouses just chilling in downtown Chicago. There was a downtown Chicago, a River North Chili's for a long time that I went to once or twice.

And I went to the Chili's in Evanston a number of times when I was in grad school because they just had some good deals. But I digress. I think we'll get to a power ranking one of these days of casual dining chains in the U.S. but for now, and there is a little bonus to this, let me give you a bonus now. My bonus is per artificial intelligence research because I just didn't have the energy to go through all this painstaking stuff myself. Estimate, and you could rank this too if you want.

I don't care. I'm not going to spend all that time on it. But estimate the number of locations that each one of these franchises has. And I will, I'll reveal that to you as we go through. the dates here. So from oldest to youngest, the oldest one in my list is TGI Fridays, which was founded in 1965. So 60 years old this year. And TGI Fridays has 600 locations. I got to tell you, there is a TGI Fridays one mile from my house growing up at the corner of Perryville and Harrison Avenue in, I think technically it was Cherry.

Valley, Illinois. Maybe it was rock for it. I don't know what the limits are, but right on the edge. And I don't know if I ever went to that TGA Fridays, maybe once, literally would see it every single day, driving away from home, driving back home. And it's like a beacon of light, but rarely got to go. I don't think I ever went to that one. I don't know. TGI Fridays 500 locations. Number two, Red Lobster, 1968, three years later, and similar numbers, has 514 locations. Number three is Chili's, 1975, and has approximately 1,610 locations, which is number one on this list in terms of most locations.

So shout out to Chili's. It feels high, doesn't it, to have 1,600 Chili's? But who knows? I once went to a Chili's after working an event somewhere in southeastern Pennsylvania, I think suburbs of Philadelphia somewhere, I think it was, or maybe central Pennsylvania. And it was the day of the home run derby. And I was like, oh, I need to have dinner somewhere, right? Put it on the company card.

And so I went in there thinking, oh, I'll sit down, grab a table. I actually sat at the bar and watch the home run derby because Kyle Schwerber was a cub back then. And I was like, oh, I got to watch this. And he ended up making it to the finals and lost to Bryce Harper. who cheated, I think it was. But they didn't have it on. It was like a random NBA summer league game. And it was too just young and not bold enough to be like, hey, could you change the channel? And I ended up not seeing the home run derby. So that happened to me in a Chili. Number four, Applebee's, 1980. And just behind Chili's at 1,600 locations. So those are probably interchangeable.

1600 or 1610 for Chili's, but Applebee's was founded in 1980. Number five, Olive Garden, 1982 has approximately 892 restaurants around the world, most of them in Italy, I would assume. Number six, Outback Steakhouse, 1988 with 102 locations. I don't think I've ever been to an Outback Steakhouse. I think that's the one on this list where it is like, I have no recollection of ever going. We had one in Rockford, I think, when I was growing up, probably somewhere on East State Street, but I have no recollection of ever stepping foot in an Outback Steakhouse. You see, you know, I feel like every time you see an Outback Steakhouse ad, it's their advertising shrimp on the Barbie, and there's a million other things you can get at Outback. But as someone

who does not personally love shrimp that much. For them to lead with that, I was always just kind of like, eh, not my deal. Not that I was really in charge of our dining experiences anyways. And then finally, number seven, the most recent is Texas Roadhouse founded in 1993, 722 locations. Although I read, I don't remember some sort of article that popped up as I was

researching this, that Texas Roadhouse is now the number one casual dining chain in the U.S. beyond olive garden and red robin and stuff so there's other ones we could have thrown into the list like i don't know when red robin was founded let's let's google it the last thing we do here before we play our outro music just out of curiosity because there's a great song rock and robin but that's different than red robin isn't it uh red robin wikipedia red robin gourmet burger's ink is an American chain founded in September 1969 in Seattle, Washington, 1969. I don't know if I would have thought it was that old. That would have put it at number two or number three on our list

after TGA Fridays and Red Lobster, but briefly before Chili's. So there you go. Four hundred ninety-eight restaurants, which on this list would have been the fewest right behind red lobster all right that was our bean town podcast this week i want to thank everyone for listening thank you for tuning into our program and uh keeping us afloat in these uh you know these inflammatory recessionary times uh we're still coming every week at you with content not coming every week that sounds like the sex toy ad we are we are bringing you fresh content every week and uh i don't know we're going to have to do an NFL draft or an not draft a fantasy football pre preview soon here. Some people are already having their drafts. I have won this weekend, so

wish me luck. I'm going to bet all $200 on J.J. McCarthy. That's the team building strategy. All right, time to get going. My name is Quinn David Furness. This is my show. Quindad Furness presents the Beantown podcast. I hope everyone. Stay safe, stays sane, stay cool, get in the AC. I'll check in on you next time. Bye-bye. You know, yeah, yeah. And I'm just a couple. I'm just going to be. And you're just going to be.

And you're going to be. I'm going to be able to be. I'm a good. I'm going to be. And I'm going to be. And I'm a good. And I'm going to be. I'm going to be.

So, you know, I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to You know, I'm going to be able to be. You know, I'm going to

I'm going to Thank you. Thank you.