Doughboys - Chuck E. Cheese's with Erin McGathy

Episode Date: April 14, 2016

The 'boys evaluate kid friendly pizza parlor and video arcade Chuck E. Cheese's, a childhood favorite of guest Erin McGathy (This Feels Terrible). And, iced tea is in the spotlight in another Drank or Stank.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The ancient Chinese stone-flipping board game Go, marketed in the US under the name Othello, has a strategic depth that some say rivals chess. And like chess, a dominant move has a name, not Czech, but Atari. And so an American computer engineer and Go aficionado named Nolan Bushnell came to choose that name for his burgeoning video game company, who had a signature black-and-white game of his own, Pong. Bushnell's crude table tennis simulation was the first true video game blockbuster and is credited for initiating the electronic gaming craze.

After Zatari 2600 took America by storm, Bushnell moved on to another business venture, reimagining the dank, grungy video arcade into a brightly lit, child-friendly pizza parlor, complete with games, prizes, a ball pit, and an animatronic stage show. The concept was a hit in the early 80s, the later endured a series of bankruptcies, finding it salvation in a buyout and subsequent merger from rival Showbiz Pizza. Over the decades, the pizzeria's rodent mascot has evolved from a playful happy mouse into a skateboarding guitar-wailing CGI creation voiced by the lead singer from Bowling for Soup.

And now with 500 locations across North America, it remains a mecca for kids' birthdays and youth sports celebrations. As its famous slogan says, it's where a kid can be a kid. But what about us grown-ups? This Week on Doughboys, Chuck E. Cheese's. Welcome to Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants. I'm Nick Weigar, alongside my co-host, The Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell. How you doing, Mitch?

I'm doing well. Uh, howdy-how. Ugh. Sorry, there was still Chuck E. Cheese stuck in my throat. To all of, uh, Spoon Nation, I got a little drop for ya. Oh, here we go. Taking a couple seconds here and we're getting feedback from it. There we go.

Fuck. Dave Thomas. Mike, maybe we won't have lunch first. Howdy-how. Howdy-how. What is that special? You wanna hug it out? No, not really.

Let's hug it out, bitch. Some guys like old balls. I mean, they're all different. And you gotta feel them and you try to go out and you try to use the ones that you like the best. Did he quote the Jackie Kennedy ever said about this? She said, they killed my husband. They.

She didn't say he killed my husband. She was plural. Spoon Man. All right. Jesus Christ. You didn't like that one? That's from Thomas McIntyre. Thomas McIntyre.

At Hella Screens. Thanks, Thomas. I liked it. Yeah, great. About the duration of the feature film Braveheart, but a lot of good, a lot of good little clips in there. You thought that was as long as Braveheart? It felt as long.

Braveheart is two and a half hours. Really? I think it's more like, isn't it more like three? It's close. That's what I'm saying. It's a lengthy movie. It's at least two and a half hours, right? I was saying it felt interminable.

Man, I love Braveheart. Braveheart's good. I shouldn't use Braveheart because it's a long movie, but it feels epic, but it doesn't like slow down. Yeah. It's not like a sluggish slog. What's a better slog? I don't know.

Gettysburg? Gettysburg. What's that Lars von Trier movie that's like three hours long? I don't know. I think it's gotten to Cole Kidman, whatever. Who cares? Mitch, how are you doing? Well, you know, I'm doing well.

Yeah. Yeah. I had to... This is one of those ones where I hot off the presses. I just ate at the restaurant. Immediate impressions. Immediate impressions. Came straight there.

No time to sleep on what we did and think about how we weirded out hundreds of families. You texted me 40 minutes before we were supposed to begin recording, saying that you were on the way to the restaurant. That's right. So, we're starting a little late, but I think we've got a very fresh evaluation from you and I think that'll prove valuable. Okay, good. I'm glad that you got the part out that I'm late and I fucked up the podcast.

So yeah, fuck you. Thanks for telling everybody I'm late again. Well, you may be late, but our guest is right on time. She in fact beat me here and we are thrilled to have her. She's the host of the podcast, This Feels Terrible, which is right here on Feral Audio. Erin McGathey. Hi, Erin. Hi.

How's it going? Welcome to the show. I'm so happy to be on the show. Oh, boy. What a nice thing to say. I'm very nervous. Don't be nervous. Nervous.

I took a long time figuring out what I was going to wear. For me, Nick and Dust, there's a photo at the end. That's very important. We're taking a little photo. Where you can see us get fatter each week. I genuinely wanted to, I was so excited about being on this podcast because I do listen to this podcast that I wanted to, and I'm very excited and not nervous, but had a very profound experience at Chuck E. T.'s and I want to really be able to express that.

I was just at the castle where they shot Braveheart. Really? Yeah. Because you moved to Ireland recently. Yeah. All right. So what has this transition been like, life-wise, we're certainly interested in, but I think also a lot of our listeners are going to be interested in what the transition has been

like, food-wise. Ah, it's been, I mean Dublin is, I live in Dublin, that is the capital of Ireland. I don't want to assume that everybody knows what Dublin is, but Dublin is a pretty international city, so the food transition hasn't really been that dramatic. Gotcha. Yeah. And I guess the biggest difference is that I kind of excuse away eating bad food because I'm like, well, I don't know where to go.

So I'll have to have fries again, that they call them chips over there. And let me see if I'm right here, because I said this on an earlier podcast, on an early episode of Doughboys. They eat toasties a lot, right? To, oh. Like the sandwiches that are like ham and cheese, oh no, now I look like these. Yeah, they're called toasties. Like, yeah, it's grilled cheese.

Yeah, grilled cheese and they have like tomato and ham in them sometimes or something. They call them toasties? Yeah, they call them toasties. I wonder if that's more like a UK thing, but they definitely do call them toasties. Yeah. I have seen that, that's true. And I was saying that it seems like you can, like people go to the bar for lunch a lot, like it's very common to go to the bar.

Yes, okay, they drink a lot. Yeah. You're the one to say it. I didn't mean like that, but you know, like a common place to go for lunch is to the bar, right? Or to go to a pub and get lunch. I mean, I think it's weird to admit that you hate Irish people so early on. No.

But I mean, it's totally fine. I am all Irish. I went to Ireland. I've been to Dublin. I love Dublin. I don't. Why are you wearing that Thomas Cromwell shirt? Give Mitch a little credit.

The Irish are one of the few ethnicities he doesn't hate. Oh my God. Jesus Christ. But yeah, people do go to the pub for lunch because they serve food there. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like, you know, if you or I were to get lunch in some made up scenario where we'd want to spend lunch together, we wouldn't go to a pub.

We'd go, you know, you go somewhere else. I mean, I feel like you get that a little bit more on the East Coast, but not really. I actually went to, I went to, I had a day off this week and I went to an Irish pub. It's like an American Irish pub for lunch. And it was like very sad. It was just a lot of like, oh, this guy is 50 and drunk at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday. You were at Sunny McLean. Yeah.

Sunny McLean. It's your old haunt. I don't know if it's just because of the crowd that I'm hanging out with over there, but I haven't actually gone to a pub for lunch, though I know that people do go to pubs for lunch. Yeah. Yeah. I've been going to a lot of really like American barbecue places because that's a thing that's

happening in Dublin. Oh, interesting. Oh, wow. Yeah. And like organic farm to table things. What is there, what is the Irish interpretation of American barbecue? Well, there's a, there's a place called Pit Brothers in Dublin that has like a, I avoided it for a while because there's this giant window and on the window and huge like foot

long, three foot long, I've forgotten our system measurement already, meter long letters. Oh, it says, I'm so international, the, it says sex and then below, it's written, which is lame. And then below it, it says, no, that we have your attention, won't you come in for some barbecue? And I just was always like, I can't, is that a college dorm? But I went in there and it's, it's good. I mean, they're very, it's very hip and it's, it's kind of adorable because the people who

work there are very snobby about barbecue. Yeah. But it's not like, it's, it is, it's like sweeter. It doesn't taste like American barbecue, but they're very, they're very proud of their authenticity. So I kind of just like, okay, I think the same way that if they were over here and they go to like an American Irish pub, they're like, oh, that's great. Yeah.

Super Irish. There's some mutual humoring going on. Sex doesn't make me want to, like, like it's like, those are very different things. Especially barbecue. I can't think of like a, there's not, there's not really less sexy food than a big old plate of barbecue. Yeah. Is it, I don't know, sauces?

I don't want to be gross. Were they just trying to be obnoxious, like Americans or something? Is that, was that a part of it? I mean. I mean, yeah. I mean, maybe, maybe that's it. I feel like even in a college dorm, that is the dorkiest shit I've ever heard. That's bad.

It's like a 1987 joke, I feel like. It's been around for a while. I did something so, so embarrassing that I haven't thought of in a really long time. But like when I went to college, I was a virgin, but I ironed on pictures. Like they were laughing. No, no, no, I'm saying. A lot of people are. Where does that laugh come from?

I ironed on pictures of porn from nerve.com. Do you remember nerve.com? Oh yeah. There is this set of pictures that was a couple having sex in a bathtub and I, I don't know, I was trying to be edgy and I printed them out on my ancient printer and ironed them on my bread, on my bedspread. Wow. And then when people came in, there was just like porn all over my bedspread and I was

a virgin. But I wasn't giving off that impression. I get that. I think that's a lot of, that's a lot of college kids. That's like a cool college kid move though. That's like kind of like an edgy sort of, I don't live with my parents anymore. I'm going to take ownership of this a little bit. That's a, I would have been 100% activated by you if I, if I had known you.

But there's a lot of kids that go to college virgins and who are about to graduate virgins and so on and so forth. And yeah, anyways, I once had a, there was a time I was, God, this is horrible. I shouldn't, but this is, this is like similarly embarrassing in a different, in a grosser way. So I, like my sheets had been, like my sheets were dirty. I just had never washed them and I was like, ah, fuck, I don't have to do with these. And a neighbor offered to like loan me her sheets. She was like, well, you know, I got an extra set of sheets.

If you want some sheets, you don't want to launder them or whatever. I don't know why I didn't just want launder them. I think it was so lazy and inept. It just wasn't, it just wasn't an option for me. So I used her sheets and then like a weekend using her sheets, I had like a very voluminous wet dream. Oh my fucking God. And it was like, and then conti, and then just like, it was like, I didn't know how to handle it. So I used the sheets for like another week and then I think I just took them off the bed and handed them back to her.

Oh my God. The word voluminous just makes you think of flowing. That is fucking nasty. It was really gross. So you just gave her back these soiled sheets? I guess so. What? It's insane.

Also, what was her motivation behind? She probably liked me or something. I don't know. Why do people do things for people? You fucked up bad. You fucked up really bad. Yeah. That was a goblin.

So, all right, so here's a question. It's outside of Ireland. So I feel like, I don't know if you consider yourself a relationship expert, but you're certainly someone who like thinks about relationships and talks about relationships and dating as a topic you've explored a lot. How dare you? But I'm wondering like, okay, how does that pertain to, let me see if I boil this down. Where would you say, where would you rank the date foods? If I'm taking someone out and I'm saying like, okay, this is someone I want to impress and maybe we're talking first date, maybe we're talking a little bit further along. Maybe the subject of a particularly voluminous question.

Interesting. Well, I've been thinking a lot lately about how turned off I am by quote, unquote, like romantic restaurants that have like the white tablecloth and everyone in there is really embarrassed and weird. I just were embarrassed. That's like just the feeling of people on a first date and like the sense that the guy has tried to, is trying to impress this woman and he might not have enough money to cover the bill and he's just sweating what he's ordering and what he's ordering. I'm speaking about it like a particular experience where I went to the city of Limerick a couple of weeks ago and went into what was supposed to be like the best restaurant, like going just by Yelp standards. And I went in and I was like, oh, this is just supposed to be like cool date restaurant. And there were literally three dates and three really young guys and everyone just seemed really nervous and no one was talking. So I think that the, I think like good date restaurants and good date food is maybe a little more relaxed.

Yeah. Top like I think steak is kind of gross. Yeah. I always go Italian if I'm taking someone out. That's the wrong. That's wrong. That's wrong. I always do.

Well, I do terribly. But you just got dumped on. I'm sorry. I just told you your whole strategy was bullshit. You know what she's right. I do so many podcasts. I do so many podcasts. But I've been binge listening to your podcast.

So it's a trippy feeling. I'm trying to not, when I'm picturing is just, I'm just reminding myself like you're in it. It's happening. You're inside your own mind. I think Italian's good. I don't think there's anything really bad. I think it's bad if you're nervous. I think expensive is bad.

Yeah. Because I think that puts a weird pressure that doesn't need to be there. I guess unless you're trying to impress someone, you're going to pick up the whole bill. But even that is kind of showy, right? Then there's pressure on the person who didn't pay for the bill to cause a voluminous. You know, it sounds like blooming. It's almost disgusting. Yeah.

It was a gross word for a gross, gross story. I wonder what happened to that girl. She bloomed. Ugh, ugh, Jesus. Ugh, ugh. I think it's just dry heaving. This is so sexual and the, the restaurant is Chuck E. Cheese. Which makes sense.

It's funny that Weigar's most sexual episode is the Chuck E. Cheese episode. Which we'll get into. Yeah. Well, let's, I mean, like. I mean, I'm saying we'll get into how you were at Chuck E. Cheese and so on. It really looked like the biggest creep on earth. Well, speak for yourself. The, yeah, so let's talk about, cause I want to get to Chuck E. Cheese in one second.

But like, as far as where you grew up and the chains that you came to know as a kid and that you continue to patronize as an adult, like what is that spectrum? Well, I grew up in a military family. So it wasn't until I was nine years old that I was living in the United States in a cognizant way. Gotcha. And where were you before then? Italy. Okay.

I'm very international. And I was born in Japan. So you should be able, I expected a gasp. Sorry. Wow. Well, we're just constantly gasping on this show for need of air. Yeah. So I had the, when I, when we lived in Italy, we had Armed Forces Radio and Television,

which was like a selection of American shows. And like, I mean, they're like fast food restaurants are referenced all the time in sitcoms and everything else. So I thought, I didn't know that McDonald's was real. Oh, wow. And, or like, I just didn't even think about it. I remember when I saw it for the first time in the United States, I was like, whoa, like, that's so cool. Like it was a movie set.

It was like seeing a crusty burger. Right. Exactly. And it was the same thing with Chuck E. Cheese. And when we moved to the United States, we lived in Orlando, and there was a place in Orlando that was like Chuck E. Cheese, but it was called Starbucks. Like not the coffee chain, but it was the same exact thing. And it was like kind of space themed.

And the guy that was my memory of it, do you remember the Burger King? It was his name. Wheels. Yes. Burger King kids club. Yeah. The hot guy in the wheelchair. Wheels.

Yeah. He... He was hot. He was. I had such a big crush on him. I once dated a guy because he had a diabetic pump. Wait, solely because of that? I think I'd have been the only factor.

Well, he was such a mean guy, and his aspiration was to, and if he's listening, that's fine. His aspiration was to become a manager. And yeah. Of what? Anything? No of like comedy groups. I met him like, he was like UCB adjacent. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Maybe his pump wasn't working. Maybe that's why he was being mean. I don't know how it works with diabetics. Insulin is really just a mood thing. Yeah, he was just like, he was just very, he was very arrogant, and we were intimate. Did you do stuff with the pump? Huh?

Did you guys do stuff? What? That's not that weird of a question. You talked about your wet dream. I said, did you do stuff with the pump? Just do stuff. No, but he, no, we did not do stuff with the pump. The pump was never mentioned, but it was like installed on his side, but he was such an arrogant guy,

but he was very, he was very hot, and we had, we had a, we had a, we had a night together, and I, and I had thought to myself like, well, like this won't happen again. Like there's no future here, but he, when he took off his clothes, it was a handsome man. But then he had a little pump, and I was like, oh, that's why he's so mean, because like he's insecure about like this. He's a little vulnerable. Yeah. Yeah.

So he was like your wheels kind of in some way. He was my wheels. That's very nice. Yeah. I also, I had a crush on someone in Ireland for a hot sack because he had a stutter. They call him a stammer. Yeah. If that person's listening, now he knows.

Seems like you're, you're into people with a lot of flaws. I was going to say. Which might be a good candidate. I was going to say too bad a, more women are into guys with horrible flaws. Be cleaning up constantly. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, yeah, no, I just, I like, I like, I like the juxtaposition of vulnerability along

with someone's ability to, to come voluminous. I cannot, I will not forget that. Well, I can do, I mean, I have the flaw pot down. The other part I can't really do. You just turned into human Boston and went to the flaw pot. Yeah. So, so I, so we would go to, we went to Starbucks and I thought that was, that was, I didn't think Chuck E. Cheese was real.

Yeah. I remember thinking like, oh, like what if Chuck E. Cheese was like a real place? Cause Starbucks is okay, but wow, that looks really cool. And Starbucks had like a money machine and we practiced for the money machine before our birthdays. Was this, was this like one of those things where you try to catch all the money that's falling at you? Yeah.

Okay. But it's like tickets and stuff. And like one of my favorite memories from that time is like standing around with my friends in the backyard and like throwing tissues up in the air and like being like, no, no, my strategy is going to be all hands down, like spread out your body and then you collect, you collect the tickets when they collect like under your legs and like the different, and then it just like failing completely. But then when we moved to, when my family moved to California, then I went to a Chuck

E. Cheese and my memory of it was that it was incredible. Yeah. And the best thing ever. And it also makes you feel like an adult because you're gambling. Yeah. Yeah. That's a cool side to it. There is a little bit of a, you're trying to get those tickets.

There's in your, in your, you're spending money, but it might be worth it in the end. Yeah. Like how do you provide for your family with the toys that you earn? Cause we, like, and I would go to Chuck E. Cheese as a kid, but the closest adjacent pizza time location in Lakewood, California was a showbiz pizza, which is basically Chuck E. Cheese, but it had a gorilla instead of a mouse. And it was a sort of- Oh, a gorilla.

Yeah. I thought you said a gorilla. Like that was your word for like backyard drill. A gorilla. A great ape. And he had, he was dressed up like a little circus man. Oh, a great ape. Okay.

Yeah. And he would play like a little, I think, I don't remember what fucking instrument he played, but he had his whole band and that was the whole thing he went for. But it was fundamentally the same thing. And then those two companies later merged, I learned. We had bonkers on the East Coast. I remember there was a bonkers. I think there was another one too, but-

But did you call it bonkers? We definitely called it bonkers. And I definitely had a birthday party there at one point. I remember it being way more magical. We'll get into our experiences. But I remember it being way, way more magical than what I saw today. Bonkers- And fancy, right?

It was really big and way more elaborate. I mean, this is through the eyes of a child. So I don't know what it was. Maybe things have always been shitty. It's that thing that you learn as an adult. Oh, it's just kind of shitty. Everything's bad, but your kid brain didn't understand it. Yeah.

I don't know. I can't tell. I mean, bonkers shut down because a girl got her hair. This is a true story. I feel like with all these places, there's always stories of children getting hurt or they're haunted or something. I feel like it's like one of the two. But at bonkers, there was this one ride that was an indoor roller coaster thing

that just went in circles, but it went pretty fast. And it was a pretty quick ride for a thing that's indoors and didn't seem safe. That seems like a horrible idea. And a girl got her ponytail caught and I think she got scalped or whatever. Jesus Christ. Yeah, bonkers. I think that goes. Scalped or whatever.

I mean, I think she was scalped. You know what? I'm sure that there's going to be people in Boston area who remember that. If you know this bonker story, just tweet at us. Hashtag bonkers scalping. Bonkers scalping. Did bonkers have a mascot? There was like a big clown, I think, with it, but I don't remember.

You know what? They didn't do like the character thing as much. And I got to say Chuck E. Cheese, when you think of famous mice, I was saying this. Chuck E. Cheese is top five famous mice, right? I mean, he's up there. Well, who do you have? You've got Mickey Mouse number one for sure. Who else?

I don't know. I guess Mighty Mouse in there. Mighty Mouse, Speedy Gonzalez. Speedy Gonzalez is a good one. And then like Jerry, I guess, right? Oh, Jerry from Tom and Jerry. That's a good one. Yeah.

Danger Mouse, some would say. No, it's maybe a different generation. Chuck E. Cheese probably beats him out, right? I don't know anything about his personality, though. Yeah. What is his... Oh, that's a huge thing I was thinking of. Yeah, what does Chuck E. Cheese stand for?

Well, he's sort of just a... He's just got a vest and a hat. That's like basically his personality. Yeah. And then now they've revamped him a little bit. Now he's like a small... You know what? Stuart Little, I would say.

Might be in that conversation. Ralph of the motorcycle. Yes. Yeah, that's a good one. So maybe he doesn't even make top five mice, right? He's probably... He might be top ten. He's a pretty famous mouse.

I mean, we know nothing about him. Yeah, we don't really know what his personality is. I guess he's in a band, yeah, and... At one point, he was a top five mouse. I'm trying to think. Were there like mice in Dumbo or something? I feel like we're missing mice. Well, the mice in Cinderella.

Mice in Cinderella, yeah. Those are pretty famous. Yeah. Jackie Cheese was meant something at one point, didn't he? It's definitely like a named mouse that means something. I don't know. He seems... He's just totally personality-less.

I had a mouse. Yeah. You had a pet mouse? Yeah. If you heard of him, if he was one of the famous... His name was Gogam. Gogam. That's a great name.

Yeah. Wait, why Gogam? Because I was into Impressionist art. Oh, wow. A very international child. Oh, man. That's awesome. In fifth grade, I took care of the class mouse and his name was Snowball.

A little white mouse. Was it a mouse or a hamster? Whatever. I'll just say it's a mouse for this story because who gives a shit? Either way, it'd end up in your digestive tract. Yes, that's right. I'm a lot like a snake, Wagner. I eat mice whole and swallow them.

Is it Richard Gere who's meant to have had sex with a hamster? Yes. It's a weird rumor, too. Yeah. It was a gerbil, I think, that came up, we supposedly put up his ass. It's so Richard Gere, and it's so specific that it just got circulated via oral tradition, and it's just like a part of American folklore. I'll say.

Why am I being so gross? Because you said voluminous. Yeah, it got body real quickly. I feel like Richard Gere still has to come forward on this because I've never heard him deny it, either. There should be a 30 for 30 on this because it's something that everyone's heard. Yeah. Would you deny it?

Because it's so absurd that anyone with half a brain would be like, oh. I would try it if I was accused of it. If I was accused of it, I'd try it. So this mouse snowball brought it home for the holiday break. People got to take the class pet home or whatever. And I remember it, we went on vacation, my family went on vacation, and we came back, and I had left like a CVS bag too close to the cage, and snowball pulled it in and ate into it, and then I came out and I was like, oh no, snowball's dead, but he was in the bag.

He lived. He lived. He had ate, and he just was sitting in the bag, and I was like, oh, thank God, he didn't die. I think it must have had happened close to then. Yeah. Then. It does seem like he kind of went insane though if he was just sitting in the bag. He found him and he was just rocking back and forth inside the bag.

Well, then I took him back, and I think two weeks later we went home for the weekend, and then there were like a string of like three snow days, and we came back in the class, and there was like this white mouse, and we came back, and it was black, and the janitors had like turned the heat up. It's like one of those old schools, Walliston Elementary School, like one of those like, they have what's it called, the thermostat, like the radiators. The radiators. It had like old radiators, and they had turned it way up, so like the pipes didn't explode,

and he pretty much like looked like he cooked to death. Oh my God. He was like black, because he was near the radiator. He was like a black little ball, and he was dead, and then all the fish had died from like the heat, and like, yeah, all the pets in the classroom died. That's so terrible. When we came back, yeah. What a great analogy for what I think happened to the Chuck E. Cheese chain.

Well, let's talk about it a little bit, because I mean, certainly we all have memories of Chuck E. Cheese as kids, or it's associated knockoffs. But we all went recently, independently, to Chuck E. Cheese, and I opener, I feel like. Definitely like just a very, very different experience going as childless adults. None of us went with children, correct? No. Going as adult sans children. It's like a very different experience from going as a little kid.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, you could say that. There was a sign with a gun by the door that said, do not bring firearms. Yeah. Yeah. We noticed on the Yelp review for the one we went to in Carson, California, that someone had left a one-star Yelp review just remarking on there having been a shooting.

And there was also like a no-firearms war shoot somewhere. There's a no-firearms warning by the door, which maybe more businesses should have. I don't know. But that's a political statement I don't normally make. What the fuck is going on? But yeah, it was really, that's like disarming that that's the first, I think as a kid you don't see that, but as an adult it's kind of like the first thing your eye goes to as you're walking in.

Yeah. Yeah. And then so let's talk about our recent experiences a little bit. So Erin, which location you go to, and you went with our producer Dustin, correct? I did. Yeah. Yes. What was that like?

Well, you know, hanging out with Dustin is always kind of a chore. Oh, no. Dustin's the best. I just love that he can't say anything. He just sits on the other side of the car. Oh, he can. He has a little machine when he talks to us sometimes. Oh, he's not there.

Just like our podcast guests, he's not existed right now. He walked out. Although he's there, he's there. Well, Dustin and I haven't seen each other for a few months because I've been in Ireland. Yeah. So we're using it as a way to catch up with killing two birds. You're familiar. I said that like this is an old, especially you probably not familiar with.

Where there's a shortage of stones. It was, well, I was really excited to go. And even though I was like, well, in the back of my head, I was thinking, I'm sure it's not going to be as good as it was when you were a kid. But then there was another voice that was like, but what if it is? Oh, sure. Yeah. Like it might be really good.

It's going to be fun. And Dustin and I kind of have a sibling relationship. So it's a perfect person to go with. And we, it felt immediately upon entering, and I texted this. This was a group text full disclosure. It felt immediately like walking into the waiting room at a pediatrician's office. Yeah. Where you're just like, oh, I could, it's not possible for me to be sick immediately,

but I think I am. Like I can feel it. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And it smelled like diapers. Really strong of diapers. And, and I looked up the Yelp review later and multiple people said that, that it smelled like diapers.

I have, I do have that actual sense memory from being a kid. I do remember a diaper smell at sort of Juggie Chooses. Because you were still wearing one? I mean, I'm going to say with your sheet story. Did that just follow you everywhere? Yeah. Well, and it definitely smelled more like diapers around the younger toys. Yeah.

So, I mean, that makes sense. I'm sure why you're right in that area. And it was the, we ordered, should we talk about what we order? I mean, I feel like there's just so much. The thing that struck me when I walked in were these giant posters. I don't know if you had them in yours that were, there are illustrations that looked like the same artwork that you would see on a health brochure. Okay.

And they said, one said memories, another one said celebrate, and another one said play. Yeah. I think I saw those too. Yeah. But it was like, like really noticeably creepy art. Yes. Like fascist propaganda, but like commanding kids to have a good time. Yeah, yeah.

Were you at the Burbank Chuck E. Cheese? No, I went to the Eagle Rock Chuck E. Cheese. Okay. Yeah. And where'd you go, Nick? I went, we went to the Carson one. Oh, okay. And I went to the Burbank one.

So, across the board, no one enjoyed their experience. And I ordered wine. Yeah, because they do offer beer and wine for adults. Which kind of is creepy to me. It's a little weird. But I was like, I'm not crazy about this. Because we weren't the only pair of adults that were there, I think. Dustin got harassed by some people when he dropped a tissue.

Really? Which was, yeah, he went to the bathroom and he dropped a tissue on the way there and he didn't notice it. Uh-huh. And when he came back, this guy came up to him and like pad his tissue and it was like, I think you dropped something. Like is this another patron? Yeah.

Yeah. He was an adult man and Dustin was confused at first. Like didn't put together what he was saying. And then him and his girlfriend just started like laughing maniacally. So, I don't know if they're just like the guys who, like that's their like local joint. The fuck? I don't know. That's bizarre.

Yeah, it was strange. Or it could be a lie. It looks like he says, it looks like it was. And I ordered wine, Dustin ordered beer, ordered red wine, which traditionally comes room temperature, but they said, oh no, wait, we'll get you a cold one. Okay. So, I waited for a cold one, which I was just confused by, I don't really understand what they meant, but yeah, it was cold wine.

And we ordered the spaghetti and meatball pizza. Wow. Yeah. I saw that. I was really tempted to get it. Because I care about podcasting and I really wanted to do the right. It seemed like the right thing to do. That is a hundred percent.

I'm not saying you don't care about it. No. It's just maybe. No, you're right. I don't. I don't. I mean, I got it because I wanted you guys to be impressed with me. I am very, very impressed by that.

Thank you. Because you can get into it in a second, but I'm sure it tastes like shit is my guess. Well, I mean, do you want to know? Well, we can say, should we say food for a little bit? Or should we just talk about more of the experience? Well, there's so much to talk about. There's so much to talk about. But I will say, so my wife, Natalie, and I went to the Carson Chuck E. Cheese and we

went because it was adjacent to an IKEA where we were planning on buying a TV stand. So it kind of worked out. So we're like, okay, we can, this fits into a preexisting errand. And also I just did not want to go alone. I basically begged Natalie to come with me because I did not want to be beaten to death. And so we go in and you have to stand in a little corral before they let you in. We went for a lunch buffet. They have a $5.99 lunch buffet.

I don't know if that's nationwide, but at certain locations they have a $5.99 lunch buffet, which is not a bad price, food aside. But we went in and you have to stand in this little airlock basically for them to approve you to go in. And they go over and they have these little wristbands they put on you. Did you guys get wristbands? No, it sounds like you went to VIP Chuck E. Cheese. Well, yeah.

The Carson one, they gave you wristbands. And everyone in your party has a matching wristband. And that's how they know which kids are going to leave with which adults. Oh my God. They gave you one of those Weiger bands? But that was already a little disorienting. And I'll just say this, all the staff was very nice. Like no one really even eyed me suspiciously.

Everyone was just sort of like very friendly, perhaps just seeing a couple for assuming like, oh, maybe this is a work lunch or something like that. Did you do a work lunch? But it was very, it was very strange. It was a very strange experience. I was very uncomfortable from the moment I stepped in. It was just imagine, it would be so funny like if you were like, we're all, we're all around the same age and you're married.

But like, I've been obsessed with the idea of like the guy in his 30s who really wants to be a dad, but it doesn't want to come on too strong. But it's also, but also knows that's kind of an asset. And it like surprises a girl, like goes on a date like, hey, like, let's go to check your cheese. Like, I love kids. But it would backfire. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you didn't have to feel like too much of a creep because I initially went alone. Sorry. That was the ugliest laugh I've ever heard. What do you mean you went alone? With a briefcase. I was very much close to being alone with my briefcase that I bring to Doe Boys every night.

And I, Van Robeshaw, friend of the podcast, Van Robeshaw, Robeshaw, a fan, I don't know how to say it. It's Robeshaw. Even though you're a good friend. Last minute, sped up to Chuck E. Cheese, I did enter alone. It was very, I was in the corral right after a family. You're still a single man with a van. I'm sorry.

I'm single man. I have, I parked my van right in front of the entrance and left it running. And I went through the corral. I think the woman at the gate just kind of thought I was with a group. Okay. And luckily it was just like, there you go. She didn't really stop me or anything at all. She was like, open the gate.

It was like, there you go. And I was like, thank you. And I immediately be lined. Oh, sorry. Bless you. You caught something. I caught something from Chuck E. Cheese already. I walked right to where you order food because I didn't want to.

I was pretty much looking down. I felt like a huge pervert. And I ordered, I ordered our food in van. I sat down. I was there for about 10, 15 minutes alone and then van finally got there. I like the idea during that time. Yeah. I went over to seats.

I sat in a booth and I looked down at my phone and never looked up again because I did not want to look at anyone. I was embarrassed. Why was van Robie's show like going 80 miles per hour on the freeway to Chuck E. Cheese? That's the most suspicious part of this whole thing for me. You know, he's still there. I think all the children thought he was a robot, one of the animatronic, or the animatronic Chuck E. Friends, which I didn't really know.

So I didn't really know any of Chuck E.'s friends. Here's the thing. Did you guys have Raul the owl? Yes. Oh, God. I saw a video of Raul the owl and he's like, that felt like such a guy that we would know in our world who was like, oh man, he's doing Raul the owl videos or whatever. It was very sad.

There was a lot of stuff that was depressing in there, but most of all, it feels like a place that's about to go out of business. When van got there, we moved to the show area and there's so many tables. There were so many tables and chairs all empty. We were just sitting there and the animatronic Chuck E. is there kind of moving around. That was the only animatronic thing that was working. Oh, wow. Yeah, we just had Chuck E.

Yeah, we just had Chuck E. too. There was just a little TV next to him that was faded and it was small. Obviously, maybe like 15 to 20 years old or something around there. It just felt like a place that needed updating and it's not getting updated. Yeah, I don't know how to assess the state because the one I was at, the state of the franchise, because the one I was at had some modern arcade games. They had a doodle jump cabinet. That's a game that came out last year a couple years ago.

They had some newer upgraded stuff. I mean, your franchise had a bracelet budget. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, maybe this is one that's getting a little plus mark. It's like they're trying to do some improvements that they're going to send chain-wide. Or it's just an individual franchise's choice. But it didn't feel dingy. I remember like a general grime around Chuck E. Cheese and this one felt pretty clean.

It felt like kind of hotel lobby clean. Not mine. Yeah, this one was pretty well taken care of. But it might have been that we went like one of the first parties on a weekday. And it might just be that these kids, it hadn't had kids ruining it all day, you know? Dustin and I both commented on how literally sticky the floor was. Like mixed sheets that he borrowed. Yeah, they're also, and I don't want to bomb everyone out, but there were a lot of...

I wanted to see, I wanted to know where, who, what adults belong to what kids? Because I think there were just adults that were hanging. Oh, yeah. Like me. But like, I shared a moment with this man who was playing some game and was like really proud of how he was doing. It was the game where you throw a ball at clowns. Yes.

Like it's like an old-timey carnival game. Yeah, yeah. And I was standing, I was standing behind him because I was, I think it was, I was texting and I was just, we were waiting for a pizza because we waited for a very long time. And I think he thought I was watching him because he like did something good and he turned around and like gave me like a, like a wink, like a, like a chin wag. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I'm like not here.

And also I'm not watching you hit the clowns. That's weird. That's not a place to try to pick up a late. If you're at Chuck E. Cheese alone. No. Yeah. That's bizarre. And he's not, I mean, if he's there with his kid, like show your kid how to, I mean,

because admittedly, like I do, I am into dads. I like the, or I don't know if that sounds weird. I do, I mean, you know, whatever. I'm a woman. No, I'm going to get really apologetic, but it is, it is charming to see a father with their kid. Yeah. Kind of turning so rad, voluminous with blushing.

There's nothing, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. That's a totally reasonable stance. Yeah. To see someone who's good with kids, you're like, oh, that's a good guy. Yeah. It's totally fair. But he was like, look, I'm so good at this fucking game. Like, you're just so, so, so strange.

That man is no good, whether he has a kid or not, I feel like. Yeah. Yeah. But then I was the creep. I became the creep because I saw a game that I immediately was so excited to, so excited to play, which is the horse game. Which one's the horse game? It's, I've never seen anything like this before at any of these places, but it was,

it was, it's a big white horse, like that you would see outside of a grocery store. Okay. But it was big enough for an adult to be on. And it's, and it's a, it's like an equestrian, like writing, like racing. Oh, wow. And there's a video screen or whatever in front of it? Yeah. There's a video screen in front of it.

And I didn't plan this when I'm sitting backwards on my chair, but in order to, in order to move the horse, you have to like, you have to like write it in a, in a, in a very suggestive way. Yes. And the, the horse, I, and I got, I got frustrated because Dustin and I were both trying to figure out how it worked. And so then I found myself, I was like, no, you have to like actually write it really hard, but I did something weird with the horse where it started kind of going out of control.

And I was really close to just being thrown off of this, uh, child's game. And then once I got off of it, I saw that the, the half of the horse's face was broken off. Oh man. Yeah. I didn't do that. But I'm just saying it was scary, scary looking. That's like a little, like kids, broken carnival stuff, broken kids stuff is always just like

a little extra creepy. Yeah. So little kids hump on this horse to make it go faster. Yeah. Dustin and I, Dustin and I watched a three year old do it later just to like see how it worked. And their mom, this little girl's mom was, was behind her and was patting the back of the horse.

Like, but as if to be like, go ahead, like, go, go horse. It's such a strange moment. We talked with Dustin about like maybe, maybe that woman not knowing that horses are actually real creatures. Maybe like this is what she thinks the horse is. There's a cloud outline where Nick was, it seems like he just ran off to go watch a round of this horse game. You know, I actually have a memory of Chuck E. Cheese as a kid going to Chuck E. Cheese

and there was a game there. It was a test your strength game. And I was like a, I think I was an eight or nine year old boy and, but the way the game worked is that it had like a, a bunch of, it had some buttons based on the honor system where you could put in your gender and age. And when I put in like boy eight to 10 and I tried to do this, you know, it's like basically like you hit this, this, uh, the sensor with a, a big paddle and you test how strong you are.

And when I did boy to eight to 10, like I'd get like maybe halfway, but I found out that you could just put like girl one to three and then I could hit it with my strength and I would always max out and get max tickets. So I just like camped out there for like an entire party and just got as many tickets as I could get. Was that game called the gender conditioning strength test? Yeah. Did you ever get stronger?

But yeah, I like my ex, my experience, it was weird because it was the buffet. There were very few people there period and there were just basically like two families. Nellie and I were the only people using the buffet. Nellie saw the food and was just like, I don't want any of this. So just didn't even eat. So just an empty Chuck E. Cheese plate in front of her and a cup of water. And the cup they gave me, I got a soda cup. I got like a little eight ounce like kids cup.

So like it wasn't like, you know, that that was barely enough for, I don't know, it's like a half a drink. And maybe they thought she was your mom. Yeah. Well, we should be clear. Did you have a spinny top hat on and overall? But the thing is like, I didn't play, I would normally play games there. Like if I went to like a Dave and Buster's, I'm playing some games, but I was just so

like nervous. I was so like unsettled there that I was just like basically eating like I was, it was my first day in prison in the cafeteria and I was just like shoveling food down as quickly as I could just to get the hell out of there because I just felt like, I just felt like I shouldn't be there the whole time. Well, it was very weird when Van came in and was extremely comfortable, it made me more comfortable, was extremely comfortable, went and started playing games. He was like truly trying to get tickets at one point.

We played SkiBall. That's the only game I played there. I played around SkiBall and it was fun. I love SkiBall. It's a great game. But I immediately was like, let's get out of here. We're getting looked at like, like within seconds. Like I feel like there were families being like, what are, what are you guys, what is

your guys deal? What's the, what is the deal with you guys being here? And it was the Seinfeld family. And also there was a, what's the deal with you looking at my kid? And then there was a countdown when we were eating for the Chuck E. Cheese Show to this guys. The ticket, ticket flurry or the ticket flurry that was, that was like in a spot. I still don't understand what that was.

I was like waiting for it. No one did anything. Yeah. There was the same with us. Five minutes. Chuck E's like, like ticket show or whatever, where they have that, a thing where I guess kids can get in there and the tickets fly all over the place, the thing that you train for when you were a kid and they had pushed that machine into the area where there used

to be an animatronic other animal and it was just sitting there. The countdown goes down and then Chuck E. comes out and it's just me and Van in that whole section and this mopey Chuck E. is just walking and like not caring at all and walks up to like the front where like the, where the section is where you come in. So this is a mascot performer. This is the mascot performer just walks like so depressingly up to the front, turns around, walks back. One kid puts up his hand and he gives him a high five and walked back into the back.

That was it like in that amount of time. And I turn to Van and I was like, this is like, this is like the most depressing thing I've ever seen in my entire life. That's got to be a shitty job. Just because I remember even as a kid at Chuck E. Cheese, like fucking with the Chuck E. Cheese guy, there was actually one, there was a different birthday, kids birthday party where Chuck E. Cheese was like hugging a kid and like I grabbed his tail and I tied it to a chair.

Oh my God. You're a fucking evil cartoon character. And he started walking away and like he was tugging the chair and then he noticed it and like couldn't untie it with his big paws and I think I felt bad and untied it for him. But yeah, that's just like, they're just little, little shits like me are doing that to him all day, like stamping on their feet, like hugging him too hard, hitting him in the balls. And it was probably, it was probably a teenage girl because that's where, oh yeah, yeah,

yeah. Metaspect performers are actually like young, young women. So that's like doubly terrible that you got to deal with like that like, you know, abuse from the last whole kids. This sucks. I remember Grimace, I had one birthday party at McDonald's when I was younger. And I had one at, I wonder if I ever had one at Chuck E. Cheese, I don't remember being at Chuck E. Cheese too much.

I think it was more bonkers that we went to, which I did have a party at. But we were at McDonald's and Grimace came out and Grimace came to hug me, hugged me and then everyone was mean to Grimace and they chased him off and I was really sad. It was this young, sad memory, I was about six years old, five years old maybe, six, I don't know, somewhere around there. So we had the opposite experience. I was a good boy who just wanted a little Grimace hug and you were one of those assholes and chased him off.

Here we are. Yep, together. Not too much has happened between that time. No, those are the key events in both of our lives. Now we have a pod guest. All right, so let's talk about the food a little bit. So I want to hear your assessment because I had a slice of this spaghetti and meatball pizza from the buffet, but I want to hear your assessment, Aaron, of getting that spaghetti

and meatball pizza freshly made. Well, my experience with the food at Chucky Teas was genuinely unlike any other experience I've had at a restaurant because, yeah, because it was such a disgusting place, also not to get too graphic and I don't like scatological things, but the bathroom was not tended to. And that was kind of like my first, it was just all very gross. It smells like shit. It smells like shit in Chucky Teas. It just smells like shit.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty gross. And we ordered this spaghetti and meatball pizza and I was not that hungry and so I think that helped with ordering that because I wasn't, I was like, well, I'll try this thing and won't that be hilarious? Won't that be hilarious? But I, it took them a second to get it for us and I think they forgot and they, which is not that important, but when they brought it, though, that's only notable because they were so late with pizza, I went to go check on it and I noticed that all the people working

behind the counter, they were all wearing name tags, I don't know if you notice the name tags, but it's like, hi, my name is Jose, my favorite game is, but no one wrote down what their favorite game was. It was blank for everyone, like no one took the second to write down a skew ball or whatever. Because they wanted to get the fuck out of there as soon as they're done with their shit. Yeah, this is, I'm leading up to saying that the spaghetti and meatball pizza was really good. Wow, wow.

Yeah, it was hot. The texture was like, I don't even like spaghetti and meatballs, but I took a bite of it and Dustin also, we had the same experience, neither of us were that hungry because we had lunch together as well, and we had a day of meals, which we do once a year. Anyway, we both were really surprised by how good the pizza was, and it was actually delicious, and we got cheesy bread, and that was also very good, and it was just shocking, and it was such a weird thing because it was such a disgusting, unappetizing place, like there's a fly that was literally flying that was following Dustin around, which is funny.

It was, it felt like, it just felt really dirty, and I don't want to be too, well, we've already been very graphic, it felt like when you feel ashamed of something you've looked up on the internet in order to achieve a masturbatory goal, and then you're just faced with a screen after you're satiated and just like, ugh, and close your laptop, like, I've heard, I've never messed with you. Which for you is Chuck E. Cheese, that's what you do. Slam the door at the front door. You know, I'm very surprised by that verdict, I'm very surprised by that outcome with the

food. My food experiences went from the lunch buffet, and there were two pizzas that were untouched, they had been made and no one had taken a slice yet, and there was also a third pizza that had been mostly taken, mostly piranhas had gotten to it, there were just a few slices left. Piranhas? When something like, you know, that was the wrong thing to say. Like little kids are you talking about?

I wasn't calling the little kids piranhas, I was just saying like, it was like the skeleton of a pizza was there, it was like most of the pizza had been eaten. Okay. You're like if a cow... Like the cheese off of it? Yeah, there was just like a few slices of pizza left, that's what I was trying to say, that would have been an easier way to say it, whatever, I was trying to be flowery for no reason.

I'll avoid that in the future. I enjoy your voluminous animal man voice. And then there were a couple of things of salad, just like a basic garden salad, basic Caesar salad with some dressing on the side, and then there was a thing of a dessert pizza, which was the cinnamon bread sticks, though it looked more pizza-y than bread sticky. I had some of the Caesar salad with, I don't think they had a Caesar dressing, so I had some ranch dressing on it, I had a slice of cheese pizza, a slice of supreme pizza, and then those were the two that were freshest, and then the one that had been mostly eaten,

was the thin and crispy pepperoni pizza, which was more of the, they were the square slices as opposed to the triangles, and I also had some cinnamon bread sticks with that, and as I mentioned, my tiny cup of iced tea. Was everything under heat lamps? Everything was under heat lamps, it had been prepared fairly recently, but it turned out to be a little... You went to like the grossest version of Chuck E. Cheese. And you took your wife there.

She puts up with a lot. She's going to turn into cookie cheese. What? Someone else is going to fuck my wife. That's what I was going to say. Wait, it turns into... Okay, so because she has an unpleasant experience, because my lovely wife has an unpleasant experience at a Chuck E. Cheese lunch date, that turns the restaurant into a cookie cheese because

eventually she's going to cheat on me with another man. Well, you've said before she gets turned on when she's frustrated. Yeah. Have I said that? If there was an adult version of Chuck E. Cheese called cookie cheese, you would go all the time. Yeah. You know you would.

Just go there to watch. Just guys would go there to watch. Other guys rail their wives while they eat pizza. And then they... And then who watches the kids? I don't know. The kids are off doing everything. The kids can cook too.

Oh my God. The kids can cook. Yeah. No, you get like family cooked. Like it's like you get... Family cooked. You see another man take care of your kids. Yeah.

And like teach them things. Yeah. Like it's not actually sexual. Yeah. He's like playing catch with them and giving them better gifts for their birthday. I thought we're a kid can cook his dad. Anyway, cheese pizza and supreme pizza were fine. I mean they were a little doughy.

They certainly weren't super... They were the freshest but they certainly weren't super fresh. The thin and crispy pepperoni pizza by virtue of having the least crust was the crispest and the most edible of those pizzas. Interesting. The cinnamon breadsticks, I don't know. I didn't know. I feel like that was there just to have a dessert just because kids...

It was so loaded with sugar and so over sweetened it was just kind of a little hearty. I am shocking that something would be unhealthy on that. Yeah. But overall, like I, oh wait, I also got a slice, I didn't get a slice of the spaghetti and meatballs pizza. I got an individual slice of that. And that was probably actually the best thing, the best of the regular pizzas that I ate. I still think the thin and crispy pepperoni pizza was more appetizing.

But yeah, that actual, the bite of meatballs, there was like one meatball on it was actually pretty tasty and if it had been fresh and if it had been hot, I think it would have been a little bit more satisfied. How about yourself, bitch? So like I said, Van Robichop met me there. I ordered a large half cheese, half pepperoni pizza. I thought the pizza was okay. It's so much like that, like not terrible, not good, bland, kids will eat it and like

it. All right, type of pizza. It had like a kind of a garlicky crust. Okay. I felt like, and this is just ordering it fresh, I don't know, like how Domino's redid their pizza. I feel like they had like a little garlic butter on the crust. It's not good pizza, but sometimes I can appreciate pizza like that, but it's not, it's just

not great. It's like, I feel like, I don't know if Tony's pizza is nationwide, but it's like a frozen pizza that's like a- Yeah. Yeah. No, it's nationwide. Mid to low tier pizza. Yeah.

A frozen pizza. I feel like it's about that level of quality. I would say that's almost insulting to Tony. I mean, they're- They're close to each other. Yeah. It's not terrible. I was saying, when we were eating at Tevin, I was saying, this isn't the worst pizza I've

had in LA. Like I've had pizza delivered to my house from like some spots over the 10 years of being in LA that's been worse than Chuck E. Cheese Pizza. I have had worse pizza than Chuck E. Cheese Pizza, yeah. It's not terrible. It really isn't. But it's not good. I wonder if because the environment was so disgusting, my brain was just expecting a

diaper pizza. Yes. Like just expecting little shit on the pizza. Oh, interesting. I had just like lowered my palate so, so low that it was delicious, I don't know. That is so spot on. Like I just expected like a diaper pizza, too. Like you expect to eat a diaper for some reason when you're in there.

I don't know. It doesn't make sense, but you just think you're going to somehow get a diaper in your mouth. Yeah. All right. That sounds strange. But I was right there with you. I was like, it just smells like diaper, smells like little kid shit all over.

Over the place. Also like, I just feel like the whole setup is just so bad and needs to be redone and like even like the jungle gym play area, I'm so sure of this was like the shittiest version I'd seen of one. Like it was just jungle gym. It was like, like, you know, like the tubes that the kids crawl through. Oh, we didn't have tubes. You didn't have to.

Oh man. Okay. So that's even worse. I feel like there was a, there's like the thing, like a ball pit where the kids climb through and they go through these tubes. But they like the tubes were like up above the floor where people were kind of like walking around. And I remember back at least in bonkers, there was a little section where you could where

you could kind of like go through like a whole jungle gym. It just felt like a way more elaborate thing. Gotcha. Again, I was, you know, like 30 years younger, but it felt way more elaborate in this. It was just everything about it was shitty. And then we got our appetizer, which we got the, we got the appetizer sampler, the sampler platter. And it came with, it said french fries, but it came with tater tots.

And then it comes with your choice of like chicken wings. You can have bone in chicken wings, buffalo, like there's a sweet and tangy and a, and a barbecue choice. And I went with a boneless buffalo because I felt like that was like the closest thing to nuggets, which they probably do. Okay. Yeah. And then it came with celery, the boneless nuggets, tater tots and little mouse diapers

and little tiny mouse diapers. There comes with a ranch blue cheese ketchup and then hot sauce. And then we got, it usually comes with breadsticks, but we ordered the cheese stuffed buffalo sticks. So it's like, there was like a cheesy bread, but we got the buffalo cheesy bread, which is like cheesy bread. And then inside of it was boneless buffalo chicken. Oh, that's weird.

It was the best thing that we had. Wow. It was by far the best thing we had. It was good. We were both like, this is decent. This is, this is the best thing. I wonder if that's like, it almost like, I wonder if that's like kind of like, it hit the Taco Bell nexus of just like they put so much in there that it kind of ends up being,

that's the final, the form where it becomes greater than the sum of its parts. It was, it was the closest thing to a Taco Bell type, like little dollar menu thing or whatever. Snacktivity. 100%. Yeah. Cause I wonder if when you've got ingredients that cheap, which I imagine they're, their food costs are as cheap as possible because they're just trying to have food as a means

to get kids to play games. I wonder if it's just like the more of that you put together, the more you can overlook its individual failings. And when you get something in its more pure form, it's, it's, you can taste the toxicity a little bit more. Right. Yeah. There's definitely like a food innovator behind what's happening there.

Like with the, with the spaghetti and meatball. Yeah. That was a new thing, right? There's definitely someone in there. They're trying some stuff because the, the Buffalo cheesy bread is like on the menu and I'm like, Oh, that's kind of like a cra, I like never see that ever. It was, it kind of was good. Like it, it, it won me over and the pizza wasn't bad.

So as far as the food experience went, you know, the celery, I didn't want to eat any sort of lettuce or any produce or anything like that, but the celery was fine. The Buffalo chicken bites were cold. They would like, it just seemed like very much like they were heated up in a microwave. The mousetipers. The mousetipers were delicious, of course. I stuffed myself on mousetipers and then the tater tater. It's disgusting.

Sentin sorry. So good. It is still not as gross as your voluminous amounts. Yeah. You, you have still said the grossest thing I ever said on the podcast and you gave a cummy sheet back to a girl. You just, you just winsterized that cummy sheet. It's what you did.

Yeah. I mean, cummy sheet actually sounds like a really cute 90s band. Everybody with a cummy sheet. Oh, you said that the bowling for soup guy is the. That's a Wikipedia fact because they've got a new mascot and he's kind of like Stuart little sized and styled. He's scaled down and he's got like a guitar and he, he skateboards and he's, he's a little cooler.

He's a little more ratatouille looking and he has. Ratatouille. That's another famous mouse. Oh yeah. Okay. So ratatouille. All right. You know what?

We need to settle this. Whatever the most famous mice are. Yeah. Hit us up with a hashtag mount, mount mouse more. Oh my God. So let's see what, what the, what the four most famous mice are. We know that Mickey Mouse is going to be on there, but the other three I think are up for grabs.

I just broke my Chuck E. Cheese bracelet. Oh no. Oh no. I thought it was going to last forever. It's on the floor. Oh man. Oh. Do you, really quick, this is very morbid, but do you know if that Bowling for Soup

guy that's doing the voice for Chuck E. Cheese, if he's still alive? Oh, well there may have been, I've heard there were rumors that he died, but I think that's actually been, that was just an internet hoax. That's my understanding. Okay. Only because if anyone was going to kill themselves, it seems like very, like not like you should kill yourself if you had that job, but doesn't that seem like, and then he, you know what I mean?

Just like, just in the, if you're, it would be very on the nose. And then Nick Weigart took over as the voice of the Chuck E. Cheese man. You're doing a good job. All right. I didn't even hear Chuck E. Cheese talk. Our Chuck E. Cheese kind of flopped around just like a broken sign. Yeah. Yeah.

That's, here's my thought on the new one. I don't like the new fucking Chuck E. Cheese. He looks different and he doesn't match the mascot. He's like totally different. He doesn't match the mascot. It's sizeist. He's a little thin guy and he's just like a little thin fucking loser. He's here on my cup.

He just looks like every other shitty cartoon. Yeah. He really is. He looks different in every, in every representation of him. Like that, that like computer animated thing looks different from the mascot and the mascot looks different. Like the, the dressed up, the costume character looks different from the Amitron. A hundred percent.

And that's why that's very disorienting. Or a Tomatron or what am I, what's the word I'm looking for? Animatronic, robot or whatever the fuck it is. Yeah. To the extent that I thought that the guy, the costume character was his cousin. Like I was looking around. Oh yeah. Oh, maybe that's like when there's a, you know, Kermit, like Robin and Kermit, like

that sort of thing. Yeah. It's like trying to say that like Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. are all the same character. It's just like, no, those are clearly like different monkeys. Like what are you, don't, these are just, just name them different things. They're different Kongs. You're definitely Kong obsessed.

Yeah. Yeah. And all, all like the brigade of Chuckie's friends, like Munch sucks. Like there's this big green monster called Munch. I just found this out today. Cause I was like, who the fuck is that guy? Yeah. I said that to a kid.

Who the fuck is that green guy? And he's Munch. And then there's like a chicken woman, right? Oh no. Oh, there's a white mouse lady. All these. They're all garbage. They're all, they all, they are all garbage, but Chuckie, you're, I was saying the same

exact fucking thing. It's like, you can't even match Chuckie in your own fucking restaurant. All these Chuckies look different from each other. Who is this orient? Who's the fucking real Chuckie? It's like when there was a bunch of Superman after Superman died. Oh, in the comics. Yeah.

In the comics. Yeah. And they had like four different aspiring supermen and you were trying to find out who the real one was. That's what it's like with Chuckie Cheese right now. That sounds kind of fun though. Like if that was the thing where like, like there were competing Chuckies, like who is the real Chuckie, but it just seems, it seems like they've had a new CEO every six months

and a new guy that comes in and is like, look, Chuckie Cheese is going to be relevant again. And they like reveal a new thing and everyone was like, this guy's going to be gone. They probably do have a new CEO every month. It felt so much like they were, they're on the verge of disaster. Yeah. Apparently thriving. Apparently they're financially successful. Really?

No, that can't be true. I don't understand it either, but you know, I don't understand the economy. I don't understand how corporations work. What's that video game where you're in a Chuckie Cheese late at night, but it's not a weekend at Freddy's or something? Five nights at Freddy's. Oh yeah, five nights at Freddy's. It's like a weird surreal, like horror.

Is it a horror game? I think it's a horror game. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. I guess it would be creepy to be in there, but there's nothing even in there. Yeah. Like that.

I would rather be at that Freddy's seems fun. Chuckie Cheese, there's nothing there. Yeah. Did you guys get it in the hamster wheel? No. They have a big hamster wheel? Yeah, there's a hamster wheel. Really?

Yeah. I did so many times. I had to stop because I thought I was going to have a heart attack because I got so into it. But yeah, and I was too big for it, so I crouched down, but you run on it and you're trying to up your RPMs. Oh. That sounds fun.

Yeah, it's fun, but I fell a couple times. So I would, 1000% wouldn't fit, and 2000% would have had a heart attack in that hamster wheel, which would have been appropriate for me to die inside a Chuckie Cheese hamster wheel. Do you think that's what generates the power for an individual Chuckie Cheese location? Oh my fucking god. Did you guys, it sounds like you guys didn't really play that many games. No, I got out of there as quickly as possible.

You didn't play any games. No, I didn't play any games. I was like, I know that's part of the experience, but I was just like, I'm just not going to walk, I'm not going to walk by this family and then go whatever, play this, play fucking whack-a-mole by myself. I'm going to argue it's creepier for you to not play a game. Like you just enjoy the buffet food of Chuckie Cheese. Well see, but that's just like gluttonous.

That's just like, oh, you have, you like just trashy food. I don't know. I feel like that's like more understandable. I was in and out of there quick too. I mean, I did play Ski Ball, so I did play at least one game, but as a guy, maybe it feels different to be in there. There is a different vibe being an adult male. Yeah, that did occur to me.

And I wasn't hiding this before, but I actually went to another Chuckie Cheese today. Really? Wow. Yeah. Two Chuckie Cheeses. Yeah, I did not eat there, but I went down to, I was downtown and there's one on Wilshire next to the Max Fun headquarters. And I was just, I didn't even know it was there and I walked by it and it just seems

so weird because I haven't noticed them around and then it was just two days in a row. And I just, I walked in and it seemed totally empty. And I thought like, oh, it's so crazy. Like I could, like should I have lunch here? Like would that be, because I want to, I'm curious what this is like being alone. And I was reminded again how, how nice it is that I can look at kids. On that note, let's get to our final judgments. So Aaron, if you listen to the podcast, you know how this works, we'll sort of give our

little summation, our closing argument, if you will, and then rate the chain on the scale of one to five forks. You are our guest. We'll start with you. I feel like the food was only good in the way that Stockholm syndrome is okay when your brain breaks. So I'm going to say I could never, I could never go back there again. So I went and I wouldn't bring children there.

Yeah. It seems like that's the first time that's occurred to me that like, oh God, why would you take a child to this broken dream place? Oh, 100%. Yeah. And all the games that I was near were so dangerous. So I'm going to say, yeah, just, was it spoon fork, one fork? One fork.

One fork. Oh, shit. I'm going to say one fork, one prong. One prong. Oh, okay. I like that. I like that too. It's a little bit better.

Single tine. That's one of the worst ratings so far. I agree with you a lot in a lot of ways. Is that fun for kids? Some kids seem to be having fun, but like, you go to a Dave and Buster's and you're like, man, I know that's for adults, but like, it feels so much more fun. Like why can't a Chuck E. Cheese feel the way a Dave and Buster does? Why can't they update these animatronic animals or whatever?

Why can't they, it's 2016, they should be doing an even better show. They should have every Chuck E. Cheese should look alike. Like all the mascot and the animatronic one and the guy on the plate and on your cup, they should all look alike. And who is he? Tell us who he is. Who is he? What's his backstory?

He needs way more of a backstory. Does he own the restaurant? What's going on? And when they do the ball pit and the little obstacle course thing that they do, it should be much bigger and better. As a kid, that's so fun. And I was looking at it and I was like, that's fucking whack and it was a shitty, shitty setup.

I had a wild cherry Pepsi, which I didn't mention, which was good. I'd never had a wild cherry Pepsi before and I really liked it. I'm trying to get some good things out. A diet Pepsi as well on the way out and I still am holding my Chuck E. Cheese Cup, which is maybe the most embarrassing thing of all it's seen with Chuck E. Cheese Cup. And then as far as food goes, yeah, the buffalo bites were bad, the tater tots were bad, that cheesy buffalo, the buffalo cheesy bread was really surprisingly good, celery's whatever, pizza's kind of whatever, but not terrible.

And then we also had churros for dessert, which came with like a caramel dipping sauce and like kind of like a raspberry or a strawberry jam dipping sauce. And those weren't bad either. They weren't great, but they weren't, they were churros, they were decent. But overall, not good. I feel like that place needs to be, you know, kind of torn down and then built back up. The food wasn't the worst. I'm going to give it one and a half, two forks, two forks through the eyes of a child.

I know maybe that's too high. No, I think it's fine. I feel bad now. No, I think it's totally fair. Don't, I just think of caros where was my worst rating ever. I think I gave it a half for, yeah. So you know what, one and a half forks. It doesn't, it's terrible.

It's bad. It's really bad. Here's my thought. And last week, in my closing arguments discussing Veggie Girl and Nathan Barnett, I brought up the idea of, I believe part of the goal with an evaluating change of this podcast is evaluating them on the terms of what are they attempting to do? How are they achieving that goal? And it's difficult for me to fully assess this.

I kind of have to go back to memories. You know, I remember I had a very happy, I mentioned some of my other visits to Chucky Cheese as a kid, I had a very happy memory. My friend Henry's birthday party in third grade. He was a very charming, happy kid. And there were only me and this other kid, Jeremy, were the only two kids to show up at his birthday party at Chucky Cheese. And I think a lot of kids would have been depressed.

Henry had the time of his life. We showed him a great day. We played in the ball pit. We romped. Voluminous amounts of fun. It was a voluminous amount of fun for Henry and his mom was there. That was a great day. And I think for kids, this is a great experience.

Or I don't know if this is a great experience. I think for kids, kids will have fun. I think it went to a nice one. I think it may have went to a nice one. But I remember it being a great experience. But I don't know if I was a parent, if I would want to take my kids there. I feel like you could go, I'd rather take them to Legoland. I'd rather take them to, you know, if I want to see them have a, like, take them to a show,

I'd rather take them to something else, not this animatronic half-assed stage show. I feel like there are a lot of other venues where I'd take kids to entertain them as opposed to or even just a public park feels like more fun than a Chuck E. Cheese. Certainly the food is completely unhealthy. And I think for the most part, pretty bad quality. As an adult male with no children, I have no reason to ever go there. So me evaluating it on those terms, I'm going, I'm going one 1.5 forks, one fork two times. So yeah, that was Chuck E. Cheese.

Wow, they need to turn it around. Well, I don't know. Or maybe not. Maybe they're doing fine. Who fucking knows? You breaking that down, like, it's a funny looking, looking at a place like that as an adult because it just seems so lazy as a, like, it was a place to take your kids, like, really? Like, there's so many other ways to expand a kid's imagination, not to get too hippy.

No, but that's a great point, too, though, is our kids over this now, like, does Chuck E. Cheese not matter as much as it once did? If you were a kid, wouldn't you rather play games on your iPad or your PlayStation 4? We didn't grow up with that everywhere and with screens everywhere. So maybe it seemed more magical when we were kids because something was moving. I don't know. Nothing ever moved. I remember that.

I wish I could go back in time and just experience, like, an 80's Chuck E. Cheese and see what it was like. Also, so this loser kid who had no one come to the party, you gladly went to his party. We had a lot of fun. I won't have you a bad-mouthing Henry. What happened to Henry? You mentioned that his mom came. Was she not usually around?

No, I think I just remember that. I remember it was the four of us. It was mom and then two and three little boys and we had a great time. All right, you guys can vamp. You're really moving away from the story. I'm just running away. I'm going to set up the next segment. I'll be back in one second.

I didn't know how fun it would be to make pedophile jokes and tell them this is on the podcast. I mean, this is the real experience of the podcast is getting to. Well, my issue is, as you know, I make pedophile jokes with Nick all the time. Yeah, yeah. I really like them. And then, but today it feels like almost, it's almost too much. Too much.

It's so real that he was there and had a Chuck E. Cheese. Yeah. It was a little bit, it was a little bit too much. I bet you both were really sweet kids. I was a nice kid. I'm a worse adult man. I'm shitty as a man. I think you're a very nice man.

I like this, I like this like persona of you. It's very funny. And I like how sensitive Nick is. Yeah, he's a little too sensitive. It's very sweet. It's very sweet. Like he would have like a, like a, like a, you know, kids who covered their, their books with like really like fancy like book covers.

Oh yeah. Like he was a book cover kid. Yeah. He was, yeah. I was a nerd for sure. I feel like when you say that though, I'm like, like, I heard Nick's story about tying a rat's tail earlier to that, to the poor Chuck E. Cheese thing. So I'm like, was he, I don't know.

And also I'm not as abrasive, I guess, off of this podcast as I am on it maybe. Right. No, no. I'm not as big as of a jerk, right? Anyways. No, you're not. You're very sweet. Do you, do you break your brumper once?

Yes. I broke your bumper. And you're very sweet about it. You did. Yeah. You, you, when, uh, when we were first hanging out, uh, and I first met you, you were like, I can parallel park. Yeah.

And I was like, okay. And then you parallel parked my car and you broke my bumper a little bit. But it was, you know what? That bumper eventually ended up in my car when I worked at the Simpsons, a truck drove by and pulled it off and I had to put the bumper in my actual car. And like it was in there and I like took girls on dates like with a bumper sticking out from between the front seats. It was terrible.

But I didn't get mad at you at all because you're, everybody loves you. How am I going to get mad at you? Um, but we miss you. Are you like in Ireland before we move on to the next segment? Is it, is it's. Uh, Mitch, I'm just looking for something to keep me here. Oh boy. Oh boy.

Someone. Well, if I remember. What an overture. You like guys who are really screwed up and I'm, uh, I'm like, I like secret flaws. Well, I'm as sloppy as the floor of a Chuck E. Cheese. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm here for, I'm here for a few, for a few months. We should hang out.

We're always talking about hanging out. Yeah. Let's do it. We'll go to Chuck E. Cheese again. All right. It's time for a segment. We've got a beverage and we're going to decide if it's worth pouring down your throat. It's drink or stink.

Um, so Mitch, what is the beverage you got for us today? Well, today this beverage is from a Subway sandwich shop, fuse iced tea, strawberry red tea. Now let me just explain that something we didn't really talk about too much in our review is that Chuck E. Cheese takes fucking forever to make their food. Very slow. It was very, very slow. Yeah.

It was already late. It was like 7.55 and I was supposed to be here at 7.30 originally and I, uh, and we pushed it to 7.45 kind of, kind of. And, uh, so I had a, it was my job to pick up the drink today, but this is a good interesting drink. Right. Come on. Fuse, strawberry iced tea.

I certainly haven't tried this. Aaron, have you tried this before? I have not. All right. So this will be a, this will be a very true test. Are you a sweet, do you like your tea sweet or do you like it plain? Are you kind of like a, uh, uh, I usually, I don't know. I usually, I usually drink plain, plain tea, but I, but I am Southern.

Yeah. And they love sweet tea. That's all they're allowed to drink. Yes. Yeah. It's very sad. I never, I never had it growing up. That's very sad.

I never had it growing up, uh, sweet tea, but I like it. All right. I, I, I like, I don't know if I like iced, I like a nice tea with lemon in it, like the classic Snapple flavor or something. It seems very adult to me. Yeah. It seems that when I have kids, I'll start drinking tea. Sure.

Yeah. I like an unsweetened iced tea. I feel like that's my go-to lunch beverage because I definitely will like, I'd prefer to have something sugary, but if I just eat sugar all the time, I just put on so much weight. So like, I feel like that's, it's something a little bit more flavorful than water, just an unsweetened iced tea, but I'll take a sweet tea on occasion. So this kind of has sort of a very reddish character and a very strong strawberry aroma.

It's really coming out. Yeah. There we go. It's completely fermented, like in the back. Yeah. You're right. If someone said this was like a hard drink, I would, I might buy it. I might be like, oh, okay.

I'd have no reason to think they were lying. It tastes like it might be a little, have a little alcohol content, even though it doesn't. Why? It tastes like something you would drink at like a, at like a kid's baseball game. Oh, sure. Or like, if you were a kid on the team, youth sports, what did you say earlier, youth sports? Youth sports. Um, you know what the second?

Wait, why did, why, why did you say youth sports? I was saying the context of the intro in terms of why people will still go to Jucky Cheese. He was telling us the subject of his, uh, wet dream. Oh, Jesus Christ. Not you two. Um, so the second ingredient, the second ingredient is high fructose corn syrup, and I am certainly getting a lot of corn syrupy character to this.

Um, what's, what's the plan here? If you're going to be an iced tea, and we're going to try to take down Snapple, or what, what are the other like classic iced teas? I mean, how is this tea? It doesn't taste like tea at all. It doesn't taste anything like tea. Yeah. Yeah.

It is, it is very juicy. Do you know the fuse brand well? I always see it. I don't. I don't know what it is. I always see fuse brand. I don't know what it is. It is like, it feels specifically like, uh, uh, subway type drink.

It tastes like someone worked at Arizona iced tea and was always like, guys, we gotta make it more fruity. And then I was like, no, no, no, this is not the Arizona brand. I mean, he started his own company called Fuse. Well, it's got the mycocrawards.com iconography on the back. So I assume it's just, uh, it's under the Coca-Cola company's umbrella, one has to assume. I don't know. I mean, I feel like you're getting a lot of sugar from this.

And if you're going to drink a sweet beverage, you know, for me, it's just like it, compared to the gold standard, compared to the things that, that already exist. Like I think I'd rather have a Snapple peach iced tea. I think I'd rather have just a regular old sweet tea. I think I'd rather have a Coca-Cola classic than this Fuse strawberry red tea. I don't think it offers anything above any of those. So many calories. Yeah.

A lot of calories. For that reason, drink or stink. I'm going stink with this one. How about you guys? I mean, is it still terrible? Would you still, if there's, it was a hot day, would you want to have this? I mean, it's not, it's not terrible. It's not terrible.

It's not terrible. I'm actually like surprised by it, it not being bad. I guess it does, it does taste like Snapple. You know what? I would, if I was on a picnic and there was nothing else available. No, you know, it's not, it's not bad. You know, you know what's getting in the way is like, I think, when I think of tea, I think of like, ah, no guilt, like perfect.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can drink tea endlessly. Like I've been getting very into tea in Ireland because I'm an international person. Sure. That's right. And they drink tea constantly. So it's like adding sugar to tea is like, I don't know, painting ciliary with lard. I agree.

I mean, it is great and then also on here, it's like vitamins B6 and B12 and it's like why? Why are you even adding that? If this is, it feels just like a Coke product. So why are- That's like, they tested it and they're like, huh, guys, there are vitamins in this. Yeah, that must have been a weird side effect that they didn't really like intend on happening. Yeah, I feel like it's just lucky that there's a couple of B vitamins in here.

They're unsure how to market it. So they're like, I don't know, we'll try this healthy thing. Maybe that'll work. And that's, you know what? I think I have to go stank, sadly. I love strawberry flavored stuff. Me too. And this didn't win me over, which means that it did a bad job.

Yeah, it's kind of like a pre-sunny. What do you think about the name Fuse? I don't like it. I don't like the name Fuse either. Yeah, it's like ooze. It's like electric ooze. Yeah, it sounds like a deep cable channel that you only get on certain providers. That's scrambled.

Yeah. So now I like it. It's like right between IFC and logo. Should we pronounce Fuse too, right? Is that what it's called? Maybe it is. I don't know. Maybe it is Fuse.

I would imagine it's Fuse and it's like they just swap out the S for a Z. That's what happened between Fuse. Maybe that's what it... I was saying that Fuse is what happened to between you and that girl who borrowed your sheet. Oh, fucking Christ. You were fused to it. Oh, okay.

Like you're semen and you... It's also what happened with that plastic bag and the intestines of that poor, poor mouse that did not ask to be... I didn't kill the mouse. It wasn't my fault that marshmallow died. I didn't... Or snowball, whatever the fuck its name was. I didn't tell you guys this, but they blamed it on me that it died after the fact.

They were like, it's Mitchell's fault. He took care of it, so I should have gotten this part of the story out and I was like, it's not my fault. It died in the school. It didn't die when it was home with me and people were still blamed me for it. Mitchell, that defense won't work with your children, so just keep that in mind. They died in the school. Aaron, do you have an official verdict, Drankers Stank?

Did you give us yours? I didn't. I'm thinking too much about it. I feel so bad. You don't have to feel bad. It's a huge corporation. Yeah, no, it's Coca-Cola. I'm going to say stink.

I'm going to say make your own shit. Oh, it tastes like chapstick. That's what it tastes like. It does, yes. It tastes like chapstick. That's perfect. That's the closest thing that comes to articulating the flavor. It feels like it would fit in at Chuck E. Cheese and they're like, here's our strawberry

tea. Yeah. What it should taste like. All right. It sucks. Sorry, fuse iced tea. Try better next time. That was Drankers Stank.

Just like a restaurant. We value your feedback. Let's open up the feedback. Today's email comes to us from Alex Browser. Alex writes, this past Friday, my friends and I made a trek to the nearest TGI Fridays to enjoy their new endless apps promotion, which includes unlimited servings of a variety of different appetizers for just $12. We were having a great time drinking beers and enjoying the food until about three rounds

in. We all started to feel very, very sick. We sort of dug ourselves into a hole because we told our waitress, we were trying to break the record. She saw someone eat sick servings once. We thought we would crush the record. None of us made it past five rounds and we were so full and sick, we couldn't even go out on that perfectly good Friday night.

My question to you, has this feeling of guilt and disgust and shame ever happened to you while eating all you can eat specials? What are some ways I can better exert self-control when eating? Thanks for the question, Alex. What do you guys think? Any disgust and shame over all you can eat? Any ways that Alex can control his urges a little better? I don't eat at all you can eat stuff too often.

I don't do buffets too often anymore. But I would just say every meal, not every meal, but I feel disgust and shame constantly. It doesn't have to be a buffet. It's very easy to gorge. It's very easy to gorge. Especially in America. Tonight, I ate too much of that fucking Chuck E. Cheese and I was mad immediately. Yeah, yeah.

I think he's being too hard on himself. Also, they went out with the purpose of gorging. It's basically a self-imposed eating contest. Yeah, I think he's asking how he can be an athletic, like a competitive eater, which you have to train for that. So the answer is train. That's a great answer. Yeah, I don't think you have to be too ashamed of what you're doing.

You're just having fun and having some good time. Were you embarrassed in front of these people? Is that a part of it? Because if we were talking about dates stuff earlier, that's a big thing for me on a date. I don't want to eat a bunch of food. I feel like that's never a good thing. Like you were saying you don't get steak or whatever. Yeah, I just read this study, or maybe someone told me about it, or maybe it was a dream.

But men eat more on dates because it's like a leftover biological thing where they're showing how they're, what's the word I'm looking for? Viral they are? Yeah, yeah, like that they're able to eat a lot because they're like beasts that they are. Like if someone's eating a lot on a date, it's not necessarily that they're not nervous and don't care. It's because they're showing off like how good their body works or something.

Does that track like biologically is like if you can eat a lot of food, you got a lot of cum? You were cum obsessed. We have it in the brain. Did you guys ever think that like if you drink a lot of milk, like whenever I saw a guy drink a lot of milk, I was like, oh no, he probably comes so much. Did you ever think that? Oh my God.

Jesus Christ. The only thing I ever knew is that people said pineapple, I'm sorry, we never heard of this guy's question, but this is what he's going to hear now. I heard that if you eat pineapple can make things taste differently. Yeah. Is that true Nick or no? Nick, I loved your story for the, I forget which episode it was with the, I forgot, cum.

It was another cum thing, you, I'll think of it. I got to pull this podcast out of the gutter, it's my own fault. A lot of meat makes it taste bad. Interesting. I've heard. You, you, you wanted to, you wanted to know this if a lot of, eating a lot of food makes you. Yeah, I know, I'm saying it's my fault.

I'm saying I shouldn't have gone down this road. You also didn't have to say the word cum, you could have said any word you wanted to. You're right. You're right. I don't, I don't know if that's true. I've never, I never get too embarrassed, though I, I had, like I, I, I ordered Domino's a week ago and then I, I was still thinking about cum and then I was like, I wonder what Dom, are you going to say what Domino's make this?

Sorry, you ordered Domino's. I hate, no more, I hate cum, I hate everything about it. I ordered Dom, I mean, it's good. Oh, Jesus Christ. No, I feel like that's a personal attack. I think I, sorry. No, go ahead. Were you going to say?

No, I was going to say the stupidest thing ever, but I will say it, I was, for a moment I was genuinely wondering, do you think, this is such an insane question, like, do you think I've Dom with more cum than you have like your own cum with like a stupid insane, like of course you've Dom with more like a Dom. I, I, I definitely when I was, you know, from, you know, 13 or 14 till 25, I, I feel like I, I'm not like, I'm not like a, like a, like a, like a sex comedian. Yeah. I feel, I feel self-conscious about like, I go to every podcast and I make them talk

about cum. No, that's, you have two weirdo guys who, we initiated it this week, who, who is bouncing around in their head constantly and they never talk about it and I think you just got it out of us. It's about all the food we've eaten and all the sex we have not had. This is what's going on in our brains. Me and my friend Bonnie in high school had a big list of guys that we thought we had made cum, like that we thought, thought about us.

Wow. Well, we won't tell this story on the podcast, but the first time I ever, could I do, I'll say it. You know what? I'm sorry. You just said we won't tell the story on the podcast. Now you just say it. I'll just, I'll quickly say it.

The first time I ever orgasmed, human came, I was just trying not to say the word. Yeah. A lot of people know this story. My father saw it happen accidentally. He opened the shower as it was happening, as I, the first time I ever masturbated. Anyways, that's it for the question of the week. So there's your answer, Alex. My dad saw me cum the first time I came.

Is that why every time you cum now, you scream, close the door? Are you proud? If you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants, you need to know us at DoughboysPod. Yes, it's email.com. Check out our Twitter at DoughboysPod, follow us on Facebook at Doughboys. Aaron McGathey. What a treat.

Thank you for coming here. Thank you for discussing Chuck E. Cheese and so many other things. Do you have anything you would like to plug while you're here in the States? Oh my God. Just some asshole. No. We're going to put a warning, this is the dirtiest episode. I do.

I do have something to plug. First of all, if my dad is listening, like everything, I'm really okay. He's worried about me a little bit. Yes, my thing to plug, I'm going to be performing for the entire month of August at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, if you are in the UK, performing at the Gilda Balloon. It's going to be a great time, and it's a one-woman show about cum. It's called Sticky or Sweet, and the poster is my face just coming up through like Samantha Morton in my Nordy report.

Oh my God. So come check out that, but no, it's not a show about cum. Yes. Well, we know we have some listeners out there in the UK. Go check out Aaron's show. Definitely. He's the best. And that'll do it for this episode of Doughboys.

Until next time, for The Spoonman and Mike Mitchell, I'm Nick Weigher. Happy eating. See ya.