Beantown Podcast - What is Hello Kitty (10182025 Beantown Podcast)

Episode Date: October 18, 2025

Quinn comes to you LIVE to discuss the music of Monty Alexander, Sabrina La Beauf's age, and Nyquil science experiments

Hey, what's going on? It's Quinn David Furness. Welcome to my show. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast for Saturday, October 18th, 2025. What's happening? What's going on? How are you? My name is Quinn, and this is my program. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast. I'm going to come at you with a quick hitter this week. got some family in town don't have a ton of time to just kind of dawdle right d a w d'l e how about rico dowdell panther's backup running back rushing for 200 yards all over the place there's a great uh elton john song where he says not the not the time to dawdle i think that's in like bitter fingers maber maybe bitter fingers maver what is a maver nothing doesn't mean anything hard to write a song with Bitter Fingers. That's Elton John. It's a great song. It's from, what is that one from

Bitter Fingers, Yellowbeck Road maybe? I can't remember. There's so many Elton's run of killer albums from like 1970 to 1973 or something. He put out like five or six albums. And it was just, he is one of those albums where even the deep cuts that, you know, never made radio play and the casual person doesn't know. There's just fantastic song. Obviously I'm a I'm the number one Elton John Stan on this podcast, but it's just, man, some good stuff. Occasionally, I'll get away, like right now, as far as my YouTube algorithm, my listening habits go. YouTube's what I use for music. I don't have Spotify or Apple Music or title.

What's title? Anyone know what title is? There's a killer's bonus track off of, I think, day and age or Battleborn. I don't know, called Title Wave. She always had won't have a head of you do. You heard him. Maples look to me like I'm crazy. Well, you never heard Tidal Wave, buddy.

Where was I? Oh, YouTube, my algorithm, there's periods of my life where I get away from having Elton John in the algorithm. And now that I'm becoming aware of it, I need to infuse some deep cuts back in there, whether it's blue move, or brown dirt cowboy don't shoot me i'm only the piano player cariboo there's a lot of good action there to be had great great albums uh i am the host creator and pod or and uh well

i am the podcaster we'll leave it there i am the podcaster you know because bean town the bingetown podcast a lot of people might not know this it is just one subsidiary of the entire bean town network if you go to beantown podcast.com you can learn about uh cuts by cue you can learn about Beantown blog. So the podcast is the flagship, right? But there's, there's so much else to the Beantown experience. I think we could have like a Beantown pop-up experience. You know, I rent out like a container, a shipping container or something and doll it up. We were, where we were staying in Las Vegas a couple weekends ago, the Park MGM, there's like a Hello Kitty experience downstairs out like, I'm,

outside the front of the hotel, basically. And we never really got the chance to walk around it. Frankly, we never got the chance to experience it. But I don't know, Hello Kitty is, it's wild, not wild to me, that's too strong of a word, but Hello Kitty is one of those media franchises that I just don't know anything about, never got into it. I mean, I think it's pretty out of all the media franchises out there. I mean, maybe you could like say Barbie and American Girl doll take the cake in terms of how gendered they are or how gendered their target audience is. But I don't think Hello Kitty would be too far behind, right? Like I not that I know a lot of people in general or had friends growing up who were super into Hello

Kitty, but I don't think I ever saw a male, a boy be into Hello Kitty. Kitty. So it's Japanese, right? Hello Kitty is Japanese. But is it, and I'm going to be completely honest with you, and I should mention before we go any further, listen to discretion advise when we get into this program. Number one, we'll occasionally use some language number to the podcast, subjectively terrible. Is Hello Kitty, like, what's the OG? Was it a TV show? Was it like a stuffed animal, like a beanie baby sort of thing? is anyone put a pin in that for a second i know we we we talked beanie babies a couple months ago because i watched that um beanie bubble apple movie they made with galfanakis directed by

the guy from okay go damien koulash and his wife who's uh al gore's daughter christin i think her name is is anyone else surprised for for how big beanie babies were that they never like parlayed into a larger media franchise like an animated series or like the pre-Webkins thing where it's like you have the stuffed animal but there's also like the virtual version where you log into the platform and like play games with your virtual animal i'm surprised beanie babies never tapped into that not forward thinking enough i guess but back to hello kitty i legitimately don't know email with beantown podcast at yahoo dot com again it's beantime podcast at yahoo dot com uh tv show game stuffed animal movie

playing limited edition playing cards uh i i actually it's one of those things now that i'm talking out loud about it i have no idea what hello kitty was my my i have almost no exposure to hello kitty in my entire life dating back to the mid 90s in case you couldn't tell the only really thing i had on hello kitty and this is just the most uh benign i think this that's what benign means i don't know B-E-N-I-G-N. Now I'm thinking about Ben-Jays. Is that the things they have down in Louisiana with the little powdered sugar on top? That sounds delicious. We had a VHS tape of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer growing up.

And it wasn't like the full version with, unfortunately, you think like if you had the VHS and it wasn't just like the TV airing every year on ABC that you'd get like the full uncut version, you know, full penetration, et cetera, Rudolph and Clarice. I'm not convinced that Rudolph's mom and the gym coach, Donor, is Donner his dad or who is the name of the coach? Was it Blitzen? I don't know. I'm not convinced they didn't have a thing going and don't get me started with Mrs. Claus and those else. Ho, ho. Ho, ho, am I right, guys? The full version of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer has the iconic scene at the end as Rudolph flies away in his sleigh. The way I'm setting this up makes it sound like it's going to be some total bullshit, but it's not.

It's something we've talked about many times. In fact, I have a whole song about it. Speaking of the Beantown Network Enterprise, our music wing, the Yukon Cornelius theme song, which you can go find on my YouTube page. If you're new to the Beantown podcast, we'll occasionally put out music. It's a hoot, frankly. But this is not bullshit. At the end, Yukon Cornelius, one final time is he's lying there dying in the snow as Rudolph, you know, flies. way he's not actually dying he throws his pickax up into the air he goes wahoo pickax land and he

strikes not gold but he strikes peppermint what he's been searching for all along you go the entire rudolph the redneils reindeer uh television special not knowing what exactly he's searching for is it gold silver power what is yukon want adventure definitely wants adventure i love his He's got a revolver. You never get to see him use it. I thought he would use the revolver on the bumble. But what would have been great as if, like, at the end, Yukon comes back with the bumble.

And I'm thinking, like, Hunger Games, mocking Jay over here, you know, with Katness. And it's like, okay, she's going to shoot the arrow and she's going to take out Donald Sutherland, rest in peace. You know, that's Yukon. He's going to take out the bumble. But at the last second, his revolver. ticks up a degree and he takes out none other than santa claus oh my santa claus was the bad guy the whole time just like when catnus shoots julian moore my oh my what was the what was the whole point of that

it was like you know she was catniss uh jennifer i was going to say coolidge that would be a very different hunger games movie wouldn't it i would watch that movie if uh you know this all the same stuff applies but Katniss Everdeen is just a little bit more bumbling than Jennifer Lawrence is who actually did it. I would watch Jennifer Coolidge in the Hunger Games. Someone's got to write that. We would need a better PETA, though. I don't think, you know, Jennifer Coolidge would act circles around Josh Hutcherson. I think we would need like a Bobcat Goldwaith or something like that. why you know cat catnus the whole third movie she's fighting with julian moore coin is that her name and at the end it's like they take they storm the capital j6 style they they they overthrow the

evil empire they're going to hang donald sutherland with his white suit in his red flower or whatever. And then it's like, Catnus kills Julianne Moore, which they kind of telegraph, like you see it coming. But what was the point? And then there's like one final scene with Katniss and Sutherland, like in his garden or something. I don't remember what the sort of result of that is that conversation. It's been a minute. I feel like Hunger Games, it's it's not faded from cultural reference because I feel like everyone like even the kids I teach right now and that they're not kids anymore they're 18 19 like those students they are well aware of the hunger games I assume I mean when did the first the first one came out in what like

2011 2012 something like that I'm getting on thin ice here maybe these students I'm teaching who are 18 have absolutely no idea what the hunger games is it's not unrealistic if my math is checking out to think that these students were approximately five years old when Hunger Games the movie came out and even younger when the novel came out. I don't know how old the novel is, but the novels are. So maybe not everyone knows Hunger Games, but I was just going to say like it's, well, and as I said that it allowed, they did the spin-off, right? Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes with Lucy Gray, Rachel Ziegler. And I don't know the name of, I don't remember the, who was the guy who plays the,

the young Donald Sutherland. Was he like a famous actor or something? Some no name. I think he was some no name. That movie was, okay, it felt like two different movies, two different halves. It was kind of strange.

I don't know. Not great. Not terrible. But then where's Lucy Gray in the Hunger Games? She like escapes from snow, Donald Sutherland. And then she's just, Where did she go?

Probably died in one of those hunger games we didn't get to see. Because I think by the time the first movie comes out, it's like the 74th Hunger Games. Maple's Minute. I don't know what she got, Maple. She's spluted over here. She's not touching breakfast because mom's gone at her workout. She's staring intently at the door. Can't shake her focus.

Maple's Minute this week brought to us by our good friends at Home Pride, Oregon. We had the man in the house, the man himself, Steve, 541-0-0-0-0-3-16. he's out of the house right now but he'll be back uh what was the name what that uh kids tv show big blue bear in the house or something like that never really got to watch that one occasionally when i was at my grandfather's house but i never really caught up to it i probably know more about the big what was because there's big comfy couch and then there's like the big brown bear's house or something like that you guys know what i'm talking about i think i know more about that than hello kitty i just proved that oh i didn't finish my hello kitty thought

this will be this will be good for home pride organ the reason i mentioned rudolph the red nose reindeer is because we had a vhs and at the start there was like uh it wasn't like a you know classic vhs where there's like movie previews you know like 90s jonathan taylor thomas movies that sort of stuff it was just like a hello kitty almost like sponsorship or something there wasn't like a trailer it was just like this and there was no voiceover but essentially if there was a voiceover it would have been like this VHS was brought to you by Hello Kitty and there was like a little title card essentially at the beginning and I think again at the end and I don't know it wasn't I don't know what it was

advertising it's just like oh yeah if you like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer you might also like hello kitty but is it a movie is it a TV special who knows no idea that's why I mentioned hello kitty or Rudolph the Red Nose Ranger and Hello Kitty on the podcast today apologies But Maple's Minute, Home Pride Organ, 54140-0-316, or email, Homebriot Organ.com. Homebriot organ inspection, perfection. Maple's Minute, I don't know, we don't got too much shit, eh. Went to the park yesterday, got jumped on by a very German shepherd who just wasn't good at playing. But Maple, I'll tell you this, buddy.

I hope you're listening. You're looking right at me. We got the Halloween, our little neighborhood's Halloween pet costume contest in two weeks. And we've got the defending champion over here, Maple. And it's going to be a very interesting decision. I guess it's going to be a coming down to the wire kind of coach's decision. Is she going to go with what worked last year, her pumpkin outfit, or is she going to pivot and try something different,

which would necessitate a shopping trip in the near future here? I don't know. one of our favorite segments on the podcast, your interview with the dog, Maple, what do you think? Well, she licked the microphone. There's something. I think that means you want to be the pumpkin, right? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

That's what Maple is thinking. That's Maple's Man. By the way, I'm drinking just a standard hot coffee, freshly ground beans out of my peanuts mug squad. It's got, I think this was for my in-laws. It's got Woodstock, two Woodstocks. Did Woodstock, none of the Peanuts specials that I saw, and granted, I've probably seen about 10% of them. So there's a lot of them out there.

And none of them did I see Woodstock having a boyfriend or girlfriend or mate of any sort? But on this cup I have, there's two of them following Snoopy. We got Snoopy, Lucy, Charlie, Linus, and Sally. so I'm sorry. Oh, yeah, that is Linus. I was going to say, oh, Linus, you got the boot, buddy, but he's right there. Biggest, biggest myths? That's not the right word. Diggs, there's another word for this where you, like, disrespect someone. The biggest, I don't know, there is a perfect word out there, and it's just not coming to me. Schroeder, Schroeder, I feel, is pretty classic. Pepperment Patty, you could make an argument for.

Franklin for the diversity. These are all. Whiffs is not the word. I don't know. It's killing me. Don't you just hate it when you know that there's a perfect word? Not even a perfect word, just like a regular English word. That suits exactly what you're looking for and you can't get there. My hot take of the week, gosh, I will tell you this.

My recording schedule got shuffled around a little bit this week, and I am going no notes on the podcast, which you might be listening and saying, gosh, that's got to be every week. I actually have done a pretty good job, especially this season, season eight here, of like coming into every show, at least with notes scribbled down on my iPhone app. And I always make sure I have my three things, if nothing else. I've got my trivia question. I've got Maple's Minute and I got my hot take of the week written down. I guess here's my hot take because I ran this morning in, you know,

It wasn't like downpour pouring rain, although there were flashes here and there where it got pretty rough. But I know people, and I'm not here to judge them or hate on them because, look, everyone has their own workout preferences. A workout exercise is a very personal thing. Like, I don't like to go for a run immediately after eating because I will quite literally get nauseous and stuff will slosh around in my stomach and I will really not enjoy it. And I know other people where it's like, oh, I'm about to go for a work. record. I got to make sure I eat something right now. So, like, it's a deeply personal thing, but I don't think, and I don't disrespect you if you disagree with me, but I don't think running in the rain is that bad. In fact, I think unless it is just like an absolute torrential

T-O-R-R-E-N-T-I-L downpour. I think running in the rain is actually quite refreshing. Now, I'll say this. There gets to be limits on this, right? Obviously, if it is just like sheets of rain falling down, that's not that enjoyable. and then also once you get down below like 40 degrees if it's raining particularly if it's really windy if you're getting like that cold wind against your face and hands and you're wet that's not like i don't want it i don't want to be running and be wet when it's like below 40 degrees out but today here in chicago say for a couple you know like 60 to 1 to 2 minute segments probably two or three times on my eight-mile run this morning where it was just getting kind of gnarly

and I had to like shove my headphones into my running bells and try to keep them dry and stuff. Very refreshing to get the rain drops keep falling on my head. Speaking of music, that's our hot take of the week. Our music recommendation of the week, by the way, brought to you by our good friends at the Samson Q2U series. crisp, clear audio quality. There was, there were some good Bible clues, I think, on Jeopardy just last night, but I watched Jeopardy after, after not only sloshing down some NyQuil, but also a melatonin. I did kind of a science experiment, like, well, I sleep extra, extra good if I double up. And I would say my sleep was perfectly average, but I did crash extremely hard. I was

trying my damnedest to make it all the way through a 19-minute episode of Jeopardy on YouTube. And I finally succumbed to my wounds, if you will, my NyQuil, like halfway through double jeopardy. But there are some good Bible questions before that. And I know the Samsung Q2U series would have nailed it. Ken Jennings, he would have been even CRISPR if his microphone there at the Sony stage was a Samson Q2U series. When God speaks, he uses a Samson. And our music recommendation of the week, of course, also brought to you by our good friends at Cuts by Q. I did a nice, I did a faux pa, if you will, F-A-U-X space P-A-S. And I meant to shave, as I typically do on Friday, like afternoons when I take my shower. And again, my schedule got a little bit

wonky and just it didn't work out well then i i hop in the shower this morning after my run and get out realize i still got full neck beard action going on so we got to go to the great outdoers i don't know what accent that was but it was me trying to be uh who is it that says it sick boy and train spotting the guy who dies i think that's the one who says the great outdoers Tommy is that his name i can't do a scottish accent and i'm not going to try because most of my accents end up just devolving into like a three out of ten Australian accent and no one really wants to listen to that. But I did, I went to the back porch, the Great Outdoors, did my neck shave and all as well. Our music recommendation of the week, I was feeling not in a rut

musically, maybe I just need to add more Elton John to my playlist, but my jazz sort of mix on YouTube was getting a little, just too repetitive. I just needed some infusions of artists and new voices because there's so much, this goes without saying, but there's so much in the jazz realm across the board, but specifically I'm a big jazz piano guy because I'm a pianist myself. And so I went to the chat GPT. I said, give me some recommendations that are similar to these artists. I think I punched in like B.G. Adair, David Ben Wask, or Peterson, Bill Evans, some of my personal favorites and spat out a number and I've gone through a bunch but the but one that has really kind of hung with me the last three days has been since I started this endeavor of refreshing my jazz

piano play this Monty Alexander who I'm sure if you were just like a very average jazz pianist you're like yeah Monty Alexander's a legend's been around for forever but from me he wasn't really raised in the jazz tradition and I've never taken a lesson of jazz piano in my life there's a lot of new discoveries to be had here. So Moni Alexander is a Jamaican, I think Jamaican-born jazz pianist. He's in like his 70s now. And of course, when you are like a lifelong musician, your discography is going to be just pages and pages long, at least in terms of the things you've played.

And so I've only began to scratch the surface 1% of Moni Alexander so far. but in particular there's been a cover of no woman no cry you know bob marley uh he's i mean they're both jamaican right and i mean this whole thing is great but there's a middle section where the drums really pick up in this monny alexander cover and oh man it has just been stuck in my head for 48 72 hours here so that's our music recommendation of the week i got to tell you one one last thing i will do our book recommendation of the week and then i got a very if you're if you were turning tuning into the bean town podcast thinking like man i really need a good sink my teeth into a trivia question you're going to be so much disappointed today because it's

very uh simple and and guess the closest number kind of thing uh but we'll get to that in one moment i i i will mention i'm about i don't know halfway two-thirds maybe maybe more like halfway through killers of the flower moon i'm reading the book so you're probably aware of the film because it just came out what two years ago scorsesey and Leo and De Niro and Gladstone. Is that hanging? The Lee Gladstone wins the Oscar for playing Molly Burke? Is that her last name?

I can't remember. But, and I'm excited to go back and rewatch the film after because I didn't remember in the film, and maybe they adapted it slightly differently, although I don't think they did. I don't think Scorsese would have, would have butchered the source material this way. But I didn't remember, I think it just wasn't paying enough attention, Leonardo DiCaprio's character, he's kind of like one of the two leads,

him and his wife in the film. I didn't remember him being such a POS in the film. I remember kind of trying to root for him a little bit. But man, according to this book, which is what it's based on what the film is based on it's a it's a nonfiction book it's like a very long research article um man all these these white folks are just absolutely terrible this scheme and i haven't even gone to the end yet to uncover all of it but this scheme that these these white guys cooked up to um there's a their word for this where you go like precisely go like one by one, but to very calculated, calculatedly eliminate these wealthy Native Americans one by one to narrow the funnel down to just, either like this lady's descendants

because she was married to Leonardo DiCaprio, Ernest Berkart, whatever his name was, or just kill her off entirely and just claim the land, is absolutely wild and the craziest thing this isn't going to come as a shock like this isn't entirely news to me but it's just a it's a refresher of how just absolutely terrible this was these native americans back in the you know early 20th century late 19th century whenever this was they like they owned the the land they got the money from the oil drilling all that fun stuff but the u.s passed or had a law saying that like oh, it was theirs, but they still had to answer to, like, a white protector.

There's a term for it where it's like, oh, yeah, you have to have, like, an advisor who actually, like, makes final decisions on your money and what you decide to do with it because you're, you know, Native American, you can't fully be trusted. And it's just, look, this isn't going to come as any surprise, but it is just, poof, that's rough, man. in some ways we come a long way from that in other ways not so much at all not going to get political but i will i will give a five five bags of popcorn to killers of the flower move flower move that's what it is it's a new dance move killers of the flower moon great read go check it out and then i've got the running man next up by stephen king i've never seen the film uh arnold schwarzenegger so I'm excited I think the I've heard the film is not a great adaptation of the book so I'm excited to read the book watch this film and then compare and then there's also a new is it Glenn Powell is that what he's promoting on SNL in a couple weeks here when he's on he's making a version or he's starring in a version of the running man that's coming out I think I don't know if it's a film or a TV show I'm not sure but coming out at some point soon here I think so there's our our book and our music and our movie recommendations this week.

We'll finish it off with television. We were talking, this is our trivia question. We were talking about the Cosby Show and dances at the wedding and all that stuff a little bit last week. And I was just doing some like very, you know, mindless cursory surface level research on, you know, the cast and, you know, reflecting on Malcolm Jamal Warner, rest in peace. But between Malcolm Jamal Warner and Donald Sutherland,

we've lost some giants lately but my question my trivia question for you so she wasn't around in season one but the eldest Cosby daughter in the Cosby show Sandra who ends up getting married to Jeffrey Owens who is the whole Trader Joe's actor struggle

kind of story from a couple years ago plays Donovan McNabb Tiger Woods and Don Cheetel on it's always sunny in Philadelphia one of my favorites Sandra ends up showing up in season two, and then she's kind of in and out throughout the rest of the show. I think season two is when she shows up, played by actress Sandra Labouf, Shia's older sister, but black. So my question is, what was the age, what was, they're both still alive. So the eldest Cosby daughter, played by Sabrina Labouf.

Sandra. And the Cosby matriarch, Felicia Ayers-Alan at the time, now Felicia Rashad, playing Claire Huxdable, who I think was a lawyer on the show. Mom, eldest daughter on the Cosby show. Here's a question. What was the age gap of the actresses, or what is the age gap of the actresses? Felicia Rashad, married to Vikings legend, right? What was it? his first name, Jamal, Amal Rashad, something like that. Age difference between the actresses, Felicia Rashad and Sabrina Labouf. I'll tell you this.

There was not controversy, but there was question over whether the actress for Sandra was the best choice based off of her age, if that moves the needle for you one way or another. uh if you want any more time to discuss debate think about it go ahead and give yourself a pause here you usually in english you would just say go ahead and pause us but it's one of those things like in spanish where you say like i have hunger you got to give yourself a pause the actual age gap between these two actresses in real life 10 years playing mother and daughter and look as far as

age gaps between actors and actresses go for things like that this is far from certainly far for the most egregious thing you could find, but it was an interesting nugget I came across 10 years. That's what I got for you. My name is Quinn David Furness. This is my program. Quinn David Furness presents the Bean Town Podcast. I hope everyone's having a great week.

I hope you stay safe, stay sane, stay dry. I'll check in on you next week. Bye-bye. Thank you. You know, I'm going to be able to I'm going to I'm

I'm I'm You know, I'm going to be. Thank you.