Beantown Podcast - Woodland Creatures Power Rankings (02012025 Beantown Podcast)

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Quinn comes to you LIVE on Groundhog Day Eve to break down his power ranking of woodland creatures, discuss how one piece of fruit can ruin everything, and pine for Ben Carson, Betsy Devos, and others

Hey, what's going on? It's Quinn David Furness. Welcome to my show. Quinn David Furness presents the Beantown podcast for Saturday, February 1st, 2025 Groundhog Day Eve. That's right, Maple. I said groundhog. You've probably never seen one of those. Be mighty tasty. We'll talk woodland creatures later on. Which now that I think about it, we should have included a groundhog in the list. I guess it'll be honorable mention. You'll learn all about that and much more to come here on Queen David Furnace Presents the Bean Town Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Spotify,

Player FM, Cast Box, free internet radio with, that's what Maple listens to when we do her separation anxiety training, reggae covers. I am the producer, host, chief mixologist of this program, Queen David Furnace Presents the Beantown Podcast. I had a great, oh man, I had a great rapper name that I shared with Rachel yesterday last night, but I was high on an edible. And all I remember is that the first, it's two, it's one of those words that, you know, it's just one word, but you break it up like you would, I don't know Florida for example this was the first one is ick I see K but it's supposed to be X I think yes I don't know my all-time favorite rapper name if I ever make it big on my own label Bean Town Records is

gonna be something that was not original it was bestowed upon me by our local community colleges Model United Nations advisor and assistant professor of history, Martin Quirk, who I think has retired and is now running a hobby farm is what I can gather on Facebook. But it's one of those things where this is way too in the weeds. Ipso facto to summarize quickly, like a month ago, two months ago, I was invited to like this page, like Shady Lane farm, something like that. And you know, invite the or like this Facebook page. So click into it, no idea what it is and see it's only liked by one of my friends one of my mutual friends And it was Martin quirk apparently I'm friends on Facebook with this history professor. Whatever nice enough guy. Don't know him very well

anyways So my assumption is that he is Shady Lane Farms, and he was just inviting all his Facebook friends to like it That's really the only clue I have though because when they post, it's not like they have a profile picture with him in it. It's like some random animal or something. And all the posts are about like, you know, fresh vegetables for sale and pony rides and that sort of thing. So I don't know if that's actually him. I don't know if he's the one. I don't know if Martin Quirk is Shady Lane Farms, but that's neither here nor there.

My favorite rapper name for myself geographically inspired is Dr. Congo, which really, you know, the Africa heads would probably just go nuts over. You got it. It's a little bit of a deeper cut, right? It's, you know, Democratic Republic of the Congo, often known as, you know as the DR Congo. And that's to separate it from the Republic of Congo. They're right next to each other, separated by, you guessed it, the Congo River.

So you've got Congo and Democratic Republic of Congo, or DR Congo, if you want to save some syllabic energy. And so DRC, Dr. Congo, that would be my name. How did we get there, Maple? I don't even know. We are joined by co-host Maple today. We just got a nice little belly rub before we started. Look at those little teeth are showing, that little underbite.

We got to get you to see Dr. Gary Sexson, orthodontist to the stars, Rockford, Illinois. Listen to discretion, advise when you're listening to this program, number one, will occasionally some language. Number two, this podcast is objectively terrible, but it's February 1st, we made it. We are one month down in 2025, 11 to go. Shortest month of the year is here in February.

And another successful dry January for the Queenster. This was, I don't know what, like my fourth consecutive one in a row. Really the only one I haven't done in the last give or take eight or nine years was again when I, 2021 because I took all of 2020 off. But yeah, another, another successful one in the books. I did not celebrate at midnight with a beverage. I've still not had an alcoholic beverage

it's about 230 in the afternoon right now and Not planning on it, you know, it's it's where we got this wedding here this wedding My wedding is in less than three months now, which is crazy coming up on two and a half months away and I'm really in this mindset of, I'm not going crazy with starving myself and not eating anything. We literally had a pasta bake and oatmeal cream pie ice cream for dessert last night.

Okay, so none of that. However, I'm just like, if I can just cut out the alcohol, that's such a big thing for me. It's all those hidden calories. Some of these craft beers will have anywhere from 12 to 1500 calories in a 12 ounce can. A lot of people don't realize you get some of the higher end Trader Joe's whiskies. You just want to have a shot of that. It'll be something like 6, 700

calories stats provided by bean town podcast.com slash You just want to have a shot of that. It'll be something like 600, 700 calories, stats provided by beanthownpodcast.com slash research. And the calories just add up and up and up, like a Coldplay song with an extra up. Or what's the Target store brand? Is that also called up and up? Or is it to infinity and beyond? I can't remember.

If anyone saw the animated Buzz Lightyear movie, go ahead and email us, BeanTownPodcast at Yahoo.com with your review. I thought I heard something about in the original script of this animated movie from whatever that was, like 2022, something like that. Buzz Lightyear was supposed to be, I was going to say homophobic, but that's the opposite of what I'm trying to say. He was supposed to be, I was gonna say homophobic, but that's the opposite of what I'm trying to say. He was supposed to be a homosexual, he's supposed to be gay, and I think he has like a Latino sidekick or something in the picture. I've never seen it frankly, I've been more focused on Wallace and

Gromit, Vengeance Most Vowel, and Wild Robot. I heard people are really liking Wild Robot. But apparently the whole gay Buzz Lightyear thing didn't make it to the final cut. I think Tim Allen probably had a big protest. Now he wasn't the voice of animated Buzz Lightyear that was none other than Chris Pratt, who has been the new, he's the new Nicolas Cage. He's in every single movie that's ever come out and then some. But it was interesting, now that I'm thinking about it, I think there was a lot of pressure

from studios, North Korea, the Republican Party to not make Buzz Lightyear gay. And I actually just an hour ago finished the chapter in my Seth Rogan memoir I'm reading called Yearbook, which the chapter is all about his making of the interview, which I don't think has had as long lasting of a pop culture impact as some of the other Seth Rogan projects like Pineapple Express are super bad. But I did see the interview maybe a year after it came out, that sort of thing. If you recall, James Franco plays like an American political TV host, something like that, and he, the US government sends him to North Korea to try to assassinate Kim Jong-un and they

end up becoming really good friends, whatever. This was during the Obama administration. This was before even all of the Trump stuff came out. There was a lot of Trump-North Korea action in his first term. Now, a lot of the focus right now is on plane crash, God rest their souls, and DEI and no government funding, which has been blocked, but we're forgetting, and this will lead into our hot take of the week in a second here, that Trump was all over Kim Jong-un

in his first term, he was talking about him a lot, Rocket Man, and maybe I haven't followed the press clippings enough, but I haven't heard one single mention of North Korea in this term, which is disappointing because I kind of preferred it when our enemies were like That the big you know the boogeyman the boogeyman if you will be OO GEY MEN that we had to worry about were North Korea and

Putin we still have to worry about Putin, but we have to worry about Putin and Trump being best buds, which is scarier than just Putin by himself. GMOs and non-GMOs, these are all things, kind of classic villains in our world in the first term. And now it's like you worry about getting deported if you're a little bit too dark-skinned. If you work in any sort of DEI initiative, you worry about losing your job. See, it feels like the stakes are a little bit higher here. So suffice to say, I miss when North Korea was our main concern.

But the reason I mentioned that is, and I guess I knew this when this film came out 10 years ago or whatever it was, but I had forgotten. There was a whole big hubbub, you know, Sony produced the movie, The Interview, and North Korea hated this so much that they hacked into Sony servers, released a bunch of sensitive information, emails, people got fired, scandals, that sort of thing, in advance of this movie, and like the premiere got cancelled, they got pulled from theaters, and eventually Obama came out in a press conference and defended it. I certainly did not remember all these details. It was really interesting.

But it's the censorship. It's interesting. I don't remember how we got to the interview, but something else we were just talking about. That's OK. I want to also mention, of course, Bin Laden was hiding in not Pakistan but Afghanistan, but they are neighbors. And so with that clean segue, I'd like to shout out our good friends

in Pakistan. Thank you for making us the 112th ranked comedy podcast in the great Islamic Republic of Pakistan. But yeah, dry January is extension mode for me here. Probably go until at least the bridal shower, which I have been requested to attend in three weeks here. Probably have a glass of wine or something there, you would figure. Gotta drink to get through those games, right? It's like, guess the weight of the bride and pin the tail on the groom, and I don't know what other games you play at a bridal shower. Maybe like the old fashioned, there's like a classic Hollywood game where they like ask you a question, and the average person is the contestant and they give their answer,

and then they go to the panel of famous people and they're in Richard Dawson is always there and They always pick Richard because they think they're gonna have the most Chemistry ESP if you will I Don't know what game that is, but I was watching it on the yet. We have like some Some random Roku live TV stream game show network knockoff sometimes you get I think dealer no I was gonna say dealer no deal it's actually a whole separate channel we

were I we were watching Australian dealer no deal in bed the other night it was just very different there was no like family members off to the little side area. It was much more fast paced. The game would take like 15 minutes. The dollar value is really low. The top price was $100,000 Australian dollars. I have no idea how that equates to US dollars. It felt kind of low. But the people instead of models it was just like regular looking people one of the people was the guy's daughter Excuse me It was just kind of It felt very low stakes. You didn't have like all the big sound effects. You didn't have a bank or the offers just came in

So it was like if you were trying to produce deal or No Deal on 10% of the budget, which is probably a fair assessment, and you only had the studio space rental for like two hours and you had to get it all done, that's kind of what it felt like. But Australian Deal or No Deal nonetheless. Which reminds me, Deal or No Deal Island hosted by what's the guy in Spider-Man? Flash Thompson, I think his name is, something like that. Spider-Man's high school bully portrayed by Joe Mangianello, I think is how you say his last name. Magic Mike guy. We're drinking our tea in last name, Magic Mike guy. We're drinking our tea in sparkling water, by the way. Two separate beverages.

I didn't make the lemon herbal tea out of the sparkling water. I don't know what that would be like. Hot Bubbles, kind of funky. Bubbles is the name of the black guy from Lilo and Stitch, right? Voiced by the incomparable Ving Reims, V-I-N-G space, R-H-A-M-E-S.

Do we think Ving Rhames has really done anything in the last 15 years other than just show up in all the Mission Impossible sequels? Let's actually check in on that and then we are going to proceed with what we had planned for today. I did make notes. I know you're sitting here 15 minutes in thinking, gosh, Quinn just came in completely swinging a miss on the prep for this one. That's not actually the case. Ving Rames, if you're curious, his full name, Irving Ramsey's Rames.

Dude, Ramsey's Rames, what hell of a, I mean Irving is badass in and of itself, but Ramsey's Reigns, that's totally like a WWE fighter or something like that. I don't know how tall Ving Reigns is. He's a, excuse me, well built individual. Went to Juilliard if you can believe it. He's got three kids. What I really wanted was the filmography. Has Ving Rhames done anything recently other than just Mission Impossibles? The answer is firmly

yes. So he's got the Mission Impossible 8 this summer. He was in Wild Robot. He was the voice of Otto in the Garfield movie which I missed it's animated Chris Pratt and Sam Jackson Wow Chris Chris Pat strikes again proving my point here in the Bean Town podcast and then Mission Impossible 7 then some other ones in Mission Impossible 6 using Guardians of the Galaxy 2 then Mission Mission Impossible 5, and then some other ones. Piranha 3DD? What is that?

It's like Piranha 3D but the sequel? That's exactly what it is. So stupid. So to answer my original question, yes, Irving Ramsey's Reims has been in other things, but you just haven't really seen them. Or you have seen them and you've only heard Mr. Reims. Our hot take of the week since we already mentioned it, kind of in passing, so far we're what, 10 days in, something like that, this Trump term is a lot scarier than the first term I would say, because the first term it was kind of

like what's serious and what's a joke and now we know it's just all a power grab which in some ways we knew that before but it's it's there's not a lot of when you got Nazi salutes and you know firing people who prosecuted you before there's not a lot of balance of power going on here especially with the Supreme Court the way it is. So it's a lot more dangerous this time around, but I got to tell you, I am so much more bored. I don't need my president to be a comedian, but if it's going to be Trump, just lean into the funny stuff rather than just like the weird power hungry stuff. Dude, we need, I mean, first term,

we had Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who's moved on to Greener Pastures, AKA Arkansas. We had the Mooch, Scaramoochie, right? Someone just mentioned that in their little blurb on Jeopardy the other day. Scaramooch, a Scaramoochie, what is it? It's like nine days is a Scaramoochie length of time. We had Sean Spicer Dude classic Sean Spicer. We had Kellyanne Conway

I don't think Kellyanne is really part of the gang this time around. One guy who is He's he's kind of held out is and he's he's he seems to fit in with the whole Elon Nazi salute sort of thing Stephen Stephen Miller, if you remember that guy. Not that I want to give him a lot of air time, but Stephen Miller has been one of the very few that has held on. Hope Hicks is the name of someone who I think was press secretary at some point. I don't know anything about her. Sounds like a sideline reporter for the fourth string NFL

on Fox crew, noon game. That's got, I don't know who would be in that window, the noon window. It's got Saints visiting the Giants written all over it. In November in the Meadowlands, Derek Carr is injured. So it's Spencer Ratler versus Daniel Jones first team to score like 20 points wins fourth string that's Hope Hicks this term just boring so far I know it's only been 10 days let's not

rush to judgment but I don't know bring back bring back the incompetence. It's still incompetent, but Elon and Zuckerberg and Target getting rid of all their DEI stuff. And it's just a lot more boring than the first term, which is disappointing. I'd like to be entertained, if nothing else. Giuliani? Dude, that was gold stuff. We had all the... the impeachments? Are we gonna get impeachments this time? I don't even know.

Perfect phone call. Right now we're just getting the DEI stuff, which is just kind of boring. Which brings us to Maples minute. She did not sleep very well last night. A lot of pacing. It started at 2am. I think her tom is a little rumbly, right buddy? A little rumbly tom. Some loose poo today. And she told me, I don't know if we've talked about this much on the show, she's a big MAGA head. She wanted to get a little hat for Christmas but couldn't find one in her size. She told me she's concerned about DEI That's what's keeping her up at night

Right, buddy. She's looking right at me DEI. That's pretty scary to you. Well good thing. It's gone now We're not even gonna say it anymore common sense, right maple Common sense. That's what we need. That's maples minute for the day Some one other thing I wanted to mention, and then we're going to thank our sponsors and then get into our power rankings this week. This happened to me on Thursday, Friday, something like that. I can't remember.

You ever get a bad piece of fruit? It just ruins everything. I'm not talking like rotten. I'm talking like you bite into an apple and the skin is a little bitter. You're not getting those bright, vibrant flavors. It's not quite as juicy as you wanted. And especially for me, I've been on sort of a toast kick.

So I have my toast at like 10 AM, something like that. But then other than my piece of fruit, you know, I've been on sort of a toast kick So I have my toast at like 10 a.m. Something like that But then other than my piece of fruit my apple I'm not eating typically again until like five or six And so when I have that apple Yeah, like one or two in the afternoon. It is It's just You need it to be good. You need it to be reliable. Or this happens more to me with bananas. I don't eat bananas a ton these days, but if you get a bad banana maybe it's a little bit too, what's the word, soft. You kind of get

like the brown line going through the middle of it when you bite in, black in some instances, it just kind of ruins everything right? Or you get those bananas that are just no flavor even if they're firm and you know just just no flavor then you're just kind of chewing a soft mush. So I don't know email us beanthumbpodcast at yahoo.com or message at us post at us on blue. I don't know what we're supposed to call it. The tweet was such a perfect encapsulation, such a perfect verb, tweet at us.

But not doing Twitter so much these days. Let us know your fruit horror stories. Trying to think what other fruits would be really bad. I don't know, sometimes you get those, this week on the Bean Town podcast, Quinn goes through every type of fruit there is. Sometimes you get the blueberries that are already kind of mushy, and then you're just kind of like, these aren't that poppable, you know? Or what I really hate, I almost never have grapes anymore.

We had a lot of grapes growing up. When you get grapes that start to get the mush going on, just not good at all. Not good whatsoever. That's what I wanted to share on that topic. Riveting two minutes of the Beantown podcast. Something I gotta mention, it's not, we don't have firm plans yet,

but I'm zeroing in on a date. It's February at the Beantown Podcast once again, season eight, which means it is pledge drive month. And if you are an eager beaver, an eager groundhog, groundhog day tomorrow, punk satani, see you there, you might be thinking, you might be trying to throw your money at me, give or take. We don't have any sort of a GoFundMe setup, nothing like that yet. We will plan to have it. Of course, that's just part one of Pledge Drive Month. Part two is the eighth annual Bean Town Podcast Pledge Drive Telethon fundraiser. I still got to put in some work on this, got to develop some graphics and actually choose the date. I will say in the past we've done Sunday afternoons because

you get past the Super Bowl and Sunday's kind of free up. That's still an option. Rachel is going to be in South America for a bit and then Cabo for a bit. I'm trying to figure out two things. Which trip do I do? And then secondly, when do I want to do it? It might get pushed to March. The decision here is, do we want to stick with Sunday afternoons or we want to try something else? There's pros and cons. For me, at least Sunday afternoon,

I'm usually chilling, not doing too much, especially in the winter, kind of staying around the house. But then it's also like, do I really want to work on the Sabbath? Friday night, you're usually out and about clubbing. Certainly, Maple and I, we do that all the time. But I don't know, Rachel's going to be in Mexico, Friday, February 28th.

What do we got? What do we think? If you're new to the show, the Pledge Drive Telephone fundraiser is usually about a two-hour spectacular. We have, we put the phone number out there. You can call in. In recent years, you can play games live on air. The donation to the show is, does not have to be linked to you participating in the show at all, although we certainly welcome funding this time of year. And just like we've done in the past, every dollar we receive will be matched one to one to a local charity here. Usually we do United Way of Metro Chicago. So if

you're doing the math, I'm not making any money off of this. The charity is really, I'm just the middleman, which is good. It's good to have a middleman in these types of situations. I wouldn't want you to donate to charity directly, right? Have it go through beanthompodcast.com slash giving. So we'll put a poll up there on blue sky social or something like that. Which day works best? there on blue sky social or something like that which day works best Friday night February 28th I don't know it's kind of got a nice ring to it huh me and maple we get us going the live stream we'll get her a little Bluetooth so you can talk to her it could be could be good we'll finalize that date shortly considering it's only three to four weeks away here, but be on the lookout

for the link to donate the date. Usually we put together a fun graphic. Again, it is the eighth annual Bean Town podcast, Telethon Pledge Drive fundraiser. Last year we were crazy. We drank an entire, we did a challenge. We drank an entire bottle of lemon juice Live on the show. We're not gonna be doing anything quite that Let's say destructive to the esophagus this year But I would like to incorporate some kind of challenge usually we drink I probably won't this year just because I'm trying to slim down for the wedding But well, I'm not gonna hold myself to anything at this point in

the game I want to do like a spicy food challenge I think that'd be fun but I wanted to be affordable as well sometimes those one chip challenges online it would be like $20 for just the chip and it's like I don't know is there a cheaper alternative here is there something I can buy in my local Trader Joe's that has a similar level of spice? We'll research and get back to you. In the meantime, I wanna let you know or ask you better yet, are you tired of selling your house

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Actually the entire cabinet was way better first term than second term so far. I mean, RFK Jr. Bobby's in a league of his own, but Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Ed, she really came from that line of, you know, stupidity, Sarah Palin-esque stupidity, Michelle Bachman, all that fun tea party stuff. But you never really felt like these people were straight up evil. You just felt like they were raised in a very conservative society with different values, if you will, much more traditionalist, sometimes sexist values. Now the people that are going in, like Elon and the FBI director, whatever his name is,

and RFK, I can't figure out at all. You kind of feel like they might be sort of evil. And that's a little bit more scary than Betsy DeVos talking about potential Grizzlies. Simpler times man. Ben Carson, I wish Ben Carson was back. Someone go wake him up figure out what he's doing. We need him for DHS or whatever. Housing whatever role he had. I don't know. I don't really know what he did, but I don't feel like he really

did anything, which was great, because he didn't really try to tear down the fabric of our democracy, which is kind of where we're at at this point. If you're tearing down the fabric of society, democracy, if you're gonna lean into it, you might as well have crisp, clear audio quality. And guys, let me tell you, you're gonna get that from the Samson Q2U Series Pro X line.

I don't know if there actually is a Pro X line, but you have to imagine, it would be a good investment for them. You got the X chair. I should really podcast from an X chair. You guys ever see that infomercial? It's like a full, I don't know if it's 60 seconds. It feels like 60 seconds. There's the guy with like his Bluetooth. Looks like he's looking into the future. He looks very cool.

He kind of looks like a slightly older version of what's that popular guy's name who's hooking up with Sidney Sweeney. He was in Top Gun 2 and Twisters. Dave Foley, I don't know what his name is. Kind of looks like a version of that guy, but 20 years older, mixed with a little Alan Ruck action. If you've seen the XJAR commercial, you know exactly what I'm talking about and you would agree with me in my assessment, I believe.

exactly what I'm talking about and you would agree with me in my assessment I believe. Quick side note to say tea just it still sucks. Maybe I just need to have like five bags of tea in there and not just one but I've drank almost a whole thing here from my British International School of Chicago South Loop, a Nord Angela Education School mug, and still just getting nothing. My enjoyment level from this cup of tea is like a 3 out of 10 because it's warm and it's cold outside, versus the enjoyment I get from this sparkling lime water. All natural flavors, mind you, is like a eight and a half out of ten It's just there's a big gap When God speaks he uses a Samson and of course a good friends Bob and weave

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you five seconds to type in the new one. That's just sort of the level of attention to detail we have here at the Bean Town Podcast. I guess you could argue that that is a high attention to detail, because I rarely mess it up, but more so just laziness or stubbornness. That's a better way to categorize it. From beehives to bangs, faux hawks to flat tops, and everything in between called Cuts by Q at 815-298-7200 or email cutsbyq at yahoo.com.

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All right, there we go. Welcome to the second half of the Bean Town podcast a shorter half Presumably because my tea is cold Groundhog day is tomorrow We're not doing like a full-fledged tribute to the groundhog. We certainly talk about Groundhog Day most times when it comes around. It's a classic tradition. Punxsutawney Phil, there's a lot of great lore on Punxsutawney Phil. He comes out of his hole at Gobbler's Knob, although it's unclear to me where Phil lives the rest of the year.

But tomorrow, early, very early in the morning, it's like 6am, it's kind of crazy. It's like aggressively early. I'll never forget. You know how there's some weird things, either in childhood or as an adult, doesn't matter, but just like very small minutiae that like sticks in your mind. It's like you'll never forget it. Either it's like the way something was said or how it was phrased.

The example I'm thinking here, aggressively early, when I, excuse me, when I lived in Baltimore, Mr. Berpalot over here, and then we're gonna, the groundhog is gonna lead us into our Woodland Creatures Power Ranking, the definitive list in case you're curious. I couldn't find one online, but aggressively early, I went to Salt Lake City once for a conference when I lived in Baltimore, and the conference started at 8 a.m. that day. It's like when the sessions started. So I was going, our dean was going, my boss's boss,

and my boss was going. Good old Pat Salmon, who has long since retired from the college admissions game. Chicago guy. Actually, he's a Philly guy, but he went to Northwestern for grad school at least. And to speed up this story here, he was like, because we weren't staying in the same hotel

or anything, he was like, hey, we should get breakfast, catch up, and I was like, yeah, absolutely, let's do it. And he's like, what time? I think this was an email, it was a text. It wasn't a face to face or a phone call or anything. It was written communication. He's like, Oh, what time would you like to have breakfast on Friday or whatever it was? And I was like, Oh, how about like 7 15? And he just responded back. That's aggressively early. And he said it wasn't like that was the only thing he

said. It was part of a larger message. But I remember feeling very low self-confidence. Quinn, very nervous. Quinn was very much taken aback by that. Because I was like, oh, shoot. The conference starts at 8. I figured we were going to have breakfast much before that. And that's kind of one of the many things that led me to formulate the opinion that my boss wasn't crazy invested

in that job. Which is just my own perspective. I don't know if that's true or not. I only knew the guy for two years. But email us, beanthumbpodcast.yahoo.com. Is 7 15 a.m. aggressively early for breakfast I think on a weekday it's not on a weekend it is but if you add in the caveat of you got someplace to be or you're supposed to be at 8 I don't think 7 15 is aggressively early at all I

think 6 6 is borderline. You know what I feel is aggressively early? And this isn't a pot shot. I love taking pot shots, but this isn't one. I'm thankful to my dad for doing this for us when I was a kid, middle school, high school, whatever. But when we would go to my grandfather's house on vacation in northern Wisconsin, we would try to stay in shape because you'd be out of town for four or five days.

He would take us to go swimming at the Rice Lake pool used by the high school, but it wasn't just the high school pool. And I think if I remember correctly, we'd open at six. And so we would try to get there around that time. And to me, that was aggressively early because it was dark outside. It was winter in Wisconsin, swim season. So we're talking 10 degrees, 15 degrees, completely dark,

you know, 10, 15 minute car ride just to get there. And then you're jumping into freezing cold water at six, six, six, 15 in the morning and it was meters and we were used to yards so the whole thing felt longer not that I was like busting my ass in a workout and you know one of those things it's probably not that much fun for my dad to drag a bunch of kids there either I pre-am appreciative of him doing that but gotta tell you 6 a.m. in the race like pool in the dead of winter that feels aggressively early I'm just gonna put that out there I

think the thing was too is like and it was probably just like that's when they had time for the open swim so not taking any potshots and anyone but the mental process for you as a kid it's like I'm on vacation up here like committing to a workout is one thing but waking up at 6 Pat Salmon if you're out there listening 6 a.m. in the rice Lake pool that's aggressively early not 715 at a little breakfast diner in downtown Salt Lake City because you got a conference to get to if we had a conference in Rice Lake at 730 I would not be bitching and moaning as much about the 6 a.m. start time but there were no conferences. I never went to a conference in Wisconsin. You got anything on that, Maple? Never seen Maple swim before. She's gone to some baths. Maybe if we got

you some bath toys, would you like baths better? She's kind of come around to them. She doesn't enjoy them. She just sort of resigned to the experience at this stage. She's had maybe three or four baths now. Once a month on average. But what if, you know, when I was a kid we had we had great bath toys. So we'd have this big, we had this big plastic tub of toys that weren't, you know, exclusively for bath time, but they oftentimes made an appearance. There was a great orca, a killer whale, a T-Rex. That was my favorite. The green T-Rex with like the yellow belly. These are just cheap plastic toys, but they probably exist somewhere at my parents house.

I don't know. Maple, you want some... See, most of her toys are like stuffed animals. So you don't really want to get those wet. We'll get you a plastic T-Rex or a orca or something and that'll... You'll like bath time better. Maybe a Garfield. You squeeze his tummy and Chris Pratt says something. Or Ving Rhames. Hasn't been Garfield yet. Don't count him out. All right, Groundhog Day, back to it.

That got me thinking about woodland creatures. I love that phrase. When I hear woodland creatures, it makes me think whimsical fantasy, which is how I like to live my creatures. It makes me think whimsical fantasy Which is how I like to live my life It makes me think of Snow White right she's singing in the you know all the creatures are singing with her They're harmonizing backing group even Cinderella's got some some mice right they sew her clothes It's pretty cool. I don't know how they do that without thumbs Rachel is showing me an AI rendering of a corgi cooking

dumplings last night. And there were a couple moments, if you're trying to spread out your dough, you don't really need thumbs for that. But he was plopping them into a pot of boiling water with one hand, with one paw. And I was like, how do you do that without thumbs I didn't I didn't buy it for one second not real AI not caught up yet

would uh I was gonna go into a whole tangent on Rogue One but that's actually appropriate because I had an idea for something involving Rogue One, a Star Wars story that we'll probably talk about next week, another mini power ranking. But let's get to it, our power ranking of woodland creatures here. And this is just for shits and giggles, there's not a lot of deeper meaning. And then we'll finish up with a trivia question, which is pretty like, whenever more, not easier, but like very straightforward, there's not really going to be critical thinking that goes into it type questions. Maybe reminiscing would be good. If you have been to the city that we'll talk about in a second here. But these, I want to mention these rankings are just based off of personal vibes. If Maple over here was making her rankings based off of how delicious these wooden creatures might be, it might be a whole separate story. But you know,

she didn't have thumbs so she couldn't really write it down. Number 10, actually scratch that because I mentioned I would do this. Honorable mention, the groundhog, which is a great name when you when you really break it apart a hog like Timon and Pumbaa, that's a warthog Groundhog and warthog very different creatures. You wouldn't necessarily consider them to be both part of the hog Family or what is that genus hog genus? Family class order How does that go

No, I missed one Kingdom there it is Kingdom phylum class order Kingdom, there it is. Kingdom phylum, class, order, family genus species. There you go. Eighth grade biology showing up in the clutch here in the Bean Tom podcast. But a groundhog and a warthog and just a regular hog, which I would pick a pig, I guess,

is synonymous with a regular standard American hog Do they have hogs in other countries like regular pigs? We don't really think about that you think about warthog you think Africa groundhog you think, Pennsylvania Are there other hogs out there? We're not thinking of but honorable mention for the groundhog which is kind of like a I Don't know. It's like a marmot, which didn't make the list. If you asked me to describe what a marmot was, I'd probably just say, I don't know, just go look at a groundhog and like change one thing. Er, and that's a marmot. Number ten, we got a field mouse. Now there's a bunch of mice I could have chosen from here. He could have Cinderella's, you know, Taylor, Taylor's to the stars mice

But I thought a field mouse kind of nice now you say well, can you have a woodland creature? Be a field mouse if it's in the field that's not in the woodlands, but I sort of feel like I'm willing to take some liberties It's only number 10. Okay, but they're pretty cute They're better than like the the city mice urban mice right field mouse is number 10 number nine i figured i had to have one bird in here and i thought you want something with striking colors like a blue bird now blue birds are kind of nice blue jays have a very nasty reputation among the uh the blue genus. But I could have, you know, I could have done a lark, could have done a finch,

a common warbler. But I decided just a bluebird feels very pleasant. Like, I'm pretty sure Snow White was singing with some bluebirds. I have to go back and check it out. Uh, number eight, a fox, right? Maple, you kind of look like a fox. Fox is a good woodland creature. Fox and the hound. The fox's name is Todd, which is kind of weird. And there's... What? Oh, Rachel just came home. Oh, your hair. It's pretty cool. Science experiment. There is also, there's another animated film from like the 70s. It's these foxes, vices. And I don't really remember what happens. There's some geese that might be drunk. You ever watch this movie? You know what I'm talking about?

drunk. You ever watch this movie? You know what I'm talking about? It's like a couple, it's an animated movie about foxes and I think the female is called, no, no, it's like a knockoff. The female is called like Vixi or something like that. There's some geese involved. I don't really remember who the bad guy is in that movie. We'll circle back to this. Actually, I can't let this go. We are going to Google animated movie about foxes. I think they get smoked out at one point.

Yeah Not Fantastic Mr. Fox Not Fox and the Hound, not Fox and the Hound 2. We're going to the Wikipedia page, animated films about foxes. Not Zootopia, I saw that by myself at spring break. Not Charlotte's Web. The Fox Hunt. No, those from the 30s. That wouldn't be right. Foxy by Proxy. I don't know what that is. I'd like to watch it. I think we can all agree none of these are going to hold up to vengeance most foul, but nevertheless. Oh, there it is. It's called the Little Fox. Nevertheless. Oh, there it is. It's called The Little Fox. Yeah, it's a, oh, I gotta pull this up on YouTube later. The Little Fox. 1941, that can't be, 1981. It's a Hungarian

animated film produced by Pannonia Film Studio based on the novel Vuk by Istvan Fekete. Released December of 1981. So we must have had the dubbed version, kind of like how Scamper is Russian. Is that right? He's like Japanese or something. But this is Hungarian. It made 17.2 million Hungarian currencies at the box office. Budapest ate it up. A computer animated sequel of Fox's Tale, T.A.L.E., was released in 2008 to negative reception. Disappointing. All right.

We got to move past this. But yeah, if you want a classic VHS pick, the little fox. Vic is the name, that's right, V-I-C like the shield. Vic is the name of the main character, his uncle Carrick. And his wife is, oh it's Foxy there it is number six a squirrel this was hard because they're so common they're all over the place it's tough to rank those right they're so synonymous with the woodlands we've got some black squirrels over here by the by the the river And when we would go, we already mentioned

Northern Wisconsin once on the program today in a swimming pool capacity. Well, we would go up to Northern Wisconsin and I never did this because I don't particularly like shooting, but sometimes you would slap a red squirrel with a 22 off the deck. And I don't really just, I'm not, I don't imbibe myself in hunting culture at all and I don't judge those who do but the whole concept of just like walking out onto your deck taking a pot shot, there it is, and just a tiny little woodland creature just minding his own business looking for acorns and bam, he's dead don't know not my thing not my thing not my cup of tea unlike this great cup of tea I had earlier on the program number five is a

hedgehog I don't really know the hedgehogs natural habitat most of the times when you think about hedgehogs they're either from the pet store or in a Sonic and Knuckles capacity. We had a neighbor growing up who had a hedgehog that was pretty cool. I like how they can kind of curl up into a little ball and just hang out. They're like a small porcupine. Porcupine spoiler alerts did not make the list but we just were talking about hogs completely forgot about the hedgehog so if we're keeping a running tally we've got that the regular just plain old hog the pinkish hue the groundhog the warthog and the hedgehog there's got to be other hogs out there

what do these hogs have in common it It's like when I picture them all next to each other, what is the hoggish feature? Is it something with the nose? Like the nose has gotta be pointed up, is that what makes a hog a hog? It's actually a pretty good guess now that I think about it. I think hedgehogs have that, but like very small amount.

Regular hogs, obviously, warthogs obviously. Ground hogs I think of more like a normal nose so I don't know. I don't know where this scientific theory is going. Number four we got a rabbit. What I like about rabbits you get a lot of different types of rabbits. We had a black rabbit growing up. Some of those like arctic turn or arctic hairs they got big ol' floppy ears, huge feet, like two meters long. You got that cool white rabbit from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, or the one that murders everyone in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You got Bugs Bunny, Lola Bunny. You got rabbits that cover a lot of bases. Tiny little bunnies right

maple? That's number four on our woodland creatures list. Bambi's got a rabbit friend thumper. Oh that's right that's what we call maple when she wakes up at 2am. Nightmare is about DEI initiatives thumping the floor. She's catching we were talking about it earlier Got some laughs from the peanut gallery over here Number three one of my personal favorites not not the singing kind more just the ones that keep to themselves chipmunks They're kind of like squirrels, but they seem just they're just kind of doing their own thing you know. I love a little chipmunk and just when they when they fit the acorns into their cheeks they got good natural patternation of colors on their fur and one time when I was in Colorado I I had pneumonia and was not feeling well, but I took a great picture

of a close-up shot of a chipmunk on a hike. And that was the highlight of my trip. That and reading my book about famous dog rescues. Number two, maybe a controversial pick. You might not think this is a woodland creature, but I'm throwing them in here. A bear like Jeremy Allen White or someone from Boys Town here in Chicago. Famous bear. Well, I got to tell this story real quick. Wheel of Fortune, Wednesday night.

I think it was Wednesday. It was the prize puzzle and it was living things. So you got to start kind of making the connections. You know, what's an animal that could be closely associated with a place they would send a person? You got warthog Africa, groundhog Pennsylvania. And you might laugh at Pennsylvania, but this week alone on Wheel of Fortune, we have seen prize puzzle trips to Virginia, Mississippi River cruise, which apparently costs $15,000. I don't know what other shitty place Atlantic City we've seen recently. Georgia. Someone had to go to Georgia? Yeah. Just... What I read online, the common thinking was that with Pat Sajak retiring, they're off the hook with his salary, so that's going to free up, you know, Sony's going to have some more money for better trips. But

it's been very lackluster, to put it lightly. But I just think a bear, you know, a bear could be a nice wooden creature. Now it's gotta be like a black bear, maybe potential grizzly, certainly not an Arctic or a polar bear, right? There's no woodlands up there, it's all permafrost. But I would, you know,

or if you have some smaller bears like pandas, now that's Chinese woodlands, we haven't really gone Eastern hemisphere on this. I don't know what kind of hogs they have. You got warthogs, but that's sub-Saharan Africa. I don't know, is there an Asian hog that we're not aware of? They got, you know, musk oxes, but that's more the ox family, less the hog family. The bears come in at number two, and then my personal favorite, number one, because how many animals out there are actually like, they have an occupation. I mean, bears, there's actually that famous

Polish bear who fought in World War II, Wołczak, I think his name was. So some individuals have occupations or there's a lot of primate actors like What is the what is the name of the Fred J Muggs J Fred Muggs the host of the today show? Still alive. He's like 80 years old so some or capuchin monkeys like the one from Pirates of the Caribbean some specific animals have Jobs, but it's very rare for an entire species to be all in on the occupation that's why the beaver comes in at number one on our list of woodland creatures. Dude they just go to work they get their little blueprints they roll

them out chop down some trees chop those trees into smaller trees and build a big ass dam and then they just live in there How many animals build cool houses like that? I think when I saw the little Fox, you know Vic and Foxy They like hang out down in a hole. They get smoked out eventually But they didn't really build it. They just kind of it. They just kind of ambled upon it Same with bears. I don't think they're really like building dens. You think they just kind of find a good spot, but beavers say, no, no, no, oak on treyer.

Let me build my home. They get, you know, fresh running water. Are there saltwater beavers? That'd be kind of cool. I don't know where they would get their water from. Sucking on wood, I guess. But that's the rankings. Number 10, or honorable mention, groundhog,

and the other hogs we mentioned. Number 10, field mouse. Number nine, bluebird. Number eight, fox. Seven, vole. Oh, we didn't even, we skipped seven. That's embarrassing. Seven is a vole, which is like a mole, but a vole.

V-O-L-E, he's like a tiny little field mouse or a hamster but chunkier I can't believe we skipped an entire one on the list. That's embarrassing Apologies to all the voles out there six squirrel five hedgehog four rabbit three chipmunk two bear and one beaver Went to church growing up with a couple last named Beaver, Brad, and I don't know, whatever her name was. Amy, I think she sang for worship service. Brad was in charge of games for our Awana program on Wednesday night. Never met another Beaver in my life. Just

Brad and Amy. Our trivia question of the week, I was watching an episode of Detroiters this morning and there was a passing shot of the people mover and this got me thinking and I promised you earlier, it's just a very simple basic question. Not a lot of critical thinking going into this one. So if you don't know, the PeopleMover is Detroit's elevated train, and it really just runs in a big circle around the downtown area, and I'm sure they have a rapid bus system. They have to. But in terms of their train, this is what they have, the PeopleMover. It's kind of been beleaguered over the years for This is what they have the people mover. It's kind of been beleaguered over the years for not serving much of a purpose

It's got 13 stops more or less. Imagine if the Chicago loop was just That was the train It kind of be like well, what are we doing here? Chicago loops got eight stops people movers got 13 So it covers a little bit more space. I think but my question to you very simply which direction So it covers a little bit more space, I think. But my question to you very simply, which direction does the people mover move in? Because it's just one direction. It's not like you got two different sets of tracks. It's just one set just goes around and around and around.

So which direction does the people mover of Detroit move in? If there's any natives out there, they could probably figure this one out. Maybe a better question would be, you know, break down all the Chicago L lines and tell me which direction they move around the loop. Brown line goes counterclockwise. Purple goes clockwise. Orange goes... what does the orange go? Orange goes clockwise. Pink goes clockwise. Green doesn't do a full loop. It only does a half, so it goes both ways. I think that covers all of them. It's really brown. That's the tricky one The answer to the actual trivia question the people mover goes counterclockwise So there you go. You learned something

That's what I had for you today. Thanks for bearing with us for a full hour of coin David furnace presents The Bean Town podcast happy Groundhog Day to everyone who celebrates don't forget to get there early And uh, maybe hey maybe Aggressively early Why don't you swim? Here's the plan 6 a.m. Swim some laps 6 30 gobbler's knob winter prediction 7 15 get breakfast

With your boss or don't because we didn't we did but it was at some other point Which I think was aggressively late, but I can't recall I got sick from the altitude and then I went to my hotel room and watched The judge Kavanaugh Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings another great figure from the first term that'll put a bow on it guys My name is Quinn David furnace. This is my show Quinn David French presents the bean Tom podcast. Thank you for tuning in Happy Groundhog Day. Happy hog day to everyone. Stay safe. Stay sane check in on you next time. Bye I'm going to sing a song. so so so Thank you.